Heather, the Totality

by Matthew Weiner

  He was frequently awakened in the middle of the night and dragged into the living room, never knowing if he was going to be a punching bag or a parlor trick. His Mother survived on government assistance and stealing, especially in the good years when they were building the stadium and construction was everywhere, but she mostly worked in local beauty parlors sweeping up hair and sometimes as an unlicensed cosmetician, which was ideal since it allowed her to follow her soap operas, skim from the register and evaluate others’ appearance with authority.

  It was a relief to both Bobby and his Mother when he started school. He enjoyed it because it was structured and there was something to eat other than Taylor ham sandwiches, but soon he realized he was smarter than all of the students and most of the teachers. He discovered that he could get anything he wanted by simply telling the truth about his Mother or his poverty, particularly to the younger teachers whose eyes would fill with tears and buy him fast food and promise things would change. Nothing did, of course. The worst that would happen was his Mother would get a visit, but she was impossible to get in trouble because she had no shame and would frequently greet bureaucrats and do-gooders in her oversized T-shirt nightgown or a ratty kimono.

  Bobby spent most of his time alone. It was hardest in the summer when the house was full of junkies and the TV had to be watched on mute. He would go down to the river which was littered with abandoned appliances and tires and feel lonely and sick because “he, too, felt thrown away,” as a prison psychologist would one day tell him.

  Nothing really held his interest except animals. They were like people to him, dumb and helpless, especially the roadkill he would pick up and hide in the garage for later inspection. Only by accident did Bobby finally discover his own power when he saw a bird trapped inside the window air conditioner and turned it on and watched in awe as the animal was battered by the fan until blood sprayed out the vent.

  Bobby dropped out of high school and got a job at a lumberyard loading trucks and eventually pallets once he figured out the forklift. He continued to live at home after staking out his own room with a padlock and in his off-hours he would watch TV and drink vodka and absorb the meaningless talk and explosive laughter of his Mother’s friends and lovers at her spontaneous nightly gatherings.

  Sometimes a fight would break out and he would just leave and sit on the stoop or walk to the corner store for more beer. A neighbor girl, known as Chi-Chi, would frequently be on her stoop as well and he thought her very beautiful and could tell she was finding a way to talk to him. Once, on a particularly overcast Saturday afternoon, he crossed the street early so he could pass closer and said, “Nice sunny day, huh?” She smiled back and he was pleased that he had said one of those things people say.

  Two

  MARK’S LIFE DIDN’T CHANGE much when Heather came along. At first there was little for him to do. Karen took care of everything and it made sense since he couldn’t really feed the baby, preferred not to change diapers and was at work when all of the bathing and strolling was done. But eventually, he found that Karen and Heather lived as a closed unit and he was on the outside. His attempts to participate were thwarted by his ignorance and it was true that it was always easier for Karen to do things herself than to watch him struggle with dressing the toddler or loading the bag for a trip to the park.

  He wasn’t angry with Karen but with himself, taking his relegation to observer as an extension of flaws that were now equally apparent at the office. In the halls of finance, Mark had never been able to make himself essential. Although his work was adequate and he made more money than he had ever dreamed, he witnessed a string of undeserving men move past him with skills far more social than financial, and he gave up the thought that he would ever run the department or even fly on the company jet.

  Heather was a beautiful baby. Her blonde hair would eventually darken but she had large blue eyes and she smiled as early as four weeks, often clapping her little fat hands with delight. Karen fitted her in French knits and found that although she was a girl, light blue suited her coloring and her temperament. Heather sought out others’ eyes and won over even the most downbeat New Yorkers with her squeals and laughter.

  She was so beautiful that when she would inevitably become the center of attention in a park or a store, her newly won friends would look at Karen, or Mark and Karen together, and be unable to hide their surprise that this child belonged to these people. Heather’s parents were never insulted but shrugged with humble pride, both of them having concluded independently, though they never shared it with each other, that their inner selves had been expressed through their beautiful biological creation. Mark even mused to Karen that perhaps they were “so good at making kids,” maybe they should have another.

  As much as Karen loved her parents and considered her childhood in leafy suburban DC idyllic, she remembered most of those years as lonely. She always wanted a sibling and wondered, because her Mother was obsessed with birth control, explaining it to her before she even understood what it was, if she was an accident. For a while she had an imaginary brother ten years older who would drive her places like the ice cream store and ballet practice, but it only took a sleepover or a ride home from school with another family for her to remember that she was lucky not to be fighting over everything in her house.

  On the other hand, not fighting for anything might’ve been a liability. Karen was by nature easily controlled by other people and tentative about risks. She was never the first one to dive into the pool but preferred to watch a few people try it. Also, her Mother went back to school for library science when she was a toddler, and her Father, a patent attorney, was unable to take on all of the housekeeping and parenting duties that lapsed. He was in love with his work, frequently appropriating his clients’ creativity as his own. He had fantasies of invention and would tinker but for the most part enjoyed having the neighbors see him walking in and out of the house with rolled-up blueprints under his arm, schematic drawings of electrical and chemical structures beyond his comprehension.

