Chapter 4

Kathleen left her book on the dining room table when she heard the door slam, (Reading there was more comfortable than holding the huge art book up in a living room chair, and being in her room -- where she’d normally read for her entire life in this house -- seemed, suddenly, suggestive of what she had been doing with Char.) She found Mom and Cat in the living room.

“Cat, shouldn’t you close the door more quietly?”

“Memere!” Now Tante Kathleen was making rules like Maman. And it was a rule that she hadn’t even broken.

“I closed the door, dear. Sometimes people want to know when others are in the house.” She smiled at her daughter. Sometime, she had to communicate to Kathleen that ones sexual activities are perfectly acceptable but not for public discussion. Of course, Cat was here. That required subtlety which wasn’t all that bad. Subtlety is what Kathleen had to develop. Good, Kathleen was blushing. Well, some of this could be done without Cat watching. “Do you need to use the bathroom, dear?” Cat went into the downstairs half bath.

“Really, dear. I’m your mother. I had two babies. Med school should have told you the preconditions for that.”

“You laid out the consequences long before med school did. You never before talked about your own activities.”

“And I won’t do so again, dear. Ladies don’t talk about their own activities.” And now Charles was coming down the stair. “Good afternoon, dear. So nice of you to adjust your shower schedule so that there isn’t a line in the morning. We used to be stressed with four. We never thought ahead to six.”

“Mrs. Brennan...” Charles began.

“‘Kate,’ dear. Jeanette calls me ‘Katherine’ which might be confusing since she was so kind as to name her child after me.”

“Kate, you’ve been so hospitable.”

“Pure selfishness, dear. I was just thinking last night how much more comfortable the house feels when I know people I love are in it -- even when they are asleep.”

“Sharl, look what I’ve got.” Cat had been quite patient. First she’d been scolded for something she hadn’t done. Then nobody had seen that she’d washed her hands.

“More books. Do you want to read them now?” The conversation with Mrs. Brennan was in danger of getting mushy. And paying attention to Cat was always acceptable behavior in this house. He got the books on a table next to an easy chair and himself in the chair. After Cat was in his lap, he reached for the first book of the three.

Kate put the other six books where she could find them when she needed to. She went into the half bath to flush the toilet. Cat had remembered half her tasks. Another time, she’d have reminded her of the need to flush, but Cat had had a busy afternoon. Kate washed her own hands and headed for the kitchen. Katherine followed her.

“Really, Mother.” She took a minute to think how to express herself. Mom looked at her quizzically, but stayed silent. “You might not talk about your own activities, but you’ve talked loads about the first time I brought Char here.”

“Only about what you said, dear.” Kate had quite forgotten reporting that both beds were slept in -- on separate nights. “And it’s less that you asked for Charles to share your room than that this was the first time we’d heard about him. We met several of your friends when we came to your graduation. You could have introduced one more. I don’t say that you should have described how far that friendship had gone. Indeed, as I said, ladies don’t talk about that. Even married ladies don’t talk about it to anyone but their gynecologist. Your husband, of course, but who says you’re a lady in the bedroom?”

“Mom!” First she lectures on being a lady; then she gets bawdy! And with barely a breath in between.

“Well, dear, some things you do say to your daughter that you don’t talk about at table. I never worried about your being too circumspect with Charles. After all, you are positively blatant in front of us. But, if you think that there is something I would disapprove in the marriage bed -- ‘bed’ is figurative, of course. How you behave in your own apartment is your business. Circumspection here, around Cat, goes without saying. Anyway, how you behave in the marriage bed is your own business; so long as neither of you is injured, I not only don’t have to know, I give my blessings.”

“You’re being much more permissive than you were when I was growing up. And there were reasons we didn’t tell you earlier.”

“More permissive than before you were married, dear. I don’t approve of premarital sex for my children. And, yes, you wanted to keep your private fling private. And, then, you wanted to introduce us to the love of your life. I can see both motivations. I just feel that you had options in how you moved from one to the next.”

“You didn’t say that you disapproved. Did you expect me to come to the altar a virgin?”

