All My Mother's Lovers

by Ilana Masad

  Maggie thinks she’s heard enough. She wants to smoke. She wants to sleep. She wants to call Lucia, maybe Ariel, and she wants to understand what the hell her mother was doing and how no one knew about any of this. She wants to throttle her innocent and loving father and tell him to snap the fuck out of his mourning because there isn’t nearly as much to mourn as he thinks there is. Though that would likely make things worse.

  She gets up, leaving the half-empty beer on the artfully rough wooden coffee table. “Well, okay. I guess I’m done here.”

  “You’re going?” he says, looking up. “Don’t you want to stay for dinner at least? We have a guest room.” He hesitates, puts down the letter. His hands begin the nervous washing motion again. “That is, it’s yours for the night. If you’d like.”

  And Maggie, tired, is undone by this kindness. So half an hour later, she finds herself settled in, her bag retrieved from the car and lying on the queen-size bed in the spare bedroom, sitting down to eat ewa agoyin—which she’s told are mashed beans with a dark sauce of palm oil, peppers, onions, and ground crayfish—with Abe and Junior.

  IRIS

  DECEMBER 13, 2012

  Every year, Iris tried to do something special for herself on what she considered the Bad Day. It was the anniversary of her first marriage, and if she didn’t make an effort at distraction, she inevitably sank into a pit of dark memories. Though, truth be told, those memories invaded anyway, almost no matter what she did, and not always or only on the Bad Day.

  That morning, she woke up to a thermos of fresh coffee with a flower-shaped jam cookie propped against it on the bedside table. Under the thermos was a note from Peter. Good morning, my love, it read. Have an easy day. I’m sorry I’m not here to hug you. For a moment, she was disoriented. Where was he that he had to leave a note? And then she remembered that he and Maggie had driven to LA to meet a friend of Maggie’s from college who was visiting the West Coast with her family over winter break. They were going to brunch at a place Iris recommended—she took clients there occasionally—and then to the Huntington Art Gallery to see Ricky Swallow’s contemporary abstract sculptures. Iris was originally supposed to go with them, but when she’d realized what the date was, had begged off.

  She hadn’t explained why, though. Her children didn’t know she’d been married before, and she had no interest in telling them. Peter deferred to her in this, knowing that she felt it was a sad and pathetic excuse for a marriage. No matter how many times she was told it wasn’t her fault, no matter how much she would tell others it wasn’t theirs either, the fact remained that she was ashamed of it, of how long she’d stayed, of how many years she’d spent subsumed in it. She didn’t want her children having that kind of example in their lives, and she didn’t want them to see her as weak.

  She pulled herself up, stretched, and began to get organized for the alternative plans she’d made for the day. The distracting ones. Ariel was probably home—she couldn’t imagine where else he’d be—but was probably sleeping late as usual. She’d told the kids that she had an urgent work thing pop up last night, while she and Maggie were watching Motives & Murders: Cracking the Case, the newest of the sensational crime docudramas on the ID channel. She’d waited until a commercial break, of course, her and Maggie having forbidden Ariel from talking only moments earlier because he was making fun of the narrator’s overly serious tone. Ariel, who’d gone back to his book after that, barely glanced up when Iris explained that she was heading out of town, but Maggie seemed disappointed that Iris wouldn’t meet her friend. In her usual way, though, she’d lifted her chin and jerked out a nod of what Iris suspected was feigned indifference. She couldn’t confirm it; Maggie would always deny vehemently that she was hurt or bothered by anything Iris did. It used to drive her up the wall, the passive-aggressive way Maggie said “Whatever,” or “Never mind,” but over the years, Iris had come to accept it, mostly because she had never managed to break through it. She used to try, telling Maggie they could talk, that it was better to discuss these things than keep them inside, but Maggie would just roll her eyes and say that there was nothing to talk about. “She takes after you,” Peter used to tell her when she was at her wit’s end, crying in their bedroom after another fight with her daughter. “She’s stubborn, and she protects herself. She’ll come around eventually,” he’d say. But so far, Iris was sad to note, she hadn’t.

