“Was she ever a … dancer?”
“At the club?” Nina exhaled, laughing. “Heavens, no. Even if she’d wanted to. Your mother’s about as coordinated as a dump truck.”
“But she knows how to Pony,” I murmured to myself.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?” Nina asked.
I shook my head.
“Maria, listen, you’ve got nothing to be embarrassed about, as far as your mother goes. She loves you very much, but she’s your average, run-of-the-mill drug addict. It’s a disease that is well out of her control. Out of anyone’s control, really.” Nina exhaled, a cloud of blue.
“What should we do now?”
“When it comes to Victoria, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Nina waved her hand to clear the smoke from the air. “In the meantime, how about if I make you some breakfast?”
“No, thanks.” The thought of food still made my throat close up.
“Coffee?” she said on her way to the kitchen.
“Okay.”
The phone rang. I could hear water running.
“Just let the machine pick it up,” Nina called out. After a few more rings, the machine clicked and beeped, and my mother’s voice filled the apartment.
“Nina? Nina, are you there? This is Vic. I need you, Nina—I really fucked up this time. I told Maria to leave yesterday, and—on Christmas—and she didn’t come home last night.” Her voice broke. I stood up. I didn’t feel like hearing her voice. But I found myself walking toward the machine, like it was pulling me along. I could just pick up the phone.
“And I thought maybe she would have called you or maybe she’s staying at your place. Maria, if you’re listening, honey, it’s Mom, and I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I just totally lost my shit, you know? And, um, I really hope you’ll forgive me and everything will be okay again because, um. I’m just … I know, I’m a jerk. I’m a total shithead, I know I am. But I’m trying, I’m really—I’m gonna try harder, and I’m just so sorry for all the shitty things I said to you, Maria. I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean any of it. Come home, okay? Will you? I love you, Maria. I’m sorry.”
I stood by Nina’s desk, frozen. Listening to the tape in the machine click and whirr.
“Hmm.” Nina stood in the kitchen doorway, an empty coffee cup in her hand. “Sounds like that call was for you, anyway.”
15
It took me a frightened second to recognize the bald guy in the trench coat who grabbed me by the shoulders as soon as I rounded the corner of Nina’s street.
“Maria! Thank God! You’re alive!” It was Lee. He hugged me, then looked me up and down. “Your hair looks fantastic.”
“Thanks. Meanwhile, I’m having a mild heart attack.”
“I’m sorry!” He took his hands off me. “But I couldn’t help myself! Your mother’s had me and the boy toy combing the streets—”
“The boy toy?”
“Oh, what’s his name? Travis?”
“Travis,” I repeated.
“Oh my God.” Lee rolled his eyes. “He’s going to get himself arrested. He’s basically stalking the entire NYU campus, because he’s obsessed with some obese pianist he’s convinced you’ve eloped with.”
“Tell Travis to go fuck himself,” I muttered, walking away.
“Ooh, can I?” Lee caught up to me. “Listen, Maria, you have to call your mother. Tell her you haven’t been chopped up into a million pieces and thrown into the Hudson River. Travis has her convinced that this guy you’ve been seeing is essentially the Son of Sam.”
“You tell her.”
“Tell her what? That I spotted you walking down Lexington Avenue in a fabulous plaid ensemble and you waved from a distance? Maria, your mother wants me to throw you over my shoulder and bring you home. Now, obviously, I’m not going to do that, because I’d put my back out, but—”
“I’m not going home.”
“Where are you going, then?”
“I’m running an errand. I have to buy—” I consulted the list Nina had given me. “Beluga caviar.”
“I knew it!” Lee gasped. “You’ve been kidnapped by that awful Nina woman, haven’t you?”
“She’s not awful.” I moved to the edge of the sidewalk to let a dog walker with a bunch of tiny, yapping terriers pass by. “And I haven’t been kidnapped. Mom told me to leave, so I left.”
