May 2001, Grosse Pointe, Michigan
The familial units don't leave us alone for long once Grandma and I get back to Grosse Pointe; blood is thicker than water after all, no matter what you say. On Mother's Day, Father, Liz and Mary show up on our doorstep with a huge bouquet of flowers, right after they come back from church.
"Grand-ma!" wails Mary dramatically, falling into Grandma's arms when we greet them at the door. "I missed you so much, and every day I was worried that you were gonna die!"
"There, there, child," says Grandma, patting Mary on the head though she staggers backward slightly with Mary's unexpected weight leaning on her. "I'm still here, aren't I?"
"Mary, don't," says Liz, pulling Mary roughly away from Grandma just as I step in to catch Grandma by the shoulders from behind. "You're such a child. It's high time you grew up some, you're almost nineteen, for heaven's sake."
"Rowena." Fine lines appear on Father's forehead as he studies Grandma closely, looking her up and down. "How have you been doing? The girls brought flowers in honor of Mother's Day, just for you – Anne, can you go get some water to put them in, please?"
"Coming up right now," I say, only heading into the house when I see Liz has a firm grip on Mary and won't let her bowl Grandma right over again. Still, I keep turning my head around periodically as I scootch into the kitchen to grab a vase and fill it with water, bringing it back out for Father to set the bouquet into. "Won't you come in please? Just make yourselves comfortable in the living room, it's been ages since we last caught up and we can talk for longer this way."
Even though they're ostensibly here to ask after Grandma, nobody wants to talk about the subject of chemo; it's skirting uncomfortably close to the taboo of talking about death. So, they ask about all the superficial things: the fancy restaurants we went to at Inner Harbor, whether the shopping in Baltimore is any better than in Detroit (we have no idea), how the weather was (beautiful, thank you, and here are the photos of the cherry blossoms), and finally, whether I've managed to meet any men over there.
"Nope," I say cheerfully. "No suitable ones, at least. Guess you're stuck with me for good now – I'm officially an old maid at the ripe old age of twenty-three." That's at least partially true, since I don't need a suitable man when I've already got an unsuitable one, and I've earned the right to poke some fun at them being stuck with me since everyone ought to know I'm only here because I'm the one doing all the heavy lifting of looking after Grandma.
Grandma shakes her head at me, but her eyes betray the hint of a smile, as Father says, "Anne, watch your mouth," in exactly the same tones he'd just used to ask me to go get the water.
I change the subject then, by showing them my photos of Seattle: the quirky cafes, the view of Lake Union from Gasworks Park, landscape views of Rainier and the Olympics shining white against the clear blue sky, the boathouses moored on the lake, and Pike Place Market. Carefully, I keep all the personal snapshots under wraps, even the ones with just Harriet in them; those will get too close to my life at MIT and to Fred – a bigger taboo even than talking about death, because being an Elliot is all about maintaining the shiny veneer of perfection. Everything has to be posh, pristine and picture-perfect. There's no room for authenticity, for life, and all the messiness that comes with it. And one part of that means a good Elliot girl isn't even supposed to be seen with, let alone marry, a black man who grew up in the 'hood. Especially if said man had a mom who did drugs. Even if that self-same man also happens to be a scholar, an officer, and a gentleman at the same time.
They don't stay long in the end, because our lives don't quite measure up to their standards of glitz and glamour, but we don't get back our peace for long till Charles comes calling.
"Hey, Mrs. Stevenson," he says. "How ya feelin'? Mary told me y'all were back, so I figured I'd come by to see you."
I roll my eyes at him in irritation, wondering what it is with everyone asking Grandma how she's feeling all the time. Don't you know that's the most tiresome question you could ask someone with cancer – what answer would you expect, anyway? If they follow the usual script and tell you they're fine, they're lying because they have cancer. And if they tell you how not fine they are, well, some wonderful conversation you're going to have.
"Very well, thank you," says Grandma gracefully. "Today's a good day."
"Good, good, that's great," says Charles, not missing a beat in his cheerfulness. Charles is just as he ever was, and he hasn't got a mean bone in his body, but as far as Grandma is concerned, he's hitting all the wrong notes and it annoys me. "Well, it's good to see you too, Anne. Hey, it's Sunday – want to hang out for a bit, just like old times?"
"Go ahead, Anne, I won't break from spending an afternoon here on my own. You need to get out and have some fresh air," encourages Grandma. "You both enjoy yourselves and don't worry about me, all right?"
"OK, Grandma," I say. "I won't be long, be back in a little bit." Partly, I just want to get Charles out of there; his perpetual cheerfulness feels a little bit like a bull in a china shop, especially when all our emotions are somewhat fragile at the moment.
"I thought you'd want to see that car of yours, now that you're back," says Charles after we close the door. "So, I'll show you where I stashed it. Far away from the prying eyes of the parental units."
He's put the Pontiac in Pontiac – the outlet of his family's garage chain that's farthest away from downtown, the one which his parents visit the least frequently. I have decidedly mixed feelings about that one - part of me wants to laugh at the humor in the obvious pun, a part of me appreciates him protecting my privacy by not outing the car – and the identity of its owner – to his parents on my behalf, and yet, a third part of me seethes with a slight sense of injustice. Sure, it's a ratty, cheap, almost twenty-year-old jalopy, but does that mean it has to be relegated to one of our poorest suburbs just by default? Isn't that appropriation?
