Falling in Love with Natassia

by Anna Monardo

  On her way back to the table, Mary got her cigarettes out of her backpack, tossed them way down onto the middle of the table, far from the notepad and pen. She sat again to write. It was shocking to think that she used to spend her nights alone while Natassia wandered around the city, “using her own good judgment,” as Lotte liked to say.

  What complete horseshit.

  During a Dr. Cather session on the phone about a month earlier, Mary had broken down, whispering, “Dr. Cather, I did terrible things. I left her with other people, and they let her run around. We all did. We let her go.”

  “But now, Mary,” Dr. Cather had said, “you are holding your daughter in a way that you yourself were never held. You’re holding her physically, emotionally.”

  “But when she was little…”

  “Some people never in their lifetime receive what Natassia is receiving from you now. Some never manage to do for another what you are doing for your daughter now. Now, Mary, look at now.”

  Right now Natassia was out for sushi with Kevin. If they’re not home in two hours, I’ll call the police. I won’t let her out all night the way we used to.

  Now Mary needed to keep her job. She pulled her legs up and settled herself Indian-style on the straight-back chair. Instructor’s teaching philosophy. Five pages.

  The silence in the loft was a whisper of noises: the ice-cube machine in the fancy fridge, radiator pipes hiccupping, traffic. Mary looked at the word “philosophy.” It made her think of Ross. She hated being in a fight with him. Her feet were cold. On her way into the bedroom for socks, she picked up the mobile phone and dialed Ross’s number. She hung up. Then she hit REDIAL. Harriet answered. Ross wasn’t home, so Mary and Harriet talked a while about the letter from Franklin. Harriet was sympathetic, said she hated writing that kind of stuff, too, when she applied for grants or whatever. She said the only thing to do was sit down and get it over with. She said, “Sometimes a mug of green tea settles me.”

  Harriet and Mary had never met, but they’d been having phone conversations for over two years now, arranging Natassia’s visits to Spokane, and, recently, discussing her recovery. Mary decided to go for it. “So—Ross sounds, I don’t know, jumpy lately.”

  There was a pause, and Mary thought, I should have kept my mouth shut.

  “Jumpy’s not even the word. Mary, things aren’t great around here. I’ve thought of calling you. I’m glad, for Natassia’s sake, that she didn’t come visit this New Year’s. She wouldn’t enjoy her dad much these days.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, Mary”—a new Harriet slipped through—“he’s not in good shape.”

  “He’s using?” Why’m I acting like I don’t know?

  “After that trip to New York for Natassia, he plummeted. But you know, it’s not just her breakdown. It’s—it’s Ross. What can I say? It was very bad for a while. I had to tell his supervisor.”

  “At the hospital? You told?”

  “He’s a doctor, Mary. He could kill somebody if he made a mistake. I could lose my own license for protecting him.” Mary could hear in Harriet’s voice traces of an argument, hints of a battle that had gone on, maybe was still going on. “It’s not just cocaine now. He’s starting in with fentanyl.”

  “What’s that? Is it bad?”

  “Bad? It’s like morphine, only about eighty times more potent. It’s used by the anesthesiologists, who happened to notice their supplies were down. One thing led to another. Anyway, they’ve got him on probation now. They love him at the hospital, they really do. He’s an excellent doctor. Even when he’s high, he does the work better than most. He’s in a rehab program, doing daily check-ins with a counselor. Random urine tests.” Making her way down this treatment list, Harriet eased back into her doctor’s voice. “He’s in private therapy and in a group.”

  “Urine tests? Isn’t that what they do with addicts?”

  “Mary. He is an addict. He was injecting this stuff.”

  “Oh, man, Harriet, I just—”

  “I know, Mary, I know. And he refused to tell you any of this, because, well, as you know, he lies a lot. But, really, he didn’t want to worry you, on top of everything else you’ve got with Natassia. And he certainly doesn’t want his parents to know. Mary, who are these people? I mean, good Lord, how destructive they’ve been to him. How…”

  Lotte and David? Were they really that bad? Were they?

