Not the stunning victory I’d hoped for.
26. RITALIN FOR THE HEART
Andi had a nightmare. Angry men with baseball bats came through the window; they wanted to hurt the children. She tried to make them stop, really she did. Or rather, she hid while Ovidio shot them with his gun. I ran to her room when I heard her cry and grabbed her to me. She crumpled against my chest, a reluctant, shuddering ball; she would not be consoled. Ahmad, wearing only his pajama bottoms, came to the door. I told him about the dream.
Damn your daughter’s Oedipal fantasies, he muttered. Andi pulled away from me, reached for him with both arms, her face smeared with tears. He took her from me and swayed with her, his arms strong against her back, his face nuzzling her neck, murmuring things till she fell asleep, still in his arms. Behind them, floating in the corners of the wall, lit by glow-in-the-dark stars, portraits of Ahmad and me, looking younger, more optimistic. I left Ahmad to put her back to bed and felt cold inside. When had I become superfluous?
From my bed I stared at the Corot poster on my wall, made strange by flashing avenue light. I’d made a vow when Andi was born: she’d be the center and the circumference of my life, its organizing principle and its limit. I would never abandon her, not in thought, word, or deed. I’d be everything my mother wasn’t. Nothing would ever ground my girclass="underline" I’d make sure she flew to her big heart’s content. Was I a bad role model? Was Connecticut better for my baby?
I’ve never been good at second-guessing myself. When that still small voice tells me to look at my life, I turn up the stereo, find anything to do but. The psychologists haven’t come up with a cure for what ails me: there is no Ritalin for the heart.
I kicked my blankets to the floor. Time to do something. Organize under the kitchen sink, flush the coffeemaker with baking soda. As I left my room, something crunched underfoot: a Popsicle-stick throne Ahmad had made for Tink — a throne, flattened now by my big foot.
What do you think, Tink? I asked, the hall nightlight illuminating the shape of things. Should I move to Connecticut? Will I lose my daughter if I don’t?
Tink kept his counsel, proving his wisdom, yet again.
•
The next morning, the spices were in alphabetical order and Andi was none the worse for wear. She was playing with the Lewinsky paper dolls and singing “Home, Home on the Grange,” which is how Pammy insisted the song went. She’d already eaten — I saw the remnants of grape jelly omelet in the sink. As I made eggs for myself, I imagined the New York things we might do: pizza picnic on the Staten Island Ferry? Counting seagulls on the Circle Line? Inventing Mongolian ancestors at Ellis Island? But Andi had a better idea. She ran into the kitchen wearing a frilly dress Aunt Emma had sent her. Pammy had invited her overnight; she wanted to go now. She’d already filled her backpack with essential toys and, I hoped, some underwear.
Whoever heard of going to a sleepover at ten in the morning? I asked. And why did she want to go so far from her mama?
She’s only upstairs! Andi said, giving me the look seven-year-olds cultivate that says, Where did I find this mother, is there any chance I can take her back?
I thought you didn’t like Pammy.
What’re you talking about?
Did you have enough breakfast?
Pammy’s mother bought Drake’s Cakes! she said mysteriously.
Oh, I said. Does Drake bake a good cake?
There was that look again.
Okey doke, I said. Eskimo kiss!
We rubbed noses and off she ran.
27. FALSE FRIENDS AND TRUE
I found myself looking out the bedroom window at Benny’s side display, wishing I were a birdwatcher and could produce binoculars. What did I hope to see? Benny and Psychogirl smooching by All Things Green (books on the environment, money, and “envy management”)? Ahmad was hum-singing along with Glenn Gould in the living room. Maybe he thought he could draw me out, pretend nothing had happened, pretend he wasn’t playing Connecticut tug-of-war with our little girl. He needed to apologize: confession, contrition, reparation, change.
Benny, Connecticut, the possible addition to our family — I needed help sorting it out, but where? Once upon a time, I’d have called Jeanette, Jonah’s sister. She was the one friend other than Ahmad who’d stayed true when I had a child. Some dropped me; others changed the subject when I talked about cracked nipples, the miracle of life. I hadn’t felt the loss, because I had Ahmad and Andi — I had my family. But Jeanette became a better friend then, visiting when Ahmad was teaching so I could shower, bringing me chocolates, telling somewhat relevant stories about her Dotty’s colic, never asking when I’d lose my baby weight. We didn’t have much in common except high school in Rome, and Jonah, but I enjoyed our confidences and the girly things we did — like getting our legs waxed and watching the weepies. She wasn’t great at managing her own life, but she was terrific at managing mine.
My stories ended that. She hadn’t minded “Tibet, New York,” about Jonah’s last days — it had moved her, even, she’d said so more than once. But in “Domino,” my most recent, published a year ago, I’d imagined us in high schooclass="underline" Jonah at fourteen, defacing a portrait Ahmad had made of me, my Botticelli hair flying wild, and jerking off in a tree as he watched T. and me making out in a copse. I made things up to “tell a deeper truth”; Jeanette said I’d made Jonah out to be a pervert — why would I do that? She wouldn’t return my calls.
When Ahmad went to his studio, I grabbed a book from his bookshelf: Poverty and Landlessness. Tiny print, grainy black-and-white photos — it was perfect! I called Jeanette, said her daughter Dotty had left a book last time she’d babysat. I’d be in the neighborhood, should I maybe drop it off?
Oh, Jeanette said. Sure.
•
I brought Romei’s “Screen” with me and reread it on the downtown bus — the crashed parties, the rendezvous in the park. I stalled in the consummation scene, stared at it as we bumped down Broadway, came to myself only after we passed Fairway. I elbowed my way off and walked back up to Seventy-ninth. As I waited for the crosstown, I kept staring at the page. Something wasn’t right.
False friends! The passage was littered with them. Words in one language that trick you into thinking they’re related to words in another (like Andi, who appears related to Ahmad, but isn’t). Like fame, which in Italian means not fame but hunger.
When the crosstown arrived, I went straight to the back and looped my arm around a pole. Had false friends insinuated themselves into Romei and Esther’s Eden? No. Were they reflected in the mirror as Romei posed in the clothes he’d “liberated” from his friends’ closets? No. They were only here, in the consummation scene. Baffled, I got off at Sixty-eighth and Third. Had Romei meant to do this? He must have. But why? Was he testing me, daring me to make a novice’s mistakes?
C’mon, Shira, I thought as I walked up Third Avenue. Why would he do that? Surely he was making a point about the lack of correspondence between the character Romei and his English-speaking love. Interesting, but who would notice but me? I couldn’t make his plays on words evident in translation — once translated, they’d disappear. (No one would look at the word bookstore and think, Bookstore is libreria in Italian, which doesn’t mean library—what is that crafty poet up to!) Romei’s joke would be visible only to the reader of Italian, and only if he were thinking about how it might translate.