Live a Little (31 page)

“Ma?” Raquel says as she walks in, somewhat comforted by the familiar scent of overcooked brisket and soggy vegetables.

They are already drinking wine in Ma’s neat, sparkling kitchen. Somebody has obviously said something funny, because they are laughing the pleased, collusive laughter of those who have discovered a small but not entirely unexpected zone of commonality. Ma is tiny and bustling in black polyester pants and a V-necked Peruvian hippie tunic that looks like something Jerry Garcia would have worn onstage. Laurie, washed clean of
Living with Lauren!
makeup, is prettier and fresher than someone who wakes up at four-thirty
A.M.
has any right to be.

Then there’s the man.

A stringy, droopy-eared, bandy-legged little bugger, tall enough to top Minna—not saying much— but pet-rooster small by anyone else’s book. He stands in masculine repose with one leg bent up on a chair, a posture Raquel finds intrinsically disturbing, signaling, as it does, a level of confidence and dominion over the gathering that Raquel decides instantly he does not deserve. Perhaps the sinewy rooster of a man is a neighbor, one of Minna’s strays lured in from the cold with promises of a bowl of soup and a spirited argument.

“Hi, I’m Eliot,” the rooster says, shaking Raquel’s hand with a vigor that she finds somewhere between dominating and rude. “You must be Rachel.” He turns to Minna and—surely this is a cruel trick of light, perhaps caused by an unfortunate burst of fluorescence bouncing off the brisket pan—pats her on the seat of her polyester pants. “Just like you said, honey, she’s a big one!” the rooster clucks.

Before Raquel can fully absorb the horrific implication of the rooster’s words and actions, Minna plunks the ladle down in a lily-pad-shaped ceramic dish Taylor made for her for Mother’s Day and wipes her hands on a dish rag. Minna reaches up and pulls Raquel down for a kiss, staining her cheek with a jammy smear of tangerine lipstick. Minna’s eyes are suspiciously bright, almost feral. Raquel wonders if her mother is on (prescription, of course) drugs.

“Rachela,” Minna says in a singsongy manner Raquel has never heard from her mother’s lips and which sends a spear of deep fright through her chest. “This is Eliot Abramson. We met at Dr. Kolodnick’s office. El, this is my daughter Rachel, mother of those two wonderful kidlets.”

Then Minna stands there, smiling broadly and, Raquel realizes, girlishly, while she waits for . . . what? Because Raquel is accustomed to sussing out her mother’s preferences to avoid incurring wrath, she figures out in the next few milliseconds that Minna envisions some sort of physical contact to seal the deal, so Raquel leans forward and allows Eliot—who, by some act of cosmic jokery is wearing a tank top, for God’s sake, from which his elderly arms poke, ropy and dotted with age spots—to plant a wet kiss on her cheek. Raquel struggles not to wipe it off.

“So, Eliot,” Raquel says, trying to keep the optimism from her voice, “you have a heart condition?”

“Did. Fit as a fiddle now. Just ask your mother.” Eliot throws an unsubtle lascivious glance at Minna, who has resumed stirring the soup. Raquel tries to meet Laurie’s eyes, hoping to share a moment of mutual disgust, but Laurie is smiling at the two of them, her obvious delight a wall of bulletproof glass, impenetrable.

Impenetrable.

I pull up to the house, which looks like a miniature Tara with its white pillars, brick walls, and sweeping window draperies. Like a lot of things about Ma and Eliot that stymie me, the discrepancy in their aesthetics grabs and shakes me every time I come here. Ma, with her unfashionably flowing fluff of curly gray hair, violet robes, and fondness for anything remotely indigenous and feminist, cannot help but clash with Eliot, who is partial to tracksuits, synthetic fabrics, and eighties-style eternal bachelor decor in shades of charcoal, silver, and old blood.

I bang on the door with the big brass knocker that I always imagine smashing down on Eliot’s withered testicles and wait, anxiety churning in my stomach. In terms of my ability to be Zen when disappointing my mother, I am still a kindergartner, my personal evolution jammed into permanent park around the time I learned to read.

