The Real Mother

by Judith Michael

“On the Internet. Everything’s on the Internet. So is he?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed. He seems very comfortable with me, anyway.”

  “He’s probably good at faking those things.”

  Sara contemplated her. “Carrie, have you considered the possibility that you will find something wrong with any man I seem to like?”

  There was a small silence, then Carrie said brightly, “So when do we get to see this mysterious Mr. New York? We really want to, you know; we really ought to.”

  “And you will. Soon, I think. Maybe we’ll all go hiking next weekend. By the way, he’s not living in New York right now; he bought a house here, for a project he’s building west of the city.”

  “What kind of a project?”

  “A huge development. In fact, it’s really a town.”

  “A town? A whole town?”

  “It sounds like it. Houses, stores, a school, playing fields, a library…Pretty much a real town.”

  “Wow,” Doug breathed. “That is so cool. Can we see it?”

  “Right now there’s not much to see; it’s still being planned. But the land is beautiful: wild grasses and flowers, lots of trees, and a stream running through—”

  “Well, when they’re building it, can we see it? When it’s got cranes and bulldozers and earthmovers and stuff?”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.” She looked at her watch. “I have to leave. I wish I didn’t, but I do. There are cookies and fruit for dessert, and then please clean up. And do your homework. Abby will be home—”

  “—at nine-thirty,” Carrie said. “Sara, we’re quite fine. We’re perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves; you let me babysit in the neighborhood all the time.”

  “You’re not babysitting,” Doug said loudly. “ ‘There’s no baby in this house.”

  Sara laughed and kissed them. “I’ll call to make sure Abby gets home.”

  Of course she’ll get home, she thought as she drove toward Lake Shore Drive. She and Sean had walked to the movie; they probably would be back well before nine-thirty.

  “Nine-thirty,” Abby told Sean as they left the theater and he wanted to drive to the lakefront and park. “Sara said I have to be home then, so I can’t—”

  “So you’ll be a little bit late,” he said impatiently. “What’s the problem? Do you turn into a pumpkin or something?”

  “Something,” she said, trying to make it sound like a joke. Sean never seemed to worry about his family or anything that might interfere with whatever he wanted to do at that very moment. “I’m a free spirit,” he had said soon after they met. “I do what’s best for me and my cause.”

  “Your cause?”

  “Having a good time. The contentment cause. The free-choice cause. The pagan pleasure principle. Whatever works.” And then he had changed the subject. Sean was always changing the subject; it made Abby feel off balance a lot of the time.

  “Come on, Abby,” he wheedled outside the theater, his lips brushing her ear. “I haven’t been alone with you for a week. I long for you when we’re not close.”

  The blood rushed through Abby like the wine Mack gave her when they had dinner without Sara; her legs felt shaky. She tried to draw a long breath, but what came out was a kind of hiccup, and all she could do was shake her head in a kind of desperation. When she found her voice, she said, “I can’t, I just can’t. I have to get the car back before Sara knows I’ve taken it.”

  “She doesn’t know?”

  Abby shook her head again.

  “Well, what a girl. I’m proud of you. My independent free spirit. The pagan pleasure principle. You are my true love. So how will you get it back without her knowing? How did you take it without her knowing?”

  “It was parked a block away; you know how crowded our street…” Her voice trailed away.

  “So if you get back before her, everything’s fine.”

  After a moment, Abby nodded. “Fine.”

  “And she gets home …when?”

  “She’s working till ten, but Carrie and Doug expect me by nine-thirty.”

  He looked at his watch. “Damnation. Well, you can be a little late, and still beat ten o’clock. Come on, my beauty, ten minutes to the lake, twenty minutes for lovemaking, ten minutes to get to your house. We can do it. Come on, come on, love’s awaiting and time’s a-wasting.”

