Who Makes Up These Rules, Anyway? Read online

  “Funny,” Rio says, lifting Alyssa off his lap and setting her down on the couch. “I don’t suppose you got any?”

  “In the fridge,” I say, looking through my wallet. “Did you borrow any money from me?”

  Rio ignores me as he walks to the kitchen, and I pull out my checkbook to write a check instead of giving Jesse cash, since suddenly I am down to seven dollars. I am sure I had about forty when I went off to get milk and a couple of other things after seeing Dr. Benjamin.

  “Where in the fridge?” Rio asks, standing at the kitchen doorway.

  Men are impossible. It isn’t bad enough that they all apparently believed the “lock” function on the dishwasher means they can’t open it (which explains why they pile dirty dishes on the counter above it), apparently there is also some sort of boa constrictor that lives under the sink, so they can’t, ever, scrape dishes or throw empty boxes and cartons out. You’d think that they could actually look in the refrigerator for themselves. What can live in there? Bigfoot?

  I roll my eyes at Jesse, grateful that he is only a man-in-training and not a full-fledged incompetent yet, and head for the kitchen.

  “Right here,” I say to Rio with the air of superiority that a wife who knows she’s right has a patent on. I fling open the refrigerator door and reach in—but the two half gallons of milk I bought hours ago are gone. I don’t know why, at this point in my mental deterioration, this comes as a surprise, but it does. I bend at the waist and look harder, move the orange juice, the pineapple-orange juice, the tropical orange juice, swearing about how five people should be able to drink the same juice once a day, shouldn’t they? But juice is beside the point.

  “Jesse?” I call. “Did you and your friends drink all the milk already?”

  Jesse rolls into the kitchen on his new Rollerblades—they have retractable wheels, only he never seems to retract them. He is going to kill himself skating around with his nose in a book. He looks up at me as if he hasn’t a clue why he’s come into the kitchen.

  “Did you somehow make the milk disappear?” I ask him, trying to be nonaccusatory. After all, I’ve been jumping down everyone’s throats for days and it has to stop.

  “Milk? Oh, good. You got some? You got any of those things from the bakery with the whipped cream and—”

  “There is no milk. I’m asking if you drank it all,” I say, trying to sound more patient than I feel.

  He reminds me that he had Sunny D, and, sounding like Captain Queeg asking about the strawberries in The Caine Mutiny, I demand to know if there was milk in the fridge when he took the juice. Jesse obviously thinks the answer is of no consequence. He looks at me blankly.

  “Well, somebody drank it,” I say, opening up the cabinet under the sink and looking in the garbage for the empty cartons. “I mean, there has to be some logical explanation for this. Two half gallons of milk don’t simply grow legs and walk away.”

  “You forgot it,” Rio says. His tone is bored. “I guess I gotta—”

  I adamantly deny forgetting it. I am rapidly growing tired of him acting as if I am some mental patient with drool on my chin. “I remember quite clearly going to Trader Joe’s and CVS rather than making a full-scale supermarket run, and getting two half gallons of milk, soy nuts, shelled pistachios, some of those imitation Cocoa Puffs that probably won’t fool Alyssa and a box of Tampax.”

  “Ah! Well, that explains everything,” Rio says after rolling his eyes at the mention of my Tampax. “Maybe you left the milk in the car?”

  I didn’t, I assure him, but he sends Jesse to look, anyway, while I continue to deny it. I remember quite distinctly putting it on the counter and then opening the refrigerator door. Okay, maybe not distinctly. It’s one of those things you do over and over, a million times during the course of a lifetime—like turning off the faucet or closing the door. But I did get the milk.

  Rio leans against the wall, his arms folded across his chest, looking righteous while we wait for Jesse to return.

  “What?” I demand, but he just watches with mild curiosity while I rearrange the contents of the refrigerator.

  “Hiding in there somewhere?” he asks. “Under the butter? Behind the mustard?”

  Jesse comes in through the kitchen door flipping a disk in the air and catching it. “Not in the car. Found Dana’s Linkin Park CD, though.”

