An Actual Life

by Abigail Thomas

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Virginia and Buddy "had to get married." Their daughter, Madeline, was conceived the first time they "did it" in Buddy's room at college. Virginia's college asked her to leave. Her parents put on a wedding. And now? Well, as Virginia puts it, "now that we know each other a little better it turns out we are actually strangers." Set in 1960, AN ACTUAL LIFE, is about the second summer of Buddy and Virginia's marriage. There's no money, no love, no foreseeable future. They both try hard, but Virginia is all of nineteen and Buddy only just past twenty and neither one has a clue how to make this misbegotten marriage work. The way it ends is both a complete surprise and utterly inevitable.

Release date: January 4, 1996

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Print pages: 252

Sample

Would you have married me if I were a dwarf?” I asked Buddy to test his love.

“What?” He didn’t look up from his book.

“Would you have married me if I were a dwarf.”

“I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“You wouldn’t have looked the same.”

This means he never loved me.

“How about if I were an albino?”

“Virginia, what’s got into you?” Buddy turned around in his chair to look at me. His hair was messed up and he looked tired. “You know why I married you.” At that exact moment the baby cried but then she went back to sleep.

“Dated me, then. Asked me out.”

“No.” Buddy shook his head. “I’m studying.” He was sitting in my mother’s old wing chair that she gave us when we got married. I was lying on the daybed with the green corduroy cover and the pillows that always slide off. Well, I had my answer.

Studying, I’m sure. He was probably writing Irene’s name down fifty times in a row. It’s something about her he just loves. I know it for a fact. And there’s really nothing about me to love anyway. There’s not even really any me, exactly. I keep changing inside my skin. There’s no definite person in here. My voice comes out weird and I hardly ever say anything I mean.

We are going back to Hadley for the summer. We have to, it’s Buddy’s hometown. We were there last summer, too, before the baby came, when we first got married. I hate Hadley, I can’t help it. The trees are short and the sky seems so much lower down than it does at home. I just feel all pressed in there, I don’t know why. I also hate streets that are named after numbers. First Street, Second Street, how boring. Back home we name our streets for trees and flowers. I like Chestnut, and Elm, and Maple. Those are nice names for places to live. My old address is 39 Grove Street, Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

I look around before we leave but don’t think I will miss this apartment. We only painted part of it blue. We ran out of steam in the living room where we only got the bottom half done. Above it is the pea soup color somebody else chose. I told Maddie the good thing about this summer is she can go right outside into her own yard but she’s too small to know what I’m talking about. And it is the only good thing. Except of course for Dot. Nobody in Hadley can stand me except Dot. Everybody else thinks I am so stuck-up. Well, that shows what they know. A bunch of ignoramuses.

Aunt Dot has her camera ready when we pull into the driveway. Dot is who raised Buddy after his parents died. She and Buddy lived in this tiny white house and he loves her to death. “Cut it out, Dottie,” said Buddy, giving her that really sweet smile that he has never once smiled at me. “Let me go, Dotdotdot,” which is what he always calls her, after the punctuation. He unwraps her arms from around his neck. “Let me unpack the car,” he says. But I can tell he was happy to see her. With Buddy you have to know how to read his movements because he seldom says anything affectionate in actual words. You have to see how he pretends to punch Dot’s arm, or gets in his boxing crouch to pretend to box with her. This is Buddy’s way of teasing and Dot just eats it up. I am more dignified, and my mother would just die if she could see this kind of behavior. I understand it somewhat, though. I wish he would do it with me once in a while. He never kids around with me in a friendly way. He says I have no sense of humor. Well, that is ridiculous. I have a very good sense of humor.

The house will be all for us this summer. Dot has moved in over the garage. “A little family needs its private moments,” says Dot, with her Brownie snapping away pictures of us unloading the car. She gives me a big blue scrap-book for a present that she picked up at a garage sale and you can see glue from someone else’s pictures on every page. I need something to keep my memories in, she tells me, and already I feel so bad. We aren’t like that, Buddy and me, we don’t have such sentimental feelings for our life. Dot holds me in her arms and gives me her skinny hard hug, then she holds me away from her. “Let me get a good look at you, Virginia,” she says. “My, you do look beautiful. Isn’t she beautiful, Buddy?” Buddy is on the spot and I feel almost sorry for him. He really doesn’t like to make personal remarks. He just sort of grunts reluctantly uh-huh. “Now where’s that little piece of sugar?” asks Dot, peeking in the window of the car where Maddie is still fast asleep in the backseat. I pick her up out of her seat and she is sweet and warm and heavy, and just waking up. Dot stretches out her arms and I put Maddie in them. At first I am worried that Maddie might not remember Dot, or be afraid of Dot, because actually Dot has a very small mustache but Maddie just snuggles into her arms and looks over at me with that funny little smile she gets. Dot is kissing and kissing away and stroking her hair and I wish I had put a little dress on Maddie instead of just her undershirt because this is sort of a special occasion. “Look at the curls on this child,” exclaims Dot. “She’s got your coloring, Virginia,” she says. “And look at this fat little tummy!” tickling her and Maddie starts laughing. I love it when Maddie laughs. She sounds just like a mynah bird.

