Any Place I Hang My Hat (27 page)

“Do you have any idea why she was like this?”

“None,” she said softly. “It’s something I’ve never stopped thinking about. Before she ran off she was seeing a psychologist. When all was said and done, the psychologist was as shocked as we were. I mean, Phyllis was rebellious, but those were the years for it. Vietnam, what have you. Nice girls her age, Brooklyn girls, were using pot and some sort of mushrooms with hallucinogenic properties. And every other word out of their mouths was f-u-c-k. But those girls wound up buying prom dresses, or at least going off to college. It was a stage.” She took off her silver cuff, set it on a side table next to the love seat, and massaged her wrist. “Runaway girls often ran away for only a day or two. That’s what everyone said. Even if it lasted longer, they eventually reached out for their families. But if the detective agency hadn’t tracked her down, I honestly don’t know if we ever would have heard from her.”

Sitting right beside someone, it’s awkward to try to look her in the eye all the time because you’re practically nose to nose. I’d gotten fed up looking at the hibiscus trees and the golf course just beyond them. So while Rose was gazing down at her long-fingered hands, I checked out the house. It was one of those town house affairs without defined rooms. On one side of the living room in which we were sitting was a TV-library-game room. In the center of it, a chessboard set up on a square table. On the other side of us was a dining area that opened onto a kitchen. It was the sort of place that would be good for a couple who couldn’t bear to be out of sight of each other. Or as a sitcom set, so the camera could dolly along from room to room to room.

“You were talking about calling your daughter Véronique,” I prompted her.

“We didn’t even know she had changed her name. Well, we knew about Moscowitz to Morris. She called us periodically, a This is to let you know I’m alive phone call. But she didn’t want to see us. We thought maybe she’d had an accident and something awful had happened to her face, or that she’d had plastic surgery so she couldn’t be found. We didn’t know.

“But then she called and asked us if we’d fly out to New Mexico. Santa Fe. She was getting married. Selwyn and I were on extensions, and he was saying, ‘Of course we’ll be there,’ and sounded so thrilled. So I didn’t say what I wanted to say, Let me think about it. Then she was on to how her name was now Véronique Morris and if we were going to reconcile, we could never refer to her as Phyllis. And our names had to be Morris when we were there. So from that time on, even after she walked out on Preston and met Ira, we always called her Véronique to her face. But I think of her as Phyllis.”

“Did you ask her why she chose that particular name?”

“No. She’s not someone who explains very much. When we were flying out to Santa Fe, I thought maybe Preston was some sort of socialite and that she felt the name Phyllis was too déclassé for him and Moscowitz too Jewish. He turned out to be a time-share salesman. Nice, ordinary. Good-looking, but the farthest thing from a jet-setter you can imagine.”

“Does Ira think your last name is Morris?”

“No. He’s a very nice man, but I’m always uncomfortable with him. I know he must be thinking, What’s wrong with her that she named her daughter Véronique Moscowitz?”

“So the name Phyllis is a secret?”

“I suppose. I don’t see her often. And I really don’t see her alone, without Ira or the boys. Ira calls her Véronique. I usually don’t call her anything, but when I do it’s Véronique, and she’s never corrected me.” She stood, went to the cabinet, and took out the framed photographs she’d stashed away. “I’ll show you Nicholas and Ryan.”

About half an hour later, when I was leaving, she asked if I was going to contact Phyllis. I told her I still didn’t know.

“Does she know I’m here?” I asked.

“No.” Then she said, “It would be nice if you and I could see each other again.”

She walked me outside to my rented car. Neither of us could figure out how to say goodbye, so we wound up doing one of those fast cheek-to-cheek air kisses. I got into the car and kept the door open for a minute, waiting for the hot blast from the air conditioner to cool. Rose turned to go back indoors, but then came right up to the door. “We should keep in touch.”

“I hope we will,” I told her.

“Call me whenever you want to come down. I’ll pay your airfare. You can stay here. If you’d be more comfortable, I’ll be happy to take care of a hotel room.”

I reached out, took her hand, and gave it an affectionate squeeze. Probably even more than affectionate. My grandmother squeezed back.

