My Husband's Sweethearts (17 page)

To get to Elspa's parents' house, she directs
us through a bleak section of Baltimore.
Many of the row houses are boarded up
with No Trespassing signs stapled to doors. The stoops
are gray. A few children run up the sidewalk and disappear
down a narrow passageway between two houses.
Three young men have collected in front of a corner
liquor store. An angry-looking old woman is standing just
off the edge of the curb, searching in the pockets of her
housedress for something.

My mother reaches up and locks her door. John and
Eleanor do, too, but Elspa is leaning through the bucket
seats to take it all in.

"I used to spend a lot of time in this part of town,"
Elspa says, suddenly agitated. "Slow down."

Eleanor moves her handbag from the foot well to her
lap—instinctively, I think. My mother is using her hat to
shade her face from view as if she's a celebrity.

As we approach a boarded-up, burned-out hull of a
house on our right, Elspa leans close to the window and
watches it pass as if it were a monument of some sort. She
seems far away.

"Do your parents know what you're coming to ask
them?" Eleanor asks, quite practically.

"About Rose? No. They'll assume the worst. That I'm
coming for drug money."

"We'll be there with you, dear. I hope that we'll help,"
my mother says.

"She's right," I say. "Maybe you could offer a generous
bribe, as bribes go."

Elspa nods. "Let's keep going."

The sections of Baltimore change more quickly than
those in most big cities. Poor neighborhoods butted up
against million-dollar homes, sometimes only divided by
an intersection.

Elspa keeps directing. "Right here. Left at the next
light. Not too far now."

We head into a secluded development. My mother
comments on the handsomeness of someone's landscaping.
Eleanor agrees, as if they're suddenly on a home and
garden tour.

"That's it. There," Elspa says. She's pointing across
the street to a really grand home—white with a huge,
green lawn. Lush and expensive. Two Volvos sit in the
driveway. A minivan is parked along the curb near a Saab
convertible.

"Is there a party or something?" John asks.

"Sunday brunch with the whole family," Elspa says. "I
hope you like crab crepes."

"Who doesn't like crab crepes?" my mother says.
"Bogie loves crab crepes!" She pats his bony head.

"They turn my stomach," Elspa says.

John pulls up and parks behind the Saab. I'm not sure
what to say so I don't say a word. We all climb out of the car
and rearrange ourselves, pressing out wrinkles, straightening
waistbands—all of us except Elspa, however.

I bend down and look inside. Elspa takes a deep
breath. She puts her hand on the passenger door's handle.
She opens the door, puts one foot on the ground, and
stares up at the house.

"They're just people. Just folks," John says.

"With exquisite taste," I hear my mother murmur,
which is no help.

I grab Elspa by her lapels, brush off the cardigan, push
the sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. "This is my secret.
I perfected it after I left Artie. Here it is: you have to
cut yourself off emotionally. Just a little. Just temporarily.
To get through this. If you don't need them, they're more
likely to think they need you." And then I punch Elspa's
upper arm.

"Ouch," Elspa says.

"Wrong answer," I say. I punch her again.

She winces.

"Not good enough," I tell her. "You aren't supposed
to react." I punch her again.

"That really hurts," she says. She rubs her arm.

"Um," John says, "how about you stop doing that?"

"Okay, forget it," I say. "Do the best you can."

We all walk to the front door. Elspa pushes the glasses
up on top of her head, which spikes her hair back up a little.
John reaches forward and rings the bell. "They're just
folks," he says.

A tall, sporty woman with a gray bob answers the
door—Elspa's mother. She looks at the five of us—giving
a particularly hard glare to Bogie in his festive outfit. Her
eyes fall back to her daughter. "The crepes have gone
cold, the tonic flat. Come in, though. Come in." But before
she moves back so we can come in, she looks at her
daughter. She takes her by the arms. She glances again at
the rest of us. "So," she says to Elspa, nodding toward me,
"you borrowed her clothes. That was thoughtful." She
ushers us in. "Who are your friends here? Introduce me."

"This is Lucy and John and Eleanor and Joan. This is
my mother, Gail."

"Welcome," she says, waving us down the hall. "The
crepes have gone cold, the tonic's flat!"