“How about a picture of this beautiful little family!” says Dot next. She always needs to be doing something. Dot does not just stand around all day. Buddy has a box of clothes under one arm and a suitcase under the other and he is pushing the car door closed with his foot. He is wearing his cowboy boots even though it is almost eighty degrees already. They make him six feet tall exactly. Otherwise he is five feet eleven although he always says six feet if somebody asks and he hates that I correct this every time. The last thing Buddy takes off every summer are his cowboy boots. I swear his feet must boil like soup in there but he doesn’t care. They are some kind of lizard skin and have red decorations at the top and the toes are pointy. They look very uncomfortable to me. I tried on a pair at the store and I almost couldn’t pull them off and I got sort of panicky. Buddy pulled them off for me, it was embarrassing because he had to put his foot against my chair and grab me around the heel of the boot and yank.

“Buddy, hold your daughter,” says Dot, and Buddy rests the box on the hood of the car and puts the suitcase down and takes Madeline from Dot’s arms. It always surprises me when Buddy does what Dot says. It feels funny standing there next to Buddy. This is closer than we usually stand and already I can feel the little part of Buddy that I do know getting farther and farther away. It is like his face is changing into a total stranger. Dot takes three pictures and lets us move around again. Buddy starts carrying things into the house. I am holding Madeline again and Dot and I are already laughing about Madeline trying to get down and play in the dirt. Buddy loved to play in the dirt, Dot tells me. I try to imagine Buddy as a baby boy but I can’t.

The house is sweet. It has hollyhocks growing around the porch and the porch is only rotted out over in the front where nobody really sits. It has nice white posts and morning glories climbing up and the wicker rockers Dot drags out of the garage every spring and hoses down. Dot is still stringy as ever and today she has her hair in a tiny ratty little bun at the nape of her neck like Olive Oyl. Sometimes we have such a good time that I feel terrible. My mother is more restrained and she would be upset if she were a fly on the wall, so to speak, down here. She would not recognize me the way I am with Dot, how noisy I can be and how I laugh at ridiculous jokes my mother would never dream of making. My mother would not approve of all the dog hair in Dot’s car or that her sandals are made of cheap white plastic. My mother believes in buying something of quality that will then last you a good long time. Dot has had her sandals for three years, though.

“Well!” I say, opening the screen door to the kitchen. “Here we are again!” I try to act as cheerful as I can. Everything looks exactly the same. The same tablecloth with cactuses and the map of Colorado even though this is New Jersey. The same old bowl of plastic fruit in the middle of the table. Three fresh bananas on the counter. One black banana in a bowl by the stove for what purpose I do not want to know. The same old electric stove and the curtains with cherries and cherry stems over the sink. The same old yellowish sink. The same old ratty green rug by the door. The same old white paint kind of greasy over the stove. But it looks homey and Dot has pictures of Madeline on the fridge and even the smell of her cigarettes is kind of cozy and nice. I am sure if I look in the freezer I will find the piece of wedding cake I wrapped in tinfoil to eat on our first anniversary when I thought we were going to have a different kind of marriage. I bet it’s still in there behind the old pork chops and the frozen spaghetti sauce and the exact same boxes of broccoli that were there last summer.

Sometimes I wonder if I will wind up in one small place most of my life the way Dot has. Already I have moved more times at age eighteen than Dot has in her whole life of forty-three. “Oh, you poor thing,” she said when I first told her, “so many different schools?” but really I was thinking, Oh you poor thing you’ve always only lived in this sad tiny house that looks as if it might have blown down once and not gotten put all the way back up. This little house in this little place where all you can see is the black road and a few other houses along the way and across the street is a little brick building that has to do with the water supply and that has a chain-link fence around it and some weeds growing. It is kind of depressing. Our house in Wellfleet is larger and quite solid. We have a different kind of porch painted gray with a white railing and a lot more wicker furniture although the hollyhocks are spindly. My father is a minister and we have moved around the country a fair amount. I am not sure I could be happy staying put.

