Authors: Richard Russo
Her father didn’t date or drink, but there was
something.
Sometimes, when she returned home after spending the evening with Lou at Ikey’s, she’d find him asleep in his chair, the phonograph needle bumping the label of one of his jazz records, a strange, sweet smell in the air. Or she’d wake up in the morning and there’d be a stale version of that same cloying aroma lingering in the house. She was about to ask her father about it when she remembered the very first time she’d smelled it in the parking lot one Friday night outside Angelo’s Pizza. There a skinny, shabbily dressed Negro was idling near the entrance, and he’d nodded familiarly at her father. “Got what you be needin’, brother, whenever you be needin’ it,” the man said, seemingly to no one in particular. A group of people was coming out of the restaurant as they were going in, and Sarah’s first thought was that he’d been addressing one of them, but once inside, the longer she thought about it, the more certain she was that he’d been talking to her father, a conclusion reinforced by the fact that he’d taken no notice whatsoever of the man. Her father always went out of his way with Thomaston’s Negroes, starting up conversations whether the occasion warranted it or, to judge from their startled reactions, not. Yet that evening he’d ignored the skinny black man entirely, and they’d passed close enough for her to catch a whiff of the sickening sweet odor that clung to his clothes. Was it possible that such a man had something her father wanted, or needed, as he’d claimed? If so, Sarah wasn’t sure she wanted to know what it was. “Promise me,” her mother had told her that first summer Sarah stayed at the Sundry Arms, “that if you ever see a syringe lying around the house, you’ll tell me.” Frightened by the prospect of stepping on a needle, Sarah promised she would, but she never saw a syringe “lying around” and couldn’t find one in the medicine cabinet either, though she routinely looked to make sure. But what would she do if she found one? Keeping her mother’s secrets meant she was honor bound to keep her father’s, too, didn’t it? Assuming he had any?
A
S DIFFERENT
as her parents were, Sarah’s strategy for living with them was the same: keep busy, fill the days. In Thomaston, she joined as many after-school clubs as would have her and volunteered at the library and the Shady Rest Nursing Home, explaining to her father that such activities looked good on college applications. And now, of course, there was Ikey Lubin’s, her second home. On Long Island’s South Shore, filling the days was easier. The summer people for whom she’d babysat since she was twelve started arriving around Memorial Day, and the first thing many of them did was call Sarah’s mother in the hopes of getting in the front of the queue for her daughter’s services. “Really? Not until mid-June?” they said, their voices rich with panic. The idea that they’d have to look after their own children until then, every hour of the livelong day, was really too much to bear. “You’re here!” they’d exclaim when she finally arrived. “Can you come Tuesday? No? Wednesday, then? Don’t tell me Gwen Spencer got to you before me? What did that woman do, meet your train?”
No joke. Sometimes, desperate mothers did precisely that. Having learned the date of her arrival, they’d pretend to be at the station to meet their husbands. “Sarah!” they exclaimed. “I’m so glad I ran into you. Are you free Saturday night? Can we book you Saturdays for the whole summer?” Sarah could’ve charged far more than she did—her mother urged her to—but she preferred instead to be selective, working only for people she liked and whose children weren’t monsters.
Just once, the summer between her sophomore and junior years, was she tempted by an offer for more work at greater pay. One of the mothers, aware that Sarah was a budding artist, had offered her the large apartment over their garage, which she could use as a studio when she wasn’t looking after the children. It was tempting, because this particular family was her favorite, and the two girls adored her. The husband was young and good-looking, a former college athlete who worked for an ad agency in the city. Monday through Thursday he commuted on the LIRR, which meant that his wife and daughters were alone in the overly large house. She liked how he’d sometimes sneak up behind his wife in the kitchen when he thought Sarah and his daughters were off somewhere, put her in a big bear hug and kiss the back of her neck while she squealed and frantically pedaled her feet in the air as if she were on an invisible bicycle. The round table in the large kitchen had five chairs, which meant that Sarah would fit in quite naturally and wouldn’t crowd them at all, even when the husband was there on his three-day weekends.
It presented a stark contrast to her mother’s apartment at the Sundry Arms, where the two of them had to eat sitting on barstools at what was euphemistically called the breakfast nook.
“Please,”
the little girls begged, tugging on Sarah’s fingers. “
Please
come live with us.” “Now, girls,” their mother chided, “that’s something Sarah has to decide with
her
mom.” But Sarah could tell she herself was almost as excited as her daughters, and later, when she drove Sarah back to the Sundry Arms, she’d sweetened the pot, assuring her that of course she could have Sundays off. This was the day Sarah and her mother always spent together, and she didn’t want to come between them. In fact, maybe Sarah could take every other weekend, Saturday and Sunday both.
Should she mention the offer? Her instinct was no. She didn’t want to hurt her mother’s feelings. But then, she thought, what harm would it do? She wouldn’t have to make it sound like something she was interested in, but rather something wanted
of
her. Then she could gauge her mother’s reaction. Who knew? It was possible her mother would see it as mutually beneficial. They
were
squeezed tight at the Sundry Arms, and Sarah knew her presence did cramp her mother’s style, manwise. Also, an artist herself, she’d certainly understand how nice it would be for Sarah to have space to work, a room with good light, where she wouldn’t constantly be having to put her brushes and paints away so they could have space to eat. So maybe.
Deep down, though, she knew better. Her mother harbored ambivalent feelings about most of the families Sarah sat for, admitting they were pleasant enough and certainly had nice houses but always managing to find something amiss. She wouldn’t let Sarah work for people she hadn’t met. She interviewed them in their own homes, then voiced her suspicions about them after they returned to the Sundry Arms. The bigger the house, the more lavish its grounds and well mannered its owners, the more convinced she’d be that something had to be wrong. If you looked hard enough, you’d find it, and usually her mother didn’t even have to look all that hard. “I don’t envy
that
woman,” she’d remark after being introduced to a new family. “Did you notice that the husband kept trying to look down my blouse?”
