The Late, Lamented Molly Marx

by Sally Koslow

  “Hideous,” he says after picking it up. “I’ll be glad when this ordeal is over.”

  The slightly nasal voice on the other end is the same person who has called around eleven every night for the last week.

  “Thank God it’s the last day,” Barry says.

  I study Barry’s face. His eyes look puffy, and I see wrinkles, newly engraved.

  “How do I feel? Like dog shit.”

  This does not make me unhappy.

  “I think she’s doing okay, but it’s hard to tell—she’s been practically mute.”

  Wrong. Annabel’s been quite a little chatterbox when Barry’s not around, especially when she’s alone.

  “Everyone’s all over her—Delfina, my mother-in-law, and that loudmouth Lucy. Oh, and Molly’s friends.”

  Who’ve come, one by one and in small groups, every night of shiva.

  “Yeah, especially the lipstick lesbians.”

  My gang has really been here.

  “Tomorrow? Impossible. I’m back in surgery.”

  That poor nose.

  “No, my feelings haven’t changed.”

  Does he care about this woman? I can’t tell. After the wedding, I never could tell if he cared about me.

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  The voice sounds even more nasal.

  “Have a little decency,” he says.

  He looks at the clock.

  “I mean it. I’m beat. Another time, Stephanie.”

  Stephanie.

  Barry crawls into bed. He avoids my side as if rolling there would mean that he, too, will land in a grave, and falls asleep in less than two minutes.

  It’s true that he has surgery in the morning, but not until ten. A detective named Hicks arrives at seven forty-five. He is African American, no older than his early thirties, one earring, a discreet gold stud. I can’t resist watching him, a man who is far more handsome than he guesses.

  “Mr. Marx,” he begins, taking inventory of our living room.

  “It’s Dr.,” Barry answers reflexively Putz, he thinks, why did I say that?

  “Excuse me,” Hicks says. “Dr. Marx. I’m sorry for your loss and intruding at this time, sir, but as I told you on the phone, this is standard. Just a few questions.”

  “I’m all yours,” Barry says.

  We’ll see about that, I hear Hicks think. “The evening that Mrs. Marx went out biking—the night before she was found dead, that is. Where were you?”

  Barry answers immediately. “I was running. In Central Park. Training for the marathon.”

  “Same here,” Hicks offers, in a friendlier tone than I would have predicted.

  “Well, then you know how much time you have to put in,” Barry says. “At least an old guy like me does.” He laughs as he attempts to grease his way with charm. He guesses that he isn’t actually too many years older than Hicks, but the detective isn’t going to reward him with personal workout details.

  “Did anyone see you that night?”

  Barry takes a minute to answer, but he has already decided what to say. “The doorman.”

  Alphonso, our evening doorman, can’t remember if you had a colony of bats delivered twenty minutes ago, and he loves Barry, who gives him a few Yankee tickets every season.

  “And where did you run in the park?” Hicks says.

  “Entered across the street, ran south, up to the north end of the park, then back out on Eighty-first,” Barry says. “The usual loop.”

  “How long did it take you?”

  Barry shifts in his chair and twists the wedding band. “That run usually takes me about forty-five minutes.”

  Barry looks as if he is waiting to be congratulated on his seven-minute miles, but instead Hicks asks, “Did anyone see you running?”

  What the fuck, Barry thinks. “Sure, a lot of people, I guess, but we don’t all stop and introduce ourselves.” It’s not speed-dating, for Christ’s sake, he thinks.

  “Was there anyone you can think of who would have wanted to harm your wife?” Hicks asks.

  After a long, considered pause Barry says, “Everyone loved Molly. She wasn’t a threat to anyone.” Not exactly the highest praise, but I imagine he thinks he is complimenting me to, well, the heavens.

  “Was Mrs. Marx upset about anything?”

  Besides me? Barry says to himself. “Nothing out of the ordinary. She led a very fortunate life.” Cushy Pampered. Privileged. True, true, true.

  This is really his point, and Hicks gets it.

  “So I appreciate your visit, Detective, and I hope”—and expect, he thinks—“that all the muscle of the New York Police Department will get behind finding the fucking monster who did this to my wife.”

