My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman

Author:Elinor Lipman [Lipman, Elinor]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 0618872353
Google: dlNHLWyPytMC
Amazon: 0618872353
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2007-05-08T04:00:00+00:00

Before we'd opened our menus, my father announced that we were all going to Grandma's house, respecting her wishes, like the mature and flexible people that we all knew ourselves to be.

"What happened?" I asked.

"We talked about it and we decided we have enough confrontation in our lives," said my mother. "And here was an issue we could shelve without compromising any principles—"

"Knowing that Laura Lee is not our enemy," my father added. "She is, in the eyes of the college, simply the newest housemother and she needs a ride home at Christmas."

"Who are 'the eyes of the college'? Someone she told about her plans, so now you can't leave her high and dry?"

My mother's glance swept the room—we always bumped into colleagues at the Coach House—before she said, "Apparently she told Eric Woodbury that we were taking her home for Christmas, and he was pleased."

"Did he say why?"

"I would imagine," said my father, "that the president of a college does not want any employee to be spending her holiday on a locked-up campus—"

"In a nearly unheated dormitory," my mother added.

I asked how they knew Woodbury was pleased.

My mother said, "He came to class today."

"And mentioned to your mother something along the lines of what a nice gesture it was to extend a hand to the new girl on the block, given that she's all alone."

"Did you say, 'What's it to you, buddy?'"

"No, I did not," said my mother.

"And that was it? You didn't say anything?"

"Such as?"

"That anyone with two eyes in their head can see he's cheating on his wife, who's just as much the new girl on the block, and probably all alone, too."

They both sighed, reached for rolls, buttered them. My father said, "Here is a cold dose of reality, Frederica: How often have we spoken to the man when it hasn't been adversarial? Once? Twice? Never? Yet here he was saying, in effect, that despite pigeonholing the Hatches as pains in the ass, he was now seeing us in a different light."

"Which one?" I asked.

"A friendly and collegial one. Even an altruistic one."

I asked if Laura Lee was by his side as he was making his speech.

"They've stopped doing that," said my mother. "They sit separately and they hardly exchange glances."

"Why not? If everybody knows."

"What everyone knows is gossip. Your mother and I ignore the rumors, especially after Laura Lee admitted at our own table that no one was disrupting any happy marriage."

"They were making euphemisms," I said. "Isn't that when you say something to protect the innocent?"

My mother pointed to a box on my father's menu: "Bouillabaisse for two persons." He nodded enthusiastically.

My mother asked what I was in the mood for. Before I could answer she said, "Let's leave it this way: Sometimes adults know what's best. And reaching out to Laura Lee is the right thing to do at this point in time."

I asked if she meant now, December, the holidays, when lonely people get lonelier and jump off bridges.

"That. And with a cost-of-living adjustment on the table," she said quietly.

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