by Susan Isaacs
I stuck my hands into the deep pockets of a cashmere sweater I’d had since 1990. It was thick and beautifully cable-stitched, though the sleeves were too long; it was also orange. The girl at Ivey who had gotten it as a birthday gift proclaimed she looked hideous in orange. That was why she was giving it to me. Since only five or six people on the entire planet actually looked good in orange, I was walking up Madison Avenue in full knowledge of how less-than-lovely I appeared but how wonderful I felt in cashmere.
“Do you remember who gave me this sweater?” I asked Tatty.
“Suzy Dalton. Don’t ever ask me Do you remember? when it comes to clothes. You know I always remember.” It hadn’t been easy to get Tatty to go for a walk. The only way to get her to move was to promenade past the windows of expensive stores. She was not fond of the outdoors, though she was enthusiastic about weather because changes in climate required changes of wardrobe. “Amy, did you honestly think you could distract me, talking about a sweater?”
“I was the one who was telling you all about Rose Moscowitz,” I replied. “What’s in it for me to distract you? Did you ever consider that the reason you get distracted is that you’re eminently distractible?”
“No, I have not considered.” At that moment, her eyes were looking right, at a display of cane handbags with leather trim that seemed to have been inspired by the suitcases in The Grapes of Wrath. This particular homage to the migrant worker started at about five hundred dollars per. “And while we’re on the topic of considering,” she went on, “have you ever considered that I am not a typical In Depth reader?”
“Tatty, that is so obvious it’s beyond consideration.”
“Then how come all you’re giving me is facts? Facts, and all that boring archaeology or anthropology about the different places that different kinds of Jews move to in Florida. If you’re not in the mood to talk about the human drama of meeting a grandmother for the first time, you could at least tell me about what you were thinking.” I picked up my pace and got her past a scented soap/potpourri store and across the street before she slowed again, this time to study an array of antique watches. “Give me one minute,” she said. “I’ve never seen some of these pieces before.”
I buttoned the sweater and lifted its shawl collar higher around my neck. I should have been working on a Monday night. The magazine closed Tuesday and I was only half through with my article. I’d done a pretty complete outline on the plane coming back, so at least I knew what I was going to write and in what order I’d write it. But by five in the afternoon, I was worn out, not so much from the work, but from the effort of keeping Rose, my mother, my half brothers—to say nothing about John—out of my consciousness. I’d called Tatty, then walked up to her apartment to take her for an airing.
“Are you ready for my thoughts and the human drama of it all?” I inquired. “Or are you going to stand in front of those watches for half an hour observing the march of time?” She began walking again, and with her long legs, it was at a fairly good clip. “Tatty, it’s not that I’m avoiding telling you what I felt meeting Rose. When I made the date with her, I didn’t think I’d feel anything. It was just a logical first step to see her, before the big emotional onslaught of meeting or even seeing my mother. I figured that if Rose wasn’t senile or a vicious bitch, I could probably get some insight that could help me if and when I decided to approach my mother.” I took a deep breath. The air was so cold I could feel it flow through my nostrils and make the plunge down into my lungs. I blew it out through my mouth and was disappointed not to see a frosty mist. “If I do decide to see her, I wonder ...”
“What? You wonder what?”
“Would you please give me time to finish a sentence? I wonder if she’ll look like a total stranger—okay, a total stranger I’ve seen a couple of pictures of. But I’ve read about a phenomenon called infant amnesia, that for some neurological or developmental reason, you lose all memories of what happened to you as a baby.”
“Never heard of it,” Tatty declared.
This was not a shock. “So I’m wondering, if I do see her, will it be an emotionally neutral experience? Or will I get this sudden rush of memories? All the Mommy business. You know, like her saying This is your nose, this is Mommy’s nose or I love you or Shut up or I’ll beat the crap out of you?”
“I wish I could tell you, Aimée.”
“I keep thinking about that old saw, that you can’t put back the genie once you open the bottle. Maybe I should stop now. What if she turns out to be a moral monster? Or something worse?”
“Like what?” She looked intrigued.
