To Siri with Love

by Judith Newman

  (Almost every woman today struggles with balancing work and motherhood; I am no exception. The difference is that I don’t have the luxury of worrying about balance. I’m not a contributor to the family coffers; I am the family coffers. John is long retired, but not a Mr. Mom kind of dude. In short, it’s convenient for everyone that I love my work since I have no choice about whether or not to do it. On a good day, I’ll make more than it costs to pay the caretaker who allows me to work. As I write this, Michelle is taking Gus to Grand Central Terminal . . . so I hope you’ve bought this book rather than borrowing a friend’s copy.)

  Gus’s first caretaker was Orma, a stolid, serious, deeply kind woman from Jamaica, who was with him from the ages of zero to ten. Among the many things he learned from her was that Halloween is the holiday of the Devil and it is always much colder than you think, so carry a sweater in July. Orma has never entirely accepted that she doesn’t work for us anymore, so she still drops by with her newest little charge, raids the fridge for a Diet Coke, and, refreshed, takes off. One time, on a very hot summer day not that long ago, I came home to find her taking a shower. She’s very comfortable in my home.

  She adored John, and didn’t bother to hide her belief that he was the better parent, perhaps because her expectations of men are pretty low. John got a trophy just for showing up. I, on the other hand, had a great deal to learn, and she tried to teach me every day for ten years. We had the kind of resentments that build up over a decade, the divides of race and class where the employer feels judged and guilty, and the employee knows it and smiles to herself. But Gus loves her, still hops when she comes by, and is not in the least perturbed when she invites herself to his birthday parties. Orma and I put aside our quiet mutual resentments during the most recent presidential election where our worries, different as they were, brought us closer. I buy a lot of extra Diet Coke, and it will always be waiting for her.

  Kelly was a twenty-five-year-old hipster who was getting her teaching degree, and had to live through the shouting of Henry, then ten, who thought homework was for suckers (and still does, but at least he doesn’t shout about it). She was fun and smart and much more interested in her friends and family than her job, which suited me wonderfully after Orma, whose life was her work. As a bonus Kelly recorded everything, so I have a video of the first time Gus, at eleven, managed to zip his own jacket. They are both literally shrieking with joy.

  Greta came next. Several years earlier she had a thriving career in publishing, but when her husband died, a grief set in that she could not shake. When she was laid off at her job, she knew she needed to get out of the house. Which is how a sophisticated woman with postgraduate degrees ended up trainspotting daily with my son.

  Greta was Swiss, which meant that she was the only person in Gus’s life, other than John, who knew the correct order of the stuffed animals on his bed and kept a wary eye in case one was out of place. She called Gus Bert, and he called her Ernie, and I think she genuinely adored him. She loved John, too; he reminded her of her late (British) husband. John had spent many years singing professionally in Germany, so they would speak German together and reminisce, since John’s motto is “Everything was better in Germany.” Her husband had died of the same heart condition John had, which I wished she would have mentioned a little less often. But she was wonderful. Even if she disappeared every now and then, and could be a tad spacey at other times, I was so grateful for her time with us.

  One day, she told me she was taking a road trip with her nephew, and they would spread her husband’s ashes in one of his favorite spots in California. She would be back in three weeks, she said. Three weeks turned into a month, and a month into two months. I told Gus she would be back, even as I hired another wonderful woman, Michelle, to accompany him on his adventures. Greta then wrote to tell me that she had a terrible kidney infection, and was staying out in Los Angeles for treatment. I have a sneaky little email program on my computer that can tell me where an email originates from. Greta was back in New York City. That’s when I knew we would never see her again.

  A few days later I threw out my back. I was avoiding going to the doctor, as I always do, yet was still desperate for pain relief. I had kept my parents’ painkillers, OxyContin and Percocet, from the final months of their lives, just for emergencies like this.

  The bottles were all there in my cabinet, lined up neatly. The orderliness of the bottles should have tipped me off. I opened them one by one. There had been scores of pills in there, and now there were none. Unless Henry had decided to become his middle school’s drug dealer, I had a good idea where they went. I thought back on Greta’s “spaciness” and her disappearances, too, and realized that her time with us lasted as long as there were pills in these bottles. I hope so much there is less pain in her life now.

