Her Mother's Daughter (111 page)

She mentioned Toni less and less. Sometimes he wrote to Franny, or to me. But intimacy requires continual contact (Is your cold better? Did you try those pills? So you didn't sleep at all? Why don't you take a nap while I do the dishes? Did the washing machine repairman come? Was he able to fix it? How much did he charge? Outrageous! So how did Franny manage at show-and-tell? Was she happy with herself? And what did the teacher say? And what about the other kids? Did they like it? Were they good? Were they funny? Oh, Belle got a new couch? What color? What does it look like? Does it look good? Yes, I went to the dentist and I need an inlay, two or three appointments, five hundred bucks, but it's worth it. You know, in the store today I saw a necklace, thick and gold, well, not real gold of course, a sort of collar, I guess, and I thought of you, it looked like you, but you don't wear necklaces. Still, I wondered…).

It wasn't long before we were out of touch with each other. Once that happened, there was little to say—we'd lost the feel of each other's lives, and only major events—triumphs or disasters—were worth mention. He had some triumphs, so did I. Franny's, which she continued for over a year to report religiously, were the occasional A on a test, gold stars on test papers, compliments from her teacher, her birthday party and all presents received (Toni sent her a doll with her own suitcase and wardrobe), her part in the school play (she played a tooth), promotion to second grade, her mastery at day camp over the summer of the Australian crawl, the reopening of school, her new school clothes, the occasional A on a test, gold stars on test papers…eventually, she flagged. It was too hard: so often, when she begged me to phone him, he wasn't home; when he was, he could only repeat the same words, Wonderful, Franny, Great, honey.

I photographed cornfields in Kansas, a bridge in Seattle, the outback of Australia, rioting in Gdansk, two massive peace marches, and the prison at Attica after the massacre. Arden was graduated from college and Franny and I drove up to the ceremony. We stayed at a motel, not at the commune. Arden was going to remain there with Jacob, her newest lover; she would write poetry and sell dried flower arrangements. She was distant, edgy with me—with both of us, really. Franny cried on the trip back: she'd been so excited about seeing her beloved older sister. We went back without either Arden or Billy: he was staying in Ithaca to take some summer courses. I wondered, briefly, what my life would have been like then if I hadn't had Franny. I let a glimpse of a neat little apartment in Manhattan, of no more responsibilities, no more concealment, an easy life, cross my mind, then fade. I did have Franny: and I would not give her up. She was my darling.

I still screwed around when I was traveling, but less often and with less joy. It wasn't the same. Before, extracurricular sex had seemed an overflowing, an exuberance, an adventure. Now there was a shadow on it, an edge; it felt urgent, a seeking, a need, desperate. I was looking at every man I met, not with an eye to pleasure, but with an eye to—oh, not marriage, but something permanent, something that permitted intimacy. I didn't like feeling that, and more and more I avoided looking at men at all. I felt old, abandoned, unwanted.

Toni, meanwhile, was having a great time. It took a year to come up with a screenplay they liked, but now the producers were looking at locations, directors, talking about cast, it was all so exciting, he loved it out there, maybe we could all come out and visit, or maybe Franny could, when he had time to spend with her, maybe next year when he wasn't so busy, when things calmed down. I told him I wanted him to come home that Christmas. He said he would if he could, but they were in the middle of all this important stuff. I said he
had
to come home. He came. I had the feeling that if I told him he had to come home for good, he would have done that too. I didn't.

He stayed a week. Franny was ecstatic. Arden had come home too that Christmas, bringing Jacob with her (Mother by now having resigned herself to unlicensed sex). She recognized that Toni and I were finished and flirted wildly with him, which sent Jacob into a drugged withdrawal. I overheard her discussing plans to fly out and visit him. Billy, with the same recognition, barely spoke to Toni. I was in deep gloom, I don't know why.

