Close to Home

by Cynthia Baxter

  “Dolly’s not dying,” Violet said defensively. “And it is big news. It’s causing Peter to reevaluate everything in his life. For him it’s a major life crisis.”

  “He told you all this?”

  “Leah did. She called me last week, when he wasn’t around. You know Peter. This is the kind of thing he would never want his mother to know.”

  Right, thought Jess. Whereas I would immediately go rushing home to Mom with a piece of news like that, hoping for a pat on the head.

  She could remember hurrying home from school, into this very living room, in fact, bubbling over with the news that her poem had been chosen for the sixth-grade literary magazine. Telling her parents about it, even then, was more meaningful than actually seeing it in print. They had been proud, of course, and she had basked in the feeling of knowing that she had pleased them. Peter, by contrast, didn’t even mention that he had gotten into one of the country’s foremost art colleges. His parents didn’t find out until the admissions director telephoned Violet to ask whether or not he would require assistance finding a student apartment.

  “All right, Mom. So somebody offered Peter a job. What kind of job?”

  “An art job. Being an artistic adviser for some superduper corporation. I think it’s IBM—or maybe it’s Exxon. I forget. At any rate, he would help them decide which young artists to buy paintings and sculpture from. He’d be sort of a corporate type, believe it or not. Our Peter, with his name on the door.”

  Jessica could see where all this was leading. With a sigh of defeat, she said, “All right. Mom. What do you want me to do about it?”

  Violet’s eyes lit up. She had won.

  “Go talk to him. See what’s going on with him. Find out if you can help him. Give him some advice.”

  And then report back every single word of the conversation to me.

  Once again, Jessica’s impatience with her mother was mixed up with that confusing meshing of being both daughter and mother. In other words, she could see Violet’s point.

  She glanced at Sammy, still in the kitchen pushing Mallomars into his mouth, looking like the star of a Clorox commercial with his hands, face, and shirt streaked with chocolate. What if it were her son who was pursuing a career as a sculptor? That was easy enough to imagine as she watched him reach over and gleefully pulverize the remaining Mallomars with his fists. What if he were an artist who was suddenly invited to sell out? Wouldn’t she, too, want to be involved? Wouldn’t she crave information, reacting the same way she had when Sammy had been the only child in Miss Linda’s nursery to refuse to submit to fingerprinting on Police Day?

  “All right, Mom. I’ll talk to him. I’ll see if I can find out what’s up.’’

  “A telephone call won’t do it, Jessica. You know Peter’s no good over the phone.’’

  “Right.” Lucky Peter, who had permission to be almost totally uncommunicative. “I’ll pack up Sammy and we’ll go to Hoboken.”

  “Hey, Sammy,” she called into the kitchen, “guess what? We’re going to New Jersey. You’ve never seen yellow air before, have you?”

  * * * *

  A visit to Peter’s loft in Hoboken always reminded Jessica of a trip into another dimension. It was mainly the city itself. Hoboken was one of those places that actually deserved all the jokes that were routinely made about it. It consisted of a congested mass of dark, heavy buildings, populated by people with dark, heavy expressions. It brought to mind all those Upton Sinclair and Frank Norris novels about the evils of the city, stories about young women enslaved in factories, about watered-down milk for undernourished children, and above all about the feeling of doom because there was no way out. The only good thing she could ever think of to say about Hoboken was that it was close to New York City. But then again, so was Riker’s Island.

  Peter’s loft was in a neighborhood that was supposed to be changing. From what Jessica had observed over the past six years or so, ever since Peter and Leah had moved there from Avenue A in Manhattan, all that had changed were the rents. She made a point of stashing her car radio in the trunk of the Volvo before locking all the doors. She gave it one last mournful look before leaving it parked on the street and heading toward the ex-button factory that her brother called home. Abandoning her beloved vehicle in this neck of the urban woods, she half believed that she would never see it again.

  “Say bye-bye to the Volvo,” she instructed Sammy as she picked him up and carried him off to his uncle’s apartment.

