by Anna Monardo
SO MARY BOUGHT MEAT. T-bone steaks and sirloin tip and thick pork chops and lamb chops and ground sirloin for hamburgers. All her life, Mary had only considered foods that would keep her dancer’s body thin and in working order. She didn’t know much about cooking, and certainly couldn’t meet the standards Natassia had got used to while living with Lotte, but Mary remembered that her father sometimes used a grill out on their cracked cement driveway. “You can’t really ruin food too much on a grill,” he always said. Behind the Hiliard greenhouse apartment was a garden shed, and in there Mary found an old hibachi. She set it up on the stone bench outside her front door, and she made a full dinner every night: grilled meat and a bowl of chopped-up iceberg lettuce, sometimes with a tomato sliced into it, sometimes a cucumber, and every night she boiled a package of frozen peas or beans or spinach (Birds Eye or some other quality brand), and she put out whole-wheat bread. Going against every rule she had for herself, Mary served butter, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, whole milk, ice cream. She bought Häagen-Dazs for Natassia and didn’t worry about the fat content or the expense.
To encourage Natassia to eat, Mary sat down to dinner, let herself eat until she actually felt something close to full, and she didn’t like it, that stuffed-ness she associated with living at the Steins’ and needing to get away. But she stayed at the table; sometimes she tried to light a cigarette, but Natassia complained about the smoke. So Mary just sat. Did head rolls, shoulder rolls, pressed her thumbs into the jutting knobs of her hip bones to make sure they weren’t buried yet in fat.
Mary planned her days around the urgent need to get to the grocery store. At first she borrowed the school van and took Natassia with her, but Natassia was so worn down she could hardly drag herself through the aisles. Then Mary’s friend Claudia, who taught English, offered Mary the use of her Mazda during her lunch break, and Claudia sat in the cottage to watch Natassia, who slept—or maybe just pretended to sleep—all wrapped up in blankets until Mary came through the door with her arms full, announcing, “Tonight it will be a feast of tenderly grilled chicken breasts with a light lemon seasoning. Chopped tomato on a bed of lettuce. For nourishment, a side dish of green—”
At moments like these, Mary didn’t recognize herself anymore. For so many years, she’d been a person who was not only willing but actually relieved to give her child up to someone else’s care. That wasn’t who Mary was anymore.
THE WISE INSTINCT that propelled her into action also told Mary that her efforts were nothing, just a way to accommodate the beast. No longer waiting at the door but having entered and moved right in, the ferocious truth visited Mary as soon as she woke every morning: I didn’t love my daughter right, and now love is so twisted inside her that she jabbed herself with a Cuisinart blade and burned herself with matches. These thoughts stabbed Mary a thousand times a day. She might try to hurt herself again. She is totally dependent on me now for her safety. I’m it.
Everything else fell away. In some ways this was the easiest time in Mary’s life, in that it was the least complicated. She had to teach dance because she got paid to teach dance, so she danced. There were no men, but she didn’t care, never thought about sex anymore. Sometimes she forgot to shower. Her thick hair, way overgrown by now, was always slipping out of a rubber-band-held ponytail, a little uneven nub that made the base of her neck itch. Her eyes above her prominent cheekbones were almost swollen-gone. The days passed. The only thing Mary took great care to do was never to let Natassia out of her sight.
Don’t let there be another emergency.
Natassia spoke very little, and she wanted her body to be covered all the time. Natassia and Mary had always run around half undressed in front of each other, as oblivious of modesty as dancers in a backstage dressing room. Now Natassia wore sweaters and sweatpants, even in bed. She was always cold. And, worse thing, she couldn’t stop hating her body. More than once, Mary saw Natassia look in the full-length mirror on the hall-closet door and, just as Mary had done in front of countless dance-studio mirrors, whisper to herself, “Ugly.” Because she wasn’t supposed to have heard, Mary couldn’t say, No, you’re beautiful! Besides, they had passed the point where Mary’s words could help. Dr. Cather was always telling Mary, Trust yourself. So Mary did what she knew how to do. Body. Mary tried to care for Natassia’s body.
