The Original 1982 (17 page)
T
he apartment is dark when I get home. I turn the key in the lock and push the door open. I'm reaching for the light switch when I hear the sound of frantic rustling coming from my bed.
Oh, no, I think. Minnow, do you have a boy in here?
My panic is quickly replaced by surprise as I flip the lights on and see you and Jill scrambling into your clothes. “Mom,” you say. “Do you
mind
?”
I'm so stunned; I don't know what to do. “Sorry,” I mumble, and go into the kitchen to give you your privacy.
The secret lives of teenage girls. I think of the lined pages of my diary at fourteen, filled with the details of my own mother's worst nightmare. I put on a pot of water for tea, stand in the kitchen, and wait. I hear you saying good-bye to Jill, the sound of the front door opening and closing.
“Do you want a cup of tea?” I ask, facing the scratched sink and worn cabinets. I envision the conversation we will have, sitting at the table, mother and daughter. Unlike my own mother and me, we are open with one another. We can tell each other anything.
But you don't answer, and when I poke my head into the room, I find it empty. You've gone into your own room.
“Minnow?” I tap softly on your door.
“I'm sleeping, Mom,” you say.
“Okay.” I pause. What should I do? Must I wait for you to initiate the conversation? I hope you don't feel embarrassed or ashamed. “Good night, honey,” I say.
“Good night,” comes your sweet voice through the door.
I carry my tea to the table, turn on the TV with the volume low. There are always wars, and fires, and other catastrophes to provide distraction. Tiger jumps into my lap. I scratch his belly, and he purrs like a motorboat. On the news, a family has been rescued from a fire in Queens. They stand together in front of a house in ruins. A handsome firefighter denies he is a hero. I sip my hot tea, thankful for the roof over our heads, feeling the fatigue of the long day.
I wonder if I'd be so calm if I had caught you with a boy, instead? At least the encounter with Jill Woo can't leave you pregnant, and girls experiment, I think. It doesn't mean, necessarily, that you're gay. Of course, if you are, Minnow, I'm okay with it. You know that, don't you?
In the morning I wake you and you hop into the shower while I start breakfast and see to the menagerie. I'm hoping there will be a minute or two to talk, but then the phone starts to ring, and it's getting late. You grab your lunch from the refrigerator. “Bye, Mom.”
“Will you be home after school?” You're already half out the door.
“Nope,” you say. “I have basketball and then some of us are going to Jill's.”
“Will Jill's mother be home?” I ask, and regret it instantly.
“Yes,” you answer, running down the stairs. Is it my imagination or is the one syllable infused with shame?
It's not until the following Sunday, waiting for your grandparents to arrive for brunch, that the time seems right to broach the subject. By then, our conversation feels forced and awkward.
“Look, Minnow,” I say to you. “This is getting ridiculous. We need to talk about it.”
You're holding one of the guinea pigs in your arms, stroking her soft black-and-white fur. “There's nothing to talk about,” you say.
“I think there is,” I tell you gently. “I think you're feeling embarrassed about my walking in on you the other night.”
You rub your face against Z's back and don't say anything.
“Am I right?”
“I don't know.”
“Isn't there anything you'd like to say to me about it?”
“Sorry I was in your bed.” Your brown eyes are wet with tears. You're trying to blink them away.
“It's okay,” I say, as lightly as I can.
We sit quietly for a few minutes, and then it comes out.
“I like Jill, but she doesn't like me.” The tears are rolling down your cheeks, and I want to hug you, but force myself to sit where I am and listen. You wipe them away, holding the palm of your hand against one eye, your long hair falling over your face.
“There's a boy from school she likesâJosh.”
“She seems to like you very much, too,” I say.
You don't respond to this, but sigh deeply. “Not the way I like her,” you say finally.
The doorbell rings. “Go throw some cold water on your face,” I tell you. The brief conversation has us both feeling a little better, and you give me a brave smile.
I buzz my parents in and watch from the doorway as they ascend the stairs.
“Hi!” my mother calls. “We lucked out and got a parking space right out front.”
“Good for you,” I say, holding the door open, kissing them.
“Where's my girl?” my mother asks, and you come out of the bathroom, smiling. You kiss them and hug them.
Your grandfather is not as affectionate with you as he was when you were small, but that's just how he is. Grown-up girls aren't as easy for him to make sense of. “Hi, Minnow,” he says in his soft alto. His hair is almost entirely gray now. “What's new?”
“Nothing much.” You shrug.
The television is going with the sound off, and his eyes wander toward it.
“Come sit down,” I say. “I'm making blueberry pancakes.” We all know they're your favorite.
