An American Love Story (23 page)

She wanted to hold out her arms to take her baby to her breast, but her arms felt leaden and her baby was a young woman now, a confidante. She took a drag of her cigarette and realized there was no ashtray in Nina’s room, not even as a souvenir. The ash at her cigarette’s tip was growing longer. She couldn’t make a mess on Nina’s pretty carpet. These are the tiny ridiculous things that come to mind in the middle of violence and tragedy. Laura turned and walked out of Nina’s room.

Nina sat there and felt her heart beating; beat, beat; surprised it was still functioning. All these years, all her life, her efforts had done nothing. The animal Supreme Court had been right, and now her destiny was apparent to everyone. She was a failure. They were all failures, and so was their life. She hated her mother for what she had become, and her father for his omissions, and Susan
Josephs, whoever she was, just for being there. If her parents had loved each other, if their life had been normal, there would have been no Susan Josephs. The light in her room was so bright it was beginning to make black zigzags in front of her eyes. She turned it off.

She took her empty dinner plate from underneath the bed and brought it into the kitchen, rinsed it, and placed it neatly into the dishwasher. The apartment seemed very large and filled with shadows. When she was gone it would be emptier still, and they might miss her. Right now all she wanted to do was sleep forever. She tiptoed silently out into the living room, past the lighted den where her mother, head back, was flung on the couch like an armature, listening to sad music, lost in her own world. Nina continued unseen into her mother’s bedroom.

Of course she knew where the pills were. She took the bottle that said
Take one at night
, and slipped it into her pocket. Then she returned to her own bedroom and shut the door.

She wondered how many you had to take in order to die. She brought a glass of water from the bathroom to her bedside table along with the pills and started swallowing them. They tasted bitter, and she had always hated taking pills. Nevertheless, she persisted. After she had finished half the bottle she was starting to gag. If one at night was enough to make her mother look like a dead woman, surely as many as she had just taken would make her a real one.

Not a dead woman, a dead girl. She would never grow up.

And that was just fine, she didn’t want to.

Nina lay on top of her still-made bed in her clothes and thought about ice-skating. She had seen a photograph once of the lake outside their apartment building, in Central Park, in 1880. Nothing was there but The Dakota, and trees, and families skating on the ice. There were men and women and children, the grown-ups in long coats, the children still in short ones, everyone having a good time. Those were simpler days; there was less to do. The air was clean, and people read, and told stories, and sometimes sang at parties. There was no television. She didn’t think there was any Hollywood. She could not, in her wildest imagination, picture
herself and her father and mother all ice-skating on a frozen lake together on a weekend afternoon.

But of course some of those people were probably miserable too. Scratch the surface of a life and you never know what you’ll find. She couldn’t move anymore. She imagined music playing and herself skimming and twirling on the ice. It was a peaceful image. Cold air came up from the ice and then there was nothing at all.

In the morning Edward came to the apartment to fetch Nina to go bicycle riding in the park as they had planned. He rang the bell and nobody answered. Finally, instead of Nina, who was always eager and ready, opening the door, Laura did. She looked terrible.

“I have a hangover,” Laura said. “If you want coffee you’ll have to make your own. We have no help on weekends now that my husband has decided to economize.”

“That’s all right,” Edward said. “I had some at home. Where’s Nina?”

Laura looked blank.

“Nina!” he called. There was no answer. “Nina?” She had never been late in her life. He went to her bedroom and knocked on the door. “Nina? You’re not still asleep? Nina?” He pushed the door, gently, not to intrude. It opened. He looked in cheerfully, expecting her to come bounding out. Then he saw her.

She was lying on the bed fully clothed and she didn’t seem to be breathing at all.

The white place was a hospital, with footsteps and hospital noises. The whiteness was the light through her closed eyelids. Her throat hurt terribly and there were things attached to her. She could hear people murmuring in the near distance, and she pretended to be still asleep so she could hear what they were saying about her. A voice she didn’t know said: “She’s coming around.” Nina waited to hear if they said anything else, but she was too sleepy to wait, and she drifted off, surprised she wasn’t dead and wondering what miracle had happened to save her.

Later, a doctor came and asked her what had happened. He
didn’t seem to be accusing her of anything, but that was probably a trap.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Nina lied. “I really needed some sleep so I borrowed some of my mom’s pills.”

“How many did you take?”

“Just to go to sleep,” Nina said mildly.

“Four? Six? Ten?”

She looked at him as if she didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about. She knew how to do that look because she had seen it on her father. Now she was beginning to understand what it meant, that it could cover any number of things, like a cake full of snakes.

