by Mary Morris
As I feed Bobby, a woman kills her husband with the frozen leg of lamb, then serves it to the detectives. They devour the murder weapon, the woman having brought off the perfect crime. What would I do under similar circumstances? I ask myself. The fact that I am asking at all has me concerned. When I have gone through the classics, the modern whodunits, what will feed my imagination? What will I invent to get me through?
Night after night, when I quit my work for Mike, I stare at the painting of the face that rises out of the mountains, against the desert; it has been on my work table for weeks. But by nine o’clock I collapse, too exhausted to paint.
One warm Saturday I took Bobby to the park. We went to Strawberry Fields, where I put him on a blanket in the sun. We sat beside two women, one with a newborn and the other in dark glasses with a toddler. The woman in dark glasses said, just as I sat down, “Let’s face it, once you have a baby, that part of your life is over.”
“What part?” I wanted to ask, but she was running across the field after her toddler. It was a warm, muggy day, unusual even for early May, and I stretched out on the blanket, staring up at the clouds, the trees overhead just beginning to blossom. When she came back, I heard her friend say, “What’s the most embarrassing place for your water to break?”
“At an art opening …” the toddler’s mother said, breathless from retrieving her child.
“Of your own work.” Her friend laughed, patting her newborn. “That’s where mine broke.”
I found myself laughing as well, then longing for an opening of my own work. I would have been happy just to finish the painting on my desk. Restless, I put Bobby in his stroller and walked with him through the park. The pavement felt warm under my feet and I knew I wasn’t ready for summer. I took him over to Diana Ross playground and put him in one of the infant swings. Holding him by the shoulders, I let him rock back and forth. Around me parents sat, talking while children dug into a sandbox. Others pushed children who pumped their legs frantically on swings. I rocked Bobby, back and forth, and felt as if I were in a time warp, slow action. I stayed here for a long time.
When I got home, I sat down to paint while Bobby took his nap. I looked at the picture and saw what I wanted to do. I wanted to deepen the lines around the face, make it recede farther into the picture. I wanted the road and the snake and the fence to look like snapshots or clippings from a magazine. The photorealist elements of the piece. I had begun to paint when Bobby woke. He was feverish, tossing. I gave him some Tylenol, but he stayed awake, fitfully, in my arms.
That night I dreamed I was in a room with a rat, a huge rat, and the rat was barring the door. Keeping me inside, threatening to bite.
When Jesús came over from the Video Connection with a horror film, I asked him to help me get down a box from the top of the closet; it contained my summer clothes. After he did this, he looked around. He saw the unmade bed, the pile of dirty clothes, a plate of half-eaten food. “Mrs. Slovak,” he said after a long pause, “this place is kind of a mess.” I stared at his face. He was young, perhaps not more than twenty, and he had olive skin and dark silky hair combed straight back.
I glanced around. “Yes, it is; I try to keep it together, but I’ve got so much to do.”
“What about your husband? Does he work late?”
I smiled at Jesús. “I don’t have a husband. That’s why I can’t get everything done.”
He looked down at his feet. “You seemed kind of alone.”
“I’m all right,” I said. “Really I am.” I wondered if he was going to leave or just stand there and stare at his feet.
“Well, if I can help you out again,” he said, “just ask for me, or if you just want someone to share a slice of pizza and watch a good movie, let me know.” I stood there, nodding like a wind-up toy, and pulled my robe tightly around me.
“I will,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”
I offered him his usual tip, but he refused it. When I closed the door, I found myself slightly breathless. I thought of calling him back, but I didn’t. Although I still wanted videos delivered, I knew I would stop calling for them.
After he left, I tried to watch the movie he’d delivered. But Bobby would not sleep. His eyes were fixed and black like my mother’s when she was angry. Though I always thought his eyes and hair took after Matthew’s, now it occurred to me that he looked like her. He started to cry. “Don’t,” I told him because tonight I didn’t think I could handle it. I started eating a slice of vegetarian pizza and sipping a Diet Coke, though I knew this wasn’t good for my milk. “Don’t cry,” I said, but he wouldn’t stop. I was afraid that if I picked him up, I’d crush him.
