She Is Me (15 page)

“I’m sure that’s carcinogenic,” she said.

“All natural. Natural and nutritionless. No worse than chamomile tea. Except the sugar. And the cocoa powder. And God knows what else. Now, Water, that’s an issue. Not just in California. All over the United States. Of course, that’s partly because California siphons off everyone else’s Water . . .”

The kettle whistled.

“The Extinction of the beaver population has contributed to Water Pollution . . .”

“Tony, I didn’t buy the tea.”

“You didn’t steal it, did you? You’re not turning into one of those Kleptomaniac Housewives, are you?”

Housewife? Since when was she a housewife?

“Since when have I become a housewife?” she said.

Tony had tilted the kettle over the cocoa. Some of the boiling water sloshed over the side of the mug. Greta saw sickly little marshmallows bobbing in the cup.

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“Go to hell,” Greta said. “Go to hell!”

She ran to the bedroom and sat on the end of the bed. She smelled chamomile and looked down at her hand, still holding the bag of tea. She stood up and walked back across the room. She had forgotten to slam the door.

The trouble with adultery is you don’t know whose side you’re on. Madame Bovary was a victim, Madame Bovary was a selfish monster.
Madame Bovary
was tragedy,
Madame Bovary
was farce. A lover is an active noun, one who acts. A lover is an object, the one you take. I love you: I am your lover. I love you: I take you as my lover.

Whose side are you on?

The lovers’ side.

The faithful husband’s side

The wrong side of the bed.

Elizabeth took a Diet Pepsi from her mother’s refrigerator and opened it. It exploded, caramel foam flopping onto the kitchen floor.

“Whose side are we on?” Elizabeth said as she mopped up the mess. “The infantile social-climbing Emma? But she’s so much more than that. And so much less. She’s a woman full of ambition in a world that has no room for women with ambition. She’s a girl who’s been taught to seek the sublime in the banal. To exchange tradition for convention, then to exchange convention for pretension . . .”

Daisy sat at the kitchen table reading the most recent pages of the script. She looked up calmly, her finger bent back, at an odd angle, holding her place on the page. “Emma Bovary doesn’t know the difference between passion and romance,” she said. “That’s all.”

“
Love
and romance,” Elizabeth said. “Between
love
and romance.”

“Love.” Daisy repeated the word as if it were in another language, slowly, earnestly. “That’s the word, all right, Cookie,” she added in her more familiar manner of gentle condescension.

Daisy had turned out to be incredibly helpful. Attentive. That was the best word. She often just appeared at the door, like a neighborhood kid at the house that stocked the best snacks. If Elizabeth wasn’t there yet, she would wait, patient, decorative, undemanding, a nice diversion for Greta. If Elizabeth had already left when Daisy arrived, still she would spend a little time with Elizabeth’s parents. They adored her, of course. She was adorable, Elizabeth agreed. Daisy had a handful of interchangeable pet names for everyone— Cookie and Pussycat and Babe— and she brought Harry a hat from the thrift store that made him look like Humphrey Bogart.

Elizabeth mopped up the spilled soda and muttered to herself in a singsong. “Love and romance, love and passion, love and longing, love and lotsa luck . . .”

Daisy was looking at her, much the way she had the day they met at Volfmann’s beach house when Harry spilled the vase of flowers. She didn’t offer to help. Elizabeth felt her watching, rapt but distant, as if Elizabeth were suspended in an aquarium, and she, Daisy, on an afternoon outing.

Elizabeth said, “What?”

Daisy smiled at her.

Elizabeth smiled back. “What? What are you looking at?”

“God, you have a great smile.”

Elizabeth, embarrassed now, tried, unsuccessfully, to frown.

When Greta had her next break from chemotherapy, in which her body could try to regain some of the strength lost to the poison drips, a vacation of sorts, a holiday, she determined to use the time to tend to her mother and to allow herself to be lured to her doom. For surely adultery was doom. Elizabeth was not the only person who had ever read
Madame Bovary.
And adultery with a woman— that had to be a special, double dose of doom.

How had she come to this pass? She didn’t want to be a lesbian, a word that brought to mind either unstylish women in poorly tailored pantsuits or trendy college girls who would one day regret their tattoos. She had no political interest in gay rights. She was too privileged, too protected even to be much of a feminist. Her mother had always done just as she liked and Greta was expected to do the same— as little or as much as that might be. Greta tried to imagine her mother, dressed to kill, her nose flapped to the side, marching with PFLAG.

