The Real Mother

by Judith Michael

  Doug turned off the television set. “I don’t feel like watching anymore.”

  “Me neither.” Carrie stood up. “I guess I’ll go to bed.”

  Doug tossed the television control onto the couch, then whirled and threw his arms around Sara. “Don’t be sad, Sara. We love you.”

  Carrie leaped into the embrace. Sara’s eyes filled with tears, and then her earlier anger returned, flared up so that she forgot her longing. What right did Reuben have to lie to her? (Well, he hadn’t exactly lied, but he might as well have, conveniently leaving out one simple fact that would have interfered with her believing him a free candidate for her to stroll with, to sleep with, to love.) What right did he have to pursue her when he was entangled, to let her become entangled when he was not free to make her a part of his life, or to become part of hers? What right did he have, now, to say he was sorry, he’d acted badly (damned right he had), and wanted to call her again?

  “Sara, don’t cry,” Carrie said, and began to cry herself.

  In an instant, Sara’s anger turned on herself. Speaking of rights, she thought, what right do I have to impose my unhappiness on two loving children? What right do I have to burden children totally dependent on me with a misery they can’t do a single thing about? What right to complicate their lives at a time when they have no complications, but stand on the threshold of years and years filled with complications of their own?

  Her eyes dried. “There’s nothing to cry about,” she said briskly. “I live in the best house in the world with the best people. There’s enough love in our house to fill me up as much as a whole Thanksgiving dinner. In fact, I’m stuffed, no room right now for any more.”

  Carrie giggled and raised her head. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “But Reuben…”

  “Reuben’s a great guy and maybe someday we’ll get together again, but right now I’ve got all I can handle dealing with the three of you.”

  “And Mack,” said Doug, loosening his hold on Sara.

  “And Donna,” said Carrie.

  “She’s really weird,” Doug declared. “Is she ever going to move out?”

  “Sara wants her to,” Carrie said.

  “Can’t you just tell her to?” Doug asked Sara. “I mean, nobody likes her very much and she doesn’t pay any attention to us, except once in a while she gives me this big awful kiss and says how handsome I am. Why does she do that?”

  “I didn’t know she did,” Sara said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “She said not to. She said she just loved me because she could pretend I’m her brother, but I shouldn’t tell you ’cause you wouldn’t understand. It’s not fatal, you know, Sara, it’s just kind of awful. And weird.”

  “She bought a chair,” Carrie said. “It’s downstairs, next to her bed.”

  “What?”

  “She said she didn’t have a comfortable place to sit, you know, to watch television, so she bought this chair and a friend took it downstairs for her. Yesterday.”

  “There is no television downstairs.”

  “Mack gave her one. He said as long as she had to be in the basement, she ought to have a view of the worldly worldwide world. Something like that, anyway.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Oh, I’m sorry,” Sara said quickly, seeing the dismay on their faces as she snapped at them. “It isn’t your fault. It’s just that I do like to know what’s going on around here.” She paused, juggling all the new information, to make room for it among thoughts that kept swerving back to Reuben. “It’s okay. I’ll talk to her, and find out what’s going on.”

  Doug looked alarmed at the note in her voice. “Don’t tell her we said anything, you know, about kissing or chairs or …anything.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Go on, now, time for bed. It’s getting late.”

  “You’re okay?” Carrie asked.

  “I’m fine.” Sara smiled. “You two make me feel wonderful.”

  “Sara,” said Doug from the doorway. “I’ll be home late tomorrow; Mack’s picking me up at camp and taking me to the gallery, to figure out where I’m going to put all my pieces.”

  Can’t get away from him, Sara thought; he keeps popping up. And evidently the gallery was real, and Doug’s show was real, and she did not know what to think about that. She did not want to think about any of it, especially Mack. Right now, poised, at long last, to disappear into her bedroom and nurse her aching for Reuben, her anger at Reuben, her longing for Reuben, her worries about Donna, she could not deal with Mack.

