When the Messenger Is Hot (8 page)

Josie and Hyman have sex. Hyman refers to sex as
fucking
. Josie, who would not refer to sex as anything but sex, would not call it making love even if she were madly in love, due to what she sees as an utter lack of meaning (Josie feels strongly that if you're going to use the word
make
in this scenario you should also use the word
baby
, because that is the only possible thing that could be made from that particular act besides maybe a mess, and even Josie would have to agree that neither
let's make a mess
nor
let's make a baby
, in this particular case, would be a turn-on). Shortly after Josie and Hyman have sex, postsex, mid-Hyman talking about sex,
That was a great fuck
or some such, Josie lies in Hyman's bed wondering if this is supposed to be arousing, if this sort of talk is arousing to people, if this sort of talk is expected in return. Josie says the word
fuck
often enough, but prefers it followed by
off
or
up
, or as an adverb, or even isolated by itself in moments of frustration. Josie is listening to the postsex wrap-up, to Hyman's allegedly seductive description of her body parts, trying to think of anything at all to contribute, when
her mother calls
. Josie's mother is upset. Josie has gotten a call from the network regarding her social security number and Josie's mother says,
People have no business going out of town when they're supposed to be trying to get a job
, and then she says,
Are you having a good time? What have you been doing?
in a completely sweet tone of voice that bears no resemblance to her initial comment and Josie says,
I'll call you back later
, and gets off the phone. Josie has a hard time concealing her embarrassment and Hyman, in a surprising turn of sensitivity, offers as consolation a story about a time when he was in bed with a
lover
in New York and his father called to remind him to water the plants.

Josie returns to New York and starts her job at the network. She is assigned to the traffic department, which she is to learn is not about actual traffic, where she will be an assistant. She is assigned to the overnight shift. She will work one to nine. She will pay her dues. Josie does not anticipate how this will actually affect her. Josie will come to understand and appreciate manic depression. Trying to sleep during daylight hours in a two-bedroom apartment with an unmedicated manic-depressive opera singer and her husband will give Josie a certain appreciation for the breaking down of normal mental functions. After five days of working the one-to-nine shift Josie will take short breaks to cry in the bathroom, after eight days of working the one-to-nine shift Josie will cry for a good portion of any time not spent sleeping, and after ten days of working the one-to-nine shift Josie will turn in her resignation with a plan to enroll in the International Bartenders School.

Josie's mother says,
Well, that was hasty. Because we were hoping you'd have found your own place by now. Look at your cute doggie socks!
None of this is helped by Hyman's presence in town for the debut of his
piece
at City Center. Josie welcomes the distraction in spite of his repeated requests for a fuck, which she obliges without ever voicing her objection to this particular use of the word. Josie tells her mother she's got a lot of job interviews and instead spends a lot of time with Hyman during the day. Hyman loves an afternoon fuck anyway and admonishes Josie for the deception but admits to getting an additional thrill from foiling the plans of anyone's mother. Josie and Hyman spend the afternoon of February the 14th at the Guggenheim Museum on which day the only mention made of St. Valentine's Day is a sideways glance and a mumble of
foolish American contrivance
from Hyman to a woman blissfully carrying a bouquet of daisies in one hand, an adoring date in the other, and a satisfied look in her eye, a February 14 wherein they move up the Guggenheim's spiral at a snail's pace, Hyman lingering at each painting for what seems to Josie like an hour to describe
juxtapositions of color and light and balance
and whatever else endlessly to the point where Josie is forced, after only one rotation around the spiral, into blurting out,
Do you like it?
, which direct question neither gets answered nor makes what she thought was a fairly obvious point, which question results only in Hyman stroking Josie's hair with deceptive affection, suggesting a more sophisticated haircut
now that she's out of college
and requesting an afternoon fuck, possibly somewhere in Central Park. Josie says,
Maybe tomorrow
. Josie is tired of the word
fuck
now. Josie returns home to a valentine from Hayes made from the
Wall Street Journal
and a lot of red glitter. Josie is no more interested in Hayes than she ever was, but she is a little less interested in Hyman.

