Here in Paris, too anxious to linger after the alarm, I get up early to edit in the quiet. A freelance book editor I am struggling to balance Betty, manuscripts with snarled sentences—and my checkbook. Last night, I was up late on the phone with one of my clients, a loon from Los Angeles who believes he has dug up an unprosecuted Nazi still stomping around Germany. Instead of actually acting on my edits, he has e-mailed hundred of documents to be summarized for entry into the text. I have had very little sleep. My sympathies are veering toward the Reich.
Mornings in New York, I could be found editing books through the night, at the Malibu Diner on West Twenty-third Street. I sipped my coffee, watched the street and the people, scrutinizing the cops mingling with ancient ladies with drop earrings, streaks of red on their faces, and blaring lipstick—old showgirl types, their often-tinted hair in dry curlicues, who come out early to order rye toast and soft-boiled eggs.
I have always lived alone. My life as an editor of books and magazines has been spent lingering in the white spaces between lines of copy, trying to get the work perfect. I was raised to get it right. I was raised to work. These were some of the things my mother taught me by example.
. . .
Betty started playing the piano when she was a girl. She has a way with the instrument, but it was my father’s voice that people really noticed. Big George was known for singing. The possessor of a voice that could boost celebrants and move even casual mourners, he performed at weddings and special occasions in Madison and Paris. Betty accompanied him. One night, I remember her practicing the “The Lord’s Prayer” over and over so many times I got a headache.
“Stop playing ‘The Lord’s Prayer,’” I screamed out from my bedroom.
“Don’t bug me,” Betty yelled back. “I’m in a mood.”
When my father came home, later than usual, I threw my arms around him as my mother asked where he had been. She said they had to practice for a funeral the next day. We hadn’t had much dinner. Betty never really ate, just pushed her food around on her plate. She wanted to stay thin.
“Thy kingdom come,” my father sang, “thy will be done.” His voice filled the house. They went through the song over and over as I slept on the couch. The warmth of my father’s hand on my back brought me back. When I got up, he stood me in front of him with his hands on my shoulders and my feet on his work boots. He walked me all the way to my room like this as Betty kept on at the piano.
Betty kept practicing just to make sure she got it right, got it perfect. I had listened to my mother so many nights, playing the church songs over and over; I could sleep through it. But my father, a man with a temper, never could. Big George got up, furious.
“Dammit, Betty. Dammit,” he said, his voice loud and angry, “leave that alone and come to bed. I am worn the hell out.”
“No one,” my mother yelled back, “wants to hear the pianist hit a clunker when they’re about to go into the ground.”
. . .
All through school, I worked as hard as I could, tried to win approval. From anyone. I was so hungry for something. My quest to be perfect never really stopped. I tried at work, on every project, at all the jobs I held. For a long time, as I moved from job to job, I was always praised and got promoted, over and over. But I never got it quite right.
I am not sure my mother believes she ever got it right either. I don’t think she believes that either one of us have ever really hit the mark. I struggle with my moods. They come in big waves, erratic and intense, though I hide them. I have had to fight at times to stay upright. But here my mother keeps me going. I just get up. I crack the eggs, pick the pieces of shell out of the bowl, and flick them across the room with my fingertips.
This morning, as usual, there was coffee, ready and waiting. Every night Betty changes the filter and puts the water, some of which she always manages to spill, into our old, huffy-puffy machine. During her night missions she turns it on for when I come in. She is very conscientious about this; it almost is the last task, aside from the laundry, that she is able to complete successfully. Although she can still play the piano occasionally for church, she cannot cook, or clean, or do anything that requires organizational ability or thinking ahead. She makes the coffee too weak, but if I try to intercede before she gets to it, she looks hurt. It is her job. And she thinks I use too much Folgers. “Coffee’s high,” she says. “Coffee’s high-priced.”
Procrastinating, trying to avoid the Nazi hunter’s last crazed draft, I snag this and that from the kitchen. A day that begins with four coffees, two cinnamon rolls, and several trips to the refrigerator for caramel praline ice cream is likely to lead a person into risky emotional territory. If that doorbell rings it had better not be a Jehovah’s Witness.