  Whoa, Detective Hicks thinks, this hothead’s getting way ahead of himself, considering that his wife’s death might be a simple, stupid accident or even a suicide. “That’s all for now—we’ll be in touch, Dr. Marx,” he says, and gets up from the chair. “Sorry to intrude.” He shakes Barry’s hand and gives him his card. I notice his hands, large, strong, as meticulously groomed as my husband’s.

  “No problem,” Barry says, slipping the card in his pocket. After the detective leaves, Barry sighs. It sounds like the wheeze of an elderly man. In two minutes he, too, is out the door. It’s raining, but he forgets his umbrella.

  I check on Annabel. She’s been playing rabbi all week long, sitting shiva with her American Girl dolls. I am the pretty blonde, Elizabeth, who serves tea and is presumed to have good penmanship. I, Elizabeth, have been spending the week asleep. I keep wondering if Annabel will let me wake up.

  “I miss you, Mommy,” she says. “I love you.” She tenderly tucks her tattered blankie around Elizabeth. Around me. “Are you warm enough, Mommy?” In her pink flannel nightie and bare feet she pads across the room to the toy baskets and, one by one, dumps them on the floor until she finds a minuscule plastic plate with a tiny brown muffin attached. She places it next to Elizabeth. “You must be hungry, Mommy,” she says. “Got to eat.” I recognize the musical tone as my own.

  On the dot of eight-fifteen, Delfina quietly raps on the door as she opens it, singing, “Good morning, sunshine.” She takes in the mess-toys and books everywhere—and the dolls tidily lined up for prayers.

  “You’ve been busy, haven’t you, miss?” she says, love in her voice. “Don’t worry—I’ll watch over your friends here, but we gotta get dressed—time to go back to school.”

  Annabel doesn’t budge.

  “What do you want to wear?” Delfina asks. “Pick anything.”

  My daughter rummages through her drawer and finds the velour sweats that almost match mine, last Mother’s Day’s gift from Kitty. I wore my set only once, because they made me feel as if I should be heading out for the early-bird special in Boca. Annabel hasn’t worn hers since last summer. Her skinny arms and legs stick out by inches.

  “Perfect,” Delfina says. “Now hop to it, miss. Waffles!”

  After Delfina leaves the room, Annabel takes one last long look at Elizabeth. “You take a long sleep now,” she says.

  Nine

  MISSIONARY’S DOWNFALL

  rom where I lie now, it’s easy to ask myself why I didn’t confront Barry at our wedding when I saw that witch wiggle her tush out of my parents’ powder room. But what was I supposed to do, yell “rewind” with 250 wedding guests panting for cake? As they say in life, timing is everything. In death, not so much.

  Hawaii won the honeymoon sweepstakes, and the morning after our wedding, Barry and I flew west. For the first day, I wanted to strangle him with an orchid lei, but my fury started to mute as I soaked in a hot tub and sipped innumerable pineapple cocktails—not that I could tell a Missionary’s Downfall from a Tropical Itch. When we weren’t getting hammered we were having sex, on the bed, in the hammock, and on the fine white sand, this way, that way, and yes, once that way. By the end of the trip, I’d convinced myself that maybe I’d imagined the debacle of the powder room. I returned to N
ew York with a grass skirt, five new pounds, and a urinary tract infection. In the honeymoon afterglow, I made a secret vow to become a forgive-and-forget kinda wife worthy of a Country Music Award and my husband’s everlasting affection.

  Three weeks after the wedding, I had lunch with Brie, who hadn’t yet started law school and was still the centerpiece of faraway photo shoots—she’d just returned from Kenya—although at almost twenty-eight she’d stopped getting top American bookings. Her last job had been for the second-best women’s weekly in Johannesburg.

  When she asked me about married life I reported that I’d been dragging myself out of bed every day to kiss Barry goodbye before he left for the hospital. “I’m buying fresh flowers twice a week, and every night I play a bunch of jazz CDs recommended by that guy we like at Tower Records, the one with the dreads.”