He went red and stiff. I had to walk away. Then I wondered what his first memory of me would be. Of my back. Of me standing above him, a finger raised. My first memory of my own mother is fuzzy because I have so many memories of her, but they are not clear the way this one might be. I remember myself in a sink, my mother’s black hair above me like a net about to drop on a wild animal. Or I see her at the window, her face pressed to the glass.
At last I walked over and picked him up, and he fell asleep in my arms. When he slept he was lighter than when he was awake. Lighter than air. I could have carried him forever when he was asleep. It was as if the spirit had abandoned the body, as if he had achieved weightlessness. Perhaps it is not the body that carries the weight. The body is mere gristle and bone. It is the spirit that weighs us down.
When I was certain he had settled down, I put him in his crib and went into the bathroom, but there was no toilet paper. I opened the refrigerator and found I had no juice, no milk. There was nothing for me to eat but the leftover pizza, and I was down to two diapers, barely enough to get him through the night. It was late, almost eleven o’clock, but the store on the corner was open. It wouldn’t take long, fifteen minutes at most, for me to dash out and get just the necessities. No more. I could take Bobby with me, but it would mean waking him, getting him dressed, and it had taken so long to put him down.
Instead, I plugged in the nightlight in his room. It was a prism that cast a small rainbow on the wall. With my finger I traced its arc. Then I went into the kitchen and warmed a bottle. I placed a small stuffed giraffe beside Bobby’s head and the warm nipple near his lips. On the cassette player I put on Brahms. Touching his brow to be certain he was asleep, I pulled the covers up to his chin, put on my coat, and headed out the door. I dashed down the stairs and into the street.
What could happen in fifteen minutes? He could wake up and put his head through the crib bars. A fire could break out in the electric socket in his room. He could wake up and be frightened to death. But sometimes it takes me five, ten minutes to reach his crib. I tried to imagine the night with no toilet paper, no juice, nothing to eat or drink. Not enough diapers. What are the chances of something happening if I went to the store? Infinitesimal. Hardly anything at all.
Three or four people were milling about in the corner store. It is run by Arabs, who are never very eager to do business. In their back room, they run a bookie operation. Here, men in kaftans make money change hands. They are never in a hurry. I began to grab things off the shelves—juice, milk, formula, diapers, butter, a bag of noodles, crackers, some Campbell’s soup. The toilet paper and paper towels were up high, and I had to wait while the man at the counter rang up an order. Still he did not come, so I stood on a milk crate with a stick in my hand, batting away at the paper goods until they tumbled into my arms.
I raced to get in line, but a woman and drunk with a six-pack were ahead of me. He was fumbling with his change; he couldn’t get the coins out. I looked at the clock. My heart was beating wildly. I never should have gone out. I should have wrapped Bobby and taken him with me; I should have waited until dawn. I’d been gone twelve minutes, and I was certain Bobby was awake. He’s screaming. The neighbors have called the police; the police think—know—I am abusing my child. Child welfare is on its way to take my child away from me. They would b
e within their rights to do so. They are breaking down the door, and when I race up the street, arriving with the groceries in hand, they are standing there, ready to arrest me.
The drunk spilled a handful of change on the floor; he bent over, trying to pick up a quarter. His fingernails were dirty. A cigarette burned in his mouth. The woman in front of the drunk ordered a sandwich—salami and Swiss on rye with mustard and mayo and a pickle. How long would it take the proprietor to make her sandwich? Fifteen minutes have gone by. I should put my items back. The police are there; the child is dead. In just a matter of minutes, I have made the mistake I will pay for all my life.
“Excuse me,” I pleaded with the woman. “My child is home alone. I need to hurry.” Everyone looked at me with disdain. The woman, sizing me up, made a space with her hand and I moved to the head of the line. The man at the register, who knew me, said, “So where’s the kid?” All eyes were upon me; everyone was ready to dial the police. “Asleep; a neighbor’s watching him. But I’ve got to hurry.”