  Every time a caretaker left, I thought Gus would be upset. He was not. At first I wondered if he was cold or uncaring, or just didn’t really notice the particulars of who was accompanying him, as long as there was someone. But I don’t think that was it. It was just that he thought about friends differently. It was fine if they lived in his computer or in his mind. It was fine if they disappeared only to show up years later. There was no recrimination, only delight at seeing them again.

  I want him to understand what real friends are. It’s the guy you go to the movies (or bus stop) with, the person you talk to about your annoying parents, the one who shares his beliefs that lightning is scary but sunsets are magnificent. I also want him to know that there is push and pull, that a friend is someone you can have a fight with who still comes back after you finish shouting at each other. A friend is not just lines of text. It’s not just the declaration that someone is a friend that makes it so.

  But let’s be fair here. In the age of social media, the idea of friendship is changing for all of us. I have 1806 “friends” on Facebook; tomorrow it will probably be 1809. This is a modest number by the standards of most of my friends. Or are they “friends” with air quotes? I don’t know anymore. Now when I go to a party, I often find strangers saying to me, “Oh, I think we’re friends on Facebook”—which actually is a connection of some sort. It is an immediate point of reference, and if all else fails, we will realize we were both privy to some FB discussion, and X is so smart, and Y is an idiot, and then we’re off and running. If that cyber connection means something to so many of us, who am I to define for Gus what friendship is and is not anymore? But if I can’t say exactly what friendship is, I have to at least try to give him an idea of what it isn’t.

  * * *

  One afternoon I get a phone call from Gus’s school with the words no parent wants to hear: “We are concerned.” Mr. T., the school counselor, found that someone had been texting Gus “inappropriately”—another word that strikes fear into a mother’s heart—and that apparently Gus was planning a rendezvous with that person. This is an abbreviated version of the text conversation:

  : OK . . . I am on El Roblar by the Farmer & the Cook. This is Samantha btw.

  K . . . on my way.

  Gus: Oh that’s good

  Samantha: OK Chi Baby has landed. Should I drop my shit off at the top or grab it later?

  Gus: No

  Samantha: No . . . just park and come in?

  Gus: Yes

  Samantha: K. They are checking me in.

  Welcome to the Hotel California . . .

  Gus: Oh I see

  That’s cool

  Samantha: Is it OK for me to take my stuff to my “dwelling”? They are asking if u are here. . . .

  Gus: I am not here. Sure it is ok.

  [Me, reading this: WTF?]

  Samantha: Staff wants to know your ETA . . .

  Gus: I don’t know what it is

  Samantha: I am just the messenger.

  Gus: I am in New York City

  Samantha: ha, Great . . . then am I the teacher then this weekend?

  Gus: No

  Samantha: Enjoying this. . . . .

&nb
sp; Gus: Yes I am

  Samantha: Mind fuck a doodle do

  Gus: I hate you

  Samantha: Fuck yeah!

  Gus: You are a villain.

  Samantha: Takes one to know one . . .

  Gus: I know you’re a villain.

  Samantha: Are u sure?

  Gus: I am sure you are a villain.

  Samantha: Wow I’m surprised u took me on. . . . U seem like a very confident man though. . . . I think.

  Gus: I am a confident man

  Samantha: Yep . . . and intuitive cuz u are totally pushing my buttons . . . well done.

  Gus: Thanks.

  Samantha: Applause applause

  Gus: Yay

  Samantha: Mind fuck. . . . cuz u are reminding me of someone. Well done.

  Gus: I am not.

  Samantha: U are!

  Gus: Stop texting me. You are a villain and saying the f word

  Samantha: The word is fuck.

  My bad!

  Gus: I am sorry that I said a bad word

  Samantha: No you’re not.

  Besides fuck is a great word.

  I did say a bad word

  So what?

