by Lois Cahall
My orange tabby cat, Brad - so named because he’s the Brad Pitt of gorgeous male felines - presses his nose against the window in an effort to spread pheromones. The cleaner pretends to tickle Brad, who behaves as though he can feel it. Window Washing Man lifts his hands to the sky to motion “nice day, eh?” before locking my eyes like a game show host awaiting my million-dollar response.
But he’s already lost me - my attention wanders off to a potential article brewing in the back of my mind…
Until you’ve lived in a city like New York you’ve probably never hired a window washer. Back on Cape Cod I just cleaned the windows myself, folding down the double-hung pane as I dangled from the ledge above the front yard, one story up. Neighbors would bike by, gathering in a crowd to watch as I suspended like an acrobat in Barnum & Baileys Circus. One day I contorted myself enough to wind up at a chiropractor’s office, after being rescued by my neighbor. “I missed a spot!” I screamed as she lowered me into her backseat. “C’mon! Look at those streaks!”
How come this guy doesn’t have streaks, I think, gazing out at Juan Valdez as he makes perverted Marcel Marceau mating gestures with his fingers. Lovely. I’ll bet he mimes that to all the girls. But my annoyance inspires me to turn back to my keyboard to change a few lines on that article…
“Well, they didn’t quite live happily ever after…..Insert the sound of SCRREEEEEEEEECHING brakes. Because I don’t remember the fairy tale handbook including two small twins running their chocolate-covered fingers across my white suede couch.”
It was about a year ago that I told my cousin Godfrey, the celebrity chef, “I wish that my boyfriend, Ben and I could just live together. We’d be so happy.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” he said, while mixing a batch of the steak tartare that made him famous. I knew he had a point. I’ve won the Grand Prize in Ben. But now I’m a mom for the second time, only the kids aren’t mine. Ben and I had gone from broken families to a blended family. Nobody said it was going to be easy…
I had had my daughters way too young - raising them for what seemed like my entire life. The irony is that Ben was ten years older than me but has younger kids, and I was ten years younger than he but have grown kids. Considering our ages, his kids should be my kids and mine, his. Of course the truth is they aren’t technically Ben’s kids at all. He had married Rosemary later in life, and adopted the two twin boys she’d had from a previous marriage to an eccentric Parisian. The boys’ biological father, Jean-Francois, had split but had left her with the twins – Jean-Baptiste and Jean-Christoph. Wonder where Jean-Francois is now? Probably in some French café sipping wine, smoking endless unfiltered cigarettes, surrounding himself with beautiful young starlets in bandage dresses, the kind that require the girl to stand stick still and hold her breath or a breast might pop out. Wonder if he wants to meet for a martini? Compare notes? I’d be willing to go to Paris for Happy Hour…
The window washer taps to get my attention as he lowers his scaffolding to eye-level. I choose to ignore him before realizing he’s warning me about something else. And as I come to, I hear that something else outside of my office door.
Growing faster than a freshly-watered Chia pet, spreading more rapidly than poison ivy, more powerful than a loco-motive, it’s a plane, it’s a bird it’s….
Jean-Baptiste… rounding the corner straight toward my desk, causing me to retract in my seat the way an audience patron might from some exploding creature in a bad B movie. As he charges toward me like a bulldozer, my teacup goes flying across my keyboard and into my lap.
“Shit, shit, shit!” I scream, as its cold contents find a home on my bare thighs in cut-off shorts. I jump around dabbing at my wet crotch like an Indian tribal leader in a rain dance. “Shit! Shit!”
“My mommy says you’re not supposed to swear,” says Jean-Baptiste.
As I pat at my crotch with tissues from the nearby box, the window washer raises an interested brow. He lifts his foot to move in closer but instead, moves his foot into his steel bucket. He begins to topple, grabbing the building’s façade for dear life, his eyes widen as he falls backwards. Good thing Ben and I live on the first floor.
“Libby,” Jean-Baptise sing-songs, “It’s just, just, just that…um, just…”
“Honey, remember we talked about gathering your thoughts before you speak in order to help you from stuttering?”