“Maria.” Lee sighed. “I know how your mother can be. She has her ups and downs, and she has her little outbursts. But beneath it all, she’s the same old Vic, and I know she loves you.”
“She’s got a funny way of showing it.”
“I know.” Lee reached into his pocket, pulled out a cell phone, and flipped it open. “Listen, if I can’t convince you to come home, will you at least talk to her?”
“No.”
“I’m dialing the number.”
“Good for you.” I turned and walked away. Lee followed.
“Here! It’s ringing!” He held the phone out to me.
I swatted him away. “I’m not talking to her.”
From the phone, I heard a tiny “Hello?” Lee pressed the phone to his ear.
“Vic! It’s Lee! I found Maria! She’s right here, but she doesn’t want to talk to you.” He put his hand over the receiver. “Talk to her!” he commanded.
I shook my head.
He got back on the phone. “Vic? Okay, she’s in a bad mood, and she’s shopping for Beluga caviar, which means that she’s probably been hanging around Nina, but other than that, she’s fine. And she says she’ll talk to you soon. Yes … yes, I’ll tell her. I think she already knows, but I’ll tell her … Love you, too, babe. Ciao.” He flipped the phone closed. “She wants me to tell you that she’s so, so, so, so sorry—that’s four ‘so’s. And will you please come home.”
I shook my head. “Maybe later. But not right now.” I jammed my hands farther into my pockets. “Tell her … tell her we’ll talk soon, though.”
“How soon?”
I shrugged. I was still angry. And I really wasn’t sure when I’d feel like talking to my mom again.
“Maybe next year.”
Nina’s New Year’s Eve party was going to be a serious shindig. She’d hired a chamber music group and caterers and everything. Almost a hundred people had been invited to come and watch the fireworks from her wraparound windows. I didn’t know how a hundred people were going to fit in the apartment.
“You’ve been such a help, Maria. I don’t know how I would’ve gotten this together without you.” Nina and I were unwrapping crystal vases from their stowed-away place in the hall closet. She’d ordered a small mountain of fresh-cut flowers for the affair.
“I’ve been having a really good time,” I told her. “And it’s been really nice of you to let me stay here. But—”
“No buts about it. It’s been wonderful having you.” She crumpled a wad of newspaper in her hand.
“I know I should go back, though.”
“No, you shouldn’t. Here.” She handed me a vase. “Put that one on the hall table. I think it’ll be perfect for the gladiolas.”
I obeyed.
“I mean, after the holiday, I was thinking I should maybe go back—I should go to the regular school. The public school in Brooklyn.”
“Why?” Nina looked up. “I thought you enjoyed our lessons.”
“I do. But I kind of feel like I’m in your hair. And, also … I was sorta thinking that maybe I could go to work for you.”
“What do you mean, work for me?” Nina squinted into a crystal bowl, holding it up to the light, looking for cracks.
“I was thinking.” I cleared my throat. “Maybe we could work out a deal. Maybe you could pay for my mom to go to rehab again, and I could take over her job at Citygirls. To pay it off.”
“Maria.” She looked down at me. “Don’t be ridiculous. How would I explain that to your grandmother?”
“My dear, little white lies are unbecoming, both to your mother and to you. Now, let’s stop with this nonsense and finish the task at hand. What do you say?”
“I just thought it might work, that’s all.”
“And you’ll live in the apartment by yourself? Or will you take over your mother’s latest boyfriend, as well?” Nina arched her expertly plucked eyebrow at me. I felt myself blush.
“No,” I muttered.
“You’ll live here, we’ll continue our lessons, and that’s that.” Nina handed me the crystal bowl. It was heavier than I thought. “I think your grandmother would prefer it, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” I looked down at the bowl, the light prisming off of it. “Yes, ma’am. I guess she would.”
