“Shoot.”
“Could you round up Audrey and Merit and Faith and come on over, oh, say, about ten o’clock?”
“You’re throwing a coffee party?”
“Something like that.”
Kari fretted over how to best present Julia. Should she have her on the couch, where everyone would see her as soon as they came in, or should she keep her in the bedroom and bring everyone in on the pretext of looking at her new curtains? Should she be holding Julia when she answered the door, or would that be too big a surprise for them?
She opted for putting her in the bedroom, and there was a mild excitement as her friends gathered in the living room. There was always mild excitment whenever they got together, especially when they hadn’t planned on meeting, and especially because it was Saturday and the women (except for Merit, who brought her baby with her) were able to leave the kids home with their fathers.
“So,” said Audrey, “if this is a coffee party, where’s the coffee? Where’re the treats?”
“It’s not really a coffee party,” said Kari.
“Sheesh,” said Slip with mock offense, “talk about getting us here under false pretenses.”
“Yeah,” agreed Audrey. “I thought I was getting at least one of your homemade cinnamon rolls. What gives?”
Kari pressed her lips together, trying to hold back the smile that wanted to burst all over her face.
“Look at you,” said Faith. “You look like the cat who swallowed the canary.”
Laughter burbled out of the older woman.
“Oh, Kari,” said Merit breathlessly. “Did you meet someone?”
“That’s it!” said Audrey, clapping her hands together. “Kari’s fallen in love!”
Kari laughed again and nodded. “It’s true, I have fallen in love.”
“Holy love and intrigue!” said Slip. “That’s why you were acting so funny last night—he was here with you!”
“Well, not exactly.”
“Is he from California?” asked Faith. “Is that why you went out there?”
“Why don’t you all just come with me to my bedroom?” said Kari, her bright blue eyes never brighter, never bluer.
“What, you’re going to introduce us to your boyfriend in your bedroom?” said Audrey. “That’s kinky, Kari.”
“Won’t he be embarrassed?” Merit whispered as they made their way toward the bathroom.
“Won’t we?” asked Slip. “ ‘Uh, hello, mister, we’re Kari’s friends, just here to gawk at you.’ ”
Opening the door, Kari could hardly contain herself.
“Jeez Louise,” said Slip, “you’re shaking.”
There was a moment of stunned silence as the women stood huddled inside the door, staring at a bed that held not a man in a bathrobe but a sleeping infant.
“There’s a baby in that bed,” said Merit.
Audrey, resisting the urge to comment on Merit’s powers of perception, said instead, “Whose baby is it, Kari? What’s she doing in your bed?”
“She’s my baby,” said Kari. “And she’s sleeping.”
“Your baby! What do you mean?”
“Where’d she come from?”
“How old is she?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why, she’s black!”
“Yes, she is,” said Kari, hearing Faith’s statement in the jumble of everyone else’s words. “Half black and half white.”
The women had formed a semicircle around the bed and stared at the little hump on the center of the mattress, Neanderthals staring at the first fire. All of them were so full of questions they couldn’t speak. Finally a space opened up in Slip.
“Kari,” she said, “tell us everything.”
But Kari couldn’t. Instead she told them the story she’d rehearsed about a fellow teacher who’d been transferred to California and a teenager she’d had in her class who was pregnant and wanted to give her child to a loving family.
“But you’re not a family,” said Faith. “You’re a widow.”
Kari plastered on a fake smile; inside she winced at Faith’s bluntness.
“Well, this was a private adoption. Arranged by the girl’s family’s lawyer. Their only requirement was that they find someone who really wanted to love and raise a baby.”
“Well, that’s certainly you,” said Slip. She paused for a moment, brushing a tear out of her eye. “But you’re sure everything’s on the up and up? Nothing can happen . . . like it happened before?”
“No, Julia’s mine,” said Kari. “For ever and ever.”
Merit set her sleeping daughter next to Kari’s. At two months, Reni looked huge next to Julia.
