by Lori Carson
When I pick you up just before midnight, after my shift, you’re out cold. Maria hands you to me in the doorway, because her husband, Hector, is sleeping. He has to get up at four in the morning. I pay her in cash, eight dollars an hour. It’s a little more than half of what I make.
We whisper so quietly it’s like lipreading.
“Good night, Maria. Thank you so much.”
“No problem. Such a good baby.”
All night I’ve longed for this moment, to smell your baby sweetness and feel your astoundingly soft skin against mine. I carry you downstairs and into the nursery without turning on the light. The moon is shining in the window, and the only noise is the distant rush of traffic on Broadway. As I lay you down in your crib, my heart feels big, like it’s pushing out against my rib cage. I watch you sleep for a long time. Your tiny chest rises and falls. Finally, I walk the few steps to my own bed and fall into it without even washing off my makeup or brushing my teeth.
At work, I miss you and worry that you’re missing me. I tell the girls about all the funny things you do. You have a great sense of humor and laugh at any silly game I come up with. You’re smart, too. I can see your brain working, trying to figure things out. You want to touch everything in your reach.
You look like Gabriel and like me. You have his perfectly shaped lips and intelligent eyes, my coloring and stubborn chin, our broad cheekbones and heavy eyelids. You had Gabriel’s balding pate, too, which worried me a little, but finally your hair has started coming in soft, light brown waves. It curls around your slightly pointy ears and at the back of your delicate neck. You have blond highlights, too, like the ones women pay hundreds of dollars for on Madison Avenue.
I realize, looking at you, that Gabriel and I could be brother and sister, our resemblance is so strong. Before you were born, it never occurred to me. Now you remind me of it every day.
I hear rumors about Gabriel. He’s going to make a movie. He’s collaborating with famous rock artists. I listen to the stories with one ear but try not to dwell on them.
The only one that really gets my attention is when I hear his wife has had a miscarriage. They say she can’t have any more children. I have no idea if it’s true, but I feel deeply sorry when I hear it. I suppose that might seem strange to you, Minnow, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
In the original 1983, when I hear about their lost baby, my eyes fill instantly. An ache spreads through me, heavy as a bag of sand. I know what it is to lose someone never touched, or kissed, or held.
Thirty
We visit Jules at her new apartment in the West Village. It has a whole wall of exposed brick and windows that overlook a little park. The floor tiles in the kitchen are stylishly black and white. We watch as she grinds whole beans and makes strong black coffee in a French press.
Jules is flush with movie money and speaks of her luxuries and privileges as if they are commonplace. But she’s generous with you, so I try not to feel like a poor relation. You’re the best-dressed daughter of a struggling waitress, ever. She’s taken us to FAO Schwarz and bought you enormous bears and blue-eyed baby dolls. Your nursery overflows with a jungle of stuffed animals and other toys.
She holds you, rocks her leg, wags her foot. She’s dying for a cigarette. The constant motion puts you to sleep.
Conspiracy, Jules’s big movie, is scheduled to open soon, and she is overwhelmed with publicity commitments. She has offers for other movies but has rejected one for the nudity the role requires, and another because she’d be little more than arm candy. She’s going to hold out for the good parts, although her manager and agent tell her those are few and far between. They’re encouraging her to work as much as she can, to strike while the iron is hot, but Jules dismisses their advice. She believes things will always be as they are.
This is how it is when you’re young, Minnow. You have no sense of the temporary nature of opportunity, the temporary nature of everything, in fact. You think it’s all going to last forever.
Jules talks about her time in London, her dinners with movie stars, her interviews and auditions. Hearing about it all makes me feel that I am missing my chance, that life is passing me by. I want to be out there in the world, too. I want to prove something to my family, to show my father he’s wrong about me. I want to have a big life like Jules and Gabriel.
But then you begin to cry and she hands you back to me. Your sweet baby scent is like a balm. The rush of love I feel reminds me of what’s important.
