Whenever You Call (12 page)

The boys didn’t say anything about my outfit, but I hadn’t expected commentary. Instead, Noah guided my arm through the crook of his as we walked to the car. I leaned on him slightly, enjoying the touch of his body and that he’d thought to offer me support. It was a fairly new occurrence for my kids to be sensitive to me, though I’m not suggesting that they were spoiled or thoughtless. It just seemed that while they were still in college, they’d tended to forget that their parents were, well, for want of a better term,
human beings
.

“What do you hear from your Dad?” I asked. It was decidedly odd that of all my husbands, Trevor was my least favorite even though he’d been the father of my wonderful children and the one I was married to the longest.

The reason I counted him as my least favorite was because he didn’t like me. Basically, I’d come to the sad conclusion that he’d never really liked me at all. It’s not that I didn’t consider myself immensely likable. I truly believed that I had a delightful personality. After all, I did get three men to marry me, all of them accomplished and presentable in quite unique ways. So, yes, I was delightful.

I wasn’t altogether sure, however, that I was lovable.

Trevor made this rather clear when he became a workaholic during our marriage, and a total wastrel almost immediately after we separated. I took some solace from the possibility that the institution of marriage caused him grief, but then he remarried a very unattractive woman who was actually eight years his
senior
, and he stayed a wastrel. Luckily, his hardworking years with me insured that he’d tucked away quite a nest egg, so the kids had college tuition more than covered. And now, for example, Noah was being carried for this trial year of writing. Nevertheless, Trevor made me feel wildly inadequate as a woman.

“He’s reminding me of Isaac, if you can believe it.” Noah held the front passenger door open for me, then climbed into the back seat. Elliot was driving because he always drove everywhere.

“You can’t mention Trevor and Isaac in the same sentence. There’s zero correlation between them,” I said.

Noah reached for the seat belt and touched my shoulder at the same time. “Oh yeah?”

The car roared to life. Elliot said, “Dad’s getting that good ’ole time religion.”

I figured they were joking. Trevor was a man who could be at his own mother’s funeral and busy with writing advertising copy in his head. He’d been a writer, too, but his writing was in the service of selling. Now, years later, I had to admit that my writing was also in the service of selling. Which was, perhaps, one of the reasons I’d tossed it in favor of serving alcohol at a bar.

I said, “You’re kidding.”

Noah said, “We’re not completely sure what he’s up to, but he keeps forwarding us this New Age crapola about chakras and auras and stuff.

“Maybe it’s Genevieve’s influence,” I said. Genevieve was the new wife.

Elliot shook his head. “Nope—I called Dad last week and she was the only one home. She thinks it’s bull.”

“She
is
a scientist.

“Genevieve is a high school biology teacher,” Noah said.

“That’s a scientist.”

He patted my shoulder again, in such a way that I felt like a small, hopelessly out of touch, idiot. That’s another thing kids are good at doing: turning our roles upside down just as quickly as possible, so that we become the child, and they the parent.

Not that I particularly cared about remaining a parent. The tricky thing was segueing from parent to whatever-else. It wasn’t a transition I made smoothly with my own mother and father. I could remember being crushed after Mom read my first novel and told me that she thought I would never succeed as a novelist.

“Why do you say that?” I’d asked her. As usual, I was trying to be a good sport.

We were sitting out on the front porch of our Northampton row house. A deep cool shade from overgrown trees cut the hot summer day, but her words made the sweat run from both temples down my cheeks. My first marriage was in its divorce stage, and I had no way of knowing that other marriages, children, and many more novels were ahead of me.

Mom sipped her glass of iced tea and tapped the porch floor with one bare foot. I couldn’t
hear
the foot tapping, but I could
see
it. Funny to realize that she was about my age now.

“Your novel is as sweet as can be, you
know
that,” she said without an ounce of sweetness.

“Yeah.”

“But it’s not really interesting.”

I thought about my novel. When I’d been writing it, I’d found it interesting and even considered its theme rather unique.
Publisher’s Weekly
had called it, “A challenging, thought-provoking story that lurks beneath an entertaining surface.” I wondered if it was possible that my mother simply hadn’t gotten the underneath part, though that was unlikely given that her Ph.D. had been in Comparative Literature with an emphasis on Samuel Beckett. Presumably, she knew about how to judge a piece of writing.

