“I thought I’d try to help out. I’d been such a big hit before, carrying her around and chasing the cat, and I thought I could cheer her up again. I hadn’t given her the present yet. It was in the front hall with my coat. I thought it was for after lunch, with the cake. So I leaned forward and said, ‘Vanessa, I have a surprise for you.’ She opened her eyes, and I leaned really close to her and I made a face, to make her laugh. She smiled, so I went on making these faces and then she started to laugh. I thought Marilyn liked it. She didn’t say anything, but she scraped some more food out of the jar and Vanessa had her mouth open because she was smiling and the spoon went right in. And instead of crying and spitting it out, Vanessa laughed, and then started to chew and swallow. I thought Marilyn and Dad liked what I was doing. I stood up and made more faces, and Marilyn fed Vanessa. When I saw the jar was empty I thought Vanessa was through, so I stood up and reached across the table and picked her up right out of her high chair.
“But I didn’t know she was sort of strapped into it, there was this, like, harness, underneath the bib, that attached her to the chair. I was leaning over, trying to swoop her across the table, and the chair was pulled over. It fell into the table and knocked over the water pitcher, and Vanessa started to cry because the harness was hurting her shoulders, and she was kicking her feet in among the plates and all the food, and she knocked over everything else, the plates and her milk glass and my Coke. It was a mess.”
Nicko stopped again. I put my hand on his shoulder and rubbed it a bit.
“But everyone could see it was all just a mistake?” I said.
“Marilyn looked at me like I had gone after the baby with an ax. She grabbed Vanessa out of my hands and said, ‘Nicholas, that is enough. I’ve had it with you. All you’ve done since you arrived is upset Vanessa. You nearly had her in hysterics over the cat, then you upset her so much that she wouldn’t eat, and now you’ve destroyed everything on the table. Just leave Vanessa alone. Don’t touch her. Don’t even talk to her.’”
“She couldn’t have said that,” I said.
“Then Dad said, ‘Nicholas, would you come into the library with me for a minute.’ So I went in there and he said all this stuff about how I wasn’t considerate to Marilyn, and I only used their house in Southampton like a hotel, and how I only thought of myself, and I never offered to help or anything, and how it was Vanessa’s birthday and I hadn’t even brought her a present.”
There was another long pause. I went on rubbing Nicko’s shoulder. I could see his face in profile. He has long, straight eyelashes, and they brushed his cheek each time he blinked.
“And so?” I said.
“So I left,” said Nicko. “I left the present in the hall.”
Since then, Nicko hasn’t heard from his father. I called, of course, to tell him what I thought of his behavior, but Walter hung up on me.
There’s nothing I can do; it drives me wild. All I want to do is make my son happy, keep him from pain, and I can’t even do it at home, in the most private part of his life. Willis says I’m overprotective, and maybe I am. But it was my idea to get divorced; it’s because of me that Nicko doesn’t live with his father, that he lives with Willis, and that Walter takes out his rage at me on Nick. All I can do is try to make things go well for Nicko however I can. How could I not be overprotective?
But that evening in late August I felt normal, I even felt successful, as a mother. I felt the summer had gone well for Nicko and Bell.
Standing in the crowded doorway at Pete’s, I felt proud of all of us: Willis, solid and dignified, his blue eyes gleaming under his flamboyant graying eyebrows. Nicko, clean and tanned and wonderful, his blond hair freshly washed, his jeans miraculously holeless. Belinda was wearing faded but clean jeans and a loose cotton sweater. Arlette, of course, dressed up the rest of us: cool and elegant in a very short, very tight jersey dress and her gold bracelets. And I felt light and happy that we had at least managed this peculiar sort of family group, all of us bound to each other by these odd strands of commitment, affection, and good will.
At the table, I leaned back in my chair, relaxed and happy, and turned to Nicko.
“So,” I said. “Tell me about the week. What’s been going on?”
Nicko looked out from under his bangs and smiled. “Oh, yeah. It’s been a pretty exciting time out here.”
“Yes?” I said.
“Well, the high point was really Thursday.”
“Thursday?”