Josie and Hyman meet at Cafe La Fortuna for cappuccino the following afternoon. Hyman wastes no time reaching under the table and in between Josie's legs.
Hyman
, Josie says, pushing his hand away, not smiling, as Hyman is,
I want to talk about where this is going
. Hyman says,
Okay well then let's have a big discussion then, ha ha
. Josie can't even begin to guess what is funny to Hyman in this moment but when he sees that Josie is not also laughing he mentions his SAT scores yet again in evidence of the fact that they are very different, that he is four years older than she is and therefore he
will always be ahead
of her and furthermore that she clearly has
unresolved issues with her mother
that she will have to work out before she has a
real relationship
with
anyone
but that he
truly enjoys
her company and was hoping that they could
continue fucking
for an
indefinite period of time
as he
likes fucking her very much
. Josie, who has an opening to hurl a great variety of insults at Hyman regarding his own mother and father and regarding his obsession with his SAT scores, instead calmly stands up and says,
But I don't fucking like
you
very much
, which is the best she can do under the circumstances, which even Josie knows is the kind of response that in seventh grade would have provoked the sarcastic
Nice comeback
in return, and which of course produces loud guffaws from Hyman as Josie leaves the restaurant without saying good-bye. Several years and a few more appreciative boyfriends later, Josie plans to tell Hyman, if she ever sees him again, that he was an
elitist fuck
, but when the time comes and Josie runs into Hyman on the street, even after he says,
I see you still have the same haircut
, Josie still can't bring herself to say anything rude but keeps the plan open for another time.

W
HEN MY DAD comes to me with the all-purpose serious tone that turns up in a variety of scenarios ranging from me forgetting to pick up milk to him forgetting to get me the concert tickets I asked for to car accidents varying in degree from chipped paint to fender-bender, I naturally fail to understand, upon hearing the words
cancer
and
lung
and
mom
in the same sentence, that it may not turn out well. Which is followed by me spending the next two years failing to understand that. And so of course, when the doctors tell us that she's expected to have a full recovery, this is then followed by me believing them, followed by me moving out of town as proof of my faith in the medical community. Subsequent things that will help me not to understand this:

(My mother is already an opera singer, so it's not like the old doctor-will-I-ever-play-the-piano kind of situation, still, someone with a lung problem singing, you know, opera, is not only impressive but is a fine tool for furthering denial.)

Several combinations of chemo and radiation and new age crap later, when the doctors say that if this round doesn't work she might only have a few months, I begin a six-hour crying jag that turns my face into a pomegranate and results in the sensation of having a big wad of bubblegum burst inside my skull, which is followed by me wiping away my tears and realizing that the doctors must be completely wrong. I fly back to New York to see her more often even though the city makes me want to slash my wrists and even though I think I won't live through one more person pressing up against me on the subway and even though my mother is even more mood-oriented than before the cancer/lung thing. As a show of my faith in her ability to function as usual, I let my mother drive to Taco Bell (when she sends me back into the house to retrieve her
book
— a tattered Week-at-a-Glance calendar/address combo crammed with assorted scraps of paper, napkins, unpaid bills, to-do lists, fabric swatches, and bus tickets, held together by the combined strength of a rubber band and a size 10 clamp — the opportunity for better judgment arises and is ultimately rejected upon returning to the car and witnessing the first glimmer of hope I've seen in my mother's eyes in months). This even though Mom was more than a little stressed out as a driver before she was attached to an oxygen tank and on prednisone and Xanax and antibiotics and whatever else and because she wants a chicken taco
really bad
and because driving makes her feel like she has some control over her life which we both know she doesn't now, if she ever did, and because I can't decide which frightens me more, me driving at all with her in the passenger seat (
what if she tries to have a conversation while I'm driving what if I drive too fast or slow what if she tells me to make a left turn but there's no left turn signal what if I have a terrible accident and kill my dying mother what if I have a terrible accident and something worse than death happens to my dying mother what if she yells at me?
) or her driving on drugs. Which is followed by me agreeing to continue on the trip
just a little ways
(in reality three interminable highway exits during which she flips off a truck driver and honks at an old lady [not any kind of change from her normal driving patterns] and misses the exit [to which she says,
Whoops!
and giggles even though I know that this spacey part of the tour is the abnormal part]) to the fabric and crafts store to pick up some yarn for a needlepoint she's making for my cousin's new baby. This of course is followed by a variety of thought patterns, like how I'm thirty-six and still single and she's not going to be making any needlepoint anything for my baby, like how I've failed as a daughter, like how I might have considered this a lot sooner, how surely if I'd gone to medical school or taught children in Third World countries or written an Oprah book or achieved some other phenomenal thing she'd have been proud of me in spite of my not having given her a grandchild and a son-in-law or even a live-in boyfriend or lesbian life partner. All of which I actually did consider sooner, which clearly indicates my true nature as a selfish, horrible child. I try to pretend I don't notice the weird tone after I compliment her new car and she responds by saying,
Glad to hear
that, in which I sense she's glad to hear that because it's about to be mine. I tell her I'd really rather skip the Pre-Season Ornament Extravaganza at Fountains of Wayne but decide not to mention that it's because I'm afraid she won't be here when the actual season comes around.

