A Good Name

“I remember the first time I met your mother,” my grandmother shook her head as she spoke causing her grand pearls to click against each other on her aged neck. “Your father brought her home one weekend and as soon as they left I turned to my sister, Sybil, and I said to her, ‘Sybil, that woman is not like us and she’s certainly up to no good with my son’. That’s what I told Sybil.” She brought her hand to her mouth, heavy laden with a chunky gold ring topped off with a diamond. “We Roberts’ don’t associate with her kind.”

The Christmas tree lay perfectly in the glistening snow. The pieces of broken glass ornaments sparkled under the white moon and the smell of fresh pine permeated the cold December air from the broken needles and branches the tree had attained in the process of it’s removal from our dining room.  I was an eight year old then, standing on the porch with my head cocked, studying the discarded tree. Inside I could still hear my mother ranting and raving. My father slipped out the door, a gust of heat swept over me from our warm home. He let out a sigh and shoved his hands into his pockets as he stepped beside me and studied the tree with his head tilted to the side, as well.

“Dad…”

“Yes?”

“Why did mommy throw the tree into the yard?”

I looked up at my towering father; his crisp Polo shirt had lines down the arms where they had been starched. I could see his mind turning as he chose his words carefully and squirmed his lips around before he spoke.

“Your mother…thought we had too many trees in the house already,” he nodded, satisfied with his comment. It was true. We had four. Christmas was a time to overdo everything and we, the Roberts family, were spectacular at overdoing Christmas. We were known for having the most beautifully decorated house on the block and our Christmas parties were known all about town for being the best. Lavish decorations were strewn throughout the house and somehow, every year, there was a new Christmas tree in a room that did not have one the year before. The lucky room this year was the dining room.

“But why did she throw it off the porch? Christmas trees go at the end of the driveway for the garbage man to pick up.” I rattled off rules like this constantly. I was such an orderly child with a complex for tidiness and punctuality. Anyone breaking any rule of society or prim and properness would throw me into a complete hissy.

“Your mother…” my father thought long and hard again then polished his sentence off with the best conclusion that still, to this very day, sums up my mother. “Your mother isn’t like us, Carrie. So don’t try to define her.”

Holidays could always be counted on to bring about a royal fit in my house. For example, the thanksgiving dinner table was split up into teams. On the right side, was team Carl. Dad’s family. They were clean cut, fit, and stylish. I remember anytime I ever answered the door and found “Team Carl” standing there, I was greeted by a wave of strong perfumes from London, red lipstick, and folding money was always stuffed into my pockets before mom could see and disapprove.

Then there was the left side: Team Karen. Team Karen had unkempt hair and had different clunker cars every six months that were lovingly named. They were obese and brought candy rather than money for me that was pulled out of purses when Dad wasn’t looking. They were more of the story-telling kind, unlike the politic-debating Team Carl. Their clothes were ordinary and they always smelled like the food they had brought over that was baked from secret family recipes dating back to the American Revolution.

My mother had been raised in a poor family and received no formal education outside of high school. My father, on the other hand, had been raised in an upper class wealthy family and had attended college and Pharmacy School. School for me was a mix of the two worlds; mom raised me to live in the moment in high school, that the peak of life lied in those halls that were filled with cheerleaders and football players gossiping and riding around in big trucks on the weekend. My father had raised me to not care about what was going on socially in that school because, “After all, you’ll be out of there and on your way to college in no time! They won’t matter. They’ll be pumping your gas.” He encouraged me to volunteer, become active in school-based clubs and build a college résumé. “A good name is to be desired rather than great riches,” he would always tell me. To my mother’s dismay, I was never the homecoming queen, but I did graduate with honors as the president of our senior class and was inducted into the National Honors Society among many other organizations and activities. By the time I started filling out application for college, I didn’t have enough room to state my achievements and extracurricular activities.

My father had always made it a point to socially groom me for life. He put me in ballroom dancing classes, etiquette classes and golfing tournaments. Mom frequently quoted him from the day of my birth. She would curl up her lip and sit up straight poking her pinky finger in the air like an aristocrat and let the words tumble out of her mouth slowly and with a proper British sounding accent, “Your father. Your father looked me in the eyes on the day of your birth and said, ‘Karen, this little girl will have a silver spoon in her mouth in everything she does!’” She made a mockery of him and his spoiling ways.

