The Late, Lamented Molly Marx

by Sally Koslow

  “My vote is to pull into that winery right there and drink Sonoma’s finest until we’re shit-faced,” Eric said. “See the sign?”

  “You go, girl,” Jasper said to Eric. We all knew Eric was gay, but I loathed Jasper all the more for banging on it.

  “The driver calls the shots,” Luke ruled as he rolled his eyes at the back of Jasper’s head. Since Eric was behind the wheel, he chose to turn off Dry Creek Road into the Ferrari-Carano Vineyards.

  Some of the wineries we’d passed were little more than tumbledown shacks, but we could see we’d hit pay dirt. At the end of a drive, a vast pink stucco estate house with arched leaded-glass windows stood before us, fronted by classical gardens circling a fountain. The lawn was rolling and lush, the privets manicured. Thinking back to it, the place reminds me of the Duration, especially when Puccini wafts through the air.

  “Holy cow,” Eric said as he led us into the tasting room off the main lobby. It was all but devoid of other customers, but thousands of wine bottles glinted, there for the buying.

  From behind a gleaming wood bar a white-aproned man greeted us. I have no idea if he knew a Barolo from a Chianti, but I liked the look of his shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair, tied back in a ponytail. “Would you care for a pour of our Syrah?” he wondered.

  We would. And the zinfandel, the Tresor, the Eldorados—the Noir as well as the Gold—the fumé blanc, and, what the hell, the cabernet sauvignon. All four of us sipped and critiqued with flowing pretension. We started with “fruity” and “earthy” and shamelessly worked ourselves up to “herbaceous with hints of anise, berry, and tobacco.”

  After nearly three hours, Eric and Jasper decided to drive back to town; they were heading to San Francisco. That I, a full-fledged mother, allowed these two to get into a moving vehicle now fills me with shame, but that’s how drunk I was. “Don’t worry,” Luke said to them. “We’ll find our way home.” The proprietor was only too happy to give us a card for a taxi company: the longer our stay, the bigger his sale.

  Eventually, Luke and I had sampled nearly every wine from the vineyard. I decided to ship home a case of the zinfandel. Luke picked the Syrah. I wandered around in a fog, lubricated as much by the past week’s work as by that day’s excellent vintages. Nor did the excellent company hurt. Whatever fear I’d had about living up to Luke’s expectations had been washed down the hatch, and we were laughing and showing off for each other.

  “You go, girl,” Luke said in Prince Charles’ voice. In the moment, I thought he was hilarious.

  Shaky on my feet, I was ready to call our cab when Luke motioned me out to the big white-tiled center hall and pointed to some steps. “Let’s explore,” he said, mischief in his eyes and voice.

  “Are you sure it’s okay to go down there?”

  “The door’s unlocked. I took a peek when I took a leak.” Another line of his I’m now embarrassed to say that I felt deserved a hearty laugh.

  We tiptoed down a short flight of creaky wooden stairs into a low-ceilinged windowless room the size of a basketball court. From wall to wall, heavy old oak barrels sat like monks, each presumably filled with wine. The cellar air felt refreshingly cool. Like Alice in her maze, I walked in one direction and Luke in the other, in and out of narrow aisles.

  “Molly, come here,” Luke stage-whispered from across the room.

  “What is it?” I asked. Maybe he’d found a barrel with an open tap and we could polish off our afternoon with one last, secret swig.

  “Come over here,” he said. “You’re going to love this.”

  I did.

  He grabbed both of my hands and pushed me against the side of the tall wooden barrel. Then he kissed me, hard. His lips tasted better than any of Ferrari-Carano’s premier selections, although I swear I detected a drop of the zin, with just a hint of boysenberry and licorice. He slid his cool tongue deep into my mouth and cupped my face in his hands while he tenderly and sensuously explored. “I’ve been dying to do that for days,” he whispered.

  I said nothing, but I let my hands roam to his back and my mouth stayed with his. “No” and “yes” both came to mind as he unzipped my jeans and slid his fingers inside me. I didn’t stop him and answered his lust with my own, each sweet movement calibrated for maximum pleasure, his and mine, together, as my own hands found his flesh, hard and inviting.

  By the time we heard footsteps, we were both on the floor, which in my bliss felt as comfortable as an inner-spring mattress. “I don’t think I want to spend the night here,” I said.

