That is why I was a little brusque with you when I barged into the kitchen and told you I needed to go home.
Not that this did any good. Would you come home with me? Not on your life. You acted as if I were some throwback Victorian explorer who was trying to catch you with a net.
Yet another indication of how little weight my word carried now that we had switched places.
28
I remember walking back into our newly reorganized apartment and thinking how pathetic it looked. Not even the sight of the diaphragm sitting safely in its drawer reassured me. And believe me, I checked.
The children were angry at me for having dragged them away from the party early. They had wanted to play with their friends, whom they informed me they had missed. ‘If you missed them why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked. But I couldn’t get a straight answer from them, in Maria’s case because she had come back from the party talking babytalk.
Terrific! I thought. A day back with her friends and a whole summer’s work is undone. It was the same with Jesse. The fears I had worked so hard to chase away were back. It wasn’t just that he wouldn’t sit in a room without me. He wouldn’t even sit in a chair alone. And having glued himself to my side, he couldn’t sit still. This made it very hard to lose myself in the paper. (By now, this was the only thing I could think of doing to stop the fantasies that had begun to crowd my brain – about what you might be getting up to with Gabe, Mitchell and/or any number of people, including bikers.) My patience was short, and so there was an edge to my voice when I asked Jesse if he didn’t have to go to the bathroom.
I am sure this is why he lied to me and said no.
‘You do have to go,’ I said. ‘But you think the alien is hiding in the toilet. Right?’
He looked at me with a trembling lower lip.
I tried a gender approach. ‘Believe me. The alien does not exist.’ I went into my stock explanation, a difficult feat at the best of times, made more difficult now by Maria’s interference.
She was playing waitress. Not a game I usually permitted. After what I went through in my first marriage, waitressing was not something I was able to have much of a sense of humour about. But I did not have the energy to stop it today. So while I was talking Jesse out of his fantasies, and fighting a losing battle against my own, Maria was taking our orders and setting the table, i.e., filling plastic plates with shredded paper towels.
Imagine what it was like. I had no control over my thoughts. In my mind you were banging sometimes Gabe, sometimes Mitchell, and sometimes a battalion of Hell’s Angels. You were writhing, spreading your legs and biting his/their necks. And what was I doing? Sitting at the dining-table, singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Maria’s dolls, and pretending to eat and enjoy the shredded paper towels.
It seemed an eternity before I could ask for the cheque.
I knew there were any number of things I ought to have been doing to get the kids ready for school the next morning. But I couldn’t so I went back to my paper. I was half-way through a movie review when Jesse climbed on to my lap again, making it impossible for me to breathe.
‘What’s wrong now?’ I asked.
Pointing up at the poster on the wall, he said, ‘The Diadoumenos?.’
‘What about it?’ I asked.
‘I think it might have special powers.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Jesse,’ I said. ‘It does not. It’s just a statue. Lay off.’
‘I just saw them, though,’ he said.
‘Saw what?’ ‘The arms.’
‘But it doesn’t have any arms.’
‘It does now,’ he said in a trembling voice. He looked out the window and said in a stage whisper, ‘They’re back.’
‘What do you mean, they’re back?’
‘They’re over there,’ he said, pointing out the window. ‘I just saw them.’
‘Listen,’ I said to Jesse. ‘You didn’t see them. It was just your imagination. The Diadoumenos lost its arms thousands of years ago. They’re not coming back.’
‘Where are they then?’
‘Somewhere far away,’ I said. ‘In a ditch in Greece.’
‘Why, though?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe some barbarians chopped them off. Or maybe they fell off in a storm.’
‘Is that why people aren’t made of stone any more?’
‘People were never made of stone,’ I told him.
‘Then why is the Diadoumenos made of stone?’
‘Because the Diadoumenos is a statue.’
‘But you said the Diadoumenos was a man.’
I tried to explain. ‘Technically, yes, it’s a man. But it is supposed to be a statue of a god. It’s a statue of Apollo, the god of love.’
‘Is that why it has no arms?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Why does it look like a man, then?’
‘Because the ancient Greeks believed that gods looked like men.’
‘So what happened to the rest of them?’
‘The rest of what?’ I asked, my patience wearing thin.
‘The rest of the gods,’ he said. He paused to give me a significant look. ‘There’s only one left now. Remember?’
He gave me a nudge. I didn’t know what to say. ‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ he continued. ‘I think they turned into alien robots.’
Not aliens. Not again!!! I wanted to hurl myself out the window. ‘Listen, Jesse,’ I said. ‘The Greek gods did not go anywhere. They never really existed. They were figments of the ancient Greek imagination, just like the alien is a figment of yours.’
‘You mean Apollo never existed?’
‘Right.’
‘So then how can there be a statue of him?’
‘Because – as I already told you – it is not a statue of Apollo. It is a statue of a man who looked like Apollo.’
‘But how did they know what Apollo looked like? If he didn’t exist?’
‘They didn’t know,’ I admitted. ‘They guessed.’
‘But I thought you said this statue was real.’
‘It is real.’
‘But you said it didn’t exist!!’
