Authors: Anna Quindlen
“I don’t think you should say that,” Leo replied.
“Nah, it’s okay, kid,” Irving said. “Your family gets to make cracks like that. But if a stranger does it”—he smacked his fist into his palm—“to the moon, Alice.”
“
The Honeymooners,
” Leo said.
“I’m impressed. Went off the air long, long before you were born. Before your aunt was born.”
“I watch a lot of old TV. Gilligan.
Hogan’s Heroes. Beverly Hillbillies.
”
“Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed,” Irving began to sing in his bass voice, and Leo joined in. Then they sang
The Flintstones
theme, and
Mister Ed.
I felt that sensation of physical well-being that bears a passing resemblance to lying on the beach at 3:00
P.M.
“I’m not a big fan of your sister’s, but she must be a helluva mother,” Irving said later.
Meghan is a very good mother. When Leo was a baby, she was living part-time in a garden apartment in D.C. while covering the Justice Department, and by the time he entered school she was doing weekend newsbreaks and a feature called “Real America,” about the lives of ordinary people, that took her all over the country. But she would fly for hours to get back in time for a teacher conference, and he would fax his school papers to hotel rooms so she could read them over. And Evan was a wonderful father, good at roughhousing and reading bedtime stories. There was the nice Scottish nanny who stayed until Leo started school, and the great Filipino housekeeper who’d be around forever, whose name was Mercedes. And of course there was always me. We did look enough alike to be mother and son.
And then when Leo was seven, Meghan became the morning show newsperson. There were family dinners every night at six. Eighteen months in and she was given the big job, for what at the time seemed an astronomical sum and now was slightly in excess of her clothing allowance. Her first day on the air I watched with Leo and Evan, the three of us eating oatmeal. And when Meghan said, “This is Meghan Fitzmaurice. Rise and shine!” I burst into tears. It sounded just as it had sounded when we were children, when the eight-year-old Meghan would slide from her twin bed to wake her four-year-old sister with exactly that greeting. It sounded so promising, as if this would be the day: the day to ride a bike without training wheels, to make it through the afternoon without a stained blouse and a scolding, to persuade the girl next door to like me. To meet a man. To make a mint. To prosper. To love. To live fearlessly.
But Leo had been truculent, and his freckled brow had dropped low over his eyes, as though he was wearing a visor. “She said that on television,” he muttered. “That’s what she says to me, not what she says on television.” It was as though Meghan had blurred a line that Leo had expected she would maintain, a line between work and home. Evan and I had looked quizzically at each other over his head. Finally Evan had said, “I guess it will take some getting used to.”
F
OR MANY YEARS
my date book had contained the overlay of someone else’s family: M to Phila for convention, E in Tokyo all week, and everywhere L. L—soccer. L—exams. L—field trip. It was not that I made them all, but I was the backup parent. “This is Bridey,” Leo said to his English teacher, his coach. The friends’ mothers all knew me, the friends liked me. There was a common perception that I was less likely to narc them out, in their words, than a parent would be. This perception was wrong, but they’d tested it only once, when I was house-sitting for Meghan and Evan and found two guys in the steam shower with a beer bong. I turned the shower on and threw them both out onto the street dripping wet. Luckily, the other guys thought it was hilarious, and whenever they saw me they all started to chortle. “What is it with those guys and you?” Meghan said once, almost as though she was jealous.
“L to JFK,” it said in my date book when I turned to the following week, and in this new atmosphere of domestic anarchy, I was stymied. Meghan had left for the Caribbean, Evan was somewhere in a hotel, and I was not prepared to be the one to tell their son that his father had moved out and his mother had become a national symbol for the degeneration of American society.
That last was not exactly accurate. First came the news stories, then the features, then the opinion columns, and not all the columns were bad. There were the pursed-lipped discussions of standards and the columns that called for Meghan to resign and those that said she should stay on but she made too much money and didn’t pay attention to Kansas and Arkansas and what one pundit called “the great swelling midsection of the country.”
But there had been plenty of columns that said that Meghan’s temper was understandable, that you couldn’t lionize people because they were hard-hitting and irreverent and then turn on them when they stepped over the line, that Ben Greenstreet would have tried the patience of St. Edward R. Murrow himself. “I stood up and cheered,” wrote the only woman columnist at
The New York Times.
The flip side was the antifeminist who wrote always as though the fifties had been the most halcyon time in American life (although of course she would not have been able to write a column then) and who suggested that if Ben Greenstreet’s wife had not been so busy with her own job, none of this would have happened. Meghan had read me that one over the phone. “So let me get this straight,” she’d said at the end. “He’s a jerk because she works?”
She had gotten claustrophobic in Harriet’s apartment, much as she professed to love it, and gotten angry at her forced hiatus from the show, although she had been scheduled to take a week off anyway. “I’m leaving this afternoon,” she said when she called the morning after our lunch, at least a half hour short of dawn.
