Parts Unknown (22 page)

Another restriction of the Thursday schedule was that I was required to pick Lucy up in an hour, which left absolutely no time to do anything useful. Any errand, in Los Angeles, took longer than that—one had to drive, and park, and navigate long checkout lines. Once, I’d tried to go to Trader Joe’s, less than a mile’s drive away. But I returned ten minutes late, after battling crowds and the backed-up, miniscule parking lot, and for weeks after Madame had been colder than ever to me.

So on Thursdays, I just spent the hour walking around Madame’s neighborhood. Only a mile from my own, the Hancock Park neighborhood was a different world, and strolling down the sycamore-lined streets, with rows of elegant houses set up high on hill-like lawns, was my sole exercise for the week. The farther east I walked, the bigger the houses got, the higher the security fencing was, and the quieter the streets became. By the time I got to June Street, I could hear the echo of my own footsteps. Cars rarely drove by, and I’d never seen any resident emerge from or enter the grand homes, just the occasional gardener or cleaning service. I spent the hour walking around and around the same few blocks, which roughly formed the shape of a pentagon: McCadden Place, to 1st Street, up Hudson Place, which ended at the Wilshire Country Club with an impassable fence. Then back down Hudson Avenue to 2
^nd
Street, and back around again, my stomach aching the whole time, so tired I just wanted to lie down on one of those verdant lawns and go to sleep. All I could think about was the intractable problem of Josh’s appearance on Saturday, and how to force him into coexistence with the real life I led every day—my life as Lucy’s mom, and George’s wife, and the little boxes of responsibilities those positions entailed. My allegiances were unchangeable, absolutely necessary, and completely at odds with going to Josh’s book signing. By doing so, I would upset my family’s balance for good, my desperate avowals of “friendship” to the contrary. Being George’s wife, being Lucy’s mom: these were the only two things, in fact, I could say I’d ever succeeded at.

The houses stood, still as sentinels, atop their little hills. The landscaping around them was uniformly professionally designed and well-tended. Bougainvillea and azaleas splashed color across front entries. A few tulip trees were still blooming. I could glimpse night-blooming jasmine behind high walls. I sniffed, trying to catch some of the delicious floral smells surely coming from all that vegetation. But all the gorgeous plantings were far away, up the little hills near the front doors of the homes. Too far for the scents to reach me. All I could smell, walking past the big houses, was the herbal, green aroma of freshly cut grass.

Whatever happened to me, whatever small decisions I made, seemed immaterial. Those houses would still be standing there forever, kept safe from change and from harm by the force of the wealth, or the willpower, stockpiled behind their doors. My fingers lingered on Madame’s tarnished brass knocker. Knowing George’s closeness with his mother, I’d thought, until I met Madame, that maybe she could be my second chance at having a mother to love, and a mother who truly loved me. So silly.

I could enter that house, but I could never belong there.

~ ~ ~

That evening, while Lucy lounged slack-jawed in front of
Word World
and I should have been making dinner, instead I snuck into the office room and spent some time peering voyeuristically into Josh’s life. I browsed through his web site, drooling over his blog entries about the creative process, the fulfillment of writing, his love for comic books. I internalized his literary heroes—Michael Chabon, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Hardy. I remembered the forlorn English textbooks in his London bookcase. He had followed all the dreams he’d had back then, and made them real. Not like me. Nothing like how I’d ended up.

I copied his email address, visible when clicking the Contact link on his web site, opened Skype, and pasted the address in. Presto—Josh was on Skype. A click away from a voice call. Still not satisfied, I moved on to Flickr and pasted the email address there too. No dice, but when I typed his wife’s name in, there they were—dozens of publicly viewable pictures of Josh and his family. Bonanza! Clearly they were not yet used to fame or the possibility of being Googled by strangers.

It felt dirty and sneaky, looking at the private moments of Josh, Caroline, and Amanda, but I did it anyway. Caroline was model-beautiful, with long, straight, dark hair that draped around her so effortlessly, it must take an hour to style it each morning. A Jewish star on a gold chain glinted around her neck. Baby Amanda looked just like her dad, with swirls of black curly hair and penetrating eyes that stared right at the camera. There they were, the happy little family—although, as always happens when one person needs to hold the camera, they were rarely all in a photo together. The big blue New Mexico sky, like an enormous bowl, cradled them in scenes I’d tried to envision. Now I could vividly re-create them. Caroline and Amanda at the farmer’s market I’d imagined, Caroline holding up an enormous melon. Josh leaning against an earthen wall of their home, cradling Amanda tenderly. Caroline and Amanda. Josh and Amanda. And then, last of all, a photo, probably set with the camera timer, of Josh and Caroline, embracing each other, she smiling at the camera, he nuzzling her neck.

