Gregory Benford - Timescape

“What’s to tell? She’s a California girl.”

“Which means?”

“She plays tennis, hikes in the mountains, has been to Mexico five times but no farther east than Las Vegas. She even goes surfing. She’s tried to get me to do it, but I want to get in better shape first. I’m doing my Canadian Air Force exercises.”

“That sounds very nice,” she said doubtfully.

Gordon checked her into the Surfside Motel two blocks from his apartment and then drove her over to his apartment. They walked into a room full of the smell of a Cuban casserole dish Penny had learned to make when she was rooming with a Latin American girl. She came out of the kitchen, untying an apron and looking more domestic than Gordon could remember her ever being. So Penny was putting on a bit of a show, despite her objections. His mother was effusive and enthusiastic. She bustled into the kitchen to help with the salad, inspecting Penny’s recipe and banging pots around. Gordon busied himself with the wine ritual, which he was just learning. Until California he had seldom had anything that didn’t taste of Concord grape. Now he kept a stock of Krug and Martini in a closet and could understand the jargon about big noses and full body, though in truth he wasn’t sure what all the terms meant.

His mother came out of the kitchen, set the table with quick, clattering efficiency, and asked where the bathroom was. Gordon told her. As he turned back to the uncorking Penny caught his eye and grinned. He grinned back. Let her Enovid be a flag of independence.

Mrs. Bernstein was subdued when she returned. She walked with more of a waddle than Gordon remembered, her invariable black dress bunching as her slight wobble carried her across the room. She had a distracted look. Dinner began and progressed with only minor newsy conversation. Cousin Irv was going into drygoods somewhere in Massachusetts, Uncle Herb was making money hand over, fist as usual, and his sister—here his mother paused, as though suddenly remembering this was a subject she should not bring up—was still running around with some crazies in the Village. Gordon smiled; his sister, two years older and a whole lot bolder, was looking after herself. He made a remark about her art, and how it took time to come to terms with that, and his mother turned to Penny and said, “I suppose you are interested in the arts, too?”

“Oh yes,” Penny said. “European literature.”

“And what did you think of Mr. Roth’s new book?”

“Oh,” Penny said, plainly stalling for time. “I don’t believe I’ve finished reading it.”

“You should. It would help you understand Gordon so much more.”

“Huh?” Gordon said. “What do you mean?”

“Well, dear,” Mrs. Bernstein said with a slow, sympathetic tone, “it could give her some idea about… well… I think Mr. Roth is—you agree, Penny?—is a very deep writer.”

Gordon smiled, wondering if he could allow himself an outright laugh. But before he could say anything Penny murmured, “Considering that Faulkner died in July, and Hemingway last year, I guess that puts Roth somewhere in the best hundred American novelists, but—”

“Oh, but they were writing about the past , Penny,” Mrs. Bernstein said adamantly. “His new one, Letting Go , is full of—”

At this point Gordon sat back and let his mind drift. His mother was onto her theory about the rise and preeminence of Jewish literature, and Penny was responding precisely as he could have predicted. His mother’s theories rapidly became confused in her mind with revealed facts. In Penny she had a stubborn opponent, however, who wouldn’t knuckle under to keep the peace. He could feel the tension rising between them. There was nothing he could do to stop it. The issue wasn’t literary theory at all, it was shiksa versus mother’s love. He watched his mother’s face as it tightened up. Her laugh lines, which actually came from squinting, grew deeper. He could break in but he knew how it would go then: his voice would slide up in pitch without his noticing it, until suddenly he was talking with the whine of the teenager barely past Bar Mitzvah. His mother always brought that out in him, a triggered response. Well, this time he would avoid that trap.

Their voices got louder. Penny cited books, authors; his mother pooh-poohed them, confidently assured that a few courses at night school entitled her to strong opinions. Gordon finished his food, savored the wine slowly, looked at the ceiling, and finally broke in with, “Mom, it must be getting late for you, with the time difference and all.”

Mrs. Bernstein paused in mid-sentence and looked at him blankly, as if coming out of a trance. “We were simply having a discussion, dear, you don’t need to get all flustered.” She smiled. Penny managed a matching wan stretching of the face. Mrs. Bernstein poked at her beehive hairdo, a castle of hair that resisted change. Penny got up and removed plates with a clatter. The pressing silence between them grew. “C’mon, Mom. Best to go.”

“Dishes.” She began gathering cutlery.

“Penny’ll.”

“Oh, then.”

She rose, brushed her shiny black dress free of invisible crumbs, fetched her bag. She went down the outside steps with a hastening step, clump clump , more rapid at the bottom, as though fleeing an undecided battle. They took an alleyway shortcut he knew, their footsteps echoing. Waves muttered at the shoreline a block away. Fog fingers drifted and curled under street lamps.

“Well, she is different, isn’t she?” Mrs. Bernstein said.

“How?”

“Well.”

“No, really.” Though he knew.

“You’re—” she made a sign, not trusting the words: crooking her longest finger over the index to make am entwined pair—“like that, yes?”

“Is that different?”

“Where we live it is.”

“I’m older now.”

“You could’ve said. Warned your mother.”

“Rather you met her first.”

“You, a scholar.”

She sighed. Her bag swung in long arcs as she waddled along, the slant of street lamps stretching her shadow. He decided she was resigned to it.

But no: “You don’t know any Jewish girls in California?”

“Come on, Mom.”

“I’m not talking about you taking rumba classes or something.” She stopped dead. “This is your whole life.”

He shrugged. “First time. I’ll learn.”

“Learn what? To be a something-else?”

“Isn’t it a little obvious to be so hostile to my girl friends? Not much analysis needed to understand that.”

“Your Uncle Herb would say—”

“Screw Uncle Herb. Hustler philosophy.”

“Such language. If I should tell him what you said—”

“Tell him I have money in the bank. He’ll understand.”

“Your sister, at least your sister’s close to home.”

“Only geographically.”

“You don’t know.”

“She’s slapping oil on canvas to cure her psychosis. Yeah. Psycho Sis.”

“Don’t.”

“It’s true.”

“You’re living with her, yes?”

“Sure. I need the practice.”

“Since your father died…”

“Don’t start with that.” A cutting-off chop with his hand. “Listen, you’ve seen how it is. That’s the way it’ll stay.”

“For your father’s sake, God rest his soul…”

“You can’t—” He was going to finish push me around with a ghost and that was the way he felt, but he said, “know what I’m like now.”

“A mother doesn’t know?”

“Right, sometimes not.”

“I tell you, I ask you, don’t break your mother’s heart.”

“I’ll do as I like. She’s fine for me.”

“She is… a girl who would do this, live with you without marriage—”