The Stork Club

by Maureen Freely

  She turns to Mitchell and says, ‘Some weirdo called Bruno left a message on the machine.’

  ‘Oh God, yes, that reminds me!’ Mitchell almost screams as he runs into his office.

  ‘Do you have to call him now?’

  ‘I think it would be for the best,’ he says brightly. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘No. I’ll just wait out here with Laura until you’re ready to show me that space.’

  ‘Oh honey,’ he says. ‘I don’t think I have time to do that for you today. And anyway, don’t you think it would be better for you to do this on your own?’

  ‘But I don’t know where to start,’ she says.

  ‘What you do is you go South of Market, and drive up and down, and look for signs, and take down the numbers, and make appointments and go look at these spaces and see if they’re right for you – is that so complicated?’

  The phone rings. ‘Bruno on the line for you.’

  ‘Right! I’ll take it in here!’ He slams the door.

  ‘What’s with him?’ Becky asks you. All she gets in the way of an answer is a weak smile and a shrug. Of which she is supposed to make what?

  So this is how you start a business, she says to herself fifteen minutes later as she cruises South of Market. You get some money-making ideas together and see which one gels. OK now, so let’s see. Since we’re South of Market, let’s rule out any idea that involves middle-class kids. Let’s go with the graphic design concept or failing that the Japanese underwear import-export scheme. What kind of space will she need? How is she supposed to find it cruising around these streets with Baby Roo squealing in the back seat?

  She sees a sign for a space that would work for the Japanese underwear idea. But she just can’t see herself spending her whole day processing Japanese underwear orders. So she drives around some more until she sees a sign for a larger space with big windows, perfect for the graphic design concept. But does she have the nerve to set up on her own like that? Is she ready to go to the trouble of leaving Baby Roo with a sitter to come down here and hang out in an empty office waiting for work that might never come?

  She pulls into a space across from a purple nightclub, and that is when she has her first fantasy.

  It is a replay of yesterday’s nitpicking incident. But this time, instead of slapping me, she pulls me closer to her, runs her tongue over my lips, and …

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ She jolts her eyes open and returns herself to the purple reality of the nightclub entrance, tries to sober herself up by looking at the drunks. She looks at her watch. Thank God! Time for Baby Roo’s DPT.

  The ride to Ophelia’s office is uneventful, if somewhat faster than usual. It is not until she is circling the block looking for a parking space that she has another erotic interlude. This time I pull her close to me and give her a forceful kiss. Which is fucking ridiculous. Because she has never ever thought of me that way. Why is she having these fantasies? As she finds a place for herself and Baby Roo in the crowded waiting room, she decides she must be having them in order to avoid thinking about her career, her inner contradictions and her dismal life.

  This is how she sees it: a third baby fine, a third course of DPTs no fine. She looks at the other women in the waiting room. Ms Self-sufficient in the corner with her three-week-old numero uno. Talk to her? She could write the script. Ditto for Ms Distracted Mother of Two Under Two in the toy corner. That voice she uses, the genuine interest she shows in Goodnight Moon! And even worse – Ms Earth Shoe-who-is-about-to-reach-term, who-gave-up-coffee-six-months-before-conceiving-and-thinks-you-can-determine-the-sex-of

  -the-child-by-eating-a-surfeit-of-either-lettuce-or-dairy-products. Keep me away from her, Becky thinks.

  Ms Earth Shoe has begun to talk to Baby Roo when Ophelia comes through. Becky is sure that the lookers-on don’t appreciate the preferential treatment, but she doesn’t give a flying fuck.

  Ophelia is acting strange today, too, Becky notices. She has no time for Baby Roo, sends her off as fast as she can with the strange new nurse, then sits down on the edge of the examination bed and looks at Becky as if she is about to break some important news to her. Except that she doesn’t.

  So Becky says, ‘I think I should be there when Baby Roo gets her shot.’

