Five Women (17 page)

“I'll leave the day after New Year's. I sublet a friend's apartment in Greenwich Village, and later I'll get something of my own.”

“Then you're planning to settle in New York City?”

“You bet. I'm finished with Horridwood.”

“Horridwood!” Nicole said, and laughed.

“She has your sense of humor,” her mother said.

“I didn't think you'd noticed I had one,” Eve said.

“Oh, I noticed.”

Christmas dinner was just as dismal and lonely as it had always been. There was her mother and her daughter and herself, the scraping of fork and spoon on plates, the sparse and forced conversation, the hole of sadness in the pit of her stomach when she thought about other families having raucous and jolly Christmases full of people. At least with Nicole there, obliviously chatty about the events of her little life, it gave her and her mother something to talk about. The holiday dragged Eve back to her isolated and frustrating childhood, all those years she had dreamed of getting out, and she reminded herself that she was on her way, that she wasn't a helpless little girl anymore.

She helped her mother wash up while Nicole went out to play with her loot. “Next year,” her mother said, “I'm going to have Christmas dinner at a hotel, in the hotel restaurant.”

“We could have done that this year,” Eve said.

“Well, this was a farewell.”

“To what?”

“To Nicole. To you. You're going to take her with you to New York and pretend to be a real mother for the first time in your life, and I'm taking Logan Bewstar in as a partner and letting him run the farm while I get myself a nice job in Miami Beach and see some of the high life.”

“A job as what?” Eve asked, incredulous.

“A bookkeeper. I've been doing all the paperwork around here forever, you know. A farm is a business just like anything else.”

“But . . .”

“But nothing. You think you're the only person who has a right to be free? I sacrificed my whole life for you, and now it's my turn to have some fun before I'm too old to notice I'm having it.”

“What sacrifices did you make for me?” Eve asked.

“Who did you think I did all this for, myself? I did the best I could. If you don't like it, that's just too bad. How did you think you got to be so independent? Because I taught you how. I made you special. Now, go out and do whatever you're supposed to do with your life. I've got all Nicole's clothes washed and ironed, and I bought her a new suitcase for her toys. She hates eggs, you ought to know, and she likes to sleep with a night light on. She sleeps with her teddy bear, and you have to read her Dr. Seuss before she'll close her eyes.”

“Who is this Logan Bewstar?” Eve demanded.

“You remember him.”

“No, I don't. Is he your boyfriend?”

Her mother laughed, a deep happy laugh that came from a place inside her that Eve had never known existed. “Boyfriend? God, no. If you saw him you wouldn't have to ask that question. He's a twenty-eight-year-old hippie with long hair and a girlfriend, but he loves the idea of a chicken farm and he's going to do a good job. It's funny, isn't it? I thought my way of life would become obsolete with the new generation coming along, but kids like Logan want peace and quiet and I'm the one moving on.”

“Miami Beach is hardly the high life,” Eve said.

“It is to me.”

“What is Nicole going to think about all this?”

“As if you care.”

“I do care,” Eve said, insulted.

“I'll tell her tonight, and it will give her a week to get used to the idea. She knows you're her mother, and she knew you were coming back someday to get her. I've always told her that. She was looking forward to her adventures in Hollywood, but now she'll look forward to the ones in New York.”

Nicole was going to live with her. Eve felt as if her mother had dumped an eight-hundred-pound gorilla in her living room, but this was not a joke. “How am I supposed to pursue my career when I have to take care of a child?” she asked.

“You and only a million other people have that problem,” her mother said cheerfully. “I suggest day care.”

That night Eve couldn't sleep at all. She went outside and walked down the dirt road, in the humid tropical night, under the full, silky moon, cursing John Hawke's dick and testosterone and romantic teenage heart. She cursed herself for having been young and stupid on nights like this one, when she thought sex was innocent pleasure. If she had ever thought she could escape from her past she was mistaken, because Nicole would always be there to remind her.

