Other People's Lives (11 page)

“An
umbrella!
Maria, darling! What a marvelous idea and leave it to you to think of something original like that! Because the umbrella that
I
have is so unique that someone could offer me a million dollars for it and I still wouldn't part with it. Because it's beautif—”

“I hate umbrellas,” Julie said. “That's
another
one of my mother's things. She's always sending me these new kinds of umbrellas. That fold up. Or are tiny. Or that attach to something. I think it really freaks her to think that I could go out in the rain without an umbrella. I mean, for
her
all they have to do is say on the news that there's a
chance
of rain. Of
showers.
And there she is—marching out with her little matching umbrella set…Daddy says that she should have lived in England—you know, London. And that her whole umbrella trip is just part of her obsessive, compulsive, bullshit neurosis. Only
I
think it's because she's so into
things.
Possessions. She'd probably feel naked without it.”

“She worries maybe you would get a cold. Get sick,” Maria said. “Only people have always more resiliency—resilientness?
I
think.”

In London, England, Louise's mother emerged from an underground station. Life, bitterness, and a variety of demeaning climates had taken away from her that striking, high-colored, youthful bloom which had once been the outward sign of her true promise and deeper distinction. Even her hair, once fair, was now almost entirely white. Worry, injustice, and general mistreatment would have been her explanation for this. But there were those who saw in her white hair, as it fell over her ears and wound about her head, stylish still, an old-fashioned, gracious, otherworldly beauty. These were usually students and could have no idea at all of what her life had been, and what she had rightfully expected of it. It was possible, in Louise's opinion, that her white hair and forced, distant smile (secretly contemptuous if you knew what to look for) lent her a false, suffering wisdom, an idea of herself she had come to enjoy. At least she could extract some pleasure from it—bittersweet—her favorite kind. Enough pleasure, in any case, to diminish the edginess of her gestures, the impatience of her expression. Still, with her graceful smallness, she walked up the steps determinedly, purposefully—the otherworldly calm in her eyes entirely misleading. Alighting from the underground at Swiss Cottage, she put her hand out to test for rain and, accustomed now to a climate where rain was constant, she opened up her umbrella. She did not dislike it: its faded rosy shadow both above and before her temporarily gave her back the coloring and outlook of her youth. Hooded, protected in this way, she managed packages, completed errands, and greeted people with unexpected ease and a certain lightness. Her resilience was remarkable; everyone said it. She did not debate in her mind why this quality had not been passed on to her younger daughter. It was a long-standing misfortune and she did not dwell on it.

“Here it is and I knew I'd find it!” Rebecca said, her thoroughly pleased bustle stirring up the deadness of the room. She held the umbrella out to Maria, but did not let go of it. “Wait a minute, darling! Wait
one
minute. The
reason
that it's so special and people would be shocked at me for using it as if it were just an ordinary umbrella for everyday—not that I care!—is that this umbrella, hand-painted and bamboo and everything, comes from China! And I don't mean Hong Kong and I don't mean
Bloomingdale's
China. Although all I read about in the paper was straw baskets, and you'll have to excuse me, Maria, but any dope can make a basket. And that's the one thing that you'd expect those hot-shot fancy society chippies to know about. Because what kind of colleges did
they
go to but basket-weaving ones…”

Maria said, “Bamboo. That would definitely, I think, be all right.”

“And hand-painted, Maria! Every single stroke! It's from the Canton Trade Fair—and never
mind
the kind of Americans who ended up going there! The people who brought it back for me have lived practically everyplace! India! Japan! England! So they're the last people in the world who could just get taken! And get stuck with junk! Because merchants are merchants—and never mind Cultural Revolution and New Orders! Because I don't care
how
many rivers he swims naked in the cold! When it comes to rooking people, salesmen are the same all over.”

“If you swim naked in the cold, you could join the Polar Bear Club,” Matthew said. “I saw it on TV.”

“Do you see why I object to television, Maria? Did you hear him? That's
exactly
what I mean and
exactly
what I always
tell
people—oh my God! The telephone! The telephone is ringing and I bet I know who it is! It's that wonderful Carla Saltzman! And any time she just
talks
to me it means something very special for her. As a woman and as a doctor. Because it's so different from her
own
parents! ‘I can't get over it, Rebecca,' she always tells me. ‘You just
defy
the whole syndrome of old age!' Defy! Every single symptom!”

