How could he pack his bag and load his car and drive off leaving her behind? She watched him pale-faced, in shock, her little six-year-old body stiff and aghast on the sidewalk, waving furiously even after his car had turned the corner. I knew he would never come back: did she? Did he?
Yes, Toni packed his J. Press suit, his silk shirts, some new Italian shoes and a new Brooks Brothers blazer and slacks with the best of his remaining clothes into the back of the Corvette: his plan was to drive to California and see the country. He made a point of the fact that he was leaving behind his old manual Royal, as if that were proof he planned to return. He took a thick envelope of photographs of all of us but mainly of Franny. I felt sure, although he didn’t mention it, that he’d make a stop in Dayton, Ohio, to show off that Corvette and maybe the clothes. He left at the end of October, when the kids were supposed to be at school, but both of them came home for two days, to say good-bye, to hug him one last time. Arden cried, and even Billy had tears in his eyes at the parting, but Toni was hearty in his assurances that it was only for a couple of months, that he’d be back before they realized he was gone. They chose to believe him, or act as if they believed him, and they were used to separations, so they did not mourn. Except Franny, who had never before been without her father. Then Arden and Billy went back to school and Franny that night crept up to bed bereft in the deserted house.
So what I had to think about, that night in October one month before my fortieth birthday, the night I sat up in the cold living room smoking, thinking about long ago when I used to do that while Brad slept the sleep of the blessed, the dense, or the drunk, was what was I going to do? what was I going to do about Franny? With whom I would not willingly part. But whom I had unwillingly to care for.
I wasn’t sure I wanted Toni back. Not that I didn’t love him, not that we didn’t have, together, a sweet intimacy and acceptance that kept us both warm. But I had broken his trust in me, and he had remained but withdrawn from me—I could feel his furious need to get out. I don’t believe he doubted my love for him, no matter what my sexual habits. I don’t believe my sexual habits even really bothered him. I think he felt that a real man, a man as men are supposed to be, would not accept such behavior from a wife. So the sight of me made him feel diminished, less of a man. And he already felt unmanly.
We live in a world that requires something other of men than that they raise a family and love a woman and write sensitive delicate prose in a small back room of the house. At the beginning, when he chose that course, he was still a boy and thrilled by his rebellion against the world of men: it made him feel strong. But whatever either of us might think or feel privately, we could not escape the world’s judgment. As the world judged us, against our will, willy-nilly, we judged ourselves and each other. The world gets you. It got Brad, it got Toni, and through them, it got me.
It was time for Toni to move on. If he had not, his contempt for himself would have spilled over onto me and he’d hate me for his jailer. And I would in time—did I already?—feel contempt for him for passively accepting himself as a failure.
It seemed strange to me as I sat there, cold, a blanket draped over my shoulders, that neither of us had mentioned the possibility that we would remain together, he in California and I in New York, occasionally commuting across the country. Or that I could move to California. “It Never Entered My Mind”: I began to hum that song, always a favorite. No. It had reached its full organic growth, our union, and had to end. I had no right to quarrel with whatever he did, I had forfeited that right. He was young, unimpeded by children now, he would find a new woman—he had to have a woman—and make a new life.
My fortieth birthday came and went. Toni called and sent flowers. Billy called the following day—he’d forgotten under the pressure of a chemistry exam. Arden called a week later saying thanks for the sweater, but she was no longer celebrating her birthday, she was renouncing bourgeois occasions like that. She didn’t mention mine.
Without realizing it, I settled into a permanent state of woundedness. Toni had phoned the night he left (from Dayton, and the bastard reversed the charges); then four days later, from someplace in Indiana, two days later from Wyoming, and two days after that from a hotel in Los Angeles. A week went by before he called to announce he’d found an apartment. After that he called every week, Sunday evenings. I will never forget the first Sunday he neglected to call. I let Franny stay up very late—she was so anxious, so sure something terrible had happened to him, that she was afraid to go to sleep. I put in a call to his apartment, but there was no answer. I let her sit on my lap and I turned on television to distract her. Around eleven, she finally fell asleep, her body heavy against mine, damp, sodden with sorrow.
