by Mona Simpson
Then they all arrive, and I fold and stack strollers. Ruth brings Ginger Saperstein and her granddaughter Aileen; Danny drove them so they could all see the movie star. Babysitters arrange themselves around the long table with food, and the moms stay by the beverages, sipping different waters. Aleph Sargent stands, arms pretzeled. “Brando’s mom,” she says, introducing herself.
“A little on small,” Cheska whispers.
“Not so much beautiful. Only just—nothing wrong,” my pupil says.
“That is what is beautiful,” I say.
“But she is not wearing a coat!” Cheska says.
Claire should greet the mothers, but she does not come out from the kitchen. Why this pie? I have seen her make two beautiful tarts in less than twenty minutes. Babysitters stare at the nanny of Aleph Sargent. Everyone wants to hear the life of a movie star. But Clarisse is talking about herself. “I’ve traveled many different places.”
“You are live-in?” my pupil asks.
Clarisse snorts. “Oh, yeah, have to. Couldn’t go a night without me.”
“The boy, Brando?”
“The girl. Without me, she can’t find anything. Sometimes we’re out and I get beeped. Oh, Clarisse, have you seen my hairbrush?”
“Aleph Sargent cannot find a hairbrush?” Lucy says.
“Very dependent.” When Clarisse shakes her head, loops of skin jiggle. Maybe she does not like Aleph. And Aleph, she is probably paying her a lot.
“Only babysit or clean up, too?” Mai-ling asks.
“I’m no housekeeper. I’m the nanny and she has me do her personal things. No one else touches her laundry.” I think of lingerie, fragile as spiderwebs.
“Of all the mothers, your employer has the biggest wardrobe!” I mean that for a soft joke.
But the giantess eye-rolls. “Two full rooms.” She nods, her head in a slant, the way of a horse, evenly chewing. “She converted a bedroom for her closet.”
“She is movie star! To be beautiful, that is her job.” I do not want to hear bad things about Aleph. She worked babysitter too.
“Li-ing!” Sue calls from the other table and Mai-ling springs up.
I follow because Claire may not even know there is a movie star in her backyard.
“Tissue, please,” Sue says. Mai-ling always carries Kleenex, tucked in the elastic of her leggings. Sue is the one to squeeze the nose of China. Then she gives the wad back.
In the kitchen, I find my employer, flour in the hair, a champagne bottle open. “It’s a disaster, Lole.” In front of her stands the glass pedestal, with one thin layer, the height of a pancake. On top of this, my employer ladles yellow sauce. “Supposed to be custard.”
“Where is the rest the cake?” I feel frightened; I do not want that she will fail.
“This is it, Lole, two layers. Hard as rock. We’ll toss a coin who goes to Vons.”
The layer should be more up. Custard should hold; this is a soup, spilling over the lip of glass. On top the mess, she sets a second layer. Then, she pours chocolate.
“Here goes nothing. Three and half hours. But he wanted it. And I tried.”
“It’ll taste great,” Paul says, stomping through the kitchen, camera around his neck. He stops to snap the dripping cake. To him, there is no difference. But Claire, she could not live with someone who minded. She minds too much herself.
Outside, the kids paint egg crates to glue onto the boxes for shingles. That anyway turned out a good idea.
Claire carries the cake and I go to get Williamo. I find him inside the only box not yet decorated, sitting in the corner, holding his knees.
“Why you are not fixing your castle?”
“I don’t know.” If all the castles become decorated except his, for Claire the day will be sad. “Too much noise.” We sit in the box together, hearing kids and mothers and babysitters; it is a lot of noise. I wonder if the things we do for kids are what they want anyway, because today he is not happy.
Then I lead him to the cake. Claire bends to light the candles and our boy blows. This is the only thing they still believe here. Wishes. Not prayers.
Claire cuts the cake and I pass around plates.
