Every Day (16 page)

“What’s
horrible?” I need to know what she knows.

“What you
did!”

“What
did I do?”

“You slept with that
man.
Which means you’re a
slut
. That’s what a
slut
does, Mom.”

She takes no delight in assigning me this term, although I do note her pride in knowing it. It’s the pride one takes in a new authority, one that has been earned.

I wait a minute, for our minds to leap over details.

“Do you know who the man is?”

“Yes, I
know
who the man
is,”
she spits, in vicious mimicry. “He’s Isaac’s dad, and because of him, my dad has to stay in a hotel and Isaac isn’t going to live here anymore.”

It is frightening to me that she doesn’t think to cry as she announces these things, that she’s resigned to them. I keep calm for her, and for Daisy, who’s begging Jane, arms outstretched, for more relief from the floor.

“Where is Isaac going to live?” I ask.

“Like you care!” she shouts, at the same time shielding Daisy’s ears from the volume.

“I do care, Jane. Now tell me where he’s gone.”

“He went to stay with a guy from camp, another counselor. He says he doesn’t want to see you anymore.”

“Do you know the counselor’s name?”

“Of course I know his name. I have to know his name. He’s my counselor! But why should I tell
you?
You decided to go live with someone else too. Why shouldn’t Isaac?”

“I was staying at Grandma’s, Jane,” I say, “except for one night when I didn’t. When I was a slut, as you would say.”

“Only one night? Did he dump you too?”

I know who’s talking here. It’s not my daughter. It’s Adrienne. I have never been able to understand how a mouthy kid like Adrienne could be the product of a dullard like Ted and the heretofore subtle and respectable Kirsten.

“Would you care to tell me anything else that Adrienne has decided about me?”

She does what any eight-year-old forty-year-old would do in response to a threat. She tromps upstairs and slams her door behind her. Daisy howls.

I pick her up and offer standard solace: “It’s all right. Jane’s just mad at Mommy.”

“Yes,” Daisy sobs.

We end up at Jane’s door, gently knocking, getting obstinate silence from within. I ply her with questions:

“Did Daddy say where he’d be tonight?”

“Should I try him over at Kirsten’s?”

“Are you all right?”

“Do you want some dinner?”

“Can I come in?”

Then I hear the weeping. Deep sniffs, a high, faint whine in between. And I just barge. I’m allowed. I’m her mother. I’m allowed to do what I’ve always done to help her through whatever. I say this to Jane.

“But you
did
it!” she moans. “You made all of us
so
sad! We’re never going to be a
family
again!”

I’m on her bed with my back against a poster of Bon Jovi looking pained, practically eating the microphone. “That’s monstrous,” I tell her. “We’ll always be a family. Even when someone does something awful, they’re still part of a family, and the family has to know that.”

“But you can’t
live
here any more!” she wails.

I swallow this, unsure of its origin, hopeful that she has made it up in an attempt to order this chaos.

“I can too,” I counter. “And I will.”

“But where’s Daddy going to live?”

I hang on to her, all of us staring into the amazingly tidy center of her room, the only space of it that isn’t cluttered with something pink or black to wear, pack things in, or plug in.

“I can’t answer that,” I say. “Maybe here. But we don’t know until we see how everyone feels after a while. May I tell you some things that I
do
know?”

She nods permission. Daisy’s busy in the jewelry box, and the fact that Jane’s done nothing to stop her is proof positive that things have never been worse for her.

“Sometimes grown-ups get just as mad and bewildered and afraid and out of line as children. It’s not a good thing, but it happens. I’m not happy about what I did, but I did it, and I’ve got to keep on living despite it. I went and saw Isaac’s dad, and I realized I still love him a little.”

I stop here to wait for censure, screaming, excoriation. But she’s just looking at me. I’m relieved to know that the sound of my voice, when it’s level, blankets her, shields her from her own fury, and that when she lets this happen she has ceased to deny me.

“He left so soon after Isaac was born that I didn’t have time to know it was over, and it really wasn’t. And when I saw him I didn’t think very hard about what I was doing. I was so overwhelmed. He made such a big impression. It doesn’t have a lot to do with Daddy. It’s very old news.”

“Adrienne says you slept with him.”

