"Seasons Clear, and Awe" - Chapter 4
by Matthew Gasda
We conclude the first week of PILCROW’s Inaugural Serialized Novel Contest with Chapter 4 of Matthew Gasda’s Seasons Clear, and Awe. Over the next two weeks, we’ll serialize the first few chapters of our remaining Finalist’s unpublished novels, and then subscribers (both free and paid) will vote on a Winner to be fully serialized here on the Substack (Finalists are awarded $500; the Winner $1,000.)
Our Finalists for this round:
Seasons Clear, and Awe by Matthew Gasda
Mites by Gregory Freedman
Notes on the State of Virginia by Michael Pilarz
We’re excited to have all of you as a part of this endeavor to forge a new path for fiction on Substack. If you believe in what we’re doing, please consider offering a paid subscription.
“Seasons Clear, and Awe” chronicles three decades in the life of the Gazda family, whose children inherit not wealth but something more dangerous: their parents’ unlived ambitions and their mother’s gift for psychological dissection. As Stephen and Elizabeth grow from precocious children into neurotic artists in their thirties, Matthew Gasda reveals how post-industrial, late 20th century America created a generation too intelligent for ordinary happiness, too self-aware for decisive action: suspended between the working-class pragmatism of their fathers and the creative and spiritual aspirations of their mothers, capable of everything except building lives.
Matthew Gasda is the founder of the Brooklyn Center for Theater Research and the author of many books, including the recent novel The Sleepers and Writer’s Diary.
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The next day was Saturday, and Elizabeth wanted to see her friend Andrea, who lived two blocks away. It was a request Adele acquiesced to, though she didn’t necessarily want to see Andrea’s mother, Joni. Joni would inevitably put on a pot of coffee, assuming that the two women would hang out just like the two daughters, and Adele would have to talk about Tupperware parties, husbands, and neighborhood gossip.
But Elizabeth, who Adele noticed tended towards playing alone by herself, could be quite happy in her room, in her own world, and needed the social interaction.
And so she would put up with it. And there was the consolation that she generally felt more competent as a mother than Joni. There was the fascination of seeing how other women raised their daughters, and indeed their sons (Joni had a five-year-old son, Bobby). It was all research.
So Adele walked with her daughter, who was getting to the age when she was old enough to go over by herself, but still wanted to be accompanied the two blocks and change to the Benn house (after placing a quick phone call to Joni, saying they were coming over, and hearing that Joni would be happy to have them).
Joni, sure enough, asked Adele if she’d like to stay and have coffee with her.
—Of course, Adele said, anticipating it, sitting down while the girls dashed into the living room. —Sounds great.
She sat down with the woman whose friendship she was so ambivalent about. There was nothing outwardly wrong with Joni Benn. She was a friendly woman, cared about her children, always walked Elizabeth over. But Adele sensed there was some unconscious cross-purpose, a narcissism that required listeners, a narcissism that made Adele uncomfortable, because it made her wonder if she was the same way (desperate to talk about her life).
—Do you want sugar in your coffee?
Joni, who was putting on weight, asked, and so the suggestion of sugar, automatically now tied, associatively, to Joni’s body, repelled Adele, who normally did take her coffee with sugar.
—That’s alright thanks.
—Is two percent milk okay?
—Um… I don’t really like two percent, Adele said. —I’ll just have a little sugar. Otherwise black is fine.
—Okay, Joni said. —The girls are in their own world, aren’t they?
Joni smiled and poured Adele coffee; Adele accepted the coffee, which she didn’t really need, aware, however, that this was a ritual that made Joni, or a woman like Joni, comfortable. They both would drink the coffee, and they would both be women with young children, and they would both be women who lived on the northeast side of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and they would both be women in their forties. And they would both be themselves with each other. They would be vulnerable. They would pretend at least.
Joni, whose husband had already gotten fat and who’d stopped sleeping with her after the birth of their second son, usually needed to talk about herself, about her marriage problems.
—Are the kids ready for summer? Are your kids ready for summer? Joni asked. —Are they going to camp? What’s the deal?
—Oh, no, yeah, we’re not. I mean, we can’t really afford to send them to camp, and they don’t want to... Adele took a sip of coffee. —You know, Michael’s home all summer. And so, the kids just, they love going to the pool.
—Did you join this year? Adele asked, referring to the Northwest Swim Club.
—Oh, yeah, we joined, of course. You know, the girls had so much fun going together.
Joni glanced into the living room. Andrea was making some kind of theater out of her Barbie on the couch while Elizabeth narrated something with Ken.
