In the new neighborhood, it is not easy to make friends. The babysitters, they are not nannies. They are not even full-time. They are what the people here can afford. I had to tell one girl, You can never shake a baby. A yo-yo, it is not safe either.
Ruth calls me on the telephone. I am here seven days, my only off Sunday mornings. Ruth returned from New York, and now, two years after her escape, the slave is talking about her master. He drove her around South Central. We will let you out, he said. They’ll find use for you. Like a dog. She told Ruth, Because he did not use me in a sex way. They beat her. Ruth says she remembers the bruises. “And whenever we give her anything, she asks if she can keep it.”
I hear this in our faraway kitchen, that Laura and I painted teal. We came home at five, we had bath time, and got on jammies. Now Laura has her music hour. I moved the playpen, so she can see me make our dinner. While Ruth tells the problems of the slave, I am thinking we need bay leaf; I will buy a plant. Tomorrow chicken adobo. The slave started a job in Malibu. A three-year-old said, I’d like a Pepsi. Please bring it to me half filled with ice and my cherry floating on the top. Otherwise I can’t drink it.
I laugh along; Ruth always jokes about how they spoil kids in America, but then, she says, the Malibu brothers pushed the slave into the pool. She tried to paddle to the side and they poked at her with the stick of the net. She swallowed water, but finally, the assistant, who sat typing recipes into a computer, ran out and put a broom into the pool for her to grab.
The slave choked. The assistant dialed the mother to tell what happened, to see if the boys should be punished. But the mother said, Oh, it’s a hot day, she probably enjoyed getting cooled off.
Ruth asks if I have seen Williamo because, long time ago, I said Jean, the one next-door Claire, would hire the slave. “That baby must be born by now,” Ruth says.
“I do not know,” I say. “We are too busy.”
Lucy finally quits. She wants that I will take care Bing, but I cannot.
I am needed here.
“Double up,” she says. “They just have to buy a double stroller, like that. Maybe if you tell Judith she can pay less, she will say okay.”
“But, Laura, she will not say okay.” The employers of Lucy pay a lot. They will not have problems. “Call Ruth,” I tell my former pupil, as Cheska studies the review book for her nursing exam.
“The guy, he is going so many doctors, now, Lola. Sometimes two in one day. He cannot sleep. He is depress. They are giving Prozac.”
Cheska pops up from the review book, puts a feather to mark her place. “Prozac! Many things contraindicated for that. Dairy!” She is studying again for the exam. She failed four times already. “Anything ferment, like that.”
“Lita says until now, the doctor comes home in the afternoon and kneels on the floor with her daughters. But Alice, she does not know how to play.” I would have said that about Lita. But I have noticed, mothers and nannies, they sometimes match, the way of dogs and their owners.
I do not ask Judith to buy a double stroller, but I ask if I can give away the crib. For the one-year birthday, I want to buy for Laura a low bed I can put on the floor next to mine. And when Lucy quits, my old employers, they do not even ask me. They hire a white.
“I just do not know this one,” Lucy says, when she and Cheska come to get the crib. “We can tell from the face. Lola, Jeff, he is disappeared all night. Helen called police and they found his car on Pacific Coast Highway. She is afraid suicide.”
Suicide? I really do not know. “You told me he is taking Prozac.”
Cheska lifts her head. “Maybe he ate cheese.”
Today, it is supposed to rain, so I have pots on the floor, places marked with small X’s of masking tape to remember leaks. In one cupboard I keep old pots for this.
“Why you are not using the dishwasher?” my pupil asks, when I rinse her cup. She opens the dishwasher that does not work, sniffs. We are saving to fix that too.
“It is okay,” I say, holding Laura. “We are cowboys here.”
I touch the letter of my former employer in my pocket. Later, I dial the number. He answers. What can I say? Good, you are not dead! So I hang up.
For the one-year party, I invite both my former employers, Bing, Williamo, Lita, the Chinese Adopteds, and kids Laura knows from here.