  Gus: I just don’t like it when you say bad words

  Apparently Gus is planning a rendezvous in California with a woman named Samantha because he is a playa. Only none of this is true. I dial Samantha’s number, and say, essentially, What the hell. Samantha is at first appalled, and then we are both intrigued. It turns out that Samantha is some sort of spiritual healer, and there is a convention of healers in Ojai, California. The number of the man leading this conference is one number different from Gus’s phone number—and thus the mix-up. Samantha was pleased and flattered that this prominent healer seemed to be getting flirty with her, and the flirting became a power play, and suddenly this conference is taking on a whole new meaning.

  It never occurred to Gus, obviously, that his first response to her text should have been “Who are you?” Because when your definition of friend is, uh, emerging, why not just answer whoever texts you? I was kind of pleased to see that once she said “fuck,” he decided she was a villain; he’s never liked cursing. But this could have been anybody. He would tell her where he lived and what he was doing and whether he was alone; if she had asked for his credit card number nicely and he had one, he would have given it to her. If she had said that she loved him, he might have said it, too. Because, until she was a villain, she was a friend.

  Will he always be this innocent?

  And will he have someone in his life who can open the can?

  * * *

  When my worry overwhelms me, I think about Barry.

  Barry lives in my building. He is a small man with grizzled graying hair and square glasses that are too large for his face. Every morning he heads somewhere, eyes downcast, carrying a briefcase. In the twenty-five years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen him talk to anyone. If you get in the elevator with him, he presses himself against the walls, staying as far away as possible. He lives with his sister, a tiny woman who looks very much like him, also doesn’t talk, and has a problem with her balance.

  When Gus was six or seven, I noticed something: Barry waved at him. It was the tiniest of waves, more of a twinkling of the tips of his fingers really. I realized this was because everyone was busy respecting Barry’s privacy; everyone, that is, except my son. Gus would shout “HI, BARRY” as the little man scurried by. For a couple of years, Barry’s eyes would dart in Gus’s direction. But then, over time, there was that teeny-tiny wave.

  Every year at our apartment building’s Christmas party, Barry and his sister would make an appearance. She would steady herself against the brick wall of the lobby. Neither would speak to anyone, but they seemed content amid the hubbub. This year, I gathered my courage and went to speak to them. The truth is, I wasn’t sure they could speak.

  Well, Barry certainly could; he spoke very softly, but perfectly well and intelligently, with a heavy Bronx accent. He worked in some business I didn’t understand, but it involved numbers. And the woman I (and everyone else in the building) had thought was his sister was in fact his wife. I found this immensely cheering.

  These were the first words Barry spoke to me after twenty-five years: “How’s my friend Gus?”

  Thirteen

  Getting Some

  Henry walks into my room at two a.m. “I have phimosis,” he says.

  “No, you don’t,” I mutter.

  “You don’t know what phimosis is, do you?” he replies.

  “No, but whatever it is, you don’t have it. You also don’t have necrotizing fasciitis, lymphatic filariasis, or alien hand syndrome.”

  “Oh my God, what’s alien hand syndrome?”

  “It doesn’t matter. My point is, you don’t have it.”

  Henry acquires diseases late at night when he Googles. Then he needs to discuss his symptoms.

  Phimosis, as it turns out, is a tightness of the foreskin that makes it difficult to move it up and down on the head of the penis. I can’t possibly imagine how a fourteen-year-old found this out. Anyway, in an adult it can make intercourse painful. It is not diagnosed before the age of fifteen because lots of boys have a tight foreskin, and it loosens with maturity. But tonight Henry is convinced he will never be able to have sex. And by the way, do girls object to foreskins? He needs to know now.

  How does a mother delicately tell her son that in the condition a woman generally sees a man, a foreskin is a nonissue? I didn’t. I just wanted to end the conversation. “Henry, if you do have phimosis, you’ll get circumcised and that will solve the problem,” I say. He stops talking about it and goes away, but I suspect I didn’t help him sleep.

