Robin and her mother discovered that they liked many of the same foods, and that they were both addicted to the same daytime soaps. They ate Chicken McNuggets and fries on snack tables in front of the television set in the living room. Her mother couldn’t believe that Robin had really been on Love in the Afternoon. She had missed that particular episode, and she let Robin act out the whole thing for her.
Brandy hung around a lot in the beginning, ruining things by sitting between them and talking back to the TV during their shows—by just being a third wheel, the way Robin had usually been with her schoolmates. “Why doesn’t she get a life?” she grumbled when the door chimes rang first thing one morning.
“Don’t be like that,” her mother said, on her way to the door. “She’s lonely, poor thing.” She’d already told Robin that Brandy had been a widow for years, and had no children.
“I once knew a dog named Brandy,” Robin said. She’d decided that this Brandy was doglike—not vicious, maybe, but slavish, the kind of dog that licks people to death. “Woof, woof,” she said, when Brandy came in, and her mother laughed.
Some afternoons, after the nurse arrived, Robin and her mother tiptoed out to the car, giggling and shushing each other, and took off before Brandy could ask to go with them. She finally caught on, of course, and her feelings were hurt. Robin overheard her mother on the phone saying, “Well, I’m really sorry you feel that way, but I think you’re being oversensitive.”
After that, Brandy stayed away, and her retreat meant that Robin had to pitch in with caring for Tony. He was as helpless as Phoebe, but without any of Phoebe’s appeal. His dark urine spilled down a tube into a clear plastic bag that had to be emptied twice a day, and he wore a grownup diaper for the other stuff. At least there was very little of that, and either Robin’s mother or the visiting nurse cleaned him up; Robin was grateful that they covered his private parts while they worked. Despite the sheepskin pad over the bottom bedsheet, he’d developed ugly, oozing bedsores on his heels and elbows and bony behind that needed to be smeared with a special ointment. The two women took care of that, too. Robin got into the habit of watching everything they did, carefully, like there was going to be a final on it one of these days. And she learned to help sponge Tony, and turn him from one side to the other every few hours. He only weighed about ninety pounds, but it felt like ninety pounds of lead. After they turned him, they used an aspirating machine to suck out the mucus that kept accumulating in his throat; the gurgling noise stopped for a while whenever they did that. Tony opened his eyes and looked around from time to time, but he always closed them again right away, as if he didn’t like what he saw. The nurse, Roberta, said he probably didn’t see anything, that he was semi-comatose. “One foot in this world and one in the next” was the way she described it. “His biggest problem right now,” she told Robin, “is his strong heart.”
Linda wrote to Robin often—chatty letters, mostly about Phoebe and the weather. She enclosed snapshots of the baby she must have taken herself, because they were either out of focus or overexposed. Robin kept them on the shelf in the closet of her room, on top of her new clothes. Her mother offered to fix the room up for her, to take out the bike and the pinball machine and put in a chest of drawers and a comfortable chair instead. But Robin said she liked it just the way it was, and she did. Sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep, she got up and played the pinball machine in the dark. Or she put on the light in the closet and looked at the snapshots of Phoebe.
Finally, there was news in one of Linda’s letters about Cynthia and her custody suit. “We went to family court this morning,” Linda wrote, “and the whole case was thrown out.” Robin had a satisfying vision of Cynthia, her lawyer, and all those stupid papers being flung through a window of the courthouse by somebody like Bull Shannon, the goony bailiff on Night Court.
That afternoon, when her mother was out buying milk, Robin went to the phone and dialed Linda’s number in L.A. After the third ring, she heard Linda’s super-friendly “Hi,” and said, “Hi, it’s me!” back, before she realized Linda’s greeting was taped, and that it was continuing right over her own breathless reply: “This is Linda. Nathan, Phoebe, and I are all busy right now. If you’ll leave a message at the sound of the tone, we’ll get back to you soon. Thank you!” That only confirmed what Robin already knew—that Nathan lived there now, and she didn’t—and she hung up without leaving a message.
