Seven
By the following Sunday, I have grown up. Enough to have woken up and made love to Jerome; enough to be lying in bed afterward,
a slow-drip coffee on the nightstand, the LA Times between us in an irritatingly retro move. On my own I would be reading this on my iPad, but in bed with my boyfriend on a
Sunday morning, the actual newspaper feels more appropriate.
I am reading the business section, Jerome falling back to sleep beside me, the stillness of the air punctuated by the rise
and fall of light snores.
I have managed to stay home the rest of the week, turning up at Jerome’s last night with grocery bags and a plan to cook us
dinner. I am not a cook, have never been a cook, but I banged on Keith and Gus’s door yesterday morning and asked for advice
on what to make for dinner for Jerome.
I left with a recipe for slow-braised lamb with apricots and pine nuts, and instructions to text Gus if I got into trouble.
I started texting in the aisle of Whole Foods.
They’re out of lamb shanks. He’s saying shoulder will be fine. Will it????
It would. But there were more questions: Regular pine nuts or toasted?
Whole apricots or dried? Cumin seeds or ground cumin?
Eventually, Gus phoned me, fed up with texting.
“My thumbs are falling off,” he grumbled in a good-natured way.
“I know it’s insanely old-fashioned, but I’m phoning you now and you had better pick up. I can’t deal with any more texting.”
I arrived at Jerome’s while he was at the rowing club, and let myself in. His house feels grown-up, more grown-up than ours.
Our apartment was furnished largely thanks to IKEA, CB2 and West Elm, a mishmash of colors and styles, nothing quite matching,
which suits Lucy and me perfectly. Jerome’s house was furnished by a decorator whose style I recognize as being mid–Marty
Cooke. Neutral colors, blacks, browns, grays, and pale orange. He has two Arne Jacobsen Egg chairs and the requisite Le Corbusier
lounge chair in the corner. A cowhide rug on which a Lucite coffee table is planted, piled with thick coffee table books on
design and mid-century modern, with various sculptures, including three Pae White Popcorn sculptures in the middle of the
table, the gold lustre glinting in the light that pours from the huge glass windows.
Jerome’s house feels more grown-up than my father’s. Marty’s house may be filled with the same furniture—Saarinen, Eames,
Jacobsen, Le Corbusier—but it is also filled with the detritus of family life. The sofas in the family room are spotted by
spilled juice boxes, the rugs now old and pulled. My father refuses to replace them until the children have grown.
His kitchen counters are white marble and stainless steel, and covered with stuff: bottles of vitamins and supplements that have spilled over the sides of the round brass tray that was supposed to contain
them; stacks of papers, mail that has been opened but not yet sorted out; tech magazines, car magazines, Newsweek, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Architectural Digest, all of which are subscriptions, few of which Marty, or Scarlett, get around to reading.
Jerome’s house is spotless, in the way only a bachelor pad can be. I took off my shoes and put a playlist on Sonos, relaxing
as the music filled the house, louder than Jerome would have liked, but he wasn’t home.
When he came home, the lamb was cooked, and smelled delicious; the accompanying couscous was light and fluffy, and the table
was set (thank you Gus and Keith), with orange blossom branches in a glass cube in the middle.
“Wow!” Jerome kept saying, unable to wipe off his smile. “I can’t believe you did this!”
Yes, I thought. Who’s the grown-up now?
I put the papers down and watch Jerome sleeping. I have no idea what it is like to be married, but I imagine it is filled
with moments like this, calm, secure, peaceful.
I find myself thinking about my parents’ marriage, wondering whether they had moments like this, one of them sleeping in bed,
the other sipping coffee, comfortable together, knowing that life was on their side.
It is almost impossible to imagine them together. My father has no patience. He has no tolerance for anyone who doesn’t live
up to his expectations.
“Get a fucking grip,” he will holler in the office, as everyone scatters, ensuring they are not in the path of the tornado.
What would he have said to my mother, in bed, depressed, unkempt?
She wasn’t like this, then. The depression started post-partum. Marty never knew my mother as bedridden. He wouldn’t have
tolerated it, surely. In those days she was a calming influence, his rock.
In the old photographs, my mother’s face had not been pulled down by resentment and anxiety over money; she was pale-faced
and pretty, obviously in love with my father.
I have heard the story many, many times over the years.
