by Nancy Thayer
“Lexi go to sleep now,” Carey Ann said, shutting the door fast and locking it.
Alexandra began to scream full blast again.
Carey Ann and Jack sat in bed waiting for the screaming to stop. When it finally did, Carey Ann looked at Jack. He shook his head at his wife. So she did not go check on the baby again. They turned off the light and slid down between the sheets. Jack felt as if he’d just climbed out of a Cuisinart. He was both exhausted and jazzed-up. He turned to Carey Ann, wrapped his arms around her.
“I can’t now,” Carey Ann said. “Not now. I’m sorry. I just don’t have any energy for it. I can’t get in the mood. I feel like crying. I feel like a person who’s left a puppy out in the cold.”
You are leaving me out in the cold, Jack said to his wife, but only in his mind. He turned on his side and tried to go to sleep. This is a start, he reminded himself. Marriage is long, and we’ve made one change. This is a start.
WINTER
6
Cynthia came home for Christmas vacation.
When she was about twelve, she had started tearing the skin off her fingers. It was a terrible habit, a disgusting one, and seemed to indicate deep problems. She would start somewhere around the fingernail, and finding a tiny sliver of loose skin, would peel the skin down toward the knuckle. Some days all the fingers of her hands were an angry, naked, injured red.
Daphne had tried everything to get Cynthia to stop. First she had just ordered her to stop doing that. So Cynthia stopped doing it—in front of her mother. But at night, when they were eating or watching TV together, Daphne would look over and see her daughter’s injured hands. Then she tried to bribe her—Cynthia was still young enough to play with Barbie dolls, and complained often that she had three Barbies but only one Ken, so she had to keep killing one Barbie’s boyfriend off so he could be with another, or make him date all the Barbies at once and even commit bigamy. Daphne told Cynthia that if she would stop tearing her skin, she would buy Cynthia two more Ken dolls. But even though, over the next few weeks, Cynthia made a valiant attempt, she could not stop. So Daphne threatened Cynthia with Cynthia’s worst punishment—being grounded so she could not spend the night with her friends or have them over for the night. Even that did not work. Cynthia cried grievously, but she could not seem to help herself.
“All the girls at school do it, Mom. We just get bored.”
Daphne went to see Cynthia’s teacher. He reassured her that this was just a phase that Cynthia was going through, that indeed many of the girls did do it, that it was often a sign of boredom. And Cynthia was so bright—but so bored with many academic subjects—that it was not surprising that she tore at her skin. Preadolescents and adolescents often had many revolting little habits, the teacher said; adolescents all sucked their hair or chewed their nails or, if they were unfortunate enough to have zits, sat all day in class rubbing them. You got used to this sort of stuff as a teacher, and it wasn’t a sign of psychological disturbance or unhappiness.
So Daphne learned to ignore this. She said nothing more to her daughter about it. When Cynthia was twelve and thirteen, she used to wear Band-Aids to school, and when they ran out of Band-Aids, she wrapped Scotch tape around her fingers. Then she sat at school and tore at the tape, tore it in shreds.
She also used to sit, watching TV by herself, and coat her fingers with Elmer’s glue. After it had dried like a second very white skin, she would carefully peel it off. Little curls of dried white glue would lie around on the carpet like hundreds of fingernails.
When Cynthia reached fourteen, she spent more time on her hair and clothes and general hygiene. She didn’t peel her skin quite so much—she painted her nails, and peeled that. She painted them almost every night with two or three coats of thick oily paint, and when she came home from school the next day, her nails would be almost bare, with only a few shreds of color left. And she still, now and then, tore her skin.
She was doing so well in school, and then she was the lead in the high-school play even though she was a sophomore, and she was so happy and popular and outgoing that all of Daphne’s friends agreed that Cynthia’s habit was not the sign of a deep-rooted problem. Pauline White said that when she was a teenager she used to pull her eyelashes out, one by one, and study them for a long time, how the root end was white, how some were longer and thicker than others. Daphne tried not to worry. But she secretly thought: Cynthia peels her skin, tears at herself, mutilates herself, because her father doesn’t love her and never pays any attention to her.
