Hidden in Paris (4 page)

Her decision, for someone who had so carefully avoided the exterior world, might seem out of character, but in fact it allowed her, with what she considered to be a modest adjustment, to keep the status quo. She would get to stay home. All she really wanted was to stay home like the old woman who had died amongst her cats.

Chapter 3

Lola opened her window wide to improve the master bedroom’s Feng shui, but then she remembered that article in the yoga journal on Southern California’s air being the worst in the nation, so she closed it. Surely it couldn’t be true about Bel Air, with all those trees? They must be talking about the Port area, or the San Fernando Valley. She unrolled her mat and sat on it for a few minutes of meditation. She bit her lower lip, felt it still hard and sore two days after the injection. Coming from the kitchen downstairs were the sounds of a coffee grinder and pans being moved around. Serena, the maid, was preparing breakfast. Lola straightened her spine and closed her eyes.
I’m breathing in. I’m breathing out.

The way Mark moved inside the walk-in closet, Lola knew he was getting himself worked up. “Why can’t I find a goddamn thing in this house?” he said.

She relaxed her arms and laid her hands, palms up, on her knees.
I’m breathing in. I’m breathing out
. Whatever was needed was always elsewhere, far away and rarely in the expected place because the nanny and the maid were always in competition when it came to running the house, organizing closets and cabinets according to their conflicting senses of logic. Lola didn’t have what it took to demand that things be put in any specific place or done any specific way. Instead, she forever adapted, forever navigated her “staff.” She wasn’t a very good hostess, or housewife, or “CEO of the household,” or even “wife on duty,” titles Mark called her for fun.

“Lola!” Mark called. She got up and escaped to her bathroom. In front of the mirror, she tapped her lips with the tip of a finger. They felt like wood. Did she look better or ridiculous? On the walls, her face graced the covers of
Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Marie Claire
. Twenty years of her life relegated to the walls of her bathroom.

This last year, all the headaches with Simon had probably cost her triple in the looks department, but she was lucky to have good bone structure. Her ink-black hair was cut short in a trendy style. She was tall and thin with imposing boobs—paid cash, as Mark liked to say. She was almost forty and still turned heads.

Leaving Mark to his struggle, she tiptoed out of her bathroom and descended the stairs dressed for yoga. The sound of pans in the kitchen resonated inside the stairwell. Maybe it was the height of the ceiling, but no amount of rugs could muffle the odd echoes. Mark liked the mansion pristine, all 7,640 square feet of it. He had said she’d never lack anything. He was speaking of material things, of course.

In the kitchen, Tamara, the twenty-five-year-old nanny from South Africa, was feeding Simon in his high chair. Lia was only half dressed for school, and her hair wasn’t combed. Lola had helped her nine-year-old select two outfits for the day, to circumvent early morning meltdown, but Lia was wearing yet another combination, and at the moment was stabbing her spoon into her cereal bowl and not making eye contact. Is anger genetic or learned? Lola kissed Simon, took a mini lick of a speck of pudding on his cheek. “You taste delicious today,” she said.

“Mom, that’s disgusting,” Lia said.

Lola kissed the top of her daughter’s head. Mark’s call came from upstairs and tore through the silence of the house like skid marks on white linoleum floor. “Where is my fucking Donna Karan shirt?” Everyone in the kitchen—Lola, the kids, Serena, and Tamara—froze for a heartbeat.

“It’s right in the closet,” Lola called out.

“Not that one, dammit! The white one! Where the hell is it?” Mark yelled from the stairwell. She smiled at Serena, who could barely look at her. Simon flailed his arm at his mother. “Up me.”

“I’m not carrying you, love. You need to finish breakfast.”

In an instant, Simon had wriggled his way out of the chair, threatening to make it topple over. “Up me! Up me!” Tamara picked him out of his chair and set him down.