HAVING SPENT MY first full day back in New York writing about where the Democratic presidential candidates stood on the diminished ozone layer and global warming, I was no doubt oversensitive to the chill of what was supposed to be a spring evening. The air was wet and bitter, waiting for snow that would not appear so late in April. But winter was hanging on and would not give in to spring.

I stuck my hands into the deep pockets of a cashmere sweater I’d had since 1990. It was thick and beautifully cable-stitched, though the sleeves were too long; it was also orange. The girl at Ivey who had gotten it as a birthday gift proclaimed she looked hideous in orange. That was why she was giving it to me. Since only five or six people on the entire planet actually looked good in orange, I was walking up Madison Avenue in full knowledge of how less-than-lovely I appeared but how wonderful I felt in cashmere.

“Do you remember who gave me this sweater?” I asked Tatty.

“Suzy Dalton. Don’t ever ask me Do you remember? when it comes to clothes. You know I always remember.” It hadn’t been easy to get Tatty to go for a walk. The only way to get her to move was to promenade past the windows of expensive stores. She was not fond of the outdoors, though she was enthusiastic about weather because changes in climate required changes of wardrobe. “Amy, did you honestly think you could distract me, talking about a sweater?”

“I was the one who was telling you all about Rose Moscowitz,” I replied. “What’s in it for me to distract you? Did you ever consider that the reason you get distracted is that you’re eminently distractible?”

“No, I have not considered.” At that moment, her eyes were looking right, at a display of cane handbags with leather trim that seemed to have been inspired by the suitcases in The Grapes of Wrath. This particular homage to the migrant worker started at about five hundred dollars per. “And while we’re on the topic of considering,” she went on, “have you ever considered that I am not a typical In Depth reader?”

“Tatty, that is so obvious it’s beyond consideration.”

“Then how come all you’re giving me is facts? Facts, and all that boring archaeology or anthropology about the different places that different kinds of Jews move to in Florida. If you’re not in the mood to talk about the human drama of meeting a grandmother for the first time, you could at least tell me about what you were thinking.” I picked up my pace and got her past a scented soap/potpourri store and across the street before she slowed again, this time to study an array of antique watches. “Give me one minute,” she said. “I’ve never seen some of these pieces before.”

I buttoned the sweater and lifted its shawl collar higher around my neck. I should have been working on a Monday night. The magazine closed Tuesday and I was only half through with my article. I’d done a pretty complete outline on the plane coming back, so at least I knew what I was going to write and in what order I’d write it. But by five in the afternoon, I was worn out, not so much from the work, but from the effort of keeping Rose, my mother, my half brothers—to say nothing about John—out of my consciousness. I’d called Tatty, then walked up to her apartment to take her for an airing.

“Are you ready for my thoughts and the human drama of it all?” I inquired. “Or are you going to stand in front of those watches for half an hour observing the march of time?” She began walking again, and with her long legs, it was at a fairly good clip. “Tatty, it’s not that I’m avoiding telling you what I felt meeting Rose. When I made the date with her, I didn’t think I’d feel anything. It was just a logical first step to see her, before the big emotional onslaught of meeting or even seeing my mother. I figured that if Rose wasn’t senile or a vicious bitch, I could probably get some insight that could help me if and when I decided to approach my mother.” I took a deep breath. The air was so cold I could feel it flow through my nostrils and make the plunge down into my lungs. I blew it out through my mouth and was disappointed not to see a frosty mist. “If I do decide to see her, I wonder …”

“What? You wonder what?”

“Would you please give me time to finish a sentence? I wonder if she’ll look like a total stranger—okay, a total stranger I’ve seen a couple of pictures of. But I’ve read about a phenomenon called infant amnesia, that for some neurological or developmental reason, you lose all memories of what happened to you as a baby.”

“Never heard of it,” Tatty declared.

This was not a shock. “So I’m wondering, if I do see her, will it be an emotionally neutral experience? Or will I get this sudden rush of memories? All the Mommy business. You know, like her saying This is your nose, this is Mommy’s nose or I love you or Shut up or I’ll beat the crap out of you?”

“I wish I could tell you, Aimée.”

“I keep thinking about that old saw, that you can’t put back the genie once you open the bottle. Maybe I should stop now. What if she turns out to be a moral monster? Or something worse?”

“Like what?” She looked intrigued.

