Bernice drops heavily to the floor and rolls over an array of wooden blocks; she finishes lying flat on her belly and begging for more.
“Look at that!” I say. “Now tell her she’s good.”
“
“Now see if she’ll give you her paw.”
“What do I say?”
“Say, ‘Give me your paw, Bernice.’”
“What a stupid name,” she says, but even her pseudo-cool can’t hide her excitement at Bernice’s response. “
Bernice looks blank but scrambles to a sitting position, panting. Her eyes remain on Maddie, rapt.
I rack my brain. What did Miss Waxman say? “Try ‘Shake.’”
Maddie straightens up like a toy soldier. “
I begin to wonder about the dark side of my little angel, but Bernice doesn’t seem to mind. On cue, the dog lifts a furry foreleg and paws at the air between her and Maddie.
Maddie’s eyes grow panicky. “What’s she doing?”
“She wants you to take her paw.”
Bernice puts down her paw, then raises it again.
Maddie looks at me, then back at Bernice. “Will she bite me?”
“Of course not. Come on, Maddie, just touch it. She won’t bite you. I promise.”
Bernice puts down her paw and raises it again in the air.
Maddie reaches out tentatively with her fingers, her child’s hand just inches from Bernice’s soft white paw. I flash on Michelangelo’s depiction of God creating Adam, which doesn’t seem half as significant for western civilization.
“Just touch her, Maddie. She wants to be your friend.”
Maddie bites her lip and reaches closer to Bernice’s paw.
Bernice whimpers and rakes at the air.
“Go ahead.
“Can I?” she says worriedly.
“Yes, go ahead.”
And finally, she does.
35
We sit uncomfortably in the darkness, on the carpeted steps that serve as seats in the elementary school auditorium. To the left is my mother, her face carved from a solid stratum of granite, like the dead presidents hewn into Mount Rushmore. Her hair has been sculpted into curls and is as rigid as her gaze, which does not waver from the stage, much less look at me. I figure that we will speak again in the year 3000 or when she quits smoking, whichever comes first.
Making a cameo appearance to her left is Tyrannosaurus Ex, Sam, in a Burberry suit with a stiff white collar. I told him I would picket his law firm if he didn’t come today. He gives me a billable smile when I look over.
Next to him is Ricki, looking entirely entertained, and not only by the class play. She has brought along her three sons so the requisite brothers will be present, and has even offered me half price on the therapy I will need to recover from today. That’s what friends are for, she said with a smile. And she forgives me for lying to her, and even for returning the blue Laura Ashley dress.
To my right, of course, is a man who looks like Robert Goulet and smells like the perfume counter at Thrift Drug: my father. He’s the only one having fun at this thing. He guffaws at all the punch lines and claps heartily after all the songs. He nudges me in the ribs four times, whenever Maddie enters in her costume, knocking the camcorder into the back of the man in front of me. When I finally ask him to stop, he says out loud: “Wadja say, doll?”
So I don’t ask again. I put the rubber rectangle of the camcorder to my eye and watch my daughter take center stage. Dressed as a carrot, naturally, she joins hands with her new friend, Gretchen the tomato, and they take the hands of a bunch of broccoli and several tulips to sing about the things that sprout up in the spring, tall and proud in the warm sun.
Like children.
In no time at all I’m in tears, looking through the rubber eye of the camcorder, hating that it will record my sniffles with Japanese high fidelity. In the background will be a group of first graders warbling faintly about springtime.
I find myself thinking of Armen, then Sam and my father. And how sometimes it doesn’t turn out like it’s supposed to.
Love dies, people die. Mothers and fathers break apart, the ties that bind unraveling as freely as a ball of yarn, with one tie remaining: the microscopic skein of DNA that resurfaces in our children, in permutations never imagined. Maddie’s the only tie between Sam and me; I’m the only tie between my parents. We all relate to our children, but none of us to each other.
The tears wet the eyepiece of the costly camcorder, and I have to set it down in my lap. My father puts his aromatic arm around me, and then my mother does the same, which only makes me cry harder.
For all we lost.
For all we never had.
Sam passes me a monogrammed handkerchief and I try to recover, grateful for the darkness. Meanwhile Ricki looks like she wants me on Prozac, and the carrot is hugging the tomato. The house lights come up, threatening to expose my hysteria, but in the light I can see that everyone else is crying too. I’m just another hysterical mother in an audience of hysterical mothers applauding their baby vegetables.
Maddie finds me in the crowd and grins, gaptoothed.
I clap loudly for her, hands over my head. I look over and my father is doing the same thing. Scary.
My mother puts a note on my lap. On the front it says GRACE ROSSI. “What’s this?” I ask her.
“Sam passed it down to you.”
“Sam?” I look over at Sam, but he’s whistling for Maddie, doing his best impression of a real father. I pick up the note and something falls into my lap.
It’s a new photo of Tom Cruise. The note says:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Maddie’s adorable,
Wanna see my tattoo?
I look past Sam and over the parents, teachers, and kids. Underneath the EXIT sign, in the back row of the auditorium, is a handsome man in a black raincoat.
And no rain bonnet at all.
Acknowledgments
Kay Thompson’s wonderful character, Eloise, likes to make things up. So do I, which is important to keep in mind as you read this book. Even though I have worked for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, doing the very same job as my character Grace Rossi—indeed, in the very same courthouse—
The first thanks go, as always, to my agent, Linda Hayes, and to my editor extraordinaire at HarperPaperbacks, Carolyn Marino. I am blessed in knowing these terrific women and in becoming their friend, even if I never write another book. But since I intend to write other books, I’ll be the grateful recipient of their judgment in knowing what makes a book work, their insight into how to improve a manuscript, and their commitment to me and my writing. Not to mention their sensitivity to my care and feeding. The Old Testament would call what they
