Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings Read online

  No, I can’t really remember what it used to be like when we sat at the table and just talked. As I say, all I can really remember about it is that we could hear each other.

  Questions I Wish I’d Never Asked

  All I wanted to know was who had left the garden hose out in the snow to freeze.

  “Who,” I said to my older son, Laurie, “left the garden hose out in the snow to freeze?”

  “Not me,” he said at once. “I didn’t do it.”

  “Well,” I said (flank attack), “when did you last use the hose?”

  “I haven’t used it since last summer,” he assured me. “I don’t think I’ve even seen the garden hose since last summer. Or maybe even the summer before.”

  “What did you use to wash the car?”

  “What? Oh.” He thought. “Oh, that. You mean that garden hose? And anyway I put it back.”

  “Then why is it out in the snow to freeze?”

  “I’ll tell you,” he said. “I remember I put it back, because I was curling it up in the garage, and I gave Joanne the frying pan—”

  “The frying pan?”

  “Well, yes. To wash the car.”

  “Why did you need a frying pan to wash the car?”

  “For the soap,” he said, sighing.

  “I suppose,” I said carefully, “it was the omelet pan?”

  “We figured you didn’t use that one as much as the others.” He was quiet for a minute and then went on quickly, “So I gave Joanne the frying pan and the sewing scissors to take in, and I curled—”

  “The sewing scissors? Mine?”

  “She was cutting off the frayed edges.”

  “Of what? Of what?”

  “There was a kind of a little hole in the upholstery.”

  “Of the car?”

  “Well, the dog did that,” he said desperately. “We put the car robe over it, anyway. So I was curling up the garden hose in the garage and Joanne…”

  —

  “Joanne,” I said, “did you wash the omelet pan?”

  “What?”

  “Did you wash the omelet pan after you used it to wash the car?”

  “Well, there was already soap in it. I just rinsed it out and put it back. Why?”

  “Where are my sewing scissors?”

  “I don’t know. You want to cut something?”

  “I am trying to find out who left the garden hose out in the snow to freeze.”

  “You mean when Laurie washed the car? Did the omelet taste funny?”

  “Where are my sewing scissors?”

  “Oh. Well, I brought them in. And Barry was doing a plane model in the kitchen. And he asked could he borrow the scissors for a minute. And I said he should put them back in your sewing table when he was through. Why,” she asked, struck with an idea. “Can’t you find them?”

  “No. I cannot find them.”

  “Why don’t you ask Laurie? He was washing the car.”

  “Did he leave the garden hose out in the snow to freeze?”

  “No, that was Sally.”

  “Sally?”

  “She had it because she was trying to ice skate.”

  “What?”

  “On the lawn. She was going to put water on the lawn so it would freeze, but it wouldn’t stretch.”

  “Then did Sally—”

  “All I know is, it wasn’t me.”

  —

  “Barry,” I said, “where are my sewing scissors?”

  “What?”

  “The day Laurie washed the car you were doing a plane model in the kitchen and Joanne came in with my sewing scissors and you asked to borrow them and they have not been returned.”

  “Oh. I don’t know. Maybe Laurie took them.”

  “Laurie was curling up the hose.”

  “Then maybe Joanne took them.”

  “Joanne was rinsing out the omelet pan.”

  “Then what about Sally? Or Dad?”

  “What did you do with my sewing scissors when you were through with your model plane?”

  “What? Oh. Oh. Your sewing scissors.”

  “My sewing scissors.”

  “Oh. Well, I guess they got in the plane.”

  “In the plane? My scissors?”

  “Well, I got it glued, and—I remember now—I couldn’t find the scissors and then when I shook the plane it rattled but I couldn’t unglue it so I guess they’re still in there.”

  “Where is the plane now? We’ll unglue it together.”

  “I took it to school. Dad said I could.”

  —

  “Listen,” I said to my husband. “Did you tell Barry he could take my sewing scissors to school?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Who left the garden hose out in the snow to freeze?”

  “Well, I didn’t. Why don’t you ask the children? Why would I leave the garden hose—” He put down his paper abruptly. “Sewing scissors?” he demanded. “Are they making those little boys take home economics now?”

  “No,” I said. “They’re learning safecracking.”

  “Progressive education,” he was shouting when I closed the study door. “Good honest arithmetic was all we…”

  —

  “Sally,” I said, “who left the garden hose out in the snow?”

  “What?”

  “Who left the garden hose out in the snow?”

  “Well, I put it away.”

  “When?”

  “I was going to ice skate because you know what Jeannie has? She has a big patch of ice right on her own lawn and she goes skating there every day and can I get new skates?”

  “No. You took out the garden hose?”

  “Jeannie’s mother lets her put water on the lawn to ice skate. Jeannie can use her garden hose whenever she wants.”

  “Does she put it away afterward?”

  “Put what away?”

  “The garden hose.”

  “Can I? Get new skates?”

  “Look,” I said. “Did you or did you not leave the garden hose out in the snow?”

  “Because if I get figure skates I can go backward.”

