The Corrections

Nevertheless, the markets did collapse, and Enid, who hadn’t dreamed that she would ever be glad that Alfred had locked their assets up in annuities and T-bills, weathered the downturn with less anxiety than her high-flying friends. Orfic Midland did, as threatened, terminate her traditional health insurance and force her into an HMO, but her old neighbor Dean Driblett, with the stroke of a pen, bless his heart, upgraded her and Alfred to DeeDeeCare Choice Plus, which allowed her to keep her favorite doctors. She still had major nonreimbursable monthly nursing-home expenses, but by scrimping she was able to pay the bills with Alfred’s pension and Railroad Retirement benefits, and meanwhile her house, which she owned outright, continued to appreciate. The simple truth was that, although she wasn’t rich, she also wasn’t poor. Somehow this truth had eluded her during the years of her anxiety and uncertainty about Alfred, but as soon as he was out of the house and she’d caught up on her sleep, she saw it clearly.

She saw everything more clearly now, her children in particular. When Gary returned to St. Jude with Jonah a few months after the catastrophic Christmas, she had nothing but fun with them. Gary still wanted her to sell the house, but he could no longer argue that Alfred was going to fall down the stairs and kill himself, and by then Chip had done many of the jobs (wicker-painting, waterproofing, gutter-cleaning, crack-patching) which, as long as they’d been neglected, had been Gary’s other good argument for selling the house. He and Enid did bicker about money, but this was recreational. Gary hounded her for the $4.96 that she still “owed” him for six six-inch bolts, and she countered by asking, “Is that a new watch?” He conceded that, yes, Caroline had given him a new Rolex for Christmas, but more recently he’d taken a nasty little bath on a biotech IPO whose shares he couldn’t sell before June 15, and anyway, there was a principle at stake here, Mother, a principle. But Enid refused, on principle, to give him the $4.96. She enjoyed knowing that she would go to her grave refusing to pay for those six bolts. She asked Gary which biotech stock, exactly, he’d taken the bath on. Gary said never mind.

After Christmas Denise moved to Brooklyn and went to work at a new restaurant, and in April she sent Enid a plane ticket for her birthday. Enid thanked her and said she couldn’t make the trip, she couldn’t possibly leave Alfred, it would not be right. Then she went and enjoyed four wonderful days in New York City. Denise looked so much happier than she had at Christmas that Enid chose not to care that she still didn’t have a man in her life or any discernible desire to get one.

Back in St. Jude, Enid was playing bridge at Mary Beth Schumpert’s one afternoon when Bea Meisner began to vent her Christian disapproval of a famous “gay” actress.

“She’s a terrible role model for young people,” Bea said. “I think if you make an evil choice in your life, the least you can do is not brag about it. Especially when they have all these new programs that can help people like that.”

Enid, who was Bea’s partner for that rubber and was already annoyed by Bea’s failure to respond to an opening two-bid, mildly commented that she didn’t think “gays” could help being “gay.”

“Oh, no, it’s definitely a choice,” Bea said. “It’s a weakness and it starts in adolescence. There’s no question about that. All the experts agree.”

“I loved that thriller her girlfriend made with Harrison Ford,” Mary Beth Schumpert said. “What was it called?”

“I don’t believe it’s a choice,” Enid insisted quietly. “Chip said an interesting thing to me once. He said that with so many people hating ‘gays’ and disapproving of them, why would anybody choose to be ‘gay’ if they could help it? I thought that was really an interesting perspective.”

“Well, no, it’s because they want special rights,” Bea said. “It’s because they want to have ‘gay pride.’ That’s why so many people don’t like them, even apart from the immorality of what they’re doing. They can’t just make an evil choice. They have to brag about it, too.”

“I can’t remember the last time I saw a really good movie,” said Mary Beth.

Enid was no champion of “alternative” lifestyles, and the things she disliked about Bea Meisner she’d disliked for forty years. She couldn’t have said why this particular bridge-table conversation made her decide that she no longer needed to be friends with Bea Meisner. Nor could she have said why Gary’s materialism and Chip’s failures and Denise’s childlessness, which had cost her countless late-night hours of fretting and punitive judgment over the years, distressed her so much less once Alfred was out of the house.