Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (14 page)

After William's descent into the perilous bowels of the rumpus room, Ben tells us about his trial, about his borderline-retarded client, about the victim who Ben believes accidentally severed her own index finger while chopping chicken parts. He tells this story with his usual bland impassivity, as if he is recounting a dull and pointless Mets game played long after the team has given up hope of winning the pennant. I wonder if Ben sheds this laconic style when he is in front of a jury, or if it is this very mildness that convinces them so often to acquit his clients.

“Ben,” Allison calls across the room, “I need you to make a quick Grand Union run.”

He pushes his glasses back on his egg face with one finger and nods distractedly, continuing his story about his thwarted attempts to convince the judge to authorize funds for an expert on self-mutilation.

“
Now
, hon,” she says.

He snaps to attention.

“You forgot Rice Dream,” she says reproachfully.

“Rice Dream?” he says.

“For the kids who can't eat ice cream.”

“Don't trouble yourself on William's behalf,” Jack says. “He'll be fine with just birthday cake. He's used to it.”

“Don't be silly,” Allison says in her booming voice. “We have other children with lactose issues. I have a spelt alternative for the children with wheat allergies and I want a rice-milk alternative for the children with dairy allergies. Ben, you have to leave right now if we're going to cut the cake by twelve thirty.”

Ben makes for the door. As he is wrapping a long purple muffler around his short neck he says to Jack, “I don't suppose you'd like to join me? Take a walk to the market? It's just a few blocks.”

“Sure,” Jack says.

I am about to follow when Allison says, “Emilia, come meet Lizbet. Her daughter Fiona is William's age. Lizbet and her partner, Angela, live on the Upper West Side, too.”

Jack winks at me from across the room and makes his escape. I trudge over to be introduced to a slightly younger version of my sister. Lizbet has Allison's frizzle of gray hair and her earnest and pietistic expression.

“Lizbet's signed Fiona up for PS 87,” Allison says.

“We're hoping to get into the dual-language program,” Lizbet says. “By eighth grade the children are completely bilingual. Have you signed William up for kindergarten yet? Or will he be going to . . .” Here she pauses and purses her lips around the words, as though they are too sour to be spoken without making a face. “To private school?”

“It's really not up to us,” I say. “William's mother would never in a million years let him near a public school.”

“It's such a shame,” Allison says in a pained voice, as if she is very sorry for William. And for me. “William is a sweet boy, but I think it's already possible to see in him the effects of an overly sheltered upbringing. When a child grows up surrounded only by people of his own race and socioeconomic class, he cannot be expected to be sensitive to difference.”

“Oh for God's sake, Allison. He goes to the 92nd Street Y preschool,” I say. “He's got black and Asian kids in his class. Diversity is one of their
things
.”

“Experiencing rich people of all colors is not experiencing diversity.”

“Not everyone there is rich.”

“You're rich.”

“Not really,” I say. But of course we are rich. Certainly richer than the other people in this house. Certainly richer than I ever expected to be.

Olatunji Babalalu, who is listening to the conversation, reassures me. “Private schools can be wonderful. I myself attended the Bishop Pertteerson Comprehensive Secondary School, in Mbosi.”

I am saved from replying by a loud pounding from the stairs leading up from the basement. Lennon appears, red-faced and sweaty. “Emilia!” he shouts. “You better get downstairs right now!”

“What happened? Is William okay?” I run across the room, dodging around the dining-room table and nearly toppling a woman in an apple-green sari.

I take the stairs two at a time, Lennon on my heels. At the bottom, on the garden level that my sister has turned into a playroom complete with beanbag chairs, ugly peach carpeting, and an ancient stereo system, but devoid, of course, of television, video, or anything else that might pollute her children's pristine minds, I find a dozen or so children huddled together under a banner that says,
FELIZ COMPLEA
ñ
OS
,
EMMA
.

“Where is he?” I shout. “Where's William?”

My niece, who is sucking on the end of one her red braids, points to a foam sofa. “He's hiding behind the couch.”

I grab one end of the sofa and heave, expecting to need all my strength to budge the thing, but it is so flimsy it flies away from the wall and halfway across the room, toward the group of children. They scatter, squealing.

William is lying on the floor curled in a ball, his head buried under his folded arms. I can tell immediately what has happened; it is horribly obvious. The smell is overpowering.

“Oh no, William,” I say. “Did you poop in your pants?”

