Parts Unknown

Chapter 10





Wednesday morning, I was waiting impatiently outside Blick Art Materials on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles ten minutes before it opened. The minute the doors were unlocked, I whirled through the aisles, restocking—stretched canvas, tubes of lovely creamy acrylic paint, palette paper, new bristle brushes. Acrylics instead of oils, because I was in too much of a hurry to wait for oil paint to dry. Acrylics instead of watercolor because the pastel, blurred hues of watercolor were not at all what I needed. I could hardly remember when I’d last felt such an intense need to put brush to canvas. Long before Lucy was born.

But today, I was burning, restless, awareness zigzagging through me in jagged arcs. I was so alert I could almost see colors that didn’t exist; everything around me pulsed with a bright energy that I could suddenly tune into. It was amazing, to feel so sharp, considering I’d slept just a few restless hours each night since Sunday.

Now that Josh was near, I had miraculously unfrozen. Thawed. I was becoming myself again. Finally, I knew the theme for the series I was going to paint, the one that would compose my artist’s portfolio. It would be called Incineration. Large canvases; thick, deep, dripping colors. Bodies rising phoenix-like from ashes. Forms writhing, twisting together, afire with passion or destruction. Great gouts of indian red, purple madder, venetian red, flung against the canvas with force, fading to rose madder on the edges, on a ground of dioxazine violet. Death. Conflagration. Rebirth. In which order, I wasn’t certain.

I set up my old travel easel in the kitchen so as not to stain the living room carpet. Unfolding the French easel was like a meditation—each wooden part pulling out, interlocking, tightening screws, shifting angles, until what was the small shape of a wooden backpack was suddenly a full-sized easel. Like those Transformer toys Alex played with when he was small—presto, from boring wooden box to instrument of inspiration. Opening the easel I inhaled whiffs of past painting sessions, each smell a memory—the lingering, acrid scent of turpentine; faint undertones of the easel’s wood; the musty, plastic-y smell of dried acrylic paint. Then, meditation over, not even bothering to take the time to coat the canvas with another layer of gesso, I began painting frantically, not wanting this feeling to end.

I’d never painted abstracts before, but I did now, till I had to pick up Lucy. I was ablaze, determined, filled with passion transmuted to brushstrokes on canvas. Thick, wild strokes that swirled, taunted, and danced. Each brushstroke was a release, yet it was like painting with my own blood. Parts of me splattering on the canvas, no longer the whole, self-contained person I was before—but fragmented, in pain, joyous but panicked at the same time. I couldn’t live the same life I had been, knowing he was out there. Josh was coming, and after Saturday, I could no longer be the same.

~ ~ ~

I was so distracted that afternoon when I picked up Lucy at Happy Hands preschool, I walked straight into Astrid as I shepherded Lucy out toward the car. I’d signed up to bring marshmallow Peeps to the class party on Friday. I even scrawled PEEPS on my hand with a leaky pen I found in my purse, so I wouldn’t forget. I couldn’t wait to get home and put Lucy down for a nap so I could finish that painting. It was like a jigsaw puzzle, or a crossword, where you’re almost at the end and just have a few pieces left, only a couple trivial words, and you’ve solved the puzzle. I was this close to being done, and nothing else mattered . . . ooof.

“Viv, look out! You’re a million miles away,” choked Astrid as I barreled into her.

“Sorry sweetie, you’re totally right. I didn’t see you at all. Listen . . . I’m painting again!” I exclaimed, glad to be able to blurt a tiny part of the truth to someone.

“Oh, good for you!” Astrid enveloped me in a warm hug. Lucy and Astrid’s son Mario had already run off to play together in the grassy enclosed area near the parking lot. “I’ve been waiting for this to happen. I knew you had it in you!” She pulled back and looked at me appraisingly, hands on my shoulders. “Look at you—you are on fire. Your aura’s totally pulsing, there’s orange everywhere!”

Astrid was the only real friend I’d made since Lucy was born. She lived a couple blocks away from me, and we’d run into each other so often at the preschool and at the tiny park at Curson and 8th Street, it was almost inevitable we’d become friends. With her wild nimbus of super-curly wheat-colored hair and her bird-like bone structure, paired with her almost six-foot height, she looked like a stretched-out pixie. Her plumber husband Fernando—large, solid, and very much of this world—grounded her, but not by much. She sometimes did psychic readings in her home and during the preschool’s annual carnival. Due to her utter sincerity, she was extremely successful selling products for Herbalife. She genuinely believed in her spiritual powers, and although I couldn’t say whether any of her predictions had actually come to pass, I couldn’t think of any that hadn’t, either. Cautiously, I reserved judgment.

