Recipe for a Happy Life: A Novel (27 page)

“No you don’t,” my mother says. “You have never needed me a day in your life. You just don’t want to feel guilty about me dying.”

“That’s not true,” I say. “I need you. I need to feel close to you. I need for you to understand who I am, who I’ve become, and be okay with it. I need your advice. I need you to tell me how you’re feeling about everything and I need to tell you how I feel. I may not have needed you before, and you may not think that I need you now, but I do. I really do.”

My mother doesn’t respond; she doesn’t say anything at all. We stay there, out on the balcony, for a long time, looking out into the street. We stand there long after she’s finished her joint, long after the sun has set over the Hudson River. We do not say anything inane to each other, like “Isn’t the sunset beautiful?” We just stand, side by side, looking out into the city, and we don’t say a word.

Forty-four

“Feel any better?” I ask my mom as we walk down Sixth Avenue, on our way to get something for dinner. I don’t know who spoke first, who broke the silence, but it doesn’t matter.

“You know, I think I always knew,” my mother says, looking out into the evening sky, barely watching where she’s going on the busy street. “I just always knew something was missing.”

I nod my head in agreement, waiting for her to say more. All of my years of therapy have taught me that it’s good to talk, good to let things out, so I let my mother do that. If I were to actually tell her that she should talk it out, she’d probably laugh at me, so I just stand next to her, nodding, not saying a word.

“I mean, maybe that’s why I’ve always been traveling the world. It was never a desire to travel. It was a need. It was like, if I didn’t travel, if I wasn’t always moving, I’d die. So, maybe I’ve just always been looking for something.”

I nod and my mother continues talking.

“Now I’ve found it and the only way I know how to deal with it is to run away from it.”

We get to the diner, the one we always went to when I was a kid, and walk inside. The manager recognizes us and ushers us over to our favorite booth, the one next to the window that has eighties songs on the mini-jukebox. We don’t even need to look at menus.

“You know,” I say, “I always want to run, too, but I force myself to stay.”

“Well, then, maybe I can learn something from you,” she says.

“I think we can probably learn something from each other.”

She smiles at me and I look at the selection on the jukebox. The songs haven’t changed—Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Water,” Pete Townshend’s “Let My Love Open the Door”—and I’m comforted to see that some things stay the same, always.

“You have to come back with me,” I say as my mother puts a quarter into the jukebox. The Eagles’s “I Can’t Tell You Why” plays softly.

“Why don’t we talk about this in the morning?” my mother says.

“I think we should talk about it now.”

“I don’t really want to see your grandmother,” she says, shrugging her shoulders. “And we’ve already established that I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. Not now.”

“You should talk to her.”

“What could she possibly have to say to me?”

“That’s what you should find out,” I say. “That’s what I plan to find out when I go back there.”

“You’re just angry that you found out she’s not perfect,” my mother says.

“That’s ridiculous,” I say. “I’m worried about you right now.”

“Yes,” she continues, “you’re upset that the normal childhood you think she gave me was a lie.”

“No, that’s what you’re angry about,” I say, looking at her. “As much as you preached to me about the merits of my extraordinary childhood, you’re angry that she took away your normal one.”

My mother opens her mouth to say something back to me, but then puts a finger to her lips instead.

“Just admit that,” I say. “Admit it.” As I hear the words coming out of my mouth, they sound harsher than I mean them to, but it’s like I can’t stop. I want to treat her more gently because she’s sick, but we seem to have moved past that.

“Maybe,” she says.

“Maybe,” I say back.

“Well, counselor,” my mother says, “you’ve made such a good argument, I think I will go back.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I really appreciate that.”

“But there’s just one condition.”

“What is it?” I ask. I was about to say “sure,” but it’s my mother I’m dealing with, and although we’ve taken a big step forward today, I still don’t entirely trust her.

“Let’s stay here in the city tonight,” she says. “For old time’s sake.”

“All right,” I say. “For old time’s sake. I was supposed to talk to Jaime about last night, but I guess it can wait.”

