by Corine Gantz
Was it a relationship?
What she ought to do, while she waited for Jared, was call her mother. But this simple act was beyond her capacity. All she could do was think of calling her mother and marvel at the relief she experienced from not calling.
When the house filled with noise again, she retreated to her bedroom, sat at her desk, and doodled on Post-Its, bits of construction paper leftover from the children’s homework, even cigarette paper and the backs of subway tickets.
A few nights earlier, she and Jared were sitting at a bar. While Jared spoke with an acquaintance in a French much too rapid for her to follow, she had doodled on the back of his beer coaster. She had felt Jared’s eyes on her hand. “Tu dessines bien,” he said. You draw well. This was a statement, not necessarily a compliment, neither was it a mark of surprise. She did not see him pocket her drawing, a jumble of branches and birds, and she was shocked to find it pinned above her desk the next day. “Tu ne jettes rien, d’accord?” he told her. Don’t throw anything away. “You exhibit, now.” So now she kept her doodles and scotch-taped them next to the first one and watched her wall come to life in a way that somehow made her proud.
Around dinnertime, they had a ritual. She waited in her room and Jared tapped at her bedroom door. He looked happy when he entered, smelling of cigarettes and coffee and carrying a tray with their dinner. Here too she had resigned to follow his cue. This would be her only meal of the day. They ate it as they sat cross-legged on her bed, the tray of food between them. Jared ate but mostly watched her eat. When he was not satisfied with the way things were going, for example if she took too small a bite, or if she slowed down her eating, he would take his fork and food to her lips. She agonized about every bite and worried about the food that would be digested before she could get rid of it in the bathroom.
She wasn’t sure what to make of Jared’s obsession with food and began to hope it meant that he loved her. She wondered what would happen if he did not come. She wondered if she would be too embarrassed to go downstairs and ask for food herself.
Lola sat on the edge of her bed next to Lia in the girly pink room, under the canopy sprinkled with silk daisies. Lia was inconsolable. Her face was in her hands and her thin shoulders moved with each silent sob as Simon, seemingly oblivious, nudged coins between the cracks of the old wood floor and under the rug.
She wanted to caress Lia’s hair, but stopped herself—Like Mark, Lia had trouble expressing emotions other than anger—and waited. She hoped this was about a fight with the boys. She hoped it was about school. She hoped it was anything but the topic of Mark, a topic avoided in an unspoken agreement. Why did Lia no longer bring up her dad? Did her daughter understand it all but refuse to ask for fear of getting her worst fears confirmed? Was Lola tricking herself into thinking that Lia and Simon weren’t traumatized?
Lia lifted her head finally, and looked at her through tears and fire. “You’re so mean!” she cried.
Up until she met Annie, Lola believed it was a good mother’s job to be her child’s emotional punching bag. If not your mother, then who? Now she wasn’t so sure how to react to Lia’s anger. “What did I do this time?” she asked. Her sarcasm was really Annie’s sarcasm, but in her own mouth it sounded awful.
Lia looked at her in disbelief. Tears sprang from her eyes. “Why aren’t we going home? Why can’t we see Daddy? Why isn’t Daddy calling? Why aren’t we calling him?”
There it was, Lola thought. There it was. Words throbbed to get out. Lia needed to know that Lola was the victim! Lia needed to know that it was in fact Mark who had abandoned them by not loving them the way they needed to be loved. But really it was all so unclear. Who was the victim and who was the perpetrator? It took every ounce of her strength not to fall to her knees and beg Lia and Simon for forgiveness. What little strength she found at that moment she extracted from herself by thinking of Annie, who knew better than to frighten her children with her own weaknesses.
Simon walked toward the door. “Where are you going, love,” she asked.
“I play with the boys,” Simon answered casually as he left the room. Lola saw it as a parable of women’s condition. Boys went into the world and women stuck around and wrung their hands.