In the morning, Mary got up early, ran a hot bath, then coaxed Natassia out of bed. Mary had to rub Natassia’s shoulders (so bony) and her feet (two pairs of socks?), tug lightly on her hands (she’s so cold!) until Natassia finally sat up. Mary led her into the bathroom, helped her undress, helped her into the tub, then sat on the blue porcelain edge while Natassia soaked. Mary let her soak a long time, hoping that if Natassia’s body could be soothed then her heart would find comfort, too.
Though she let Mary help undress her, Natassia pulled a towel into the water and covered herself, sat with her head falling in front of her, hiding in her wild mess of hair. Her shame and her skinniness seemed to be feeding on each other, the soul cannibalizing the body. Mary, as a dancer, had pushed her own body into all kinds of extreme pain; she had never wanted anything like that for her daughter, but here they were. During the first two weeks upstate, every morning in the bathtub with the warm wrap of the wet towel around her body, Natassia cried.
“Sweetie,” Mary said.
Natassia turned away, her face agonized with humiliation.
Mary wanted so much for Natassia to talk to her. Please, she almost pleaded, just let me hear your voice.
Silence.
During this time, Mary came to understand what Ross must have ached for years ago, when they were lovers, every time he pleaded with her, Mary, talk to me! and she made it clear she wanted him just to bug off. Maybe now Mary understood a little what he had needed to hear. And if she had been able to open up to him back then, would it have made a difference? Kept them together? Kept Natassia safe? All Mary remembered was a fierce will to protect herself, but, even remembering all that, remembering exactly what it felt like, she could not accept Natassia’s silence. Come on, come on, come on! Talk to me! Mary wanted to scream it. Talk to me about what’s inside of you, Natassia. I love you so much, I want to know, so I can take care of you, and if I can’t take care of it, I want to look out for you. Is this how Ross had felt? Mary had never experienced love like this, love that wanted to know and know.
Then, one morning, after a night of almost no sleep at all, Natassia lay in the tub and wrapped herself in a heavy green-striped towel and finally she began to talk, and when she did, Mary wished more than anything not to be hearing what she was hearing.
“Why did he…” Natassia whispered. She lay so far back that bathwater was lapping the edges of her lips, soap bubbles on her front teeth.
“What, honey? I can’t hear you.” Mary leaned forward into the water, all the way up to the sleeves of her black T-shirt.
“Why…”
“Please, Natassia, talk louder.”
“Why did he stop loving me?” Natassia choked it out, then, in one fast move, she dipped her head back until her face was buried under water.
Terrified, Mary pulled Natassia up, but in such a panic that Natassia spun onto her side and her head bumped against the edge of the tub. “Leave me alone,” Natassia scolded.
“I’m sorry.”
“I hate you,” Natassia said, finding her tears again.
“Honey, I need to hear what you’re saying.”
Natassia lay back again, wrapped in her towel, and stayed that way a long time. With her fingertips wrinkled from the water, Natassia’s hands looked like an old lady’s, older than Lotte’s. Her eyes were closed, so Mary could stare. So much Ross in the kid’s face. The plump freckles. That high, wide, intelligent forehead. Mary used to like to stroke Ross there and tell him that was where he stored all the excess information he had about practically everything. He knew so much more than everybody else. Impatience was twitching over Natassia’s eyelids. Still, she refuse
d to speak. I’m the wrong mother for her and she knows it. I’m not smart enough.
“I don’t know how come,” Natassia finally said. “Am I really stupid?”
“No!”
“He said it so many times. ‘I love you. I love you.’ But he was lying. Every night, when we went to sleep, he rubbed my head and said all the reasons he loved me. He said I was so smart.”
“You are. You’re very smart. Very, very.”
“And he said he loved me because I smelled good. And he kept saying he loved my knees and stuff. He made such a big deal out of my knees and my ankles.”
And your breasts, Mary thought, remembering the note she’d found in Natassia’s drawer. I should have done something then. I should have…
“He said…” Natassia’s voice was loud and full of attitude, full of you’ve-been-bugging-me-so-now-you’re-going-to-hear-it. “He said we were going to get married.” Natassia stopped, let “married” ring in the foggy bathroom. Mary, working hard, did not flinch. “He said he never wanted to marry anybody as much as me. He said that.” Natassia’s energy was used up; she began to cry again. “How can you say that to somebody and then it goes away?”