“Rachie, what are you doing standing there in the cold? Come on in.” Ma hustles me into the house, which has the stale, overheated barnyard odor of a veterinary office. “You’re okay?” She lays her palm on my forehead, as if a mild case of motorcycle accident has raised my temperature.

“I’m fine.”

“I saw the review of your show in the
Chronicle.
See?” Ma has taped the strip of newspaper to the fridge, alongside a veritable microfiche file of newsprint detailing Laurie’s media triumphs, and a smattering of health advisories.

“Is Eliot here?” I ask.

“No, he’s at yoga.”

I allow my head to droop. “Ma, my life is a mess.”

Ma grabs my hand. “You have it again.” We both know what she means. Guilt, sludgy and viscous, clogs my throat. I already know I am a social deviant. Now I’m officially a monster, destined to join the ranks of Ted Bundy and Ken Lay in a special corner of hell.

“No, no, it’s not that, Ma. It’s. . . I had an affair.” I watch to see if I’m merely spreading icing on a preexisting awareness.

Relief loosens her gnome’s face. “Well, honey, I know. You told me already, remember?”

Me. Ma. Embarrassing conversation. Duke’s message. Big misunderstanding.

“No, Ma. I wasn’t involved with him then. You just wanted to think I was, because of Phil.”

“I see.” She doesn’t.

“After I found out about Phil, I went a little nuts, I guess. I needed to
do
something, to show myself that I could change things in my life, instead of just waiting for things to happen to me. There was this guy, this”—how possibly to describe Duke Dunne’s pedestrian charms to my mother— “this
diversion.
I’m not saying we’re involved or anything like that. It’s more like a sexual, I mean, animal”—egads—“I mean, basic sort of thing. It’s basic,” I finish lamely.

“You like screwing him.”

Ma, ever illuminating.

“It’s, uh . . . well, yeah.”

“But he’s not relationship material.”

“That’s right.”

“So you wonder what you’re doing,” she continues.

“ Uh-huh.”

“Canoodling with a surfer half your age when it’s embarrassing the hell out of your kids and causing you to get in motorcycle accidents.” Ma sprinkles some flaxseed on our whole-grain toast and cuts me a glance before dividing the toast into four neat squares. “Taylor and I had coffee at the hospital while you were asleep. I know all about it.”

Oh.

“I don’t see anything wrong with it, myself. You could be a little more discreet, but I understand where it’s coming from.”

It dawns on me that she views the accident as a ploy for attention. “You think I crashed on purpose? I wasn’t even driving!”

“The subconscious works in mysterious ways.”

“Thanks, Obi-wan,” I mutter.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Ma thoughtfully munches a wedge of toast. “You were always your own worst enemy, Rachel. Self-doubt—it’s a toxic thing. If you want to screw a surfer, screw a surfer, but do it for yourself, not out of pique or boredom. And don’t expect your family to be happy about it.” Ma’s bent pinky—which looks like the result of injury but she was actually born with—pokes my way in emphasis. “You want advice? I’ll give you advice. You patch things up with Phil, or take a lover, or go join a convent if that floats your dinghy, sweetie, whatever you want to do. But do it with conviction, because that’s what really matters. When you get to my age, you think you’ll remember all your little successes and failures? Feh! All you’ll remember is how much heart you put into whatever you did. That’s all I’m saying.” She peers at me over her half-moon glasses. “Now, what else is going on?”

“Ma, Micah is gay.” It just comes out. I let it lie there. Ma doesn’t react right away except to finger a greenish, grass-textured pill, probably one of Eliot’s vitamins, a refugee from his horse stable–sized pillbox.

All at once she snaps her fingers. “I knew it!”

“Knew what?”

“What you just said.”

I can tell that Ma, despite her newfound position as a devotee of free love, is finding this hard. “The thing is, Ma, that’s really okay, you know? Micah is who he is. We talked about it. It wasn’t my best hour, I’ll admit it, but I think it’s going to be okay. Honestly, at first I was a little. . . upset about it. But then I thought that people have kids with
cancer,
for chrissake”—Ma’s stubborn little chin dips toward me as I say this, absorbing its import— “who gives a rat’s ass who he’s fucking?” I take a sip of the water Ma drew from the Brita pitcher for me.

