Short Story
LAUGHING ALONE
by
Debbie Ann Ice
I used to laugh a lot. Laughter was the key to dancing over the rough spots, those little cavities that couldn't be filled any other way. Giggles released me and welcomed the right kind of people in. If someone could laugh with me then I figured the person was worth being with. I laughed and laughed and the world laughed with me, until now.
I remember when I had to stand up in front of the entire Girl Scout troop in my hometown of Macon, Georgia and sing the Girl Scout song, solo. I had been talking a wee bit too much during the knot-tying lecture. "If you laugh, even smile, Liz Miller, you have to start all over again. You can't leave until the entire song is sung with a straight face, young lady." Mrs. Gray, our troop leader, looked like an eagle, an eagle who knew how to tie knots. I stood by my best friends, Sadie and Mollie, and sang:
Sadie laughed so hard she crossed her legs. Mollie put her head in her hands. Before the eagle could talk again I continued, this time very loud.Girl Scouts forever
Together we shall stand
We learn to tie knots
We'll use them on a man.
"Liz!"A square knot is for times
When cookies don't sell
We tie a rope across the doorway
And then we ring the bell.
I said, "Mrs. Gray, you cannot get up until you listen to my entire song without laughing!"
Sadie wet her pants.
I don't live in Macon, Georgia anymore. I inched my way up north a degree and a job at a time. So now I live in a place where the cold stiffens your bones, ices your insides and cements you to the house. Seems like all winter I go from heater to heater. I'm always cold. I live inside sweaters, coats, layered with cloth like some elaborate wool wedding cake. I miss the sun, but most of all I miss Sadie and Mollie. I had thought for sure I would just find another Sadie and Mollie somewhere. But I never did.
I could have used a few giggling friends at the first cocktail party my husband, Lawrence, and I had. Now that was funny. The caterer never delivered the food and my bartender was stoned and couldn't figure out the drinks. I'd found the rather young looking man with bright purple hair in the phone book, under "Bartenders on Wheels". "Bartenders on pills" was more like it. One of my husband's clients, a Vice President at PepsiCo, informed us that something was a little off with the bartender. He'd put sprite in the gin and tonic. Lawrence and I managed to remain serious during the discussion. "We'll certainly complain to the service we're using," said Lawrence. I bit my lip. Lawrence and I escaped to our bedroom, shut the door and laughed so hard we both had to sit down. I said, "We could say our party has a theme--Mystery drinks. Guess that drink." Lawrence added, "And if you guess right, you can smoke what the bartender smoked."
The evening was so awful, it was funny. I'd burned the cheese olives I had thrown together quickly and was swiping at the red wine spill on my silk blouse when I said to the women, hanging out in my kitchen, friends from church, "You know what I think God's plan for me is?" They all wrinkled their eyes and became silent. I continued through a smile, "I think I'm here to make everyone feel better about themselves. I mean when life gets you down, just compare yourself to me."
The silence that followed was eerie, like the hush after those bad plays when the audience doesn't get the ending. Or when someone's three-year-old shouts 'shit' at a birthday party. "Liz, is there anything we can do to help out?" said Diane. She looked like Olive Oyl in the old Popeye cartoon.
God almighty I missed Sadie and Mollie.
Laughter went out the door completely when Lawrence began working late, leaving me alone most weeks with three children. There is just so much pizza that you can eat, just so many playdates you can tolerate, just so much "mom" talk that you can take. And I'm convinced that until a child reaches puberty, women in the suburbs do not know how to talk to each other. We only know how to compare our children-- behavior modification issues, Parent magazine articles, children recipes. Occasionally we'll talk about tennis. I was starved for Lawrence, devouring his brain when he walked in the door. I couldn't wait until the children were asleep so we could discuss politics, Wall Street, the meaning of life. But, he was tired, and I soon became bored.
"So how's the market?"
"Omk."
"Are internet stocks going to take a dive soon. I think so."
"Unh huh."
"Can you believe this deregulation going on out in California with those utilities? Boy I smell trouble in a cold winter. And gas? Think we got another stagflation coming?"
