Pushing Upward (10 page)

Emma was on the phone when I walked in. I didn't want to disturb her, so I gently put the cookbooks on the kitchen counter and tried to guess who she was talking to. Like I couldn't figure it out by the script on her lap and the way she expressed herself, with childlike exuberance. Clearly, it was Bert. Bert's father was the movie mogul who was married to Sarah, Emma's best friend who had died right after her husband. This was apparently the moment when Bert adopted Emma as his surrogate mother and she adopted him as her surrogate son. He was now a producer. He called Emma practically every day and sent her scripts to study and critique. She would spend hours not only reading these scripts, but writing extensive notes in their margins, detailing her evaluations. Her long pauses when she spoke to him implied, to me at least, that he confided in her and valued her comments. Where she learned the discernment to break down each scene, understand the nuances of every character, I had no idea.

Without even knowing him, I didn't like Bert. He took up way too much of her time.

While I waited for her to end the conversation, I flipped through the cookbooks.
Ohhh
,
Hunan chow mein! Yummy!
I hunted through the fridge, but there was no baby bok choy, whatever that was, or water chestnuts. Emma had no wok. I picked up the African book.
Mmm
.
Fufu,
boiled plantain;
masamba,
greens; and
pastel com diablo dentro,
“pastry with the devil inside”—the picture looked divine! I poked around the cupboards, but we were out of tuna and there were no sweet potatoes.
Drag-ola!
I picked up the Jewish cookbook, leafed through the pages. “
Ahhh,
potato pancakes!” I exclaimed, too loudly.

“Hello,” Emma called out.

“Hello! I'm going to make lunch today,” I said overzealously, hoping she'd realize how excited I was and get off the phone.

“I'll be off in a few minutes, dear. I was going to make fruit salad. My friend Zelda is coming for lunch.”

“I'll make enough for Zelda, too.” Emma returned to the phone, and I forged ahead, making sure we had all the ingredients: eggs, potatoes, onions, milk. But I couldn't find the potatoes. I kept rummaging through the drawers, now making more noise than I should.

Emma said good-bye and put down the phone. “What are you making?”

She was probably terrified that what I was making was a mess. I didn't blame her.

“Potato pancakes,” I said, pulling out pots and pans, still looking for the potatoes. “Do you like them?” I asked, not giving her a chance to respond. “You don't have to get up. Just tell me where you keep the potatoes.” I was going to prove to her that I could do this on my own.

“I'll show you.” She came into the kitchen and went directly to the pantry I'd just ransacked. “They're right here, dear.” She took out six potatoes from a brown bag in the back corner and placed them on the counter.

“No wonder I couldn't find them.”

“How many does the recipe call for?” Emma asked, trying to be helpful.

I looked at the book. “One onion per four medium-size potatoes.”

Emma handed me six more potatoes from the bag.

“Twelve potatoes? That's a lot.”

“You'll see how quickly they're absorbed.”

“We'll need three onions.” She reached back into the pantry and took out four onions.

“Thank you … you can sit down now. It's my turn to cook.”

“Can I peel the potatoes?” Emma asked coyly.

I thought about it a minute. “Okay. But I'm doing the rest.”

Emma peeled the skins while I shredded the peeled potatoes.

“Why not grate the potatoes into a bowl of water, then strain off the water and add in the onions?” Emma suggested.

“But it says here to keep the potatoes in water
before
you grate them.”

“You don't want the potatoes to brown after they're grated. While they're sitting, you can grate the onions. Didn't your mother ever make potato pancakes?”

“No one was allowed in the kitchen when my mother cooked. She said it made her nervous.” I didn't tell Emma, but my mother didn't like it when people intruded upon her private asylum. The kitchen was where she went to escape … from everything. When my mother's hands kneaded the batter in the mixing bowls, she could forget about my father's drinking. While she stuffed the turkey (and herself), she could forget that her own mother had committed suicide. She'd probably never cooked with her mom, either. But one thing was for sure: Nobody made potato pancakes like Estelle Billings. Nobody! They were like crispy hash browns but thicker and sweeter, especially when doused in sour cream. I remember eating ten to fifteen of those puffy little critters whenever my mother made them.

“How many eggs does the recipe call for?” Emma asked, waking me from my reverie. I checked the book again.

“Three, I think … yep, three.”

The intervening years disappeared as she handed me the eggs and showed me how to break them, using the round part of the spoon and then dropping the yellow eye and the clear liquid into the bowl,
plop
. I stirred the mixture. Seeing my own hands in the mixing bowl brought tears to my eyes as I stood there, next to this woman. I didn't realize how much I'd missed not cooking with my own mother, not being initiated into the secret of how to bring those formless globs of goop into the perfect cookie or pancake or whatever she was making. I always wanted to be one of those globs that received all of her attention. I always wanted to
be
the batter, because that batter seemed to get a lot more of my mother's love and attention than I ever did.

“We need to drain the mix, form small balls, and then flatten them with the spatula once they're in the skillet,” Emma said, a note of compassion in her voice. Understanding, and probably not for the first time, that I might be more fragile than she was. “Be careful not to drain out too much moisture, otherwise the pancake will be too dry,” she added.

