Perfection (33 page)

I heard the subway train singing
one morning. As the brakes released on the Number 2 train at Atlantic Avenue, I distinctly
registered the first three notes of “Somewhere” from
West Side Story,
drawn out, longingly.

Transfixed, I wondered if this performance was just for me, a one-time fluke. None of the other travelers seemed to notice. The next time I rode the train, I heard the song again. I had to smile because that melody could not be more appropriate for me, the prodigal daughter, returned home to the city I tried to leave.

It’s true that the Big Apple doesn’t exactly roll out the welcome-home mat. I had to develop my urban body shield and reawaken the third eye. Not the one you hear about in yoga class, the one in the center of your forehead. I’m talking about the one in the back of your head. For a few months, I was constantly bumping into people and lampposts until I relearned the refined Manhattan pedestrian ballet. I had to teach Liza some serious street smarts so she could deal with crazy Brooklyn traffic on Union Street.

But the city and I, we are good friends again now. At the last minute, she threw me a life preserver and reeled me back home. Gowanus might not be as gorgeous as the Hudson River view I left behind, but on a springtime walk home from downtown Brooklyn, the late afternoon sun hits the warehouse windows on Union and Bond, and the Kentile Floors sign shimmers and flares in the distance. Liza and I hold hands as we cross the Union Street Bridge, admiring the improbably lush princess trees in full flower perched over the canal. A lone seagull floats high above us on a salty breeze, squawking and kibitzing. On days like this, I think to myself,
this is the place for us
.

It’s Saturday night at Hope & Anchor, a vaguely sailor-themed restaurant-nightspot on Red Hook’s main drag. We are out for a family-friendly night on the town with Liza’s friends and their
parents. The kids are finishing plates of macaroni and cheese; we grown-ups are polishing off a jumble of Asian noodle salad and pierogi. I am anticipating an ample wedge of truly evil chocolate cake. I squish the lime down the neck of my Corona, where it bobs like a buoy on a fisherman’s line (as the late, great comic Mitch Hedberg liked to say, I have been “saved by the buoyancy of citrus”). My child is no longer wide-eyed shocked, merely intrigued and delighted by our MC, a cocoa-skinned drag queen named Dropsy, nearly seven feet tall (including the blond Afro wig), busting out of a black spangled minidress, who strides to the microphone in black platform boots to lead us in karaoke. She opens the set crooning “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” in a breathy falsetto. Our kids—Dropsy calls them the “Hope & Anchor Children’s Choir”—are waiting to sing their recent favorite: Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The audience claps and whoops its approval. The waiter arrives with my slice of chocolate cake. I don’t think it gets much better than this, at least not with a PG-13 rating.

After years apart,
Irena and I live just five blocks from each other. Despite Henry’s earlier attempts to undermine our friendship, it’s almost like the good old days. There was a time, years earlier, when we all lived in adjoining brownstone buildings, our backyard gardens separated by a fence we vaulted using an old kitchen stepladder. In those days, we’d hang out in our gardens after a freelance workday indoors, form spontaneous dinner plans depending on what either of our refrigerators contained. Our cats wandered back and forth under the fence while we organized the menu. Irena’s eight-year-old daughter (now in college) would en
tertain Liza, who was just an infant. Finally, Henry might grill a steak and rummage for a bottle of wine, Irena might make an expert pasta dish and discover another bottle. A salad might get tossed with the mingled contents of our crisper drawers. Other friends and family might appear. We’d eat here or there, we’d sit around the table till Liza fell asleep on my lap.

That era when we were young with nothing but time is certainly over. But once in a while, we have idle afternoon hours together. When our new apartment proved too small for four cats, Irena and her partner graciously adopted my old cat Katie, who spent her golden years in the paradise of their elegant apartment, napping on refinished Danish midcentury modern. When I visit Irena, we muse on survival—old Katie cat’s and ours, and the many twists and turns that have brought us back together.

“No, Mr. Smarty-Pants,”
I retort, directing a nicely crisped
frite
at Eliot’s grinning face, “I am not going to write up the nitty-gritty of our one and only date. And don’t be looking so hurt.”

Every few months, on a day when my friend Eliot, now happily married, travels to the city for work, we eat lunch together. At a bistro table, everyone is the same size.