My feet were killing me. I ducked into the kitchen to hide out for a while and kick off the heels I’d borrowed from Nina. The party was even worse than one of Grandmother’s Thanksgiving dinners. Everybody was old and boring and rich, and there really were almost a hundred of them. My cheeks hurt from fake-smiling. And I’d had no idea that I’d signed on as the hired help. I was put in charge of piling up the coats on the bed in the spare room—my room—and helping the bartender make sure the glasses stayed full. And letting the caterers know which trays were empty. I hadn’t even gotten anything to eat yet. I couldn’t help looking out Nina’s windows and imagining my mom out there, downtown, somewhere in the crowd at the Patti Smith show. I wondered if it was too late for me to get in.
In the quiet of the kitchen, I stole a flute of champagne and swiped a few miniquiches from one of the caterer’s trays. I was only alone for a moment, though, before the kitchen door swung open and two women came in, both of them giggling drunkenly.
“Ooh, we didn’t know anybody else was in here!” One of them clamped her hand over her mouth, still giggling.
“Is it okay if we smoke?”
My mouth was stuffed with miniquiches, so I just nodded.
“Thank God.” The taller one with the frosted tips lit up. “Smoke?” She offered one to me.
I swallowed. “No, thanks.”
“If you haven’t started yet, then don’t,” the shorter one with the obvious facelift advised. “I’m sorry, tell me your name again. I know Nina introduced us.”
“Maria.”
“Right, right.” The woman with the facelift nodded. “I’m Jaclyn, and this is Edith.”
“We met.” Edith exhaled smoke at me. “So, you work for the caterers? Those sushi things are fabulous.”
“No, I’m—I’m a friend of Nina’s.”
“She’s Veronica’s daughter, remember?” Jaclyn elbowed Edith.
“Who’s Veronica?”
“Victoria,” I corrected.
“You know. Remember when Carl had that affair with Holzberg’s wife and they split up for a while?”
“Oh God. When Nina wrecked the Porsche?”
“Mm-hmm. But not before that incident in the Hamptons—”
“I remember that. She went to Holzberg’s and threw that painting in the pool—wasn’t it a Schnabel?”
“Ucch,” Jaclyn gave a throaty sigh. “I can’t keep those new painters straight. Anyway, you remember, she took up with that sort of … new waver. Running around downtown—”
“I thought she was dead. The girl who worked at Nina’s boutique? That’s the same one, right? I heard she collapsed right there in the store. Massive heart attack. Nina was the one who did CPR until the paramedics arrived. I think it was drug related. She wasn’t that old.”
“I think you must have the wrong—” I started to say.
“Is that what happened?” Jaclyn sucked on her cigarette. “You poor thing. Your mother died, and now you live here with Nina?”
“My mother’s not—”
“Lucky you.” Edith snorted. “If you’re gonna jump class, might as well get adopted into it, instead of having to marry some bastard like my husband.”
“Christ. Don’t get me started.” Jaclyn rolled her eyes.
“Would you excuse me, please?” I walked out, barefoot, forgetting my shoes. Nina’s shoes. She had everyone gathered at the windows. Dressed in shiny pink and green cardboard hats. One of the caterers was distributing noisemakers on a silver tray.
“Maria, there you are!” Nina waved me over. “It’s almost time!” There was a tiny television set on her desk. Dick Clark was on, counting down the last two minutes of the year. I shook my head and headed for the bedroom. She wedged her way through the clusters of drunk old rich people and caught up to me in the hallway.
“Maria—where are your shoes?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Come, now, let’s not be—”
“Have you been telling people that my mother’s dead?”
“What?”
“These women—Edith and Janice, or something—they said—”
“Why would you listen to a word either of those women—”
“They said she had a heart attack. Why would they say something like that? Is it true? Why didn’t anybody tell me?”
“Maria. Don’t get hysterical.” Nina sighed and pulled me into the spare bedroom, closing the door behind her. “There are some things that are simply too complicated—”
“Don’t tell me I won’t understand. I’m not some idiot who wandered in from—”
“From Millville, South Carolina. Thinking your wonderful mother hung the moon. Darling, it’s not that you won’t understand. It’s that you’ll understand all too well, and then you’ll wish you didn’t.”
