Close to Home

by Cynthia Baxter

  But their good intentions began to slide before very long. With David away at work all day and Jessica the “primary caretaker,” the phrase the books were now so fond of using, each parent’s relationship with Sammy changed. And so it seemed only natural that she become much more attuned to the subtle signals that their baby gave off.

  Perhaps being so keyed into him was what led to her inability to stop putting him first, no matter what. It wasn’t long after Sammy’s birth, after all, that David’s slumbers grew so deep that he no longer awakened to the sound of Sammy’s cry. It was she who tuned into cable television shows on which the experts discussed topics like the ins and outs of intestinal gas. When the temperature dropped unexpectedly in the middle of the night, she was the one who got out of bed and, zombielike, rummaged through the linen closet to find an extra blanket to tuck around the shoulders of their sleeping son.

  Perhaps that compulsion to take care of a child was simply stronger in women. Jessica began watching PBS documentaries on animals in the wild, curious about how animal mothers behaved. Was she, like them, merely acting in a way that her chromosomes dictated—while David, like the male tiger who was chased away by the tigress after she gave birth, was similarly a mere victim of his biological impulses?

  Not that David wasn’t good with Sammy; he was. But “being good” with a child was not exactly the same as being totally attuned to him. Yes, he had taught Sammy how to eat cereal at three months. He had even toilet trained him in a one-weekend whirlwind course. But Jessica knew for a fact that David couldn’t name his pediatrician or come up with Sammy’s birthday without jotting down half a page of mathematical calculations.

  But David’s limited involvement in Sammy’s life was only part of the sadness Jessica was feeling as she climbed up the stairs, prepared to play referee once again. She gritted her teeth as she pried Sammy’s fingers from around his father’s ankle, bracing herself against the child’s screeching and David’s pleading, “Look, Sammy, all I need is ten minutes to myself. Ten minutes! Can’t you understand that?”

  “Come on into the kitchen and I’ll give you some Ritz crackers,” she offered halfheartedly.

  “Ritz?”

  She had said the magic word. Salt, after all, had almost as much drawing power as sugar.

  What bothered her the most, she realized as she led Sammy into the kitchen, was that David could play Daddy whenever he wanted to.

  “I’m taking a shower,” he would announce, just as he had tonight. For him, it was a basic right, being able to shower at will. Jessica, meanwhile, would say, “Look, David, I’d really like to take a shower soon. So whenever you finish what you’re doing and you’re free to watch Sammy, I’ll go up and do it. Okay?”

  Okay?

  At what point had Jessica begun to ask permission? Back when it was just the two of them, she and David had been so conscious of sharing everything equally. He chose the restaurant one night; she chose it the next time they went out. The same went for movies, video rentals, and a hundred other things.

  Once she gave up her job, however, the balance of power shifted. Or maybe it wasn’t the job; maybe it was simply the result of Sammy being born. At any rate, she suddenly found that all the old rules had been thrown out. And these days she found she was too tired to fight for what she once had felt so strongly that she deserved. Whether that was something to rail against or simply to accept, Jessica still had yet to decide.

  “All right, guys, I’m back.” When David reemerged, reuniting with mother and child in the kitchen, his shirt and tie had been replaced by a well-worn, blue L.L. Bean prairie shirt and a pair of jeans. His hair was dripping wet, blotted only minimally by the towel that was draped unceremoniously across his head,Virgin Mary-style. Just as he’d promised, he had been upstairs less than ten minutes. “I’m human again. Hey, do I get a decent hug now, sweetie?”

  Jessica turned away from the chicken she was browning, prepared to forgive and forget. But it turned out that David had been addressing his other “sweetie.”

  “Look, I didn’t mean to come off sounding like the Grinch,” David said, seeking her forgiveness with his soft brown eyes as he shyly peeked out at her from behind Sammy’s neck. “I just had a rough day, that’s all. The commute into the city really gets to me some days. And this new client of ours ...”

  Jessica nodded. “I know how it is,” she said. “I understand.”

