Turbulence

by Annette Herfkens

  Josephine is born an hour later. Seeing Jaime talking to his girl through my tears of joy while they stitched me up says all there was to say about the duality of life.

  My mother gets a granddaughter after all: Josephine Leonie Lupa. We nickname her Joosje.

  TWO BLOND BABIES

  Joosje makes me a mother on Mother’s Day. As it happens, it is also the last day before the maternity ward of New York Hospital closes, and I am the last mother to give birth there. A nurse asks me whether I want to be interviewed for a New York TV station, while she intends to move us to the new Greenberg Pavilion; I politely refuse, because it is not the time to out Joosje yet, and definitely not on TV. In fact, I’d rather go home, and we decide to sneak out. It is an exhilarating experience to go into the hospital with the two of us and come out with three. If only we were not suddenly approached by a camera crew. A man I recognize as the Republican senator from New York, Al D’amato, comes forward to congratulate us. I reluctantly shake his hand and smile wryly for the camera, hoping that my Wall Street brothers are watching another TV channel.

  We set up my office in the living room from which I trade happily while dancing with joyful Joosje in my arms.

  Jaime interprets Ana’s wishes to keep our domestic arrangements quiet in the strictest possible way. He is absolutely adamant that nobody in the bank or in the market should find out.

  • • •

  The second pregnancy is much easier to hide than the first. A year has passed, and our colleagues have gotten used to seeing me infrequently in the office. They assume I am traveling. Our subordinates, on the other hand, get used to reporting to me at home. Once in a while, they come to my apartment to fix my computer. They merrily play with Joosje on our terrace. I think they are proud to share this secret with the great Ana Botín, the charismatic co-owner of the bank.

  Because I work from home, I have the double life of the working mother in a very literal way. When I am hanging out with moms from Joosje’s preschool, who do not have or want to work at all, nobody sees me as a working mother. Although I often excuse myself to talk to Jaime on my cell phone, they view it as hubby stuff rather than market stuff. When sitting on the bench at a playground, I listen in wonder to their timeless conversations. When a toddler interrupts, they just forget the previous subject altogether and move on to the next one. It doesn’t matter, because they are in the moment with their children. I don’t feel that yet. I feel like an imposter. As I also do with the working moms when they complain about the lack of focus of the nonworking mothers. Why are they creating camps? I wonder. Perhaps it is done out of insecurity. Motherhood is prone to constant judgment. And so are the children, as a result. Collective judging functions to bind one group, for they are right, leaving the others out in the wrong.

  Considering we are living in the lion’s den—the Upper East Side, the neighborhood where most investment bankers live—we have surprisingly few sticky situations. Until my neighbor takes me to a playgroup, by invitation. Girls only. I am a novice at motherhood, but these mothers own that role fully and efficiently, with a distinct Upper East Side twist.

  I am in a large apartment with a playroom, maid’s room, and eat-in kitchen. Framed artwork in the kids’ corner, the frames matching little benches. There are schedules everywhere, and multiple printed invitations on the fridge. A special Lego table with a hole in the middle and a bag underneath to catch the bricks. The kids’ bedrooms are in different colors but match with extreme consistency. The curtains, the bathrobes, the multitude of cushions, everything is coordinated.

  The nanny is minding our daughters in the playroom; the mothers are in the dining room, having bagels and coffee. They talk about their husbands, their likes and dislikes at dinner parties. They talk about their most-wanted private school. I watch and listen in awe.

  Suddenly, I hear the hostess say, “My husband has moved to ING and is much happier now; he is an emerging markets economist.” ING? Emerging markets? I gasp for air. I grab my friend’s arm and guide her into another room. “I have to go. He must be working right next to my old pals; I am finished if they find out.” The market is a place full of gossip. My friend is cool. She hands me Joosje’s coat, when she notices a pile of passports on the desk near the window. She quickly skips through them and shows me a picture of a man in a suit. “Do you know him?” she asks. I don’t know. I can’t focus; I am too nervous to look. I just have to get out of there.

