A New Lu (23 page)

34

I spent the weekend in seclusion. My e-mail bottomed out within twenty-four hours of the subscribers' delivery date. Now I'm back at work, wading through a fate worse than failure. Success.

Copies are flying off the newsstands and generating the kind of mail usually reserved for political tell-alls. Tai says we need to stay close to the reader on this one, give her personal attention, as in answer every one of the e-mails “The Pregnant Pause” receives. Even if I could type sixty words a minute for a solid week I could not keep up. Never mind that I don't have the medical or psychological savvy to deal with letters “Dear Abby” would hesitate to tackle. For instance:

“Don't we have enough problems without encouraging self-indulgent middle-aged women to bear genetically morbid children to justify their egotistical whims?”

Or this one:

“At last! Someone who understands. Even though I detest men, I'm meant to be a mother. Given the chance, I'd rear a male child to be the kind of man I've never found.”

Or:

“Thanks to your columns on self-acceptance, I had come to embrace my childless state as natural. Now you flaunt your late-life fertility in my face. I will never forgive your betrayal. Please cancel my subscription.

Or, even better:

“No rational woman wants to give birth to her grandchildren.”

And so forth. Tai is jeté-ing down the halls. She brought in champagne for a toast I had to forgo. The reason for her elation? The blurb in the
Montclair Times
is only the beginning. I'm to be interviewed by the statewide
Caller-Times
tomorrow. Right now, the staff's gone to lunch on Tai. I said I needed a nap. But I'm really sitting here trying to figure out exactly what my next move should be.

Cy thinks I should back out. “There are crazy people out there. Not like before, when nutzo fans just wanted to catch sight of the object of their desire. Today crazies want to take you home and bury you in the backyard for safekeeping. You should install remote-camera surveillance of your property. Think of your child.”

This, of course, makes me feel very safe and happy about my decision to be a more public persona than usual.

I came home yesterday to find two men wiring my house with an alarm system. Cy had the sales slip in hand. I didn't say no. But I don't feel happy about it.

William wants to come into town on Saturday. I don't know. I'm falling for this man. Really falling, as in love, commitment and ever after. But, as Andrea so colorfully put it months ago, I've just been let out of jail. Do I want to commit another crime—and get caught?

William's the marrying kind. A woman can just tell. He's a planner, and a natural at couplehood. I'm not an afterthought in his life. Only last night he said I shouldn't live alone the last two months before delivery. He has been talking to an obstetrician friend. The last trimester is “when things can get dicey for a woman my age.” If he can't convince me to come out and stay with Aunt Marvelle, he says I should consider letting Cy move in. I know he has a bias toward the Aunt Marvelle solution. So do I. But—I'm afraid to hope for happy ever after.

“Mother!”

The appearance of the young woman in a Donna Karan suit at my office door is so singular that I don't for a moment think it's my daughter Dallas. She would have had to come in from the city, blowing off work on a Tuesday morning. The extremity of circumstance that would force her to such radical irresponsibility escapes me. Then I see her expression, a volatile mix of hurt, fury and high dudgeon.

I'm not often reminded of the word dudgeon, only in connection with Dallas, and always when it's way too late to head off her eruption.

“What were you thinking?” She closes the gap to my desk in two strides, and slaps a copy of
Five-O
on my desk. “Are you trying to ruin my life?”

“Is any of that rhetorical?”

“Do you know what I found when I arrived at my office this morning? This!” She bangs the cover with a
fist. “It was taped to my door with a marker conveniently tucked into your column page.” She sniffs. “To say that the child you carry is a bastard! In print! How could you?”

“I don't recall that phrasing. I believe I said I'm going to be a single mom, something short of Immaculate Conception but with the result there's no Baby's Daddy.”

“Why would you put that in print?”

“Because it's true? It's a column, Dallas. My column, my life.”

