Four of a Kind

by Valerie Frankel

  Sex was not the answer to her problems. Sexy daydreams about Finn were a pleasant distraction from the potential reality of divorce, poverty, and guilt. But the fantasies kept coming regardless, with furious intensity.

  “I take it the wardrobe makeover didn’t work?” said Bess, who then coughed and sniffled with gooey gusto. Even with a red nose, the blond host looked lovely in a cashmere sweater and black velour track pants.

  Alicia shook her head. “Tim watched me give birth,” she said, peeking at a pair of tens in the pocket. “Seeing me in a skirt did not have a dramatic effect.”

  Carla said, “I’m going to have to insist on gloves, Bess. I can almost see the germs crawling off your hands and all over the cards. I’ve got twenty people to cook for this weekend, and if I get sick …”

  “If you get sick, your husband can do the work,” said Robin. “It’s his family, right? You’ve got just your mother.”

  Carla warned, “Don’t, Robin.”

  “Don’t remind you that Claude makes you do everything and then complains about it?”

  Carla shook her head pityingly at Robin. “Always seeing the negative.”

  “Full house,” said Robin. “I mean my cards, not my holiday plans.”

  Robin gathered her winnings, and stacked the chips before shuffling and dealing the cards. Alicia thought the redhead was being intentionally inflammatory. Robin was definitely testier than usual. For all of Alicia’s family troubles, at least she had holiday plans. She wondered if she should invite Robin and her daughter, Stephanie, to her mom’s place in New Jersey for Thanksgiving.

  Bess must have been thinking the same thing. “Robin, I meant to ask if you and Stephanie would like to come here for Thanksgiving dinner. It’s just Borden and me, and the kids. His parents from San Francisco. Maybe my mother if she’s in town, which I hope she isn’t. And possibly my brother Fred and his family.” And then Bess sneezed so hard, she blew her pocket cards across the table. Useless rags, Alicia noted.

  “That’s it,” said Carla. “You’re too sick to play. You should’ve canceled.”

  Bess said, “We’ve had the date for weeks. And it was all set up with Amy babysitting, and the kids were all excited to have movie night together …”

  This was the first time they’d agreed to bringing all the kids over. Bess’s house was big enough, for one thing. Carla’s sons were thrilled because they were allowed to watch TV and eat junk at other people’s houses. Robin’s Stephanie loved to hang out with the boys. Bess’s Amy got paid by each mother for her babysitting services (outrageous extortion, Alicia thought). Joe wasn’t so keen on enforced socializing, but Alicia wanted him nearby, and thought the extra time with the other kids would ease his shyness.

  “Flush,” said Robin, showing her cards, since Bess’s were already on the table. “I win. Again.” To Bess, Robin added, “You assume I’ll be crying in my cocktail on Thanksgiving? Do I look like a pity case to you?”

  Bess, who was in mid-noseblow, looked over her tissue at Robin in shock. “I’m so sorry, Robin! I invited you because I’d love your company. The kids would love having Stephanie. I never meant to insult you!”

  “I was going to invite you to my mom’s in New Jersey,” said Alicia to take the heat off of sick Bess. “Is that a tempting offer or what?”

  Carla said, “I thought about inviting you, too, Robin. But you’d be surrounded by a lot of black people who distrust Jews.”

  “Hey! I voted for Barack,” said Robin.

  “I voted for Mike Bloomberg,” said Carla. “That doesn’t make me Jewish.”

  “You can say that again,” said Robin, laughing. “I appreciate all the invites. And I respectfully decline. Stephanie and I will be passing the holiday at the Atlantis resort on Paradise Island, in a luxury suite with a minibar and dozens of tiny little bottles. The last thing I’d want on Thanksgiving would be to insert myself in other people’s obnoxious family dramas.”

  Alicia said, “Sounds like you should be inviting us to come with you.”

  Bess said, “Robin, honestly, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “I’m not offended,” said Robin.

  She sure looked offended. Alicia wouldn’t have been surprised if Robin’s red hair burst into flames.