I have my girl dressed in silver with a bow.
What I promised some-a-day for Williamo, I make now: the ice candy. My kids finally sent me the plastic cases to freeze. We found a recipe Laura loves: avocado, milk, and maple syrup. My former weekend employers drive up in the convertible, like you would see in a movie. The guy, he used to look at Bing and say, And this is still all before he’ll remember. That was his refrain.
He bounds up the stairs to our small house, taking them two at a time, holding the hand of Bing, a merry glint in his eyes. I keep looking, once and then again, because in his other hand raised up he is carrying a live bird in a light green cage. The cage swings a little with each jounce step and the bird stays perched to a branch inside, yellow feet curled around.
Why do they bring with them to a party their bird?
I inventory the rooms of their house, my mind going down hallways. They do not have a pet bird! I understand even as it is happening—this bird is a present.
No! Who would give a live animal without first asking the grown-up?
They are saying if we do not want, they will take him back, even as Bing holds open the cage door and Jeff coaxes the yellow stick legs onto the finger of Laura. They are explaining the habits, showing the little trough hooked onto the bars where goes the water. They have, with her name on it, a book about this kind of bird—the cockatiel.
Claire
THE TWO BOXES
“You don’t seem pregnant to me,” Helen said.
“I don’t feel pregnant. I just haven’t had a period for a while.” But I didn’t keep good track. “With Will, I threw up.”
“So you’re not, then,” she said with authority. Up close, there was something plain about her face. “Do you even want a second child?” Once in a while I remembered: people found me odd. “It’s a lot of work,” she said, holding her belly.
She sighed. They all thought we couldn’t manage Will as it was. I couldn’t.
I bought the little thing you peed on.
Two lines came. Bright pink.
I’d wanted a divorce. Now I’d have a baby instead. I tipped, leaned my forehead on the cool bathroom wall. That size 2 dress in the closet.
When I told him, late that night, Paul started shaking his head. “I love children. I would have liked more, if I’d married a different kind of woman. But given both of our work …” He sat and rubbed the arch of a foot. “Claire, I don’t think our marriage can withstand another child.”
He stared at me as if I were new. “That was the one time we’ve had sex all year.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
He started pacing. “He’s already in school. Next year, he’ll start kindergarten. It’ll be easier from here on out.” His voice calmed, telling me we were near the end. If I could hold up, steady my nerves, we’d pay people a little longer, and then we’d be out of the woods. But I’d waited, was waiting still, for us to enter together, one on either side of Will, and come out, a long time later, somewhere else.
“Why is it so hard for us to manage?” I said. “Other people manage.”
“I don’t see that many people who both have major careers.”
“I don’t have a major career.”
“You’re one symphony away. And having another child won’t help.”
“I told you before we got married that I couldn’t have an abortion.”
“I know you said that, Claire. We had a fight about that then, too, if you recall.”
We’d never settled that fight, as we didn’t settle most of our fights. We left them on the floor and turned back to daily cares. When I’d had the amnio, he’d said, “Y
ou’d abort before you’d chose to carry to term a baby with a terrible disability, wouldn’t you?”
I’d been softer then, bridelike. I put a hand on his arm. When I think of our young marriage, that’s what I see: his dark arm and my wrist, a musician’s hand, with clipped nails. “Just wait,” I’d said. “We’ll get the results in a week.”
Now he stood with the same strange smile Will got when he was going to be stubborn. “I’d choose the marriage over a child we don’t have.”
Would I? I didn’t think I’d choose the marriage over anything, though I no longer seemed to have a choice.
But it turned out to be a false positive.
It started in the smallest way. One day in April, Paul came to the kitchen as he did every morning, baseball cap backward, carrying his briefcase, but this time holding his tuxedo. He looked around, then hung it on the door. Before, he’d always given his dry cleaning to Lola. Now there was only me. Still, he hesitated. I suppose dry cleaning fell into the housekeeper column. His mother had raised him to know the difference.