  “Anyway,” Harriet said, “it really is better for Natassia not to be here this year. We miss her, but her dad’s sleeping down in Natassia’s little room.” And the next thing Mary knew, Harriet was confiding that she and Ross were in couples counseling, too, but it was that doctor’s voice offering this information. Composed, Harriet went on: “I’ve just had to draw some boundaries. Things seem a little better now, with this rehab program.”

  “Is he going to lose his job?” Mary asked.

  “No.” Harriet’s voice was clipped, firm. “As I said, he’s a brilliant physician, Mary, and well liked. He won’t lose his job.” Pause, then Harriet let herself sound like a woman again. “He might lose me, but not the job.” Harriet laughed that low, wry hurt-woman’s laugh Mary had heard from Natassia after the BF left her. Then, from somewhere close to Harriet, came unpleasant cat noises. “Oh no, kitten! My little kitty here just got sick on my shoe. Oh, poor cat. Mary, I should get off.”

  “Oh yeah, listen, let me know. And if you guys need anything. Really, anything.”

  “Well, just, please, wait for him to tell you himself. We’re clear on this, right?”

  “Sure. Bye.” Wow. Mary had to walk around the loft. None of it was news, it just felt bad to have it spelled out. Rehab. Probation. Urine tests. Injecting.

  Mary pushed open the window again, just a crack, and squatted there smoking a cigarette, letting the smoke out into the night. (Nothing made a cigarette taste better than quitting for a few days.) No wonder he’d been such a jackass to her on the phone, he was worried about his own job. If they both fucked up, where would Natassia live? How destructive…. Lotte and David probably weren’t a possibility anymore. “I’ve got to write this job thing,” Mary said out loud. “Now. Tonight.”

  She smashed her cigarette on the sill and tossed the butt down into the street, let the window slam. Her feet were freezing. She went into the bedroom and dug around in the laundry basket of clean clothes. Ross had been in some kind of rehab once before. It had helped, for a while. He’d been clean for over three years, since he’d first met Harriet. Putting on her socks, Mary noticed someone’s toenail clipper on the dresser, and she stopped to clip her toenails. There was a nail file, too, so she filed her fingernails. How could Lotte and David not know about Ross? And they went to London for Christmas? Mary noticed her toenail clippings on the wooden floor, and with her foot she swept them under the bed.

  On the way back from the bedroom, with socks on, Mary stopped on the bare wood floor between two dhurrie rugs and squared her feet in a parallel second position. Her body was full of antsiness that wasn’t letting her sit down to write. She did an abdominal contraction and rolled her head down to her feet, hands to the floor, felt her spine loosen, then rolled herself back up slowly, vertebra by vertebra. She’d been working out at a gym down the street in the mornings. She’d taken a dance class that afternoon. Her joints were nice and loose; inside, in her guts, though, she was knots. Ross. Ross. It would have been good to call Dr. Cather. But four days after Christmas, on a Friday night at eight-thirty? Lying on her side, Mary V-ed open her legs and used one arm to raise herself off the floor, hinged herself up to a standing position. That felt nice. She got down on the floor again, V-ed her legs, hinged up, then did four counts of shoulder isolations and four counts of hip isolations.

  Kevin and Natassia had been playing an Edith Piaf CD, and there was one song…Mary found the song on the CD and improvised, starting on the floor with her legs V-ed open. The CD player was on REPEAT, and Piaf’s singing sounded like the howling inside Mary’s
chest as she let herself dance the album through three times. Mary liked what she’d just improvised, so she danced it through again. And then she couldn’t hold herself back.

  Turning off the music, she walked straight into the bedroom, opened Natassia’s backpack, and dug around until she found Natassia’s journal.

  For a terrible, sick moment while she’d been dancing, she’d let herself wonder, Is Natassia using? What if Ross is supplying her? Messed-up father, sick daughter? As a doctor, Ross could get anything. Reading this journal feels much worse than giving in to a smoke. There was a powerful body sensation every time Mary held the pink folder. Touching the tips of the pages, Mary’s fingers trembled and felt hot; but inside, Mary felt oddly at one with herself: her impulses and her actions were aligned. This is probably how it feels to Ross every time he starts using.

  She wasn’t looking just for the dreaded initials BF now, she was looking for anything. An early-December entry relieved Mary’s most immediate worry: Daddy’s messed up again. She won’t tell me but I can tell from their phone conversations. Poor sick Daddy. I never could stand it when he’s like that.

