The Stork Club

by Maureen Freely

  I don’t know how I managed to make it up to the seventh floor and into the apartment without something happening to diminish my euphoria. Without the elevator gates crashing and compacting my shoulders, as they have done on so many other occasions. Without dropping the case of champagne on my feet, or having to hold the flowers in my teeth as I fumbled for the keys, and dropping either them or the flowers into the crack between the elevator and the landing. Somehow, miraculously (and uniquely), everything was where I wanted it when I needed it.

  And of course I had Gabe with me in the elevator. When I came back from parking the car, there he was. He was carrying his tool box and was wearing that worshipping smile that had me fooled for so long …

  ‘So, you gave Mitchell what for, huh?’

  I told him yes without pausing to think how he knew.

  When we got to the seventh floor, he held the door for me while I carried out the champagne and the flowers and fumbled for my keys. Then he gave me the thumbs up: ‘Give ’em hell,’ he said, and again, I didn’t pause to think what he meant.

  As I sit here now in my tomb of an apartment, with nothing to listen to but the low rumble of the refrigerator, I think back with unspeakable longing to the noises that greeted me when I pushed open the door.

  I remember a baby crying. A toddler talking nonsense. A group of four year olds pretending to be spaceships, and beyond them, the plinking of the Sesame Street theme song; the death throes of Dr Seuss as he recited ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ on a tape recorder that was crying out for batteries; a single, desperate and unheeded request for juice.

  I must have had to do a certain amount of carting cases and bags between the door and the kitchen. But all I remember is standing there with the champagne weightless in my hands, and the flowers suspended in mid-air, and looking into the bedroom, above and beyond the TV screen.

  From which the sickly music of Mister Rodger’s Neighbourhood now emanated. For once I did not wonder about his secret sex life. I was able to look above and beyond him, and through the window without even thinking how badly we needed a windowcleaner.

  The sun was low in the sky. Shafts of light were pouring through the window pane and a swirling pattern of children’s fingerprints. Looking beyond them, I could see the slate-grey silhouettes of the pine trees on the far side of Russian Hill Park and the black outline of the Golden Gate Bridge rising above them. Looking over my other shoulder, moving my eyes quickly over the Star War figures, the huddled children and the gaping diaper bags, I could see the city spread out before me, the city and the bay and the bridge and even Contra Costa County at my feet.

  I have since, in my solitude, tried to relive that moment, which is how I know I have invented it. There is no one spot from which you can see all the things I saw on that late afternoon or was it early evening when I came home with the tickets. I remember gasping for breath, as if I had climbed all seven flights of stairs, as if I had been climbing stairs for seven years. I remember looking first over one shoulder and then over the other, at the Bay Bridge and then the Golden Gate Bridge, at the children on our bedroom floor and Mister Rodgers condescending to Chef Brockett and then back to the bay and the Pyramid Building and the pastel houses of Telegraph Hill and Coit Tower standing perfectly centred in the middle-bay window of our living-room, and then at Jesse, with his Superman underwear and his Superman cape, standing on the armrest of the leather couch, surrounded by his friends in their Spiderman and He-Man and Incredible Hulk underwear …

  He was preparing for flight. He was standing on the armrest poised for take-off and waiting for his friends to stop talking so that they could give him their full attention. I watched him will them into silence without even raising his hand. I noticed but did not mind that he was wearing his shoes. I watched him brush back his golden curls and poise his perfect athlete’s body and then – as his puny, ugly, round-shouldered friends looked helplessly on – I watched him bend his knees with a kind of grace that can never be taught and then rise off the couch leaving scuffmarks I forgive him a thousand times over, to go sailing through the air in a perfect arc, to land on his feet with his hands still straight, his knees bent, his cape still half suspended behind him. My son! I thought.

  And then, as if she had read my thoughts and decided to rebuke me, there, suddenly, was Maria, smiling at me through the window of her Wendy house.

