“It already is this afternoon,” I said.
“Her pad is right across the Park from you. Are you busy?”
“Busy? Let me think. Hold on a minute. Tommy? Hold on, I’ll be right back. Tommy?”
“Yes, I’m here,” Tommy said.
I ran in my room and went straight for my little black brocade purse. A dim memory was pushing its way to the surface. I was hoping I hadn’t just imagined it. But no, there it was, a square of tinfoil, a care package of speed that Michael had slipped into my bag before I left, whenever that was. Wonderful Michael, in my life again. I sighed with contentment. Then I ran back to the phone.
“Tommy?”
“Are you OK?”
“Absolutely OK. I can go anywhere anytime. What’s her number?”
The Sigrid solution came my way not a moment too soon. Maggie and I hadn’t been hitting it off very well lately. It might even have been that she was preparing to kick me out. In the beginning, a couple of months before, when my roommate took in her new lover and asked me to leave, and I had to go home (no place else to go as usual), Maggie was undeniably delighted to have me back. I was her only child, and she and I had always been a smidgen too involved, according to every shrink I ever knew. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that when I first returned, Maggie was spilling over with an inappropriate amount of enthusiasm. She started laughing at her own jokes, buying tickets for us to Broadway matinees, ordering steamed lobsters from Rosedale Fish Market. She was full of hope. We joined Weight Watchers and cooked chicken livers stirred up with apples and onions in Pam and did the crossword puzzle together on Sunday. She honestly believed that I was turning over a new leaf.
Then I remembered to pull myself out of this jolly stupor.
My mother had been seducing me, as was her wont, and I’d been falling for it. My biggest nightmare was that, unless I fought it, she and I would float off into the sunset together like something out of Tennessee Williams, like Sebastian and his mother in Suddenly, Last Summer, only the single-sex version.
So my tactic was to turn churlish and mean. I never left the house. Maggie came home after doing the grocery shopping, and I was sprawled out on the sofa, my hiking boots—left over from the radical feminist stint—propped on the upholstered pillow. Maggie stood there in her low-heeled Florsheim “comfort pumps,” shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Then she wrinkled her nose as if the air smelled and looked longingly at her sofa.
“I don’t have a place to sit in my own house,” she said.
“What’s wrong with the club chair?”
“But you can’t see the TV from there.”
“You don’t want to watch anyway. The movie’s almost over,” I said, wishing she would shut up.
“Yes, I do. I want to see the news,” Maggie said, standing there in her miracle-fiber skirt-and-blouse ensemble, a big clumsy pocketbook hanging off one shoulder, still carrying two shopping bags full of groceries, one in each hand.
“It’s OK,” I said, never taking my eyes off George Raft, “this movie will be over at six. You won’t have to miss a minute of Vietnam, Ma.”
My attitude wore her down. She looked so miserable by the end of the day—her soft, reddish-blond-dyed hair matted to her forehead, a faded housecoat thrown over her wilted body—a weaker child might have taken pity. Not me, though. I wasn’t about to fall into her clutches. Just because I had to be there didn’t mean I belonged to her, I told myself. As far as I was concerned—and several of my shrinks had backed me up on this—my mother was out to get me.
Before Tommy and I got a chance to hang up, Maggie came out into the hall where I had draped myself over the loveseat and started gesturing to me.
“That’s enough now. Tell him you’ll call him back later. I want to talk to you.” Maggie spoke loud enough for Tommy to hear.
I waved her away.
“That’s enough I said.” The volume was pitched even louder now.
I put my hand over the mouthpiece. “Don’t bother me when I’m talking on the phone. Go away,” I hissed.
“How dare you speak to me like that. You are on my phone in my house.” The volume was turned up full blast now, to shrieking level.
“Tommy? I have to go. Thank you.” I slammed down the receiver. “You love humiliating me, don’t you? It’s how you get your jollies, isn’t it, humiliating me. Always was, you sadist bitch. All my life.”
“That’s it! That’s enough. You can just pack your bags and leave right now. I don’t care where you go. I’ve had it!” Maggie screamed.
She looked ridiculous as usual, I thought, standing there little and pudgy in her shapeless, chocolate-colored miracle-fiber pants and a lavender T-shirt, which had, coincidentally, a chocolate-colored stain on the front of it. Were the pants and shirt supposed to go together? Never exactly chic, Maggie had been extremely glamorous when she was young. Daddy’s little girl, the gay divorcée about town, sexy and colorful; she was a lush, sweet orchid that bloomed at night. This was so right up until lately. Then I don’t know what happened. Once she passed fifty, she simply let the whole thing drop as if it were a stage role that had ceased to amuse her.
“It just so happens I was planning to leave today anyway,” I said.
“And go where?” she asked. Her voice fell so fast, she sounded almost timid by comparison.
“Never mind where. It’s none of your business.”
“Oh yes, it is. How do I know you won’t come creeping back here when this one doesn’t work out. Is it that man you just talked to? Are you going to live with that man? Fine with me, as long as he’s willing to pay for everything. Does he know how spoiled you are? How messy you are?
“And, Janet, put some clothes on. Maybe he won’t mind, but I don’t like you parading around my house naked.”
“No, Mother, it isn’t that man,” I said, ignoring the last part but feeling, suddenly, naked. “It’s a young woman, around my age. She lives off Central Park West and she’s looking for a roommate.”
“Who is she? Someone you know?”
“Not yet, but I understand she’s very nice.”
“You’re going to move in with some stranger sight unseen?”
“I thought you wanted me out, no matter what.”
“Yes, but I think you should leave here the right way. Get a job first, then find an apartment when you have some money saved. I know your father, if he were ever willing to take any interest at all, would agree with me. I’d call him right now, but he absolutely refuses to get involved. Might as well face it, whenever there’s a crisis, I’ve got to handle it alone. He’s useless, your father.”
I was tempted to tell her that my handsome Yankee cavalier of a father, with his history of wives—four of them, present one included—had just been passing through. He was an empty well, I wanted to say to her, an empty well. Instead I said, “But you’re doing fine all by your lonesome. Didn’t you just kick me out?”
“Maybe I did. And probably that’s what I should do, but you know I’d worry. OK, I’m sorry. I lost my temper. You can stay.”
“Tough shit. I’m going.”
“Please stay, Janet. I think you’d better stay, Janet. You’re asking for trouble. This isn’t right. You’re not going about this the right way.”
“Too bad. I’m already gone,” I said.
“What are you going to do for money? That girl isn’t going to put you up for free.”
“I