by Anna Monardo
“My ear aches so much it’s killing me.”
The ugly thoughts were there again: Drama queen and I can’t stand this. Mary was now in the full grip of an old feeling she didn’t like, and it scared her so much she went into a back bedroom with the mobile phone, called Dr. Cather, and spoke to her answering machine: “We’re not having so much fun up here anymore.” Mary knew that Cather would hear the SOS coded in between Mary’s flat voice and her sarcastic message.
Within half an hour, Cather returned the call. “Mary? What’s going on?”
Natassia was lying on the couch, her back to the room, so Mary left her and went to the bedroom, closed the door but not completely. She whispered to Dr. Cather, “She keeps breaking down.”
“Well, Mary, you know, she’s grieving. It’s a process, with several stages.”
“Yeah, but I’m calling about me now.” The phone was wedged into her damp neck, her arms were crossed tightly across her chest, her fingers digging into her soaked armpits. “I don’t have any patience for it anymore. I’m losing it. I’m turning into a lousy mother again. Frankly, this is starting to bore the shit out of me,” Mary hissed.
And she went on, whispering, confessing to Dr. Cather that she no longer wanted to be mothering this soggy, whimpering blob of flesh that pouted constantly with Ross’s thick lips and talked back with Mary’s own mean smart-mouth. All the love that had propelled Mary through the difficult weeks since the night in the ER, all that huge love, had suddenly turned to disgust. Mary was tempted again by the wish she’d had when Natassia was small, the wish to say, Somebody else can take care of her better. Now Mary started crying. “I never thought I’d resent her again, and I do. I can’t stand her.”
“Well, of course you’re angry with her. She screwed up your class. She’s requiring a mammoth amount of attention. Anybody would be mad.”
“Really?” The bed in the dusty, unused room was piled with plastic cartons of the sabbatical family’s clothes. Mary kicked a space open between two cartons and sat down.
“Of course. The difference this time,” Dr. Cather said, “is that while you’re feeling it—the anger, the resentment, the exhaustion, all of it—you’re continuing to take care of her. You’re staying responsible. You’re doing what needs to be done.”
“But a normal mother wouldn’t feel these bad things.”
“Who said?” For the first time ever, Mary heard in Cather’s voice a genuine human being, not a professional, and Cather kept on: “Any mother in her right mind feels these things a hundred times a day. A thousand times a day. Not acting on these negative feelings is what separates the good mothers from the criminals.” Cather slipped back into her therapist’s voice: “Mary, I suspect you’re expecting too much of yourself.”
Mary’s hand had been pulling at a yank of hair. Out of nowhere it occurred to her to ask, “Do you have kids?”
“Three sons and a daughter.” Silence. Mary could sense Dr. Cather making a decision to tell more. “All my kids are grown now. I love them more than my own life, but I still remember clearly whole days of wanting to kill one or another of them.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I never did it, though, not once.”
“What?”
“I never killed any of them,” Dr. Cather said.
“How did you manage? I mean, four kids. Shit.”
“Sometimes, on really bad days, I’d lock myself in the bathroom and flush the toilet over and over again—our apartment was in a prewar that had those noisy industrial toilets—and I’d scream into the flushing toilet. When I walked out, I felt much better.”
There was silence as Mary took this in. Then she said, “I’ve got to go back out to Natassia. She’s being too quiet in there.”
“Okay, but before you go in there, punch a pillow a couple times, give it a good fist.”
“Yeah. Right.” Mary couldn’t quite hang up. “Listen. How many times can she break down like this? I mean, how long do these things usually last?”
“There’s no usual, Mary. I suppose she’ll break down until she actually believes her lover’s gone, and whatever else she’s grieving along with that. We re-enact separation over and over until we finally believe—and accept—that our loss is real, irrevocable.”
“So she still thinks she might get back together with the guy?”
“She might think that if she cries enough he’ll hear her and come back. We don’t know. She herself doesn’t know. It’s not logical, it’s emotional. In any case, Natassia will cry until her grief runs out, at which point, we hope, she’ll be capable of true reflection on the things that have happened to her. That’s when her true healing will begin. Much of this, I hate to tell you, is just preliminary.”
