Parts Unknown

by Davidson, S. P.

  There was a specific ritual upon arriving at Madame’s house. Lucy would ring the tarnished brass doorbell, and Madame would open the door after a proper sixty-second pause. Everyone would present a cheek to be kissed, and one of us would always comment on how fine she was looking that evening. Then Madame would crouch down, and would say some variation of: “George, she’s growing so tall. And doesn’t she look just like her father.”

  As a matter of fact, Lucy had George’s hair, but my face shape, and was quite small, like me. I always offered a strained smile, and George always said proudly, “Doesn’t she, though.”

  Then we trooped into the living room, which was an homage to late-1960s style. The sofas in the grand living room—a room nearly as large as our apartment—were crafted of some nubby ochre-colored early polyester blend from the 1960s; they were excruciatingly uncomfortable, and seemed to be filled with bags of sand instead of stuffing. Flanking the hideous sofas were two wing-backed chairs featuring bright floral patterns on a white background. They were encased in custom-made plastic covers that were never removed. It was important to avoid those chairs during hot summer days, because Madame’s house had no air conditioning and bare legs would stick to the plastic. Getting up was akin to pulling off a Band-aid.

  I held Lucy’s hand for moral support and carefully settled us on the sofa. Madame had placed a cut-glass tray with drinks on the coffee table—apple juice with a straw for Lucy, and glasses of rosé for me and George. We clinked glasses. “To family,” George said jovially. He sat across from me and Lucy, next to his mother, and rubbed her hand affectionately. “I missed you, Mother. It’s been a long week—I thought Sunday would never get here.”

  She gazed at him adoringly. “I keep busy, too, but I always look forward to Sundays.” Her gaze settled, more or less, in an air pocket between me and Lucy. “And always so lovely to see your beautiful family. Now—eat—I put out a little appetizer here. And I’ll just go see about dinner.” She rustled off into the next set of rooms.

  We nibbled on stale Wheat Thins and a strange vegetarian pâté that Madame purchased weekly, without fail, at the Erewhon health food market. She had put out cubes of cheddar for Lucy. As soon as Madame disappeared into the kitchen, Lucy dunked the cheese into her apple juice, choking back giggles. She followed the rules of her Grand-mère’s house to the letter, but reverted briefly to her usual self as soon as Madame’s back was turned. I gave her a covert grin of solidarity, and hastily crumbled some pâté so it looked like I’d eaten more than I actually had.

  Now was my cue to offer to help. Leaving George with Lucy, I dragged my feet to the kitchen, as if heading to trial. “Madame, the pâté was delicious, as usual. Can I help you out in here?” She turned, her heavily mascaraed eyes widening, giving her the appearance of a sly raccoon. “Oh, no, it’s fine, I’ve got everything under control in here!” she said brightly, struggling with a large round cast iron pot.

  “No really, can I help you with that?” I pleaded. It was clearly too heavy for her. But, her back turned, she shook her head energetically. Her hair was dyed the same jet black as her mascara, and she kept it girlishly long, always wound into a large, loose bun at the back of her head.

  “Oh, no, go enjoy yourself. I’m fine, really.” Only family members were honored with the privilege of helping her with dinner. I asked every week; every week she said no. I returned to the living room, shoulders sagging. Madame was making far louder clattering sounds in the kitchen than was necessary.

  George walked toward the kitchen and Lucy and I to the dining room. We sat silently at the table, waiting to be served. I rubbed her shoulder reassuringly. The long table had seating for ten, and the four of us were always scrunched up at one end of the table—Madame at the head, of course, in the regal chair with armrests. George always sat to one side of Madame, Lucy to the other. My chair was that house’s equivalent of Siberia—next to Lucy, two seats away from the matriarch. Fortunately, it meant I had far fewer dinnertime responsibilities, conversation-wise, than Lucy and George, and was free to gaze at the vintage mural opposite me. It dated from early in the house’s history, and was actually hand-painted wallpaper, rolled onto the wall in sequence to form a scene. In the scene, men and ladies from an indeterminate era that appeared to combine horseback riding with motor cars were undertaking some sort of journey. The ladies wore numerous diaphanous layers of clothing; the men were dapper in knee breeches and shiny top hats. The strange thing about some of the ladies was that, riding sidesaddle, either their veils were covering their faces, or they were riding with their backs to the scene, so you could only see their streaming head coverings. But why would they cover their faces with those colorful layers? And why, in contrast, were all the men looking straight out at the viewer? And if the ladies’ backs were turned, what exactly were they looking at in the distance? I had puzzled over these mysteries for many previous Sundays, and continued to do so this evening, falling into a brief stupor as my eyes, glazed, gazed inwards.