All these traits hampered her desirability as a friend, even in loosey-goosey Los Angeles, which was a relief for me. The more people avoided her, the more I could keep her for myself. As I’d discovered in my eight years living here, it was very hard to find a niche here, and a group to belong to. The poverty-stricken, artsy types I’d hung with on occasion during my Kingsley apartment-dwelling days didn’t mesh with the life I led now, spouse of a reserved statistics professor, mother of a young child. We lived in different worlds—creativity, versus parenthood. Thank goodness for Astrid; she grounded me in both of them.

Plus, I had no idea how to deal with other mothers—I couldn’t figure out how my experience could mesh with theirs. The parents at Happy Hands preschool always seemed to be so busy and sure of themselves, the kind of people who would actually converse about how their kids were “growing up too fast.” The kind of people who could spend a perfectly nice afternoon at the park dissecting potty-training strategies with each other. I spent so many hours a day with Lucy—the last thing I wanted to talk about with other grown-ups was my child. That probably made me seem like I was some sort of half-assed parent, which wasn’t true. Most of the time.

With Astrid, I didn’t have to worry about all of that. She was some fusion of Julia Cameron and Sylvia Browne. She was self-actualization in action.

“Listen, I can tell you’ve got stuff on your mind. But you wanna meet at the park later?” Astrid offered.

I jumped at the chance. “Sure, how about three o’clock? Lucy should be up and around by then.”

“Deal.”

I strapped Lucy into her car seat. She was singing tunelessly, over and over:



This little light of mine

I’m gonna let it shine

This little light of mine

I’m gonna let it shine

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.



It was one of those catchy little preschool songs that lodges in your head and refuses to let go. By the time we got home, I was singing it to myself, hummed it all the way to Lucy’s room with her. “Mommy, are leprechauns real?” she asked. They’d learned about St. Patrick’s Day the week before.

“Well,” I answered carefully. “I’ve never seen one, but I’d like to think they’re real.”

“Like Santa Claus?”

“Sure, like Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy.”

“What if they aren’t? What if we hope they’re real, but they’re not?” Lucy’s face was woeful.

Never underestimate a kid. “We just have to believe in them, honey. And maybe if we believe hard enough, they stay real.” She let her breath out in a big relieved whoosh. “I’m gonna believe, all the time!”

“Me too.”

Once Lucy had maneuvered herself into her ill-fitting nightie, I lay down on the floor next to her, curling my body around her warm one for a moment, feeling her relax almost immediately into sleep.

Because she had once been a part of my body, I felt a strange connection to her, which was never more apparent than at the moment she fell asleep. It was as if my whole body was always on alert for her when she was awake, making sure she hadn’t hung herself accidentally from her doorknob with a jump rope, or closed herself up inside a dresser drawer, or any number of ridiculous fates only a parent could envision. But the moment she fell asleep, my body knew it. Asleep, no harm could come to her of her own making. My body would relax too, in tune with the soft, slow vibes emanating from her little body.

In a state of half awakeness, cuddling her close, I thought about money. Since the weekend news of Bear Stearns’ collapse, George kept obsessively checking his retirement funds in his Fidelity account, although, never a daredevil, he had everything invested in low-risk treasury bonds and CDs. I had no retirement funds and no personal savings to worry about. George was my retirement security; our joint checking account was my only means of spending power. Love kept me with George, but money bound me to him.

Still: that week, there was no status quo, anymore. I was hovering on the brink of some precipice. One little push, and it would be so easy to tumble over the edge. The force involved in pulling back from that brink seemed tremendous.

~ ~ ~

At three o’clock, after a snack of string cheese and goldfish crackers, Lucy and I traipsed across the street to the park. The developer of the adjoining business tower had likely been mandated to build that park; still, it had the basics any kid would want, in miniature. It featured, just a few feet of space, a seesaw, a slide, and three swings—all that a child with imagination really needed. Even better, a few yards away, there was a little pond, prettily landscaped, with a waterfall, rocks, and real fish and turtles.

