by Anna Monardo
“Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to your teeth. You’re not sucking the thumb again, are you? You just got your braces off.”
Chagrined as always when caught thumb-sucking, Natassia changed the subject. “I think that last recording was the sharper one, don’t you?” In a rushed, businesslike manner, she folded sheets of tissue paper—contrasting shades of deep blue and light blue—and interlaid them in a box that was the perfect size to hold the tape. “Oh, yeah, wait.” Natassia jumped up and left the room.
“Don’t you ignore me. Come back here.” Mary stood and followed Natassia, who was scurrying down the hallway.
“I need scissors,” Natassia called over her shoulder. “They’re in my room.”
“Shit.” Mary’s cigarette was dripping ash onto the Persian carpet. “I want to know,” she called, using her hand as an ashtray and making her way down the dark front hallway, “what you were trying to steal from that store.”
“I was not stealing.” In the bedroom, Natassia was pawing through a desk drawer. Mary always forgot, until they were both standing, how much her daughter towered over her.
Mary’s fingers ringed Natassia’s arm tightly. “What did you take? Tell me. What?”
“Ow-w-w-w! You’re hurting me. I didn’t take anything. I was looking, that’s all.”
“For what? Tell me.”
Natassia sighed, as if she were the adult tolerating the kid, and sat down on the edge of her desk so they were eye-level with each other. “He’s really been wanting a new leather wallet, like a really, really skinny little one?”
“Natassia.” Mary’s grip tightened again.
“I wasn’t trying to leave with the wallet, I really wasn’t. I was just walking around with it in my back pocket, you know? And all we were doing was, like, looking for a mirror to see if it showed through my jeans pocket?” Lately Natassia’s voice had started doing that Valley Girl thing of turning everything she knew to be a fact into a question; this happened especially when she talked about her boyfriend. “He’s been trying really hard to find a money holder that doesn’t show through his pants pocket?” Mary let go of Natassia and felt nauseous. He’s vain, Mary thought, can’t the kid see how vain?
Natassia turned back to her desk drawer. “Oh, great, here’s the scissors,” and she rushed out toward the living room.
Mary, quick, turned and grabbed a handful of nightgown and held on tight as she followed Natassia through the hallway to the living room. “Then why did the store people think you were stealing? Did you explain to them what you were doing?”
“Hand me that Scotch tape, please.” Natassia was oh-so-carefully trimming the edges of the tissue paper so that her recording was nestled perfectly within the little box. “They simply wouldn’t listen to us, Mom. We tried to tell them.”
“Who’s us? Who were you with?” Mary stubbed out her cigarette, wiped her ash-stained hand on her jeans.
“Carey and Mariah.”
“I’m calling their parents.” Mary jumped over the back of the sofa and onto the floor.
“Mom! No!” Natassia ran around the coffee table to cut her mother off, but Mary was faster and slipped ahead and was on her way down the back hallway. Natassia followed. Single-file, they had to squeeze between crowded bookshelves and stacks of books to get to the kitchen. Natassia was saying, “You can’t do that. Mariah’s mother can’t find out.”
“Why not?” With the phone receiver gripped under her jaw, Mary snapped through the pages of the phone book on the kitchen counter. “What the hell is Mariah’s last name, Brown or Greene?”
“No, no, no, no. Please, no. Please, no,” Natassia said in a whispery chant as she eased the receiver out from the vise made by Mary’s jaw and shoulder. “No, no, please, no. Mariah’s mother just got out of the hospital for bad depression. They can’t tell her, the doctor said so.”
“Why all this consideration for Mariah’s mother? Tell me, please. Why do I get all the bullshit and she gets all this consideration?”
Natassia sighed. “Stop being so theatrical.” She hung up the receiver and headed back to the living room. “How would you like it if you were in a big depression?”
“Maybe I am.” Mary was reaching up into the fuse box for David’s bag of potato chips. His cholesterol was through the roof, and he hid his treats so Lotte wouldn’t toss them, but everyone else knew where they were. “Come back here. Get that bag of chips for me. Please.”
