Yessss!
Chapter Eight
I was so elated at the quantum leap in my prospects that I stopped at Jonathan’s on the way home and bought a pork tenderloin. I could have bought it at Albertson’s or Von’s or some less exalted (and cheaper) purveyor of foodstuffs, but it was so unusual to have meat that actually had to be cooked from scratch that I decided the occasion justified it. If price were no object, the makings for a fairly awesome celebration were right in front of me. I passed on the caviar, but I picked up asparagus and baby lettuces, for once not caring if my mother and Allie ate them or not. Then I headed for the wine aisle, wondering what would go best with pork. I looked around for one of the ubiquitous and knowledgeable Jonathan’s clerks, who could probably help me select something decent and affordable.
I almost backed into Dr. Lawrence, who was studying the Merlots.
I felt a momentary sense of confusion, the way you do in high school when you happen to meet one of your teachers somewhere outside school. Should you say something or head in the opposite direction? I’d run into my former psychiatrist two or three times since I finished therapy, and every time I felt the same way: unsettled.
To demonstrate that I was now a professional woman with clients of her own, rather than the mixed-up divorcée he had known several years before, I made myself go up to him. “Hi, Dr. Lawrence,” I said.
He turned. For just a second his face was a psychiatrist’s mask, showing nothing. Then he smiled. “Hi, Becky. And it’s Mark, remember?”
I remembered. It was just hard to say it. He looked older; his hair was grayer and was beginning to get thinner around the crown. But his brown eyes were warm, the way I remembered them. I wondered if he still told very good very bad jokes. “Mark,” I said.
“How are you?” he said, like a normal person.
I was the one having trouble. The patient-to-doctor manner I’d bestowed on him for years didn’t fit anymore, and I hadn’t come up with a suitable substitute.
“Fine,” I told him heartily. “Really fine.”
He looked amused. “That’s good.”
“So, um,” I said awkwardly, forgetting to ask how he was, “what are you doing here?” The minute the words were out of my mouth I felt like an idiot. What was the matter with me? I shouldn’t have conjured up high school.
His eyes flicked to the bottle he was holding.
“Sorry,” I said, before he could say anything. “It’s obvious. I guess I’m just a little surprised running into you like this.”
“I drink,” he said, deadpan. “Occasionally I eat too.”
I laughed. “I’m glad to hear it.” I studied him. “You’re looking well,” I said, like a grown-up.
He was. His olive skin made him looked tanned and healthy, even in winter.
“Thanks,” he said pleasantly. “So are you. How are things going at the law firm?”
“You picked a good day to ask,” I said, flattered that he’d remembered. “I—”
A sultry beauty with dark hair and heavy-lidded eyes stuck her head around the end of the aisle. “Marky, do you have the wine? We’re going to be late!” She looked at me. “Sorry,” she said, and disappeared again.
Marky?
He looked at his watch. “She’s right,” he said. “Sorry, I’d better run. It was really nice seeing you.”
“Same here,” I said to his back as he headed for the checkout counter.
His back looked friendly and substantial. I felt a little pang of regret at the missed opportunity and a flicker of annoyance at that “Marky.”
Transference, I said to myself. Get over it.
Still, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to treat myself to a bottle of the same wine Dr. Lawrence had selected. I lifted the bottle and turned it around.
The tag read $37.50.
I put it back on the shelf.
Burdick was asleep on the couch again, orange belly exposed and a paw flung over his eyes. He looked like some aging, impossibly world-weary Hollywood producer taking a brief respite from the attentions of importunate starlets. I made cooing noises at him, and he opened one amber eye with moderate enthusiasm, probably due to the groceries I was carrying in my ecologically sound recyclable bag. He closed his eye again. Cats all know The Rules instinctively: Make ’em come to you.
My daughter greeted me with a little wave as she passed through the living room. The phone was pressed up against her head as if it had been grafted on. She moved on into the kitchen and momentarily reemerged with a bowl of cereal, still talking into the receiver. Her dexterity never ceased to astonish me. “Don’t spoil your dinner,” I said, waving my grocery bag in her general direction. “I’ve got something special.”
She gave me a look of polite incomprehension and floated into her room, closing the door behind her.
“She’s been like that all afternoon,” said my mother, coming out of her room. “On the phone, I mean.” Her tone was a combination of amusement and disapproval. Her daughter (yours truly) had been limited to half an hour of phone time per day. It was useless to try to explain the futility of imposing phone limits when you weren’t going to be home to enforce them. “Whispering and giggling,” she added.
“Ohmygod!” Allie’s voice rose to an excited squeal that penetrated into the hallway.
“What’s up, do you know?” I asked my mother.
My mother looked blank. She shrugged. Once, not long before, she would have made it her business to know, the way she had made my clothes and hair and taste and friends her business when I was Allie’s age. I’d resisted her badgering, but at least by her own lights she was participating in my life. Now she was slipping into self-absorption, her interest rarely straying beyond her body and its war against decline. I’d spent half my life trying to hold her at arm’s length, and now I missed her giving me a hard time almost as much as I regretted her long, slow retreat.