I could almost feel Josh’s presence, seeing him—even embracing his wife—making him feel so close, it was as if I could connect to him with my mind. By this point I was almost convinced that making love with George on Friday would be tantamount to cheating on Josh. I dreaded it.

Stop. I had to get a grip. Josh and I could be friends again. Not lovers—friends.

I couldn’t punish George so horribly, just because he didn’t understand why I needed to paint. It was absolutely wrong.

At a quarter to six, I x’ed off Internet Explorer and hurried to the kitchen to preheat the toaster oven. Lucy was exactly where I’d left her, practically drooling as she watched the
Curious George
PBS cartoon with ferocious concentration. I rummaged through the freezer, unearthing a box of chicken nuggets and a bag of freezer-burned Tater Tots. Tossing them onto the tiny toaster oven sheet, making a mess of the icy breading, I reflected that for the past forty-five minutes, as Lucy’d been congealing in front of two PBS shows, I hadn’t thought about her for a moment. She’d been completely out of my mind. The mom radar that kept me tethered to her, always watchful, had blinked off, replaced with slimy cyber-stalking by me, half-deranged ex-girlfriend, failure as a mother.

~ ~ ~

On Friday, it was 62 degrees in Santa Fe. In Los Angeles, the weather continued summer-like. It was in the eighties, and I was wearing sandals, capri pants, and dragging the standing fans out of our garage, brushing the dust off, and trying to blow the hot air out of our apartment. We lived on an upper floor without air conditioning, and in the summer, the apartment could get up to a hundred degrees. Our futile arsenal of standing fans and a portable air conditioner, which cooled about six square inches of Lucy’s room, was never enough.

I was dreading Friday night, but I’d never yet said no, and refusing tonight would ring all sorts of alarms for George. Fortunately, George knew nothing about Josh. Why dredge up old memories, I’d figured long ago. Let the past stay buried. I was good at that.

So long as everything was in its place, George was content. The only exception to his requirements for order was Lucy. She defined chaos, and George accepted that. “She’ll be just fine by the time she’s five,” he assured me often, though I wasn’t convinced of any such thing. But changing our Friday night routine—that would be unthinkable.

Fortunately, I had an entire day ahead of me. I had another canvas ready to go. I wasn’t sure what I would paint, but I knew it would flow out of me, from deep in my unconscious, my hands knowing just which colors to choose from the tackle box I used as an art bin. My hands would know what to do.

No such luck. My PEEPS hand reminder had long since washed off, but hurrying out the door with Lucy for preschool, she reminded me herself. She’d been looking forward to the party all week. “Mommy,” she tugged at my sleeve. “Did you get the chickie Peeps or the bunny Peeps?”

“Oh, sh . . . oot,” I smacked my forehead with my hand. “Honey, I totally forgot. Let’s see if 7-11 has them, it’s on the way.” Thank heavens, one package was left—blue bunnies, rather dented, but good enough. “Thanks hon,” I hugged Lucy, “for reminding me.”

We entered the classroom, ten minutes late, bearing Peeps. My one parental contribution to the class this year. The room parents had already set everything up—festive plastic Easter tablecloths, and paper cups and plates that matched. Nick had stockpiled his balloons in the corner. Jessica was poised behind a face-painting station. 8:30 in the morning seemed a tad early for all this. I smiled at Christine and thrust the Peeps at her. “Here—where should I put these?” She eyed the crumpled package. “Where’s the other one? We need 22; there’s only 12 here.”

“Uh—I’ll be right back.”

