Bad Timing

by Betsy Berne

  •

  The call left me hollow. I headed directly to the sanctuary and took to my bed. My mother’s crusty veneer and shantytown tongue veiled untold compassion driven by extremely sensitive radar. You usually couldn’t tell, but she hurt easily. I knew because I was my mother’s daughter. I was also his daughter, complete with the scathing judgments based on impossible standards. It would have been a difficult combination to navigate with anywhere, but it was especially hard in this small town, this relentless town that seldom forgot or forgave.

  My mother’s radar had tracked a crisis in the making, and I wouldn’t have known how to begin to confirm it. The term married man would not have worked. And I doubted that “single mother” would go over too well either. I sprawled out on the bed, staring at the high pink leak-stained ceiling.

  I was one of the very limited number of women who remained pink freaks after the age of five. The sanctuary was pale pink and was filled with cheap street furniture that I’d accumulated over the years and painted white. It looked like the kind of quaint little room you’d find in a shack by the beach. In the sanctuary I could pretend I was at the beach—on a rainy day, that is, since the windows faced an airshaft and there were never more than a few weak rays of light streaming through at odd times of the day. There was a big metal bed my friend Sam had made for me. It was two inches too short, so the mattress tipped a little over the edge, and it was so heavy that I’d never be able to move it. There were photographs on the walls—several of my dead friends had been photographers, and I had a whole wall by my bed consisting of nothing but pictures by dead friends and pictures of dead friends. There were pictures by living photographer friends on the other walls.

  One of my older paintings hung on the wall opposite the bed. It was pink, too, a morbid dirty pink with a lot of scratchy tentacles surrounding a murky object in the center. Some said it resembled a heart with one or two aortas too many. Others found it disturbing in a grisly, visceral, or sexual way. Grisly sexual art was trendy these days, but not my kind: it had to be more obvious or ironic—so obvious that you’d look at it and think, I can’t be right, that’s too obvious, it must be over my head, but it would turn out that your first throwaway thought was usually right. I guess that’s where the irony came in. Anyway, whenever my neighbor ambled by the sanctuary, he’d cover his eyes and crack, “This room must make men just shrivel right up. You might want to consider some redecorating.” But I didn’t see it.

  I began to mull over my situation and then did everything in my power not to. My favorite form of avoidance was a nap, but I was not a successful napper. All the men I knew could go down at the drop of a hat, particularly the ethnics. Every time I saw a movie with Victor he’d be dead to the world at some point, and my neighbor could even drop off during an arduous dinner party. As for my musician brother, his day was one long nap, interrupted by spurts of work and phone calls. I, on the other hand, usually had to sedate myself with several over-the-counter sleep potions in order to attain a measly hour of escape.

  I swallowed and waited. I put the pillow over my head to simulate darkness, but I could still hear the Wall Street broker who had moved in upstairs. It sounded like she had purchased a new pair of boots, perhaps riding boots. I pulled the pillow around to cushion my ears and had difficulty breathing. I lay facedown for a similar, less suffocating effect. Then I curled into the fetal position. The fetal position made me sit back up. It was all wrong, both in concept and execution.

  I got up and settled into another prone position in the only other avoidance area in the loft: the shabby couch perched close to its jaunty mate, the TV. Another neighborly problem presented itself: The band downstairs had begun a rehearsal. At least they weren’t jazz musicians—just a group of failed generic musicians playing failed generic music. I started to drift—that is, until I remembered. This was no longer a plain shabby pink couch; it was the scene of the crime, a possibly more odious crime than I’d even suspected.

  In the end I gave in to ritual. Busy people had appointments, errands, nine-to-five lives, or a steady succession of drinks, dinners, and lunches to keep them distracted. We nonbusy people were a vanishing breed. I’d toyed with the busy life, but it had never really suited me. My mind was my business. The busy people imagined that I was lolling around the premises all day. They didn’t realize that the creative process involved working at all hours—because you never knew when you might hit your stride. There was no question that too many plans—even just making the plans—would disturb the process. Merely leaving the premises for a carton of half-and-half could disturb the process. Downtime was essential, but the downtime had to be filled, too; it was littered with bad magazines, half-finished books, and, most important, a few TV programs, preferably reruns, playing at salient times in the day. My favorite rerun was on at six, that hazardous time zone when day shifts into evening and the busy people shift into second gear, or third, or fourth.