“Well, I thought I implied it. And approval is one thing; expectation is another. I assigned you and Charles to different rooms his first trip here. That is disapproval of your spending the night in the same bed. Then we closed and locked our door. That is expectation that there would be traffic in the hallway.”

“Don’t ask -- don’t tell.”

“That’s now, dear. We told you quite clearly that we disapproved, then. Now, you don’t tell me of your actions, and I try to keep out of the way. It’s much more pleasant that way. On the other hand, I certainly hope that you are happy in your marriage. And, marital happiness almost always requires an enjoyable sex life. It’s just that you don’t have to make a point of it in company. Bob, whatever his faults, never ground your nose in his bed-time habits.”

“Well, I knew about them. I can remember the rocking chair!”

“Yes, dear, but he didn’t say ‘I want to borrow the rocking chair so I can share it with Jeanette.’ He did give you and Charles a rocking chair for a wedding present, which was quite pointed enough. But I can’t think of a subtler way to pass on the wisdom. And, after all, when Bob is your criterion for subtlety, you are already in a weak position.

“And, dear,” she continued, “this is a mother-daughter conversation. I’m being much franker than I would be in company. Traditionally, we would have had one before you got married, but I didn’t have one before I got married -- the tradition had already died out. You had already been living with Charles. Maybe I should have, not what you do in bed but what you say in company.”

“You don’t believe in frankness, do you?”

“I respect frankness in moderation, dear. I specifically object to exhibitionism.”

“So you slam the door when you come in?”

“Right! I object to exhibitionism, and I object to snooping. After all, I didn’t interrupt anything, but I didn’t know what I might interrupt. I might have overheard a fearful row, you know. It isn’t only what a married couple enjoys but wants to keep private; it’s also what they don’t enjoy.”

“Charles and I don’t have rows.”

“That’s nice, dear, but it won’t be the end of the world when you do.” During this discussion, Kate had been preparing dinner. Kathleen, trained in this kitchen, had helped.

“Memere,” Cat had appeared suddenly. “May I have a pickle, please?”

“It’s too close to dinner, Cat. When Maman and Papa get here, we’ll all eat.”

Bob and Jeanette spent a long, not particularly pleasant, time with Mrs. Groghan. The sky to the west was getting cloudy as they drove back. As she got out of the car, Jeanette heard the Marseillaise coming from inside. She got there in time to join in the last verse.

“How often have you sung it to Memere today?” she asked Cat. It had been a nice surprise, but she hoped Katherine hadn’t had it inflicted on her every hour.

“Deux seulement.” Cat was still in the francais mode. Besides, she knew she was being accused of something else she hadn’t done.

“The repetition was my idea,” said Charles.

“We were waiting for you, dear. Dinner is in five minutes, if you care to wash up.” Jeanette went upstairs. Bob, who had no compunction about being heard urinating, used the downstairs half bath.

“And how was Mrs. Groghan?” Kate asked when they had begun eating.

“Depressed,” Jeanette answered, “and -- frankly -- depressing. She told us that she doesn’t get many visitors. I can understand why. Marcy seems to be a regular every two weeks, and I think she’s running for sainthood. I was reminded of my calls to my parents.

“You don’t know, Charles, but the first Christmas after our marriage, my mother’s plan for the vacation was that I spend all of it in my house and Bob spend all of it here. Six months newlywed. Somehow, the idea didn’t strike my fancy. Actually, I’d been happy to escape that house. Ever after, until Cat was born, we spent Christmas dinner with them. I called on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Every call, every visit, was agony. I’m surprised I didn’t develop an ulcer. When we took Cat there for a Christmas dinner, it was no better. A dutiful daughter might have an obligation to inflict that on herself. A good mother has an obligation not to inflict that on her child. They haven’t seen Cat since.”

“And, Cat, do you want to tell about the library?” Kate didn’t want to discuss whether Cat had seen Jeanette’s parents since. Cat told all about the library, and nothing about the other visits. She ended up saying that all the books in the library were in English. “Cat was telling me about your library, that it has Spanish books. Does it have French books, too?”

“I don’t believe so,” said Jeanette. “Bob?”

“None I’ve seen. It has more Russian than Spanish books, I don’t think any of them are for kids. Remember the Mariel boat lift?”

