Carbon Dating : Part 4

Ditched by Dr. Right: And Other Distress Signals from the Edge of Polite Society
by Elizabeth Warner

(Page 4 of 6)

Mother told me to put on lipstick and then we'd be off to dinner. I silently followed her around like a wan Labrador while she turned off lights, shut doors, and made little notes for herself on monogrammed Post-its. She is tall and slim, with pale blue eyes and hair that is quite gray, but I don't so much see the gray, because in my mind it is auburn. She talks with her hands. She drives cars passionately, swiftly, and efficiently. We sped along Lancaster Avenue, and I recounted a few details of Clark's departure as I followed the telephone wires in the darkness outside the car window. Finally we pulled into the Merion Cricket Club's massive red-brick entrance and wound along past the acres of lawn-tennis courts, parking in a huge lot filled with Jeeps and small expensive sports sedans bought to replace now-matriculated children. Once inside the clubhouse bar we ran smack into Thatcher Longstreth, our family lawyer for over two centuries. Mom gently held the back of my neck like one would an unwieldy but valuable trophy statuette.

"Hiya, kid," said Mr. Longstreth, slapping me hard on the back and permanently lodging an olive in my trachea. "How's that job? And the big city? Still saying no? And how's the wandering eye?"

"Oh, hi. Everything's fine, thanks." I was now really listless.

"The littlest is back to pay us a visit from the Big Apple!" My mother beamed, and I was relieved by her bland re- mark. This is a woman who might just as easily have said, She's back to lick her wounds . . . the needless foolish we-told-you-so wounds inflicted by that poseur jackass from Wesleyan with two heads and the stupid haircut and dubious medical degree. The nice Irish lady who had been smiling at me since I was four years old appeared and ushered us into the main dining room for supper. Mom waved good-bye to Mr. Longstreth and steered her Littlest Cub ahead. I kept my head down as we entered, still curious about whether or not the diagonal diagrams on the carpet would ever make me dizzy enough to throw up. They hadn't thus far, but they were looking like they could.

I behold our club's cavernous Sistine-esque dining room, and suddenly I am fourteen again. Mom has taken my big sister Meg and my two brothers Malcolm and Eliot here to lunch. Meg is complaining that someone made fun of our family earlier that morning. And surveying the brood proudly, Mother says, "Well, I have four very competent, very attractive children."

There is a pause, whereupon Meg turns to Mother and says, "You know, I don't think Elizabeth's such a knockout."

My uncle says later that the Lord has given everybody something, and that it's a good thing He made Meg so astonishingly beautiful because He also gave her the mind of a tropical fish.

Mother now surveyed the dining room, and I wondered when, if ever, I would be able to look around pleasantly like she does, and not think about dying quietly and alone, curled in a walk-in closet, with the tips of dry-cleaning bags tickling my nose. We were seated, and I picked at radishes and celery lingering in easily two inches of water in a porcelain dish. I remembered that most people who drown do so in less than three feet of water. But I don't remember if that's because they're in the tub or because sharks like shallow shoals.

"Lambchop, I know it feels terrible, but you really are better off without him. You just are. I can tell you right now that if your father were alive, he wouldn't have cared for Clark one bit." Mom smiled at the waitress, who was waiting patiently. "Just the little filet. Rare, Margie. Thanks."

"And no veggies tonight, Mrs. Warner?" Margie waited quietly with her pad.

"Certainly not. What about you, Lambchop?" Mom and Margie stared at me.

"Well, um, how's the monkfish?" I queried.

"Elizabeth, it's fish. It's fine." My mother was exasperated, as if I'd asked Margie to recite Farsi.

So I wouldn't cry anymore, I quickly changed the subject and told Mother about how I might be accompanying a friend to the Tony Awards.

"Oh, that'll be fun. Has Pete Gurney got a Tony nomination this year?" she asked hopefully. Mention theater and she'll always carp about how A. R. Gurney never gets the recognition he deserves. Now that Dick Rogers has passed on. (Although she does concede that Dick Rogers got plenty of recognition.) Gurney is a really big deal for Mother.

"I don't think there's a Gurney play up for a Tony this year, Mother," I admitted, with the same gravitas I would use to tell her that somebody's nation was too racked by poverty and civil war to send a troupe of athletes to the Olympics.

After a gin-soaked but nostalgic meal, with three side trips to the ladies' room, where I sobbed off and reap- plied the makeup Clark R. M. Wheeler, M.D., had single-handedly sent streaming down my already raw cheeks, Mother and I returned home. In through the mudroom, which was neither muddy nor roomy. With the cedar and the wet-dog smell and the down vests nobody wears. The house whose internal topography I know so well - all the kids do - that we could each maneuver anywhere through the dark barefoot, with only floor surfaces and the echoes of certain walls and clocks and faulty ice-makers to guide us. Mother suggested we retire to the den for a belt and a visit.

Copyright © 2005 by Elizabeth Warner.

About the Author

Elizabeth Warner is a writer and actress whose one-woman show, The Wandering Eye, premiered at HBO's Aspen Comedy Festival. She has read her work on NPR and written for several network game shows, and particularly keen viewers can spot her in a few films. Elizabeth lives in Los Angeles but, no fool, maintains a home in New York as well.