“Oh please,” my mother says. “As if he’s even still there. When he woke up and saw you were gone, he probably thanked his lucky stars and took the first jitney back into town.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“What?” my mom says, feigning innocence. “You don’t really want him. You want that other one, the one who looks like he belongs out there. Only you don’t want to admit it to yourself yet. I’m just saying that the work’s probably been done for you, so we’re clear to stay here tonight. There’s nothing to worry about.” She smiles like a little girl. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen that smile.

“I guess you’re right,” I say. “One good way to get rid of Jaime is to leave him alone for twenty-four hours.”

“Or you could always just try to kill him,” my mother says with a little smirk, just as the French fries and vanilla milkshakes are being brought to the table. “Oh, wait, you already tried that.”

I toss a fry across the table at my mother and we both dissolve into a fit of laughter.

Forty-five

The drive back to the beach feels shorter than when I was headed into the city to find my mother. Along the way, we stop for coffees, stop for water, and we talk the whole time. There’s more laughter, and I think I may have even convinced my mother that when she gives her next photography lesson to Hunter, I should be more than an assistant; I should be a student, too.

Somewhere around exit 65, my mother says: “I’m glad you convinced me to stop running away.” She smiles at me—I can see her from the corner of my eye—but it just makes me think. I’ve been fooling myself into thinking that I no longer run. True, when I heard about my mother’s illness, the first thing I wanted to do was flee, but I stayed. And I’m really proud about that.

But isn’t this whole summer just one big escape from reality? Running away from the trouble I got myself into in the city. I realize that’s probably the real reason I didn’t want to go back to New York yesterday. The scene of the crime. And maybe I’m the one who should grow up and start acting like an adult. Especially since I’m about to become a mother.

I silently vow to call my law firm the following day and tell them that I’ll be back. I will immediately then mention the fact that I’m pregnant, so that they can’t fire me. The one thing big law firms hate more than associates who take all twelve weeks of their amassed vacation at once are big discrimination lawsuits.

I will follow my own advice. I will stop running away. I will cut my never-ending summer vacation short and go back to my old life. I will work during the week, come out to see my mother and grandmother on weekends. I will face problems like an adult, by talking them out, not by running away from them.

*   *   *

Forty-five minutes later, my mother and I pull into the Mattress King’s estate. Every time I pass through the majestic gates, I notice something new. This time, I’ve noticed that the gates have tiny red hourglasses on either side. They glisten in the light from my headlights, probably because they are encased in tiny red crystals. Viuda Negra, indeed. The Mattress King really did have a great sense of humor—it was what I liked most about him. I wonder for a moment what he would think about what’s been going on this summer. I wonder if he knew my grandmother’s secret.

After depositing the car safely into the garage, we march back upstairs and hear laughter coming from my grandmother’s bedroom. I call out a loud “we’re home!” so that we don’t catch my grandmother and Adan in the middle of anything.

“In here,” my grandmother calls out. My mother and I walk into the bedroom, where we find my grandmother, Adan, and Jaime sitting around the trunk of photographs. The picture of domestic bliss makes me feel uncomfortable.

“Hey, babe!” Jaime says as my mother and I walk into the room. He jumps up from where he was seated and gives me a peck on the lips.

“Look at the three of you, all together,” I say. I look at my grandmother and Adan, and they gaze back at me with happy expressions, as if they are my parents and it’s prom night.

“Of course we’re all together!” he says. “Why wouldn’t we be? I proposed to you, didn’t I?”

“Not really,” I say. “You just sort of announced to the world that we were getting married after telling me that the best thing about our relationship was the fact that I never wanted to get married.”

Jaime launches into a grand speech about how perfect our life will be, the gist of which is this: now that he’s gotten his ambivalent feelings out, he’s ready to start fresh. Everything is clear. He knows what he needs to do. He’s ready to be a dad.

“I’m in love with someone else,” I blurt out. Shock registers on everyone’s face. Everyone’s but Jaime’s.

“With who?” he says, a sly smile playing at his lips. Does he think this is a joke? Step one of acting like a grown-up: come clean to those that are close to me.

