Читать книгу Mommies Behaving Badly - Roz Bailey - Страница 13

My second call from that rainy street corner was to the NYPD, whose dispatcher told me to return to my home and they’d send a car over to take a report. “But the last time I had a car stolen, I had to come into the precinct to make a report,” I said. Having had two other cars stolen, I knew the gig, and I didn’t want this anonymous phone voice to screw things up.

She assured me that the system had changed, which made sense. I mean, you lose your car, and now you’ve got to take the bus into the police station? Is that not the ultimate indignity? I headed back toward the house and called Morgan.

“Your car was stolen!” Morgan gasped. “What kind of Scrooge goes around stealing cars three days before Christmas?”

“An agnostic car thief? Let’s face it, in that profession you don’t get holidays off.”

She let out a raucous laugh. “You seem to be taking this well.”

I stepped around a puddle on the sidewalk. “I figured grace under pressure was preferable to throwing a tantrum in the street, especially with the pavement being so wet and this being the first time I’ve worn this Yves St. Laurent scarf. But I don’t think I’m going to make it in today.” Jack’s car was parked at the airport, and although I could take a cab to the train station I needed to stick around to fill out that useless police report.

“No worries!” Morgan proclaimed. “You just take care of what you need to do with the car and the baby and all.”

“But what about your notes? I mean, if I’m going to get this all done by the first of the year, I need to get going, and you’re flying out tomorrow.”

“Can you do it over the phone?” she suggested. “I can imagine you’re having a terrible day and I hate to push, but I’d love to have a juicy manuscript to send round in the new year.”

“You’ll have it,” I said, stopping short of saying: “Can Do!” I didn’t want Morgan to see me for the total suck-up that I am.

Inside the house, I told Kristen about the car as I pulled off my boots. Upstairs, I reconnected with Morgan on the land line, settled in at the laptop and dove into her notes, blocking out all distractions. I didn’t tell Morgan about moving to Oregon, knowing that it would waylay our conversation for quite awhile, and that it would make it all seem real, which I wasn’t quite ready for yet. Right now it was sort of a fantasy of vengeance, as if to say: “You can’t steal my car, because I’m taking it away—clear across the country! So there! Nanny, nanny foo-foo!”

That night Jack called to let me know that everyone in Dallas was thrilled for him. Of course, he had yet to face the wrath of Numero Uno Laguno and the rest of his team at the New York station, but whatever their reaction, he was outta there, leaving them in his dust.

“You okay?” I asked. He sounded like a kid who’d lost his favorite teddy bear.

“Are you sure about this move? I mean, it’s a big one.”

“And the farthest you’ve ever gone is across the East River,” I teased him. In truth, I wasn’t sure at all, but the thought of moving felt like a leap—some sort of movement—even if that leap was off a cliff.

“I’ll always be a Queens boy at heart.”

“You can take your Queens heart with you, but it’s time to take some chances and shake things up, don’t you think? You don’t want to spend your whole life living in two houses in Queens.”

“I don’t know why not. It’s New York. What’s not to love?”

Car thieves and traffic, pollution and overpopulation… I could have gone on all night but I didn’t want to bash Jack’s homeland. I leaned into the glow of the computer, drawn to photos of towering green Douglas fir trees and royal blue lakes. I’d been researching Oregon, excitedly nesting. “Your roots are showing,” I said. “Besides, this is the path to promotion. You’re going to be a GM someday, and you’ll look back and say that it all really started with this move, the fact that you were willing to go out and take some chances.”

“You’re right. Management is thrilled with me right now.”

I could hear the little zing of pleasure in his voice. Workplace kudos always gave Jack a shot to the libido, turning the power trip into a pleasure trip, and I was happy to come along for the ride.

“I wish you were here,” he said. “We could order room service and fuck all night. This bed is the size of the playground at P.S. 188.”

The thought of a giant-sized bed made me think only of the sleep I could enjoy there—days of sleep—but I didn’t want to burst Jack’s bubble. “Ah, those were the days,” I said, scrolling down a website that showed me average standardized test scores of school districts in the Portland area. “Have you ever heard of Lake Saranac? Or West Green? They’re both south of Portland, commuting distance to the city but good schools.”

“It just seems so random. Like some giant thumbed the globe and jabbed a finger at Oregon.”

“We should go check it out,” I said, thinking aloud. “That will make it real. Eyeball the towns, the traffic patterns, the locals…”

“Find a house,” Jack said, ever the practical one.

