The Real Mother

by Judith Michael

  “You can do so many things,” Sara had said on the phone on Sunday, “if you just settle on one project or one area and then concentrate on it. Take it one step at a time. Give yourself a chance, Pussy. If no one else will, you have to be the one to do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Give yourself a chance. Believe in yourself.”

  Suddenly, Pussy was desperate to call Sara. She had to talk to her, hear her voice, believe she was real, believe everything she said. Without thinking, she pushed back her chair.

  “My dear,” said Lew, the smoothness of it grating across Pussy’s skin. “Is there something you need?”

  They were all looking at her, the first time since dinner had begun. “Just…to make a phone call,” she said.

  “But surely it can wait until later. We’ll need you soon for the dessert.”

  She hovered between sitting and standing.

  One of the men on her right said, “Well, if it’s important…”

  Lew drummed his fingers, lightly, almost delicately.

  “No.” She sank down. “It can wait.”

  A server pushed her chair back to the table. Without looking at Lew, she restored her fixed smile, gestured for wine, and drifted away.

  Lew had been the nicest of all of them. His wife had died and he lived alone in a cavernous apartment overlooking the reservoir in Central Park; the first time Pussy saw it she felt blinded by the light. In those days she was alone, too, cleaning house and cooking for an elderly couple in exchange for a bedroom and her own bathroom in the basement of a house in Queens; two window wells filtered a sooty gray light that blinked on and off as people walked by. Lew’s effulgent rooms, his masterful voice and bulk and sleek suits, and his broad hands, in bed, turning her compliant obesity this way and that, shoving her head between his legs, pushing her to crouch on all fours, her buttocks high, gave her subservience a new meaning. By the time he announced to her employers that she was leaving, she adored him and lumbered beside him to his apartment feeling ecstatically secure.

  They were married two years later, when she could zip up a wedding dress, apply makeup with a skillful hand, and speak only when her husband addressed her. Four years ago. When Pussy Corcoran, humming her new name to herself, believed that all her dreams had come true, exactly as she had dreamed them.

  She believed that from the moment Lew told her he would marry her to the first time (the only time) she had tried to show an interest in his work. She had turned her eager face to his and he had told her, not, then, unkindly, that she was to show interest in him only in bed and running his home. Anything to do with business was his. Only his. Not, he added, a difficult concept for her to grasp.

  “…the last parcel that size on the Fox River,” Pussy heard Lew say, “with a town close by.”

  “But Carrano bought it.”

  “And doesn’t have annexation approval from River Bend.”

  “So, they’ll build the town without approval.”

  “The county won’t allow it.”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “They don’t want another independent municipality, like a Carrano Village West, with its own mayor and city council, and they want to upgrade River Bend without spending county money. They can do that by annexing a heavily subsidized village, or, even easier, they can watch jobs and taxes pour in from a casino. I’ve got three sure votes out of five against giving Carrano annexation approval, and in favor of our casino.”

  “Promises are easy to forget.”

  “These were paid for, with another payment due after the vote. They won’t forget.”

  There was silence.

  “But if Carrano can upgrade the town, why wouldn’t they just vote to give him the annexation? Simplest thing, seems to me, without them starting to futz about Mafia or what all, people always do, with casinos. So they vote to annex, and you’re out.”

  “They’ll vote for the casino. They won’t want the town built, period.”

  “Why the fuck not? Carrano’s got every approval but annexation, and you said the town needs help, and, like I said, villages are clean; nobody worries about Mafia and all. So who’s gonna stop it?”

  “The people.” Corcoran smiled thinly. “This is a democracy, remember? The kid’s out there convincing every hick Carrano’s a danger to their way of life. He’s good: honest face, big smile, nice way with words. Got a few hundred for a demonstration last Saturday—marchers, speakers, even had TV crews—and he’ll be doing more of them, get a few hundred more each weekend. Keep things boiling; you think any politician’s gonna vote against a local uprising?”

