In A Country Of Mothers Page 12

  Claire still didn’t say anything. Polly’s silence had rubbed off on her.

  “I’m leaving in about a month.”

  “I’ll miss you,” Claire said, staring at Jody, thinking about the dream, trying to remember what Mark really looked like, how he carried himself.

  “Yeah, well …” Jody said. “Anyway, don’t you think I should start getting ready, if only conceptually?”

  “Soon,” Claire said, and then was quiet for a minute. “I’ve been thinking about your being adopted.”

  “That’s really nice of you,” Jody said. “I’ve been slacking off myself.”

  Claire felt guilty. She was doing this for herself. It had nothing to do with Jody, and it was bad practice. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she said, giving Jody an out.

  “I can talk about it,” Jody said.

  Claire pretended to be unaware of the fact that Jody would do whatever Claire wanted her to. “When is your birthday?”

  “Why?” Jody asked. “Do you want to buy me a present? I don’t have a CD player or a Cuisinart.”

  “Do you know what hospital you were born at?” Claire asked matter-of-factly, looking at the sky outside her windows.

  “It went out of business.”

  “I’m trying to have a serious conversation,” Claire said, annoyed, focusing in.

  “Sorry, but it’s true. It went bankrupt or corrupt or something and closed. A little depressing, isn’t it? My one connection to my real mother goes out of business.”

  “What was it called?”

  “I don’t know,” Jody said, looking puzzled. “My elementary school also closed. They turned it into an office building. Do you think this means something?”

  “If you know that it closed, you must have known what it was called.”

  Jody looked at her. “I did know,” she said. “But I’ve forgotten. Doctors, maybe. Is that the name of a hospital? Or is it a TV show? Why do you care, anyway — are you, like, a hospital groupie?”

  Claire remembered a Doctors Hospital in Washington, somewhere downtown. But she’d given birth at Columbia Hospital for Women.

  “Would you want to know who your mother was?” Claire asked a few minutes later.

  Contemplating the Rothko print on the wall, Jody shrugged. “If someone was passing out pictures, saying ‘This is your mother,’ I’d look. I’d be curious. If someone came right up to me and said ‘Your mother’s name is whatever and she lives wherever and here’s her phone number,’ I’d listen, I’d take the information, but I don’t know what I’d do with it. It might mess me up.”

  “How?”

  “First off, I have a mother and a father already. That’s good enough, isn’t it? I mean, it should be, shouldn’t it? Second, it would grate on me and in a moment of weakness, a moment of wanting something, I might call and get rejected. She gave me away, remember? Chances are, she doesn’t want anything to do with me. I’m like a bad memory.”

  “Do you ever think she might be out there looking for you?”

  “No,” Jody said sharply. “Why would you say that?”

  “I was just curious whether you’d ever thought about it from her side.”

  “Why should I?”

  Claire didn’t respond. “So, you’d never do a search or anything like that?”

  “Only if I was sure it didn’t matter, if I was positive everything would stay the same no matter what. I’d have to go into it not wanting anything, not expecting anything. By the time you’re at that point, why bother?”

  “Obviously you’ve given it some thought.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” Jody said.

  “Hardly,” Claire added, and again they were quiet for a moment. “Let’s talk about California.”

  “Finally,” Jody said.

  13

  Peter Sears and Jody were naked in Jody’s bed when her mother called at eleven. The lights were off at Jody’s request — she didn’t know Peter well enough to be both nude and illuminated. It took her a minute to find the phone in the dark.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said.

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “No.”

  “You sound sleepy.”

  Without warning, Peter’s hand was between her legs.

  Jody cleared her throat. “I’m awake. How was your day?” She made a mental note to either bleach or shave the hair on the upper part of her thighs before their next date.

  “Do you have company?” her mother asked.

  “Company? No,” Jody said. Peter slapped her butt and it made a sharp smacking sound. “I was just watching TV.” He put his tongue to her breast.

  “I thought I heard something in the background.”

  “A book fell off my bed.”

  “It’s good you’re reading, sweetie. Did you have a good day?”

  “It was fine.” Jody felt guilty. Peter’s presence was a strange but necessary betrayal of Jody’s relationship with her mother. As much as her mother nagged her about never having a boyfriend, she never acknowledged the possibility of Jody having a sex life.

  “I’m so tired,” her mother said. “I pulled a muscle in my back and had to take two Advil and now I can hardly keep my eyes open. Can we talk tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, sure, Mom. Go to bed.”

  “Everything’s all right?”

  “Fine,” Jody said. “Sweet dreams.” Peter took the receiver from her and hung up the phone. “She calls me every night at eleven,” Jody said, getting out of bed. Peter grabbed her and pulled her back down on top of him. “I don’t think so,” Jody said.

  “I’m not done.” He pressed his tongue against her breast, his cock against her crotch.

  Sleeping with Peter was an experiment. Jody wanted to see if she could have sex with someone she didn’t care about. It was easier than she expected, but boring. She wished he’d leave. She was also angry with herself for having given in on the condom thing. Jody constantly lectured Ellen and everyone else, but when it came down to it, she’d crumbled and was furious with herself.

