by Wendy Wax
“Shut up.”
“Of course, I want you to know that I’m going to sit down with Luke immediately about the Selena Moore account. And if I get it, I expect a full partnership.”
He put a finger to her lips. “Shelley,” he said softly. “Be quiet.”
“But—”
“I’ve been trying to tell you that we’re not alone.”
There was a complete and absolute silence as the enormity of what he’d just said and what she’d just blurted out sank in. And then someone cleared a throat in the back corner of the room.
“Oh, my God.” Shelley squeezed her eyes shut and leaned hard to her left. When she thought she’d cleared the screen of Ross’s body, she opened them. One at a time.
And then most definitely wished that she hadn’t.
chapter 27
Shelley watched in horror as her father rose from what used to be his leather couch in the seating alcove and began to walk toward them.
With every step another emotion appeared on his face, and none of them were emotions she wanted to see. Shame warred with embarrassment, then gave way to dismay. Resignation followed. They blended with the shock to form a road map of a father’s disappointment.
It was the resignation that frightened her the most.
He came to a halt in front of them, and if she hadn’t known better, she would have thought that Ross was trying to shield her. He turned and drew slightly in front of her so that they faced her father almost side by side.
“Now, Harvey.” Ross’s tone was reasonable, almost placating.
“No,” Harvey Schwartz said, “no explanations, no excuses.”
She wanted to shout, “It’s not what it sounds like,” but of course it was. She’d been trying so hard to clarify everything, there could be no doubt what had taken place between her and Ross.
“I’ve been trying to protect her for as long as I can remember,” her father said. He spoke to Ross as if she weren’t even there. “She doesn’t have to think before she acts, because there are never any consequences. She just leaps without a net.”
“Daddy, I—”
“No.” He turned and looked at her and his face was horrible to see. Her heart hurt inside her chest. She could feel each individual beat reverberating in there, like a gong struck by a mallet. How ironic it would be if she was the one who succumbed to a heart attack. Right now, it felt entirely possible.
Or maybe she could just die of humiliation and be done with it.
“I think we should all just take the day and cool down,” Ross said. “Maybe tomorrow—”
Harvey Schwartz shook his head. “No.”
Everything was so off. Her father was supposed to cluck his tongue over her, pat her on the head, and tell her to try harder next time, while Ross jeered and pointed a finger. But her father had turned into an implacable stranger, and Ross looked . . . regretful?
“I thought things had changed. I’d heard you were working hard, producing results,” her father said.
She didn’t ask him where he’d heard these things. “But I am, Daddy,” she said. “I’ve got all the accounts I was given back on track, and I’ve been invited to pitch the Selena Moore Boutiques account. We can become their agency of record.”
“But you’re still playing at this, Shelley,” her father said, “still letting men and . . . whatever else comes up . . . get in the way of your professional judgment.”
OK, she was not going to have a conversation with her father about sex. They were all already suffering from way too much information. Still, the injustice of the double standard rankled.
“So this is my error in judgment? Despite all the things I’ve accomplished, you’re going to focus on my sleeping with Ross? What about him? What about his sleeping with me?” Even in her own mind she sounded like a child trying to place the blame elsewhere.
She pointed to Ross even as she took a step away, needing to put distance between them. “I didn’t think Jews bought into the whole Immaculate Conception thing.”
Ross actually laughed.
She shot him a look. “You! You’re lucky I’m not suing for sexual harassment. And you know what else? I take back all the things I said earlier. Stellar? Ha! I spit on stellar!”
Ross stopped smiling. Harvey Schwartz cleared his throat again. And everything plunged the rest of the way down the hill.
“I came in this morning to discuss the offer from Miller Advertising,” her father said, looking at her.
“Offer?” The hair on the back of her neck popped up. Between the hurt and anger and embarrassment, it was hard to imagine summoning another emotion, but fear managed to rear its ugly head.
“They want to buy us out and merge the two agencies,” Ross clarified.
She was having a hard time catching her breath. Each of their comments struck her like an unexpected body blow and left her gasping for air.
“They approached Ross six weeks ago. I’d be paid off. Ross would stay on as president. Others,” her father looked at her, “would be out.”
Others meaning her. They’d been talking about selling for six weeks and this was the first time they’d bothered to mention it to her.
“Your father’s been resisting,” Ross explained. “He wasn’t willing to agree to some of the terms I was. He wanted to see you taken care of.”
So she’d been the holdup. Her father had tried to protect her once again.
Looking at her father made her want to cry, so she looked at Ross instead. Then the full realization hit her. She’d been jumping through hoops to try to prove herself to Ross Morgan while he’d been lobbying to sell the agency, to an agency he knew she wouldn’t be a part of.
Ross could afford to pretend regret; he would get a big fat payout and be named top dog. She would be out.
Because she’d slept with him and spoken out of turn. Because she didn’t know how to keep her mouth shut at the appropriate time.
“You’ve just helped me make my decision,” her father said. “Ross, contact Chase Miller today and tell him to have the papers drawn up.”
She looked at him. “That’s it? Have the papers drawn up? Shelley slept with the wrong person, so she can’t possibly be serious about her work? I guess I’ll go ahead and sell out?”