But Will had dressed himself in a T-shirt I liked; his long hair curled up in the back. I’d made barley bread for the first time and Will was eating it, with honey. “Do you want me to take that in?”
“Could you? Thanks.” Paul sighed. “I should get a new shirt. I let the salesman talk me into that one. Mistake.”
“We can go look,” I said. “The Emmys aren’t till the end of the summer, right?”
“I have to have it to take to Alfie’s wedding. Didn’t I tell you? It’s black tie. That’s so like him. The human comedy.”
“Who’s Alfie?” Will asked.
“Alfie’s daddy’s cousin, who lives in Baltimore.” In the nine years we’d been married, I’d spoken to Alfie exactly twice, when he’d called after each of Paul’s episodes aired. Apparently, he was now marrying. Paul said he’d leave on a Thursday, getting off early to go to the airport. He’d return Monday morning and drive straight to work.
“You’ve never taken four days off to spend with us,” I whispered.
“They’re not inviting kids. Otherwise, I’d bring him and you could come if you wanted or stay home and work.”
A race started in me. “No,” I said. “This isn’t fair.”
“It’s done. Molly already booked my flight.”
“You don’t even know this guy.”
“His mother would be very hurt and offended if I didn’t go.”
“I’m hurt and offended.” All for a cousin we hadn’t seen since our wedding. A cousin Will had never even met. My outrage spun a web.
“I’d like to talk to him,” Lil’s husband said, when I called that afternoon. “She’s got me trained. I mean, if you want to work the kind of hours he works, with that focus and that commitment, then your free time isn’t yours. That belongs to your wife, and she can do what she wants with it.”
Lil said, “It just sounds like he doesn’t listen to you.”
This was what his mother earned, I thought, those times she waited with her glass of wine and just got me. Absolute obedience. But there wasn’t enough of him to share.
“I don’t want you to go,” I said, as he stood packing, the suitcase open on the bed.
“Claire, I have to.”
“If you go,” I said—but what? I had nothing he wanted that I could deny. I kept asking, it came to me in a rush, for time. And the answer was no.
But the days he was gone felt like vacation.
We took a long walk with my mother and Tom, who’d come from lunch at Twin Dragons. They brought their fortune cookies for Will.
As we strolled, my mother looked down. She told us the plumber had stolen her rings.
“Maybe you misplaced them,” I said. “Remember the time we found your money order.”
“No, he took them, I’m sure. I know it.”
“How do you know?”
“They’re gone. We looked everywhere.”
“We looked everywhere,” Tom echoed. “I called him and said, I have your name and your insurance number. I said in twenty-four hours we’re going to file a police report. He said he didn’t do it, but I don’t believe him.”
I turned to Tom, sharp. Didn’t he remember, she’d once accused him of stealing from her.
I didn’t like William hearing this. Wind gusted eucalyptus buttons, and Will kicked them with the round fronts of his sneakers. Leaves rattled above.
“The eucalyptus smell good,” I said.
“There are six hundred different kinds of eucalyptus in Santa Monica,” Tom said. “All from Australia.”
He took the bag from Twin Dragons away from my mother. “No, don’t do that, don’t. People don’t like that. They don’t like it.”
“Well, someone does.”
“She thinks she’s feeding the animals,” he told us. He bent down to pick up a wet lump of mu shu pork from a lawn.
Friday night we went to a Buster Keaton festival, with pizza and good ice cream. Will stood up on his seat and the men behind didn’t mind. After Will fell asleep, Paul called. “This rehearsal dinner. Everyone made a toast. And the bride’s father …” As he talked, I moved around my office. There was a box in my closet. I’d brought my things in it to California years ago. I put in a bent pinecone and a picture of Will.
The next day I stood at the bank depositing a check from an orchestra in Arkansas. There was another one from the radio station affiliate that aired Saint Paul Sunday. I filled out the deposit slip to put the money in our joint checking account. The total was twenty-three hundred dollars. I deposited those checks, and then took out cash. We had a four-hundred-a-day limit. I did it Sunday, too, dropping the envelope of money in my box. On a whim I called my mother. “We found the rings,” she said.
