My Hollywood (30 page)

Lettie! Good for her.

Maybe you are next
, Bong Bong wrote in pencil at the bottom, from the other side the world. But I do not want to go back and bake pie.

Claire
THE WORST SUMMER OF THE MARRIAGE

Paul had grown up inside a family. He knew how to do this, even if he never came home. He didn’t think it was so hard. I let Paul decide. I had no confidence for life. But as soon as we fired Lola, I knew it was wrong.

She deflated. Did a small bump stick out in her back? I realized she was a few inches shorter than me. I’d always thought we were the same height.

I knocked over a coffee the morning of the first day. She started wiping it.

“No, I’ll do it,” I said.

A light left her face I didn’t see again, the rest of the time she lived in back of us.

Lola still lived in our garage and for first time in four years, she was there more than in the house. She took Will by the hand, pulled, and said, “We are going now.” He looked back at me, a wish on his face. I didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t stand to be near me. She stayed ten more days and each one felt like an emergency.

Will gazed up at me when we told him. I said it would be all right. That was the worst thing. He trusted me and I lied.

That first week felt like a divorce, glittering with event. We’d fired Lola, but then we took her out to dinner, as the school director told us to. We had gifts to give. A card with money and a locket. But I didn’t feel alive in my life.

We didn’t know when she was leaving, so we couldn’t interview other people. We’d told her we couldn’t afford her.

Paul sighed. “We may have to say she has to move.”

But I’d grown up with a terror of landlords. I couldn’t kick her out.

His phone beeped. “I’ve got to get that,” he said.

Then, the first Sunday in August, Ruth and her slight husband appeared. Ruth had gained weight. They carried boxes from Lola’s room to the ancient green Mercedes, and they wouldn’t let me help. Paul stayed in bed, watching television. He thought he was coming down with something. In a little more than an hour, they drove away, and Lola was gone, the door left hanging open.

An empty room and a globe.

Monday morning Paul came to the kitchen, carrying his briefcase as usual, showered, dressed, baseball cap on backward, ready to go.

I’d have William all day. How had we decided this?

I’d looked at my score before anyone else woke up, then I kept it on the table while I made breakfast. A teasing scale passage. I had ideas! But when would I work?

Paul had made the decision to fire her, but he still went to the Lot.

All of a sudden I understood with an awful clarity. He made more money than I did now, and for him that explained everything. Still, his show was in production. Right now, there really wasn’t anything he could do.

He must have seen my face, because he scrawled out a number. “Here, call the agency and get somebody temporary. Just for a few hours. Go to work.”

“You think he’s going to
accept
somebody the agency sends!”

“He’ll be fine,” Paul said, and then the door slammed.

With school out, Will had nothing to do. I called each of the moms from the playgroup and left messages. No one called back. When the replies straggled in over the week, the moms apologized, with what seemed like excuses. Sorry they couldn’t do Monday, they said, but didn’t suggest other days. When I mentioned tomorrow, they said the next few days were crazy. In a week, it was evident; nannies had been calling for playdates with Lola, not Will.

And it became apparent how much Lola did. By Wednesday, the hampers in both bedrooms overflowed. By Friday, laundry spilled onto the floor. Then Ofelia called in sick.

“So we’ll sign him up for another camp session.” Paul looked over at the mound in the corner. “We still have towels?”

“Don’t ask me.”

But we did, thanks to his mother, the outlet shopper. Her boxes waited unopened by the door. I slit one, and bingo. Dark purple towels.

I did what Paul said. I signed Will up for another session of camp, but when I drove him into the state park, he didn’t want to get out of the car. One of the teenage counselors helped with the extraction. Will looked at me through the window.

“All right, so he looked at you. It isn’t the biggest deal in the world,” Paul said. “Did I always want to go, when I could have stayed home with my mommy? Just say goodbye and leave.”

I did. But camp only went until two.

During those hours, I called Lil to ask for advice.

Drop the ball, she said. See what happens.

That night we had takeout for dinner.

The ball dropped.

And dropped.

Paul won. I couldn’t live like this. The next Tuesday morning while Will was at camp, I did four loads of laundry and went to the store to buy food. I did everything and felt exhausted by the time I put Will down. Everything but work.