She looked at her father again, trying to understand. “No matter what I do, you still see me as a child, treat me as a child. You’ll never see me any other way.”
Her father sighed and set his shoulders. She absolutely could not bear the look of disappointment on his face. “We’ll talk about this another time, when we’ve both calmed down.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned and walked slowly out the door.
Stunned, Shelley watched him go. Then she turned to look at the man beside her; the one she’d resented and fought with and been unable to resist. The one who’d wished her gone and whose dreams had all just now come true.
“Well,” she said as her anger and anguish built, “this must feel like Christmas and Easter rolled up into one.” Too agitated to stay in one place, she began to pace. “It’s not every day you get to watch someone destroy herself quite so completely.” Her stomach was churning so violently she was afraid she was going to be sick. “I waved my sex life in my father’s face. And then I handed you everything you wanted on a silver platter! Me! I gave it to you!” She absolutely could not believe it.
Incensed, she rounded on him, prepared to tell him off some more. But he beat her to it.
“I hate to break it to you, Shelley, but every move I’ve made has not been about you.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Sometimes things don’t work out the way we plan, or even the way we want them to.”
He came over and bent his face to hers. His eyes were full of emotion she didn’t understand.
“And don’t you dare try to tell yourself that our sleeping together was some ploy to get rid of you. This thing, whatever it is between us, has been brewing since we laid eyes on each other. I’m not wild about it
and I sure as hell wished it would go away, but it won’t. I should never have touched you. Never.”
He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it. “But I couldn’t resist. And look what’s happened.”
He sounded almost as unhappy about it as she felt. “You know, if you had acted like a grown-up for once, instead of a spoiled little girl, your father wouldn’t have had our mistake stuffed in his face. A grown-up might have resisted storming in here unannounced. Or taken a moment to make sure we were alone before launching into such intimate detail.” He shook his head again and snorted in disgust. “Just a little bit of self-restraint, and we wouldn’t be standing here having this conversation.”
His last words were whispered, but they rang in her ears as if they’d been shouted. He might as well have capitalized every one of them. “I have a final news flash for you: Your father treats you like a child because you insist on acting like one.”
He speared her with his blue eyes so that she couldn’t look away. “I was never a serious threat to you, Shelley. The only real threat you’ve been facing is yourself.”
She stared into his eyes, completely aghast, and knew that at this moment she hated him more than she had ever hated anyone.
Most of all, she hated that he was right. She’d never forgive him for that.
Mandy Mifkin was . . . miffed. Someone who didn’t know her might not have noticed, but Judy could tell just how ticked off the bar mitzvah coordinator was. She held her small overexercised body very still; there was no fluttering of the hands, no overt physical indication. But if this had been a cartoon, lightning bolts would be shooting out of her eyes.
They were seated at the Bagel Nosh, a small delicatessen not far from Judy’s neighborhood, where the waitstaff did a fair imitation of surly New York and you could get chopped liver with the bagels that were baked fresh daily.
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Mandy said. “I explained at the Bar Mitzvah Expo that if you’re not planning to go all out, you’re wasting my time and your money.”
Judy understood the woman’s dilemma; an event planner was only as good as her last event. Mandy Mifkin’s reputation and ability to attract future clients were constantly on the line.
“If you’re going to do the sports thing, you’ve got to DO the sports thing. Let’s divide the banquet room into National League and American League, or NFL and AFL, let each table be a different team, make the kids’ buffet look like a concession stand. We could even dress the waiters like concessionaires or referees. It does no good to do these things halfway.”
Mandy Mifkin could sell. She hadn’t gotten where she was by letting clients shy away from the spectacular, and the larger the spectacle the better. Other coordinators might turn out nice, tasteful events. A Mifkin bar mitzvah was an extravaganza. But Judy no longer felt all that extravagant.
“We can put baseballs on the yarmulkes and edit Sammy’s video to make it look like an episode of Baseball Tonight. We’ve already booked the whole ESPN Zone. You’ve got to embrace this theme and make it your own.”
Judy took a bite of her bagel. At a nearby table, a group of women from her temple glanced their way and then put their heads together. Whether they were whispering about the obvious falling-out between planner and client or the state of Judy’s marriage was unclear. Taking a sip of coffee, Judy tried to focus on the woman across from her.
Mandy was right. The first decision was the theme of the event and everything else simply flowed from that. It just felt so unimportant at the moment. What did any of this have to do with Sammy becoming a man? She suspected her son would rather have two parents and the life he was used to than a big-ass bar mitzvah. She put down her bagel as her appetite disappeared.
“Look,” Mandy said more quietly, “I know your life has been a little . . . unsettled . . . since your father’s heart attack.” The coordinator did a semi-tiptoe around her marital situation. “And I know sometimes things . . . change. If you can’t afford to do this . . .”
Judy looked the coordinator in the eye; she was tempted to shoot a few cartoon lightning bolts herself. All this woman cared about was making her outrageous fee and enhancing her own reputation. She didn’t care about Judy or Judy’s family; she simply didn’t want a client who couldn’t or wouldn’t go all out.
