Her Mother's Daughter (89 page)

“And the one whose room it was in would start to treat it as if it was his—or hers.”

“And there's not much room in our rooms either, Arden.”

“What about the kitchen?”

“On top of the stove?”

“Mmmm.” Heads were busy. No solutions.

“Couldn't he read while we watch TV? We'd keep it low.”

“It's hard to concentrate. But you can ask him.”

“We only watch till nine. Then you could both read.”

“I'll ask him,” I smiled.

The outcome, of course, was that the kids got exactly what they wanted. We
all
watched television until nine, then they went to bed and we read for a couple of hours. We did this every night. We were a family.

It wasn't until spring that Brad found out. In the middle of March, I was sent to Algeria, where the OAS—the secret revolutionary organization of the Algerian army—had declared open war against the French. Terrorism and bombings had mounted, and the French were arguing among themselves about what to do. During a lull in the action (some sporadic guerrilla action was still going on),
World
sent me over to get some pictures against the future—for they expected either a full-blown war or the granting of independence soon. It was a dismal assignment, it turned out. As a woman I was denied entry to the male councils of the OAS, and I ended photographing mainly French buildings that had been or might be destroyed by the rebels, the souks, and the wonderful dark cobblestoned alleys of the Algerian quarter. But I did make some important Algerian contacts.

I was gone for two weeks during which Arden agreed, for once, to have dinner with her father—maybe because she missed me, but probably because he offered to take them to a restaurant, just the three of them, instead of having them to dinner at his house with Fern and Fern's daughter and the baby. Normally, when I was at home, Brad rang the doorbell and waited on the front porch for the kids to come down. He didn't like to encounter me. He had a grudge against me. You might even say he hated me.

Before she got sick, Pani usually opened the door to Brad, and he would stand chatting with her in the doorway. Since her illness, Billy ran downstairs to answer the door, ready to go, calling up to Arden that Daddy was there and to hurry up. But this time, Billy wasn't ready; he answered the door in socks, and without his coat. And Brad, knowing I wasn't there, followed him upstairs. And he found Toni ensconced in an armchair in the middle of a chess game with Billy, looking completely at home with his shoes off.

Brad darted him one look of hatred, then stood silent, stiff, angry-looking, until the kids got themselves ready. I know all this because Toni told me: and it puzzled me. Because Billy was always nervous when his father was coming for them; he began to wash and dress far ahead of time, nagging Arden to get started, and usually, building into a frustrated rage at her.

I arrived home late Thursday night, and Toni came up and insisted on heating some pasta for me—I was tired and would have been happy to eat it cold—and made a fresh salad with one hand, his other around my waist, crowing—oh, only the young can be so happy—delighted to have me back. I glowed, happy to see him, to be near him again, to be home, warmed by his happiness, as if already my heart had started to cool, harden, petrify, whatever it's done, and needed warmth from the outside to get it pumping.

He was standing at the stove, turning the pasta with a wooden spoon, and he grinned at me, “I met your ex the other night.”

My heart may have trouble pumping, but it has no trouble whatever in stopping dead. I moved away from him and let myself down into a kitchen chair.

“You did?” Even the expression on my face did not faze him. He told me what had happened.

“Oh, god.” The voice was much deeper than mine, I didn't even recognize it as my own.

Toni put the plate of linguine in front of me and sat down across the table. “
Mangia,
baby.”

But I couldn't—I fussed with it, moved it around, put a few forkfuls in my mouth, but couldn't swallow.

“Why, what's wrong?”

“I'm going to hear about this. I just know it.” My body was seized with dread, the kind of fear that debilitates because it prevents you from thinking clearly. I felt as if my blood had stopped moving through my body, had clotted, clogged, and lodged in my brain. Toni laughed at me: I was a puritan after all, a good girl despite what I'd said about my college days, and once a wife always a wife, I was overcome with guilt, while Brad ran around even before we were divorced and remarried and had a new child and paid little attention to his other children and thought nothing of that.

