“Yah, yah, yah, yah.” Nicky jumped up from the chair, victorious and important. “We’re douging to have a picanic with-th Mama in der park,” he yelped, running through the dining room toward the den.
Immediately Jessica flashed through the doorway again. “You told me Sarah could come over. That’s what you told me. You promised.”
Coco felt weak. “All right. I’ll call her mother and see if she can come on the picnic with us.”
“Right now,” Jessica demanded, stationing herself permanently at Coco’s side. “Call her right this minute.”
“Okay. I’ll dial the number, and you ask Sarah to ask her mother,” Coco compromised, wilting at the thought of Mrs. Baumgartner’s voice. Clara Baumgartner—Diligent Mother, Dedicated Wife, Super Square—dismissible—unless someone felt totally insecure and statusless. Coco looked up Sarah’s number in her second-class telephone directory. Soon all the neighbors would know that Gavin was gone. Instantly the Burman children would be treated differently—like deprived and underprivileged inner-city kids on scholarships at summer camps. All the neat nuclear families would be enriched by the Burmans’ breakup, reconfirmed, fortified, and strengthened by the Burmans’ failure.
Now Mike and Jessica and Nicky and Josh would join the ranks of weekend refugees traveling like gypsies in accord with some court visitation order so they wouldn’t be at home—was it on Wednesday nights and Sundays?—if their friends called up. Was that the end result of all this pain? Did it all end in dispersal and division, lessening and weakening, reduction and loss, shoving and schlepping? Would there soon be several half-brothers and sisters—Gavin’s second family, not Coco’s—so no one would know who belonged with whom? And unlike the Auchinclosses, the Burman children would look like the Jukes and the Kallikaks of Upper Appalachia.
“Sarah’s mother said okay,” Jessica reported in a loud voice next to Coco’s ear.
Well, what did you expect? Coco thought bitterly observing Jessica’s surprise. Was there ever a moment’s doubt? Why should Mrs. Baumgartner say no? Why shouldn’t she take a cool nap, a guiltless little sleep, while Coco assumed responsibility for Sarah’s life and limb, a fifth responsibility she needed like a hole in the head?
So Jessica ran off to announce her separate victory, and Coco was suddenly seized by a spill of fantasies which flushed through her head like Draino bringing up foul bubbles in the kitchen sink.
You’ve got to get an apartment, an L-shaped apartment, a strange voice said. You’ve got to live in a high-rise building with a doorman, a sauna, a swimming pool equipped with four life guards, and an army of teen-age baby-sitters on the premises.
But we’d need four bedrooms, Coco countered. And I would like a study.
Well, then, move out to a commune in West Virginia started by eight attractive middle-aged professionals, divorced or widowed, whose children are old enough to baby-sit while you work in the fields all day planting lovely green beans and fresh dill in your marvelous make-believe army fatigue suit from Saks Fifth Avenue.
But they’d probably want me to do all the cooking, Coco argued. I might end up cooking and cleaning for eight or nine men with Meds. or Med.-L.’s and twenty ravenous teen-aged kids. Even with nonexclusive sex and nice nature walks, I’m not sure I want to cook that often.
Coco began to think about a box of chocolate-covered doughnuts in the breadbox that had frosting melting a little bit from the heat.
Dear Lord, please don’t let me start eating, Coco prayed. She knew she could never stop after just one chocolate-covered doughtnut. There would be two. Or two and a half. And an equal number of glasses of milk to make it come out even.
Please, God, I don’t want to nag, but I simply cannot afford to gain weight right now.
She got up and poured another cup of coffee. If she began eating now, she would never stop until her stomach stuck out farther than her boobs. And constipated as she was, three doughtnuts could remain intact inside her body for five or six days.
See? That’s what was wrong with sitting in the kitchen, she thought angrily.
Coco got up, took a doughnut out of the breadbox, put it back, got it out again, and ate it in two bites.
This is the end, she thought wildly, walking away from the counter toward the table and then back again. The very end. I will now begin eating myself to death. And it’s starting with sweets. I don’t even like sweets. Coco sat down and then got up again, went to the cupboard, pulled out the giant-size box of Captain Crunch, tilted it toward her face, and swallowed three sticky mouthfuls directly out of the box.
