This is My Child
Nancy Bourne
Dorothy Winiker’s daughter had fallen in love and her mother disapproved. An old story. But not for Dorothy, whose daughter had never before disappointed her. The two had clung to each other since Ray, the husband and father, left for work one morning and never returned. There were several postcards from New York City and a few from Bangkok to the effect that he was on a spiritual search. Then nothing.
To support herself and her child, Dorothy had capitalized on her hobby, painting landscapes. She landed a teaching position in the art department at an exclusive private high school, where the wealthy parents discovered her paintings. The landscapes evolved over time into outsized abstracts and arresting collages. They were now selling at a clip in galleries throughout California. Everyone who knew art, knew Dorothy Winiker.
But Dorothy’s world revolved around Rachael, now eighteen. She hadn’t yet started college, had practically no experience with boys, and the man, whose name was Rick, was too old for her.
Rachael had met him at the Verizon store where she was having have her iPhone upgraded.
“He works there,” she told her mother. “He’s a wizard with computers, iPhones, you name it.”
“Is he selling phones?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I would think a wizard with computers would have other options.”
“He’ll have plenty when he finishes college.”
“Oh. Where’s he in college?”
“A community college in the East Bay somewhere, but he’s going to get his degree. He just needs to make the money first.”
“How old is he, Rachael?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Oh.”
When she first met him, Dorothy could see the attraction. He had the kind of chiseled upper lip and cleft chin that women find hard to resist. But he was barely taller than Rachael, his thin wisps of hay-colored hair signaled early balding, and when he talked to Dorothy, his eyes fixed somewhere above her head.
Rachael negotiated Berkeley in her usual competent way: she scored A’s in her classes and ran cross-country every afternoon. But on Friday nights she drove back home to Larkspur to spend the weekend with Rick.
Dorothy struggled to contain herself. She knew an outright attack would backfire. A mother’s disapproval was no weapon against the power of sex, and this was, as far as she knew, Rachael’s first plunge into that heady confusion.
Second semester began and Rachael was still spending every weekend with Rick. Dorothy could hold it in no longer. They were huddled together in the former garage, transformed by skylights into a bright, spacious studio. Rachael sat, as she often did, on a paint-encrusted wooden chair close to her mother, her eyes fixed on the canvas of red-orange streaks against a background of purple swirls.
“Sunset?” she asked.
“Bingo,” her mother replied. “You’ve got a better eye than those wannabes who write for the papers.”
“I’ve seen it, Mom. That same sunset. You got it nailed.”
Dorothy kissed the top of Rachael’s head. She took a breath, and then asked, “Aren’t there any boys you like at CAL?”
“Nope.”
“But sweetie, you aren’t giving them a chance. You keep rushing home every weekend.” She didn’t dare look at her daughter.
“All they do, Mom, is drink and party and whine about grades.”
“At least they’re in college.”
Rachael pushed her thick brown hair behind her ears and glared at her mother. “Rick’s dad drives a truck. His mom sells jewelry at Macy’s. That’s why you don’t like him.”
“That’s not fair,” her mother shot back.
“But it’s true.”
“I like him fine,” Dorothy lied. “But you’re so young.”
Rachael rose slowly to her feet and looked directly into her mother’s upturned face. “I love him,” she said.
“You think you love him . . .”
But Rachael was out the door.
~ ~ ~
Then one night during spring break, Rachael showed up with a ring. As shocked as she was, Dorothy’s first thought was, how pathetic. The tiny diamond was a mere spark on the yellow gold band.
“What does this mean?” she asked.
“I’m getting married.”
“No, you’re not.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have three more years of college. You’re much too young to settle down.” Words become clichés, she thought, because they’re so true.
“I’m going to marry him.”
For the first time, these two women faced off against each other.
“You hate him because he’s lower class.”
“I don’t want you to marry a loser.”
“You hate him because you’re jealous.”
“Why would I be jealous? The point is, he’s not good enough for you.”
“You don’t know him.”
“If you marry him, I won’t pay for your college.”
“I don’t care.”
They went to bed exhausted, unresolved. But by the next afternoon, a bargain was struck. Rachael would return Rick’s ring. To get that concession, Dorothy promised to pay for all four years of college. And if Rachael still loved Rick after her sophomore year, Dorothy reluctantly agreed they could marry. She felt certain that waiting a year would bring her daughter to her senses.
The following evening Rachael burst into the studio where her mother was gluing twists of red and purple silk onto a field of black acrylic. The girl’s blouse was in disarray, her hair tangled, her eyes red. She held in her palm the gold band. The diamond was gone.
“He threw it at me,” she sobbed. “He was so hurt. He threw it at me and the diamond fell out. I crawled on my hands and knees, but I couldn’t find it.”
Dorothy pulled her daughter into her arms and held her as she had always done.
“He spent all his money for this ring,” Rachael cried.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” Dorothy crooned, rubbing her daughter’s back, rocking her. But she was thinking, I would have expected just that.
~ ~ ~
Rachael came home rarely during the first semester of her sophomore year. She didn’t mention Rick, not even during Christmas vacation. Dorothy gloated in silence.
And then late one soggy night in February the phone rang. Dorothy had gone to bed early, wrapped to her chin in her voluminous duvet, immersed in a P. D. James mystery. Rain crashed onto the tile roof, beat against the windows.
“Mom?” Rachael’s voice sounded distant, frightened.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m in Reno.”