The premiere for Conspiracy is on a Tuesday night. I’m on the schedule to work Tuesdays, but swap with Sofia. Jules is going early to do interviews. She says she’ll leave my name on a guest list at the door and that I should meet her inside.
I’d love to buy something new to wear, but even if I had the money I wouldn’t know what to buy. On the day of the premiere, I put you in your carriage and we take the subway downtown to a thrift store on East Fifth Street. I’ve gotten the hang of it now, carrying you in the stroller down the steep stairs. Sometimes someone offers to help, but they hold their end at the wrong angle or move too quickly. It’s easier just to do it myself.
At the thrift store, the clothing is piled up so high you can see it mashed up against the front window from the street. I’ve been coming here for years. You have to plow through the piles. It’s a treasure hunt. In the fifteen-dollar pile, I find a black velvet dress with spaghetti straps and little velvet balls that hang from the top of the bodice. I think it’s from the sixties. It’s lined in satin, not like the cheap stretchy velvet you get now. I hold it up against me. It looks about right.
“That’s a cool dress,” the punk girl behind the counter says.
I look over at you, bundled up in your carriage, stationary as a sack of flour. I pay for the dress, and the girl hands it back to me in a plain plastic bag. I hope it fits. Most of my baby weight has gone, but I’m not the skinny girl I used to be. At the last minute I decide to dye my hair, too, and pick up a box of Clairol Medium Summer Blonde at the drugstore.
The dress is a total score. It’s tight up and down. I just hope the zipper holds because I’m bursting out of it, and it’s an old zipper.
The hair dyeing is less successful. I don’t spend much time reading the directions, because you’re getting fussy and need to eat and have a nap before I leave you with Maria. My hair looks sort of blond in the darkish light of my living room, but in the bathroom, I can clearly see it’s green, and not a good green. I’m not sure what I’ve done wrong, but it’s too late to do anything about it now. I put on my makeup with one hand, holding on to you with the other. You keep reaching for my mascara wand and then my lipstick. Minnow, you really make me laugh.
At about seven-thirty, I grab your diaper bag and your rabbit, your bottle, and a jar of carrots, and rush up the stairs to leave you with Maria.
I hand her the bag and the bottle and the rabbit. But I’m slow to let you go. “She ate twenty minutes ago, and I just changed her diaper.”
“Dame la niña,” she says to me, her fingers wagging, and then to you, “Come here, mi gordita.”
There’s a part of me that regrets handing you over every time. Maria sees it in my face. “Go have fun, Lisa. We’ll be just fine. Wave bye-bye to your mama.” She takes your little hand and waves it around. You look up into her face. “Good night, Mommy,” she says, and takes you inside.
I make my way carefully down the three flights of stairs, in my high heels, to the street. I’m wearing a shabby coat over the velvet dress, but a man goes by and gives me a long whistle, and I almost forget my hair is green.
On the corner I hail a taxi. “Sixtieth and Second,” I tell the driver. He’s got cool jazz playing on the radio. I look out the window as we fly across town. New York City has the best people watching in the world. You see couples in love, men in hats, women hurrying with shopping bags, all the different coats, boots, hairstyles, people of every color, age, and shape.
It’s almost spring again. Only a year
ago, I walked the streets of the Upper West Side, excited and nervous, wondering what you’d be like. I can almost see myself walk by. I was another person a year ago. I think of your father and feel deeply sad. I still miss him. It never becomes less. When I catch my reflection in the glass, I note again that I’ve become someone whose resting face falls into a mournful expression.
As if the cabdriver can read my thoughts, he says, “Smile! It can’t be that bad.”
This is one you hear a lot as a young woman, Minnow. Why do men think we enjoy being commanded to smile? I meet his eyes in the rearview mirror, but don’t give him what he wants.
As we pull up to the theater, I see Jules standing on the red carpet in a long black dress. She’s lifting her chin and posing for the cameras. She’s as lovely as Grace Kelly. Walking past her, I feel a combination of two things: unbearable pride and uncomfortable envy. She sneaks a look at me over her shoulder and gives me her real smile, the one that says, Can you believe this craziness? I give her one back. The photographers jump to see who I am. I hope I don’t have lipstick on my teeth.
