My Hollywood (36 page)

Claire
THE HUMAN CONDITION

Then it was the day to tell. William. Of our failure.

We’d planned for months with a tall, grave child therapist Dr. Lark recommended, who met us in his backyard cabin, with a fire always burning.

Then it was the day. We did it in the kitchen that had once been black. Sitting around our old table, in the morning, we began a scene we knew we’d never forget, not one of the three of us. Paul took William on his lap, and I didn’t want time to move.

I wonder how many people stop then. And turn the day into a regular one. What a relief and reclamation.

“We … have something to tell you,” Paul said.

“What?” Terror recumbent in his voice, or did I just imagine it?

Paul gave the little speech and Will gasped. Once. The sound unmade everything. He fell into his father’s arms, collapsed. There seemed to be no air in him. I touched the soft flannel of his sleeve. Paul, the man he was and would always be, kept talking in a good voice, a high child-explaining voice, making it simple.
Now Mommy and Daddy will have two houses. Daddy has a new house and you’ll have a room there and your room here and some nights you’ll sleep in Daddy’s house and some night’s in Mommy’s
.

“I never thought you two—” Will said.

He looked straight at me for a moment. “We’re going to be all right,” I said, remembering in that instant that I’d said this same thing when Lola left. When we’d fired Lola, Paul had made the decision. The school director told us to and we followed along.

“I promise.” I’d make it be true.

Will cried himself out, Paul stood up, and it was still the morning of the first day. We got into Paul’s car and drove to the new house. We parked and stood outside on the damp lawn. Paul had rented a good, family-looking house on a wide street. “Should we go in?” I whispered, but Paul motioned that he thought it would be better if we had lunch first. We had to be at the field an hour before Will’s game. We went to a place that had been our favorite for a few years then and that, after that day, I never stepped inside again. They made a pasta we liked and their own ice cream, a different flavor every day. That day was mint, white, not green. It was hard to think of things to say. I felt grateful for the luxury of Paul’s car.

I had Will’s baseball uniform in my purse. I helped him into the long socks, one leg at a time in the backseat while Paul walked over to talk to the coach.

Then Will ran out onto the field. Simon stood in the cage already, skinny in his catcher’s gear, and Bing leaned listless against the fence. Another hot Los Angeles day, the sky a dull white. The assistant coach organized drills. I saw from his posture that Paul was having words with the coach.

“They’ve got him pitching.” Paul shook his head, landing next to me on the bleachers. “It’s too much stress. But the coach already told him at practice. He’s afraid it’d be worse if now he tells him he can’t. If he can’t concentrate, he’ll pull him out.”

We sat in the stands together. As the game started, we cheered along with the others. Across the field, Jeff and Helen came carrying coffees, both wearing white shirts. For a while, I thought I could have loved him. I bit the inside of my lip. What do I do with that? He looked over at us, raised an arm. Did he know he’d lifted my hopes? Did he care?

He was reckless and she was impervious, cleaning up the street before their own house, as best she could.

“Hey, I want to ask you about pianos,” he said. “I want to buy a really good one.”

“What for?”

“I want Bing to take lessons eventually; who knows, maybe Helen’ll learn.”

Next to me sat Paul, whom I couldn’t quite love. I had once. Where had that gone?

We watched the slow tense game. The sky had turned an opaque blue. In the last inning, Will struck out two batters. The next kid hit a line drive and skidded into second. Then Will pitched balls. The coach slowly pushed out the pitching machine to the mound and conferred. The next batter smacked the ball hard and high and Will ran backward and caught it.

Paul looked at me standing, his face his face, then suddenly moving. The waves a rope makes when you swing it up and down. He held me. “He’s going to be all right.”

The other boys ran out and lifted Will on their shoulders. We hovered around the kids. Pizza and Cokes with the team made dinner. We stayed until the end. Then we drove to what would now be Mommy’s house to get my car. We’d asked Will if he wanted a sleepover with Daddy the first night. Paul’s mother had flown in two weeks ago; his sister had sent housewarming gifts. An aunt, the mother of the newly-wed cousin, gave an Oriental rug. Here it all waited: towels in the guest bathroom, pajamas already in the Pottery Barn Kids dresser, the rooms better decorated than our places had ever been. He’d proven that even at the few small things I’d tried, he excelled. He’d taken one of my ratty treasures for Will’s room. A map of the fifty states marked with their native birds I’d once salvaged from a Dumpster.

Paul had rented a movie for them to watch.

I left while it was still light. I couldn’t exactly breathe when I stepped outside. Everything turned unreal in the flat California light. Had I made this?

I stood outside, looking at his solid, complete house.

When Lola left, no one had asked anything. The difference had been profound but private, like the end of an affair that turned out to be the love of your life. Separation turned out to be extremely public.

