The Stork Club (11 page)

"I want to conduct this group under the aegis of the hospital and our pediatric-development program, so I'm presenting it to all of you for discussion." She looked around now at the faces of the others. Hands went up, there were dozens of questions, surprise at the statistics, and a fascinated curiosity about Barbara's research.

"It's undoubtedly an exciting new area," Louise said. "I think we should try to work a group like that into our schedule."

An elated Barbara congratulated herself all the way home on the good job she'd done. She was glad to have the meeting out of the way before tonight. The romantic quiet celebration with Stan of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Impossible, she thought. A twenty-fifth wedding anniversary is something that happens to somebody's aunt and uncle. Not two youngsters like Barbara and Stan Singer.

She had sworn to Stan that she didn't want a party. Just dinner, preferably with her family, but when she invited her mother, Gracie said there was some committee meeting she couldn't miss. Jeff apologized that he had to go to basketball practice. Because the anniversary
fell in the middle of the week, Heidi told her sadly that she couldn't make it in from San Francisco.

So after a fast shower, the application of some fresh makeup, and slipping into a dress she was proud she could still wear since it was about fifteen years old, she and Stan sat alone in a large booth at Valentino's. Maybe, she thought now, it had been a mistake not putting together a big blowout of an anniversary party. A quarter of a century of marriage was certainly something to celebrate.

Stan seemed unusually nervous. He kept looking over at the door, and postponing ordering dinner presumably because, as he told Barbara twice, he'd eaten a late lunch and wasn't very hungry yet. Now he was watching as a stunning young girl in a tight black minidress was being led across the restaurant. When the maître d' stepped aside and Barbara saw that the girl was Heidi, she let out a yelp of glee, followed by another when she realized that behind Heidi, dressed in a sport coat and tie, was Jeff. And miracle of miracles, behind Jeff was Gracie. She looked great in a silk shirtwaist dress and long dangly earrings Barbara hadn't seen her wear in years.

"Surprise, darling," Gracie said, and Barbara wondered if she was thinking the posh restaurant was excessive.

"Happy anniversary, Mommy," Heidi said, sliding into the booth and giving Barbara a hug.

"You planned this behind my back?" Barbara asked Stan.

"Of course," he said as he grinned, and received a kiss from his daughter.

"I
knew
I liked you," Barbara said.

"Mother, you look fabulous," Heidi said.

"Thank you, honey. I was just going to say that to
my
mother."

Gracie laughed and slid in next to Stan and gave him
a patronizing little pat on the arm. "Good work, kiddo," she said.

Barbara felt warmed by the sight of her family all together in one place. Stan liked to call the need she had to see all of them assembled at a meal her barbecue fantasy. Now if the fantasy came true, which it never did, they would all be happy to be there, get along smashingly well, and leave full of love for one another and better for the encounter.

"Your hair looks totally idiotic," Heidi said to Jeff, and the fantasy went the way of all fantasies.

"That dress is so tight, if you fart your shoes'll fly off."

"Time out, you two," Stan said. "You've been together one hour. Can you stay civil for one more, in honor of the celebration?"

"Classic sibling rivalry," Gracie said. "My girls had it constantly."

"No, we didn't. Not constantly," Barbara flared immediately, knowing as she did it was a mistake to rise to the bait.

"Let's call New York and ask Roz.
She
has a mind like a steel trap," Gracie said.

"Maybe that's why they had sibling rivalry, because you compared them, Grammy," Heidi said.

"I
never
compared them."

"Well, if Aunt Roz has a mind like a steel trap, what does my mom have?" Jeff asked.

"I'm debating whether I should call a waiter or a taxi," Stan said, and everyone laughed.

"I guess no dinner with our family would be complete without tears, insults, hurt feelings, and unfulfilled expectations," Barbara said.

"In other words, we're normal," Gracie offered, then she lifted her arm to hail a passing waiter. "Could we have menus here pronto, dear boy? I'm starved."

"Mother!"

"The real issue you and your family-therapy associates ought to confront is why people jump through such hoops to conceive babies in the first place. All the babies do is grow up and mistreat one another, and
you
in the bargain."