  “No,” Peter had said, not even willing to discuss it.

  “Yes,” Jody said.

  “No,” he said, and pushed his naked self into her.

  Instantly, Jody felt like it was too late. The moment of contact transmitted poison like an electric shock, and she just lay there, paralyzed, as if she’d been fatally stung.

  Men are so fucking annoying, she thought, daydreaming as he pumped away on top of her. This wasn’t fun, definitely not fun, but there seemed to be no way out — like a loop-de-loop, upside-down, inside-out roller coaster bringing you to the edge of vomit and death. Jody forced herself to simply hang on, finding relief in the idea that eventually it would be over. Meanwhile she wondered if maybe it was her; maybe there was something about her that made good sex impossible. To some degree it had always been a problem, but this was pathetic.

  He pulled out before he came, grabbed her palm, spit on it, and put her wet hand on his dick. It was gross; spit on her hand, his dick slimy from being inside her. She flicked her hand and wrist up and down in a matter-of-fact motion as if shaking down a thermometer. Peter stuck his fingers inside her. Men always did that, shoved as many fingers as they could organize deep inside and then wiggled them around as if trying to find the prize in a blind treasure hunt. She’d had examinations that were more fun. With her empty hand, she pulled on his wrist and shook her head, no way. It took him a minute to catch on.

  At four in the morning, Jody was still awake, trapped under Peter’s arm. She looked down at his penis, sleeping nicely, quietly on his thigh. It looked good there, healthy and relaxed. She’d seen some frightening ones — thick, stumpy things, or miniaturized pencil dicks — but this one was nice. She liked it better than its owner. Jody carefully lifted Peter’s arm and crawled out of the bed. She felt crusty, disgusting. In the bathroom as she washed, she tried to decide if it would be worse to be pregnant or have AIDS.

  14
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  Claire promised Jake that if he went with her to Bob Rosenblatt’s office she’d spend the whole afternoon with him. He wasn’t impressed. Well past the point where spending an afternoon with his mother was a great pleasure, he was into being left alone, lying on his bed with the shades pulled down.

  “When you spend an afternoon with me,” Claire asked, “doesn’t something good happen?”

  “Yeah, you feel guilty and buy me ice cream or french fries. I can buy my own french fries.”

  “Isn’t there anything you’d really like to do?”

  He shook his head.

  “Well, I’d really like you to come to see Bob Rosenblatt with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think it would be good for us.”

  “You think I need a shrink. You’re a shrink, so why don’t you just go ahead and do it to me?”

  Claire didn’t say anything.

  “Okay, fine, I’ll go, but then I get to pick out something I want and you have to buy it for me.”

  Claire still didn’t say anything.

  “Those are my conditions.”

  “Put your shoes on,” Claire said.

  Jake jumped down from his loft onto Adam’s bed, sending toys flying like shrapnel.

  “Be careful,” Claire said.

  • • •

  Rosenblatt kept them in the waiting room for ten minutes and twenty-three seconds. Claire watched the clock on the wall, sure there was no one in his office. It was a trick, Rosenblatt’s way of asserting his authority over her: I’m the doctor and you’re the patient.

  “I’ve never been in a shrink’s office before, except my mom’s,” Jake said, shaking Bob Rosenblatt’s hand.

  “Well, this is it,” Rosenblatt said, gesturing toward the Philip Pearlstein painting on the wall and the Oriental carpet on the floor, as if to demonstrate his superiority. “Take any seat you like.”

  Jake sat in the Eames chair that was clearly Rosenblatt’s usual seat and Claire felt proud of him. Rosenblatt made a face. Instead of saying something, he stuffed his large body into the smaller, more subservient chair across from Jake. Claire sat alone, pressed against the arm of the sofa.

  “Your mother is worried about you,” Rosenblatt said.

  Immediately Claire was pissed. You don’t start off pitting family members against each other. Jake wasn’t a junkie they were trying to get into a treatment program. He was a bored eleven-year-old.

  “Is there something she should be worried about?”

  Jake shook his head.

  “Is there anything in particular you’d like to talk about?”

  Jake shook his head again. He was losing his baby shape, the sweetness in his face changing into something more angular, less familiar, mannish.

  “You’re in what grade?”

  “Sixth,” Jake said. “And if you’re going to ask me if I like school, the answer is it’s okay. I mean, I like the kids and everything.”

  “Do you have a lot of friends?”

  “I guess.”

  “Any one in particular?”

  Jake shrugged.

  Rosenblatt was driving Jake further into himself. What a fucking idiot, Claire thought. She tried to think of a way to interrupt, to get things back on track.

  “Is there anything special you like to do with your friends?”

  Jake shrugged again.

  “Jake’s on the baseball team, and the soccer team, and he plays the trumpet,” Claire said.

  Both Jake and Rosenblatt gave her hard looks, then ignored her.

  “Do you like sports?” Rosenblatt asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Any one in particular?”