Rebecca hurried off to answer the phone, and Maria, with the Chinese umbrella on her arm, knocked lightly on the bulb of the antique hurricane lamp. It lit up immediately, and facing away from its brightness, Louise watched Maria tap the bamboo umbrella handle. She moved her fingers over its strange texture and knobby grooves, and in a distant voice repeating, “Bamboo,” Maria looked as if she were in a different world.

“I don't know whether that was a wrong number or the God-damn party line or what!” Rebecca said as she rushed back into the room with the door swinging behind her. “And after all that running! I don't even know why I bother!”

Matthew, too, looked as if he were in another world. In the darkness he had found a narrow, raised platform like a ramp that Louise thought was probably intended as a showcase for Rebecca's antiques. Only the one shaded light was on and Matthew seemed unaware of it: with his eyes half closed and his arms partly raised, he walked carefully, one foot exactly in front of the other, inching his way across the ledge as if it were a mountain in an unexplored country. It was a child's game played in private. Every so often his eyelids tightened: he was daring himself to open them, but would not.

“Look at him, Maria! Look at the way he walks—he looks just like Dennis.”

Maria said nothing. She nodded slowly in the gloom and her face, suddenly longer and narrower, seemed to have an unnatural pallor that Louise had not seen before. Because of the red glass shade of the hurricane lamp, the light rose up through the funnel like the close glow of a candle flame. Matthew was balancing now in a far-off corner of the room. Half in shadow, his skin, too, looked unhealthily translucent. It was
not
the eerie, borrowed bloodlessness of Dennis illness, Louise told herself, but merely the peculiar, distorting light of the lamp.

“I'm not saying that he shouldn't,” Rebecca laughed, reddening and grabbed at Maria's arm. “I only meant with the way he looks and the way he walks, maybe
he'll
be a dancer, too. Or with all his picture-drawing,
some
kind of artist.”

“I hope not. It's a terrible life,” Maria said. She had put down the umbrella, regained her characteristic expression, and, still standing, was rapidly pushing things back into her purse. “Come on, Matthew. No more climbing and no Jamie Laufer. It's already late now and time definitely for us to go. My watch says it even.”

“Oh, Maria, darling! You don't know what you're saying! How
could
you? Who could blame you? It's only because of your bitterness at life! At fate! At the
cruelty
of Dennis' illness. It's your
grief
that's speaking—not you! Of
course
you want him to use his creativity! Of
course
you want him to be an artist. What mother wouldn't? What greater thing could you want for your son?”

Maria shrugged. She said, “It's my opinion only. I can't decide what will happen to him, but definitely that's my opinion. It's a terrible life.”

“Because it's
extreme,
darling. The highs, the lows, the excitement, the agitation, the constant, intense turmoil—of fertility! And delight! That's what it is! By definition. You can't object to the unconscious. It doesn't
know
in-betweens! And who would want it to? That's
boring.
And that's one thing, Maria—” Rebecca shook her hand, forgetting that it was still mittened, like a prizefighter's. “That's one thing that even all the reviewers always agreed about! He was certainly never boring.”

Maria was folding Matthew's long green woolen scarf and did not look up. “Maybe on stage not. But in life, always. Chronical. Like his disease now—also chronical.”

“You mustn't give
up,
Maria. They're doing
marvelous
things with Hodgkin's disease! Radiation! Remissions! All
kinds
of wonderful things.”

Predictably, Maria said, “Well, they're not doing wonderful things for Dennis. It has to do with—I don't know what—stages. What they can do for him now, I don't know. What they can do for
me
at least is better parking places. It's in my opinion disgusting—parking places only for doctors!”

“I
know,
darling! It's an old story. A profession that
guards
its privileges—and all of them undeserved! From the largest to the smallest. And in my opinion—” Rebecca suddenly looked at Julie—“opinion nothing! Why am I suddenly being so ladylike? It's not opinion! It's the truth. The worst ones were psychiatrists' wives—the very worst! They thought
they
were God and they were
married
to God, and that's how they looked at the world and that's how they brought up their families. And everyone knows how
that
paid off!”

