This Is My Life

by Meg Wolitzer

  Erica walked quickly along Washington Square South. She had stepped out for a walk hours before, and Jordan would wonder what had happened to her. Or maybe, she thought, he wouldn’t. It depended on whether or not his customers were still in the apartment. Erica couldn’t bear the idea of returning to that place now. How would she stay there and continue to live with him? How, in fact, had she lasted so long in the first place? It was so much easier to remain inert, to not have to take any action at all. The world was full of people who lay in bed with one person and dreamed of another. It didn’t even have to be a particular person you were dreaming about; it could be just an idea of a person, someone whom you had to invent and assemble.

  Erica realized that she felt suddenly hungry. She had been exerting herself much more than usual: all that walking, and then all that tossing in the bed. When Mitchell lay on top of her, giving her his full weight, she had felt the air pushed out of her for a second. It gave sex some absolute, tangible meaning: the heaviness of two bodies, each of them giving the other a full bulk of weight, saying, Take this, it’s yours, passing it back and forth like a baton in a relay race. Soon a rhythm is established, and you can take more and more. You show off, like a weight lifter at a gym, piling iron bricks on the Nautilus machine. You go red in the face, you start to sweat, you are actually laboring. Sex isn’t necessarily an ethereal pastime for two dewy teenagers in a field. When you were big, like Mitchell and Erica, sex was about matter, and the shifting and arranging of that matter. It was like sculpting in some thick wet clay and then casting it in bronze.

  And now she was starving, longing for something sweet again. Erica was standing on West Fourth Street, and she saw that she was directly in front of a bakery, as though she had landed there divinely. She blinked a few times, then peered in the window. It was filled with tiers of pastry: petits fours iced in pink and white, with little silver balls peppering the top, and a round chocolate birthday cake, the frosting so thick and scalloped that it seemed to have been applied with a putty knife.

  She opened the bakery door and a little bell trembled overhead. Inside, the fragrance was surprisingly strong. Erica knew exactly what she wanted. She hesitated before the slanted glass counter for just a second, and then ordered a single eclair.

  Seventeen

  Dottie was in the isolation booth. She had headphones on and was blithely listening to Pachelbel’s “Canon in D,” while outside the booth the double bonus answer was being revealed. “It’s a hard one,” confided the host of the show, a slender, giggling man named Jack Waring. “But if I know Dottie Engels, she’ll be able to figure it out.” He paused. “Especially if we tell her there’s a free meal in it for her!” He put his hand to his chest and bent over at his own joke, and the laugh light blinked. The audience dutifully complied, although their laughter came in an unstable wave. It could be filled in later, Opal knew; it could be sweetened until everyone seemed to be roaring.

  Ross Needler had found work for Dottie. It was a game show, and originally she had been depressed by the prospect and had said no, but after a while she changed her mind and called him back. Something was better than nothing, she had rationalized. It was work; there would be an audience, and a live set, and she would be back on the air.

  “Think of the exposure,” Ross had said.

  “You can die of exposure,” Dottie answered, but still she agreed.

  Run for the Money was one of those game shows that relied on physical exertion as much as what Jack Waring termed “brain power.” It was a fairly complicated show, Opal thought; if you answered a series of questions right, you made it into the isolation booth for the double bonus question, and if you answered that correctly as well, then you went on a chase for a large sum of money, which was strategically hidden along an extravagant obstacle course. Dottie wouldn’t be allowed to keep any of the money, of course. It would all go to her teammate, a law student from Fordham named Darren Helper.

  Dottie had to pretend that she didn’t need the money at all. This was the great irony, and everyone involved with the show’s production understood it well. It wasn’t just Dottie; most of the celebrities who appeared on Run for the Money were experiencing hard times. Alcoholic actors or desperate ex–child stars with faces puffed up and ruined by adolescence—all of them flocked to the show. This week, the other guest was Melanie Sweet, a young dark-haired British actress who had portrayed a villain on a nighttime soap opera before it was canceled. Neither Dottie nor Melanie was appearing anywhere else, but the host treated them as though their careers were blooming madly, and at the beginning of the show he thanked them both for taking time out of their busy schedules. “Of course,” he said to Melanie, “viewers remember you best as Tempest Blaine on Sutter’s Cove, but I understand you’re working on some new projects.”

