Current Affairs

by Raskin, Barbara;

I smile.

  “So?” Mickey prompts me. “If you can give them to Mr. Ocheros we’ll just finish up our coffee and get going.”

  “I’ve done something very stupid,” I say, feeling myself flush. “I had them in my other purse, my shoulder bag, and I forgot to transfer them into this one.”

  I place my evening bag on the table.

  “I don’t know what to say … I’ve been so busy, not at all myself lately. Stupid. Really stupid of me,” I repeat. I now inject a little nervous stammer for authenticity’s sake. “I mean … I mean … I knew we were c-coming here just to deliver them.” I pause to smile nervously at Mr. Ocheros. “But I can b-bring them by first thing tomorrow. Or in the afternoon. Or whenever you want. Whatever …”

  All three men are looking at me with genuine amazement. I look around the table at them.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m … uh … really, really sorry about this.”

  “Well, we can wait until tomorrow,” Ocheros says very precisely as he removes a small silver card holder from inside his jacket. “Here is my card. Please telephone my office before you come and someone will meet you here,” he says, nodding toward the doorway.

  “Thanks, Mr. Ocheros,” I say with a smile. “Thank you.”

  And then he gets up and walks away, stopping to bend and sway like a palm tree over various tables as he greets special guests.

  I drain my champagne glass.

  Now Mickey is furious.

  “I hope to hell you’re telling the truth,” he says to me. “Because if you’re pulling a fast one, if you’re still thinking about releasing that damn interview, you’re on your own. You’re responsible if anyone gets hurt. And that includes Michael Dukakis. That story could hurt him a lot. I wish you’d get your head out of the sixties, Natalie. It was fun while it lasted, but it’s over now.”

  “You’re playing right into the Republicans’ hands by letting them get away with all this,” I say, suddenly hot and focused. “There’s been a big cover-up here, Mickey. A White House secretary admitted using drugs and no one turned her confession over to the Justice Department. No one made any effort to have her prosecuted even though she was holding a sensitive government job. It was a complete cover-up. I don’t want to sound like some bleeding-heart liberal, but, jeez, I see old ladies eating cat food and sleeping in the streets while these Republicans are snorting coke in Georgetown and sending millions of dollars to the contras.”

  “Christ, Natalie,” Mickey says. “How retro can you get? This isn’t the time for all that shit. If the Democrats want to get their man in the White House they’ve got to forget about the war in Nicaragua and Salvador. They’ve got to show they can run this government. Run this country.”

  This time I don’t answer him.

  Bo signals the waiter for the bill, but the man comes over to say there isn’t any charge. Bo leaves a twenty-dollar bill on the table and then leads the way to the door. The minute we step outside, one of the parking jocks sprints off into darkness and returns within seconds in my Ford. Mickey tips him and gets into the driver’s seat.

  “Well, I’ll be in touch with you folks tomorrow morning,” Bo says.

  I can hear a smile in his voice.

  Then he turns and starts walking up Thirty-first Street toward Wisconsin Avenue.

  “You could’ve asked him if he wanted a ride,” I complain, sliding into the passenger seat.

  Mickey doesn’t answer. He doesn’t speak at all during our ride back to the hotel. When the elevator from the garage stops at the sixth floor, he gets off with me.

  “Oh, no,” I laugh nervously. “I’m done in, Mick. No more for me tonight.”

  I move quickly. Standing on tiptoe, I give him a sisterly peck on the cheek and then hurry toward my door before he recovers. I let myself into the room, turn the night lock and fling myself down on the other, unused bed.

  12

  I wake up before seven the next morning in the weird light of a hotel dawn and dig through my suitcase to find my old jeans, which are daily growing bigger on me, and a shirt. Then I dress, check out at the front desk, put the charges on Eli’s Visa, load up my car and drive home.

  I want to go home.

  No matter how dangerous it is, I want to go home and put some order back into my life. Tonight Eli will return and I want at least to have our bedroom fixed. I want to cleanse and restore our house to make it a home again.

  I begin on the first floor by uprighting little end tables, returning drawers to their desks and replacing books on their shelves. Plants have been pushed over and their pots broken. Eli’s study is a disaster. I do a little work in each area before I decide to concentrate on one room at a time. Of course I choose to begin in the kitchen, my beautiful kitchen, with its wall-length view of Rock Creek Park.