He nodded. He didn’t care if it was true or not. I paid quickly, fumbling, not unlike the drunk, with my bills, and dashed out the door. I ran up the street. It was eleven-thirty and I looked to see if flames leaped from my window, if the rescue squad had arrived. But the building was quiet. There were no screams. As I slipped inside, my downstairs neighbor, a closet homosexual who speaks lovingly in Greek with his mother on the phone, was coming in with a male companion. “So,” he said, “how’s it going?” Always the same friendly smile. Upstairs I heard the laughter of the two girls who sublet the apartment across from mine from the actress who has yet to make it big on the West Coast.
I turned the key—and was greeted by darkness and quiet. Not a sound. Half-expecting to find Bobby gone, I raced to the crib. He lay on his back, his chest rising and falling. I collapsed on my bed, exhausted, and fell into a deep sleep. But it was not long before I heard Bobby’s cry. “Please,” I heard myself saying, “please, not now.”
Toward the end my mother would interrupt my sleep. She’d come into the room while Sam and I slept. We had been tucked in by our father, who told us stories about a black swan with heavy wings that took us to a land of chocolate lakes and gumdrop mountains. But she’d come in and shake us, bringing us abruptly back. Her hair hacked off, short, hideous. Her features pinched, fierce.
She came to us first with her dreams. Dreams of empty houses, no one there. Dreams of missing people and strange beasts. Her breath smelled of cigarettes as she shouted into our sleep, her sadness turned to rage. “Do you know what it’s like for me, living here? I come from Pennsylvania. My family had money. We lived in a big house.” Often she was naked, her body trembling. The first few times it happened, I thought the house was on fire and we had to flee. “I was somebody else,” she’d shout. “I was somebody before.” She’d wake us four times a night, then not at all for a week. She shook us until our father staggered in and led her away. For years I never really slept, feeling that at any moment I could be awakened.
Now I lay, listening to Bobby’s cry. “Please, don’t,” I pleaded with my infant son. “Please, don’t wake me again.”
I picked up the phone and called Tucson. I was relieved when Dottie answered, her voice groggy with sleep and thick with her cigarettes. “It’s me,” I said. “It’s Ivy.”
“What is it? My God, what time is it where you are?” I heard the rustle of sheets, the flattening of a pillow. My father’s voice was muffled. “Who is it, Dot? Who’s calling at this hour.” She shushed him. “It’s Ivy.”
“What’s wrong?” I heard my father say. Tears filled my eyes.
“I’m going to put the baby up for adoption,” I told her. “I can’t take it anymore.”
“Don’t, Ivy.” She sounded frightened. “Promise me you won’t.”
“I can’t promise. I made a mistake.”
“Send her a plane ticket home,” my father said. He grabbed the phone away. “Either I’ll come there or you come here. Those are your choices. Period,” he said. I knew he meant it.
Somehow I didn’t want anyone going anywhere. I didn’t know what I wanted. “Don’t do it,” Dottie said. “You’ll regret it all your life.” She knew what she was talking about. “We’ll send you money for a baby sitter, a plane ticket, we’ll take the baby for a few months, whatever you want.”
I thought of them out there in the desert. The cactus, the miles of white sand. My father got on the phone.
“You’re not a quitter,” he said. “That’s not the Ivy I know. You know, I folded the laundry and cooked for you for all those years. It wasn’t easy, but I did what I had to; that’s all.”
“I know you did, Dad.” I could see him at the Laundromat, the racing page on his lap, his pockets full of dimes for the machines. “I’ve been thinking about her lately,” I said.
“Don’t waste your time, Ivy.”
“I’ve been thinking about why she left.”
“Forget the ones who left,” he said, his voice filled with irritation. “Think about the ones who stayed.”
There was silence. This had always been his point. At last I said, “But maybe I’m like her.”
