In A Country Of Mothers Page 18

  While Jake and Adam fought over Boardwalk and Park Place, Claire sat at the kitchen table, working out a draft.

  Please send any and all information about your organization, its publications and programs, as well as any additional information on resources that would be helpful in conducting a search for a child given up in Washington, D.C., in 1966. Thank you. I have enclosed a check for fifteen dollars so that you may mail me the information via express/overnight mail.

  She wrote out ten copies exactly alike, stuffed them into envelopes along with ten checks, and instantly began waiting.

  Without Sam, she sat on the beach watching Jake and Adam playing at the water’s edge and thinking of Jody. As far as she was concerned, Jody was the child. The papers and the searching were only a way of confirming what she already knew. For the first time she felt like the mother of three children. She felt complete. Everything had come together. In Claire’s mind, she had done a marvelous thing by setting Jody free and enabling her to begin her own life. Claire was the elusive perfect parent, the woman whose child came and went effortlessly, without conflict. She saw Jody as her own personal success story. And without being made to feel the burden of meeting a mother’s needs, Jody had given Claire something she’d been wanting for twenty-four years: her child was back.

  Like Samantha in “Bewitched,” like Jeannie in “I Dream of Jeannie,” Claire had meddled, but had acted invisibly. No one would ever know she’d been there; no one would ever suspect her. From a safe distance she’d made her mark, staked her claim. Now she could sit back and watch and things would be wonderful. Thankfully, she’d controlled herself during those sessions when she couldn’t concentrate on a word Jody was saying, when it was all she could do to keep from blurting out, “But sweetie, I’m your mother!”

  Claire looked out across the sand at the people around her. It was shrink month at the beach. Men with thick dark beards, skinny white legs, and fat asses hid under huge umbrellas, their faces protected by new hardcover books. It was their month to let it all hang out. There was no one there except shrinks — the August rents were so high that most other people couldn’t afford them. Two hundred pale weird kids on the beach. A hundred and fifty weird parents in the sand. Shrink fathers and mothers alternately screaming at and ignoring their children. A regular shrink convention.

  Claire checked at the post office every day, and soon packages started to arrive. First, a long bibliography with a Post-it attached and a message written in loopy handwriting—“For search information in the Washington area, contact the Safe-Place Support System,” with an address and a phone number. The next day, a copy of the District of Columbia Code on Adoption, fifteen pages of fine-print gobbledygook: “Persons who may adopt … Consent … Legislative History of the law … Subsection (e) of this section is not unconstitutional on the grounds that it denies a natural parent due process…. Birth Certificates … Notice of final decree of adoption shall be sent to the commissioner (mayor). Unless otherwise requested in the petition by the adopters, the commissioner (mayor) shall cause to be made a new record of the birth in the new name and with the names of the adopters and shall then cause to be sealed and filed the original birth certificate with the order of the court. The sealed package may be opened only by order of the court.”

  Claire read it all and then called the girl down the street to baby-sit, while she rested upstairs in the bedroom, shades drawn.

  The next day a package came from the International Soundex Reunion Registry in Carson City, Nevada. A form marked Confidential read: “No Fee Charged for Registration. Present Name____. Searcher Is____.” Halfway down the page was a blue asterisk and the instructions: “Fill out this form as completely as possible in respect to the adoptee or other child as facts were known when the separation occurred.”

  Claire couldn’t do it. She was sick. All she wanted was substantiation, gratification, an official notice. It was as simple and complicated as that. She looked at the form, held her pencil to the paper, and couldn’t write her name. Jody had said that she’d never search; it didn’t mean that much to her. Was she lying? Did she not want Claire to be her mother? Sometimes Jody gave Claire the feeling that maybe she didn’t really need her, or at least not as much as Claire needed Jody. Claire filled out the top line — Present Name, Claire Roth — and stopped. She worried that she’d actually fill out the form, send it in, and they’d send her the name and phone number of a doughy girl who worked in a Burger King mixing shakes.

