Parts Unknown (21 page)

Still: that week, there was no status quo, anymore. I was hovering on the brink of some precipice. One little push, and it would be so easy to tumble over the edge. The force involved in pulling back from that brink seemed tremendous.

~ ~ ~

At three o’clock, after a snack of string cheese and goldfish crackers, Lucy and I traipsed across the street to the park. The developer of the adjoining business tower had likely been mandated to build that park; still, it had the basics any kid would want, in miniature. It featured, just a few feet of space, a seesaw, a slide, and three swings—all that a child with imagination really needed. Even better, a few yards away, there was a little pond, prettily landscaped, with a waterfall, rocks, and real fish and turtles.

Lucy and Mario immediately kicked off their shoes and began chasing each other around the park. They ran so freely, completely lacking inhibition or self-consciousness. Astrid was carrying 6-month-old Isabelle in a complicated-looked cloth sling. Various straps and latches kept the thing fastened, and only the soft sienna tufts of Isabelle’s furry head peeked out. I reflexively rubbed her hair as I would a pet’s.

“So, wow!” Astrid exclaimed heartily, pulling off her own shoes—she always wore footwear that was completely wrong for the occasion. Today’s strappy 4-inch gold lamé heels would have been better suited to a formal evening event. “You’re painting—I still can’t believe it.” She punched my arm affectionately, which hurt, rather. “Good for you.”

“Thanks,” I said modestly. “It feels good—like a dam opening, or something. I didn’t know I had so much bottled up inside.”

“Don’t we all,” Astrid murmured reflectively. I laughed at her. “Astrid, you’re the one person I know who has nothing to hide.”

“That’s because I work it all out, baby,” she grinned. “Between yoga, meditation, and this cranial-sacral therapy work I’ve been having done lately—I’ve got all the bases covered.”

“Your chakras must be totally aligned. Or something.” I agreed. Astrid had been trying, for years, to get me to read a book called
The Psychic Pathway
so I could open myself to the sixth dimension, but so far I’d resisted, out of pure fear that I’d discover uncomfortable truths about my own future. Or past, for that matter. I’d once been fascinated by tarot cards, and I still had some hiding in a drawer somewhere, but it had been years since I’d been tempted to do a reading.

Astrid was always completely open and honest with me. I wished I could be the same with her, but something was always holding me back. If only I could break free of those invisible tethers, just this once. I felt like I was lying to her, by not telling her what was really going on. My mouth opened; no sound came out, my lips burbling silently like a fish. Lucy raised an eyebrow. “Are you choking?” she asked politely.

“Stop it,” I protested. “Okay . . . It’s kind of weird. I just found out that this guy I used to know in London when I was in college—he’s this famous writer now. And it’s just, kind of, been on my mind . . . Lucy! Stop that right now!” Lucy was pouring a bucket of sand over Mario’s head. Contrite, she began swiping the sand out of his hair.

“Did you used to be in love with this guy?” Astrid guessed.

“Yeah . . .”

“It was one of those junior year abroad things, wasn’t it?”

“One of what things?”

“Oh—you know. You go to a different country and you expect to, like, have all these life-changing experiences. So you show up and if they don’t happen, you make them happen somehow—everyone’s there looking for some massive transformation, aren’t they? That’s why they all went so far away in the first place.”

I was beginning to squirm.

“So you have all these schools in all these European countries, just totally filled with horny exchange students who have taken enough philosophy classes to be able to declaim, like, existential theory to each other while fucking each other’s brains out,” Astrid continued. “And, you know, the kids are all in awe of those friggin’ old buildings they have there, and the fancy accents people have. All that history all around makes everything seem so important, right? So they go see Shakespeare plays or whatever, and then they fuck each other, and they’re convinced they’re in looooove.”

“You’re right,” I drooped. “One of
those
things. Yeah, I guess that’s what it was, then.”

“Great that he’s famous and stuff though!” Astrid chirped. Isabelle had started to wail midway through her speech, and Astrid performed some magic involving turning the baby sling in a perpendicular direction while simultaneously lifting her shirt and thrusting Isabelle onto her right breast. The baby, still snug in the sling, began slurping audibly.

“It makes it seem so stupid when you talk about it like that,” I muttered.

“Now—really! Don’t tell me you’ve still got a crush on him, after all this time!”

I should never have told her.

“Of course not. It’s just weird, that’s all. To see his name again. So what’s up with you? How’s the Herbalife stuff going?”

