Ordinary Life: Stories

by Elizabeth Berg

  “Can I call you back?” I asked. “I need to grate the Parmesan. If I do it on the phone everything gets too shaky.”

  “Just say yes,” he said. “Say you’ll meet her and tell her you’re my girlfriend.”

  “Your girlfriend! I am a married woman—with a child. She’ll see that right away.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, don’t wear your ring!”

  “Listen, Laurence. A woman can just tell if another woman has children. You get these changes. It’s like you can’t make good gravy until you have children, and then suddenly you can.”

  “I can make good gravy,” Laurence said, defensively.

  “Not mother kind,” I said. “You make fancy wine kind. You can’t make mother kind. Anyway, what I mean is that your mother will sense right away that I have a kid, and then she’ll know you’re lying.”

  “Just because you have a child doesn’t mean I’m lying! Why can’t you be a single-mother girlfriend?”

  “And what happened to my husband?”

  “I don’t know. Left you for another man.”

  “I’m sure.” I stretched out the phone cord to look at myself in the glass door of the oven.

  “Oh, come on. Please do it?”

  I stared at the cheese and the grater. I wanted to get going. “For God’s sake, Laurence, don’t be so guilty all the time. You didn’t make your mother have a stroke! You came out to her over ten years ago! Why don’t you just think about this some more? Believe me, it’s not a good idea. Too Lucy-and-Ethel.”

  “I can’t believe you’re letting me down on this. I’ve got nobody else I can ask! Please do it.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Did you dream that you should do this or something?”

  “Yes! Well, sort of. A daydream.”

  “They don’t count.”

  “I know. But I did have a night dream that I gave her a gift. And then she died. Peacefully.” There was a pause and then he added desperately, “I’m her only child.”

  “Oh, all right!”

  “Great! I’ll be there at seven. Fifteen minutes, that’s all we’ll be there. I promise. Remember not to wear your ring.”

  After dinner, my daughter, who thought Laurence’s idea was terrific, who was acting like I’d been chosen to be on television, wanted to help me pick out something to wear. She thought I should look sexy. But then, she was twelve and temporarily tasteless. “You don’t wear something sexy to meet your boyfriend’s mother,” I told her. “Especially when she’s in the hospital. Remember that when you start dating.”

  “Laurence is trying to convince her that he likes women, right?” Her excitement was barely containable. I thought, Why don’t you pretend to be his girlfriend if you think this is such a swell idea?

  “Right.”

  She blew a huge orange bubble and then popped it. “So you should look sexy.”

  This is really too adult for her, I thought. Why isn’t she in her room making a doll walk around and talking for her? Why doesn’t she color anymore? Still, maybe she was right. I called down for advice to my husband, who was sitting in his armchair sighing over the newspaper. “How do I look sexiest?” I asked.

  “T-shirt, no bra—why?” he yelled. There was a moment of silence, and then he asked, “Is Lynie with you?”

  “Yes,” she yelled back, “and I heard you. ‘T-shirt, no bra.’ That’s disgusting.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “I can’t wear a T-shirt anyway. Let’s go for the nice girl look.” I held up a pink dress with a tiny white collar. “How’s this?”

  “Where’d you get that?” she asked. “It’s pretty.”

  “From Grandma. She always wants me to wear stuff like this.” I looked at myself when I was dressed. Not too bad. Conservative, but not Republican. The image of a woman who might still pray. I realized suddenly how much I didn’t want to do this. I sat on the bed, frowning. Lyn sat beside me.

  “All ready?”

  I’m nervous.”

  “Why? Laurence is your best friend.”

  “I know, but I don’t want to meet his stupid mother and pretend I’m his girlfriend. This is too much to ask!”

  “What about that time he sat for me when you and Daddy went away for the whole weekend?”

  “He’s forgotten all about that.”

  “Well, he still did it.”