It’s obvious to me now, but it wasn’t then, that she’d always intimidated me. She’d had glorious, prematurely white hair, which she wore in a thick single braid. Her sharp nose sprang from a tanned unwrinkled face and her large thin mouth curved downwards. That mouth frowned even when she smiled. You can see it in all the family photos. It was like a trick of nature, a waterfall that flowed up, a baby sucked back into the birth canal, blood refusing to clot. My mother’s frowning smile.

I remember sitting very still on the porch that day, not answering her. Feeling, well, devastated, and trying to pretend that I was cool with what she’d said. I could understand now, with my own kids, that I’d probably said or done something that triggered a defensive reaction. Maybe it had simply been the act of publishing a novel. Perhaps all parents feel the need to retaliate for their child’s audacity at growing up and threatening to surpass them. But I knew I was making excuses for my mother, probably because she’d died five years ago and I didn’t enjoy dissing her memory. Still, briefly, I could just imagine the expression on her face if she’d known I’d finally quit writing in order to become a bartender. Her smile might actually curve up.

A
LEX’S
APARTMENT IN JAMAICA Plain always made me think of her as a little girl because it carried the flavor of her as the ten-year-old who’d been obsessed with birds. She’d had nests and eggs, feathers and skeletons, scattered across every surface of her bedroom. Once, when I was changing the sheets on her bed, I’d found a sharp, curved object, about the size of fingernail. I started to toss it aside, but instead picked it up and saw that it was a tiny bird’s beak. Though her apartment was now more artfully arranged than that childhood bedroom, she still had nests and eggs, feathers and skeletons, on display. She’d painted a huge Amazon red-throated caracara on the wall above the sleek red couch and the green area rug had parrots fluttering across its expanse.

Both boys began whooping and clucking, trying to mimic birds, but sounding more like a fantasy animal of the earth rather than the sky. I hit Elliot and said to shut-up because I’d caught sight of a strange woman in Alex’s kitchen.

Alex grabbed my arm and whispered, “I followed your advice and wrote a Missed Connection about that woman I met at the party—remember?”

I nodded and tried not to show how pleased I was that I’d been capable of making a suggestion Alex deemed worthy enough to follow.

“She’s in the kitchen!”

“I’ll go introduce myself.” I headed off, only to feel Alex tugging at my arm.

Her eyes, puffy from lack of sleep, perhaps, or even tears, looked equal parts exhilarated and defeated. “I think she’s The One.”

I leaned forward and pressed my cheek against hers. “All right,” I whispered.

Noah was in the kitchen, sliding the salmon casserole into the oven. “Mom, this is Jane, Alex’s new squeeze.”

A tiny woman turned around from the sink and blushed. I almost said something about her rosy cheeks being so pretty, but managed to stop the words just in time. We said hello at the same moment and I found myself blushing because she was so small and, somehow,
dear
.

“I read one of your novels!” Jane said.

I bowed slightly from the waist. I’d never been good at handling any kind of acclaim for my writing. Or even attention, since I’d noticed that while many people might say something nondescript like, “I read one of your novels,” fewer actually said that they enjoyed the book or found it well-written.

“What do you do, Jane?”

Noah moaned. “Mom, that is
so
unacceptable.”

“I’m not supposed to ask what someone does?”

“It’s insulting,” he said. “It’s like equating what someone
does
with
who they are
.”

“Isn’t who you are what you do?”

Jane said, “I’m a nurse.”

“But that’s not
who
you are, right?” Noah said.

“To be honest, it may be who I am. Nursing is important to me.”

I smiled triumphantly at Noah. “I win.”

He grinned back at me, always the most good-humored of the three kids. “Are we in some kind of competition?”

At that moment, as if she sensed things were getting tricky, Alex appeared in the open doorway to the kitchen. The apartment was structured in the shotgun style, with every room leading into the next. From the kitchen, you entered a bathroom, and through that, the bedroom.

Alex asked me to check that the bathroom and bedroom were tidy enough, which I took to mean that she was trying to get me away from Jane. Being a mother was, quite simply, difficult. Suddenly I yearned for my little house, without the boys, quiet and even lonely. I saw myself at the computer, checking my e-mail. I hadn’t heard back from Mr. Rabbitfish. A disappointment. I also hadn’t received a return call from Al, and the extent of his possible injury was bothering me. Maybe he hadn’t called because something serious had happened. Maybe he was hugely pissed at me.

