Spin Doctor (4 page)

Unfortunately, Carol misinterpreted my suggestion to break old behavioral patterns and consciously seek appropriate times to soften her edges as an exhortation to become a one-woman Bacchanal. While she still acts like Medusa in public, behind the meticulously clipped shrubberies of her three-bedroom Westchester Tudor, Carol's become the Merry Widow, indulging in simultaneous affairs with two married men, both attorneys, one of whom is her law partner. Her other lover is the law partner's squash partner. Talk about bedroom communities!

I don't like to take
my
work home with me either, and my intrusive ruminations on Carol Lerner were exactly that. This was my much-needed mental “down time” between my laundry room sessions and my downtown ones. I was grateful for the unexpected appearance of Ian, my eleven-year-old wonder child. I have no idea how I ended up so blessed with this boy. He always slept through the night when he was an infant, never went through the terrible twos, cleans up his room without being prodded, has legible penmanship, and his teachers around the corner at Ethical Culture adore him: in short, Ian embodies all the things that are supposed to be lacking in the gender al
legedly composed of snails and puppy dogs' tails…although he
was
eating Cheez Doodles for breakfast.

I assumed my voice of maternal authority. “Young man, those are not an adequate substitute for corn flakes.”

“I know; they suck with milk,” Ian said, folding the bag closed. All parenting should be this easy. “Mom, my agent called. You have to take me on an audition after school. It's a national commercial for McDonald's, and we can't be late.”

“When are we ever late?”

“Last week, at the one for replacements for
Big River.
”

“I'm an actor too,” Alice said to Ian. “Although I really hate it when women refer to themselves that way.
Ess.
I'm an
actress.
I don't think it's un-PC or something to consider myself an actr
ess
—as opposed to ac
tor,
I mean. It's a prettier word too.”

“Oh, that's cool. Have you ever been on Broadway? I played Gavroche for eight months in
Les Miz,
and I was also in the national tour of
Peter Pan
with Mary Lou Retton. I did three national commercials and a local one for the Vision Center. It was their back-to-school commercial last year. And I did the print campaign for the Gap and a catalogue for Kids 'R' Us. Are you in something now?” Ian asked, finally pausing for breath. “Hey, Mom, there's a boggart in that machine!” he yelped, his attention diverted by the sudden violent shaking of one of the washing machines. It did in fact look like it was demonically possessed, or that some less-than-benign force was trapped inside.

“Well, sweetie, there's not much I can do about that now. If I open the machine, everything will stop like it's supposed to, but with these old washers, I'm afraid it might not start up again and our clothes will be too damp for the dryer to be effective.”

“I'm in
Grandma Finnegan's Wake,
” Alice told Ian. “I auditioned for it and got the part on the same day…the same day my grandmother died…and our last name is Finnegan. Can
you believe it?” Alice began to choke up, and although I really don't know her, I decided she could use a hug. But that started her sobbing again, and in a matter of moments Alice's tears had completely saturated the shoulder of my Indian cotton blouse.

“What's a wake, Mom?”

Alice pulled away and I hesitated for a second before responding to Ian's question. “It's like a party for someone who died, honey. It's a big tradition among the Irish.”

“Oh. How come
we
don't have parties for people when they die?”

“Because our name is Lederer. Jews don't have wakes.”

“Can we go see Alice in the play?”

“Your father and I will certainly go support Alice's career.”

“But what about me? Can't I go? You said it's like a
party.
”

I looked at Alice, hoping she might confirm my suspicion that the interactive production, while billed as a “family comedy,” was not quite appropriate for preteens. “From what I hear, it's far too risqué for you, honey. Too many double entendres.”

“What's a double
entahnder
?”

“Dirty words.”

Ian continued his campaign. “You let me watch other things with dirty words. Like
The Sopranos.
”

“Your
father
lets you watch
The Sopranos.
And if you want my opinion on the subject, which I know you don't, I think he's far too permissive.”

