NEVER TOO OLD

Third Prize

Festival of the Arts Literary Competition 1994

 

 THE BUZZ OF the doorbell makes me spill my tea. I always say things like, “I wouldn’t have broken the saucer if you haven’t left it on the edge of the table.” It’s a bad habit, blaming others for my faults. I’m working to correct it.

I head for the intercom.

“Hello.”

“Jess, it’s me. Diane. Let me in. Quick!” My sister pronounces her name Deehanne or at least she has since she married Yves-Pierre five years ago. Diane or Deehanne is a world class flouncer. I wonder where she developed it.

“Want tea?” I ask.

“I suppose.” She follows me to the kitchen. I pour two cups from the pot I made and nuke them in the microwave. I nuke all my food since Zach gave me the new microwave for Christmas last year. Both he and Sandy, tease me that I should turn the stove into a planter. By the time the timer dings, I’ve wiped up the spill.

Diane seats herself on a kitchen chair in the center of the bay window. The winter sun makes a halo around her brown curls.

She fiddles with the spoon and picks up the copper sugar bowl, studying the crystals before stirring in a half spoonful. After she adds milk, we watch the white swirl through the brown liquid.

Diane sighs.

I say, “Why do I think something is wrong.”

“Don’t be sarcastic Jess. You’re always sarcastic.”

I try to look innocent. I’ve never mastered innocence just as I’ve never overcome my clumsiness.

“We’ve got a problem, Jess.”

“Who’s we? You and me? Yves-Pierre and you, Zach and …”

“Come off it. It’s Mother?”

“What’s happened to her? I talked to her yesterday. She sounded fine.”

“It’s not her health. It’s worse.” Diane buries her head in her hands. My sister has always been dramatic. As a teenager a pimple brought on a three-act opera. Even last year she wore mourning for three months when her cat died. “Where’s Zach?” She sighs again.

I tell her my husband is with patients. He spends half his time doing charity work, half in an uptown office. It’s a compromise between social responsibility and greed I find appealing. He’s my second husband. “Do you need him for something to do with Mother?”

Before Diane can answer, the key clicks in the front door. Sandy follows Amadeus, our dog, into the kitchen. He’s part poodle and part question, white immediately after his bath and dirty gray the rest of the time. He’s gray now.

Amadeus jumps on my lap and licks my face. He acts as if we’ve been separated for days instead of 40 minutes. Diane looks disgusted as if his mouth contained raw sewerage.

Sandy takes a Coke from the fridge. It’s opening fizz echoes Diane’s next sigh.

“What’s happening, Aunti Di.” Sandy never liked the pronunciation Deehanne so she sidesteps it. I did point out that it was no sillier than when she spelled her name Sandi in her 13^th year with little hearts over the i. As Sandy walks by, she drops a kiss on the top of my head but when I respond, she holds up her hand.

“Parent breath.” It’s a joke between us. I call her Brace Breath. My daughter disappears into the bowels of her room. Like most teenagers’ bedrooms, hers should be condemned by the board of health.

“Get back to Mother, Diane.” I pour more tea, forgetting it’s cold. My sister doesn’t notice.

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Try the beginning.”

Diane pulls off the sweater she bought at the Icelandic import store where she loves to shop. She gave me a similar one last year for my 39^th birthday.

Her brown cords make her look really skinny. She’s on some diet where she has lost 15 pounds. We’d gone to the movies on her banana and milk day, and she’d come armed with seven bananas to replace popcorn. I hate admitting it: she has more will power than I do.

“I went over there today to take her to lunch. A surprise you know. The soup and salad place where she likes the black bread with cumin seeds. Anyway, I let myself in the back door and went right to the bathroom.”

When we were growing up, we always used the back door. The backroom was across from the rear entrance. Diane had/has the world smallest bladder.

“Mother wasn’t in the kitchen. I knew she was home. Her coat and purse were on the rack. I called out. No one answered.” She looks at me drawing out the drama.

I lean forward so she’ll continue.

“I’ll be right back. I gotta pee.” When she returns, she draws a breath. “I went upstairs and that’s … that’s … that’s where I found them.” She pauses waiting for me to speak.

I know if I don’t follow her script, I’ll never learn the whole story. “Them?”

“Mother. In bed. With a man.”