  “Oh, yes,” Melanie answered in her clipped, distinctive voice, and she went on to explain that she was reading screenplays and searching for the right part. She was afraid, she said, of being typecast as a villainess.

  “You know,” Dottie offered, “I have similar fears; I’m afraid of being typecast as an overweight woman!”

  Again the host doubled over, his laughter exploding like thunder into his little clip-on microphone.

  Opal sat in the third row. She had been given the morning off from work. Now she glanced up at the ceiling, which was speckled with recessed lights like a planetarium, as though the universe could be contained within the confines of a theater. Maybe it couldn’t be contained, Opal thought, but it could be approximated. The full set of Run for the Money was as elaborate and distracting as much of life: all those bright colors, loud noises, and either elation or despair waiting at the end.

  When people won big on game shows, their families piled onstage, hugging them and hugging the host. But when they lost, their families stayed safely in their seats, unwilling to be identified. Nine-year-old kids looked away from fathers who had just mistakenly answered the pivotal question. Images of what might have been flashed through the kids’ eyes: a Winnebago, a trip to Disneyland, a gleaming Jaguar. All of it wasted, tossed easily into the lap of the opponent. In the car on the way home from the taping, the kids sit sullen in the backseat of the old station wagon, trying to decide whether or not ever to speak to their father again.

  At least it’s something, Dottie had said all week, as the day of the taping grew closer. Just last night Opal had set up an obstacle course in the living room, at Dottie’s request. Opal had held a stopwatch, and Dottie had made her way over the minefield of cushions and upturned chairs. Opal watched as her mother struggled through the clutter. It was “something,” true, and “something” was given full credit merely because it existed, because it got Dottie out of the house. You had to look for gratification, Dottie often said; it wasn’t going to miraculously appear before you. She found gratification in small ways: when her face appeared somewhere, or her name. It made her feel connected to the rest of the world.

  Opal had read Howards End in her English class the year before, and for weeks afterward everyone had gone around campus murmuring, “Only connect,” as though this were the only thing worth remembering from the novel. And what, even, did it mean? It had such an easy surface to it; of course, you thought to yourself, Forster is saying that we should all connect with each other! And you sat up in bed in the middle of the night, flicking on the lamp and waking your roommate to tell her how important it was that you two ”connected.” Your roommate lay there squinting at you in her Lanz nightgown, begging you to turn off the light.

  So Dottie Engels only wanted to connect; what was wrong with that? You couldn’t tell your mother how to connect; she had to decide that for herself. No one had told Dottie to be a comedian in the first place; that had been her own decision. It was, people had said in articles early on, her “gift.”

  During a break, Opal peered down at her mother and waved, but Dottie didn’t see her;
she was having her hair fluffed by a woman in a smock, and her eyes were closed, as though she were momentarily dozing. The hairstylist gently shook her, and Dottie’s eyes opened. The woman disappeared offstage, the light went on again, and everyone was silent. The important round was about to begin, the part of the show that some viewers tuned in for exclusively.

  Dottie was going to run the obstacle course. Melanie Sweet hadn’t been able to hit the buzzer quickly enough, and she just kept shaking her glossy head of black-Labrador hair. Melanie Sweet’s partner, a computer programmer named Suzanne, was given various sad parting gifts, and then her chair and desk began to move on their track, until she had floated offstage, waving forlornly, as though set adrift on an iceberg.