  There was nothing to do. The days and nights were mindless, punctuated only by Jake and Adam’s demands to be driven out to Montauk to play miniature golf, to the video store, the CD place, the ice cream shop. For days on end Claire focused on the information packets, the forms. Every morning she walked to the post office, stuffed the mail into her beach bag, and carried it with her down to the water. She’d sit on her blanket, facing the sun, and pore over the papers. Every time she opened a new envelope, her stomach knotted, twisted, and sank. She carried the information everywhere, and finally, at the end of the week, put it all into the night-table drawer and walked away. Jody was her daughter and that was that. She’d made up her mind and didn’t need anything else.

  One weekday, after she’d spent eight hours in the sun, after she’d eaten two Häagen-Dazs ice cream bars and drunk a large Coke while the kids were off with friends, Claire fell into thick afternoon sleep and dreamt about Jody. They were in bed together, naked: Jody’s mouth at her breast, her tongue on Claire’s nipple. Claire rolled towards Jody, and in her sleep felt herself seduced.

  A crying toddler walking up and down the sand woke her. “Shh … shh,” a woman said again and again, trailing after the child. Claire was confused, blinded by the glare. She couldn’t keep her eyes open. She was scared and horny. The more she thought about the dream, the more frightening it became. She rolled onto her stomach and put her head down again, pressing her face against the blanket.

  In the dream everything appeared perfectly normal, as though this were the way it was supposed to be. On the beach in front of her was the shrink convention, and still Claire had no one to ask. She reached for a legal pad and attempted to diagram it for herself. Mother, Child, Oedipus, Freud. The dream didn’t belong to an old dead shrink, to any particular theory; it was her own.

  21

  UCLA film brats. Everyone knew someone or had sold something. They all thought they were special. Who to be friends with, and how? Talk about sleeping with the famous record producer’s son? Tell the truth, or lie? Or maybe wimp out and hang with the weaklings, the quiet ones, the ugly ones who must have gotten in on talent since they didn’t have anything else? The first day of school. Eighteen years of first days, all of them exactly the same, all as horrible as the one when she was almost four and her mother dropped her off at nursery school and she stood on the front step screaming as her mother’s car disappeared down the driveway.

  “Hi, I’m Jody.” Shake hands, look at your feet. “I’m from New York.”

  New York was good, much better than Bethesda or Washington. Washington State? Oh, Washington, D.C. Is your father a senator?

  “Where in New York?”

  “The city. The West Village.” Good move, Jody.

  Registration, classes, meetings. Shaking hands with people whose names she wouldn’t remember in an hour or a month.

  “Hi, my name is Bob, I’m not an alcoholic.” A joke? “I’m from Minneapolis.”

  “What are we supposed to be doing?”

  Compare Xeroxed information sheets and maps, run around in circles, get registration cards stamped and bad pictures taken, become official. Then, at the bookstore, charge things for yourself, books you always meant to read, magazines, stupid things for the apartment, a blackboard — things that’ll really help you get organized.

  “Ice cream?” Bob asked. “You want to go have some ice cream?” Unpretentious, down to earth, midwestern.

  “Sure,” Jody said. And on the way out, they picked u
p a lost girl named Ilene, formerly from the deep East Village, the roots of her dyed black hair already turning a peculiar orange from the California sun.

  “Look‚” she said. “Would you look at my hair?”

  “I’m looking,” Jody said. It was hard to miss.

  “You’re from Minneapolis,” Ilene said to Bob. “Do you know Prince?” Another joke? A lot of comedy in these situations, stress-induced one-liners.

  Friendships formed. Inseparable at first. Three was a good number. They expanded sometimes to four, sometimes to five, and sometimes shrank to two if someone was busy, tired, or fed up. New situations were overwhelming. Sometimes everyone had to be alone, decompress, call home, remember who she was and why she was doing this.

  “Hi, honey, how was your day?” Jody’s mother asked nightly at eight o’clock Pacific time. “How’s the apartment coming along? Are you watering the ficus? Not too much. Have you met anyone interesting yet? Maybe you’ll find a boyfriend out there. You know, we really should talk less often, the phone bill’s going to be sky high.”

