She Is Me

by Cathleen Schine

  She put Barbie and Dr. Chuck Bovaine at an Oscar party given by a studio head named Wolf. In the emergency room, Dr. Bovaine had sewn up Wolf’s daughter’s Jet-Ski lacerations. When Wolf and his daughter go to the office for a follow-up visit, they meet Barbie, who charms the studio head with her beauty and her gentle presence. And so the doctor and his wife are invited to the Oscar party. No. Not an Oscar party. Wolf’s daughter’s extravagant bat mitzvah. They would dance the hora.

  EXT. BEVERLY HILLS MANSION— EVENING

  Barbie and Chuck ring the bell at the oversize front door. The too-tight waistband of his unfashionable tux cuts into his belly. She, on the other hand, has never looked more beautiful. He grabs her waist, bends to kiss her bare shoulder.

  BARBIE

  Let go of me! You’ll wrinkle my dress!

  A picture of Dr. Anthony Bernard pushed the picture of Dr. Chuck Bovaine aside. Elizabeth’s father had a big head, too big for his body, and a big square face. She saw him bend a big square head to kiss her mother’s shoulder.

  “Tony,” her mother said in protest, squirming away from him.

  Dr. Anthony Bernard turned to a woman on his other side, a beautiful young woman who thought his big head leonine and his square face full of character. A woman named Barbie. He lowered his big square face and kissed her perfect shoulder.

  “Tony,” she said, sighing with pleasure. “Oh, Tony, darling.”

  “Fuck the shoulder kissing,” Elizabeth said out loud. “Who the fuck kisses a fucking shoulder?”

  EXT. BEVERLY HILLS MANSION— EVENING

  Barbie and Chuck ring the bell at the oversize front door. The too-tight waistband of his unfashionable tux cuts into his belly. She, on the other hand, has never looked more beautiful. He bends down to kiss her.

  Barbie turns her face to protect her lipstick. CU Barbie’s face over his shoulder— an expression of bored, bland disgust. She reaches around him and removes a piece of breath-freshening gum from her mouth.

  Greta made the usual round of phone calls, interviewed a new batch of candidates with Elizabeth, and then, finally, chose yet another housekeeper for Lotte. This housekeeper was small but mighty. No matter how vulgar Lotte managed to be, this housekeeper seemed to regard her eccentricities as vibrant and assured— signs of life. Touched by Lotte’s helplessness, impressed by her strength, this housekeeper was tireless, but brought to the apartment a sense of serenity. Most important, this housekeeper was a man. His name was Kougi.

  Kougi and Lotte spent their first afternoon together discussing politics under the watchful eyes of Greta, Tony, Josh, Elizabeth, and Brett. Lotte consigned dirty gangster politician hypocrites to the lowest levels of hell. Kougi nodded soberly, adding only, “‘Drop wisdom, abandon cleverness, and the people will be benefited a hundredfold . . .’”

  Now that Lotte was settled in, Elizabeth returned to her post at Greta’s side. Greta had to explain that mint tea had replaced ice tea as the only palatable food.

  “Mommy, you have to eat,” Elizabeth said.

  Greta was happy to have her back. She loved the sight of Harry struggling up the steps behind his mother. She loved the sound of his voice and the warmth of his body, squeezed in beside her in the big armchair. She loved the sight of Elizabeth, too. Elizabeth came into her house and criticized her and defended her with the intense abandonment that comes of love, the same vehemence she showed toward Harry.

  “You’re impossible,” Elizabeth said.

  “You’re no day at the beach, either,” Greta said.

  Elizabeth stared at her, as though weighing the virtues of being a day at the beach.

  “I’m not?” she said finally. She seemed genuinely surprised.

  Harry climbed off the chair and lay beside the cat in a patch of sunlight.

  Elizabeth made Greta a pot of mint tea, and then another, and then a third.

  “I know you want to help, honey,” Greta said. “But mint tea will not save me.”

  “Yes, it will,” Elizabeth said.

  Greta smiled at her. She held out her arms. Elizabeth put down the pot of tea and knelt in front of the chair Greta sat on. Greta put her arms around her daughter, her day at the beach.

  “Don’t worry,” Greta whispered. She rocked Elizabeth in her arms. “Don’t you worry.”