Thanks a lot, Dr. Cather.
WHEN MARY WENT BACK into the living room, Natassia was asleep on the couch. Mary hadn’t punched a pillow, but she knew what Cather was saying: Feel your feelings.
I want a good smoke.
She found her corncob pipe hidden in the bottom of her backpack and went into the bathroom, lit up, opened the window, and let the rain come in on her. She still had the mobile phone in her hands, so, when it rang again, she answered in mid-ring, thinking, Shit, don’t wake the baby.
“Hello, Mary? This is Franklin Fields. Couldn’t reach you in the office, glad I found you.”
I’m losing my job.
“I’ve been thinking about your daughter.”
Mary wrapped her index finger tight around the bowl of the pipe. With her other index finger, she tapped at the hot ash, seeing how long she could keep her finger on the heat. I’ll call Lotte. Natassia will have to go live with them again. I’ll ask Ross for some cash until I find another job, I’ll call…
“I don’t know what she’s up to these days—”
She’s trying to save her life, you fucking bastard.
“—but I’m wondering if she’d have any interest in a laptop computer we’ve got sitting here in the office. Technicians are coming through later today to upgrade our equipment. According to our contract, they’re supposed to take what we don’t use. I like to keep these laptops available in case faculty want them for traveling or whatever. Anyway, if she wants to keep this computer down in your cottage, she’d be doing me a favor.”
“Yeah. That’s all, the computer?” Mary said.
“Well, I don’t have a printer available, but she’s welcome to use the facilities in the computer lab.”
“No, no, I mean, is that all you’re calling about? I mean, it’s really nice of you to think of her. I just…Well, I’m sure you know I had to cancel some classes this week because she’s been having a hard time. A setback.”
“Listen—”
“But I’m calling all the students to set up makeup sessions this weekend.”
“I’m not worried about the classes, Mary. Give yourself a break. You’ve worked hard since you got here.”
“Yeah, well, thanks for the computer.”
“So let’s see if she can use it. Come by my office, pick it up. Sooner the better.”
A COUPLE HOURS LATER, leaving Natassia in the cottage with Claudia, Mary headed up the hill to Franklin’s office, shaking her head. Just now, as she walked out of the cottage, Natassia had been singing, teasing Mary, “Fra-ank-lin Fi-elds forever.” Is she getting better, or worse? If she can sing now, why’d she pull that shit in the studio? It was the end of the workday, and up in the Admin Building, the foyer was quiet. Mary dropped her umbrella into the brass umbrella stand, shook off her denim jacket. Franklin’s secretary heard her, came out, and told Mary to walk right into Franklin’s office. When he saw Mary in his doorway, he came out from behind his wide desk.
Franklin looked a little older in his office than he did wandering around the school, older and more planted. And Mary had an impulse she’d never had before with a man: standing before him, she wished he was her father. Franklin kept being nice to her. He had asked her out, so he was interes
ted in her, but not in any pushy way. Suddenly she wished for something else she’d never wished for before. A nice, polite, respectful guy, a little older than she was, not too needy, not flashy, maybe with a little money. “Have a seat, Mary?” Franklin offered. “Time to visit for a minute?”
As she sat down in his wing-armed chair, hoping her dusty jeans weren’t smudging the suede upholstery, she said, “I can’t stay long. Natassia—”
“Mary,” Franklin said, “you look tired.”
“Yeah. Well.”
Mary liked the way the curtains were drawn and several small lamps lit in Franklin’s office on this rainy late afternoon. On his desk, a bottle of Tums, a bag of candy corn. Mary tried to remember what Claudia had said his deal was—divorced, never married? The smell in his office was good, some accumulation of a man working in a room all day long. Franklin’s office was actually two rooms with a big arch between them. His desk and the chairs were in one room. His library was in the other, with a TV, a small couch, and a stack of videos on the floor. There was a bay window behind his desk with piles of paper all over the window seat. What does he do in this office all day?
