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Love, Mom

December 8
^th
, 2015

Dear Mom
,

There's a conversation I had last year with my grandfather Ben that I'd like to tell you about. We were in his studio and he was in a bad way, talking to me about how much he owed the attorneys who defended him in the lawsuit against Sondra. He kept saying, “I'm a poor man, Rebecca. A poor, poor man.” Can you imagine a person who had firsthand experience of Depression Era poverty, sitting in his multimillion-dollar SoHo loft with his multimillion-dollar house in the Hamptons just a short car ride away, going on about how he was poor? What does that mean, Mom? It confuses and frightens me. There's some fundamental principle to money which I don't understand. But I should figure it out before I spend my whole life worrying about the stuff. You, too, maybe?

Love, Rebecca

December 28
^th
, 2015

Dear Rebecca
,

Seems you're feeling a bit philosophical these days, so I'm going to give it to you straight: Shut the door on your father, right now. It's the only way to deal with his kind. He will take as much as you let him. You have to say, “Enough,” and then erect a barricade. It's not selfishness. No, it's called being practical. You're a single woman. The world doesn't treat you with the tenderness you would like it to, so stop treating it as if it did. Toughen up. Get mean. Your survival depends on it. It took me a long time to learn this, but I did. I'm not going to tell you that the result is perfect. I struggle with life. I am unhappy a lot of the time. But I live under my terms. No one can pull me a hundred yards this way and hundred yards that. There's stability in knowing this. Unfortunately
,
part of making the decision to not let people walk all over you and take take take is that you will have to feel bad at times. Bad for saying no. Bad for shutting out. Bad for the things they might do to themselves after you have acted. This makes it an imperfect solution. But it does work most of the time, and those are the kinds of answers you have to start believing in. Things that work most of the time, or more often than they do not work, are where you can find improvement. I don't talk to my sister anymore. I haven't for six months anyway. It feels great. I am in control. Me, not her. If Ella showed up at my door, and I suspect she might one of these days, I wouldn't let her in. I'd feel terrible about that for a couple of days. Far better than letting her inside and giving her the privilege of degrading me with her emotions and her needs. That is a month-long recovery. Two months. No, no, no, my dear, save yourself. Don't be railroaded by the same people anymore. Don't be their little whipping girl
.

Love, Your Mom

 

“…Of course, your sister is emotionally erratic. She's exhausting. She doesn't socialize well.”

“But she faults me for hiding her from friends and colleagues.”

“Did she forget the last time we took her with us to a party? She cornered Diane's husband in a bathroom.”

“She's always been very easy.”

“She has no self-confidence.”

“And still I feel so bottled up around her. I can't say what's on my mind. Ella's emotions, her sensitivities, have to be attended to. You have to protect her and yourself by not saying the wrong thing. What about my emotions? Ella would say that I don't have any. That nothing seems to bother me. I always seem so together. While she's rigged the world to take pity on her.”

“She's clever that way. At any given time, a dozen people are carrying out some favor for Ella. They give her money, a place to stay. They think she's an artist deserving handouts.”

“But she's not, Oliver. She might have been. Her photos showed so much potential. It's frustrating to talk about. See, I get worked up. My face overheats, my hands shake, because I believed in her, and what did she do with her talent? Her life? Nothing. She's thirty-eight and still waiting for it to begin.”

Helen went to stand before the windows. A blizzard was overtaking the city. The weather report said a foot of snow by morning.

“This is my home. I should never feel uncomfortable here. Not for any reason.”

“Don't worry, Helen, she'll leave soon.”

“But I'm concerned about Rebecca, too.”

“Why me?” asked Rebecca. The eight-year-old had been on the sofa with her head in her father's lap, listening to her parents.

“I don't like you being around her so much. Who knows what kinds of things she tells you. Likely badmouthing me all afternoon while I'm out. ‘Your mother's a hard-hearted bitch. She doesn't care that I have no money and no place to go, she wants me gone.'”

