I flinched when he put his hands on her, caressing her writhing hips, the indent of her waist. Take your hands off her! I wanted to yell. That curve is not yours. She’s not yours. She’s mine! Okay, this was silly. She wasn’t mine, but she most certainly was not his. I crossed my arms over my chest. Felt the violation that she did not seem to feel. Felt it for her. Felt it for her, magnified eight million times. It was obvious he wanted to possess her, be inside of her. Didn’t that make her nervous? He was a stranger. Strangers were dangerous. You never knew what a stranger would do. How could she be so trusting? My whole body seemed to contract, collapse inside, to make up for the fear she didn’t have. Take your hands off my mother. Stop looking at her. Stop devouring her with your eyes!
I wanted to avert my own eyes, but I couldn’t. No one could tell me there were no feelings involved there. Those were feelings I was seeing; he was feeling something! You think she wants you to touch her? You think this is real? You think she cares anything about you? You should hear what she says about you people when she comes home from work. She laughs. She thinks you’re all fools. Don’t you know that?
She didn’t, actually, laugh at them, though, not so often. She was more likely to feel affection for the men, especially her regulars. But still. She would never want to see them outside the club. She didn’t want to know them. None of this had anything to do with who they were, much as they wanted to think it did. Maybe I’d do him a favor and explain that. Tap on his shoulder. Wake him from his stupor. Excuse me, mister. My mom? She couldn’t care less about you.
Oh, wait. Right. I didn’t need to tell him that. He didn’t care about her either. They didn’t want to care about each other. This whole thing was set up so caring didn’t enter in.
But, man. He sure was looking at her like he cared. Did caring have to be such a fleeting thing? The length of a lap dance? Three minutes? Then gone?
She smiled, and accepted his caress. Why didn’t it make her cringe like it was making me cringe? She was used to it. Probably didn’t feel it. Or did she like it? Had it ever made her cringe?
The DJ faded out “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer and segued into “Every Breath You Take” by the Police. I finally realized why most of the songs were so old. Most of the customers were middle-aged.
I felt overcome with a horrible feeling of sadness. A sadness that landed in my gut, as if those gyrating hips in my rib cage had landed, in a heap, on the floor of my stomach. People. So vulnerable with their needs! Maybe they were right, trying not to feel. Feeling could make you feel so goddamned lousy. I went back to the dressing room. I’d seen enough.
That night, as we walked the short walk home, I asked Coco, “What do the men do with it?”
“Do with what?”
“They get all aroused, right? So what do they do with it?”
“Oh. They jerk off in the bathroom. Or go home to their wives. Or it ends up in their underwear, I guess. It’s only about a teaspoon, ya know. It’s not a big deal.”
“But doesn’t it make them all frustrated?”
“They come in frustrated, sweetie. They don’t leave that way.”
I didn’t believe that then. I believed it even less as I grew older. He would hand over the money, which had to lead to some anger, because he would know she was just doing it for the money. And she would feel angry because he could have her for the money. So they both would be left with anger for being used. And all this anger spread like waves and polluted the world.
We reached the apartment and I followed Coco up the stairs. That’s when I remembered I was now behind on all my homework. Math? Yuck. Religion in Japan? Who cared? This had been totally fascinating, even if it did rile me up. A strip joint sure did take your mind off the hassles of everyday life.
No wonder people went there.
chapter twenty-four
i ’d finally, with Emma’s help, gotten all of Leah’s clothes packed up. Emma had decided to keep some sweaters, a beautiful full-length wool coat, and some dress-up dresses. I was glad she’d been able to face the “things” finally, and that she’d set some of them aside for herself.
Now it was time to start on the desk. Emma was in the living room doing homework. Some chocolate chip cookies were baking in the oven. I sat down in Leah’s swivel chair thinking this would be easier than the clothes, less personal.
The front top drawer was straightforward enough. Crammed with pens and papers and stamps and odd keys and packets of sugar and old receipts . . . I threw out everything that was obviously garbage and organized the rest into neat piles. Next to the desk, there was an oak wood filing cabinet with two drawers. The top drawer was full of work documents. I didn’t know what to do with them, so I left them alone. The bottom drawer was locked. Probably more work papers. Oh, well.
I turned to her desktop. There was a pile of books: Strangers on a Train, a biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, Moby Dick, some old issues of the New Yorker, a Coach catalog. A huge stack of correspondence. I didn’t feel right looking through it; there were some personal letters there, sympathy cards from when her father had died, letters from friends. I neatened it up, but didn’t throw anything out.
Then I started in on the three side drawers of her desk. It was really getting overwhelming, and I was thinking I should just tell my father to do this himself. Tax forms, old Visa bills. In the bottom drawer was a spiral notebook. It had a yellow-and-orange plaid cover. I flipped it open. It was a journal. The first date went back about six months. The last date was from a few days before she died.
“Ginger!”
Emma was screaming from the kitchen. Still, I closed the notebook. “What?”
“I think the cookies are ready!”
“Will you take them out?”
“Okay!”
I opened the journal back up and looked at the end of the last entry.
