by Sally Koslow
Gonzalez finishes her coffee and takes out a lipstick in her signature shade of iridescent tangerine. She applies it without looking in a mirror.
“Don’t go all cliché there, G.G. Does your daughter-in-law hate you?” Hicks went to the wedding last year of Gonzalez’s son, eighteen and a father. The kid was a standup guy when his girlfriend got knocked up.
“Maria worships me.”
“Kitty Katz more or less said the same thing about Molly.”
I didn’t overhear that particular conversation, but I love that we’re on a first-name basis, Hicks and I.
“What about the demented sister?” Gonzalez looks Hicks in the eye.
“Crazy’s not the word for Lucy Divine,” Hicks says, even if Lucy can’t prove where she was the day Molly died. “You’re jerking me around, G.G., my friend.” The notes in Hicks’ file on Lucy run along the course of intense, envious, high-strung, bitter. “But no, I haven’t ruled her out,” though as Hicks is getting to know Lucy, he likes her more and more. She’s no killer, his gut tells him.
“And the bad boy himself?”
“Dr. Strangelove?” Hicks perches on Gonzalez’s desk, tosses his coffee cup into the trash, folds his arms, and leans against the wall.
“I was thinking of the other guy,” Gonzalez says as she mimics his posture. When Hicks isn’t around, I’ve seen her stare long and hard at Luke’s picture. We have that in common.
“I’m leaning more in the doc’s direction myself, but no, he hasn’t dropped off my list.” As predictable as spam, every day Barry hits Hicks with “What’s new, Detective?” But my husband’s tenacity hasn’t convinced Hicks that he’s innocent. He can’t account without a doubt for where he was at the time of my death. Neither can Luke. Then again, no random runners or bikers have emerged from the ether to pin a crime on either one.
“Where do you stand with the harem?”
“Ah, the ladies. So many women, so little time. Always someone new to meet.” Every day, Hicks’ trail leads him to yet another current or former patient who he suspects might provide a clue.
“The friend and her Latin babe?”
Ping. Brie’s mention turns Hicks to mush. His stern NYPD shell is screeching, Unprofessional, but every other constituency within his body is doing a tap dance to celebrate last Saturday. Brie is going to be his little secret. He doesn’t want this newly sowed romance—dare he call it that—trampled by the verbal assaults of his dear but cynical friend G.G., although in the past they’ve shared details of romantic entanglements. There’s been no reason for such discussion, however, in longer than Hicks would care to recall. Still, he’s not ready to introduce and beat to death the baffling case of Sabrina Lawson, Esq., and Detective Hiawatha Hicks.
“The friend has been duly interrogated, I assure you. She can account for being in São Paulo the night of the event, and Molly Marx didn’t seem to matter much to Ms. Vega one way or another. I can’t see her getting herself in a lather over her.”
“You don’t know Latin women very well, do you, Hi?”
“No,” he says. “I don’t. I don’t claim to know any kind of women very well, G.G.” Molly, especially. Hicks looks at the bulletin board. Maybe I should get myself some darts and wherever one hits, that’s who did it, he thinks.
Thirty-nine
A SMALL WORLD, AFTER ALL
’ll take it.” I didn’t need the dress, but I wanted it—and not just because it made my hips look narrow. I coveted this wisp of wine-red velvet because it was new, which was the way I wanted Barry to see me.
“Will you be taking the package with you?” the waif at the cash register asked as she twirled a coil of wiry copper hair sprung from her bun.
It hadn’t occurred to me to have the dress delivered, but the weather forecast was for rain and, what the hell, I was feeling what—for me—amounted to devil-may-care. “You know what?” I said. “Please send it.” I gave the girl my credit card, feeling virtuous that the price was 40 percent off. Was this because Barneys’ truly haute shoppers had caucused and agreed to snub this garment? No matter. I could picture the spaghetti straps showing off my shoulders and the skirt swirling around my knees as Barry and I took the floor to swing-dance. The other night, after we tucked Annabel into bed, we’d actually popped in a CD and practiced in the kitchen.
