Diane explained to Lily that fifteen years had gone by since then, that medicine had learned and developed a great deal in heart treatment. “It’s the most successful area of medicine there is,” Diane said.
“You’re smart,” Lily said. Her chin buckled under her upper lip. “You’re my smart girl,” she repeated.
Diane felt her heart expand, warm against all the years of silence, hot and red, glowing against the ice age that had formed between them. Diane took the bony fingers, cold with fright, in her palm. “Don’t worry, Ma. They do know what they’re doing.”
“If they make me into a horror,” Lily said, “just shoot me. I don’t want to lie someplace, drooling all over myself.” Lily laughed, a ghastly hysterical laugh, at this thought. “That’s all I need — to end up wearing diapers with some schwartzer to change them.”
“Will you please not call them that, Ma?”
Lily took offense. Loudly proclaimed she wasn’t a racist. Her proof: she paid her girl (a black woman of sixty) a dollar more an hour than the going rate for housecleaning.
My mother is dumb. How is that possible? Was Daddy so brilliant? He owned and managed three record stores and made a good living, but he was hardly Einstein. Where did I get my SAT scores from? There must be some intelligence in this woman; there had to be gold buried beneath the layers of conventional attitudes and dull gossip.
Maybe not. I was probably kidnapped from a roving band of intellectuals, hijacked away from a life of the mind and forced to live in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
Diane called home while waiting for Lily to emerge from the catheterization. She had read in the release disclaimer there was a 1 percent chance that insertion of the catheter would provoke a heart attack. The document was pretty good legally, but nothing could protect the hospital from a clever lawyer.
“I’m a lawyer,” Diane had heard herself saying to Dr. Klein, just as stupidly as Lily had. Even dumber, Diane had lied, saying, “I’m an associate at Wilson, Pickering.” She had been so intent on scaring the doctor with this fact that she had forgotten to say her tentative farewell to Lily, her just-in-case good-bye. “Don’t worry, Ma,” she had planned to say. “I love you.”
After the doctor left, Diane had another opportunity, but Lily distracted her, throwing a temper tantrum about her legs being uncovered because her gown was too short. “I’m a small woman!” she began to shout. “This must be for a child!”
“It doesn’t make any difference, Ma,” were the last words Diane had spoken to her mother before she went in. “You’re not going to a bar mitzvah. Don’t worry about your outfit.”
That farewell was a far cry from “I love you, Ma!” She’s going to be all right, so it doesn’t matter. Diane reached Francine at home. Byron was out again with Peter. Diane’s absence seemed to be a blessing. Peter had taken off three days in a row, treating Byron to a movie, the circus, and now, although it sounded unlikely, according to Francine, to a play.
Diane sighed and stared out the waiting-room window at the hospital’s half-empty parking lot. A drizzle had begun. There was nothing to see but the cars, put in slots like empty shoes in a closet, longing for use. Diane had enjoyed that nighttime drive down from New York. Alone, urgent, scared, music playing out of the darkened hollow beneath her, the dashboard lights glowing like cat’s eyes.
If she dies, I’ll get in the car and disappear. Drive and drive and drive. If she dies, I’m an orphan. And orphans wander. Alone.
NINA WANDERED the aisles of the drugstore until she found the laxatives. She hadn’t needed them in years; the worst of her constipation had ended in college when she began to drink coffee.
Maybe I should start Luke’s day with three cups of espresso, she thought.
Tad had asked her to work for him on next year’s line. He suggested she drop her courses at FIT and work full-time.
“You’re not one of these children,” Tad had said. “You don’t need this. Work for me for a few years and they’ll all be going to you behind my back and offering you the world.”
She almost believed him. She said yes, she would drop her courses and become his assistant, my number two, as Tad called it. But she hadn’t told Eric the news. That was wrong. But she needed at least a few days to think up her explanation of why taking the job was so important. She knew it was, but she couldn’t explain why.
There were lots of new twists to the laxatives, so-called natural laxatives, but when Nina studied their labels, they all had chemicals of one sort or another and cautioned that regular use might lead to dependence. Eric wouldn’t accept that for his son. Although Luke was getting the shit out, his body wasn’t making it easy. She called the behavioral psychologist and he said, “Well, as long as he’s trying and doing it, you can continue the mineral oil to make it easier.”
But Eric had said no to that. “He’ll be on it for the rest of his life,” Eric said.
The Perfectibility of Man. But Eric was right. Luke was happier, freer, his spirit blossoming. He played for hours now, no longer comatose on the couch, staring at television. He concentrated on his pretend games, learned the alphabet merely by osmosis, used the slide fearlessly, let go of her and Eric in the mornings with assurance — Luke was tougher, more decisive, surer of himself.
She found something new. Fiber biscuits. She read the package carefully. All natural ingredients. Can be used as a daily supplement without a risk of dependence.
Don’t be dependent. Don’t need anyone. Dress yourself, fight your own battles, carry your sword into the world and conquer it. There’s love at home, but there’s happiness outside.
She showed the biscuits to Eric. He read the box three times. “It doesn’t seem to have chemicals or anything bad,” he admitted, but with suspicion. “What do we do? Have him eat one a night?”
“Why not? It’s just bran, that’s all. He can have it before he goes to bed, right after pooping.” Luke now made a regular trip to the toilet with Eric right before his bedtime stories.
It was all so absurd, so laughable. But it wasn’t, not really, she knew it wasn’t.
Over dinner, she tried to tell Eric about Tad’s offer, but she couldn’t let go, sever herself from being Eric’s wife, always convenient, always willing to make things easy.
What do I say if Eric says, no, I need you to be here, I’m under a lot of pressure?
Eric is under a lot of pressure. His face seemed to be pulled so tight that he couldn’t loosen enough to smile. He sat at dinner, staring into space, not hearing Luke’s happy monologues: “You know something? It’s not so good to build something very tall, because they fall down. Unless you make a bottom—”
“Foundation,” Nina said. “A foundation is what goes on the bottom and holds up the building.”
“Yeah! A foundation. You have to make a big foundation or something tall will fall down.”
Eric stared off. His eyes were big and absent. Their brown color usually had depth, allowing light to penetrate into his soul; these days they were clouded, a muddy pond, no reflection, no transparency, just swirling, stormy dark.
“Are you with us?” Nina asked softly, touching Eric’s hand.
“Has your mother called you lately?” he asked, quickly, as if an answer were urgent.