  Between 6:09 and 6:18, depending on the first commercial’s appeal, the phone would usually ring. Today it was 6:13 and I was staring at the TV without registering.

  “Wow. Brandon should never wear shorts. He looks awful,” my brother said. “Do you think he and Kelly are going to break up?”

  I took a quick glance. “I’ve seen this one, and I know they’re going to,” I replied brusquely. “You know who she’s going to end up with, don’t you?”

  My brother feigned surprise. “Not Dylan!”

  “Yup.” I was smug. “Come on, you’ve seen this one.” My brother always pretended to be one of the busy people. I knew better.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen it—a hell of an episode. A fine acting ensemble.”

  “How about Dylan’s goatee?”

  “He looks like every asshole in this town—Donna’s looking good though, isn’t she? Are those tits for real?”

  I had to focus. My mind was pretty cluttered, what with the pink and brown lipstick, the pink and brown babies, and now Donna (who was wearing red lipstick and, I can tell you, it was all wrong) and her breasts. “I think I just read somewhere that they are. You know what? I think I also read she’s going out with the guy who’s not blond—”

  “Well, I just turned it on for a minute,” he broke in, and without a good-bye he started to hang up. Under everyday circumstances this would be acceptable; the call would have served its purpose—a brief exchange to reassure both of us that there was another one of us out there. But not today.

  “Wait, do you have to go?”

  “I have to practice. I’ve got that gig next week.”

  “Okay then.”

  “You sound weird,” he said. The family was not accustomed to choked whispers, and certainly not to audible tears. If you shed a few by accident in the old days, the brothers would move in close to make sure the few multiplied, so it was easier to stifle the initial shedding.

  “Well, I may be overreacting or crazy, but remember that guy?”

  “Oh, Jesus, I thought you were cool about that. You are crazy. I told you, just get over it—it was one fucking night, he’s never going to call, and it’s a dead end anyway. On the other hand, I could use a gig that pays—I hear he sometimes hires guys who can actually play on Sundays.”

  “No, no, no, I am over it, I swear. It’s just that I think I may be pregnant.”

  “Oh, Christ,” he said. “How could you be so stupid? Oh, never mind. Are you crying? Oh, Jesus. I didn’t mean it. Forget it. I’m sure you’re not pregnant—there’s no way. On the other hand, it’s probably just your luck. I had a feeling this was going to be trouble. Though I could use a new bass player. You never found out if he’s still playing, did you? Hey, look at what Donna’s wearing now. Tits or no tits, she looks terrible. Unbelievable.”

  “What’s she wearing? I turned it off.”

  “Oh, it’s too late. She changed. So why don’t you just take a test?”

  “I think it’s too soon.” I was still teary but relieved at having finally confessed to so
meone.

  “I hate to tell you, but it’s never too soon. You can take one of those tests the next day if you want. Didn’t you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t. Last time I had to wait. I guess that was a while ago.”

  “Well, go buy one and take it. Call me back and tell me what happens. What a drag. I’ll tell you one thing—from now on I’m wearing leather condoms, or maybe a steel girdle. What were those things the Roman soldiers wore when they went to battle?”

  •

  The drugstore was just around the corner, but in order to get there I had to run the gauntlet of three brand-new, not terribly sedate outdoor drinking establishments that dwarfed the three relatively sedate veteran outdoor eating establishments. No matter how surreptitiously I tried to slink by them, some acquaintance would notice me and call my name loud enough that a few other heads would turn to greet me, too. Whoever said this was a cold, unfriendly town has never visited my corner.

  Your average New York corner is entitled to be boisterous and unruly. But until now there had never been anything New York about my corner. My corner was the gateway to the enclave where wide forsaken streets were lined haphazardly with pockets of buildings and divided by haunted alleys. It anchored blocks of ethereal brownstones with parrot stores or Vietnamese souvenir shops on their ground floors, stern factory buildings fronting for swanky lofts inhabited by rich or famous people, misshapen factory buildings crammed with seedy lofts sheltering neighborhood relics like myself, and even a few Deco skyscrapers towering over the whole mess.

