YRKB
11-30-2011, 12:22 PM
Sometimes she seems to make him sick.
My son watches his wife, a fine figure - still today, at 36 - in her chiffon dress and bouffant up-do, like a deluxe upgrade on his mother 30 years back, serve food to the table, rammed with my endlessly complimentary sisters-in-law.
It's pretentious and saccharine as ever, but clearly he hasn't developed my coping gene over time. Or he's just averse to it.
Everybody loves his Evelyn. They make no bones about why either, though they're all a bit more subtle about it in her company. She's of 'good stock' - a 'high-bred line', a business magnate clan that having been making money and headlines in the financial world since the late 30s. I alerted them all to it, unfortunately - deducing it when we we're first introduced.
'What did you say your surname was, Evelyn?'
She'd smiled, flushing red - near ashamed, now I recall it - and in that moment it'd all come together. My wife and her sister's had sat up, eyes like forest animals that had been administered a shot.
'What are you talking about, Paul? What?!' My wife was insistent all afternoon and non-stop that evening. I showed her a few internet articles and she'd gone into the bathroom , breathing like a cargo truck to call her sisters. Maybe alright at the time, but now it was pathetic. The flame for our family respectability was clearly borne by my son's wife, and the women took her everywhere and worked her family history into every conversation and house call.
Middle-class hoarders. Lower middle class. My wife was always the complete, supermarket and sunday-afternoon-cordless-phone-gossip-with-a-cigarette prototype. Though she'd leave me for saying it too much. It excites her and her sisters to get a little bit above their station, especially on Evelyn's back.
They always neatly avoid the fact that she'd been estranged her family for a good 4 years before my little man came along, and that his coming along hadn't made her 'hopeless situation' (in her orthodox Presbyterian family's estimation at least) any less dire. She wasn't getting a penny, she never would - and they didn't call her if another one of them was born or died.
Evelyn had fire in her when we first met, she was a woman of her own measure - and my bringing her background up had clearly not been the thing for her. Things are different now though, since she's the apple of our family's eye and finds favour over any other of the nice boys and girls our kids married in. She plays on it, dressing like a little society hostess - that mess of a tatoo on her ankle out of sight and mind - nodding all neatly when the women tell their friends vague facts they researched about her family. The more all that distances my boy from her too - he was always a kind of anarchist kid - the more she goes the other way, getting herself sucked further into the old cronies' fold.
Protection. I guess.
When you see all this, clear as day, what does an old man like me say? How do I put that - saying what to who?
Watching them drag up their little boy too is something. My son encourages even more of the mad dog rebel in his own - and the sense of entitlement Evelyn has gained in 9 years of marriage to our family means she's just happy to spoil her little heir-to-attention. For all that, I've got a grandson that could have been understudy for that kid's role in the Omen.
I'm too old not to play along. I just don't hold out much hope for these guys.
Copyright Yafeu-Khamisi Rodway-Brown
My son watches his wife, a fine figure - still today, at 36 - in her chiffon dress and bouffant up-do, like a deluxe upgrade on his mother 30 years back, serve food to the table, rammed with my endlessly complimentary sisters-in-law.
It's pretentious and saccharine as ever, but clearly he hasn't developed my coping gene over time. Or he's just averse to it.
Everybody loves his Evelyn. They make no bones about why either, though they're all a bit more subtle about it in her company. She's of 'good stock' - a 'high-bred line', a business magnate clan that having been making money and headlines in the financial world since the late 30s. I alerted them all to it, unfortunately - deducing it when we we're first introduced.
'What did you say your surname was, Evelyn?'
She'd smiled, flushing red - near ashamed, now I recall it - and in that moment it'd all come together. My wife and her sister's had sat up, eyes like forest animals that had been administered a shot.
'What are you talking about, Paul? What?!' My wife was insistent all afternoon and non-stop that evening. I showed her a few internet articles and she'd gone into the bathroom , breathing like a cargo truck to call her sisters. Maybe alright at the time, but now it was pathetic. The flame for our family respectability was clearly borne by my son's wife, and the women took her everywhere and worked her family history into every conversation and house call.
Middle-class hoarders. Lower middle class. My wife was always the complete, supermarket and sunday-afternoon-cordless-phone-gossip-with-a-cigarette prototype. Though she'd leave me for saying it too much. It excites her and her sisters to get a little bit above their station, especially on Evelyn's back.
They always neatly avoid the fact that she'd been estranged her family for a good 4 years before my little man came along, and that his coming along hadn't made her 'hopeless situation' (in her orthodox Presbyterian family's estimation at least) any less dire. She wasn't getting a penny, she never would - and they didn't call her if another one of them was born or died.
Evelyn had fire in her when we first met, she was a woman of her own measure - and my bringing her background up had clearly not been the thing for her. Things are different now though, since she's the apple of our family's eye and finds favour over any other of the nice boys and girls our kids married in. She plays on it, dressing like a little society hostess - that mess of a tatoo on her ankle out of sight and mind - nodding all neatly when the women tell their friends vague facts they researched about her family. The more all that distances my boy from her too - he was always a kind of anarchist kid - the more she goes the other way, getting herself sucked further into the old cronies' fold.
Protection. I guess.
When you see all this, clear as day, what does an old man like me say? How do I put that - saying what to who?
Watching them drag up their little boy too is something. My son encourages even more of the mad dog rebel in his own - and the sense of entitlement Evelyn has gained in 9 years of marriage to our family means she's just happy to spoil her little heir-to-attention. For all that, I've got a grandson that could have been understudy for that kid's role in the Omen.
I'm too old not to play along. I just don't hold out much hope for these guys.
Copyright Yafeu-Khamisi Rodway-Brown