There's a Word for That

by Sloane Tanen

  Ian’s phone call from London announcing that Bunny would be drying out at a rehabilitation center in Malibu had further soured his mood. Dear God, why couldn’t his mother sober up in the English countryside? He was horrified at how close she’d sounded in her phone message yesterday, happily announcing her arrival in Malibu and her wish to see him “first thing.”

  Henry stood up and fetched a bottle of Pinot, a corkscrew, and a large burgundy glass, all of which he carefully carried back to the table. He poured himself a glass and reflected bitterly on his father’s insinuation that Henry’s failure to attend the great Bunny’s bloody birthday bash had contributed to whatever epic tantrum had apparently occurred. So it was his fault she’d landed herself in rehab? Henry had to laugh at that. He couldn’t be held responsible. He had a job! Not that his father or Ian or his mother, for that matter, seemed to care.

  No matter how far he fled, he failed to escape the long shadow of Bunny Small. Just that morning at the ENT’s office, the new nurse had called out his name from the door and he’d had to endure the looks and laughter that ensued. Why had his mother named that ridiculous character after him? If only his father hadn’t been so hurt at the prospect of Henry changing his last name on his twenty-first birthday. He’d had tears in his eyes, for God’s sake!

  The nurse had appraised Henry en route to the exam room. “Really? Henry Holter?” she’d asked with an arched brow, as if he’d made it up to be clever. Then Dr. Zimmerman had informed Henry, in no uncertain terms, that his hearing aid was no longer a viable alternative to the ear surgery he’d been putting off—a procedure necessitated by too many untreated ear infections as a child. He was terrified of the prospect and agitated at Dr. Zimmerman’s suggestion that he stay out of the pool until after the operation. How on earth would he manage his mother without the catharsis of his evening swims?

  How well Henry remembered the innumerable nights he’d stood outside his mother’s study when his father was traveling, off hunting for antique treasures around the world and, no doubt, enjoying a reprieve from his exhausting spouse. Henry had been petrified of disturbing his mother’s “creative process” but unable to endure the relentless throbbing in his right ear. He recalled her put-upon sighs as she shooed him off to bed with half a Valium, two baby aspirin, and a perfunctory kiss so she could get back to work.

  Henry was staring at his papers in a stupor, wondering at the injustice of it all, when he heard the sound of a key turning in the front door. Risa. Had she told him she was coming over tonight? He clenched his teeth and pretended to be engrossed in his work.

  Now that she was here, he’d have to do the thing. He couldn’t wait. Not with his mother in town. Don’t get drawn in, he told himself. Just do it. He couldn’t stomach two unhappy women, two failed relationships. He took a breath, bracing himself.

  “Henry?” Risa called. “Hello?” Her dark curly hair was loose, spilling down the back of her snug, silky blue blouse. Her skirt was typically short. “My day was crazy,” she said, smiling at the unexpected bottle of wine. She pursed her full lips, always painted the color of ripe tomatoes, as she poured herself a glass. After slipping off her heels, she sat down on the chair beside him and began to massage one perfectly manicured foot. Henry stared, turned on despite himself. How he loathed his baser instincts, his superficial side. He cleared his throat. “We should talk,” he said.

  “You know that Quentin Mayer kid?” she asked, ignoring his comment. “The PhD candidate I told you about?”

  Henry knew exactly where this was going.

  “He tried to kiss me,” she said. “At least, I think that’s what that was.” Risa went on to describe the play-by-play of Quentin Mayer’s declaration of desire. Henry was only half listening. Men were constantly hitting on Risa and she was constantly dashing home to report the events to Henry and complain about the general burden of being so attractive. Did she hope he’d be impressed? Jealous? She really should have the grace to be the one to end things between them. Why make him do the work?

  “What do you think?” she asked, peering at him seductively over her wineglass.

  “About?”

  “Quentin Mayer.”

  “I think maybe you should button up and let your hem down if you don’t want your students or your therapist or the valet outside of Whole Foods to get the wrong idea.”