  George clattered through the swinging door leading from the kitchen, bearing steaming plates: one with a lone slice of potato on it, for Lucy (the only white component of the meal), the other for me. I assessed the gray piece of pot roast; the festively colored mix of peas and carrots, clearly previously frozen; and the sliced, boiled potatoes. Madame liked to make a big deal, both of cooking for us, and of displaying that she made do with only the bare necessities on a fixed income.

  At dinner, Madame first turned to Lucy, whose face was pale and set. “Lucy: comment ça va?”

  Lucy, having been posed this simple, inane question weekly by Madame, knew the answers by heart: “Ca va bien, grand-mère.”

  “Et ton école—tu l’aime?”

  “Oui, grand-mère, je l’aime.”

  “Et moi?”—Coquettishly. “Tu m’aime?”

  “Oui, grand-mère, je t’aime!”

  Madame beamed. From inside her plaid housecoat, she produced a crumbling shortbread cookie, from last year’s crop of Girl Scout cookies, and handed it to Lucy. My daughter was flushed with pride. She had to take this exam every week, and the penalty was the withdrawal of her grand-mère’s love, a dulled look in Madame’s eyes as she turned to George. My heart would ache for Lucy, those weeks when she tripped up her French—or more precisely, for myself, because the look in Madame’s eyes would imply: you’re going to be a failure, just like your mother.

  For a while, with Madame’s attention on George, I could relax, and eye the mural. It was like a crossword puzzle, or a maze: one day I’d figure out how it worked. Lucy sat, rigid, her hands clasped in her lap like a waxen doll. She bore so little resemblance to the outsized child I lived with that she almost appeared possessed.

  Then, inevitably, as if recalling the etiquette requirement that one must speak with each of one’s dinner guests, Madame turned politely to me. “So, Vivian, what have you been doing lately?”

  “Oh, the usual,” I stammered. “I spend most of my time with Lucy, of course. And when she’s in preschool I feel like I’m constantly running errands.” I shook my head helplessly. “I don’t know—the weeks just go by, don’t they?”

  The corners of Madame’s mouth barely curved up in courtesy. “I remember those days. Always running around. Of course, I was teaching too, which kept me more than busy. But I always had dinner on the table when Leonard came home, didn’t I, dear?”

  I fidgeted, miserable. Madame knew I couldn’t cook worth anything. George offered gallantly, “Vivian’s a wonderful mother.”

  “I’m thinking about going back to work soon,” I blurted in desperation. I hadn’t thought about any such thing. Lies began flowing effortlessly. “Maybe taking the CBEST test and getting into teaching. Getting my credential.” Madame was staring at me in frank surprise. “Like you, you know. Because you were such an inspiration. To George. Growing up. And then, I could have the same school schedule as Lucy. So she wouldn’t have to stay all day in after-school care.”

&nbs
p; “That’s wonderful, Vivian,” Madame said, as enthusiastically as I’d ever heard her speak to me. “With you contributing, maybe you both could finally buy a house. You’re completely priced out of this neighborhood, unfortunately. But maybe a little farther south—Wilshire Vista, maybe. Or Picfair Village. I hear it’s really up-and-coming now.”

  George was glaring at me from across the table; I couldn’t figure out why. But satisfied momentarily, Madame turned back to George. “So, how is Pearl doing?” Pearl was George’s prized cattleya. He was grooming her for the orchid show.

  He frowned. “I kept in her in the window too long; now she’s got black blotches on her leaves. I don’t know that she’ll recover in time for the show.”