That said, I believe the doctor when he says the unpronounceable drugs are working and that my mother is showing great improvement. I am nonchalant helping her look through brochures for those stairway elevator-seat things and I sob underneath my pillow when I go to bed, grateful that the noisy oxygen machine is probably drowning me out anyway. I tell her all the things I'm grateful for that she's done for me and I do not take it personally when she says only,
That's nice, sweetheart
, and then falls asleep in the middle of my long list instead of bursting into tears of gratitude herself followed by a deep and profound TV-movie moment of near-death enlightenment and reconciliation.

And I believe my father when he says she's feeling a lot better just the week before I come home for Thanksgiving and that she's only on the oxygen tank for half the day now as opposed to 24/7. I feel certain that she is on the road to recovery and I forget that she still has some cancer in the only lung she has. I fly home for Thanksgiving and arrive at an empty house and a note that says, “Went to a party at the Forestas', back around ten. Salami and provolone and some nice smoked mozz. in fridge,” which I take to mean that my mother is cured, and I call my friends to discuss and analyze the miracle cure. And when my mother comes home as beautiful and put together as ever but still attached to the oxygen tank and has to sit down on the second stair from the exhaustion, I retain the assumption that she's still cured but just tired and following the precautionary miracle cure maintenance of using the oxygen and not overexerting herself. I help her up the stairs and I try to ignore how much she sounds like Grandma when she says,
I'm sorry I'm so tired. I really wanted to visit
, and I eat the cold cuts in the kitchen with my dad after she goes to sleep and when he says,
Your mother's not doing very well
, I say,
I thought she was better
, and I decide she just overdid it with the party. When he says he's going to take her to the hospital tomorrow if she's not feeling better, I put down the cold cuts.

And when Mom wakes up the next morning not feeling better and my father says he's taking her to the hospital, I remain calm as she simultaneously shrieks and rings a bell she brought with her into the bathroom in case she needs help but I silently wonder how I'm going to survive a week of simultaneous shrieking and bell-ringing. I have not forgotten how bad the shrieking sometimes was even before she got cancer and a bell. I am aware that drugs + cancer + shrieking + bell = my imminent commitment to a mental health facility. I long for the days of good old unadulterated shrieking. I am aware that d + c + s + b = 10X worse than my worst nightmare, and that x = a gazillion. I help her out of the tub and I do not cringe at the sight of the scar down her back that I have seen dozens of times now anyway as she hasn't lost her nudist leanings. Which sets in motion another train of thought that includes the memory of countless embarrassments beginning when I was six as a result of her nudist leanings. It includes wishing I were still six. It includes wishing my mother were still sneaking me under subway turnstiles even though I will never be mistaken for a five-year-old again and even though I hated that she did that at the time. It includes wishing Mom and I were still pretending that the Calder sculpture in Lincoln Center was an ice cream stand or a lemonade stand or a hot dog stand or any kind of a stand, or that she was still letting me stay up late
just this one time
to watch
Laugh-In
because I love Lily Tomlin even though she lets me watch it every week and I don't get half the jokes anyway because I'm six. It includes wondering what my mother was like when she was six.