Tunnel of Love

by Hilma Wolitzer

  But television was an escape, a chute down which Linda could slide, away from her restlessness, her frustration, and the vague sadness that inched toward her heart around the middle of every day. The junkier the show the better, it seemed. She’d become almost addicted to the daytime soaps, with their real time and unreal characters, and to the game shows, on which improbable wishes were magically granted or denied by some genial, godlike host. Linda did watch other, more worthwhile things from time to time. Something on public broadcasting about the food chain that sickened and fascinated her at once. A late-night travelogue on which an anthropologist examined the mating habits of the Asmat of New Guinea. And she’d caught a little of the Republican National Convention, which made her feel like a child again, with a strict father and an absent mother.

  Whenever Linda heard Cynthia coming, she’d quickly switch off the TV, grab one of the convenient bedside books, and open it at random. Cynthia wasn’t fooled, though. She would pat the still-warm television set on her way into the room, pluck the book from Linda’s hand, making her lose her “place,” and sit down beside her. Then she would quiz her about her assigned projects for that day. And when Linda failed, as she often did, to demonstrate progress in one area or another, Cynthia would launch into one of her pep talks. You are what you read. The mind has a thousand eyes and the heart but one. And did Linda want to be a dance instructor all her life? She did, actually, but Cynthia made it seem like such a pathetic ambition, Linda was ashamed to admit it. And she was gradually losing confidence in her own idle body. Improving one’s mind and broadening one’s skills were reliable ways out of a dead-end existence, Cynthia declared; the rest period she had enforced those first couple of weeks was clearly over.

  At eight months, Phoebe was on a crash course of improvement, too. She was allowed to cry herself to sleep sometimes, a discipline Linda had never imposed. Cynthia said it was for Phoebe’s own good, that the world was a structured place, which she’d have to learn sooner or later. “Later would be better,” Linda said, but she was overruled. That night she had to wrap the pillow around her ears to muffle the heartbreaking sound of the baby’s wails.

  Cynthia and Phoebe started going to Mommy and Me classes one afternoon a week at an analytic research institute. Two eminent child psychologists presided over a program of educational play, with an emphasis, Cynthia said, on coordination and socialization. “I’m only a substitute mommy” she assured Linda. “You don’t want Bebe to miss a single step in her development, do you? Remember,” she said, in a teasing tone, “it’s dog-eat-dog out there.” Cynthia and Phoebe went other places together: shopping, to the zoo, and even down to the television studios where Cynthia’s soap operas were produced. “Tell Linda all about your life in the fast lane,” she instructed Phoebe when they returned from one of their outings.

  Linda wished that Phoebe could really talk, so they might share some of their separate experiences. When they had a few minutes alone together, usually at the beginning and the end of the day, Linda spoke to her anyway, the way she’d spoken to her mother after her stroke, when she was in a coma and it was impossible to know exactly what she could hear or understand. She chatted to the baby about her own day and about Robin, and how lovely things would be when they were all home together again. Phoebe didn’t respond in kind, of course, but her gaze was direct and intelligent, her delicate brow creased in what looked like thought. And Linda could observe her progress—those distinct vowels and consonants in her babble, and the way she got up on her hands and knees now, rocking back and forth as if she were preparing to catapult herself across the room and back into their old life.

  Linda was even more troubled about Robin, who could talk, but mostly chose not to. Telephone calls between them were especially grueling. More than once Linda had to say “Hello? Are you there?” in the middle of a conversation, because the line seemed to have gone dead. But it was only Robin retreating into her usual punishing silence. For a little while, she’d been talkative, going on about Cynthia’s supposed plans to steal Phoebe. But when Linda refused to take her nonsense seriously, Robin simply clammed up again. She still came to visit every Monday and Friday afternoon, though, with Nathan. She spent as little time with Linda as possible, running off to find Phoebe wherever she was, in the house or out on the grounds. Linda tried to make the most of her moments with Robin, but it was like interrogating a prisoner of war who’d been trained to reveal nothing beyond her name, rank, and serial number.