  In the kitchen, she grabbed a couple of slices of bread and stuck them in the toaster on low in order to make the emergency snack she always brought with her on drives—a peanut butter sandwich. One of the vestiges of her mother’s rearing. An immigrant—or did she count as a refugee, at least at first? Iris didn’t know, since her parents refused to talk about so much—her mother had tried to expose her daughter to everything American, and along with TV dinners and Twinkies, she deemed peanut butter especially so. She was forever worried that Iris would get hungry and made sure her daughter had a Wonder Bread peanut butter sandwich—crusts on, only because Iris insisted—whenever she left the house.

  Waiting for her toast, Iris began sifting through the pile of mail from the week that had accumulated on the kitchen island. A couple of bills, some requests from museums and theaters for donations—these were all for Peter, since he was the one who got on their mailing lists—and some holiday cards from former clients, one from her accountant. And at the bottom, a parents’ newsletter from Maggie’s university. She slit the envelope open with her thumb, tearing it unevenly and giving herself a paper cut. “Ow,” she said, sticking her thumb in her mouth. She sucked on the metallic flavor of her blood and relished the sting as she skimmed the thick pages of the pamphlet. They described all sorts of student affairs she didn’t care about, and then, on the back, in large letters, she saw the word “Graduation” and tugged her thumb out of her mouth. Some guy with a silly name was speaking at commencement, and Iris grinned at herself; he sounded like a fashion model rather than a motivational speaker. She supposed he could be both. Mostly, she couldn’t believe Maggie was going to graduate in five months. That is, she thought as she spread Laura Scudder’s on the hot toast and pressed the slices together, it made perfect sense that her daughter was graduating college, but was also a totally bonkers concept. And Ariel—he’d be starting soon enough. A warmth filled Iris’s chest as she gathered her things to set off. If only her parents could have seen her children—fully American, free to speak their minds and follow their hearts, unconstrained by the kind of oppression Iris’s parents had suffered. Even when Maggie went on about the state of politics, even when Iris agreed with her, she knew in a way her daughter didn’t that the very ability to voice her anger was a freedom.

  She climbed in her car and began the drive to Coalinga, to the resort she had a good discount on since she’d organized a couple of events there for small companies. It boasted three restaurants, a large pool, and was near what she’d learned was the annual Horned Toad Derby, something she knew nothing about but was charmed by anyway. She listened to NPR on the drive as she always did, and the news was dire, of course; there were violent protests in India following a gang-rape. Good, she thought. Rape was nothing but violence, disgusting and disguised as sex rather than what it really was—a destruction of a person’s power, an erosion of their will. Her vision blurred for a moment with the force of the image springing before her. Shlomo’s face, his scraggly beard oozing off his chin and cheeks, his hot breath filling her nose. A loud honk brought her back to the present—she was going far too slowly for the highway. She pulled over onto the shoulder and endured another extended blare as someone passed her and yelled “Learn how to drive, bitch!” out their window.

  Iris sat, hands gripping the wheel so hard that her knuckles were white and the flesh between them beet red. A story came on about the final funerals for Sandy Hook victims. The newscaster’s voice was solemn in a way it wasn’t a moment before during his discussion of the rape protests. Iris changed the station—B
illy Idol’s “White Wedding.” Oh, the irony, she thought.

  When she got to the resort, she realized she hadn’t eaten her sandwich. She considered it but decided to toss it in the bin—her mother was probably rolling in her grave—and get some lunch at one of the restaurants instead. The more casual one; she’d save the really fancy place for later, when Abe arrived.

  “Hello, ma’am, can I tell you about our specials today?” a young white brunette woman asked, her apron tied meticulously around her hips and her crisp shirt so clean it was almost blinding. Iris was pretty sure there was a woman like her at every upscale restaurant she’d ever been to—bland, fresh-faced, appealing in the same way as a town car. Recognizable, symbolic, utterly dull.

