An Abbreviated Life Read online

  We move to the dining room, and I have made place cards for my mother and Rita and Josie. Each table setting has a crystal ball ornament with everyone’s favorite color.

  My mother sits with us and has a glass of wine. As Josie brings out the hamburgers, my mother gets up to leave. I become upset because my mother had promised to put me to bed. “Rita, will you stay with me?” I ask.

  She agrees and I feel soothed.

  Rita comes with me to my bedroom, and she sees three letters from my father on the table. Unopened. The procedure is usually that Josie reads these letters to me after dinner while my mother is with guests or out for the evening. Josie has come in the room to prepare me for bed. “This evening when we got back from Ariel’s psychiatrist,” she explains, “the missus wanted to trim the tree. Mr. Harvey writes beautiful letters. I will read them to her tomorrow.”

  I ask Rita to wait until I fall asleep.

  “Before you leave, will you turn the lights off the tree?” I am worried about a fire. Rita sits on the edge of the bed and tucks me in. As she gets up to leave, I keep calling for her to come back for more hugs.

  SHE LEAVES MY bedroom and goes to the kitchen to help Josie clean up.

  “The missus has spent more time with Ariel tonight than she has the whole time I’ve been here,” Josie says.

  “Why do you suppose that is?” Rita asks.

  “Because you’re here. And she’s afraid you will write to Ariel’s father about what you see. She was so loving tonight. Ach, it’s an act.”

  Josie had been there only a few months. Rita was new to my mother’s behavior. They hadn’t yet accepted how powerless they were. But they stayed. Even though they were torn. They stayed.

  13

  I relied on Josie for everything. She would never leave me. She was dependable. She woke me up in the mornings and put me to bed. She walked me to school, and at the end of the day, she stood there waiting to pick me up. She took me to the dentist and sat in the waiting room, knitting chunky woolen vests, until the appointment was over. She took me to my piano lesson and sat in Central Park until I was through. She helped with my homework, braided my hair, cooked and ate all of my meals with me. Every morning and every night. She had one day off a week, and during that day I stayed in my room reading or drawing.

  When my mother demanded that Josie work through her day off, they argued. Josie would shout at my mother and say she needed a rest. Then my mother would fire her. This happened whenever Josie stood up to her. It could occur at any minute over anything. I asked my mother, “Will Josie be here when I wake up?” and she would snap, “No,” calling her a traitor. I would start to cry and beg her not to fire Josie until she promised she wouldn’t. But she would anyway. There would be arguments because Josie didn’t approve of my mother’s bad habits—walking around naked, having sex with the boyfriend who gave her a black eye and letting him sleep over, dropping cigarette butts into the coffee mug, letting the bathtub overflow, entertaining on school nights; it was a long list.

  JOSEPHINE HAD NEVER been married, never had children, and was several years older than my mother. She was sturdy, with a winsome smile and freckled skin that made her seem maternal. She wore her auburn hair in a bun that made her seem taller than her five-foot-two frame. She called it a topknot.

  Eventually I began to trust her and we developed a bond. As I got older, one of the most hurtful things I could say to my mother was “You didn’t raise me. Josie did.” My mother would point out that she was the one who paid Josie to take care of me. Then she’d accuse Josie of turning me against her. Just as my father did.

  JOSIE WOULD MAKE dinner for us every night and we would sit down to eat at five-thirty. The time never changed. It was part of the structure. My mother always insisted there be a place set for her—she wanted to be included—but then she wouldn’t show up. We’d eat dinner with a place mat and napkin set in front of an empty chair.

  I would go to my mother’s room and let her know dinner was ready. “I’ll be right there,” she’d say. Time passed. After her phone calls ended, my mother would make an appearance.

  “You don’t promise a child you’ll show up and then not make it,” Josie would say. “Ariel has been waiting for you.”

  My mother insisted that I didn’t mind. “Do you?”

  She’d look right at me. I had to lie.

  JOSIE SAYS, “THERE’S shit in the bed.”

  I don’t ask why there’s shit in the bed.

