“What’s that supposed to mean? What ‘whole truth’?”
Listening to her, I stare down at the photo of Axel and me on my coffee table. It was taken at that crab restaurant we went to down near Fisherman’s Wharf. I’ve left it out because I want to put it in that little frame I bought. “I was the one who asked for the divorce, Ariane,” she says. “There’s someone else in my life now.”
“Who?”
“Honey, it’s Viveca, the woman whose gallery represents my work.” I don’t get it at first. Why does she have to divorce Daddy because of some professional relationship? “I didn’t mean for it to happen. I didn’t even see it coming at first, but I’ve fallen in love.”
“With who?”
“With Viveca.” She says other things: how she tried at first to deny her feelings. How the last thing she wanted to do was hurt Daddy.
“Mama, stop it. You’re being ridiculous.”
“I know it’s going to take some getting used to this, Ariane, but I hope that after a while, after you’ve had time to think it through—”
“I mean it. Just stop. You’re not leaving Daddy for a woman.”
“Yes, I am, honey. I already have. I’m sorry.”
Axel and I go blurry from my tears. I reach down and turn the picture facedown. “This is bullshit!” I tell her. Hit the button to shut her up and fling my cell phone across the room. I’ve never been this mean to her before, but she deserves it. It’s crazy, what she’s saying. How dare she do this to Daddy! To all of us!
A few minutes later, I follow the ring tone to where my damn phone landed. It’s underneath the couch. Figuring it’s Mama calling back, I ignore it and head for the fridge. There’s got to be something in there that hasn’t gone bad yet. A half-carton of cold lo mein later, I pick the phone off the floor and see that it’s Axel who was calling. It’s bad news: his grandmother, a massive stroke, a decision to take her off life support. He’ll stay in Wisconsin until after the funeral. His semester doesn’t start for another two weeks and he’s brought his laptop, so he can work on his syllabus while he’s out there. “Talk to you soon, babe. Sorry I have to scrap our New Year’s Eve plans, but I know you understand.”
And I do. I’m sympathetic. But the timing couldn’t be worse. Should I fly out there to be with him? No, we haven’t been going out long enough. I’ll send flowers or donate to a charity if they’ve designated one. . . . Shit! I was really looking forward to us seeing in the New Year together. Now I guess I’ll be spending the night with my last year’s New Year’s dates, Ben and Jerry. Eating Cherry Garcia and trying not to think about my mother and that Viveca woman. About poor Daddy by himself in Three Rivers . . .
When Marissa finally answers, I can tell from her slurry voice and the background noise that she’s at some bar getting drunk. “Yeah, I was surprised at first, too, but hey. People change, Ari.”
“From straight to gay? When they’re in their fifties? And we’re just supposed to accept this little adventure of hers?”
She starts in on this stupid theory about how rigid categories like gay and straight are imposed by society. “Scratch the surface and we’re probably all bisexual, Ari.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, this is our mother and father we’re talking about! Stop being so hip about it, will you?”
“Stoli and pomegranate,” she says, throwing me until I realize she’s halted our conversation to order herself another drink. “I’ve gotten to know Viveca a little. She’s awesome, Ari. You should see her apartment.”
“I don’t want to see her apartment. I just want Mama to come to her senses.”
“What did you say? God, it’s so fucking loud in here.”
“Nothing. Never mind. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Yeah, okay. Just try not to be such a tight ass about it, okay? People evolve.”
“Oh, shut up.”
After a nearly sleepless night, I call my father. It’s 8:00 A.M. where he is, almost sunrise here. Yes, he’s unhappy about it, he says. Yes, he feels angry and betrayed. But what can he do? Insist that she stay married to him when she doesn’t want to? When I ask him how Andrew took the news, he tells me he didn’t say much. Then he went up to his bedroom and punched a hole in the wall. That was what Daddy was doing when I called, he says: trying to see if he could patch up the damage instead of having to replace the Sheetrock.
After about a week, I start answering Mama’s calls again. Start coming around. Good old Saint Ariane, she always does. But accepting the fact that she’s having a lesbian affair doesn’t mean I have to like it. . . .
