The Reluctant Daughter Part 3

"What happened after that?"

"You know what happened, Allie."

"Tell me anyway."

"I met you. And I grew my hair out, started wearing dresses again, bought lipstick and lingerie, and made you lemonade while you changed the oil in my Toyota."

"Because..." Allie prompts me even though the answer is a no-brainer.

"Because," I tell her what she already knows, "I realized I didn't want to be a butch, I wanted to be with a butch."

"Exactly." Allie raises both hands in the air, palms to the sky as if the connection is obvious. "Don't you see, Lydia?"

"See what?"

"It's the same thing now. You don't want to be a mother, Lyddie. You want to have a mother."

"Allie, that's ridiculous." I slam both fists down on the picnic table. "I'm forty-eight years old, for G.o.d's sake. I'm way too old to need a mother."

"No, you're not. And Lydia, you don't need a mother. You need your mother."

"Allie, she's the last person I need. I'm an adult. I'm not a child anymore."

"You may not be a child, Lydia, but like it or not, you're still her child." Allie looks me in the eye. "You'll always be her child, Lydia, trust me on this. I know what I'm talking about." Allie glances at the big maple tree on the edge of our lawn, then lowers her gaze and says softly, "Take it from me, Lyddie. You're never too old to need your mother."

"Oh, Allie." I reach forward to pull her into my arms and offer comfort. But it is Allie who gathers me up and hugs me tight, because in the end, I'm the one who bursts into tears.

"SILENCE IS GOLDEN, so let's get rich." It's a game I thought my mother invented but as I got older, I saw that it was something all mothers knew about. I imagined they all went away to motherhood boot camp or the University of Motherhood where they learned to say things like, "Try it. How do you know you don't like it if you won't even try it?" And, "The reason is because I said so." Or maybe it was all just hardwired into their DNA.

When I was growing up, my mother, like many of the other mothers on our block, took her turn picking up some of the neighborhood kids from Hebrew school. And after being cooped up for two hours on a Monday or a Wednesday afternoon staring at letters that went the wrong way and looked like the scribbles we made way back in kindergarten, my cla.s.smates and I, crammed into the backseat, were ready to let loose.

"Mrs. Pinkowitz, Steven hit me."

"I did not, Mrs. Pinkowitz. Mindy's lying."

"I am not."

"You are, too."

"I am not. Ow!"

"Mom, Steven pinched Mindy. He did. I saw him."

"I did not!"

"You did, too!"

"Hey, that's my lunchbox. Give it to me."

"Make me."

"Mrs. Pinkowitz..."

"That's enough," my mother said, the ever-present cigarette stuck between her lips moving up and down with her warning. Though my mother did not speak loudly, hers was the voice of authority and it quieted us instantly. In the silence that followed, she inhaled sharply, and a blue cloud of smoke rose and encircled her head, reminding me of the halo of dirt that always surrounded Charlie Brown's messy friend, Pig-Pen. "We're going to play a game now." My mother glanced at my friends and me in her rearview mirror. "It's called 'Silence Is Golden, So Let's Get Rich.' Whoever stays silent the longest wins."

"But Mrs. Pinkowitz..."

"No talking." My mother glanced at us again. "Anyone who says one word will walk the rest of the way home."

Steven and Mindy and I looked at each other, our eyes wide. Would my mother really throw us out of the car and make us walk miles through the streets of suburbia where occasionally older kids rode their bikes but no one had ever been known to walk? Too scared to call my mother's bluff, we clapped our hands over our mouths and stifled our giggles. Mindy didn't even say anything when Steven popped open the clasp on her Mary Poppins lunchbox and ate the Twinkie she had been saving for later all afternoon.

We are still playing "Silence Is Golden," my mother and I. It's been almost five months since that fateful dinner with my parents and Jack and Crystal, and I haven't spoken to anyone I share a gene pool with since.

"But isn't that what you wanted?" Vera asks as we slide our lunch trays down the cafeteria line, trying to decide between burnt soy burgers and some kind of stew made mostly from vegetables left over from last night's dinner. The food is always awful at these regional Women's Studies conferences, and though each year Vera and I threaten never to return, we faithfully make our way to whatever school is playing host-this year it's a small private college in upstate New York-mostly because it gives us a good excuse to hang out together and catch up with each other. Vera lives and teaches in Philadelphia, is twenty years my senior, and was my mentor a lifetime ago when I was a lowly grad student, hardly daring to take my own academic work seriously. After all this time, I'm still amazed that Vera considers me her colleague; though I've called her by her first name for almost two decades now, part of me will always think of her as "Dr. Rosenbloom."