Natassia ran into the kitchen with giddy, fast steps that pissed Mary off. Easily, Natassia lifted the bag out of the fuse box, and handed it to Mary, who was careful to keep the ice in her voice when she said, “Thank you.” Natassia bent and kissed her mother on the forehead. Mary slapped Natassia’s butt and walked in front of her down the hall to the living room. “I want you to sit in here and talk to me.”
“No, Mom, let’s go in my bedroom. I’ve got tons of stuff I need to do in there.”
In the bedroom, Natassia turned on her stereo radio. Mary turned the window-unit AC up to high and sat on the radiator with her legs curled under her and the bag of chips in her lap.
“Now,” Natassia said, “for the pièce de résistance.” She went inside her closet, came back with a shopping bag, and from it pulled a large dark button-down shirt. After yanking her white comforter down, she spread the shirt on the bed, the arms stretched out. “Oh, shoot. Where’d I put the iron? I’m such a ninny. Where’s the iron?”
Mary didn’t like the look of a man’s shirt lying on her daughter’s exposed bedsheet. “Where’d you get that? Kevin?”
“Isn’t it great? Here, touch this.” She scooped up the shirt and tossed it to Mary, but then she said, “No! No! Don’t touch, you have greasy potato-chip fingers. Here, feel it.” Natassia grabbed the shirt back and brushed it against Mary’s face.
Soft polished cotton. “What did you pay for this?” Mary wanted to know.
“I got it at the vintage store on Hudson Street.”
The color was beautiful, deep maroon. “How did you know what size to buy?”
“The BF wears the same size as Daddy. Isn’t that cool?” Natassia had found the iron under her bed. She spread the shirt out on her sheet again, plugged in the iron.
“Since when do you know what size your father wears?”
“One day the BF and I got caught in the rain in the park, and we were, like, totally soaked?” Natassia licked her pinkie and tested the iron’s heat. “So we came here and I gave him one of Daddy’s old flannel shirts. Dad said he didn’t mind. This iron isn’t hot enough.”
“I don’t like you bringing guys here when Lotte and David aren’t home.”
“Oh, Mom.” Natassia rushed to the shaving closet to get a cup of water for the iron. She called out over the running water, “That’s completely silly. You know we’re at his place all the time alone. You know I’m lovers with him.” Natassia came back and Mary stood to face her. Natassia stepped close and ran her hand over her mother’s head. Mary felt a gush of relief to have the kid finally looking at her without that withering stare. “Come on, Mom. You had lovers when you were my age, I know you did. Don’t tell me you didn’t.”
Up close, Natassia did smell. She was sweaty, with the scent she used to bring home at the end of a day of playing in the grass. The summer Natassia was four, she, Ross, and Mary had spent a week on somebody’s farm in Connecticut, some friend of Lotte’s. Now Mary stood as close as she could to Natassia in her dirty nightgown, the pink wilted ruffles, and Mary held the scent for a long minute, afraid she might cry. The green smell of child’s play was a gift from somewhere beyond her anger, this chance for a whiff of her small girl again.
“Mom?”
“I had boyfriends when I was your age, Natassia. Not lovers.”
“Semantics. What’s the dif?” On the bed, the iron tilted over onto its side. “Oops.” Natassia ran over to the sink with her glass and filled the iron with water, while on the wall above her, in a row of four framed photograp
hs, Mary spun, lifted a male partner, leaped in a 180-degree split, and took a curtain-call bow. Mary couldn’t stand the way she looked in any of the pictures, but they were one of Lotte’s efforts to help Mary and Natassia stay connected. A framed poster of Mary’s company hung in Natassia’s bathroom. Mary had once overheard a little friend of Natassia’s saying, “Wow, you have so much dance stuff. I take ballet, too.” And Natassia had said, “I hate dance. Those are just my mother.” Mary turned away now, looked out the window, over the top of the air conditioner splattered with pigeon shit, down onto West End Avenue. The tedious repetition of New York summers and the effort to survive New York summers seemed almost unbearable. Mary noticed that the air conditioner was sweating, and she thought of all the air conditioners in the city that were churning right now, the efforts of thousands and thousands of people to make life endurable. The windows of Natassia’s bedroom still had the baby bars in place. It was impossible to explain to the kid just how much this older, foreign guy knew that Natassia, despite all her precocious intelligence, did not know yet. Could not know. Impossible to make Natassia realize how desperate and unhappy he probably was if he was going after a teenager; and, therefore, how ruthless he could be. “You’re too young for lovers, Natassia.”