The Pontiac is in just about as good shape as I'd expect, which means none the worse for wear since the day I took it out of Fred's hands. Bumper sticker still readable, still hanging on in there. Its engine starts. All good there.
"Anne, are you planning to drive it around when you're here?" asks Charles.
"Maybe. I don't know." I haven't thought this far yet because there's been way too many weightier issues to solve. Like scheduling maintenance therapy, for example. And figuring out if there'll be a way for me to juggle a job around getting Grandma to and from her appointments. How to hide the Pontiac – for I know full well it can't see the light of day with Father, Grandma or my sisters around – has been one of the things farthest away from my mind, even though it's an absolutely necessary thing to do.
"Well, if you do, there's stuff you need to know. Who is Akida Jahir Croft, by the way?"
"Akida…" I'm puzzled for a minute before the realization hits me. "Oh, that must be AJ! Why are you asking? And where did you come across his name?"
"That's the name of the person whom the car is registered to," explains Charles. "I had to check it up because the tabs expired last June, so if you want to drive it, you'll have to get him to renew them, or to transfer the car to you so you can buy new tabs. Anyway, who is he? I figured he must be your secret boyfriend from Seattle or something."
"Not quite," I reply. "He's my future brother-in-law. And there's no way I can get him to sign the car over to me, because he's in Guam right now with the Navy, and I have no idea how to get in touch with him."
"Your future… you mean, Anne, you're engaged?" Charles' eyes widen with surprise, before he breaks out into a big grin. "Congratulations! Nobody ever said anything though – not your grandma, not Mary… Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"Thanks," I say, returning his smile before letting out a wistful sigh. "I wish I could've told you before, too, but it's top secret because my family doesn't know, and I'm not going to tell them yet especially with all this other stuff going on. You're the only person in Michigan who knows about it, and I can't even tell your parents. Don't get me wrong, your parents are great – but telling them is too risky, it'd be almost like telling Father, and I'll be so dead if he finds out. Not to mention, I can't imagine what it'd do to Grandma if she knew."
"Why? Ah, I guess… the name? So, this guy with the car is his brother, huh? Does that mean he's…er… black?" Charles has never had a ton of imagination, and I never told him any details about Fred during our college years because, as you can imagine, that topic's sensitive when I told Charles I couldn't date him because I already had a boyfriend. Still, that was years ago, and we've long moved past the awkwardness of that situation, especially when he knows that the rest of his life is here in this garage chain, and he'd never have moved to Seattle for me if I'd stayed at Boeing.
"Yes," I reply matter-of-factly. "He is, though AJ is Fred's brother-in-law, not his brother. That doesn't matter to me one bit, but you can imagine Father would think differently – and Grandma, she's a traditionalist. She'll never say anything impolite to anyone's face, but still, she's made her preferences clear. And, well, anyone who doesn't come from a picture-perfect, squeaky-clean prep-school mold isn't who she prefers, so that excludes the vast majority of the human population."
"Well, I've always been glad my folks are more easy-going than yours about such things, though I say, I never thought of doing anything shocking like that. How long have you been with him, anyway? Surely you haven't made this decision in a rush? Or do you…" He trails off, trying to find a delicate way to say it. "Um, you don't… if you need to get married, then surely… you can't keep it from your folks that long?"
"No, I don't. I don't need to, in that sense, but Fred's been the only person I've ever thought of marrying for years. Since we were nineteen, I knew I didn't want to date anyone else for the rest of my life. He's been my friend, my rock, and my partner for pretty much my entire college life, all the way from spring semester in freshman year. And now, when he's in military pilot training and can't get out till August, I miss him a ton."
"Aha." A contemplative look crosses Charles' face. "Freshman year. So, he's the guy you were dating when you told me you couldn't be my girlfriend because you were already with someone else. All this time, I thought I'd either lost out to a crazy smart geek, or to some filthy rich kid from prep school, but turns out, you passed me over for a black guy with a beat-up car."
Before I know it, I let out a huge gasp. I know Charles, and he's never mean or spiteful to anyone on purpose. But somehow, the racist undertone of his remark irks me, and I'm just as horrified at myself as I am at him, because I know I'd never have thought about it this way before I met Fred either. Was this how we were, then, in the Before Times? Believing ourselves to be perfectly nice, upright, and benign people, while we were walling ourselves up in a world that was only white?
To his credit, Charles realizes his mistake almost immediately. "Erm… sorry," he stammers, reddening in embarrassment as he flicks his gaze to the floor. "I… I really didn't mean it that way. Honest. I… I just never thought we'd ever date anyone…who wasn't like us."
"That's the thing, though," I say staunchly. "In all the ways that matter, Fred's just like us. Better than us, even, in terms of all the things he's accomplished already, and his future ahead of him. When I met him in my freshman design class, I was first and he was second in our project demo, but it could easily have gone the other way. He's been neck to neck with me in many of my classes, and way better than me in some of them. Now he's a commissioned officer in the Air Force, and even before he was in the military, he already had a lot of duty and responsibility in his life, but he carries all his burdens with such good grace. I wish I wasn't adding to them, though; I don't deserve him at all, especially when I'm in a situation like this."
