“How goes the warfare?” I ask them.
“Level three and climbing,” Isaac reports. He won’t even turn around to get horrified that I have given the stapled bag of cassettes and CD’s to Daisy for safekeeping.
“I’m losing, as usual,” Jane says. I’m convinced that Nintendo was made for boys, and it infuriates me to see Jane lose heart over something so pointless.
“Let’s quit while we’re behind and go get some takeout,” I say, urging her with my free hand outstretched. She comes away easily, and Isaac mumbles about meeting us at the car in five minutes. We walk through heavy, humid air to our car. Jane gets in the front this time while I load Daisy into her car seat, what my mother refers to as her “motley.” I turn on the air-conditioning. After grabbing the bag from Daisy, who breaks my heart with a wail of disappointment, Jane unwraps her tape and punches it into the tape deck. I get the bag back for Daisy, who may not get over the theft for a long time, and finally sit, doors shut, and try, again unsuccessfully, to make out the profundity of the 10,000 Maniacs. But this is a group that eludes parsing. I cannot for the life of me understand what they’re saying, they slur their words so.
“Janey,” I ask her.
“What.”
“Are you still mad?” As much as I hate to admit it, I do hang on the words of my children sometimes.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, could you tell me when you do know?”
“Mo-om.”
I watch her mouthing the impossible lyrics, closing her eyes when a particularly sensuous moment in the music arises. I am fascinated. She’s older than I thought. She’s a girl now, not a little girl. I wonder if Simon sees it, if he can bear it, because right now I can’t. Never mind how frighteningly old Isaac seems to me.
“Mom,” Jane says.
“Yes, Jane.”
“Don’t be late again. I really hate it when you’re late.” She watches the parking lot happenings, families loading in and out of their cars, everyone in a different mood, bound for some sort of friction, and I wonder if that’s what she sees, or if she doesn’t see them as I do, but simply as people going into a store to do what we’ve just been doing, looking and buying, leaving with something they’ve wanted and are now happy to have.
“I won’t do it again,” I tell her.
“Deal,” she says, and in the way she has of surprising me, she throws herself on me, hangs on my neck, and starts to cry. This must be what Fowler meant when he said he couldn’t bear the weight of Isaac, his perfection, the fear of holding something so beautiful in his arms. Except I bear the ache, and I cry too, for all of us, for her love of me and mine of her, for my imperfections and her disappointment, for the joy of knowing her.
“I see you two have made up,” Isaac says matter-of-factly as he gets in back.
I straighten up, embarrassed, the way I get when he notices intimate details about me these days, like the one about my looking good in Gillette’s dress. “We’re fine,” I assure him. I smooth Jane’s hair and help her settle back into her seat, into the music, into our sunset ride to our favorite Chinese restaurant, then home.
• • •
“Baby?”
He has called me this forever. I’ve never objected, and I don’t object now. I don’t and have never found it corny or belittling. I have always appreciated the fact that it highlights our ten-year age difference. Furthermore, I like and revere babies, and I know that Simon doesn’t mean to categorize me with them, only to point up flattering similarities: babies are beguiling and faultless, pure, honest, and dependable.
I am out in back being too vigilant about the steaks and too free with the wine when he calls. In no way do I feel worthy of such an endearment. That I imagine Fowler’s response to hearing me referred to as “Baby” (certainly he’d find a way to disapprove, even if he were merely jealous) confirms my unworthiness.
“Almost done,” I call back.
He’s at the window above the kitchen sink, the one I frequently watch the children from during the day, when they’re doing their outdoor things and I’m doing dishes and planning activities for later on by telephone.
“Can you bear another salad?” he shouts.
“Anything.”
