Robert and Rebecca, still in their pajamas, were sitting on the couch watching TV. Rebecca’s Barbies had taken over the armchair, where they sunned themselves at a pool party most of the previous afternoon. After dinner, Rebecca had told her mother she couldn’t put them away because the Barbies were responsible for cleaning up after themselves. It didn’t look like they had made much progress. Robert’s U Clean It car wash stood in the middle of the area rug with twenty-seven cars lined up. Karen knew there were twenty-seven cars because that was what Rebecca had told her last night. There was no way they could send their customers away, even though it was well past closing time, because she and Robert didn’t want to disappoint them. They had offered a special that day and had an overwhelming response. Rebecca had made the decision after dinner to shuttle the customers home so they wouldn’t have to lose their places in line. “It doesn’t matter,” said Karen, hoping Shelley would suggest later on in the day, when Robert got up from his nap.
“Well, I’ve got a few things to do this morning. How about lunchtime?”
Karen walked back into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. She had half a pitcher of iced tea she’d made for Sarah’s visit yesterday, and some grapes she could re-rinse and put in a pretty bowl. She could make tuna; her mother loved it. And, she thought, walking to the cupboard, she had some pretzels, somewhere. Bob had taken a liking to them recently, proclaiming them the ultimate snack food: crunchy, salty, and low in fat. Karen found half a bag next to the unopened chips she was saving for the weekend. “Sure.”
“One o’clock?”
Karen closed her eyes. Her mother knew the kids ate early, Robert in particular. Since he was up at dawn, he was ready to sleep by twelve thirty. And if she didn’t get him down by then, he got overtired and didn’t sleep at all, which meant she had a cranky toddler for company all afternoon. How many times had she complained about this to her mother? “You can come at one, but you won’t get to see Robert.”
“Really?”
“He’s up at six, Mom, which means I’m up at six. By noon, we both need a break.”
“Okay. If I push myself, I should be able to get there by twelve thirty. Why don’t you feed him first, and then put him in for a nap after I arrive? Maybe then just the girls can have a nice lunch together.”
Rebecca, Karen thought, would not want to wait until one to eat a tuna sandwich with her grandmother. If Karen made a big enough deal about it, however, and allowed Rebecca to help with the preparations, it might work. “Okay,” said Karen. “I’ll see you at twelve thirty.”
“Can I bring anything?”
What Karen wished was that her mother would simply offer to bring something if she wanted to bring something, cookies for the children or a bottle of mineral water from her basement, or not ask. If Shelley asked and Karen said no, Shelley was covered and could expect lunch or dinner at Karen’s house without contributing toward the meal. Ironically, it was Shelley who had taught Karen to bring something to the hostess. “I’m all set,” said Karen, listening to Robert and Rebecca arguing in the other room.
“Perfect. I’ll see you at twelve thirty then.”
Karen set the phone down on the kitchen counter and walked into the living room. Robert was on the floor kicking and fussing, and Rebecca was holding the television remote control in her hand above her head as she sat on the couch. “What is going on here?”
“He doesn’t like this show,” said Rebecca calmly.
Karen glanced at the TV and saw animated figures. “Why not?”
“I have no idea. It’s Reading Rainbow.” Rebecca’s eyes never left the TV.
Karen picked Robert up off the floor and held him to her. “Is Levar reading a scary book, Rebecca?”
“Where the Wild Things Are.”
Karen sat down on the couch with Robert on her lap. “They are a little scary.”
“Not to me,” said Rebecca, “and not to Max.”
Karen told Robert the monsters were nice; they just looked scary. Robert watched for a moment, then started crying again. Karen lifted him and herself off the couch. “I’m going to get him dressed. The TV goes off after this show.”
“Are we going to the park today?”
“Grandma’s coming.”
Rebecca hesitated, absorbing, and then asked, “Does that mean we can’t go to the park?”
Karen raised her eyebrows at her daughter. “That depends on how fast we can clean up this house, your room included.”
As always, cleaning the house took longer than Karen expected. The children were pretty good at putting their toys into their painted wood chests in their rooms if Karen offered an incentive, like an ice cream from the truck at the park. It was the dusting and vacuuming and general cleaning that was most onerous. She resented doing it; it was constant, and Bob didn’t help. If there was clutter on the floor, he walked over and around it. And he hadn’t picked up a broom since they left the apartment, instead ignoring the snap and pop of snack crumbs when he walked into the kitchen after work.