And perhaps she had been right. For Cynthia was still peeling her fingers when she left for California and her father, and now here she was home on vacation, and her fingers were whole and perfect.
When Cynthia had stepped off the plane, Daphne had gasped. Cynthia was so beautiful. And she looked so grown-up, so terribly sophisticated. Her thick blond hair was cut almost punk, very short and slicked back behind her ears and up at her forehead, and she wore long dangling earrings and lots of eye makeup—put on subtly, put on with the hand of an artist. She had lost a great deal of weight. She had gotten taller in the seven months she had been away, but she had also lost a lot of weight.
“Cynthia,” Daphne asked, keeping her voice casual, “are you anorectic?”
Cynthia smiled. “No, Mother. We just eat lots of fruits and vegetables out there.”
Gone were the loose and flapping clothes of yesteryear; Cynthia now wore skintight toreador pants with tight long sweaters cinched at the waist. Cyn was dressed rather like Daphne had been as a teenager in the fifties, but Daphne knew better than to say so.
Clothes. With girl children it was never simple. Two years ago, when David died, Daphne had reacted to his death by gaining weight. She almost didn’t know how she did it—she didn’t pig out or eat obscene amounts. But she was always so tired, and normal life seemed to require such vast amounts of energy that she had to keep eating this and that simply to find the power to get through each day. She had been numbed by David’s death—a loss of yet another person whom she loved and who loved her—and she couldn’t find the strength to diet, or the will to care, for a while, what she looked like. With David gone, really what did it matter what she looked like? She was certainly not too fat to work the word processor or the typewriters. Oh, she wasn’t even really fat, just heavier than normal.
That February, when Cynthia rushed into the house from school, wild with joy, to tell her mother she had been cast as the lead in the spring school musical, West Side Story, Daphne was thrilled and proud. She was usually terribly careful about money, she had to be, but that night, seeing how her enthusiasm buoyed up her daughter, she called Pauline and Douglas White and four of Cynthia’s best friends and took them all out to the most expensive restaurant in town for dinner. She had them all come to the house early, for champagne, which she rushed out to buy and which she let Cynthia and her friends drink (it was a Friday night, and she did not let them drink too much).
It had been a grand celebration, a perfect one, absolutely on the spur of the moment; Pauline had put her casserole in the freezer, because Daphne had insisted that everyone had to celebrate that very night, the night that her daughter had been chosen over all the juniors and seniors for the lead. Everyone toasted Cynthia, who was rosy with happiness, and when the evening was over, Cynthia had come into her mother’s room, in her nightgown, and embraced Daphne.
“Thank you, Moochie,” she said. “That was the nicest party in the whole world.”
“You deserved it, Coochie,” Daphne replied, hugging her back.
Daphne had gladly driven Cynthia out to the high school for rehearsals and gone again much later to drive the other actors and Cynthia home. She did this over and over. She drove Cynthia out opening night and dropped her off an hour before the performance, then went home to dress for the play and the reception afterward. She had taken Cynthia shopping and let her buy the dress she wanted for the reception—Cynthia chose a slinky black thing that was probably to
o old for her, but when she put it on, the dress looked appropriate. Cynthia looked ravishing. The dress was too expensive, just as the party had been—but then, Daphne said, sometimes you just had to go a little crazy, especially at times like that.
The play went off splendidly. Cynthia was queen for the night. At the party afterward, Daphne stood in a corner talking with other parents and wondering if what everyone said was true, that Cynthia had special talent, that she could be an actress, that she was magnetic onstage, that she was the real thing. She watched her sixteen-year-old daughter slinking around in the black dress with enormous amounts of makeup on and her hair dyed black for the play. “I made her!” Daphne wanted to yell at people. “I made that child in my body.”
The high school was about five miles out of town, set among fields. When the reception for opening night ended and everyone piled into cars and drove out of the high-school parking lot, Daphne and Cynthia were finally alone together in the car.