“You’re where?”
“We eloped. Don’t be mad.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Rick and I. We’re in Reno. We’re married.”
“No.” Don’t panic, Dorothy told herself. “You wouldn’t.”
“Please . . .”
“I thought Rick was out of your life.”
“He was.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you’d try to stop us.”
“You’re right about that.”
“Try not to be mad, Mommy.”
“You’re so bright; you have so much promise.” Stop! Dorothy told herself, but she couldn’t. “You’re throwing it all away.”
“Don’t Mom.” Rachael’s voice was suddenly strong. “I’m happy. I really am. I called because I wanted you to know that.”
“Well I’m glad somebody is.”
They sat in silence, holding their phones.
~ ~ ~
By the end of term, Rachael could no longer hide the reason for her hasty marriage.
“When were you planning to tell me?” Dorothy asked her daughter on the first day of summer break. They were sitting on Dorothy’s expansive redwood deck not facing each other.
“I thought you knew.”
“That you were having a baby?”
“Are you pleased?” Rachael asked.
“It’s my grandchild. I will love it.” Then she added, “But how are you planning to support a baby?”
“Rick’s working.”
“What about you?”
“I’m taking a year off.”
“I see.” Her cherished daughter was leaving college to have the baby of a man who sold telephones. She choked back a rush of questions, afraid if she spoke one word, her rage would drown her.
~ ~ ~
The baby arrived in late September, a six-pound boy with chicken legs and blotchy skin. And Dorothy fell in love. She cried when Rachael told her his name, Jack, for Dorothy’s father, and rushed straight to Target for a backward facing car seat.
She took a part-time position at her school so she could devote two full days a week to Jack. However, on her first visit with her grandson in Rachael’s cramped one-bedroom Berkeley apartment, her daughter held her off.
“Rick’s taking off from work this month, Mom, and we want to get to know Jack, just the two of us.”
“But I could give you a break some afternoon. You’ll both be exhausted.”
“Give us a month.”
“I could sleep on the sofa and give him a bottle in the middle of the night.”
“No.”
And so she waited. And finally one Tuesday morning in early November, in Rachael’s tiny living room, she held baby Jack close to her chest, warm against her, his soft, sweet breath on her neck, and she wept.
Those Tuesdays were the happiest days Dorothy could remember, happier even than when Rachael was a baby, because back then she’d been nervous and clumsy and sleep-deprived. Happier than when she’d sold her first painting, for fifty dollars.
Every Tuesday morning Dorothy would rock the baby and sing to him until he fell asleep. Later she would drive to Lake Merritt where she pushed him in the second-hand carriage she’d found on Craig’s List. She wore her binoculars around her neck and would point out the Black Crowned Night Herons nesting in the trees, while Jack’s eyelids drooped over his large blue eyes.
The routine varied as he grew; Dorothy drew dogs and cats and fire trucks for Jack, read Green Eggs and Ham over and over, wiped avocado and banana off his tiny cleft chin. At the park, they whisked down the slide together, her arm circling his compact little body. He took his first step on a Tuesday and said “Grandma” for the first time in her living room.
When Rachael returned to college, Dorothy offered to take Jack two days a week.
“Thank you, Mom,” Rachael said, “but I’ve found a daycare I like. Jack needs to be around other children.”
“What about Tuesdays?”
“If you really want him, I can arrange a four-day package.”
“I really want him,” she said, weak with relief.
~ ~ ~
Rachael dropped out of Berkeley midway through her junior year.
“It’s too much pressure,” she told her mother, “writing all those papers and being a good mom.”
“You have to get a degree!” Dorothy knew she sounded desperate. “You can’t get a decent job with a high school diploma.”
“I’ll finish college,” Rachael told her.
Two years later she transferred to Cal State East Bay in Hayward where she could take night courses when Rick was home with Jack. It took her three years going part-time, but she finally graduated with a degree in elementary education.
“I thought you were a history major,” Dorothy said at one of their rare dinners together.
“Jobs aren’t available in history, Mom, in case you haven’t noticed. We need the money.”
Dorothy still took care of Jack on Tuesdays, but once he was in school, her role was reduced to driving him to and from Little League practice or swimming lessons. She loved this boy, loved his wiry arms wrapped around her, loved the way he laughed at the jokes he told her that weren’t funny, loved the castles he created out of Lego, loved most of all taking out the magic markers and making wild pictures together.
Just as she’d done with Rachael, beginning when her daughter was so small she had to stand on a chair in the studio to cover large sheets of butcher paper with purple and red.
“Guess what this is?” Rachael would ask.
“A Rhino?”
“Guess again.”
“A Purple Spino?”
Giggles. “No, silly Mommy. A hefalump.”
“I never saw a hefalump with yellow spots.”
“It’s the Egyptian hefalump.”
“Well, you’ve left off the red wings.”
And she and Rachael, wearing one of Dorothy’s old tee-shirts, her tangled brown hair held back with barrettes, would splash watercolors onto their masterpieces spread out on the large cluttered table, giggling, admiring, inventing with rainbow fingers.
Having Jack to herself every Tuesday, for however short a time, almost made up for the loss she wouldn’t yet acknowledge.
~ ~ ~
And then an email: “Rick has left me.”
Dorothy sat frozen at the computer. Her hands shook when she finally picked up the telephone.
“What do you mean he left you?”
“He packed up his things and moved out.”
“When?”
“On Wednesday.”
