You Made Your Bed: A Novel

by Cornelia Goddin

  It’s not that my cheetah-self holds any kind of grudge against the gazelle, or denies its beauty, or even right to exist. It’s that my babies need food, and whatever needs to be done to get it for them, that’s what I’m going to do.

  Simple as that.

  Part III

  32

  2001

  Jamaica

  Dusk, and the sunburnt Crowes sat on the porch, facing the sea. Lillian out-glowed them all by virtue of her fourth gin and tonic, and Wilson’s face was red from insufficient sunscreen.

  “If you’re going to keep stealing the cashews, go wash those grubby hands,” Lillian said to Wilson. “I don’t know what in the world you find to do that is so filthy.”

  “He’s a boy,” said Gordon. “He doesn’t have to be sparkling clean every minute. You can have all the cashews you want,” he added to Wilson.

  Thirteen-year-old Caroline, dressed in a mortifyingly frumpy Lilly Pulitzer skirt, shot Wilson and Gordon dirty looks. She wondered if her hatred for her family members would ever diminish, or if she would only be free of it once she had grown up and moved away. Far, far away, all the way to Long Island if she had to.

  “Come with me a minute,” Gordon said to her, and the friendly tone in his voice lightened her mood. She followed him through the living room with its bamboo furniture, past the kitchen where Hazel was working on dinner, into the hallway where the bedrooms were.

  “Go in your room, I’ll be there in a sec,” said Gordon, and winked.

  She didn’t think she was in trouble, but it wasn’t always easy to tell. Both her parents were capable of sudden, gusting furies that seem to spring up from nowhere. But there had been no crying, no fighting with Wilson that her parents could see, and no blow-ups at the dinner table for the entire vacation, which was something of a record. She couldn’t guess what Gordon was up to, and the not-knowing was scary.

  “Here you are,” he said, coming into the bedroom. “I got something for you. I wanted to give it to you in private.” He reached into the pocket of his seersucker shorts and pulled out a bracelet. He slipped it onto her wrist.

  “Thanks, Daddy,” she said, in wonderment.

  “It’s just between us,” he said, putting his fingers under her chin and lifting her face toward his, then kissing her on the forehead.

  “I love you, Daddy,” she whispered, looking at her wrist and then throwing her arms around him and hugging tightly.

  The bracelet was a cheap, simple affair, nothing but tiny beads in the Jamaican colors of red, green, and yellow, not strung in a pattern but haphazardly. Caroline wore it every day for years.

  33

  Caroline

  “Marecita’s practically my mother, Gnat, come on.”

  Natalie shrugs. “That’s a massive overstatement and you know it. Lillian might be useless but she’s still there, right? She didn’t run off with the doorman like Erica’s mom.”

  “In Mummy’s case, ‘still there’ is way overselling it. You haven’t seen her lately.”

  She shrugs again. “Listen, I get it. I was devastated when my parents got rid of Anna. Remember those chocolate chip cookies she used to make?” Natalie tucks her glossy, shampoo-ad hair behind her ears and sits up straight like she is about to start doing yoga right in the booth of the diner.

  We sit quietly for a minute, blissed out at the memory of those carefree middle school afternoons, getting high and eating Anna’s cookies warm from the oven.

  “Why did they get rid of her, anyway?”

  “Sam started looking at her funny.”

  “I don’t remember Anna’s being hot.”

  “She wasn’t. But Sam was fourteen and pretty much wanted to fuck anything that moved. Plus Anna smelled like cookies all the time.”

  I stir my black and white with the long spoon that comes with it, but don’t drink any. I haven’t indulged so far today, but can’t find my appetite. I have this image of a separate tiny me as the little Dutch boy, frantically running around trying to plug dikes while the sea rises around my legs: Marecita, Mummy drinking herself to death, Wilson and his goddamn therapy. That little Dutch boy is far too busy to eat. And just now even the thought of a milkshake makes me want to heave.