"Don't ever say that Anne, not when you deserve every single person in your life who treats you well. You're just about the kindest person I've ever met, and I've known you ever since we were three." How ironic again, when all the kids at our school used to tease us for being a long-time couple, that when Charles and I should have our deepest conversation in two decades of knowing each other, it's all about my love for another man. "Anyways. What are you going to do with the car? There's only one of you, and you've got your own car here at home, so surely you won't want to pay for two sets of car tabs and all? Besides, unless you find another job, you'll still have to send the bills to your dad. Unless you're keeping it for your fiancé?"
Car tabs. That was one more thing I'd never thought about – I've been driving my Golf around for so many years now, and somebody, probably Mr. Shepherd, must've been taking care of that for me. I feel mortified, because now I realize why Fred asked me to junk the car; it hadn't been because he thought he was above driving a ratty old Pontiac after he got commissioned. Rather, he was probably thinking we'd get cash from junking it, instead of paying for tabs for a car that neither of us technically need.
"Fred asked me to junk it, actually," I admit. "I was the one who couldn't let it go, not when it represents so many of my memories of us in college. You're right – it doesn't make sense for me to pay to keep two cars and Father's still paying the tabs on mine, actually. But if I don't drive it on the road and just keep it here, just to remind me of him, would that be possible?"
"I don't know how long I can keep it, though," says Charles. "So far, I've been lucky that my parents don't come around here much, and we haven't needed the space, but I can't possibly let you store a car here for free indefinitely. And I don't think you want to pay for the space either, do you? How long will it be before you guys get married, anyway?"
"Now, I don't know anymore," I sigh. "We thought we had a plan, to get through this year and get together in August. And then we'd make our engagement public to my family, while continuing to save for our future for one more year. That was before the cancer, and now I don't see how we can possibly go ahead with that plan when it'd break Grandma to hear this, especially since she was the one who advised me so vehemently against Fred."
"That's tough. And I never quite got round to telling you how sorry I am about your grandma, you know, the cancer and all. Are you sure she won't come around, though? She might change her mind. In fact, it might make her happier to see you settle down with someone you really care for."
"I wish," I say, pensively. "But I know she won't change her mind, not when she used such strong words to tell me exactly what she thought about me and Fred being together. 'You're throwing your life away if you think that's the best you can do in a match,' is what she said to me, and those words are going to stay with me forever. They're the most horrible words I've ever heard her say about anyone. Back then, I was nineteen, and it was the summer after freshman year. All through spring semester, I told her little bits of things about Fred when I called home from college: how there was this boy I really liked, who was a friend at first until he became more than a friend. But she didn't think much of it; to her, dating someone when you're nineteen is almost like a high school romance, and she expected it to fizzle out in weeks, or at most, months. It was only when you and I didn't get together and she blamed Fred for it, that she realized exactly how serious I already was about him at the time, and then she tried to talk me into dating other people. She said the wise and responsible thing to do would be for me not to get into a committed relationship yet and keep my options open – I was still young after all, and I'd have plenty of chances to meet other boys out there who could be more compatible with me when I was ready to settle down. As you can imagine, she wasn't happy at all to find out that he's black, but there's even more to it – he grew up in the 'hood with a single mom who passed away, and she believed he might find college too hard in the end – that he'd end up dropping out and going back to the 'hood, maybe even getting into drugs or gangs or worse. I knew she was underestimating him, because I went to class with him every day and I could see how smart, disciplined, and motivated he is. Then she pointed out that even if he graduated, which he did, I would still need to choose somebody to settle down with when I got older, and if I didn't give him up at that point, I'd end up being a military wife. She talked a lot about how hard the lives of military spouses are, and how I shouldn't squander all the opportunities that the family gave me to have a better future than that. She said it'd be hard for me to get good jobs because I'd have to keep moving to different places, and there'd be long times when I wouldn't be able to see him, just like now. And that furthermore, he might not always be lucky – what if he never came back at all, or if he came back with a disabling injury or was mentally scarred for good? I told her I thought it would all be worth it, because when you truly care about somebody, you promise to go through thick and thin, through sickness and health. Like what I'm doing with her right now. Of all the things she said, there's only one I kind of agree with. Which is, when I marry Frederick, the family strife is going to tear all of us apart. You know Father. He… I can't put it any other way, he isn't always a reasonable man. And he's the one who doesn't need any other reason to go ballistic except that Frederick is black and from the 'hood, and therefore, to his mind, beneath the Elliot family. It'd be ugly, but I'd be willing to go through all of that if Grandma were well. Now that she's sick, I couldn't possibly do that to her and spoil the rest of her life. I don't know what I'm waiting for, or how I want it to play out, because Fred and Grandma are tearing me in two different directions, but I – I just can't bear to let go of Fred, even if it's selfish of me."
"Wow," says Charles. "That's some story. Now I know I never stood a chance, not against that. Just know I'll do anything I can to help you out, and whatever you want to do with the car, I'll work something out for you."
