Linda Grady-Troia

Roger got home from the conference in San Francisco to find a voice mail from Emma on his home phone.
“Hi Pops,” she’d said. “Guess you’re still out of town. I couldn’t remember when you said you were getting back. It’s by this weekend, right? ‘Cause it’s your turn to have me for the weekend. And you know how you’re always wanting to take me someplace ‘edifying?’ “ Roger had to smile to himself at the way she made fun of the word with just the way she said it. But it was true. He did try to make sure their weekends together were “quality time,” even if he and Emma didn’t always agree on what that meant. He’d never agreed with his ex-wife about it either, which might help explain why he only got to spend Tuesday nights, when he wasn’t away on business, and every other weekend with his only child.

“Well,” Emma’s recorded voice went on, “I think we should go to the Museum of Modern Art. Friday night. They’re open late, you know. Of course you know. You’re, like, a member or something, right? We should go to the film program there. Okay? Let me know, okay? Love you, Pops.” And she’d hung up.

So that was it, he thought. Somebody had told Emma that MoMA had a film program, and she decided that was more bearable than looking at paintings while Roger tried to explain art history. But that was okay he decided. Once they were in the building, maybe he could get her to visit one of the galleries, briefly, without whining. Some of his fondest memories of his own youth were of visiting museums with his mother, without his sister and his dad, who’d preferred other activities. Sooner or later Emma would learn to appreciate art, Roger was sure. It had to be genetic.
And she wanted him to take her, not her mother. That was a start too. As long as they were showing an appropriate film Friday night. Emma was only thirteen, and Roger knew she considered that a good deal older than he did.

He found his members’ newsletter and checked the film schedule. “Woodstock,” that should be okay. He’d never seen it, but he knew they sometimes showed it on PBS during fundraisers, hoping to eke out a few more donations from people his mother’s age. He’d take Emma to see “Woodstock.” Maybe a quick stop in the sculpture garden would be a better choice than one of the painting galleries. She’d liked the sculpture garden when she was little, before she decided museums were for nerds.

Roger left work early Friday to meet Emma at the stop where she would get off the bus from her middle school. He was startled when he saw her. She usually pulled her long dark hair into a ponytail on weekdays, but this afternoon it was loose, parted in the middle, and bound with a headband. Not a top-of-the-head, Alice-in-Wonderland headband, but a horizontal across-the-forehead headband, making him think of Tiger Lily and the other Indians in her school play, “Peter Pan,” a few years before. She’d looked so sweet with her hair in pigtails and stumbling over her one line. But his nostalgic recollections came to an abrupt halt as she bounced up and kissed him on the cheek, and he realized with a start that, while she still had to stretch up a bit to do it, he no longer had to bend over to help her reach.

“Hi, Pops!” she bubbled.

 “Hi, Em. Did you go and grow again on me?”

 “Da-a-ad!” And Roger marveled again at the range of condescension a thirteen year old could pack into a one-syllable word.

“Well, I haven’t seen you in two weeks!” he defended himself. “I think you’ve grown an inch in that time.”
“It’s the shoes,” she said, and she giggled, his little girl again. “See?” And she pulled up the hem of her jeans to show off a clunky sandal from which peeked a bright tie-dye sock.

 “Aren’t your feet cold?” he asked, concerned. It was, after all, still February.

 “No.”

 He knew from that tone of voice it was pointless to argue. “If you say so,” he agreed. But he scrapped the sculpture garden idea. Someplace inside the museum would be warmer. Maybe the photography exhibit.

“I reserved the movie tickets at the museum,” he told her, as they headed back to his apartment to drop off her backpack. “But I thought we’d go a little early anyway. Maybe look at a few exhibits.”
He half expected her to sigh, or pout, or demand a snack instead, but she just nodded. “Okay,” she said.

And so they arrived at the museum an hour before the six o’clock film screening, at which point Emma, to Roger’s delight, asked to go look at a specific Matisse painting, “The Dance.” He would have preferred she ask for something like Monet’s water lilies, which didn’t feature nude women, but still.

 “How come you wanted to see this one?” he asked as they stood in front of it.

 “Nana Nancy mentioned it the other day. She said she liked it.”

 “Nana Nancy? You talked to my mother?”

 “I saw her Tuesday night. Mom had to go to some business dinner and you were out of town. I told her I was old enough to stay by myself. I mean, I’m even allowed to babysit for the Stein kids down the hall as long as the Steins are gonna be home by ten. But Mom said she might, like, be real late, and I’m supposed to be starting research for this oral history project we’re doing in social studies, so I figured I could interview Nana Nancy. We had fun.”

