Cold air smacked her in the face as she pushed through the door and onto a patio occupied by a couple (one of Mary Jo’s bridesmaids and, if memory served her correctly, a Spanish diplomat) for whom Kari’s presence was obviously unwelcome. Kari ignored their put-upon looks (hadn’t that Spanish diplomat come with his wife?) and walked to the other side of the patio, wishing she had brought her coat, even though her shivering had just as much to do with her fear as with the cold.
She knew everyone was going to find out. What would her dear brother Anders think, her letting him believe that Julia was his niece instead of his granddaughter? And Sally? And Mary Jo’s brothers? And, most importantly, what would Julia think? She hated to think of the deep hurt they were all about to be pushed into.
Realizing this intruder wasn’t going anywhere, the couple slipped out, but Kari, so agitated by fear and worry, didn’t even notice their departure. Nor did she notice Mary Jo until her niece put her hand on her shoulder.
“Oh!” said Kari, startled.
Mary Jo smiled, but her blue eyes (so like her aunt’s) were crinkled with concern.
“Aunt Kari, what’s the matter? Mark’s worried sick—he said one minute you’re laughing like Santa Claus and the next minute you’re running off the dance floor as if he’d done something to offend you.”
“You told him, didn’t you?” Kari said, her voice both angry and plaintive. “You told him about Julia!”
Suddenly Mary Jo was the opposite of a blushing bride; all color leached from her face.
“No,” she said quietly. “I didn’t tell him. I’ve never told anyone.”
Kari opened her mouth to speak but it took a few moments for any words to gather.
“You never told Mark? But . . . a wife tells her husband everything.”
Mary Jo shook her head. “Not this wife.”
“But he said something about Julia being beautiful and taking after her mother!”
“Geez, Aunt Kari, can’t you take a compliment?”
Again Kari opened her mouth and had to wait for the words to catch up. Finally she said, “Don’t you think by not telling him you’re deceiving him?”
“First you’re yelling at me for telling, and now you’re yelling at me for not telling. Which way do you want it?”
Taking her niece’s hand, Kari managed a weak smile. “Mary Jo, I’m . . . glad you didn’t tell. And relieved. But surprised. I just assumed you wouldn’t want any secrets between you.”
“There are worse things a couple could have between them. I’m thirty-two and Mark’ll be forty—it’s not like we both haven’t lived lives before we found each other.” Letting go of her aunt’s hand, Mary Jo watched as a hotel employee swept snow off the courtyard. “Look, Aunt Kari, the fact that I had a baby when I was young is not the least bit relevant to the person I am today. I had sex, I got pregnant, I gave birth . . . end of story. It was the beginning of your story, but really—and I don’t mean to sound cold—it was the end of mine as far as the baby went. I didn’t regret having her, but I didn’t miss her, I didn’t long for her, I only felt relief. Relief that I got to go back to being who I wanted to be.” Mary Jo folded her arms across her chest. “So you think I’m deceiving Mark by not telling him? I thought I was protecting you and Julia. I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“It was,” said Kari, feeling the sting of tears in her eyes. “It is.”
“I don’t know what you’ve told Julia—”
“Only the story I told everybody else. So far she seems happy with that.”
“Good,” said Mary Jo. “But if and when she wants to know more, it’s up to you what you tell her. You’re the mother. You get to decide what’s best for your child. I’m ready to cross any bridge I need to, or you need to; I just don’t see the need to build a bridge to cross when we’re perfectly fine where we are.”
“We are,” Kari whispered. “We’re perfectly fine where we are.”
“Then let’s get back to the party,” said Mary Jo, taking her aunt’s arm, “and get some of that prime rib I’ve been hearing so much about.”
AS SHE RECOUNTED THE wedding and reception in their hotel room that night, Julia was giddy.
“Mom, did you see that guy I danced with at the end?” she asked, crawling into the bed Kari was already settled into. “The guy with the longish hair and the red plaid sash thing—”
“Cummerbund,” said Kari.
