Other People's Houses, page 15
The dogs had wandered back in, having discovered Ava was only heading to her room to sulk. They could sense tension in the kitchen, and they both started slowly wagging their tails in a “Let’s all calm down” kind of way. Frances reached down to pet them, but her anger was growing rather than fading. “Why is that bad? I don’t have a job-type job. This is what I do. I’m a mom, a parent. I take care of my own kids, and I help other parents take care of theirs. I have time. They don’t. When I don’t have time, one of them will. It’s a fucking village, right?” She thought, but not for long enough: “It’s not like you’re helping all that much, is it?”
“I help.”
“When? When was the last time you did a load of laundry?”
“The other day, before my trip to San Francisco.”
Frances snorted. “Yeah, you went through and picked out a basket of your own clothes and washed them. You didn’t do anyone else’s, you just took care of your own shit.”
The fourth glass was nearly gone. The dogs were backing out of the room. Other men might have raised their voices, but Frances’s husband lowered his. “At least I take care of my own shit. You put everyone else first so you don’t have to look at your own life. You’re way too busy to go to the gym, or get a part-time job, or even get a fucking haircut. We haven’t had sex for nearly six months, we haven’t gone out to dinner, we haven’t had a conversation that wasn’t about the kids, we haven’t done anything that wasn’t to do with the mundane quotidian details of existence. It’s so fucking boring, Frank, it’s all so fucking boring.” He tipped the bottle but it was empty. “At least Anne Porter generated a little heat and light while she burned her fucking house to the ground.”
Frances turned and walked out before she said something she would regret, and her husband almost certainly wouldn’t remember.
* * *
• • •
Despite her deep irritation with Michael, Frances still had things to do. She pushed the argument to the back of her mind, where it wedged itself in a mental closet full of such things, and went to give Lally a bath. Ava was sulking in the bedroom to her right, Michael was sulking in the kitchen downstairs, and she was going to hide in the bathroom and form her daughter’s hair into soapy devil horns. Fuck them.
Lally, who was completely unaware that anything was going on with her mother at all, said, “So, will Anne still be Kate and Theo’s mom?”
Frances nodded. “Yes, you can never not be someone’s mom, once you’ve started.” That wasn’t the best way to put it, but it was what she had at that moment. “Once your baby is born you’re its mom, and that’s forever.”
Lally had contrary information. “But what about babies who are adopted? They get new moms.”
Frances sighed inwardly; she should have seen this coming. Fuck Michael, he was putting her off her game. Her knees hurt from kneeling next to the bath, so she shifted to her butt. Much better, although now she could feel soapy water seeping through her pants. “Yes, but the lady who was pregnant with them is still their mother, she just isn’t the person who’s going to be their everyday mom. And the person who adopts them is going to be their mom or dad just as much as if they had been pregnant with them, right?”
Lally wrinkled her nose and looked up from under her horns. “Two moms? Like Wyatt?”
“No,” said Frances, running the sprayer water, making it the right temperature. “Turn around, baby, and tip your head back.” She started rinsing the little head, shielding Lally’s eyes as best she could with her left hand. The sprayer was broken and one clogged hole directed water down her sleeve while another generously watered her left nipple. She ignored them both. “Wyatt has two mommies at the same time. Adopted children have an original mommy, who they often don’t know very well, but sometimes they do,” this was getting confusing, “and another mom or dad, who adopted them and is their everyday mom or dad.”
“Soap! Soap!” Lally jerked her head forward and stuck her hand back for a towel, which Frances handed her. Once she’d dealt with that, Lally tipped her head back again, trustingly.
“So even if someone has two dads, like Molly”—a kid at school—“they still have a mommy somewhere.”
“Exactly.” Frances wondered if she could just leave it there. Had she given enough information to satisfy, and not too much? She felt herself guilty of over-information all the time, explaining too much, going into too much detail. Michael was better at this. When a younger Ava had asked where she came from, and Frances had opened her mouth to start explaining the intricacies of sexual reproduction, Michael had said, “New York,” and Ava had nodded and walked away.
“It was like the joke, right?” Michael had said, reacting to Frances’s laughter. “You know, the kid who asks his parents where he’s from, and they go into all the details about sex and pregnancy, and then he says, ‘Oh . . . Billy’s from Chicago.’” Frances had just shaken her head and leaned over to kiss him. She wished he were in the bathroom to handle this line of questioning, and not downstairs being a self-pitying dick.
As Lally climbed out of the tub, and was wrapped in a hooded towel that made her look like a dinosaur, she said, “But if Kate and Theo’s mom and dad get divorced, then she won’t be their mom anymore, right?” She thought for a second. “Or will their dad not be their dad?” She looked suddenly worried. “Or do they have no mom and dad at all?”
Frances picked her up, which was getting harder, but Frances wasn’t ready to stop. She carried her down the hall, holding her tight, and sat down with her on their big bed.