“That’s great,” Roger said, delighted at the idea that his mother and his daughter were forging a relationship that wasn’t mediated by him.
“Yeah, we had a great time. She showed me some art books of paintings that she liked. She went to college for history of art, did you know?”

“Yeah, I knew. She used to bring me to museums all the time when I was a kid. Here and the Met mostly. I might have majored in art myself, only I was worried about making a living.”
Emma looked at him a moment, as if surprised. “Oh yeah? You never told me that. Cool.” Then she went back to her original line of thought. “So then I started asking Nana about when she was a kid and all, like before you were born, and she played me some music she liked from back then, while we looked at old photos. She’s got music that’s still on those big black vinyl records that you’ve got to play on one of those, what-do-you-call-ems, turntables. It was...,” and here Emma paused, obviously seeking to be sure she got the unfamiliar slang correct, then continuing, “it was, like, groovy, man”

 “I’ll bet it was,” Roger laughed.

 “That’s why I wanted to see this movie,” Emma explained. “Because it’s about that. And the music. I liked some of the music.”

“Groovy,” Roger assured her, and then, “But when I picked up the tickets they told me the show was sold out, so we’d better head down pretty soon to get good seats.”
“Okay,” Emma agreed. “I want to use the bathroom before it starts. I don’t want to miss any of it getting up to pee.”

So a few minutes later Roger found himself standing in the hallway outside the first floor ladies room, idly looking over a map of the museum while he waited for his daughter. Why, he wondered, do girls always take so long to pee?
Emma emerged at last, her headband rearranged slightly, her lips shiny with gloss. She’d taken off her parka and it was rolled up under her left arm, revealing a tie- dyed tee shirt Roger was sure he’d never seen before. It was a slightly snugger fit than he liked to see her wear, snug enough that he realized she was developing breasts, had in fact probably been developing for some time without his noticing under the looser shirts she more usually wore. But then she turned in a way that hid that disturbing detail from his view, towards the water fountains.

There were two of them outside the restrooms, one slightly lower than the other. An older woman had paused to sip from the higher one, so Emma bent over the lower. And it was at that moment that Roger noticed two young men pause just abreast of him. Well, they were young compared to Roger, but old compared to Emma, probably in their early twenties, one in business casual wear, button-down shirt and khakis, the other in jeans and a sweater. Button-down guy nudged his friend and lifted his chin indicating something ahead, and with a sick lurch in his stomach, Roger realized that the point of interest was the rear view of his little girl as she bent over the water fountain.

Sweater guy said something to his friend, too soft for Roger to hear, and button- down guy nodded, and smiled. And then, as Emma finished drinking and stood and turned, glancing around for Roger, the two young men resumed walking. That’s right, buddies, Roger found himself thinking, keep walking. Show’s over, you perverts. That’s my little girl you were ogling. If either of you dares to say anything to her, or make any kind of gesture that could possibly be taken for crude, I’ll ... .

And then he realized there was nothing he could do, unless one of them actually crossed some line whose exact location was unclear to Roger. But I’ll know if they cross it, he assured himself. Emma had by now spotted him and was coming towards him, and thus straight towards the two guys as they walked away from Roger’s vantage point.

The two of them stepped apart to let Emma pass between them They did not cross any line. In fact they let her get completely past them before they turned for another appreciative look, and Roger found himself wishing that nature had granted him a homely daughter. Fat and homely. And then Emma slowed, just a trifle, and for a millisecond a shadow of a self-satisfied smile flickered across that beloved and definitely not homely face, as if she knew she was being admired. Surely not, Roger told himself. Surely she’s still oblivious to that. And he glanced from her back to the two girl watchers. But they had kept moving and were even now vanishing into the mens room.

“Ready, Pops?” Emma asked, and Roger could only nod and take her hand as they headed downstairs to the movie theater.
“I’m not a little girl any more, Pops,” she told him. “You don’t have to, like, hold my hand on the escalator!”

“No,” Roger agreed, “no, you’re not a little girl anymore.” And then, reluctantly, he let go her hand.
As they settled into their seats, waiting for the film to start, Emma rambled on happily about the great evening she’d spent with her Nana, and her new fascination with all things 60s.

“Hence the shirt?” Roger asked.

 Emma glanced down at her new shirt. “Yeah,” she grinned. “I ordered it off the internet. Mom let me order it ‘cause she agreed I needed some new shirts, but she made me pay the difference between regular and next-day shipping out of my allowance. I don’t think that was fair, do you?”