She had so many questions. Was this permanent? And ten-year-old Jack? Drifting along in his pre-adolescent paradise.
“Why don’t you come over tonight?”
Silence.
Then, “Not now. I need to spend time with Jack.”
But I need to spend time with you, Dorothy wanted to say. I want to help. I want to be your mother. Instead she said, “How is Jack?”
“When I told him, he tore out a piece of paper from his notebook and drew a face with a downturned mouth and a tear.”
“Poor baby,” Dorothy said. “That’s so like him.”
“Yeah. Look, I don’t want to talk about it now. Okay?”
Dorothy wouldn’t give up so easily. She insisted on Rachael’s coming to dinner the next Friday night after work.
When she saw her daughter at the front door, exhausted from working all day with third graders, her thick brown hair pulled back into a messy pony tail, her blouse stained, she reached out to take her in her arms. But Rachael rushed past.
“Do you have any wine?” she asked and Dorothy scurried off to find a bottle.
“So what happened?” Dorothy asked when she returned.
“Can I just sit down?”
Rachael followed her mother to the living room. Large canvases covered the walls on three sides, two abstract pieces with gold-green triangles on a blue background, and a favorite, from her earlier days, of cows grazing in the moonlight. Sitting beside her daughter on the worn velvet loveseat, Dorothy waited.
“Things with Rick haven’t been good for a while.”
“How come?”
Rachael’s laugh sounded sour. “You should know.”
“I don’t.”
“Let’s put it this way. I have a college degree, I have a profession; I make more money than Rick. He couldn’t handle it.”
“Was he unfaithful?”
“Mom, you’re so old fashioned. I don’t know. Maybe. The truth is he got tired of accusing me of being tired of him.”
“Were you?”
“Tired of him?” Rachael’s voice quavered. “No.”
“What about Jack?”
“We’ll share custody. It won’t be nasty, I promise.”
“I love you,” Dorothy said. She put her arm around her daughter’s squared, muscular shoulders. She’s been working out, she thought.
Silence.
“For what it’s worth, honey, I know what it feels like.”
Rachael looked up. “What?”
“Being left. You know, by Ray, by your dad. You feel so helpless and you don’t understand.”
Rachael smiled for the first time. “You? Helpless? Mom, you’re a powerhouse. But you’re right. You didn’t understand. You left my dad no room.”
Dorothy stiffened. “How you do know that?” she asked. “You were ten.”
“I am your daughter.”
“What does that mean?”
Rachael sighed. “Look, Mom, I’m in a bad place. I can’t talk about it right now.”
But Dorothy persisted. “Do you think Rick left because you’re like me? A powerhouse, as you call it?”
“Good God, no!”
She’s upset, Dorothy told herself, as they stared out the bank of windows at the blue-green mountain in the distance, and she held her tongue. But later, at the kitchen table as Rachael nibbled absent-mindedly at her halibut steak and downed several glasses of wine, Dorothy could no longer keep silent.
“What will you do now?”
“I don’t know. Move probably.”
“Move? Where?” No, she wanted to scream.
“To San Jose. Close to my school. The commute from Berkeley is killing me.”
San Jose? Sixty miles from Larkspur, the traffic a nightmare.
“I’d like to help you,” she said. She was begging.
“There’s nothing you can do right now.”
Dorothy looked directly at her daughter. “Talk to me, Rachael!”
But Rachael was standing up, dropping her napkin onto her half-eaten dinner.
“I have to go.”
“I made a pecan pie.”
“I’m sorry, Mom; I’m really full.”
And she was gone. Dorothy sat at the kitchen table for a long time, working over and over in her mind what was happening to her daughter, to herself. There were so many possibilities.
Rachael clearly blamed her for denigrating Rick and undermining her marriage. Dorothy hated to admit it, but it was partly true. And, what was all that about being so powerful that Ray left? That seemed really unfair.
Dorothy finally dragged herself off to bed, where she lay with open eyes, her mind racing.
~ ~ ~
Rachael’s move to San Jose changed everything. Not that Dorothy was completely shut off from her family. She still saw them occasionally, but Jack was always too busy, with sports or friends or band practice.
“It’s not worth the drive,” her daughter would email.
“But I’d like to see him,” she’d email back.
“It’s just not a good time.”
She saw them for Christmas and the occasional birthday, always at her house, although she had visited the peach-colored adobe townhouse in San Jose. Jack always hugged her when she saw him and cheerfully answered her questions about his various teams, the books he was reading. He was a wonderful boy.
And then Rachael married again. This time to her school’s assistant principal whose wife had left him with two children. Dorothy was thrilled when Rachael invited her to the wedding.
“At the courthouse, Mom, very simple. Just family.”
Dorothy searched the stores for the perfect outfit. Unlike the Reno fiasco, this time she would be there, mother of the bride, celebrating. She chose a rose-colored silk dress with long sleeves and a tailored collar and black patent heels. The wedding party arrived in their school clothes.
The judge, apparently eager to return to the courtroom, hurried through the brief ceremony.
“Thanks for coming, Mom,” Rachael said and gave her a quick hug.
“Can I treat everyone to lunch?” Dorothy asked.
“That’s really nice,” Ron said, “but I have a meeting this afternoon at school and Jack has baseball practice.”
She cried as she fought the heavy afternoon traffic back to Larkspur.