“I bet they’ll be best friends,” said Merit softly, and Kari wanted to hug her. In fact, Kari wanted to hug everyone.
“I’m going to run home and get my camera,” said Audrey. When she returned she brought both a fancy Nikon (whose many lenses she had never used) and a bottle of champagne, and as they toasted the new mother and baby, Audrey snapped pictures. Eventually the laughing and jostling woke Julia up (Reni slept on), and for the first time in their lives her friends got to watch Kari pick up a baby and address it as her own.
“OKAY,” SAID KARI, who, even in the midst of the sweetness of her daughter, could be swept away in one of the sweet memories Julia had already given her, “I really have got to get to work now.” She began assembling the ingredients for chocolate, blond, and peanut butter brownies. Unconcerned whether she had an audience or not, Julia continued to concentrate on which Cheerio passed muster.
If she and Julia were out and about in the world, she could count on at least one rude remark and several ignorant/stupid ones, but Kari wasn’t as ready to pick a fight in defense of her daughter anymore; it wasted too much time and energy. Let the idiots figure things out for themselves, she thought, ignoring questions like “Didn’t they have any regular babies to adopt?” or “Is she a mulatto?”
It’s one thing I’ll have to teach Julia, she thought. Pick which idiots to fight and which ones to ignore. Sometimes the idea of all she’d have to teach her daughter was a daunting prospect, but if Kari had learned one thing, it was to not borrow trouble. Trouble would find her if it wanted to; there was no sense worrying about the whens and ifs.
The thing that really unsettled her so far didn’t happen in the grocery store or strolling Julia in the park; it happened at her brother Anders’ house last weekend. She and Julia had been invited over to help celebrate his wife Sally’s fiftieth birthday.
Everyone, after alternately complimenting the food and complaining about eating too much of it, was lounging in the living room, their stockinged feet up on ottomans, their belts loosened, talking about nothing more important than who got to hold Julia. Kari loved these get-togethers, relaxing so completely in her family’s presence that she could have easily fallen asleep, except that she didn’t want to miss out on any of the conversation, jokes, or rounds of dessert.
“Okay, my turn,” said Kari’s nephew Scott. “All I get to hold at school are coeds and beer bottles.”
“Uffda,” said Sally, swatting her son’s leg. “Your report card better not show that.”
“I doubt it will,” said Kari of her nephew, who was valedictorian of his senior class.
“Thanks for your vote of confidence,” said Scott, and Kari handed him Julia. Dressed in a pink dress and tights, Julia looked as if she had been the inspiration for the word precious. She held her arms out to the young man; that she wasn’t a fearful baby was yet another aspect of her personality that caused Kari’s heart to swell with pride and love.
Julia had been welcomed by Kari’s family as the gift she was, but they had plenty of questions—the same type of questions the Angry Housewives had, ones she accepted as curious rather than accusatory.
When Anders and Sally had first come to see Julia, Kari was almost sick from nervousness.
“Oh, Kari,” Sally had said, taking the baby in her arm
s, “she’s absolutely beautiful.”
She’s your grandchild! Kari had screamed inside.
“She looks a little like Bjorn,” Anders had said.
It’s you she could look like! but it was such a sweet and generous thing for Anders to say that she had felt some of the nervousness melt away.
“You know, I think you’re right,” she’d said, studying Julia’s face.
Anders was telling Scott it was time for Uncle Anders to hold the baby when the phone rang.
Sally answered and then, cupping the receiver, announced, “It’s Mary Jo!”
While Sally chatted happily about Scott coming up from Ball State bearing his laundry—“but a present too, a lovely teapot”—and her other son, Randy—“oh, he and Beth both have the flu, but they’re taking me to the Guthrie next week”—Kari felt everything disappear inside her body but heat.
She was about to excuse herself to the bathroom, where she could splash cold water on her face, but then Sally said, “And of course Kari’s here with Julia—honestly, Mary Jo, she’s the cutest little baby.” There was a pause, and then Sally held out the receiver.
“Kari, Mary Jo wants to say hello.”
