Happy Family (14 page)

Cici was in her bathroom. She traced the name and address, going over each letter with the point of a fountain pen until the paper started to tear. She felt every loss rise up in her, the pain was so deep she could not bear it. She scratched at her arm, clawing at her flesh. It was not enough; she needed to cut all the way down, to hit the quick. She took the point of the pen and stabbed at her arm until she broke the skin. For a moment, she felt the relief of physical pain.

Cookie had been pounding on the door, and now she said: “I'm calling Mr. M. if you don't give me a sign you haven't slipped on the bathroom floor and split your damn head open like a ripe tomato.”

Sol had had to go into the city, citing unexpected problems with the new apartment. He would be home late that night before he went on his business trip, or he might stay over. She thought of all the nights he'd stayed in the city, how she'd worried about him being there alone. She thought of how he always took a shower when he got home late. She thought of little things and big things; there was no size chart for lies.

The fountain pen had leaked all over her hands. Blue ink stained her skin and dripped onto the marble floor. Her white slip too; she'd bunched it up to get at her stomach, to dig at her scars, but they were too resilient, wouldn't be opened. How would she clean up the mess? She took her toothbrush and started scrubbing the floor.

“I'm calling him,” Cookie shouted, still pounding on the door.

“No,” Cici said, her voice surprisingly strong.

Cici leans back in her chair in her jewelry vault, her muled feet propped up on the ottoman next to the unopened Bulgari box. The empty bottle of Sancerre lies on the oriental carpet, next to the profiterole plate that's clean save for a few coagulated drops of chocolate. Donizetti's
Lucia di Lammermoor
plays softly from the speakers; candles diffuse cardamom and bitter-orange scents.

Her right knuckle is swollen with age; the ring might fit her now. The skin on her hands is still soft, but she hates the sunspots and veins. She had her jewelry, and Sol had his wine cellar. Sol taught her about wines, how to look at the color with the glass tipped. If it was thick, almost blood-dense, it was a Big Red, and Sol loved his Big Reds. If jewels are the patron saint of the guilty, then the ruby is the Queen of Hearts.

Once she knew about the emerald ring, Cici couldn't stop picturing her husband and Catherine Webster, their naked bodies rising up to meet each other. She had sat for a long time in their bedroom, looking at the piece of paper with her husband's mistress's name on it. Then she'd searched the house for scissors. She was sure she had some in her sewing box.

The first cut was easy. Cici almost wished Sol were there to witness it. She was a little tipsy; she'd been drinking the best of his Big Reds. Her right hand held the scissors while her left hand riffled over the rows of Sol's pants, jackets, and ties. She'd taught Sol how to dress. Had picked out all of his clothes, had his monogram sewn on the sleeves of his custom-made shirts. She thought about the weather where Sol would be going for a conference in California, he said—day wear, evening wear, maybe something a little sporty for afternoons. She color-coordinated the ties, shirts, and suits and grouped them on the floor. Then went into her closet and got tissue paper. Once she had everything organized, Cici cut. She started with the pants of his favorite blue suit. The leg came off with several satisfying snips.

She cut arms, toes, crotches, ran the scissors over the compression socks Sol used for his phlebitis, and they curled like ribbon. Threads scattered across the floor like spring pollen. She folded his clothes and packed them with tissue paper, like she always did, so they wouldn't wrinkle. She layered the items carefully, concealing the cuts. When it was all nice and neat, she closed the suitcase. For a moment, she was not sure she could follow through with this. It is amazing the things we think we cannot do and then when the time comes, it is so easy. As easy as a kiss on the cheek to say good-bye, travel safely.

When Sol got back from his trip, he called from the airport to say he'd be staying over in the city.

“How was the weather?” she said, gazing out the window of her Montclair kitchen at the lilacs in full bloom.

“Fine,” he said, “it's always nice in Southern California.”

“So they say.” She heard the bustle of the airport, someone being paged over the loudspeaker. “You sleep well in the hotel?”

