Neave would tell you straight-faced that she’s reasonable, but that’s not even within screaming distance of the truth. If she feels pushed around it’s easy to accidentally jab an elbow into her dignity because it sticks out in all directions. I liked that about her, but maybe I could enjoy the vinegary side of my sister because I was her Lilly. She loved Jane and Boppit and I guess even Snyder, but she loved me most. I say that as simple fact, nothing I earned or did anything special to get.
The way Neave is made hasn’t always served her so well. She’s stubborn. She gets mad pretty regularly. To be fair, when she does get mad it’s usually for a good reason, but she doesn’t try very hard to tamp it down. This is a mistake on her part. She never learned to just look thoughtful and nod if somebody was irritating her. She didn’t know how to let whatever Mom or Snyder were saying just bounce off her while she paid no attention to them and considered whether or not she should go to that Filene’s sale and stand in line for stockings. That’s what I did and it always worked for me. Neave would have been a happier woman if she’d been more interested in, say, Chanel, than the stuff she found on Mrs. Daniels’s shelves. Books can get you in more trouble than a little black dress can. You always know where you stand with a good suit, and Vera Maxwell was enough of a guiding light for me, though she never satisfied Neave.
You love according to your nature and when I was there, alive, my nature wasn’t that solid, steady thing that Neave’s is. The way I loved Neave was more flexible, less dogged, more shiny than the way she loved me. My kind of love could catch a breeze and blow away in a fight over a burnt pork chop, blow right back in at the other end of a pretty box from Tiffany’s or a little joke. That, according to my dog companion who was here to greet me when I got Where I Am Now, sums up my limitations as a mother as well as a sister. I wasn’t gifted in the parenting department, a lot of which involves just being there, which is boring. I loved my Annie, but I couldn’t stand being bored.
Neave and Janey made it easy for me to be a mediocre mother. There they were, always at the ready. “Oh, I’ll take her for an overnight!” or “Lilly, there’s a cartoon reel this Friday at the Hollywood Cinema. Why don’t I take Annie?” Annie adored them and they did the same right back at her.
Neave’s love was immovable in hurricane, flood, or fire, as steady as a line of mountains. She would throw herself between Annie and a pack of feral dogs any day of the week. And the way she felt about me? I knew I could do whatever I wanted, even if she hated it, and I’d always be forgiven. She forgave me for not being the best mother in the world, and she loved my little girl like she was her own. She forgave me for Ricky Luhrmann, which shows you that I could do anything at all and still stay in Neave’s good graces.
Ricky: she hated that man almost as much as he thought she did. I can’t change what happened between me and him, even for her, because nobody on Earth had ever made me feel as powerful as Ricky Luhrmann made me feel, or as helpless. My future was shackled and bound to him as soon as he followed me to the ladies’ that night at the Ritz and got my telephone number. We had business together, and we played it out right to the bitter end. Even if I’d been able to see everything that was going to happen, I bet I still would have given him my number.
Oh, well.
Right up until the end I felt so confident, so completely safe. I was an idiot. I could blame some of that inaccurate view of myself on Neavie, though that’s unfair. She treated me like I was the most beautiful, capable, powerful woman on Earth, and I ask you, why would I disagree? I didn’t know anybody more honest or smart than Neave. If she said I was that woman, I was. I felt equal to any man, any moment, any chance. It made me reckless. Isn’t it a joke on us that the power she gave me might have been what attracted Ricky.
Who is now looking her way.
Like I said, Neave. I’m so sorry.
NEAVE
Monsters in the Movies
Early on in his life, comic books got Snyder Terhune by the throat and he never even struggled. We often don’t, when the thing we love finds us.
My brother’s favorite magazine was Monsters in the Movies. In 1938, Mr. James Moses, writer and publisher of Monsters in the Movies, put an announcement on its back page: Looking for local clubs to host me on my coast-to-coast tour! Right then and there Snyder Terhune, ninth grade social outcast and friend to no one, determined to create a local fan club and host Mr. James Moses on his tour. He sat down, wrote to Mr. Moses, and let him know the Lynn, Massachusetts, club would be pleased to host him. He dropped it in a mailbox and set out to create a Lynn, Massachusetts, club. He didn’t ask our mom if it was okay. By the end of two weeks he had found six other kids who thought Monsters in the Movies was the country’s most important publication and they headed to our basement to puzzle out some secret handshakes. Members ranged in age from Snyder (just barely fifteen) to Billy Upton (thirteen but big for his age). Snyder was their leader but fourteen-year-old Arnold Strato was their strategist. The pack of them trooping down into our basement looked as serious as if they were heading off to dismantle a bomb. Only Arnold Strato seemed to have any sense of humor about the whole thing. The first meeting they had, he was the only one who even glanced my way to see me sulking at the head of the stairs (I wasn’t allowed to go down there or bother the boys in any way) and he threw me a wink and grinned. I liked Arnold. He didn’t have any of those dominating habits that older boys tended to exercise around younger ones. His own inclinations and his large family had given him diplomatic skills that came in handy for groups like this one. By the end of the meeting he and Snyder seemed to be sharing presidential duties and honors, Snyder deadly serious and Arnold looking like he’d found an interesting game and was happy to play it for a while.