Girl Talk

by Julianna Baggott

  “She thinks love is a weakness, a dirty sin,” my mother said. “She would never come to see you, to admit to wanting to see her granddaughter. If she gave in to her weakness, she would do it this way, in secret, the way she drinks vodka in coffee cups.”

  It was silent between us. Neither of us spoke for several minutes. I was wondering how my mother could lie so easily, how she must have almost believed that her mother was dead, maybe because at some point it began to feel like she was dead. I thought about her in the convent bathroom, bleeding away the baby, how much she needed the baby and how that need went unanswered, in blood and sweat and pain. Then finally I asked her, “Why?” I sat up, straining forward now, propped up on my elbows. “It was so awful. How could you let it happen again? Why did you let yourself get pregnant again? With me?”

  “Look,” she said softly, “sometimes the only way to fix a mistake is to make it twice.”

  After the miscarriage, my mother bled for about a week, a heavy period. At night, she dreamed about the swimming pool, filled with everyone she knew, naked—her mother, her father, Anthony. Sister Katherine Perpetua treading water, her weak legs dangling beneath her. My mother was waiting for Jesus, not just to save her but to save all of them. Sometimes the water would swirl red as if he were wading in, the nail holes in his feet seeping blood. But he didn’t show. Instead, my grandmother polished silver, my grandfather chopped the heads off of fish, arranging their bodies in the chipped ice of the display case completely submerged with him. Anthony circled on the surface, like an angel watching over his slaughterhouse sheep that paddled with their thin hooves. They seemed to say, It’s just like normal. C’mon in. And she wanted to tell them it was not normal. The baby was there, too, floating away without a cord, farther and farther. She was in the pool trying to swim and on the edge of the pool, dry as a bone, watching.

  During the day, she tried to pray to Jesus, but she could hear the highway, the trucks rumbling by, day and night. She knew she could hitch a ride to Bayonne and find Anthony. She wondered if she would go, moment to moment, she wondered if she would get up and walk out. But each moment passed and she was still there.

  Eventually, she found herself at the pool again, bloated and pale in her blue suit, sitting on the wooden bench in the shade of the pool house. She watched the girls slip into the water, their hair fanning out over their heads, how they nearly disappeared, became a blur, and then broke up through the water’s surface. At noon the nuns poured from the chapel, their black bell skirts gliding across the courtyard, their crosses catching sun the way windshields do when a car is driving toward you, white holes burning on their chests. Even Sister Katherine Perpetua from that distance seemed to be gliding, her canes like two gold staffs. My mother wanted to know what it felt like to be saved.

  She walked to the pool’s edge to see if Jesus would make her swim, if Jesus would be the one to save her. She jumped in like all of the rest. The water rose around her, slowly filling her mouth. She wasn’t afraid of anything. She put her faith in God, everything going white, brilliant light shooting off the water’s surface. But Jesus didn’t save her. The spry swimming instructor dragged her up from the pool’s floor onto the cement. My mother threw up pool water, heaved until her breaths were clear. She looked up at the cluster of nuns leaning over her, their silver crosses now swinging like pendulums from their chests, their pink cheeks tear stained. She stared up into their skewed faces, their wandering eyes, their bucked and gapped teeth, their thick spectacles, and knotted noses. They were so beautiful, she said it out loud. “You’re beautiful. You are all so beautiful.” And the nuns reared and giggled, blushing. She knew that she couldn’t leave them.

  13

  Juniper called a few days after Church carried Kitty Hawk, his bride, over the threshold of my apartment. This time in my life is blurry. I remember feeling outside of myself and yet rooted in my body, its nausea, and bloated tenderness. I was exhausted and clammy, my mind whirling in different illogical directions. I spent a lot of time bent over trash cans. I wasn’t prepared to have a chat with Juniper Fiske. But there I was, the receiver to my ear, Juniper Fiske’s chirpy voice chatting away.

  Evidently Church had taken Kitty home to meet his mom, a day trip, and it wasn’t a pleasant scene. Juniper had been excited to meet Kitty. Juniper was, after all, interested in Asian cultures and desperate to discuss her chi with someone who might find her enlightened. But Kitty wasn’t the chi type. I’m pretty sure she wore the thigh-high lace-up spike-heeled boots.