“Yeah, that thing. Anyway, wasn’t he cute? He’s a sophomore at this private school here, the Friends School. I said, ‘You mean everyone gets along really good?’ and he laughed and said, ‘No, it’s run by Quakers,’ and I said, ‘What do you have for breakfast?’ and he said, ‘Huh?’ and I repeated the question and he said, ‘I don’t know—eggs, bacon, pancakes, the usual stuff; why?’ and I said, ‘I just thought you’d be eating Quaker Oats all the time,’ and I know it was a dumb joke but we both laughed like a bunch of lame-os and then he said he thought I was one of the prettiest girls he’d ever seen!”
As she drew in a load of air, Kari smiled.
“You’re not one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen,” she said, pushing a tendril of hair off Julia’s forehead. “You’re the prettiest.”
The fourteen-year-old girl tucked her hands behind her head and stared at the ceiling.
“Do you think my biological mother was pretty?”
Kari’s heart seized up to the size of a walnut.
“I’ll bet she was,” continued Julia. “Not that I’m bragging or anything . . . but it’s fun to have people think you’re pretty, isn’t it?”
“I . . . I wouldn’t know.”
Julia turned to her. “Oh, don’t be so modest, Mom. You’re the most beautiful mom I know.”
Okay, Kari thought, it may look like a hotel room, but I’ve actually died and gone to heaven.
“Thank you, darling.” Kari bent down and brushed her nose against her daughter’s. Her heart pounded as she sorted out the words she wanted to say. “Julia . . . would you like to know who your real mother is?”
“Biological mother, Mom,” said Julia. “You’re my real mother.”
“Well, I know you’re curious and must have a lot of—”
“Mom? No offense, but do we have to talk about this right now? Because I’d really like to talk about Jeremy—that’s his name; doesn’t it go good with Julia? Julia and Jeremy? I mean, I know I’ll probably never see him again, but right now I’d just like to talk about him. Or if you’re tired, I’d be just as happy to lie here and think about him.”
“Go ahead,” said Kari, kissing her daughter’s cheek. “Go ahead and talk about him. I’d love to listen.”
As Julia babbled on about Jeremy’s favorite sports—“He plays rugby, Mom! I told him that’s not even a sport up in Minnesota!”—Kari leaned back on the plump hotel pillows and thanked God for the day, and especially the respite.
September 1983
HOST: MERIT
BOOK: In The Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen
REASON CHOSEN: “Someone I respect at work said I should read it.”
Merit was back to typing, and although her speed (107 words a minute) was a source of pride for her, it was a small source, especially now that there were word processors and one little key could erase a mistake as if it never happened.
All of the Angry Housewives were now working outside their homes. Faith was a decorator; Slip helped people get jobs and housing; Kari had gone back to substitute teaching when Julia was in the second grade; and Audrey, who didn’t have to work, hostessed (“They won’t let me call myself a host, Slip!”) at a restaurant downtown, patronized by lots of businessmen, including occasionally her ex-husband.
“It’s not as if it fulfills me on an intellectual level,” she explained, “but it’s fun. I get to dress up, flirt with a lot of guys, and eat free. Can’t knock those benefits.”
Merit wasn’t fulfilled on an intellectual level at her job either, nor did she fin
d the typing of endless reports on city planning fun, but the money supplemented what the court forced Eric to pay her every month. He had included snide notes with every check until Audrey dictated a letter Merit sent to him, informing him she’d sue him for harassment if he persisted in such mean-spirited, childish behavior.
Merit solicited Audrey’s advice on many subjects, including household management (Audrey had taken her through a tour of her basement, showing her how the fuse box worked, where the gas and water lines were, and how to relight the furnace), but the advice Audrey gave to her about men and dating went in one ear and out the other, with no absorption by the brain whatsoever.
After her divorce, Audrey had slept with any man who was willing to spring for dinner or a movie (she never told them those bargaining chips were superfluous and that she would have slept with them anyway), but she felt she had grown up and the sex-without-love stage now bored her.