"How's this?" Vera leads me to a table at the far end of the cafeteria to give us a little privacy.

"Perfect." I sit in the corner with my back to the wall and unwrap my packet of plastic utensils, not in any rush to return to the conversation we had started while choosing our food. Vera takes her time as well, making small talk about the weather-it's unusually chilly for Columbus Day weekend-and salting her food in an attempt to make it edible.

"You look great," I tell her, impressed as always with the way Vera presents herself to the world. Her sleek silver hair is cut in a fas.h.i.+onable asymmetrical bob and she wears a clunky necklace of black and white zebra-striped beads that few women her age-or any age-could get away with. I met Vera in my militant baby d.y.k.e, pre-Allie days when all I wore were torn jeans, flannel s.h.i.+rts, and work boots or baggy sweaters, sneakers, and army pants. The minute I walked into my first Introduction to Women's Studies cla.s.s and caught sight of my glamorous professor clad in a semi-clingy sweater dress, back seam stockings, and two-inch heels, I was intensely suspicious of her. How could someone who looked like she had just sashayed off the pages of a fas.h.i.+on magazine be a tried and true feminist? But Vera proved to be a brilliant teacher; she put my doubts to rest and taught me a thing or two about the tyranny of political correctness all at the same time.

A few years later when I ran into her at a conference similar to this one, Vera was even more delighted than my mother to see me wearing a skirt. "Let me guess," she said. "You found your butch." I smiled and blushed a deep red, answering her question without saying a word. Vera celebrated my coming out as a femme ("And with a name like Pinkowitz, how could you be anything else?" she asked) by presenting me with a b.u.t.ton that proclaimed, "I may wear high heels but I can still kick a.s.s." Needless to say, we've been fast friends ever since.

I can always count on Vera to stand out amidst our Women's Studies sisters, most of whom dress in drawstring pants and Birkenstock sandals. Today she has on a long gray riding skirt with a soft-looking black cashmere sweater and a matching cropped suede jacket, which I dutifully admire.

"Check these out." Vera lifts the hem of her skirt to show off her footwear. Vera is a shoe freak and has been known to arrive at a three-day conference with seven pairs of shoes.

"They're gorgeous." I gaze at her black and white cowboy boots with l.u.s.t in my eyes. Like Vera, I love shoes almost as much as our other common vice: chocolate. "Are those snakeskin?"

"Lizard." Vera lowers her voice to a whisper, though no one could possibly hear us over the din of two hundred scholars, students, and professors chatting about curriculum and complaining about the food. A sound, incidentally, that both of us adore.

"You don't look so bad yourself," Vera comments, giving me a thorough once-over. I am wearing a hot pink fuzzy turtleneck sweater over black wool slacks and black leather ankle boots. "You've aged about two minutes since the last time we saw each other."

"Vera, that was only a year ago."

"Still," she says. "You could easily pa.s.s for a student. It's hard to believe you're going to turn fifty next summer."

"Hey, don't rush me," I say, sawing my soy burger in half with my serrated plastic knife. "I've still got a good ten months to go before I kiss my forties good-bye."

"So how are you going to celebrate the big event?" Vera wants to know.

"I'm throwing the party to end all parties. Sat.u.r.day, August 13th, one o'clock, in our very own backyard. So mark your calendar," I point at her with my knife, "now."

"Got it," Vera a.s.sures me, tapping the side of her skull where that magnificent brain of hers resides. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Good. And speaking of birthdays," I lift a forkful of wilted lettuce drenched in Day-Glo orange dressing, "isn't somebody turning seventy at the end of this year?"

"n.o.body sitting at this table." Vera glances at the empty chairs beside us and shakes her head. "Why don't we change the subject, Lydia? Ask me how my workshop went."

I let it go-Vera never was one to make a fuss over her own birthday-and oblige her. "So, Vera, how did your workshop go?"

"Lydia, I thought you'd never ask. It was excellent." Vera swallows a bite of stew and screws up her face at the taste. "I had about thirty women there-most of them undergraduates-and after I got them all riled up about the terrible oppression of prescribed gender roles, we spent the entire time trying to come up with a definition of 'butch' and 'femme' that didn't include the words 'masculine' and 'feminine' and which we all could live with."