The pediatrician didn’t know if what Simon suffered from were nightmares or night terrors. What difference did it make? Last time Lola had taken Simon to the doctor, not knowing where to start with the list of things that worried her about him, she had felt like a complete idiot. The doctor had looked at her intently and prescribed a lot of love and a very soothing environment. It made Lola feel as though she was an abusive mother and he knew it. She had done what was prescribed and kept Simon in the house with the nanny most of the day. She limited their outings to visits to the nearby park and had stopped mommy and me classes. Obviously, preschool was out of the question.

Simon’s hands were covered in chocolate pudding and she lifted him in mid-run before he hit the white upholstering of the kitchen chairs. She didn’t need a fight between Serena and Tamara over who would be responsible for cleaning that stain. Simon’s furious little body jerked as Lola held him under his arms and carried him towards the kitchen sink. Mark’s voice thundered from the upstairs bedroom. Lola sat Simon up on her knee by the sink. As she was running warm water over Simon’s hand, it suddenly dawned on her that the shirt Mark wanted was still at the cleaners. She felt dread, wiped Simon’s hands with the cloth Tamara handed to her, thinking rapidly.

“What about the Armani shirt, honey?” she called out with the hint of a shrill in her voice. “Or what about that other one that you wear all the time? They’re clean, pressed, and ready to go.”

She heard Mark running heavily down the stairs. He appeared in the kitchen, his face red and half a dozen white shirts on hangers in his hands. Tamara and Serena stepped out of his way. He came to an abrupt stop on the other side of the kitchen island to face Lola. “Are you saying my white shirt hasn’t been cleaned?”

Lola put Simon down and gave him a gentle push, which resulted in Simon wrapping himself around her leg. “What about the two brand new ones, you know, the...”

“I’m about to have an extremely important meeting,” Mark, roared. “The
one
thing I ask is to have the proper clothes available!”

Lola looked at Tamara in a plea for her to take Simon out of the room. Tamara, on instinct, was already motioning for Simon to come, but Simon tightened his grip on Lola’s leg. Tamara tried to pry him off with no success as Mark stepped toward Lola and inched close enough that she could smell his toothpaste breath and see the pores on his face. His handsome, freshly shaven face, tanned skin, bleached teeth, the face of a winner. “Are you incapacitated in some way I should know about?” he sneered.

Lola glanced at the clock, at Simon wailing in Tamara’s arms, then at Lia who was entering the room timidly to get her shoes tied, and then back at the clock. Mark looked at Lia. “And what do
you
want?” Lia looked down at her dangling shoelaces. “Nine years old and you can’t tie your own shoes? Is this whole family handicapped, or what?” Lia bent down and tied her shoes. “I need that shirt!” he screamed. “Get me that shirt!”

“It’s at the cleaners,” Lola said. “I’ll be back in no time at all. I won’t even make you late.”

Lola could see Mark’s rage feeding on itself. “You’ve already made me late! I get
no
support in this house. I carry your ineptitude on my shoulders!”

Had he been physically abusive, maybe things would be clearer. The way it went, it was all so confusing. Later today, they might call what just happened “blowing a fuse.” They might even laugh at it. She would laugh at it. But for the moment, she was scared, but of what? Perhaps of what Simon and Lia were hearing, of what Mark might do or say? Scared, perhaps that he might be right about her.

Her silence had a way of making him even more furious, but she didn’t know what to say, especially with the children in the room. The angrier he got, the more she became paralyzed.

“Please calm down,” she pleaded finally.

“Why should I?” he screamed.

She searched for words, a reason to give him. “Because I...I can’t handle it?” she finally said. Yes, it was formulated as a question, and in that question, she got her answer.

“What is it you can’t handle? Is it your basic role as my wife?” He lowered his voice and talked in her ear between clenched teeth, showing that he was enough in control of himself to spare the children. “If you can’t handle it, get yourself a fucking divorce. That’s what all your girlfriends are doing, sucking their husbands dry, those gold diggers. I don’t even know what you’re fucking waiting for.”

Divorce, that word. Here it was again, used in vain. It occurred to her finally that Mark was no longer talking about shirts, but about her turning him down for sex again earlier that morning. Her
basic role as a wife
.