  So they weren’t in cahoots, father and daughter. Mary put the pink folder away, tucking it under the same white T-shirt where she’d found it. By now Mary was perspiring and dusty and decided she could use a hot bath before sitting down again to write.

  The bathroom was cluttered. Kevin’s guy stuff was everywhere: a slopped-up shaving-soap dish, a wood-handled shaving brush. His boxers were crumpled on the floor by the toilet. It had been a long time since Mary had been around so much guyness. After she cleared his stuff from the tub, she started to run the bathwater, and then Mary noticed a red hair, bright, a single pubic curl. It had to be Kevin’s, because it wasn’t hers and it wasn’t Natassia’s. Mary filled the tub with hot water. Nora’s Annick Goutal bath oil was in the shower caddie, so Mary poured in a generous amount. Stepping into the bath, Mary was not aware of watching Kevin’s red pubic hair whirl in the water, then float. But she was watching. Mary’s bubble bath was hot and deep, and she soaked.

  Paging through Nora’s Tweeds catalogue, Mary tried to figure out which items on the dog-eared pages Nora was interested in. How much does she spend on her clothes? Where is she? What’s up with those two? I need to talk to her. Soaking, Mary knew the evening was wasting. No progress whatsoever on the job stuff. If Natassia and Kevin aren’t back soon… But something in her gut, not just laziness, told Mary it was okay to trust Kevin to watch the kid—at least for a little while.

  When the water was losing its heat, Mary got up out of the tub and toweled off. Wearing Nora’s bathrobe, Mary went into the kitchen and poured herself a big glass of ice water. She drank it, lay down on the couch. Her left foot was aching. She got up and found a bag of peas in the freezer and lay down again with the bag of peas on her warmly socked foot. Five minutes, she told herself.

  WHEN KEVIN AND NATASSIA came home, Mary was sound asleep on the couch, snoring a little; her Nicorette gum had slipped out of her mouth onto a pillow.

  Natassia and Kevin looked at the skimpy bit of writing on the legal pad on the dining-room table. “I’m going to have to help her,” Natassia said to Kevin.

  “That might be a good idea.”

  CHAPTER 29 :

  DECEMBER

  1989

  It is a cold, clear glass of a day. Saturday, December 30. Kevin is walking cross-town bouncing a basketball. A little past noon, the day is fresh and just started. Standing at the corner of Houston and Broadway, waiting for the light to change, he’s smiling to himself, and can’t stop bouncing. He’s got on fingerless gloves, and he scratches under his beard. Kevin still can’t believe the way his luck has turned—day after day of living with Mary Mudd. In the proximity of, in the same air space with Mary Mudd. God, she smells good. And there’s at least a couple more days to go. Best Christmas ever. Thank you, Santa. Entertaining Mary’s daughter is a small price to pay for the miracle of living so close to Mary. Now and then, Kevin has to step outside, just to look at it—his current life.

  This is probably the first time since he was twelve years old that he hasn’t been wondering about how long until he’ll get to see Mary again. Now he sees her first thing in the morning, last thing at night. They go to the gym together every few days. Yesterday he watched her climb and climb the Stairmaster. She totally out-climbed him and everybody else in the place. Oblivious, wearing her Walkman, she had her eyes on CNN: the Berlin Wall falling, the big gate opening. Just like me, man, that’s me! When he was tuckered from his workout, Mary was still going strong, halfway up Mount Everest. Before he left the machines to go to a mat, he shifted a floor fan so the breeze would cool her off. She didn’t notice, but he likes doing nice things for her.

  All around in the gym were the garish girls in spandex—blue, pink, green stripes on black. Mary, in faded gray sweats, radiated beyond them. She hadn’t worn socks; her chains and baubles shimmered on her ankles above her old Reeboks, which she’d laced loosely so she could slip her shoes easily on and off. Her shoelaces were broken, tied together. As long as he’s known her, since she was a kid, she’s been dressed in worn-out, secondhand clothes. Probably his whole deal with vintage clothes started with Mary; all the years Kevin has been scavenging, he’s been shopping for clothes for Mary Mudd.

