by Lori Carson
Now she holds you in her lap. You look out the window of the train as everything speeds by.
“Ca,” you say.
“Car,” I repeat.
“Bud.”
“Bird.”
“Whas’tha, Mama?”
“That’s another train like this one,” I tell you. “Train.”
“Tain,” you repeat.
My sister will be at the party. Lynn is being relocated to New York by her company. She’s staying with my parents while she looks for a place to live.
At the station, my father’s Buick is parked across the street. I hold the front door open for Maria, but she prefers to sit in the back. With my father’s help, she gets you into the car seat, one, two, three.
“How was your ride?” my father asks as we drive the few blocks to their house.
“Fine,” I say. “Maria was just telling me that the preschool thinks Minnow is smarter than the other two-year-olds.”
“Of course she is,” my father says, “but isn’t she a little young to be in school?”
“It’s only a couple of hours a week, Dad, and she likes going. It’s good for her to socialize.”
My father doesn’t choose to respond to this. We pull into the driveway. “Here we are,” he says. Maria and I free you from the car seat, and we go inside.
“There she is!” my mother says happily, in her singsong. “Hello, Maria. How are you?” She takes our coats and hangs them in the hall closet.
Maria finds a seat on the edge of the couch in the living room. She’s quieter than when it’s just us.
My mother takes you from my arms and walks with you past a stack of brightly wrapped presents on the hall table, and into the kitchen to show you the cake she’s baked. It has your name written on it in pink icing.
“Mine,” you say.
“That’s right.” Your grandmother laughs. “Later, we’ll sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to you, and you can blow out the candles!”
“Where’s Lynn?” I ask, and my mother tells me that my sister is house-hunting with our cousin Rachel.
“You remember Rachel is in real estate now,” she says. It’s the first I’ve heard of it.
“Aunt Lou coming?” I ask. My mother says she expects her older sister any minute. Aunt Lou lives just two towns away.
We return to the living room with paper and crayons to sit on the floor and draw. My mother’s drawing of a house and trees is not bad.
“That’s nice, Mom,” I say.
“You thought you were the only artist in the family?” she asks lightly.
As you draw, you begin to sing, softly at first, and then louder. Your pitch is good, your voice high and clear. It doesn’t take much to encourage you to go through the whole repertoire. “ ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’?” I prompt.
Your version is one line long. You lift your feet to your hands as you sing it and wiggle your toes.
“ ‘ABCs’?”
We laugh because you skip the lines you don’t know and approximate the ones you do, blurring the consonants and connecting the vowels. We laugh with you and at you, too. We love you so much, Minnow.
Aunt Lou comes through the door. “Where is everybody?” she says.
“We’re in here!” my mother calls.
My sister and cousin return chattering about the places they’ve seen.
You bounce between all the grown-ups, telling incomprehensible stories. My father lets you tug on his glasses. He speaks to you in a silly voice. Over your head, he watches the game.
In the following years, Lynn and Rachel will marry and have children and you’ll be rich with young cousins, but today you are the only child and we watch you, exotic, rare, perfect girl, running, singing, talking, blowing out your birthday candles. “Happy birthday, dear Minnow! Happy birthday to you,” we sing. You laugh and sing along, reflecting our love back to us.
Later, talking with my cousin at the kitchen table, I listen to her wonder aloud about the way fathers get to walk away without consequence. “Aren’t we the ones who create this culture of privilege among men?” she asks. “Aren’t we the ones who condone actions of irresponsibility amongst fathers?”
But how do you make a man behave the way you think he should?
“With laws that demand accountability,” Rachel says.
I don’t know. If he doesn’t want to be in your life, do you really want to force him to be? I’d rather be alone, Minnow. There are plenty of worse fates.
Thirty-eight
Still, I have bills to pay and the money I make doesn’t go very far. Not when it has to cover preschool, and babysitting, and shoes you grow out of every month. Maria returns a five out of the money I pay her. “Get something for yourself,” she says, but I never do.
