Any Place I Hang My Hat (37 page)

“Did she organize the committee?”

“No, she’s just on it. We ran a couple of pieces on it and if her name wasn’t Hochberg, which I noticed only because I was proofing the article, I wouldn’t have paid attention.”

“Did you meet her?”

“No. I’m sure we ran a photo. If you want, I can find it.” As I was saying no thanks, Nell, Ms. Nature Girl, came in with the coffee, muffin, and a surprising number of paper towels, as if a spill of Exxon Valdez proportions were inevitable. When she left, Sandy said: “As far as Véronique Hochberg goes, you now have the sum total of my knowledge.”

“And the two sons?” I took a bite of muffin—either intensely seasoned bran or bland pumpkin. “I think they’re elementary or middle school age.”

“If they were superstars at academics or sports, I’d probably have heard of them. Same thing if they were deep into delinquency. In a community this size, sealed juvenile records don’t mean you don’t know what’s going on. But I never heard of them. Nearly all my business with Ira is on the phone, but the couple of times I’ve seen him he’s never whipped out his wallet and shown me pictures.” Sandy took a couple of sips of coffee, and then put down her paper cup on a small saucer-size plate. “Actually, we have a fair number of interesting people in this town. The Hochbergs are not among them.”

For someone who was not an ace behind the wheel, I had an amazing ability—well, amazing to me—to read maps. During the fighting in Afghanistan and the war with Iraq, I could have been one of those CNN generals standing next to a floor-to-wall map with a pointer in my hands. Give me a few seconds and I’d not only be able to present the best off-the-main-highway route from Karbala to Kirkuk, but also remember it a week later. Likewise, after a couple of minutes with a Greater New York road atlas, I could have been named official cartographer for Shorehaven.

I got off Main Street, which seemed to be a half-mile-long exhibit of pizza places and nail salons separated only by a hardware store, shoe store, bank, or gift shoppe featuring fat candles embedded with flowers. The residential areas nearest the center of town were middle class, with plastic tricycles temporarily abandoned by schoolchildren in front of single-car garages and odd objects stuck into spring green lawns: gnomes, frogs, bald eagles, though sadly, no flamingos.

As the neighborhoods became more prosperous, metal, plastic, and inflatable things disappeared from the grass. So did sidewalks and, eventually, streetlights. The Hochbergs’ house was in a section called Shorehaven Manor. That part of town was as upper middle class as it is possible to get without being actually rich. Still, the plots of land looked pretty small to me. At least they were far from the acreage of the estates in which a couple of my friends from Ivey had lived, and not close to the Orensteins’ house in suburban Connecticut, with its hill of a front lawn and forested backyard.

The houses themselves, however, came close to being grand. There were huge, red-roofed Spanish villas, massive, beamed Tudors, impressive brick Georgians with Tara-like white columns, often so close to each other that someone might be able to read the vintage of the bottle of sauvignon blanc on her neighbor’s dining room table. As I neared the final left turn to chez

Hochberg, Shorehaven Manor felt cramped to me, as if an entire kingdom’s aristocracy had been squished into ten acres.

I made my turn and drove around the block slowly to check out 48 Knightsbridge Road. A Tudor. Maybe Véronique Hochberg’s devotion to the Bard of Avon was such that she’d bought it as a constant reminder of his genius. The upper part of the house was the predictable white crisscrossed with dark timber beams. Perhaps the first floor was some pre-Elizabethan style that I didn’t remember ever seeing before, but it was part brick, part roughed stone, so it looked as if the builder had run out of one material and simply continued with whatever the next truck brought in.

As far as the landscaping went, I couldn’t judge. It was grass, a couple of trees, and a lot of bushes with small red and pink flowers. Not labor intensive. To me, gardens were either the big Botanicals in Brooklyn and the Bronx, or like Dr. Orenstein’s—lots of flowers that bloom at different times of year to attract butterflies, and, way in the back, a vegetable plot surrounded by a homey little fence to keep out deer, rabbits, and other vegetable-eating Connecticut creatures.

Coming back from my trip around the block, I parked the car across the street and a few houses down from the Hochbergs’, then took out the road atlas and my cell phone in order to look lost in case there were suspicious neighbors. Not that I saw any. Knightsbridge Road was quiet enough to seem devoid of life. I felt like an interloper who had dropped in from a parallel but populated universe.

