The only man I ever birthed, though not the only one I mothered, is on the other end of the line, and he is giving me news that is sad and bad and that makes me jealous. Julia, my ex-husband’s second wife, has been hospitalised after a heart attack, her third. She will likely not survive. She is much younger than I – fifteen years if you go by my age as I’ve been lying about it forever, sixteen if you go by my age as I am pretty sure is correct. Either way, she is 68.
Either way, it is 1984, and she is with them, and I am alone on New Year’s Eve in New York City, and it’s too warm. I wish it were snowing, but gently, gently, like sugar falling on a great, grey cookie.
Unlike Julia, my health is and always has been – physically – impeccable.
‘She was struggling in all this Maine snow, when there’s none in California,’ says Johnny, says Gianino, my Little John, says my son, says Gian, as he asked to be called back in junior high school, when it occurred to him that he had the wherewithal. ‘She collapsed coming up the driveway after taking the kids to the library. It’s pretty grim this time, Ma.’
‘Ma’, he calls me – incongruous, ugly – but I enjoy it. Max, my ex-husband, taught him that: the harsh monosyllable sounding working-class, hardly our income bracket. But that was part of what I loved about Max. The blue of his collar to the white of mine. I was not entirely un-maternal toward Max. Of course when, finally, I needed his unconditional support, he could not afford the same care to me.
‘Dreadful,’ I say. ‘I hope the ambulance didn’t founder getting out to Pin Point.’
Gian spends his time between semesters at Pin Point, the summer home Max and I bought in the thirties; perversely, he likes it in winter, too.
‘No, they made it all right,’ he says. ‘I’m at the hospital now. Claire’s mom took the train up from Boston to help out with the kids so I can stay here with Julia. The university’s not back in session until the third week of January, so this honestly couldn’t have happened at a better time.’
This announcement that Gian is calling from the hospital forces me to revise the image of him in my mind, an image I wasn’t even aware of until I knew it was wrong. I picture him now in an overly bright lounge among grim institutional furniture, murmuring into an oft-disinfected courtesy phone. He rests his free hand atop his shaggy head in his distracted fashion – th
