Bertrand Court

by Michelle Brafman

  “She’s my grandma, silly.” Kaya giggles and points to my ash-blond hair (L’Oréal No. 30).

  I cup her cheek, the perfect half of a peach, and gush, “You’re very kind, young man.” Good golly, it’s been a long while since anyone’s noticed my looks. But here I am, the source of both Maggie’s and Kaya’s dimples and light hair, a sharp contrast to our olive skin. A striking combination, if I do say so myself. Now, Kaya’s older brother Alec is all Solonsky — dark hair, doughy body, and gentle eyes, albeit a little too close together. Real Jewish-looking, like his father.

  Kaya waves goodbye to the clerk, and I reach for her hand as we exit the store. I squeeze her chubby fingers, which will one day be long and tapered like mine. It’s hot outside, and the humidity is downright uncivilized for a Midwestern girl like me. I take a handkerchief out of my pocketbook and dab my upper lip.

  “Doesn’t that clerk remind you of Cary Grant a little?” I ask Maggie.

  She rolls her eyes. “He’s a big flirt.”

  “What’s a flirt?” Kaya asks as she hops into the back of Maggie’s wagon and buckles her car seat.

  “A person who makes people feel good about themselves so they’ll like him,” Maggie says, starting the car.

  “People are going to flirt with you like crazy, Kaya. You’re such a pretty little thing.” I smile at her in the rearview mirror.

  Maggie’s jaw tenses. She’s so fussy about this topic. Can’t I appreciate my granddaughter’s beauty?

  “Kaya and I have big discussions about inner beauty, about the importance of kindness and respect.” Maggie’s doing that thing she does with her husband, where they pretend that they’re talking to each other: “Kaya cleaned up her room today, Eric. All by herself.” But this time I can’t tell if her intended audience is Kaya or me.

  “And inclusion, Mommy. That means you let everyone play with you.” Kaya has rehearsed this line.

  “That’s right, sweetie.” Maggie shoots me a look, the remnants of a familiar anger that I still don’t understand. I never worked so hard at anything in my life as I did raising my daughter, devoting myself to her, helping her strive for perfection. If my mother had paid attention to me like that when I was a girl, I would have luxuriated in her love like a kitten basking in a warm patch of sunshine. I thought when Maggie became a mother she would understand the sacrifices I made for her, the hours I spent learning her cheerleading routine so I could help her make the squad. Which she did.

  But I’m not going to let any of that spoil my weekend. You could have knocked me over with a feather when Maggie called last month and asked me to fly to Washington to help out with Kaya’s party. Sure, we see each other fairly often — Christmas, birthdays, and whatnot — but this is the first time she’s really invited me into her life since Alec’s circumcision ceremony, the first time she hasn’t pawned me off on her kooky sister-in-law Amy, who lives in a cute little apartment in a Spanish neighborhood near the zoo. Amy insists that the neighborhood is safe, but I send her bottles of mace from time to time. Eric and Alec are off at some father-son soccer camp in Pennsylvania — neither one has an athletic bone in his body, something I’d never dare mention. So here I am, ready to roll up my sleeves.

  My mother thinks that baking a sugar-free carrot cake for a five-year-old’s birthday party is moronic, as she’s been screaming at me by her deliberate silences since I took her to the Bethesda Natural Food Co-op this afternoon. I’m not going to let it get to me; our parenting styles are just completely opposite — thank God — and she’s going to have to accept that eliminating sugar from our diet is an important choice I’m making for our family.

  I prepare a farro and cilantro dish I clipped from Organic Weekly, steam some kale, and broil a nice piece of salmon for us. After dinner, I bathe Kaya, whose little body hums with excitement over the party; it takes three chapters of Charlotte’s Web for her to drift off to sleep.

  My mother is scouring the salmon pan with an S.O.S. pad when I join her in the kitchen. “Thank goodness she finally went down. I don’t want her to be pooped out for her party,” she says, and she smiles at me, which incites a fresh wave of guilt over my anger with her this afternoon at the co-op. I ruined her moment with Stephen, or the Compliment Man, as Eric and I’ve nicknamed him. I pick up a bag of carrots, and we grate them until our fingers turn orange.

  “Look.” I point to our stained hands.

