My mother entered first, and as I saw her step through the doorway, throwing a smiling glance over her shoulder at her companion behind, it was as though I were getting a slow-motion glimpse of a younger version of my mother that I had never known before.
Then she was through the doorway and coming through behind her was…the most beautiful middle-aged woman I’d ever seen.
I didn’t know what I was feeling as I came to the realization of the thing I should have guessed: Vic was Victoria.
My mother was in love with another woman.
I kept the news of the revelation involving my mother to myself. The news was too new, and somehow I couldn’t sort it out immediately, so I kept it to myself, kept it even from Tolkien.
When Tolkien had sort-of moved in with me, the first thing we’d done was gone out to buy a new bed. The queen-size sleigh bed I’d had the past few years still had a lifetime’s worth of service left in it, but I didn’t want to spend my new life with Tolkien sleeping in the same bed I’d shared with Trevor, did I? It would be daring the gods or something, like wearing the same wedding dress twice, so we’d gone and picked out something just for us: a pencil-post bed that we’d liked the style of and Emma had liked its height from the floor (it was extraordinarily high) because she could roll under it.
I lay next to Tolkien in the pencil-post bed, propped up on one elbow, idly caressing his chest.
I was trying to pay attention to his words, since he was talking to me about something important, but I was so grateful on a daily basis that I’d been granted a second chance with him, that each night in bed felt as though I was rediscovering the world. I sometimes told myself it must be a bit like what Emma experienced the very first time she opened her eyes: the attractively shiny newness of everything and, yes, the scariness of the unknown. And, oh, did he have an amazing body! It was hard to stop myself from admiring the way a muscle was shaped here, the way his hair lay there…
“Would you rather do this later?” Tolkien asked, referring to the papers he’d been about to tell me about.
“Sorry,” I said, exercising a superhuman will and tearing myself away from that chest. “You were going to tell me about your search for Sarah?”
I’d been sleeping when he’d come in late from work, sliding in next to me and whispering that he had news. I guess the fact that he was naked when he told me was what had made my natural inclination to ignore the talk and go for the comfort. What can I say? Once self-involved, always—
“I’m finally getting somewhere.” He spoke with such enthusiasm that his enthusiasm made me get enthusiastic and actually made me forget about having sex with him for the moment.
“What is it? What?” I asked, sitting up.
“Well, remember I was going to interview some of Sarah’s friends?”
“Right. The same ones the local cops had already talked to.”
“That’s right. Anyway, it looks like they didn’t tell everything they knew before. Apparently, Sarah had a boyfriend that no one else had bothered to mention. Her family didn’t know about him, of course, she’d kept it a secret. It looks like he went missing the same time Sarah did.”
“So you think they went together?” I didn’t give him a chance to answer. “But why wouldn’t someone have put this together before? Two kids go missing at the same time—”
“He was several years older, out of school, living on his own, so it wasn’t like anyone at school would have put it together and her friends weren’t talking. You know how that is with teenagers—they think loyalty means keeping their mouths shut, with no thought that to do so might result in a far greater danger. As for the boyfriend, I suspect that when he disappeared people just assumed he’d moved on.”
“Do you have any idea where they might have gone?”
“No. But at least I’ve got something more to go on now.”
“Mary Jr. will be so excited!” I said, but then I stopped myself. “But I don’t think I’d best say anything to her yet. Why get her hopes up before we know something more concrete?”
“That sounds smart,” he said.
I settled down into the welcoming crook of his arm, head against his chest, and recommenced idly playing with his body.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked.
“Mmm?” he responded. Apparently, my idling was starting his motor.
“Do you think I’m a bad person?”
That stopped his engine cold. He looked down at me, tilted my head up so that I had to meet his eyes. “Why do you ask that?”
“Because I’ve asked you to use your spare time to find Mary Jr.’s niece and while I could have asked you to do the same for Emma’s mother, I haven’t.”
“I see,” he said softly. Then he laid his cheek against my hair.
“No, Jane, I don’t think you’re a bad person for not actively going the extra step in searching for Emma’s mother. I think you’re human. You can’t be expected to go after that which might cause you lots of pain. Besides, Social Services says they’re looking for her, right? It’s not like you’re obstructing their search in any way. Honestly, it’s not your responsibility to do any more.”
“I suppose.”
“I mean, how good would it be for Emma, if someone else showed up now, wanting her back?”
I thought about it hard, not just from my viewpoint, but from Emma’s. I thought about how happy she was with me.
“It wouldn’t be good at all.” I shivered.
“And then there’s this,” he said.
“What?”
“In all these months, no one has come forward to claim Emma. I’d say the field looks pretty good for you and her.”
“I’m worried about Emma.” I poured forth my fears to David and Christopher in their apartment. It was such a happier place up there once again, now that Christopher knew what he wanted to do and knew that David was fine with it.
