But When She Was Bad Page 9

  Annie’s approach now to all these domestic matters was to tell me she didn’t have time for such annoyances, not with the baby coming. I dearly want to growl, “Why the hell not, since you’re not doing a damned thing around the house anyway?”

  We’d end these discussions more often than not with a glare at each other and a retreat to our respective corners—Annie to the newly-built nursery, where crib, couch, and hanging mobiles were all in readiness; and I myself off to some distant nook at the other end of the house where I might nurse a drink while squirming uncomfortably between a rock and a hard place.

  I could sense that I had my shoulders very close to the mat. The power was surely and steadily flowing Annie’s way as we got closer to her due date. From her viewpoint, the house and the three kids were more than ever a burden to be borne. She’d made it clear what she really wanted: a baby of her own and a house of her own where she wouldn’t have to put up with strangers in her midst.

  Along about this time, Annie took to reading books like, How To Be Your Own Woman, The Superwoman Within, The Stronger Sex, The Tyranny We Face, Time For The Awakened Woman, and so on. I’m not sure how much they influenced her, but at least now she had an intellectual framework for her feelings. I’m sure, in any event, that she (and maybe her LITTLE-GIRL-INSIDE too) now looked at me and the three kids with enlightened eyes.

  36

  It’s Day Six of Nine and I’m feeling restless in the studio so I hop in the car and go over to Todd’s day care center. I figure I’ll take him out for a few hours, maybe up to the trails that circle the reservoir nearby.

  He loves hiking these rough-cut paths through the woods and doing things that test his bravery. He’ll hesitate at the edge of a steep hillside, for instance, and then make me carry him down. But the next time we go for a walk, he exults in telling me how he can do that particular hill himself. It’s a stretching time for Todd; he’s learning how brave he can afford to be.

  When I get to the center, the director, a mild, generally pleasant woman in her mid-50s, intercepts me and tells me I can’t any longer take Todd from the center without Annie’s permission.

  “Say again?”

  She repeats herself and tries to look firm. What she really looks is terrified—that she’s once again caught in the middle between another pair of raving lunatics who are nominally known as parents and who routinely act out their power struggles by using 4-year-olds as pawns.

  “Really?” I say after she tells me again. “That’s a new twist.” I pick up Todd and leave, feeling her eyes drill smoking little holes in my back. I settle Todd into the car seat and then feel an agitated presence behind me. It’s the director again. “I’ll have to call the police, Mr. Wexler, if you take Todd without permission.”

  I smile. I’m angry but I try to hide it. “Did you know, Ms. Darlington,” I say very quietly, “that our divorce agreement gives me veto power over Annie’s choice of day care centers?”

  Ms. Darlington says nothing. She’s processing this information. “Mr. Wexler,” she says finally, “you have to understand my position. Ms. White is the custodial parent, so by law I have to go strictly according to that and carry out her wishes.”

  “I’ll have him back by 4. Will that do?”

  “What if Todd tells her?”

  I turn to Todd and say, “What about it, sport? Can you keep quiet this once and not tell mom that you and I saw each other today?”

  He smiles. Kids of broken marriages are experienced coconspirators. “Yup.” I know it’s unlikely he’ll be able to keep a confidence but I figure, what the hell. You take it a day at a time, life with Annie White.

  Ms. Darlington shakes her head in heartfelt exasperation at what the world (along with her universe) has come to, but she turns to go back inside. “Please, Mr. Wexler, not a minute after 4.”

  As I pull away from the building, I realize that Annie must know something is up. She has a radar when it comes to such things. She may not know the specifics of what I’ve recently learned about her affair and she may not know about a DNA bomb that’s ticking away out there in a Midwest laboratory—but she knows something is afoot.

