Every Day

by Elizabeth Richards

  “So you’re all right then,” he said.

  I told him no, as if I had a right, and that was the end of it.

  “Maybe she can’t belong to just one man,” says Jim.

  How dare I presume to compare myself to Catherine, to equate my level of looks to Jeanne Moreau’s?

  She presumes.

  She dresses up like a man to rendezvous with two men.

  She jumps into the Seine for effect.

  She marries and has a child.

  She wants the men alternately. And someone else as well. Albert somebody.

  She fucks all three.

  Granted, she drives off an unfinished bridge with one of them and kills herself, and him.

  I don’t believe we’re meant to pity her, except in recognizing where her sort of honesty gets us, to the bottom of a river.

  It’s another story. I’m not French, and I’m not wild. I’m watching a movie in a bedroom in New York. My children are sleeping. My husband is returning tomorrow evening to help sort things out so we don’t have to drive off a bridge.

  He said, “I’ll be home tomorrow night. See you then.”

  These are not the words of a man who accepts that his wife needs to leave him intermittently for the man who has fathered her first child.

  After the call, there was an ease about the children, less irritability, less arguing. They had soft voices at bedtime. Isaac asked me to scratch his back. Even I lost some rigidity over the various rules we’ve set up in the house, thinking we’d perish without them. Dinner happened serially. Only I brushed my teeth. But then I had a bowl of buttery popcorn. Not the portrait of a woman about to drive herself off a precipice.

  And Fowler in all this? Roaming the East Village, taking things in through a haze of death, buying the newspaper only to remember he will buy newspapers for just two or three more seasons?

  I haven’t called, haven’t wanted to disturb the new vision of him as a man who’s been tortured and wayward because I was too mind-blowing to handle. Perhaps in your thirties you’re meant to run up against earlier versions of yourself, versions that no longer work, that were arrogant enough to discuss “my life” as if this were a controllable entity not subject to whim or resurgence of the powerful past. I doubt Fowler thinks of himself in this way, as the past slamming into the present to wreck the future.

  “You’re always with me,” he said. “You’re in my head.”

  For now, I will not live without him, nor he without me.

  “La femme est naturelle, donc abominable.”

  • • •

  I’ve become difficult to wake, is this morning’s complaint, direct from Jane, who can’t get past my lethargy over breakfast. I keep apologizing, something that on stronger days I never do. But on stronger days I’d be bounding about the kitchen with several different taste sensations at the ready. There’d be no ground for such complaint.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve only had a few hours’ sleep.”

  I stand, mid-living room, wondering how I can convince Jane that I haven’t become exhausted deliberately, simply to annoy her.

  “Do you miss Dad?”

  “Sure.”

  “No you don’t.” I’m a liar, just like Simon said. “Janey, he’s coming back tonight. There’s no reason to panic.”

  “I’m not panicking,” she says firmly. “I’m hungry.”

  Isaac is on the couch, watching.

  “Let’s get McDonald’s,” I offer cheerily. “Come on. We can eat in the car. We won’t be late for camp.”

  Jane throws down her pack. “I don’t want McDonald’s!” she yells. “I want real food! Why all of a sudden aren’t we eating real food?”

  Daisy, picking up on Jane’s frenzy, begins to cry, loud, exhausted wails. I had thought I had them fooled last night after Simon called, that we were easing into a new phase of family, one in which Dad and Mom can be on the outs without a general meltdown.

  I kneel in front of both daughters, in front of my son. I look to each of them for a moment of help. Just one moment of openness to me, whoever I am. Daisy crawls into my lap. Isaac flips his hands, returns them to his knees. Jane keeps yelling: Why this? Why that? All of her queries circumventing the issue of her father’s disappearance.

  “Janey!” I finally shout.

  It scares her into silence. She looks at me, disbelieving.

  “I’m your mother,” I say. “I’d like you to remember that.”

  Jane inhales, summoning nerve.

  “You don’t act like my mother anymore,” she says, and she takes herself to a dining room chair where she waits for the next move from the woman who has replaced her mother in thought, word, and deed.