Lia was standing near the front door, suddenly ready for school. A miracle. She had managed to comb her hair in front although the back of her head was still a tangled mess. She had found her backpack, her jacket even, and had put them on. Her little face was pale and tight. Simon’s wails were like a siren in the background. He was still fighting his way out of Tamara’s arms. Serena was wiping the granite kitchen counter with ardor.

“I’m getting the shirt,” Lola said, and a moment later, she and Lia darted toward the front door. Simon managed to break free and grab Lola’s leg again, so she picked him up, held him tight, and snatched her purse. The three of them sprinted toward her car while, still in the kitchen, Mark was thrashing shirts and hangers around the room.

Once in the car with the doors shut, an overwhelming sense of relief enveloped Lola. All she needed to do was get the shirt, drop it off at home, and then drive to school. It wouldn’t take more than ten minutes. Lia would get a tardy at school, but so be it.

She drove slowly along the driveway.
I’m breathing in. I’m breathing out
. Cleansing breath. Yoga breath. The worst part of the morning had passed. Tonight, Mark would probably act as though nothing had happened, or else he’d make a joke about it. The frustration over Lola avoiding sex would probably never be discussed. Mark would calmly explain what he was really angry about. He would give her the list of the ways in which she was failing him, and she would believe him.
I’m breathing in. I’m breathing out
. That night, they would have sex.

She swallowed the urge to cry.
Serenity
. She said the word silently.
I have a choice about how I feel. I have a choice about my words, and I have a choice about my thoughts.
She glanced back to look at the children in the rearview mirror. Lia was sitting tensely upright, her face pale, and her mouth tight. Simon was chewing on the sleeve of his sweatshirt and it was soaked. She turned onto Sunset Boulevard, accompanied by the creeping feeling that was with her everywhere lately and that she wasn’t able to name.

Althea allowed herself the apple that had been the ever-present center of her thoughts all morning long. She went to the bare kitchen where she had never prepared a thing but tea, and opened the refrigerator. Lemons, apples, baking soda. She took the apple to the coffee table, the only table in her apartment, and placed the apple on a large plate. She turned on the TV and, as she watched, cut the apple into quarters, then quarters of quarters with long, dexterous fingers that felt foreign to her. Over the next half hour, she chewed the apple slowly, making herself aware of the minutest sensation.

Later, on the way to her parents, she didn’t pass another soul. Half of Ohio had been battered by an ice storm, and the wind was merciless. She walked close to buildings for shelter as her long red hair battered her face like a whip. She was light enough to be carried away by the wind. Light and small, but never light enough or small enough. She would soon be twenty-five but exhaustion and anxiety made every step feel as though she was closer to eighty.

She stood in front of the door for a few seconds, and finally let herself in. Her dad’s glasses sat crooked on his face as he slept in front of the blaring TV. Althea wondered when her dad had started taking naps before lunch. Sounds were coming from the kitchen. Her mother, Pamela, was cooking. Althea gathered her strength and put her hands on the doorknob. In the kitchen, her mother’s body had the familiar stiffness as she moved around with heavy steps in a state of contained exasperation. Althea tried to not look at her thighs or her prominent stomach. The kiss she deposited on her mother’s cheek wasn’t acknowledged.

“What took you so damn long? Now we won’t be able to eat until one o’clock! Now the entire day will be off. We won’t be hungry at dinnertime!”

Conscious of the fact that she had deliberately arrived late, Althea didn’t ask why any of this mattered, since nothing would happen between lunch and dinner. Those were criminal thoughts, unacceptable thoughts. “I’m not that hungry at all. Maybe a small salad and we could eat right away?” she blabbered.

“I’m making Duck à la orange! It’s French. There is a sweet orange gravy, and I’m making a noodle pudding to go with it.” She gave her daughter a piercing look, her face like a permanent warning. “Your favorite.”

By coming over only once a week, Althea deprived her mother of her only joy, which was to feed her. “Thanks,
Mom.” she said, and wondered how she would swallow that thing.