“The repairman came,” Nicko said. “He fixed the dishwasher.”
Everyone laughed. “Very funny,” I said, laughing too.
“I had a better time than Nicko,” Bell said. “I jumped three feet two. And I was the only one Ann let do it.”
“You didn’t tell me that, Bellie,” I said, pleased.
“I forgot,” said Bell, smiling into her glass.
“That’s terrific,” I said, and then I pushed at Nick’s shoulder. “And what about you? Come on, Nicko. Give me the scoop. Tell me things I want to know.”
“What do you want to know?” Nicko asked. He was grinning, we all were.
I knew better than to ask about Nicko’s job, which is a touchy subject, and I had alternate questions ready.
“Well,” I said, “did you see Harry?”
Harry is a schoolfriend from New York whom Nicko never sees. I keep hoping that Nicko will acquire friends. I want him to be part of a big, roving herd of kids, boys and girls, rowdy and cheerful and warmhearted, surging in and out of one another’s houses, shouting and thrashing in the pool, tracking water through the kitchen, going out for pizza and on to the movies. This is my dream.
“No, Ma, didn’t see Harry,” Nicko said, shaking his head. “Sorry. Didn’t see Harry, again. Another bad week for me and Harry.”
“Nicholas, you’re torturing your poor mother,” Willis said, jocular. “Call Harry, and put her out of her misery.”
Nicko grinned. “Sorry, Ma. Maybe you should call Harry,” he offered.
“Right,” I said. “I’ll call him right now. Give me a quarter,” I said to Willis, and everyone laughed.
But in the end, of course, I couldn’t help myself.
“So how are things going at the nursery?” I asked, very casually, and Nicko stopped smiling and looked down at his beer.
“Okay,” he said.
“Did you work every day?” I asked.
Nicko shook his head, not looking at me.
Arlette spoke up. “Oh,” she said contemptuously, “they are no good, at that nursery.” Her mouth was pursed critically. “They do not tell the truth. They tell Nicko to come in, yes, we need you, then they say to go ’ome, we don’ need you. Sometime’ Nicko go in at ten, ’e come ’ome at two. Sometime’ they say no, don’ come in at all.” She shook her head. “Puh,” she exhaled dismissively, and with one disdainful breath she banished the nursery forever from her universe.
I don’t know what’s going on at the nursery. I don’t know whether Nicko isn’t working hard enough, or whether they lied to him to begin with, but it hasn’t gone well. I was struck by Arlette’s contempt for the nursery and her loyalty to Nicko. Her attitude infected Willis, who ordinarily sides genially against Nicko, whatever the issue.
Now Willis said, “You know, that really is rather shocking,” as though that were the first he’d heard of it. “Didn’t they say they wanted you full-time?”
Nicko shrugged his shoulders and nodded. “That’s what they said, all right,” he said.
Willis shook his head. “Shocking,” he said again, setting the weight of his disapproval against the enemy.
“Shockeeng,” Arlette echoed primly.
“Shockeeng,” Belinda said, grinning in a nice way, and we all laughed, including Arlette.
Dinner was a success, and by the end of it I was feeling even more affectionate toward everyone, particularly Arlette. I forgave her everything—her coolness, her near-insolence, her bikini—for her defense of Nicko. Now I was glad she’d b
een there with him all summer: if Nicko didn’t have a big, loose group of friends, at least he had one fiercely loyal one.
When we stood up to leave, someone called from another table. “Arlette!” It was a girl with very red lipstick and long blond hair, very straight.
Arlette looked around and gave a brief neutral wave.
“That was a great party!” called the girl.
Arlette said, “Ah,” noncommittally, and kept moving.
“Moonlight swimming! Love it! Thanks!” called the girl, but this time Arlette just waved, like a queen signaling the end of an interview.
When we were outside I asked, “Who was that?”
“Jus’ a girl from out ’ere,” Arlette said vaguely, shrugging. “I don’ really know ’er very well.”
