Once in a Lifetime

by Steel, Danielle

  "I have responsibilities, Barbara. I have to go back and give her a hand. I just can't let her go on struggling alone...." He was apologetic, and Barbara looked at him with a bitter little smile, tears bright in her eyes.

  "What about your own life? What about the things you said to me about getting what I need, and not just dancing to everyone else's music?"

  "That's all true. I believe everything I said. But Barb, you have to understand. This is different. She's my wife. In your case, you're being strangled by an overbearing, demanding, unreasonable mother. You have a right to your own life. But my life is Georgia's too ... you just don't throw twenty-two years out the window." And what was she supposed to do with her mother? Run out the door and never come back? He was full of shit and she knew it. He went back to his wife the next day, and the affair ended abruptly. She quit her job after the new year, and two weeks later she discovered she was pregnant. She deliberated for a week, locking herself in her room, and sobbing silently into her pillows. She had thought that she loved him, that he would be free, that he might marry her some day ... that she would be free of her mother. And what in hell was she going to do now? She couldn't take care of a child by herself, and having it aborted went against everything she believed. She didn't want to do it. In the end she decided to call him. He met her for lunch, looking very businesslike and a little distant.

  "You're all right?" She nodded, looking grim and feeling desperately nauseous. "And your mother?"

  "She's all right. But the doctor is worried about her heart." At least that was what she told Barbara, every time Barbara wanted even to go to a movie. Now she never went out. There was no point, and she didn't really feel up to it. She was constantly nauseous. "I've got something to tell you."

  "Oh?" A wall instantly went up, as though deep in his gut he suspected. "Didn't your last check arrive?" They had decided it would be better If she quit the firm and he had arranged a large severance pay for her to assuage his guilt. Yes, you son of a bitch, she thought to herself ... but this isn't about money. It's about my life. And your baby.

  "I'm pregnant." She couldn't think of a gentler way to say it and she didn't really want to. Screw Georgia and her change of life. This was more important. At least to Barbara.

  "That certainly presents a bit of a problem." He tried to sound glib, but his eyes told her that he was nervous. "Are you sure? Have you seen a doctor?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you sure it's mine?" Even knowing her life, he didn't flinch as he said it, and her eyes filled with tears and spilled onto her cheeks.

  "You know something, Stan? You're a real shit. Do you really think I was sleeping with someone else?"

  "I'm sorry. I just thought--"

  "No, you didn't. You just wanted to get out of it."

  For a moment he didn't answer. And then his voice was a little more gentle when he spoke again, but he didn't even reach out to touch her hand as she sat crying across the table. "I know someone who ..." She cringed at what he was about to say.

  "I don't know if I can do it ... I just can't. She began to sob and he looked nervously over his shoulder.

  "Look, be realistic, Barb. You have no choice." And without another word he scribbled a name on a piece of paper, wrote her a check for a thousand dollars, and handed them both to her. "Call this number and tell him I sent you."

  "Why? Do you get a special deal?" Apparently this had happened to him before, and then with despair in her eyes she looked across at him, this wasn't the man she knew, this wasn't the man she had believed in ... the man she had thought would save her. "Would you send Georgia to him?"

  He looked stony-faced at her for a long moment. "I sent him my daughter last year."

  She lowered her eyes and shook her head. "I'm sorry."

  "So am I." They were the last kind words he said as he stood up and looked down at her. "Barb, get it done fast. Get it over with. You'll feel a lot better."

  She looked up at him from where she sat. "And if I don't?"

  "What the hell do you mean?" He almost spat the words at her.

  "I mean what if I decide to have the baby? I still have a choice, you know. I don't have to have an abortion."

  "If you don't, it's entirely your decision."

  "Meaning don't call you?" She hated him now.

  "Meaning I don't even know if that's my child. And that thousand dollars is the last you'll see from me."

  "Is it?" She picked up the check, looked at it, and tore it in half before handing it back to him. "Thank you, Stan. But I don't think I'll need it." And with that, she stood up and walked past him out of the restaurant.

