The Love Children Page 17

  “Come on, Jess. We all search for love. You just do it . . . well . . . more ardently than most of us. In a more driven way, I guess. More passionate.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked what she was saying at all. But I didn’t want to have a fight with Sandy.

  People started to leave. They were really mellow, their farewells hung on the cold air as we stood in the doorway, watching them get in their cars and drive off, waving. Sandy’s parents left, but Sandy stayed, she and Dolores both. Mom left us alone in the living room and went into the kitchen to do a final cleaning up. Then she came in and kissed the three of us good night. That was nice. We sat with a bottle of cognac, for Dolores and me, and Southern Comfort, for Sandy, and talked and talked. I asked them to stay overnight but Dolores said she was fine to drive and they both left about three in the morning. I went up to bed, a smile on my face, a little woozy from the cognac, feeling that this was all I needed in life—my friends—to make me happy.

  I had just drifted off when the phone rang. It was almost four in the morning! I leaped up and out of habit, forgetting I had my own phone, I ran into Mom’s room. She’d already picked up the phone. I heard her say, sleepily, “Huh? Uh? Sandy?”

  Oh, my God, Sandy! They were drinking, they had an accident, it’s my fault, I gave them the booze, I thought. I grabbed the phone from Mom’s hand. Sandy was screaming and sobbing into the telephone.

  “Jess! My father! Daddy! He killed himself! He’s dead!”

  10

  Sandy’s life fell apart that night. There she is, a little high and giggly, dropped off by Dolores after a long evening getting tight with two old friends, smiling, full of good food and affection and Southern Comfort, standing in front of her family’s neat brick Colonial. She stares in satisfaction at her home, framed by trees and stationed firmly against the cold, clear Belmont sky, when she notices a cloud hovering around the garage doors.

  The sky is as dark as it gets in a place with streetlights, and in the grayish purple air, a fog rising in one spot seems strange. She slowly walks toward the garage, thinking her father has left the car running. How can that be? Her efficient father. Her heart races ahead of her brain as she approaches the closed garage doors and begins to hear a purr, the hum of a motor, and she is sure now that he did leave the motor running; how could he be so forgetful? Her systematic, scientific, careful father. Her thoughtful, quiet, unemotional father. She is running now, reaches the garage door. It is not locked, just shut, and she heaves it open. The smell of exhaust fumes is extreme. It is a smell she loves and used to breathe in when, as a child, she would stand in front of the garage waiting for her father to pull out. It fills her lungs and she remembers her mother telling her not to breathe it in because it is toxic and could make her pass out. She puts her hand over her face and darts inside. She opens the car door and sees a figure slumped over the wheel and doesn’t know who it is. She reaches into the car and turns the key in the ignition and, blessedly, silence falls. It’s over; her eyes close in prayer. She puts her hand on the figure’s shoulder to wake him up; it’s over, over now, get up, but his head falls back against the car seat; how could that slender, graceful, delicate man have become inanimate flesh?

  Her thin scream is muffled by the hand that covers her mouth and nose, and she begins to cry in deep, heaving, silent sobs and doesn’t know why she is crying because her father will wake up soon, she’s sure. She runs into the house to get her mother, who will be able to wake her father, even though she, Sandy, cannot. She runs, sobbing, drops her keys and picks them up and drops them again, and finally gets the front door open and runs up the stairs to her parents’ room where her mother is sleeping, floating in innocent sleep. I shouldn’t wake her up, she doesn’t know yet, leave her that way, but she does, nudging her mother, get up, get up, Mommy, Mommy, and Mommy does, bewildered. Sandy, what?

  Sandy finds her mother’s robe and slippers and puts them on her, unable to speak, holding her mouth closed to stop herself retching, pulls on her mother’s hand, holding in her sobs like vomit, pulls her down the stairs and out the back door and down the driveway to the garage and in . . .