  She looked so … so … I hate to say it, but it’s true. I didn’t buy that doll for her, you did. (I didn’t give her doll that name either.) She was sitting at the window of the Wendy house, rocking Baby Jesus in her arms and pretending to breast-feed it, and she looked … as I said, I hate to say it, but I’ll say it anyway. She looked feminine.

  And so did you when you stepped out of the service elevator with that basket of laundry so beautifully poised on your shoulder. I hate to say it, but… no, I don’t hate to say it, because it’s true.

  You were barefoot. You were wearing your oldest sweatshirt. Your jeans were streaked with flour, but you looked feminine, and if I had to choose a moment to freeze for ever on a vase it would be that one. You, stopping short at the sight of me and sucking in your breath, me, half kneeling over the flowers and champagne and looking up at the ringlets that had escaped from your ponytail to make a halo for your face. Following the curves of your slender arms, of your long fingers draped so gracefully around the edge of the laundry basket, and remembering all the sorrow you had had to carry over the past ten years, all the disappointments I had made you bear. And just reaching out to take the basket from you, to regain my full height, take you in my arms, and show you the tickets, the brochure with our villa in it…

  Why didn’t you realize how much this moment meant to me? Why didn’t you send them away?

  11

  I remember standing in the kitchen with my back to them, looking at the toaster, trying not to listen to them asking you if you were sure this was what you wanted.

  I remember pushing aside their things to clear a space on the counter, a modest space just big enough for me to butter the toast and spread out the salmon and cut the flowers and get the glasses ready while they continued to query our plans.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve given yourself enough time to think this through?’ they asked.

  I remember pushing aside their keys and their handbags and their children’s juice cups, pushing them aside as gently as if they were living things while at the same time fighting the urge to send them flying, and then looking around for the knife, and finding it under a pile of Becky’s baby’s teethers, and being overcome by an urge to mash up every last one into the Disposall, and longing for the sound of crunching plastic, longing to lose control and run amok slashing furniture –

  As I cravenly washed the knife. Retrieved the lemon. Cut it into wedges, and listened to you disappear into a vapour of weak apologies:

  ‘No, he didn’t consult me but it will be nice for the children … Why? Oh just because … Come again? No, I like surprises … No, really, he has my best interests at heart.’

  What right did they have?

  It was all I could do to serve them their champagne in a civilized manner. If this manner was also somewhat cold, it was because I was preoccupied with my hands. In other words, it was only extreme vigilance that kept me from uncorking the champagne bottle in the direction of Charlotte’s head when she reminded us that Chandon was not champagne but sparkling wine, or clipping Ophelia with the hors-d’oeuvres tray when she gave her lecture about eighty per cent of the salmon in Puget Sound having cancer, or giving Becky the finger when she proposed that sarcastic toast about the road to Damascus.

  You may remember I gave you a look, but you didn’t respond to it, or in any event didn’t make a move to get rid of them so that we could enjoy the imitation champagne and cancerous salmon and make our Bohemian plans in private. It was to keep myself from yelling, If you disapprove of me that much, then why are you accepting my hospitality? that I went into the bedroom to watch the evening
news.

  I thought they would be happy to see the end of me. I had no idea they would take my withdrawal as an additional offence. When you came into the bedroom after seeing them off, I actually thought you were going to apologize to me for their behaviour. I was shocked, therefore, when you asked me why I had been so rude to them.

  No need now to go into the details of our argument. All I’d like to say is that, if I acted vicious, it was because it hurt so much to hear you say that maybe your friends were right about me.

  I regretted my harsh words almost as soon as I said them. It was horrible to see you so upset on a day that should have been such a happy one for both of us. My intentions were honourable when I said I would do whatever you wanted in order to make things up to you.

  But when you said, ‘I want to share our celebration, I want them all to come out to dinner with us tonight,’ I nearly spat.

