This One Is Mine: A Novel (19 page)

V
IOLET CARRIED
D
OT INTO THEIR
S
UNDAY MORNING
RIE
CLASS.
R
ESOURCES
for Infant Educarers, or RIE, was a parenting approach that Violet had flipped over. It was founded in the sixties by a Hungarian, Magda Gerber, and based on the research of Dr. Emmi Pikler, a Budapest pediatrician. RIE held that all babies were born competent, inner directed, and confident. Only by well-intended but misguided parenting in which babies were wheedled, praised, and entertained did they become insecure, overly dependent, and quick to bore. Unlike in other mommy-and-me-type classes, in RIE class, parents were asked not to initiate conversation with their babies, so the teachers could model how and when to respectfully communicate. Thus RIE classes were rather solemn affairs.

“Good morning, Dot,” said Sharon, the serious but gentle teacher. Violet found it demoralizing that a woman in her sixties had a better body than she did.

Violet put Dot down and joined the wall of trendy moms. One man was there, a young tattooed father who took every opportunity to mention that he had directed an episode of
Entourage
.

Dot stood at the door, watching the group of infants play with wooden toys, plastic kitchen items, and such. She took a deep breath and looked at Violet. Violet nodded. Dot took a deeper, quivering breath.

“Ball,” she said. Violet acknowledged this with a smile. Dot bustled over and picked up the ball.

“What we just saw was wonderful parenting on the part of Violet,” said Sharon. “Dot was able to choose
on her own terms
when to initiate play. Violet did not order Dot to go play. How wonderful life would be if, as adults, we could take a couple of deep breaths to assess
our
comfort level before
we
jumped into a strange new situation.”

Violet nodded. She hadn’t heard a word of what Sharon had just said.

T
EDDY
stood in the door, his hands nestled in the pockets of his pill-covered peacoat. His downcast eyes said he well understood that what they were about to embark on was grave and dishonorable. He entered the house and hesitated. Violet removed her glasses and placed them on a table alongside her car keys, some dry-cleaning tickets, and Dot’s spare EpiPen. She locked the door, then walked to the couch and sat on its edge. Teddy followed and sat beside her, his head down, his hands still in his pockets. His profile betrayed his inferior breeding: weak chin, narrow nose, no cheekbones to speak of. Ashy skin, sparse eyelashes.

He turned to Violet. “So?” he asked. Through a crack in his jacket, Violet saw his beating T-shirt. She moved closer and touched both palms to his cheeks, then ran her fingers through his thick, unclean hair.

“
Oh Jesus.” Unloosed, Teddy kissed Violet. She released into the pillows. They searched each other’s mouths. Tenderly, roughly, trading off leads, as if to say,
This is who you are? Well, this is who I am.
All with the aching thrill that is impossible with a husband of sixteen years.

A blond-haired boy wearing a Hanging with Yoko T-shirt and kabbalah bracelet struggled to fit a hair curler into the wide mouth of a water jug. When he finally succeeded, the
Entourage
director
glanced up from his text-messaging and said, “Good job, Django!”

Sharon smiled. Violet braced herself. She knew this guy was going to get it.

“In RIE,” Sharon told him, “we think of praise as sugarcoated control. Django was peacefully enjoying the challenge of putting the roller in the jug. By telling him, Good job, you sent the message that something arbitrary to him is of great import to you. Not only does this confuse a child, but it also erodes his inner peace. Pretty soon, you will have a praise junkie on your hands whose only motivation in life will be to perform for other people because it’s the only way he knows how to feel good about himself.” Violet had never much cared for the
Entourage
director, and even secretly hoped he’d get on Sharon’s bad side. But now that it had happened, it made her kind of sad.

V
IOLET
luxuriated in the teenage playfulness of making out with Teddy. With her tongue, she explored the gap in his teeth. On one side was the sharp edge of his front tooth. On the other side, the flat, smooth molar.

“
I know,” Teddy said. “When I first lost that tooth, I always did that myself.”

“
How did you lose it? Did a dealer beat you up?”

“
I’m such a fucking cliché. You know me too well.”