  On the phone, Juniper sounded at first as if she were scolding me, as if it were my fault, and then she became miraculously enthusiastic. She had a plan.

  “Not that I blame you, Lissy. Really, I don’t. And, of course, I don’t have anything against the Asians,” she said. “I think they are a wondrous people. I take tai chi, you know, twice a week and the instructor is Chinese and we get along famously. I am very open-minded, Lissy. But . . .” She hesitated. “I don’t think she’s right for my Church. I’ve been thinking of hosting an intervention. I’ve always wanted to.”

  “Well, it’s a little late for an intervention. They’re already married.”

  “Better late than never. I would like you to be in charge of getting Church home without his knowing a thing about this.”

  Well, there was little I could say, considering that according to Juniper this was at least partially my fault. I had little faith in her plan, but I was almost as unenthusiastic about Church and Kitty’s relationship as Juniper was. I needed Church. I wanted to have that moment with him, whatever that moment would be, something sweet and gentle, in which I’d know everything would turn out right in the end, the way my mother felt after meeting Bob Jablonski at the punch bowl. I certainly wasn’t convinced of Church and Kitty’s love. I was pretty sure Kitty was in it for the money or the green card—most likely both. I agreed that although the intervention would happen ex post facto, maybe it would make Church snap out of it, come to his senses, and get out before he got in any deeper. I said I would make something up to get him to her house on the day; lying had become a specialty of mine. But I was suspicious of Juniper’s tone, the way at the end of the conversation she got giddy and said, “Okay, so it’s set. I’m throwing an intervention.” I was fairly certain that she had a very different view of an intervention than I did, but interventions were fairly new to me—actually, this would be my first—so I didn’t really know what to expect. And because it was her son, I decided to just go along.

  Evidently Piper often didn’t return Juniper’s calls, for what Piper referred to as “political reasons,” which meant nothing to Juniper, or to me for that matter. So I was to phone Piper, and Juniper suggested that I try to be “politically sound.”

  I called Piper that afternoon. “Yes? Piper Fiske here.”

  I said, “It’s Lissy Jablonski.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “What is it?”

  I assumed that she remembered me. I knew her well enough to take this as her friendly tone. I was straightforward but felt that old nervousness, remembering when I’d called from Ruby’s kitchen at fifteen. “Church is in trouble. He’s married a stripper he met a week ago. He’s lost his mind.”

  “Church Fiske, I will remind you, is a wealthy white heterosexual man born with every advantage and privilege, in a world designed for wealthy white heterosexual men born with every advantage and privilege. He had someone cut his meat for him till he was twelve years old.”

  “Your mother wants to have an intervention.”

  “For Church Fiske? That is so typical. Do you know that there are women in China killing themselves by drinking pesticides? Fuck Church Fiske.” And she hung up.

  When I called to tell Juniper that I had failed to entice Piper into coming to the intervention, she said, “Piper is very busy. She’s probably overcommitted herself this month. Did she hang up on you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Juniper sighed a little sigh of relief that seem
ed to mean Oh good—it’s not just me. “I’ve already engaged a caterer. You’ll get your invitation in the mail.”

  When I received my invitation to Church’s intervention in the mail on Juniper Fiske’s monogrammed stationary, I called my mother. You have to keep in mind it was 1999. By then, my parents had, for all intents and purposes, never been apart aside from one “conference,” as my mother put it, during the summer that never happened. I will mention here that my grandmother had been dead, by that point, for three years. She went peacefully, the doctors claimed. I remember my mother saying, “A little presumptuous, don’t you think? How can anyone know what goes on inside someone as they die? Since when is sleep necessarily peaceful? Why does everyone think that that’s so comforting?”

