“Oh my, you’re always a surprise, Aida,” Francine sighed, looking nervous, avoiding her eyes.
Aida sighed. All that phony nicey-nice crap. “Julia lives in Carmel now, and got a PhD so she could become a psychologist. She’s one of those psychologist types who have the biggest neuroses of all. That’s why they go into that field—to try to figure themselves out.”
“So, what kind of psychologist is she?” Francine asked.
“Oh, not the inkblot type, thank God, or those who study rats in cages all day. Nah, she tests kids in school who can’t read. They call it ‘learning differences’ now, instead of just ‘slow learners,’ like it was in my kids’ day. Back then, ‘slow learners’ was the nice way of saying ‘dumb as a doornail.’ ”
“Well, that sounds like a real contribution to improving kids’ lives, their self-esteem and all, don’t you think?”
“I guess … but I don’t believe in all this ‘self-esteem’ shit. Some kids have confidence because they’re natural-born winners. Others are losers, just plain-vanilla losers. If you ask me, they’re going to have low self-esteem no matter what. Not everyone can be a winner, you know.”
Aida fingered the new merchandise that had just come in. “New” used-clothing donations, that is. She usually stroked the donated clothing as if it were from Saks, but now she twisted and yanked at the blouse neckline on a shirt she was hanging, wrinkling the thin cotton, which had clearly been meticulously ironed by another volunteer. She let go of the cotton blouse, straightening the hanger. The wrinkles looked embossed, like one of those crinkly Indian patterns. She tried to smooth them out. Hated wrinkles, even on fabric.
Francine laughed, interrupting her train of thought again. “Well, it’s probably a blessing you didn’t go into counseling and have to listen to other people’s problems, Aida.”
“Yeah, I’ve had enough of my own. At one point, my kids were the source of a lot of problems in our household. Always had five cars for the five of us. No one learned to share. We all felt like we had to have our own. Go our separate ways. They were so goddamn spoiled—always getting what they wanted. Bob got so upset when our son had a car accident, crashing into a steep snow bank. The bills were so high, he started playing the stock market. That’s probably what he’s doing right now, as we speak.”
“Well, kids can be expensive, but you can’t worry about the money you spend on them too much. It’s the love that counts in the end, now isn’t it? And how are Julia’s own kids, her being a child psychologist and all?” Francine asked.
“She only has one: a college-age daughter. Zoë. She’s fine, in spite of her mother.” Aida laughed at her own joke. “She’s a very good student, thanks to lots of nagging from her helicopter parents. But we don’t see Zoë much. They say they’re too busy … just an excuse, though, if you ask me.” Whenever she thought of Julia, she envied women who were close to their adult daughters. Must have just been her fate. She’d had no choice—in who her daughters would become, what personalities they would have. She and Julia were just mismatched. That happened sometimes. Like her and her own mother. At least she could depend on Joanne and her two girls. She could still influence them.
Francine had put her in a bad mood.
“Got to go,” Aida spit out, shooting a stink eye at her. She hustled through the door before Francine could respond.
Yep, she thought, Francine doesn’t get any action. That explained it. Probably hot flashes were making her bitchy today. She’ll love me again when she gets back to her old sweet self. She wished she would just do her makeup once in a while, though, and make herself look more presentable. But Francine probably didn’t give a damn. Didn’t care about what was really important for a woman’s well-being.
While she waited in the parking lot for her youngest granddaughter to arrive, Aida thought about the differences between her two daughters and their daughters. Three generations, yet so different. Julia had been difficult from the get-go, no common ground with her. Julia’s daughter, Zoë, was a compromise, an in-between granddaughter: beautiful, sweet, good natured, but so serious and studious—a real drawback, in Aida’s humble opinion. She saw Zoë annually at best, more like once every two or three years. She would have liked to have been closer to her. Like she was with Joanne’s two cutie-pies; they visited her at least once a week.
No matter how Aida had tried, her older daughter just never cared. Julia could have been pretty if she had only shown any interest. Aida remembered their last heated argument, over the telephone, during the obligatory Sunday-afternoon phone call to the old folks.
