by Anna Monardo
“Hey, Ross,” Mary started. She wanted to say, She’s my kid, too, and she’s not a baby. She’s five years old. We missed the baby part completely.
But Lotte was talking now, staring David down. “There will never be a report,” Lotte said. “You’re our children, and we will never make a report against you.” Lotte’s chubby face was scalded with indignant love. Mary sat close, right at the edges of Lotte’s layers of purple clothing, and she watched Lotte’s color rise, highlighting the blond patch of down along her jawline. Lotte’s nostrils were tense. Is this what it meant truly to be a mother, to love with such a fierceness it changed the way you looked? How had Mary and her daughter become so lucky, to have this woman on their side? Sitting next to her, Mary could feel Lotte’s large, loose body consolidate, her muscles on alert, ready to fight. “We love you,” Lotte whispered. “Nothing will ever change that.”
David, fed up, shook his big head of black-gray curls, turned away from Lotte, and said something about how much she pampered Ross, and if she kept it up the boy would never learn how to take care of his own child, and Lotte said something like “Are you threatening me?” And Mary thought, Shit, now Ross and I are even wrecking his parents’ marriage.
Lotte began to speak a kind of chant, whispering without pause: “We are not reporting you. You kids are just in over your heads. You’ve tried. You haven’t done a great job. You’ve done the best you could. We love you. We want to help you. And that’s all we want….” She couldn’t stop herself, and Ross was pleading with her in the same chanting rhythm, “But, Mom…But, Mom…Mom…”
“Please, please, Ross, let Natassia live with your father and me. At least for the next couple of years. She is your daughter. You come for her whenever you’re ready. Stay here with her whenever you want. But, please, for now, let us take care of her. She needs—”
“Ma-ry,” Ross shouted up from the floor, “you’re just sitting there. Mar! They’re taking our kid away.”
“They’re trying to help us.”
“You can’t take our child without our permission.”
“We’re giving them our permission, Ross. I’ll sign a legal document if they want.”
Ross called her a coward. Mary asked him why he couldn’t see that this was the best thing they could do for Natassia. He called her a coward again, called her a chickenshit slut of a coward, so she finally stood and kicked his leg—right there in front of his parents—yelling back at him, “You’re right. I am a coward. And I’m fucked up. And so are you. The only chance we have to not fuck up our kid is to let her live with your mother and father.”
But here they were, ten years later, and Natassia was fucked up, and Mary was crawling with anger. She felt cheated. Gypped. Of course David and Lotte had taken a load off her hands, they’d given Mary and Ross ten years of freedom, the chance to work on real careers, but Lotte and David were supposed to have raised Natassia right, not fucked up. That was something Mary could have done herself, even without Ross. Together, she and Ross could have done a superior job of making sure Natassia turned into a mess.
It had sickened Mary when Ross cried at that long-ago breakfast, but now she felt like crying as he had then, My baby, my baby. “Look,” Mary said, struggling to keep sternness out of her voice. “We need to come up with a real plan here. Before Natassia wakes up again. I’ll call her school tomorrow and tell them she’ll be out for a while. But what about doctors? Ross? Is there somebody I’m supposed to call or find or what?”
David looked at Lotte. “She’s scheduled with Silvers for tomorrow, right?”
Ross was rolling his eyes, trying to get Mary’s attention, but, glancing around the table, Mary wasn’t able to look any of them in the face. Was it possible, was it actually fucking possible, that even with a very sick kid at stake here—and not just any kid, Natassia!—the three of them couldn’t stop going at one another? Had it always been so sick at this house?
Lotte reached over and lifted the New York Times off the radiator. Soot had come in through the window screen, and she brushed that off the newspaper and then wiped her hand on her robe. As she was disemboweling the stack, section by section, David reached over and snatched Arts & Leisure and Business and the magazine.
“Save some of that for me,” Ross said, standing, coming back to the table. “I’m taking it with me tonight. You know what the Times costs in Spokane?”
“Don’t worry, you won’t be out there forever,” David said, examining the magazine’s table of contents.
“What’s that mean?” Ross was taking the real-estate section from his mother’s hand.