“He was wrong to say such things to you. I mean—shit, not because…Oh, shit, Natassia, you are beautiful and brilliant, and you deserve to be loved. But you’re too young for a grown man to be saying shit like that.”
“It’s not shit. Just because you never got married—”
“Okay, but you’re fifteen, it’s”—there was a word Cather used a lot—“inappropriate. He was inappropriate. Natassia, do you know he could get arrested for having sex with you? Do you know that? I mean, laws are set up so this kind of thing doesn’t happen. It’s just plain wrong.”
“We didn’t have sex. We made love.” The dark eyes and their power got lost again under the maze of wet hair. “You’re the one who had sex with everybody in the known universe.”
Mothers have to take some bad hits sometimes.
Yeah, Dr. Cather, but—
Pick your fights. Let some fights go. Let it go.
Mary’s fingernails had been clawing at the nervous itchiness at the back of her neck. “Can you answer a question for me, Natassia? I just—please, can you tell me? Did he ever try to—I don’t know—did he get rough or hit or something?”
“Mom.”
“Please.”
Natassia sat up tall in the tub. Her eyes appeared again. “You don’t get it, do you? Everything was great until I wrecked it.”
“How did you wreck it?” Mary tried pouring a handful of warm water over Natassia’s goose-pimpled shoulder.
“Stop it,” Natassia ordered.
“Sorry. But did he,” Mary whispered, circling Natassia’s ankle, “hurt you? I need to know.”
Natassia kicked Mary’s hand away. “Mom, nobody hit anybody. If that’s what you’re looking for, it didn’t happen. Do all your stupid boyfriends hit you? Why are you so obsessed with hitting?”
“Because you hurt yourself, Natassia. What made you do that?”
“Oh God, Mom, you’re always crying now. Stop it. It’s gross.”
“Do you have any idea why that happened? With the Cuisinart? Can you tell me?”
“I just can’t stand it if I don’t see him again.” Natassia put her forehead on her raised knees. Down into the water, she said, “The only thing I want is to get back together with him, and I don’t want to talk.”
Mary waited until Natassia was done soaking, then helped her out of the tub.
THE NIGHTS when she was able to sleep, Mary was having terrible dreams, mostly with babies in them, or dreams of mutilation. A baby with one blue ear, no blood in it, sitting at the mouth of a big sewer. A palace with a dirty-tiled subway station in its basement, a jar of knives at the turnstile. A dream in which Mary was slicing flesh that didn’t bleed but turned into meat for a sandwich. Mary’s sleep exhausted her. She was desperate for more sleep when the alarm clock went off, but it was always a relief to see daylight. Turning over first thing, Mary usually found Natassia lying on her back, knees bent, arms crossed over her chest, staring at the ceiling. What seemed to be happening was that Natassia fell asleep easily when she got in bed, but woke in the middle of the night and was unable to sleep again. She’d just lie there, not move. She used to be one of those kids who hogged up a bed, spread out diagonally. Now she took up so little room.
BY THE SECOND WEEK of the crisis (the first week, thank God, had coincided with Fall Break), Mary had to get back to her classes. On Monday, after the bathtub routine, Mary held out a leotard for Natassia to step into. “There’s no other choice, sweetie,” she said when Natassia hesitated.
“I’m not a dancer. I hate dance.” But Natassia pulled the leotard on.
“Yeah,” Mary said, “dance sucks sometimes.” She handed Natassia two sweaters, a pair of tights, and sweatpants. Mary ached while she watched Natassia cover herself up in layers. By quarter to nine, the two of them, wrapped in scarves and sweaters, headed through the meadow up to the studios. Walking, they were always close, bumping into each other.
Mary’s first class began at nine-fifteen, ballet. Up at Hiliard, Mary was jack-of-all-trades, teaching multiple levels of ballet and modern, an improv-and-composition class, and a seminar that was supposed to be all reading and writing, though Mary mostly showed dance videos. In addition, Hiliard offered adult ballet and modern classes, quite pricey, for townies. And, by audition, “advanced” training for private students. All day and a couple evenings each week, Mary was in the studio, and she kept Natassia with her.