  She wanted him gone. She wanted Donna gone. She longed to have the house wrap itself around her and her family and be the haven it had been just last April. Only five months ago.

  But Doug was watching from the doorway, wary, prepared to argue, and Sara was not about to argue.

  “Do you know what time you’ll be home?”

  “Mack said we’d like pick up Carrie and Abby and go to dinner.”

  “He thought you’d have a date,” Carrie said, trying to cover up Mack’s leaving Sara out of their plans.

  “Does Abby want to go?” Sara asked.

  “I guess so. Mack said he’d ask her.”

  Sara did not let herself hesitate. “As long as you’re home by nine. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  “Would you like to come?” Carrie asked.

  “No, it’s your party. You’ll have a fine time. Go on, now; I’ll come and say good night in a few minutes.”

  And where was Donna? she wondered as she turned out lights in the playroom. Donna had her own key—finally there had been no alternative to giving her one—and came and went at odd hours, sometimes saying she had been apartment hunting all evening, most often evasive.

  And Mack was out, too. Sara’s anger flared again. On top of everything, she couldn’t even go to bed knowing that everyone in her house was accounted for. Her house was not the safe, solid enclosure it had always been; now it stood open to the world. Or part of it.

  She was being irrational. She knew it. In fact, she nursed it, since she wanted to be angry. It was better to be angry at Reuben than to long for him. She did long for him, but why dwell on that? Anger could almost replace it, at least for as long as she could hold on to it.

  The trouble was, though she angered easily, she was not able to hold on to anger, recovering almost as quickly as it expressed itself. A real flaw, she thought caustically the next morning as she walked into Donna’s cubicle and saw that it was still empty, her desk still cluttered from the day before, though the rule of the office was that all documents, private or not, were to be put away at the end of each day.

  In her own office, Sara opened her calendar. A full schedule with nothing she wanted to do, each hour filled until almost six that night. I could suddenly be sick and go home, hide in bed for a day, veg out, as Doug would say.

  Except that’s not me. I need to know I’ve accomplished something at the end of each day. A little compulsive, maybe. But me.

  “YOU SARA?”

  She looked up at a burly figure in the doorway, a great bear of a man, dark-bearded, dark hair to his shoulders, black curly hair at the base of his throat and covering muscled arms that strained at his tight T-shirt. “Sara Elliott,” she said. “Do you have an appointment? My secretary is not—”

  “Your secretary! Shit! Your little toy!” Slamming his hands on the edge of her desk, he leaned on his arms toward Sara, crowding her. “I wanna know what the fuck you’re doing to my wife!”

  Sara stared at him. “I don’t know your wife.”

  “The fuck you don’t! Donna’s my wife! Your little plaything secretary!”

  “Donna? Donna is married?”

  “Don’t play the fucking innocent with—”

  “Mr.—whatever your name is, and you haven’t had the courtesy to introduce yourself—no one talks to me that way. If you can’t do better than that, you’ll have to leave. And if you won’t, I will.”

  “Fuck it, all I—�
��

  Sara stood up.

  “Sorry, Jesus, that’s the way I talk. I tell you how to talk? I care how you talk? I care how you talk to my wife. You turned her against me, you helped her cheat on me—”

  “Just a minute. What is your name?”

  He threw out his hands in frustration. “Ziggy.”

  “And—?”

  “What difference does it makes? Zigmund Brouner. I use Ziggy.”

  “Mr. Brouner, you’ll have to tell me what you’re talking about. My secretary is Donna Soldana. She is not married; she’s been living alone to escape a difficult situation at home, and right now she’s staying at my house until she can find a new apartment where she can be safe.”

  “That’s a load of shit.”