—Yeah, I guess they’re like pigs in mud, aren’t they? Adele said. —I don’t really see why there needs... you know, they... well, yeah, we don’t need anything fancy, that’s for sure, even if we could afford it. They wouldn’t want anything other than to go to the pool. You know, the kids have their cousins, too.
—I mean, I think everyone from Spring Garden goes... I worry about Annie, Joni said. —I think she has trouble making friends. We’re really grateful for Elizabeth.
Joni was nervous, Adele noticed: eager to establish mutual affection, emotional independence, sympathetic understanding, temperamental compatibility, and consensus with her. Adele found it strange that Joni was treating her like family, like a sister or an aunt or a mother, and that Joni didn’t understand that. Casual neighborhood relations shouldn’t or couldn’t be the same as relations within the family, or that she, Adele, couldn’t compensate for some kind of fundamental absence in Joni’s household. Adele couldn’t absorb Joni’s self-interest, egotism, and moral chaos. God knows she had enough of her own. She was holding back that chaos, actually, in her own life, and it felt or was unfair that Joni wanted to share her own chaos with Adele in an unburdened way.
—Oh, that’s very kind of you to say, Adele said.
Adele winced inwardly because she wasn’t grateful for Joni or Annie, and secretly thought that Annie, who was controlling and nagging and superficial (thus the Barbies) was a bad influence on her daughter.
—Do you want to go out on the porch? Joni said, gesturing to the enclosed porch, which was just a few feet away through the kitchen door. —We can get more sun out there.
—Ah, sure, Adele said, sensing that something was up. —We can go out.
The women picked up their coffee cups and stepped through the kitchen door. Joni exhaled like she’d been holding her breath underwater. Adele looked at her. Joni must have been an attractive woman in her twenties, but she’d grown prematurely stout. Her hair was greasy.
Adele thought of these kinds of women as women who were born to be mothers because they couldn’t sustain their allure. When Adele had gotten married at thirty-three, she was still beautiful, maybe now even more so than she’d been before; maybe not literally, but at the time she’d met Michael, she was confident, independent. She definitely hadn’t made her choice out of desperation or loneliness. She’d had men in Philadelphia who wanted to date her. Men in New York. Men on the Main Line.
Adele didn’t envy couples who got effectively shipwrecked together. Who got married because they let themselves go. Isolated themselves. Lost touch with their sensuality and seductiveness.
—Can I talk to you about something?
—Sure, Adele said. —Happy to talk.
What Joni wanted, in a sense, was to make this (the realm of the porch) like the realm inside: innocent. A world of make-believe. A world of dolls and games. Fantasies. The girls were playing, pretending that their dolls were older adults. And the women were pretending that their bodies were young. Vehicles for fantasy and sex. Or at least Joni was. And Adele had to admit that, for all of her implicit, flash judgments, she respected Joni for being able to deny reality so fully.
They sat down on the plastic patio chairs out on the small enclosed porch. Joni and Bob had pretty awful taste in decor and furniture.
—Well, I don’t want to say this, Joni said, trying to lower her voice, though they were well out of earshot of the girls, who didn’t care even if they could hear what their mothers were talking about. —I met someone.
—You met someone? Like you mean you’re having an affair?
—Well, I kissed... I... I kissed a man this week. I mean, while the kids were at school, after I dropped Bobby off at daycare. And it was just like a couple hours. I... I don’t feel good about it at all, but on the other hand, I feel amazing about it, and... Joni laughed, gaining confidence as she tried to explain.
Adele laughed, definitely a little stunned. —I mean... is that something you... I don’t... I’m definitely... I’m not judging you, Adele said. —I’m definitely not judging you. I just... I want to help. Or I want to be a sounding board for this. Do you just need to get it out? Or do you want my advice, or... look, we’ll...
—Yeah, a little bit of both, Joni said. —I don’t really have anyone to talk to. I don’t... I can’t... I mean, my sisters like Bob, so I couldn’t tell them, and…
Adele saw that the other woman was in a state of ecstasy.
And all of this was concealed by the routine of drinking coffee and chatting and listening to the girls play inside the house in the other room. Here, the two women were in the world of knowledge. There, in the living room, in a matrix of cushions and dollhouses and coloring paper, the girls were in a realm of innocence.
Joni’s strongly developed feminine narcissism necessitated ignoring her daughter, wanting to dominate men, losing interest in her husband. Adele realized that what Joni wanted to do was to transfer her excitement, her lust, onto her, Adele. She wanted Adele to reveal her own narcissistic characteristics, to admit that she didn’t love her husband either, that she wanted a lover too, maybe even a younger lover, a conquest.