  “I’m your mother,” I repeat. “Get in the car.”

  • • •

  I call Kirsten from a pay phone outside the high school.

  “I’m in trouble.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  The silence on my end troubles her. “I’ll meet you at McDonald’s.”

  I don’t even tell her I was just there. Anyway, we drove through and ate in the moving car.

  “Give me a half hour.”

  I take the long road along the Hudson, passing the estates Simon likes to ogle, inventing stories about the inhabitants out of mere details.

  “And these?” he said once. “They leave home by helicopter. They can’t stand highways. They gave all their cars away.”

  How many cars, Daddy? Jane wanted to know, heart leaping at her daring father, at his utter lack of reserve, his bravery. I can be so much less entertaining. Witness Daisy in the backseat, once again asleep.

  More coffee, and bits of Kirsten’s hash browns, which are, indeed, awful.

  “I figured something was going on,” Kirsten says. Her kids are grown enough to leave her home alone in the morning, free to meet her hysterical friends. “You haven’t been calling. Who is he?”

  Without any prompting.

  “You and Gillette are such old hands,” I complain.

  “Yada yada. Are you going to tell me or am I eating this shit for no reason?”

  She’s absolutely right. It is shit, and I owe her the story.

  “Isaac’s father.”

  She puts the remainder of the McMuffin into its paper wrapper.

  “O-kay.” Even her cynicism can’t engulf this.

  “And?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  I keep my eyes on her. Can I say it? Can I say it’s not what you think?

  “Please,” I say. “Please. It isn’t an affair. I’ve known this man since I started talking about my life as my life. I had a child with him. I don’t feel like an adulteress.”

  “Be that as it may,” says Kirsten.

  “But I don’t!”

  “Be that as it may,” she repeats.

  “Jesus, Kirsten,” I say, and she grabs my wrist.

  “This is different. This is—harder to ignore.”

  She’s trying to be generous, I know that. But I want to know, for whom? For whom is it harder to ignore this? Because if she’s talking about Simon, if she’s more worried about him than about me, then I’ve been rash in telling her.

  “The kids,” she says, her fingers tightening. “The kids don’t hear this sort of stuff. It wrecks their world. So they make up that they hate you and love him, and then your life is over pretty much. Don’t tell them. Don’t tell Isaac you’ve seen his actual dad. Don’t.”

  She lets go. She’s made marks on my wrist. She’s in tears.

  “You’ve done this too,” I say. “You’ve told your kids.”

  “Just do what I told you.” She starts to get up.

  “How do you live?” I ask. “How do you and Ted live on after it?”

  She smiles. “Who says we do?”

  • • •

  He’s home. I continue with the straightening, arms taut, head lowered over whatever mess I’m at work on, a comical version of what I’d intend
ed as a portrait of grace under pressure. I tried it out this afternoon, before picking up Isaac and Jane. I practiced insouciance and ease in front of Daisy, whirling about the vacuum as her favorite tune from the Fine Young Cannibals blared over its apocalyptic roar. Daisy flapped her arms and shrieked. I was putting on quite a show for her, but I stopped just short of injury after all the smashed Goldfish had been sucked up and their crackling had subsided.

  He’s brought the children presents. Isaac’s got a new glove, Jane a new beach towel, and Daisy a Sesame Street dollhouse with nonthreatening pieces. He is sweet beyond words, to them.

  I tell him I’ve waited to serve dinner, and he says he’s already eaten but would be glad to sit at the table while we all eat.

  So we gather.

  Naturally, the talk is all about camp. Daisy sits in his lap facing him, squeezing his face in her fat hands.

  “I missed you kids,” he says, as the casserole gets considered, tried, and left to its own devices. “After dinner we’re all going to sit in the living room and have a talk.”

  “Daddy, can we go to the beach this weekend?” Jane pleads. “I want to lie on my new towel and get really tan!”

  He laughs. “If that’s what you want, pumpkin, that’s what we’ll do.”

