Authors: Francine Prose
“Hardly,” says Vera, aware that the silly smile on her face could be mistaken for modesty, as if Rosie were praising her excessively.
Norma leans forward, Dave leans back. Vera wonders why they signify interest with opposite motions and whether this is what Plato meant by finding your complementary half.
“What’s the story?” says Dave.
And Vera tells them. Dave and Norma keep interrupting, making her explain. When she gets to the part about the lemonade stand, they play their own version of Where-Did-This-Story-Come-From? “You had your little lemonade stand,” says Dave. “Little Miss Entrepreneur at five cents a glass.” Norma’s in her element, extracting information, though Vera feels less like a troubled student than a witness at a trial. So Vera testifies on, and by the end is almost satisfied—if not by the logic, at least by the conviction of her story.
Not so her parents. When she’s done, they both have the foolish irritated looks of cashiers who’ve totaled and retotaled every item and still can’t get it right.
“I’m not surprised a bit,” Dave says. “I’ve always said your mother has ESP. When you were off traveling and I’d be sick with worry, she’d know just when you were going to call. Years ago, forty-five years ago to be exact, she’d wake up in cold sweat here in New York; and later it would turn out we’d run into some fighting.”
Vera wants to say that sensing when your daughter is due to call or sweating when your husband’s fighting in Spain is nothing like looking at a photo of a house and guessing the names of its occupants. But now it’s Norma smiling that silly, flattered smile and neither of them are listening.
“So,” Dave says at last. “What’ll you do about it?”
“Nothing!” Vera wants to shout. “Sit tight and let history absolve me!” But of course she says nothing of the kind. For one thing, she can’t imagine what history might do in this case except turn the Greens out of their house and fill it with fifty welfare families. For another, it’s not true. She’s already taken action.
“I called,” she says. “I talked to Mrs. Green. I’m going there Monday.”
“That’s my girl!” says Dave, and Norma gives him a look Vera knows. She’s about to say something technical or political and is already waiting for him to correct her. “But if they’re suing you…” she says. “Can you mention this to the lawyers…?”
“Bloodsuckers!” says Dave. “Let the lawyers mention it to her!” Vera thinks of Leonard Villanova: he
did
have a kind of ticklike quality. She’s imagining a story about a lawyer for a corporate blood bank busted for taking his payment in kind—
BLOOD-LUSH LAWYER APPEALS VAMPIRE VERDICT
—when she hears Rosie say, “Don’t mind Mom. Touchdown will be any minute.”
Dave takes this as evidence that Vera can’t be trusted to pilot them home, so what follows is an argument about his driving them. Vera would like a ride—the streets are deserted; not even she would dare the front of the train at this hour—but feels duty-bound to refuse. Finally Norma settles it by pushing them into the car.
Dave circles Prospect Park, over to Fourth, then down Atlantic to Court. Vera wonders why he’s taking such a circuitous route, then realizes it’s his old route to work, mapped for minimum rush-hour traffic. There’s no need to go this way now. Near Livingston Street, he starts doing a strange thing. At every turn he brakes and says, “Do I go right here?” or “Do I go left?”
“Yeah,” Vera mutters through clenched teeth. He’s driven this way half his life. Turning, she looks at Rosie, who shrugs and leans forward and rests one hand on Vera’s arm. Vera knows her parents’ aging isn’t their fault. Why does it make her so angry? And suddenly she longs to cry out, Dad, pull over! Park right there between the Board of Education and the cuchifritos stand! Cut the motor and we’ll sit in the dark car and listen to your war stories all night!
But by now they’re already on Montague Street, and Vera can’t wait to get home. Dave pulls up to the curb, kisses Vera, then turns to kiss Rosie. “Rosie, you be a good girl,” he says, and to Vera, “Call us Monday when you get done seeing those people.”
“I’ll see,” Vera says. “If I have time.” Then she’s out of the car and at her door so fast that for a moment Rosie seems to recede like a small retro-rocket falling further and further behind Spaceship Mom.
E
VER SINCE VERA QUIT
smoking, she’s needed to plan her arrival home, those first few minutes once pleasantly occupied by her coming-home cigarette. Sometimes magazines help stave off the homecoming panic. But tonight, in the absence of tobacco or glossy print, she decides to have another drink, not so much for the alcohol as for something to clink and hold. Then she’ll ask Rosie’s opinion of Dave’s new driving style. She’s hoping that Rosie will reassure her with the wisdom beyond her years that, Vera’s learned from the media, is the curse and the blessing of the single-parent child. She remembers how, after one of Lowell’s departures, Rosie had said, “If he were
my
old man, I’d just sit tight and wait for him to get lonesome.” How old was Rosie then? Six? Seven? And Vera was comforted by
that
?
