Autobiography of Us (21 page)

“Sunday,” he said slowly. “Why not?” He ran a hand over his face. “Rebecca—” But then he stopped. I believe that was the moment he tried to tell me the truth, that when he reached for his courage he simply found it gone. Like so many unhappy people, he didn’t know how powerfully the vision of a happy life held him, I don’t think, until he found himself confronted with everything he stood to lose. He was not a cruel man, understand, only weak like the rest of us. Under that golden exterior, after all—a heart. “He’s getting so big,” he said finally. He crossed the room and came over to where we sat, laying a hand on Matthew’s head. We both watched our son for a moment, that small stomach rising and falling. And then my husband said very casually he guessed he’d try sleeping in the guest room for a night or two.
Guessed
, he said, shrugging
—
as though someone had put the idea to him. “I haven’t been sleeping well,” he said. “I wake up every time you go to feed the baby, and then I can’t for the life of me go back to sleep.” His mind drifted at meetings, he said. He was having a terrible time making it through the day. “A temporary fix,” he said, leaning over to kiss me on the head.

He was at the door when he turned again, his pajamas folded neatly in the crook of his arm. “Rebecca.” He smiled at me over our son’s heavy body; it was an awful smile. “We understand each other, don’t we?”

I don’t remember what I said to him that night in the bedroom, his handsome face distorted by that smile like a pool of water ruffled by a strong breeze. I know that after he left I carried Matthew to bed, that after that I went straight to the bathroom and shut the door, running the water to cover the sound of the tears that never arrived. I know that after a little while I splashed cold water on my face and brushed my hair its hundred strokes before turning off the light and going to bed, that I only bit my lip when I came into the kitchen early the next morning and found him gone, Matthew already calling for me from his crib, Lucas’s cries verging on frantic. It was only temporary, I reminded myself. Later, after Paul had taken most of his things from our bedroom and I started putting his clean laundry directly into the drawers of the guest room bureau, leaving his favorite toothpaste on the guest room sink, I kept turning the same lie over and over.

Continuing, in other words, to live as I always had. What else could I do?

I’m sorry to say I saw your grandmother just twice before she died, both times on the occasion of one of your brother’s births. We’d fallen into the habit of speaking every Sunday night not long after Paul and I moved to New York, Mother providing running commentaries about the state of the gladiolas or the new heated pool at the club, the cat that appeared on their doorstep one morning with a dead hummingbird in its mouth, depositing the body before it slunk off into the hedges. Occasionally my father picked up the extension in his study, the buzz of the radio giving him away long before his measured greeting—
hello
,
there
, or, simply,
well
. I wished desperately at those moments that Mother would give him a chance to speak, that she might pause her endless chatter; in retrospect I understand she was only doing her best to fill in what would otherwise doubtless have been a string of awkward silences, saving us from the weight of everything that went unsaid.

Strange, that first visit after Matthew was born, to find she was so much smaller than I was: I had not remembered that. But then that is so often the way with things from our childhood—they are never quite as grand or terrible as we recall. I remember, too, that the back of her skirt was wrinkled from the plane ride—the turbulence, she noted,
atrocious—
and her hand went there automatically as she turned from the window, smoothing the cloth flat before she lowered herself onto the couch. My father seemed ill at ease, his big hands resting on his knees as though unsure of what to do with them as he gazed around the room.

“All on one floor,” he said finally. “Is that it?”

“It’s a floor-through.”

“A what?”

“A floor-through,” I said again, my voice loud. “We were lucky to get one so big, not to mention the view. There aren’t many places with a view like this.”

They both turned to gaze at the windows.

“No,” my mother mused. “I wouldn’t think there would be.”

“We had to fight off half a dozen other bidders. Paul was wonderful. Didn’t give an inch.”

My father nodded. “Sounds like a fine man.”

“We’re on pins and needles, as you can imagine.” Mother crossed her legs at the ankles and smiled up at me, putting on her brave face to show she was still fighting the lingering effects of all that turbulence. “I feel sick we’ve let so much time go by without meeting him. Absolutely sick.”

“Things have been so hectic,” I began.

