Ask Again Later (3 page)

I bought it so I'd stay home more. I bought it instead of getting a pet. It's the closest thing to a living being without actually breathing or needing health insurance.

It speaks to me in concise phrases, without prolonged sentences that are weighed down with “ya know” and “at the end of the day” and “basically” and “um” and “like”—which I really appreciate. “Fill water tank. Fill coffee beans.” It's direct and to the point. It's one of the most uncomplicated and rewarding relationships I enjoy.

In fact, it was so uncomplicated that I was tempted to complicate it. I wondered, in the wee hours, after my new baby had been unpacked and readied for coffee making in the
A.M
.—whether the other appliances would be territorial? Jealous? For such a new appliance it certainly was receiving an undeserved amount of space. Of course, the refrigerator wouldn't be able to complain about that! Although the microwave would have a legitimate gripe. Even I recognize that with all of these imaginings, I'm going well out of my way to avoid my internal life. But recognizing it doesn't negate it!

One way I could give my internal life a leg up is by having only one newspaper delivered. But which one would it be? Do I want the
Wall Street Journal
more than I want Page Six of the
Post
? And on the day I have the time to read the whole Sunday
Times
, will that be the first day I don't have
home delivery of the Gray Lady? The price of abundance, I'm learning, is constant indecision.

I'm about to enjoy some frothy milk and coffee, read Page Six and at least the front page of the
Times,
when the phone rings.

I look at the coffee machine, in hopes that it might indicate whether or not I should answer the phone. A modern Magic 8-Ball. It doesn't reassure me, so I don't answer. I wait, try to stick to the plan—read my paper, drink my coffee, breathe.
Then
I play the message.

“Tonight,” Sam says, “if we're out of there at a reasonable hour, I think we should do…something.” His voice is sleepy and subdued enough for me to wonder if he's sleep-dialing—acting on some fantasy—and won't remember he's called.

“I've been up since four o'clock waiting for it to be almost six o'clock so I could call you. I just miss you, and I'm really fucking lonely,” Sam says. “Lately, when I think about you, and lately it seems like I can't stop—of course it doesn't help that I see you every day—I don't even think about anything great. I keep thinking about that week we were working together in L.A.

“That night I knew you were awake in your room and you wouldn't open the door. And outside of your door I left some steak that the guy at the restaurant wrestled into the shape of a swan. I thought you'd think it was really funny and come looking for me. Every time I think of that I feel like such a jackass. I gave you leftover meat in a fucking
tin-foil swan. Why did I think you'd respond to that?”

It's the call I'd been waiting for. What is the worst thing that could have happened if I'd answered the phone? Or opened that door? I would have to
live
my life.

He was right, of course. I was in my hotel room, worrying what hypothetical and amazing thing might happen next, yet afraid to find out. I waited twenty minutes before venturing into the hallway to see what Sam left. The swan. There's only one person in the world who would try to seduce a woman with leftover New York strip—and I let him get away!

Sam has this funny way of seeming more real on the phone than he is in person. Not more real, but more himself. He feels safer the farther away he is. He's like me, in this state of paralyzed limbo. It's the dance of avoidance that happens when your wife leaves you and you meet a woman whose father walked out on her. You are locked in perfect step.

If
it
were going to happen,
it
would have already happened. (Admittedly, even while I'm thinking this, I'm hoping it's not true. It's too simplistic, and when you apply the statement to almost any situation, frankly, it doesn't hold up. I mean, what does its not having happened yet have to do with preventing it from happening in the future? Nothing! Is it a predictor of things to come? Who knows! I don't want the statement to be true, of course. It's just true for now. That gets my hopes up, which just lets me down, so I need to stick with this thinking—you see.)

