Who Makes Up These Rules, Anyway?

by Stevi Mittman

  “Isn’t it enough to survive a marriage and kids? Or, in my case, a divorce and kids? You make me feel goddamn decadent if I give in to one moment of well-earned, totally deserved self-pity.”

  She stares at me and takes another swig of her merlot as if she is daring me to tell her she has had too much. When I don’t, she raises her glass in salute.

  “Here’s to you, Ted, willing to brave the funny farm for your family’s comfort and enjoyment. Bring on the pool, shall we?”

  “I don’t see what else there is to do,” I say. It’s a feeble response, but my arsenal is empty.

  “You could just say no. It worked for Nancy Reagan, didn’t it?” she says.

  “I never liked Reagan.” I am aware that this is a typical June Bayer non sequitur and yet I can’t help myself. “Still, I can’t imagine what it was like for Nancy to watch her husband slip away. Or maybe I can imagine. All too well. And now I’m the same age—”

  “You’re letting this birthday thing get to you,” Bobbie warns me, as if that thought hasn’t occurred to me, as if I don’t now have a psychiatrist (shades of my mother) to point this out to me. “I don’t care what age your mother was and what age you are. Accidents are not hereditary, girl. Didn’t your new doctor tell you that?”

  I shrug an acknowledgment, not anxious to give Bobbie any credit or validity.

  “She didn’t say you were losing your mind, did she? She didn’t say that just because your mother has reality issues, you do, did she?”

  Before I can answer, Diane pops her beer and wags a finger at me. “Like I’ve been telling Bobbie, there’s always the undeniable power of self-fulfilling prophesies. Like, I suppose you could drive yourself nuts because you—”

  “Shut up, Diane,” Bobbie says. “She really doesn’t need any help falling over the edge, you know.”

  “I’m trying to pull her over and ask her to step out of the car,” Diane says. Now that she’s passed all her tests and is a rookie cop, she feels the need to remind everyone of that fact at every opportunity.

  “The way I see it,” Diane continues as if I am not there, “she’s driving herself to the funny farm. Now, my lights are flashing, my siren’s blaring, and I’m saying ‘whoa, lady. This is not where you want to go.’”

  “So,” I ask, pretending to be bright and cheery as I shuffle through the tapes on the table. “What are we seeing tonight?”

  “Subtle,” Bobbie says sarcastically. “I’d never guess you were trying to change the subject.”

  They go on joking with each other, but I am finding it hard to pay attention. I hate it when I leave the kids at home alone. Yes, I know that Dana is old enough to babysit, but where she’d be vigilant at someone else’s house, will she be vigilant in her own? And where other people’s children might be fooled into thinking she was a grown-up with some authority and obey her, is there a chance in the world as we know it that Jesse will? “Earth to Teddi, come in, please,” she teases.

  “Did I turn off the stove?” I wonder aloud. “And unplug the microwave?”

  “You called in pizza for the kids, Ted,” Bobbie reminds me. “You didn’t even turn on the oven or anything.”

  Maybe I should go home and check. I could slip in the back door and look around without announcing that I’m home, or I could leave the weekly Teddi Roast and—

  Diane rolls forward on the couch and puts her weight on her legs. “What is the matter with you?” This from a woman who has no children.

  “She’s fine,” Bobbie says too quickly.

  “Yeah,” I agree. “I have a possessed house, where laundry goes into the garbage and keys disappear and toilet paper rolls are always empty but—”

  “Hey! How many men does it take to change a roll of toilet paper?” Bobbie asks. Suddenly she’s Miss Perky-Pants because she senses that I am ready to bolt.

  Diane ignores her while I give her a look you might classify as a glare.

  “Nobody knows,” she says solemnly. “It’s never been done!”

  “I shouldn’t have left the kids alone,” I say.

  “Speaking of kids…” she says, desperate now for me not to leave “…you know that Mike hasn’t called the girls in over a week?”

  I can’t imagine Rio not talking to our kids for a week. I can’t imagine the hurt our kids would feel. “Are you sure he isn’t reaching them when you aren’t home?”