  He hustled Abby to her car and watched impatiently as she fumbled with her keys. She knew Sean hated it that she would not let him drive her car, but she had promised Sara no one else would drive it, and she felt she had to keep at least one of her promises. In most other ways, it seemed she broke a lot of them in always giving in to Sean. Tonight what she wanted to say, but could not, was that she really didn’t want to go to the lakefront; that the place she was happiest was not in the stuffy darkness of a car, but in the warm darkness of a movie theater, her shoulder touching Sean’s, her breathing so light she felt she was floating, her hand held beneath his, pressed against his inner thigh. The truth was, she never liked the writhing and straining in a car, whether they were double-dating with Sean’s older brother and one of his girlfriends, or they were alone when Sean took the car himself. She disliked it from the time they parked in a pitch-black corner of Lincoln Park to the wild moments when Sean’s tongue twisted possessively around hers, one arm holding her in an iron grip, his hand pinching and rubbing her nipple, while his other hand thrust deep beneath her skirt, ruthlessly exploring, bringing her body to a pitch of desperate wanting and a fever that was so savage she would moan please please please and, then, shocked at the sound of her crazed voice, would jerk back, her eyes flying open, her frenzied hands pushing, pushing, trying to pry Sean’s body from hers.

  Of course that made him furious; she always knew it would. At first he would grip her more tightly, but when she kept pushing, becoming almost hysterical, he would spin around, his back to her, and stare out the window on his side while she tried to adjust her brassiere and sweater and skirt, and get control of her breathing and clear her mind, though it didn’t really matter, because the evening was ruined, as if the contented hours in the movie theater (her contented hours) had never been. But whenever they were together in a car, the cycle repeated itself, as if Sean knew— from experience?—that eventually Abby would be worn down, more and more accustomed to his caresses, so that they began to seem a normal part of the evening, and then her arousal would finally be all that mattered.

  Abby never talked about how she felt, and she was silent as they drove out of the parking garage. Sean turned on the radio—he had told her he hated silence—and accompanied by the mellow saxophone of a jazz group they both liked, they reached the park, and a corner they knew was seldom patrolled by roving police cars.

  The park was quiet, almost drowsy: the joggers and volleyball teams were gone, the aging couples had turned home after their nightly strolls; the last dog walker, yanking on the leash, had dragged a reluctant animal into one of the apartment buildings across the street. The darkness deepened, the police cars made their sweep and were gone, and Abby and Sean had to themselves a small turnout behind a grove of trees near the lake.

  The moment Abby stopped the engine, Sean pulled her to him, shoving down the V-neck of her sweater to clamp his moist mouth on her breast. Abby felt herself melting, opening, sinking into him until she had no sense of herself at all; she had disappeared into feelings. Indeed, by now it did seem the normal thing to do. Besides, it made Sean happy, and tonight she knew they had only a brief time, so she met him with a passion that seemed equal to his. “Oh, God,” he moaned, and pulling his hand from between her legs, he unzipped his pants and forced her fingers around his stiff cock, hot and smooth, huge and menacing. It was the first time he had done this and Abby suddenly was dizzy, her insides churning, her mouth and throat choked by his insistent tongue. Sean’s ruthless grip forced her hand up and down the rigid shaft, faster and faster, and Abby felt she was hurtling down an
abyss where everything was unknown but terrifying, and a sob rose in her throat.

  And then, suddenly, behind her closed eyes, came the vivid picture of her hand, beneath Sean’s damp palm, vigorously pumping…Sara’s wooden rolling pin. And with that, fear and desire shattered, and hysterically, Abby began to laugh.

  Sean jerked away. “What the fuck!” He flung her from him, shoving her ribs and breasts into the steering wheel, and Abby gasped with pain. She met Sean’s eyes, enraged, hateful, and saw the twist of his mouth and his outthrust jaw, and when his hand came up she cringed, expecting a blow. Instead he zipped himself back into his pants, grabbed his jacket from the backseat, and opened the car door. “You cunt,” he spat, and Abby did not recognize his voice. “Cunt, bitch, who the fuck do you think you—” His face worked, then he slammed the door and with long running strides disappeared into the darkness.

  Abby did not move. Her breathing came in harsh, desperate bursts, until the sob in her throat burst apart, and she stumbled frantically from the car and vomited onto the dirt road of that quiet corner of Lincoln Park.