  Rio looks at me. “You feel okay?” he asks, coming close enough to all but examine my pupils.

  I pull away from him. “I’m fine. Why are you making a federal case out of this? I got milk,” I say, speaking as evenly as I can. “I got two half gallons of the red Lactaid, even though I wanted the blue one that’s low fat. And the cashier had her nails all done up for the Fourth of July already, red and white stripes with blue tops and little white dots…or maybe it was for Flag Day…” My voice trails off as I consider whether or not it might have actually been yesterday that I went to the store. Without Angelina coming anymore, what is the difference between Tuesday and any other day of the week?

  “Was Lys with you?” Rio presses.

  Oh, right. Now I’m sure it was today because of her play-date and my therapy session. “No, remember I called you this afternoon and told you that she was at Alexis’s and I was going to pick up the pants with the sauce on them from the cleaners?”

  “No,” Rio answers flatly.

  “Now who can’t remember?” I ask.

  He puts his hands on my shoulders and all but walks me to a chair, pressing on them until I sit. “I wasn’t in the office this afternoon. I went to see that back doctor again.”

  “So then it was earlier,” I say cavalierly, as if it isn’t the least bit important, while all the while I have the sense that something is terribly wrong here. But I can’t put my finger on what it is. “I mean, it must have been earlier, right? When you spoke to me, that is.”

  “You feel okay?” He pushes my bangs back off my face and feels my forehead. “I don’t think that doctor of yours is doing you one damn bit of good. If you ask me, you’re worse than before you started seeing her. I’m telling you, Teddi, you seeing a lady doctor is like the blind leading the deaf.” He shoots a glance at Jesse, who’s standing next to the entrance to the kitchen watching us. With the slightest gesture of his head he makes it clear that Jesse should leave us alone.

  Jesse seems to know more than I do and nods, avoiding my eyes as he leaves. There is something familiar about the look that passes between them, and a bitter taste rises in my mouth. I’ve seen that look. I’ve received it.

  But that, of course, is different. Something is wrong here, but it isn’t that.

  “Is it your back? Did the doctor say you hurt something? Is it serious?”

  “No, it’s not serious,” Rio says. “I might have to go back to him a few more times is all. Those therapy treatments are helping some. It ain’t me I’m worried about, Ted. It’s you.”

  “Me? I’m fine. I’ve got a lot on my plate, what with this birthday thing, and my mother being back in South Winds, and my father and Angelina…well, who wouldn’t be a little distracted? But I’m really—”

  “So I guess you probably planned to get the milk, but you got busy or something and you forgot, right?”

  Well, that would be nice, but it isn’t so. I remember I even got a Kentucky quarter for change and put it in my jeans pocket.

  “No. I got the milk right after we talked,” I say, leaning back so that I can feel around in the change pocket of my jeans, but not finding the quarter there.

  Rio comes closer, crouching beside my chair and looking into my eyes as if he’s going to find some secret there. Softly, almost gently, he tells me that the only time we spoke on the phone today was when he called to say he was coming home. He says there were no discussions about milk or laundry or anything else.

  “Maybe all you need is a good night’s sleep,” Rio says. “How about I run you a bath or something and then get you into bed? And tomorrow you can call Dr. Benjamin and…”
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br />   “Rio, I got milk.” How many times did my mother swear she bought something and been unable to find it? How many glances did my father and I share that mirrored the one Rio shot Jesse? But this is different. He has to know that, doesn’t he? My mother is crazy, yes. But for me there is some other, some better, explanation.

  “Don’t worry about the freakin’ milk,” Rio says, putting his hand under my elbow. “I’ll go over to Dairy Barn after you’re settled.” Suddenly he’s a saint.

  “You know, Rio, I really didn’t forget Jesse the other day,” I say as I let him lead me toward the stairs. “I lost track of the time…” I don’t bring up the ball game, which I have decided not to think about, or the hundred other things I have forgotten lately. Everyone forgets things. That’s why there are forty-two different kinds of Palm Pilots. That’s why they invented secretaries. And notepads.

