If after all the joyous hope it in fact did not work out, she was devastated and had to think it all through again. In some ways she did not want to become the kind of person she now resented. But then again she did. It was the only way to not get hurt by them, again.
She had a girlfriend to cry to and cheer her on. When she tried again, Eva would say “I believe in you.” Mary appreciated this, but she also knew that the words were offered somewhat in innocence. Eva, after all, was a lifelong New Yorker, and a lawyer, and although she was accomplished, she was not ambitious. Eva didn’t realize what it was like to need help to realize your natural calling, how humiliating that was. Eva had been handed everything. She was born in New York, after all, and knew how to act.
Telling Mary “You can do it” and other cheers was in some ways a contrivance for Eva to feel more sympathetic, i.e., the person she wanted to be. Ever since the legal clinic had been defunded, Eva had been depressed. Mary knew she felt disappointed in herself. Eva was embarrassed by her own failure, and by the suffering it had caused her clients. Mary felt bad for Eva, but she was also sick of it. It was time for Eva to move on to something better. After all, what was happening to Mary was worse. Eva at least had a law degree; she should be able to solve her problems. Thank God that Hockey had gotten her a new gig. It was good for everyone and would keep the focus where it needed to be.
Eva had loved the clinic, and Mary had been filled with hope. Now Mary felt deep inside that there was a secret connection between Eva not being happy and no one opening the door for Mary. In a vague and unarticulated way, she felt that Eva’s disappointments were exactly the thing keeping that door from opening. Now Eva had to be very, very happy so that Mary could finally make it.
After eight years with Eva, Mary had learned a lot about Jews. No matter what they got, it wasn’t enough. They always wanted more. Regular white people were too satisfied. Like Mary’s family. They thought that wanting anything was asking for trouble. That’s why her own family didn’t get her. She wished for something great, and they found that uncomfortable. Maybe that was the very attitude that kept her from knowing how to get the thing she needed. It was the hidden injury of class.
Mary’s father had been afraid to want, and it didn’t serve him, either. She loved him so much and wanted him to be on her side. For the last ten years of his life, she called him with every detail of hope or expectation, but he never got excited. He couldn’t. He loved her, but her ambition was just a blur. He worried that she was setting herself up for defeat. It smelled to him like covetousness and being too big for her britches. It made him uneasy and it was painful to pay attention. But if he was the example of what happens when you give up on your dreams, it was a fate she wanted to avoid. Mary couldn’t call him after two in the afternoon, because he would be drunk. Her mother would also be drunk. Her mother just disappeared into vague rambles about nothing.
It was so childish. Not having dreams. They were like kids. But she didn’t want them to be. They were her parents, and she loved them no matter what. Couldn’t they put down the bottle and reciprocate? If she called too late in the day, her dad was really out of it. But before two he was usually okay. Sometimes even gruffly funny, like when she was a kid. If Mary went to visit them in Del Sol, they would drive drunk. The few times Eva came along, she had a shit fit. She couldn’t stand all the drinking and the accompanying silence. She would complain about it, call it “morose.” But she would also use her credit card to rent a car so that they didn’t have to ride with the drinkers. Mary’s credit card was maxed out. Eva tried to help, but after two days of straight vodka and silence, she would go in the next room and watch TV until the holiday was over. She met them halfway. But Mary wanted it all.
Eva was nice when Mary’s dad got sick. She did talk about “end-of-life issues,” but was kind. She put Mary first. Her dad drank until every organ in his body turned to water. Mary saw him in the hospital bed, bloated, like an ocean wrapped in skin. One day the skin burst open and all the water came out. Then he died. That night, her mother went out for drinks. After that, her mother, Delilah, would occasionally repeat her dead husband’s phrases, but in a more understated slurry tone. They were:1. Get over it.
