Warm Wuinter's Garden (28 page)

“How come?”

“One—he’s lost some people under him, so he’s
had to take up some of their slack. Two—he’s jumpy that he could be
next. He’s trying to work so hard they’ll think he’s
indispensable.”

Trying to be positive, Lise asked, “Is there
really a chance of him losing his job?”

“My God, Lise, come down from the tower!
There are bodies everywhere. This town has been hit so hard. Half
the people here work for computer or defense companies—high tech
defense. You never saw so many Volvos, Saabs, and Camry’s parked in
front of an unemployment office. PTO is very worried because the
kids are picking up on the trouble at home—insecurity, fighting,
increased drinking—and bringing their worries to school. Bill
doesn’t know, but he feels anything could happen at any time. A
month’s, maybe two’s, notice and some severance pay and bang, Uppy
goes into the pot… And this whole damn war makes it worse. Everyone
seems to be standing around holding off making any decisions until
they know what’s going to happen over there.”

“Brad says that even if we win quickly, which
he’s sure will happen, it’s going to be a couple of years before
New England really starts to recover. He says Dukakis’
‘Massachusetts Miracle’ was Oz-land.”

“Thanks, Lise, just what I needed to
hear.”

“Dilly, it’s his opinion. It doesn’t mean
he’s right.”

“Who knows. We’ve been talking about me
looking for a job. That way, if Bill lost his job, there’d still be
some money coming in.”

The bitterness of the sip of coffee Lise took
made her wince.

“Like what?”

“Who knows. Day care. Teacher’s aide. It’d
about have to be something with kids. It’s all I know anymore.”

“What about teaching? What about finishing
your degree and getting certified? You’d be great.”

Lise decided to add the last sentence as
partial payment for revealing Brad’s pessimistic thoughts.

“We’ve talked about that, too, but it’d take
too long.

I’m not even sure if what I did back then
would count. I know that I would have at least two semesters of
work plus student teaching to finish up. That’s too long. We could
be in trouble tomorrow.”

“What if you went part time? Got some kind of
job and took some classes. In a couple of years, you’d be ready to
go.”

“And who’d take care of this?”

Dilly moved her arm in front of her with a
gesture so sweeping that it reminded Lise of the proud ranch owner
in an old western.

“I don’t know, Dilly. Maybe Bill or the kids
could do more, or maybe you could do less. You know, let some
things go.”

“You’re going to make someone a great wife,”
Dilly said as she pushed off from the counter against which she had
been leaning and began unloading the dishwasher.

As Dilly bent over the washer, Lise dumped
her coffee in the sink and rinsed out the cup.

“I think there’s more to marriage than
cooking and cleaning.”

“You’re not married.”

Lise felt her muscles tighten up against the
nearness of Dilly’s anger. Things were beginning to go the way
she’d feared they would. She waited a second before asking, “Have
you talked to Pete lately?”

“What about?”

Lise thought the sounds of the dishes being
put back on their stacks in the cupboards were too loud. She
considered helping, but decided it would make matters worse.

“I don’t know. The war, I guess.”

“Why?”

“I thought he was kind of, something, I don’t
know, kind of quivery at Christmas. I think all of this is stirring
up some old stuff for him. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on,
but I think what’s going on in Iraq is some way re-arranging
whatever went on in Viet Nam.”

“Lise, that’s twenty years ago. What’s the
connection? That was jungle; this is sand. That was wrong; this is
right. I don’t see the link.”

“Gaby called me.”

“Gaby. What’d she want?”

“She’s worried.”

“It’s a little late, isn’t it?”

“She said the boys thought Pete was being
strange. I don’t know. Morose, maybe. Even quieter than usual, but
not a quiet quiet. He has the TV on all the time. She was concerned
enough that she went to see him.”

“Well, I’m sure that must have helped. Maybe
he’s morose because his wife left him and took the kids.”