  “I’ve got a game Saturday,” Isaac says.

  “Then we’ll go to the beach on Sunday.”

  Jane seems agreeable to this, which she would not have been had I been in the director’s seat.

  They want cookies, and it just so happens Simon has brought some, from Greenberg’s, which in our household represents an extravagance. He puts them on a plate and sets them on the coffee table.

  “Could you two just work out whatever it is so I can go out and shoot baskets?” Isaac asks. “I’m really not in the mood for a powwow.”

  “Just give me a few minutes,” Simon tells him.

  I cradle Daisy with her bottle of milk, and Jane takes her place beside Simon. Isaac stands.

  “Something has happened in our life,” Simon begins, “that is going to change things a bit. I don’t much understand it myself, so I’m going to let your mom tell you more, but I want you to know that whatever changes get made, you kids are going to help make them too, because your mom and I want what you want. No one,” he says tearily, “and I mean no one, is going to do something he or she doesn’t want to do. But I have to address this new thing that’s happened because I can’t ignore it. I don’t know how.” By this time, tears stream down his face. “Please, Leigh. Please could you take over?”

  I pull Daisy closer. I’m afraid, so afraid that I can feel my heart pounding against her. I beg him with my eyes, but he can’t look at me for long.

  I look at Jane, then at Isaac. I think about Kirsten’s caveat. I’ve got no choices. I’m the criminal I said I didn’t feel like.

  “Mommy?” Jane says, sitting up, away from her father, more terrified by my tears than by his, it seems.

  “I’ve seen Isaac’s father,” I say to all of them, my grip on Daisy tight enough to make her squirm.

  Isaac inspects the carpet.

  Jane is at me again: “Why, Mom? What do you mean?”

  “I’ve done a thing I shouldn’t have, I suppose,” I say. “I don’t think your father can forgive me for it,” I tell her.

  Daisy wiggles away from me and over to Isaac’s feet. He picks her up.

  “How is the asshole?” Isaac says. He holds Daisy up for my perusal. “Is he worth this to you?”

  “Isaac!” Simon shouts, rising in rage, walking over for his daughter.

  Daisy’s expression has turned, and she is aware of danger. She reaches for her father, who catches her just as Isaac lets go and then slams out of the house.

  “Mommy!” Jane cries. “Mommy! What are you doing? Where’s Isaac going?”

  I face my husband.

  “Of the two of us,” I tell him, “it’s a toss-up. You can’t look me in the eye and tell me you came back here and did this out of love. So long as I bloody live, I’m not going to be convinced of that.”

  I pick Jane up for the first time in months, amazed at how light she is. She is sobbing so heavily I worry for her bones. She hushes, holds on, and finally, after a quiet spell, she whispers in my ear, “Mommy, please don’t leave us.” At which point I know that my only choice is to leave. For now, anyway. But he will not take them from me. He will not.

  chapter four

  At three o’clock I put the suitcase back in the closet. What is a week’s worth, a month’s worth, of clothes? How does one imagine even a day’s worth when the day promises to be blank, devoid of noise, of children? I have at times been enthralled by such a prospect, of complete self-absorption in the city: meeting Gillette, eating out, indulging in the beverage of choice, in silly plans to make money. Now the thought revolts me. It terrifies. It’s unspeakable.

  I do, however, know where I’m going. To my mother’s—where else? I’m waiting for first light. One thing I cannot do is alarm her by arriving before dawn. She’ll certainly be up, but I refuse to appear desperate.

  After the dinner cleanup I imprisoned myself in the bedroom. I sat on our bed and listened to the evening rumpus. I heard Simon urge the girls toward sleep, upstairs, into their nighties, into the bathroom, back to their rooms. I froze to his slow reading of the several small books we keep by Daisy’s crib. Jane I heard rooting about in her closet, which is on the other side of our wall. It sounded as if she was rearranging the shoe boxes, making room for something.

  I snuck out once, to kiss them. I told Jane not to cry, she’d have her daddy for the week, the way she had me this past week when he was working, and then we’d see. When I lowered the crib rail to kiss Daisy, she was already asleep.

