The Three of Us (26 page)

Friday, 20 November

Peter

A rather embarrassing thing has happened. I have apparently started to enjoy yoga. It has somehow flanked my subversive attitude and actually seems to work. I feel a strange sense of calm when the session is over and my pulse definitely beats slower. Soon I have quite forgotten the silly names of the various moves. Oddly, the pain in my left leg that I have diagnosed as either sciatica, after a phase of fearing it might be deep-vein thrombosis (which could prove fatal if the blood clot travelled up through my artery and lodged in my heart) or gout (except that I haven't really been drinking sufficient port and brandy or eating enough Stilton to trigger it), seems to have faded, following my repeated sessions of Downward Facing Dog.

Monday, 23 November

Joanna

Today we drop into Bellini, an enchanting if pricey baby store on West 86th Street. Shocked by the eight-week lead time for furniture orders, I am promptly panicked into asking if we can buy any of the floor samples. I point out a white cupboard with a trellis of hand-painted pink roses dancing over the drawers. ‘This', I say, fingering the little rose-shaped drawer-knobs, ‘is perfect. I really don't mind the store wear-and-tear on it if you can deliver it soon.'

‘Aren't you forgetting something?' asks Peter crossly. ‘What if it's a boy? He's not going to want pink bloody roses.'

I ask the assistant to strike the order.

Monday, 23 November

Peter

My mouth is full of stainless-steel instruments when Dr Wasserman picks his moment to break the news to me. ‘You need an onlay. The whole procedure will cost $1,175.00.'

I gag on the small mirror that is reflecting the offending molar.

‘We have to take a cast of the tooth and send it away to the lab for them to build the onlay,' adds Dr Wasserman defensively.

Gargling with the puce mouthwash, I struggle to regain my composure. My health insurance doesn't cover dental work.

‘This may feel like a small electric shock,' warns Wasserman, brandishing his syringe. After he has liberally injected me, he and Evelyn, who work on the ‘hot seat' principle, depart to attend to another patient, while my anaesthetic takes effect. I sit there, assailed by the whine of his unseen drill, and turn my head to one side where a computer stands blinking my case history ominously on its screen. My onlay is already logged up there. Price: $1,175.00. I stare at the Friesian cow balancing on its steep canal bank, and then peer up at one of the cancan girls on the mobile, to see if she is wearing knickers. Finally the drill in the neighbouring room subsides and Dr Wasserman returns with Evelyn.

‘Ah, is the onlay absolutely necessary?' I venture.

‘Yup, 'fraid so. No way I can fill this, there's not enough tooth left to hold up,' he says.

He takes another exploratory jab with his metal spike and I jump, notwithstanding the injections.

‘We could do it in gold instead of porcelain,' he offers.

Christ, for $1,750.00 I would expect a diamond stud as well, I think, but I simply shake my head and say, ‘Porcelain will be fine.'

Evelyn holds a colour chart at my open mouth. It covers a spectrum from dazzling white, through various shades of yellow, to a tobacco-stained beige. ‘This is the best match,' she pronounces, and Wasserman nods, making a note of their disappointingly yellowish choice.

Finished, I trudge north along a continuous row of designer stores on Madison and beat myself up. I should have known, with his Park Avenue address and the burnished plaque proclaiming his qualifications at Columbia School of Dentistry, that Wasserman was bound to be pricey.

Tuesday, 24 November

Joanna

I am beginning to find yoga so helpful that I am practising some of the easier moves on my own. There is only one thing which worries me: at the end of each session Mary thanks us and gives each of us a little bow with her hands clasped together, as if in prayer.

It is clear we are meant to return this gesture, but neither of us seems able to. I usually nod and smile in an embarrassed, English sort of way while Peter starts busily rolling up his mat. We have discussed our inability to perform this small and yet, I suspect, important detail of yoga etiquette and have put our failure down to British reserve. But today when Mary bows I catch her eye and force myself to return her gesture with a stiff little bow of my own.

