Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

Is it necessary for me to be a flirt? Why do all the men in Talmadge seem to be seeking a love they never had?

I get puzzled sometimes.

FEBRUARY 25, 1954

Suppose it were a chorale? Not in the true style of a Lutheran hymn, nor even anything similar to Bach or the baroque composers. But instead something — I don’t know. If it could state something definite. If it could have a solidity.

The pump is out again. I called the Brothers Karamazov who always descend on that pump like two vultures ready to pick the bones clean. I asked the fat one why he always smiles so happily when he tells me there’s big trouble with the pump. He apologized, smiling.

A church theme? Or more than that, something infused with the sort of thing Copland got in “Appalachian Spring,” or Sessions in his early symphonies, an elemental feeling of the frontier, and perhaps the Negro church? It sounds a little somber, but I’d like to try it, if ever I get the chance. Tomorrow is a meeting of the League of Women Voters. How do I get involved in such stupid projects? We had to fill the bathtub with water while they fiddled around outside, otherwise we’d have nothing to drink until morning. Kate complained because she won’t be able to shower. She brought home a record called “Rock, Rock, Rock.” Music? Certainly. Elemental, definite, and solid, why bother?

MARCH 5

Bill from the Vultures. $300 to fix a pump! I asked Matthew to call and complain, and he said we were at the mercy of the world’s technicians, and I said not if the man of the house were willing to call and complain. This led into one of Matthew’s wild theories, this time on castration, of all things! Matthew said the popular theory was that women are castrating the men of America, and then after they have eaten their (I won’t use the word he used) go seeking lovers who they feel are real men. He doesn’t buy this theory. As far as I can understand it, this is what he believes:

Women and men fall in love when they’re still girls and boys. They’ve been raised in a culture which romanticizes everything, and so romance is the keynote. But romance, according to Matthew, is for children. The boys and girls get married, and suddenly the boys are face to face with a world full of killers in which they must somehow survive. They learn. They survive by becoming men , by losing the boyishness they once had. So Matthew says the reason for a woman’s restlessness is not that the male has been castrated and rendered impotent. Oh, no, Matthew says it’s just the opposite, it’s simply that the boy has become a man at last. But the woman did not fall in love with a man, she fell in love with a boy. She doesn’t like this new person around the house. She wants the boy, the romantic boy who wrote her love poetry and spent hours with her on the telephone. So where does she find the boy, the romance? In a lover. I never knew he thought about such things.

I think he’s faithful. I would shoot him!

MARCH 16

Bedlam! Absolute! Bobby drank finger paint.

Don’t ask me how finger paint got thin enough to be drunk, don’t ask me where Mrs. Haskell was when he drank the stuff, don’t ask me how that nursery school is run when a child can be allowed to drink finger paint! Dr. Anderson said I had better take him to the hospital in Stamford, which I did, and they pumped out his stomach, some fun, and we discovered Matthew’s Blue Cross had run out. Always when you need it. Kate had a fit! We didn’t get home until after 5, and I was supposed to drive her to Mary Bottecchi’s for an after-school party, and she was absolutely frantic. I told her that Bobby could have poisoned himself, and she said, “Fine, it would have saved me the trouble!” and I almost slapped her. I would have, but she seems so adult, and I don’t want to destroy this feeling of independence which seems to be a part of this phase. I never would have said anything like that to my mother, but Kate is not me, and I don’t want her to be me.

In any case, the Amanda Bridges Taxi Service flew into high gear and got Kate to her party slightly late. I seem to be taxiing children all over the countryside. How does Kibby Klein manage with her five kids? Must go shopping again tomorrow. Why do I always look too sexy in a bathing suit the moment I try it on again at home? Matthew asked me to bend over, and I did, and he said, “I can see your navel,” which of course he could do nothing of the sort. But I guess it was a little too revealing. It looked all right in the shop. Maybe Matthew is a prude. Maybe I am, too.

I tried to get to the piano, but someone from the library came and spent an hour telling me how vitally our donations were needed this year — as if they are not needed vitally every year. I wrote a check for $25. I think she expected $50, but that’s too bad.

APRIL 7

Well, I finally got something down on paper. It was a lot harder than I thought. I worked for a full 3 hours this morning while Bobby was gone. The house was absolutely still, my what a relief! I don’t know if it’s any good, but I managed to fill a page of manuscript, and when I played it back it sounded at least as if I’d got the feel of the thing. I didn’t want anything like Schönberg or Hindemith, a cosmopolitan veneer without roots — who was it that said, “I wouldn’t be found dead with roots?” But at the same time I wanted to avoid a feeling of unintentional primitivism, or artlessness. It wasn’t easy. These are the first several bars where the rather solemn major theme is established. I still have a lot of work to do on the chords, filling them out, making them richer somehow without too much sophistication. But this is the way it goes:

Bach is probably turning over! But I felt pretty good about what I’d accomplished, even though Matthew seemed to shrug it off. I played him everything I had, and he said he liked it, but I don’t think he knew quite what — well, I’m not sure I know quite what I accomplished, either, but — well, I don’t think someone should expect a pat on the head just because she put a few notes on paper. Still, I guess it was something. May Collins says she is going to open a novelty shop in Talmadge.

APRIL 8

Matthew’s car had a flat, drove him to station and Kate to the bus stop at the same time. Took Bobby with us in pajamas, then back to the house for breakfast, and over to Mrs. Haskell’s. She reminded me about the show the kids were doing this afternoon. I promised I’d be there. Met Julia Regan at the post office, had a cup of coffee with her. She was on her way to Tulley’s office. Is there something going on there, or am I crazy? She said she was going to have a showing of some slides she took in the Virgin Islands in February, would I let Kate come? I said of course I would, must mark it down on the calendar, it’s a Friday evening, April 16. Connie Regan, no relation, joined us when we were almost finished, said she wished she could do something like taking pictures, and Julia laughed it off. Connie said she gets tired of being referred to as a housewife, which amused me because what is she if not a housewife?

I went to get newspaper and some things at the drugstore and was just ready to sit down at the piano when Parsie informed me that Railway Express in Stamford had called to say I’d better pick up the package they have there for me, or it would begin accumulating storage charges. Hopped into the car and off to Stamford, picked up the package, the garden stuff I ordered from Ohio. Had lunch at Tiny’s, and then back home in time to catch Bobby’s nursery-school show. He was a rabbit. There was some reference in the skit about him preferring finger paint over almost any other beverage. I think this showed a huge lack of tact on Mrs. Haskell’s part, considering the fact that Matthew is a lawyer who was ready to sue her and the school at the time of the accident.