“I’m thinking about bailing, honestly. You want to know where the money really is? Pleasure parties. They’re like purse parties, but with vibrators. If you can get the hostess to serve some booze, the ladies will start laying out some serious cash. I’m going to get started organizing them on the west side. Here, I’ve got a sample. Wanna take a look in my purse?”

She jerked her head over to her voluminous shoulder bag, which was liberally encrusted with faux rhinestones. I gingerly rooted around still-damp pacifiers, used Band-aids, and lost Cheerios till I found something large, thick, and rubbery. “It’s the Super Bunny!” Astrid enthused. “Just switch it on and feel that puppy go!” Indeed, turning the pastel monstrosity on practically electrified my arm. “If you want to buy one,” she lowered her voice confidentially, “I can get you a discount.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” I returned tartly, as we followed Lucy and Mario to the pond. Lucy lay on the rocks and trailed her fingers in the water. Every time we came, she was determined to pet a fish, but the fish were too quick and too smart for her. She was convinced, though—one day she’d touch one of those elusive silvery beauties.

Eventually Astrid said, touching my shoulder, “You know, you’re so lucky to have George. You two are, like, the least dysfunctional couple I know.”

I squatted next to Lucy and spread my fingers in the water. They appeared to fracture in the eddying current. “What are you saying, Astrid?”

“Don’t screw it up,” she said gently. “It isn’t worth it.”

“It’s not that simple,” I said.

She knelt next to me and rubbed my shoulder. “Honestly, it’s simpler than you think.”

Fortuitously, Mario slipped in the water and cut his knee on a rock. So Astrid rushed home with a wailing Mario and Isabelle as I watched my fingers trailing helplessly through the water, making wider and wider circles, crazed patterns that didn’t make sense. The play date was over, but Lucy wouldn’t leave the park. She threw herself on the ground, kicking her feet, yelling “I won’t go! I wanna stay!” Eventually I resorted to picking her up, limbs flailing in all directions, fingernails scratching my face. It was like carrying a deranged octopus across the street, appendages smacking me in tender locations. I staggered a bit under her weight, going up the stairs, and wondered fleetingly what would happen if I dropped her.

I tossed Lucy onto the sofa like a pile of laundry, turned the sound on the television high enough to muffle the sounds of her high-pitched sobs, and started dinner. Heating up a frozen lasagna from Costco seemed like a good plan.

George came home at seven. Immediately when he came in, he smelled the air, as if sniffing out infidelity. “What’s that?” he asked. “It smells like wet plastic.”

“I’ve been painting,” I said, almost defensively. “I started painting again. Today. I’ve got a lot of ideas kicking around. You’re smelling the acrylics, that’s all.”

He didn’t make a move to go look; I’d moved the easel into our small office room at the end of my painting session that morning. “That’s great, really, that’s great,” he said. “Listen, I’ve been meaning to ask you: what’s with the doll heads everywhere? It’s just creepy. Can you put them away, please?” Then, barely taking a breath: “So, Lucy, did you have a nice day? Are you ready for a story?” She was smiling, sleepy and warm like a small kitten, bearing no resemblance to the spawn of Satan she’d been just a few hours earlier. George was so relaxed with Lucy, too. He showed a different side of himself to her than he did even to me—a free, easy spirit he never allowed himself to display otherwise. Lucy adored him.

He was a truly caring husband, too. Sure, he could be short sometimes, and domineering. But he never failed to kiss me hello or ask about my day, as if he truly cared about the quotidian news my housewifely self could drum up. It shouldn’t matter that he’d never understood what I did, and why I had to do it, but it mattered, even so. My art had piqued his interest in me, but ultimately it became a conversation piece rather than a meeting of the minds.

Perhaps we marry the father we wish we’d had. George was so meticulous and finite, so far from Dad’s sloppy good nature and casual, laissez-faire approach to almost everything. Like a father, I wanted George’s approval, his understanding, just as much as his love.

George disappeared down the hall, his back perfectly straight, just like always.

My hand shaking, I slopped some wine into a glass. The more I drank, the more I wouldn’t have to think.

