It was becoming clear to Francine that Jason had not come to ask for my hand in holy matrimony. She was very pale. She was so angry she couldn’t eat. “Are you telling me you’re just going to use my daughter as you please?”
“She likes how I use her. And”—Jason forked another piece of meat onto his plate-“I’m not a humanitarian institution. I take care of myself. Period.”
We didn’t stay for the strawberry shortcake. “What a plastic cunt,” Jason observed as we drove home. “Now I see why you’re so sick,” he said without sympathy.
“I never want to see that punk again,” Francine told me the next day. “And I mean never. To think you let rancid garbage like that touch you. Don’t you feel contaminated? Aren’t you afraid of getting some kind of disease from someone like that?”
Perhaps that is when the schizophrenia set in. The night I sat at the dinner table with Jason and Francine, the night they spoke about me in the third person, as if I weren’t there. And I wasn’t. Who sat silently in the chair simply listening?
I thought there would be just two worlds then, the one with Francine and the one with Jason. I thought I could control the splitting and branching off, the places in me that seemed battered and ruined, the channels in my flesh that felt glued together, somehow bricked shut. I thought I could control Jason, myself, my passion and my contempt. I was trying to remember exactly how the splitting began, accelerated and took on a life of its own, when the telephone rang.
“He’s going to die, I know it,” Francine said, tearful and drunk.
“Even money says he’ll make it.”
“Don’t jerk yourself off. Be prepared for the worst.”
Francine believes in preparing for the worst. After all, she was deserted in childhood. After all, she was a foster child, taken in by Irish and Italian families who only wanted her for the forty extra dollars a month the state provided for her room and board. She spent her childhood among illiterates and drunks who starved her, beat her and never gave her a key to a house, not even in winter. And she didn’t have the money for tampons and stuffed toilet paper between her too thin legs and thought she would never live until March, until the snow stopped and sun warmed the dull brown streets. After all, her right arm is permanently damaged, after the day she slipped on the ice, after the day and night she screamed and cried and begged before the foster parents took her to a doctor, before they set the compound fracture. To this day she cannot zip up the back of a dress by herself and the arm still hurts. And just when she thought she could take a rest, let her guard down, her husband got cancer and went broke.
She knows what it is all about. Let the world sift through the garbage and lies. She keeps her money in different banks. Her cupboards are stocked with canned goods and bottled water in case of earthquakes or wars, in case of depressions or invasions. Francine has a.38 revolver. She has detailed plans, with alternate and emergency subplans.
“Francine,” I began, feeling weak, feeling the room start to spin. “I’m tired.”
“You’re tired? You don’t even have a real job. I did two tapings today. I had a budget conference. I looked at film.”
“I know.” I tried again. I took a deep breath. “Your energy is astounding.”
“I’ve got no fucking energy. I’m half dead.” She began to cry. “He’s going to die. Painfully, horribly. I can feel it in my bones. This is it, kid.”
“Mother, calm down.”
“It’s a punishment. Him and you. My childhood wasn’t enough. Heap it on me. Bury me in catastrophe.”
“Why don’t you get some sleep?” I glanced at the clock. It was ten-thirty.
“How can I sleep? Martin’s coming in from Boston tonight. He’s probably in a cab right now.” Francine seemed to be regaining her control. “You know,” she whispered, “Martin is very fond of me. He’s a very important man. He’s on the board of fourteen major companies.” Francine named them, one by one. “Harvard Law School. The whole WASP bit. He thinks I’m exotic. That’s what he told me last time I saw him, in Chicago. He said I was exotic in the best sense of the word. What do you think that means?”
“He wants to fuck you even though you’re Jewish.” And crazy, I added mentally.
“You’re vulgar,” Francine said, sobering up. “And so resentful. You can’t stand it that men find me so attractive.” Francine lowered her voice. “Men have always found me attractive. I have a special quality, a certain magnetism. I’ve always had it. Even in the foster homes, even wearing rags from strangers and hanging around street corners hustling guys for dinner. I just ate and disappeared. I had to do that to survive. Just food and then I disappeared. God, I was hungry, always hungry. I weighed ninety-three pounds when I married your father. I guess you blame me for it. You blame me for everything. Five foot eight and ninety-three pounds. Every winter, I thought I’d die.”
“Mother—”
“Of course, you blame me for everything. That’s the basis of your whole pathetic life, trying to stick it to me. That’s why you live in a slum with that sick little maniac. It’s all to punish me. Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Please.” I noticed my hand was clenched so hard the blood had drained out. My fingers were sheet white.
“Of course, you think I’m stupid. Because I didn’t get spoonfed at some college? I’m in MENSA. You know what that is? It’s a special society for geniuses. They verified my IQ at 168. Less than one percent of the population has an IQ that high.”
“I’ve always been proud of your IQ,” I said, digging my fingernails into the palms of my hand. The pain was intense. It helped distract me from the pain of talking to Francine.
“One day, you’ll realize. One day, when I’m dead. And it’s going to happen sooner than you think. One day, at my desk, with the fucking telephones all ringing at the same time, I’ll keel over, a heart attack. You go like that.”
“I don’t feel well.”
“Your father’s dying. He’s the one who doesn’t feel well. But then, that’s typical. You never could face reality. Even as a kid. Why do I keep expecting anything from you? You’ve never given me one moment of love or solace. I jack myself off thinking you’ll start now.” Francine began to cry again. “You don’t even think Martin cares for me.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You think I’m just a piece of ass for him? I got news for you. He’s a very busy man. He’s deliberately stopping in L.A. just to see me. He has to hold up a conference in Honolulu to do it. You think a guy from Harvard Law School with a Boston town house and an estate in Virginia has to hustle a piece of ass?”
Suddenly Francine’s voice changed. “The bell!” she exclaimed, all at once thirty years younger, breathless, a teen-ager with a big, perfect lavender corsage on her way to the prom. She hung up without saying good-bye.
Somewhere, my father was curled up in a small ball, asleep on the sofa. I hoped the surgeon was getting a good night’s sleep. I walked outside. I crossed the bridge near my house and zigzagged down Howland Canal. I stood on the broken sidewalk near Jason’s house, on the opposite side of the canal, the water black and final between us. Jason’s lights were on. I walked home quickly and telephoned him.
Jason answered cheerfully. Jason invariably answers the phone with rare optimism, as if continually prepared for the great moment, some ultimate offering. What is he expecting? A stranger’s voice informing him that he’s just won a prize in a painting festival? The big break? A new woman? An old woman?
“What do you want?” Jason asked, cold and flat.
I assumed Jason had a woman with him. He’s always nervous when he has a woman with him and I call, as if, after all this time, I’m going to rush across the bridges and broken sidewalks and storm through the front door hysterical, with a gun and a paternity suit, screaming he’s the one, he’s the one.