WHEN I AM GETTING A MANICURE, I am my mother. Her hands are now my hands. My veins rise up from my wax-paper skin, like hers did. My fingers are long. I like to wear tight black gloves that silhouette their shape. I once thought my hands destined me for the piano. I was to be disappointed. Still, I am vain about them. It’s possible that my father had beautiful hands too, but there is no way to know. His portrait shows his hands folded in his lap, curved over a newspaper. They could be any shape. I must have felt them when he held me in his arms and when I learned to walk, holding on tight to him with one hand and my mother with the other. I have a photo of my brother like that.
I was both my mother’s daughter and her close companion. Because my brother was four years older, I was loved almost like an only child. My mother did not always want to venture out by herself, and so we did things together like two girlfriends. We rode the first car of the subway together into Manhattan, standing in front of the window to watch the tunnel opening up and the bright lights switching on and off. We went to Broadway theatres together when a ticket for $2.80 bought a better seat than one that cost $1.20. We saw La bohème together, and I was embarrassed when the curtain went up after the final act and I couldn’t hide the tears running down my face. Poor Mimi.
A special treat was to go to Radio City Hall to see a movie and a show. We would stand in line for hours. That is where I saw my first movie; Carmen Miranda was the star and I was mesmerized by the basket of fruit she balanced on her head while she twisted and turned to a rumba. After the show we went to Schrafft’s, where the sun shone in through large picture windows. I ordered a coffee ice-cream soda and we watched the clusters of crowds walk down Broadway from our window table.
When I was almost fifteen, I had a crush on a seventeen-year-old boy who I believed was a genius. We met in the Catskills when my mother and his parents became friends. He played Rachmaninoff with great speed while he leant in towards the music. He painted with oils. He was slim and dark haired, and his name was Francis Mechner. My mother bought one of his dark, green landscapes for fifteen dollars. One night he offered to walk me home from his house to ours. I was thrilled. My mother quickly said no need, that the two of us would go home together. I found it hard to forgive her.
WHEN I WAS FIFTEEN, my mother bought a white house with green shutters and a screened-in porch on Foote Avenue in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. “Life will be easier,” is how she described the move. We would be close to family. And so we left our sixth-floor apartment in New York for the small town where my mother’s nephew Ernest, his wife, Ruth, and their two children had recently settled.
In moving, my mother was leaving behind a clutch of Swiss women who lived in an apartment building like ours, but down the street. They were better off than we were. My mother couldn’t keep up with them. She was always worried about our finances and sought advice from any relative or close friend. The women spoke the Swiss dialect amongst themselves, but my mother was anxious to perfect her English. She was determined to lose her accent. I was embarrassed by it. Only much later did I hear my friends say that my mother’s accent was charming. By then, it was.
I think my mother experienced more than anxiety. My father’s suicide had left its scar: life could end in an instant. Perhaps she thought that if she had exercised more caution, she could have saved him. She was ängstlich, which is the German word for anxiety plus fear. I tried to inoculate myself against it because I sensed that it could foreshorten my future. I was daring on roller skates, and good at jump rope, but on the P.S. 101 playground I could not conquer the metal jungle gym bars. Other girls could hang by their knees and swing back and forth, letting their dresses hang down, but I was terrified to let go.
I often wondered, and later began to understand, the strength required of my mother to take me, at six and a half years old, and my brother, aged ten, to America to escape the threat of Hitler’s invasion. We waved goodbye to our friends and relatives at the Zürich train station and boarded the S.S. Manhattan in Genoa. My mother had thought we had a private cabin for the three of us. Instead we were seven, including a baby, part of a panicked group fleeing Europe. But my memories are panic free. For me, the voyage was an adventure. My most exotic treat was having a slice of apple pie, à la mode.
How did my mother decide what to leave in the Zürich apartment and what to pack for America, knowing she would never see her possessions again? Why did she bring two brick-hard green silk pillows that took up lots of space? They were uncomfortable. They had no use. Possibly the tiny pink rose pattern reminded her of the sofas and chairs she had to leave behind. Why not more silver, or dishes? She rolled up the Gobelin tapestry with its scene of Versailles but left the broad gilt frame behind. She must have been advised not to take it, too heavy, too expensive. She could always buy a new frame in America. Now the Gobelin hangs in our guest bedroom at Wake Robin without a frame. The pillows are gone, but the tapestry remains, a reminder of the comfortable middle-class life my mother once had. Some stitches have frayed and the fabric needs to be cleaned, but the elegant couple still dances in the courtyard. He takes a deep bow in a heavy blue cape; she is entranced, dressed in a pink silk gown. I dreamt about them as a child.
