Rafael Yglesias - The Work Is Innocent

They were expecting John and Naomi in a few hours, and when every one of the travelers, except for Richard, decided to take naps, Richard followed Betty while she cleared the kitchen table and wrapped the leftovers.

“Well, Mom, do you like the girl I’ve brought home?”

Betty smiled naturally at his blunt and foolish question. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to her.”

“I know,” he said. “You hate her. Well, it’s only my first try.”

“Oh, I see. You’re in a silly mood.”

He paced about the kitchen trying to figure out what state he was in. “I’m restless,” he announced after some thought. It seemed profound.

“What about?”

“Don’t ask hard questions. Maybe for John and Naomi to arrive. I haven’t seen them for almost a year.”

“That’s right,” Betty said. She had put the dishes, after a pretty thorough cleaning, in the dishwasher and had finished wiping the counters. “Well, now that I’ve cleaned it all up, I’ll make dinner.”

Richard laughed. “I can appreciate that now, Mom. If I were you, I’d suggest going out to eat.”

“Are you eating out a lot in New York?”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s bad. I know. You’ve seen John and Naomi recently?”

“Oh! Change the subject, did you? Yes, I saw them in the fall. I went there for a week.”

“And is their relationship—well, how did it seem?”

She stopped her activity and looked at Richard. “You know, Naomi says you’re the only one who understands why they separated.”

“They didn’t separate. Isn’t that part of why I understood it.”

“What?”

“Naomi told me that everybody in the family insisted on thinking of it as a separation. You know, in the sense of divorce. To divide, etc.”

“All right, don’t be such a wise guy.”

“I’m not. That’s the way she felt. That people presumed their vacation from each other was just the first step toward divorce.”

“But nobody said anything like that to her.”

“Oh, come on, Mom. Leo said to me once, ‘That fucking brother-in-law of ours better not pull a WASP on Naomi and try to leave her without a penny.’ ”

Betty shook her head in irritation and Richard saw a warning signal he had learned to fear over the years: her eyes clouding with tears and anger. He was taking this subject too lightly. “Oh, that’s just Leo’s nonsense. I never said—”

“Mom! Mom,” Richard said quickly, hurrying over to Betty and patting her arm. He knew the gesture showed his terror of her feelings more than it really comforted her, but he never realized that until he found himself stroking her arm hurriedly, wishing he could withdraw what he had just said.

“I never said anything like that to her,” Betty said, and then smiled knowingly, perhaps a little bitterly, at him. “It’s all right, Richard, I’m in control of myself.” She compensated for this cut by kissing him on the forehead and then returning to the dinner’s preparation.

They were silent until Richard heard Leo’s voice announcing that he was taking a shower. “What did he say?” Betty asked.

“He’s taking a shower so don’t use the hot water.” The subject seemed closed, but Richard, watching approaching gloom of a winter’s night at one of the windows, felt chastised for his frivolous attitude. He couldn’t understand why he had cared so little about Naomi’s crisis, and it only made him feel more shallow that his casualness had been mistaken for understanding by Naomi. The rest of the family had buzzed about, gossiping and steeling themselves for a massed rejection of John, because they assumed Naomi would need all the support—including malice toward John—that love can give a young divorced mother. He conjured up the image that they must have had then: of Naomi, almost collapsing from her child’s weight, trudging off manless in the snow.

“It’s very hard being a mother with a little baby,” Betty said in the middle of tasting a sauce. She replaced the lid of a pot on the stove and bent over to check the flame. “There’s a terrible amount of pressure on you. It makes your marriage very difficult.”

“I know ,” Richard said, his irritation surprising him and Betty.

“Don’t be annoyed,” she said, not commanding.

He wanted to yell self-righteously about his needs, but he’d learned the value of cautious statements. “You don’t need to sell me on having consideration and sympathy for my sister, Mom. She’s done a pretty good job of that.” Betty looked at him with her expression changing slowly from apology to disapproval. “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he said. “I haven’t had a shot at oppressing anybody, do you know that? I was never allowed to be unconsciously racist, sexist, or just plain unconscious.” He stopped because it was turning into a tirade.

“Oh, you’re just being silly and cantankerous.”

There was always this moment in disagreements with members of his family. The rush of fury, like a car engine flooding, the wheels racing uselessly. I have to understand this too, he thought. It’s her daughter, her self reincarnate. His parents had fought when Naomi was a teen-ager, and Aaron had insisted she wash the dishes. “No daughter of mine is going to wash dishes,” Betty yelled. Oh, how boring people really were, Richard thought. This is my mother’s mysterious inner life—she doesn’t want her daughter to be a victim of male chauvinism. How could he tell his mother how tough it was for him, without whining or belittling the profound nature of his sister’s problems? “There’s a lot of pressures on me too,” he said, and knew immediately that it was inadequate.

“Well, of course, it’s very hard being a writer. I told you not to be one.” She smiled at him with an embarrassing and comforting love. “But it’s nothing like having a child. Another living being who depends on you every hour of every day. You’re never free of it.”

He stared at her, at it. The feeling, the scene. “I’ll see you later,” he said, and walked through the pantry, leaving the house.

“You don’t have a coat,” she called after him.

There had been no snow for weeks so it was cold and empty outdoors, the ground gray and frozen, the trees, except for the evergreens, bare. He stared at this scene for a moment before deciding to run the length of the driveway. It was too cold to walk. His feet were hurt by the hard matted ground and his steps echoed loudly in the forest. He had a feeling that he would meet John and Naomi on the driveway and, indeed, their car turned in it just as he began his slow trot back.

John stopped the car and they did their hugging and kissing out in front of it. Richard pretended interest in his young niece to avoid conversation, but after holding her in his arms he became hopelessly sentimental and kissed her repeatedly on the forehead so that Naomi said, “Oh, you’re necking. That’s what I do with her all the time.”

Richard had no chance to respond because they had reached the house. It was funny to watch the family all come out through the door together, almost fighting to reach them first. He remembered Joan was a stranger and would need his escort, so he handed Nana to Betty and hurried into the house. He found Joan standing in the pantry brushing her hair self-consciously. She smiled with relief when he appeared and he loved her deeply for that.

He led her outside and toward the family group, and only then did he become aware of how nervous he was about his family’s judgment of Joan. And from the expression on Naomi’s face, she was voraciously interested in what he had come up with. Naomi broke in immediately after Richard introduced them, “So this is my little brother’s girl friend.”