Never Enough by Joe McGinniss

children had always set her teeth on edge.
    “Can’t you make her be quiet?” Jean said.
    “Connie will deal with it. If she ever gets out here. Connie! I need you right now! Hurry up! ”
    Still screaming, Zoe started to punch and kick at her mother.
    “Can’t you control her?”
    “Stay out of this, Mom.”
    Zoe was now writhing on the living room floor. Connie raced in from another part of the apartment. She carried Zoe to her room and closed the door. Slowly, the screaming subsided.
    “Nancy,” Jean said, “I think it’s time that you learned to take care of your children yourself.”
    Nancy gasped.
    Then—and even years later Jean didn’t know another way to say it—Nancy went berserk. She charged at Jean and grabbed her and yanked her off the couch. Never robust, Jean had been especially frail since her surgery. Screaming even louder than Zoe had—and using language that Zoe wouldn’t learn for years—Nancy propelled her mother down the hallway.
    “Don’t-you-ever-tell-me-how-to-handle-my-own-children!”
    She squeezed Jean’s shoulders and pushed her up against the door.
    “Get out! Get out! Get out of my house! I never want to see your fucking face again!”
    Nancy opened the door and gave Jean a shove hard enough to make her stumble into the hallway and slammed the door in her face.
    Jean pounded on the door, begging Nancy to let her back in. There was no response. She pounded and begged until she was too exhausted to continue. She took a taxi to the cruise ship in tears.
    She let an hour pass, then phoned the apartment. Nancy picked up. The instant she heard Jean’s voice she was possessed by another fit. She yelled things into the phone that Jean could not imagine a daughter ever saying to a mother. Jean hung up but called again an hour later. This time, Connie answered. She said Nancy was lying down and did not want to be disturbed.
    Jean was still crying when the cruise ship left the harbor in late afternoon.

8. THE PERFECT COUPLE
    THE MORE MONEY ROB MADE, THE MORE NANCY SPENT. SHE bought clothes, jewelry, and perfume. Then more clothes, jewelry, and perfume. Then scarves and shoes and cosmetics. It was so easy to spend vast sums of money in Hong Kong, where shopping was the national pastime. In fact, if it weren’t for the 6.5 million Chinese who lived there, Hong Kong could have become Nancy’s kind of town.
    She shopped out of boredom. She shopped out of anger at Rob. She shopped so she could talk about her shopping. She shopped because the stores were open. She shopped because she never felt she had enough.
    While she shopped, Connie took care of the children. That’s what Connie was for. Connie had turned out to be smart, conscientious, and caring—the perfect amah. But even with Connie, Nancy felt oppressed by motherhood. It never stopped. There were no fixed hours, there were no days off. Children needed to be clothed and fed and cleaned and cleaned up after; they needed to be entertained and educated and disciplined. Nancy was perfectly happy to get down on the floor and play with them when in the mood—she delighted in her children then—but not even Connie’s round-the-clock service spared her the burden of responsibility. She loved to be a third child with her children; it was parenting she found so hard to cope with.
    Nancy brooded about her body. She’d always known her looks were something special, but she would turn thirty-five in the spring of 1999, and it alarmed her to think—and of this she was convinced—that in terms of physical attractiveness she would soon enter an irreversible period of decline. She’d look so much better, she thought, if only she hadn’t had children. Her two pregnancies had taken a toll. It galled her to see her breasts begin to sag, to see the slight padding on her hips, to spot incipient cellulite on her thighs. That was the main reason she didn’t want to have the third child that Rob had begun to insist on. He wanted a son. Easy for