  Madame’s hand, clawlike, brushed George’s arm. “It’s not till October, dear. I’m sure you’ll work your magic on her; she’ll be right as rain by then.”

  “Of course, Mother. You’re right . . . now, Angel—remember, that’s my miltonia—she’s having trouble too. Her leaves are crinkled—not enough water. I need to pay more attention to my girls.”

  Madame’s voice murmured, soothing. I should be more interested in George’s orchids. They always seemed such a silly affectation, a pursuit for the privileged, or those who wished they were. Madame took better care of him than I did.

  At least she’d turned her attention from me and Lucy. I breathed out. Relaxed. Safe, until next week.

  The thing was, I could never figure out exactly what Madame expected from me. I would have thought she would have been pleased when I stayed home with Lucy. Instead, that seemed to feed into some fear that I was only out to mooch off of George and spend his money. When we’d first met, and she discovered I was an artist, I soon understood from her leading questions that she was convinced I was on drugs—like all artists must be, you know. I don’t think she’d ever shaken that belief.

  I only half-listened as Madame spoke animatedly with George, her hand often on his arm, caressing it, her red-lipsticked mouth delightedly pursing, opening, closing as she unwound the tales of her week. Hassles with the cleaning lady—Madame was sure she was planning to steal something. A shakeup in her bridge group. Her old college roommate, now terminally ill. The circular stories of someone now at an age where there are only so many stories left to tell.

  Then George recounted every detail he could recall of his week—the traffic, our anniversary, his students—who needed help, who was a rising statistics star. Funny anecdotes about Lucy. Every so often Madame would pose him a question in French—a language I didn’t understand—and he’d respond, so that for a while the slippery vowels across the table, the elided consonants, sounded not unlike a radio tuned to a distant foreign station—one that merited a moment’s listen as you clicked past it on the dial, a spot you weren’t meant to linger.

  ~ ~ ~

  An absolute truth of life with a young child is that there is never time, on Sunday morning, to read the Sunday morning paper. As usual, I didn’t get to it until Sunday night, after we’d put Lucy to bed, compliant and wobbly after her enormous effort to be good. By eight p.m. I practically oozed into the sofa cushions; I was that tired from once more barely surviving the weekly dinner gauntlet. One day I’d make some unforgivable faux pas, I was sure of it. I wondered what George would do if he absolutely had to choose between siding with his mother or with me.

  “So what was all that about?” he asked, stiffly lowering himself on the sofa next to me. “About going back to work?”

  “I don’t know.” I rubbed my hands up and down the legs of my pants. “I guess it kind of came out of nowhere. But maybe it would be a good idea—so I’m not so cooped up in the house all the time.”

  “Nothing comes out of nowhere.” His voice was clipped. I hated it when he talked like that. He was so well-bred he almost never yelled. Instead, he got terse. “We agreed that you’d stay home with Lucy. At least until first grade.”

  “Your mother thought it was a good idea,” I muttered.

  “She’s got her own plans,” he said coldly. “We’ve done the spreadsheets. You know we’re doing perfectly fine on my income alone.”

  “I just get so frustrated sometimes,” I said. “I don’t feel like I’m . . . useful. And the longer I spend not being useful, the harder it is to get back to being useful.”

  “You’re not making sense.” He tapped his foot impatiently. His body was rigid, a foot away from me. He looked at the wall, not at me. “How can you even think about going back to work while Lucy’s so young? We agreed before she was born: one parent would stay home with her as caregiver. Now, believe me: I’d stay home with her if I could. But we both know that whatever income you would earn—” his foot tapped faster— “would never even come close to my salary. And, obviously, I have tenure. I need to continue teaching. It’s out of the question for me to take a sabbatical, especially this year. This is going to be such an important year for me, with Archie on the way out—I really need to show the department I’m the logical choice for chair. I’ve got to spend the next month or so polishing up that paper for the Phoenix conference. You know the one—‘An Algorithmic Approach to Statistical Analysis.’ So don’t throw this going-back-to-work nonsense at me, not right now. We’ll talk about it in a couple years.”