"Wow, that must have been challenging." Vera loves to fan the flames of feminist fury and I can just imagine my former mentor in her glory, striding down the aisles between her students' desks, pacing back and forth as she pondered their comments, and then marching to the front of the room to grab a stick of chalk and write key words on the blackboard in a furious staccato. "What did you finally come up with?"

Vera holds up one finger while she gulps her water. "We went back and forth a hundred times and then just as we were about to give up any hope of reaching a consensus, a woman remembered something she had read somewhere and everybody loved it. So, our definition of butch is," Vera pauses for dramatic effect, "iron-covered velvet. And our definition of femme is," she looks pointedly at me, "velvet-covered iron."

"Ooh, that's good. That's very good," I say, pus.h.i.+ng my tray away though most of my lunch is still on it.

"How did your workshop go?" Vera abandons her food as well, and reaches into her shoulder bag at the same time I unclasp my purse.

"What do you have in there?" I ask as she digs around.

"Toblerone. Bittersweet," she says, breaking off a piece for me. "And you?"

"G.o.diva." I pull out a small gold box and offer her a truffle. Vera and I both learned a long time ago that the only way to get through these conferences is to avoid the coffee altogether and fortify each other with chocolate. "I think people liked my workshop. I got the idea one day when I was reading an article in Good Housekeeping -"

" Good Housekeeping? Good G.o.d." Vera raises her eyebrows, pretending to be shocked. As if I don't know she has a lifelong subscription to People magazine.

"Which I was browsing through at the dentist's office," I say in a feeble attempt to defend myself. "Anyway, it was about women caught between raising their young children and taking care of their aging parents. I thought: What about women who don't have children or parents? I did some research and decided to focus on Gertrude Stein, who had no kids and whose parents died when she was a teenager. Plus since the personal is always political, I spoke about my own experience, of course."

"Of course." Vera fixes me with her piercing blue eyes. "But Lydia, you do have parents."

"Sort of," I say, though I know Vera won't let me get away with that.

Vera nibbles on her chocolate and gives me a look that means we are now about to have a Serious Conversation. I squirm in my seat just as I did years ago when she called on me in cla.s.s and I knew that whatever answer I came up with wouldn't be good enough for her. Vera is well aware that she is the kind of professor whom students constantly complain about while they have her as a teacher, and endlessly praise in hindsight because she makes them think and work so hard. Vera never lets her students-or her friends-get away with anything.

"Tell me more about what's going on with you and your mother," Vera says, still fixing me with her eyes. It is then I remember that in a former life before she became a professor, Vera ran a very successful full-time therapy practice and still sees a few clients on the side.

"Where do I begin?" I ask, and just as I get the words out, two young women approach our table hand in hand. Saved by the baby d.y.k.es, I think as one of them steps forward, pushes a hank of green-and-magenta-striped hair out of her eyes, and waits to be acknowledged.

"h.e.l.lo," Vera, ever the gracious one, says, though she stops short of inviting the couple to sit down. But the woman nearest us ignores her and stares pointedly at me. "Don't you know who I am?" she finally asks, her tough exterior shattered by the note of disappointment in her voice.

I wrack my brain while looking her up and down. Along with the in-your-face hairdo, she sports black-painted nails, deep purple lipstick, and wears a short gunmetal gray skirt, torn fishnet stockings, and a leather bomber jacket that is positively swimming on her. I'm sure it belongs to the ultra butch watching from a distance who is at least twice her size. She's probably a former student, but her face is not in the least bit familiar. "I'm sorry," I offer a weak apology. "I'm at that age where I can't even remember my own name half the time and-"

"Rebecca." She cuts me off with an impatient wave of her hand. "Rebecca Pearl. From Oakwood. My family lives across the street and down the block from you."

"Rebecca Pearl?" I still look at her blankly.

"Don't you remember?" Her voice is almost pleading now. "You used to babysit for me when I was about five. Remember? I was always asking you to play Barbies with me, and you wouldn't unless I agreed that Barbie could discover the cure for cancer or something instead of just marrying Ken..."

"Oh my G.o.d." I look closer, and sure enough, underneath the heavy-duty eyeliner, I can just make out my former neighbor's innocent little face. "I remember now. You're Becky Pearlman, right?"

"Sort of," she says, "I used to be, but I dropped the man. In more ways than one."

"Little Becky Pearlman," I repeat in wonder. "How do you like that? Sure I remember now. So you're, what? About thirty-two, thirty-three? Are you a student?"

"Yeah, I'm kind of on the twelve-year plan, and this semester I'm finally getting my degree."