Lucy and Mario immediately kicked off their shoes and began chasing each other around the park. They ran so freely, completely lacking inhibition or self-consciousness. Astrid was carrying 6-month-old Isabelle in a complicated-looked cloth sling. Various straps and latches kept the thing fastened, and only the soft sienna tufts of Isabelle’s furry head peeked out. I reflexively rubbed her hair as I would a pet’s.

“So, wow!” Astrid exclaimed heartily, pulling off her own shoes—she always wore footwear that was completely wrong for the occasion. Today’s strappy 4-inch gold lamé heels would have been better suited to a formal evening event. “You’re painting—I still can’t believe it.” She punched my arm affectionately, which hurt, rather. “Good for you.”

“Thanks,” I said modestly. “It feels good—like a dam opening, or something. I didn’t know I had so much bottled up inside.”

“Don’t we all,” Astrid murmured reflectively. I laughed at her. “Astrid, you’re the one person I know who has nothing to hide.”

“That’s because I work it all out, baby,” she grinned. “Between yoga, meditation, and this cranial-sacral therapy work I’ve been having done lately—I’ve got all the bases covered.”

“Your chakras must be totally aligned. Or something.” I agreed. Astrid had been trying, for years, to get me to read a book called The Psychic Pathway so I could open myself to the sixth dimension, but so far I’d resisted, out of pure fear that I’d discover uncomfortable truths about my own future. Or past, for that matter. I’d once been fascinated by tarot cards, and I still had some hiding in a drawer somewhere, but it had been years since I’d been tempted to do a reading.

Astrid was always completely open and honest with me. I wished I could be the same with her, but something was always holding me back. If only I could break free of those invisible tethers, just this once. I felt like I was lying to her, by not telling her what was really going on. My mouth opened; no sound came out, my lips burbling silently like a fish. Lucy raised an eyebrow. “Are you choking?” she asked politely.

“Stop it,” I protested. “Okay . . . It’s kind of weird. I just found out that this guy I used to know in London when I was in college—he’s this famous writer now. And it’s just, kind of, been on my mind . . . Lucy! Stop that right now!” Lucy was pouring a bucket of sand over Mario’s head. Contrite, she began swiping the sand out of his hair.

“Did you used to be in love with this guy?” Astrid guessed.

“Yeah . . .”

“It was one of those junior year abroad things, wasn’t it?”

“One of what things?”

“Oh—you know. You go to a different country and you expect to, like, have all these life-changing experiences. So you show up and if they don’t happen, you make them happen somehow—everyone’s there looking for some massive transformation, aren’t they? That’s why they all went so far away in the first place.”

I was beginning to squirm.

“So you have all these schools in all these European countries, just totally filled with horny exchange students who have taken enough philosophy classes to be able to declaim, like, existential theory to each other while f*cking each other’s brains out,” Astrid continued. “And, you know, the kids are all in awe of those friggin’ old buildings they have there, and the fancy accents people have. All that history all around makes everything seem so important, right? So they go see Shakespeare plays or whatever, and then they f*ck each other, and they’re convinced they’re in looooove.”

“You’re right,” I drooped. “One of those things. Yeah, I guess that’s what it was, then.”

“Great that he’s famous and stuff though!” Astrid chirped. Isabelle had started to wail midway through her speech, and Astrid performed some magic involving turning the baby sling in a perpendicular direction while simultaneously lifting her shirt and thrusting Isabelle onto her right breast. The baby, still snug in the sling, began slurping audibly.

“It makes it seem so stupid when you talk about it like that,” I muttered.

“Now—really! Don’t tell me you’ve still got a crush on him, after all this time!”

I should never have told her.

“Of course not. It’s just weird, that’s all. To see his name again. So what’s up with you? How’s the Herbalife stuff going?”

“I’m thinking about bailing, honestly. You want to know where the money really is? Pleasure parties. They’re like purse parties, but with vibrators. If you can get the hostess to serve some booze, the ladies will start laying out some serious cash. I’m going to get started organizing them on the west side. Here, I’ve got a sample. Wanna take a look in my purse?”

She jerked her head over to her voluminous shoulder bag, which was liberally encrusted with faux rhinestones. I gingerly rooted around still-damp pacifiers, used Band-aids, and lost Cheerios till I found something large, thick, and rubbery. “It’s the Super Bunny!” Astrid enthused. “Just switch it on and feel that puppy go!” Indeed, turning the pastel monstrosity on practically electrified my arm. “If you want to buy one,” she lowered her voice confidentially, “I can get you a discount.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” I returned tartly, as we followed Lucy and Mario to the pond. Lucy lay on the rocks and trailed her fingers in the water. Every time we came, she was determined to pet a fish, but the fish were too quick and too smart for her. She was convinced, though—one day she’d touch one of those elusive silvery beauties.