Who says I am a lesbian, anyway? she thought. Well, I do, I guess. But, people have fantasies. So what if all my fantasies are about Daisy Piperno? So what if I’m attracted to Daisy? Wolfishly, obsessively, sexually attracted to Daisy. It’s not like I want to live with her. It’s not like I long to adopt a Chinese orphan girl with her. I don’t want to move to Northampton or go to k.d. lang concerts. I just want to sleep with Daisy. And hear her voice. And sit beside her. And touch her hand. And sleep with her. Again and again.

Which kind of makes me a lesbian.

Well, Greta thought, Northampton is beautiful, especially in the spring. To be fair.

Four women and three men in a swimming pool. They are very drunk. They have been drinking a disgusting concoction called a Negroni, prepared by one of the men. He is a boy, in fact. Or nearly. Look at him, in his baggy surfer swim trunks. There is no hair on his chest. His chest is smooth and rippling with muscles. He is staring at me, Elizabeth thought.

It was the boy’s birthday. Josh’s best friend, Tim, was twenty-six.

“Happy birthday!” They all toasted him.

Elizabeth closed her eyes. It’s only Tim, she told herself. The boy next door. She let her body sink until her head was submerged. She floated in a sitting position. He’s young and drunk.

She sputtered to the surface. She didn’t see Tim in the water, but her mother was splashing Tim’s mother, Laurie. That was good. Then her mother splashed her father. That was better. Splash away, Greta. Elizabeth tried to relax in the water, telling herself that her mother’s splashing was a sign of health. Then she wondered if the pool was full of germs that might infiltrate her mother’s weakened body. She wondered if her mother wouldn’t be better off asleep on the sofa beneath the crocheted afghan. She wondered if splashing was a sign not of health but of hubris. Greta turned just then and splashed Elizabeth.

“Mo-om,” she said.

“Don’t whine, Elizabeth. It’s only water!” Greta said and reached out to ruffle Elizabeth’s wet hair. Elizabeth sat on the steps and crossed her arms. Her mother was ridiculous.

Brett was away, in Washington again. He would have understood that her mother could have cancer, be brave, and still be annoying. Greta was so giddy. It struck Elizabeth as unseemly.

Elizabeth put her elbows on her knees. Her chin was in the water. Would Brett understand that Tim had a crush on her? She watched as Daisy Piperno splashed Tim, who had leaped into the pool and was now floating on his back. He opened one eye. It was level with Daisy’s bikini top. Tim reached out as if to pull on the strap and Daisy dove away. He laughed. Then, catching Elizabeth’s eye, he stopped laughing.

“Elizabeth . . .” he said.

A beach ball hit Elizabeth on the head. She heard her brother laughing. She heard herself laugh, too.

“I have hair!” her mother cried.

“To Greta’s hair!” said Tony. He was out of the pool, pouring out another of Tim’s disgusting and potent Negronis. Elizabeth eyed him suspiciously. To have an affair while your wife is undergoing chemotherapy was very low. Her father was an honorable man. He couldn’t be having an affair. There he was toasting his wife’s hair. Could you bring yourself to toast your wife’s hair if you were having an adulterous affair?

Emma Bovary could have. She would have found a way to think about it that somehow made her both the victim and the heroine. Did her father see himself as the victim and the hero? Sometimes Elizabeth thought of herself as the victim and the hero, so why not Tony? He was closer to the real victim and the real hero. He was closer to Greta.

Everyone raised a glass to Greta’s hair.

Elizabeth stared at the silky dark hair under Tim’s arm as he held his glass aloft. She looked at his armpit. I am fickle even in my adulterous fantasies, she thought. I have betrayed Volfmann. She realized she was drunk. She had rarely gotten drunk when she lived in New York. What a waste. It was so easy to get home in New York. Now that she was always driving, she was always getting drunk. Tim has a crush on me, she thought. He always has. He said so. She envied Tim his carefree life. A life free of the shadow of maternal death. What a self-important bore I have become, she thought.

I’ve got a crush on you,
she sang softly.

Sugar pie,
Daisy sang, just beside her.