  A car outside honked three times. “There he is,” I said. Lyn ran down to meet him. She was crazy about Laurence. He called himself her fairy godfather. When she was born, he’d visited me in the hospital and brought her a Judy Garland tape. She listened to it every night, lay in her crib wide eyed and content, sucking her thumb to “The Man That Got Away.” Their tastes had been aligned ever since. Laurence took her to museums, to concerts, even out to dinner. He came into the living room and hugged her, then waved to John. “How’s it going?” he asked in the huskier-than-usual voice he reserved for my husband and members of the police force.

  “Okay, Laurence, and you?”

  “Okay.” This was the usual length and caliber of their conversations. They didn’t understand each other, but they tolerated each other with an excruciating kind of courtesy. When Laurence came to a family dinner, everyone was exhausted after an hour.

  “You look nice,” I told him when we got into the car. He was wearing his gray linen blazer and an imported cotton striped shirt, open at his tanned neck.

  He waved my compliment away. “I’m a nervous wreck. I just thought maybe she’d feel better if she believed I’d have five Catholic children after she died. That’s how many she and my father figured they’d have. But then he went and died on her.”

  “What? I have to be Catholic, too?”

  “No, just raise our five kids to be.”

  “What makes you think she’s going to die, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. She looks bad. Got all this junk on her.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “They like to play with all their equipment.”

  “I don’t think she’s going to make it,” he said. I looked over at his serious profile and didn’t say anything. I thought, Maybe this is a good idea.

  The hospital room was a private. There were bouquets lined up on the windowsill and two cards, both featuring monster-type nurses, taped to the wall. There was a commode in the corner, covered by a blanket that served only to accentuate its presence. Laurence’s mother was sitting up in bed watching television. When she saw us, she gasped and shut it off.

  Laurence hugged her and said, “Hi, Ma. Look who I brought to meet you.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Davis,” I said, and shook her hand.

  “Oh, please … Maureen.” She gave me a discrete once-over. I actually felt myself holding in my stomach. “It is such a pleasure to meet you, Susan. Laurence told me he’d met a very nice woman. How many children do you have?”

  I looked at Laurence triumphantly, then said, “One.”

  “Uh-huh. Boy?”

  “No, a girl. Her name is Lyn—she’s twelve.”

  She smiled, “So. Larry tells me you’re getting married soon.” She straightened the transparent green tubing delivering oxygen through her nose.

  I stared at Laurence while I said, “Oh, did he tell you that?” He stared back, his eyes wide and pleading. “Well, yes … some happy day,” I said.

  “When?”

  “When?” I laughed a little. “Well, you know … we’re sort of in the planning phase.”

  She took my hand and patted it. Then she looked over at Laurence, who had found something mesmerizing out the window. She leaned toward me, whispered, “I knew he never meant it. I knew he only had to find the right girl.” There was a small clicking sound when she talked—loose dentures, I imagined. She had nice eyes, blue and clear, and curly white hair. I thought she looked fine. I didn’t see a thing wrong with her. Then I wondered if something were hidden by the covers and felt guilty. She was looking at me expectantly.

  “Yes, we’re … very happy. V
ery excited,” I said.

  “Larry is a wonderful boy.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Very sensitive.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  She sighed, let go of my hand. “Of course, I hate for you to meet me under circumstances such as these! When I get home, you must come to dinner.”

  “Well, I’d … love to.”

  She turned toward Laurence. “Will you bring her to dinner next weekend?”

  He turned around, and there was, I noted with satisfaction, a residual blush on his face. “Ma, you don’t know when you’re going home.”

  “Sure I do. In two days.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, Dr. Abrahms told me today. It was a very small stroke, Larry—I’m fine. I was very lucky. I just have to take this medicine—to thin my blood, you know. I’m going home Friday.”

  “Well” He looked at me. “Isn’t that great news! I wasn’t expecting that!”

  She chuckled. “He always underestimates me. He worries too much. He’s very sensitive.”