Eventually Astrid said, touching my shoulder, “You know, you’re so lucky to have George. You two are, like, the least dysfunctional couple I know.”

I squatted next to Lucy and spread my fingers in the water. They appeared to fracture in the eddying current. “What are you saying, Astrid?”

“Don’t screw it up,” she said gently. “It isn’t worth it.”

“It’s not that simple,” I said.

She knelt next to me and rubbed my shoulder. “Honestly, it’s simpler than you think.”

Fortuitously, Mario slipped in the water and cut his knee on a rock. So Astrid rushed home with a wailing Mario and Isabelle as I watched my fingers trailing helplessly through the water, making wider and wider circles, crazed patterns that didn’t make sense. The play date was over, but Lucy wouldn’t leave the park. She threw herself on the ground, kicking her feet, yelling “I won’t go! I wanna stay!” Eventually I resorted to picking her up, limbs flailing in all directions, fingernails scratching my face. It was like carrying a deranged octopus across the street, appendages smacking me in tender locations. I staggered a bit under her weight, going up the stairs, and wondered fleetingly what would happen if I dropped her.

I tossed Lucy onto the sofa like a pile of laundry, turned the sound on the television high enough to muffle the sounds of her high-pitched sobs, and started dinner. Heating up a frozen lasagna from Costco seemed like a good plan.

George came home at seven. Immediately when he came in, he smelled the air, as if sniffing out infidelity. “What’s that?” he asked. “It smells like wet plastic.”

“I’ve been painting,” I said, almost defensively. “I started painting again. Today. I’ve got a lot of ideas kicking around. You’re smelling the acrylics, that’s all.”

He didn’t make a move to go look; I’d moved the easel into our small office room at the end of my painting session that morning. “That’s great, really, that’s great,” he said. “Listen, I’ve been meaning to ask you: what’s with the doll heads everywhere? It’s just creepy. Can you put them away, please?” Then, barely taking a breath: “So, Lucy, did you have a nice day? Are you ready for a story?” She was smiling, sleepy and warm like a small kitten, bearing no resemblance to the spawn of Satan she’d been just a few hours earlier. George was so relaxed with Lucy, too. He showed a different side of himself to her than he did even to me—a free, easy spirit he never allowed himself to display otherwise. Lucy adored him.

He was a truly caring husband, too. Sure, he could be short sometimes, and domineering. But he never failed to kiss me hello or ask about my day, as if he truly cared about the quotidian news my housewifely self could drum up. It shouldn’t matter that he’d never understood what I did, and why I had to do it, but it mattered, even so. My art had piqued his interest in me, but ultimately it became a conversation piece rather than a meeting of the minds.

Perhaps we marry the father we wish we’d had. George was so meticulous and finite, so far from Dad’s sloppy good nature and casual, laissez-faire approach to almost everything. Like a father, I wanted George’s approval, his understanding, just as much as his love.

George disappeared down the hall, his back perfectly straight, just like always.

My hand shaking, I slopped some wine into a glass. The more I drank, the more I wouldn’t have to think.

~ ~ ~

Thursday, the Los Angeles Times informed me that it was 64 degrees and partly cloudy in Santa Fe. After dropping Lucy at school, I set up another canvas. I sketched in the outlines quickly with a brush dipped in Hansa yellow thinned way down with water. This was a mate of yesterday’s painting, a representational take on the abstract of before. It was amazing, the way the fast swirls of paint coalesced in my hand from random squiggles into people, two people clenched together in the gobs of paint, embracing frantically, but unable to escape. They were locked in the painting, like Michelangelo’s The Dying Slave was forever struggling to escape from the marble in which it was encased. Their lips pressed together sealed them but also bound them, their hands glued to each other prevented them from pushing their way out of the thick, tornado-like swirls tightening around them.

I had been listening to Celtic music all week, put in the mood by St. Patrick’s Day. Harp, fiddle, and flute sounds from a Chieftains CD flitted around me as I painted. At once mournful and joyful, tunes such as “The Parting of Friends” and “The Lament for Limerick” made my heart both lift and ache. I was moving forward, driven, possessed, but had no idea where I was going, so quickly and surely.

