The Seven Year Bitch Read online

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Duncan asked.

  “It certainly is,” I said, looking at Russell, who had come in behind him followed by a completely filthy Humbert.

  “It was just lying there in the woods. What can I say, my son appreciates nature,” Russell said.

  “For you, Mama,” Duncan said, holding it up to me, my first gift from him. I imagined I would keep Hairy and Over Forty in a special box to be eventually joined by collages and beaded necklaces and ashtrays made out of clay.

  Later, when most of the guests had left, Gra and I were cleaning up in the kitchen and Russell was serving drinks to a few of our friends who had driven up for the day. Duncan was asleep in his crib, his forehead covered in stickers, holding a dragon puppet he had received in one hand and the Hairy and Over Forty DVD in the other. I had taken idyllic photos of him, but I’d decided against a video after the one Russell had made the year before.

  “I want you to sit down,” I told a very pregnant Gra. “It’s not good for you to work like this.”

  “I hate this so much,” she said.

  “What?”

  “This.” She made a sweeping gesture over her remarkably small stomach. “I want it out! I so uncomfortable.”

  “It’ll be over soon,” I said. “Here’s what I owe you.” I handed her eight hundred dollars in an envelope.

  She took the envelope but kept hold of my hand along with it. “Do me big favor. I tell Charlie I only make half this for this job.”

  “Okay. I don’t tell Russell what I do with my money either,” I said, thinking of all I had spent on Shasthi against his will. “That’s very American.”

  “I send rest of money to my father in Thailand. I own a orchard there. I allow him live there even if I hate him.”

  “Why do you hate him?”

  “He held gun to my head when I was young.”

  I couldn’t believe how good her English had gotten and she was already using everyday American expressions like “held a gun to my head.”

  “He put gun right here,” she said, pointing to her temple.

  “He tried to kill you?” I said, hoping Duncan couldn’t hear from his crib.

  “He held gun to my head and I say to him go ahead and kill me please, kill me, because you are nothing, and I come from you, so I am nothing.”

  “Why are you going to send him this money?” I said. She should be saving up for a one-way ticket back to Thailand, maybe go on some more chaperoned dates and start again with another husband, or for a studio apartment in Queens.

  I thought of my nice father asleep on the couch in the other room with Curry Puff and Humbert asleep on his chest and feet, exhausted from building forts with Duncan, his biggest crime not paying for my third year of business school. My father had brought a Nerf football and spent an hour with him on the lawn throwing it to him and saying things like, “Good arm, son!” and “Yup, I think we’ve got another leftie.” Now that was a role model for a boy, I thought, not a man who sat hunched over the New Yorker literally crying over a bad review.

  I thought of Shasthi, constantly sending money home to Guyana.

  “You have nice father,” she said. “If father nice, you nice. If father scum, you scum.”

  I was so impressed she already knew words like scum.

  “Actually that’s not how it works here in America,” I said. “It’s the first thing you learn in therapy. Your parents are absolutely no reflection on you. That’s how I was able to marry my husband. I have the worst mother-in-law on earth. I mean, she never held a gun to my head, but her voice is like a gun. But Russell is not his mother. He is not his parents. You are not your father.”

  “I think Izzy teach me a lot,” Gra said.

  I always loved a house after a party. I loved the exhausted feeling and the mess. I didn’t want to clean it up. On the coffee table were enormous phalluses made out of Play-Doh that were handmade by Russell’s friend Ben, the exalted author of the great novel Shoes and Socks, the one who had filmed last year’s suicide video. The balls were huge and rainbow-hued; he must have spent quite a bit of time forming them.

  I picked up my digital camera and started looking at some of the photos. I had captured Duncan’s face when he saw the fairyland, marveling in awe. I stood there looking at photos on the tiny screen, and then I stopped and stared at one.

  It was of Russell, my husband, sitting on Ben’s lap with his arms around his neck. The next five photos were all of Russell sitting on Ben’s lap in a loving embrace. Ben was a good six inches taller than Russell and much bigger and more muscular. Russell, on his lap, looked like a girl. I felt disgusted. Why would he want his son to see him this way?

