“My little helper!” she’d exclaim while hoisting him in the air, and then she’d rub noses with him in a way that made Jake giggle and made Maya’s honey-blond ponytail flick from side to side like a horse’s tail. When I saw that I couldn’t help wondering what it might be like to grab that ponytail and ride Maya from behind, but I wasn’t stupid enough to try and jump the cleaning lady. She remained a sweet fantasy, right up until this day my son speaks of her as a bittersweet reality.
Not bittersweet, exactly, but there’s something sadly matter-of-fact about his tone of voice. Jake isn’t ashamed of himself, but he isn’t proud of himself, either. He’s just telling me what’s what, and only because I asked. And I’m not quite through asking.
“When?”
“A couple of months ago.”
“Where?”
“In my room.”
This staggers me. “In the middle of the day? What the hell were you doing home?”
“Teachers’ conference. No school that day.”
Fucking private schools, using any excuse to close the place! “Does your mother know?”
“Not unless Maya told her.”
I wonder what Doris would think about it. She’s a liberal, but she might not be this liberal. And the idea of her son fucking a grown woman who hasn’t been to college could put Doris into a coma.
“Did she make the first move?”
Jake sighs. “Does it really matter, Dad? She’d just been dumped by her boyfriend. She was upset. I saw her crying, and I asked her what was wrong. We got to talking, and it just kind of…happened.”
“Just the once?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Was it awkward afterwards?”
“Not really. She put her clothes back on and waxed the kitchen floor. A true professional.”
“Did you use a condom?”
“Of course!”
“You had them?”
“She did.”
“Then it didn’t just happen, Jake. A cleaning lady doesn’t carry condoms. It’s not something she packs up with the Ajax and the Lemon Pledge. She planned this thing.”
“I honestly don’t know if Maya is smart enough to plan something like that.”
“Never underestimate a female.”
Jake laughs, shakes his head. “Mom says you’re a misogynist. Maybe she’s right.”
“Your mother calls me a misogynist?”
“Only when your name comes up.”
“I do not hate women. I just believe a man should do all he can to defend himself against their wily, cunning ways.”
“If Maya were wily and cunning, would she still be a cleaning lady?”
“All right, all right. I take it all back. She’s a wonderful person who broke you in as nicely as it can be done.”
“That’s exactly right, Dad. She’s also a lonely woman who needed to be held, and I was there to do it, and glad to do it.”
I’m stunned by both his loyalty and his maturity, not to mention his next question.
“What was your first time like, Dad?”
“Terrifying and humiliating.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“She was an older woman. She pretty much took me by the hand and had her way with me.”
“It wasn’t pleasant?”
“We both had our teeth clenched, as I recall. That’s never a good sign.”
“What was her name?”
“Fran. Short for Francine, I think, but I don’t know for sure.”
“She still alive?”
“How the hell should I know? It was a long time ago, right after…”
“Right after what?”
“After my mother died.”
It’s the first time I’ve connected my first time with my mother’s death—out loud, anyway. Maybe my first no-hands sexual experience was an act of despair.
Jake stares at me with sympathetic eyes. “Was this back in your old neighborhood in Queens?”
“Yes, it was. She was what was known in those days as a ‘divorcee.’ Her husband had their kids for the weekend, and she came into Charlie’s Bar for a drink, and I was there. To borrow a phrase from you, it just kind of…happened.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen. Same as you.”
“You were drinking in a bar when you were seventeen?”
“The legal age was eighteen back then, and I looked older than I was. And Charlie’s Bar was a real dive, a bucket of blood. They served anybody who was old enough to walk in.”
“How old was the woman?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Dad. Are we talking to each other, or not?”
“Thirty-three, maybe thirty-four.”
“Holy shit, Dad! That’s like the age gap between me and Maya! History really does repeat itself, doesn’t it?”
“Not exactly. See, Fran was a barracuda. Maya is sweet. Maya used to carry you around on her shoulders when you were little. Do you remember that?”
“Vaguely.”
“Well, I remember it distinctly. I was always amazed by how strong she was, a girl that slim.”
“She’s not slim anymore.”
Oddly, weirdly, ridiculously, I feel my heart sink. “Maya’s not slim?”
Jake shakes his head. “She’s pretty stocky, Dad.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Her face is beautiful, though. She’s kind.”
“I can’t believe she got fat.”
Jake’s face darkens. “Hey. Don’t call her fat. I never said she was fat.”
“I’m sorry! I’m just a little blown away by this! The last time I saw Maya she was as slim as a runway model!”
“Yeah, well, you’ve been away a long time, Dad.”
All I can do is look at him. Yes, indeed, I have been away for a long, long time. I’m close enough to hear the whistle of breath through Jake’s nostrils, but a canyon separates us.
Suddenly the sun is gone. A shiver goes through me. We pick up our pace, as if to warm up against the sudden chill.
“I assume Maya never made it as a fashion designer.”
“Nope. Apparently she had a lot of trouble with the written work, so she gave it up. She’s a cleaning lady. A cleaning lady with a broken heart, and broken dreams. That’s why she looks old. Not because she got fat. Because she stopped dreaming.”