“Maybe you should’ve worn a bra,” Sarah would say, a suggestion her mother was sure to ignore.
“I give that marriage two years, max. I like what they did with the kitchen, though. Someday before I die I want a big kitchen with an island.”
At any rate, when Sarah finally did mention the offer, her mother’s crestfallen expression caused her to lie and say she’d already told the woman no. “Who does she think she is?” her mother said, and Sarah felt guilty for weeks, mostly because she realized, after turning it down, how much she’d been looking forward to a seat at that table, to being part of that family. She had no way of knowing that by the end of the summer the couple’s marriage would be in ruins, their summerhouse for sale. The two little girls had cried and cried when informed they’d be heading back to the city early and wouldn’t be seeing Sarah anymore. According to the mother, they’d been even more inconsolable over that than the fact that their father wouldn’t be living with them.
“You didn’t see that coming?” Sarah’s mother said when she heard the news.
What she saw, a week later, was the husband coming out of Sundry Gardens. He looked just the same, which for some reason had surprised her. Could a man betray his wife and children and still look the same? Wouldn’t there be visual evidence of his faithlessness? She knew that was silly, but still. And there’d been a woman with him. Pretty, though no prettier than the wife he used to sneak up behind in the kitchen. Sarah wondered if he did the same thing with this new woman, and whether she would ever suspect what was going on behind
her
back. There’d also been a little girl with them, younger than either of the man’s daughters. The adults had each taken her by the hand and were swinging her between them as they made their way to the parking lot. When the husband saw Sarah across the street, he smiled and waved, but she pretended not to see and then not to hear when he called her name. She knew what he wanted of her, and she would
not
babysit for him.
L
IES,
Sarah reluctantly concluded, were simply part of how adults operated. Everybody had secrets, it seemed, and to keep them people lied. That knowledge didn’t trouble her terribly except when she ran across someone like that husband, who was particularly good at it. She didn’t consider herself gullible, but of course gullible people never did, and what if she was wrong? Probably best to play it safe and avoid deceitful people. One of the things she loved best about her boyfriend was that, like his father, Lou seemed incapable of deceit. But she’d also begun to realize there was more than one way to lie. Some people lied to each other but also, bizarrely, to themselves. Sometimes they had to in order to lie to others. Weren’t her own parents like that? The official reason she lived with her mother during the summer was that she could make far more money babysitting on Long Island than she could in Thomaston. Her father reminded her of this each time he put her on the train. He would miss her terribly, he said, but she’d make good money and her college fund would grow, just like it had last summer. And, he went on, a girl needed time with her mother. Even though all of this was true, it was still mostly a lie. Her father wouldn’t miss her, at least not as much as she missed him. It wouldn’t take him weeks to get used to her absence. He wouldn’t spend hours imagining what was going on at the Sundry Arms. When he took her to the station in June, she could tell by how he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and kept eyeing the platform clock how anxious he was to see her off. By the time the train pulled out of the station he’d be speeding back to Thomaston, where a fresh ream of typing paper awaited him. This was the
real
reason she was going—so her father could work on his book, uninterrupted.
At the end of the summer the same thing would happen in reverse. Under the high, vaulted ceiling of Grand Central, she’d listen to the same half-truths she’d heard on the platform of the tiny station in Fulton. “Oh, sweetie,” her mother would lament, “summer’s too short. You just
got
here. You know why I had to leave your father, don’t you? You know I wasn’t leaving
you.
You mean more to me than my own life. Tell me you believe that, sweetie, because I couldn’t bear it if you didn’t. And you know that if things ever get too awful with your dad, you can come live with me, right? You wouldn’t even have to call. You’re old enough now. You can just get on the train and call me when you get to the city. And you know how to get out to the country….”
Sarah knew her mother believed everything she said when she said it, but she also knew she could make such promises because it was safe to do so. Whatever happened in Thomaston, no matter how terrible her longing for her mother was during the long winter months, Sarah would never abandon her father, never show up on her doorstep expecting to stay. Her mother was what happened during the summer when her father was writing his book. Her father was what happened during the school year when her mother was enjoying her independence. That was what her parents had negotiated. Any revisions would also be negotiated between them, and she’d merely be informed of their decision.
Still, she knew that parting was harder on her mother, who, unlike her father, stayed with her until the last possible moment, sometimes actually boarding the train with her, making sure she was settled in with her luggage safely stowed on the racks above. Once she miscalculated and the door hissed shut in front of her, and she’d had to stay on the train all the way to Fordham. Sarah suspected—no, she knew—that the apartment would feel empty when she returned, that for weeks she’d be dogged by an emotion she didn’t want to admit was guilt. Maybe that feeling never entirely went away. But neither was it strong enough for her to consider returning to her marriage, her husband, to life in Thomaston, New York. Gradually her guilt would abate, and she’d convince herself of the wisdom of keeping things as they were, since there was no help for it. She did love the freedom her apartment represented, and it wasn’t big enough for two, at least not all year. And what her mother said about Sarah being more important to her than her own life simply wasn’t true, or not true enough to change things. That was the terrible secret her mother held deep in her heart, the one she hoped her daughter didn’t suspect. And it was different only in degree from the secret her father harbored—that once his fingers started flying over the keys, his life was full and sufficient.
Maybe everyone was like that. Maybe lies were necessary to survival. When she was younger, such possibilities had been painful to contemplate. But by the summer before her senior year, Sarah had grown used to them. She’d long ago forgiven her parents for their secrets, as well as for the half-truths they first told to themselves and then to her. Of course by that summer she had a secret of her own.