He scrambles into a tighter knot.

“We were playing statue tag,” Lennon says. He has come up beside me and is obviously trying not to breath through his nose. His voice has a nasal twang. “He was tagged and I think he was just afraid to move or something. I guess it sort of hit him suddenly because one minute he was totally fine and the next he just . . . I dunno. Did it.”

I kneel down next to William and, doing my best not to gag from the stench, reach out a tentative hand. “William? Hey, William? Are you okay?”

His groan is muffled by his arms.

“Oh, William. Why didn't you just tell Lennon you needed to go to the bathroom?” I know even before he starts to sob that I should not have said this, but I am out of my depth here. I don't know how to deal with this kind of accident or with William's humiliation.

“William? Let's go get you some clean clothes, okay? Okay, honey?”

“Go away!”

I bend over to pick him up, but I pause, my hands hovering above his khaki pants where a dark foul-smelling stain is spreading.

“Leave me alone!” he screams. “I want my mommy. I want my mommy right now.”

Of course he does, of course he wants Carolyn. She would know what to do. He is born to her, she speaks his language, she does not need to counterfeit a mother's response. My skills of interpretation and deciphering, barely competent when things go smoothly, fail miserably when William is so humiliated and in such pain. When he really needs a mother, a fake one is not good enough.

“Your mom's not here, honey,” I whisper.

“Daddy!” he cries.

“Daddy had to go out for a minute. To get Rice Dream.” Oh no. I realize that this is my fault. It was the ice cream. He has had a horrible attack of diarrhea because of the ice cream. “There's only me, William. I'm the only one here. But I can help you, honey. I can help you.”

“I don't want you! You're not my mommy! I want my mommy! I want my mommy right now!” He lunges away from me, bicycling his legs, kicking as hard as he can. One of his feet lands directly in my stomach. I grunt and fall to my knees, bent over the pain in my belly.

“William, please,” I say. “Honey, just come with me. You've got poop in your pants and you've got to change your clothes.”

“I hate you!” William yells. “I hate you!”

“Why don't you let me give it a shot?” Allison says gently. I had not even noticed her but now realize that she must have come down after me and been watching this all along, she and the rest of the assembled company. She eases me out of the way. She kneels down next to William and, stroking his hair, bends over and whispers in his ear. At first he shakes his head and continues to cry, but after a few minutes he begins to calm down. Finally, with a ragged, trembling inhalation, he unwinds himself from his tight knot and gets to his feet. Allison gives him her hand and they make their slow way out from behind the couch. William keeps his eyes firmly averted from mine. He clings to her as they climb the stairs. I follow close on their heels.

Once we are upstairs Allison turns to me and says, “I'm going to take him up and give him a quick bath. Why don't you stay here? We won't be a minute.”

“It's okay,” I say. “I can take care of it.”

“No!” William says, leaning against my sister. “I don't want Emilia. I want you!”

“I've got this under control,” Allison says. She steers William toward the stairs to the second floor. “Emilia, would you be a peach and get the cake ready for me? The candles are in the drawer next to the stove.”

While they are climbing the stairs she catches my eye and mouths, “Don't worry.” Easy for her to say.

By now the other guests have resumed their party small talk, although there is a self-conscious quality to the attention they are not paying me. One woman gives me a sympathetic smile, but the rest avert their eyes.

While I am arranging the candles on the cake, nine to celebrate the years of Emma's life and one to grow on, Jack and Ben return. I am girding myself to tell Jack what has happened when I hear his light tread running up the stairs. I know I shouldn't be relieved at having avoided the task of recounting William's shame and rage, but I am.

I take the decorated cake out to the dining room and place it in the center of the table. A few minutes later Allison comes downstairs, holding William's clothes in a tight bundle.

“I'll take those,” I say.

“Let me put them in a bag.”

I follow her into the kitchen. She deposits the clothing into a plastic grocery bag and ties a tight knot. She hands it to me and washes her hands.

“Is he okay?” I ask.

“He's fine. Just freaked out. He had diarrhea. He was terribly embarrassed and the other children didn't help him any by laughing at him. Emma is going to be writing him a nice long letter of apology.”

“She doesn't have to do that.”

“She most certainly does.”

I swing the bag on my finger for a moment. “It's my fault he has diarrhea. He's lactose intolerant and I made him eat ice cream.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because I didn't think he was really allergic. I thought it was just Carolyn's craziness. Go ahead. Tell me I'm a terrible person.”