I loosen my belt a few inches and rebuckle it. I’m starting to show a little, but I can still conceal it. I hope, anyway. When I ordered my dress for Mama’s wedding, I’d already had my procedure but wasn’t sure if I was pregnant yet. I’m glad I thought ahead and got the empire style instead of the dress I liked better. I just hope it won’t make me look too dumpy. Marissa said Viveca took her shopping and bought her a designer dress—a strapless black mini. We’ll be quite a contrast: Annie’s thin, striking daughter and the dowdy older one. The do-gooder. Well, what’s new? In high school, Rissa was a homecoming princess and I was president of the Let’s Discuss It Club.
Jesus Lady reaches inside the neck of her sweatshirt and fiddles around in there, adjusting her bra straps. When we went shopping for my pregnancy pants yesterday, I probably should have gotten a few new bras, too, instead of listening to Cicely about waiting until I was ready for nursing bras. When I tried my dress on last night before I packed it, it felt a little tight in the bust. My boobs are definitely bigger now. Axel would have liked that. Well, too bad for him. What was that crack he made when I was getting out of the shower that time? That I belonged to the Itty Bitty Titty Committee? As if I wasn’t already self-conscious about my body. Hey, it’s not like he was Mr. Perfect Physique. Like he didn’t have that muffin top above his pants. When I bought him those cargo shorts with the thirty-eight-inch waist instead of thirty-six, he acted so touchy about it.
When the flight attendant returns, she’s forgotten that I didn’t want anything to eat. Drops two packets of peanuts onto my tray. My stomach lurches. “Would either of you like these?” I ask my seatmates. The woman smiles and shakes her head, but Mr. Business snatches them from me without saying thanks. From the corner of my eye, I watch him rip open the packets with his teeth and pour them into his empty plastic glass. He shakes the glass and brings it to his mouth as if he’s drinking the peanuts. Next, he burps open his can of Bloody Mary mix, takes a long drink, and slurps the excess off the top of the can. Guy’s got no manners. And an oral fixation, too. Right, Daddy? Well, I should talk. The night Axel broke up with me, I went home and ate an entire roll of Girl Scout cookies. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I still catch myself sucking my thumb like I did when I was a little kid. . . . Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Mr. Business take two little bottles of vodka from his briefcase and pour them into his can of juice, swish it around. How the heck did he get his little stash past security? Well, these businessmen fly all the time. They must know all the little tricks.
“There. Finished,” she says. What’s her name? Dolly? She puts her beading materials into her big canvas carry-on, takes a sip of coffee, and opens her cookies. “Gee, can they spare it?” She chuckles. Is she thinking out loud or talking to me? “These are more like crackers than cookies, aren’t they?”
Okay, me. “Really,” I say. Normally, I don’t get all buddy-buddy with the people in the other seats when I fly, but she seems nice enough. Maybe it’ll make the trip go by faster. “Every time I fly, things get a little cheesier.”
“Isn’t that the truth!” she says. “And now with all this pain-in-the-neck security stuff. Put your toiletries in a clear plastic bag, take off your jacket, remove your shoes. Last time I flew, they confiscated a perfectly good pair of Millers Forge nail scissors that I’d had for years. Had to go out and buy another pair that don’t work half as go
od. I know they’ve got to take precautions, but do I look like the type who’d hijack a plane with nail scissors?” She chuckles at the thought of it and points down at her shoes. “I bought these ugly things at Wal-Mart just so it’d be a little easier to slip them off and on when I went through check-in.” I look down at her black wedgies with Velcro straps. She’s right about them being ugly. Maybe she’s wearing elastic waistband pants, too. I ask her what kind of work she does.
“Oh, I’m retired now. Used to work in the billing department at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs. I was the office manager there. I’m the bossy type, so it fit me to a T. What about you, dear?”
“I’m a manager, too. I run a soup kitchen in San Francisco.”
“Well, good for you, honey. That’s God’s work you’re doing. I bet it’s challenging, though.”
I nod. “Especially in this economy. Donations are down, our budget’s been frozen for two years now, and our numbers keep increasing.”
“Oh, my. What do you do? Serve a noontime meal?”