  Until recently, the neighborhood had held its own against repeated commercial assaults because it was guarded by a band of the uppity rich people who’d snatched it away from the relics like me. I wasn’t so crazy about these vigilantes, and I crowed silently when they lost a righteous battle. However, they had been a little easier to ignore than the hordes of louder and even more uppity young people who frequented the new drinking establishments.

  The owner of the new establishments was a stolid, goatlike hippie who stood on twenty-four-hour watch, like a crotchety farmer protecting his land, grinning and gloating in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the neighborhood relics. Some of the relics had caved. One painter I knew—a gray and grizzled potbellied art-world casualty—had laid claim to a stool at the far end of the bar at one of the establishments. The superintendent of my building was usually right next to him, leering. He bore an uncanny resemblance to the scurrilous super, Leroy, who inspired Rhoda Penmark to include him in her trio of Bad Seed murders. The bar was all windows, and my eyes locked with theirs every time I snuck around the corner.

  I stopped and looked both ways when I got downstairs. I saw the leering super and the grizzled potbellied painter planted on their stools. The goatlike hippie was crouched beside them further ingratiating himself, although it was hardly necessary. I took off, zigzagging through the riffraff, eyes straight ahead. I’d almost made it when I heard my name. It was my neighbor calling, his grand elegant self concealed, as usual, by a baggy, crumpled button-down oxford shirt that hung listlessly over baggy crumpled khakis. He was crossing the concrete eyesore in the middle of the street they called a park. Granted, it had a few benches and one or two trees, but mostly it was littered with trash and local bums looking to cash in on the riffraff en route to the establishments. My neighbor was moving swiftly. The neighborhood presented a larger obstacle for him, as I wasn’t the only relic who considered him a personal mainstay.

  “Hey, where are you going?” he said cheerfully. Then he saw my face and his voice became less cheerful. “Uh-oh, what now?”

  “Oh, never mind.”

  “Just tell me.” He motioned me over to one of the benches in the eyesore, and I sat down beside him. I preferred the eyesore to the outdoor establishments, but my neighbor didn’t. “I didn’t get out of Brooklyn to drink another lemonade on another rotting bench on a filthy slab of concrete,” he’d rage. My neighbor knew the direct route to my genetic guilt. So I must have looked pretty bad.

  “It may be nothing. I mean I hope it’s nothing,” I began.

  “Yeah?”

  “The imaginary love child may not be so imaginary. I’m going to the drugstore to get a test.”

  “You’re kidding!” His solemn eyes went big and bewildered, and his graceful hands began to flutter. “Why didn’t you tell me? Listen, I’ll go with you.”

  “No, no, no—I can’t even think about that now. I’m not sure I could go through with it—not at this stage of the game. This may be my last chance, and—”

  “Down, girl—I meant go with you to the drugstore.” He had to raise his voice and grab my arm to break into my rant.

  I wasn’t sure if my neighbor understood the gravity of my predicament. I’d emerged from the cult profamily, and while there was no need to replicate it, I wanted a piece of the action. At this juncture I was resigned to a small piece. I was willing to relent on the mate-and-kid package deal but not on the kid part. The path I’d chosen—or rather, the one that chose me, as I explained repeatedly to my mother—was not the path of a woman headed toward motherhood. It was an oblivious, obstinate path focused around the studio, a path I’d assumed I could control. I’d assumed the package-deal path was one that I could not control, it would just happen, sort of a luck-of-the-draw deal. But I no longer assumed anything. All I knew was that I might have had the whole thing backward. And now I knew I wanted the kid part of the package deal more than I had ever let myself know—sometimes you don’t know how much you want something until it happens, even if it doesn’t happen like clockwork, with all the essential ingredients. And now it was getting late. My neighbor might think I was making a last-ditch effort to run with the pack. I wasn’t. I’d already veered so far off the path that the pack was a murmur in the distance.

  I let my neighbor drag me to the drugstore, and I let him do the talking and make the purchase, and I let him block our way back home. The female members of the cult did not normally let. I had a feeling that if this saga continued to gain momentum, I was going to be doing a lot of letting.