So perhaps it’s just as well that while Vera’s still playing with the lock, Rosie says, “Can I use your phone?” and takes off before Vera can reply. Vera decides against the drink and follows Rosie into the bedroom to eavesdrop. Vera’s tuned in for surprises; but Rosie isn’t saying much, just listening—from what Vera can gather—to some story Kirsty’s telling, set in a pizza parlor. “Yuck!” says Rosie. “Anchovies?” What’s wrong with anchovies? Vera wants to know. Could she and Lowell have imprinted her with that terrible anchovies vs. Pampers fight they’d thought her too young to understand? By the time Vera’s persuaded herself that anchovies are an acquired taste, she’s abandoned the pretense of hanging up clothes, so that when Rosie says, “Mom, could you leave for a minute, everybody hears
everything
around here!” she agrees, even though it’s her room.
Lingering in the hall, Vera thinks she hears Rosie say “Carl” and puts her ear to the door. But they’ve gone on to Dungeons and Dragons. Kirsty’s Lady Velvetina, with 158 points on the side of Lawful Good.
Vera drifts toward the living-room window, where she stands watching Kenny and Dick walk Mister T., their Lhasa Apso. They’re chatting with their friend Hugh, who’s walking his Rottweiler. The big dog’s circling the Lhasa, the little dog’s trembling, but the three men look so neighborly, so relaxed, Vera’s heart constricts and takes jealous revenge in a headline:
RONALD MCDONALD STRICKEN BY AIDS.
Though she knows drinking and drugs will only make her feel worse, she pours some brandy, lights a joint, and flips on the TV in time to catch a rerun of
Fantasy Island
about a con released from the slammer after thirty years with one desire—to find the bride he left at the altar when the cops nabbed him at his own wedding. Vera switches to
People’s Court
: a guy who dresses up as a giant Goofy and clowns at kids’ parties is being sued by some parents for failing to show. The judge speaks of broken promises, transgression, and penance. The giant Goofy’s convoluted arguments remind Vera of Raskolnikov. Another dog, another sign: if
People’s Court
’s sounding like Dostoyevsky, she’s watched too much TV.
By now the alcohol and marijuana have so profoundly damaged her logic that what Vera’s thinking is: If life is one broken promise after another, why not call the expert on broken promises, Lowell? Dialing his number, she steels herself. No one will be there, meaning Lowell’s gone off with someone else and the terms of their on-again, off-again ten-year marriage will finally have to change. Or worse, a woman will answer.
“Hello,” murmurs Lowell in his soft, shy telephone voice. When Vera says his name he yells, “Sweetheart! How are you? How’s Rosie?”
One thing Vera’s got to give him credit for: he really does care about Rosie. Once at a party Vera met a man who seemed nice until he started telling her how his wife had custody of their daughter and dressed her in designer jeans so tight she had to lie down to zip them. “She’s six years old,” he’d said, reaching for Vera’s hand, and Vera had left him there, reaching. Lowell would never serve Rosie up so some strange woman at a party would see him as a caring kind of guy.
“Does she miss me?” Lowell’s asking now. “Does she talk about her old Dad?”
“Of course,” Vera says, though the truth is: yes and no. Rosie misses him so much she can hardly say his name. And Lowell, for his part, would like nothing better than to have Rosie living with him. So Vera’s worst fear: Rosie is marking time, hoarding her allowance till she can run away to L.A. She’s already been there three times, each time for a week or so, and come home with tales of devoted attention and sacks full of wonderful gifts—a dayglo “giggle stick” that, when tilted, emitted a slow, froggy belch; a headband with its own little battery pack and tiny, sequentially blinking lights; a green plush caterpillar that, unzipped and reversed, turned into a butterfly with glittery wings. But what surprised Vera most was that Rosie and Lowell had gone shopping for presents and wound up with something remotely like what they’d set out for. She’d tried quizzing Rosie about what they’d bought where. But Rosie clammed up. It was private. And Vera felt jealous and stung, as if Lowell and Rosie were having a love affair and decided: for Vera’s own good, some things were better for her not to know.
