Be Good

On the day we were to visit my daddy's family, we would leave early in the morning, making one of the first ferry runs and being on the mainland by nine. The road to Graywood was long and winding and I knew every house and turn by heart. My mother drove in silence, unhappy at the prospect of a day at the farm and moved only by obligation to make the journey. It's one day out of the entire summer, my grandmother had snapped at her the night before, Just go and make the best of it.

We stopped for lunch at one Digby's two restaurants, a small waterfront place owned and operated by a longtime friend of my mother's, a place with a seafood just off the boats and a liquor license. Sitting at a back table watching the boats come and go, we ate lobster and haddock and curly french fries with cold slaw while my mother smoked and drank iced coffee laced liberally with whiskey - no liquor would be forthcoming at the farm and it would be a long, dry afternoon for her. We were anxious, ready to be there, and she stalled us with shopping and visiting and more iced coffee, snapping at our impatience and restlessness and complaining of a migraine. Leaving the kids for a few days? her friend the owner asked as he placed homemade chocolate cake and ice cream on the table and gave her a wink. Thank God, yes, she said with a flirtatious smile, A whole week without them. She slid over to make room for him to sit down and he lowered his voice to ask if she was coming back that day - she smiled again and nodded and he gave her another wink. Don't be late and miss the last ferry, he told her, You might end up with no place to sleep. She laughed a little too loudly at that and I winced to hear her tell him, Well, maybe you have an extra room.

Her mood improved and her headache miraculously cured, we left the restaurant and began driving again, reaching the farm in the early afternoon. As always, it was just as I remembered - a tumbledown-ish gray house at the end of a long, gravel drive, with my grandmother in her rocking chair on the front veranda, surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins. Cows were grazing on the hill near the barn, chickens wandered aimlessly around the well, and the newest litter of kittens was sleeping in a basket by the back door. It looked, sounded, and smelled like home and we piled out in a rush to blueberry pie cooling on the stove, cold milk from the icebox and a tumultous welcome. My mother hurriedly popped a breath mint and joined - although hesitantly and with reservations - in the fray of reunion. For a few moments, the woman at the restaurant departed to be replaced by a distant but at least there daughter-in-law with an almost genuine smile. No one commented on her bright red lipstick, cropped hair, bare legs, or the faint smell of whiskey on her breath. For a few moments she was just a member of the family, fitting in - albeit a little crookedly - with these homespun and plain folks that she looked down on the rest of the year.

Whether sensing that they judged her and found her wanting or felt that she had been a poor choice, maybe realizing that they didn't approve of her - unvoiced as this sentiment always was - or simply overwhelmed by this mass of family, my mother never made the effort to get along. She stayed on the fringes of the family, making a pretense of affection for them while sneering behind their backs. She jealously held onto what she had and laughed at what they didn't, making jokes about her "poor relations" and their "down on the farm ways". She would've preferred to keep her life separate from them and while resenting their influence, she had no real choice except to tolerate the infrequent visiting days. That evening though, she was glad enough to leave us in their care and as she waved goodbye she called out to us, Be Good!

I wondered if she would do the same.