The Undoing

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  “Please. Sit.” Sally pointed to the chair beside Grace. “Everyone, this is Mrs. Alves. She’s the mother of Miguel Alves in fourth grade. I’m so sorry, you’re going to have to help me pronounce your first name.”

  “Malaga,” the woman said. Her voice was light, nearly musical. “Malaga,” she said again, more slowly and with the emphasis clear on the first syllable.

  “Malaga,” Grace repeated. She extended her hand. “Hello. I’m Grace.”

  Sylvia and Amanda followed suit. “Hi, hi,” the woman said. “I sorry. I late. The baby, she fussy.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” Sally said. “But you know, we’ve gotten a great deal done. Please,” she said again. “Sit.”

  The woman sat in a chair next to Grace and angled herself away from the heavy wooden table, crossing one leg over the other, and Grace couldn’t help noticing her legs, which were fleshy but rather graceful. She leaned slightly forward, nearly touching the wood of the table: more flesh, visible through the silk of her shirt, but somehow, again, not unattractive. She had mentioned a baby? Grace thought. She looked like someone who might have given birth in the not too distant past. Still convex, still producing. Her hands were folded together on the tabletop. On the left hand, fourth finger, was a thin gold band.

  “We’ve been talking about auction items,” said Sally, speaking—Grace could not help but feel—inordinately slowly. “Things to auction off at our benefit, to raise money for the school. For scholarships,” she added, now looking pointedly down at her notes. “Generally, we ask the parents to come up with ideas. If someone can offer something related to their work. Like an artist or a doctor. If you have any ideas, please let me know.”

  The woman—Malaga—nodded. She looked thoroughly sober, as if she had just been given terrible news.

  “So … let’s move on,” said Sally, and she did. The newcomer’s arrival had the effect of a starting pistol, and suddenly everyone sped up. They barreled through everyone’s schedule for the next few days, and who would be manning the table downstairs in the lobby (not a desirable position), and who would be greeting guests upstairs in the Spensers’ grand marble foyer, and whether Sylvia had the software she needed in order to cash everyone out at the end of the evening. There was to be a pre-party—“Cocktails with the Headmaster”—technically not their responsibility but necessitating some coordination, and an after-party in the Boom Boom Room at the Standard, which Amanda was more or less in charge of (her friends being the core group of attendees, in other words). But they tore through it all.

  Malaga said nothing, nor did her expression seem to change, though she turned her head with the others as conversation moved among the other three. But then, just as they were raising the thorny issue of how to leave the benefit en masse when it was time for the after-party, but without creating an air of exclusivity (because, after all, the final numbers had now been given to the Standard and there could really be no tagalongs), the talk was cut by a sharp, gulping infant cry, and the silent woman jolted to her feet and left the room. She returned a moment later with a tiny, dusky infant wrapped in a green striped cloth. Nodding in acknowledgment of the women’s cooing, Malaga took her seat again, shrugged her arm out of her long-sleeved silk shirt, and roughly pulled down a white bra, exposing the entire side of her body. This was done so quickly that Grace barely had time to be uncomfortable, but looking furtively across the table, she saw that Amanda seemed scandalized. With eyes widened, she gave a minuscule shake of her little head, sufficient only to convey this to herself and anyone else who might have chosen that nanosecond to glance in her direction.

  The issue, of course, was not the breast-feeding, which Grace assumed they had all (with the exception of Sylvia) happily done, and out of a combination of principle, pride, convenience, and concern for the health of their babies. The issue was the blunt and thoroughly nonchalant nakedness on display: one breast descending freely into the sucking mouth of the baby, the thick flesh of the belly, even the full upper arm warmly positioning the infant’s head. There was no designated nursing garment like the one Grace had worn, with its discreet slit for the nipple and artful drape to shield her from, for example, prurient teenage eyes incapable of differentiating between the sexual and the maternal. Malaga Alves, having seen to the baby, continued to look around the table, waiting for the conversation to continue; so, in an act of collaborative theater, with a set of cooperative stage directions, the other four women proceeded to pretend she wasn’t there. The baby sucked loudly and made little sounds of frustration. After a few minutes, just as Grace had reached a state of relative imperviousness about the situation, Malaga extracted the nipple, which flopped wetly against the infant’s cheek, after which, instead of covering it up, the woman beside Grace simply exposed the other breast by the same method and positioned the baby anew.