At the edge of the lawn, I hear a fight. But for once, I do not mind. Williamo sits here, looking at each bite cake. Aleph speedwalks to the hive. Clarisse stands and the whole bench shakes. Next to her Aleph is a stem. Clarisse pulls out Brando by the feet. China shrieks, climbing up and up on Mai-ling. Sue, ten feet away, says, “Oh, it’s all right. They all do it.” Sue, she is never the one to say, They all do it. Only when the mother of who did it is a movie star. Aileen runs to Ruth; she has a huge bocal. It seems Brando kicked her too.
“I’m sorry,” Aleph tells Claire, “but Mary says when he does it I should take him home.” Aleph leaves, carrying Brando, and it is like the air coming out a balloon. But now, we can talk.
“He does it to get at her,” Clarisse mutters, following behind, a cream puff crammed into one side her mouth.
“Clarisse, I do not like!” my pupil says. “And Aleph, she is so sweet, Lola! She could have anybody!”
“But-ah, maybe she wants a white.” I would like to see the inside of that house. My daughters, they will tell everyone that their mother in America visits movie stars.
Just then Helen and Jeff arrive, rolling in a red bike with training wheels, balloons tied on the handlebars.
Williamo hugs the thigh of Claire.
“Cake okay?” she asks. “Know it doesn’t look so hot.”
“Best cake I ever had.”
I finally taste. True, the layers are hard, but they crunch, and the runny custard tastes like home and goes very good with the chocolate.
I give the little sack with my presents: a new ten dollars and a mustard seed in a crystal ball for around the neck. The gifts when he is opening them look flimsy. I wish I would be the one to roll in the bike with balloons.
I turn because I hear fighting. Ginger Saperstein pushes Aileen off the lap of Ruth and Aileen turns on the grass, making a noise.
“Shhh,” Ruth whispers. “Shhh.”
I have never before seen Aileen like this. I have never once seen her cry. She does not like Ginger Saperstein. She cannot stand to see her grandmother bossed. But Ruth she has to answer the wishes of her employer.
“Get up,” Ruth says, down near Aileen.
Danny left already. Ruth will have to take three buses with Ginger back to Beverly Hills; Aileen will go home at the end of the day with Cheska.
Now the mother of Claire and Tom come up the lawn, her hand on his arm. She carries balloons and Tom hauls a small tree.
Ruth starts collecting paper plates to throw out. She always acts like this, too grateful.
“Why you leave before the piñata?” I ask.
Ginger Saperstein and Aileen only met at the wedding and once at Christmas when Aileen came dressed up to say thank you for her present. Even today, Aileen wears the old clothes of Ginger. Sue and another mother glance over. Ruth is right; Ginger becomes jealous. And today we have mothers who get jealous too. I will give Ruth cream puffs for the bus.
Standing with the bat, each child looks small, a little frightened. I am the one to tie the blindfold. Only one wins. And then just for a second. Williamo swings hard, but a little to the side. China, she slits the belly with her slug.
With paper plates, there is not so much to clean. Only bowls from the cake. Mai-ling sweeps, then starts wiping; she works like this. She will scrub every pan and then when that is done she will still be moving, clearing counters, drying the sink, polishing the spout of the faucet. I cover foods to save. The tablecloth, it is already spinning in the machine. It seems my body has more air inside, like angel food. I am wrapping cream puffs for Cheska and Aileen. We name the guests, remembering little bits of what they said. I feel proud we helped after the piñata that Williamo and China would not fight.
I walk with Cheska to the front, where wind tugs balloons from the mailbox. “That is
her!” she says, pointing to a woman up the street. “From the Castle.” The Castle. It takes me a moment to understand because the kids today have castles too.
“That lady! She is the one! But you do not expect a second wife to be fat.”
Paul helps Melissa shove the castle of Simon into the back of her station wagon. The decorated refrigerator box of Aileen, they leave. She shrugs. They cannot carry on the bus. I pull a top off a lavender, for no reason. I am happy. Williamo said a nice goodbye to every one his guests. He kissed his grandmother and hugged a long time while Tom showed Claire where to plant the tree in the yard.
“I saw your boyfriend the other day at Sears,” I say.
“Who, Tom? He’s not my boyfriend.”
