by Sloane Tanen
Sam made a face. “You don’t need to buy his affection with whores and limos, for God’s sake. He wouldn’t like any of that. I will get Henry at the airport. He’ll be quite comfortable staying with Daphne and me.”
Bunny shuddered. “If you say so. When is he coming?”
“I’m not saying another word.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, darling. Please.”
He smiled apologetically, happy enough to allow Bunny to forgive his indiscretion.
“I’m off, then,” Bunny said.
“What about tea?” Sam asked, turning over the cloisonné vase Bunny had been holding.
“Next time, darling. I should pop into Browns for a new dress…for the party. Now that you’ve exercised your usual lack of discretion, you can’t blame me for wanting to look my best, can you?” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Mm. I suppose not,” he said, obviously still worrying over Ian.
“Care to come?” she asked, stopping and smiling enormously so that Sam would understand that it was a good thing that he’d told her. She hadn’t felt so pleased in months. “It would be so much less tedious if you came. You know how much I hate to shop and you’ll be honest about what suits. Can’t trust the sycophantic salesgirls, and once I take off my ensemble, there’ll be a crowd,” she said, realizing that she actually needed Sam to come with her. “You can chase away snoopers.”
“I can’t imagine a more fulfilling afternoon.”
“Lovely.” She tucked her hair back into her hat and tied up her scarf again.
He grabbed his keys and called out to his assistant that he was leaving for the day.
“That’s what I admire about you, Sam. Your work ethic.”
“And that’s what I admire about you, Bun,” he said. “Your ability to insult a man and persuade him to be your companion in the same sentence.”
Janine
Janine had to press the intercom button three times before somebody answered.
“Hi, Janine.”
“David?”
“It’s Frank.”
“Hi, Frank. Um, is David there?”
“He’s at lunch. Something wrong?”
“Lunch? It’s five o’clock.”
“He’s on the night shift.”
“I think there’s a black widow in the closet.”
Frank laughed. “There’s no black widows in Manhattan.”
“I just saw a black spider the size of Iowa with a red hourglass on its stomach.”
“The red is on their backs,” Frank said like he was a fucking arachnologist rather than a doorman.
“Frank?”
“Yep?”
“You need to get up here. Or send Manny. I’m freaking out.”
“I’m the only one in the lobby, honey. I can’t leave. I’m sorry. You know I would.”
“Okay,” she said, trying to calm down.
“You all right?”
“No.”
Janine had known Frank since she was twenty years old. The whole staff of the building had been there forever. She was famous back then. They treated her like a daughter of their own who needed protection. They were like a family.
In many ways, they felt like a much better family than the one Janine had in LA. Not today, though. Today they were failing her. Today she regretted tipping Frank so generously at Christmas. Didn’t he understand this was an emergency?
“Janine?” Frank asked. “You there?”
“Yeah.”
“What you want me to do?”
“Can you call Mrs. Nguyen?”
“In eight G?” he asked. “What’s she gonna do?”
“She’s not scared. She took a mouse out of three A once.”
“She cooked it and ate it,” he said, laughing.
The doormen didn’t like Mrs. Nguyen. She ordered everyone around and never tipped. Still, she came in handy.
“I’m totally not amused, Frank. I’m upset.”
“Let me see if Freddie’s around. Hang tight.”
Janine heard the line switch off. She dropped the phone and ran back to the closet. Hang tight? The spider was in her shoe, just waiting. When the doorbell rang, she didn’t move. She wasn’t taking her eyes off the monster. “Come in!” she shouted. “It’s open.”
She was expecting Freddie. He was one of the newer hires. He was short and didn’t speak English very well. Whenever nobody else was available, Freddie was dispatched to the scene.
She heard a woman’s voice. “Hello? Hello?”
“Hi, Mrs. Nguyen,” Janine said, still not moving. She couldn’t believe Frank had actually called Mrs. Nguyen. Or that she had come! “I’m in the bedroom.”
“You got spider?” Mrs. Nguyen was in her bathrobe and slippers. She had pink foam curlers in her hair, the kind Janine hadn’t seen in years. “Move over,” she said, giving Janine a little push. “Let’s see.”
“Thanks for coming,” Janine said, so grateful she wanted to wrap her arms around the old lady and cry.
“Where’s big boyfriend?” Mrs. Nguyen asked. “This his job.”
“Jürgen?” Janine asked, always astounded by the way gossip got around the building. “He’s not my boyfriend anymore. He’s married.”
