Motherland

by Amy Sohn

  The path opened into the vista of the beach below. It was a long walk, and as the fog lifted, the first thing he saw were the two large domes of the San Onofre nuclear power station just down the coast, like enormous breasts with freakishly erect nipples.

  The breaks were wall-to-wall surfers. As Gottlieb walked from Uppers to Lowers, he couldn’t imagine how he would get any rides in such a crowd. At the next break, he threw on his wet suit and went for it. The waves were huge, bigger than Malibu’s, but there was a clear current where a line of surfers was riding out.

  Paddling as hard as he could, he felt the surge of last night’s coke and vodka and Japanese beer hit his brain. He ducked under the first wall of white water and briefly considered turning back to the beach. By the time he reached the lineup he was out of breath and queasy. He sat on his board shoulder to shoulder with a couple dozen guys. He was aware of an enormous energy in the coil of waves beneath him. For the first time since his arrival in L.A., he couldn’t imagine riding such large surf. It hadn’t looked so big from the shore.

  An older guy with a long white beard and bare chest seemed to look right through him but then smiled, friendly. Gottlieb smiled back and nodded. He closed his eyes and took a few long, deep yoga breaths to relax. When he opened them again, the whole crowd was off, gone, moving fast, like a shrill, whistling sea creature away from him and toward something larger and totally out of scale against the horizon.

  Whitebeard looked back and called out to him, “Outside, bro!” Cursing himself, Gottlieb paddled like a maniac to catch up with the crowd. The first wave looked like it was about to break fifty feet in front of him. It was monstrous in proportion to what he had seen so far. He paddled harder than he thought possible, breaking just over the top of the lip. A mean mist blinded him as he thrashed toward the second wave, a blurry towering silhouette somewhere behind his eyes. His lungs, shoulders, and arms were on fire as he rose up the body of the second swell and speared through the crest. He heard his own voice crying out as though from far away.

  The third wave of the set was the biggest. He knew for sure he wasn’t going to make it. There was a moment of stillness. An inky blackness overshadowed him like the falling anvil in a Road Runner cartoon. He watched a ripped blond kid with a wild grin dance across the crown of the wave above his head, and somehow Gottlieb punched up through the peak of the wave and back into the world. But there was no victory in having survived. He was terrified and shaking. What an idiot. As he paddled into the relative safety of the channel, he felt again like the teenager on the Jersey shore with the wrong board and the wrong body. The total kook.

  A group of young kids was laughing, and one of them glanced at him sidelong. Whitebeard paddled over and smiled at him again, measured, stern. Gottlieb noticed his piercing blue eyes. “Welcome to the church, bro,” the guy said.

  Marco

  “Um, could I get a glass of the Riesling?” Todd asked.

  “And you, sir?” asked the Goth bespectacled waitress at Brooklyn Fish Camp.

  “Sparkling water with lime,” Marco answered. It was so easy to play the role of good sober person, ordering the sparkling water even though he’d had almost a fifth of vodka over the course of the day. He had plastic bottles hidden all around the apartment now. He even had one in the toilet tank, his ironic homage to Ray Milland in Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend.

  It was a hazy Sunday evening in mid-September, and Marco and Todd had come to the restaurant with the children. They had spent the day together as a family, big omelet breakfast at home, playground, park, Todd’s quesadillas for lunch, park again. At five Todd had suggested they all go out to eat.

  Todd liked to go to restaurants even now that they were parents. When Enrique had been a baby, it was easy, but as he had gotten older and more difficult, the restaurant trips had begun to seem like folly, like the worst of both worlds. The adults couldn’t enjoy themselves, and neither could the kid. What was the point? He wondered what the outings meant for Todd. Was it about being an adult and a parent at the same time, being waited on while your kid got fed, too? Or was it about his money, showing off, being the big daddy?

  Todd was holding Jason over his shoulder, out of the sling. A woman behind them in her twenties, on a date with a buttoned-up boyfriend, made eyes at Jason. She had no idea. Jason woke up six times a night in the co-sleeper next to their bed. Todd would feed him the first two times, but after that, he thought Jason should cry it out. Todd would go into the living room and sleep on the couch with the pillow over his head while Marco tried in vain to comfort the baby.