  Share our celebration? Share? The hated word cut me like a knife. Of course I was going to look glum while you called them up. Of course I was going to let you take the initiative with babysitters and reservations.

  But believe me. As far as the dishes were concerned – I was planning to go back to the kitchen and clean the whole thing up. How was I supposed to know that by then you would have already ‘taken the hint’ and cleaned up by yourself? (And let’s keep our sense of proportion here. We are talking five glasses and three plates.)

  I’m sorry, though, about abdicating bathtime. I also ought to have read to the children so as to give you more time to get dressed. I ought not to have sat there looking impatiently at my watch as you rushed to throw your clothes on in under three minutes.

  And when we left for the restaurant, I shouldn’t have pulled away from the kerb before you had a chance to put on your seatbelt. I was distracted by the effort of keeping my feelings to myself. Because I did mean to keep up my end of the bargain, if only to show you the lengths to which I was willing to go to degrade myself on your behalf.

  But let me tell you.

  I have never felt so desperate as I did that night at the Hayes Street Grill.

  So let me say it again: I have never felt so desperate as I did that night at the Hayes Street Grill. Never have I felt so acutely that I was an alien in my own country. All I wanted was to take your hand in mine and talk to you about Greece. But you were six people, three vases and thirty-nine stultifying conversations away from me.

  You were at the head of the table, obscured from my view, overentertained by Mitchell and Kiki. I was at the foot of the table, hemmed in by your unfriendly friends and wedged into a space that had never been intended to accommodate a chair. Every time I moved my elbow, I knocked over the bread basket on the table behind me. Every time I exhaled, I jostled the wine glasses on same. I could hear every hushed word that passed between the people whose wine glasses and bread basket I was jostling. Every single word was about me.

  They thought I might be in violation of the fire code. If somebody had told them I was also the host, they probably would have fainted.

  Ditto for the waiters. Even when I was the one to order the wine, they would take it to some other man to taste. Every last thing they served me was cold.

  From time to time, if I moved my head far enough to one side to see beyond the towering vase, I could catch a glimpse of your shoulders, of the outer reaches of your hair, of your arm waving or your hand reaching out for a glass. From time to time your laughter floated down to me through the monstrous tangle of petals and stems. Instead of lifting my spirits, it only made me angry at the men who were monopolizing you. It only served as a reminder of the evening we could have had if we had gone out by ourselves.

  I did try to keep up my end of the bargain. But your friends were not any happier about the seating arrangement than I was. They acted as if I was there just to keep them from discussing me.

  Imagine Charlotte and Ophelia to either side of me, toying with their first courses, fixing me with Stonehenge glares. And now imagine me, trying to interest them in the following subjects:

  Art. Literature. Music. Dance. Politics – both local and national. Foreign policy. Nuclear disarmament.

  The Siege of Troy. The Greek War of Independence. Byron. Shelley. The Hellenic Age. The lessons to be learned from Prometheus. The tragedy of Iphigenia. The persistence of matriarchy on the island of Skopelos.

  Here is the one topic they responded to:

  The persistence of matriarchy on the island of Skopelos.

  And this was only Charlotte, to tell me it was not the entire island of Skopelos, but a single coastal village.

  ‘So what?’ I said. ‘It’s still a matriarchy.’

  ‘Not necessarily, if you look at the overall kinship structure,’ was her response.

  At which point she turned away and started up a conversation with Ophelia that was so unspeakably boring I felt like taking my fork and stabbing my chest.

  Here are some of the things I found out that night from Charlotte and Ophelia, as you sat beyond my reach, separated from me by three impenetrable tiers of Stork Club:

  1. It takes under two minutes to freeze-dry a pre-cancer, if it’s somewhere accessible, like, say, your nose.

  2. Wheat, like cow’s milk, is mucus-forming.

  3. While we may have a woman in the Supreme Court, women in general still have a long way to go.

  4. Women bankers do not tend to get promoted as far as their male colleagues because they tend not to play golf.

  5. This is grossly unfair.

  6. Things are not going to improve until corporations are run by men AND women (that’s how they always said it: men AND women, men AND women) who have first-hand experience of childcare.