“Everything was fine. The driver is here, I have to go, darling.”

“But was the weather too warm? Did you have the right clothing?”

“Perfect,” Sol said, “and the thing about travel is…you can always buy what you need.”

Tears were dripping down Cici's face when she hung up the phone. She went into Sol's closet and grabbed an armful of the Brooks Brothers and Armani suits off their wooden hangers. She curled herself into a ball on the floor like a child and would have fallen asleep like that if Cookie hadn't interrupted her.

“Twenty-five dollar.” Cookie was standing straight and tall like a Miniature Pinscher with an agenda. “I ain't deaf, dumb,
and
blind—I know what's been going on around here.” Cookie picked up a pair of Sol's pants. They're now shorts. She put them back on the hanger. “It ain't none of my business, but I'm here to tell you there's something you can do about this situation. Now get on up, you shouldn't be rolling around on no closet floor.”

Cookie handed her one of Sol's handkerchiefs. “Blow good and hard, now.” Cici sat up and blew her nose like an obedient child. “All right, I'm only going to say this once.” Cookie took the handkerchief, folded it, and placed it back in Sol's drawer on top of a stack of clean ones.

“Twenty-five dollar. That's what it cost you.”

“Twenty-five dollar for what?”

“Come on, Mz. M., you got Mafia in Italy, don't you? Just about the only thing That Nigger is good for is knowing folks who know folks, and yes, you know what I mean.”

“You're not saying it is twenty-five dollars to—Cookie! God, He hears you.
Ossia la Madonna!
”

“Like God don't hear Mr. M. when he's doing what he's doing? He don't like that much either. It's always us women who suffer. I don't care what the Bible says, it's not right.”

“But…twenty-five dollars, is so nothing…” Cici couldn't help thinking that Sol's life was worth more than that.

“To you, but to some folks—”

“Shhhhhht! It is a sin to even think like this.”

“A'right, Mz. M. I just wanted you to know that you could do something constructive instead of drinking and cutting up clothes. That Nigger can work it out so nobody's the wiser. You know what he gone and done? He bought himself a Cadillac; how he got the money I do not know—you think I saw any of it? No sirree. And you know what? That damn Cadillac sits in front of the damn house because he can't afford to put gas in it. So I told him, Go live in it, fool, go get your money's worth.” Cookie chuckled. Cici laughed as well, not because it was funny but because she was now a little afraid of Cookie.

“Thank you, Cookie. But I could not do that.” Did Cici consider it, even for a second? She crossed herself and thought she'd have to go to see Father Padua immediately.

Who would think that a human life could cost so little? Cici had no idea Cookie knew those kind of “folks.” Cici didn't even know the name of Cookie's husband; she called him only That Nigger. She thought she should send him a present; maybe he was angry not to be included at Christmas when she'd sent presents home for Cookie's children. Would he like a nice Burberry raincoat?

Cici's thoughts are interrupted by the sound of the pug scratching at the door. John Paul III doesn't like to be alone. Cookie's proposition had made her wonder how well we ever know other people, even the ones we see every day, even the people we love. Sol certainly had his sins, but there were also her own. She had been so passionate, so hungry for every pleasure the body offered. She should have gone to church while she was pregnant, confessed her sin of placing her desire over the safety of her baby. Wasn't it a just punishment that after her surgery, she could not make love without pain or fulfill her husband's desire? In some deep unarticulated place, Cici knows this is what led him to Catherine Webster.

T
he more Cheri looks at the black-and-white card showing a winsome boxer in a birthday hat, the more it resembles Eddie Norris's dog. The birthday card is from Suzanne, the secretary of the Near Eastern Civilizations Department, who sends one every year. The generic Hallmark card is the first communication Cheri has received from anyone in her department in a while—her colleagues evidently thought it best to distance themselves from her in light of the recent allegations.