  Linda’s relationship with Nathan seemed to suffer the most of all. Their sex life had been sabatoged by the circumstances—her injuries, their lack of privacy. And he wasn’t any more forthcoming than Robin about his days and nights away from Linda. Sometimes he took her out to the garden in her wheelchair, and they sat there, gossiping about the club, about the outside world. He held her hand and kissed her, and he brought her little gifts—flowers and sucking candy and a Chinese backscratcher to relieve the violent itches under her casts.

  The day he gave her the backscratcher, he said, “For those hard-to-reach places. And you can always use it to defend yourself.”

  “Against who?” Linda asked.

  “The Dragon Lady, who else?” he said.

  “Don’t start that again, Nathan,” she said sternly. “I mean it.” But then she softened her rebuke by raking his arm gently with the small wooden hand of the backscratcher.

  He gave her a slow, sleepy smile. “And you can always use me for those other hard-to-reach places,” he said.

  “Don’t start that again either,” she warned.

  It was like the beginning of a courtship that could still go either way. Linda told herself that true love didn’t die in the absence of its greatest expression, and that they would pick up their passion where they’d left off as soon as she was fully healed. When he kissed her, she kissed him back, chastely, with a hint of more to come. For some reason, she kept forgetting to ask him if Nathan was his actual given name.

  Linda had other visitors, too. Vicki’s mother was recovering nicely from her heart attack, and Vicki was back from Ohio. “Just look at you,” she said, sweeping into the orderly guest room, dropping shopping bags, her shoes, and an outsized purse in her path. “I leave town for a few weeks and you get into so much trouble.” Linda had never noticed how potent her perfume was, or at least she’d never minded it before. Like Robin, Vicki seemed both impressed by and contemptuous of Linda’s opulent new surroundings. She went around the room picking up and setting down various objects: a brilliant blue paperweight, a tiny bronze Buddha, one of Cynthia’s or her husband’s Emmys. “Oh, why didn’t I wear that skirt with the big pockets?” she lamented. She signed Linda’s cast across the knee with her waterproof, kissproof lipstick. “Stay cool in the Big House,” she scrawled, followed by a series of Cherry Smash Xs. Linda realized she had used the same metaphor Nathan had, when he’d said all that stuff about her cell and being let out early for good behavior. She had finally gotten around to looking up that word “metaphor” in the dictionary, but she was still pretty far behind in her vocabulary list.

  Rosalia arrived on a Sunday, bringing bags of fruit and cookies and her maternal presence, which made Linda ache for Manny, for her mother, for everyone and everything lost in her lifetime. She asked Rosalia to sign the cast, too. Rosalia sat there for a long time, chewing on the other end of the marker, thinking about it. Then she wrote something lengthy in Spanish that Linda couldn’t translate, but she recognized the words for “God” and for “love,” and they comforted her. What wonderful friends she had, old and new!

  When she was getting ready to leave, Rosalia said, “I won’t be seeing you for a while, Linda. I’m moving away, to Chicago.”

  Linda was dismayed. “But why?” she said.

  “You know, it’s hard times. My cousins in Chicago said I could stay with them, that they’d help me look for work there.”

  “Can’t you find anything out here?” Linda asked.

  “I�
�ve been trying, believe me, but there isn’t anything. And I don’t want to be a burden to my children.”

  “Oh, Rosalia,” Linda said. “I’m going to miss you so much. I wish I could help you.”

  “Help yourself, amiga,” Rosalia said, bending to kiss her goodbye.

  Cynthia had hired a new personal trainer, an Arnold Schwarzenegger-type named Craig. His sessions with Cynthia lasted much longer than Linda’s ever had, and they must have been more strenuous, too, because Cynthia always stayed upstairs afterward for a nap. Linda was in training of sorts herself. Twice a week, the physical therapist she’d worked with in the hospital came to the house to put her through her paces. He said she was lucky to have been in such good shape before the accident, and that her youth increased her chances for a good recovery. Linda, shuffling around the room with her walker, didn’t feel very youthful anymore. She was merely childlike, someone protected, but with limited privileges and liberty. She could smooch with her boyfriend, but not go all the way; she could be a mother, but not take charge of her children.