“Lia, these are very good questions,” she said, her words like cotton in her mouth. “You know things between grown-ups get very complicated sometimes. Your daddy loves you and your brother so much, but right now, he and I are taking some time apart. We’re taking a little break from each other.” Those were vapid words she would have considered an insult to Lia’s intelligence if she hadn’t been the one forced to use them. “It’s just temporary,” she added, not knowing if this was even a possibility any more.
“I want to go home. Why aren’t we going home? We’re not going to stay here forever, are we?” Lia cried. She was working herself into a tizzy. Girls. Lola had never been like this, maybe there lay the problem. Not that she wasn’t feeling hysterical herself, panicked suddenly, because, though theoretically Lola never gave Mark a way to reach them in France, had he really wanted them, had he really wanted her... For a man of such means and resourcefulness, there must have been ways....
“Don’t you like it here?” she asked emptily. “We’ve made good friends...we’re pretty happy here, aren’t we?” That was, of course, beside the point.
“This isn’t our real home,” Lia spat. “They aren’t my real friends. I hate French people. I want to see Daddy.” Then she added, her voice calmer, “Do you think Daddy could come here and live with us in France?”
Lia liked it here! “Honey!” Lola mechanically braided Lia’s hair. But Lia didn’t want physical contact. She might have needed it as desperately as Lola needed it, but not now, and not from her mom. She cringed and moved away, and Lola hated her daughter for a flashing instant.
The hope, she realized now, had been that Mark would crack. That he’d crack and run back to her. She had read too many romance novels. Mark’s aloofness broke her heart. She was much more comfortable with his tantrums that gave her the illusion of attachment. In more ways than one, she was the one who was “cracking.”
“It’s your dad and me, Lia. We’re not getting along. We both love you guys so much.” Lola cringed at her own cliché. “But there was so much screaming and fighting at home.”
“Daddy is always screaming at you,” Lia said. She wasn’t crying suddenly. “Are you going to get a divorce?”
Lola swallowed, “We haven’t used that word,” she lied. “We’re taking some time apart to figure things out.” Lies and clichés.
“Rebecca at school, her parents are divorced,” Lia said matter-of-factly.
“That’s...that’s true.”
“But she sees her mom every weekend.”
“Her dad takes care of her?”
“I don’t want Daddy to take care of me. I want you to take care of me, and Simon. I don’t want to go back home to Bel Air and never see you anymore.” She burst into tears again. “Is that what would happen?”
Lia had just articulated Lola’s deepest terror. Her throat constricted, she was only able to let out a small “You, you’re going to see me every day.”
“I want to see Dad every day, too.”
“Of course, baby. Of course you do. And he wants to see you.”
“I think he doesn’t care about me so much,” Lia wept.
“That’s nonsense. He’s crazy about you!”
“But he’s not crazy about you, is he?”
The comment hurt Lola terribly. She had believed for so long that she and Mark couldn’t live apart, that they loved and needed each other despite the indignities, that the family was the priority to both of them. “I...just don’t know...what he thinks. Sometimes, loving someone is good, but not enough. You have to treat the people you love right. That’s what I want Daddy to do. Treat me nice.”
“I hate when he screams.”
“It’s scary,” Lola agreed.
“Did you tell hi
m that?” Lia raised her shoulders and her mouth made a grimace of contempt that made her look like the teenager she would one day become. “What’s the point, he never listens.”
Lola felt small. “Not as much as I’d like,” she whispered.
“I’ll tell him then.” Lia jumped to her feet and faced her mom, her expression tight with determination. “That’s what I’ll do. I’ll tell him that we’ll come back if he stops screaming all the time. That’s what I should tell him.” Lola, felt too overwhelmed to answer. Lia continued, “I’ll write him a letter, that way he can’t interrupt!”
Despite her anguish, Lola burst into laughter. “You know your father pretty well.”
“I’m a good negotiator, too. Remember when he didn’t want me to go to that sleepover at Joshua’s, and I convinced him, and he said I was a good negotiator, remember?”