The Lump

I WANT TO LEAP
through the phone and kiss Sam. I want to thank him for being honest about how he feels and the things he regrets. The phone rings again. I skip the small talk. The hellos. I just answer and speak:

“It's not personal. It's situational. I'd be all over you if I didn't have to sit across from you at every meeting,” I say. “Let's not forget the Christmas party. One kiss and I get called into HR and am asked to reread and sign the non-fraternization policy again—in front of a witness this time. I felt like I was twelve. My feeling is if I'm working seventy hours a week, and I have the energy to kiss anyone, including a coworker, my stamina should be applauded. I should get some kind of bonus for compartmentalizing my life so beautifully and to the firm's advantage. Our timing has always been off, Sam.”

I never go out on a limb, but it feels breezy and wonderful out here; I'm weightless, unburdened! And at the same time it's starting to seem…eerily silent.

“Hello?” I say.

I want Sam to reassure me. Tell me that we make our own timing. Everything will be okay.

“Well, kudos to you, honey,” my mom says. “That's just good common sense. In my day, relations with a coworker were considered dirty, even cheap.”

Of course I don't confess that “dirty” may well be the allure of it. And “cheap” only sweetens the pot.

“Relations?” I say.

“It's none of my business,” my mother says. “I wish I'd slept around when I was young and had a different body and done all sorts of things I'd be ashamed of now, too. Who's HR?”

“I'm not sleeping around,” I say. I knew no good could come from my answering the phone this early in the morning. Why had I second-guessed myself? Only people on a mission make calls at that hour. The kind of people who have been pacing their kitchen waiting for six-thirty to arrive. There's no adequate preparation for that kind of ambush.

“Emily, you're a grown woman; do as you please,” my mom says.

“I am doing as I please. Why are you calling so early? Is something wrong?” I ask.

“You're going to have to call in sick today,” Mom says. “I really need you.”

The requests for me to call in sick happen regularly and usually mean someone bailed on lunch, or golf, or a spa day. She needs a seat-filler. The notion of paying in full for something she failed to cancel twenty-four hours in advance is one of her bigger beefs.

Someone
will pay. Usually, it's me. Even in high school it was an issue. I'd sleep through the alarm and she'd
gleefully meet me in the kitchen at ten
A.M
., asking what “neat” thing we should do that day. I was tardy or absent from nursery school a record forty-seven times…and it was only a three-day-a week program. I was a very convenient breakfast companion for my mother.

“I need to go to work today. I could meet you for dinner, or stop by after work,” I say. “We're almost finished with this project. I can even take a vacation when it's over. Could we go to Florida?”

“I need someone with me now, right now,” Mom says. “I'm dying.”

“Dying? Come on, Mom. What is that can't wait until seven o'clock tonight?” I say, getting annoyed.

“Cancer,” Mom says. “And I don't want to be alone with it in my living room anymore.”

Impersonating Happiness

MY MOTHER HAS
never been a reliable narrator of her own story. Once, she had a heart attack. It was the very best kind of heart attack a person can have. It was the kind that happens when a person self-diagnoses—actually
mis
diagnoses—her own panic attacks. She was immediately given a clean bill of health from a cardiologist. The second, third, and fourth opinions concurred with the first opinion. Out of habit and suspicion, she continued walking around holding her chest for several weeks, while
swearing off red meat and chasing down her aspirin with Bordeaux.

My family communicates through extremes: comedy or silence or high drama. Speaking directly, or from the heart, is too “on the money.” It would eliminate all the anxiety of a surprise, of nuance. Nuance, it turns out, is very convenient. The perfect scapegoat. You don't necessarily have to mean what you say. You can even pretend to be misunderstood. Humor impersonates happiness.

When my parents told me they were divorcing, they joked about it for weeks. My mother giggled about my father's appearance, his lack of organization, and his inability to dress appropriately without someone's laying out his wardrobe. He wouldn't know how to find his way home, which was fine, since he wasn't welcome to come home anyway.

My father laughed about how my mother would be afraid to leave the apartment without him. All dressed up and too afraid to go. She would have to live her life on the phone, he said. Which was fine since she never stopped talking.

