Keep Me Posted (12 page)

“Uuuh, not much,” I said, girding myself against the pain that erupted each time I spoke or swallowed.

“Are you finding time to be together as husband and wife?”

“What?”

“I mean, it’s important to remember that you aren’t just parents. You are also man and wife.”

“Man and wife? What are you talking about?” I said while attempting to steer my cart into the fray at the free-sample counter. I was chilled and starving, and the steaming plastic ramekins of Roasted Corn Tortilla Soup were beckoning me. But the cluster of senior citizens leisurely sipping their soup right there at the sample counter made things difficult. I was not in the mood for this. To check out, I found the end of the line, which snaked around the entire perimeter of the store, and did the rest of my shopping by grabbing whatever I could reach from my place in line.

I half listened and tried to do as little talking as possible while reaching for the odd loaf of bread, canister of coffee, and bag of flax chips. Mom yammered on about “date nights” and “keeping him interested,” and then it hit me: Sid must have told her about my letter from the Pig.

“Mom, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go. I’m in line at the store. I’ll talk to you Sunday, okay?” I wanted to get off the phone before she confronted me about the kiss—or worse, talked about her own affair.

Mom had had an affair when I was in the sixth grade. I found out on a Sunday afternoon when Sid was at a friend’s house. I had been napping on the family room couch and awoke when I heard the phone ringing. Dad answered and called to Mom in a clipped
voice that her boss was on the phone. She got on the phone and said that yes, she could come in early tomorrow to assist with a root canal. Then Mom and Dad had a brief and barely audible argument about why she was still working for Dr. Shapiro. Apparently, Mom had given her notice but still had a week to go. This was surprising information for a few reasons. I hadn’t known that she had any intention of quitting her job. She liked being a dental hygienist, as far as I knew. She used to come into our classrooms with her giant toothbrush and a set of model teeth and teach proper oral hygiene (brush up and down, not side to side; don’t neglect the gums and tongue; soft bristles, not hard; eat an apple or some cheese before bed if you forget your toothbrush on a sleepover).

Furthermore, she needed that job—we were a two-job, one-(used)-car, clearance-rack-shopping family. Then Dad wondered out loud if her boss really needed her help in the morning or if it was just an excuse to see her alone, before the receptionist arrived. I got the shock of my young life when Mom said sharply, “I told you it was over with him.” It’s a line I’d heard dozens of times on
Santa Barbara
—the soap opera Sid and I faithfully watched, in which the wealthy Capwell family navigated an endless storm of lust and betrayal from their picturesque town on the sea—but not one I ever imagined hearing in my own home. “I told you it was over with him,” was something Gina the slutty villainess said, not my mom. My parents walked out the back door to finish the yard work, and I heard no more.

For an hour I remained in the fetal position on the couch, under the crocheted afghan. I remember desperately needing to talk to Sid. But in the time that passed between my shocking discovery and Sid’s arrival home, something shifted in me. I couldn’t tell her what I knew. I didn’t want my sister to hate Mom the way that I
did now. I think this was the moment I started to become my own person, to grow away from my sister a bit. I felt very grown-up, protecting Sid from something that would hurt her.

This secret became my dark superpower: a source of strength, but also the saddest and most uncomfortable thing I’d ever encountered. I both relished my ownership of it and deplored its very existence. The whole thing was downright Capwell-esque, and I envisioned myself as a character: the strong and stoic sister, my eyes flickering knowingly each time I caught Dad gazing at Mom with those pathetic puppy-dog eyes. It was a defining phase for me: I was not a frivolous blabbermouth. I was a shrewd and serious player who knew when to keep her mouth shut. I felt that I understood darkness and pain.

I got my first period a week later, and instead of telling Mom, I told Sid, who set me up with Kotex and Tampax and a hug. Mom, of course, found out and came to me in a jubilation I could hardly share in. “You’re a woman now!” she said, hugging me. And I thought,
Indeed I am
.

I may not have been (definitely was not) a woman, but it was by keeping that secret that I stopped being a little girl who modeled herself after her big sister. I still admired Sid as much as ever, but now that I’d made a conscious decision to protect her, I was a force in the world, distinct and separate. I became wry and sarcastic. A shade bitter, even. I grew to own my new outlook, taking pride in not seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. I was the Rizzo to Sid’s Sandy, the Laverne to her Shirley.