  “That’s carotene.” She rubs her fingers together. “Your father loved carrots. Remember that ginger-carrot ring I used to serve on Christmas Eve?” Her voice softens, as it always does when she remembers my father, who died last summer.

  “Yes, and I remember our baking adventures too.”

  My mother’s the most fun when she’s baking. We used to make batches of M&M oatmeal cookies to sell at high school football games when I cheered, and I bet if I put on some Captain & Tennille she’d start dancing, despite her recent hip replacement.

  Maybe Eric’s idea of inviting her to help with Kaya’s party wasn’t so bad. “Birthday parties are Helene’s thing, Maggie. Besides, she’s so lonely without your dad,” he said last month as we drove home from picking strawberries. Things are much better with my mom; I mean, I don’t hate her anymore. She was so invested in my looks that I felt like she was breathing through my lungs. Now that I’m a mom myself, I can’t imagine taking that kind of pleasure in my daughter’s appearance. I want to show my mother that raising children is about instilling values and building self-esteem, not pushing them so hard to be on top of the heap that they grow fat, pimply, and miserable out of spite. I can’t imagine what it would take for her to get that.

  I invited both of Eric’s sisters to the party, and the next morning Hannah and her younger daughter, Jane, arrive at ten-thirty on the nose. I also invited Robin and Sydney, but they’re in Rochester visiting Marcus’s family.

  Kaya bounces downstairs wearing her favorite pair of overalls and a dingy Snow White T-shirt Eric bought her at the Orlando airport two years ago. My mother examines Kaya, and I know she’s thinking, Couldn’t she have put on a party dress? When Kaya learned how to dress herself, I made a silent promise that I would let her choose her own clothes, regardless of how unattractive they were.

  Thank God, Hannah brought Jane, because only six children show up for the party. Two of them are twin girls from across the street. I’ve tried to befriend their mother, Nikki, but she’s aloof. Their father, Tad, walks them over, and I can practically hear my mother wishing I’d married a man like him, the kind who wears expensive suits, whitens his teeth, and greets you with both polite attention and the suggestion that someone or someplace more important awaits him. A son-in-law her cronies at the club would covet. Tad’s the polar opposite of Eric, not my type, but I do wish he’d stay, just to fill out the room.

  “August is a tough month to host anything in Washington. The city just clears out,” Hannah explains to my mother, and I resent her kindness.

  My mother’s eyes dart around the room. “Go get me one of your scarves, Maggie, and I’ll lead the girls in a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”

  “This is a choose-your-own-theme birthday party, Mom.” I try to keep the annoyance out of my voice. I’ve explained this to her about a dozen times, but she refuses to hear me. “It’s empowering for the girls to make this experience what they want it to be for themselves.”

  As per usual, Amy, whom Kaya has deemed “the fun aunt,” arrives late. She sneaks Kaya a kiss and heads to the sunroom to join my mother and Hannah, who are rocking back and forth in their wicker chairs. They pepper Amy with questions about her boyfriend, Leon. None of us have met him yet. I notice that Hannah keeps a watchful eye on the kids, the way I did when my sweet, pudgy Alec was playing T-ball with a team of rough boys.

  As I’m putting the finishing touches on the goodie bags in the kitchen, my attention slides toward the living room, where I can see Kaya’s reflection in the glass cabinet.

  She stands with her hands
on her hips and points to Jane and two other girls. “You three go draw, and when I say time’s up, then Sophie and Emma will switch and two of you can come play house with me,” she orders. “I’ll decide which two.” During a parent conference last winter, her teacher had described this bossy behavior, which I initially chalked up to her classmate Daphne Silverberg’s bad influence. After Daphne moved to Toronto, I attributed the bossiness to Kaya’s burgeoning leadership abilities.

  The three girls dutifully march off to color on a small table, and Kaya turns her attention to Sophie and Emma, the anointed guests. “Okay, so I’m the mommy. Emma, you’re the daddy.”

  Emma grins.

  “What am I?” Sophie asks.

  Kaya pauses as Sophie waits in silence. “You’re their dog. And you have bad breath.”

  Sophie’s shoulders slump, and her chin quivers.

  “Here, put this in your mouth.” Kaya gives her a ratty old tennis ball she must have found in the yard.