  Now the obstacle course was ready. There would be small tasks for Dottie to carry out: “Nothing herculean,” the producers had assured her. This was the part that Opal didn’t want to watch. She thought about going out into the lobby for a cigarette. She could come back in when it was all over, when Darren Helper had won enough money to pay back his student loans, or else had gone back to the Bronx empty-handed. Her mother’s failure shimmered back at Opal like a reflection: herself in the mirror, wearing full makeup. Dottie had started off so big and wide and powerful, and now she was going to run along a snaking track in her red-dotted dress while the audience watched and roared. But it wasn’t just Dottie; it was Opal, too, who had started off so small and wiry and clever, and had ended up at this uncertain place. How did we get like this? Opal wondered. She gazed back up at the pinpoint lights on the ceiling. She thought of Erica, standing in the doorway of that lousy building, staring out at her.

  Dottie stood at the entry of the obstacle course. Then a loud bell rang and she was off. First to the archery range, where she had to shoot at a target whose colors represented different dollar amounts. Dottie tried two arrows, and both missed the target completely. The third arrow hit the second-lowest amount, $250. The audience loved it. They screamed at her, urging her along. Dottie smiled up at the camera, her face a little crazed with triumph. Next Dottie went on to the pile of Buried Treasure. Somewhere underneath a big mound of dirt was a gold coin in there, which had nothing written on it at all. Whichever coin Dottie found first was the one Darren would keep. Dottie paused, panting, holding the shovel in one hand. The clock overhead was ticking away, and the audience was quiet once again.

  Then she started digging. She went at it with a vengeance, and dirt flew around the stage. Opal watched her mother lift and lower rhythmically; she was like a dog digging up a bone in a yard. Now she was slowing down. The shovel came up, stayed in the air, came down. The camera did a close-up; Dottie’s face was a high color, shining with sweat and radiant, as though a light had been left on somewhere underneath the surface. Dottie reached slowly down. Her hand curled around something, but the camera hadn’t left her face. Suddenly her expression changed; in close-up it was terrible.

  “Oh, help me,” Dottie said. She fell to the stage, and the shovel dropped too, with a resilient metallic clang. Opal sprang up, a small cry caged in her throat. The audience turned and murmured. Dottie Engels was flat on her back, a gold coin blazing in her hand.

  PART THREE

  Eighteen

  When the call came, all her clothes seemed to fly into her hands. Suddenly Erica found herself holding a blouse by the collar, a crushed pair of jeans, two socks. The telephone had shaken her from one of those strong afternoon naps, and now she was quickly dressing, stepping into her jeans and jerking the zipper closed.

  On the phone, Opal’s voice had been flat but frightened: She wasn’t calling to buy coke, Erica knew at once. “It’s about Mom,” Opal had said. “She’s had a heart attack.”

  Erica felt her own chest suddenly compress. She didn’t know what in the world to say; finally she found a voice, but it sounded strangely hollow, as if she were speaking on an overseas call. “Where is she?” Erica asked.

  “Roosevelt Hospital,” said Opal.

  What next? Something responsible, supportive. Erica picked at a ragged fingernail. She was breathing faster now, through her nose, like a bull gathering steam. “Well,” Erica said, “I’ll come there.”

  There really wasn’t a choice, she knew, as she pulled the blanket back and swung her legs over the side of the loft. Crisis did not leave room for choice. All your conflicted feelings were supposed to fly out the window, making way for action. But even as you geared up for it, you weren’t thinking: Oh, I’m so humane; I’m such a decent human being. You weren’t thinking at all, you were just responding dumbly, from the porous human marrow inside you. Erica dressed quickly, then hurried into the kitchen for her coat. Jordan was at the table with a box of Arm and Hammer baking soda and a box of safety matches in front of him. He was trying to figure out how to freebase.

  “My mother’s had a heart attack,” Erica said.

  Jordan looked up slowly, distracted. “You going there?” he asked, but he did not ask where “there” was. It might have been anywhere; New York was certainly filled with hospitals. Jordan himself had been a patient at several of them. Erica nodded and slipped on her coat, and then she was outside.