  Jody’s apartment was mediocre, but so was almost everyone’s. There were a few rich kids with major daddy money and nice apartments; a few people, mostly couples, who’d rented little houses. Jody wasn’t particularly envious, but still, the apartment wasn’t really a home. She’d never looked out onto a palm tree before. She’d never had a pool in the backyard, either. She thought of swimming, dipping her face into the water, turning to the side, breathing. Outside of her parents’ basement, the horrible furniture somehow got better; the memories invested in it seeped out into the warm air, and Jody began to feel attachment, comfort, nostalgia.

  Jody thought of Claire at the beach — their house was probably a quaint twelve-room cottage on the ocean that had been in the family for years. Claire undoubtedly spent the mornings in the kitchen, putting together massive picnics that she hauled to the water’s edge in a little red wagon. Afternoons were spent on the sand with assorted children and neighbors snacking on warm soda and grainy egg-salad sandwiches, pondering whether the crunchy parts were eggshell or sand. She saw Claire’s blond hair becoming nearly translucent, her skin browning. Every night there would be a fancy cocktail party on someone’s deck. Jody half wished she hadn’t left Claire behind, half wished she could talk to her now, tell her stories about everything as it happened, describing the people, the teachers, the city itself, making the horrible things funny.

  “Harry B. is coming to town …,” Harry sang an off-key and off-color version of the Christmas carol on Jody’s answering machine. “You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not shout, ’cause I’m taking you out.”

  Five days later he arrived in a chauffeur-driven Bentley. Jody had to skip a program meeting and a screenwriting class in order to keep the date.

  “Hello, sweets,” he said, kissing her full on the lips as she climbed into the car. She subtly wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Excuse the man at the wheel, but I absolutely cannot drive in this town. I’m fine in the Alps, perfectly happy on the streets of Paris, but this,” he said, gesturing widely, encompassing the entire Los Angeles basin with his sweep, “drives me crazy.”

  “I could have driven,” Jody said.

  Harry scowled, waved his hands, and whispered the destination to the driver. “Tell me how it’s been,” he said.

  “It’s only been a month.”

  “Are you regretting your decision to abandon me?”

  “No.”

  “In time,” Harry said, gazing out the window as Hollywood slipped past.

  They went to Chasins. Even though Harry spent almost no time in Los Angeles anymore, he knew everyone and, from the moment they were seated, held court. Right and left, from appetizers through coffee, people dropped by the table and chatted — or chattered, in Jody’s view.

  “I’m a vice-president at Paramount now,” one would say. “Let’s do lunch.”

  “Let’s,” Harry would answer, adding, “Do you know my friend Jody Goodman?”

  The vice-president would blink and extend his hand. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “Ms. Goodman is a stellar young filmmaker. Stellar.”

  “Oh, really,” the veep would say, reaching into his jacket pocket, fishing out crisp business cards, setting one down on the table next to Harry and handing the other to Jody, who in a flush of embarrassment would knock her knife onto the floor.

  By the time the dinner was over, Jody had met at least twenty people, collected sixteen business cards and three tentative lunch dates, spilled one glass of water, lost two knives, and was starving to death, because in an effort to make decent conversation she’d been unable to eat.

  “Most productive, don’t you think?” Harry said as they stood at the restaurant’s entrance, waiting for the Bentley to pull up.

  “I suppose,” Jody said.

  “That’s how it’s done. Are you hungry, good girl? Are you ready to truly dine?”

  “I could eat.”

  Harry again whispered instructions to the driver, who sped them off to a nearby drive-through McDonald’s, and they feasted on Big Macs, fries, and shakes while the man at the wheel took them on a slow, smooth tour of Beverly Hills. Fatter than ever and stoned on sugar, Harry reached over and tried to feel Jody up. She bent her head down to meet his hand where it lay on her chest and bit him hard, leaving deep pink tooth marks in his spongy flesh.

  Jody had done it: she’d gotten to L.A. Everything was fine; there were people to meet, parties to go to, mini-events where a screenwriter or director talked or showed something, passes to screenings. Soon there were choices and phone numbers Jody had to memorize.

