“Did he call Joshua’s parents?” I said anxiously, taking down the Oreo cookies.
“Not yet.”
“Is he going to?”
Mom sighed. “I’m afraid so.”
“Oh Mom! I’m going to be so humiliated . . . couldn’t you stop him?”
“Well, the second you were out the door, he was reaching for the phone, sputtering about statutory rape and that type of thing. I tried pointing out that it might be better if he called when he was a trifle calmer. And I also said that it was clear as day that whatever you were doing with Joshua, you were doing because you wanted to, so rape is scarcely a fitting—”
“Then what’d he say?”
“He said he’d wait and call Joshua’s father at the office.”
“Mom, Joshua is really a nice person.”
“Darling, I know! I think he’s a perfect sweetie . . . but that’s really totally irrelevant.”
“It is?”
“Basically . . . see, the thing is, what’s bothering Lionel is that it’s you, his little darling, having sex, and that totally freaks him out.”
“Didn’t he think I ever would?”
“Oh, he knew you would eventually, but he probably hoped you’d be like him and wait till college.”
“‘When I was your age, my grandparents were still tucking me into bed’? That’s a line from Manhattan that Woody Allen says to Mariel Hemingway; she’s seventeen.”
“Precisely.”
“Would he feel just as bad if it were Deel?”
“Not quite, I don’t think . . . Oh, it’s lots of things, hon. It’s complicated. There’s one crucial fact that I think—An awful thing is about to happen to Lionel.”
I felt scared. “What?”
“He’ll be fifty in two weeks—five oh.”
“So?”
“Well, to you fifty is fifty, nothing special. But to Lionel it’s a whole big deal. It’s half a century. It’s, well, definitely middle age. It means time is running out.”
“But what does that have to do with me and Joshua?”
“Well, here he sees you blooming, going forth into the world . . . and here his options are more and more limited. When you’re young, you have a feeling you can conquer the world, anything can happen, and then it dribbles away bit by bit. It’s been five years since he won the Emmy and nothing much has really worked out since then, so he’s kind of in a general funk about everything . . . He’s gotten plump, poor thing.”
“Yeah,” I said, seeing what she meant.
“And then it’s his whole relationship with you, Tat. He adores you. You’re his little pet, his darling. Remember how the two of you used to go to photography shows on Saturdays or to screenings together? And to you it was such a big deal, such a wonderful surprise and treat. And now you wouldn’t be seen dead with him.”
I felt awful. “That’s not true! That I wouldn’t be seen dead with him!”
“Well, you know what I mean. Whenever he suggests something, you’ve made other plans. Before he was big, wonderful Daddy who knew everything and you looked up at him with those big, beautiful eyes and it made him feel terrific, and now . . . well, you’re looking at Joshua that way.”
“You mean he’s jealous?”
“Sort of . . . Look, hon, the whole thing is as normal as blueberry pie, but when it strikes home, when it’s your daughter, that’s when it hurts.”
“Poor Daddy.” I sat down on a stool next to Mom and began eating some cookies.
“I know.” Mom sighed. “Poor Lionel.”
“Do you think there’s something I could do to make him feel better . . . I mean, other than not seeing Joshua?”
Mom nodded. “You know, I was thinking, you remember how you and Deel used to give little parties for us when we had our birthdays? Well, I’m giving Lionel a surprise party when he turns fifty, but I thought if the two of you did it with me, baked something nice, maybe made him some special present . . . Remember how you used to make those collage calendars? Just kind of make a fuss over him.”
“Sure, I could do that.”
“I mean, let’s face it,” Mom said. “Part of it there’s nothing you can do anything about. He just has to come to terms with it himself. But I think if you kind of snuggled up to him, just a touch, maybe—”
“Okay,” I said. That sounded easy.
Just then the phone rang. Mom answered it. “Oh, hi! Yeah, sure . . . what time is it again? Five thirty? Okay, well, what should I do? Should I pick you up or what? Great, see you then.”
When Mom hung up the phone, she closed the cookbook. “Hon, listen, I have to run, I’m going to have a drink with Simon. I’ll be back around six thirty, okay? See you!”
She ran off to get her coat.
Simon used to be Mom’s director. It’s really a sad story. For four years Mom had this terrific job on a TV soap called The Way We Are Now. It was one of those gummy things that are on from 2:00 to 3:00 every afternoon, but Mom’s part was really terrific. She was a kind of villain or villainess. That’s the kind of part Mom likes; she likes roles you can sink your teeth into. She says she always hated ingenue roles, even when she was young enough to play them, and now that she’s thirty-nine, she says she doesn’t feel like trying to look ten years younger than she is. Actually, Mom looks younger than she is anyway, but I know what she means.
On TWWAN Mom played this woman named Myra who’d had a really terrible childhood. Her uncle, her stepmother’s brother, seduced her when she was eleven, but she was too scared to tell anyone, and that gave her all kinds of complexes about men. Then, when she finally told her mother about it, when she was eighteen, her mother threw her out of the house and she got into the car and drove off. Only it was a rainy night and her car crashed and she was horribly disfigured and had to have facial surgery. The trouble was that the doctor who did surgery on her, Dr. Morrison, fell in love with her and that led to all kinds of complications because he was married and his wife got really mad. So Myra (Mom) left town and moved to Chicago where she met a really nice man named Fred, but he was leafing through some old letters one day and found out about her uncle and that very day he left her. She felt heartbroken and decided to go back to her hometown and be a nurse there. By a strange coincidence Dr. Morrison was in that same hospital as a patient (he had to have something done with his kidneys) and they fell in love again and his wife got mad again.
Anyway, the awful thing is they wrote Mom out of the show six months ago. They’d put these new writers on the show and they wanted to build up some other part, so they had Mom in a car crash where she died. Dr. Morrison has been a real mess ever since then; he seems to have lost the will to live and no one knows what to do with him. Even his wife says she wishes Myra were around to cheer him up. But it’s too late. Once you’ve killed a character off, that’s that. But the main thing is, poor Mom! Because she was doing a terrific job. You should see all the fan mail she used to get. Four men even proposed to her! One of them said she looked just like his childhood sweetheart and another said he lay in bed every night dreaming about her. Another one said he’d read her sign was Taurus in some TV magazine and that meant she was perfect for him because he was Aquarius. So that proves she was doing a great job, and she was earning all this money. Of course she can still do commercials, but it’s not the same thing.
Anyhow,