  “No, thanks, I know what I want,” Iris said. “The crispy calamari to start, please, and then the Cobb salad?”

  “What kind of dressing?”

  “Do you have blue cheese?”

  “Yes. Excellent choice, ma’am,” the server said. She clicked her pen sharply on the pad in her hand and smiled widely, revealing a silver ring hanging from her gums over her front teeth that made Iris shudder internally, and think that maybe she wasn’t quite so bland.

  “Oh, and a glass of wine, please. Whatever the house white is.”

  Iris began to relax now, leaning back in the polished wooden booth and feeling her limbs begin to ease from the tension of the drive, which had become overcautious after her vision of Shlomo. She pulled two books out of her bag—one crime novel she was almost finished with, about a corpse found in 1946 in a bombed-out corner of London, and a new one she was about to start that she’d picked up because it was about an old widowed Jewish repairman. Sort of like her father, a jack of all trades who’d been the super of the apartment building she’d grown up in, in Brooklyn. She thought he’d enjoy seeing someone like him starring in a book.

  But the books couldn’t keep her attention for too long, especially after the second glass of wine. She kept thinking about her imminent meeting. It had been over three months since she’d last seen Abe; they’d texted and exchanged a few emails and talked on the phone once or twice. He’d been busy with his semester—it was a teaching year for him, which he didn’t love, but it came with being a researcher with university funding—and his son’s full-time move into his house. And Iris had been working, trying to help Ariel study for the SATs, and remodeling the bathroom in her and Peter’s room after they’d discovered rot underneath a couple loose floor tiles. As she paid and got up to go check into their room, she pushed thoughts of her family away from her mind, reminding herself that she needed boundaries, even on an emotionally slippery day like this. Without strict separation, she wouldn’t have ever been able to keep this up. Instead of home and the guilt she felt at canceling plans with Maggie, she made herself picture Abe’s mouth on her neck and wondered idly how quickly they’d fall into bed. One thing they had in spades was chemistry.

  “Here you go, two-oh-one, the Canary Room,” the desk clerk told her, handing over a key with a large wooden tag on it in the shape of a yellow bird. The rooms at the resort used to only have names, but apparently too many visitors had complained about having difficulty navigating, and so there were numbers now too. Iris wished there weren’t—there was something so romantic about the idea of needing to hunt down the Canary Room.

  She took the elevator up, because her knees ached in the winter nowadays, and found the room at the end of the hall. It was painted a light, friendly yellow, with the couch and the bedsheets in complementary white and gold stripes. A large TV hung across from the bed, and the curtains were flung open, letting in the winter sunlight, which was already beginning to orange with the passing of the day. She followed her usual routine: kicked off her heels, got her toiletry bag onto the bathroom counter, and turned on the TV to the Weather Channel because it made her feel less alone. There wasn’t much exciting about entering hotel rooms anymore, though she remembered her first stay, how stoked she’d been when her parents had taken her to Maine once when she was young, to visit distant relatives. Back then, staying in a hotel felt like the epitome of wealth. Now she stayed in Best Westerns and Holiday Inns almost weekly, and sometimes, if events were taking place in higher-end Marriotts and Hiltons, she’d stay on-site. She wasn’t rich, but she was more comfortable than she could have ever imagined being.

  In a way, she had Shlomo to thank for that. She hated it, though. She didn’t want to owe him anything.

  She lay down and let the talk of rain and shine and temperatures and dew points soothe her to sleep.

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEN SHE WOKE up more than an hour later, her mouth felt foamy, and there were two missed calls from her daughter. She called back, panicked. “Sweetie, what’s wrong?” she asked as soon as Maggie picked up.

  “What? Nothing, chill, everything’s okay,” her daughter said, impatient. “Dad wanted to know whether you had renewed the Barnes and Noble membership but he forgot his phone at home like a dingus.”

  “Don’t call Dad a dingus,” Iris said, relieved and also beginning to get mad. “When you call twice and don’t leave a message it makes me think something awful is happening.”

