by Mona Simpson
He walked back balancing his feast.
Among the throng—men moving lights, cinematographers pushing Panavision cameras on trolleys, a studio executive leaning against a pillar—I watched Paul, a nucleus, in his baggy white shirt. Actresses sat in chairs, getting made up in plain view. I would have thought that was private. A comedian walked to the center of the stands and began juggling. “Warm-up guy,” Jeff said, walking past.
I heard a soft flurry of scribbling behind us. Paul was grateful. At breakfast, he’d tallied their fees. “The writers are essentially giving me a million dollars. When you figure their episode quotes.”
“Wants us to work on the blow,” Jack said. He came tonight as a favor to Paul. Within the comedy world, Jack was famous, though no one had ever heard him say anything funny outside the Room. I’d hardly heard him say anything at all. He drove a Civic with a bumper sticker that said KILL YOUR TV. I saw Paul in the distance, one hand on Jeff’s shoulder. The younger guys here hoped he’d hire them when he got his pickup order. “Never seen so many writers at a pilot shoot,” Jack said. “It’s a testament to Paul. The perfunctory presents alone are going to bankrupt you.”
He was right. Paul had spent more than a thousand dollars. Paul’s mother had sent ten Ralph Lauren blankets she’d found in an outlet, but this time, he decided to buy retail. We bought those noise-canceling headphones Jeff had given me.
A young writer sighed. “Got to be an easier way to make six hundred thousand.”
Molly handed Bing a napkin with two Hostess CupCakes, then sauntered off.
The eight TV screens blinked on and I gathered that the shoot had begun. I thought they’d have clackers.
The actress whined. I wanted to tell Paul, but I couldn’t get his attention. This felt urgent. Her voice was ruining his lines. Paul had once missed a whole dinner party, pacing outside, begging her agent.
After every scene—which went like a volley—there was a mangled shout and applause. Paul moved, clipboard in hand, between milling camera people in the lit sets, where he looked more at home than he did in our house. All those nights I’d put down the phone, feeling socked, when he said it’d be another late one, this had always been here—PAs pressed around him offering food, Diet Coke—another fuller world. At home, it was just Will and me. And Lola, who right now sat somewhere in the bleachers.
Will pulled me over to see the warm-up guy hold a ladder in his teeth. Jeff bumped into me, his arm on my arm.
“Wonder what he’s getting paid,” I said.
“Maybe nothing. Probably sees this as his big chance.” His hand arabesqued around my ear. “You do something to your hair?”
“Helen took me.”
“I like your regular hair.”
The clown’s roommates probably knew about this showcase. Maybe they’d planned a party for him at home. But the studio guys stood, arms crossed, talking to one another. Paul wouldn’t notice him either, though for his son, he made the whole show.
Between wonders, Will ran back to Craft Services, returning with a new flimsy paper plate. So far, by my count, he’d eaten:
Two Hostess CupCakes
One Twinkie
Two cheesecakes
A brownie
Two Ho Hos
Four Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Another candy bar I didn’t know the name of
He now carefully balanced a 7UP can on the thin arm of the director’s chair. I didn’t allow sodas at home. Paul hid Diet Coke in Lola’s square refrigerator. He’d go out at night, knock, and grab one.
Paul walked over, picked up Will, and guided me to another region behind a curtain. A guard sat at a wooden desk in the middle of the adjacent hangar, a ledger open. He let us in. In another room, walled with black curtains, there were overstuffed chairs, couches, a long table of food, and, on a high cart, one small TV monitor.
“The network people,” Paul whispered. “Their caterer.” The network would decide whether or not to buy Paul’s show. All this time they’d been back here deliberating. Men in chef’s hats served. “You’re going to like this, bud.” Paul handed Will a square of tiramisu.
We fell into a hard-whispered fight.
“Claire, we auditioned forty actresses, and she was far and away the best.”
“Couldn’t Jeff direct her to tone it down?”