We have things under control. Daisy has been sleeping since we left the Chinese restaurant with our package of dumplings, noodles, and chicken with walnuts. Jane is upstairs readying herself for camp, which starts tomorrow, and Isaac is in his room watching something loud and angry on television. Jane woke Simon when we returned. He was still outside, but the steaks were on the counter, defrosted. I got everyone fed and up to their rooms. I was terribly efficient, which is part of being guilty, I guess. I should be more careful about exhibiting too much verve. Sudden bursts of enthusiasm will draw the wrong sort of attention. Already Simon’s eyes widened when I offered to start up the coals and tend to the grilling.
I turn the steaks, which look wonderful. I’m going to enjoy this meal, even though I probably shouldn’t. My husband, comforted by his nap and our favorite wine, will want to talk. And I will too, not just to keep from thinking of Fowler, of myself in the youthful pose of being desired, but for reassurance: yes, we live an enviable life that must be maintained without distraction.
Simon stays in, for the ten o’clock news I’m sure. I set down the barbaric fork and lounge in his favorite chair, watching the night sky, I suddenly realize, for the first time since Jane was born. I don’t know why, in the eight years we’ve been together, I haven’t done this. It’s as if someone whispered to me when I got engaged, “Don’t look up.” Or “Stop looking.” I like looking up, looking around, seeing. Even if it feels strange and makes my heart pound.
“Ready when you are,” Simon calls a few minutes later.
I bring in the steaks. The table is set, candles lit, wedding china, which we now use as our everyday, in place. He shuts off the news. I ask what he’s heard.
“The usual,” he says, sitting. “Fires. Highway horror. Child abuse. Border troubles. Tyranny and devastation abroad. Stop me when you’ve had enough.”
“Enough.” I smile. I love my husband. How could I have done what I did today? But that’s the wrong question. The question—Gillette would back me on this one—is about marriage. I am beginning to suspect that I’ve been wrong about marriage. That it isn’t and could never be, given that human beings invented it, steady and predictable. Maybe everyone strays a bit, even married people. Perhaps they don’t all go to the lengths I’ve just gone to, although many go further. My parents are married people who live in separate apartments. As a child, I was quick to disapprove of this arrangement. It is no wonder that at times each of them looks at me sideways, as if they’d never met a bigger fool.
“Tell me about the day,” Simon says after the first few bites. “Starting after you dropped the girls with Kirsten.”
He’s not looking at me, only at his food, the perfection of angles he’s achieving with his steak knife.
“I drove into the city,” I say. “I saw Gillette.”
“What else.”
“She gave me this dress.” The dress has wilted completely, although I still like it for the freedom it offers.
“It’s a great dress,” he says. Now he stares. He takes something out of his back pocket and lays it by my plate. It’s Fowler’s postcard. I set down my utensils.
“I met him for lunch.”
Everything slows. The eating, the sounds of suburban night. The damn seconds.
“You had lunch with that jerk?”
Simon has never been so solemn, so intent.
I don’t know what to do. I turn on him. “Lunch is pretty innocuous, as a meal,” I counter.
He looks me in the eye. Then he pushes his chair back, stands, and walks out the back door.
chapter three
An hour later, when I’m doing the dishes, I imagine Fowler telling me things about myself that I’m glad rather than loath to know, apologizing, looking
for my next remark, beholding my children and my house and blinking with amazement, having to sit down.
Simon, back from his fury walk, catches me talking to myself. He glares. I begin to make up a story, about trying out a new approach for the chapter we’re doing, seeing how it sounds.
“Save it,” Simon tells me, leaving the kitchen for the refuge of the television. Flirting with the blank space by the fridge, I tell the imaginary Fowler that he could do better than to hang on my every word during his last year on earth.
I’m guilty of wanting distraction and getting it. I’m guilty of succumbing to boredom, frustration, and vanity. I’m guilty of weakening in my resolve to provide a decent home for my children. At base level, I’m an adulteress. So I’m wondering why I don’t feel worse, like a criminal, like I ought to give myself up to some authority that could dispense the proper punishment and make arrangements for our domestic life that would keep the children’s best interests and Simon’s above mine.
