Loose Screws

by Karen Templeton

  Her duty done, Nonna says, “Basta” to the dog, then turns and glowers at the bag. “Open bag, is no good. Things will crawl in. You go out, find something with a lid to put it in.”

  Forty-five minutes later Nedra and I are trooping back up Broadway at eight o’clock on a balmy summer night, lugging home a miniature garbage pail, complete with lid. I have no idea why she decided to come along, but she keeps giving me these looks, as if she wants to talk but doesn’t quite know how to go about it. Since we’re not prone to having cozy little mother-daughter heart-to-hearts, I can understand why. I’m also not going to make it easier for her.

  Never mind that my brain is about to explode with curiosity.

  Dusk has purpled most of the sky, save for the brilliant rim of orange along the horizon, just visible at the crosstown streets through the trees along Riverside Drive. The atmosphere is relaxed—for New York, anyway—the scene almost carnival-like. The sidewalks are clogged with people and laughter, strollers and the creaking, wheeled shopping carts unbiquitous to the city. Bodies swarm around the open-air fruit and vegetable stands, filling the air with a dozen languages; dogs tied to parking meters stare fixedly through a thousand passing legs at store entrances, dodging passersbys’ attempts to get their attention, only to explode into dance when their owners finally emerge.

  Morningside Heights has changed a great deal since I was a kid, as have most Manhattan neighborhoods, I suppose. Many of the family-owned businesses that gave each area of the city its unique flavor have gone the way of the ten-cent pay phone in favor of franchises that threaten to make New York no different from Houston or Des Moines. But New York is all about attitude, I decide as we sidestep a pair of Hispanic teenage girls giggling so hard about something they can barely walk. Attitude, and energy, and survival. And each neighborhood has its own slant on that, something that can’t be completely annihilated by the Great Franchise Invasion.

  “Oh, look,” Nedra says, nudging me as we pass West Side Market. “They’ve got cherries on sale.”

  We both grab plastic bags, assume our positions on either side of the trio of slanted bins stretching across the front of the store. The can shoved underneath the bleacher-like space formed by the raised bins, I begin plucking the best cherries from my side, along with about a hundred other people. I catch my mother watching me, but she averts her eyes when I look up.

  Something pings off my head.

  I look across the bins at my mother, who is frowning in concentration at the cherries. I think, hmm, and resume picking.

  Two seconds later, thunk, a cherry bounces off my shoulder and back into the bin. My gaze shoots across to my mother, who looks up. “What?” she says.

  But her eyes are sparkling like jet.

  I wait for my opportunity, then lob a cherry at her. Only a little old Spanish lady gets in the way and the missile bounces off her forehead. The poor woman looks around, puzzled, then starts gesticulating to her companion, going on in rapid-fire Spanish about what just happened.

  My mother and I don’t dare look at each other.

  We hold it in until the cherries are paid for—we each get about three pounds, which is way more cherries than we’ll be able to eat before they rot—and stowed inside the garbage pail for the six block trek back to her building. Giggling, we each grab a handle and start up the block, exploding into howling laughter before we hit 111th Street. People are looking at us. Some smile. Some frown. I do not care.

  I can’t remember laughing with my mother like this since I was little.

  Hell, I can’t remember laughing like this with anyone, not in a very long time, at least.

  As we cross 112th Street, we both automatically glance east toward Amsterdam Avenue. At the end of the long, narrow block, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine looms in quiet majesty over the neighborhood. Nedra says, “Do you remember my taking you to the park over there when you were little?”

  Do I? Oh, yeah. We went there often, no matter what the season. She’d sit on the grass or one of the park benches and gab with other mothers, while I’d play tag with children of a dozen different colors….

  “You remember that time one of the peacocks suddenly appeared in front of you with his tail fanned out?” Nedra says, laughing. “I thought you’d wet your pants.”

  My own laughter blends with hers. “I did.” I throw her a glance, a smile tugging at my lips. “Maybe my aversion to fowl can be traced to that initial childhood trauma.”