But they lose interest quickly. “She isn’t anybody,” I hear one say.
The movie is a complicated thriller involving the Israeli secret police, Russian spies, and the CIA. The plot is so confusing, I lose track of who is who. Jules plays two characters. She is a freedom fighter and a woman in a young lieutenant’s dream. As a soldier, her hair is shorn, her brow furrowed. She appears suddenly in a doorway. Then she’s running down the hall. As the dream girl, she wears a sheer white gown. Her platinum-blond wig falls over her face. When she tilts her head, the long wig parts like a curtain to reveal red painted lips.
After the screening, I pile into a car with Jules and her publicist to go to the after-party at a nearby hotel. She is whisked away as soon as we arrive. I stand in line to get something to eat at the buffet and sit at a table by myself. Everyone at the party seems ambitious and fake to me. I watch them walk around the room, trying to gauge whether conversation with one person or another is worth their time. I don’t talk to anyone, and no one talks to me. What a shallow world, I think, feeling self-conscious about my green hair. Even the velvet dress suddenly feels like a shabby rag. I think of you waiting for me at Maria’s and just want to go home.
When I find Jules to tell her I’m leaving, she holds her hand up to her ear like a phone and mouths, “I’ll call you.” But she’s so busy that she forgets to call. Or maybe she’s waiting for me to call her, but I don’t call either.
It happens pretty much the same way in the original 1983.
Conspiracy makes Jules a movie star. She rents a house on the West Coast and has all her belongings shipped out there. We don’t get to see her again for a very long time.
Thirty-one
In the morning, Maria comes downstairs. I fix her a cup of tea and we sit in the garden wearing our coats. It’s almost May but there’s still frost on the ground. Maria’s hair is the most incredible shade of silver. When she glances in the mirror to smooth the ends, she sucks her cheeks in ever so slightly. You seem to think she’s perfect in every way.
She’s teaching you to speak Spanish and points to the illustrations in your books. “Dog: el perro. Cat: el gato.”
I know a few words and phrases that Gabriel once taught me, but I never became fluent. I was like his parrot. He’d teach me to say something funny and I’d repeat it. Then he’d laugh. I still love to speak the few words I remember, but I don’t have a natural talent for other languages. Maybe you will.
“House: la casa. Grandmother: la abuela.”
You make lots of sounds but nothing is quite Spanish, or even English. “Ba, ba, ga, ga,” you say, and laugh.
We laugh with you.
Maria teaches me things, too. She shows me how to wash the floors with white wine vinegar. She tells me the best kind of paper towels to buy. She gives me a special soap for washing baby things and underwear. She talks about cleaning as if it is both an art and a feature of good character. Her highest compliment is: “Now, she knows how to clean.”
Maria has a son and she used to have a daughter. The girl died of cancer a long time ago in a city called La Rioja, in Argentina. That’s where Maria grew up, married Hector, and raised her children. “Now it is only boys,” she says, referring to her son and his sons.
Though Maria is nothing like my mother, there is something of mother and daughter in the bond we forge. It seems easier to accept mothering from her because she is not my mother. I know that doesn’t make sense.
I look at you, Minnow, and feel how much it would hurt to have you replace me with a capable woman from Argentina. I make it a point to call my mother just before bedtime. “Listen to this, Ma,” I say, and hold the phone up to your mouth. “Minnow, say good night to your abuela.”
Thirty-two
It’s summer again before we run into Gabriel. We’re on Hudson, coming from a shop in the West Village, when I see him on Bank Street, heading right toward us. It takes him a moment to recognize me. He does a double take, which hurts a little, because I’d know him anywhere, instantly. But then he sees us and looks genuinely shocked and happy. His face crumples and his eyes light up.
