“Fried chicken tenders. Fried food is horrible for you, but it’s all she likes to eat. Rio says it’s a miracle she doesn’t cluck by now. And I had to make Dana a veggie corn dog because she saw one of those PBS specials on how they get veal, and Jesse was going to eat late because he went over to his friend’s house so they could build a guitar, and when it was time to take the veal out of the oven, I realized I never even turned it on!”
“You made four different dinners for five people?” she asks, her soft brown eyes wider than I’ve ever seen them. Probably she manages to make one meal, like say meat loaf, and it’s a take-it-or-leave-it affair. I sit up a little taller.
“Actually, I made five dinners for eight people—Bobbie and the girls came over because Bobbie loves my veal parmigiana, and Kimmie is a vegetarian, so she ate corn dogs with Dana, but Kristin and I don’t eat cheese, so we had veal without the parmigiana, though I really did feel guilty about those poor little baby calves.”
Dr. Benjamin does an exaggerated slump in her chair, saying she is exhausted just listening to me.
“That’s why everyone goes out. But, anyway, my point is that I forgot about the oven,” I say sadly, my bubble bursting. “And I could have dealt with all of that, but yesterday I decided to visit my mother at South Winds, where I’ve been a million times, and three-quarters of the way there I got lost. I got off at exit 62, the way I always do, made a left over the LIE, and suddenly I had no idea where I was, where I was supposed to go.”
I feel like I have said magic words. Dr. Benjamin has come forward in her seat and she is staring at me as if I’ve suddenly grown an extra head—something I could actually use.
“And what happened?” she asks me.
“Well, I got back on the LIE and came home. And I sat in my living room and cried because I couldn’t get to South Winds. Ironic, huh?”
CHAPTER 12
Rio and I sit fanning Jesse and Alyssa in the hot auditorium of Thompson Middle School, where Dana will start her march to adulthood in the fall. I have made Rio promise not to remind my father about the moving-up-day ceremonies, though what excuse he’s given my dad for taking the day off, I am not sure. Something to do with his back doctor or the physical therapist, I think.
In exchange, Rio has made me promise to consider sending Alyssa to Westwood Lake with Dana and Jesse. He’s already sent in the deposit, but he says we can forfeit it if I can’t see my way clear to letting her spend the summer in, as Rio puts it, the cool of New Hampshire with a bunch of kids her own age, her sister and brother nearby, and three counselors to her bunk of seven.
“Imagine, Teddi,” he keeps telling me. “A whole summer of freedom for us, like before we got married.” No matter how many times I tell him it won’t be anything like that, that marriage and kids are for life, I don’t think he hears me.
Anyhow, he reminds me, I started camp at six myself, the summer following the accident with Markie, and survived. But that was because my mother was so dreading the summer pool season that her psychiatrist actually recommended sending me away.
“You okay?” Rio asks over the kids’ heads.
“Of course I am,” I snap at him.
“Do you see him?” I ask Bobbie, who is looking around the auditorium for Mike.
There is a sharp intake of breath beside me and Bobbie squeezes the blood out of my hand. “There! With the sunglasses. What’s he, incognito?” she demands.
“Is that her?” I cannot hide the surprise in my voice. On Mike’s arm is the most ordinary woman, with mousy brown hair hanging out from beneath a floppy hat, and wearing one of those flimsy, flowery dresses that women haven’t worn outside their gardens since the sixties. As Bobbie has drummed into me on countless occasions, how you dress on L.I. is the measure of your success. You don’t get into a Mercedes S-Class car in ripped jeans unless Ralph Lauren himself has ripped them. And you do not wear out-of-date clothes unless they can be categorized “vintage”—and you can pull off the look. A fatal mistake is thinking that something you’ve saved from twenty years ago looks exactly like the stuff they’ve brought back into fashion. It doesn’t. The hem is higher. Or lower. The flowers are bigger. Or smaller. The waist is tighter. Or looser.
What Bobbie has been telling me forever finally clicks as I look at Mike’s lady friend in her back-of-the-closet faux pas. She is not younger, not prettier, not anything “gooder” than the wife Mike already has. This is who he’s left Bobbie for?