~ ~ ~
Dorothy was now retired from teaching, but her experiments with fabric, found objects, and photographs kept her up late into the night, working, excited. With friends from her hiking club, she climbed the trails up the blue-green mountain, a camera in her backpack to catch unexpected bursts of color and shapes. Her wall pieces, meanwhile, were selling at exorbitant prices, in Chicago and New York. Which meant she had plenty of money for African safaris, Japanese gardens, eco-tours of Brazil and Alaska, the art museums of Europe. And she dashed off to New York at least twice a year. All first class.
Her oldest friends, whose children had grown up with Rachael, traded stories about their grandchildren, but since she rarely mentioned hers, they stopped asking. Except for Mary Lee, her long-time confidante, who wormed out the truth from Dorothy and then emailed Rachael, urging her to stay in contact with her mother, with no response.
As she grew older, Dorothy could go for months at a stretch without hearing from Rachael and Jack. She would tell herself they were busy, getting on with their lives. She knew, from a note Jack sent her, thanking her for his high school graduation present, that he was at UCLA. She had mailed him a check for a thousand dollars because she didn’t know what else to give him.
Dorothy invited Rachael to her exhibition openings, and she responded with emails of congratulations. And then the emails stopped. Invitations to dinners went unanswered. Phone calls disappeared into voice mail.
When she was working or traveling, Dorothy felt good about herself. And yet, at her exhibitions she always watched the crowds, expecting that maybe, this time, Rachael would walk in, and she could say, this is my child.
~ ~ ~
Rachael never appeared. But everyone else did. That is, the critics and collectors and art aficionados who flocked to Dorothy’s openings in the exclusive galleries where her work was shown.
On one rainy November afternoon, crowds clustered around a wall size image of a goat on exhibit at the JB Fine Arts Gallery near Union Square. Dorothy had first seen the photograph at a local history museum somewhere in Kentucky and had fallen in love with it. The goat seemed to be leaping out of the picture. She purchased the photograph, had it enlarged, and spent weeks staring at it propped against the wall of her studio.
“You’re tired of that dead looking grass,” she told the goat. “You want to escape.”
So she took out her acrylics and painted the grass blue. By the time she had finished, a purple goat was leaping out of the frame on bright red legs. You couldn’t not look at it.
“A stunning concept,” a newspaper critic raved to the crowd. “It’s so Chagall.”
Dorothy smiled graciously. She knew she would read that phrase in the next morning’s paper. She loved it. All of it. The attention, the excitement of an opening, the money, because her goat had sold for a tidy sum. But mostly she loved the work itself. The colors and textures and shapes and silliness; it was all play.
“I’m wild about farm animals,” she explained to the crowd, “and bright colors. So I just got started doctoring up that old goat. And there you have it.”
As she was talking, she caught a glimpse of a short man dashing into the gallery. Something about the way he bent his head forward under a soggy newspaper struck her as familiar.
“So this is your new stuff?” the man called from across the room.
The features in the white, fleshy face were no longer sharply chiseled and his wet head was nearly bald. But the man was unmistakably her former son-in-law.
“Rick,” she said, crossing the room, taking his cold hand in hers. “How long has it been?”
“A lifetime,” he said.
“What are you doing here?”
“Getting dry. I was working in the area. Got drenched and ran into the first door I saw open.”
“Where are you working?”
He flashed a smile of triumph. “Autodesk. I’m in computer design. Say, what do you think about Jack?”
She smiled at him, trying not to show how little she knew, how much she longed to know.
“Look,” she said. “The gallery’s closing in a half hour. Could you stick around? I’d like to . . . talk. You know, catch up?”
Rick didn’t seem to notice her confusion. “Sure,” he said. “I need some time to dry off.”
Dorothy could hardly pay attention to the chorus of admirers surrounding her. She set her mouth in a fixed smile and answered their questions mechanically. And then they were gone.
“I’ll lock up,” she told the manager.
“Wow!” Rick stood in the middle of the empty room, his arms spread out. “No wonder Rachael was always so intimidated by you.”
“Intimidated?” The word startled her.
“You bet. You’re a big deal!”
Dorothy forced a smile. “Looks like I was today. But you were talking about Jack.”
“Yep. I always said that kid was a genius. Now look at him. Working for Microsoft no less.”
For Microsoft? Doing what? She was tempted to beg. But she was too proud, too hurt, to do anything but nod her head.
Rick kept talking. There was something different about him, a confidence in his voice, in the way he met her eyes. “You know, I haven’t been up to Seattle yet,” he said. “Is Rachael’s condo really as fancy as Jack says it is?”
Could he be making this up? Had her daughter really moved away without telling her? And Jack? Her legs were trembling so badly she was afraid she might crumple.
“Are you okay?” Rick was peering at her face.
“Of course,” she managed to say. Her voice was stiffly polite. “Look, I’m sorry. I have to close up.”
“I’m off then,” Rick said. But he stood for several minutes, watching her. Then he opened the door and vanished into the rain.
After he left, Dorothy circled the room, running her fingers over the slick acrylic surfaces, willing herself to remember her joy in bringing to life all these shapes and colors. Bringing to life the goat, its beard jaunty under all that paint, its red legs leaping out of the frame. But right now, she could find no joy in it. She told herself tomorrow she would look Jack up on the internet and get in touch. He could tell her how to reach her daughter. She could write to Rachael, beg her. But not tonight.
And so she locked the door, turned out the light, and moaned into the darkness, “What did I do? What in God’s name did I do?”
