Parts Unknown (13 page)

For a while, with Madame’s attention on George, I could relax, and eye the mural. It was like a crossword puzzle, or a maze: one day I’d figure out how it worked. Lucy sat, rigid, her hands clasped in her lap like a waxen doll. She bore so little resemblance to the outsized child I lived with that she almost appeared possessed.

Then, inevitably, as if recalling the etiquette requirement that one must speak with each of one’s dinner guests, Madame turned politely to me. “So, Vivian, what have you been doing lately?”

“Oh, the usual,” I stammered. “I spend most of my time with Lucy, of course. And when she’s in preschool I feel like I’m constantly running errands.” I shook my head helplessly. “I don’t know—the weeks just go by, don’t they?”

The corners of Madame’s mouth barely curved up in courtesy. “I remember those days. Always running around. Of course, I was teaching too, which kept me more than busy. But I always had dinner on the table when Leonard came home, didn’t I, dear?”

I fidgeted, miserable. Madame knew I couldn’t cook worth anything. George offered gallantly, “Vivian’s a wonderful mother.”

“I’m thinking about going back to work soon,” I blurted in desperation. I hadn’t thought about any such thing. Lies began flowing effortlessly. “Maybe taking the CBEST test and getting into teaching. Getting my credential.” Madame was staring at me in frank surprise. “Like you, you know. Because you were such an inspiration. To George. Growing up. And then, I could have the same school schedule as Lucy. So she wouldn’t have to stay all day in after-school care.”

“That’s wonderful, Vivian,” Madame said, as enthusiastically as I’d ever heard her speak to me. “With you contributing, maybe you both could finally buy a house. You’re completely priced out of this neighborhood, unfortunately. But maybe a little farther south—Wilshire Vista, maybe. Or Picfair Village. I hear it’s really up-and-coming now.”

George was glaring at me from across the table; I couldn’t figure out why. But satisfied momentarily, Madame turned back to George. “So, how is Pearl doing?” Pearl was George’s prized cattleya. He was grooming her for the orchid show.

He frowned. “I kept in her in the window too long; now she’s got black blotches on her leaves. I don’t know that she’ll recover in time for the show.”

Madame’s hand, clawlike, brushed George’s arm. “It’s not till October, dear. I’m sure you’ll work your magic on her; she’ll be right as rain by then.”

“Of course, Mother. You’re right . . . now, Angel—remember, that’s my miltonia—she’s having trouble too. Her leaves are crinkled—not enough water. I need to pay more attention to my girls.”

Madame’s voice murmured, soothing. I should be more interested in George’s orchids. They always seemed such a silly affectation, a pursuit for the privileged, or those who wished they were. Madame took better care of him than I did.

At least she’d turned her attention from me and Lucy. I breathed out. Relaxed. Safe, until next week.

The thing was, I could never figure out exactly what Madame expected from me. I would have thought she would have been pleased when I stayed home with Lucy. Instead, that seemed to feed into some fear that I was only out to mooch off of George and spend his money. When we’d first met, and she discovered I was an artist, I soon understood from her leading questions that she was convinced I was on drugs—like all artists must be, you know. I don’t think she’d ever shaken that belief.

I only half-listened as Madame spoke animatedly with George, her hand often on his arm, caressing it, her red-lipsticked mouth delightedly pursing, opening, closing as she unwound the tales of her week. Hassles with the cleaning lady—Madame was sure she was planning to steal something. A shakeup in her bridge group. Her old college roommate, now terminally ill. The circular stories of someone now at an age where there are only so many stories left to tell.

Then George recounted every detail he could recall of his week—the traffic, our anniversary, his students—who needed help, who was a rising statistics star. Funny anecdotes about Lucy. Every so often Madame would pose him a question in French—a language I didn’t understand—and he’d respond, so that for a while the slippery vowels across the table, the elided consonants, sounded not unlike a radio tuned to a distant foreign station—one that merited a moment’s listen as you clicked past it on the dial, a spot you weren’t meant to linger.

~ ~ ~

An absolute truth of life with a young child is that there is never time, on Sunday morning, to read the Sunday morning paper. As usual, I didn’t get to it until Sunday night, after we’d put Lucy to bed, compliant and wobbly after her enormous effort to be good. By eight p.m. I practically oozed into the sofa cushions; I was that tired from once more barely surviving the weekly dinner gauntlet. One day I’d make some unforgivable
faux pas
, I was sure of it. I wondered what George would do if he absolutely had to choose between siding with his mother or with me.

