The Stork Club

by Maureen Freely

  ‘That was the breaking point for me,’ you told him. But what mattered was what you did next. ‘You have a baby who is interested in nothing but putting a teether into his mouth. How do you find a way to pass the afternoon so you can both enjoy yourselves? You have a husband who comes home so late that you can hardly look him in the eye. What do you do to salvage the evening?’ This was why it was so important for you to spend time with Becky and Charlotte and Ophelia. ‘We all felt the same. It was up to us to make something out of nothing and we did.’

  You explained how exhilarating it had been to take four screaming infants to a Dim Sum restaurant and see the meal through to the end. To meet at a designated corner with your strollers and walk east one afternoon, and west the next. To take them to museums that were beyond them, to beaches where it didn’t matter that it was too cold to swim. To sit down on the cold and windy beach and say to Ophelia, ‘Do you know what he said to me this morning?’ and find out that Kiki or Mitchell had said exactly the same thing. You told him about the Christmas morning when you had dragged yourself and Jesse up to Lafayette Park, thinking that fight you had just gone through was going to bring the world to an end, and watched three other stooped figures pushing strollers up to the playground. It was hard not to laugh, you said, because, if the same thing was happening in all four houses, that meant it wasn’t any one person’s fault but a pattern. And, when you knew that, you could go home again and find the strength to keep going and that was love.

  ‘But you’re living on crumbs!’ Gabe cried.

  But you’re living on crumbs!

  Those were the words that kept jumping out at me the next day no matter how hard I tried to push them away. And your response:

  I suppose you’re right.

  How could you say that?

  And how could I, knowing that you had said that, bring myself to apologize to you for my own bad behaviour, when I knew that I had at least acted openly, while you …

  How could I get up and start making plans for this trip you were only pretending to want to take with me?

  I realize now I ought to have told you what I was so upset about. I can see that without this information my behaviour must have made no sense. I only hope that now you can understand why I refused to apologize for the restaurant fiasco, why I offered to cash in your ticket so that you could liberate yourself while I took the children on vacation by myself, why I said so many nasty things about your friends, why I called Gabe up to fix the sink and then left the house and came barging back in five minutes later, and acted as if he were an intruder, and cross-examined you as to why you were talking with him in the kitchen, how well you knew him, why you gave such an airhead the time of day, and why I made such a fuss about a letter from Stavros that I had discovered after a long and determined search.

  Why had you never told me you were in touch?

  Why did you prefer Gabe’s company to mine?

  Why did this trip we had dreamed of together suddenly mean so little to you?

  Why did you think you were living on crumbs?

  These were the thoughts that were still plaguing me on the day of our scheduled departure.

  And

  13

  It is four in the afternoon. We are sitting in our bedroom, or rather I am sitting in our bedroom, watching a Giants game on TV. I am having a hard time hearing the commentary, because the children have dragged the Fischer-Price slide right next to the sofa and are fighting over who gets to sit at the top. I am trying to reason with them without raising my voice.

  You are rushing back and forth with armloads of toys and toilet articles. It is clear to me that you are trying to pack too much, and I have decided not to say anything, because I don’t want to have a fight.

  At the same time I am fucking annoyed at you because you have left so much until the last minute. For ten days now I have been transferring funds, buying luggage, tying up loose ends at work, and what have you been doing? Slouching around in one of your low-grade depressions, and I’m fed up with it. Fed up with all this staring at the ceiling, this pausing at the window to frown at the view, this whispering on the phone. Why do you always slam down the receiver the moment I walk into the room? Why can’t you say to me what you say to them? And why is food suddenly no longer your responsibility? Ever since I came home with the tickets, you haven’t gotten it together to cook a decent meal. It has been hamburgers or Chinese take-out every goddamn night. If you had given up on cooking in order to devote your time to organizing the house, it would have been different. But with two hours to go before we are to leave for the airport, the apartment – which I consider to be your responsibility – is a wreck. Unpacked toys, unpacked clothes, unpacked books, unpacked toilet articles … piles of dirty sheets all over the place … is this what it has come to? With your fine mind, with your exceptional abilities, are you finally incapable even of taking the sheets down to the basement and throwing them into the machine?

  It pains me now to remember how I sat there thinking ill of you. I mean, talk about out of touch. What kind of balloon was I floating around in? God, when I think about the way I just sat there on the sofa with my can of beer and my Giants game, feeling so superior, so sure of my unilateral decisions, so unaware of the ways in which I was taking you for granted. I cannot believe the way I sat there and said to myself, when is this woman going to get it together? How is it that a woman with a 4.0 grade point average can have left so much until so late?

  God! How could I have failed to see it? The proof was standing right there in front of me, and I didn’t see it. Or rather, I didn’t see what the luggage meant, how the way in which the bags were divided amongst us was significant.

  Nine matching Sportsacs, standing in a smug little row.

  For the baby bears, two teeny tiny Sportsacs.

  For the mama bear, a medium-sized Sportsac handbag and a twenty-eight-inch Sportsac suitcase.