“I can’t be taking notes from my wife.” Just then Molly came over with a clipboard. Paul lifted a piece of my hair, hooked it behind my ear. “Hair looks nice.”
A tall camerawoman bent down. “Does he want to ride?”
So Will rode the Panavision, shaped like a huge whistle, scooting on tracks toward the underground cave of a false living room. Paul sprinted across stage. “Whoa. Hey, you bring a camera?” Before I mumbled no, he assumed my failure and began asking, “You have a camera? You have one?”
We had a picture of Will riding the Paramount golf cart. We should have had this too—Little Him on the Panavision, night of the pilot shoot.
When the camerawoman returned him, Will bit down on a Milky Way.
I grabbed Jeff’s elbow. “The way Marly’s playing Ellen, she sounds a little dumb.”
“You say that as if it were a bad thing!” He walked off, shaking with little explosions.
People stamped on the metal bleachers. Then they walked out in bunches, laughing. The studio president stretched, in soft long sleeves. A hand on Will, I lingered near the executives coming out of their cave, hoping to overhear. But they were talking about an actor.
“Two years ago he was eating dog food from a can.”
The camerawoman who’d given Will a ride squatted to lift cable, looping it around her elbow. Pretty underwear. She looked past forty, wearing work boots. I never would have guessed. Magenta.
She opened a hand spread with gum sticks and offered them to Will.
The warm-up guy heaved two duffels over his shoulder.
“Excuse,” I said. “Could I have your name?”
“Sure!” He set the bags down and carefully printed his name and three phone numbers on a torn envelope corner; oh, no, he thought I was somebody. I was just Paul’s wife. All I could do was send him a basket, next Christmas.
My mother and Tom came over, smiling, her arm on his arm. She wore all black with her good scarf, draped.
I reminded her about Grandmothers’ Day at the school. Grandfathers’ Day was a week later.
“I thought we could invite Tom,” I said.
“Let’s wait on that,” she whispered, pulling me aside.
“Why? Will thinks of him as a grandfather.”
“Well, he’s not. He’s just a friend. I don’t really even like him.”
Finally Paul tore open his presents. I could tell the way he turned the pen in his hand that he thought it was extravagant. But he clipped it to his pocket.
“We can discuss returning it in the morning,” I said.
He laughed. “I love the mug.” He twirled Will in the air.
I hoped Paul would drive. He could leave his car; I’d bring him back tomorrow. Will by now had gum plastered on his face and hung, a crooked star, over his father’s chest. I’d taken him to the bathroom and tried to scrub the gum off, but little bumps lingered like a rash. When Paul set him down again, I saw the mess on his white shirt. “You go,” Paul said. “I have to stay for pickup shots and retakes.”
Will spread over me now, head on my shoulder. It was one-thirty, a spring night. Palms on the Lot, embedded not in dirt but cement, soared thirty feet. They looked like props too, but they were alive. I braced one hand on the smooth bark and held Will’s forehead with the other when he bent over and threw up, again and again.
I carried him into the house and laid him on the bath mat while I ran water, with bubbles. I lifted him into the white mounds, holding him between my knees. Drying him, on a pile of towels, I saw his nails were too long, and as he slipped into the faint reassuring hum of a dream, I got out the clippers and, one by one, took his s
leeping feet and hands to trim.
Paul walked in the door at four o’clock Monday, palms up. “Got the pickup order. Thirteen shows. They usually buy six or seven, this’s the whole season.” He never minded having to explain to me. Helen understood the business better than Jeff did. But Paul didn’t even expect me to watch TV.
“Let’s go out tonight. Celebrate,” I added.
I waited on hold with our favorite restaurant; I believed in the rituals. Lil and I had had theories, but they didn’t seem to be working on me. Some living fabric, slightly denser than air, held Lola, Willie, and me together. When Paul stepped into the house, something vibrated—a high string—with the twang of a stranger.
“I’ve got to scramble to hire. So far the only writer we have is Buddy G., and even he’s telling his agent to play hardball.” He sighed. “And we’re late.”