  Emma giggles nervously and doesn’t stick up for her twin sister.

  “In your mouth, Sophie,” Kaya says sweetly.

  It feels like red heat is smoking off my chest. I hope to God that Hannah, Amy, and my mother are so deep in conversation, now about mace, that they’re not catching this. Should I step in? Reprimand Kaya on her birthday? Tell Sophie not to put the ball in her mouth? I wish Eric were here, even though he rarely takes on his little princess, or his big princess either, come to think of it.

  “You’re next, Emma. Go get the tennis ball.” Kaya hugs her redheaded friend.

  Emma purrs at Kaya’s affection and picks up the ball. Holy shit, my daughter is cult leader material.

  Jane, shy yet self-assured, has dealt herself out of this game; she’s looking through a stack of Kaya’s puzzles in the corner of the den. I feign oblivion to the goings-on in the sunroom. “So, Hannah, did you tell my mom about your trip to the Dells?” I try to drown Kaya out, because I’m hearing her through their ears. This is a train wreck. But something about Kaya’s control over these little girls tugs at the borders of my consciousness. Although I’m not exactly proud of her behavior, I’m a little in awe of her power.

  “Girls, time to serve the cake!” I finally interrupt Kaya’s game.

  The girls gather around a card table my mother has decorated with pink balloons and streamers. My mother places the round layer cake in front of Kaya while I hunt down our camera. A halo of candlelight bathes Kaya’s face and hair, and she’s my angel again. I snap a shot of her blowing out all five candles on the first try. My mother plucks out the slender candles, covered in a gummy orange substance and white frosting. The cake’s a big hit, and when Sophie asks for seconds, my mother nods at me with approval. I’ve spent the better part of my life pissed off at her, but right now I feel prouder than the day I ran home breathless with the news that I’d been voted captain of the cheerleading squad.

  Kaya “whoopses” the first time during her birthday bounce on Robin and Marcus’s trampoline, a few hours after the guests have all gone home. Thank goodness the Golds are in Rochester and were therefore spared the sight of an orange geyser flying into the blue sky. Maggie and I chalk it up to the heat, the excitement, and too much activity on a full tummy. Then the cake comes out both ends while Maggie is bathing Kaya, and again when the poor little dear stretches out on her Sleeping Beauty bedspread. We assume she’s finished when we bring her down to the sunroom to cuddle and listen to the rest of Charlotte’s Web, but she gets sick all over the wicker chair, ruining the page where Charlotte spells her first word. Maggie carries her to the bathroom, but only after Kaya has managed to make quite a mess of the sunroom, which looks like orange you-know-what really did hit a fan. I’m guessing Kaya snitched another piece of cake before dinner. There is nothing worse than the sound of a child retching. I run down to the corner market and buy some Gatorade and good old-fashioned Coca-Cola, like I used to give Maggie whenever she got sick.

  When I return, Maggie has opened the windows to ventilate the sunroom. The thick air carries the scent of bleach and Say-Lo, which smells like burnt rubber. Maggie would have been better off baking a less colorful cake.

  “Hand me that 409, dear. I’ll wipe down this chair,” I offer after Kaya has finally fallen asleep.

  Maggie doesn’t answer me because the phone rings. I begin to dig into the weave of the wicker chair, trying not to breathe in too deeply. Her voice is full of apology as she talks to Tad’s wife, Nikki, the twins’ mother. “I spoke with Poison Control already. It’s not toxic in the quantity I used for the cake.”

  She hangs up and sweeps her wet hair off her neck. “Don’t, Mom. I know what you’re thinking,” she says through the hair band she’s holding in her teeth.

  “I’m not saying a word.”

  “You’re thinking why didn’t I just buy one of those sheet cakes from the Giant, all lard and sugar, with princesses and mounds of pink and purple frosting?”

  That’s exactly what I’m thinking, but I’ve done a very good job of keeping quiet, and I’m sure not going to throw kerosene on this fire. I’m also thinking that Maggie could easily have married somebody like Nikki’s Tad, but that’s not productive either. “Actually, I was thinking about what marvelous self-esteem Kaya has developed. She has quite a Svengali effect on those little girls.” No big surprise, she’s smart and gorgeous, but if I mention her looks, Maggie will flip into one of her moods. Pretty is bad. Confident is good. Got it.

