An Abbreviated Life

by Ariel Leve

  “Are you angry at me?” one of them asks. She looks nervous. “I’m not angry,” I reassure her.

  I can’t imagine telling them stories about my childhood with information that would frighten and confuse them. I make decisions about what’s appropriate and filter out what I can share. I share very little. When I mention this to Mario, he says, “That’s normal, no?”

  I COVER MY mouth so as not to pass on the germs and infect them. That’s normal. You don’t want to infect your children. You don’t want them to feel your pain and your sadness and your anger and your depression. You don’t want to expose them to sickness. You don’t want them to feel sorry for you. You want to insulate them from your suffering. That is normal. A normal I’ve never met. Normal is not exposing children to every feeling as it occurs.

  THERE IS A sign that hangs on the door of the bathroom. It reads Family Toilet, and underneath it has the girls’ names and Papa and Ariel allowed. We made the sign with watercolors and Magic Markers; colored it in and drew butterflies and stars.

  All of us use the same bathroom and there is no guaranteed privacy. This is new to me. I am sitting on the toilet when the door opens and the little girls walk in. “Hi, Ariel,” one of them says sweetly. The other one asks, “What are you doing?”

  At that instant, I’m unsure how to answer.

  In one week they will turn seven years old. What is the right age to explain what menstruation is? I know they are too young to understand, but I don’t want to lie.

  “This is something that happens when you grow up,” I begin slowly, trying to figure it out as I go along.

  They are listening carefully, the way they do when I’m about to tell them a story.

  “One day something happens to your body so that you will be able to have a baby.”

  I stop myself from going on. They’ve lost interest. They are standing by the sink, where they are playing with a can of shaving cream. One of them pumps a dollop of foam into her tiny hand and turns to me, “Like when we were in Mama’s belly.”

  “Exactly,” I say.

  I CAN’T IMAGINE wanting these little girls to identify with sorrow. I can’t imagine hitting them. Or slapping them across the face. Or kicking them or jerking them or squeezing their arm so tight it leaves a bruise. I can’t imagine promising something I don’t deliver. I can’t imagine accusing them of trying to hurt me or hating me or being jealous. I can’t imagine condemning them for not listening to my problems—or spewing words of contempt that shred their fragile self-esteem. I can’t imagine ignoring them when they plead for my attention or to be listened to. When they ask a steady stream of questions (“Is the tooth fairy real?” or “Why can we throw peanut shells on the sand and not plastic?” or “Why do flowers smell?” or “Is ketchup healthy?”), I can’t imagine ignoring their curiosity. Because they need to be heard, and at that moment, this is more important than anything else. They are hungry for attention. I can’t imagine starving them.

  THIS IS HOW it is now. These moments, filled to the brim with complicated narratives, are part of my life. And every moment I absorb how much attention they need, I experience how deprived I was. But this awareness of neglect is not a sorrowful feeling or a spasm of self-pity. It is a stunning and lucid clarity of the loss. Every moment I can’t imagine is also a moment of remorse, release, and emancipation.

  33

  After my mother sold a book that she wrote, she bought a Ferrari. It was an impulsive purchase. A fire-engine-red Testarossa convertible. She admired the beauty but it was the speed that she craved. It lived in a garage on East 86th Street. She didn’t have a driver’s license and never learned how to drive.

  Jeff, her laid-back, dope-smoking windsurfing instructor, drove the car. He’d pick her up and they’d take off, flying out of the city, sometimes for days at a time. There is a photograph of her in the passenger seat, hair blowing away from her face, arms straight up in the air. She has a smile that conveys total abandon. She could experience freedom—intermittent happiness—which was deeply felt. But it had no traction. And after a few months the car was gone. She told me she needed to sell it to pay for my school.

  ONE WALL OF the dining-room-library was covered with a large Cy Twombly painting. The canvas was tan with streaks of black and gray and splashes of red. My mother adored the painting and I got used to it being part of my everyday life. “This painting is very valuable,” she would say. “And one day it will be yours.” It was sold.

  NEXT TO THE painting was my favorite thing in the house. A vintage Charlie Chaplin Mutoscope from the 1930s—the kind of penny arcade machine that looked like a shiny red mailbox on stilts. It was cast iron and fully operational. When a penny was dropped into the slot, I would turn the crank and press my eyes into the viewer. A lightbulb would come on, and then a reel of Charlie Chaplin still photos would fall one at a time in front of the viewer, similar to a flip-book. The faster I turned the crank, the faster the images would fall, creating a sequence of movement. It was like watching a silent movie.

  The marquee on top of the machine had a black-and-white picture of Charlie Chaplin leaning on his cane, and the name of the film might have been Kiss Me Again. Below the crank was a locked metal drawer; this is where all the pennies would collect. There was no key to unlock it, but I figured out how to open it with a bobby pin. Once a month I would empty it out onto the dining room table. I’d use a glass goldfish bowl and fill it to the brim with pennies. Then I would carry the fishbowl of pennies in my arms to the bank around the corner. I’d hand it over to the bank teller and she’d give me in return several rolls of new copper pennies in stiff cardboard tubes.