The excitement of exploration tugged at me even as I felt the weight of my book deadline holding me back. Must write book… I really couldn’t go anywhere until I hammered out this ending, but I was getting close.

“So book a flight for after Christmas,” Jack said, making it sound all too real. “You probably want to take the girls, ease them into it.”

The girls…I hadn’t really anticipated their reaction to moving. I decided to put that conversation off until after Christmas.

That Christmas I felt full of hope and excitement, sure that in future Christmases our family would be more relaxed, less harried, leaving us more time to eat together and participate in family activities. Although I had no idea what those activities might be out in Oregon, I composed a placid family portrait in my mind: Jack with a fishing rod, me in worn blue jeans that fit at the waist, the kids in yellow slickers and rain boots right out of the Land’s End catalog. Next year we could buy them bikes since they’d have a place to ride them in the wide-open spaces. Next year we could try skiing at Mount Hood, and this summer we’d rent a houseboat or take the girls white-water rafting.

“White-water rafting?” Jack asked dubiously one night as we rattled through plastic bags, trying to assemble as many toys as possible. “Sure. And I’ll grow a beard and start eating tree bark and you can call me Grizzly Jack.”

“Don’t crush the dream, and can you figure out where the batteries go?” I asked, handing him a robot Scout had resigned herself to when I warned her that she couldn’t count on Santa to deliver rocket boots or a hovercraft or any of her other new inventions this year.

By Christmas day our little town house was bursting at the seams under the weight of holiday gifts and decorations. Before we’d even had coffee and cinnamon rolls Scout’s robot had knocked over a vase Becca had made for me in Girl Scouts, and Dylan had cut his foot on a twisty tie wire from a toy package. But I didn’t sweat it, knowing that this would be our last Christmas in cramped quarters. We would probably have to sit for more than an hour in bridge traffic to make Christmas dinner at my parents’ house in New Jersey, but I refused to get annoyed and packed a deck of cards to distract the girls with.

If Christmas Eve with the dysfunctional Salernos hadn’t blown my resolve, nothing would.

Jack and I had stayed up for an hour early this morning, raking over the coals. Jack’s mother had insisted we stay for course after course of verbal abuse and heavy foods—the appetizer, the antipasto, the pasta course, the fish course, the dessert platter. I didn’t let myself get annoyed over Mira’s bossiness or worried that we were keeping the kids up till midnight on Christmas Eve. If this was going to be our last Christmas in New York, I was determined to suck it up and make it a merry one, even if it meant playing the long-suffering daughter-in-law, though Mira nearly undid my resolve with a single platter of shrimp.

“Did you see Grandpa’s fish?” Mira asked the children, pointing them into the den, to a mounted cod on a plaque, a small Santa cap perched on its head. “Isn’t it hilarious? Press the button. Go on, press it!”

Becca followed her instruction and the cod’s mouth opened and closed as it growled out the carol: “We Wish You a Merry Christmas!”

Mira clapped her hands to her cheeks in hilarity. Becca nodded politely, but the rest of us seemed unfazed.

“We’ve got one of these at home, Grandma,” Scout pointed out. “We got it for Daddy last Christmas.”

“Oh, really?” Mira’s smile went slack as she spun toward Scout. With the aura of scotch hanging over her I worried she might fall on my daughter, but Mira righted herself, hands on hips. “And I suppose yours is better?”

Scout blinked, clearly uncomfortable.

Stepping in quickly, I put my hands on Scout’s shoulders reassuringly. “It’s okay, honey.” I pulled Scout against me, as if the need for a hug had just come over me. “The fish is very funny, Mira. That’s why the girls bought it for Jack. We howled when we first saw it in the store.”

“I suppose,” Mira said, but her movements were icy as she turned and headed back to the kitchen, mimicking my daughter. “We have one at home!”