Paul returned Monday night after I was asleep. For once, the next morning, I woke first. On the table, right inside the door, was a hexagonal box, made of dark pebbled red leather. A gift. I thought of my two boxes. I tried to imagine this one inside the other. Even though the hexagon was so much smaller, it didn’t seem to fit.
My friends had stood at our wedding by the chuppah; they’d promised the rabbi to help keep us together.
“Well, you know what Beethoven’s mother said about marriage,” Harv told me. “‘A little joy and then a chain of sorrows.’ He overheard this—no wonder the guy never found love.”
“Even if he does just a tiny bit you like,” Lil said, “you may miss that tiny bit.”
She suggested a vacation.
“With him?” I couldn’t really imagine it.
For a long time, I’d had a separation alone. I’d had a whole love affair with Jeff, without his complicity. It was about time I started having relationships with people who knew about them.
Still, I’d married late, and I had a schoolboy.
Nothing could turn out anymore.
Paul didn’t attend the end-of-the-year conference. The teachers told me Will had trouble with impulse control. He talked too much. We’d let our nanny go, as they’d said to, I told them. And he was improving, they said, but when I pressed them, they couldn’t tell me what had actually improved. And we’d lost Lola. Or I had.
I went to Dr. Lark.
“What is it you’re afraid of?”
“Worst case? Worst case might be that he can’t make friends. That he has to go to a special school.”
“He has a sweet connection to you. He’ll find friends.”
“He just doesn’t behave well enough.”
“I’d put my bets on you,” she said.
“Well, I can’t leave Paul now,” I said. “When Will’s having trouble.”
“It’s hard to know how these things play out,” she said.
When I was leaving, I turned back. “Do you have children?”
I expected her to have two or three. Her research concerned mothers with infants.
“No, I don’t.” She paused. “I married late.”
I began to imagine being al
one.
Money was going to be a problem.
I always knew the name of the place. The redhead had once tried to get Elissa in. I didn’t call her, though. I just looked up the number and then got flustered when the woman at the switchboard asked my name. Michelle Berend, I said. Paul’s sister in Boston. I didn’t want my name on their books. I’d had a so-so conference with Will’s teachers. That was all. I just wanted to see.
Special needs.
Maybe we all have special needs.
On the tour, the classrooms looked normal enough. Papers hanging on bulletin boards. Lockers in the hall. Rows of new white Apples in the computer room. A small library lined with posters of Einstein, Tommy Hilfiger, Whoopi Goldberg, Tom Cruz. Jay Leno. Richard Ford. John Irving. Hans Christian Andersen. Walt Disney. Then, in the music room, a guy with long hair, wearing jeans and a dark T-shirt, lifted the needle of a portable record player onto an old Piatagorski recording of Saint-Saëns’s First Cello Concerto. Kids sat in a circle on the floor, each holding a baton. He walked around behind them, moving an arm, in rhythm.
When the piece ended, he stopped in back of one kid and touched her head. He went to the piano, banged out a chord, and asked for identification. She got it right, and then she tapped another head. He trilled a shivery high E.
I noticed men’s arms. Paul had a yeshiva boy’s arms, the kind I’d always liked. This guy had muscles, but they weren’t ugly. Then the bell rang, and the kids’ shoulders bumped one another.
“Okay, five minutes of Duck Duck Goose,” he said.
The tour guide herded the six other parents and me toward the new gym. But I lagged back. A boy now skidded around, tapping heads. I’d never noticed before how hard it was to run in a circle. His sneakers squeaked. I sat on the floor with them and closed my eyes. I wanted the teacher’s hand to hover over my head; I wanted to be Goose.
Then a second bell rang and the kids shouldered their backpacks and thudded out. I was the only one left on the floor.
“Was that a conducting class?”
“I’m just a dad. My kid’s in fourth grade.”