“Oh, God,” I said. “I wanted you to stay in touch, but not necessarily at five
A.M.
”
“It’s my body clock. Along with everything else, this show has totally screwed up my body clock.” Then she gave me a list of clothes to get from the apartment for her trip. “Aren’t you worried they’ll take pictures of you at the airport?” I said. “I’m chartering,” Meghan said. Ah, the chartered jet, the black car of the air.
I couldn’t bear to watch the show with only the two men, both guys who seemed to think that banter was a small country in Africa. It would have reminded me of looking past the night table at Meghan’s bed after she had left for college. Pillows stacked, comforter uncreased. A couple of times I’d jumped on it just so it looked as though someone had once slept there. I’d seen my sister almost every morning for the last ten years, mostly when both of us were in New York, but sometimes when I was in Washington and she was in London, I in Philadelphia and she in Baghdad. Most of the time I was drinking my coffee and she was drinking hers, although probably people think it is water in that big mug on the desk. And every morning she greeted me with the words she used to wake me in the morning when we were kids.
She somehow made it mournful in the first few days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, and then changed it to defiant after week two, so that one columnist said she had thrown down a gauntlet for those who thought the United States was out for the count. She embellished it from time to time, said “Rise and shine, Mr. President” the morning after the inauguration and “Rise and shine, Hoosiers” the morning after the NCAA finals. If the ratings are any indication, you probably saw her every morning, too.
“Who cares?” she had said the last time the numbers came out. “The morning shows are a joke. Thank God I got that ‘no cooking segments’ clause in my contract.”
“You make ten million dollars a year,” I’d said.
“You always bring that up. You and the tabs.”
“It does mitigate.”
“I know, but who really cares about the crap we do? Diet doctors, stonewalling administration officials, shrinks. Who watches that stuff?”
“I do.”
“Yeah, but you only watch because you know what I’m really thinking. Now that would be great television, if it had subtitles and what was really going through my mind was at the bottom of the screen.”
That would be an easy job for me. I’ve been a potter, a paralegal, a waitress, an art framer, and a social worker. I’m pretty sure that last one is the one that will stick, but if I ever decide the job of helping those who can’t help themselves has lost its charm, I can always do
Rise and Shine
with subtitles.
Meghan to the bestselling mystery writer thumping his eleventh book: How would you compare this to your last?
Translated: Everything you write sounds exactly the same.
Meghan to the secretary of defense: I’ve been told you meet with the president every morning. How did that routine get started?
Translated: We all know the guy doesn’t know anything about foreign policy and you make all the decisions.
Meghan to the actress thumping her new movie, in which she appears nude and during which she was sleeping with her costar, a married Catholic with five children: Talk a little bit about the atmosphere on location.
Translated: Whore.
My sister has a filthy mouth in private, although she has a reputation as one of the most eloquent public speakers in America. The first word Leo said was
shit,
although he couldn’t articulate the
sh
sound terribly well. Luckily, New York City playgrounds have heard many a toddler use the kind of language the FCC bans on television. Often in Spanish, too.
“It’s how I let off steam,” Meghan once said. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but to be charming for two hours a day in front of millions of people—it’s a lot more exhausting than it looks. And before you start, I know how much money I make.”
My sister liked the fact that I watched every morning. “What do you think?” she’ll say when she calls at 11:30, after she’s wiped off all the eyeliner and the lip gloss and done a postmortem with the production staff. “Was I too hard on the first lady?” I am the
Rise and Shine
target audience. “Oh, Jesus,” a producer once said when he met me at a dinner at Meghan’s apartment. “You’re the sister? God, if I hear one more word about how the sister hated the supermodel segment, or the sister thought we should have Philip Roth on after Bellow died, or the sister hates the upholstery on the new chairs.”
The sister ought to have looked at her calendar before Meghan left for Jamaica. When I saw the notation about Leo’s return, I tried to call her on the new cell number her assistant had given Tequila. After ten rings, a mechanized message answered. I sighed and called Evan. A secretary made me spell my last name, which seemed harsh, and put me on hold for a very long time. I hoped she was a temp.
After a few minutes he came on. “What now?” he said in a thin, slightly shaky voice.
“Ev?”
“Oh, God, Bridget, it’s you. This new woman said it was Miss Fitzmaurice and I thought it was Meghan.”
“A week ago I watched you steer my sister around a black-tie event with your arm around her waist and now you’re making her sound like Eva Braun.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t reach her and when she reaches me she starts slicing me to ribbons. I appreciate that this came as a surprise to her, but for God’s sake, Bridge, she’s making it a million times worse than it needs to be. She knows it’s not as if we had this idyllic marriage and, bam! I pulled the rug out from under.”
“Actually, Ev, that’s exactly what you did.”
“That’s what I did from where you’re sitting. If you’d been with us day after day, year after year, you’d know I’m right.”