  By now, the level of anxiety in the room was palpable. The women spoke in rapid, frill-free sentences, barreling as quickly as possible toward the end of the meeting’s agenda. Absolutely no one looked at Malaga, except—Grace saw—for Hilda, who had arrived in the doorway and was staring balefully at the half-naked woman. Malaga herself sat imperviously, her silk shirt flung back over her shoulders like a cape, her bra wedged below her unfurled breasts. It occurred to Grace that if this woman were of an even remotely venal disposition, her behavior could be seen as exquisitely hostile, but on balance she thought this was probably not the case. For all the resentments a New Yorker named Malaga Alves might hold toward a New Yorker named Sally Morrison-Golden, she had emitted not even a whiff of anything like ill temper. There was, to the contrary, an absence of reaction, a retreat into negative energy; her actions were those of a woman who did not consider herself visible, let alone inflammatory. Glancing furtively at her, Grace suddenly found herself remembering a person she had once seen in the locker room of her gym on Third Avenue. She had been changing after an aerobics class when she noticed a woman standing in front of the mirror near the entrance to the showers, quite naked, without even the usual gym-issued towel knotted around the hips or over the breasts. She was in her thirties or forties—in that ill-defined middle place where how old you look depends so much more on how well you’re taking care of yourself than how many years you’ve been alive—and in that equally ill-defined terrain between heavy and thin. As Grace went through the usual motions of extracting herself from her sweaty leotard, stepping into and out of the shower, drying her hair, and opening her locker, she had gradually noted that the woman was still standing in precisely the same place and that same position: before the full-length mirror, combing her hair. Her stance and behavior added up to far more than the sum of their parts, a fact equally obvious to everyone else in the locker room, fifteen or twenty other women who studiously avoided this person, stepping carefully around her, averting their eyes. Nakedness in a locker room, of course, is far from unusual, and hair combing and looking into mirrors are also quite common. But the woman had emanated a visceral wrongness as she stood, so still, a little too close to the mirror, staring with a little too much concentration at herself, her legs a little too far apart, her left arm motionless at the hip while her right hand dragged the comb carefully, rhythmically, through her wet brown hair. That woman had had just this expression on her face, thought Grace, testing the insight by looking briefly back at Malaga Alves, then turning again to Sally in an effort to seem nonplussed. They were racing now, crossing t’s and dotting i’s, removing any possible impediment to finishing the meeting and getting the hell out. Sally, perhaps recalling the days of her “big career,” ran what remained of the session like a merciless managing partner, thoroughly indifferent to the private lives of her subordinates. Tasks were assigned and a pre-event rendezvous scheduled for Saturday afternoon at the Spensers’. (“Does that work for you, Malaga?” Sally paused to ask. “Oh, good.”) The baby continued to suck throughout, and it seemed to Grace almost bizarre that such a tiny thing could sustain hunger for such a long time. Then, without
warning or comment, she turned her head away from her mother’s heavy breast and looked avidly around the room.

  “I think,” Sally said firmly, “that may be it. I don’t have anything else. Sylvia? Do you have anything else?”

  “Nope,” Sylvia said, shutting her leather-encased folder with a smack.

  Amanda was already getting to her feet, gathering the papers before her as she did. She wasn’t wasting time. Malaga, having jostled the infant into a more or less vertical position, had still not shown the smallest inclination to cover herself.

  “It was nice to meet you. I think your little boy is in my daughter Piper’s class. Miss Levin? Fourth grade?”

  The woman nodded.

  “I haven’t gotten to meet any of the new parents this year,” Amanda said, shoving the papers into her pale green Birkin. “We ought to have a get-together, just Miss Levin’s class.”

  “How is Miguel doing?” Sally asked. “He’s a sweet little boy.”

  Malaga, in response, showed the slightest animation, offering a brief smile as she patted her infant on the back. “Yes. He doing well. The teacher, she working with him.”

