Open Doors

by Gloria Goldreich

  “The religious school at VBS is really great and they do marvelous bar mitzvahs,” the man called Carl told Elaine.

  “Valley Beth Shalom,” Herb Glasser explained to her, his tone dry. “They like to call it the ‘very big shul’ which, of course, it is.”

  Elaine smiled, refilled one young woman’s wineglass, answered her question about her work. Ceramics was not her hobby, she explained. It was her profession.

  “Yeah. Well, I might take a course. A workshop. See if I like it,” Carl’s wife, Suzanne said. “If I have the time, that is. Between carpools and committees and stuff. Carl is always traveling so I’m stuck with the nitty-gritty. I can’t imagine where you found the time, Elaine.”

  She thought to tell them how different child-rearing had been for her. Strenuous, yes, but not frenetic. Music teachers came to the house. There were no tutors, no frantic academic competition. The children rode their bicycles down quiet suburban streets to Hebrew school, to ball fields and playgrounds, to their friend’s homes. “Our kids are pretty independent,” she and Neil had told their friends proudly. Their lives had been structured to nurture that independence. Her studio just outside her back door, Neil’s office a few miles away. She had not been imprisoned behind the wheel of her car, checking her watch, tearing from one after-school activity to another. She had been at her potter’s wheel or setting her kiln, taking pleasure in the work of her hands, excited by a new glaze that captured the colors of an autumnal sunset, a trivet that she had molded to the shape of a banyan leaf, fielding phone calls from customers and galleries.

  “Peter says that his mother’s work was always her priority,” Lauren said smoothly.

  Elaine stared at her daughter-in-law. Was that how Peter had perceived her? Was that really how he had described her to Lauren? She thought to murmur a protest but Lauren had glided into the kitchen and Suzanne looked at her expectantly.

  “I think there were fewer pressures when our kids were growing up, certainly less driving and, I think, less striving. My work was important to me but not as important as my family.” She disliked the defensive tone that had crept into her voice and she was relieved when Lauren invited them into the dining room.

  “Peter must have gotten really hung up,” she said apologetically. “We might as well begin.”

  “The freeway,” Carl said.

  “Two accidents on the 405.”

  “Maybe three. I heard three.”

  “This damn city.”

  They all shook their heads and smiled forgivingly. They were fortune’s favorites, basking in sunlight, aglow with prosperity. Los Angelinos all, by birth or by choice, they loved the damn city of their discontent, reveled in its spaciousness of sky and nearness of sea. It was, at once, their own Riviera, their Alps, their Sahara. They loved its brightness, its excitement, the big cars they drove along its freeways, the beautiful homes with white stucco walls and red-tiled roofs they glimpsed from behind their oversize sunglasses, the lives they had invented for themselves amidst its radiant landscape. They loved sitting down to dinner in Lauren and Peter’s beautiful dining room, eating the salad made from avocados plucked that very morning from a tree whose swaying branches were in easy view of the table. They squeezed lemons, newly picked, the rinds still warm from the afternoon sun, into their tall glasses of sparkling water.

  Their conversation flew from topic to topic. New books were discussed and new films and books that had been optioned for films and films that were being turned into books. They laughed at the absurdity of it all and pulled out small notepads to record the names of the books, the films. They bemoaned the proliferation of shopping malls. The real money, Carl said, was in the record thing. No, the music thing. No, the film thing. Suzanne was insistent. After all, weren’t they sitting in Peter’s house, eating his avocados and he, after all, was deep into the film thing. They all laughed and Lauren smiled and glanced at her watch.

  Maria served the main course, wild salmon with julienned vegetables—all organic, Lauren assured them, bought at the organic produce counter at Gelson’s that very morning. Peter arrived as she rose to pass the vinaigrette, slamming the front door, smiling his apologies, kissing Lauren lightly on the forehead.

  “A late meeting…a call from the east coast…those idiots can’t get the time zones right and then of course—”

  “The freeway,” they screamed in chorus.

  “The damn freeway,” he agreed, accepted their sympathy and hurried upstairs to change. His mustard-yellow shirt was badly rumpled; a grease stain shimmered on the monogrammed pocket, the polka-dot ascot was gone.

  He rejoined them, wearing a pale green cotton sweater, a gift from Denis, Elaine recalled irrelevantly, as the conversation switched to summer plans for the children. There was a baseball camp at Pepperdine University. Carl and Suzanne had already registered their sons. A new day camp was enthusiastically endorsed. It offered horseback riding and go-carts.

  “And computers?” Lauren asked anxiously. “I want to get Renée interested in computers.”

  “Definitely computers.”

  “What I would like,” Herb Glasser said, “would be to take my grandchildren to Israel this summer.”

  They all looked at him in amazement, as though he had suggested taking Renée and Eric to another planet.

  “Maybe another year.” Peter reached for a roll. “They’re too young and it’s too dangerous right now.”

  “Not too dangerous for your sister and her family,” Elaine snapped and the harshness of her tone surprised her.

  “Sandy—Sarah—and I live very differently,” he said shortly.

  “Obviously.”