  She had cried all the way home, and that night her mother had forced her way into her bedroom. "He left you, didn't he? He went back to his wife." She was so evil she almost gloated. "I knew it... I told you he was no good ... he probably never even left her in the first place."

  "Mother, leave me alone ... please...." She lay back on her bed and closed her eyes.

  "What's wrong with you? Are you sick?" And then instantly she knew. "Oh, my God ... you're pregnant... aren't you? Aren't you?" She advanced on her with a wicked look in her eye, and stood in front of Barbara.

  Barbara sat up to face her mother with a look of grief in her eyes. "Yes, I am."

  "Oh, my God ... an illegitimate baby ... do you know what people will say about you, you little whore?" Her mother reached out and slapped her and suddenly all the frustration and loneliness exploded within Barbara.

  "Dammit, leave me alone. It happened to you with my father."

  "It didn't ....we were engaged ... he wasn't a married man. And he married me."

  "He married you because you were pregnant. And he hated you for trapping him. I heard the things he said to you when you fought. He always hated you. He was engaged to someone else. ..." Her mother slapped her again, and Barbara sank back onto the bed sobbing.

  For the next two weeks they barely spoke, except when her mother tormented her about the illegitimate baby. "You'll be ruined ... disgraced ... you'll never find another job." And the truth was that she was worried about the same thing. She hadn't been able to find a job since she left Stan's office. The unemployment rates had been soaring since the previous summer, and even with her summa cum laude degree from Smith, she couldn't find a thing. And now she was having a baby.

  In the end there was nothing else she could do. Too proud to call Stan for the name of his doctor, she called a friend, got a name of a doctor, and had an illegal abortion in New Jersey. She rode all the way home on the subway in a daze, bleeding copiously onto the seat, and passed out cold on the subway platform. They called her mother from the emergency room at Roosevelt Hospital, and her mother refused to come. When she got home three days later, her mother stood in the living room and uttered two simple words. "Baby killer."

  The hatred between them grew after that, and Barbara was going to move out. But her mother had another stroke, and she couldn't leave her. All she wanted was her own life and her own apartment. She got unemployment payments instead, since Stan allowed her to say she'd been fired, and her mother got a pension and they lived on that, but barely. She nursed her mother back to health for six months, and through it all her mother never let her forget about the abortion. She blamed the stroke on her, and her disappointment in Barbara as a human being. And without even realizing that it had come, Barbara lived in a constant haze of depression. Eventually she got another job, working at another law firm. But this time there was no affair, there were no men, there was only her mother. She lost touch with all her friends from Smith, and when they called she didn't bother to return their calls. What could she tell them? They were all married or engaged or having babies. She had had an affair with a married man, had an abortion, worked as a secretary, and was a full-time nurse for her mother. And her mother was always carping at her that they needed more money. It was another secretary at the law firm where she worked who suggested that she call around to some literary agents. She c
ould do extra typing at night, and the money was halfway decent. In fact, sometimes it was pretty good. So Barbara did, and it was thus that Daphne Fields found her, ten years after she had begun typing manuscripts at home in her spare time, a withered, lonely, nervous spinster at thirty-seven. The once handsome, well-built, athletic young girl who had been the president of the senior class at Smith and graduated summa cum laude in political science, was taking in typing in a fourth-floor walk-up on the West Side, nursing her ever more vicious mother. She hated everything Barbara was, hated her lack of spirit and fire. And yet it was she who had stamped it out. And in great part because of her, Barbara had never recovered from the tragic love affair and the abortion.

  Barbara was fascinated by Daphne at first, but she didn't dare ask anything about her life. There was something very private and closed about Daphne, as though she were keeping a multitude of secrets. And it was only late one night when Barbara had delivered a manuscript to her apartment, a year after she'd begun typing for her, that the two women had begun to open up about themselves. Barbara had told her then about the abortion, and about being imprisoned by her invalid mother. Daphne had listened quietly to the long unhappy tale, and then told her about Jeff and Aimee, and Andrew. They had sat on the floor of her apartment, drinking wine and talking until the wee hours of the morning. It seemed like yesterday as Barbara watched her now, lifeless in her hospital bed, when only days before she had been so vibrant.