I don’t believe there is a separation between the mind and the body. They are inextricably joined. What happens to one happens to the other. I wish I’d lived my life realizing that more.
I read it again. And again. As if it would keep her alive a little bit longer. Even though I’d purposely looked there first, I hated how it took on an extra power of profundity just because it was positioned at the end. Did she even know it would be her last entry? It took my breath away, realizing all over again that she was gone forever. How could it be?
Emma called from the living room. “Are you coming? The cookies are out.”
“I’ll be right there!”
I put the notebook back in the drawer. If there was one journal, shouldn’t there be more? Or had she just begun this one when she saw that she didn’t have much time left?
My gaze went to the file cabinet. The locked drawer. Maybe one of those keys in the desk fit that drawer.
I found the keys. There were three. The smallest one seemed like it would fit.
But I really shouldn’t. It was none of my business. If she locked up her journals, it was because she didn’t want anyone to see them. I should respect that.
I tried the small key. The drawer opened.
It was packed with spiral notebooks. Thirty or even forty of them. All plaid like the one in the nightstand, but in different colors. I flipped through the blue one on top. Yes, another journal. A lilac one. A green one. All journals. My father wouldn’t want me to find them, so why ask me to go through her things? Maybe he didn’t realize she kept journals. Yeah. Typical.
I took one out from almost the bottom of the pile. It was dated 1985. Wow. I put that one back and took another from near the top. January 2003. What a wonderful gift. Emma would love to read these one day. I turned to the first entry.
I hate my husband.
Or maybe not.
I read on.
I never thought I could feel these feelings, least of all towards him, but I do. I could kill him.
I looked up at the doorway. My heart was pounding. I couldn’t resist.
He has made me so unhappy. And
he doesn’t seem to care! I thought he loved me. But when I told him I knew about that woman, he didn’t even seem to feel any regret! And it’s so, God, so disgustingly typical. She’s young, she’s got a perfect body. I never thought he would actually succumb to that. I thought he was above it. Hah! Maybe no man is above it. That’s why they all . . . No. It doesn’t do any good to generalize. This is him. My husband. My own husband. I hate him. I hate him!
I skimmed down the page, hungry to know exactly what it was he’d done. Had an affair, that was obvious, but with who? For how long? Where? How?
I couldn’t find the answers. It would take more digging. I’d probably have to go back in time to piece it together.
I put the journal back in the drawer, locked it up, put the key in my back pocket, and went out to Emma in the living room.
“How’s it going?” she asked, not looking up from her history book.
“Okay.”
“Want a cookie?”
“Yeah.”
I was trembling. What if Emma happened upon these? I couldn’t just leave them there, even if there was a key. What if she found the key, like I did? I could keep the key, but what if my father asked me about it? I felt very protective of the journals. Would Leah want him to see them? I went to the refrigerator to pour myself some milk.
“Are you okay?” Emma asked.
“Yes!” I took a bite of cookie.
“They turned out well, don’t you think?”
“They turned out very well.”
Before leaving, I found a large Duane Reade shopping bag in the back pantry and piled in all the journals. Then I covered the journals with some of Leah’s scarves. I set the bag out in the hall by the elevator so Emma wouldn’t see me taking it. I wasn’t planning on keeping them; I just really, really didn’t want her to find them by accident. I’d figure out later where to put them back, so I’d know they’d be safe.
As soon as I got home, I laid them all out on my bed and put them in chronological order. Then I went back to the one I’d looked at before and started to skim forward until I found the entry where he admitted that this woman wasn’t even the first one he’d been unfaithful with. Evidently he liked having little flings with younger women.
At first, Leah was relieved that it wasn’t a real affair, an emotional affair, with a woman he cared about. She thought he would stop as soon as she confronted him and beg her forgiveness. But he didn’t.
I am truly floored. He seems to think the only problem here is that I found out. I thought he would offer to stop, but he says he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t even seem to feel guilty! And now I feel like there’s something wrong with me, because I can’t compete with these girls. I feel so horrible. It hurts so much. Can I forgive him? Does he even want my forgiveness?
I closed the journal, lay my head back on my pillow, and stared up at the ceiling. The idea that he didn’t care whether she forgave him or not made me so mad. He was the one failing her, but he made her feel deficient!
A conversation I once had with Leah came to mind. It would’ve been soon after she found out about my father’s cheating. We were strolling through Central Park. I was complaining about Coco, who’d just self-published her “how to strip” book and was busy trying to publicize it and get people to take her classes.
“I just wish,” I had said, “I could have a normal mother.” I’d totally expected Leah to chime in and run Coco down.
“But you know what?” Leah responded. “In her own way, Coco is a very strong woman. Do you realize she’s never been dependent on any man? That woman knows how to take care of herself. Sometimes I wish I could be more like her.”
It had really annoyed me at the time. Now I knew what she’d been driving at.
chapter twenty-five
c hef Jean Paul waited to speak until we were all standing around the butcher-block tables. “There will be a banquet in two weeks. We will prepare a buffet. Investors and potential investors are invited. I will assign each of you a dish. Please do not ask me if you can make a salad or a soup or a vegetable or a fish or a chicken or a cow. That is my decision. However, if you are planning on continuing in pastry next year, let me know, and I will assign you a dessert.”
