My Hollywood (11 page)

I remind them, they have
utang na loob
—debt of the inside. That can never be repaid. Yesterday, I said, “I am here cleaning American toilets so you can study.” Issa, my youngest answered, “You are trying to make us guilty. Do not worry. We are not using drugs.” I have bought already for each daughter a fine gold chain with a cross. Here, I overheard a mother, when the husband did not arrive at a benefit she was chairman for, say, “Well. More diamonds.” I decided then, better if the jewelries come from me.

This one from Iloilo, she is the age of my kids. She looks straight forward to a life she does not know. I guide her out at the Greyhound station, show her where we wait for the next bus. We sit in it empty while the driver goes to buy cigarettes.

The bus stop it is not far from the house of my weekend employers; it is a walk up, the road ending in mountains. I planned to say,
See, we are here
. An arm spread. But this is long slanted rain, the palms blow, and our shoes ruin in the trudge. We go under tall ragged eucalyptus and dripping pine, which smell more in the wet. Lucy looks down when she sees the house. It is not like some Danny and Ruth have driven her by.

“I see you were dreaming of a mansion.”

“Ruth said he is movie director?”

“The homes here, they cost over a million. It is the television executives who live two layers. But do not worry, this family, they are good.”

“Do you want this job for you, Lola?” She has something shy that I like.

“It is my gift to you.”

I have obtained for my employers their new Mary Poppins, complete with the umbrella. We take our shoes off outside, and I use my own key. I expect everyone to be asleep, but the house tilts like a shipwreck boat, lit and sideways. The guy sits in the living room, a drink on the arm of the chair. Farther back I hear sounds that are not Bing.

“I’m in the doghouse.” The guy looks up.

“I will introduce you to your new Monday-to-Friday. This is Lucy from Iloilo.”

“Oh, hi, good, great. Helen know she’s coming?”

“Helen knows.”

“She’ll be glad, but better wait till tomorrow. Like I said, it’s been a rough night.”

“I will show to Lucy the room. She can sleep in the bed with me.” We change to pajamas and brush teeth. I am thinking if there is a problem in the house they may not take her. But Vicky is gone already two weeks. Five days without a babysitter and, usually, they hire. I told them already, they can pay less. Maybe seventy-five a day.

“In the morning I fix their bed,” I instruct. “Americans enjoy to have done for them what a Filipina would do only for children small small.” Making beds for my employers, I know too much of them. The bed of an active couple is like the crib of an infant, sheets twisted and strange stains. Spit up. Spit down. But the bed of my weekday house, it is the bed of a nun: neat, white, dry, what Williamo calls pretty princess perfect. The only stains I ever found were breast milk.

Tonight, it is the first time Bing is not in the room with me. I hear the thump of footsteps, the guy going around in a circle.

“Never could have happened a generation ago,” he says into the telephone. “Never would have happened in our old apartment, for Christ’s sake.”

I put my robe over. I will offer my employer tea, by holding up the kettle. Some babysitters, they talk to the employer anyway, the ones who grew up in the jungle or some swamp without telephone service.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Lola, we keeping you awake? Paul, lemme call you back. She’s sobbin’ on the bed, wailing for the neighborhood to hear. The kid’s shrieking. Now Lola’s up. We don’t live alone anymore, I pointed out to her.”

When he hangs up, I ask, “And what did the mother of Bing answer?”

“Nothing.” He rubs his eyes. “I don’t think she’s speaking to me.”

“Would you like chocolate or tea?”

“I’ll take some chocolate maybe. Lola, nothing even happened. She had Bing all day by herself and so she was tired. Who can blame her? She’s been on her own all week. She ran a bath. But you know the way Bing goes around pushing buttons on the phones? Well, on the machine in our bedroom, he must’ve hit something. And so, I’m having a conversation with Paul. I mean, she probably talks to
ten
friends about our re
la
tionship, her complaints about me, who knows what, and I don’t mind, I really don’t even mind—and we’re just mouthing off, the way guys do, talking about how stuff isn’t the same as when we were young. Oh, God, I said some things I probably shouldn’t have, about, you know,
thoughts
during casting, and this guy I work with said he wondered if he’d ever fall in love again. I kind of agreed with him, just in camaraderie, oh and then I said something about her weight, when she had Bing she put on a little and the breast-feeding, something about breast-feeding. And now she says it’ll never be the same. And I didn’t even do anything. I haven’t touched another woman, I haven’t even
considered
touching another woman. I was just talking. Sheesh.”

