Broken for You (23 page)

Wanda opened the door and found a tall woman with the healthy face and workhorse frame of a farm wife. She had three children of indeterminate sex in tow; the older two were holding her hands, the third was snuggled into a backpack. Wanda had the impression that she was being confronted by a small indigenous tribe.

"You must be Wanda. How do you do? I'm Susan Meriweather." Her accent was British, but warm and unaffected. "I'd shake your hand, but mine are rather gooey at the moment."

"Hello, Susan!" Margaret called from the kitchen. "Hello, Margaret!" Susan called back.

"SUE-SUE! SUE-SUE!" shouted the baby in the backpack, joyously. It sounded like "THOO-THOO! THOO-THOO!"

Susan guided her small herd into the center of foyer and went on. "As you can plainly see, I have company. This is Olivia, Ethan, and Zachary." She began to hoist the baby off her shoulders and onto the floor. "I've brought the chimps, Margaret!" she called out. "The what?" Margaret called back. "You mean, the
children
!" said the oldest child, seriously. "Oh, yes. So sorry, Olivia. I MEANT, THE CHEETAHS!" "No! No!" called the second child, frowning, "The CHILDREN!" "Oh, yes, of course, Ethan. Silly me. NOT CHEETAHS AT ALL. THEY'RE CHIHUAHUAS!"

"NO! NO! NO!" called the two older children, cracking up. "THE CHILDREN! THE CHILDREN!"

"CHEE-DWEN!" yelled baby Zachary, outvoluming them all. "CHEE-DWEN!"

"Oh, God!" Susan called out, mock horrified. "I MEANT, THE CHILDREN, THE TOTS, THE WEE BAIRNS, THE ANKLE-BITERS, THE BONNY LADS AND LASSES!"

"THOO-THOO-THOO!!!" laughed the baby, clapping his hands. The other two children were somehow managing to giggle and hiccup in unison.

"Wonderful!" Margaret sang out. "I can hardly wait to meet them!"

Susan looked at Wanda and began unbuckling, unzipping, and untying various coats, belts, buckles, and bags. "Sorry. I hope this isn't a problem. Their parents called at the last minute to say they'd be working late."

"It's totally fine. I'm used to kids."

The baby gummed a hank of Susan's hair while she rummaged through the backpack and magically extracted enough plastic for a multifamily garage sale. It was something like witnessing the miracle of the fishes, but with yellow, orange, and blue sippy cups. "They'll stay occupied. We're used to schlepping, aren't we, darlings?"

After the tour of the house, Margaret and Wanda guided Susan and the children out to the patio. "Oh, darlings, look! Isn't this a big, glorious mess?"

"BIG METH! BIG METH!" shouted Zachary, showering Susan with gobs of saliva.

Olivia regarded Margaret and Wanda wryly, and then leaned close to Susan and whispered, "Maybe you should ask to see their rooms before you commit to anything."

"Now, Olivia, haven't you ever heard of creative clutter?"

"You always say that a messy room is a noisy room."

"HA!" blurted Margaret.

"Smarty-pants. But this isn't exactly a room, now is it? This is the great outdoors. And this may well be the most glorious great outdoor mess I've ever seen—and that's saying a lot, having lived with you lot all these years!""It reminds me of the beach in
Grandfather Twilight,
" Olivia said.

"I can see how it would!" Susan looked toward the middle child, who was standing near the French doors leading into the kitchen. "What does it remind
you
of, Ethan
?"

Ethan grunted and turned to face the wall.

Susan handed the baby to Margaret and knelt down. "Ethan, can you look at me?"

"Don't want to."

"Are you feeling sad? Mad? Glad? Afraid?"

Wanda watched closely. She couldn't help but envy Ethan, standing—albeit reluctantly—in the spotlight of all this loving attention. She wondered what it would be like to move through childhood holding hands with someone who insisted that you not only face your feelings, but name them.

"NO!!!" Ethan screamed.

You might not like it now,
Wanda thought,
but you'll than
k
her in about twenty years.

"What then, love? Can you try and say?"

"STOP IT!" Ethan shouted. "STOP TALKING! WANT TO GO NOW!"

Susan drew Ethan into her arms. He flailed against her and then started to cry. "I don't want you to live here!" he said between gasps. "I want you to come with us! Come with us to New York New York!"