“OK, here’s how this works.” She paused. “Do you want chocolate milk?” Lally shook her head, not ready for cocoa yet. “Do you need pajamas?” Lally shook her head. “OK, so, you know that Daddy is my husband, right?” A nod. “And I am his wife, right?” Currently, she thought, assuming I don’t stab him in the throat later. Another nod. “OK, so a husband and a wife can get divorced, but if they have kids and are also a mommy and a daddy to someone, that is forever.”
“You can’t divorce a kid?”
“Nope.” Frances looked up and saw Ava leaning in the doorway. “Once you’re someone’s mommy you’re their mommy forever, and you never stop loving them or taking care of them or wanting them to be happy. That’s just the way it is.” She was looking at Ava as she said this, and saw her daughter about to challenge pretty much everything she’d just said, citing child abuse, death, drug addiction, et al., but then Frances frowned slightly, indicating Lally, and Ava just rolled her eyes. There would be time for brutal honesty later. For now Frances was determined to let Lally think the best of the world, and apparently Lally’s older sister was OK with that, too.
“Unless the kid is really bad, right?” There was a pause, and Lally tipped her head back to look at her mom. “What if the kid is really bad, can you divorce them then?” Whether she was planning some terrible crime, or just wondering how bad refusing to eat vegetables was, legally, Frances didn’t know. She kissed her daughter on her clean little forehead, and shook her head.
“No, baby, it doesn’t matter how naughty a kid is, you still love them forever.”
“Even if they poo on the floor?” This was a question based on experience.
“Yes, even then.”
“Or if they steal your hat?”
Frances grinned. “Or even then. There is NOTHING you can do that will stop me loving you. I might not like what you do, but I will always love you.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Frances hugged her littlest child, and looked up at her eldest. Ava was just looking back at her, impossible to read. Then she turned away and headed off to her room.
Twenty-one.
Wyatt was already asleep when Sara came home from work, still in makeup and looking gorgeous. Iris was wearing an old-lady flannel nightgown, lying in bed reading the New Yorker and eating ice cream. She was happy to see Sara, of course, but inwardly cursed that she hadn’t gotten more ice cream in the first place because now getting seconds would look greedy. Bad planning.
Sara threw herself down on the bed next to Iris, kissed her hello, then sat back up again. Such energy, thought Iris, closing her magazine and smiling.
“I like your nightie,” Sara said, half smiling. The granny nighties were a running joke between them because Iris shopped for them compulsively on eBay, hunting for genuinely old, worn flannel gowns that genuinely old, worn ladies had possibly died in. She liked how soft they were, found the patterns and cuts comforting. Sara thought it was funny, and secretly adorable.
“Thanks. How was work?”
Sara shrugged and leapt up to go wash her face. Her voice drifted from the bathroom. “It was fine. I kind of rushed out of there, but I think it went well. David Rapelli turns out to be a nice guy.”
Her costar. He was a hunky handsome guy, the dude next door, the fuckable-husband type. He and Sara were married in this movie, but that was about as much as Iris knew about it.
“Oh yeah?” Iris reached for the magazine again, but was thwarted by Sara suddenly reappearing, her face bare. She had the common actor’s ability to put on and take off makeup in about three seconds. Ten thousand hours of anything makes you an expert, presumably. Iris patted Rosco instead, as if that had been her intent the whole time.
“Yeah. He’s married, two kids, not the brightest bulb on the tree and knows it, mostly grateful for the lucky break he had genetically, followed by the lucky break he had temperamentally, followed by the lucky break he had professionally.”
“So, grateful then?”
Sara nodded. “Largely. He started to be a dick about craft services, but he picked the wrong day for it, so that didn’t last long.”
“How do you mean?”
“Lynsey was first AD.”
Lynsey was a woman they both knew socially, after Sara had become friends with her through work. A dedicated and gifted multitasker who could have been directing enormous movies or captaining some industry or other, she was instead a first assistant director on made-for-TV movies so she could earn enough money and have enough working flexibility to care for her younger sister who was slowly but surely dying of cystic fibrosis. Lynsey had incredible empathy, maybe as a result of watching someone you love fight to stay alive despite a life filled with pain, which made her a pleasure to work with unless you were rude, at which point she would flay you alive and you’d never be hired again.
Sara pulled off her clothes and clambered under the covers, snuggling up to Iris. “Ooh, you’re so toasty.” She wrapped her long legs around her wife, who shrieked and pulled away.
“Your feet are like ice cubes. What were you shooting, a scene on an iceberg?”
Sara laughed. “Yeah, because in this story the young married couple are going on vacation to the Grand Canyon and an iceberg comes floating down the Colorado.”
“Global warming. It could happen.”
“Well, this isn’t the dystopian vacation rom-com you seem to be imagining. I just have cold feet. You married me for better or worse, let me tuck my cold feet under your warm legs.” She did so, and continued. “Anyway, Lynsey pulled him briefly aside and said something and after that he behaved himself impeccably. I think you’d like him.”
“Is he incredibly short?”
“No, he looks like he does on-screen, pretty tall.” Most actors were shorter than you’d think, Iris had discovered, with big heads and large features and an overwhelming tendency to look at themselves in mirrors, windows, other people’s sunglasses. She had never been very comfortable with “industry” people, and largely kept away. But they did have some friends from Sara’s work, like Lynsey.
