But I didn’t stop to celebrate. I immediately set myself new goals. A mile and one eighth. A mile and one quarter. A mile and one third. Everyday I strained myself to the limit. Soon I was good enough for the medium-fast lane. And it was here that I hit the mile and a half mark, and set my sights on two miles before Thanksgiving. And as I swam back and forth, daily exceeding even my own expectations, I thought about you, and the ever increasing ways in which you were abandoning me. Why were you not listening to my cries for help? What had made you so hard? I swam through your life, marking each year of your childhood, remembering the day I met you, trying to locate the turning point. Was it the unheated house in Molivos? Was it when we came back to America? Was it Hastings? Was it that the pregnancy had come at a bad time? Was it that I had ignored you? But if it was why were you so insensitive to my problems now that we had changed places, now that you were the one who was ignoring me? Why had you belittled me when I pleaded with you to give me more of your time? Why had you left the room when I complained that we never did anything together anymore? Why – when you knew what they were like – had you abandoned me to your friends?
Outside the pool, their initiatives were continuing. They were still doing all my driving for me. They were still organizing every detail of my schedule. They even took responsibility for the weekends, arranging play-dates of which they only saw fit to inform me at the last minute. It was like having my own personal public relations office. Because, as you know, they took it upon themselves to sort out the kindergarten fiasco. They were the ones who took Jesse to his second interview – not me. I didn’t even hear about it until afterwards.
When I did, I was livid. My harsh words didn’t phase them. They just told me it was healthy to feel angry. Just work your way through it, Charlotte advised me. That wasn’t all she advised me. Hardly a day passed without an interesting new ethnic cookbook, a list of Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings, an article about a sensitive man breaking gender barriers, or a suffocatingly thoughtful little treat – a soap in the shape of a citrus fruit, a barrel of popcorn from Nieman Marcus, a funny article about a bizarre occurrence in South Dakota, a ham from Vermont. When she guessed I was having earthquake worries, she provided a geological survey map to show me that the kindergarten Jesse and the others were supposed to go to was on bedrock. When she figured out that the burnt-milk stains you were leaving on the stove were bugging me, she looked into specials for espresso machines. When I did not act on her information, she went so far as to offer to drive me to the store. I said no, it was too much trouble for a luxury, but for all the discussion that ensued it would have taken less effort to go.
I had to argue every point with Ophelia, too. I had to prove to her that the shrink was incompetent. I had to do research on antidepressants to convince her they were not my only option. I still had insomnia. Although she did give me something light to help me, she insisted on monitoring me closely. Had I tried taking a walk, a bath, a hot milky drink at bedtime? Had I considered herbal remedies? Analysis? Short-term, group or family therapy? TA? She lectured me on the dangers of addiction to tranquillizers. It was exhausting, and so was talking Becky out of this business she suddenly wanted to start with me. Because she wouldn’t take no for an answer, I had to come up with concrete reasons – why it wasn’t the right personality mix, what we could reasonably expect from doing import-export with only one product, why she was naive about Mitchell’s promises about backing.
It was bad enough not to be able to warn her about her husband, bad enough to figure out she didn’t know he was using her money, but on top of all that to have her condescend to me …
Who did she think I was? That was the question that kept me going lap after lap after lap, until the week after Thanksgiving, when I hit the two mile mark.
I was glad Charlotte was in the pool that Tuesday evening, glad to watch the puzzled look on her face when I walked over to the fast lane, glad to see Poseidon West already in there pounding his way towards the deep end. I had not seen him in weeks. He did not know how far I had come. I waited until he was pounding up to the shallow end. Then I plunged in. I was glad to see him rise out of the water to confront me. I kept on going and did not look back. I did not notice that Charlotte had left the pool. I was glad when I saw her walking down the bleachers – followed by Becky and Ophelia.
They wanted to see me fit? Well, how fit was I now? And had they had anything to do with it? Not a single thing. As I pounded my way through the second mile, I overreached myself and almost had to stop. I kept going by imagining what it was doing to these women to see their favourite pet outsmart them.
