She moved from her desk to sprawl out in a chair. “I’m so sick of this. I am. I am so sick of myself. You know what happened this morning? I toasted half a bagel. So far so good, huh?”
I smiled.
“And then I wanted to have it on a beautiful dish, I just wanted to have something beautiful to eat on because I’m trying to do what my therapist says and nurture and reward myself. So I have these cute little saucers I bought in an antiques store, cherries all over them, and I took one down from the cupboard, and here comes the big finger from the sky, pointing at me. Put that back! That’s a saucer! You can’t eat a bagel on a saucer! She looked up at me, sighed. “All the time, this voice: Wrong. Stupid. That is not for you. It is for everyone else, not you. And Laura, I want you to know, I really want you to be clear about this: It’s not how I want to be. I look up at the night sky and see the same beauty you do. I mean . . . torch singers, little red potatoes, the sight of a kid running down the street with her tongue sticking out of her mouth . . . I get that.
“I want you to know that whenever I go to a museum, everything in my head gets pushed away. It doesn’t matter what I look at : ancient pottery bowls, period rooms, sculptures—doesn’t matter. The whole time I’m there, everything pecking away at my soul bows to greater considerations. I stand in front of a little French oil of a woman at a food market and all you can see is one slice of her cheek and her coat and hat and her shoes, and everything about her comes to me: where she lives, her little overheated apartment, the half circle of camembert wrapped in butcher paper in her refrigerator, the split in the lining of her shoe, the water level when she takes a bath, the little pink roses on her teacup, how she’ll buy the lemons and the peaches—I see it all! I feel like I’m lost in the Wheel, only a part of some larger whole, and I can breathe. It’s such a relief. But then I have to come out. I have to come back.
“What’s wrong with me is what always intrudes. It overlies everything, that shadow. It’s what never, ever, ever goes away. No! You can’t do that, you can’t do that, shame on you, shame! And I have had enough. I have had enough! I am going to give it a real try here, I am by God going to try everything I can, and I am . . . I am . . . No fear, okay?” She pounded the arm of her chair at this last. Then she stopped, deeply embarrassed. “Jesus. Oscar clip. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said, moving over to her, touching her am. “I’m glad you told me that. It makes me . . . well, it makes me know you.” I looked at my watch. “Let’s go out to lunch, want to? My treat. You can eat anything you want from anywhere you want it. I need to tell you something from Steve. And then I need you to tell me how I can help.” And then I want to go home.
“I WAS, SICK,” CAROLINE SAID. “And Steve’s right. When I was lying on the cot in the nurse’s office, I heard her kind of yelling at Mom. Didn’t you notice she had a fever, Mrs. Meyer? I remember wanting to come home because I felt so bad and yet dreading it because I knew I’d be in trouble again.”
I played with the few strands of pasta left on my plate. In it, I suddenly saw a kind of filigree design that was actually very beautiful. I started to say, “I’m listening to you, Caroline. But I just saw something here that I want to get down.” I could feel heat rising at the back of my neck at the thought, at how close I came to pulling out my sketch pad, knowing that she would have said, in one way or another, “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”
Instead I said, “I . . . it must have been so hard for you.” I cleared my throat. D+, I gave myself for that attempt at an empathic response. Beneath the table, my free hand curled into a fist.
Caroline smiled sympathetically. She could see I was ready to jump out of my skin. “Look. I know you’ve been trying very hard to . . . in the midst of . . .” She put her hand over mine. It was such an awkward gesture; I could feel the clamminess. Were we friends, were we real sisters, I could comment on this, say something funny, and it would be fine. As it was, I ignored what surely both of us were aware of, making the moment even more awkward than it already was. “I’m trying to say thank you. It means so much that you listened to me. And that you said you believe me.” She took her hand away, put it in her lap. “So.”
I moved closer to her. “So. What now? Do you still feel like you need to talk to Mom?”
“I know it’s not the right time, with Dad . . .”
“Probably not.”