And then the morning was gone, and I got in the Volvo and drove to pick up Lucy.

Every Thursday at 12:30, straight after preschool, I dropped Lucy off at Madame’s for Madame’s self-imposed one hour a week of bonding time with her granddaughter. The timing was tricky, because Lucy always napped at this time, so it created a scary blip in her usual routine. And by the time we got to Madame’s, Lucy was usually in such a frenzy of nervousness and anticipation that she could barely function. Thursdays were the worst day of the week for me, not only because I had to deal with Madame on my own, without the buffer of George, I also had to deal with Lucy’s fallout after spending an hour at that house on Las Palmas.

Today the contrast between Madame’s haphazardly kept home and the rest of the well-manicured houses on the block was even more apparent. The entire sidewalk in front of her house had been dug up, with knocked-over orange cones and markers bearing the legend “City of Los Angeles Department of Public Works Street Services” blocking any way up to Madame’s door except up the driveway and across the grass. A dark, slimy liquid oozed from the sidewalk toward the gutter.

Madame viewed me on Thursdays simply as a Lucy delivery system, and as usual, she took ages to get to the door (didn’t she know we always arrived at 12:45 pm, promptly, each Thursday?), and peered suspiciously through the keyhole. An acid glare that she shot toward the dismantled sidewalk kept me from asking questions. Lucy chirped desperately, “Bonjour, grand-mère!” I came inside to exchange uncomfortable pleasantries. “What lovely spring weather we’re having!” I trilled. “I’m so glad it’s such a beautiful day, aren’t you?”

Madame snorted. “It’s too hot; it’s far too hot for March.”

“I don’t remember what the weather’s usually like in March,” I said lamely. “I just thought it was nice out . . .”

Madame curled her nostril ever so slightly and turned to Lucy. “Come, Lucy, let’s have a little lesson before snack time, shall we?”

Lucy suddenly grabbed hold of my hand with her little fingers and wouldn’t let go. “Honey, it’s time to say goodbye,” I said, attempting to disengage myself. But she pulled me along with her, forcing me to follow Madame through the kitchen, where a few open cupboards flaunted the disarray within. Plastic ware that must have been circa some 1970s Tupperware party nearly spilled out of one—a large, cloudy Jell-O mold, a hamburger-making set, a bilious green colander. We emerged into the breakfast room—these old, grand houses had both breakfast rooms and dining rooms, living rooms and dens, maids’ quarters and bedrooms. She always kept a bowl of purplish berries on the dining room table; they were cranberry-sized, and grew on the high hedge at the far end of her backyard. I wasn’t sure whether they were poisonous; I had seen George pop a few in his mouth on occasion. An old photo album was open on the dining room table, one of dozens that she had organized by date in the built-in bookshelves in the den. She’d often pull out and leaf through albums featuring George’s youth in the same meditative way Catholics would finger rosary beads. Time in Madame’s house had stopped around 1979—the year George had gone away to college.

Madame glared at Lucy, still clinging to my hand as to a life buoy. “That’s enough now, chérie. We have a lot to learn this afternoon.” I disengaged Lucy with difficulty and hugged her tight. “I’ll be back in just a little while, sweetie.” She bravely allowed Madame to grasp one hand and waved forlornly with the other as I escaped through the grand entrance hall with its soaring two-story cathedral ceiling and vintage glass-drop chandelier. My feet crinkled through the old, threadbare beige carpet. I felt like I was abandoning her to a total brainwashing, as I did each week. But what could I do? Madame was Lucy’s grandmother, after all.

Another restriction of the Thursday schedule was that I was required to pick Lucy up in an hour, which left absolutely no time to do anything useful. Any errand, in Los Angeles, took longer than that—one had to drive, and park, and navigate long checkout lines. Once, I’d tried to go to Trader Joe’s, less than a mile’s drive away. But I returned ten minutes late, after battling crowds and the backed-up, miniscule parking lot, and for weeks after Madame had been colder than ever to me.