I was shocked, therefore, when they began to cheer me. The lifeguard blew his whistle. They whistled back and shouted, ‘Get there! Get there!’ to me. I was mortified to see Poseidon West rise out of the water to look at them. I was short of two miles but no way was I going to swim with this kind of attention. I got out of the pool.
‘Mike! Mike!’ Becky shouted. It killed me to have to look up, but I knew if I didn’t everyone would see how embarrassed I was. Horror of horrors, Becky now blew me a kiss. ‘I knew the mountains would make you well!’ she shouted.
I could not help but say, ‘What?’
‘Don’t you remember?’ she bellowed. ‘It’s a line from Heidi?
The lifeguard blew his whistle again. I moved towards the changing room. ‘Wait a minute!’ Becky jumped over the railing and ran up to embrace me. The other two followed. I extricated myself as fast as I could, but fifteen minutes later I was still hiding in the shower. How was I going to face them outside? What if they made another scene?
When Poseidon West came into the showers, I turned my back to him. But he came right up and tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Way to go,’ he said. He gave the thumbs up.
He asked, ‘Which one’s your girlfriend?’
I said, ‘None of them.’
‘They sure think you’re hot stuff,’ he said.
I discouraged the conversation from going any further. When he said, ‘Keep up the good work,’ I pretended to ignore him. But for all my embarrassment his words had their effect. It was the first time it occurred to me that there might be some people in the world who thought of these women as sex objects.
How dare they? I remember looking across the foyer and seeing Charlotte, Becky and Ophelia leaning against the front desk. I remember they were dressed in track suits. And I remember thinking yes, they did look good, all three of them. They were, yes, all three of them, attractive. And yes, perhaps, if I were unattached and had never met them before, I might be attracted to them myself. I might catch a glimpse of them laughing amongst themselves as they leaned against the front desk, and maybe even do a double take, and maybe even find a place, an unobtrusive place, at the other side of the foyer, and take out a newspaper and check them out more carefully, while pretending to read the sports section. Because that’s how men were, always putting the body before the head – and how unfair that was, how crude it was to assume that just because a woman smiled at you she was coming on to you, how wrong it was of Poseidon West to think that just because they were paying me attention that meant they thought I was hot stuff. They didn’t think I was hot stuff. They just wanted me to be …
They were glad for me. Glad for me! They had no idea that I had reached the two mile mark fuelled by hateful thoughts. That’s why they hugged me and kissed my cheeks. Not because they thought I was hot stuff. But because they wanted to let me know they were with me all the way, because they knew how hard I was trying, because they wanted me to …
They wanted me to go with them to the café on Sacramento. They all had a lot to do that night. They said they could use some caffeine. They were sure I could use some, too. I saw the bemused look Poseidon West gave me as we headed for the door. One of them had put her arms around me. I can’t remember which.
I pretended not to notice Poseidon West when he gave me a knowing wink as he overtook us and said, ‘Way to go!’
And I said, ‘Oh, just some idiot from the pool. Pay no attention to him.’
I was mortified when we walked into the café to see him standing at the cash register.
The first thing he did when he got to his table was to open up his sports bag and take out a newspaper. But I watched the slippery way his eyes slid off the sports page and on to the women’s unsuspecting backs. God damn it, men were dogs. His eyes went straight to Becky’s panty line. They flickered with interest, then took in the larger concept of her legs. Her hair rated another two seconds. Then it was Charlotte’s hair, Charlotte’s body, Ophelia’s ankles, Ophelia’s bra strap, and then, as Ophelia turned to look for me, a quick once-over of her chest, and, finding it not full enough, growing bored with the floorshow, returning his full attention to the paper, as I myself had done so many times before.
As if that was all they were there for!