Somebody stop me, she pleaded, remembering the Chicago killer who wrote a similar message with lipstick on bathroom mirrors after murdering women. Somebody help me. Somebody help me stop. I will weight 130 within minutes, and then everything will be finished, over, done for.
Coco opened the Frigidaire door and then closed it. Strong waves of food guilt were drumming through her as she experienced incredibly strong hunger pangs.
It was too late. If only she could go back five minutes in time. If only she could vomit. She could never redeem the day after eating a doughnut and Captain Crunch. She opened the back door and hurried onto the porch. Fat. She would be fat. She was already fat. It was too late. Now there would be no men, no career, no love, no security, no status, no quality of life. Just fat. Her and her fat. She stuck two fingers deep into her throat and leaned over the porch railing. One house away, the hippies who lived in the YES commune were watching her from their back veranda. So what? Let them think she was tripping on acid. She had to vomit up all those carbohydrates. They were the very worst kind of calories. But she couldn’t. She was so totally distraught now that she couldn’t even make herself vomit. She went back into the kitchen.
Then, spontaneously and without benefit of forethought, Coco walked over to the silverware drawer, opened it, took the wedding band off her hand, and threw it into the jumble of utensils, most of which were supposed to stand erectly magnetized on the knife holder. Her ring settled down’ next to a potato peeler that had a piece of red apple skin stuck in it.
Everything’s dirty, Coco thought, staring into the drawer. Funky, Filthy, Nasty. And it was all Gavin’s fault. His departure, like his presence, caused a waste of precious time. Just like today … it was always the same. For a breath-rewarding moment Coco hated Gavin with a liberating rush of loathing. Yes. Yes, she was glad, happy he hadn’t phoned. She was delighted and thrilled that he had moved out of the house, and that now she could get her shit together, at last, finally.…
Now she could get things tidied up. Now she could move all her winter clothes into Gavin’s hall closet. Mentally she called dibs on his big bureau and silently repossessed the three small chest drawers that she had lent him on indefinite loan but which were perfect for pantyhose and knee-highs. Now she could rearrange all her sweaters and put Gavin’s ultra-intensity reading lamp on her side of the bed (but how could there be a His or Hers side in a demilitarized zone? which was her side of the bed if she slept alone?), throw out all the old pill bottles with Gavin’s name on the prescription and gain two more shelves in the medicine cabinet. Great. And then she would get rid of all his books, thereby liberating space for her History of Literary Criticism collection so they wouldn’t have to hide in double layers behind her surveys and anthologies.
And this very day she would move all his classical records to the left side of the shelf in the living room and push all the hard-rock albums closer to the stereo so she wouldn’t bump her knee on the fireplace poker when she tried to reach her records. For a moment she considered filling out a change-of-address card at the post office, when she went to claim her unsuccessful-attempt-to-deliver-the-mail package, redirecting Gavin’s mail to his office, thereby daily and eternally uncluttering the front-hall chest. But then she reconsidered and decided it was much more political to inspect all the return addresses on Gavin’s letters as well as hold his mail as bait to get him home.
Oh
, yes, Coco thought, smiling now as she lit another cigarette and poured a fresh cup of coffee. Now she would actually save a lot of time. Now there would be plenty of time at night to write. Now she could speed up the novel and still be free to do some free-lance articles as well as complete the research for her Ph.D. dissertation on A Casual Explanation for the Paucity of Female Prose Writers in the Eighteenth Century, since there wouldn’t be anymore of those terribly long, awkward phone calls from Gavin’s relatives in Los Angeles on holidays, or anymore shopping expeditions for bar-mitzvah gifts for all his nephews, let alone that slew of bar mitzvahs coming up. And now there would be no more stopping at the laundry to pick up his shirts or drop off spaghetti-spotted ties. Now there would be no more delays in the supermarket at the fancy delicatessen section she had been forced to review and audit every week for the past twelve years. Now she could just bypass all of Gavin’s favorite salamis and smokefish and jars of gefillte fish and gehactah leber. Now she could march right past all those kosher horrors in the same way she bypassed the cat-food and kitty-litter section (which was at least five yards long) and (since Joshua’s graduation from strained infant food) the Gerber section, which eliminated almost twenty yards of decision-making counter space, thus speeding her up and over to the soups and sandwich spreads with a fresh burst of energy.
