Rose was too level-headed to fall for Ward. But this is how it is, isn’t it? Simpering fools conquer men and nations, strong-headed women in seven-league boots, unused to being the love object, swoon and are lost.
Then I heard about it all. How they met (she was transplanting some perennials; he was bored and trying to find someone to play croquet with him). How Ward liked to chase Mary Rose around the fringes of the Baron property, tackling her and biting the insides of her elbows, the backs of her knees. How Ward composed love poems about Mary Rose’s mastery of the sickly rhododendrons by the driveway that no one had ever coaxed into bloom.
The fire flickered exhaustedly in the green marble fireplace. Stella fingered my car keys, lost interest and dropped them on my foot, waved her hands up at the window frames, and babbled aisle aisle aisle. I nursed her on the right side. I nursed her on the left side. She slept. I heard how Ward invited Mary Rose to the set to watch him direct a commercial for flavored seltzer—Ward was a director of high-profile commercials that garnered fancy prizes—then, during a break, locked them in the greenroom, where they made love on the linoleum. How he sent Mary Rose not flowers, but slim books whose sole purpose in life was to charm. How he looked her in the eyes when she spoke, instead of around the room or at the spot on the wall just behind her head. How he made her laugh.
“What did the hurricane say to the palm tree? Hold on to your nuts, this is going to be one hell of a blow job.” Mary Rose slapped her thighs, wept with delight.
Oh no.
“In the poem about the rhododendron?” She knuckled the tears out of her eyes with no regard for the hyper-sensitive skin just beneath. She was in love. “He compared my way with shrubs with how I can mend an empty heart.”
“Shouldn’t it be fill an empty heart? Or mend a broken heart?” I bounced Stella, even though she was mewing in a way that said, “Cut it out or I’ll shriek.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I just looked at her. I wanted to say, Mary Rose, it will matter. It will!
This wasn’t entirely true. It will matter, until you have a child, then it won’t matter again. Look at me. I have eyes for no one but Stella. I am moved to tears by the thought of Stella’s feet, those rosy toes as round as marbles, the soles of her feet like the faces of two little eyeless old men. One time I put her entire foot in my mouth, just to see what it was like. The foot tasted like Stella smelled: Downey, Desitin, and clean baby. I was planning for a day in the future when she would be an eye-rolling teen and accuse me of sticking my foot in my mouth and I would say, “No, but I stuck your foot in my mouth—when you were about six months old!” Dumb, dumb, dumb beyond belief. But it’s one of the wonders and powers of motherhood: It pleases me, so who cares?
“It’s ready!” cried Audra, rushing from the kitchen with mincing steps, the kind meant to represent hurry. “Mary Rose, honey, I hope you can stomach my parsnip and clam stuffing. I’ve had some people complain that the parsnip is too rooty and the clam is too gooey, but I think they complement each other perfectly. Just like you and Ward.”
I followed Mary Rose into the dining room. To the back of her head I said, “Rooty and Gooey sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” Maybe I am not simply a terrible mother; I may also be a terrible friend.
Mary Rose ignored me, sat where Audra told her to. The walls in the vast dining room and breakfast room were painted with gold leaf that had blistered and buckled in the dampness.
Suddenly, hubbub! Or rather hubbub, Baron style. Little Hank, Ward, and Dicky rolled in, beating their sleeves to warm up, stamping their feet, as if they’d just come in from a dogsled race in a blizzard instead of basketball in the driveway. They behaved like an overzealous amateur theater group given the improvisation hectic! causing Audra to rush back into the kitchen to find a corkscrew. One was found. Much to-do about the wine, opening it and pouring it.
“Where’s the GD corkscrew?” said Little Hank. “Dad, did you leave the GD corkscrew on the boat?” Little Hank, in a kelly-green polo shirt and madras slacks, always looked like he’d been beamed up straight from a fraternity kegger, circa 1964.
I got the feeling Little Hank was trying to change the subject, something they’d been talking about before being called in to dinner. Or maybe I was simply projecting, based on what I know about Dicky: Romeo’s Dagger was the high point of his life, The Big Game meets The One That Got Away, and was a topic he could flog to death. Dicky dropped into his chair. He was wearing a huge blue plaid flannel shirt, exercise pants with stripes up the side. Unlike the other Barons, who were of medium height and build, Dicky was tall and curiously wide. He had hips. Next to his brothers and parents, he looked as if he was gestated next to a nuclear power plant. Chernobyl Dicky, I thought, everything about him big and pink.
“Nowadays a simple life crisis isn’t even good enough,” he was saying. He fiddled with the silverware, hit the prongs of the salad fork with one finger and sent it flying into the middle of the table. “You’ve also got to be training for the Olympics. Your life has to have a hook, is what I’m saying. The crisis itself isn’t even good enough anymore. Do you hear what I’m saying? Who was that little girl in Texas who got stuck in the well and had to have that guy with no collarbone rescue her? That story would never have been made today. Not even for TV.”
“Have another drink, Dick,” said Ward, winking at Little Hank. Little Hank winked back too enthusiastically, grateful to be in on one of Ward’s jokes. I sighed. Other people’s family dynamics.
Audra brought in a high chair from another room. I assumed it had belonged to her boys, even though it looked too new, with a special nontoxic glaze and padded with a seat cover trimmed with a yellow ruffle. Once Stella was tucked into the chair, she popped a crinkly red thumb into her mouth. When she was unsure of her surroundings she never cried, just became as uninteresting as possible. Maybe she would grow up to be a spy.
Ward pretended to sit in the air right next to Mary Rose, then scooted her over with his hips so he could share the chair with her. “Not enough chairs, Ma. Guess I’ll have to share with Mary Rose.” He wrapped his arms around her arms, laid a photogenic cheekbone on her shoulder. Ward also has one of those forever-boyish forelocks around which decades-long Hollywood careers have been built. What is it about a man with good hair?
Big Hank stood at the head of the table, methodically carving the turkey into disks with an electric carving knife. He hummed like a bored dentist. There was something with the turkey. It was white and shiny. All I could think of was a burn victim. Of course. Roasted without its skin. Audra’s devotion to low fat extended even to the calorie-fest of the year. Around the table, bowls were passed: steamed carrots, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, whole-wheat rolls as heavy as billiard balls.
Only in sitcoms do women usually make quips and asides about the god-awful cooking of their hostess. Mostly, we smile and offer compliments; the worse the meal, the more effusive the compliments. I watched Mary Rose take a dry oval of charred bird and try to disguise it with two ladles of gravy, which turned out to be steamed and whipped rutabagas.
“Yum! This is a real taste treat!” said Mary Rose. She put the fork in her mouth, then took it out with the food still on it. “Mrs. Baron, meant to tell you, before I leave tonight let me take in the calla lilies for you. It’s getting a little nippy out there.”
“I’ll nippy you,” said Ward, walking his fingers up Mary Rose’s side in the direction of her breasts.
“Ward.” Mary Rose squirmed, delirious as a fourteen-year-old on her first date.
“Ward!
