When she arrives in Chicago, it will be cold and dark. The wind will whip around her and rush up under her coat as she waits for the cab. But she will be home. She thinks about all she would miss, if she were to leave. The way that spring feels like a miracle every year, how she spends the first warm days sitting out on the front porch steps, willfully paralyzed, watching robins hop heavily across the lawn. The conversations on the el, the miniatures in the Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute, the bar at the top of the John Hancock, the changing colors of the lake, the high quality of the many small theaters. Midge, of course.
She looks over at the woman sleeping next to her, someone who regrets a rash decision. Then she imagines herself in the little house, bringing in the mail and sitting at the lovely new table to read it. Then she thinks about having her cab stop at Superdawg in Chicago on the way home, where she might get two Whoopskidawgs, she loves them and she loves the fact of them. She's pretty sure there are no Whoopskidawgs in Mill Valley.
Oh, it's impossible to make the decision! On the one hand, the house is a miracle offering that she simply can't refuse. On the other hand, it was meant for Dan and her, the two of them. And in addition to Chicago being home, it seems her life there is beginning to change in ways she is only now starting to understand. Shouldn't she see it through?
Tom. Well, he has said that his favorite city next to San Francisco is Chicago. Maybe he'll move there. She thinks of them walking down Oak Park Avenue together, hand in hand, and something inside her seems to revolt at the notion. She thinks of him sitting at the breakfast table with her in the little house in California, and that doesn't feel any more comfortable.
There is nothing to do but not decide right now. A solution will come of its own accord. She has to learn patience and trust. At some point.
She stares out the window, wondering if she is too old to learn certain things. Is it true that one can become so fixed in one's ways that it really is impossible to change? Or are there preordained stages in life—altered somewhat by each person's eccentricities, of course—but preordained stages through which people must pass, meaning that one is changing all the time whether one wants to or not? She remembers the day Tessa turned seven and at breakfast said to her and Dan, “This is the first old age, right?” She and Dan had found that so amusing, but now she wonders if there wasn't some preternatural wisdom in Tessa's remark, if there isn't some rule of definitive change that accompanies each interval of seven years, no matter who you are, or where you live.
When the plane finally begins to taxi down the runway, gathering speed, she turns away from the view. If she does sell the house, she will personally interview anyone who wants to buy it. It has to be the right person, it has to be such an exceptional person.
She's not selling it. She's going to live in it.
Somehow.
She'd better sell it.
Enough! She closes her eyes and tries to disconnect from herself, to switch from this ping-pong turmoil in her brain to sleep.
twenty-eight
“I'M NOT TELLING YOU ANYTHING,” WALTER, TESSA'S DOORMAN, says.
“Come on, Walter,” Helen says. “I just want to know if she has a boyfriend. You don't have to give me details, just say yes or no.” She knew she shouldn't have asked him this without cookies in hand.
Helen has taken a cab to Tessa's apartment on the way home from the airport, and she and the doorman are sitting on lawn chairs in the storage room behind Walter's desk. He has propped open the door so he can see if anyone comes into the lobby, and now he goes to peer through the crack, ostensibly to have a better look, though Helen thinks it's really to break away from her pleading gaze. As soon as he sits back down, she starts in again. “Seriously though, does she? I'm pretty sure she does.” Walter raises an eyebrow and the tenor of his voice rises right along with it. “What's the matter, y'all don't talk?”
“She doesn't tell me everything.”
“She shouldn't tell you everything!”
“She shouldn't tell me if she has a boyfriend?”
Walter purses his lips, says nothing.
Helen looks at her watch. “Walter.”
Someone comes into the lobby and Walter rises quickly. “Duty calls,” he says and then looks at her. “You staying in here?”
She nods.
“I'm not coming back,” he says, but she knows he will.
And he does. He stands before her, his arms crossed. “I'm sorry, but I'm not going to tell you anything, Helen. I don't feel it's my place. And I don't want to. Tessa's my friend.” He smiles at her. “You're my friend, too—although you feel more like my daughter.”
“Stop stalling, Walter. I've got to go.”
“All right, Helen, I will stop stalling. I'm going to tell you something I've been wanting to tell you for a long time. But it's not what you want to hear. Helen, I say this because I care about you both: you've got to let her go. You're way too tight up against her.”
“I am her mother!”
“I know you are,” Walter says. “And you show her a whole lot of love and concern. And leftovers. Now you've got to give her some respect and let that girl stand up.”
Helen stares into her lap, fiddles with the clasp on her purse. The purse that Tessa helped her pick out after Helen had held up an alternative selection and heard the usual rejoinder. “You know she's moving out to California, right?”
“She told me. I'll miss her, but I'm very happy for her. She found herself a good job.”
“Did she find anyone to take the lease? Can you at least tell me that?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet you can't tell me or not yet she hasn't found anyone?”
“She hasn't found anyone.”
Helen nods. “I'm worried she'll be stuck with two rents.”
“Let her figure it out.”
Now she is angry. “Do you have children, Walter?”
“Do you remember being a child, Helen? Do you remember when you wanted to move away from your parents, how hard it was to do, but how important?”