She sighs impatiently. “You're not a terrible person, Emilia. You're immature and self-centered, but you're not a terrible person.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“What? You want me to lie to you?”

“No. You're right.” I wrinkle my nose. The stink of William's clothes is coming through the plastic bag. “He hates me.”

“He doesn't hate you.”

“He said he hates me.”

“He doesn't really hate you. He's a sad and confused little kid. That's all. Children his age do not feel things like hate. That's an adult emotion.”

“I know. I know you're right.” She's wrong, though. I think she underestimates William. I think he is fully capable of all sorts of adult emotions, including hatred.

“Come,” Allison says, pushing me out of the kitchen door. “It's time for birthday cake.”

         

W
hen we are riding across the Brooklyn Bridge, William's voice creases the thick silence in the cab. “I hate Brooklyn,” he says. It is the first thing he has said since he and Jack came downstairs after his bath. Under his winter coat he is wearing a pair of Emma's overalls, rolled up at the ankles, and a plain white T-shirt.

Neither of us replies.

“I can see where the twin towers used to be,” he says.

“Good,” Jack says.

William stares at the empty space in the skyline.

“Emma is nine,” he says. “That's almost two times as old as I am. Two times five is ten. And nine is one less than ten.”

“Yes, that's right.”

“And she can't even read!”

“Okay, Will,” Jack says. “I know you're upset and embarrassed, but you don't need to say mean things about Emma.”

“I'm only five and I can read chapter books.”

“William!” Jack says. “I said that's enough.”

“She's stupid. She's a stupid girl.”

“William!”

“She's not stupid, William,” I say. “She's just got problems reading.”

“What's the difference?” he says.

Jack strokes William's cheek with his palm. “Be quiet, Will,” he says.

Chapter 15
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

W
hen
we get home, there is a message waiting from Simon. Since I stood them up the night before, will I come to a matinee with him and Mindy today? I immediately call back and take them up on their invitation. I cannot bear the thought of the rest of the day in William's reproachful presence. To Jack I say that it is clear he and his son need some time alone. I try not to let on how relieved I am at his lack of objection.

After the movie, Simon, Mindy, and I end up in a restaurant on East Sixth Street, eating Indian food. Simon is pretending to be here under protest. He calls this block “diarrhea row” and picks at his vindaloo, muttering about how the Indian joints all share a single kitchen, one that has been condemned by the health department.

I have had enough talk of diarrhea to last me a good long while. “That is an old joke, Simon. That is a bridge-and-tunnel joke. See that man?” I point to a heavyset man whose dark hair creeps over his head and down the back of his collar like moss on a log. “That man made that very same joke tonight, on his way through the Holland Tunnel.”

“Don't be such a snob, Emilia,” Simon says. “You're from New Jersey.”

“Yes, I'm from New Jersey, but I embrace New York. I embrace Bombay Palace. I eat my chicken tikka masala with gusto and do not complain about a few cockroaches and the odd case of salmonella.”

Simon rolls his eyes but I can tell that he is happy. I saw him and Mindy briefly clasp hands as we walked over from the movie theater, after I announced I was hungry and that I was in the mood for Indian food.

Mindy spears the last piece of tough, stringy chicken breast. “Did you know that tikka masala isn't really Indian at all? It was created by Indians in England because their customers couldn't handle the subtle flavors and spices of real Indian cuisine. It has ketchup in it. Or tomato soup. I can't remember which.”

I sop up the remains of the sauce with a piece of burned nan. “Tikka masala is made with tomato paste,” I say. “And spiced with cardamom, tumeric, cumin, nutmeg, and, I think, mace. And if it was invented by Indians, then it's Indian, no matter who it was invented
for
. That's like saying pizza isn't really Italian. I hate that. I've been to Italy. In Italy, people are constantly gobbling pizza. And pasta. Like it's supposed to mean anything that Marco Polo stole the noodle from the Chinese. Chow fun is Chinese. Pasta is Italian. End of story.”