  She stared down at her plate, no longer hungry, relieved when the conversation shifted back to safer areas—a new restaurant in Little Tokyo, a café in the Fairfax district that was hosting play and poetry readings, the selection of a committee to work with Lauren on an autumn gala.

  The guests left after coffee and dessert. It was, after all, a weekday night, a great night for a dinner party because weekends were so jammed with screenings and performances and recitals, but still they couldn’t stay too late. They would awaken early to take business calls from different time zones, hit the freeway before the rush hour began. The young mothers had to drive their kids to school, and finish jogging before the sun rose too high and the produce markets got too crowded.

  “Great dinner, Lauren.”

  “Thanks, Peter.”

  Herb kissed his daughter good-night.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Just a little tired, Dad,” she said.

  “You go to sleep. I’ll help Maria with the cleanup.” Peter was conciliatory, his hand light on her head. He smiled conspiratorially at his father-in-law. They knew how to pamper their princess.

  “All right.” She offered no argument. “Tell Maria not to put the wineglasses in the dishwasher. Are you coming up, Elaine?”

  “In a few minutes,” Elaine said. “I think I’ll have another cup of coffee.”

  Herb watched Lauren walk upstairs, his forehead creased with worry. He held his hand out to Peter, to Elaine, murmured his own thanks and left, walking too slowly down the pathway.

  Elaine went into the sunroom and Peter followed her a few minutes later, carrying two cups of coffee.

  “Warm milk and one sugar in yours,” he said. “Just the way you like it.”

  She took a sip.

  “It’s very good,” she said. “As good as the coffee at La Grenouille.”

  He set his own cup down and looked at her sharply.

  “I was there for lunch today,” she said. “I saw you. Who is she, Peter?”

  He covered his face with his hands, his long fingers covering his eyes, crystal teardrops sliding down the backs of his hands.

  “Sorry,” he said and his voice was muffled.

  “Peter.”

  Once, when he was a small boy, she had found him seated in his room, weeping. Even then, shamed by
his tears, he had covered his face with his hands. She could not recall now if his misery had been triggered by the failure of an examination or his rejection by a school team but she did remember that she had gently removed his hands and cradled his head against her shoulders, smoothing his hair, murmuring his name, assuring him that it would be all right, everything would surely be all right. Now again, she moved toward him, took his hands in her own and smoothed his hair but she could not assure him that everything would be all right.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said again. “I’ve just been so miserable for so long that everything welled up and I lost control.”

  “It happens,” she said. “Your father thought that it was a sign of strength for a man to cry.”

  “And did he ever cry?”

  “Now and again.”

  With his hands pressed to his eyes, tears leaking through the long graceful fingers Peter had inherited, Neil had wept when Denis told them that he was gay, when Sandy told them of her decision to move to Jerusalem. But she would not share those memories with her son whose tears sprang from a different source.

  Peter regained his composure, took up their cups and went into the kitchen to refill them.

  “Her name is Karina,” he said as he once again sat opposite her. “She’s a writer. I met her when I was putting together a nature program for some kids’ channel and she came in to doctor the script. We were on the same wave-length, sort of making fun of the project but treating it responsibly. We were shooting on Catalina Island which meant we had to stay over a couple of nights and we ended up spending a lot of time together. We talked a lot, compared our lives, our families. She was born in Russia, came to this country when she was twelve and she won a full scholarship to USC and did an MFA at Berkeley. She’s serious about her writing—what she calls her real work. She’s had two stories published in good literary quarterlies and she’s written a film script about her family. Half fiction, half autobiographical. It’s going to make a great documentary. Actually I’m already working on it with her. It’s fresh cinematic territory. Nothing’s been done about the integration of the Russians and her family is the perfect prototype. The odyssey from the austerity of Moscow to the overwhelming plenty of L.A. The juxtaposition of values. I’m thinking black-and-white for flashbacks and color for the contemporary scenes—cutting-edge stuff. I finished scouting out locations and we’re all set to begin shooting. It’s a big investment but it’s something I really want to do and I think it will work.”

  “I know that you’ve always been interested in producing documentaries,” Elaine said carefully.

  “Interested? Actually, I thought working on documentaries, on serious teaching films would be my life. It was what really grabbed me when I started working in cinema. But it didn’t work out like that. I needed to zero in on work that would pay the bills—commercials, made-for-TV films, sitcom pilots, even instructional films for the big corporations—and it turned out that I’m really good at all that crap. I make money, a lot of money, but the more I make the more we seem to need. The house, the kids, vacations, memberships. Those meaningful documentaries I was supposed to be making get put on hold while I keep balancing the checkbook. That was one of the things I talked to Karina about. I told her how frustrated I felt, how the things that I really wanted to do kept drifting further and further away from me. That’s why I’m so excited about doing the film about Karina’s family and why I’m so grateful to her for pushing me to get started on it.”

  He took a long sip of coffee which Elaine knew had to be tepid by now.

  “You didn’t talk to Lauren about it?” Elaine asked. “About how you felt your career was getting sidetracked?”