“We’ll find out eventually,” I told her. “If we’re patient. Are you hungry?”
“My stomach’s a little rocky this afternoon,” she told me. “But you go ahead. I’ll just have a little ice cream later.”
“Mother, you know you need to eat a more balanced diet. You can’t just live on ice cream; it isn’t good for you. Besides, I have some nice pork tenderloin. We’re celebrating.”
“I guess that would be okay,” said my mother. She didn’t add, “Celebrating what?”
“I have news,” I said, cutting a bite of (if I do say so myself) perfectly cooked pork tenderloin and swirling it in the bitter orange sauce. (Just add some cognac to marmalade and throw in a little orange juice. Heat and serve, as Betty Crocker might have said.) Although I was fiercely devoted in principle (if not in practice) to someday getting my weight down to 121 pounds again, in front of Allie I was the role model of somatic satisfaction, of feeling comfortable with who you are and your own appetites, and all the other things that are the opposite of bulimia and anorexia. I didn’t see a way around this hypocrisy other than a very long run of very expensive therapy in an attempt to root out years of being told by every magazine from Seventeen to Cosmo that More is Less in the size department. Hence the lovely steamed potatoes, the fresh asparagus, and the mixed baby lettuce salad sharing the plate with the pork slices. I made an ostentatious show of sampling everything, which quickly became something more than an act, while Allie pushed her food into piles on her plate. It was clear that her mind was not on dinner.
“I’m going to need your cooperation,” I added. Both of them looked up at that. I knew it had an ominous ring. Allie set down her fork and gave me a worried look.
“It’s nothing bad,” I said. “Quite the contrary, in fact.”
“That’s nice, dear,” said my mother absently.
Well, what did I expect? Work and family are parallel universes, intersected only by guilt. I couldn’t demand enthusiasm, however much I might have enjoyed it. The most I could hope for was to slog along reasonably well in two worlds at the same time withou
t wreaking havoc in either one. Like it or not, this was probably what my life was going to be from now on. Not an altogether cheerful prospect, on the whole.
“I got a new client today,” I went on relentlessly. “Maybe you’ve heard of her: Dr. Bobbie Crystol.”
“Is she on Oprah?” asked my mother.
“Not that I know of,” I admitted. “But she is sort of famous. She’s a medical doctor working in the anti-aging area and—”
My mother snorted.
“What does that mean, anti-aging?” asked Allie.
“In my day it meant dying your hair and lying about your age,” said my mother surprisingly. “Now it means stuffing yourself full of hormones and freezing your head after you’re dead.”
“Oh, cool!” cried Allie. “Is that where they, like, store you in a Thermos so they can bring you back later on? Grandma and I saw that on TV. It costs a lot of money.”
I could see that I had seriously underestimated the informational value of afternoon programming.
“Giving new meaning to The Big Chill,” I murmured.
They both looked at me without comprehension, locked out of the generational reference by their positions at opposite ends of the age spectrum. I hated it when that happened; it was like having Old Fogy tattooed on your forehead, except that tattoos were a generational marker too. Like saying “You sound like a broken record” and realizing your teenage child has no idea what that would sound like. How did this happen so fast? When did the Grateful Dead get edged out by Dr. Kevorkian?
“Anyway,” I said, “I don’t know exactly what’s involved. I haven’t read her book yet.”
“Oh, a book,” Allie mumbled in a tone that struck daggers into my heart.
“Called You Don’t Have to Die,” I offered.
My mother choked on her asparagus.
Allie looked startled. “Really?”
“That’s really the title. I don’t think she can actually be claiming that she’s found the secret to eternal life or anything like that. I mean, the public is gullible but not that gullible.”
Allie looked disappointed.
“Hubris,” said my mother.
“What does that mean?” my daughter asked.
“Getting too big for your britches.”
Allie made a little face. This was one of my mother’s favorite criticisms, used to stamp out Ambition before it took root and caused permanent damage. We’d both been on the receiving end more than once.
“I’d like to live forever,” Allie said.
My mother shook her head. “No, you wouldn’t.”
Allie and I looked at her.
“You can only stand things for so long,” she muttered darkly. “Trust me.”
“Anyway,” I said hurriedly, before she could expand on this topic, “it might be mumbo jumbo, but it’s going to be my mumbo jumbo. I’m going to be in charge of Dr. Crystol’s legal work.”
“That’s nice, Mom,” said Allie. Her tone told me she’d lost interest.
“It’s a very big client. It means a lot of work and undoubtedly some nights and weekends at the office.”
“Oh, Mom.” My daughter sighed. She knew what I was going to say.
“I really need to be able to count on you to keep things running smoothly while I’m not here,” I said, encompassing both of them. Allie knew what I meant and started squirming. “It won’t be forever, but ultimately it could mean a lot more money for us.”
“What good will that do?” she mumbled, rolling her eyes.
College, a car that starts reliably, a vacation somewhere without canvas walls, I thought. I didn’t say anything.
Her eyes flooded suddenly. “May I please be excused?” she asked, dabbing at her tears with her napkin. “I have to call somebody.”
“You didn’t finish your dinner,” my mother pointed out.