“I don’t know. There are any number of appalling possibilities. I have to give you credit, Tatty. You were the one to tell me to leave well enough alone.”
“It’s amazing how you can be so smart and so dumb at the same time.” She had been saying that on and off since our second week at Ivey. “The genie is already out of the lamp or bottle or whatever.” She blew on her hands, then stuck them into the pockets of her vest. Sheared mink. Dyed dark blue. “As a matter of fact, the genie got out the minute you told Rose your name and that she could check you out at In Depth and Ivey and every place else you ever were for more than two seconds, you fool. Au revoir, Monsieur Genie, ’allo Véronique. Okay, there’s no law saying you have to go and meet your mother. But what if she comes to you? And what about this nouvelle grand-mére? Nouveau? Isn’t it odd that I think it’s nouveau? Do you think you want anything to do with her?”
“Yes. It’s kind of weird, because she seems like a tight-ass. But I found her thoughtful, honest—well, I guess she’s honest. Maybe I was taken in. But no, I don’t think so. For all that control, she has emotional depth. Clearly, she was in love with her husband and that’s a terrible loss for her, still. And she loves her grandsons.”
“Ugh, half brothers!” Tatty exclaimed. “What if you reconcile with your mother and have to be nice to them, too? What could you do except take them to the Planetarium? Boys are so unknowable between ten and fifteen. Pimples, braces, and constant useless erections.”
“To continue,” I said. “Even though Rose is a very restrained person, I think a lot of that restraint is centered around what happened with her daughter. The trauma of it. You know, I told her that she and I had something in common: Phyllis abandoned us both. But at the same time, I couldn’t stop wondering what was so horrible about Rose and her husband that would make a sixteen-year-old girl take off and not get back in touch. Not for a few days. For years.”
Tatty stopped in front of a window, but didn’t look in. “Maybe nothing was wrong with them,” she said. “Did you ever think that? Maybe Phyllis-Véronique was one selfish, hostile piece of shit. Maybe the really amazing thing is that her mother is still willing to have anything to do with her.” Her back was toward the store window. She glanced over her shoulder for an instant at the full-sleeved white blouses and beribboned dirndl skirts for Upper East Side peasants, and blew up her cheeks in an about-to-vomit gesture. “Come on, A. Phyllis-Véronique is a type. You know, all those kids we knew when we were fourteen whose character wasn’t forming but was already in cement. All right, some were sweeties for life. But some were bad to the bone. That’s your mother.”
Actually, I was thinking I was disappointed Tatty didn’t like the skirts and vests, because I thought they were pretty great. I once told her I thought she was part of a cabal that met quarterly to decide what was chic and what ought to be sneered at. And whom. Some of what she and her fellow chic raved about was incomprehensible to me: coats that looked like Klan robes, hobo bags that looked like portable potties.
“Now you’re the one looking in windows,” she announced, in a voice half of Madison Avenue could hear. “You’re sooo distractible!”
“Shush, Tatty.”
She lowered her volume slightly. “Not only that, look at what you’re looking at. I bet you don’t know why. I know. Because you were poor and your grandmother could only buy you the little bo
x, with ten crayons. Anything in those kindergarten colors is irresistible to you. As I was saying, Phyllis-Véronique was the worst. Walking out on you, not coming back, not ever trying to get in touch.” I attempted to interrupt her but she was on a roll. “Compare her to Grandma Lil and Chicky.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They were loyal,” she said. “I, for one, completely adored Grandma Lil, even though she was a perpetual embarrassment to you. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have been embarrassed, even though you pretended you weren’t.”
“Lay off, Tatty. I wasn’t embarrassed.”
“Please. That time she told me, ‘Tatiana, I know it’s not classy to call someone classy, but you, my dear, have class.’ You wanted to die!” I nodded. Old friends have unfortunately long memories. “Did Lil want to take care of a ten-month-old baby?”
“I guess not. No. But she did.”
