I know exactly what you’re thinking right now. And no, I am not cracking up.
The house I want will have much smaller rooms than the one we have now. I think we will have it built. There will be pastel walls, Martin, not the safe off-white you always insisted upon because that heavily jeweled, heavily perfumed, heavily made-up interior designer who came out when we bought our first house told us to let the things on the wall speak—not the walls themselves. Neutralize, she said, looking at me because I had said I would like walls the color of the sun, and of robins’ eggs. I don’t know how we could have put so much stock in a woman whose clothes we both hated. The very notion of some stranger telling people how to arrange their houses seems so ridiculous to me, now. Did then, too, if you want to know. It’s like someone else deciding when you’re hungry.
I want a place by the ocean, where you can hear the water any time you decide to pay attention, where you can see it out of the windows. The ocean will be ever-changing during the day, blue to gray to green; but always the same at night: vast black. I want a white fence around the property, tall flowers leaning against it in patches so thick they don’t suffer from the occasional thief. I want a porch, wide and long enough for an outside living room, perhaps a hammock for you, I think you might like to drink your seltzer in a hammock. You might like to read your Sunday newspaper there, too, then doze off under the business section.
Inside the house, golden-colored wooden stairs should lead up past a small leaded glass window. The sunlight should come through that window so thickly it looks like candy. There should be no curtains in the house except for white ones in the bedroom, with trim so beautiful it’s heartbreaking. I can find those curtains somewhere, I know—they’ll be old, of course, and hopefully used, and therefore saturated with soul.
In the bathroom, I want an old-fashioned sink with a wide pedestal base; and the presence of a clear, strong blue color—perhaps in towels, and probably on the ceiling, too. There will be a claw-footed tub, and in the summer, I will paint its toenails, and in the winter I’ll knit slippers for it. We’ll have big seashells scattered here and there on the floor as though they had stopped by to change out of their swimsuits.
I want a small fieldstone fireplace, a bouquet of flowers always on the mantel. Multipaned windows, French doors. The kitchen should be a large friendly square and the cupboards should have glass doors to show this brown speckled bowl, perfect for making pancakes; that yellow mug, right for morning coffee. Our forks should be decorated on the ends with forget-me-nots so that each bite will carry flowers to our mouths. We can do without some of those damn wineglasses, Martin. I would just as soon drink wine out of a jelly glass, it always looks so good in the movies when the Italian men wear their T-shirts and sit at the kitchen tables and drink their wine that way. And in the background, the women standing over pots with lively smells, wearing print housedresses and white aprons and braids pinned on top of their heads, and little, foreign, dangling earrings—I bet they have a nip too, their own glass on the counter beside them. Yes, I believe we must both start to drink from jelly glasses, and I think when we do, some stubborn old stone will be loosened.
The kitchen counters will be wooden, hip high, and a slight slope will develop in the middle from the weight of our meals. There will be a back door off the kitchen, a rope clothesline you can get to from there.
Our bedroom will have a little wall space for paintings of flowers, but otherwise there will be windows. The bedspread will be white chenille. Our closet door will be large and heavy, and it will creak in familiar but different ways when we open it, as though it were saying the same word in different moods.
There will be another bedroom with yellow walls. For Ruthie and for guests. A round, floral scatter rug on the floor. Lace here and there. In summer, a blue vase on the dresser with one pink-and-white peony, the shameless-hussy variety. In winter, a fat book lying open there, pale sunlight on the page like a wash.
I want one bedroom painted a blue leaning toward purple, and I want that room kept empty except for the fill of light and the dust motes, drifting down like inside snow. It will be the place to stand in and get peaceful. To remember the fullness of spareness.
I want a little room only for me. Stuffed full of what I love. A ticking clock, too, the smooth measure of time that is not hysterical or guilty or full of longing, that offers no judgment of anything, that just says here, here, here, in slow, sounded seconds. Here. Here. Here. Off that room should be a small balcony, facing the water. Room for one chair and a begonia, a flustered red color. Room for one cup of coffee balanced on one knee.