Ever since I've been domiciled in Grandma's guest bedroom, I've started calling Fred at night again; it's been sheer misery to have our only presence in each other's lives reduced to a series of texts. After Grandma's fallen asleep, I burrow my entire body headfirst under the coverlet and plug my ear buds into my cell phone before I talk to him, so she won't be able to hear us. Because I'm now on Eastern time while he's in Central, I bear the main brunt of the sleep deprivation, but still, neither of us are able to go to bed as early as we should whenever we talk. When sleep-deprived drivers are already supposed to be the equivalent of DUIs, I don't want to think about what a sleep-deprived fighter pilot would be like, but we have no alternative since I don't have any privacy when Grandma's awake. We try to make the most of Friday and Saturday nights, when he doesn't have training the next day, unless there's something we absolutely need to talk about on a work night for him. Which is tonight, because I need to check in with him before I deal with the car.
"I've made a sad decision," I tell him, "I think I'm going to have to junk the Pontiac after all. All this while I've been trying to keep it, to remember old times with, but I can't drive it around without renewing the tabs and it isn't fair to ask anyone to store it for me for free, so I guess I have to let it go."
"You mean, you haven't junked that clunker yet?" Fred is amused, rather than regretful. "I've gotta admit, everyone has a soft spot for their first car, and I'm no exception. Still, a few hundred dollars is nothing to sneeze at, and our memories of college will stay with us, whether we have the car or not. In fact, I didn't renew the tabs on purpose last year since I knew I won't need that car over here and I thought you'd junk it for me, so I hope AJ's parents didn't get that bill. The car's registered to their place."
"AJ's parents? Oops, I guess it's really embarrassing to say this, but I gotta own my rich-girl problems, I suppose. Frankly, I didn't even remember you had to pay tabs for cars until today; I guess Father has been paying for mine all along. So, I've been driving a car with expired tabs, that legally belongs to your brother-in-law, all around the Puget Sound area for half a year, but my supreme luck held up and nobody pulled me over."
"Nobody would ever think of pulling you over, Anne," says Fred, laughing even harder. "You're such a prim and proper driver, and you never deviate from the speed limit more than two miles per hour either way. That's why you're perfect for living on base, you'll probably be the only spouse who can last a whole year without getting a single ticket. Anyway. You'll want to print out that email I sent you when you junk the car, so they know AJ gave you power of attorney to sell it for him. You should still have it – I sent it to your personal email address instead of the MIT one, since they were shutting our school email accounts down."
He's thought of every little thing, and that's him, a quintessential military man: thorough, precise and methodical. I find the email and give Charles the printout, feeling as if I'm sending my favorite pet to the vet to get it put down, and he brings back a check for two hundred dollars. When I ask Fred how to wire the money to him, he tells me to keep it instead because now, I'm the one who isn't getting any pay at the moment.
Strangely, Fred and even Charles are more sensitized to my lack of finances than I am; it's true that Fred's now technically richer than me because he's getting officer grade pay and has nowhere to spend it, whereas I've had zero income for more than four months and my bank account is slowly hemorrhaging from cell phone bills. The only reason why my savings aren't drying up faster is because I've been charging everything to Father's credit card; pretty much all of my expenditure involves Grandma to a certain extent, with the cancer books being the only things I bought just for myself. Now that it fully sinks in just how precarious my financial independence is, I start looking for jobs in earnest, and thankfully Northwest has its hub here in Detroit so it isn't difficult for an aeronautical engineer to get decent work at the airport.
"We're both matching minions in overalls now," I tell Fred gleefully when I start work. "It's a pity we won't be able to meet the others in San Francisco for Halloween, or else we won't even need costumes."
Things fall into a routine schedule again – Mr. Hill takes Grandma to her maintenance therapy sessions, accompanied by either Sarah or Jemima, and I stop by to speak to the doctors and pick Grandma up whenever I can get out of work to go there. Our maids take turns to come over to Grandma's to do chores, and I make dinner and do the laundry in the evenings after I get home, while also keeping track of Grandma's medications. Fred and I become distant mirror images of each other, both of us spending our days clad in aviator jumpsuits, puttering around in hangars and airfields, albeit one time zone and fifteen hundred miles apart. For now, my life goes back into a stable holding pattern; I've arrested the free fall and am holding steady, even if just barely, at a new cruising altitude.
In the middle of the 100-degree August heat, Fred graduates UPT. This time instead of gold bars, he gets his first pair of wings. That's one even greater achievement, topping even the day of our college graduation and his commissioning ceremony; yet he was all alone, with no special person to pin his new wings on – not Sophia, who's in Guam, not Edward, who has settled down in Shropshire, and now not even me. Now that he can finally get out of base for the first time since college, he comes up to Detroit to visit, the way we planned a year ago, but since I can't stay with him without outing myself to Grandma, he has to go to AJ's parents' apartment to crash. Even though we still don't know when we'll break the news to my family, we want to accomplish two very important errands together, and there's only a few precious hours we can spend together on the weekend, when I manage to trick Charles and Mary into watching Grandma for me.
Charles has started getting chummy with Mary ever since I went to Seattle; he went to college at Berkeley and completely enjoyed the hippie lifestyle there, but being the homebody that he is, he never thought of doing anything else but coming back to his family business after he graduated. I don't know if he would've spent that much time with her if I had been around, but since they both like to swing and she's always looked up to him, they fell in pretty nicely with each other. From the times I've seen them together after I got back, it looks like Mary's starting to get sweet on him, though he doesn't seem to have a clue. So, I get tickets for The Princess Diaries for the two of them and tell them if they come by to hang around and maybe show Grandma their swing moves for a while before the show, I'll go off and give them a bit of time together. That makes at least two of the concerned parties immensely happy: Mary, and Grandma. Charles has been a favorite of Grandma's ever since he was a toddler, and now that she knows I'm a totally gone case and will never couple up with him, she's more than happy to do anything within her power to encourage him to settle down with Mary instead.