Ran to the car, gunned the engine, sped to the nearby Vons supermarket, and purchased several extra packages of Peeps just in case. I was no good at this involved-parent stuff. It was hard enough, just dealing with Lucy. I didn’t have an ounce of altruism left over for volunteering, or being cheerful, or making freakin’ balloon animals for a classroom full of half-tamed three-year-olds. But the way Lucy’s eyes lit up when I hurried back into the classroom made it all worthwhile. She looked at me like I was everything. Like I was the biggest hero of the day. “Mommy!” she squealed. “You got more Peeps!” She ran over to me and gave me a big, possessive hug, making sure every kid in the room knew that I was
her
mother. She eyed Jack, her paramour in the three-year-old class. “I told you she would,” she said. I raised the Peeps over my head in triumph.

~ ~ ~

I’d accomplished only one thing that morning—purchasing Peeps. I stayed for the class party, and once it was over, it was almost time to bring Lucy home. But the canvas was waiting. For next week. I wondered what I would paint, what I could possibly paint, once I’d seen Josh.

While Lucy napped, I lay down on George’s bed for a while. My head ached with so much thinking, my thoughts whirling around all week to no good purpose or conclusion. I did feel sorry for George. He had so few close friends; he rarely confided in me, either. He saved his secrets, his openness, for his mother. But still, there was something comforting about his lengthy dissections of fellow faculty members’ motivations, and his enthused explanations of arcane statistical information. I barely understood half of what he tried to explain to me, but I always nodded enthusiastically to make him think I was really interested. Truly, he gave me so much—he didn’t need to give me all his secrets, too.

Unlike George, I had spread my confidences around. No two friends knew the same secrets about me. The only person who had ever known everything was Josh—all of me, both my passionate and my prosaic self, and loved all those pieces.

George had chosen the wrong person.

I was no good, for him. I was unworthy of him, in fact. I was missing some crucial loyalty gene, some key aspect of kindness and altruism. Or—I had it—it was just so convenient to discard it, now that Josh was back. But why was I feeling ill all the time then, now that it was me, George, and Lucy as usual, having dinner, playing Candyland every night, smiling at each other, kissing hello when George walked through the door in the evening, and kissing goodbye in the mornings. Those perfunctory little pecks were suddenly fraught with guilt and regrets. He’d picked the wrong person to love, but it wasn’t his fault. He was a good person. I couldn’t leave him, and drag Lucy a thousand miles away from her daddy. I was a horrible person. But Josh—I had to be with him. Family. Love. Family. Love.

Ack!

There was no other choice; I had to do the tarot cards. I sprang up from the bed and rooted through my sock drawer, another choice hiding location.

I bought this deck of tarot cards back in high school, at the now-defunct Psychic Eye esoterica emporium on Gough Street in San Francisco. The shop was long gone, which was too bad. I’d spent a whole afternoon there once, wandering through its rooms full of purplish crystals, bronze elephant-headed deities, stacks of books explicating past lives and emotional healing through dental surgery, and dozens of different tarot decks. I chose the one that spoke to me, a beautiful deck called The New Palladini Tarot. I didn’t know if I believed in the cards or their dubious fortune-telling ability, but whenever I was in a period of great turmoil, I’d run a hand of cards to see what was what. The cards were beautiful but frightening; looking at the blank, knowing eyes of the figures on them felt like dropping head-first into an abyss. For courage, I thought of Astrid, and laid them out.

First card; the present situation: Ten of Rods. The burden of success.

Crossing the first card, the immediate influence: The Lovers. Of course.

Goal or destiny: Three of Cups. Promising—fulfillment and healing. Yes, brought by Josh. Aaaah . . .

Distant past: Five of Pentacles. Loss; yes; loss of Josh. This was so true!

Recent past: The Magician. Creativity, rediscovered. The tarot cards were amazing!

Future influence: Queen of Pentacles, reversed. Suspicion and distrust. Well, George would be feeling that soon, that was for certain.

The last four cards remained face down. My heart was hammering. So far, my fortune was absolutely correct. But what—what would the last card say? Would it be my happy ending—the Wheel of Fortune perhaps, or the Hierophant?

I flipped over cards seven, eight, and nine; they dealt with the present circumstance and inner emotions. Whatever; who cares—the end result, the future—that’s what was important.

Card ten, the final result: The five of cups. In the picture, a downcast figure eyed three overturned cups; two cups remained standing. What the heck did it mean? I paged desperately through my little tarot card answer-book. Crap. This didn’t tell me anything. The overturned cups meant loss. Well, of what? Who would I lose? Which one? And of the two upright cups, who were they? What would remain in the end?