“That’s what my mother always said. She bought me a pink peignoir when I gave birth to Renée and a blue silk nightgown when Eric was born.” Lauren smiled at the memory. “Thanks, Elaine. Let’s do that.”
“Great.”
Elaine felt a shaft of shame. She had not thought of Lauren as a young woman in need of maternal nurturing. She had never, until that very morning, felt at all motherly toward her son’s wife.
Lauren and Elaine spent the morning strolling up and down Rodeo Drive, stopping at boutiques where they knew they would not buy anything for the sheer joy of marveling at the designs, at the bright colors and tasteful displays. They reveled in the touch of the delicate fabrics and laughed at the absurdity of the prices. They peered into the shining glass windows of larger stores and stared at the shoppers, marveling at the trendy outfits, the high boots and short hemlines, jaunty capes of geometric designs tossed carelessly over Tshirts, women in saris and young girls in very short shorts who whizzed past them on Rollerblades. They exchanged knowing looks when they stood on a corner behind a very tall blond woman dressed in a black satin pantsuit, cradling a tiny white poodle whose diamond-encrusted collar matched her own dangling earrings and double-stranded necklace.
“Los Angeles,” Lauren said laughingly. “Don’t you love it?”
“Actually, I’m beginning to,” Elaine replied.
It was in Little Tokyo, at a shop that sold exquisite silks, that they found a kimono of rich blue lined in a delicate yellow satin which Lauren pronounced to be perfect.
“Just what I wanted,” she said. “And I never would have had the nerve to buy it for myself.”
“It’s beautiful. And it looks beautiful on you,” Elaine agreed. “Peter will love it,” she added daringly.
The joy faded from Lauren’s face and she bit her lips.
“Will he?” she asked wistfully.
They ate lunch in a small Japanese restaurant. Colorful paper lanterns that swayed gracefully over the black lacquered tables lit the narrow dark room. It was, Elaine realized, the first time that she and Lauren had ever been alone in an ambience of intimacy.
“My parents loved this restaurant,” Lauren said. “We used to come here a lot when I was in high school. And Peter and I had dinner here almost every weekend when we were at UCLA. We used to think of it as ‘our restaurant.’ We had a special booth—that one over in the corner.”
She stared across the room into the shadowed recess of that nook where once she and Peter had spoken softly to each other in the secret language of lovers, had smiled and reached across the table to touch each other’s hands.
“And now?” Elaine asked gently.
“We haven’t been here in years. It kind of disappeared from our radar. We just don’t have special places, special days, anymore,” she said sadly.
“Why is that, Lauren?”
Their meals arrived before Lauren could answer and they studied the beautifully arranged plates of shimmering sashimi, carefully avoiding each other’s eyes. Lauren plucked up a piece of tuna in her chopsticks and set it down again.
“Sometimes I think it’s simply because we have such crazy schedules,” she said at last. “Peter’s so caught up in his work and I’m so busy with the kids, running the house, my own obligations, my dad, that there never seems to be time just for the two of us, Peter and me. No time to come here and just sit in our old booth and talk and laugh.”
“Maybe you could let some of your involvements go,” Elaine suggested. “Make more time to be together, just the two of you.”
Lauren laughed bitterly.
“I wish I knew how. I wouldn’t know what to cut out. Most of what I do, I do for the kids or for my father or for Peter. It’s part of my pattern. I always thought that it was my job to make everyone around me happy. When my brother died I decided that it was up to me to give my parents pleasure, to compensate them for their loss so I was the good and pretty daughter who never caused them any sadness, any difficulty. I went to school in L.A. so that I’d be near them. And then when I met Peter I kind of did the same thing. He was so lonely when we first met and he talked about how he’d always felt that he was an outsider in his own family and so I made sure that he didn’t feel that loneliness, that he always knew that he was at the very center of my life, always a part of me because he had never really felt a part of your life. I probably shouldn’t be telling you all this, and I don’t want to hurt you, but I want you to understand how it all began for us, for Peter and me. We were both lost kids and we got lucky and found each other. And we loved each other. I wonder if he remembers now how much we loved each other, how we couldn’t stand to be apart. We kept each other’s course schedules and waited outside classroom doors just so that we could walk together from one lecture hall to another, every minute that we shared was sweet and precious.”
