The Original 1982 (10 page)

Thirty-five

N
ow that you're more mobile, Minnow, sometimes we take the bus. It's not that I mind the subway—it's the fastest and cheapest way to get around town—but sometimes I don't feel like going underground. On the bus, you're riding above the traffic, past pedestrians and the mad activity of the city. It takes a while to get where you're going. A kind of intimacy develops between all the passengers.

One day, I find I'm looking at everyone on the bus and imagining each person as a baby. All these freaky people, stressed out and anxious, pale, frowning, and buried in layers of old coats and scratchy-looking wool hats. Every one of them was once someone's baby.

There I am, with you on my lap. Still, what I think about is: Why does the world need so many babies, so many people? Clearly, everyone feels the need to reproduce, but does that mean everybody should?

I start to get really worked up thinking about how selfish it is. How many people have children just because they don't know what else to do with their lives, or because they think they're supposed to, or because they're terrified to be alone? We're a species with a population problem!

Just then, I notice your shoe is missing. It's fallen off somewhere. Your pink sock is about to slip off, too. I give it a tug and get up to look around. Perhaps the shoe has come off on the bus.

One of the former babies, an old man in a brown overcoat, finds it in the aisle. He's a little bent with scoliosis and holds on to the seat backs as he makes his way to us. He smiles warmly as he hands the shoe to me. I thank him, and he says, “My pleasure, young lady.”

I notice a lot of the other passengers are looking and smiling, too. I feel sorry then, for wishing them never born. There is kindness radiating from their faces.

There may be no greater human quality than kindness, Minnow. This is a revelation I come to as an older woman, and there's no way I would have known it that day on the bus. But I need to fill the girl I was with lessons learned by the woman I became. I need to give her perspective, to ground her, so when she gets off that bus with you in her arms and turns to wave at her fellow passengers, who are waving back through the dark windows, she can be uplifted by the exchange. I need her to be healed by such things so that she can be a good mother to you and make the most of this second chance for both of us.

Thirty-six

C
orbin moves into the apartment on West Seventy-first Street. He builds himself a rustic cupboard to hold his things. The place is small for the three of us, but he turns the yard into his workshop. He makes shelves and benches, and even a little chair for you. He labels boxes of baby things with their contents, cleans out the medicine chest and the refrigerator. He paints the kitchen wall with chalkboard paint so we can write notes to one another. Little by little, he brings a Corbin kind of order to our lives.

He's a natural with you, too, Minnow, maybe because he's really a kid himself. He tells you silly jokes and never tires of coming up with games for you to play. He hangs a swing for you in the yard, and I have to tell him not to push you so high.

When I see you're getting attached to him, it warms my heart, but it also worries me, because although I don't want to be thinking about Gabriel, I see him in your face every day. A part of me is still waiting for him. I know it isn't rational, but hope lives in me like a stubborn amnesiac. It causes me to pull back from Corbin sometimes. I never say a word about Gabriel, but he can feel me slip away. He tells me my eyes have gone cold. “Where'd ya go?” he asks suspiciously.

Sometimes we argue, and he storms off and doesn't come back until the next day. When he gets home I say, “We can't do that in front of her, Corbin. I mean it. I won't have her growing up around people screaming and slamming doors.”

“Well, maybe you need to figure out what you want,” he growls petulantly.

He holds the music over my head when he's angry. He has control of my recordings. We've added cello and trumpet. A percussionist has laid down some hand drums and tambourine. Layers of electric guitars, keyboards, piano, and background vocals add momentum to the choruses. The closer the songs get to being completed, the larger his threat. He could take the tapes. He could destroy them.

Still, when things are going well between us, I allow myself to imagine a future with Corbin. I can picture us sitting around the long table with a house full of kids. We could grow our own brood. I could play music and he could make furniture. Maybe we could be happy.

Corbin is jealous of Alan at first, too. But it doesn't take long before they become friends. They share a love of electronics, musical instruments, and techie stuff. They can talk for hours about some latest guitar pedal or gadget.

Alan gets in the habit of coming by on Sunday afternoons when he's in town. There's usually a game on TV that nobody watches. They talk and Alan keeps an eye on whatever's in the oven while I play with you on the floor.

You have little interest in your toy piano, or the dolls that I once loved. You only want to put puzzles together or play with
LEGO'
s Fabuland. There are hundreds of plastic pieces around us in primary-colored piles.

“Aren't you afraid she going to choke on that?” Alan asks.

“She loves to build. I can't stop her. Watch.”

I take a red
LEGO
piece from your hand, and you scrunch up your eyes and open your mouth to wail: “Mama!”

“See?”

“Leave the kid alone,” Corbin says.

I hand it back to you and instantly you resume building.

“Is that a firehouse, Minnow?”

“Fi-ouse,” you say.

When I try to help you, you push my hand away. So I build my own structures beside you. You watch me out of the corner of your eye, and think nothing of taking a desirable piece from my hand to add to your own construction. Together we build a
LEGO
town of buildings and bridges. When you get tired of the game, you stand up carefully on chubby legs and knock it all down.

