Happy Family

by Tracy Barone

  A few droplets of rain spatter the table. Michael has been moving around them with his camera and is now behind the shaman. “Well,” Van drawls, “that’s quite a story.” The rain starts really coming down, giving everyone something to do besides dwell on the meaning of nuts and lopped-off breasts.

  Later, when the Ecuadorans have retired and it’s just the four of them in the living room, Michael sequesters Van in front of the TV, showing him the footage of the Shuar using shrunken heads in a religious ceremony. “Taya, come check this out! I’m sure Cheri has seen it already, but it’s fascinating stuff,” Van says.

  “Cheri hasn’t seen it,” Michael says tightly. Cheri knows it’s the footage Michael had asked her to look at. She would feel guilty if he weren’t putting her on the spot.

  “Not this version,” she says.

  “It’s new,” Michael says pointedly.

  “Guys, let’s get back to the rotting flesh later,” Taya says, jumping up and doing her best Donna Summer impersonation: “Someone left a cake out in the rain.” She runs outside and comes back bearing a slightly soggy birthday confection with two candles, one in the shape of a four and one shaped like a zero.

  “I’m turning in. It’s all on you to make a dent in that,” Michael says.

  “You can’t leave now!” Taya says, lighting the candles, but Michael’s already doing the man-hug with Van, and by the time Taya places the cake with the now-lit candles in front of Cheri, Michael is heading up the stairs.

  Wishes are heavy, horrible things. Cheri is more than ready for the night to end but dreads being left alone with Michael. To seeing the tablets before my next birthday, she thinks as she blows out the candles. Van makes a big to-do about signing a copy of his catalog and presenting it to Cheri. “It was swell meeting you,” he says, kissing her forehead. “C’mon, cowgirl,” he says to Taya, “we’ve got another road stand to hit before it’s all over.”

  “I’m so sorry, CM. Whatever’s going on between you and Michael, he shouldn’t treat you like that. Call me later.” Cheri watches as Taya runs out into the rain and Van gallantly meets her with an umbrella and holds it over her head. “Thank you,” Cheri shouts and then turns into the stillness of what’s left over.

  Dishes. Food to be wrapped and put away. Cheri grabs her cigarettes and opens the door to the porch. When she lights up, she sees a lump in the corner under the awning and moves to investigate. It’s the shaman, curled up like a pill bug on his sleeping mat. He sleeps like a child, innocent, indifferent to his surroundings. She bends down and adjusts his blanket.

  When she goes back inside, she is surprised to see that Michael has come back downstairs and is in the kitchen, doing the dishes. “Do you know our houseguest is sleeping on the ground outside, getting wet?” Cheri asks.

  “He’s never slept in a bed; he’s from the rain forest. Rain and forest, get it?”

  “Just leave that stuff. I’ll do them in the morning,” she says.

  “You don’t do them right. You stick the silverware in the basket without scrubbing the tines and it’s a waste of water to run the dishwasher twice.”

  “You know what? I can’t do this anymore,” she says before she can think not to say it.

  “Then don’t,” Michael replies, still fiddling with the forks. “I said I’d do it.”

  “Not the dishes. This. Us. You’re so angry all the time. Calling me out like that in front of everyone. For what? Not kneeling at the altar of five minutes of new footage?”

  “I asked you to do one thing, Cheri. One thing. You couldn’t be bothered.” Michael drops a few more knives into the dishwasher, then pauses. “I’m not going to do this with you now. I just want to go to bed.”

  “I know that’s what you want. And that’s what we’ve been doing for years now. But I can’t breathe here, and it started way before I was panting for air on the ground in front of the movie theater. There’s all this anger in what you say, what you don’t say, it just hangs over everything.”

  “So, wait, now I’m to blame for your panic attack? Is that what the goddamned shrink is telling you?”

  “Meds doctor. Nobody told me anything or has to tell me. You and I don’t communicate anymore, or maybe we stopped trying to. I don’t know who I am here or what this marriage is about anymore.”

