Madison at 69th, a Fable

THERE WERE FOUR PEOPLE in on the kidnapping, although only three of them were kin to the victim and the fourth really shouldn’t be held accountable since she was in love. The fourth is me.

Maybe no one should be held accountable. After all, Edwina is their mother. It’s not like they set out to kidnap some total stranger. Which is why it was so easy. She was staying at the Westbury, on Madison at 69th. We thought about doing it there. Then Arthur fell heir to a house in Brooklyn. Fate was running with us. The tide of fate carried us along.

Actually, no one is to blame but Edwina herself. You shouldn’t tell your kids you are going to get a face-lift, especially if two of them are medical students. You shouldn’t go all the way up to New York City to have it done when there are plenty of good doctors right here in Memphis, Tennessee, where we live.

The middle child, Arthur, is the one I love. He’s just finished his first year in medical school at Vanderbilt. The other two are women: Cary, age twenty-two and floundering, and Kathleen, in her second year in med at Ohio State. So Edwina invites them all up to New York for four days in June to help her get ready for the surgery. Then Arthur invites me to come along and the first thing I know we are at the Westbury signing Edwina’s name to chits. Later that night we went down to SoHo to go barhopping and Cary brought it up. “We’re accomplices to a crime. She doesn’t need a face-lift. What’s she doing this for?”

“Because she broke up with your dad. Elemental.”

“She wanted the divorce. He’s the one with the broken heart.”

“They take your face off and lay it on your chest.” This from Arthur. “It’s nuts.”

“She left him because he had to take blood pressure pills. She doesn’t have any sympathy for him.”

“So what are we doing here? Taking bribes.” This from Cary. There hadn’t been a word out of Kathleen. She’s a goddess. She’s five eleven and she has this way of staying completely still for long periods of time and letting everyone have their say. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Sometimes I try to do it at parties, but it never works for me. I’m not the type for it. Too manic and too short.

I guess I better stop here and tell you about myself. I’m Sara Garth from Courtland, Alabama. I play tennis for Vanderbilt and I make good grades. I’m an only child, that’s my only problem. I fall in love with families. I spent my childhood at my Uncle Philip’s house because he had six children. So much was going on over there. Nothing went on at home. The piano teacher came. Mother taught French in Decatur. Daddy ran the gin. We had dinner. We lit candles and put them on the table and talked about whether it would rain. We sat on the porch and talked to people who came over. We drove out to the fields and watched the cotton grow. I went to Lausanne School in Memphis, which is where I got to know the Standfields. Then I went to Vanderbilt. You get the picture. Everyone seeks that which they do not have. I seek excitement. But not to do it. Just to watch it going on. It was plenty of excitement to fly to New York with the Standfields to see an opera. Before they even decided to kidnap their mother.

Don’t get me wrong. I agree in theory with what they had in mind. My mother’s roommate from All Saints had her heart stop in the middle of a face-lift. I’d heard that story for years. Another friend of Momma’s was blinded by a face-lift. Now she has a chauffeur and a dog and a cane.

 

“We don’t have to sit by and let this happen.” Cary was still making the case. “We don’t have to sit around like a bunch of sheep while she lets some guy butcher her scalp. We could kidnap her. I’ve been thinking about it for days. We just cart her off and keep her until it’s too late to do the surgery. You have to wait months for this guy. She said it was the last operation he was going to do before he went to Europe. He won’t even be here to take care of her post-op. He sprang that on her yesterday. What if she’s blinded like Sara’s friend? Who do you think will have to take care of her the rest of their lives?”

“We could show her a video of the surgery.” Kathleen spoke at last. “She’s been brainwashed by her friends. We’ll deprogram her.”

“You’d kidnap her?” This from me.

“Yes, I think I would.”

“Count me in,” Arthur said. “When do we do it?”

“Monday afternoon. The surgery’s Tuesday. She has an appointment at the beauty parlor Monday afternoon. We’ll snatch her after that.”

“And take her where?”

“I can get the Langs’ house in Brooklyn. They’re all in Italy. Donald offered it to us but Mother wanted to stay at the hotel so we’d be near Lincoln Center. We could take her there on some pretense and just not let her go.”