In fact, she does remember. Oh, that yellow brick road, that wild need she had to get out. The very notion of buying her own bag of bread was exotic. The summer she was nineteen, just finished with her first year of college, where she had lived in a dorm, she told her parents she wanted to move into an apartment with a young woman she'd met at the office where she was working for the summer. They didn't want to let her go. For one thing, they had met the young woman and had reservations about her character and they were right—the girl was in the habit of bringing home men almost every night, and it was a one-room, studio apartment. Still, Helen moved into the place in August, and her parents gave her four bags of groceries to get started. A couple of weeks later she met Dan. Immediately, she began spending more time at his place than at her own, finding it infinitely more private.
Helen stands, brushes crumbs off her lap. “Do you want another cookie?”
“Give them to my girl.”
“She's not your girl.”
“Is too.”
“Is not.”
“Ask her. She'll tell you.”
Helen sighs. “Thank you, Walter. For everything you've done for her.”
She starts to leave the storeroom, then turns back to face him. “And … I just want you to know I heard you, okay?”
“Okay.”
Helen walks over to the elevator and presses the button. Just as it arrives and she's stepping in, Walter says, “Helen? He's real good-looking. And nice.”
Helen doesn't bother holding the door open to hear more. She knows that's all she's going to get.
Tessa's apartment is fragrant with the scent of exotic spices. “Did you make Indian food?” Helen asks, trying not to sound incredulous—and failing.
“I ordered out,” Tessa says, “but I could have made it.”
Helen takes off her coat and sits down on the sofa. Tessa moves a stack of papers and Helen sees penmanship on the top page
that is not Tessa's—some writing, some numbers. “Is that …?”
Tessa turns around. “What?”
Is that your boyfriend's writing? “Is that biryani I smell?”
“Yes. Do you want some?”
“No thanks. But it smells good.” What's that writing about? What are those figures for?
“Well, I have tons left. You can take some home if you want.”
Am I ever going to meet him? Why can't I meet him? “Okay. Maybe I will.”
Helen tells Tessa how lovely it was to see the house again, how she appreciated it even more the second time around. “It's just so hard to let go of it,” she says.
“What was it like waking up there?” Tessa asks.
Helen smiles, shakes her head.
“I thought so,” Tessa says. “Did you sit in the tree house?”
“Yes, I did. I sat in the tree house and I looked out and the view was so beautiful. And I saw two deer. I know people hate them for the way they eat their gardens, but I love them.”
“Me, too,” Tessa says. “I'd feed them.”
“So,” Helen says. “How are your plans progressing for your move?”
“I just talked to someone who I'm almost positive is going to sublet the place. She's coming for one final look tomorrow and if she takes it, she'll buy my furniture, too. Whatever her decision, though, I'm going out there in two weeks.”
“Uh-huh,” Helen says. She feels the sting of tears starting and stands up. “Be right back. I've got to go to the bathroom.”
In the tiny room, she looks at her daughter's toiletries: her toothpaste and perfume, her piles of makeup, all of it sent to her on what is nearly a daily basis. Helen picks up one of the cases with eye shadow, and rubs a violet color over her lid. It looks awful, and she turns on the water to take it off. Tessa's sink is dirty, and so she gets the cleanser out from under the sink and begins scrubbing. There. Next, she puts cleanser into the toilet and starts scrubbing that, too.
Tessa knocks on the door, then opens it and sees her mother standing there holding up a toilet brush like the Statue of Liberty. “Mom. Mom. Mom.”
“You want your bathroom to be clean if that person comes back to look!”
Tessa closes her eyes, rubs her forehead.
“Fine.” Helen puts the toilet brush back in the holder, and joins her daughter in the living room.
“So. I guess you're excited to go, huh?” she asks cheerfully, to make up for cleaning the bathroom.
“I am. This is going to be a great job, and I already have a place to stay in the city, in Pacific Heights.”
“Really!”
“Yeah, a friend of a friend is over in France, and I can stay in her apartment for a month. That should give me plenty of time to find my own place.”
Helen leans back against the sofa, looks around the apartment. It seems so odd to think of someone else living here. After Tessa leaves, it will be difficult to drive by this street.
Tessa has asked her something she hasn't heard.
“What?”
“I said, ‘How was Tom?’”
“Oh. Fine. We had a couple of meals together.”
“He's a really nice guy,” Tessa says. “Seems like he could be fun to be with, too. Is he?”
Helen looks at her watch. “I'd better get going.” She puts her coat on, picks up her purse, kisses her daughter good-bye. When she walks down the hall, she can feel Tessa's eyes on her back. How do you like it?
twenty-nine
“BUT WHY DIDN'T YOU SLEEP WITH HIM?” MIDGE ASKS, THE NEXT afternoon.
Helen only looks at her.
“What?” Midge says, puffing a little; they're walking at a pretty rapid pace. “Time's awasting.”
“First of all, this isn't the sixties. I hardly know him.”
Midge waves her mittened hand. “Ah, you know him well enough. It sounds to me like you covered a lot of ground in just a few days. Didn't you even kiss?”
“Not that it's any of your business, but yes, I kissed him. I kissed him good-bye.”