  It’s a beautiful late-spring day and the trails around the reservoir are deserted. Todd and I take off down a gravel path and at first he clings tight to my index finger. He’s chattering all the while, telling me about the two (“or maybe three”) girlfriends he’s so far identified in his life, plus his trip the evening before to a Friendly’s for an ice cream sundae, and, not least, the fact that he was bitten again yesterday, this time on his wrist. He holds the wrist up for my inspection and I see some red welts there in a chain-like embrace around his tiny arm.

  “Jesus Christ,” I breathe. “Which dog this time?”

  “Snowball,” he says. That’s the little brain-dead terrier Annie recently added to her menagerie. She already had an untrained 90-pound Irish Setter, an equally wild dog of indeterminate breed, three cats, and a cloudy goldfish bowl of gradually suffocating fish. It all lends credence to the notion that people who can’t handle one pet invariably add some more.

  “Todd, you should call me when this happens.”

  “I told mom that but she wouldn’t let me. She said it’s none of your business. She said all it would do is give you anna nition.”

  “Ammunition,” I correct automatically. I seethe a while in silence, knowing it would only make Todd feel uneasy if I ranted and raved about the danger he continually faced from the chaotic zoo his mom kept, along with the dog crap all over the floors, the overflowing litter boxes, and general mess Annie reveled in.

  Three more days, I remind myself. Then I’ll know what to do.

  We wander a circuitous path around the reservoir and a little sooner than I would want, we head back to the car. It’s showing 10 of 4 on the dashboard clock so we head on back to the day care center. I remind Todd, for what it’s worth, that today’s outing is to be our secret. “Mom doesn’t have to know,” I repeat.

  “O-tay, I won’t tell her.”

  I’m walking him up to the center’s door when Todd stops and says, very quietly, “Dad, when can I live with you and the tids?”

  I groan inwardly. Why’s he have to say that now?

  “I don’t know, Todd,” I say. “We’ll have to see what happens, okay?”

  “O-tay,” he says softly. “Can you come tomorrow?”

  “The day after tomorrow. Thursday, okay?”

  “O-tay.” He swivels toward me and hugs fiercely at my knees. I crouch and hug him back. We both keep quiet for a few more seconds.

  That’s why I end up at Tony Gio’s Bar & Grill and finally they have to pour me into a cab which takes me home.

  37

  I’m going to skip way ahead in the story and tell you that the birth went fine, that I bought that second house for Annie and Todd two years later, and that Annie and I divorced a year or so after that.

  Wait a minute!, you’re saying. What the hell went on that all that came about?

  Well, like the bumper sticker might say, S—HAPPENS.

  The birth was at home. Annie insisted this had nothing to do with the fact that the late Jillian had all three of hers at home. Not at all, she said, smiling her gorgeous smile at me.

  “It’s part of the empowerment process, Gil. Why does any woman need a bunch of men gawking down at her crotch just to have a baby?” I didn’t have an answer ready for that one. She went on, “Women have been doing this by themselves for thousands of years. The midwife and I will do just fine on our own. In fact, Melissa says she’s never had a problem and she’s helped at over a dozen births so far.”

  Fine. Terrorize me again. Make me watch a wife screaming for drugs that aren’t there; make me hope that the kid is not breech, is not in sudden cardiac distress, and is not being strangled with the cord around its neck. Be okay, kid! Breathe! is what I chant inwardly as I crouch one more time in front of a woman writhing in agony, my hands ready to catch yet another slippery hike
from center.

  But Todd manages to do it. He’s blue at first, then he squalls, and I let loose a sigh that’s been pent up for some nine hours, all the way from 8 a.m. that morning when Annie looked at me with scared eyes and said, “You’d better call Melissa. I think it’s time.”

  Todd survives the ordeal just fine. He’s got a full complement of finely-etched lines on his palms, which tells me he’s not retarded. His hips flex and his spine’s closed up and he has eyes, thank God. He’s 7-pounds-something, and he’s 21 inches long. He knows enough to take the tit when he’s offered it and he knows better than to stay awake long in this new, light-spiked world. He falls asleep on Annie’s stomach and I go back to breathing normally.

  Idyllic, yes?

