Harry:
Please just tell me where you are. I don’t understand what’s happening
Me:
I’m fine. I’ll let you know when I get there
I set the phone to vibrate and block Harry’s number. It’s easier than telling him the truth.
For a second I push my thumb down to shut it off but that would be a mistake. Johnny’s at a soccer day camp at his school. I’ve managed to cover well enough in front of every authority figure—the midwives, the GP—but if the school catches on to how fucked-up I am then we’ll have a problem. If school calls then I need to answer. They never call the dads. Even when the moms work full-time. Even when they make more money than their husbands.
Two weeks ago Johnny was doing Forest Explorers camp. He fell out of a tree and his head ricocheted off the trunk of the tree next to it. I had to take a taxi to Wimbledon Common and run into the woods with the baby to find them because they didn’t want to move Johnny until I got there. So I’m sweating, panting, dragging the baby in the car seat through the bushes—and there he is, his whole forehead a purple bruise. He’s holding out his Yankees cap to me full of berries. “Look, Jeej, it’s all blackberries. I picked them.” We spend the next four hours in the emergency room, Rocky crying, Johnny hungry and hurting but holding that hat like it was filled with gold, the three of us covered in blackberry juice by the time we saw the doctor.
So, anyway, if the school calls I need to answer it.
I look at my watch. Rocky’s naptime. I’m sure he’s not asleep. I’m sure he’s screaming with tiredness because Harry’s misread his signs or forgot the sleeping bag he likes or couldn’t find his lamb. His face is red, his diaper needs changing, his onesie is soaked with saliva and tears and urine and I’m waiting for a feeling but I don’t have any. Someone else’s turn to have feelings today.
I flick on the TV. The Real Housewives of New Jersey marathon is on. I exhale, relieved, happy to see the ladies totter across the screen. And here are the enormous houses like you can get only in America; the massive cars; the walk-in closets; the constant bickering; the betrayal; the big hair; the alcohol; the spoiled children; the wealthy husbands; the stream of high-pitched, nonsensical, impassioned chatter that is about nothing and everything all at once—I wrap it around me like a blanket.
I love the vacant beauty of the Housewives of Beverly Hills: their plastic faces and Birkin bags, their house swans and private jets. I love the hilarious, vivacious Housewives of Atlanta: unapologetically fierce, fabulous, defined. I love the Housewives of New York City: their aging glamour and cabaret dreams, wearing diamonds to drink champagne alone with their tiny dogs. If I could trade lives with any one of these women for a day, I would do it in a heartbeat.
But the Housewives of New Jersey are not aspirational like the others. No one ever wakes up and says, “I hope one day that I’ll make it in New Jersey.” That’s no one’s life goal. I only say that, though, because I’m from Staten Island, just across the water, and Jersey, like Brooklyn and Long Island, is a cousin, just your least favorite one. The one you end up moving to anyway because it’s actually really nice there and they have great schools and you can get a house with a driveway. But still, it’s fucking Jersey.
Teresa appears on the screen, her black hair cascading in glossy extensions over the dark-blue dyed fur of her collar. Her eyeshadow matches the hue of her coat. She’s at a liquor store signing bottles of Fabellini, her own line of flavored sparkling wine. She’s gracious with her fans who ask her about Melissa, her sister-in-law, and who are concerned for her because they know about the federal fraud charges she and her husband, Joe, are facing. Oh my God, Victoria Gotti just walked into the store, all fur and black leather and ice-blond hair to her waist. “Excuse me, Miss, do I have to wait on line, with all these people?” she rasps, one finger waving in the air, dismissing the mere mortals around her, sending chills down my spine.
I wish I could say I was classy and sophisticated, a housewife of Beverly Hills in the making, but these Jersey girls are really my people—dropping f-bombs every other word, eating Chinese food in the kitchen unless they’re having Sunday pasta dinner. Dark brunettes. They don’t apologize. They eat dessert. They wear high heels and real furs to drive their Escalades to the mall. Their kids wear Gucci sneakers. They pay in cash. They yell, in joy and in anger. They have meticulous eyebrows, and pride, and loyalty, and real emotions. They say “shtrong” and “shtreet.” Maybe they finished school, maybe they didn’t. But they’re not in the kinds of businesses where education matters. They hug and drink and cry and have each other’s backs. They’re not rich-lady skinny because they’re not trying to be because you can get red leather leggings in any size in Jersey and that’s what Spanx and over-the-knee boots are for. And they don’t give a fuck anyway.