“Tongues?”
Helen says nothing.
Midge laughs. “Okay, no tongues. Well, next time.”
“How do you know there'll be a next time?”
“Because you didn't want to go to George's for breakfast, that's how I know.”
Helen starts to protest, but her friend is right. If you go to George's you have to get hash browns. And she's not eating hash browns for a while. Just in case. She had half a bagel for breakfast, and a little bowl of strawberries. And now is starving to death, but never mind.
Passing Austin Gardens, Midge points to the park. “Let's go sit down.”
They make their way to a bench near the entrance and Midge dusts off a good three inches of new-fallen snow. It's the powdery kind that lifts lightly in the air and glitters as it falls. They sit quietly for a while, enjoying the warm sun, the lack of wind. It's the best kind of winter day, where breathing in the cold air does not hurt, but refreshes. Midge described it once as taking your lungs to the dry cleaners.
“I just think it might be too soon,” Helen says, finally.
“For sex?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then just make out! You know, heavy petting, like in the old days. It's fun. It would be good for you. Don't you want that old pelvic ache back again?”
Helen turns to face her friend. “You know, sometimes you just don't get it. I know you think I've had enough time to grieve. But I'm not like you, Midge. I feel things more deeply. I—”
“Okay,” Midge says. “Let me tell you something, Miss I-Feel-the-Pea. I feel the pea, too! All of us feel the pea! The difference is what each of us chooses to do about it! Or has to do about it!”
Helen feels a kind of lurch inside that is complete acknowledgment of what Midge has just said. Helen has always thought of herself as being different, as feeling more than others. Sometimes she views it as a gift, more often as a curse. But it had not fully occurred to her, until now, that if someone doesn't react as she does, it doesn't mean they feel any differently.
“You're right,” she tells Midge, her mouth suddenly dry, a weary embarrassment upon her. She turns away, focuses on a squirrel who has climbed down a tree and now holds statue still, as though eavesdropping.
“You know that story about the person who's thirsty?” Midge says.
Helen shakes her head no.
“Well, the person is complaining and complaining and complaining that she's so thirsty. ‘Oh, my God, I'm thirsty, I am so thirsty. She's given a drink of water. And you know what happens then? She says, ‘Oh, my God, I was thirsty! I was so thirsty!’”
Helen looks at her hands. “That's me?”
Midge doesn't answer. Then, more gently, she says, “Helen, you're my best friend. I love you for lots of reasons. But the truth is, you've never stepped up in some kind of essential way and part of the reason is that Dan never made you. He protected you, and in fact he encouraged your helplessness. I think he thought it was charming. Maybe it made him feel like a man.”
Helen starts to defend her husband and Midge interrupts, saying, “I know. I loved Dan, too, believe me. And I think he did most if not all of this subconsciously. But without him, here you are, still asking someone to fix everything for you.”
“You mean Tessa,” Helen says.
“Well, yes.” Midge leans closer. “Look, I don't mean to—”
“It's okay,” Helen says. “I'm getting it from all sides. I know it's time for … I know it's time. But I just want to say one thing. If I ever write a novel again, it's going to be in defense of weak women. Inept and codependent women! I'm going to talk about all the great movies and songs and poetry that focus on such women! I'm going to toast Blanche DuBois! I'm going to celebrate women who aren't afraid to show their need and their vulnerabilities, to be honest about how hard it can be to plow your way through a life that offers no guarantees about anything! I'm going to get on my metaphorical knee
s and thank women who fall apart, who cry and carry on and wail and wring their hands because you know what, Midge? We all need to cry! Thank God for women who can articulate their vulnerabilities and express what a lot of other people probably want to say and feel they can't! Those people's stronghold against falling apart themselves is the disdain they feel for women who do it for them! Strong. I'm starting to think that's as much a party line as anything else ever handed to women for their assigned roles! When do we get respect for our differences from men? Our strength is our weakness, our ability to feel is our humanity!
“You know what? I'll bet if you talked to a hundred strong women, ninety-nine of them would say, ‘I'm sick of being strong! I would like to be cared for! I would like someone else to make the goddamn decisions; I'm sick of making decisions!’ I know this one woman who is a beacon of strength, a single mother who can do everything, even more than you, Midge. I ran into her not long ago and we went and got a coffee and you know what she told me? She told me that when she goes out to dinner with her guy, she asks him to order everything for her. Every single thing, drink to dessert, because she just wants to unhitch. All of us dependent, weak women have the courage to do all the time what she can only do in a restaurant!”
Midge looks at her. “Hmm. I'm very sorry to tell you this. That all sounded pretty strong.”
Helen laughs, and then they sit quietly until Midge announces that her butt is frozen and Helen says how convenient, now it won't hurt when they saw off all that excess flesh she keeps bitching about.
“Yeah, we can superglue it to your pancake boobs,” Midge says and Helen says that would be fine.
When Helen gets home, there is a message from Tom, saying he's just making sure she got home all right, and to call back when she's got time. She picks up the phone, then decides to call him tonight, just before she goes to sleep. She'll save it up for herself that way. Also, she'll decide what it is she really wants to say to him, and how.