"You can understand why I'm such a shining example of mental health with a mother who has
that
philosophy," Barbara said.

"Happy anniversary, sweetheart," Stan said, patting her hand.

"You know what?" she said, smiling at him. "If we're still around for our fiftieth, let's just go on a cruise."

They said good-bye to Gracie and made their way home, Heidi and Barbara sitting in the back of the car. When Heidi took her hand and held it, Barbara felt a surge of gratitude for being blessed with these two complicated creatures, her children. It was the best anniversary gift she could think of to be able to tuck Heidi into bed tonight in her old bedroom, even though the room now had a desk and a wall unit of bookshelves on one side and had been serving for the last few years as Barbara's at-home office.

"Grammy looked adorable tonight, but she's such a cuckoo," Heidi said. She was turning down the daybed while Barbara stood watching.

"Thank you for coming in for this dinner, honey," she said.

"Are you kidding? I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

Every time Barbara saw either of her children after not seeing them for a while, like the times Heidi came in from San Francisco to visit or Jeff got off the bus from spending a few weeks at tennis camp, she would be gleefully bowled over by the sight of them. Not by
their beauty, because she knew she had no objectivity about that, but by the miracle of genes. She would marvel as she gazed at one of her kids, for what they always found to be an annoyingly long time, at the way her own characteristics and Stan's fell together to shape them.

Their carriage, their gestures, their speech, their respective senses of humor, the familiar amalgam of her characteristics and Stan's mixed in with each child's individuality never ceased to amaze her. The same kind of uncontrollable hair she tried to tame on herself in high school by rolling it around orange juice cans and plastering it with Dippity-Do, on Heidi was a wild, wonderful-looking mane caught stylishly in a headband, or worn hanging loose, showing off the girl's personal confidence, which was more than Barbara ever remembered having at that or any age. And the darkness around Stan's eyes, which had always been his least favorite feature on his own face, had been inherited by Jeff, on whom it looked exotic and mysterious.

"Sit down, Mom," Heidi said, and Barbara knew it was an invitation to stay in the room to talk, so gratefully and obediently she sat on the desk chair across the room from the bed, and started the conversation with what she hoped sounded like a casual, not-too-probing question. "How's everything in San Francisco?"

She'd been saving any girl talk for the time when they were alone, hoping she'd get real answers instead of the upbeat facile ones Heidi might give in front of the others. Or maybe she wouldn't get a real answer at all. That sometimes happened too. Usually after Heidi first arrived, there would be a kind of tense feeling-each-other-out time between them, until the familiarity took over and Heidi dropped the exterior of a chic San Franciscan.

"I'm not good," Heidi said, moving some clothes from her duffel bag into a drawer. "I'm in love."

Hmmm, Barbara thought, things are getting chatty a lot faster than I'd anticipated. "But why does that make you not good?'' she asked. "I thought that was supposed to be happy news."

"It makes me not good because he's crazy. Because he's thirty-five years old and can't make a commitment. Because speaking of mothers, his did such a job on him that nobody will ever live up to her so he can't get married, can't be exclusive to any woman. And I'm the poor jerk who stays with him, even though I know that all I want in life is to have a relationship like yours with Daddy. But there's not a prayer. Not with this guy. I mean, I know he lies to me and probably cheats too."

"Are you practicing safe sex?" Barbara asked, knowing she would get an outraged answer back.

"Oh, God. Of course!" Heidi flared.

"I'll bet the lying and the cheating hurt a lot," Barbara said.

"Don't shrink me, Mother!"

"I'm not shrinking you. I'm being sympathetic."

"Yes, it hurts a lot, and I'm thinking of moving back to L.A. just to put some distance between me and Ryan. Yikes. Even when I just say his name I get a pain in my chest."

Barbara held her breath so she wouldn't say what she was thinking, which was hooray, yes, move back here, because if she said that, Heidi would probably buy a condo in San Francisco by Monday. Instead she waited for her to go on.