When I get up the nerve to ask Harv for a raise, he says he can’t right now. Things are tight at the studio. He might even have to let one of the engineers go, he says, which means Corbin could soon be out of work. When I tell Corbin this, he shrugs his shoulders. He’s not a worrier, which leaves the worrying to me.
At least my recording is done. When I can afford to, I plan to have cassette copies made of the best five songs and send them out to music attorneys and managers. But that seems like a faraway plan. We live on rice and beans and ramen noodles. We drink our coffee black. We fight because Corbin spends his money on beer.
All this time, I’ve kept Lois’s dog-eared card in my underwear drawer, and one warm spring day I give her a call. We make a plan to meet for coffee at a place off Columbus Avenue called Cafe La Fortuna.
In the back garden, I see her sitting in a corner beneath one of the yellow umbrellas and give a little wave.
“Hi, Lisa,” she says, standing and kissing me first on one cheek and then the other, European style. I do the same. Couple of Long Island girls, playing at sophistication.
I ask her what she’s been up to, and I can tell by the way she answers that she isn’t really dancing anymore. That’s what happens. Dancers age out. It must be brutal for Lois, but she doesn’t let on.
“How’s your baby? You had a girl, right?” I can tell she knows I want something but she can’t figure out what.
“Yes. She’s going on three.”
“Wow. Time flies.”
“I know.” I tell her about working at the studio, and how it doesn’t pay much. I tell her I’m looking to make some extra money.
“What about the deadbeat dad?” she asks.
“Not in the picture,” I say.
“And you don’t want to go after him?”
“No, I don’t.”
She lifts a tiny cup of espresso to her lips, holding out her pinkie. She keeps her green eyes on mine. “Well, I know how you can make some money, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
“Try me,” I say.
She tells me about the massage parlor on lower Broadway where she’s worked for about a year.
“The only problem is, I don’t really know how to give a massage,” I say.
She looks at me like I’m a dope, like I couldn’t possibly be so innocent, but it’s a genuine question. I know what she’s talking about. I just don’t know if I can fake the massage part. The rest I figure I can manage.
“They don’t care about that,” she says. “You just have to look pretty and be nice.”
“I can be nice,” I say.
She laughs a dry laugh. “Yeah, well, it’s not as easy as you think.”
And she’s right.
I go in for an interview and am shown around the place. It’s divided into eight little rooms, separated by thin, temporary walls. The rooms are only a little bigger than the massage tables in them. A single green plant sits on an empty desk in the reception area.
I’m told that the men pay in advance for the massage and any extras. They undress and cover themselves with a rough towel that smells of bleach. I make it clear that I don’t want to be touched. I’ll do the happy ending, but that’s it.
It’s a c
ouple of weeks before I actually get up the nerve to take a shift at the massage parlor. I only have one day off a week from Silver, and it’s hard to get away.
I’ve left Corbin to look after you; told him I was getting together with Lois and some other friends from the restaurant. I plan to be home in time to make dinner.
I’m a little nervous as I enter the tiny room. It feels too close. The man on the table is middle-aged. His reddish-blond hair could use a trim. I pull the towel back to his waist and put a little oil on his upper back. He lifts his head to look up at me, over his shoulder, and I recognize him. Damn. He’s my old neighbor from East Seventy-eighth Street, the rich guy who lived in the house next door.
For a second, I see the recognition in his eyes. Then we pretend to be strangers. “Hello,” he says.
“Hi,” I say back.
But I can’t do it. Even touching his back is revolting.
“Would you excuse me a minute?” I say. I step out of the room and get my jacket and other things from a closet in the hallway. I don’t even risk waiting for the elevator, but bolt down the five flights of stairs. Needless to say, I never go back.