  Every word George spit out made perfect sense, in isolation. “But wait a minute,” I said slowly. “I know we had a plan. And I remember agreeing to it. And I still totally agree, in principle, about what’s best for Lucy. But don’t you think, if parts of the plan aren’t working, we can change it? I mean, just a little. Just because we made this plan, um, um . . .” (I counted in my head) “four years ago—way back when I got pregnant—that doesn’t mean we have to live by it forever, right?”

  George tapped his foot very fast. “I didn’t say forever, Vivian,” he said slowly. “I said, two . . . more . . . years, okay? Wait till she’s five. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “Maybe I’ll start painting again,” I said forlornly. “If I’m not going back to work, then. Maybe I can get that portfolio together.”

  He glared at the wall. “What you do in your free time is up to you. But Lucy comes first, do you hear?” His voice was like a stern father’s—something my dad had never been. What Dad had done was far worse than that.

  I cringed involuntarily inside, like a child about to be punished, and walked to the bathroom. Splashing water on my face, scrubbing it hard with my hands, I willed the thick gathering tears to go away.

  I had this fantasy sometimes, where I wished George was dead. Some victimless situation—a car accident, perhaps. Of course he wouldn’t suffer; it would be instantaneous. I would cry a lot, but inside I’d be ecstatic. I would be free.

  When I returned, George was paging through his Friday Wall Street Journal, muttering under his breath at the economic news, which seemed to become more dire each time he purchased the paper. His little ritual was to take a Friday evening walk after Lucy went to bed, to the little newsstand at the Farmer’s Market, buy his paper, walk home, and then make love to me. The actual, ceremonial reading of the newspaper occurred, invariably, on Sunday night.

  He looked up briefly, then back at his paper. I could feel him thawing already. Tomorrow, he’d wake up and all would be as usual. He wouldn’t need to repeat himself. He was the conqueror; I was the conquest. I’d been wrong about the framed map above the fireplace, from the start. That map—it had started everything. It had opened my long-sealed heart, just wide enough to let him in. And once he was in, he couldn’t get out. It was no use—once I started dreaming about his baritone voice, with its perfectly formed consonants lulling me to sleep, I couldn’t wait to hear it again. Once I gave in to George’s ideas, and George’s plans, everything became so much easier. And once I got used to the nice dinners, and the tidy apartment, and the almost sexual thrill of having money, as much money as I’d ever need, if only I married him—by that point, I was in too deep to struggle my way out. Uncle Paulie’s money was lon
g gone, and tainted as it was, it had equaled freedom. With enough money, I could do anything. I’d be safe. And I was barely scraping by by the time I met George.

  The thing was, I eventually realized that he loved that map the way he loved his orchids, and the way he loved me: anything unknowable was meant to be acquired. Tamed. Kept behind thick walls, in a room heated just the right temperature for flowers, and old paper, and me. So we could all thrive, and be observed, with utmost care, as the early explorers must have monitored the horizon, scanning for an approaching threat.

  ~ ~ ~

  I poured myself a third glass of wine, picked up the ever-shrinking Sunday Los Angeles Times, and paged distractedly through the book review section. Nothing caught my eye. The trouble was, I’d never quite gotten out of my high-school Harlequin romance novel phase. I’d force myself to read the latest Booker Prize and Pulitzer Prize winners, which always seemed either too pretentious by half, or heinously boring, or far too violent and depressing. But I needed to keep up, conversation-wise, with George. And to feel that my expensive college degree gave me some modicum of taste and class. My real, secret love, however, were those thick paperbacks that didn’t even make it onto the wooden bookshelves at the Fairfax branch library. Instead, they lurked on the spinning rack in the way back of the library, pink covers with gyrating wedding rings in foil, or cutaway covers with a woman, head tossed back, gazing with fiery passion into the eyes of a dashing, faux-historical stranger. I still devoured those books like candy, secretly, when George was at work. But despite my clandestine book fetish, I was rarely satisfied. I kept searching for that one book—that elusive book—that would transform me. That would show me what it really felt like to be in love, to be desired passionately, and to live a life of ultimate fulfillment.

  Thus musing, it was a complete shock, my eyes flitting over the reviews on the Juvenile Fiction page, to see the one name I never expected to see again. Joshua Barnes.