Domestic Affairs (23 page)

By the second half of our trip we knew all the ship’s comedian’s jokes, but it didn’t matter: We were cruising. Steve—who spends his life back home in jeans and a paint-spattered shirt—found that he loved putting on his tuxedo every night. I wished I’d managed to scrounge up more gowns than the four I’d brought, to avoid repeating my outfits. I began to look a little enviously at other women’s pearls and diamonds.

After twelve nights aboard ship (plus one night in Southampton, England) we were home again, stepping a little unsteadily onto land. And though during that week and a half I hadn’t missed the children as dreadfully as I’d feared, suddenly I was frantic to see them. All I wanted was to rub my cheek against my baby’s bottom and make a pot of soup.

Sometimes, now, we still watch the
Love Boat,
and it always makes me think of that brief, unreal interlude when we inhabited neither one continent nor the other, but a world apart from everything else. Eating, drinking, dancing, drifting in the Atlantic. Every now and then at parties (my children’s) I still tell one of Mickey Marvin’s jokes, featuring a dollar bill folded up in the shape of a telephone receiver and a punch line that leaves the five-year-olds doubled up with laughter. And sometimes, when I tell friends about our cruise, I take out the shipboard portrait taken of us, greeting the captain: I in my borrowed silk gown, Steve in his borrowed tux. That one also gets a laugh. The truth is, we are better suited to pumpkins around here than to coaches.

Thursday afternoons I pick Audrey up at school and drive her to a city twenty-five miles away for gymnastics lessons. It’s a wonderful school we go to—wall-to-wall mats and equipment, uneven parallel bars, balance beams, enormous bags filled with foam rubber, and a professional-size trampoline. There’s a bench at one end of the gym for the parents to sit on while they wait for their children, and a toy bin that keeps Charlie and Willy reasonably well occupied during the hour and a quarter of Audrey’s lesson. I could bring a book, but I love watching, not only my child but also all the other little girls in brightly colored leotards and gym shorts, dreaming of becoming ballerinas and acrobats. For them, anything appears possible.

We’ve been coming here for a year now; I know the routine pretty well. I bring a stack of books for my sons to look at when they get bored, and a couple of snacks to tide us over until dinner, which we eat at McDonald’s, just down the road from gymnastics class. This is our night for the big city.

Audrey loves these classes, adores her teacher and our Thursday routine. The waiting around part is hard for my boys, but the thought of the Happy Meal they’ll get afterward keeps them going. As for me, I take my pleasure vicariously—relishing the thought that I am giving my child something I would have loved, and never had, myself. All through my own school days, I remained a miserable failure at sports—the last one chosen for every team, the first one replaced by a substitute. To this day, I am unable to perform a cartwheel. For Audrey, I vowed (almost the day she was born), it will be different.

The truth is, she’s not a natural gymnast either. There are girls in her class who slide effortlessly into splits and flip across the room in one cartwheel after another, girls who spin round and round on the uneven bars and do somersaults in midair off the trampoline. For Audrey, every new skill they teach her is a struggle. But she’s getting them—and if I have to put a thousand miles on the car to make it happen, well, that’s one of the things mothers do.

Yesterday at her first class of the new school year, I found myself sitting on the bench beside the mother of a new student, a girl just Audrey’s age, whose family has recently moved to our area. So I was the veteran, the one who knew the ropes—naming the pieces of apparatus, explaining dismounts and trampoline rules and the policy concerning absences. “I signed Rebecca up because she’s just so gawky and awkward these days,” the woman sighed to me. And then, observing my child in one of her better headstands, the woman nodded appreciatively. “Was your little girl always that graceful,” she asked, “or did she pick it up here?”

Of course I beamed, and (secure in my own child’s accomplishment) I assured her that her daughter’s headstands looked just fine and would get even better. Audrey looked up just then, to be sure I had been watching, and waved, and I mouthed the words “Great job!” I recognized the look of pleasure that crossed her face before she turned back to the little group of girls, ready to attempt the next exercise. She was giggling about something. Her ponytail was bobbing, and she was hiking up the tights under her red leotard—making me realize she must have grown over the summer. They’re too short for her now. I reminded myself to pick up new ones for her. Maybe a new leotard too.

