A Perfect Wife and Mother

by Peter Israel

  “I’m sorry, Larry,” she says, lifting her face. “It’s … it’s very beautiful.” For a second I think she’s about to cry. Her mouth screws up, her chin, her eyes go small. I see her swallow. “… very sweet, Larry …” Shakes her head slowly. “But I can’t accept it.”

  “Why not?” I say.

  She hasn’t even taken it out of the case. Now she’s handing it back to me.

  I don’t take it.

  “Tell me,” I say. “Why not?”

  “I don’t think you want to know,” she says, shaking her head again.

  “Oh, come on, Georgie, for Christ’s sake!”

  But her eyes lower. Now she’s staring down at the damned thing as though she doesn’t know what it is.

  “I think we shouldn’t be talking at all, right now,” she says dully. “I don’t think we should.”

  “But we’ve got to!” I protest. “Georgie, for Christ’s sake, this is us!”

  She shakes her head slowly, side to side, sighs, like she’s talking to some moron who doesn’t have a clue. And that’s what she says—not that I’m a moron, but: “You don’t understand, do you, Larry. You really don’t.”

  “Don’t understand what? If I don’t understand, then you better tell me!”

  “You’ve just done it all over again,” she says.

  “Done what? For Christ’s—”

  “You’ve gone off, and you’ve done your great self-examination, and you’ve decided, ‘Oh, maybe there are a few things wrong, but there’s nothing I can’t fix.’ It’s very typical of you. You’ve even done the same thing with Justin. ‘Oh,’ you say, ‘I know you’re worried about him right now, but he’ll straighten out.’ You really believe that.”

  “Of course I believe it!” I say. “Don’t—”

  “Why?”

  She’s looking up at me again, eyes questioning.

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you believe he’ll straighten out?”

  “Why? Because … because he’s our kid! Because he’s a good kid, for Christ’s sake! Okay, so he’s had a bad experience, but he’ll snap out of it. He’s not going to stay this way for the rest of his life.”

  “How can you be so sure of that?”

  “Georgie, what are you talking about?”

  “I’ll tell you why you’re so sure of it,” she goes on. “It’s because it’s what you’ve decided. It’s your decision, therefore that’s how it’s going to be.”

  “Just a minute, just—”

  “And where am I in all this? How do I fit into your great new scheme of things?” At least, for better or worse, we’re getting onto familiar ground. I can hear the shrillness coming into her voice, and suddenly her fists are clenched tight. “You don’t have to tell me, I already know. I’m just supposed to go along with everything you’ve decided. Because I’m the good little wifey. Because that’s what good little wifeys do. Well—”

  Finally, it gets to me. “But that’s not fair, Georgie! What do you think I wanted to see you about? I came here to discuss it!”

  “Discuss what?”

  “Us! Everything!”

  “You did no such thing!” she cries out. “You don’t have a clue as to who I am! You came here to announce what was going to happen because you had it all worked out.”

  “That’s not true! I’ve even been to a shrink myself!”

  I wasn’t going to mention it, but at least it surprises her.

  “You what?” she says.

  “That’s right. I went to see somebody.”

  “Why?”

  “Because … because everything was screwed up. You and Justie, me too. I felt like I’d lost control of things.”

  “And did the shrink help you get control?”

  “Georgie, you don’t have to be sarcastic.”

  “I’m not being sarcastic. Not at all. But did he—I assume it was a man—did he help you get control?”

  “No, not in one meeting.”

  “But what did he say?”

  “Not a hell of a lot. You know how they are. He thought I ought to figure out what I want.”

  “Oh? And have you?”

  Suddenly, I see the trap. I see it, like a hole I’ve just dug. And I resent it, resent what I know she’s going to say even before she’s said it.

  “Well?” she says. “Have you figured it out?”

  But I can’t answer. Not that that matters.