  ‘Oh yes, right,’ says Ophelia. Instead of calling the nurse back, she hoists herself up on the examination table and stretches herself out in the manner of an odalesque. She has one foot propped on a stirrup. ‘I’m having a hard time pulling off my doctor act today.’

  You can say that again, Becky feels like saying. Instead she listens politely to Ophelia as she tells her the newest hospital-horror story. This one has to do with a drain some underling accidentally drove into an old man’s heart. Usually she tells these things deadpan but today she is agitated. She has not drawn the story to a close yet when she reaches into a drawer and pulls out a box of chocolate truffles. She offers the box to Becky, then takes one herself.

  ‘I wonder what people would say in the waiting room if they saw us now,’ says Ophelia.

  ‘They would say we were acting immature.’

  ‘I wish someone had told me how much fun it was. I would have started acting immature a lot sooner.’

  ‘Me too. In fact, I would have passed up the ballet years altogether.’

  ‘Too late now,’ says Ophelia, reaching for another truffle.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I can do what I like now. Nobody can stop me. I’m too big.’

  ‘The problem is what to do about it,’ says Ophelia.

  ‘Maybe the best thing is to take it to the limit,’ says Becky, and then she brings up the story of the nits and the straying hand. In this telling, she notices, she is a shocked victim, while I become more and more mysterious as she questions my motives.

  And Ophelia’s reaction is … jealousy? She looks at herself – fleetingly – in the mirror over the sink as she lolls on the examination table, licking the chocolate off her fingers, and is relieved to see that she looks only distantly interested. When, in fact, this story hits Ophelia right where it hurts most.

  Her first thought is: Why Becky and not Dr Ophelia Mendoza? After all, hadn’t she spent the entire previous afternoon on the phone with me? Hadn’t she been kind and understanding and helpful? Yes, she had been, but there had not been a single moment that had contained the slightest hint of a misunderstanding developing. Had she ceased to come across as a sexual being? If so, why? Was it her body? Her body language? The way she talked? Her attitude? Her clothes? The shape and/or age of her breasts?

  This has been the worst thing about living with Kiki’s confessions: this sudden and total absence of self-image. She has no idea what she looks like to others, no idea even how she wants to look. She feels like an empty train on a circular track. She has no past, because her version of events has been blotted out for ever by Kiki’s secret life.

  How many encounters had he admitted to? How many affairs? He said he didn’t want to live that way any more. He had even agreed with her suggestion that all three of them, in other words, Mom too, take the AIDS test. But in the meantime, how was she supposed to live with these apparitions Kiki had bequeathed her? Where was she supposed to take the questions he hadn’t answered? Which nurses? is what she wants to know. Which patients? More to the point, why?

  The counsellor had told her that at least she was in touch with her feelings again. But she doesn’t see how her feelings are helping things at all. She can’t even look at Kiki now without being overcome with memories of questionable nurses and friends and patients. It isn’t so much jealousy as a virulent form of curiosity. That is the worst thing, she now decides as she doodles on the truffle box, half listening to Becky half tell her about a man who had half made a pass at her. She sees the world through Kiki’s eyes now, because her own have been proven wrong.

  Here she is with her dear friend Becky, but she is hardly able to talk to her because all she can think is how did Kiki size up Becky? Was Becky more
desirable than Ophelia because of her height? Her manner? Her jokes? Her clothing? The mixed signals she might or might not be sending out?

  There is a moment when she almost breaks her vow, when she is on the verge of telling Becky the truth. Then she reminds herself. It wouldn’t be professional to confide in friends who are also Kiki’s patients. On the other hand, how is she supposed to get through this ordeal without discussing it with her friends?

  It is almost a betrayal not to tell Becky. But say she told Becky this morning here in this examination room, within earshot of the other involved parties, where would she begin? What angle would she take? How would she keep herself from bursting into tears? What would she say to the nurse?

