35.
Family Values
She was driving to pick Ursula up at gymnastics with the radio on. Usually Eleanor favored music, but for some reason the dial had been set to news. A segment came on about rising stars in politics. A familiar voice came out of the speaker—one she hadn’t heard in a long time, but even before she could put a name to it, her stomach clenched.
“We’ve got all these welfare recipients out there, sitting around watching TV and collecting checks,” he said. “It’s time to start thinking about hardworking middle-class Americans for a change.”
There was more. Something about church, old-fashioned family values. The sacredness of human life, from the moment of conception.
This was Matt Hallinan. Now representing the state of Rhode Island in the United States House of Representatives.
She could still hear his voice whispering in her ear and remember his hands on her shoulders, and then her face, pushing her down.
Eleanor turned off the radio and pulled over by the side of the road. Knowing what was coming, she stepped out of the car. She threw up.
36.
Female Party Guest Number Four
That spring, Alison’s teacher had sent a note home to Cam and Eleanor. She wanted them to come in for a conference.
Plans had begun for the annual show, a musical version ofCinderella,and all the girls in class—all but those cast in the roles of Cinderella, the stepsisters, and the stepmother—were supposed to play guests at the ball. When the teacher directing the play, Mrs. Ferguson, had shown all the girls the ball gowns they’d be wearing for their roles in the show (a move intended to make them feel better about not having speaking parts), Alison had refused to try hers on. She wanted to play one of the male party guests. That, or the prince.
“This is actually the first time any of us has seen Alison assert herself so forcefully,” Mrs. Ferguson told Eleanor and Cam at their conference. “She’s always been so quiet. She’s always gone with the flow. But I have to say, this whole thing brought out a side of your daughter I wouldn’t have expected. It’s been very difficult.”
“Can’t you just let our daughter wear a suit jacket if that’s what she’d prefer to do?” Cam said. “The whole point of this show is to let the kids enjoy themselves, right? Clearly, putting on a fancy dress is not Alison’s idea of a good time.”
“Once we start bending the rules for one student, there’s no telling what the others will start asking for,” the teacher told them. (This seemed bogus to Eleanor. How many other eight-year-old girls in the class shared her daughter’s aversion to putting on a dress?)
In the end, Alison agreed to play Female Party Guest Number Four. But her acquiescence struck Eleanor as closer to defeat than acceptance. The night of the performance she had a stomachache, and the family stayed home.
Later that night, Ursula had come to her parents’ bedroom. “I think you should know,” she told them, “Ali says she’s really a boy. You just made a mistake when she got born.”
This was one story from their lives Eleanor would not be including in herFamily Treestrip.
37.
No More Cork People
That spring, when they launched their cork people, Alison stayed home—the first time any of the children had failed to participate in their tradition. “It’s just dumb,” she told Eleanor. “I don’t get the point of dumping a bunch of stupid boats in the water with some stupid corks attached and getting your shoes all muddy chasing after them. Then Ursula starts bawling if one of the people falls off the boat. Like they’re actually real.”
“Theyarereal,” Ursula told her. “Real cork people.”
Ten more newspapers signed on to runFamily Tree.Eleanor was getting invitations to appear at events in other cities now. Staying in hotels, like in the old days. But in the old days, there were no children.
It was difficult, leaving home. Cam, unfailingly good at impromptu art projects and backyard sports—igloo building and nature hikes—was not very reliable when it came to school pickups and getting children to soccer practice and music lessons. Whenever she left him in charge, she’d come home to find they’d missed appointments, failed to turn in homework—and had a great time. Once, after a weekend visit to a newspaper convention in Chicago, she returned to find they’d painted a mural on the living room wall. Another time, Ursula had applied a T-shirt decal of Michael Jackson’s face directly on Toby’s stomach. For weeks after, it remained on his skin, slowly peeling off, until all that was left was a faint outline of one eye and part of a mouth.
When she first started traveling for work, Eleanor had counted on Coco to step in with babysitting, but Coco—almost eighteen now—was a senior, applying to colleges, and had cut back on her hours.
Eleanor put an ad in the paper. When she thought about the bestperson for the job, it felt as though the most important thing was finding someone energetic enough to run after Toby—and above all else, reliable in ways his own father never was.
In the end, she hired Phyllis, a fifty-two-year-old divorced woman who’d raised a couple of children on her own. Ten years of teaching Jazzercise at the Y had left her in excellent shape. She cooked. And she could knit.
“Give me a few months with your family and you’ll all be wearing new sweaters,” she told Eleanor. But what really sold Eleanor was how Phyllis responded to Toby.
Some people who met their son, observing his explosions of wild energy, didn’t know what to do with him, but Phyllis seemed unfazed. The first time they met, she had spoken to him in a calm voice, not baby talk, and when she saw that he had a couple of rocks in his hand, she asked if he would show them to her. He laid them in her hands and she studied them closely before speaking again.
“I like rocks, too,” Phyllis said.