So on Thursdays, I just spent the hour walking around Madame’s neighborhood. Only a mile from my own, the Hancock Park neighborhood was a different world, and strolling down the sycamore-lined streets, with rows of elegant houses set up high on hill-like lawns, was my sole exercise for the week. The farther east I walked, the bigger the houses got, the higher the security fencing was, and the quieter the streets became. By the time I got to June Street, I could hear the echo of my own footsteps. Cars rarely drove by, and I’d never seen any resident emerge from or enter the grand homes, just the occasional gardener or cleaning service. I spent the hour walking around and around the same few blocks, which roughly formed the shape of a pentagon: McCadden Place, to 1st Street, up Hudson Place, which ended at the Wilshire Country Club with an impassable fence. Then back down Hudson Avenue to 2nd Street, and back around again, my stomach aching the whole time, so tired I just wanted to lie down on one of those verdant lawns and go to sleep. All I could think about was the intractable problem of Josh’s appearance on Saturday, and how to force him into coexistence with the real life I led every day—my life as Lucy’s mom, and George’s wife, and the little boxes of responsibilities those positions entailed. My allegiances were unchangeable, absolutely necessary, and completely at odds with going to Josh’s book signing. By doing so, I would upset my family’s balance for good, my desperate avowals of “friendship” to the contrary. Being George’s wife, being Lucy’s mom: these were the only two things, in fact, I could say I’d ever succeeded at.

The houses stood, still as sentinels, atop their little hills. The landscaping around them was uniformly professionally designed and well-tended. Bougainvillea and azaleas splashed color across front entries. A few tulip trees were still blooming. I could glimpse night-blooming jasmine behind high walls. I sniffed, trying to catch some of the delicious floral smells surely coming from all that vegetation. But all the gorgeous plantings were far away, up the little hills near the front doors of the homes. Too far for the scents to reach me. All I could smell, walking past the big houses, was the herbal, green aroma of freshly cut grass.

Whatever happened to me, whatever small decisions I made, seemed immaterial. Those houses would still be standing there forever, kept safe from change and from harm by the force of the wealth, or the willpower, stockpiled behind their doors. My fingers lingered on Madame’s tarnished brass knocker. Knowing George’s closeness with his mother, I’d thought, until I met Madame, that maybe she could be my second chance at having a mother to love, and a mother who truly loved me. So silly.

I could enter that house, but I could never belong there.

~ ~ ~

That evening, while Lucy lounged slack-jawed in front of Word World and I should have been making dinner, instead I snuck into the office room and spent some time peering voyeuristically into Josh’s life. I browsed through his web site, drooling over his blog entries about the creative process, the fulfillment of writing, his love for comic books. I internalized his literary heroes—Michael Chabon, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Hardy. I remembered the forlorn English textbooks in his London bookcase. He had followed all the dreams he’d had back then, and made them real. Not like me. Nothing like how I’d ended up.

I copied his email address, visible when clicking the Contact link on his web site, opened Skype, and pasted the address in. Presto—Josh was on Skype. A click away from a voice call. Still not satisfied, I moved on to Flickr and pasted the email address there too. No dice, but when I typed his wife’s name in, there they were—dozens of publicly viewable pictures of Josh and his family. Bonanza! Clearly they were not yet used to fame or the possibility of being Googled by strangers.

It felt dirty and sneaky, looking at the private moments of Josh, Caroline, and Amanda, but I did it anyway. Caroline was model-beautiful, with long, straight, dark hair that draped around her so effortlessly, it must take an hour to style it each morning. A Jewish star on a gold chain glinted around her neck. Baby Amanda looked just like her dad, with swirls of black curly hair and penetrating eyes that stared right at the camera. There they were, the happy little family—although, as always happens when one person needs to hold the camera, they were rarely all in a photo together. The big blue New Mexico sky, like an enormous bowl, cradled them in scenes I’d tried to envision. Now I could vividly re-create them. Caroline and Amanda at the farmer’s market I’d imagined, Caroline holding up an enormous melon. Josh leaning against an earthen wall of their home, cradling Amanda tenderly. Caroline and Amanda. Josh and Amanda. And then, last of all, a photo, probably set with the camera timer, of Josh and Caroline, embracing each other, she smiling at the camera, he nuzzling her neck.

I could almost feel Josh’s presence, seeing him—even embracing his wife—making him feel so close, it was as if I could connect to him with my mind. By this point I was almost convinced that making love with George on Friday would be tantamount to cheating on Josh. I dreaded it.

Stop. I had to get a grip. Josh and I could be friends again. Not lovers—friends.

I couldn’t punish George so horribly, just because he didn’t understand why I needed to paint. It was absolutely wrong.