“She’ll kill us.”

“She might be relieved. She was pretty mad when the doctor told her he wouldn’t be here after the operation. He introduced her to some young guy who’s going to take care of her. This short ugly guy. It’s the old guy she’s got the hots for. That’s what this is about. I can tell by the way she talks about him.”

“She doesn’t want to do this. Look at how she’s having to psych herself up. Having us all up here. Spending all this money.”

“We have tickets to the opera on Monday night. Those tickets cost five hundred dollars. She’ll die if we don’t go.”

“We can’t worry about details. How can we get in the Langs’ house?”

“It’s a combination. He gave me all the numbers.”

 

So the next thing I know it’s Monday afternoon and I’m sitting in a rented Cadillac Coupe de Ville outside of Georgette Klinger’s on Madison Avenue and Arthur is helping his mother into the car.

“We’re celebrating,” he was saying. “Sara won a scholarship. We have champagne. We’re going out to Brooklyn to pick up Donald. He wants to celebrate with us.”

“We have to be at the opera at eight. That’s wonderful, Sara. I know your folks are proud. When did you find out?”

“Mother called and told me. They sent a letter. It’s the Academic Excellence for Athletes Award. It’s five thousand dollars.” It was true about the scholarship. Only I had won it a month ago. So I didn’t feel bad about lying to her. I almost never lie. There’s no need to if you’re an only child.

“I don’t know how Arthur can keep up with you. You must have a room full of trophies.”

“I don’t keep them. Mother does. I just worry about the next tournament. Or I worry about my knee. I spend a lot of time worrying about my knee.”

“All right then. Drive on, Kathleen. Let’s go get Donald and celebrate.” She smiled and patted me on the knee. Edwina’s a wonderful woman. She’s always been wonderful to me. I stared deep into her sweet funny face. I didn’t see any lines. I just saw movement and laughter, Arthur’s mother. I steeled my heart. Imagine letting anyone cut into that beloved skin.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. “Don’t be afraid of success, Sara. I worry about young women fearing success. Arthur doesn’t care if you excel. He brags about you to everyone, don’t you, honey?” She put her other hand on his knee. She was sitting in the back seat between us. Kathleen was driving. Cary was riding shotgun. “Where are you going, Kathleen?” Edwina leaned up into the front seat. “You have to be careful where you drive in this city. Are you sure you know where you’re going? Why did you rent a car?”

“I know where I’m going. I lived here for a year, remember?

“Well, we can’t be late to the opera. They won’t let you in. Das Rheingold. People are here from all over the world to see these operas. Now then, where is the champagne?”

“It’s in the trunk. We wanted to wait until we got to Donald’s. How was Georgette Klinger’s?”

“How do I look?”

“You look great. You don’t need a face-lift, Momma. You look perfectly all right like you are.”

“Well, don’t start that again. Tomorrow afternoon it will all be over.”

“It won’t be over.” This from Arthur. “You’ll be on Nembutal and Demerol and ibuprofen, maybe for months. You’ll be on antibiotics until you’ve compromised your immune system. Your face will be bruised and puffy. You’re risking your nervous system and muscular coordination. You’re risking ending up with a tic.”

“Jane Morris had it done and she looks marvelous.”

“She was in pain for six months. Her daughter told me she was in pain for six months and couldn’t sleep and now she’s addicted to Xanax.” This from me. I couldn’t believe I said it.

“Well, I won’t listen to this all the way to Brooklyn. I thought we were having a celebration for Sara. I’m too old to be afraid to take chances. I really want to stop talking about it. Sara, tell them to lay off their poor old mother.” She smiled at me and pressed my hand. She kissed me on the cheek. I felt like a criminal and also Judas. We were violating her civil rights. I looked at the soft pretty skin along her hairline. I steeled my heart.

Thirty minutes later we were out in Brooklyn driving along a street with Italian restaurants on every corner. Cary was studying a city map. We found the neighborhood and pulled up before a tall brick duplex with a stone fence and a little courtyard. We parked and Arthur unlocked the gate in the fence and then the front door.