  Elizabeth buried her face in her mother’s neck, comforted and desperate at once. My mother is here, she thought. She is flesh and blood and a soft voice. Without her, the world would have no flesh, no blood, no voice. The arid future without her mother stretched horribly before her. She pressed her face deeper into the cavity beneath her mother’s chin.

  “Hello!” Greta said to someone behind Elizabeth’s back.

  “A tableau,” said a familiar voice from the direction of the front door.

  “Just a lot of stress,” Greta said. “Enough to go around.”

  Elizabeth raised her face from its warm maternal burrow.

  “Were we supposed to meet?” she said to Daisy, who stood in the doorway, backlit by the bright morning sun.

  “I brought your mother flowers,” Daisy said. She was holding a pot of orchids. They, too, were just a black silhouette against the daylight.

  Elizabeth stood up. That was so nice of Daisy. Odd, but nice.

  “I thought you might be here, though,” Daisy said.

  Well, not so odd, then.

  “They’re beautiful,” Greta was saying. She had taken the pot from Daisy and given her a brush of a kiss on her cheek. The flowers were a pale glowing green that held, inside, their deep pink.

  “Like you,” Daisy said.

  I don’t have to do anything, Greta told herself. I don’t have to go any farther than this with it. It’s a flirtation. Someone in my position deserves a flirtation. How many of us get a flirtation at this stage in life? And how well-timed, really. Chemotherapy is so tiring, so depressing. Daisy is therapeutic, that’s all. A diversion. Occupational therapy.

  “You don’t have to butter up my mother,” Elizabeth said. “It’s my grandmother who requires constant infusions. She’s driving me out of my mind . . .”

  “They really are so beautiful,” Greta said, ignoring Elizabeth. “You’re amazing. To have remembered.”

  “You like them, really? I’m so relieved. I looked at, like, hundreds.”

  An innocent diversion, Greta thought. She met Daisy’s eyes and a tremor of desire passed through her that was so unsettling she reached out for the table to support herself.

  “Remember what?” Elizabeth said.

  “Your mother said she would never buy flowers for herself, and the flower she would most never buy for herself was an orchid.”

  “Yeah,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve never liked them much myself. Too much like flesh.” Although, as she looked at the smooth greenish petals, they didn’t look the least like flesh.

  “Don’t be so conventional,” Greta said. She was beaming. “It was so thoughtful of you, Daisy.”

  “Yes, it was,” Elizabeth said. And I’m not the least bit conventional, she thought. What kind of thing is that for a mother to say to a daughter? “And they’re awfully nice orchids, as orchids go.”

  Her mother’s face was bent over the flowers. Elizabeth wished she had brought orchids for her mother. All she had done was make pots of hot, liquid chewing gum. The pot of blossoms on their tall stems had certainly cheered Greta up. She was smiling in a way Elizabeth did not recognize. Elizabeth knew when her mother was lying, and now, although her mother hadn’t said anything much at all, she felt the same airless tension that surrounded Greta’s untruths.

  “I never knew you liked orchids so much,” Elizabeth said.

  Daisy had settled on a chair outside, near the pool, where she blew big, doughy smoke rings. Elizabeth and Greta stood in the living room with the plant and watched the silver loops rolling toward the sky.

  “You never asked,” Greta said.

  At six A.M. Elizabeth drove Brett to the airport, which was on
ly fifteen minutes away. He was going to Washington to a hearing. Harry slept in his car seat in back.

  “I hate to leave you, baby,” Brett said. “I tried to get out of it. I’ll be back in a few days.”

  “I know.”

  She pulled up to the curb and got out of the car to kiss him good-bye. She wanted to get to her parents’ house. Her father would probably still be home. Maybe she could talk to him. Tell him the story of Madame Bovary. Remind him that adultery does not pay. Remind him that these might be his last days with his companion of thirty years. Thirty-two years, actually. Couldn’t he wait until . . . She stopped herself. She ran her hand through Brett’s hair, making it stick up. She liked it when it stuck up like that. It gave his polished beauty an absurd, more accessible quality.

  “What?” Brett said.