“And I’ve got lots of work to do in the meantime, God knows.”
“I guess we all do.”
“Thank you for coming back here, Laura. You can . . . why don’t you go back home? I know it’s hard for you to be away. But could I call you sometime?”
That she needed to ask. “Any time,” I said, and a small black part of my heart singsonged, You don’t mean it. “Any time,” I said again, overcoming it.
I DECIDED TO PAY THE EXTRA COST and fly home that evening. Before I left for the airport, I called Aunt Fran. “I’ve been thinking,” I said. “I would really like permission from you to tell Caroline and Steve what you told me.”
“Oh, Laura.”
“I think it might help. I think it might help everyone.”
“She trusted me to never let you kids know.”
“But look at what’s happening. Caroline is having a lot of trouble right now, dealing with the way she grew up. I mean, she had a mother who attacked her with a knife, and she—”
“What?”
“Well, Aunt Fran . . . you know that. You said you knew. You said you knew! Mom attacked—or very nearly attacked—Caroline with a knife! That’s why Caroline was hospitalized.”
“Oh, honey. Oh my goodness. That’s not true. It was the other way around! She came after your mother!”
“That’s what my mother told you?”
“It was the other way around! Oh my goodness. Caroline said your mother attacked her? No, sweetheart, I swear to you, it was the other way around! Ask—oh, I was going to say ask your father. But he knew. It was Caroline who tried to attack your mother!”
There sat the spider, beautiful in her web, drops of dew shining like diamonds all around her. I spoke very carefully. “Aunt Fran. Do you honestly believe that?” I picked up a pencil from the kitchen table, balanced it along the knuckles of one hand while I waited for her answer. Come on, Aunt Fran, you were my favorite. You in a yellow sundress, holding two of your own kids, one under each arm, laughing.
“Well, of course I do! It’s the truth!”
I let the pencil fall; it rolled under the table. I would not bother to retrieve it. My mother had Aunt Fran, just like she had my dad. There was no more to say. I held on to the phone and stared out the window at the sunset. Beautiful pinks. Dusty rose. Mauve. Wonderful next to sage green.
“Laura?”
“I have to go.” I hung up the phone, locked my mother’s house, and headed to the car to go to the airport. Enough. I turned on the radio, turned it up loud. Then louder still.
It is a travel advertisment in a newspaper, a half-page picture of an older couple in their late seventies or early eight-ies, floating in a pool on rubber rafts with built-in pillows. The water is crystal clear and shot through with jagged lines of sunlight. The man wears black bathing trunks that come almost to his knees, funny, in their way. The woman wears a beautifully designed swimsuit in a Hawaiian print with a plunging neckline that—unbelievably—looks sexy. Her necklace is made of shells that coordinate with the bathing suit. She wears a bathing cap covered with flowers but has left uncovered one perfect wave of streaked hair. Her hus-band holds her hand—it is he who has reached out to her; it feels somehow that it is always he who reaches for her. Her face is a study in pride: eyebrows plucked in a graceful arch, cheekbones high and rouged, lipstick perfectly applied. She has a smile on her face; his expression is more serious, nearly anxious.
When I came across this picture, I had an odd reaction to it. “Look at this,” I told Pete, and he looked over and said, “Huh. Cute.”
“It’s not
cute!” I said angrily.
Pete looked up, surprised.
“It’s not! Look at her! This is a woman whose been overly cared for all her life. She’s a user; she thinks only of herself. Look at her eyes!”
He looked again. “You can’t even see her eyes.”
He was right. Both people in the photograph wore dark sunglasses.
“Well, I know what they look like,” I said.
“How?” Pete asked, and I did not answer, because I could not say.
21
PETE PICKED ME UP AT THE AIRPORT. HE LEANED OVER to give me a quick kiss before we pulled away from the curb. I wondered what he’d ask me and what I’d say. I realized I’d fallen once again into uncertainty. I was beginning to think I understood battered wife syndrome: seeing someone as a monster, then as someone not so bad, then as someone familiar and loved. “Damn it!” I said.