Dressed in a pair of tired shorts with an elastic waistband and a stained cotton T-shirt, Karen attacked the kitchen. She cleared the counters, table, and floor, and then scrubbed all three. She did the dishes, then wiped the fingerprints from the lower cupboards. When Rebecca walked into the room and asked if she and Robert could watch one more show, Karen acquiesced, but said they had to put away their toys while doing so. When she was done in the kitchen, Karen joined her children in the living room and dusted around them. In the bathroom, she wiped the dried out, spat toothpaste from the sink and the urine pools from around the base of the toilet with disinfectant cloths. She returned the bath toys to their mesh bag, hung it from the hook next to the showerhead, and then pulled the curtain across. When the TV show ended, Karen turned the set off and told the kids to sit on the couch while she vacuumed. Rebecca, already moping, already knowing they would not make it to the park, sat with her arms across her chest. Whenever her grandmother came to visit, her mother always ran out of time. She asked anyway. Karen looked at her watch. “Let me make the tuna first. Do you want to help?” Rebecca’s response was a dark look.
When Karen turned her back and walked into the kitchen, Robert followed her, announcing that he was hungry. She lifted him into his blue wood chair and put some Cheerios in a plastic bowl in front of him. The first few hit the floor before she closed the box. She walked away from him, willing herself not to get out the broom. There would be more, and she would deal with it later. She grabbed two cans of tuna from the cupboard and drained them, then minced a small amount of onion and added it to the tuna before putting in a generous amount of mayonnaise, exactly how her mother liked it. She turned and opened the bread drawer and found nothing but stale bagels. She walked to the fridge and opened the freezer section. “Shit.”
“Shit,” said Robert.
Karen put plastic wrap over the tuna and put it into the fridge. She grabbed Robert from his chair and strode into the living room, where she caught Rebecca watching TV with no volume. “That television is supposed to be off.” Karen stood in front of Rebecca with Robert on her hip.
“And we’re supposed to be at the park.”
Karen turned off the TV. “And you need to watch what you say, young lady.”
Rebecca slid off the couch. “Are we going now?”
“We have to go to the store first. We’re out of bread.”
“Great,” said Rebecca in the sarcastic tone she had picked up from Bob. Karen ignored her; they didn’t have time for a time-out.
“Let’s go. The sooner we go, the sooner we can get back.”
“That’s obvious,” sassed Rebecca.
Karen took two giant steps toward her daughter and swatted her bottom. Rebecca immediately began to cry. And even though Karen immediately felt like she had done the wrong thing, handled the situation like a stressed-out babysitter instead of a reasonable, rational parent, she said, “You deserved that.” Rebecca wiped the te
ars from her eyes. “No more monkey business. No more fresh mouth. And we might just have a chance of getting to the park.”
They walked out to the driveway. Karen secured Robert into his booster seat, while Rebecca, still moping, belted herself. Karen started the car and realized, for the fourth or fifth time in two days, that she had no gas; only now she really had no gas, which meant they would have to get some before going to the store. Maybe she could buy bread there. She drove to the Shell station/Food Mart, pumped gas into the car, and ran into the store to check out their bread. Soft&Tasty white filled the bread shelf. Her mother ate nothing but whole wheat. Karen ran back to the car, where she had a brilliant idea: She would get bread at the bakery! She drove to the other side of town to Freshly Baked, where she bought a loaf of sliced whole wheat, six poppy-seed sandwich rolls, six brownies, and six lemon bars. Still feeling guilty about giving Rebecca a spank, she also bought two frosted sugar cookies, which she let the children eat in the car.
Back home, Karen listened to her messages as she put everything on the kitchen counter. Bob would be late that night, and Sarah, who was at the park, was wondering where they were. It was eleven fifteen, which meant it was too late to go. If they left now, Robert would fall asleep in the car on the way back. Karen left a message for Sarah on her home phone and then called Bob, who had an important dinner meeting after work. He would be home by nine. She then told Rebecca they couldn’t go to the park, which made her daughter cry for the second time that morning. Karen apologized and then turned on the TV. Rebecca sat on the couch. Karen sat Robert down next to her.