At a quarter to six, I x’ed off Internet Explorer and hurried to the kitchen to preheat the toaster oven. Lucy was exactly where I’d left her, practically drooling as she watched the Curious George PBS cartoon with ferocious concentration. I rummaged through the freezer, unearthing a box of chicken nuggets and a bag of freezer-burned Tater Tots. Tossing them onto the tiny toaster oven sheet, making a mess of the icy breading, I reflected that for the past forty-five minutes, as Lucy’d been congealing in front of two PBS shows, I hadn’t thought about her for a moment. She’d been completely out of my mind. The mom radar that kept me tethered to her, always watchful, had blinked off, replaced with slimy cyber-stalking by me, half-deranged ex-girlfriend, failure as a mother.

~ ~ ~

On Friday, it was 62 degrees in Santa Fe. In Los Angeles, the weather continued summer-like. It was in the eighties, and I was wearing sandals, capri pants, and dragging the standing fans out of our garage, brushing the dust off, and trying to blow the hot air out of our apartment. We lived on an upper floor without air conditioning, and in the summer, the apartment could get up to a hundred degrees. Our futile arsenal of standing fans and a portable air conditioner, which cooled about six square inches of Lucy’s room, was never enough.

I was dreading Friday night, but I’d never yet said no, and refusing tonight would ring all sorts of alarms for George. Fortunately, George knew nothing about Josh. Why dredge up old memories, I’d figured long ago. Let the past stay buried. I was good at that.

So long as everything was in its place, George was content. The only exception to his requirements for order was Lucy. She defined chaos, and George accepted that. “She’ll be just fine by the time she’s five,” he assured me often, though I wasn’t convinced of any such thing. But changing our Friday night routine—that would be unthinkable.

Fortunately, I had an entire day ahead of me. I had another canvas ready to go. I wasn’t sure what I would paint, but I knew it would flow out of me, from deep in my unconscious, my hands knowing just which colors to choose from the tackle box I used as an art bin. My hands would know what to do.

No such luck. My PEEPS hand reminder had long since washed off, but hurrying out the door with Lucy for preschool, she reminded me herself. She’d been looking forward to the party all week. “Mommy,” she tugged at my sleeve. “Did you get the chickie Peeps or the bunny Peeps?”

“Oh, sh . . . oot,” I smacked my forehead with my hand. “Honey, I totally forgot. Let’s see if 7-11 has them, it’s on the way.” Thank heavens, one package was left—blue bunnies, rather dented, but good enough. “Thanks hon,” I hugged Lucy, “for reminding me.”

We entered the classroom, ten minutes late, bearing Peeps. My one parental contribution to the class this year. The room parents had already set everything up—festive plastic Easter tablecloths, and paper cups and plates that matched. Nick had stockpiled his balloons in the corner. Jessica was poised behind a face-painting station. 8:30 in the morning seemed a tad early for all this. I smiled at Christine and thrust the Peeps at her. “Here—where should I put these?” She eyed the crumpled package. “Where’s the other one? We need 22; there’s only 12 here.”

“Uh—I’ll be right back.”

Ran to the car, gunned the engine, sped to the nearby Vons supermarket, and purchased several extra packages of Peeps just in case. I was no good at this involved-parent stuff. It was hard enough, just dealing with Lucy. I didn’t have an ounce of altruism left over for volunteering, or being cheerful, or making freakin’ balloon animals for a classroom full of half-tamed three-year-olds. But the way Lucy’s eyes lit up when I hurried back into the classroom made it all worthwhile. She looked at me like I was everything. Like I was the biggest hero of the day. “Mommy!” she squealed. “You got more Peeps!” She ran over to me and gave me a big, possessive hug, making sure every kid in the room knew that I was her mother. She eyed Jack, her paramour in the three-year-old class. “I told you she would,” she said. I raised the Peeps over my head in triumph.

~ ~ ~

I’d accomplished only one thing that morning—purchasing Peeps. I stayed for the class party, and once it was over, it was almost time to bring Lucy home. But the canvas was waiting. For next week. I wondered what I would paint, what I could possibly paint, once I’d seen Josh.

While Lucy napped, I lay down on George’s bed for a while. My head ached with so much thinking, my thoughts whirling around all week to no good purpose or conclusion. I did feel sorry for George. He had so few close friends; he rarely confided in me, either. He saved his secrets, his openness, for his mother. But still, there was something comforting about his lengthy dissections of fellow faculty members’ motivations, and his enthused explanations of arcane statistical information. I barely understood half of what he tried to explain to me, but I always nodded enthusiastically to make him think I was really interested. Truly, he gave me so much—he didn’t need to give me all his secrets, too.