How had it paid off? Louise knew: sullen in her expression, but easy in her gliding strides, Julie dropped in and out of schools at will, at her own pleasure. If she did not like a course, it would not be different for her from not liking a particular flavor of milkshake. No one would think it strange; no one would consider her “not ready.” In no one's eyes would there be the accusation that she was unable to cope. If she happened to be taking a bus somewhere, she would just lope onto it on the spur of the moment. She would never have laid out the exact fare the night before, and though she would have to fish for change in her knapsack, she would not lose her balance as the bus lurched. Once seated, she might well miss her stop, but not because other people's lives beckoned her.

“Oh, God
damn
it, Matthew!” Maria said. “
Again
God damn it!
Again
that's something I forgot—your dental slip for school. Because the girl there gets very mad, you can't blame her, if you say it's for rush but not emergency. She has always too many phones to answer, it's a very crowded clinic.”

“Maria! Since when do you take him to a
clinic? Why?
Why don't you take him to Leon? It's true he doesn't like to work on children, but that's because of the parents. And for you! You
know
he'd make an exception! Gladly!”

Maria said, “It's too far for him to go by himself. And coming home then in the dark, it's what I don't like.”

Matthew, his eyes now fully open, came down off the ramp. He said, “Yucch, Mommy! I
hate
the dentist. I hate the drill and I hate the needles. I hate
everything.
And they have these stupid gold stars—for babies.”

“You see that, Maria? He'd
love
Leon…Matthew, darling, I know you would. He'd
never
treat you like a baby. And besides that, he would tell you what he's doing and then it wouldn't hurt.”

“It always hurts,” Maria said. “It hurts for everyone. He must only get used to it. He has already very bad teeth.”

“Is Leon a painless dentist?” Matthew asked. Zipped into his jacket, he was standing near the ledge again and squinting up at Rebecca suspiciously.

“Any dentist can be painless,” Julie said. “You just have to put your head in the right place. Nitrous oxide is good, though. It gets you started.”

Rebecca, whose face was still red, disjointedly pulled herself away from Maria and, turning to Julie with her gloved hand upraised, said, “Julia. I have a
bone
to pick with you, you know.”

“It's a duck bone,” Matthew said, and once again lapsed into giggles. The suspicious squint was still in his eyes and it occurred to Louise that he so often looked this way because he neglected to wear his glasses.

She heard the motorcycles zooming around the hilly roads again, and this time, in the early twilight chill, they managed to sound ominous and mournful at the same time. They were other people's energies moving and rushing away, and Maria, standing up with her heavy bag on one arm and Matthew's Magic Markers slipping out of their case in the other, raised her voice to match the motorcycles. “I think now we really must go. Because in case later on there are icy roads or too much traffic, I am clearing steer of it.”

“Maria, darling! You can't leave yet! I haven't
shown
you anything! My marvelous antique jewelry!”

Maria pulled Matthew's gloves out of her raincoat pocket; they smelled of wet wool. “It's better I think if we come back another time,” she said. “It's already dark and I'm nervous for the roads. Also, because they used all day my apartment for the Block Party, I'm afraid for what it could now look like.”

“Well, darling, of
course
you'll come back! But here—it'll just take a second! I have them in beautiful little velvet cases and I'll show you my jewelry. It's Victorian and early American—and early everything! Because everything I have is very beautiful and everything I have is very old—and all kinds of vital, wonderful people
all
love it. And
that's
what I wanted to talk to you about, Julia!” Rebecca suddenly turned from her velvet cases to find Julie, who was already on her way out, slouched against the door. “Your
father,
Julia, wrote a paper in some kind of psychiatric journal about people who like to live with antiques. And he said that the reason they do it is that they're incapable of dealing with adult conflicts and adult sexuality! And that they're attempting a Peter Pan-like retreat! Schizoid and unresolved! Those were his exact words! Peter Pan-like! Schizoid and unresolved! Since when does
he
know anything about antiques? Or people who buy them? I'd just like to know what makes him such an expert!”