“So you’re telling me this actually is all your idea.”
“That is correct.”
Now I’m really stumped. “Then what brought it on? Why now? And why the strict deadline?”
“Why—it is the most interesting question one can ask, isn’t it?” Her eyes light up. “It may be titillating to learn how a man was murdered, for example—especially if it was particularly gruesome—but why. Now that’s what drives human existence. The motive!” Marva leans back, crossing her legs and holding her cigarette out in such a way that she reminds me of a 1940s Hollywood starlet, or a drag queen—one that happens to be hooked to an IV. “Will never once wondered why I wanted to organize my home. He was far too eager to get his hands on everything, I suppose. But that’s Will. Only concerned with digging through to find what’s of value—and by that, I mean what’s worth money. If it were up to him, he’d take the fine art, sell it, and then gut the place.”
“But it’s not up to him, right?” I clarify.
“Oh, it will be his eventually—at least, what I don’t choose to donate. But the day will never come when I allow myself to be mentally incompetent enough to put my life—or my possessions—in his hands. Lord only knows what would become of us.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Will doesn’t strike me as Son of the Year, but I think if Marva were to become senile and bedridden, he’d at least hire someone to stop by and flip her over now and again so she wouldn’t get bedsores.
“I’ve never understood that boy.” She absently flicks the ashes off her cigarette, half of them missing the ashtray. “I’d been willing to give him the world, quite literally. He traveled so many places with me as a small child, but when he got to be school-aged, he flat out refused. One time, there I was, ready to jet us to Paris—it was fashion week. Imagine the people he’d be exposed to! The atmosphere! And he dug in his heels and said no. I thought perhaps it was because he didn’t understand what it was—he was only seven or eight. But, no, he didn’t care. He wanted to stay home because he had a book report due. A book report! Over fashion week! Ugh, and those team sports he was always insisting on playing.” She shakes her head.
Although I can’t imagine too many eight-year-old boys choosing fashion week over a sports game, I figure Marva is simply expressing the frustration so many mothers experience in trying to split being a mom with being a person in their own right. “So you had to miss out on a lot,” I say, nodding with understanding.
“Goodness no. He stayed with the nanny. But it goes to show that people are going to be what they are. And Will, for reasons I cannot fathom, is wholly determined to be ordinary. Tell me, do you have any children?”
Her question takes me enough by surprise that I don’t let my twinge of pity for Will take root. After all, it’s the first time that Marva’s shown any interest in me, and I’m tempted to glance outside to see if there’s a sudden frost on the ground as a result of hell’s having frozen over.
“I do,” I say. “I have a son. His name’s Ash. He’s nineteen.”
“Off at college?”
I’m about to trot out a lie, but I stop myself. Here I am, practically rifling through this woman’s underwear drawers—in fact I will be. It’s downright stingy not to reveal something about myself in return. “He’s in Florida at a drug rehab.”
She nods, as if I said he was attending Harvard Law School. “What’s his drug?”
It bothered me when Mary Beth Abernathy asked the same question, but for some reason it doesn’t coming from Marva.
“He smoked a lot of pot. But it was mostly the prescription meds that were a problem. OxyContin, benzos … at first what he could steal from a medicine cabinet. Then anything he could buy from dealers. Occasionally meth. And then … it got pretty bad pretty fast. The guy who checked him in at the rehab called him quite the little pharmacist.”
“It was coke in my day. I don’t suppose anybody does coke anymore,” Marva says wistfully.
I shrug.
“I certainly did my fair share of experimenting,” she says. “Possibly someone else’s share as well. No regrets about it, though.” Her brow furrows. “Well, perhaps one …”
When she doesn’t say anything else, I ask, “What was that?”
But she shakes her head. “No matter. Now, as for your most interesting question: I suppose it would be quite difficult for you to have this deadline, and yet not be able to move forth as you’d like.”
“It is,” I say, relieved that she’s acknowledging it.
“To be clear up front, I am not going to return the bowls. It’s an insult to the artist. However, I can assure you that I won’t buy anything further.”
“That would be great.” While Marva is being so open-minded, I add, “It would also help if you’d let me make decisions on my own. Do presorting. Throw away what’s clearly garbage. Use my time productively.”
She stubs out her cigarette, then stands, wiping stray ashes off her sweater. “I’ll require final approval, but I suppose at this point there’s no harm in letting you ready things for me to look at. Now if you’ll excuse me, I believe I’d like to rest.”
After Marva leaves, I take one last pull on my cigarette, cough, and then bask in the glow of my victory. I didn’t let her stomp on me this time! I told her what I wanted, and I got it!
But as I’m sweeping up the ashes from the floor, I realize—with a flush of humiliation—what a fool I am. Marva put up enough smoke and mirrors that I didn’t even notice: For all our talking, she never answered why she has such a specific deadline.
Why do I always fall for that?
Ash used to do it to me all the time. When he was younger, it was kind of funny, the way he would bob and weave around any questions I might ask. I’d say, “Did you do your homework?” and he’d reply, “Really, Mom, what kind of son would I be if I didn’t do my homework?” I’d catch on a few minutes later—force him to the table with his books—and we’d have a chuckle.
