“The movie?” I ask.
“No. The date?” he deadpans.
“So far,” I say, the fluttery feeling returning to my stomach, “I think it’s going pretty good.”
18
marian
“Well, well, well! She’s alive!” my mother exclaims, her version of a humorous guilt trip, when she finally tracks me down at work. “I was about to have my people call your people…”
“Very funny,” I say, putting her on speaker so I can stretch my stiff back and shoulders.
“But that wouldn’t work. Because I don’t have people,” she says, laughing.
“Ha. You do too have people,” I say, referring to her gardener, handyman, pool guy, dog sitter, and longtime housekeeper Martha.
“So how are you, honey? I’ve been worried about you,” my mom says.
“I’m fine,” I say, taking her off speaker. I catch her up to speed on work and the drama surrounding Angela. Namely, that she announced a “Zen-like indefinite time-out” in Uruguay to “clear her mind and get over a betrayal” two days before tabloid photos surfaced, suggesting anything other than a soul-searching getaway. In one series of shots taken at a beach bonfire at the chic resort Estancia Vik, Angela is topless, getting her groove on with a bronzed Brazilian soccer star known throughout South America and much of the world for his womanizing, boozing, and prolific yellow cards.
“Is that all?” she says. “Anything else going on with you?”
I feel myself tense, thinking of Kirby, my relationship with Peter, and most of all, Conrad. “I don’t know, Mom,” I say. “Things aren’t so good, actually.”
“What’s going on?” she asks.
When I can’t speak, she says, “Marian? Do you want me to fly out and come for dinner? I’m due for a little shopping. Maybe a show,” she says. “Your father could use a little break, too.”
“No. Don’t bring Dad,” I say so quickly that I give myself away.
Sure enough, she asks, “Honey. Is this about … what happened?”
It is the way we talk about Kirby on the rare occasions we bring her up at all, making veiled, wistful references, as if each of us wants to protect the other from more pain. I think of Peter’s accusations—that I want things to be perfect and tidy—and suddenly see the truth in his charge, realizing exactly where I get it.
“Yes,” I whisper, ashamed that it has taken me three weeks to tell my own mother that my daughter came back.
She asks no follow-up questions, just says, “I’ll check on flights right this minute and be there tonight.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I say, hanging up the phone, feeling that we’ve just come full circle, back to that one, hot summer. And that once again, I really need my mother.
* * *
Later that evening, shortly after my mom has landed at LaGuardia, I run into Peter on the street outside of our building, ducking into a black Town Car. He catches me out of the corner of his eye and does a double take, before leaning out of the car and giving me a small, noncommittal wave.
I bite my lip and wave back, then turn in the other direction.
When I hear him yell my name, I turn and survey him as coolly as possible, then take the few steps over to him.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hey,” I say.
He glances up at the ominously dark sky. “It’s about to storm.”
“Yeah. Maybe it will cool things off a little,” I say, thinking that this is what we’ve come to—chitchat about the weather.
“You headed home?” he asks.
“No. I’m going to dinner,” I say.
He raises his eyebrows. “A date? Already?”
“Yeah. With my mom.”
A big fan of my mother’s, his face brightens. “Well, tell her I said hello.”
“Will do,” I say, staring at his emerald green tie and matching pocket square. I can feel myself stalling as I ask, “So where’re you off to?”
“JFK,” he says. “I’m on the nine o’clock to L.A.”
“Business or pleasure?” I ask with a careful measure of sarcasm.
“C’mon. What do you think?” he asks.
I shrug as if to say I have no idea what’s going on in his life. He could be headed to the West Coast to go on a date with some moronic actress for all I know. Perhaps he’s decided that if he’s going to have to deal with all of my drama, he might as well be with a really hot twenty-five-year-old who doesn’t want to have a baby. Who hasn’t had a baby. I feel a wave of irrational jealousy commingled with sadness and anger and bitter disappointment.
“No. No pleasure these days. I’m just headed out to screen pilots and work on the final lineup,” he says.
“So? Are we safe?” I ask.
He looks confused and then says, “Oh, right. I thought you meant us. You mean your show?”
“Yeah. Is it safe?”
I ask the question even though I’m not really worried about making the lineup, but he shrugs helplessly, as if he works in the mailroom rather than running the entire network, and says, “Do we know the status on Rivers?”
“No,” I say, resisting the urge to tell him that I don’t know the status of much of anything these days. “Why? Does the show hinge on her?”
He grimaces and I feel a jolt of panic that, in addition to my relationship, my show and career could be in peril, too. That we could be talking about more than just a changed time slot with dumbed-down story lines.
“Are you serious?” I say.
“The advertisers aren’t happy about the development.”
Desperation wells in my throat but I try to calm myself down, plead my best case to my boss. “We’re an ensemble cast. We still have Damian and Carrie … and they have half a million Twitter followers between them. They’ve doubled their followers since this story broke. Tripled it, I bet.”
“Marian. Relax.”
“No, Peter. I can’t relax. Not until you tell me we’re safe. I mean, you have to have faith here … We’ll be fine. Even without her. I mean, if The Office can stay on the air without Carell, then we can stay afloat without some C-list psycho.”