“What, Mom?”
The air conditioner was making a racket. Down on the street, a young man on a bicycle was kissing a man who stood next to him. They’d been alternately talking and kissing for several minutes.
A Michael Jackson song came on the radio, and Natassia screamed so loud, Mary spun and hollered, “What!”
Natassia ran across the room to the stereo and raised the volume.
“Goddamn, lower that stupid song.”
“Can’t!” The room was full now of Michael Jackson. And in every mirror—the floor-length on the closet door, the three-way dresser mirror, the makeup mirror on the desk—there was Natassia, bouncing. Mary, watching Natassia jerk and spin, was thinking, What a little girl she still is. She was wondering, Can’t that man see how young she is? She was noticing, The kid’s dancing off the beat.
As soon as the song ended, Natassia, breathless, went back to ironing. “I love that song.”
“It’s shit. Lower the volume. Please.”
“You do it. The knob’s lower right.” Natassia was poking the shirt cuffs with the hot tip of the iron. Now and then, the thumb of her free hand went to her mouth, where, without realizing it, she bit the tip of it, then sucked it, then bit. “He’s going to look so beautiful in this shirt.”
Beautiful? He probably had a wretched skinny ponytail full of squiggly gray hairs, tarnished earrings in his sagging earlobes, and a potbelly. “How many gifts does this god need to make his birthday happy enough for him?”
“Mother,” Natassia scolded. Now the shirt was spread front-down on the sheet, then folded and tucked perfectly into a gift box, which was stacked with the smaller box of the violin recording. Natassia pulled out from under her bed a roll of Italian watermarked wrapping paper, which she unfurled across her bedsheet. She bent to wrap the gifts. Mary did not like that the wrapping paper looked pricey, and she did not like seeing Natassia’s nightgown hanging open, showing her breasts. Folding up the bag of chips, Mary left the room.
“Where’re you going, Mom?”
“Those chips made me thirsty.”
“There’s iced tea. Will you get me an iced tea? Please? Pretty, pretty please, Mom?”
“Have you even eaten lunch today?” Mary called from the hallway.
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“I am not going to scream,” Mary screamed from the kitchen. “You come in here if you want to talk to me.”
She poured two glasses of iced tea, splashed one with gin from the bottle on the counter, and headed back to the bedroom. Rounding the corner out of the too-bright kitchen into the dark hallway, she ran right into Natassia, who was holding scissors. Their arms bumped, iced tea spilled.
“Nice!” Mary scolded.
“I was coming to talk to you.”
“Don’t run around the house with scissors. Don’t ever run with scissors.”
“Oh, great, you got me an iced tea.” Natassia wrapped her hand around her mother’s hand on the cold glass Mary offered and stepped close enough to cover Mary’s bare toes with her own bare toes. “You’re so sweet.”
One problem with this visit was that it was off-kilter. They always hugged when they first saw each other, and this time they had not. Natassia knew enough to try to set things right. She wriggled her toes over Mary’s toes, and her finger tapped at the feather hanging from Mary’s ear. Mary felt the impulse to trace Natassia’s jaw, the soft line of blond down that ran from her earlobe, another inheritance from Lotte. Mary felt so much affection for the soft plush on Natassia’s and Lotte’s arms and jawline, their bushy eyebrows. They both said they envied Mary’s hairlessness, her ink-line-thin eyebrows, the invisible silk hair on her arms, but these body differences made Mary feel left out.
It was late afternoon. By now Mary had lost track of all the important points she had come here to make. The kid might end up in jail, but the only thing that made any sense was to hug her. Mary lifted her hand and offered her palm to Natassia, and Natassia pressed her own palm against her mother’s. Their fingers locked together, and Mary brought Natassia’s big hand up to her lips for a kiss, and she whispered into the kid’s knuckles, “I’m going to go home soon, baby.”
“Oh no.” Like a little girl, Natassia pulled on two of her mother’s fingers. “Don’t go yet.”
They were in their sweetheart whispers, and they sipped from their glasses of tea. “Natassy, I came here to talk.” The palms of their hands pressed gently together, back and forth. “And we’re not talking.”
