Loose Screws

by Karen Templeton

  When I jump and head toward the kitchen, he snags me with one long arm, whipping me around and flinging me toward the bathroom door. “We do this. You do you. And burn that…thing you’re wearing.”

  Seconds later I step into the shower and imagine I hear Shelby’s perky little voice saying, “Now, think positive, honey. Things really will turn out for the best,” followed immediately by Terrie’s, “You don’t need that sorry piece of dog doo in your life, girl, and you know it.” And between that and the sugar high, I think, You know, they’re right. I have terrific friends and hot water when I actually need it and a new client to see on Monday and a brand-new bottle of shampoo to try out and my period isn’t due for two more weeks. So I was supposed to be on my honeymoon right now. So my heart is broken. I will heal, life will go on, because I am woman and I am invincible and no man is gonna get me down when I live in a city where I can get Kung-Pao chicken delivered to my door twenty-four/seven.

  Now if I could just convince this permanent lump in the center of my chest to go away, I’d be cookin’ with gas.

  When I emerge, ten minutes and one hairless body later—my mother equates shaving with kowtowing to male standards of beauty; my take on it is I prefer not to look as though I’ve missed several rungs on the evolutionary ladder—my apartment once again looks like someone reasonably civilized lives here and Ted and Randall and Alyssa are nowhere in sight. The Blockbuster box, however, is. Which means, yes, the movie’s now so late, I’m surprised they haven’t sent their goons after me. On that cheery note, I grab another cookie (huh—looks like they took a few back with them) and I think how much I love this silly little place, with its Barbie kitchen and high ceiling and two big windows looking east across Second Avenue to the apartment directly across from mine.

  Five years ago, I sublet it from a costume designer named Annie Murphy for six months while she went out to L.A. to do a movie. Only, she kept getting work out there and never came back. And over the years, her sister from Hoboken would come to cart off Annie’s furniture—with Annie’s blessings—and I’d replace it. The place was truly mine now, in every sense but the lease.

  But I would have been happy in suburbia, too. I was going to get a dog. A big dog. Something that slobbered.

  Oh, well.

  Anyway, while I’m musing about all this, my mouth clamped around half a cookie, I make myself open one of the bags I’d packed for the honeymoon, where whatever clothes I do have reside. All sorts of slippery, shiny, weightless things—some new, some old favorites—wink at me when I flip back the top. I spend my working day in simple, neutral outfits: black, beige, gray, cream. Nothing that would distract my clients—I want them to see my designs, not the designer. On my off hours, I go wild. Salsa colors. Bold prints. Stuff that makes me happy.

  Licking crumbs from my lips and telling myself I do not need another cookie, especially on top of the Häagen-Dazs bar, I slip into a pair of brand-new, fire-engine-red bikinis and matching lace bra that are more concept than substance, a short purple skirt, a silk turquoise tank top. I may have pitiful tits but my legs are good, if I do say so myself, especially in this pair of gold leather-and-acrylic mules that make me nearly six feet tall. On my Favorite Things list, shoes rank right behind food and sex. Although sometimes, on days like today, sex gets bumped to third. I turn, admiring my feet. God, these are so hot.

  A pair of combs to hold back my hair, a spritz of perfume, a slick of lip gloss—

  I look at my reflection and think, God, Greg. Look what you’re missing. Then the intercom buzzes.

  And I just think, God.

  Three

  The tile floor in the bathroom in my first apartment, a fifth-floor walkup way downtown off First Avenue, was so caked with crud that everyday cleaning agents were worthless. So one day I hauled my butt to the little hardware store around the corner and explained my plight to the stumpy old man on the other side of the counter who’d probably been there since LaGuardia’s heyday. From behind smudged bifocals, he seemed to carefully consider me for a moment, nodded, then vanished into the bowels of the incredibly crammed store. A moment later he returned bearing a jug of something that he reverently placed on the counter, still eyeing me cautiously, as if we were about to conduct our first drug deal together.

