Olivia, as I said, didn’t let me down either. She did not even wince at finding herself repeatedly being called Miss Hutton, though I did, each time. What was the something about her that necessitated such formality? It couldn’t be because she wasn’t Jewish. Though my mother was a Newark Jewish provincial of her class and time and background, she wasn’t a stupid provincial, and she knew very well that by his living in the heart of the American Midwest in the middle of the twentieth century, her son was more than likely going to seek out the company of girls born into the predominant, ubiquitous, all but official American faith. Was it Olivia’s appearance that put her off then, the look of privilege that she had, as though she’d never known a single hardship? Was it the slender young female body? Was my mother unprepared for that supple physical delicacy crowned by the auburn abundance of that hair? Why again and again “Miss Hutton” to a mannerly girl of nineteen who had done nothing as far as she knew except to help her recuperating son while he was a postoperative hospital patient? What had affronted her? What had alarmed her? It couldn’t have been the flowers, though they didn’t help. It could only be a quick glimpse of the scar that had made unspeakable and unsayable Olivia’s given name. It was the scar together with the flowers.
The scar had taken possession of my mother, and Olivia knew it, and so did I. We all knew it, which made nearly unendurable listening to whatever words were spoken about anything else. Olivia’s having lasted in the room with my mother for twenty minutes was a heartbreaking feat of gallantry and strength.
As soon as Olivia had left to take the bus back to Winesburg, my mother went into my bathroom, not to wash up but to clean out the sink, the tub, and the toilet bowl with soap and paper towels.
“Ma, don’t,” I called in to her. “You just got off a train. Everything is clean enough.”
“I’m here, it needs it, I’ll do it,” she said.
“It doesn’t need it. They did it this morning first thing.”
But she needed it more than the bathroom needed it. Work — certain people yearn for work, any work, harsh or unsavory as it may be, to drain the harshness from their lives and drive from their minds the killing thoughts. By the time she came out, she was my mother again, scrubbing and scouring having restored the womanly warmth she’d always had at her disposal to give me. I remembered that when I was a child in school, Ma at work would always come to my mind whenever I thought of my mother, Ma at work, but not because work was her burden. To me her maternal grandeur stemmed from her being no less a powerhouse of a butcher than my father.
“So tell me about your studies,” she said, settling into the chair in the corner of the room while I propped myself up against the pillows in my bed. “Tell me about what you’re learning here.”
“American History to 1865. From the first settlements in Jamestown and Massachusetts Bay to the end of the Civil War.”
“And you like that?”
“I like it, Mom, yes.”
“What else do you study?”
“The Principles of American Government.”
“What is that about?”
“How the government works. Its foundations. Its laws. The Constitution. The separation of powers. The three branches. I had civics in high school, but never the government stuff this thoroughly. It’s a good course. We read documents. We read some of the famous Supreme Court cases.”
“That’s wonderful for you. That’s right up your alley. And the teachers?”
“They’re all right. They’re not geniuses, but they’re good enough. They’re not what’s uppermost anyway. I’ve got the books to study, I’ve got the library to use — I’ve got everything a brain requires for an education.”
“And you’re happier away from home?”
“I’m better off, Ma,” I said, and better off, I thought, because you’re not.
“Read me something, darling. Read me something from one of your school books. I want to hear what you’re learning.”
I took the first volume of The Growth of the American Republic that Olivia had brought me from my room and, opening it at random, hit upon the beginning of a chapter I’d already studied, “Jefferson’s Administration,” subtitled “1. The ‘Revolution of 1800.’ ” “ ‘Thomas Jefferson,’ ” I began, “‘ruminating years later on the events of a crowded lifetime, thought that his election to the Presidency marked as real a revolution as that of 1776. He had saved the country from monarchy and militarism, and brought it back to republican simplicity. But there never had been any danger of monarchy; it was John Adams who saved the country from militarism; and a little simplicity cannot be deemed revolutionary.’ ”
I read further: “ ‘Fisher Ames predicted that, with a “Jacobin” President, America would be in for a real reign of terror. Yet the four years that followed were one of the most tranquil of the Republican Olympiads, marked not by radical reforms or popular tumults …’ ” And when I looked up, midway through that sentence, I saw that my mother had fallen half asleep in her chair. There was a smile on her face. Her son was reading aloud to her what he was studying in college. It was worth the train ride and the bus ride and maybe even the sight of Miss Hutton’s scar. For the first time in months, she was happy.
To keep her that way, I kept going. “ ‘ … but by the peaceful acquisition of territory as large again as the United States. The election of 1800–1801 brought a change of men more than of measures, and a transfer of federal power from the latitude of Massachusetts to that of Virginia …’ ” Now she was fully asleep, but I did not stop. Madison. Monroe. J. Q. Adams. I’d read right on through to Harry Truman if that was what it took to ease the woes of my having left her behind alone with a husband now out of control.
She spent the night in a hotel not far from the hospital and came again to visit me the next morning, Monday, before she left by bus for the train to take her home. I was to leave the hospital myself after lunch that day. Sonny Cottler had phoned me the night before. He had only just heard about my appendectomy, and despite the unpleasantness of our last meeting out on the quad — to which neither of us alluded — he insisted on coming out in his car to drive me from the hospital back to school, where arrangements had already been made by Dean Caudwell’s office for me to spend the next week sleeping in a bed in the small infirmary adjacent to the Student Health Office. I could rest there when I needed to during the day and resume attending all my classes other than gym. I should be ready after that to climb the three flights to my room at the top of Neil Hall. And a couple of weeks after that to return to my job at the inn.
That Monday morning my mother looked herself again, unbroken and unbreakable. After I’d finished assuring her about the helpful arrangements the college had made for my return, the first thing she said was “I won’t divorce him, Marcus. I made up my mind. I’ll bear him. I’ll do all I can to help him, if anything can help him. If that’s what you want from me, that’s what I want too. You don’t want divorced parents, and I don’t want you to have divorced parents. I’m sorry now that I even allowed myself such thoughts. I’m sorry that I told them to you. The way that I did it, here at the hospital, with you just out of bed and starting to walk around on your own — that wasn’t right. That wasn’t fair. I apologize. I will stay with him, Marcus, through thick and thin.”