“So what was all that about?” he asked, stiffly lowering himself on the sofa next to me. “About going back to work?”

“I don’t know.” I rubbed my hands up and down the legs of my pants. “I guess it kind of came out of nowhere. But maybe it would be a good idea—so I’m not so cooped up in the house all the time.”

“Nothing comes out of nowhere.” His voice was clipped. I hated it when he talked like that. He was so well-bred he almost never yelled. Instead, he got terse. “We agreed that you’d stay home with Lucy. At least until first grade.”

“Your mother thought it was a good idea,” I muttered.

“She’s got her own plans,” he said coldly. “We’ve done the spreadsheets. You know we’re doing perfectly fine on my income alone.”

“I just get so frustrated sometimes,” I said. “I don’t feel like I’m  . . . useful. And the longer I spend not being useful, the harder it is to get back to
being
useful.”

“You’re not making sense.” He tapped his foot impatiently. His body was rigid, a foot away from me. He looked at the wall, not at me. “How can you even
think
about going back to work while Lucy’s so young? We agreed before she was born: one parent would stay home with her as caregiver. Now, believe me: I’d stay home with her if I could. But we both know that whatever income you would earn—” his foot tapped faster— “would never even come
close
to my salary. And, obviously, I have tenure. I need to continue teaching. It’s out of the question for me to take a sabbatical, especially this year. This is going to be such an important year for me, with Archie on the way out—I really need to show the department I’m the logical choice for chair. I’ve got to spend the next month or so polishing up that paper for the Phoenix conference. You know the one—‘An Algorithmic Approach to Statistical Analysis.’ So don’t throw this going-back-to-work nonsense at me, not right now. We’ll talk about it in a couple years.”

Every word George spit out made perfect sense, in isolation. “But wait a minute,” I said slowly. “I know we had a plan. And I remember agreeing to it. And I still totally agree, in principle, about what’s best for Lucy. But don’t you think, if parts of the plan aren’t working, we can change it? I mean, just a little. Just because we made this plan, um, um . . .” (I counted in my head) “four years ago—way back when I got pregnant—that doesn’t mean we have to live by it forever, right?”

George tapped his foot very fast. “I didn’t
say
forever, Vivian,” he said slowly. “I said, two . . . more . . . years, okay? Wait till she’s five. That’s all I’m asking.”

“Maybe I’ll start painting again,” I said forlornly. “If I’m not going back to work, then. Maybe I can get that portfolio together.”

He glared at the wall. “What you do in your free time is up to you. But Lucy comes first, do you hear?” His voice was like a stern father’s—something my dad had never been. What Dad had done was far worse than that.

I cringed involuntarily inside, like a child about to be punished, and walked to the bathroom. Splashing water on my face, scrubbing it hard with my hands, I willed the thick gathering tears to go away.

I had this fantasy sometimes, where I wished George was dead. Some victimless situation—a car accident, perhaps. Of course he wouldn’t suffer; it would be instantaneous. I would cry a lot, but inside I’d be ecstatic. I would be free.

When I returned, George was paging through his Friday Wall Street Journal, muttering under his breath at the economic news, which seemed to become more dire each time he purchased the paper. His little ritual was to take a Friday evening walk after Lucy went to bed, to the little newsstand at the Farmer’s Market, buy his paper, walk home, and then make love to me. The actual, ceremonial reading of the newspaper occurred, invariably, on Sunday night.

He looked up briefly, then back at his paper. I could feel him thawing already. Tomorrow, he’d wake up and all would be as usual. He wouldn’t need to repeat himself. He was the conqueror; I was the conquest. I’d been wrong about the framed map above the fireplace, from the start. That map—it had started everything. It had opened my long-sealed heart, just wide enough to let him in. And once he was in, he couldn’t get out. It was no use—once I started dreaming about his baritone voice, with its perfectly formed consonants lulling me to sleep, I couldn’t wait to hear it again. Once I gave in to George’s ideas, and George’s plans, everything became so much easier. And once I got used to the nice dinners, and the tidy apartment, and the almost sexual thrill of having money, as much money as I’d ever need, if only I married him—by that point, I was in too deep to struggle my way out. Uncle Paulie’s money was long gone, and tainted as it was, it had equaled freedom. With enough money, I could do anything. I’d be safe. And I was barely scraping by by the time I met George.