Her bedroom was on the first floor and the boys’ were upstairs; still, she didn’t like sneaking men in at night and pushing them out before her sons woke up. And she didn’t like waking up smelling of liquor and different brands of cologne and aftershave. She still subscribed to her basic rule—I’ll date anyone who asks me, as long as there’s not drool on his chin while he asks—but she realized there was no harm in getting to know someone before she invited them to bed.
“And that’s what you should do, Merit; get out there and see what’s happening in Man Country!”
“I’m not really interested,” Merit said with a shrug. Closer to the truth was that she had NO DESIRE IN THE WORLD! to visit “Man Country” let alone browse inside its borders. What if she wound up with another Eric? A man whom she’d thought was the answer to her prayers, and was, if she’d been praying to the devil. No thanks—if it was her fate to not be with a man, that was a far better fate than being with a man like Eric.
It was a given that whenever Merit was out and about, men were interested. Men in her church asked her out (at the annual picnic, waiting for their children to get out of Sunday school, and once in the communion line); men at work asked her out (fortunately, her boss was married and one of the few men to whom this served as a deterrent); men in the grocery store, the butcher shop, the bookstore asked her out. Remnants of her high school self remained in that it pained her to hurt anyone’s feelings, but at least she was able to say no, and underneath that no was I’m as happy as I’ve ever been with my girls and my girlfriends—I don’t need you right now.
If only I had a better job, she thought, finishing a report on the feasibility of restructuring the infrastructure according to budgetary guidelines or some such blather (Merit had no retention of what she typed; after the fourth or fifth “in accordance with” or “recent studies show,” her mind flew out the drafty office window and didn’t come back to its host until the last piece of paper was out of the printer.)
At least relief was only ten minutes away: lunch.
“You want to go down to the cafeteria?” asked Bree, the only interesting person in the whole office.
“I was going to the library to see if I could play the piano,” said Merit, more an apology than a statement.
“That’s cool,” said Bree, taking a mirror out of her desk drawer to check on her kohl-lined eyes. “I wish I could play an instrument. But I seem to have some sort of tonal deficiency that has doomed me to live my musical life as only a fan.”
Bree had recently vacationed in London and had returned talking about how something called punk rock was already passé there, “and it’s too bad, because it was going to change the world.” She was the one who passed books on to Merit with urgent orders: “You have to read this.”
She was trying to figure out what to do with her master’s degree in anthropology, and until she did, she typed at the desk behind Merit’s.
“You want anything?” she asked, lifting the strap of her huge shoulder bag over her head. “A bag of chips? Some yogurt?”
Merit held up a brown paper bag. “I’m all set, thanks.”
“Well,” said Bree, leaving the office even though it was eight minutes away from being officially noon, “I hope you get in.”
This referred to the library’s first-come, first-serve policy to use the pianos.
“Me too,” said Merit. “I could really use it.”
Among many of the bastardly things Eric had done, taking the piano (originally a gift from his parents) ranked right up there with a fist in the face.
“But what about the girls’ piano lessons?” Merit had asked.
“Tell them if their mother hadn’t divorced their father, this never would have happened.”
Upon hearing that the music had stopped at the Iverson house, Audrey had promptly bought Merit a piano.
Merit was overwhelmed by her friend’s generosity, which Audrey shrugged off.
“Consider me a patron of the arts, Merit.”
“I swear I’ll pay you back.”
“Don’t you dare,” said Audrey, miffed. “This is a gift.”
She couldn’t afford lessons with Mrs. Klanski, so Merit taught the girls herself. Fortunately the girls liked to practice, and thirteen-year-old Melody in particular (I guess I named you right, Merit often thought as she listened to her daughter play) showed a real talent. Which was all well and good, except that it was hard getting in her own time at the piano. Which is why, when she wasn’t spending her lunch hour reading, she was spending it trying to play the library piano.
Luck was with her that afternoon; one room was occupied by a young man hunched over the piano so that his hair nearly brushed the keys, but the other room was open and there were no names on the sign-up sheet.