  “This’ll cut through anythin’, guaranteed,” he said.

  Muriatic Acid the label proclaimed in ominous black letters. The skull and crossbones was a nice touch, too.

  “Just be sure to keep windows open,” Stumpy said, “wear two pairs of gloves, and try not to breathe in the fumes, cause’, y’know, it’s poison an’ all.”

  Undaunted, I trekked back to my hovel, suited up, pried open the bathroom window with a crowbar I bought at the same time as the acid, and poured about a tablespoon’s worth of the acid on a really bad spot by the bathtub. The sizzling was so violent I fully expected to see a horde of tiny devils rise up from the mist. For a moment, I panicked, wondering if the acid would stop at devouring roughly a century’s worth of dirt and grime, but would also take out the tiles, subflooring, and plasterboard of my downstairs neighbor’s ceiling, as well. After a few mildly harrowing seconds, however, the fizzing and foaming stopped, and I was left with what had to be the cleanest three square inches of tile in all of lower Manhattan.

  And that, boys and girls, pretty much describes what happens when my mother and I get together.

  The instant Nedra enters my space, or I hers, I can feel whatever self-confidence and independence I’d managed to accrue over the past decade fizz away, leaving me feeling, temporarily at least, tender and raw and exposed. Which is why I avoid the woman. Hey, I’m not into bikini waxes, either.

  It’s not that she means to be critical, or at least not with malicious intent. It’s just that, unlike the vast majority of her peers, Nedra hasn’t yet lost her sixties idealistic fervor. If anything, age—and a few years as a poli-sci prof at Columbia—has only fine-honed it. I, on the other hand, am a definite product of the Me generation. I like making money, I like spending it, preferably on great-looking clothes, theater tickets and trendy restaurants. The way I figure it, I’m doing my part to keep the economy from collapsing. Not to mention supporting entrepreneurship and the arts. Nedra, however, cannot for the life of her understand how her womb spawned such a feckless child. Nor has she yet been able to accept the hopelessness of converting me.

  The good news is that the stinging usually doesn’t last for long. Underneath the insecurities, I’m not the piece of fluff I appear. I can survive a Nedra attack, much as I’d probably survive a tornado. And while that doesn’t mean I have the slightest desire to move to Kansas, I have also learned how to play the game.

  Take now, for instance. I open my door, glower at her. Take the offensive for the few seconds she’ll let me have it. After all, she doesn’t know I’ve been tipped off.

  “Nedra! What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Oh, would you just get over it and let me be a mother, already?”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  She barges in, a grocery bag banging against her leg.

  “I thought I told you I didn’t want company?”

  “You’re distraught,” she says. “You have no idea what you want. Or need. And right now, you need a mother’s support.”

  Except then she scans my outfit, disapproval radiating from her expression. Not because of the way I’m dressed, but because she knows I spent big bucks on it. She, on the other hand, is in full aging-hippie regalia—print broomstick skirt, white T-shirt underneath a loose embroidered blouse (no bra), Dr. Scholl’s wooden sandals.

  I cross my arms. Glower some more. “Don’t worry. They’re all made in America.” Never mind that my avowal is full of bunk, and we both know it—the shoes, especially, positively scream Italian—but even at her lowest, Nedra isn’t likely to yank out a tag and check. Instead, she gives in to five thousand years of genetic conditioning and goes all Jewish Mother Affronted on me.
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  “Did I say anything?”

  “You didn’t have to. And how old is that skirt, anyway?”

  She waves away my objection and clomps toward my kitchen, and I once again—much to my chagrin—stand in awe of my mother’s commanding presence.

  On a good day Nedra reminds me a lot of Anne Bancroft. Today, however, the effect is more that of a drag queen doing an impression of Anne Bancroft. Rivers of gray surge through her dark, shoulder-length hair, as thick and unruly as mine. The bones in her face jut; her brows are dark slashes over heavy-lidded, nearly black eyes; her mouth, never enhanced with lipstick, is full, the lips sharply defined. Although she has never smoked—at least not cigarettes, and never in my presence—her voice is low and roughened from one too many demonstrations; her boobs sag and sway over a rounded stomach and broad hips; her hands are large and strong, the nails blunt.

