The Stork Club

by Maureen Freely

  I watched, aghast, as he returned to the canvas carrier bag and fished out a bottle of aspirin. Yes, aspirin. Not Tylenol. Not acetominophen. But aspirin. The substance that gives your children Reyes Syndrome if they happen to have the flu. I watched in disbelief as Jesse walked over to Maria and asked her, ‘How old are you now?’

  ‘Three,’ Maria said.

  ‘Three? You’re three already? I remember when you were a teeny tiny little baby. You were only this big. I never thought you would grow up to be such a lovely, big, beautiful girl. Did I?’

  ‘I’m big,’ she said. ‘I’m three.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘And you know what that means, don’t you? That means you can have three lovely little fat pink aspirins! So put out your hand then. Put out your hand, you little rascalette.’

  I honestly didn’t expect him to be able to open the bottle. After all, it had a child-proof cap. But whoever had used it last had not closed it right. Because Jesse was able to open it without any trouble. ‘That’s the thing that’s so nice about Eluisa,’ he told me. ‘She always gives us aspirin for dessert.’

  18

  How I wish you had come home then. But you did not even call. I was left alone with the children for six more hours, with no real information on your whereabouts and a growing pile of evidence that things, in my absence, had gone irreparably wrong.

  I could read it in the children’s eyes that night as they lay in their beds staring at me and the ceiling, with their covers pulled up to their chins and their hair spread out like sunrays on their pillows, in beds that hardly had room for them, because of the dolls and the doll’s clothes, the stuffed walruses, tigers, dogs and kangaroos, the tape recorders and Walkmans, the cassettes, the pop-up books, the crayons, the magic markers, the crumpled drawings that offered no explanation, no relief for the frightened shadows in their ravaged eyes. They had their memories.

  Here are some of the things Jesse told me about you as we lay together in his bed:

  1. He said one night you had ‘forgotten’ to come home.

  2. He said another night you had come home with an illegal alien.

  3. He said you were almost always in a bad mood.

  4. He said you had started wearing eyeshadow and lipstick. And alien clothes.

  5. He said Maria had gotten a rash because you had let her use your deodorant on her cheeks. Apparently you were in bed, trying to sleep off a hangover. Or at least that was what I assumed –

  6. Because he said the night before that you had come home drunk, fallen flat on your face and called Jesse an asshole.

  7. He said he couldn’t remember the name of the place, but that he thought you were working in a bar.

  Naturally I was alarmed. And not just by what Jesse told me.

  Here are some of the conversations I had with Maria as I was putting her to bed:

  ME (to Maria, after reading to her for twenty-five minutes): So. That’s the end of Eloise. I think it’s bedtime now, don’t you?

  MARIA (in a spoiled voice): No! I’m not sleepy!

  ME: But it’s seven-thirty already. It’s Jesse’s turn to have a story.

  MARIA (in a staccato shriek): No! It’s not Jesse’s turn! It’s my turn!

  JESSE (giving up in his usual gentlemanly way): Oh, I don’t mind. Read her another story.

  ME (giving in, out of guilt): OK. Just this once. What would you like, darling?

  MARIA (Screws up her face and says nothing.)

  JESSE: I think she’d probably like a Dick Bruna.

  (NOTA BENE: I hope you can see how hard I’m trying to be even-handed and patient.)

  ME (after taking a handful of Dick Bruna books off the bookshelf):

  So, Maria. You’re getting one more story and then it’s bedtime.

  Which one do you think you’d like? THE KING?

  (She shakes her head.)

  THE FISH?

  (She shakes her head.)

  THE CIRCUS?

  (She shakes her head.)

  (I come close to losing my patience.)

  ME: You don’t want THE KING. You don’t want THE CIRCUS. You don’t want THE FISH. Which one do you want?

  MARIA: THE PENIS.

  And later, after I have finished reading to Jesse, a similar exchange, while I’m lying down with Maria:

  MARIA: I’m three and a half now, aren’t I?