“Buddy? Really?” This kid, two years out of college, who rarely bathed, had a marketable skill. Thirty years of practice practice practice; why didn’t I?
“Isn’t that incredible? But I’ve got to make calls. So eight o’clock?”
I stepped outside, pulling the extension cord into the small courtyard I’d planted with Tom and my mother. The Boston ivy we’d staked was halfway up the wall now, the leaves red. The day Tom took me to the nursery to buy plants, he’d introduced me to the owner. I was curious as to what he’d call me. “This is Claire,” he said. “I’ve been going with her mother for thirty-some years.” When I told Paul, he said, “And that’s exactly what he’s been doing. He’s been going with her.” Fog blew in. My upper lip stung, and I fumbled in my pocket for a Kleenex. Will picked up colds from the other kids in school. “Two, please. Could we have a booth?” I’d stood here when I ripped open the envelope from the preschool, offering Will a place. Yes! I’d said then, making a fist. Now, passing through the kitchen, I grabbed a paper towel to blow my nose.
I needed my own triumph. But lately, I hadn’t sent out any entries to the world.
I felt like the child I’d been, holding my knees, waiting. To be chosen.
In our room, after dinner, Paul said, “Oh, no. I feel that ball in my throat. I can’t get sick now.” He reached the spare comforter from the high shelf in the closet and took his pillow from the bed to sleep in his study.
“I’m getting it too,” I said.
“At least you don’t have a table read on Friday.”
I was the one in the house with the insignificant cold.
Lola never caught any of our viruses at all.
I’d received a call from the Class Community Service and Events Mother asking if we would host the end-of-the year party. He had to be a little popular, I told myself, or they wouldn’t want the party at our house. I held that all week like an unexpected check in my pocket: I went in for his teacher conference glad I had it.
The door swung open. “Shall we start?” Janet. The head teacher.
“Paul’s coming too. He must be stuck in traffic.”
Then, to my surprise, the school director entered, holding a folder. “Janet and Heidi have some concerns,” she said. “That Will sometimes seems unhappy.”
Unhappy? They appeared to be waiting for me to say something. Just then, Paul burst in. “Sorry I’m late, the 10 was jammed from Bundy on.”
The director turned to him. “We called this conference because we want to help William.”
Paul picked up three oranges from a bowl on the table and spun them in an arc. He tossed one to the director, who caught it. There. He had them smiling. “No, seriously,” he said. “It strikes me as a matter of him having to grow into himself.”
“Are you setting limits at home?” the director asked.
“I try,” I mumbled.
“Maybe it’s your housekeeper a little.” Heidi, the assistant teacher, played with her fingers. “I don’t think she can really control him. She has to tell him things a lot of times. He pretends he doesn’t hear.”
“She doesn’t pick up the tones,” Janet said. “He needs help knowing what’s appropriate. Yesterday, she just grabbed Bing’s arm and said, Why you cry?”
The director nodded. “We see this with a lot of the foreign housekeepers.”
“Why was Bing crying?” Crybaby.
“Do you know?” Heidi looked to Janet. “I’m not sure either.”
“But Bing doesn’t usually fall apart for no reason,” the director said.
I slid a look at Paul. We weren’t so sure.
“What do you recommend we do to help Lola?” Paul asked.
The director shook her head. “I don’t know that you can.”
“But the nannies’ own kids are well behaved,” I said. “They sit up straight at the table and take turns talking. I asked Lola how the moms get them to do that.”
“She may not even know,” the director said.
Janet said, “What works in their culture may not work in ours.”
“Those children have been learning from their mother since they were babies. They’re fluent in her cues. She may make a tiny facial adjustment and they understand she means business.”
“So what can we do?” Paul said, hands on his knees. To the point.
The director said, “I’d think about replacing her.”
“But she loves him!” I said. “And he loves her.”
Paul put his hand on my arm. Calm down. He turned to the director. “Of course, we take what you’re saying seriously. We’ll have to think about all you’ve said.”
