the hospital. Elizabeth would sit in the waiting room reading
Travel and Leisure.
Greta would come out twenty minutes later. It was just a drip, she said, and it didn’t hurt. Afterward, though, everything tasted like aluminum foil, she was queasy, and the fatigue was as heavy as death itself.
“They give you poison,” Greta said. “Odd, isn’t it?”
Outside, a dog barked. A little propeller plane from Santa Monica Airport buzzed overhead. The house faced a small walkway. In the back, there was an alley for cars. In 1900, Venice had been planned as a vacation spot for middle-class Los Angeles city dwellers, a series of summer cottages at the beach built around canals. A lovely idea, Elizabeth thought. Canals and walk streets. The walk street in front of her house was lined on either side by the front gardens of pretty little bungalows. If it weren’t for Harry, who treated the walkway as his own, rolling toy trucks up and down, she wasn’t sure if she would ever go out there, since she was always driving up the alley to park in the back, and coming into the house through the back door. She wondered if any of her neighbors ever saw their front gardens.
There was no traffic noise, not even Harry’s simulated engine roars, which meant that from the kitchen Elizabeth could hear the old men (it must have been their beagle who’d been barking) next door talking by the open window of their kitchen. They were identical twins in their eighties and often sat on their porch wearing matching green caps that said SKIDMORE BASKETBALL.
“Beautiful girl,” one said.
“That Cher,” said the other.
Elizabeth heard Harry singing in his bed, waking up from his nap, a nap he would soon have to abandon altogether as he started out on life’s narrow rocky path at nursery school. He sang with his pacifier in his mouth. He would have to give that up, too, she supposed.
Harry stopped singing. She heard a shuffling. He appeared in the doorway.
“I’m a cat,” he said, and began making hideous high-pitched squealing noises.
“Why are you screeching, kitty?”
“I can’t answer,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Cats don’t talk.”
He ran to the television and turned it on.
“Tommy!” he cried, pointing at a cartoon baby.
Tracy? Britny? Barbie?
Barbie, Elizabeth thought. I will name her Barbie. A brand name. An icon among brand names. A brand name with a wardrobe. Barbie the pilot, the bathing beauty, Olympic skater, equestrian, career gal, African American. Nobody could say Barbie lacked imagination.
Harry wanted an apple. Harry lined up his blocks on the floor. Harry had cities to build. Which meant Elizabeth had cities to build, too. Her workday was over. Her workday was just beginning. She sat on the floor with Harry, who was intent, his vision as grand as Robert Moses’s.
“That’s great, sweetie,” she said periodically, reaching out to steady a tower. Barbie and Chuck, she thought. Poor Flaubert. Chuck, a chiropractor, rushes off to his office late one night. He has to perform an emergency adjustment on a burly, prosperous ex-hippie microbrewer! The brewer’s beautiful daughter drives her father to the dedicated chiropractor! Dad is bent over in pain! She helps him, in all his tormented bulk, into the office! But,
mon dieu!
She is very beautiful, this daughter!
Elizabeth picked up her mug from the coffee table. Beautiful in which way? she wondered. A drop rolled down the side of the mug onto her pants. Beautiful how? Elizabeth would have to decide, and she was not used to dispensing beauty, only interpreting it. Should Barbie Bovaine possess the dark-eyed mysterious beauty Flaubert gives Emma Bovary? Or the blond, blue-eyed prettiness favored by Americans? Perhaps she is stylish and cosmopolitan and dark, but lives in a blond, robust, homespun town? Yes. Dark hair, black hair. Swollen lips, like a model. Which she bites, like Emma Bovary. And beautiful white fingernails, like Emma. Small, lovely feet. No
Travel and Leisure.
Greta would come out twenty minutes later. It was just a drip, she said, and it didn’t hurt. Afterward, though, everything tasted like aluminum foil, she was queasy, and the fatigue was as heavy as death itself.
“They give you poison,” Greta said. “Odd, isn’t it?”
Outside, a dog barked. A little propeller plane from Santa Monica Airport buzzed overhead. The house faced a small walkway. In the back, there was an alley for cars. In 1900, Venice had been planned as a vacation spot for middle-class Los Angeles city dwellers, a series of summer cottages at the beach built around canals. A lovely idea, Elizabeth thought. Canals and walk streets. The walk street in front of her house was lined on either side by the front gardens of pretty little bungalows. If it weren’t for Harry, who treated the walkway as his own, rolling toy trucks up and down, she wasn’t sure if she would ever go out there, since she was always driving up the alley to park in the back, and coming into the house through the back door. She wondered if any of her neighbors ever saw their front gardens.
There was no traffic noise, not even Harry’s simulated engine roars, which meant that from the kitchen Elizabeth could hear the old men (it must have been their beagle who’d been barking) next door talking by the open window of their kitchen. They were identical twins in their eighties and often sat on their porch wearing matching green caps that said SKIDMORE BASKETBALL.
“Beautiful girl,” one said.
“That Cher,” said the other.
Elizabeth heard Harry singing in his bed, waking up from his nap, a nap he would soon have to abandon altogether as he started out on life’s narrow rocky path at nursery school. He sang with his pacifier in his mouth. He would have to give that up, too, she supposed.
Harry stopped singing. She heard a shuffling. He appeared in the doorway.
“I’m a cat,” he said, and began making hideous high-pitched squealing noises.
“Why are you screeching, kitty?”
“I can’t answer,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Cats don’t talk.”
He ran to the television and turned it on.
“Tommy!” he cried, pointing at a cartoon baby.
Tracy? Britny? Barbie?
Barbie, Elizabeth thought. I will name her Barbie. A brand name. An icon among brand names. A brand name with a wardrobe. Barbie the pilot, the bathing beauty, Olympic skater, equestrian, career gal, African American. Nobody could say Barbie lacked imagination.
Harry wanted an apple. Harry lined up his blocks on the floor. Harry had cities to build. Which meant Elizabeth had cities to build, too. Her workday was over. Her workday was just beginning. She sat on the floor with Harry, who was intent, his vision as grand as Robert Moses’s.
“That’s great, sweetie,” she said periodically, reaching out to steady a tower. Barbie and Chuck, she thought. Poor Flaubert. Chuck, a chiropractor, rushes off to his office late one night. He has to perform an emergency adjustment on a burly, prosperous ex-hippie microbrewer! The brewer’s beautiful daughter drives her father to the dedicated chiropractor! Dad is bent over in pain! She helps him, in all his tormented bulk, into the office! But,
mon dieu!
She is very beautiful, this daughter!
Elizabeth picked up her mug from the coffee table. Beautiful in which way? she wondered. A drop rolled down the side of the mug onto her pants. Beautiful how? Elizabeth would have to decide, and she was not used to dispensing beauty, only interpreting it. Should Barbie Bovaine possess the dark-eyed mysterious beauty Flaubert gives Emma Bovary? Or the blond, blue-eyed prettiness favored by Americans? Perhaps she is stylish and cosmopolitan and dark, but lives in a blond, robust, homespun town? Yes. Dark hair, black hair. Swollen lips, like a model. Which she bites, like Emma Bovary. And beautiful white fingernails, like Emma. Small, lovely feet. No
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