  “He’ll have an apple juice,” Todd said, pointing to Enrique. “In a paper cup with a lid and a straw.” The waitress trotted away to get the drinks. They looked down at their menus.

  Marco knew what Todd was going to get, the fried oysters and clams as an app, followed by the lobster roll, washed down with at least two more Rieslings. No wonder he was gaining weight so rapidly. He ate like a pig. When the waitress returned with the drinks, they all ordered. Marco ordered the tilefish, and Enrique got his usual—fish and chips from the kids’ menu. Enrique was sitting across from Todd, Marco next to him. The two men never sat across from each other anymore; one had to be across from Enrique and the other next to him to make sure he didn’t burn down the restaurant. He was coloring in a book they had requested from the waitress; like all Park Slope restaurants, Brooklyn Fish Camp was kid-friendly.

  “So Frankie thinks I should open a second office in the North Fork,” Todd said. “I mean if we’re open to it.”

  “You mean you’d commute?”

  “At first, but if the business was good, we could move one day.”

  “What about all your jobs here?”

  “Eventually I’ll get someone else to manage it. And we’ll have two revenue streams.”

  Todd had talked often of relocating to the North Fork, now that he was getting jobs there. He had a vision of Enrique playing by the bay, going to a small school. A quiet pace of life. Marco thought it was an unrealistic fantasy. There was crime and violence, and winter would be depressing.

  “What would I do there?” Marco asked.

  “Teachers can work anywhere. If my business took off, maybe you wouldn’t have to work.”

  “I like working.” Marco was burned out on teaching, but he didn’t like the alternative—taking care of kids all day. He felt like this was a ploy to keep him beholden to the children. Todd probably wanted another one. He wanted to be like those gay guys down the block with the three kids, a husband to a stay-at-home wife. Marco couldn’t imagine living on Long Island. No gay parents. No culture.

  “Maybe you’d like staying at home.” Marco took a sip of his Perrier and saw Todd nod slightly. Then Todd took a deep swill of his wine.

  How could Todd not know that Marco was drinking? He didn’t want to see the parts of Marco that he didn’t like—he didn’t want to admit to the parts of himself he didn’t like. This was what hurt Marco the most, that he was afraid of the ugly sides. Marco wasn’t afraid of Todd’s. They made him who he was. He was too strict, but he could be soft with Enrique, too.

  If only the sex were better. Then maybe they wouldn’t have gotten into this mess. The nights when Marco came home from hookups late or went off at ten to return at two, Todd was always sleeping when he got back, or pretending to. In denial, trying to make it go away. But he could feel rising hostility from him, as though Todd were waiting for Marco to say he was done, he’d gotten it out of his system, he was ready to go back to being monogamous, ready to be the gay Cleavers again. How many guys had there been since he put up the profile two and a half weeks ago? Fifteen? Twenty? He couldn’t count anymore.

  Jason was squirming on Todd’s shoulder and fussing. Todd shook a bottle of formula and gave it to him. Jason took a little but then fussed again. It was a horrible noise, demanding, angry. Marco wanted to run out onto the street to get away.

  It seemed everyone was looking at them, even thou
gh it was early, and most of the other patrons were couples with kids. “Where’s my food?” Enrique yelled.

  “It’s coming soon,” Marco said.

  Todd bounced Jason, who was getting louder and more irate. Marco felt a furtive thrill that Todd was having no more luck with the baby than he was. Maybe the problem wasn’t Marco. Maybe Jason was just an impossible baby. He had deep circles under his eyes, and his skin was sallow. He was not the picture of health. Lately, Marco had been thinking his mother had drunk when she was pregnant, maybe that was why he was so colicky.

  “I’m going to take him outside,” Todd said, then reached down and took another gulp of his wine. “Just let me know when my food comes.”

  “Why’s he crying?” Enrique asked, looking up from the robots in his coloring book.

  “He always cries,” Marco said. “That’s what some babies do.”