  By the time her Mother got a job running the Clarksburg Bookmobile, Karen was out of daycare and spent so many afternoons tucked in a corner watching her Mother read to children that she held her books facing an imaginary audience until she was in second grade. When spending cuts threatened to shutter the bookmobile, the town passed a referendum of support and suddenly it wasn’t just the kids who waved to her Mother and called her by her first name.

  Karen hated sharing her and spending so much time with the babysitter, who was really the cleaning woman, and eventually took up any activity that kept her late at school. By junior high, she had been ignored into full self-reliance and established a routine of locking herself in her room after school with a portable TV where she could escape to the saturated worlds of romance while having access to her body.

  Karen told Mark she didn’t want another child. It wouldn’t be fair to Heather. In fact, Karen knew the minute Heather was born that she would give her uninterrupted attention and care for as long as possible. She never worried that she was justifying her lack of interest in a career or her reliance on Mark’s success, because Heather was not an average child. Perhaps if Karen had shown the spark and magic that Heather did, her Mother would’ve never gone back to school.

  As Heather grew into a little girl, her beauty became more pronounced but somehow secondary to her charm and intelligence and, most notably, a complex empathy that could be profound. “Why are you crying?” she said at five years old from her stroller to a Woman on the subway who was not crying and who corrected her politely. Heather continued, “You shouldn’t be sad even if your bags are heavy. I can carry one.” The Woman then laughed nervously and sat down next to Karen as she said she could handle her things, but thank you. Karen lightly scolded her child to mind her own business and handed her a sippy cup.

  The Woman was looking up, pretending to read the ads, as Heather, still staring, removed the cup from her lips and said, “Everybody
riding on the train acts like they’re alone, but they’re not.” At that point the Woman burst into tears. Karen didn’t know what to do and her search for a tissue became simply rubbing the woman’s shoulder as she sobbed and awkwardly smiled, embarrassed. Heather watched both of them and by 77th Street when they had to get off, she said bye-bye and the Woman, now composed, looked at Karen and said that she must be the best mother in the world. Karen deferred the credit to her child and although it looked like modesty, she knew that Heather did things like this all the time and that she was somehow here on earth to make people feel better.

  For Karen there was plenty to do every day even after Heather began a full day of school. There was exercise and shopping, not a lot of housework that wasn’t done by someone else, activities and enrichments to discover and investigate, nutritious meals and thoughtful entertainment to be planned, and of course, documenting the daily wonder of Heather could never be ignored. Karen made scrapbooks, collages on the computer and with some effort, little movies that she could share on the Internet. She worried at first that she was bragging in some way, but when she saw that everyone responded to her daughter the way she did, she knew that she was actually brightening people’s day and that maybe they, like her, were learning so much about themselves as they watched Heather grow.

  In the communities she visited online, she found so many like-minded women and got such encouragement that any worry was quickly abated either by a veteran mom or an actual expert. This meant that Karen spent less time around other people in general, but she was always open to interacting, and from the beginning, whether they were strolling in the park or swimming at the club or eventually playing tennis, Heather made Karen game for sitting down and having a snack with anyone.

  The Breakstone family, small as it was, used more than its share of resources and Mark was proud that he was able to provide them with a beautiful apartment. He particularly liked Karen’s taste for satin velvet, which was used sparingly but seemed directly aimed at him. They had a velvet headboard on their bed and a suite in the living room featuring an armchair of the same that he favored on his increasingly sleepless nights, preferring it to his private paneled study where the furniture was cold leather. The living room chair was red but appeared brown in the dark and he would pour a few fingers of scotch in the best glass and be able to either doze off or at least not be nervous about seeing the sunrise or how the long night would make his workday unbearable.

  One late night while Mark was preparing for his chair he realized that he could look in on Heather, now seven, while she slept. He was never alone with his daughter and felt his wife’s resentment when he would sit down at the dinner table and say, “How are my girls today?” He had arrived at the phrase because when he would talk to Heather directly, Karen would always answer for her or insinuate herself into the conversation. Even when Heather was sick, his “How are you feeling, piglet?” was answered by Karen. “She’s better, thank God” or “She had a crappy day.” So that night, when he found himself standing in her room staring at her, he felt guilty and strange when she opened her eyes and smiled at him. He couldn’t explain why he was there so he just sat on the bed and stroked her hair. He finally said, “Why are you up?” and she said, “Because I can’t sleep. I must be like you.” He brushed her forehead and gave her a kiss on the cheek and said, “Where do you want to go on vacation? We can go anywhere.” And Heather said, “Wherever you are, Daddy.”

  That year, instead of going to St. Bart’s, Karen and Mark, at Heather’s request, agreed to go to Orlando as long as they could stay at the luxury hotel that was not dominated by the theme park. They had a suite with a living room for their daughter’s rollaway and despite Heather constantly picking up annoying friends, the family enjoyed the mix of crowds followed by intimate dinners. One night Heather insisted on hanging out in the game room and Mark and Karen found themselves alone. In their anxiety they got drunk and made love but were up and worrying again by ten o’clock when Heather returned as promised. They had not made love in a long time, what with Karen swamped with Heather’s dance, tennis and piano lessons and Mark’s increasing insomnia which had taken him from their bed almost every night.