Franny got in the habit of sleeping in my bed. I didn’t have the heart to forbid it, but I worried about what would happen when I had to go away again. I ran ads in newspapers and interviewed people, but every woman—only women applied—seemed wrong. Franny nestled beside me on the couch when I interviewed them, and I could feel her reactions, feel her body tense or withdraw. I trusted her. The women were either puritanical, cranky, sloppy, mean, or unreliable. I worried.
Russ called me with an assignment to go to Belfast to do a photoessay on Bernadette Devlin, and I still had not hired a housekeeper. I asked my mother. She came. She and my father lived in my house for a week: he went to work as usual and she took care of Franny. Mother seemed really happy when I came back and an idea lighted in my head. But every time I spoke to her in the days after my return, she told me how tired she was after a week with a six-year-old, and I knew there was no hope even though having Franny with her would have made her happy. I kept looking for a housekeeper, and finally found a kindly responsible woman, Mrs. Czepiel (another Pole! It was amazing).
Franny turned my heart. She was so brave, so sweet. She’d apologize for waking me up by crying out in her nightmares. She was pale and seemed to be holding herself together by will. She had, after all, lost three people—her father, her brother, and her sister—in a space of two years. She grew inward, quiet. She had no friends. She sat at home and read, or played the piano. She was taking lessons. When I was away for more than three days, my mother would drive over one afternoon and take her back to their house for dinner and the evening, then drive her to school in the morning. She was very good when she was at Grandma Belle’s house—angelic.
She mentioned Toni less and less. Sometimes he wrote to Franny, or to me. But intimacy requires continual contact (Is your cold better? Did you try those pills? So you didn’t sleep at all? Why don’t you take a nap while I do the dishes? Did the washing machine repairman come? Was he able to fix it? How much did he charge? Outrageous! So how did Franny manage at show-and-tell? Was she happy with herself? And what did the teacher say? And what about the other kids? Did they like it? Were they good? Were they funny? Oh, Belle got a new couch? What color? What does it look like? Does it look good? Yes, I went to the dentist and I need an inlay, two or three appointments, five hundred bucks, but it’s worth it. You know, in the store today I saw a necklace, thick and gold, well, not real gold of course, a sort of collar, I guess, and I thought of you, it looked like you, but you don’t wear necklaces. Still, I wondered…).
It wasn’t long before we were out of touch with each other. Once that happened, there was little to say—we’d lost the feel of each other’s lives, and only major events—triumphs or disasters—were worth mention. He had some triumphs, so did I. Franny’s, which she continued for over a year to report religiously, were the occasional A on a test, gold stars on test papers, compliments from her teacher, her birthday party and all presents received (Toni sent her a doll with her own suitcase and wardrobe), her part in the school play (she played a tooth), promotion to second grade, her mastery at day camp over the summer of the Australian crawl, the reopening of school, her new school clothes, the occasional A on a test, gold stars on test papers…eventually, she flagged. It was too hard: so often, when she be
gged me to phone him, he wasn’t home; when he was, he could only repeat the same words, Wonderful, Franny, Great, honey.
I photographed cornfields in Kansas, a bridge in Seattle, the outback of Australia, rioting in Gdansk, two massive peace marches, and the prison at Attica after the massacre. Arden was graduated from college and Franny and I drove up to the ceremony. We stayed at a motel, not at the commune. Arden was going to remain there with Jacob, her newest lover; she would write poetry and sell dried flower arrangements. She was distant, edgy with me—with both of us, really. Franny cried on the trip back: she’d been so excited about seeing her beloved older sister. We went back without either Arden or Billy: he was staying in Ithaca to take some summer courses. I wondered, briefly, what my life would have been like then if I hadn’t had Franny. I let a glimpse of a neat little apartment in Manhattan, of no more responsibilities, no more concealment, an easy life, cross my mind, then fade. I did have Franny: and I would not give her up. She was my darling.
