Mom’s face brightens in that vacant way. “I thought you already had one, hon.”
“No, I mean, well . . . yes, I was seeing someone, but now it’s serious.”
“Oh?” Same brightening—if Mom gets any brighter she will burn herself out. “Is it that starving artist? Bain?”
“Blaine!” Giggles erupt; Jayne decides to believe Mom has made a joke. “He told me the other night, after the Saint Xavier fundraiser, that he’s trying to change—he’s had kind of a wild life—and now he wants to settle down.”
“That’s wonderful!” Mom is leaning across the table of RL, flagging the waiter down and ordering another round of wine. “Though men never really change—you know that, don’t you? It’s cute when they offer to try, as long as the things they’re referring to are only nuisances, not anything really bad, capital B.”
Jayne is certain Mom would not categorize snorting H or practicing B&D—some of Blaine’s favorite capital letter pastimes—as nuisances. She smiles demurely.
“We should have gotten a bottle,” Mom shrills, giddy. “After all, we’re both in love . . . honey, didn’t you think Larry just seemed like the warmest, kindest person? Doesn’t he just radiate that?”
“Huh?” Jayne says. “Are you talking about that J. Peterman guy who says everything on cue, or about Marty?”
“Marty!” her mother scoffs. “Marty never says anything!”
“Maybe you’re just not listening.”
“Oh, Sophie Wee.” Mom rests her hands on the tabletop, Christlike. “Please. He really enjoyed you. He thought you were so bright . . . which, of course, you are.” She studies the menu diligently, although she will have the soft shell crab salad, obviously. Afterward she will drag Jayne next door to Ralph Lauren and offer to buy her an outfit, and Jayne will accept because she wants to blend in at work, and after that Jayne will feel as if Mom paid her off not to say anything to Marty and will feel guilty because the only reason she is holding her tongue is for fear that Marty will leave.
She stares around the dark-wood room. It is meant to feel like a men’s club in here, but all the patrons are women. In fact there are only . . . three men, she counts, in the entire place: all over sixty. Her mother likes this kind of vibe—likes to sit among ladies who lunch, although she herself works, works hard, harder than Marty wanted her to, harder than he works himself. But Mom knows—she was tricked once before: never grow too dependent on a man. She will not give herself up this time. Maybe she does not know how to give up anything anymore. Maybe that is the problem.
“Don’t live with him,” Mom warns abruptly, tone dire. “That Blaine. Divorce rates are higher among couples who live together. I learned that training to be a Pre-Cana counselor. Modern couples tend to assume it’s just the opposite. Isn’t that funny?”
“I don’t want to get married,” Jayne says, expecting her mother to gasp, but Mom is scanning the room, too—reassuring herself that she belongs here?—and only nods, so Jayne is not sure her words even registered. She sighs.
“Mmm,” Mom murmurs finally, eyes still on some distant goal. “I understand completely.”
The voice on the other end of the phone is young and female, both of which come stupidly as a shock. “Can I help you?” chimes the girl—the manager who has been fetched to field a customer complaint. Behind her, the hum of copiers, white noise.
“I’m calling about a, um, person who works in the evening—to, about a man who works nights. His name is Bain, something like—”
“Blaine, you must mean!” Such cheer—one would think this girl had cracked a major case for the FBI, rescued countless children. “Our night manager.”
“Yes, well. Yes. Well. Your manager is sexually harassing his customers.”
“Oh . . . wow. I mean, what do you mean?”
“It’s pretty obvious. A woman walks in, she doesn’t even have to be good looking, and he tries to pick her up. He’s done it to me, so I sent one of my coworkers, married and twice his age, and he did it to her, too. He called her baby and said he lived around the corner and wanted to bring her home to see his paintings. Can you believe it? Does he really think that’s going to work on anyone who isn’t totally desperate?”
“Gross!” The girl—she must be an earnest Women’s Studies major, working her way through school to become a humorless, bespectacled professor in expensive tweed—takes a moment to compose herself. “I . . . God, I had no idea. I’m so sorry. If you want to come in and get some courtesy Kinkos cards, I mean, please, feel free—”
“I won’t be needing any courtesy cards.” Stiff, with an air of skepticism. “I wouldn’t want to run into him again. I’ll be taking my business elsewhere.”