  7. It is not clear if the nursery schools that emphasize fantasy prepare children better or worse than nursery schools that emphasize practical life.

  It was when they got on to the monolithic and stultifyingly important subject of kindergarten admissions that my eyes began to roll around like panic-stricken eight balls in their sockets. I didn’t care to know which kindergarten best served the whole child. I didn’t care to know how many kindergartens the wise parent applied to, or what I had to do to keep on the good side of the directress of the Creative Learning Centre, or when their next jumble sale was taking place, or why the hell the wise parent of the whole child was well advised not only to attend but to participate in these functions. I remember thinking: Paint a bull’s eye on my head. I was dropping three hundred bucks for this?

  I was already feeling persecuted, in other words, when Ophelia turned on me.

  ‘You are intending to get the children back in time for the new school year, aren’t you?’

  When I answered, ‘Not if I have anything to do with it,’ I was being sarcastic, but they both took me seriously.

  ‘That’s a mite presumptuous of you,’ said Charlotte. She used the same voice I remembered her using that time years ago at the playground when she thought she needed to teach me how to tie my own child’s shoelaces. ‘You didn’t happen to tell your wife about this part of your plan, did you?’

  ‘Not yet, but I will next time you permit me a few seconds alone with her.’

  ‘And you think she’ll go along with it?’

  ‘I don’t think,’ I said. ‘I know. You may not realize this, but actually we’re very close.’

  ‘So close that you know what she needs better than she does? So close that you know you are doing her a favour by depriving her of a career?’

  ‘You got it,’ I said. ‘That’s how close we are.’

  ‘You really are the limit,’ said Ophelia.

  And I retorted, ‘You really are the pits.’

  ‘There’s no need to get personal,’ said Charlotte – to me, even though Ophelia had been just as personal. ‘There’s a serious issue at stake here. You do realize how important the final year of nursery school is? You do realize how hard it is these days to get a child into kindergarten?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said,
‘and I think it’s sick.’

  ‘Well, you may be on to something there, but it’s what we have to work with. What’s the alternative?’

  ‘The alternative is to split’

  ‘By which you mean?’

  ‘By which I mean move my family to a country where they have a normal educational system.’

  ‘And which farflung planet of our solar system would that be?’

  ‘The one where no one would ever dream of discussing kindergartens in public. Or cancer. Or dentistry. Or women’s rights.’

  They stared at me, stunned by my rudeness.

  ‘You weren’t born this way, I’m sure of it,’ I said. ‘It’s San Francisco that’s done this to you. But do you have any idea how fucking boring you’ve become?’

  They caught their breath and exchanged looks.

  ‘It’s not even worth responding to,’ said Ophelia.

  Charlotte nodded. ‘So let’s just eat.’

  My gratitude at their silence was short-lived. Because I had a chance to listen to Becky, who was sitting next to Charlotte. Or rather, I had a chance to listen to the noise she was making.

  Like everyone else at the table, Becky had left her personality at home that evening. She had brought Baby instead. And if she wasn’t slapping Baby on to her right breast, she was pulling Baby off her left breast. Slap. Pop. Slap. Pop. I failed to see the point of a new breast every ten seconds. But I soon discovered why she had to struggle to keep her eyes from closing. It was because she was listening to Trey, who was sitting next to Ophelia.

  Now talk about torture. Charlotte and Ophelia were like Monagesque socialites compared to this guy. Here are some fascinating titbits he passed on to me over the course of the next half hour, whenever my eyes, dancing frantically from head to head in search of relief from the growing panic of boredom, accidentally locked with his:

  1. BMWs are cheaper if you buy them in Germany.

  2. Mercedes Benzes, which you can also buy in Germany on a similar export plan, are better value dollar for dollar.