Breakfast and lunch, I tell her. “Plus, we do a dinner on alternate Fridays, with entertainment. Folk singers, usually, but last week we had a magician.”
“Sounds like fun. How many meals do you put out in a day?”
“Last month we averaged about a hundred for breakfast and over two hundred for lunch. This past Thursday, we cooked eight good-size pork roasts, and we still ran out. The last twenty or so guests had to make do with egg sandwiches. Open-faced ones after we started running low on bread.”
“Well, an egg sandwich will fill you up as well as anything.” She tells me she helps out twice a week at the Salvation Army store near where she lives. “Been doing that for four years now, and I still can’t get over the things people don’t want: brand-new clothes, sofas that are as good as new, mattresses that look like they haven’t even been slept on. Course, with the furniture, you’ve got to be careful.” She lowers her voice. “Bedbugs.”
“Eww,” I say. “Gross.”
“Other day, I got myself a Broncos sweatshirt that someone didn’t want. Had the tags still on it. Lord, I love my Broncos. You must root for the Forty-Niners out where you are. Or are you an Oakland fan?”
I tell her I don’t really follow football.
“No?” She looks shocked. “Well, I’m a football fanatic. Every year after the Super Bowl’s over, I go into a little slump.”
“My husband follows football,” I say. Why did I just lie like that? What’s the matter with me?
“Most men do,” Dolly says. “It’s in their blood. You know the sex yet?”
I’m dumbstruck for a second, thinking she’s just asked about my sex life with my imaginary husband. Then I realize she means the sex of the baby. I shake my head. “The doctor says she’ll be able to tell me after I have an ultrasound, but I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Well, if I’m any indication, I’d guess it’s going to be a boy. I was sick with my boys but not my girls.” Same as Cicely, I think. “I blame it on that damn Y chromosome, ha-ha. Everyone says how much easier boys are to raise than girls, but that wasn’t my experience. I used to have a sign over the toilet for my guys when they were growing up: I AIM TO KEEP THIS BATHROOM CLEAN. YOUR AIM WILL HELP. SIGNED, THE MANAGEMENT.”
God, I wish I could laugh as easily as she does.
“No, my boys gave me a run for my money during their teen years, but all three turned into decent fellas, thank the Lord. Course, Lisa, my youngest, wasn’t any picnic when she was a teenager, either. Drinking and drugging. Shoplifting. Straightened herself out, though. She’s in AA now, too.”
“What did she name her baby?” I ask.
“Nineliez. Nineliez Maria. Her partner’s Puerto Rican.”
“That’s pretty,” I say. “Different.” She’s just said “partner,” not “husband” or “boyfriend.” Maybe her daughter’s gay. Maybe she used a sperm donor, too.
“At this point, you can’t really tell what that new little munchkin’s going to grow up looking like, but I suspect it’ll be Spanish. Her mother’s got some Dutch from her father and some German and British from me, but the Spanish will most likely be dominant. What are you?”
“Me? Well, I’m Irish on my mother’s side and Italian and Chinese on my father’s.” I think about how Andrew, Marissa, and I look so different from one another. He’s got Mama’s red hair and green eyes, her fair skin. I have Daddy’s dark hair and Mediterranean complexion. Marissa’s the only one who you can tell has some Asian in her.
“Heinz fifty-seven varieties, eh?” Dolly says. “I can see the Italian in you but not the Irish or the Oriental.” Oriental? In Berkeley, you could probably get fined for saying something so politically incorrect. “Good lord, if it wasn’t for my high blood pressure, I could eat Chinese food every day of the week. Too much sodium, though. A few years after I got sober, I asked my Higher Power to remove my craving for alcohol and He did. But I still crave egg foo yong and General Tso’s chicken. I’d pray on that, too, but I figure the Good Lord’s got a few more important things on his agenda.”
“Oh, okay. When you said before that you were a grateful alcoholic, I assumed, well . . . ”
“That I was an active drunk? No, ma’am. I’ve been sober for thirty-one years. Best decision I ever made, joining AA—next to divorcing those two lunkheads I was married to. Both of ’em drank like fish. Problem was, I used to try and keep up with them. After I quit, I gave Number Two an ultimatum. ‘It’s either me or the booze,’ I told him. And when he went out and got soused that same weekend, I packed his bag and showed him the door. Lucky for me, I had a good job and the house was in my name. I’d gotten it in the settlement from my first divorce.”