"Umm. Unh Uh."
He wanted to know about the children.
"Robert had a playdate. They roller bladed and his friend fell and scraped his knee. I put Neosporin on it and a band-aid. He cried. "
Unh huh."
"Jonathan hit someone at school and I made him write a letter saying he was sorry."
"Um"
"The baby slept three hours."
"Omm."
Even this would have been ok, if Lawrence still laughed. Laughter had been our connection. That's how Lawrence fell in love with me. Well, I suppose he fell in love. I mean he married me, right? I'd met Lawrence when he was fired, thrown to the streets by a trading desk that couldn't tolerate mistakes, even small ones, like one tiny trade that went wrong. Of course, his trade lost about a half a million dollars for the Bank. I was a trader too. I didn't get fired, though-. I said, "What's this trading thing anyway, Lawrence? I mean what is it? We're talking about shoveling debt around. One person says I'll take that debt, another person says I don't want this debt. It's an 'I owe you' , for Chrissakes. Used debt. And after it gets handed around, it's still debt. Who cares? Go build something. Make something."
So we made a family, something untradable, except when the mother-in-law visited, then we shoveled them off to her and watched their value grow like some helium balloon. Lawrence became a dealmaker, someone who put project finance deals together for huge companies who loaded themselves up with debt and then shoveled it around to other people.
I don't recall when Lawrence stopped laughing completely, but it was probably sometime during my third pregnancy. Of course, I looked like hell, and I felt the same. Things got a little disorganized. Toys that had no use were put in a corner of the kitchen. Toys that had use were put in the corner of the den. Toys that were of questionable use lay about the hallways, stairways, bathrooms, under beds. Diapers were stored in different places all over the house so as to reduce walking distance. Walking was difficult since I had become more than huge with the third pregnancy. I had turned into a human of planetoidal proportions. Moons could orbit me. The difficulty walking wasn't a problem after a while, since the doctor told me my blood pressure would not go down unless I lay on my left side all day. So I stared at the world sideways.
Man, did I need a few laughs.
Obligingly, my three- year old broke his collarbone, two ribs, and his right forearm. I was seven months pregnant and had to lie on my left side all day while trying to care for a bedridden three-year-old who still wasn't potty-trained and an active seven-year-old. And the punchline came in the form of help: a rather sassy Jamaican named Lilea who lectured me on my house management skills. "How de house get like dis?" When she wanted to make a point, she would say. "Look ad dis!" holding up something that looked like it was alive, some huge bacterial organism that had nursed itself to grand proportions by feeding off of Legos beneath the bed. Lilea wasn't very good at laugher. And while Jonathan had to listen to me, I felt too guilty to make him laugh. I lay on my left side in his room babbling on and on about how much I loved him. Lilea would make me leave and go back to the bedroom. "Wood you look ad yoself on de floor, like some bear rug. Floor no good fo baby."
"Lilea," I said as I lay on my left side in the kitchen while she cooked something that smelled like coconut. "You're a bossy woman. I bet you could run a country with your bossy self. President Lilea."
She never laughed, just shook her head. "It harder here running de likes of you. Yes it is."
But that was better than Lawrence who wandered into the house at 10 p.m. passing me by after a brief kiss on my cheek.
I suppose I got bitter. Lying around does that, particularly if someone else makes this inroad into your family and keeps reminding you of how awful things were before they arrived.
"Dis house is in good shape now. Lilea fix it up good. Oooh my lord was dis house a mess. You is lucky ole Lilea fix it up. Yes, you is lucky Lilea come along when she did."
Then she started in on her demands. As I became more and more disabled, my other boys became dependent upon her, and Lawrence flew out of town to places like Dubai and Indonesia, Lilea started asking for more money. She also wanted vacation pay and personal days.