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“I seenk Susan,” Arlette said, remote, as though Susan were from another universe. Arlette got in the back with Nicko and Belinda. I got in front with Willis. I said nothing more. I didn’t want to question Arlette now, in front of everyone. In fact, I didn’t want to question her later. Whatever had happened had happened, and now I was here it wouldn’t happen again. There’s no such thing as a perfect au pair, and there were worse things than one moonlight swimming party. I didn’t want to make retroactive accusations: Arlette’s reign was over. She had done her job, and the summer was ending.
At home, I got out of the car and stood still for a moment, basking in the summer darkness and the full moon. Arlette climbed out noisily behind me and slammed the door.
“We’re going to the movies,” she announced, and added insultingly, “if zat’s all right.”
“The movies?” I said. I felt ambushed, flattened. I had thought the evening was over, for one thing: it was quarter of ten. I thought that Arlette would say good night, and go off to her house. I thought that Willis and I and the children would mooch around for a while, reading or talking or listening to music, inside, in the library, or out on the porch. And then we would all go to bed. Arlette made me feel as though I had just given a dinner party and then been told that everyone was going on afterward to a restaurant.
I also felt hurt that Willis and I were not included: I had thought we were friends. I had felt, at dinner, as though we—Willis and Nicko and Bell and I—were opening our circle to Arlette. I thought that the five of us had established a core of friendship, acknowledging that we took pleasure in one another’s company. And I even felt rather generous about this, as though we were offering Arlette something special. Now it turned out that she and my children had their own circle, and that it was even smaller and more exclusive than ours.
“Oh,” I said brightly, trying to conceal all this. “All right.” I turned to Nicko. “What are you going to see?”
But Arlette answered. “Lace Two,” she said, or maybe it was “Lay Stew,” or maybe “Les Stoux.”
I looked again at Arlette. Her face was closed and expressionless, and she seemed now hostile and alien. The name of the movie hung in the air between us like a coded challenge that she had thrown out contemptuously, knowing that I dared not answer it. The incomprehensible words seemed proof of my ignorance, my exclusion from their world.
“Fine,” I said, more brightly, nodding, cowardly. “Don’t stay out too late,” I added, and then wished I hadn’t.
“Don’ worry,” said Arlette condescendingly. They all climbed at once into my car, as though this had been planned. As she drove out the driveway Arlette waved, the gold bracelets sending a brief scornful gleam into the night.
I went to bed at once, feeling forlorn, and fell asleep even before Willis came in. I woke up later, in the dark room, full of urgent certainty: I knew at once that it was very late, and that the children weren’t back. Willis was solidly asleep, and I got quietly out of bed and tiptoed down the hall in my nightgown.
Nicko’s room was silent and empty. The bed was flat, unoccupied, untouched, the pillow still covered by the patterned bedspread. Nicko’s muddy leather boots lay on their sides by the closet door, where he had kicked them off after work. The clock by his bed said twenty past four.
I looked into Belinda’s room. She lay in her bed, her face set deep into her pillow. I turned on the light.
“Where’s Nicko?” I asked. Her face was crumpled furiously against awakening, and she rubbed her hand hard against her mouth. She shook her head.
“I don’t know,” she got out.
“Did he come home from the movies with you?”
She stared at me. “The movies?” She was blinking, hard.
“Did Nick come home from the movies with you?”
“Yes,” she said, and set her face back deep into the pillow again.
I went downstairs. My car stood in the driveway, innocent, shining faintly in the moonlight. Unaccountably, my heart began to pound. There was no wind, and the maples towered overhead, black and remote. Barefoot, I tiptoed gimpily across the gravel, wincing at the sharp stones. The noise I made seemed deafening: the gravel crunching, and my own breathing. At Arlette’s door I knocked firmly. The raps were horrifically loud, like rifle shots in the stillness.
“Arlette,” I said, speaking quieter than in a daytime voice, but not in a whisper, “Arlette.”
At once she was there, on the other side of the screen door. I could see her white robe, a pale glimmer in the dimness.
“Yes?” she said rudely. “What ees eet?”
“Where is Nicko?”
“I don’ know,” she said.
“Did you bring him home?”
“I brought ’eem ’ome. I di’n tuck ’eem eento bed.” Her tone was like a slap in the face.