I told Toni I wanted to sell the house and move into the city. There was no point to keeping it, with only Franny and me occupying it. There were too many rooms, the garden was too much for me. He said it was my house wasn't it: I could do as I liked. He said this without bitterness. I asked him if he understood that my moving to the city would mean Franny would have to go to private schools, and that I expected him to pay for that. I don't know why I did that. I could afford it myself. But his checks for Franny's care had been erratic. I guess I was demanding something from him for her. Something I could tell her about, something she would understand. I guess.

Anyway, he just shrugged: if he had to, he would. He made no demurral. He had utterly given over emotional responsibility for her. I had expected him to protest he did not want his child raised in the heat and filth of New York streets, like Brad a half-million years earlier, but he said nothing. I recognized guilt when I saw it: I should, after all. I asked if he wanted a divorce. He paled. He said he loved me. But he wanted his chance, and this was it and it was in California and he knew I wouldn't move out there. He asked if I wanted a divorce. I shrugged.

One night we stayed up late drinking and he told me about the women he'd been involved with out there. There had been quite a few, but right now he was involved only with Gail and Pauline. But he felt inexperienced, he needed advice, a woman's view: why did Gail act that way, what was going on? And how was it that Pauline had treated him like that? Did other men have problems sometimes…you know…? What did I think he should do? I told him what I could. Mainly I listened. I knew that he wanted more than advice—he wanted to brag a little, to show me. I let him: he deserved it, he was allowed.

We agreed with enormous civility to grant a divorce should either of us decide we wanted one. When he left, in a taxi this time, we kissed affectionately, like sister and brother. Franny was more relaxed this time, her body leaned into mine. But this time she cried for a long time after he left. This time she knew he was not coming back.

“Saintly, weren't you!” Clara snorted.

“I am, you know,” I said coolly. “You can be saintly when you don't want anything.”

“Oh, baby,” Clara sympathized (and I drew myself together like a clamshell at the word), “don't you see? You were still insisting on control. You wouldn't let him know he mattered to you! You would be damned if you'd give him any sign you were jealous!” She said this passionately, leaning forward, touching my hand.

I pulled my hand away. “Jealous? I'm not a jealous person. I didn't feel jealous in the least. Why should I? I was glad he had other women, it alleviated my guilt.”

“Even Arden?”

I could feel my mouth narrow. “Arden? Yes. Well, I figured if she went out there and got involved with him—she'd be sorry. It doesn't work to screw Mommy's lovers. She'd find out.”

“Vengeance, saith the lord,” Clara laughed. “Oh no, you're not jealous.”

“Is that vengeance? I think it's just common sense.”

“Look, whatever you did or were, you loved him and he loved you—once. And for years you believed in him, in his talent, his promise, and supported him, emotionally, financially….”

“Yes. But he was taking care of my kids, of me…it was so wonderful to come back from a trip and have them all so happy to see me, have Toni happy to fix something to eat…” I sighed. “It was an even exchange as I see it.”

“Even if it was! You loved him and encouraged him and you
did
support him and the minute he succeeds he leaves you. That's a pattern.”

“Not
your
kind of pattern! It's not the typical male-female situation, Clara! Toni was the wife in our house!”

“A wife who leaves you high and dry with a small child to raise, a child he asked you, begged you, pressured you to have. Promising he'd always take care of her!”

“Mmmm.” That part
did
make me bitter.

“And he leaves right before your birthday. Your fortieth birthday! An important one, not to say traumatic. You gave him a party when he was thirty, and another when he was thirty-one. He couldn't hang around for one month?”

“He couldn't hang around period. He got the call; he made arrangements. He was gone in ten days.”

“And that didn't hurt you?”

“Clara!” I was growing exasperated. “I've told you, he had to leave, it was time. He had to leave and go out into the world and be like other men. And after all, I had been screwing around and he knew that. I had forfeited my right to complain. Why shouldn't he have his chance at sexual freedom?”

“I'm not saying he shouldn't!” Clara was growing heated too. “I'm saying he hurt you! I'm not saying he didn't have reasons to do so, maybe even a right to do so—I'm just saying that it hurt you. You keep talking about not feeling anything and I'm saying you did feel something, and you keep telling me you didn't because you had no right to! You are being impossible!”