  She is aggressively pulling the sheets off the mattress in my mother’s bedroom and throwing them on the floor. “Why should I have to put up with this?” She is not expecting me to answer her. It was as though I wasn’t there.

  I am there. I am standing in the doorway looking on.

  “Why do you think no one else will stay in this job? No one else will put up with her. Why should I have to? I’m not a maid.”

  I panic. “You’re not going to leave, are you?”

  She doesn’t answer me.

  MY MOTHER HAD accidents. That’s what they were called. Peeing in her pants was a frequent accident. “Give me a second,” she would announce when she arrived home and I went to the door to greet her. “I’ve had an accident.” There was no shame in this announcement.

  Sometimes she would come home and be in such a rush to make a phone call, I would see her standing in the kitchen, receiver to her ear, with one leg tightly crossed over the other so as to prevent the pee from coming out. She would hold this pose for a few seconds and concentrate on not wetting herself.

  She would make the shhh gesture, furrow her brow, and press her finger to her mouth until she was ready to talk to me. When she hung up the phone, I would ask her to change out of her soggy sweatpants.

  “I’m about to,” she’d say. “I haven’t had time.”

  I watch as she moves past me, inching forward, sashaying in an almost elegant manner, her arms swaying as one leg sharply crisscrosses the other with precise timing so that there is no open space between her legs.

  “It’s not my fault,” she calls out. “I have a bladder problem.”

  INSTRUCTING MY MOTHER on manners or etiquette or on how to behave elicited amused disapproval. “No bringing up mommy,” she’d say. I told her: Please don’t blow your nose into your T-shirt. Or into the linen napkin at a restaurant. Someone else has to take that away. Are you wearing underwear? Can you brush your hair? Your nightgown is inside out. Please don’t wear it to Parents’ Day. Did you say thank you? Don’t do that. Don’t say that.

  She would snap, “How did you become so conventional?”

  THERE WERE NO barriers between what my mother was experiencing and what I was exposed to. “We don’t keep secrets from each other” was a commandment. Nothing was ever withheld.

  MY MOTHER HAS a new lover. She has been shouting into the telephone in the kitchen and he must have hung up on her because as she strides through the living room, her light pink ruffled bathrobe untied at the waist so that it looks like a cape flowing behind her naked body, she is in a state. She blurts out, “I miss screwing him. Where are the matches?”

  I am sitting on the sofa. “By the stove where they always are.”

  She gives me a quick glance. “Can you help me, please?” She is frantic. “I need a light for my cigarette.”

  He had a huge cock. That’s what she is telling me about her boyfriend. I am not old enough to be hearing this information. Discomfort races through my body.

  I follow her into the kitchen. “Where are the fucking matches?” she cries out. She is opening drawers and cabinets in an agitated manner.

  The Spaniard had wide shoulders and wore expensive suits. He smelled of cologne. He was married. He drank a lot. When she was happy with him, all was right in the world. She ended up in the hospital after they argued. She lent him money. Gave him money. He swindled her out of the money. He was a freeloader. A hustler. A thief. “He stole ten thousand dollars and I want him arrested!” She called the police. T
his was the story. He never loved her. He used her. She threatened to have his green card revoked.

  DAYS LATER, WHEN I ask her not to use the word cock, she tells me that the word is vulgar and she doesn’t use it.

  THE FIRST TIME I heard the term gaslighting, I was in my late thirties. I was walking with a friend on West 27th Street in Manhattan. It was nighttime, after dinner, and he was finishing a story about a woman he was no longer involved with. A woman who had made him doubt his perception of reality. He was describing an argument they’d had.

  “And then I said”—his voice became a roar of indignation—“don’t you gaslight me!”

  He hissed the rebellion into the air. I didn’t respond and we continued walking, neither of us making a comment to the other but reflecting privately on our experience as veterans of a psychological ambush. I’d never met that word before, but it wasn’t a stranger. Our paths had crossed. The encounter wasn’t a surprise. Our meeting was more like confirmation. Yes, I know you. There’s a name for that. There’s a term for that.

