Olivia

by Judith Rossner

  “Look,” Leon said, “you’re under a lot of stress.” He came over to me at the sink, put his arms around me, turned me around. “I don’t think we can even have a reasonable conversation until this business with Olivia’s over.”

  When this business with Olivia’s over.

  I was beginning to suspect that the business with your kids was never over. That they held your life in their hands, no matter how remote from you they’d seemed to be. If it was true, Leon didn’t know it yet. But he’d find out.

  I said, “Let’s just go up and go to bed. I’ll clean up in the morning.”

  “It’s best if you wait out here during the examination,” the nurse informed me as Livvy wavered. “Later, Doctor Widner will talk with both of you.”

  So. No choice to be made. I smiled encouragingly, told Livvy he was nice and she shouldn’t be nervous, a phrase which, when directed to me in my youth, had infuriated me. I smiled.

  “Unless you feel like being nervous,” I said, “in which case it’s also allowed.”

  She smiled back, a polite, scared little smile, and went into the office. After some time had passed, Widner came to the door and invited me to join them. He was a tall, skinny, bearded, and soft-voiced man of perhaps forty. I could see as I entered the office, where Livvy sat in one of the two chairs facing his desk, that she had responded favorably to him, or at least hadn’t disliked him. Her eyes never left his face as he told me his examination showed that Olivia was indeed pregnant, and that while we were still in the first trimester, the procedure should be performed as soon as possible. He wouldn’t be at the hospital tomorrow, Wednesday, but would schedule her for Thursday morning. She should count on spending a few hours there, between waiting her turn and resting afterward. He rang for the nurse, who gave us each a copy of the instructions and explanations, which were clear and simple. Did either of us have any questions? I asked when Livvy would be able to return to school. He smiled, shrugged, said the next day.

  We returned home, where, after a lunch during which we spoke very little and I prayed that Pablo was tied up in some monumental phone job that would prevent him from calling, Livvy went to her bedroom and, leaving the door ajar, went back to sleep. I spent the afternoon and the rest of the night working on the show.

  “The year I was twelve, I decided to make my parents’ anniversary dinner. I saved my baby-sitting money to buy a ceramic pot in which I’d serve a carbonnade, a simple, lovely beef stew made with the kind of red wine that I still had money for after buying the pot. I cooked the carbonnade in a cast-iron pot the day before, and on the afternoon of the dinner transferred it to the beautiful earthenware pot, then put it back in the refrigerator and prepared everything else for this dinner of dinners.

  “At seven o’clock, having set the carbonnade in the oven, I joined my parents for drinks and stuffed mushrooms, then led them to the dining room, where I’d lighted candles and placed a menu on each plate. Both were enchanted.

  ‘ “I can’t believe this,’ my father exclaimed, and coming toward me to give me a big hug, he added, ‘This is the best anniversary!’

  “Actually, what he said was, ‘This is the best anni—’ because as he began the word, there was a terrible crash, a series of crashes, in the kitchen. The ceramic casserole, which I’d taken directly from the refrigerator and set over a stove light, had exploded all over the kitchen and taken the stew with it.

  “It was one of those rare crises where nothing at all can be done. There’s a book called The Cook’s Advisor in which the author, Camille Stagg, lists practically any mistake you can make along with the possibilities for undoing it. Some of the stuff I knew or could have made up, but I came across an item that was utterly startling. I want to read it to you. This is about mayonnaise that won’t bind: ‘Any cold ingredients should be allowed to come to room temperature before beginning the sauce. It is essential to add oil drop by drop at first,’ et cetera, et cetera, I don’t actually have to read all this. Here we are. ‘If a thunderstorm is brewing outside, stop everything and wait until it blows over. It will prevent your mayonnaise from binding. Remarkable, but true.’ Isn’t that marvelous, whether you’ll ever use it or not? She’s also got a whole section on weather and how it affects different dishes. Including Hollandaise, for example.”

  “No, not Hollandaise!” someone in the audience called out. Additional mikes had been installed to help along audience participation. “I’m sick of Hollandaise. Everyone who teaches cooking tells you how to fix Hollandaise.”

  I laughed. “Oh, well, anything true is going to be said by more than one person.”

  Sheldon was signaling from the wings, closing his eyes and resting his head on his hands to indicate that he was falling asleep. I was doing the chatty, nonphysical stuff that drove him wild even when he wasn’t concerned that Big Brother Network was watching, but I really didn’t know what to do about it.

  “Does anybody have any good mistake stories? Preferably something with a Hollywood ending? Like when Escoffier accidentally set the dessert on fire and called it flambe?”

  A woman raised her hand and told some story about the first time she’d cooked kidneys and bought beef instead of veal, and what they smelled like when cooked. I laughed, but in a distracted way. She was pregnant, and my brain had been thrown back to Olivia. The woman sat down. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I looked at the counter in front of me, where I had, among other things, some limes. I held up one.

  “By the way, speaking of flexibility, I recently made a startling discovery. You’d have thought it would be obvious, but I never heard anyone . . . You can freeze lemons and limes! Why not, after all? It’s not the texture you’re going to care about when you defrost and squeeze them.”