Allie looked at me desperately.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Go ahead.”
“Humph,” said my mother disapprovingly.
“I wonder what that was about,” I said after Allie had departed for the sanctuary of her room, phone in hand. By now I was used to adolescent mood swings, but this was more sudden than most.
“Spring formal,” said my mother, surprising me again.
“This early?”
My mother shrugged.
“I thought you didn’t know what was up.”
“I forgot,” she said.
I cornered Allie later in the kitchen, after her grandmother had gone to bed. The one constant with healthy teenagers is their requirement for frequent infusions of sustenance.
Her look said, Don’t crowd me.
All innocence, I got a glass of water from the tap (no fat, no calories, good for you, and tastes terrible, plus the city of San Diego keeps trying to get voters to approve recycling sewage water treated to make it potable) and sipped it, watching her spread a piece of bread with honey from the nearby Laguna Mountains. She always insisted that honey you could buy in the grocery store tasted “plastic,” so we made the hour and a half round-trip to Julian once every two or three months. As soon as she got her license, she declared, she would make the trip by herself over the narrow and winding roads. Ha.
“So,” I said, sidling up to the topic with astounding subtlety, “are you thinking of asking somebody to the dance?”
She looked away, embarrassed. “I don’t know.” She put down the half-eaten slice of bread. “Maybe. It’s not for a couple of months yet.”
“Have someone in mind?”
She looked at me. “Mom, please don’t ask me who. You don’t know him, okay? I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”
“Fine,” I told her. “I understand. I only want to encourage you to go, if that’s what you want. Remember what you were saying about making the most of high school?”
She nodded mutely.
“I just want to say that no matter what happens at work or with Grandma, I won’t let anything interfere with this, barring unspeakable acts of nature or fate. We’ll go get a dress, and we’ll make time for whatever else is necessary. Shoes, the whole bit.”
She laughed. “Promise?”
“Promise,” I said. “But first you have to ask somebody.”
“I know,” she said, looking at her feet like a shy kindergartener, in one of those abrupt changes of attitude that twist your heart when you’re a parent. “But what if…”
“What if?” I prompted her gently.
“What if he says no?”
“It’ll hurt,” I admitted. I couldn’t even begin to tell her how much. “But you’ll live through it. And if you’re as brave and smart as I think you are, you’ll just shrug your shoulders and ask someone else.”
“You make it sound so easy,” she said.
“Oh, Allie,” I said, “there’s nothing easy about it. It’s just…the way life is.”
She looked away. “Did Dad…?”
“What?” I asked her.
She half smiled. “He told me once you turned him down the first time he asked you out.”
“That’s true,” I said. “Imagine your remembering that.”
“I remember everything about Dad,” she declared. “So how come you said no?”
A million answers sprang to mind, none of which I wanted to share with my daughter. “I was seeing somebody else when he asked me, someone I thought I liked better.”
“But Dad won out in the end,” she said.
I smiled. “He was very persistent,” I told her. “You should remember that.”
“Are you sorry?”
I looked at her. She was serious. “Of course not,” I said. Which, in most of the ways that really count, was true.
She gave me a quick hug. “Thanks, Mom.”
I flicked her cheek with my finger. “Don’t mention it,” I said. “Advice is my specialty.”
“I know,” she said, rolling her eyes. But at least she laughed.
Afterward, I thought how much I missed having
someone to share this with. Somebody to ask, “Do you think she’ll get a date?” who would understand the worry that she might not. Somebody to relive the excitement and the fear of being rejected that comes with asking someone out. Somebody to say, “How could anybody not want to go with her?”
Somebody like her father, in fact.
Most of the mental dialogues I still had with Richard were arguments, part of the unfinished business between us. At moments like this I was reminded that there had been good times too, and I knew he would have understood, even if he’d been impatient or busy. If Richard had still been alive, I wouldn’t have wanted him back as a husband, but I wanted him back as a father, Allie’s father, and David’s too.
Sighing, and feeling sorry for myself for reasons that were unclear even to me, I went to check the voice mail I’d acquired earlier in the afternoon. There was already a message in my “mailbox.”
“Hi, Mom,” said my son’s voice, in his usual breezy tone. “Glad you finally got a message service. Grandma always forgets when I tell her I called.” He hesitated. “Listen, Mom, I’m really sorry to ask you this because I know how much you hate to deal with it, but Carole’s late with Dad’s portion of the tuition payment again. Could you, like, call and remind her? The administration office has been on my case, because it happens, like, every quarter. Sorry, Mom. Thanks. Bye.”
Chapter Nine
Bobbie Crystol swooped into the restaurant like an actress auditioning for a starring role she knows she’s already won.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said, disengaging her hand from the maître d’, who looked as if he’d like nothing more than to kiss it. She had on tight jeans, a black T-shirt, and the most dramatically beautiful Navajo squash blossom necklace I had ever seen. Heads turned.
I gave her a smile worthy of a publicist or an escort. “No problem,” I said, although my seat was already numb from sitting.
“Use the firm credit card,” Taylor had told me. “Go somewhere expensive.”
Exit Strategies Page 6