There should be a shed in the back, with my red bicycle inside, a brown basket on the handlebars. Your bike will be in there too, though I know of course you won’t want a basket, you think it’s wimpy. I’ll use the basket to hold loaves of bread from the bakery, packages I’m taking to the post office. We can ride to look at other parts of the ocean, to see the large and larger rocks, tan colored or gray, sharp or smooth. Waves will crash and the spray will be spectacular, as it always is, small cymbal sounds seeming to come from it.
We should keep gardening tools in the shed, and old newspapers stacked up neatly, just in case. You know. In case of paint. In case of puppies, in case of kittens, it’s good to keep yourself open to the possibility of them.
You can do something in our new house just for you too, but this time you will ask me about it. It will be your turn to say, “What do you think about this idea, Nan?” And it will be my turn to say, “Well … I suppose.”
Well, look how long this letter is, how I have gone on and on! This is so different from the usual way, when I try to cast my thoughts out, meaning to share all of them with you, and then slowly pull the line back in, your not having seen much at all. You stop listening so I seize up, or I seize up so you stop listening. Which is it, Martin?
I am in Minneapolis, staying at the Radisson, right downtown. Yesterday I bought cowgirl boots and a cowgirl hat. Black. Don’t ask me how or why I found them here. They were in a store window and I answered the call. Then I had caramel corn for lunch and took a walk around a lake, there are lakes everywhere, here. The boots were very comfortable, I don’t think they’ll hurt your picky feet.
Well, it was supposed to be a surprise, but as you can see now, I bought you boots too. And a hat. White, so you can be the hero. Which you sort of are, to me and to Ruthie. You know we both love you very much. I suppose in my own way I’ve been as neglectful as I accuse you of being. So let me tell you, to start, that I never felt scared of robbers when you were home. And I think your French toast is the best in the world.
I’m going to a movie now. Middle of the afternoon, in my cowgirl boots. Tomorrow I’m driving further north. I hear it’s beautiful. And when I am there I am once again going to attempt sleeping outside. I don’t know why it’s so damn important to me.
Do not throw away any of my magazines. Believe me, I will know if you do.
Love,
Nan
Well, I suppose I did a very foolish thing today. On the way out of the city, I picked up a hitchhiker. He seemed so nice, that’s the only way I can say it, standing there, his thumb out and his face a little embarrassed. Handsome thing. He got in and we got to talking and he told me he was coming from his girlfriend’s house, well, not his girlfriend, just a friend who was a girl. I suspected that, this man was gay, I could see that. He said the woman was his best friend and they’d decided to have a baby together, that she was close to the end of the pregnancy now and very testy, in fact she’d just thrown him out of her apartment and he’d had no way home, they’d been out in her car. He said he thought pregnant women were supposed to be easy to get along with, all dreamy and soft.
I said, Well.
He said she’d been cleaning like a crazy person and I said yes, the time is close, then, that was exactly what I’d done when I was close. Martin came home and I had been washing walls which I had never done in my life. He?
??d taken the bucket from me, saying, “Nan, Nan.” It was kind of sweet. That night, at four in the morning, the contractions started. I’d awakened Martin and he’d said, “Well, you’d better try to rest a little more, you’ll need your strength,” and then he promptly went back to sleep. Snored! But I got up and went into Ruthie’s room, which was all ready for her. I stacked and restacked her tiny T-shirts, wound her mobile, thought, soon I will know if you’re a boy or a girl.
I told this young man, Ethan, his name was, I said, you know, a woman who is very pregnant needs a lot of very special attention. He said, well what could he do, he was there, wasn’t he?, he came to see her every day, he tried to do things for her, but she was just so damn cranky. And then he sighed and looked out the window and said he thought what she really wanted was for him to love her … that way. And he couldn’t. I said that must be very hard. He said I didn’t know the half of it. I said maybe he shouldn’t go home, maybe he should go back to her apartment. He said yes he knew that, in fact he was just going to ask me to let him out and he was going to hitch back there, take her out to dinner, she liked the bacon burgers at the Embers, lately, although he himself thought it was not the best thing for the baby. I said I’d take him back to her house. He said really? I said sure. He asked me to stop at a florist’s and he came out with two bouquets. He’d gotten one for me. Freesia. I said, Oh, but I’m on the road, they’ll just die. So he went back in the store and bought a vase and he put the flowers in there and anchored it with a ribbon to the door handle. I thought, what a nice thing. And I was so happy I’d picked him up.