He had found an article that interested him now. He did not even look up, did not even glance after them as they carried their trays to the table. For some reason, his dismissal of them made me even angrier than his roving eyes. What right did he have to rate them that way? What was so special about him?
They wouldn’t let me pay for my coffee. You can do it next time, they said. This was the easy way it was between them. Why had I never noticed? Why had I thought they were trying to smother me when all they were trying to do was help me out, the way they all helped each other out? I watched Ophelia tear open a sugar packet and pour half the sugar into her cup, half into Becky’s. I watched Charlotte reach over and flick an eyelash off Ophelia’s cheek. I listened to Becky ask Ophelia if she’d managed to get a full night’s sleep for a change and then watched her eyes register sorrow as Ophelia tried to make light of an accident she had passed by accident on her way back from a birth. A head-on collision on the corner of Geary and Fillmore. Both drivers looked dead but she sent them off in an ambulance anyway, because there was always a chance, she said. And when Charlotte said how awful, Ophelia said it could be worse and then went on to tell about the time when she was working as a locum in England for the summer and had had to go in an ambulance with a corpse that was still twitching. ‘You don’t know how hard it is sometimes to write a death certificate.’ The other two said they didn’t know how she did it and she said the main problem was numbness. ‘Because, you know, when I got up this morning, was my first thought: What happened to those guys in the accident? No it wasn’t. It was: How am I going to pick up my kid if my office hours run over? I mean, it’s a relief to have Mom gone, but the logistics of childcare are almost impossible without her.’
Charlotte said, ‘You should have told me. I could have helped you out.’
‘You’ve got to get back-up,’ Becky said.
‘Well, in theory, I ought to be able to count on Kiki, although of course, when it comes down to it, there’s always something urgent he has got to give priority to.’
‘The point to remember is that neither of you is used to the daily wear and tear of childcare.’
Well, we will be soon!’ she said.
They all laughed and then Becky said to me, ‘Just stop us if we’re boring you.’
And all I could think was what an asshole I was. Here they were, three women who were just barely managing to fulfil their responsibilites, and still they found time to worry about me.
I reviewed their many kindnesses. I reviewed my unkind suspicions and hostile acts. Why hadn’t they just given up on me? What had I ever done for them?
I looked at Becky. I thought about her financial problems and those hyperactive girls and that albatross of a house, and I said to myself, who was I to ridicule her for these plans she had for businesses and services and community work? At least she cared.
At least she was trying, I said to myself, and then I looked at Charlotte, and I thought about her problems: Trey the millstone, those two disturbed kids, the demanding job, the slowly sinking star of academic glory, and still she managed to accentuate the positive. Who was I to look down on her for sometimes oversimplifying?
And Ophelia – I tried to imagine having to get up in the middle of the night to find a surgeon to do a C section, having to write a death certificate for a twitching corpse. And, as if that weren’t enough, she had to worry about who was going to pick up her kid on Tuesdays, who was going to watch him on Thursday night.
She wasn’t going to get the help she deserved, not if I knew Kiki. But instead of telling him to go to hell, here she was discussing how to get round him, some other solution that wouldn’t cause so much domestic friction. And her friends were going along with her. They didn’t think to question her premise.
It killed me, Laura, it killed me to see how cheerfully they were stretching themselves to the limit while their husbands did fuck all and all other men judged them and dismissed them solely on the basis of their bodies, and how could I honestly say I was any better, sitting here taking their money from them for a coffee so that they could thank me for an accomplishment I had intended as an act of war?
A woman came rushing into the café loaded down with shopping bags. She dropped one and let out a soft curse. Poseidon West looked up, looked through her, looked at his watch, folded up his paper, put it back into his bag, slowly and luxuriantly, as she scurried to pick up the things she had dropped. She joined him at the table with an apology. He said, ‘Well, I hope at least you didn’t spend all our money.’
She was too busy rearranging bags to object to his tone. ‘I got some food, too!’ she said apologetically.
He gave her a disparaging look.
