Part Eight.
My mother picked up the vibe the very next time we were in the store. Apron-boy approached us again, this time next to the cantaloupe pyramids, and asked if he could help. With anything.
"No," I said, managing a furtive smile. I even tacked on a "thank you."
As we left the store, she snickered. "Oh, to be 16 again. My mother used to laugh every time she took me for ice cream. 'I like to go with you,' she'd say, 'you order a small and get a double scoop just for being young and pretty.'"
"It's nothing to write home about," I said, grinning as I loaded the brown bags of fizzy soda into our trunk.
"Mmm," she smiled, thoughts far away. I wondered if the ice-cream story carried some sort of expectation: what good daughters do. How did this translate to the modern era? Perhaps my smile ought to procure us a double-slab of salmon teriyaki? Shoot, I would have been game, if I'd known how. That salmon was a miracle.
----
Mother waited each night for Dad to call. When I asked her why she didn't just pick up the phone and call him, she said, "I'm old-fashioned."
I was aware of this. I mean, we called her "mother," per her request/insistence. "Mom," for her, evoked a frazzled woman perpetually-swathed in stonewashed denim. When motherhood was new for her, she'd imagined referring to Dad as Papa. But that was one dream which my father emphatically squelched.
The phone thing still puzzled me, though. The weirdest part--he did call, always when she wanted, as if he could see us sitting there waiting. They conferred each night, Mother twisting the spiral-cord around her hand like a teenager. I never listened in on these conversations; they never interested me. My AP English class required Crime and Punishment and The Grapes of Wrath. The Russian nicknames alone demanded my full attention.
One night as she stared at the rotary dial, she laughed a little throaty laugh, the laugh of remembering something. I momentarily abandoned Rodya.
"In high school, I'd curl up underneath this table and talk to Marilyn every single night. At least an hour."
Marilyn was her high-school best friend. They'd both sustained long-running crushes, and had both given these boys a numeric "code" to preserve decorum. As she described it, I saw her, 16, curled up against the stately, carved legs, same cord twisted through same fingers, reporting on 'number 13' and the way he'd smiled at her between Chemistry and Concert Choir.
"Why didn't you go into your room?" I asked.
"It was comfortable down there." She smiled again and kicked the table leg gently. The phone rang, startling us both. She let it ring twice more, then picked up the receiver gently.
"Hello?" she answered in a tone reserved for strangers. Then, "Hello, dear." And the mash-up of the day, from the rat in the garage to the business of listing the house, began in detail. I turned back to Dostoevsky.
---
These reports on our circadian rhythm seemed to hold Dad's genuine attention. I didn't find much to be interested in: I woke up, walked to the park, and then shred something. Reports brought home from the state. Electricity bills from the 1950s.
During work hours, I sat on the floor of the back indoor porch, wedged between the fold-down ironing board and the washer-drier combo. One morning Mother gave me a box of pink Weinstock's credit slips.
Small, trim, the width of a shoebox but twice as long. This was Olive's box. I'd never met my grandmother; she died a year before I was born. The job should have taken ten minutes. Make sure a blank, signed check wasn't wedged between the receipts, and get on with it.
Two hours later, I was still cross-legged on the linoleum. The descriptions of purchase, credit slips ranging from '47 to' 79, read like a frivolous summer novel. She'd been a fashion plate, no question: Trim tweed suit, contrast-trim jacket, size 6. Red leather shoes, side buckle, size 7 narrow. A hat's description read: "feathery felt. Baby blue color with netting, grosgrain ribbon, jeweled bauble." I was lost in it.
I loved that Olive Reynolds Steinkamp bought it all on credit. We didn't buy anything on credit. Mother was not the kind seduced by style. She wore one blue button down skirt with a t-shirt tucked in to the waistband. It was utilitarian, it suited her service to her dad, to us. But I still bugged her about it. I thought she should have some fun getting dressed. She brushed off my concerns. When we went shopping, one thing mattered to her: Modesty. Just as fast as I picked something out, she'd deem it "on the make." An impossibly old-fashioned term. I hated it.
I felt accused. Of growing up. Of wanting to be pretty. Sometimes the outfits were ridiculous, were sluttish. I wanted to see what I'd look like if I dressed like the girls who got the attention. But sometimes I just thought something was jaunty, or I liked the way I filled it out, or it felt like me. These were real fights. The way all mothers and daughters have real fights. Tears, emotional blood baths, the dressing-room floor awash in taboo tank tops and too-short-skirts.
Impossibly, delightfully, the box smelled of Chanel No. 5. The smell of beauty. The smell of elegance; the smell of a woman who buys "jeweled baubles" on credit. The indoor porch swelled with the scent, it pulsed against the heat. I curled further back into my corner, leaned against the warm dryer, and breathed in deep.
