Kiss Mommy Goodbye (29 page)

Donna’s eyes trailed after a small dark-haired boy as he ran from the entranceway of the park to one of the brightly painted jungle gyms. She watched him as he climbed to the top and hung by his ankles upside down. Where was his mother? she wondered angrily. You don’t let small children play unattended in a potentially dangerous environment. The boy was no older than Adam. It was sheer irresponsibility to let him run free without supervision. She looked harder at the child—he even looked a bit like Adam, she thought, at least from this distance, and facing into the sun as she was. If she squinted just slightly, she could almost believe—

“Todd, where are you?” a woman’s shrill voice called out. The woman ran into the playground area and then angrily walked toward the boy. “How many times have I asked you to wait for me and not run so far ahead. You know I can’t run so fast anymore.” Donna looked at the woman’s body. She was perhaps six or seven months pregnant, five or six years her junior. Then she looked down at her own body. She was the thinnest she’d ever been, her slight frame accentuated by hair that was just a touch too long to be attractive.

“God, I don’t know how I’m ever going to manage with two,” the woman said, ambling over to Donna and sitting down beside her. Donna was surprised to find she appreciated the woman’s presence, the chance to converse. It had been a long while since she had actually talked to anyone, uttered more than a necessary hello or goodbye.

“You’ll manage,” she said, smiling. “It’s hard at first, you don’t think you’ll ever get organized, but you do, and then it’s really nice.”

“Yeah?” the woman asked, straightening her blonde hair under her bandana, her black roots protruding about half an inch into the sunlight. “I hope so. We can’t afford no help or anything. And Todd, he was such a rotten baby, cried all the time. I don’t think I could go through that all over again.”

“My first was the same,” Donna said. “Adam cried for three straight months. But then he stopped and he was terrific. Sharon never cried at all. Maybe you’ll be just as lucky with your second.”

“I sure hope so.” The woman looked over at the playing children, a total of ten now that Todd was among them. “Which ones are yours?”

The question caught Donna off guard. She found herself
stammering her reply. “They’re—they’re not here.” The woman looked surprised. You don’t have to have children with you to sit in a playground, Donna wanted to tell her. Instead she said, “They’re with their father. He took them to Disney World.”

“Oh, that’s nice. We were there last year. I liked it more than Todd.” Donna smiled. The woman looked at her questioningly. “You’re not spending Christmas together?”

Donna stared at the younger woman in surprise. How could she have forgotten it was Christmas in just a matter of days? She looked around her, at the palm trees, the green grass, felt the warm December air around her shoulders. It was easy to forget it was Christmas, she decided. The weather was the same as it always seemed to be, sometimes hotter, sometimes less so; there was no one around to shop for, no one to ask daily, is it Christmas yet? No one had sent her any Christmas cards—how could they? No one knew where she was.

She had taken up a quasi-permanent residence at the Mt. Vernon Motel on Belvedere. At first, it had been intended as transitional, a sort of half-way home between Mel’s house and a new apartment of her own. The lease on her rented home had expired, its owners returning to claim their territory. And so, she had moved some of her more portable belongings into the Mt. Vernon Motel and put the rest into storage. After the tourist season was over, she’d see about finding a regular apartment. Probably.

“I forgot it was Christmas,” Donna said, and immediately wished she hadn’t.

The younger woman withdrew, a look almost of fear crossing her eyes. Donna suddenly remembered the large
Christmas tree at the end of Worth Avenue, saw it lit up and glowing against the night, saw the store windows all filled with Christmas trappings. It was amazing what the mind could block out, she thought. She had actually managed to make Christmas disappear. A not altogether small accomplishment.

The woman smiled feebly in Donna’s direction, pushed herself into a standing position, mumbled something about helping her son, and then walked with relative speed, for a woman in her condition, to where the boy was dangling. When she concluded whatever it was she had thought up to say to him, she proceeded to another bench on the other side of the narrow, elongated park and sat down, pulling a book from her purse, and not once looking back in Donna’s direction. What kind of a lunatic forgets it’s Christmas? Donna asked herself again; then she stood up and slowly walked in the direction of the exit.