“You’ll get some experience under your belt. Doesn’t matter where you get it, just have a good record. In a year or two, the big guys will want a look at you.”
“And which big guys are those?”
“The big hospitals, city hospitals, university hospitals. You’re going to want to be someplace better later on in your career.”
“I don’t think so, Dad.” Mary watched Ross wipe a swab of jam off his plate and lick his finger. “I’m happy where I am.”
“No, you’re not,” David said, which prompted Ross to say, “And who the hell are you?”
Mary interrupted, “Excuse me, but Natassia? We don’t know what we’re doing yet.”
Ross said, “I already said. I want her seeing someone experienced with kids. A woman, someone younger than Silvers. I can’t imagine Natassia’s feeling comfortable talking to some old guy. Jesus. That night, when she broke down, she should have gone straight to a hospital.”
“A hospital? In New York? Oh, Ross.” Lotte was glancing at headlines.
David was looking at his son, shaking his head. “You’d never survive as a doctor in this town. Do you know what city hospitals are like these days? AIDS patients have to sleep in hallways. On stretchers. People are dying in the waiting rooms before Emergency has time to ask them where it hurts. And you think a hospital is going to care about a teenage girl whose boyfriend just broke up with her.”
“Hey, Dad, if you haven’t noticed, Natassia is having a nervous breakdown. This isn’t just a teenager with boy troubles.”
“So you would call it a nervous breakdown?” Lotte looked up over the tops of her reading glasses. “I mean, medically, that’s what you’d say? Well, then, she probably does need continued care—”
“Of course she needs continued care, and it better not be with Silvers. My God.”
“Hey, Ross, whose insurance is paying for this?”
“Right, Dad, pull the purse strings. Listen, I’m going to the AMA if she keeps on with Silvers. I’ll lodge a complaint.”
“And I’ll lodge a countercomplaint,” David told Ross. “And guess who’ll win.”
“Me. I’m her father.”
“Yeah?” David said. “Think again. Me they’ve heard of.”
“Yeah, you. You they’ve heard of.”
“Pershing Publishers they’ve heard of. Spokane General Hospital or whatever the hell you call that welfare clinic where you work, filching narcotics is mostly what you’re doing there….”
Mary looked over at Ross and hollered, “Ross, no. What are we going to do?”
“How…” Ross said to his father, “dare…you?”
“Ross,” Mary insisted.
“How fucking dare—”
“You had to do this?” Lotte asked David. “Now?”
David turned in his chair, crossed his legs. “Somebody finally speaks the truth around here, and everybody—”
“The truth,” Mary pleaded, “is, my daughter is in very bad trouble.”
And David said, “Oh, listen now to Mrs. Mommy. Excuse me. I mean, Ms. Mommy. You never did get married, did you?” Suddenly David jumped his chair backward, away from the table. “Shit.” He swiped a cockroach out from the underside of the table. “Lotte—”
“You’re the one who said no to the exterminator.”
“Damn exterminators smell up the place with poison.�
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“Then live with roaches. Are you listening or not? These kids don’t want Natassia seeing Silvers. What are they supposed to do?”
“Whatever you want. All of you do whatever the hell you want, which is what you do anyway. I’ve got business to attend to right now.” David stood and grimaced, ready to leave. He had a twin sister retired in Tucson that none of them, not even Lotte, had ever met. He’d stopped talking to his sister in their early twenties. The danger was always there that David would cut you off forever; the list was long of people whose names he would not even say. He leaned down over Lotte’s lap and took several more sections of the newspaper.
“Damn you,” she told him, “you’re going to the bathroom with the best sections of the paper.” Lotte looked at Mary and Ross. “I’m left with nothing but the travel section.” She yelled into the hallway, “I want that magazine when you’re done,” but David was gone.
When Mary looked over at Ross, she didn’t like the look on his face. “Are you all right?”
Ross’s voice was very low as he began to ask his mother, “How come—”
“Ross, ignore. I’m telling you—”
“But, Mom.” Ross was staring down at the food on the table. For the first time all morning, he wasn’t putting something into his mouth. “Listen, Mom—”
“All I can tell you is what I’ve always told you, Ross. Your father is a man who knows very well how to be mean. Ignore him. For your own sanity, ignore.”