  Out on Fifth Avenue, Marco could see Todd bouncing the baby but could tell by his posture that it wasn’t working. When Enrique’s food came, he tore into it like a wild dog. Todd’s oysters and clams sat there. Todd came in the door with Jason, whose howls pierced the din of the restaurant. “You take him,” Todd said, his face red with distress. An order. Todd unbuckled the sling, and Marco put it on himself and slipped the devil child inside. It was like trying to shove Rosemary’s baby back inside Mia Farrow.

  On the street Jason screamed and screamed. As Marco walked, people stared and cut a wide swath around the pair as though colic were something they could catch, like avian flu. Marco inserted the bottle in his mouth, but once it was empty, Jason went back to wailing. Marco gave up trying to quiet him.

  A couple of blocks down the street was a bar virtually open to the sidewalk, one of those big sports bars that during summertime showed soccer, baseball, horse racing, and tennis, all on different screens. Marco made eye contact with Todd through the window, pointed down the street, and made a “walkie” motion with his index and middle finger. Todd nodded at the universal parent sign language, fried oysters all over his face.

  With the baby wailing on his chest, Marco stepped into the bar. “Triple shot of Absolut, neat with a twist,” he said. The other customers, small cliques of blank-faced men, stared at him. The bartender eyed him warily. “It’s for me, not him,” Marco said.

  The bartender shrugged and poured his drink while Jason writhed and shrieked. “Eighteen dollars.” Only a few bucks short of the price of a fifth. Marco picked up the glass and gazed momentarily at the small slice of lemon peel, its bitter essence rising up his nostrils, and tossed the drink back, swallowing it in three even gulps. He slapped a twenty on the table and stepped out onto the street through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  Everything looked better than it had before. The air was clear, and Jason had stopped crying abruptly, like some tiny barometer of Marco’s burden as it floated up into the early-fall breeze. He ate a few Tic Tacs and headed back to the restaurant. Outside, looking in through the window, he saw his other son and husband huddled over their plates, attacking the mess as if the end of the world were at hand.

  Helene knew something was strange when she found Seth sitting in the big chair, looking grim—not least because he never socialized. He would eat her food, but he didn’t like to sit and talk. What was the point of letting your son live with you when he wouldn’t pass time with you, even to watch the occasional Glee?

  He was sitting in The Bastard’s old chair, the one Helene had since adopted as her own, and he was in one of his weird getups—toothpick jeans and a button-down striped shirt. Obviously, he wanted something from her. He needed money, there was trouble with a girl. “Hi there,” she said. She took off her Mephisto sandals and sat on the sofa across from him. “How was your day?” she asked.

  “I wanted to get my bike out of the basement, and I couldn’t find the key. I remembered I had a spare from a long time ago. I saw the strollers. What’s wrong with you?”

  She hadn’t expected he would find them. He was always forgetting his keys and MetroCard and having to get buzzed back in, and somehow he’d found a decades-old spare basement key? “Nothing is wrong with me,” she said.

  “Stealing is wrong.”

  “I’m not stealing. I’m . . . streamlining.”

  “Those things belong to people. Children. You’re stealing from kids, Mom.”

  “They have other strollers! I went to Marnie Krinsky’s for book club, and there were eleven in the downstairs lobby. Eleven! She said one of the mothers is trying to petition the board to build a ramp next to the steps in the foyer.”

  “What you’re doing isn’t right, Mom.”

  “It’s not right to clog up the sidewalks with double-wides, either. It’s not right to expose your lactating breasts when someone is trying to eat an egg salad sandwich next to you. It’s not right to bring rambunctious toddlers to nice restaurants, or talk on your cell phone so loudly that two people trying to have a face-to-face conversation can’t hear each other. Or stand chatting with a friend right in front of the Food Coop entrance so other people can’t get in. Or type on a laptop for six hours in a café so there’s no room for the customers who are actually buying the food they sell. A lot of things aren’t right. If this makes someone think twice about leaving a stroller in other people’s way, then I’m not committing a crime. I’m doing a public service.”

  “Are you, like, actually in full-on menopause, or would it be considered perimenopause at this point?”

