by MB Caschetta
They look at each other for another long moment, neither one speaking, until there’s a knock at the door.
Lorena gets up quickly, smoothing her slacks.
“Come in,” Allison says. The door swings open. Babe is standing in the hallway, smiling.
Lorena pushes past him. “I hope you’ve come to apologize.”
Babe steps aside as she leaves the room.
“Goodnight, darling,” he says quietly.
After Lorena lost custody of Aaron, she’d had a cancer scare that turned out to be harmless cysts, one of which had burst, causing unspeakable pain. She made an appointment with the gynecologist, who scheduled a sonogram. The day of her appointment, she’d had the usual case of nerves anticipating the grisly affair of spreading her legs for cold instruments. She could hear the nurses talking. What was the young woman’s last name again? Oh, wait, here it is. No, that’s not it. Ordering lunch: sushi and shrimp tempura. The more the invisible nurses behind the wall talked, the more nervous Lorena became.
They’re never going to see me sitting out here, she thought, panicking, they’re never going to remember. A quieter, more insidious thought came: I have cancer. I’m going to die.
Lorena burst into tears with People magazine lying open in her lap.
A pregnant woman to her right said, “Oh dear, are you all right?”
Another older woman, who probably did have cancer, went up to the Plexiglas window and knocked with her wedding ring. “Hey! Hey!” she said. “Can someone actually wait on us?”
Out the nurses came, a gaggle of white geese, swarming to bring Lorena back to a small, windowless examining room. Hesitant to take off her clothes, she cried even harder, silently, her mouth open, lungs straining.
“Are you all right? Are you okay, dear? Why don’t you drink some water.”
The sudden intense tending after their indifference made Lorena want to run away, the cancer surely eating a path through her ovaries. Instead, she stripped off her clothes and got into the stirrups.
After leaving Babe and Allison alone in the maid’s quarters, Lorena checks on the boys—all of them sleeping—and remembers that particular kind of silent crying.
“Will you stay for Thanksgiving?” Lorena asks. She’s feeling desperate. “You’ve become a member of the family.”
They are in the kitchen, bright track lighting fighting off the impending winter dark. Yellow beams bounce off the large stainless sink, gourmet tools hanging from the walls and ceiling. Lorena feels comforted by Allison’s presence, and by knowing the whereabouts of everyone in her household. Allison is freshly showered, which makes Lorena relax with the knowledge that the stain of her husband’s touch has been washed away with expensive soaps.
This is her favorite time of day, alone together. And yet, somehow Lorena wants more than just the facts. She knows the bare minimum: that Allison grew up in a three-bedroom apartment near the projects on 106th Street. Her father is a spiritual and political leader, whom the New York Times called “radical” and “charming” for his loyalty to local communities. Babysitting in Connecticut isn’t exactly an expected stop on Allison’s journey, though her father approves of a semester off campus working with people, whether rich or poor. Her older sister teaches starving children in rural Central America. Her brother is Thomas Bentley, the only white city official ever to be elected to a primarily non-white district, still quaintly referred to as Spanish Harlem. And something lurid happened to Allison at Smith, involving a female professor and a public scandal.
Lorena places tiny cooked potatoes around an already-roasted chicken that she bought in town, while Allison assembles a salad. “I’ll probably go to Manhattan. My family has a kind of traditional get together. Unless, of course, you need me?”
“Oh, please have dinner with us.” Lorena takes down a stack of plates. “The boys love you so much. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Babe is faxing abroad or sulking over spreadsheets in his office upstairs. Lorena takes the opportunity to lavish attention on Allison, plying her with a few sips of white wine.
“Maybe,” Allison says. “I’ll have to do some fancy footwork with my mother.”
“Let me talk to her.” Lorena’s eyes are bright. She puts her hands on Allison’s waist, smiling down at her. “You absolutely must spend the holiday here with us. I simply won’t take no for an answer.”
Allison nods, twisting slightly out of Lorena’s loose embrace. From the corner of her eye, she can see Babe standing in the shadow by the back stairway, watching.
