The Saving Graces (2 page)

As for me, Emma claimed she'd thought I looked like a rock star, too. Who? I asked eagerly. (Once an old beau told me I reminded him of Marie Osmond-"the perkiness," he'd said.) But Emma said, "Sinéad O'Connor." What? "Oh, not the baldness, although your hair was pretty short, Lee. More that, you know, humorless, self-righteous schtick you do." Oh, thank you very much! I was offended, but Emma added, "No, Sinéad O'Connor's gorgeous, haven't you ever noticed her eyes?" No. "She's a beautiful woman, Lee, I meant that as a compliment." Oh, really. I doubt that, but in any case, I look nothing like Sinéad O'Connor. I look like my mother: small, wiry, dark, and intense. And I am never self-righteous, although it's true that I'm frequently right.
So, again, so much for first impressions.
When I married Henry, it crossed my mind that I might not need the group as much anymore, or that my enthusiasm would slack off, I might not have the same time and energy for it. None of that happened. There was a period of seven or eight months when I was so fixated on sleeping with Henry, very little else registered on my consciousness, but that was an across-the-board phenomenon and didn't reflect on the Saving Graces specifically.
Emma and Rudy got a great deal of amusement out of that time in my life, I must say. I don't know what they thought I was like before I met Henry-a prude, I suppose. Which I am not, and never have been. I don't happen to swear, and I do like to keep certain thoughts to myself, not share them with the world at large. Or ill do share them, apparently I put them in terms that sound old-fashioned, even quaint to certain people. So when I met Henry and suddenly the only thing on my notoriously rational and unimaginative mind was sex, they thought this was hilarious.
I could have put a lid on their fun by simply keeping quiet, but for some reason, I guess the hormone circus going on inside, I couldn't stop talking about it. Could not keep my mouth closed. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before, and I was thirty-seven years old. One Thursday night, I made the mistake of telling the group how Henry looked in his blue cotton uniform, with his name in gold over the front pocket, and PATTERSON & SON HEATING, PLUMBING & AC on the back. And he wore a tool belt. A tool belt. Who knew? Rudy and Emma said they knew about tool belts-I'm talking about the ultimate in male allure, that irresistible combination of sexuality and visible evidence of problem-solving capability-and even Isabel allowed that the concept wasn't new to her. I wonder where I've been.
Then I made an even bigger mistake. I told them about the first time he came to my house (which at that point was only to fix a stopped-up toilet; I hadn't hired him yet to replace the old pipes and put in new heating ducts), and he showed me a diagram in a plumbing book so that I could see exactly what was wrong and how he was going to fix it. "It's pawd o' the suhvice," he told me in his low, thrilling, solicitous southern accent. "An infawmed customah is a satisfahed one." He had his sleeves rolled up, and the sun through the bathroom window illuminated every golden hair on his-well, I believe in this case the word really is sinewy-forearms.
You would have to see the diagram he showed me to understand what I mean, but believe me when I say that the drawing of the "closet auger" angling its long, tubular way into the narrow, back-slanted overflow passage of the toilet looked exactly, exactly like a man's penis in a woman's vagina.
You can imagine the "plumbing" jokes I've had to put up with for the last four years.
Here is some more irony. In addition to the clean, liberating lust I've felt for Henry since almost the moment we met, I also knew he would make the world's most wonderful father. My genes called to his genes, I used to say, in a joking way. Together we were going to make beautiful Jewish/Protestant, intellectual/blue-collar babies (the intellectual component coming from my parents, not me; my father teaches quantum physics at Brandeis and my mother is a stockbroker). But things are not looking hopeful in the baby-making department nowadays. Something seems to be wrong with my plumber's plumbing. Or maybe it's me, they're not quite sure.
I try not to think about the worst that could happen to us: childlessness. Such a forlorn word. And alien. I've never associated it with myself before. I feel mocked now by all the years I religiously took the pill or used foam, an IUD, a diaphragm, scrupulously making sure I kept myself barren.
I've managed to hide the worst of my fears from the group better than I hid my oh-so-funny libido, but I probably won't be able to for much longer. And why would I want to? To preserve their image of me as the sober, sensible, coolheaded one, I suppose.
But Isabel knows already. As usual. Once she told me she couldn't have gotten through her divorce and then the cancer and chemo and all that without me- which is very kind, very typical of her, but not true. But it will be in my case. If the worst happens - if Henry and I can't conceive a child-I'm quite sure that, without Isabel, I won't be able to bear it.

   3.

   Judy.