The man was tall and skinny and didn’t look anything like John Travolta, she decided, wondering why she had thought he had in the first place. John Travolta was dark and had elastic hips. This boy—he was just a boy, she could see now, despite the dim lighting—had only average brown hair coloring, a mildly sensual look about him as opposed to one that was overwhelming, and his hips were only eager. What was she doing here? No, that was wrongly phrased. What was
he
doing here? They were in her motel room, after all. She was sitting on her own bed; he was standing over by the dresser combing his hair in the mirror. He wore tight black jeans and high-heeled boots. No shirt. Quickly, Donna checked her own body—she was still
wearing the light blue velour shorts and matching top she’d been wearing for the last several days. Had they made love already? Was she dressed again and waiting for him to finish preening and leave?

She looked back over in the youth’s direction. That was a good word for him, she decided. Youth. Slightly more than a boy, not quite a man. At least ten years younger than herself. What was he doing in her motel room? Where had she found him?

“What day is it?” she asked him suddenly.

He turned slowly in her direction, a look of puzzlement crossing his face. “Friday,” he answered. His voice was strange to her; she couldn’t remember whether or not this was the first time she had heard him speak. “Be with you in a minute, babe.” He was studying his profile in the mirror, much more interested in his own perfection than in her.

“What date is it?” Her own voice sounded strange to her as well. As if she were listening to it on tape. In fact, the whole scene felt like something she was watching from across the room: two strangers, one partially clad and standing, absorbed in his own image, the other still dressed, sitting on the bed and waiting. Waiting for what? For him to leave? To approach her? Make love to her? Who was this boy? How had he gotten into her motel room? What day was it? “What date is it?” the voice asked again, almost feverishly.

“Hey, babe, you keep asking me that. What’s the matter? Are you all right?”

“What date is it?” So they had spoken before.

“It’s still Friday, December thirty-first.” He turned back to the mirror, then checked his watch, which she had noticed he had removed and put on the dresser. “Like I told
you in the park, I can’t stay long. I got a date tonight.” He smiled sheepishly. “New Year’s and all.”

Had they already made love? Was that why he was here? She watched from somewhere outside of her body as he expertly kicked off his boots, walked away from the mirror and moved to within two feet of the confused woman in blue who sat on the bed. Both women now watched as he teasingly unbuckled his belt and inched his black jeans down over his hips. He wore no underwear.

“You have a nice body,” she heard the woman’s voice say. He kicked free of his pants and then took a few dancing steps back toward the mirror, examining his now naked body from all angles.

“Great, huh?” he said, more than asked. “I work out in a gym every day. Just around the corner from the park. Gotta keep in shape,” he said, moving back in the woman’s direction, “you know, for the chicks.”

The scene was moving too quickly, Donna thought from her position across the room. Would the projectionist please stop the film for a few minutes, roll it back, start it again from the top? I missed the opening credits. I don’t know who these people are, what this boy is doing in this woman’s room. Why does she look so confused? I’m the one who doesn’t have a clue as to what’s going on here. I always hated coming in in the middle of a picture. Would the projectionist please start the film again? Tell me who these people are?

“A little old for this sort of thing, aren’t you?” she heard a woman’s voice ask. He was hanging upside down from the top of the jungle gym, the knees of his black jeans wrapped around the bright green bar, his black T-shirt falling up and
away from his pants, the button in the middle of his belly almost smiling at her. He quickly scrambled to his feet, turning right side up and facing her. He looked like John Travolta, she thought.

“You a park superintendent?” he asked, chewing furiously on a stick of gum.

She shook her head. “No. No. I just come here sometimes.”

“Yeah?” he asked disinterestedly. “You got kids here?”

“No,” she answered, shaking her head.

He nodded and looked around. There were a few kids playing nearby. When he looked back at the woman, she was still staring at him.

“So, uh, you just come here, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. I know how it is.”

“How what is?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.” He looked back at the jungle gym.

“My name is Donna.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled guardedly. “Nice to meet you, Donna.”

“What day is it?”