Donald Lang’s parents are architects. From the minute we entered the courtyard we could tell we were someplace special. In the small courtyard were two Japanese magnolias and a statue of Venus leaning over to look at her hand. Very elegant and gracious, welcoming. The sidewalk was made of tiles with neat green grass growing in the cracks. Beside the door were pots of geraniums. The door was painted dark red with a brass plate for the combination lock. Inside, the house was stark and contemporary, more like a museum than a house. There were wide white sofas and black leather chairs. There was a television set behind a Chinese screen and Indian carpets on the floors. The kitchen opened into the living room. I opened the refrigerator. There were cheeses and wine and bottled water. “We are in Italy seeing palaces. Be welcome here,” it said on a note propped against the wine bottle. I began to rethink my estimation of Donald Lang now that I had seen his home. No wonder he was so cautious. It was from living in a museum.

Cary and Arthur moved the screen from in front of the television set. “We have a surprise for you,” Cary told her mother. “Sit on the sofa. We want to show you a video.”

“You’re full of surprises today. What’s going on here, Cary? Is this about drugs? Because I’m not going to countenance anything like that.”

“We want to show you a film,” Arthur said. “We love you, Mother. Don’t ask any more questions. Just watch this film for us.”

“It’s of you? You made a film for me?”

“Just watch it. Then you’ll know.”

“What time is it?”

“Four-thirty. I promise we won’t miss the opera.”

“How long is this film?”

“Twenty minutes. Come on, Momma. This is important to us.” We surrounded her. She looked from face to face. Then she gave in. We settled down upon the sofas. Kathleen put the tape in the video player. I stood by the door.

“Lights,” Kathleen said. I turned off the overhead lights. The film came on. A PBS special. The gory details of a face-lift. I waited until the surgeon made the first incision behind the ear. Then I slipped out the door and went into the kitchen and started eating cheese and crackers. I can’t stand the sight of blood. I opened all the drawers and cabinets and inspected the silver and the china. Gorham and Spode and handmade pottery. She wouldn’t prosecute her own kids, I decided. She wouldn’t prosecute me.

When I went back into the living room the film was almost over. The patient was propped up in bed in the pressure bandages. Edwina was scrunched back into the sofa. “What time is it?” she was saying. “I appreciate all this but we really need to get back to the hotel.”

“We aren’t leaving yet.” Cary walked over to the television set and turned it off. “What did you just see, Mother? What did that mean to you?”

“That you have decided to show me this gory film in the hopes that I will change my mind and not have the surgery done. That’s obvious.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Well, are you going through with this? After what you just have seen?”

“I am fifty-nine years old. I don’t have long enough to live to go saving myself a little pain and discomfort. I want to have this done. I’m having it done.”

“Jane Morris was in pain for six months. And she doesn’t look that much better. She couldn’t wear her glasses for ages. You want to be an invalid for half a year?” This from Cary.

“She doesn’t look younger,” Kathleen said. “She just looks like she had a face-lift.”

“Her mouth looks funny,” Arthur added. “You want your mouth to look like that?”

“I am not going to look funny. This man is the best plastic surgeon in the United States. Now let’s get going. I appreciate your trying to do this. I’m not mad about it. But we’re going to miss the opera. I want to be there before the curtain so we can see the crowd.”

“Mother.”

“What is it, Kathleen?”

“Your face could look like a mask. You can’t do this. We just can’t let you do it.”

“You can’t stop me.” It became very quiet in the room. Edwina had known all along, I think. I moved back into the doorframe.

“You too, Sara? You’re in on this?”

“Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am. I mean, I didn’t think it up, but I think you shouldn’t do it. You look fine. I mean, you look beautiful. You’re one of the most beautiful women I know. If you do this, you won’t be able to exercise for months. Think about it. You might straighten out some lines, but you’ll lose your figure. God. I mean, no, I’m not in on it, but I don’t want you to be mad at me. Okay, I’m in on it.”

“Leave Sara out,” Arthur said. “If you want to blame someone, blame me.”

“All right.” Edwina stood up and looked around. “I watched the film. Enough is enough. The opera starts at eight. Let’s all just go back to the hotel and get dressed and forget all this.”