Sitting down on the bench, Merit attacked the keys, playing rousing versions of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and the marine hymn and nearly every song written to inspire men to go to war.
When she emerged from the room, it was as if she’d spent time in a gym; she was hot and sweaty and somehow cleansed.
“Bravo,” said a man sitting in a plastic chair against the wall. “Bravo.”
Merit turned toward the escalator, not hearing him.
“Bravo,” insisted the man, following her. “Bravo.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I was commenting on your performance,” said the man and Merit caught a glimmer of two gold teeth just at the corners of his smile.
Merit said later that that was why she’d stopped to talk to the man, fascinated as she was by a particular symmetry he presented not only in his teeth, but in his long curving sideburns, which looked like two hairy parentheses (“Does that mean his face is parenthetical?” asked Audrey), by the way the lapels of his pale blue leisure suit (“Oh, no,” said Slip, “he’s still wearing one of those?”) were perfect angles.
“I was playing that loud?” asked Merit. The rooms were not soundproof, but unless someone was playing fairly energetically, people outside couldn’t hear.
“It’s my ears,” explained the man. “It seems I have exceptional hearing—especially when it comes to music. Especially when it comes to beautifully played music.”
Merit’s initial fascination was fading fast. Another guy trying to pick her up.
“Hmmm,” she said. “Well, I’ve got to be going. Nice to meet you, Mr. . . .”
“Paradise,” said the man, extending his hand. “As in you’ve found yours!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s my name!” he said gleefully. “Frank Paradise!”
“Is that right?” said Merit, giving him an almost civil smile before turning on her heel.
“Wait, miss—please,” said Mr. Paradise. “Let me give you my card.”
“No, thanks,” said Merit with a wave of her hand. As she walked toward the escalator, she thought how proud the Angry Housewives would be of her assertiveness. She had turned a guy down without apologizing once.
Paradise was there the next time Merit played on the library piano, a
nd the next time and the next.
Seeing him, she’d joke, “My Paradise,” which brought on a smile and a flash of those gold teeth. But she said nothing more, and he didn’t pursue her after she stopped playing, though he did offer his bravos.
After the fourth or fifth one-man ovation, Merit finally changed her tactic of heading directly to the escalator and instead sat next to him in one of the plastic chairs lined up against the wall.
“Mr. Paradise,” she began.
“My Paradise,” he corrected. “I like it when you say ‘my Paradise.’ ”
Dear God, thought Merit. Maybe he’s a little soft in the head.
“Mr. Paradise,” she said, raising her voice as if volume might increase his comprehension. “While I’m flattered you like my playing, I really am getting a little uncomfortable with your presence here.”
“Then have a cup of coffee with me.”
“I will not,” she said, leaning away from him. “What on earth makes you think I’d have a cup of coffee with you?”
Mr. Paradise shrugged, and the stiff polyester of his leisure suit (this one was brown with wide white topstitching) took its time falling back on his shoulders. “Nothing makes me think you will, but everything makes me hope you will.”
“Oh, for . . . oh, for . . . ,” sputtered Merit, rising. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”
Mr. Paradise’s face fell like a hound hearing “Bad dog!” from its beloved master. In a lifetime of facing disappointed male faces, this was by far the most disappointed.
“I’m truly sorry if I offended you in some way,” said Mr. Paradise, being careful not to look her in the eyes. He stood up. “That was not my intention, believe me.”
“Oh, all right,” said Merit impatiently. “I’ll have coffee with you. One cup.”
The sun broke on Mr. Paradise’s face. “One cup,” he said, as if those words were the winning answer to a question he’d been asking all his life.
IT GOT TO BE A REGULAR Thursday engagement: a cup of coffee in the basement cafeteria of Woolworth’s. On the other days of the week, Merit played the library piano, or if she didn’t get in, she took out whatever book she happened to be carrying in her bag and found a window to read by. Mr. Paradise, thankfully, never trailed after her, never found a book of his own and planted himself next to her, but would simply wish her a good day and depart. Merit was sure that if he had a hat, he would have doffed it.