“Well, maybe you should have,” I said, furious, “because he’s gone. He’s not in his room.”
Arlette shrugged her shoulders.
“If you don’t know where he is I’m going to call the police,” I said.
“Did you look in ze bassroom?” Arlette asked coolly. “Why don’ you look in ze bassroom.”
I hesitated, and Arlette pressed her advantage. “Go an’ look, why don’ you,” she urged. “Probably ’e ees jus’ zere.”
I went back to the house and pounded upstairs. Nicko was not, of course, in the bathroom, but when I went back downstairs I found him standing in the driveway. He was wearing only his jeans. It was cold, and he was shivering, his arms crossed on his chest.
“Nicholas,” I said, stiffly. “Where have you been?”
Nicko put up his hand, palm flat, as though to keep me from charging. “Mom,” he said, awkward, preliminary.
“What?” I said.
“Look,” he said, “I have something to tell you.”
“Here I am,” I said. “Tell me.”
Nicko hesitated and swallowed, and shifted his bare feet on the stones. He crossed his arms on his chest again and tucked his hands underneath his armpits, for warmth. I didn’t move or suggest that we go inside. I didn’t say a word.
“Mom, I know you’ve been looking for me.”
I didn’t answer.
“Well, I was here all along.” He paused. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this. Because I know it will disappoint you. The thing is, I was up in the top of the garage,” he said. “I was smoking.” His voice dropped awkwardly.
“Smoking.” I stared at him. “You were up in the top of the garage smoking,” I repeated.
Nicko nodded hopefully.
“In the middle of the night,” I said. “All alone. For four and a half hours.”
He nodded again, less hopefully.
“And that’s where your shirt is, and your shoes,” I said, merciless. “If we go up there right now we’ll find them.”
Nicko didn’t answer, and dropped his eyes.
I was filled with fury. I was outraged at Arlette, this arrogant, mendacious young woman, this duplicitous hussy. She had coolly used my life for her purposes: my car for her friends, my pool for her parties, my son for her sex. I had hired her to look after my c
hildren, and she had taken my money and corrupted my son. She had stolen the body of my child.
I was even angrier at Nick, my flesh and blood. He was lying to me, to his mother, his greatest ally, his partner against the whole world. All his life I have taken his side. I thought of him coming downstairs at breakfast, seeing Willis check his watch.
Now Nicko stood on the cold gravel, curling one bare foot over the other for warmth. He looked down at the ground, his shoulders hunched. He was shivering, waiting for me to answer his lie, waiting for the wave of my rage to break over him.
But I was too angry to speak. Fury had taken me over: I was ready to kill Nicko. I wanted to attack him physically. I could understand, right then, in the cold wild center of that wave, how mothers could kill their children, how they could go on and on hitting.
I stood there, blazing, murderous. I could hear my own breathing, the passage of air into my nostrils. I swelled with my own power, I could feel it gather inside me. Over us the maples moved in the darkness, murmuring. Around us the night was cold and dark, and I could feel something in me rising.
Nicko’s arms were crossed on his chest. The moonlight struck the top of his head and his shoulders, but his face was dark. Only his silhouette was clear, the shape and size of his body. In the shadows he looked much larger, taller than I thought he should. His silhouette looked like a man’s, which angered me more, since I knew he was not.
“Mom,” Nicko said, “I’m sorry.”
His voice was gentle, and that sound—gentleness—was terrible. It was like a wave breaking over my own head; it quenched my rage and turned it to cold dread. For gentleness is what you hear in a lover’s voice when he tells you he is leaving, gentleness is what you are offered when there is nothing else left. When you hear it, you know the worst has come, and in Nick’s voice I could hear that it was not Arlette’s reign that had ended.
Breaking the Rules
On Thursday, Anna was awakened by the thump on the bedroom door, the firm knuckle on hard oak. The brisk announcement “Morning!” was followed by footsteps receding down the carpeted hall and another, fainter, knock, on the next door. At the sound, Anna rose up into consciousness to find herself next to her husband in a high carved Victorian bed, in a shooting lodge in the Scottish borders, on the first anniversary of her father’s death.
Asking for Love Page 17