“No need to apologize to
us
, sweetheart.” She picked up one of the throw pillows and set it back down immediately. “You’ve been busy as a bee. You’ve got the baby to think of, not to mention setting up this place. And Paul—well, it sounds as though they’re keeping him on his toes.”

“He should be home any minute.” The elevator whirred as I said it; I hoped it was him, but it kept going, gears clanking as it rose.

“Isn’t it funny, everyone living on top of one another like this?” My mother glanced around the room as though she expected to see people emerging from behind the furniture. “You must get along famously with the neighbors.”

“Everyone mostly keeps to themselves, actually.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Honestly, Walter,” she said, reprovingly.

My father turned toward the window again. “Tremendous view.”

“It’s nice having the river so close by. And the parks,” I said. “One on either side.”

“Speaking of neighbors…” My mother sat up a little straighter. “I ran into Eleanor the other day and she told me the most terrible news: Ruby up and quit on her last week, just like that. Can you imagine? After nearly forty years with the family! All over the question of a little raise.” She shook her head. “The whole thing’s come as quite a shock. Ruby’s always done terrific work, but Eleanor had every right in the world not to cave, I think. Why, there must be dozens of people like Ruby who would
die
for that job.”

“Your mother,” my father interjected, “has recently developed an allergy to the word
Negro
.”

“It’s not me,” Mother sniffed. “They don’t like that word anymore. Isn’t that right, Rebecca?”

I ignored her. “Then you see them, the Carringtons?”

“We’ve been on the Ladies’ Guild together this spring, Eleanor and I. Didn’t I—? No? We’ve been having a marvelous time.” Her voice changed almost imperceptibly. “Of course, she and Beau are just over the moon about the twins.”

“Twins?”

“Alexandra. She’s due in September.” She paused. “I assumed—”

“Of course,” I said quickly. “I’d forgotten.”

“Strange-looking man, that husband of hers. I saw them at the park once—oh, it must have been ages ago.” My mother coughed. “Tall as the day is long. Not particularly friendly, I must say.”

“You know him,” my father said. “She knows him, Eloise.”

“That’s right. A Browning boy, though I believe he’s a bit older. Now, what was his name? Lundell? Labelle?” She clicked her tongue. “Lowell,” she declared, triumphant. “Bertrand Lowell.”

“Alex’s husband.” I had been standing and now I sat down. “Bertrand Lowell.”

“Did you know him?”

“A little.” I took the blanket from the back of the sofa and busied myself refolding it.

“A fine match, I think. Eleanor seemed very pleased. They have them over every weekend for dinner, she said.” She looked at me. “I gather you’re not in touch?”

“I’ve been so busy,” I said slowly.

“It’s such a precious time, isn’t it?” My mother looked up at me, her expression wistful. “Why, I remember you as a newborn as though it were yesterday. Imagine—your father and I not even married a year, the three of us crammed into that tiny house up in the hills. I spent every minute with you. Up all night and on into morning. I saw the most marvelous sunrises—do you remember, Walter? Do you remember how much I loved sitting up with her while the sun rose? And here you’ve got this apartment, this view. You must be on top of the world.” She reached out and touched her fingers to my arm. “Just look at this place. Look at you.”

Paul came through the door not long after, shaking my father’s hand and bowing as he presented my mother with a glass of champagne, which made her smile. I believe they both took to him immediately. He was charming and affectionate, kissing the top of my head before he sat down beside my father, placing a hand on my shoulder as I passed around the hors d’oeuvres. I served everyone shrimp cocktail from a silver bowl and pretended not to notice when I spilled sauce on the rug: My hands were shaking in that awful way they have. Not long after, Gladys came out with Matthew—damp and sweet-smelling from his bath—and my mother cooed over him, Matthew squirming a little until she handed him back to me, saying she must have lost her touch. I all but jumped at the chance to leave the room, taking your brother in my arms and murmuring something about feeding, though no sooner had I shut the door to the nursery than I found myself sinking into the rocking chair what felt like moments before my legs gave out. It was only when your brother began to wail that I realized I still held the bottle tucked into the crook of my arm, that I must have been sitting there for God knows how long with his little hands grabbing, my mind somewhere else entirely.

