This was the year they were supposed to buy me my own ca
r so I could drive myself places, but they have yet to do it. They have this idea that I should first find some sort of part-time job to at least pay for my own gas and insurance.
"When you accumulate enough to pay for at least one year's insurance, we'll get you the car." she has promised.
She also promised to help me by looking for a job that could fit into my schedule. I moaned and groaned, wondering aloud in front of them if my taking on a job wouldn't hurt my schoolwork. Miguel laughed.
"Oh, having a vehicle and driving all over the place won't cut in on your study time?"
I hate having parents who are so realistic. The parents of other girls my age accept at least a fantasy or two. However, it is very important to Mommy and Miguel that I develop a sense of value, the one sense they both insist is absent in Palm Beach.
"Here, people would think it justifiable to go to war over a jar of caviar," Mommy once quipped.
I do understand why she doesn't like the Palm Beach social world. My maternal grandmother Grace wasn't treated well here. and Mommy blames many of her own difficulties on that. At times Palm Beach doesn't seem real to me. either. It's too perfect. It glitters and feels like a movie set. When we cross the Flagler Bridge into West Palm Beach. Mother claims she is leaving the world of illusion and entering reality.
"Rich people here are richer than rich people most everywhere else," she told me. "Some of the wealthy people here are in fact wealthier than many small or third-world countries. Hannah. They keep reality outside their gold-plated walls. There are no cemeteries or hospitals in Palm Beach, Death and sickness have to stand outside the door. While the rest of us get stuck in traffic jams of all sorts in life, the wealthy residents of Palm Beach fly over them."
"What's wrong with that?" I asked her. "I'd like that."
"They haven't the tolerance for the slightest inconveniences anymore. Sometimes it's good to have a challenge, to be frustrated, to have to rise to an occasion, to find strength in yourself. You need some calluses on your soul, Hannah. You need to be stronger."
"But if you never run out of money and you can always buy away the frustrations, why would it matter?" I countered.
She looked at me very sternly,
"That's your father talking," she replied. Whenever she says that or says something like that_. I feel as if she has just slapped me across the face.
"You'll see," she added. "Someday you'll see and you'll understand. I hope."
Should I hope the same thing? Why do we have to know about the ugly truths awaiting us? I wondered that aloud when I was with my stepfather once, and he said. "Because you appreciate the beauty more. I think what your mother is trying to get you to understand is that not only do these people she speaks of have a lower threshold of tolerance for the unpleasant things in life, but they have or develop a lower threshold of appreciation for the truly beautiful things as well, The Taj Mahal becomes, well, just another item on the list of places to visit and brag that you have seen, if you know what I mean."
I did, but for some reason. I didn't want to be so quick to say I did. Whenever Mommy or Miguel were critical of the Palm Beach social world. I understood they were being critical of my father and his family as well, and even though they weren't treating me like a member of that family, I couldn't help but think of them as part of me or me, part of them. I'm full of so many emotional contradictions, twisted and tangled like a telephone wire with all sorts of cross
communication. It's hard to explain to anyone who doesn't live a similar life so I keep it all bottled up inside me. I never tell anyone in my classes at school or any of my friends about these family conflicts and feelings.
Feelings, in fact, are often kept in little safes in our house. There is the sense that if we let too many of them out at the same time, we might explode. Every-thing is under control here,
We're never too happy; we're never too sad. Whenever we approach either, there are techniques employed. After all, both Miguel and Mommy are experts in psychology.
Daddy is always urging me to be different from them, warning me that if I'm not. I'll be unhappy.
"Don't be like your mother," he says. "Don't analyze every pin drop. Forget about the -whys and wherefores and enjoy. She's like a cook who can't go out to eat and take pleasure in something wonderful without first asking the waiter for a list of every ingredient and then questioning how it was prepared, always concluding with 'Oh, if he or she had done this or that, it would be even better,' Don't become like that. Hannah," he advises.
Maybe he's right.
But maybe. maybe I can't help it. After all. I am my mother's daughter, too, aren't I?
Or is my mother going to forget that I am her daughter? Is she hoping for that little loss of memory she often wishes she had?
I have another fear, a deep, dark suspicion that I remind her so much of my father that she can't tolerate it anymore and that was and is the real reason why she finally wanted another child, a child with Miguel.
Perhaps it is my imagination overworking or misinterpreting, but all throughout these last months of her pregnancy. I felt her growing more and more distant from me. She had less time to talk to me about my problems and concerns. Helping me find a suitable part-time job and getting me my own car seemed to have slipped out of both her and Miguel's minds. She had more concern for her practice, finding ways to continue to treat or have her clients treated while she was recuperating from giving birth than she had for me. She wanted to stop going to work the last month, and she was always very busy trying to make arrangements. I could see that even our morning ride together had changed. How many times did I say something or ask something and she didn't hear me because her ears were filled with her own worries and thoughts?
"What was that?" she would ask, or she would simply not respond and I would give up, close up like a clam, and stare out the window wishing I had waken with a cold and stayed home bundled up and forgotten.
However, my school, my teachers and some of the friends I had filled my life with more joy now. Staying home would have been punishing myself for no reason, or at least, no reason for which I could be blamed. In fact, some of my girlfriends actually felt sorry for me. They thought it would be weird if their mothers became pregnant like mine at this point in their family lives.
"I can tell you right now what's going to happen." Massy Hewlett declared with the authority of a Supreme Court judge. "You're going to end up being the family baby-sitter, and just when you should have more freedom to enjoy your social life."