  “I sure as hell hope you’re not implying that it’s my own fault that I’m harassed.”

  “Of course not,” he said, flustered. But he was suddenly angry about August, too angry to let it go. Despite everything, Henry was a monogamous man, and although he realized he was getting sidetracked, he went on, unable to resist. “You know, if you’re so put out by the onslaught of male attention, you might turn off your light.”

  She moved her chair closer to him and began, maddeningly, stroking his hair. He felt tense with irritation. As if the bestowal of her focused attention would neutralize her crimes. As if all would be forgiven. “My light is not on,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said. “It’s not on.” He glanced at her silk shirt, stretched tight across her breasts, and imagined her rolling around in bed with August Tennenbaum. “A nice cardigan might function as a dimmer, though.”

  She slid her chair back and narrowed her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, knowing his approach was all wrong, stepping back from the edge. “My mother’s arrived. It’s been a bad day.”

  Henry chose not to mention the trip to the ear doctor. Risa would not be sympathetic about his needing surgery or the fact that he couldn’t swim his daily laps at the pool. But anything involving his famous mother fascinated her.

  “Your mom is here? In LA?” Her face was alight as she leaned forward, her elbows on the table.

  Henry picked up a pen and started spreading the student papers out as if he were making a paper barrier between himself and her barrage of questions. He’d always wondered if Risa’s interest in him had more to do with his last name than with anything else. Her appetite for prestige, for celebrity, would be hard to satisfy in academia. But if she was tied to Bunny Small, however frayed the string, that might be just the ticket.

  “Are you going to see her?” Risa asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “I’ll go with you. I’ll cancel my classes.”

  “No.”

  “Let me support you in this, Henry. I want to. What can I do? Should we have her for dinner? I can make the walnut chicken with the cherry sauce.”

  “She’s in a rehabilitation facility, Risa. I don’t think they let her out for dinner parties.”

  “Well, I want to do something.”

  “Why are you always so interested in my mother?” he asked, putting down his pen. “I understand the global obsession with celebrity, but why are you so interested in her?”

  She paused for a moment before answering. “She’s fascinating, of course. But this is about you. Whatever I can do for you.”

  “Bollocks,” he said, his anger triggered by her blatant hypocrisy. Risa had as much interest in extending herself to help him as she did in stopping the onslaught of male attention brought on by her sartorial choices. Dread washed over him immediately. There was no turning back.

  “I think it’s time we went our separate ways,” he said. He hadn’t intended to sound so curt, but he felt a welcome relief now that he’d finally said it.

  “What?” She looked at him and laughed. “Is this about our conversation the other night?” She’d decided they should discuss her moving in, since she spent two or three nights a week at his place anyway. Henry had been mystified, considering the August Tennenbaum information, and he’d quickly changed the subject. “It wasn’t a marriage proposal, Henry. You really are the most commitment-phobic man. Forget I mentioned it.”

  “It’s not about that. Look, I know you like the idea of me, but I’m fairly certain the real me doesn’t quite come up to scratch. I’m too”—he paused, searching for the right word—“introve
rted. This isn’t going anywhere. You need more. You deserve more.”

  “No. I love you, Henry.”

  “Love me?” He raised his eyebrows, stunned. “We don’t get on, Risa. I don’t think you even particularly like me.”

  “Don’t tell me how I feel. I fucking love you.”

  “You see, the thing is,” he went on, finding the courage to finish the conversation now that he’d started it, “I know about August.”

  “Nothing happened,” she said too quickly. She stood up and started pacing. Her eyes filled with tears. She swallowed. “Please, Henry.”

  “I understand. You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

  “But I want to.” Her face was flushed.

  “It’s not necessary. Let’s not do this.”

  “It was just the once.”

  “You just said nothing happened!” he said loudly. What rubbish! Risa didn’t love him.

  “It just sort of happened. It didn’t mean anything.”

  “The thing is, it means something to me. I only brought it up because you wouldn’t have done it if you liked me, let alone loved me. We’re simply not suited. It’s all right.”