  Sandy’s mother gasps, covers her mouth, looks wildly around, finds Sandy and grabs her, holding her so both of them can cry out loud now. After a while, Sandy spots the note, written on a pale-blue credit card receipt, lying on the seat beside her father, scrawled with the words, “I can’t go on,” just that, nothing else, no good-bye, no love, no hope. The words end, the world too should end but it doesn’t, not for any of them, only for him. It would be bearable if the world ended, but no, they have to trudge back inside, wake Naomi and tell her and watch as she runs out to the car, sobbing and screaming; they call for an ambulance on the off chance that there is some hope, though they both know, but you never know, maybe . . .

  They have to go on living.

  Sandy’s first act was to call me. Mine was to cry in my mother’s arms. He was my ideal father. My real father had already in some sense died, so this felt familiar. When it was light, I called Dolores at the group home. I knew she’d want to know. It was amazing how upset she was. You’d think Sandy’s father was her father too. Maybe the Lipkins were the mother and father she’d have liked to have had, sweet, gentle, smart, tolerant people, ideal people, civilized people. Maybe Dr. Lipkin was father to those of us who didn’t have one of our own, one we could use.

  We both drove to the Lipkin house and between Dolores and me, we took care of things for the next week or so. When Seymour flew up from Princeton and Rhoda from Los Angeles, Dolores met them at the airport. When other relatives flew in from out of town, it was Dolores or I who met them. Dr. Lipkin was buried as soon as Rhoda arrived; then the family sat shiva, so the house had to be immaculate and food had to be available. Mrs. Lipkin lay in bed, dopey with sedatives. People visited her there, and she roused herself to sigh hello, then sank back into grief. Sandy and Naomi sat in the living room but did not inhabit their bodies; they were like shadows. They didn’t rouse themselves even for Seymour. Seymour and Rhoda had to greet the many guests, an unfamiliar role for them. They were strained, polite, pale.

  Friends and relatives brought food: platters of smoked salmon and stuffed grape leaves and hummus and pita and olives and figs and casseroles and meat and fish with noodles or rice that we put in the oven. People came every afternoon and evening for the next five days, and they ate the whole time. We were heating casseroles and putting out platters in the dining room, consolidating half-empty serving plates and cleaning away used dinner plates and putting them and the silverware in the dishwasher. It was tiring, but I found I was good at it, efficient. I’d learned something in all those years of helping Mom in the kitchen.

  When it was over, the family had to face the silence. Rhoda and Seymour went back to their havens as fast as they could. From the way they acted, you’d think it hadn’t been a happy family. They didn’t want to stay with their mother; they didn’t seem to want to deal with her at all. Naomi—they called her Nomi—pulled herself together first. She would be able to go back to school, to Barnes, after the holidays. She slept and ate almost normally from the first, and she worked on a paper due in her social studies class after the holidays and watched television, just like before.

  But Mrs. Lipkin and Sandy remained prostrate. By this time, Dolores and I were going over only in the afternoon for a few hours. Dolores would go to the market and I would cook some dinner for them, but really, we went just to be company, to try to cheer them up. Neither of them was eating much; they both lost a lot of weight. They slept most of the time.

  It was almost time for me to return to Andrews if I was going. It would be hard to pick up my life there—I had missed all my final exams. The new semester began the third week of January. I kept pushing away the thought, as though I didn’t plan to go back. I guess I didn’t: after all, I had brought all my stuff home with me. Besides, I was consumed with worry about what was happening to Sandy. I was afraid that she was clos
e to suicide herself.

  One gray afternoon, I made tea and carried the tray up to her room, where Sandy was lying on her bed, asleep. I had bought some black-and-white cookies, which I knew she loved, and put them on the tray. I knocked and went in. She looked up sleepily. I wondered if she was taking the same pills her mother took.

  “How you doin’?”

  “Okay,” she mumbled, sitting up. She glanced at the tray. “Oooh . . . black-and-white cookies. Thank you. Where’s Dolores?”

  “She went to the market. To get stuff for dinner.”

  “Ummm.”

  I poured tea for both of us, pulled her armchair around toward the bed, and sat, facing her. “Sandy, it’s getting to be time to go back to Smith.”

  “I know.”

  “I have to leave too.”

  She paled. “When?”

  “Soon.”

  She turned away from me. “I’m not going back to Smith.”

  “Sandy!”

  “I can’t. It’s pointless. I wanted to be a doctor—like him.”