  In an effort to revitalize Peter’s building, someone who fancied him- or herself an artistic being had painted the hallways an interesting collection of contrasting colors.

  The first floor was painted orange, a warning to the unprepared visitor to expect the unexpected. Lime green on the second floor; that color was popping up in the most unexpected places these days, rearing its hideous head as it seemed to once every decade or so. Raspberry on the third floor, an electric shade of blue on the fourth. By the time Jessica reached the Day-Glo yellow fifth floor, where her brother lived, she felt a little bit of a migraine coming on.

  As soon as Leah opened the door, Jessica was as unsettled as usual by the carefully constructed chaos. The furniture was a representative- sampling from a variety of periods and styles: quasi-antiques rescued from other people’s curbs on trash collection day, a sleek red Naugahyde chair from the fifties, a few metal folding chairs in industrial gray. Interspersed throughout were the tools of Peter’s trade; here and there were impromptu work areas, identifiable by the clutter of paints and glues and all manner of media that had been left behind.

  And then, of course, there was the artwork itself. While Jessica loved her brother, and liked to think she understood him pretty well, she had yet to come to grips with the mishmash of Styrofoam Big Mac boxes and cardboard Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets that he routinely glued together to create something he considered art—an evaluation which, much to Jessica’s never-ending incredulity, was on occasion shared by others.

  Leah wasted no time in leaning forward to give Jessica a big welcoming hug, the long, tense, sincere kind that faith healers were always giving to true believers.

  “Hello, Leah,” Jessica gasped, not quite able to catch her breath.

  “Oh, Jessica, it’s so nice that you’ve come.” She stood aside to let her guest enter the loft apartment that, in Jessica’s eyes, still retained much of the charm of its original incarnation as a sweatshop. “It always means so much to Peter.”

  An ambiguous greeting, if she’d ever heard one.

  “It’s nice to be here,” Jessica returned.

  “And how is little Sammy today?’’ Leah snuck a peek behind Jessica, where the little boy was hiding out while he cased the joint.

  Once he saw that it was Aunt Leah he was visiting, he hopped inside the apartment, gleeful with anticipation. As was so often the case, he associated her with the snack she had given him the last time he had seen her: granola confections disguised as oatmeal cookies.

  “O’meal! O’meal!” he cried, immediately switching his first allegiance from his mother to someone with the potential to supply him with sugar.

  “Okay, Sammy,” said Lean. “Let’s go get Peter, and then you can come with me to the kitchen and I’ll see what I can find for you. Besides,” she said to Jessica, “I’m in the middle of baking bread, and I think it’s just about time to start punching down.”

  Leah was probably the only woman in the state of New Jersey who baked her own bread. She moved like a ghost in an old movie: gracefully, slowly, her feet not quite touching the ground. Her airiness was complemented by her waist-length wheat-colored hair, lost somewhere between blond and brown. It was her wardrobe, however, that Jessica found the most fascinating. Today she was wearing a full skirt that had been batiked in purple, a Grateful Dead T-shirt, and her usual pair of Birkenstock sandals, this time with knee socks.

  Still, Jessica had to admit that in one way she admired Leah. The woman seemed to be cloaked in ser
enity, as if deep down she had reached an understanding of what it was all about and accepted it totally, without rage, conflict, or stomach ulcers. And she was only twenty-eight years old.

  When Peter emerged from the back corner of the loft, his hands were covered with red paint and his eyes had that slightly crazed look they took on whenever he was working. But the wide smile on his face let her know how pleased he was to see her.

  “Hey, Jessie! Have you brought word from the outside world?” He gave her a hug, being careful not to touch.

  “Peter. You look great.”

  “And you, Sis, look like a page out of the L.L. Bean catalogue.”

  “Oh, I do not. You’re just trying to get me riled.”

  “No, I meant it as a compliment! Honest! Hey, come on in and sit down.’’ He ushered into the area of the loft that had been designated as the living room. “Don’t mind the mess. I was working on something new.”