He nods. I go back to my keyboard as he stands there “gathering.”
“Okay, Libby,” Jean-Baptiste sing-songs. “I, um, um, I um, gathered my thoughts…”
“Good,” I say spinning my desk chair his way and giving him my undivided attention.
“It’s just that it’s been a long time and he’s still not hot.”
“Who’s not hot?”
“Ohhhhhhhh,” he says exhaling deeply as though he’s just dropped off a ton of stone at the top of Acropolis. “I just want to know how long do we sunbathe a cat? We don’t want him to burn and then peel.”
Leaping from my chair I dash to the kitchen to find the other twin, Jean-Christoph standing at the counter. His devil eyes narrow at the microwave door waiting for it to ‘ding.’ My heart falls to my bottomless pit of what was once called a stomach. I press the release button and Brad comes storming out, shaking his body and meowing, his fur a bit electrified. He’s slightly tipsy in his step before gaining his composure and bolting from the counter to the next room.
“Are you out of your minds?” I say to the twins staring up at me.
Jean-Christophe head butts Jean-Baptiste and the two fall to the kitchen floor wrestling, biting and clawing like a scene from Animal Planet. Imagine that British narrator with his exaggerated enunciation: “And now the cougar fights the jaguar over the almost dead cat. It’s Jean-Baptiste who wins this round by poking his brother straight-away in the eye socket!”
“Owwwww!” screams Jean-Christophe at the top of his lungs, “That hurts!”
“It’s not supposed to hurt,” says Jean-Baptiste, poking him in the other eye. “It’s supposed to kill you!”
“No, boys!”I call out. “Stop! I said stop that biting!”
“I’m not Jean-Christophe,” he explains. “I’m Jean-Baptiste!”
I move to the window and twist the lever on the blinds, blocking the view of our window washer who has since climbed back on board. Then, dropping to the floor, I take the child’s arm with one hand, using my other hand to cover his snapping mouth. Now he’s biting my hand. I retrieve it instantly, shaking my fang-marked fingers into the air.
“Ouch,” I say, “That does hurt!” I examine the boy’s face. - I’ll be a monkey’s uncle - it is Jean-Baptiste! So easy to confuse the twins except for the beauty mark on his left cheek.
“Promise me you’ll stop, honey,” I say.
He nods, his eyes looking up at me as though he’s been enlightened. I trust him. I smile. I let go. Whereupon Jean-Baptiste digs his teeth into his brother’s arm, this time drawing blood. I’m stunned. The little liar! Now I’m down on my knees using my arm to separate them like some hockey referee on the rink.
“Can’t you two just get along?” I demand; desperation in my voice. They drop their hands to their sides, stop and stare up at me like orphans waiting for a porridge refill.
I look at each of them and exhale deeply. “Look, boys, I have to work. Okay? I have what they call ‘a deadline.’ Do you know what that means?” They shake their heads so I squat down to their level, one hand placed gently on each of their shoulders. “It means that I have to have the work done by a certain time. Like when you have a deadline to make the school bus, or a play date.”
They nod.
“So,” I continue, “After I read through my assignment, and after we talk about why we can’t harm God’s precious creatures by putting them in the micorwave, I promise with all my heart I’ll take you out for ice cream. Any flavor you want.”
“No. I hate ice cream!” says Jean-Christophe.
“We o
nly eat gelato,” say Jean-Baptiste.
“And only in Milan with Mom-mee,” says Jean-Christophe.
“Milan,” I say. “Of course. Lovely.”
“I hate you, booger face,” says Jean-Christophe grabbing at his brother’s nose. The two of them are back at it again. “I hate you! I hate you!”
And I hate that you get to go to Italy. I hate that you’ve had gelato. I’ve never even tried gelato. What exactly is gelato? But I don’t say that. Instead I’m reminded by the good angel on my right shoulder that I must maintain being the sweet stepmother who defies years of fairy-tale stereotypes. So I opt for, “Okay, the heck with ice cream. How about popcorn and a movie? Sound good?” I’m hopeful.