Roger had no intention of inserting himself into the middle of an argument between his daughter and his ex-wife, although he was glad to hear Danielle was for once setting some limits. He wished she would play bad cop more often, so he could play good cop during his limited time with his daughter. He decided on a tangent for a response. “What was the big rush?” he asked.
“I wanted to have it for tonight, of course.” Emma managed to make him feel it had been a really dumb question, but at least she’d veered away from any further complaints about her mother. “It was sort of like one of the shirts Nana had on in some of the old photos. But I couldn’t find anything like the one I really liked.”

 “And what was that one?”

 “It was a print. It had all these, like, commas and apostrophes all over it. I forget what Nana said it was called.”

 “Paisley?” Roger suggested.

 “Yeah, that was it. Paisley. Nana said it was Indian. She said Indian shirts were real popular with hippies.”

 “Were they? A bit before my time. But Nana wasn’t exactly a hippy you know.”

 “Well, she never, like, ran away to San Francisco. But she said she wore flowers in her hair sometimes. Do you know that song? She played that one for me.”

“Probably heard it when I was a kid,” Roger said distractedly, bothered by an image of his mother with flowers in her hair. Although of course, he realized, he was picturing her as a 65 year old, one of those sad aging flower children one sometimes saw down in the Village, when he kew perfectly well she was a well-groomed grandmother who was more likely to have a flowered hat from Bloomingdales on her neatly coiffed head.
Then the movie began. Roger had let Emma select their seats, and they were in the very middle of a long, completely filled row, near the front of the theater. And thus, shortly into a film so long some museum rep had announced it would be shown with an intermission, Roger realized there was no way he could get Emma out of there without creating a scene, even if she were willing to go. Which, judging from her total absorption in what she was watching, she wouldn’t be.

And so he sat there and cringed, and kicked himself mentally for not having done more research on the movie before agreeing to bring her. Yeah, they showed it for fundraising on PBS, but PBS could cut and bleep and MoMA did neither.
To start with, there was the language. The young hippies the filmmaker interviewed didn’t seem to be able to string two words together without one of them being an obscenity. Well, Roger tried to console himself, Emma was a city kid. She’d probably heard all this on the street. He’d have a talk with her about it over dinner afterwards.
Then there was the drug use, constant, casual, and take for granted. Oh sure, there was some stage announcement about avoiding the bad acid, but that presupposed there was such a thing as good acid. And enough marijuana was being consumed on screen to make Roger wonder why a cloud of smoke hadn’t hung over the festival like a London pea-soup fog from an old Sherlock Holmes movie.
By the the time some charming young girl started in on an interview about casual sex in the commune she lived in, Roger had come to the conclusion it couldn’t get any worse, and he was going to have to spend the rest of the weekend lecturing his daughter about all sorts of dangers of over-permissiveness. And then it got worse.
There was a scene of lovely but grubby young hippies stripping off their clothing and wading into a pond to skinny dip. Which after the scene of a couple walking off into the woods with obvious immoral intentions, later glimpsed at a distance through a screen of vegetation, seemed an almost healthy amusement. Till Emma started in her seat beside him and whispered, loud enough for people around them to overhear, “That’s Nana Nancy!”
Well, it was some young woman with long brown hair, and Roger knew his mother had worn her hair like that in her youth. But the girl was seen from the back as she stripped, waded, then dove, into the water, vanishing from sight. “Shh!” Roger hissed, and then, “No it’s not.”
“It is!” Emma insisted, but fortunately more quietly. “The shirt she just took off, it’s the one I was telling you about. The paisley Indian shirt.” “We’ll talk about it later,” Roger said. And he tuned out the rest of the movie as he tried to figure out how to convince Emma that her grandmother was not and never had been the sort of girl who would swim naked in public, let alone in front of a film crew. If he didn’t insist on their leaving at intermission, it was partly because Emma wanted to stay and he wasn’t up for the fight, but largely because he hadn’t yet figured out what to say. And anyway, he figured, the harm had already been done.