  “Oh, really? What is it? Or is it a secret?”

  “It’s no secret. It’s a statement about vegetarianism. I’m taking the wrappers from Big Macs and Whoppers and all the junk foods with meat in them and building a tombstone out of them. Then I’m dripping blood—well, really it’s red paint—all over it. Get it?”

  “I get it,” Jessica said solemnly, nodding. “It sounds very . . . appealing.”

  “Well, you know, Jess, it’s a statement I’ve just got to make. It’s what our society is all about, after all. Junk food is the symbol of the American people, a people obsessed with junk. A society that prefers mystery meat to good wholesome food, one that accepts strawberry milk shakes made without ice cream or even real strawberries. A society whose emotions are as disposable as the wrapper from an order of onion rings, whose values are as distorted as the mouth on Ronald McDonald’s face. . . .”

  “Peter, I’m not sure your sister is interested in hearing all this.’’ Leah had come in purposefully from the kitchen area of the loft. She perched lightly on the arm of the couch that was upholstered in garish gold brocade, complete with fringe all around the bottom. Her hands were white with flour, living proof that it had, indeed, been time to punch down. She and Peter together looked like participants in a minstrel show.

  “Actually,” Jessica said, clearing her throat, “I came because Mom asked me to. I understand that there’s trouble here in River City.”

  There was confusion in Leah’s eyes as she forced a small, bland smile. Obviously she had missed the allusion to The Music Man. Jessica immediately felt like a fool, someone loutish who had crossed into foreign territory but had lacked the sensitivity to switch to the native tongue. While Jessica basically liked Leah—Leah being the kind of person that anyone would feel guilty for not liking—she often found herself resenting the fact that whatever cleverness she happened to possess was completely wasted on her.

  “You must be talking about the job offer,” Peter translated, casting a sidelong glance at his ladylove. “Yeah, I figured Mom would interpret it as a life crisis.”

  “You mean it’s not?” Jessica was disappointed. She only hoped her poor Volvo wouldn’t end up being the real victim in this fool’s errand.

  Peter shrugged. “There’s no decision to be made. There never really was.”

  Jessica stared at him blankly. “Pardon me for being slow, but does that mean of course you’ll take the job or of course you won’t?”

  “Oh, Jessica,” Leah said, addressing her with so much patience and kindness it was as if she were a child who had just lovingly delivered a bouquet of weeds to her mother, “you know Peter would never be happy in a job like that. It would stifle him too much.”

  “It would also give him paid vacations and a dental plan.” Jessica realized that she sounded terribly bourgeois, but she was suddenly irritated with her brother. And it wasn’t that he had turned the job down as much as because he had had no doubts about that being the only thing for him to do.

  “I don’t get it, Peter,” she went on, turning to face him, deliberately cutting Leah out of her view. “What would be so terrible about joining the human race?”

  “You mean joining the rat race,” he answered, smiling. “I already belong to the human race, whether I want to or not.”

  “I guess what I really mean is, when are you going to grow up?”

  “Ah, Jessica,” he said, shaking his head slowly.

  “Excuse me,” Leah said brightly, standing up. “I’ll go check on Sammy. Besides, it’s time to preheat.”

  “What is it with you, Peter?” Jessica demanded. “I don’t get it. Here this golden opportunity just falls into your lap, a chance to do what you’re interested in doing, what you’re really good at, something that would provide you with security and money and contacts . . . and you won’t even consider it.”

  “First of all,” Peter explained calmly, “looking at the so-called artistic expression of others and deciding which is good and which is excrement is not something that I am, quote, ‘interested in doing.’ As for being good at it, well, that’s neither here nor there. I’d probably be great at being a telephone operator or selling shoes, if I put my mind to it, but that doesn’t mean I’m filling out job applications for jobs at Buster Brown.’’

  “And I suppose the bit about money and security is worst of all, right?”

  Peter just laughed. “What about you, Jess? I could say the same for you, you know. What’s the difference between my position and yours? You’re one of those people who’s full of great earning potential and all that, somebody who has a lot to contribute to society. But you’re not. You’re doing the same thing I’m doing.