“Use your words,” I say for a joke, because that is what we tell children to do instead of hit.

But he does not laugh. “Hey, you think you could get through to her?”

“You want that I will be the one to talk to Helen?”

“Maybe bring her a hot chocolate or a tea. Make it tea.” He is the one watching her diet. Even now. She will want me to feel sorry for her, but she will believe I do not understand, because she is on a higher level, married to fame, married to glory.

“I will take Bing, so she can sleep.” But I do not make tea. I prepare the white hot chocolate—her trademark; she serves with hollow cinnamon sticks the kids use to blow bubbles—on a tray with graham crackers. Going in, I feel wrong. But I cannot send back my first pupil. I do not want an agency replacement for Vicky. Someone from an agency, she will not owe me.

Helen sleeps facedown, one knee up the way of my youngest. Issa is the smallest of my children and the most expensive. Bing wiggles; he is not used to a bed without walls. Here people write books about the family bed. We had the family bed. The baby sleeps with the parents until the next one is born. Then out. That is all.

But this boy, he cannot sleep. And he is the cause of the trouble.

“Lola,” Helen whimpers, mouth against the sheet. Then she sits up, her bare feet hanging, like a hospital patient.

“You are always making for me coffee. Tonight I have for you the white hot chocolate.”

She is wearing pajamas with a light green edge, the hair tangled, nose red. I take Bing on my shoulder, begin the pat-pat. The finger goes to the mouth. It is best if they all sleep. I will sprinkle sugar in the eyes.

“Lola, he doesn’t want me, he never did, not really.”

I open one arm for her and she loosens to sob. “You have your cry.”

“Paul asked him, was he in love with me when we got married, and he said he thought I was pretty enough, he was in love
enough
, I was a good person …”

“To be a good person, that is not something to cry for.”

“I’m the consolation prize. He should love me.” Her voice gutters, something animal you would hear in a birth or a death, not during the middle of life. “He said to Paul, he said, ‘I wanted a bitch. I did the smart thing. I married a good woman and I expected the rest to follow. What can I say? Some did and some didn’t.’ Oh, and Paul said, ‘Well, she’s beautiful at least.’ And
he
said, ‘You think so? Really? On the outside maybe. Our insides don’t fit.’ Lola, you know, we’re going to Hawaii; he said he was afraid to see me in a bathing suit! He’s afraid my butt will jiggle.”

The breath heaves. This is really the worst for her. “I know, I know.” For a long time we just rock. Then she is ready to listen. I have seen this with children. You have to wait until they are still. That is when to tell the story. “My employer, he is grateful. For you, for the marriage, all of it. Without you, he would have—no life. He did not believe any of this would be possible.” What I am saying, it is also true.

“He’s said that, that he’s grateful.” She holds the cup now with both hands, drinking as if chocolate can cure her. “But Lola, he doesn’t love me enough. And I’ve given up everything. I don’t have anywhere to go.”

“These are words of the night best forgotten in every marriage.”

“Not Claire’s, I bet.”

“But-ah you would not have married Paul. You wanted someone higher. You married a man who will suffer, bang his head.”

I have the Little Man on my shoulder; I present to her the sleeping face. “If you married someone else, you would not have this one.” I look around the rich room. “You are better here.”

“How about you, Lola? In your marriage.” She begins to remember curiosity.

“Bong Bong, he is very quiet. It is late. Come. You sleep. When it becomes light, you will wake up and go in the shower. Put something, a cream on your eyes. After you are dressed, you will meet your new weekday nanny.”

“How should I
be
with him, Lola? Maybe I should seem not to care.” She is embarrassed, nothing at all like real shame. “I don’t think I can sleep.”

I take the boy to his crib and find the ragged bear he holds at night. I bring it to the mother, tuck her in. Finally, we can sleep.

When I wake, Lucy stands, dressed and ready.

In the kitchen, the guy looks up at me from slicing a persimmon. The last part to fix. Then the gears will move. It can be a morning like any other. The women in America want everything to be about love. And I do love their children. But I am working for money. I knew, a long time ago, for my family to move forward, I would have to be the one to pay it. What can a foreign man do here?

My employer looks at me. He needs to get to work. “So?” he says. “Tell me.”

“If you are asking, I think, something of appreciation.”

“Like flowers or something.”

