Incarcerated. Has Gloria assumed that Saffee’s reticence is because her mother is in prison? Stunned, she winds a too-large section of brown hair around a roller and anchors it firmly with a plastic pick. Incarcerated.
Well, yes, Joann is in a sort of prison, not physically—although Saffee imagines that the state hospital is much like one—but emotionally for sure. For a long time Joann has been in a sort of prison, not entirely of her own making. Saffee doesn’t have any more insight into mental illness than her dad does and, if she were honest about it, she doesn’t want to know more. At any rate, Saffee will have to find a different way to keep the commandment about honoring one’s mother. It is unlikely that prisons of any kind cater to birthday parties. She won’t set Gloria straight on the facts. Her roommate can think what she wants.
“Oh! One more thing—a present,” Gloria says, reaching for her to-do list.
“Isn’t giving a party enough of a present?” Saffee asks.
“Oh no, I want to give her a gift too. At Dayton’s I saw a manicure set with oodles of nifty tools . . .”
No! Saffee wants to shout. Not a manicure set! She remembers the scene in Technicolor. Anything but that. Mothers don’t like them.
She winds the last roller extra tight and jabs it with a pick.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
JACK
1961
You’re going to Paris? April, that’s amazing.”
April’s phone call catches Saffee by surprise. Europe. Saffee wouldn’t even consider something so daring. April’s capricious tendencies have always served to liberate her from various restraints. Now, since the latest shred of Joann’s stability has again disappeared, she no longer tolerates any independence in April, and April’s creativity resists a harness. Her only recourse is to flee; to remain would be to break.
April explains that Mr. Franken, the father of the twins she babysits, is Miller’s Ford’s city planner. He and his family have been invited to a small French city as part of a six-month exchange program and have asked April to accompany them as their nanny. Mr. Franken is arranging a correspondence course for her to keep up with school.
“It’s not Paris exactly,” she says. “I think it’s a little town south of there, or maybe north. I don’t know. I don’t really care. Saffee, I’ve been hoping and hoping for some miraculous opportunity like this, and now it’s come. For six whole months I’ll be away from all the nonsense at home.”
“But, April, how about Mom and Dad . . . ?”
“That’s the biggest shock. Dad says I can go. I guess he thinks if I’m gone I’m one less thing for him to worry about. Mom’s in the hospital again, and I get the idea she doesn’t comprehend much right now. I think Dad will just tell her later. Saffee, it’s going to be a blast!”
Saffee gives her red scarf a toss over her shoulder as she and her friend Kathy meet on the campus mall. They hug hello, then head toward a costume jewelry store they both love. “So, Saffee, I’m so excited to tell you that I have a really nice guy to set you up with . . .”
Saffee laughs. “No way, Kathy, no more matchmaking. I’ll never forget that last weirdo. You told me he was, what did you say, sensitive? Yeah, like a gorilla is sensitive! That one made me swear off blind dates forever.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about him, but I know, I really know you’d like Jack. He’s just like you, serious about stuff, but interesting, and fun too. I think he likes to go to the theater. I have this feeling you were made for each other!”
“And why do you think I’d like to go out with someone like me? Is this the same Jack you told me about months ago? I thought he graduated.”
“Yeah, Jack Andrews, he did graduate. So what?”
“Sorry, Kathy, not interested. I’m still trying to fit in with college age, don’t care anything about older men out of school. Fix him up with one of your sorority sisters if he’s so wonderful.”
“He’s not an ‘older man.’ He just graduated at the end of last quarter. And I would fix him up with a Tri Delt in a heartbeat, except for one thing.”
“So, what’s that?”
Kathy grins in her impish way. “I think he’s meant for you.”
They walk in silence for a while.
“Kathy?”
“Yeah?”
“This Jack Andrews. Is he a good dancer?”
She’s just making sure. Joann had told her never to marry a man who can’t dance.
When he calls, they talk for half an hour. Small talk. Investigating. He sounds polite. He works for a St. Paul insurance company in their work/study actuarial program—whatever that is. He explains, but she still isn’t sure. “Okay,” he says, “just think that an actuary is a place where they bury dead actors.” She laughs.