I used to always have interesting things happen when I picked up hitchhikers—not always pleasant, but always interesting. Once, a man had such terrible BO I had to leave the car windows open overnight. But other times I got to see the flash of a life like a peek at someone’s true hand of cards, and I liked that.
On my twentieth birthday, I was out driving with a girlfriend and we picked up a man I have thought about a million times since. He sat in the back with his arm draped across the seat as though his invisible companion were along for the ride, too. My girlfriend and I were kidding around a little bit and he was laughing at everything we said and soon we were all laughing, it was the kind of thing where the laughter feeds on itself, where the sound of someone else’s snorting and wheezing keeps you going until you don’t even know why you started laughing in the first place—and you don’t care. It’s so good for you, that kind of hard laughter, so cleansing—you feel like your liver’s been held up and hosed down, your heart relieved of a million grimy weights. We were driving down Lake Street, I remember, with the windows open and our elbows hanging out to an early spring day. The sun was high in the sky, “I Can See Clearly Now” was on the radio and I thought, nothing needs to be hard. I thought, I can suggest anything, and these two will say, “Sure!”
Before I had a car, I hitchhiked a lot, too. I had my fair share of nasty men pick me up; one said he “laid out stiffs” for a living, and showed me his business card: THOMPSON MORTUARY, it said, in apologetic script. Then he asked if I would like to screw him, for a hundred dollars. He showed me the hundred-dollar bill, folded into quarters and stuffed into a corner of his wallet. I said, But don’t you want to be in love, have sex with someone you really care about? I really said that. I think I thought I was Mobile Therapist. He said no. I said, Well then why don’t you just get a prostitute? He said, “I don’t want a prostitute, I want a nice girl, like you.” His voice was so oily and dark and it came to me that he could take me anywhere and do anything. When he came to a stop sign I said, This is fine, thank you, have a nice day, thank you, and I got out and went home and called my boyfriend Bob Sandler and he came over and got me to stop shaking. I wonder where Bob is now. I wonder if he still has his hair, he had beautiful hair.
Another time I got picked up by a mother who was bringing her little son home from school, and she talked to him with great interest and respect about what he had done that day. I remember thinking, If I become a mother, let me be this kind. I was fascinated by the very notion of showing a child respect, it was outside my experience, my parents viewed children rather like puppies. The boy was about six, sitting with his book bag on his lap, idly fingering the clasp and having a conversation with his mommy and his insides felt right, I knew it. I thought, yes, let me be just like her.
I tried, but I don’t think I succeeded. There is so much I’d do differently, if I could. Sometimes in the quiet of the afternoon, I sit in Ruthie’s room thinking, an ache of regret lying like a stone in the bottom of my stomach. Not long ago I remembered how Ruthie always said, “Thank you, Mommy,” whenever I bought her school clothes, and I burst into tears because she should not have felt she needed to thank me for what was her due. I shouldn’t have said, “You’re welcome.” I should have said, “Oh, Ruthie, you don’t have to thank me.” Then I thought about how she also used to ask if it was all right to roll down the window of the car and I said out loud to her bedside lamp, “My God, I was so controlling. I’m so sorry.” After I cried for awhile (and you know I’d been crying so often that week) I got up in the middle of this particular torrent of tears and made myself a bologna sandwich—anyway, after I finished crying, I called Ruthie and asked her if she thought I had done anything terrible when I was raising her. I said we were both old enough to talk about this now, and I was truly interested in knowing her real feelings. At first, she was kind of flustered, embarrassed—and she probably wondered if I were nuts—but then she said, “Well, mostly, you just taught me to trust myself.” And I said did I really do that? and she said yes. And I thought, how could I have taught you something I never learned for myself?