“Better than a woman,” I say.

Diane’s voice drips horror, shock, disbelief. “Our Mother. Your Mother. In bed with a man. Don’t you understand?"

“Was she enjoying it?”

“I didn’t ask. I told her she was awful, immoral. I came over here. What will we do?”

Sandy comes back into the kitchen and opens the fridge. The way she eats she should weight a ton. She must have her father’s metabolism. She makes her favorite sandwich — peanut butter and bologna. I refuse to make them. Makes me gag.

“Your Mom and I are having a grown-up conversation, Sweetie.”

My daughter opens the fridge again and gets a glass of milk.

“Brace Breath. Your aunt found Nana in bed with a guy.”

“Way to go, Nana!”

We’ve always had a very open relationship about sex, my daughter and me. Before she got her period we dipped tampons into a glass of water to see which brand was best.

About the same time Zach, Sandy and I rented the video Terms of Endearment. In one scene Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger lie on their stomachs discussing lovers.

I’d been on the couch with my head on Zach’s lap. My teddy bear husband leaned over and whispered, “I can see you and Sandy doing that in a few years.”

Imitating Zach’s tone, Sandy whispered back, “Me too.”

“Neither of you realize that Mother is almost 73,” my sister says.

“I suppose it’s like riding a bike. You never forget how,” Sandy says.

Diane and I both look at her.

“It’s just a guess. I’m still a virgin.”

“I’m glad,” I say. I am.

“I don’t understand you two. Sandy’s too young for this conversation and Mother … wells she certainly is too old to be doing what she’s doing.” Diane puts her hands on top of her head as if she’s afraid the top will blow off. “I just had a terrible thought. What if he’s after his money?”

“He’ll be disappointed.” Papa had left her with enough that she didn’t have to watch every penny but keep her eye on her nickels.

“She insisted we be so straight. Remember the Easter I brought Jonathan home. We were living together. You think she’d have let us share a room, but ohhhh no.” Diane’s voice still bears anger from so long ago.

“That was Papa not Mother. She went along with him for peace.” This is my part of the script. In my role as older sister, Mother often consulted me about how to handle Diane. Not that Mother needed it. She’d been a good parent running interference between her offspring and husband whose favorite saying was “My girls will never …”

Of course we’d done many of the nevers.

When I was 19 and in love with Leon, a Communist, my Mother welcomed him, fed him, asked his opinion on issues while Papa grew redder and redder. Papa wanted to call the police, FBI and CIA. Mother’s calm prevailed. In a way, I’m sorry that Papa didn’t live to learn Leon owns a Mercedes dealership now.

On the day of Papa’s funeral, Mother and I spent more energy controlling Diane’s hysteria than we did on our own grief. Yves-Pierre drove my sister home before the burial. Later I watched her stroke the casket of her life’s partner. For all their differences they loved each other. Deeply.

“Papa’s been gone three years. If Mother had died first, I’m sure he’d have been remarried by now. Women mourn. Men replace.

“I’m not getting any help here.” Diane grabs her coat and beret. “I’m sorry I disturbed you.” She slams the door.

“Wow!” Sandy says. “She was mad.”

Diane will go home. In a couple of days, I’ll phone. She’ll use her icicle voice. After that she’ll call me, and we’ll pretend nothing happened. It’s happened so many times, the pattern is boring.

I call Mother. “Hello, Mother,” I say when she answers.

“By any chance have you talked to your sister?” she asks.

I tell her I have.

“Are you mad at me too?”

“Not at all. Want to talk about it?” She used to ask me the same question. Now I’m doing it to her.

“Oh Jess, he’s so nice. He bought violets for my coat when we went to church last week. You know, where they sell them in Copley Square?”

I did know. I picture mother standing in her charcoal coat she bought at Jordan Marsh. A man, his back to me, pins a bouquet on her lapel.

“Don’t tell Diane that. She’ll think I sold myself for a bunch of flowers.”

Sandy mouths, “Is Nana okay?”

I nod yes.

He tells me about her friend. He sounds nice. She sounds happy.

“Did I do wrong, Jess?”

I think of all the lovers I had after my divorce before I met Zach. I think of all the pleasure I’ve had in bed. I think of Sandy’s reaction.

“Way to go Mother.”