  I sneak out and let my friend do the good-byes for me. And I resign from the playgroup.

  When Joosje is two months old, we bump into a trader from Salomon Brothers near the hospital. Jaime tells him he is babysitting his niece, and not knowing what to do with her, he called me to help him out. The trader tests: “And does Annette know what to do?”

  “I am a natural,” I answer, with my best poker face.

  • • •

  A year later, pushing Joosje in her stroller, we almost bump into a colleague from Santander at Blockbuster, but Jaime turns around just in time. As he does in the park, when he spots his ex-boss from Citibank.

  • • •

  We only get busted by the market after Maxi is born, when a fax is sent from a New York office to a London office. Someone has just seen Jaime Lupa pushing a double stroller with two blond babies, both with Annette’s face.

  Two blond babies, New York, 2001

  THE ORANGE MAN

  Jaime and I often find that we are invited to dinner parties just to tell my story. Jaime will oblige beautifully, with pathos and drama, always exceeding our hosts’ expectations. By contrast, I always play it down. I just shrug and say, “It wasn’t that bad,” or “No, it hasn’t really changed me.” I know that I fall short of everyone’s expectations.

  Inevitably and thankfully, the conversation then turns to the mystery of the orange man. The man who I believed had been watching me in the jungle.

  “He must have been a monk,” the other guests suggest. “They do wear orange in that part of the world.”

  “But it was bright plastic orange,” I counter. “Official orange. He might have been a government official, waiting for all of us to die. To avoid paying damages, perhaps. They obviously go to great lengths to avoid that.”

  Of course, they ask why I didn’t get any money. I explain the law passed by the Vietnamese government soon after the crash, limiting liability to twenty thousand US dollars, way below international standards. “Twenty thousand dollars? That’s all you got?” our hosts exclaim, horrified.

  I tell them that I have refused to accept it. “Thank you, but no thank you. I would have had to sign off on all further claims. And who knows what will happen in the future. They might start caring about tourists, and me! I could still become disabled in some way, mentally or physically. I am not waiving!”

  “That could establish motive,” my hosts suggest. “Sending the orange man to watch you die.” That has crossed my mind.

  Someone asks, “But didn’t they send a helicopter to rescue you?”

  I shrug again. “That’s what I heard, but I never saw a helicopter. You’d think I would have noticed. All I did all day was look at the sky.”

  “And the orange man, what did he do? Did he say anything? Did you do anything to get his attention?”

  “I screamed, I waved, I cursed in every language, but he just stood there, like a staring statue. He did not lift a finger.”

  In the end, everyone agrees that I must have been hallucinating.

  YOGA, 2001

  When I finally turn forty, I am more than ready for my next decade. So much happened in my thirties: Pasje, London, Madrid, New York, the crash, Jaime, Joosje, Maxi. The only drawback is that I promised myself that at this estimable age I would finally begin exercising. I’ve never really worked out before. I’ve never believed I needed to. Not until I turned forty.

  I decide on yoga, which seems the path of least resistance. I target a friend to come along.

  We join a yoga place wit
h an established yogi somewhere in Midtown. It turns out yoga was the new “in” thing to do. It seems to have its own breed of women: long hair, skinny, with straight backs and serene smiles. They are dressed in tank tops and leotards. They sure hug a lot.

  “That sweater is soooo looovely,” says one to another. It should be; it’s Prada.

  At the center of these long-legged nymphs sits a short-legged, pot-bellied yogi, well into his fifties, with long, gray hair. Even less-dirty minds would not be oblivious to all the sexual joy that charges the air. Hugh Heffner comes to mind.

  One of the most beautiful nymphs, Rachel, becomes our semiprivate yoga teacher. We meet in a little room with a view of the diligently stretching, cool Midtown crowd.

  I listen to Rachel’s instructions with uncharacteristic focus. It’s always been a challenge for me to listen and act out instructions in sync. It makes me want to joke around. Not anymore. Now I oblige. I am forty.