  Maggie answers the phone again. “Hi, Amy.” She shifts feet.

  This isn’t going to be good. Amy ate the frosting off of everyone’s plate. I saw her do it. Such an odd woman, that Amy.

  “I know. Wait, that’s my call waiting. I’m so sorry. God, this is a disaster.” Maggie pushes down on the receiver and answers the next call. “How many times?” she asks, then gives her Poison Control spiel and hangs up. “Megan Moore. Her Aliza ate a lot of cake.”

  “Oh, dear,” I say.

  “I better call Hannah,” Maggie says. She’s nervous; her chest is breaking out in those red blotches. Maybe she’ll feel better if we talk about our dazzling Kaya some more. “Your daughter was cuing those girls like a director when they played with those tiny dolls. Polly Pockets, I think she called them? Cute. And she assigned two mommies to one child!”

  Maggie removes a soiled slipcover from one of the couch pillows. “Kaya has a lot of classmates in her preschool with same-sex parents.”

  Oh, Lord have mercy, she’s going to hop on that diversity soapbox with that hideous tone she uses to lecture all of us who “don’t get it.” I’ve never figured out exactly what it is that I don’t get, or why people who do get it are so gosh-darned mean to those who don’t. That girl can make me mad as a hornet. I muster up a smile and reach for another roll of paper towels. My, it feels like a sauna in here. My blouse sticks to the dampness under my arms.

  Maggie continues in that tone of hers. “So the preschool furnishes some of the dramatic play areas with only mommy dolls and others with daddy dolls.”

  I wasn’t going to say anything about the tennis ball incident, but it’s always like this with Maggie. I’m her punching bag. “Kaya was pretty tough on that cute little Sophie, told her that she had to be the dog when they played house.” I give the chair another good squirt of cleaner.

  Maggie’s ears turn crimson. “Eric and I appreciate the diversity in her preschool. We want Kaya to know that everyone, regardless of his or her sexual preference or race or religion, should be loved and accepted for who they are.” She’s heaping naked pillows on top of one another.

  “And when Sophie started to cry, Kaya went in for the kill.” I lower my voice, knowing that my calm is just going to make her hotter. I gave birth to this girl, taught her her first word, and bought her her first brassiere; I know where she hides the silver.

  Maggie ignores my comment. “These are our core values.”

  Oh, for Pete’s sake, if I hear one more word about their “value
s,” I might just have to wait in line behind Kaya for the toilet. “Your daughter runs the show. She’s got the others lining up for her approval.”

  “Kaya has not yet learned the social skills to manage all the girls who vie for her attention. It’s a developmental issue.” Maggie’s voice is loud.

  Hooey. I’m about to tell Maggie she can move to London or Timbuktu and I’m still her mother and I can still read her and her little girl like a Harlequin. I saw everything. Kaya will always land on top of the heap, despite Maggie’s mumbo jumbo about equality. And I’ll tell little Miss We Treat Everyone with Respect that I watched her watch Kaya take charge of those little girls and I caught a smile poke through her lips. She can’t deny how delicious it feels to see your child win.

  Before I can say any of this, the phone rings again, and Maggie looks at the caller ID. “This is a nightmare,” she says in a tone of dread. “Hi, Hannah. I was just going to call you.” She pauses. “Oh, that’s such a sweet thing to say.” Now she sounds almost chipper. “I’d love to chat, but we’re just putting our house back together. Thanks for calling.” Maggie grins. “Jane must not have eaten the cake!”

  I can’t tell if Maggie’s happy that her niece didn’t get sick or that someone actually called to compliment her on the party, especially Hannah. She looks like she did when she used to do those tap routines for my mother, eager to please, vulnerable to my mother’s boozy indifference — and Maggie was the favorite grandchild. I wanted to mess up my mother’s Greta Garbo hairdo, scoop my little girl up in my arms, and cover her with kisses.

  The anger vacates my body, and now I’m just dog-tired. And sad. Why do Maggie and I fight when she needs me the most? My limbs feel heavy, and my eyes burn. I want to hug my daughter, but I can’t face her turning away from me again.

  “Remember when I hired the Mary Kay lady to make up all our faces at your sweet sixteen?”