“Flowers
and
something. Maybe diamond.”
More diamonds
. “Lucy will take Bing. You make a playdate with your wife. Have your fun. We will clean up later.”

I hear the sounds of a shower, Lucy whacking pillows. It is almost time for my Monday-to-Friday. I send Jeff carrying in a tray of breakfast, coffee made the way she makes it. If the throw is correct, the hand can leave, and the top will keep on spinning.

Bing wakes up, so I introduce my buddy buddy to Lucy, explain that he is tired.

“In our place,” she says, “I am the last. I stay between my mom and dad until I am fourteen years old.”

Bing listens. Sleep for him is a problem.

“Later on,” I say, “I will see you with Williamo in the park.”

He tightens his lips and blows. A high, wavery sound comes—the first whistle. I will not tell the parents.

Claire
A COMEDY LIFE

“He’ll be fine,” Paul said. But I was beginning to think he always said that.

I’d signed the contract eighteen months ago. The money was decent, and we’d thought by the time Will turned two, I could get away. He was two and a half now but the Room was breaking the story for Paul’s next script. So, if I went, for three days Will would see a parent for an hour in the morning, a period that would include Paul’s shower, and then not again until the next day.

I called to cancel but programs had already been printed. “Bring him along,” the director said. A jovial bassist, he told me when he performed his boys came too.

And so does your wife, I thought, noticing:
this is how you become mean
.

He said “Bring him along!” a second time. This wasn’t one of those concerts where they invite the composer out a moment before the downbeat. They wanted me onstage for a preconcert talk. Where was Will supposed to be then?

“I’ll stay with him. You’re a new mother. Don’t worry.”

But I hadn’t figured out yet how to take a shower without Lola watching him.
Black stockings
, I scribbled, picturing the drawer where they all tangled together.

I finally called back to say I was bringing Lola, but the word “babysitter” slipped out, evoking high school girl, ponytail, part-time.

Which the director clearly expected—not
this
. At the airport, he stared at Lola, who’d unlatched the stroller, strapped Will in, and clutched the handles as I tried to pry them away, one-handedly. I could manage the cello with my left. Shouldn’t I, the mother, push? Why was he staring? Lola was a middle-aged woman, wearing creased jeans and a clean T-shirt that said
HARD ROCK CAFE
.

“I’ll push,” I said.

She shrugged.
Then why am I here?
But she was here to take Will while I performed. Lola worked like a switch, on or off.

It was just after six, Central Standard Time, and dinner became our first problem. The orchestra administrators conferred in whispers, culminating in the delicate question,
Should
she
come along?

Oh, nothing was working. Probably the women you read about who traveled with nannies stayed in hotels that offered room service. But the Holiday Inn had only a vending machine. Lola and Will needed to eat, so dinner featured me trying to prevent Will from throwing food that landed near the outreach director’s magenta heels. The director’s boys were conspicuously absent.

“Home with their mother. School night.” Arab men have exceptionally wide smiles, I thought.

The next day, I gathered food for the room. Lola wanted to stay in; it was too cold. Still, I tripped over the cord of the Holiday Inn blow-dryer, the director arrived early, and my dress felt tight. Willie wailed when I left. Some strands of my hair I hadn’t finished drying froze to icicles. Only a few years in California and I’d forgotten hair did that.

They brought the lights up, so I saw how few seats were taken for the talk. I told lies about how I worked, or were they lies? I described how I used to be. I’d started when I was a girl. Eight. Viola. “Viola’s not second fiddle.” My old joke lifted the hat off the small crowd. People rustled as they came in and took their seats. I didn’t say that I’d recently started to chatter my teeth to show tunes. Or that my fingers moved on my other arm all day long.

“What are you doing with your hands?” Bing had asked, at playclub.

“She always does that,” Will said.

I played the theme I’d started with. The modulation from the E-flat major to F still gave me a streak of excitement. Then I stopped thinking of the harmonic expression and played in a dream.

Later, when I unlocked the motel room door, I found Will inside walls of pillows, Lola on the edge. I stood looking at them, holding my cello. I had everything. Undressing in the gray dark, I listened to them breathe. My piece had sounded different played. The inside and the outside tied together with one chord and passed on to the next person in line. When I woke up, blinking, as the lights came on, I could hear the audience. It had felt good to be taken over, although what had been planned as a quick trip for money was ending up a wash. I’d have to pay Lola for three extra days plus a hundred. And her airfare. I’d become the fat lady, who had to be lifted to her perch by a crane. If I’d been a guy my age, my everything, I’d have gone home with a check in my pocket.