“You’re right. He’s never really gotten over
that, but I think one of the reasons Gaby wanted out was because
she felt he had brought too much of Viet Nam home with him. She
told me once she always felt like she was fighting hard to draw his
attention back from something that was riveting him, but that she
couldn’t see. It was like some part of him had gotten stuck over
there. Those summers I lived there it was creepy sometimes. There
were days when he was there, and others when you couldn’t reach
him.”

“So what was her new diagnosis?”

“She said he wouldn’t talk about it. Kept
shrugging his shoulders and changing the subject.”

“Well, Lise, there are certain things that
that’s all you can do. Shrug your shoulders and move on to
something else.”

“I don’t know, Dilly. The situation might not
be anything you can change, but it seems to me we’ve all got some
control over our responses and our feelings. Like with Mom.”

“What about Mother?”

“The bone cancer. The tumor in her femur.
That’s real. That can’t be changed. How she deals with it, that she
has some control over.”

“I don’t even want to talk about it. I can’t
believe it. She should sue.”

“Who? Why?”

“The doctors. They obviously missed something
in September.”

“Not necessarily. Cancer isn’t a simple…”

Dilly slashed both her arms through the air
as if she were walking through dense brush.

“Lise, Lise. Forget it. I don’t want to hear
it.”

The kitchen grew so quiet Lise could hear the
slight grinding sound of the stove’s clock. One of the reasons she
had wanted to visit her sister was so they could talk about Bett.
When her mother had told Lise that the doctors had found a tumor in
her leg, it had hit her hard. That one datum had changed
dramatically the probabilities of all the possible outcomes. The
experiment was going badly.

At odd moments in the lab or running along
the Charles River, a whoosh of emotion would blow through Lise
scattering everything else inside her. She would be filled with an
anticipatory anguish of her mother’s absence. It reminded her of
walking in the hayloft of the old Woodmansee barn. The barn had not
been used in years. A gray, silken-sided ladder led to the loft.
The loft was filled with dark baked air. Heat and spider webs and
dust from desiccated hay thickened the air and deadened the sound
of light steps on weak old boards. The muffled creaks and slow
giving of the ancient wood made each step a fear-filled
adventure.

Reminding herself of her plan to be more the
scientist than little sister in her visit, Lise remained silent.
She watched Dilly. After several minutes of concentrated coffee
drinking, of stirring, of testing an air-cooled spoonful, of
inhaling a small sip after carefully blowing ripples across the
cup’s mocha-colored surface, Dilly motioned with one hand, as if
she were a conductor giving the downbeat.

“How are you and Brad doing?”

“Pretty good.”

It was Dilly’s turn to be patient. After a
long silence Lise said, “Good. Real good.”

Dilly took another slow sip. Lise heard
something thump at the far end of the house. She opened her eyes in
question. Dilly shook her head to indicate the sound meant nothing
important. She stared at Lise.

“Pretty good, I think.”

Lise felt an old, familiar surge of panic.
When she was a little girl of five or six and Dilly was finishing
high school, she would be caught by Dilly in some secluded section
of the yard or in a quiet corner of the house and be subjected to a
barrage of questions. Did you do this? Why? When? Don’t you know
that’s wrong? Did you do that? No? Really, no? Then why are you
looking like that? You did do it, didn’t you? Back then and, she
told herself, again now, any silence on her part would just cause a
more forceful attack. But any answer would only lead to more
questions. She tried to transcend her swelling feeling of panic,
and the old familiar generalized guilt, to remember why she had
come.

“It’s so hard to tell. It seems as if things
are going along well, but then something, or nothing, happens and I
get doubts. How was it with you and Bill? How did you know things
were working out?”

Dilly looked startled at the question.

“I just knew.”

“Yeah? See, I don’t trust that feeling
anymore. I’ve had it too many times with too many people. Did you
know what you wanted from someone?”

“Of course.”

“What?”

Lise thought Dilly had a look of confusion on
her face, as if she had misplaced something or couldn’t find
something in her purse .

“Hardworking, attractive, ambitious.
Interested in being a father. Solid. Loving.”

“How’d you pick those attributes? How’d you
know those were the things to value?”