  “Hey, Teach,” a man called out, “what’s going on here? I came all the way from Brooklyn, got the day off when you sent me a ticket for the show, and here I am and you’re not doing anything!”

  “Oh, dear,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’ve had a difficult week and I . . . I’ll tell you what. Anyone who doesn’t feel as though the show’s satisfactory today can get another ticket instead of going to the end of the list.”

  “Maybe you should have had a couple of drinks,” the same man said.

  I laughed. “That’s not a bad idea at all. You know, you just reminded me . . .” I took from the bookcase a lovely little book called Whistler’s Mother’s Cook Book, which my father had found while browsing in a secondhand shop. “Whistler and his mother were apparently both cooks. Whistler said—here we are—he did not expect the standard of sobriety that his mother did and would not employ a cook who claimed that she did not drink. ‘All good cooks drink!’

  “That’s a direct quote, and of course, drinks are more interesting than leftovers. At least, people have said better things about them. In fact, I think the best way for me to conclude this show is by quoting Saint Augustine’s final word on drinking, which was that total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation. Something that nobody to my knowledge has ever said about leftovers.”

  Sheldon was waiting for me, fuming, as I exited the stage kitchen. Did I remember that this was supposed to be a cooking show? Had I made it a point not to do any cooking or any “Seymours” in the whole lousy show because I was afraid of making it a little better? I knew They were watching.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I can’t talk now. There’s something going on. I’ll call you.”

  “I won’t be home.”

  “Tomorrow,” I said.

  “Early morning,” he said.

  “Late afternoon,” I said, “if things are okay.”

  He followed me as I got my coat and bag and headed for the exit, kept saying, over and over again, that he couldn’t believe what I was doing, maybe It had all finally gone to my head.

  After the third or tenth time I stopped, turned to him, and said, “Let me put it this way. If I have to talk now to keep doing the show, then I’ll have to stop doing the show
.”

  I left, hailed a cab, reached home, checked in downstairs. Livvy’s door was closed; a note taped to it said, Hi. The phone woke me up and I stayed up after you were gone. I watched TV and ate practically everything in the refrigerator, so you don’t have to wake me up for dinner. I’m very sleepy. Love, Olivia.

  Love, Olivia.

  Dare I hope that a little love for me would survive her ordeal?

  I didn’t feel like going upstairs. I stretched out on the sofa, felt chilly, covered myself with an afghan. Leon might take it for granted that we were doing our normal routine Thursday-night whatever-I’d-made-to-practice-and-watching-my-show routine, or maybe he was hoping I’d stay downstairs with Livvy. Well, whatever he wanted, I didn’t seem to be in any hurry to go up.

  When I awakened, I felt as though it were the middle of the night, but the kitchen clock said it was twenty past seven. I checked Livvy’s door, which was still closed, took the kitchen phone off the hook, and went upstairs to find Leon and Annie reading in the living room. Both looked up and appeared to be mildly surprised to find me there.

  Leon said he’d left the answering machine on because the phone had rung at least twenty times, most of the calls from Sheldon.

  I nodded. “The show was lousy. I hope nobody saw it.”

  Leon shook his head, said the kids had been too hungry to wait for me and they’d gotten a pizza and he’d had a slice, so he was in no hurry for dinner. I couldn’t have cared less. I was very cold. I locked myself in the bathroom and took a long, hot bath, then put on a sweater and jeans, rather than a robe, because I felt I had to be prepared to leave the apartment at any moment. When I came back out to the living room, Annie was gone. Leon was still reading. I sat down and pretended to do the same, but I was thinking about Livvy. Olivia. Once upon a time I’d thought Leon’s children could make up for the virtual loss of my own daughter, and if they all went away, I’d still probably miss one or another of them more than I’d miss Livvy. In the daytime. But I’d never awakened at three in the morning thinking about Leon’s children, even Annie, when she’d “left” me. No one of them had given me the intense pleasure my own daughter once had, or left me as desolate as she had more recently.

  Leon looked up from his magazine.

  “What’s happening?”

  “We’re supposed to be at the hospital at ten tomorrow morning.”

  He nodded.

  “Widner was very nice. She seemed to have a good reaction to him.”

  Leon shrugged, as though this might have been taken for granted. He was still unwilling to acknowledge the difficulties one might encounter in trying to lead a very young Catholic girl through the erasure of a life that fed on her own unready one. I wasn’t up to convincing him that he was wrong, if he could be convinced; in fact, it was my experience that he was more rigid about matters of pregnancy and abortion than any others. Furthermore, the anxiety I felt told me that not only shouldn’t we talk anymore, but that I would rest a little easier if I slept downstairs.

  I said, “Maybe I should sleep downstairs.”

  He said, “Try not to make such a big deal out of the whole thing. You’ll get her more anxious than she’d normally be.”

  I went back to the bedroom and got what I’d need for the morning, hoping I wouldn’t let him stop me from going downstairs if he tried.

  He didn’t try.