"I like a cold crepe, myself," John says.

The kitchen is a state-of-the-art affair with chrome appliances
that belong in a high-end restaurant. There's an
enormous and elderly St. Bernard asleep in the corner. It's
a certain kind of wealthy person's dog of choice and it lays
there like an expensive bearskin rug. I recall one of Artie's
favorite quotes from my mother:
a pet dog should never be
larger than a handbag.

Gail starts pouring tall drinks. Elspa and I look out the
window. I can see her brother and sister and their families
gathered out on the back lawn. There's a man who I figure,
by his age, is her father, sitting in an Adirondack
chair. There's a gazebo in a back corner. Flowers hem the
yard. Kids chase each other. And one, in the middle of it
all, is a little three-year-old girl. I watch Elspa watch her.
Rose is beautiful. She makes me ache in that way beautiful
children do. I've wanted one of my own for so long. But
I'm also aching for Elspa. Her eyes are so hungry for the
child.

Gail hands everyone plates with crepes and garnishes.
"Here you go. With my apologies. Well, now, I guess I'm
apologizing for
your
tardiness. That doesn't make sense."

"There was terrible traffic," my mother says. "And I
require rest stops, you know how it is."

Gail doesn't want to share this little moment of commonality
with my mother. She smiles politely. "Let's head
outside."

We follow her to the backyard and a young man jogs
over. He gives Elspa a big hug. She hugs him back tightly.
"You look great!" he says, and then turns to the rest of us.
"Do I already have to say sorry for something Gail has
said? Here's a blanket apology."

"Thanks, Billy," she says, then introduces us to her
brother. But she's keeping an eye on her Rose, who's even
more beautiful closer up. She's bright-eyed and expensively
dressed in a flowered pantsuit. "She's doing great,"
Billy says. "She already has a good sense of irony, a real
feel for injustice. Like her mother."

I tell Elspa how beautiful her daughter is. Everyone
agrees.

"She really is. Imagine, you made that," John says.

Elspa smiles. "Not in an outfit like this."

*

Later, in the gazebo, I'm idling by the edges. Elspa is playing
with Rose, scooping her up when she falls down on
top of a soccer ball. My mother is off walking along the
side gardens, taking mental notes, no doubt. She's let
Bogie down and he's sniffing the grass.

Nearby, John is talking to Elspa's father, Rudy, a golfish
man wearing a smart lime polo shirt. "So, what do you
do, John?"

"Sales. I'm an entrepreneur."

"Huh. Elspa's last boyfriend was an entrepreneur. So,
she's picked another pusher. I almost pulled the trigger on
the last one's punk-ass." I'm a little surprised by the term
punk-ass.
If John is, he doesn't show it. But Rudy explains,
"We've learned the terminology."

"I'm not her boyfriend. I own a mattress and bedding
supply store."

"Mhmm. Mhmm," Rudy says. "I see."

I walk back inside to the kitchen. There's no one here,
which I'm very happy about. I start putting dishes in the
sink. Gail appears, carrying more dishes. She takes this
moment alone with me to give it to me straight. "I'm just
telling you that your efforts will be better rewarded if applied
elsewhere. We've had Rose for a year and a half and
we should have taken her at birth." She nods through the
window at Elspa and Rose. "Oh, most babies get to learn
how to hold their heads up straight, but Rose had the
pleasure of kicking heroin."

"Elspa's a different person now."

"She almost burned to death in a crack house. Seven
months pregnant."

We can hear Elspa and the other family members in
the backyard. There's some cheering. Someone must have
scored a goal. I leave Gail at the sink where she scrubs.

*

Soon enough the Sunday brunch winds down. The other
families are leaving. Billy gives Elspa a hug, a warm and
sad one. He picks up his son. His wife just waves.

Gail turns to my mother. "So, did you make that outfit
for your dog yourself? It's quite, quite . . . unique."

"Actually," my mother says, "I did." I cringe as she begins
to report on Bogie's affliction of overendowment—
including a few loud whispers of the word
penis.
I step
away, pretending to be distracted by the tall trees.