We’d been invited to a Valentine’s Day party. For the last few years, I’d felt almost like Lucy, inclined to boycott the love-drug holiday even in her classroom, to the relief of most four-year-old boys and the dismay of all the girls, who generally threatened to stage their own St. Valentine’s Day Massacre when they learned of this outrage. At the very least, I never knew what kind of cards to buy Barry and thus avoided the primary categories—sex addict and snooky-wookums—in favor of those in the neighborhood of funny (I’m not interested in a normal relationship. I like ours better). Three cards were tucked away, waiting for my flourishy inscription, along with a pair of silk boxer briefs.
Last February 14 had presented the additional challenge of the Luke factor. But this year I didn’t want to think about him, the fondue we’d fed each other at Artisanal, my favorite next-best-to-Paris bistro, or his persistent calls—at least once a week—which I’d been dodging. Every time Luke’s face flashed in my brain I tried to activate my denial button. Once in a while, it functioned, blinking Luke who? If I visualized him as an alien life force infecting my heart and soul, I could banish his image and voice for hours at a time. I was determined to make room for Barry and Barry alone, whom I reminded myself to think of as “my husband.”
I floated out of the store. So did my umbrella, which in a burst of independence reversed and landed in the gutter. I wasn’t going to let my favorable mood be washed away by this annoyance or the fact that I appeared to be invisible to every cruising cab. I walked to the bus shelter. When I opened my wallet I discovered I was a quarter short of exact change. With birthday party manners, I begged twenty-five cents from a senior citizen, boarded the bus, and held tightly to the overhead bar as the vehicle belched up Madison Avenue. On the corner of Seventy-ninth Street I waited patiently for a second bus to carry me through the park. On Amsterdam Avenue, I got out, stepped directly into water, and soaked my suede flats.
“I hate when that happens,” said a stranger who, in exiting the bus, had leaped over the puddle with a leggy brisé. I took in the raincoat, matching hat, and knee-high boots—one Chanel too many, even if the getup was bona fide. The woman was about my age, maybe younger, the type who appeared to have acquired a water-repellent finish.
“No biggie,” I said as dirty slush oozed into my tights. I was determined not to let something this inconsequential ruin my afternoon, not after this morning.
Earlier that day, Barry and I had finished our seventh fifty-minute hour of Dr. Stafford’s psychic sorcery. Through the doctor’s judicious questioning, fortified by the odd epiphany half-remembered dreams, and my unmitigated optimism, I’d become positive that this counseling was steering us toward closeness or even—should I let myself think the word?—intimacy. And the day before, while putting away Barry’s shirts, I came across legitimate evidence in the form of a package from Kitty’s favorite jeweler. I carefully untied the red silk ribbon to snoop, and was rewarded by the wink of a multifaceted pale pink stone heart pendant glittering within a setting of pavé stones the color of plum jelly. It wasn’t what I might have chosen for myself—way more Kitty than Molly—but when I carefully lifted the necklace out of the velvet box, it nestled perfectly in the hollow of my neck. I stared at my reflection and felt the thump of my achy-breaky heart.
My husband was making amends, trying to give us another running start toward happiness. I wouldn’t let myself think otherwise. I seriously doubted that it was a gift for Kitty, and not even Barry Marx could be brazen enough to buy a tender—okay, rather gaudy but still notably sweet—gift for another woman and store it in our very own bedroom, a mere six feet from our marriage bed. This meant the things he�
��d been saying in Dr. Stafford’s office must be true. As I sloshed along, thinking about the next weekend’s Valentine’s Day party, my actual heart beat wildly, a sensation I hadn’t felt toward Barry since, well, ever.
Halfway down the block I noticed Madame Chanel keeping pace with me, maybe six feet to my right. “Want to get under here?” she said to me, nodding toward her umbrella, apparently escaped from a golf course. “There’s plenty of room.”
My feet were cold, slipping inside my ruined shoes, and the rain was landing on my head. “Yes!” I said, and scurried toward my savior, thinking this was exactly the sort of fortuitous, munificent gesture I should attempt to write up, speckled with wit, and send to the “Metropolitan Diary” column of the New York Times. “Thanks. I’m heading downtown a few blocks to register my daughter for swimming lessons.”
Annabel refused to put so much as a toe in the water, and Barry and I had decided that the situation had to be faced. Still, even if it was true, why do I always blather?
