The Hunchback of Neiman Marcus (6 page)

I can't seem to write

for more than five minutes at a stretch

without someone phoning

from the Firemen's Association

to ask me for a donation.

Or someone will ring the bell

and say they're sorry to bother me

but they saw the FOR SALE sign next door

and were wondering

what the asking price is.

Or my mother, who's been

in the hospital for two weeks already,

will call to tell me I'd better

get over there right now

to spring her from “this hellhole.”

I'll explain that I can't come over,

because I'm at home—in California.

But she'll just hiss,

“Don't give me that stupidity…”

and continue on with her steroid-induced rant.

Even if I somehow manage to calm her down,

then field a call from her pissed-off nurse,

and succeed in convincing her

that my mother couldn't possibly

have bitten her
on purpose,

something else will inevitably happen—

Alice will stop by

to ask me if I can snap

a new photo of her for Match.com;

maybe something a tad more glam.

Or Samantha will call me from school,

begging me to rush over there

with the
Great Gatsby
essay

she somehow managed

to forget at home.

Or Roxie will text me

from her freaking iPhone,

or her iPad,

or whatever the hell she's using these days,

to ask, “WHEN CAN I C UR BUK?
”

Honestly.

I don't know how I will
ever

finish this manuscript

if I keep on getting

interup—”

Even while

I was writing that
last
poem

(about why I can never

get any writing done)

Michael strolled past my office window

and paused to press his face to the glass,

cupping his paint-spattered hands

around his eyes.

He stood there staring into my office,

his eyes fixed on me

like a puppy begging scraps

from the table.

(Michael's
always
doing this—to try to see

if I'm writing or not—because I guess he figures

if I'm
not
writing, then he can ask me whatever

pressing question it is that he
wants
to ask.

He does this, even though I've told him

that
when
he does this, it's just as distracting—

more
distracting, even—than if he had

knocked on my door in the first place.)

I forced myself not to glance over at him,

trying to look engrossed in my work,

but he peered and peered and peered at me

till I finally turned and barked, “What
is
it?”

At which point, he barged into my office

like a bull charging a matador's cape,

to inquire if there was anything

in the house for lunch.

As if he couldn't have

walked into the kitchen,

pulled open the fridge door,

and found out that answer

all by himself.

With me asking him

why he just did that staring-at-me-

through-the-window thing again,

even though he knows how much I hate it?

And him saying he wasn't staring at me,

he was only trying to see

if I was writing or not,

so he could ask me about lunch.

And me saying

I'll never get any work

done if he keeps on bugging me

about every little thing.

And him clearing his throat

and saying do I really think it's fair

to get so pissed at him when his only crime

was that he was trying not to disturb me?

And me saying

I really don't have the time

to keep fighting with him about this

because I have to get back to work.

And him saying,

“Of course you want to stop
now.

I've just said something you know is true

and you don't want to concede the point.”

And me saying—

Well, you don't want

to
know

what I said
then.

Which of

us hasn't passed

a vengeful hour thinking

of ways to spend the insurance

money?

Is it a bad sign if instead of working

on your manuscript

(the one you were supposed to turn in

nearly a year ago)

you find yourself

spending the entire afternoon

looking up all your old boyfriends

on Facebook?

And I'm just about

to start writing
(honest!),

my eyes happen to drift over to my bookcase

and land on a photo of Sam—

blowing out the candles

on her seventh birthday.

She was unbelievably cute at that age.

And unbelievably exhausting…

I'd be sitting at my computer,

in the middle of writing a poem

so ununderstandable that
The New Yorker

would surely beg to publish it,

when my seven-year-old would burst in

like an adorable tornado.

“Look at me, Mommy!

See how good I can cross my eyes?”

I'd be watching it dawn on Cary Grant

why Deborah Kerr had stood him up,

when my seven-year-old,

resplendent in a pink chiffon tutu,

would prance in

and position herself

between me and the TV.

“Look, Mommy! Watch me do the hula!”

I'd be trying to snatch a quick conversation

with one of the other frazzled mothers in the park,

but my darling sugar-buzzed seven-year-old

had other plans for me:

“Mommy! Look at me go down the slide!”

“Mommy! Watch me do a cartwheel!”

“Mommy! See how high I can go on the swing?”

“Look, Mommy! Look at
me
!”

Now…my seven-year-old is seventeen.

I pass by her bedroom door and pause

to watch her in the soft lamplight,

murmuring into her cell phone.

Sensing my presence, she looks over

at me sharply and snarls, “Could you be

any more annoying if you possibly tried?

Why are you always
looking
at me?”

I just stand there,

well…
looking
at her.

And then, feeling strangely giddy,

I decide to try something:

“Achoo!” I say.

“Ah…choo!

  Ahh…
choooo!

    Ahhh…
CHOOOOO!”

But,

apparently,

the spell has lost

its magic.

On what day,

at what hour,

at which tell-me-it-ain't-so moment

did you finally come

to the blow-to-the-solar-plexus realization

that your daughter had switched over

from being so proud of you

that she actually wanted to bring you in

for show-and-tell,

to being so humiliated

by everything you say or do

or even
think
about doing

that she is

no longer willing

to be seen in public with you?

(Unless,

of course,

you offer to take her shopping.)

Samantha and I are cruising

the Neiman Marcus Last Call Sale—

because who can afford

to shop at Neiman's

when it's
not
having a sale?

I'm admiring my daughter

as she glides through the racks—

her back so straight

she looks as if she's balancing

a rare book on her head.

I glance in a mirror at my
own
posture

and am appalled at how

my head's jutting forward,

as if it's trying to win a race

with the rest of my body.

I'm stunned by the gorilla-esque curve

my spine seems to have taken on,

as though determined to prove

once and for all

that evolution really
did
happen.

I snap my shoulders back

and pull myself up,

arrow straight, like a child being measured

against a wall.

Then, a few minutes later,

while we're browsing through

a mountain range of marked-down panties,

I see an old woman sifting through

the thongs on the other side of the table—

the hump

on her back

so enormous

she resembles

a camel.

She looks up suddenly

and catches me staring.

I avert my eyes

and am confronted with my reflection

in yet another mirror—

which is when

I notice that my

frighteningly King-Kongish posture

has snuck right back up

on me…

Oh no!

Is this how

it all began for
her?

Twenty years from now, am
I
going to be

the hunchback of Neiman Marcus?

Samantha won't allow me

into dressing rooms with her anymore.

So, as usual, it's my fate to wait

in an empty one across the hall.

She tries on a long-sleeved

form-fitting chocolate-brown T-shirt,

and models it for me—

she looks gorgeous.

Then she retreats

back into her dressing room

and tosses the shirt over the top of the door

for me to put into the “maybe” pile.

As I reach out to catch it,

I find myself musing

that brown's a good color for me,

and that
I
wear a size medium, too,

and that those nice long sleeves

would go a long way

toward hiding

my flabby upper arms…

On impulse, I slip off my baggy tee

and pull the brown shirt on over my head.

But when I catch sight of myself in the mirror,

I gasp—

how is it possible

that the very same shirt

that made my daughter look

so curvy, smooth, and sexy,

makes
me

look like two scoops

of half-melted

Rocky Road?

They came out.

They stood up.

They fell