John shows up at my elbow. I'm surprised to find him
so close suddenly. He smells nice—a cocktail and a little
something cinnamon. He says, in a hushed voice, "Do you
want to tell me something?"

"Tell you something?"

"I feel like you have something to say that you aren't
saying, and I just wanted to give you a chance to say it, if
you wanted to. But if you don't want to . . ."

"Or if I have nothing to tell you . . ."

"Right, exactly, then that's fine."

"Fine."

"Fine you have something to tell me? Or fine you
don't want to? Or fine you have nothing to tell me?"

I'm completely befuddled. "Yes."

"Yes, what?"

"I don't know what."

"We could try this as a conversation," he says. "I
say something. You say something. Like that. Back and
forth."

"The kiss is a dustpan," I whisper to him. "It's nothing
more than that now. It doesn't mean anything to me,
really. I'm fine with it. Are you?"

"A dustpan?"

"Yes," I say.

He doesn't really respond. He's just looking at me,
baffled.

"This is a conversation. I say something. You say
something."

"A
dustpan
?" he says again.

"Back and forth. A conversation," I say.

"Okay, well, the kiss isn't supposed to exist at all. That
was the agreement. I promised."

"But do you think of this thing that doesn't exist?"

"Yes," he says, and I know that I want him to think of
it. I want him to have tried to sort it out—like I have. But
as soon as I realize that I'm happy that he thinks of it, I
know that I shouldn't be happy. I shouldn't have even
wanted to know.

"Okay, then," I say. "That's what I wanted to know."

"Let me add here, while the nonexistent kiss kind of
almost exists, that I don't think of it as a dustpan."

"Okay," I say. "I tried that but I don't think it worked
anyway." And I turn back to my mother who is still yammering
on about Bogie and his burden.

Gail looks confused. Her face has begun to pucker
sourly, and then, luckily, Rose totters over to a cake plate
she can't reach and shouts, "Mommy! Mommy!"

Elspa gets up to help her. But Gail is there, a whir of
motion. Rose is, in fact, calling for Gail.

Elspa says, "I can get it."

Gail scoops Rose up. "It's her nap time."

Rose pitches her head back. "I don't want a nap!"

"I'll take her up," Elspa says.

"The routine is best," Gail says, and walks away with
the child.

Elspa is disappointed, shaken. She tries to keep her
composure. "I guess we should go now, too," Elspa says.

Rudy walks ahead to escort us through the house to
the front door.

As we walk through the well-appointed house, I lean
in. "Secure a second meeting to talk—at a neutral
location."

I hear John whisper to Elspa, "You can do this."

Elspa glances at both of us nervously, nods.

Through the house, through the front door, standing
on the lawn, Elspa's father is saying good-bye, shaking
hands. He says to Elspa, "Are you coming by tomorrow?
We'd love to see you."

"I want to talk to you two about something."

"You know we can't give you money anymore and you
know full well we've been to classes on how to handle addicted
children. Damn, they were a humiliation for your
mother."

"I don't want money. That's not what I want to talk
about." She starts to back away. I shake my head, willing
her to stick with it. She stops and stares up at the house.
She crosses her arms and squeezes them tightly. I can see
from here that she's touching the spot where I punched
her, steeling herself. "Let's meet at a restaurant instead.
And I want to be with Rose tomorrow."

He glances up the stairs behind him—where Gail is
putting Rose down for a nap. "Okay, I think we can do
that."

"I want to, just, take her to the park or the zoo—something
like that."

"We haven't really tried that before. Are you sure? By
yourself?"

"Maybe with my friends, too."

"A short trip to the zoo?"

"I've been clean for a long time. I'm taking my daughter
to the zoo. I'm allowed to do that."

He nods. "Okay." He steps toward her. It's not clear
why, exactly, but it might be that he wants to give her a hug.

She turns and walks quickly to the car.

Once we're all inside, there's this moment when we're
still holding our breath.

John says, "That is a hive of some vicious killer
WASPs."

"With exquisite taste," my mother repeats.

I say, "But we have a second meeting in a different
location."

"You were amazing!" Eleanor says. "Truly tough as
nails." And this, coming from Eleanor, seems like the
highest of compliments.