  “Piper said she played a game with him on the roof,” said Amanda.

  The roof was where the elementary students went for recess. It was covered in safe, rubbery flooring and full of primary-colored playground equipment and a net, to prevent the children from flying away.

  “Okay,” Malaga said. The baby emitted a deep, unladylike burp. Suddenly, Grace wanted desperately to leave.

  “Well, bye, all,” she said cheerily. “Sally, if you think of anything else, please call. But obviously we’re in great shape. I can’t believe you’ve pulled this all together in such a short time.”

  “Well, with a little help from Suki Spenser.” Sally laughed. “It doesn’t take a village if you have a multizillionaire with a ballroom and a winery.”

  “So that’s what I’m missing,” Grace said with practiced goodwill. “Good-bye, Malaga,” she said, noting that the woman was finally putting her heavy breasts back into the bra. Grace lifted her leather briefcase by its shoulder strap and placed it squarely on her shoulder.

  “You going back to work?” Sylvia said.

  “No. Taking Henry to his violin lesson.”

  “Oh, of course. Is he doing Suzuki still?” Sylvia asked.

  “No, not really. After Book Eight or Book Nine, somewhere around there, they sort of head away from all that.”

  “You still take him to his lessons?” said Sally, with the faintest whiff of disapproval. “God, if I took my kids everywhere myself, I’d never do anything else. Two of them do gymnastics, and there’s piano and ballet and fencing. Plus Djuna, of course. She only does Music Together and Gymboree, but you know, the fourth go-round with Gymboree? I couldn’t take it anymore, so Hilda goes. The moms were like, ‘Oh, my baby’s so special because she slid down the slide!’ I keep wanting to say, ‘This is my fourth kid, and I hate to tell you, but gravity makes them all slide down the slide.’ And I almost lost it so many times in Music Together, I finally told Hilda she had to do that one, too. I feel like I’ve been shaking the same egg maraca for a decade.”

  “I’m sure if I had more than just Henry, I’d have stopped a long time ago,” Grace assured her. “It’s not that hard when it’s just one.”

  “I’ve been thinking of starting Celia on the violin,” said Amanda. Celia was Daphne’s twin, a sturdy girl, at least a head taller than her sister, with an overbite that was going to be very expensive. “Where is his teacher?”

  Grace wanted very much to say that it didn’t matter where Henry’s teacher was, since Henry’s teacher would not possibly consider taking an eleven-year-old beginning violin student, no matter who his parents were or how much money they had. Henry’s teacher, an acerbic and depressive Hungarian in his seventies, had become Henry’s teacher only after a hair-raising audition and an exhaustive assessment of his musicality. And though it was clear to all involved that Henry was headed for university, not conservatory (a state of affairs that suited Grace and Jonathan, and certainly Henry, just fine), it was also true that his talent was sufficient to keep Henry’s place on his teacher’s very small and very precisely maintained roster of students. She might have answered Amanda’s question by saying that Vitaly Rosenbaum taught at “Juilliard” (which had until recently been true) or even “Columbia” (which was also somewhat true, since a few of his students, who had similarly departed the conservatory track, were now undergraduates and graduate students there, and everyone came to his Morningside Heights apartment for instruction), but it was necessary only to answer with a third truth to make the entire conversation evaporate, so she opted for that.

  “He’s on West 114th Street,” she said.

  “Oh,” said Amanda. “Well, never mind.”

  “I love Henry,” said Sally. “So polite, every single time I see him. And oh, my God, is he good-looking. I’d kill for his eyelashes. Have you noticed his eyelashes?” she said to Sylvia.

  “I … don’t think so.” Sylvia smiled.

  “It’s so unfair, boys get the best eyelashes. I mean, I’m spending a fortune on that eyelash-growing stuff, and Henry Sachs walks down the corridor and blinks and you practically feel a breeze.”

  “Well … ,” Grace said. She was fairly sure that Sally meant to compliment Henry, or more probably Grace herself, but she found the observation of her son’s beauty distasteful. “I guess they are a little on the long side,” she managed finally. “I haven’t thought about them in a while. When he was a baby, I remember noticing they were long.”