  The kid, Pussy thought, the one whose eyes scared her. She had blessed some amorphous God (whom she could not believe in; she wanted to, but Lew always said the weak knelt and prayed, the strong stood up and did) when she saw that he was not among tonight’s guests.

  “So when do you figure to break ground?”

  “Couple years. Soon as the legislature votes the license, we’ll start the hotel and the dock for the boat.”

  “With the locals cheering you on? They’re gonna like a hotel and riverboat casino better than a new town?”

  “They like money. You think there’s any other reason legalized gambling’s popping up all over the place? River towns are dying right and left when their factories fold: old run-down places on the Fox River, the Illinois, the Mississippi, all of ’em with blue-collar people with nowhere to go, nothing to do, their houses rotting away. They screamed loud enough, they got riverboats. Casinos. Jobs, tourists—busloads of optimists and bored housewives—and tax money. The towns get all spiffed up, and the states rake in their share; they raise taxes every year on the casinos and use the money for schools. You tell me who’s gonna vote against that.”

  “You’re sure of all this.”

  “We’ve been doing a lot of legwork.”

  Carrano, Pussy thought. I’ve heard of that. Somebody talked about it and Lew was interested. I can always tell; his right ear jerks, like a dog that hears something. Her smile widened. Like a dog.

  But who said it? She tried to remember. It was in some place with people and …waiters! A restaurant, and Sara was there. And then she remembered: Sara with a man, older, stern looking, and he stood up and pushed forward so she and Lew had to step back. And when Lew asked who he was, or something like that, the man—Reuben! His name was Reuben! She remembered!—said he had something to do with Carrano Village. And Lew’s ear jerked forward.

  Maybe Sara was involved with Carrano Village. Close to Reuben, close to Carrano Village. And Lew was trying to stop her. I have to warn her, Pussy thought. I can’t let Lew do anything to hurt her. She’s my only friend.

  Through the warm buzz of the wine she’d drunk, she tried to focus on what they were saying.

  “…twenty percent,” Lew said. “The family’s keeping a million shares; the rest we’re offering at sixty.”

  “Can’t buy into something that might be a pipe dream, shit, Lew, you know that. What if you never build it?”

  “We’ll build it. We’re starting the day after we buy the land from Carrano. We figure he’ll have to sell in the next six, eight months; he’s got too much tied up to let it drag on much longer. Soon as he knows he can’t annex, which means he can’t build, he’ll dump it, and we’ll pick it up.”

  “So that’s when we’ll talk about buying in.”

  In his deadly patient voice, Lew said, “We’re offering two hundred sixty thousand shares. You want options, now’s the time. We’re opening it up soon as we break ground. Let me know.”

  “How’s the fishing out there?”

  “Smallmouth, carp, some others. Not as good as it used to be, too polluted, but still good.”

  “Shoulda been with us last week, four days on the Roaring Fork, best trout you’ll ever see.”

  Pussy shut them out. Fishing, she thought angrily. I want to hear about Sara.

  “My love?”

  Lew was loo
king at her, smiling, his eyes flat.

  “The dessert,” he said.

  A server pulled back her chair, freeing her from the table. Pussy went to the kitchen. The chef had the copper serving dish ready for her, rows of crêpes perfectly overlapped from end to end. Lew had told her this was to be her contribution to the evening. Once, in New York, he had admired a hostess who carried a blazing dessert to the table like a proud queen bearing a sacred flame. “You’ll do that,” he had said to Pussy, who had quailed, and prayed that he would forget.

  But Lew did not forget anything. And so Pussy stood beside the chef, ladling warmed cognac over the crêpes. “Madame is too generous,” the chef said sternly, but she was afraid of walking in flamelessly, and added one more portion. She hoisted the heavy dish and went to the swinging door. “Light it,” she ordered. The chef shook his head, but held a long, lighted match to the crêpes, and Pussy entered the dining room.