  My grandmother had been at home in bed, found four days later by a neighbor with a key. My mother felt guilty, yes, because anytime someone dies, we feel guilty. But she wouldn’t allow herself to take on too much of the burden. She still held tight to their bitter silence, not giving in to a big display of emotion. I followed suit. I felt guilty, too. I was old enough to have forged a relationship with my grandmother on our own terms, which I failed to do. But like my mother, I didn’t shoulder all of that responsibility. It was a multigenerational effort at silent unrest. I understood why my mother didn’t want her to go peacefully; she wanted her mother to have struggled at the end to make peace with her meek husband; with her daughter, both the infant she loved so easily and the woman that infant grew into; with me; and with herself.

  I was curious if, as she got closer to her death, she’d become softer, more like that girl again swinging out over the grain and flax, if her body itself had become more childlike, less the way I think she might have seen herself, as raped and dirty, but finally as again pure. If the doctors were right and she went peacefully, I imagine that was part of the peace she had to make. My grandmother had been raped and it affected my mother; it affected me. My grandmother thought her body was dirty. My mother thought she herself was a whore. My own craziness is lodged in my uterus. I’m aware of it, but I don’t know how to fix it. All I know is that I agree with her, that love is a weakness. I can’t fix that either.

  My mother knew all about the Kitty-Church fiasco; she knew that I’d recently sworn off men and knew the nondetailed version of the breakup with Peter Kinney, a boyfriend she’d never met. And although I hadn’t told her that he was a married man, I knew that she knew because she told stories, out of the blue, about abysmal relationships that were born out of “this kind of deceit.” Other types of deceit—her own, for example—were completely acceptable. Infidelity was not high on her list of vices. Of course, she had no idea I was pregnant. I asked her if she’d come to Church’s intervention with me. I didn’t want to go alone.

  “It sounds like one of those sensitivity training things where everyone cries and hugs each other. Mrs. Defraglia’s son went to one, came home, told her he loved her and hasn’t had a job since. She caught him embracing the mailman. I’ll never understand people’s obsession with expressing themselves. What’s wrong with pruning a tree? Your father finds that a nice form of expression and he doesn’t have to sit on a couch and talk about how everything makes him feel, for God’s sake. And what about Jazzercise? Did I tell you I’ve started up again? Juniper said my voice sounded fat. Does my voice sound fat to you?”

  Obviously, my mother was still pissed at Juniper for the comments she’d made during their last phone conversation. I decided to ask my mother a question more in her field—deceit. “Church won’t take the garbage out unless Kitty promises to watch him wave from the curb. How am I going to get him all the way to Cape Cod alone?”

  My mother said, “Tell him that Juniper has lost her mind again. That she’s shuffling around in her bathrobe all over town. Tell him his mother’s a complete loony. He’ll believe that.”

  I used my mother’s excuse to get Church to Cape Cod. He’d wanted to take Kitty, but she was taking a bubble bath, alone, sulking about a bracelet Church hadn’t bought for her. He had the money, but it wasn’t his style to act rich and throw money around, something Kitty did not understand. Also, she had to work that night.

  I told Church, who was drinking a beer, absentmindedly flipping through my CDs, “You don’t really want Kitty to see your mom all freaked out and huddled up in the corner of her room in an old bathrobe. It won’t be pretty.”

  “I thought you said she was out wandering the streets.”

  “At first, yes, but she’s pretty tightly cocooned right now.”

  By this time, it had begun to really sink in that I was pregnant. And although I had Church alone, I didn’t bring it up. I felt guilty about having lied to Church about his mother, like I was driving an old person to a nursing home when I’d told him we were going to a shuffleboard contest, a dog to the vet when I’d promised a run in the park. But I was dying to tell him, to tell someone. The news was bubbling up inside of me as if holding in the news itself were the thing making me sick.

  Church was distracted, looking out the window, letting his eyes flick from car to passing car, sometimes craning his neck to look at distant contrails, the sky’s white furrows. “I never like going home,” he said. “It’s like walking into air. Nothing but tense air. You know how it is. You understand. You remember my house when we were kids, that summer. You know that I hated it and why I loved Bayonne.” He was still looking out the window into the roadside trees. “I was happy, you know, that summer, with you and your mother, the Pantulianos. I was really happy. I still know everything about the Yankees, everything—just ask me.” He paused but didn’t really wait for me to ask him about baseball.