"That's great," I tell her, and then remember my manners. "Vera, this is Becky-"

"Rebecca."

"Sorry. Rebecca. I used to babysit for her and her sister. How is Ruthie?"

"Ruth's okay, though she just got divorced and is back living at home with my parents. Lee and I were just there last weekend." Rebecca looks back toward her girlfriend, who acknowledges us with a curt nod.

"Really?" I ask, my curiosity piqued. "How does your family feel about you being a lesbian?"

"Oh, they're cool. Whatever makes me happy and all that. You know. My mom's kind of taken up the cause; she's a member of PFLAG and everything. There's a Westchester chapter and she goes to all the meetings but she's the only person from Oakwood there. It's a pretty heterocentric place," Rebecca explains to Vera, in case she doesn't know. "Oh, and guess what," she says, turning back to me. "While we were there, my mom and I b.u.mped into your mother at Stop & Shop."

"You did?" I can just imagine the look my mother would have given the punked-out Rebecca. It wouldn't have been pretty.

"Yeah, in the spaghetti aisle. I told her I was really excited about coming to this conference and that you were going to be presenting. And my mother-you know she's a librarian, right?-said that she had just read some really great article you had written about gay rights in South Africa."

My eyes widen. "I bet that went over well," I murmur to Vera. Then I look back up at Rebecca. "What did my mother say?"

"It was so weird." Rebecca s.h.i.+fts her weight from one combat boot to the other. "She didn't say anything. She just turned around and walked away. Left her cart there and everything."

"Are you kidding?" I am vaguely aware that I am not acting in a very professional manner here, but right now I don't care. "Are you sure she didn't say anything?"

"Nope. Nothing."

"Nothing? Not one word? Like, I don't know, good-bye?"

Rebecca shakes her multicolored coiffed head.

"Wow." I lean back against my chair and stare at the soggy mess on my lunch tray, which blurs in front of my eyes. I thought my mother was way past the point of doing anything that would shock me, but this dramatic display of rudeness is a bit over the top, even for her.

"I'm sorry," Rebecca says, as if she needs to apologize for my mother's behavior. "Maybe I shouldn't have told you. I think my mom even went over the next day with some PFLAG pamphlets, but your mother wouldn't speak to her."

"It's very nice to meet you Rebecca, Lee." Vera, trying not to appear impolite, nevertheless practically shoos the two women away from our table. After they're gone, she takes my hand and asks gently, "Lydia, are you all right?"

"Let's take a walk." I stand abruptly and gather my tray. All of a sudden the loud bustling cafeteria feels confining, as does my turtleneck sweater. Either my emotions are getting the better of me, or I'm finally having my first hot flash. I expect it's the former, though I'd be a lot happier if it were the latter.

We discard the remains of our lunch and exit the building. Crisp fallen leaves crunch beneath our boots as we stroll across the campus quad, past the ivy-covered brick buildings and shedding trees. Squirrels chase each other through the gra.s.s, other conference attendees walk in groups of twos and threes; some smile and wave to us as they pa.s.s. Vera takes my arm as we amble along, not because she needs it for support-at sixty-nine she is far more spry than I am-but because she knows I need the support. Vera has been hearing about my mother for just about twenty years now. We discuss her latest escapade concerning Rebecca and her mom, and then I bring Vera up to date on my current situation, ending with the unexpected and surprisingly deep hurt I feel at my mother's partic.i.p.ation in the silence between us.

"Why doesn't she call me?" I ask Vera, whining like an adolescent who has been sitting by the phone for days hoping to hear from her latest crush. "I know she never calls me, but still, it's been almost five months now and I thought surely she'd pick up the phone before Rosh Hashanah to wish me a happy new year or after Yom Kippur to see if I'd had an easy fast."

"Maybe she'll send you a Chanukah present," Vera says, turning left and leading us past the college library. "Though as I recall, you weren't exactly thrilled with what she got you last year."

"Can you blame me?" I laugh bitterly. "As if Allie and I would ever wear matching blue polyester sweats.h.i.+rts with wide-eyed kittens chasing b.u.t.terflies painted on them. What are we, the Bobbsey twins?" The surly voice of my inner teenager bursts out of my mouth.

"Well, she knows you like cats, Lydia," Vera says, stopping us both in our tracks. "And at least she included Allie."

"Vera, when was the last time you saw me wearing something blue? Never." I supply Vera with the correct answer. "Let alone something made of polyester. Don't you see? My mother bought me something that she would like, not something that I would like."