  And yet there is no denying how magnetically attractive she is. She moves with the confidence of a woman totally comfortable with her body, her womanhood. All my life, I have noticed the way men become mesmerized in her presence. Struck dumb, many of them, I’m sure, but I early on learned to recognize the haze of respectful lust. Not that I’ve ever been the recipient of such a thing—not in that combination, at least. A shame, almost, that she’s refused to date since my father died. She insists love and marriage and men are part of her history; now she’s free to devote her life to her work, her causes, and, when I don’t duck quickly enough, to me. Yes, she is a formidable woman, someone you instinctively want on your side—or as far away from your side as possible—but her sexuality is so potent, so uncontrived and primal, she could easily serve as a model for some pagan fertility goddess.

  The clothing disagreement has been laid to rest for the moment in favor of—I see her scan the apartment—reviving the Living Space Dispute.

  My fists clench.

  “I still don’t see,” she says, plunking down the grocery bag filled with something intriguingly solid onto my counter, “why you feel you have to line a greedy land-lord’s pockets for a space this small. Honestly, honey—you could drown in your own sneeze in here.”

  “The place is rent-stabilized,” I say. “Which you know. And it’s mine.” Well, for all intents and purposes. “And it’s a damn good thing I didn’t let it go, considering…things.” I clear my throat. “What’s in the bag?”

  “Ravioli. Nonna made it this morning. And you could live with Nonna and me, you know. Especially now that I’ve moved all my stuff up front to the dining room, since we don’t really need it anymore, so there’s an extra room besides the third bedroom, you could use it for an office or studio or something. I mean, c’mon, think about it—even if you split the rent with me, think how much money you’d save, and have twice the space besides.”

  Twice the space, but half the sanity. I cross to the kitchen, remove the plastic container from the bag. “Right. You wanna take bets on who would kill whom first? Besides, you actually expect me to believe those rooms are vacant?”

  My childhood memories are littered with images of tripping over the constant stream of strays my parents took in, friends of friends of friends who needed someplace to crash until they found a place of their own, or the grant money came through, or whatever the excuse du jour was for their vagrancy. I never got used to it. In fact, every time I got up in the middle of the night and ran into a stranger on my way to the bathroom, I felt even more violated, more ticked, that my space had been invaded. Which is why, I suppose, despite the pain of paying rent on my own, I’ve never been able to stomach the idea of a roommate. Not one I wasn’t sleeping with, at least.

  And Nedra is well aware of my feelings on the subject, that much more than the normal grown child’s need for independence propelled me from her seven-room, rent-controlled nest. Unfortunately, what I call self-preservation, she has always perceived as selfishness.

  “I don’t do that anymore,” she says quietly. “Not as much, anyway.” I snort, shaking my head. “Look, I’m not going to turn away someone who genuinely needs my help,” she says, almost angrily. “And, anyway, Miss High and Mighty, since when is it a crime to help people out?”

  I look at her, feeling old resentments claw to the surface. But I say nothing. I’m feeling fragile enough as it is; I have no desire to get into this with her right now. Which is, duh, why I didn’t want to be around her to begin with.

  Then she sighs. “But I am more cautious than I used to be. I don’t take in total strangers the way Daddy and I used to. Not unless I have some way of checking them out.” She rams her hand through her hair, frowning. “It upsets your grandmother, for one thing.”

  Well, good. At least her mother-in-law’s getting some consideration, even if her daughter didn’t. I notice, however, she doesn’t contradict me about the killing-each-other part of my observation.

  I return my attention to the plastic container of pasta in my hands. Defying their imprisonment, the scents of garlic and tomato sauce drift up. Traditional, artery-clogging ravioli, stuffed with plain old meat sauce, the pasta made with actual eggs. My knees go weak. I put the container in my empty fridge, make a mental note to call Nonna when I get back to thank her—

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Nedra says softly. So softly, in fact, I look up in surprise.