It’s not a competition, I wanted to call after her, but I held my breath, having covered that ground with Mira before, to no avail. Mirabella Salerno wanted to be the best, the prettiest, the funniest, the richest, and she didn’t even have the refinement to mask her quest for self-aggrandizement beneath a more subtle façade. The daughter of Long Island’s self-proclaimed mattress king, Mira’s childhood had been chock-full of material splendor. I’d seen photos of the white baby grand piano, the pony, and the catered birthday parties with magicians, clowns and candy shops on wheels. Since her parents had died before I came into the picture I was never quite sure if these treats were reinforced by genuine love and affection. In either case, the goodies had stopped when the IRS clamped down on her father for nonpayment of income taxes while Mira was in high school. Her “good life” went down the drain and she’d been unable to pull herself back up into the privileged social strata. I sensed that her marriage to Conny had been a concession, with baby Frankie coming along a mere seven months after the ceremony. “He was premature,” Mira always claimed. “You should have seen him—a scrawny thing.” Despite her pride over the grown Frank, who’d revitalized the mattress dynasty, I sensed that Mira had settled when she married a mere transit worker. Over the years Conny had moved into the family business, but he never became the Mattress King.

Although family fortunes dwindled, Mira never lost her sense of entitlement and vanity. According to Mira, she was the best woman golfer at the Little Bay Club, the smartest player in her bridge club, the youngest-looking grandmother in all of Queens. I would agree that her home, a contemporary minimansion right at the edge of Little Neck Bay in Malba, was among the most breathtaking in New York City, though the cavernous great room and cold hardwood floors seemed to cry out that beauty is meaningless in a home without human warmth and compassion. In that way, the house was an accurate reflection of Mira’s personality—a stark, expensive show-place with no tolerance for liveability.

“What do you think my parents are going to do in that house?” Jack had asked when construction was under way some ten years ago. “Did you see the house? It’s huge!”

“Well, I suspect they’ll start by having sex in each room,” I had answered flippantly. “And then they’ll strip off their clothes, run naked down to the water and shout: ‘We’re queen and king of the world!’”

Jack had been sorry he asked, though he laughed despite himself, despite the lingering pain that tugged at him whenever his parents entered his periphery. Apparently it hadn’t been easy growing up in the Salerno household, son of Constantine and Mirabella. I didn’t meet Jack until we were both in our twenties, so I can only go on his stories of the horrors of coming home at age eight and not knowing what to expect. A good day would be when his mother would pour him a glass of milk and remind him to clean his room and get his homework done. A bad day? Well, they ranged from inebriated Mom dropping whole jars of garlic powder into the spaghetti sauce to Mom passed out on the floor, her face bloody and bruised from the fall. It always broke my heart to hear Jack recollect these stories so calmly, to picture the young Jack, close to Rebecca’s age, picking up his mother, dabbing at her wounds with a damp washcloth and helping her back to bed, all the while worried that she might come alive and lash out at him, spewing out accusations and curses in her drunken state. “She wasn’t always that way,” Jack would tell me calmly. “But not knowing, the anxiety of wondering as I walked home from school what kind of mood she’d be in, that was the worst part.”

“And where was your father when this was going on?” I’d asked dumbly.

At work, driving a train for the MTA. Or taking Jack’s older brother Frankie to a “go-see” in Manhattan, since Frank’s success at age seven in a TV commercial for bandages had the whole family hot for Hollywood. Or coaching Frank’s baseball team to victory (though Frank was warned to duck fly balls to protect his money-maker from disfiguration). Or carousing with his buddies down at the Town Tavern. Or ushering the eleven thirty mass each Sunday—one of the great ironies in my mind. Like it’s okay to let your wife drink her life away and your kid to be emotionally abused, but don’t be late for passing the collection plate for Sunday mass.

“My father was very reliable,” Jack always said. “You could set your watch by his coming and going.”

Although, I pointed out, there was a difference between having a set schedule and being reliable and responsible. But that didn’t seem to help Jack undo the damage of the past or relax in his current relationship with his parents, which was fraught with suppressed rage on all sides, dashed with guilt and suppressed anger.

After the singing-cod incident, I settled the kids into a back room with some videos, handheld computer games and a small bowl of crackers. From holidays past I remembered that tonight’s menu was definitely not kid-friendly and had plied the children with chicken fingers, applesauce and macaroni before we left the house. “No crumbs on the floor, please,” I admonished in a low voice, knowing Mira would have me whipped and tied for smuggling a snack onto her plush white wall-to-wall.

“We’ll be careful,” Becca promised, both girls nodding solemnly while Dylan’s runny nose threatened to drip on the carpet. I gave it a quick wipe and returned to the party, where Frank had arrived.

“There she is, Long Island’s next star!” Frank held out a hand to his mother and she twirled into his arms. “Ready to shoot your big commercial, gorgeous doll?”

Feeling as if I was watching a failed dance sequence on American Idol, I dared ask: “Are you doing another mattress ad, Mira?”