I refolded the bathroom towels and used a wet washcloth to swipe out the sink. In Alex’s bedroom, I successfully avoided imagining the two of them under the covers, but I ripped the bed apart and remade it, tight and neat. Bed-making, unlike cooking, was one of my special skills. When I’d worked for the summer as a maid at a motel, I’d been trained to make a bed right. The trick was to do one whole side first, with a strenuous tucking in along that side. Then, when you got to the other side, you could pull hard against the tucked in part, and the result would be extremely sleek and wrinkle-free.

Noise echoed through the apartment. Isaac had probably arrived. I checked myself in the mirror and was pleased by the flush in my cheeks, almost as good as Jane’s. I knew that men were supposed to respond to pink cheeks because it signaled good health and, therefore, fertility. Nothing like looking fertile after menopause. Such a truly complex, challenging paradox.

Isaac was just inside the open door to the apartment. To my distress, I saw that his cheeks were as bright as mine, signaling his own fertility. Ummm. He looked quite handsome, especially when I factored in that on Monday morning he would take up residence at a monastery. I flashed to the image of a single cot in a stone cell, with Isaac languishing for want of female attention. Made me momentarily hot. I was sure my cheeks got even redder with my suppressed fertility.

Two years of celibacy, after all. Spare me the lectures.

When I moved close to kiss him on the cheek, he shifted his head and I found myself touching his lips briefly with mine.

“I’m so glad to see you,” he murmured into my ear.

I patted his shoulder, feeling like he was a puppy dog.

Elliot, standing by the bay window that looked onto the street out front, held up a half-finished bottle of beer. “Three cheers for the once-and-future monk!”

“Hip, hip, hooray!” Noah yelled.

The rest of us joined in for another round of “Hip, hip, hooray!” at which point it occurred to me that we could all go home now.

As our cheers died down, a man appeared framed in the doorway behind Isaac. In his arms, he held Jen. I’d seen her carried up stairs, where there was no wheelchair access, many times and she’d always worn an expression of tolerance, mixed with boredom, on her face. Today, in what I could only assume was Tom’s arms, she looked thrilled and annoyed at the same time.

Isaac stepped aside and practically embraced Tom and Jen both. It was my turn next, but I knew Jen wanted to be put down before she started greeting everyone. I tugged at Tom’s arm. “Hi, I’m Jen’s very best friend, Rose.”

Tom smiled. He had warm brown cow eyes.

I said, “Why don’t you come in and make yourselves comfortable?” I stepped back and cleared a path.

A silence settled on the group as Tom maneuvered over to the couch and bent to place Jen into the corner seat. I knew Jen would find the quiet embarrassing, so I began to talk about how I’d thrown a martini glass at my bar tending instructor, Al, and had cut his cheek so badly that he’d been hauled away in an ambulance. Now there was another kind of silence. I looked at Jen for support.

She said, “Isn’t this the guy you said was so handsome?”

“Naturally.” Isaac raised one eyebrow.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

Instead of answering me directly, he said, “Will he have a scar?”

“Probably.” I tried to give a nonchalant smile. “I’ve been waiting to hear back from him.”

I felt the stares of my kids as if I’d been accused of murder.
Unfairly
accused, that is. “Hey, it was an
accident
—I was nervous because the test is timed and everything depended on my doing well. Plus, it was the first
test
I’d taken in about thirty years!”

Elliot said, “If we give you a drink, will you stop talking?”

I nodded. “For sure.”

“Get her a drink, then,” Alex snapped. The two of them had always been argumentative with each other, while Noah functioned as the peacemaker.

“I can make my own drink, and everyone else’s,” I said. “I am now officially a bartender at The Harvest Restaurant.”

I gathered up drink orders and limped back to the kitchen to prove myself, though I wasn’t sure why I felt it incumbent to do any proving at all. I began to pour drinks and tried to rally my spirits. I felt awful about Al, and telling the story, far from making me feel better because I’d confessed it, had done the opposite. If I could have remembered his phone number, I’d have called right then.

Tom appeared in the kitchen. “Jen sent me back to help you.”

I handed him a bottle of beer and a glass of chablis. “This is for you two.”

He held them for a second, without moving.

“I know Jen tells you everything,” he said.

“I’m not sure about
everything
.” I began to mix two vodka martinis.

“You really are good at making drinks,” Tom said.

“Thanks.” I shook the martinis with renewed vigor and thought about how Tom was more socially awkward than I’d expected. Jen’s infatuation had implied a god of some sort, but instead I saw a man of clumsy charm, with an emphasis on the
clumsy
. Taking pity on him, I said, “Is something worrying you?”

He shifted his weight and I saw the strength of his body. If his eyes were like a cow, his physical presence was more like a bull.