  “This isn’t hormonal, Seth,” she said. “And I don’t appreciate the sexist implication. It’s about the loss of common decency. I don’t know the names of half the people who live on this block anymore. I used to know all of them. The Bastard and I had a more harmonious relationship with heroin addicts than I do with these yuppies.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that it might be because of you and not them?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You walk down the street with this angry look on your face. You mutter to yourself. They all think you’re crazy. Someone told me about a stroller stealer at a party, and I thought it had to be a lunatic. You’re a hypocrite. You were every bit as much of a helicopter mother as these moms are now. They just didn’t have a word for it then. You were so mad at Dad for leaving that you became obsessed with us. You used to follow me from room to room when I was upset. These women aren’t that different from you.”

  “I never would have spent eight hundred dollars on a stroller!”

  “That’s only like a hundred bucks by 1980s standards.”

  Seth didn’t understand it, and there was no way she could get through to him. He didn’t know that once people had cared about each other. They left their doors open. You could walk in a neighbor’s house and borrow a hammer. Now it was all Pakistani contractors. Park Slope was a neighborhood without neighborliness.

  “Why don’t you leave?” she said.

  “Fine,” he said, standing up.

  “No, I mean for good.” She could see him blanch. “You obviously don’t like me. You think I’m crazy, and you don’t like living here. You do it because it’s free. So why don’t you live someplace else?”

  “I just think it’s wrong to steal from children.”

  “So get a place of your own. Then you won’t have to put up with me. You’d be much happier in Bushwick or Ridgewood, anyway. This is the best thing for both of us. I want you out by Friday.”

  “Where am I supposed to go?”

  “You have friends. I’m sure one of them will take you. Or stay with your father in Greenpoint. You’re not my problem anymore.” She clenched her fists so he wouldn’t see her hands shaking, and then she climbed upstairs to her bedroom, closed the door, lay on her stomach, and cried.

  Karen

  What kind of underwear did you wear for a massage? Did you wear underwear at all? Karen had decided she would since Seth was male, but she wanted it to be a nice pair, one without any holes. After Matty moved out, her collection had
become a pathetic testament to life without sex. She bought most of her panties—discounted remainders of no-name brands—at Daffy’s in the Atlantic mall, rarely paying more than a few dollars each. Although some were shiny and silky, over time they stretched to the point where thin strips of elastic protruded from the fibers. She would have to go on a shopping spree so if she ever got Wesley in bed, she would be wearing undies cute enough not to make him run for the door.

  After digging around in her top drawer, she fished out an expensive pair of burgundy Hanky Pankies that she’d bought at Diana Kane on Fifth Avenue before the separation. They were boy shorts, and when she looked at herself in the mirror, they managed to make her waist look slimmer while cupping her butt attractively. Though she barely knew her masseur, this Seth Hiss guy she’d met at the supper club, she felt it was important that her underwear not be disgusting.

  On the phone Seth had said he was no longer seeing clients in his own apartment but could bring his massage table to hers. She was nervous about putting herself at risk by having a strange man come over. Then she remembered the seersucker suit he had worn to A Tisket, A Tasket and decided that no one in seersucker could be a secret rapist.

  She dressed quickly. The buzzer went off. “Nice to see you again,” he said when she opened her door. He wore skinny jeans and a tight pinstriped button-down. His massage table was on his back in a case. “Make yourself at home,” she said. He left his shoes in the hallway and came in. “I was thinking you could put your table in the den.” She indicated the room off the living room, which was connected by French doors. She always winced a little when she said “den,” remembering her plans to make it a baby room.

  He removed the table, dressed it with sheets. On the couch he asked her a few questions, scribbling her answers down on a clipboard, and then he said, “We’re going to start facedown, so you can take off your clothes and lie with your face in the cradle. You can keep your underwear on or take it off. It’s up to you. Put the sheets over you. I’m going to go to the bathroom to wash my hands. Is it down that hallway?” She nodded. “When you’re ready, just call out. Take off any necklace or earrings. Sound good?” He seemed more agreeable and less snide than he had at the supper club.