Disturbances in the Field (22 page)

“Don’t have any more, come on. This is no good. Have some coffee.” Victor pushed his cup over to Don, squeezed my leg under the table, then took my hand.

“What a day. God, I wish Gabrielle would come home. I’m a mess alone. I can’t even match my socks. Well, no, of course I can. I mean, I just miss her. I haven’t seen my kids in three weeks either. I miss those sullen adolescent faces.”

“Enough. It’s time to take you home in your little green bus,” Victor said. “I’ll drive. We’ll get a cab from there.”

“I’ll drive,” I said. “I’m sober and I’ve never driven a bus.”

“Oh,” sighed Don, drinking some more. “Poor Esther. The crazy reasons we get married.”

“You seemed quite sane, as I remember. You went about it very methodically, bringing her flowers, taking her to the theatre, all dressed up.”

“It was lousy, being a resident then. Besides all the people crippled and dying, we had to work round the clock. We didn’t know enough to organize for better conditions. You remember what it was like. No one thought of protesting. They have it much easier now.” He swallowed the last of the martini. “We, on the other hand, longed for a little comfort. And she was oh so comfortable.” He winked lewdly.

“In all these years we’ve never seen him like this,” I said to Victor. We laughed, holding hands and gazing at Don.

He set down his empty glass sharply. “How did you two happen to get together?”

“Us?” Victor turned to me with that raised eyebrow again. He was really overdoing it. “Oh, we got married because you and Gaby got married. Isn’t that right, Lyd?”

W
HEN ALTHEA WAS BORN
, in 1963, my mother and Victor’s mother came over nearly every day to help, because I was sick and weak, my mind torpid from anesthesia. In the hospital a realization had crept up on me insidiously like a mouse in the dark, a mouse whose presence you suspect, yet who you hope will never appear. I was responsible for the survival of this creature. It was paralyzing. Who the creature was in relation to me, my body, was a riddle: no longer part of my flesh, yet if I accidentally pricked her with a pin my nerves jumped in harmony with hers. I had headaches and inexplicable spells of fever, and my stitches were infected. The infection was painful and lingering. I took it as symbolic—I had been torn and would never heal.

My mother and Edith, who behaved in a saintly way, were in what they only half-jokingly called the prime of life, their middle fifties. My father had been promoted and transferred to the New York office of his insurance firm, and my mother loved the change. She became chummy with Edith. Afternoons, they went to matinees and movies, occasionally to lectures or panel discussions at worthy institutions. Victor said a peripheral benefit of our marriage was the bringing together of two such compatible women.

My mother took on an elegance but I knew it was detachable, like a zip-out lining. I remembered her before she had had the leisure for elegance, before the prime of her life. I remembered her with metal clips in her hair, a frumpy apron tied round her waist, her hands sunk to the knuckles in raw chopped meat. I had seen her scale fish for dinner (the man in the store did not meet her standards), with newspaper spread on the kitchen table and scales spattering like hail from the quick strokes of her knife. I had seen her rub lemon juice on her hands to get rid of the fish smell, then patiently hook up the long-line bra that disciplined the flab around her middle. My mother’s new-found elegance was a triumph of pride against a backdrop of labor. But I had never seen Edith other than flawlessly mannered, dressed, coiffed, and accessorized, and so I was embarrassed by the shabby chaos Victor and I lived in. I needn’t have been. Edith wished to be neither intimate nor critical, simply useful. She ignored the paint rags and canvases, the piles of music and cartons of records in our living room, the only room large enough for storage. When I halfheartedly apologized, she hushed me gently; she understood we were young people and busy working. But if ever we wanted her cleaning lady for a day ...