Nancy Bourne
Dorothy Winiker’s daughter had fallen in love and her mother disapproved. An old story. But not for Dorothy, whose daughter had never before disappointed her. The two had clung to each other since Ray, the husband and father, left for work one morning and never returned. There were several postcards from New York City and a few from Bangkok to the effect that he was on a spiritual search. Then nothing.
To support herself and her child, Dorothy had capitalized on her hobby, painting landscapes. She landed a teaching position in the art department at an exclusive private high school, where the wealthy parents discovered her paintings. The landscapes evolved over time into outsized abstracts and arresting collages. They were now selling at a clip in galleries throughout California. Everyone who knew art, knew Dorothy Winiker.
But Dorothy’s world revolved around Rachael, now eighteen. She hadn’t yet started college, had practically no experience with boys, and the man, whose name was Rick, was too old for her.
Rachael had met him at the Verizon store where she was having have her iPhone upgraded.
“He works there,” she told her mother. “He’s a wizard with computers, iPhones, you name it.”
“Is he selling phones?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I would think a wizard with computers would have other options.”
“He’ll have plenty when he finishes college.”
“Oh. Where’s he in college?”
“A community college in the East Bay somewhere, but he’s going to get his degree. He just needs to make the money first.”
“How old is he, Rachael?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Oh.”
When she first met him, Dorothy could see the attraction. He had the kind of chiseled upper lip and cleft chin that women find hard to resist. But he was barely taller than Rachael, his thin wisps of hay-colored hair signaled early balding, and when he talked to Dorothy, his eyes fixed somewhere above her head.
Rachael negotiated Berkeley in her usual competent way: she scored A’s in her classes and ran cross-country every afternoon. But on Friday nights she drove back home to Larkspur to spend the weekend with Rick.
Dorothy struggled to contain herself. She knew an outright attack would backfire. A mother’s disapproval was no weapon against the power of sex, and this was, as far as she knew, Rachael’s first plunge into that heady confusion.
Second semester began and Rachael was still spending every weekend with Rick. Dorothy could hold it in no longer. They were huddled together in the former garage, transformed by skylights into a bright, spacious studio. Rachael sat, as she often did, on a paint-encrusted wooden chair close to her mother, her eyes fixed on the canvas of red-orange streaks against a background of purple swirls.
“Sunset?” she asked.
“Bingo,” her mother replied. “You’ve got a better eye than those wannabes who write for the papers.”
“I’ve seen it, Mom. That same sunset. You got it nailed.”
Dorothy kissed the top of Rachael’s head. She took a breath, and then asked, “Aren’t there any boys you like at CAL?”
“Nope.”
“But sweetie, you aren’t giving them a chance. You keep rushing home every weekend.” She didn’t dare look at her daughter.
“All they do, Mom, is drink and party and whine about grades.”
“At least they’re in college.”
Rachael pushed her thick brown hair behind her ears and glared at her mother. “Rick’s dad drives a truck. His mom sells jewelry at Macy’s. That’s why you don’t like him.”
“That’s not fair,” her mother shot back.
“But it’s true.”
“I like him fine,” Dorothy lied. “But you’re so young.”
Rachael rose slowly to her feet and looked directly into her mother’s upturned face. “I love him,” she said.
“You think you love him . . .”
But Rachael was out the door.
~ ~ ~
Then one night during spring break, Rachael showed up with a ring. As shocked as she was, Dorothy’s first thought was, how pathetic. The tiny diamond was a mere spark on the yellow gold band.
“What does this mean?” she asked.
“I’m getting married.”
“No, you’re not.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have three more years of college. You’re much too young to settle down.” Words become clichés, she thought, because they’re so true.
“I’m going to marry him.”
For the first time, these two women faced off against each other.
“You hate him because he’s lower class.”
“I don’t want you to marry a loser.”
“You hate him because you’re jealous.”
“Why would I be jealous? The point is, he’s not good enough for you.”
“You don’t know him.”
“If you marry him, I won’t pay for your college.”
“I don’t care.”
They went to bed exhausted, unresolved. But by the next afternoon, a bargain was struck. Rachael would return Rick’s ring. To get that concession, Dorothy promised to pay for all four years of college. And if Rachael still loved Rick after her sophomore year, Dorothy reluctantly agreed they could marry. She felt certain that waiting a year would bring her daughter to her senses.
The following evening Rachael burst into the studio where her mother was gluing twists of red and purple silk onto a field of black acrylic. The girl’s blouse was in disarray, her hair tangled, her eyes red. She held in her palm the gold band. The diamond was gone.
“He threw it at me,” she sobbed. “He was so hurt. He threw it at me and the diamond fell out. I crawled on my hands and knees, but I couldn’t find it.”
Dorothy pulled her daughter into her arms and held her as she had always done.
“He spent all his money for this ring,” Rachael cried.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” Dorothy crooned, rubbing her daughter’s back, rocking her. But she was thinking, I would have expected just that.
~ ~ ~
Rachael came home rarely during the first semester of her sophomore year. She didn’t mention Rick, not even during Christmas vacation. Dorothy gloated in silence.
And then late one soggy night in February the phone rang. Dorothy had gone to bed early, wrapped to her chin in her voluminous duvet, immersed in a P. D. James mystery. Rain crashed onto the tile roof, beat against the windows.
“Mom?” Rachael’s voice sounded distant, frightened.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m in Reno.”
