by Sally Koslow
Hicks seems to be enjoying the show. He grins. “Well, we’ll be winding things up soon here, Ms. Lawson,” he says. “Just a few more questions. Where were you the night that your friend died?”
Brie squeezes her eyes shut, trying to stop the onset of tears. “I was working,” she said. “In Brazil.”
When I was bowling in the Bronx, Hicks thinks. “Anything else you’d like to tell me?”
Brie looks pale and tired. A lock of dark hair falls out of her chignon, and she brushes it away from her face. “Nothing I can think of.”
“Okay, then,” Hicks says. “Just one more thing. Do you know a Luke?” He pulls out the notebook again. “Luke Delaney?”
“Luke Delaney,” she says. “Yes—yes, I do. We met years ago, when I was a model.”
A model, Hicks thinks, not surprised. “And what was Mr. Delaney’s relationship to Mrs. Marx?” he asks.
“Work associates. He’s a photographer.”
“That’s all you want to tell me?” he asks.
Brie finds her courtroom game face. “That’s all I know.”
Hicks gets up and shakes Brie’s hand. I am fairly certain he holds her palm for a moment longer than necessary, but I can’t be held accountable for my observations, because the mention of Luke, whom I have refused to think about, has my mind in orbit.
“If there’s anything else that you remember, here’s my card,” the detective says. He’s switched his tone to neutral pointing toward cordial, presses the card into Brie’s hand, and walks out the door. His rear view is possibly his best angle.
After he leaves, she steps to a desk and puts the card in the skinny, empty drawer on the right. Hiawatha Hicks, it reads. She says the name out loud. “Hiawatha?” The laugh that fills the loft is the laugh I remember, and from where I am, we laugh together.
Sixteen
BAD BANANA
arry?” Lucy said. “I hope I didn’t wake you.” The truth is that Lucy wishes she could haunt his dreams as a blood-sucking, scythe-wielding vampire. Furthermore, it’s Sunday morning, and if he’s not up now, at nine o’clock, my sister will surely mark it in the ledger she keeps of Dr. Barry Marx’s scurviest sins.
“Who’s calling, please?” Barry says. He sounds winded, which doesn’t surprise me, because although it’s raining heavily, he has just come in from a run. Standing in a baseball cap and poncho, he drips water on our kitchen floor. Barry knows the caller is Lucy: our voices were the only thing about us that was virtually identical, and I doubt he thinks I’ve rung him up from the grave to tell him he forgot to buy the right kind of milk (organic, 2 percent)—something he’s done.
“Your favorite sister-in-law,” Lucy announces.
Barry takes a moment to think, Big-tit bitch. “Good morning, Lucy,” he says. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” He sounds even, pleasant, as behooves a well-paid surgeon. Shortly after we were married, he worked for a few months with a speech consultant in order to soften the New York in his vowels. My idea.
You don’t like me and I don’t like you—let’s not pretend, Lucy thinks. “I want to make arrangements for Passover,” she spits out. “I’ll fly into New York, pick up Annabel, and bring her to Chicago for the beginning of her vacation. I’m off myself, so it’s easy for me to swing, and I can spend the whole week with her.”
“Continue.”
“My parents will fly her back,” Lucy says, encouraged. “We have a lot of plans—the Field Museum, American Girl Place, the two seders, of course. And matzo brei on the first morning of Passover—Divine tradition.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do I take that as a yes?” She is working to keep the exchange breezy but on a pad of paper is drawing circles, heavy and black with her worry.
“Lucy, it’s not going to happen,” Barry says. “Your dad mentioned something about this, but Annabel’s therapist thinks it’s too much for her to travel so soon.”
Lucy says, “Annabel’s therapist?” at the same time as I think it. She has a pediatrician and a dentist. Since when does my daughter have a therapist?
“I’ve had several consultations with a highly credentialed colleague who specializes in childhood grief,” Barry says.
“Oh, really?” Lucy says. “Who might that be?”
“Joseph,” Barry says.
“Joseph who?” Lucy asks. She is sitting in front of the computer that my parents keep on the kitchen counter and has already called up Google.
“Joseph is the last name.”
“What’s his first name?” Lucy asks briskly.
“Why is this important?”
“I asked you a fair question.”
“Okay,” he says. “Stephanie.”