  Flames shot up, singeing her hair. Flames cascaded over the edges of the dish in a molten cataract, engulfing her hands and wrists. With a cry, she dropped the dish, and flames spread over the carpet to the seven pairs of patent leather shoes beneath the table. The men leaped up and began stamping on the carpet, crushing crêpes and kicking aside the copper dish like a flaming football.

  Pussy floated away, and, from her safe distance, watched wonderingly. The scene was frenzied and seething, like a performance video in an art museum: six sleek, dark-suited figures vaulting up and down, rising like specters from a bed of flames, making strange cries of gleeful abandon. Only Lew was unmoving, standing rigidly at the head of the table. Pussy saw him peripherally, but, raptly absorbed in the spectacle before her, did not look his way. This was her doing. The leaping, the high-pitched cries, the sudden life that awakened the stark, cavernous dining room…her doing, all hers. She was smiling: powerful, buoyant, alive.

  But soon the flames subsided to scattered flickers of blue, and then died away. A ragged oval of charred carpet remained when the men, their gleeful faces turning sheepish, returned to their chairs. As one, they replaced sheepishness with concern. “Not serious, you know.” “Shouldn’t have dessert anyway; bad for my belt size.” “Too bad about the carpet.” “There’s a guy can fix that, little Armenian can do anything. I’ll give you his name…”

  At last Pussy glanced at Lew’s stony face. He’ll kill me, she thought, and fled.

  She could not go to the bedroom; it was the first place he would look for her. She ducked into the library, opened one of the pair of mahogany doors into Lew’s study, and pulled it shut behind her. He would never look for her here; it was forbidden territory.

  She circled the room, the only human-size one in the apartment, staying close to the walls, trying to imagine the future. Her steps were short and desperate and it occurred to her that observers would say she looked like a mouse on a wheel, or a laboratory monkey frantically searching for an escape from a pen. And they’d be right.

  She sat on the leather couch. She hated leather; it was slippery and cold, resistant to curling up in a protective ball. In a minute she was pattering about the room again. I’ll run away. I won’t take anything of Lew’s, I’ll just go to Sara and she’ll take care of me.

  She stood at the desk and picked up the telephone. She knew the number by heart. “Sara!” she cried. “Thank heavens you’re there. Can I come to live with you?”

  “Live with me? You’re leaving your husband?”

  “Yes, yes, yes. I have to, have to get out, I’ve made him so angry, furious, furious, I can’t stay, he’ll kill me.”

  “You don’t mean that, Mrs. Corcoran. Of course he won’t kill you—”

  “He will! He will! He’s so—”

  “But you’ve told me he’s been angry at you before, and every time he’s calmed down. Was that the truth… that he calmed down and everything was all right again?”

  “It’s like”—Pussy dropped into Lew’s swivel chair. Leather again, but she had no choice, her legs crumpled—“you tell yourself everything’s all right, but you can’t forget what somebody said, and he can’t forget, either, so it stays underneath everything, and it keeps hurting, so, no, I guess nothing is all right, not really, not ever.” She was drawing circles, smaller circles inside them, circles trapped within circles, the pen gouging the sheet of paper as the circles became more desperate. “And this time I did something terrible, stupid, I ruined his dinner party and he’ll never forgive me, business is the only thing he really truly cares about and I made a mess of it…”

  “The whole evening or just some of it?”

  Sara’s practical voice cut through Pussy’s wailing. “Dessert.”

  “So something went wrong with dessert. Surely that’s forgivable.”

  “That was my only part, all I had to do. Except keep quiet and smile a lot.” Her pen slashed through the circles. “Sara, I can’t stay here, I don’t have anyplace to go, I don’t know anybody but you, please, Sara, please let me live with you! I won’t be any trouble, I’ll clean house—I know how—I’ll do whatever you want, please, please…” She clamped her palm over her mouth to stifle her sobs, feeling ashamed. Sara wouldn’t cry; she was too strong for that.

  “I’ll try to find a place for you tonight,” Sara said at last. “I’m afraid it isn’t a good idea for you to come here. Believe me, Mrs. Corcoran, I’ll—”

  “Call me Pussy! You never call me that! I’ve asked you before, and you ignore me! It’s like you don’t like me!”

