31. WHERE HAVE THE BANANAS GONE?

My grandmother was ninety-one in 1973. She said there’d been more phone calls for me at the Front Street house since Mr. Barlow had moved to New York. “The calls are mostly from Jasmine, dear,” Nana told me. Jasmine had learned to hang up whenever Dottie answered the phone. Dottie had done her best to discourage Jasmine from phoning my grandmother’s house.

One time, when Jasmine had called and asked for me, Dottie was blunt about it. “Any self-respectin’ woman would just get over it—shit is shit,” Dottie told her.

“It didn’t happen to you,” Jasmine replied in her imperious fashion.

“I should be phonin’ you, Jasmine—I was the one who cleaned up your shit,” Dottie reminded her. There’d been another time, Nana told me, when Jasmine phoned the Front Street house and Dottie had labeled her a “walkin’ shitstorm.” I should have known better than to tease Dottie about it.

“I think, Dottie, it’s safe to assume that Jasmine is still walkin’—she’s only fifty-two,” I told Nana’s veteran housekeeper.

“I think, Adam, it’s safer to assume that Jasmine is still shittin’—for as long as the old bag is still livin’,” Dottie added.

It would not have been hard for Jasmine to find the phone number for Rachel Brewster in Manchester, Vermont—my mom and Molly didn’t have an unlisted number. But my mother usually wasn’t the one who answered the phone. When Jasmine called my mom and asked for me, Jasmine didn’t know she was talking to Molly; Jasmine didn’t know Molly. “Adam isn’t here,” the trail groomer told Jasmine.

“I know you’re Adam’s mother,” Jasmine began. “I am an older woman who has slept with your son—I’m probably your age,” Jasmine told the snowcat operator.

Molly was as blunt about it as Dottie. “If you’re the bed-shitter, you’re a year older than Adam’s mom—if you’re the bed-shitter, go fuck yourself with a two-by-four,” Molly told her.

“Is that Jasmine? Poor Jasmine!” my mother was calling, from another room, but Molly had hung up on the bed-shitter. Once, when Jasmine called, I happened to be staying with my mom and Molly. I was helping Molly with a risotto; my mother answered the phone. “Who shall I say is calling?” Molly and I heard her say. “Is this the Jasmine?” my mom then asked. Molly and I just looked at each other; I kept stirring the risotto. “It’s poor Jasmine!” my mother told me, not bothering to cover the mouthpiece of the phone. I just shook my head; my mom got the message. “Adam can’t come to the phone right now,” my mother told her. Molly and I could hear Jasmine’s rising voice—it reached us at the stove. “Well, I’m certainly not going to tell him all that!” we heard my mom say.