She air-kissed her oldest son on each cheek. “Frankie insisted on it. He said sales shot up after the first one aired, so I couldn’t say no, could I?”

“Still a beauty, my Mirabella,” Conny said from his favorite leather easy chair. “You wouldn’t believe the number of people who recognized her after she did that last commercial. One woman came up to her, right at the supermarket. She comes up and says, ‘You have the most exquisite skin.’ Exquisite, she says. And I say, yup. That’s my bride.”

Frankie winked at me over Mira’s shoulder, an indecipherable gesture. Did it mean the sales increase was all a lie, or was that just his way of saying Merry Christmas?

“We’d better watch out or producers from Project Runway are going to be calling. They’ll want you on the show, Ma.”

Talk about buttering the goose!

Mira rolled her eyes. “Get out! What can I say? Success is sweet, though I do wish my sister was here to enjoy all this with us. I do miss her at the holidays.” She turned to me, as if I hadn’t heard it all a million times before. “Died of ladies’ disease. You know.” She gestured awkwardly toward her shoulders, which I had learned was her way of designating breast cancer since she couldn’t bring herself to say the “B” word. According to what I’d gleaned from Jack, his Aunt Angela had contracted breast cancer before the days of selfexamination and regular mammography.

“Very sad. I’m sure you miss her,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic.

“I do,” she cooed, “every day.”

I felt for Mira, really, I did. But it seemed to me that she might focus on getting back the loved one who was still retrievable, the daughter who’d fled this madness years ago. What about Gia? Why didn’t anyone ever mention her—a phone call, a childhood anecdote? “Why would anyone want to bring her up?” Jack would counter when I asked about his sister. “She didn’t get along with Ma at all.”

Was that any reason to banish the poor girl from the family?

Frankie rubbed his pudgy hands together. “What delicious morsels have you concocted this Christmas, Ma?”

Thank God for Fat Frankie, able to change the subject if it meant a segue to food.

“Shrimp, anyone?” Mira set the platter of pink curls down on the coffee table, and Jack leaned forward to snatch one and dip it in sauce.

“Delicious, Mom,” he said, and I realized the poor man probably hadn’t eaten since breakfast, as I’d had him locked in the basement closet for most of the afternoon, assembling a tricycle for Dylan. He reached for another, but his mother smacked his hand away from the platter.

“Leave some for Frankie,” Mira snapped. “It’s his favorite.”

“I like shrimp, too.”

“No, you don’t,” his mother retorted tartly. “Remember when you spit it into your napkin at Aunt Lucia’s anniversary?”

“I was like, five, then.”

“Still, it never agreed with you.”

“Frankie is the one who always loved shrimp,” Conny added, launching into the old family yarn as if we hadn’t heard it a hundred times. “I remember when he was really little, just a tiny thing. Most kids wouldn’t go near seafood, but there was Frankie, powering it down, cocktail sauce and all—the whole nine yards.” He pointed the remote at the fireplace and a gas flame burst over the fake logs.

I felt the temperature rising in the overheated room. Or maybe that was the heat of my anger.

“Ma, I love shrimp,” Jack insisted.

“Jack, please. Don’t start with me.”

“I’m just saying, I like it.” He reached for the platter and grabbed two pieces quickly, on alert for a second slap.

Mira sucked her teeth in disdain. “I said save some for your brother. You never listen. Some things never change.” With a sigh, she picked up the platter and moved it to the piano, where Frankie was leaning with a tall glass of Dewars and water, mostly Dewars. “Shrimp, Frankie?”

“Thanks, Mommy.” He dipped into the red sauce with a coy smile.

Ooh, how I hated the way Frank still called her “Mommy,” and the way they showered him with adulation while Jack received sloppy seconds. I wanted to overturn the platter, dump the cocktail sauce in Frankie’s lap, or, better yet, smear it into Mira’s white carpeting with the slick soles of my designer heels.

But no. I clenched a handful of Mira’s ivory velvet pillow and sucked in a cleansing breath. No, I would not be moved to physical violence by shrimp. The shrimp incident was just the latest in a lifetime of unfairness and abuse that Jack had endured. If he could survive an alcoholic mother, a neglectful father and a prodigal brother, surely I could endure a few social irritations to keep the peace.

Endure, yes. Forgive? That was another story. Watching the way Jack’s parents mowed over him on Christmas Eve, I coddled our secret, vengefully glad that we were leaving them behind and sure that they’d miss us, miss having Jack to kick around, miss manipulating the grandkids. Ha! Wouldn’t they be sorry when they no longer had Jack as their scapegoat.

