Phoebe doubted it, seeing his eyes latch back on the paper. She grabbed the New York Post and took a minute bite of melba toast. Don’t lose your Audrey Hepburn, Jake reminded her until she yearned to chop his words with onions and force-feed him with the mix. “Delicate and dark—that’s my style,” he’d say.
Sometimes when he left for work early, she ate a bagel. Afterward, she did jumping jacks and a hundred sit-ups. Not this morning, though. No bagel. No sit-ups. Seconds after choking down a piece of the crumbly cracker, she raced to the bathroom, turned the sink taps on full force, the running water a sound barrier, and then threw up. Not that Jake would notice—not unless she vomited in front of him.
Marriage rendered her a shade more invisible each day—until Jake wanted sex, and suddenly she became 3-D. Those nights, instead of turning on his bedside lamp and studying tiny numbers, he’d run a hand down her arm and enumerate one of her charms:
“Damn, your skin is satin and cream. I want you so much.”
“You’re the entire package, baby, and just as gorgeous as the first day I met you.”
They still clicked like magnetized dolls. Phoebe dissolved during lovemaking, but the rest of the time, she became hypervigilant, agreeable in everything from the scent she wore to keeping the house free of dust and clutter. Her original guilt played a part, almost crushing her. Sometimes she considered revealing the truth of her lost baby, hoping the inevitable battle would bring them closer. More likely, the truth would destroy her place in their relationship, and their balance of marital power would teeter until she’d hit a permanent bottom.
Sometimes the reality that she had married too young slipped past her denial. Marriage meant feeling shackled at a time when the world seemed to be cracking wide open for women.
In either circumstance, she forced herself to remember Rob’s cold face at the news of her pregnancy. With that memory, she embraced Jake with gratitude. When swimming in the brew of love, resentment, and indebtedness overwhelmed Phoebe, she’d note the ways their marriage had succeeded. Despite her mother’s pleas for an immediate grandchild, Jake had pushed her to graduate from college. After taking the stockbroker’s exam, he had started his own company, Jake Pierce Equity. Phoebe gained bragging rights as Jake hustled success at JPE from almost nothing. Her uncle Gus gave him cheap rent in his accounting office in the Bronx, but Jake had built everything else alone. Each time Phoebe saw Uncle Gus he’d grab her upper arm, pull her close and whisper, as though it were a secret, “He’s got some head on him, that man of yours. Smart as a whole college.”
Business rolled in so fast, he’d drown if she didn’t help him on Saturday, paying his bills and typing up lists of the stock trades he’d made that week. Yes. Exactly as he’d predicted, Jake began to tear through the world. He strutted. She smiled. When he became too in love with himself or worked crazy, long days, her sister’s advice helped Phoebe clamp down on the scathing words dying to escape.
“Remember?” Deb would ask. “Don’t you remember how Mommy nagged Daddy—how we hated it? Treat Jake like the man he is.”
? ? ?
The best hours of Phoebe’s week began when she arrived at the Mira Stein Settlement House on Rivington Street, on the Lower East Side. If it wouldn’t drive Jake nuts, she’d add Saturdays to her Mira House schedule. Her title was program associate, which meant she filled in wherever needed, getting involved with every age group. That Monday, when the exercise teacher didn’t show, Phoebe ran the senior workout class.
“What should I do?” she asked her boss, the assistant director. Energy shimmered off Trixie, who never searched long for an answer.
“Just make them move. Gently. Easily. You’ll think of something.”
Phoebe set up a circle of battered metal folding chairs. Elderly men and women, all over eighty, held on to the raised backs, kicking up their heels, marching in place, and bending side to side. All while “The Beat Goes On” played, the walking bass-line perfect for the exercise. Introducing them to Sonny and Cher gave her a kick.
In the afternoon, she settled in with the after-school kids, who stretched toward her like neglected plants too long in the shade. For a few hours, they got to play intricate games of make-believe and draw giant Ferris wheels, instead of caring for younger siblings or translating their parents’ symptoms to overworked doctors at the Orchard Street Clinic.
“Mrs. Pierce, help me!”
Phoebe ran to Anthony, who stood by the sink covered with clay. She turned on the water and rinsed the grit off his skin and on to hers. Then she washed them both clean until his hands were again pale gold. The boy hugged her, leaving proof of his affection with wet handprints.
“I love the days you come,” he said.
“And you’re the sunshine of my week.”
Tomorrow she’d welcome the members of Cooking for English—the highlight of working at Mira House. She’d proposed this class after spending months proving herself as a program assistant—even including the cost of the Cooking for English materials; a donation from her softhearted father. The idea sprang from a chance encounter with a mother who’d brought a jar of perfect borscht as thanks when Phoebe didn’t complain about the mother being late picking up her child. The gift of food generated the most animated conversation she’d had with any mother at Mira House. Clarity came: use food to bridge the cultures, exchanging recipes for knowledge of New York.
Her students taught her dishes and customs from their home countries: Russia, China, Hungary, Korea, and many others. She tutored them in English, the rules of rent control, and every other trick they needed to live in New York.
? ? ?
Phoebe stirred the beef in wine sauce in careful circles, determined to keep the roux from getting lumpy. She’d learned the dish watching her mother make it twice a month but still couldn’t get the liquid to the silky consistency her mother produced, where the merlot married the broth, flour, and touch of butter until it seemed as though Julia Child had visited the Beckett family.
Tonight Phoebe planned a perfect dinner. Water boiled, ready for the egg noodles. Baking powder biscuits punched out in flawless circles covered a cookie sheet and waited for the oven. Russian vegetable pie cooled on the counter. All his favorites.
Devil’s food cake decorated with two tiny rattles—one pink, one blue—waited, secreted in the back of the fridge.
As the stew thickened, the phone rang. Inevitably it would be Deb—also married and a supper maker now—or her mother. This was the hour the three of them prepared dinner and called back and forth.
She didn’t miss a circle of stirring as she reached for the phone. “Hello.”
“So, answer me this one, okay? When do we get to stop taking care of your mistakes? Daddy told me everything.”
“Mom?” Phoebe put the receiver in the crook of her neck and searched the table for her cigarettes. “What are you talking about?”