  My alarm was set for eight. At eight I arose from the sofa, where I’d finally fallen asleep, washed, brushed my teeth, and went to Livvy’s room. I knocked lightly at the open door. There was no movement under the blankets that covered even her head. I turned on the light, went over to the bed, and, only as I sat down on the edge and put out a hand to find her shoulder, realized there was no person there, but only pillows arranged to give the appearance of someone under the blankets.

  I pulled them back.

  Pillows, towels, a few sweaters. A note on a yellow pad rested on the second pillow down: I’m sorry. I can’t do it. I’ll call you. L.

  My phone was ringing. My brain was splattered in its own corners and couldn’t make me get up to answer it. The ringing stopped and began again a short while later. It might be Livvy! I ran into the living room, picked up the receiver. It was Sheldon. I told him I couldn’t talk but I’d call him back later. He asked what the hell was going on. I hung up. The phone rang again. I picked it up and said hello angrily, presuming it was Sheldon again.

  Livvy’s voice, small and frightened, said, “It’s me.”

  “Baby!” I cried out. “Where are you?”

  The voice, still so low I could barely hear it, said, “I can’t do it.”

  “But why couldn’t you talk to me?” I asked. “Why did you have to run away? Where are you?”

  “We can talk now,” she said.

  “Is Pablo with you?” I asked.

  “Yes.” The voice, which had become a tiny bit more audible, receded again.

  “It would be easier,” I said after a while, “to talk about it sitting in the same room, all of us looking at each other.”

  “We’re too far away.”

  “Where are you?”

  A long pause.

  “Florida.”

  It took me a while.

  “To get married?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about school?”

  “I can finish school. There’s only a little more than four months left. I can wear jeans.”

  “Listen to me, Livvy. You’re seventeen years old. And you’re a very good student. You like school. You should be going on with it, going to college, getting a—”

  “I can still go to college. Pablo works nights sometimes. We can take turns with . . . with . . . We can take turns.”

  Be careful.

  My brain was back where it had gone often during these days, to the beginning of my time in Italy with Angelo, the time when I’d become pregnant. The difference was . . . There were many differences, including my being older. The common denominator was in marrying the wrong man. Pablo was surely a nicer man than Angelo. And for all I knew, he’d be able to support a family while his wife went to school. But it wouldn’t be easy, and I wasn’t sure he could handle her, and she didn’t love him, and I’d seen no sign at all that she wanted to take care of a baby.

  “Even if it all works, Livvy,” I said slowly, “it could be very difficult. It could be—”

  “Killing a baby is difficult,” she said.

  “I understand that,” I responded. “I couldn’t kill a baby. But this isn’t a baby yet. It’s the seed of a baby.”

  “It has fingerprints.”

  “Does it? I don’t think so, not yet, but even if it does . . . Why don’t you come home, and we can look at a book. Something. Talk about it. And then you can make your decision. I’m not going to force you to have an abortion.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Her voice had grown stronger as the conversation continued.

  “I don’t think I could. There’s no doctor who’s going to give you an abortion just because I want you to have it. That’s not the way it works.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Well,” I said, “then maybe you should check out everything I’m saying before you—”

  “We got married this morning.”

  So. It was over. But how was that possible? Maybe she was only saying it so I’d leave her alone.

  “So quickly? Without anyone’s consent?”

  “I’m seventeen. There’re plenty of places where you don’t need it if you’re seventeen. The judge said we were good people, accepting the responsibility for what we did. Getting married instead of having an abortion.”

  “The judge?”

  “He was a Cuban,” she said. “A good Catholic.”

  “But you’re not.”

  I’d said it without thinking, an automatic response at a time when that was the last thing needed. I bit my tongue, but it was too late.

  “I’ve been punished for that,
” she said. “But I will be now.” And she hung up before I could say another word or ask when she was coming home. Or where home would be.

  I’ve been punished for that.

  The phone rang within seconds of my setting the receiver into the cradle. It was Sheldon.

  “Don’t get hysterical on me,” he said immediately. “We have to talk.”

  “I’m not hysterical,” I said.

  “What’s been going on?” he asked.

  “Olivia got married,” I said after a long pause.

  “You’re kidding,” Sheldon exclaimed. “How old is she again?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “What, is she pregnant? Doesn’t she know you don’t have to do that anymore? Or is it the old Catholic shit?”

  I took a deep breath, irritated that his normally limited understanding had come so readily.

  “Let’s just say she got married.”

  “Gotcha. Okay, sweetheart.” My excuse had made it, particularly the unstated part. “Now, I want you not to worry about the kid anymore. She won’t turn out to be so Catholic if she wants to get rid of the guy.”

  Fuck you, Sheldon.

  It was the first defensive reaction to the marriage that I’d experienced.

  “We both know the show was lousy, Caroline. Now I understand why. ‘Nuff said. But you need to get your head together.” A significant pause. “Our dinner with Landy’s tomorrow night.”

  My brain began whirling around, as though it were a dreidel he’d just spun.

  “Four Seasons. Eight o’clock.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Don’t be crazy. You have to.”

  The dreidel stopped spinning and flopped over.

  “I can’t. I can’t leave my house. There’re calls I’m waiting for.” I needed to be available, though I didn’t know for what.