Alas I fear we might be done for, kaput, Sam and me. There is only so much Topper someone with manners can take. Though they were friends once, something happened about the time Sam left for Princeton. A lack of some understanding, as each of them tells it. Two different people, is what they mean. If either boy reads this, please clue a gal in. And set aside your differences for a person who loves you both.
In any case, I’ll insist my brother fix this situation. If he can’t, well, he’ll need to find me a new man since he’s the one who constantly chases them away. If I ever hope to get married, I should probably keep that particular monkey in his cage.
Yours sincerely,
Ruby Young
7
Sunday Morning
Bess sets the Book of Summer back onto the table.
“I can’t imagine Grandma Ruby making a joke about feces,” she says with a chuckle. “I just can’t. She’s too civilized for that.”
“Really the joke was more my father’s,” Cissy says. “And Topper’s. But your grandmother was not short of moxie.”
“Self-controlled moxie,” Bess says. “It’s funny. Ruby always called Topper by his real name. So there is Robert, or Topper, and Grandpa Sam. Her other brother P.J.”
“Walter, too,” Cissy says. “He was the middle brother who died as a teen.”
“For a ‘house of women’ there sure were a lot of dudes.”
Cissy gives a halfhearted smirk.
“Well, the dudes they come,” she says, eyes cast toward the floor. “And they go.”
Bess could nearly hear her grandmother’s voice. They come and they go … and a house of women it remains.
True enough, Bess thinks. It is only women sitting in that dining room, the two people left clinging to the house, as the house itself clings to the side of a bluff.
“The guys usually can’t hack the tough stuff,” Bess says. “That much is true. But at least Sam wasn’t scared off despite Robert’s—Topper’s—best efforts. And thank God for that or you and I wouldn’t exist.”
Bess doesn’t remember Grandpa Sam, or even much about him. He died of a head injury when Bess was young. A head injury, she’d later learn, incurred after falling through a window while drunk.
His death was enough of something, an embarrassment, or shame, or heartache, that he was all but vanquished from the family lexicon. Whenever he did come up, the name was new and strange and tricky to place. Sam? Who was Sam again? There are random nonrelatives from the forties whom Bess can more swiftly recall. Mrs. Grimsbury, for example. Some so-called cousin or aunt who lived in France.
“You know, you never talk about your dad,” Bess says as she thumbs through the book. “I was young when he died, but you were an adult, a mom even.”
“That I was,” Cissy answers with a nod. “There’s not much to say. He was a sad and troubled person.”
“Which usually means there’s a lot to say.”
“Well…” Cissy exhales. “You’re probably right. He was a very sweet man, just as Mom said. I wish we could’ve…”
She lets her voice wander before picking it back up.
“When someone offers help,” she says, “it can seem like criticism. In other words, you’re doing this wrong. My father hated…” Cissy shakes her head. “Sam Packard was terribly critical of himself. We were trying to be delicate, Mom and I. Too delicate, as it turned out. We weren’t … we didn’t have … things were different then. Plus, he was never an angry drunk, only a very sad one. I guess we thought we could love him back to health.”
Bess bobs her head in response, unsure what to say. Her own father is not the overly emotive type. He never coached any of their teams or told amusing stories at the dinner table. Her brother calls him Clockwork Codman. He punches in, he punches out, he does what’s asked.
But Bess always wanted some indefinable “more” from the man, a realization made in the last few months, during a perfunctory stab at marital counseling. The shrink tried to tease out some daddy issues on which to pin their problems. In the end, the issues weren’t deep enough to explain why Bess ended up in that place. And now she feels ashamed for talking about Dudley like that, at $200 per hour no less, when he is basically fine, as far as dads go. At least he’s not a drunk.
“Poor Grandma,” Bess says as she glances out the window.
The skies are clear but the fog is leaking in. Bess’s phone indicates it’s supposed to drizzle by nightfall. A light rain isn’t exactly Hurricane Sandy, but Bess cringes to think of more weatherly abuse being inflicted upon Cliff House. The vote is the day after tomorrow. Surely the home can survive until then.
“And poor Cissy,” Bess adds, looking back at her mom.
“Poor me nothing. I was cared for. I was loved. As for your grandmother, she had enough mettle to get by.”
“Yeah, this family is lousy with mettle,” Bess says. “I really miss her sometimes. Is that weird? She’s been dead for a greater portion of my life than she was alive but sometimes I can actually bring myself to tears just thinking about her.”
“Not weird at all,” Cissy replies with a distracted sniff.
“I really looked up to her.”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
Cissy hoists a box from the table and thumps it, loudly, onto the ground, a signal she is done with the conversation. She can be so darn cagey about Ruby, the end of her rope quickly reached. Moms and daughters. Did it always have to be that way?
“So, the divorce,” Cissy says, apropos of nothing. Not that segues are her style. “You’re still doing this?”
“Yes, Mother. I am ‘doing this’ and, really, it’s all but done. We have a few details to work out, some papers to sign, and then the marriage is legally over.”
Cissy frowns.
“Mom…”
“But you seemed to really love each other,” she says. “Brandon was so helpful. So protective of you.”
At once Bess remembers Cissy’s first visit to their home in San Francisco. Dudley stayed behind, characteristically neck-high in yet another “earnings season.” Bess was relieved: only one parent to impress with her adulthood and new fiancé instead of two. Cissy was an easier sell, though only by degrees.
Bess had big plans to welcome her mother to San Francisco with a meal featuring only Northern California cuisine. Oysters. Dungeness crab. Fresh sourdough. About a quarter of the way through cooking, Bess realized she had no butter, not to mention a scarcity of Chardonnay. Things spiraled from there. What the hell was she doing? Bess had never been a decent chef, and a Nantucketer was hardly going to be impressed with fresh fish. She should’ve opted for Rice-A-Roni, “The San Francisco Treat.”
“This is a disaster!” Bess said, fighting tears of frustration. “I don’t even know what I’m doing! Dungeness crab? I burned a Lean Cuisine last night!”
At the time, Cissy was due back from a walk. Or else she wasn’t. Cissy was known to stroll for hours.
“Stop,” Brandon said as he entered the kitchen. “Stop. Just calm down.”
He pried a wooden spoon from Bess’s grasp. Also a cheese grater, though there wasn’t any cheese nearby.
“Go read a book,” he ordered.
“I have to finish dinner!”
“I’ll take it from here. You relax.”
So Bess let him complete what she’d started.
The dinner was okay, nothing fantastic. But it was more than edible, a better feat than Bess could’ve pulled off. And that Brandon stepped in rendered the meal perfect, in the end.