“I . . . I . . . ,” she said, flustered, before taking the phone.
“How are you, Aunt Kari?” came Mary Jo’s bright voice, and Kari was able to answer, “Fine,” without her voice belying her terror.
Many times Kari had picked up a pen with every intention to write, to share with her niece the phenomenal progress this phenomenal baby was making—“She rolled over!” “She’s sitting up!” “She’s got teeth!”—but fear made her cap her pen and put away her stationery. She and Mary Jo had shared a warm and close relationship, and as much as she missed that, Kari felt that if she communicated with her niece, it would remind Mary Jo of what she had given up. And if she was reminded of what she had given up, wouldn’t she start yearning for it? How could she not?
So Kari had sent Mary Jo none of the letters and care packages of cookies she’d sent her other nieces and nephews, hoping she’d understand and/or welcome her silence.
“I hear Julia’s just a wonderful baby!” enthused Mary Jo, to which Kari murmured that yes, she certainly was.
“Well, that’s great, Aunt Kari. I’m so happy it’s all working out!” And then, to Kari’s surprise, her niece went on to talk about her incredible art history professor and campus demonstrations and her new appreciation of physics, and when Kari finally handed the phone back to Sally, she thought: I’ve just had a conversation with a college girl. Not the biological mother of my daughter, but a young woman thrilled by her class schedule as well as the sex appeal of one of her professors; a young woman participating in sit-ins and be-ins in front of Sproul Hall. Relief rained on the parched dryness inside Kari, and she said a silent prayer, thanking God for letting Mary Jo be happy to be a college girl, making it easier for Kari to be a mother.
November 1969
HOST: MERIT
BOOK: Dr. Faustus by Thomas Mann
REASON CHOSEN: “It made a lot of banned-books lists.”
True to his word, Eric didn’t hit Merit again after that first time. At least not for a whole month. And it wasn’t really a hit, more of a slap, inspired by Merit’s inability to recognize how hard Eric worked during the day and was it that difficult to have a drink made the way he liked it when he got home? Another slap followed a couple weeks later—this because the baby’s diaper needed changing and Merit (who was cooking dinner) had the audacity to suggest he change it.
But it wasn’t until they had walked home from Kari’s Christmas party almost a year ago, Merit holding her baby with one arm and her drunken husband (he was normally so careful with his behavior, and yet he felt no compunction in getting absolutely blotto at Kari’s Christmas parties) with the other as he struggled to find traction in the snow, wasn’t until she had laid Reni down and then gone downstairs and found Eric sitting on the couch, still wearing his overcoat, wasn’t until she kneeled down to slip off his wet shoes, that she found out there were worse things than getting hit. With his foot against her chest, he pushed her backward, hard.
As she gasped for air, her mind tried to make sense of how she had been kneeling two seconds ago and how she was now lying on the living room carpet. Then another blow, delivered by Eric’s foot, pounded into her side, and at the same time her mind exploded with disbelief and terror.
“I told you to take off those stupid buttons,” he said, ripping the Pat Paulsen for President button off her dress. “And what was all that flirting going on with you and Todd Trottman? You think I’m blind—you think I can’t see what you’re up to?”
“Todd Trottman?” Merit said, or tried to say, not knowing if the words had come out before he kicked her again, this time on her upper thigh, before stomping out of the room. For at least half an hour, she lay on the beige carpet, her arms wrapped around her knees, her knees drawn up to her chest, staring at the legs of the coffee table her in-laws had given them, wondering how they were made to curve out like that, wondering how much weight they could stand before they finally snapped.
She had seen Faith at the grocery store the next day, and Faith asked her why she was moving so stiffly.
“My gosh, you’re walking like an invalid—are you all right?”
Merit had smiled and said she had fallen down the steps while carrying the laundry basket to the basement.
“Merit,” said Faith, “you’re lucky you didn’t break a leg!”
“I know,” said Merit. “It’s the last time I’ll carry a full laundry basket down the steps.” Shame swarmed through her, and she was relieved when Faith said she’d love to talk but Wade was getting home from a trip and she’d promised she’d make him a pecan pie.