“Cynthia, you were wonderful,” Daphne said.
Cynthia burst into tears. “Mother, how could you!”
Daphne looked over at her daughter. “What?”
“How could you have worn that old-fashioned old dress! To my play! And my reception! I wanted to die when I saw you.”
Daphne stared down at her lap in amazement. It was true that over the past few years she had bought many more clothes for her daughter than for herself—that was only logical; Cynthia kept growing out of her clothes and needed new ones. And she cared so much about what she wore and how she looked. And Daphne had a closet full of dresses and shoes she had accumulated over the years. Well, with all the weight she had gained recently, she had bought a few new things for comfort, but she could still squeeze into her old clothes.
She thought she had looked fine for the reception. She had found, at the back of her closet, an old Indian cotton dress, in all shades of purple, with quilted cuffs and bodice, and little mirrors and embroidery all over. It fell full from the bodice and floated loosely down to her mid-calf. It made her hair look very black and her eyes look very blue, and, Daphne thought, it hid her excess weight well.
“I don’t understand,” she said to Cynthia. “To what are you objecting?”
“To that dress!” Cynthia answered, nearly shouting. “Oh, Mother, how could you do this to me?”
Daphne was quiet in response. In the past few years Cynthia had become more and more critical of her mother, sometimes with reason, but this seemed beyond the bounds.
“It is a perfectly beautiful dress,” Daphne finally said.
“It is so out-of-date!” Cynthia said. “No one wears dresses like that anymore! Have you ever seen anyone wearing a dress like that in the past trillion years?”
Daphne took a deep breath. “I think it’s a shame to ruin your opening night, your success, with this kind of discussion.”
“Oh, Mom,” Cynthia wailed, “don’t you understand? How can I feel successful when you’re going around like a … a bag lady? What are you trying to do, announce to the world how you give everything to your daughter? That I’m some spoiled little brat and you’re the martyr of the century?” After a deep pause for breath, Cynthia said, “You would have bought a new dress if David were still alive.”
Daphne drove in silence, trying to interpret this newest message from her daughter. She had wondered how much Cynthia missed David, how much she mourned him. On the one hand, David had been her mother’s friend, and Cynthia was so involved with her peer group that David had been only a tiny dim star orbiting the periphery of Cynthia’s life. But, on the other hand, David had been the grown-up man in Cynthia’s life, out there at the edge of it all, circling, always in sight, someone who gave limits and boundaries to Cynthia as she exploded into womanhood, someone who, with Daphne, provided a sense of safety.
In any case, David had been Cynthia’s only “male role model,” that precious necessity that psychologists and elementary-school teachers liked to terrify divorced mothers with. Daphne had known David for twelve years, and had “gone with” him for eight, ever since Cynthia had been six. Daphne thought that David had come to love Cynthia, and she him. His devotion was great; he attended all her events, brought her birthday presents and Christmas presents, played softball and tennis with her, and he never let her see him in his nasty drunken states. Well, Daphne had had a hand in that. She had worked very hard to protect Cynthia from the knowledge of David’s alcoholism. How could it be explained to a child? There were times when David, kind, gentle David, suddenly staggered and fell down, or cursed or spoke obscenely, or roared and smashed things, or blacked out, slumping, slobbering, in any corner of the room. David carried a monster within him who could erupt at any moment, and Daphne was always on guard, keeping that monster from Cynthia’s sight. She refused David’s repeated offers of marriage because of his drinking, and when Cynthia asked, as she occasionally did, why Daphne and David didn’t marry, Daphne answered her daughter vaguely, “Oh, it’s just not the right time,” or, “Maybe someday, but we like things the way they are now.” And Cynthia had seemed content with that.
Daphne had not been able to protect Cynthia from grief when David died. For that, only time brought relief. Even so, for months Cynthia would occasionally, out of the blue, burst into tears and tell Daphne that she missed David. He had been the closest thing to a father she had had.