Tony died two days later, almost a month after Robin’s arrival in Glendale. Nobody, including his doctor, had expected him to last that long, even with his terrific heart. Robin had been hoping it wouldn’t happen during one of those rare times she was alone in the house with him. She imagined it would be something like hand-to-hand combat—Tony vs. Death—a battle that might shake the walls and overturn the furniture. Every scary image of dying she’d hoarded from years of television-watching came back to haunt her. Gangsters writhing around for about a week after being peppered with bullets. Some guy on his deathbed in a soap opera, sounding like he’d swallowed a rattlesnake. Maybe the worst pictures she’d kept in her head were of cartoon cats and mice who wouldn’t die, even after they were pitched over cliffs or ground up by a cartoon machine into cat-or-mouse burger. They made Robin think of Tony magically restored to his healthy handsome, dangerous self, to his intimacy with her mother that would forever exclude her.
As it turned out, she was in his room, but not alone with him, when he died. Her mother and Roberta were both there, too. They had just finished the ritual of cleaning and turning him, and were about to do the thing with the aspirating machine, when Roberta realized the gurgling in his throat had stopped on its own. “Uh-oh,” she said. She pressed two fingers to his neck, her eyes shut in concentration. Then she took out her stethoscope and listened to his chest with it. She folded the stethoscope and put it back into her pocket. “It’s all over, dear hearts,” she said. “Let’s be glad.”
Robin moved instinctively toward her mother, who went past her into Roberta’s open arms. Her mother cried quietly, almost politely, while Tony lay there turning gray under his jaundiced tan. Robin tried to feel something—pity, grief, the kind of gladness Roberta had meant, or even vengeful joy—but the whole event was sort of a letdown.
The house became busy within minutes. Brandy was the first to show up, before the doctor or the undertaker, and Robin’s mother let herself be bear-hugged in forgiveness and consolation. Other neighbors, who Robin had never seen before, came over, too, and their gentle murmurs gradually grew to a swarming hum. Her mother became a celebrity surrounded by fans and Robin couldn’t get near her. Not that she knew what she’d say if she had the chance. “Sorry,” which all the visitors whispered, like a password, seemed both inadequate and phony.
In the early evening, after everyone else was gone, Brandy sat down at the kitchen telephone and made some long-distance calls, from a prepared list. Robin’s mother sipped coffee at the breakfast bar and stared bleakly into the future, or the past, while Robin stood in the doorway and listened to Brandy’s end of the phone calls. They seemed to be mostly to Tony’s relatives back East. She opened with the same lines each time, varied only by the names of the people she was calling. “Is this So-and-So? Well, I’m a close friend of Tony and Miriam Hausner’s, and I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”
Robin took the coffeepot from the stove and silently offered her mother a refill, but she covered her cup with one hand and closed her eyes. She didn’t open them again until Robin had replaced the coffeepot and gone back to her station in the doorway.
Two of Tony’s four children—the middle ones, his daughter Jennifer and his son Kevin—flew in from New Jersey the night before the funeral. The older daughter was traveling in Germany and couldn’t be reached. And when the younger son, in Cleveland, was asked if he could make it to the services, he said, “I think he owes me a visit,” and hung up. Jennifer and Kevin stayed at a motel nearby and arrived just in time for the chapel service the next morning.
The minister was brief. He said only a few things about Tony, about his devotion to his wife and his concern for his children, and how much he’d loved his work and golfing and his cactus garden. There was a prayer and then a woman played “Moon River” on a keyboard organ. Robin kept stealing glances at Kevin, sitting at the other end of her row, almost surprised to see that he wasn’t an angry thirteen-year-old boy anymore, someone who might set a fire in the chapel rest room or take the hearse on a joyride. He was about twenty-five, and average-looking, except for his acne-scarred skin and the way he kept blinking. Tony’s daughter was pretty in a boring way, with the kind of looks they were always making over in women’s magazines. She was only about five years younger than Robin’s mother, who had once told Robin she had a “thing” for older men. That was during Robin’s earlier visit to Glendale, with Linda, and the only time they’d ever discussed Robin’s father. Her mother explained that he had smothered her with a love that quickly snuffed out her own, and she had to escape or die. Robin knew firsthand about his smothering affection, but she’d felt ferociously protective of him then, of what was left of him: his ashes still waiting for disposal in a plastic box in the trunk of the Mustang. Right after they left her mother’s house, Linda drove to this wooded rest area off the highway. Dorky Linda couldn’t get the box open for the longest time. She finally had to hit it with a rock. Then she said something about Wright Henry Reismann, that he was a good man who would be missed, and she spilled the ashes all around them. On the other side of the trees, a family was sitting at a redwood table, opening their picnic basket.