Lauren smiled at the memory and looked across the room at the shadowed booth they had once laid claim to, as though the ghosts of Peter and herself as young lovers lingered there still. She sighed and turned back to Elaine.
“Peter told me how happy I made him and I kept on trying to make him happy,” she continued. “I’d had a lot of practice doing as much for my parents after Donny died. I made plans that would please him, booked tickets for shows he would like, fixed up a home that would make him proud. It was important to him that you and his dad see how well we lived, how well he had done. He always felt that he had to work harder than his sisters, harder than Denis, to carve out a place in your family, to get you to notice him.”
Elaine stared at Lauren as though she were speaking an unfamiliar language.
“How could he have felt like that?” she protested. “We loved him. We valued him. I guess we didn’t make him aware of how much we cared. We just assumed he would know. Or maybe it was because his father and I were so enmeshed. We adored our children but in truth, we lived for each other. Like you and Peter, we were at the center of each other’s life.”
Her eyes filled. The husband for whom she had lived was dead and she was alone, harvesting the bitter crop of her children’s festering resentments, the hurts that neither she nor Neil had ever suspected.
“Peter understood that,” Lauren said. “Intellectually, he accepted that. But he couldn’t help the feeling that he was always on the periphery. Just as you and his dad lived for each other, he wanted someone to live for him. And I did that. I knew how to do it. I had practiced for years with my parents. Peter’s happiness became my happiness. When we moved to the hills, I got involved in loads of social stuff because when Peter started his production company he needed the kind of contacts he made at the club, at the synagogue, even in the PTA. I was doing my job because if he was successful, he’d feel good about himself. He’d be happy. Happy. The magic word. And that’s what I wanted for him, what I still want for him. It’s what I want for Renée and Eric. For my father. For everyone I love. I’m the happiness fairy. That’s why I make sure my kids don’t miss anything. That’s why I’m driving them here and I’m driving them there. That’s why I call my father every day and why I play tennis at the club so my dad can watch me and have lunch with me. So I’m constantly on the run and so is Peter. His business is expanding, he gets busier and busier and we see each other less and less. Sometimes I feel as though I’m living with a stranger. Sometimes I think that Peter has a whole other life that I don’t know anything about. I know his work is overwhelming and I know that we need the money but I can’t help feeling that something is happening. I feel the distance between us and worse than that, I feel so alone. I want to know what’s going on, in his head, in his life, but I’m afraid to ask him. What am I going to do, Elaine? Can I do anything at all?”
Her question was a plea, a sad echo of Peter’s own words.
“It will all work out, Lauren,” Elaine said and she shivered at the falsity of her answer.
She wanted to be truthful with this daughter-in-law, whom she had never loved, whom she had just begun to und
erstand. She had not credited Lauren with the insight and compassion so newly revealed, nor had she understood the love and need that had thrust Lauren and Peter into marriage when they were both so very young. She saw the pain in Lauren’s eyes but she could offer neither honesty nor comfort. Her loyalty to her son constrained her.
Impulsively, she reached across the table and took Lauren’s hand in her own. They sat in silence, the lights of the colored lanterns dancing across their linked fingers.
thirteen
Peter drove Lauren to the hospital.
“Pre-op stuff,” he told Elaine when he returned. “I’m really glad you’re here, Mom. Lauren explained everything to Renée and Eric but they’re still a little freaked out. They hear hospital and they think about Lauren’s mom. They think about Dad. Renée actually asked Lauren if she was sure she would be coming home because her grandma didn’t and her grandpa didn’t. Lauren explained everything to them but Renée just kept crying and Eric held tight to her arm the way he used to when he was a baby.”