When the class was over, she ran up to me, still bouncing. Did I see her backward somersaults? her vault over the horse? her flip on the uneven bars? I hugged her, told her how well she’d done. “You know,” I said, “I was always too scared to get up on the uneven bars, even when I was a lot bigger than you. One time, when the teacher made me do a flip, I burst into tears.”

She made a face of exaggerated disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding, Mom. Flips are cinchy. Everybody does those.”

Nope, I said. Not your mother.

In the car on the way to McDonald’s, she was still flying. Maybe next session she could sign up for two classes a week instead of one? Maybe in a year or two she could be on the team? Maybe we could get a mat, so she could work on her routines at home? “We’ve got that old mattress up in the playroom,” I said. “That would never work,” she said. “It’s got to be a certain kind. You never did gymnastics, so you don’t understand.” In her voice was a tone—not exasperation so much as mild amusement, and the very faintest, most affectionate form of condescension. But because she is basically a kind and considerate person, she also gave me a hug, and said, charitably, “That’s okay, Mom. Nobody can be good at everything.”

My eight-year-old can do some things I can’t. She has begun a process that will be repeated with increasing frequency by all three of my children, for as many years as I live, in which the child surpasses the parent. It’s what I want for all of them. It’s why I drive all these miles on Thursdays, why I sit on that hard bench, why I write out all those checks I can’t always afford for gymnastics classes (also piano lessons and skiing lessons and art supplies), and why there will very likely be a regulation-style gymnastics mat under the tree this Christmas.

I remember the first time the thought came to me, that part of what being a parent meant was moving one step closer to the grave. Shifting: from protected child to child protector, from the one who walks on the inside to the one who walks closest to the road. When the thought first hit me, I was pregnant with my first child—the one who is now my eight-and-a-half-year-old gymnast—and (in the style of a nine-months-pregnant woman, who is seldom very far from tears) I was in tears. My body was no longer simply my own, I wept, but totally at the service now of a small person I hadn’t even met yet. I had longed for this moment. I wanted to become a mother. Still, it was a shock to realize that if I did my job right, I would have a child who was smarter, wiser, nicer, more secure, more accomplished than I. A child who could turn cartwheels and do flips. Who would someday say to me, “You mean, you can’t even do a backward somersault? Here, let me teach you.” And see, it has happened.

I was in New York City the other day—without my children or my husband, or any of the paraphernalia I usually carry (bags of groceries, a baby bottle sticking out of my purse) that give me away, instantly, as a married woman, a mother. Sitting on the bus, I felt a man looking at me in a way that hasn’t happened often in the eight years since Audrey was born. No way he could tell I was unavailable.

I guess, truthfully, I miss being looked at not as somebody’s mother, but as my own self. One pleasure I remember from my single days was the way every day dawned with possibilities looming. You never knew if this might be the train you’d board and meet the man of your dreams. There was always the chance that tomorrow you might fall in love. Given the choice, I’ll opt for loving someone, being loved, to the mysteries behind door number two. But no question, one element that’s absent from even blissful domestic life is mystery. Courtship. Suspense. (It’s no wonder so many mothers of young children watch soap operas and read romance novels.) A husband can be many things, but one thing’s for sure: he will never be a stranger in the night.

Early last winter (it was just before Christmas) Audrey flew by herself to visit her grandmother in Canada. It’s a trip she’s made often, ever since she reached the age at which airlines permit children to fly alone (and, in truth, a little before then too). It’s a direct flight: my mother puts her on the plane, and of course either Steve or I always pick her up at the other end.

This time she’d been gone about five days, and I was missing her badly—couldn’t wait to see her coming off that plane. I guess I was in a pretty keyed-up state: a combination of excitement at seeing Aud, and Christmas, which is a holiday that (I keep reminding myself) I love, even though I’m generally in tears at least once a day throughout the month of December.