She went back to the house where she had grown up. In a way, she thought, it was right that she take her child, even though she was dreading the responsibility and the added financial burden. It would be cruel to make Nicole live the lonely life she had lived. At least with her the kid would have some fun.

Eve looked up at the second-floor bedroom that had been hers. Now it was—for a few more days anyway—her daughter's. Well, Eve thought, it's you and me, kid. She had heard the line in a movie when the curmudgeonly man didn't want to take the spunky orphan, but was stuck with him. It's you and me, kid.

The house was lighted by moonlight, with a bright, glossy sheen. At the window she saw her daughter's small face, looking out at the only world she had ever known. So she couldn't sleep, either. There she was, probably wide awake with excitement, finally fulfilling her wish to be with Mommy at last, in show business. Eve walked closer. She didn't know if Nicole saw her or not; she seemed lost in a daydream of her own. Then she got close enough to see that Nicole's face was wet with tears.

Tears were pouring out of Nicole's eyes and dripping off her chin. Believing herself to be unobserved, she made no effort to wipe them away. Her mouth stretched into a miserable sideways figure eight and her shoulders began shaking. What Eve was looking at was not a fellow adventurer off to see the wizard but a terrified, sobbing child.

Eve suddenly realized that her mother had either deceived her or deceived herself. Nicole didn't want to go away with Eve any more than Eve wanted to take her. What had her mother expected? Nicole hardly even knew her. And there was nothing either of them could do about it. Eve knew how her mother was when she had made up her mind. Nicole looked down and saw her then, and looked startled; then she turned away quickly and went into the private darkness of her room.

She was stuck with the kid. And the kid was stuck with her.

Chapter Fifteen

G
ARA AND
C
ARL
HAD BEEN MARRIED
for ten years, and she was always surprised that she had been happy for so long. It was as if marriage to him, although it involved some inevitable compromises that she really didn't mind, was a vacation from the pain and self-doubt she had lived with all of her life before he came along. The years were a kind of healing. When she passed the magic cutoff year her gynecologist had warned her about, Gara realized that unless she now made a great effort to get pregnant, which she did not want to do, she was probably unlikely ever to have a child of her own, and she felt much more relieved than nostalgic.

Carl was a welcome barrier between her and her mother, and her father seemed to like him. She had been saved from ten years of dating. She felt as if she fit into a place where her parents finally accepted her—at least, as much as her mother was capable. She was a happily married woman with a flourishing career and two nice stepchildren. Cary and Eric were in prep school and college now; they were sixteen and eighteen, tall, well-built, healthy, good-looking boy-men. She saw them much less often these days, but when the four of them had dinner in a restaurant she felt proud at the family appearance they must be making, and warm in the knowledge that they all got along.

Every day of their married life Carl told her at least once that he loved her. At night in bed he held her in his arms until one of them fell asleep, and when he woke up in the middle of the night he always reached for her. She knew how unique all that was. She heard about marital problems from her friends, and from her patients, and everything she read told of broken promises, changed goals and expectations, and loss. It seemed the divorce rate was climbing every minute. She was constantly aware of how lucky she was, and worried that her husband would die.

Carl's father had died unexpectedly a few years earlier of a heart attack while running for a commuter train, the year before his planned retirement. Gara imagined—briefly, because it was much too frightening—what it would be like never to see Carl again, to have him leave for work on an ordinary day and then not come home, and after this terrified moment she always flung herself into her happy, loving marriage with more consideration, more affection, more gratitude. She did not yet think of her parents growing old and sick or even dropping dead; the mystical power they still had over her made her think they would live for a very long time.

It was her husband she brooded about, his health and welfare, the muggers, murderers, accidents, plane crashes, all the varied terrible things that could happen to him. Sometimes she wondered if this was her secret way of keeping excitement alive—by imagining him snatched away from her and then miraculously restored. She knew you had to shake yourself up from time to time in order not to let a relationship grow stale, and if her method was morbid, at least it worked. She wondered why she needed it. It was unrealistic to expect things to be perfect all the time, but that was the way she was, even now.