I bask. Only a small bit more to do and the house will be back. Houses here most of the time only wait. The owners feel afraid to use their living rooms, as if they will break, but look, now it is the same again. Like our bodies; we feel happiest after we give all. Williamo sprawls across his bed. The pots are put away; I pick up rags to throw in the machine. Then my employers come into the kitchen and ask me to sit down.
So now I am sitting. This is the time every year they say my raise, the mint at the end of the meal. I am thinking, in a colored swirl, maybe this raise will be big. From my weekend employers, maybe they found out my offer.
But they chop me. With the air of the party still here.
She is talking in her voice with the teeth; I have seen it before when she is saying she is sorry, but really her teeth they are a gate, Do not come at me. He said already what he said. He talks loud over her; he is being the man. They appreciate all I have done for William, he shouts, what I have given him, but his show will not air until September and his contract it is not yet renewed. It will depend on ratings.
They cannot afford me.
She is still talking, talking, but it is already done.
They chop me and he is not yet five.
Claire
AND IS MY LOVE FOR SALE TOO?
We met Helen and Jeff because they wanted Lola. Once, they would have paid anything for her. I thought we could probably still talk them into it. We had a supper scheduled.
I told Lola while we were washing dishes at the sink. “Lole, we’re having dinner with Jeff and Helen. Should I tell them they can have you? I’m sure they’ll jump at the chance.”
“Anyway, I will be there too.” She shrugged. “So you will be the one to ask.”
“I’m ovulating,” Helen said, first thing, when we arrived.
“Really? How do you know?”
“Basal thermometer. The doctor said to keep my legs up twenty minutes after sex.”
“The doctor with the freckles?” Paul asked.
“Isn’t she cute?” Jeff looked at Paul. “I have a crush on her.”
“We both have crushes on her,” Helen said, and for once took the punch line herself. “But I have the more intimate relationship.” Then she stood to take our plates to the kitchen.
“Sit down, I’ll do it,” Jeff said. “Or let them. That’s why they’re here.”
Paul and I started stacking.
“Not you. Lucy and Lola.”
In the lull, I lurched forward. “There’s something we have that you may want,” I began. They looked at each other and started talking.
“… your landlord would ever sell?”
“You think they would, you talk to them, I’ll pay you, man.” Jeff fisted Paul’s shoulder. “Commissionorama.”
They wanted to buy our little house! And Paul was listening! I stood up and ran to the bathroom. Then he was there, knocking. “Let me in.”
I sat on the floor hugging my knees.
“Claire, it was a misunderstanding. They thought you were offering.”
“You told them no?”
“Let me in. They’ll be fine,” he said, patting my back. “They’d just use it for his office. Course, if we did want to, we could probably make a pretty penny.”
But what about the days I’d scrubbed the new grout with a toothbrush, or painted the inside back corners of drawers with that toxic enamel, work you do only for your own. “Is my love for sale too?”
“Claire, I was just saying. I thought you might like the cash for a down payment.”
“I love our house.”
“’Kay. Done.” He ushered me back outside. “Claire’s put a lot of work into the house. She’ll be burying me in the backyard. But what she meant, when she said we had something”—here he lowered his voice—“was Lola. We’re going to have to let her go.”
Helen lifted her fingers from the table, one at a time, keeping them straight. Jeff looked up into the jasmine as if he weren’t following. They’d lost interest in what had once been so urgent to them. They were over Lola.
“And we thought, maybe with another baby,” Paul continued.
But they had Lucy, who was fun and talented with flowers.
Helen shook her head. “I’ll go a different way this time. We’ll do a baby nurse and maybe a UCLA girl. We’ll see. Bing has outgrown Lola.” She rested a hand on her belly.
Time doesn’t age you, Lil said. Having kids does.
As Helen served stone-fruit cobbler, Jeff grabbed her plate and lifted it. “You really want this?”
“Yes,” she said.
“When do you go?” Paul asked Jeff.
“I told him, next movie’s here or somewhere I can bring the kids without vaccinations,” she said. “I don’t want to be away more than one or two nights. That’s not being a mother. That’s being a father.”