Meanwhile, I haven't dressed up in ages; shuttling Grandma to and from chemo was every bit as brutal as my college all-nighters, if not worse, so I lived in comfort clothing: joggers, sweatshirts, and Chuck Taylors. Even though I was dressing like a student again, that didn't keep me from feeling old inside; I feel all the worry lines on my face even though I can't actually see them in the mirror. To avoid raising suspicion with Mary and Grandma, I keep a light touch to my attire: trying to add a little colour to my face with minimalist make-up (and hoping I'm successful) and pairing a cute floral top with my dressiest DKNY jeans.
We meet at Fairlane Town Centre in Dearborn; after all, the ring is a special enough thing that we want to get it at a nice shop, and this place is upscale enough without being pretentious. It's even better that Dearborn's clear across the other side of Detroit, so we shouldn't run into anyone from Grosse Pointe who might gossip back to Father. When we see each other, I launch myself into his arms as if I was welcoming him home at the airport after a long time away, the way I wish I could have done. Fred is about as nicely dressed as I'd ever seen him, save for the times when he wore his dress uniform; he's wearing a casual but stylish long sleeve shirt even though it's over 80 degrees outside, nice jeans, and lace-up dress shoes. We kind of match in our attire, and if you didn't know us, you'd think we were any two young professionals going out on a regular weekend date, not star-crossed lovers trying to make the most of a teeny reprieve in an unending period of separation.
"You always look even more beautiful every time I see you," he tells me, though I know it isn't true at all, and especially not when I feel like I've aged eight years in the past eight months. Like always, I tell him he's the better looking half of us, and the only reason why he thinks I look good is because he's biased. And then he denies it and pulls me in a little closer. This has been our routine for years, and it feels good to fall back into that familiar pattern again. Every time we get together now will be one more to hang onto, as I'll store up each time together for the times when we're apart, when my trove of memories will be all I have of him.
Our first mode of operations is to stop at all the jewelry stores in the mall to look at rings. I'm not the kind of girl who makes rules about how many months' salary my man should spend on his engagement ring, and he believes in having an emergency fund in the bank rather than me wearing our life savings on my finger (and probably becoming a walking target to get mugged, since I'm living in Detroit after all). Why we try on so many rings, is because we need to get something that fits on my tiny fourth finger, when my hands aren't much bigger than a child's. Finally, we end up with a single half-carat diamond set on a slender, wavy silver band, simple yet delicate and elegant. We need to get the jeweler to do another thing for us too – an Air Force pilot doesn't wear his first pair of wings; it's supposed to be bad luck, though I don't really understand why. I whip out the cute little Sony Cyber-shot camera Grandma got me last summer and snap a photo of our upturned palms, his dark hand beside my fair one, holding the intricately carved pewter wings, so perfect and so beautiful, before we get the jeweler to score them down the middle. Then he takes one end and I take the other, and we snap it apart as if we're breaking a wishbone. I make a little wish as we break the wings apart, that he'll stay safe, and that I'll be able to steal many more moments like this together with him. Because I can't wear the ring on my finger if I don't want Father and Grandma to find out, we get a hole bored into my half of the wings, and a chain for me to wear my ring and the wing around my neck, hidden under the neckline of my top.
After we buy the ring, we have about an hour left before I need to drive home to be back with Grandma before Charles and Mary go out on their date. That means we have time to stop at Coffee Beanery, and unlike how we used to share just one Venti size drink every time we went to Starbucks in our college days, now Fred can treat me to fancy coffee and sandwiches without him feeling the pinch or me feeling guilty. He puts the ring on my finger, so I can wear it and we can show our engagement to the world for just this little while before I have to go undercover again.
"Anne, you've been the making of me, and I don't want to spend my life with anyone but you. One year ago, you told me you'll marry me, and I want to follow through with that, when – when the circumstances will allow. It will happen, and you will be with me someday. Till then, whenever you look at this ring, think of me."
It will happen – though all these months, neither of us have ever broached what "it" is, even though Fred has never wavered that he'll go through it with me. Fred's confident pronouncements that we will make it together are tainted with guilt and grief for me, because we both know exactly what must happen for us to finally forge ahead with our marriage. Our togetherness and Grandma's demise, both tied together like this – to have one, I must lose the other. You can't have your cake and eat it, Anne, I think to myself, that thin but hard veneer of bittersweet lacing even the moment that should be the sweetest one in my life, when my fiancé has my hand in his and is slipping our engagement ring on my finger. And yet, I know, he's completely right; Grandma's eventual passing will be inevitable, no matter how unreal it feels right now, and Fred and I will have to weather this, and many other things in the future, together side by side, in spirit even if not necessarily in body.
When we embrace and share a last, long kiss outside my car in the parking lot, I don't want to let go – all the times in the past, I knew exactly when we'd see each other again, but this is the first time that neither of us can truly say when the next time will be. He'll have times when he's on leave, and the next time will definitely be less than a year from now, and maybe it isn't prudent to splurge on an air ticket every time he has leave, but at least we can strive for more than once a year, at least. Yet being a fighter pilot is a profession with more uncertainty than most; I don't want to think about if, rather than when, so that is another thought I tuck at the back of my mind, trying to bury it away before it festers. Just like the thought about Grandma.