It turned out there was nothing he could say that made any difference. Emma was sure the young girl stripping off the Indian shirt had been her grandmother. Roger explained till he was blue in the face about the number of identical shirts that must have been imported, and how large a percentage of young women at that time had long brown hair. He talked about what a responsible, careful, reliable woman his mother had always been. He talked about her parents, Emma’s great grandparents, dead before she was born but whom Roger remembered from his own childhood as the sort of protective, cautious people who would never have allowed their only daughter to go to a three-day music festival in the middle of nowhere. None of it helped.
Then it occurred to him he might be able to claim that his mother would have been in her first married apartment in Brooklyn that summer, caring for an infant Aunt Joannie. He had to stop and do some quick mental math, figuring out exactly how much older Joannie was. And then Roger, who had never been much interested in family history, had a flash memory of his late father saying something about having met his mother at a concert. And he thought of the young couple in the film strolling off into the woods, and he shut up while he recalculated dates. No, surely his sister wasn’t quite that much older. Was she? Then he shoved the thought aside, pulled himself together, and started into his lecture on the dangers of drug use instead.
The next morning Emma had a rehearsal for an upcoming school band concert, so Roger got them both up, dressed, fed, and over to the school. Then, as the other parents settled themselves in the cafeteria with their cardboard cups of coffee and the latest school gossip, he headed over to a nearby park for some privacy, pulled his coat collar up against the breeze, pulled out his cellphone, and called his mother.
She wasn’t home, and she didn’t answer her cell, so he left a voice message.

“Mom? It’s Roger. Listen, you got Emma all interested in the sixties when she stayed with you the other night and I’m ... well, frankly, I’m a little concerned. She asked me to take her to see “Woodstock” at MoMA, so I did, but there was all this bad language, and drug use, and then to make matters worse, she’s sure she recognized you in the movie. Skinny dipping! I mean, I know you would never have done something like that, but she’s convinced it was you and she’s just at the age where I have to start worrying about bad influences, and I’m ... I don’t know. But listen, you’ve got to tell her it wasn’t you. It wasn’t, was it? I mean, you weren’t there, were you? No, I’m sure you weren’t. And you would have kept your clothes on even if you were, right? But you’ve got to tell her that. Okay?”

And he shut the phone off, discontented and still edgy. Surely Emma was mistaken. Surely it had not been his mother. And even if, god forbid, it had been, she’d realize that it was necessary to tell Emma it wasn’t.
His mother didn’t call back that day. He and Emma had lunch with one of her friends and the friend’s divorced father, then they went food shopping. He let Emma select the dinner menu, and she even started helping him cook it, but then left him to it while she started her homework (interrupted by at least a dozen text messages). Later they watched a basketball game on TV while he tried to instruct her on the fine points of the game.
Sunday morning he took her to church. He didn’t go every week, true, but he tried to go every Sunday Emma was with him. He reasoned it was good for her, and he wasn’t sure Danielle was all that regular about it. Of course that was when his mother called back. He wondered if she’d called then on purpose, knowing where he’d be, knowing he’d have his phone off, not wanting to talk to him while Emma was with him.
The voicemail said simply: “This is your mother. You can call me this evening, after you take Emma back to Danielle’s. I’ll be in. Oh, but before nine if you can. I want to see Masterpiece Theater.” She sounded annoyed, Roger realized. Why was she annoyed? Not at him, he hoped. She had to be annoyed about something else. He hated having her annoyed with him; it always made him feel like a naughty little boy again.

He called back around eight-thirty, as instructed, ever the dutiful son. “Mom? It’s me.”

 “Roger. Yes. Hi.”

 She was, he admitted to himself, definitely annoyed, and if she was still annoyed from this morning, it probably was with him. What had he done now? “How are you?” he asked, and while he certainly didn’t wish his mother any ill, he sort of hoped she’d say she had a headache, or that her arthritis was acting up. Even being told that she had a hangover from some wild evening might be better than having to defend himself from some unintended offense.

“Ok for an old lady,” she said. “Not bad for a bad influence on my grandchildren.”

 Oh, Roger thought. That was it. What exactly had he said in that voice message? “I didn’t mean ... ,” he began.

“No,” she interrupted, “the riotous living of my youth hasn’t caught up with me yet. I’m sure you’ll be delighted when it does. It’ll serve me right.”

 “Riotous ...? Oh my god! Was it you in the movie? I told Emma it couldn’t be.”

 “You did, did you? And why were you so sure?”

 “Well, because you wouldn’t do something like that. Wouldn’t have done something like that. Or ... would you?

“I wouldn’t now. But I haven’t always been 65. What would I have been then, 20? 21? Would I have done it at 21? You know, I don’t think I want to answer that question.”
Roger hesitated, unsure what he could possibly say next. Then, after a moment, hesitantly, “Why not?”

 “Because it’s really none of your business.”

 “But you’re my mother!”

 “So? I wasn’t your mother then.”

 “You’re Emma’s grandmother. She looks up to you.”

 “And for once she thinks I’m something other than a boring old lady.”

 “Oh, now I get it,” Roger said. “It wasn’t you, but you like that Emma thinks it was. You like that it makes you seem more ... interesting.”