Robin’s mother broke down at the cemetery. As the coffin was being lowered into the grave, she called pleadingly to Tony not to go, not to leave her all alone. Brandy started sobbing, and then Kevin, and finally Jennifer let loose, too. Robin was rattled by this unexpected display of emotion. Things had been so calm until then. It had seemed to be just a matter of getting through the terrible, necessary steps of the day. She had been on the fringes of her mother’s plans for the funeral, and now she felt more out of place than ever. The only one in the family group not mourning, the only one who didn’t belong. The pitch of weeping and wailing had grown alarmingly, and at its very peak, there was suddenly a much louder, more piercing cry, like when the lead singer grabs the melody in the final refrain of a song. Everyone turned around to see who was making that racket, and no one was more astonished than Robin to realize it was herself.
A few days later, Robin’s mother announced that it was time they stopped fooling around and got serious about their lives. That meant she was going to look for a job, and that Robin should register for school. The two of them, and Brandy, drove about three miles to Goldwater High. Classes were just changing when they entered the building, and the halls flowed with mobs of noisy, jostling students who all knew one another. A secretary in the office said that she would send to Northside for Robin’s records. In the meantime, she wanted to know if Robin had a birth certificate with her, or any other official document of identification, to get the ball rolling. “Why don’t you show her your driver’s license, hon,” Brandy said.
35
Lucky Life
ON MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, three days after Nathan’s divorce became final, he took Linda and Phoebe to a Chinese restaurant on San Pedro Street for a celebration supper. He hadn’t been in the mood to do much of anything over the weekend. When Linda asked him if he was feeling sad, he’d said, “Nah, just a little off.” But he had to be in mourning for his lost marriage, no matter what he said, and she kept a cautious and respectful distance from him until Monday morning, when he woke, cheerful again, and exuberantly horny. They both had early classes at the Bod, but they lay there after making love, dozing in each others arms, until Nathan suddenly said, “Do you feel like Chinese food?”
Linda raised her head to look over his shoulder at the alarm clock. “At seven-thirty in the morning?” she asked.
“No, chica,” he told her. “Tonight.”
“Okay, chico,” she said.
At some other time, with some other man, she might have been hurt if he began to think about food so soon after lovemaking. But there was an uncanny pleasure in planning anything ahead with Nathan: meals, movies, even the dullest domestic chore. Later, in the shower, after she’d scrubbed his lovely back and turned around so he could scrub hers, the sight of his shampoo alongside her own in the shower caddy gave her an absurd rush of happiness. His shirts and trousers crowded her clothes in the bedroom closet, but she didn’t mind. She even liked watching the wild mingling of their underclothes in the dryer.
With Robin gone, they had a lot more time and privacy for their passion. Phoebe was sleeping in the second bedroom now, but it was also a sort of shrine to Robin’s former occupancy. Her posters of rock stars still hung on the walls, and there were a few articles of her clothing in the closet and drawers that Linda hadn’t gotten around to mailing to Glendale yet. Her sole attempt at nursery decor was the installation of a Kermit night-light. Linda went in to check on the baby a few times every night. In Kermit’s gentle green glow, she looked extraterrestrial. Like Robin, only a tourist on this planet.
Linda thought of Wright as soon as she walked into Yum Luck’s, because their wedding had taken place in the back room of a Chinese restaurant in Newark a lot like this one—with similar red-flocked wallpaper, a golden-dragon motif around the padded bar, and a big, murky aquarium in which carp swam listless laps. She remembered how festive the platters of sizzling rice had seemed on her wedding day, and how hilariously funny Wright was when he tried to eat with chopsticks. Linda had worn a blue linen suit and a matching picture hat she had to take off during dinner, so she could see what she was much too excited to eat. The eight guests they’d invited, co-workers and friends, toasted them into a long and glorious future with champagne and Chinese beer. Only Robin had put a damper on the merrymaking, by scowling and tapping her foot during the ceremony, and then picking suspiciously through the special Happy Family entree Linda had ordered for the table, like a Board of Health inspector.
