“What did she say?” he asked as he sat down, resolutely pouring his cereal and forgetting to kiss the top of her head.
“Oh, more or less the usual.” Rose paused. “She compares herself to Obama. . . .”
Peter groaned and rolled his eyes, anticipating what humorous aperçus his colleagues might be practicing on their way to work.
“And apparently she was a terrible wife.”
Peter looked up. “Is that all?”
Rose shook her head. “And she says she broke your heart.”
He was silent in an unusual way, so Rose felt the need to keep talking. “I don’t know why she has to do this.”
“Yes, you do. Because it makes her feel powerful. It’s a good line, a good story, and people want to read it. People like you, I might add. Where’s Matty?” Sudden anger had consumed his appetite. “It’s quarter of eight. I can’t be late this morning. Matty! Get down here. Now!” And he marched into the hallway.
Rose hoped Matty was dressed. Though Peter might say his sudden bad mood was all her fault, it was really Liddy’s yet again, and when confronted with his son, the living, breathing embodiment of Liddy, down to the shape of his eyes and the music of his rare laugh, you didn’t have to be a therapist to guess what might happen.
“You go, then,” Rose said, calling after him. “I’ll walk with Matty. It’s a beautiful morning. And I’ve got an appointment at the doctor’s at nine thirty.”
Peter picked up his bag and coat and left with a sharp double bang of the front door. Rose sighed and stood up, wincing slightly as her knee twinged, and hauled it up the stairs, where she knocked on Matty’s door.
“It’s time to get up, Matty,” she called.
“No!” came the muffled shout from inside the room, so she opened the door, braving the intense odor of growing boy and stale shoes, and switched the light on, cruelly pulling the duvet off him with a flourish.
“Up! Now!” she barked, marveling at how their interactions, once so fluid and fulsome, were now reduced to words of one syllable. Liddy had remarked on the phone to her just last week that it seemed Matty had been invaded by an alien body snatcher who had only one expression, sullen, and only one word of English, no, and while Rose laughed politely, she wished Liddy and Peter would talk about it. She saw how they both mourned the passing of their perfect little boy and how hard they found this teenage stranger, full of new hairs and hormones, to deal with. By contrast, Rose had come to learn that her ability not to lose her temper with Matty might be directly to do with her not having given birth to him. She did not take his outbursts personally because she did not see his behavior as any reflection on her own.
“C’mon! Hurry! I packed your school bag, I charged your phone. Don’t forget to tell Miss Walsh you need an afternoon slot for your piano lesson next week, and you’ve lost your library book so I’ve stuck twenty dollars in your jacket pocket to cover it.”
He shook his head and grunted something unintelligible before picking the duvet up off the floor, rolling onto his side, and curling into a ball underneath it.
“Matty!” she said, exasperated.
“Can Dylan and Jack come over tonight?” came his muffled response.
“Yes, if their parents text me. You have to get up now!”
Suddenly, from downstairs, the front door swung open.
“Rose!”
At his father’s voice, Matty leapt out of bed, picked his clothes off the floor, and hurried into the bathroom, not quite so teenage yet as to brave paternal wrath first thing. Rose came down the stairs once more. Peter was standing in the doorway, hangdog. Rose smiled.
“You didn’t have to come back,” she said.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry.”
“No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been reading it. It was insensitive—”
“I can’t believe she said that. It’s so personal. And in the Times . . .”
But it was the truth and they both knew it. They just wanted it unsaid. Liddy had not just blithely broken Peter’s heart, she had shattered it; but Rose had spent a year picking up the tiny pieces so the two of them could stick it back together.
“She makes me look like a shmuck. . . .”
“She thinks I’m wonderful,” Rose dared, and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Something must have happened,” said Peter. “It doesn’t sound like her.”
“What are you talking about?” said Matty from the bathroom door, a toothbrush sticking out the side of his white frothy mouth.