  But as she joined David and Sammy in what she had nicknamed a “group hug,” with the three of them standing together in an awkward cluster, their arms more or less draped around each other, she was thinking that, when you came right down to it, she really didn’t understand at all.

  * * * *

  The news about Lloyd Nolan’s murder catapulted Jessica into a state of almost total distraction. It was the result of a combination of things: her horror over the event itself, her annoyance over her husband’s indifference to the whole thing, and her uneasiness about the fact that somewhere out there, perhaps even right in Sea Cliff, among the fairy-tale Victorian houses and the video stores and the playgrounds, the killer was still at large.

  This odd mixture of emotions formed a sort of cocoon around her, nature’s way of blocking out what was simply too hard to deal with. All week she caught herself making bizarre, totally uncharacteristic mistakes. Forgetting to put the jelly on Sammy’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Tossing dirty socks into the trash can and junk mail into the clothes hamper. Carefully affixing a postage stamp to an envelope only to realize after the fact that she had stuck it on the upper left corner.

  At the moment, however, she was trying her damndest to root herself firmly in the present. She was about to embark upon the tricky part of the drive to Hicksville, a town named after a local artist named Thomas Hicks rather than as a disparaging comment. This section was a crossroads of several major thoroughfares, making for dangerous driving. So as she came up to where Route 107 merged with 106, then widened a bit more in preparation for the entry and exit ramps for both the Long Island Expressway and Northern State Parkway, she forced herself to put the real estate agent’s dreadful demise out of her mind.

  She stepped on the brakes as the car on her right cut into her lane, less than eighteen inches in front of her.

  “Oh, boy,” she muttered. “Another one of those drivers who hasn’t figured out that if he ever caused an accident, he’d probably be one of the people to get hurt.”

  Actually, Jessica really enjoyed driving. Aside from the sense of freedom it provided, she felt more secure in a car than she did anywhere else. It was a metal womb preventing her, however temporarily, from having to participate in her own life. There was no telephone, and the radio could be snapped off in a fraction of a second. Aside from the psychological isolation, there was the physical component, as well. The doors were locked, the windows were rolled up, and most of the time she was moving at a speed that made it impossible for anybody short of Superman to catch up with her.

  But her stint as chauffeur was short-lived. Today’s destination caught her eye, and she turned on the right turn signal.

  “We’re here, Sammy,” she called over her shoulder to her impatient charge. He was kicking the back of her seat, already in sugar shock from the mere anticipation of a trip to the golden arches.

  “We’re at the climbing hamburgers?” he asked hopefully, still not able to believe his good fortune.

  “We sure are,” Jessica replied, pleased that, for a change, she was able to play the role of Good Mother. “And you can have a chocolate milk shake and French fries, just like I promised.”

  “Oh, boy! And I not gonna give you any’.”

  Aside from having the distinction of being one of the most frazzling places to drive, Hicksville had another claim to fame: it was the home of the best McDonald’s around. It was the kind of place that Jessica had envisioned every time she thought of moving her son out to the suburbs to allow him to experience a richer life.

  It offered mo
re than the usual grease-coated, salt-saturated, carbohydrate-laden foods—a menu that every child in America could recite by heart. The real attraction here was the indoor playground. A pair of glass doors decorated with an ever-smiling Ronald McDonald marked the entrance into a fantasy land difficult to duplicate this side of Disneyland. Here, in a large, airy, sunny space, an area covered with thick carpeting so tough it could withstand anything from cleats to elephant hoofs, were two industrial-strength slides, a small merry-go-round, four hobby horse-style McDonald figures perched on springs, and, in the center, three oversized hamburgers suitable for crawling into, climbing onto, and jumping off of.

  “Climbing hamburgers!” Sammy chortled once again. Predictably, he was experiencing paroxysms of ecstasy. Without waiting for an invitation, he took off in the direction of the playground. “I go on the merry-a-ground first!”