“We’re staying here.” Cary stood up and faced her mother. “We aren’t through talking. Do you know how delicate flesh and blood is, how intricate the connections are? The central nervous system, the dendrites, you want all that exposed to the air? The frontal lobes, the brain, Momma. The seeing, smelling, thinking, sensing, talking part. You’re going to let somebody cut near that. You look fine. You don’t need a goddamn face-lift.”

“It’s the money, isn’t it? You don’t want me to spend money on myself. That’s it. It’s always money with you, Cary.”

“That’s part of it. There isn’t enough money for everything and this is going to cost a lot more than you know. Wait a minute. I want to show you something.” Cary left the room to get her purse, which was on a table in the front hall. I looked at my watch. Six o’clock. Fourteen hours to go. How could we keep this up for fourteen hours?

“I want to use the phone.” Edwina walked over to a table and picked up the phone but the phone was dead. We had removed the cords from the phones. She shook her head and pursed her lips together. For a moment I thought she might start yelling. Everyone at the Standfields’ yells whenever they like, but usually not at each other, usually just at fate. They sort of yell up in the air.

Cary came back into the room carrying a sheaf of xeroxed papers. “Okay. Read this. This is a list of drugs taken by Jane Morris in a five-month period last year. Her daughter faxed it to us. They’re getting ready to sue the doctor so they had to have the records. Look at this. Sit down a moment, Momma. Just read the list.”

“We are going to miss the opera.”

“No, we aren’t. We have the car. I’ll let you off in front of Lincoln Center.” Cary pushed the sheaf of papers at her and she took them and sat down on the sofa and began to read. I walked over and read over her shoulder. It was a long list of antibiotics and painkillers and sleeping pills and tranquilizers. There was another list of special cosmetics and bandages and a wig. The total for both lists was five thousand, four hundred and thirty dollars.

“I knew it was the money,” Edwina said, glowering at Cary.

“It’s your health and mental stability,” Cary shot back. “I don’t want a crazy drugged mother.”

Edwina dropped the papers in her lap. She looked around at her children. Then she began to cry. We all drew near. “You are so mean,” she cried. “How can you be so mean to me? I love you so much. I’m trying so hard to find a way to live. Oh, God, I’m trying as hard as I can.”

“Here, take this. It’s a vitamin C.” Arthur handed her a pill and a glass of water and she took it and put it in her mouth and swallowed. I couldn’t believe she had done it. He handed the pill to her and she took it. Mothers and sons. Explore that if they lock you in a cell.

In five minutes she was nodding. In six she was asleep. “I don’t believe you did that,” I said. “You didn’t do that while I watched.”

“One Seconal compared to the list you just read?”

We put her to bed on the white sofa where she had fallen asleep. We straightened up the room and turned off the lights and went into the kitchen to sit around and feel guilty. “You and Arthur could go to the opera,” Kathleen said. “Someone should go. She won’t wake up. Cary and I can watch her.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t think I could do it.”

“I can.” Arthur laughed. He was drinking milk and eating cookies. He’s going to be a fat man. I will love him even more when he’s fat. If he gets fat, I’ll get fat. We’ll be fat together. If we aren’t in jail. “Come on, Sara. Let’s go. If no one uses those tickets, she’ll have a fit. She’ll be madder about wasting those tickets than anything else.”

“She may never speak to us again.” This from Cary. “Get ready for that. She may not pay our tuition next year.”

“Dad will pay it.”

“I think we ought to call him. We ought to let him know about this.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Arthur, you and Sara go back to the hotel and see if there are any messages and then go to the opera. We’ll be fine here. She won’t wake up for hours.”

We went outside. It was still light, just after seven. We got into the Cadillac and drove into Manhattan and found a parking garage and ran for Lincoln Center. We made it just before they closed the doors.

Das Reingold. It was superb. A metaphor for how the innocence and beauty of the world were stolen and taken down into the earth to be made into a ring of power. In the second scene, as the curtain rises, the king and queen of the gods are asleep on the ground. It is dawn on a mountain. They have nice clothes and food and weapons but no home. They still have to sleep on the ground like animals. As the sun rises and the mist clears away, a beautiful city appears in the distance. Valhalla, a place for gods to live. Fricka, the queen of the gods, wakes up. She shakes her husband. “Look at that,” she says. “A city for us to live in.”