“Try me.” I folded my arms across my chest.
“Maria.” Nina’s expression was blank. “Your mother is going to kill herself.”
“That’s a really … that’s a really awful thing to say.”
“Unfortunately, it’s true. I told you that your mother was a drug addict. Last year, her heart finally gave out. Your mother was dead, as a matter of fact. Clinically dead, for a minute and a half. They brought her back, at the hospital. And the doctors told her that if she ever abuses drugs again, she will effectively end her life within one to two years. You would think”—Nina cleared her throat—“that being clinically dead would be a strong deterrent to bad behavior. For Victoria, unfortunately, it isn’t.”
“Why didn’t—why didn’t anybody tell me she was sick?”
“Because everyone wants you to do well. No one wants you wasting your time worrying about someone who is already far beyond—she’s beyond help, Maria. Beyond anything you or I could do. I’ve sent her to the best rehab facilities, to the best doctors. And she relapses, again and again. What else is left? Put her under twenty-four-hour surveillance? Admit her to the hospital? Throw her in jail?”
“But she’s not—she’s not sick. She could stop. She could be fine.” Hot tears spilled out of my eyes. Outside, the countdown had started. The year was almost gone.
“Maria, you have to understand what I’m telling you.” Nina put her hand on my shoulder. “Victoria doesn’t think she’s sick, either. But she is. And the one thing she cannot do is stop. Your mother was given an ultimatum: If you use drugs, you will die. No loopholes, no exceptions. Yet she continues. The equation cannot be any simpler.”
“I don’t buy it.” I tossed Nina’s hand off my shoulder. From the living room, an eruption of voices shouted Happy New Year!
“It doesn’t matter whether or not you buy it. It’s the truth.”
“So, what, we just give up on her?” I heard my voice crack. “That’s what you all want me to do? Wash my hands of her? Say, Sorry you’re having trouble with drugs, Mom, but I have to think about my SATs.”
“Yes, that’s precisely what you’re supposed to do. What has your mother ever given up for you? She left you because there weren’t enough drugs in Millville to sustain her appetites. She threw you out of her apartment on Christmas Day because she was under the impression that you
had gotten into her precious stash. Your mother has one love in her life; it isn’t that ridiculous boyfriend of hers, and it isn’t you. Maria, you have a chance. Your grandmother and I put you in a school that would have assured you a place on the top of college admissions lists. You cannot allow this to drag you down—”
“I cannot allow this to drag me down?”
“No, you cannot. And if it sounds heartless or cold, it’s only because I’ve allowed it to drag me down for almost as long as you’ve been alive. I came to terms, only very recently, with the fact that I cannot be your mother’s savior.”
“And just because you’ve given up, you want me to give up, too?”
“I want you to save yourself. Do you have any idea how much it pains me to see how your mother abuses you?”
“She’s never laid a hand—”
“She neglects you. She doesn’t care about you. And it’s unfortunate, because there are a lot of people on this planet who would love to have a daughter like you. A daughter who’s smart and funny and curious about life. But your mother can’t care about anything. She’s already in thrall to this oblivion, to numbness and death. She’s checking out of life, Maria, and she’s going to end up in a very dark place, eventually in the darkest of places. And that’s not your journey to make. You’re at the dawn of your life. Don’t let Victoria take you down with her.”
A cold, sick chill had settled in my guts. Nina didn’t know what she was talking about. Doctors weren’t always right. Anyway, my mom didn’t want to die. She was having too much fun.
“Even if you’re right,” I said, my voice thick with tears, “she’s still my mother. I’m not giving up on her.”
“Yes, she is still your mother. And no one can stop you from caring about her. But do you understand now? Do you understand why we kept this from you?”
“No. I think you’re all fucked.” I spat the words at her. “I think you’re lying because you want me to hate her. You, my grandmother, my dad—”
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