“That is just my point. Lil was responsible. She probably even loved you in her own self-centered, clueless way. Even if she didn’t, she did what was right. She stuck by you. And look at Chicky. He got out of jail and what was the first thing he did? Took care of you. How many—pardon me—fuckups like him in their twenties get out of jail and only want to do the right thing for a little kid?”
“I know.”
“It’s not just being responsible. Just think about them: a criminal and, with all due respect, a leg waxer/shoplifter. Isn’t it amazing? I never thought of this before. Both of them had good character. You have good character. Where do you think you got it from? Phyllis-Véronique? No, you got it from the people who brought you up.”
Tatty and I wound up at Chop Meat Charlie’s, a dingy coffee shop in her ’hood that residents embraced because they thought it delightfully sincere. Among Charlie’s offerings was a tuna salad that tasted so close to the glop we’d eaten at Ivey it became our comfort food. Objectively, we knew proper tuna salad should not be as sweet as lemon meringue pie. Nor should it be studded with chopped pickles. Still, this was what we yearned for. We hit Charlie’s every few weeks. After the tuna, we split a dish of coffee ice cream, so by the time I got home I was feeling properly comforted.
It was only about eight-thirty. Naturally, before I even took my sweater off, I checked voice mail. Two messages. The first, from In Depth’s production department, was something between a plea and a demand not to go over fifteen hundred words. The second was from John Orenstein.
“Hey, Amy, it’s me. John. Listen, I want you to know that if you’d like to come to our Seder, you’re still invited. This invitation is from me and also my parents. I know with all that’s ...” He hesitated for a second, and tried to cover it up by making a big deal about swallowing. “... that’s happened you might not think the invitation is still in effect, but of course it is. I promise you, you won’t feel uncomfortable. Well, let me know if you can come. I’ll probably drive up early that day. If you take the train, I’ll pick you up at the station. Okay, hope you can make it. Bye.”
“Did your mother put a gun to your head?” I blurted out after I slammed down the phone. I might have gone on a rampage for a few minutes, but I was so upset my digestive processes went into shock and I kept hiccuping tuna-pickle and coffee ice cream fumes, which not only made me nauseated, but hurt my ribs.
I said, “Go fuck yourself, John,” more decorously, then sat in the middle of the couch?bed and did some yoga breathing. This took a while since, besides my anger at being an Orenstein family object of pity, I couldn’t get over being broken up about how our relationship had gone from great to stale to broken beyond repair. I was torn apart, too, at the thought of how much of the blame was mine.
Once I calmed down, I got myself all fluttery again when it occurred to me that maybe John was using the holiday as a means of getting back together, consciously or subconsciously. I immediately divided myself in two so I was able to have a heated debate as to whether or not John was too direct in his dealings to use such an adolescent—Aha! But was it adolescent?—approach.
Naturally, this got me nowhere. I picked myself up from the couch and found a pen so I could deal with my response in a rational manner. As a first, I decided to make a list of talking points in order to sound compos mentis when I spoke to him. However, after jotting down appreciate offer/other plans, I drew a blank. I realized the wisest course would be to sleep on it. Naturally, two seconds later I was on the phone.
By the third ring, I knew John wasn’t home, which of course put me on the road to rage again, thinking: He calls me relatively early in the evening. I return the call later in the evening, when he should be home, but of course he’s not because, having offered the invitation, he also has to make it clear that it’s in no way an opening to resume the relationship. At this very moment, he’s probably banging La Belleza standing up, in her five-hundred-square-foot walk-in closet, so that if I call him on his cell phone, he can be out of breath—and she won’t be able to repress a giggle.
I had already altered my grip on the phone so that when I smashed it down again I wouldn’t break my nails. That was the instant it dawned on me that even if I hung up before his voice mail clicked in, my number might still register on his caller ID and how pathetic it would look if I called back an hour or two later, obviously dying to speak to him in person. His voice mail said, “This is John Orenstein. Please leave a message.”