  For the papa bear, a forty-two-inch Sportsac suitcase, a twenty-eight-inch Sportsac suitcase, a Sportsac garment bag, a Sportsac duffel bag for the snorkling equipment, and another one for books. Plus a typewriter and a camera case.

  How the sight of them, neatly packed and ready to go, must have galled you as you tried to squeeze your own and the children’s belongings into bags too small to hold them.

  If you only knew how much I regret saying, ‘No, absolutely not,’ when you asked me if you could pack some of your reading material in my book bag. More to the point: I do not know how I felt justified in objecting to your putting two of your dresses into my garment bag.

  Technically, I was right. You can only put so much into a garment bag. If you have three suits AND two dresses in a garment bag, everything is going to get wrinkled. Which defeats the purpose of the bag. The question is, why did I think my suits were more important than your dresses? Why had I not thought to buy you a garment bag of your own? The answer is, I wasn’t thinking.

  Looking back, I can see why you got so angry when I told you that there had to be enough room in your handbag for the children’s toys. But still, even with hindsight, I am shaken at the memory of the hatred in your face when you hurled the handbag at my chest and screamed, ‘I hate you, I hate you,’ over and over again, and then launched into that merciless list of all the things I had ever done wrong. I mean, I just couldn’t fucking believe it.

  It was the attention to detail that got me – then as now. The fact that you could remember exactly what I had said to you on the 9th of October two years ago, and exactly what time I had or had not gotten out of bed for the past eight weekends. Had you written it down or what? I also couldn’t understand why you had chosen this particular moment to share this information with me, or why you had to do so in front of the children.

  Looking back, that is what I regret most – that the children witnessed your transformation from a sweet, giving, pleasantly absent-minded woman into an ogress. I cannot even begin to imagine what it did to them to see you savagely attack my garment b
ag and drag it brutally down the corridor, shouting vicious curses. As for the way you took it out on to the landing and dumped the contents down the stairwell – tell me. Was that really necessary? Couldn’t you have waited until the children were asleep?

  I realize that I should be the last person to criticize you, after the way I acted at the airport. But I am trying to be honest, in the same way I hope you will be with me one day. What I want to do is explain how I came to do what I did. To explain – not to justify. Because I am not at all proud of what I did in front of the metal detector.

  14

  I know. I was out of control. But I could not accept this portrait you had painted of me, of this bear … this bull who stood between you and the world, blocking your way. Who treated you like a toddler. And you, who had never had an ounce of viciousness in your body, I could not believe you had painted this portrait single-handed. No, I could detect the heavy-handed influence of the Stork Club.

  That is why it really bugged me to have to stand there in the airport lobby watching your farewells. From the looks your friends were giving me, you would have thought I was extraditing you to the Third World for an unfair trial. They kept saying things to you like, ‘You know where I am if you need anything,’ and, ‘If it gets too much for you, just give a shout.’ You kept sobbing, and blowing your nose, and saying, ‘I’ll be all right. I really will be.’ You would have thought I was standing over you with a whip. I kept saying to myself, all right already. Let’s get the show on the road.

  I mean, when you look back on that day – if, in fact, you ever think back – don’t you agree it was going too far to have all three of them come out to the airport? I was already reeling from our fight over the garment bag. And on top of that, to have your friends glaring at me as if I were abducting you to Bhopal … it was too much. I didn’t really see a towtruck take away the car that was parked next to Becky’s BMW. I just made it up to get rid of them.

  I hope this goes some way towards explaining my behaviour in front of the metal detector.

  15

  Again, let me stress that I am not trying to justify myself. But by the time we got to the metal detector, I had long ceased behaving rationally. I was too upset about what happened at the check-in desk.

  I don’t know if you remember, but the ‘flight attendant’ was a Grade A bitch. She had no good reason to refuse to check Maria’s carseat through. I mean when you think of the number of times we’ve carted that thing on and off planes … I tried to tell her that she had it all wrong. But she was the expert. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but according to our regulations …’ I can still hear her whiny little reject-cheerleader voice. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but… I’m sorry, sir …’

  You may remember that I lost my temper. You may also remember that you tried to calm me down. But by reprimanding me in front of the baboon attendant, by treating ME like a toddler you had the opposite effect on me than the one you intended.

  There’s something else I should mention. I try to keep it to myself, but I hate carseats. I hate putting children into them. I hate groping between their legs for the buckle. I hate seeing my children sitting there like trussed turkeys on their way to market. But most of all, I hate weaving through crowded departure lounges carrying two bags in each hand and balancing an upside-down carseat on my head. Because everywhere I look I see airport employees laughing at me.

  That’s why I kicked Maria’s carseat off the scales, and why it was so satisfying. OK, bitch, see if I care, was what I was saying. To the flight attendant. Not to you. So. I was appalled when you went back and insisted on carrying it yourself. I was also furious at the sanctimonious harpy manning the metal detector because of her idiotic insistence that I take Maria up out of her stroller. So when the stroller slipped backwards, and the camera bag crashed to the floor, and all the lenses and attachments went spewing out on to the floor … well, who wouldn’t flip out?

