Bed Rest

by Sarah Bilston

  Over lunch we talked about her presidency of Residents Against Demolition. She seems to think that a few doses of Clorox and a good scrub would sort out the mold problem—and raised her right eyebrow in a distinctly skeptical fashion when I advanced my “black-mold-is-one-step-down-from-the-black-death” theory. I asked her why she’s leading the residents’ action group, given that she doesn’t actually live in the condemned building, and she looked at me reproachfully. Then she asked what I would do if my friends were about to lose their homes. But I think she is inspired by more than mere philanthropy; she seems to feel that she’s partly responsible for the landlord’s decision to destroy the building because she was encouraging her friends in the complex to agitate over the quality of services he’s providing. Like many of the residents in the condemned complex, she has a rent-controlled apartment, and as we all know, landlords aren’t especially keen to throw money at tenants renting desirable Upper-East-Side properties at a fraction of their market value. She has apparently filed several complaints about the quality of the services she’s received over the last year and helped half a dozen friends in the other building make similar complaints. She thinks the landlord was rattled by the sudden influx of grievance letters and trumped up the black mold theory in response.

  She also thinks that our building is next—she believes destruction of the first complex will set a precedent somehow, and she’s clearly worried about losing her home. But, as I told her, if our apartments turn out to be free of toxic mold, there’s nothing the development company can do to her; as a rent-controlled tenant, she can’t be evicted. It’s different for Tom and me, of course; if the landlord wants to renovate our apartment we’ll have to move out at the end of our lease, but we’ve got another twelve months to go, and by then—who knows?—maybe we’ll be in our three-bedroomed house, cooking on our shiny silver Viking stove.

  I always have some sympathy with landlords in this position. They’re just trying to earn a living like everybody else. But if Mrs. G is to be believed, ours has been shortchanging the rent-controlled residents for years, and he has now written a shamefully high-handed letter telling them they’ll have to move out within a matter of weeks and offering shockingly poor compensation. If the building has serious mold the residents will have to leave, as I explained, but of course they have rights. Mrs. G and her friends are unsure how to respond; Mrs. G’s great-nephew, Alexis, has been helping them translate the landlord’s various communications, but he has admitted that he doesn’t understand the landlord’s latest statement of the case and of his legal responsibilities.

  So I offered—oh lord!—to look at this latest document and try to explain it to Alexis and Mrs. G. I tried extremely hard to make her understand that I was not going to act as their lawyer in all of this, but I’m not entirely sure she got it; I told her they needed to hire a lawyer officially to represent their interests, but she looked extremely blank and said “You not lawyer, then?” with big round eyes. She’s going to ask Alexis to drop by one night this week after school (he’s a history teacher) and bring the letter, and I’ll have to tell him that my advice is strictly off the record. I really don’t think I can get involved in this; even if the residents were able to pay me, I can’t function effectively as a lawyer while lying on my left side twenty-four hours a day. And Dr. Weinberg would have a fit if she found out.

  Am I being played by old Mrs. G? Maybe. Maybe I’m going to seriously regret offering to help, but I don’t see what else I can do. Mrs. G has been like a mother to me this past week—not like my mother, obviously, more like the mother I always wished I had. She makes me things to eat, she listens to me sympathetically when I’m upset, and other than that she leaves me alone. This is pretty much perfect mother behavior, as far as I’m concerned. The least I can do is explain the contents of a letter to her.

  Today, for the first time, she also told me a bit about her own life. She was engaged thirty-five years ago to a man who was blown up in Vietnam a week before he was due to return home for the wedding. And that, as far as she was concerned, was that. “In my mind, we married, you know?” she said to me, her eyes suddenly bright. “Still married. There can be nobody else. He was everything. My sister in Philadelphia, she’s so cross with me, thinks I’ve ruined my life, but I’m happy, you know? Happy as I can be without him. Alexis looks after me, I see my friends, I go out, I have good life. Don’t know why people make me do what everybody else does, move on like nothing happened. When you find the right person, that’s it, you joined up forever. Know what I mean?”

  I nodded slowly. What would happen if Tom—no, no, it doesn’t bear thinking about. But my mother was kind of like Mrs. G, she rarely dated again after my father walked out, although I don’t think it was because she felt “joined up forever.” I think she just thought life was too short to waste on any more rat-bags.

  7 P.M.

  Disaster! Brianna’s married lover dumped her last night!

  They went out for drinks, she expected the usual amorous relations to ensue, but he coldly gave her her congé halfway through a large dry martini. And what, as she said, do you do after that? Draw out the painful breakup as you delicately sip the remainder of your spirits or down the thing in one hasty gulp, risking swollen numb lips and stripped cheek cells? In the end she decided on the old-fashioned alternative (I always said she was a 1950s girl) and splashed the entire contents of the glass in his eyeballs. And then (because what was he to do with his drink? she pondered, being a thoughtful girl in her way), she picked up her lover’s glass, dipstick, olive, and all, and dumped it down the back of his neck as she marched out of the bar.