“Yes, dear. Did it bring Russian books to Chicago? I would think Spanish ones if any?”

“Well, yes. But the idea. We said to Castro, ‘Free your political prisoners.’ He freed a good deal more than the political ones.” Cat’s presence cleaned up Bob’s vocabulary the way that his mother’s presence hadn’t for decades. “He sent us his criminal class. They found the pickings much better in the USA.

“Well, we said Jews in the USSR are oppressed -- which they were but not extremely for the USSR. They let bunches of their Jewish retirees leave, and we let them all in as refugees. Then, since they were no longer in their country, the soviets didn’t pay them pensions. Lots came to our neighborhood. I don’t think there are any Russian kids, though I wouldn’t bet on it. I wouldn’t give odds against Eskimos in the local school.”

“So,” Kathleen summarized, “the Chicago library has books in English, Spanish and Russian. Eskimos are out of luck.”

“Our branch library has books in English, Spanish, and Russian. If Jeanette wanted to borrow French books, I’m sure there are some in the system. The branch does take one French-language magazine, though. It’s Jeune Afrique, but I don’t know what’s jeune about it.”

“That’s ‘young,’ Bob.” Jeanette couldn’t understand how Bob could miss that. His French vocabulary wasn’t great, but it should contain ‘jeune.’ Didn’t he call Cat ‘jeune fille’ sometimes?

“Yeah. ‘Young Africa.’ But it’s more like Newsweek than Cricket or Boy’s Life. The guys on the cover have all been old except when Obama was elected. For that matter, Obama is older than I am. I don’t look younger than Obama. I sure don’t feel younger than Obama.”

“Well, dear, I’m sure he feels older than you. Some days, he probably feels older than me.”

“‘Mr. President,’” Charles said, “‘A plane carrying the Polish president and half his cabinet has crashed in Russian air space. The two countries haven’t gone to war -- yet.’”

“Oh, it’s a job to turn your hair white, all right. It just hasn’t.”

“Those two don’t have an ounce of fat between them,” Jeanette contributed. “And she’s borne two children.”

“Do I detect a tiny amount of jealousy there, dear?”

“Nothing tiny about it. Those birthers are barking up the wrong tree. How about proof of Sasha’s birth? What I want to see is a picture of Michelle pregnant, preferably nine months pregnant. I’d have it blown up and stick it on my wall. ‘I’m thinner than you were then!’”

“Well, you’ve got your figure back, dear.”

“My figure, perhaps. Not hers. And my waist is two inches larger than it was before Cat -- three at the wrong time of the month.”

“But I like your figure.”

“You, Bob, liked my figure when I was pregnant.”

“I like your figure now. You were so sleek then. Sexy.”

“I take back the wall poster. You’d just lust after it.”

“Well, we got some new books to read, but they were all in English.” Kate didn’t like the discussion of Daddy’s lusts in front of Cat. And Cat, who was as capable of carrying on her own monologue as any other Brennan, was following this conversation.

Indeed, although it was at the Brennan table, this had been one conversation. Soon that record was shattered, as was the conversation. Cat told Maman about the three books Sharl had read to her, Charles and Bob discussed the history of Russian-Polish relations, and Kathleen brought up one issue her conversation with her mother had raised that she could discuss in front of Char.

“Was I way wrong in saying that the plane crash risked war,” Charles asked.

“Probably not. The governments involved may have been certain, but the State Department was probably less so. After all, the potential for taking offense was on the Polish side, and there wasn’t much of a Polish government to go to war. On the other hand, those countries have been invading each other for centuries.”

“Russia invading Poland, for sure. But I though that was only the communists.”

“Short history of Russia. Back before the time of Christ, there were Slavic tribes all over Eastern Europe. Not quite everywhere, but almost everywhere. They’d displaced someone else, to be sure. Finns, maybe. But historians only study what has happened when somebody around writes things down. Anyway, a bunch of Scandinavians conquered the area that you might think of as the Western Soviet Disunion. They established a trade with Constantinople by river and the Black Sea. They used to gather annually in Kiev to form convoys to protect themselves from river pirates. The Slavs called their Scandinavian conquerors ‘the Russ’ or the redheads.