I save what I have to say about Adrienne, except for “She’s right. I did.”

“That’s a bad thing to do when you’re already married, Mom.”

“Yes, it is.”

“So,” she says, shifting away from our close hold, “does this mean you don’t love Daddy anymore?”

“No,” I tell her. “It doesn’t mean that at all. It means that I have to do a lot of thinking to try and figure out how to resolve the problem I’ve created. Your dad’s very angry with me, and he has reason to be. But I think I must have been a little angry with him too. We haven’t paid too much attention to each other lately. That happens to people in families. You get so used to having everyone around you don’t think you have to worry about them any more, and I think that’s happened to us. I’ve stopped worrying about him, and he’s stopped worrying about me. And I was the more careless.”

“Where’s Isaac’s dad?”

“In an apartment in the city.”

“Are you going back there?”

“I don’t know. I’m not going to stay there, if that’s what you mean.”

“Is he coming to see Isaac?”

“I’ll have to talk to Isaac about that.”

She looks at her bedspread, pink and yellow diamonds laid edge to edge, hand-sewn by Simon’s mother.

“Do all families have things like this happen?” she begs to know.

I hold her hands. “No. But all families have things happen to them.”

This seems to satisfy Jane’s need for logic, and she agrees to dinner, so the three of us go downstairs. Daisy makes the preparations easy by asking to go in her travel crib. We fix a cheese and onion omelette. Jane cracks the eggs and grates the cheese, and I do the sautéing and tend to the omelette’s edges with a butter knife, then fold it when it’s firm and slide it onto a plate. Daisy has passed out in a sitting position in the corner of the travel crib. We set the table for two.

“Our family’s getting smaller,” Jane remarks.

“I don’t know about that.” To me, the opposite seems to be
true. People leaving for separate sleeping posts is something I grew up with, and our house is still standing, still central. And perhaps this thing with Fowler won’t do to us what convention would have us believe.

“I want you to meet Jim,” I say.

“Why? I don’t want to.”

“Because he’s Isaac’s father and part of who I am.”

I hate talking like this, particularly to Jane. Solid truth has a hollow ring sometimes, an unwelcome earnestness; like a candid expression of love, such truth is ill received by people who are sharp and looking for pretense, even when they’re children. But again she surprises me.

“Okay, Mom. Whatever you say. But if you ever make me choose who to live with, you or Daddy, I’m going with Daddy. Because he’s alone, and that’s not fair.”

I want to tell her that’s a choice she won’t have to make, that she’ll be with both of us. I want to tell her that I’m alone too, that Fowler is, as always, an impossibility lingering on the periphery. But these things, if said, will only lead to more argument.

“How’s your omelette?” I ask her.

“Fine. It’s not runny.”

After dinner we go driving. I have to find some more things out. Isaac would be proud of me now, if not for Fowler. I’ve “chilled,” as he’d say. I’m the sleek mother of three, wearing probable loss with considerable aplomb. The gas tank is full. Daisy’s got Cheese Nips for dinner in the back, and Jane’s wearing Adrienne’s Vuamets, a sympathy loan, to cover up signs of weeping. We’re cruising to Classic Rock, which is to say, the music of my generation. The girls like it, and so do I. My appreciation of this music, as I recall, is the first thing I horrified my father with. Mother just listened and understood it as another form of good-bye.

“We’re stopping at Adrienne’s,” I tell Jane. “Please stay in
the car. I just want to ask her mom if she knows where Isaac is.”

“Okay,” says Jane, too taken with herself in sunglasses, with Clapton’s wailing, to object.

•   •   •

I park behind the Jeep at 7:30, a civilized hour for visiting in this community, as it is postprandial, a time when all has been shoved into the dishwasher and the older family members have a moment to inspect a troublesome corner of the garden or the editorial page. I find Kirsten and Ted sitting at the glass table outdoors, both reading the paper. Adrienne and her younger brother, Garrison, are visible through the bay window, immobile in front of the TV.

“Oh, hi there,” says Ted, springing up when he sees me.

We call him the Hidy-Ho Man at our house.

“You’re alone?” she says. He begins to fidget verbally about iced tea or a beer, or something stronger?

“Panic not,” I say. “The girls are in the car. We’re in search of the third. Any clues?”