“Jen is pushing me away.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then why did she tell me, before we came here tonight, that this was our last date?”

“You misunderstood.”

Noah sidled past Tom. “Drinks, Mom?”

I handed him two martinis. “One for Isaac and one for Jane. Come back for more, okay?”

I saw him peek at Tom and figure out that we were having one of those important talks that shouldn’t be interrupted.

When he’d left, Tom said, “I definitely did
not
misunderstand. I’ve been dumped before and that’s what she’s doing.”

Cold gripped my stomach. I made a scotch and soda, packing it with ice. “This makes no sense.”

“She didn’t talk about it with you first?”

I grabbed a knife and stabbed at the ice. “If she’d mentioned it to me, I would’ve given her hell.”

He ventured a tentative smile.

“Take her the wine and drink your beer,” I said. “Let’s get her a little smashed and then I’ll talk to her.”

I finished the drinks, and with Noah’s help, passed them around. The living room was pleasantly crowded, so I sat cross-legged on the floor. I sipped my martini and leaned forward to put it on the coffee table.

Isaac stood up from the couch. “You want to sit down?”

“I am sitting down.”

He smiled gently. “Okay.”

“You’re a lot less argumentative,” I commented. “Is that due to Buddhism or monkism?”

Elliot jumped in, obviously worried that I was going to be rude in some way. “Monkism isn’t a word.”

Isaac just smiled. I suspected his silence had to do with monkism.

“Since this is a going-away party for you,” I said to him, “why don’t you tell us what you’ll be doing?”

Noah coughed. I looked at him defiantly. I’d about had it with my kids constantly trying to censor me.

Isaac took a gargantuan swallow of martini. “Okay,” he said.

Silence again. This from the guy it used to be hard to shut up.

Jen said, “You could take us through a normal day—tell us what will be happening.”

“We rise at four o’clock in the morning for a two-hour meditation,” Isaac said.

“Fucking hell,” Elliot swore.

I reached for my martini, trying to imagine getting up at four o’clock in the morning and then embarking on two hours of meditation.

“Without coffee.” Isaac grinned, almost sheepish.

“Are you sure about this?” Alex said gently. She was considering Psychiatry and with everyone but her mother, she’d been practicing.

“I’m sure I want to try.”

Tom said, “Why?”

I had to swallow a laugh. Tom’s expression showed a guy so fed up with women that he actually recognized the desirability of becoming a monk.

Jane must have thought the same thing because, unexpectedly, she giggled.

Isaac held up the martini glass, sloshing drink around. He gazed into the clear alcohol, as if hypnotized. He might be pretty good at the meditation stuff. “I don’t know why exactly,” he said. “ But, basically, I’ve concluded that there’s more to this life than how I’ve been experiencing it. I don’t know whether I’ll stick it out—I guess if I’m honest, I’d probably have to admit I usually get into things and then discard them.”

A guffaw exploded out of me before I could stop it. Noah glared in my direction, but Isaac started to laugh, too.

“Just ask Rose,” Isaac said.

Isaac turned to Tom. “What do you do, Tom?”

I smiled broadly at Noah, reminding him with my eyes that I wasn’t the only one to ask about a person’s profession. Even the great monk-to-be, Isaac, could be prosaic.

“I write nonfiction, mostly on political subjects.”

Jen said, “His last book was about the Democratic party,
Double D Cup
.” She grinned, and I could hardly believe that she was dumping Tom. On the other hand, I knew her well. She could be brutal once she made up her mind.

“That’s a
great
title,” Alex said.

I checked everyone’s glasses and noticed that we needed refills, so I stood up and got new drink orders. Jane came with me, clutching empty glasses.

In the kitchen, I bustled around.

“Can I help?” Jane asked.

“Would you peek at the casserole in the oven?”

She grabbed an oven mitt and opened the door. I felt the blast of heat in the small kitchen. “What am I looking for?”

“Is it bubbling around the edges?”

“Big-time.”

“Turn off the oven, then.” I rattled the martini shaker and asked, “Do you know what else we’re having?”

“There’s a big salad and some rolls.”

“What if we wrap the rolls in aluminum foil and pop them in the oven?”

She got to work.

“You’re great to boss around,” I said.

Jane smiled, rueful. “Maybe that’s why I’m a nurse and not a doctor.”

“We have a bossy boots gene in our family,” I said, by way of apology. I knew Alex was significantly worse than me in that department.

“Uh-huh.” She glanced at me. “Do you understand that title,
Double D Cup
?”