  No matter how many times I’d seen the Charlie Chaplin movie, I never tired of watching it. It stopped working when one of my mother’s dinner guests drunkenly put a quarter in the slot meant for a penny. The quarter jammed in the slot, and my attempts to poke it down with a knife only made it worse. After that, the Charlie Chaplin machine remained in the same place, broken and out of order. But I liked having it around. “This machine is an antique,” my mother would say. “One day it will be yours.” It was sold.

  THROUGHOUT MY LIFE at 180, I listened to my mother’s constant refrain about the worth of the apartment. My mother owned it outright, and over the years, it had increased in value. This would only continue, she said, no matter what. It was a major asset. I was instructed to be grateful I had such a beautiful place to live; told to feel lucky I would have it forever. I did not have anxiety about financial security because my mother would reassure me that I would never have to worry. “You’re going to inherit a million-dollar apartment,” she would say. Under no circumstances would she sell it. “Do you understand?” Yes, I understood. There was a commitment to take care of me financially that accompanied the tremendous theatricality about her money woes. She would sacrifice so I didn’t have to.

  “You can count on it,” she said. The apartment was sold.

  34

  On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was in my studio apartment in the West Village. The phone call with my mother the night before had gone on for nearly an hour.

  “But you promised me!” she said, stamping her foot so forcefully, I could hear it hit the floor. She was having a tantrum. A bold, unabashed declaration of disappointment. Life as she knew it was over.

  “I didn’t promise you,” I said, calmly pointing out the truth for the sake of accuracy.

  “You did!” Her voice had the agony of a five-year-old denied an ice cream. “You promised you would be there and it’s my sixty-fifth birthday today and you are my only child. David has offered to have the party at his apartment, which is five minutes from where you live!” She heaved a sigh of disbelief. “Is it too much to ask that you would show up? I would think you might care about making me happy and want to be there.”

  When she got no response to this, she paused. “This is the last birthday party I’m ever having.”

  THIS IS THE last birthday party I�
��m ever having. She was turning forty. This is the last birthday party I’m having. She was forty-five. Forty-six. Forty-seven. The last birthday party was her fiftieth. Her fifty-fifth. Every year it was unquestionably the last birthday party she could afford to have, and every year I would hear her persuade guests to show up.

  She would plead: “Judy, you have to come. Everyone else is canceling. No one is going to be here.” She would lament: “I have all this food and booze and it’s just going to go to waste. You have to make it. Please. You have to.”

  Judy would promise to make it. Then my mother would add, “Make sure to be on time.”

  Judy would arrive to a living room filled with guests. She was on time. At least sixty people would already be there. Donald, the Goldbergs, James Earl Jones, the lady from the elevator, the tennis pro. I was stationed at the front door as the greeter. Instructed to say, “Please have a drink, my mother will be out soon.”

  SO WHEN THE phone rang, on the morning of September 11th, I assumed it was my mother again. When I answered, I was relieved to hear my friend’s voice on the other end. But he sounded cold.

  “Turn on the television,” he said. I reached for the remote and stood in front of the screen; I watched as the second plane hit the tower. I did not sit down. My friend, who had been silent on the line, said softly, “Oh my god!” and I gasped as well. I didn’t move. The sirens outside the window became increasingly louder; they didn’t fade into the distance, as they usually did, but continued to wail and the noise amplified. St. Vincent’s Hospital was on my street. Ambulances were arriving at an alarming rate. I heard my friend say, “I’ll call you back,” and he was gone.

  I didn’t move from the spot I was in. I couldn’t. Standing immobilized in front of the television screen, the cordless phone in my hand; it was a jolt when the phone rang again because I’d forgotten I was still holding on to it. I answered immediately, assuming it was my friend calling back.

  My mother says, “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  I tell her, “I’m watching it now.”

  “It’s awful. And David’s apartment is downtown.” She sounds distraught. “You realize that now no one will come to my birthday party.”

  35

  I arrive home from school and Charlie, the elevator man, is on duty. He has thick, oily black hair that is slicked back so that track marks from the comb are visible. I have known him for all of my twelve-year-old life, and other than to mumble “Good morning” or “Good evening,” he has rarely spoken with me. I am the only one in the car and I lean back against the wall, counting the floors as we move upward in silence. We reach the last stop and the elevator jolts to a halt. As he unlatches the metal gate, just before the heavy doors clang open, he says, “None of us like to go to Penthouse G.”

  WHEN DONALD STOPPED drinking, the scenes with my mother continued, but no matter how much she provoked him, he remained sober and unflappable. He went to a clinic in the Midwest and “dried out.” That’s how he referred to it. He had a health scare, and when he returned he was devoted to the Pritikin Diet. We would cook oatmeal together, and there was never a time when I didn’t want to have him around.

