The Sea of Light (39 page)

“Oh,” he might have said, “no.” And leaned across the desk to kiss her.

At which point, of course, I walked in.

But that is another story.

Two weeks later, my husband took Babe to see the coach at a good swimming club upstate. An expensive place which, we understood, all the best sorts of people with the most talented children went to in the beginning; and the coach came highly recommended.

It was a long drive, nearly two hours. They were on the road at dawn. I was awake too and, between boiling formula, heating milk, stove and sink and crib and den, between one screaming boy and another, I sometimes glanced out the window and saw the sky grow pale yellow over the horizon, thin clouds scatter above the browning leaves of trees.

*

She places another pot on the stove, turns the burner up.

“You didn’t put in too much water, I hope?”

“No, Mom.”

“Because they mustn’t be soggy, you know. We want them lightly done, almost steamed.”

“Fine.”

The voice is full of a bored resentment. I recognize it, from before—although this is the first time I’ve heard it since the hospital—a sullenly careful defiance. I resent it myself; yet, it frightens me. I decide to change the subject, get back on safer ground.

“Tell me—where will you go from here? I mean, with swimming.”

She shrugs. Rummages through a drawer for potholders.

“What do you mean, from here?”

“From State. I mean, certainly you aren’t planning to stay there? Not with another full year and a half of eligibility.”

“Um, I kind of thought I might.”

“You thought what?” I echo, though I’ve heard her.

“That I might stay. At State. I mean, I
like
it.”

“Yes, okay, but what about the quality of competition?”

“Hey look, Mom, it’s not like I’m so far above any of them, you know.” She laughs. It sounds bitter and dejected.

“Nonsense,” I soothe, “that’s ridiculous.”

“No it’s not. I mean it. It’s the truth.”

“Well, if it
is
really the truth—and I can’t help but doubt that, Babe—but if it by some stretch of the imagination
is
actually the truth, it is only the truth for
now.
I know you’ll be back on top. This slump—it’s purely temporary.”

“What if it’s
not?”

“Not what?”

She flattens a palm against potholders on the counter, faces me with a glum and resentful expression, hand on hip. I recognize this from before, too: her posture of challenge.

“Not
temporary,
Mom. What if this is the best I can do? What if this is the way I am, now, and the way I’m going to be from now on—”

“Oh, Babe,” I sigh, “you mustn’t be defeatist.”

“I am
not
defeatist! No
way
am I defeatist! I mean, I really think I’m a
realist,
Mom. I am telling you the truth! Does that interest you, or not?”

Steam pearls from the string bean pot. I face her myself, in a similar stance. “Don’t you talk to me that way!”

“Why can’t you just
listen?”

“Listen?
Listen?
I have spent my time
listening,
my dear, for the last twenty-one years!”

“Oh, yeah? Well so have I!”

“This is
ridiculous!”
I can feel the tears swell, but I won’t allow them to spill. No. None of them will have that victory over me any more—to fracture me with tears, theirs or my own; and she, for one, must know it.

Because what do any of them understand, anyway, about being a wife? Or a mother?

“I
detest
the fact that it always comes to this, Babe! You walk into the house, you get everyone’s attention, and then we’re crossing swords—”

“And you think I
like
that?”

“Well, you certainly make it happen!”

“
I
make it happen?
Me?”

“Yes, you! And I, quite frankly, am fed up with being your punching bag!”

The string beans are boiling. The burner knob turned on high—too high—but I won’t reach across her to turn it down. She is taller than I, and much heavier. Still, she does look good; even in this anger and this pain I can admit that, can see it so clearly. She is well-formed, muscular, the specific shape modulated almost scientifically for a certain function—which, after all, has been true for most of her life—so even extreme damage could not obliterate that form which, in one way or another, we have all of us, all of us, helped to create. And she is not so unnaturally pale as before, her face is brown, and ruddy with the flush of constant exercise, blood pounds vibrantly near the surface, makeup has made the face look almost pretty, and the haircut—new? for her? for me? for someone else altogether?—layers her dark, thick, shining hair just short of the shoulders, renders her somewhat girlish and almost fashionable so that, despite myself, I approve. But—I have to admit this, too—part of the reason I don’t reach across her and risk coming too physically close is her
bigness.
It is repulsive to me. And something else, too: she evokes a kind of fear. But, of what, I really don’t know.

This is hateful. Unmotherly. Another extremely good reason to despise myself. But I cannot for the life of me quell it.

She looks at me. The jaw works hard, a strong oval, exorcising anger. Set just above it, the lips are wide and plump and full, almost too full, absurdly feminine. When she speaks, her voice is much softened.

“Listen, Mom—do you love me?”

“What,” I hear myself echo. “Do I
love
you?”

“Yes. I mean, do you love
me
—me—” the hands open in supplication; she restrains a motion, a motion to move forward toward me; and her voice takes on a pleading tone. “I mean,
me
the way I am now, right now—or, like, maybe the way I’ve always
really
been—”

“What on earth are you
talking
about?”

“Or, I mean, if you
don’t,
then—
can
you? I mean, can you try? Or could you, someday—”

“This,”
I hear myself say loudly, too loudly, “is insane.”

“Please,” she whispers. Then the arms open, spread wider than me, and her, and she is approaching.

Water hisses out of the string bean pot, spills white and green foam onto the stove. I duck her, turn off the burner, turn it back on to low. My hands are shaking. When I face her she’s leaning against the refrigerator, arms stiff at her sides and hands shoved deep into her pockets. I want to tell her, again, that I wish she would change her clothes before my parents arrive. I am so tired of the bad impressions they must get of this family, every visit. But when I open my mouth to speak something salty drips in, then something else, and I realize, without knowing why, that I’m crying.