“I remember.”
“Okay. I’ll do it right now.”
Lia went to Lola’s desk, took a pen and paper and began writing. She watched Lia and felt elated. They had communicated. This was for real. But as Lia wrote, hunched at the desk, Lola understood what she had to do next: Follow her child’s example and face Mark.
A superhighway of ants crawled from under the garage door to the kitchen, to the sink, and industriously blackened every inch of the dirty dishes that filled the sink and marred the countertop. Mark observed the ants from his seat at the kitchen island as he chewed his Stouffer frozen pizza. Selena had quit two weeks before and things were going to the dogs but he didn’t really care. He swallowed the last of the pizza, reached for the can of Raid, and discharged a long spray of ant-and-roach killer in the direction of the sink. He watched the ants wither and die wondering if this would be enough to send him to hell.
What he thought was the flu had turned into something else. He wasn’t going to the office and when the office called he had a hard time picking up the phone. He had decided to stay home, skipping showers and shaving for a few more days. The phone was ringing. Again he hoped it was Lola and not the office. But it was never Lola and it was always the office. He picked up the receiver.
“I think I’ve found her,” said a man’s voice.
Mark sprang to his feet. “How? Where is she?”
“She’s definitely in Paris,” the voice said. “I have an address. Do you want me to fly there? Take pictures?”
“No, no...not yet. I need to think. I’ll call you back.” Mark hung up the phone feeling lighter than he had in weeks. He imagined himself arriving at the door of some French hotel, she falling into his arms, the kids... but the memory of their last phone conversation came to him again, like a vice on his heart. He had tried to play it smooth and had said all the wrong things. It had started with Lola asking him if he was “doing okay” and it had pissed him off that she would do something so wrong and selfish and then expect reassurance that it didn’t affect him.
He had tried to be funny. “Oh, just peachy,” he had said. “You know, making money, playing strip poker with my girlfriends.”
There had been a mundane exchange then Lola said, “I’ve been thinking of the reasons I left. I think it also has to do with needing to do something worthwhile with my life.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he had answered. “Of course you do things that are worthwhile.”
“I’m not even raising my own children.”
“What kind of bull is that?”
“The nannies. You think the nannies are better than me. You won’t even trust me to be a mother to my children.”
Mark had rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “That is bar none the most ridiculous accusation I have ever heard. The nannies are for you, Lola, not for me. Everybody does it. You can free up time to-”
“To accompany you on business trips?” she had interrupted. “I end up leaving the kids for days at a time. You don’t know how much I’ve cried in those hotel rooms while you were doing business.”
“You never said anything!”
“It’s always about what you want, and what you think, Mark. I was afraid to disappoint you.”
“It looks like you’ve conquered your fear all right. Well good news, the nanny quit, and so did the maid. When you get back home there will be no one left to blame!”
“You want to know why I left? For this! This very comment!”
“What? What did I say?”
“Do you even hear yourself?” Lola said angrily. “Calling me a parasite all the time?”
“But I didn’t call you a...”
“And screaming at me and putting me down?”
Lola barely sounded like herself. He did not know how to respond to her aggressiveness. “Is that all?” he asked.
“You won’t change,” Lola had said flatly.
“I’m too dumb, eh?”
“To change, you’d have to see that the way you do things doesn’t work.”
“Oh, spare me the psychoanalysis.”
“It’s always about what others have done wrong. Heads have to roll.”
“If you were so miserable, why didn’t you say so?”
“I was terrified of speaking to you.”
“What stopped you?”
Lola had sounded incredulous. “What stopped me?” She breathed in. “You can’t be asking that question! How about your uncontrollable, violent anger? How about the names you called me? Do you at all realize how unforgivable you’ve been, and how much I have forgiven you anyway?”
“Oh!” he said, furious now, “because you think that your resentment didn’t seep out continuously?”
“You’ve got an anger problem. Of course I had resentment,” Lola had exclaimed.