  “Lauren and I don’t talk,” he said shortly. “We make logistical arrangements. We schedule things. When I’ll be home, when she’ll be home. Who to have over for dinner when. Whose invitation to accept for this party, that screening. We discuss problems with the house. The landscaping. Should we resurface the pool? We race around with the kids on the weekends, getting them to birthday parties, soccer games, T-ball. Her focus is on things—getting this—getting rid of that—keeping up with her friends. Oh yes, and making her father happy and making the kids happy or at least trying to keep them from a state of terminal whining. I can’t remember the last time we had a real conversation of any substance.”

  “She doesn’t care about making you happy?”

  “She doesn’t understand what would make me happy, which is strange because when we met I thought that I had finally found someone who was entirely vested in me. We were at the center of each other’s lives then. We told each other everything. I try to figure out what happened to that feeling, how it got lost. It’s as though we’ve forgotten the secret language that once made us laugh and cry and hold each other tight. Sometimes I think that we’re two strangers who happened to get trapped on the same treadmill, running in place but never arriving anywhere. It’s different with Karina. She understands. She knows what the pressures of the rat race are like because she’s always supported herself, paid her own way. Lauren was her parents’ little princess. They bought her anything she wanted. She grew up flashing credit cards as though they were magic wands. And the scenario didn’t change when she married me. Karina keeps herself to a budget. When she has to she takes a hack job but she sticks to what she calls her real writing. And she knows how to listen. I can talk to her about my ideas, the kind of films I want to make and I know that she’s focused, that she’s interested and that she honestly understands where I’m coming from and what I want to do. Mom, I just love being with her, being alone with her.” He looked at Elaine and her heart turned when she saw the pain in his eyes. “It’s been a long time since Lauren and I spent any time alone.”

  “You and Lauren have children, responsibilities. It’s hard to find time to separate yourself out when you’re raising a family,” she reminded him.

  “But you and Dad managed to do it.” He laughed harshly. “Your quiet dinners. Your quiet talks. I remember how I would look out of my bedroom window and see you walking together in the garden, hand in hand. You were so wrapped up in each other that it didn’t matter that Sandy and Lisa were upstairs dying their hair magenta and Denis and I were beating the shit out of each other in the basement. Denis once said that we could run away from home and it would take hours before you and Dad noticed that we were gone. Lisa called you ‘the cult of two.’”

  Elaine looked at him, surprised by the bitterness that tinged his words, shocked by the anger that darkened his eyes.

  “Sorry,” she said and wondered why she was moved to apologize. Those quiet hours with Neil were her treasured memories. She found it bewildering that Peter, like Sarah, had resented them, and resented them still. But then, she had found so many things bewildering in the months since Neil’s death. She and her children had emerged from the chrysalis of their grief into the clarity of a wounding honesty.

  They sat for a few moments in silence, listening to the sad nocturnal serenade of the nightingale that lived in the lemon tree.

  “Are you sleeping with Karina?” Elaine asked at last.

  He stared at her, his face contorted in misery but he did not answer.

  “Does Lauren know about her?”

  “Lauren knows that something is really wrong between us. She knows that I’m away more than I have to be and that I’m tuned out, that I’m irritable. She’s said that. But she hasn’t asked any questions and I think that’s because she’s afraid of an honest answer,” he replied, his voice flat.

  “I think she knows more than that.” Elaine thought of Lauren’s face locked into sadness, her worried gaze, the odd inertia that paralyzed her without warning. “It’s not fair to her, Peter.”

  “I wanted to wait until this surgery is over. I know it’s a simple procedure but it’s something that has both of us on edge. I don’t want to hurt Lauren. And I don’t want to hurt my kids. They’re the heart of my life, Renée and Eric. They mean more
to me than anything else in the world. Sometimes when I look at them I wonder how I got so lucky. I watch Renée at ballet, Eric sprinting across the softball field and I think I’ll explode with joy. I can’t lose them. They’re too important,” he said and he stared sadly into his empty coffee cup as though he would read his future in the remaining dregs.

  “More important than Karina?” she asked.

  He did not answer.

  Again his hands flew to his face. Again he crouched over in despair but no tears flowed.

  “What am I going to do, Mom?” he asked. “What the hell am I going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “But it’s not a question that has to be answered tonight.”

  Together then they rose and moved about the room, flicking off lamps, drawing the drapes closed. Elaine took her son’s hand and they walked through the dark house and up the stairs, tiptoeing because they did not want to disturb Lauren or waken the sleeping children.

  twelve

  Lauren’s doctor called the next morning. Lauren’s surgery was scheduled for the following week. She would have to enter the hospital a day earlier for pre-op procedures.

  “Okay. That’s fine.” Lauren’s phone voice was calm as she reached for her calendar and circled the date, penciled in the time she had to arrive but Elaine saw that she was very pale and her hand trembled as she set the phone down.

  “It’s just routine surgery,” she said. “Prophylactic really. Just fibroids. But the doctor thinks they should come out and they do cause some discomfort.”

  “The doctor’s right, Lauren,” Elaine assured her. “And I know it’s routine. I know a lot of women who have dealt with it. Do you know what we should do today—we should go into town, have ourselves a really good lunch and go shopping. I want to buy you a really fancy negligee. No woman should go to the hospital without a new nightgown.”