This particular December day, I’d had a fight with Steve a few hours earlier. I can’t even remember anymore what it was about, but I know my themes well enough that I can guess. He wasn’t talking to me enough. He had fallen asleep on the couch again. He had slept through all three times Willy woke up in the night. The only compliment he’d given me in two days was for taking the trash to the dump. He was showing all the signs of being a man who’s planning to give his wife a knife sharpener for Christmas. Somewhere in there I had doubtless told him (my old refrain) that he was treating me like an old shoe.

When I set out in mid-afternoon for the hundred-mile drive to the airport, we hadn’t made up. I didn’t really mind the drive: I had brought with me a bunch of obscure bluegrass music tapes full of tragic love stories. Playing bluegrass banjo is a long-deferred dream of mine, but for the time being, I just sing along. That’s what I did that day all the way to Boston. Then, because I had a couple of hours to spare before Audrey’s plane got in, I stopped at a mall a few minutes from the airport to do some Christmas shopping.

I bought a few toys for the children and three dozen bagels for the freezer. When I looked at my watch I realized I had cut things a little closer than usual, but still, I knew, there was enough time to pick up our car, drive to the airport, and retrieve Audrey. As I walked to the parking lot, I said out loud—superstitiously—how much I loved her, and how lucky I was to have a daughter.

But when I got to the car, put down the packages, and reached into my purse for the car keys, they weren’t there. I checked again, and then I checked my pockets. I checked again, checked the ground around the car. I raced back to the toy store I’d been shopping in: no keys. No keys at the bagel stand. And now Audrey’s plane was just a half hour from landing. I knew the keys might be in the car (it was too dark to see) and they might be in the snow somewhere between the parking lot and the shops. But there was no more time to look. So, frantic now, I hailed a taxi and told the driver to take me to Logan Airport fast. I had only ten dollars left in my wallet. The fare came to five.

I got to Audrey’s gate with just five minutes to spare. I made a call to the Boston police, who told me they couldn’t get a car like mine open and started without seriously damaging the ignition, and in any case it might be a few hours before they could get around to me. I called Steve—told him what was happening, and explained that I’d be home late.

Then I caught a glimpse of Audrey, who was carrying an enormous box holding a Barbie Dream Carriage (her early Christmas present from her grandmother) and a couple of shopping bags besides. Of course I threw my arms around her first, and burst into tears. Then I explained about the car.

Neither of us had eaten dinner, but I figured we’d better use our last five dollars to get back to the car and try again to find the keys, or someone who could get the car open. It was around seven-thirty by this time, and below freezing, with a stiff wind.

To save money, I thought we’d try and share a cab. There was a friendly, kind-looking man in the taxi line, so I asked him if he might like to split a fare. The man—Ned was his name—said sure.

In the taxi, Audrey told him our story, leaving out nothing (not the bagels, or the Barbie coach, either). And it turned out that this fellow (a nice-looking man, about thirty-five) was an engineer who’d just flown in to set up a machine he’d invented at MIT. His briefcase was full of tools. “I’ll come with you to the parking lot,” he said. “I’ll get your car open.”

Well, I said, okay; and Audrey jumped up and down on the seat, announcing, “This is great! This is just great!” I suggested she could wait inside the parking-lot attendant’s booth, where it was warm and there was a television set, but she didn’t want to miss anything. So she sat on the hood of the car, bundled up in extra clothes she’d pulled out of her suitcase, and leaned over Ned’s shoulder while he laid out his tools on the roof and analyzed the situation.

With his special miniature flashlight beamed in through the windshield, Ned found out the keys were in the ignition. Then he took a coat hanger out of his garment bag, twisted it, and attached a screwdriver to one end. Then he attached some wire so he could maneuver the screwdriver, sort of like a fishing line, from outside the window. The whole thing became pretty elaborate.

And it didn’t work. An hour had passed now, and my fingers were numb. Maybe I should just leave the car and call a friend in Cambridge to pick us up, I said. Audrey and Ned protested. “I’m going to get this thing open,” Ned said.

He built a second invention. Audrey told him her longtime ambition—to be an inventor. He told her about things he used to build when he was a little boy.

We talked about all sorts of things while he worked on our car. He told funny stories about taking apart people’s stereos all the time, and Audrey told him about her trip to Canada. She mentioned what a good pie baker I am. He mentioned how much he loved pies.