“Really?!” You do a little hop, despite your mood. The gesture feels bittersweet. How long before you've completely outgrown these girlish leaps and jumps?
“Got any coffee?” my dad wants to know.
“Of course.” I squeeze his hand in mine and feel the bones of his long fingers, his smooth olive skin.
The casement windows are halfway open and a fresh-smelling breeze blows in. Even in New York City the scent of spring is sweet. Yesterday, in the Jefferson Market Garden, I noticed a forsythia bush in full bloom; half a dozen sparrows perched on its yellow branches.
I place a pitcher of orange juice on the table, a plate of well-done bacon, the way my father likes it, low-fat milk for my mother, steaming mugs of French roast coffee. In the kitchen, I pour the batter, full of blueberries, into a hot frying pan as my mother watches from the doorway. She tells me she's been writing a poem every morning, a haiku. We listen to my father ask about your plans for the future and to your responses, so mature and well spoken. You're thinking about going to medical school, you say, maybe Stanford or Harvard, although you'd also like to travel for a while before college. Hearing you speak of your dreams and plans makes me miss you already, as if I've been projected into some future year, when you'll live in a foreign country, visit at Christmastime, and only call on my birthday.
When we sit down to eat, it's my turn to answer questions. “How's the real estate going?” my father asks.
“It's going okay,” I say.
“You making any money?”
I tell him that I'm doing all right. He knows that much already because I haven't asked them for any help lately.
In the original 1997, he says to me: “If you were working this hard at almost any other profession, you'd probably be head of the company by now.” But that's when I was making my living as a musician. Now there is no reason to suspect that I would ever be head of a company.
After brunch, you and your grandmother play a game of Scrabble. Your grandfather turns the volume up on the TV. The Yankees are playing one of the first games of the season. He takes a seat in the secondhand leather armchair that Alan and I recently dragged back from the flea market. It's the only piece of furniture I've ever owned that my father finds comfortable, and as he leans back into it, I feel glad to have pleased him.
I wander outside to the terrace, to see if anything green is sprouting. I've planted tulip bulbs along with a few daffodils in the pots along the brick wall. The daffodils are up and have already started to open. It's still cold enough to see my breath, but I lift my face toward the sun to feel the promise of its warmth.
H
arry Garfield's office is in a sparkling building near Rockefeller Center. Everything is glass and marble; even the reception area is posh. I look through a window at the pretty receptionist with the Brooklyn accent. It's been fifteen minutes since she told me Mr. Garfield would be right with me. She answers the phone every three or four seconds, puts one call on hold to take another. Church Records shares offices with a group of entertainment lawyers, and the name she recites again and again is a mouthful, but she never slips up.
Another fifteen minutes go by. Between calls, she checks her manicured nails and gives me a smile of apology. She looks as relieved as I do when a door opens and a smartly dressed blond woman says my name.
I follow the
click, click
of her high heels down a hallway, past a row of desks behind which sit secretaries in tailored jackets or tidy sweaters. Men walk past in suits and ties. She leads me through a maze of hallways that go on and on, past cubicles with ergonomic chairs, filing cabinets, and fluorescent lights, the hum of business getting done. I follow her through another doorway. “Almost there,” she says. There's no way I'm going to be able to find my way back to the elevators.
In Harry's office, the walls are covered with framed rock-and-roll posters, gold records, a black-and-white photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge, and others of himself, smiling alongside various music business luminaries. The bookshelves are packed full of CDs, books, cassettes, and LPs. Harry's desk overflows with paper, in folders and in piles, more CDs, most out of their cases, pens, paper clips and rubber bands, a few pairs of sunglasses, and a jar of jelly beans.
He looks up but stays seated. “Hi, Lisa. You look great. Thanks for coming in. Have a seat.”
I thank him and relax a little. I've got a T-shirt on and a jean jacket over it, tight black pants, and a pair of Doc Martens boots. My hair is messy in a good way, and I'm wearing just enough makeup to make it look as if I don't have any on. I'm going for hip, casual, and pretty.
Harry has asked me to bring any music I've got to play for him, so I've brought the well-recorded demos made with Corbin years ago at Silver Sound, although some of those songs are not my best. I've also got a tape of a few newer, better songs, recorded on a four-track in my apartment, but those kind of sound like I'm singing underwater.
“What do you have for me?” Harry asks, rubbing his hands together.
I rummage through my big bag, trying to decide which of the two tapes to give him first, and hand him the cassette of the homemade demos. At the last second, I change my mind. “Wait, listen to this one first. Track three.”
“Still True” still sounds pretty good to me. It's the strongest of my older songs. We sit in silence while it plays. He closes his eyes and nods his head. I can tell by the way he's listening that it's a good one to have started with. Three minutes and forty-something seconds go by.
