Falling in Love with Natassia

by Anna Monardo

  Mary had called Hiliard and told them she needed to take another personal day. When she had been performing, there’d been no such thing as a personal day. Even if you yourself were having a nervous breakdown, you showed up. But Mary was sure racking up the personal days now. She and Natassia spent most of the day napping on Natassia’s big wood-frame bed, Mary huddled under an afghan, Natassia under her comforter, both of them waking, then turning over back into sleep, like two wounded animals, exhausted. Late in the afternoon, they watched the Home Shopping Network for a while. Just before dinner, Natassia actually took a phone call from one of her friends. Mary even heard her laugh for a second.

  That night at the dinner table, everyone breathed the calm air of a crisis passed. Natassia agreed to sit at the dining-room table with the others. Filling their plates with slices of herb-encrusted pork roast, complaining about the stack of phone messages from agents and all the work piled up on her desk, Lotte seemed refreshed. Ross had called her in the afternoon, just to say he’d got back okay. “Said he wished he’d stayed longer.”

  “Hell,” David grunted, “I don’t know what the hell he thinks he’s doing way out there.” But, for the most part, David, too, was happy about his day at the office. Slicing his meat into big chunks, he announced he’d taken the first steps toward promoting his youngest editor, Garth. “The kid’s just wildly talented, that’s all there is to it.”

  Natassia didn’t have it in her to eat more than a few spoonfuls of the garlic mashed potatoes Lotte had prepared specially for her, but Natassia was alert enough to ask her grandfather, “Didn’t Wallace tell you a couple months ago there weren’t going to be any promotions until the next fiscal year?”

  How the hell did Natassia know so much about her grandparents’ jobs? “Who’s Wallace?”

  “Poppy’s publisher,” Natassia told Mary.

  “Wallace can take a proverbial leap into the proverbial lake,” David said.

  So, Mary thought, this was another of David’s tugs-of-war, and this young editor, another pawn. Whoever Garth is, I feel sorry for him.

  “Hell,” David continued, “after Garth brought in that true-crime exposé, how could I not promote him?”

  “How nice for Garth,” Lotte said.

  “Yeah, and Wallace doesn’t have a leg to stand on. I’ve got the entire editorial department lined up to fight him.” David forked a large mushroom cap and put the whole thing into his mouth.

  After spending a couple days with David for the first time in years, Mary was beginning to feel that thing—that evil—Ross claimed had been in the apartment all the years he was growing up. Why didn’t I ever notice it before? Since Sunday morning’s breakfast, Mary had been thinking it was Lotte who had failed them, but maybe David really was a prick. Besides, Mary found it basically impossible to stay mad at Lotte, so, when Lotte passed around a basket of hot rolls, Mary took the basket, looked Lotte in the eyes for the first time in days, and told her, “You did it again, Lotte. This dinner is really good.”

  ON TUESDAY, Mary called work, said she needed yet one more personal day. She made Natassia a big bowl of cereal, and Natassia ate a bit, sitting up in her bed. When Mary saw Natassia sliding back down under her comforter, she said, “Come on, honey, let’s go out. Put your jeans on. I’ll buy you something for twenty-five dollars. That’s all I have in my wallet.”

  “Don’t you need to go back to work? Aren’t they wondering where you are? Haven’t you missed, like, a bunch of your classes?” This was the usual organized Natassia, and Mary was grateful.

  “They’ll live,” Mary told her.

  “I don’t feel like going back to school yet, Mom.”

  “You’re not going back to school yet. But you have to get out of bed. We’ve got to go outside for a walk. Come on now, get dressed.”

  And to Mary’s surprise, Natassia pulled off her nightgown and reached for her jeans.