  What would he do at Duncan’s next birthday, I wondered, give Ben a blow job while shooting himself in the head on the national news?

  Gabe Weinrib, I couldn’t help think, would never sit on a man’s lap.

  I walked out onto the deck where they were sitting, giggling like schoolgirls, obviously drunk on scotch again.

  “Why did you sit on Ben’s lap?” I asked.

  “I didn’t sit on Ben’s lap,” he said.

  “Yes you did.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Russell said.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Not only was he now gay, he was stupid. “I have the evidence! Someone took pictures of it!” I said. “Is this what you want in the family album?”

  “It was just a joke,” he said.

  “Why did you feel the need to sit on his lap? On your son’s birthday?”

  I could hear Charlie Cheney talking loudly now to my father in the living room about how Gra wouldn’t mind cutting his toenails right now if he wanted her to. Russell had managed to make Gra and Charlie’s marriage look like Ward and June Cleaver’s. They were happy compared to us! Gra was fulfilled, learning a language, starting a business. And so what if she had to cut Charlie’s toenails? There were women who came to this country who had to cut a hundred toenails a day for less than minimum wage and she only had to cut his probably once a month at the most. And what was so wrong with Charlie asking her to? I myself hadn’t cut my own toenails since business school. But why, the question still remained, would Russell actually sit on a man’s lap and then lie about it? How would I ever, for instance, erase the image from my mind and, say, have sex with him ever again? How was I going to forgive this one? I thought. How was I ever going to forgive this one?

  I went into my room and sat on my bed with a pile of essays. I had just judged a contest—In 100 Words or Less Tell Us Your Most Positive Aha Moment—for O, The Oprah Magazine. The winner got $100,000 and an all-expense-paid trip to Chicago to appear on Oprah’s show. I’d gotten a hundred boxes of essays, earned $40,000, and gotten a call from a member of Oprah’s staff who said that Oprah personally wanted to give me a bonus for doing such a great job. I’d waited anxiously for my “bonus” (what could it be—$5,000, $10,000, $25,000?—I wondered) until it arrived: a copy of the book Live Your Best Life: A Treasury of Wisdom, Wit, Advice, Interviews, and Inspiration from O, The Oprah Magazine. Shasthi loved it, even if I was less than thrilled.

  And before that I judged Iron Baby Organic Formula—In 100 Words or Less Give Us Your Best Good New Mom Tip for Exhausted Moms. The $25,000 grand prize went to a woman whose husband was in Iraq and who suggested taking a “Babymoon” when your baby was born—an at-home vacation where you take two weeks for just you and your baby. The first-prize winner’s tip was to string lights in the woods behind your house for your child’s birthday party and tell your child fairies had done it. Her husband was also in Iraq.

  The new contest that had arrived in fourteen boxes was Lavish Cosmetics: In 100 Words or Less Tell Us Why You Want to Stay Forever Young.

  I couldn’t wait to lose myself in the essays.

  Helen Jacobson

  Wading River, NY

  For life is fleeting!

  Oh I wish I could stay young,


  Ravishing,

  Ever beautiful.

  Victorious, I would go to my 20th High School reunion.

  Everyone would stop to admire me

  Remarking on my

  Youthful, glowing appearance. “Ha-Ha,” you

  Oldsters, I would say

  Under my breath of course

  Never once looking back at

  Gerald Gerson, the boy who broke my heart.

  Marni Flood

  Oakland, CA

  Young is a state of mind, not a physical state. As an Aquarius I will always stay young, for my mind will explore new things—music, dance, the arts. I will find a man who always knows I am young and beautiful even when we’re forty-five. I want to stay young forever because I don’t want to die, but then again, whoever really does? Please send me a free coupon for your Lavish Lashes Mascara. I love it!!!

