A. Homes - Things You Should Know

“It’s vinyl,” I heard the lifeguard tell someone.

The extreme stillness of the sky, the hot, oxygenless air, the water strong like bleach, was blinding, sterile, intoxicating, perfect.

The only other person who came to the pool regularly was a girl who had just been in the nuthouse for not eating. Deformedly thin, she would slather herself with lotion and lie out and bake. She was only allowed to swim one hour a day, and at noon her mother would carry out a tray and she had to eat everything on it—“or else I’m taking you back,” her mother would say.

“Don’t stand over me. Don’t treat me like a baby.”

“Don’t act like a baby.”

And then the mother would look at me. “Would you like half a sandwich?”

I’d nod and she’d give me half a sandwich, which I’d eat still standing in the water, goggles on, feet touching the bottom.

“See,” the mother would say. “He eats. And not only does he eat, he doesn’t make crumbs.”

“He’s in the water,” the girl would say.

In the evening I would crawl into my cave and read postcards from my mother— Venice is everything I thought it would be, France is stunning, London theater is so much better than Broadway. Thinking of you, hoping you’re having a fantastic summer. I am imagining you swimming across America. Love Mom.

“We’re still your parents, we’re just not together,” became the new refrain.

Later, when I started to date, when I would go to girls’ houses and their mothers and fathers would ask, “What do your parents do?” I’d say, “They’re divorced,” as though it were a full-time job. They’d look at me, instantly dismissive, as though I too was doomed to divorce, as though domestic instability was genetically passed down.

And then, later still, there were families I fell in love with. I remember sitting at the Segals’ dining room table, happily slurping chicken soup, looking up at Cindy Segal, who stood above me, bread basket in hand, glaring at me in disgust. “You’re just another one of them,” she said, dropping the bread, unceremoniously dumping me. Too stunned to swallow, I felt soup dribble down my chin.

“Don’t go,” Mrs. Segal said, as Cindy slammed upstairs to her room. After that, the Segals would sometimes call me. “Cindy’s not going to be here,” they’d say, “come visit.” I went a couple of times and then Cindy joined a cult and never spoke to any of us again.

My mother used to say, marry someone familiar, marry someone you have something in common with. The flatness of Susan, the hollow, the absence of some unnameable something — was familiar. The sensation that she was on the outside, waiting to be invited in, was something we had in common.

Never did Susan ask for an accounting of my past, never did she pull back and say—“You’re not going to hurt me, are you? You don’t have any weird diseases, do you? You’re not married, right?”

Susan looked at me once, squarely, evenly, and said, “Nice tie,” and that was it.

In the morning, after our first night together, she rearranged my furniture. Everything immediately looked better.

It is late in the afternoon; I have spent the day lost in thought. There are contracts spread across my desk waiting for my review. Outside, it is getting dark. I leave and instinctively walk uptown. All day I have been thinking about the house, about Mrs. Ha, and now I am heading toward our old apartment as though it were all a dream. I am walking, looking forward to seeing the grocer on the corner, to riding up in the elevator with Willy, the elevator man, to smelling the neighbors’ dinner cooking. I am thinking that once these things happen, I will feel better, returned to myself. I go three blocks before I catch myself and realize that I am moving in the wrong direction. I belong in Larchmont — Larchmont like Loch Ness. I hurry toward the station. Stepping onto the train, I have the feeling I am leaving something behind. I check my messages — Susan has left word, something about a client, something about something falling, something about it all being her fault, something about staying late. “I don’t know when,” she says, and then we are in a tunnel and the signal is lost.

I am going home. I imagine arriving at the house and having Sherika tell me Mrs. Ha is gone again. I picture changing into hunting clothes, a red-and-black wool jacket, an orange vest, a special hat, and going in search of her, carrying some kind of wooden whistle I have carved myself — a mother-in-law call. I imagine Mrs. Ha hearing the rolling rattle of my call Mrs. Haa…Mrs. Haaa Haa…Mrs. Ha Ha Ha…Mrs. Haaaaaahhhh —it ends in an upswing. She is roused from her dream state, her head tilts toward the sound of my whistle, and she is summoned home as mystically as she was called away.

I phone Sherika and ask — can she stay late, can she keep an extra eye on Mrs. Ha. I take a taxi from the train — there is the odd suburban phenomenon of the shared cab, strangers piling in, stuffing themselves into the back of the sedan, briefcases held on laps like shields, and then each calls out his address and we are off on a madcap ride, the driver tearing down the streets, whipping around corners, depositing us at our doorsteps for seven dollars a head.

Home. The sky is five minutes from dark, the floodlights are already on in the backyard. Kate and Mrs. Ha are down in the dirt, squatting, elbows resting on thighs, buttocks dropped down, positioned as if about to shit.

“Mrs. Ha, what are you doing?”

“I am thinking, Georgie. And I am resting.”

There is something frightening about it — Kate imitating Mrs. Ha, grotesque in her gestures, rubber-limbed like a circus clown, contorting herself for attention, more alive than I will ever be. Her freedom, her full expression terrifying me — I am torn between interrupting and simply watching her be.

“We are planting a garden,” Sherika says, straightening up, extending to her full six feet. “After lunch I took them to the nursery. We are putting in bulbs for spring.”

“Tulips,” Kate says.

Sherika drops sixty-nine cents of change into my hand and somehow I feel guilty, like I should have left her a hundred dollars or my credit card.

“What a good idea,” I say.

“We are just finishing up. Come on, ladies, let’s go inside and wash our hands.”

I follow them into the kitchen. They wash their hands and then look at me, as though I should have something in mind, a plan for what happens next.

“Let’s go for a ride,” I say, unable to bear the anxiety of staying home. Not knowing where else to go, I drive them to the supermarket. Sherika takes Mrs. Ha and I have Kate and we go up and down the aisles, filling the cart.

“Are you the apple of your daddy’s eye?” A clerk in the produce section pulls Kate’s hair and then looks at me. “There’s lots of these Chinese babies now, nobody wants them so they give them away. My wife’s sister adopted one — otherwise they drown ’em like kittens. You don’t want to be drowned, do you, sweetheart,” he says, looking at Kate again.

“She’s not adopted. She’s mine.”

“Oh sorry,” the guy says, flustered as though he’d said something even more insulting than what he actually said. “I’m really sorry.” He backs away.

Sorry about what? I look at Kate. Her head is too big. Her skin is an odd jaundicy yellow and now she’s playing some weird game with the cantaloupes, banging them against the floor. It occurs to me that the guy thought there was something wrong with her.

“Did you find everything you were looking for?” Sherika asks as we’re wheeling up the frozen foods toward the checkout.

“I’m finished.”

In a strip mall across the street, I notice an Asian grocery store. When the light changes, I pull in.