  My hand in his, we walked up the steps and outside, into the twilight. The winery was closing and we were its last visitors to leave. I gave Luke the card for the taxi, which he called with his arm draped around my shoulder. He leaned heavily and deliciously against my side.

  We walked, melted into one, toward the entrance, and stopped to kiss by a towering bronze statue. The figure was a wild boar said to roam the Sonoma Valley, where he stole away the grapes. A plaque announced him as Bordeaux: those who made a wish while they touched the giant snout were said to see their dream come true.

  I looked up. The big boy’s nose was rubbed to a coppery gleam. I stretched to reach it.

  Let me love the right man, I said to myself. Let me not ruin my life. Let me figure out what will make me happy.

  I knew I’d made three wishes, not one, and hoped that Bordeaux wouldn’t fault me on a technicality.

  Twenty-two

  THREE GUYS GO INTO A BAR

  arry!” Stephanie says.

  It better be important, Barry thinks. He’s behind schedule, because surgery ran long today which he’s explained to me can happen when the patient is enormously fat.

  As Stephanie begins to speak, his nurse steps into his office. “Sorry to interrupt, but Delfina’s on line two,” she tells him. “She says it’s urgent.”

  “Later, Stephanie.” Barry clicks off. He hopes Delfina isn’t calling to make a sudden trip back home to take care of a sick relative. Or ask for a raise. Or resign. He worries about this every day. Delfina is the Swiss Army knife of his life, solving virtually every practical problem.

  “Dr. Marx?” Delfina says to Barry. “Mrs. Marx’s sister—”

  “Lucy?” What now?

  “Mrs. Marx’s sister. She snatched Annabel,” Delfina blurts out, her usual Zen-like restraint splintered. The way Narcissa, a Mary Higgins Clark devotee, relayed the incident a minute ago, Lucy had been ready to whisk Annabel away to, Narcissa speculates, a bunker under a chicken coop in some undisclosed location.

  “Oh my God,” Barry says, gulping air. “That bitch. Where’s Annabel? Is she okay?”

  “Annabel’s fine—she’s with Narcissa and Ella. I’m on my way over there. Mrs. Marx’s sister”—Delfina no longer thinks it seems Christian to call her Lucy—“took off.” After Barry reaches Annabel—“Hi, Daddy. Aunt Moosey came to my school! Yes, it was very exciting. No, she didn’t say why. Daddy, Narcissa’s going to make us milkshakes now. Bye”—he cancels four consultations: a sweet-sixteen chin job, a redo on one of those unfortunate noses from Kitty’s generation that look as if they were pointed in a pencil sharpener, a postdivorce nose-jowls combo, and a fiftieth-birthday lift on a woman who loathed the neck rings she’d accumulated each year as if she were a redwood. He bolts from his office, hops in a taxi—Barry has the best cab karma of anyone I know—and rushes home, ignoring Stephanie’s repeated calls.

  When Barry is nervous, he paces. It is twenty minutes later now, and like a panther at a substandard zoo, he’s traversed the long hall, the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, and back, again and again and again. Twice he has started to phone his mother and Detective Hicks—in that order—and thought better of it. Finally, he makes a call. “Stephanie. You aren’t going to believe this.”

  “Jesus, finally! I’ve been trying to reach you everywhere.” God damn it, she thinks, who are you to duck my calls? “Where are you?”

  “Home.”

  “The
n I’m on my way over,” she says, seizing this unexpected gift. “I should be there in twenty minutes.”

  Barry continues his loop-de-loop, then suddenly goes into our bedroom and opens an embossed leather book. No BlackBerry for me. It had been my annual ritual to spend the better part of one Sunday in early January entering the stats of my nearest and dearest into a tasteful address book while I deliberated on who should make the cut. This year, I edited away three college friends and two former coworkers, and when four of these people showed at my funeral, I was shamed, deeply.

  Barry reaches Brie at work. “Lucy’s gone off the deep end,” he says. I admire his restraint. “She made a grab for Annabel.”

  “Back up. That’s impossible,” Brie says. “Lucy Divine can be off, but she’s not ready for an asylum.”

  “I assure you, she’s both.”

  Brie’s pause is a true seven-second delay, while she processes that Barry expects her to take action. Of what sort, she doesn’t know, but she recognizes that only face time will do. “Shall I come over?”