  I didn’t tell Brie the half of it, and I don’t mean that I also played Lyle Lovett and Michael Bublé. Every day, I made mental notes on wry observations and worthy conversational themes, often stolen from the blogosphere, which, along with three proper courses, I’d serve at dinner to stimulate—make that simulate—amusing repartee. I ordered napkins embossed with “Barry and Molly” and took Barry’s shirts to the dry cleaner for laundering. How could I have known he preferred them on hangers, rather than three to a box like a weekly birthday present?

  Brie stopped flipping through pictures she’d taken on a safari tacked onto her shoot. “Excuse me,” she said, “but have you seen my friend Molly?”

  “Your point being?”

  “You shouldn’t be sweating it like this.” Brie leaned forward and nailed me with her eyes, smoky as graphite but not as soft. My bridal sell-by date, which had veiled me from criticism, had apparently expired. It was the first time since I got married that anyone—even Lucy—was talking turkey to me. “You’re borderline pathetic,” she added, in case I hadn’t gotten the message.

  I turned my wineglass in a circle on the bare wood table. My wedding band caught the light, its channel-set diamonds marching in a circle promising eternity.

  “I hear you,” I said.

  “I’m not sure you do,” she said, putting her hand on mine to stop the twisting. “Look at me.”

  Reluctantly, I did.

  “If anyone belongs on a pedestal, it’s you, Molly. Not him. Ever since you met Barry Marx you’re acting all ‘I’m the bottom, you’re the top.’” For extra emphasis, she sang the Cole Porter song.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” I whispered. Brie’s singing had captured the attention of two women at the next table. Her vocal stylings leave something to be desired. “Thanks for the big vote of confidence, but I want to make my marriage work.”

  “Yeah?” she said. “And this is it?”

  “Nobody teaches you how to be married,” I said, in what even I recognized as a tone better left to a motivational speaker. “I can’t very well imitate my parents—they’ve set the bar so high it’s a damn curse.” Perhaps I used a different adjective. Anyway, it’s not like Dan and Claire Divine coo to the point where you gag, but they still crack each other up, and sometimes I catch my dad staring at my mom—even when she’s come in from tennis, sweat dripping down her back and curling the hair around her delicately lined face—with a look that says, How did a dumb putz like me ever win Mega Millions? For her part, Mom respects the power of lingerie. I always assumed I could tell a lot about my parents’ private life by her boudoir wardrobe, which is heavy on silk charmeuse in styles skimpy enough to show off her cellulite-free legs, each wisp of a gown coordinated with robes—sheer cottons, embroidered kimonos, and velvets in Elizabethan hues. Lucy calls her the Geisha.

  “Besides,” I added, “you don’t even know Barry all that well. I think you’re being a little arrogant.”

  “You’re right, Molly,” Brie said, leaning back in her chair. “I’m single. What do I know?” Her words were apologetic; her voice was not. “It’s just that I don’t want you to forget you.”

  “I love that you worry about me,” I said after about a minute. “I worry about you, too. Mostly that you’ll elope.” Brie was then five boyfriends away from declaring herself a daughter of Sappho. “I’m selfish. I’m afraid I’ll lose you to someone who’ll make you live without blow-dryers and Crest Whitestrips on the dark side of the moon.”

  Brie laughed, a deep, throaty gurgle I wish I could hear this very minute. “Tell me again about the photographer you met,” I said. She described her latest conquest, Luke whatever, in head-to-toe detail. Black hair, blue eyes, long legs.

  My mind was stuck in the Molly-forgetting-Molly groove. Still, I must have subliminally absorbed something, because a year later, when I met Luke Delaney, wires connected deep in my brain, and I approached this particular man with my version of candor. To begin with, I made a point of looking him in the eye, something Barry repeatedly told me I neglected to do, a deficiency among many that, in the second year of our marriage, he was only too happy to draw to my attention so that I could become a more perfect person and mate.

  I was at Kennedy Airport when I met Luke. “Excuse me, but aren’t you Molly, Brie’s friend?” a black-haired man asked right after I was told my flight to London had been overbooked and I’d need to take the next plane out hours later.

  “Yes, I’m Molly,” I said. “Molly Marx.” I tried to smile but, aggravated as I was about the delay, the best I could do was not frown.

