her veggies, and life was so peaceful, wasn’t it––and dry martinis in the pleasant garden. Not to mention her gleaming perfect teeth.
Kitty spent her days deadheading roses, and in winter she and Geraldine took long snowy walks, and basically, that’s all she needed. The talk of children never intruded on their conversations, perhaps because Ben thought it was too late in the day to start a family. And possibly because he was so awfully busy.
That was just fine with Kitty. She had never pictured herself burping squalling babies and wiping tender bums. Her mother seemed to have detested children. Come to think of it, her mother seemed to have detested her. So Kitty figured, at times a little wistfully, that no maternal genes had passed her way. Any stirrings in that direction had been promptly buried next to her youthful indiscretions.
And Ben? What he needed was a wife, a replacement for a former one. Someone there when he came home. Someone who appreciated his substantial paycheck and didn’t complain about his evenings locked away with his rare coin and stamp collection. Someone by his side at office parties, cooperative in bed, but not too demanding. And by all accounts they suited each other perfectly.
* * * *
Then one fateful night, when the frogs were croaking like an ancient chorus, the telephone shattered life as they knew it.
“Jerry’s dead,” Ben announced, his face as white as flour.
“What?”
“My brother Jerry. He’s dead.”
“Oh dear God! I can’t believe it. Who called?”
“Silverman. Along the Palisades Parkway. Apparently he was speeding, lost control, crashed into a guardrail and flipped. But Christ, he had to have that damn high-powered Ferrari, didn’t he?”
“Oh Ben, how awful. How very awful. But where’s Paul?”
“Paul’s with Esther, Kitty. He’s with Esther.”
* * * *
Ben kept putting off a discussion about Paul. Finally, on the way to the funeral, at the eleventh hour so to speak, he was forced to muster up some courage.
“Kitty Cat, you understand, I will have to see to Paul.”
“What do you mean––see to?”
“Well, the truth is he has nowhere to go now, does he? You know the situation.”
Kitty’s heart sank. “I thought you said he was with Esther.”
“Sweet Baby, you and I both know he can’t stay with Esther. Didn’t I tell you just last week? She’s been searching for a retirement home for some time now. Oh Kitty Cat, why don’t you ever pay attention? You know full well she can hardly manage on her own. In any event, Esther is too old and too fragile to take on a thirteen-year-old boy.”
Her pulse danced wildly on her wrist. “Who’s going to take him?” she asked.
“He’s my nephew, Kitty, my only nephew.”
“Perhaps a good boarding school then?”
“No, Paul’s been through an awful lot. He’s the kind of kid that does not do well without a mother. He’s rather fragile and needs a good deal of support.”
“Oh no, Ben. Oh no, oh no. I don’t know a damn thing about mothering. I don’t know a damn thing about adolescents. In fact, I was a lousy adolescent; everybody said so. How could I be of any help to him? Besides, it will all fall on me, every damn bit of it. When are you ever available, I’d like to know? Please Ben, please. I don’t want this in my life.” Hysteria was forming in her throat. “I just can’t do it,” she screamed. “I just can’t do it!”
“Oh, Kitty, Kitty. You’re putting me between a rock and a hard place. There are things in life one has to do,” he said calmly. “Like it or not––this is one of them.”
* * * *
Paul came up the walk lugging two bulging backpacks and an exhausted looking Teddy bear. A tall gangling sort of boy with an angry complexion, and sad gray eyes. Kitty managed a chirpy welcome. He responded with a growl, and dropped his backpacks by the stairs. She took him up to his room. A lovely room that looked out on mostly hardwoods. When she pointed this out to him, he disdainfully glanced out the window. And it was quite clear to Kitty––he would have been just as happy with a slag heap.
Mealtimes became stressful. The easy banter between husband and wife soon evaporated. Ben bent over backwards in an effort to make conversation. Paul’s responses were limited to shrugs and monosyllables. He spent his meals hovering over his food, pushing it this way and that, scowling, as if suspicious they might attempt to poison him.
Paul lolled about listlessly for a week or so, and Ben, not knowing what to do, enrolled him in the local junior high school. His first day there, Kitty spent pacing up and down. She agonized about her fate and obsessed on their future, which at the moment appeared to be black as pitch. At four o’clock she could hardly breathe as she waited for him to walk up from the bus stop.
When he walked through the door, her fingers were tightly crossed behind her back. She said, “How was it?”
“Shitty,” he said. He climbed the stairs and slammed the door behind him.
Kitty’s heart sank. It was already May. How was she ever going to get through the summer? How was she going to endure three sultry months of Paul lying around, flipping channels and drinking endless colas? She begged Ben to send him to a nice camp, up in the Poconos, maybe, or how about Vermont? Ben diplomatically approached him. The boy’s answer was a resolute, “Fuck camp.”
“Are you going to allow him to talk to you like that, Ben?”
“We’re going to have to be patient, Kitty. Please remember he’s a kid whose mother abdicated her responsibility early on. In many ways, I suppose, he sees himself as an abandoned child. From what you’ve told me about your mother, I would think you might be able to understand that. And Jerry, well, you knew Jerry. His heavy drinking, an endless string of housekeepers, not to even mention his numerous female attachments. You couldn’t exactly call it a structured home life, could you? And now––his father dies in a car crash. Be fair, Kitty. This isn’t easy.”
* * * *
In mid-May Mr. Chandler came around and rototilled, but Kitty felt too paralyzed to plan a garden. Meditation proved impossible. Deep breathing didn’t help. The whole house seemed to be engulfed in an atmosphere of gloom. As May drew to a close she began to realize she would have to take refuge in her garden, or be strangled by her own relentless rancor.
Then one late June morning, when she was down on her hands and knees, tucking soil around some baby lettuces, a shadow cast itself across her busy hands. Startled, she looked up and saw Paul standing there and, eying a hoe lying by her side, a grisly thought flitted through her mind: Oh God, he’s going to try to kill me.
“What are those?” he said.
“Lettuces,” she sputtered. “Little innocent baby lettuces.” She feared she might have to defend them from his flip-flops.
“Beautiful,” he said.