  One Friday, when Cynthia and Phoebe were at the studio and Linda was dozing before the television set with the prop of an open book in her lap, she heard the doorbell ring and the dogs begin to bark. She clicked off the TV and looked at her watch—it was only noon, much too early for Nathan and Robin. Either Lupe or Maria came down the stairs, followed by the dogs, and walked toward the front door. Then there was a flurry of conversation, in Spanish, between a man and a woman. The woman was Lupe, Linda realized after a few moments; she had never heard the man’s voice before. They both sounded excited, and Bismarck and Brunhilde’s watchdog act had dissolved into an uproar of happy yelping. Soon there were more footsteps, approaching Linda’s half-opened door. The dogs bounded into the room and a long shadow fell across the threshold. “Hello?” she called, and the door opened the rest of the way. A husky man with a speckled beard and gray, brush-cut hair was standing there. He seemed as surprised to see Linda as she was to see him. Lupe stood behind him, smiling ecstatically and wringing her hands.

  “Can I help you?” Linda asked the man.

  “That seems unlikely,” he said, taking in her harnessed arm, the elevated leg. “I’m William Sterling. I used to live here.” The Director! “And who, may I ask, are you?”

  Why did that seem like such a hard question? “My name is Linda—Linda Reismann,” she said. “I’m Cynthia’s …” Cynthia’s what? “Cynthia’s … friend,” she finished weakly.

  “Did she do that to you?” he asked.

  “What?” Linda said. “Oh, no, of course not! I had an accident. It’s a very long story.”

  “I’m sure it’s an interesting one, too,” he said. “But I don’t have a lot of time right now. I’ve just come to get a few of my things, and then I’ll be out of here.”

  “Was Cynthia expecting you?” Linda asked.

  “Ho!” William Sterling said. “That’s a good one! No, I made very sure Cyn wasn’t expecting me, and that I wouldn’t be expecting her, either. I don’t know how much you know about us … Linda, is it? But our parting wasn’t exactly what you’d call cordial.” As he spoke, he began taking various things off the shelves and putting them into two large Neiman Marcus shopping bags that had been folded under his arm. Linda watched that beautiful paperweight disappear, then several of the television trophies, and some books and papers from a desk in the corner. It was like witnessing a robbery without doing anything about it. Except, of course, this wasn’t a robbery—these had to be his own belongings. The dogs lay panting near Linda’s chair, blithely watching, too. And Lupe still hovered in the doorway, looking pleased and worried at the same time.

  At last he was finished, at least in here. “Ciao and shalom,” he said to Linda. Lupe and the dogs followed him out of the room. Linda could hear them all trooping upstairs, where, she imagined, he would add to his loot.

  He came down several minutes later and stood in the guestroom doorway again. “Is there a baby in this house?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Linda said. “I mean, she’s staying here, but she’s out with Cynthia right now.”

  “Whose baby is it?”

  “Mine,” Linda told him. “Cynthia’s just helping us out, until I’m better.”

  “I see,” he said, looking pensive. “You must really be good friends.” He paused, studying her. “Well, it’s been swell,” he said at last, slipping the little bronze Buddha into his pocket, almost as an afterthought. “Be more careful from now on, Linda, okay?” And then he was gone.

  Linda waited anxiously for Cynthia to come home, but Robin and Nathan showed up first. Robin was beside herself when she discovered the baby wasn’t there. Linda called Cynthia’s office, and her assistant said she was just about to call Linda, with a message from Cynthia. She and the baby had gone into Beverly Hills for a while, to shop, and then they were going on to a wrap party at Chasen’s. They’d be back about sevenish.

  “Sorry, kiddo,” Nathan said to Robin, “but I can’t stay that long. I’ll make it up to you on Monday, okay?”

  “Monday,” she said scornfully, as if he’d mentioned the next century. She seemed both forlorn and angry, and she began nagging him to leave.

  Linda had been looking forward to talking to Nathan privately about William Sterling’s surprise visit, but Robin hung around them, sulking, until he agreed to go. “Wait at the door for me,” he told her. “I just want a minute with Linda.” And Robin stalked out without saying goodbye.

  “Listen, querida,” Nathan said, as soon as he and Linda were alone. “There’s something wrong here, something fishy. Don’t you feel it?”