“That’s where I’m headed, too,” the woman said. Her voice was slightly nasal, not up to Chanel standard.
“No kidding?”
“Really,” the woman said. “Apparently, my son’s amphibious.”
“How old is he?”
“Three and a half.”
“My daughter is about that age. She’s Annabel. And I’m Molly, by the way.”
She turned toward me. “Nice to meet you, Molly.” She gave me a lingering, sideways smile and pronounced my utilitarian name slowly, as if she’d never heard it before. I waited for her to volunteer her name and perhaps her son’s, but she offered nothing. I tried to take a discreet but closer peek at this stranger, but the rain and the difference in our heights—she was tall—made that difficult. Even under the umbrella and in the downpour, however, her teeth were hard to miss. Were they capped or was she just overzealous with a bleaching kit?
The two of us continued to walk silently for several blocks until we reached our destination and stopped under its awning. Coco Chanel snapped shut her umbrella and easily pushed open the heavy glass door for both of us. We entered the building’s lobby, which was thick with mothers, nannies, strollers, and toddlers. The smell of damp wool and chaos was in the air.
“Mrs. Marx?” someone shouted as an elevator discharged an additional supply of noisy women and children.
I turned in the crush. “Narcissa?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, waddling toward me. “You here for the swimming? I just signed up Ella. Better hurry—it’s nearly full up.”
“Rats,” I said, and thought a stronger word. Once again, had every other mother mastered this drill and arrived hours ago? Why had I wasted time shopping or not sent Delfina to take care of this chore? Because I always underestimated the ballsy competition of New York moms and because I wanted that dress and because Delfina was back at the apartment, supervising Annabel and, for that matter, Ella, which was why Narcissa was here. “Well, good to see you, Narcissa. I’ll give it a go.” At least if Ella was in the swim class, it would be easier to sell Annabel on the idea that practicing the dead man’s float in pee-warmed water was something she should look forward to doing every Wednesday at three.
The next elevator was too full to enter. And the one after that. I finally mashed myself into the fourth car that came along, and when the door opened on the fifth floor, I saw that my umbrella-toting buddy was there, too, and had already reached the front of the line, with only one woman ahead of her. She must have run up the stairs. Note to self, I thought. Next time, haul ass.
“I saved you a spot,” Coco shouted to me, causing the other mothers and nannies to glare.
“Hey, no way,” one of them said. “I got here first. Fair’s fair.”
The complainer was right. “Thanks, anyway,” I said. I walked to the back of the small room and started to search in my bag for the Home section of the Times when I heard my phone blare “When the Saints Go Marching In.” By the time I found the phone—in my coat pocket, under the crumpled Barneys receipt—I’d missed the call. Luke. His third that day, not that I’d answered any of them.
I put away the phone and opened my newspaper. I found it hard to concentrate. Luke was not just back in my head, whispering, taunting, and warmly blowing into my ear—he was coursing through my body like Wi-Fi.
The phone rang again. Once again I ignored his ring. I’ve known saints, I thought, and you, my friend, are no saint. The phone sounded again.
“If you’re not going to take your calls, at least turn off your damn phone,” the woman ahead of me snarled, attracting the attention of everyone in the small room.
Why hadn’t I grabbed that bitch’s place in line when I had the chance? “I’m sorry if I’m bothering you,” I replied, “but I have to keep my phone on.” Delfina might call, or Barry.
“You know, you’re not only annoying, you’re rude,” Squawk Box hissed.
The phone rang again. The room grew silent as the woman’s stare dared me to answer it. The phone blared and the saints marched. I felt trapped and intimidated. “Hello,” I said. “No, I really can’t talk now.” Luke’s voice was casting its usual spell. “I’m not kidding, I can’t …” He went on for a bit, his rhetoric less pleading than calmly, appealingly persuasive. “I disagree—that’s a terrible idea.” Damn, he was persistent.
I felt a force push me toward him, gentle, invisible like a breeze. “Okay, okay, You should have been a lawyer. Okay, we’ll meet … we’ll talk. But not today, because …” I looked outside. The rain had suddenly stopped. The sun had come out. “Because I’m going … biking.” As I clicked off, my resolve began to crumble.