Carl's way of keeping the excitement in their marriage seemed to be the brief business trips he took to Europe without her. When he left her it was never with more than one or two days' notice, and she was never sure exactly which day he would be back until he appeared, although she always knew where he was. He called her every day from his travels, came home laden with presents and funny stories and anecdotes, and as soon as he came back into their apartment he made love to her as if he had been starving for her touch.

“Don't you ever worry that he might be cheating when he's on a trip?” her friends sometimes asked her.

“No. I'm sure he's not, but if he is, it obviously makes him want me more.” She really meant that, but she thought her calm acceptance of the idea of his perfidy was possible only because she knew he was faithful.

When Carl was in Europe and she was in New York Gara never told her parents he was away. She knew her mother would nag her to come for dinner every night, as if she were incapable of being by herself, and try to insinuate herself under her grown daughter's very skin the way she always had. There would be too many questions, too much clutching, too much criticism, too much worry. May could never comprehend that Gara actually liked to be alone, or more likely May just didn't care what Gara wanted.

Sometimes Gara and Carl were able to travel together, and it was like another honeymoon. Gara loved being part of his art world, which she thought was glamorous, and she enjoyed listening to his friends talk about new painters and new paintings, and hear their gossip about people she now knew. He had such a capacity for enjoying life, so much enthusiasm, and he wanted her to share it. He was only ten years older than she was, but sometimes she felt like his child because he was so protective of her happiness. She saw no conflict between being the independent woman he admired and her total reliance on his love. In fact, she thought, his love gave her the wings to fly. He was the good parent she had never had.

One night when Carl was away, Gara took her old family photo album out of the bookcase and leafed through it, trying to figure out the past. There she was, a shyly smiling child at the beach with her parents, having been told to smile for the camera, her mother's camera smile too large, too fake, her father's a little diffident, a little proud. They were just an ordinary family on vacation in the late 1940s, the hardworking husband and father, the housewife and mother, the child for whom they would move the world. Gara remembered then the other pictures she had only in her mind: her father teaching her how to ride a bike, holding the handlebars while he trotted beside her; taking her to swim in the waves, his hand under her stomach, telling her not to be afraid because he was right there. When had she lost him?

He was an ordinary father of the period, away working or at home silent behind his newspaper, abdicating control of the home and the child to his wife because the child was a daughter. He echoed May's edicts and opinions like a vice-president. If it ever occurred to him that May was too close, too smothering, that she was recklessly trampling down every possible boundary in order to be closer to her child, who was her dream and her little lover, her image in a better mirror, the object of her unacknowledged jealousy, if it really ever occurred to him he pushed the disloyal thought away. He was no worse than any man of his time, and better than many. Men were not supposed to be able to understand women. Had he known his beloved daughter was unhappy? Had he thought that was normal?

Maybe she should have told him if he didn't know. In an odd way Gara had always protected her father because she wanted him to approve of her. But there was more—what if he did know how unhappy she was, and he simply didn't care?

She had asked him once, years ago: “Why don't you ever defend me against Mother when you know she's lying?”

“Because you're going to grow up and go away,” he had answered, “and I'm going to be with Mother forever.”

Well, she thought, that's an answer. She had been touched by his simple, childlike honesty, the acknowledgment of his weakness in this family struggle. It had not occurred to her to be angry that no one would take her side. She knew that was her problem—she lived in the same body with her anger and didn't even know it was there until afterward when she pulled out the events again and looked at them. But she
had
gone away, and the fights didn't matter now; she had escaped. She put the album back on the shelf.

The next day she told her mother that Carl had a meeting—which was not true, he was still in France—and accepted an invitation to come to her parents' apartment for dinner that night. Gara supposed the ambivalence and the fantasy would always be with her: yearning to visit her kind, interesting, supportive parents, missing them, making the phone call, not able to accept that the parents she would visit were the ones she'd always had.