  “Yeah, I know,” he says, guiding me as if I am an invalid. “It’s nothing. Too much stress or something. In a few weeks the kids’ll be off to camp and you’ll get a nice break.”

  I stop and turn to look him squarely in the face. “This is important, Rio. Listen. I’m not losing my mind. I did get milk.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Probably Dana drank it, is all. I’ll get more.”

  But if Dana drank it, the empty cartons would be in the garbage. And who could drink a whole gallon? And what about the phone conversation, and the quarter in my jeans?…

  “Jesse came in from the car, right?” I ask.

  Rio nods.

  “And Dana’s in her room and Alyssa went to bed, right?” I ask, listening to myself and being ashamed of the pitiful way I sound. “I didn’t lose any of them today, did I?”

  “The children are good,” he says softly. “And there’s some good explanation about why the milk’s missing. Maybe Dana loaned it to Bobbie and the girls.”

  It is possible, I suppose. More likely than that they were filming a “Got milk?” commercial down the block and raided my refrigerator.

  For more than thirty years I have been telling myself I am fine, convincing myself I am all right, purposefully ignoring every sign that should warn me.

  Now the yellow lights are flashing. CAUTION! CAUTION! PROCEED WITH CARE! and closing my eyes doesn’t help. I still see them.

  “Want me to run you a tub?” Rio says. “Or maybe help you get outta your clothes?”

  There is no innuendo in his voice. No sexual connotations. His eyes aren’t eating me up the way they usually do.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him. I’m fine I repeat to myself while Rio answers a soft knock on the bedroom door.

  “Is Mommy okay?” I hear Dana ask, though Rio has opened the door only a crack.

  “I’m taking care of Mommy,” Rio says. “She’s tired, is all. It’s like we talked about, remember?”

  “Well, but she was supposed to take me to Saks to look for bathing suits, and Jesse says—” Dana starts.

  “Don’t go worrying about your mother,” Rio says firmly. “That’s my job.”

  “It’s nobody’s job,” I say from a dark corner of the room where I’m thinking I must be crazy if I told my eleven-year-old she could get a bathing suit at Saks Fifth Avenue. “There’s nothing to worry about. I must have left the milk on the counter at the store. People do that all the time.” And toilet paper rolls jump out of wastebaskets, and daughters-in-law forget to buy gifts, and—

  “Of course they do,” Rio agrees.

  But he is lying.

  “Oh! I remember now,” I say brightly. “I put the package down on the next car so that I could open the car door.”

  “See?” Rio tells Dana. “That’s all it was.”

  Well, if he can lie, why can’t I?

  CHAPTER 8

  “It was horrible,” I tell Dr. Benjamin as I pace around her office. “I actually accused her of stealing milk from my refrigerator. It seemed so logical at the time. The only logical explanation.”

  “And what did your neighbor say?” she asks.

  “She pointed out that I was the one forgetting to get things,” I say, when actually Bobbie shouted something like What the hell do I need to steal your milk for? I’m not the one with the freaking memory problem! She was having a sleepover for the girls and had, of course, gotten lots of Dunkin’ Munchkins and bakery stuff, and bagels and lox for breakfast the next day. According to The Rules, you cannot cook for a party. You have to bring in or go out for any food beyond chips. The one exception to this rule is if you’ve gotten a new piece of equipment, like a Pizzelle Maker, which you can inaugurate at a party but then never use again.

  “And she’d gotten Lactaid for Dana, and that was the way I thanked her—accusing her of coming into my house and taking milk out of my refrigerator.” I shake my head, a habit that has become so routine that it’s a wonder my eyes don’t rattle. The two half gallons in Bobbie’s fridge were from the Dairy Barn, and if I hadn’t been so totally crazed I would have realized that as soon as I stuck my nose in for the hazelnut creamer.

  “Did you really believe that she had done that?” she asks. Unlike the last visit, she is doing an awful lot of writing in my folder.

  I admit that I suppose not. It was just that I was inexplicably missing milk and Bobbie had an overabundance.

  “Let’s forget the milk for a minute,” she says, and before she can finish I make some joke about how I’ve made a habit of doing that already.