  I was thinking of him at Dino and Ruby’s, the way he walked around on the edge of ecstatic. He was jumpy, intense, soaking it all up. I felt sorry for him, the idea that the summer that never happened was the best summer of Church’s life.

  Now he started to get antsy, twisting in his seat, gearing up for a little speech. I could tell. It’s his distraction technique, a way of taking his mind off of his problems, this time Kitty in a huff and his crazy mother, closer by the minute.

  “One day,” he said, “I’ll invite you over to my house with all its kitsch and gaudy wallpaper. I’ll be in my white sneakers with black socks. We’ll sit in aluminum lawn chairs with sagging nylon seats. I’ll have a white chest and tan arms from mowing the lawn in a V-neck T-shirt and coaching Little League. We’ll have those oversize magnet alphabet letters on the fridge and the kids will be eating peanut butter sandwiches cut into triangles.”

  “By Kitty? The little woman? Your better half?” I was doubtful.

  He ignored my tone. “The old ball and chain. And you’ll say, ‘He made it! He’s pulled it off.’ ”

  “Well,” I said, “you’re fucked up, Church, but you’re goal directed. It’s a compliment.”

  He nodded and smiled, turned up the radio, a retro ’80s channel playing Yaz and INXS. He seemed content, almost chipper.

  When we arrived at Juniper Fiske’s house, the street was lined with cars, nice ones, like a Volvo dealership.

  Church said, “God, did she die or something?”

  “No,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

  We grabbed our overnight bags out of the backseat. I was already doubtful that we’d survive long enough to need the bags. We walked up to the front door, Church heading in first. The room was packed with well-dressed guests, holding little plates, popping hors d’oeuvres. A server wielding a silver tray of toothpick-stabbed, crab-stuffed mushroom caps stopped in front of us. “You want some?” she said flatly.

  The room had fallen silent. I said, “No, thank you” out of politeness, first of all, but I was also constantly hungry and not hungry, the idea of mushrooms making me sweaty, the spit hot in my mouth.

  Church calmly took a napkin and filled it with mushroom caps. “So,” he said. “Explanation please?”

  When I gave Church the short-version explanation of the intervention
there in Juniper’s black-and-white-tiled entrance, he laughed.

  “My intervention?” And then he asked with mock seriousness, “I’m a heroin addict and you didn’t tell me?”

  “It’s Kitty. People think it’s a mistake.”

  “Oh, I like this,” Church said, smiling. “This couldn’t be better.” He crammed some mushroom caps into his mouth. “So, Juni got the Laury Brothers to cater. She must think it’s serious. She knows I’m already married, right?”

  “It is serious, Church. Better late than never,” I said, trying to sound convincing, but now I wasn’t so sure. I felt a little ridiculous as if trapped in one of my nightmares, a high school flashback to the time I played a Polynesian in a production of South Pacific, singing “Happy Talk,” that sinking feeling of being trapped on stage with bad actors and I’m always blanking on my lines. I wished Giggy and Elsbeth had been invited. I thought they’d have helped me out. I saw no sign of them or Matt, not that I was mourning Matt’s absence; his definition of a relationship was not the most sound.

  Juniper breezed in from the kitchen at that moment. She was carrying a glass of white wine, smiling tightly. “Oh, Church, I’m so relieved to see you.” She put the wineglass on a lowboy, took both his hands, and looked at him with true concern. “How was the trip?” she asked as if the real concern here were traffic.

  Church said, “Not bad, really. Smooth sailing, I’d say.” And he popped more mushroom caps.

  Juniper took my elbow and whispered, “Do I look okay? I don’t seem the least bit off-putting, do I?”

  “No,” I said. “You look divine, as always.”

  “Oh, thank you,” she said, shy and hopeful.

  “Who’s the leader?” I asked, glancing around the room. “Did you go with a psychologist or priest?”

  “Was I supposed to hire someone?”

  “Yes!”

  “I’ve never cared for psychologists, Lissy. They like to blame mothers. You’ll agree with me on this point one day. And as for a priest, I mean, no one can relax with that collar lurking about.” With that, she floated off.