I kicked Paul. “That was it,” I said, finally outside. “That was my problem all along. I wanted to be a father.”
“Maybe you should see somebody,” Paul said.
Helen and Jeff passed on Lola. I hardly remembered the beginning anymore; I remembered it the way you remember someone else’s life. There was a year he woke up at five. Paul changed his diaper and drove around until Will’s neck wilted on the car seat. For months, I’d worried about whether I had enough milk. I didn’t want Will to have a drop of anything else, even water. I pumped and Lola marked the date on each bottle. So many things that seemed crucial and excruciatingly hard ended and then didn’t matter anymore, forever after. Little Him would never remember. All the closeness; looking up into your eyes as he sucked; you could have fed him unwarmed formula, for all he’d know by the age of memory.
At a year, Lola stopped boiling the bottles. At fourteen months, I weaned him. If I’d succeeded at this or failed, it was finished.
I tried to find what should have been my baby journal. The pages were blank, except one scribbled recipe for homemade Play-Doh we’d never used.
We fired Lola.
Lola
A WHITE THAT WANTS OUR LUCY
My weekend and five-day employers, my wand turned them into friends. The husbands, they close the door to laugh and get paid for it. My weekend employer is a famous. So why is not the contract of Paul renewed?
The door to the kitchen swings both ways, and Helen backs in, holding a platter. I am the one to take. Lucy is here too: for their dinner parties, they double.
“Lucy, you seem down,” Helen says.
“I just do not know with Tony.”
I have a much bigger problem, but Lola keeps her private life private. Maybe the advice of Ruth was wrong. “That is old news,” I say, scissoring basil.
“Helen, there is something I want to ask,” Lucy says. “Your friend Dale, once he said about a painter? Can I see that picture?”
Helen stirs the pasta, adding more salt to the water, even though we already put. This is the problem here. Women have helpers, but they do not let us make anything complete. Then they feel unnecessary. When I had helpers, I let them cook. I ate.
“Dale thinks you’re gorgeous. We always tell him to bug off.”
“This is a white? That wants our Lucy?”
The face of my pupil closes. She bites a noodle. “Done already.�
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Helen heaves up the copper and we both grab.
“He only dates Asians. The last American he went out with was in college.”
“But Lucy is Filipina. She must marry a Filipino.”
“What do you say, Luce? Think you’d ever date an American?”
“Blue-eyed babies,” I say. “Coconuts. Brown bark, white inside.”
Lucy mixes pasta into the sauce. “I will just see with Tony.”
“She will not even meet Filipinos,” I say. “Thirty-three already.”
I sprinkle the confettied basil, hand the finished pasta to Helen.
“To be continued,” she says, walking out backward.
We serve ourselves on the plates we use for the kids. Helen would let us eat on china, but these go in the machine. The cooking here, it really is too healthy.
“Me, I am eating salads, fish, like that. But my tummy, it is still big, Lola! And the girls here, they are so slim. Because they drink milk. They have long bones.”
But some Filipinas are slim too. Lettie Elizande. Me even.
“The ones in magazines. Tony said, I want your stomach to become like that.”
“Those girls aren’t doctors, Lucy. They’re models,” Helen says, here again. “They’d rather be doctors with a tummy.”
But supermodels earn more than doctors. Anyway, Lucy is not doctor here.
“Let’s put on the fish,” Helen says, sharp in her voice. Before, she did not have that. I cannot tell if Claire has asked yet about me.
Lucy takes the pan from the refrigerator with salmon marinated in orange juice. There are too many vitamins in this food.
“I say to him, Maybe you don’t like me? He says, Yah, I like you. But before he is saying we will be married. Now, no.”
My heart speeds. My pupil, she will not be ready to give me her job. I should have found for her a husband first.
Helen looks to me. She wants to return to her guests. “What do you think, Lole?”
“Lucy knows I do not approve. She should be with someone who has savings.”
“But she likes him.” Helen sighs, backing out the swing door to her life.
I shrug. “Kids like candy.”