“Lauren’s a wonderful mother, Peter,” Elaine said.
“I know that. Goddamn it, I know that.” Fury spiked his tone but she did not flinch.
“You should think of all the good things in your life together. What you shared in the past. What you’ll share in the future.” She hated the preachy sound of her own voice, the hurtful clichés she spewed forth, but they were words that she needed to say. Passivity was abandoned. She would fight for her son and his family.
“And do you think I haven’t thought about them?” he asked bitterly.
He slammed out of the room and she shivered in the aftermath of his anger. Walking down the hall moments later, she passed his den. The door was open and she heard him speaking softly, too softly into the phone.
“It will be all right,” he said. “I understand. Don’t worry.”
She thought with relief that he had called Lauren at the hospital, that the gentleness of tone was meant to reassure his frightened wife. Her words had made a difference. She paused for a moment and knew at once that she was wrong.
“I have the production script ready,” he continued. “Your revisions were right on target. I have to check out some of the cinematography segues when we go from color to black-and-white. But I have it under control.”
Elaine heard the impatient tap of his foot as he waited for a response but his voice, when he spoke again, was calm and reassuring. “Tonight’s no good. I have to be with my kids. You understand that. But I’ll try for tomorrow night. No, I’ll do more than try. I’ll be there. I promise.”
He was talking to Karina, of course. She hurried to her own room and closed the door behind her, heavy with disappointment, hot with anger. But she knew that she would say nothing more. Not now. She had, perhaps, said too much already.
Eventually she went downstairs and watched him check his attaché case.
“I have two meetings this morning,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “But I’m going to try to get to see Lauren as soon as I’m done.”
“She’ll appreciate that,” Elaine said. “And I’ll stop by the hospital to see her before I pick the children up from school.”
“You know their schedules?”
She glanced down at the list Lauren had printed out with such care. Eric had soccer practice. Renée had a ballet lesson. Each of them had playdates afterward. Lauren had attached MapQuest directions with their friends’ addresses, phone numbers, the mother’s name.
“Lauren printed everything out,” she said.
“Yes. Of course she would.” Elaine could not tell if his words were edged with admiration or annoyance.
Still, she was relieved, when she went to the hospital that afternoon, to find Peter sitting beside Lauren in the patients’ lounge. Lauren wore the blue kimono that matched her eyes. Her blonde hair fell about her shoulders. Pale without her makeup, she seemed oddly vulnerable, almost childlike. And Peter looked at her, his face a mask of regret and tenderness.
“We’ve been talking, Peter and I,” Lauren told Elaine. “Strange, isn’t it, that I had to go to the hospital so that we could find some quiet time just to talk.”
“That’s the way it is when you both lead such busy lives,” Elaine said.
“Yes. Peter’s life, especially, has been extremely busy.” There was no sarcastic tinge to Lauren’s words, only an accepting sadness.
What had he told her? Elaine thought angrily. And why at such a time when she’s frightened enough?
“I explained to Lauren how involved I am in this documentary,” he said, as though reading his mother’s thoughts and fending off her unarticulated accusation. “I told you about it, Mom. About how I’m working with this talented young Russian writer. The one I told you about?”
“Yes. I remember.” Elaine stared hard at her son and turned away. She did not want to be complicit in his deception.
“She sounds very interesting,” Lauren said. “You said that she was called Karina.”
“Karina,” he repeated and the name, spoken so slowly, hung uneasily between them.
Later, speeding down the freeway to pick up the children at school, Elaine reflected on the oddness of that exchange. It was strange, too, she thought, that Peter and Lauren, for all their sadness, had seemed, for the first time since her arrival, at ease with each other. It was as though they had been released from a strangling tension and could breathe freely again.
Denis, Sarah and Lisa all called that evening to speak with Peter, to express their concern, to offer their support.