“Hey, John. Amy. Thank you for the invitation, and please thank your parents for me as well.” So what that my heart was pumping double-time and squeezing all the blood through my arteries to my head and that I could truly feel my once and future stroke coming on? “I love how your family celebrates Passover, but even though I know I’d enjoy the Seder, I don’t belong there. I appreciate your wanting to include me. I hope you and your family have a great holiday. Oh, and just to let you know, the search for Phyllis Moscowitz Morris Lincoln Véronique Groesbeck Hochberg is going well.”
The next morning, I was watching my cursor blink on and off, debating whether to call Thom Bowles the bête verte of the Bush administration’s environmental policymakers, when my phone rang. It was Happy Bob: He wanted me in his office, “to talk about Thom Bowles.”
I traipsed down the narrow hall without looking into anyone’s cubicles. God, how I hated coincidences like that: I think Thom, two seconds later someone else says Thom. Normally a summons to Happy Bob’s office meant he was too uncomfortable to do his usual drop-in: clomp into your office without a May I, squint at your monitor to see what page you were up to, sit on your desk, crumple your papers with his ass, and direct his breath up your nose.
Everyone knew what was wrong when he was unable to walk. His discomfort was due to either flatulence or shin splints. The former was evident when you opened his door. The latter became clear when he’d draw up his slacks and, with two fingers on either side of the tibia, massage up and down his legs, occasionally emitting a squeal when he tugged at one of the few hairs on them. Now, however, his request sounded ominous.
“Have a seat,” Happy Bob said. I was sitting on the only chair he had by his desk, a ladder-backed piece he’d bought at auction and told everyone was Shaker. Everyone said Wow or I love the stunning simplicity. The chair was pitched in a way that it pushed you forward a bit, not a great position to be in after two bowls of Frosted Mini-Wheats. “The environmental piece almost done? It would be good if you handed it in before lunchtime.” He was wearing his least luminous smile.
I decided to be brave and inhale through my nose rather than my mouth. No gas. “It won’t be finished until three or four,” I told him. “I did a lot of interviews, probably too many, and I want to give each candidate approximately the same space, going to the depth, or the lack of it, of their commitment, and also who their advisers are. And then I got a call last night telling me fifteen hundred words, which I took to be a twisted joke.”
“Look, what with Iraq and what’s going on internationally, you’d be lucky getting a mere five hundred words. But I’m
generous. You want to make extra work for yourself and write more than fifteen hundred? I can’t stop you as long as you get the piece in by five-thirty, but I can guarantee you it will be cut and there won’t be time for delicate surgery.” He was being his usual irritating self. My fears about a looming Thom Bowles-related disaster abated. Too soon. “What the hell has been going on between you and this kid who’s stalking Bowles?”
I asked, “Do you want me to write about the kid?” with a great deal of amazement that I didn’t feel.
“Now Amy, you know I don’t.” He said this with his really broad smile, which besides being repulsive, was an omen that his next sentence would be far worse than the previous one. “Have you been talking to this Fernando Carrasco on the sly?”
“On the sly?”
Someone from the Bowles campaign had learned that I’d talked to Freddy. For a reporter at In Depth, folly, but certainly forgivable. No one cared if you talked to a kid making a paternity accusation, as long as you didn’t demand to write about him. But for me to have counseled Freddy, to have gone out of my way and gotten him a lawyer, was probably as much unethical as it was foolish. This wasn’t exactly a news flash to me. I’d known when I gave him Mickey Maller’s number that this wasn’t one of my more stellar moves, but I hadn’t cared. Freddy was a kid in search of a missing parent and I was compelled to help him. Also, I figured the chance of anyone’s finding out about my involvement was close to zero. Not close enough.
“I talked to Freddy Carrasco, but certainly not on the sly.”
“About what?”
I took a deep breath. With it, alas, I discovered Happy Bob had indeed said Fill ’er up at the gas pump. “About his claim that Thom Bowles is his father,” I explained. “Listen, there are two types of interesting stories: the ones that are fit for publication in In Depth and those that aren’t. Right? This kid didn’t seem like a stalker or someone who’s unbalanced. I wanted to hear what he had to say. I bought him a cup of coffee and I listened. There’s a decent chance he’s telling the truth.”