Tara raised her hand. “Will this count heavily towards whether we’re admitted into the Master Class?”
“Everything you do,” he yelled, “counts heavily towards whether you are admitted into the Master Class!”
It gave me a certain amount of satisfaction to see him bellow at her like that.
“Needless to say,” Jean Paul continued, “this banquet is very important to Mr. Knickerbocker.” Mr. Knickerbocker was the president of the school. I’d only seen him twice: once when I toured the school, and once when I was giving the school secretary my tuition check. Both times, he was sitting behind a huge mahogany desk. He was about eighty years old, and he’d never once come down to our floor, but rumor had it he ate upstairs in the school restaurant all the time with his thirty-year-old peroxide blond girlfriend.
“So!” Jean Paul continued. “Please raise your hand now if you are hoping to continue in pastry!”
This was it. The moment for me to come out to Jean Paul as a pastry chef. Ralph raised his hand, and a couple of the second careerers. Then I did. And then Tara. What a drag.
“At the end of the day,” he said, “I will post a list. It will say what you will make. Please do not come to me and complain because I will not change my mind. Now separate into the following groups. Half of you will be making tomato concassé. Half of you will be making pastry cream.”
Of course, I wanted pastry cream. I’d made concassé up the wazoo at Chantal. But no, I was doing concassé. The only good thing was that Tom was doing it too. Tara had been assigned pastry cream. I noticed her pout to Tom. Aw, too bad. Ralph, who was also assigned pastry cream, winked at me as I put my cutting board next to Tom’s.
“So how’s it going at the job?” I used a tone that I hoped would convey that I was adjusting to the concept of us being friends, of course we were friends, there’d never been any reason to think we were ever going to be anything but friends, so please don’t imagine that you’ve decimated my soul.
“Pretty good.”
After I was done sharpening my knife, he asked if he could borrow my steel.
“Sure. Nothing worse than slicing a tomato with a dull edge.”
It was no use thinking I could seduce him away from Tara. Especially since I wasn’t going to wear that red dress. Especially since I had no shoes to go with it. So he might as well see what a good sport I was.
Once the tomatoes had been doused in boiling water, we all set to peeling. I picked out a nice plump one, slit an X at the bottom and pulled back the skin. “So. Is Mr. Glass treating you well?”
“I have to say . . .” Tom looked up just to make sure Tara was not nearby. She was heading towards the walk-in. “Jonathan Glass is a very arrogant man. He’s constantly letting us know in one way or another that we all can easily be replaced.”
“Is he that nasty?” I wasn’t really surprised, but I wanted to encourage Tom to run him down some more.
“Yeah. I mean, I know I have to be grateful for the job. I’m learning a lot. But it’s not easy.”
“Especially after being here all day.”
“I counted thirteen burns on my hands and arms last night.”
“Get out!” I halved my naked tomato.
“Look at this!” He pulled up his sleeve and showed me an assortment of red welts.
“Ouch.”
“Last night, I got my palm. Could barely hold anything, but he made me finish the service.”
“What a jerk.” Maybe Tom noticed I was enjoying the crit too much, because then he started defending the guy.
“Of course, I can understand that. He needed me. And it was my own clumsiness. I got through it okay.”
“But still . . .” I squeezed a tomato over my cutting board to get the excess seeds out, then d
iced it up and threw it into a huge bowl our group was rapidly filling.
“The guy is a genius,” Tom insisted. “Sometimes I think it’s absurd that I’m paying so much money to stand around and do this.” He nodded towards the bowl.
“Right,” I said. “I know.” As I pulled off a nice swath of skin, I couldn’t resist saying, in a subtly catty tone, “At least you have Tara there to make it easier.”
He was silent a moment as he chose a tomato to work with. “Yeah.” He slit it with an X. “Tara idolizes her dad. I don’t think I could ever be as good as he is.”
“You mean as good as he is to the world? Or to her?”
He hesitated. Cut his tomato in half. “Both.”
“I have no doubt that you will surpass Jonathan Glass one day.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’ve seen what you can do. I know you’re ambitious. And you have what it takes. There’s no reason why it won’t all happen for you.”
Maybe I was trying to butter him up. But I did truly think he had a perfectly good chance to succeed out there. He was a competent, attractive white male with ambition. Why shouldn’t he?
“Thanks,” he said, wiping his hand on his side towel, then pressing my arm. “It means a lot to hear that from you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, glancing at where he’d touched me. Actually touched me! Maybe I wasn’t completely out of the running.
At the end of the day, a bunch of us were waiting in the lobby for Jean Paul to post the list of assignments for the banquet. Kingsley got off the elevator.
“Ginger! Just the person I wanted to see.”
“Hi.”
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
“And how is your sister?”
“She’s good.”
Ralph looked at me, like, What sister?
“I was wondering . . .” Kingsley was speaking in a hushed voice and sneaking a look sideways to make sure no one else could hear. “I’d like to invite you and Coco to dinner . . .”
The Art of Undressing Page 17