She hangs up before she can hear this contrite little coed—Blaine’s probably banged her, too—cross her heart and hope to die that a future run-in with The Kinkos Predator is out of the question.
Snapshot number seventeen: Jayne with puffy hair, Bear’s sweatshirt in honor of Super Bowl Sunday, flowered Forenza jeans she used a coat hanger to zip. Marty in a white T-shirt with (passé) “Where’s the Beef?” slogan, lightweight blue Lands’ End cardigan, khakis, index and middle fingers in “V for Victory” sign.
Subtext: Jayne rests her head on Marty’s shoulder. He is her savior. As of their conversation last night, her underwear drawer is three hundred dollars richer; the abortion is scheduled for Monday. Mom cannot know. Mom would make Jayne have the baby and then give it up for adoption, and she cannot go through with that, she just can’t. If Mom knew Marty had given her the money, she would divorce him, even though divorce is a sin, too. Not like abortion, the ultimate sin—unless you count suicide.
Script: Marty did not raise his voice when she told him. He sat faded against the beige sofa of the TV room with Dad’s Irish setter asleep on his knee: a portrait worthy of Mike Brady. He said, “Does the father know about this?” and Jayne yelped, “God no!” then chewed her lip: this picture-perfect father deserved better than a seventeen-year-old stepdaughter who got so drunk at parties she usually ended up sprawled on a guest room bed, underpants lost among a pile of coats, bra around her chin. Sometimes she didn’t even remember the guy; she only found out at school when his girlfriend accidentally-on-purpose spilled Coke all over her at lunch or wrote “whore” on her locker in lipstick. And so Jayne contemplated the right seed to have impregnated her: someone like Marty, a secret boyfriend she would martyr herself for by not revealing his name.
“I don’t think it’d be a good idea to tell him,” she stammered. “He doesn’t want to be in a serious relationship with me because I’m not Jewish. We always use a condom, though—I don’t know how this happened.”
Marty nodded sagely. (Tonight, on a very special Brady Bunch, Jan gets knocked up by one of God’s Chosen People . . .) “I’ve heard plenty of young men give that cop-out in my time. But telling him might make him think more seriously about his responsibilities. Sex is a big undertaking. There are risks. Not just pregnancy—”
“But we used a condom . . .”
“Emotional risks, Jaynie.” Mom hated it when Marty used her new name. “Tell the truth—you love this boy, don’t you? That’s why you’re trying to protect him?”
And Jayne couldn’t help it: tears welled. This was happening a lot—more and more—she believed herself.
“It won’t get you anywhere, giving yourself to someone who doesn’t want all of you. You’re a wonderful girl. Don’t hold yourself cheaply.”
Jayne nodded. She had wrecked everything, every plan to redeem Dad. Abandoned him instead the moment she opened her legs; would seal his fate Monday. Her failure burned—she wondered if God felt sad, too, or just wrathful. But Marty would give her the money. Marty would choose her over Mom. Even over God.
Through the keyhole, Blaine is wearing that same shirt he wore to the fundraiser. Instead of a jacket and tie, he has a vintage silk vest slung over it and has left it untucked over pants that on anyone else would look like basi
c cargo, but on Blaine manage to lend him the appearance of a gentleman guerilla; Jayne half expects to see a rifle casually slung over his shoulder. He smells like a jungle, too—shuns deodorant as bourgeois. She loves his scent, wants to fling the door open and inhale his primitiveness. But with the way things have been going lately . . .
“What do you want?” she mutters through the door, half hoping he will not hear her and will slink away.
“Gotta show you something.”
She inches the door open in slow motion; Blaine stands stock still, waiting until she’s backed away to let him in. His good manners worry her. The way he is not checking out her cleavage worries her. His fingernails are stained with paint; he holds some crumpled paper in his hand.
“You probably already guessed as much.” Voice low. “But I got a new old lady. I mean, not that you and I were ever . . . Yeah, so her daddy’s a lawyer. She wants me to give you this.”