“Disappearing like this, and now all this crap about being afraid and not wanting nannies? Make up your fucking mind, Lola.”
“You’re out of control, and I can’t stand it!” she said.
The bitch! He had felt the rage rise in him like a damned Godzilla out of the waters. He had yelled, “You want a divorce? Say it, for Christ’s sake!”
“I don’t want a divorce,” Lola had cried. “I want a good marriage.”
He was not listening anymore. He was screaming. “We have a good marriage! We have a freaking mansion, we...” Mark searched for proof. “You have a life of leisure!”
“Mark, you’re in denial,” had come Lola’s cold voice.
“You have to come back Lola, by law! I’ll sue your ass!” was all he could think of saying.
By that point, Lola was sobbing on the line. “I...I’m not ready. And with that attitude, I don’t know if I ever will be.”
“Then screw your attitude,” he screamed. “Fuck you Lola!”
When he realized that Lola had hung up, he had hurled the receiver against the wall. The phone had smashed into pieces that scattered around the kitchen with earsplitting violence. Days later, the shards of phone were still there on the floor, telling him more about himself than he wanted to know. He could have picked them up, yet part of him was interested in what the remnants of the telephone were saying. Never mind the ants, this was what he would go to hell for. For that broken phone. For that fury that overtook him and was long past his ability to control.
Up until this moment, he had been focused on the private investigator and finding Lola. But now that he had tracked her down, he realized it might be too late. She had not really been found. In fact she might be lost to him now.
Mark opened his wallet and took out the card. Larry had given him the card, Larry, his boxing coach, of all people. The irony wasn’t lost on him. When your boxing coach hands you the card of a shrink who deals with anger management, you know you’ve got a problem. Mark rubbed his eyes and neck and dialed the shrink’s number.
Chapter 21
Annie slipped into her shorts, and it was a delicious feeling. The zipper zipped a nice smooth zip. She didn’t even need to hold her stomach in. She turned around, looked at her butt. Nice! Feeling like a runway model, she descended to the garden in shorts and a tank
top. The heat wave, unseasonable for May, had metamorphosed the garden in a few days. The clematis burst with pale pink flowers, the air was heavy with the scent of wisteria and leaf buds practically opening before the eyes. The children in their bathing suits were running in and out of the house and Lola was sun tanning in her bikini, her skin gleaming with suntan lotion.
Annie had spent the winter hauling car-sized flagstones around and now the planting could start. She knelt in the musk-scented earth and got that feeling again. That feeling of urgency, that feeling that she was about to burst with...what? For half an hour, she raked the earth with her fingers, making small holes, separating flats of creeping thyme and baby’s tears into small chunks and placing them in between the flagstone while the children pursued each other armed with loaded water pistols.
Lola turned away from the French magazine she was leafing through. “I hate sunbathing marks. Would you mind if I do like the French and go topless?”
“Do I mind that you look this good? Of course no, why would I mind,” Annie answered. She surprised herself for saying what was on her mind, and then realized that the reason she could say it was because Lola’s beauty no longer raised red flags in her. She and Lola were as different as night and day, but she had dropped at least twelve pounds and felt better than she had in years, light and diaphanous, practically waif-like. But it wasn’t just the weight. It was something else that had to do with Lucas telling her she had a backbone, and that she was the full package and whatever other silly thing he had said but that for some reason made her suddenly feel attractive.
She lifted her face towards Althea’s bedroom window, and sure enough, there was Althea, watching them. Was she waiting for an authorization to join the fun? Or was she just being creepy? She waved at Althea to come down but Althea disappeared from the window. A few minutes later, to her surprise, Althea materialized in the garden. She wore winter clothes, black pants, black turtleneck and heavy black makeup around her eyes. She would never understand how this girl functioned. Althea was, according to Maxence, “turning emo” which she understood was the new Goth. Althea plopped down on a plastic chaise like a teenager who wants to be there but resents it all the same.