Meanwhile, I daydreamed about sitting Dad down in front of the TV so that he could see how these things work. A woman who says, “I told you it was over with him,” is, in fact, receiving long-stemmed red roses by the dozen that cause her to gaze longingly
into space while she replays in her mind the sultry evening they’d spent in a bubble bath only the night before. I wanted him to storm out, to give her an ultimatum, maybe go to her office and threaten to rough up Dr. Shapiro.

But the irritation I felt with my father’s meek nature paled in comparison to the indignity of having to think of my parents in a sexual way. The horrifying flashes I’d get of Mom mounting Dr. Shapiro on the very chair in which my family had our teeth cleaned were deeply troubling to me at this tender point in my development. Dr. Shapiro was older—or at least seemed older, with silver hair and deep crow’s-feet. The pictures in his waiting room were all of him partaking in bike races and marathons and rock-climbing adventures. He had perfect sparkly white tombstone teeth, and I wondered which came first, the teeth or the interest in dentistry. Was he so vain that he built a career around his best feature? Or had he had awful teeth his whole life and gone into dentistry to fix them? Either way, I thought he was totally lame.

After that Mom took a few months off and then got a part-time job working for another dentist, a female dentist. Dr. Shapiro must have been paying Mom pretty well, because right about this time, Sid and I were told we had been “chosen” to work one day a week each in the church rectory. I think it must have been some kind of work-study program to help pay our tuition. In the four-to-seven-thirty shift on Tuesdays, as a thirteen-year-old, I was tasked with answering the phone, taking money from people who came in to reserve a Mass for someone, and following the day cook’s instructions for preparing dinner.

Since no one in our house ever cooked, both Sid and I were completely useless when it came to this last part. Each Wednesday, I’d read the cook’s scrawly, old-fashioned cursive note instructing me
to prepare something I’d never eaten. It was mostly a matter of heating a meat loaf or shepherd’s pie, but I was also expected to mash potatoes or assemble a salad. Terms like “relish tray,” and “gravlax” had me on the phone to friends’ mothers every week. The whole thing only fueled my irritation with my own mother.
Why does everyone else in our town know what a Betty’s Salad is? Why haven’t we ever once eaten meat loaf?
Sid was perplexed when I lashed out about this, and I came close to telling her why we were working there in the first place, but my vision of myself as a
Santa Barbara
character steadied me, and I kept mum.

Eventually, it all came out. Mom and Dad sat us down at the kitchen table one night and explained that they were having trouble with their marriage. They sensed that we had noticed. They wanted to stay married because they loved each other, but marriage was hard and they were working on it. Sid cried and asked a series of invasive questions provoking Mom to confess her affair. I watched, stone-faced, wishing I could make it all stop, to go back to it being my secret.

Sid’s emotional reaction and my non-reaction led my mother to sign us up for three sessions of family counseling.

No one I’d ever heard of went to therapy, which made the experience all the more strange and embarrassing. I suffered through those awkward meetings saying as little as possible, but Sid and my parents made up for my passivity with copious crying and hugging and sharing. I imagine our therapist felt like a real healer.

Despite—or perhaps because of—the early encounter with my parents’ sexuality, I always clammed up like a fourteen-year-old when my mother broached subjects of a carnal nature (which she did quite a lot, unfortunately). She and Sid had teased me about it at Christmastime.

“Well, I’m just saying it’s important, is all,” she said after I rolled my eyes at some thinly veiled double entendre she made as we stood in the kitchen sipping wine and putting away dishes.

“All right, Mom, we got it,” I said.

“Well, I think it’s beautiful,” said Sid.

“Thank you, Sid. It is beautiful. And sometimes it’s fun and sometimes it’s dirty and sometimes it’s . . .”

“Jesus!” I yelled, cutting her off. “Listen, Mom, there’s gotta be some kind of Internet chat room for frisky empty nesters. Go tell
them
about your conquests with my father.”

“Oh, come on, Cass!” Sid said. “You know how many of our childhood friends’ parents are still married? Not many. And how many of them are still enjoying a healthy sex life? Probably even less. I say, you go, Mom!”