  “Yeah, but like, if something awful was happening I’d call nine-one-one, you know?”

  “Okay, Maggie.” Talking to her daughter was exhausting sometimes. “How was your day with your friend? Are you all still in LA or heading home yet?” There was a long pause. “Honey?”

  “What.”

  “What, what? I asked a question.”

  “We’re heading home. Bye.” And Maggie hung up on her. She stared at her phone. What had she done this time? Maggie wasn’t one to just hang up like that, not usually—she would normally stay on the line, huffily silent, while Iris tried to figure out how she’d offended her daughter. Last time, it was when Whitney Houston died; Maggie had told her that it was an open secret that she was a closeted lesbian, even if the rumors were being denied over and over again now that she was dead, and Iris had said that sounded like nonsense. It seemed to her that fans were always trying to make famous people into a version that suited their politics. Maggie had gone cold and monosyllabic for the rest of the call. But Iris hadn’t said anything about anything this time, had she? The way she and her daughter ran hot and cold on each other kept her up at night sometimes, trying to figure out which of them was being unreasonable.

  Her phone, still in her hand, buzzed; it was Abe, telling her he’d just parked. She closed her eyes, made herself sink back into the here and now, into this part of her life that was hers alone. When she sat up, she was smiling, her fingers prickling with anticipation at touching Abe again.

  Giddy, she went downstairs in her stocking feet. The carpet felt like a pillow under her soles. It was a luxurious sensation, like being Eloise at the Plaza, and when the elevator opened and she saw Abe standing at his majestic six-foot-three height, she had the urge to run to him, jump on him like someone in a rom-com. But instead she stopped and watched as he looked around, his mouth set. When he caught sight of her, he smiled, but not as enthusiastically as she’d hoped.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked once his long legs carried him over to where she was standing.

  He squeezed her shoulder and shook his head. “Let’s go to the room.”

  In the elevator, she took his hand and squeezed it. He pulled her toward him and kissed the top of her head, taking a long whiff of the smell of her hair. “Abe, I’m worried,” she said.

  “Don’t be.” He smiled, more genuinely. “It’s just things at home.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Has Lisa gone yet?” Lisa was Abe’s ex-wife, who was moving to New Jersey and letting Abe have custody of their son, as long as Junior wanted to stay in Sacramento.

  “She’s leaving after Christmas. Junior’s been with her all this past week even though we already moved all his stuff into m
y place.”

  “I’m sorry, darling,” Iris said. They were in the room by now, and she knelt before him and began to remove his shoes to give him a foot rub, which was one of his favorite things. But he pulled her up and sat her on him, her skirt riding up to her thighs, and kissed her. “Oh,” she said, feeling not so sorry after all.

  They fucked hard and fast. There was an urgency to Abe that she wasn’t used to. He tended to spend a long time pleasuring her with his lips and tongue first, even if they hadn’t seen each other for a while, but this time he got her clothes off, gazed at her, and awkwardly tore off his own while fumbling in his bag for lubricant. He slid his wet hand the length of his shaft and then, with more force than usual, slid two fingers inside her. He picked her up and she wrapped her legs around him. He didn’t quite slam her against the wall, but he backed her into it hard enough that he pulled away from kissing her neck and asked her, “Okay?” She nodded, and he pushed inside her.

  It was over pretty quickly, as with a shudder he let loose inside her. He held himself there as she rocked against his pelvis, his penis softening but providing enough stimulation to keep her going. Finally, she pushed her fingers between them and rubbed herself until with a stuttering gasp she came. He took her hand and sucked on the wet fingers. Then he laid her down on the bed so gently it made her throat fill with emotion. He settled behind and pressed up against her, a long arm wrapped around her stomach with his hand tucking under her waist.

  “Hmm,” she murmured, arching back into him. “I missed you,” she said.

  “I missed you too, Irey,” he breathed. “I missed you too.” After a long moment, Iris dozily basking in the warmth of his body, he spoke again. “I miss you too much to keep doing this.”