For Mother’s Day, since the children couldn’t be there, he took Emily to the club for brunch. Surrounded by large, lively parties decked out in their Sunday best, they shared a quiet table for two. He recognized several young families from Calvary, the boys in blue blazers and ties, the girls in pinafores and Mary Janes—perennials Kenny and Margaret had worn thirty years ago. The flocked wallpaper was the same, and the crystal chandeliers, the servers in their white jackets and gloves reaching across to refill water goblets and deliver fresh rosettes of butter. While nothing had changed in generations, the passage of time seemed pronounced here, as in a museum. As a child he’d stood in the same buffet line, holding the same heavy plate rimmed with gold, still warm from the dishwasher, looking past the gauntlet of salads and steaming chafing dishes to the dessert table. The handles of the silver were worn smooth from use, the club monogram softened. The finger bowls, the sterling salt and pepper shakers and candlesticks—everywhere he looked were relics, themselves included.
Knowing she liked mimosas, he ordered them a pair.
He raised his glass. “Happy Mother’s Day.”
“I’m not your mother.”
“You’re the mother of my children.”
“That’s different.”
“It counts.”
“I suppose.”
Emily smacked her lips and frowned as if hers were sour. “I miss being a mother.”
“I didn’t know you could quit.”
“When they’re young they need you all the time. I miss being needed like that.”
“They still need you.”
“It’s different when they’re little. They’re still sweet. After six or seven they don’t need you as much. That’s why it was so nice having Sam here.”
“It was nice.” She’d actually spent most of her time that weekend with Ella, who at twelve seemed perfectly sweet to him—as did all the grandchildren—but he knew better than to contradict her. “I need you.”
“Thank you, but it’s not quite the same. Though I must say you are pretty helpless.”
He clinked glasses with her again. “Rufus needs you.”
“That is true, he’s my baby. I don’t know why it makes me sad. It’s stupid. It’s just life.”
“It’s not stupid,” he said.
“I don’t know, lately I’ve been thinking about my mother, being stuck with just me. I didn’t make things easy for her.”
“She was very proud of you.”
“I know that, that’s not what I’m talking about. Imagine if we just had Margaret.”
He didn’t want to. “You’re not at all like Margaret.”
“Please, I know what I’m like. Where do you think she gets it from?”
Her temper, she meant, not the drinking or the secretiveness. Those were from his side. “And where did you get it from?”
“That’s the mystery. My mother and father could never figure it out. I think it was just me.”
“You turned out all right.”
“That was later. For the longest time we fought over every little thing, and then I left—just like Margaret. How did things change? Because at the beginning everything was good. That’s what I’ve been thinking about lately.”
“That’s a lot.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No, I need to know these things.”
“Maybe a little heavy for brunch.”
“Maybe.” The drinks were skimpy—his glass was nearly empty. “To your mother.”
“To my mother. And yours, God bless her.”
“Do you want another? It is your day.”
“Ow. Twist my arm.”
The second seemed sweeter.
“This is nice,” Emily said, taking his hand. “I suppose we should get something to eat.”
“I suppose.”
“It wouldn’t do to be blotto for her call.”
“No, it wouldn’t.”
One thing about the club had changed—the food had gotten better. A chef’s station at the end of the buffet was offering her favorite, lobster Benedict, which lifted her mood, along with another mimosa. For dessert they had bananas Foster, made tableside, wispy blue flames licking over the bubbling butter and brown sugar.
“Definitely not on the diet,” she said.
“Banana’s a fruit.”
She didn’t mention her mother again until they were in the Olds, on their way home. Out of nowhere, as if picking up the conversation, she said, “I don’t think she knew what to do with me. I wasn’t a bad child, I was just stubborn. I remember her locking me in my room when I refused to listen. I’d be banging on the door and she’d be downstairs vacuuming or doing laundry. Now it sounds bizarre, but back then I didn’t think it was strange. I thought that was how everybody lived.”
“What about your father?”
“He’d spank me, but that was easy. He didn’t want to, he just did it for her benefit. That was normal for the time. You know.”
“I do,” he said, though his father had never touched him. At worst, his mother might twist his ear.
“I don’t know why, being locked in bothers me more. Being ignored. I don’t understand what she thought it would teach me.”
“To mind her.”
“It didn’t. It made me hate her.”
Drink normally turned her maudlin and philosophical. He waited for her to qualify the remark, to say she forgave her, but she was watching the old mansions on Fifth slide by, vestiges of the city’s gilded past.
“Do you think Margaret hates me?”
“No,” he said. “Why do you say that?”
“I didn’t treat her very well.”
“She didn’t treat you very well either. In any case, she can’t say you ignored her.”
“Maybe I should have been more like you.”
It was tricky ground. While long ago he’d decided to let Margaret live her own life, Emily, out of guilt or the misplaced need to save her, still wanted to believe they could fix things, even on occasion defending her against him. Sometimes, for Emily’s sake, he wished she would give up, but understood she couldn’t. Just as often he doubted his own position, accusing himself of coldness, cowardice. What kind of father had so little faith in his daughter?
“It wouldn’t work,” he said. “That’s not who you are.”
“It would be easier. I get tired of it.”
“She’s lucky to have you for a mother.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do,” he said.
It must have been the right thing, because that was the end of the subject, though he expected any second for her to start again.
Kenny and Lisa and Sam and Ella were on the machine. “This is your Mother’s Day song,” they sang. “It isn’t very long.”
“Very nice,” Emily said, erasing it.
Margaret didn’t call till late that afternoon.
“Why, thank you, dear,” Emily said, delighted, as if surprised. “Happy Mother’s Day to you too.”
She set aside her crossword, turned the music down and wandered into the dining room, as if for privacy, where she stood looking out the French doors. Behind the Times’s science section, Henry listened for any hint of discord. He couldn’t hear what she was saying, only her tone, and gauged it for the smallest trace of impatience. In the car he’d reassured her that Margaret didn’t hate her, as if it were an impossibility. Now he could see them screaming at each other across the table, Margaret flinging down her napkin and stalking for the stairs with Emily right behind. He and Kenny learned not to wait for her to return. They ate in silence, the cuckoo clock ticking in the breakfast nook.
Emily laughed, a false alarm, prompting a grumble from Rufus, sacked out on the hearth. She wasn’t saying much, just nodding along. After a while she came back into the living room and made a yammering puppet of her hand. In her more manic phases, Margaret had a tendency to ramble.
“All right, I have to go get dinner started. No rest for the wicked. I hope you have a lovely time. Your father sends his love. Thank you. I love you too, dear.”
She hung up and replaced the phone in the holder.
“How is she?”
“She sounded good.”
“Good.”
“The big excitement there is that Sarah’s going to be the lead in Bye Bye Birdie. Apparently she has a major crush on Birdie. That’s a quote—‘major.’”
As she relayed the details, he thought he’d worried for no reason. She and Margaret battled the way he and Arlene had as children—endlessly, innocently, being natural rivals. He understood that bond, and yet as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t stop replaying what she’d said in the car about her mother—the locked door and the vacuum—and wondered why she’d picked today, of all days, to unburden herself. Having always been loved, he liked to think he’d never hated anyone, especially the people closest to him. They were different, the two of them. He couldn’t fault her honesty. Any other time he would have welcomed her confession, but he was unprepared for it, and while it paled in comparison to his own secrets, at heart he was shocked, and couldn’t shake the feeling that it had become, already, unfairly, something he would never forget.