  “WE ALL LIVE in a yellow submarine. A yellow submarine! A yellow submarine!” My mother is singing and animated. She is sitting in the front seat of Donald’s lemon-yellow Cadillac and I am in the backseat, perched on the divider so that I can see straight ahead. The tan seats smell of leather and the three of us are heading up to Westchester on a Sunday to visit my grandmother in Scarsdale. There is a feeling of normalcy to this outing that puts my mother at ease. With Donald at the wheel, she is calm. He knows the way. He is wearing his “chauffeur’s hat,” a flat cap of brown corduroy. When we pass by a Kentucky Fried Chicken, Donald talks to me about the “secret recipe” and I ask him questions about Colonel Sanders. He answers me affectionately. As he drives, my mother sits in the passenger seat smoking and talking about herself.

  After the day at my grandmother’s, I dread the ride back to Manhattan. It gets dark as we approach the city, and there is a moment when my mother’s mood shifts and she begins to fixate on what happens when we get home. It is a Sunday night and she doesn’t want to be left alone. “I don’t want to spend the night by myself!” she shouts. Even though she is with me.

  AS I GOT older, Donald and I developed a friendship independent of my mother. There was a feeling of kinship. We had her in common. We always took each other’s side no matter what, and this would alternatively amuse or infuriate her. He was generous with his money and gave willingly, but it was his time that I valued the most. He helped me with homework when Josie had her day off. He showed up for my performances at school and on Parents’ Day. My friends thought he was my grandfather. And when I did well in school, he was proud of me.

  Donald never spoke a bad word to me about my father, and there was a mutual respect. “Donald is a good man,” my father would say. He was grateful that Donald was in my life.

  FOR THE FIFTEEN years that Donald and my mother were together, off and on as a couple, it was a mystery why Donald put up with the stress and aggravation. No one could understand. He didn’t need her. He had his own money. His own life. But in spite of my mother’s verbal and physical attacks, he wouldn’t desert her. The scenes were predictable, so much so that he became accustomed to them. He was adamant they would never live together, but she never gave up hounding him.

  After the apartment at 180 was sold, my mother moved us into a building on Third Avenue directly next door to his. It took her less than five minutes to be in his lobby when he refused to pick up the phone and speak to her.

  Sometimes she would have my grandmother call to beg him to forgive her. My grandmother would cry into the phone, “Please, Donald, you know how she is. She can’t help herself. She needs you. Don’t abandon her.”

  He would forgive my mother. Was it guilt? Duty? Probably attachment, too. Years later, after he died, I understood that it was me he didn’t want to abandon.

  IN 2000, DONALD’S obituary ran in the New York Times. My mother is mentioned as his “companion of many years.” There is a reference to his wicked sense of humor and how he once had a denim jacket made with a heart on the back and his phone number smack in the middle. It notes that my mother, “who lived with him at the time, remembered being less than charmed.” I smiled when I read that she lived with him. She had most likely written that part of the obituary herself or supplied information to the reporter. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t true. In the end, she got her way.

  36

  Mary Poppins!” my mother exclaims with the enthusiasm of a little girl. She is gleeful. Giddy with anticipation. “It’s my favorite!”

  In a few days it will be my mother’s seventy-fifth birthday, and I have agreed to see a show with her on Broadway. This is the one she has chosen. I’ve let her know I’m in New York for a brief period before I return to London. She has extracted a promise that I will spend time with her. And she wants to go to the theater. A play or a musical. “Just the two of us.”

  WHEN MY MOTHER spends time with me, she will frequently bring someone along she wants me to meet. Whom I have to meet. “He’s heard so much about you,” she’ll say, referring to this new Very Important Person in her life. Someone she met on the bus. Or in an elevator. Or in line for a brownie during intermission at the ballet. She will have introduced herself in a way that has made them instantly believe their lives will be enriched, personally and professionally, by knowing her. She will teach them. She will help them. They are beguiled by her charm.

  I have to meet this person. He is investing in her musical. I have to meet her new best friend. I have to meet her new student. Her new assistant. Her helper. The composer. The nutritionist who has changed her life.

  I’ll point out to her that we have limited time and I’d rather spend it alone with her. She’ll plead with me: “They’ll just come to say hello and leave. They really want to meet you—to know you exi
st!”

  My mother will complain to this new best friend about my neglect of her, and the new best friend will sympathize. What a horrible situation. What an insensitive daughter. My mother will push this person to get involved. To advocate on her behalf. She will give out my email address and my phone number, and the call will come. It begins with: “Hi, Ariel, you don’t know me, but I met your mother recently and she’s asked me to get in touch with you.”

  But I know the Very Important Person in her life is a transient. Months, often only weeks later, the story will change and the new best friend will be the enemy. The investor was a user. The helper was incompetent. The story will end with: they screwed me over and turned out to be a fraud.

  THERE IS A first-grade production of Mary Poppins at the Hewitt School, and I have a solo in the song “A Spoonful of Sugar” and have been practicing for weeks.

  Rita has arrived at the school auditorium early and Josie sits next to her. They save seats in a row near the front. The floor of the gym is filled with rows of metal stacking chairs facing the stage. The chairs are covered with a hot-pink plastic padding. My grandmother has made the trip in from Scarsdale and sits next to Uncle Jud, my father’s brother, who has traveled from upstate New York to be there as well. In the row where they are seated, there is an empty chair saved for my mother.