After I parallel park along the road outside Grandma's house, carefully choosing a spot where nobody can see me from the driveway, I slip the ring off my finger and string it onto the chain with my half of Fred's wings. I hold the chain and wing in my hand, gazing at it for a long while, before fastening the chain around my neck and hiding it away – out of sight, but never out of mind.
If I thought I was cruising along again, I was wrong; it doesn't take long for my world to be shaken up with another bout of turbulence. Father's income has been a black box to me all along and given the way nothing has ever been denied us materially, I hope I can be forgiven for having thought it was limitless in the past. Only until now, I never realized just how mistaken I could possibly be.
After work one muggy August night, Grandma sits me down at the dining table. It's one of her better days, and she holds herself with the perfect composure and dignity I've always remembered and admired. All through these days since the diagnosis, every time Grandma leaves her room she'll always be properly dressed in the same tailored blouse and pants outfits she always wears, with the Blanche wig I got her covering her thinning hair and her makeup impeccably done.
"Anne, dear," she says to me, "we've got work to do. When your mom was alive, she used to make sure your father was temperate in his spending, but she's been gone for almost twenty years now, and since then there hasn't been anyone keeping him in check. Mr. Shepherd told him he's maxed out all his credit card debt, and we need to put together a plan to make sure all of us stay within our income from now on. And I believe we can come up with a workable plan if we do it together – after all, you've always had your mother's good sense."
When we total up the family income, it's no mean sum – after all, Father gets dividends from his shares in ELMSCO, though these have slowly dwindled since the Big Three started losing market share to Japanese autos all through the '80s and the '90s, which is why his income started to get smaller while his spending habits remained the same. Then he gets interest income from a huge portfolio of investments, and Grandma has quite a few unit trusts of her own too. Apparently, Father and Liz have told Mr. Shepherd they'll cut off some of their charity donations and will also nix their plans to redo the entire house in contemporary style, but that isn't enough because it doesn't touch any of their huge, repeating lifestyle expenditures. Grandma says Mr. Shepherd thinks seven years is a realistic timeframe for Father to pay back his debts, so we should split the deficit, with interest, over that period of time and subtract it from the income to get the baseline amount we can afford to spend. But I'm aghast; how can we possibly be in the hole for seven years? By then, I'll be thirty, an age I can hardly imagine. Instead, I tell Grandma, we should just live like a regular middle-class family from now on, and that will get us clear as soon as possible if we take the rest of the income and use it to pay off the debts.
I draw a line down the middle of a sheet of college-ruled paper and start making out a list of "Essentials" and "Non-Essentials". Of course, Grandma's medical expenses are the first item under "Essentials", and after that, I multiply my college grocery budget with Fred by four and put that amount in for food. For transportation, I figure we really only need two cars, and we can't afford a chauffeur; this means Liz, Mary and Father will have to chip in with ferrying Grandma to and from her doctor's appointments, but if we all do our part it should be feasible. And we can then replace Liz's BMW Z3, Mary's Chrysler PT Cruiser, and Father's fleet of luxury cars – a Chrysler 300M, a Lincoln Town Car, a Cadillac Eldorado and a Maybach stretch limo – with a fuel-sipping Honda Civic. I'll keep my Golf because it has good fuel economy, and we'll figure out a way for the five of us to carpool each other around. And if all of us do our part with laundry and dishes, then it might be possible for us to function without any full-time household staff, but I budget in some money for a cleaning lady to come into each of our homes two times a week and a local high school boy to mow our lawns every fortnight, especially since Grandma shouldn't be helping with chores.
It's a tough choice to put Mr. Hill, Sarah and Jemima into the list of "Non-Essentials" when they've been with us so long that they're almost a part of the family, but there's no way we can afford them and clear the debt at the same time. And Liz, Mary and I all have enough clothes to last us for three or four years, so clothes shopping goes into the "Non-Essentials" list too. As do fancy restaurants, exotic holidays, and summer vacation home rentals, though it's a moot point for me when my new life with Grandma has no room for any of those things anyway.
"Don't be naïve, child," says Grandma, shaking her head slightly as she gently chides me. "I know you're a good girl and you want to help the family. But how can your father build trust with clients if they see him downsizing like this? They'll know his business isn't doing well and that will make them think twice about working with him. And besides, we're in Grosse Pointe, and he has to keep some face, to maintain his dignity in front of the neighbors."
My list doesn't see the light of day, not when even Grandma's seven-year list gets thrown out by Father. He blusters about how insupportable it is to do without all the niceties of life when he's got the Elliot family pride to maintain, and after rounds and rounds of ranting, he finally declares that if this is what he needs to do, he might as well move out of Grosse Pointe altogether.
"Actually, relocating might not be a bad idea," says Mr. Shepherd. "If you move into a stylish city apartment, you can enjoy a chic, urban lifestyle without being saddled with all the expenses that come with maintaining a big house. Think of it as the modern, 'in' thing to do. And if you rent out the house, you'll be able to earn more income."