  She was still for a moment, as if collecting her thoughts, preparing her case. Then, pouting her lips, almost pleading: “I never know where you are, Henry. It’s like everything I say gets on your nerves. You just sort of lock yourself away and there’s no access. I need to know I’m appreciated.”

  “Appreciated?” he asked, grasping for his outrage amid the threat of her emotional manipulation. “Appreciated how, exactly?”

  “I don’t want to be with Gus. I want to be with you. Long term,” she said, as if he might be flattered.

  Gus? Was she serious? He shook his head. “It won’t work, Risa. We’re a mismatch.”

  She looked at him in disbelief. Then she laughed. “So you’re breaking up with me?”

  He didn’t say anything. It was an awkwardness that had to sit. She marched into the bathroom. He could hear her gathering some of her things. “You’re like Meursault,” she said, returning. She pointed her toothbrush at him like a handgun. “You think indifference will protect you from suffering.”

  Now it was Henry’s turn to laugh. Risa couldn’t discuss their relationship without bringing up Camus. The woman taught eighteenth-century literature, for God’s sake; she clearly had no business dipping into the twentieth-century canon.

  “You can’t escape emotional pain, Henry. You can’t go around acting like you exist outside the rules of civility and thinking it’s okay.”

  “You’re the one who screwed August Tennenbaum,” he said, hating himself for saying something so trite. “And I exist outside the rules of civility? It’s something, the way you’ve managed to make me the asshole here.”

  “You are the asshole here.”

  She threw her toothbrush, a compact, Vaseline, and some medication into her purse. “You can’t choose to block people out because you’re afraid of getting hurt. You’re like a hedgehog. Afraid of intimacy.”

  Her barrage of bad similes was rankling. “Why don’t you stick with Pope and Swift,” he snapped. He felt guilty for upsetting her, but it wasn’t as though anybody gave lessons on how to end a bad relationship with grace.

  “Fuck you, Henry. This is about your fucked-up relationship with your mother. You’re going to regret this. I’m a catch, Henry. Take a good look.” She flung open the front door and turned to him. She had black mascara ringing both eyes. “Good luck finding someone willing to put up with your shit.”

  Henry kept his mouth shut.

  “Fuck you,” she said again and slammed the front door behind her.

  He was still sitting at the table, contemplating the silence, when the door opened again.

  “I forgot my bag,” Risa said. She stopped to look at him, perhaps allowing him a moment to change his mind. He made no move to get up.

  “Fuck you!” she said a third time, picking up her purse. On her way out she snatched a lovely little pre-Columbian figure from the bookshelf and threw it across the room. It shattered into a thousand pieces. Henry gasped. Risa knew he loved that statue. He’d bought it at auction with his father, a museum-quality ceramic Mesoamerican corn goddess. She’d survived five hundred years only to be destroyed by a hysterical assistant professor of English.

  After Risa left, Henry cleaned up the shattered remnants of the statue and dumped them into the garbage. That seemed wrong, so he dug out the larger shards and put them in an old cookie tin. At some point he’d bury them or scatter the remains somewhere fitting. It was the least he could do. Henry went to the bookshelf and moved some books over the area where the figure had been. Tomorrow he would drive to Malibu and visit his mother.

  Janine

  Janine had gotten in last night and opened the front door of her father’s house to the familiar smell of firewood and floor polish. For a brief moment she was reminded of how things used to be when she came home: the barking dogs greeting her, their housekeeper, Maria, running across the yard to give Janine a hug, and her dad…she would see him through the window. He’d be standing in the kitchen, trying to act casual, when she knew he was always too excited about her homecoming to do anything other than pace the floor waiting for her.

  But yesterday wasn’t like that. The house had been so dark and lifeless. She’d felt like a ghost, or at least like she was surrounded by ghosts, standing alone in the cold hallway with her suitcase. No dogs, no Dad, no Maria. She’d crawled right into her old bed, not even bothering to shower or unpack.