Of course I never used to watch any of these shows until we moved here, until Rocky came and the world shrank to the size of the living room and everything turned the color of the London sky at 3 a.m., no matter what the time of day.
Now the ladies are discussing a rumor about another girl in the group and her husband and whether he did or did not sleep with his mother-in-law. Amber is so shocked she’s about to fall out of her chair, and Teresa reacts because she’s in front of the camera but you can tell her heart’s not in it. She’s got other things to worry about. She’s facing prison because of her husband’s financial decisions. Papers she signed because she trusted him. It’s hard enough dealing with one dick in your life without thinking about the dicks that other women are married to. Married to Dicks. That could be a reality show. Every married woman in the world could be on it.
That’s not fair. I don’t mean it, he’s not a dick. Harry is…I was going to say a good man but that’s just…that’s surface. He’s a part of my body, one of my limbs, half my brain. A vital organ I can’t live without. He would laugh if he heard me say that about the vital organ. I’m mad at him, I hate him and I love him. I have no choice, it’s involuntary, like breathing.
We don’t tell people the real story when they ask how we met. We just say we met in New York. Because how do you explain the tragedy and the loss, the years spent apart, the plans of a God who takes no notice of whether you believe in him and just puts you where you need to be.
I thought Harry would get what’s happening to me without my having to explain. We used to be like that, we used to have unspoken understanding. One night back in Brooklyn, when we’d been together only two months, Johnny woke up at 1 a.m. with a really high fever. He was shaking and sweating. He was limp in my arms. I was alone and scared to death. I called a taxi for the hospital and when I opened the door of my building to take Johnny outside Harry was standing there, out of breath, like he’d run the whole way.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“You called, or you didn’t know you called,” he said. “You must have hit my number by accident, but I heard you talking. I could hear something was wrong so I’m here. I came.” Our eyes met. He took Johnny from my aching arms and we got in the cab.
Maybe finding each other after so many years was the best part of our story. Maybe the rest doesn’t end well. Oh, look at this. Gia, about twelve, the oldest of Teresa’s four daughters, is crying in the kitchen. She’s old enough to understand something serious is happening to her parents. Teresa—in a purple velour tracksuit, her pink acrylic nails as reflective as the shiny marble countertops of her kitchen—wraps her arms around her daughter and says, “I wish I could take your pain and I have it, you know?”
I know you do, Teresa, I know. But who takes your pain for you?
Who’s going to take it for me?
Brooklyn and Manhattan, October 2012
I’m being watched. I open one eye, startled to see Johnny at the edge of my bed, his little nose two inches from mine, watching me breathe, like a very small demon in a horror movi
e. “Oh shhhhhhoooot, Johnny, don’t scare me like that, how long you been standing there?” I half-yell, half-whisper.
“Hi, Jeej. Did I do good sleeping?” I look at the clock. 5:42 a.m.
“It’s not the worst you’ve ever done but it’s not your best.” He climbs into bed, scoots his little backside as far into my stomach as he can, repositions my arms and installs his head under my chin. “OK, buddy, let’s try to sleep some more?” And I close my eyes. I haven’t slept past 6 a.m. since he was a baby, nearly four years. Seven days a week. Most days, it’s 5, so I guess we slept in today. I want sleep so much it feels like hunger. I say I resent these early mornings, this need of his to be on top of me. But I know that one morning, not too long from now, it’ll be the last time he does this; the last time he’s small enough to curl up beside me; the last time he’ll need to. I won’t know it at the time—that it’s the last time—but it will be. I hold him close so he can feel the rhythm of my breathing and be lulled into dreaming and…
Two seconds later: “Jeej, can we go to the playground?”
“Yes, later, go to sleep.”
“Jeej, I have pizza?”
“Yes, later, go to sleep.”