  “Sure, we both know that if we were starving, we could go and get a job tomorrow. I could sell those shoes at Buster Brown, and you could become queen of the corporation. But for now, you and I are doing what we tell ourselves we should be doing. We’re answering a higher calling—you, motherhood; me, high art—and the rest of the world, including security and money and all that good stuff, be damned.

  “Anyway, I could say that,” he concluded, a strange smile on his lips. “But I don’t.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “All right, boys and girls, it’s time for us all to be little froggies. Let’s get down on the floor and practice saying, ‘ri-bet!’ “

  Jessica discreetly clamped her hands over her ears, pretending she was pushing back some renegade strands of hair. The Thursday afternoon story hour at the Sea Cliff children’s library was just getting under way, and Sammy and a dozen other preschoolers were sitting in a loose circle amid the low shelves of books and colorful beanbag chairs, revving up for some heavy audience participation.

  “Those were excellent ribets,” the children’s librarian exclaimed, “Now, how are we at jumping? The little froggie in the book we’re going to read today is a very good jumper. Okay, my froggie friends . . . jump!”

  Jessica turned to the book she had brought along, one that had neither ribets nor jumping in it but promised to be engaging just the same. Before she had gotten through the first paragraph, however, she became aware of someone moving over to her.

  “Excuse me, but aren’t you Sammy’s mother?”

  Jessica blinked a few times, trying to place the vaguely familiar face. Automatically she glanced at the crowd of would-be frogs hopping around on the carpet, certain that with just a little prompting she would be able to match up mother and child.

  “Yes, I am. And you’re . . . Oh, of course. You’re Robert’s mother, aren’t you? From Sammy’s nursery school?”

  “Right you are!” The plump woman looked pleased to have been recognized. She pulled up a small wooden chair and sat down. “It’s nice to see someone I know at one of these,” she said pleasantly. “You’re not one of the regulars, are you?”

  “This is my first time. I hadn’t even heard about this story hour until a few days ago. My next-door neighbor told me about it.”

  “Well, it’s nice for the kids when they know some of the others here. Miss Li
nda told me that Robert and Sammy are great friends. By the way, my name is Alice.”

  “I’m Jessica.” With a self-conscious laugh, she added, “It’s nice to know we all have names besides ‘Sammy’s mother’ and ‘Robert’s mother.’”

  “I know what you mean. Even though I sometimes feel as if that’s all I am these days.’’

  “You, too? And here I’ve been thinking I was the only one.’’

  Just then one of the younger girls in the room let out a shriek. Watching her frazzled mother dart after her, Alice asked, “Are you planning to have any more?”

  “I’m afraid we’re still recovering from the first.”

  “I know what you mean. I want to have another ... I mean, I always thought it made sense to have two kids. But every time I try to psych myself up for it—Oh, excuse me, will you?” She jumped off her chair. “Robert, you know we don’t hit. We never, ever hit.’’

  Jessica was left alone again, feeling a bit heartened. Maybe I’m not quite the stranger in a strange land I’ve been feeling myself to be, she thought, observing with great interest the way in which a fellow mother handled her son’s caveman instincts. She was so absorbed in watching Alice, in fact, that she didn’t notice when someone else came into the library.

  “Hey, babe, come here often?”

  Jessica nearly toppled off her pint-sized chair. “Terry! You’re the last person in the world I’d expect to see here.’’

  “Well, it’s true that this isn’t one of my usual haunts. But I happened to be doing some errands and I noticed your car parked right outside. So I figured I’d take a chance.”

  Jessica cocked her head to one side and smiled. “This must be your lucky day.”

  “I’ll say. Not only did I manage to track you down; now I can check out all those Dr. Seuss books I’ve been meaning to catch up on.” He grew serious. “Listen, Jess, I’ve got another mission for you.”

  She held her hands out and pretended to examine her fingernails. “I don’t suppose that this time it’s a manicurist, by any chance?”