“She’s fine,” says Vera. “Really.”
“What’s the latest?” Lowell says. “What’s she into?” The latest? How long has it been since they talked? A month?
“The same,” says Vera. “Ballet. Dungeons and Dragons.”
“Boys?”
“Give it a break,” Vera says. “She’s only ten.”
“Ten’s getting up there,” says Lowell. “Don’t underestimate heredity. If she’s anything like her Dad, she’s probably sneaking off to play hypnotist with the little boy next door.”
One of Lowell’s favorite stories: when he was in third grade at the Eskimo school, he took little Nancy Senkaku behind the bleachers and said, “You are getting very sleepy” till she lay down and let him take off her pants. Vera remembers where she heard it: on Louise’s couch in the dark. How proud she’d been to have a lover who’d been practicing since he was eight!
Now she says, “Not in
this
neighborhood. The little boy next door is a fag.” She hesitates, not quite trusting what he’ll do with this information, then goes ahead anyway. “As a matter of fact, I think she does like some kid in her summer program. Not that she’d tell me. Norma wormed it out of her at dinner.”
“She’ll do that,” says Lowell. “Talking to Norma’s like taking a giant hit of sodium pentothal.” Vera laughs, then thinks how few people know her well enough to make such jokes. Especially as she gets older, friends and family never meet. If she waits another ten years, then falls in love with someone new, chances are that person will never meet her parents at all.
After this cheering thought, there’s a silence. “Want to hear a joke?” says Lowell. ‘Why did Reagan invade Grenada?”
“To impress Jodie Foster,” says Vera.
“How’d you know?” he asks.
“I heard it last year,” she says. “Only then it was, ‘Why did Begin invade Lebanon?’”
“It’s better about Reagan,” Lowell says.
“I don’t know,” says Vera. “What’s new with you?”
“S.O.S. Same old shit. I gave the script to some hotshot lady agent. She’s from Canada originally, so I figured she might know what I was talking about.”
Vera’s read Lowell’s script. Called
Polar Bear Boy
, it’s about a guy from Minnesota who around 1900 took a trip to the Arctic Circle and decided there was money to be made trapping polar bears and selling them to all the new zoos starting up in the various cities of America. So he caught dozens of them and, when the market slowed down, began leading tours for rich society folk who wanted to see polar bears in their natural habitat. He married a girl he met on the tour and stayed married ten years, until it turned out she was some kind of wildlife preservationist way ahead of her time—also crazy and overbred. Finally one night she laced his after-dinner cognac with enough arsenic to kill a bear. Though it’s not a bad story—utterly improbable despite the end, when a credit tells you it’s all true—and has room for lots of documentary nature footage and turn-of-the-century furs, Vera knows it will never be made. Polar bear jacking is hardly the world’s most commercial subject, and besides, Lowell’s humor doesn’t quite translate onto the page. You need to hear him reading it in your head. For starters, thinks Vera, he might consider retitling it,
Polar Bear Man
.
“Have you heard from her?” Vera says. “The agent?”
“Shit, no,” says Lowell. “It blew her right out of L.A. My script was the absolute last straw. She disconnected the phone, fired her secretary, hopped the first plane back to Vancouver, and married her high-school sweetheart.”
Decoded, this means the secretary gave Lowell’s script back without saying anything. “She’s probably better off,” Vera says. “She should have stayed there in the first place.”
“Probably,” says Lowell. “Hang on. I need a smoke.” When he comes back and Vera hears the altered intake and puff of breath, she wants a cigarette so bad she’s shaking. She’s thinking of mornings, coffee and cigarettes shared with Lowell in that first Hayes Street apartment—gray, uncomfortable, hung everywhere with their art-student landlady’s work: a series of abstracts based on
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
. Even so, she’d rather be there than here. Than anywhere.
“Speaking of smoking,” says Vera. “Yesterday I wrote this Bigfoot story—”
“Bigfoot!” crows Lowell. “My main man!” Lowell considers Bigfoot a kind of personal totem. In fact he claims to have sighted one in Oregon. One night, he and his friend C.D. were out camping. They saw Bigfoot and Bigfoot gave them the V-sign. Peace and love. How typical of Lowell’s stories, that flat, understated joke. Nature at its most mysterious and elusive, every cryptobiologist’s dream resolving itself in a hippie cliché.
“—about Bigfoot knocking over a gas station and stealing some cigarettes—”