  When the retching stopped, she wandered from the car, dazed and without direction, until she came to the low wall of roughly squared limestone blocks that lined the lakeshore. She climbed up and walked along the top, glancing now and then at the rows of large blocks that stepped down to the restless water. She climbed down the first step, then the second, until her feet were wet from the waves slapping against the lowest tier. After a moment, she climbed back to the top and sat down, hugging her knees to her aching chest. To her right, the city’s lights followed the curve of Lake Michigan, then shot upward in skyscrapers: spires of gold and black gleaming against an unearthly rusty pink sky, an urban sky reflecting the glow from streetlights and the headlights of thousands of cars.

  “We never see the stars,” Doug had complained just yesterday.

  “We’ll go far enough from the city lights to see them,” Sara had replied.

  “When?”

  “Maybe this weekend, when we go hiking.”

  Abby gazed at the lights and the pink sky, thinking of absolutely nothing, until her head drooped, too heavy to hold up. Beside and below her, graffiti painted on the limestone blocks was barely discernible in the faint light: KEN LOVES AL. TO HELL WITH EVERYTHING.

  BETTY LOVES CATHY. BLACK POWER. I AM GOD. GAY LOVE. From the lowest tier of stone blocks, where waves and foam curled around mossy pilings, the dark expanse of the lake, broken by flecks of white, stretched to the horizon and met a sky of tumbled clouds.

  I’m going to die, she thought.

  One way or another, certainly she would. Sean would kill her. (He could, she was sure of that; he often talked about killings in London as if they were just another part of the city, like double-decker buses and Big Ben.) Or her broken heart would kill her before he could.

  I’ve had fifteen good years; maybe that’s all I deserve.

  I’m not a good person; I lied to Sara and I laughed at Sean.

  I’d be better off dead.

  Or I could disappear.

  Like Dad. Like Mack.

  Then I could live somewhere anonymously and sacrifice myself to helping the poor, and go hungry and be cold.

  She began to shiver. It must be late. She could not see her watch and suddenly thought of Sara, worrying about her. Oh, God, I just keep making things worse.

  She ran back to the car and turned the key in the ignition. The clock came to life: ten-fifteen. Abby rubbed her eyes. Was that all? It had felt like hours later; she felt as if she had aged a hundred years. She took her cell phone from her purse, and driving out of the park, she called home.

  Carrie answered. “WHERE ARE YOU? WE’RE WORRIED!”

  “Is Sara there?” Abby asked.

  “No, she called and said she’d be here about ten-thirty. She asked about you and I told her you weren’t home and she sounded mad. WHERE ARE YOU?”

  “On my way home.” She tried to think of a simple excuse that would put Carrie on her side, and remembered something Mack always said, with a wink: Half-truths are better than total lies; easier to remember. “I had a fight with Sean,” she said. “And he …left, and I just stopped for a while to think about things.”

  “Was it a bad fight?”

  “I guess…yes.”

  “So you’re broken up?”

  “I don’t …well, probably.”

  “Is your heart broken?”

  Abby started to cry.

  “Oh, poor Abby,” Carrie exclaimed. “We won’t talk about it, I know how betrayals can crush the loving heart of a sensitive—”

  “Stop it!” Abby cried. “Just shut up!” She threw the phone to the floor of the car and blinked away tears to drive the last few blocks to her street. Then she had to drive around the block until she found a parking place, and, finally, run back to the house.

  Sara arrived ten minutes later. Carrie and Doug were watching television in the library. Exhausted from her long day, thinking longingly of bed, she determined to allow exactly five minutes for greetings and getting all of them upstairs. She kissed them and sat on the arm of the couch. “Is Abby upstairs?”

  Carrie sighed mournfully. “With a broken heart. Sean betrayed her and she has given him up forever.”

  Sara’s eyebrows rose. “They had a fight?”

  “Well, that’s what she said, but, you know, she puts up a brave front, as heroines always do.”