“You may be right about that.”
“I know I’m right about that.”
When did I stop dreaming, and is it possible to start dreaming again? I suspect my son knows the answer to this question, but I’m afraid to ask him.
Then, suddenly, out of the blue, there’s something I absolutely have to do, as soon as possible. I stop walking, grab Jake by the elbow. “Listen, kid, I need a favor.”
“A favor?”
“I have to see Margie, and you’ve got to come with me.”
Jake’s eyes widen. “You sure you want me to go with you? I can wait at the house.”
“No, no, no. I came with you to see Sarah, now you’ve got to come with me to see Margie. Give me your cell phone.”
I refuse to carry a cell phone. This had been a sore point between me and Derek Slaughterchild. The last thing I want in life is to be reachable at all times. I’d sooner wear an ankle cuff that beeps every time you leave the house.
I call Margie, who’s out someplace loud with laughter. It turns out to be a bar on the Upper West Side, where she’s having drinks with the girls from her office. Not surprisingly, she’s in a giggly state.
“You’re interrupting my girlie night!” she says in mock anger.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” I say. “Listen, could we get a quick drink?”
“I thought you had your son tonight!”
“I do. He’s with me.”
“Oh my God, don’t tell me I’m actually going to meet him!”
“Can we get that drink?”
“Come on over!” Margie says. “You know where I am!”
She hangs up without saying good-bye. I turn to Jake. “Do you mind doing this, kid? It won’t take long.”
“Ooh. That doesn’t sound good, Dad.”
“It won’t be good, but it’ll be brief. I’ve got to clear the deck, just like you did.”
It takes us less than ten minutes to walk there. It’s an old-fashioned joint, dark and high-ceilinged. We walk in together at the height of a raucous happy hour. Margie yells my name before I have a chance to pick her out of the crowd.
Not too many things in this world look as good as a blonde in black. Margie is rail-thin, and the black pants and jacket make her look even skinnier. She’s had a few white wines, and as she approaches me she staggers and falls into my arms.
She tends to get drunk fast, because she doesn’t eat. She prides herself on not eating. I once cooked dinner for Margie, chicken cutlets and mashed potatoes, and after she’d eaten a mouthful or two she lit up a cigarette and used her plate for an ashtray. I can still see the cigarette butt she jammed into the leftover mashed potatoes, angled like a sinking ocean liner just as it’s about to plunge underwater forever. That was probably the moment I realized we were doomed.
But who am I kidding? We would have been doomed anyway, no matter how great a girl she was.
With my help, Margie struggles to her feet, kisses my cheek, and lets out a whoop. “Admit it, I make a great first impression, don’t I?” She giggles, then formally extends a hand to Jake. “Hello, I’m Margie.”
“Jake.”
“My God, Sammy, you never told me he has a beard!”
“He didn’t, the last time I saw him.”
“Well, Jake, it’s good to finally meet you.”
How can someone I’ve been seeing for barely a month talk about how good it is to “finally” meet my son?
“Listen,” I say, “it’s loud in here. Can we go outside for a minute?”
“Great idea. Let me get my cigarettes.”
She goes back to her table full of girlfriends, none of whom I’ve met. They look appraisingly at Jake and me, covering their mouths as they whisper to each other and laugh like mad.
Margie sighs as she steps outside, leans against the building, and lights up a Marlboro. “Do you smoke, Jake?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Good for you. Don’t start, that’s my advice. I know it’ll be absolute hell for me when I have to stop.”
And I know exactly when that will be—when she decides to get pregnant. As I mentioned, Margie is thirty-seven years old. Within a week of meeting her, she made it clear to me that one day not long from now, she wants to have a baby. Her biological clock is gonging away like Big Ben. She does not have time to waste, and the terrible truth is that I am a waste of time.
Margie inhales deeply and thoughtfully, really enjoying it, the way you enjoy something you know you are about to lose. She smiles at Jake, shaking her head in what appears to be wonder. “He certainly looks like you, under all that hair.”
There’s never a good time to pull the trigger. You just have to pull it.
“Margie,” I say, “we can’t do this anymore.”
The cigarette in her mouth slants downward, just as I’ve seen it happen dozens of times to startled actors in the movies but never in real life, until now. She takes the cigarette and throws it toward the street. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that our relationship isn’t going anywhere. I’m breaking up with you. I’m really sorry.”
She’s still leaning against the building. She puts a hand behind her back and pushes herself to a standing position on tottering legs. “I don’t understand. Is this a joke?”
“I would never joke about this. You want things I don’t want. You want to do things I’ve already done. There’s no point in us being together.”
She looks at Jake, the thing I’ve already done. It’s hard to tell, but Margie appears to be more stunned than hurt. I’m hoping that’s the case, and of course I’m wrong. She puts her hands over her face and starts to cry.
I stand there paralyzed, but Jake does not. He takes Margie in his arms like an old friend and strokes her hair. Margie puts her arms around Jake and cries on his shoulder.
“It’s okay,” he assures her. “You’re going to be okay.”