  “For the first time in your life you’re not busy, every minute, all the time. Who are you without your tablets to translate or a book to write or your degrees to define you? Your problem, Cheri, is that you can’t stand to spend time with yourself. You’re always running but you won’t ever admit you’re afraid. Like it will make you seem weak. So instead, you shut down and push people away.”

  “Why is it that every time I try to bring up issues in our relationship, you make it all about me? Look, I have my shit, we both have our shit, but what I’m saying now is we’re stuck. We have been for a while, and I don’t know how to get unstuck.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that you create the situations you get stuck in? You take such an extreme stance, you don’t back down or compromise, and you end up hurting yourself.”

  “Oh, so I created the situation with Richards and Samuelson? It’s my fault I’ve been wrongly accused of some PC bullshit? Are you saying that I should just bow down and admit to something I didn’t do? ‘Please, sir, I’ll do anything to keep my job.’”

  “I’m saying you had a choice. You could have apologized, worded it in a way that you could live with. But no, you always have to go balls to the wall. You think I’m stubborn? You put yourself in a corner and then you blame it on our relationship. Just like you did with Sol.”

  “This has nothing to do with Sol! You want to talk father issues? You don’t want to have a baby. You never did.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” His tone is icy.

  “Exactly what I said. You like being the center of attention; it’s a role you’ve played your whole life, so why share the spotlight now?”

  “You know what, Cheri? Your disappointment has nothing to do with me. In fact, the whole misguided journey to having a baby has had nothing to do with me all along. It’s always been your agenda.”

  “Agenda? Since when is being a mother an agenda?”

  “How do you want me to respond, Cheri? Script it and I’ll say it. I’ve tried to be as compassionate as I can and listen to you go on and on about this, but there’s only so much I can take.”

  “On and on? I won’t let you make me into the needy, grasping female just because that image suits your agenda. This whole fucking party was about you! But good news: It’s over. I’m lopping off my breasts and throwing them back at you.”

  Michael slams the dishwasher closed. “Go fuck yourself!” They stand there, breathing hard.

  “I don’t want to live like this anymore,” Cheri says. “We both deserve better.”

  “So what do you want to do? Divorce?”

  “I don’t know. A break. Separation.”

  “Well,” Michael says, turning his face away from her, “do what you need to do.” Cheri doesn’t notice that her cigarette’s burned down to the filter until her finger registers the heat. She drops it in a glass of water. Michael is sweaty, not just drunk and stoned sweaty, but sickly in this light.

  “Are you okay?”

  “After this fucking fantastic conversation? No, I’ve told you I haven’t been feeling well.”

  “What is it?”

  “Upset stomach. I need to get some air.”

  “Should you see a doctor?”

  Michael puts on his jacket. “I’m getting a physical next week. I’m going for a walk; don’t wait up.”

  Cheri opens the curtain and follows the form of her husband as he crosses the street and heads toward Lincoln Park. His gait is comforting in its familiarity; shoulders weighted, head bent slightly, he walks with a tall man’s lope. He could have said, I want to fight for you, for us. He didn’t. The street lamps illuminate the mist, the edge of his coat, the profile of h
is nose. She imagines he’ll venture a couple of loops, if that. She stands on tiptoe to watch him as he moves deeper into the park, walking until the night swallows him up.

  Part III

  Different People Die

  Family Portrait, Summer 1970

  The painting sits, covered in a velvet cloth, on a gold easel in the middle of their living room. Mama’s made a huge fuss getting everyone ready for Solomon’s big surprise. Gusmanov is due in a few minutes, to hang the portrait above the fireplace. It’s a Saturday and Cheri is bored waiting for her father to come home, listening to Mama tell Cookie to watch out for his car, did she just hear it pulling into the driveway? Her father was only going into work for a few hours this morning, and Mama has made a special lunch.

  “It’s not a damn surprise party,” Cookie says, rolling her eyes. Cheri is just glad her part in this is over.

  Every Saturday for weeks Mama had been dragging her to her font of inspiration—Cecil’s House of Fabric—so Mr. Cecil could paint their portrait. Mr. Cecil was a decorator but had paintings in a Montclair gallery “and Manhattan,” her mother said proudly. He stank of BO and cologne and invited his favorite clients to the back room—his art studio—to smoke, drink, and eat cheese that looked like it could crawl across the plate on its own.