“Mm. Too bad for you.” Mrs. Nguyen raised her eyebrows. “I saw him in elevator yesterday?”
Janine wondered where Freddie was. She didn’t feel like explaining her relationship with Jürgen to Mrs. Nguyen. “He was here fixing my ceiling fan. He’s a contractor.”
Mrs. Nguyen narrowed her eyes, looking as if she weren’t convinced.
Jürgen and Janine were still close, despite the breakup, despite his marrying someone else. He never talked about his wife, Birgit, and Janine never asked any questions. She hadn’t even realized that she still needed him until she’d seen him holding hands with his pretty wife at Zabar’s a couple of months ago. Their happiness had filled her with an inexplicable urgency to do something, anything, with her life. She’d enrolled in the cartooning class that night.
“How long he been married?” Mrs. Nguyen asked, clearly more interested in Jürgen than the spider, which was now crawling out of the shoe.
“It’s moving!” Janine screamed, pointing at the spider.
Mrs. Nguyen looked. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth turned into a circle. “That’s black widow.”
“It is?” Janine asked, even though she’d been certain already. Stupid Frank. What did he know? Janine gave Mrs. Nguyen a boot.
“What’s that for?”
“Can you kill it?” Janine asked. “I’m scared.”
“No way. It’s bad luck.”
“I’ll give you a hundred dollars.”
Mrs. Nguyen laughed. “What good a hundred dollars if I got lifetime of bad luck?” She looked at Janine and then turned away.
“Where are you going?” Janine asked. “You can’t just leave!”
“I go get a cup.”
“And then what?” she shrieked. “Carry it down the elevator and release it on Madison Avenue?”
Mrs. Nguyen shrugged.
“You watch the spider,” Janine said, talking slowly. “I’ll get the cup. Don’t move.”
Mrs. Nguyen pursed her lips. “Yeah, okay.”
Janine hurried off in search of an encyclopedia or an art book big enough to kill it. There’d be no cup. She was having dinner with a friend in an hour and she didn’t believe in luck.
When she came back, Mrs. Nguyen wasn’t there. What the fuck? Maybe she was onto Janine’s execution plan. “Hello?” she called, clutching Taschen’s colossal Cabinet of Natural Curiosities. “Mrs. Nguyen?”
She was gone. Janine ran over to the closet. The spider was gone too! Gone! Janine knew she’d have to move out now. Twenty years was a good run, but she’d never fall asleep in this room again. She sat on her bed and kept her eyes fixed on the closet. Kitty Fisher came over to see what the matter was.
“You’re useless,” she said, pulling
the cat onto her lap. She could hear reggae music next door.
Janine had always had an irrational fear of insects. One night when she was seven or eight, she’d gone to ask her mother to kill the daddy longlegs she’d seen on her bed. She knocked lightly on Pam’s door, whispering her name, being careful not to interrupt whatever might be going on in there. She knew it wasn’t kid stuff. But if someone didn’t kill the giant bug on her bed, she thought she’d die. Janine still wasn’t used to the new house her father had bought them in Laurel Canyon. She wasn’t used to her new mom either. This mom suddenly wanted to be called Pamela instead of Mom and had taken up smoking and had parties and boyfriends. This mom announced she was a feminist and had a mirror over her bed. Janine knew there was something embarrassing about it all but she wasn’t going to argue because this Pamela person seemed, at first, to be a lot nicer than her old mom.
Pamela had even let her and Amanda choose what color carpeting they wanted in their new bedrooms. Amanda picked a salmon pink. Janine picked powder blue. The master bedroom and hallway were a deep forest green. Janine couldn’t believe her mother would allow such a brazen lack of cohesion. “Fuck the rules,” Pamela had said, too loudly, as they giggled over swatches in Banner Carpets. “Choose whatever makes you happy.” It didn’t matter that the colors clashed, Janine later realized, because their doors would always be shut. Each bedroom was a habitat unto itself, a holding cell of female expectations and dissatisfactions.
Janine had sat that night on the green carpet outside her mother’s door whispering “Pamela” like a prayer, listening to the music coming from inside mingled with the hushed tones of a man’s voice. The man was probably Ken, her mom’s new favorite, an actor with big white teeth who enjoyed juicing, moon boots, and being naked. (Thinking about it now, adult Janine felt a stab of sympathy for her younger self. It wasn’t like Pamela had been a paragon of motherhood when she and Janine’s father were married, but her mom’s leap into the pool of sexual liberation presented a new roster of issues. Would it have been so hard for her mother to ask her boyfriend to wear a robe or at least some underwear?)