“Dr. Phyllis Hepstein,” Bobbie all but hisses. “Can you believe he brought her? The girls will be devastated. Do you think I should—”
“I think you should send him that Dr. Joy Brown book,” I whisper back. “Everyone knows you’re not supposed to bring ‘the other whatever’ to anything that involves the kids. Sheesh!”
“I think I should—” Bobbie starts, handing me her program and her purse and getting up from her seat as the auditorium fills with the sounds of muffled crashing from the area of the stage. “Is this on?” comes blasting throughout the room, followed by a feedback whistle that must be calling all the dogs within a twenty-mile radius.
“Not now,” I say, pulling on Bobbie’s perfectly tailored celadon silk mother-of-the-young-graduate jacket. Personally, I can’t wait to see Bobbie standing next to Miss Salvation Army circa 1969, but the ceremonies are starting. I glance over at Rio to share a moment of pride, but he is talking to a young woman in a yellow dress sitting behind him, introducing the kids quietly while stragglers hurry into seats. He’s got the charm turned up to full power, and I am glad that I never see him selling sofas, as I think it would put the final nail in our marriage’s coffin.
I don’t know where that thought came from, and because of it I give the girl a friendly little wave that says I am the happiest little homemaker, not bothered in the slightest by some little slut flirting with my husband because I am oh so secure. Rio makes hand gestures of introduction, not talking because the school principal is welcoming the parents, siblings and friends of the graduates. While I am not all that active in the PTA, I do have at least a nodding acquaintance with nearly all the moms. But I’ve never seen the woman in yellow before. Maybe she is an older sister or an aunt to one of the kids. I feel the slightest twinge of jealousy that I am around the corner from menopause and this girl looks like she could practically take her place among the graduates.
The ceremony proves to be only slightly less boring than listening to Alyssa list her sixty-seven Beanie Babies one by one. At least I am not required to appear interested. They call out every child’s name, read their list of activities and accomplishments—what, when asked in kindergarten, they hoped to be when they grew up, and what they now hope to become. This only seems to last for four or five days. It must, because Alyssa has to go to the bathroom three times during the calling of the roll.
Bobbie offers to take her the third time, but I have this vision of Circa ’69 following them, a cat fight breaking out, hair flying, Alyssa crying, the whole nine yards. And so we all go.
“She shouldn’t be here,” Bobbie says from behind the door of her stall. “She has no right to see my girls do anything.”
“Bobbie,” I sort of whine, trying to warn her that we aren’t exactly alone in the ladies’ room. Besides not knowing who is already in the stalls, there is a line of four or five women waiting to use the toilets. “I’m washing Alyssa’s hands and then we’ll wait for you outside.”
“What? I’m supposed to be discreet?” Bobbie asks, raising her voice indignantly.
I look into the mirror and see several women watching me. Among them is the girl in the yellow dress. I offer her, along with everyone else, an apologetic grimace. The girl takes it as an invitation and steps out of line to introduce herself.
“I’m Marian Healy,” she says. “I, like, used to go here.”
“Well, do you want to go here now?” one of the women in line asks.
The girl titters. I feel two hundred years old. I haven’t tittered
in a dozen years.
“I saw my husband talking to you,” I say, trying not to sound suspicious. After all, lately I’ve been suspicious of everyone but the doorpost.
The girl nods very vigorously, and her dark hair continues moving even after she is done. “I work at the deli he goes to sometimes,” she says. “He’s always very nice to me, very polite. Some people treat you like the furniture when you work in a deli, but Rio doesn’t.”
Well, furniture is Rio’s bread and butter. He notices furniture. He sizes it up, takes its measure, intuits its worth.
“He’s very nice. Polite.”
“Yeah,” Bobbie says as she dries her hands. “You said that.”
As we head back to the auditorium, the girl in yellow calls after us to wait. We turn, but she seems to have forgotten what she wants to say. So I encourage Alyssa to blow her a kiss while Bobbie rolls her eyes, and then leave her in the hall and go back into the too-hot, too-crowded, too-boring ceremonies.
“Where’s Dad?” I whisper to Jesse as we take our seats again.