  ME: That’s right, Maria, you’re three and a half.

  MARIA: On my birthday I’ll be four.

  ME: That’s right, Maria. You’ll be four.

  MARIA: All the childrens at school going to coming to my party. All the childrens except Heywood. Heywood’s an asshole.

  ME: Little girls shouldn’t say words like that, Maria.

  JESSE (with his typical fairness): Little boys shouldn’t either.

  ME: That’s right, Jesse. Boys and girls shouldn’t say words like that. Only grown-ups, and even then only at certain times.

  JESSE: Mommy says asshole all the time.

  MARIA: Mommy has a vagina.

  And still later, when, for some insane reason, we have wandered back to the subject of birthdays:

  ME: What do you want for a present on your birthday, Maria?

  MARIA (Silence. Followed by deranged laughter.)

  ME: Would you like a … tricycle?

  MARIA (Shakes her head and laughs.)

  ME: Do you want a (I think I said ‘dress’ but if I did I really meant ‘outfit’.)

  (Whatever. Does it really matter?)

  MARIA (Shakes her head and laughs.)

  ME: Do you want a … huge enormous ice-cream cone?

  MARIA (Again, shakes her head and laughs.)

  ME: What DO you want, then?

  MARIA: A penis.

  Again, a penis.

  Why?

  What had been going on in this house during my absence?

  Why did they stiffen when I brushed the air from their foreheads? Was it simply because I had scared them by venting my rage on the aspirin? And if so, if they were scared of me, why were they so scared when I got up to go?

  Here are some of the things Jesse told me he was scared of as we lay together in his bed:

  1. He was scared there was an illegal alien in the closet.

  2. He was scared that there was a small, but growing, illegal alien in his chest. In his chest?

  3. He was scared that I was just pretending to be his father, when I really was an illegal alien from outer space.

  4. He was scared that his sister was an illegal alien reject from a defective planet.

  5. He was scared that his real mother had been killed by an illegal alien and replaced by an identical robot.

  And so was I, Laura. And so was I.

  What bar were you at tonight?

  The nightmare scene, the nightmare scene I had pushed out of my mind for so long, came back. I was back in that bar again. I was pushing my way through the crowd to get to my wife. I was seeing her with her elbows on the bar, talking to a big guy with a ponytail. I was seeing her laugh and then stop laughing when she caught sight of me.

  This is Trooper.

  Here we go again, I thought. The same nightmare I went through with Mona, except this time involving children. Then I turned on the VCR and found out it was a thousand times worse.

  At first I couldn’t make sense of the scene. It seemed to be an operating room, an operating room in a spaceship, I decided, because conditions were cramped, and the doctors were dressed in metallic outfits. They were struggling with a patient on the operating table. He, too, was dressed in uniform. What was wrong with him?

  I watched, aghast, as a mechanical monster exploded through his chest.

  I stopped the video, stared at the still of metal and exploding flesh. I stifled a silent scream. Then I backtracked. Watched the mechanical monster explode out of the spaceman’s chest again. Backtracked to the beginning of the movie. Watched the whole goddamn thing.

  And so there you have it. American
culture in a nutshell. I was appalled by that movie, Laura. Both artistically and because of what it had done to my children. But at the same time I could not resist it. I watched it all the way through.

  The more I watched it, the more mesmerized I was. And the more I watched it, the more it summed up for me all the influences, all the ideas that I had always wanted to keep away from my kids. The more I realized how little you, with your fairy-tales of virtuous careers and supportive friends, could see. It was neither here nor there if you had spent your evening in a bar or a bar-review course. Wherever you were, you were in trouble. We were all in trouble. Any country that could produce a movie like Alien, any country that could expose its children to a movie like Alien, any country that condoned parents leaving children in the care of illegal aliens in order that they might alienate themselves at bars and bar-review courses, any country that could let these things happen was fucked.