“Daddy's not permissive; he's
progressive,
” Ian insisted.

“Daddy's” your classic Upper West Side Jewish liberal intellectual who lets our kids get away with far more than they should, completely devaluing my clout as an authority figure. “Yeah, Ian? Well, in one word:
fuhgedaboutit!
”

Talia, having folded the last of her all-natural fiber dancewear, finally got ready to leave the room, struggling under
the weight of her basket. I slipped into my de facto role as laundry room “cruise director.” “Alice, do you know Talia Shaw? She's a new tenant—and a performer too.”

“A dancer, I presume,” Alice said, eyeing the pristine pile of leotards.

Talia nodded. “I'm with City Ballet. They let me to do a season as a guest artist with the Martha Graham company last year, but it didn't work out. Got fired and served with divorce papers all within the same month.” She gave a little shrug and the insouciant bounce of her dark ponytail seemed a sharp contrast to her crisp, unemotional tone of voice. “At least it was in my contract with City that they had to take me back.”

“And you heard that Alice has just gone into
Grandma Finnegan's Wake,
” I said.

Talia gave her a chilly little smile.

“I guess it's not exactly
Giselle,
” Alice said, descending into embarrassed self-deprecation.

“I think it's wonderful that we have working performers in the building,” I said cheerily, sensing the tension in the air. “It keeps the atmosphere vital.” If my performer clients didn't have evening curtains to make, I'd give serious thought to conducting cocktail-hour therapy sessions down here instead. “By the way, Alice, have you ever read the book?”

“Which book?”

“Finnegan's Wake.”

“At eight hundred and something pages? Gee, Susan, it's on my to-do list,” she joked.

“You've never read it? Hmh! I spent an entire semester on it at Bennington.”

Talia turned at the doorway to the laundry room. “I've never
read
it, but I think I
wore
it once.” Ian, Alice, and I regarded her as though she were an alien. Suddenly she became tremen
dously self-conscious: the shy woman who had confessed her discomfort with being verbal. “Why are you guys looking at me like that? When I was about four years old, after I saw
The Nut-cracker
on TV and told my mother I wanted to be a dancer, she laughed into her scotch glass and said that no klutz could grow up to be a ballerina. She said I had to learn balance and grace, and placed a hardcover copy of
Finnegan's Wake
on my head and told me to walk around the house like that. From my bedroom to the basement, y'know? When I could finally manage three flights of stairs—up
and
down—without dropping the book—she agreed to let me begin ballet lessons. 'Bye.” She started once more to leave the room.

“You forgot your soap,” Ian offered helpfully.

“Thanks.” Talia fetched her soapbox—a brand of ecofriendly powder—from the table near the washers and balanced it on top of her basket of clothes. “Oops,” she said, setting the basket on the floor and running into the tiny bathroom.

“What do you want to bet she's taking diuretics?” Alice whispered to me. “I mean the woman has absolutely no body fat.” She regarded her own midriff, which was slender but far from skeletal. “I mean that should be illegal—the zero body fat, not the diuretics!”

I winced, recalling too well my own punishing bout with them, and how grateful I am to have recovered, physically and psychologically, from the devastation of an eating disorder.

A couple of minutes later Talia exited the water closet wearing a frown. “They took down the mirror over the sink.”

Faith swanned into the laundry room. “I believe I left a knit top down here yesterday. This color,” she said, indicating the orchid-colored scarf at her throat.

“I know you,” Alice said to her. “You used to be a friend of my grandmother: Irene Finnegan.”

“Yes, yes of course,” Faith said. “And you have my deepest condolences. They don't make them like Irene anymore. We used to go to the opera together from time to time, after Ben—my husband—died. Irene was a very special lady. With a huge heart. After Ben passed away, it was your grandmother who taught me how to balance my checkbook. Can you imagine,” she said with a throaty laugh, “I'd never paid a bill on my own!” Faith peered into each dryer, looking for her missing garment. “Ah, well, maybe I never even washed it to begin with,” she sighed, heading out the door. “At my age, the mind tends to become a rather porous organ.”