At Yum Luck’s, they were seated next to the aquarium, to Phoebe’s delight. From the perch of her booster seat, she had fish to ogle and point at while she tried to master her slippery noodles. But again Linda was reminded of Robin, of the fish tank in her mother’s house Linda heard bubbling that day but never got to see. The girl hadn’t written or called once in all these weeks. When Linda decided to swallow her pride and call her, Robin wasn’t there. The woman who answered the phone, someone named Roberta, took Linda’s message, but Robin never returned the call.
Linda pulled the teapot and the soy sauce out of Phoebe’s reach. She started to protest and Nathan gave her his key ring—her new favorite toy—to play with.
Linda kept stirring her bowl of soup, so that the wontons sank and rose and sank and rose in the fragrant broth. Nathan said, “Do you want to switch? Would you rather have the hot-and-sour?”
“Do you know what she once called me?” Linda said. “Robin, I mean. She called me the kiss of death.”
“Why did she do that?”
“Because, you know, first her father, and then Manny …”
“That’s crazy,” Nathan said. “That’s really crazy.”
“Well,” Linda said. “I kissed them, didn’t I? And then they both—”
“Hey, I’m still here,” Nathan said, “aren’t I?”
“I think you’d better pinch yourself,” Linda told him, “just to be sure.”
Instead, he pinched her, under the table. “Yep, I’m still here,” he said.
“Maybe I should have acted more hurt and surprised when she said she wanted to stay there,” Linda said. “Maybe she was only testing me.”
“It wasn’t you she was testing,” Nathan said.
“And I could have told her more about the thing with Cynthia, how scary it really was. I made it seem like settling a parking ticket.”
“Linda mujer,” Nathan said. “Sometime
s you have to just let go.”
It pained her to think he might also be talking to himself, about his once-wife. What if Linda hadn’t been so bold that night of their search for Robin and Phoebe? What if she had simply thanked him at the end and sent him on his way again? After they’d phoned Robin’s mother and discovered the children were there, relief and fatigue had overwhelmed them. Linda, fired up by the relief, wanted to battle the fatigue and leave for Glendale right away, but Nathan talked her out of it. It was a long drive, he said, and it had been an even longer day. They both needed to sleep for a while, and Robin and Phoebe probably did, too. He was going to take Jewelle home and then head for his place to catch a nap; he promised he would be back to pick Linda up in a few hours. Jewelle was in the bathroom while he was saying all of this. Linda found herself listening for the toilet’s flush, for the sound of an opening door. The seconds were beating away. She could practically hear them, as if her egg timer was running. “Nathan,” she said, in a voice thick with sleepiness and emotion. “Don’t go home tonight.” This was the new Linda speaking, the recent convert to action, to choice, the swimmer who would no longer simply float on her back through the currents of life. She and Nathan looked at one another with deepening attention. When Jewelle finally flushed the toilet, it roared like Niagara Falls.
They didn’t make love that night; Linda was asleep when Nathan came back and got into bed beside her. She turned to him so naturally, and without fully waking, he might have been her lifelong husband returning from a midnight trip to the bathroom. They wound themselves together in knots that would have stumped Houdini and double-dove into sleep. In what seemed like minutes, she was shaking him to get up, to get going.
On the way to Glendale, they talked and talked. Robin was going to be in the car with them on the way back, which would certainly limit their ability to speak freely. Linda paid close attention this time while Nathan told her about Delila. “We met in Baja in 1985,” he began. “She’d come down from San Diego to visit relatives. We became dance partners first—in fact, we met at a dance-hall contest. I was just hanging out with some buddies. Delila was supposed to be in the contest, but her partner stood her up.” He paused for a moment, remembering. “We fooled around on the sidelines before the thing started, flirting a little, trying out a few steps. We were in perfect sync, the way it sometimes happens, and her friends and mine started daring us to enter the contest as a team.”
Tunnel of Love Page 37