“If only that were true.” She pauses, her chin trembling as she fights to maintain her dignity. The sight affects me, but not for the reason she might assume. I'm reminded that her tantrum tactics haven't changed since age two. “I'm the one being humiliated. My e-mail is jammed with notes from friends and colleagues who think your pregnancy is hilarious or a hoax.”

“I had no idea
Five-O
was so popular among the under-thirty crowd.”

“They're e-mailing your column to one another. It's been posted on my alumni college class bulletin board.”

“Isn't that copyright infringement?”

“I can't believe you! You make a fool of yourself—of your family—and all you can think about is yourself. You never think of us anymore!”

I'm not unmoved by her misery but strive to stay calm. The family has been through enough stressful scenes in the past month to last us a decade. And there's Sweet Tum's emotional well-being to consider. But Dallas, too, is flesh of my very tired flesh. “I love you, Dallas, want the best of everything for you. But if you think how I appear to your friends is numbered among my priorities, you are mistaken.”

“I should have expected this. After all, you let your new man friend beat up my father!”

I rise from my seat and move to shut the door and pull
the shades over the panels on either side just in case someone comes back early from lunch.

As I approach Dallas the crisp scent of Pure Tiffany perfume tickles my sinuses. I gave it to her on her last birthday. “You told your father about William. Don't think I didn't figure it out before your father admitted it. Did you encourage him to come snooping with the pretext of bringing me a gift?”

Dallas pales. “I didn't think that man would actually be there.”

“Didn't you?”

She shrugs.

“As long as we're on that subject, don't ever go tattling behind my back to members of this family again.”

She gapes at me in utter disbelief. “You're just so, so—I don't know who you are anymore.”

I indicate the chair for her to sit. “Who, exactly, did you think I was?”

“You were my mother.” She sits. I offer her a tissue from my desk box. “My role model.”

“I'm still modeling, dear.” I rest my hips against my desk. “I just modeled the higher ground while you and Davin were growing up.”

She takes a moment to blow her nose. “You certainly have taken the low road this year.”

“Yes, I can see how it might seem that way to you.”

She looks at me in confusion.

I reach out and put a hand on each of her shoulders. “Dallas, parenting is a role seen through a telescope held up to the eye of a child. That distance gives both parent and child the comfort of a focussed but narrow view. You saw what your father and I wanted you to see in order to grow up to be the best person you could be. One day you will be at the other end of the telescope.”

Dallas exhales a long breath. “That sounds ominous.”

“In ways you can't yet imagine. If you do it right, the
labor to produce a fully functioning adult lasts a good eighteen years.” I shake her shoulders lightly. “Terms are negotiable.”

She smiles at me for the first time in months. “Have you always been this unconventional?”

“Probably not. I'm changing.” I release her and lean back. Sweet Tum needs more of my room everyday. “It's one of the things that bothered your father.”

Her brows draw together in annoyance. “Dad's changed, too.”

“He may not welcome that observation. But, between you and me, of course he has.”

Dallas is silent a moment. “I never told you, Mom, but when I was thirteen, my girlfriends voted you and Dad most likely to remain married.”

“Is that like being voted most popular?”

“I thought so. I know it sounds dumb, but I always believed if my parents stayed married, I could. But now—” she looks up at me “—if you and Dad couldn't make it, what chance do Stephen and I have?”

I tell her the only truth I know. “The fact that your father and I didn't make it to the ‘until death do us part' part doesn't mean it was a mistake for us to spend twenty-seven years together. If you and Stephen are happy now, you have a very good chance of being very happy at least that long.”

“That's just it.” Dallas looks away. “I'm not sure that I want to marry Stephen.”

“That's natural. Prewedding jitters.”

“You're right.” She gives her head a quick shake, as if to throw off the thought. “I've invested too much time and money into making everything perfect.”

I notice now that her hair, though pulled back, is dramatically longer than it was just a few weeks ago. She's had extensions put in.