  She gives me a look that says she isn’t so stupid that she hasn’t asked them. “I suppose he could be trying to contact them telepathically,” she says, getting in a jab at the hypnotherapist her husband is seeing. “When I call his office the girl tells me that he’s meditating.”

  “Well, it would be nice if he meditated on what a shit he is,” Diane says.

  The phone rings and Bobbie picks up the portable. It’s Dana, and she hands the phone to me with a disgusted look that implies it’s my fault that Dana has called.

  “What’s wrong?” I say into the receiver, already on my feet and halfway to the door. It seems like Alyssa’s binkie is the latest victim of MIS (Misplaced Item Syndrome), a virus that has struck my life with all the force of Epstein-Barr. “I don’t know, honey,” I tell her. “It was there last night. Did you ask Jesse?”

  Dana asks me what Jesse would want with it and I reply, “What would anyone want with that ratty old thing? Do you think some robber broke in and stole it? It’s got to be there somewhere. Ask Jesse to help. And call me back if you don’t find it.

  “And put Alyssa on.” I wait, fighting the urge to run across the lawn and look for binkie myself. The truth is that a few months ago, I’d have found it in a flash. Tonight I’d be about as much use as one of Lys’s Beanie Babies. I hear Alyssa’s sniffle on the line. “Sweetheart? Stop crying. Dana will find binkie. You know, you’re getting pretty old for…Lyssie, she’ll find it. If she doesn’t, I’ll come home and I’ll find it, okay?”

  “Oh no you don’t,” the childless one says. She takes the phone from me. “Alyssa? This is Aunt Diane. I’ll put out an APB on binkie and we’ll get to the bottom of this. Can you give me a good description to give to the detectives?”

  Bobbie winks at me as we watch Diane in action.

  “Eech! And you want this thing back?” Diane says into the phone. “A reward? Sure we could. It’s probably the only way you could get anyone to touch it, honey.”

  Diane holds out the phone to me. “Jesse’s yelling that he found it. Guess I’m lucky I didn’t set that reward yet.”

  “Where was it?” I ask, while Bobbie puts two videotapes behind her back and gestures for me to pick one.

  The dishwasher? “Hmm,” I say, at a loss for the right response. “Well, give it to her and tell Dana to put her to bed, okay? Thanks, sweetie. Yeah, Daddy will be home before me. Okay. Call if you need me.”

  “Maybe Rio thought it was time to wash it,” Bobbie suggests, though we all know that men don’t know there’s actually water and soap behind the dishwasher door.

  “Okay, here’s another one,” Bobbie announces. “How many men does it take to throw in a load of wash? Seven. Six to go on a search mission to find the washer and one to throw the whites in with the darks!”

  I pretend to be amused as I sit down on the couch, determined to get through whatever movie they choose. I will not surrender to panic. My children are fine. My marriage is fine. I love watching movies. They make me forget my troubles.

  Bobbie pops in the video and throws the case down on the table.

  High Anxiety.

  Great. Just great.

  CHAPTER 11

  “I’m sorry I’m late. I couldn’t find my car keys. Again. And really, I don’t even know why I’m here,” I tell Dr. Benjamin. Even I can hear the anger in my voice. I try to erase it, take it back. “I mean,” I say softly, “you must have patients that really need your help and I’m taking up your time.”

  “You don’t need my help?” she asks. She has light brown hair and pale skin and wears a pink short-sleeved
angora sweater, and all I can think when I look at her is that she is soft. A child would want to crawl into her lap. A husband would want to lay his head there and be comforted.

  I am not looking for comfort.

  “Well, I’m not angry anymore, so no, I don’t think I need any more help.”

  “All your anger is gone, then?” she asks, looking as skeptical as she sounds. “I must be the best doctor in America. Or maybe you’re just the most forgiving woman.”

  “Or some combination,” I say, perching on the edge of the chair since I have no intention of staying. I don’t think. Somehow, now that I am in her office I am a lot less sure about leaving than I was while rehearsing on my way over in the car.

  “So then you’re not having trouble with your memory anymore, either?”