  So she keeps the tone light. Before long, Baby Roo is brought back crying, Becky picks her up and leaves, Ophelia is left alone again and suddenly she feels as if she is dying, or will die unless she says something, it doesn’t matter how little, about what she’s going through. So she calls up Charlotte to tell her about this new counsellor. This is a safe choice as Charlotte is the one who originally recommended her.

  But Charlotte decides not to answer the phone. She is chairing a brown bag talk that has turned out to be more of an event than she expected.

  The speaker is a highflyer Charlotte neither trusts nor likes. They were in grad school together. This woman was ambitious even then. Now, although she has only one publication to her credit, she has managed to get herself a split appointment and a salary even a Nobel Prize winner would lust after.

  One thing Charlotte will concede – she is a good speaker. Her subject is Juliet Mitchell and without lowering her tone she has been able to make her theories comprehensible to a group that is not exactly on the ball. But they are eager and not afraid to admit to ignorance. Not afraid to say ‘Um’ or ‘You know’ or ‘I mean’ a thousand times as they do so. Not even afraid to pop gum in the speaker’s face. Caution! Charlotte tries to catch herself before she goes too far with her little snobberies. At least these semiliterate women in the audience are bringing enthusiasm to what is threatening to become a tired subject. At least they are feminists at the gut level if nowhere else. And the biggest miracle of all, at least they are not all women! There are two men (!) sitting in the back row and, although they are asking obnoxious leading questions, they do, by way of compensation, break up that air of solidarity that can make these lunchtime events so dire.

  One thing sticks in her mind as she drives home afterwards. Something the speaker said during the question and answer period. She said that the war between the sexes had grown more subtle now that men, particularly educated men, could no longer stand up and present themselves as male supremacists. This had prompted some backtalk from the men in the back row, and even Charlotte had privately cheered them. How did Ms Highflyer know what men were really like when you had to live with them? Here she was with her megasalary and her split appointment and her singles life and she thought the world was sexist?

  Some women didn’t realize how easy they had it. That is the thought that keeps returning to her as she pushes her cart through the supermarket, as she puts her groceries away, as she cooks the supper, as she tries to correct the children’s manners but can do nothing to stop her husband from staring into the middle distance. As she hunts through the papers Trey had promised to sort out weeks ago for the latest issue of World Headlice News. Why is she the one who is always doing favours for people? Why do the lucky ones spend so much time feeling sorry for themselves?

  When she gets to 2238 at 7 p.m., dinner isn’t even on the table. She finds you sobbing on the leather couch. When she asks you what’s wrong, you say, ‘We can’t co-operate any more. We can’t even buy a chicken together without arguing about the sell-by date.’

  She advises you to go easy on me: I have had a hellish week, she informs you. You do not seem impressed. ‘What kind of week do you think I had?’

  The chicken that seems to have caused the argument is in the oven. Charlotte is still reasoning with you – and standing accused of taking my side – when I emerge from the bedroom to put it on the table.

  It makes Charlotte sad. To see a man trying so hard to do things right, a man who cares so deeply about every aspect of his children’s welfare having to put up with this kind of shoddy treatment from his overcoddled wife. It’s so unfair! Can’t you just forget whatever problems you’re having at work and give your husband the pat on the back he deserves?

  Since you are not about to do so, Charlotte is glad when you are called to the phone. This gives her a chance to tell me what a wonderful job I’m doing. She produces the famous copy of the World Headlice News. She sets about instructing me in the art of nit avoidance.

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  I remember how clearly Charlotte enunciated her words. She made each important point three times, varying her sentence structure, and supporting her deathly boring claims with theatrical gestures. I can see now that Charlotte was only trying to be helpful. But I can’t tell you how humiliating it was to have to sit there while she addressed me in a voice a three-year-old dog would find insulting.

  Then, after she left, to have to slave through dinner and dishes without a word of thanks from you. To watch you ignore the children. To listen to you sigh deeply as you stepped into your bath, as you stepped into your nightgown even though it was only nine o’clock, as you pointedly turned off the light. To try and escape into the television screen but to be brought back by your impatient tossing and turning. To try and get into bed and discover a Walkman, a hairbrush, two books and a box of tissues under the covers.