I still screwed around when I was traveling, but less often and with less joy. It wasn’t the same. Before, extracurricular sex had seemed an overflowing, an exuberance, an adventure. Now there was a shadow on it, an edge; it felt urgent, a seeking, a need, desperate. I was looking at every man I met, not with an eye to pleasure, but with an eye to—oh, not marriage, but something permanent, something that permitted intimacy. I didn’t like feeling that, and more and more I avoided looking at men at all. I felt old, abandoned, unwanted.
Toni, meanwhile, was having a great time. It took a year to come up with a screenplay they liked, but now the producers were looking at locations, directors, talking about cast, it was all so exciting, he loved it out there, maybe we could all come out and visit, or maybe Franny could, when he had time to spend with her, maybe next year when he wasn’t so busy, when things calmed down. I told him I wanted him to come home that Christmas. He said he would if he could, but they were in the middle of all this important stuff. I said he had to come home. He came. I had the feeling that if I told him he had to come home for good, he would have done that too. I didn’t.
He stayed a week. Franny was ecstatic. Arden had come home too that Christmas, bringing Jacob with her (Mother by now having resigned herself to unlicensed sex). She recognized that Toni and I were finished and flirted wildly with him, which sent Jacob into a drugged withdrawal. I overheard her discussing plans to fly out and visit him. Billy, with the same recognition, barely spoke to Toni. I was in deep gloom, I don’t know why.
I told Toni I wanted to sell the house and move into the city. There was no point to keeping it, with only Franny and me occupying it. There were too many rooms, the garden was too much for me. He said it was my house wasn’t it: I could do as I liked. He said this without bitterness. I asked him if he understood that my moving to the city would mean Franny would have to go to private schools, and that I expected him to pay for that. I don’t know why I did that. I could afford it myself. But his checks for Franny’s care had been erratic. I guess I was demanding something from him for her. Something I could tell her about, something she would understand. I guess.
Anyway, he just shrugged: if he had to, he would. He made no demurral. He had utterly given over emotional responsibility for her. I had expected him to protest he did not want his child raised in the heat and filth of New York streets, like Brad a half-million years earlier, but he said nothing. I recognized guilt when I saw it: I should, after all. I asked if he wanted a divorce. He paled. He said he loved me. But he wanted his chance, and this was it and it was in California and he knew I wouldn’t move out there. He asked if I wanted a divorce. I shrugged.
One night we stayed up late drinking and he told me about the women he’d been involved with out there. There had been quite a few, but right now he was involved only with Gail and Pauline. But he felt inexperienced, he needed advice, a woman’s view: why did Gail act that way, what was going on? And how was it that Pauline had treated him like that? Did other men have problems sometimes…you know…? What did I think he should do? I told him what I could. Mainly I listened. I knew that he wanted more than advice—he wanted to brag a little, to show me. I let him: he deserved it, he was allowed.
We agreed with enormous civility to grant a divorce should either of us decide we wanted one. When he left, in a taxi this time, we kissed affectionately, like sister and brother. Franny was more relaxed this time, her body leaned into mine. But this time she cried for a long time after he left. This time she knew he was not coming back.
“Saintly, weren’t you!” Clara snorted.
“I am, you know,” I said coolly. “You can be saintly when you don’t want anything.”
“Oh, baby,” Clara sympathized (and I drew myself together like a clamshell at the word), “don’t you see? You were still insisting on control. You wouldn’t let him know he mattered to you! You would be damned if you’d give him any sign you were jealous!” She said this passionately, leaning forward, touching my hand.
I pulled my hand away. “Jealous? I’m not a jealous person. I didn’t feel jealous in the least. Why should I? I was glad he had other women, it alleviated my guilt.”
“Even Arden?”