  When we got home, I propped my neighbor up on the shabby couch while I did the test. The stick turned blue before I even left the bathroom; I simply pretended it hadn’t and kept right on going toward the couch. It was the last opportunity I’d have to exercise an avoidance tactic, and I was in shock, the kind of shock that hits you when a distant acquaintance calls at seven in the morning and tells you a dear friend has died. My neighbor’s hands were fluttering again, and his eyes were distinctly alarmed. He hoisted himself up to stagger over to the other couch, a street couch swathed in white sheets like a newborn. He lay down there, and I spread out on the shabby pink crime scene, and we both assumed staring positions.

  “Well,” he began. “Well, what do you think?”

  “I don’t know.” I covered my face with my hands, just in case. This predicament was a rude slap in the face, a cruel taunt: the dangling of a prize I had secretly planned to win. Now it was well within my reach and I might have to default. I had no qualms about motherhood—I’d mothered broods of childlike adults, and I was overqualified to mother the real thing. That wasn’t the problem. I couldn’t pretend that painting wasn’t an all-consuming passion, nor could I pretend that motherhood wouldn’t be an overriding passion—too much of my own mother was lodged deep inside me. “How can I keep it? I can’t even support myself—I mean, maybe if I gave up painting and wrote about lipstick full-time.” My voice drifted. Beauty writing might not even support a bohemian and a kid and a baby-sitter. On the other hand, I was moving rapidly out of motherhood range, not to mention the fact that pregnancy with a bum heart was a tenuous proposition and one that would get more tenuous with time. But a life without painting could provoke bitterness, and no kid deserves a bitter mother. On the other hand, if painting prevented motherhood, that could provoke bitterness, too. Bitterness could sneak up on you in this town, and you had to be alert and agile to dodge it.

&
nbsp; That wasn’t all. For me to foist a fatherless, not-so-privileged existence on an unsuspecting child seemed arrogant, presumptuous. I was not a movie star who could hire a staff of fake fathers, and I knew too many fatherless adults who were not quite right in the head or the heart—including the father of this potentially fatherless child. It would have been more modern to skim over the facilitator in these circumstances, but I was only modern on the surface. I flashed on him and his hidden fury and his package deal and the “something I’ve told very few people,” which had more than a little bearing on this, and I winced. I said as much to my neighbor, but I won’t pretend it was intelligible.

  “Wait a minute, slow down. Screw him. You don’t have to tell him. I promise you, I know his type—I guarantee he’d say you couldn’t prove it was his and hang up. And screw the money—you’d figure it out—hey, what should we call it? Do you really want to do this?”

  “I wish I didn’t.”

  “I could go with you, I mean if you decide . . .” He was always going with me. He went with me to the last-straw funeral and to the memorial six months later, and he didn’t even know Jack. Who in this town needs an extra funeral and an extra memorial? He went with me to put the cat to sleep, and believe me, he loathed and feared that damn cat. Eventually, my neighbor and I hit our stride lying on the couches. He’d suggest, I’d rail against. He’d go with the opposite tack, I’d rail more stridently. We didn’t get very far.

  I had to lie down again after he left. This going-against-the-grain business was debilitating. I blamed my erratic behavior on hormones. I’d always looked forward to blaming everything on pregnancy hormones. Just like everyone else. Exactly when did they kick in?

  C H A P T E R

  4

  LOOKING OUT, I could see the rain coming down from a sky glazed pale blue by the sun still shining. Tropical rains in the city always feel slightly sinister, but it was more likely that the sinister sensation I was feeling came from sitting alone in a dark deserted bar at four o’clock in the afternoon. The bar was tucked in a far corner of the neighborhood just north of mine. It used to be a frumpy art neighborhood. Now it was a gaudy shopping district and there wasn’t a frump in the vicinity. Only a few holdout galleries were left, galleries that had transformed themselves into boutiques in order to survive, and the neighborhood was beginning to look like a slightly more upscale version of Bleecker Street. The dark deserted bar was one of the original courtly neighborhood bars and remained an institution—although remaining an institution was a fickle business in this town. There were years when it had to pose as a swinging bar to attract swingers from other parts of town, but it never quite lost its dignity. At four o’clock it was not swinging. No, it was four-fifteen.