A. Homes - In A Country Of Mothers

They took the bus up Sixth Avenue to Fifty-third Street. Before looking at anything, they ate. Eating always made Jake happy. He had a sandwich, Jell-O salad, Coke, chocolate cake, and frozen yogurt. Claire had cottage cheese and black coffee. They both finished feeling virtuous. Now there was no way they could be in bad moods.

In his adolescent way—“cool”—Jake expressed interest in Picasso and Pollock, but what really got him going was the helicopter hanging from the ceiling on the third floor and the red sports car parked next to it. “Unbelievable,” he said, circling both exhibits.

They ended up in the gift shop. “Buy me this,” Jake said, immediately picking out a bright multicolored truck intended for someone much younger.

“Look around a little,” Claire said.

He pretended to and came back with the same toy. “I want this.” It was something she knew Adam would be happy with. Jake would have fun putting it together, but he’d never play with it. She took the box from him and turned it over. Forty dollars. If she bought it for Jake, as soon as Adam saw it there’d be a fight.

Claire picked up another box, an airplane for thirty-five dollars. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll get you the truck, and the plane for Adam.”

“It’s supposed to be my special day,” Jake said. “I’m supposed to get a present — just me, not him too.”

“I have two children. I can’t buy one a present and not the other.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Then you have to get me something better.”

“What about a book?”

“Oh, that’s real exciting.” Jake went carefully around the store and ended up pointing out an interesting collection of painted wooden pieces that could be put together to create creatures or abstract designs. It was much more age-appropriate than the truck.

“Do you really want it?” Claire asked. It was a great toy, something she might even tinker with herself but unlike anything Jake had ever asked for.

“It’s called Zollo,” he said.

Claire bent down and looked a the price in the case. “It’s a hundred and ten dollars.”

Jake got serious. “It’s very cool. Buy it for me. Please.”

Claire didn’t want to ruin the good time they were having. Good times were fragile these days. One wrong move and Jake could lapse into a week-long sulk that would put the whole house in a foul mood. Thirty-five for the plane, a hundred and ten for the painted wood.

“Will it make you happy?”

“Definitely,” Jake said.

She handed the cashier her credit card. In the end it was cheaper than therapy.

H arry took Jody on one arm and Carol Heberton on the other and walked the two of them off the location at the Forty-second Street library. They’d spent the morning getting the scene just right — Carol researching psycho killers while, unbeknownst to her, the one stalking her was watching. Leading the two women up the street like they were blind old ladies, Harry pressed close to Jody’s ear. “I would’ve invited you to have dinner alone with me,” he whispered, “but I knew you’d decline.”

Jody could feel the thick flesh of Harry’s lips tickling her lobe.

He held open the door to Aux Trois Mousquetaires on Forty-fifth Street, and Jody quickly ducked into the restaurant after Heberton.

“I hope you’re happy,” Harry said.

She was — very. Lunches like this with producers, famous directors, and movie stars, drawing stares and whispers from across a room — that was part of what she’d come to New York looking for.

“It’s your going-away party,” Michael, her boss, said, kissing her cheek. “Hello and goodbye.”

Jody wanted to rub the side of her face, to ask the waiter for a special cloth and a glass of bottled water to resterilize the spot.

Despite what everyone was saying, she knew the lunch wasn’t really for her. Jody’s impending departure was an excuse to take everyone out for a morale booster: martinis and snails.

“It’s only the beginning,” Harry said, after the waiter took their drink order. “There’ll be more.”

“You look like you’re about to cry,” Raymond said to Jody. “Interesting, tears and snot — but not really the stuff of a good meal, would you say?”

Jody blinked and took a deep breath. She wouldn’t cry.

“Don’t worry,” Carol Heberton said. “In L.A. everyone has lunch, sometimes two and three times a day.”

“Let’s paint the child a mural,” Harry said, passing around the cup of crayons that sat next to the sugar bowl. Everyone took one and dutifully started scrawling on the white butcher paper laid over the tablecloth.

Two women came up to Carol, and before they even finished asking “Are you …?” Carol had taken pen and paper and signed her name in huge, nearly floral script.

Harry looked up from his escargot and smacked his buttery lips. “Only the true cognoscenti know directors.”

“P.S.” Michael said to Jody. “Could you stop by the office this afternoon and do whatever it is you do to the Xerox? It’s not working again and I have some scripts to send out.”

“Take a lesson,” Jody said.

“Well, before you go anywhere, I want you to teach your replacement how to do it.”

“Replacement?” Jody said. “You mean you’re not having my chair bronzed?”

The main courses arrived on huge heated plates, and for a few moments of almost prayerful silence they all focused on what was before them, going at it with knives and forks, oohs and ahs. When they’d satisfied their most immediate needs, the remains were passed in a circle so everyone could taste. Lunch ended with espresso all around and a full course of desserts — fruit tarts, crème brulée, and a serving of profiteroles that arrived in front of Jody in a pool of chocolate sauce, a flaming sparkler in the middle. Jody expected that at any minute a long line of waiters would pull up to the table and start singing “Happy Birthday,” “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” or something like that. Fortunately, no one came.

Harry looked down at Jody’s profiteroles and poked at them tentatively with his knife. “Probably not unlike what’s mounted on your chest, in both size and density.”

Jody carefully pulled out the flaming sparkler, then turned to Harry. “If those are mine, this must be yours.”

Harry smiled, took the sparkler, and dunked it upside down in his wineglass. “Touché,” he said, holding up the still-sputtering stick of metal.

“God, this is a good time,” Carol Heberton said. “It’s been so long since I’ve had such fun.”

After they finished eating and Michael had handed over his platinum card — the one he called his “plutonium card”—Harry insisted they wait while the busboys cleared the table and the crayons were passed again and everyone finished the drawing, making bright waxy circles and nasty comments about the spots of wine and food that had stained the surface. Harry directed them all to sign their work, rolled the mural up like a diploma, and presented it to Jody.

“Go forward,” he said, holding the restaurant door open.

Jody stepped out into the humid afternoon and immediately felt sick, overwhelmed, and in need of a nap.

“Back to the trenches,” Michael said.

Harry belched, rubbed his belly, and belched again. “A lovely lunch, Michael. Thank you. I shan’t forget it.”

“Don’t forget about the Xerox,” Michael said to Jody.

“Thanks,” Jody said, and they all walked back downtown toward the two huge granite lions that marked the spot where the movie would end.

At eleven-thirty that night, Peter Sears called Jody from the pay phone on the corner of Charles and Bleecker. “I have to come up,” he said. “It’s an emergency.”