"I know, Ethe, I know." She began crooning something to him—not your typical British nanny fare, it sounded like a country-western tune. Dolly Parton maybe. Or Loretta Lynn.

"Now," she said once Ethan was becalmed, "let's see if we can make something of this. You'll help me, won't you?" She looked toward Margaret and Wanda. "Do you mind? If we play about a bit, I mean? I'll make sure we're very careful. Have you gloves we could borrow?"

"I rather thought they'd take me with them," Susan was saying to Wanda. They were alone upstairs and taking another look at Egg Cup, the room that would be Susan's. "I've been with these children ever since
they were born. But their parents have already engaged another nanny through a service in Manhattan." Her eyes filled with tears. "There are, apparently, a lot of nannies in New York." "You used to be a nurse?"

"Yes. Pediatrics." Susan stepped into the bedroom and looked toward the bath. "Your room adjoins this from the other side?"

"That's right."

"This will be nice," she said, feebly. "Sharing, I mean. Like university." Now that Susan wasn't tending her brood, she seemed uncomfortable, as if apologizing for her physical presence. Wanda could easily see her as the kind of girl who grew into those big-boned feet and hands too quickly and then slouched through adolescence, trying to disguise her stature and avoid ridicule. She probably never wore high heels or had a boyfriend in high school. Wanda wondered if Susan had
ever
had a boyfriend; she had a kind of asexuality that made her seem virginal. But then, she was British, and a nanny.

"By the way," Susan went on, "I'm not the sort that goes in for three-hour pedicures and cucumber masks."

Wanda laughed. "I'd be more used to that, actually. What will you do after your family moves to New York? Work wise, I mean."

Susan pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and fiddled with it. "Well, I'm taking a bit of a holiday after I move in here, and then eventually I'll be going back to nursing."

"Really. At a hospital?"

"No." Susan blew her nose. "Home hospice care. For the terminally ill." Her eyes zigzagged around the room once more; the look on her face could not easily be labeled as mad, sad, glad, or afraid. Wanda empathized, knowing very well herself that many emotions are not contained within the lexicon of Dr. Seuss.

"Shall we go downstairs then?" Susan sniffled. "Rescue Margaret from the wee ones?"

When they returned to the kitchen, Olivia and Ethan were already dressed in their coats and ready to go. Baby Zachary was fast asleep on a comforter laid out beneath the table.

"Susan!" Margaret said. "Before I forget: You should know that you're perfectly welcome to have overnight guests, anytime."

"A sleepover?!" Ethan was overjoyed. "Susan can have a sleepover?!" "Exactly!" Margaret said. "Isn't that nice?" Then, sotto voce to Susan:

"The children have been so good. May I give them each a cookie?" "Please," Susan answered. "Give them several. I rely heavily upon

the soporific effects of sugar at bedtime. Now, where did I leave my

coat?"

Margaret began doling out cookies. Susan gathered her things, scooped up Zachary, and settled him, still sleeping, into the baby carrier.

Susan spoke softly to Wanda. "Overnight guests? I have the distinct impression she's giving me permission to get laid."

"She is."

"Unbelievable!"

"Can't say I've taken her up on it yet," Wanda confessed—Susan snorted sympathetically—"but she has a boyfriend. Wait till you meet him. He's a dear."

"Well," Susan said, sighing, "At least someone in the house will be dancing the mattress jig."

The house was eerily quiet after the departure of Susan and the chimps. Even Margaret's things seemed disappointed by the abrupt decline in sound waves. A shelf of Doulton vases looked positively glum, their round, empty mouths shaped as if voicing a single elegiac syllable uttered in the pear-shaped tones of the British Broadcasting Corporation: one long, sustained, and civilly mournful "Oh!"

"Heading to bed?" Margaret asked.

"Yep," Wanda replied. "How about you?"

Margaret nodded. They started up, side by side.

Margaret's mother appeared several steps above them, lounging against the wall, her terra-cotta-colored peignoir harmonizing perfectly with the mahogany paneling. She had a queerly benevolent look on her face.

"Susan's great," Wanda said. "When will she move in?"

"The day after tomorrow." Margaret awaited commentary from her mother. When none came, she felt a perverse desire to goad her. "I might be taking in more boarders, you know."