By now even I was getting mixed up. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Let me explain how this statue came into being. There used to be a man who looked like this statue.’
‘Did he have arms?’
‘Yes, as far as we know, the man who looked like this statue had arms.’
‘But you’re not sure,’ Jesse said.
‘No, I can’t be a hundred per cent sure because I never met him. He died thousands of years before I was born.’
‘If you never met him, how can you be sure his name was Apollo?’
‘His name was NOT Apollo. Apollo is the name of the God the SCULPTOR thought he looked like. God!’
‘Which god?’ Jesse asked.
‘No, no, no,’ I said. ‘Listen carefully this time. We don’t know what the real guy’s name was. And we don’t know what the name of the sculptor was. All we know is that he sculpted this statue and that he based it on a real human.’
‘How can you be sure, though?’
‘I can’t be a hundred per cent sure. But I am almost positive. There has to have been a man once upon a time who looked like this simply because this statue looks so much like a man.’
‘It doesn’t look like a man to me.’
‘Why the hell not?’
‘Because. It doesn’t have any arms.’
‘But it did have arms, God damn it. It did. It DID! Until that storm came along, or until those barbarians whoever they were hacked them off, it had arms. OK? Got that straight? Can I read my paper now?’
But the paper had become a lost cause. Jesse had eroded my faith in what I saw. I looked at the Diadoumenos and said to myself, he’s right. What scanty evidence we base our conclusions on. How could we be sure the model for the Diadoumenos had arms? The answer was, we couldn’t. We took it all on faith. And because of what had happened, I began
to think how much I took on faith in my own life.
The return of my paranoid fantasies made it hard for me to stay at Jesse’s level. This is why, when he asked me what barbarians were, I did not give him the full answer he deserved. I was sarcastic. I said they were people who hated art. When he asked me if they still existed I said yes but now they made Hollywood movies. When he said maybe that’s what was in his radiator, I said yes, it was probably a Hollywood director. For the first time since I had taken the children over, I did not want to talk to them. I just wanted them to leave me alone. That is why I did not object when Maria, influenced by the travesty she had witnessed earlier, began to play Church.
I remember looking up from the paper and seeing her pushing the baby stroller with one hand and with the other hand holding open a Golden Book as if it were a hymnal, and singing something ghostly in the upper registers.
The next thing I knew she was asking me to get some money ready. ‘Time for collection,’ she said.
I didn’t pay any attention to her.
The next thing I knew, she had shoved your diaphragm into my face.
She had already put some quarters into it.
I don’t think I have ever been so horrified by a contraceptive device.
‘Where did you get that?’ I screamed. I grabbed the diaphragm. The quarters went flying. ‘This is not a toy. If anything happened to this it could be very dangerous.’
‘Give it to me!’ Maria shrieked. ‘It’s for Church!’
‘No, it’s not. It’s for Mom,’ I said. I took it back to the bathroom where it belonged. I opened up the drawer and found … your diaphragm case. I opened the case and found … your diaphragm.
Once again, I nearly had a heart attack. I turned to Maria. ‘Who gave you this?’
She looked at me, her sullen expression an alarming replica of yours. ‘Mom gave it to me. For Church.’
‘Where did you find it?’ I’m afraid I took her by the arms and shook her. ‘Show me!’
Still pouting, she took me to your jewellery case and lifted out the bottom. To reveal not one, not two, but three more diaphragms.
No need now to go into the hysterical accusations I levelled against you when you finally came home. As for the things you said back to me, I can’t tell you how they stung me. I was threatened by your rapid progress? I, who had done everything in my power to bring it about? I was smothering you? I was forcing myself on you sexually? I condescended to you? I couldn’t understand how you could have a friendship with a man that wasn’t based on sex?
‘I’ll give you something not to trust me about,’ you said in your new assertive snarl. ‘I always wanted to hear his band anyway. So why not now? And why go unprotected?’
I can’t tell you what it did to me, watching you throw all five diaphragms into your bag – or what the children’s crying did to me after you had slammed the door on us. Then, to have to sit there waiting for you to come home …
What time did you finally roll in? Ten, eleven o’clock? I may have been pretending to sleep in that armchair, but let me tell you, I have never been more fucking awake. I could smell the stale cigarette smoke on you. I could see your hair was tousled, and on your dishevelled clothes I could imagine the hands of other men. When I got into bed next to you, I could smell the men – not just Gabe and Gabe’s band, but my partners, and the balding lawyer who had given you his card, and the Santa Rosa plumber, and the restaurant radical, and the faceless hordes of bikers, twenty-three-year-old junior lawyers, Mitchell … When I couldn’t bear it any longer, I put my clothes back on and went out.
I decided to track down Rob. I hadn’t seen him since before Greece. I found him at Specs. He had just gotten off his taxi shift and was drinking Miller’s with tequila chasers and sitting with a woman who turned out to be a stripper from one of those places on Broadway.
She had silvery blonde hair and a loud voice and she chewed gum. She had glitter eyeshadow and a brain the size of a pastie. She kept poking Rob playfully near the groin. Every other word she said was ‘fuck’. He pretended not to notice but then suddenly he jerked around and in a low and menacing voice said, ‘Cool it.’ And presto! Magic! She did, even though she didn’t want to. When was the last time I had seen that?
