shelf.
It was Sunday afternoon. Father, Beth, and I were trying to clean house before Mother returned from a weekend of interviewing state senators in Sacramento. Father was vacuuming the hall rug while Beth was mopping the kitchen floor and I was dusting the den furniture. We were all listening to Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
turned up loud and playing over and over again on the hi-fi. We were all hard at work and happy and eager for Mother to return and compliment us on our cleaning. Then I picked up Mother’s sculpture in order to dust the mantelpiece. Above the sound of the
Four Seasons,
above the sound of the whining vacuum cleaner, Father and Beth could hear the crash.
After turning off the music, Beth stood at the edge of the kitchen floor and her only comment was: “You’re dead, Jeremy. Now you’ve really had it.”
Father shut off the vacuum cleaner and tried to piece the sculpture together, but it was hopeless. Adobe Woman had a crack down her spine, her right arm stopped at the shoulder, her feet were missing.
“If I glue it together and put it back where it was, maybe Mom won’t notice the difference when she returns,” Father said. “I don’t want to upset her after a long weekend of hard work.”
“Don’t even think of trying that,” Beth called from the kitchen.
“Why not?” he asked.
“You know how disdainful Mom is of duplicity.”
“Yeah, Dad, d-d-don’t piece it together. I’ll just tell her what I did when she gets home.”
Mother was, above all else, a woman of moods. If she’d been escorted out of the San Francisco Press Club for wearing slacks or her editor in New York had tampered with her lead, dinner would be a long silent affair, the rest of the evening she’d try to find fault with us, and we’d stay out of her way. But when things broke right for her, when
The Nation
played her story on the inside front cover, or an important politician invited her to ask the first question at a press conference, she was capable, I think, of divine love. She would give back to us the blessings the world had bestowed upon her, and in her glory we could do no wrong. She’d gone to Sacramento with the intention of talking to a few senators, some assemblymen, and maybe a couple of lobbyists, but Arnie Logan, Mother’s former sports editor on the
Daily Bruin
and now Pat Brown’s press secretary, had arranged an exclusive interview for her with the governor, and on the way home she’d sold it as a free-lance feature to the Sunday supplement of the
San Francisco Examiner.
She wanted so much to share her triumph with us that she bought Father another book to add to his The Rosenbergs Were Not Guilty Library, she bought Beth a marionette, she bought me a box of cinnamon gingerbread men, and she bought herself a bottle of champagne. When she handed me my box of cinnamon gingerbread men, I handed her the broken pieces of Adobe Woman and said, “I’m sorry, M-M-Mom, I dropped your c-c-clay lady.”
On that Sunday afternoon, I don’t think the death of her father would have seriously dampened her spirits. She was so giddy with success, so drunk with champagne, that she just looked at the pieces and laughed and tousled my hair and said, “That’s okay, Jeremy. Don’t worry about it. It was an ugly old thing, anyhow, don’t you think? I didn’t care much for it any more. Cheer up, hon, it was only a statue. All is forgiven if you’ll promise to be as honest with me about everything as you’ve been about this. Will you do that? From now on, if you do something I should know about, will you come tell me rather than make me find out for myself? Good. Now, may I have one of your gingerbread men? I’ve always liked best the kind with icing on the nose.”
This was certainly a side of Mother I had seen little of until then. I wanted to show my gratitude by giving her the whole box of gingerbread men, but she said, “No, I’d rather get a dozen kisses from you later tonight.” When she
It was Sunday afternoon. Father, Beth, and I were trying to clean house before Mother returned from a weekend of interviewing state senators in Sacramento. Father was vacuuming the hall rug while Beth was mopping the kitchen floor and I was dusting the den furniture. We were all listening to Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
turned up loud and playing over and over again on the hi-fi. We were all hard at work and happy and eager for Mother to return and compliment us on our cleaning. Then I picked up Mother’s sculpture in order to dust the mantelpiece. Above the sound of the
Four Seasons,
above the sound of the whining vacuum cleaner, Father and Beth could hear the crash.
After turning off the music, Beth stood at the edge of the kitchen floor and her only comment was: “You’re dead, Jeremy. Now you’ve really had it.”
Father shut off the vacuum cleaner and tried to piece the sculpture together, but it was hopeless. Adobe Woman had a crack down her spine, her right arm stopped at the shoulder, her feet were missing.
“If I glue it together and put it back where it was, maybe Mom won’t notice the difference when she returns,” Father said. “I don’t want to upset her after a long weekend of hard work.”
“Don’t even think of trying that,” Beth called from the kitchen.
“Why not?” he asked.
“You know how disdainful Mom is of duplicity.”
“Yeah, Dad, d-d-don’t piece it together. I’ll just tell her what I did when she gets home.”
Mother was, above all else, a woman of moods. If she’d been escorted out of the San Francisco Press Club for wearing slacks or her editor in New York had tampered with her lead, dinner would be a long silent affair, the rest of the evening she’d try to find fault with us, and we’d stay out of her way. But when things broke right for her, when
The Nation
played her story on the inside front cover, or an important politician invited her to ask the first question at a press conference, she was capable, I think, of divine love. She would give back to us the blessings the world had bestowed upon her, and in her glory we could do no wrong. She’d gone to Sacramento with the intention of talking to a few senators, some assemblymen, and maybe a couple of lobbyists, but Arnie Logan, Mother’s former sports editor on the
Daily Bruin
and now Pat Brown’s press secretary, had arranged an exclusive interview for her with the governor, and on the way home she’d sold it as a free-lance feature to the Sunday supplement of the
San Francisco Examiner.
She wanted so much to share her triumph with us that she bought Father another book to add to his The Rosenbergs Were Not Guilty Library, she bought Beth a marionette, she bought me a box of cinnamon gingerbread men, and she bought herself a bottle of champagne. When she handed me my box of cinnamon gingerbread men, I handed her the broken pieces of Adobe Woman and said, “I’m sorry, M-M-Mom, I dropped your c-c-clay lady.”
On that Sunday afternoon, I don’t think the death of her father would have seriously dampened her spirits. She was so giddy with success, so drunk with champagne, that she just looked at the pieces and laughed and tousled my hair and said, “That’s okay, Jeremy. Don’t worry about it. It was an ugly old thing, anyhow, don’t you think? I didn’t care much for it any more. Cheer up, hon, it was only a statue. All is forgiven if you’ll promise to be as honest with me about everything as you’ve been about this. Will you do that? From now on, if you do something I should know about, will you come tell me rather than make me find out for myself? Good. Now, may I have one of your gingerbread men? I’ve always liked best the kind with icing on the nose.”
This was certainly a side of Mother I had seen little of until then. I wanted to show my gratitude by giving her the whole box of gingerbread men, but she said, “No, I’d rather get a dozen kisses from you later tonight.” When she
Similar Books