  And then, to have you confuse things by seeming to come on to me. Do you have any idea what it was like for me to discover you were sound asleep? I suppose it is impossible. Impossible for a woman to know what it feels like to ejaculate when losing an erection.

  I can’t tell you how bitter I felt. I had thought we were doing this, at least this, together. Laura, I am telling you. I have never felt so lonely as I did that night. Why bother? I asked myself. I could have been anyone fucking you, anyone at all. I was only useful to you so long as I agreed to clean your house for you and feed your children. I would be visible to you only if I fucked up. Even then you would notice the empty refrigerator and unbrushed hair and unmade beds before you noticed me.

  I was expendable. I was in pain. I wanted to end the pain. Most of all I wanted to escape those thoughts. They were so fucking boring. I considered taking a sleeping pill. But it was so late. I would be a zombie the next day. Better to take all fifteen of them and end it.

  Then I heard Maria singing.

  I found her crouching next to the baby stroller at the foot of her bed.

  ‘Something wonderful is going to happen,’ she told me. ‘Jesus is going to have a baby.’ She cupped her chubby hands around my ear. ‘Chickens aren’t the only ones.’

  She put her hands on my cheeks and looked me straight in the eye. ‘It’s a secret. But you have to be very quiet.’

  She picked up Jesus from the stroller to reveal an egg. ‘I took it from school, from that box where they’re hatching them. Isn’t it beautiful?’ she said.

  And it was beautiful, it really was. It was the most beautiful, most improbable, most defiant thing I had ever seen in my life.

  No need now to go into the problems the egg affair created for us at school the next day. I knew what I wanted now. School didn’t matter. I went through the motions, and allowed the women who had taken charge of my life think they were taming me. I let them drive me wherever they felt like driving me. Didn’t notice where, didn’t care. I let them talk. I nodded obediently at their moving mouths but did not hear a thing.

  I remember that you called at six that night and said you wouldn’t be home until late, but for once I didn’t care because all that mattered to me now was the time I got to spend alone with Jesse and Maria. I wanted to sit at home and watch them eat their toast upside-down. Listen to them tell me about alien statues from outer space and pictures th
at could move beyond the confines of their frames. So long as we were inside the confines of our apartment, we were safe. Safe, so long as no woman was watching us, to play whatever games we wanted.

  They fell asleep happy that night. And I was glad, once they were asleep, that I had the house to myself. I didn’t care where you were or who you were fucking. You couldn’t hurt me. I had my TV, my books, my music and my private thoughts …

  And my games.

  This is the one I liked the most: I did everything your friends told me to do. But nothing more. I remember that Charlotte had lent me Children: The Challenge. I had stayed up all night reading it. I gave it back to her outside school the next morning, and said, ‘Thanks, that was interesting.’ That was all I said. When Charlotte asked me, ‘What did you think about Point X or Point Y?’ I would say, ‘They’re probably valid under certain circumstances.’ When Charlotte said, ‘I’m not so sure,’ I said, ‘There are probably two ways of looking at it.’ She never caught on.

  Another game I played: to see just how little I could get away with doing without raising the alarms. How small could I make the cookies for the bake-sale? How close could I get to falling asleep at the parent seminar without actually closing my eyes? I made a point of being almost late for Circle every morning. Five seconds, four seconds, two … I enjoyed watching Fatso’s face.

  I deliberately set out to worry them. They would ask me, ‘Where did you get your new CD player?’ I would say, ‘I don’t know if I remember.’ ‘But you only got it last week,’ they would say, and then look at each other, as if to say, Is this guy losing it? I would spin it out for as long as I could and then say, ‘Oh yes. Now I remember. I got it at Blank for blank dollars.’ I would be correct to the last penny.

  I let them organize my schedule for me. I went through the whole kindergarten application nightmare without a single untoward remark. And little by little I became my mask.

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