  “Well,” she goes on, “I guess you have, else why would you be here?” She laughs her shrill, sarcastic laugh. “Now let me see if I’ve got this straight. You go one time to a shrink, one visit. Maybe it’s something you’ve always mocked, but what the hell, things have gotten out of hand, you feel you’ve lost control. So you go. God knows what you tell him, but the shrink says you ought to figure out what it is you want. The next thing that happens, well, here you are, aren’t you? And you’ve got it all worked out, it’s all been decided. The New Universe according to Larry Coffey, with a little help from Buckminster Fuller. Buckminster Fuller, for God’s sake! Well? But that’s it, isn’t it? You have figured it out, haven’t you? Oh, there’ve been a few mistakes here and there, but nothing you can’t fix. Justin’s going to snap out of it, I’m going to snap out of it—that’s what you’ve figured out—and now it’s all there in a neat package, like one of your—what did you call them?—your ‘Big Bears’?—and all you’ve got to do is sell it. And all I’ve got to do is buy it! Well? Isn’t that it?”

  It’s like an onslaught, her sarcasm. I can feel her rage building like lava, and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do or say to stop it, even if I wanted to.

  “Well, Mister,” she shouts at me, “I’m not buying!” Her face has gone white. “It’s because of you that my life’s a wreck, as well as my son’s, and we’re not taking my marching orders from you anymore! Proposing marriage, for God’s sake! With this stupid … this stupid goddamn trinket!”

  She’s been holding on to the case the whole time. Suddenly she flings it across the counter at me. The damn choker doesn’t even fall out.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” she shrieks at me. “Peter Minuit?”

  For a second, I don’t even get it. Then I do. Cute. New York, from the Indians. Twenty-four dollars in trinkets. And I see red. I see purple, orange, pink, all the fucking shades in between. I see Lynne Snyder, standing at the top of the back steps, listening in.

  “And who do you think you are,” I shout up at her, “her fucking cheering section?”

  But Georgie’s still sitting on the kitchen stool. I think she’s crying—or trying to. Or trying not to, what do I know? But I can’t look at her anymore.

  As for me, I guess I’ve already shed my tears.

  “Please go, Larry,” she’s saying, her voice low and trembly. “Let’s not do this anymore. Please just go.”

  That’s exactly what I do.

  Out the door, into my car, off. Quick, surgical, no more questions. I’m thinking: Baby, you just did it to me for the last time.

  Somehow, I’ve even got the fucking velvet case back in my pocket. Must have picked it up.

  I stop at a shopping strip. I’m still shaking inside. Booze is cheaper in New Jersey than New York. I buy the 1.75-liter Dewar’s. On second thought, I buy a second. So much for the new Coffey.

  Big Bear, I say to myself, just cool out. Whatever happens, you gave it your best shot, you really did. The thing is, old man, and don’t you forget it: Whatever you did, whatever you said, you could have crawled through a bed of nails on your fucking kneecaps, she was going to shoot you down. The fix was in.

  I roar off toward the tunnels. Fuck Hoboken! I’ll park in the hotel garage, twenty-five bucks a day or whatever they charge, stick it on the tab.

  Anybody out there want a diamond-and-gold choker, ten thousand bucks plus tax?

  Part Four

  Georgia Levy Coffey

  5 April

  Friday night, my diary open on my lap, some movie I�
��m not watching on Lifetime. The packers didn’t finish till after six. They’re still not finished. Then, when I finally put Zoe down, Justin woke up again, and I had to lie down with him, stroking his hair, telling him a story, telling him everything’s going to be all right. When I’m not at all sure it is.

  Finally, after three months, he’s driven me off the edge.

  I took him into the city, Wednesday afternoon, to show him the new apartment. I thought it important that he see for himself, let the reality of change sink in before it actually happens. There were still workmen there, dropcloths all over the place, ladders, the reek of fresh paint. I showed him his new room—it has a lovely view of the river—and then I was looking over some fabric samples with the decorator. The next thing I knew, he was gone. Somehow he walked out of the apartment, rode the elevator down eleven floors by himself, and out into the street. Nobody stopped him, nobody saw him.