“Mary, I’ve been wanting to bring you up to speed on some developments that might be of interest to you. We got a donation of a heap of money specifically designated for bringing guest speakers to campus. Since we’ve got you here, an expert, I thought it might be neat to invite one or two dance companies to perform, maybe give some lectures. ‘Master classes’ I think is the term, right?”
He’s kidding. No one had ever come to her with money to spend on dance. Usually, dancers had to beg. “Great,” she said, “how much is a heap?”
“You’d have a budget of about five thousand. Could we attract some good companies with an invitation like that?”
She tried to act calm. “Yeah. There are companies that’d come up here for that.”
“We could possibly even better that amount. Put together your wish list. Also, on a different track, we’re starting a new program for our first-year minority students. I thought you’d be a good person to be on that committee.”
“What would I have to do?”
“At first, just go to meetings, try not to fall asleep.”
She liked the way he didn’t take himself too seriously, but why was he trying so hard with her? “Once it gets going, this first-year program should be an interesting project. What I’d ask you to do is make phone contact with potential minority students.” Ah, so he’d pegged her for this disadvantaged-background thing, that was it. After all these years, Mary thought, my poor-white-trash roots still show. “Let these kids ask you questions. And I’d expect you to answer candidly. I don’t want them feeling we’re pulling wool over anybody’s eyes. When they visit campus, I’d like you to maybe have a meal with them and their parents. You just…just seem to have such a gift, Mary, for dealing with these kids. They’ll love…just love talking to you.” He sometimes got a little stutter while talking to Mary. “You’ll excite them,” he said, and a little embarrassment set in between Franklin and Mary. “Okay, let me show you this computer I dragged you up here to get.”
Something extracurricular was definitely in the room. Mary did a quick appraisal. They were still talking about nothing but work; there was the fact that he was her boss, there was the fact that he was cutting her lots of breaks, there was the fact that she might fuck up in some big way that would really disappoint him. And there was something else. What? She was pulling away from whatever romance energy might be in the room, but she also was feeling a little sad about that, not wanting to pull away completely. His necktie was loosened—that preppy version of sexiness. He was actually so close to almost being attractive. Not a bad nose at all. He still had lots of hair. But was it the acne scars on his chin? She knew she wasn’t attracted to him, but there was some pull. Definitely not a body thing. But something.
“Do you think your daughter’ll need help setting this up?” Franklin was tucking the computer into its case. “I could come down sometime.”
Mary flinched at the thought of Franklin entering the mess of her home. “No, no, we’ll be fine. Listen. Thanks. A lot.”
The day was darkening by the time Mary walked back down the hill in the rain. Now that she was out of Franklin’s office, not looking at him or feeling him looking at her, she could imagine some romance thing happening. Almost. But she couldn’t help pulling back from his attention, as she had done after performances when people from the audience came backstage and gushed, stepped in too close. Onstage, apparently, she gave something away that made these strangers assume they knew her intimately. But it wasn’t her; it was some dance-being Mary Mudd, who was not the real Mary Mudd. When people from the audience saw her up close, so many of them would shake their heads and tell her, “But you’re so small, so tiny.” That’s when Mary really wanted to hide, thinking, You don’t know how small, and wanting to yell, “Please, don’t come any closer.” That’s how Franklin’s attentions were making Mary feel. But for a brief couple of minutes that afternoon, while she walked home, she let herself imagine sex with a bit more seriousness than she was used to. He’d be a little grateful. She’d be grateful, too, but he wouldn’t believe it. She imagined them afterward, on really clean white sheets, resting.
Resting. Maybe it wouldn’t be Franklin Fields, but, shaking out her umbrella before she opened her front door, Mary began to imagine the presence in her life of a man with whom she could finally lie down and rest.
THAT NIGHT, Mary had a dream. Franklin Fields was handing her a videocassette. As he did, he lightly touched her breast, and she wasn’t mad. It felt nice. Good.