But more than a year had passed. Perhaps Cynthia was caught, at some point in the whirlwind of her adolescent emotions, missing David, saddened that he wasn’t there tonight to see her great success. But Daphne thought there was something else, something more, and it had to do with money.
Daphne always had to be very careful with money. There was never enough. Joe regularly sent the monthly child support, but never any extras, and college secretaries did not make a huge amount. Each year Daphne tried to save some money for college for Cynthia, and some for a vacation—this summer, she had carefully explained to Cynthia, there would not be a vacation as such. They would not be able to go away for a week or two to the Vineyard or Maine. She did not go into detail about this; she did not tell Cynthia that there would be no vacation because Cynthia’s clothes this year, which Cyn had wanted so desperately, and because the celebration dinner Daphne had given when Cynthia was told she had the lead, and because even the huge bouquet of flowers Daphne had had sent to the dressing room for Cynthia’s opening night had nibbled away all the money for a trip. Perhaps they would go into Boston for a few days and do the museums and Quincy Market. And after all, they were living in Massachusetts, where people from other states came for their vacations. Cynthia hadn’t seemed bothered by this. She had even decided that she would try to get a full-time job, babysitting, if nothing else, so that she could seriously add to her savings account. For Cynthia had always worked too, babysitting, to help pay for her clothes, the movies, the school trips; she had always worked good-heartedly and without complaint.
But did Daphne? Always work good-heartedly and without complaint?
Well … usually. There had been times in earlier years when Daphne, exhausted with a sick child and sick herself, had complained a lot. Had wept. There had been times when Cynthia would beg for a box of expensive cookies and Daphne would snap, “Look, we hardly have enough money for milk.” But this past semester Daphne had not even mentioned money. She had wanted Cynthia to have a wonderful semester, free of worries, so she could concentrate on school and the play. Really, Cynthia’s criticism was, Daphne decided, unjust.
When they went into their house, Daphne said, “Sit down and talk to me a minute, Cyn,” and turned on the living-room lights. Dickens waddled over and laid his head in Cynthia’s lap, and automatically she opened her hands so he could lick them. Fred, the cat, had died of old age not long after David’s death. “Cynthia, what is all this really about?” she asked.
Cynthia looked at her mother and burst into tears. “I don’t know,” she said. “Oh, Mom, I’m sorry. I love you so much. I really do lo
ve you so much. I don’t know why I get so mad at you. I don’t know why. Sometimes just the sight of you irritates me so much I could scream! But I really love you! Do you think I’m crazy? Do you think I should see a shrink?”
Daphne went over to sit next to her daughter. She put her arm around her. “I think you’re a teenager,” she said, smiling. “I think you’re just a normal teenager. Now,” she said, “can we have some cocoa and talk about the play? God, Cynthia, you were divine! How do you think it went?”
Then they were okay again. They went into the kitchen and sat up late talking—Cynthia talking, reliving every moment, while Daphne listened, entranced.
The day after opening night, Daphne had found in the mail a letter from California, addressed to Cynthia, from Joe. Daphne held the letter in her hand as if it were a ticking bomb, which in a way it was. Joe had not written to his daughter in all these years, not so much as one birthday note. So what was this? She wanted to tear the letter open and read it herself, but it was addressed to Cynthia, and Cynthia was out. She waited, heart thudding as if she were in a race. As if a war had been declared.
For those few moments in her life, Daphne had no dignity. In the late afternoon she hung around the front hall, pretending to pick dead leaves out of the Christmas-cactus pot, waiting for Cynthia to come in the front door and find the letter waiting, where all mail waited, on the front-hall table. Like a jealous lover, she smiled and spied, watching Cynthia’s face when Cyn came breezing in the front door that afternoon.
“Hi, Mom!” Cyn said, and immediately her eyes went to the table—so she had been expecting this!—and she tossed her books on the hall chair and grabbed up the letter. Daphne, kneeling over her Christmas cactus, heart knocking away inside her, watched eagerness … amazement … ecstasy spread across her daughter’s face.