“I don’t know. There are any number of appalling possibilities. I have to give you credit, Tatty. You were the one to tell me to leave well enough alone.”

“It’s amazing how you can be so smart and so dumb at the same time.” She had been saying that on and off since our second week at Ivey. “The genie is already out of the lamp or bottle or whatever.” She blew on her hands, then stuck them into the pockets of her vest. Sheared mink. Dyed dark blue. “As a matter of fact, the genie got out the minute you told Rose your name and that she could check you out at In Depth and Ivey and every place else you ever were for more than two seconds, you fool. Au revoir, Monsieur Genie, ’allo Véronique. Okay, there’s no law saying you have to go and meet your mother. But what if she comes to you? And what about this nouvelle grand-mére? Nouveau? Isn’t it odd that I think it’s nouveau? Do you think you want anything to do with her?”

“Yes. It’s kind of weird, because she seems like a tight-ass. But I found her thoughtful, honest—well, I guess she’s honest. Maybe I was taken in. But no, I don’t think so. For all that control, she has emotional depth. Clearly, she was in love with her husband and that’s a terrible loss for her, still. And she loves her grandsons.”

“Ugh, half brothers!” Tatty exclaimed. “What if you reconcile with your mother and have to be nice to them, too? What could you do except take them to the Planetarium? Boys are so unknowable between ten and fifteen. Pimples, braces, and constant useless erections.”

“To continue,” I said. “Even though Rose is a very restrained person, I think a lot of that restraint is centered around what happened with her daughter. The trauma of it. You know, I told her that she and I had something in common: Phyllis abandoned us both. But at the same time, I couldn’t stop wondering what was so horrible about Rose and her husband that would make a sixteen-year-old girl take off and not get back in touch. Not for a few days. For years.”

Tatty stopped in front of a window, but didn’t look in. “Maybe nothing was wrong with them,” she said. “Did you ever think that? Maybe Phyllis-Véronique was one selfish, hostile piece of shit. Maybe the really amazing thing is that her mother is still willing to have anything to do with her.” Her back was toward the store window. She glanced over her shoulder for an instant at the full-sleeved white blouses and beribboned dirndl skirts for Upper East Side peasants, and blew up her cheeks in an about-to-vomit gesture. “Come on, A. Phyllis-Véronique is a type. You know, all those kids we knew when we were fourteen whose character wasn’t forming but was already in cement. All right, some were sweeties for life. But some were bad to the bone. That’s your mother.”

Actually, I was thinking I was disappointed Tatty didn’t like the skirts and vests, because I thought they were pretty great. I once told her I thought she was part of a cabal that met quarterly to decide what was chic and what ought to be sneered at. And whom. Some of what she and her fellow chic raved about was incomprehensible to me: coats that looked like Klan robes, hobo bags that looked like portable potties.

“Now you’re the one looking in windows,” she announced, in a voice half of Madison Avenue could hear. “You’re sooo distractible!”

“Shush, Tatty.”

She lowered her volume slightly. “Not only that, look at what you’re looking at. I bet you don’t know why. I know. Because you were poor and your grandmother could only buy you the little box, with ten crayons. Anything in those kindergarten colors is irresistible to you. As I was saying, Phyllis-Véronique was the worst. Walking out on you, not coming back, not ever trying to get in touch.” I attempted to interrupt her but she was on a roll. “Compare her to Grandma Lil and Chicky.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They were loyal,” she said. “I, for one, completely adored Grandma Lil, even though she was a perpetual embarrassment to you. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have been embarrassed, even though you pretended you weren’t.”

“Lay off, Tatty. I wasn’t embarrassed.”

“Please. That time she told me, ‘Tatiana, I know it’s not classy to call someone classy, but you, my dear, have class.’ You wanted to die!” I nodded. Old friends have unfortunately long memories. “Did Lil want to take care of a ten-month-old baby?”

“I guess not. No. But she did.”

“That is just my point. Lil was responsible. She probably even loved you in her own self-centered, clueless way. Even if she didn’t, she did what was right. She stuck by you. And look at Chicky. He got out of jail and what was the first thing he did? Took care of you. How many—pardon me—fuckups like him in their twenties get out of jail and only want to do the right thing for a little kid?”