“Well, the sooner I get all my stuff done, the sooner we can talk.”
“Listen, honey. Listen, sweets.” Their fingers were intertwined. Mary whispered and Natassia listened. “I’m not trying to be big and mean with you. I’m really not. I’d love it if you met a nice guy. You should have a nice boyfriend. You’re gorgeous and terrific and smart.” Natassia smiled, but with her head swaying back and forth, as if she were hearing a friendly melody, not real words. “But, Natassy, I want you to be only with men who are wonderful, nothing less than terrific. I don’t want you to be with someone who’s not good for you.”
“M-o-m-m.” Natassia still swayed, and Mary lifted their joined hands and made an arch for Natassia to dance under. “The BF is good for me. He’s awesome. You don’t even know him.”
Mary kept hold of Natassia’s hand, as if they were partnering, and led the two of them down the hallway to Natassia’s room. Feeling sure they would now talk, Mary let go of Natassia and put down her spiked tea, sat on the bed, lay back, and all at once her body realized both the depth of her exhaustion and a delicious release from it. The gift boxes stacked beside her on Natassia’s bed didn’t seem so lethal anymore. “Natassia, do you know how much I miss you sometimes? Come sit with me.”
Natassia plopped down on the other side of the pile of gifts. She really was a precious girl.
“Sweetie, what about our plan? How about you coming to live with me in January? I could get you enrolled now for next semester. I’m pretty sure we get free tuition.”
“Ma-ry!” As much as Mary resisted Mom, she liked it even less when her daughter used her first name, as she did now: “Mary, Mary, Mary! You must be hallucinating. You really think I’m going to live up there?”
“What’s wrong with living up there? I live there.”
“My friends don’t.” Natassia picked up the boxes to inspect her gift-wrapping. “My BF doesn’t. Your school’s too far away. These gifts are still missing something. They don’t look as good as I want them to look.”
“Honey, aren’t there any good guys in your school?”
“Damn! Ribbon! I forgot to get nice ribbon.”
“These gifts are fine without ribbon. You already spent a fortune t
o wrap them.”
“Yes!” Natassia jumped off the bed. “I know what I’ll use. I know exactly.”
She did a pirouette on her way to her closet and looked back at Mary, who said, “Yes, lovely,” then Natassia disappeared. When she stepped out of the closet, she had her Mexican-print cotton skirt and was ripping the seam.
“What are you doing?”
“This is so perfect I can’t believe it.”
Mary sat up straight. “Stop that.” She tossed a pillow. “Now! Stop. That’s a good skirt.”
“This is what I was wearing the first night we made love.” Natassia was holding up the skirt and aiming the scissors for a deep gouge into the cloth.
“Natassia! That skirt cost money.”
“Why’re you so hung up on money these days? You got a job.”
In two long strides Mary was across the room, grabbing the skirt from Natassia and smacking her hand, hard. “This is not good. Don’t you ever tear up anything of yours for a man. Don’t do it.” She was squeezing Natassia’s hand that was holding the scissors, and she squeezed harder and harder, until Natassia yelled “Ow!” and let go of the scissors. They dropped and pierced the skin of Natassia’s foot and brought up a drop of blood.
“Mom!” Natassia’s voice was full of shock, and Mary’s heart was pounding as she bent down to Natassia’s foot and wrapped her hands around it to cover the blood. Mary closed her eyes. She felt lightheaded, caught within another of those returned moments: Mary remembered Little Girl Natassia falling while playing, getting her perfect little body cut or bruised or bumped. Afterward, Mary cringed to touch the scabs, the scars. But this time, Mary herself had done the damage, made the cut, brought up the blood. Opening and closing her eyes, Mary sat on the bedroom carpet holding Natassia’s foot. A little blood ran through her fingers. Natassia was more scared than injured, Mary could feel that just through the foot in her hand.
“Mom, you’re not crying, are you? Look. The cut’s really small. The blood stopped.”
Mary couldn’t keep the anger out of her hands. She picked up the scissors and tossed them across the room; the tip dug a point into the floorboards just past the carpet. The scissors stood there, shining and shimmying for a second, then fell over, clattered onto the wood. “Shit.”