  The next morning was rainy, so while Karen had a massage, father and daughter took a crafts class and Mark and the other guests basked in the sunshine Heather created with her laugh and willingness to help the smaller children. Before they left they quickly made a beaded necklace for Karen so she would not feel left out. Mark and Karen got drunk and did it again that night while Heather slept in the next room and it was somehow less but followed by a whispered conversation about how long they’d been together and what a miracle Heather was. The last day the three of them sat far from the breakfast buffet, overlooking the man-made lagoon, so conspicuously happy that a passing woman insisted she take a picture for them.

  While the Breakstone family was on vacation, Bobby was laid off from the lumberyard. He was told he would get his job back and they had let everyone go for a few weeks only to rehire them to avoid some labor laws and he was happy to spend some of the money he’d been earning or maybe go somewhere. But his Mother had broken up with her latest and Bobby agreed to give her a loan so she could feed her habit, knowing full well he would never see the money again. It didn’t matter because where would he go anyway and wandering around Harrison and Newark would be fine in the spring before it got sticky. He also had become increasingly interested in Chi-Chi across the street. Her brother was a mechanic and told him that her real name was Chiquita and that she was older than he thought. They were from Mexico and there was other stuff that Bobby ignored because all he wanted to know was that she had noticed him and that she was alone most of the time when he walked by.

  One day he went out for beer and his heart raced when Chi-Chi stepped onto the porch in a light blue dress. That was his favorite color and it suited her brown skin and there was lace around the neck almost like a nightgown. As he approached her side of the street he slowed and nodded to her. She smiled back and he stopped. He had never stopped before, but she had never really smiled before and somehow she must have known that was his favorite color. He walked up the steps offering her a beer as he did, but she simply turned her back and opened the screen door for him and went inside. He followed quickly, but then she stopped near the stairs and asked him to leave. Bobby didn’t know what kind of game she was playing so he put down the beer and told her how pretty she was and how happy he was to see her every day. She smiled again, but he could see her face was twitching a little and it was clear she was scared and that really pissed him off, especially as she tried to move past him to the front door. He held her and told her to stop everything she was doing. She could be scared if she wanted but he didn’t care because he knew what she wanted. He grabbed her hair and shoulders but she slipped away and picked up an ashtray from the seat of a chair and hit him in the temple. His vision was white for a moment as he stared at her. He screamed at her as he took her arm and twisted it, “Don’t you know who I am?” She started to cry and struggle and finally he just punched her in the stomach while he still held her arm and he felt her body give way. She flew back to the wall and he punched her again, this time on the side of her head. And as she dropped to the ground unconscious, he caught his breath and looked around so panicked that only later did he remember he had been rubbing himself through his pants to calm down. He picked up the beer and ran home, locking himself in his room and drinking half a bottle of vodka until he could sleep.

  He told his Mother to tell people he wasn’t there if someone was looking for him. He wasn’t sure if Chiquita’s brother would show up or if she was dead. But why did she do that? Why were the pretty ones always so dumb? It kept rolling over in his head, washed out only by his Mother’s screams as she tried to block the police from his bedroom door. His Mother was worried about her stash so she put up a valiant defense but Bobby just opened his door and calmly went along, stunned by the whole afternoon’s even
ts. What was hardest to believe was that Chi-Chi would press charges when they were selling OxyContin out of her house and she had a brother who weighed 220 pounds and was perfectly capable of dealing with Bobby on his own.

  It was the first time Bobby was in jail and he kept to himself and even got some antibiotics for where the ashtray cut his head, which was already infected. Chiquita was alive and the Public Defender, who was impressed by him he could tell, laughed at the idea of the State getting him for attempted murder. Things went according to plan and Bobby watched the court playing around him as if it were a TV show. He eventually pled out to assault and mustered some emotion that sounded like regret and before Bobby was remanded, the Public Defender told him that he would do three not five years and that it was a chance to change. It wasn’t until Bobby went to prison in Trenton that he learned how lucky he was that Chiquita’s concussion kept her from remembering he was there to rape her. This all could have been so much worse.

  Mark had only been with a few women in his life and none of them, other than Karen, had he chosen or pursued. After suffering through numerous rejections in high school, including one girl who rebuffed his advances by revealing that the origin of his class-given nickname, “Moonstone,” was not a play on Breakstone but referred to the shape of his face, Mark withdrew socially, discovered cross-country running and satisfied himself to yearbook pictures and catalogues since pornography embarrassed him.

  When he lost his virginity in college it was a joy to wake up next to real flesh and she was kind about his performance and they fell into the habit even though he wasn’t attracted to her at all. She wasn’t ugly but a little heavy and the first of all the women he slept with before Karen, who were loud, brash and loose and seduced him with an air of charity. For his part he was expected to quietly support their unrealistic dreams of clothing design or magazine writing while taking their side in disputes, especially against all other women who were clearly envious.