The End of Men

by Karen Rinaldi

  Beth was relieved that RHM would be freed from his eccentric threats, but she felt queasy with the certainty that another group of women would bear the burden of his deranged attention. It reminded her of the duplicity she felt when she agreed to keep Paul’s secret.

  AFTER THEY HAD finally divorced, Paul had continued to see women without sharing with them his HIV status. He had promised her he was practicing safe sex. Beth was doubtful. Was it her responsibility to expose him to protect the others who might be infected by his denial? Or was it his private personal health information to manage? How would she feel if her own daughter were of age? Beth was tormented by these questions and lost many nights’ sleep over it. If Paul were to infect someone, Beth knew she would feel responsible.

  She remembered meeting Paul and a girlfriend, Katie, for lunch one day. They had been Rollerblading and Paul sent Katie off to buy herself a pair of shoes with his credit card. When she disappeared into the store, he pulled off his blades to show Beth the lesions on his shins and feet. Paul had taken to sharing the horrors of the disease with Beth because he needed a witness. Helen would burst into tears whenever he brought it up, so he relied on Beth, the person he had hurt most, to share in the progression of the disease. Beth was appalled, but not by the purple splotches on his skin.

  “Does Katie know about any of this?” Beth asked.

  “About what?” Paul replied, his face a mask of innocence.

  “About what these are and why you have them?” Beth’s tone grew angry quickly.

  “I told her that I have shingles. She doesn’t need to know any more than that.”

  She looked at him in disbelief, but it was clear he believed every word he said. “Paul, you have to tell her. It isn’t fair.”

  He stared hard at Beth, as if willing the conversation away. “I am not putting her in any danger,” he promised.

  Katie was a twenty-two-years-young woman from Akron, Ohio. She’d been living in New York City for six months and likely knew little or nothing of the ravages of the AIDS epidemic. This is how tragedy strikes, Beth thought. “Paul, promise me that you will tell her. Don’t play God.”

  She left Paul standing on the sidewalk, socks pulled down to his ankles, Rollerblades in hand. She couldn’t stand to face Katie as she walked out of the store, bright-faced and unsuspecting. Beth didn’t trust herself not to blurt out the awful truth. She couldn’t help but hate herself for not sticking around to do just that.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Anna

  ANNA BEGAN THE first day of the rest of her life on the Monday before Halloween. The day started out at 6:00 A.M.—no differently from any other day. But instead of blow-drying her hair and dressing up, she slipped into her favorite pair of Jason’s gray Champion sweatpants and a faded, threadbare red pearl button sweater—a garment she should have relegated to furniture polishing years ago. She pulled her unwashed hair into a ponytail and wore her glasses instead of contact lenses. Oscar, tipped off by his mother’s lack of effort in her appearance, was beaming.

  “You’re staying home with me today? You’re not going to work and Jenny’s not coming?” The boys loved their nanny but rejected her quickly in favor of their mother.

  “She’s coming this afternoon. I’m yours and Henry’s for the entire morning and every morning for the next couple of months. Does that make you happy?”

  She and Jason had decided to keep Jenny on a part-time basis. She would come at 1:00 P.M. and stay until 6:00 P.M. four days a week. The new plan was to spend weekends out in Montauk, leaving Thursday evening and returning Monday morning. The schedule was downright languorous.

  Oscar nodded chin to chest. “Come on, Mama, let’s play. What do you want to play?”

  “How about we make a train track with your Brio set?”

  “No, I don’t want to do that.”

  “Want to set up Build ’n Bash Construction?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Want to play stickers?”

  “No, we can do that when Henry is asleep so he doesn’t use all of them.” This implied, of course, that Oscar had no intention of taking a nap while his mother was around and couldn’t wait to get his little brother out of the way so he could have her all to himself.

  Anna knew that Oscar knew exactly what he wanted to do, but he also knew it was something she probably didn’t approve of. This routine of zeroing in on doing what he wanted by exhausting all other possibilities was a brilliant tactic. He did it every weekend, so Anna wasn’t surprised that he had leveraged the same strategy on a Monday. By the time it was decided what game they were going to play, Anna was usually so fed up with the conversation that she’d agree to anything just to get him to stop asking.