“So go home!” I exploded, rising and stalking invisible enemies in my large, light, plain, living room. “Who asked you to interfere! Do I need you? What do I want to listen to you for?”

She stood up too. “I won't! I won't go home until I get you to listen to reason!”

“Listen to
you,
you mean! And you are hardly the voice of reason! A person who eats peanut butter out of the jar for breakfast and crackers in bed? A person who rides a bicycle in New York City, breathing in truck fumes? A person who has dedicated her life to not making enough money to live? You are reasonable?”

She started to giggle then, and so did I. “Oh, Anastasia….” She walked toward me, her hand outstretched.

I turned away, I walked toward the kitchen. “I need some more seltzer,” I said. She sank down on the old shabby couch, sighing. From the kitchen I could hear her, yelling:

“You're full of pity for Franny, losing her sister and brother and father all in two years, but you don't even bother to mention that you lost daughter, son, and husband in that same period!”

I stopped, my hand on the refrigerator door. A memory had just pierced me, cold as the fridge, damp, metallic. Moving. I was moving from that house, our house, Toni's and mine, and I was packing the things from the medicine chest in a carton, and I picked up a bottle, Toni's after-shave. It was a cheap after-shave, but he liked it, and even though the kids would give him better brands at Christmas, he went on using this cheap stuff. And I started to hurl it into the trash, thinking, I don't need this cheap after-shave cluttering up my medicine chest, but it wouldn't leave my hand and suddenly I was bent over the bathroom sink, sobbing…. I loved that he loved that after-shave, I loved it because he loved it. I sobbed myself dry.

“You keep on denying your feelings. That's why you suffer from zombiedom!”

I returned to the living room with my seltzer and a dish of candy. I handed it to her. I sat down. “Zombiedom comes from pain. And pain comes from the things that happen. And the things that happen
do
happen, and maybe they're even inevitable. In any case, you can't change them. You have to accept your fate. And if your fate is zombiedom, or carrotdom, then you have to accept that.”

“Ah, Anastasia!” Clara breathed in lament, pushing the candy dish away. Then, face upturned: “Carrotdom?”

I
N JUNE OF 1971
,
World
folded. My world folded with it, and other people's. There were hundreds of us out on the street, dozens of photographers used to a high standard of living, out of work. Because I kept myself so removed from office politics and affairs, I'd had no sense that things had been going badly for the magazine. Its failure was a complete shock to me.

I went home—which by then was a light, airy, shabby two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side, with a view of rooftops and on clear days, a fingernail of river glittering metallically—and collapsed in a chair. I'd had lunch with Russ at a little bistro near the office, and he'd told me that the magazine was closing down at the end of the month. There would be no more assignments.

The phone began to ring then, and went on ringing for weeks—other photographers and journalists out of work, wondering where to find work, asking what I was doing. I wasn't doing much. Because I'd always lived simply, I wasn't as desperate as some of them. I had enough money in the bank to carry me for six months and enough invested that dividends would cover the rent on my apartment for the foreseeable future. I had to find work, but I wasn't yet at the end of my resources. It was the shock that felled me—the fact that it was ended so irreparably—for there was no other magazine like
World
—so suddenly, so unexpectedly, the life I loved, the swinging around the world with a knapsack on my back….

I had only Franny to fall back on. But the truth is it wouldn't have made much difference (would it?) if my kids had been closer to me, if they had been part of my daily life, because when your work is your identity, people, even family, people you love, can't compensate for the loss. Still, I tried to reach them. I called Toni, but he wasn't home. He wasn't home for weeks. I could have tried to reach him at the studio, but I didn't.

I couldn't call Arden, but I wrote her, and a week later, she called. She was sorry to hear about
World,
but sure I would be all right, would find something, I was strong and independent and I would be all right, that was for sure. The great news was that she and Jacob were getting married, and she wanted me to help her plan the wedding. Where should she hold it? The commune was a bit hard to reach, wasn't it? What did I think?