2. What are you going to do, start crying again?
3. I’m fine, I’ve moved on.
4. Because I don’t want to.
Eva insisted all the way home that “because I don’t want to” is not a reason. A reason is something like “because I’m afraid that if I try, I will fail and be ashamed.” Statements that Mary and her family would never make in a million years. If she did, Eva would just respond, “You can do it.” So what would be the point?
The truth was that Mary mistrusted Eva’s logic system. And she trusted her parents’ logic system. Even though one belonged to winners and the other to losers. But she was raised in it like she was raised to do the dishes. It was mother’s milk. The trilogy: (1) ambition is dangerous; (2) praise encourages it; and (3) don’t try to better yourself beyond what your folks have achieved. That’s what was so heroic about Mary ultimately, so optimistic. That despite all her conditioning, she tried as hard as a person could to make herself happy. To have the life she had to have. To do what was right. She acted on her own behalf. And she hoped.
When Eva’s father died, after very expensive heart surgery, Nathalie went back to school and got a PhD in education. She studied end-of-life issues among the Jewish elderly. She indulged. When Mary’s father died, Delilah got a new boyfriend and a blender. She got over it. She and Tom liked to make vodka drinks with orange concentrate and crushed ice or some fruit from the garden. They let Eva in the house and even sent her a Christmas card. Eva buys Delilah and Tom the most ambivalent Christmas presents possible, like soap. It’s so embarrassing. How are they supposed to understand why she doesn’t have the right kinds of gifts? Everyone celebrates Christmas. Nathalie and that Ethel treat Eva and Mary like dirt. But they think they’re superior. That’s what Jews are like. They always think they’re better, no matter how they behave. That was a big part of the problems Mary was having professionally. All of these rich WASPS from Ivy League schools and Jews who grew up in New York. They run the world.
“I’m never going to make it.”
“I believe in you,” Eva said. “You can do it.”
13
Driving upstate with Hockey, Eva remembered all her dreams of country houses with big stoves, a writing studio for Mary, a dog. Isn’t that what grownups had? Someday. It would be so lovely. A picture window right over their bed so that the sun would crawl in beneath the trees, and the crisp air, coffee, pancakes, making love, going for walks, talking. The bright, quiet way. What did these houses cost anyhow? It shouldn’t be too impossible. Some day.
Then Hockey turned into Ossining and she remembered her last client to reside here, Fred. The cool black senior citizen who never stopped charming and never stopped cocaine. In and out of jail well into his seventies, but somehow not pathetic. She’d get mail from emergency rooms where he checked in for diabetes, refills of Coumadin, grandpa stuff. And then he’d wrap a way-out mad scarf around his neck, find an old Nehru jacket, and look like one bright dude romancing younger ladies and smoking cocaine.
This time, though, she and Hockey were neutral, in ugly old lawyer clothes. Dull and ill fitting. They didn’t talk much, listened to the radio. Clients are mirrors of lawyers’ wishful wannabe selves. And David was as bland as they get. No acne or drooling; he didn’t look like a monsignor or mortician. Just a regular video store clerk in his forties, a loser with someone to love. Being incarcerated did nothing for him. He didn’t bulk up like most, or act tough. He just stared at the ceiling. That was depressing. This life wasn’t for him; he wasn’t accepting enough to figure out how to get by.
“Can you get me out?”
“I know,” Eva said, “it’s awful.”
“I’m getting fat, I’m growing breasts. How do I get out?”
That happe
ned sometimes. Exercise takes motivation. Especially with all the white bread. David could pull off a few push-ups in his cell, but he was never a gym queen before and didn’t even know what to do with the weights. Better to just hide on the bunk and keep very, very quiet.
Eva inhaled. This was her plan to cheer him up. That’s what she always seemed to be after, helping the person in front of her out of a nightmare of unfairness. With a plan. Things never turn around without one. The forces are too strong.
“How are you holding up?”
David was panicked. “One of the weirdest things about being in jail is that you can’t have conversations with anybody. No one knows how to discuss. They just take a position and repeat it over and over again. And if you don’t give up, they’ll stab you. No one knows how to take in information or how to negotiate.”