“Nice work, Minnow,” I say, laughing.

“No, Mama,” you say sternly. These are your two favorite words.

I set the table and we sit down to eat, you in your high chair.

“How's Charlotte's new record doing?” I ask, sailing the spoon through the air like a plane. You make me work for each mouthful. Soon you'll begin terrible twos.

“She's getting great press,” Alan says. “It's just a matter of time before she really hits.”

I understand Corbin's jealousy then, because I feel sick with it myself.

“Who else is in the band?” Corbin asks.

Alan goes through the names and I can hear his pride and affection for everyone. He's as loyal as a dog, I think. But how can I resent it, when I know his greatest loyalty is to me?

After dinner, I put you to bed and we sit in the garden and play music. It takes him a minute to remember how my songs go. “How's your recording coming along?” he asks.

“We're almost done,” Corbin says. “You should come down and add some finishing touches.”

“Love to,” Alan says, and I know he means it. But he's about to leave again, to go on the road with Charlotte. They'll be in Europe for the next month and a half, and we'll probably be finished before he gets back.

Thirty-seven

M
innow is very smart,” Maria says. We're on the way to my parents' house, the three of us, taking the train out to Long Island for your birthday party. Corbin has to work. You're turning two this week, and my mother has invited everyone to celebrate.

“Her teacher says she is smarter than the other children,” Maria continues. “She's good at language and math.” Twice a week, in the mornings, you go to a preschool in the neighborhood. Maria picks you up on those days.

Now she holds you in her lap. You look out the window of the train as everything speeds by.

“Ca,” you say.

“Car,” I repeat.

“Bud.”

“Bird.”

“Whas'tha, Mama?”

“That's another train like this one,” I tell you. “Train.”

“Tain,” you repeat.

My sister will be at the party. Lynn is being relocated to New York by her company. She's staying with my parents while she looks for a place to live.

At the station, my father's Buick is parked across the street. I hold the front door open for Maria, but she prefers to sit in the back. With my father's help, she gets you into the car seat, one, two, three.

“How was your ride?” my father asks as we drive the few blocks to their house.

“Fine,” I say. “Maria was just telling me that the preschool thinks Minnow is smarter than the other two-year-olds.”

“Of course she is,” my father says, “but isn't she a little young to be in school?”

“It's only a couple of hours a week, Dad, and she likes going. It's good for her to socialize.”

My father doesn't choose to respond to this. We pull into the driveway. “Here we are,” he says. Maria and I free you from the car seat, and we go inside.

“There she is!” my mother says happily, in her singsong. “Hello, Maria. How are you?” She takes our coats and hangs them in the hall closet.

Maria finds a seat on the edge of the couch in the living room. She's quieter than when it's just us.

My mother takes you from my arms and walks with you past a stack of brightly wrapped presents on the hall table, and into the kitchen to show you the cake she's baked. It has your name written on it in pink icing.

“Mine,” you say.

“That's right.” Your grandmother laughs. “Later, we'll sing ‘Happy Birthday' to you, and you can blow out the candles!”

“Where's Lynn?” I ask, and my mother tells me that my sister is house-hunting with our cousin Rachel.

“You remember Rachel is in real estate now,” she says. It's the first I've heard of it.

“Aunt Lou coming?” I ask. My mother says she expects her older sister any minute. Aunt Lou lives just two towns away.

We return to the living room with paper and crayons to sit on the floor and draw. My mother's drawing of a house and trees is not bad.

“That's nice, Mom,” I say.

“You thought you were the only artist in the family?” she asks lightly.

As you draw, you begin to sing, softly at first, and then louder. Your pitch is good, your voice high and clear. It doesn't take much to encourage you to go through the whole repertoire. “ ‘Twinkle, Twinkle'?” I prompt.

Your version is one line long. You lift your feet to your hands as you sing it and wiggle your toes.

“ ‘ABCs'?”

We laugh because you skip the lines you don't know and approximate the ones you do, blurring the consonants and connecting the vowels. We laugh with you and at you, too. We love you so much, Minnow.

Aunt Lou comes through the door. “Where is everybody?” she says.

“We're in here!” my mother calls.

My sister and cousin return chattering about the places they've seen.

You bounce between all the grown-ups, telling incomprehensible stories. My father lets you tug on his glasses. He speaks to you in a silly voice. Over your head, he watches the game.

In the following years, Lynn and Rachel will marry and have children and you'll be rich with young cousins, but today you are the only child and we watch you, exotic, rare, perfect girl, running, singing, talking, blowing out your birthday candles. “Happy birthday, dear Minnow! Happy birthday to you,” we sing. You laugh and sing along, reflecting our love back to us.

Later, talking with my cousin at the kitchen table, I listen to her wonder aloud about the way fathers get to walk away without consequence. “Aren't we the ones who create this culture of privilege among men?” she asks. “Aren't we the ones who condone actions of irresponsibility amongst fathers?”

But how do you make a man behave the way you think he should?

“With laws that demand accountability,” Rachel says.

I don't know. If he doesn't want to be in your life, do you really want to force him to be? I'd rather be alone, Minnow. There are plenty of worse fates.