  When he crosses Thompson Street, the street he lives on, he realizes it’s been over a week since he’s been to his own apartment, which actually is Mary’s apartment from way back when. He’s been subletting from her for years. This makes him feel good, too; together, they’ve managed to hold on to rent control for almost fifteen years. If that Hiliard School jerk ends up firing her, maybe Mary will need to move back into the walk-up—with Kevin. Man, he’d treat her well. Cook for her all the time, like Christopher does for Nora.

  Anything could happen. Kevin is wide open to this particular day. At the corner, some teenage girls are watching him, so he finger-spins the basketball. The girls giggle. The light changes. He moves on. Last night, they were watching It’s a Wonderful Life and he got to spend two hours sitting on the couch, with Mary’s smallness curled not far from him, at the other end of the couch, her feet tucked into the crack between the sofa cushions. It was all there: The slope from her hip down to her feet. The tumble of shoulder and arms. The clean, strong lines of her. The rumbly way she laughed. Then she fell asleep. Her ankle chains. Her ankles, her bones, her wrists. Ear. Feather.

  He wanted to stare, but he couldn’t stare. He took her in in bits, little glances, and it was like glimpsing beautiful stuff on a beach—rocks and shells and stones and chunks of weathered wood you want to scoop up and take home. His heartbeat was a fast dance all through the movie, while he pushed the pillow against his hard-on, which hasn’t subsided for a minute during the eight days he’s been lucky enough to live in the loft with Mary.

  Heading over to the basketball courts on Sixth Avenue, hearing the bouncing, the running, he looks up at a sky so blue; it’s solid and matte, like an unchipped piece of original Fiesta stoneware. He wants to wrap his legs and arms round the whole wide world and just fuck and fuck.

  CHAPTER 30 :

  DECEMBER

  1989

  Nora’s first miscalculation (she didn’t like the word “mistake”) was, probably, her decision to surprise Abe by going out to Greenport a day earlier than they had planned. If a patient in a session had made this decision, Nora would have asked, What are your intentions with this surprise? How do you imagine it will be received? And she would have thought to herself, This person is trying to extract information. Is there a lack of trust here? In other words, Are you spying? But all Nora allowed herself to consider was this: If nine days and nights with Abe will be great, won’t ten be better?

  When she arrived at the house that evening, she had to let herself in with Christopher’s key (which she’d taken to make sure he couldn’t just show up). Abe wasn’t there. Two lamps were lit in the living room. The bathroom
light and fan were going. Very tall piles of paper lay all over the kitchen table, which was in the living room, where it did not belong. The bed in the biggest bedroom was unmade. The toilet seat was up. She dumped her bags in the smallest bedroom and opened the bottle of good Scotch she’d brought with her and sat down and waited.

  It was after midnight, and she was in the den watching the news, when Abe got home. “Hey! Nora Conolly,” he said, and smiled. He took his boots off at the door and, still in his overcoat, walked over to Nora. When he shrugged out of his coat, his sweater smelled like a good dinner party—wine, spiced-up food, cigarettes. He carefully lowered a plate of leftovers onto the coffee table. Nora asked, “Where’ve you been?” Schoolmarm.

  “Met that couple down the road, the retired advertising people?” He leaned back on the couch and took Nora’s legs across his lap. Maybe it’s okay about the toilet seat. He didn’t know I was coming. “Nice folks. They invited me to chow.”

  “They invited you?” She knew who he meant. Two women who had an extensive garden of hybrid roses and a greenhouse built onto their two-story garage. “They never talk to us.” Keep Christopher out of this. “My lawn’s too shabby for them. They ignore me.”

  Abe laced his fingers through Nora’s. “They felt sorry for me out here alone.”

  “How’d you meet them?”

  “Outside, smoking. They walk by all the time with their dogs. You got lots of nice neighbors, Nora Conolly, out here in Greenport, Long Island.”

  “I hope you’re not smoking out in the cold for my benefit.”

  “Don’t want to stink up the Nora Conolly beach house with smoke.”

  His eyes were on her. He was a little drunker than she’d noticed at first—his eyelids were heavy—but that gaze of his was almost too much. “It’s nice of you not to smoke in the house,” Nora said, and leaned forward, rested her forehead on Abe’s cold cheek. She closed her eyes, breathed. “You didn’t make your bed,” she whispered.