Her eyes are dark, turned to the floor. She speaks evenly, firmly, with a low alto tone that frightens and maddens me. “You don’t, Mom, do you?”

I spit tears. “I don’t
what?”

“Love me. You don’t love me. And you can’t, unless I’m better than everyone—unless I win—”

“How dare you, Babe?”

“You never have. I had to
win.
Win, win, win. Win, win, win.” Her voice takes on a mocking lilt. “Listen to the coaches, dear, they know what they’re doing! Win, win, win. Be a
champion,
Babe, a great
champion
—never mind about being yourself—I mean, nobody could possibly love you for being just
yourself,
I mean, for just being
alive,
because it isn’t good enough, in fact it is pathetic and disgusting—I mean, what good is just being
alive—”

“Shut up,” I say, “Stop it this instant.”

“Like I’m some dancing bear, going through your hoops,” She hunches over, hands rendered clawlike in a Quasimodo stance. The face is darker with rage. She growls. “Grrrrr! Grrrrr!”

“That’s revolting.”

“Grrrrr. Revolting? I’m revolting? Well,
fuck
you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

I stamp a foot, hear my own voice rising now as if it’s detached from me, loud and icy and controlled by a deep agonized fury. “How dare you? How dare you—”

“You
never
loved me—”

“—Speak to me this way!”

“—Not unless I won—”

“Stop it!”

We are both stamping our feet. Pounding our fists on Formica counters, refrigerator doors.

“It’s true!” she hisses, triumphant. “It
is
true! I knew it!”

Smoke burbles out around the edges of the stove door. The air is filled with it then: a smell of disaster, of burning meat.

I turn my back to her. Open the oven. A sickening wave hits me—dry, ruined flesh, foul gray clouds.

This, then, is dinner.

I turn the oven off. Turn around, again, to face her.

“Go upstairs,” I hear myself say quietly, icily, “and change into some decent clothes. And when you come
downstairs, be prepared to behave civilly. We aren’t animals around here. We are human beings. And you, young lady—from now on, I expect you to act like one.”

“Fine,” she says, grimly. “Just watch me.”

She walks out, leaving me in smoke, fading steam, open oven, mounds of potholders. Through clouds misting the entrance between dining room and kitchen, I can see her receding back. She is lumbering along the edge of the perfectly set dining table. Looking big, dark, absurd as she passes by the fine lace and china. Beyond the dining room is the living room, dull colored lights on a tree, glittering wrapped packages placed neatly around. Far off, through the clouds of ruined dinner, partway through this large and tasteful house, I can see her putting on her coat, picking up her suitcase.

It occurs to me that she has forgotten to take her presents. It occurs to me that she has forgotten to bring any, too.

Christmas Dinner

(
BABE
)

It’s that high electric white-light buzz in my brain. I haven’t felt it for months; but now it’s like a friend, not an enemy, gives me strength, makes me capable of moving through the air that is thick and gray. Christmas tree. Smells of burning food. Reminds me of something: Ellie’s place, in October. Guess I am the jinx when it comes to cooking dinner.

Dad is nowhere in sight. My hands shake when I kneel to kiss Teresa good-bye. I don’t want her to see, or know why; but she’s probably heard the whole stink, anyway—although, here in the playroom, with her dolls and all the half-open books and manhandled plastic vehicles and building blocks, she pretends it never happened, pretends to shut it out, the way kids do.

“Toots, I’ll see you.”

“Okay.”

She sends a red and yellow plastic truck careening toward her Barbie doll, which is dressed in a bikini and tiny rubber slippers. The doll falls under plastic wheels, pink hands in the air.

“Uh-oh!”

“What, Toots?”

“Now she’s
dead.
Now we have to do the funeral.”

“It’s just a doll, Toots—it’s not really dead.”

“Is too.”

It occurs to me, on my way out, that maybe she is genuinely fucked up. It doesn’t seem like a normal four-year-old kid would go around killing off her Barbie doll. Maybe Jack’s right, and there’s something totally rotten about the whole household—which I see as if I’m some kind of visitor, now, for the first time ever: Dad nowhere around, Mom worse than ever, Jack bummed out, Teresa playing hit-and-run, Roberto becoming this dull, pimply, overweight, lifeless cigarette-smoking psycho greaser.

I feel cold inside the coat, hands still cold and shaking inside my gloves. Glad, though, that I didn’t unpack. Glad that I did not even visit the bedroom upstairs to deposit my luggage; because here it is in the hall, ready for me to grab without a thought. And here is Jack, lurking, looking nervous and sad.

“Whew. I heard.”

“You want to drive me to the train station, Jacko? Or do I call a cab?”

“Where are you gonna go?”

“To see a friend,” I say, thinking of it for the first time.

For some reason, though, the thought is calming. Makes me focus. It’s what you need, to do anything: a plan. So you can follow through. I am still numb and sweating but the trembling diminishes. I can move better. Things seem momentarily clearer.

In the end, he drives me—taking the Volvo this time, not the new BMW—running out after me still struggling into his leather jacket, which looks ridiculous on him because he is far from being the tough motorcycle bodybuilding type.

Roberto is shivering near a corner of the garage, snot frozen between nose and upper lip, smoking a Marlboro.

“Goodbye, Robo.”

“Where you off to?”

“I had a fight with Mom. I’m splitting.’

“Yeah?” He blows out foul clouds, tosses the butt end into a dirty wet snowdrift. “Well fucking-bitching-A, Babe. What brought
you
to life?”