Daisy, Daisy, Daisy. Daisy was everywhere. Elizabeth let herself bump down the steps and back down beneath the water. She opened her eyes. She saw two hands touch, two fingertips just brush each other. Like the Sistine Chapel, she thought. Like God and Adam. But who was God and who was Adam down here? In the Bernards’ swimming pool? By the light of the silvery moon?

She came to the surface and watched Tim push her brother into the pool. Josh was sturdy and square. Tim was lean and long waisted. Tim could be my brother, except that he’s not sturdy and square. He’s shimmering, a thousand drops of water clinging to his skin, to his long legs. Tim jumped wildly into the pool, dove beneath the surface, and pulled her underwater. How many times had long legs led to adultery? she wondered as she struggled up, gasping when she hit the surface. Too many times. Long legs were never reason enough to betray the man you love.

She wondered if she did love Brett. She had loved him once. She had grown used to him, too, which was a kind of love. But now, somehow, she wasn’t used to him anymore. It was as if they had just met, as if a stranger slept in her bed and peed in her toilet. He hadn’t changed. They hadn’t grown apart. She had simply lost the gift of being used to him.

She wondered what kind of legs Volfmann had. Bandy legs, probably. She wished suddenly that Volfmann was there with his bandy legs. He would tell her what to do. He would say, “I want adultery!” And she would say, “What about the child? I have a child! Think of the child!” And he would say, “Happiness! Passion! Intoxication!” And she would say, “Adultery is okay in the movies. But this is real life. People get hurt.” And he would turn purple and bang his fist on the desk and say, “How would you know? How would you know about happiness, passion, or intoxication? Adultery may be tragedy, but your life is farce.”

“Happiness, passion, intoxication,” Elizabeth said, softly, sitting by the pool drinking a Negroni.

“I don’t know about happy or passionate,” her father said, sitting beside her on the chaise. “But you are definitely intoxicated.” He put a towel around her shoulders.

“Look at Mom,” she said. “She looks happy.”

Greta was floating on her back. Daisy held her hands and pulled her gently around the pool.

“You’re intoxicated. She’s happy. Does that make me passionate?”

I hope not, Elizabeth thought.

He began to pace along the edge of the pool, first in one direction, then the other, wet footprints on top of wet footprints.

“Daddy, what’s wrong?”

He laughed.

Greta watched them. She stood in the pool, conscious of Daisy near her, of Daisy’s body. What were they saying? They both looked so miserable. She could still feel Daisy’s hands holding hers in the water. Tony gave a short, bitter laugh. Elizabeth’s expression was taut. There was panic in her face. The air was cold and made Greta shiver. She heard the sound of someone climbing out of the pool. She knew it was Daisy. She turned her head and watched Daisy walk toward the pile of towels. Greta looked over at her husband, who now stopped pacing and looked back at her. Did he know? Sometimes she thought he knew. She wanted to run into his arms and beg his forgiveness. I don’t mean it, she would say. At least, I don’t mean to mean it.

Tony held a towel for her. Elizabeth was also holding a towel for her. She saw Daisy. Daisy was watching them as they held their towels for her. Greta dove underwater. Where it was quiet. Where it was safe.

Elizabeth was, as her father had said, intoxicated.

“Tell your mother,” Tony was saying, turning to go inside.

Tell her what? Elizabeth wondered. That you’re running away? She’ll see that for herself. She took a swig of her drink, hoping to become more intoxicated.

“I want to watch the ball game,” he said. “I’ll check on Harry. Tell your mother.”

He didn’t want Greta to worry. That was a good sign. Maybe Elizabeth was wrong. He wasn’t having an affair at all. He was a considerate husband who didn’t want his wife to worry and a loving father who wanted to lend a hand to his intoxicated daughter by being a devoted grandfather and checking on his sleeping grandson. That made much more sense than having an affair.

When Greta climbed out of the pool, Elizabeth stood up unsteadily, wrapped her mother in the towel, and wished she could wrap both her parents up and hold them safe and sound, and together.

“Daddy went to watch baseball.”

Greta nodded.

“He said to tell you.”

Her mother pulled on a sweatshirt.

“Daddy wanted me to make sure to tell you,” Elizabeth repeated. “So you wouldn’t worry.”

“Worry?” Greta asked. She looked out from the hood of the sweatshirt, her lips a little blue, but her face radiant.

Tim was suddenly beside Elizabeth. He put his hand on her arm. It was warm. Or perhaps her arm was cold.