But maybe there was evidence for Ruthie’s strength of spirit, all along. When she was in junior high school, that most dangerous of places for girls, she went through a very rough time with her friends. What happened is that she got pushed out of her group. I saw it coming, but I couldn’t tell her. I had no idea how to say, Honey, I don’t think they want you anymore. I thought they were crazy. I wanted to hurt them. I saw one of their group, Lindsay, in the drugstore one day when all this had started happening—the chicken calls, the way Ruthie’s Saturdays were suddenly blank—and I thought about telling the clerk I’d seen that girl shoplifting—many, many times. I thought about grabbing her by her pert blonde ponytail and holding the spiral-bound notebook I was buying up to her neck. But I didn’t. I smiled at her. I said how’s your mother. I said tell her I said hello. And when, after a period of isolation, Ruthie determinedly brought home a new friend, I made cookies. The effort of starting a friendship was showing in both of their faces, it was as though their underwear was excruciatingly tight. I overdid it, of course; I made three kinds of cookies, I folded the paper napkins into swans; I made a show of exiting so that they would know they were free to tell delicious secrets. They sat so straight and quietly at the kitchen table, and after I left I sat in the living room holding a magazine on my lap and craning my neck to listen to their soft, short sentences. I wanted to be able to tell Ruthie how to be popular, how to make and keep friends. But I was—and still am—pretty much a loner, one who wearies of almost anyone’s company much too soon. My mother told me that when I was four, I came inside from where I’d been playing with another little girl, my first play date, and said she should go home now. Seven minutes had passed. Even when I got older, I’d be sitting with a bunch of college friends and suddenly have to leave. They were good-natured about it, they knew me. “Uh-oh!” they’d say. “Nan’s gotta go, get out of the way!” I wanted Ruthie to be different from me, to be someone who could make casual conversation without clenching her fists, who could be comfortable at a party. Well, she is that. She is quite sociable. But she is like me, too. Thus the miracle of mothering. Thus the duck who puts her head under her wing but still watches her ducklings bustling about her, their heads held high.
Suddenly, I miss the scent of Martin. Isn’t it funny, he has turned
out to be the one I can be with the longest.
Dear Martin,
I am pulled over in a roadside rest. The sun is starting to go down, and the colors are spectacular. I thought that rather than risk an accident, I’d pull over and watch, and write to you.
I was thinking today that maybe you should retire, take an early retirement. Now, don’t start huffing and puffing and thinking up all your fancy arguments. Just wait, I want to tell you something.
I don’t regret the fact that I was the one to stop working to raise Ruthie. When we brought her home from the hospital I hovered over you every time you even held her. I knew you were her father and half responsible for her in every way, but I have to tell you, Martin, as far as I was concerned, she was really all mine. I made her baby food, I picked out her toys and her clothes, I took her to school every first day, I pulled her shades down for her naps, I took her to the doctor, I braided her hair and buckled her shoes and mounted her artwork on the refrigerator. And I wanted to. I wanted to. Once she got into the teen years, you and she seemed to get closer and that was fine with me, too. I had had my hands to her when she was still wet, was how I saw it. Now I could step back—keep watching, but step back. And then back further.
All during those years of Ruthie growing up, I was also the one to cook and shop and clean, and I didn’t really mind that, either. Of course there were some bad days. Remember the time Ruthie was napping on a Saturday afternoon and I sat in the living room literally tearing my hair out and saying I was too smart to do this, that a chimpanzee could do what I was doing—better!, that I had to have more challenge and stimulation in my life or I was going to die? I remember you trying to help, suggesting I get a job, and how I screamed at you that I could never do that, I couldn’t leave her with someone else. It is such a violent love, that of a mother for a young child. And I had to be there, no matter the cost. I knew I was missing some things, I could feel some brightness of mind dulling; but on balance I loved what I did.