  Daphne had been adamant, when she heard Barbara's tale, that Barbara had to leave her mother.

  "Look, dammit, it's a matter of your survival." They had both been a little drunk, and Daphne had pointed an emphatic finger at her.

  "What can I do, Daff? She can hardly walk. She has a heart condition, she's had three strokes...."

  "Put her in a home. Or can you afford to?"

  "I could if I worked my ass off to do it, but she says she'd kill herself. And I owe her that much...." Barbara's thoughts drifted back to the past. "She put me through school, she even put me through Smith."

  "And now she's ruining your life. You don't owe her that. What about you?"

  "What about me? There's no me left."

  "Yes, there is." Barbara had looked at her, wanting to believe her, but it had been years since she had dared to think of herself. Her mother had almost destroyed her. "You can do anything you want to do." It was what John had said to her in their cabin in New Hampshire. She told Barbara about him then. She was the first person she had told. There were no secrets left when the night was over. And again and again they went back to talking about Andrew. He was everything that mattered to Daphne, everything that counted, that brought life and fire to her eyes.

  "You're lucky you have him." Barbara looked at her with envy. Her own child would have been ten years old by then. And she still thought of it often.

  "I know I am. But I don't 'have' him in that sense." A look of sorrow came across her face then. "He's at the school? And I have my own life, such as it is." Barbara suspected that in her own way Daphne was not so much better off than she was. She had her son and her work, but nothing else. There had been no man in her life since John died, and she was careful to see that there wasn't. Apparently several people had asked her out over the years, old friends of Jeff's, a writer she had met through her agent, people she met at publishing functions, but she had declined them all. In her own way she was as lonely as Barbara. And it formed a bond between the two. She confided in her more than anyone else, and after Barbara began coming to her house to work, they went to lunch now and then, or shopping on a Saturday afternoon together.

  "You know something, Daphne? I think you're crazy."

  "Tha's not news." She grinned up at her tall friend as they went through the racks at Saks. Barbara had actually managed to escape her mother for an entire afternoon and they had decided to spend it together.

  "I mean it. You're young, you're gorgeous. You could have any man you want. What are you doing shopping with me?"

  "You're my friend and I like you. And I don't want a man."

  "That's what's crazy."

  "Why? Some people never have what I've had." She almost cringed as she said it, knowing the emptiness of Barbara's life.

  "It's all right." Barbara had looked down at her with a warm smile, looking suddenly younger. "I know what you mean. But that's no reason to quit."

  "Yes, it is. I'll never have again what I had with Jeffrey, or John. Why settle for second best?"

  "That's not a reasonable assumption."

  "In my case it is. You don't find men like that again in a lifetime."

  "Maybe not just like them. But someone else. Are you really going to give up on that for the next fifty years?" Barbara had been horrified at the thought. "That really is goddamn crazy." It didn't seem as crazy to her that she had given her life up to a mother she hated. But she didn't see herself in the same light. Daphne was beautiful and petite, and Barbara had sensed from the first that she was going to be very successful. Their lives were worlds apart to Barbara.

  But it was Daphne who saw hope for her friend, and she nagged her constantly to do something about it. "Why the hell don't you move out?"

  "To where? A tent in Central Park? And what do I do with my mother?"

  "Put her in a home." It became a familiar refrain between the two, but it wasn't until Daphne bought the apartment on East Sixty-ninth Street that she developed a plan, and she faced Barbara with it, her eyes filled with excitement.

  "Christ, Daphne, I can't."

  "Yes, you can." She wanted Barbara to move into her old apartment.

  "I can't support us both."

  "Wait till you hear the rest of my idea." She offered her a full-time job, at a handsome salary that she could well afford.

  "Work for you? Are you serious?" Barbara's eyes had lit up like a summer sky. "Do you mean it?"

  "I do, but don't think I'm doing you a favor. I need you, dammit. You're the only thing that keeps my life running smoothly. And I'm not going to take no for an answer." Barbara had felt her heart soar within her, but she was terrified, too. What about her mother?