  It was not until after I had watched the movie (and had a few more drinks) that Ophelia called to have it out with me about my alleged abusive treatment of Eluisa.

  Apparently Eluisa had turned up at her door in hysterics, telling all sorts of lies about me, which Ophelia, of course, believed. I do realize that it would have been better for all of us if I had been civil to Ophelia. But her timing could not have been worse.

  Her sign-off was ominous. You know, she said, in a trembling voice, ‘you’re sitting there mouthing off like the king of the castle, but I don’t know if you even have a right to be there. You’d better find some way to cool off, and quick, or you’re going to be very sorry.’

  Then she hung up on me. I decided, disastrously, to take her advice.

  19

  I had not been in the shower long before someone – Jesse, I assumed – came into the bathroom to take a piss.

  BAM. Could that be Jesse kicking up the toilet seat?

  Before I could answer that question, I saw the answer, unequivocally, through the mist.

  A man. A man who now rapped his fist on the glass.

  ‘Knock, Knock!’ he said. ‘Anybody home? Hurry up, babes. Dinner’s on the table.’

  It was Gabe.

  Our handyman Gabe.

  What was Gabe doing in my bathroom?

  Talking to you about dinner? Addressing you as ‘babes’?

  This was the fucking limit. The time had come to draw the line. There was only one problem.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  I watched the shadow of Gabe washing his hands. ‘I don’t know, babes,’ he was saying, ‘Mitchell did you any favours selling you that car. It’s not a lemon, babes. It’s a fucking citrus grove. I did my best, but if you ask me … hey, Laura? You OK in there, babes?’

  He opened the shower door.

  ‘Oh. Hi,’ he said, adding in a croak, ‘you’re back!’

  ‘What the fuck are you doing in my bathroom?’ I asked.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Um, I mean, well … you see …’ Now he was having trouble breathing. ‘Um, there’s this guy I know. Who does services real cheap.’

  ‘Services,’ I repeated.

  ‘Car services.’ He cleared his throat. ‘And since I was going there. Anyway. I offered to …’ He slapped his pockets. ‘Oh man, don’t tell me I left it downstairs!’

  ‘Left what downstairs?’

  ‘The service booklet. I’ll go get it now, before I forget.’ And baboom, he was off. ‘Back in a sec!’ he shouted from the service elevator. I threw on a towel and tried to catch up with him. Slam. Clonk. He was gone.

  I got dressed and went into the kitchen. I caught sight of some car keys sitting on the counter, on top of a service booklet for a 1980 Pontiac Phoenix.

  A 1980 Pontiac Phoenix?

  My wife had bought a Pontiac Phoenix? A Pontiac Phoenix with (as I discovered upon examining the service booklet) 85,000 miles on it?

  Again, it, took me a while to take this information in. It wasn’t until eleven-thirty or so that I was able to propel myself to the bookshelves in search of Consumer Reports. I think that even under normal circumstances I would have found the information it contained disturbing. But after the day I had had, it was the last straw.

  I had some questions to ask Mitchell – if he was the one who had sold you this car. I had some questions to ask you. But first I had some questions I wanted to ask Gabe. And if he was too cowardly to come to me …

  I assure you, however, that before I took the service elevator down to the basement, I did check the children, and they were sound asleep.

  As you are well aware, there was no answer, but a lot of incriminating noise, when I knocked on Gabe’s door.

  I did, however, call his name three times before I kicked in the door.

  I really wish you could have seen him cowering behind those drums, with his teeth chattering, and his left arm raised as if to fend off a blow. He didn’t look too impressive.

  I suppose there is no point in reproducing our conversation here. Suffice it to say that I would have behaved differently had I known you were hiding underneath the bed.

  When I took the elevator back up to the seventh floor, I couldn’t get in. My key didn’t work. I went back down to the basement. This time, as you may remember, the door to Gabe’s room was bolted. ‘They’re on the washing machine,’ he whispered hoarsely through the keyhole.

