“You want it?” I ask Franny. “The apartment? I’ll sublet it to you, or turn over the lease.”
“No way,” she says. “You’ll hate my guts in seven months after this kid pops out and you’ve gone loco pushing a stroller with all the lesbians and rich pseudo-lefties in Park Slope.”
I cringe, imagining myself as one of the fresh-faced moms in cargo pants and comfortable shoes who meander down the wide clean sidewalks, pushing squalling babies in Maclaren strollers, pulling happy trotting dogs beneath a canopy of old London plane trees. “You’re probably right,” I tell Franny.
I watch a mover carry down three boxes bound to his back with a long blue and white strap. He slides them into the truck.
“But come on,” I say. “This place would be awful for a baby. There’s no room for a crib. I’d have to lug the stroller up five flights. And two seconds after she learns to crawl, she’ll either have her finger in a light socket or fall out the window.”
Another mover yells down to me from the fifth floor. “You want the couch to stay or go?”
“You want the couch?” I ask Franny.
“Are you serious about this?”
I nod. “Sure. Why not? I don’t need it. You live in a crap hole and have to take the train an hour to get here every day. Why don’t you just take it?”
“Are you going to resent it?” Franny asks.
The guy above us waits.
I shake my head no, then ask her, “What’s it going to be?”
“Hell, yes!” she yells. “Sign me up!”
“Do you want the other furniture, too?”
“As long as it’ll match my milk crates and futon.”
“Leave all the big stuff,” I yell up to the movers.
Franny runs back into the restaurant, yelling, “Wait until I tell Ernesto!” over her shoulder. I laugh at her, but feel glad that I’m the one making her happy instead of pissing her off, like I seem to do a lot these days.
“I think that’s all,” the guy yells. “You want to take a look?”
I shake my head no. I don’t want to see my place so desolate. I want to remember it how it was. When Eddie comes downstairs, I hold out my hand. “Can I have your keys to my place, please?”
“Why?” he asks. “Where are yours?”
“I made a decision,” I tell him. “I’m giving this place to Franny.”
Eddie does a quick double take. “But I thought you wanted—”
I shake my head. “I don’t want two places.”
“Since when?”
“Since now,” I say.
He extracts the keys from his pocket and holds them out to me. “Is that really what you want?” I nod and take the keys from him. “You’re awesome, Lemon,” he says and hugs me tight.
The movers slide the van door closed. “Prospect Park West and Carroll?” the driver asks.
“Yep. I’ll meet you there,” says Eddie. He turns to me. “You sure you don’t want to come?”
I point to the restaurant. “Too much to do.”
“Come home early,” he says.
I roll my eyes.
He kisses my cheek. “Okay, so see you when you get there. Love you.”
“I love you, too,” I mumble as I watch the truck creep through a congested intersection toward Brooklyn, where I’ll start my life over again.
Ten Weeks
Oh, baby, what a world you will come into. For now, you nest inside your mother, so naive, with your hands flexed over your tiny pulsing heart as if praying. What favors do you request from God? Your fingers and toes are pronounced, definitive, and real, with touch pads on the ends for you to explore all sharp edges and soft surfaces of the planet.
In profile, you look vaguely human now, with an oversize noggin, evident ears, and a bump of a nose over that tiny slit mouth where taste and tooth buds form. Your tail is gone. Reabsorbed, making you more person than fish. You move, jerky involuntary motions with your limbs. Or, are you really waving to your mother?
You are a girl, as your mother has suspected. Not that anyone can tell yet. But deep inside it’s been determined, and already you carry the eggs of another generation, making your mother a temporary nesting doll, carrying her future grandchildren. Your grandmother carried half of your genetic material for a short time. Do you remember? Your mother is bookended by the two of you. Mother, daughter. She is forever both now.
Chapter
Twelve
I ’ve been a Sloper for a week, and I already desperately miss the squalor and inconvenience of the East Village. Here there is no never-ending din of humanity, no slurry of garbage in the gutters. All the people appear well fed, clean-scrubbed, and happy in their comfy lives. Even the loonies who sit on park benches ask politely for change instead of skulking through the streets, yelling at the voices in their heads.