  I become totally absorbed. No—transported. Since everything is out of order and space is up for grabs, I begin to improvise, improving upon my original organization of the pots and pans. I am so into it that I don’t even hear the footsteps in our gravel driveway.

  “Natalie? Nat?”

  It’s Mickey.

  I open the back door. He comes inside without looking at me. He seems to be suffering from the same reticence I felt last night. I, also, have refused to run the rushes from yesterday.

  “My God,” he groans, looking around the kitchen. “Whadda disaster. Why’d you come back here all alone, Nat? It’s still dangerous. Especially since we didn’t complete our mission last night.”

  I have to smile at his delicacy.

  “Well, I can’t just abandon it, Mick. It’s the only thing we own, Eli and me. And I don’t like being homeless. I work with homeless women. I know what it does to people.”

  “But I thought all the locks were broken—”

  “I’m going to get everything fixed. It’s my house. My home.”

  “Well, I wanted to warn you Shay’s coming back early. She says she wants to help you. Clean up the place, I guess.” He studies the pieces of a broken platter on the floor. Then he looks up and meets my eyes. “I think she was maybe getting suspicious. About us.”

  “Really?”

  Translation: Infidelity and adultery are surefire topics to grab her interest. That negative attention span of hers can be corrected and converted with the right ammunition.

  “Yeah. Really.”

  “So’s she coming back to restake her claim?”

  “Yup. In about an hour and a half. The flight gets in at eleven. She phoned at seven. I called your room right away, but you’d checked out, given me the slip. You didn’t go to Georgetown already, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I want to go do that with you, but it’ll have to be early, because Shay wants us to go back up to the Hamptons tonight.” Mickey smiles sheepishly. “Apparently Long Island is the place to be between conventions. Shana told her that. She bumped into Shana. Or else Bianca. Or someone.”

  “She’s still a groupie,” I say, starting to scrub one of my countertops with cleanser on a sponge. “A groupie grandma still chasing after the band. A real Democratic party girl. Well, tell her she has to pick up Amelia in Minneapolis because I’m not going back there and I won’t let Marge make the trip. I really mean that, Mickey.”

  “She did say, she misses the baby.”

  “Oh, that’s real cute,” I snicker.

  “Don’t get bitter,” Mickey counsels. “Half your charm is not being bitter when you could be. I just hope she doesn’t pick up any vibes about us. You and me.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say sarcastically. “Shay’s never seen me as any kind of threat, let alone a sexual one.”

  “You won’t say anything, then?”

  “Hey! I’m disappointed you felt it necessary to ask.”

  “Wait till she sees how you look,” Mickey says ominously. “She’s not stupid. You look gorgeous! You look like you’ve been getting it.”

  Although there’s an element of t
ruth in what he says, I know the minute Shay gets here I’ll experience the same old anonymity that blankets me whenever she’s around. I’ll start to feel like a missing person again. Some shadowy figure in a witness-protection program. A desaparecida.

  “Would it be okay if I borrowed your car to go get Shay?” Mickey asks. “Yours or Eli’s?”

  “Sure. Take mine. I’ll run up to Georgetown when you get back. Don’t worry about it.”

  At 10:00 I give him the keys and he leaves for the airport. At 10:02 I take a bottle of Chablis out of the refrigerator and slowly sip wine from a coffee mug while I sweep broken shards off the floor.

  Still, I think, things could be worse.

  I mean, with my luck, I could have ended up being the sister of Scarlett O’Hara or Zelda Fitzgerald or Daisy Buchanan or Elizabeth Taylor or Cleopatra or Queen Victoria or Holly Golightly or Brett Ashley or Temple Drake or Princess Di. I might have been born the sister of Bette Midler or Angela Davis or Madame Ngo or Jane Fonda or Marie Antoinette or Ms. Dalloway or Zsa Zsa Gabor or Anastasia or Rosa Luxemburg or Connie Chung or Hannah Arendt or Madame Chiang Kai-shek or Viva of Ultra or Simone de Beauvoir or Dorothy Lamour or Dorothy Parker or Dorothy Day or Georgia O’Keeffe or Frida Kahlo or Tokyo Rose or Joyce Carol Oates or Queen Esther or Golda Meir or Whoopi Goldberg or Cher.

