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Authors: Valerie Trueblood
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theaters, though not in towns the size of McBride, no. âI donât go to movies myself,â Abby said. To her surprise, when he got back to California Seligman sent it to her on video. Next time she saw him she apologized. âMy daughters gave me a VCR but I donât work it unless theyâre over, itâs not worth it. Iâll just look at the ones on TV.â
That was early in their acquaintance, before Abby felt any embarrassment at his knowing the amount of time she spent in front of the TV, sometimes asleep there.
Each time Jake was in town he put a tape recorder no bigger than his hand on the table and had Abby say whatever came to her while they sat at her dining room table drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. She remembered that distinctly: days on end of having someone to smoke with, so that if her older daughter visited after Jake had been there she would step into the house waving both hands in front of her nose.
âNow donât you blame me,â Abby told her daughters. âHe was pumping me. You say something when somebodyâs after you.â
Both of her daughters, however scarce they made themselves most of the year, had been planning to be in town to attend the premiere of the movie of Abbyâs experience. But the daughterin Richmond went in early to have her third baby and her sister decided to go to the hospital instead. âI hate to miss your movie, but I just think at forty, when itâs a C-section, you want family with you.â It was the kind of thing that daughter did, the older one, to show Abby. So Abby would think, oh, sheâs a sight more helpful than I am. Because as a mother Abby never did come up to the standard of her daughters, shockingly insistent and painful as her feeling about the two of them had been at one time, awake in her bed at night worrying and planning because of no one to ask. No man. Or at least no husband. The first one had cleared out; the second, who looked like Gary Cooper, was not Gary at all, not a force held in by fairness and gallantry, but a mess, so shiftless he might as well have been one of her children. She thought about her second husband with the same feeling of commiseration with her old self that she had when her best friend Darla, who was younger, described the hopeless men she had to choose from in McBride.
For Abby there had never been a shortage of men, in days past, though few of them the father type. In her years away from the town of McBride she had been one of those said to go through men.
While she was getting dressed she got the call saying the C-section had been accomplished, a boy had been delivered. âThey just lifted him out, like a jar out of the canner! Your last grandchild,â her daughter added, in the way she had of catching at you before hanging up.
So Abby was going with Jake. He was picking her up in the Mercedes he rented when he flew in. He was in town to answer questions after the show and he was the mayorâs guest.
âI think Mr. Mayor expects your movie to be about him,â Abby said. âHeâs got a girl from the Washington paper coming in.â She never could separate one mayor from another by name but she knew this one to be a grandstander.
âI heard that,â Jake said, laughing and almost winking through the phone from the mayorâs house. Jake was a sad, stooped, Jewish man, handsome in a way Abby had thought, at first, thatnobody other than herself would take any notice of. He laughed at everything she said, until she really settled in to talk. Then he leaned on his elbows with his hands in a tent over his forehead, and once that happened he would get wrapped up in it and take off his glasses to clear the steam if she so much as said the dog died.
With her daughters not coming he had said to invite anybody else she wanted. So they had had dinner with Darla ahead of time. By now Abby knew more about Jake; she had seen him with her own
That was early in their acquaintance, before Abby felt any embarrassment at his knowing the amount of time she spent in front of the TV, sometimes asleep there.
Each time Jake was in town he put a tape recorder no bigger than his hand on the table and had Abby say whatever came to her while they sat at her dining room table drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. She remembered that distinctly: days on end of having someone to smoke with, so that if her older daughter visited after Jake had been there she would step into the house waving both hands in front of her nose.
âNow donât you blame me,â Abby told her daughters. âHe was pumping me. You say something when somebodyâs after you.â
Both of her daughters, however scarce they made themselves most of the year, had been planning to be in town to attend the premiere of the movie of Abbyâs experience. But the daughterin Richmond went in early to have her third baby and her sister decided to go to the hospital instead. âI hate to miss your movie, but I just think at forty, when itâs a C-section, you want family with you.â It was the kind of thing that daughter did, the older one, to show Abby. So Abby would think, oh, sheâs a sight more helpful than I am. Because as a mother Abby never did come up to the standard of her daughters, shockingly insistent and painful as her feeling about the two of them had been at one time, awake in her bed at night worrying and planning because of no one to ask. No man. Or at least no husband. The first one had cleared out; the second, who looked like Gary Cooper, was not Gary at all, not a force held in by fairness and gallantry, but a mess, so shiftless he might as well have been one of her children. She thought about her second husband with the same feeling of commiseration with her old self that she had when her best friend Darla, who was younger, described the hopeless men she had to choose from in McBride.
For Abby there had never been a shortage of men, in days past, though few of them the father type. In her years away from the town of McBride she had been one of those said to go through men.
While she was getting dressed she got the call saying the C-section had been accomplished, a boy had been delivered. âThey just lifted him out, like a jar out of the canner! Your last grandchild,â her daughter added, in the way she had of catching at you before hanging up.
So Abby was going with Jake. He was picking her up in the Mercedes he rented when he flew in. He was in town to answer questions after the show and he was the mayorâs guest.
âI think Mr. Mayor expects your movie to be about him,â Abby said. âHeâs got a girl from the Washington paper coming in.â She never could separate one mayor from another by name but she knew this one to be a grandstander.
âI heard that,â Jake said, laughing and almost winking through the phone from the mayorâs house. Jake was a sad, stooped, Jewish man, handsome in a way Abby had thought, at first, thatnobody other than herself would take any notice of. He laughed at everything she said, until she really settled in to talk. Then he leaned on his elbows with his hands in a tent over his forehead, and once that happened he would get wrapped up in it and take off his glasses to clear the steam if she so much as said the dog died.
With her daughters not coming he had said to invite anybody else she wanted. So they had had dinner with Darla ahead of time. By now Abby knew more about Jake; she had seen him with her own
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