Unlike George, I had spread my confidences around. No two friends knew the same secrets about me. The only person who had ever known everything was Josh—all of me, both my passionate and my prosaic self, and loved all those pieces.

George had chosen the wrong person.

I was no good, for him. I was unworthy of him, in fact. I was missing some crucial loyalty gene, some key aspect of kindness and altruism. Or—I had it—it was just so convenient to discard it, now that Josh was back. But why was I feeling ill all the time then, now that it was me, George, and Lucy as usual, having dinner, playing Candyland every night, smiling at each other, kissing hello when George walked through the door in the evening, and kissing goodbye in the mornings. Those perfunctory little pecks were suddenly fraught with guilt and regrets. He’d picked the wrong person to love, but it wasn’t his fault. He was a good person. I couldn’t leave him, and drag Lucy a thousand miles away from her daddy. I was a horrible person. But Josh—I had to be with him. Family. Love. Family. Love.

Ack!

There was no other choice; I had to do the tarot cards. I sprang up from the bed and rooted through my sock drawer, another choice hiding location.

I bought this deck of tarot cards back in high school, at the now-defunct Psychic Eye esoterica emporium on Gough Street in San Francisco. The shop was long gone, which was too bad. I’d spent a whole afternoon there once, wandering through its rooms full of purplish crystals, bronze elephant-headed deities, stacks of books explicating past lives and emotional healing through dental surgery, and dozens of different tarot decks. I chose the one that spoke to me, a beautiful deck called The New Palladini Tarot. I didn’t know if I believed in the cards or their dubious fortune-telling ability, but whenever I was in a period of great turmoil, I’d run a hand of cards to see what was what. The cards were beautiful but frightening; looking at the blank, knowing eyes of the figures on them felt like dropping head-first into an abyss. For courage, I thought of Astrid, and laid them out.

First card; the present situation: Ten of Rods. The burden of success.

Crossing the first card, the immediate influence: The Lovers. Of course.

Goal or destiny: Three of Cups. Promising—fulfillment and healing. Yes, brought by Josh. Aaaah . . .

Distant past: Five of Pentacles. Loss; yes; loss of Josh. This was so true!

Recent past: The Magician. Creativity, rediscovered. The tarot cards were amazing!

Future influence: Queen of Pentacles, reversed. Suspicion and distrust. Well, George would be feeling that soon, that was for certain.

The last four cards remained face down. My heart was hammering. So far, my fortune was absolutely correct. But what—what would the last card say? Would it be my happy ending—the Wheel of Fortune perhaps, or the Hierophant?

I flipped over cards seven, eight, and nine; they dealt with the present circumstance and inner emotions. Whatever; who cares—the end result, the future—that’s what was important.

Card ten, the final result: The five of cups. In the picture, a downcast figure eyed three overturned cups; two cups remained standing. What the heck did it mean? I paged desperately through my little tarot card answer-book. Crap. This didn’t tell me anything. The overturned cups meant loss. Well, of what? Who would I lose? Which one? And of the two upright cups, who were they? What would remain in the end?

Stupid tarot cards. They never tell you anything you want to know.

~ ~ ~

Friday night, brushing sweaty hair out of my eyes, I put on my ugly pajamas—the stretched-out green pastel ones, with the little pink flowers on them. According to our indoor thermometer, the apartment was 90 degrees.

I got in bed, turned off the light, and turned to the wall. But there was George, right behind me, nuzzling against my back and kissing my neck. I lay there still for a while, letting his hands explore, being utterly passive. I had never felt less aroused in my life.

It still surprised me how inventive George was in bed, and yet paradoxically, how predictable. It was as if he’d memorized the entire Joy of Sex, and was determined, scientifically, to explore all the variations of lovemaking to find just the right, perfect one. He knew precisely what to do. Unlike a few previous fumbling lovers, he knew the exact location of my *oris, and what to do with it, and when. But the way he did it was more clinical than arousing. You could time our lovemaking with a stopwatch if you wanted.

I had to play my part. I turned around, kissed him for a while with as good a simulation of passion as I could muster, and began pulling off his pajamas. His hands moving over me were like a brand: everything he touched could be his. He could do what he wanted to me. I belonged to him.

His eyes boring into mine as I arched my back in a simulation of pleasure, I knew what I would do.