“Mom, stop fussing over Sarah and Megan’s appearance, their weight, their clothes. Will you, please? You’re going to make them obsessed like you did with Joanne: eating disorders, body image problems, that kind of thing.”
Aida could hear the edge in Julia’s voice. It never seemed to go away, no matter what they talked about. “All that psycho mumbo-jumbo, darling. You know, a girl’s best asset is not her brain. It threatens men, and you should know that more than anyone. You needed to play the game more—tell them how they are all God’s gift to women. That’s why you didn’t get tenure. I bet that chairman could have been charmed into submission. Into giving you that tenure you wanted so badly. And Mike … well, you just think you know your husband. Men hide their true feelings, you know. Like your father. Mike does it, too.”
“Mom—” Jules began.
“And are the boys after Sarah already!” Aida continued, ignoring her daughter. “One reminds me of your sister’s first real boyfriend, Tim. Only in the looks department, though. Not all that other stuff—such bad news. What a nightmare he turned out to be. Having to sleep in our closet on that cruise ship. Who would have guessed? And you just leave that little girl alone, you hear me? Sarah’s the little girl of my dreams. Looks just like me when I was her age.”
Why did they always end a conversation so tense and disagreeable? Even when they talked about Sarah, who was none of Julia’s business. With her, Aida had truly fallen deeply in love, perhaps for the first time. And this time she would get the relationship right. Many of the aunts and uncles on both sides of their family thought that Sarah looked like Julia. Even Joanne did. How could they think such a thing! How could a mother not know what her own daughter looked like, what she was interested in, or what she dreamt of becoming?
“She does look like Jules, Mom,” Joanne said. “The same black eyes and gorgeous, wavy, jet-black hair. And she has those same skinny stick legs Jules had when she was ten years old, too. I’ve seen the photos!”
Well, not even Joanne knew her own daughter as well as she thought she did. Not as well as Aida knew her. Well, it is what it is. It is what it is.
While she was on the phone with Julia, Aida had seen Megan sit at Bob’s desk in the corner of the room to do her homework. After that she would sketch for hours, lost in her own little world. Sweet. Megan should watch her weight, though. You could never be too skinny, as Gloria Vanderbilt used to say. Or too rich. Aida preferred Sarah: her second chance. With her she felt reborn—she felt like a mother. Sarah was a bit too organized sometimes, a wee bit too fond of structure, even at the age of ten. She aspired to be an orthodontist and straighten other people’s crooked teeth. Aida promised herself she would work on that, and on Megan’s seriousness—promised herself that she would cultivate in both her granddaughters a preference for enhancing physical appearance and a sense of fashion instead of a focus on school and studying. It was probably just a phase they were going through. Academics were not the key to a woman’s success.
Aida thought of Nancy, way back then. Star student. Why had Aida hoodwinked Bob into marrying her instead? That was one helluva misstep. One bookworm should have married another.
Aida had to remind herself that Sarah was not a plaything, a “reborn doll” like one of those displayed in her étagère. She had a case full of the humanlike dolls, each one in hand-sewn attire from different periods in American history. She h
ad a Betsy Ross doll, a Pocahontas doll, a Southern belle antebellum doll, First and Second World War dolls, Great Gatsby period dolls, and frontier dolls, too. An expensive—but not a frivolous—hobby.
Sarah seemed to love those reborn dolls as much as she did. They shared a ritual. Now that Sarah was entering her teens, Aida hoped that her granddaughter wouldn’t outgrow her fondness for the Sarah doll. Or become like Megan, who studied the historical background for each doll, ominously like what Julia would have done. Megan was never going to be anyone’s plaything.
When Sarah was little, Aida had described to her the time-consuming process of creating the Sarah doll. Every apartment at SafeHarbour had a decorative tchotchke displayed in the alcove by the front door where a plaque hung with each resident’s name. The O’Reillys had a photo of Stonehenge. The Ludwigs had a family photo of three generations. The Whitmans had a photo of Aida’s Sarah doll.