  Bruce Hollandar

  Reno, Nevada

  I am a man writing this for my wife even though the rules say you have to be a woman. My wife deserves to win because she is beautiful. I’m in a wheelchair due to an on the job accident and I told her you don’t have to be my girl anymore, but she said she’ll always be my ladyluck. She is young when she makes me laugh. We laugh so much. I could not have a better wife. I haven’t written this much since High School.

  The phone rang in the kitchen and I got up reluctantly to answer it.

  “Is that Izzy?”

  “Oh, hi, Deirdre-Agnes,” I said. She’d never called us at the country house before. Instinctively I looked out the window to see if she’d pulled up in our driveway and was calling from her car. “I’ve been meaning to call you.”

  “I need my crib back now!” she said. “My baby is three months old and I can’t keep him in the bassinet.”

  “Well, something terrible has happened,” I said. “There was a terrible flood in our apartment.”

  “A flood?” she said.

  “The ceiling in Duncan’s room fell in and crushed the crib. Everything was water damaged. It’s just terrible! I didn’t call you, because we were checking with our insurance company to see if it would cover the cost of the crib, but they don’t cover floods.”

  “How is that a flood?” she asked.

  “Well it was flooding conditions, it was raining. Remember that huge rainstorm last month?”

  “No,” Deirdre-Agnes said.

  “Well, I’m sorry, we had to throw the whole thing out. Listen, I have to go because I have company.” I thought of Russell sitting on the company’s lap.

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “Well, we’re having the ceiling repaired and repainted.”

  “That’s not what I mean. What are you going to do about it?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked impatiently.

  “To replace my crib!” she said.

  “Well, Deidre-Agnes, what would you like me to do to replace your old used crib?”

  “I’d like you to send me a check for fifteen hundred dollars so I can buy a comparable one.”

  “Fifteen hundred dollars!” I said. “For a used, scratched crib that you gave me. I suggest you go on eBay and buy one for about a hundred dollars, and I’ll happily send you the money.”

  “A hundred dollars!” she said. “You better give me back my crib.”

  “It doesn’t ex-ist,” I said. Why had I made up this terrible story? I asked myself. I had never regretted anything more in my entire life. I didn’t even want to see the crib again, let alone lay my son down to sleep in it. I had made a terrible mistake and there was nothing I could do about it.

  “Well, then we’ll see you in court,” she said in her Irish brogue so it sounded like “caaaaaart” and hung up.

  23

  I sat on the couch in the lobby of our building watching Duncan stare in awe at the Christmas tree. Every year before I had a baby, I had resented this tree with its Sesame Street and Disney ornaments and its huge Elmo topper. I had grimaced at the super’s wife when she appeared each year to assemble and decorate it, apologized for it when I led company past it, noted other buildings’ more grown-up holiday offerings, which involved fairy lights and branches of berries and pots of poinsettia and velvetribboned wreaths. But now that Duncan loved this tree, I loved this tree. I even appreciated the building’s nod to its Jewish residents: three little plush Hasidic man-dolls standing between a Santa-clad Shrek and Winnie-the-Pooh.

  Duncan stood before this tree as if it were a shrine, only looking, never touching, filling me with pride. Other children attacked it while the doormen scowled.

  A man I knew from the third floor walked into the building and approached the couch where I was sitting. I couldn’t remember his name, but I knew him because he had put Humbert in a Jude Law movie, which was exciting even though Hum ended up on the cutting-room floor, probably because Jude Law had felt threatened by my dog’s movie-star good looks and acting skills.

  The man was with his son, the same age as Duncan, who walked right up to the tree and manhandled an ornament of a bear character I wasn’t familiar with yet, Calamine pink with a rainbow on its stomach. I felt oddly grateful for every character I wasn’t familiar with yet, as if it meant I was that much closer to my old self. If I didn’t know SpongeBob SquarePants or let the Wiggles into my house, I wasn’t completely lost. Similarly, I tried to hold on to my femininity by refusing to learn the names of the different dinosaurs. When I accidentally learned which one was the triceratops one day at the Museum of Natural History it was like unwittingly growing a pair of balls.