  “Oh, I know.” I thought, I’m going to kill him.

  “Ma, you must be tired. I just wanted you to meet Susan, say hello. We can talk more later.”

  She nodded. “Young lovers! You two go right ahead. I’m so glad to meet you, Susan.” She looked at me significantly. “Me too,” I said.

  Laurence kissed her. We started to leave the room and she called me over and asked in a low, conspiratorial tone, “Do you like roast beef, honey?”

  “Yes, I do,” I said. “Roast beef is just fine.” I was speaking in a low voice too, although I had no idea why.

  “I could roast a chicken, too.”

  “Either one. But you go ahead and just rest, now.”

  “Larry loves apple pie,” she whispered. “Do you?”

  “Oh yes, who doesn’t?” I raised my voice. “Well, it was very nice meeting you.”

  “Okay, dear. Before you go, hand me my phone, will you? I’m going to call my sister. Wait till she hears that I’ve just met my future daughter-in-law!” I handed her the phone and she waved gaily to me as we left.

  In the hall, I squeezed Laurence’s arm and said between my teeth, “I thought she was on her deathbed!”

  He whispered back, “Oh fine, wish my mother the worst!”

  “You know what I mean! Now what? I’m not going to her house for roast beef and apple pie, I’ll tell you that.”

  “I know!”

  “Well, what are you going to say? That we broke up on the elevator?” As if on cue, the elevator arrived. We stepped in and I said, “I’ve had it. I want to break up. We’re through.”

  The doors closed. Laurence stared straight ahead and said sadly, “Finished. And so soon!”

  Back in the car, I punched him on the arm. “She’s not even sick! She looks better than both of us.”

  He looked at himself in the rearview mirror. “Do I have those bags under my eyes?”

  I imitated him in a nasty, whiny voice. “Do I have those bags under my eyes?”

  “All right, I’m sorry!” he said. “She looked much worse yesterday!”

  “Oh, never mind. I got to get out of the house, anyway. Let’s go eat. Want some pie?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, let’s go get some.”

  “Okay.”

  At our favorite downtown diner after two slices each of banana cream, I said, “I can’t believe she bought all that!”

  “Oh, it’s because she never believed me when I told her the truth. She’s just been waiting for this. Now she’s happy.”

  “But what about you? Look what you’ve done! She’ll probably live to be a hundred and be asking you every day about your upcoming wedding. Why did you do this, Laurence, seriously? Did you really think she was going to die?”

  He fingered his coffee cup. “I don’t know, maybe.”

  “I think it was a subconscious desire on your part. I think you wanted to think about being married to me, ’cause for a woman, I’m pretty swell.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  I stopped my cup at midpoint. “Really?”

  “Maybe we should have an affair.”

  “Oh, stop.”

  “Maybe we should,” he said. “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it.”

  “Only when I first met you, five hundred years ago, and I didn’t know you were gay.” I remembered meeting Laurence for the first time in our acting class in college, admiring his wonderful looks, his sense of humor. He’d told me soon after that, “Look, I think I should tell you something. I’m not interested in women … that way.”

  “Well, I know!” I’d said. “I know that!” But I hadn’t. And I was disappointed. I’d been thinking, Oh boy, a man with clean nails who loves theater and books, a man who’s emotionally available. But then we became good friends and I thought, Well, this is better anyway. Now we won’t get sick of each other. And we didn’t.

  “You’ve never thought of it since then?” he asked.

  “No! Have you?”

  “Oh, sometimes. Sometimes when things are going badly with someone, I think, Maybe it would be easier to be more of a majority type. You know, pull the Saab into the garage each night, hug the kids, eat supper, and watch television with the wife.”

  “God, you make it sound so boring.”

  “Well, isn’t that pretty much what you do?”