“I know,” he says. “I paid two giants to build it for us.”

“What did you pay them with?” she says, getting suspicious.

“I gave them your younger sister, Freia, Youth. One of them is madly in love with her.”

“My little sister, Youth? Oh, no, she is the treasure of the world.”

“Well, we couldn’t go on sleeping on the ground all our lives. We had to have a city.”

About that time the beautiful younger sister comes running onto the stage with these ugly giants chasing her. She throws herself at her sister’s feet, begging for mercy, and in the end the king makes a deal with the giants that he’ll go down into the earth and bring back the gold and give it to them in exchange for Freia. “Well, okay,” the giants say. “You have until sundown to get it. Meanwhile, we will keep Freia as a hostage.”

They take her away and as soon as she leaves the stage, the gods begin to age. Their faces wrinkle and they begin to stoop.

“Oh, my God,” I whisper to Arthur. “This is too much metaphor. Let’s go to the hotel and get the messages and then go back out to Brooklyn. Let’s leave at intermission.”

“There isn’t any intermission. It’s three hours nonstop. This is German opera.”

“Be quiet,” a man said in a foreign accent. The stage was dark. It was a set change. We grabbed our things and ran.

We went to the hotel and got the phone messages. We called the doctor’s answering service and told them Mrs. Standfield had changed her mind and flown back home. We called the concierge and told him to hold the ballet tickets for Tuesday night at the desk. “At least she’ll be able to see the ballet,” I said. “That should cheer her up.”

“Nothing’s going to cheer her up. She’s going to kill us.”

“How long will she sleep?”

“Until five or six in the morning. It was a knockout dose.”

“I couldn’t believe she just took it, put it in her mouth and swallowed it.”

“People trust doctors. They even trust first-year medical students.”

“You slipped your mom a Mickey.”

“I know. I did, didn’t I?”

“What if she calls the cops?”

“She won’t call the cops on us.”

“What if she did?”

“Then there wouldn’t be anyone left for her to love. That’s what’s wrong with her, Sara. That’s why she wants to lie down on a table and get butchered. To have a different hope. God knows what she thinks it will do for her. Make her young again. Save her from the giants.”

“She ought to have grandchildren by now. Only none of us wants to have them.”

“It’s the new world. People don’t get what they think they ought to have. They have to think up new things to want.”

“Elective surgery?”

“Maybe we should have let her do this.” He sat on the bed and took my hand. Such a sweet, fine, chubby medical student. I did love him. That much was true.

“Maybe we should make love.”

“Not right now. We need to get back out there and see what’s going on.”

She slept until dawn. “Think how tired she must have been,” Kathleen kept saying. “She’s just worn out with watching us grow up.”

“We have to be more careful of her,” Arthur kept saying. “We have to shield her from our pain.”

“Bullshit,” Cary said several times. “Children aren’t responsible for their parents’ lives. If she hadn’t left Daddy, she wouldn’t be alone. She left him when he was sick. I love her, but she’s still a bitch.”

“Maybe she wanted to get in on the modern world,” I said once or twice. “Maybe she saw all these free young women and she wanted to be one.”

“She was always free. A rich man’s daughter and a rich man’s wife.”

“That’s not freedom. That’s chattel slavery.”

“It’s freedom to a starving peasant.”

“It doesn’t follow. It was slavery to her.” And so on and so forth. We talked a lot that night. Since we didn’t sleep.

“Some vacation,” Arthur said. “What a pleasant rest.” See, he’s a real funny man and after this, I definitely will marry him.

Finally, it was dawn and she was waking up. We had put music on the CD player. We had made coffee. Kathleen had gone out to a deli and bought eggs and bread and butter and bacon and pancake mix and syrup. Arthur and I had slept a few hours, curled up in our clothes. Actually, it was the kind of night I’d always dreamed of. A family in crisis and me in the middle of it. Decisions to be made, sacrifices called for, furrowed brows, the quick darting glances moving among us. You drugged me, she was going to say. You are disinherited.