"How did you ever get so smart when you were eighteen to marry my cute daddy? A man you still love after twenty-five years."

"Oh, it was easy, really. Grammy helped me decide."

"She did?" Heidi was surprised by that answer.

"Uh-huh. She said, 'If you ever go out with that
nerdy little tight-ass again, I'll kill you.' Two weeks later we eloped." That brought a laugh from Heidi, a laugh Barbara loved and remembered from all her daughter's years of growing up, a laugh that made her know Heidi was going to be okay in spite of the thirty-five-year-old man and his mother. "And the rest is history," she added, laughing with her, and hurting for her.

You don't get to pick, Mother
. Those were words that Barbara had thought and said to Gracie endlessly in battles, not just about Stan, but about everything she could think of over the years. And she knew the same rule applied to her relationships with her own children. After they reached a certain age, they didn't give a damn what she thought.

"What can I do?" she asked.

"Nothing," Heidi said and lay on the bed and pulled the covers up to her neck, looking to Barbara the same way she had when she was six years old. In fact, the fading honey-colored Winnie the Pooh that had been a gift to her at birth and one of her favorite baby snuggle toys still sat on the night table next to the bed, completing the picture. Barbara wanted so much to say something comforting, and the only thing she could think of that might work was something she really didn't believe, but it was hopeful, so she said it anyway.

"Well, maybe he'll change."

In the morning when she drove Heidi to the airport she remembered a story Gracie had told her when she was a little girl, about a turtle who watched the birds fly south for the winter and longed to go with them, but of course she couldn't because turtles can't fly. When two of the about-to-depart birds saw how wistfully their friend the turtle watched them, they offered to take her along. They would, they told the turtle, find a stick onto which she could clamp her mouth, and each of the birds
would carry an end of the stick in its mouth. The only caveat was that the turtle had to keep her mouth shut for the entire flight.

The turtle, her mind racing, reminded herself again and again of the perils of speaking, but finally she had something which felt so important to say—Barbara couldn't remember now exactly what it was—that she spoke and of course fell from the stick, and not only didn't make it to the destination, but was never seen again. Barbara and Gracie always joked that the moral of the story was "If you want to go to Florida, keep your mouth shut," but the message was clear, and Barbara frequently felt when she was with Heidi as if she were that turtle.

At least they were sitting in a car, which was a great way to talk about uncomfortable situations, because if you were the driver you had to watch the road and there didn't have to be eye contact.

"I miss L. A. and I miss you and Daddy and Grammy, and even Jeff the brat. I always think I'm going to visit more often, but then I get bogged down with work and . . . and I never think I should leave . . . "

"Ryan?" Barbara asked, realizing she'd just caused the turtle to fall out of the sky.

"Yeah. I don't know what I'm going to do about that. Maybe give myself some time limit in my mind, and if he doesn't come around by then I stop seeing him."

"That sounds reasonable."

"It does, doesn't it? Unfortunately I don't have the guts to really do it."

"Do you have any women friends there?"

" A few. But they're all going through their own stuff, you know? Every now and then I see one of them, and they seem to be in worse shape than I am. At least I have a good job."

They were both silent after that until they got to the curb at United Airlines.

"Want me to park and wait with you?"

"No thanks."

"Whatever you decide to do about Ryan, I love you,'' Barbara said, and on the way to the office she told herself it was because Heidi was too choked with emotion that she didn't say "I love you" back.

At the office Barbara shuffled through the mail and returned some calls, and just before her first family arrived she took a call from a friend she hadn't seen in years. Lee Solway, a thoughtful, well-respected pediatrician to whom she'd referred dozens of patients.

"Lee. How great to hear from you. How are you?"

"I couldn't be better. Listen, I wanted to advance a call you're going to get from a fellow named Richard Reisman. I've come to know him quite well and he really needs your gentle guidance. Let me tell you why."

As Lee Solway described the referral Barbara listened, then wrote down the name Richard Reisman—and next to it the words
Candidate for new group
. The doctor was right. This man would need all the help he could get.

"Does it sound like it's your bailiwick?" Lee asked her.