Unfortunately, Lucy can’t hear me snort.
“Well, the Divine family has consulted a therapist as well,” Lucy lies. “And our highly credentialed expert from the University of Chicago who specializes in early-childhood trauma says that to deprive Annabel of contact with her maternal family right now will be …” Lucy takes a second to think. “Would have long-term, reverberating negative consequences.”
“Reverberating, huh?” Barry says. “So, Luce, should we have our therapists meet in Central Park for a duel? Plenty of room to reverberate there.”
Annabel walks into the kitchen in her nightgown. Her toenails sparkle, the handiwork of Delfina, who left for church this morning as soon as Barry walked through the door after his run. He’s been paying her extra to sleep in the apartment every night.
My daughter puts her half-empty bowl of Cheerios in the sink and wanders over to her father. “Daddy?” she says. “Daddy?” The word flutters from her mouth. “I can’t find my Dora DVD. Fairy Tale Adventure. I need it. Where is it?”
Barry would have a better chance of finding God. “Lucy,” he says, “Annabel’s here. Gotta go.”
“Is that Aunt Moosey?” Annabel asks. When she smiles, her dimple shows. “Can I talk to her?”
“Barry, put Annabel on,” Lucy says. The breezy tone has blown away; she’s defaulted to shrill with a 70 percent chance of shit storm. The circles she’s doodling have grown as thick as snakes and fill a page of legal pad.
“Not a good time,” Barry says. “Annabel and I are heading out in five minutes.” His eyes settle on a wall calendar decorated with a lioness and her cubs. “We’re going to the zoo.”
“I didn’t know we were going to the zoo.” Annabel examines the rain pounding the windows in almost horizontal freefall. Even a three-year-old can look dubious. “And I want to talk to Aunt Moosey.”
“Just put her on for a minute,” Lucy says. Google has coughed up a few Stephanie Josephs—two attorneys, a hipper-than-thou teenage blogger, and an Atlanta podiatrist.
“Hang on,” he tells her. “There’s a call.” Barry puts Lucy on hold. “Are your ears burning?” Barry asks.
“Not my ears,” Stephanie says. She sounds sultrier on a rumpled Sunday morning than I ever did on my most torrid Saturday night.
“You’re a therapist, right?” he asks.
“Was,” she says. “Two careers ago. Social worker at a geriatric center. Dentures, Depends—not my thing,” she laughs. “May I ask where this conversation is going?”
“Not important,” he says. “You were saying?”
“I took one look at this storm and had a vision for this afternoon,” she says. “Jordan and Annabel could watch cartoons, and we could do … whatever.”
“Whatever, huh?” he says, talking quietly. “I lettered in whatever in college. How did you know?”
Annabel tugs his hand. “The zoo, Daddy?” she says. “When are we going?”
“Honey, can’t you see it’s raining?” he says. “And that I’m on the phone?”
“I want to talk to Aunt Moosey! I want to find Dora!” Her face is getting red.
My eyes dart back and forth between Chicago and New York. Left on hold, Lucy sticks out her lower lip and glowers.
My father walks into the kitchen just
as she slams down the phone. “Take it easy, partner,” he says. “What’s wrong?”
Lucy runs upstairs and when she gets to the hallway outside our former bedroom door shouts, “That sleazoid thinks he can have things any way he fucking wants. Well, he better think again.” My father stares at his grown daughter with the look men get when they’re stuck in an estrogen choke hold.
“Boyfriend trouble again, sweetie?” he shouts back.
My sister slams the bedroom door.
In my New York kitchen, Barry is savoring every detail of the description Stephanie offers up of the afternoon’s prix fixe. “Think about it, Dr. Marx,” she says, her mind bouncing between the equal appeals of Barry’s big dick and big bucks. “Raindrops on the windowpanes, jazz or opera—your pick—and a side trip to the bedroom for as long as you want. Should I go on?”
“Oh yeah, baby—do,” Barry says while he idly plays with the curls on Annabel’s head. She tugs on his sleeve. He bends over to give her a kiss.
“Daddy,” she says loudly, “the zoo! When are we going? And you need to find my Dora DVD, ’member?”
“You’re not seriously thinking of going to the zoo, are you?” Stephanie asks.