The first two weeks I was home from the hospital their visits often coincided. Together they would change into slacks carried in smart tote bags, tie scarves around their lightly lacquered hair, and vie courteously for the privilege of carting dirty laundry to the laundromat around the corner or peeling potatoes for our dinner. No more snacks grabbed at odd hours: they insisted we eat regular dinners, especially since I was nursing Althea. Together they lugged bags of healthy food from the supermarket on Twenty-third Street. And they sat amid the living room debris, on our Salvation Army overstuffed chairs, drinking coffee and reliving their own ordeals of childbirth, while I lay nearby on a mattress on the floor, reading and eavesdropping. I had been told to get as much rest as I could—besides the fevers and the stitches and the atrophy, I was slightly anemic. I was reading Trollope. Gaby, who knew about childbirth and had unerring taste, had brought me three novels in the hospital. “These should get you through two weeks,” she said, “and then you’ll be fine. If you need any more, he wrote about four dozen others, all very long.” I had a pile of things I ought to have been looking at—Brahms scores for our trio, a new biography of Haydn, the first act of an operetta one of my students at the Golden Age Club was composing. But only Trollope would do. The once-bright paisley cover on the mattress was stained and stiff in places, from love-making; I hoped the mothers could not infer that by looking. I wished they would take it to the laundromat along with the baby clothes, but hesitated to ask. I could not imagine ever flopping down on that mattress with Victor again, throwing our clothes blithely around the room, any more than I could imagine telling my own story of childbirth years from now, interspersed with chuckles. I was busy suppressing it.

When they left, chatting their way down the dusty stairs, I leaned against the doorframe in my bathrobe, straining my ears for the last notes of their voices and feeling the panic approach. I kept it at bay by carefully mapping out the hours until their return, like a child left alone in a strange place. I could feed her and dress her well enough. If only nothing unexpected happened ... Once I confessed this panic to my mother. She stroked my hair and squeezed my chilly hands. “Don’t
worry,
” she said firmly. “Every day you get stronger.” I burst into tears. I could cry at a touch. The tears were so ready and eager to spring; it disgusted me.

Now and then I would stare at the piano and play a melody with one hand, barely pressing the keys, like a timid student. A few times I sat down, longing for the music, but with a perverse urge to fail. At the first infelicity I would cry, bitter, spiteful tears: I told you so. I knew the effort it would take to get rid of those infelicities, and how unequal I was to any effort. So I would crash my palms on the keys, which woke Althea. I picked her up and we cried together, flesh to flesh, each of us seeking comfort in the source of the tears.

I tried to play records, but I was used to playing them very loud, to hear every detail, and this too woke Althea. I was furious and wanted to leave her crying in the wicker bassinet, but she might choke, burst her larynx, develop asthma, require psychoanalysis in later life. Always an extremist, and proud, I wouldn’t turn it down to capitulate to an infant. I turned it off instead. I picked her up angrily and let her suck me dry.

Greg, the violinist in our trio, phoned one afternoon as I lay on the sex-stained paisley-covered mattress. My mother was sitting nearby with the baby in her arms. Greg said he had persuaded the community relations people to have us play at the fair.

“What fair?”

“You remember, Lydia. The fair at All Angels, in three weeks. They’re raising money for their nursery school, or sports program, I forget what. I told you and Rosalie about it weeks ago.”

“I didn’t even think they had a piano. They probably think you’re a string quartet.”

“They have a string quartet, for downstairs. Jeffrey Rice is doing that, with Emily and those other two from Juilliard. We’re going to be in the main part. They’ll bring in a piano. It’ll be terrific, Lyd. It’s a great place, and we can play anything we like for four hours. The Mendelssohn, if you want. The ‘Dumky.’ We can take breaks one at a time and do duets. We’ll do the ‘Spring’ Sonata, everyone likes that.

You’ll be great, you’re a closet romantic. It’s a hundred fifty bucks, maybe more, depending on what they take in. And the exposure.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“I can’t. I don’t feel well.”

“It’s in three weeks! Are you nuts? In three weeks you’ll be fine. My wife’s been through it twice; believe me, I know. You’ll be dying to get out.”

“No. I have to go now.”

“Lydia, what’s the matter with you? We’ve been doing this for three and a half years and we’re just getting somewhere. In the spring we might play at Hunter—Rosalie met the guy who does the programming. Anyhow, where are we supposed to find someone at the last minute?”

“It’s not the last minute. There are a million pianists around. I went to school with this girl Henrietta Frye. She’s better than I am, actually. I’ll give you her number.”

After I hung up I handed my mother a slip of paper. “I’m going to take a nap. Could you do me a favor, please? Call this number and ask for Mrs. Rodriguez and tell her I can’t come in next week and ... I can’t come in at all any more.”

“What is this all about?”

“Look, would you just call, please?”

“No, I won’t just call when I don’t know who I’m talking to and what I’m talking about. I don’t want to sound like an idiot.”