“Your mother gave an interview that upset me and I overreacted,” Peter announced. Rose smiled forgivingly and hoped Matty would appreciate what a fine example of taking responsibility for negative emotions his father was giving him.
“Is it the ‘broke your heart’ thing? Mom told me about that. She said she was sorry. She was in a funny mood that day and she probably made a complicated situation look simple.”
He went back to the sink. This was followed by the exuberant gargling and spitting noises he had been told innumerable times to avoid, but Rose and Peter were too intrigued by his comment to admonish him.
“I love you,” said Rose to Peter. “Go, or you’ll be late.”
In the background now, the sound of Matty pissing, like a horse onto a metal gate.
“Close the door, for Chrissake!” shouted Peter, then whispered, “How do you put up with us, Rose? And why are you seeing the doctor?” He pulled her close. His hand rested gently on her hip.
“Annual physical. My age. My knee.”
“Is it the change of life, Rosey?” said Matty, emerging, a slick of hair gel plastering his fringe to his forehead. “Melinda’s mom’s having that and she’s turned into a monster.”
“C’mon, son,” said Peter, chivying the boy out the door before they could find out if this might be the morning Rose’s legendary placidity deserted her. “I know you haven’t eaten, so I’ll buy you a bun on the way.”
“Cool.” The boy grinned, suddenly looking like a little child again. It was so confusing, this cusp time, thought Rose, for Matty and for her. He was quite right, of course, the change was coming. She had been feeling it for the last couple of months. The two of them were trapped in their mutating bodies, wrestling with the extraordinary confusion of feeling young while growing older.
“I resent so much of our time being taken up talking about her. That’s it, really,” Peter said quietly.
“I know,” Rose replied, and he left again, Matty in tow.
Although Rose did indeed resent having to talk about Liddy quite so much, what she really resented was that in all the talking, Peter never said anything about the relationship, dismissing it as “ancient history,” although “secret history” was more accurate. But, over time, she accepted that all new partners are forced to navigate the complicated terrain that their predecessors leave behind. That what Liddy had left behind was more like scorched earth, and because she was vivid, extraordinary, unforgettable, and all these things in all ways, Rose had to fight not to become a sort of puny, satellite moon rotating in the gravitational pull of Liddy’s blazing sun. For this reason she had told her mother that, if they ever got married, she would never take Peter’s surname, as she could not face being the second Mrs. James when the first was quite so first in everything. (This comment conveniently sidestepped another conversation, which was why, despite their obvious domestic happiness, the marriage had not yet happened. Peter seeming resolved not to make what her mother referred to as “an honest woman of her.”)
Similarly, there had been the issue of what Matty might call Rose, or rather what Liddy might “helpfully” decide she could be called. On this, Rose felt some relief that she was not formally his stepmother. After all, as a person who looked to literature for a map of life, she would shudder and think, Who wants to be the Wicked Queen torturing Snow W
hite? It could not be helpful to the millions of children who ended up in blended families that the image of stepparents imbued in their nurseries was almost inevitably the black horns of Maleficent looming over the crib bars. Thank goodness Matty had suggested “Rosey” almost by accident when they were playing a game, so Liddy’s suggestions of Aunt Rose, which sounded like a dowager, or Mom2, which sounded like something out of a Disney movie about a family of androids, could be ignored in a way Liddy herself could never be.
Rose had often noticed that if there were lulls in any conversation she was having, all it took was for Liddy’s name to be mentioned for interest to be revived. There was always something to say about Liddy, and as Rose’s doctor, Barbara, strapped the cuff of a blood pressure monitor around Rose’s upper arm one hour later, today proved no exception.
Barbara had resolved not to mention the interview in the Style section, but because she was also a single mother of two and having a bad day, when it fell out of Rose’s bag onto the floor, she picked it up, glanced at it again, and could not control herself.
“Liddy James. Superlawyer! Supermother! What a bunch of baloney! With the irreplaceable Lucia, the driver, the personal trainer, the chef delivering the meals, and, no doubt, the life coach on speakerphone once every two weeks, I’m amazed she ever sees her children. And you seem to look after Matty most of the time.”