“She doesn't do that,” Rebecca assured her mother.

“Rebecca's happy to have her here,” Oliver said. “You get along well with each other, don't you? I know you find the time after school lonesome.”

Rebecca didn't answer. She was watching her mother at the window, in her white bathrobe with the belt untied, her dark chin-length hair gathered in both her hands, her legs strong and shoulders back and her head bent forward.

All of a sudden, Helen said, “Did you put the car in a lot, Oliver?”

“What's that?”

“I said, did you put the car in a lot?”

“No.”

“You should have.”

“Well, I didn't.”

“You should do it now.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

Oliver said, “Don't be crazy.”

“We spend a fortune on that car.”

“I know we do.”

“But you'd just leave it outside in a snowstorm?”

“Yes.”

“It has to go in a lot.”

“I'll take care of it in the morning,” he said. “I'll dig it out if I have to.”

“I'm not leaving the car in the snow, Oliver.”

“Helen.”

“It's just terrible for the body.”

“I'm not worried about the body.”

“Well, I am. And I'm moving it.”

“Helen!”

But now Helen went to dress. Oliver brought his daughter up to sit. Glaring at her, he said, “Well, we can't let her go alone, can we!”

Oliver remembered parking the BMW the previous afternoon three blocks from the apartment, on Eighty-Third. But outside, every step was a challenge and he didn't want to be wrong. He began to doubt himself. Was it Eighty-Third? First he led his wife and daughter down Eighty-Second. But when he didn't see the car, he said to them, “It's not this block. Come, let's go! Let's go!” and he pulled his daughter by the hand to the next street. He didn't notice his black scarf dragging through the snow, then coming off altogether. When he got to the car, he touched his neck where the scarf had been. Then he looked back down the empty street.

“Damn!” he cried.

“Did you lose your scarf, Dad?”

He didn't reply.

Helen and Rebecca got inside the black car while Oliver scraped snow from the windshield with his forearm. The engine warmed. Not many people were driving, though there weresome taxis in the street. The sanitation trucks did the plowing. Along the curb, garbage bags that wouldn't be picked up for days were halfway disappeared under the snow. The windows were still defogging when Oliver got in the car. He began hitting switches, trying to bring up the temperature inside, muttering angry words under his breath. Removing a glove, Helen licked the end of her middle finger and took a speck of dust off the dashboard.

“Ms. Wyse called today,” she said to her husband.

“Who?”

“My assistant principal,” said Rebecca, from the back seat.

“She informed me that Ella's been late to pick Rebecca up every day this week, even after I told her that she had to be on time and she promised me she could be depended on.”

“Is that true, Rebecca?”

“Yes,” she said. “But—”

“Did you speak with Ella?” Oliver asked his wife.

“I did, this evening.”

“And…”

“And, no, she wasn't apologetic.”

“Why haven't you said anything about it, Rebecca?” The radio whispered news in the background. Oliver shut it off with a violent tap of his forefinger to the black knob.

“Because she's very protective of my sister,” Helen interjected. She had been waiting days to say this to her husband, and her daughter. “What, you disagree, Rebecca?”

Rebecca brought her hands together in her lap, saying nothing. Oliver grimaced, the snow obscuring his visibility. The black car drifted down Park Avenue and he felt as if not he but someone else was in control of it.

“From the way Rebecca looks at me since my sister arrived, I know she blames me for the way her life is. You think I should fix everything for Ella, as if I haven't already tried.”

“I don't think that, Mom.”

But with her head turned toward the window, Helen said, “I won't do it anymore,” repeating the phrase again and again. She didn't pause when the car skidded out. She seemed not to notice how Oliver grappled with the steering. Had she not seen the other vehicles stuck in the snow? The only people on the street were those out of their cars helping to push. Rebecca watched their tires spinning, the exhaust pumping out under the diffuse orange light of street lamps.