  Rachel makes us balance on one foot. I am supposed to cradle the other foot while focusing on a single spot on the floor. I look at my scars and at my missing toes while rocking my foot like a baby. The remaining toes are in obvious need of a pedicure. I stumble and step back.

  “Focus!” Rachel says.

  I have to breathe deeply, in and out, like some pervert making an obscene phone call. In and out, in and out. One leg toward the back, both arms to the front. My seemingly fit body feels awfully limited. I can’t even straighten my legs.

  “It has to come from your core strength,” Rachel says. From where? “Body and mind in balance. You connect your mind to your body through your breath,” she says. Mind over matter! I held my breath and pushed myself up to plank position.

  “Don’t judge,” Rachel says. “Don’t compare.”

  Now that she says it, I notice that my friend is doing a much better job. She is more focused and stronger than I am.

  Don’t think of her. Focus!

  I look at my friend focusing. She doesn’t bother judging her surroundings. Not now, anyway. The rest of the day she judges loud toddlers, non-potty-trained toddlers, fat toddlers, skinny toddlers, working mothers, and nonworking mothers with nannies. She even judges childless women for loving their cats as if they were children.

  How can you rate someone else’s love?

  Let it go! Stop judging her. Focus on your breathing.

  I look at the clock. Fifteen more minutes. Rachel makes us do a headstand. That is easy for me. As inflexible as I appear now, I have been good at gymnastics since I was little, and I loved standing on my head. I might lack core strength, but I am still light and supple. Up went my legs, against the wall. My friend is still struggling. Hey, look at me! I breathe in, I breathe out, sounding like a grungy dog.

  “No ego!” Rachel says. “Just let go.”

  And finally, I do. During the meditation at the end of the yoga session. Out of nowhere, after a class of battling my overly active mind, there it is: my jungle. My jungle in all its glory and beauty, with its lush green and energizing leaves. My mind goes blank. In a golden silence and a silent gold.

  The teacher later describes it as Samadhi, the superconscious state of union with the divine. When the fluctuations of the mind stop completely. When the little self connects to the higher self, to the center, to the universe.

  I can tell from her face that she finds it hard to believe that I would make it there at all, let alone that fast. A materialistic, opinionated, bacon-devouring, outgoing, left-brained investment banker.

  It is beginner’s luck. Like my first golf lesson, when I hit the ball really far and straight, with that perfect ping.

  It takes me years of practice to get back up there. Many yoga classes and teachers later, I learn to connect to my body through my breathing. To breathe into my painful shoulder and leg. I even learn to use the breathing as reins for my brain, to get that same neutral mind I had in the jungle. The mind that lets me be a witness to my surroundings and to myself. In the jungle, my labored, one-lung breathing steadily reminded me that every high and low arises from and returns to a neutral place. That there is a stillness in the pause between breaths that is always there and available. To everyone, at any time.

  SENTENCED, 2001

  Jaime and I are sitting on a couch. A two-seater, which makes us sit closer together. It occurs to me that we are supposed to be holding hands. Like the couples on TV, waiting to see what prize they will be awarded or making a plea for their sick or missing child. Of course, we don’t, but something tells me it might not be a bad idea. The whole scene feels like a play: the elegant office with striped wallpaper and heavy curtains; the ottoman with the damask fabric and gold trim; and the matching Victorian couch, with us sitting on it. Enter the Upper East Side therapist, a Hermes scarf wrapped around her shoulders, her reddish hair up in a bun.

  She is here for couples like us, couples willing to pay hundreds of dollars an hour for speech therapy for their two-year-olds. She had evaluated Maxi the week before. I was on that couch alone then. With curled toes and white knuckles. Maxi was so obviously not complying with the therapist’s instructions. Like he didn’t comply at his posh music class at Diller Quaile, where I often got dirty looks from the other mothers for letting my son disrupt their perfect world. After class they whispered. They avoided eye contact as we strapped our children in their strollers. They made an obvious effort not to have to walk down Madison Avenue with me. They turned silent when I caught up with them because of a red light. It was OK. He was my second child. I had been there and I had done that. Literally. I had walked down that avenue with the other mothers, listening to the cocky—or rather, “henny”—conversations about that one odd child. If only by walking with them, I had gone along with avoiding the “unfortunate” mother. Now I knew how she must have felt.