I have heard my mother’s version, and my father’s version, and the story has changed depending on how combative their relationship is at the time.
Knowing my parents as well as I do, I have had to parse out what I believe to be true, and it is this:
My mother was working part-time at the library in Los Gatos, trying to be a writer in her spare time. She was a child who
was an avid reader, who was always happiest with her nose stuck between the pages of a book, a child who decided to be a writer
when she was six years old.
At twenty-five, she was fresh-faced and serious. I think of her then as the quintessential librarian, hiding her beauty and
brilliance behind glasses and a terrible 1980s hairstyle that can only be described as a mullet—short in the front, long in
the back.
She described herself as happily invisible, until my father walked in and changed the course of her life.
At thirty, he seemed sophisticated, and sure of himself. He had had some success in his former job at Apogee, where he had
developed some of the world’s biggest computer games, including the world’s first shareware game. He was already established,
already knew who he was in the world, but he didn’t get the credit, Apogee did.
When he met my mother, he had left Apogee, and was figuring out what was next, suspecting he would be better off creating
his own company. There were tons of job offers, but if he was going to take a job, which he wasn’t at all sure about, he didn’t
want just anything, he wanted the right job offer, the one that would serve as a springboard. He met with people, networked, and kept himself busy.
Discipline was always his strong suit. Even when he had nowhere to go, he set his alarm for 6:00 a.m. He would go for a run in Belgatos Park, then home for oatmeal and berries, and a shower.
By 10:00 a.m. he would be in the library, scribbling notes on a pad, ideas for games, computer programs, sending off résumés when he stumbled across jobs that seemed interesting, although that wasn’t how he expected to find work. Everything was about who you knew.
The same people showed up to the library every day, but my father wasn’t interested in talking to anyone, too consumed in
work to notice the faces around him.
My mother, raised to be polite, was stationed at the front desk to greet everyone who entered. When he walked past her desk
every day, she would smile at him, increasingly irritated that he didn’t smile back. He looked at her, but didn’t seem to
see her. His gaze was entirely blank, as if she didn’t exist.
Arrogant, she decided, taking an instant dislike to the man she thought of as Hawaiian Shirt Man because of the garish shirts he always seemed to be wearing. If only she could stop watching him. He burned with energy,
striding through the library with a Sony Walkman on, his body almost bouncing, exuding confidence. She suspected, long before
they met, that either he was somebody, or would be somebody.
“I’m trying to print, but it’s out of paper.” My mother looked up to see Hawaiian Shirt Man. She considered talking to him,
but decided he didn’t deserve it. Silently, she left the desk and went to the supply closet, bringing back a stack of paper,
still wrapped in plastic. Usually, she would have filled the printer herself, but he didn’t deserve that either. She handed
it to him, looking him in the eye as she did so, challenging him for never having seen her.
“I’m Marty,” he said unexpectedly.
“Letta.”
“Letter? Like number, letter?”
My mother stared at him, inscrutable. “No. Letta with an A.”
He stared at her. “What are you doing later, Letta with an A? Do you want to have coffee?”
“No, thank you.” She turned back to her work, offering no other excuse.
Marty walked back to the printer, turning once to look at this librarian he had never noticed before.
She had sandy-colored hair and green eyes, clear skin, and an unnerving stare.
No, thank you. He wasn’t used to women saying “No, thank you,” particularly not women like this.
He was used to women simpering, smiling,
flicking their hair, and flirting.
From then on, he looked at her. She had stopped smiling at him when he walked in, and now, he found himself searching for
her face each morning. Throughout the day, he would look up from his work and watch her.
A week later, my mother found a chocolate chip scone on her desk. The next day, a cappuccino, the day after that, a cupcake.
Every day for the next three weeks, when she got back from a break, or lunch, or the bathroom, there would be a treat on her
desk. And then, there was a typed note, wedged between two Twinkies. “Meet me at the Roasting Company at 6:00 p.m.”
A coffee shop, she thought. It wasn’t a hiking trail, nor a park. A busy coffee shop would be fine.
At 5:45—Letta was always early—she had stationed herself at a table in the Roasting Company. Her back was against the brick
wall as she sipped an iced coffee and read Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
“Hello, Letta with an A.” She looked up, annoyed that Hawaiian Shirt Man was standing in front of her, pulling his headphones off his head as he