For a day, I made myself sit by the phone and call the moms.

“Wow, gosh, I really wasn’t expecting this. From you guys, I mean. D’you guys ever think of seeing a therapist?”

I heard the cranky melody
all around the mulberry bush
under the voices,
POP
when I got to hang up.

The kindest mother turned out to be Cheska, Simon’s babysitter. “Do you want we do something?” she said. “We will help. Sure.”

I called everyone on my list. That was the evening of the second day.

I bought a mitt and tossed the ball to the boys during practice, learned the arcane hieroglyphs of scorekeeping. I loved watching from the bleachers; you could see our boys improve, week to week, from barely being able to hold the ball to moments of offhand grace. That’s the way I’d felt once upon a time with Paul, the way family life should be, I supposed—effort, applause, small improvement, a feeling of inevitable advance. One day, Simon’s father came at the end of practice, still in his suit and tie. Cheska shouldered Simon’s backpack to go home and start dinner, and he took her place on the bleachers.

“How you doing?” he asked.

“M’kay,” I said. “How are you?”

He told me he was working to finish the albums Melissa had started, on a table in the partners’ conference room. He was trying to do them the way she would have. “But there’s a real break. You can see the difference.” He shook his head.

Eventually, I saw those albums. Cheska showed them to me. Melissa had done them by year, and at the bottom of each page, she’d written a sentence in a beautiful slanted hand.

Will was in three pictures. Bing was in many. I wanted Will to be in more.

Just then, practice ended, and the boys all pressed around Will. He’d just gotten a cell phone, the first. The moms looked at me: the woman who’d said no to soda, no to Game Boy, no to Nintendo had bought her son a cell phone.

I whispered, “When you divorce, the first thing the kid shrink says is
Get him a cellphone.”

Beth Martin grumbled, hauling Brookie’s heavy bag to the parking lot.

“You can have a cell phone,” her voice carried, “if I can get a divorce.”

“Are you still in the same house?” Sue asked me, collecting China’s mitt, visor, and knee guards in the slow-gathering dusk.

I nodded. Was that something you’d ask a married woman?

That was Five Pitch in 1996.

At Little League, a year later, she asked me the same question.

By the time Will started All Stars, I thought of it as her refrain.

The human condition
, Paul said.

He could still make me laugh.

Lola
DATE.
AN AMERICAN WORD

The month Laurita will turn four, my employer comes home carrying bags: clothes, makeup, everything wrapped in tissue. She plunks down these riches on the kitchen table, looking defeated. “I have a date,” she says.

Laurita and I glance at each other. I had given up on that.

Date
. An American word. There is no such thing in our language. It would not happen the same in Asia. We have romance, of course, but even that, in our place, it is more serious. Still, good if my employer can give Laura a mother-father home.

Then some-a-day Lola can leave.

“When do we see this prince?”

“Friday night.”

We will have to help her use the purchased magic. Judith jokes that I am her how-to manual. I put on my glasses to read the instruction booklets for the paints and glitter. But we will need demonstration.

I take Laura to the cosmetics counter of a department store.

“We would like to enroll,” I tell the lady. We sit on high chairs and watch her work the tiny pots of improvement. See how beauty hides in money. Like everything American, it seems unnatural, but it makes the race more fair. The lady paints with little brushes. I do it there at the counter twice to get used to the powder for the caves around the eyes. At the end, I offer her five dollars. She taught us almost an hour. “For tip,” I say.

She pushes it away. “My job. It’s a slow afternoon.”

I am grateful when someone is kind to me in front of Laura.

Friday, we make a party. Every item Judith owns is out on her bed, over the chair, or hanging on a doorknob. We pick a skirt. The blouse, I am the one to open buttons. We brush on eyeliner, puff the powder. We have become experts.

But the Prince does not come to the door. In our country, a suitor will arrive to meet the family. After Judith leaves, in her own car, we turn on music and hang up everything, so it will be her room again, the same. Then I seat Laura before the mirror and paint her face, dab perfume. When I put her to bed she is laughing.

I wait up. After eleven, I hear the door creak, then water in the pipes. I go to the kitchen and open the refrigerator to make a noise. But her light stays off. The next morning, she talks on the phone until we leave for ballet.

Back home, I say, “It is twelve hours and you have not yet told us the date.”

“It was okay,” she says. “I don’t know. I guess I’m out of practice.”

The birthdays of Laura, they are my doing. There is no Claire to bake the cake. But we invite the ones Laura likes from her class, two neighbors, and the Chinese Adopteds. We have ice-cream cake, princess favors, and games; we experience the air of a party. If you work for someone who makes from-scratch cupcakes, with ruffled frosting, and on top each one a pansy, it is different. Here we huff, blowing up balloons. (At my weekend employer, the balloons came delivered, the long satin ribbons tied to make a bouquet.)