I could feel my mouth narrow. “Arden? Yes. Well, I figured if she went out there and got involved with him—she’d be sorry. It doesn’t work to screw Mommy’s lovers. She’d find out.”
“Vengeance, saith the lord,” Clara laughed. “Oh no, you’re not jealous.”
“Is that vengeance? I think it’s just common sense.”
“Look, whatever you did or were, you loved him and he loved you—once. And for years you believed in him, in his talent, his promise, and supported him, emotionally, financially….”
“Yes. But he was taking care of my kids, of me…it was so wonderful to come back from a trip and have them all so happy to see me, have Toni happy to fix something to eat…” I sighed. “It was an even exchange as I see it.”
“Even if it was! You loved him and encouraged him and you did support him and the minute he succeeds he leaves you. That’s a pattern.”
“Not your kind of pattern! It’s not the typical male-female situation, Clara! Toni was the wife in our house!”
“A wife who leaves you high and dry with a small child to raise, a child he asked you, begged you, pressured you to have. Promising he’d always take care of her!”
“Mmmm.” That part did make me bitter.
“And he leaves right before your birthday. Your fortieth birthday! An important one, not to say traumatic. You gave him a party when he was thirty, and another when he was thirty-one. He couldn’t hang around for one month?”
“He couldn’t hang around period. He got the call; he made arrangements. He was gone in ten days.”
“And that didn’t hurt you?”
“Clara!” I was growing exasperated. “I’ve told you, he had to leave, it was time. He had to leave and go out into the world and be like other men. And after all, I had been screwing around and he knew that. I had forfeited my right to complain. Why shouldn’t he have his chance at sexual freedom?”
“I’m not saying he shouldn’t!” Clara was growing heated too. “I’m saying he hurt you! I’m not saying he didn’t have reasons to do so, maybe even a right to do so—I’m just saying that it hurt you. You keep talking about not feeling anything and I’m saying you did feel something, and you keep telling me you didn’t because you had no right to! You are being impossible!”
“So go home!” I exploded, rising and stalking invisible enemies in my large, light, plain, living room. “Who asked you to interfere! Do I need you? What do I want to listen to you for?”
She stood up too. “I won’t! I won’t go home until I get you to listen to reason!”
“Listen to you, you mean! And you are hardly the voice of reason! A person who eats peanut butter out of the jar for breakfast and crackers in bed? A person who rides a bicycle in New York City, breathing in truck fumes? A person who has dedicated
her life to not making enough money to live? You are reasonable?”
She started to giggle then, and so did I. “Oh, Anastasia….” She walked toward me, her hand outstretched.
I turned away, I walked toward the kitchen. “I need some more seltzer,” I said. She sank down on the old shabby couch, sighing. From the kitchen I could hear her, yelling:
“You’re full of pity for Franny, losing her sister and brother and father all in two years, but you don’t even bother to mention that you lost daughter, son, and husband in that same period!”
I stopped, my hand on the refrigerator door. A memory had just pierced me, cold as the fridge, damp, metallic. Moving. I was moving from that house, our house, Toni’s and mine, and I was packing the things from the medicine chest in a carton, and I picked up a bottle, Toni’s after-shave. It was a cheap after-shave, but he liked it, and even though the kids would give him better brands at Christmas, he went on using this cheap stuff. And I started to hurl it into the trash, thinking, I don’t need this cheap after-shave cluttering up my medicine chest, but it wouldn’t leave my hand and suddenly I was bent over the bathroom sink, sobbing…. I loved that he loved that after-shave, I loved it because he loved it. I sobbed myself dry.
“You keep on denying your feelings. That’s why you suffer from zombiedom!”
I returned to the living room with my seltzer and a dish of candy. I handed it to her. I sat down. “Zombiedom comes from pain. And pain comes from the things that happen. And the things that happen do happen, and maybe they’re even inevitable. In any case, you can’t change them. You have to accept your fate. And if your fate is zombiedom, or carrotdom, then you have to accept that.”