The thing was, I eventually realized that he loved that map the way he loved his orchids, and the way he loved me: anything unknowable was meant to be acquired. Tamed. Kept behind thick walls, in a room heated just the right temperature for flowers, and old paper, and me. So we could all thrive, and be observed, with utmost care, as the early explorers must have monitored the horizon, scanning for an approaching threat.

~ ~ ~

I poured myself a third glass of wine, picked up the ever-shrinking Sunday
Los Angeles Times
, and paged distractedly through the book review section. Nothing caught my eye. The trouble was, I’d never quite gotten out of my high-school Harlequin romance novel phase. I’d force myself to read the latest Booker Prize and Pulitzer Prize winners, which always seemed either too pretentious by half, or heinously boring, or far too violent and depressing. But I needed to keep up, conversation-wise, with George. And to feel that my expensive college degree gave me some modicum of taste and class. My real, secret love, however, were those thick paperbacks that didn’t even make it onto the wooden bookshelves at the Fairfax branch library. Instead, they lurked on the spinning rack in the way back of the library, pink covers with gyrating wedding rings in foil, or cutaway covers with a woman, head tossed back, gazing with fiery passion into the eyes of a dashing, faux-historical stranger. I still devoured those books like candy, secretly, when George was at work. But despite my clandestine book fetish, I was rarely satisfied. I kept searching for that one book—that elusive book—that would transform me. That would show me what it really felt like to be in love, to be desired passionately, and to live a life of ultimate fulfillment.

Thus musing, it was a complete shock, my eyes flitting over the reviews on the Juvenile Fiction page, to see the one name I never expected to see again. Joshua Barnes.

My god . . . How . . . ?

Author of
Supers
.

A small note under the review mentioned that he was appearing at Barnes & Noble at the Grove shopping center.

2 p.m. on Saturday, March 22.

Holy crap. He was . . . real. Alive. And coming here. Next week.

My heart was thumping so fast I thought I might pass out. I felt nauseous, lightheaded. I had to get out of the room, those silent, well-behaved orchids judging me, dark eyes in their cupped centers staring at me, unblinking. I cleared my throat. “George.”

“Erm?” He didn’t look up.

“I’m going to bed.”

“Goodnight.” He leaned over and kissed me, a perfunctory peck on the mouth. “Love you.”

“You too.”

I closed the bedroom door and leaned against it, alone, my head pounding. All these years, when I forced myself not to think about Josh. Whenever I’d slip, and remember that August in London, it was always bathed in a mellow golden light. In soft focus, those days all seemed warm, fuzzy, and perfect, even though in reality it had been rainy and cold for most of that month. My memories had all the qualities of an exceedingly pleasant dream, one that’s too ridiculous to be real, but pleasant to recall in the light of day nonetheless. It had just been three weeks out of a lifetime of regular life; a life of just surviving and going along. That month stuck out weirdly, a time out of time, the only month I’d stepped outside real life and done the unimaginable: loved passionately, was loved in return and lived happily in a little London flat. It was all just like a dream, really, and Josh was a fantasy, the one ideal man who’d believed in me, and my art, and had seen all of me, inside and out, and loved everything he’d seen. At least for a while. It was dangerous, to think he could still be real. 

But here he was, actual, alive, out of the blue, just
there
. He really had followed his dream. He was the writer he always wanted to be. And I was . . . here. But not here.

Chapter 7

I let myself remember, finally. Think back once more to 1998, to the memories I’d shoved aside, so successfully, for so long.

Josh, Trevor, and Dov were my new, better family. After our night at the pub, so long ago, Dov held my elbow, steering me through the door. He pressed more closely against me than he needed to, probably, but I didn’t mind. I felt nothing for him but simple affection. After knowing him for just one evening, he felt, already, like my brother. Dad had Andrew, a “protegé” of his who’d confessed the strip club visits to me at a Christmas party this past winter. Sleazy as it was, Andrew was Dad’s substitute for Alex. Perhaps Dov could help me to forget that Alex was untouchable and Marty, unreachable.