"Father, please say you'll set us all up at our penthouse in the Upper West Side," says Liz. "It'll be great to live somewhere with decent shopping for once, and Motor City is so boring."
Great. Wonderful. New York, Boston and Chicago all have to be off the list if we want to stop Liz from blowing off the rest of the family savings at Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus or Filene's, but I'm so not going to open my mouth when nobody's going to listen to my opinions anyway.
"Maybe you could consider something else," suggests Mr. Shepherd. "How about getting a chic condo unit in Florida? It's the place for the fashionable retiree set, and you'll have plenty of lifestyle options to keep yourselves entertained. And you can upkeep your home easily without the need for full-time staff, which will keep your costs manageable."
It takes Father a few days to sleep on the idea, but he finally acquiesces. After all, he says, he's turning fifty-five so it's high time he starts enjoying his retirement. Selling the penthouse apartment that he bought on the Upper West Side when Liz started at Barnard will free up enough money for him to buy a nice condo in Florida and have some cash left over. In the meantime, Liz can't wait to start living it up by the beach in sunny Florida, and we figure the rent we get from the big house will more than pay for short term rental housing, so Father decides to make the move right away.
"Well, I'm staying here," says Grandma. "I'm too old to move across the country, and besides, I want to live out the rest of my days at my old home. Anne, we'll manage quite acceptably together here, won't we?"
"Sure, we will," I affirm. There's plenty of reasons for me to want to stay: some distance between myself and Father's judgmental presence can't hurt, I have a job and an income here, and it's good for Grandma to remain in her home and not have to switch doctors again, now that we've set up a plan.
"If you're staying, I'm staying too," says Mary. "I don't wanna leave when I've just started making new friends in college. It was hard enough leaving all my friends from high school behind, and I don't wanna move away and have to do it all over again." And Charles, of course, I think, but again, I keep discreetly silent.
Father's move means we have yet another round of logistics to deal with: I shift my belongings to Mom's old childhood room, so the more generous guest bedroom can go to Mary. After all, I'd pared everything I had down to the bare minimum when I went to college, whereas Mary never really left the big house since she enrolled in the local community college after graduating from SEM. Because it's our fault that Mr. Hill, Sarah, and Jemima don't have full-time jobs with us anymore, I try to find a soft landing for them. Fred helps by asking AJ's parents to pass on leads through him to me; AJ's mom has been working as a cleaning lady for years, so she has a network to find out exactly which rich families in the area are looking for new staff. We pack up everything in Mary's room and rent a U-Haul for Mr. Hill to drive over to Grandma's before he leaves us, with him and Charles working together to carry all her stuff inside. And I need someone to be with Grandma and accompany her to her appointments during the day when I'm at work, so I ask Sarah and Jemima to take turns to come back on an hourly basis while finding other part-time work for them with other families, paying them higher than market rates because of their medical caregiving duties and the fact that they'll need to rent their own homes now instead of living with us. The money for Sarah and Jemima's hours with us comes straight out of my pay, but thankfully Mr. Shepherd and Father have agreed that Grandma's medical bills will go into his new budget, something that Father has triple-underlined in the latest budget document.
After Father and Liz have gone off to Palm Beach, I go over to the big house for one last time to give it a once-over and clear out the stuff in my childhood bedroom before Mr. Shepherd puts it onto the rental market. With everyone else having moved on to their new residences, all the rest of the furniture has either been moved or sold; stripped bare of everything except the drapes, the huge parlor yawns at me, looking dated even with just the unadorned flooring and walls. Of course – Father and Mom bought and decorated this place when they married in the '70s, before they had us; no wonder Father was thinking of a full re-do before his financial constraints stopped him cold in his tracks. My old pink walls look dusky and dirty, and the movie posters I pinned up on top of the wallpaper are all faded and peeling, the edges curling up at the sides. The four-poster bed frame, once shiny and bright, is flecked with black tarnish, and the candy-striped linens have faded to a nondescript shade of off-white. All of my painted wooden furniture already had a vintage tinge to it on purpose, but now there are tiny yellowish spots on everything. The books on my shelf are all well worn and thumbed over, the deep ridges on the spine of Pride and Prejudice betraying just how many times I read it during my middle school years. Everything here is a relic, belonging to the ghost of the eighth grader that I was when I last lived in this room, for I took everything that was of any use to me along when I went away to SEM and then to college.
Before I tear them off the walls, I take a long, hard look at all the posters one last time, for they represent my childhood fantasies of love. Pretty Woman. The Little Mermaid. Beauty and the Beast. When Harry Met Sally. Far and Away. The Princess Bride. Back then, I knew my sisters and I were raised to be divas and princesses, only I never quite felt equal to taking up that mantle. And the fairy tales taught me to expect that someday a man, tall and rich and white and handsome, would sweep me off my feet because he'd be thoroughly entranced by my perfect looks, perfect manners and perfect virtue. He'd show up gallantly on a snow-white steed, grant me every single wish I had, and we would have our happily ever after together, swirling away to a never-never-land of unending bliss. There'd be hot, steamy kisses to the tune of Unchained Melody and bold, soulful declarations in the style of (Everything I Do) I Do It For You. Yet I was never the striking beauty that Liz was; I wasn't a pageant girl or a ballerina; rather, I've been more of a Jane Eyre than a Jane Bennet, all my life. Still, I daydreamed about a clean-cut, dashing suitor who would make my skin tingle and my heart flutter, running through a series of crushes on Tom Cruise, River Phoenix, Kevin Costner, and Bryan Adams the year I was in eighth grade. Since I never drew anymore after failing fifth-grade art, there's no solid evidence of those fantasies, which all played in Technicolor in my head after school as I read my Austen novels right in this very room, casting my latest film or pop hero in the leading role as I filled in the blanks with little side scenes I made up along the way.