Adele had gotten that out of her system though (all that narcissistic desire to stuff yourself with experience); that was the point of her Philadelphia years, and her many bus or train trips to New York to date fashionable men.
Or maybe there was something about Joni’s behavior that collapsed the distinction between knowledge and innocence, and that was the problem with it. Joni was seeking carnal knowledge, but she was also seeking to feel young, to be young again. What Joni wanted, in a sense, was to make this (the realm of the porch) like the realm inside: innocent. A world of make-believe. A world of dolls and games. Fantasies. The girls were playing, pretending that their dolls were older adults. And the women were pretending that their bodies were young. Vehicles for fantasy and sex. Or at least Joni was. And Adele had to admit that, for all of her implicit, flash judgments, she respected Joni for being able to deny reality so fully.
—What are you going to do? Adele asked after a pause.
—Are you going to tell Bob?
—No, I’m not going to tell Bob....
—Do you really think you’re going to be able to cut this off in a few weeks if you’re not sleeping with Bob?
—I think so...
—Who is this guy? Is he...
—You know, he’s another professor in the engineering department.
—What?
—Yeah, I met him at a faculty function.
—That’s crazy. Adele shook her head back and forth. —Wow.
—I know, I feel crazy. And I felt crazy when he... um, this man... I’m not going to say his name — you know, whispered that he’d like to meet me for lunch. It felt... I mean, it felt like a movie. I felt like my parents. Like I was in my parents’ generation. You know, it’s very 1950s or something, Joni said. —And I guess that’s part of the appeal. Like this is something you can do inside of your marriage if you want to.
—Is he married?
—No, he’s not. He’s a bachelor.
—Is he older? Is he younger?
—He’s just about my age. Turning forty this year. He’s a really neat guy. He doesn’t want anything long term. I don’t think he’s ever going to get married or have kids. So I guess there’s less pressure. You know, he’s not competing with Bob. I think that’s the important thing. He’s not trying to break up my family. Maybe he noticed that I was a little bit lonely or something, you know? Maybe he’s doing me a favor.
—Oh, he’s not doing you a favor. He’s doing himself a favor.
—You think so? You mean a man who wants no-strings-attached sex?
—Yeah. He’s not like Mother Teresa.
—Okay, well, I get that. I get that. But I mean, Joni explained —We both want no-strings-attached sex. That’s the point. I mean, after... you know, having two kids... Joni caught herself. —I mean, do you ever have... like, do you ever want to... have...? Adele knew this question had been coming: whether affairs were sanctioned. Normal. A part of being proper adults.
Joni brushed her short black hair with her hands unconsciously. She looked, to Adele, lively, frantic, bored, creative, distracted, and poetic at the same time. In constant dialogue with her own nervous system. —I mean, you must’ve thought about it, right? Like, have you had temptations?
Adele wondered how she looked to Joni, and Adele realized that Joni wasn’t paying attention to her at all; Joni might as well have had no eyes. She might as well have been totally blind. She wasn’t seeing what was around her. She wasn’t seeing her kid in the other room. She was just listening for the magic words that would come from Adele.
—To be honest, Adele said, I’ve had temptations, and I’ll admit it, but... truly nothing serious.
—Like what?
—You really want to know?
—Yeah, of course. I want to know.
—I don’t know if I really feel like sharing, Adele said.
Well, she might have enjoyed the idea of infidelity, discreet infidelity in principle. It wasn’t something she was... that she was personally capable of. And she and Michael had never stopped having sex. Maybe it wasn’t awe-inspiring, but it was steady, reliable sex. Comforting. The kind of sex two married people with kids should have. Tender and giving. Once she’d had kids, she’d really let go of being looked at a certain way by men and had done so with considerable relief.
There was something so narcissistic about holding on, obsessing over your fading looks. Yes, the older lawyers at Talmann, Hutters, and Sorrentino (where she’d gone back to work this past year) made little comments and suggestive looks. Guys in their fifties and sixties. Yes, she was a handsome woman, but the only really real point of acting on one of those looks or comments would be to feed her ego, her need to be seen. And she didn’t want to do that. She’d spent her entire twenties doing that. Desperately, hungrily, obsessively. And now...
Adele suddenly felt very sad and didn’t know what to say. As far as she knew, no one in her family were cheaters. Her parents didn’t cheat, her brothers didn’t cheat. They just didn’t want to be married. Michael wasn’t a cheater. She’d be shocked if he did. And she wasn’t. She was a flirt, but not...
So many of her friends were divorced. So many of the kids on Stephen’s’s baseball team were from divorced homes. Divorce was as normal as staying together anymore. But she was old-fashioned about marriage too. You shouldn’t cheat, and you shouldn’t divorce your spouse. Not if you had kids. And why? She had no idea. She didn’t believe in a God who cared about domestic arrangements for sex, but she had an innate sense of duty, of interdependence; it was her interdependence with her husband and her kids that made her feel most alive.