MY MOTHER EXPERIENCED only two financial phases: upper middle-class comfort when she was married to my successful businessman father, and financial uncertainty at the age of thirty-six when my father committed suicide. Each year, as her income grew less, her anxiety grew more. Still, she went to the beauty parlor on schedule, if not once a week, then once every two weeks, and smoothed Elizabeth Arden on her face every other night.
A manicure was more of a luxury for my mother than it is for me. We were not poor, but we were very careful. I now understand that there was no backup plan to support us. She alone was responsible for her family, and so she counted every penny. From her I learned to save. I would pile up the dollar bills and stack the quarters high after each day waiting on tables at Chef Karl’s in Lenox where I worked every summer while in college. Those quarters and dollar bills paid for my room, board, and tuition; there were no college loans.
I began to relax about money when I got married. Then my old anxiety about money returned when I was newly divorced. I fantasized about stealing a roll of toilet paper from a public restroom, but never did. Too bulky. I sank comfortably back into the pillow of economic security when I remarried. I’ve had to unlearn much of what she taught me about money—that we had to be very thrifty, that there would never be quite enough. Still, when I get my nails done I feel like I’m indulging in a small luxury. I can file my own nails well enough. Clear polish does not really require expertise. The manicure makes me feel good, clean, and more beautiful. My nails advertise who I am: a woman who takes the time to take good care of herself. I like the feeling I have when the manicurist holds my pliant hand in hers like a tray and pays full attention to each of my fingers, one by one, until every cuticle is pushed back and every nail glistens evenly. She removes any mistakes with a knife-edged Kleenex, slicing away spills with the precision of a surgeon.
My mother was drawn to pink shades. I stick to neutral. Now and then I wear red nail polish, though it has to be a special occasion. My mother chose between two nail styles: a half moon, which leaves a half circle bare at the base, or polish on the entire nail. Both require precision, but the half-moons are more difficult, and therefore, more elegant. She did not want to look garish. She was a lady. Women made regular appointments then, for a manicure and wash and set. Hair was “set” in pin curls or rollers. The objective was control. My mother would sit under the beastly hot dryer with long silver clips pinching the sides of her head. They left even waves and created the illusion of a full head of hair.
My mother began to worry about her thinning hair when she was in her early sixties, like I worry now in my eighties. Her hair was thinner than mine, which should make me feel good. It was no thicker than strands of unspooled gray thread. Edgar, my brother, would look down on the top of her head from his great height and joke with her about becoming bald. He would stroke her scalp with his broad hand and add rough, teasing words. She was caught between laughter and distress; his attention felt good even if it hurt.
I laughed too, even when I shouldn’t have. I hoped that my mother would not raise the hand mirror to reflect the baby-pink patches on her head. I do not raise my mirror either. A frontal view is best. My hairdresser, Steve, does such a good job of puffing my hair into a white crown he then sprays in place. When I look in the mirror, I see that my hair has become a deflated Governor Ann Richards. I would not get older like my mother did, I told myself when I was young. But I ask my hairdresser the same question my mother must have asked: “Is my hair getting thinner?” Neither of us would have wanted an honest answer, and I never get one.
“I keep finding gray hairs on the back of my sweater,” I sigh.
“Some will grow back,” Steve assures me. And I believe him, until I find the next few hairs settled down on my black wool dress like silky lint. My husband picks them off and hands them to me between his thumb and second finger, like some specimen. I shrug.
DECEMBER 21, 2016I made my bed this morning,
wanting to get back in.
The white duvet won’t
stay flat like it should
at seven in the morning.
Puffiness beckons
me to lie supine
as white light
sinks me into sinful
repose, devoid
of dreams
and things to do
and places to be
on the dot of time.
Why not live back to front
and enjoy the best part
of the closing day in the morning.
When lavender drops
fall on my pillow,
and my feet find heat
at the foot of the bed.
and coax the light to
my open book, I want
so much to finish,
before I disappear.
from myself.
I would have to be sick
or dead
to get permission
to smooth the covers
sweetly over my body
in daylight.
I dare not ask,