Forgive us, we will plead. We love you. We don’t want your face cut off and sewn back on to make your mouth into a straight line.

“We’re sorry,” I said, as she opened her eyes. First one eye and then the other. “We love you. We did it for you.”

“Where am I?” She sat up on one elbow. “What time is it?” She pulled herself into a sitting position, shook her head, looked at me, then shifted her gaze to Kathleen.

“We drugged you, Momma. You missed your appointment, by the way. There’s no reason to get angry now. You aren’t being rolled into surgery today.” Kathleen leaned over and touched her mother on the arm. She kissed her forehead. Then she walked over to the television set and turned the plastic surgery tape back on. She had rigged it so that the opening scene was the surgeon poised above the patient with his knife. He cut into the flesh behind the ear, a long incision along the hairline and down below the ear. Blood seeped out. A nurse began to suction it.

Edwina sat up, stared at the set. She looked past me at Arthur. “Turn that off, please. Is there any coffee around here? My God, did I sleep on the sofa?”

“The coffee’s ready,” Kathleen said. “And I’m cooking pancakes and scrambled eggs and bacon. You can forgive us and eat with us or you can disinherit us. And don’t get mad at Sara. She and Arthur are getting married. She’s in this by mistake.”

“I don’t believe this,” Edwina said. “Where’s the phone, Kathleen? I have to call those people.”

“We called them. We told them that you changed your mind.”

Edwina shook her head. She lifted her arms to the ceiling. She fell back on the sofa and started laughing. “Oh, God,” she said. “What have I wrought? This is unbelievable. I have to go to the bathroom.” She stood up. “Is there a bathroom in this house?”

She left the room, barefooted, shaking her head from side to side.

“She isn’t going to disinherit us,” Cary said. “Let’s get breakfast started.”

“Next time it will be something worse.” Kathleen walked into the kitchen and got out the bacon. “Next time it will be a man.”

“Well, are you going to have her some grandchildren? Are you going to interrupt your medical school and deliver the heirs and heiresses?”

“Maybe Sara will?” They looked at me. I picked up a carton of eggs and began to break them into a bowl.

“Not anytime soon. I’m playing tennis.”

When Edwina came back from the bathroom she had combed her hair and straightened up her clothes. It was amazing how well her hair had stood up, given the long sleep on the down sofa.

Arthur was setting the table. Edwina joined him and began to straighten the place mats and realign the silver. All the Standfields are perfectionists. Everything they do has to be just so. English genes. “I’m starving,” Edwina said. “I suppose you know I’m going to lose a four-thousand-dollar down payment. There’s no way he will give my money back.”

“I’ll get it back,” Kathleen said. “Leave it to me. You want jelly or honey or both? The coffee’s ready. You want it now or with breakfast?”

“Now would be lovely. What did Arthur give me?”

“A Seconal.” Kathleen held out a cup of coffee to her mother. A beautiful cup and saucer with morning glories growing around the cup and handle. We had set the table with the prettiest china we could find. Food being cooked, sunlight coming in the window, life being led. Edwina took the cup of coffee and sat down in a chair at the table. “That’s the first night’s sleep I’ve had in weeks,” she said. “I don’t care what happens after a night like that. I didn’t even dream.”

“Then why were you doing it?” We all drew near. Moved around her.

“I don’t know. I guess I thought it was my duty somehow.”

“To not get old?” This from Cary.

“Well, not to be ugly. To go find love.” Edwina hung her head, then started laughing again. “What did you tell them? Oh, my God, what did you say?”

“That you had changed your mind. That you were going home.”

“We went to the opera,” I offered. “It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I brought you a program and a libretto. It’s on again tonight. If we could get some tickets, I’ll pay for them. I’d love to take you to the opera, Edwina. I bet we could get some if we tried.”

“But there’s the ballet,” Cary said.

“There’s a spectacular show at the Metropolitan Museum,” Arthur added. “Ancient Greece. We could take you there.”

“We’ll do it all. Why not.” Edwina reached out her hands and touched two of her children. “First let’s eat. Someone say a blessing.”

“Let me get the eggs,” Kathleen decreed. “Sara, put the toast on the table.”