“How about some pop?” Dot asks, hauling bottles out of the fridge. “Anybody thirsty? Buddy? Virginia? How about you, little monkey?” she says to Maddie who is wiggling around in my arms. “Some pop for you?”

I have to say I hate the word “pop.” I want to know what kind of drink it is. I want to know if it is Coca-Cola or root beer or a Dr Pepper. I don’t like the word just “pop,” as if it were all the same. I also hate, “Do you want some juice?” I want to know is it orange juice? Is it grapefruit juice? I think things should be named their own names specifically. Otherwise it is just lazy talk. That is how my mother feels about it and I feel exactly the same way.

“Pop-Pop!” Maddie is excited. She thinks it is her grandpa, who is my daddy, but we are not home at my house. This makes me feel so homesick for one minute, and guilty, too. I don’t know what my daddy would make of my life these days. I am afraid it would make him feel terrible. I put Maddie in the old wooden high chair that used to be Buddy’s when he was a baby. Dot never throws anything out. Maddie starts banging on the tray with her spoon and yelling, “Like it, like it!” which she is smart enough to say and not even quite one year old and I give her half a banana. She wants one of the plastic ones so I have to pretend to be getting it from the bowl on the table. I peel it for her and then she begins to mush it in her hands. I don’t really mind this, I think a child has to be allowed to make some little messes. Then she throws it on the floor.

“Or iced tea? Would you like some nice iced tea?” asks Dot, already mopping up the banana. I was going to do that.

“Oh,” I say to Dot, “I would love a glass of iced tea. It is my favorite summertime drink. And a little apple juice would be fine for Madeline. I’ll get it, Dot, don’t be silly,” and I open the fridge again and get out the pitcher. She has put the mint in as I feared. The mint grows wild around the porch steps and the trouble is I have often seen dogs pee there. I pour myself a very small glass with no mint in it and then I take it into the bathroom and pour it down the sink. I pretend I need a tissue for the baby. This is just the beginning of things I can’t eat here. “Delicious, Dot,” I say. I let Madeline have a small bit of apple juice in the plastic cup. Buddy is marching in and out of the kitchen with the suitcases and boxes like a one-man procession of ants. I love the sound the screen door makes banging behind him. I don’t know why. I wish Buddy would smile sometimes. But he isn’t that kind of person and there’s nothing I can do about it.

We are going to be sleeping in Buddy’s old room with the twin beds which Dot has pushed together. This makes me so sad for Dot. She doesn’t know we don’t care at all if our beds are touching since we don’t really lie down in bed and do anything together. Actually, I’m just as glad if you want to know the truth. The first thing I want to do is screech them apart but I can’t do that except very gradually, like an inch at a time. The wallpaper is brownish with some green leaves thrown in and it is peeling by the window. The plaster is furry underneath where there was an old leak. The window is high in the wall, and there is only one in the whole room. “Good room for a baby,” says Dot, “nice and dark,” which I do not think is true. My baby prefers a little sunlight for her naps. Buddy’s old high school pennants are on the wall and Maddie’s crib is going right underneath them. Buddy’s going to put it together when we’re done unpacking.

Dot is fussing away helping me put our things in the drawers. She has a special pink dress for the baby that she picked up at the flea market. “Oh, Dot,” I say, “this is awfully nice,” although I don’t actually think so since it is covered with lacy frills. It will make Maddie look like a little store-bought cake. My tastes are much simpler, as are my mother’s. But it is so easy to make Dot happy. You just act happy around her and thank her for everything she does. I sometimes feel disloyal to my mother when Dot and I are laughing. It is hard to say what we find so funny, but in certain moods it is almost everything.

“I saw this sign, Dot,” I say to her. She is folding up Maddie’s undershirts and putting them in the top drawer. “It said house for sale. But the h was painted funny and it looked like mouse for sale. Isn’t that funny?” Dot thinks it’s funny too, thank goodness. She says, “Mouse for sale? Oh! Mouse for sale! Oh!” and then she starts laughing this terribly loud laugh that would drive my mother crazy but usually sends this surge of happiness into me. One time Dot nearly drove her car off the road from laughing so hard. “Oh dear!” says Dot. “Oh dear! I wonder what they were asking for it!” she says, which starts me off laughing again.

“Well, if it was a very special mouse it might be worth five dollars,” I say. It is all so silly but that’s what we laugh at, me and Dot.

“What’s up?” Buddy asks. He is dropping the last box down on the bed. He acts like there might be something wrong with us laughing this hard. Maybe he thinks we’re laughing at him. “Mouse for sale,” I tell him. “Remember?”

“. . .