  Out of the blue Michael called. “News flash,” he said when Jody picked up the phone. “A fish on the line. For you, and just for you, because I love you.” He was playing with her, doing an L.A. routine. “Let’s have phone lunch — it’s like phone sex, only better. We both order salads, keep the receiver tucked under our chins, and you crunch and chew heavily into my ear.”

  “What’s the deal?” Jody asked. “It’s not like you to run up your phone bill.”

  “An old friend called. He’s out there going into production in La-La Land and could use a smart little helper. You got any spare time?”

  “Maybe. Who is it?”

  “Gary Marc.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Do I dial long distance for my own entertainment? Call him at the studio, he’s expecting to hear from you. And P.S. — don’t tell him you fucked the record guy’s son. They hate each other from way back.”

  “How’d you know I slept with him?”

  “From the look on your face.”

  “I’m so glad I don’t work for you anymore,” Jody said.

  “Mutual. Listen, I’ll talk to you later…. By the way, Harry told me he had a nice dinner and that your tits are bigger than he thought.”

  Jody laughed.

  “We’re looking at a rough cut tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  “Thanks,” Jody said. “Thanks a lot.”

  She had the prime spot, the best job, the jealous respect of her fellow students.

  “How’d you get it?” they asked.

  “Just did,” Jody said. “Phone rang one day, like in the movies.”

  Two hundred hours a week, that’s what it felt like.

  Gary Marc. Mr. Producer. Mr. Hollywood. His house in Bel Air had an air-conditioned tennis court and the freezer was stocked with ice cubes made out of lime Perrier. “Call Brando for me — I was supposed to tell him about this thing…. Oh, God, it’s Shirley MacLaine’s birthday — send her flowers, make up something good to say on the card.” Soon Jody knew not just where and when but how Gary liked to lunch, in what kind of light, facing what direction. “I’m seeing a couple of actresses read today — be there. I want to hear what you think.” Jody, the arbiter of good taste, the uncorruptible New Yorker, critical, logical, on target. “Funny. You�
�re very funny.” A compliment — but how come everyone always said the same thing? She wasn’t that funny. Still, any compliment from the Marc Man himself was to be taken seriously.

  “Thanks,” she said. Jody loved it.

  The weather was nice, not offensive. Without even trying she had a little bit of a tan, although she sometimes wondered if it wasn’t radiation burn off the computer screen.

  When she wasn’t in class, or doing the required amount of socializing, when she wasn’t schlepping for Gary, she sat in front of what amounted to a blank black-and-white TV trying to draw pictures with words. Medium shot. Car chase. Interior fast-food restaurant. Daylight. Phone call. Blackout. Sex scene. It was a comedy. As long as she was entertaining herself, she thought it was good. So far, it was a movie she’d love to see. Jody was having fun; she was doing fine. Once, twice, or three times a day, she reminded herself — told you so.

  A guy named Simon, from San Diego, asked Jody out a couple of times. On what Jody thought would be the big night, she hid a condom in her shoe — her skirt didn’t have pockets, and she wasn’t about to carry a purse — and hurried to meet him by the mailboxes in the film department. After a lecture by Mel Brooks, they went to Simon’s apartment. With his roommate, Steve, in the next room, they sat on his futon and watched the video he’d used as his application to film school. It was all zoo footage. “Sweet,” Jody said. “Very sweet.”

  “We have to talk,” Simon said breathlessly. “It’s about Steve. He likes me. Last night, we got plastered, had a huge discussion, and … well, I think I like him too. I just don’t know. I hope you’re not pissed.”

  “Nope,” Jody said. “Pissed isn’t the word for it.” And she stood up, pulled herself together, and walked out of the apartment.

  “See you tomorrow,” Simon called after her.

  It was the beginning of the fall; it was supposed to start getting cold outside, dark earlier, and with any luck eventually it would snow. But not in Los Angeles, not in the land of the great imagination. At best it was chilly and raw, rainy. Jody was tired. She was having a great time, but she was exhausted; the fun was no longer fun. It was too fucking tiring. It made no sense. Jody was happy. She kept checking herself: I’m happy, right?