Or worse, a soon-to-be-divorced client whose standard of living might be about to drop.
The words “You’re fired” hovered on Judy’s lips, but she knew better than to make a rash decision; she’d made too many of them over the past few weeks. “It’s not about the money,” Judy said, her tone brittle. “Or my personal life.” Which, of course, was none of Mandy Mifkin’s business. “I understand what you’re saying, and I’ll give it some serious thought.”
“But—”
“It’s only April; Sammy’s bar mitzvah isn’t until August.”
“I know, but . . .”
It was clear Mandy Mifkin craved closure. She wanted to know that they were moving ahead under her terms, or parting ways. Judy could identify completely, but she wasn’t interested in Mandy Mifkin’s issues; she could barely keep up with her own.
Judy put enough money to cover both their meals down on the table. “I have to go. I’ve got some things to take care of at—home.” She stumbled over the last word. “And then I need to get into the office. I’ll give you a call later this week.”
Judy hurried out of the deli. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mandy Mifkin pick up her phone and start dialing. The ladies at the corner table put their heads back together.
Two left turns and a traffic light later, Judy was in her neighborhood, sailing past the elaborate clubhouse to the cul-de-sac on which her family lived. She didn’t pull into the garage and enter through the kitchen door of her home as she would have just a week ago. Instead, she parked in the driveway and came in through the front door, like the stranger she’d become.
The front rooms felt musty and unused. If Craig had had Eva in this week, he’d neglected to ask her to dust. Pausing in the foyer between the formal living and dining rooms, she tried not to think about the family dinners that had taken place there. Or the cocktail parties and fund-raisers they’d hosted. She’d put such time and effort into decorating these rooms, into creating the public face they presented to the world. Perhaps she should have spent more time on the guts of their family, shoring up the parts that they kept stuffed inside.
She went up the front stairs and into the boys’ rooms, where mounds of dirty clothing covered the carpet and discarded candy wrappers and food-crusted plates littered every flat surface.
Leaving things where they’d been dropped, she padded down the back stairs. In the master bedroom, the unmade bed and clothing-strewn floor confirmed that her two apples hadn’t fallen far from their father’s tree.
The kitchen made her gasp. It was clear Eva had never been called and that neither Craig nor the boys had lifted a finger in her absence. It took every ounce of willpower she possessed not to clean it up. Or choke on the tears of hurt and anger that filled her.
Instead, she picked up the phone to check messages. They were all the detritus of her old life, and she couldn’t find the strength to write any of them down. Then she heard the one from the temple Hebrew school that had come in last Friday. She cleared a pile of junk from a bar stool so she could sit down and listen.
“Hi, Mrs. Blumfeld,” the B’nai Mitzvah administrator’s voice said. “I’m calling to make sure Sammy’s OK.”
Judy went still at the woman’s words. What could be wrong with Sammy?
“He hasn’t been in Hebrew school the last two Thursdays. And his Sunday school teacher says when he is there, he’s not, if you know what I mean.” There was a pause. “Can you give me a call to set up an appointment?”
Judy jotted down the phone number, but her mind was already racing. Craig drove the boys to Sunday school, but she drove Sammy to Hebrew every Thursday afternoon. In fact, she’d driven h
im right up to the front entrance the last two Thursdays and watched him amble toward the front doors. It had never occurred to her that he hadn’t gone inside.
Her son was playing hooky from Hebrew school, and she hadn’t even known it. She’d always scoffed at those news stories in which children came to harm or did outrageous things and their parents acted so surprised. Like the mother of a serial killer she’d once heard interviewed who’d said, “I don’t know what happened. I talked to him this morning and he sounded just fine.”
How could a mother not know? Knowing was a mother’s primary job.
Maybe the serial killer’s mother had been off trying to find herself, too.
Hollow-eyed, Shelley sat across from Howard Mellnick. Drowning in hurt and anger, she’d rushed to his office when he’d offered to fit her in during his lunch hour. Now she waited for him to throw her a life preserver; something, anything she could cling to in order to keep her head above water.
“So,” he said quietly after she told him what had happened. “What now?”
“What now?” she asked. She was afraid she might go under and not come up again and he was asking “What now?”
He nodded.
“I was really hoping you were going to tell me that.”
Dr. Mellnick smiled gently. “It’s your life, Shelley. That makes it your decision.”
“Look,” she said, madly treading through her emotional waters, “I don’t have the energy for major analysis right now. I just need to get through this day. And then I need to get through tomorrow.”
“Then answer the question.”
“Fine.” She sat back in her chair and pretended to think. All the while, in her mind, she was bicycling her legs, sculling her arms, trying to stay afloat. Trying not to think of her father’s dismissal and all the horrible truths Ross Morgan had hurled at her.
“Let’s see,” she said, “my father, who gave his business to someone else and allowed that someone else to demote me, torture me, and make me jump through all sorts of, as it turns out, unnecessary hoops, has now decided to sell his business to people who will get rid of me. On top of that, one of the main reasons this is happening is that I slept with the person he gave the business to in the first place and then flung that fact in my father’s face.”