“Jeej, you are my Jeej. Are you my Jeej?”
“Yes, always. Please let Jeej sleep, OK?”
“Jeej, you need coffee?”
“Yes, always, go to sleep, Johnny.”
“I like T-rexes. Oso [he can’t say “also”] I like pteradactylyseses, and triceratopses, and oso iguanodons.”
“I know. Go to sleep.”
Thirty seconds later, a whisper: “Jeej, can we go to the newzzeum and see the dinosaurs?”
This is the point at which other mothers at pre-school drop-off with successful careers and good shoes say, “Then I just give him the iPad and he leaves me alone for an hour.” But me and Johnny aren’t in the financial position for an iPad so I have to use old-school methods.
“Hey, Johnny, can you put your cars in a line that goes from my bed all the way to the kitchen?” That may sound like a big project unless you understand the tiny dimensions of a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. It’s technically a two-bedroom, because they put up two walls and split the kitchen in half to make a windowless space that fits a twin bed and nothing else. It doesn’t even fit a small person wanting to walk around the bed. You just have to dive onto it from the doorway. Which has no door. Because, as I pointed out to the real estate agent, it’s not a bedroom. Don’t get me started on the bathroom.
I try for ten more minutes of half-sleep but as the sun rises over Brooklyn and comes through the cracks in the blinds the conveyer belt in my mind cranks up. Student loans, rent, day care. Send Dad a hundred bucks. Don’t turn the heat on yet, not till the end of the month. I wish I got that promotion. You got to let that go, Gigi. I know but don’t they see I do the hours? I just do them when Johnny’s asleep? Next time, Jeej. Don’t drive yourself crazy. I know, but I need the money if we’re ever going to get out of this apartment. My tooth hurts. How long can I avoid going to the dentist? Will it just go away? No, Jeej. You have to go to the dentist. If I had got that job they would’ve given me dental cover. You have to go to the dentist because if your teeth start rotting you’ll definitely never meet someone. Meet someone? Who am I going to meet? Nobody wants a thirty-something toothless paralegal with a kid. And when would I meet this person anyway? There’s never any time. There’s never any time. Johnny needs new shoes. Dammit. Why are his feet so huge? I’ll stop buying coffee when I’m out. Pack lunch every day for work. Cancel my haircut. Return that dress. Jeej, it was only twenty bucks. I know. But he needs a coat and shoes and I need to go to the dentist. Cancel the cable TV. Really? It’s just basic. You’re right, though. I can’t meet the girls for drinks. Not if Sharon’s having that party for her kid. I can’t show up without a present and I can’t afford to go to drinks and get a present and buy coffee because the loan payments are due for the college that I finished and the law school that I didn’t to become the lawyer that I’m not. Why didn’t I finish? You would’ve been finished this year if you stayed with it. I know. But who would’ve taken care of Johnny? You couldn’t do it. You couldn’t do work and law school and Johnny. I can’t afford everything. I have a good job for one person. I got enough money for one person with huge loans. But I’m not one person. I got this other very small, very expensive person too. I can’t do everything and remember everything. I’m everything, I have to be everything…
CRASH. THUMP. “Owwww, ouchie ouchie!”
Johnny shouts and I leap out of bed, scoop him up, hug and hug and rock and rock, all of his little body still fitting within the circle of my arms. I start singing our song, “Like a Prayer.”
“Just breathe, Johnny—In the midnight hour—just breathe, you’re OK. Did you jump off the couch again?”
“Yes, my wrist,” he says, pointing to his elbow. “It’s broken.”
“Let me check, let me see if these kisses will work, and by the way, this is your elbow,” and I cover his elbow with kisses, then I turn into Mama Bear and sniff around him, sniff his shoulder and under his chin which turns his tears into fits of giggles and finally I launch a tickle attack. “You’re cured. Now let me brush my teeth. Make me a coffee, please?”
“No, Jeej.”
“Why not? Could you learn to do something useful already?”
“NOOOOO, JEEJ. I am a children, coffee is hot.”
“OK, you’ve got a point.”
“Jeej, can I have juice?”