“Huh,” I say, unable to think of anything else. Mr. Aisle Seat has already polished off his cocktail, I assume, because he’s just bent his can in half and stuck it in his seat pocket. Oh, wow, you’re strong enough to bend aluminum. What a he-man! Turning back to Dolly, I ask her how her daughter’s doing—the one who’s had the baby.
“Well, she’s having a little trouble with breast-feeding,” she says. “Getting the baby to latch on. But she’ll get the hang of it. Course, I’m no expert on the subject. Back when I was having mine, the doctors were pushing formula instead of breast milk. You planning on nursing yours?”
I tell her I am because all the baby books say it’s better for them. Builds up their immunity. “And I’m not going to rush into giving my baby solid food either,” I say. “I read this article online said that feeding babies solid food too early can lead to obesity and diabetes later on.”
“Well, take it from me, honey. You can read up on the subject all you want, but the best way to learn how to be a mother is by being one. When I brought my first home from the hospital, I wasn’t even sure how to pin a diaper. Had to have my cousin Etta come over and show me. On-the-job training: that’s what mothering is.” She reaches over and pats my knee. “But you’ll learn quick enough, same as everyone. Did your mother breast-feed?”
Did she? I don’t know. I don’t remember her nursing Marissa. “I’m not sure,” I say. “Maybe not, though. I have a twin brother.”
“Well, I guess that’s why the Good Lord equipped us gals with two breasts instead of one,” Dolly says. “Course, some women have triplets, so that busts my theory.” She chuckles some more. Mr. Business lets out a fed-up sigh. Well, excuse us. And by the way, I can smell your booze breath.
“I like your bracelet,” I tell Dolly. She slips it off and hands it to me for a better look. The little dime-sized medal hanging off of it has a butterfly on one side, three words on the other: SERENITY, COURAGE, WISDOM. In my peripheral vision, I see Aisle Seat Guy take a peek at Dolly’s bracelet, too. “This is from the serenity prayer, right?” I ask.
“Uh-huh. You know it?”
“Sort of. At the soup kitchen, they have AA and NA meetings right after lunch twice a week, and when they say that prayer at the beginning, sometimes I
stop and listen to it. It’s so simple, but it says a lot.” Listen to me: the agnostic who hasn’t prayed since she was a little girl.
“Well, the Good Lord wants our lives to be simple,” Dolly says. “Love one another: that’s all He wants. It’s us that makes things complicated.”
She smiles. I smile back. We’re both quiet after that, but when my thoughts wander back to breast-feeding, it reminds me of something. “Oh, shit!” I say. It just slips out.
“Something the matter?” Dolly asks.
“No, I just thought of something I forgot to do before I left work yesterday. Sorry for swearing.”
“Didn’t hear a damned thing,” Dolly says. “What’d you do? Forget to turn off the coffeepot?”
“No, nothing like that. I was supposed to order more cases of nutritional supplements from our pharmaceutical supplier, but I got distracted. The freezer in the basement had gone on the blink, and some of the meat had begun to thaw, so . . . well, let’s just say I never went back to my desk.”
“Nutritional supplements? Like vitamins?” Dolly asks.
“No, no. Enfamil for the crack babies and Ensure for our elderly guests and the ones with HIV AIDS. We got a grant last year that lets us buy and distribute them, and I’m trying to stockpile as much as possible. The funding runs out at the end of the year.”
“And they won’t renew it?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Nothing’s a sure thing anymore.”
“Well, good luck,” Dolly says. “Canned formula’s gotta be better than mother’s milk with crack in it.” She tells me she drank during her first couple of pregnancies. “My doctor recommended it, in fact. Told me to have a glass of wine or two in the evening to settle myself. I drank and smoked with my oldest. Course, back then they didn’t have all the warnings they do now. I wish they had. My Jimmy was the puniest of my six, although you’d never know it now. He goes six one, six two, and could stand to lose twenty or thirty pounds. So who’s picking you up when we land? Your parents?”