  “She have long lashes,” Malaga Alves said suddenly. She nodded at the baby in her lap, who was sleeping now and whose eyelashes were indeed quite long.

  “She’s beautiful,” Grace said, grateful for the shift in focus. It wasn’t difficult to endorse the beauty of an infant. “What is her name?”

  “Her name Elena,” said Malaga. “My mother name.”

  “Beautiful,” Grace said again. “Oh dear, I’d better leave. My kid with the long eyelashes gets upset when I make him late for violin. Good-bye, everyone,” she said, already turning. “I’ll see you at school, or … on Saturday! It’s going to be great.”

  With her bag slung over her shoulder, she made for the kitchen.

  “Hang on a sec, I’ll walk out with you,” Sylvia said. Grace, who at least preferred Sylvia to anyone else in the room, paused unenthusiastically in the front hall. After the door shut behind them, they stood for a moment on the town house steps and looked at each other. “Wow,” said Sylvia.

  Grace, who didn’t want to agree until she knew exactly what she was wowing, said nothing. “You going to school now?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I have another meeting with Robert. One in my long, long series of meetings with Robert. I’m surprised they’re not gossiping about us.”

  Grace smiled. Robert was Rearden’s headmaster. His marriage to his long-term partner, the artistic director of a major off-Broadway theater company, had been one of the first gay weddings featured in the Times “Vows” column. “About Daisy?” she asked.

  “Yes, always Daisy. Do we move her ahead or do we keep her back? Is it better for her to do trigonometry with the tenth graders or hygiene with the fifth graders? Can she skip introductory biology and go ahead to advanced chemistry, or is it more important for her to keep taking seventh-grade social studies with her class? It’s exhausting. I know I shouldn’t complain. I understand I’m supposed to support her academically, but at the same time, I want her to be a seventh grader, you know? I don’t want her to go tearing through her childhood. She only gets one, like the rest of us,” Sylvia said. Together, the two walked east to Lexington and turned uptown.

  This little truth, offered so nonchalantly, gave Grace an unexpected sting. Henry, like Daisy, was an only child, and she had also sighted the far shore of his childhood. He was still recognizable as the child-Henry (even, to his mother, at least, as t
he toddler-Henry), but it was all going too fast, and she knew it. The fact that there had been no other children made this looming transition more fraught still. When he left her embrace she would become, in a real sense, childless again.

  Of course, it had not been their plan to have only one child, and now she understood that she had squandered precious time when Henry was little worrying over when (if) the next one would come (Jonathan, who had seen too much cancer to let her go very far down the infertility treatment road, put a stop to it after a half dozen rounds of Clomid, which had not been successful). In time she had settled into this Henry-centric configuration of her family, but like any other family configuration in New York City, this one came with baggage. If families with two children were modestly procreating and families with three and more were displaying entitlement, parents of single offspring possessed an inverse arrogance all their own. A single, perfect child, they seemed to suggest, was worthy of their full attention, effort, and nurturing. A single child, so remarkable in himself or herself, negated the need to reproduce repeatedly, since he or she was obviously capable of contributing more to the world than any number of lesser children. The parents of only children had an annoying way of offering their children to the world as if they were doing the world a big favor. It was a phenomenon Grace had long been familiar with. She and her closest friend, her childhood friend Vita, had once made up a song about this type of parent, to the tune of a song from Bye Bye Birdie:

  One child, one special child,

  One child to mother forever and ever

  One child, not two or three …

  One child, one perfect child,

  One child who’ll love me forever and ever

  One child, that’s the way it should be …

  Grace, of course, had been an only child herself. She hadn’t exactly been inflated to world-saving stature by her mother and father, and she had often been lonely. Or—she corrected herself now—not exactly lonely, but alone. Alone at home or at the lake in the summer. Alone with Mom. Alone with Dad. The power and messy intricacies of sibling relationships fascinated her. Sometimes, at Vita’s labyrinthine apartment on East 96th Street, she had stood out in the hallway and just let the sounds of movement and argument (usually argument) among Vita’s three brothers wash over her. That, in a complete negation of her own family, had become what family was supposed to be. She had wanted it for Henry and had not been able to give it to him.