  —

  As a matter of fact, the other day, when I was washing the dog, it occurred to me who had left the hose out in the snow. I did, the last time I washed him. Not that the question is of the slightest importance, anyway. What’s important is to get it thawed out and put away. Let the dead past bury its dead, I firmly believe.

  Mother, Honestly!

  Mothers are harried creatures, haunted by all sorts of terrors: rusty nails, the rising cost of sneakers, rain on Class Picnic Day. Take, for instance, the mother of the sixteen-year-old boy who is learning to drive. Or the mother of the lead in the school play, for whom she must create a pioneer-era costume by Monday. Or the mother of the free-swinging third grader, who always says the other kid started it. Most mothers are called upon, from time to time, to endure periods of such unnerving strain that only a heroine could meet them.

  Above and beyond all those, there is another mother, who may be met almost anywhere. Sometimes she is just sitting by herself over a cup of coffee, staring straight ahead. Or trying to exchange a pair of size-16 subteen Bermuda shorts for a size-14 preteen. Or wearing gloves at a party because the bottle of polish remover has been long and mysteriously missing. Her new white blouse has been out to the laundry three times, and she hasn’t worn it yet. She cringes when the phone rings. She cannot endure the sight or sound of a guitar. Any statement beginning “Everyone else does” sends her into a white-faced and speechless fury. Don’t get in this woman’s way. She has enough to put up with at home. She is the mother of a twelve-year-old girl.

  Those mothers who have lasted till a child has reached twelve have themselves pretty well in hand. They keep telling themselves that at any rate the worst is over—except for distant headaches such as paying college bills and giving the kids wedding presents and taking a firm stand on babysitting when they are grandmothers. It might have
been pretty rough the first few years, they tell themselves, what with things like chickenpox and television and stilts, but now that the girl is twelve she is practically grown up and can take care of herself and begin to be responsible.

  I know mothers who keep telling themselves and telling themselves things like that, in voices getting more and more shrill, wringing their hands and grinding their teeth. Now the girl is twelve, they say, she’s practically grown up. She is. She is. She is.

  That’s me.

  Last year I sent my daughter, an agreeable child who liked to play baseball and thought boys were silly, off to camp. I got back—and it took only two months—a creature who slept with curlers in her hair, wore perfume from the five-and-ten, and addressed me as nothing but “Mother, honestly!”

  By now she also calls me “Honestly, Mother” and “Mother, really” and sometimes just plain “Mother.” She worries constantly about her figure—usually with one hand in the refrigerator. She thinks any beardless adolescent who sings through his nose is “cute.” She has perceived that in addition to being slightly behind the times in my dress and manner, I am hopelessly dated in my grasp of teenagers—especially of what “everyone else” is allowed to do. This, incidentally, is a phrase I can’t even write without feeling a little chill down my back. My daughter says it without difficulty. I tell her, “I don’t care what everyone else does…” and “No daughter of mine is going to…” and “When I was your age, I had to…” Neither of us listens to the other. She no longer thinks boys are silly.

  She has compromised, oddly, with her past as a child. She no longer plays cops and robbers in and out of the treehouse; she climbs into the treehouse to read. She will spend hours riding a bike with her little brother, so long as it is understood that she is teaching him how, and not riding purely for pleasure. She has learned from her Home Ec teacher and her Scout leader how to manage perfectly well in a kitchen, but if her mother is around she drops cups of flour and burns eggs and steps on the cat. She can shut herself in the bathroom combing her hair until her mother beats feverishly and hysterically on the door, yet she is never late for school because that is where the boys are.

  Punishment for a twelve-year-old may be of the “Very well, you can just go right on to the Scout meeting in a uniform that has been left lying on the floor” variety, and it is wholly ineffectual, of course. She won’t go to the Scouts in the wrinkled uniform, naturally; either she’ll show up at the last possible minute in the one decent dress she has left or she won’t go at all; either way, it’s her mother’s fault, and she’s going to tell the Scout leader so.

  On the other hand, a mother is definitely an asset to a twelve-year-old girl. For one thing, a mother will agree to a larger clothes allowance than a father will, and she’s usually a valuable ally when it comes to asking for extras, such as a new winter coat. No matter how old the female, she has an instinct that lets her know when men will be fussy about money.

  A mother’s no good when it comes to cooking and sewing lessons—these are properly taken care of by the Home Ec teacher, in a style diametrically opposite to anything ever seen at home. But a mother might remember enough of her college French to lend a hand with the homework, and somewhere there’s always a lipstick she’s forgotten to hide. She is also assumed to have a certain fund of practical knowledge (“Hello, Mom? Is this Mom? Listen, the baby’s turned over on his stomach and Mrs. Banks didn’t tell me whether he was supposed to or not and do you think I’d better turn him back over or can he sleep on his face?”). A mother can likewise be counted on to have errands to do in town while six giggling girls go shopping—thereby reducing the manager of the five-and-ten to near hysteria.