“Nate Sugarman,” I say. “You met him at the party.”

“That tool?” Jaime asks, laughing. “Are you fucking kidding me?” And then, looking at my grandmother and Adan: “Pardon my French.”

Does he see the irony in saying “Pardon my French” to a couple of French nationals?

“You know what,” Jaime says, “I don’t care about any of that. All I care about is you and me. And our baby. And the life we’re going to have together.” He puts his hand over my abdomen, and I instinctively shy away from his touch.

“We’re going to have a life together?” I ask.

“We can have the perfect life: I’ll be home with the kid all day when you’re at work, and then you’ll come home from work and I’ll run my gigs.”

And when he says it like that, it does sound like a perfect life. We’d have a happy child who was always in the care of a parent and Jaime and I could both continue to work, so money wouldn’t be much of an issue. I have nothing to say in response. I suppose I do owe it to Jaime to give things one more try. I owe it to our unborn child.

“We should let the two of you talk,” my grandmother says, and she and Adan leave their own bedroom so that Jaime and I can be alone. “You and I need to talk, too,” she says to my mother on her way out of the room.

“Let’s go to our room,” Jaime says, and grabs my hand, as if nothing has changed, as if I hadn’t just been gone for twenty-four hours, as if he hadn’t just found out that I was in love with another man.

I let Jaime grab my hand and lead me back to my room. Our room. I do it as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Forty-six

“And what did he say?” my mother asks me. We’re down in the basement in her dark room, getting ready for today’s photography lesson. She’s taking down Hunter and Skylar’s photos from the drying line so she can give them their pictures.

“He said that I should take my time out here, that they’ve got my cases covered for now and that I should come back when I’m ready.”

“Your job will just be waiting there for you?” my mother asks. “After not coming in to work for weeks, and getting other people to pick up the slack, your job is still going to be there for you?”

“That’s what they said,” I tell my mother. “Anyway, I was taking my accrued vacation.” We then have a debate on whether this is the nature of big firms in general—that they can always use little worker bees, especially worker bees who do not expect to make partner—or if this is because I immediately dropped my pregnancy into the conversation with Tim.

“Or maybe Tim’s just a decent guy,” I tell my mother.

“Well, I’ve never met him, so I wouldn’t know,” she says. She thinks for a second, and then asks: “What do his hands look like?”

“Prep-school-boy perfect.”

My mother wrinkles her nose and we both laugh.

“I think you did the right thing, you know,” she says, grabbing a few cameras. I smile back at her, but she sees right through it. “What? You don’t think that going back to your job is the right thing to do?”

“I guess it is,” I say. “Of course it is. But Grandma offered to let me stay out here full-time, on her dime, so that’s pretty tempting, too.”

“You have to work,” my mother says, taking a few test shots out of her camera. “You can’t rely on your grandmother’s money. That’s not how I raised you.”

“Why would that have to be an indictment on you?” I say. “On how you raised me? Can’t I just make a choice for myself?”

“Of course you can make a choice for yourself,” she says, looking up at me. “I just never thought you’d choose her way of life.”

“Just because you’re mad at her—” I begin, only to be cut off.

“I’m not mad at her anymore,” my mother says, quickly. “I told her that I forgive her. And I do. But this has nothing to do with her and me. This has to do with you and the kind of life you want to live.”

“I don’t know what kind of life I want to live,” I say, and I don’t. I have no idea what I want. I’m no closer in discovering the recipe for a happy life than I was when I first came out here this summer.

“I didn’t raise you to be dependent on other people,” my mother says.

“I’m beginning to think that maybe depending on other people isn’t such a bad thing,” I say.

I turn around to gauge my mother’s reaction to what I’ve just said and she’s silent. She’s perched herself on a stool and is bent over slightly in the stomach. Her eyes are closed. This can only mean one thing: the return of debilitating pain. I know that she decided to forgo the marijuana this morning since we’d be seeing Hunter and Skylar, but I rush over to her stash and grab a joint and lighter.