She then hurried north up Fifth and turned east, jogging the last half block. Panting a little and out of breath, her heart racing, she gathered in front of the Lower School’s stately limestone edifice with the other stay-at-homes, the nannies and the au pairs, a stray father or two—not Richard, a searching glance told her—because they got props for showing up to events, fathers did, even if they spent the whole time sending and receiving email. At the Winter Concert, from the balcony, the North Dakota of the school’s theater, where Liz and Richard had purposefully homesteaded, the darkened auditorium below had looked like the prairie at night—all those BlackBerrys flickering their Morse code like fireflies.
Liz nervously combed her hair with her fingers. It had air-dried and tangled in the breeze. She’d forgotten to pack her brush.
“I hate this shit.” Sydney sidled up behind her with her signature feline grace. She was in white today, cropped linen pants suspended off the frame of her hip bones and a skimmy tank dangling from her collarbone as if it were slung loosely on a clothesline. Her skin glowed bronze on her toned arms and shoulders. She was chewing gum. She offered Liz a piece. Liz took it.
“Nobody loves their kids more than me,” said Sydney, “but even Clemmie thinks all these events are overkill. She’d rather be at home sucking her thumb and staring out the window.”
“She’s my kind of kid,” Liz said.
Sydney placed a light hand on Liz’s shoulder. “How’s Jake doing?”
Liz knew she shouldn’t—Richard would kill her—but she was stoned and lonely and grateful for the interest.
“Not so well,” she said. She twisted her hot hair off her damp neck. And then, as if the truth itself were dawning on her: “Actually I think the word for what he is, is shattered. We’ve gotten him into therapy, but still . . . I’m honestly ready to shoot myself.”
Kevin, the security guard, stepped out in his gray blazer and mushroom-colored slacks, his wide face pink as a rose. “All kindergarten parents and nannies, please join us in the auditorium.”
Sydney sent Liz a melty look of sympathy just as the red doors opened. The throngs advanced.
There was a sudden sea change and Liz sailed forward in the crush, like she was in a mosh pit, her feet grazing the ground, carried by the crowd. She swiveled her head to search for Sydney, but Sydney was to the front of Liz now, her short brown bob gleaming sleekly in the sun.
“There you are,” said Casey. She had her hair caught back in two pigtails, which somehow made her look older than she was. More pruney, Liz thought. Prunier? She was wearing a Paul Frank top and a tiered crinkly cotton skirt, almost as if she were dressing up as her own daughter for Halloween.
“I have been dying to talk to you,” said Casey.
“Oh,” said Liz.
“How are you all doing? I saw Richard running this morning.”
“We’re all okay,” said Liz. “Thanks for asking.”
Good thing Richard prepped me on that one, Liz thought. She felt a little claustrophobic in the crowd. Maybe that’s why she was aware of her heart beating inside her chest. Or maybe it was being high. That sometimes happened. Paranoia. Cold sweats. An anxiety attack. She dug her fingernails into her palms to calm herself.
“My heart goes out to you, Liz, it really does,” said Casey.
As they entered the foyer of the school and pressed down the corridor to the theater, Casey grabbed Liz’s hand by the wrist. Liz was momentarily grateful for the pressure of her grasp. It grounded her, just when she thought she might astral-project out of her own body and sail off into some form of tempestuous sea.
“Sit with me,” Casey said. “I’ve known the Cavanaughs for years; we’re old friends—Peter did Bill’s photorefractive keratectomy . . .” She stared hard at Liz. Could she tell that Liz was stoned? Or was Casey just taking note of Liz’s confused expression? “His astigmatism.”
“Oh,” said Liz. She breathed in deep.
They took seats together to the left of the center aisle, mid-auditorium. In the thick of it. Richard would have approved, Liz thought. Now everyone could see that she had nothing to hide, that she held her head high. This was Liz’s first real foray out in public, she realized, since the whole sordid affair broke. She couldn’t just arrive late, duck her head, grab Coco, and jump into a taxi.