But they’re ignoring me. Now Jean-Baptiste goes for Jean-Christophe’s belt, tugging it away from his waistline and grabbing down inside of his pants for a shiny blue device that’s poking out of his zipper. “See! It’s my ipod! Right there! Told ya!” says Jean-Baptiste pulling his brother’s unruly curls with his left hand and shoving his right hand deeper inside his brother’s pants to create a wedgie.
“No, it’s mine!” screams Jean-Christophe, pulling his brother’s hand out.
“You have an ipod?” I ask, snapping up the device. “But you’re only seven.”
“I have two iPods!” he declares with a hateful tone. “A blue one, a red one and now mommy is buying me a green one next week, so there.”
“Then you should donate one to the poor,” I say, carefully wrapping the cord around the blue iPod and placing it on my desk.
“Hey that’s my iPod, lady!” says Jean-Christophe grabbing at my arm.
“Excuse me?” I say.
You give it back to me or I’m calling the police!” says Jean-Baptiste.
“What?” I’m completely stunned. Not sure whether to laugh or cry or wash his mouth out with Ivory soap.
“Give it back to me or I’m calling the police and have you arrested!” he repeats.
I stare down at his evil dark eyes beaming up at me for the Star Wars challenge. “Oh really?” I say. “Well, I’ll let you call the police, little man, but first you’re both in the corner for a time out while I finish my article. I’m on deadline.”
“We don’t do time outs.”
“I bet you don’t,” I say.
Just then, their father, Ben, enters, hands on hips He stares me down. “What did you do to them?”
“What did I do to them?” I ask. “Are you kidding me, Ben?”
They dash to his side, clinging like flies to a screen.
“Daddy, she’s being mean,” says Jean-Baptiste.
“Okay, you know what?” I say. “ You take them. I was supposed to hit the send button on my computer ten minutes ago.”
I escort them all out of my office door, easier said then done, dodging the hundred and fifty action figurines strewn across my floor - enough to entertain a village in Bosnia; enough to support an entire cancer wing full of children; enough to fund our nation’s financial bailout-and still send every hard working American on vacation.
Ben is out the door with both boys but looks back, “I’m going to take them out for lunch, to a movie, to the park, and then…”
I close the door before he can finish his thought. Then I fall back against it as my eyes tear up, my hand planted on the inside of the handle separating my world from theirs, as though I’m looking through the wrong end of a telescope and they’re fifty miles away.
And through the telescope I can see Ben’s pre-married life. The ski slopes in Aspen, the August trips to Italy – apparently eating gelato - the five star hotels and the Michelin starred restaurants. And never once having to pull a plug on the monitor of a dying Grandmother. Never once spreading his mother’s ashes on the shore - twisting the tin container’s top as you flung them into the wind and then trying to remain solemn; caught between the bittersweet tears and the granular crunch as they blew back in your tear-stained face.
This was not the life I had signed up for. I was finding out the hard way – like running your fingers along the blade grass at the beach – that life with Ben was going to be full of surprise paper cuts. I could use one of my Grandma’s ethnic remedies about now. “If you want to make a bad burn or poison ivy go away, squat down, pee on a cloth, add a little witch hazel and dab with it until…”
Rising up from the floor, my desk clock reminds me I now have seven minutes until my deadline. Life always seemed to be a ticking clock of deadlines. I move to my daughters’ high school and college graduation photos lining my fireplace. We had survived the test of time, we three women, but I had to have a Teflon heart to do it. Their days of little girl tea parties and frilly ankle socks were a lifetime away, though I clearly remember a specific night - a birthday sleepover with classmates, when I watched them evolve into teenagers. Such bizarre creatures at the age of fourteen - their brains exploding with ideas, so much of it devoted to the pursuit of silliness. They’re like fizzing electric wires, spurting energy but not hooked up to anything.
But now my girls were grown and had moved into respectable lives. They were concerned with the environment, creating universal peace, saving all the whales from extinction, and most of all, fighting for the legalization of marijuana.