  Here’s Annie’s note to me about a month later, on the morning we had Todd baptized—and were about to throw another catered party to celebrate his arrival:

  Dearest Gil,

  Please excuse the informality of this note, but I wanted to inform you very quickly about a few things.

  Thank you for so many happy times. Thank you mostly for today. There are so many similarities between today and our wedding day. I was so happy to marry you and continue to be proud to be your wife.

  For reasons you understand all too well, this day is a better one. Without question this is the happiest day of my life. Thank you for my family. Thank you for my beautiful baby. Thank you for enabling me to have this celebration.

  It wasn’t easy holding back the tears of joy as I stood next to my wonderful husband this morning and watched as my angel sent from God was baptized.

  In return for all you have given me, I can only give you my unending love & devotion through this life and the next.

  Annie

  Actually, it was the beginning of the end.

  Because Annie now had an honest-to-God possession—something and someone that was 100% hers. Nothing could come between her and Todd. No one could adequately watch Todd but Annie. No one, not his father, and certainly not Allegra, Jack, or Wolfie, could safely play with him or help bathe him or monitor him at night. She cooked with him on her hip, she napped with him, she carried him everywhere. Todd became Annie’s 24-hour preoccupation.

  Before he was born, we’d bought a new crib for the baby, even though I still had one of the cribs my other children had used stored in the basement. Annie laughed scornfully when I suggested it was a perfectly good crib for this new baby. “No,” she said. “I want a new crib for my baby, something she didn’t pick out.” I’m sure I put a new groove in my tongue when I heard that, but I went along.

  The new crib was never used. At first, for a month or so, Todd slept in our bed. Annie said it was the only way she could rest at night. She said that way she could guard against SIDS—sudden infant death syndrome. Then she took to sleeping with Todd on a couch in his room. Eventually, she replaced the couch with a twin bed and slept there with him.

  In desperation, I myself put him in the crib once or twice in the late evening, but he yowled, missing Annie’s enfolding arms. I’d stand guard at the door to the nursery, preventing Annie from going in and rescuing him.

  “It’s cruel,” she wailed.

  “He’ll stop,” I’d say. “They always stop.”

  I’d stay there in front of the door to Todd’s room for a while, listening to the noise. I’d shoo away a fretting Annie time and again, assuring her that Todd would quickly learn that sleep is something you do alone. But she’d lurk nearby, twisting her hands and darting ugly looks at me. “Please,” she’d say. “Just this once, and we’ll try again tomorrow.” I’d shake my head, adamant that this nonsense had to cease.

  Then, inevitably, she’d work up her anger some more. “You’re a cruel bastard,” she would finally snarl, pushing into me and past me. It was either give way or violently throw her back. I’d give way. She’d zip into the nursery and scoop him up to breast feed him some more. Afterward, she’d wander the house with him, then finally fall asleep with Todd cradled next to her.

  Todd never did learn to sleep well. Even now he fights it.

  Annie no longer did anything around the house or for anyone that couldn’t be done with a baby on one’s hip. Worse yet, Annie saw Allegra, Jack, and Wolfie as too noisy and too boisterous for Todd’s well-being. Todd didn’t have a schedule, so he might be up at midnight, or he might be napping at odd hours. Regardless, the baby was king, and the baby’s needs were paramount. The rest of us could take a hike.

  Annie and I never again went out, because how on earth could Annie entrust her baby to a mere babysitter? Likewise, we rarely had people in anymore. A couple of times I insisted on it and there we’d be, halfway through dinner, when Todd would wake up screaming from a tenuous nap on the twin bed in his nursery. Annie would spring up without a word—and disappear for the rest of the evening. I’d go looking for her after a while and she’d raise a stern finger to her lips, hushing me; Todd was latched onto a breast, asleep.

  She shopped and she cooked dinner, but virtually all else ceased. Cleaning, chauffeuring older children, work of any nature—all these went by the board. When she did talk to the older children, it was to bitch at them about their noise or their attitude. The kids laughingly tell me of the time when they were ignoring her in favor of a hot Nintendo game … and she threw a frozen turkey across the room at them.

