Lillian on Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

hokey. The reason the men in Richard Avedon’s fashion photos look so gorgeous in the seedy parts of Paris is that they’re not from there. They’re visiting, or they’re leaving, having visited.
    That was the summer the chance to work in Munichcame up. I didn’t know anything about moving yet. I now know, from moving and moving and moving, that the only way to handle being asked to leave a country you love for another you don’t know is to start looking forward immediately. If there’s anything you’ve been meaning to buy, buy it, then pack it, and start imagining it on a new mantel or in a new closet. Start imagining yourself around new landmarks, investigating new supermarkets, tuning your ear to the new language.
    I remember waking up on a Saturday morning that summer, not long after Dave’s proposal, to the sounds of neighborhood lawn mowers. Suddenly I couldn’t bear the idea of more lawn mowers. I didn’t know if I could bring Mother around on Dave, and I didn’t know how much I wanted to. When he proposed, walking hand in hand with me around the quadrangle for the umpteenth time in our courtship, he’d kept it simple. No dinner, no knee, no ring. He took my face in his hands. I loved that; he was the first to do that, and I’ve loved it ever since. But I blushed red hot and told him I didn’t know. I asked for time. I didn’t know if I could handle being in his family but not
of
his family. I also figured Poppa would have defended him if he’d felt Dave was the one for me, and he hadn’t. Poppa hadn’t said a word.
    The opportunity in Munich was a six-week position. A woman Mother’s age from the Junior League, with whom I often did hospital visits, had an older brother who was in Munich working on a book, and his typist had come home due to a family emergency. He had a deadline, and he needed to finish. Could I type? Fortunately she didn’t ask if I could type
fast
.
    Six weeks in Germany. So I lay there, frightened of the unknown but maddened by the eternal lawn mowers of central Missouri, and decided that getting away was exactly what I needed. Getting away by marrying someone your parents mistrust isn’t getting away at all. The parental presence is eternal. It’s either benevolent or malevolent. You get to choose.
    Mother never would have agreed to Munich if she hadn’t been so afraid of feeling judged by Dave. She was worried about me, of course, but this time Poppa did step in. He took me with him to the hardware store on an errand one morning and he said to me, “Lillian, you’re going to have to make your mother just a little bit happier with your arrangements in Germany, and then it’ll all be fine.” The writer, Mr. Jessop, had told his sister that I could take over his typist’s room, as she had decided not to come back, but Poppa told me Mother didn’t like that I’d be living alone.
    â€œBut it was okay for the other girl,” I pouted, and he said, “And it’ll be okay for you too. We’re just going to have to tell a little fib.”
    â€œWhat kind of fib?”
    â€œWell, can we not tell Mother that one of your Vassar girls is in Munich as well? And that you’ll be able to stay with her?”
    So I lied to Mother, and I lied to Dave. I told him it would be great for me to get some experience before coming back and talking about marriage, since I didn’t feel I was bringing much to it. “Preparation is everything,” I said.
    He shook his beautiful head. Dave was no dummy. “Anyway,” he said, “the fire has gone out of your kiss.”
    â€œHas it?” I said. “Was there fire in my kiss?”
    â€œNot really,” he said, which seemed unkind at the time, but in fact wasn’t. Dave was honest and good. I was in for much, much unkinder partings.
    God, that was so long ago. I remember crying at the airport, and I