“You aren’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you think about it, because it worries you.” His voice rose as he spoke. “Your mother never thought about anything … except herself.”
“Lately I seem to remember everything.”
“The only thing you need to remember is that Dottie and I love you very much. We love you and we love Bobby. And we’re proud of you.”
“I can’t work,” I said. “I can’t get anything done. Did you ever think”—I was trying to keep from crying—“did you ever think about giving me up? When things were difficult?”
He paused. There was a long sigh. “Sure, I thought about it. Given my situation, I would’ve been crazy not to think about it. But thinking about it and doing it are two different things. You were my daughter, Ivy. You always will be.”
Now the tears were running down my cheeks. “Thanks, Dad. I’ll be all right.”
“I know you will,” he said, his voice cracking. “You’ll be fine.”
SIXTEEN
MY STEPMOTHER’S NAME was Dorothy, but my father called her Dot, which only served to remind me in the early years of how small and insignificant she was in our lives. I called her Dottie from the start because she asked me to, though in my teens I began to call her Mom. Because she also had red hair—though hers came from a bottle—most people assumed she was my mother and almost no one asked.
Once, however, a teacher during a conference asked me in front of my parents where I got my brown eyes, and I replied, “From my mother.” The teacher stared at Dottie, with her brilliant blues, then at my father, then back at my chocolate browns. “From her mother’s side,” my father said.
Three years after my real mother left, my father divorced her in absentia and married Dottie. He did it for me; I knew that. But when he married her, I ran away from home. I’m not even sure what came over me, because I knew Dottie well and I even cared for her. But the day they went down to the Hitching Post on the Strip, I packed a small bag with some clothes, a baloney sandwich, several Nancy Drew mysteries, and left. I got a ride first with a drunk who was hauling pigs. When I couldn’t stand the smell of him or the truck, I asked him to let me out, and he put his hand on my thigh. I was ten years old, but I shoved his hand away. I thought he was going to kill me. Instead, he told me to get out of his truck.
The next guy who picked me up had a truck-load of grapes. On the seat beside him he had bunches of green and purple grapes. His fingers were purple from plucking them. He was very fat, with snakes tattooed up and down his arms. The grapes must have been sprayed with pesticides, because I itched all over and my eyes burned. I think when I fell asleep he radioed the troopers, because they came and got me when we were at a truck stop having a Coke. He gave me a key chain with a little truck on it. I st
ill use it for my keys.
When the troopers brought me back, my parents wept. Dottie was still wearing her apricot wedding gown and was putting out cigarettes into platters of uneaten cold cuts. I thought they were going to hit me, which they never had, but instead they embraced me as if I were some blessed being and not a runaway kid.
——
“The first time I ever laid eyes on Ivy Slovak,” Dottie often said, “it was like she was on fire. Wild eyes, burning red hair. And there was something else about her—like she’d explode with the tiniest spark. It was left to me to tame her.”
Dottie told this to anyone who asked about us. She seemed to love telling it, whether I was in the room or not. It was how she explained herself and everything around her. “First I took care of the girl,” she said with a laugh. “The father came later.”
My mother and Dottie used to sit for hours in the late afternoon on the plastic lawn chairs, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Dottie usually had her hair in brush rollers. (She never wore them to sleep because Ralph wouldn’t let her, she confided in my mother with a suggestive cackle that came back to me after Ralph died, even after my father and Dottie were together.) Ralph dealt poker, though he wasn’t a gambler, not like my father. It was just what he did. He was a simple man, not good at much, but he loved his family. He died of throat cancer before he reached forty.
Ralph and Dottie had a boy named Jamie. Jamie and I used to take off our clothes and display our private parts to each other for hours, but no one seemed to notice. Later, when we were adolescents and stepbrother and stepsister, this would embarrass us so much that we had difficulty being in the same room. Jamie was fair, with blue eyes like his mother, and two years my senior. He turned out to be a relatively successful management consultant and now lives with his wife and two children out west.