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Authors: Lee Fullbright
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women and not feel the rabid resentment they had for one another.
My mother was a widow, the only one of Grandmother’s daughters to have ever married, a fact that counted like the Holy Grail with women, I could tell by the things they said about my mother. And never mind that Mother’s “ne’er-do-well,” what Grandmother called him, had run off when my mother was about to have Earl, deciding a war in France was more rewarding than zings from those sharp-tongued women—even though my mother always pointed out that the “ne’er-do-well” had returned, regardless that it took him ten years, and just in time to get me started, so there.
Which meant there were no actual men in my life, my father having ultimately died from sharp tongue-lashings (how I explained his demise), and my grandfather, Grayson House’s builder, having been a suicide, in all likelihood goaded into it by the women. In fact, it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn the women had loaded the gun before handing it over to my grandfather—that’s how much they disliked men. No, I knew women only (and Earl didn’t count for shit), and the sure truth that any male having a thing to do with them eventually chose death over life. That’s what existing with women was about: watching, waiting, gauging, and then dying. For instance, my grandmother was formidable enough on her own, but put her together with the other women, and I lived in awe of what she could unleash, of what she could walk away from.
My mother was the no-nonsense worrier, a hard worker, the one who didn’t have time enough for me unless Lothian had time for me. Mother was also in charge of the Grayson finances, meaning the little bit of stipend we got from my father’s death benefit, and the littler bit that still trickled in from Grayson Enterprises, the investment firm my grandfather had started, which was mainly bookkeeping, not investments anymore, because who had money to invest? And the little bit Lothian earned, which, combined with my father’s death benefit and the Grayson Investments trickle, was our entire income, and that, as I was to hear a hundred times a week, wasn’t enough.
One time, many years ago, Earl phoned me in California to say he’d had revelations about Mother and men and our paternity. What a joke. As if, by then, I hadn’t known the truth for years. My daughter says I was curt with Earl on the phone, that I “ranted and raved for hours afterwards.”
Did I mention Elyse is full of shit?
But, again, I digress.
My mother wasn’t ugly like Stella. Mother had a beautiful secret-like smile—which is how it had been painted in her portrait. And her nose was straight, not hooked like Stella’s. Mother had Stella’s pale hair, but whereas Stella’s hung to her waist when she let it down from the knot at the nape of her neck, Mother had cut hers into one of those bobs fashionable in the 1930's. I guess you could say Mother was very pretty; she had good skin, pale like mine, but on her it looked nice, and she had amazing cheekbones. She had the most amazing table manners too, holding teacups just so, dabbing the corners of her pretty mouth ever so genteelly with our old monogrammed linens—which I thought was just Mother putting on a show for Lothian. Still, I was at a loss to explain the significance of constant cleaning, or of ironing pillowcases and underwear, all of which Mother also set great store by, but all of which Lothian couldn’t have cared less about. We couldn’t afford men to take care of the grounds anymore, and Earl being useless, it seemed stupid to me, all that worrying about the insides of things when the outside of Grayson House was falling down around us—not to mention nobody ever came around to see how we were living anyway. The wings of Grayson House had been closed off, but the old mahogany furniture on the three floors of the main house gleamed from frequent polishing, and the wood floors shone too, where they weren’t
My mother was a widow, the only one of Grandmother’s daughters to have ever married, a fact that counted like the Holy Grail with women, I could tell by the things they said about my mother. And never mind that Mother’s “ne’er-do-well,” what Grandmother called him, had run off when my mother was about to have Earl, deciding a war in France was more rewarding than zings from those sharp-tongued women—even though my mother always pointed out that the “ne’er-do-well” had returned, regardless that it took him ten years, and just in time to get me started, so there.
Which meant there were no actual men in my life, my father having ultimately died from sharp tongue-lashings (how I explained his demise), and my grandfather, Grayson House’s builder, having been a suicide, in all likelihood goaded into it by the women. In fact, it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn the women had loaded the gun before handing it over to my grandfather—that’s how much they disliked men. No, I knew women only (and Earl didn’t count for shit), and the sure truth that any male having a thing to do with them eventually chose death over life. That’s what existing with women was about: watching, waiting, gauging, and then dying. For instance, my grandmother was formidable enough on her own, but put her together with the other women, and I lived in awe of what she could unleash, of what she could walk away from.
My mother was the no-nonsense worrier, a hard worker, the one who didn’t have time enough for me unless Lothian had time for me. Mother was also in charge of the Grayson finances, meaning the little bit of stipend we got from my father’s death benefit, and the littler bit that still trickled in from Grayson Enterprises, the investment firm my grandfather had started, which was mainly bookkeeping, not investments anymore, because who had money to invest? And the little bit Lothian earned, which, combined with my father’s death benefit and the Grayson Investments trickle, was our entire income, and that, as I was to hear a hundred times a week, wasn’t enough.
One time, many years ago, Earl phoned me in California to say he’d had revelations about Mother and men and our paternity. What a joke. As if, by then, I hadn’t known the truth for years. My daughter says I was curt with Earl on the phone, that I “ranted and raved for hours afterwards.”
Did I mention Elyse is full of shit?
But, again, I digress.
My mother wasn’t ugly like Stella. Mother had a beautiful secret-like smile—which is how it had been painted in her portrait. And her nose was straight, not hooked like Stella’s. Mother had Stella’s pale hair, but whereas Stella’s hung to her waist when she let it down from the knot at the nape of her neck, Mother had cut hers into one of those bobs fashionable in the 1930's. I guess you could say Mother was very pretty; she had good skin, pale like mine, but on her it looked nice, and she had amazing cheekbones. She had the most amazing table manners too, holding teacups just so, dabbing the corners of her pretty mouth ever so genteelly with our old monogrammed linens—which I thought was just Mother putting on a show for Lothian. Still, I was at a loss to explain the significance of constant cleaning, or of ironing pillowcases and underwear, all of which Mother also set great store by, but all of which Lothian couldn’t have cared less about. We couldn’t afford men to take care of the grounds anymore, and Earl being useless, it seemed stupid to me, all that worrying about the insides of things when the outside of Grayson House was falling down around us—not to mention nobody ever came around to see how we were living anyway. The wings of Grayson House had been closed off, but the old mahogany furniture on the three floors of the main house gleamed from frequent polishing, and the wood floors shone too, where they weren’t
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