  “Oh, stop,” she says, but she’s smiling, too. “Okay, so maybe the rooster was a bad idea.”

  “You think?” I say, and she shrugs, jostling the can between us.

  We walk in silence for another block before she says, “So. You’re over Greg?”

  “She said hopefully.”

  “She said hopefully.” She flicks a glance in my direction. “Well?”

  Now it’s my turn to shrug. “I don’t know. Yeah, I suppose. But…the other night has nothing to do with that.”

  “Oh?”

  “No.”

  “Oh,” she says. Another few yards, then, “This is Nick we’re talking about, right?”

  I glance over, but it’s gotten too dark to see well. “You remember Nick?”

  She smiles. “Oh, yeah.”

  “Okay, fine. It was Nick. Your turn.”

  Her laugh is low. “Nice try.”

  “God. You are so evil.”

  Another laugh. “I am, huh?”

  My assumption is this means I do know the man. Great. Now I’m going to be obsessed with trying to figure out who it is. Like that gal who has to guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name.

  “Okay,” she says, “before you burst something in your brain, ask yourself—does it really matter? Who it is, I mean?”

  “Is that guilt I hear in your voice?”

  “Hardly. Just…a need to keep some things private. At least until I figure a few things out for myself first.”

  I nearly come to a dead halt right in the middle of the sidewalk. Nedra, insecure? Nedra, who doesn’t have a dubious bone in her ample body?

  “So…this isn’t just one of those I’ve-met-someone-and-I’m-hearing-wedding-bells kinds of things?”

  Her laugh booms from her chest. “God, no. This is more like I’ve-met-someone-and-the-sex-is-great-but-this-is-nuts kinds of things.”

  Now I’m really intrigued. Enough to not even flinch at the weirdness of talking about sex with my own mother.

  Now she comes to a stop, nearly yanking my arm off. I spin around. Her mouth is drawn into a tight line. “When it comes to men, I’m clueless, you know?” She looks away, swipes her hair out of her face with her free hand and holds it to her temple, then looks back at me. “I don’t know the rules. Hell, I don’t even know if there are any rules. God. I was barely eighteen when I met your father. I fell in love, had you, got married, never looked back. Leo was the only man I ever slept with, believe it or not. And when he died…”

  Again, she hesitates, then lets out her breath in an abrupt sigh. “I was only thirty-two,” she says, almost as if she can’t quite believe it herself. “And yet I figured, Hey, it’s over for me. I had my great love, I have a great kid, I have my work…who needs sex to muck things up? Now don’t ask me why I had to wait until menopause to figure out what I’d been missing for eighteen years, but better now than not at all, I suppose.”

  I need a minute to sift through all that, so I tug at the can, get us started again. “So…what you’re saying is, I shouldn’t expect a stepfather out of this?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, my God—he’s not married, is he?”

  Horror streaks across her features. “Honestly, Ginger—give me some credit!”

  “Sorry.” Then I ask, because I’ve got to know, “Are you happy?”

  “I’m…content with things the way they are, I suppose. In some ways.” She sighs. “God. If this is what you younger types go through, I sure don’t envy you. All this angst, this indecision, this
wondering if I’m doing the right thing…how the hell do you stand it?”

  “That’s easy. Häagen-Dazs.”

  “The weird thing is,” she continues, “that when I’m with him, nothing else seems to matter. It’s when we’re apart I get very confused.”

  “And this isn’t driving you nuts?”

  “Sure it is. But what’s the alternative?”

  “Maybe finding someone who doesn’t make you confused?”

  After a moment she says, “You mean, like what you did with Greg?”

  “Well…yes, actually. I mean, the whole reason I was attracted to him was because being with him didn’t put me through a million changes.” Unlike some other people I could name. “I never felt confused when I was with him. I felt safe. I felt sane.”

  “Well, hell—where’s the fun in that?”

  “I’m not like you, Nedra. I don’t like living on the edge.”

  I can feel her scrutiny on the side of my face. “You think following your heart is living on the edge?”