   I don't know why my friends bother with me, I'm so high-maintenance. I would run ill saw me coming. But they're always so patient and supportive. They put their arms around me and say, "Oh, Rudy, you are doing so well." That's code; it means, since nobody's put me in a straitjacket yet, I must be all right. I agree, but I always feel like knocking on wood after they say that.
What I don't tell anybody, not even Emma, who thinks she knows everything about me, is how large a part norpramin and amitriptyline have been playing in my mental health. And before them, protriptyline and aiprazolam. And meprobamate. I could go on.
Nobody knows this about me except Curtis, my husband, and Eric, my therapist.~ I'm frank about the rest, my family's total dysfunction, the decades I've spent in counseling, my fights with depression and melancholia and mania. Everybody in the world is on Prozac or Zoloft, so there's no shock value there anymore, no shame, as Emma says, in better living through chemistry.
But I keep it to myself. The thing is, I need my friends to believe that what I do, how I behave, is real. Because it is real-but if they knew about my secret army of psychopharmaceuticals, anything I did right would be "because of the drugs," and anything wrong- same thing. Nothing about me would be authentic. In their minds, there would be no real Rudy.
Wait till I tell them what I did today. I already know what their reactions are going to be: Emma will laugh, Isabel will sympathize and console, and Leewill disapprove (gently). And all of them will be wondering in private, Well, what were they thinking of when they hired her in the first place? But it's not their judgments I'm worried about. It's Curtis's.
What happened was, I got fired from the Call for Help Hotline. I'm ashamed to say I only lasted a week. Mrs. Phillips, my supervisor, said I got too personal with one of the callers, in direct violation of training guidelines. I know I handled it wrong, I know there have to be rules, but the truth is, if this girl-Stephanie-if she called again, I know I would do the same thing.
They tell us to be cautious at first, and already I had taken some prank calls from teenagers. But Stephanie's young, thin, strung-out voice gave her away so quickly, I was sure after only a few seconds that this was no game.
"Call for Help Hotline, this is Rudy speaking. Hello? This is Rudy, is somebody there?" "Hi, yeah. I'm, urn, calling for a friend." "Hi. Okay. What's your friend's name?" Long pause. "Stephanie." "Stephanie. Does Stephanie have a problem?" "Yeah, you could say that. She's got a lotta problems."
A lot of problems. Okay, which one is the worst? The one that's making her the most unhappy." "Oh, God, I don't know. She cries a lot. You know. Over, you know, a lot of stuff. Like, her family. Her friends." "What's wrong with her family?" Snort. "What isn't?" Iwaited.
"Her mother, okay, she's a real mess." "In what way?" Silence.
"In what way is she a real mess?" No answer.
"I bet she drinks too much." "What?" "Does Stephanie's mother drink too much?" "Jeez. Yeah. She does. So-did you just, like, guess that?" "Well, my mother drinks too much. So, yeah, I guess I just guessed it." Why did I say that? Why?
"Really? So she's a drunk? My mother's a total drunk, it's so awful, I don't see how I can . . . Oh, man. Oh, shit."
"No, wait, that's okay. Hey, Stephanie? Listen, it's okay, really. About ninety percent of the people I talk to start out telling me they're calling for a friend. But, you know, I think it's good-you probably would call for a friend, because you're a nice person."
(This is not exactly bow I usually talk; I mean, it's not quite my voice. But whoever I'm talking to on the Hotline, I find myself-found myself-falling into their idiom. Mrs. Phillips, before she fired me, said it was one of my most effective counseling strategies.) "Right," Stephanie said skeptically.
"No, you are, I can tell."
"How old are you?"
"Me? Forty-one.">br> Scoffing sounds. "Yeah, so like, what do you know about teenage angst?" "Teenage angst." I laughed, and Stephanie started to laugh with me - I thought she was laughing, but then I realized she was crying.
"Oh, man. . ." I heard her fingers slide on the receiver-she was going to hang up.
I said very quickly, "Yeah, my mother was a drunk, she tried to kill herself when I was twelve. When I was eleven, my father did kill himself." Long, long silence. I had plenty of time to ponder what made me blurt that out. I knew it was against the rules, but at the time, I couldn't think of any other way to keep her on the line.
Anyway, it worked. She started talking. "My mother almost every day when I come home from school she's, like, plastered. Or else she's sick. And I have to take care of her. I can't bring anybody over, so I don't have any friends. Well, one, I have one friend, Jill. But she doesn't . . . you know, I can't tell her what's going on,so..."