“Mom.”
“Doctors pilfering drugs. These days your father has become Mr. Conspiracy Theory. I tell you, he’s published too many thrillers.”
“Actually, Mom—”
“Ross,” Mary said. “About Natassia. I’m going to ask Nora for names of therapists. If you don’t like this Silvers guy, then—”
“I was trying to say something to my mother here.”
“No, Ross,” Mary insisted again. “It’s not about you right now.”
Ross stood and walked to the fridge and opened the door and stared in, then slammed the door. Sitting again at the table, he stretched his neck left, right. “What do you want me to say? Call Nora. Natassia needs to see someone experienced in crisis intervention, not some fat old Freud wannabe. Does Silvers even manage to stay awake when she’s in there self-destructing right in front of his eyes?”
“So, I’m calling Nora,” Mary said. “Right? Like, today? Now?”
Ross turned to his mother. “How come every time I come home I have to listen to him tell me I work in a lousy hospital?”
“It’s your father’s way of saying he misses you and wishes you lived closer to us.”
“I think it’s his way of telling me he thinks I work in a lousy hospital.”
“Ross, my son, light of my life, my joy, are you happy doing the work you do?”
“Yeah, Mom, I am. Really happy.”
“Good.” Lotte leaned over and put a small kiss on his mouth. When she leaned back in her chair, they smiled at each other, and Ross stayed leaning forward with his hands on his lap—Ross had a real belly now that kept him several inches away from the table. “Then why,” Lotte asked him, “can’t you be happy with the same kind of job in a hospital closer to home? Tell me, why not?”
AS SOON AS ROSS FINISHED his last bagel, he said he had to go out. Earlier, he’d told Mary, privately, that he needed to get to an AA meeting before he boarded his flight or he might flip out in midair. “I’ll be back in an hour and a half,” he announced, standing up from the kitchen table.
“You’re leaving? Where are you going?” Lotte was startled enough to take off her eyeglasses. “We never see you, your plane’s in a couple hours, and now you’re going where?”
“I won’t be long, Mom.”
“Stay with us. What if Natassia wakes up and wants you?”
“Ross can go,” Mary said. “Natassia’ll be asleep for a while.”
“Yeah, I won’t be long.” Leaving, Ross kissed Mary on the ear and whispered, “Thanks.”
As Ross slammed out the front door, Lotte looked over at Mary, but Mary found she couldn’t meet Lotte’s eyes (years ago, how she used to search all over Lotte’s face for any hint to what she was thinking). Mary bent her head down to look for her Nikes under the table.
“You’re not going out, too, are you?” Lotte asked.
“No, I just need to go read student papers. Do you believe I have to make those kids keep a dance journal? What’s to write? You dance or you don’t.” Mary stood and began piling up dirty plates and glasses.
“Mary, I haven’t even had a chance to ask you lately, are you any happier up there at Hiliard? Is it any easier for you this semester than it was last spring?”
“Anything’s easier after you’ve done it a while.” Mary heard the rudeness in this. Lotte was still looking at her. Mary sat again but kept busy collecting silverware.
“Just leave it, dear. We’ll tidy up later.” While Mary went to the fridge with her hands full of food, Lotte said, “You know, Mary, I can imagine this is a nightmare for you, all this with Natassia. I think that for the past few months you’ve really been trying to—how do I say this?—reclaim your daughter, I think you really have. Taking that teaching job so you don’t have to be on the road, and you’re doing a beautiful job—I don’t know if it’s my place to say it, because you’re not my daughter, but I’m proud of you. I really am. All this that Natassia’s going through now, I want you to remember, it’s not a reflection on you.”
No, it’s a reflection on all of us. Mary stayed facing the open fridge, rearranging shelves. In her throat, that terrible thing was happening again that had been happening so much these days.
“I want to make sure you know,” Lotte continued, “you’re not alone. What’s important is that after all these years we’re able to come together if there’s a crisis, and help one another. We’re still a family. Somebody needs help, we come together. Oh, Mary, please, have I made you cry?”