“My God, Lise, I just knew. It’s just
obvious.”

“Well, someway it’s not to me. Take a simple
one. Take attractive. If a guy’s attractive, is he going to be
vain? When he gets hurt is he going to use his easiest thing, his
looks, to feel better? If he’s vain, is he going to need constant
reassurances? Is he going to have a lot of problems when his looks
begin to go? Is he going to have that thing that so many pretty
women and rich men have—where they’re never quite sure why things
happen? They wonder if it’s their looks or wealth that’s
responsible, or did something happen because of what they did? Or,
what about ambition? Does ambition mean that I’ll always be
third?”

“Third?”

“After him. And after whatever it is he’s
hungry for.”

“Ugly, lazy. This is your dream?”

“I don’t know. I think maybe I don’t know
what to look for because I’m not sure what I want. You knew, right?
You knew you wanted to be a mother? A full-time, focused
mother?”

Dilly changed the tense to the present.

“Know. I know what I want.

Lise scanned around the room and then shifted
her eyes toward the stairway from where a parade of muffled sounds
came. She spread her arms in a motion that reminded herself of the
one that Dilly had made earlier.

“This is what you want. I get that, but I
don’t know if this is what I want. Some days I do. I imagine this
and can’t imagine anything nicer. Other days, I don’t. I think
about being a mother and I feel a hand tighten around my throat.
I’m so selfish. I’m the baby, right? Spoiled. I doubt how much I
can give. I look at you. You’ve given a lot.”

Dilly felt a rusty-tasting bitterness form
along the base of her back teeth. When the children were little the
days, though never-ending, were too short and the nights were never
long enough. There was never enough time for anything—not
mothering, nor laundry, nor love, nor sleep. She had given, and
given, and given. She had given past exhaustion and, in some
miracle of motherhood, she had gotten back much more than she had
ever given. On that unceasing diet of too much work and too little
sleep she had grown full. Then, the kids had gone to school and the
days had become too long and, with the problems with Bill, the
nights had become too long, too. She had given less but only
because no one would take more. And, the less and less she could
give, the more empty she felt.

For the briefest moment Dilly wanted to tell
Lise how empty she felt.

“Everything’s not perfect.”

The scientist in Lise exulted at the first
evidence that supported her theory, but the youngest sister in her
responded by glossing over Dilly’s revelation. The youngest sister
was afraid to hear what her older sister might begin to tell
her.

“Nothing ever is, right? I guess that’s why
I’m not sure with Brad. He’s bright; he’s sweet; he’s fun; he’s
interesting; and interested. But… I have my doubts. I’m a little
Hamletta. Remember that? Remember when Dad would call me that when
I couldn’t decide what kind of ice cream I wanted and would ask for
three or four kinds?”

“Not really. I may have been gone by
then.”

“No, I don’t think so, maybe it just meant
more to me.”

“Could be.”

For the rest of the day Dilly and Lise came
close to talking about several things that were important to each,
but each time their behavior got close to their intentions, their
roles and rules from the past—big sister and little sister, teacher
and student, captain and private, warden and prisoner—stymied them.
Those old connections were too strong to be broken and too defined
to allow them to reach across their sibling history to one
another.

Lise left after helping Dilly make dinner,
but before Bill came home. She feigned a headache and, after hugs
and kisses all around, put herself into the calm of her car. On the
drive home and, later, sitting in the kitchen eating her own thirty
second exercise in meal making, Lise pondered what she’d hoped to
learn of Dilly’s life. She reviewed the hopes she’d had for
establishing a new relationship with Dilly, a friendship founded on
family but one that disregarded the long-held, but to her now
meaningless, distinctions between their ages.

Theory drives science. That was the basic
rule. It was often breached, but it still was the first tenet.
Think of how a relationship might be. A does this to B, but only in
the presence of C. Think first, then, do. Put ten or one hundred or
one thousand things over here and do this to them; put some more
over there and don’t do that to them. Think first. Think about how
you expect things to happen. Think first, then, test. Then watch
very closely to see what the results are.