  OUT ON THE STREETS, it was the best kind of late-September day. Clear sky. Blue. Sun. Sharp shadows slicing the sidewalks. Warm air, with a little coolness in it. Mary and Natassia walked down West End Avenue a few blocks, then over one block. Everyone on the street was caught in webs of sunlight, and Mary remembered the long-ago September when she, Ross, and Baby Natassia were just back from Rome, staying at David and Lotte’s. Lotte had bought a fancy stroller with white mosquito-netting to protect the baby. Just a year before that, when they were students in Rome, Mary and Ross had crawled under the netting over Ross’s bed, and when they crawled out—voilà!—Natassia! Back in New York, every time they hauled the heavy stroller down the building’s front steps and onto West End Avenue, even though Ross was over six feet and Mary knew herself to be as strong as a football player, she looked down at Natassia lying under the white net and wondered how they could ever protect her. Mary thought, The poor little thing looks exactly how I feel: trapped.

  Now walking next to Mary was this teenager, this new Natassia, thoroughly exposed, her face uncovered, her expression blank. “Your father and I used to walk you in your stroller on Broadway every day. Just after Rome, when we lived up here.”

  “Why’d you move downtown? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just keep living with Grammy and Poppy? Since Daddy was going to Columbia.”

  As they walked toward Eighty-sixth Street, Mary caught a glimpse of Nora’s friend Candice up ahead, waiting at the corner for the light to change. Candice was pregnant, huge, rubbing her stomach. She had a grim-faced Hispanic woman standing with her, probably her nanny-in-training. They were close enough that Mary could have said hi, but Candice was one of those people who always asked you a bunch of questions about your life, just to hear what a mess it was and to compare it with her own cheery life. Candice was a therapist friend of Nora’s who didn’t need to work, so she didn’t. She was married to some handsome French guy whose family owned a vineyard; they were friends with Meryl Streep and other actors who had houses in Connecticut. I don’t need to hear it, not today. Mary ignored Candice and answered Natassia’s question. “Daddy and I had to move. Lotte and David’s apartment got a little tight for the five of us after a while.”

  “Give me a break. Three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a maid’s room? Downtown, we hardly had any space at all.”

  Children want to know the truth, Dr. Cather had told Mary, so Mary told Natassia, “We had to move because your grandfather was giving Ross a hard time about wanting to go to medical school. If you can believe it. The only guy on the Upper West Side who could get pissed about his son wanting to be a doctor instead of a writer.”

  Finally, some expression crossed Natassia’s face: a smirk. She let out a cynical, chipped laugh. “Poppy’s so funny. Just because he didn’t get to be what he wanted to be.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “He wanted to be a violinist, but his parents made him drop it.”

  “How come?” It was high noon; the sun was hitting hard. As they raced the yellow light to cross Eighty-sixth Street, Mary put on her sunglasses and pulled out a cigarette so she’d be ready to concentrate on this conversation as soon as they got to the other side of the street. In the apartment, they would never have had this talk. “Why’d they make him not be a violinist?”

  Natassia’s cynical laugh again. “Poppy doesn’t admit it, and he always disses his parents when he talks about them, but I think it’s because he’s not a very good musician.”

  “He’s not?”

  “He sucks. Why do you think he and his friends let me play with them? None of us is very good.”

  Mary noticed two dancers she knew walking out of a restaurant, but she didn’t try to get their attention. “David didn’t want to be in publishing?”

  “He hates publishing. He only did it because he met Grammy and she was great at it, and she helped him get a job. Grammy understands books and the book business better than anybody. Poppy’s smart, but mostly he’s a bully.”

  “Natassia.” Mary grabbed the kid’s hand, made her stop walking
. “Do you know how smart you are?”

  Natassia waved away Mary’s cigarette smoke. “Mom, it’s not smart. You can’t help seeing stuff when you live with people all the time.”

  Natassia glanced at the window display at Murray’s Sturgeon Shop. Natassia, Lotte, and David always made a big fuss about this place—smoked fish. Mary didn’t understand it. “You hungry?”

  Natassia shook her head no and asked, “Wasn’t that Nora’s friend back there, the one with the cute husband and all the money, who knows Meryl Streep? Why didn’t you talk to her?”

  “She gives me a headache.”

  They kept walking. “It’s weird,” Natassia said, “not to be in school in the middle of the day,” and Mary realized she had no idea how her daughter usually spent her days.