As it was, I decided no to Marlboro as I slid in on the other side of Will. Falling asleep, I pictured Jeff’s arm. When had I stopped thinking of Paul? Could you ever think about someone that way when they were actually there?

Will loved Detroit’s Arabic pastries. He carried a circular box up the tin steps of the plane and Lola lugged coffee with cardamom, a bag in each hand. “You’ll come again!” the director called up from the tarmac. On the plane, William settled in my arms, fitted perfectly. In high school, the one girl I knew who’d had sex said that after, when the guy put his arm around you or you sat on his lap, everything just fit right, a way it hadn’t before. I’d never really found that with another body, until now.

Sunday, Paul sat in a straight-back chair in my office, listening to what I had so far. I used Finale to play him both versions of instrumentation. He crossed his arms and listened. Then we took a walk and talked, in soft, adult voices, pushing the stroller. I’d have to call Decca Argo and tell them I’d be late with my songs; I’d ask to bump the recording date a year. Paul agreed; the collection would still get finished: it could still be great, only later. Strange that this caused no clamor. Where had I lost my rush? William was two and half, but I felt wetly joined.

We decided that I should take on a class at Colburn. They paid less than the Manhattan School, but they’d give me an office. Maybe I’d meet some friends.

We stopped at The Coffee Bean. A guy from work had introduced Paul to a coffee-based drink that tasted like a milk shake but wasn’t supposed to be bad for you. Now Paul just loved them.

“Gramma Ceil called the other day and said, ‘She’s been in Carnegie Hall, why doesn’t she quit while she’s ahead?’” Paul told this as a joke. Retire like Grace Kelly. Look at Elizabeth Taylor, who stayed. She got fat. Men had to keep working. But for a woman an unblemished record is best, even if that record is brief.

There were too many virginities.

At the park, a female couple, one short and one tall, loped across the grass with a toddler wearing a white dress. Will and this girl rushed toward each other, slowing as they neared. The women smiled up at us. Then Will stuck out his arm and pushed the girl. She fell straight back. He looked up, as if he’d just conducted an experiment.

The women, on their knees over the victim, looked at me with horror.

Monday morning, I called. My producer was respectful and brisk. He wouldn’t worry about me longer than the time of our phone call. I was a composer he’d thought would amount to more.

But Paul was encouraging. “You want them to be really good. It doesn’t matter if they’re done now or a year from now.”

Once I’d pushed the deadline back, though, it was revealed as a flimsy stage set. No one was waiting for me. Only William.

I was lost.

I shopped fretfully for Lola’s Christmas present. Lil and I talked about whether it should be jewelry or maybe a purse. And how much cash? If I asked Lola, she’d say she needed money, and then she’d send it home. I finally selected a Steuben bird. She’d told me she collected glass. I thought she could start a collection here. We could put up a shelf in her room. I held the bird in my hand. I’d tried like this once before; I’d found a nest with two paper-light, brown-speckled blue eggs and given it to my second-grade teacher. Now she lived with three other old nuns, in a bare apartment over a garage. I sent their commune a card with a check every Christmas. After a life of teaching elementary school children, they had insufficient grocery money.

I cashed my honorarium from the School for the Blind. We’d give Lola the wrapped crystal bird and a five-hundred-dollar bill in an envelope. Odd that this year, when I’d earned less than before, I considered that check mine to give. I still had money from a Copland prize, for work I’d done years ago. Coming out of the Beverly Hills store where I’d found the bird, I saw a sweater on a mannequin and bought it for Paul. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do—married?

He looked around the room when he opened the box. We’d opened all the presents by ten-thirty. Now what? I always wanted time together, the three of us. I suggested a hike, but Paul said he was tired.

“The beach?”

“Kind of cold. Sandy.” He flicked on the TV. “Why don’t we just relax?” He made stacks of duplicate photos to send to relatives while he explained football to Will. First downs. Field goals. I roamed through the rooms, picking up paper, distracted by the noise of the announcers and the bands. Lola had gone to Ruth’s only the night before, but the house already felt unkempt. Finally, the phone rang.

“You guys free?” Jeff asked. “I found a church that has music.”

“When?” Paul didn’t like churches. We’d already declined an invitation to mass with my mother and Tom. But I wanted to get out of the house.