  “Look, Dad,” the odd little third-floor neighbor-boy said.

  “No touching,” Duncan said, like a little museum guard.

  The man, whose name I didn’t know and never would because now it was about three years too late to ask, sat down next to me on the couch. I was a little surprised because we’d never really talked, just smiled when we passed each other in the lobby. We hadn’t even had the usual elevator pleasantries because he usually took the stairs. All I really knew about him was he wasn’t married to his son’s mother and she’d been in a documentary about giving birth in their apartment. I’d been there the night her labor began and the camera and lighting crews came.

  I never understood why people wanted to do anything in their apartments. I didn’t even want to eat dinner in my apartment, let alone give birth in it. In fact, if I could afford it, I wouldn’t even sleep there. I’d do what Coco Chanel did and leave my apartment every night to check into a nice hotel.

  As soon as he sat down next to me I felt he was available.

  “Duncan’s gotten so big,” he said.

  “So’s yours,” I said. “He’s beautiful.” I always said that no matter how strange-looking a child was.

  “It’s gone so fast,” he said.

  I hated when people said things like “It’s gone so fast” because to me it had gone really slowly.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s amazing.”

  The man suddenly stood, reached up to the light fixture hanging low over our heads, and unscrewed the bulb a little, turning it off. “That’s a lot better,” he said. The light hadn’t bothered me but I was impressed when a man took charge of his environment that way. I wondered what it would be like to live with a man like that. If Russell was annoyed by a lightbulb, he would either live with it for the rest of his life or call Rashid up to fix it. Rashid was up at our apartment so often that once when Duncan had drawn a picture of our family he had included Rashid, a very tall, angular scribble standing between short, round Mommy and Daddy scribbles.

  Despite the macho lightbulb incident, the man had always seemed slightly gay to me. Not gay really—I didn’t doubt he liked women—but a little effeminate. He smelled good. He was very attractive, I thought, but he seemed like the type of man who might sleep in a nightgown or knit by the fire in his country house. I wasn’t at all attracted to him. Not in a romanticcomedy-I’d-really-end-up-with-him-in-the-end way but in a real I-wonder
-what-the-woman-who-gave-birth-in-her-apartmentsees-in-him way.

  “Working on any good movies?” I said.

  “What? Oh, yeah, I have a lot going on,” he said.

  I knew from this he meant he was breaking up with his girlfriend.

  “I hear ya,” I said, with a funereal nod.

  “No, I don’t think you understand.”

  “Oh, I think I do.”

  “Things aren’t working out for me and my girlfriend.”

  We sat and watched our children in silence for a minute.

  “My girlfriend, Natasha, just isn’t stable. She goes off on me for no reason. Rages at me. I can’t take it anymore. One minute she’s screaming at me that I’m not a man, and then she’s fine but I’m not fine. We were supposed to go to Miami last week, and the day we were supposed to leave she was yelling at me that I had done something wrong, I had packed wrong, and the next minute she’s holding the tickets and saying, ʽOkay, let’s go,’ and I’m thinking, There’s no way I would go with you now.”

  “That’s awful,” I said, thinking I had done the exact same thing to Russell the last time we had gone to Miami.

  “I really can’t take it anymore. I took an apartment in Brooklyn.”

  I couldn’t say anything. Usually when someone told me he was getting a divorce I would say something glib like “That’s great,” or “You’re lucky,” or “Cheers, darling!” In fact I’d said all three to my cousin just a few weeks before—“That’s great, you’re lucky, cheers, darling!”—and held up an imaginary glass of champagne. But I couldn’t say anything right then because it was suddenly too painful and fresh, as if he were still blood-spattered and holding the scissors he’d used to cut the umbilical cord in his apartment.

  As he continued complaining about Natasha he could have been Russell complaining about me. It seemed that despite the fact that I wouldn’t want to deliver a baby in my apartment, we were exactly the same wife.