  The relentlessly bright California sun woke her early the next day, illuminating the familiar contours of the bedroom she’d moved into full-time after her mom died. She lay in bed, mentally preparing herself to visit her dad in rehab. When she finally got up, she opened the blinds en route to the bathroom, and the sight of the backyard hit her hard. The scene was almost supernatural. The once lush and colorful landscape was a dry and withered tangle. Stepping out through the glass door, Janine tried to absorb the level of decay. Why hadn’t anybody told her how bad it was, how sad it was? Or maybe someone had tried to tell her and she hadn’t been listening.

  Working in the yard had long been her father’s therapy, an escape from poor box-office numbers, nagging ex-wives, calls from the office. Sandro did the heavy lifting—the mowing, raking, irrigating, and fertilizing—but Marty was the beating heart. The glory of his garden was a reflection of how demanding his job was at that moment; the higher his stress levels, the more fully his weekends were occupied by the immediacy of weeding, pruning, and planting. The giant eucalyptus trees that shaded a sea of yellow barberry, the clivia brightening the understory of three giant palms, the potted cacti that framed the pool, and the fuchsia bougainvillea crawling up the barn doors—all these were his pride. Janine had spent countless hours watching him tool around outside, trailing after him as he watered, clipped, and planted. Sometimes he explained about the plants; more often he just happily listened to her chatter.

  When had her father stopped taking care of things? He hadn’t been at Directions that long. And she couldn’t help but be irritated by Sandro’s neglect, despite how bad she felt for him in the wake of Maria’s death. A few months back, her father had told her (once it became clear that Sandro was too depressed to work) that Gail had hired a Japanese gardener to take over. Sandro didn’t want to work, but he certainly didn’t want anybody else doing his job either. He’d chased that Japanese gardener around with a BB gun until the man had driven off, never to be heard from again. Marty found the story wildly amusing; Gail found it less so. She had thrown up her hands and ceded the yard to Marty’s “misplaced sense of loyalty.”

  Janine was relieved her father was still faithful to Sandro. Marty had always been susceptible to the women in his life, but Gail’s emotional manipulation was so complex that he actually believed he was lucky to have her. Janine didn’t like to think about how much her father had changed since he’d started s
eeing Gail, how easily he’d set aside his moral compass when his girlfriend didn’t like the direction it was pointing. That he hadn’t fired Sandro, despite everything, was a good sign.

  Janine scanned the garden now for any evidence of Sandro. All she saw was a plate of half-eaten cat food on the outdoor dining table. At least he seemed to be feeding Roger, her father’s cat. Stepping back inside, Janine considered her options for the day. Visiting with her nieces was off the table. She had finally called Amanda from the airport in New York yesterday, but Amanda hadn’t picked up. Janine left a message, but when her plane landed in LA, she’d received an e-mail from her sister making it clear that she wouldn’t be seeing Jaycee and Hailey anytime soon. The girls had watched her little cameo on TMZ, Amanda had written. Hailey seems to have spun some fantasy world around you, and while I’m hoping her hallucinations are a side effect of the pain medication, I obviously have to take every precaution to protect her. With that—and without any explanation of why Hailey was on pain medication—Amanda had signed off, saying that she’d see Janine “without the girls” at their father’s birthday dinner, a week from Saturday.

  Janine was annoyed and disappointed. Not only would she have liked to see the twins, but she thought Amanda might have some insight into the state of the yard—what it meant, how long it had looked that way. Janine had never been able to deal with the hopelessness of things falling apart. Maybe that’s why she’d stayed in New York. In Manhattan, at least, the evidence of the passage of time felt natural, not criminal. The city never deteriorated in an obvious way, and the old people seemed oddly content. Janine liked seeing them on the bus, braving the elements to go to concerts at Lincoln Center, enjoying dinner at the local diner. Like the models and the businessmen, the homeless and the handicapped, the elderly were essential to the city’s landscape. LA was different. The closest thing to elder respect in LA was when an actor received an Academy Award for lifetime achievement at the Oscars. And even then, the producers invariably had the old-timer wheeled offstage midspeech, knowing the audience needed to see Jennifer Lawrence again before their anxiety over their own mortality ruined the evening.