“How was your day?” Sara’s feet were warming up, and her arms stole around Iris’s waist and tugged her closer, rubbing her face into her neck, smelling the clothes soap they used, feeling secure and loved. She could give David Rapelli’s gratitude a run for its money.
Iris shrugged. “It was good.” Then she suddenly gasped and sat up. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I didn’t tell you this as soon as you walked through the door! Anne Porter has been having an affair and Charlie found out today and threw her out. They had a huge fight in the street, I saw the whole thing, it was awful.”
Sara rolled away from her wife and sat up. “No way.”
“Way.”
“Seriously? She was cheating? How long had that been going on?” Sara looked genuinely shocked and surprised.
Iris shook her head. “No idea. Frances said she thought several months.”
“How did Frances know that?”
“She talked to Anne about it.”
“She knew about it before Charlie did?”
“Yeah, but only for a few days.” Iris told Sara the craft supplies/infidelity story.
Sara sat there and gazed at her. “Holy Fucking Shit. Those poor kids. What a disaster. Do you want more ice cream?”
Iris nodded. Sara grabbed her bowl and headed downstairs. The dog followed her, and Iris sat in bed and listened to the two of them having a conversation. Or at least, Sara had a conversation, but Rosco was apparently jotting his answers down on a pad because Iris couldn’t catch his responses at all. When Sara came back she had two bowls with her. One contained her own ice cream, which was vanilla and about the size of a walnut, and the other was for Iris, which had two flavors of ice cream, whipped cream and chocolate sauce.
“We’re out of maraschino cherries,” Sara said, as she helped Rosco get up on the bed again. “We weren’t, but I gave Rosco the last one.”
“That explains his pink nose. Are maraschino cherries good for dogs?”
“No idea. I give him them all the time, and he’s never complained.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, that’s why we’re out. Anyway, tell me more about Anne and Charlie. What’s going to happen?” She sat down, still naked, put the bowl in her lap, screamed at the cold, got up, put on a T-shirt, and tried again.
While watching this pantomime, Iris half-heartedly picked up her magazine, then put it down. “I don’t know. It’s just happened. I doubt they even know themselves.” She looked at Sara. “Would you divorce me if I cheated on you?”
Sara nodded. “Of course. If I knew. If I didn’t know I’d be fine about it.” She frowned. “You’re not cheating, are you?”
“Of course not. Not that I’d tell you.”
“Right.” Sara tipped her head on one side as she thought about it, a habit she had that impersonators often mocked. It was natural, though, she’d always done it. “I guess it would also depend on what kind of cheating.”
Iris turned onto her side, facing her wife. “How do you mean? Isn’t there one basic kind, the kind where you sleep with someone you’re not married to?”
“Yeah, but there are so many variations on the theme.”
“Please explain, Professor.”
Sara sat up in bed and curled her legs under her, counting off on her fingers. “One, the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am school of cheating, where you hook up with strangers in bars, hotels, nightclubs, and simply have sex. No information is exchanged, no follow-up is expected or desired.”
Iris nodded. “I’ve heard of this, continue.”
“Second, the kind that comes up on sets or on vacation or on temporary assignments of one kind or another. This kind is mostly about sex, but it’s also about re-creating the first few days or weeks of a new relationship. You’re both slightly nauseous, you lose ten pounds in as many days, you start wearing nicer underwear . . .”
“Or NO underwear . . .”
“If you’re that way inclined, and you flirt in front of other people and generally toy with the secrecy and excitement of illicit romance. However, it is always understood that this is a fling, nothing more, and although it can be passionate and personal and intimate, it is not intended to develop into anything.”
“OK, check.” Iris was suddenly enjoying this conversation less. Sara had clearly thought this through.
“Third—and this is where it starts to get sticky—is the kind that starts as one of the above, usually the latter, and then gets out of hand. This can happen anytime, to anyone, which is why infidelity is such a dumb idea if you love your spouse. One minute you’re having a giggle with the wardrobe girl, and the next she’s boiling your rabbit, if you get my reference.”
“To Fatal Attraction, yes, I get the reference. We don’t have a rabbit, thankfully.”
“True. And finally, you have the worst—or best—kind of infidelity, the one where you fall in love with someone else and your marriage ends.”
“Is that always what happens? Your marriage ends?”
“No. Sometimes you fall in love with someone else and are grown-up about it and change jobs, or do something else so you don’t see that person anymore, and never take it beyond the confines of your own head. Other times you both know you’re in trouble before you get into it, and you have a very sad conversation where you agree that if you lived in a different world you’d be together, but you don’t, see earlier reference to changing jobs. And other times you acknowledge the attraction, have one very steamy make-out session, and end it there.” Sara suddenly sighed. “But that choice is a very dangerous one, in my experience, because once that physical bridge has been crossed, it tends to fall down behind you like a chase sequence in an action movie and there’s no going back.”
Iris looked at her wife, who wasn’t even seeing her anymore. She cleared her throat. “In your experience?”