What do you think, Minnow? Is it unbelievable that I would go to work at a massage parlor? Maybe it never happened. Maybe in some other version of 1985, Lois and I said good-bye on the sidewalk outside Cafe La Fortuna, and I never called the number she gave me. Maybe I never asked her for the number. Maybe she never even worked at a massage parlor on lower Broadway.
But true or false, three years later, we run into Lois on the Upper West Side, and I introduce the two of you.
“Nice to meet you,” you say.
“What a polite young lady,” she says. “How old are you, Minnow?”
You hold out all your fingers on one hand and answer, proudly, that you’re five and a half.
Lois looks better than ever, if that’s possible. She tells me she’s at Fordham, getting a law degree.
“That’s so great,” I say, truly impressed. We speak for a few minutes. She doesn’t say anything at all about the past and neither do I. We make a silent agreement that any shameful or embarrassing thing we remember, about ourselves or the other, never happened. I look into those green eyes of hers, and we briefly embrace.
“See ya, Minnow,” she says, walking backward.
It’s the last time we ever lay eyes on her. She disappears into the world along with so many of the friends and acquaintances of my waitressing days.
You reach for my hand and we continue walking in the opposite direction.
Thirty-nine
By 1988, we’ve relocated from West Seventy-first Street to a floor-through in an old row house on Sixth Avenue in the Village. The location puts us in the right school district for you to attend one of the better public schools in the city. The new apartment has a slanted floor and a funky kitchen; the rent is an astronomical thirteen hundred a month. But my parents are contributing a small sum toward it, and I’ve got a new job, too.
Today we’re back on the Upper West Side on our way to have lunch with Maria. We walk faster as we get close to our old building. You’re excited to show Maria the dress you’re wearing especially for her. It’s pink and has a skirt like a tutu.
“Mama, is Maria going to be surprised to see me?” Your brown curls lift and fall as you skip along.
“No, baby. ’Cause she knows we’re coming. She’s going to be excited, though.”
We approach the familiar front door, and you reach up to ring her buzzer.
I’m still climbing the last stairs as you run ahead to throw your arms around Maria’s waist. She pats your back. “Hello, Minnow. Come in, you two.”
Taking your hand, she leads you into the kitchen, where something smells good. Your voice is high and clear as you answer her questions about your new teacher, your school, and your pink dress. From her living room window I can see our former garden below. The old fencing has come down in one corner, and there are leaves from last fall covering the grass and flower beds. I wonder if the current tenants will bother to keep it up.
“How is the new job going, Lisa?” Maria asks, carrying a bowl of her special meatballs from the kitchen. She hands me a spoon. “Minnow, sit down at the table,” she says to you. You carry your own bowl, carefully.
“I’m starting to get the hang of it,” I say, about the job. I’ve recently gotten my real estate license at the suggestion of my cousin Rachel. I’m hoping to make some real money doing it. I’m still at Silver one day a week, too, but since you started school, it’s been increasingly difficult to work those hours.
“And what about the music?” Maria asks. “Have you been playing your guitar?”
“I have,” I tell her. The new apartment has a back terrace that faces the beautiful old brick of another low building. Whenever I can, I sit out on there with my guitar and write. I watch the clouds roll past and sing my songs to the blue sky.
“That’s good,” Maria says. “Never stop.”
“I won’t,” I say. But the truth is, it’s hard to find the time. Days get eaten up by other things, or I’m too tired and crash out in front of the TV instead. I still love it, maybe more than ever, but it’s not my priority. Not this time.
On Maria’s table, the ceramic salt and pepper shakers are shaped like Hawaiian girls. You like to play with them, and she moves them closer to you. “Minnow,” she says, “how is your Spanish coming along? Have you been practicing?”
“I’m a little busy right now,” you explain, “but I’m still very good at it.”
We smile at one another over your head.
“How do you say ‘I love you very much’?”
“Te amo mucho, Maria,” you say sweetly.
“Very, very good.” She laughs appreciatively.
