“You sound depressed,” my mother said two sentences into the conversation.
“I’m just tired.”
That shopworn line again.
I could see her as if she were before me. No doubt she was sitting up in bed, several pillows behind her back, the television softly playing. I have my father’s coloring. My mother is dark, her black hair white now and softly framing her round, full face, her brown eyes large behind her thick glasses.
“Of course you’re tired,” she started in. “All you do is work. And those horrible cases in Richmond. There was a story about them in the Herald yesterday, Kay. I’ve never been so surprised in my life. I didn’t even see it until this afternoon when Mrs. Martinez dropped by with it. I stopped getting the Sunday paper. All those inserts and coupons and ads. It’s so fat I can’t be bothered. Mrs. Martinez came by with it because your picture’s in it.”
I groaned.
“Can’t say I would have recognized you. It’s not very good, taken at night, but your name’s under it, sure enough. And wearing no hat, Kay. Looked like it was raining or wet and nasty out and here you are not wearing a hat. All those hats I’ve crocheted for you and you can’t even bother to wear one of your mother’s hats so you don’t catch pneumonia . . .”
“Mother. . .”
She went on.
“Mother!”
I couldn’t stand it, not tonight. I could be Maggie Thatcher and my mother would persist in treating me like a five-year old who doesn’t have sense enough to come out of the rain.
Next came the run of questions about my diet and whether I was getting enough sleep.
I abruptly derailed her. “How’s Dorothy?”
She hesitated. “Well, that’s why I’m calling.”
I scooted over a chair and sat down as my mother’s voice went up an octave and she proceeded to tell me Dorothy had flown to Nevada – to get married.
“Why Nevada?” I stupidly asked.
“You tell me! You tell me why your only sister meets with some book person she’s only talked to over the phone in the past, and suddenly calls her mother from the airport to say she’s on her’ way to Nevada to get married. You tell me how my daughter could do something like that. You think she has macaroni for brains . . .”
“What sort of book person?”
I glanced at Lucy. She was watching me, her face stricken.
“I don’t know. Some illustrator she called him, I guess he draws the pictures for her books, was in Miami a few days ago for some convention and got with Dorothy to discuss her current project or something. Don’t ask me. His name’s Jacob Blank. Jewish, I just know it. Though Dorothy certainly couldn’t tell me. Why should she tell her mother she’s marrying a Jew I’ve never met who’s twice her age and draws kiddy pictures, for crummy sake?”
I didn’t even ask.
To send Lucy home in the midst of yet another family crisis was unthinkable. Her absences from her mother had been prolonged before, whenever Dorothy had to dash out of town for an editorial meeting or a research trip or one of her numerous “book talks” that always seemed to detain her longer than anyone had supposed. Lucy would remain with her grandmother until the wandering writer eventually made it back home. Maybe we had learned to accept these lapses into blatant irresponsibility. Maybe even Lucy had. But eloping? Good God.
“She didn’t say when she’d be back?”
I turned away from Lucy and lowered my voice.
“What?” my mother said loudly. “Tell me such a thing? Why should she tell her mother that? Oh! How could she do this again, Kay! He’s twice her age! Armando was twice her age and look what happened to him! He drops dead by the pool before Lucy’s even old enough to ride a bicycle . . .”
It took me a while to ease her out of hysteria. After I hung up, I was left with the fallout.
I couldn’t think of a way to cushion the news. “Your mother’s gone out of town for a little while, Lucy. She’s gotten married to Mr. Blank, who illustrates her books for her . . .”