"I know what that's like. I didn't have any friends, either, the whole time I was growing up. But that was a mistake. I made that mistake."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, I mean, I did it all to myself, because I couldn't stop feeling ashamed. Like I was the one with the problem. But, Stephanie, listen to me, you didn't do anything, you really didn't. You're innocent. You're a baby. You don't deserve what's happening to you."
She burst into tears then. I did, too. Neither of us could speak for quite some time. I'm not sure, but I think this was when Mrs. Phillips started listening in.
"And, you know, this isn't even the main thing," Stephanie went on when she could talk. "Except it is, it's like over everything, you know?" "I know." "But right now it's something else, something even . .
"What? What, Steph?" "God." She started to cry again. I just waited. I was crying, too, but silently now. I thought of Eric, my therapist, and how he never cries, no matter how badly I go to pieces in his office. And yet I never think he's cold or indifferent-oh, no, just the opposite. But he doesn't cry. Which is good, thank God, because somebody's got to stay composed.
So I tried to pull myself together for Stephanie. "What happened?" I finally asked her. "I know it's something bad." "It's bad. Something I did."
"With a boy?"
Stunned silence. Then, "Well, shit." I had to laugh again. "It's okay, really, just another wild guess. What did you do? You can tell me if you want to." "Are you married? What was your name, again?" "Rudy. Am I married? Yes." "For how long?" "Four and a half years, almost five." "So you were, like, thirty-seven?" "Yes. Old," I said, before she could. I could tell that's what she was thinking.
"So did you ever, like .. . do anything with a guy that..." "That I felt ashamed of afterward?" "Yeah." We're not supposed to tell parallel stories. We're trained to listen and ask questions, and refer callers to the appropriate social service agencies. So all I said- and I don't really think this was so bad-was, "Steph, I've done things with men that I haven't even told my therapist about." She gave a nervous, relieved laugh. "So you mean, like, you go to a shrink?" "I'll give you his name. Eric Greenburg, he's in Maryland-" "Hey, wait-" "No, write it down. Just in case." I gave her the phone number, too. I think she wrote it down. Needless to say, this is something else we're not allowed to do.
"Okay," Stephanie said, clearing her throat, "this guy, he's in my math class. His name is George but everybody calls him Spider, Spider Man, I don't know why. I don't even like him that much, I mean, he's not my boyfriend or anything, but he was in the mall with these other guys last night, and I was with Jill, and we started talking and everything, and pretty soon Spider said why don't we come out to his car because he's got some stuff, you know, and we can smoke it. So Jill goes, no way, we're leaving, and-okay, this was really, really stupid, I know, but I told her to go on, because I was staying." "Uh-huh."
"So she left, and I went out in the parking lot with Spider and these two other guys and got high."
"Uh-huh."
"I've smoked before, it wasn't the first time or anything. I think it was my mood or something. And, you know..."
"Not wanting to go home."
"Yeah."
"Wanting to shake things up a little. Bust out."
"Yeah. Oh God, Rudy."
"I know. So . . .
"So ... you know what I did after that."
"I guess so. Flow was it?"
She giggled-but then she started to cry again. My telephone is on a table with two fiberglass panels on either side that are about chin height. If I don't want anyone to see me, I have to hunch over, practically put my face on the table. I covered the back of my head with my hand and listened to Stephanie cry and cry.
"It's okay. It's okay. You're all right,"
I told her over and over. "You're still yourself. You're still you."
"It was awful, Rudy, it was so awful. Oh, God, and I don't even like him! And he'll tell everybody, all his friends, and then..."
"Who cares? You're not like that and you know it. Screw them."
"Jill's not even talking to me!"
"Well, she's angry, but-"
"No, she hates me, my best friend hates me."
"No, she doesn't."
"Yes, she does."
"She's confused and she's mad at you, but she doesn't hate you, Steph. Is she really your best friend? For how long?"
"Since sixth grade. Four years." She said that like I would say forty years. "Oh, what am I going to do?"
"Well, I guess you have to talk to her."
"She won't talk to me! And anyway, I can't tell her all this stuff." "Well, you can. You told me. It'll just be really hard."
"I can't. She's so straight. And she's good, she's always been good. Sometimes I think if I had a sister, it wouldn't be so awful. Or even a brother, if I just had someone-"
"Well, not necessarily." "No, I mean, if I had a sister or something, then at least there would be somebody to share it with, all this crap."
"Well, you'd think so." "No, I think it would be a lot easier. A lot. You know, being lonely and everything..."
I did it again. I said,"W~ell, I'll tell you, I've got siblings, and they just made everything worse. When I was your age." "1 don't get that."
"You know how your mother's drinking makes you feel like a failure?" "Yeah?"