  Oscar’s eyes were darting back and forth from the kitchen counter, where a pink plastic bottle sat in the corner, to his mother. The action was supposed to tip her off. She wasn’t getting it. Oscar, by now exasperated that Anna wasn’t reading his mind, said, “I want to blow bubbles!”

  Anna hated the mess the bubbles made, especially when Henry got involved. They invariably spilled the entire bottle and Anna would spend half an hour mopping up the viscous slop.

  Henry, upon hearing “bubbles,” went into a frenzy. He ran to his mother’s legs and began blowing through his lips. He cried, “Bop! Bop!” meaning he wanted her to blow the bubbles so he could pop them.

  “Ugh,” Anna said, and sighed. “Okay, guys, bubbles it is. Since it’s raining outside, let’s stay in the kitchen so we don’t make too much of a mess . . .”

  By the time one o’clock came, Anna had already mopped the bubble slop, scrubbed the floor clean after a dropped container of paint, and given Henry two baths—one to clean off the paint striped across his face, hair, and ears and one to clean the mess of an exploded diaper. Oscar, whenever Anna was tending to Henry, insisted on standing directly under her so he got elbowed and kicked. He had burst into tears three different times.

  Day one and Anna wanted to scream.

  Jason kept to himself in his office downstairs, coming up once to help during a particularly loud moment when the two boys were howling simultaneously.

  Once Jenny came, Anna was able to put on a pair of jeans and boots and head out to do the shopping for dinner. Oscar insisted on going with her, which turned a half-hour errand into a ninety-minute exercise. She loved his company, so she didn’t mind; besides, she had to remind herself, she really didn’t have any schedule to adhere to, and it was to spend more time with the boys that she took the sabbatical in the first place. Anna tried to relax into the new agenda of no real agenda.

  HALLOWEEN CAME WITH more fanfare every year, and Anna was happy to have a mission for her first Tuesday at home. While she normally didn’t acknowledge the holiday, this year Oscar was determined to make the most of it. Dressed as Bob the Builder, he used a plastic toolbox to hold his candy and referred to his little brother as Pilchard the Cat. Henry accepted his fate as long as he also got to wear a yellow hard hat like his big brother.

  Anna’s heart broke a little watching Henry/Pilchard dutifully trying to keep up with Oscar/Bob as they negotiated the high front stoops of each row house in their tree-lined Brooklyn neighborhood. Unable to climb quickly enough, Oscar was often on his way down before Henry made it up to the door. Refusing his mother’s help—Henry did have the more independent spirit of the two—he wound up whining at Oscar with frustration because he couldn’t keep up with his big brother. As a gesture of his rage, he threw his hard hat over the locked wrought-iron gate leading to a ground-floor apartment, far enough away that Anna was unable to retrieve it. This, of course, made him cry harder, losing his pacifier in the process. Anna frantically searched her pockets for another as Henry screamed, “Ra-ra! Ra-ra!”—his baby-speak for the pacifier. Then, beneath the racket of her youngest, she noticed the unusual silence of her older son.

  She looked around to find him seated on the bottom stair, surrounded by dozens of candy wrappers, everything from m
ini chocolate bars to gummy bears. He’d systematically tasted nearly every goody in his toolbox. Where his face wasn’t smeared with chocolate, his skin was pallid. Anna knew what was about to happen next.

  Still holding a sobbing Henry, now dangling under her arm like an oversized football, she ran down the stairs to Oscar and whipped him up with her other arm to deposit him curbside. Almost on cue, he vomited up every last bit of chocolate and partially chewed gummy bear all over the tire of a parked car. Better that, Anna consoled herself, than someone’s front stoop.

  Within forty minutes from setting out, their trick-or-treating ended, sticky and smelly and ready for a bath.

  None of this was anything new to Anna. But now Monday through Friday looked a lot like Saturday and Sunday. She’d wished for a life of weekends and now she had it.