“Thank you, Sid,” Mom said, and then started doing an embarrassing dance around the kitchen, where she kind of rolled her fisted hands at waist level while rocking side to side. I groaned and closed my eyes, while Sid, just to make me squirm, started dancing with her and chanting, “Go, Rita! Go, Rita!”

Suffice it to say, I was not cool with my mom calling to talk about sex, and I was even less cool with Sid telling her about my note.

I managed to get home by eleven, and I could have taken a thirty – or forty-minute nap but was revved up from that phone call, mad at myself for being mean to Leo this morning, angry with Sid for presumably telling Mom about my kiss with Jake, and trying hard not to think that maybe infidelity is simply in my blood. I unloaded my groceries, washed the breakfast dishes, took a quick shower, spot cleaned and vacuumed the living room rug, forced myself to gargle with salt water, and went to pick up the boys. It
was drizzling again, but my favorite umbrella was nowhere to be found. I must have left it in the cab. I purchased a four-dollar number at the bodega and walked with my unspecial black umbrella back to school.

As soon as I got there, I was accosted by one of the assistant teachers. “Oh, Cassie, hi. Do you have a minute?” She was a young woman named Breezy, who always seemed completely wonderful with the children but took an imperious tone with the parents. I stepped into the office with her before Joey and Quinn noticed me.

Apparently Quinn had a lot of questions about death and had told his friends that his mom wants to die, which forced me into a long explanation of the morning. Once she seemed assured that I was not having suicidal thoughts and sharing them with my three-year-olds, I sheepishly presented her with one of the Trader Joe’s gift cards I’d picked up after seeing the pile of last-day gifts and apples and flowers on the windowsill when I’d dropped the boys off.

The rain had stopped, so I took the boys to the playground and let them get muddy with the goal of wearing them out before the movie I had planned for that afternoon. I hoped the huge bag of Pirate’s Booty cheese puffs and sachets of dried mangoes combined with Buzz, Woody, and the gang would keep them content long enough for me to lie down and not speak or swallow for an hour or so. I was so intent on getting to that couch that I wasn’t even going to check the mail, but it was Joey’s day to be in charge of the keys and he insisted on stopping.

Singapore

June 29

Cassie,

Double whammy! I found a questionable text message on Adrian’s phone from an “AP.” It said, “Miss u. Come back to BKK soon, OK?” BKK is obviously Bangkok and I knew that, but for some reason I felt the need to Google it, on the off chance that it was, oh, I don’t know, a bank or something with extremely personal service. So I opened River’s laptop and when I typed “B,” I hesitated for a second, and a scroll of terms starting with the letter “B” appeared, and “birth father locator” was the first one. That means River must have typed that into his computer recently, right? Shit!

I wonder if I did the right thing by never searching for Kenny—never even trying to connect him with River. I think he went to jail at some point for selling drugs, so who knows what became of him? I figured if he wanted to find us, he could.

But now I wonder, was I being too proud? Was that what was best for River? Or just for me? River and I have talked about his dad a few times over the years. He knows his first name, that he decided he wasn’t ready to be a father and went to live his own life. I never once consulted a book or the Internet or even took him to a counselor. I guess I thought he was fine with it.

I still think he was mostly fine. He was so close with Mom and Dad and Joe and Margie growing up that I never felt like he had a typical single-mother childhood. I really never even thought of myself as a single mom. Someone was always at his baseball games. Dad taught him how to drive. I feel so stupid to have assumed that was enough. I thought if I could just make sure someone was always around for him, he’d never feel that hole. But maybe he did. Adrian certainly didn’t make any attempt to fill it, which is a whole other story.

At any rate, I’m sad about all of this. My marriage—not even three years old—is going to end, and I’m not enough for my son.

Love you.

—Sid

Her sad and insecure feelings stuck with me through the night. By the next morning, I still felt sick as a dog, but that letter plus the burning question of whether she had told Mom about the kiss, added to this business with River, had me agitated. The kids were eating Cheerios and watching
Sesame Street
, and I could think of nothing else but phoning Sid. I knew it was an okay time to call, because she was either twelve or thirteen hours ahead of me, or behind me. I could never remember, but I did know that if I was ever going to call her, it should be in the morning or the evening, and not in the middle of the day. So without overthinking it, I picked up the phone and dialed the fourteen digits I had taped to my refrigerator.