—Are you upset with me? Joni asked.
Adele craned her neck backwards like she’d been struck. —No, no, no, no, I’m not, no, no, no, no. Not even close. I’m processing what you told me, Joni. You have to break it off, right? You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I’m upset, but if you don’t think he’s a reliable guy... I mean, anyone who would do that... I mean, if they’re in the same department, it’s kind of a jerk move.
—It is a jerk move. But I guess I’m angry at Bob.
—Did Bob do something?
—No, that’s the problem. Bob doesn’t do anything. Bob teaches engineering, and then he comes home, and is kind of just a blob on the couch every night.
—That’s what happens to people. They become blobs, Adele said forthrightly.
—Oh, I want more than a blob.
—Is your husband a blob? Your husband’s not a blob.
—Sometimes he is, honestly.
—Oh I see.
Adele wondered if Joni had an affair so that she could share it with another adult, so that she could turn this kind of gossiping about the self into a form of community building; they were two members of a nameless tribe. Neighborhood women, or whatever it was. Joni was asking, tacitly, whether she was worthy of conscious care, attention.
—I mean, Michael’s not Bob; I don’t really know Bob, Adele added self-consciously. —And frankly I don’t really know you... that well, Joni…
—I’m sorry if I’m oversharing or...
—No I just mean I’m not really sure what advice you’re looking for.
Adele couldn’t help but be called cold at this point in the conversation. She hadn’t asked for this. She was there to facilitate her daughter’s play date. It would have been easier to drink coffee and do some Tupperware party gossip. But also, she had to admit to herself the tendency of tuning out people as soon as she realized, which was often quickly, that they were significantly less intelligent than she was. She had to join up a long time ago, and instead of admitting this gracefully or acknowledging this gracefully, Joni piled triviality after triviality upon Adele’s head, and nothing was more trivial than cheating on her husband.
—I’m not really looking for any advice in particular... like I said I really just needed to talk to someone.
—Have you thought about seeing a therapist? Like either for yourself or with Bob?
—Oh I don’t... no... I don’t think he’d go to couples’ therapy or... if I would even... I mean fixing this isn’t necessarily what I want.
—I guess I can see that.
—I guess I thought... Joni trailed off. —I guess on some level that maybe you had had an affair or would have been the kind of person to think it was all hunky dory.
—I think about sex a lot less than I used to.
—Is that true? Joni asked, incredulous.
Adele paused to think about whether it was in fact true; it was factually true, going by the measure of the types of thoughts that passed across her mind from day to day, but there was always the question of the unconscious: what was she pushing down or ignoring? Was sex less important or had she made it less important? Would sleeping with a stranger ignite something?
—It’s true enough.
—I’m not trying to encourage you or anything to do what I did, I just…
—I’m sure you can find other gals in the neighborhood who are cheating on their husbands; or at the pool this summer, just ask around.
Adele’s tone was ironic, not sarcastic, and this clearly upset Joni.
—No, I don’t think I’ll do that...
Joni paused. —Do you think you’re better than me? She asked the question without a tone of provocation, rather one of sincere wounding (which wounded in a different way).
—I’m not better than anyone, are you kidding?
—I can read your face.
—My face isn’t doing anything, Joni.
—Looks to me like it is.
—Hey, relax.
—I’m really insecure about this; I’m opening up to you.
Adele stared at the varicose veins forming under the dermal layer of Joni’s skin (Joni liked to wear short shorts in warm weather, like she was young, or younger).
—I’m not trying to hurt your feelings Joni; I’m listening. You wanted someone to listen to you.
—You sound so condescending.
—I didn’t promise you I would react a certain way.
—I know you didn’t; I just launched into... but still I guess I wanted...
—What?
—I just thought we were friends; I’m realizing that we’re not and it’s humiliating.
—Joni, I did nothing, said nothing...
—I just looked at you and...
—Okay, what can I say?
—Haven’t you ever strayed...?
—Only in my thoughts.
—What kind of thoughts?
—I don’t necessarily want to share that... but obviously it would make you feel better if I did...
—Is that selfish?
Joni’s new tactic was submission, feeding Adele’s ego, admitting to Adele’s superiority, begging for Adele’s recognition.
And Adele hated this more than anything else, more than the whole story of the affair.
—I don’t know what it is.
—I’m not saying you should cheat on Michael. I’m saying...
—You just wanna know that we’re on the same level, on some level.