  Bess blew her nose again, her eyes clogging now, too. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? Sorry for trying to be nice. Sorry for not canceling. Sorry for sneezing on the cards. Sorry for anything I’ve done or ever will do.” And then, incredibly, Bess started to cry.

  Carla said, “This is what happens when you don’t let your body be sick.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. If I knew you were going to cry, I would have said yes to Thanksgiving with your in-laws,” said Robin.

  “I’m fine,” said Bess, recovering. “I don’t get what’s the matter with me. I never cry.”

  “Evidence to the contrary,” said Robin.

  “Mom?” came a weak voice from the top of the stairs.

  Joe. Alicia instinctively sprang to her feet. “Honey? Are you okay?”

  She walked up the stairs from the basement to find her son at the top, holding on to the railing, his face streaked with tears. He backed into the parlor room, and Alicia saw his pants were soaked. Her stomach dropped. “Did you have an accident?” she asked.

  Joe started crying, hard. He was having difficulty breathing. “No!” he got out. “Charlie squirted me.”

  “Squirted?”

  “He has a Super Soaker. He was squirting everyone. But he did it at me the most. He’s a total jerk! Someone should lock him up. I want to get out of here.”

  “Calm down,” she said, alarmed at her son’s anger and panic, internalizing his feelings as they crept into her skin and bones.

  “Get me out of here! I hate them! We have to leave now!” Joe shrieked, his voice cracking and desperate.

  The commotion drew the other mothers up the stairs and into the parlor. One look at Joe and Bess said, “What did Charlie do?”

  Clutching her like a toddler, Joe cleaved to Alicia’s side, grasping at her hips, on the verge of a total meltdown.

  Her head spinning with outrage on Joe’s behalf, remembered fear from when she was picked on by playground aggressors, embarrassment that her son was a target, shame that she was embarrassed. Rage at her friend’s son. A whirlwind of bad feelings.

  Bess was already shouting up the stairs for Charlie, a hyperactive mischievous instigator who, at that moment, Alicia would’ve loved to see boiled in oil.

  Charlie trudged down the stairs, followed by Robin’s Stephanie and Carla’s Zeke. The three of them appeared to be in cahoots, smiling nervously. All the other mothers launched into demands for explanations, what did they do to Joe, did they have any idea the trouble they were in, etc. Meanwhile, Alicia and Joe clung to each other, knowing full well that the other mothers’ yelling would only make the other kids pick on Joe with increased vigor at school.

  Bess said, “Where is Amy? Amy! Get down here!”

  Yes, thought Alicia. Where is the babysitter I’m paying ten dollars an hour?

  Charlie said, “She’s in her room, on the computer.”

  At the news, Bess trudged up the stairs, presumably to bust her daughter. Spotlight off him, Charlie retreated to his lair. Stephanie and Zeke started to follow him. That brought on a fresh torrent of “Where do you think you’re going?” and “Hold it right there,” from Robin and Carla.

  Alicia felt Joe shaking, literally trembling with fear, shame, dread. The physical manifestation of his panic passed through Alicia in waves. She thought she might throw up. She had to get him—and herself—out of there.

  “Tell Bess thanks and I’ll call her,” said Alicia, moving toward the front door.

  Robin leaned down, got in Joe’s face, and said, “Stephanie is very sorry for whatever she did.”

  It was the wrong thing to do, wrong thing to say. Carla knew enough to stand back and be quiet. Alicia nodded at Robin and hurried Joe into his coat
and out the door.

  Alicia was able to hail a cab on Henry Street. She pushed Joe into the taxi and buckled him in. His panic seemed to abate. He was still now, except for intermittent posthysterical rattling breaths. After the panic in the parlor, his sudden stillness seemed sinister and strange.

  Alicia had been a socially awkward kid. She’d been a quiet loner. But she didn’t remember having episodes like this. For years, she’d assumed Joe had inherited her shyness and would learn to adjust. But now she wasn’t so sure that was it. Alicia closed her eyes and let her worst fear come to the surface.

  It was possible that something was wrong with her son.

  6

  Robin

  “That bitch,” muttered Robin to herself while reading her email at the kitchen table after putting Stephanie to bed.