  If only he could always be pleased so easily, thought Jessica, following a few paces behind, wondering at what point in his life the lure of milk shakes and slides would pale, being replaced by attractions that were much less innocuous.

  Actually, coming with Sammy to this dreamland Mc-Donald’s always made her feel that maybe those Ivory soap advertisements weren’t so farfetched, after all. As she sauntered into the playground area, her eyes fixed on Sammy’s radiant, gleeful expression as he hopped up onto the merry-go-round, she was aware that she was being treated to one more of those glimpses of the rewarding side to motherhood. A smiling little kid with a round cherubic face like something off a Christmas card and a smile that could light up a coal mine. His sweet baby voice lifted in song as he joyfully sang, “Cooka-cha! Cooka-cha!’’ his version of “La Cucaracha.’’ She was glad she had the power to avail him of two of his favorite things in life: French fries and a chance to climb, run, crawl and slide to his heart’s content. He was in such a good mood that Jessica couldn’t help being in a good mood, too. For the first time in days she forgot about the business about Lloyd Nolan.

  Today she and Sammy were meeting Nikki and her two daughters here. She would be able to indulge in her new definition of bliss: a cup of medium-warm coffee and her son’s leftover fries, along with a chance to talk to one of her favorite adults with only a minimum of interruption from their kids. At this point, even being out in the world, as opposed to stashed away in somebody’s kitchen, was a treat. Being in a place in which kids were allowed to be seen and heard, even to excess, made it even better.

  Pleased that Sammy had wasted no time in getting into the swing of things, Jessica looked around for Nikki and her daughters. Sure enough, they were already here. Four-year-old Kimberly was scrambling on top of one of the hamburgers. A few feet away, little Allison teetered around, trying to keep up with her big sister. Nikki, meanwhile, sat at one of the red plastic tables, guarding her daughters’ partially eaten lunches and dutifully picking at her own salad, only occasionally supplementing it with a purloined French fry.

  “Better watch out. Those things have about a billion calories each,” Jessica warned as she sat down at the table, balancing on the tiny molded plastic stool that had been designed for rumps in size 3T He-Man underwear.

  “Yeah, tell me about it. Out in front, instead of saying, ‘Over a billion sold,’ it should say something like, ‘Only twenty jillion trillion calories inflicted upon our customers.’“

  “Two-thirds of whom are mothers with absolutely no willpower,” Jessica added, “unable to keep themselves from eating their kids’ leftovers. Hey, these Chicken McNuggets aren’t too bad, are they?”

  Nikki was incredulous. “What? You mean you call yourself an American and you’ve never had a Chicken McNugget before?”

  “I happen to be an American who can’t eat anything besides a bunless hamburger in a place like this without feeling so guilty that I wake up at two in the morning and start doing leg lifts.’’ She contemplated the morsel of chicken before her for a few seconds, then finally popped it into her mouth. “I really shouldn’t be eating these.”

  “Listen, if I burned up a hundred calories every time I said that phrase, I’d be giving Cher a run for her money. Hey, go get yourself a salad. I’ll watch the kids.

  “And get another order of fries—for Sammy, of course.’’

  “So what’s new with you?” Nikki asked a few minutes later as Jessica joined her once again, this time maneuvering a tray full of food. “How are things in the McAllister household?”

  Jessica’s response was a deep sigh.

  “Uh, oh. I’m sorry I asked.”

  “No, you should be glad you asked. I mean, after all, if I can’t complain to my best friend, who can I complain to?”

  “Well, a member of a more optimistic portion of our nation’s population of females might suggest that you try talking to your husband.”

  “Except that my husband is what I want to complain about.”

  “Oh, so it’s David again. The dynamic young engineer on the rise.”

  Jessica gave her a glare. “He’s on the rise, all right. And lately, I’m starting to feel like it’s more at my expense than anything else.”

  “What’s this? Rebellion in the ranks? Mutiny in the laundry room?”

  “Actually, I’m still at the stage where I’m stewing about all this. The point where I become really mad—when I’m yelling and screaming and foaming at the mouth—won’t come until later.”