“Why would you want to do that without asking?” the doctor said.

Cake full of snakes, Nina thought.

“Wouldn’t it have been better to tell your mother?”

“She was asleep,” Nina said.

When they let her go home Laura cried. She kept sobbing and hugging Nina, alternately, and saying how guilty she felt. “Oh, my dearest child, I’m so upset. If I hadn’t had those pills around …”

But you always will, Nina thought.

“You must never, never do that again.”

I guess I won’t, Nina thought. She nodded.

“Say you won’t. Promise.”

“I won’t do it again.”

“We mustn’t tell your father. He’ll never forgive me. I’ll never forgive myself.” Nina wished her mother would stop crying. “And your father would be so disappointed in you,” Laura went on. “He thinks so highly of you. He would never understand why you did a crazy thing like that.”

“I wouldn’t want to tell him either,” Nina said. “We’ll keep it our secret.”

Of course she would never tell. She would never want her father to know that his “perfect” daughter had done something so imperfect as try to commit suicide just because everything she had tried to believe in all of her life had turned out to be a lie.

15

1975—SEATTLE

I
t was Bambi’s wedding day, and she had never been so happy in her life. Bambi Green and Simon Green, together forever. Their friends at college had made jokes: Why get married when you can just live together? You don’t even have to change your name.

It had never occurred to either of them not to get married after they graduated. Their lovemaking, consummated at last when they were finally away from home, was as powerful as she had expected it to be. They had the same dreams for the future, the same needs, the same plans. And above all, they were in love.

It had turned out that Simon’s parents could deny their brilliant boy nothing. They had paid his tuition, but Simon had insisted on working at his part-time job anyway, and persuaded them to lend him the money to start him in his new business venture after graduation; his longed-for coffeehouse, Simon Sez. He presented them with a very good business prospectus he had put together with two partners
he had met at school. Simon’s parents were not rich people, but they were willing to do whatever they could. His two partners’ parents were of course contributing too. And Bambi had talked her parents into investing as their wedding present. She and Simon intended to be equals in everything.

Simon’s mother never quite forgave Bambi for changing her son’s destiny, but Bambi ignored her wounded little looks.

Their last year at college, while Simon was working long hours finding the right place for the coffeehouse and putting it together, Bambi was writing. She had poems and brief dramatic sketches prepared for her appearances under the pink spotlight. There would be other people performing too—new comics trying out their material, guitar players, singers—anyone who wanted to be discovered, but she would be the star.

Simon Sez was in Seattle, near the university. Simon had given up his plan to combine the coffeehouse with a bookstore as too complicated economically; instead it would be a gathering place. It was very small and cozy, and inside it looked like a library, with dark wooden walls, and bookshelves filled with secondhand paperback books he had bought for a nickel apiece, knowing people would borrow them and not return them even though he had placed a sign-out book near the door. Tables were jammed together, with room for him to walk around and be the jovial host. Their little apartment was only a block away, waiting for them. They were not even going to bother with a honeymoon right now, much too excited to get on with their project.

But all that was tomorrow, and today was Bambi’s wedding day, a day she knew she would remember all her life. Her wedding dress was beautiful; a palest ecru lace shift she had insisted on buying in a vintage-clothing store. (Her mother had been annoyed about that, naturally. She had no style.) Her long hair was loose and flowing, with a crown of fresh early summer flowers holding her veil. The sweet tones of a flute player would accompany her walk down the aisle.

She and Simon had written their own vows. The minister was twenty-eight and had sideburns. They were being married in the garden of Bambi’s home, where she had had her Sweet Sixteen
party. How long ago that seemed, and what a baby she had been! She thought about her little fears of not being popular, and her joy when she found she was. She was going to be an independent career woman from now on, so far beyond silly things.

Simon Sez would be their kingdom—the “magical kingdom” of their childhood fantasy—and if anyone displeased her she would just throw him out.

She was in her bedroom putting the finishing touches on her wedding makeup when Simon sneaked in. He looked so handsome her heart turned over. Yes, a heart could do that, she believed it now.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Bambi said. “It’s bad luck.”

“You look so gorgeous,” he said. He tried to put his arms around her.

“Stop,” she said, giggling.

“I’m the luckiest man in the world,” he said.

“I know it.”

He took a step back and looked at her, his eyes filled with wonder. “I can’t believe I’m not even nervous.”

“Well, I want to be nervous,” Bambi said, “So go back outside and then you can pretend you never saw me before.”

“I love you,” he whispered, and left.

Had anyone ever been as happy as she was?