  JOSIE COULD BE like a martinet. She was in charge and she was strict. So strict that her beating me with a hanger or a hairbrush was not unusual. How many times did she have to tell me to do my homework? I talked back to her when she tried to discipline me. She spanked me so hard that her hand would swell and become red and she’d have to stop. She would chase me around the dining room table waving a wire hanger in the air until I was trapped in a corner, unable to get away. I promised I would listen to her; I would do what she wanted and not misbehave.

  “I can’t take it!” she shouted. She looked so disheartened. I was afraid that she’d given up on me.

  My mother would become furious with her for hitting me. She was protective. But then she’d hit me as well. Or she’d throw things, usually a shoe. But she had terrible aim and I laughed at her when she missed, which only made it worse.

  But when Josie made up her mind that she couldn’t control me and had no choice but to quit, this was the worst punishment of all. I would apologize for not listening to her and beg my mother not to let Josie leave. My mother would plead with Josie to stay. “How can you do this to Ariel? If you leave, it will damage her even more.”

  DURING THE DAY I would worry that when Josie came to pick me up at school she would inform me that my mother had fired her while I’d been gone. Or worse, I worried that my mother had fired her and would send someone I’d never met to pick me up. I’d get out of school at the exit on 75th Street between Park and Madison and there would be a stranger waiting for me. Linda was waiting. Linda who? The woman my mother had met at the dry cleaner’s or in the elevator or at the beauty parlor, someone who was investing in her musical. I’d get home to find Josie packing her suitcases, dabbing her bloodshot eyes with a tissue. She would tell me she couldn’t take it anymore and that she was getting an ulcer.

  I CRIED THAT my mother didn’t mean what she said and begged her please not to go. I sat on the step stool in the kitchen near the stove and watched as she packed up her room. She threw items into her suitcase—hand-knit vests and rosary beads. Sometimes while she was packing my mother would return, enraged. She would grab Josie’s arm to prevent her from leaving. “You’re not going anywhere!”

  My mother would plant herself firmly in front of the door, pushing Josie away if she tried to get past. The two of them would tussle—Josie trying to shove my mother out of the way, my mother refusing to let her go. They would have a tug-of-war over the suitcase that would escalate into a violent scene, and I would implore Josie not to leave out of fear she’d be physically harmed if she continued to try. I would insert myself in the middle and urge them to stop.

  Josie would say that she loved me, but she had her health to think of. The ulcer was getting worse. So a few hours later, after my mother calmed down and retired to her bedroom at the opposite end of the apartment, I’d help Josie sneak out. Ringing the bell for the service elevator, then guarding the kitchen door, I’d be the lookout to make sure my mother couldn’t accost her.

  AFTER JOSIE LEFT, my mother announced she’d take care of me herself. A few hours later she’d be on the phone with the employment agency pleading with them to send someone over as soon as possible. She couldn’t cope. The employment agency refused to send a new person to be interviewed. They didn’t care how much she paid; they didn’t want anyone else to be attacked. When my mother hung up, she started to cry. She felt persecuted.

  WHEN SOMEBODY NEW arrived, I wanted to explain how it worked. I wanted to explain that there would be days when my mother was kind and generous, giving her presents such as orchids and poems by Pablo Neruda and Federico García Lorca. She would treat the new person like a friend, take her into her confidence, and ask her for advice; these were the days to expect to feel special. But then there would be other days. When my mother would have an accident and not make it to the bathroom in time. Or there would be nights when dishes would be broken in a drunken fight and pieces remained on the dining room floor, waiting to be swept away. I wanted to explain to this stranger who had come to live with us that when my mother yelled, she didn’t mean what she said, or when she walked around naked, not to be frightened, not to leave, it would all be okay, she would recover, it would pass. And that a day or an hour later, it would be forgotten.

  As soon as the new person became the old person, my mother began making daily phone calls to Josie at her new employer’s. She offered kind words, more money, more days off, paid vacations; she promised to behave, anything to get her to come back.