  With Anna at home, Jason spent more time on his own work, which seemed fair enough, though it wasn’t part of the scenario Anna had envisioned. Still, they managed to sneak out for a movie or a coffee when Jenny tended to Oscar and Henry in the afternoons and spent the occasional indulgent afternoon in bed when Jenny could coerce the boys out of the house for a few hours. In the beginning, Oscar didn’t make it easy. While he’d become accustomed to Anna being gone all day at work, now that she was home, he wanted to monopolize her time. After a few weeks the family settled into a new routine.

  Anna felt she should have predicted it, but she was still surprised to find that her days weren’t any less taxing than when she’d gone to work every day. Now, however, she didn’t feel like she accomplished half as much. Where before she’d been at meetings with the staff of RHM, she was now folding laundry and picking up the boys’ Matchbox cars. Instead of eating at Da Tommaso with Beth, she was sharing a box of macaroni and cheese or a peanut butter sandwich with the kids. Instead of staring at a screen of e-mails, she was watching construction truck videos—what she called “truckie porn”—three times a day.

  She called her sister. “Is, I am not living the dream. What is wrong with me?”

  “Why, what’s happening?” Isabel asked.

  “All I do is laundry, clean up after the boys, and watch road-building videos and Thomas the Tank Engine. I want to poke my eyes out!”

  “Ha! I guess toddlers are pretty tedious? Maybe you’re bored . . . Can you at least work some in the afternoons?”

  “No! I told Beth I was going to disconnect, and she had Eric step into my role. But I’m not sure that disconnecting was the best idea after all.” She paused, then continued: “Oh, God, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but yes! I. Am. Bored!

  “Am I crazy?” Anna asked, feeling absolutely crazy.

  “Nah, you’re just a twenty-first-century woman . . . Okay, big sis, gotta go to a meeting. Talk later.”

  Not to be deterred by a disastrous Halloween, and a little at a loss about what to do with herself, Anna decided she’d make her mother proud and plan a big Thanksgiving family dinner. Bobby and his wife flew in from California. She invited Beth and Jessie to join them as well. Surely preparations for a holiday dinner for twelve would occupy the part of her brain that needed to feel productive.

  The festive occasion was almost derailed when the boys caught a twenty-four-hour stomach flu just days before Thanksgiving. Added to the disaster of Halloween, it felt like an inauspicious start to a new life. Anna willed herself to not take any of it as a bad omen.

  The preparations were not to be in vain, however. Thursday arrived, and by some miracle, they were all there, worse for wear and wine by the end of the day, but together nonetheless.

  Isabel barely moved from the couch the entire day—doctor’s orders—and Sam lovingly attended to her every need. Isabel had a dreamy quality about her. With only six weeks before her due date, Anna guessed she was in silent preparation for what was to inevitably come.

  When Sam wasn’t by her side, Jessie and Isabel played cards together. The seven-year-old tended to her immobile friend with a wisdom far beyond most her age. Isabel, being the youngest of three siblings, was also the youngest in spirit. There were moments when she and the remarkably grown-up Jessie seemed more like peers. It struck Anna that most children and adults were really not that different from each other outside of the responsibility adults shoulder.

  In Anna’s never-ending efforts to stem the chaos and detritus of a houseful of people, she made several trips to empty the garbage into the backyard bins. On more than one occasion she witnessed Bobby and Beth engaged in the intimate repartee they always fell back into whenever they saw each other. Their brief love affair ended when they met and married their respective mates. Anna smiled at them kindly and raised an eyebrow to suggest she was paying no mind at all to their conversation, when in fact she was tickled by the unusual friendship they’d weaved over the years. She knew their romance would never reignite, but the connection remained a nostalgic tether to a simpler time in their lives. When she returned to the living room, she caught Isabel’s attention and nodded her head to the back of the house.

  “Looks like some heavy reminiscing is going on back there . . .”

  “Oh?” Isabel craned her neck to take a look but couldn’t see past the kitchen. “Maybe I have to get up to pee right about now. Here, Jess, help me up.”

  Anna was in motion all day and did her best to dismiss her mother’s entreaties for her to relax.

