Broken for You Read online

  True, she seemed to have expansive, unmistakably feminine hips, and her pendulous breasts responded naturally to the swaying motion of the bus, but so what? Wanda had once stage-managed a play where one of the actresses thought her character ought to have big tits; the costumer had engineered a beautiful, natural-looking, 38D chest out of muslin and filled it with birdseed. Peter knew how to sew. And he was a sculptor, for God’s sake. Anything was possible.

  Wanda placed a hand on the center of her 30A chest and tried to quiet her heart. She would have to be tricky if she was going to find him. But maybe she could beat him at his own game. She knew about disguises too, after all. She had plenty of experience watching actors disappear into other characters, become unrecognizable behind layers of padding and clothes and wigs and makeup.

  What kind of character would be most unlike her? What kind of person would Peter least expect? She wiggled her face around and tried out a few new expressions. She imagined speaking with a lower, more resonant voice. She hummed an old Peggy Lee song. She arched an eyebrow. She cocked her head.

  Yeah, sure. She could do this. He’d never even see her coming.

  If you’d asked her, Wanda would not have been able to tell you why Peter’s departure had driven her to these extremes of emotion and action. Before he left, she had no idea that she was capable of such a dramatic, Old Testament style of grieving. Not that she’d ever read the Old Testament; she hadn’t. But the point is, no one was more surprised by these excesses of behavior than Wanda herself.

  They met when Wanda was stage-managing Uncle Vanya and the theatre borrowed a sideboard from the store where Peter did restorations. Refusing help from Wanda and her crew, he steered the massive piece onstage himself; once it was in place, he smoothed his big boxer’s hands over it with a palpable and sensual reverence that gave Wanda an unusual empathy for Victorian furnishings. His pores released a hot yeasty smell that was tinged with citrus. Who knew why—a person can’t explain these things—but in that moment, Wanda was finally arrow-struck by the mythical purblind boy.

  Peter was older than the actors she’d bedded, and heavier, both in body and spirit. The bloom was off this rose, that was sure. But he had breadth and depth of experience, he’d struggled with depression, and—what a relief!—he could talk about something besides his resumé: jazz, God, poetry. Instead of investing his energies in the transitory rewards of applause, good press, and self-promotion, he restored things, made things, brought forth the pentimento hidden deep in ancient wood. His sculptures were stationed around the loft where he lived and worked. After Wanda moved in, she felt protected by them, assured by their weight. Peter’s angels may have had wings, but they weren’t going anywhere. Yes, he was troubled, he drank too much, he was certifiably bipolar, but he was such a gentle drunk, so sweet in bed when he was soused. After years of improvising with volatile children, his slowness and steadiness was a balm, his somnolence after they made love a haven.

  But he didn’t love you enough, Wanda reminded herself. He left you. He went away. Does he really warrant this kind of behavior? Is it worth going nuts over the man?

  The answer didn’t really matter. Affirmations couldn’t save her. Wanda had faced the fact that she would have to keep cracking up, little by little, like a windshield, until she found him. She just didn’t seem to have a choice.

  The woman on the bus turned out to be exactly who she seemed—a horsy matron with a postmenopausal mustache. So did the six other people Wanda felt bore certain suspicious resemblances to Peter, either in build or in manner, or in, well, aura.

  Wanda wasn’t stupid. She knew there was about a million-to-one chance that she’d find Peter riding the bus. But the enormity of the quest she’d undertaken began to sink in, and by the time she arrived at her final stop, she was deeply depressed.

  She sat down on the sidewalk. She cried for ten minutes: the exact length of a union break. She got up and began picking up cigarette butts, Burger King wrappers, banana peels, 7-Eleven Big Gulp cups, anything she could find. She used them to construct a sidewalk collage of Peter’s face. People came and went. They gave her odd looks, but they didn’t intrude, didn’t ask what she was doing. It’s amazing how much privacy you have, Wanda thought, when people think you’re crazy. After a while, she tenderly dismantled Peter’s face and deposited it in the trash can that was chained to the Metro bus shelter. She opened her cardboard box, pulled out her red and black book, sat down next to the trash can, and began to write. She wrote the same affirmation, over and over again.

  I am going to find him, Wanda wrote.