Maria’s table feels like one of the safest places on earth. I think of the night that things got out of control with Corbin, when I grabbed you and escaped up the stairs. Her door was our salvation. She never said a bad word about Corbin. She never told me I was making a mess of my life.
When we go, we promise to come back soon.
“Can I sleep at Maria’s house one day?” you ask me as we walk to Broadway to catch the train.
“Sure you can, baby. I think Maria would love that.”
Forty
Every morning, I walk you to your kindergarten class, down Sixth Avenue and right on Eleventh Street. You hold my hand. Mixed into your walk is a little skip. You love to talk, nonstop, for the pleasure of it, like a chirping bird. You ask questions about the trees, the weather, people who pass by, clouds, the future, tall buildings, and more. When I don’t know the answer to something, we go to the Jefferson Library after school and look it up.
“Mama, is that the horizon?” you ask one day, pointing west toward the river. How do you know these things?
Another day you ask about a boy who is a bully at school. “Maybe people haven’t been nice to Sebastian, so he doesn’t know how to be nice to other people,” I say to you about that boy.
“You mean Sebastian’s mommy and daddy?” you ask.
“Maybe,” I say. “Or other kids might have been mean to him when he was little.”
You’re quiet for a few seconds as you think it over.
We’ve had many conversations about your daddy, the first when you were only three. You bring him up frequently, in ordinary ways. I’ve told you he’s very busy and lives far away. I’ve said that someday when you’re much older, you’ll be able to see him. I don’t know if this is the right thing to say, or if it’s true.
You used to ask Corbin if he could be your daddy, but Corbin is gone now, back to Austin. You still talk to him on the phone sometimes, and you have your uncle Alan, and your grandpa. You seem to be at least as happy and well adjusted as the rest of the kids.
Alan continues to come by on Sundays when he’s in town. You watch for him, pressed up against a window that looks out onto Sixth Avenue from the second floor.
Alan gre
ets you with hugs and kisses. Sometimes he brings his girlfriend. She’s a different one each time. It’s hard to keep a relationship going when he’s on the road so much. They’re blond or brown-haired, or his favorites, the redheads. They’re all young and skinny and a little self-conscious. They follow him up the stairs and hang back. Say hello with lowered eyes and stand in the corner or by the bookshelves, pretending to look at the titles. You’re the icebreaker, Minnow. You’re always so nice to them. You hold their hands and point out your drawings, framed in clear plastic on the long wall behind the dining table. You introduce them to the cats. You take them to your room and show them the papier-mâché sculpture that sits on your dresser. “See, it’s a unicorn with wings,” you explain.
They tell you you have pretty hair, or that they like your shoes, or your nail polish. When they ask you what you want to be when you grow up, you say a veterinarian, a scientist, or a mathematician. “I love prime numbers,” you volunteer.
That usually throws them. They look dumbfounded. The first time I heard you say it, I was right there with them. I thought it must be something your grandfather had taught you to say; you’ve inherited his gift for logic and numbers. When I asked you what you loved about prime numbers, you said: “They’re fun.”
I don’t know what it means to love prime numbers. But who am I to tell you what to love?
Alan still likes to take charge in the kitchen. He tastes the sauce and looks through my spices to add bay leaves or nutmeg or cinnamon. I’m happy to let him, though after all these years of his suggestions, I can cook almost as well as he can.
“Hey, do you ever hear from Jules?” he asks one Sunday.
Dave is there, too, that night. He’s the bass player from Charlotte’s band and Alan’s good friend. It’s just after midnight and Talk Talk’s “Spirit of Eden” is turned down low. We’re sitting around the long table, finishing up the last bottle of wine. “Yeah,” I say, feeling a little drunk. “I’m in touch with her pretty regularly.”
Renee, the current girlfriend, is resting her head on Alan’s shoulder. I keep noticing the way her hennaed hair curls at the edges, the last of a grown-out perm. Beyond her through the open pocket doors, I can see you sleeping in my bed on a pile of coats.