  During the subway ride uptown, the enclosed space as damp and hot as a Swedish sauna, Erica felt her body rock with the movement of the train, and she wondered if her mother would die, and if she did, what that would mean. She could not even begin to imagine. The train stopped at Fourteenth Street, and the doors slid open. A couple of people hobbled on, and the doors slid shut. At every stop, the train admitted more and more human tragedy, or maybe this was just the way she viewed the world today. Everyone looked specially beaten down by the ferocious cold weather, and the subway’s warmth seemed to make it worse, almost highlighting the misery. The lights blinked and went out for a few moments, and they all traveled in merciful darkness.

  Erica thought: If my mother dies, I will be lost.

  She wasn’t sure why this should be so, and yet it felt absolutely true. In some way she took comfort from the fact that Dottie was out there. She felt like a child lying in bed while her parents’ dinner party rages in the other room. The child does not have to take part, but is somehow soothed by the fact that all night, as she sleeps, the voices will continue, the low murmur of jazz, the gathering of plates.

  When Erica arrived at the hospital, she had to follow a labyrinth of colored tape to find the Intensive Care Unit. All she could think of, as she followed the yellow lines at her feet, was the Freedom Trail in Boston, which her family had gone on years and years before. They had followed the brightly colored footprints all over the city, past Faneuil Hall, and the Commons, and Boston Harbor where the tea had been dumped. Now Erica was passing terrible sights: stick figures strapped to stretchers so they wouldn’t blow off, nervous families clustered in anticipation around a doctor, an old man trying to wheel himself to the water fountain. She kept going until the yellow tape abruptly ended.

  A nurse placed a cool hand on Erica’s shoulder. “Do you have a pass?” she asked, her voice wafting straight from the Islands.

  Erica shook her head. She tried to explain who she was, and her words came in a rush. The nurse led her into a crowded waiting room. It took her only a second to locate Opal. After an awkward moment of silence, Opal began to talk, giving a short, stuttering summary of how Dottie had collapsed onstage.

  “It was really terrible,” she said. “There were all these people everywhere, and one of the stagehands said he knew CPR, but it turned out he really didn’t. I could barely get into the ambulance with her. And then when I did, I couldn’t believe it; this paramedic took out this big pair of shears, like garden shears, and cut her dress right off her.”

  “So what did they say?” Erica asked.

  “Nothing,” said Opal. “Heart attack, that’s all I know. They said to wait here, and somebody would come out and talk to us when they knew something.” She gestur
ed toward a pair of windowless doors. “She’s in there,” she said. “They don’t let visitors in. We just have to wait.” Opal glanced up. “There are two reporters here,” she said. “I told them I didn’t want to talk to them. If I did talk to them, I’d probably ask them where they’ve been for the past few years, when Mom needed the publicity. Now they’re here when she doesn’t need it.”

  Erica glanced up and saw two young men walking restlessly around the room, picking up old magazines and putting them down. They stood out from the crowd; everyone else was sitting with their families in anxious huddles. On the floor a young boy played with a set of plastic A-Team dolls. He sat at his mother’s and father’s feet and talked to himself quietly, while his mother absently stroked his head.

  If you brought a blind man in here, Erica thought giddily, he might think he was in a room full of people making love. All these quiet sounds, the hushed, agonized noises these desperate families made. It was just like the subway. Why wasn’t anyone talking to each other? Erica wondered. If there ever was a time to commiserate, this was it. She could imagine everyone turning from their separate family constellations and beginning to speak as a group. It would all happen at once, like a pivotal step in a folk dance, in which all the couples acknowledge each other and everyone steps back in a giant ring and links hands.

  The mother of the little boy would look up and say, “Our daughter swallowed Comet.”

  Comet, the cleanser, Erica would realize, and she would picture the scene: a child clutching the shiny green cylinder, tilting her head back to receive the full flow of powder. Erica shivered. Right now, she thought, Jordan was at the kitchen table with a yellow box of baking soda in front of him. She felt an inexplicable rage toward him—the way he continued to wear his hospital bracelet when nothing in the world was wrong with him, the way he had lounged in his hospital bed for two full weeks, following the soaps and eating canned peaches.