“What day? Uh, Friday. It’s Friday.”

“Friday the what?”

The smile started to fade. “Friday, December thirty-first. New Year’s Eve.”

“Now?”

“What do you mean, now? It’s only a little after three o’clock in the afternoon. Later. In a few hours, it’ll be New
Year’s Eve. You want to know what year?” The voice was a mixture of sarcasm and bewilderment.

She shook her head. The year was unimportant. She continued to stare at the young man.

“Look, I gotta go. Got a big date tonight. You know how it is.”

“How what is?”

He started to move away from her. “Well, Happy New Year.” He turned and started to walk away.

The woman took a few tentative steps in his direction. “Wait!” she called.

“I really can’t stay,” he said, turning.

“Would you like to go to bed with me?”

My, my, but this woman was bold, Donna thought, watching the scene replay.

“Is this some sort of joke?” Walking back toward her.

“No joke. Would you like to go to bed with me? I’m living over on Belvedere.”

“Freaky chick,” he said, starting to laugh. “Sure, I’ll give you a tumble. But I can’t stay long.”

“You have a car?”

“Down the street.”

Donna watched the boy’s hand fall across the woman’s rear end as they walked together out of the park.”

“Don’t you think you should take this off?” he was asking, pulling at the woman’s blue velour top. They were back in the motel room. Donna watched as the woman lifted her arms into the air like a child and the young man—the youth—pulled the top over her head. “Hey, a bra!” he said, laughing. “I haven’t seen one of these things in years.” He studied it as if it were material from another
planet, moving his hands across her back to undo the clasp.

“It unclasps from the front,” she muttered.

“Yeah? How about that? Told you it’s been a long time since I’ve been around one of these.” He found the hook and undid it effortlessly. “Haven’t lost the touch though,” he said, his tongue twisting the gum in his mouth. He pulled her bra off, letting it fall to the floor. “I guess this is like one of those zipless fuck fantasies, huh?” he asked, pushing her down on the bed and pulling off both her shorts and her panties in one adept motion.

“I gave up on fantasies a long time ago,” the woman’s voice said. Donna squirmed from her position across the room. The voice had sounded just a bit too familiar on that last utterance. “I was on an airplane once,” the voice continued, “a long time ago. A nun took the seat I’d been saving for Warren Beatty. So much for fantasies.”

Donna laughed. The youth didn’t. He stopped chewing his gum and straightened up his body, which had been bending over the woman. He was staring down hard at her, examining her with an almost clinical eye. Donna noticed his erection was diminishing.

“Something wrong?”

“What’s this?” he asked.

“What?”

“This. Looks like some sort of scar.” His fingers traced the vertical line which ran from her navel to her pubic hair.

Donna felt the woman pulling her toward the bed. “My babies,” the voice said, haltingly.

“Babies? You got babies?”

“Two of them,” she said slowly. “They had to come out by Caesarian.”

The youth sat back away from the woman. “That’s too bad. Nothing you can do about the scar, huh?”

Donna was back inside the woman’s body. It didn’t quite fit. She wanted to get out, to get away from this place, this boy, whoever he was, and this ridiculous conversation, but she seemed stuck inside this strange woman’s skin, a virtual prisoner of a less-than-perfect, noticeably scarred body. “I never thought much about it,” she said. Her own voice. It was true. Victor had always treated her scar as some sort of badge; Mel had never mentioned it except to comment that it was nicely done and to plant kisses up and down it. She stopped. She would not think about Mel. She looked back at the boy, the distaste he felt obvious in his eyes. “You don’t like scars. I take it.”

He shook his head. “Don’t exactly turn me on. But I guess things like that don’t bother you ‘new women’—”

“New women?” What on earth was he talking about?

“Well, you don’t shave under your arms, you don’t shave your legs—”

Donna looked down at her legs, felt her underarms. He was right. How long had it been since she remembered to shave? She had no idea. “I guess I’m quite a sight.”

He laughed. “Look,” he said, getting up off the bed and walking back toward the mirror, “maybe we’ll do this some other time. It’s gettin’ kind of late. I have this date and all.”