Violet kissed him again. He answered back. “Oh God,” she said. “Can we kiss forever?”

“
No!” Teddy laughed and pushed his hand down her pants, beneath her underwear, and slid his fingers up inside her. “God, your pussy’s wet.” For years, Violet couldn’t get like that for David. It was unspoken, that they needed to use spit to fuck. It had been awkward and embarrassing at first; now it was just fact. “Take off your clothes,” Teddy said, and pulled his T-shirt over his head.

Violet undid one button on her shirt, then the other. Luckily, she was wearing one of her new bras, a lacy confection that smooshed her breasts together to yield a fulsome, almost cartoonish cleavage. “Take that fucking thing off,” he said. “Hurry it up.”

“I have a question,” said a young mother. “Tess fusses when I’m at my computer doing e-mail.”

“What’s your question?” Sharon said.

“I feel bad. I mean, I need to check my e-mail — and I never do it for more than fifteen minutes — but Tess hates it. And I want her to be happy.”

“Wanting your child to be happy is a misguided goal,” said Sharon. “The goal shouldn’t be to raise a constantly
happy
child. The goal should be to raise a child who is capable of dealing with reality. Reality is boring. Reality is frustrating. Reality isn’t about getting everything you want the second you want it. Even a one year old is capable of handling these things.”

Violet was back in the living room with Teddy.

H
E
undressed with frenetic purpose, as if stripping in the snow before jumping into a hot tub. It allowed Violet to match his lack of shame with her own. Naked, supine on the velvety couch, she felt giddy nonchalance. She was Manet’s Olympia, sumptuous, alert, being attended to by a dark figure. More shocking than the tableau was the trust she felt in the supplicant standing before her with the big erection.

“
I can’t believe how hard I am right now,” he said, stroking himself. “Jesus, you have great tits.” He reached down and cupped one of her breasts, her soft white skin super-sensitive to his every hangnail and cracked cuticle. Teddy sidestepped between the couch and the coffee table until he stood squarely before her, then dropped to his knees. Violet pushed the table away with her heels.

“
Thanks,” he said. “I didn’t know if it was a million-dollar antique or something.”

It was a Donald Judd and it cost fifteen grand, but Teddy didn’t need to know that. He sucked her breast. His hands moved to her legs. He pushed them apart, wide. Violet smiled-winced at the pleasure-pain of her ligaments stretching. Teddy sat back on his heels and examined her. “Your pussy is more gorgeous than anything on the internet. You just ruined jerking off to porn forever.”

“
I think that makes me happy.”

“
You little minx,” he said. He gave her inner thigh a sweet kiss.

“
That’s me all right. A little minx.”

He rammed his face between her legs and worked his fingers, his tongue, even his teeth, it seemed, only coming up for air, face shiny, to exclaim, Fuck, or, Jesus.

For fun, Violet said, “Jesus, fuck me,” but Teddy didn’t get the reference.

O
LIVER
,
a darling two year old, shook the water bottle full of hair rollers. Dot ran to look and tripped over a plastic bucket.

“Dot, I saw that,” said Sharon. She walked over and sat near Dot, who was about to cry, or maybe not. “You fell and hit your head.” Sharon picked up the bucket and showed it to Dot. “This bucket. You tripped on it.”

Dot took in Sharon’s words, then sprang up and ran to join Oliver.

“All Dot needed,” Sharon said to the parents, “was acknowledgment that someone saw what had happened to her. Parents think they need to fix every little painful thing that happens to a child. Children are born with an incredible capacity to get over things. They just need to know that someone saw it. It is evident to me that Violet is adhering to the RIE principles at home.”

“Thank you,” Violet said.

K
NOWING
that Teddy preferred going without, Violet was relieved when he dug through his pants and pulled out a condom. “Just happened to have one handy?” she teased.

“
I never know who I’m going to run into. One time, I was coming out of the men’s room in Beverly Hills, and there was this hot lady just sitting there.”

“
Oh yeah?”

“
I totally could have fucked her.”

“
You think?” Violet watched Teddy put on the condom. She had been married and faithful for so long that sex with a condom was a racy novelty.