Suzanne's card was waiting for her on the kitchen counter, along with a growing pile of FedEx packages from her mother, who insists that Cheri celebrate this damn fortieth birthday, despite her demand that Michael
not
throw her a party and regardless of the fact that Cici has remained in Montclair and is not ensconced in the guesthouse to oversee the festivities. It was just as well, after the interrogation Cheri went through at her first meeting with the review committee earlier this morning. Only to be told, at the end, that they wouldn't be reconvening until school recommenced in September.

“Keep your powder dry”—that's what Eddie Norris would have advised. Eddie schooled her in how to have her deposition taken for a case that went to trial: answer only exactly what is asked of you, don't offer more information; when in doubt say, “Can you repeat the question?” And that's exactly how she'd treated the academic gestapo. She had turned over all her grade books, her students' tests and papers. She'd studied her lecture notes from the discussion of sacred prostitution and prepared answers to the committee's likely questions. She'd felt a wave of
Punch-Drunk Love
anxiety cresting over her, and she'd popped a pregame Ativan.

Eddie's boxer. They called her Trooper General Hole-in-the-Tongue Gonzales because her bottom fang tooth kept getting caught in a hole in her tongue, exaggerating her underbite. When they found the dog, Cheri had been at a low point in her new career in law enforcement. She'd expected hostility from outside—civilians on the Lower East Side hated cops. But their jeers were nothing compared to the onslaught she'd endured
inside
the Ninth Precinct. She expected the hazing that came with being a rookie. She was used to having to prove herself. What blindsided her was the rage directed at her because she was a woman.

Maybe she'd overestimated gender equality in 1984. She was of the generation of women who were told they could bring home the bacon
and
fry it up in a pan. Or maybe she just thought that she could conquer any obstacle through sheer force of will. It wasn't the first time she'd been called a dyke because of her short hair and the multiple holes in her ears. Her firearms instructor at the police academy took her aside one day and said, “Guys will want to do you. If you won't, they'll say you're a lesbo. And you're a hell of a shot, better than most of the men. Might want to tone it down just a bit; Jewish, educated, female—they're going to hate you. Their wives will hate you. Not because they're worried you'll fuck their husbands, but because they don't trust a broad to have their man's back. You'll have to put up with that shit for years. Your career, your pension will depend on it. Maybe now's a good time to think about going back to school with the rich kids.”

There was no way Cheri was going to be that girl. His suggestion only spurred her on, inspired her to prove him—and Sol and everyone else who assumed she'd fail at the NYPD—wrong. So she kept her mouth shut, didn't protest being relegated to desk work, was determined to survive the daily harassment, the bloody tampons in her locker, having guys walk past her like she didn't exist. Endure. She'd go to the gym and punch the heavy bag when it got to be too much and if a tear spilled, she could say it was sweat. She'd cover her face and scream into her pillow at night so that in the morning she could saunter in again like nothing bothered her. The worst thing she could do was let them see it got to her. How it bored into her like a parasite, the knowledge that they were all saying, “You'll never be good enough to belong.” Cops were a family. When you were in the fold, no matter where you came from, you were blood. She yearned for that kind of family, for that feeling of belonging. Withstand.

One morning, nine months after starting with the NYPD, she'd gone to the gym early and noticed in the shower that something was wrong with her conditioner. She couldn't dry her hair; it looked like greasy vinyl and smelled like mayo. Someone's idea of a practical joke. The wood-paneled wall in the muster room had a row of official photographs and plaques inscribed with the names of members of the Fighting Ninth who'd been killed in the line of duty. Cheri had had one of those taken after her graduation from the academy. One of the photographs was of a man who looked barely twenty. She stared at the name on the plaque—PTL Timothy Rocco—searing it into her mind. It was as if a sponge blotted up all the noise, the humiliation, even her desire to keep wiping at her hair. And then the room was full again and the sergeant was pointing to her, saying she was in the rotation. They were short-staffed. Somebody had to take Cheri in his car. She waited like the last kid to be chosen on the ball field. And that's when Eddie Norris walked in late and, without looking at her, said: “She's with me.” Everyone knew that if Eddie Norris tapped you, it meant something. There were protests and guffaws but Eddie Norris gave no explanation and made no apology. All he said to her was “If you fuck up with me, you won't fuck up again.”