  Dear Harvey,

  The other evening I went over to 180 after a call from Ariel. There was a woman named Maria there. She was the third housekeeper now that Josie has left again. I sat with Ariel and we did her homework.

  The following morning at 7:30 Ariel called me. These early-morning calls are generally from a very sad little girl and this was no exception. We planned to spend the afternoon together. Maria had, of course, now left. We didn’t talk much about that. Each time someone leaves, Ariel just says, “She’s not here anymore.”

  xo Rita

  WHEN I RETURNED from one summer with my father in Thailand, I discovered Josie was no longer at 180. She was there when I left; when I got home, she was gone.

  Within two hours of my arriving back at the apartment, my mother called Rita.

  “Ariel has just returned from Bangkok and she would love to see you. She is very sad that Josie has left her.”

  My mother put me on the phone.

  My voice was small and sleepy. I asked Rita to come for a visit.

  “Have you met the new person who takes care of me?” I asked.

  AFTER THAT, I went to sleep to recover from the jet lag, and when I woke up, Rita was seated on the edge of my bed. She read me a story, and as she started to leave, I made a cage with my arms around her so that she couldn’t get out. I told her my mother was planning a big party and that I was worried about the noise.

  “I’m afraid I won’t get any rest,” I said.

  A FEW WEEKS passed. Rita arrived at 180, and I was once again asleep. My mother was in a housedress and Ina (the new person) was preparing lunch for my mother and a guest. Rita entered my room, woke me up, and told me to get dressed so that we could go out. She had planned a visit to the Hayden Planetarium.

  “Look, Rita,” I said, “my fish has died.”

  The water in the fishbowl was filthy and the fish had been dead for some time. My mother came in the room, looked at the fish, and clutched her stomach as if she was about to be sick. Rita asked her to take me out of the room and said she would get rid of the fish. “Oh, thank you,” my mother said. “I don’t know what I would have done.”

  Rita took care of this simple task, flushing the fish down the toilet. She cleaned the bowl, too. Then she helped me get dressed while my mother took a phone call and her guest roamed around the apartment.

  Rita had pigtails in her hair. “I want some, too!” I said. I inform her that I hav
en’t washed my hair in two weeks or taken a bath in a week. Rita later writes to my father, “It sure looked like it.”

  After lunch, Rita took me on the 79th Street crosstown bus to the planetarium. She wrote to my father: “It was grand. Ariel scampered around asking more questions than I was able to answer. It was a beautiful afternoon.”

  When we returned to 180 at five-thirty in the afternoon, there were people having drinks in the living room and Ina was not around. Reluctant to leave me on my own, Rita made sure I had dinner and a bath. Before leaving, she put me to bed.

  WITH JOSIE GONE, I was sent for a visit with my father’s mother in upstate New York. When I got back, my mother called Rita. She told her she was going to Chicago for the weekend and wanted to make sure Rita could spend time with me.

  “I’ve got a new maid for her, but she loves to see you,” my mother said.

  She put me on the phone.

  “I am going to Scarsdale tonight,” I said. This is where my mother’s mother lives. “I go from one grandmother to the other.”

  When Rita arrived for the weekend, my mother’s plans had changed. She was not in Chicago. She was in her bedroom. Rita walked into my room and was surprised to see Josie there visiting with me.

  “Josie has agreed to come back,” I said. I was excited about this.

  LATER THAT EVENING, Josie called Rita and explained why she was returning. My mother had been putting pressure on her, and finally she had said yes. Josie told her, “She promised no more parties on weeknights; I would have time off each week and get four weeks paid vacation.” Rita doesn’t believe my mother will keep her word.

  “If she breaks the promise,” Josie said, “I’ll just pack up and leave. She knows now that I’ll do it.”

  Dear Harvey,

  By now you’ve probably heard that Josie is returning to 180. While it’s true that Josie has a very strong self-interest, she will take good care of Ariel. She will get her to school on time, see that she does her homework and will make sure that she’s clean and keep her well-fed. Those have got to be considered plusses.