  “About?” I ask, since I don’t think we’re talking about the Hotel Petrocelli anymore.

  “What do you think?”

  Ah. I almost smile. “Oh, right. You hated Greg, you detest his family and everything they stand for. I somehow don’t think you’re real torn up that it didn’t work out.”

  “Well, no, I’m not, I suppose. I couldn’t stand the thought of your marrying into that bunch of phonies.”

  An exquisite pain darts through my left temple. “Just because they don’t live the way you do, don’t think the way you do, that doesn’t make them phonies.”

  She gives me that okay-if-that’s-what-you-want-to-believe look, then says, “Whatever. But what I feel about them doesn’t matter. Not right now. I can still feel badly for you. I know you loved him.”

  And I can tell it nearly kills her to admit that. But before I can say anything else, she goes on.

  “And it kills me to know you’re hurting. I remember what it feels like, suddenly being single again. And it’s the pits.”

  I’m staring at her, unblinking. Is this a “Twilight Zone” moment or what? Empathy? From Nedra? On a personal level?

  I think I feel dizzy.

  “And I also know what it feels like,” she continues, her dark eyes riveted to mine, “the first time you go out into the world after something like this. That you look at everyone around you and wonder how they can just go on, living their normal lives, when your own has fallen apart.”

  For the first time, I notice the dark circles under her eyes, that she looks tired. Worried, even.

  I have seen my mother outraged, exhilarated, devastated. But not once that I can remember have I ever seen the look in her eyes I see now. And I realize she’s really not here to torture me, at least not intentionally, but because she needs me to need her. As a mother, as a friend, as anything I’ll let her be.

  Oh, dear God. She wants to bond? To do the whole we-are-sisters-in-tribulation thing?

  My eyes are stinging as I turn away to toss my sunglasses and a book into a straw tote. The criticism, the clashing of opinions…I know how to brace myself against those, how to grit my teeth against the sting. This…this compassion, this whatever it is…

  I have no idea what to do with that.

  “We better get going,” I say, snatching the stupid video off the coffee table before tramping through the door.

  An hour and a half later things have returned to normal. Or what passes for normal between my mother and me. We got into a political fracas before I even hailed the taxi, an argument that wasn’t fully cold in its grave when we arrived at Grand Central and she launched into an unprovoked attack on several hapless passersby for ig
noring a homeless man on the sidewalk, to whom she gave a ten dollar bill.

  It was ever thus. I know my parents sure didn’t earn the big bucks as instructors at Columbia, especially not in those early years, but they were profoundly aware of those who had less, to the point where their socialistic consciousnesses weren’t at peace unless they’d given away so much of their earnings to this or that cause, we were barely better off than the poor wretches they supported. Generosity is all well and good—don’t look at me like that, I give to charity, jeez—but weeks of living off lentils and boxed macaroni and cheese night after night because we couldn’t afford anything else got old real fast.

  I suppose they thought, or at least hoped, their altruistic example would instill a like-minded spirit of sacrifice for the common good in their daughter. Instead, a childhood of forced culinary deprivation has only fostered an insatiable craving for prime rib and ridiculously expensive, ugly little fruits that are only in season like two days a year.

  So. I pretended I’d never seen her before in my life as I sauntered into Grand Central as gracefully as one can with a trio of soft-sided canvas bags in assorted sizes hanging about one’s person. I was also profoundly grateful it was ninety degrees and therefore highly unlikely we’d pass somebody wearing a fur. Don’t even think about walking down Fifth Avenue with Nedra anytime between October and April. Dead things as fashion statement send her totally postal.

  Which is why she must never know about the Blackglama jacket hanging in my closet, an indulgence I succumbed to, oh, four years ago, I think, when I got my First Big Client, a dot.com entrepreneur who basically waved a hand at the SoHo loft he was thrilled to have “only” paid a million five for and said, “Just do it.”