August 10, 1968

Dear Alex,

I’m writing to say I understand. Or I want to understand. I don’t know that they’re the same thing exactly, but I am doing my best here. I am making an
effort
.

It seems to me that the road to such-and-such is paved with delusions. Not heaven or hell, but the in between, the nowhere in particular. Where I find myself living. Do you understand what I mean by that? I don’t mean to sound so dire about it. There are little things that nudge me out. Moments that lift the fog like a flap of skin. Matthew smiles his baby smile or the sun hits the river just so. A cardinal rises from one of the old elms down in the park, the flash of red as he wings north surprising. I have to think you have those, too, though given recent evidence I feel less inclined to imagine what they look like. I won’t pretend to have a clue what form your happiness takes at this point, the shape it has assumed. Everything changes. I ought to have grown accustomed by now. And yet the change boggles the mind, as my father would say, the word just right,
boggles
, a word that shakes the brain, rattles it loose. The thought still stops me where I stand, Matthew feeding and that sour smell everywhere, the sound of his sucking loud.

Listen, the thought says. Eventually, you lose everything.

MY mother died in the fall of 1973, a heart attack due to blockage her doctor said must have been accumulating for some time. I spent most of the long flight from New York asleep, the damp heat as I stepped out of the airport at once strange and achingly familiar. I was something less than fully awake as I rode along the highway, the sight of downtown L.A. approaching oddly dreamlike as a result, blurred, a jumble of skyscrapers and billboards rising from the haze of smog. I had never taken a taxi in Pasadena before; that must have added to the strangeness of it all, the unreal quality of the scenery flashing by as we pulled off the highway and drove down those old roads. I asked the cabbie to drop me at the sidewalk in front of our driveway and then just stood there a minute, staring at the familiar façade before tucking my bag behind the front hedges and starting back down the street. I needed to walk around the block once or twice, I told myself. Clear my head.

I found myself in front of Alex’s house soon enough. In one of our last conversations before she died, my mother told me that the Carringtons had moved to Florida months before, some controversy over a large amount of money gone missing at Mr. Carrington’s company. A
scandal
, she’d said. Meanwhile, the house looked exactly as it always had, its size impressive in a way even the other houses on our block didn’t quite match, that high wall running all the way to the far end of the backyard that sloped down into the swimming pool. I would not have been surprised to hear a shriek from the pool as I stood there on the sidewalk, to catch a glimpse through the iron gates of my fourteen-year-old self disappearing into the blue water after Alex, our bodies leaving twin trails of bubbles.

I kept walking all the way to Swenson’s, the little market where my mother had liked to do her shopping. I don’t know that I thought much about what I was doing as I took a basket and walked down the aisle, stopping by the display of oranges. It was my mother who’d taught me how to pick out the best ones. She’d stood with me once in precisely the same spot and showed me how to run my thumb across the skin, checking the texture, the dimples meant to be of a certain size, the scent strong without being overpowering. I picked up an orange and held it to my nose.

Listen: It is a terrible thing, losing your mother.

There was a girl who lived in our neighborhood, Lucy Allen, who I was friendly with when I was young: Boots, her dog was called, his black coat set off by four white paws. Boots was supposed to be the family dog, but like all dogs he had his master, and in this case it was Lucy’s father, Mr. Allen, a quiet man we might never have known was home until he came shuffling into the room. We might never have known, that is, if it hadn’t been for Boots, who in an ecstasy of love would spring up from wherever he’d been sleeping minutes before Mr. Allen walked in the door and, lifting one boot, point his nose at the front door.

I can’t say I had Boots’s accuracy about timing or direction, but if I’d had a coat of fur, a strip of it would have stood straight up along my back when Alex came through the door. I stood there pressing my nose into the orange’s cool skin and stared at that familiar profile as though it were possible I had mistaken someone else for her. I must have looked half mad. I actually went so far as to drop the orange deliberately to the ground, crouching there a moment—hidden, feeling absurd—before I forced myself to stand.