Jesse looks up at me as if I’m not supposed to be there. “Who?” he asks.
I take the book from his hands, shut it and hold it in my lap.
“Suzanne Weinstein, chorus, grades four and five,” Dr. Meredith drones on.
“But it’s boring,” Jesse whines, kicking his leg back and forth. “I listened when they did Dana and the Ks.”
“…band, grades three, four, and five. Best speller runner up, second grade…”
“I left Dinky the Doo-Doo Bird in the bathroom!” Alyssa says, loudly enough for several heads to turn.
I clap a hand over Alyssa’s mouth. “Dodo,” I correct. “And shh!”
“…in kindergarten, Suzanne wanted to be a ballerina,” Dr. Meredith says. I glance at the stage. Poor Suzanne Weinstein is a cute little butterball who, at eleven, has probably already been put by her mother on the waiting list for stomach-stapling surgery.
“Dinky Doo-Doo’s in the bathroom!” Alyssa says more loudly as she pulls away from me and heads for the aisle.
Rio is swaggering down the aisle toward us, doing the shoulder thing, Dinky in his hand, that girl in yellow a foot or two behind him. He holds the Beanie Baby out to Lys while Dr. Meredith drones on and he nods toward the girl, who obviously found it for her. Rio picks up Alyssa and holds her close enough to Miss Yellow Dress for her to give her a big thank-you hug. It is like a momentary time warp—Marian Healy looks like I did ten years ago, and Alyssa looks pretty much like Dana did. And Rio’s gazing at her the same way he used to gaze at me—nether regions, chest, lips, eyes. The flare of jealousy is doused quickly when his gaze shifts to me and he winks as if he’s taken stock and I still measure up. How it is he can look at another woman and make me feel good about it is simply amazing. There’s an art to it, and he’s a master.
“And that concludes our list of graduates,” the principal says, and the audience cheers, and the graduates take off their hats and throw them up because they are tired and it is hot and they all want the whole thing to be over.
As we gather our belongings and stand up, I catch a glimpse of Mike, his arm around his flower child.
“It’s not fair,” Bobbie says when I pat her gently on the arm.
I can say something sympathetic. I can agree. But I give her the standard answer because it says it all and we have said it to each other a million times—when her father died, when my mother goes back to South Winds. When I found out that my father and Angelina had lied to me for my entire life and that I can’t turn to Angelina with my hurt.
“Who ever told you life was fair?”
I hear the words, but this time they aren’t mine. They are the words of my childhood, and they belong to my mother, her answer whenever I dared to complain about anything being unfair.
Who ever told you life was fair? Was it fair to Markie? Was it fair to me?
And people wonder why I think I have no right to be unhappy.
If life were fair, my dear little girl, I’d have my bouncing babyboy and all would be right with the world. Don’t talk to me about unfair. I have that market cornered.
My mother’s pain has always been the standard by which everyone else’s is judged, and if yours falls short, well then, what right do you have to complain? When I think about it, it’s true. Compared to June, the rest of the world is lucky indeed.
Not that, at the moment, I think I ought to tell Bobbie that.
CHAPTER 13
The days before camp get progressively crazier. I have agreed to paint camp trunks for several customers and now it appears that my children will wind up like the shoemaker’s children, only instead of no shoes, they will have plain trunks. And I buy toothbrushes, toothpaste, plastic toiletry cases, all of which disappear. I hide bags of candy in the kids’ trunks for them to find when they unpack. Instead they find them as I’m packing. I put stamped envelopes addressed home in Dana’s and Jesse’s trunks and postcards that Alyssa can color and mail. They are now precolored. I buy more toothbrushes, toothpaste, plastic cases to replace those Misplaced Item Syndrome victims, and pack them, knowing the kids will have duplicate sets when both turn up. They, in turn, disappear, and my children accuse me of forgetting to get them in the first place. And the second place. And I buy more.
The night before camp I host the Annual Gallo-Lyons Pre-Camp Barbecue. This year, in addition to my parents, because my mother is “unavailable” and my father is “unacceptable,” Mike is also palpably missing and Rio comes home from work early to take on the task of single-handedly making perfect hamburgers (and veggie burgers) for eight.