Thirty-eight

S
till, I have bills to pay and the money I make doesn't go very far. Not when it has to cover preschool, and babysitting, and shoes you grow out of every month. Maria returns a five out of the money I pay her. “Get something for yourself,” she says, but I never do.

When I get up the nerve to ask Harv for a raise, he says he can't right now. Things are tight at the studio. He might even have to let one of the engineers go, he says, which means Corbin could soon be out of work. When I tell Corbin this, he shrugs his shoulders. He's not a worrier, which leaves the worrying to me.

At least my recording is done. When I can afford to, I plan to have cassette copies made of the best five songs and send them out to music attorneys and managers. But that seems like a faraway plan. We live on rice and beans and ramen noodles. We drink our coffee black. We fight because Corbin spends his money on beer.

All this time, I've kept Lois's dog-eared card in my underwear drawer, and one warm spring day I give her a call. We make a plan to meet for coffee at a place off Columbus Avenue called Cafe La Fortuna.

In the back garden, I see her sitting in a corner beneath one of the yellow umbrellas and give a little wave.

“Hi, Lisa,” she says, standing and kissing me first on one cheek and then the other, European style. I do the same. Couple of Long Island girls, playing at sophistication.

I ask her what she's been up to, and I can tell by the way she answers that she isn't really dancing anymore. That's what happens. Dancers age out. It must be brutal for Lois, but she doesn't let on.

“How's your baby? You had a girl, right?” I can tell she knows I want something but she can't figure out what.

“Yes. She's going on three.”

“Wow. Time flies.”

“I know.” I tell her about working at the studio, and how it doesn't pay much. I tell her I'm looking to make some extra money.

“What about the deadbeat dad?” she asks.

“Not in the picture,” I say.

“And you don't want to go after him?”

“No, I don't.”

She lifts a tiny cup of espresso to her lips, holding out her pinkie. She keeps her green eyes on mine. “Well, I know how you can make some money, but I don't think you're going to like it.”

“Try me,” I say.

She tells me about the massage parlor on lower Broadway where she's worked for about a year.

“The only problem is, I don't really know how to give a massage,” I say.

She looks at me like I'm a dope, like I couldn't possibly be so innocent, but it's a genuine question. I know what she's talking about. I just don't know if I can fake the massage part. The rest I figure I can manage.

“They don't care about that,” she says. “You just have to look pretty and be nice.”

“I can be nice,” I say.

She laughs a dry laugh. “Yeah, well, it's not as easy as you think.”

And she's right.

I go in for an interview and am shown around the place. It's divided into eight little rooms, separated by thin, temporary walls. The rooms are only a little bigger than the massage tables in them. A single green plant sits on an empty desk in the reception area.

I'm told that the men pay in advance for the massage and any extras. They undress and cover themselves with a rough towel that smells of bleach. I make it clear that I don't want to be touched. I'll do the happy ending, but that's it.

It's a couple of weeks before I actually get up the nerve to take a shift at the massage parlor. I only have one day off a week from Silver, and it's hard to get away.

I've left Corbin to look after you; told him I was getting together with Lois and some other friends from the restaurant. I plan to be home in time to make dinner.

I'm a little nervous as I enter the tiny room. It feels too close. The man on the table is middle-aged. His reddish-blond hair could use a trim. I pull the towel back to his waist and put a little oil on his upper back. He lifts his head to look up at me, over his shoulder, and I recognize him. Damn. He's my old neighbor from East Seventy-eighth Street, the rich guy who lived in the house next door.

For a second, I see the recognition in his eyes. Then we pretend to be strangers. “Hello,” he says.

“Hi,” I say back.

But I can't do it. Even touching his back is revolting.

“Would you excuse me a minute?” I say. I step out of the room and get my jacket and other things from a closet in the hallway. I don't even risk waiting for the elevator, but bolt down the five flights of stairs. Needless to say, I never go back.

What do you think, Minnow? Is it unbelievable that I would go to work at a massage parlor? Maybe it never happened. Maybe in some other version of 1985, Lois and I said good-bye on the sidewalk outside Cafe La Fortuna, and I never called the number she gave me. Maybe I never asked her for the number. Maybe she never even worked at a massage parlor on lower Broadway.

But true or false, three years later, we run into Lois on the Upper West Side, and I introduce the two of you.

“Nice to meet you,” you say.

“What a polite young lady,” she says. “How old are you, Minnow?”

You hold out all your fingers on one hand and answer, proudly, that you're five and a half.

Lois looks better than ever, if that's possible. She tells me she's at Fordham, getting a law degree.

“That's so great,” I say, truly impressed. We speak for a few minutes. She doesn't say anything at all about the past and neither do I. We make a silent agreement that any shameful or embarrassing thing we remember, about ourselves or the other, never happened. I look into those green eyes of hers, and we briefly embrace.

“See ya, Minnow,” she says, walking backward.

It's the last time we ever lay eyes on her. She disappears into the world along with so many of the friends and acquaintances of my waitressing days.

You reach for my hand and we continue walking in the opposite direction.