  I went nuts. The Patz boy, the Patz boy! This was New York City, not St. George, and Justin doesn’t know the Village at all. I ended up waiting, with my father, in a dreary police station on Tenth Street. The cops came and went; we sat. It was after dark and drizzling by the time they found him, all the way over in Tompkins Square Park, that charming showplace of the East Village where they’ve had all the trouble with the pushers and the squatters.

  He was sitting on a bench, by himself.

  He was hungry.

  He’d gone looking for his goddamned beloved Harriet.

  It was my father who got that out of him. I could hardly talk to him. He told his grandfather that he was looking for “’arrit.”

  But isn’t that why we’re moving? So he’ll stop looking? So there’ll be no third floor, no room, no memory triggers? Because everything else I tried—getting rid of all her stuff, every trace, and moving him downstairs to the second floor—failed totally? I even had a gate installed at the bottom of the stairs going up—what a joke! It took him all of ten seconds to figure out how to climb it, and then I’d find him staring out her windows again, staring out at … nothing!

  His “mute resistance.” That’s what they called it at Group. They said his “mute resistance”—refusal to talk, sing, whatever it was they were doing—was too “disruptive” for the other children.

  His therapist called that “attention-getting” on Justin’s part.

  I’ll say.

  And all it takes is a moment’s inattention on mine.

  “But what am I supposed to do?” I asked her hysterically. This was yesterday, after the New York experience. “Am I supposed to tether him to me?”

  “I’m afraid, for the moment, there’s not a lot else you can do,” she answered sympathetically.

  “But should I cancél New York? I mean, I’ve got the movers coming tomorrow morning, but maybe it’s all a terrible mistake!”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think you’ve got to give him time. And me time.”

  Time.

  That’s what everybody says.

  But time for what?

  The little light in the alarm panel on the bedroom wall just went from red to green!

  I jump at first, but now I’m fuming. Goddamn him! Who else in the world but Larry has the code? And didn’t we agree, through the lawyers, that he could come anytime he wanted this weekend for his stuff but that he had to call me ahead of time?

  I don’t need this now. Don’t need it, don’t need it!

  What does he want from me? Does he want to hear it all over again—that we’re a walking cliché? One of those “great” suburban marriages that, at the first crisis, turn out to be hollow at the core? Or that it was my fault as well as his? Or nobody’s fault? Or Harriet Major’s fault? Or whatever “spin” he wants to put on it this time?

  Or is it the money? He knows—over my lawyer’s dead body—that I don’t want alimony. I even hit my father up for the loan to get us to New York because I refused to ask Larry. But I damn well do want child support.

  I turn off the TV, throw on my robe. From the top of the stairs, I can’t hear a sound.

  Very un-Larry.

  Unless this is his idea of a joke?

  I call out his name softly. No response.

  Unless … good God, could he have given someone else the code?

  Should I check the children first?

  I start down, flicking on the front hall sconces from above. Damn, why didn’t I change the locks?

  Still no sound. From the curve in the stairs, all I can see is cartons, stacks of them. The most depressing of sights. They take up almost the whole downstairs.

  Then, her voice—and simultaneously I spot her between two of the stacks, gazing up at me.

  I don’t move. I can’t believe it.

  Goddamn it, she wrecked my life, and now she’s standing in my house!

  She looks awful too. Tired, hair all scraggly, and she’s wearing some dirty misshapen parka, hands jammed in the center pouch.

  “How did you get in here?” I say. Instinctively, I pull the ends of my bathrobe together.

  “Easy. My code’s still in the system. You programmed in the digits of my birthday, remember? I knew you’d forget to take it out.”

  She’s right, I did forget.

  “What are you doing here, Harriet?” I say, struggling to keep the shrillness out of my voice. “Why have you come?”

  “But what’s all this stuff?” she says. “God, you’re not moving, are you?”

  “I think you’d better go.”

  “I don’t believe it! You’re moving? Out of this house?”