I hadn’t told Tolkien about the revelation concerning my mother, and I wasn’t ready yet to talk to David and Christopher about it either, even though I did feel they could help me sort it out. I was still too busy coping with my own conflicted emotions, though, to let the prism of other people affect those feelings just yet.
“Oh dear God,” said David. “Is this like when that book had you worried she wasn’t rolling over quickly enough and then she just rolled right over?”
“No,” I said a trifle testily, “this isn’t at all like that. I think she needs religion.”
“What are you talking about, Jane?” David looked at her playing on the carpet. Then he sniffed the air. “I think she may need a new nappy, but religion?”
I moved to change her, but Christopher got there first. “I’ll get this round,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said to Christopher as he went off to get the supplies for Emma they kept up there.
As he proceeded to change her on a small blanket he’d laid on the carpet—the bigger she got, the easier it was to just change her on the floor, since she’d begun to twist too much for a changing table—we continued with the matter at hand, the subject of my latest motherhood anxiety attack.
“Why do you say Emma needs religion?” David asked.
“Be-cause,” I Jane-whined, “that’s what people do with babies!”
“They do?” he asked.
“Yes! Where do you come from?”
“Israel.”
“Right. I knew that.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Be-cause you don’t appear to be getting it!”
“Well, then, why don’t you explain it to us, so we will get it,” suggested Christopher, pulling Emma’s pants back up. “There you go, Em.”
“Okay,” I said, “fine. Haven’t you ever noticed, that when people have a baby, they start going to church again?”
“Well, not everybody,” said Christopher.
“Of course not,” said David. “I would imagine that some people go to synagogues.”
“Or mos
ques,” added Christopher.
“Okay, fine. Be semantically precise if you must. The point is, that when people have babies, they return to some sort of house of worship.”
“Right,” said Christopher. “Babies make people hypocritical.”
“What? Why are you not getting it?”
“It’s just that, I can see where you’re heading with this. And it does seem hypocritical to me, in light of what you yourself have previously said on that subject, stuff along the lines of people not needing any specific organized religion provided they could be inspired on their own not to murder one another.”
“That does sound like me,” I conceded.
“Yes, it does,” agreed David.
“So you think it’s hypocritical when anyone does it?” I asked.
“If we’re talking about people who haven’t set foot themselves in a church or a synagogue or a mosque since they’ve gotten big enough to say ‘no’ when their parents tried to make them,” said Christopher, “and now that they have kids of their own, they’re starting that same whole empty process again, then yes.”
“I respectfully disagree,” I said.
“That’s a new one from you.” David snorted, and I ignored his snort.
“I’m not convinced it’s empty at all,” I said. “In fact, I think it’s a great way to give Emma a sense of community.”
“How many communities does Emma need?” David asked. “You’ve given her the community of us, of your friends and co-workers and family, of Mary Jr. and her friends. Come to that, you’ve given her the community of you—why, you’re like an entire community unto yourself. How many more communities does she need?”
“I just think she could use a religious community as well.”
“For what?” asked Christopher. “For small-mindedness and us/them face-offs?”
“Do you honestly believe,” said David, “that a person needs to be a member of a specific religious group to have a moral center?”
“Do you mean that we need to save her soul?” asked Christopher.
“We could always get that Jewel girl.” David shrugged.
“Or REM,” suggested Christopher.
“I don’t know!” I said, growing frustrated. “I don’t know what I mean! Maybe I just think that, when Christmas eventually rolls around again, it should mean more to her than just the decorations and just the presents. Maybe I just think she should be going to potluck suppers.”
David’s and Christopher’s eyes met right over my head.
“She makes a persuasive argument,” David said with a shrug.
“I like casseroles,” said Christopher.
“Then you agree with me?” I asked.
“About the casseroles?” Christopher said. “Sure. You can’t ever have enough of those.”
Well, it was a start at least.
“Great!” I said. “Where do you think we should start?”
“We?” said Christopher. “Oh, no. Count me out of this one. I’m C of E. We don’t have to go to church. We’ve got the Queen, you know.”
“But what about the casseroles?”
“Oh, I’ll still come for those, but only for those. I doubt wherever you wind up, they’ll be having potluck every Sunday.”
Wherever I wind up? Yes, I still didn’t know to what church I’d be taking Emma. I still needed to figure that one out. And, according to Christopher, C of E was out, since there wouldn’t be any need for us to show up at all. Well, unless another Royal got married.
As so often happened, when stumped by life, I looked to David for inspiration.
“What about you?” I asked. “What church do you belong to?”
My best friend was clearly annoyed with me.
“I’m Jewish!”
“Oh. Right.”
Christopher, perhaps hoping to deflect the annoyance David was so visibly feeling, turned the spotlight on me.
“What are you, Jane?” he asked.
Now there was a stumper.
“I dunno,” I said. “Episcopalian?”
My Emma could now understand the word “no”—not that she always, or even sometimes, obeyed it. She was also a mobile little girl. She could already stand alone momentarily and could walk while holding on to furniture.