Merit was not used to lying, didn’t like the feel of a lie inside her, and yet felt at times her whole life was a lie. She lied every time she made herself trip or appear clumsy so that in case someone saw a bruise, saw her “walking like an invalid,” she could excuse it away—“Oh, you know me, Clumsy Clara.” She lied when asked how she or Eric was, smiling and answering, “Great.” She felt like a bad actress in a play she never wanted to be in.
Merit hadn’t noticed a pattern yet, but she could count on at least one “rage” a month (just like my period, she thought, although, having recently discovered she was pregnant again, she wouldn’t be having one of those for a while). The hitting, slapping, and kicking were bad, awful, terrible, but afterward was by far the worst, when Eric would plead for her forgiveness, kissing the bruises that were already rising on her body, when he’d force himself on her, all the while telling her that from now on things would be different, she’d see.
She learned how to hold her breath midway in her throat, which stopped the rising bile; she learned how to pretend she was asleep afterward so that he’d finally turn around and go to sleep himself; and she learned how to convince herself that she didn’t hate the man she married, she only hated what he did, and that of course would stop soon, had to stop soon.
Once Slip had said that Jerry had gotten so mad at her he told her he was going to kill her, and Merit had looked up expectantly, horrified that someone else’s husband wasn’t what he seemed, and horrified over how happy she felt about it (she wasn’t alone!), but then Slip told how she and Jerry had been talking hypothetically about what awful thing they would have to do to make the other want to divorce them.
“I told him I’d tithe half of Jerry’s salary to Richard Nixon and the other half to George Wallace, and Jerry said not only would he give me a divorce for that, he’d have to kill me,” and Merit realized that the threats that were real for her were just a joke for Slip.
Eric used his surgeon’s precision when it came to hitting her, only doing damage to parts of her body that wouldn’t be seen by anyone (he knew her next appointment with her obstetrician wasn’t for three more weeks). She drew her shame tight around her; it was a coat that had no buttons, no zipper,
so she couldn’t get out of it, but most importantly, nobody could get in.
She knew from her father’s sermons based on biblical sacrifice that there were a lot of people in the world less fortunate than she, and the trick was figuring out how to deal with one’s particular (mis)fortune.
Motherhood was her biggest trick. She had known she’d love her children, but she was stunned at the force of her love, awed with the knowledge that if the world needed to be wrestled to benefit her baby girl, she would not only wrestle the world but pin it to the mat. She, who was the queen of the cowed, wouldn’t accede to Eric’s wishes to bottle-feed Reni; she wouldn’t accede to her mother-in-law’s advice to put her on a schedule or to not pick her up when she cried “because you’re teaching her she’s the boss and you’re not.” She rationalized—she had to rationalize when it came to her husband’s abuse—that what Eric did to her was a separate issue, and as long as he wasn’t hurting the baby already born and the one inside her, she would find a way to deal with it.
And so she had come to practice small rebellions.
Eric liked her to go to bed in a particular negligee—it was pink and lacy and, in Merit’s mind, something a child bride would wear. Gradually, sitting on the toilet, she began pulling out the seam stitching, inch by inch, night after night until one night, as Eric pulled her to him, the side of her gown ripped open. Despite Merit’s assurances that she could repair it, Eric, who believed new was better than mended, ordered her to “throw it away,” and a tiny star appeared against the dark nightscape of Merit’s marriage.
When Eric first asked her to wear her hair in a French roll the way his mother did (“It’s so elegant, so feminine”), Merit was happy to oblige him. She was tired of it now and had talked of cutting her hair, but Eric wouldn’t hear of it. So one morning, sitting at her vanity, she tore a piece of tissue she had just used and began rolling it up in her hair. Throughout the day it made her giggle to think of the wadded-up, dirty tissue hidden in her elegant, feminine French roll. Another day she rolled up a used Q-tip; another day a teething biscuit Reni had gnawed on.
Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons Page 16