  “I would appreciate that.”

  Barry doesn’t dislike Brie. He admires her brains and drive and thinks she’s “drop-dead sexy.” He’s convinced that her current partner preference is temporary, contrived to show the world how progressive she is. But rapport between the two has been tamped down by Barry’s intuitive, accurate awareness that his every fumble and flirtation has been deconstructed by Brie and me for years.

  Thanks to a waiting company car, it takes exactly ten minutes for Brie to drive up Madison and cross the park. In my building, only two apartments’ doors open on every floor. Brie and Stephanie enter the building at the same time, silently share an elevator, and, to their mutual surprise, exit together to walk to the Marx residence. Brie turns to Stephanie. Her first impulse is to extend her hand for a shake, but she checks herself. This stranger in tight jeans, spiky boots, and go-getter perfume could be one of my mommy-pals, Brie decides. The woman might take such a gesture as butch.

  Brie fears being typecast and tends to overcorrect. Today she is wearing a snug white sheath and spectator oxfords as pointy as tweezers. Their gold metal heels could double as ice picks, and her quietly shimmering snake bracelet winds around one arm. She’d be pleased if you’d guess her occupation as a rock star’s publicist, not corporate litigator.

  Brie smiles warmly. Stephanie does not respond. “I’m Brie Lawson, Molly’s friend,” she says nonetheless.

  “Stephanie Joseph,” she answers coolly. “Annabel’s therapist.”

  Liar, liar, pants on fire!

  Barry opens the door. His thinning hair is tangled from running his hands through it and he’s padding around barefoot, although he’s still in his rumpled dress shirt and suit pants. “Stephanie, meet Brie. Brie, Stephanie.” He leads both women to the living room and collapses on the edge of a suede ottoman. “I tried to call that bitch-maniac, but her cell is off.”

  “Same thing for me,” Brie says. “We should get to Claire and Dan.”

  Claire and Dan. Who might they be? Stephanie wonders. She longs to be strategic and essential, but how? “What about calling the police?” she suggests in her gravelly, nasal voice.

  “The police?” Brie says, looking at this therapist dressed for after-hours clubbing. And when did Annabel start seeing a therapist? Barry never mentioned her. “Please, let’s not go there—at least not yet.”

  “I’m thinking restraining order,” Stephanie says. “We’re talking kidnapping, at the very least.” But neither Barry nor Brie gives her the courtesy of a response. “Listen, we could all use a drink. Dr. Marx, is that New Zealand sauvignon blanc you served the other night still in the wine fridge?”

  Barry turns to Stephanie. “Good idea,” he says. “I finished it, but open another.”

  Stephanie walks toward the kitchen. Not only does this therapist know what’s in Barry’s wine refrigerator, she has a damn good body, Brie thinks, and I have to agree as I size up her endless legs and high, rounded butt.

  “How are you thinking you want to approach this?” Brie asks.

  “Hey, lawyer,” he says. “I was hoping you’d have a plan.”

  “Dr. Marx?” Stephanie yells out from the kitchen. “Could you give me a hand in here?”

  “Excuse me,” Barry says, and disappears. After a minute, Brie looks at her watch. Two more minutes pass before they return, Stephanie minus her burgundy gloss, although artfully applied liner remains around her lips.

  “None for me, thanks,” Brie says when Stephanie offers her a glass of wine. “We shouldn’t waste any more time before we call your inlaws,” she says to Barry. “The call’s got to be from you.”

  “I’m dialing them now,” he says, and reaches my father, who has just finished unpacking at a small hotel in the East Sixties. My mother has walked to Bloomingdale’s to scout for Kitty’s hostess gift. Scented candle? Chocolate-covered pretzels? Whatever she buys, my mother feels it will be wrong, and on that point she is right.

  “Barry,” my dad says heartily, answering on the first ring. “A ziesen pesach.”

  “Same to you, Dan, but it’s not such a sweet Passover, I’m afraid.”

  Dan braces himself for a bad joke. A Catholic priest, a Protestant minister, and a Hasidic rabbi walk into a bar. “Don’t tell me. Your mother decided to serve sushi instead of gefilte fish?” he asks genially.

  “Are you sitting down?” Barry says, wanting to handle this right. Like most people on earth, Barry genuinely likes my father.