Her granddaughter had peeked up at the shelf. Aida, only slightly taller than Sarah, had unfolded the stepladder because she herself couldn’t quite see the top shelf either. She explained how she had looked at boxes of Sarah’s baby photos, compared them, and decided which one captured the essence of perfect babyhood.
“Sarah, you just knew when a camera was pointed at you. Always so cooperative. Doing what you were expected. Not like other babies. You knew how to pose.”
“Well, I hate having my picture taken now,” Sarah said. “They all make me ugly as sin.” She had taught her granddaughter that expression. “I look fat in most of the photos anyway.”
“How can you say that, darling? You’re beautiful. You could be a model. I pored through boxes and boxes of scrapbooks. And then I found the one. Finally sent the doll manufacturer this photo of you at about eight months old. See?” she said, passing the baby picture to her granddaughter, excited about its pristine condition. “Here’s a lock of your baby hair I sent FedEx insured. The ‘Sarah doll,’ custom ordered, came by express mail about a week later, a month before you entered kindergarten.”
Today, on their special afternoons together—even as a teenager, way past the age for dolls—Sarah asked about her reborn doll. With an exaggerated dramatic gesture, like the ones she practiced for the musical Oklahoma!, Aida reached for the doll, loving the buildup of suspense both for her and for her granddaughter. She had gotten all dressed up for Sarah—was wearing a pale Valentine’s Day–pink blouse, the sheer, low-cut type she preferred when singing in Rodgers and Hammerstein productions.
“Well, you know, Sarah, this is my favorite,” Aida singsonged, absolutely delighted. Gently lowering the baby doll from its stand, she kissed it and stroked its skin and wisps of hair. Stepping down, trying to conceal her arthritic hands, she handed her prized doll to Sarah, presenting it as a gift.
Sarah’s face glowed with the honor of holding her namesake; she hugged it awkwardly, perhaps afraid she would drop it.
Aida was pleased to see that Sarah was not too old to play with dolls. “This baby photo was the right one for your doll. I keep it in an envelope in the display case, too. Right here,” she said as she patted the envelope where it sat in the étagère.
The Sarah doll, which had cost more than one thousand dollars, looked as human as possible without being quite a corpse. That was part of its ethereal beauty for Aida: a statement of beauty from cradle to grave.
When Sarah was little she had stroked the doll’s skin and looked under the white “christening” dress at its diaper, and her eyes had grown large. “Sarah’s skin looks just like mine,” she had muttered, touching her chin with her index finger and then the doll’s.
“My doll even has the same birthday as yours, hon. Do you want to see her birth announcement?” Aida had asked. “My Sarah is made from some pricey silicon-vinyl mix. Doesn’t it look like real skin though? You can touch it again if you want.”
“I want to look at my doll, Grandma—the Sarah doll—in my own way,” Sarah had said, putting the announcement Aida handed her on the coffee table with barely a glance at it. She looked closely at the doll, then at her baby photo, and back at the doll. She didn’t say a word.
After a long inspection, she finally spoke: “The eyes are too real.” That was all she volunteered. She seemed spellbound, unblinking, staring at the doll’s eyes. They looked like glass to Aida.
There were two birthday cakes, always, for Sarah’s birthday every year: one for Sarah, and one for the doll sitting next to her.
“I can’t remember, Grandma,” Sarah said, interrupting Aida’s thoughts. “I know you told me before, but is the hair real?”
“Sure is. I’ve told you before, many times. The hair is yours. And the eyes look so lifelike because they are made from an advanced material, a sort of synthesized form of Pyrex.”
“The skin’s kind of reddish and veiny, though. I’m not sure I like it. Was I that way as a baby?”