  The speech therapist insists Jaime and I come together this time. So here we are, not hand in hand, on the couch. She looks at us with trained compassion, which we are still unaware we deserved.

  “I am very worried about your son,” she says. Something in my ears start ringing. “I have tested him for more than just speech.”

  Oh, God. “I have reasons to believe that he has PDD.” Jaime looks blank. I know what she is talking about. Only a fortnight earlier I had woken Jaime up, crying that Maxi could be autistic. It was four in the morning. I had spent two hours surfing the Internet with my heart racing. Mothers know best, they say. Fuck it. I wish I didn’t. PDD stands for pervasive development disorder. This diagnosis had been invented for those who do not fulfill all criteria for autism. No two-year-old does, so this diagnosis leaves some room for hope. Autism does not. It is a prognosis of never and always. I knew that. “You are lucky that we caught this early,” she says. “With intensive therapy he might still live a full life.” Now we are both nodding, as if we are listening to the details of a sentence. “You have to get on it now! I’ll send my report to the best agency for early intervention.”

  Walking to the appointment, we felt upbeat. A winning couple striding down Park Avenue. Well dressed and self-possessed, we had passed our daughter’s preschool in a church on Park and 85th. She was safe and sound inside. It was a good feeling, especially as we discussed a guy who had just paid a million bucks to get his child accepted. We congratulated ourselves. As foreigners we had beaten the odds without even realizing it. We had no trouble being accepted, whether it was for the co-op, the preschool, or the preppy music classes, and these things were apparently the neighborhood’s highest purpose. After this preschool, it would be kindergarten, and from there into the best college, and so on.

  We had not even changed in the process: Jaime’s hair was still longish and I still blurted out whatever came to my Dutch mind. We lived off Fifth Avenue. We made good money. We had a busy social life. Invitations to Upper East Side events decorated our refrigerator and we wrote thank-you notes on personalized stationery. We had two adorable toddlers. Our future was bright.

  As our sentence is being prono
unced, I struggle to hear above the roar of emotions flooding my ears. I watch myself taking down phone numbers given by the therapist and picking up my bag to leave the office. What now? I am trying to adjust to our future. All I could come up with is the vanishing image of the four of us in two golf carts. I try to picture Raymond from Rain Man. Blank. I feel an ice-cold hand around my heart.

  We have just lost Maxi’s future.

  DOOMED, 2001

  We are invited to a dinner party at our friend’s house. I am early, so I wander into Barnes & Noble. I walk over to the Special Needs section. Reluctantly. I still feel that with every book I read Maxi’s diagnosis becomes more irreversible.

  There are only a few books on autism. I pick one out, open it at random, and glance at the page. “Autistic children break up families,” I read. “The sleepless nights, the constant unpredictability: eighty-five percent of the parents end up divorced.” I close the book.

  I walk over to my friend’s house in a daze, in a world of my own. A new, scary world. My friend opens the door with her apron on. She is still cooking. I tell her what I had read. She hands me a glass of Sancerre.

  I burst out crying.

  ADJUSTMENTS, 2001

  After Maxi’s preliminary diagnosis, I first have to mourn his future as I picture it. Define what is lost and stay still with it, the things he and I would never be able to do.

  I see happy families everywhere. “Normal” families. Fathers and sons playing baseball. Brothers and sisters playing tag. Mothers taking pictures. Each child looks straight at the lens and smiles. At least now I knew why lately Maxi does not. Autism. Full-fledged. That final diagnosis comes eventually. Years later, after we’d spend thousands of dollars and hours on special therapies and tests. There is a whole market out there for tired and desperate parents like Jaime and me.