  And there was no way she could ever catch up. All Mary could do was let her shoulder rub against Natassia’s arm as they walked side by side through the sidewalk crowds. What a relief. Walking outside, the kid did seem better. When they were in front of a small slice of a store that sold nothing but socks and stockings, Mary asked, “Want some new socks?”

  “Nah. I don’t need any.”

  They walked on. At the record shop, she said she didn’t want any new tapes. At the Town Shop, Mary offered to buy her some new pajamas or underwear, but Natassia said no. She didn’t want to go into Shakespeare & Co. to look for a book. They kept walking. As always, Mary noticed a few people on the street glancing at them, wondering, probably, What’s the short Korean woman doing with the tall kid?

  When they were almost at Sixty-eighth Street, Mary said she was starving, so they went into a coffee shop, sat in a booth, and ordered grilled-cheese sandwiches and one chocolate milk shake to split. Natassia drank the whole shake but ate none of her sandwich. Mary offered to buy her another shake.

  “No, thanks. Let’s go to Zabar’s and look at coffeepots.”

  “Sure. Whatever you want.”

  Out on the street, bumping into each other companionably, they headed back uptown. Mary thought about a friend of hers who had said years ago, about Little Girl Natassia, “When you’re with Natassia, you forget she’s not an adult. She’s such good company.”

  Natassia was good company, and Mary was enjoying her more than she had in a long time. For one thing, the kid wasn’t giddy and silly. Coming out of her crisis, she had developed a cynical little bit of an edge that was actually kind of funny. At lunch, when Mary had mentioned that Nora and Christopher wanted them to go out to the beach house for a weekend, Natassia had said, “Mr. and Mrs. Compulsive? Forget it. I know I’m a neat freak, but all Nora does when I’m out there is tell me not to walk sand into the house. Like, excuse me, are we at the beach or what? She’s hawk-eyes about everything I do.”

  “Natassia! Nora loves you. So does Christopher.”

  “I don’t know how he puts up with her.”

  “They’re the best married people we know, besides your grandparents. And you know Nora and Christopher love you to death. If you ever needed anything, they’d help you in a minute. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know, but she’s just a dolt sometimes.”

  And later, when Mary told Natassia, “Your dad really wanted to stay here and be with you longer, but he had to get back to work,” Natassia said, “No, he didn’t. He has Harriet. He has to punch a time clock with Harriet.”

  “Why don’t you like her?”

  “He could do better.”

  “Well, what does he like about her?”

  “She tells him what to do. He doesn’t have to think.”

  “Natassia!” Mary said, laughing.

  “Well, you asked.”

  At Seventy-sixth Street, they had to stop on the curb for a red light. When it turned green, Mary let Natassia walk a few steps ahead so she could watch her. Natassia’s jeans were dirty and hanging loose in the rump. In just one week, she’d lost so much weight. One week ago today, the asshole had broken up with her. God, she does look worn out. Natassia’s hair was dirty again, hanging in clumps. It really wasn’t funny to have your fifteen-year-old daughter sounding as jaded as your friends who were in their thirties. Natassia had stopped in front of a Korean fruit market and was looking at a display of red pears. Standing in front of the fruit, she sighed. On her face there was a moment of such completely uncovered sadness that Mary felt her own eyes fill up behind her sunglasses. Oh God, how could she ever tell Natassia how much she loved her?

  Mary went over to a newsstand outside a stationery shop and pretended to be reading headlines while she lit a cigarette and dried her eyes. Jesus, on the street, crying so hard she had to wipe away the tears with her whole hand. Suddenly a baby boy’s blond head popped up right in front of Mary, so close to her she saw the dried snot on the edges of his nostrils. He was hanging in a papoose on his mother’s back as she struggled to push a shopping cart through the heavy door, and she had no idea that her baby’s face was so close to a stranger’s, that he was having this private moment with Mary. The baby boy was pointing at her, so Mary touched his finger with one of her fingers, what she and Little Girl Natassia used to call a finger kiss. Then the baby boy was gone, inside the door. Mary put her finger to her lips and kissed it. When she turned back toward the fruit stand, Natassia was still staring at the pears.

  “Honey, ready?”

  “Yeah,” Natassia said.