“Time passed, the Russ were conquered by descendants of Genghis Khan. They looted and devastated Poland to create a cordon sanitaire, and ruled Russia from Astrakhan. They figured that was as far west as they could live full-time and keep up their Mongol lifestyle. Each year, they’d wait for the rivers to freeze solid enough. Then they’d ride north and west on those rivers.

“But their turn came to weaken. The Polish aristocrats conquered a big swath of territory from them. They called it “The Frontier,” or, in Polish, “The Ukraine.” Ever wonder why the country is called “The Ukraine,” while other countries aren’t called the France or the England? So when the Russians got their own act together and threw off their Mongol yoke, huge swaths of the people who spoke like them were in The Ukraine or in Byelorussia, White Russia. White Russia had other conquerors. Later yet, the tsars reconquered both countries. When they got to the border between The Ukraine and Poland, they didn’t stop. By the First World War, Poland was divided among the German, the Austrian and the Russian empires.

“Anyway, conquest not only wasn’t a communist invention, it didn’t go only one way.”

“History is more complicated than I thought.”

“Yeah. I can recognize a cold or a broken leg. I bet most of what you see is something I could diagnose right maybe eighty percent of the time.”

“Some.”

“But we want you to see it. Because my child may be in the twenty percent. All specialties are niggling details. Another thing about history is that loads of people tend to think that countries have some sort of natural boundaries. Australia, maybe. But most boundaries are where the armies stopped fighting. Smithia sees their natural boundaries at the greatest extent that the have held; Jonesland sees their natural boundaries at the greatest extent they have held. A huge swath is in both.” Both dug into their food for a moment.

“Remember when Bob and Jeanette were first married?” Kathleen had asked. “They came home for Christmas?”

“Indeed, I do, dear. You could have cut the attraction between them with a knife. And, while she is much more modest than Bob, it seemed mutual to me.” Kathleen thought that was damning with faint praise -- dogs in the street are more modest than Bob. And she had her own memories to assure her that the attraction was mutual. Some of those memories involved her intense jealousy of that feeling between them when her life had seemed so deprived of love back then.

“I’d more-or-less broken up with Terry Randolph. He’d propositioned me.”

“I thought that something like that had taken place, dear. I tried to make myself available; you were having none of it. You preferred Jeanette. I was glad she was available. You could have done much worse. Worse than Jeanette, I mean. Terry was truly unsuitable.”

“You ever said so.”

“Saying so worked so well for the Capulets, it’s a pity more parents don’t try it. No, dear. And he was perfectly suitable for a boyfriend and dance partner. He was so staid; he would have never done as your life partner. I waited, and you saw that. Then you went back to being a high-school dating couple. The hardest part of parenting is knowing when to hold back. And, really, we felt more comfortable when he was taking your time. He never tried to use force, did he?”

“Heavens, no! Terry?”

“Well that is the greatest danger. You knew our rules; you could keep them or break them. You knew enough to take precautions.” Cat, after all, was present if not evidently listening. “The greatest danger was some boy who would use force. Your ‘no’ wouldn’t count. Your sensibility about precautions wouldn’t count. And Terry didn’t look like that type. What he did look like was an incredibly conventional boy. He was in high school, and he had fun because that’s what you do in high school. But, if you’d taken him for life, he would have stopped having fun. And, inescapably, so would you.”

“You never said any of that.”

“Well, first of all, we didn’t particularly want a romance between the two of you. Why provide parental opposition? That’s the surest fuel for romance. As I said, I made myself available; you turned to Jeanette. That was less adolescent rebellion than you practiced when you were technically out of adolescence, but it didn’t bode well for a parental ukase.

“And, in the second place, you were going to fly out of the nest and go to college. We weren’t sure of medical school at that time -- although you were -- but we weren’t so stupid as to regard it as certainly out of the question. So, you needed a social life then that wouldn’t block your academic life in the future. Terry was -- if not perfect -- a very good fit. Bob had been bad enough.”

“You love Jeanette.”

“That I do, dear, did even before Cat. There was nothing wrong with Bob’s choice except the timing. And that messed up Jeanette’s life rather than Bob’s.”