“Fairy Tale Adventure’s my best favorite.” Annabel is hanging on Barry’s leg. “I want to watch it before we go.”
“No, not now,” Barry says.
“Are you talking to me, Bear?” Stephanie says. Kitty calls Barry “Bear.” Which is why I never did.
“Daddy! I want to see the part where the mean witch puts Boots to sleep.”
“Bear, you there?”
Annabel begins to stamp her feet. “Stephanie, actually, maybe this isn’t a good time,” Barry says. “Call you later?”
She laughs. “Certainly Promise?”
“Promise,” he says as he clicks off, measured seduction replaced by exasperation.
“Dora needs to turn into a True Princess to wake Boots up,” Annabel says, dissolving into tears. “He has to wake up. He’s Dora’s best friend. He has to.”
“What happened to her friend, honey?” He pulls our daughter onto his lap.
“Daddy—you know!” she wails. “He ate a bad banana. Very, very bad.” As a new torrent of tears bursts, Annabel’s nose drips on her nightgown, a ribbon of mucus catching on one ear of Alfred the bunny. “We’re not going to the zoo, are we?”
“No, kitten, I don’t think that’s such a great idea,” Barry says, trying unsuccessfully to use his nylon poncho to wipe her nose. “Not today.”
“You lied!” Annabel says. “You always lie!” As she flies out the door, letting it slam behind her, I am seeing Lucy, circa four years old: my sister a powerhouse, especially next to me, as passive as a sugar cookie. I watch helplessly, in awe of Annabel’s will. How will Barry ever manage her alone?
“God damn it, Molly—what the fuck do I do now?” Barry says, clenching his fists. He puts his head down on the kitchen table and softly bangs his forehead several times. I see tears, though whether they are from grief or frustration I cannot say. “Molly, you weren’t supposed to die. You weren’t supposed to die.”
I forgot that someone could yell and cry simultaneously.
I hurt for my Annie-belle, who has lost her mommy. I hurt for my sister, Lucy, for how hard it must be to be her. I hurt for my parents, who have been forced to surrender half their heart. I hurt for all of them and I hurt for me, because I miss every one of these tortured people whom I love and whom I’ve left behind, broken and bleeding. I hurt for how much I miss my life. I would gladly go to the zoo in the rain and muck; I would stand in shit and sleep in wet straw and smell terrible smells, just to be alive for another day.
But what surprises me most is that I am feeling something new. The emotion is a foreign spice whose name I don’t even know and that I can’t decide if I like. I am feeling something for Barry.
I am so fixated, I barely notice Bob standing beside me. “Sometimes,” he says, “it’s best not to watch. Or listen.” But I wave him away. I can’t stop doing either.
Seventeen
LEMON TART
eets?” Barry said. “Again?”
When I was pregnant, I had a fetish for beets, which until then I’d bought only in cans and only on sale. Barry started calling me “the Beet Queen,” which I took as a compliment, not so much because a novel by that name was one of my favorites, but because fresh beets suddenly struck me as the ultimate root vegetable, food my Middle European great-grandmother must have grown and cooked. I felt as if all the beets I was consuming were allowing me to reconnect with my ancestors. This, I guess, is what pregnancy does to some women.
“I found a new way to make them,” I assured Barry as I tied a starched white chef’s apron around my eight-and-a-half-months-pregnant girth. “From Nigella.” If I had had a girl crush, it would have been on a woman like Nigella Lawson, who, even though her last name is Brie’s, reminds me of Lucy, if my sister had a cultivated BBC accent instead of a Chicago honk. Freud would have a chuckle with that one, so forget the crush. But I’d made Nigella’s beet, dill, and mustard seed salad at least eight times.
Barry grabbed three big red onions and started juggling, which along with performing surgery and manual foreplay starred in his skill set. After a two-minute routine, he parked the onions on the counter, came up behind me, and gave me a long hug, pressing his warm palms on the spot where our baby had, for the moment, stopped doing flip turns. His erection pressed against my behind.
“You’re in a good mood,” I said, not that such a mood was unusual lately. We were getting along exceedingly well. Throughout my pregnancy, Barry’s disposition had rarely dipped below good and occasionally spiked off the charts, and his sex drive seemed to increase as gestation progressed.