  With Henry, every day there are new questions about his body—what’s OK, what’s not OK, and how girls will feel about it. I tell him to stop looking. Specifically, I tell him he has to start getting dressed in the dark. Nothing stops him.

  He also doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo that there are things you don’t discuss with your mother. My friends insist I’m lucky; mention sex, and their own teenage sons plug their ears and la la la themselves out of the room. Somehow I don’t feel my good fortune. Far from being Bleecker Street’s Sophie Portnoy, checking the underwear of her precious Alex, I want to know nothing. Instead, I hear everything. Many, perhaps most, of Henry’s questions are motivated less by curiosity than by his desire to torture me. When he senses my discomfort he goes in for the kill, like a shark smelling blood in the water. “What do I do if my hands sweat?” “How much of my tongue do I put in when I kiss?” “Do girls like a guy who can last a long time? How does a guy last a long time?” “What’s the average size of a penis? What’s small? What’s large? How big is Dad?” Most sentences begin with “Is it normal . . . ?” As in, “Is it normal to be able to wank twice in a night? How about three times? Asking for a friend.” Recently I’ve thought about getting a pack of Post-its made up that say “IT’S NORMAL” and slapping them over his mouth before he can open it.

  Henry is in fact a handsome boy: lean, dirty-blond Dennis the Menace hair, broad shoulders, green eyes; the line I’ve heard more than once from single girlfriends is “Boy, you’re going to have trouble on your hands.” But as far as he’s concerned, at fourteen he is the dorkiest dork in Dorkville. The cocky little shit of daytime gives way to a midnight self-esteem spiral. “I’m going to be forty years old, living in this room asking my mommy to make me nachos,” he’ll say. On a much-anticipated school field trip, he was late but wouldn’t get out the door; he insisted on packing his new birthday present into his bag. He was about to miss the bus. Finally he jammed it in, then surveyed the bag sadly. “Yeah. You know who definitely gets to make out with a girl on the overnight field trip? The guy who brings his own telescope.”

  If Henry’s worries were contained to his own self, that would be one thing. But his free-floating anxiety often comes to rest on his twin brother. “Mom, do you realize you have one fourteen-yea
r-old son who knows nothing about sex?” he said one day as Gus stood nearby, playing Mario Kart on his DS. “He has a mustache! He has pubes! I barely have those things, yet he’s the one who knows nothing.”

  “He’s just dark-haired, Henry, so it’s more obvious that—”

  Henry was getting himself worked up. “Does he know how babies are made?” he shouted. Gus helpfully patted his stomach. “Does he know how the babies get in there? Does he even know what a condom is?”

  Given Gus’s lack of dexterity, he has about as much chance of putting on a condom as I have of being named principal ballerina for the New York City Ballet. He still can’t manage buttons; left on his own, he just pulls the shirt apart like the Incredible Hulk.

  But the condom thing was a problem for sometime in the distant future, right? I put these thoughts aside, just like the thoughts of whether or not he should be able to father children. Right now, it would be good if my deeply affectionate son had just the most rudimentary idea about the birds and the bees.

  “Mom, you know how Gus is. This isn’t going to happen on its own, and Dad won’t talk about it. You have to do something.”

  Henry had a point.

  * * *

  Nobody really thinks she has to teach her children about sex. I mean, not really, not in the way you might have to teach them, say, how to use a credit card (amazing how fast they catch on to that). Kids learn the basics of reproduction, what goes where, and then their natural curiosity takes over. They ask a zillion questions, of either you or their idiot friends, and eventually they figure it out. With boys, in particular, the mechanics come first, and the emotional components come later. (Sometimes way later. Like fifty.) But what if one of the hallmarks of a condition is that there is no natural curiosity? Or, rather, that curiosity is limited to a few very limited subjects—train schedules, weather conditions—and reproduction and love are not among them? What then? Do you leave it all (to quote Sky Masterson) to chance and chemistry? Gus didn’t even seem all that interested in his own bodily changes. One night, about two years ago, I said to him, “Honey, you can’t just stand under the shower. You need soap, and soon you’ll need it even more than you do now.”