  “I told you—”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, I don’t change the way I talk just for you. That’s me, and you’ll take it ’cause you’ve stolen my wife, turned her against me, helped her have a lover, shit, maybe more than one, and I could sue you in every fucking court in Chicago, but all I want is she comes home and you keep away from her. She’s living in your house? Jesus. Tell her she has to come home! I’m there, she knows it, she damn well knows it, she comes back on weekends and we have a great time, then she’s gone all week, said she was going to a hospital every day after work and staying overnight for treatments for asthma, you know, shots and special diet and this humidity room, she said she couldn’t explain it all—she’s smarter than me, so I figured I couldn’t understand it anyway—but her asthma was really better, she never wheezes on our weekends, but she says it’s bad at work—your air bad here, or something? Maybe you need a new ventilating system, air-conditioning, whatever. Anyway, she said she had to go to the hospital every night except weekends, and I said that was okay ’cause it wasn’t costin’ us anything, her insurance paid for it, and I could be alone for a while ’cause she was getting well so we could be together all the time, that’s what she wanted, all the time with me… she said. And all this time she’s sleeping around… how many guys who the hell knows, and she never went to any hospital. She lied and you put her up to it and now where am I? Fucked over is where I am.”

  Beneath the onslaught, Sara sat limp and disbelieving. “What about her father?”

  “Father? What father? Her mother never got married, had three kids, different men, she died a few years ago, drugs, they said, but Donna said she was just too mean and miserable to live any longer.”

  Stunned, Sara stared at him. “Sit down,” she said at last. “Please. I need to understand—she’s been coming to you on weekends?”

  “Comin’ home on weekends. And the rest of the time fuckin’ whoever. There’s one I know for sure, she told him her brother was after her, tried to screw her once and she needed a safe place. They hung out in his apartment, but she had her own place—that what you said?—and I guess took guys there, too. She’s so fuckin’ gorgeous, you know, everybody wants her…” His voice trailed away, torn between pride in his gorgeous wife who always attracted men, and jealous rage for being made a fool of.

  “Mr. Brouner,” Sara said at last, “I knew none of this. Donna told me she was being pursued by her father, that he had sexually abused her, so she needed a safe place to live where her mother could visit her and her father could not find her. I believed everything she said.”

  “Bullshit. Donna don’t lie unless somebody puts her up to it. She’s a little bitty thing, she don’t know much about the world, she needs taking care of, she don’t know her way around.”

  Sara shook her head. “Evidently she is quite experienced, quite shrewd, a masterful liar, and a pretty good actress.”

  “Bullshit! Bullshit, bullshit! You’re the liar! You’re an evil person. You’re like a, what’s his name, Houdini, the guy who got women to do things, like, hypnotized them, whatever, that’s you.”

  Svengali. But she did not say it aloud. In fact, there was nothing she could say. He would not believe her, and she was not sure whether to believe him, though she suspected he was telling the truth. I’d put some trust in Abby’s feelings about Donna. Reuben had said that on the telephone the night Donna showed up. She had begun to think he was right. And then Donna had refused to go to a lawyer, had made such an outcry Sara had given in. Abby was right, she thought now. And Reuben told me to trust her. But I kept believing—

  The outer door of the office opened and she heard Donna’s footsteps.

  “Donna!” she called. “Could you come in, please?”

  Donna stopped short in the doorway. “What are you doing here? I told you never to…you can’t come here—”

  “I can come anywhere I fuckin’ want to!” He was on his feet and enfolding her in a bear hug. “I come to take you home, sweetie. Get you away from this Houdini. She’s bad for you, honeybunch, she gets her kicks fuckin’ with you, makin’ you do things you don’t want to do. She’s evil. You need protection from people like her; you’re too good. So you’re getting the hell out of here and coming with me.”

  “Okay,” Donna said.

  Just like that. Doesn’t she believe in anything? Well, of course she does: she believes in whatever works for Donna.

  Still disbelieving, Sara said, “Where did the bruises come from?”

  Ziggy ducked his head. “I guess that’s me. I get mad. It’s not Donna’s fault; she’s the best little wife anybody could want, she never did anything—”

  “Sure I do, I get you mad. Poor baby, I give you a hard time, don’t I? But you’re my big, strong guy who knows what he wants.” She looked at Sara, as if, woman to woman, they could understand the intricacies of female needs. “I just need a break now and then.”