  ‘What are?’ I asked.

  ‘The keys.

  For the new locks.’ For the new locks.

  This guy had the keys for the new locks? And I didn’t?

  This guy had the keys for my home and I didn’t.

  This was the thought that was running through my mind as I let myself back into the apartment

  This was the thought that was running through my mind when I punched a hole in the bathroom door.

  This was the sound that woke up the children.

  I had not managed to stop their howling before the phone rang.

  It was Becky.

  Sounding very strange.

  ‘I thought you would like to know,’ she said. ‘Laura’s not coming home today. She’s staying here with us.’

  Needless to say, I did not take this news well. I should not have cross-examined her. But I knew there was something fishy going on. That’s why I decided to drive over to Becky’s and get you.

  The children were the ones who, once I had bundled them up and taken them out into the street, pointed out your abomination of a Pontiac Phoenix.

  Even in my drunken state, I could not believe my eyes. I mean, didn’t you look at the goddamn thing before you bought it? Couldn’t you see that the chassis was bent? Couldn’t you tell from the sound it made that the transmission was fucked? And the muffler gone? Totally? I know I was wrong to drive in that condition. But Laura. It wasn’t me who drove into that telephone pole. It was your 1980 Pontiac Phoenix.

  If

  20

  The fog had not yet lifted when the nurse pushed my wheelchair out into the street the next morning. Set against the dead white sky, the row of houses across the street from the hospital looked like gravestones. The only sign of life was the litter swirling down the sidewalk.

  I remember feeling chilly as I stood there in my robe while you cleared the maps, receipts and wrappers off the passenger seat of Becky’s ageing BMW. I did not warm up on the drive home.

  The apartment had that damp, after-breakfast look – pyjama tops on the floor, trails of cereal on the table, a towel draped over the filing cabinet in the hallway …

  ‘Where do you want me to set you up?’ you asked.

  ‘Set me up for what?’

  ‘For the afternoon,’ was what you said. ‘I’m going out.’ You went on to explain why in your usual roundabout manner. Thus I found out about the sale on attaché cases in Mill Valley, and the woman car dealer near Tiburon, before I found out that you were starting work the next morning in Mitchell’s new office on Jackson.

  You? Starting work? With Mitchell? In his new office on Jackson? The idea was too bizarre
for me to take in.

  The next thing you told me about was, significantly, the dishwasher. I was not to worry about it even though it was broken because the landlord hadn’t been able to find a replacement handyman yet. That’s how I found out that Gabe was no longer with us. It was no accident that you chose to tell me this while you were putting away groceries. That way you didn’t have to look me in the eyes.

  Ditto for the way you dropped the bombshell. You were putting on your coat and had just finished telling me about the videos I could watch, and the baseball game I might not realize was on this afternoon, when you added (with your back to me), ‘And oh, if the babysitter calls …’

  I think you can understand now why I raised my voice when I said, ‘THE BABYSITTER? WHAT BABYSITTER?’ And why I reacted so strangely when you explained you had had to hire a new one.

  I don’t know if you remember what you said next, but I do. You said, ‘Well, honestly, what did you expect? I could hardly keep Eluisa on after what you did to her.’

  What I did to her?

  ‘I was lucky that she even agreed to recommend someone else.’

  I assume that you will also be able to understand now why there was a crack in my voice when I said, ‘You’re telling me you’re hiring another El Salvadoran evangelist?’ And why, when you replied, ‘Well, it’s either that or a boat person,’ I said, ‘Oh God, oh help me, God, I can’t be hearing this.’

  Once again, you misunderstood: ‘I mean, really – what did you expect?’ was what you said now. ‘My friends all think I’m crazy to let you back at all. And if you want to know how I feel – if you weren’t an invalid …’

  ‘Is that my new classification? Invalid?’

  Again, you did not seem to hear the panic in my voice, because what you said next was, ‘Where I come from, you look after sick relatives, no matter what.’