I pictured future Christmases with just the three of them huddled by the fire, the toothless grins of Mira and Conny gloating as Frank stuffed his mouth with shrimp, shrimp tails littering the floor and red sauce staining Frankie’s polo shirt covering his growing belly.

Ironically, this morbid fantasy brought me little consolation, knowing that family members had faded into obscurity, never to be discussed again. After all, Jack’s older sister Gia now worked for a technologies firm somewhere in California—where, no one was sure, as they’d “lost touch,” as Jack put it, soon after Gia graduated from high school.

“Promise me you will never give up on any of our children,” I told Jack the few times we’d discussed his missing sister.

“Of course not!” He always seemed indignant that I’d lump him in with his dysfunctional family. “Anyway, they didn’t really give up on her. More like they drove her away.”

“The same thing, or worse,” I said, hoping he understood how important it was to keep in touch with our children and let them bond among themselves.

Oddly enough, when I married Jack I thought I was saving him from his dysfunctional family, that I was the one person who could bring stability and love to his rocky world. When I had expressed this theory to my friends, they were quick to point out that I was attracted to Jack because he was a tormented soul.

“You like him because of his fucked-up childhood,” Gracie told me. “There’s something sad and dangerous there, the bad boy on the edge of losing it, the orphan child to comfort.”

“Ridiculous!” I insisted.

“Totally true,” Harrison corrected me. “If his life weren’t so darned bad, you wouldn’t like him so darned much. Bad boys are hot, I tell, you! Hot, hot, hot!”

I vehemently denied the bad-boy attraction, though in my heart I knew there was a scintilla of truth to it. Certainly, Jack’s Lost Boy quality had some appeal for me, but I was equally attracted to his sensitive side and the vulnerability he kept hidden from his family. I didn’t want his dysfunctional family, but I was very interested in the boy who had survived those dysfunctions.

On Christmas Day we went to my parents’ house in Maplewood, New Jersey, where all seven of the grandchildren were given free reign over Mimi and Papa’s house. For the first time in weeks I felt free to enjoy a drink and adult conversation. As I laughed with my sister and brother over some old family photos, I felt relieved that none of us had slipped into self-inflicted alienation in some distant state.

“Another Christmas and still no sign of Sis?” Amber asked. “That’s just fried.”

When Jack and I were in the throes of wedding preparations word about his “missing” sister had slipped out, and though my sister and I had fought like demons through childhood we suddenly seemed to be shining examples of sisterhood.

“Well, after last night I’m beginning to think Gia had the right idea.” When she shot me a curious look, I just shook my head. “Don’t ask. It’s a wonder Jack survived those people.”

Amber put her empty glass on the end table and stretched like a cat on my mother’s jade green sofa. Although she’s got two kids and a career as a full-time mommy in New Jersey, she hasn’t lost the ability to relax.

“The Salernos are a tough bunch. Compared to Jack and Frankie, you and I look like the Olsen twins.”

I held up my hand with a laugh. “Ooh! Can I be Mary-Kate?”

My brother Sam popped into the living room to deliver a fresh batch of whiskey sours and tease us about abandoning our children.

“Don’t get up,” he told Amber, who was prone on the couch. “I’ll just start an IV line and drip this one in for you.”

She sat up and reached for the drink. “Smart-ass. Be nice to me or I’ll go off to California or Alaska, never to be seen again.”

I smiled, feeling the glow of Christmas and sibling affection.

He pointed toward the family room. “As long as you take those two screaming monsters with you.”

I felt a twinge of emotion, knowing I’d be the one moving off to a distant state soon, though my departure wasn’t like Gia’s. There’d be family visits and phone calls and e-mails. I closed my eyes, picturing a house with a guestroom big enough to put up Amber or Sam and their families when they came to visit.

“How are the kids doing in there?” Amber asked.

Sam lifted his drink to his lips. “Tyler just bit Scout. Didn’t break the skin, and she did punch him first. Otherwise, it’s one big love fest.”

The love fest grew louder when the food started coming out of my parents’ huge refrigerator. Shrimp was not served, but my father had smoothed sour cream to concoct a fish shape out of layers of caviar, hard-boiled egg and red onion. It was delicious, and although caviar has always been a favorite of mine, Jack was allowed to eat as much as he wanted.