“A number of our families have felt the way you do, and I can tell you that if there’s been a goodbye ceremony, the parents are surprised. In a few days, the kids almost completely forget her.”
“We’re having the class party at our house.” I wanted them to know that, even so, Will had friends.
Janet nodded. “Not all our kids can swim. And believe it or not, you’re the only house this year without a pool.”
Oh. “You think Helen complained?” I asked Paul as we walked out.
He shook his head, arms crossed. “Should’ve said something to us first.”
It was a hard drive home. Lola helped us so many ways.
“Still, he’s in school now,” Paul said. “It’s a big expense.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Why, Claire? We’re in this together.”
But I was the one Lola helped. How had the food and the house become my job, though? Was it because Paul made more money now, or because Paul didn’t care? He would have left the sheets on the beds indefinitely. Lola made us possible.
“She’s not that much, compared to other nannies.”
“We’d have to do it sooner or later, anyway.”
I’d tried to talk to Lola about disciplining Will. Not spoiling him. When I was his age, I’d made my own breakfast. Of course, when I was his age, I’d coaxed my mother out of bed. I couldn’t wish my life for him.
Lola had laughed. Claire, when we are young, we have houseboys. We will not do anything. Then, when we had to, we learn.
The teachers said she was indulgent. It was true: he’d hit her. And what did she do?
Maybe it would be nice to be by myself in the house sometimes.
But it wasn’t only laundry Lola did. Every night, we ate together, the three of us. While I put him down, she cleaned the kitchen, then we sat again, the red teapot between us, my jar of flowers returned, and talked about Will’s day.
She worried with me about Will. Without her, I’d be alone.
When I stood to wash the teapot Lola said, Leave, I will be the one.
As I opened the front door, I heard Lola upstairs at the piano practicing her song. “Clair de Lune.”
Biting the inside of my cheek, I dialed my producer. In two weeks, the deadline set when I’d postponed would come for my songs.
“How do you spell that?” his new assistant asked after I said my name.
Lola
THE CHOP
Birthdays here, they are like weddin
gs almost. Williamo and I attended a party inside a striped tent on the beach. My kids, they took turns. Each year, one got the party. But Williamo, he is the only, so for the first birthday, Claire set the alarm for six o’clock to bake a cake with a chocolate she special-ordered from New York. For the second, she made a yellow cake, very buttery, with white frosting. Last year, we toothpicked together three layers, with orange, lemon, and lime rinds grated in and also the broken petals of roses to look like confetti.
This year, for the fourth, Williamo and I cover balloons with newspaper dipped in paste to make a piñata. For the stuffing, we will use penny candy, and I am sewing little bags for coins. When I almost took the one-hundred-ten-dollar-a-day job, I thought I could buy presents Williamo would never forget. Huge robots already put together from the window of Puzzle Zoo. But I chose time over money. Lola over robots. Now, the day of the party, I wish I had the gift to open the eyes big.
Claire, she stands already baking. This year, she uses a book. Williamo tasted Boston cream pie at another house and he wanted. So she squints, her reading glasses on. I can tell she has lost confidence because flour dusts the counter and the floor.
Outside, cardboard castles wait. Lil gave Claire that idea, and I asked Sears for refrigerator boxes. But they looked not so good in the yard and yesterday Williamo and I painted a base coat yellow. The doors to all the castles flap open, the sky a California blue. I tie a bunch of balloons to the mailbox so everyone will know that this is the house of the party.
I hear shouting. Claire wants that Williamo will put on a new button shirt. She looks upset from this Boston pie. I hold my elbows. The mother, she pleads. Why will she not say, I have for you a reward? Just a candy.
I help. “Put it on, Williamo, and I will give you something.”
Williamo sighs. It is what he does when he gives up.
Bing and my pupil arrive first. He runs in with wet hair. “I comb. Then just foof, with my fingers!”
“Where is your employer?” I say.
“I tell her, but she has Dr. Mars.”
“But how many chances to see Aleph Sargent?” Helen, she attends Dr. Mars twice a week.