  “So far I’ve been able to talk Gordon out of firing her. Well, not entirely, but at least he agreed to think about it further.”

  “Did she do it?”

  “Cut up the painting? I have no idea. I doubt it. What I can say is that I am going to freak the hell out if he gets rid of her. I’ll get an apartment in Queens and move in next door to Marecita’s family, and follow her wherever she goes.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “She brings me coffee in the mornings.”

  Natalie throws me a skeptical look but I can tell she’s ready to move on to different topics. I’ve been so out of sorts lately I haven’t talked to anyone and have no nuggets of gossip to offer up, which is what Natalie thrives on.

  “Still doing your 5-2 diet thing?” I ask.

  She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “That’s totally yesterday,” she says, reaching for my French fries.

  “You were doing it last week, right? What happened?”

  “Got tired of being hungry. Besides, there’s this whole ‘fat is beautiful’ movement and I want to get in on that.”

  “Good one.” I force myself to take a sip of the black and white but it tastes like chalk. “Hey, you ever hear of something called EMDR?”

  “No.” She pops another French fry into her mouth. “Is it some kind of facial cream or something?”

  “Never mind. So what are you doing for New Year’s? Got plans?”

  “Jamie and I hate New Year’s. It’s like Amateur Night, you know? We’ll probably just order in and watch movies all night.” She chews thoughtfully, then pulls my black and white over to her side of the booth and takes a noisy slurp. “My mother keeps talking nonstop about me settling down. It’s beyond the beyond.”

  “Do you want to? Twenty-eight doesn’t seem too old or too young, for what it’s worth.”

  “I don’t know. I mean, yeah, I do, but is that because Jamie is the right guy or because I’ve hit that age and he’s the guy I’m with when the music stops?”

  “I still hear music. Plenty of music.”

  Natalie laughs. “Easy for you to say. Gordon and Lillian don’t bug you about it night and day.”

  Right. They don’t. They would probably prefer for me to have a boyfriend because it’s what people do, but marriage? Absolutely not. I can’t say this out loud because it sounds bad—snobbish, and indeed, sort of crazy. But Gordon and Lillian are not interested in my getting married because that would involve bringing in someone from outside the family, and by definition, those people are not us.

  They are not Crowes.

  You can take that however you want.

  It’s unseasonably warm today, so after Natalie takes off, I put on sunglasses and wander over to Fifth and then into the park. One might think this beautiful day would be enough to satisfy me, at least for a short string of moments, but that is not the way people like me think. Instead of enjoying the day, I am picking at the problem of my brother like he is an itchy scab.

  Well, to be precise, more like a purulent, suppurating wound.

  Additionally, I admit to a cheap thrill that comes with snorting the odd bump while out in public. It’s not really much of a risk, to be honest. Gordon is violently anti-drugs but I can’t really imagine he would let me go to jail over it, no matter what kind of a hard-on some righteous prosecutor might get about putting someone from Park Avenue in the slammer. I dip the cute little spoon into the vial and snorkle it up, standing next to a big tree in the winter sunshine, a couple of skaters whizzing by and in full view of the hotdog vendor. Not like any of them will give a shit.

  That’s the puzzle, isn’t it? Gordon actually does give a shit, and has told me countless times in the most vehement tones that I should avoid drugs, period. And it is that r
isk that thrills me so, as though the apartment, all his money, and his good opinion of me are all precariously dangling at the end of a stick, ready to drop away into the dark abyss if I screw up. And I want to test it. I want to reach that stick as far out as I can so that I nearly tumble into the blackness right along with all of it.

  Eventually I’ve had enough of cocaine and the fruitless lacerating of wounds. I head home, wishing I had some of that weed Natalie’s brother used to sell us; it’s pretty decent for handling the come-down. Pretty sure I still have some Xanax tucked away somewhere, or if Mummy is out of the apartment—slim chance, but still—she’s got a vat of benzos in her bathroom and as far as I know, Gordon doesn’t utter a peep about it. It’s grating, that kind of unfairness.