Rose looked up, astounded by the accuracy with which Barbara had portrayed Liddy’s life, although, of course, Barbara had been Rose’s doctor, and then her friend, for over twenty years.
“Liddy agreed that Matty would stay with Peter Monday to Thursday, to be close to the school,” Rose said. “And she’s flexible if he has a soccer practice or a playdate on a Friday night or something—it was all decided with a child psychologist after they split.”
“Just as well she doesn’t ‘do guilt,’ then,” continued Barbara. “Huh! Of course she doesn’t. She’s forgotten what it’s like for the rest of us. Guilt is our hobby. It gives us a break from the exhaustion. You ought to see the online comments!”
The cuff gripped Rose’s arm, then seemed to sigh out. Barbara checked the reading.
“Perfect,” she said. “You want to know the truth, Rose? Liddy couldn’t have her life unless she shared custody. I’m telling you. If she really was a single mother with her job and two kids, she couldn’t cope.”
Rose attempted a noncommittal shrug.
“She looks good, though. Has she had work done?”
“No,” said Rose. “She says she wouldn’t ever have plastic surgery—she once represented this guy whose wife left him when his nose fell off.”
“Typical. It’s only women who look like her who announce things like that. I’m not talking lifts, or even fillers. I bet she’s had this thing where they inject your own blood into you. The Vampire Facial, it’s called. ‘Totes appropes’ for Liddy, as my daughter would say.”
Rose couldn’t help giggling, suddenly mischievous. “I would like to know one thing,” she said. “What’s tuna surprise?”
Barbara paused as she expertly pricked the vein on the underside of Rose’s elbow with a needle. “The surprise is she actually cooked something.”
And she drew three vials of viscous blood from Rose’s arm, stuck different colored labels on each, and took out a pen to mark them.
“When was your last period?” she asked. Rose shrugged and said ruefully that she thought that ship had sailed, pulling out the receipt from Duane Reade on the back of which she had scribbled her symptom list (swollen ankles, sore boobs, lethargy), so Barbara handed her a plastic sample jar and ordered her to pee in it. When Rose returned, the hot little pot in her hand, Barbara was still staring at the photograph of Liddy.
“I think she should be worried. She’s got that thing, that thing characters in plays have, pride before a fall. Right?”
“Hubris,” said Rose, thinking. “An overestimation of one’s own competence or capability.”
“Yes,” replied Barbara, sticking the thin paper strip into the sample pot and glancing at her watch. “Hubris.”
“After hubris comes nemesis and then comes the fall,” continued Rose, delighted to change the subject and adopting the beguiling academic tone she used on her students. “It’s from Greek tragedy, like in The Iliad when Achilles, extremely prideful, drags poor Hector’s body over the ground outside the city walls of Troy, and fate deals with him pretty swiftly afterward. I was thinking about it this morning, because I’m teaching Coriolanus again this semester. Another great man brought low by his hubris. I think he’s somewhat misunderstood, though. . . .”
Barbara peered across at her.
“Like Liddy?” she said.
“Yes, actually.” Privately, Rose found Liddy’s determination to live life by her own rules nothing less than heroic, particularly given how difficult it must be. She knew many, however, shared Barbara’s view that there was no end to the ways in which Liddy offended the gods of normal.
“You’re too nice,” muttered Barbara and she did not mean it as a compliment, but Rose was thinking about Coriolanus and said, “Would you have me/False to my nature? Rather say, I play/The man I am . . .” She trailed off, realizing she must have gone too far, because at the sink Barbara was standing very still in what looked like some kind of shock.
“Are you okay?” said Rose, and then remembering where she was, “Am I okay?”
“Yeah. You’re fine. You’re pregnant.”
Barbara expected a big reaction, but the word on its own would not do it. After all, it had let Rose down three times before.
“How pregnant?”