It didn't matter what he said. I knew Brad, I said, ominously.

But several weeks passed and nothing happened. Toni had the grace not to bring it up to mock me. I walked around holding myself tensely, expecting a disastrous phone call. Brad did call one evening to arrange a shopping trip with Billy—he was going to buy him a new spring jacket—but I didn't talk to him. The Saturday afternoon of the shopping trip, Billy came in looking very disturbed. He was short with me, and spent the rest of the evening in his room. When I went to try to talk to him, he was withdrawn and sullen, reading, he said. He didn't even come out to watch television that night, and my dread grew again, like a tumor that has started to shrink, but suddenly expands hugely.

Brad called Monday morning around ten. I knew he didn't need to be at his office that early, but I also knew that is where he was—with the door shut no doubt against the possible arrival of a secretary.

“You bitch! You slut! You whore!” were his opening words.

My dread eased as adrenaline pumped in: the worst had arrived, there was no further need for fear. What I had to do now was act angry, outraged.

“This is an obscene phone call, and I am hanging up now to call the police.”

He ignored that. He poured it out. My filth, my whoredom, having a young lover in the house with my children. He spent several minutes lovingly mouthing the language all men know and secrete away in a back pocket, waiting for a chance to use it: the extensive vocabulary indicting the vileness of women. There was no time for me to say anything, but it humiliated me to stand there holding the phone listening to it, implicitly granting his right to use it, so I hung up. He rang back immediately. I didn't answer the phone. It rang on and off for the next half hour, then stopped. But my dread now had returned. What next?

Next was a ring at the doorbell a few hours later. Why hadn't I gone out? He was standing there white-faced, his features standing sharply on his face like a line drawing. I was amazed at how lined he was—he was only a year older than I, but he looked forty. He charged in when I opened the door, ran up the stairs, and went through the rooms searching, throwing open doors and slamming them shut. He even checked all the closets. Then he went into the kitchen and counted the dinner plates in the dish drain. There were four.

I followed him screaming. “How dare you! What the hell do you think you're doing! I'm calling the police!” I went for the phone, but he leaped at me and grabbed my hand. Hard.

“You can't call the police. I'm paying for this place, remember,” he gritted out between clenched teeth.

“You pay child support, not alimony! I support myself and I pay the rent here. This is my house!”

“The hell it is! Any judge in the country would grant my right to be here! And any judge in the country would grant me custody of the children after what you've done. And I'm just telling you, bitch, that I'm taking the kids away from you. You're an unfit mother, whore!”

“Hah! You'll take the kids and make Fern take care of them? She'll like that, won't she, oh righteous one! Who's the adulterer around here, I want to know. If you're going to invoke conventional morality, Brad, at least get your story straight.”

“I never brought her home. I was married to her before the kids ever saw her,” he hissed. “You bring a young boy into the house, it's obscene! Are you reduced to robbing cradles? Or is it that you've finally found someone your own age!”

I had all along been a little uneasy about Toni's age, but now I felt outraged. He was, after all, only eight years younger than I. How many men get involved with women half their age, or girls young enough to be their granddaughters? Hot running blood rushed to my head—a bad thing for me, because I lose the ability to think and fall back on mindless language.

“You fuck! You stupid asshole! Get out of my house! Get out now!” I reached for the phone again, and when his hand darted out to stop me, I thrust it off, hard, I pushed him as hard as I could. He was caught by surprise and rocked a little on his heels, and I shoved him toward the door. He caught his balance and began to move back toward me, but I gave him a huge shove—my arms are strong from holding and carrying heavy equipment—and he fell back against the front door and slipped down a step. It frightened him, although he caught himself, and he glowered and spoke like a movie villain, in a low threatening voice.

“Just you wait, bitch. I'm going to take your kids away. Any judge in the country would judge you an unfit mother. WHORE!” He turned and stamped down the stairs. He slammed the front door so hard the glass cracked. When I heard it, I ran down after him and threw the door open. He was about to get into his car.