It wasn't until their last call of the day—a complaint of a foul smell coming from an apartment off Avenue C—that they found the boxer. The stench of the apartment made bile rise in her throat. But Cheri wasn't going to pull a rookie move and throw up in front of Eddie Norris. The dog was severely emaciated and dehydrated, barely able to lift her head. On the floor next to her was the decomposing body of a woman still holding a crack pipe—the coroner had to break her fingers to get it loose. The dog went nuts when they started to move the body, sinking her teeth into Eddie's hand.

Eddie saved that dog just like he saved Cheri. He nursed the dog, cooked her rice and chicken, and eventually her eyes brightened and her fur grew back with a new luster. For months, she smelled like chicken soup, and Cheri joked that it was from Eddie's being a Jewish mother. Eddie took the boxer everywhere and the precinct adopted her as one of their own; she even slept for hours under Eddie's desk while he and Cheri were on duty in the projects of the Lower East Side.

It's funny what Cheri remembers. Trooper General had a thing for toes. She liked to go after Eddie's feet, especially when he and Cheri were having sex. He'd swat her away, but she'd get excited and turn in a circle like she was chasing her tail, her tongue hanging like a wind-blown necktie. She was comic relief from the assault of the Job, and Cheri went from tolerating the dog to looking forward to seeing her. Trooper General had the unnerving habit of staring at them while they were sleeping; if Cheri woke up, there she'd be, her eyes trained on them. “She just wants to make sure we're still alive,” Eddie said.

“Your mother's gone crazy again with the presents,” Michael says as he walks into the kitchen. “Are you going to open those packages or just let them pile up until the day of? You'll have to move them before our company comes.”

“What company? Tonight?” Cheri instinctively slides the birthday card back into the envelope.

“Next week. I'm waiting on the exact date. We finally got that Sedona prick to let the shaman come here for a few days. You wouldn't believe the negotiations with customs and immigration. They're treating him like he's a terrorist because he's brown-skinned; talk about racial profiling. I don't know how he did it, but Bertrand got the U.S. consulate in Ecuador to help with documentation to verify he's a tribal elder so he can bring in the yage.”

“Yage?”

“Plant medicine, DMT—aka ayahuasca. You know the footage we shot with Del Rio—you should really look at what I've done with it before he comes. Can you do that, please?” Cheri remembers that footage: initiates in the thrall of the hallucinogen, wailing, retching, the shaman walking among them making a high-pitched, keening sound like an aboriginal cantor.

“So, wait, is the shaman coming
here
to do a ceremony?”

“Well, I have to interview him again.” Michael shakes one of Cici's packages. “More towels?”

“Is he coming alone or does he have an interpreter?”

“Yeah, they're giving me the second-string interpreter. The main guy is staying in Sedona. Can you believe it? Everything is a fucking battle.”

“Okay, just let me know soon.” The last thing Cheri wants is more people she can't communicate with in the house. Tripping on yage or not tripping. “Taya's coming to town and I'm trying to plan my birthday.”

“You'll know as soon as I know. And don't worry, they'll bunk in my office.” Cheri gives him a look: It's okay for the shaman to stay there but not her mother?

“It's work. And only for a few days,” Michael insists as she grabs the package away from him and holds it protectively.

“I told Taya we're going to get together with her and her new guy; we were all going to do something for my birthday.”

“You said you didn't want to do anything for your birthday. I took you at your word.”

“I said I didn't want a party,” Cheri says measuredly. “Remember, I told you she's dating that artist. Von something. He's around your age—he was big in the seventies. He does nudes…”

“Sorry, darling, but sometimes we have to accommodate other people's schedules. I know Mezzo America's not your field, but I thought you'd appreciate meeting a Shuar medicine man. He's the first to come to the States ever; some people would consider it a blessing. Can we talk about this later? I'm exhausted. I was just on my way upstairs to take a nap.” He's almost out of the kitchen when he turns around.