  “If it makes you feel off balance, yes.”

  The conversation is making my stomach knot, but just when I start to say I think we should change the subject, Nedra says thoughtfully, “I suppose I felt safe with your father, come to think of it. Because I knew we were supposed to be together, I suppose, which is its own kind of security. Still, being with Leo also always made me feel…I don’t know…more alive, somehow?” She laughs. “The man always kept me on my toes. Always challenged me, made me look at things in a different light. He always inspired me to be…more.”

  “But this…whatever it is, it’s different from that?”

  She gives me the first on-equal-footing look I think we’ve ever shared. “Right now, it’s all about the sex. About having a good time together. This man makes me feel good about myself and my body. May not be a lot, but I’ll take it.”

  Something like envy zips through me. Yeah, maybe Nedra says she’s conflicted, but that’s not stopping her, is it? Hell, no. She didn’t storm out of her lover’s apartment like some neurotic doofus. She isn’t letting a little thing like stark terror keep her from enjoying the moment.

  But that’s the difference between us, I guess. She likes danger. I don’t. What she calls “alive,” I call “petrifying.”

  And I don’t much like being petrified.

  We begin the uphill climb from Broadway toward her building. “You ever regret the choices you made over the years? About how you’ve chosen to live your life?”

  My question clearly startles her for a moment, but then she says, “No. Not about the big stuff.” She glances at me, then away. “For the most part, I like who I am. What I do. I know I tick a lot of people off—including you—but I wouldn’t be happy trying to be somebody else, would I?”

  After a moment I say, “No, I guess not.”

  “But I do have two regrets in my life, I suppose, even if one of them isn’t something I could have controlled anyway.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “That I never had another kid. Leo and I would have liked that.”

  This is news to me. I’d always assumed I was an only child by my parents’ choice. “And the other thing?”

  I catch her smile out of the corner of my eye. “I’m sorry I told you to call me by my first name when you were little.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Weird, isn’t it?” She laughs softly, then says, “I was so young when I had you, I guess I couldn’t quite grasp the idea of being somebody’s mother. But now…now I wish I’d heard you call me Mommy.”

  I cock my head at her, then shake it. “You’re not a mommy, Nedra. Sorry.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  We get to the door of my mother’s apartment building. José, the night doorman, raises one eyebrow at our loot, but only shakes his head.

  “How’d you get the rooster in, anyway?” I ask when we’re safely out of earshot.

  “I walked quickly and pretended it was a parrot.”

  My cell is ringing when we get inside the apartment. Nonna hands the phone to me, taking the can from us and carting it down the hall, but not before I notice the woman whom I’ve never seen wearing anything but housedresses in murky prints—which is what she had on when we left forty-five minutes ago—is now sporting a black T-shirt of mine that declares It’s All About Me.

  Cue “Twilight Zone” music.

  I go into my room to answer the phone. It’s Terrie, who barely lets me get out “Hello?” before she says, “Okay, so Davis calls me, right? And we end up spending like two hours on the phone, and I’m thinking, this is really weird, because I cannot remember the last time I heard a man able to focus for two hours on anything that didn’t involve uniforms and a ball of some kind. So then he asks me out, and I hear myself accepting, because what else was I gonna do? Turn the man down after we just talked our butts off for two hours?”

  Takes a second before I realize there’s a pause, which is the first chance I have to say, “How’d he get your number?”

  Another pause. Then, “Okay, so I gave it to him. I mean, it wasn’t like I expected him to actually call.”

  I decide against pointing out that if she hadn’t actually hoped he’d call, she wouldn’t have given him her number. But then, this is Terrie we’re talking about.

  “Anyway,” she says, “so what was I supposed to say? ‘Thanks for the nice conversation and by the way, have a nice life’? I mean, that would have been—”

  “Rude?” I suggest. Not because I agree with her, although I’m beginning to feel eerily as though I’ve been down this path myself. Very recently.