  “Okay,” I say. “Maybe.” There are a million things to choose from. I decide the baseball phone call is the one I want to talk about. “I could swear, I mean, I would swear on a stack of Bibles that Rio never called, never asked about my father taking Jesse to a game.”

  The doctor doesn’t say anything.

  “Now, of course, it was on a Saturday, so the kids were home, and Rio hadn’t gotten me the Palm Pilot yet, and I was running around like a lunatic trying to get stuff taken care of, like getting shoes for Dana’s graduation and taking Jesse to Little League and trying to keep Bobbie’s spirits up, and I did have the woman from the card shop over to look at invitations for Dana’s bat mitzvah, which is a whole other can of worms….”

  Dr. Benjamin flips back in her notes. “You mentioned your daughter’s bat mitzvah the last time you were here and said about the same thing regarding it.”

  “I did?” I don’t remember. Of course I don’t remember—if I can lose a whole phone call with Rio, surely I can lose an offhand comment to Dr. Benjamin.

  “Rio and I have been at each other’s throats about the whole affair,” I admit. “I mean, the children are ours, and we should be in charge of paying for the bat mitzvah and making all the decisions about it, right?”

  She seems noncommittal, so I continue. She’ll no doubt admire my sense of responsibility when I explain the problem. “If—hypothetically—we let my father pay for it, shouldn’t he have the right to make decisions about it? I mean, like if I let him pay for Dana’s dress, doesn’t that mean that my mother—when she gets out of South Winds—will have the right to come shopping with us, to say what looks good and what doesn’t, to tell me I have to have stupid dyed-to-match suede shoes and my dress has to be made by Eleni in Plainview or special-ordered through that little store in Woodmere that she likes?”

  I’m wondering what she did about her children’s bar and bat mitzvahs, and if I’m offending her.

  “Have you told Rio, or your mother, what you are telling me?” she asks.

  Like I can tell my mother that. Like I can tell my mother anything. Especially when she’s in South Winds playing the poor-me-I’m-in-the-institution card. It’s all academic, anyway, since I wouldn’t take a dime from my father at this point. It’s that Rio doesn’t seem to get it. “Listen,” I tell her. “If anyone ever lies down on your couch and asks if her husband should go to work for their father, you should tell them that the answer is no.”

  “How long has your husband worked for your father?” she asks.

  “I know,” I say. “You’re right.”

  “About?”

  I admit that it shouldn’t have taken us twelve years to come to this conclusion, and if we’d only been brave all those years ago, by now Rio would be working somewhere where there was at least a chance he’d be happy.

  “It’s all my fault,” I admit. Her lip twitches. “No, really. This one is my fault.”

  “For having a generous father who took his son-in-law into the business?”

  No, for being spoiled rotten and wanting nice things for myself and my family.

  “Why is it your fault?” she presses.

  “Once I told Rio that my idea of camping in the wild was a motel with chenille bedspreads and one of those wall heaters that clicked on and off all night.”

  I’m not sure if Dr. Benjamin gets it or not. I think I may see a small smile, but like with a baby, it could be gas.

  As Rio’s mother always says, from fig trees you don’t get apples, and I’m not as different from my parents as I’d like to believe. Like any other couple in the Five Towns (that posh area of Long Island where the nouveau riche have riched their limit), my parents expected me to marry well and live happily after—in a four-bedroom house with a three-car garage and live-in help. My father had pulled himself up by his bootstraps, or so the story goes, and he didn’t want me to have to struggle the way he did. So he bought a big house in Cedarhurst to be sure that the best would be close at hand, and in case it wasn’t, he bought my mother a Cadillac, my brother David a BMW, and me that vintage candy-apple-red Corvette. When he gave it to me and called it a husband-getter, I don’t think he had Rio Gallo—who pulled up in his tow truck when I got stuck on the Northern State Parkway—in mind.

  He certainly didn’t have in mind a son-in-law who would have the audacity to lie to him about graduating from SUNY Stony Brook, when in fact he’d never even finished Nassau Community College.