I can see Peter watching me, and sensing the need to make some gesture of his own he suddenly nods and raises his left hand in a brisk, police-officer-type wave. Though certainly a start, it is not a manoeuvre I have come across before in our admittedly limited yogic repertoire.

Wednesday, 25 November

Peter

I am flattered to be offered a job today, teaching a writing course this summer at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, just north of the city. It is a graduate class in something called ‘Creative non-fiction'. Why is it that non-fiction is defined in the negative, forever salaaming to made-up stories? Fiction should rather be labelled non-fact. As for creative non-fiction, I'm not even sure what that means. It sounds awfully like President Clinton's definition of legal truth – something that's not demonstrably a lie.

Wednesday, 25 November

Joanna

In the lift today I see a sign asking for a twelfth man to sit shivah, the Jewish ritual of mourning. And down at the wall of mailboxes off the lobby, another sign advertising for sale the entire contents of an apartment.

‘Very sorry to hear about the death of 13G,' I say to Gerard, the Toulousian super. I pause, but he knows what's coming next. ‘Any idea what's happening to the apartment?' I ask lightly and immediately feel ashamed of myself. ‘It's just that we have so many friends looking, you know what it's like…' I apologize.

‘Don't worry – everyone asks – it's already gone,' he replies.

Friday, 27 November

Peter

Today there is evidence of the new tenants – a large removals van is parked outside, disgorging all the bric-à-brac of someone else's life. The side of the van is decorated with a large picture of two men pushing a trolley loaded with a giant ear. Underneath it says Van Gogh Movers: A Cut Above the Rest.

Saturday, 28 November

Joanna

This morning, leaving for the office, I enter the lift expecting as normal to be the only passenger. I'm not. Standing by the buttons is Richard Dreyfuss. I am so surprised to see him that I jump and then, trying to recover myself, blurt out, ‘Hello', in what I fear may be a starstruck voice.

‘Hello,' he says noncommittally.

I debate whether to mention the
Krippendorf Tribe
or
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
or even his Oscar-winning performance in
The Goodbye Girl,
but decide against it and we descend in silence. And as we reach the front lobby he makes quickly for a scruffy white stretch limo, which lurches off down West End Avenue, a portion of its back fender hanging off.

Sunday, 29 November

Peter

Obsessively checking my Amazon.com ratings today, as others check their share prices, I am enormously cheered to see that I have rallied strongly and now stand at 9,127th instead of the high twenty thousands, where I have been languishing of late.

I boast of this fact to Michael, who is a fellow author and obsessive Amazon.com checker, but he tells me that a sudden rally such as I have just enjoyed can in fact be bad news. He has gone to the trouble of phoning Amazon.com's literary score-keeper, who explained that it's usual for books that become unavailable in bookshops (because their sales are too torpid to be worth the shelf space) to jump suddenly in their Amazon.com ratings. So this can, in fact, be a sign that a book is on the way out.

The score-keeper has also told Michael that Amazon.com uses a complex logarithmic formula, multiplying number sold with recentness of sales, to calculate a book's ranking. Apparently when you get down into the thirty thousands, the sales are so slight that a single purchase can yank you up several thousand places.

DECEMBER

Your baby's lungs and digestive tract are almost fully developed and it can now see in utero and distinguish light from dark.

Your baby now weighs 6 lbs.

The womb is so snug you may notice less movement.

If you are interested in breastfeeding sign up for a class or interview lactation consultants.

BabyCenter.com

Saturday, 5 December

Joanna

Today, at ABC, the luxurious furniture store on 19th Street and Broadway, whose interior is cunningly designed to feel like a magical bazaar, we see a truly magnificent crib. Its wooden panels are exquisitely hand carved with cherubs and laurel wreaths, and its front railing cleverly drops to convert it into a day bed. Even Peter agrees that it is an outstanding piece of furniture. But the price is silly – we reluctantly agree on that too. ‘The kid will never appreciate it,' he reasons. ‘Let's just get a basic, safe cot, not a juvenile throne.'

So we leave, determined to shop around.