“I’m enjoying this new domestic you,” he said, scanning the recipe in the opened cookbook. As he started to chop fresh mint, I breathed in the picnicky fragrance and had a sudden yen for a tall glass of lemonade. Had it not been past eight on a Saturday night, I might have begged Barry to run out and buy enough lemons to fill a jug with a homemade brew, but I was hungry. The table was set with rustic pottery, chunky amber goblets just right for his wine and my water, and beeswax candles, waiting to be lit. I still had to finish our pasta, a simple recipe heavily reliant on pecorino Romano.
As peak experiences go, there are some women who find pregnancy overrated. Seeing your butt, once hard and high, swell into a beach ball you know will deflate and sink; finding your nose spread across your face; watching tributaries fan out from bulging varicose veins—I was determined not to notice such things happening to me. I was too distracted by the good stuff, like my brand-new, God-given cleavage, which I showcased at all hours in deep V-neck clothes so clingy they literally stretched the boundaries of good taste and should have been labeled Slut Mommy.
During the winter, as my bump grew, it felt cozy and efficient to be a baby-making machine. I was awed by the knowledge of cells multiplying inside of me like disciplined Marines, and I indulged in cup after cup of steaming cocoa, ignoring the verboten caffeine, reminding myself I required the calcium. Every weekend, I settled on the couch wrapped in cuddly cashmere with grilled cheese sandwiches, spending long afternoons watching Turner Classic Movies and memorizing name books.
Barry wanted a boy. He was sure it was a boy. Kitty analyzed my body—the baby bulge staying relatively narrow—and declared that yes, it would definitely be another Marx heir, since I looked like she did while pregnant with Barry. I interpreted this to mean that I was one of those rare attractive pregnant ladies, since when Kitty favorably compares your appearance to hers it is the highest form of flattery.
Barry insisted on a strapping name, a manly name, a name like a power drill. He tossed off my suggestions—Dylan, Devin, Jesse, Sebastian, Nicholas, Eliah, Raphael, Oliver, Graham, Kieran—like small, twee doilies in favor of Hank, Jake, Cal, Kurt, Max, Nat, Bart, Tom, Abe, and Zack, stopping just short of Thor. I let him know I thought his
choices were the kind of names wit-challenged pet owners bestow on Chihuahuas. We ultimately agreed on Alexander William, but when I suggested that Master Marx could be Sasha for short, Barry made a unilateral decision: if the baby was a boy, we would go with William Alexander. Given the remote possibility that we would produce a girl, Barry, marinating in his testosterone, graciously said I could pick whatever name I wanted for this unlikely female offspring.
William Alexander. It was a solid, multitasking name. William Alexander Marx, spelling bee king, bar mitzvah boy, Phi Beta Kappa, juris doctor, and Supreme Court justice. Will Marx, captain of the squash team, not a pimple in sight. Wild Willy Marx, starting pitcher for the Yankees. Billy Marx, renegade indie film director, winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes. William A. Marx, Ph.D., curer of AIDS or cancer, possibly both. President William Alexander Marx, the first Jew in the White House.
I sometimes let my mind wander to William Alexander’s future sibling: Daniel James.
They’d be the Marx brothers, just as wicked, only gorgeous. But living with a sextet of balls—what would that be like? How do you change a boy’s diaper without getting a squirt of pee in the eye? Would a small male and I have anything to chat about? What if he was one of those perpetually moving children who start downing Ritalin before solid food? For a number of weeks I felt uniquely unqualified to be the mother of even one son. I warmed to the idea of having a boy, though, when I considered that he might be as attentive to me as Barry is to Kitty, calling at least once a day.
I never focused much on the reality of there being an actual person inside my body, and I learned to keep visions at bay of future projectile vomiting. I was shocked when people expected to hear me opine on points I’d never considered, like whether I’d let the baby watch the Wiggles, a quartet whose popularity I learned rivaled that of the Beatles, despite the fact—or maybe because of the fact—that they perform “Hava Nagila” in Bavarian folk costume.
I wasn’t in a hurry for my pregnancy to end. It was a contentment zone I’d never before imagined or visited. Tonight I sang “I’m a Woman” as I finished cooking our meal—“W-O-M-A-N”—putting the pasta in a big white bowl, snowing the top with even more cheese. I could picture the calcium going straight to my baby’s tiny, precious bones, making them hard as diamonds.