“Didn't Mother prepare a delicious dinner?” her father said. He looked at May with tenderness. Actually it wasn't delicious, it was strange: a watery brown gravy with small cubes of mystery meat and carrots in it. Perhaps he was worried that she would die; perhaps they were all obsessed with death.

“Yes,” Gara lied. “What is it?”

“Steak and bologna stew,” her mother said. “I made it up.”

This is the last time I eat here, Gara thought. She wished she could keep the vow. Her mother had always done strange things with leftovers, but lately it had been getting worse. The only thing you knew for sure was that it would be fattening.

“I bought a new fur coat,” May said.

“Oh? What kind?” Gara asked.

“Seal,”
May said. Her tone was defiant, waiting for a comment. She knew what she had done.

The animal rights movement was a growing new issue in the country. Pictures of adorable little white seal pups being clubbed to death were shown on television news or came in the mail; their dark-eyed, whiskered baby faces appeared on stamps, and were shown in ads in which their blood soaked the snow. You were ashamed to wear a seal coat and you would never buy one. You bought a mink. Minks were still considered nasty ferrets.

Gara said nothing, but she was shocked. I should have known, she thought. Only May would do that. She probably wanted to buy the last one before they got banned.

“I'll leave it to you in my will,” May said. “You can have it taken in.”

“I was thinking of getting puppy,” Gara said.

“Getting a puppy? You want that mess around the house?”

“A puppy coat.”

May peered at her, trying to figure out if it was a joke. “You always pick on me,” she said. “You always misinterpret me. Why are you so hostile?”

“Please don't argue,” her father begged mildly, but, as usual, he was saying it to Gara. They ate their coconut cake in silence, and drank their coffee, and when he had finished her father excused himself to watch the news on television. Gara cleared the table quickly so she would not have to watch May eat the rest of the large cake, and then she excused herself too, to go home. As she stood at the door, her mother's lips sucked hungrily at her cheek.

“Ah,” May said, enraptured, kissing her, eating her. “Yum yum yum, delicious. My first-born and last-born baby girl.”

* * *

That was the last time Gara ever saw her father alive. He had never been sick a day in his life, and a week later he was found slumped over his desk at his law office, having quietly bled to death of an ulcer no one had known he had. Her mother called to tell her, choking back tears she should not have felt ashamed to shed. How could you be a hysteric and a stoic at the same time?

Gara had felt death in the air that last night at dinner, but it had never occurred to her that it would be her father's. She had not hugged or kissed him when she left, because they never touched. She had never even had a chance to say goodbye properly; as usual he had left her to her mother, and now it was too late. Gara felt her heart breaking.
I saw a man upon the stair, a little man who wasn't there
 . . . She had lost him years ago, and now she had lost him again before she was able to make the connection they both would have wanted.

It was her mother, she sensed, who would live a long time and surprise everybody. A perfect textbook candidate for a heart attack or a stroke, May didn't even talk about dieting, much less try it. She never exercised, never had. Gara had long since stopped trying to win a discussion of any kind with her. Her aunt and uncle—her mother's brother and sister—were both in therapy, had been for years, but it had never occurred to May that she had any problems having a nicer daughter wouldn't fix. Once, a few years ago, worried about May's unhappiness, Gara had had the temerity to suggest she seek help.

“You're the one who needs a psychiatrist,” May had snapped, “not me. A girl who can't even be friends with her mother.”

“I'm not a girl anymore.”

“You're my little girl. You always will be. No one will ever love you as much as your parents do.”

And if they don't love me enough, or in the right way, or for myself, Gara thought, is this the best I can expect from anyone? The mixed messages twined around her like smothering vines, and even now, although she was someone who was considered capable of solving other people's problems, Gara knew she had many of her own she had merely pushed aside. My husband loves me more than you do, Gara thought, but of course she would never say it.