“Sherrie supposedly got pregnant by accident,” Casey confided. “Peter has three children from his first marriage. Sherrie was supposed to be the younger, sexy wife—you know, the fun one, the one who’s never too tired, that sort of thing. She’d give him blow jobs on the ride up to the country. But then they hit a bumpy stretch after Daisy was born; she gained some weight and I think maybe when Daisy was in the Lower School, Sherrie was hospitalized for depression? Anyhow, Peter let Bill know he had one foot out the door but then she pulled it together and voilà.
“She’s not very maternal, Sherrie,” Casey went on. “I don’t think she really wanted a child. Maybe she was just staking her claim on Peter? She’s a party girl and likes to collect art.”
The lights dimmed, thank God. Liz wasn’t sure how to respond to Casey. She didn’t know how to feel about all this intense and indiscreet camaraderie. Her face felt red and hot, as if she were embarrassed or blushing or angry or just warm. She wasn’t sure. She didn’t know if she was supposed to be grateful that Daisy’s mother hadn’t wanted her and was, thus, conveniently the source of all her daughter’s troubles, or if she should feel worse that her own son had played a part in this poor child’s endless misery. It occurred to her just then that she had never heard Daisy’s mother’s name spoken aloud before. Peter Cavanaugh, she’d heard. The father. The family broker. The Wallet. But the neglectful mother, depressed, hospitalized—no wonder Daisy had been overseen by nannies—overweight, inept, formerly fun, no. What a sad and devastating portrait. Not at all how she had imagined the Cavanaughs and their life of splendor. Poor Daisy. Poor Sherrie. Liz knew what depression felt like. Sherrie Cavanaugh must love her daughter, Liz thought. Even if she didn’t want her. She must love her to the point of unendurable pain at this very moment. She must also hate herself.
In the dark, Liz’s heart went out to Sherrie Cavanaugh. Like Liz, Sherrie Cavanaugh was an art lover who didn’t have a job, and was bungling being a mother.
After Liz’s father died, when she was a teenager, her mother would often arrive at home in the evenings from her job downtown in a dentist’s office too weary to eat; she would undress in the entranceway to their apartment, peeling her stockings down, unraveling as she closed their front door. Mom would then lie down on the couch in her bra and half-slip and chain-smoke the cigarettes that eventually killed her from an agate ashtray that lay like an anchor on her chest. Liz could not forget her mother’s hectoring: “You girls have to work hard in school. You’ve got to have your own careers. Never be dependent on a man for money.” Now, with all those fancy advanced degrees behind her—BA, MA, PhD, in the lucrative field of art history no less—“dependent on a man for money” would be the ID in Liz’s contributor’s notes were she ever to email updates to her various alumni magazines. Trapped and useless, Sherrie Cavanaugh and Liz Bergamot had more in common, perhaps, than their children’s mutually assured destruction.
The stage lit up. Jane Perskey, crisp in a light blue pantsuit, walked out of the wings and up to the miked podium. The auditorium rang with polite applause.
“Welcome to the Wildwood Class of 2016 end-of-the-year musicale,” she said. “I am sure you will be delighted by what you are about to see and hear this afternoon. But before we begin, I’d like to take the time to ask you to turn off your cell phones and other electronic devices and to let you know that several members of our audience suffer from seizure disorders. In our efforts to cut back on all the flash photography, we will be videotaping the performance and will send you each a copy over the summer to remind you of the splendid year we’ve had, along with materials on the 2003-to-2004 annual fund.”
Jane smiled a
nd winked.
There was diffuse laughter. Like the scattering of leaf piles in the wind.
“We have had a wonderful year with all your wonderful children. Thank you all so much for lending them to us.”
Everyone clapped, Liz included. From the wings came the opening strains of Bob Marley’s “One Love.” One by one, led by Mrs. Livingston, the kindergarteners marched out onto the stage singing, One love, one heart, let’s get together and feel all right. Coco was number eleven in the lineup and she marched with a shit-eating grin on her face. When she spotted Liz in the audience she started to wave and blow her kisses. “Momma,” she shouted. “It’s me, Coco B.! It’s me!” Liz’s heart swelled.
“That’s so adorable,” said Casey.
“Thanks,” said Liz.