She took a part time job with the Hopkins on weekends. Charles Hopkins was one of the partners at Johnson Barnes, an investment banking firm. They had a Park Avenue apartment and two homes. The house Lilea worked at on weekends was a six thousand square foot Tudor monstrosity, big enough to house three families. Naturally, her demands increased. "Sarah Hopkins a good woman. She make Lilea happy. She look afta me. Pay me a bonus fo good job every now and then. I think she would like Lilea to work more, but I can't leave you in dis kind of shape. No sir. Unless I get in some kind of money problem myself."
I couldn't stand up. My children were small. One was injured. My husband was not home. And my nanny was blackmailing me.
"Oh yes, Miss Lilea. I'm sure glad Ms. Hopkins takes care of you," I finally said out of my sideways mouth on the kitchen floor. I was two weeks from giving birth. "I'm glad you've found a place in life for yourself. Having us all take care of you. You're a trader, a good one."
"What dat you say to me?"
"I said you're a trader, Lilea." I was feeling particularly bad that day.
Lilea had asked for a donation to her church and a two dollar an hour raise since my health issues had added stress to her job. She mentioned that Ms Hopkins was willing to take her full time.
"What you trying to say 'bout Lilea." She had her hands on her hips, looking down at my lopsided frame that was sprawled upon the ground like some dead carcass.
"You trading yourself. Upping your value and using our white guilt. White guilt, low supply, high demand. Boom. High value. You're a trader."
She left one week before I gave birth.
Lawrence's did not think a single thing I said was funny. "White guilt?
What the hell, Liz? People don't talk like that up here. Shit. What in the world were you thinking?"
"She didn't get my humor. It was dark humor."
After I gave birth and settled in with three children and another nanny who never said a word and appeared frightened of me, I gradually improved. I lost weight, started feeling attractive. But I still wasn't laughing.
Lawrence was home only two weeks out of every month, and when he was around, we were maintenance workers.
At first, with all the baby work, children activities and chores, I didn't even realize I wasn't having sex anymore. It just left my state of existence, like something that belonged in the past. I would look at my body in the mirror and make jokes. "Well, Liz, here you are past sex, past making babies. What is this body for now?"
There was no one to laugh with me about this. I tried -talking about sex with the mothers at the playgroup. "I read that sex slows down considerably after the third child. Why is that? You think our bodies get that used look?" Man! It was as if I had spit venom in the air. The silence, the looks. I shut up. I had talked about sex all the time with my single friends. I supposed once we had children sex was not to be discussed, as if giving birth made us mortified at what we did to get the baby. Suddenly sex was indelicate and we were embarrassed, stunned by it. We metamorphosed from sensual toys to human factories.
And now my factory had closed. Shut down.
I suppose it wasn't a surprise to find out that while my factory shut down, Lawrence simply moved on to another plant. I found out after the annual company Christmas party.
I had told Lawrence that I couldn't make the party. I was going to surprise him. It was on a Friday, so I got a babysitter to spend the night at my house and then reserved a room at the Palace on Madison Avenue. I smiled on the train ride to the city, thinking of the ways I would tell him Merry Christmas in a king-size bed in a place that had no children sleeping down the hall. When I walked into the restaurant, his table went silent.
"Where's Lawrence?" I was wearing a bright red knit dress. I felt great.
"That's a good question," said his secretary. "He said you were sick and he couldn't make it."
Well, it wasn't hard to figure that one out. I sipped my coffee the next morning as he strolled in, explaining that, "I got too drunk. I stayed over at Ron's place to sleep it off." Ron was one of the partners.
It was sad. But I played along. "Oh, I'm so sorry. You must've been tired out by work too. Good thing you didn't take the train."
"Yep better to sleep it off."
I kept going. "I know one person who fell asleep and ended up at New Haven." I laughed. Ha ha. So funny. Lawrence asleep at 1 a.m., lost in another city, another strange station. What I would give for that to have actually happened.
"Really? Who did that happen to?"
"Mona's husband. He'd been to a company party after work. So he was tired for different reasons." I placed emphasis on those last two words.
"Any coffee left?" He'd missed my line. Damn! He brushed his hair back and grabbed the paper.