  That said, I am sorry about the way I turned on you. I should never have ‘congratulated’ you, or said that thanks to your expert packing the four hundred dollars I had just spent on the zoom lens was down the drain. I knew only too well that the camera case had not been designed to hold a zoom lens. Sooner or later, it was going to fall out.

  If you only knew how sorry I am about the way I acted when you said you weren’t going to go through the metal detector until I apologized. I acted like a child, and traumatized the children when I grabbed them like that. I should never have told you to go fuck yourself in front of all those people. It was wrong of me to push you away and wrench the children from you.

  I know I have no right to have felt the way I did, but when the children ran back to you screaming ‘Mama! Mama!’ I felt betrayed. I thought you had turned them against me. That’s why I said, ‘Adiós for ever.’

  But I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that when I said, ‘You know where to find me, if you change your mind,’ I did not mean Greece. I meant the plane.

  I know I can’t prove it, but I did wait until the last possible moment to board the plane. I stood there at the gate, clutching the boarding passes, craning my neck to catch some glimpse of you and the children hurrying down the corridor. It didn’t even occur to me that you needed those very passes to get past the metal detector.

  Then finally I thought: Fuck it. If she wants to play games she can go ahead and play them but not with me. So I got on the plane, and five minutes later I was in the air. And then, suddenly, as if by magic –

  16

  No more babyseats or strollers. No more whining children or disapproving wife. Just me and nine matching suitcases flying fast forward towards the Atlantic. No changing planes in St Louis. No sleeping on second cousins’ couches in New York. No boat trains across the English Channel, or camping on the outskirts of Amsterdam, or backtracking to Brussels for the cheapest charter. Just one flight, without a single stopover, to Athens –

  And once in Athens, no need to wait in the scorching sun for the bus. Just hop into a taxi with the nine matching suitcases and sweep into the city down the same sun-baked avenues where you and I had once struggled with string bags of groceries under the cruel midday sun. Brush past the narrow winding sidestreet where we used to live, past the soulless office building where we taught for wages even a slave would laugh at, and past the Parthenon, the Palace Gardens, the House of Parliament and the bench in Syntagma where I had once put my head in your lap and wept. Ignore the street that leads to the icy doors of American Express, where we had failed to receive so many important letters, where urgently cabled money could just sit, undetected, in a secretary’s desk drawer for months. Where they never apologized to anyone in jeans, where they treated you like shit, and assumed you were there for the air-conditioning, if your hair came within six inches of your collar.

  Remember all this and then look away and smile as the taxi pulls to a stop in front of the hotel we had passed so many times with our string bags, never dreaming that one day we would be able to afford it. Watch the doorman approaching, watch the bellboy dart back and forth with the nine matching suitcases. Proceed to the desk. ‘Ah, yes, sir,’ says the clerk. ‘You wish for a suite?’

  Step into the well-appointed elevator. Press the top button and step back to make room for the porter. Step out into the plush corridor for tips, smiling bellboys, and respectfully closed doors. Look at the antique chairs in the sitting-room. Look through the french windows at the Acropolis. Look at the beds. Flop on to the largest for an undisturbed and unresented nap.

  Wake up to darkness and the hum of the air-conditioner. The room seems to be swaying and for a moment I think I’m on a boat.

  I am not on a boat but my head is swimming. Slowly I remember that I am in the Grande Bretagne, that my name is Mike and that I’m married to a bitch. I remember I have money. I remember I’m alone. I can do whatever I want. I am free, but I am also lying upside-down and on a diagonal on a different bed from where I started.

  I am also not sure I can sti
ll use my arms. To sit up and reach out and turn on the light – it may be impossible.

  Quick. Up.

  Out with the suitcase with the summer clothes. Into a short-sleeved shirt before I notice that there’s no one there to notice. Out into the evening. Feel the warm air hit my face as I push open the lobby doors. Off to Zonar’s. No need this evening to go to the cheap place next door. Take a seat outside, at a table in the back row. Sit back with a Campari and soda and look beyond the empty chairs around your table, look instead at the Greek gentlemen in their grey, short-sleeved shirts reading their papers, the foreigners writing postcards and flipping through guidebooks, the cars rushing past every time the light turns to green.

  Remember coming here when I was in high school, the lengths to which I went so as to not look American.

  Remember that time when I was wearing my father’s sunglasses, and drinking a Pernod, and reading the New Statesman, and trying not to choke on my cigarette, and those demonstrators went past, anti-American demonstrators – and remember how I tried to act as if they were just another battalion of taxis trying to beat the lights. Tried to remind myself I was a sympathizer. I had nothing in common with my father.

  I don’t want to think about my father, as I have no intention of looking him up. I want to enjoy my freedom and my new capacity to pay for it. And so bring me the cheque, please. Keep the change. Thank you, sir. It’s nothing. In fact, it’s a pleasure. Make a path between the tables. Step off the kerb and hail a taxi. Watch him nod knowingly when I say L’Abreuvoir – as if there was nothing strange in going to a French restaurant for my first meal in Greece. Speed along more avenues up through Kolonaki and sit at the same table where you and I sat on our first anniversary and ordered the cheapest things on the menu.