Mrs. Livingston gently refocused Coco and helped the children arrange themselves in line. Mrs. Aguado’s kindergarten class and Ms. Evans’s followed them. Soon the entire stage was three-deep in a multi-culti panoply.
“They look like a Gap ad,” Casey said, approvingly.
Indeed they did, except for the fact that they were bedecked in gray pants and skirts and white polos.
The music teacher, Ms. Walton, entered from stage left and took a bow. She raised her baton, and the children all inhaled sharply. She brought it down and they lifted their sweet young voices in song, their throats long, their faces upturned, mouths open like baby birds. Like little gray sparrows.
A cappella, they began to sing:
I’m on my way and I won’t look back. I’m on my way and I won’t look back, I’m my way, oh yes, I’m on my way.
I asked my mother to take me there. I asked my father to take me there. I asked my teachers to take me there. I’m on my way, oh yes, I’m on my way.
Tears fell unchecked down Liz’s cheeks. Casey thoughtfully produced a Kleenex.
“Your mascara’s running,” she said, helpfully.
After the performance, Liz waited proudly outside with the other parents, who were all now slightly rumpled and clammy-looking, as if they were just wakened collectively from an afternoon nap. The eager young performers soon cascaded out onto the street. Most of the mothers were carrying flowers, and Liz mentally kicked herself for not thinking ahead. She would take Coco to the nearest Korean grocer and have her pick out her own bouquet. Then they’d walk over to the gelato shop and she’d buy Coco whatever she wanted. The topping of her choice, even those cavity-inducing gummy bears. Liz’s buzz had worn off and she had come down enough to grab a hold of herself. No more tears for her, just one bright smile for her precious daughter, which she carefully arranged on her face.
Cries of joy escaped from the crowd. Families clustered happily around Ms. Evans, Mrs. Aguado, and Mrs. Livingston as the kindergarten teachers shook each child’s hand and handed them over to their respective guardians. No sign of Coco anywhere.
Liz packed in closer. Mrs. Livingston saw her anxious expression.
“Coco B.’s in the restroom,” said Mrs. Livingston. She nodded toward the door. “It’s okay. You can go inside.” A total breach of protocol, a parent going in the out exit, but what the hell, Mrs. Livingston’s happy but tired manner seemed to say. It was practically the last day.
Liz entered through the red doors. The air was cooler in the school foyer than it was out on the sunny sidewalk. She walked down the corridor and to the left, where the bathrooms were located. She opened the door.
There was Coco, surrounded by a gaggle of giggling girls. Clementine, Coco S., and two girls Liz didn’t recognize. And in the center of the pack, Coco B. Coco Louise Mei Ping Bergamot. It took Liz a moment to fully identify what the commotion was all about.
To the delight of her audience, Coco was rolling her narrow hips from side to side while she fluttered her fingers in fanlike motions across her flat chest. Then she pressed her palms against her thighs and suggestively pulled up the hemline of her skirt. Her audience giggled and cooed.
I love to love you, baby, Coco sang in a breathy, high falsetto. I love to love you, baby . . .
Clementine sucked her thumb.
“Coco,” said Liz, sharply. She could feel the perspiration on her neck and shoulders freeze.
Coco stopped for a moment. “Hi, Momma,” she said, with a wide smile.
She turned around, wiggling her buttocks in the air. I’m feelin’ sexy, why don’t you say my name, little boy . . . The girls giggled and screamed.
Still bent over, Coco reached down beneath her pleats to lift her skirt.
“That’s enough,” Liz said, her voice shaking with anger. She grabbed Coco by the arm.
Coco’s eyes went wide. She looked terrified.
Liz tried to make her voice more neutral. Even to her own ears, what came out sounded phony and faux-nice. The way an adult would speak in a cartoon.
“Girls, why don’t you all scoot along outside. Your parents must be wondering where you are.”
Clementine took her thumb out of her mouth.
“Scoot along,” said Liz, shooing the girls through the door. She still had her fingers tight around Coco’s wrist. Coco was squirming.
“Ouch, Momma, you’re hurting me,” said Coco, loudly. “Keep your hands on your own body.”
“Shush, Coco,” said Liz. “Be quiet.” She put her palms on Coco’s shoulders and started steering her out the door. “We’re going home.”