“The mother of these, she is not the one going to playdates either,” Lita says. “She works in the hospital long days.”

“But, anyway, your two. They are easy.”

“You know where she is today? I have to laugh. Till eight, nine o’clock at night in Chinatown, and here she lets her own, Chinese also.”

But this no longer sounds to me a joke. All the time I planned for Parent Association parties in Tagaytay, I am doing more now. More than when I had Williamo too.

Lita shakes her head. “Did you hear about your former employers? Lot of trouble. Divorce maybe.”

“He is depress again?” Maybe Alice left him. If she is not moping anymore. Lita says she is older now, sadder, but in a straight line.

“No, I am talking Claire, the mommy of Williamo.”

They are divorce now too! That is what they all do here. In the Philippines we cannot; we are Catholic. But I do not want to hear this from Lita.

I shrug. “He work so much anyway. Why they have to divorce?”

I think of the table where Claire and I sat, after the day was over, to say,
Well, we did our best
, one more time, Paul gone, Williamo asleep in his bed that I every morning made.

The girls stand, doing fast claps with their hands.

I went downtown
To see Charlie Brown
He gave me a nickel
To buy me a pickle
But the pickle was sour
So he gave me a flower
But the flower was dead
And this is what he said
.
Icky icky bubble gum
Icky icky ewwww
Icky icky bubble gum
A boy loves you
.

At the “icky” part, they jumping jack.

Alice arrives for the pickup, dressed like an older woman, the style of my mother, with clear nylons. Lita tells me that the grandmother is Altadena head librarian. Every spring, she sends Alice and each the Chinese Adopteds one hundred dollars to buy a new dress. Until now, she still sends. Alice, she has no idea that I am the one who stole the letter that saved her marriage and talked Lita out of quitting all these years.

I ask Judith, “So will we be needing again the magic powders?”

“That’s a good question,” she says.

“More than one week already,” I say. “He did not call?”

“Oh, he called.”

“Imagine,” I say, sweeping the kitchen. “Eight years already, I am working seven days, with no off.” For a moment I forget Judith is my employer.

But she looks down at my broom as if she sees a rodent scuttling across the floor, thinking, Lola, does she want more from me?

No, I do not want more. I understand she has done her job too. She is the one to worry the mortgage and tuition. On holidays, she gives me one and a half times pay. Two different occasions, she pressed a roll of cash in my hands, damp hundred-dollar bills and twenties mixed, I could not tell for any reason. Some surge of gratitude, maybe. A person from the school of Laura or at her work said something kind. My employer is a person who, every once in a while, needs her cry. My youngest is like that; certain animals, they are weaker. With Judith you can watch it build. Nothing is good enough anymore. She begins to move in circles, fast steps;
things have to change around here
. After, the world sparkles, rinsed for her; that is when she will give me a handful of money.

“Lola, I need to talk,” she says. “After Laura’s asleep.”

During the bath, I worry, is my job still safe?

I find Judith at the kitchen table with a stack of papers. “Lola, I’m making my will. I have it now so if anything happened, Laura would go to my mother, but she hardly knows her. I’d need you to stay.”

“You want that I will go to Minnesota?”

“I’m taking out a life insurance policy that would pay your salary. With a three point five percent raise every year.”

I never tell Bong Bong that on a legal document, I have given away our future.

Here I am working for things I did not think about with my kids. My kids, they had too many friends. Friends I had to limit, like sweets.
You are preventing me!
my eldest screamed a night I dragged her out the neighbor house for homework.

I ask Laura what girl she likes best. “Raime, I guess,” she says, “and Georgia.” I have observed Raime. She is not a good choice for us. So I call the mother of Georgia, and she says yes. She will bring Georgia to our place.

Saturday morning, I feel nervous. Like my employer, I am out of practice. What will I do with the mother? I need Judith to meet and greet—the two could sit, talk about the school, and I can take the girls. I hint for Judith to stay.

“Oh, Lole, I need my yoga today. Can you just handle the playdate?”

What will I say? She is paying me. “I’ll be back,” Judith calls, carrying her rolled-up purple mat. We take out LEGOs. The dress-up box. A small trampoline I got for the birthday waits clean-hosed on the front lawn. I have ready peeled carrots and yogurt, for a healthy snack. I dig out the recipe for homemade Play-Doh Claire wanted me to prepare. This girl and her mother, they will come to a far neighborhood, and no parent home, just a babysitter. How does that look? All the handmade touches I refused Claire (at that time I thought I was too busy) I do here by myself.