Hockey smiled. “That’s why they’re in jail.”
“Then why am I here?”
“What do you think?” that was Eva, being a therapist.
“People are fucked up about sex.”
The two lawyers had their two different reactions to that one. Yes. And but.
“But,” Hockey said, “a lot of people don’t agree with fucking little boys. Take some responsibility. You shouldn’t be in jail, but come on, David. Stew needs a boyfriend his own age to ruin his life.”
“Just get me out of here.”
“I really think we can.” That was Eva. She’s the one who agreed that he was being victimized.
“Great. How?” There was hope, suddenly, in David’s face.
Eva felt the breeze of grace. This was her calling. People were treated unjustly. If they didn’t have enough power to protect themselves, others had to intervene and help. It was the primary responsibility of being a human. It was the reason to have society. Now if only someone would intervene for Eva with her family. It had to happen some day. Maybe her niece/nephew would be the one to put a stop to this. She had to wait. There also needed to be someone who would intervene for Mary. She deserved a fair opportunity. Eva prayed there would be a person with decency and mercy who could open that door for her beloved. Someone had to intervene for Hockey. He needed better meds and didn’t know how to invent them himself. And Stew. He had to get an apartment in Brooklyn somewhere and start all over again. Find a nice boyfriend to come home to who would be responsible and generous. Now Eva was intervening for David, being her best. Fighting for someone who needs it–that’s what life is all about.
“I think if we work with the truth and we’re smart, we can win. Our argument is fair. It’s clear and true. If we explain it well, we should win.”
“What is the truth?” Hockey snapped. She knew he’d been feeling poorly about everything and not able to get caught up in the fight yet. Maybe that’s why he was being sarcastic. He was scared. That made sense.
Eva was scared, too. “That there is a double standard in the culture for May-December romances. And David should not have to go to jail for twenty-five years–or at all–just because he’s an older man romancing a younger one and not a professor having an affair with his female graduate student.”
“That sounds okay.” David cheered up considerably. He wasn’t alone, and it showed on his face.
People need each other. David needed them, and now Hockey needed her. Walking back to the car, Eva could see that Hockey was not feeling well at all. He was pissy. Sad.
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
The best thing was to not condescend. To treat him as if it wasn’t happening until he said that it was.
“Hockey, is that really why you think people are in jail? Because they don’t know how to negotiate? It’s because they don’t have rights.”
“You’re funny. People aren’t as weak as you think.”
“What do you mean?”
“Eva, you think everything is logical.” He slid behind the wheel and they were off on the return through river, tree, lean steeples, whispering pines, crackle. “You just figure out what’s going on, and then you explain it clearly and everything will be okay. Nothing works that way. You can’t win like that. People don’t just capitulate because you’re telling the truth.”
“It would be very good for me to learn how to fight and win.”
“Winning is good. I just remembered.”
“It would be a new feeling for me.” All those welfare cases Eva had fought for so many years. Even if the client won, they often ultimately lost. They won a meager benefit in a no-win system.
“It’s all coming back to me.” Hockey was doing seventy. Breaking the rules but not expecting a consequence. “When it comes to the law there’s something stronger than truth, smarts, or love of justice.”
“What’s that?”
“Strategy.”
They sat in the car in silence for a while, toyed with the radio. Eva didn’t say anything, but she was thinking. She remembered that strategy could win a very hollow victory. She wanted to remind Hockey of something he believed in. Something that would remind him that people’s lives matter.
“If Jose had lived, would he ever have betrayed you?”
“Never.”
That was the source of life, having been loved. Eva sat back, relaxed. Hockey still knew what was true.
14
Stew was in the kitchen boiling eggs for egg salad. Far behind there was a wind chime and incessant yapping of alien forces. He let those eggs cook for twelve minutes just to be sure. They would be as hard as potatoes and tougher to criticize. His mother and sister liked everything just so.