“No ice cream?” said Coco, turning back to look at her.
“Yes, no. Yes, I don’t know,” said Liz. “Just go.”
She gave Coco a little shove forward.
“You didn’t like the concert?” said Coco. She stopped and looked up at her mother. Her eyes were brimming.
“Oh no, yes, of course, it was wonderful, honey, the concert was amazing. You were wonderful, honey,” Liz said. “I’m sorry I snapped. I just want to get out of here. Mommy’s feeling claustrophobic.”
“Could you hear my voice?” Coco said.
“I could hear your voice,” Liz said.
She put her arm around Coco’s tiny waist, and they started walking toward the side exit.
“Liz!”
At the sound of her name, Liz stopped and turned. Backlit from the sun outside, she could see Sydney’s smoky silhouette in the open doorway of the school.
“Have you seen my Clemmie?” Sydney called from down the other end of the vestibule. “Mrs. Livingston said she was in the girls’ room.”
“Must be the one on the second floor,” Liz said, and kept walking.
“What now?” says Richard. He was hoping that the call would be a return from Carmichael or, God willing, the long-lost Strauss, when he heard Lizzie’s wavering voice. “What is it and why can’t you handle it?”
He doesn’t have time for this. He needs Strauss to call him. He needs to prepare himself for the meeting with Scott Levine. He needs to win over Carmichael. Why on earth hasn’t Strauss called? It is almost five o’clock. Strauss has been incommunicado all day; whatever it is, can’t be good. “Come to think of it, why can’t you handle anything, Lizzie?”
“Do you have to be such an asshole?” says Lizzie.
“Do you have to be such a bitch?” says Richard. Without thinking, he swings back at her. He’s never spoken to her that way before. Nor she to him.
He hears a sharp intake of breath and then Lizzie hangs up the phone. He stares at the receiver in his hand. Another first. This is the year of firsts.
And since this is the year of firsts, first he contemplates letting her stew. Then his better nature gets a hold of him. He picks up the phone and punches in his home number.
She lets it ring. Once, twice, three times. “Come on,” Richard groans out loud. It rings again and then the answering machine picks up.
“Lizzie, honey, pick up the phone,” says Richard, knowing that he is being recorded. “Pick it up.”
“Hello,” she says, coming on the line. He can hear her trying to control her voice.
“I’m sorry,” R
ichard says. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just that I’ve been waiting all afternoon for a phone call, a call that hasn’t come.”
Silence.
“I’m under a lot of pressure, Lizzie,” Richard says. “And it would help me a lot, a lot, if you took care of things with the kids.” He says this with what he intends as patience, but even he hears the frustration bubble out. “I mean, isn’t that the deal?”
“The deal? There’s a deal?”
“You know what I mean,” says Richard.
“I never thought of it in those terms before,” says Lizzie, as if musing out loud, “but . . . I do do the lion’s share of things for the children, I did move to New York for you, I did back-burner my career to help you build yours . . . Is that what you mean by ‘deal’?”
“Come on,” says Richard. As if she ever truly had a career. As if she hasn’t always been something of a dilettante.
“I have a PhD from Stanford; you have a PhD from Stanford. I turned down that postdoc at Harvard so you could go to the World Bank. Who had better grades? Who won more awards?”
“You turned down that postdoc because you were pregnant,” says Richard.
“You were the one who wanted a baby then!” Lizzie says. She is so furious it sounds like she is spitting. “Someone had to take care of him.”
Richard feels outside his own body as he speaks. He feels as if someone else is speaking through him. The cold, hard facts funneling out of his mouth.
“The reality is this: the financial responsibility for the family was mine then and it is mine now. I haven’t had the luxury you’ve had to be conflicted. And at this moment, I’m under tremendous pressure to keep the whole thing going. I don’t need you calling me for every little hiccup.” He takes a breath, confesses: “They won’t let me back in, Lizzie. Do you know how that feels?”
“I’m sure it feels awful, Richard,” Lizzie says quietly.
He pauses. He wants to tell her what is going on with him. At the same time, he wants to impress her. To comfort her. To let her know it will be all right. Old habits die hard.
This Beautiful Life Page 17