  Cheri hated sitting for hours, frozen in place, on the sofa that smelled of stale tobacco with Mama’s arm around her. She hated wearing a dress. Mama’s efforts to girl her up stopped in kindergarten when Cheri had taken scissors to the bows on her dresses and then to her hair. She was almost eight now, but Mama burst into tears and said, “You are crushing my heart, for this one time, please look like the pretty girl.”

  “The eagle has landed,” Cookie says ominously, and Mama sends Cheri to wait in the living room. A minute later, Mama trots into the room, leading her father by the arm. He’s still in his white lab coat. Mama shimmies behind the easel and dramatically pulls back the cloth: “Your family portrait!” Cheri thinks the portrait looks the same as it did last time they saw it: Mama is glamorous in her pink satin dress, her long blond hair in a “do-up.” Her arm is a little too tightly around Cheri, who looks uncomfortable, posing with a weird, fake smile.

  “Is beautiful, yes, Solomon?” Mama stands by Cheri’s father, who is staring at the painting. He shakes his head and closes his eyes, clearly disappointed. “What is wrong?” Mama looks crestfallen. Gusmanov has arrived in the doorway with his tool kit but pauses at the sight of Cici’s distress.

  Sol pulls Mama aside and speaks quietly. Mama is talking with her hands and her father shakes his head and says, “Family portrait,” like the words don’t make sense. Mama puts her hand to her heart and then glances over at Cheri. “Go to your room, cara mia,” she says.

  Cheri feels the heaviness of her father’s disapproval. For what, she’s not quite sure, but she suspects that it has to do with her, as it usually does. Once upstairs, she becomes absorbed in her book of Greek mythology, imagining herself as Athena, turning her foe into a spider. When Mama calls her down for lunch, Cheri sees that the table is set for two. Mama’s eyes are watery.

  “Where is Dad?” Cheri asks.

  “He had to go back to the office. He’ll be home later.” Mama puts pasta on plates and brings them to the table. They eat in unusual silence.

  “I guess he didn’t like the painting,” Cheri finally ventures.

  “Oh, no, cara. Is the misunderstanding. Cecil will fix everything and your father will be very happy.” The corners of Mama’s mouth turn up but her eyes are still turned down.

  “Are you okay, Mama?” Mama nods and gives her hand a little pat. It makes her feel unsettled and angry at her father. Why can’t her family just be normal?

  Two weeks later, the curtain was about to be torn off yet another version of the Matzner family portrait. And just in time for her eighth birthday, Cheri learns she has living relatives. It wasn’t as if she thought her parents had sprung fully grown from the head of Zeus, but they had always been silent on the subject of their families. Like all children, Cheri knew only what the grown-ups told her. When she was old enough to understand that everyone had grandparents, she asked where hers were. When “gone” wasn’t the right answer on the family tree Cheri made in second grade, a note from her teacher shamed her mother into further explanation: Belle and Bernard Matzner had died in a car wreck before Cheri was born, and the D’Ameris, back in Italy, had gone to “a better place,” save for Mama’s sister Alida, who ran off and married Christ. A logical child by nature, Cheri had more questions about how you could marry a dead person than she did about the untimely demise of both sides of her family.

  But Cheri learns about her mysterious forebears the day Cici marches into the kitchen while Cheri is eating breakfast, criticizes whatever jobs Gusmanov and Cookie are doing at the time, and announces:

  “Is time for my daughter to make her roots.” She plunks two airline tickets down on the table in front of Cheri and taps them with a long, polished nail. “In the premier,” she says, as if traveling in first class explains everything.

  “Ooof. I tell you this is food for pigs. You will see in Italia no-body eats the crunchy captain cereal. You will not find it at the table of my family. I tell you, Cookie, to toss the pig food.” Cheri cradles her cereal bowl like a convict.

  “Family? What family?”

  “My sister Genny, you will say Zia Genny, her children—what do you call them, Cookie, the children of my sister?”

  “But your family is dead, Mama. You said so.”

  “Niece if she’s a girl, nephew for a boy,” Cookie says.