  If there is a scorecard for potential sons-in-law in that Handbook, you can bet that “no college education” is grounds for immediate rejection. Rio probably scored a perfect ten on the disqualification list—or would have if my parents knew about the cobra tattoo on his left shoulder, and the fact that he’d broken the law a couple of times and bent it several more. In the perfect alternate universe my parents choose to inhabit, there are no second chances, no extenuating circumstances. The fact that Rio’s father died when Rio was eight years old, that the man had been so underinsured that Rio’s mother had to take in wash to feed her children, that Rio and his brother and sisters were prey to a very bad element and that each of them finally overcame the temptation for easy money, count for nothing. The man has a tattoo. Let’s all put our heads in the oven, shall we?

  I could tell Dr. Benjamin that, but I don’t. I think I don’t want her to know he has a cobra tattoo.

  She watches my mind work, but she doesn’t offer a penny for my thoughts. Maybe she’s fooled by my T.J. Maxx discount designer clothes and thinks I don’t need the money.

  “Did you see the gynecologist?” she asks.

  I nod, and since the ob/gyn has given me a clean bill of health, I ask, “If I told you that I’ve seriously considered the possibility that my husband and my father are conspiring behind my back, would you think I was paranoid?”

  “Conspiring to do what?” She is leaning back in her chair, studying me while I search for an answer.

  “Well, I thought it was to get me to let Jesse go with my father to a ball game—he had these tickets that let them sit in the Mickey Mantle Suite or something.”

  “A Legends Suite?” she asks, and I can see she knows more about baseball than I do and that this is a big deal. It makes me glad I let Jesse go, even if I didn’t know what I was doing.

  “I guess,” I say, hoping this will make her happy. “Anyway, I’d swear they didn’t call, but would my father really stoop so low?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Well, the thing of it is, they’d never have bothered. I mean, Rio would tell me Jesse was going and it would be a done deal. I might have given him a hard time, but he’d have convinced me not to punish Jesse for my father’s mistakes. And he knows that.” Just like he knows if he gives me the pool as a gift, and has the kids in on it, that I have to at least consider it. For a moment I think about telling Dr. Benjamin the pool saga and asking her advice. But what if she tells me to face my fears and get the pool and I find that I can’t do it? Or what if she tells me I don’t have to confront my fears and I go on, for my whole life, with South Winds hanging over my head, looming ever and ever closer?

  “So you’re still angry with your father?” Dr. Benjamin asks.<
br />
  “I guess,” I admit, relieved that I’ve decided it isn’t time yet to tell Dr. Benjamin about the pool. Not until I sort through my feelings. Actually, I still might say no, and then I will have told her for nothing. “But I’m not like off the deep end anymore.”

  The doctor says she is glad to hear it, but I haven’t really finished.

  “And then they both claimed that Rio came home from work early on Saturday.”

  “Why would they tell you that?”

  “Because it’s true, I guess,” I say. After all, the car’s grill is fixed, isn’t it?

  “Well, that would explain it,” she says, and her lip does that twitchy thing again.

  “He is trying to drive me crazy, you know.” I fiddle with my purse strap, not meeting the doctor’s eyes.

  “He?”

  “Rio. My husband. He bought me a bikini for my birthday.”

  Is that a smirk? She doesn’t only think I am old, she thinks I am fat, too? She’s got ten pounds on me, easy.

  “What?” I ask her, daring her to say it.

  “I was thinking that maybe he was hoping you’d drive him crazy,” she says, and gifts me with a genuine smile. Of course, she’s never seen Rio’s head swivel around to watch a pretty young girl’s firm butt going by before snapping back to me with wistful regret in his eyes.

  “I am driving him crazy—or my memory is. Or my lack of memory, I should say. I mean the PDA is a help, but there are things you shouldn’t have to write down. Like I keep thinking I’ve changed the toilet paper rolls in the bathrooms and when I come in again, they need changing. And last night? Can you believe that I forgot to turn on the oven? Well, you probably can. Rio had a little trouble, though. I made veal parmigiana for him, but I had to make some Fingers of Death for Alyssa and—”

  “Fingers of Death?”