“Ah,” said his mother, “now I get it. You’d prefer a boring old lady for a mother. An interesting mother, now there’s a scary prospect.”

 “I didn’t say that! You’re putting words in my mouth.”

 “What exactly are you saying? What exactly are you concerned about?”

“I’m worried that Emma might ... I don’t know ... get ideas.”

 “You’re worried that if Emma thinks her grandmother went skinny dipping at Woodstock she’s gonna ... what? Go swimming naked in the sailboat pond in Central Park?”

“No! But ...,” Roger struggled to find the words for his concerns. “I thought I knew my mother. I do think I know my mother. I mean, I’ve known you all my
life.”
“Yes, but you haven’t known me all of mine. I did have a life before you were born. For that matter, I still have one now that you’re grown up. Being your mother is not now, and never has been, my entire existence. I’d have thought that by 38 you’d have realized that fact.”

 “I have. I know, but ... people change only so much.”

 “But they do change.” He could hear her sigh, then she asked, “Are you still the boy who got suspended for fighting in high school?”

“Well, yeah, but I learned my lesson, and I haven’t been in a fight since. And I didn’t start that one!”
“Ok,” his mother said. “You don’t punch bullies in the nose any more, and I don’t skinny dip these days.”

 Roger had to laugh at that one. “Well that’s a relief.”

 His mother laughed too, breaking the tension. “It’s a relief to me too! I don’t think that’d go over too well at the Y. Well, except maybe with a few dirty old men.”

Again Roger laughed, but the idea of somebody ogling his mother, however old they might be, did nothing to put an end to his concerns. He tried again to explain. “But Emma’s just at the age ... . Mom, there were these guys, while I was waiting for her outside the ladies room, and she came out and paused at the water fountain, these guys ... looking at her. And I think she knew it.”
“She’s a pretty girl, Roger. She takes after her mother. Guys are going to look.”

 “I’m not ready for this.”

 “You think any parent ever is? You think I was ready the first time I saw some boy trying to look down your sister Joannie’s shirt? Happens anyway, ready or not.”

 “God help me,” Roger sighed.

 His mother laughed, but the annoyance had left her voice. “So let me see if I’ve got this straight,” she said. “You’re worried about Emma’s growing up and concerned that she’s more likely to be an out of control teenager if she thinks her grandmother was one before her, if she thinks she’s following some kind of family tradition. Have I got it?”

 “More or less.” Roger admitted, “although it sounds stupid when you put it like that.”

 “Oh, and you’ve got some kind of madonna/whore thing going and you’d really prefer to have your mother sitting securely on the madonna side of the divide.”

 “Again, it sounds dumb when you put it like that.”

 “Maybe it sounds dumb because it is dumb, my boy. Well, we can discuss that at

length some other day. My show’s about to start. But I’ll tell you what.”

 “What?”

 “Emma’s supposed to come over next Friday to interview me for this oral history project. Must be some new standard school thing. Joannie’s David interviewed your Uncle Ron about Vietnam last year.”

 “Oh yeah,” Roger said, “I remember Joannie mentioning that.”

 “I promise I will be explicit -- well, not too explicit -- about the dangers of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But I’m not gonna lie to her.”

 “It was you.”

 “I’m not answering that. Roger, you are just gonna have to get comfortable with the idea that the women in your life are not always what you think. Or would like. Maybe you and Danielle would still be married if you didn’t have a problem with that.”

 “Mom! That’s not ... .”

 “I mean, that was part of what led to the divorce, isn’t it? You took offense that she wanted to go back to work? That being your wife and Emma’s mother didn’t satisfy her every need?”

 Roger felt himself growing angry now. “That not true and it isn’t fair!” he all but yelled.

 There was a pause before his mother replied. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”

Roger needed to take a couple of deep breaths before he was able to say, rather stiffly, “Apology accepted.”
“And by way of further apology, I will tell you this,” his mother said. “I’ve seen the film. I’m not in it. And I will tell Emma that.”

 “Thank you, Mom,” he said, less stiffly.

 “I’ve really do have to go, Dear,” she said. “But we’ll talk soon.”

 “Right. Bye, Mom”

 “Bye, Roger. Oh, and ... .”

 “What,” he asked when she hesitated.

 “I’ve said it wasn’t me skinny dipping in the film, but I didn’t say I wasn’t there.”

 And she rang off before he could respond, leaving Roger to stand for a long moment, staring at the receiver in his hand, unsure what he thought or felt, till the beep beep beep of phone reminded him to hang up.

END