“Evan, I practically live at your house half the time. I don’t want this to turn into the fighting Fitzmaurices, but you did a pretty credible imitation of a happily married man.”
“Exactly. An imitation.”
“How’s your new girlfriend?”
“What? What?”
“I know there’s got to be someone.”
“Do the two of you think with one mind? Speak with one mouth? Jesus. I have to go here.”
“That’s fine, I don’t want to talk about this anyway. I just wanted to ask about Sunday.”
“Sunday?”
“My day planner says Leo gets into Kennedy from Barcelona. Are you picking him up?”
“I thought Meghan took care of that. She always takes care of those things.”
“Meghan has left for vacation. Remember? The two of you were going to go together to Jamaica on Monday morning for a week. She went early. I don’t know what the plan was for Leo.”
“She told me he wasn’t even coming home. At least I think that’s what she said. I think that’s why we were going to Jamaica even though he was on the way back from Spain. I think she said he wasn’t going to stop back home before he went up to school. I could be wrong, though. I’m so tired, what with the travel and the work and everything else. Maybe I got it wrong. Should I send a car?”
“A car? A car? Are you serious? Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think the proper response to welcoming back your son whose entire world has been blown up while he’s been gone is to have the official greeter be some stranger in a black suit holding up a sign. Particularly when his mother may be on the covers of the magazines in the airport newsstand. Oh, and then there’s your little piece of news. You want to have the driver break your news to him, too? I’ll tell you what, Evan, you’d better get your ass out to Kennedy Airport on Sunday.”
“I’m in Tokyo.”
“What?”
“Didn’t she tell you when she put you through? I’m in Tokyo for the next week on this deal. I went because I thought Meghan said Leo was going right from Spain back to school without stopping at home. I also thought Meghan wasn’t going to Jamaica until Monday. I’m totally confused. Help me out here, Bridge.”
Help me out here, Bridge. It should be programmed into their computers, left as part of the message on their machine. But it was always about Leo, and that had made all the difference.
“I’ll pick him up. That’s it. As for the timing, yours has really been off here. With everything that’s going on, you could have backtracked on this separation stuff a bit and decided to let this whole thing ride for a couple of months, just to get over the publicity hump.”
“You’re going after the wrong person here. I suggested that to Meghan the last time we talked. So that the publicity could die down and we could find a good time to talk to Leo together.”
“And?”
“Let’s just say that Ben Greenstreet got off easy. Meghan was the one who said it was out of the question. Or words to that effect. Mostly obscenities.”
“Okay, I’m just not going to discuss my sister with you at this point. Just tell me where I should take Leo after I pick him up.”
“What do you mean? Take him home. He probably has to be back at school Monday, anyway. I think spring break is over. Take him to the apartment.”
“There’s no one there. I think Mercedes had the week off because you guys were going away. Is there even food in the fridge?”
“I can’t tell you that. Meghan had the locks changed. She told the doorman someone had stolen our keys. I felt like a damn fool when I went to pick up my suits. I’ve been wearing the same two ties all week.”
“Paul Stuart.”
“No, they’re both Zegna.”
“Go to Paul Stuart. Buy new ties. Get over yourself. How the hell am I supposed to get in the apartment?”
“She said you had keys.”
I looked into my purse. Meghan had sent me to her apartment to pick up the things for her trip as though she was afraid to go, afraid that the ghosts of a happy past would rise from the Oriental rugs and strangle her with memory. Or maybe it was the ghosts of the unhappy past. There were four photographers on Meghan watch outside, but apparently none of them knew about the side entrance. One of the doormen, Rafael, nodded at me solemnly. “Tell Ms. F hello for me,” he said formally. The doormen liked Meghan because, unlike the jokey rich guys, she never pretended they were her friends. And unlike the jokey rich guys, she tipped big at Christmas.
I’d thought she was silly when she gave me the packing list—“white bikini, red bikini, black tank, navy tank, running shoes, running shorts, three prs. white pants, three white T-shirts, flip-flops, gold sandals, gold halter dress”—the packing list of a woman who planned to swim and eat expensive. But once inside the apartment, I was glad she’d asked me to do it instead of doing it herself. The air was so silent and still that it had mass. The weight of the past: The sleigh bed in which Leo had been conceived. The desk that had once been in Evan’s father’s den, with its green leather inlay. The detritus of various decorators: the chintz period, the Biedermeier period, the white period, the red period. Like most Manhattan apartments, it looked less like a life than a stage set for a production of a Noël Coward play. Meghan is not a slave to fashion, but various rooms had been made over at various times even though they’d looked perfectly fine. Leo had once told me that the words that struck fear into the hearts of private school boys in New York were “Why don’t we look at wallpaper for your new room?” Trains. Soccer balls. Street scenes. Stripes. Plaids. Those poor boys had seen it all.