  I must be more tolerant, I keep telling myself and telling myself. She’s growing up. Pretty soon now she’ll start being responsible and neat and sensible. I must be more tolerant. And there I go into her room, tripping over a Coke bottle and averting my eyes from the pictures of singers on the wall, and say through the steady beat of guitars from the record player, twisting my hands together and trying to get my voice down, “Is that my bottle of shampoo on your desk? Can’t you pick up some of your magazines? It seems to me anyone would be ashamed to entertain her friends in a room like this. Can’t you ever make your bed?” And she looks up through the tangle of drying socks and says, “Mother, honestly!” And then I have to go downstairs and sit by myself in the living room until I am steady again and can start telling myself to be more tolerant.

  One thing really bothers me. I recently met a mother whose daughter is sixteen. When I remarked casually that I would be happy when my daughter outgrew her present stage and became more sensible and responsible, she just looked at me for one long minute and then began to laugh. She laughed and laughed and laughed. As I say, that bothers me a little.

  How to Enjoy a Family Quarrel

  There are grounds for deep suspicion, I think, in the idea of a family group that does not occasionally dissolve itself into a mass of screaming squabblers. I know of families where no word of dissent is ever permitted before—or from—the children, and these tend to be families where no word of tenderness either is ever permitted before—or from—the children. Not to put too fine a point on it, if two or three or four or five or six people live together in one house, sooner or later something is going to come up about which they do not see eye to eye and are prepared to say so. The children are displeased with their parents, perhaps, or displeased with one another or some outside element; it is even possible that the parents are displeased with their children. It would surely be unsafe to imagine that the average family could keep these emotions safely unspoken without some damage to the psyche, particularly the parents’.

  In our family we are six—two parents and four children—and we are given to what I might call unceasing differences of opinion, more or less passionate. Almost any subject, from politics to small variations in daily dress, can find us lined up in formation on two bitterly opposed sides. Such a subject as “Resolved, That all allowances be trebled because of general charm and amiability” can keep us going for quite a while. This one is still current, my husband and I taking the negative.

  We learned very early that it was safest to hold a united front on all major issues in front of the children. Since four of the members of our family are children, we also have learned never, never, never to put anything to a democratic vote. Time after time we found ourselves outvoted 4–2 and involved in things like going on a picnic tomorrow no matter whether it rains or not, and inviting those nice people with all the children to come for a weekend. Also we found out very early—when our older son was about six weeks old, in fact—that no parents ever got anywhere by calling in outsiders, particularly grandparents, for an impartial judgment.

  Family arguments tend to be of two sorts, although one is not necessarily more peaceful than the other: the personal, or no-discussion-before-company type, and what for want of a better word might be called the impersonal—philosophical, political, or moral questions from the world at large. (The situation in the Middle East, for instance, or the probable baseball standings next fall, or whether it is fair to keep children out of certain movies, or the age at which it is proper for a girl to start wearing lipstick.)

  On all general subjects, naturally, the children hold violently partisan opinions, dictated by what they saw on television, what the teacher said, or how Kathy’s daddy voted. My husband and I hold opinions that are the result of reasoned, mature thought. Of course, the ending to our discussions often comes late at night, after the children are in bed, when my husband and I are still patiently explaining to each other in level voices the complete justice of our own views. (My husband, for instance, favors a weak answering no-trump, although I have time and again explained to him that it is a fallacious bid.)

  The family argument usually takes place around the dinner table, somewhere halfway through the main course, when dessert seems impossibly remote beyond the mounds of spinach, and the nov
elty of eating again has largely worn off. Anyone, of course, may commence the fray, but once it’s begun, certain immutable ground rules apply and may not be broken.

  The ground rules may be stated as:

  • The battle must be joined in a spirit of high moral indignation and a correspondingly high voice. In case of an argument on the impersonal level, some intelligent cause for an instance in the subject should be adduced, as “My old teacher made us learn all the parts of the alimentary canal.” Or “What good is geography, anyway?”

  • It is not necessary—is, in fact, reckless—to give anyone else’s side of the question.

  • The more vivid the detail, the more forceful the complaint. “He hit me and scratched me and pulled my hair and bit me” is clearly a finer many-angled trench to fight from than merely “He hit me.”

  • Once the arguable premise has been determined, counterattack may consist of flat denial (“I never did”), counteraccusation (“Well, you hit me first!”), or personal insult (“Anyway, you’re nothing but a big baby”). In case of parental involvement, case histories may be admitted into evidence (“Since you are so consistently rude to members of your own family, I can see no reason why we should believe that you are civil to your sister’s friends”), and dire prediction may be used as a pseudo threat (“The main part of growing up is the acceptance of responsibility, so a little girl who is going to wear lipstick and fancy shoes will naturally want to be more capable around the house and can therefore plan to wash and dry the dishes every night”).

  • If the father of the family speaks, whether in anger or not, absolute silence must be maintained, although it is not necessary to pay any particular attention to what he is saying.

  • If the mother of the family speaks, by heaven everybody had better look alive.