She lit up a cigarette and squirmed around in her chair, while Rob droned on about a recent deep-sea fishing expedition and his plans to hit Guanajuato that winter.
‘Hey, fuckhead,’ she said. ‘Maybe I’ll come with you.’
‘Like hell you will,’ said Rob.
He turned his back to her and started telling me how his writing was going. ‘I think all those porno books fucked up my style.’
‘You’re fucking right they did,’ his companion said.
‘Amy Jean?’ Rob showed no signs of being ruffled. ‘I’ve just about had enough of your backtalk. I feel this urge growing inside me to knock you clear off that stool. So why don’t you take a walk down to the other end of the bar while I talk to my friend?’
‘If you say so,’ was her meek response. She slouched away to talk to a gaunt, desperate-looking woman at the other end of the bar.
Rob and I watched them light each other’s cigarettes, and then he snorted and said, ‘Women!’ He took a long drag out of his cigarette. ‘So,’ he said, exhaling. ‘What’s up with you?’
There was no way I could tell him. No way!
I had lied to Rob before. But this time I went at it in a new way. There was no relation between me and the macho miracle I described for him. I did not mention you or your job or my accident or my decision to stay at home with the children. Instead I talked travel and fictitious one-night stands and business conquests. Rob was not particularly impressed, but as I was telling him what he expected to hear, I guess he believed me.
I was the one who needed convincing. That is why I ended up going back to Amy Jean’s friend’s place. I thought she would be easy.
Just when I was working myself up to a climax, she stopped me and said, ‘Wait. Before you finish. You have to know who I am. You have to accept me.’ She turned on the light. Looking down at the body underneath me, I saw it had one breast missing. In its place was a scar. ‘This is me,’ she said, almost proudly. ‘This is the real Samantha. I used to be ashamed, but not any more. I’ve come to terms with it and I want you to do the same.’
There was no way I could get it up again after that. I guessed I deserved the abuse she gave me. When I got home, I couldn’t bear the thought of lying next to you, so I poured myself another drink and settled into an armchair. I lit myself the cigarette that would end up burning a hole in the leather. My last memory is of looking up at the Diadoumenos, looking up at his blank eyes and his stumps and almost catching them move, then closing my eyes to trick them, opening them fast, and seeing the last trace of a disrespectful gesture. I must have been very drunk.
I fell asleep and dreamed I was defending a bunker. I was surrounded by an army of bikers, handymen and twenty-three-year-old junior lawyers. They were trying to close in on me. I was spinning around and around with my submachine gun, spraying them with bullets. But I couldn’t kill them for longer than two seconds. They would get up laughing when I wasn’t looking and move in on you, and you let them. While I was spraying them with bullets, other intruders would sneak up behind me. This nightmare was still playing itself out when the alarm rang at seven in the morning. I was still under its influence as I went through the motions of breakfast. I think that is why I did such a bad job – that and the fact that the children were wired up anyway on account of it being the first day of school.
For Maria it really was the first day of school, ever. She must have been awake for hours when I went in to get her. When I took off her covers she was already dressed – inside out and backwards. I am sure if I had had enough sleep I could have managed to get her dressed properly without injuring her pride and therefore causing a scene. But because I wasn’t thinking, I was too direct.
‘Take those off,’ I
said. ‘Let me put them outside out for you.’ She refused to obey me.
I was stupid enough to issue an ultimatum. ‘You can’t have breakfast until you’re dressed right,’ I said. She refused to budge. I had to undress her by force. Furious, she refused to eat her cereal. So I insulted her, told her she wasn’t acting like a three and a half year old. My heart aches when I remember the horrible things I said to her, that I really ought to have been saying to you.
How could I have done that to a child that age on such an important day? Even Jesse couldn’t take it. When I did Maria’s ponytail, and she screamed, and I threw the brush across the room, he pleaded with me to be nice to her. And what did I do? I just told him it was a fine time to become her ally since he was the one who had revved her up. Glossing over my own deficiencies, I reminded him of all the things he had done to annoy me over breakfast.
This made him even more upset. ‘I’m sorry!’ he yelled. ‘I can’t help it! It’s not me!’
‘Then who the fuck is it?’
‘It’s the alien inside me,’ Jesse said. ‘The alien inside me made me do it.’
I’m afraid I shook him.
‘How many times am I going to have to tell you this. There is not an alien inside you. Now eat your cereal. There’s no school until you do.’
Obediently, he chewed for me. But he continued to cry and eventually food started spilling out between his quivering lips.
‘What’s wrong now?’ I asked.
‘It’s moving again.’
‘What’s moving again?’
‘The Diadoumenos?’
‘Oh it is, is it? Well, let me assure you. It is never going to fucking move again.’ And that is when I tore it off the wall and stamped on it.
I then proceeded to tear it into little bits. ‘That good enough for you?’ I asked Jesse. Looking up at him, I was shocked to see that he had stopped crying.
The Stork Club Page 16