Today, I get to hear about the time he met Patrick Stewart (one of my celebrity crushes), who had finished a voice-over for a company sales presentation. Following the recording session, Stewart invited him for afternoon refreshments—tea, Earl Grey, hot—just like he did on
Star Trek: The Next Generation
.

Eliot listens while I yammer on about the latest book I’ve read. I’ve been rereading my favorite E. M. Forster novels—most recently,
A Passage to India
. The Marabar caves will always be a
mystery for me, though after this reading, I can imagine the darkness in which Adela Quested experiences her flash of terrifying self-awareness.

Over the last mouthfuls of strawberries and cream, Eliot and I compare notes on our respective partnerships. He tells me about his rose garden, and we share weird pet stories (the time his dog impaled his chin on a bone tops all).

“So, Jools, can I be in your next book?” he asks.

The bill arrives, and we split the check with our business cards. I am pretty sure this lunch qualifies as a legit tax deduction.

Anna and I live just a few streets
from each other in Brooklyn. We still share many things, including our handsome dentist (if you have to sit in the wretched chair, at least you should have something pleasant to look at). We call on each other when we have troubles—professional, personal, or, as it sometimes turns out, imagined. Her forceful “I hear ya, sister!” always snaps me out of my gloominess. On in-sync days, we find ourselves in the same yoga class, sipping a coffee together on the bench outside a local food shop, or eating takeout together with our kids at her kitchen table.

Her red hair has never looked more vibrant than at her recent birthday party, a gathering of eight women at a large round table in a downtown Manhattan restaurant, where we ordered extravagantly, right through dessert, “one of everything” being the guiding principle.

Living in the city is never easy, but for both of us it makes sense, at least for now. While we pursue our separate work and
love lives, there is an abiding comfort in talking about our children’s difficulties and successes, and making future plans.

I still correspond with Eliana.
Her interest in my life feels authentic, and I often find myself thinking about her in idle moments. I consider her a most unusual sort of friend, mostly unknown and unknowable to me, but feel strongly that we wish each other well.

In the most recent photo she sent me, I couldn’t help thinking how much we have both changed. Her black clothing is long gone, replaced with more colorful choices. Her light eyes engage and sparkle without heavy makeup, and her hair, shorter and lighter now, blows about in a breeze. She looks relaxed and open. I wonder if I’ll ever meet her again; I’d like to be able to thank her in person for her openness with me.

Eliana and her partner married in June 2007. I am glad that at least one of us has that kind of optimistic faith in traditional rituals, though I imagine her wedding was anything but staid.

Liza says she doesn’t care if Will and I get married. “That’d be okay, I guess. But I get to pick out your wedding dress and go on the honeymoon with you.” She’s too old now to be a flower girl. She’ll probably insist on being a bridesmaid, and I can’t imagine a better choice.

Will, Liza, and I go on a spring
break vacation in Tulum, Mexico, where we are sleeping in a platform tent in a national park. A steady wind has brought us a week of brilliant blue skies.
As dusk approaches, a bank of low-hanging, dark clouds hovers on the horizon, still a safe distance away.

We have made friends during this week with a man named Doug and his daughter, Savanna, who both seemed relieved to discover that we are not the perfect nuclear family we first appear to be.

“Do y’all live together then?” seven-year-old Savanna asked in her Southern lilt, after hearing me refer to Will as my “boyfriend.”

“Yes,” I replied cheerfully, “we’re a funny little family, we none of us have the same last name.”

Doug nodded with the wisdom of one who has already been entangled in some of life’s complicated unhappiness and has emerged bruised but intact. “Whatever works,” he said.

“Indeed,” I replied.

Doug, Savanna, Will, and Liza play in the surf, two dads helping two daughters out to the curling waves, to catch the sweet spot for the big boogie board ride in—big in kid terms, of course, and too big for me. I am fully dressed in a top and skirt, with a sweater even, against the breeze, watching from the safety of the sand with delight as my brave girl and Savanna return again and again, riding waves that would intimidate me.

The dark clouds edge closer, the wind bends the palm trees. I have seen that curved form of trees and these saturated colors of whipped sea and sky. In a painting—
The Coming Storm
by Winslow Homer.