“Nice tune,” he says when it's done.
“Thanks.” I'm playing with a rubber band I've taken from the edge of his desk, twisting it around my wrist and fingers.
“I don't remember it from the other night.”
“No, it's an older song,” I explain. “I try to play new stuff at the open mic.”
“Pretty. I like it. What else you got?”
I hand him the other tape. He puts it into the cassette deck and presses play. The murkiness of the recording is a shock after the pristine sound of the first demo and I can tell he's confused. He listens for a couple of minutes and then shuts it off.
“You're a real talent,” he says. “No doubt about that. The question is what to do with you.”
I don't know what that means, but it doesn't sound good. Harry talks about himself for a while and then plays me a song by a singer he says he discovered last year. I nod my head and pretend to like it.
Before we say good-bye, he gives me a tour of the office, introduces me to the hip, young people who work there, and fills my bag with CDs of all the new Church Records releases.
Outside his door, he shakes my hand. “Stay in touch,” he says. “Let me know when you're playing next.”
“I will,” I say, but life gets busy, and I never contact him again.
W
hen Jill Woo comes to the apartment, I attempt to give her the benefit of the doubt, but it isn't easy. She's tall, taller than I am, with flawless skin and symmetrical features. Her long black hair sways back and forth as she crosses the room.
“Hi, Ms. Nelson,” she says to me, and I notice how poised she is, how careful and precise her diction. Not a passionate girl, this one. She won't be carried away by love.
Still, in the year since I caught the two of you in bed, things seem to have progressed between you. At fifteen, you're in love for the first time and speak of Jill with every sentence. She seems to be willing to go along with it at least.
“Jill is
so
smart.”
“Jill is
such
a great basketball player.”
“Jill's going to be in
Seventeen
magazine!”
You refer to her as your girlfriend, though I have my doubts as to whether she'd do the same. I can see the way she keeps her options open. She's like the boys I used to choose, basking in your adoration but turning away from you as you lie on the floor in front of the TV. I come in with a bowl of popcorn and see you stroke her arm. It's always you doing the reaching, while Jill leans back and coolly receives. She teases you for wearing your jeans too often. She tells you you should cut your beautiful hair. She pinches your skin at the waist. “Spare tire,” she says, laughing, so you refuse to eat the fattening desserts you love.
But one day, you come home from school and throw your book bag onto the table. “I broke up with Jill,” you say.
“What happened?” I ask from the kitchen where I'm unpacking groceries. I try to hide my relief.
“We've been fighting a lot.”
“You want a cup of tea?”
“Sure,” you say.
So I make us some tea and join you at the table. “How are you feeling?” I ask.
You look so serious and lovely, Minnow. Your nutty-brown hair falling in waves past your shoulders. You wear a crisp, white shirt, a navy A-line skirt, and heavy black shoes.
“I feel okay.” I watch you spoon three heaping sugars into your tea. “I felt a little dizzy at first, and my stomach hurt, but then I was kind of relieved.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh, because sometimes it was exhausting, trying to be good enough for her.”
“You're
too
good for her,” I can't help myself from saying.
“Of course you think that. You're my mother. But with Jill, everything always has to be
so
perfect, and I'm not like that. I like to relax.”
I can't help but smile at this, my relaxed, superachiever, A-student daughter.
A few days later, Gabriel calls to say he's finally making good on his threat. He plans to run for political office in the fall. He asks me how I'd feel about your spending the summer with him, in his country, to help work on his campaign. “It would be very interesting for her,” your father says. “To learn about the political process, to find out Greenwich Village is not the center of the world.”
“What about your family?” I ask. “Does your mother even know about her?”
“Of course she does!” He's offended. “Everyone is dying to meet her. She'll have the time of her life.”
I think about my own trip to Gabriel's country, in the early eighties. Gabriel and I had been together for a year or so. He'd told me all about his beloved country, about the mountains of Terra Azul, where you can see two oceans from one patch of grass.
When we first arrived at the airport, your father ran ahead, leaving me to trail behind with our bags. I was alone going through customs when the immigration officers confiscated my passport, looking for a bribe. They were embarrassed when they found out I was with Gabriel, but they kept it just the same. Your father told me not to worry about it, and we left for our hotel. Later, he called the office of the president and explained what had happened. My passport mysteriously appeared at the front desk the next day.
Would I sleep a single night if I gave you permission to spend the summer with Gabriel in his country? “Let me get back to you,” I say now. “I need to talk to her, see what she wants to do, and I really need to think about it.”
“Okay,” he says. “But think fast. Tell Minnow I'll speak to her on Friday.”
“I will.”