“But if my sister doesn't like me, she shouldn't stay with us,” Helen continued. “There are a hundred people in New York who would put her up.”

Turning left onto Eighty-Second, the car swung wide in the snow. Oliver straightened out before trading the street for the sidewalk.

“But I have to tell you—”

“Yes. What is it, Helen?” Oliver had pulled up outside a parking lot. The metal gate was down.

“When I said that Ella and I had spoken about her being late to pick up Rebecca and that she did not apologize, what I meant to tell you was that she's taken her things and left.”

Oliver pressed the horn to alert the attendant. “What are you talking about?”

“She's gone.”

“Did she have any money?”

“I wouldn't know. I didn't tell her to leave. She said she felt unwelcome, and I agreed with her that she wasn't. That's it.”

Oliver hit his horn again, searching through the windshield for signs of an attendant. When no one came, he said to her, “I can't talk about this,” and he got out of the BMW and tottered up to the metal gate. Cars were parked all the way to the entrance. Through a doorway at the back, the crossed legs of a seated man were visible. Oliver rang the bell. The man didn't move.

“Are you dead in there!” he shouted.

But the attendant remained perfectly still in his chair.

Oliver returned to the car, slamming the door shut. In the leather driver's seat, he said, “It's probably the same everywhere.”

“You'll find something,” Helen said.

However, the next lots were full. They rode past their old spot. Now it was occupied. When the fuel light went on, Oliver couldn't help himself. He grabbed his wife by the shoulders and shook her. “Why did I let you talk me into this!”

“Oh, let go of me, Oliver!”

“This is your fault!”

“We had to move the car.”

“No, we didn't.”

“We were just going to leave it in the snow?”

“Yes!”

Helen pulled away from her husband. Everyone was silent. The car rumbled past building canopies flapping hard in the wind. White snow dervishes swirled down the avenue. Rebecca gazed at them while they spun away, her hand pressed to the window.

All of a sudden, Helen was saying, “And do you know before Ella left tonight, I told her, I went, ‘I've tried to do everything I can for you, but you take advantage of me and I'm done with it.' And she said, ‘I take advantage of you? I take advantage! How could you say I take advantage?' I mean, does she have no sense of what she is? But then I know she does, Oliver. That's the thing. Which means it's an act. Can you imagine that? An act!”

Making a right turn onto their block, Oliver was prepared to tell Helen to get out and take their daughter with her, he would look for parking alone. But then a miracle—a spot had opened up right in front of their building.

“Holy shit. Look at that!” Oliver pulled between two snow-clad cars. He was out on the street before Helen and Rebecca had unbuckled their seatbelts. “Come on, you two!” he shouted.

Helen looked grimly at her husband. “Will you wait a second!”

But Oliver was knee-deep in snow, and furious. He said, “Forget it. I'll meet you both upstairs,” and he rushed off between the large double doors.

A moment later, Helen and Rebecca confronted the startling warmth of the lobby. Observing the puddles on the marble floor, Helen asked the doorman Edmond, who would have to mop now, if Oliver was responsible for these wet tracks.

“Yes,” Edmond said.

“I thought so,” replied Helen. She apologized on behalf of her husband. Then she told the doorman that Oliver would need to borrow a shovel in the morning to get the car out. And would one be available at eight? She knew the doormen shoveled the sidewalk mornings and, with snow like this, there was no question there'd be plenty to remove.

Edmond said, “Not a problem, Helen.”

“It'll be available to him?”

“Yes.”

Rebecca followed her mother toward the elevator at the end of the lobby. But Helen suddenly checked inside the door to the stairwell. She looked up to the second landing, and said to her daughter, “I thought Ella might be asleep there. You think she's in the storage room, maybe?”

“I don't think so, Mom.”

Helen's back straightened. She called out to Edmond and asked him whether he'd seen Ella leave that evening. He said he had.

“Around 6 p.m.?”

“Probably six, yeah.”

“She hasn't come back, has she?”