  “I’ll miss you,” she said. Would she? The night before, as Harry slept beside her, his bunny clutched in his arm, Elizabeth told herself it was time to take him to his own room, time to shuffle down the hall with him dangling over her shoulder. But she didn’t stir. From the living room downstairs, beyond several closed doors, she heard the muffled squeal of Brett practicing his bagpipes. She looked at Harry. The sound didn’t seem to bother him. She held him. And when she heard Brett come upstairs, she pretended to be asleep holding Harry. She expected Brett to take Harry from her, to pry him loose, to banish him to his own little room. She felt the heat of her anger at Brett’s anticipated behavior. It spread over her entire body as he entered the bedroom. She hugged Harry. She did not move, frozen in her warm rage.

  Brett had not taken Harry from her. He did not lift him up and carry him to his room. Instead, he stood by the bed for a minute. Perhaps he was gazing affectionately at them. Or was annoyed. Or staring off into space. Elizabeth, her eyes closed tight, could not tell. Then, he had simply squeezed into bed beside Harry and fallen asleep. Elizabeth could hear his breathing, heavy and rhythmic. She could hear Harry’s breathing, light and clear. She had tried to hear her own breathing, but realized she had stopped, and forced herself to exhale. She hung on to Harry and his bunny. There’s no room, she thought. There’s just no room.

  Then she fell asleep and dreamed of a small bedroom bathed in pale white morning light. A sheer white curtain billowed in the breeze. The walls were white. The floor was white. Where was this place? She was lying on a brass bed. The sheets were white. There was no one else there. She was alone in a cool, soft white room.

  “I hate to go,” Brett said, standing outside the car, his arms around her.

  “Why did you agree to follow me out here?” she asked. “The only people you see are my crazy family.”

  “And my crazy family.”

  Elizabeth stared at him blankly. Brett’s parents lived in upstate New York. His sister lived in London.

  “You and Harry,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said. “Right! Harry and me.”

  Once there had been a sense to the world, an order that awaited her when she opened her eyes in the morning, an order that was as real and inevitable as existence itself. But existence is not inevitable, Greta reminded herself. And order could be disrupted by an unexpected pounding of the heart. Daisy Piperno had settled herself by Greta’s feet on the couch when Greta was sleeping. And Greta had awakened.

  Greta dreamed that she needed to put dollar bills into a machine in order to stay parked. But all she had were quarters and dimes and nickels. She looked down at the silver in her hands and said over and over, “I don’t want change, I don’t want change . . .”

  Silly dream, she thought when she woke up. But she was pleased with her nocturnal pun. Her hands shook when she answered the phone and when she took in the mail. She stared at the orchid for half an hour, sipping chamomile tea. Daisy had sent the tea to her the day before. When Greta tore apart the big brown envelope and found a plastic bag, full of tiny flowers, she thought it was marijuana. But then she opened the plastic bag, and the scent of chamomile burst out.

  Greta had closed the bag quickly, guiltily, as if it really had been marijuana, or the dried flowers would give her away. What nonsense, Greta, she thought. You might just as well watch soap operas all day.

  She put the bag of chamomile tea in the cupboard, next to the Twinings and Lipton and Red Rose.

  “What’s this?” Tony said that night, after dinner, digging in the cabinet. He opened the bag and sniffed.

  “I thought maybe . . .”

  “Right. For the nausea. Good idea.”

  Greta took the bag from him and inhaled the slightly medicinal smell. What shall I do? she thought. Should I talk to him about this? What is it I would be talking to him about, anyway? A dream? A pun? A bag of tea?

  “Does it help?” he said.

  He opened a packet of powdered hot chocolate and emptied it into a mug.

  And she didn’t want to worry him. He already worried about her so much, too much. She saw how uncomfortable he was, how sad, how eagerly he left the house. He had always spent a lot of time out of the house. It was probably why their marriage worked. But now he left so she wouldn’t see how worried he was. How could she add to his worries? It would be unfair.

  “I’m sure that’s carcinogenic,” she said.

  “All natural. Natural and nutritionless. No worse than chamomile tea. Except the sugar. And the cocoa powder. And God knows what else. Now, Water, that’s an issue. Not just in California. All over the United States. Of course, that’s partly because California siphons off everyone else’s Water . . .”

  The kettle whistled.