  Doug looked up from the bar of soap he was carving. “Carrie’s making up a story. It doesn’t sound as if it’s going to have any blood or mayhem, though,” he added sadly.

  “Lights out, and upstairs,” said Sara. “I’m as tired as you should be.”

  “I’m not,” said Doug.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Sara waited until they had turned off the television set and the lights, and followed them up the stairs. Why can’t they have problems only on weekends? she thought, and knocked on the closed door of Abby’s room.

  “Go away,” Abby said.

  “Well, I’m not going to do that,” Sara said mildly, “so why don’t you save us a lot of time and let me in?”

  There was a pause. “You can come in; it’s not locked.”

  Sara opened the door. “I don’t barge into rooms with closed doors; you know that. You have a right to privacy.”

  “So why are you here? All I want is to be alone. Private.”

  Sara sat in the armchair beside the large window that Abby had hung with silk drapes striped in apricot and ivory. Three years earlier, Sara had given the three of them a budget for redecorating their rooms, to distract them from the frightening changes in their life: Mack gone, their mother in a nursing home, unable to speak to them, Sara no longer just their sister, but suddenly the only parent they had. They had grasped at the project as if she had flung them a lifeline, concentrating fiercely on small and large decisions alike: rugs or carpets, paint or wall-paper, colors for walls and window and door frames, pictures, lamps, furniture, bedding, the location of bookshelves and how they would organize their libraries. Carrie’s and Abby’s books were shelved by subject or author; Doug’s by color.

  The three of them had chosen furnishings and color schemes totally different from each other, and Sara, in her new role as sort-of parent (the term she wryly came up with each time she sought one), found she was discovering, through their decorating, their different personalities: Abby’s striving for calm sophistication with subtle colors and country French furniture; Carrie’s brightly assertive with red-and-blue plaid drapes, and a deep, oversize red armchair that swallowed her up when she tucked her legs under her to lose herself in writing or reading; Doug’s searching for adulthood in a dark brown carpet, brown leather armchair, brown-and-black automobile-patterned quilt, and burlap curtains on his two windows…an exact copy of Mack’s windows in his third-floor bedroom. Doug had stared at Sara, daring her to say something when she saw them, but she said only, “What an interesting touch,” and helped hi
m hang the sagging fabric before kissing him with a hug which he feverishly returned.

  “Not a great evening?” Sara asked Abby, who sat on her bed, knees to her chest, as if—though Sara could not know this—she were still sitting on a limestone block beside the lake, still dazed, still in turmoil.

  There was a long silence. “He got mad at me.”

  “For any special reason?”

  The silence was even longer this time. “I laughed at him.”

  Sara nodded. “That’s tough for boys to take. I guess it’s tough for everybody. Though, sometimes, people just laugh back.”

  “He couldn’t. He was—” Abby stopped, then sighed miserably. There was no way she could tell Sara about it. Mack said Sara was another generation and couldn’t understand any of their feelings, and even though Abby knew perfectly well that wasn’t true, at least not all the time, she could not bring herself to say aloud what had happened in her car that night. (Anyway, Sara didn’t know she’d taken the car, so of course she couldn’t talk about it; what was wrong with her that she did so many things wrong, so everything that followed seemed even worse?)

  Sara assumed it had to do with sex. Where were they? He didn’t have a car, unless his father let him use his. Were they parked somewhere in his car, or did they have another place to go after the movie? But before she could frame a few careful questions, she heard the telephone ring, and then Carrie’s voice, calling her. “It’s your Mr. New York.”

  Sara hesitated, but Abby, relieved (but also disappointed, because in a way she had been hoping Sara would probe, forcing the story out, and then provide just the comfort Abby needed), said, “It’s okay, Sara. I’m fine, really, it’s okay; go ahead.”

  And though Sara knew she should stay, she went to her room to pick up the telephone, because Reuben had been in New York for the day, and they had not talked since last night, and what she most wanted at that moment was to hear his voice. Because, admit it, she told herself; it’s a lot easier and more pleasant, especially at the end of the day, to talk to Reuben than to deal with a fifteen-year-old’s romantic, probably sexual, angst.