A Week as Andrea Benstock
- Автор: Блок Лоуренс
- Год: 1975
- Язык: английский
- Год: Arbor House
- ISBN: 978-0-87795-100-1
- Жанр: Романы для взрослых
Электронная книга - «A Week as Andrea Benstock». Краткое содержание книги:
She couldn’t read much in her own reflection. The evident changes — the lines on her forehead, the touch of crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes — said little to her beyond reporting her age. And she didn’t mind looking her age, not really, any more than she minded being her age. At least she didn’t think she did.
And yet her mirror image seemed to be trying to tell her something, and sometimes it seemed as though it should be important to know what it was. Like right now.
When the telephone rang again she went into the kitchen and answered it. She chatted briefly and automatically with an aunt of Mark’s. Then she got her cigarettes, lit one, and called Mark at his office.
“Nothing special,” she told him. “Just that my phone’s been ringing all day so I decided to turn the tables.”
“Have a lot of people called?”
“Oh, all the usuals. Liz and Dick Burton, Grace and the Prince, Jackie and the Greek. All our crowd.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Fat chance a girl’d have to lie about her age in this town. These clowns mark their calendars years in advance. Somewhere here in Buffalo there’s a woman who wrote down ‘January 6, 1995 — Robin Benstock’s 30th Birthday.’ I mean they really plan ahead around here.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Well, that’s nothing new.”
“It certainly isn’t. Listen, being thirty’s not so bad. There are worse things.”
“Sure. Like being thirty-one, and thirty-two, and—”
“Idiot. I spoke to your dad. We’re meeting them at the Club for dinner.”
“Yes, I spoke to my mother.”
“I moved it from seven-thirty to eight so that we could stop and see my folks first. They wanted us to come by for a drink, and of course they’ve got something for you.”
“I can’t wait.”
“What’s that? You were mumbling.”
“Nothing, just thinking out loud.”
They went on talking, sketching in the details of the evening, establishing that the baby-sitter had been booked. Then he said, “Just a minute, somebody wants to talk to you,” and he put Casimir Drozdowski on the line.
He said, “Well, hello there. Rumor has it that it’s your birthday.”
“How did you ever hear that?”
“Listen, I read the papers. I listen to Rona Barrett. I keep on top of things.”
“I’ll just bet you do.”
“Have a sensational birthday, huh, Andrea? And don’t get too drunk tonight.”
“Fair enough.”
“Drunk, but not too drunk.”
“Okay. Cass?”
“Hmmmm?”
“Something you said a few weeks ago. A few months, actually. About a man being ultimately responsible for his own face?”
He laughed. “That’s after forty, honey.”
“I know,—”
“You got ten years before you have to worry.”
“No, what I wondered is was that your line or did you get it from somewhere?”
“It was my line.”
“Oh.”
“Except Shaw wrote it down before I had the chance, the son of a bitch.”
“George Bernard Shaw?”
“Uh-huh, but don’t ask me where he wrote it or the exact wording because I couldn’t tell you. But have a wonderful birthday, and here’s another UN member who wants to talk to you, the honorable ambassador from Sicily.”
“Andrea? Happy birthday, kid.”
“Thanks, Eddie.”
“The whole family wishes you a happy birthday,” Eddie Santora said. “The Godfather, the consigliere, everybody. They said to tell you that if-a you don’t-a have a Happy Birthday, they’s-a gonna slappa you face.”
“What I want to know is how you three lunatics ever get any work done.”
“We can’t miss. The UN always beats everybody.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“A Jew to be sneaky, a wop to be crooked, and a polack for brute force. Who’s gonna stand in our way?” His voice dropped. “Listen, Andrea, I figure you’re thirty now, that means you’re old enough to play with the big kids, right?”
“If you say so, Eddie.”
“So what I mean is you’re old enough to mess around a little, right? You and me, kid, we’re a natural combination.”
“Well, I know that, Eddie, but would Terri see it that way?”
“Listen, kid, I won’t tell if you don’t. Hang on, your old man wants to talk to you.”
Mark came back on the line. “All three of you are crazy,” she told him. “It’s good you found each other. I’ll see you around six, six-thirty?”
“Around six. I’m glad you called, honey.”
“Me, too.”
She lit another cigarette, poured herself a cup of coffee and took it outside with her. Robin was still giving the sandbox her full attention, but she turned from it at Andrea’s approach and got to her feet. She stood with her feet well apart and placed her hands very deliberately on her hips.
“Happy birthday,” she said. “Another goddam telephone call.”
Andrea tried to object to the “goddam” but couldn’t bring it off. “You’re impossible,” she said.
Robin beamed.
Andrea went to her and picked her up. “Impossible,” she said. “I don’t know what’s the matter. Other people get to have children. But what I get stuck with is—”
“A forty-year-old midget smartass!” Robin sang out.
“Smartie,” Andrea said. “A forty-year-old midget smartie.”
“Smartass.”
“I give up,” she said. She brought the child’s face very close to her own, and for an instant it was as if she was staring into her mirror again. Then she said, “I’ll tell you what.”
“Goddam smartass.”
“Yeah, that’s you, all right. Goddam smartass. I’ll tell you what. I’ll make you a deal.” Was it proper to make deals with a child? “Here’s the deal. You can say things like goddam and smartass when it’s just me.”
“And Daddy?”
“And Daddy, yes, but not—”
“And Poppa David?”
“And Poppa David.”
“And Nana Sylvy?”
“And Nana Sylvia, yes, but—”
“Not Poppa Harry,” Robin said emphatically. “Not Nana Dele.”
“Jesus.”
“Christ,” Robin echoed.
Andrea put her down and stared at her. “You know everything, don’t you? Not Poppa Harry and Nana Adele, that’s right. And not any other people. And Jesus Christ is another of those words.”
“Oh, I know that,” Robin said.
It wasn’t that children grew up so quickly. It wasn’t merely that. She’d heard that line all her life, it was what the old always said of the young, and she was beginning to see what they meant. Time passed subjectively faster the older you got, as each year in turn became a smaller proportion of your overall experience of life. Thus the years of your child’s childhood rushed by more rapidly than your own childhood had ever done.
But there was something else, too. It was that the changes in your child were so abrupt, so spontaneous, so impossible to anticipate. Someone who has for months existed as The Kid one otherwise unremarkable morning emerges as a completely defined individual. There is suddenly a personality present in what had heretofore been not much more than a warm and entertaining animal.
And all at once the attendant awe of parenthood is immeasurably extended, from My God, I made a living being! to My God, I made a person, I made this person!
Two summers ago, when Robin was a year and a half old, they had attempted to conceive another child. It was hard now to remember the degree of urgency that had accompanied that decision. It had become somehow imperative that they have another baby, and that they do so immediately so that the two children would not be too far apart in age.