“You’re not exactly making your case by calling your leading lady—”
“It’s not about the actors, though, Peter. That’s the thing. It’s about the writing.”
He smiles, and for a second I think he’s mocking me, but then I realize it’s a look of fondness—the way he used to look at me. That he admires my tenacity. I realize he hasn’t called me “Champ” in a long time.
“Keep us on the schedule, Peter. Convince your staff that we will hold our audience. I know we will. You know that, right?”
Before he can answer, the skies suddenly open and a downpour begins to pound the sidewalks. Fortunately the overhang on the building keeps me mostly dry, but I still curse under my breath, realizing that I don’t have an umbrella and that it will be virtually impossible to get a cab. Especially at this hour. Peter gives me a sympathetic look, slides over, and pats the seat next to him.
“C’mon. Get in. I’ll give you a lift.”
I hesitate, doing my best to resist him. “You’ll miss your flight,” I say.
“Where’s your dinner?”
“The Modern. It’s out of the way.”
“It’s only four blocks out of the way,” he says. “Come on. Don’t be stubborn. Get in.”
I climb in and close the door, then cross my legs and angle my body toward the window, away from him.
“Let’s drop the lady off on Fifty-third between Fifth and Sixth,” he tells his driver as rain pelts our car, the swish of the windshield wipers punctuating our silence. He finally clears his throat and reaches out to touch my hand, more in the way of a brother or close friend than a boyfriend or even an ex-boyfriend. “I’m going to do everything I can,” he says.
“Well, then. I guess I shouldn’t worry,” I say pointedly. “You are the head of the network, after all. And as the head of the network, I know you’ll loo
k at the big picture.”
“Of course,” he says, as we fall silent again. Despite heavy traffic, we arrive at the restaurant a moment later—none too soon as far as I’m concerned.
“Thanks for the ride,” I say curtly. “And the talk. I appreciate your honesty.”
“C’mon,” he pleads.
“What?” I snap.
I wait for him to speak but instead he shakes his head, and looks away, as if he knows he’s going to cancel my show or our relationship. Maybe both.
“Bye for now,” he finally says. “I’ll call you the second I know anything.”
“Fine,” I say. Then I get out of the car, slam the door, and run through the rain toward my mother.
* * *
When I reach the end of the runwaylike tunnel entrance to the restaurant, I spot my mom in a red, double-breasted trench, her Goyard roller bag, which she recently boasted about “stealing” on eBay, at her feet.
“Perfect timing,” she says, rushing toward me. We hug one beat longer than our usual hug hello before she kisses me on the cheek, then stares intently into my eyes. “It’s so good to see you, honey.”
“You, too,” I say, now positive that she knows what this is about.
She shows her usual restraint, though, and says, “You look good. Really good. Did you change your hair?”
“I went a little lighter,” I say, reaching up to flip a section of my hair. “You know—for summer.”
She smiles and says she needs to do something to hers, maybe while she’s here.
“When’s your return flight?” I ask.
“Oh—I don’t know. I just clicked something on the computer. I think I leave Friday afternoon … I’ll have to check.”
“I can try to make you an appointment with Dana,” I say, referring to my longtime stylist at Louis Licari.
“That would be great,” she says as we move into the restaurant, checking our coats and my mother’s bag with an auburn-haired maître d’ who would make a fine Angela Rivers replacement.
Then, without the ado characterized by lesser restaurants, we are instantly and silently ushered into the narrow, vaulted, gleaming white dining room to Peter’s usual two-top overlooking the sculpture garden. It occurs to me that this would be another casualty of my life without him—I won’t be able to get the best table at the best restaurants at a moment’s notice.
After we are seated, my mother glances around the room, then out the window into the garden, gasping her approval. “What a gorgeous space. Just stunning … Now is this the same fellow who did Union Square Café and Gramercy Tavern?” she asks, always in the know about any of the best hotels or restaurants in Manhattan (along with Paris, London, and L.A., for that matter).
I nod and say, “Yes. Danny Meyer. He also did Eleven Madison … And the Shake Shack.”
“And the chef?” she says, eyeing the enormous, exquisite, and very exotic pink and purple floral arrangements in the center of the room.
“Gabriel Kreuther. Classically trained. From Alsace originally. Most recently from the Ritz on Central Park South. Marc Aumont is his pastry chef,” I spew, realizing that my mother and Peter have culinary snobbishness in common—that I probably wouldn’t have all of this memorized if not for him.
We turn our attention to the menus, silently reviewing the four-course, prix fixe menu, the selection itself a near religious experience for my mom. After some deliberation, we order a Sonoma sauvignon blanc and almost identical meals, both of us going with the asparagus soup, the scallops, and the cod until she switches at the last second to the lobster. For dessert, we go with the strawberry-rhubarb vacherin.
While we wait for our wine, I stall, avoiding the woolly mammoth in the room, and instead catch her up to speed with Angela and my most recent conversation with Peter. As always, she is fiercely and satisfyingly loyal, saying all the right things about the show, how strong the writing is, how little we need Angela, and that the network would be crazily shortsighted to cancel us. “You’re just too good,” she says.