I wave my arms vigorously in the universal maternal sign of distress. Will looks toward me and smiles, graciously acknowledging another of my many frantic mom moments.

Within half an hour, our children washed and changed, big lightning flashes as bright as noon over the sea and the nearby lagoon, and the first large drops patter on windows and the con
crete terrace of the restaurant where we are seated. By then we adults are happily downing fresh margaritas, wondering if our bungalow-size tent will be dry when we return (we forgot to close the flaps) but not worrying enough to dilute any joy in the fresh fish tacos our waiter brings to the table. The local tawny-colored lizards have joined us in the safety of the restaurant, arrayed across the walls and ceiling. It is good to feel safe and cared for.

My relationship with Will continues to evolve. It is nothing like the love affairs of my younger life, which featured longing and desperation. It is nothing like my marriage with Henry. What we strive for is the kind and loving embrace that allows each of us to feel cherished, think clearly, and possibly make some decent choices. Amid the thousand moments that keep the machinery of daily life moving forward, I welcome the bursts of love and lust that overtake me, like the first sip of a rich red wine, while walking through a subway corridor, inspecting oranges at the grocery store, or waking up to see his blue eyes looking into mine. This is my idea of
umami
.

Liza told me sheepishly
that when she was “little” (because of course she is not that anymore) she thought whenever you put a disc in a CD player, the musicians were playing live, just for you. She confessed that this understanding changed one day when she was four, when I told her, while we listened to the Beatles’
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,
how sorry I was that John Lennon was dead.

This was a useful moment in understanding the magical thinking and self-centeredness of children, as well as a good number of adults. And yet, sometimes we all need to feel that we are the live
performance. There are times when we must take the stage to make choices, the best ones we can. We must make an effort, whether the audience is twenty thousand screaming fans at Madison Square Garden, the smaller world of our family, or just our solitary observant self.

I have seen that wisdom can come from unexpected sources. I have learned from my daughter’s honesty and insight. I’ve appreciated the guidance of my family, my old friends, and new ones I’ve made during this journey. I’ve also found that the surreal, comic, erotic, and even terrifying moving images of my sleeping hours can reveal the concerns of my life with startling clarity. This recent dream seems to express my strong desire to embrace change and my fear about doing just that.

I am in my old neighborhood on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. I know this even though the streets do not look the same and there are no street signs. I am walking on what feels like West End Avenue, stone-cobbled, as it was during my childhood, heading off to meet my mother somewhere. I have dressed with care, in a grown-up uniform: trim brown skirt, brown jacket, and brown leather pumps. I am carrying what I hope is a ladylike brown handbag. Everything matches.

Suddenly, an open, stone-paved plaza appears, filled with rows and rows of large corrugated boxes, an array that seems endless and expanding. The boxes are heaped high with shoes.

My hands shake, my palms are sweating. I want the shoes. The temptation is too great, despite worry about keeping my mother waiting. There are hundreds of choices to make—so many shoes in countless colors. I reach for the scent of the warm, tanned leathers. I throw off my plain brown leather pumps, step bravely away from the security of my handbag, and rush up and
down the rows of boxes. Eagerly, I start trying on shoes, first in matched pairs; then, in my haste, I carelessly seize lefts and rights from different pairs.

When I remember, with a startle, to look for my handbag, all the boxes of shoes vanish just as suddenly as they appeared. My handbag and my original pair of brown shoes have also vanished. I am standing alone in the empty plaza with just the mismatched shoes on my feet—two unsuccessful experiments of entirely different heel heights, one a high sandal in peacock blue, the other a too-pointy pump in saffron orange. I feel a pang of filial anxiety—this isn’t how I planned it. I have no cell phone to call my mom. I’m late and I look ridiculous and now my mom will be worried or mad or both. I tell myself that I will have to go meet her just as I am, arriving late, looking like a lopsided clown. Later, there will be time to cancel credit cards and buy a new wallet. I try to reassure myself with words Will says to me when I feel overwhelmed by daily life’s frustrations (computer problems, work deadlines, disputes with our landlord): “What’s the worst that could happen?” Typically, the short answer is, nothing life threatening, financially ruinous, or even scary.