“What happened?” He slowed the car, checked the rearview.
“Nothing,” I said, waving my hand. “Sorry. It’s okay, don’t stop. I’ll tell you later. I don’t even know what I’m feeling.” I began to cry, which only made me angrier.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know.” I wiped away the few tears I’d shed. “Listen, can we go get a drink somewhere? Are the kids okay?”
“The kids are fine. Your mother’s there. And . . . well, surprise, my parents are too.”
I stared at him, open-mouthed. “When . . . ?”
“They didn’t tell me. They were on their way back from somewhere, and they were only fifty miles away. . . . They arrived just after your flight took off from Minnesota.”
I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes. “Pete. You know I love them. But so much is going on!”
“Let’s go somewhere and talk.”
“Somewhere close. I don’t know why I’m angry. I’m not angry. I really am not angry.”
THE CROWDED BAR WAS IN AN AIRPORT HOTEL, and many of the patrons had their carry-ons beside them. I had to squeeze past a large black overnighter to get into my seat. “Oh, sorry,” a young woman said, pulling it in closer to her.
“No problem.” I said this, though what I wanted to say was Move it!
Pete ordered wine at the bar and brought it back to the table. I said nothing until he reached over and rubbed my shoulder.
“What a mess!” I shook my head.
“Did something else happen?”
“You won’t believe this. Aunt Fran told me—” I stopped talking, aware that the young woman I squeezed past was listening intently. “I’ll tell you in a minute,” I said. And then, pointedly, “Maybe we should switch tables.”
With that, the young woman rose, put money down on the table, and stalked off.
Pete watched her go. “What was that all about?”
“She was eavesdropping.”
“Ah.”
“I hate it when people do that.”
He said nothing, but in his silence I could hear his all-too-correct accusation: You do it constantly.
“Anyway, Aunt Fran told me it was Caroline who attacked my mother, not the other way around.”
Pete sat back. “Wow. So what do you think?”
“At first, I was absolutely convinced that Fran was taken in by my mother in the same way Dad always was. But now I don’t know. I can’t think straight. I feel like I need to be doing something, and I have no idea what to do. I mean, I feel weird going home to see my mother, when I don’t know if she . . . I don’t know what to believe, Pete. I honestly don’t.”
“Maybe you just have to let things sit for a while. It’s not like you have to make any decisions about anything right away. Whoever did what, it happened a long time ago. Caroline’s said what she needed to say, and she’s getting help. Your mother’s okay for the time being. I think . . . well, I might as well tell you now, I think she wants to stay with us for a while. Lots of hints about how she feels glad to have company, how she can help with this and help with that.”
“Help with what?”
“Oh, babysitting—”
“We don’t need a babysitter. We finally don’t need one!”
“Shopping, she mentioned grocery shopping.”
“I like to pick out my own things.”
“Laura?”
“What!”
“It’s not my idea. She’s not my mother. You know?”
“I know that!” I stared at him. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m just mad. I want to go home and just have it be normal again. I don’t want her there. That’s the truth. And I miss my dad, and I haven’t even been able to take the time to mourn him.” I sighed. “I don’t know, I guess you’re right. There’s nothing to do now but let some time go by. Let’s just go home.”
In the car, with the radio off, the quiet and the darkness and the presence of Pete began to soothe me. “I’m not going back there for a while!”
“You don’t have to.” He took my hand. “So. You want to know my thing that happened today?”
“What?” I turned toward him, nearly giddy with relief.
ROSA, SUBBY, MY MOTHER, PETE, and I were seated at the kitchen table, and the kids were upstairs in their rooms. We were having coffee and the excellent pistachio biscotti that Rosa baked this afternoon, probably fifteen seconds after she set foot in the house. We were all in our pajamas, and despite the strain of everything that had been happening, I felt happy. It was as though I’d awakened from a bad dream, had left behind a pulling darkness to join these familiar faces in this most familiar of settings. Our voices overlapped as we talked; we laughed frequently. What was notable, of course, was my father’s absence, that persistent raw spot: my mother’s smile fading as she rubbed the familiar bump of bone on the outside of her wrist the way she used to rub the knuckles of his hand.