  I am going to find him.

  I am going to find him.

  Then, feeling definitely cheered—Maybe there’s something to this creative visualization shit after all—she gathered her things and began the arduous trek up the hill to the Hughes mansion, her new temporary residence.

  Four

  Breakfast at the Schultzes’, 1969

  The last time Wanda had felt grief of this magnitude was twenty-eight years ago, when her mother, Virginia Maria Lorenzini O’Casey, disappeared without a trace. That had been bad enough. But then a few days later, Wanda’s father, Michael Francis Joseph O’Casey, also left the scene. So, at the age of six, Wanda became an orphan.

  Which is not to say that she was abandoned on the doorstep of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and given up to the care and company of the Roman Catholic Church—Michael O’Casey had that much concern for his daughter, anyway. Wanda’s father was a devoted atheist who’d started proselytizing against the church at his daughter’s cribside, and even if he didn’t plan to participate in Wanda’s upbringing, he told her outright that he’d be damned if he’d let the priests and the nuns—especially the nuns—get ahold of her. No, Wanda was left on the doorstep of Maureen Schultz, Michael O’Casey’s older married sister. Aunt Maureen and Uncle Artie already had eight children of their own, ranging in age from two to fourteen, and Wanda would later deduce another probable reason for her father’s decision: He must have figured that adding another kid to the pile wouldn’t make much of a difference.

  On the morning Wanda’s father told her he’d be leaving Chicago for a while and she’d be going to live somewhere else—he was fixing her a hot breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, and pancakes, which was very unusual, highly suspect, but at the same time, very nice—he explained his reasoning in the lilting cadence of his Dublin brogue: “You’re goin’ to be stayin’ with my sister and her family. Your aunt Maureen will take good care of you. They’ll be lots of other kids there for you to play with too—not like here, where it’s just you and me and your mother.” He’d paused to brush at his eyes. Then he fixed Wanda’s plate and set it in front of her. There was enough food on it for a lumberjack.

  Michael O’Casey sat down and sipped on his coffee. “And don’t worry, darlin’,” he had concluded, as if this were the best inducement of all: “You won’t have to go to church.”

  He’d gone on to tell Wanda that her aunt Maureen hadn’t been to Mass or to Confession since she’d married Artie—not that she wasn’t a good woman with so-called Christian values; she was. But Michael O’Casey reassured his daughter that the only time she was likely to hear the word “God” was twice a year, on the two major Christian holidays, when the Schultz mère and père arose before dawn, fortified themselves with an entire pot of Maxwell House coffee, roused, rallied, and assembled the troops, and—after finding eight pairs of matching socks and good shoes, knotting seven ties and one bow, and seeing that eight sets of teeth were brushed, eight bladders and bowels were emptied, eight heads were combed, and eight coats were buttoned—walked in, usually during the processional, to the Good Shepherd German Lutheran Church in the neighborhood where Artie grew up.

  “But you won’t have to go,” Wanda’s father said, emphatically. “I’ll make sure your aunt Maureen is clear on that point.” Michael O’Casey sniffed and cleared his throat. “Now eat your pancakes. There’s a good girl. I’ll just pac
k a few things for you.”

  Wanda didn’t remember much of the actual leave-taking. Her next clearest memory was of arriving in the Schultz family kitchen. Her entrance was at first scarcely noticed. The Schultz children—James, John, Jacob, Jesse, Jordan, Joshua, Jeremiah, and Jacqueline—were eating breakfast when their mother ushered Wanda into the kitchen.

  “All right, now,” Aunt Maureen began. “I need everyone’s attention.” At first, Wanda didn’t know who Aunt Maureen was talking to; the kitchen table contained at least fifteen different boxes of cereal, two cartons of milk, and a large pitcher of orange juice, but there were no children that Wanda could see.

  Aunt Maureen walked over to the table, which was very long; there was an empty chair at each end for Uncle Artie and Aunt Maureen, but there were no chairs on the side closest to Wanda. The reason for this arrangement became clear when Aunt Maureen picked up a pitcher and, moving smoothly from right to left, transformed herself into a well-oiled, perfectly calibrated Human Juice Dispenser.