Robert had logged three hours of television by noon and was barely able to stay awake during lunch. Karen sat next to him while he ate a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich and drank chocolate milk, a special treat for being such a good boy and staying on the couch in a TV-induced stupor while Karen reswept the kitchen floor and folded two loads of laundry. Karen had just finished putting the children’s clothing into their bureaus when the doorbell rang. Rebecca, apprised of the girls’ lunch that would exclude her baby brother, ran to the door. “Hi, sweetie,” said Shelley, bending down to give Rebecca a hug.
“Hi, Grandma. Robert’s about to go down.”
“I’d better hurry then. Are they upstairs?”
“In the kitchen. What’s in the bag?”
“Cookies. I bought them at the bakery.”
“So did we.”
“Oh,” said Shelley. She walked through the dining room, leaving footprints in the freshly vacuumed carpeting, and into the kitchen. Robert, sitting on his mother’s hip, smiled. “Hello, big boy! Are you ready for a sleep? Come to Grandma.” She held out her arms. “Take the bag, honey,” she said to Karen. “I understand we’ve both been to the bakery this morning. I also got some rolls. I know how you love sandwiches on fresh kaisers.”
“Thanks,” said Karen, deciding she would freeze the whole wheat bread and use her mother’s rolls.
“Shall we take our young friend up?”
“After you.” Karen gestured with an open palm.
They walked through the living room, where Rebecca was dressing one of her Barbies in a denim skirt and cowboy boots. “I’m hungry,” she said as soon as she saw her mother.
“Me too.” Karen accepted Robert from her mother. “We’ll be right down.”
Shelley started up the stairs, her cordovan tasseled loafers announcing each step. She wore khaki pants and a white cotton T-shirt, both freshly pressed, a belt around her middle, and short, graying chestnut-colored hair that she coaxed with mousse into the casual style she had been sporting for forty years. She no longer wore shorts or sleeveless tops, even on the hottest of summer days, claiming women over fifty should hide their flabby arm wings and double knees. She was even more disdainful of older women with hair that fell past their shoulders, and had told Karen more than once that she would have to change her hairstyle at some point. There was little less attractive, Shelley proclaimed, than a cascade of flowing hair surrounding a wizened face. What she had never said, never admitted, was that growing her hair, which was fine rather than thick like Karen’s, had not been an option.
“What a morning I’ve had,” Shelley said. “I’ve never played worse tennis; I couldn’t get anything over the net. Of course, all the girls said I was playing fine, and they meant well, but positive comments in a negative situation can actually do more harm than good. Then I ran over to the dress shop on Main—I think I told you your father and I have a wedding on Saturday and I have absolutely nothing to wear that isn’t half a century old. I must have tried on every dress in my size. No luck. The woman there—you know, the attractive one with the short blond hair and the charming smile—told me about a dress shop at the mall. She said it might be a tad youthful, but that I should not be discouraged by that. If I’m patient, she told me, I will surely find something. I’m going to try to scoot over there on the way home, so I want to eat a light lunch. And then, of course, I drove like a teenage boy to the bakery, because I had nothing at home for the children, and come to find out when I get here that you’ve been there, too. Karen, we really should talk about these things. I almost got a speeding ticket.”
Karen said nothing. If she opened her mouth, words that stung, that she could not take back would fly out of her mouth, bees from a downed hive. She laid Robert on his bed and covered him with a fleece throw.
“What kind of cookies did you buy?”
“I bought lemon bars and brownies.” Karen kissed his cheek.
Shelley held up her hands. “None for me. I’ve gained five pounds since the beginning of summer.”
Karen nodded, but didn’t pursue the subject. She, too, had gained weight. Everything she owned with a fixed waistband was tight. But the more she thought about dieting, the more she ate. Bob had said nothing until the other day when he suggested they go on a diet together. It was a gentle hint rather than a direct statement, but it hit the mark just the same. She knew he was right, but she had become mentally addicted to graham crackers in the afternoon and ice cream after dinner. She was around food all day now and ate out of boredom or as a reward instead of only when she was hungry. And she didn’t get much exercise. Karen had never been heavy—even through her pregnancies the doctor complimented her on staying the course. But since then, she paid less attention to her figure, opting for comfort over style. She wore sweatpants and large cotton turtlenecks in the winter and shapeless shorts and oversized tops in the summer. She had a closet full of beautiful things she didn’t wear, except when Bob took her out. Over the last several months, she had moved away from the tailored pieces in favor of Empire-style dresses. Bob told her he would gladly eat whatever low-fat, low-calorie dinners she prepared, and Karen knew he was trying to be helpful. But it made her angry rather than grateful. He didn’t need to lose weight, because he was busy and engaged and out in the world doing relevant things. Hard-working, important people never got fat.