Nobody could have told me that this eighth-grader would someday find earth-shaking love in the form of a wing, a ring, an aircraft model and a promise inked in Sharpie. That the eventual hero of my life wouldn't show up to sweep me away on a white horse, but instead, he'd come seeking cover at my dorm because he had no conducive place to study on campus since his own digs lacked any privacy whatsoever. That he wouldn't look anything like any of the men in the posters on the walls of this room; instead, he'd be lean and lanky, all sinew, with an earnest face and big black winsome eyes, full of vigor and spirit. That before he escorted me to our first ball (yes, ROTC had a military ball every year, of all the antiquities you could ever think of) we'd have already seen each other hundreds of times in ratty T-shirts and sweats and running gear. That we'd end up bonding over all-nighters and food-truck meals and grueling runs at the crack of dawn, not courting at soirees and nights out at the opera. That true love is about two imperfect people appreciating the best of each other despite our flaws, because it doesn't matter that he's not a prince and I'm not a princess when I just need him to be Frederick and it's enough for him that I am Anne. And that after the proposal, after the ending credits roll and it's happily-ever-after, there'll still be the long, hard, mundane slog of life to get through. But then, nobody ever told my eighth-grade self either that not a decade away, my entire life as I knew it would completely disintegrate, and this man would be the only constant anchoring me to happier days, the only person holding me up even if you put all the distance in the world between us.
You're throwing your life away if you think that's the best you can do in a match. Even after four whole years the words rankle, for they're a fault line driving a permanent crack into my relationship with Grandma. All my life, I've been something of a misfit in this family, being the only person who took after Mom instead of Father; and now that I'm forced into this boomerang situation, every day I have to live as a stranger in my own family. But with Frederick, I'm never a stranger; he understands me and what I need because he more or less wants and needs the same things too: to chase his goals, to do the right thing by the people whom he loves, and to have someone by his side who will always believe in him. How can it possibly be throwing away my life to choose the one person in my life who not only acknowledges, but supports and celebrates my very personhood? Yet I can't tell Grandma this, because she sacrificed her retirement years to raise my sisters and me; I owe her too much to ever defy her openly to her face. Even if there had been no cancer diagnosis, I'd wanted to play it cautious, to establish our respectability first and build Grandma's confidence in us before we get married. And now, I can't possibly tear the family apart with Grandma being ill, nor can I stand for her to pass away feeling disappointed in me.
Love is patient and kind, the Bible says. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love is supposed to be about purity, virtue and charity; yet here I am, selfish and duplicitous. Hiding my engagement away from all my family and secretly biting the hand that feeds me, while being a burden to the one man who's devoted to my welfare and happiness. All this while, even in the times when we've been only able to speak through texts, even though we now need to go incommunicado for days whenever Fred has temporary duty assignments, he's done all the simple, inconspicuous things that make all the difference. Like giving me a book that reminds me of me, a salve to my identity as a sports-loving twentysomething, when I'm forced to subjugate it to the needs and duties that cancer in the family brings. Or realizing that our servants, the persona non grata who have no stories, no lines and no personalities in the books I used to read, are also people and it isn't fair to take their entire livelihoods away just because Father spent too much to keep them with us. All these little things, the things that won't make it into the movies, are the ones that move me the most, and I feel terrible about not being able to do anything back for him except to distract him into an accident. Yet here I am, hanging on and playing both sides, for I cannot be perfectly honorable to either one of them without dishonoring the other even more. A fine person you are, Anne, I tell myself, and this is why they say that mankind is sinful in nature.
Nobody ever told the innocent eighth grader who lived in this room that life cannot be split into black and white, good and bad; that no matter how you try to be a kind and good person, you'll still end up becoming a leeching, lying creature all the same. That reality is the enemy of perfection, and once you think you've taken care of something, another thing is going to pop up and hit you in the face. That one of the things you shouldn't ever promise to someone you love is never to let them down, because when you have to make choices between the two people you love most in the world, you're probably going to end up letting both of them down no matter what you do.
I pack up that eighth grader and put her in a box; there isn't a lot of space at Grandma's, so I only take the books I liked best, including that worn-out copy of Pride and Prejudice, the rhinestone-studded sneakers I wore to Disneyland, and the box of character erasers I collected during my years of Lower School. Except for the posters, which aren't good for anything except the trash, I pack everything else up carefully into more boxes and label them, then leave them in the room together with the empty furniture; come Monday, I'll call the Salvation Army and ask them to pick everything up so that other little girls who need this stuff can have it. Sealing up that one box that I take with me to my car, I walk out of the room that I grew up in for the very last time, leaving it, with its pale blue painted sky, to bear witness to the fluffy gossamer dreams of another young girl, and hoping that for her, they won't all turn out to be just illusions forged in thin air, the way they were for me.