  “You told me they were all in heaven,” Cheri insists.

  “No-no-no. They are in Lago di Como. Is very nice, but heaven? No.”

  Cheri glances at Cookie in disbelief. Cookie shrugs: You know your mother.

  “So you have family at a lake and I have cousins?”

  “What is this cousin? Cookie says it is nice. You have three nice.”

  “They’re cousins to me, Mama.”

  “Nieces like pieces, that’s how you say it,” Cookie mutters.

  “Does this mean Papa’s family is alive too?”

  “Porca miseria, no!” Mama laughs so hard she snorts.

  Just like that, Cheri’s world expanded. She’d always been jealous of kids with big families, like her neighbor Stacey Walthers. Stacey had relatives at every end of the globe. Her house was always brimming with cousins, brothers, and Rottweilers. Cheri’s lack of extended family was another thing that set her apart from most of her friends, along with the fact that she didn’t look anything like either her mother or her father. Nobody ever told her, “Oh, you have your mother’s eyes,” or “That’s your father’s chin.” When Cheri got separated from Mama at Saks, a saleslady took care of her while they announced a lost child over the intercom system. When her overdressed mother ran to the sales desk, jewelry a-jangling, the saleslady didn’t believe that this grubby little boy belonged to Mama. Incensed, Mama unfurled a wallet full of photographs of her daughter and stormed off, gripping Cheri’s hand so tightly it hurt.

  Cheri was thrilled to learn her family might consist of someone besides her mother and father. But if her father wasn’t coming with them, then something was wrong. Did this have to do with the portrait?

  That night, her father comes to the door of her room. He rarely gets home before Cheri’s bedtime; Mama has told her that he’s working on something that will change medicine. “Are you still up?” Cheri sits up in bed holding Bippy—a square patchwork pillow with eyes and a tongue she won at a fair. Mama keeps throwing Bippy in the trash because he is schifo, but Cookie always rescues him. She can just make out her father’s silhouette in the doorway. “Dad, why aren’t you coming to Italy with us?” Her father makes a throat-clearing noise. Not an ah-hem, but farther back in the throat, two clearings, one-two. At night, when she can’t sleep, she can locate her father by that sound.

  “Too much work right now
,” he says, “get some sleep.”

  Cheri lies back. “Dad, would you tuck me in?”

  He pulls her blanket up under her chin, pats it down awkwardly. He’s never tucked her in before so he doesn’t know to pull the sheet tight. She closes her eyes and hears his ah-hem, ah-hem going down the hall.

  Cheri knows there is more to her father not coming to Italy than work. She overheard him telling Mama, “You’re not only a mother, you’re a wife. I came first and I should come first.” They’ve had this argument before. When her father wanted to take Mama to the Greek islands, she said no-no-no, they couldn’t leave Cheri. Cookie had her own children to take care of and Cici couldn’t possibly leave her child with a stranger. Cheri loved staying at Cookie’s; she liked playing with baby Choo-Choo and was comfortable in Cookie’s little house—practically everything in it came from their house anyway, but it all looked cozier at Cookie’s. She wanted to tell them that, say that it was okay, please don’t fight. But when her father came out of their bedroom and saw her standing there, he seemed mad so she just looked down at the floor.

  Cheri doesn’t want her father to be mad at her, but if he came to Italy she knows Mama would be different, more anxious to please, more critical of Cheri. The harder Mama worked on bringing everyone together, the more forced it seemed. The rare times Cheri was alone with her father, it was easier. If Mama was out getting her hair done on the weekend and Cheri heard the Good Humor truck down the street, her father would buy her a chocolate éclair ice cream bar. They’d walk back and she’d give him a bite because it was his favorite when he was a kid. But even then, he never seemed comfortable with Cheri—or with any other kids. He always spoke to them in a loud, formal voice, like they were miniature village idiots. Mama was more fun alone, except that she made Cheri sleep in bed with her. Mama would say, “How about you have the special treat and sleep with Mama tonight, I make the discretion.” But Mama’s “discretion” often became the rule rather than the exception. Would the relatives make her sleep in the same bed with Mama?