—Essentially, yeah.
—I don’t know; sure; we are; we’re both humans; we’re both moms in the same neighborhood; hey, Bob makes more money; you have a nicer house...
—Our house isn’t nicer. You have better taste than I do.
Adele had to admit this was true. —This is an absurd conversation.
—I feel absurd right now.
—I understand that.
—I’m desperate, Adele. For what, I’m not sure.
—I think in a few months, this will all fade.
—But I don’t want it to; life is exciting now.
—Excitement... like this... fades.
—God, I’ve really fucked my life up, haven’t I?
—No, Joni; I don’t think you have. It sounds like fucking your life up is attractive to you though.
—Yeah. Why is that?
—Human nature.
—Should we go in and check on the girls? Adele asked.
—Sure.
The two women got up. They both put their coffee mugs in the sink, which Adele noticed was full of dishes and utensils, and padded into the living room. Adele was still in her sneakers, which she would not have worn in her own house, but Joni was an indoor-shoes person.
—Hi, girls. Having fun?
—Yeah, they said in unison.
—Elizabeth, I think I’m gonna walk home, leave you to play, and I think you can make your way home when you’re ready, okay?
—Okay, Elizabeth said automatically.
Adele turned to Joni. —I want to do a little gardening, and I think Lizzie is capable of making the journey now by herself.
—Yeah, totally. It’s fine. Girls, you want anything to eat? I can make Hot Pockets or something.
—I’ll have a Hot Pocket, Andrea said.
Adele and Elizabeth made quick, electric, impulsive eye contact, because Adele had trained her daughter not to accept this unhealthy microwave food.
—I’m okay, Elizabeth said happily.
—Okay, well, just let me know, Joni said. —Andrea, I’ll get that started.
—Thanks, Mom.
Adele walked home in a hurry. Everything about the conversation with Joni Benn had to go. It wasn’t just embarrassing, but had reached a valence of cruelty. Cruelty toward their husbands, their families, each other. Adele felt, or was certain, that she was being recruited by the other women, neighborhood women who only pretended to love their families; who performed the rituals of motherhood just as their own mothers and grandmothers had done, but without any of the ardor or moral hope. Adele rejected, or wanted to reject, this. Had to reject it.
She felt guilty about leaving Elizabeth there by herself. That was because she knew the Benn household would, as it always did… In fact, Elizabeth, in some small way, would come back and ask her about things like: Why does Andrea care so much about her dolls? Why does she get to choose the rules of the games?
Why does she yell at me sometimes? Why does Mrs. Benn yell at Andrea too? Why do they yell at each other? Why does Andrea like to play inside and not outside?
As Adele saw it, Andrea Benn was going to be given little choice other than to become a facsimile of her mother: a pert, round-shouldered woman with a low, rather mean view of life who would get married to her college boyfriend and grin and bear the next generation without much enthusiasm. She would have an affair at 40 just like her mom; perhaps Joni’s mother was the same: a desperately bored midcentury housewife.
Adele felt relieved to be able to think these thoughts to herself as she walked the two-and-a-half blocks back to Huntington Street in the bright sun, which was only barely shielded and deflected by the sycamores and the smaller Bradford pears that were now popular.
Andrea had been trying to engage Elizabeth in Britney Spears versus Christina Aguilera debates and the premiere of Lizzie McGuire, but Elizabeth didn’t know what to say and didn’t really care, and had been basically shamed out of enjoying things like that by her mother. Andrea was using the bathroom; Elizabeth waited alone in the living room, lounging on the oversized sectional in hunter green and picked out a strand of her hair, kicking her feet in the air to expend her excess energy. The Benn’s entertainment center was cherry-colored and massive, taking up an entire wall. There was a “Live, Laugh, Love” sign on the wall and a decorative clock that said, “It’s always coffee time.”
Elizabeth would have been happy if Andrea never came back from the bathroom, and if her mother, either of their mothers, ever came back, and if she could just lay in this weird living room full of gigantic ugly furniture, enjoying the sunlight that was coming through the window and talk to Minnie Mouse who followed her wherever she went.
But of course that wasn’t really possible. Andrea would come back; Joni would come in to check on them; or her mother would come in to take her home; and the strange magic of loneliness would dissipate.
Elizabeth had struggled all her short life against the tendency to daydream, which was like the ocean and always wanted to tug her out into the deeper currents. But she was winning the struggle. She was doing well in school, piano lessons, and ballet. Nobody actually knew, none of the big adults in the big world knew how difficult it actually was to concentrate her mind and to do the things that were asked of her. Instead, it was easier to divide herself into two and give part of that: give one half to others and leave one half for herself.
