5
Life without Larry was both more peaceful and more chaotic, though he had little to do with the latter, as the burden of the chaos descended directly from my mother. She slept in my bed for the first four nights, snoring louder than Larry ever had, until the guest room was set up to her liking. Which did require three more trips to Woodies and one to Hecht’s to procure the exact sheets, bedspread, and mattress that she would need to deem it acceptable.
If I had suffered any illusions of training my body to sleep later, Mama dispelled those quickly. A lifetime of waking up before Papa doesn’t come undone in four days. And I hadn’t learned to be a wife in a vacuum, though I didn’t put my makeup on and then go back to bed as she did with him, pretending she rose each morning with perfectly flushed cheeks, lined eyes, and lipstick. She started to do that the first morning at my house, then stopped herself, remembering. But the habit of waking up at 4:9 refused to die for either of us.
Robbie questioned where Larry was, but Debbie went on her merry way. I told him it was a work trip—Larry didn’t have to travel often with Sam, but he had done it a few times. But on the fourth night, as I tucked him in, kissing his forehead as I always did, he looked up at me. “When is Daddy coming home?” he asked sleepily.
I froze, then choked out, “I’m not sure, honey.” He looked sad, and before I could stop myself, I asked, “Do you miss him?”
Robbie nodded, then closed his eyes.
I sat on the edge of his bed for a long time, wondering if I had made a mistake. The change in our relationship had followed Debbie’s birth. Because when Robbie was little, there was no father as proud as Larry. Had it been the affair? Or had it been me all along?
And could I still salvage what we’d once had?
My mother called for me from the hall, breaking my reverie, and I hurried out of the room so she wouldn’t wake the children. Why people forgot how to be quiet once their children were grown, I would never understand.
Neither child asked for Larry in the morning, and I didn’t bring him back up. And having my mother there, who was much more hands-on with them—as long as their hands were clean—than he had ever been, felt like a treat.
To them.
To me, well, the constant critiques were a lot.
“How will you have any energy if that’s all you eat?” she asked as I brought a piece of toast to my lips. Apparently her grapefruit provided more nutrition, with its two heaping spoonfuls of sugar on top.
“The children watch too much television.” I avoided pointing out that she parked them in front of it far more frequently than I did.
“The house is a mess. Children should learn to put their own toys away.” I didn’t remember putting toys away once as a child because of the household help.
“You really should have a maid.” I would love one. If she planned to pay her salary. Larry was going to lose his mind over the new furniture charges as it was.
“You’re going to eat that?” she asked as I took a bite of a jettisoned cookie. “You really can’t afford to let yourself go now.”
“Actually, that was my entire plan. If I let myself go, I won’t have to worry about cheating husbands because I just won’t have one.” I didn’t say that. Okay, I did later to Nancy when we took the kids to the playground. But saying that to my mother would have started a third world war.
But by Thursday, as she ordered me around the living room, making sure everything was just so for her weekly bridge game, I realized something was off. “Mama, why aren’t you just hosting at your house?”
She didn’t turn around to look at me. “Because I’m living here now.” She said it lightly, but there was a bit of steel in her voice.
“How long exactly are you planning to live here?”
This time she turned around. “You want me to leave?”
“I didn’t say—”
“Of all the ungrateful—I ruined my figure for you, gave up my whole life to help you in your hour of need, and you’d just throw me out in the cold like a day-old newspaper.”
“No one is throwing you out. Your figure is perfect. And it’s spring, which is hardly the cold. I’m just asking why you’re not hosting at your own home, three blocks from here, where I don’t have to work myself to the bone making the house the way you want it.”
“This is the thanks I get for moving in to help raise your children—”
Which was when I noticed that they were way too quiet and I hadn’t seen them in too long. “Speaking of the children, where are they?”
“I dropped them off at Nancy’s.”
“You—what?”
“Well, they can’t be running around during my bridge game.”
I stared at her for a moment. “This is their house.”
“It’s mine too right now.”
“But Larry is living at Nancy’s house.”
“He won’t be there in the middle of the day. Do you really think I didn’t consider that?”
I exhaled forcefully. All I needed was for Robbie to see something of Larry’s and put the pieces together. He may have just turned five, but he was a sharp five-year-old. “Okay, well, I’m going to go and get them now.”
“Why? Enjoy the break.”
“Because I don’t want Larry coming home and confusing them.”
“Did that man ever come home early in your entire marriage?”
I hesitated. Not since the kids were born, no. But in the early days, yes, he’d sneak home for lunch or come home early when he could, claiming he missed me. Had that ever been true? It felt like a lifetime ago. Different people. Not us, surely. I shook my head at the memory, which my mother misinterpreted.
“See? There’s nothing to worry about. I’ve thought of everything.” The doorbell rang, and I startled. “That’ll be Jean.”
I sighed at the unwelcome intrusion. “I’m going to get the kids.”
“That’s the problem with your generation. Mine knows that you have to tend your own garden before you can tend anyone else’s.”
I thought of how many nights Rosa had put me and my brother to bed. But we still always wanted our mother, who prioritized herself over us. “We’ll be back.”
“Try and keep them out until four, darling. No one will want me to host again if we’re interrupted.”
I don’t want you to host at my house again, I thought. But I gritted my teeth. “Fine. I’ll take them to the park.”
“Maybe stay out until 4:30, then. If anyone stays to talk, I don’t want grubby fingers.”
“This is their house, Mama. They can have dirty fingers in their own house.”
She pursed her lips. “It’s mine as well, and I believe the adults make the rules.”
She was impossible.
But I took my handbag and left, letting her friend in as I did, and headed for Nancy’s.