I didn’t see Paul at all that day. Or the next. I was asleep before he came home. Saturday morning, I said I wanted to talk.

“Can it wait until breakfast?”

In the kitchen, I told him I wanted a separation.

“Can we talk about this in three months?”

“I’m not joking.”

He shook his head, clearing his plate over the garbage and leaving the unwashed dish in the sink. (For whom? He had odd cutoffs for decency.) “I can’t even think about this until we finish these thirteen episodes.”

“When will that be?”

“January.”

January. I took that and held it like a promise. In the meantime, we’d go about our business. I’d try to figure out each day. Will’s friendships. His meals and bath. The house. Huge boulders. Responsibility. Food. Shopping. Where was the music in this?

How had Lola done it? I tried to remember. For at least two hours, midday, she watched a soap opera in her room. She also took a walk every evening. But in the evening she’d had me.

The third Saturday, the parade began again. Molly had set up interviews through an agency. Paul had less time than he did the first round but more confidence. None of these women seemed possible to me. How could I live with another person? Paul favored a woman named Elizabeth who spoke accented English and drove her own car.

“But I thought their point was it should be an American.”

“How long have you lived in the States, Elizabeth?”

“Twenty-two years,” she said, her chin lifted. “I am American citizen.”

Her first day at our house, she roasted a chicken with fresh garlic, olives, and lemongrass. “The people I work before, they
love
this.”

But I’d promised Will fish tacos, so I left it for Paul.

I found him in the kitchen at midnight, chewing a bone. “There,” he said. “You still want a separation?” He looked up from under his thick eyebrows. In profile, Paul was so handsome—wealth in a foreign currency. “A divorce?” he said, confidence building the joke. “Didn’t you want to di
vorce
me?”

I liked this new form of play. The stakes were interesting, at last.

“I think so. Why?”

“Because we’re invited out to dinner Friday night with the Grants. I thought it might be fun to try a new restaurant.”

He’d come home once in August with flowers at eight o’clock, twirling on the porch, ending on one knee. Another night, he brought a wrapped box: earrings.

Why didn’t I show up at the Lot and scream? Or take Willie on a plane?

I didn’t want to blow Paul’s chance. His show was a treasure. I couldn’t live with the guilt of harming what he loved.

But I could live with my anger. I’d been living with that so long already.

•  •  •

Elizabeth picked up Will from camp, and all afternoon I heard her plead. When I came downstairs, they were locked in a fight, arms braced.

“He bite me,” she said, looking up as if I were a monster.

He was a small child. A boy. Didn’t they do that? Puppies did. “William,” I said, “you can’t bite. I’m going to take away a privilege. No cartoons tomorrow.”

“I don’t care.”

“See,” Elizabeth said.

I stayed up late to tell Paul.

“In a few weeks, school starts. Why don’t we wait and watch how she does then.”

That weekend, Paul felt sick and stayed in bed. Monday morning he roused himself, and Elizabeth arrived with a project.

“Pot holders,” she announced, with satisfaction. The kids she’d taken care of before, she said, loved making pot holders.

“He’s a pretty active boy,” I said. “You might do better in the park, with a ball or some chase game.”

“You will see.” She issued a knowing smile.

She had a sour expression that night, but Tuesday brought another attempt: lanyards. A week later, when I told her it wasn’t working out, she looked relieved.

I asked Paul once.

I asked him twice.

I asked him three times to leave.

This made the bookend to our courtship, when he’d pursued me until I said,
Well, maybe. Let’s get married
.

Paul hired another woman. “Send her to the playclub. He can see his old pals.”

I sent Vanji with Will and a tray of homemade oatmeal cookies. When they returned, I asked how it went. Vanji scrunched her nose. “They don’ talk to us.”

“Next time don’t ask,” Paul said.

When the big envelope from the school came, I studied the list. We invited the boys from Will’s new class for a party. I wanted a good start for his year. The night before, I stayed up late making cupcakes. I was frosting them when Paul came home.

“When do they get here tomorrow?”

“Eleven to three.”