Why did women put up with us? I was overcome with self-disgust. By now Charlotte had brought the car-pool graph out. They were discussing how to adjust it to help out Ophelia more now that Mom was gone. I couldn’t bear it any more. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Please. Let me help too.’
36
When I say it was a mistake to enter into the babysitting labyrinth, I do not mean to imply that I didn’t get anything out of it. I liked seeing how much better the car-pool worked after I had redesigned it – and how quickly their children responded to my way of doing things.
They seemed relieved to have rules to follow. I know you will have a hard time believing this, but they didn’t even mind watching less TV.
It turned out they preferred adult attention. I can’t tell you the games I found in Seb’s playroom that had never once been touched by human hands, or how grateful he was when I taught him how to play them. I think that is why he ate for me. And if Lara and Paloma were more careful about other people’s property, and would, on occasion, even clean up after themselves, it was because I noticed who had been playing with what and held them accountable.
I did not – I repeat, I did not – set out to present myself as a supernatural being. They thought that up themselves. When they asked me leading questions – if I really wanted to lift a car, could I do it? Which was better, having X-ray eyes or the power to walk through barriers? How old was I when I had first travelled back in time? One day, if they were really, really good, and picked up everything, and ate all their food, could I change myself into a goat? – I was quick to set them straight.
My mistake was not to detect a common thread. So, for example, when I was at Charlotte’s one night with all the Stork Club kids except for Baby Roo, and I told them that if they didn’t go straight to sleep I would turn them into pumpkins, I thought nothing of it when Jesse turned to Patten and said, ‘See? I told you he was a demigod.’ Because by now I had accepted the women’s view that children’s fantasies were like snowflakes, appearing fully formed out of nowhere, sailing magnificently to the ground and then melting on impact. Today I was a demigod, tomorrow I would be a tooth fairy, the next day I would be a thirty-seven-year-old man who made them say please and thank you and wanted to know why they couldn’t draw a house or a car or a ship without making it look like a monster.
You may think it was wrong of me to interfere in their artwork. All I can say is that they liked me having opinions. They drew and painted and made clay figures for me. And their mothers, who were perhaps not aware of the extent of my involvement, were happy – and in Charlotte’s case, relieved – with the results.
Their refrain was, what was my secret? No one had ever managed to get Seb to eat a vegetable, to get Lara and Paloma to sit at a table without fidgeting, to get Patten to include flowers and smiling faces in his panoramas of hell. The burst of creativity was amazing, they told me. Dottie had even stopped her timid scribblings at the corners of her drawing pad. Now she was scribbling in the centre, and this, they informed me, was an important developmental step. The children were also so much easier to handle after an afternoon with me. This, their mothers told me, was partly due to the fact that they themselves felt less stressed. They couldn’t remember a more relaxed December.
After the kind of treatment I had been getting from you at home, it was gratifying to get some credit. It did not stop there. Because, unlike you, these women actually wanted to talk to me! The feeling was mutual, if for no other reason in the beginning than because I craved adult company after so many hours with children. And not just any adults, but adults who cared as much as I did whether the rash on Maria’s cheek was impetigo, if Dottie’s shyness was a result of trauma or a subclinical hearing impairment, if Mister Rodgers and Chef Brockett were having an affair.
I remember how surprised I was at myself during those first meals they made for me – the intensity with which I pursued the topics they introduced. What was this American phobia about contagion? I remember asking once. Did we perhaps take our obsession too far? Would the day arrive when mothers-to-be would reject all babies that weren’t genetically perfect? Was it possible to provide a childhood free of trauma? Did TV make it less or more difficult for four years olds to distinguish between fantasy and reality? Why, when we were so intolerant of politicians’ sexual proclivities, did we have such different standards when it came to people who did children’s TV programmes? Where did this new puritanism come from? Did it have anything to do with the American phobia about contagion? These were the conversations that formed the basis of our new intimacy. I came to look forward to them the way I looked forward to swimming.
The Stork Club Page 22