  “Anna, let Jason bring out the garbage. Take a break.”

  “Mom, stop hovering. I’m fine, really.”

  “That’s what you always say, Anna. Who are you trying to convince?”

  Instead of responding to her mother’s familiar harangue, Anna watched as Isabel wobbled toward the kitchen. Her sister stood in the doorway watching Bobby and Beth for a moment before turning gingerly and heading into the bathroom. Anna felt an old pang of love for Isabel, the kind she’d felt when they were children, when she could hardly contain the full heart she had for her adorable little sister. She’d teased Isabel at times, subtle reminders of her seniority. When Anna thought about it now, she wondered what lasting effect those insinuations might have had. The youngest Ducci seemed to have escaped with a fierce determinism that Anna lacked for herself. Isabel had a sense of entitlement Anna could never claim, and there were times when Anna felt fury toward her—not so much for what Isabel could do, but for what Anna felt she couldn’t do herself.

  A detective friend of Anna’s had told her once that Thanksgiving was the one holiday police officers would trade for a week’s worth of duty time. When Anna asked why, he simply stated, “Families, alcohol, and knives don’t mix well.”

  But their dinner was wonderfully uneventful. Detective wisdom be damned. Anna thought how tales of disastrous family gatherings were drama meant to fill a void. In Anna’s experience, these gatherings were, for the most part, a bit boring. Maybe that was a good thing, she realized now.

  As Anna surveyed her tryptophan-drugged family, she wondered if it was in these “boring” life moments where meaning resided. Time to pause in the ordinariness that a fulfilled life can bring. And if that were the case, then every moment need not be filled with drive and accomplishment. Shouldn’t that come as a relief? she asked. From then on, Anna promised herself to try to welcome the calm she often called “boredom” and appreciate the love those moments could reveal.

  BY THE TIME Thanksgiving had come and gone, just one month into her sabbatical, Anna was still confused about how she wanted to live her life. Her momentary Thanksgiving epiphany helped, but putting it into practice proved harder than she thought it would be.

  Since the boys were born, she’d desperately wanted to spend daytime hours with her family. That dream turned into reality lacked the swell of satisfaction she’d thought she’d feel. Going to work every day and being pulled in seven directions at once, she’d felt justified in her complaints about needing to be everywhere for everyone all at once. With less calling for her attention now, she had expected to feel more relaxed. Instead, she was frustrated wi
th herself for the lack of resolve she had about finally being at home with the family.

  What was worse, Oscar and Henry seemed to sense her ambivalence. When they cried out at night, it was for Jason, not Anna. When they needed something fixed like a broken truck or their Thomas the Tank engine ran out of batteries, they ran to their father. Although Jason spent less time with the boys than she did, he gave them undivided and unconflicted attention. Anna did not. As much as she tried to reverse the tendency, she’d often attempt to accomplish something else during their time together. The boys didn’t understand enough to complain about it. Instead, they responded by being either overly needy with her or dismissive. Anna began to feel perennially disappointed with herself for not being productive enough or attentive enough, creating a cycle of benign regret that caused Anna a new kind of discomfort.

  Jason had worked out a much more satisfying behavior pattern with his sons, no doubt a result of the ease with which he approached his day. It was the flip side of what Anna had always chided men for—their ability to do only one thing at a time. Anna hadn’t understood until now that this kind of singular focus could be something to admire, not scorn. The ability to give someone or something your full attention was a more harmonious way to live. Multitasking was a bullshit, no-win scenario.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Maggie

  AFTER THEIR WEEKEND trip to the shore, Maggie noticed that John was spending more days away—trips alone on his motorcycle—to Bear Mountain, out to Far Rockaway. Between Maggie’s preoccupation with taking care of the three kids and keeping up with the demands of a busy season at RHM, there were days when she didn’t speak with John even when he was around.

  “Hey, are you mad at me about something?” he asked her on one of these days.

  “No, why are you asking?” Maggie answered as she helped Lily and Jules build a tent out of sheets across the dining room table and chairs. The kids squealed as they crawled on their knees through the makeshift fort and Maggie laughed with them.