  Time and again, Annie would tell me what I already knew for myself: “This just isn’t working, Gil.”

  She’d rhapsodize on her second-house notion, arguing that if I just wasn’t so damned stubborn (and dense as well) we could have two harmonious households rather than one dysfunctional one. “Just think,” she’d say, “We could all flow back and forth to both houses. Jack and Wolfie could spend nights over at my place, and sometimes Allegra and I could have a girls-only night. Wouldn’t that be wild?”

  Of course, we would all have meals back and forth and everybody would pitch in—like the Waltons on adjacent mountaintops. It would be a close, loving family situation, even if a bit unconventional.

  That was how she couched it.

  Why on earth would I have let it get this far? Why would I have edged so close to giving this woman exactly, precisely what she wanted?

  Because every new day brought a new, compelling urgency to the reality that the three older kids and I were being held hostage in our own home. None of us could move about freely, none of us could play music or watch TV or just in general let our hair down without first checking whether Annie and Todd were asleep. It might be three in the afternoon—a boisterous, winding-down-from-school time of day for the three older kids—but watch out! If their new brother was asleep, there would be hell to pay for waking him up.

  Worse still, I realized that this was no temporary bonding thing with Annie and Todd. This wasn’t something that would end when Todd was two, or three—or twenty-three. The two of them had become a unit, a self-sufficient family. Annie and her LITTLE-GIRL-INSIDE now had what she had apparently needed all along: a puppy who could do human tricks. The rest of us in the house (three older kids, one older husband) were now just aggravating step-children.

  I temporized, I rationalized, I finally gave in.

  38

  Gil,

  It’s impossible to contain all the thoughts zipping through my head right now. It’s not just a matter of this particular place meeting our needs: I’m crazy about the place. It’s not a condominium, it’s a year-round love nest. The realtor was talking about exclusions and I was having sexual fantasies.

  It is unwise & naive, but I don’t want to waste time looking at anything else. I want these people to move the hell out of my home.

  Please tell me you’ll come look at the condo with me? I so much want you to fall in love with it too.

  Annie

  39

  I’d given up and I’d given in and Annie moved to a nearby condominium just about the time Todd was nearing his second birthday.

  The three older kids and I helpe
d her move some things, arrange some things and then we were effectively banished from life there. Despite all our talk about togetherness and harmony, and despite the fact that I bought the place for $150,000 in cash, I didn’t have a key.

  The charade of sharing the two homes went on only very briefly. The two older boys spent a night at Annie’s new place in the early going, and we had three or four Sunday dinners there until Annie decided she didn’t like our attitude or the mess we left behind.

  Meantime, I visited Todd almost every day, or brought him over to the house or studio for a couple of hours at a time. I also went up to Annie’s condominium with some frequency in those first few months for sex with her. The sex was all rather perfunctory. I’d zip in, we’d chat a while, then we’d get down to it. Then I’d leave and go back to my real life. I felt a little soiled over the whole thing. It was as if I were sneaking into some other man’s house to furtively dip into the cookie jar and then, watching both ways on the stoop outside, slipping away before he got home.

  Over recent times, Annie had gotten a little more into sex, at least compared to the early days with her. She seemed to counterfeit some measure of enjoyment in the act and, indeed, since the time of our marriage had even developed some rather lusty needs—entailing considerably more variety of positions and activities than one would have imagined with such a demure creature. (Only much later did I learn the genesis of this new, and if not improved, at least different sexual person.)

  Annie rarely set foot into our so-called main house any longer. As surely as she’d turned her back on Harry White and her circle of friends and acquaintances some years before, she put the house—and the four of us remaining there—out of mind. If she thought of us at all, it was likely to ring us up in her mind and press “3” to erase us … and all our damned needs and noise and nonsensical clinging to a way of life that just wasn’t with it any longer.