  Isaac came in around ten, after I’d turned from the tedium of packing, given up on it altogether, and simply put two T-shirts and a set of underwear in my shoulder bag. He had brief words with Simon. The TV was on. Then he came up, used the bathroom, and shut his door.

  I haven’t spoken in hours. I’ve been waiting, throat closed, eyes dry. This room of ours, this meeting place, is just a room. I’ve been unable to make it work for me all these hours, to put it to good use, as a library, an exercise room, an office. I haven’t been resourceful, as Liselotte would have been with her letters, or Gillette, with her phone calls, or Kirsten, with her catalogs. These last five are wasted hours. Simon has done better by them, snoring away on the living room couch. I can hear him and the television, through the closed door.

  The idea that the end to this waiting is nearer cheers me.

  This is the sort of scene Fowler would plunder.

  “You know,” he said when we were at Hastings, before we were discovered, “all those things you think about your parents, all that raw, awful business, will be very useful. It’ll fly out of you, mutate, become something.”

  He was working on a film about the tenacity of the Southern belle. He’d been taking liberties with weekend dorm duty, ignoring it completely, sneaking me off campus immediately following Saturday morning classes to the train station. We’d be in Manhattan by late afternoon, bypass my parents in favor of La Guardia, fly to Charleston and drive two hours to stay overnight with his parents, J.T. and Evelyn, in their pillared house that gave onto vine- and shrub-smothered property. Fowler told her I was a film student at N.Y.U. and she smiled with vague interest.

  “Jimmy always finds interesting girls,” she said.

  To her I was a short, dark Northerner, possibly Jewish, another of her son’s experiments, her ambitious son who needed sexual sustenance along the way to his impressive future. She was forgiving of him, but of no one else. Really, the sun rose and set on Fowler. And, I was horrified to note, he returned the obsession. Mama, he’d call her, and tell her how fine she looked, how well rested, how dazzling in whatever new or revitalized outfit she’d chosen for the day. She dressed as if for cocktails every morning, late summer cocktails, my mother might have said. Whites
and pastels and stockings she ordered by the dozen from Gump’s or Neiman Marcus. They were hazy as summer dusk and shimmered slightly, making her legs look young and cared for. Having crested fifty, she had barely a wrinkle. She was indeed cared for. There were three or four black servants (my father would have risen up in outrage and left upon seeing them; my mother would have wrung her hands in apology and followed him out), and there was Fowler Sr.

  He was a lawyer, tall, with Irish coloring, T-square shoulders, a craggy historical face, like one of the older movie stars, O’Toole or Peck. Sometimes, when Fowler and I were making our sad love up in his boyish bedroom, I’d imagine Fowler Sr.—J.T.—in his place. It was dangerous and exciting for me to do that, and it enhanced the actual danger in our leaving Hastings together. I’d substitute whatever Fowler said for what I thought J.T. would say to me: “mouth” instead of “sweet,” “baby” instead of “Leigh,” “come” instead of “yes.” At the elaborate Sunday breakfast table, where the four of us lazed until well after noon when Fowler and I would have to leave to make our various connections, I could not look J.T. in the eye for the power of my imagining.

  “Let me get you more coffee,” he’d say to me, and I’d bring to that, “Let me take you,” or just “Let me.”

  Fowler loved it. One time, while he and his mother flirted the morning away, tossing local gossip back and forth, I let J.T. get me coffee, walk me under the kudzu, point out types of birds and shrubbery. I had just figured out that I was pregnant, not with the help of chemicals, but on my own. I knew from the way my stomach was fluttering, from the separation and safety I felt because of it. The fluttering traveled, up into my throat, down through my thighs and knees to my feet, where I felt it telling me, “You’re different now. You’re beautiful, you cannot be contained. You are too much for any one man.”

  I took a bad step, into some mud. I didn’t fall, just slipped in slow motion, and J.T. caught me. He had me by both elbows.