We Are Water. Wally Lamb
about them when he was in high school. I remember that time when, after I’d told him a hundred times to go upstairs and clean his pigsty of a bedroom and heard “I will, Mom … I’m gonna” that I finally gave up. Decided to go up there and do the job myself. And I did—with a vengeance. Filled up three big garbage bags with crap that I was going to throw out, whether he liked it or not. I was a woman on a mission. And when I went to flip his mattress, I discovered his stash of dirty magazines and all those gym socks that never seemed to make it into the hamper, most of them stiff with I-knew-what … I didn’t much mind the Playboys and Penthouses. Half the teenage boys in America had those hidden away, I figured. But one of his socks was stuck to the cover of a magazine called Girl on Girl. I’d stood there, flipping through it—looking at all those hideous pictures of women having sex with cucumbers and other women wearing strap-on dildos. Fake sex, it was obvious to me, although it probably wasn’t to Andrew. They all had freakishly big breasts, and one of them, I remember, had areolas as big as the rubber jar opener down in our kitchen drawer. They all looked drugged. In the photo that infuriated me the most, two women were wearing nothing but cowboy hats and holsters cinched around their hips, and one was inserting the barrel of a gun into the other’s vagina. I flipped when I saw that one! Marched downstairs and out to the garage where Andrew was fiddling with the gears of his ten-speed. “Where did this come from?” I demanded, and when he saw what I was holding in my hand, even his ears turned red. He told me a kid in his homeroom had shoved it in his backpack without him knowing it. “Baloney!” I said. “You listen to me, young man. And look me in the eye, too.” I waited until he did. “Whoever took these pictures, and whoever publishes this garbage, is committing violence against women. You got that? And whoever’s looking at it is guilty, too. You have two sisters, Andrew. This junk is an assault on them and me and every other woman, including the ones in this picture.” He mumbled something that I didn’t catch. “What? I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”
“I said they posed for them, didn’t they?”
“Yes, they did. Probably in exchange for drugs. Or because they’d get beaten up by their pimps if they didn’t. This is violent male fantasy, Andrew. Do you think women want to have guns stuck up inside of them?”
“Okay,” he said. “You made your point.”
But I was just getting started. I waved the two “cowgirls” in his face.
“Do you think women really have breasts this size?”
He shrugged. “Some,” he said.
“Ha! Guess again. These poor girls have had their breasts sliced open and sacks of silicone put in so that men—and boys—can drool over them. Do you know what happens when that stuff starts leaking inside a woman’s body? I’m ashamed of you, Andrew. And if you ever bring this kind of garbage into my house again—”
“Your house? I thought it was our house.”
I rolled up his dirty magazine and whacked him across the face with it. “Don’t you dare smart-mouth me, Andrew Oh! What do you think your father’s going to say when I show him this ‘reading material’ of yours?”
The shrug again. “He’s probably not going to go mental about it like you’re doing.” The next thing I knew, the wrench he’d been using on his bike was in my hand. I took a swing at him and missed. He froze for a second or two, shocked. Then he shielded his head with his arm. “Jesus, Mom, stop! You’re my mother, for cripe’s sake!”
I dropped the wrench. Watched him run down the driveway and out into the road. “And from now on, put your dirty socks in the hamper!” I screamed. “And don’t stick anything inside them except your big, smelly feet!” That was when I realized old Mr. Genovese across the street was standing in his doorway, watching. Fired up still, I shouted over to him. “Mind your own business! Shut your goddamned door!” Lucky for him, he did what he was told.
Fueled, still, by self-righteous anger, I pounded back up to Andrew’s room, lugged those three garbage bags to the landing and flung them down the stairwell. Dragged them out to the car, drove to the dump, and took enormous pleasure in heaving them onto a mountain of trash. By the time I got back home, I had cooled down. I decided not to tell Orion about Girl on Girl after all, and I was grateful that Andrew didn’t tell his father that I’d swung at him with the wrench—something I now felt ashamed of having done. But I have to admit that, in the aftermath of my having cleaned out his room, I enjoyed it whenever he asked me about his stuff.
“Is my Alonzo Mourning jersey still in the wash, Mom?”
“Nope. It’s at the dump.”
“Mom, do you know where that blue notebook is where I’m recording my weight-lifting routine?”
“I guess it’s probably sitting over in the landfill.”
“Mom, Mrs. Kilgallen’s ragging me because I haven’t handed in my copy of Heart of Darkness. You didn’t toss that out, did you?”
“If it was on your bedroom floor, I did.”
“Mom, that was school property. What am I supposed to tell Kilgallen?” I advised him to tell her he’d go to the bookstore and buy her a replacement copy. “Can I have the money for it then?”
“Not from me you can’t. Use your own goddamned money.”
Poor Andrew. I was always harder on him than I was on his sisters. Maybe his being “too busy” to fly up here for the wedding is payback. Maybe I’m getting exactly what I deserve …
Unlike her brother, Marissa, our free spirit, is all for Viveca’s and my upcoming wedding. Her mother marrying a woman: she thinks it’s hip. And I’m a little concerned about the attention Viveca’s been giving her. They chat on the phone. They’ve gone out a couple of times, just the two of them. It’s not that I’m ungrateful that Viveca’s made an effort with my daughter. I appreciate that she has. But both times when they got back from those lunch dates, Marissa was carrying boxes and bags from Bergdorf’s. Viveca’s bought her that Jimmy Choo handbag she loves, the Prada platform pumps that I’d break my neck if I ever tried wearing. Designer things that an aspiring actress and part-time waitress could never afford. As good a kid as she is, Marissa’s always been a little too status conscious, and it’s almost as if Viveca is trying to buy her affection. And apparently it’s working. What was that thing Marissa said last week when the three of us were at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square? When she pointed out that children’s book? “Look. Heather has two mommies just like me.” It made me feel defensive on Orion’s behalf. She’s his daughter, not Viveca’s …
What’s wrong with me today? Why am I worrying about all these things that probably don’t even matter? I walk around the apartment, wandering aimlessly from room to room. Passing the guest bathroom, I look in at Minnie. She’s down on the floor, wearing her knee pads, scouring the grout between the floor tiles. Viveca’s a stickler about clean grout; she has Minnie use some bleaching agent to get it white. I walk past my poster, ANNIE OH: A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM! February 1–March 31 at viveca c gallery. She went all out for that show: ads in the Times, the New Yorker, and New York. Hired that publicist who got me those TV interviews that I was such a nervous wreck about … Back in the kitchen, I grab the remote and change the channel. On the Today show, that Dr. Nancy lady is cautioning Ann Curry about some new medical thing we all have to worry about. I channel-surf past Cookie Monster, cartoons, cake decorating. On CNBC, they’re talking about the global economy—the looming debt crisis in Greece that the Germans may or may not rescue them from. Viveca’s mentioned the possibility of Greece defaulting, too, and how, for some reason I didn’t understand, it could be good for her business if the euro is devalued. It’s funny: she identifies so strongly with her Greek heritage. You would think she’d be more concerned about the country’s balance sheet than her own … The old movie channel’s showing Mildred Pierce. There’s Joan Crawford with her shoulder pads and severe eyebrows, talking to her maid, who I recognize. Whom I recognize?