Of course, I still go back to the East Village every day. Half an hour on the F train from Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn to Second Avenue across the river. I’m constantly late. Every morning is a mad rush to find the simplest things in the chaos of our communal space. Boxes from my apartment still line the walls of the bedroom and the hall in Eddie’s apartment. I rummage through them every day, looking for something to wear to work.
This morning in one box I uncover a wool sweater, a pair of running shorts, and two framed pictures. In one picture, my grandmother stands in front of a giant fir tree beside Little Great-Aunt Poppy outside Aunt Livinia’s old Staten Island house. Aunt Poppy comes up to my grandmother’s waist, and she leans on the garden gate, but they have the same broad smile. In the other picture, my mother and her sisters pose by a dock somewhere. My mother stands off to the side, looking coolly ahead while the rest of my aunts sling their arms around one another and mug for the camera. I set the photos on Eddie’s dresser, promising myself I’ll find a place to hang them soon.
In another box I find my Crock-Pot and a salad spinner, but no clothes. In the hallway, I find a bag of shoes below a set of martini glasses and a wooden bowl. Inside the bag are a lone cooking clog and a pair of Greek sandals from my month in Crete, where I learned to grill anchovies and make a killer tzatziki at a little cantina by the beach. As I look at those sandals, I remember Spiro, the waiter there, who liked to slurp ouzo from my belly button. At least he never lit it on fire. I toss the sandals back in the box and give up. I pick up the clothes I wore yesterday and dress quickly.
In the kitchen, I pull open half-empty drawers, looking for herbal tea bags. Each drawer holds a hodgepodge of weird utensils. A tea ball but no tea, a grapefruit knife, an old corkscrew. Cheese grater, mismatched chopsticks. Meat thermometer. “Do we have tea?” I yell to Eddie.
“Above the stove,” he yells back from his office, where I hear the clacking of his computer keys.
“Who keeps tea above the stove?”
He comes out of his office, carrying a mug of steaming coffee. The aroma taunts me.
“It’s so uncool to drink coffee in front of me,” I tell him as I plop a bag of Tummy Mint into a lukewarm cup of water. He holds the coffee behind his back, as if that will help.
“I got a lead on a new white truffle oil from the Piedmont,” Eddie tells me.
“Great,” I say, but I’m more interested in slathering butter and jam on a piece of bread, hoping to quell the gnawing nausea in my stomach.
“You sure you’re still okay with me going on this trip?” he asks.
“Of course.” I take a huge bite of the bread. The sticky sweet strawberry jam is wonderful in my mouth. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I feel bad leaving you.”
“I’m not an invalid.”
“I wish you’d come with me.”
“Stop,” I say as I cram the rest of the bread in my mouth, then rush out of the kitchen in search of my bag.
“I also got an e-mail from my mom,” Eddie says after me.
I know what’s coming. We’ve still never resolved the issue of a visit from his parents, and I don’t fee
l like another fight right now. I’m too tired. Too harried. Like so many things in my life, I’m following the path of least resistance. I figure it’s good training for motherhood. Pick your battles, and all that.
“They want to know if they can come the week before I leave.”
“Fine,” I yell from the living room, where I find a pair of jeans slung across a chair, but not my bag or my shoes.
“Did you say ‘fine’?” Eddie asks from the doorway.
“Sure,” I say. “Whatever. I’m late.”
“I was also thinking,” Eddie says slowly, as if testing the water, sticking one toe in at a time, looking for piranhas, “that maybe we could have a party, so my family can meet your family.”
I trot through the apartment, peeking under furniture and behind doors for my lost bag. “You’re really pushing it.”
“You don’t have to do a thing. Just close the restaurant one night, and I’ll arrange everything.”
“Close the restaurant?” I ask as I drop down on all fours and sweep my hand below the bed. I find running shoes. Then I think, What’s it matter? Close the restaurant? Open the restaurant? Blah blah blah. So I say, “Fine.”