  “Luke Delaney,” he said. He shook my hand and smiled for both of us. “I got bumped, too.”

  “Are you as pissed as I am?” I asked. “If there hadn’t been so much traffic on the LIE …”

  “You at least have an excuse,” Luke said. “Got a late start. No one to blame but myself.” As he spoke, I noticed his eyes were the exact shade I’d wanted for my wedding, blue as a sunny sky over Nantucket. I shifted from his eyes to his mouth. His lips were full, his nose rather long, and his bottom teeth endearingly crooked.

  It was going to be a slog waiting for the next flight. Barry’d made no particular fuss about my going away for a week on a business trip, my first since our wedding. In fact, this morning he seemed determined to pick a fight, castigating me for forgetting to take care of paying the cable bill before my departure. He made most of the money, but writing checks was my domain.

  My smile arrived.

  “What do you say I buy us both a drink?” he asked. “Once we’re in London, we’ll be working such ridiculous hours I’ll be too damn exhausted to hit a pub.”

  “We?”

  He grabbed my tote—which overflowed with files, a liter bottle of water, and a pashmina big enough to upholster a couch—and guided me toward the first-class lounge. “Samuel Wong cancelled this morning. I got booked at noon.” That explained why the name Luke Delaney hadn’t shown up on my memos.

  The lounge was crowded, but photographers have eagle eyes—he spotted two armchairs on the far side of the room. “Grab ’em,” he said, “and I’ll get us something. You drink …?”

  “Thanks. Pinot noir.”

  As I reached the empty chairs a mom with a toddler catapulted into them. I walked back to Luke, who was balancing wineglasses on a tray along with nuts and a weapon-sized Toblerone bar.

  “We lost our spot to a mommy,” I said.

  “But here’s another.” He charmed a love seat into vacancy.

  After fifteen minutes of unremarkable chat, he asked, “Can I make a confession?”

  He’s still in love with Brie, I thought. He wouldn’t be the first man my best friend had turned into mush after she’d moved on. Knowing he was most likely under her spell made me relax. Or maybe it was the wine, which I’d already finished. “Confess away,” I said.

  “I’m scared shitless about this shoot.”

  “Really?” I asked, genuinely surprised. “Why?” To me the assignment was routine. In those days, I ran a magazine’s decorating department staffed by four slaves who bushwhacked ahead of me to set up. The magazine was photographing M
ayfair district houses, each chicer than the next. It was the kind of job I could do in my sleep, assuming the owners didn’t freak about the photographer’s aides-de-camp dropping cigarette ashes on Mummy’s threadbare rugs. Oh, there’d be dogs to corral—the Brits always had dogs. But as long as I kept them happy with biscuits and picked up the nightly bar tab for the owners and our gang, I expected peace in the kingdom. We’d already made reservations at numerous restaurants deemed “bloody brilliant” by Time Out London.

  “I’m a fashion guy,” Luke said. “But I don’t think I can stand one more model tantrum. From now on I want to be all about inanimate objects.”

  “I don’t blame you. Anything I can do—” I started to say, but the loudspeaker interrupted to announce that our flight would be delayed—by how long the plummy voice didn’t say.

  After Luke returned to gather a second round of drinks, I reported in to Barry, as a wife is supposed to do, even when she’s begun to realize she’s in a continual state of low-grade anger iced with disappointment. I doubted he’d be home, but I planned to leave a message.

  He answered on the first ring. “Really, Molly?” Barry said, and seemed to listen attentively to my tale of transportation inconvenience. “How about I pick you up and take you to dinner?”

  Suddenly Barry was acting like an ideal husband while I was guzzling wine with a guy who was looking better by the sip, someone I’d be working with across an ocean for six days. Into what alternate reality had the airport limo deposited me? “You would do that?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Why not?” he said. “I’ll hop in the car—get there in, say, forty minutes? Tomorrow’s my day off. I can afford to get to bed late.”

  I felt like a horse’s ass. Who was this spouse so concerned for my well-being? I wondered as Luke returned with more wine. “Barry, I love you for offering, but they aren’t saying when my plane will leave. You could drive all the way out here and I’d take off before you even parked.”

  He waited a few seconds before responding. “Got it,” he said.