  Shaking with anger, trying to understand how she could have been so wrong (and how many mistaken ideas might she have about other people?), Sara went to the door. “I’ll be home at five-thirty; you can come by after that and get your things.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And you’d better look for a new job. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble; you present a most convincing picture. Now you’ll both have to leave; I have work to do.”

  “Sara, don’t,” Donna said. “I mean, I’m sorry, I know I made things up, but it didn’t hurt anybody, I mean, it wasn’t murder or anything like that, and, you know, I really did need a break, I mean, Ziggy’s a lot to take in big doses, and I really really appreciated your help; you were terrific and I’ll never forget it, never, anything I can do for you—”

  “You can leave.”

  “No, you don’t mean that. I love this job. I need this job. I mean, I hate to get started at new places, you know, it’s not easy, and I really do a good job here, Sara, you know I do, you depend on me, and there’s no reason why anything should change, I mean, I’m still me, your secretary—”

  “You are not my secretary. Now will you both leave or must I call a security guard?”

  Ziggy looked alarmed. “Let’s split, honey. We don’t need any trouble.”

  “But she can’t fire me!”

  “Honeybunch, we’re outta here.”

  He pulled her through the door. Sara heard their footsteps fading away, imagined other workers peering from doorways to see what the fuss was about, and then there was silence except for the soft clicking of computer keys and telephones ringing in offices throughout the floor.

  They came that evening, exactly at five-thirty. Somehow Sara had gotten through the day, meeting with a new client, calling the City of Chicago Office of Human Resources to say she needed a new secretary, searching within Donna’s arcane filing system to find documents she needed, skipping lunch to rearrange files and respond to phone messages left on her tape. At home, she barely spoke to Donna or Ziggy; she had no patience or energy for them. It occurred to her that it was a blessing that everyone was out of the house for dinner, giving her a chance to calm down after Donna and Ziggy hauled the last batch of clothes, the new chair, and the television set upstairs to his car, and Donna slammed the key
onto the kitchen counter after Sara asked for it, though even then (blessings seldom being unqualified), she was aware that the others were laughing at dinner while she was in a house that was painfully empty.

  And so, feeling uncertain about almost everything—wrong about Donna; wrong about others?—she called Reuben.

  Just to hear his voice. Just to share a few words, perhaps some that would give them a reason to laugh together.

  But his wife answered and Sara, quickly furious, slammed down the phone. Still there. Answering the telephone. Living with him, eating with him. Sleeping with him. Belonging.

  What could she have been thinking? He was a married man; he had a wife in residence and a life that had no room for Sara Elliott.

  The interloper. The other woman. The homewrecker.

  She would never call him again. He had said it himself, when he called her: he should not have put her in this position. She would not be in this position; she would not be humiliated.

  She would not see him again. Or think of him. She was through with him.

  “Goodness,” said Ardis gaily, hanging up the telephone, “that must have been your other love. Or one of many?”

  Reuben had been in the living room, and Ardis had raced to the study when the phone rang. “I told you not to answer the telephone in this house.”

  “Oh, Ben, of course I can answer the phone. I live here!”

  “You are a visitor here.” He wanted a drink, but ignored it; he owed her at least that much. He was not interested in the caller; since it could not have been Sara, it did not matter, and whoever it was would call back. He glanced at Ardis. She looked very pretty and very lost, swallowed up in a dark blue wing-backed chair, looking at him beseechingly, as a wayfarer might look, seeking the way home, the way to peace. “I can’t give you what you want,” Reuben said quietly, even sadly. “Too much has happened that can’t be undone or forgotten.”

  He sat in a matching chair opposite her. A thermos of coffee was on the table between them, and he poured a cup for both of them. “You’re going back to New York. Tomorrow, if we can get a ticket. You and I have nothing together anymore; you know that as well as I. You don’t really want me; what you want is stability and security. But the only one who can give you those is yourself.”