~ ~ ~

Thursday, the
Los Angeles Times
informed me that it was 64 degrees and partly cloudy in Santa Fe. After dropping Lucy at school, I set up another canvas. I sketched in the outlines quickly with a brush dipped in Hansa yellow thinned way down with water. This was a mate of yesterday’s painting, a representational take on the abstract of before. It was amazing, the way the fast swirls of paint coalesced in my hand from random squiggles into people, two people clenched together in the gobs of paint, embracing frantically, but unable to escape. They were locked in the painting, like Michelangelo’s
The Dying Slave
was forever struggling to escape from the marble in which it was encased. Their lips pressed together sealed them but also bound them, their hands glued to each other prevented them from pushing their way out of the thick, tornado-like swirls tightening around them.

I had been listening to Celtic music all week, put in the mood by St. Patrick’s Day. Harp, fiddle, and flute sounds from a Chieftains CD flitted around me as I painted. At once mournful and joyful, tunes such as “The Parting of Friends” and “The Lament for Limerick” made my heart both lift and ache. I was moving forward, driven, possessed, but had no idea where I was going, so quickly and surely.

And then the morning was gone, and I got in the Volvo and drove to pick up Lucy.

Every Thursday at 12:30, straight after preschool, I dropped Lucy off at Madame’s for Madame’s self-imposed one hour a week of bonding time with her granddaughter. The timing was tricky, because Lucy always napped at this time, so it created a scary blip in her usual routine. And by the time we got to Madame’s, Lucy was usually in such a frenzy of nervousness and anticipation that she could barely function. Thursdays were the worst day of the week for me, not only because I had to deal with Madame on my own, without the buffer of George, I also had to deal with Lucy’s fallout after spending an hour at that house on Las Palmas.

Today the contrast between Madame’s haphazardly kept home and the rest of the well-manicured houses on the block was even more apparent. The entire sidewalk in front of her house had been dug up, with knocked-over orange cones and markers bearing the legend “City of Los Angeles Department of Public Works Street Services” blocking any way up to Madame’s door except up the driveway and across the grass. A dark, slimy liquid oozed from the sidewalk toward the gutter.

Madame viewed me on Thursdays simply as a Lucy delivery system, and as usual, she took ages to get to the door (didn’t she know we always arrived at 12:45 pm, promptly, each Thursday?), and peered suspiciously through the keyhole. An acid glare that she shot toward the dismantled sidewalk kept me from asking questions. Lucy chirped desperately, “
Bonjour, grand-mère
!” I came inside to exchange uncomfortable pleasantries. “What lovely spring weather we’re having!” I trilled. “I’m so glad it’s such a beautiful day, aren’t you?”

Madame snorted. “It’s too hot; it’s far too hot for March.”

“I don’t remember what the weather’s usually like in March,” I said lamely. “I just thought it was nice out . . .”

Madame curled her nostril ever so slightly and turned to Lucy. “Come, Lucy, let’s have a little lesson before snack time, shall we?”

Lucy suddenly grabbed hold of my hand with her little fingers and wouldn’t let go. “Honey, it’s time to say goodbye,” I said, attempting to disengage myself. But she pulled me along with her, forcing me to follow Madame through the kitchen, where a few open cupboards flaunted the disarray within. Plastic ware that must have been circa some 1970s Tupperware party nearly spilled out of one—a large, cloudy Jell-O mold, a hamburger-making set, a bilious green colander. We emerged into the breakfast room—these old, grand houses had both breakfast rooms and dining rooms, living rooms and dens, maids’ quarters and bedrooms. She always kept a bowl of purplish berries on the dining room table; they were cranberry-sized, and grew on the high hedge at the far end of her backyard. I wasn’t sure whether they were poisonous; I had seen George pop a few in his mouth on occasion. An old photo album was open on the dining room table, one of dozens that she had organized by date in the built-in bookshelves in the den. She’d often pull out and leaf through albums featuring George’s youth in the same meditative way Catholics would finger rosary beads. Time in Madame’s house had stopped around 1979—the year George had gone away to college.

Madame glared at Lucy, still clinging to my hand as to a life buoy. “That’s enough now,
chérie
. We have a lot to learn this afternoon.” I disengaged Lucy with difficulty and hugged her tight. “I’ll be back in just a little while, sweetie.” She bravely allowed Madame to grasp one hand and waved forlornly with the other as I escaped through the grand entrance hall with its soaring two-story cathedral ceiling and vintage glass-drop chandelier. My feet crinkled through the old, threadbare beige carpet. I felt like I was abandoning her to a total brainwashing, as I did each week. But what could I do? Madame was Lucy’s grandmother, after all.