  I sort of miss Kayley Ann Barker; my daydreams keep drifting back to her, to this idea of trading lives, of being someone else for just a little while.

  Ricardo is on duty and opens the door with his usual good humor. “You’re looking lovely this afternoon,” he says with a broad smile.

  “I’m just going to go back outside and come in again, over and over, just to hear your compliments,” I tell him, and he and the dude who carries up packages laugh. I feel like a river of snot’s about to run down my face so I don’t stick around chatting but hop into the elevator.

  There’s a closed-circuit monitor in the elevator car, as you would expect. I don’t like it. Having that round glass eye looking at me while I’m in here all by myself—it’s deeply unpleasant. As though it’s a living thing, some kind of monster, just waiting for me to forget it’s there and drop my guard.

  It makes me want to misbehave, just to show it I’m not intimidated.

  The door opens and I step into the foyer. Late afternoon light is pouring through the windows in the living room, but the angle is wrong for the Leslie Dahlquist and the only way to see the cuts is to go up close. It occurs to me that given the violent feeling of the painting—the bruised, lumpy bodies—people might actually think the cuts were part of the art, done by Leslie Dahlquist herself.

  Now I’m seriously irritated. I don’t like this kind of unintended consequence at all. It’s one thing if something brings both good and bad, and that’s what you’re expecting; that’s just part of the calculus of making decisions. A surprise is altogether something else, and I don’t like it.

  I hustle back to my room, glancing in the kitchen for Marecita but not seeing her. Xanax is in the drawer of my bedside table and I take a whole one and then another, my jitters needing some quality easement, especially now that the jeerlings are shrieking in my ear about the painting. Back to the kitchen for a glass of water. Before long I’m in that weird place where I’m super skittery from the coke but at the same time everything is kind of covered in cotton balls from the Xanax. I go into the living room and stand at the window, then go out on the terrace.

  The sun is bright but losing its warmth. I stand at the edge, holding the metal railing, which is a little on the low side for someone as tall as I am. You’d think in this age of lawsuits the building would insist on something a little more substantial. But my gaze moves out beyond the railing, looking out over the crazy jumbled-up city, looking at it with the eyes of an alien who sees the buildings the way we see a termite tower or an ant farm or a hornet’s nest. I have not observed any of those things except in photographs, but my sense of them is that they are teeming with life, just like New York. They have systems for garbage removal, nice houses and rundown houses, lazy inhabitants and busy ones, dead and dying and just born, just like New York.

  It is comforting somehow to think of myself as being nothing more than a tiny piece of a larger system, even if the system I’m thinking of is full of insects, which normally hold no particular interest for me. It’s the sense of belonging, of having some small role to play, that’s so appealing.

  The muffled sound of the Black Forest clock reaches me, and everything I see adjusts to the beat of the chimes. Dong, dong, dong, with a sharp ping at the end to mark the half hour. A flock of birds careens overhead, swoops down all together, surging one way and another. I am standing on the penthouse terrace of one of the best buildings in the best city, yet at the moment I feel rather as though the whole world is on one side of a window and I am on the other, my nose embarrassingly pressed against the glass.

  Eventually I drift back to my bedroom. I’m sitting in the slipper chair looking out at the view, trying to think up a way to convince Gordon not to fire Marecita. For once in my life, in other words, attempting to use my powers for good.

  Gordon has an unpredictable schedule. He’s out of town a lot; he can spend long hours at his office downtown. But still, you never know when he’ll drop by the apartment, looking for Marecita to make him a sandwich, or sometimes telling her to take the rest of the day off. Those days he usually spends with me.

  Other times he will bring some random businessperson up to the apartment. I’ll hear them at the bar, making cocktails in the middle of the day. Gordon gets a particular tone in his voice when he’s engaged in the seduction of a deal; it’s utterly obvious. And the truth is, whether anyone likes it or not, when you have as much money as Gordon does, there is a long line of people who are enthusiastically willing to do pretty much anything he wants them to do.