“I'm sending you a bill for destruction of property! You broke Pani's front door glass!”

He laughed. “Go ahead! Send all the bills you want! You won't see another penny from me!”

I stood there, tears welling in my throat, and watched him drive away. I felt utterly defeated. I knew he was right—the cops wouldn't have helped me if I'd called them, they'd defer to him without even checking when he said he paid the bills; and probably a judge would take my children away from me. And even if the whole thing was a ploy to enable him to stop paying child support—because that must be what he was up to, I couldn't believe he really
wanted
the kids, or that Fern would agree to take care of them—even then, he wins. Because what could I do about it? Who would help me?

I ran upstairs and put in a call to Steven Sindona, who had handled my end of the divorce. He was out. I called Edna Lench, who lived down the block, whose husband was a lawyer. When I told her what happened, her voice froze. She said she'd ask her husband, but she sounded as if next time I met her on the street, she might very well cut me. I cursed myself, because her daughter Joyce was one of Arden's best friends: would Edna stop Joyce from seeing Arden?

I wanted to die. I was no good. Everything I did, I did wrong. I just didn't think, I just didn't pay enough attention to the way the world works. And I was so panicked I couldn't reason out the situation.

I was sitting in the kitchen holding my head in my hands when I heard the light rap on the door that meant Toni was there. He came in. I was shocked at how completely I had forgotten him. And I wondered—briefly—why he hadn't come up earlier, when he heard—as he must have—Brad throwing doors open and slamming them shut.

“What's up?”

Strange how I forgave him everything, always. I never asked him to be accountable, responsible for me. It's only recently that I realized that, and Clara says, think about that, think about why you did that. At the time, I felt that it was love that wiped anger out of my heart every time I looked at him.

I told him what had happened. He sat beside me, holding both my hands in his.

“I heard a rumpus up here. I wanted to come up, but I didn't know how you'd feel about that.” He looked the question at me.

“It's probably just as well you didn't. It would just have made things worse,” I said with assurance that, at that moment, I felt. I smiled love at him. “You made the right decision.” I caressed his face with my hand.

There was noise—clatter and chatter—on the stairs, and tears sprang to my eyes. I turned around in my chair when they came in. My heart kept pinging, ping pang ping pang, pain pain pain, and water poured down my cheeks. I memorized—not that I didn't already know them—every contour of my children's faces, their young bodies, the way their hair grew on their heads. They stopped dead in the doorway, looking.

“What happened!” they both breathed. Toni told them; they turned to me horrified. “Can he do that?”

“I'm afraid he can. I've called some lawyers, but they haven't called back.” I wiped my face with a dish towel that was lying on the table, and Billy left the room, returning with a handful of tissues for me to blow my nose in.

“Well, we won't go. I won't go. They can't make me go if I don't want to!” Arden announced.

Billy glanced at her, then at me, seeking assurance, I grimaced. “They can make you go,” Billy informed his sister in a low voice.

“No they can't! I'll run away!” I sat there admiring my daughter's spirit, her courage, her ferocity, but then—as always when she was upset—she turned her anger on me. “You have to stop him, you have to do something! How come he can have a lover, he even has another baby, and they don't do anything to him?”

“He's married. It's legal.”

“Well, you can get married too!” She looked at Toni.

“Just what I was about to suggest,” he grinned at me.

“Oh!” I stood up. “No! A shotgun wedding, 1960s style?” The truth was, I didn't want to marry Toni. I
didn't want to
—deeply. I didn't know why and I didn't want to think about why.

“I'm never speaking to him again!” Arden announced, stalking out of the room. “And if they make me go to him, I'll run away! I won't live in that house!” Her door slammed.

Billy stood there, pale. His mouth was working. Then he too left the room. I heard his door close quietly, and the springs of his bed creak.