  Alicia had written the subject line: “Don’t be mad.” In the email, she’d included several links and a list of relevant tidbits. Never in a million years would Robin have asked Alicia to compile the information. Alicia knew as much, hence the subject line. And yet, that hadn’t stopped the pocket-sized brunette from doing, as she wrote, “some productive Googling about Mr. Harvey Wilson of Chelsea.” Harvey Wilson, Robin’s one-night stand, the biological father of her daughter, Stephanie.

  Reaching for the phone, Robin dialed Alicia’s landline.

  Tim, the husband, answered. “It’s Robin. Is Alicia there?”

  He said, “She has a work thing. You could try her cell, but I tried it an hour ago and it was turned off. It’s been off all evening.”

  “Thanks,” she grunted and hung up, leaving Tim, no doubt, holding a dead phone and marveling at the rudeness of his wife’s friend. Next, she dialed Carla.

  “This is a violation of my privacy!” squawked Robin into the phone.

  “Before you start complaining about Alicia, you should know that I encouraged her to do it,” said Carla.

  Robin said, “What. The. Hell, Carla. I count on you to be the repressed one, the one who doesn’t believe in prying into others’ personal lives.”

  Carla said, “Whether you like it or not, you have to make contact with this man. Fifty percent of his genes are in your daughter. For her sake, you need Harvey Wilson’s family medical history. God forbid Stephanie is at high risk for an inherited but preventable disease.”

  “Like obesity?” asked Robin, truly and deeply not in the mood to discuss inherited but preventable disease at ten o’clock on a Wednesday night. Maybe with a lit cigarette in one hand and a stiff drink in the other. Speaking of which … Robin fished in her purse for her American Spirits Organics. She took a butt out of the pack, opened the kitchen window, and lit up.

  “Are you smoking?” asked Carla.

  “Was Bess in on your little detective project, too?” Half of Robin’s body was leaning out the window, blowing the smoke into the chilly December night.

  “You were the big winner at the last committee meeting, and that meant the spotlight of our benevolent intervention fell on you,” said Carla. “So while you were on the beach at Paradise Island …”

  “Rained the whole time, meanwhile.”

  “… the three of us decided to do your homework for you,” said Carla. “Alicia volunteered to deliver the news, which makes her braver than me.”

  “I’m supposed to just call up this guy, this complete stranger, and tell him that he fathered a child with the three hundred and forty pound woman he screwed one night a million years ago?”

  Robin forcibly exhaled a heavy lungful of smoke. It’d been all too easy to ignore the Harvey Wilson situation for a decade. She’d been busy as a new mother. The lifestyle changes of bariatric surgery had been enormous. She’d had a job, the apartment to contend with. Then the distraction of her online dating career. Robin was willing to concede, however, that she wasn’t as distracted lately. Nearly ten, Stephanie wasn’t such a handful. Robin’s weight had been stable for years, and she’d adjusted to her new way of eating. She’d stopped dating since the last Match.com disaster left a sour taste in her mouth. Post-election, her Zogby obligations weren’t as urgent.

  Until now, as in, this year, this month, this day, Robin simply hadn’t been able or willing to contemplate the huge question mark of Harvey Wilson. Maybe that was why she’d opened up to the other moms at the committee meeting about him. She had mental space in her mind. Her subconscious had rushed to fill the vacuum with ghosts from the past, prominently, Harvey Wilson.

  “What are you doing?” asked a voice from the kitchen threshold.

  Robin’s blood flow screeched to a halt. Into the phone, she said, “Gotta go,” and clicked the off button.

  “Are you … smoking?” asked Stephanie behind her.

  Quickly, Robin crushed out her cigarette on the outer sill, and threw the butt out of the window, shamefully aware that it would land on or close to her building’s stoop.

  “No!” said Robin, pulling her body into the room and facing her daughter. “I just burned some toast and opened the window to air the room out.”

  “What toast?” asked Stephanie. The girl crossed her arms over her chest.

  “It’s gone,” said Robin, her brain spinning.

  “Where?” asked the girl, walking toward the kitchen garbage.

  “I threw it out the window for the birds.”

  “The birds will eat burnt toast?” asked Stephanie.