“You’re where?”
“We eloped. Don’t be mad.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Rick and I. We’re in Reno. We’re married.”
“No.” Don’t panic, Dorothy told herself. “You wouldn’t.”
“Please . . .”
“I thought Rick was out of your life.”
“He was.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you’d try to stop us.”
“You’re right about that.”
“Try not to be mad, Mommy.”
“You’re so bright; you have so much promise.” Stop! Dorothy told herself, but she couldn’t. “You’re throwing it all away.”
“Don’t Mom.” Rachael’s voice was suddenly strong. “I’m happy. I really am. I called because I wanted you to know that.”
“Well I’m glad somebody is.”
They sat in silence, holding their phones.
~ ~ ~
By the end of term, Rachael could no longer hide the reason for her hasty marriage.
“When were you planning to tell me?” Dorothy asked her daughter on the first day of summer break. They were sitting on Dorothy’s expansive redwood deck not facing each other.
“I thought you knew.”
“That you were having a baby?”
“Are you pleased?” Rachael asked.
“It’s my grandchild. I will love it.” Then she added, “But how are you planning to support a baby?”
“Rick’s working.”
“What about you?”
“I’m taking a year off.”
“I see.” Her cherished daughter was leaving college to have the baby of a man who sold telephones. She choked back a rush of questions, afraid if she spoke one word, her rage would drown her.
~ ~ ~
The baby arrived in late September, a six-pound boy with chicken legs and blotchy skin. And Dorothy fell in love. She cried when Rachael told her his name, Jack, for Dorothy’s father, and rushed straight to Target for a backward facing car seat.
She took a part-time position at her school so she could devote two full days a week to Jack. However, on her first visit with her grandson in Rachael’s cramped one-bedroom Berkeley apartment, her daughter held her off.
“Rick’s taking off from work this month, Mom, and we want to get to know Jack, just the two of us.”
“But I could give you a break some afternoon. You’ll both be exhausted.”
“Give us a month.”
“I could sleep on the sofa and give him a bottle in the middle of the night.”
“No.”
And so she waited. And finally one Tuesday morning in early November, in Rachael’s tiny living room, she held baby Jack close to her chest, warm against her, his soft, sweet breath on her neck, and she wept.
Those Tuesdays were the happiest days Dorothy could remember, happier even than when Rachael was a baby, because back then she’d been nervous and clumsy and sleep-deprived. Happier than when she’d sold her first painting, for fifty dollars.
Every Tuesday morning Dorothy would rock the baby and sing to him until he fell asleep. Later she would drive to Lake Merritt where she pushed him in the second-hand carriage she’d found on Craig’s List. She wore her binoculars around her neck and would point out the Black Crowned Night Herons nesting in the trees, while Jack’s eyelids drooped over his large blue eyes.
The routine varied as he grew; Dorothy drew dogs and cats and fire trucks for Jack, read Green Eggs and Ham over and over, wiped avocado and banana off his tiny cleft chin. At the park, they whisked down the slide together, her arm circling his compact little body. He took his first step on a Tuesday and said “Grandma” for the first time in her living room.
When Rachael returned to college, Dorothy offered to take Jack two days a week.
“Thank you, Mom,” Rachael said, “but I’ve found a daycare I like. Jack needs to be around other children.”
“What about Tuesdays?”
“If you really want him, I can arrange a four-day package.”
“I really want him,” she said, weak with relief.
~ ~ ~
Rachael dropped out of Berkeley midway through her junior year.
“It’s too much pressure,” she told her mother, “writing all those papers and being a good mom.”
“You have to get a degree!” Dorothy knew she sounded desperate. “You can’t get a decent job with a high school diploma.”
“I’ll finish college,” Rachael told her.
Two years later she transferred to Cal State East Bay in Hayward where she could take night courses when Rick was home with Jack. It took her three years going part-time, but she finally graduated with a degree in elementary education.
“I thought you were a history major,” Dorothy said at one of their rare dinners together.
“Jobs aren’t available in history, Mom, in case you haven’t noticed. We need the money.”
Dorothy still took care of Jack on Tuesdays, but once he was in school, her role was reduced to driving him to and from Little League practice or swimming lessons. She loved this boy, loved his wiry arms wrapped around her, loved the way he laughed at the jokes he told her that weren’t funny, loved the castles he created out of Lego, loved most of all taking out the magic markers and making wild pictures together.
Just as she’d done with Rachael, beginning when her daughter was so small she had to stand on a chair in the studio to cover large sheets of butcher paper with purple and red.
“Guess what this is?” Rachael would ask.
“A Rhino?”
“Guess again.”
“A Purple Spino?”
Giggles. “No, silly Mommy. A hefalump.”
“I never saw a hefalump with yellow spots.”
“It’s the Egyptian hefalump.”
“Well, you’ve left off the red wings.”
And she and Rachael, wearing one of Dorothy’s old tee-shirts, her tangled brown hair held back with barrettes, would splash watercolors onto their masterpieces spread out on the large cluttered table, giggling, admiring, inventing with rainbow fingers.
Having Jack to herself every Tuesday, for however short a time, almost made up for the loss she wouldn’t yet acknowledge.
~ ~ ~
And then an email: “Rick has left me.”
Dorothy sat frozen at the computer. Her hands shook when she finally picked up the telephone.
“What do you mean he left you?”
“He packed up his things and moved out.”
“When?”
“On Wednesday.”