  “I do like you. And I want to help you. I promise I’ll find you a safe place to stay while you think about what you’ll do next. You can’t make decisions when you’re so upset; you need quiet and time. Everything will be all right, really it will. You’re a strong person; you can make a good life; I’ll do what I can to help you decide what to do next. I’ll call you in an hour and tell you—”

  “No! Don’t call here! I’ll call you. But half an hour, is that all right? He’ll still be at dinner.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. And …try to keep calm. Whatever is going on, you won’t do yourself any good by losing control.”

  Slowly, Pussy hung up the telephone. Whatever is going on. Didn’t Sara believe her? If she couldn’t count on Sara, she had no hope at all.

  And she didn’t call me Pussy.

  But she said I’m strong. A strong person, she said. A good life. She wouldn’t say that if she didn’t mean it.

  Pussy crooned the words to herself. A strong person. A good life. She put her head in her hands and sobbed.

  Her tears fell on the papers spread on the desk, and she gasped, terrified again. She wiped the tears away with the side of her hand, pulled a tissue from a box behind her, and swiped it across the pages, wrinkling the top one. Oh, God, she thought, and, in a panic, crumpled the page completely and thrust it into the wastebasket, all the way to the bottom. Everything else looked fine. As good as new.

  The pages were covered with long columns of numbers interspersed with close text; they jumped about in front of her, black on white, white on black, dizzying gibberish, and she thought of Lew, working with them, manipulating them as he manipulated people, moving through worlds and worlds of which she knew nothing. Just as she knew nothing of him. She had slept with him, married him, traveled with him, made two homes with him (if anyone could call them that), and if she were asked to write a brief description of who and what was Lew Corcoran, she could not do it.

  Incredibly, she dozed a few seconds—minutes?—her head resting on her interlaced fingers, her elbows amid Lew’s papers. She jerked upright and tried to focus on the clock, embedded in a world globe. Forty minutes since she had called Sara. Oh, God, she’s probably gone out; she has other things to do than worry about me…

  She snatched up the telephone and punched in the number. “Sara! I thought you’d gone out.”

  “How could I, when I promised I’d take care of you?”

  A warm flood of gratitude lifted Pussy; her back straighte
ned. Sara was taking care of her. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you—” And then the double doors of the office split apart and Lew was there.

  “—Gardner,” Sara was saying. “Nancy has an empty caretaker’s apartment; you can stay there as long as you like. Her address is…do you have a pencil?”

  Staring at Lew, Pussy whispered, “Yes,” but her hands were frozen and helpless.

  “One thirty-four Elm; gray stone, a few stone statues in front. It’s ten minutes by taxi from your apartment. You’ll go there tonight?”

  “Yes,” Pussy whispered.

  “What’s wrong?” Sara said sharply. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing. I… I’ll do that. What you said.” Her hands were shaking, and the telephone rattled as she hung up.

  “How much have you read?” His voice was gravelly. He was still in the doorway.

  “Nothing.” Her eyes widened. What about the crêpes?

  “Nothing,” he snorted. “Spread out in front of you.”

  “But I don’t under— I saw a lot of numbers but I don’t understand them. What they mean. They’re just…numbers. Words. They jumped around.”

  “I’ve told you to keep out of here.”

  “I know, Lew, but you were so angry—” Don’t remind him! Don’t bring it up! “I just needed a place to be quiet.”

  “So you chose my office. To spy on me. You fucking bitch, it wasn’t enough to make a spectacle of yourself in there, to make a fool of me by being the class clown—”

  The telephone rang. Pussy stared at it. Sara calling her back, wondering why she had hung up, why she had been whispering. Her hand went out to it.

  “Leave it.” He moved a step into the room. Without raising his voice over the endless ringing, he said, “And on top of everything, you spy on me …for what? Did you think you could blackmail me into forgetting that farce in the dining room? Isn’t bed your place for blackmail? Stupid little cunt, trying to—”