“I heard from Adrienne,” Kirsten says, managing to sound bored even about this, “that he’s been hanging around with Garland, who’re terribly nice in the end. But Simon was beside himself about it, the sticky wicket being that Garland’s gay. He’s got a man living with him.”

“Do we know where he lives?” I ask.

“It’s on the camp list. A building over by the river. I wouldn’t worry. Adrienne says he’s a nursery school teacher during the year. She doesn’t think he’s after Isaac.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” I say, looking at Ted. He’s been bobbing up and down for some time now, stopping momentarily when the gay issue cropped up.

“I’ll get the camp list,” Ted says, and lopes inside.

“Are you all right?” Kirsten says.
Weary
, is what I’m getting from her. Not at all the demeanor of a woman in love.

“Fine. You?”

“The same.
Drop over tomorrow. I just can’t concentrate at this hour. It’s been a wiggy week. I almost perished of overhearing Adrienne’s counsel to your daughter. How’s the little fatty?”

“Divine.”

Ted’s back with a Post-it bearing an address and phone number.

“Whatever we can do,” he says, attempting to be doleful.

“Oh, Ted, really,” Kirsten moans. “Let’s not get divorced
for
them.”

The word startles me. I’ve had the nerve not to contemplate it much.

“Call,” Kirsten says.

I tell her I will. I head back to the car where a fight is in progress. I promise them milkshakes for endurance.

It’s a matter of being impervious, this returning. Just live. Let your grass grow. Let your kids yell at you, advise, hate, disown you. Let the creditors come. Let the husband who thought he loved you find out he doesn’t. Whatever happens will be the truth.

At Burger King I pick up two chocolate shakes. Half of mine goes into Daisy’s bottle, and westward we wend, slurping all the way.

•   •   •

“He’s distraught,” the roommate, Travis, explains. “He left here about an hour ago. I offered to drive him into the city, but he wanted to take the train. So Garland took him to the station and put him on a train and then we phoned your husband about arrival time.”

I hadn’t expected this sort of welcome, or the fresh esthetic of the place, very leafy, lots of wicker and shining parquet. And I hadn’t expected to be treated to iced tea and cookies, now arriving on a silver tray borne by Travis, another man with, seemingly, only one name. We establish ourselves in the living room with Travis, a subdued Garland trailing us.
The girls, despite the recent milkshakes, dive into the cookies, an assortment of Peek Freans and Lus.

“How’s my Otter Troop leader?” Garland says to Jane, who smiles. “You’ve got a beautiful family,” he tells me.

“Have more,” Travis says. “That boy of yours should be in the movies. His eyes! They see everything. You’ve got to watch your step around that one!”

Mother would call Travis a dandy. Older (by a lot) than Garland, he wears the ascot and is more meticulous about hair and wardrobe. I learn that he works at a gallery in the city not far from Mother’s apartment.

“We finally got coverage,” Travis sighs. “Years of free clinics, and I want to tell you, those places are not clean, and I’m on the policy!” He raises his glass to this fact, and I, not sure if it’s the right gesture, join him.

“Do you think that he would talk to me?” I venture.

“All boys want to talk to their mothers,” Travis says.

“Do you want me to speak to him about that tomorrow?” Garland offers.

“Yes,” I decide. “Yes, would you? Would you just tell him I miss him?”

“Of course.”

“Mom, can I borrow a tape?” Jane says from the foyer. The video collection, I noticed when we arrived, in a glass cabinet, includes several we don’t have.

“Did you ask our hosts?”

Travis is over there instantly, consulting with Jane about what would be best. He recommends
Bringing Up Baby
and
Ghostbusters
and then puts them in a small Bloomingdale’s shopping bag, the size they give out at the makeup counters. He also packages the remaining cookies in tin foil and holds them out to Daisy.

“At some point,” I say awkwardly, “I’ll figure out how to thank you properly for your help.” I can’t see how my son
fits into the lives of these men, but I do know they’ve made room for him.

“Call,” Travis advises. “We’re here.”

It doesn’t even bother me that Travis tends to speak for his mate. He’s eloquent, at any rate, and I don’t fear in them what Liselotte complains of so continually—an inner circle that excludes her so she won’t interfere,
une cabale.