She lay back and hung one leg over the back of the couch. Deep in a trance, Teddy positioned himself and thrust inside her. Once, twice. He brushed his hair out of his face and pushed himself up on his hands and looked down. He was transfixed by the rhythmic penetration. Like a stupid animal, his mouth hanging open, watching.

“
Fuck,” he kept saying. “You’re so fucking hot.”

Now Violet knew: this was all she’d ever needed. Not the money, not the career, not the landmark aerie. The moment she recognized it, a panic filled her: it wasn’t enough. Teddy was on top of her, fucking her hard, grunting with each thrust. They were sticky with sweat. She breathed him in. It still wasn’t enough. Violet pulled his body close into hers and stuck her tongue in his mouth. It still wasn’t enough. She clawed her nails deep into his back. He reached for her hand, singled out her index finger, and pushed it toward his asshole.

“
Do that,” he said. She stuck her finger in deep. “Like that,” Teddy whispered. “I like that.” She grabbed his hair with her free hand. “You fucking whore,” he whispered. Teddy’s cock was in her, his tongue in her mouth, her finger up his ass. There was nothing more she could do. This had to be enough. She closed her eyes.

Present Moment, Wonderful Moment.

That was a mantra the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh had given at a teaching in France. Each time Teddy pulled out, Violet thought, Present Moment. Every thrust in, Wonderful Moment.

Present Moment, Wonderful Moment. She finally understood what the simple Buddhist had meant.

There was one problem: the future.

Violet opened her eyes. What would she do with all the moments that
weren’t
this present moment, this wonderful moment? There would be so many, too many to endure. She was forty-two. If she lived to eighty, there would be almost forty years of moments that wouldn’t be this wonderful. Violet closed her eyes. She had to stop thinking that way. Be present, she scolded herself. In. Out. In. Out. Present Moment, Wonderful Moment.

“
Get on your hands and knees,” Teddy said. She did, and he pushed deep inside her. The force of it sent her face into the arm of the couch. Violet grabbed onto it for support. He reached under her and lifted her so they both stood on their knees. Their reflection in the sliding glass door was beautiful, haunting. Violet naked, hair cascading down. Behind her, Teddy, his dark arms entwined around her luminous skin, playing her like his upright bass, attuning himself to her subtleties. The overlay of dappled moonlight reflecting off the pool reminded Violet of that Gustav Klimt painting
The Kiss.
Once, in Vienna, it was on some rock tour, she couldn’t remember which, she had gone to see it three days in a row. There it was, in the reflection.

Suddenly, Teddy stopped. “Is that a tat?”

“
A what?”

Teddy lifted her hair off her ear. “It is. Ha! It’s a fucking tattoo.”

“
Oh yeah. Violets.”

“
When did you get all tatted up?”

“
In Amsterdam, one spring break.”

“
You hung out in Amsterdam? With the hash and hookers?” He pulled out and turned her around.

“
With the Anne Frank house.”

“
The what?”

“
Anne Frank House.”

“
Who’s that?”

“
The Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis in the attic and then died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.”

“
Hey, nice thing to bring up while you’re getting fucked.”

“
You’re the one who brought it up.”

“
I just asked about your tattoo.” He kissed her neck.

“
It seemed like the punk thing to do at the time.”

“
Do you think I should get a tattoo?” He sat down on the couch to give it serious consideration.

“
No.” She flopped on her back, her legs straddling him. “I think they’re pretty reductive.”

“
Heh?”

“
I can either fuck you or give you a vocabulary lesson. What’s it going to be?”

“
Jesus, look at you.”

“
Are you kidding?” she asked. “Look at you.”

“
I need to come on you.” He ripped off his condom.

“
Be my guest.” In his animal trance, that Violet felt so privileged to be part of, Teddy jerked off on her stomach.

R
IE
class was over. Violet was collecting her things when the
Entourage
director approached. “Hey, I saw on the class roster, you’re Violet Parry.”

“Yeah,” she said. Here it comes, Violet thought.

“I directed an
Entourage
once.”