Tomorrow both Isaac and Jane start camp, Isaac as counselor and Jane as camper. I go upstairs to help with the labeling of Jane’s things. On arriving, I see she has already done this. She packs her extra pair of socks, T-shirt, swim-suit, and towel into a new knapsack with such precision that I’m sure she knows something terrible has happened between me and her father.
“Good work, sweetie,” I tell her.
“It’s not hard, Mom,” she assures me.
Children are instinctually self-protective. They just get overpowered by disrespectful, unthinking adults.
I go back downstairs and take up my place on the sofa near Simon, who watches CNN with the stony face it deserves. Isaac resurfaces for some general advice on how to manage ten-year-olds.
“I’ve got twelve of them,” he complains.
“And no help?” Simon asks.
“One guy,” Isaac says. “Garland,” he reads off an orientation sheet.
“First name?” I want to know.
“There isn’t one.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Simon says, gesturing for the packet. He looks. “Sure enough: Garland.”
Our eyes meet. Mutual alarm, the only response we seem capable of sharing at present.
“Just treat them like you’d treat anybody,” I offer, and then Simon looks away, disgusted.
Daisy rolls over in the Portacrib. The she reaches for me with her fat little arms and breaks my heart and saves my life all in one second. If repentance were possible, if there were any way of my going back to the “me” who hadn’t done this, I would, just to avoid this one unbearable moment of need. Then Jane plods down the stairs, looking bored or sad, or both.
There is no “worst part” of it. It’s all terrible. I did what I did, and my husband knows, even though I’ve admitted nothing and no one has, to my knowledge, ratted on me. The thing is, I did it in full possession of my faculties. It was an honest act of will. For whatever reason, I wanted to.
“Thanks, Mom. You’re a load of help,” Isaac says.
“Treat them like you should treat Jane,” Simon tells him.
“Yeah,” Jane says. “Don’t try to kill them every day.”
• • •
Until a few months ago, our life was in constant upheaval: a relatively short courtship, according to Gillette and my mother, then instant pregnancy, moving to the suburbs, Jane’s birth, the process of legal adoption so that Isaac could finally start to feel like he had a father, temping here, temping there, the deaths of my remaining grandparents, then Daisy. I must have panicked without crisis and thus felt I had to create one. I must have worried, on the day of the party we had to celebrate the success of the adoption, when Rabbi Rosenthal brought his fingers to my cheek and told me I was pretty and that Simon was a lucky man, because I momentarily considered a reciprocal gesture, and thought I wouldn’t have minded his tongue in my mouth, the thrill of those fingers in other places, his sudden appreciation of me. I shared my concern with Kirsten, who can be so dismissive. “Welcome to marriage, Cinderella,” she said. “You hear a lot about the men who are bored but not much about the women who are. Let me tell you about boring.”
She didn’t need to. For one, I knew. I had wept in the shower late the night of the party. Simon and I had made love, and it was fine, I remember thinking. But “fine” wasn’t a word I wanted to think of as adequate to our lovemaking. I just kept staring at Simon’s chest, wondering if Rabbi Rosenthal’s was anything like it, whether he kept himself toned the way Simon does. For two, Kirsten’s husband Ted, while being the most welcoming of neighbors and the most physically appealing, is dull to a fault. He shares his amazement over the latest in lawn gadgetry with anyone who comes within walking distance of his house, as well as his updates on local crime with anyone who isn’t too depressed to listen. I don’t know how Kirsten can bear him, or if she really does. She admitted wanting to jump her decorator, “but of course he’s gay,” she moaned. How does everyone stand it, I wanted to ask her but did not at the risk of sounding too ungrateful for words.
• • •
We’re to sit down shortly, to another anxious dinner. Tonight’s menu: spaghetti and garlic bread, Caesar salad, and more of the Brouilly. Simon has been home ten minutes, just long enough to promise the older children a trip to the miniature golf course after we partake of the dinner his estranged wife has prepared. Now he’s in the shower. No one has asked why he doesn’t speak to me; perhaps they haven’t noticed. Even Jane, whom nothing gets past, hasn’t demanded an explanation from us.
