When Heather was four and finally entered the most caring and progressive nursery school, though not necessarily the most prestigious, it was Karen who spent the day crying. And as the days passed she would occupy those few hours while Heather was in school heartbroken in bed, then spring to life at pickup time when she could hold her daughter’s hand again as they made cookies or watched videos or simply walked through the park.
About ten years before Mark and Karen’s first date, Robert Klasky was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a single mother in the public hospital. Bobby, as he was called, was a miracle unnoticed by the medical staff, since they were unaware that his Mother had rarely consumed anything other than beer during her mostly unacknowledged pregnancy. He was born with his Mother’s last name since his father could have been any number of people who had Bobby’s mousy brown hair and blue eyes.
Bobby’s Mother stayed in the hospital as long as permitted before returning to the small clapboard house in the town of Harrison, where she had spent most of her unhappy life. Harrison was originally filled with Polish immigrants and was now poor but still mostly white which was unusual for that part of New Jersey and would be quaint if not for the visual cues of poverty: the flimsy screen doors, mounds of garbage, strewn scrap metal and the black knit of telephone lines that cluttered the horizon.
Having Bobby did little to alter his Mother’s belief that heroin was the best thing in her life. She had never intended to spend her adult years in Harrison with all the “lowlifes” as she called them. Despite her judgment, she took up with a series of bums, violent addicts and drunks who liked a meal and a roof and then a woman for kicks. Bobby had eaten cigarette butts and drunk beer before he was ten and even helped her boyfriends and some of their friends shoot up when they were too sick.
He was frequently awakened in the middle of the night and dragged into the living room, never knowing if he was going to be a punching bag or a parlor trick. His Mother survived on government assistance and stealing, especially in the good years when they were building the stadium and construction was everywhere, but she mostly worked in local beauty parlors sweeping up hair and sometimes as an unlicensed cosmetician, which was ideal since it allowed her to follow her soap operas, skim from the register and evaluate others’ appearance with authority.
It was a relief to both Bobby and his Mother when he started school. He enjoyed it because it was structured and there was something to eat other than Taylor ham sandwiches, but soon he realized he was smarter than all of the students and most of the teachers. He discovered that he could get anything he wanted by simply telling the truth about his Mother or his poverty, particularly to the younger teachers whose eyes would fill with tears and buy him fast food and promise things would change. Nothing did, of course. The worst that would happen was his Mother would get a visit, but she was impossible to get in trouble because she had no shame and would frequently greet bureaucrats and do-gooders in her oversized T-shirt nightgown or a ratty kimono.
Bobby spent most of his time alone. It was hardest in the summer when the house was full of junkies and the TV had to be watched on mute. He would go down to the river which was littered with abandoned appliances and tires and feel lonely and sick because “he, too, felt thrown away,” as a prison psychologist would one day tell him.
Nothing really held his interest except animals. They were like people to him, dumb and helpless, especially the roadkill he would pick up and hide in the garage for later inspection. Only by accident did Bobby finally discover his own power when he saw a bird trapped inside the window air conditioner and turned it on and watched in awe as the animal was battered by the fan until blood sprayed out the vent.
Bobby dropped out of high school and got a job at a lumberyard loading trucks and eventually pallets once he figured out the forklift. He continued to live at home after staking out his own room with a padlock and in his off-hours he would watch TV and drink vodka and absorb the meaningless talk and explosive laughter of his Mother’s friends and lovers at her spontaneous nightly gatherings.
Sometimes a fight would break out and he would just leave and sit on the stoop or walk to the corner store for more beer. A neighbor girl, known as Chi-Chi, would frequently be on her stoop as well and he thought her very beautiful and could tell she was finding a way to talk to him. Once, on a particularly overcast Saturday afternoon, he crossed the street early so he could pass closer and said, “Nice sunny day, huh?” She smiled back and he was pleased that he had said one of those things people say.
TWO
MARK’S LIFE DIDN’T CHANGE much when Heather came along. At first there was little for him to do. Karen took care of everything and it made sense since he couldn’t really feed the baby, preferred not to change diapers and was at work when all of the bathing and strolling was done. But eventually, he found that Karen and Heather lived as a closed unit and he was on the outside. His attempts to participate were thwarted by his ignorance and it was true that it was always easier for Karen to do things herself than to watch him struggle with dressing the toddler or loading the bag for a trip to the park.
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He wasn’t angry with Karen but with himself, taking his relegation to observer as an extension of flaws that were now equally apparent at the office. In the halls of finance, Mark had never been able to make himself essential. Although his work was adequate and he made more money than he had ever dreamed, he witnessed a string of undeserving men move past him with skills far more social than financial, and he gave up the thought that he would ever run the department or even fly on the company jet.
Heather was a beautiful baby. Her blonde hair would eventually darken but she had large blue eyes and she smiled as early as four weeks, often clapping her little fat hands with delight. Karen fitted her in French knits and found that although she was a girl, light blue suited her coloring and her temperament. Heather sought out others’ eyes and won over even the most downbeat New Yorkers with her squeals and laughter.
She was so beautiful that when she would inevitably become the center of attention in a park or a store, her newly won friends would look at Karen, or Mark and Karen together, and be unable to hide their surprise that this child belonged to these people. Heather’s parents were never insulted but shrugged with humble pride, both of them having concluded independently, though they never shared it with each other, that their inner selves had been expressed through their beautiful biological creation. Mark even mused to Karen that perhaps they were “so good at making kids,” maybe they should have another.
As much as Karen loved her parents and considered her childhood in leafy suburban DC idyllic, she remembered most of those years as lonely. She always wanted a sibling and wondered, because her Mother was obsessed with birth control, explaining it to her before she even understood what it was, if she was an accident. For a while she had an imaginary brother ten years older who would drive her places like the ice cream store and ballet practice, but it only took a sleepover or a ride home from school with another family for her to remember that she was lucky not to be fighting over everything in her house.
On the other hand, not fighting for anything might’ve been a liability. Karen was by nature easily controlled by other people and tentative about risks. She was never the first one to dive into the pool but preferred to watch a few people try it. Also, her Mother went back to school for library science when she was a toddler, and her Father, a patent attorney, was unable to take on all of the housekeeping and parenting duties that lapsed. He was in love with his work, frequently appropriating his clients’ creativity as his own. He had fantasies of invention and would tinker but for the most part enjoyed having the neighbors see him walking in and out of the house with rolled-up blueprints under his arm, schematic drawings of electrical and chemical structures beyond his comprehension.
By the time her Mother got a job running the Clarksburg Bookmobile, Karen was out of daycare and spent so many afternoons tucked in a corner watching her Mother read to children that she held her books facing an imaginary audience until she was in second grade. When spending cuts