Natassia didn’t put up a fight, which is how Mary knew that Natassia, too, was scared, didn’t trust herself to be alone. She sat on the wood floor of the studios, didn’t want a cushion; she napped, or read old New Yorkers she’d found in the cottage, or wrote in her journal, or stared at the dancers’ feet. And, a thousand times a day, Mary walked over to Natassia curled up like a cat following the sunlight around the floor, and Mary patted her daughter’s face, massaged her shoulders, held her hand. Mary was almost always touching Natassia. She never, never let her be alone.
“How long can you keep this up?” Dr. Cather asked during one of Mary’s weekly phone sessions, which were scheduled during lunchtime so Claudia could sit with Natassia. “I applaud what you’re doing, Mary, but, well, you’re sure you don’t want to bring her into the city, just to be evaluated by a specialist?”
No one had to tell Mary what was wrong with Natassia. Her heart was wrecked, and the only way to make sure someone else—some quack—didn’t make things worse was for Mary herself to take care of her daughter. Something somewhere had gone very wrong. Mary remembered a student who had come to her after bad and confusing preparatory training. The kid barely knew one foot position from the next. In situations like that, you have to reteach everything from the beginning. I’m her mother. She needs her mother.
“This doctor up here who undid the stitches gave me the name of a therapist,” Mary told Dr. Cather. “We’re going to try her.”
When Mary brought Natassia to Dr. Jonson’s for a second follow-up, he had insisted that Mary use the phone right there in his office to call the social worker, Heather Jamison Jonson. “Mary, we had a deal. I did my part, now you do yours.” (Mary was fairly sure Nora would say this was wrong, the old doctor forcing Mary to call his daughter-in-law, but so far Dr. Jonson was the only one who had any advice. Plus, Mary sort of liked having the old guy telling her what to do.) When Mary called, the woman answered her own phone. A baby was crying in the background. “Yes,” Heather Jamison Jonson said, “I thought you might call.” Was this good? Maybe it was bad. Maybe this social worker didn’t have any patients, and her father-in-law was just drumming up business for her. “I can see Natassia tomorrow afternoon,” Heather said.
“Noon’s the only time I have a car to borrow.”
“Noon is fine. I’ll see you then.”
Claudia in the English Department was
the only one who knew the whole story of Natassia’s breakdown. Mary was so afraid of having Natassia taken away from her, and so afraid of losing her Hiliard job (and cottage and medical insurance), she was working overtime to hide the full situation from the headmaster. When Mary’s students began asking about the girl sitting in the studio every day, Mary told them that Natassia was getting over a very serious flu, but it was way past the contagious stage.
“But who is she?” the kids insisted.
“My daughter.”
“You’re a mother?” the students asked.
“Yeah, I’m a mother.”
CHAPTER 17 :
OCTOBER
1989
It was the week after Nora had met Abe. Even though her dreams were still bad and full of Natassia, Nora’s days were a little better. There was not a thing she could do about Natassia, not since Mary had taken it all into her own hands, and Nora was too distracted to bother with Christopher, too busy going over and over in her head Abe’s voice; Abe’s muscled forearms; the worldly, worn-down leather of Abe Shulevitz’s leather watchband. Then, late Saturday afternoon, she was having a cup of soup in Veselka, one of the few places she felt comfortable eating in alone, and she saw Abe.
He was at a table in the middle of the restaurant. He was with a woman. Nora, sitting by the window with her back against the wall, was out of his line of vision, but she had a good view of him and an even better view of his companion, who was dark-haired, tall and skinny, very expensive- and intelligent-looking. Publishing, Nora thought. Maybe a museum administrator. Abe and the woman were having an argument, and, watching them, Nora immediately knew three things: (1) Abe had hurt the woman somehow. (2) The woman’s anger probably was not unfounded, for she did not look like a hysteric. And (3) Abe’s hand gestures said that he was baffled, clueless, as to what had gone wrong.
Abe and the woman had been sharing a huge cinnamon roll. A waitress had just brought a bowl of borscht for the woman and a plate of breaded cutlet with gravy for Abe. It was four-thirty on a Saturday afternoon. A little late for a postcoital breakfast or lunch, too early for dinner; then Nora remembered that he’d worked until five in the morning. Nora was fighting the evidence that Abe and this woman were having one of those blessed days that organize themselves around a couple’s various appetites: food, then sex, then sex, then more food. The shared pastry between them. Their knees interlaced as they sat squished around their tiny table.