“In a minute, baby.” I walk to the bathroom rubbing my eyes, trying to remember if I bought juice. He looks forward to juice on Saturdays, the only day it’s allowed. That’s not a limiting sugar thing. That’s a budget thing. A small pint of orange juice and a slice once a week. He’s happy with cheap and simple things now but it won’t always be this way. There’ll be video games and sneakers and cell phones and a growing boy who’ll need huge quantities of food and I’ve got to do better than this.
“You can do it,” I say to myself over the bathroom sink. Then I read the affirmations on the Post-its I put all around the edge of the mirror. I thought it was a stupid idea when I read about it in an Oprah magazine that somebody left behind on the subway. But, in a moment of desperation while pressing send to make my student loan payment, I thought it was worth a try. Cheaper than a therapist. I am enough. What I do today is good enough. I am strong and I can stand on my own. Actually, I’m lonely and tired and stressed, but don’t tell the mirror.
We get ready for our trip to the playground in Manhattan. We run into Abuela, the old Dominican lady who lives in 3C and tells everyone to call her Grandma, and help her take her groceries upstairs. We wave to Donovan, the Jamaican guy who lives on the ground floor and always sits by his window. He lets Mr. Cat climb out between the window bars so Johnny can pet him. We walk by Mrs. Yang’s Chinese herbal medicine shop and today she gives Johnny a pomegranate. Sometimes it’s a lychee or a star fruit from a little stash she keeps under the counter from her morning shopping at the fruit stand around the corner. I helped her son years ago when U.S. immigration messed up his wife’s visa but still she shares this kindness with me and Johnny every week.
I love this neighborhood. I just wish we could live here without needing four bolts on the door and bars on the windows. Without the ice-cream truck blaring its demented song late into the night when no one could possibly be buying ice cream from the driver. Without the reek of urine down the steps to the subway. I can’t do anything about that but I make sure Johnny doesn’t see the human feces when it’s on the subway steps because it’s definitely there sometimes. But this is New York; to be honest, you could see that on Fifth Avenue too.
I have.
* * *
—
We get off the train in Manhattan and go to the playgr
ound in Battery Park. I race Johnny, let him win, then trip and fall, to his great amusement. I walk toward the coffee cart on autopilot but then I remember my morning’s financial planning.
“Coffee, Jeej?” Johnny says.
“No, not today, go play,” I say and watch as he runs off.
It’s a sunny day. Crystal-blue sky, a cold edge to the air. The first ten days of September are the hardest, counting each one down until the day Frankie died. It gets easier when we’re past the yearly reading of the names at the memorial—his just one of thousands. It hits me like a flash of lightning, his name called out by some other grieving relative trying not to let their voice shake into the microphone. But it’s October now and my grief takes a different shape in autumn. The sky is a sunny cloudless blue. The change of season pulls me out of memory, but sometimes the sky pushes me back in headfirst.
My boy’s running and laughing, screaming with other kids. He’s happy. I stand to the side, hands in pockets, sunglasses on so I can check out the other parents. See if I can tell if any of the dads are single. Not that I would ever approach one. I’m just seeing who’s around.
“Look, Jeej, it’s for you. Coffee!” Johnny runs up to me with sparkling eyes and hands me a discarded Starbucks cup that he found by the trash and filled with soil. A Coors Light bottle cap added on top for presentation. I pretend to drink it. “Thank you, buddy, that’s really good,” and I hug him, inhale him. He smells like cookies and dirt. He pulls away, anxious to return to his game. I watch him run back to the other kids. Then, a man’s voice behind me and everything that might have been suddenly is.
“Light and sweet?” His accent, clear and crisp, like the snap of your fingers, the click of heels on wet pavement.
“Hi…Oh my God…hi.” It’s been eleven years and I don’t know what to do. A hug? He steps forward to kiss my cheek but I step back abruptly. I’m still holding the cup of dirt. I take my sunglasses off with my other hand and an awkward space opens between us. He looks the same. Tall and slim, nice clothes, collared-shirt-and-V-neck-sweater-not-American-clothes. I’m flustered. I look like shit. What the hell, God? Could I have gotten a little warning? I would’ve showered. Put on skinny jeans at least.
When I Ran Away Page 5