That night, much to Lorena’s surprise, Babe rolls over to Lorena. “Do you want her?” he whispers. “Show me how you want her.”
Silently then, passionately, they make love for the first time in months.
Lorena’s son Aaron arrives early for Thanksgiving. His father drops him off the night before, driving off in the dark without so much as a honk of the horn. Bastard, Lorena thinks. He ought to at least have come in and said hello. Lorena is alarmed at her son’s appearance; he has gained twenty pounds and a severe acne problem.
“We can go to a dermatologist while you’re here,” she says. It’s probably not the first thing you should say to a child who was taken away from you, to a child who lives with his father. “You look strapping.”
“I’m not going to any doctor,” Aaron says. When she tries to give him a hug, he escapes from her arms, which is probably for the better. She notices a kind of illness odor; perhaps he hasn’t bathed in weeks.
Babe does not come down for dinner.
The next morning Aaron is in the kitchen before Lorena, who nearly stumbles over him with the baby in her arms. Aaron doesn’t speak to his mother; he grunts at Allison, who makes the coffee. This is his greeting. Lorena hugs him and ruffles his hair, hoping for a whiff of soap.
“Tell me every little thing that’s going on, Aaron.” She pours milk in his cereal, and sits close.
“I’m flunking out,” he says. “I got kicked off the soccer team, and I punched my math teacher in the face.”
This is his father’s fault, Lorena thinks.
“Oh, be serious, will you?” She tries to smile deeply into his eyes. “You got four C’s and a B-. Hardly flunking; I got my copy of your interim report card last week.”
“Don’t believe everything you read,” Aaron says.
Lorena grimaces. “Did you see how big your baby brother is getting?”
Baby Jake is smashing Cheerios into the tray on his highchair.
“Huge,” Aaron says without looking up.
“And what do you think of our girl, here?” Lorena catches Allison’s wrist when she breezes by to bring her a hot mug of coffee.
Aaron opens his mouth, showing the half-chewed corn flakes.
“Yes, what do you think of her?” Babe appears in his robe.
“Whatever.” Aaron lifts his cereal bowl from the table and pads out to the other room.
Eric stands in the middle of the kitchen in pajamas, his brother at his side, still groggy. “Can I eat breakfast in the family room, too?”
“Of course, honey,” Lorena says. “Help Joshy with his.”
Lorena and Allison silently start preparations for Thanksgiving dinner, leaving Babe with a cup of coffee and the financial section. Babe’s mother and father are coming at three. His sister isn’t coming. His sister, Lorena knows, has refused to speak to him for seven years, though he never says why; she despises him, that’s all anyone knows. Babe makes glancing references to sibling rivalry.
Soon the television is blaring from the other room. Babe gets up and watches the boys from the doorway.
“Great,” he says to Lorena, “your fat kid is my son’s idol.”
“Keep your voice down, Babe.” Lorena tries not to laugh. “Don’t be so mean.”
After Babe goes up to shower, she and Allison wash and dress the turkey.
“Someone’s in a foul mood,” Allison says. She dumps three pounds of string beans i
nto the sink.
“Allison.” Lorena stands behind her. “There’s something I want to ask you. There’s something I need to know.” Lorena holds her breath for a moment, wondering if her plan is sheer lunacy. “Do you feel it the way I do?”
The room goes silent with the humming in Lorena’s ear.
“Do you feel something there?” She moves her hands up Allison’s body, from hips to her chest, pressing approximately where her heart might be.
“Lorena.” Her name in Allison’s mouth is soft, pleasing, nearly indecipherable.
“Tell me.” Lorena steps even closer, pressing herself against Allison’s back.
Lorena tries to turn off her mind, which is buzzing out of control. What does she actually know about this girl, daughter of a minister, whose life is mapped out to exclude people like Babe and herself? And here is the joke, Lorena realizes, something Babe will never imagine: Allison could never end up with someone like him. Even the lure of his sexy nomadic life will not—cannot—derail the Bentley train of liberalism and honor. Allison is someone who will not even allow herself love when love comes to her, an adoring female professor, an employer, a fan. She will probably finish Smith with honors, then on to social work school. She’ll end up married somewhere happily to a liberal do-gooder lawyer in a suburb somewhere near Manhattan.