Pausing, Aida thought of Sarah as an infant. The sight of her had taken her breath away. As if she would have shattered if she had stared at her too long. Delicate—a fragile, almost supernatural beauty. “My Sarah weighs exactly the same as you did at three months of age,” she answered. “That’s the age when you could focus on your mother’s face. And mine, too, of course.” Stretching the voile fabric between her fingers, she admired the delicate French ivory silk. “This was actually your christening outfit. I’ve saved it all these years. And I get it dry-cleaned and heirloomed on your birthday each year.” She sighed, and drifted in her own thoughts for a moment. “We can dress her up in your old baby clothes, too, if you want. I’ve saved the prettiest ones in special zipped organizers so they won’t get dirty or musty. Nothing old and ugly for my Sarah.”
Sarah nodded, smiling and obedient, looking past the doll, staring off. Was her favorite granddaughter bored of her?
“Hey, Sarah, before we have a snack, let’s look at baby Sarah a little more closely. All of the other babies in my little nursery can be ignored. Their skin and their bodies aren’t as perfect as yours, baby Sarah.”
“I’m not a baby anymore, Grandma,” Sarah said, hesitating. “And I don’t want to touch the skin. I don’t like how I can’t tell the difference between what’s real—natural—and what’s not with her.” Sarah smiled sweetly, her face relaxed. Aida liked to think it was a special smile reserved only for her, and she focused on that—rather than on her annoyance at the girl’s constant use of the word “Grandma.” Made her seem so old.
“You won’t have a pizza face, darling. A face of zits like so many of those homely teenage girls. Your skin will be without blemish, like mine. Even at my age, I like to pamper my skin.”
“Oh, Grandma, you’re the most beautiful one in here. Everyone else is so old and funny looking,” Sarah said.
Aida drew closer to her granddaughter and gave her a kiss on the forehead. How good her Sarah’s soft velvety, perfect skin felt against her lips.
“Grandma, you’re getting extra skin around your face and neck,” Sarah said. “I think that’s cool. Didn’t know you could keep adding skin.”
Why did she have to ruin the moment? Aida thought, her temper flaring. Then again, what do kids know? She fluffed the pink ruffles around her neck, the way she’d done when she had a date back in the day.
“But I want to be more than just pretty,” Sarah went on. “I want to be an orthodontist. Have a career using my mind—like Aunt Jules.”
Aida no longer heard Sarah’s voice; she was drifting to a time, far away, when she was young, beautiful, and a singer. Her Yellow Brick Road to a Land of Oz where dreams could come true. She caressed the skin of the Sarah doll as if it were her dearly beloved in an open casket. Humming “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly.” Time stood still.
THINGS UNSAID
She tried to breathe, but the air came in jagged. She inhaled and held for far too long. She choked, and then she read the note again, panting and trembling. Jules could smell her own sweat. She vomited until nothing but yellow, piss-colored liquid ra
ined down on the welcome mat.
Jules,
I can’t stand by and watch what you are doing to all of us in the name of duty and family obligation. We’re family, too. Your real family. Not the fake one you insist on choosing over us. Until you know what we mean to you, I am taking Zoë on a camping trip across the country … for two weeks, maybe more. When we get back, I hope you will have made the right decision. You have no idea what sacrifices I have made for you.
I still love you, no matter what.
Mike
Mike was planning his way out. He’d found an escape hatch. And she wanted to escape with him and Zoë—otherwise, there would be nothing left. Everything was the opposite of what it was supposed to be right now.
She carefully folded the note into even rectangles, origami-style, and slipped it in her purse. Why hadn’t she seen this coming? What a fool she had been—so blind, so driven to be a good daughter and get her parents’ approval, to prove she was a better person than either one of them. Children took care of their aging parents, didn’t they? Mustn’t they?
Jules hadn’t slept in days. She looked at the answering machine. Not a single message. Over one week had gone by since she’d found Mike’s note. That wasn’t like him—not to text or even send an e-mail, however curt. Just silence. No Mike and no Zoë.
She texted them both, hoping that Zoë, too, would text her back, just this once. “Please, please come home. I can’t live without you. You know how much I love you, don’t you? I have been so stupid! Can you forgive me?”
Things Unsaid: A Novel Page 12