  “It’d be best if you just left. Right now.”

  “I want to see Justin,” she says. “To make sure he’s all right.”

  I stiffen on the stairs. No, not in a million years.

  “He’s not here,” I answer quickly.

  “Not here? But where is he?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but he’s at his grandparents’, in New York.”

  Still she makes no move to leave.

  “There’s no need for you to be afraid, Georgia,” she says. “Not of me. I don’t mean you any harm.”

  She’s smiling up at me now. The eyes, at least, haven’t changed. Innocent, long-lashed, blue-gray eyes.

  “I’m not afraid,” I reply. “Why should I be afraid? I just want you out of my house. If you go right now, I promise I won’t call the police.”

  For some reason this makes her laugh. But then she says she can’t go, not until she’s talked to me.

  “But what makes you think I want to talk to you, Harriet?” I say. “It’s over, done. I have nothing to say to you.”

  “No, it’s not over,” she says. “Not for me, anyway. Not as long as you hate me.”

  The remark makes me jump inside.

  (How does she know? How does she know that every time Justin runs away from me, I hate her all over again?)

  I bite my tongue. I have to think practically. For God’s sake, I have two children upstairs, and I’m alone in the house. Is she dangerous? How do I know she’s not? How do I know anything until I find out what she’s come for?

  “I don’t hate you,” I say. I come the rest of the way down the stairs. “Where have you been all this time?”

  “Oh, here and there.”

  Great answer, I think. For three months, she’s been here and there.

  On closer inspection, she doesn’t look so much tired as strung out. It reminds me of college, the way people used to look at exams when they’d been up the whole night before on NoDoz and coffee. There’s a wet, musty smell about her too. It’s been raining off and on all week.

  I hesitate. I want her gone, out of my life, but how am I going to get rid of her? And she was institutionalized, wasn’t she? (Who was it who told us that? Joe Penzil?)

  “Let’s go into the kitchen,” I say. She starts down the back hall, but the back hall is almost totally blocked. “It’s easier through the dining room,” I tell her, and I follow her thr
ough the doorway. The dining room is completely done. My round oak table top is resting on its side, packed and strapped in quilting, and the base with the lion’s claw feet stands weirdly alone. The art-glass Handel chandelier is gone; the built-in glass oak cabinets, as old as the house itself, have been emptied out.

  The kitchen is about half-dismantled. The cabinets are done there too. The plumbers are coming in the morning to unhook my Viking range, which I had to sell in the tag sale because there’s no room for it in the city. Larry’s lawyer agreed that I could hold the tag sale and keep the proceeds, as long as I kept a record.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Harriet says, gazing around. “You loved this house, and it’s so … so perfect! How could you bear to move?”

  I see no reason to answer. She goes automatically to the closed side of the butcher-block counter, her back to the range. I stay on the open side. We sit on facing stools, about equidistant from the wall phone.

  She seems to be waiting for me.

  “All right,” I say in a measured voice, “tell me why I shouldn’t hate you. Tell me why you stole my son, and why you didn’t bring him home, that day you called.”

  She doesn’t seem able to answer at first. She sits rigidly, chin jutting, hands still jammed into the pouch of the ratty parka, and under the strong recessed floods of the kitchen, I see how worn she looks. Her skin has an unnatural pallor, almost gray. Could she have been locked up somewhere?

  “My real name’s Rebecca,” she says finally. “Rebecca Dalton. People mostly call me Becca. I lied to you about practically everything.”

  “I know that,” I say. “But it’s not important anymore.”

  “Yes it is. To me anyway. I lied to you in the beginning because you’d never have hired me if you knew the truth. Later on, it was because I was forced to. Robert A. Smith forced me to, the man I told you was my stepfather. It was because of him that I took Justin away.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” I say to her. “None of it matters.”

  “Oh, yes it does.”

  “We know Robert A. Smith was a fake name.”

  “So did I,” she says. “But finally, just the other day, I found out who he really was.”