I’ve got you strapped to my chest in a baby harness. So when he throws his arms around me, you’re squashed between us and I think it’s one of the finest moments of my life. I know how an astronaut feels reentering the earth’s atmosphere, the relief of a deep-sea diver breaking through to the surface for oxygen. It’s a please-God-stop-time moment, for sure, and I breathe him in long and deep. But then he lets me go, and I can see there is a new distance between us.
“Gabriel, this is Minnow,” I say. I can feel my heart pounding and my cheeks burning. You, on the other hand, are one cool customer, Minnow. You look up at him with your intelligent brown eyes as if you could take him or leave him. I’m not sure what it is I see in his expression as he looks at your face. Is it awe? Is he afraid?
“Hi, Minnow,” he says. His voice comes out half an octave too high. “She looks just like you.”
“I think she looks like you.”
We walk together, the three of us. There’s a Mister Softee truck parked on the corner of Jane Street.
“Does she like ice cream?” Gabriel asks.
I’m usually careful about giving you sugar, but today is a special occasion. “Sure,” I say.
“What flavor?”
“Better make it vanilla.”
“How about you?”
“I’ll have some of hers.”
He gets himself a chocolate.
Hudson turns into Eighth Avenue and we continue to walk uptown. A man, a woman, a baby, and two ice cream cones. Anyone would take us for a family.
Gabriel tells me he’s in town to finish packing up his things. The apartment at the Sheridan has been sold. It’s the end of an era. For the rest of my life, I’ll look up into that third-floor window when I go by and remember what it felt like to be inside looking out.
We walk and we talk. He doesn’t mention his wife or ask anything about you. He says he’s planning to return to his country soon. It’s just a matter of time now. “Everyone is going to be very surprised,” he says.
He’ll never go back, I think to myself.
He adjusts the brim of his hat. I can see him making eye contact with every woman we pass. We walk through Chelsea and the desolate West Thirties, past a truck yard, the post office, and Penn Station. You crane your neck around to look at everything. You practice “ma-ma” and “ga-ga.” You rest your head against my chest and fall asleep.
At about Forty-second Street, he seems to remember you. “Is she heavy?”
“A little. Want to carry her for a while?”
“Maybe we should take a cab.”
“No, that’s okay.” I don’t want it to be over. “I’m used to carrying her.”
“Okay,” he says.
So we walk through the theater district and the West Fifties, Columbus Circle,
and Lincoln Center. The harness spreads your weight across my back, but by the time we reach West Seventy-first Street, I’m feeling every ounce of your eighteen pounds. My shoulders ache and my neck is sore. I’m tired and need to change your diaper, feed you, and put you down for a nap. I’m thinking that as soon as I let you down you’re going to try to scramble across the floor. You’ve just started to crawl and need to be watched every second.
But I know what Gabriel is thinking. He’s wondering whether or not there’s a chance we might have sex.
I still want to, God help me. What kind of a man shows so little interest in his own daughter? I should be angry. I know that.
Still I ask him, “Do you want to come inside for a minute?”
Gabriel gives me the look: the up-and-down eyebrows, the lascivious smile, and I feel that tug in my belly that shuts off the part of my brain that knows better.
As soon as we’re inside, he tries to pull me down on the bed. I’ve still got you strapped to me and start to panic. “Wait!” I say sharply.
He gives me a moment to free you, and as I undo the harness, I look into your beautiful, tired face and know that I can’t. I don’t want to. I mean I do want to. I want to pretty badly, but not more than I want to take care of you, my love. “I can’t do this,” I tell him. I’ve got you halfway to your changing table. I pick up a diaper from the shelf.
“Sure you can, baby.” He’s right behind me. He’s kissing my neck and undoing my bra.
But I push him off. “Stop it!” My breasts are full of milk. You’re hungry, and I’ve had enough of Gabriel for the moment.
He stands in the doorway and waits while I change you. He continues to wait while I sit with you in the red rocking chair and guide your mouth to my breast. As you nurse, you reach up with one hand to hold a piece of my hair. I look over at him standing there, still waiting.
