Читать книгу Heather, The Totality - Matthew Weiner - Страница 8

TWO

MARK’S LIFE DIDN’T CHANGE much when Heather came along. At first there was little for him to do. Karen took care of everything and it made sense since he couldn’t really feed the baby, preferred not to change diapers and was at work when all of the bathing and strolling was done. But eventually, he found that Karen and Heather lived as a closed unit and he was on the outside. His attempts to participate were thwarted by his ignorance and it was true that it was always easier for Karen to do things herself than to watch him struggle with dressing the toddler or loading the bag for a trip to the park.

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He wasn’t angry with Karen but with himself, taking his relegation to observer as an extension of flaws that were now equally apparent at the office. In the halls of finance, Mark had never been able to make himself essential. Although his work was adequate and he made more money than he had ever dreamed, he witnessed a string of undeserving men move past him with skills far more social than financial, and he gave up the thought that he would ever run the department or even fly on the company jet.

Heather was a beautiful baby. Her blonde hair would eventually darken but she had large blue eyes and she smiled as early as four weeks, often clapping her little fat hands with delight. Karen fitted her in French knits and found that although she was a girl, light blue suited her coloring and her temperament. Heather sought out others’ eyes and won over even the most downbeat New Yorkers with her squeals and laughter.

She was so beautiful that when she would inevitably become the center of attention in a park or a store, her newly won friends would look at Karen, or Mark and Karen together, and be unable to hide their surprise that this child belonged to these people. Heather’s parents were never insulted but shrugged with humble pride, both of them having concluded independently, though they never shared it with each other, that their inner selves had been expressed through their beautiful biological creation. Mark even mused to Karen that perhaps they were “so good at making kids,” maybe they should have another.

As much as Karen loved her parents and considered her childhood in leafy suburban DC idyllic, she remembered most of those years as lonely. She always wanted a sibling and wondered, because her Mother was obsessed with birth control, explaining it to her before she even understood what it was, if she was an accident. For a while she had an imaginary brother ten years older who would drive her places like the ice cream store and ballet practice, but it only took a sleepover or a ride home from school with another family for her to remember that she was lucky not to be fighting over everything in her house.

On the other hand, not fighting for anything might’ve been a liability. Karen was by nature easily controlled by other people and tentative about risks. She was never the first one to dive into the pool but preferred to watch a few people try it. Also, her Mother went back to school for library science when she was a toddler, and her Father, a patent attorney, was unable to take on all of the housekeeping and parenting duties that lapsed. He was in love with his work, frequently appropriating his clients’ creativity as his own. He had fantasies of invention and would tinker but for the most part enjoyed having the neighbors see him walking in and out of the house with rolled-up blueprints under his arm, schematic drawings of electrical and chemical structures beyond his comprehension.

By the time her Mother got a job running the Clarksburg Bookmobile, Karen was out of daycare and spent so many afternoons tucked in a corner watching her Mother read to children that she held her books facing an imaginary audience until she was in second grade. When spending cuts threatened to shutter the bookmobile, the town passed a referendum of support and suddenly it wasn’t just the kids who waved to her Mother and called her by her first name.

Karen hated sharing her and spending so much time with the babysitter, who was really the cleaning woman, and eventually took up any activity that kept her late at school. By junior high, she had been ignored into full self-reliance and established a routine of locking herself in her room after school with a portable TV where she could escape to the saturated worlds of romance while having access to her body.

Karen told Mark she didn’t want another child. It wouldn’t be fair to Heather. In fact, Karen knew the minute Heather was born that she would give her uninterrupted attention and care for as long as possible. She never worried that she was justifying her lack of interest in a career or her reliance on Mark’s success, because Heather was not an average child. Perhaps if Karen had shown the spark and magic that Heather did, her Mother would’ve never gone back to school.

As Heather grew into a little girl, her beauty became more pronounced but somehow secondary to her charm and intelligence and, most notably, a complex empathy that could be profound. “Why are you crying?” she said at five years old from her stroller to a Woman on the subway who was not crying and who corrected her politely. Heather continued, “You shouldn’t be sad even if your bags are heavy. I can carry one.” The Woman then laughed nervously and sat down next to Karen as she said she could handle her things, but thank you. Karen lightly scolded her child to mind her own business and handed her a sippy cup.

The Woman was looking up, pretending to read the ads, as Heather, still staring, removed the cup from her lips and said, “Everybody riding on the train acts like they’re alone, but they’re not.” At that point the Woman burst into tears. Karen didn’t know what to do and her search for a tissue became simply rubbing the woman’s shoulder as she sobbed and awkwardly smiled, embarrassed. Heather watched both of them and by 77th Street when they had to get off, she said bye-bye and the Woman, now composed, looked at Karen and said that she must be the best mother in the world. Karen deferred the credit to her child and although it looked like modesty, she knew that Heather did things like this all the time and that she was somehow here on earth to make people feel better.

For Karen there was plenty to do every day even after Heather began a full day of school. There was exercise and shopping, not a lot of housework that wasn’t done by someone else, activities and enrichments to discover and investigate, nutritious meals and thoughtful entertainment to be planned, and of course, documenting the daily wonder of Heather could never be ignored. Karen made scrapbooks, collages on the computer and with some effort, little movies that she could share on the Internet. She worried at first that she was bragging in some way, but when she saw that everyone responded to her daughter the way she did, she knew that she was actually brightening people’s day and that maybe they, like her, were learning so much about themselves as they watched Heather grow.

In the communities she visited online, she found so many like-minded women and got such encouragement that any worry was quickly abated either by a veteran mom or an actual expert. This meant that Karen spent less time around other people in general, but she was always open to interacting, and from the beginning, whether they were strolling in the park or swimming at the club or eventually playing tennis, Heather made Karen game for sitting down and having a snack with anyone.

The Breakstone family, small as it was, used more than its share of resources and Mark was proud that he was able to provide them with a beautiful apartment. He particularly liked Karen’s taste for satin velvet, which was used sparingly but seemed directly aimed at him. They had a velvet headboard on their bed and a suite in the living room featuring an armchair of the same that he favored on his increasingly sleepless nights, preferring it to his private paneled study where the furniture was cold leather. The living room chair was red but appeared brown in the dark and he would pour a few fingers of scotch in the best glass and be able to either doze off or at least not be nervous about seeing the sunrise or how the long night would make his workday unbearable.

One late night while Mark was preparing for his chair he realized that he could look in on Heather, now seven, while she slept. He was never alone with his daughter and felt his wife’s resentment when he would sit down at the dinner table and say, “How are my girls today?” He had arrived at the phrase because when he would talk to Heather directly, Karen would always answer for her or insinuate herself into the conversation. Even when Heather was sick, his “How are you feeling, piglet?” was answered by Karen. “She’s better, thank God” or “She had a crappy day.” So that night, when he found himself standing in her room staring at her, he felt guilty and strange when she opened her eyes and smiled at him. He couldn’t explain why he was there so he just sat on the bed and stroked her hair. He finally said, “Why are you up?” and she said, “Because I can’t sleep. I must be like you.” He brushed her forehead and gave her a kiss on the cheek and said, “Where do you want to go on vacation? We can go anywhere.” And Heather said, “Wherever you are, Daddy.”