He is in an excellent mood, kissing me on the cheek as he comes in the back door, unbuttoning his work shirt and loosening his tie with a flourish, as if he’s practicing for a job at Chippendale’s. “Just gonna put on grungies,” he says as the kids come into the kitchen. On his way out he pats Alyssa’s head and fakes a punch toward Jesse’s middle.
“Patties are ready when you are,” I call after him as I spot the remnants of the Lyons clan crossing their backyard and heading for our deck. Kimmie and Kristin are wearing cutoffs and immaculate white T-shirts, the short sleeves rolled up evenly to reveal already tanned arms. The Ks have their hair pulled back in high ponytails and I can hear their flip-flops smacking as they climb the steps and join Dana on the deck amid squeals as though they haven’t seen one another in a year and a half.
Bobbie follows in a pair of deep orange capris and a crisp white halter blouse, a bottle of wine in hand. She has jeweled slides on her feet and I can see her toenails are perfectly polished, which reminds me of the footcial I never took my mother into the City to get. I look down at myself and notice that my white capris sport Alyssa’s handprint and something that may be hamburger juice near the hip. My pink V-neck T-shirt is stretched out and the hem hangs unevenly. My Keds are spattered with paint. My mother is right. Dress like a wreck and you feel like one.
Rio sails back into the kitchen, whistling, and blows on the back of my neck. “You are so hot,” he whispers, pushing up against me. “As soon as all these kids are outta here, I’m jumping you on this very counter…and on the kitchen table.…”
“Rio!” I squirm away from him and catch Jesse frowning at us, as if he can’t believe we still want to touch each other when we are clearly so incredibly old.
Rio grabs up the plate of hamburger patties with one hand, lifts it high like a waiter in a crowded bar and heads for the back door, strutting to the music playing in his head. “Oh, and the dining room,” he says over his shoulder. “And from that god-awful chandelier in the hall.”
As he goes out the back door Bobbie comes in, tickling his middle as she passes him. “What’s that they say in It’s a Wonderful Life when Harry’s got his hands full of plates? Gotta light?”
Rio’s eyes drift down the front of Bobbie’s shirt. “You’re lucky my hands are full, sweet cakes,” Rio tells her. “I’d make you forget all those old movies.�
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She rolls her eyes at me. “Promises, promises,” she says as she puts the wine bottle on the counter and rummages in my utensils drawer for the corkscrew. She comments on Rio’s unusually good mood and my cheeks burn. “At least someone’s getting something,” she says.
“Someone’s talking a good game,” I answer back as the girls file in. “Are you all abandoning Daddy?” I ask them.
They say something about the smell of lighter fluid being annoying—ever notice how everything annoys eleven-year-olds, except their own behavior?—and swipe the bowl of potato chips off the counter and take it into the den.
Rio comes back in to get the rolls after a while, and Bobbie and I call for the girls to help set the table, bring out the soda, get the show on the road. The Lord of the Grill declares the burgers done to perfection—not an easy chore when Jesse likes his burnt, I like mine rare, Bobbie likes hers medium well—and brings the platter to the table.
“This looks terrific,” he says, and he squeezes on mounds of ketchup and adds a slice of lettuce, another of tomato, and prepares to take a bite. Everyone watches him because the honor of the first bite always goes to the griller. Why this doesn’t apply indoors where I cook every meal, I can’t say. At any rate, he licks his lips, opens wide and digs in.
“Holy shit!” he says, spitting the burger onto the plate and grabbing Alyssa’s out of her hands before she can get it to her mouth. “What did you put in these? Kerosene or something?” He takes a swig of soda, rinses his mouth, runs to the railing and spits it out onto the lawn.
“Very funny,” I say, picking up my burger. My husband has the sense of humor of a fourteen-year-old, and I take a bite before he can turn this into a half-hour situation comedy. Only he isn’t joking. “Don’t eat it,” I say as I spit the meat into my hand. “Oh my God, don’t eat it!”
“What’d I tell you,” he says while the kids all push their plates away and Bobbie sniffs the meat to see if it has gone bad.
Who Makes Up These Rules, Anyway? Page 10