  “You still can. Your uncle said he had a lot of life insurance, and had it long enough that the suicide clause doesn’t affect it.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not money.”

  I sipped. She munched on a cookie.

  “I was thinking . . . maybe I’d go up to the commune where Bishop is. For a while.”

  Through the window, above the rooftops, the day seemed to grow lighter.

  “Would you come with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hate to leave my mother. But she . . . she blames herself, of course. I would too, if I were her.”

  “Your father must have been depressed.”

  “Probably. Who knows? We’ll never know. He’s just . . . gone!” She burst into tears. I let her cry until she stopped.

  “The way he went. Just went. Like a light going out. I can’t help my mother. Any more than I helped my father. But everything I wanted . . . it all seems futile, stupid, illusory . . . I just want to settle down quietly, far away from here. I want to put my hands in the earth, live naturally.”

  “Yes,” I breathed, my eyes closed, picturing it.

  “If you’ll drive, I’ll leave my car here for Nomi. So she can help Mom. Is that okay?”

  “Of course. We only need one car.”

  “You don’t mind not going back to Andrews?”

  “I’ve been feeling the same way. That it’s futile. Pointless. I wasn’t really planning to go back anyway. Only I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Great. Do you think Dolores would want to go?”

  “I don’t think she can. She has to stay at the halfway house for a set period. But we can ask her.”

  Sandy tossed the blanket off her legs. She was dressed, in jeans and a sweater. She stood up and searched for her boots and put them on.

  “Come on. We’ll ask her.”

  I followed her downstairs, carrying the tray of jiggling dishes. Dolores wasn’t back yet. I went into the kitchen to empty the tray and wash the dishes. It was easier to wash them than to put them in the dishwasher, which was already nearly full. It had just enough space for the dinner dishes, and I didn’t want to fill it now and have to empty it before dinner. I was really tired of emptying the dishwasher. Sandy sat down at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette. She looked pale and thin. Her hair, usually alive and springy, was lank and greasy. We didn’t speak. When I finished the dishes, I sat down with her and lit up too.

  Dolores came in laden with bags. “Hey, you all!” she said, surprised to see Sandy downstairs. “Hey,” we said. Dolores put the bags down on a counter and turned to us. “What’s up?”

  Sandy looked at me. I looked at her, then turned to Dolores. “Sandy is thinking of going to live on a commune for a while.”

  “Bishop’s commune?”

  “Yes.”

  Dolores stood gazing at Sandy.

  “I’m thinking of going with her.”

  She transferred her gaze to me.

  “We’re wondering if you’d like to go.”

  Something crossed her face, not a smile, but like one, a ripple of gladness that then became a ripple of sorrow. “Oh, how I’d love that!” She turned toward the counter and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her jeans pocket. Since she’d been hanging out with us again, she’d stopped wearing the stiff, formal clothes she’d worn after leaving the hospital, and was back to jeans and boots. She was thin again and her hair, which was still short, was puffy with little curls. She looked adorable. She lit a cigarette, laid it in an ashtray on the counter, and began unpacking the groceries. “But you know I can’t go anywhere until . . . I have to stay at the halfway house for a full six months. After that, I can get a full-time job and go away weekends, but even then I have to live there.” Her mouth twisted. “If I do what they say, they’ll wipe my record clean. I won’t go through life marked as someone who attempted parricide.” She sat down, facing us. “But if you’re still up there next year, I should be on my own by then. If I don’t fuck up.”

  Dolores used the word fuck often. None of the rest of us did in those days.

  “You won’t,” Sandy assured her.

  “Oh, Sandy!” she wailed and tears came to her eyes. “How can you say that! I could—so easily! Everybody fucks up!”

  We stared at each other and at her. “Dolores?”

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, blowing her nose. “Sorry! It’s just . . . your father! You don’t know what your family meant to me, just knowing he existed, you all existed, during those awful years . . . It’s unbearable to me that he . . .”

  Sandy looked at the floor.

  “Well, of course it’s unbearable for you too,” Dolores admitted, calming down. She took a puff on her cigarette, then stood up and finished emptying the grocery bags.