I sighed. “All right. It’s the Golden Age Club at a community center uptown. I go there one day a week. They have a chorus that I conduct. There’s a group that learns sight singing. A couple of them take piano lessons. This and that. I said I’d be back next week but I can’t.”

“Lydie.” She shook her head sadly. “You’re making a mistake.”

“Ma,” I wailed. “I can’t sit. My crotch is killing me. I can’t play. I can’t do anything.”

“For heaven’s sake, you have a mild infection. It’ll be gone in a few days. With all your education, didn’t you ever learn that things can change? You’re not always going to feel the way you do right this minute. In two weeks you’ll feel like a different person.”

“I already feel like a different person. Will you call for me, please? I’m too tired.” And you never told me it would be like this.

From the bedroom I could hear her deliver my message, not quite as I had given it. I would be out for a couple of weeks. Yes, the baby was adorable, and doing fine. “She’ll be in touch with you just as soon as she feels better. ... Thank you. I’ll be sure to tell her.” I shook my head in the dim room with the shades drawn. I would be in touch with nobody, nothing. I was too tired to persevere in my being. I thought of Esther’s mother, and for the first time I had an inkling of why she might have chosen to spend her life lying alone in a dim bedroom, seeing no one, doing nothing. As I was falling asleep the phone rang.

“Someone called Rosalie,” my mother reported. “Is she the one I heard you with that time at City College?”

Oh, Greg had worked fast. “Yes. Can’t you tell her I’m sleeping?”

“No. She said it’s important. Get up and talk to her. By the way, Mrs. Rodriguez says the senior citizens send their love and miss you. Mrs. Kirchner learned the Brahms waltzes for four hands and is waiting for you to do them with her.”

“Thanks.” I slogged over to the phone.

“Lydia? What’s this I hear? It doesn’t sound like you at all. You can’t leave us in the lurch.” I moved the receiver a couple of inches away. When Rosalie got excited that deep vibrant voice seemed to be delivering the recitative between arias, on the verge of breaking into passionate song. “You have a responsibility, you know. We weren’t just fooling around till you became a mother.”

“I’m sorry, Rosalie. I’m no good any more.”

“Nonsense. The whole world has children. It doesn’t mean you have to retire from life. Sit on a pillow and practice. Take codeine, it works wonders. For every day you wait it will take three to get back. I’m speaking from experience, Lydia.”

“Henrietta Frye is really good.”

“I’ve played with her. I know she’s good. That’s not the point. I thought you were serious. Is this how fast you give up?”

“Rosalie ... If I stayed on the phone any longer I would cry, and I was so sick of those tears, beyond all control. “I’m sorry. I can’t explain. I have to hang up now.”

The next day, as I was changing Althea’s diaper in the tiny room we had made bright and colorful the week before her birth, I noticed a thin red ribbon tied low around a leg of the bassinet that had been my sister-in-law Lily’s, and later Victor’s. My mother came in from washing the lunch dishes to view the baby.

“What’s that?” I pointed to the ribbon.

“Oh my!” She looked startled, then gave an uneasy laugh. “That’s an old Jewish custom, to ward off the evil eye.”

“Mother, really.”

“Don’t look at me!” she exclaimed, looking me straight in the eye. “Since when do I go in for such things?” She nodded with significance; her lips shaped art ironic smile. “Edith must have done it.”

“Edith!” I never thought of Victor’s mother as being Jewish. She was one of those gracious East Side ladies who seem unmarked by any history, unrooted, adrift in a self-styled bubble of charm. For her to have married Paul Rowe, son of an Episcopalian minister, was a bold and undiplomatic act in 1932. The horror of her Russian-born parents was intense, but luckily brief. Her boldness spent, Edith had been docile ever since, attending Christmas dinners and Passover Seders with equal grace and lack of interest. Or so I had thought. Suddenly she became a romantic, haunted figure, her Lord & Taylor disguise concealing a dark tangle of atavistic loyalties, a female Daniel Deronda.

Later, after my mother left to meet a friend at a matinee, Edith arrived, glowing from shopping and hairdresser. She was newly frosted, with a pale Chanel suit to match. It wasn’t a look I wanted, and yet it made me feel somehow undone in jeans and sweatshirt. She found me changing Althea’s diaper in the little room.