“Thanks, Mom,” I say. “Unfortunately, great shows get canceled all the time.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” she says, rattling off a few of her favorites, some of them from over a decade ago. “And the horrid ones just chug right along. Goodness, I wish more people had taste.”
I smile, thinking this could sum up her major complaint in life, as our waiter brings our wine, uncorks it, and gives me the assignment that is usually Peter’s. I swirl, taste, smile and nod, before staring, mesmerized by the waiter’s expert pouring, both glasses filled to the exact millimeter.
When we are alone again, my mother picks up her glass, raises it and says, “To mothers and daughters.”
I steady my hands and clink my glass against hers. Then we sip from our glasses and lower them in unison.
“So,” I say, when I know I can’t put it off another moment. “I think you know what’s going on, don’t you?”
“I have an idea, yes.”
“She found me,” I confirm.
“Oh, dear,” she says, looking tragic. “Tell me everything.”
And so I do, interweaving all the parts about Peter, beginning with the night I asked about marriage and she knocked on the door, and ending with my ride over to the restaurant this evening. “She is a wonderful girl,” I say, thinking about her letter and the clothes and how real she is. “And I think we might actually develop a real relationship. I’m not sure what that will look like, exactly, but we’ve been talking … and it feels good.”
I wait for her to say something—anything—about her flesh and blood, but instead she says, “Just be careful.”
“Be careful?” I say, bristling that this is her first reaction. Yet deep down, I can’t really blame her when I know I felt much the same way during her entire visit.
“Be careful about opening doors you really don’t want opened. Peter may be supportive in theory … but does he really want a complication like this? You’ve worked hard for this life. Really hard.”
I know she is talking more about Conrad than Kirby, and I can’t disagree that finding him might complicate things. Yet I also find myself wondering what she means by “this life.” And whether hard work brought me to this point—or just a whole lot of smoke and mirrors.
* * *
Later that night, I am sitting on the guest room bed where Kirby slept, watching my mother unpack her suitcase. She packed lightly for her, likely only because she didn’t have time to throw more into her bag. After hanging her usual St. John knit ensembles in the closet, she pulls out a long floral dress that could only be described as a muumuu.
“What do you think of this?” she asks, holding it up in front of her.
I make a face and say, “It’s okay … But it doesn’t look like you. At all.”
She laughs. “Believe it or not, I kind of like it. Your father bought it for me.”
“Since when does Dad buy clothes for you?” I say. “I wouldn’t even dare that one.”
“Since lately. He’s trying to be romantic, giving me gifts for no reason. Just to be sweet.”
I smile, remembering the beret from Peter, then ask her why Dad’s trying so hard.
“We had a rough patch,” she says.
“When?” I say. This is news to me. My parents have always seemed to get along well, and I have very few childhood memories of them arguing.
“Oh, I don’t know. Here and there. Little bumps. Bigger ones … But that’s how relationships are. They go in cycles. They require so much effort and patience and, God, vigilance. Maybe you and Peter should go to counseling. Maybe it will help build back the trust. It’s all about vigilance … and communication.”
“So … you agree we need to tell Dad? About Kirby?”
A funny look crosses her face before she busies herself with the remaining contents of her suitcase.
I wait for her reply, but get only nervous humming as she turns to take her toiletries to the bathroom. “Mom? Di
d you hear the question?” I say, sensing an unmistakable change of mood when she returns to my room.
“Honey…” she begins, a slight tremor in her voice making me suddenly worry that he has cancer or some other serious illness. “Your father…” she begins, then stops, takes a deep breath and slowly exhales before continuing. “Your father already knows.”
“You mean—you called him? Tonight?” I say, thinking that she might have phoned him between our entrée and dessert when she went to the ladies’ room.
“No,” she says with a grimace.
“Since when?” I demand, trying to control my emotions—a mix of shock, embarrassment, and betrayal.
“Since … pretty much the beginning,” she says.
I stare at her, then walk out of the room.
Minutes later, she finds me in the darkened kitchen, sits on the stool next to mine, and launches into her explanation. She says that it was just too hard. That she could have kept the abortion a secret but not a pregnancy and birth. Beyond that, and more important, she believed telling him was the right thing to do. I was technically an adult, but still very much his little girl, and he had the right to know what was happening with his daughter. His only child.
I reluctantly accept this. After all, it is a thought that has crossed my mind since Kirby’s visit. The part I can’t accept, I tell her, is that she never told me he knew. That they didn’t just come clean. That they were the ones with the secret—and that I was the one in the dark. For all these years. It occurs to me that I don’t even know what he thinks about everything, how he felt about my decision to give her away. I ask my mother now as I look down at her hands, wondering when they changed into the hands of an older woman.
She takes a deep breath and then says, “Well, for starters, your father was angry that I would take you to have an abortion without talking to him first. He very much wanted you to have the baby.”
“He did?” I say, my throat tightening. I am relieved to hear this, but also saddened, thinking that he never got to hold Kirby or tell her good-bye. If my mother had only told me the truth, he could have been there with us.
“You know he’s against abortion. And he thinks you would have lived to regret that choice.”