The doorbell rings. There they stand: the two. The mom pushes the back of Georgia. As if by signal, the girls run into the room of Laura. The mom looks around. Roses I cut from the yard open in a jar. Her arms pretzel as she examines bookshelves. She glances inside the empty bedrooms where I already made the beds. Then she walks into the room of my employer! She would not do that if Judith were the one here.

The bedroom of my employer, I only go in to sweep or when I carry a stack of new-washed clothes to put in drawers. Sun makes rectangles on the floor. The unused room in the house, holy from quiet, in the day no one, at night only Judith sleeping.

“Would you like coffee?” I say, to herd her back where she belongs.

“She’s not working is she, on a Saturday?”

Is it better if Judith is working? I really do not know. When this woman picks up, Judith could return, wearing yoga clothes, with her rolled-up purple mat. I copy something I have seen babysitters do before; I just do not answer. She will think either I did not hear or do not understand. I pour her coffee; offer milk and sugar. Then I make an excuse of bringing beverages to the kids.

Georgia sits with her legs open, building; she is all on that. Laura keeps hauling out other things from the closet to show. But I must return to the mother.

“They okay in there?”

“Yes, they are playing good.”

Maybe she usually talks with the other mother. Or maybe we live too far to go and then come back. I wait a few minutes, then, when it is too quiet, I say, “I will shape the Play-Doh with them. We can bring Georgia home later on or she can stay for dinner if she wants.”

“I’ll just read my book here if that’s cool,” she says.

“Oh yes, of course.” I refill her coffee. She takes from her bag a thick paperback.

I am not used to being observed. I nudge the door shut with my rubber shoe. Georgia sits intent upon the built world between her legs. She deliberates, then adds another piece. Laura might as well not be in the room. She looks at me full of longing, so happy to have captured Georgia, here touching the things she uses herself alone, but she does not know how to make it be more. And she wants. That is the thing about this girl.

“Okay, you two, I have Play-Doh. We can form statues, jewelries.”

Georgia does not move. “Oh, Georgia, look at what you built. I do not think we ever made towers that high.”

Pretty soon I have them taking turns rolling. They compare ice-cream flavors, which they like, with which topping. Three girls in the class have the same kind of shoes but different colors. Hours of my life pass this way: the voices of children saying what they like, comparing. I forget the woman in the kitchen. Laura is a happy bird. The girls cut Play-Doh hearts. I have to wire money home; there are extra expenses for Issa. I will ask Judith for an advance. My youngest a doctor. On the floor all of a sudden it hits me.

“You’re poop,” the playmate says to my Laura.

I shove up to stand. I want to throw her out, but I remember the mother in the other room. These women, they will talk. Laurita, she is laughing.
Stop
, I want to tell her.

“And you’re pee-pee!”

“No, I’m poop and you’re pee-pee.” This makes them both giggle, high chains of noise. So it is back and forth. Okay.

When we return to the kitchen to bake the Play-Doh, the mother puts away her book. While I make grill-cheese sandwiches, she starts them sifting flour for a brownie she knows how. Judith still does not return. I never thought before, but she has me so she can just go—a way no one with kids can. It is dark already when she walks in with her mat. Our dinner plates cleared, we are eating brownies.

“Here’s one for you, Mommy.” I want to knock down the plate. What has she done to deserve! But my employer sits in her throne—the mother—and talks about the assistant teacher the way I wanted her to hours ago.

After Laura goes to bed, I will ask my advance.

That Wednesday, I receive a call from Deb, the mother of Georgia.

So Laurita will now have a friend.

Georgia invites Laura for a sleepover at the end of the school year. Deb will pick them from school on Friday and she will stay whole night.

“Oh-oh, Lole, I’ve got plans Friday,” Judith says. “And sometimes they don’t make it through the first time. You may have to go get her.”

So Friday afternoon I stay home. The house, it is clean already. I arrange the toys, the hair bands, and things small small. I subtract my checkbook. Then I am done that. I fix drawers. I think of calling home, but too many parts of my life Bong Bong, he does not know. I feel tired to explain. His letters have changed; I read a twang of complaint in them. In one year, Issa will graduate. We already paid the first installment tuition. The house, it will be painted this summer. The second time. Usually, in our lives, I supply for him the answer to the question he cannot ask. But this time I keep quiet.

I take the colander to the sink and rinse a lettuce. I am eating already like an American. I watch TV news, switching channels. I read
California Examiner
, and then already, it is ten o’clock. She must be sleeping. The phone, it will not ring anymore. But I remember from my own children, sometimes middle of the night, one staying over would wake up crying. In our place, I could walk to the other house, open the door, and lift out mine.

I measure hot chocolate. I have never made just for me. Exactly when I do not want, Judith walks in, to see me stirring in milk the expensive powder. She will think I use for myself every day. But she is happy tonight—I can tell from her shoulders.