Fresh-faced and flush, Allison stammers to answer.
Lorena presses against her now with purpose. “You hate rich people, don’t you, Allison? I can see it on your face. You hate the way we sprawl in Connecticut, taking up space. I’m not one of them, Allison. But then again you hate women who love you, don’t you? You hate yourself.”
Allison backs away nervously. “I don’t hate anyone, Lorena.”
“No? Not even me?” Lorena whispers.
Before Allison can manage to answer, Josh Spencer appears in the kitchen. Rushing in socks, he slips, wind-milling his arms, gasping for air. The loud sound of his distress breaks Lorena’s trance.
“What is it, Josh?” Lorena is annoyed at his scrawny body, at the way he moves stiff-legged like a robot. Making it up, she thinks. He’s making it up. There isn’t much time before Babe re-emerges, and Lorena needs an answer.
Josh has his hands at his neck, his small frame shuddering with the effort to breathe.
“Stop it, Josh,” Lorena’s voice is harsher than she intended. “I’ve had enough.”
Josh heaves his body upward, his lips working a silent alphabet of airless vowels. Lorena rushes around the kitchen counter, grabbing him by the shoulders.
“Joshua Keith, stop this nonsense immediately!”
Eric and Aaron drift into the hallway with empty bowls of cereal.
“Joshy, please,” Allison stands by Lorena’s side, pleading. “You have our attention. What is it? What do you want? We love you, sweetheart. We love you.”
The whole scene seems suddenly foolish to Lorena. The pained words the girl is speaking, the way Josh’s thin lips are turning blue.
“Lorena,” Allison says, perfectly in unison with her thoughts.
Lorena drops to her knees. “Josh?”
“Stop! Get away!” From the staircase, in bare feet, Babe rushes them, pushing Allison out of the way, his rage flushing his face. Lorena is afraid for everyone, for her marriage, for Joshy, who is sinking slowly to the floor.
Lorena tries to hold her husband back. “No, Babe.”
He shoves her aside, grabbing the child who lies limply on the floor. Placing one hand firmly on his Josh’s shoulder, he punches the center of the boy’s belly. Lorena rushes to the middle of the gigantic stainless steel kitchen, then turns around. She’s forgotten why she’s there. Babe punches harder, and finally something round flies into the air from the back of Josh’s throat.
Everyone takes a step back as it falls to the floor. Babe bends to pick it up.
“A grape.” Babe shows it to Lorena. His face is red. “That’s just perfect. You and those damn fruit baskets all over the house.”
Joshy is coughing, curled in a ball at his father’s knee, a string of slime on his chin. Babe lifts his son off the floor like a rag doll, hugging him to his chest.
“Why didn’t you do anything?” He is looking directly at her. For a minute, she forgets Allison is there; she forgets everything, and concentrates.
“I don’t know,” she says.
“What did you think I was doing?” He pets the boy absently.
Like a door swinging open, something in Lorena unlatches. She feels it spread from her diaphragm up toward her throat.
“I never know what you’re doing,” she screams.
“What I’m doing?”
“Don’t you dare! Don’t you even dare. You think I’m stupid?” She thinks of the waiting room and the silent crying. “You think I’m blind?”
“My son could have choked to death, while you were…what?” Babe says. “What was it you were doing, Lorena?”
Lorena lunges across the room, digging her fingers into Allison’s shoulders, as if once and for all she might actually possess something, and kisses her desperately on the mouth. The tips of the girl’s teeth press unevenly into Lorena’s lips, bruising, resisting, biting back. When Lorena pulls away, the girl is blank. There, she thinks, isn’t that what everyone wanted? She does not see the disbelief on Allison’s face. Turning on her heel, she faces Babe, who still holds a whimpering Josh in his arms.