  She called me a few hours ago and asked if she could come round. I must admit, I was intrigued to find out more about this unexpected breakup. Why did MM leave his extraordinarily gullible and willing mistress? Was it the impending arrival of a new baby—or was it Brianna’s discomfort at the idea of parading the streets of Manhattan in suspenders and a crimson velvet corset?

  MM, with typical skill and aplomb, managed to make Brianna feel responsible for the disastrous finale. I suspect that the wife got suspicious, because apparently Brianna broke rule number one of the relationship by calling his cell phone a few days ago, thereby leaving an unfamiliar number in the last ten calls. And as MM had often pointed out, the wife was likely to check through the numbers. Brianna also made the mistake, I gather, of insisting that MM spend a weekend away with her sometime in the next month, and further suggested that he might like to leave his wife now, rather than in five months’ time, when the wife is on the verge of delivering a screaming nine-pounder. In other words, she became just a teensy bit more demanding, a weensy bit less submissive, and MM took to his heels in a fright.

  Of course, Brianna is now racked with guilt (“I pushed him too hard…of course the pregnancy must have shocked him…of course he can’t leave his wife while she’s suffering from morning sickness…of course I should have worn the bustier…”). I stroked her shoulder and said “there there” a lot, and watched someone else work their way through the box of pink tissues I keep on the teak side table. It was quite nice not to be the one weeping for a change. I told her she deserved better, that she was a beautiful and intelligent (?) girl and should date men who appreciated her finer qualities. She sobbed brokenly, then pulled herself together, smiled mistily at me, and said I was probably right. She thanked me for listening and consoling her in her hour of need, and told me I was very wise. I felt wonderfully maternal. (“Give wise advice to friends in need” is another item on the Modern Woman’s List of Things to Do Before Hitting Thirty.)

  Tom called a few minutes ago to say he’s on his way home for dinner, so Brianna decided to go home, have a bath, and work her way through a vat of chocolate fudge ice cream (my idea). I think I’ve calmed her down. In fact, I think she’s starting to see she’s well rid of the bastard.

  10:30 P.M.

  Tom tells me he bumped into Mark in the subway on the way home. Apparen
tly, Lara is pregnant again! Seems everyone’s up the duff these days.

  15

  Wednesday 9 A.M.

  Jeanie is coming tomorrow—I can’t wait. Only thirty-three hours to go before she lands.

  10 A.M.

  Just had Brianna on the phone. Last night’s tub of ice cream and my dose of measured advice only accomplished so much, it seems. She woke up in floods of tears (she told me), sobbed all the way to work, and now wanted my approval of her plan to go home and wallow in misery under the bedcovers for the rest of the day. I said, No! Absolutely not. No wallowing allowed. Chocolate consumption is one thing; wallowing under the comforter is quite another. Stay at your desk, I admonished her firmly, but you can come and see me at lunchtime and we’ll share a box of cookies, if you like.

  2 P.M.

  I’ve just posted her back to the office. She wanted to spend the rest of the day here (“we can keep each other company”), but I was having none of it. I mean, I like her, and I feel sorry for her, but I have my own problems. And anyway, she has to start getting over this. It would be one thing if her married lover had a single redeeming feature, but he doesn’t; he cheats on his wife and kids, he’s an unusually harsh lawyer (Brianna concedes—he’s apparently got the social conscience of a mole rat), and he’s a master in the art of manipulating weedy needy girls. What’s to like?

  4 P.M.

  Another hour-long call from Brianna. I’m utterly worn out.

  6 P.M.

  The doorbell rang a few minutes ago. It was Brianna; I could hear her heavy breaths through the door. I’m ashamed to say this, but I pretended to be asleep.

  6:10 P.M.

  Brianna just called on her cell and asked if I was okay, telling me she was worried when I didn’t answer the bell…I trotted out the line about having been asleep, silently cursing myself for having picked up the phone. She asked if she could come by; she sounded so broken and distraught I felt I had to say yes. At least she offered to bring four pints of Ben & Jerry’s super-fudge-chunk ice cream. With a jar of chocolate sauce.

  Midnight

  Tom has just kicked out Brianna. He’d been staring at her with an increasingly outraged expression on his face for the last two hours, as she oscillated interminably between extolling MM’s virtues (he was “caring,” which translated means that he bought her a turquoise bracelet from Tiffany’s for her last birthday) and cataloging his physical faults (his wife had a point about his middle-aging body, she now admits; his tummy is charging outward while his hairline is in full retreat). Huge yawns didn’t seem to register with her, neither did the fact that at one point I actually fell asleep in the conversation (a misnomer if ever there was one; she talked, we listened in silence, eyelids propped open with matchsticks). Finally Tom stood up and said courteously but firmly—every inch the practiced, polished lawyer—that I needed my rest and he had an early start at work tomorrow morning. She looked a bit taken aback, but Tom adroitly maneuvered her off the armchair and out of the door before she had the chance to ask—and I knew it was coming—if she could crash in our spare room tonight. Jeanie in my baby’s room, yes; all others, most definitely No.

  16

  Thursday 7 A.M.