  Wanda—who would have many occasions over the next seventeen years to observe, and, over time, emulate Aunt Maureen’s physical efficiency—was awed. She’d never seen her own mother pour anything at breakfast time besides shots of scotch.

  “You boys remember your cousin Wanda, right?” Aunt Maureen went on, without spilling a drop.

  Gradually, seven sets of steely, unmistakably male eyes peered over the cereal boxes, and Wanda was suddenly aware of the sounds of cornflakes and puffed rice being crunched into a mushy oblivion between seven sets of teeth.

  “Why would we remember her?” said one surly voice, cracking slightly. “We’ve never met her.”

  “I know that, James Finnegan Schultz, and don’t you be giving me that kind of smart mouth this morning if you please.”

  “Mine! Mine! MINE!” screamed another, much younger voice, and the kitchen tablecloth billowed violently.

  “SHUT UP!” came a voice from behind the Kix box. Wanda heard an aspirate, hissing sound, its exact location indiscernible. She began to wonder if the Schultz family kept a pet snake.

  “Do NOT talk to your sister like that, Jacob. Would you like me to talk to you like that?” Aunt Maureen barked. She put a comradely arm on Wanda’s shoulder, and resumed in a more even tone. “I just meant that you’ve heard me talk about your cousin Wanda, who is my brother Michael’s only child.”

  “Lucky kid,” muttered James Finnegan Schultz, the oldest. Wanda could now pinpoint his position as directly behind the box of Cheerios.

  “James …” Aunt Maureen spoke in the up-inflected “This-is-my-last-warning-buster” tone that all children recognize. James sank down behind his box.

  “MINE!” came the shrill, under-the-table voice again, followed by a loud screech and more hissing.

  “Are you being gentle to the kitty, sweetheart?” Aunt Maureen crooned to the tablecloth, and then continued in a stern, schoolmarmish tone. “Listen up now, guys. Your cousin Wanda will be staying with us for a while.”

  All the cereal boxes began to speak at once.

  “For how long?!” shouted one.

  “Where’s she gonna sleep?” said another.

  “Not in my room!” answered another.

  “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “Another GIRL? That’s GREAT! Just GRRRRRREAT!”

  “Does Dad know about this?!”

  “Girls have COOTIES! Girls are GROSS!”

  “NO! NO! NO! MINE! MINE! MINE! I WANT IT!” screeched the demon under the table, and five pink, sausagelike fingers appeared from under the tablecloth, grasped its edges, and pulled.

  Cereal boxes, bowls, spoons, butter knives, plates of toast and jars of jam, jelly juice glasses, and milk cups were all flung to the kitchen floor.

  There was a stunned silence. The scene above the tabletop resembled The Last Supper gone horribly awry. Discovered beneath the table was a sweet-faced, pudgy, blonde child of about two, wearing a pink and yellow bunny suit.

  “I ate mine all,” said Jacqueline Kennedy Schultz, clutching an empty Mary Poppins bowl in one hand and an orange-striped kitten by the tail in the other. “I’m a GOOD girl.” She smiled with an aggressive sweetness that made her look like Shirley Temple on amphetamines. Then she spotted Wanda.

  Instantly, her baby face contracted into a scowl. She squeezed the kitten’s tail harder, and it gave a pathetic, truncated squeak. “MAMA!” she yelled. “Who DAT?! WHO DAT LITTLE GIRL?!”

  Aunt Maureen began to stammer. “It’s nothing, darlin’, don’t worry, everything’s fine. …” She knelt by the table and said in a voice that was desperately placating, “It’s nothing.”

  Wanda noticed that all of the boys, even the big one called James, had taken a step backward; they seemed to be physically bracing themselves for another act of mass destruction.

  Jacqueline went on, in escalating fury. “WHO DAT? DON’T WANT HER HERE! DON’T WANT DAT GIRL! DAT GIRL GO AWAY NOW! GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY!”

  Aunt Maureen and the seven Schultz boys looked on, clearly frightened and completely passive—as if this two-year-old, cranberry-faced tyrant were a force of nature, or an act of God. It became clear to Wanda, if somewhat puzzling, that no one in the room had any intention of doing anything.