I watched Emma's hands dive into the batter, add a little flour, and cup the mixture with her thin, veined fingers as she squeezed out the excess liquid and placed the drained mix in the oiled skillet. They weren't my mother's hands; they were Emma's. But at least they were here, guiding me, showing me not only how to make this dish, but how to drop my fear and nervousness with respect to this alien room called the kitchen and accept the possibility of intimacy, even if it was with a semi-stranger.

“Should we taste one?” Emma asked, excitedly.

“One? Let's taste
ten!
”

“Taste as many as you like. It'll be a few minutes before Zelda's here. I must warn you, Zelda is going through an awful time. She is about to get a divorce.”

“That's too bad. Have you known Zelda long?”

“I have known Zelda and Max, her husband, for many years. We met in Berlin when we were young. She has been a dear friend. I am worried about her. She is being very self-destructive, drinking too much, and medicating herself.”

“I'm sorry to hear about her marriage. I think I'll leave you ladies to gossip on your own. I'm going for a long walk and then meeting some friends at Schwab's to see if I can get discovered. Lana Turner supposedly got discovered there. Why not me?”

Both our hands reached for the refrigerator door at the same time. Her soft hand taking hold of mine brought shivers to my skin. Our eyes met, and the woman from the newspaper ad smiled. My eyes filled with tears. I had never experienced this kind of patience, this sweetness, anywhere, from anyone.

Chapter 9

The light has sunk into the earth….
He veils his light, yet still shines.

Coming to consciousness the next morning, I swam up through layers of memory:

I'm twelve. It's two in the morning, and I hear someone sobbing. I don't know where the cries are coming from. So I get up from my bed and walk softly down the stairs. As I reach the bottom step, I hear the tinkling of silverware, and sobs from the kitchen. I walk closer and see my mother in her pink nightgown at the table eating a bowl of cereal and three English muffins. She always eats when she can't sleep.

A newly lit cigarette is sitting in the ashtray. Six cigarette butts lie shriveled next to it. Her hair, thin and lifeless from all the dyeing, stands straight up on one side. And one can see, from any direction, the half inch of grayed new hair growth, springing from her roots.

“Hey, Mom, why are you crying?”

She's surprised I'm there. As she turns toward me, I see that her forehead is cut above her eyebrow in a half-moon, and bleeding.

“What happened to your face?”

“Your father hit me. It's nothing.”

“What do you mean, ‘It's nothing'?”

“He does it accidentally when he's asleep. It's that stupid watch he won't take off before he goes to bed.”

My mom lies all the time. But she is telling the truth this time. My father has so much pent-up anger; I guess he's able to unconsciously let it go in his sleep.

Masterful at changing the subject when she doesn't want to talk about something, she asks, “Why can't you and your brother get along?”

“Because he's a jerk, Mom. That's why.”

I think about the fight Steven and I had gotten into the day before because he hid my history book, knowing I had a test. I wanted to kill him, and almost scratched his eyes out. Mom defended him before she even heard my side of the story. So, part of me feels sorry for the fact that she's crying, and another part doesn't.

I've seen her cry lots of times, but not like this. And I always ask what's wrong. But she never wants to talk about it. Only this time, at 2:25
A.M.
, for some reason, she decides to tell me.

“I miss my mother, so much. I don't know why she had to kill herself! Why she had to take those pills. I thought they were going to make her better, but they killed her. Didn't her family mean anything to her? Didn't she think
I
needed her?”

I don't know what to do. It's scary to see her like this. All I can think to say is, “You didn't know, Mom … It's—it's not your fault.” I rubbed her shoulder, wishing I could remove her pain. But she just sat there sobbing. I sat with her as long as I could. I didn't know what else to do.

“I gotta go back to bed, Mom. I have school tomorrow.”

“Can I have a hug?” she asks, as if
she
were the twelve-year-old.

I give her a big, long one. And then I leave, because there's nothing more I can do for the woman whose mother killed herself—for the woman who is killing herself now—except feel sorry for her. And I can do that from anywhere.

I stopped at a pay phone on my way to the Screen Actors Guild that morning and placed a call to my mother, collect. She rarely accepted, but she did today. After a few months at Emma's, I was hoping I'd be able to distance myself from Estelle Billings, not fall into the usual emotional web and react. Stop questioning why she had allowed my father to drink himself into a stupor every night and whip us, why she'd turned her head when Steven terrorized me, and why her social life was more important than her children. At least I would give it a try. Besides, I was in a good mood.

“Hi, Mom.”

She sounded preoccupied. “Sandra, is that you? What's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong. I just wanted …”

I heard noise in the background. She must have been having one of her bridge games, because she yelled to someone in the room: “This'll just be a minute.” Then she returned to the phone. “Sandra, this is not a good time. I've got a tournament here. What's going on?”

“I just wanted to tell you that I moved in with an elderly lady. She's really nice. We made potato pancakes yesterday, and … I thought of you.”