“That’s a long time. Well, she’ll be here, too, won’t she?”

“Who, Vanji? I didn’t ask her. I don’t think she’d be much help.”

“Well, I’ll try to get over at lunch.”

Paul arrived like a movie star, late and dressed like the kids, in sneakers, jeans, and a T-shirt. Boys crowded around him. The way he wriggled his back when Will tagged him and then spurted forward, you could tell he really didn’t want to get caught. Paul had a talent for fun. Forty minutes running with boys chasing him, and he was calling out to each one by name, smoothing over Will’s bossiness, making it invisible. Then, out of breath, he leaned against the kitchen counter and ate a cupcake. He looked around the room in a way I knew meant he was about to go.

“You’re good at this. I’m not. Can’t you stay?”

But he had to leave.

I tried to take his place, carrying out the tray of cupcakes. I bit into one. Soft, with tangy frosting. I ate the purple pansy. It tasted like lettuce.

But by one-thirty, Will sat in his room, knees up, arms crossed over. “You can play with them. I don’t want to.”

I sat on the bed and stroked his damp hair, boys’ voices coming through the gauzy screen. Did I have to make him go back out? What would the mothers say? But I let him look at his train book and quietly closed his door when I went to offer the guests sandwiches. I didn’t want them here now either.

Was he like this because other mothers stayed through more? Crumbs on the counter, gibberish. Will and I had bright flashes of glory, but too many times I’d left him reaching for me, from a babysitter’s arms. Am I still a mother if? I asked myself. If I went to the camp orientation, but had Vanji take my place at the picnic? What parts of the day could I cut out and still give him enough?

Paul never asked himself that. He thought he was a great dad. He did twice as much as his own father had. And he still got the day, whole as an uncut sail.

At the dinnertime call, I told Paul what happened. I could hear the alarm in his voice. “Who picked them up?” he asked. “Moms or babysitters?”

“Moms.”

“Well, next time, make it shorter.”

I sighed. “You’re better at this, but you’re hardly ever here.”

“Like a drop of rare perfume.” There was a pause. “Claire, it was
a joke.”

I knew. Everything was a joke.

In September, two days after school started, I got a midnight call from the police, telling me they had my mother at St. John’s. They’d found her outside and she didn’t know where she was. “Is she normally okay?” the man asked.

“More or less,” I said. “Why? What was she doing?”

“Well, you’ll see.”

I ran outside to Lola’s room and banged on the door before I remembered. Her room had been empty forty days. Only the bare cot and a globe. I stood a moment and spun the orb. When we’d been planning our wedding, in that hopeful swath of time, I’d said I wanted to live in Europe for a year when we were raising our children. He’d agreed, though reluctantly, even then. Who was that young woman? Even my dream seemed average to me now. Probably most of the mothers here had told their young husbands-to-be similar wishes. They’d probably known long before I did that few of those acquiescences counted. They understood—a great open secret—the bargain: together they would make a family. The women would raise children; the men would go out into the world and provide money. Why did that contract do so little for me?

I called Paul, left a message, and then had to wait. What was I supposed to do? I had no way to reach him. I called Tom and the phone rang and rang. Tom still had no machine.

I found a bar of dark chocolate in the refrigerator and tore off the layers of paper and foil. She’d had two breakdowns, but she’d always gotten better. I tiptoed in to peek at Will, fast asleep, one arm flung over his head. I bent down to hear his breathing.

I was really absolutely stuck here until Paul called.

Had he ever, in the years since Will was born, been marooned? I thought of lifting Will into his car seat. Maybe if I was steady enough, he’d stay asleep. But they’d never let me bring him into the hospital. And I didn’t want him there, in the psych ward. I stood, gnawing chocolate—when Paul called.

“I have to go! She doesn’t have anybody else.” This is the wild of life, I thought, walking with the phone, to my jacket on a peg by the door.

“Who can we call?”

“What do you mean? Paul, you have to come home. I have to go!”

“Claire, ten people are sitting here waiting for me. No thank you,” he said to someone else. “What about that older lady next door?”

“It’s after midnight!”

“Still, it’s an emergency. I’d do it, for a neighbor. What about Tom?”