As Ash got older, however, it wasn’t as funny. I’d say, “Ash, are you high? Were you smoking pot?” He’d snap back, “Why do you always think I’m smoking pot? You’re so paranoid.” The evasion was there, but also an underlying aggression—a subtle bullying that, I’m ashamed to admit, often worked to make me back off.
By the end, he still didn’t answer questions, but there was no trickery about it. “Where have you been all weekend? I was worried sick!” I said after one of the many times he didn’t bother coming home for days on end and didn’t answer his cell. By this point, his responses were more along the lines of “None of your fucking business.” Then he’d disappear into his room. I’d be left to shout through the door, “It is so my business! A door is a privilege, not a right!” Then I’d threaten to remove it from its hinges.
But I never did. Because at least when he was in his room, I knew where he was. He wasn’t OD’ing or getting rolled for drugs or money or in any of the other scenarios that ran through my mind and kept me from sleeping at night.
I often wonder if things would have been different if I’d forced the truth from Ash—if I hadn’t been so eager to be fooled. So willing to pretend that everything was okay.
I cringe at the memory of the first time I discovered a baggie of marijuana in Ash’s room—which I found while rifling through his pockets and drawers while he was at school. Instead of waving it in his face and confronting him with it, I put it back. I knew I was being cowardly, but I wasn’t ready for the fight I’d be in for invading his privacy. I figured I’d have a chance to “catch him” without having snooped, when he couldn’t get indignant over how I found it. He’d be forced to accept his consequences.
“The problem is, teenagers are going to do this sort of thing. It’s normal. I did my fair share of partying in high school,” I told Daniel later that night while we were cooking a stir-fry for dinner—I chopped, he stirred and fried. “I used to sneak out in the middle of the night. Only my parents didn’t have a
clue. Sometimes I wish Ash would try harder to hide it.”
“But now that you found it, you have to do something,” he said.
“Like what? I hate to say it, but it’s one tiny baggie of pot. I’m not condoning it, but I don’t want to get freaked out about every little thing.”
“Tell him you were looking for something he borrowed and you stumbled across it.”
“Then what?”
He stared at me incredulously. “Then you take something away from him. Like his iPod or his computer. I’ll back you up. You know I will.”
I shook my head. “He’d never go for that. He’ll get stuck on how I found it.”
“He shouldn’t get a choice on whether or not you punish him.”
I started chopping furiously. “Yep. Everybody’s a perfect parent when they don’t have kids.”
I regretted the words as soon as I said them, even before Daniel muttered, “Luce, that’s not fair.” He was right—it wasn’t fair. I was so lucky to have someone such as Daniel, who seemed to appreciate Ash as he was, right down to my son’s sarcastic sense of humor and quirky taste in music and movies. Yet, as grateful as I was, sometimes I couldn’t shake my feeling of the need to protect Ash from Daniel. Even the most ordinary dustups that might occur with two men in the same house required me to referee. Daniel would say something perfectly reasonable like “Hey, Ash, you left the light on in the garage all night,” and I’d bristle, as if Daniel were attacking me, via my son. As if what he were really saying was Why couldn’t you raise a son who knows how to flip off a light switch? So when Ash’s problems started getting bigger, and Daniel’s prodding for me to handle them more direct, truth was, I didn’t want to hear it.
Now I wonder if I’d listened to Daniel and cracked down on Ash, kept my eyes open to what was going on, if he’d be in college now, instead of where he is.
Or maybe Marva had a point: They’re going to be what they’re going to be.
I sigh. As tempting as it is to buy into that, I’m not going to let myself off the hook that easily.
Nor will I let Marva.
I toss the cigarette ashes into a trash can and then head to Marva’s bedroom. Her door is open, and I hear the TV. I lean in and say, “Do you have a second? I have a quick question.”
She’s sitting in a theater chair, having removed the IV, and hits mute on the remote. “I’m afraid you’ve caught me watching some mindless television—sometimes I can’t resist. It’s the only vice I have left.”
For a woman who only has one vice, she certainly does have a lot of them. “I realize I didn’t get an answer earlier,” I say. “Why does the job need to be done May fifteenth?”
“I didn’t answer?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Isn’t that funny, I could have sworn I did.” She picks up the remote as if she’s going to unmute the TV.
I’m done falling for that trick. “Then please be so kind as to tell me again. Why the fifteenth?”
Her hand drops to her lap. “If you must know, I’d like the house to be in order before my birthday.”
“Oh! That’s wonderful! What a great birthday present to yourself!” Seems hard to believe she’d avoid such a simple answer. “Is the fifteenth your actual birthday?”
“A day before, but I’ll need the day to prepare.”
“Prepare for what? Are you planning a party?”
“Of sorts.” Her mood darkens, and it occurs to me it’s probably because she no longer has any friends to invite. Of course she’s not planning a party. I’ve never seen her so much as talk to anyone on the phone, much less have people over. I’m struck with an image of Marva, sitting alone at a table in her otherwise empty house, blowing out a candle on a cupcake. Humming a pitiful rendition of “happy birthday to me.” Without even any clutter to keep her company.