With all that suburban silence, I stared at the dark wood door of the Hochbergs’ Tudor and tried to imagine myself standing before it, ringing the bell. I would hear footsteps. The door would open and my mother would be standing right there. In a bathrobe? In what Tatty had called her suburban gypsy style, some brilliantly striped Missoni outfit and hoop earrings? Maybe she’d recognize me because I looked like Selwyn’s sister. More likely, having been tipped off by Rose that I was alive, well, and in investigatory mode, she wouldn’t have to ponder, Hmmm, who is this person on my doorstep? She’d had a ninety-seven average. She would know.

Except maybe it wouldn’t be her at the door. Ira could be an easygoing entrepreneur who didn’t get off to work until eleven o’clock. Or he might have a regular morning golf game. I pictured him looking like an aging playboy in a lighthearted thirties movie, dressed in knickers and one of those hats that looked like a tumescent beret with a pom-pom.

Perhaps the door wouldn’t open at all. They might have an intercom. I’d be waiting for the door to open, but instead I’d hear a disembodied voice, Yes, who is it? What could I answer? Amy Lincoln? Would she come racing down from her bedroom or out of the kitchen, open the door and stare at me, whimpering, Oh my God, Oh my God, and then enfold me in her arms? Would a tinny voice rage through the speaker, If you don’t get the hell out of here I’m going to call the cops?

I put the seat back as far as it could go and rested my feet on either side of the steering wheel, the ultimate in un-Grandma Lil posture. The truth was, I still had no idea about what my mother was like. Okay, impulsive, strong-willed, and, at least in her behavior toward her own mother, anywhere from cool to nasty. But although the more I knew of Rose, the more I liked her, she herself wouldn’t win any prizes at the International Warmth Competition. True, she’d been welcoming to me, but maybe she and Selwyn could have been unloving toward Phyllis—or even worse.

I leaned forward and turned on the ignition for a second so I could open the window. Even though the day was gray, the smell of new-mown grass and the friendly chirps of birds on the quiet street made it seem lovely outside. The breeze had a chill, but I still felt enveloped by spring. The real reason I couldn’t figure out my mother was because I knew my father.

Chicky was midway between good-looking and handsome, like a really attractive actor playing a likable hoodlum. Except with my father, it wasn’t an act. It was him. Likable and somewhat crooked. Uncomplicated too, largely because he hadn’t the brains to be complicated. He had been loving to me, far better than anyone else who had known him could have imagined. And if he was telling the truth and he’d taken the rap for my mother so that I’d have an appropriate parent to bring me up, then he was also a profoundly good man.

But that didn’t explain Phyllis + Chicky = ? 4-ever, even though that ? endured less than two years. I could certainly understand a girl from my mother’s background falling for Chicky the Hunk, Chicky Bad Boy, and having a hot romance with him. I could even imagine someone like her falling so head over heels for his sweet sexuality that she’d run off with him for a few days. Even a few weeks. But longer? Marry him? Live in a rat-infested tenement? Get pregnant by him and actually have the baby?

My own sexual career had begun when I was fourteen. In all those years before I calmed down, the guys I hung with were definitely not all Harvard material—unless that category included guys who could hold up the bursar’s office at gunpoint. Certainly among those who actually were Harvard material—or Harvard students or Harvard faculty—there were some who were ill-mannered, misogynistic, or downright mean. But out of all these losers I’d fooled around with, probably 30 to 40 percent of the total, there was none with whom I would have plighted my troth, much less lived with rats.

I guess the pop-psych diagnosis for my mother would be self-hatred. By her slumming, she was punishing herself. That didn’t explain, however, why she was punishing her parents, too. And if she was so down on herself, how come she was able to break from me and Chicky and run off with—if the rumors Grandma Lil heard were right—a bodyguard? True, he might have been an utter delight, but he also could have been a dumb slab of beef packing a Smith & Wesson.

I could understand why she didn’t go back to her family, assuming they were not monsters. She was terrified that Chicky could convince a lawyer or a friendly fellow criminal that his was a bum rap and they should sec that justice was done—right, and here’s her address in Brooklyn. Or that one day, Lillian Lincoln would show up on her doorstep and hand me over, shitty diaper and all: I don’t want her and besides, she’s yours.