"Well-think if you had a brother and sister, and you felt as if you were failing them, too. Instead of one person to worry about, you had three. I'm just saying, it doesn't necessarily make anything better." "I still wish I had someone."
Why couldn't I just leave it at that? "Listen, Stephanie-Claire, my sister, ran away when I was sixteen and she was eighteen and joined a religious cult. She still belongs to it." "Huh."
"Yeah. This is a cult that believes we should revere cats because they're the direct descendants of Yahweh. Cats."
"Who? Yahweh?" "God-Yahweh means God." Stephanie burst out laughing.
"I'm not kidding. And this is just one thing they believe. And my brother, Allen, well, he's just lost, he's gone. This is my family, Steph. My father committed suicide and my mother was a lush, my sister joined a cult, my brother's a lost soul-and here I am at this crisis center, acting like a sane person! So-no, listen"-she was still snickering-"I think the first thing you should do is call Dr. Greenburg, and the second thing is, call Jill. Because you really need her right now." "Yeah, butldon'tknow..."
A little red light on the telephone starts blinking when the supervisor wants to break in. We're supposed to put the caller on hold, hit the button, and see what she wants. My red light had been blinking for about two minutes.
"I'm just saying, I think you should probably go for it with Jill. That's what I'd do if I were you. Do you really love her?" "Yeah. I guess." She started to cry again. Really cry- she was sobbing. What a nerve I'd touched that time.
"Hey, Stephanie, it's all right. Oh, baby, it's okay, it's okay. Shhh, you're all right." The red light kept flashing, flashing.
"Rudy?"
"What, baby." "Are you really okay nOw?" "I am, I really am." We're allowed to lie. And if we're not, we should be.
"Well, but... what about your mother?" Stephanie asked in a small voice.
"She's around. We both survived. She lives in Rhode Island with my stepfather, and we talk on the phone sometimes." No point in mentioning I haven't seen her in almost five years, not since my wedding. "She says she's sorry. Well, she said that once." "She did?" "Yeah. That meant a lot to me." "God, Rudy." She heaved a sigh. "It sounds like your family's more fucked up than mine is. Oh-I'm sorry-can I say that?" Oh, sweet Stephanie. "My family. Steph, if I started to tell you about my family, you'd be late for school tomorrow." Tickled laughter. I liked her so much. I had an idea. "Hey, do you live in the District?" "Yeah, Tenley Circle. I go to Wilson." "You know, if you wanted to, I could meet you sometime and we could talk some more. Would you like to? It's just an idea-" "I'd like it. Like some Saturday or something?" "That would be great. My husband usually works on Saturdays, so we could have lunch-" "Oh Jeez, I forgot you were married." "Yeah, I'm married." "So-is that cool?" "Being married? Very cool. You know. Usually." "Yeah, usually." Her voice dropped one whole, cynical octave. It broke my heart.
"So," I said, "how about Saturday? Do you want to meet?" "Oh, that would-" Click.
"Hello? Steph? Stephanie? Hello?"
I stared at the dead receiver in my hand. On my console, six or seven green lights flickered, indicating callers talking to volunteers. Had they transferred Stephanie to somebody else? I pushed a button at random.
coming out at this particular time, it's inconvenient, and that queen knew-" Click.
"Mrs. Lloyd." I jolted up straight. Mrs. Phillips never called me "Mrs. Lloyd"-I called her Mrs. Phillips and she called me Rudy. She's a large, beautiful, statuesque black woman, and she scares the hell out of me. She was standing over me, looming, really, her intimidating bosom heaving. I couldn't do anything but stare up at her. I felt like a guilty child.
"Mrs. Lloyd, hang up that phone, get your things, and get the hell out of this office." "Wait, I know I was-" "Out." She pivoted sideways and pointed through the window to the street. She had painted, one-inch fingernails and a lot of rings, a lot of clattering bracelets. She reminded me of a goddess, an Amazon.
"Please, Mrs. Phillips, if I could just talk to that girl for two more minutes, I think she-" "Lady," she said, incredulous, "you are fired. What were you thinking of?" She wasn't indignant, she was furious. Until now I'd never even heard her raise her voice.
"Mrs. Phillips, I was wrong, I know that, and I'll never-"
"We serve clients, Mrs. Lloyd. What do you think we're here for, to give you therapy?" "No, I -"You're lucky if I don't decide to have charges brought against you." "Charges!" It was every nightmare come true. Access your anger, Eric tells me-but if I had any now, it was buried too deeply, under too much guilt and remorse and misery and mortification. This was-this was one of the most classic failures of my life.