The pleasure with which Simon and Mindy greet my ill-tempered diatribe about the origins of different foods is so great that I am surprised they do not leap to their feet, join hands, and dance the hora around our table. They think that Emilia, famously opinionated, cheerfully bitter, neurotically invested in their perception of her as sharply, wickedly funny, is back. They do not realize that I will do anything, make witty and scintillating conversation until their eyes glaze over with exhaustion, juggle plates full of biryani and lamb roganjosh, pretend that the picture of the god Ganesh over the cash register is not exactly like the one silk-screened on the tiny T-shirt I bought for Isabel when I was just six months pregnant, at the Gupta Spices and Saree Center in Park Slope near Mindy's house, I will do anything, anything at all, if only they will stay out with me tonight, keep me away from that apartment, keep me away from that boy whose prodigious talents include making me feel like a terrible person, and reminding me that not only am I not his mother but I am nobody's mother at all. I will do anything to stay away from the place where he is alive and she is nothing but a frozen memory, stiff and cold, her tongue curled out of the corner of her mouth, her breath forever stilled in her chest.

“I think we should go dancing,” Mindy says.

Simon says, “Don't be ridiculous,” and kicks her under the table. His legs are so long that his knee bangs the table when he kicks her and a bowl of purple sauce spills onto the glass-covered surface.

“Subtle,” I say, and put my napkin on top of the spill to keep it from spreading. The napkins are pink, made of some remarkable polyester that repels water. “I think dancing is a great idea. Let's go dancing.”

Simon shakes his head. “You don't really want to go dancing, Emilia.”

“Yes, I do. Dancing is exactly what I want to do.”

“We can't,” he says, and looks meaningfully at Mindy. She opens her eyes in a parody of innocence and flutters her thickly mascaraed eyelashes.

“Sure we can,” I say.

“We're not dressed for it.”

“Don't be an idiot. You're wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. If you stood in front of your closet for four hours that's precisely what you'd come up with. I, number one, don't care what I look like, and number two, have a T-shirt on under my sweater in case I get hot. Mindy is dressed, as usual, like she's trying to get laid. By the way,” I say to her, “what was Daniel's reaction to the red leather miniskirt? Didn't he think you were a tad overdressed for the movies?”

She shrugs.

“We look fine,” I say. “We look amazing. We're on fire. Let's go dancing.”

Simon crosses his arms over his chest. He shakes his head and gives Mindy a sullen, angry look.

“What?” I say.

Mindy twists the paper wrapper from her straw around her finger, cutting off the circulation. Her finger grows red at the tip and white near where the rope of paper binds it. A small smile plays at the corners of her mouth.

“What's going on?” I say.

“We can't go dancing, Emilia,” Simon says, his voice very tender, like a mother speaking to her baby, like he spoke to me in the days right after Isabel died.

“Why not?” I say.

“Because Mindy's pregnant.”

“Oh,” I say. What kind of person begrudges her friend this joy? What kind of person denies her friend the right to feel a moment of bliss after two years of frustrated longing? What kind of person can barely keep herself from reminding her friend that three times before the friend has allowed herself happiness only to find it smeared in her underpants, spilled on the bathroom floor, scraped into a hospital garbage pail?

I say, “Does this mean I don't have to go with you to that Walk to Remember?”

“No, you don't have to go with me to the Walk to Remember,” she says. “I mean, I thought I was going to go anyway, and I still might go next October. But I don't think I want to go this month. I've been feeling a little superstitious about it. I don't want to
plan
on going.”

“Good,” I say, “because I never wanted to go.”

“You made that pretty clear.”

“Anyway, no dancing tonight,” I say.

“But I do want to go dancing,” Mindy says. “I've done the bed-rest thing. I've done the no-exercising, no-climbing-stairs, no-running, no-walking thing. Even when I lie on my bed, perfectly still, I lose the baby. This time I'm going to try a different approach. I'm going to try the dancing thing. I'm going to try the pound-the-floor-until-you-sweat, spin-around-until-you're-dizzy, rock-and-roll-until-you-drop thing, and see what the fuck happens. Who knows, maybe this one will stick.”

Simon and I look at each other. Simon shakes his head but lifts his hands in defeat. “Misstress Formika is at Opaline tonight,” he says. “You haven't lived until you've been seen at Area 10009.”

Opaline is a cavern with a pulsing electro beat, the neon needles of pastel strobes whisking across gyrating bodies, dark with flashes of brilliant light. Go-go dancers on the bar—boys, with one lone woman in tasseled pasties and leopard-skin pants. A flash of ass in cutout chaps, an oiled chest in a wife-beater torn by grasping hands. The boys on the dance floor suck us into their midst, not seeming to notice that Mindy and I are two of the only women in the room other than the go-go dancer and a few slick-haired and dark-lipsticked lesbians sprawled on the banquets.