  “If not downright mean. I mean, that’s what I keep telling myself, you know? So, anyway, we go out—he gets tickets to the ballet, and he not only doesn’t fall asleep, he knows more about the dancers than I do—and then we go to some fine club downtown with some fabulous jazz until like, I don’t know, one in the morning or something, and then we come back here to my place and we talk some more and not once does he pull out some sorry business about why his wife left him. A-and then somehow we start kissing—okay, so I came on to him because those pretty lips of his were just making me crazy—but that’s all that happened because he says he doesn’t want to rush me into anything, he wants to take this nice and slow, and then he leaves me feeling like a truck just ran me over and goddamn it to hell, Ginger, why do I keep doing this to myself?”

  She’s in tears by this point. Hysterical, actually, which scares me because Terrie never cries. At least, she never has in my presence. And I’m sitting here on the edge of my bed thinking, Oh, uh-huh, like I’m really the one to help you sort out your love life.

  “When did all this happen?” I ask, stalling.

  I hear nose-blowing, then a shuddering breath. “T-two nights ago.”

  “And you’re just calling me now?”

  “Well, see, Davis took me out to the Hamptons for the day yesterday.” The last syllable ends on something like a wail.

  “And…I’m guessing you had a great time?”

  “Yes, dammit! Oh, God, Ginger—this is so stupid! You know as well as I do exactly what’s going to happen. He’ll be all perfect and understanding until I fall in love with him—which at the rate things are going, should take about another ten minutes—and then he’s gonna do the same thing they all do. I mean, Jesus, it’s like the gods are sitting up there, snickering behind their hands while they look down at my sorry ass and say, Suckah. And I’ve got nobody to blame but myself. I didn’t have to stay on the phone with the man, or go out with him, or go spend a perfect day with him. But I did. And now I’m gonna pay the price.”

  Oh, yeah. Know how that goes, boy. Still, some perverse optimistic streak in me—and God knows where this is coming from, since recent personal experience certainly doesn’t bear this out—prompts me to say, “And maybe this is the one time it takes.”

  That gets a snort on the other end of the line.

  “No,
Terrie. I’m serious.”

  “Yeah,” she says on a sigh. “I know you are. And you know what really bites? After everything I’ve been through, everything I know about me and men, I want to believe you. That, after all’s said and done, I still want a man in my life. Not to take care of me or provide for me, but just to be there for me. For me.” I hear a thump, as though she’s just smacked her own chest. “I still want to believe there’s a good man out there whose smile is gonna make me grateful for every breath I take. And how dumb is that? I know what the reality is. I know. And yet here’s this damn…hope in the center of my chest that will not die. No matter how often it’s been ripped to shreds, it just keeps on regenerating, taking inordinate pleasure in making my life a living hell.”

  Yep, that damn hope thing screws us every time. But then, I suppose that’s what keeps our heads out of the ovens, too.

  I pull one foot up onto the edge of the bed, contemplate repolishing my toenails. Something frosted and pale this time, I think. “You could break it off with Davis,” I say.

  “I know.”

  “So…?”

  I hear a long, soul-shuddering sigh.

  “Well,” I say again, sounding all together and knowledgeable, because that’s what she needs me to be at the moment, “then I guess you have to ask yourself which you want more—to avoid the pain, or take the risk on the hope.”

  I ignore the little twinge of pain in my own gut.

  “You know,” Terrie says, “I really hate it when you get all logical on me.”

  Then she hangs up. This is getting to be a bad habit with her.

  I lie back on the bed, willing my mind to go blank. This works for maybe five, six seconds, until, from down the hall, I hear what sounds like a small avalanche as Nonna apparently dumps the rest of the dog food into the just-purchased plastic can. Then:

  “Per Dio! Ginger! Nedra! Venite! Subito!”

  I jump off the bed and take off down the hall, nearly colliding with my mother halfway there as images of rats or worse (whatever that might be) scurry through my brain. My grandmother is standing over the garbage can/food bin, her hands clamped to her jowls. At our entrance, she turns, her eyes as wide as her favorite pasta dishes, then jabs one finger at the bin.