“Nice to see you, honey,” called Shelley to Robert over her shoulder.
Karen followed her mother into the hallway, where she turned and said, “Sleep tight, big boy,” before closing the door behind her. They descended the carpeted stairs quickly and quietly before stopping in the living room, where Rebecca was sitting in a circle of Barbies. “Are you still hungry?” asked Karen.
“Starving. Can my friends come to lunch?”
“You can set them up on the counter. Only breathing people get to sit at the table.”
Rebecca nodded and picked up the six dolls in her group. They all walked into the kitchen, where Rebecca reassembled the circle on the counter and Shelley sat at the table. “Can I do anything?”
Karen reached into the fridge for the tuna and iced tea. “No, Mom. I’ll have lunch ready in a minute.”
“Remember, no bread for me.”
“No bread? I thought you just didn’t want dessert.”
“Carbs, honey. I’m trying to cut down on carbs.”
“What
do you want me to do with your tuna?”
“Just put it on a plate. And if you have a hunk of cheese, I’d like that on the side.”
“Iced tea?” asked Karen, turning around with the pitcher in her hand and facing her mother.
“Water,” said Shelley, “with ice please.”
Rebecca sat next to her grandmother as soon as the Barbies were situated. Shelley asked what she thought about going to kindergarten soon, and Rebecca grinned. Karen had told her mother to ask about school; it was what Rebecca talked about most. Sarah’s daughter, Britney, had already completed her kindergarten year; Rebecca couldn’t wait to catch up. Karen made the lunch plates while Shelley and Rebecca talked. The children had an easy relationship with Karen’s parents, seeing them frequently enough that all of them were comfortable. They were not comfortable with Bob’s parents, who had moved to Florida just after Rebecca was born and had become the kind of grandparents that long distance and absence created. Tucker and Janet sent gifts and called Rebecca and Robert on their birthdays and on major holidays. And they welcomed them, along with Karen and Bob, into their beachside condominium for a week every winter. But they were so worried the kids would ding the walls or spill on their pristine floors that the visits were just barely worth the effort and the relief from February’s snow and ice. They never offered to babysit—even though they talked incessantly about the fabulous restaurants in town—and they didn’t spend more than five minutes at a time chatting with Rebecca or Robert. Tucker and Janet seemed happiest at the end of the day, when it was cocktail hour and the kids were in their glassed-in sitting room, in front of a movie that Janet had selected at Blockbuster.
Shelley and Phil did babysit. In fact, Shelley urged Karen to call her whenever she and Bob wanted to go out to dinner or the movies. But, it was such a production. Karen had to pack up everything and drive fifty minutes to their house. Shelley often offered to take the kids for the night, but she wanted them picked up by ten o’clock the next morning. It was much easier on everyone to get a sitter at home. Plus, it was usually easy for Karen to find a sitter in the evening. What Karen really wanted from her mother was a genuine offer to stay with the kids during the day. Teenagers didn’t get home from school until three or so. And while that would have been a fine time for Karen to get a break, most of the girls in the neighborhood were involved in after-school activities or had homework. Their weekdays were often booked. Summer was different. Several of the thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls were eager to work because they were too young to get jobs elsewhere. And sometimes Karen called them. But it was the thought of leaving her children with a thirteen-year-old kid that often made her stop. Karen knew the younger sitters were up to the task of watching television in her living room while Rebecca and Robert slept upstairs, but she wasn’t sure they were responsible enough to watch two fully awake kids run around the backyard or inside the house. Robert was ripe for a trip to the emergency room, and how would Karen feel if he hit a doorjamb and needed six stitches in his head when a seventh grader was in charge?
A Changing Marriage Page 9