It occurred to me that whenever a woman has a child, whether that child has come from her body or not, each succeeding moment from the child’s birth takes it an independent step at a time away from where it began.
It was my job, much as I loved having her with me, to see to it that Emma kept taking those independent steps away; and if at all possible, for her to take those steps joyfully.
September, the ninth month
Tolkien and I were going out on a date.
Yes, I do realize that we’d done that part already—we’d technically gone out on a first date twice in fact—but this was a bit different.
Tolkien pointed out that since Christmas Eve of the previous year, I had yet to spend a full night away from Emma.
“You’re wrong,” I countered. “There was that one time Dodo kept her overnight and we had all that mind-blowing sex, which eventually led to your sort-of moving in here.”
Tolkien looked sheepish at being caught out. “But you can’t really blame a guy for trying to get more mind-blowing sex, can you? So couldn’t we have another one—a night away from Emma, that is?”
“You make it sound as though ‘a night away from Emma’ is some kind of great thing,” I said, “but I don’t see it that way at all.”
“Well, of course, the not-Emma part of it isn’t the selling point. It’s the us-being-completely-alone that I was looking for.”
“But what can we do without Emma there that we’re not doing already with her in the next room?”
I guess he was too embarrassed to say it aloud, because he whispered it in my ear.
I can tell you this much: it involved me playing Scotland Yard detective and arresting him for crimes against the Crown, upon which I would interrogate him using any method I saw fit; then we were going to switch, and he could arrest me.
“I can see what you’re saying. That game would work better without interruption.”
And so we’d decided on a location for our first just-us-since-he-sort-of-moved-in date. His apartment, which he hadn’t given up yet.
I suppose I might have been offended at his keeping his options open like that, but with the past history I’d given him, I couldn’t blame him. And, as for the fact that we weren’t going somewhere more exotic, I couldn’t care less that it was going to be in his nondescript apartment (which was now even more nondescript since he’d moved his CD player and CD collection to my place). I was going to get to play a detective from Scotland Yard!
So, having a perfect location, the only thing we were still in need of was a sitter.
Unfortunately, however, neither David nor Christopher could do it, because David was working and Christopher had a project he was working on; Dodo couldn’t do it, because she was going out on yet another “interview” with Stephen Triplecorn and, God bless her, I didn’t want to do anything to tip that cart; Sophie couldn’t do it because Baby Jack was sick, not that she would have anyway; and my mother wouldn’t do it because she was just plain scared to.
“But why does it have to be this Saturday night?” I asked Tolkien.
“Because it’s one of those now-or-never things. I’m guessing that if I don’t get you away for a whole night now, my next chance will be when Emma leaves for university.”
I could feel my lower lip begin to quiver. “Emma’s going to have to leave to go to university?”
Yes. Well. Even I could see his point.
That left us with…
“I think it’s just brilliant what you’ve done with this place since I was last here!”
Ladies and Gentlemen, we’d been forced to rely upon the baby-sitting generosities of Our Constance.
“But it hasn’t changed any since you were here last,�
�� I said, letting the vampire in, “save that Emma’s cot is now in the living room—” which is where it would be until we moved somewhere with a second bedroom “—and we’ve got Tolkien’s CD things set up.”
“But those two things are just so—” and here she did her flapping-seal clap “—brilliant! You’ve got the baby’s things taken care of and the man-you’re-sleeping-with’s things taken care of. Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant!”
I pitied poor Emma that she was going to have to put up with this whackjob for the entire night, but I was glad that Tolkien and I would soon be able to get the hell away from her—Constance, that is. And who knew? Babies were always taking to the strangest things—why, look at Emma and my mother. It was entirely possible that like the birds that always seemed to trail after Constance whenever we happened to be outside together, Emma would be enchanted with her, too. And if Constance kept changing her contact lens color for her, or perhaps flashed a few pretty healing crystals, Em would probably be mesmerized.
“Off you go,” Constance said, Emma on her hip. “You two have a brilliant time. We two will be just fine here.”
No sooner did Tolkien and I enter his apartment, than the phone rang.
“It’s for you,” he said. “Constance.”
“Yes, Constance?”
“Emma was thirsty and I was wondering…how long do you boil the milk bottle for?”
“You don’t boil the milk bottle! Take it off the stove before you blow the place up!”
Constance laughed. “I wasn’t going to boil it on the stove! I was going to put it in the micro. I was thinking, what? A minute? Two?”
“No, Constance! You just pour it from the container in the fridge and then give it to her.”
“You mean cold?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”
“But I always like mine—”
“Trust me, Em likes it that way. Was there anything else?”
“Oh, no. We’re having a ball.”
Kiss, kiss, kiss.
Even though I was supposed to be the interrogating Scotland Yard detective first, Tolkien had my bra off and was quite intent…
Crossing the Line Page 18