She had so many questions. Was this permanent? And ten-year-old Jack? Drifting along in his pre-adolescent paradise.
“Why don’t you come over tonight?”
Silence.
Then, “Not now. I need to spend time with Jack.”
But I need to spend time with you, Dorothy wanted to say. I want to help. I want to be your mother. Instead she said, “How is Jack?”
“When I told him, he tore out a piece of paper from his notebook and drew a face with a downturned mouth and a tear.”
“Poor baby,” Dorothy said. “That’s so like him.”
“Yeah. Look, I don’t want to talk about it now. Okay?”
Dorothy wouldn’t give up so easily. She insisted on Rachael’s coming to dinner the next Friday night after work.
When she saw her daughter at the front door, exhausted from working all day with third graders, her thick brown hair pulled back into a messy pony tail, her blouse stained, she reached out to take her in her arms. But Rachael rushed past.
“Do you have any wine?” she asked and Dorothy scurried off to find a bottle.
“So what happened?” Dorothy asked when she returned.
“Can I just sit down?”
Rachael followed her mother to the living room. Large canvases covered the walls on three sides, two abstract pieces with gold-green triangles on a blue background, and a favorite, from her earlier days, of cows grazing in the moonlight. Sitting beside her daughter on the worn velvet loveseat, Dorothy waited.
“Things with Rick haven’t been good for a while.”
“How come?”
Rachael’s laugh sounded sour. “You should know.”
“I don’t.”
“Let’s put it this way. I have a college degree, I have a profession; I make more money than Rick. He couldn’t handle it.”
“Was he unfaithful?”
“Mom, you’re so old fashioned. I don’t know. Maybe. The truth is he got tired of accusing me of being tired of him.”
“Were you?”
“Tired of him?” Rachael’s voice quavered. “No.”
“What about Jack?”
“We’ll share custody. It won’t be nasty, I promise.”
“I love you,” Dorothy said. She put her arm around her daughter’s squared, muscular shoulders. She’s been working out, she thought.
Silence.
“For what it’s worth, honey, I know what it feels like.”
Rachael looked up. “What?”
“Being left. You know, by Ray, by your dad. You feel so helpless and you don’t understand.”
Rachael smiled for the first time. “You? Helpless? Mom, you’re a powerhouse. But you’re right. You didn’t understand. You left my dad no room.”
Dorothy stiffened. “How you do know that?” she asked. “You were ten.”
“I am your daughter.”
“What does that mean?”
Rachael sighed. “Look, Mom, I’m in a bad place. I can’t talk about it right now.”
But Dorothy persisted. “Do you think Rick left because you’re like me? A powerhouse, as you call it?”
“Good God, no!”
She’s upset, Dorothy told herself, as they stared out the bank of windows at the blue-green mountain in the distance, and she held her tongue. But later, at the kitchen table as Rachael nibbled absent-mindedly at her halibut steak and downed several glasses of wine, Dorothy could no longer keep silent.
“What will you do now?”
“I don’t know. Move probably.”
“Move? Where?” No, she wanted to scream.
“To San Jose. Close to my school. The commute from Berkeley is killing me.”
San Jose? Sixty miles from Larkspur, the traffic a nightmare.
“I’d like to help you,” she said. She was begging.
“There’s nothing you can do right now.”
Dorothy looked directly at her daughter. “Talk to me, Rachael!”
But Rachael was standing up, dropping her napkin onto her half-eaten dinner.
“I have to go.”
“I made a pecan pie.”
“I’m sorry, Mom; I’m really full.”
And she was gone. Dorothy sat at the kitchen table for a long time, working over and over in her mind what was happening to her daughter, to herself. There were so many possibilities.
Rachael clearly blamed her for denigrating Rick and undermining her marriage. Dorothy hated to admit it, but it was partly true. And, what was all that about being so powerful that Ray left? That seemed really unfair.
Dorothy finally dragged herself off to bed, where she lay with open eyes, her mind racing.
~ ~ ~
Rachael’s move to San Jose changed everything. Not that Dorothy was completely shut off from her family. She still saw them occasionally, but Jack was always too busy, with sports or friends or band practice.
“It’s not worth the drive,” her daughter would email.
“But I’d like to see him,” she’d email back.
“It’s just not a good time.”
She saw them for Christmas and the occasional birthday, always at her house, although she had visited the peach-colored adobe townhouse in San Jose. Jack always hugged her when she saw him and cheerfully answered her questions about his various teams, the books he was reading. He was a wonderful boy.
And then Rachael married again. This time to her school’s assistant principal whose wife had left him with two children. Dorothy was thrilled when Rachael invited her to the wedding.
“At the courthouse, Mom, very simple. Just family.”
Dorothy searched the stores for the perfect outfit. Unlike the Reno fiasco, this time she would be there, mother of the bride, celebrating. She chose a rose-colored silk dress with long sleeves and a tailored collar and black patent heels. The wedding party arrived in their school clothes.
The judge, apparently eager to return to the courtroom, hurried through the brief ceremony.
“Thanks for coming, Mom,” Rachael said and gave her a quick hug.
“Can I treat everyone to lunch?” Dorothy asked.
“That’s really nice,” Ron said, “but I have a meeting this afternoon at school and Jack has baseball practice.”
She cried as she fought the heavy afternoon traffic back to Larkspur.