Indeed, now everything would be simplified. But, of course, there was always the danger she might find herself putting out in totally new and different ways—like anguishing over that platter of sandwich stuff last night or waiting for Suede to come home or feeling too groggy in the morning from gin, grass, and screwing all night to be able to work. And of course now she’d have to remember to go to the hardware to make another extra set of house and car keys to leave with Maryanne and to buy some new underwear and more deodorants and to have her teeth cleaned more than once a year and attend some cultural events and political rallies and … Oh, God. Why was Coco’s best friend in South America? Her shrink in Europe? Her lover on the shuttle and her husband in hiding?
Coco was feeling consummately confused, experiencing her panic both psychologically and physically. She leaned over, picked up the telephone, and dialed Maryanne’s number. Good. Nice, dependable Maryanne was always home, always picked up after just one buzz.
“Hi,” Coco said, but her voice sounded so weak that she cleared her throat and started over again. “Hi,” she said, trying to inject a lilt of brave independence. “Guess what?”
Suddenly her posture and position came into focus. The official line would be that Coco Burman had kicked Gavin Burman out of the house because he was a dirty male chauvinist pig who did not respect her as a woman, a mother, a wife, a novelist, a graduate student—indeed, a candidate for the doctoral degree—or as a potential leader of the new women’s-liberation movement in which, some day, she hoped to achieve active national leadership, along with Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, and Betty Friedan.
“We’ve split,” Coco announced lightly, laughingly.
“Who is this?” Maryanne asked.
Irritated, Coco identified herself. “Listen, Gavin’s moved out—lock, stock, and barrel.”
“Where’d he go?” Maryanne asked.
“How should I know? I don’t care. I’m free. I’m finally free.”
Coco wrote down FREE three times in an indented vertical line on her sketchpad.
“Well, how do you feel?” Maryanne asked cautiously.
“Swell. Fantastic.” But it was becoming clear to Coco that she would have to develop a varied first strike and alter her story depending on her audience. To the Columbia Road Women’s Liberation Local she would present her current marital status as a premeditated response to sexual inequities within her marriage. But for Maryanne, a semilapsed member of the local, there was a need for less political analysis and more of an emphasis on personal pain and problems.
“Actually, it feels a little bit funny,” Coco amended. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been alone. Freedom feels a little scary at first, you know.”
“Sure,” Maryanne agreed ambiguously.
“But I just had to do it. After twelve years, I knew I was either going to flip out from living with him or just go it alone.”
Silence.
Coco cautioned herself against overplaying her hand. Her credibility—like her virginity years ago—was now her most priceless possession. In the eyes of the public, she had to establish and maintain herself as a credible source of information or else eternally suffer the fate of all victims—scorn. She-had obviously made a tactical mistake phoning Maryanne before she had her shit together.
“Well, if you feel like doing something with the kids over the weekend; give me a call,” Coco said.
“Maybe we can go watch the fireworks on the Mall together or something.”
“Sure,” Maryanne said kindly, “or just stop by over here. Anytime.”
“Bye-bye.”
Now Coco was completely hysterical. She was becoming convinced that anxiety could shrink all her blood vessels, just as fear of impotence could deflate a penis. Her scanty knowledge of biology could now prove fatal. Wasn’t the blood supposed to carry the oxygen through the body via veins and out through the capillaries? Why had she listened and believed all the sexist propaganda about girls having no affinity for science? Why didn’t she know how her own body worked?
