Lillian on Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

There were pretty girls in St. Louis. Career girls too. Every time I knew he was already on the road to come and see me, I had to talk to myself all overagain about how it could be that he kept making the trip. The answer was problematic. During our first lunch and walk around the university quadrangle I asked him why he’d taken an internship in Missouri rather than New York or Washington. “I’ve been imagining a simpler life for myself, so I thought I’d come and see what that might be,” he said. I remember nodding, looking at the ground, because St. Louis didn’t seem simple at all to me. Crossing all that traffic always got me hot and bothered. But what did I know? And then he started visiting, making the drive on a Sunday, or even a Friday afternoon, and I started thinking that I might be right: Maybe St. Louis wasn’t really that simple. Maybe Dave had decided he had to come all the way to Columbia for life to be as quiet as he thought he liked. Every time he was on his way to visit I thought about how he might want me to be cute and compliant, and I thought about how I would rather be interesting and tantalizing, and I didn’t know what to do. I knew he was charming, though, and I knew he was handsome, and healthy, so I waited for him to arrive and hoped I could be cute when I was listening to him and interesting when I was doing the talking.
    Mother took against him immediately when he came to dinner a few weekends after the fart. It seemed to bebecause he wasn’t one of “us.” But if she was so devoted to “us,” why was she always insisting on cosmetic improvements? We were constantly upgrading. I imagined that she would be happy to think a well-bred young man like Dave would want an alliance, but after he had had dinner with us and left for the long drive back to the city, Mother started slamming things around in the kitchen. I picked up the cocktail glasses from the living room but hesitated to join her. Poppa was tidying the bar.
    â€œI don’t understand,” I whispered to him.
    He leaned sideways to whisper back, “I think next time he might consider calling her Ma’am.”
    Young men in Missouri were brought up to address their elders as “Ma’am” and “Sir” until invited to do otherwise. They’d expected the same from Dave, who had called them Vivian and George, as he’d been brought up to do in Connecticut. If we got married, he would be invited to call my parents Mother and Dad. Their first names were out of bounds for life, in fact. Dave hadn’t thought to ask permission. I hadn’t thought to explain to him. It was all new to us. We were so young.
    Mother seemed more relaxed the next morning when I came down for breakfast. I stared blindly into the fridge, hoping she’d talk first.
    â€œWell,” she said, putting her cup on the table and sliding onto the bench of the nook, “Dave seems like he’s going places.”
    â€œI’m sure he is,” I said, and smiled, ignoring her tone. “He’s also very fun, and kind. And he seems to really like Columbia.”
    â€œUh-huh,” she said, and I pulled out an orange. I stuck my thumbnail into it to start peeling, spraying myself in the eye with stinging skin juice. She said, “It would be kind of him to marry you.”
    â€œI’m sorry?” I said, blinking from the acid in the juice, and in her voice.
    She made me wait while she sipped her Sanka. “No, actually, it would be
unkind
of him to marry you.”
    Where was Poppa?
    â€œWhat are you trying to say to me, Mother?” I asked, feeling a prickly blossom of tears in my throat. I still had my thumb in the orange.
    â€œI’m trying to say, Lillian, that you will feel like a fish out of water among his people.”
    â€œOh, I’m sure they are just as warm as he is,” I said.
    She shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said,