  I suppose if you were being strictly honest, you might include me in that group too, ensconced as I am here at 744 with the Cézanne, etc. etc.

  I hear someone out there, and even though I haven’t worked out a single step of my Save Marecita plan, I go see if it’s him.

  “Gordon,” I say. He is standing in the foyer with his hands in his pockets, looking at the Leslie Dahlquist.

  “It feels to me like the person who did this stabbed me,” he says.

  “You’re so dramatic, Daddy,” I say softly.

  He takes his eyes off the painting and looks at me. “You’re a good girl, Caro.”

  As you know very well, I am not a good girl at all. But nevertheless my body floods with happy feelings to hear him say it. If only he would add, “And your brother won’t ever amount to anything,” or “You’re my favorite of everyone in the entire world,” something along those lines, my afternoon would be made.

  He hugs me until we hear Mummy making her unsteady way down the corridor.

  “Good girls deserve favors, don’t they?” I say close to his ear, anxious to get an answer before Mummy appears.

  Gordon smiles. “Depends. What do you have in mind?”

  “I want Marecita to stay.”

  Gordon’s face turns to stone. He’s amazing about granting favors if he feels like it, but it appears I have not chosen the best moment.

  The sun is just about to dip below the buildings across the street, and sharp sunbeams cross the living room and strike Gordon, me, and the Leslie Dahlquist. The cuts are apparent, and the two of us stand and gaze at the painting, not saying anything.

  34

  Caroline

  Even the sharpest among us are not immune to the brain’s little tricks and obfuscations. It’s taken days, even weeks, of nausea and unfamiliar little twinges to make me understand that these abdominal goings-on might not be the result of a bad olive. I have missed some periods, too. At least one, maybe two?

  Gathering fortitude—which just by itself guarantees a surging attack of the jeerlings like you would not believe—first thing this morning, wearing a ski hat, puffy coat, and cheap sunglasses, a scarf covering most of my face—I marched myself to Duane Reade and bought the first pregnancy test of my life.

  I keep trying to get across—I don’t tell you every little thing. What a bore that would be.

  The test was positive. And as millions of self-involved prospective parents have said before me, this changes everything.

  35

  Caroline

  One thing to understand about New York, if you have never lived here: sure, it looks overwhelmingly huge, but really the city is a set of neighborhoods, and within those neighborho
ods it can feel almost like living in a smallish town. On the Upper East Side, as in other neighborhoods, people make connections. They know each other’s families. They run into friends going about their day as they shop at the same neighborhood stores and dine at the same neighborhood restaurants.

  For example, a lot of the women I went to school with have gotten married and started pushing out babies. They married money (of course) and live on the Upper East Side, perhaps no farther than a block or two from where their parents still live. They drop their kids off at various nearly impossible to get into private schools, and congregate at the juice bar after, to share a little gossip before yoga. Not that most of them eat anything other than lettuce leaves and organic smoothies, which I know sounds like a cliché, but let’s face it, clichés don’t just appear out of thin air and bear no association to reality.

  I’m not jealous of them, honestly I am not. I don’t like cliques and have never seriously considered having my own children. Which, given the latest developments, I obviously need to rethink.

  Anyway, this rambling preamble is simply to explain that though it might appear to be a wild coincidence given the nearly two million people who live in Manhattan, it is not actually enough of a rarity to raise a single eyebrow that I bump smack into Amory Porter, whose parents live around the corner, when I go out to accomplish a few last minute errands before my flight to California.

  “Look who it is,” says Amory, cocking his head at me for reasons I know not.

  “Mr. Porter.”

  “It’s practically New Year’s, how can it be so warm out?”

  “Have you heard of global warming? The entire planet is going to sizzle up in a few short years.”