But it was Wanda who responded, blandly. "Yes?"

"I've been thinking of placing an ad for a handyman, a carpenter, someone like that." Margaret was baffled; her mother's silence was not only atypical, it seemed almost complicit. "The house could use some sprucing up, don't you agree?"

"Yeah," Wanda agreed sleepily. "I'm happy to help with the plumbing."

Margaret's mother swished into place beside them, alternately admiring her right hand, then her left.

"The house might become more noisy," Margaret cautioned. "Even chaotic. Are you sure that won't bother you?"

They arrived on the second floor.

Wanda yawned. "Nope. No problem," she said. "I'm good with chaos."

Margaret's mother drifted between them, brushed past them, and settled her back against the door frame leading to Margaret's bedroom. She stretched with annoying self-absorption.

"By the way, Mr. MacPherson is not my boyfriend. He's my companion. My friend."

"Well, whatever he is, I'm glad for you, Margaret. I really am. Good night."

"Good night."

Your companion?
Margaret's mother said after Wanda had gone.
That's euphemistic.

Is that all you have to say?

I'm sure you
know
what you're doing, Margaret. Is it so hard to believe that on certain subjects we might actually agree?

No. I suppose not.

All right then. Good night.
She began to drift away.
Besides,
she said in fading dulcet tones, /
will so enjoy the presence of a handyman.

Susan settled into Egg Cup and commenced weeping. She missed her young charges terribly, and she hadn't counted on the room's hundreds of diminutive yolkless vessels serving as a cruel reminder of her own steadily emptying ovarian sacs. Wanda derived small comfort from knowing there was another person in the house who cried at least as much as she did, especially since Susan's melancholia was powered by a biological imperative as well as an emotional one. In addition to their saltwater bond, they were well-matched adjuncts of the pink bathroom;
efficient and environmentally-conscious young women (Susan was a sponge bather, Wanda favored quick showers), neither spent more than fifteen minutes total within those rouged walls. Sometimes they brushed and flossed their teeth together. It was as much like sisterhood as either had ever experienced.

Only days after Susan joined the household, another boarder moved in. He was not the hypothetical handyman Margaret's mother had hoped for, but rather the intended witness to Margaret's acting debut. Even though she had meticulously penned and rehearsed her monologue, achieving a word-for-word memorization and a rainbow of subtly nuanced tactics, when the moment came, Margaret took one look at her audience and (as they say in the theatre world) "went up," forgetting everything. Her improvised speech was stunningly blunt. "I have a brain tumor," she announced. "I might live several years, I might not, but whatever time I have left I'd like to spend with you if you'll have me." Gus moved in the following morning, and the two of them began living in sin in the Cherub Room.

And as for Wanda, she found it a relief to come and go without enduring the keen scrutiny usually reserved for an only child. She went to the theatre in the evenings. She had occasional morning performances for school groups, and a couple of two o'clock matinees; but when she wasn't working she stayed away from home; she told her housemates that she was going out on job interviews. Her dress remained in the car; she carried her shoes, wig, glasses, hose, makeup, detective's badge, and phony ID in her backpack. She continued making her way to every used jazz record store in the city, moving gradually north. At each store, she spent a couple of hours, surveying the clientele and eventually making contact with one of the male employees. She inquired after Peter, left her phony business card and a Xerox of her sketch. In the car, she carefully recorded all her activities and contacts in her little red and black book—alongside her affirmation. She drank a lot of coffee. She ate little. She lost weight.

She discovered an assortment of cassette tapes in the glove compartment of Margaret's car: French language tapes, mostly, and books read in French by famous actors like Leslie Caron and Louis Jourdan. Sometimes Wanda put in one of the instructional tapes and tried to repeat the sounds without knowing their meaning.

"Love?" she said, reciting one of the speeches from
A Touch of the Poet.
"It's when you don't give a thought to all the ifs and want-to's in the world. It's when, if all the fires of hell were between you, you'd walk in them gladly to be with him, and sing with joy at your own burnin', if only his kiss was on your mouth." She practiced this speech over and over, pouting her lipsticked lips, trying to speak with a French accent.

Sixteen

A
Stage Manager on
Easter,
1997

Ko
sher Katz is
coming
today." "Huh," Wanda grunted.