  “Well,” Linda admitted, “something really strange did happen today.”

  Robin leaned on the doorbell then, and the dogs, locked in the laundry room since her arrival, began barking frantically. Nathan yelled, “Hold your horses, Robin, will you!” He turned to Linda. “Tell me,” he said. “What happened today?”

  Now Robin leaned on the horn of the Z, making the dogs go even crazier.

  “Damn it,” Nathan said.

  “We can’t do this now,” Linda told him. “Why don’t you go, and I’ll call you tonight.”

  “Don’t forget,” Nathan said, and he blew her a kiss and ran out.

  Cynthia didn’t come home until almost eight o’clock. She perched on the foot of the recliner while Linda cuddled and kissed the baby, and then she buzzed Lupe on the intercom to come get her. “Oh, not yet!” Linda cried. “I’ve hardly seen her!”

  But Cynthia said it had been a very long day for such a little person, and Bebe needed her beauty sleep. Lupe came in and signaled Linda behind Cynthia’s back not to reveal their secret. Then she took the baby and left. “I’ll be up soon to tuck her in!” Cynthia called after them. “And how was your day?” she said, turning back to Linda.

  Linda’s pulse quickened. “Okay,” she said, her gaze wandering nervously around the room, to the places where the paperweight and books and trophies had been. “But Robin was terribly disappointed that Phoebe wasn’t here.”

  “I know,” Cynthia said. “That was naughty of me. I just wasn’t thinking.”

  They chatted a little longer, and then Cynthia went upstairs. Linda waited and waited, unable to concentrate on the television program she’d randomly selected, or to read, or to even think clearly. She nibbled on the fingernails of her good hand, and clawed viciously with the backscratcher at an elusive itch under the cast on her leg.

  Finally, the explosion came. It started with something like a war cry from upstairs, and soon Cynthia was shouting in Spanish and English. Linda could barely hear Lupe’s muted response. Then Cynthia came tearing down the stairs and burst into Linda’s room. “Why the hell didn’t you call me?” she demanded. She stomped around the room, running her hands over the shelves. “Shit! Oh, shit!” she said. “My paperweight! That fucking bastard!” She was breathing heavily, almost sobbing, and knocking things off the shelves. Again, Lupe was in t
he doorway, but she wasn’t smiling this time, and when Cynthia looked in her direction, she disappeared. Linda hadn’t even thought to shut off the TV, and it blathered mindlessly in the background as Cynthia ranted and paced. “You little ninny! You ingrate!” she yelled at Linda. “Is this the thanks I get for taking you in? Is this the way you repay me for all I’ve done for you?”

  It ended almost as quickly as it began. Cynthia dashed out of the room, Linda shut off the TV, and the whole house fell into stillness. Linda believed she could hear the beams settling, the grass growing outside the windows. She was reaching for the telephone with her trembling hand, not sure who she was going to call—Nathan, or Vicki, or even Robin, someone, anyone to take her and Phoebe out of there—when Cynthia came back into the room.

  “Linda,” she said. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Neither did Linda. She eyed Cynthia warily as she came closer and sat cross-legged on the rug next to the recliner.

  “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry,” Cynthia said, her eyes bright with unshed tears. She took Linda’s hand and squeezed it. “I didn’t mean anything I said to you. Can you ever, ever forgive me?”

  “I think we’re too much trouble,” Linda said in a hoarse whisper. “I think we’d better leave.”

  “Linda, Linda,” Cynthia said. “You’re not any trouble at all. You’re my salvation, remember? I would probably die if you left me now, if I had to stay here alone. I wanted to die before you came. What I did just now … well, it was crazy. I was out of control. I’m so humiliated, I’m so very sorry. Please say you forgive me.”

  It was really odd having Cynthia sit at her feet this way, pleading for forgiveness. Why did that make Linda feel more helpless than ever on her reclining throne? “I don’t know—” she began.

  Cynthia’s hand flickered upward and then fell over Linda’s again. “Listen,” she said. “Just give me a chance to prove myself, all right? To make it up to you. God, this has been the worst year of my life.” How many times had Linda said that to herself?