“You keep talking of ‘messing up’ my life.” Jeanette had been following both the other conversations. “Really, I’ve quite enjoyed my life. Someday I want to hear the specifics of the career I gave up to become Mrs. Bob Brennan. Because that was my dream from sometime in high school.

“Well, dear, we’d planned to support a single Bob through college and law school. We saw you as a tremendous block in that road. Your sacrifice removed that block -- eased our financial burden, actually. But it was a sacrifice.”

“If I were to list the hundred most pleasant moments in my life, few of them would have been in the classroom -- even the thousand most pleasant moments of my life. The best thing about the degree is going to be holding my head up at faculty events. There is now no reason for Bob to be ashamed of me.”

“You told us not to come, dear. You said the master’s was in the future.”

“And so it is. I’m done with course work, but I still have a thesis to write. My adviser -- advisers official and unofficial -- don’t think that will take too long.”

“You know, dear, Russ never planned for that. Maybe we should...”

“I’m embarrassed enough already. Honestly, we can pay my tuition. It’s bad enough he left that special money for the last year. And this tuition isn’t all that much, anyway.” Jeanette hid her embarrassment by turning her attention back to Cat. She was managing her meal quite well, but welcomed Maman’s attention.

“I couldn’t help hearing, er...”

“‘Kate,’ dear. I’ve said that already.”

“Kate, I couldn’t help hearing your assessment of Kath’s former boyfriend. I’d love to hear what you first thought of me.”

“Well, dear, aside from thinking that she should have mentioned you much sooner, you were almost the opposite of Terry. His problem was one that Russ and I could see, but we were certain that Vi -- that Kathleen -- couldn’t. There was nothing particularly wrong with the boy; it was the man he was growing into.

“The problem with you and Kathleen, on the other hand, was glaringly obvious. It would take an absolute idiot to ignore the problem of a cross-racial marriage. Neither of you were anywhere close to idiots. Our minds totally approved of the time you took worrying about it. I supposed, of course, that this was what you were working through. There might have been several other problems which were invisible to us, but that wouldn’t be my business. Anyway, you were working through your problems together, and our minds approved.”

“You keep saying ‘our minds.”

“Well, dear, our hearts wanted you to get on with it. We tried to hide that. After all, it would be your whole lives. You deserved the time to think the process through.”

“Well, you’d have consequences, too.”

“Only social consequences, dear, and minor ones. If you’d said that the wedding had to be in Philadelphia because of fears about how our neighbors would react, we’d have attended it there. That was already decided. And, dear, Tar Heels are really not that bad.”

“South Carolina,” Bob put in, “was the first state to secede; North Carolina was nearly the last.”

“Of course,” Kate continued, “if you two had decided to never see each other again, we would have consoled Kathleen. Still, as much as that would have solved the Charles-and-Kathleen problem, and I got the impression that you had already done that once...”

“Well, yes.” From which confession, Kate got the impression that they’d done that more than once. That was an opening she was anxious to close.

“However much it would have solved the problem of Charles-and-Kathleen, it wouldn’t have really solved the problem of Kathleen. So, by the time you proposed, we had been praying for a resolution. And, dear, that was the only real resolution by then. Anyway, it happened. And Russ walked his daughter down the aisle.”

“I’m a little ashamed of the games I played about that,” said Kathleen.

“Well, dear, it wasn’t the most splendid example of maturity you’ve ever demonstrated, but your father was happy, anyway.”

“You were happy, then?” asked Charles. They, especially Kath’s father, had seemed happy.

“As I said, dear, it was Kathleen’s decision. We would have supported her either way. Yours, too, of course, but our attention -- if you’ll forgive us -- was on our daughter. Still, if you’re going to support your child, you’d rather rejoice with her than console her. And that was the only decision for which we could rejoice with her. If she’d given her heart to someone else -- not Terry, but an abstract someone -- she might have had an easier life. But, having given her heart to you, it was either a marriage or a tragedy. I keep speaking of the engagement as a resolution, a conclusion. Of course, engagements aren’t. But if our celebration was anticipatory, the anticipation was justified in this case.”