Rosa’s short gray hair was in pin curls, and she wore a black hairnet over them. She was talking about her father, how he used to stuff a sock and call it a cat. “He would hold it in his arms and pet it, Goooood kitty, goooood kitty, and then—MEOW!—he’d make it jump out of his arms. Oh, I’m telling you, we loved it. We used to laugh till we peed our pants.”
“Today, these kids need cyberspace to be entertained,” my mother said.
“They use it for their schoolwork too, though,” Rosa said. “It’s all right. They all find new things; every generation has its own new things.”
From upstairs, I heard Hannah calling me, so I excused myself and went up to her room. She had the phone pressed to her chest. “Can I babysit for the Pearsons Saturday night? Their regular sitter canceled.”
Hannah had never done this, though she did take a Red Cross course in babysitting. And the Pearsons lived just down the block and their children weren’t all that young—maybe five and seven. “Sure,” I told her.
Hannah held up a finger, asking me to wait, and said into the phone, “That will be fine. . . . Okay, seven o’clock. Thank you.”
She hung up and beamed at me. “My first job. I’ll get six dollars an hour!”
“That’s great!”
“So . . . what do I do?”
“Do for what?”
“To babysit!’
“Oh! Well, you know, first and foremost, just make sure they’re safe. That’s why people hire babysitters, to make sure their children are safe. You remember what it was like, having babysitters.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to be like them, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“They were boring. I’m going to be a fun one, like Mary Poppins.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s a noble goal.”
“Did you babysit a lot, Mom?”
“I did.” I went over to her bed, motioning for her to move so I could sit beside her. “I have to tell you, though, I was not one of the fun ones.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I guess I thought I had to be a tough boss.”
“Well, I’ll be the boss, but I’ll be a fun boss. Do
you think I could take some things over to show them?”
“What things?”
“I don’t know. Books. Maybe a game or two?”
Of course they would have their own. But I loved her enthusiasm. “I think that would be great.”
“Okay. So . . . would you close my door?”
Dismissed.
I went out into the hall and then stood for a while at the head of the stairs. I could hear my mother talking about my father, describing the way he used to make shadow puppets on the walls for us. How much we used to love that. How none of us would ever agree on what he was making, and he would never tell, so that all of us could be right.
THE NEXT MORNING, I WAS STANDING at the cutting table in my studio when Rosa appeared. “We’re going to take off in a little while.”
I put down my rotary cutter and started upstairs.
“Oh, no, keep working; I just wanted to sit with you for a while.”
“Good.” I slid a chair over to her and returned to the mat, to slicing off three-quarter-inch strips from a bright yellow cotton print.
“Well, it’s official: Subby is on the last hole of his belt. He’s going to have to get suspenders.”
I laughed. “That’s what you get for being such a good cook. Anyway, I like suspenders.”
“Oh, but he doesn’t!”
“Why not?”
“Because his Uncle Yaya wore suspenders and he was such a mess! His pants wouldn’t button anymore and his zipper was always a little bit open. Little bits of saliva always at the corners of his mouth. He had a banged-up hat he would never take off, and his shirts always had stains on them. He was the kind of man, seemed like flies were always buzzing around him. They weren’t, but it seemed like they were. And you know Subby, he likes to be so neat. Every day, with his hair cream and his cologne.”
“Well, he doesn’t have to look like his uncle just because he wears suspenders!”
“You know how it is. You have associations with things. But today I’m going to get him a nice pair of yellow suspenders; he’ll love them. I saw them in Brooks Brothers. He doesn’t know. I told him we had to go to the mall on the way out of town. He’ll wait in the RV for me; he takes naps while I shop.”