The other smokers outside the bar are staring at this oddest of scenes—a woman who’s just been dumped by her middle-aged boyfriend being consoled by the boyfriend’s teenage son, a kid she met five minutes earlier. Jake maintains the embrace until Margie pulls back. She holds him by the shoulders and asks, “How did a shit like your father ever have a wonderful son like you?”
“He’s not a shit, Margie, he’s just going through a troubled time. He likes you. That’s why he doesn’t want to waste your time.”
“Is that right?”
Jake touches Margie’s cheek. “Your dreams aren’t his dreams. It’s as simple as that.”
At last Margie looks at me, then back at Jake. Her eyes shine with tears as she forces a smile. “Would you consider getting involved with an older woman, Jake?”
He smiles. “I have a feeling you’d be more than I could handle.”
“Well, all I can say is, somebody raised you right. Your mother, I suspect.” She kisses Jake on the cheek, turns to me. “I guess there’s nothing to talk about.”
“Not really, Margie.”
“How can you be this cold?”
“I’m not cold, I’m numb. And I really am sorry.”
She nods at me, her face all twisted in a kind of sour gratitude. In the big picture, I’ve done the right thing, but it’s hard to appreciate the big picture when you’re stuck in the misery of the little picture.
Margie clears her throat. “I’m going back to my friends, then.” She wipes her eyes, tosses her hair, and shakes a finger in Jake’s face. “You, young man. Please don’t ever change the way you are.” She kisses his hairy cheek, turns, and walks back inside without even looking at me.
Jake and I stand there for a moment on this sidewalk carpeted with countless cigarette butts, all spongy under our feet. Jake lets out a long, sad sigh.
“Okay, Dad? Are we even now?”
“We’re even…Guess we’ve both got clear decks now, huh?”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“Let’s walk.”
I shouldn’t feel good, but I do. There’s a spring to my step and I almost feel like breaking into a run.
“This may sound bizarre to you, Jake, but it’s actually kind of refreshing, not having a job or a girlfriend.”
“It’s not bad being a dropout without a girlfriend, either.”
“Funny, I never even got to tell Margie that I got fired.”
“Did you really like her, Dad?”
“Jake. Except for you, I honestly don’t know if I really like anybody.”
By the time we get home, that feeling of exhilaration has melted. We’re both exhausted, and neither of us is hungry. It’s barely eight o’clock, but we flop on the beds and fall asleep watching the Yankees game. Jake sleeps on his back, arms stretched wide, his breaths long and even. His brow is slightly knotted, as if he’s conked out without quite resolving everything that’s on his mind.
In the middle of the night I get up to cover Jake with a quilt, and at the touch of it he opens his eyes.
“You okay, Dad?”
“Just covering you…. You know, when you were born, I wanted to move to the country.”
“You did?”
“It was just an idea I had.”
“Mom would have hated it.”
“That’s why we didn’t go.”
“Think it would have been good?”
I stroke his forehead. “I don’t know, buddy, I don’t know. It would have been different.”
“Don’t agonize over it, Dad.”
In the moonlight I see something over Jake’s right eye, a whisper of a scar that I’ve somehow not noticed in daylight. I trace it
with my finger.
Jake catches my wrist. “What are you doing?”
“You’ve got some kind of a scar here.”
“Ah, I’ve had that my whole life.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s from the time I fell off the monkey bars.”
“Come on. It’s got to be from something else!”
“It isn’t.”
“You were four when that happened! How could you still have a scar?”
“I fell a long way. Don’t you remember?”
I stroke his hair, sigh at the memory of it. “I remember, all right.”
We were at a playground in Central Park on a beautiful autumn day, just Jake and me. He was a very good climber, with an apelike grip that enabled him to climb the monkey bars faster and higher than any of his friends.
He was so good at climbing that I became a little lackadaisical about watching him. Sure enough, it happened just as my attention waned. Down he went from the top of the bars, opening up a gash on his forehead that bled as if he’d been shot.
I carried him howling to the emergency room at St. Luke’s/ Roosevelt Hospital, where a kindly old doctor applied a local anaesthetic before doing the needlework. Jake lay on his back the whole while, eyes tightly shut, his feet trembling in their little red sneakers. The anaesthetic didn’t totally kill the pain, so Jake winced and moaned every time the needle went in, and I held his hand and told him to squeeze me as hard as he could.
I was crying, and trying not to let him see it. The doctor—eyeglasses perched on the tip of his nose, bald on top, squiggly gray curls tumbling over his ears—spoke soothingly as he worked.
“How did this happen?” he asked calmly.
“He fell off the monkey bars,” I replied.
“Monkey bars! I didn’t realize you were a monkey, young man!”
“I’m not,” Jake breathed through tightly clenched teeth. “I’m a boy.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. My mistake.”
His fingers worked rapidly—it was hard to believe hands that fast could be connected to a voice that slow. He put the needle through for the final stitch. Jake let out a small cry and the doctor announced, “No more pain for you today! That’s it, I’m afraid.” He tied the stitch, dabbed the wound with an antiseptic solution, and put a bandage over it.
Raising Jake Page 9