Jeff warned us that parking was terrible and we’d be better off walking, so we bundled up William for the dim afternoon. “And you can wear your sweater,” I said.

“Can I just ask how much it cost? I like it, but I don’t really wear sweaters.”

I shook my head.

“Come on. I can look on the statement when it comes.”

I’d paid the saleswoman half in cash. So I told him the amount that would show.

“I’m gonna take it back. I won’t wear it. I really won’t.”

We made our way, pushing the stroller, to the Spanish Revival church. A taper burned at the end of each aisle. Paul spotted Helen in a coat with a fur collar; she held open the songbook and they were both singing. Bing stood on the pew. Paul glanced at me. To him, there was something faintly disgusting about Christianity. We did one-two-three swoosh with William, but he shrieked. “I want to leave here this minute,” he said and kicked off his shoe. People turned. Paul had to crawl under a pew to retrieve it. Shoe in hand, Will on his shoulders, he walked down the aisle to tell Jeff.

“You free New Year’s?” Jeff asked.

As we walked home, rags of fog blew past. Our street looked closed, but at the end, yellow light spilled onto the sidewalk. The Indian restaurant. We’d eaten there once with Will asleep next to us in his car seat. But everyone inside appeared to be Indian. A man with an inwardly amused face handed us plates and nodded toward the buffet. The staff Christmas dinner. Will ate dahl and rice, now perfectly behaved. When he finished, I untied the cloth napkin and he ducked under tables with Indian boys who wore small red bow ties. When Paul pulled out his wallet, they wouldn’t let us pay.

This was where we belonged, among strangers. The Berends didn’t celebrate Christmas. Anyway, Paul had off only twenty-four hours.

“Merry Christamas,” the man called out into the street.

Just as I was putting Will down, Tom and my mother arrived, holding up a Mason jar. “It’s this sauce I make from the soft persimmons. Heat it up a little and put it on vanilla ice cream. Where is he?”

“He’s just going to sleep.”

“Oh.” She followed me in to look. “Oh,” she whispered.

My mother was wearing a long red cashmere dress and red shoes. Tom had on his same striped shirt. We put the jar in the refrigerator and went to sleep; tomorrow would be a regular day. Lola would be back.

Paul brushed my arm on the way to the shower, giving my skin a shiver. Two couples going out New Year’s Eve. An adult romantic form I’d never known. My mother hadn’t been half of a couple. I’d grown up around women who needed saviors, every single one of them.

“So she never married?” I’d once asked my mother as Julie loped out to her Chevrolet. I knew she’d been proposed to but had called it off.

My mother sighed. “She would have if she could have.”

Oh, why couldn’t she just. “Go ahead, Julie!” I screamed out over the dark lawn at the long-skirted, balding, beloved middle school music teacher. “Marry him! You’ll live!”

But that him was by then long gone.

I was married. I hummed, walking through our small house to find Lola to latch on my mother’s costume pearls. Lola would babysit both boys. Helen and Jeff had a new young nanny, but she wanted an off. They weren’t sure they liked her anyway.

Jeff arrived with a local newspaper that had a map for a midnight run to the beach. He followed me into the kitchen for a paper bag and wouldn’t leave until he’d ransacked our bedroom, opening drawers and not closing them, to get our sweats and running shoes.

The restaurant turned out to be half full. The handwritten menu contained only food I couldn’t eat without digestive disaster. Paul asked Helen a careful question; she answered, and asked him one, the conversation evenly distributed. Then she asked me if I still wanted to take the class.

I told her yes, definitely.

“Okay. Because I mentioned you to Mary and she thinks she can get you guys in.”

“To the school?”

“Oh, no. To the class.”

“Thanks.” Left, right, diagonal. “You hear that? We’re taking a parenting class.”

“We?”

“They’re taking private lessons.” I pointed to Helen and Jeff.

“Thanks a lot, bud,” Paul said to Jeff.

“Owe you one.”

Our appetizers arrived. This wasn’t fun. I felt too aware of my fork. But Helen asked Paul how his pilot was going, and he got started about the notes he’d received from the studio
(Not enough strong women!
) and then from the network (
Who are these tough broads? Give me a girl I can like!
). I laughed along to the stories I’d heard before, grateful that Paul kept up our side. It was relaxing not to have to talk. He started telling a story about the one woman in the Room. Everyone hated her. They hated her almost as much as the guy who made excuses to get out at seven.