We dance together, the three of us, to the Felix Da Housecat mix of “The 15th” by Fischerspooner. Mindy and I sandwich Simon between our grinding hips like a sausage in a too-small bun until he is spun away by a man with a mane of soot-black hair, a man all hairdo, nipple ring, and, I fear, an eye for loneliness, for self-delusion, for Simon's willingness to loosen his belt in the back hall of an East Village club in exchange for nothing more than a scribbled telephone number which will likely prove to be that of a Korean grocery store on West Fifty-seventh Street. Mindy and I dance alone until she puts her hands on her hips and shouts to me, “I'm exhausted. I'm going to get a drink of water.”

I nod and start to follow but she pushes me back. “No, you stay. You're having fun,” she yells.

I keep on dancing alone, whirling in a circle, but without my friends next to me I am aware of the heat, and of missing Jack. I spin more slowly and wish I were home in bed spending my evening as I usually do, lying next to my husband, thinking about my daughter, and feeling sorry for myself. It's not that I really enjoy those evenings at home. On the contrary, they are miserable and tedious. However, there is a certain pleasure to that familiar pain, the kind of pleasure one takes in picking a firm, well-grown scab, or poking a tongue into a canker sore and tasting the metallic twinge. The desolation I feel on the dance floor at Opaline is unfamiliar—I do not recognize this ache and thus I do not like it one bit.

I feel hands on my shoulders and turn to see a man dancing behind me, his hips swaying in rhythm with mine. He looks younger than me, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six. He is handsome, slim, and sharp-nosed with sleepy eyes and narrow lips. His nylon trucker hat is poison green and cocked to one side. He snaps his teeth at me and I laugh. He is quite clearly gay; straight men do not wear tight Christina Aguilera T-shirts and pants cut so low that their public hair peeps from above the open button at the waist. He slides his hands up the sides of my body and then lifts them between our faces, waving his fingers like a Thai dancer. His rings sparkle in the flashing strobes. I lift my arms like he does and we are dancing together, mirroring each other's movements, our arms, legs, and hips gyrating in unison. We dance exactly alike, our hips swing in the same rhythm, our legs lift from the floor at the same moment and rise to the same height. We are fluid. We are exquisite. We are a perfect pair, the king and queen of the dance floor. We are like ice dancers; we should be at the Ice Capades. My partner takes my hands in his. His body undulates like a snake's as he moves me closer to him. Our knees touch, then our hips, our groins, our bellies. My breasts against his chest, my lips against his collarbone. I open my mouth and press my tongue against the hollow of his throat. His skin is salty and sharp, bitter almost. I feel his pulse against my tongue and the sensation moves through my body, down my neck, along my breasts, through my belly, into my groin. I melt, my knees buckle, and he catches me in his arms.

“Rrr-oww,” he yowls. “You are one hot little kitty cat!”

I laugh, as if I too was joking, as if I was not just knocked off my feet by a wave of gut-twisting desire for a strange gay man in an ugly T-shirt. I wave goodbye and duck through the crowd, searching for Mindy and Simon. I do not know what is wrong with me, but I must get out of here before something happens.

         

J
ack has left the small beaded lamp in the front hall lit for me, and by this dim bulb I drop my coat and bag and make my way to the bedroom. He is asleep, of course; it is past midnight and he must wake up early and take William to school on his way to the office. I strip off my sweaty clothes and stuff them deep into the laundry hamper. Then I climb into bed.

Jack used to joke that I seduced him under false pretenses, that because our first real sexual contact was a blow job, he was misled into believing that I was an aficionado of oral sex, that it would be a routine part of our lovemaking. “You tricked me,” he would say.

I used to think this was funny. Tonight I am determined to reprise that first time. I must have sex with my husband, because I wanted to fuck that gay boy at Opaline. But I cannot bear to have Jack inside me. My belly contracts and twists at the idea. It closes tight. I can't do that yet. But I can do this.

When Jack wakes to find himself in my mouth, he is so grateful that his navy blue eyes, the eyes I love so much, fill with tears. After he is done, he holds my head in his hands, smoothing the hair from my temples, and tells me that he loves me. Then he moves me onto my back and begins to give me fluttery kisses down toward my navel.

“It's okay,” I say.

“I want to.”

“No.”