“It’s wonderful that your children are so close,” Herb Glasser said, looking up from the game of chess he was playing with Eric.
“Maybe it’s because they live so far apart,” Elaine replied jokingly although she recognized the grain of truth in her words. Arguments and anger, resentment and irritation, were neutralized by the span of thousands of miles and the confusion of changing time zones.
She turned back to her sketch pad. She was designing another tile for the mosaic and Renée sat beside her, listening gravely to her explanation of how her work progressed, how each tile would capture an aspect of Neil’s life.
“If Mommy dies I’ll make a mosaic for her,” the child said.
“Mommy’s not going to die,” Elaine replied calmly but she averted her gaze from the sorrow in Herb’s eyes and showed Renée how her drawing could be scaled down to the size of a tile.
“It’s wonderful for the children that you’re here,” Lauren’s father said when Renée and Eric went up to bed. “Do you think of maybe living in California for at least part of the year? You would have family nearby.”
“It would be less lonely,” she admitted, filling in the words he had left unsaid. “And I have thought about it.”
He nodded and rose to leave.
“Would it be all right if I came here in the morning?” he asked hesitantly.
“Of course.”
She understood that he did not want to be alone during his daughter’s surgery, that he did not want to wait for news in the hospital where first his son and then his wife had died. She herself took a circuitous route from her home into town to avoid even the sight of the hospital where Neil had drifted into death.
Peter went into his den and closed the door firmly behind him. Elaine understood that he wanted no additional words of advice, no maternal platitudes. She called Lisa then, asked the questions which had already been answered and listened to her doctor daughter’s impatient reassurance.
“It’s just a routine procedure. In-and-out stuff. No danger. Lauren’s a strong and healthy young woman. A no-risk candidate for that kind of surgery,” Lisa said brusquely. “And, Mom, the adoption agency called. I’m going to go to Russia fairly soon. They sent more photos of my little girl. She’s just beautiful.”
“I’m sure she is,” Elaine said. “Is David going to Russia with you?”
“He’s got a ton of projects going in Washington just then,” Lisa said.
“But I’ll manage on my own. I always have, haven’t I?”
Bitterness edged the question that did not require an answer. Both of them knew that Lisa had always managed on her own, that she had prided herself on that independence. But this was different. Elaine hesitated, struggled to find the right words in which to phrase an offer that might not be welcome.
“Lisa, do you want me to go to Russia with you?” she asked at last, her tone tentative, uneasy.
“I want you to do what you want to do.”
The sudden coldness of her daughter’s reply was unnerving.
“Let’s talk about it again soon,” Elaine countered.
There were so many things she had to talk about with her children, so many things to be clarified, so many discontents to be aired. Her visits to Sarah and Peter had taught her that much.
“Don’t worry about Lauren, Mom.” The caution was Lisa’s apology, compensation offered for words that could not be unsaid.
It was late but she turned back to the drawing she had begun with Renée. This series of tiles would portray Neil, the father. She drew only his hands, those long tapering fingers, resting gently on a child’s head. But which child? she wondered as her pencil flew. She held it tight and fought to contain the inexplicable sorrow which threatened to engulf her.
The surgery was scheduled for eight in the morning and Peter, grim-faced and tense, left for the hospital at six-thirty.
“Damn freeway,” he said. “I don’t want to get caught in a traffic jam. I’ll call you when she’s in recovery.”
“She’ll be fine,” Elaine assured him. “Lisa said—”
“I don’t care what Lisa said,” he snapped. “I’m sorry, Mom.” His voice softened. “I’m just so damn on edge. About so many things.”
“I know,” she said and thought that if he was still a small boy she could soothe him with a hug, run her fingers through his hair, murmur words of reassurance. But he was a grown man, a father himself. She could offer him neither advice nor comfort. Adult children, she remembered with wry bitterness, sit on your heart, not on your lap.
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