“Properly pregnant. I’d say nearly ten weeks.”
Rose stayed silent.
“It’s a miracle,” said Barbara.
Rose would never again cajole Matty to remember every detail of his day, for after Barbara had packed her off in a cab to a clinic uptown where she was comprehensively ultrasounded and injected with progesterone in her right buttock, she remembered that morning only in a blurry haze through which the repetitive thump of her unborn baby’s heartbeat sounded like a tiny hammer pounding the inside of her skull. She suspected this was the manifestation of her contradictory emotions about the news. It was true, as Barbara kept saying, that she had never gotten this far along before, but Rose could not control her fear. A Polaroid in her slightly shaking hand, she stood at the reception desk, staring at a framed photograph of a redwood forest at dawn, the light pouring like columns through the leaves. She knew she was supposed to feel moved by the new light and new life, but instead she wanted to disappear beneath the dark mossy undergrowth. It was only when she was handed the bill, and felt such a surge of gratitude for Liddy and the comprehensive health insurance coverage provided by Oates and Associates, that she actually cried. The kindly nurses seemed relieved. One put her arm around Rose’s shoulders.
“I don’t know how to tell my . . . partner,” Rose said, sobbing.
“He’ll be delighted,” the young woman replied, squeezing her arm, but she didn’t understand. Rose’s first instinct was to protect Peter from another loss.
Outside, the sun had bleached into a gray sky. Rose tripped carefully down the subway stairs and held her bag across her belly as the train rattled downtown. The familiar walk to the college calmed her. She bought a cup of coffee and drank half. Then she worried whether it was acceptable or not in pregnancy these days and tipped the rest down a drain, to the squawking rage of a couple of dirty pigeons who flapped away from the brown puddle and toward her booted feet. When she reached the campus, she started to run, and even though two of her favorite students waved at her from a bench beside a wall of graffiti art, she did not stop. She glanced at her watch and hoped she would catch Peter before his undergraduate seminar.
Striding along the tiled corridor toward the lecture theater, she was conscious that her footsteps
made an unfamiliar noise, a sort of hollow, higher-pitched clip on every second step, which she ignored in her haste. As she turned the corner, however, she saw a large black backpack disappear inside the double doors, the student’s body bent in preparation to creep to a seat as near the side as possible, and she knew she was too late. She thud-clipped over to the doors anyway and peered in, knowing that sometimes if Peter caught sight of her, he would come out. Not today. He was already in full flow, his noble profile animated as he spoke, his right hand gesticulating like an orator in a Roman amphitheater. She looked at the line of female students in the front row staring at him, rapt, and then she caught sight of herself in the glass pane of the door and noticed she had the same expression on her face.
Peter had three well-regarded academic books to his name, and he was a rigorous and exacting teacher (when he controlled his tendency toward impatience and sarcasm), but lecturing was his greatest talent. Rose, by contrast, excelled one on one; every year she found three or four students to whom she knew she could make a difference, and she did.
She turned and, before heading to her office, lifted her left foot to see that the heel of her boot had come off, leaving a hole in which a piece of well-chewed gum nestled.
Annoyed, she dropped to her knees and scanned the floor behind in a futile search for the lost piece. At this moment, a pair of expensive Italian leather shoes approached. She looked up to see the department chair, Professor Sophia Lesnar (pronounced Lay-nah, as Sophia instructed), a woman of both style and substance.
“My heel came off,” said Rose.
“I hate that,” said Sophia. “Do you need some help?”
“No,” replied Rose, and hauled herself back on her feet.
“How are you?” asked Sophia. Rose answered economically with a murmured “Good” and smiled. Sophia’s fanfared arrival from Oxford University as head of literature three years ago had been greeted with almost universal horror from her colleagues, and particular resentment from Peter, who had assumed the job would be his. But although Rose had tried to dislike her out of collegial solidarity, she could not. Sophia had proved supportive and trustworthy.
The Real Liddy James Page 3
