Lillian on Life Read Free Page B

the reason we didn’t really suffer during the Depression was that my father was so handsome. As a silver salesman in Missouri and beyond, he shouldn’t have been able to make a good living. Doors shouldn’t have opened to him, but they did. I’m almost sure Poppa was faithful, but the image of him in the sitting rooms of pretty Missouri housewives, giving and receiving the flattery and pleasure that weren’t common currency at home, was too sweet to discard. After all, it was thanks to them that Mother had the house, the Wedgwood, the bourbon, the cigarettes, the weekly dress money, the silent grand piano. George Junior’s piano. I had piano lessons too, of course. Dance lessons first, though, to go with the ringlets. Mother insisted I was going to be the next little Shirley Temple.Later there was piano, and singing. I had perfect pitch. I’ve lost it by a half step lately, but it’s a perfect half step. So I could play piano, and did, but only when I was sure Mother was upstairs or out and wouldn’t come and stand in the bay of the baby grand and get all mushy about how George Junior used to play whenever she asked him to, even for guests, before he left for California.
    She was right. He was wonderful at the piano. He still is. It’s just that perfect pitch didn’t mean a thing to Mother. There’s nothing as perfect as a talented firstborn son who has gone away.
    When he went to North Carolina for training, near the end of the war, it felt so far away that he might as well have gone to France. I was twelve. I started knitting argyle socks right away, like we all did. Well, sock. I could never just pick it up and get back to work on it in the evenings. The instructions defied me. If I looked away from my knitting to consult them, I was completely lost when I looked back at it. Eventually I finished the sock, but the war was ending, so I wrapped it up and sent it off to him, just in case he needed one replacement sock or something. The letter that came back was mocking. There was no chimney to hang it on, he said, and it wasn’t even Christmas anyway. A womanwould have felt something positive, receiving one handmade sock. A sister would. I never sent gifts in half measures after that, ever.
    Professors didn’t like half measures either, I learned. They saw inconsistent work as inconsistent effort, which was never the case. There were just days when I’d sit in the library with the perfect pencil and a notebook with lines ruled just the way I like, and they might as well have been a twig and a stone. Nothing would happen. I’d turn in a stilted, hard-won paragraph or two. Professorial eyes would roll. Professorial lower lips would jut. “Lillian,” they’d say, “what happened? You can do so much better.” They ganged up, too. I was walking through Main Building to get back to my room sometime in the middle of that first winter, bundled up and sniffing to keep my nose from dripping, when I turned a corner into a trio of women: Mrs. Wade; a beige woman I didn’t know holding an armful of files; and Miss Blanding, the college president. “Is that you, Lillian?” Mrs. Wade said. “How funny, because we were just talking about you.”
    â€œSpeak of the devil,” I said, sniffing.
    â€œNot at all,” said Miss Blanding, taking control in her tailored black wool and bold silver choker. Her Kentuckyaccent caught me off guard. I’d heard her voice before, but not at such close quarters. I’d been working to minimize my Missouri accent and did pretty well at it until someone from the Midwest or the South stepped into the conversation. “Not the devil at all,” she continued. “Just an intelligent girl trying to make her way in the world, isn’t that right?”
    â€œI don’t know about intelligent,” I said, fighting the urge to tack “Ma’am” onto the end. “Trying to make