A glance at my watch. Almost eleven. I had to get back to the city, return the car, and show up at work to hand in my article, then hang around in case an editor had any questions. So if I was going to act, it had to be soon. Down the block, I saw a woman about my age or a couple of years older walking, or rather, being pulled by, a huge, hairy brown dog.

I put down my feet, pored over the atlas again, and had a conversation with no one on my cell phone. Dog and woman were coming closer. Okay, I thought, going up to the Hochbergs’ door wasn’t a great idea because doors can be slammed in faces. Police can be called. So what was the best way to approach my mother? Follow her? It might work, but what if she intended to spend the entire day reading Coriolanus or cleaning out her closet? What if she was agoraphobic and never went out?

And suppose she came backing out of her garage? Could I follow her? I knew detectives and investigatory reporters did that in movies: Make sure you stay four car-lengths behind. What if she was a terrific driver, taking turns at eighty miles an hour, while my car went out of control and crashed into a garden-supply center? Or what if bad driving was genetic and she led me on an eighty-mile journey out to the Hamptons at thirty miles an hour?

White woman near my age was schlepped by young brown dog past the car. She didn’t even see me. I had been surprisingly calm until then. I don’t know whether it was because I’d seemed invisible or because I knew all my thinking wasn’t getting me any place and the clock was ticking. Suddenly I became agitated. Within seconds, I went from agitation to fear. I only realized how frightened when I heard myself whimper.

I started the car and drove past my mother’s house again. Then, still too unhinged to be ashamed of myself for being such a loser, I drove on to the city.

I DIDN’T EVEN have to wait to get on the Long Island Expressway before being overcome with shame. Shame because I’d spent sixty-five dollars on a rental car, cut work, and accomplished nothing except learning Ira Hochberg liked golf. Shame because I, the make-an-outline, plan-ahead, neatness-counts kid, had driven to Shorehaven and gotten information, free coffee, and half a muffin from the editor-in-chief of the local newspaper, then hadn’t a clue about what to do next.

Back at In Depth, I made it a point to be seen, going to the library and making ostentatious notes, punching the soda machine with the heel of my hand, and other idiocies to establish in my colleagues’ minds the notion that I’d been around all day. Naturally, I also felt ashamed for doing this. Subterfuge was unnecessary because staff members were in and out of the office all the time. As long as your articles were up to standards and you didn’t miss deadlines, nobody gave a thought as to whether you were reading Federal Reserve stats on household debt service or going to a shoe sale at Saks. Still, I couldn’t get past the need to display what a splendid worker I was, just the way I had in elementary school, when I walked around with a backpack twice as heavy as it needed to be to impress my teachers with my willingness to cripple myself for knowledge.

The national editor, the guy who stood between me and Happy Bob, wanted a few changes in my piece, so I didn’t get out of the office that night until eight. It took me forever to walk home because I was so deep in unproductive thought about what I hadn’t done in terms of my mother and what I ought to do. I caught a reflection of myself—gray boot-cuts, blue shirt, black sweater, hysterical hair in need of cutting—in the window of a large drugstore. Clearly, I was staring at a display of Huggies diapers and Thermoscan ear thermometers, except I was clueless as to what had made me stop walking, how long I’d been standing there, and what I’d been thinking about.

It wasn’t until I was home, reheating the two slices of thin-crust pizza I’d picked up on the way, that I had my first productive thought of the day. Freddy Carrasco. The master of the Confronting a Long-Lost Parent game. Maybe I could learn something from him. Okay, our circumstances were not the same. His father was famous, my mother was not. His other parent had died, while Chicky was very much alive, albeit not a constant presence in my life. What I sensed in Freddy was that he’d tracked down—or stalked—Thom Bowles because he was looking for love. Admittedly, there was also money at the end of Freddy’s rainbow, but I didn’t think that had been his motivation.

For a few minutes, I mulled over trying to get more information about my mother from Chicky, but I knew him well enough to understand I’d gotten all I was going to get. The more I asked, the more willfully forgetful he would become.

I opened a Sam Adams and chugged down about a third of it while asking myself: What did I want from my mother? Love? Probably, though my head understood what my heart didn’t, that someone who had run away from me twenty-eight-plus years earlier wasn’t likely to want to hold me close and croon lullabies. Besides, she knew where I was. If she wanted to get into the lullaby business, all she had to do was call. But listen, my heart told my brain, she doesn’t know what to expect. Maybe she can only imagine you wanting to get even.