“My sweet sonny boy,” Ma says. Her eyes are wet. What is it about being a grandparent that takes hearts of anthracite and turns them into oatmeal?

“The thing that might be problematic is”—for God’s sake, when did Ma get so fragile-looking, so
old
?—“he seems to be sleeping with somebody—”

“Let me guess, you don’t like the boy?”

“He’s not a boy.”

“A girl?” Ma’s face perks up in spite of herself.

“No. Well, of course he is a boy. What I meant is, he’s a friend. Ma, Micah is sleeping with Ronnie. Greenblatt,” I add, unnecessarily, given the flush in Ma’s cheeks.

If I’d been hoping for something dramatic, a bold statement of support on the order of “Let’s castrate the motherfucker now. Hand me the cutlery,” I would have been sorely disappointed.

“Well, he’ll make other friends,” Ma says reasonably, validating my own cynicism about the culmination of this relationship.

“I suppose. There’s something a little sad about it, that’s all. They’ve been friends since they were five.”

Ma shrugs. “Now, Taylor, she’s the one you should have your eye on. That girl. . .” She shakes her head. After all the preceding maternal largesse, I can feel censure coming.

“What do you mean?” I know exactly what she means. Ma may be thoroughly versed in women’s lib and finding G-spots, but equal rights to women’s lib and finding G-spots have no place in her worldview. Free love is for fortysomething footloose housewives with cheating husbands and retired ovaries. Sure, she might give a pass to condom-coated teenage boys. Adolescent girls, however, should be trussed up in chastity belts until their dissertations have been formally accepted.

Ma’s mouth thins. “Just that she’s
this close
to doing God knows what with that boyfriend of hers.”

Boyfriend? I thought she broke up with Biter. Does Ma know something I don’t?

“I know. I’ve been meaning to talk with her about it,” I improvise, trying to redeem myself.

“Meaning to talk? If you’d been guiding these children like you’re supposed to be, and behaving like a proper role model instead of traipsing around the city like Elizabeth Taylor with your head in the clouds, this never would have happened.
Pffft!
It’s
meshuggenah,
is what it is,” Ma hisses.

I knew it! All that stuff about screwing surfers was a big fat red herring. Apparently, I’m allowed to have sex only if my children are locked in the cellar, studying for their LSATs. I want to scream at the top of my lungs:
Ma, why do you always do this to me? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t expect me to compete with Laurie, have a sex life, and have three FDA-recommended servings of fiber, vegetable, and protein on the table every night, too. It’s not fair. It’s not even possible.

I bite my tongue.

Ma’s criticism of my recent performance as a mother is eerily similar to Micah’s. So eerily similar, in fact, that I allow my natural paranoia to take wing and wonder if grandmother and grandson plotted to shock me with this reprimand as punishment for too many Budget Gourmets and not enough support for said son’s dalliance with best friend–cum–porn star.

“What are you going to do about it?” she asks.

Truss Taylor up in chastity belts until her dissertation is accepted?

“There’s my girls!”

Eliot Abramson emerges from the garage. My stepfather is carrying a cylinder of yoga mat and a wheatgrass drink the size of most people’s morning coffee. He pecks Ma on the cheek, and I grin into the sour nausea that always floods my gut at the sight of the man who occupies my father’s side of the bed.

“What’s new?” he says as he slurps down the wheatgrass and unfurls
The Wall Street Journal.

Before I can answer, Ma shoots me a warning look. “Rachel just stopped by to say hello. She was passing by. Such an angel.”

Passing by? Angel?

“How’s the head?” Eliot raps his knuckles against my forehead.

“Fine. Well, it was.”
Until you clubbed me, prick.

“Actually, Rachel was just leaving. To go pick up Micah at practice,” Ma says pointedly, already picking up the remote to turn on their afternoon libation,
Judge Judy.

“Why don’t you stay for dinner?” Eliot tosses the cup into the recycling bin, even though it is made of Styrofoam. “I’m making my world-famous seitan stew.”