Jayne moves forward to take his offering, unfolds her fingers to find some kind of legal document full of small print and blanks in which to fill in the names of parties. She sees her name typed in. She hands it back to Blaine. “What’s this?” But she knows.
“So you’ll stop the shit.” His guilty shuffling shows he’s been put up to this; instead of cheering Jayne, the knowledge that another woman wields such power over him when she held none is crushing. “I’ve known it was you all along, but I was letting it slide. I felt sorry for you, all that. I figured it’d be bad form not to accept a little rage. I guess I was flattered. But you pushed too far. I got fired.”
Jayne’s teeth clack together; her chest has gone so tremory her voice vibrates. “So you serve me a restraining order? For what? Suing me won’t get your job back.”
“It will if I can get phone records. It will if the day manager recognizes your voice. It will if you don’t want to go to court and be forced to stay three hundred feet away from me like some psycho. So instead, you come on in and tell my fascist boss that I didn’t pinch some old woman’s ass; I just dumped you ’cause you deserved it.”
“I . . . what?”
“Come on, girl. Why’re you trying to hold on to this game between us? I’ve been there, done that, you know? I need a little sweetness. But you prefer war to love.”
“Funny, I thought that was you.” Tears roll—she wishes he would slap them away. Would he really sue her, humiliate her in public? A flash of memory: his hand, jerking her hair suddenly back to twist her face in his direction as she grunted on all fours. I’m the only person who knows what you look like right now. No matter what else we do together, I’ll have seen your face at this moment, and that’ll always be there. What would a man like that do with tenderness if he unearthed it? Yet on his face now, not a trace of enjoyment, no perverse pleasure in his victory; confusion fuzzes her brain like cotton. Wasn’t it his goal all along to debase her? Isn’t that what she wanted, too?
“Ohh, I get it,” she drawls. “You have some new, dew-faced young thing who doesn’t like your not having a job, who figured out you’re screwing around. So I get to be the scapegoat that brings you two together. You can burn me in the town square, and she can sing “Stand By Your Man” while I fry—isn’t that romantic? Well, I never did anything to you! I don’t even know what you want me to admit to, but go ahead and hold your breath. See you in court.”
He shakes his head, like she is a mirage he needs to clear from his vision. “I have your letters, Jayne. I’ve got, what, six of ’em, threatening me, berating me, telling me I’m going to hell—you’re sick. Who else shoved a bunch of salt in my flowerbeds like my life is Sodom and Gomorrah? Who else calls ten times a day and hangs up? Who wrote in lipstick all over my car about what a pig I am? The pitiful thing is, you really believe you’re innocent, don’t you? Do you even fucking see me, girl? Or am I some figment of your imagination?”
Nothing else to say. She slams the door and sinks to the floor, longing for a not-so-distant time when one Bette Davis door slam could spur a whole reinvention of events: that Blaine was stalking her like some Slacker of Darkness, that she needed Marty—always Marty—to come to her rescue. She imagines placing the call—Marty is Jewish; he knows lawyers, too—weeping her version of the story, repeating threats that would soon sound so convincing she’d be able to envision Blaine’s lips forming them. Marty would be at her apartment in a heartbeat; she could collapse into his arms; it would be so easy. With Marty she does not need to play saint, risk-taker, proper adult daughter in a serious relationship and a Lauren suit: basket case works better. If she’s altered some details to protect him here and there, it’s not really lying. Not like what Mom is doing.
It has always been only a matter of time before Mom grew tired of the way the line has been drawn in the sand of their triad. It has always been a matter of time before Mom would make sure—and what better way than to make Jayne complicit in the Lawrence affair?—that she loses Marty, too.
Snapshot number twenty: One-bedroom studio with white walls, cracked ceiling paint, stained Berber carpet, decanter of Jameson atop the refrigerator, burgundy velvet bed covering, no chairs or couch.