  It was at this moment that Wanda exerted a heretofore undiscovered gift—a gift that would not only serve her well during her seventeen-year tenure as a member of the Schultz household, but would also predetermine her future choice of profession.

  Ignoring Jacqueline’s shrieks, and walking slowly and deliberately, Wanda unloaded her small suitcase onto the kitchen table. It should be noted that Wanda’s focus and calm under these circumstances was impressive; by this time, Jacqueline’s screams were causing extreme consternation among the Schultzes’ human neighbors and a widespread attack of nervous dementia among the neighborhood pets.

  Wanda picked a butter knife and a plate off the floor and wiped them clean with a napkin. Then with a full-volumed and commanding voice, she said, “DOES ANYBODY HERE LIKE CANDY?”

  Instantly, Jacqueline shut up. The rest of the Schultz clan drew a collective breath and focused their full attention on Wanda. Extracting a king-sized Three Musketeers from her suitcase, she sliced off a generous piece and held it out to Jacqueline, who pounced on it with both hands. The orange kitten, free at last, performed a textbook-perfect demonstration of “a bat out of hell” and skittered madly from the kitchen, never to be seen again.

  Wanda placed the remaining chunk of candy on the plate and cut it neatly into eight pieces. After serving her male cousins (she made sure that James got his piece first), she walked over to Aunt Maureen. “You don’t have to love me,” she said, holding out the last piece of chocolate with the solemnity of an altar boy, “but I’m not nothing.”

  “Oh, sweetheart!” Aunt Maureen cried. “I’m so sorry!” She burst into tears, fell to her knees, and drew Wanda into a hug with such force that it took her breath away and sent the plate and remaining chocolate flying.

  Wanda looked over Aunt Maureen’s shoulder to gauge the effect of this overtly maternal and dramatic scene. There was no need to worry. All eight of the Schultz children were blissfully united in the happy consumption of sugar. Jacqueline had stuffed the entire piece of candy into her mouth; there was something especially satisfying to Wanda about the way it distended her cheeks. The little girl was eyeing the last piece of chocolate, which had landed under the table among the minefield of breakfast dishes and puddles of milk and juice. She looked at Wanda. A nonverbal but perfectly clear exchange passed between them. Jacqueline snatched the chocolate from the floor and popped it into her mouth. One of the boys started to protest, but Wanda shot him a look and he fell silent.

  Wanda was then able to close her eyes and—knowing that a moment like this one would probably not come again soon, or often—allow herself to be lost in Aunt Maureen’s embrace. It didn’t matter that Aunt Maureen wasn’t her own mother. It didn’t even matter that
it wasn’t a real hug; Wanda knew that she had purchased this show of affection in the most shameful way imaginable. She didn’t care. These were the facts, as Wanda perceived them: Her mother had disappeared, and Da was so sad about it that he had to go away, and stay away, until he found her and brought her back. Wanda was a bright child, and Michael O’Casey had been just vague enough in his parting words (“I’ll see you around sometime, darlin’.”) to give her the reasonable assumption that he wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon.

  Another child might have cried—and Wanda felt like it. But she didn’t. Her instincts told her that crying would not endear her to the members of this family, where she’d be lucky to be noticed at all. She wisely recognized she’d be far more likely to secure a place of standing with these people as a peacekeeper, even if that meant giving up certain things.

  So it was that Wanda O’Casey, aged six (she did not become Wanda Schultz for another ten years, when everyone finally accepted the fact that Michael O’Casey would not be coming back, and Uncle Artie and Aunt Maureen legally adopted her), abandoned her own childhood to take on the oversight and management of her cousins’—becoming, one might add, a godsend to her aunt Maureen. In this way, she took her initial step toward the first of her illustrious careers, as a highly successful and much sought after professional stage manager—a job which, in Wanda’s mind at least, essentially paid her to continue doing what she’d done for most of her life: guide and negotiate truces between children. Big ones, to be sure, and card-carrying members of Actors Equity Association. But still: children.

  The next morning, when Aunt Maureen arose at five A.M. as usual, a surprise awaited her. Her niece was asleep on the kitchen floor, surrounded by plates and bowls which she had apparently been trying all night to repair; there was a bottle of family-sized Elmer’s glue still clasped in her hand.