"So what did they serve at the restaurant?" The lobster Newberg had been marvelous. I stayed and socialized with his secretarial staff.
"Some sort of meat thing. Beef stroganoff. You should've been there."
"Was there dancing?"
"Yeah. You got the newspaper?"
"Oh and you didn't have anyone to dance with?"
He was reading the front page as he walked out of the kitchen.
~
Well, Lawrence moved in with a skinny stock analyst. I did playdates, and all the mothers tried to be nice. I was a bulldog, still trying to find that audience.
"Johnny, say you're sorry," Melanie said after her three-year-old boy had bashed my David on the head with his truck. David's crying was melodramatic, intended to capture my attention.
I felt David's head. "Oh Melanie, it's ok. His bump is inside, not out."
Melanie's eyes came together, and a large canyon formed above her nose, "Actually they say that a bump is a good sign. If you don't feel a bump, the body's not making a contusion. Maybe you should put on some ice."
"No, I mean he's just manipulating. Big boys do it too. In fact, I find that men are much better at it. It all starts at the age of three. This's when they start manipulating women. We're training them, right now. Yes, right now, we're teaching them how to get attention from a woman."
She didn't smile.
"Don't you remember when you were dating? " I continued.
Silence.
"You know, like when they started saying stuff like, 'My father never understood me,' and then they got that sad look and you just felt like you had to give them affection for their sorrowful hearts?"
She was still, quiet. David wasn't crying anymore. He picked up Thomas the tank engine.
"It all started at three, Melanie. At three some woman, perhaps a mommy, maybe a daycare worker, or a nanny, or a grandmother hovered over them, wrapping their arms around their sobbing bodies when anything made them sad."
I giggled a bit to signal that I was just having fun. It didn't work.
You'd think I would stop. But I didn't. "But that's part of our jobs. Teaching our sons how to manipulate women. We want their physical needs taken care of during manhood, right?"
After another silence, she said, "I know of some great divorce groups in Greenwich that can help, Liz. Can I find you the numbers?"
~
Tonight I call Sadie.
I have never cried with my girlfriends before. I cry quite often, but always alone, in my room, sometimes with the covers over my head. It doesn't seem right to cry with a friend. It's not my purpose-- to make them miserable. My role is to entertain and crying isn't entertaining. No one likes to listen to misery.
So I'm confused when it comes, and it comes in a wave of convulsive explosions of mucus and tears. I can't talk. Sadie talks. "You get your tail back here, Liz! Get away from that asshole!"
I just convulse. I say nothing.
"Girl, you hang in there. I'm coming up and getting you. I'm going to pick Mollie up in Atlanta and come get your butt."
I blow my nose.
"It's too cold up there, Liz. And you're alone with those kids. At least go to New York, girl."
I hear Sadie start sniffling. Sadie always cries. "What can I do, Liz?" she asks.
I try to talk but when I start up, I spit saliva all over the phone. I pause and get my breathing under control.
I don't know what to say. I finally blurt, "David pooped without a diaper on today."
"Oh great, Liz. So he's potty trained."
"Kind of. He did it in the toy box."
"Oh, Liz!"
"That's ok. I needed to throw them away. I'm trying to get him to poop on my dead Easter lily. That should be tossed as well, I suppose."
Sadie's giggle is faint, like a quick breath. She says, "You should have had them all shit on Lawrence a long time ago."
"And my mother-in-law!"
"Oh God yes! All babies should be mother-in-law trained. Get them all mother-in-law trained!"
I laugh so hard I put my hand to my mouth, holding back my spit and screams. Sadie has that silent wheeze punctuated by explosions of breath and hoarse honks that mark her. I could find her blindfolded in a crowded movie theater if she only laughed.
I could find anyone if they only laughed.
§ § § Debbie Ann Ice's work has been seen by many people, most notably her patient husband and generous friends. A few magazines have pushed her work under the eyes of other people too. She is thrilled to be a part of this publication.
She lives in Connecticut with her husband, her two boys and a guinea pig in need of therapy.
She can be reached at: TJMD45@aol.com. .
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