  “The Extinction of the beaver population has contributed to Water Pollution . . .”

  “Tony, I didn’t buy the tea.”

  “You didn’t steal it, did you? You’re not turning into one of those Kleptomaniac Housewives, are you?”

  Housewife? Since when was she a housewife?

  “Since when have I become a housewife?” she said.

  Tony had tilted the kettle over the cocoa. Some of the boiling water sloshed over the side of the mug. Greta saw sickly little marshmallows bobbing in the cup.

  “What are you talking about?” he said.

  “Go to hell,” Greta said. “Go to hell!”

  She ran to the bedroom and sat on the end of the bed. She smelled chamomile and looked down at her hand, still holding the bag of tea. She stood up and walked back across the room. She had forgotten to slam the door.

  The trouble with adultery is you don’t know whose side you’re on. Madame Bovary was a victim, Madame Bovary was a selfish monster. Madame Bovary was tragedy, Madame Bovary was farce. A lover is an active noun, one who acts. A lover is an object, the one you take. I love you: I am your lover. I love you: I take you as my lover.

  Whose side are you on?

  The lovers’ side.

  The faithful husband’s side

  The wrong side of the bed.

  Elizabeth took a Diet Pepsi from her mother’s refrigerator and opened it. It exploded, caramel foam flopping onto the kitchen floor.

  “Whose side are we on?” Elizabeth said as she mopped up the mess. “The infantile social-climbing Emma? But she’s so much more than that. And so much less. She’s a woman full of ambition in a world that has no room for women with ambition. She’s a girl who’s been taught to seek the sublime in the banal. To exchange tradition for convention, then to exchange convention for pretension . . .”

  Daisy sat at the kitchen table reading the most recent pages of the script. She looked up calmly, her finger bent back, at an odd angle, holding her place on the page. “Emma Bovary doesn’t know the difference between passion and romance,” she said. “That’s all.”

  “Love and romance,” Elizabeth said. “Between love and romance.”

  “Love.” Daisy repeated the word as if it were in another language, slowly, earnestly. “That’s the word, all right, Cookie,” she added in her more familiar manner of gentle condescension.

  Daisy had turned out to be incredibly h
elpful. Attentive. That was the best word. She often just appeared at the door, like a neighborhood kid at the house that stocked the best snacks. If Elizabeth wasn’t there yet, she would wait, patient, decorative, undemanding, a nice diversion for Greta. If Elizabeth had already left when Daisy arrived, still she would spend a little time with Elizabeth’s parents. They adored her, of course. She was adorable, Elizabeth agreed. Daisy had a handful of interchangeable pet names for everyone— Cookie and Pussycat and Babe— and she brought Harry a hat from the thrift store that made him look like Humphrey Bogart.

  Elizabeth mopped up the spilled soda and muttered to herself in a singsong. “Love and romance, love and passion, love and longing, love and lotsa luck . . .”

  Daisy was looking at her, much the way she had the day they met at Volfmann’s beach house when Harry spilled the vase of flowers. She didn’t offer to help. Elizabeth felt her watching, rapt but distant, as if Elizabeth were suspended in an aquarium, and she, Daisy, on an afternoon outing.

  Elizabeth said, “What?”

  Daisy smiled at her.

  Elizabeth smiled back. “What? What are you looking at?”

  “God, you have a great smile.”

  Elizabeth, embarrassed now, tried, unsuccessfully, to frown.

  When Greta had her next break from chemotherapy, in which her body could try to regain some of the strength lost to the poison drips, a vacation of sorts, a holiday, she determined to use the time to tend to her mother and to allow herself to be lured to her doom. For surely adultery was doom. Elizabeth was not the only person who had ever read Madame Bovary. And adultery with a woman— that had to be a special, double dose of doom.

  How had she come to this pass? She didn’t want to be a lesbian, a word that brought to mind either unstylish women in poorly tailored pantsuits or trendy college girls who would one day regret their tattoos. She had no political interest in gay rights. She was too privileged, too protected even to be much of a feminist. Her mother had always done just as she liked and Greta was expected to do the same— as little or as much as that might be. Greta tried to imagine her mother, dressed to kill, her nose flapped to the side, marching with PFLAG.