  “I thought I’d make your mother a vegetable soup tonight,” I said, rising to help Dolores. “Do you think she’d like that?”

  “Maybe. She’s not crazy about vegetables,” Sandy said. “Who knows? She’s not eating much, as you know.”

  “Of course not. She’s mad as hell,” Dolores said. “I couldn’t eat at all when I was so mad.”

  I turned to her in surprise. Given the mournful frailty of Sandy’s mother these days, mad seemed a strange word to apply to her.

  “Why do you say that?” Sandy sounded annoyed.

  “Because I know she is. Remember when I used to be so weepy and helpless? I was really furious. At my father, at my mother. But I didn’t think I could do anything about the situation. So I just cried. And when I ate, it was sweets, things with no nourishment, because they made me feel better.”

  “And you think my mother . . . is angry . . . at whom?” Sandy’s voice was cold as ice. She sounded very like her father.

  “At him. For killing himself. Aren’t you? I mean, how could he do that to you? Terrible. And he didn’t even say good-bye.”

  Sandy stared at Dolores. She put out her cigarette and started another. “So you can’t go with us, Dolores,” she said, coolly resuming the earlier conversation.

  “No, I can’t, Sandy, much as I’d like to.” Dolores didn’t seem to realize she’d been in any way tactless. “But I think it’s a great idea. Bishop will be wild to see you.”

  I opened some cans of chicken broth and poured them into a pot. When the broth was boiling, I added the two chicken breasts Dolores had bought for dinner for Sandy and her mother. I lowered the heat so they could simmer while I peeled carrots, onions, green beans, and little white turnips. After half an hour, I took the breasts out and cut the meat off, then put the bones back in the broth. I tossed in a couple of handfuls of barley. I was making this up as I went.

  I had asked Dolores to get asparagus, and now I washed and peeled and chopped it. I laid the vegetables on a platter together. They looked beautiful, and that was half my pleasure in cooking. Just looking at them made me happy. I was always happy when I cooked. Dolores and Sandy went
on talking, but I had retreated when things had taken an unpleasant turn. I thought Dolores was right about Sandy’s mother, but I knew Sandy did not like hearing that. I also knew that Sandy was angry at her mother, as if she were to blame for the suicide. I knew Sandy couldn’t help what her mind was doing. When you’re so horribly hurt, you cast around crazily looking for somebody to blame. I did that myself. I just hoped it would pass, for the sake of her relation with her mother, and for her mother’s sake. Now Sandy was angry with Dolores. She was probably actually angry with her father, like Dolores said. But I didn’t listen and barely heard them.

  I removed the chicken bones from the broth and tossed the vegetables in. I opened a box of frozen peas and a can of cannelloni beans, which I drained. I would put these things in at the very end, along with the cooked chicken. I tasted the soup and added salt and pepper and a little thyme, tarragon, and basil. It was good, not great. I was disappointed. But maybe Sandy’s mother would eat it.

  When Mrs. Lipkin came down for dinner, I had the table set, the soup in a tureen, and crispy French bread hot from the oven in a basket. She ate a whole bowl of soup and some bread. And a black-and-white cookie afterward. I was deeply pleased. I went home happy.

  I steeled myself on the drive home. I had been surprised by Mom’s reaction to my coming home before Christmas, but I was sure she wanted me to go back to school, not to Andrews, but to some college or other. Maybe Moseley. She would want me to make up my finals at Andrews and finish the year someplace else. She would be horrified at my dropping out entirely.

  But I had to go with Sandy. I couldn’t leave her alone right now. Mom couldn’t see what I could see, how close Sandy was to the edge—I didn’t even want to think about it.

  I tried to launch into the discussion tactfully, but Mom surprised me. She didn’t argue. She must have sensed something. “Sweetheart, I admire your loyalty to your friend. And maybe this is the time for a break.” She didn’t even argue.

  School seemed terribly unimportant right then, just something you invented to keep yourself busy. Taking care of Sandy seemed urgent. I had seen how upset she had become at Dolores, and I felt it was important to keep her from tilting over into rage. I was impressed by Dolores; she had learned a lot during her ordeal. But I wished she’d learned some diplomacy.