  My dad doesn’t just sit. He stretches out his bulky body on the bed and looks at the ceiling, his phone pressed to his ear. “Sit down” is never a preamble to anything you want to hear.

  “It’s Lucy,” Barry says, and I see my father exhale with relief.

  “Oh, yeah. I am so sorry she’s not joining us for the holiday, Barry. It was extremely generous of your mother to invite all three of us, and I hope she’s not offended. But you have to understand, Lucy’s not ready—”

  “She tried to snatch Annabel this afternoon, Dan. She did. She showed up at the school and almost got away with it. Scared Annabel to death,” he adds, which I doubt is true, although I certainly haven’t forgiven my sister for her colossal insanity.

  These New Yorkers, bunch of drama queens, my dad decides. “What? There must be some mistake.” The ceiling has a brown-ringed water stain as big as my head, he thinks, yet they charge almost five hundred bucks a night for this airless shithole. My father hates virtually everything about New York—the industrial-strength coffee, the warp-speed tempo, and the noise to match, but especially the rip-offs. “Barry, kids that age make things up. Molly used to have this imaginary friend, Pogo.” He realizes he is shooting off his mouth, too much and too fast.

  “There were witnesses,” Barry says. “I don’t know what was in your daughter’s head,” he says, still kindly, and I feel admiration for my husband’s self-control as he edits himself. “Lucy’s head.” Because once there were two daughters. “I’m wondering, do you?”

  Did he ever? That my father adored us was enough, at least for me. I never expected to be understood.

  My father is sitting up now, and his face has flushed to a fevered red. “No, Barry, I don’t know what the hell my daughter could possibly have been thinking. But, damn, you have to give her a pass. Don’t get me wrong—if she did this … thing, it’s contemptible and, Christ, goddamn twisted, and we will get to the bottom of it.” How will I tell Claire? She will dissolve into the floor. “Obviously, Lucy needs help.” We’ll see to it that she’s on some shrink’s couch so fast her head will fall off, he thinks. “We’ll call her in St. Bart’s and demand—”

  “Whoa. St. Bart’s?”

  “That’s where she’s going.”

  “She was hoping to take Annabel to St. Bart’s?” Barry says. Lucy is an even bigger wack job than he thought.

  Maybe St. Bart’s was the cover, my father realizes. Man, does he feel thick. “Barry, I ha
ven’t even spoken to my daughter”—my only surviving daughter—“since yesterday. I better try to call her now. Please, son.” He is afraid he will cry. “You’ll have to excuse me.” He hangs up without saying goodbye.

  Barry throws his arms up in an exaggerated shrug and looks at the two women facing him.

  “Am I correct to assume that Dan and Claire didn’t know a thing?” Brie asks, pushing her snake bracelet up and down her arm. She and I both catch Stephanie watching her. Correction: it.

  Barry nods. He feels it’s safe to say they may rule out Divine conspiracy theories.

  “I still think the police should be notified,” Stephanie says, not unreasonably. “Maybe she’s going to try this again. Lucy could be-anywhere.”

  Lucy, however, is not anywhere. Her plane is getting ready to touch down at O’Hare, and she is debating whether she should call a twenty-four-hour lunatic hotline. She is sweating remorse, stinking with regret, lonelier than she’s ever been. I’ve really done it this time, Lucy has the good grace to think. Too damn impulsive, didn’t think through my plan. Lost sight of the ball. Now I’m good as busted.

  Barry is weighing Stephanie’s advice when Brie walks to the piano. At my husband’s request, my solo photographs have been packed away—“I can’t handle looking at them”—but several happy-family pictures remain. Brie’s gaze settles on my face. I feel her missing me, remembering me, loving me, wanting to do the right thing on my behalf. She’s the only real friend I could ever trust, Brie thinks. Molly lives inside me now, and I owe her. This crazy thing with Lucy’s going to suck up energy and divert from finding the pig that’s responsible for Molly’s murder. Yes, murder. Had to be a murder.

  Am I in the room with a murderer? The thought rattles inside Brie’s mind. She turns to Barry and speaks slowly and softly, one of her canniest courtroom techniques. “Barry, let’s think about Molly. You know she would never want you rushing to implicate her sister, no matter how unforgivable the offense. She’d want you to talk it through with Lucy—eventually—and then figure things out. Privately. Discreetly.”