I twist the lever on the blind and find that my window washer has left his bucket on the ledge. Staring down into its contents - the water blacker than Donna Karan’s autumn line - I can almost see a reflection of the person I once knew; a person who was supposed to be enjoying her empty-nest time. And then I look up. The window washer is back, staring in at me.
I mouth the words, “Why am I being tarred and feathered by stepkids?”
The washer shrugs. “I no speak-o English.”
“And I don’t speak Spanish,” I mouth back, plopping back down in my chair at my wet desk.
My window washer returns to his job and I return to my keyboard, which is now sticking from the tea spilled between the “R” and “U” keys. Damn it. Finally, after a lot of furious pushing, the keys begin to soften and finally move again. I breathe a sigh of relief and resume….
“As a stepparent do you often feel unappreciated, alone, and resentful? There’s little fulfillment in being a stepmother, but maybe there’s a farmer’s market nearby that sells poison apples….”
Chapter Three
I remember a certain wintry morning many years ago. It followed the let’s-get-through-the-holidays-for-the-sake-of-the-kids phoniness, the weeks of my husband and I arguing, sometimes in front of the children, mostly after they went to bed. After more than a decade of “wedded bliss,” it was very clear the marriage was over. I could take the emotional torture no more. And now the moment was here: how would my husband move his clothes out of our walk-in closet without our daughters actually seeing him do it?
One day and a half-empty closet later, I moved my shoes to what had always been his side. As I did, the closet walls echoed and so did my head, with my fears – financial and emotional. We would be a household of three now, not four.
Surprisingly, I found comfort where I least expected it: from my daughters, Scarlett, age 14, and Madeline, age 9. It began that night in a lonely bed, where I experienced for the first time the cold silence from his side of the sheets. At 11 p.m., my door flew open. There stood my two beaming daughters. “I thought you two were asleep!” I sputtered. The girls didn’t answer but instead climbed up on the quilt. Brandishing a boom box, Scarlett said, “Mom, this is important. Do you think ’NSync or Backstreet Boys are better singers?” She pressed a button, and suddenly Justin Timberlake was belting out a tune. Madeline began flopping around the mattress. Lots of giggles and pillow slamming ensued.
My lonely first night simply…wasn’t.
Had they come to me to ease their own sense of loss? Could they have been more aware of mine than I knew? Or did some instinct tell them that in making me feel better, they would soothe themselves as well?
Gradually I began to see that the roadm
ap to this new, uncharted life lay in my daughters’ faces. When Madeline studied my eyes while licking the cookie-dough spoon and asked with a crumpled jaw, “Mommy, you won’t ever leave me, will you?” a new kind of direction was born in me.
I learned that being “us girls” alone didn’t only mean we had lost something. We had gained something, too: independence. In the car Scarlett, pushing the radio buttons, back and forth, landed on the theme song from the “Charlie’s Angels” movie: “All you women, independent, throw your hands up for me!” She sang along with it, then she turned to me and said, “Hey, Mom, that’s you. Independent,” which prompted Madeline to ask, “What does independent mean?”
Years later I watched Scarlett take a clue from me and she grew up to be independent, too.
The day Scarlett graduated college it was pouring rain. As we splashed through the mud after the ceremony, she flung her arms around my neck and said, “You are the best mom a girl could ask for.” And in learning that, I had gained a lot more than a little extra closet space…
Quick! Write that all down. I stumble over my half-clothed self moving to my dresser to find a piece of paper and a pen. Great article for later…“How to Find Comfort in A Divorce from the Place You Least Expect It: Your Children…”
But then, startled by a ringing telephone, I lose the thought as fast as it arrived. I trip over my shoes and then the nightstand to get to it. I pick up. “Hello?”
“Took you long enough to answer the damn phone,” says an over-demanding voice on the other end of the receiver.
“Kitty?” I say, “I have to call you back.” I juggle the phone while trying to snap on my bra. “Five minutes, I promise. Don’t go anywhere. Five minutes…”