“Did you say ‘fine’ again?” Eddie asks.
“Sure, whatever.” I rush past him into the hall. “As long as you arrange it, and I don’t have to do anything but show up.” My bag is miraculously hanging by the front door.
Eddie grabs my arm and pulls me back for a kiss before I leave. “Thanks, Lemon. Thanks for agreeing. This is going to be so much fun.”
“You have a strange sense of fun, Eddie.” I peck him on the cheek and hurry out the door.
It doesn’t take long for my aunts to descend once they learn that the Kilbys are due in town and that our apartment is still a wreck. Three days later, while I’m basting a leg of lamb at Lemon, Melanie sticks her head into the kitchen and says, “Eddie’s on line one.”
“I’ll call him back,” I say as I slowly brush juices over the browning meat. The lamb smells amazingly good, and I could sink my teeth in right to the bone. Lately all I’ve wanted to eat is meat, rich and hearty stews, dripping greasy burgers.
“He says he really needs to talk to you now.”
“Christ,” I mutter as I shove the lamb back in the oven and lick the juices from my fingers.
In the dining room, Xiao hums happily as she makes small arrangements of dahlias for each table. “Good morning, Lemon!” she sings to me. I wave as I pick up the phone.
“Hey,” I say. “I’m swamped.”
“Listen,” says Eddie. He sounds slightly panicked. “I tried to tell them that they should talk to you first—”
“Who?” I thumb through the reservation book. The next two nights are booked up nearly solid. I let Franny plan the menu for the rest of the week to avoid any tension in the kitchen. And this morning, I paid off all the vendors, leaving us broke.
“But they just showed up, and—”
I hear familiar voices in the background at Eddie’s. I close the reservation book. “Oh, my God,” I say when I hear Aunt Mary exclaim, “Isn’t this bay window darling!”
Aunt Joy, or maybe it’s Aunt Adele, says, “Some lace curtains would look great.”
“And a valance,” another adds.
“What are they doing there!” I nearly yell into the phone. I begin to pace. They’ve done this to me over and over since I was a kid. Before every important event in my life, they’ve swooped in and taken over. They’d make all the decisions without asking me what I wanted. My first communion dress, wallpaper for my bedroom, what songs to play at my piano recitals, what food to have at my high school graduation party. I tried to put an end to their micromanagement of my life when I left Brooklyn for the first time and ran away to Europe. Since I’ve been back in New York, my strategy has been not to have important events, keep everything low-key so they don’t have a chance to interfere. No one in my family even knew I had a restaurant until I sent out invitations for the opening night.
Now, I can imagine my aunts planning this assault for weeks. I’m back on their turf. Fair game again. I knew this would happen. Since Grandma told them that I’m pregnant and living in Brooklyn with Eddie, I’ve carefully avoided them, not wanting to unleash the constant barrage of advice, tips, how-tos, and other commentary on how I, like my mother, have no clue about the right way to be domestic. Now they’ve descended upon our house, no doubt armed with Martha Stewart magazines and bolts of chintz, ready to make my life presentable so that Eddie’s parents will believe that I’ll be the perfect mother.
“They want to unpack your stuff,” Eddie says.
“Eddie,” one of them yells, “which closet will be Lemon’s?”
“Who is that?” I demand. “Is it Aunt Joy? Put her on the phone!”
“Either one is fine,” he hollers away from the phone. “Just throw my stuff on the bed.”
“Eddie!” I snarl. “Eddie, listen to me!” I say as sternly as I can, hoping to awaken some fighter instinct in him.
I hear something heavy bang, then Eddie says, “Let me help you with that.”
“Don’t help them!” I screech. “You have to stop them. Let me talk to one of them.”
“Hang on,” Eddie says to me. He puts the phone down, and I hear his footsteps across the room. Their muffled voices are unclear, but I think I make out the words, “In the corner,” and “That lamp doesn’t match.”
“Eddie!” I shout into the phone again. “Eddie, get back here!”