  I didn’t sleep last night—maybe I’m still preoccupied with Brianna’s crisis, maybe I’m overexcited about Jeanie’s arrival this evening. Either way, my night was filled with strange hallucinogenic dreams; at one point I woke up with warm sweat pooled along my spine, convinced I’d given birth to triplets with kittens’ heads.

  And my legs are starting to protest their new purposelessness. The tendons whine, the bones groan, the joints flatly refuse to cooperate when I roll and twist my ankles to try and force the blood into my freezing toes. And then there’s the cramp, that unexpected nighttime horror of pregnancy. I catch myself clinging to consciousness because my body knows that, in sleep, I may point my toes down and start up a pain that is surely as bad or worse than birth itself. (Or if it isn’t, somebody let me off this train.)

  8 A.M.

  Bri just called again. She tells me that she’s going to stay at home all day and cry, unless I can give her a reason to get up. Really, truly, I can’t. After five minutes I pretended I had to go to the bathroom. So sorry, Bri.

  10:30 A.M.

  Jeanie will be at her gate in Heathrow now. The plane will probably be boarding. I hope she’s remembered to buy a spare bottle of water for the journey, I did tell her.

  Noon

  Jeanie’s plane has taken off—I’ve been following its progress on the Virgin Atlantic Web site. It looks like she’s going to arrive on time. In about seven hours she will walk through our door.

  Brianna on the phone once more, so I used the “I have to pee” line again. It’s going to get old, but what can I do? I can’t be “on my way out the door” or “in the middle of cooking dinner” while I’m on bed rest, and I simply can’t—no, no, no—listen to any more on the subject of the MM. I feel trapped. When Jeanie gets here I’ll have to tell her to start screening my calls.

  Midnight

  Jeanie and I have been talking nonstop for the last five hours—about everything: the pregnancy, Alison, our mother, the studio, her course—everything. It’s so good to see her. It’s almost worth being on bed rest to have her here with me at last.

  17

  Sunday 4 P.M.

  Best things about having Jeanie here:

  She is an excellent cook, and I was longing for some homemade food. (We’ve eaten takeout every night since the first day I was placed on bed rest. Manhattan may have the world’s best restaurants, but there’s only so much saturated fat a girl can take.) Last night we had spinach lasagne, the evening before we had duck casserole, and she made a big pot of apple and parsnip soup for lunch today. She’s promised to make more and leave it in the freezer before she goes, together with some whole-grain rolls. Yum.

  She’s the one member of my family Tom actually likes.

  I have a reason to fob off Brianna whenever she calls (“Sorry! Jeanie’s calling me, must put down the phone…”).

  (Poor Bri, I think she feels I’ve abandoned her now that Jeanie’s here—which, in all honesty, I have. But after a few Brifree, tear-free days I’m ready to face her again, so I’ve asked her to come over on Tuesday at seven to meet Jeanie. Hopefully my sister’s presence will force her to keep a lid on things a bit, and anyway she can only stay for an hour because the MM has asked her to meet him for drinks to “talk things over.”)

  Worst things about having Jeanie here:

  Turns out she already knew how to knit. Not sure I like the fact that my youngest sister is more accomplished in the feminine arts than I am. She’s already a much better cook. (“Become competent in the feminine arts” is another item on the Modern Woman’s List of Things to Do Before Hitting Thirty. I want my children to grow up in a household where larders are stocked with luminous homemade jellies and rich amber chutneys in sparkling glass jars.)

  I’m sleeping terribly and am longing for a night alone in bed, but Jeanie’s in the spare room so I can’t kick Tom out.

  Jeanie calls Dave at least once a day and croons lovingly at him until I want to vomit.

  18

  Tuesday 9 P.M.

  Jeanie’s gone to have drinks with a school friend who recently moved to Brooklyn, so I have a few minutes to write up the events of this evening—

  At six-thirty the doorbell went, and I thought, Christ, Brianna has come early so she can spend an extra half hour droning on about the MM. But no—it was Mrs. Gianopoulou accompanied by Alexis, her great-nephew (I’d completely forgotten they were going to drop in with the latest letter from the landlord).

  First things first: Alexis seemed extremely nice, the kind of person you’d love to have teaching your ten-year-old. He looks a bit like Noah Wyle—well, like Noah Wyle would look if he’d had a Greek grandmother. He has clear, shy eyes, sun-brown skin, and floppy golden hair, and he was dressed very stylishly for a high school teacher
, in Diesel jeans and a Paul Smith shirt. I bet all his pupils have enormous crushes on him. (I almost have a crush on him myself, except it’s hard to lust after strange men when you can barely see them over the top of your belly.)

  He gave me the letter, which I soon realized he understood far better than Mrs. Gianopoulou thought. In fact, he was painfully uncomfortable about asking my advice; he understood immediately that I wasn’t acting as their lawyer, and when Mrs. G went out of the room to use the bathroom he admitted he’s been trying to persuade the group for months to raise the money to hire their own representation, officially. But the older residents are unwilling to part with their cash (to be fair, they don’t have much), and they don’t see why Alexis can’t handle the landlord all on his own.