Ian, without being asked, was folding our dried clothes into piles based on which family member owned them.

“Is there such a thing as Stepford
children?
” Alice asked incredulously. “How old are you?”

“Eleven,” Ian replied.

“He's a really good kid,” I said, realizing that I couldn't make the same boastful claim about Molly, and counting my blessings that fifty percent of my children had turned out terrific.

“I've never gone for younger men, but I think in your case I might make an exception. Do you mind waiting until you've graduated from college so we can get married?”

Ian blushed and coyly turned his head away. “Mom, I have to go to school now.”

I checked my watch. His first class started in twenty-one minutes. “Okay. I'll walk you over there.”

“You're so
protective.
I can do it myself. It's only two blocks.”

“I like to think of it as cautious. It's only two blocks but it's still Manhattan and you're only in sixth grade. Besides, there was an almost kidnapping on Sixty-fourth Street last week.”

“An
almost
kidnapping, Mom. You worry too much.”

“I'm a mother; it's part of the job description. If I didn't
worry, you'd be taken away by Social Services. And I'd prefer that you got to school this morning safely, rather than
almost
got there. So suck it up: you're getting a chaperone.”

I turned to Alice, who was watching the row of machines launder her grandmother's garments for the final time. Her face was a mask of sorrow. “Hey,” I murmured, placing my hands gently on her shoulders, “if you want to make an appointment to talk to me, to set up some counseling sessions, I'm here. You shouldn't have to go through the grieving process alone.”

“Thanks,” Alice said, blinking back tears. “My parents are in Florida, I don't even have a boyfriend—although a while back I did meet a really cute guy who paid a house call to repair a piece of old furniture—and it's not right to dump on my two best friends all the time. They have enough of their own problems. But I'm not making a lot of money Off-Broadway, you know. ‘Heigh-ho the glamorous life' and all that, but my paycheck doesn't leave me with much in the way of disposable income.”

“I don't charge anything for my laundry room sessions. And they're very unintimidating; just think of them as a weekly fifty-minute gabfest with a girlfriend who happens to have a psych Ph.D. I hold private counseling sessions down here every morning except Sunday from seven to eight
A.M
., and I've got one day open, so if you feel that you need some help getting through this bump in your road, I'm here to listen.”

“Wow.” Alice blinked back a grateful tear and surveyed the row of aging washing machines. “Who knew I could come down here and shrink my clothes and my head at the same time!”

AMY

I can't remember when I've ever seen a young woman so angry. Amy walked in with such a chip on her shoulder that I admit I found it hard to like her—something I've never experienced with a laundry room client. In situations like that, I have to focus even harder so as not to betray my bias through my body language or nonverbal responses.

Amy was pissed off that she hadn't lost her baby weight six months after giving birth, particularly since her two older sisters had done so after only forty-five days postpartum; she was frustrated that her newly altered lifestyle often lacked the rosy optimistic glow of an infomercial for motherhood; she was perennially livid with her lawyer husband for never being around to help her with their new son, apart from holding him aloft right after his bris for the entire congregation of Temple Beth Israel to sigh approvingly over, and for retreating into their guest room for lengthy phone calls with colleagues and clients every time she asked for his assistance, even if it was only to hold a fretting Isaac while she took a bath.

“Is it right to want to strangle Eric every time I look at him?” she asked me. It was our first session and invective poured from her like lava. Obviously, we'd have our work cut out for us. “I'm only half kidding, you know.” She looked down at her hands; her fingers were bent and tensed like claws. “I swear to God, there are days when I just want to put my hands around his throat and…
squeeze.
” Her pantomimed demonstration made me flinch. “But then again, he's never home long enough for me to grab him, so I guess you won't be reading about me in the papers anytime soon.”