  It went on like that for half an hour. In monosyllabic statements, Rosenblatt found out that Jake liked to eat in restaurants and go to movies, liked girls but didn’t have a girlfriend yet, blushed easily, thought his father was okay, wished his family was bigger, hoped one day he’d get his own room, and still wanted a drum set for his birthday even though his parents said it wasn’t a possibility.

  Every so often Rosenblatt would bring her into the conversation in the worst way. “Is it true Jake sometimes says he has a stomachache when really there’s nothing wrong? Did you really throw out the copy of Playboy that he borrowed from a friend’s brother?” So she sat in her corner, distant, excluded, staring at the slice of the Chrysler Building visible from Rosenblatt’s window. Briefly she considered whether she should have asked Sam to come with them. But there was something about the nature of the problem that made Claire think it was strictly between her and Jake, a mother/son thing.

  Claire pictured her own family in therapy. Her father would’ve sat on a chair as far away from the rest of them as possible, both feet planted on the floor, arms crossed over his belly, face unpleasant, chin doubled onto his chest. Her mother would be in the middle, her attention split between husband, daughters, doctor. Her sister would be in a swivel chair, spinning in circles, touching everything on the doctor’s desk, and no one would tell her to stop. There would be no chair for Claire; she would be forced to stand in the middle of the room. “See,” her father would say, “she’s always doing something to get attention. Everyone else is sitting down and she insists on standing up.”

  In Rosenblatt’s office, Claire all of a sudden remembered that her sister always had earaches. When they went swimming, Laura had to put special plugs in her ears and wear a bathing cap and still try to keep her head above water. She swam laps with her neck stretched out, like a rare bird, the bright orange and yellow flowers on their mother’s hand-me-down rubber cap flapping in the breeze. Claire thought of Jody’s ears, thought of Jody’s tetracycline-stained teeth and tried to picture her sister’s mouth, but saw nothing except Laura’s head with the bathing cap on it and the thick red line running like a vein across her forehead that stayed for hours after she took the cap off.

  That was it. On Rosenblatt’s lousy black leather sofa, while her son and this pompous ass transferred and countertransferred all their boy/man business, it all began to make sense. She’d figured it out. Laura had accidentally met Barbara at a conference — probably something like “Adolescent Willfulness” or “Finding Meaning in Your Marriage.” From across the room Barbara had seen someone she thought was Claire — the two sisters looked a lot alike — and ran over, calling Claire’s name. Laura smiled, said she had a sister by that name, and everything came out — Barbara’s discovery that she had a patient who was Claire’s actual daughter. Barbara and Laura skipped their afternoon panels and over coffee came up with the plan to send Jody to Claire. I am your child, back from darkest Peru. Barbara and Laura thought they’d done a remarkable thing. They got together, swapped details about Jody and Claire, and wondered if Claire had figured it out. They laughed. They became best friends. The two families rented a beach house together and had cookouts. Barbara, Laura, and their husbands sat in lounge chairs in the backyard while their children stood around a Weber grill toasting marshmallows. It was perfectly logical. Barbara and Laura would love each other. Long ago, Barbara had married someone who worked for the government — some sort of analyst or spy — and had moved from Baltimore to Washington. She’d grown up, stopped burning holes in other people’s sweaters, quit smoking, started drinking wine, embraced security, rules, and regulations, the conservative style of Washington society. She’d become a hard-core do-righter, in the sense of embracing the system, becoming the system, and believing in it. She would think Laura was great — exactly as Claire had seemed but not as depressed, not as quirky or weird. Claire hated them both.

  “How would you feel about coming to see me once a week? Not with your mother, but by yourself?”

  Claire was whipped through time back into the room, slightly dazed. What happened? What had she missed?

  Jake shrugged.

  “Is that something you’d be able to do?”

  “I guess,” Jake said.

  Claire was furious. Claire and Rosenb
latt hadn’t discussed the possibility of Jake going into individual therapy, and to ask Jake about it before checking with Claire and Sam took a lot of nerve. After all, they’d have to pay for it. Rosenblatt was playing dirty, using Jake to manipulate Claire.

  “How would you feel about Jake coming here?” Rosenblatt asked her.

  Claire glared at him. “I’ll have to discuss it with Sam. We’ll call you.”

  If Jake were left alone with Rosenblatt, together they would perform strange male rituals that worked like magnetic polar curses and drove the mother figure farther and farther away, until finally Jake would live in Maine and Claire in Florida.

  “Why don’t we go ahead and make a time,” Rosenblatt said. “When do you get out of school on Wednesdays?”

  “Let’s wait,” Claire said.

  It was her obligation to protect what she perceived to be the best interests of her child. And if he needed to be in therapy, it would certainly be with someone else.

  “I’m done at three,” Jake said, looking at his mother.

  “I think you have an orthodontist appointment Wednesday,” Claire said, standing up. “We’ll have to check the book at home and call you.” Claire waited for Jake to get up and then marched out of the office.

  “What a fucking asshole,” she said in the elevator.