A. Homes - In A Country Of Mothers

“Do you remember them being upset?”

“Not exactly. I remember other things; being taken to the hospital, lying on a metal table, a huge x-ray machine hanging over me. Through a little window in the door, I could see my parents’ faces on the other side. And all anyone said to me was, ‘Whatever you do, don’t move.’”

“What else?” Claire said.

“My grandparents visited, brought me a tiny stuffed dog I still have. Then my mom drove me home in our new car, and right when we pulled into the driveway, I threw up. My mother took me inside, gave me some apple juice, and then went back out to clean the car. I felt really guilty.”

“How old were you?”

“Three.”

“And you remember all that?”

“More,” Jody said.

“Go on.”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“It sounds incredibly frightening.”

“I wasn’t scared. When I think about it, I have the sensation of being frustrated, of people not listening. One time I had surgery on my ears, and my mother came into the operating room with me and held my feet while they gave me the gas. I was crying and saying I didn’t want it, because I remembered how bad it smelled and tasted from the last time, and all these guys were standing around with green masks on, and the ear doctor said, ‘It’s a new flavor, you’ll like it.’ And so I breathed the stuff and it was the same as always, and I was really, really mad, but there was nothing I could do. I passed out hating everybody.”

“Who were these people?” Claire asked, incredulous.

“My mother, the doctors. That’s how they did it then. They figured you could lie to a kid because kids don’t remember. Later I told my mother and she said no, that wasn’t true, it wasn’t like that. But it was. I’m not an idiot.”

“Are you angry now?”

Jody shrugged. “My teeth are puke gray; I could have a brain tumor at any moment. I’m not exactly pleased. I’d rather die than go to a doctor, but no, I’m not angry.”

“Why didn’t your parents protect you?”

Jody made a face at Claire. “They were right there, believing whatever the idiot doctors said because they didn’t know who else to believe. All they wanted was a healthy baby. They would’ve done anything if they thought it would make me better, bring back the other kid, or both.”

“If I were you I’d be furious.”

You’re not me, Jody thought, and how come you’re saying that? You’re never supposed to say how you’d react. This isn’t about you, this is about me. “What’s the point of being angry?” Jody said.

They sat in silence for a few minutes.

“It’s sad,” Claire said.

“Do I seem incredibly affected?” Then Jody quickly said, “Don’t answer. I don’t want to know.”

“I wonder about your parents.”

“Don’t,” Jody said.

“Don’t you think not only about the parents who adopted you but also the ones that gave you up?”

“The ones that gave me up weren’t parents. They were two people who probably didn’t know each other very well.”

Jody spent the last quarter of the session in silence. She’d always questioned whether getting sick as a child was a kind of failure to thrive. Was it from the stress of being without her natural mother, the anxiety of having the ghost of a dead kid hanging over her? Or was it completely unrelated, a genetic glitch, an unaffiliated infection? Still, even now, there was a weakness in her, and she could feel it lying dormant, waiting.

• • •

Night shooting. It sounded romantic — falling stars, midnight riverboat cruises. The idea of staying awake while the rest of the world slept was filled with possibilities. The crew started arriving between four and five in the afternoon at the edge of Central Park. They set up lights, dolly tracks, miles of electric cable, and the ever-present food table. According to union rules every location was required to have one ton of food, half hot, half cold, delivered at specifically timed intervals for the sustenance of cast and crew. The day before, the table had been heaped high with Twinkies, Hostess cupcakes, and fruit pies. “Someone’s birthday?” the cinematographer asked.

“Mine,” Harry said, popping a whole Twinkie into his mouth. With white filling squirting out of the corners of his thick lips, he turned to Jody. “Do you taste better than this?”

She stood there, dumbfounded.

Harry offered her the second Twinkie. “Want some?”

She shook her head, locking her jaw shut.

“It’s plump enough,” Harry had said, “but don’t you think it should be a little bigger?” He took a bite and threw the rest into the trash.

As the sky dropped down into darkness, Jody felt the rhythm of the city playing itself out around her; she also felt her throat hurting more and more. Early on, the passersby were people coming home from work. They stopped at the barricades for a few minutes but quickly grew tired of shifting from one aching foot to another. Kids on their way to nowhere hung out forever, always asking which movie this was. Guys who’d once done something on some other film stopped and wanted to know who was directing, who was on crew, and whether the production was hiring extra help. Later on, the after-dinner crowd, the theater crowd, the club crowd, ten thousand maniacs, prostitutes, two-bit muggers, and looney-toons paraded back and forth past the blue barricades marked POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.

The shot they were going for was a chase that ended at the fountain with the Plaza looming in the background. Carol Heberton was going to fire five shots into a bad guy, who’d spring a thousand leaks, fall backwards into the fountain, and turn the clear water pink. The fountain was so well lit that it was positively glowing. Carriages passed in front of it, and special assistants hired for the evening followed behind the horses with brooms and large dustpans. On film this would all look incredibly romantic. The best of New York suddenly intruded upon by the worst — compare and contrast, seduce and shock.

Even though it was summer, the night got chilly. Jody sipped endless cups of tea, and when Harry pulled her toward him some time after midnight, she let him hold her under his armpit. His body was warm, almost hot. Under the lights Harry looked sort of cute. His thin, silvery hair was slicked back, his bifocals resting on top of his head, his linen suit wrinkled, his custom-made shirt unbuttoned, his gray chest hair poking out. The rumpled look wore well after dark. Jody watched Harry deftly leading the actors and technicians through the scene, making changes on the spot. Strange things could happen in the middle of the night. But as soon as the sun crossed the horizon and the sour smell of the warming city wafted up from the sidewalks, everything good disappeared as quickly as a dream.

At six-thirty in the morning, when they couldn’t hold the location anymore, when the cinematographer was so bleary-eyed he could barely guarantee focus, they called it quits.

“Share a cab with me,” Carol Heberton said, not willing to wait for her car and driver. Jody was trying to flag down anything that moved.

“Two stops,” she told the driver, sliding into the cab after the actress.

“The Carlyle,” Heberton said. She was the old-fashioned kind of movie star — elegant, graceful, otherworldly — the Carlyle made perfect sense. Jody couldn’t picture her with Harry at the Royalton — so hip that inside, instead of a front desk, there was just a telephone you had to pick up in order to find out anything, including your own room number.

Carol Heberton turned to her. “Who are you and what do you do?”

“I work for Michael Miller.”

“Aah, you’re the one.”

The one what? Jody wanted to ask.