“You had your meeting with the review committee this morning. How was it?”

“I kept my powder dry,” she says, relishing that the context is lost on him.

“I found a genius place for your birthday, CM,” Taya says. Cheri has answered her cell in the locker room at the gym after getting a few sets of weights in. The lady changing next to her is giving her a dirty look, which Cheri pointedly ignores.
This isn't a fucking yoga studio,
Cheri wants to say.

“It's an authentic country-and-western bar with a real mechanical bull. My old guy is in if your old guy is in.” Taya thinks all old guys will like each other, kind of like babies; just throw the oldies in Barcaloungers with bottles of whiskey and they're happy.

“Don't think that's going to work,” Cheri says. “We have a shaman coming into town.”

“A shaman?”

“Michael's got him staying with us for his film. Don't ask me. But you can't do anything that would embarrass him, he's very into this.”

“Like I don't know how to behave? I've hosted a fund-raiser for the Dalai Lama, and he's a hell of a lot more important than a shaman. But it's your birthday, so you get to decide the venue. Tell Michael to bring his camera. A shaman on a mechanical bull is too brilliant! He can call it
Slammin' with Shaman
.”

The venue, Cheri learns in the morning, will be their house. The only day the shaman can come to Chicago is on her actual birthday and Cheri slides into acceptance. For the next few days, Michael is buzzing with shaman prep. The yage arrives in an envelope—add that to the list of misdemeanors. Michael is calling homeopaths for a root to ferment into a beer the Shuar men drink; cooking a vegetarian meal although nobody's a vegetarian and Cheri is a carnivore who likes her steak blue. All she's been hearing from HMS Bay is atonal whistling and rattling. The news headlines are more of the same: war looming; economy crashing; environment collapsing; priests molesting; and the president's at his ranch in Texas taking a “nonworking” vacation. Deforestation in the Amazon—that's a good subject to bring up with the shaman.

Cici's packages continue to pour in daily. Her mother is extracting her pound of guilt by sending pounds of gifts. Cheri can't resist opening the boxes from Dean and DeLuca. Cici always gets the best of the best, but she excels in all things pig. Half the boxes are filled with cured meats, including a whole leg of imported prosciutto di Parma, Cici's homemade mozzarella, and
torta di noce
. Cheri stands in the kitchen eating slices of buttery-soft prosciutto. “The Shuar don't eat pork! Get rid of all that,” Michael bleats as he walks through the kitchen carrying blankets and sheets to his office.

“I will not. It's not like they keep kosher.”

“It doesn't matter if it's a religious thing or not, we can't have pork in the house.”

“In whose rule book? They eat guinea pigs—they're not going to pass out at the sight of prosciutto.”

“It's a simple request—just pack it all up.”

“I'll stash it in the extra fridge in the garage. Problem solved. We've had Muslims over for dinner and I didn't clean out the refrigerator.”

“That's because your mother hadn't just sent us a passel of pig!”

“No, I'm certain we had bacon and those sausage patties you like in the freezer.” Michael's starting to get his aneurysm look. “It's delicious, want some?”

On the morning of Cheri's birthday, she wakes up to find that Michael's side of the bed is untouched. He'd cordoned off most of the downstairs with his party prep and must have fallen asleep in his office. She walks downstairs and finds a huge bouquet of tea roses that could only be from Cici and a plate of her favorite sprinkle doughnuts and fresh coffee awaiting her on the kitchen table. But this pales in comparison to what Michael has accomplished outside. He's straightened and cleaned and had his way with the backyard. He rescued the kiva from the ignominy of the garage and he's sectioned off an eating area with bamboo poles strewn with colorful paper lanterns. She walks into what is now a Zen garden; Michael's collection of large crystals and minerals jut up from the grass, seemingly rising out of the earth; flowers bloom, citronella candles ward off stinging insects, Chinese lanterns sit on tree trunks. Michael has covered their old plastic table with batik fabric and he's brought his speakers outside.