  Who needs trouble like that? Shay’s bad enough. As far as I’m concerned, she takes the prize.

  When I’ve finished sweeping I get out the bucket and mop the kitchen floor.

  I’m always surprised how little wine there is in a bottle.

  “Hiiiiiii.”

  They’re ba-aaaack.

  She’s ho-ooome.

  Heee-ere’s Shaysie!

  The back door swings open and Shay rushes into the kitchen.

  “Jeez, do I ever need to use the toilet,” she squeals.

  “Ohhh my-yy God. Look what they did to your house!”

  Today Shay is dressed in a drumroll of royal-blue spandex bike pants, a neon-green sleeveless T-shirt, black running shoes and double-density yellow socks.

  “D’you cut your hair?” she asks, barely looking as she rushes past me to the powder room with her huge red suede shoulder bag slapping against her thigh.

  From my bag-lady clients, I have learned that women use a purse or shopping bag as an extra appendage, an externalized auxiliary organ like the pouch of a kangaroo. Women like to transport essential ego props in detachable containers strapped to their bodies. I have never seen Shay enter a bathroom without her purse. It is not only that she carries and uses coke, but also that she keeps her private agendas and alternative identities inside its zippered compartment, just as Hannah keeps her survival supplies in a torn L&T shopping bag.

  The powder-room door slams shut.

  I feel mugged.

  Robbed.

  Whiplashed.

  Okay, so I am also a little shitfaced, but really!

  Did I cut my hair? What did she think happened to it?

  Oh, I am pissed. Really pissed.

  Mickey comes inside carrying Shay’s bags. Somehow my sister has already acquired several summery-looking suitcases covered in a hot-Day-Glo-print fabric that I have never seen before.

  Big Difference #291: Shay was born to shop. She is the only woman I know who can find time to do some serious shopping while covering a national political convention. I hate to shop. I only shop when I’m in Southampton, about to prostitute myself.

  Mickey sets down the luggage and comes over to me. He looks numb, like a spectator at the Ice Capades.

  “Not to worry,” I whisper. “She hardly looked at me.”

  “Nat, something happened on the way home from the airport …”

  But then the powder-room door swings open and slams against the wall, vibrating loudly until it shivers to a stop.

  My sister is seated upon the toilet, her pants down around her knees, peeing in front of both Mickey and me.

  “I have got to tell someone,” she yodels. “I have got to tell my sister. You, Natalie. Mickey and I are going to get married. We just decided on the way home from the airport. It’s the triumph of hope over experience. We’re going to get married!”

  “Oh,” I say, my voice flat and uninflected. “Great. That’s really wonderful.”

  But I am running on empty. Shitfaced or not, I can’t cover my shock at Shay taking a piss in front of us. I glance at Mickey, who looks totally pussy-whipped. Then—half to scare him, half to hide my hurt from Shay—I cross the room and plant a light kiss on his lips.

  “Congratulations,” I say, flashing the sexual chip on my shoulder. “This is a real surprise.”

  Dear God, I pray. Let me get through this. Let me swallow this like everything else. Let me eat the fact that my sister, even in her ignorance, trumped my ace. This is a toughie, but when the going gets tough, the tough get going.…

  Numbed, I now turn around. Shay has finished wiping herself and is simultaneously flushing the toilet and dragging her pants back up over her body.

  “I know you must be happy,” I say, giving her a stiff little hug when she reenters the kitchen. “But don’t forget you’re already married. I don’t think you’re supposed to double up like that.”

  “I know. I’ve got to take care of a lot of stuff with Christopher,” she agrees. “But he’s still down in Atlanta chasing after all my Washington friends. What a loser! Anyway, I’m going to help you fix up the house and everything, but first I’ve got to have a decent lunch. I’m starving. I’d kill for a huge Caesar salad. I’ve gotta have one.”

  Our Lady of Gotta. Our Lady of the Blue Gotta.