He comes back slightly breathless. “Look, Lem.” I hear defeat in his voice. “I know this upsets you, but I think we should let them do what they want.”
“Do you know what will happen? Do you understand? We’ll end up surrounded by rattan baskets and fake ivy and bad reproduction Victorian prints in gold frames. And they’ll never leave. They’ll be there for weeks. When they finally do leave, they’ll come back every chance they get, because then they’ll feel entitled, justified. They’re like wild dogs, only they rearrange furniture. You have to stop them now, because after this kid comes, it’ll just get worse.”
“Good God!” Aunt Mary shrieks. “I thought Mother got rid of these ages ago.”
“Hey! Hey!” I say into the phone. I know that she’s found my grandmother’s old lace curtains. “You tell them not to throw anything away. Not one single thing.”
“You said yourself that we should just get rid of most of this junk,” Eddie says to me.
“So now my stuff is junk?”
“Your words.”
“I never said ‘junk.’ ”
Eddie switches gears. “You’re too busy as it is. You’re dead tired when you come home. And I’m leaving for Italy. My parents are coming. At least this way things will get done.”
They’ve already got him. Brainwashed him. Swayed my poor little Eddie over to their side. “Christ,” I mutter.
“You’re going to have to start accepting help from people, Lemon. Especially from your family.”
“Help is one thing. Completely taking over my life is another.”
“It’s just stuff,” Eddie says.
I can smell the lamb. I need to finish basting it. I have to find a replacement for Mona again tonight. The lights on the phone are blinking. People are calling for reservations, and I’m tying up the lines trying to negotiate through Eddie with my crazy aunts, who are hell-bent on making my life respectable before the Kilbys blow into town. I stop and think, Is it worth the struggle?
“You don’t need these,” I hear one of my aunts say. “You’ll get new ones for your wedding.”
“Wedding!” I yell. “You tell her there is no wedding!”
“I’ll start a trash pile,” says another one.
“Oh, look!” one of them coos. “Lemon’s baby pictures.”
“Let’s find some of Eddie and hang them up together,” another one answers.
That’s when I give in. What’s the use? It’s already gone too far, and Eddie
is helpless. I can’t do anything from here, and I can’t abandon the restaurant right now. Even if I did, it would take me at least half an hour on the subway to get home. By that time the place will be unrecognizable.
“Fine, fine, fine,” I mutter into the phone. I’ll draw the line somewhere else. “It’s not worth it. Let them do whatever they want,” I say.
“You won’t regret it,” Eddie tells me.
“I might,” I say. “But I’ll get over it.”
When I get home at one that morning, four large black trash bags and a huge stack of broken-down cardboard boxes neatly tied with twine squat on the sidewalk near the curb. I have the urge to rip open each bag and see what parts of my past have been purged without my permission. But I don’t. I walk past it all. Up the steps, searching for my keys at the bottom of my bag. I’m too exhausted to undo any of my aunts’ handiwork right now anyway. And Eddie’s right. It’s just stuff. Stuff I don’t have the time or energy to deal with when I have plenty of other things to worry about. Like the crappy review in a new lifestyle magazine, calling my food pretentious and my space twee. The fact that I’m still not turning a profit despite all the dinners we’re cooking. Franny’s growing hostility about my declining productivity. And what the hell I’m going to do about finding a bartender to replace the ever-evasive Mona.
Inside the apartment, everything has been rearranged. One of my old quilts is slung over the back of Eddie’s sofa, which is now in front of the bay window, itself covered with new lace curtains. My old green-shaded library lamps are on the end tables that used to be in my grandmother’s living room. His coffee table holds a stack of my cooking magazines, and an old samovar that I found behind a Russian restaurant is nestled nicely on a plant stand in the corner. Some of Eddie’s books have been cleared out to make room for my father’s LP collection. A photo of my mom and dad sits on the mantel next to our baby pictures and a small basket filled with potpourri. I stand in the middle of the room, shake my head, and laugh.
Luscious Lemon Page 12