His mother and Carole were sitting in the adjacent living room drinking coffee. They had matching mother-daughter haircuts and dye jobs, but Carole was fatter. Although a mother herself, she had a girlish plump. Stew knew that if they stepped into the kitchen and caught him making their lunch with runny eggs, they would let him have it all right.
The two women were discussing purchases, banal details, the tiniest maneuvers. Earlier that day they had walked on a street together and shared some common topics, traded minor decisions. These were experiences that Stew would never have with his mother or his sister. He would like to, but he couldn’t give them what they demanded in return. A mirror. Instead he made them uncomfortable. He was living proof of another world. Anything Stew said was viewed with suspicion. No one would identify with it. There was no way on this planet that he was going near that living room to let them look down on him. He would not give them the chance they craved to tell their in-jokes and display their intimacies. Stew would not let them raise their eyebrows and throw glances across the room at each other, even though obviously that is what they wanted most of all. They wanted to show off that they were in and he was out.
“Mom, you remember when Christina divorced Bobby, that lawyer she used?”
That was Carole.
“The black guy? You don’t need a divorce. You and Sam can work it out. Just deal with your problems. Don’t blame him and everything will be all right.” Brigid sucked on a Carlton. “If men blame themselves, we have to pay. They can’t live with it. I don’t care if everything’s my fault as long as my life doesn’t fall apart. Blame it on me, big deal. What do I care?”
Stew knew they were sending him messages about how they were the real family. Mom and Dad and Carole and her husband, Sam, and their little son, Victor. There was no question about it. They were the ones that nobody tried to get rid of, to kick out the door into juvenile hall, all the time pretending they didn’t want to, just had to. Once they got him out, they would never let him back in. Then he’d have to peddle his ass and be poor forever. His mother’s and sister’s tones of intimacy felt heightened as never before. He began to suspect that they purposefully designed to prove what an outsider he was. They were planning it. Showing off how they talk to each other four times a day on the telephone, and that whenever his name came up, it was always as the negative example. About how terrible he is.
“Everything okay in there?”
/> That was Carole again.
“Yeah,” Stew called back. “Lunch is almost ready.”
Stew ran the hot eggs under the cold water. They were still too hot to handle. He held one in a paper towel, but it was too hot. He dropped it. Fucking egg. He hated that egg. He picked it up and smashed it in the sink, pressed his palm down on it and squashed it. It was too rubbery. He stabbed it to death with a knife, puncturing the rubbery shell. Immediately he was terrified. What if Carole came in? They’d call the police. Quickly he started scooping up the egg and wrapping it in a napkin, stuffing it into his jacket pocket so he could throw it away later at the 7-Eleven. But the eggshell pieces were too small, and he had to pick them all off the metal sink.
He plucked the next hot egg and dropped it. This time on purpose. He stomped it. The egg squashed out onto the linoleum, and Stew admired it for one fleeting moment before picking it up with a paper towel. He propped a chair against the kitchen door, then he sponged the floor and then used the same sponge on a dish, even though it was forbidden. If anyone had seen him smash an egg, they would raise their eyebrows and then gab about it on the phone, repeating the same stupid words for hours. For years. They would never let it go.
Stew cracked another egg and peeled it. Then another. He mashed them up in a bowl with a fork and added some mayonnaise. He got mayonnaise on his fingers and wiped it on the wall. Then, afraid, he washed it off with a sponge. He couldn’t breathe.
“Victor, help Uncle Stew.”
Victor came in through the swinging doors wearing oversized baseball regalia, some of it inherited from Uncle Stew, like the cap that fell over the kid’s eyebrows.
“I’m mad,” Stew said.
“I’m hungry,” Victor answered.
“Carole just wants to show off how your grandma knows every fucking detail of her stupid life.” Stew peeled the remaining eggs. “I have friends who have great lives, filled with things those two corpses could never imagine. If I tried to tell them, they would be too stupid to get it.”
The Child Page 9