  Shay is a transitive verb. Everything she does takes an object. My sister is a tidal wave, a tsunami, an oceanic surge of wants. She can keep busy just satisfying her own appetites. One whim follows fast upon another. Gratifying her own desires and impulses can fill her days. It’s amazing she ever had time to work or be promiscuous, so prolific are her wants.

  “Why don’t you and Mickey go out and have a celebration lunch alone, Shay?” I ask in a saccharine voice. “I’ve got to go to Georgetown and drop off the papers at Ariel. Did Mickey tell you about last night?”

  “Yes, he did. But we’re not going to go out to eat without you,” she howls, genuinely astonished at such an outrageous idea. “Come on—we really need a field trip. All I have to do is change into something cooler.” She bends over to lift one of her suitcases up onto my kitchen table. “Spandex doesn’t breathe.”

  Oh, no no no.

  In less than a moment she is down to transparent bikini underpants and a cleavage-creasing bra. Then she begins rummaging through her suitcase, inspecting and rejecting various pieces of clothing, pausing only long enough to toss her cosmetic bags, shoe bags, beach bags and satin jewelry bags out on the table. In a manic monologue, she begins babbling about the Masters and Johnson prediction that AIDS will soon invade the heterosexual world in a serious way. She says the whole theory is tainted by their claim that normal Americans have only three sex partners a year.

  She says to her that sounds like a long weekend.

  Mickey laughs, which encourages Shay to walk over and rub the back of his neck. He shrugs his shoulders to slough her hand away, glancing at me to acknowledge his show of independence. Then he asks her if she went to Tom Hayden’s book party. She nods, so he asks whom she went with.

  Shay says she doesn’t usually carry sand to the beach.

  Then he really laughs.

  Jealousy is a crab crawling around inside me, starting to eat my guts out.

  Attacking her suitcase again, Shay reports everyone clapped when Tom Hayden said he sometimes likes the old Tom better than the new one. Then she begins naming the various journalists and celebrities Mort Zuckerman entertained at his rented gym in Atlanta. The bratpack from Hollywood seems to fascinate Shay these days. She discusses Rob Lowe, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald and other young actors I don’t know.

  Finally she pulls a white cotton dress
out of her suitcase, puts it on and disappears with Mickey to assess the vandalism in my house. She looks genuinely shaken when they return to the kitchen, although she refers to the damage as if it’s been caused by an act of God. I am beginning to feel ill. I am sick and tired of my sister. I am sick and tired of her silly chatter, her fucked-up values, her demagogic behavior.

  “I promise that after lunch I’ll spend the rest of the day helping you, Nat,” Shay says. “We’ll call repair people and contact your insurance company and everything. I just have to get up to East Hampton sometime tonight so I can begin working on my article. It’s due Monday and I’m going to have to work around the clock for a couple days.”

  “What about Amelia?” I ask her bluntly.

  Shay looks startled. “Well, what about her?”

  “You can’t just leave her in Minneapolis. Marge is exhausted. You’ve got to fly out there and pick her up.”

  “I can’t go to Minneapolis before I write my article.”

  “You can write it on the airplane en route. You love to write on airplanes. Remember?”

  “Oh, shit. I can’t write a whole article in three hours,” Shay squeals. “And I certainly can’t work with both Amelia and Mother around.”

  Something in this moment finally ignites the flammable mass of my grievances—forty years of tinder-dry resentments. The slow burn I’ve borne all my life now begins racing toward a fiery climax.

  “You are going to go get her,” I say shrilly. “I have taken enough shit from you in this past week to last me for the rest of my life. Can’t you get it through your head that someone shot bullets through my bedroom windows? That I had to take Amelia and run away from my own house? Go to the Hamptons? That from there I had to go to Minneapolis? Do you understand that Jerry Russo got shot? That my home’s been destroyed? Do you understand we’re being hunted, Shay? Can you even guess how sick I am of cleaning up your messes for you?”

  “Eat shit and die,” says my forty-year-old sister.

  “Sha-ay!” Mickey moans.

  “Well, what am I supposed to say?” she yells defiantly. “Do you think I wanted all this to happen? Do you think I would put my own little granddaughter in jeopardy if I’d known? Give me a break, wouldja? I mean gimme a fuckin’ break!”