  She laughs. “I fell right into that one.”

  She asks me where I’d like to start and I feel like one of those clowns at the circus who keeps pulling scarf after scarf out of his mouth, only instead of scarves, they’re worries. There are class trips, disease-bearing mosquitoes, community swimming pools. “You can’t even say hello to a baby without the mother looking at you like you plan to kidnap it,” I complain. “And if Alyssa isn’t glued to my side and I lose sight of her for ten seconds, I stop breathing. Do you know what can happen out there? That someone can swoop down and scoop up my little girl, run into a bathroom with her, change her clothes, cut her hair and walk out of the mall with her before the mall police can even raise one another on their radios?

  “Suddenly I’m afraid of everything. Kids with guns, dogs that attack, drunk drivers…if Dana seems depressed, I worry about preteen suicide. If she doesn’t want dessert, I worry about anorexia. Jesse hides in books. Alyssa spends too much time looking in the mirror and trying to look cute. You should have known me before…”

  “Before what?” she asks, and I shake my head. Before what, indeed. The death of my baby brother? My mother’s illness? My inching toward the ledge?

  “Do you think I’m crazy, worrying about all these things?”

  “Are you afraid that Martians will abduct your kids? That the police will mistake them for terrorists? That witches are casting spells over them or that creatures who live deep inside the earth will shovel up and snatch them?”

  I have to admit that I am not.

  “Then no, I don’t think you’re abnormal for worrying, and I think that you are acting in a totally responsible manner when you weigh the dangers of any situation and then act accordingly. You aren’t inventing dangers that don’t exist, Mrs. Gallo. “

  “No one else seems paralyzed by these kind of fears.” They all seem to go on with their lives as if they live in Metropolis, and while bad things might happen, surely Superman will save them and their children.

  “And they are all looking at you and thinking the exact same thing. ‘Why, look at that Mrs. Gallo,’ they’re saying. ‘She’s got all these balls in the air and somehow she can still get dinner on the table every night.’”

  I admit that we go out for dinner more often than I cook.

  “Fine,” she says. “‘Will you look at that Mrs. Gallo? Why, she’s out to dinner again, as if she doesn’t have a care in the world! How does she do it?’”

  “With mirrors,” I respond, but I understand what she is saying. Apparently everyone has their own
supply of smoke and mirrors.

  I tell her that I appreciate her trying to convince me I’m normal, but that I know I’m not. She tells me there is no such thing as “normal”—there are only those who thrive better than others. We are all, to some extent, the walking wounded.

  “And in your case, what happened to your younger brother inflicted a wound that can never really heal without leaving a scar. Your mother’s breakdowns, your family dynamic—these are all more wounds that you have tried to ignore over the years. Imagine your psyche as your body for a second. You didn’t merely sprain a toe, or break a nail. These problems in your life are huge ones. And you have been strong enough to limp around with your leg broken, your arm dangling from the socket all this time.

  “Now along comes this betrayal by the two people in your life who saw you through your original traumas, and it’s like a—”

  “Knife in the back,” I say, nodding my head and trying not to cry.

  “Exactly. But you’ve staggered to the hospital, and I promise you that you are in good hands. Hands that respect your strength, your fortitude and your wisdom in seeking help.”

  “Do you think you can really help me?” I ask, leaning forward in my chair. “Once the kids leave for camp I can come more often—as often as you say, if you think that you can give me back my life. I’ll do whatever you say. Shock therapy, medication—”

  “You know, I was surprised when you didn’t come in here asking for Zoloft that first day. Since they’ve started advertising it on television I get several calls a week asking if I can prescribe it over the phone since the caller already knows from the ad that it’s exactly what he or she needs.”

  “I wanted to, but I thought that it would make you think I needed it. Catch 22, huh?”

  On the way home I call my mother at South Winds.

  “I’m playing mah jong,” she says. I tell her that I just wanted to check on her and see how she is doing. “I’m in a mental institution and my husband is schtupping the maid while I’m locked up in here. How do you think I am?” she asks.