I sensed that every eye and ear in the room had been trained on me and my call. They were Argentina, I was Evita. I tried to set my cell to vibrate, but the saints blared again. I did my best to lower my head and whisper. “Of course I have feelings for you.” As if that were ever the real problem.
“Molly, I love you,” Luke said, to me and the whole room. Apparently I’d hit the mechanism for speakerphone.
“I’m going biking now,” I said. “We’ll work this out some other time.” I couldn’t listen. “I’m getting off now.” I snapped the lid of my phone shut and shoved it in my pocket, trying to avoid glances and snickers.
Fortunately, the registrar motioned me to step forward. The woman’s fingers tap-danced on her computer keyboard. There would be room for Annabel, the last slot. Keep breathing, I told myself. It’s still a good day.
As I began to complete the form, the woman in the Chanel raincoat, who I noticed had been standing off to the side, swished past me without saying so much as goodbye. She certainly runs hot and cold, I thought just as this woman also got a call.
“Barry,” I was almost positive I heard her say. Her volume wasn’t pianissimo, and unless I was being utterly paranoid, I had the feeling that she wanted to be overheard. “Well, that’s very interesting, but I can top that. You didn’t tell me your wife was attractive. Anyway, news flash. You were right. She is definitely seeing someone.”
I looked up. The woman was gone.
Forty
EVERYBODY MUST GET STONED
un this by me again—why do we need an unveiling?” Barry and Kitty are finishing their second cup of triple-filtered coffee one Sunday. My husband sees himself reflected in the new double-wide, glass-doored stainless-steel refrigerator and thinks what I think: what was wrong with the kitchen his mother put in nine years ago—Shaker cabinetry, granite countertops, and a fridge that kept food as cold as required? When you have enough money, however, as well as an architect on speed dial, you can amuse yourself by selecting warming drawers and six-burner professional ranges and still eat out five nights a week.
For someone who spends more time each year in a one-legged king pigeon pose than in prayer, my mother-in-law is, nonetheless, the Wikipedia of Judaic heritage. “That’s what’s done,” she says. “The ceremony has to take place before the one-year anniversa
ry of a death.”
“Or else?” Barry says.
“Tradition,” Kitty says. She discards the fleeting notion of exhibiting self-control. “Besides, let’s say you and Stephanie get engaged. You’d want the unveiling to be out of the way, wouldn’t you?”
Barry chokes on a thick slab of Bermuda onion, which crowns his poppy-seed bagel.
“I’m talking hypothetically of course,” Kitty says. “Although that girl’s just what you need.”
What qualifications is my mother-in-law referring to? A big mouth? I’m going with the big ambition. Kitty sees women as the hard drive behind male success. While I believe she’s of the opinion that any daughter-in-law is largely just a biological requirement necessary to produce grandchildren, her pragmatic half dictates that as long as a male offspring has to marry, he’d best trade up to someone a lot like her.
“You’re way ahead of yourself,” Barry says after he stops coughing.
“Am I?” Kitty turns her back to refill her black-and-white-striped porcelain mugs—hers is lined in shocking pink, his in pistachio green—and predicts an engagement before the summer. Maybe a destination wedding. She’s always wanted to see the Seychelles. Dubai, Bhutan, and Bali are also on Kitty’s wish list, but certainly Stephanie will have her own ideas. One thing Kitty knows is that there’s nothing subtle about a thirty-four-year-old woman who invited her to lunch at Saks and then suggested a stroll to her uncle’s teensy-weensy jewelry store on Forty-seventh Street, where she casually pointed out a 1920s Art Deco diamond solitaire almost as big as the shop. Asscher cut, significant baguettes. Another mother might have been appalled, but Kitty admires Stephanie’s self-assurance. She believes a woman needs focus as much as state-of-the-art bedroom expertise. “Leave the unveiling to me,” she says to Barry. “Order the stone.”
Barry did—which is why Rabbi S.S. is warming up his vocal cords to once again be in service to my family tomorrow, why I can practically smell the cinnamon-raisin babkas, yeasty and plump, rising in their silvery loaf pans, and why a marble monument waits under wraps at Serenity Haven. It’s pinkish gray, not unlike Kitty’s recently installed tinted concrete countertops.