  “Yes. And it is boring. But it’s nice, too. I don’t know—sometimes you think you’re going to scream with the sameness of it all, with the unending chorus, with having to see everyone at their worst, and vice versa. But you always have a date for the prom. You don’t have to eat alone. And then every once in a while John will sort of collapse onto me and say how much he loves me and hold real still and I’ll look out over the top of his head and think, Yes, well, this is all right. And I love Lyn so much! It’s a different kind of dimension in love, kids. Sometimes I really feel sorry for you, that you won’t ever know that kind of love. Do you feel bad about missing it?”

  “I see Lyn a lot. She feels like my kid.”

  “No, it’s different when they’re really yours.”

  “That’s what everybody says. I guess I am sorry I won’t have that. But we all have major regrets about things we’ve missed. I’m sure you do too. Don’t you?”

  I thought for a while and then said, “I’m sorry I didn’t take acid and explore the sewers with these friends of mine in college.”

  “Who, Ron Shenkman and those guys?”

  “Yeah, they came to get me to go with them one night. They were these really huge pipes. They said it was … well, what they said was that it was far out. Remember? ‘Far fuckin’ out, man.’ ”

  “I didn’t like those guys.”

  “Oh, they were all right. They were fun!”

  “Exploring the sewers on acid. Really a compelling idea. This is your major life regret.”

  “You had to know them. I did take acid with them once. It was at Ron’s house. I really liked looking at his dog, at the plants in his house. They seemed filled with a kind of primordial knowledge; they seemed like the answer. I looked down into a flower on one plant, and it was so complex and beautiful and I kept saying, ‘See? It’s all right here.’ And then I remember I went outside. It was really dark, and I wasn’t afraid at all, which is really unusual for me. I looked up in the sky and all the stars seemed connected by these white lines, like constellation maps, and I thought, Aha, that’s how those guys came up with those things! They ate some LSD and then forty-five minutes later, they were saying, ‘Hey, look! Do you see a winged horse up there? How about a bull? Oh wow—he has a red eye! See that? Far fuckin’ out, man! Psychedelic!”

  Laurence smiled. “Where did twenty years go?”

  “I don’t know. Want to go?”

  “Yeah. Let’s leave the waitress a big tip. She had a hanky sticking out of her breast pocket.”

  We drove in silence for a while. Then Laure
nce said, “Well, what do we owe our parents? I just wanted the rest of my mother’s life to be peaceful.”

  “Oh, maybe I should go to dinner with you, and be really obnoxious—talk with food in my mouth, bang on the table with my spoon while I make obscure political points–and then she’d be happy for you to get rid of me.”

  “That would only make you fit right in. She’d probably give you some of her best Tupperware at the end of the evening—a little starter set to officially welcome you into the family.” He sighed, pulled the car over to the side of the road. “I’m depressed. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  I touched his arm. “Well … Laurence. What is it?”

  He leaned back, stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know! I feel like this voice is saying, ‘Lauuurrrreeence! It’s ten o’cllloooock. Do you know where you are?’ Is this a midlife crisis?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Want to get out? Walk a little?”

  “Sure.” We went into the woods by the side of the road. Laurence looked over at me. “It’s really dark out here. Are you scared?”

  “Nah.”

  “I’m scared,” he said.

  “I know. I’ll help you if I can.”

  “I don’t know what I need.”

  I sat down on the low branch of a tree, and Laurence sat beside me. I said, “You know, I think when you face the prospect of losing a parent, all kinds of things get shaken up. Maybe you have to sort of redefine yourself, only this time on your own terms.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” He stood and looked down at me. “For a boring suburban housewife, you’re pretty smart. And you are so beautiful. Still.”

  “Laurence.” I felt my heart rate quicken, and I found it profoundly confusing. I laughed, and it was too loud. Then I cleared my throat.

  “You’re nervous!”

  “Well, yeah, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Because I would like to kiss you.”

  “Laurence, I think you’re taking this whole thing too seriously. I mean, you don’t have to live up to your mother’s expectations, even if she is dying. And by the way, she’s not. She’s getting ready to make a roast beef.”