Neither one of them was kidding, and neither one of them was funny. At least not on a topic so close to them or so new to them. Their marriage wasn't—it turns out—a mistake. They were well suited for each other even if they couldn't manage to be happy. They did fit, in that peculiar way that incomplete people sometimes do. They failed in
different areas, and when they felt up to it, they picked up the slack and helped each other. Most of the time that worked.

My mother relied on my father's total lack of social awareness to get herself out the door under the guise that she was helping him navigate the world. My father needed structure; he needed to be steered by my mother. He was her confidence, her most practical accessory.

The Davenport

I SAW HER
two days ago. She didn't look ill. She looked fantastic. Healthy. She looked like a woman who's had her share of well-researched, age-minimizing treatments, including but not limited to a thoughtful, agonized-over surgical tweak here and there.

As I let myself into her apartment and take my key out of the lock, I call to her: “Mom.” I want to hear her voice before I walk in because I fear she may already be dead. I don't want to discover her body in the worst scavenger hunt ever.

She's in the living room, on the davenport, with her legs elevated. She's the only person I know who calls her sofa a davenport. Joanie could never sit on a sofa, or a couch. Joanie relaxes on the davenport. Ice pack on forehead and dressed in new silk pajamas—sea foam green—and a quilted capelet with a fur collar. Matching slippers
with heels are placed strategically on the floor next to the davenport so that anyone walking into the room will see that they perfectly complement her well-chosen ensemble. I should be relieved by the visual. So staged and in need of a witness. But I'm not relieved. I've never in my entire life seen my mother in pajamas past seven
A.M
.

A year and two months after my father left, we started celebrating Christmas again. Very carefully, I woke my mother, eager to rip wrapping paper. She told me to take a shower, brush my teeth and hair, make my bed, and put on a dress first. Then she showered, and watched Mavis the housekeeper make her bed and our breakfast.

It was torture for a six-year-old. I ate at record speed. Loaded the dishwasher. Wiped down the table. Topped off her cup of tea. Then, exhausted from the adrenaline, I'd retreat with her to the living room near lunchtime. At last I was able to open gifts. Neatly. One at a time. As if unwrapping explosives.

Mavis would sit about fifteen feet away from us, watching. She was a witness to our life, including our holidays. Any invitation for her to join us would send her fleeing to her tiny bedroom. When we gave her gifts, she opened them quietly, and in private, the same way she ate her meals.

I see now how foolish it was to think she might be dead. My mother would never die on the davenport. The silk upholstery, with monkeys playing various woodwind
instruments, would not set the appropriate dramatic effect that the occasion would call for. She'd die in bed, where her stomach would look flatter. Or in the breakfast room, where the light is especially flattering.

This is what the world looks like when you're raised by people who can't be serious.

“Mom,” I say, “I'm here.”

“Shhh,” Mom says. “I need some sleep, then we'll talk. I've been awake all night.”

“You can sleep later,” I say. “I need to know what's going on. What kind of cancer? What kind of treatment? When did you find out?”

“Breast cancer,” Mom says. “Now let me rest. I've been too terrified to fall asleep. I don't need an interrogation.”

“Of course you do! Without an interrogation, I'd get no information at all,” I say. “They must have told you more. I'm sure they didn't say you had cancer and then show you to the door.”

“Practically,” Mom says. “Which was fine with me. It was a brisk sunny day, a nice time for a walk. Better than being told on a rainy day, in my opinion. Besides, what else was there to say—‘Here's a pill'? You know I'm not going to be good at this. I have to go to the hospital for tests, classes, monitoring. It's going to take up a lot of time. I don't want to be around sick people. I really don't have time for this right now.”

“No one has time for it,” I say.

“Oh, you know what I mean. Some people like a project. Like to research and find the newest drug, the best doctors, the latest this, the hottest that. I really just want to enjoy my home, my daughters, take my walks, and have a nice glass of wine at night. I don't need anything else.”