Looking back, I don’t see how my parents ever married. My mother was a woman with a fetish for pink flamingos as yard decorations. Her idea of a good time included playing pool or bowling while drinking canned beer. My father was a man who had an obsession with nice cars and clean Polo shirts. His idea of a good time consisted of playing tennis at the country club and going for a Sunday afternoon drive in his convertible. While my mother spoke with a deep southern draw and used curse words to garnish her sentences, my father had a concise way of articulately pronouncing every word perfectly and every sentence was always grammatically correct.

For as long as I can remember, my father has woken up every morning at the crack of dawn and put on a suit and pleased people. I was raised, trained and sent off to college to get a degree so I could do the same thing: put on a suit and make money and be a people pleaser. But something unexpected came out of my raising. Something that dad had nothing to do with. I liked to draw. I was quite good at it. I won ribbons in art competitions for my art portraying feminism in a broken world. While mom didn’t buy me bows for my hair and teach me how to apply makeup correctly, she did fill my art drawer with paints and inks from other countries. Paper and wax for Bahtik art could always be found and she would never forget to pick up a canvas on her way home from grocery shopping. 

If my father shaped me socially, my mother certainly shaped me artistically. She taught me to question people and intentions. Dad taught me to shake hands and kiss babies. It’s in this that I realize I am what I am: a product of a socially unaware mother who would run through a department store cursing up a storm in a bewildered panic and a classy father who enjoyed the fruits of capitalism and hard work. The social class friction between my family members made me who I am today. I’ve looked at life from both sides and have picked my “team” to play. I find I also developed the ability to show courage in the face of  “the other side”, because my mother acquainted me with how hard life can actually be for some individuals.

They say college brings out the best and the worst in people. With this statement I agree. Growing up and receiving such mixed signals about where I was to fit in socially, I was truly curious to see where I would land when my parents flung me out of the house and into another town on a college campus. I remember a time during my freshman year when I had a choice to either roll out of bed in my pajamas and go to class or wake up an hour earlier for a shower and fresh clothes. I made the choice to take on the appearance of a lady and continued to do so until I was known as the “girl that always wears high heels to class”.

Years later I sit across from my mother at a dinner table. She props herself up on her arm over a glass of red wine and eyes me suspiciously. Out of nervous instinct I fidget with the pearls that hang around my neck and tuck my hair neatly behind my ears. The perfectionist in me longs to reach across and fix my mother’s distraught hair, too. In such dim light, perhaps people won’t see how tangled it is. I refrain. Silence. Tension is palpable as we wait for Dad to come back from greeting his friends he spotted when we were seated. I glance across the white clothed tables and flickering candles reflecting off of crystal glasses, and just on the other side of the restaurant I see him.  He strokes his hand smoothly over his silk tie and slips his other hand in his pants pocket to jingle his change as he speaks. I look back to my mother. She slouches lifelessly, still staring at me. I’m disappointed in the fact that I clearly bore my mother.

“You know, Carrie. I raised you and taught you everything I know. But you still turned out to be just like the man I married.” She sat back in her chair and examined me.

“Well, he is my father.” I laughed nervously back at her.

She looked down at her napkin and fumbled with it for a moment, pursing her lips in thought. After another pull of awkward silence she looked back up at me and let out, “I don’t mean to offend you, but I think you should know I don’t particularly like people like you. I make it a point to avoid people like you every day. How did that happen?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“Somewhere between the sports car, the pearls, the sorority letters constantly plastered on your chest and poofed hair you turned into...” she stopped. Long pause. Violins ironically chimed in the background from the band towards the back of the restaurant.

“What?” I’m interested to know my new label.

“Your father’s mother.” She nodded at me as she said it. She looked at me with pity written all over her face. She looked at me as if I was trapped. Slowly going down with the ship. I wondered if that was the same look she had been getting from me all of these years.

What may have appeared as an embarrassed blush to my mother was a proud glow on the inside. Mission accomplished. I was a real Roberts at last.