“I’m just tired.” Closing the fridge door, Mary grabbed a paper towel and wiped her face. “I’m tired.”
“Natassia’s going to be all right. She is, dear, I know that. These are growing pains.”
“We need to get her help. Really good help.”
Lotte was reaching across the table, but Mary stayed where she was, leaning against the counter.
“Everything’s going to be fine.”
“You think so, Lotte?”
Lotte nodded, and, as always when she was moved by her own conviction, her eyes were shiny and there was that flush across her face, but none of it made Mary feel good the way it used to. Mary was starting to see the truth: Lotte didn’t know much more than Mary did.
CHAPTER 8 :
SEPTEMBER
1989
Sitting at the Northwest gate at the Minneapolis airport, waiting for his connecting flight to Spokane, Ross felt sick to his stomach.
This airport was a hell to wait in. Ross didn’t know what to do with himself. He knew a New York sculptor who now lived in Minneapolis, and he thought of calling him. Very talented guy. Ross had worked with him once, briefly, on a deal to move weed from California along I-80 to New York—sweet deal. But Ross couldn’t find the guy listed in the Minneapolis phone book. Another hour to wait. He ate a huge Cinnabon roll, then another. Such a pisser, the serious way his parents were all over Natassia’s teenage misery. When Ross was sixteen and a major mess, practically begging for help—oh, fuck all that, fuck them, too. He went to the Starbucks counter, had three double espressos in a row. It really pulled his chain, especially with his father, man. Ross tipped the Starbucks girl a couple bucks and went to a pay phone, dialed his parents’ number, and hung up, twice. He dialed Harriet and hung up, twice. He called his office, where the receptionist answered and told him they’d had an emergency appendectomy and a couple cases of the flu. Nothing else, besides a teenage-pregnancy scare that was resolved when the girl got her period. Ross didn’t bother to ask the reception
ist why she was in the office on a Sunday afternoon.
Ross left a message on his New York sponsor’s phone machine, another on his Spokane sponsor’s machine, and then walked the long stretches of the terminal building, reading to himself the postings at each gate, where planes were taking off for all kinds of places. Detroit, Miami, Amsterdam. Everybody was flying through Amsterdam these days. Ross wanted to worry about Natassia, he really did. He wanted to find a solution and find it fucking now, before the kid went completely to pieces. Jesus. She could end up like me. Probably, though, he was going to have to kill his father first, really maim him a little, before anything reasonable got done in Ross’s life.
I need a drink, he told himself. He walked back to his gate to see how much more time he had before boarding. When he got to the gate, though, it didn’t say “Spokane” anymore. He asked the girl at the desk, “What happened to the flight to Spokane?”
“Sir, that flight left twenty minutes ago.”
“What the fuck do you mean, twenty minutes ago? Why didn’t you announce it?”
“Sir, we did announce it. Are you, by chance, Mr. Stein, sir? We PA-ed your name several times, sir. You weren’t here for the boarding call.”
“You fucking let them go without me?”
“Sir, I’ll have to ask you to refrain from using obscenities. We have children—”
Everything after this happened very quickly. Using both his arms, Ross swiped the ticket agent’s computer terminal onto the floor, then he went over to the window just behind her and kicked his foot repeatedly at the glass, screaming curses the whole time.
Months would pass before anyone in Ross’s family heard anything about this outburst, about Ross’s being restrained and held overnight by airport police and released the next day only after they’d talked on the phone at length with Harriet and with Ross’s drug-rehab counselor.
CHAPTER 9 :
SEPTEMBER
1989
On Sunday, after her father left to go back to Washington State, Natassia sat at the kitchen table and ate a few bites of baked chicken and half a dumpling while her mother and grandparents sat with her. Then she watched a little TV and went back to bed, where she finally got a full night’s sleep, waking only once, at dawn. It seemed Dr. Silvers’ medications were starting to stabilize her, give her some relief. At breakfast on Monday morning, Lotte said, “Natassia will be her old self in a day or two.” Filling Mary’s mug with David’s good, strong coffee, Lotte asked Mary, “I don’t think you need us here today, do you, dear?” Lotte and David were already dressed to go to work.