  "I don't know, Daff. I'll have to think it over."

  "I've already thought it out for you." Daphne grinned at her. "You can't have the job unless you move out from your mother. How's that for a stiff deal?" It was and they both knew it, but after a month of tormenting herself over what Daphne said, she got up the guts to do it. Daphne gave her two stiff drinks, and took her over in a cab to her apartment. She dropped her off with a hug and a kiss and told her she could do it. "It's your life, Barbara. Don't blow it. She doesn't give a damn about you, and you've paid your debt. Don't forget that. How much more can you give? ... How much more do you want to?" Barbara already knew the answer. For the first time in years she saw a light at the end of the tunnel, and she ran for it as hard and as fast as she could. She went upstairs and told her mother she was moving out, and she refused to accept the threats or the vengeance or the insults or the blackmail.

  Her mother moved to a home the following month, and although she never admitted it to Barbara, she actually came to enjoy it. She was with people her own age, and she had a whole circle of cronies to whom she could complain about her selfish daughter. And when Daphne's new apartment was ready, Barbara took over her old place, and she felt as though she had finally been released from prison. She smiled now as she remembered the feeling. She woke up every morning with a light heart and a feeling of freedom, made coffee in the sunny little kitchen, stretched out on her bed, feeling as though she owned the world, and she used what had been Andrew's bedroom as an office whenever she brought work home, which was often. She worked for Daphne every day from ten in the morning until five o'clock, and when she went home she always took stacks of work with her.

  "Don't you have anything else to do, for chrissake? Why don't you leave that here?" But as Daphne said it she was sitting at her own desk, preparing to work until the wee hours of the morning. The two were
well matched, but neither of them had a normal life, and all that Barbara wanted out of life was to repay her for what she had done. She had helped her to free herself of her mother. But Daphne also realized that there was another danger, that Barbara would turn her habit for devotion and slavery toward Daphne.

  "Just don't treat me like your mother!" she ranted teasingly when Barbara would appear with lunch on a tray when Daphne was working.

  "Oh, shut up."

  "I mean it, Barb. You've been taking care of someone else all your life. Take care of yourself for a change. Make yourself happy."

  "I do. I enjoy my job, you know. In spite of what a pain in the ass you are to work for." Daphne would grin at her distractedly and go back to work, working at her typewriter from noon until three or four in the morning.

  "How the hell can you work like that?" Barbara would watch her in amazement. She never stopped, except once in a great while for a cup of coffee, or to go to the bathroom. "You'll destroy your health working like that."

  "No, I won't. It makes me happy." But happy wasn't a word Barbara would ever have used to describe her. There was always something in Daphne's eyes that said she hadn't been happy in years, except right after she had seen Andrew. But the events of her life were etched deep into her eyes, and the ache she still felt over the people she had lost never really left her. She put the joy and satisfaction she felt from her work between her and the ghosts that she lived with, but they were always there, and it showed, although she seldom spoke of it to Barbara.

  But when she was alone in her office sometimes, she would sit and look out the window, her mind far away ... in New Hampshire with John, or a place she had been to with Jeff ... or in spite of the iron control she kept over herself, her eyes would mist over with memories of Aimee. It was a side of her no one saw, and she was careful that they didn't, but she admitted her innermost feelings to Barbara, about what her life had been like at various times, and how much she missed it, the people she had lost, like John and Jeff and Aimee. And always, always, she would talk about Andrew and how much she missed him. But, she had a different life now than she had had when Andrew lived at home. A life filled with work and accomplishment and success, publishers and publicity people, and her agent. She had a good head for business, which she hadn't realized before, and she exercised her craft well, with a deft pen and a good sense for what her readers wanted. The only thing she hated about her work was the promotional appearances she occasionally had to do, because she didn't want anyone prying into her personal life, or asking about Andrew. She wanted to protect him from all that. There was nothing about her personal life that Daphne wanted to share with the world, and she felt that her books spoke for themselves, but she recognized that her publishers felt the publicity was important. The issue came up again when she was asked to do The Conroy Show in Chicago and she hesitated, gnawing on a pencil.