  “Zabar’s, right?”

  “No. I’m too tired. Let’s just go home.”

  NATASSIA DID GO right to bed when they got home. Mary kept reminding herself that things were better than they’d been a few days earlier, when they’d had to wrap Natassia in a raincoat and get her downstairs for those ridiculous two-hour sessions with Dr. Silvers, who apparently kept asking her, “Did you have any dreams?,” even though she wasn’t able to sleep.

  Right now, with just a little medication, Natassia was sound asleep, hugging two of her pillows, sending up a light snore. Twice, Mary went in to check on her. The kid just needed rest.

  But after an hour, Mary’s faith in Natassia’s quick recovery began to wane. She called Nora, and finally, this time, Nora answered.

  “Nor, I need names of shrinks for Natassia.”

  “Oh no. When you didn’t call me yesterday, I hoped that meant she was doing better.”

  “I think she’s better, but not great, and David’s still big on this Dr. Silvers.”

  “I know. Ross called me this morning, really upset. Did you know his flight was so delayed he had to spend the night in the Minneapolis airport? Anyway, he’s worried about both of you. This is a lot for you, Mary.”

  “I just don’t know how to do this. Where do you start? Ross said she might need a psychiatrist instead of a psychologist, because she might need medication. Nora, she doesn’t need all this medication, does she?”

  “Listen, what kind of insurance do they have for her?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “This needs much discussion, and I have a patient in the waiting room. We’re still having dinner tonight, right? I’ll make a list of referrals and we’ll go over it. We need to spend some time with this. Now I’ve got to run.”

  BY NINE O’CLOCK that night, Mary, Nora, and Giulia were sitting in the living room, opening a second bottle of wine, picking around with their chopsticks at what was left of the chicken with cashews, the shrimp with black-bean sauce, and the eggplant with garlic sauce, which Lotte had said wasn’t as good as usual, but she’d filled her plate twice and had finally gone into her room to read manuscripts. There was one steamed dumpling left. Mary speared it, lifted it to her mouth, bit into it, then asked, “No one wanted this, did they?”

  Giulia and Nora looked at each other and laughed.

  “What?” Mary asked.

  “Nothing. It’s just good to see you being your usual self.”

  And, in fact, for Mary, the evening did feel almost normal, almost as if Natassia had nothing more serious than the flu. For the first time in days, the si
tuation felt manageable. Mary would get Nora’s list, then she’d make a phone call, then a specialist would fix Natassia up.

  Weird, but Nora looked like the one who had something bad going on. Mary hadn’t seen her in a while, not since the weekend in Greenport. Nora had put on weight, enough that it showed in her face. Mary almost asked, You’re not pregnant, are you? But, really, Nora didn’t look good. It wasn’t just the puffiness in her cheeks (was she taking cortisone for something?), and the tight grip of the buttonholes around the buttons of her silk shirt; Nora also looked pale, washed out, her hair was flat. Someone meeting Nora for the first time tonight wouldn’t see she was a knockout. But, then, Mary thought, maybe her nut-case patients really get to her by the end of the day. At least she’s here. She’ll know what to do.

  On the coffee table was a box of Mrs. Fields cookies Giulia had brought for Natassia. Nora was finishing her third cookie, and Mary wanted to scream, Stop! “Let’s do the list,” she said.

  “Okay,” Nora said, “first there’s this woman at the Ackerman Institute.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They specialize in work with families.” Nora put down her notebook and looked at Mary. “They’re going to want you to go to the sessions,” Nora said, and then stopped. “And you’ll have to talk. Did you realize that?”

  “No. But I’ll do it.”

  Nora went on. While she talked about how important it would be for Mary to cooperate with the therapist, to open up, to see this as an opportunity to get a lot off her chest, Mary began to worry about what she would do if Nora’s list included Dr. Cather. Nora told Mary about the three women psychologists on the list and gave her the sheet of paper with their names and phone numbers. Cather’s name was not on the list. Then Mary began to worry that maybe Dr. Cather was a bad shrink. Or maybe Nora didn’t know the really good ones. How did you ever know whether or not your friends were any good at their jobs?