She folded her arms on the table and laid her face down into the dark cavelike enclosure of her elbows. Of course, the heavy load of stool in her stomach was not helping her respiratory system one little bit. That much she knew. Coco had always known her chronic constipation would be the end of her, the ignominous Cause on her death certificate. Her future was short but clear. She would begin eating compulsively and simultaneously stop having any bowel movements whatsoever. In the best of times, she could manage three BM’s a week, but now that had become a preposterous goal, and all that food, all those carbohydrates, all those chocolate-covered doughnuts would stay in her stomach for a week or more, consolidating, compounding, and solidifying. Pounds and pounds of food would enter her body, and nothing but hemorrhoids would come back out.
The fecal matter in her stomach would take on the contours of a four-month fetus. Hard, bumpy feces would bulge beneath her bronze-tanned midriff when she wore the two-piece L & T Indian squaw dress hemmed with the tassels which she had just bought last month. She would get rolls of fat on her back and shoulders just like her mother and three aunts in Chicago. Oh, God, she would have those moving, vibrating, shaking appendages of fat that followed the indentations of elastic bra straps and which joggled during Mah-Jongg games. Now Coco wouldn’t be able to wiggle into her sheaths. Her zippers wouldn’t zip. Rolls of fat around her midriff would fold over and wrinkle the waistlines of her dresses when she sat down. All of her belts would be permanently pleated—horizontally—by the pressure of bulging hips. Her thighs would wiggle when she played tennis. Her buttocks would shake when she walked. Soon she would be unable to leave the house. The telephone would stop ringing as people forgot about her, and she would not even be able to attend PTA meetings in fear of embarrassing the children.
Coco began crying quietly, so the children wouldn’t hear, dabbing the tears so she would leave no incriminating streaks on her face. Oh, no, she didn’t want to die from blood clots, emphysema, lung cancer, hemorrhoids, or heartbreak when the children were home alone with her. They wouldn’t know what to do. Jessica would get hysterical, pee all over the floor, continue wetting her pants for the rest of her life. Nicky would run outside to find a policeman, dart across the street from between two parked cars and be buried beside his mother. Josh would simply starve to death—no milkee, no bottee, no eggies, no yum-yum. Coco put out her cigarette. She still was unable to capture a full deep breath, but the shortness didn’t seem as acute as it had a little earlier.
She began planning speeches in her mind to deliver to Gavin at the first opportunity. Most of them concerned the fact that he w
asn’t going to have a telephone in his new apartment. Her frustration and rage on this issue supplied fuel for several elaborate dialogues.
“What happens if one of the kids gets sick, Gavin? What if someone has to go to the hospital? What if I die?”
“You can call me at the office in the morning.”
“Well, if I’m dead, I can’t call you anywhere. So what do you think Mike should do?”
“He wouldn’t know you’re dead if he was sleeping.”
“But he’d know in the morning.”
“Well, then he could call me at the office.”
“I’m going to kill you Gavin.”
Click.
Coco’s heart raced.
Or #2:
“If you don’t have a phone at your apartment, you will not be allowed to call up here at the house.”
“Why not?”
“Because life isn’t a one-way street.”
“What does that mean?”
“That means it’s not fair for you to have the option of calling here anytime of the day or night if we can never call you any time.”
“That’s right.”
Click.
Most of the scenarios she planned dealt in one way or another with injustice, but before she could develop a complete catalog of accusations, a new horror struck Coco. It was Saturday! Later on it would become Saturday night and she didn’t have anything to do. Vaguely she had thought she and Suede would go carousing around in Georgetown. But now he was gone, and she had nothing to do—day or night. And it was the start of a weekend, a holiday weekend—the supreme endurance test. Can a real American woman survive without a real man, without any man, on a weekend? Of course she could go to a bar and pick someone up, but how could she possibly be promiscuous in her current condition? Even if she stopped eating right now, even if she fasted for three days, she was not in shape to start sleeping around. She was too small-breasted to be promiscuous when she was in her early-thirties. If a woman was fat, she should at least have huge mobile breasts. Big tits were the only consolation for other flaws such as prisichacs on the ass, appendix scars, and white stretch marks beneath tanned skin. Boobs that simply slid away in Sexual Intercourse Position #1 did not contribute to a free mind for free love or free living.
Loose Ends Page 23