  “So what’s going on, exactly?”

  Jessica sighed. “When I got pregnant with Sammy, David and I both agreed that it would be a good idea for me to take some time out from my career in order to raise him. It all sounded so good... in theory. I pictured myself as this sort of madonna, serenely rocking an angelic child in a bentwood rocker, waiting for Ozzie to come home from work to complement my Harriet.’’ She grimaced. “What I didn’t imagine was that my status would plummet lower than that of a ladies’ room matron. Knowing that society looks down on me, labeling me a ‘housewife’ with all the negative connotations that implies. I mean, that’s bad enough. But even in my own house? Lately I’ve been noticing that David’s been getting into it with just a little too much enthusiasm.”

  “I think I know what you mean. Since you sit around the house all day, doing nothing but reading magazines and polishing your nails, why shouldn’t you have dinner on the table every night at seven? Oh, and while you’re at it, how about keeping the house cleaner than my mother ever did, while still remaining conversant in politics, economics, theater. ...”

  “Exactly. A few weeks ago David wanted me to pick up his dry cleaning—forgetting that the dry cleaner is about two hundred yards out of his way as he drives to work—and when I balked, he came out with the classic line: ‘It’s easier if you do it.’ Hah! Easier for whom is what I’d like to know.”

  “I know. I keep thinking that if my husband were still single, he’d manage to find a way to work all day and continue his meaningful relationship with the dry cleaner. I know I did, when I was working.”

  “Yeah, but if our husbands were single, they’d probably get their girlfriends to do it for them.”

  Jessica shoved a handful of lukewarm French fries into her mouth without even noticing she had done it. “Our agreement, back when I was pregnant, was not that I’d become his slave. Our plan was that for a period of time—unspecified, but limited—I would take care of Sammy full-time, and he would be the one to make the money.’’

  “Yeah,” Nikki interjected dryly. “Talk about Ozzie and Harriet.”

  “But it was supposed to be different. I mean, I used to make more money than he did! If I went back to work tomorrow, I’d probably make, I don’t know, maybe twice his salary.” Remembering her salad and her good intentions, she plucked out a forkful of lettuce and stared at it. “Lately I keep thinking about calling Ed Coulter, my old boss at Klinger, to ask for my old job back. I’ll never forget his promise on my last day there. The secretaries had just held this ridiculous and utterly embarrassing baby shower for me, and I was sitting
at my desk, which was covered with pink and blue wrapping paper and all kinds of stretchies and rattles and things, and he walked in, looked me squarely in the eye, and said, ‘Jess, any time you want your old job back, all you have to do is pick up the phone.’ “

  “Is that really what you want? To go back to work?”

  Jessica sighed. “Not really. Well, maybe. Oh, hell, at this point, I don’t know what I want. And even if I did, I don’t know if I could overcome the guilt enough to actually do it.

  “You know, it’s really ironic. I spent all those years in school so I wouldn’t have to end up like my mother, washing somebody else’s coffee cup and throwing his dirty socks in the washing machine. I was so careful; I didn’t make any of the traditional female mistakes. I didn’t screw around in the backseat of cars and get pregnant when I was sixteen. I didn’t drop out of college to put some jerk through medical school. I didn’t go into a career with the idea that it was just a temporary thing, until I met Mr. Right. I was serious, you know? Yet here I am, Phi Beta Kappa key and all, starting every day of my life making the beds and washing the dishes and mopping up the spilled apple juice that hubby magically managed not to notice.”

  “Maybe Freud was right,” Nikki said grimly. “Maybe biology really is destiny.’’

  “Bite your tongue.”

  “Hey, face it. Gloria Steinem forgive me, but we’re still the ones whose bodies make the babies. And no matter how hard we fight, it seems like that simple fact always comes back to haunt us.”

  “Whatever happened to the feminist movement?” Jessica asked. “Just think: fifteen years ago, it was actually in style to be a woman.”