CHAPTER 19 :
NOVEMBER
1989
Natassia had no interest in the laptop computer the evening Mary brought it home, and not for several days afterward, but Mary’s trip to Franklin’s office eventually started a new phase in Mary’s and Natassia’s lives. When she finally did log on to the computer, she wanted to stay in the cottage to write and insisted she could be alone now. “You can’t keep canceling your classes, Mom. Just go without me.”
At Natassia’s next appointment with Dr. Jamison Jonson, Mary asked for a few minutes alone with the therapist. “Can she stay home for a couple hours without me?”
“Yes, she says she’s feeling as if she’d like to stay home to work on the computer. She wants to write.” They were standing by the closed door of Heather’s office. Heather spoke very softly; Mary had to lean toward her, and she was sure she smelled tobacco—and it wasn’t hers. Does Heather smoke? Mary felt new trust in the woman. “You’ll have to start moving toward normalcy sometime,” Heather was saying. “Trusting her again.”
“I trust her, I’m just afraid that, well, you know.”
“Just make sure you check on her every couple hours. She can’t do anything irreversible in a couple hours.”
Mary’s eyes widened.
“But I don’t really see her doing anything,” Heather said, tugging nervously at her fingers. She really needs a smoke, Mary thought. “Go ahead,” Heather said, “try it. But excuse me now. That’s all the time we have for today.”
BACK IN THE STUDIO, without Natassia in the corner sending a shadow onto the floor, Mary felt good. She felt so good she felt guilty about feeling so good. She was actually glad to be with the Hiliard students. And away from her daughter for a while. “That’s okay, Mary,” said Dr. Cather’s voice, “it’s normal.”
“I still love her, you know.”
“Of course, Mary, that’s very clear.”
After every class and at mid-class break, Mary called Natassia. Once when she called, Natassia said, out of the blue, “Mom, you know that day when I made a scene in your class and messed everything up?”
“You didn’t make a scene. You didn’t mess up.”
“It was the music that got me. That Sarah Vaughan, when she’s singing ‘Every Time We Say Goodbye.’ He used to listen to that exact same CD all the time
. You know, when I was at his place? It really weirded me out when you played that.”
“I’m sorry,” Mary said. How the hell could I know that? You never even told me his name.
“You didn’t know, Mom. It’s not your fault.”
AND THEN, one afternoon, Natassia and Mary were sitting in Claudia’s car in the parking lot of the drugstore, waiting for a prescription to be filled (an antibiotic old Dr. Jonson had prescribed for the earache). Since some Hiliard School kids were in the drugstore, Natassia had insisted on waiting in the car, and now, slouching in the passenger seat, she turned to face her mother and said, “Mom? I’m still really embarrassed about what happened that day in your class. I’m so mad—”
“There’s no need to—”
“Shush,” Natassia insisted, “let me talk. Please. It’s like this.” Mary turned in her seat and looked at Natassia, whose limbs seemed particularly long when the two of them were packed into the little Mazda. “Before I start crying and stuff, I tell myself, Don’t. But then it’s like I don’t have a choice, it’s like it’s a physical thing. I don’t know how to control what’s inside me.”
Mary took hold of Natassia’s big hands, kneaded them. “Honey, do you want me to call your therapist? Maybe you should tell her all this. Or Nora, should we call Nora?”
Impatient, Natassia turned away. “Thanks a lot.”
“No. No.” Mary kept hold of Natassia’s hands. “It’s just…I’m scared. Natassia, how can I say this? I want you to tell me anything, anything, but I’m not trained—”
“It all sounds sick and abnormal to you, doesn’t it?”
“No! It sounds sad. Here you are, this extraordinary person—”
“And you’ve never felt this? That’s what I need to know.” Natassia was looking out at the rain, her face so worried. “How abnormal am I, Mom?”
Mary shook Natassia’s shoulder. “You’re better than normal.”
“So, then, you’ve felt like this? Like you’re worthless, like you’re stupid, like you’re ashamed of yourself, you’re unlovable, that no matter what you do—”