That's when it hits me. All her efforts toward this
wedding are really an elaborate incantation. Sort of wedding voodoo. She thinks that if the ceremony is big enough, grand enough, it will somehow magically seal the marriage.

“Want to talk about it?”

She shrugs. “Stephen's not the man I thought he was.” The lament of every woman, sooner or later. “He went canoeing upstate with college buddies instead of opting to spend a weekend at Cape Cod with me.” She looks up with an expression of utter insult. “Can you believe that?”

Yes. Because I can think of a perfectly reasonable reason why Stephen preferred the chilly waters of the Finger Lakes to the temptation of Dallas in close quarters: S-E-X.

“Are you two still celibate?”

“Yes.”

It's so pitiful a reply I can't resist a smile. “And whose idea was this?”

“It was mutual.” She shrugs. “I had read this article that said if two people who are sexually active become celibate in the months before their wedding, it makes the honeymoon more special.”

There's an awful lot of stupidity parading as wisdom in print.

“I never thought I'd say this to a child of mine, but throw the damned books and magazines away! Life isn't a test you cram for.”

Dallas seems to shrink in her chair. “I just wanted everything to be perfect.”

That word again. “Do yourself another favor. Delete the word perfect from your vocabulary. Some of your happiest memories will be of times when things were far from perfect.”

“That's it?” She looks annoyed. “Edit my vocabulary and reading list. That's your advice in my time of crisis?”

I smile and nod. “Advice is easy. Living by it is the hard part.”

She takes a moment to collect her alligator portfolio and stand up. When she does, she meets my gaze with her guard completely down. “Have I ruined my marriage before I've even had my wedding?”

It's been a long time since my daughter looked to me with such complete trust. I can't blow this moment, for either of us.

I give her a hug, a great big Mama Bear hug. This is my firstborn, the reason I am a mother. I love her the way I love blue skies, sudden summer thunderstorms and ripe tomatoes eaten warm from the vine. I couldn't imagine the world without her.

I brush a hair from her cheek. “I wouldn't cancel the caterer just yet. Try spending a lot less time on the day and more time on Stephen first. Your future happiness depends on the answer to this question. When you turn out the lights at night, is Stephen the only thing in the dark you care about? If not, cut Lucy the consultant loose.”

“But the cancellation costs?”

“Cheaper than a mistake. Your crazy mama will be right there to back you up.”

She nods. “Thanks, Mom.”

Dallas and I head out for an early lunch. She didn't have breakfast and I'm ever in need of a food fix. She's not exactly comfortable about the fact that I draw a few stares of recognition in public, but she makes no comment. I do warn her that if she hated this month's column, she will want to burrow underground for the September issue.

I'm finishing a fudge bar when I arrive back at
Five-O.
I didn't know they still made them until I stopped to peer into the ice cream case in the deli downstairs.

Babs flags me down as I'm about to head for the darkroom in search of Curran.

“There's someone waiting for you in your office. Someone official.”

“How official?”

Babs smiles. “She hinted that she was from the press.”

Tai catches up with me halfway there. “Now, remember, give her sound bites. And you're going to do something with your hair, right? Is that chocolate on your chin?”

We sidestep into the ladies' lounge. Five minutes later, I'm as presentable as I'm going to be under the circumstances.

The official-looking stranger stands up as I enter my office, bright of smile and crisp of linen suit. “Mrs. Lu Nichols?”

“Yes. Can I help you?”

“You certainly can.” She offers to shake my right hand and simultaneously offers me an envelope with her left hand.

She's so swift she's halfway out the door before I can say, “Is that it?”

She barely pauses. “Yes, thank you.”

If the stranger disappeared swiftly, Tai appears even more swiftly. “What kind of interview was that?”

“It wasn't an interview.” I open the envelope and pull out several thick pieces of paper, the kind only attorneys can afford.

“What's that?”

I feel my chin moving but thankfully the words won't come out.

It's a petition from Jacob. He's filed for joint custody of Sweet Tum.