“You think you’re the only one?” Lorena screams.
“How dare you act this way in front of my children.” Babe’s voice booms through the room. Josh cringes, rolling his eyes up at the ceiling.
“Me, in front of the children?” Lorena says.
“Don’t you ever speak to me this way again.” He gets up, carrying Josh in his arms.
“You don’t even love him!”
It surprises Lorena how quiet a scream can be. She thinks about it long after Allison’s bags are packed and she has quietly instructed Aaron to drive the young woman to the train station.
How amazingly quiet.
Aaron must be the one, months later, who finds the letter with its cancelled stamp, its Manhattan postmark. He finds it during the tail end of summer, the year before his second try at boarding school. Somehow she and Babe have managed to work things out, stay together, navigating the dangerous shoal of marriage. New babysitter. This time a man from Sweden, named Sven, who has been with them ever since the au pair disaster, as Lorena has come to think of the incident. A vaguely androgynous man with wide hips, whom Eric likes and Joshy loves. Even Aaron on his infrequent visits appreciates Sven. “At least you know he won’t be balling the Ad Man.”
The note is written in cramped blue ink, addressed to Babe in a woman’s handwriting. It is unsigned and consists of a single sentence: “You never read a line of E.L. Doctorow in your life.” Lorena finds it in her pocketbook, while noting the distinct absence of money from her wallet. Thirty bucks, which makes her know that Aaron is the culprit, for this is the summer of missing objects: earrings, coins, dollar bills, Babe’s gold Rolex watch. She imagines throwing the note in the trash compactor, rather than showing it to Babe or raising a fuss, something she barely manages anymore. Why should the message be transmitted? She knows without a doubt who the author is, though she can’t imagine exactly how Aaron might have intercepted it. The creamy stationery is living proof that some girls can withstand the pressure. Some girls get away and, from a distance, wise up. Not Lorena, though. She is living proof that some girls don’t. The memory of the name, of saying it quietly to herself with the hope of conjuring up strength and passion, comes back to Lorena like an insect sting. She flattens the paper out on her thigh and carries it up to Babe’s desk, where she signs the girl’s name, in a similar blue cramped style. She wants to remember.
Allison Bentley, Lorena writes, slowing her pen to curl the tail of the y.
Wonderful
You
One desperate Sunday in Cien Fuegos when Ricardo was a boy, hi
s mother strangled Tita.
“We are the poor ones, niño,” she said, stuffing and serving the hen for dinner.
The old bird had dropped many eggs into Ricardo’s waiting hands, followed him down the dirt road nearly all the way to the school where the nuns used to preach about sin. Tita was discerning; she understood temptation. She waited all day at the side of the road while Ricardo sat in his chair in the little room with the red flag, where God had been replaced by a lady in a uniform, who repeated slogans about the government: Until victory, always.
Sometimes, out back during recess, Ricardo convinced Diego, Hector, or Pedro to play Communista with him. Ricardo played the wife, passionately kissing Diego, who was the husband, and then Pedro, the soldier turning Diego in for being a traitor to the Party. Some of the boys actually kissed him back; Ricardo’s fervent belief in Cuba gave him a certain political appeal.
Mostly he kept to himself, though, glancing down the road and watching Tita’s head bobbing for seeds, like an old nun pecking out prayers.
“Murderer,” Ricardo told his mother.
He refused to allow her arms around him, knocking them off his shoulders when she tried to apologize. She set the table with special linen as the old tias took their seats, clapping when Patria and Libertad appeared on the staircase, twin brides in matching hand-sewn dresses of ribbon and silk.
“Patty and Libby only have one quinceañera, niño,” Ricardo’s mother whispered. “What was I supposed to do?”
The black market was fickle, even for families whose fathers worked directly for Party leaders. Ricardo’s father had given everything up to join the inner circle, but he spent the better part of every month in Havana. Ricardo asked why they couldn’t all live together.
“Hijo, you’re safer here with Mami’s family,” his father said.