Turn here. No, left, left … left.” Heather gestures wildly to the left, in case Hank is unfamiliar with the word. I’m in the backseat of their sedan—squeezed next to Abigail’s empty booster seat, spare blanket, and a pile of toys, books, and snacks. Impressive how that child manages to hog the space even when she’s not around.
“Did you hear that, Hank?” I say. “Left? The opposite of right?”
“You ladies need to be nice to me. It’s insulting enough I have to go to a baby shower.”
“You’re insulted—how do you think I feel?” I say. “A couples’ shower! Do you have any idea how depressing it is to not have a date for a couples’ shower? Worse, that I do—and it’s the two of you again?”
“You still mad I didn’t bring you a corsage?” Hank says.
Heather twists so she can see me. “It’s not a couples’ shower. It’s simply not a women-only one. There will be plenty of singles there. Besides, it’s very sweet after all they went through to get pregnant that Penny’s husband gets to attend.”
Penny Kramer is actually a friend of mine from where I used to work. She’d been trying for years to get pregnant—which is why I’d introduced her to Heather. It took Heather and Hank ten years to get pregnant with Abigail—several miscarriages, hormone shots, the whole deal. And that was after they’d had DJ without any effort. I knew Heather would be great at offering support, and she was. It’s only mildly annoying that now Penny likes her better than she does me.
“So what did we get Penny?” I ask.
“Two blankets,” Heather says.
“I picked them out,” Hank says.
Heather gives a headshake to indicate, no, he didn’t.
I pull my checkbook from my purse. “Thanks for doing the shopping … Hank. What do I owe you guys?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Heather says.
“I’d rather handle it now, before I forget.”
“We were going to get her this anyway. It was no big deal to add your name to the card.”
“I’m not that pathetic! I can afford to pay my share for a gift!”
Heather waves me off. “I don’t remember what I spent. We’ll figure it out later.”
I put my checkbook away, both embarrassed and grateful. Later, when I bring it up again, Heather will make up some ridiculously low number for my “half.” It’ll be nice when I get that bonus from Marva so I don’t have to accept charity anymore. Not that the bonus is a guarantee. Despite our recent chat, things are going as slowly as ever at the house.
When we arrive, a sign with balloons taped to it directs us to the backyard, where heaters are set up beneath a party tent, though it’s a mild day.
“By the way,” I say as I see the few dozen people already milling around, “if there are any of my old work people here, I never told them about Ash being in rehab.”
“So I shouldn’t announce it when we walk in?” Hank says from behind the wrapped gift box he’s carrying.
“Hold off. I’ll be issuing a press release.”
Heather bustles off to hug a woman I don’t recognize—I’m assuming Penny’s sister, who is throwing the shower. Hank leaves to set the gift on a table. I feel that usual tinge of nervousness I get when I first arrive to a party. I glance around for an eight-months-pregnant woman or anyone else I know and, seeing neither, decide a canapé would be lovely. And a drink.
I’m pouring a chardonnay into a clear plastic cup when I hear the two Andreas say, “Lucy! Omigosh! It’s been forever! You look fantastic!”
Actually, only one of them says it, but it might as well have been both of them at once. They’re two women, both named Andrea, both secretaries, and—although they look nothing alike—no one’s ever bothered differentiating between them. Someone would say, “Give this to Andrea,” and you were free to go to whichever one struck your fancy. (They weren’t offended and often got confused themselves. I was once at a group lunch where one of the Andreas launched into a story about the time she’d seen John Cusack walking along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, and the other one said, “That wasn’t you that happened to, it was me.”)
We air kiss in that
jokey way we used to do at the office.
“Are you still at McMillan?” I say. “I’m terrible—I’ve barely kept in touch with anyone.” I realize that Penny is the only one, and that’s because of Heather. When Daniel broke up with me, he still worked there, whereas I’d been laid off a year before. I figured loyalty would lean his way.
“Yep, still there,” Andrea says. “Although we’ll see how long that lasts. They’re doing more layoffs. We lost that big underwear account, and now everybody’s pointing fingers. It’s ugly.”
The other Andrea nods. “You got out in the nick of time.”
“Is anyone else coming today?” I believe I’ve pulled off nonchalance—what I want to ask is Will Daniel be coming?
“No, we’re the only work people invited,” she says, to my relief. “They already had a big to-do for her at the office. We chipped in for a double stroller. Andrea and I got invited today because we had to answer phones while they ate cake and drank punch. As if we cared. It wasn’t even spiked.”
“So where are you working these days?” Andrea asks. “And are they hiring?”
I’d thought about how I was going to answer this question if it came up. “I’m doing a freelance gig, helping this insanely wealthy woman clear out her house.”
“Because of your book!” Andrea says. “I should have you help me with my closets. They’re out of control.”
I don’t want to say more about my job so I ask, “Where’s the mom-to-be?”
“She’s inside parked on the couch. Her doctor put her on total bed rest.” Andrea leans closer. “And she’s big … as a house. And it ain’t all belly.”
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