Sunday, 6 December

Peter

I am sitting at the kitchen table on our inherited fake cowhide bar stools, trying to make notes on a book I am supposed to review, groping for a word that remains elusively on the tip of my lobe. Suddenly I feel a sharp pain in both temples simultaneously and the awful realization washes over my mind that this is it, this is what it feels like to have a brain haemorrhage. I am invaded by the prospect of myself slumped in a wheelchair, drooling and mute. Will I be loyally tended by partner, friends and family? Or will I be dumped in an underfunded institution, sentenced to inhale boiled cabbage fumes, watch daytime TV and be talked down to by jolly Caribbean caretakers for the rest of my miserable life? I give a small shriek of alarm and bring my hands gingerly up to my temples, where I encounter something cold and metallic.

‘This', comes Joanna's voice from behind me, ‘is what it feels like to be born by forceps delivery.' And with that she prises off the claws of the chrome pasta tongs that she has gripped onto my head.

Monday, 7 December

Joanna

Tonight it is the turn of John Guare to entertain the American Friends of the Royal Court. He has agreed to be interviewed by John Lahr, the theatre critic for the
New Yorker,
whose father played the Lion in
The Wizard of Oz.
The venue is a frightfully smart brownstone on 80th Street, within smiling distance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art – one of the chicest strips of residential real estate in the city. It is owned by someone on the board of Lazard Frères, the investment bank. As our contribution, Peter and I have been asked to invite some of our journalist friends in order to whip up media interest.

‘Christ, I'll come just to see the house,' said Meredith, when I sounded her out.

It is worth the inspection, oozing expense from every interior-designed bow. As forty or so people mingle in the downstairs drawing room, they can be heard quite openly estimating the real estate value. ‘Several serious Lazard bonuses,' concludes Meredith.

Guare is an hour and a half late and, anxious to make up for this spectacular rudeness, begins circulating garrulously. ‘My dear,' he says, patting my belly and exhaling a generous whiff of claret, ‘how
are you,
we know each other, don't we?' I smile noncommittally, knowing I have never met him before. ‘Of course,' he cries, ‘I recognize you from the television!'

This is not an uncommon line in New York and I have learned it is better to maintain a silent acquiescence than to deny it. So I grin back as an attractive young woman in a black leather jacket slides up to Guare and tugs his sleeve.

‘Hello,' she says. ‘My name's Julie and I just wanted to tell you I'm such an admirer of your work.'

Guare beams. ‘My dear,' he says, taking her hand and holding onto it, petting her wrist. ‘And what do you do? In the theatre perhaps?'

‘I'm a screen writer,' she says proudly.

The great playwright's expression changes and he drops her hand. ‘Oh, how humiliating for you,' he says. ‘Ugh, how could you? You don't even own your own work and your films never get made. I fear for your mental health, my dear. An unpublished poem has more integrity than any screenplay!'

Taken aback by this onslaught, Julie attempts to defend herself. ‘Well, I have many friends in the theatre who are waiting tables,' she protests. ‘At least I'm earning a living.'

Guare raises his hand and, peering at her closely, declares, ‘You've sold out. I see it
all
the time. It's corporate writing, my dear. I have a friend who has written sixteen screenplays, he has them beautifully bound in leather on his bookshelf, but not
one
of them has been made! Ha! Tell me, do you have any credits?'

‘Yes,' says Julie quickly. ‘I got a quarter credit for
Harriet the Spy,
the children's movie that came out two years ago.'

‘A
quarter
credit,' laughs Guare. ‘So humiliating!' And with that, he sweeps grandly off to the other end of the room.

Tuesday, 8 December

Peter

I see that drunk-driving commercial again today and, as always, it leaves me chilled and fearful. The ad starts with a sonogram of a full-term baby. In the foreground are the reassuring peaks and troughs of a normal heartbeat with its bleeping soundtrack. Suddenly there is a screech of tyres, a crash, a shattering of glass and a depressed horn. The heartbeat stops and becomes a continuous beep and the graph flatlines. Text appears over the foetal sonogram: ‘Abbey Danielle – killed by a drunk driver – on the way to being born.'