~ ~ ~
Dorothy was now retired from teaching, but her experiments with fabric, found objects, and photographs kept her up late into the night, working, excited. With friends from her hiking club, she climbed the trails up the blue-green mountain, a camera in her backpack to catch unexpected bursts of color and shapes. Her wall pieces, meanwhile, were selling at exorbitant prices, in Chicago and New York. Which meant she had plenty of money for African safaris, Japanese gardens, eco-tours of Brazil and Alaska, the art museums of Europe. And she dashed off to New York at least twice a year. All first class.
Her oldest friends, whose children had grown up with Rachael, traded stories about their grandchildren, but since she rarely mentioned hers, they stopped asking. Except for Mary Lee, her long-time confidante, who wormed out the truth from Dorothy and then emailed Rachael, urging her to stay in contact with her mother, with no response.
As she grew older, Dorothy could go for months at a stretch without hearing from Rachael and Jack. She would tell herself they were busy, getting on with their lives. She knew, from a note Jack sent her, thanking her for his high school graduation present, that he was at UCLA. She had mailed him a check for a thousand dollars because she didn’t know what else to give him.
Dorothy invited Rachael to her exhibition openings, and she responded with emails of congratulations. And then the emails stopped. Invitations to dinners went unanswered. Phone calls disappeared into voice mail.
When she was working or traveling, Dorothy felt good about herself. And yet, at her exhibitions she always watched the crowds, expecting that maybe, this time, Rachael would walk in, and she could say, this is my child.
~ ~ ~
Rachael never appeared. But everyone else did. That is, the critics and collectors and art aficionados who flocked to Dorothy’s openings in the exclusive galleries where her work was shown.
On one rainy November afternoon, crowds clustered around a wall size image of a goat on exhibit at the JB Fine Arts Gallery near Union Square. Dorothy had first seen the photograph at a local history museum somewhere in Kentucky and had fallen in love with it. The goat seemed to be leaping out of the picture. She purchased the photograph, had it enlarged, and spent weeks staring at it propped against the wall of her studio.
“You’re tired of that dead looking grass,” she told the goat. “You want to escape.”
So she took out her acrylics and painted the grass blue. By the time she had finished, a purple goat was leaping out of the frame on bright red legs. You couldn’t not look at it.
“A stunning concept,” a newspaper critic raved to the crowd. “It’s so Chagall.”
Dorothy smiled graciously. She knew she would read that phrase in the next morning’s paper. She loved it. All of it. The attention, the excitement of an opening, the money, because her goat had sold for a tidy sum. But mostly she loved the work itself. The colors and textures and shapes and silliness; it was all play.
“I’m wild about farm animals,” she explained to the crowd, “and bright colors. So I just got started doctoring up that old goat. And there you have it.”
As she was talking, she caught a glimpse of a short man dashing into the gallery. Something about the way he bent his head forward under a soggy newspaper struck her as familiar.
“So this is your new stuff?” the man called from across the room.
The features in the white, fleshy face were no longer sharply chiseled and his wet head was nearly bald. But the man was unmistakably her former son-in-law.
“Rick,” she said, crossing the room, taking his cold hand in hers. “How long has it been?”
“A lifetime,” he said.
“What are you doing here?”
“Getting dry. I was working in the area. Got drenched and ran into the first door I saw open.”
“Where are you working?”
He flashed a smile of triumph. “Autodesk. I’m in computer design. Say, what do you think about Jack?”
She smiled at him, trying not to show how little she knew, how much she longed to know.
“Look,” she said. “The gallery’s closing in a half hour. Could you stick around? I’d like to . . . talk. You know, catch up?”
Rick didn’t seem to notice her confusion. “Sure,” he said. “I need some time to dry off.”
Dorothy could hardly pay attention to the chorus of admirers surrounding her. She set her mouth in a fixed smile and answered their questions mechanically. And then they were gone.
“I’ll lock up,” she told the manager.
“Wow!” Rick stood in the middle of the empty room, his arms spread out. “No wonder Rachael was always so intimidated by you.”
“Intimidated?” The word startled her.
“You bet. You’re a big deal!”
Dorothy forced a smile. “Looks like I was today. But you were talking about Jack.”
“Yep. I always said that kid was a genius. Now look at him. Working for Microsoft no less.”
For Microsoft? Doing what? She was tempted to beg. But she was too proud, too hurt, to do anything but nod her head.
Rick kept talking. There was something different about him, a confidence in his voice, in the way he met her eyes. “You know, I haven’t been up to Seattle yet,” he said. “Is Rachael’s condo really as fancy as Jack says it is?”
Could he be making this up? Had her daughter really moved away without telling her? And Jack? Her legs were trembling so badly she was afraid she might crumple.
“Are you okay?” Rick was peering at her face.
“Of course,” she managed to say. Her voice was stiffly polite. “Look, I’m sorry. I have to close up.”
“I’m off then,” Rick said. But he stood for several minutes, watching her. Then he opened the door and vanished into the rain.
After he left, Dorothy circled the room, running her fingers over the slick acrylic surfaces, willing herself to remember her joy in bringing to life all these shapes and colors. Bringing to life the goat, its beard jaunty under all that paint, its red legs leaping out of the frame. But right now, she could find no joy in it. She told herself tomorrow she would look Jack up on the internet and get in touch. He could tell her how to reach her daughter. She could write to Rachael, beg her. But not tonight.
And so she locked the door, turned out the light, and moaned into the darkness, “What did I do? What in God’s name did I do?”