Subtext: She has left her mother’s home—although there are three empty bedrooms, and they did not make her pay rent while she was in college—because it is the only way she can stop going to church. “As long as you live under my roof, you will come with me to Mass,” Mom has said eight zillion times. Jayne feels giddy sitting with the giant New York Times at Café Voltaire on her first free Sunday, reading the stories from cover to cover and tinkering with the crossword. She is a café-going chick who has known many dicks—big deal. She is a modern woman who once had an abortion; she has not committed any crime. She is no different from anyone else, not responsible for saving her father’s soul through some misguided pitch at sainthood. She can drink in the afternoon. She can entertain any lover she wishes in her big, soft bed.
Only later that night does the bile begin to rise: the beginning of three weeks with her head in the toilet, unable to keep down food, unable to sleep without waking in sweat from dreams that Mom has died. Sometimes, instead of dying—victim of a bloody murder—Mom rejects her, turns her out into the street, mocking Jayne’s threats of suicide, explaining, Don’t you see? You’re nobody to me—I don’t mind if you die. At first, she attempts making it to class, to work, but although the bile pauses when she leaves the studio, her heart races and somersaults; her legs go numb. Behind her locked door, she curls on the bed the color of the inside of a heart and listens to the irate phone messages from her boss at Dominick’s where she bags groceries, to barbs from Mom who thinks Jayne is blowing her off. No one from UIC calls; it is a commuter school and Jayne has made few friends—none of whom would be surprised to find her cutting class.
She has lost thirteen pounds by the time Marty arrives at the door threatening to get the landlord if Jayne does not let him in. The sky outside is purple as a bruise. Marty gathers Jayne—who reeks; she can even smell herself—into his arms and rocks her while Jayne dry heaves on his lap. With baby steps, he guides Jayne and her velvet comforter to his Volvo and helps her recline on the leather backseat. Mom greets them, wordless at the door, her mouth a bitter, pinched imitation of itself. Alone, Marty heats Jayne’s cocoa, makes up her bed.
In the mail, UIC grades arrive: all Fs, even in the art classes. Nobody mentions her returning next semester. Instead, Mom gets Jayne a job at a Catholic preschool, whose headmistress is a friend of hers. Saint Xavier’s is full of everything that should make her feel better. At work, the staff commonly debates what to put in Christmas cards and newsletters, saying, “We don’t want to come off as too religious.” Most of the teachers are covertly pro-choice, pro-capital-punishment; the Pope is akin to a charming but embarrassingly senile uncle only invited to dinner on major holidays. Yet the mediocre compromise of it all fits like a snug noose. So this is it then: one hypocritical foot in the faith that sears her, because she cannot stomach—literally—going cold
turkey. Because neither has she any strength for sainthood; she prefers to drink herself numb, to smoke and wear low-cut shirts. Religious guys leave her cold. Instead, assholes are what she’s traded her father’s soul for (they had all been “Blaines,” right from the first). She hates them: cheaters and users, seductive and cruel. They are the only ones able to move her.
Evenings, Mom asks about her colleagues and they gossip, eating cookies on the couch in newfound camaraderie. A feeling of fate washes over Jayne like a shallow river in which she is content to drown.
Script:
“I’m off to Mass.”
“—”
“I’ll pick up some lox and bagels for you and Marty on my way home.”
Jayne glances up from the TV; Mom stands in the doorway, framed by shimmery sun. Jayne wonders if she is sleeping around behind Marty’s back. God will never forgive it, leaving the atonement of her dead father’s sins in the hands of a woman like this. But Mom seems heartily prepared to shoulder the task, ignorant of her inadequacies and armed with the blithe righteousness Jayne associates with simplicity.
“Thanks, Mom. I’m starved.”
Surprisingly, Mom answers the phone—she is hardly ever home lately, “working late.” “Oh, sweetie,” she chokes, voice dropping three decibels. “Larry says he needs time. He thinks what he’s doing is wrong and can’t live with the guilt, as though I’m not feeling guilty, too. But don’t I deserve to finally have love after all I’ve been through, Sophie? Your poor father and his depression; all those men who didn’t want anything to do with a widow with a child—anything but sex, that is—and Marty, well, Marty . . .”
“What’s wrong with Marty?”
“Nothing, darling. He’s wonderful. I knew he would be. Everything your father wasn’t. I knew we were lucky to get him, that he’d be new hope for you.”
Slut Lullabies Page 21