“Tell me about Garland,” I tease Isaac.
“Oh, man,” Isaac groans.
“What?”
“I’m there five minutes, just long enough to find out where my group is meeting, and he wants my ass,” Isaac says, very matter-of-fact, as if he’s given me a weather report.
“Isaac!”
“Mom!” he mimics. Then, more gently. “Chill, Mom. He’s a fag. He likes me. I’m not that desperate.”
I sit at our beautifully set table. When did my son grow up? Where was I? Why didn’t someone inform me?
“I just think it’s a little unorthodox for a man like that to be in charge of little boys.” No sooner is it out of my mouth than I feel like Anita Bryant. Someone should dump a bucket of orange juice on my head.
“There are little girls there too, Mom,” Isaac reasons. “Jane goes there, remember.”
I cannot resist the notion that the world has never been so monstrous, so full of horror and violence and deviates, but who am I to subscribe to such a view? A woman who has created an extended family with such tenacity and now cannot find the strength to keep herself or it going in the only healthy manner the experts prescribe?
“I know,” I say. “You’re right. He’s probably a very nice man.”
“Maybe,” Isaac says. He’s flipping through channels, rejecting everything. “He changed his name though.”
“He told you?” My own interest isn’t proportionate to the information.
“Yeah. He kinda likes to talk.”
“Tell me about him.”
“I did,” Isaac says with irritation. “Look, when are we eating? I told the guys from the team I’d meet them at the golf course.”
“When? And when did you have time to call them?”
How dare I cling to him now?
“Seven. I just called.”
“Oh. Okay. Call Simon and Jane. I’ll wake Daisy and put her in her chair.”
“Why don’t you call them? I like to get Daisy.”
I smile at him, a sweet, tired-Mom smile. “Just this once.”
We assemble gradually, Jane bringing a book to the table and Simon bringing a hand towel that he keeps rubbing over his wet scalp. “Wow, Mom,” Jane says. “Is someone coming over to eat with us?”
Simon hangs his towel carefully over the rungs of his chair and sits. “Not tonight, sweetheart,” he says. “It’s just the family tonight. But maybe your mother will have a guest for us later on in the we
ek.”
I didn’t think him capable of such indirection.
“Who?” Isaac says.
“Muk,” Daisy says.
“No one,” I tell them all, and I go out to get Daisy’s milk.
“Your mother has friends we don’t know about,” Simon continues without expression. “Friends who drop in from exotic ports of call from time to time. Not necessarily to visit, you understand, just to call her away.”
“You guys have a fight?” Isaac asks.
“Not at all,” Simon tells them.
Jane looks frightened, and Isaac intrigued. I could dump the spaghetti all over Simon for bringing them into this right now, so soon, before we even know what it is we’re in crisis over: my infidelity, whatever in our life has encouraged it, whatever insecurities this calls up in him, for God’s sake some Jungian bit of projection if indeed he has ever betrayed me and not told me about it, maybe even some missed extramarital encounter he’s kicking himself over not having seized when it came up. I don’t know. But I don’t approve of this sort of cruelty, if I’m allowed that observation in light of my malfeasance. Yes, I’ve led us into uncharted territory, but he doesn’t have to drown the children in it.
I realize I haven’t moved, haven’t started serving the food, when Jane says, “Mom, are you paralyzed?”
Again, I go into automatic: Jane’s plate, small portion, Isaac’s and Simon’s plates, man-sized, Daisy’s bowl, noodles chopped up so she can spoon them, generally, into her mouth. I do these, then I pour us wine and them fruit punch and then I sit. I smile. Take aim, my face says to the people I love. I’ve double-crossed you.
“She’s not eating,” Jane says. “Okay, Mom. Are you anorexic? Because if you are I know this girl at school who is and she goes to talk to a shrink about it, and now she’s actually gaining weight. Now she only looks like a skeleton. Before she looked like she didn’t even have bones.”
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