  “I didn’t want it to stink up the room.”

  “Too late.”

  Trying to take control of the conversation, Robin demanded, “Why aren’t you in bed?”

  “I heard you yelling,” said Stephanie, moseying toward Robin at the window. To look for the defenestrated toast?

  Robin slammed the window shut. “It’s cold in here,” she said, shivering exaggeratedly.

  The girl nodded ambiguously at Robin, still suspicious. The expression on her daughter’s face was too reminiscent of Robin’s mother’s disapproving scowl. Robin felt the same offense (“how dare she not trust me?”) all the while smugly aware that she’d been guilty of everything her mother—and daughter—had accused her of, and more.

  “Kiss me,” said Stephanie, reaching for her mother.

  Robin felt the rip in her heart muscle. This was a Catch-22 (Caught-22?). If she kissed Stephanie, the girl would smell her cigarette breath and know Robin had lied (bad). If Robin refused to kiss her daughter, Stephanie’s feelings would be hurt and/or the girl would assume Robin refused to kiss her so she wouldn’t smell the smoke (worse).

  When did kids get so freaking sneaky?

  Was ten the new forty?

  “Just go to bed,” said Robin, turning Stephanie around, and pushing her out of the kitchen and down the hallway toward her bedroom. Along the way, Robin excused herself into the bathroom, and rinsed with mouthwash. When she went into Stephanie’s room, the girl held out her arms for a hug and kiss.

  Now Robin could give it. She hugged her daughter tight, and kissed her a dozen times all over the girl’s face.

  “Your hair smells like smoke,” said Stephanie.

  “Give it a rest,” admonished Robin.

  “Swear to me you don’t smoke. Cigarettes kill people. You should see the pictures of black lungs they showed us at school.”

  “I swear,” said Robin.

  “What were you saying when I came into the kitchen?” asked the girl, snuggling into her pillow.

  “That I burned the toast.”

  “On the phone,” said Stephanie. “About one night a million years ago.”

  “Nothing,” said Robin. “Grown-up stuff.”

  One more kiss good night. Then Robin left Stephanie’s room, and returned to the kitchen. She put a slice of bread in the toaster and turned it up to Dark.

  Ten minutes after that, Robin threw a square of charred toast out the kitchen window, just in case Stephanie looked for it in the morning.

  Harvey Wilson was currently unmarried. He was divorced, no kids. These simple facts pleased Robin a
s she examined the wealth of information Alicia and Carla had unearthed about her impregnator. She was quite impressed by the Googling, actually. Starting with his name, approximate age, and address, her friends acquired Harvey’s phone number. With these few vitals, information about him was as accessible as a hot dog stand. Employment history, announcements (wedding), legal filings (divorce), credit history—and, most interestingly, a year’s worth of postings at www.urbanoffroad.com, his blog. Apparently, there was a thriving subculture of New Yorkers who rode bicycles obsessively and exclusively. Harvey was an aficionado of dirt biking on the mean streets. The blog had advertisers, too, for bike shops and gear. According to Alicia’s Web research, urbanoffroad.com got 10,000 unique hits per day. Surely, a few of those followers weren’t bike messengers.

  Along with maps, bulletin boards, general biking enthusiast info, and events, Harvey posted photos of himself and his friends on their bikes, in group shots or solo portraits, during the day and at night, rain, shine, fog, in helmets and reflective jackets and heavy chains around their waists. Regardless of the weather conditions, the people in the photos all looked happy and healthy. The profile picture—Harvey in black bike pants (package: impossible to judge) and a red jacket—looked like the same man Robin remembered. He hadn’t aged much.

  Despite the blog’s deadly content (Robin wasn’t much of an athlete, and had sworn off bikes for life as an eighty-five-pound first-grader), she made a new habit of reading his archives after putting Stephanie to bed. Occasionally, Harvey veered off track, and wrote a few paragraphs about his personal life, including some broad-stroke comments about a short marriage. Some women’s names popped up here and there. Girlfriends? Friends? The names often changed. In his postdivorce dating life, Harvey had been riding the same grueling cycle of anticipation and disappointment that Robin had endured.