That night, the sound of the front door closing woke Janine. Pamela came over and knelt beside her in the hallway, a silk negligee grazing her thighs. “What are you doing out here?” she asked. A dam of reckless tears broke as Janine tried to explain about the spider.
“Why didn’t you come in?” Pamela asked. She looked at Janine as if she had been completely irrational in her hesitation to walk right into her mother’s bedroom. And even though this was years before her mother’s depression began to manifest itself, before Pam started to smell funny and spend her days dressed in that worn, stained terry-cloth bathrobe she used to put on only when she dyed her hair, Janine had never felt like she could just go into her mom’s room uninvited. “Oh, baby,” Pamela said, pulling Janine up to her feet for a hug. “Let’s go kill that motherfucker.”
Janine squeezed her mom hard. She was always surprised at how her mother’s sympathy undid her. She was defenseless against her kindness. But when they went into Janine’s room, the spider was gone. “Now I don’t know where it is,” she cried, inconsolable. “It could be anywhere!”
Her mom tried to calm her down; she took the sheets off the bed, shook them out, remade the bed, then shook out the quilt for good measure. It was no good.
“So come and sleep with me in my room.” Pamela yawned. Janine looked at her. She’d never been invited into her mother’s bed before. Janine began to dry her eyes, imagining herself next to her mother, warm and safe under that quilted white satin comforter. “Ken left,” Pamela explained, sensing Janine’s hesitation and extending her hand.
Janine grabbed her mom’s hand and dragged her to her bedroom. She flew into the disheveled bed. “Good night, little burrito,” Pamela said, wrapping Janine up in the blanket like she was swaddling a newborn. Janine looked at herself in the mirror overhead and smiled. This was how she had liked to sleep when she was very small. She was surprised that her mom remembered.
It was funny, Janine thought now, staring into her closet, the way spiders and mothers just disappeared. You couldn’t look away, even for a minute.
Janine canceled dinner with her friend. Manny and Freddie helped her move things out of her bedroom and into the hall. At first it was just the shoes and clothes. When the black widow failed to reappear, they called Frank and David. It was almost nine o’clock and every piece of Janine’s furniture was in the hallway. Manny was vacuuming. Janine had never felt so loved or so panicked.
“What’s happening up here?” Mrs. Nguyen asked, poking her head out of the elevator. “It’s too loud. Very annoying.” She was dressed elegantly in a red quilted jacket with matching slacks and red flats. Her black hair was pulled into a tight bun.
“We’re trying to find that black widow,” Janine said, narrowing her eyes at Mrs. Nguyen, who had obviously been out enjoying her evening.
“You’re crazy, Janine. All of you, crazy,” she said, pointing to the exhausted staff. “I killed that spider before. You took too long to get cup. I got things to do. Can’t wait all day for a cup.”
Now everyone was staring at Janine.
“I thought you said it was bad luck?” she asked, barely audible.
“Nah. I had good night. Lobster was delicious and taxi smelled okay. You stop making noise now? I’m tired. Go to bed.”
Hailey
They were visiting Grandpa Marty in rehab again. As far as Hailey could tell, not much had changed since the last time, a few years ago. At least the drive was a lot shorter now that they’d moved from San Diego to LA. The best part of Directions was seeing famous people. The place was crawling with them. Celebrity spotting was the only thing that was better in LA than in San Diego. Everything else in this city blew.
Hailey and her sister were trailing their mom to the therapy rooms. Jaycee gestured to the back of a promisingly tall woman in a T-shirt and jeans. They were both disappointed to see it was just another model. And she looked at least thirty-eight. Hailey figured being an old model couldn’t be easy.
When they reached the therapy rooms, the twins took seats on the long white sofa next to their mom. The new mediator, some fledgling douche named Dan, leaned forward on a metal chair and prepped them for Marty’s arrival. He talked slowly, instructing them on what they should and shouldn’t say to “help move the session along in a constructive way.”
“We know,” Hailey said. “It’s not like this is our first time visiting him here.”
“Hailey!” her mother snapped, annoyed that Hailey had made Marty look like a serial rehabber, which he was.
“It’s okay, Amanda.” Dan smiled at Hailey like he understood something about her. He looked at Jaycee and winked. Hailey wanted to punch him in the face. Then Marty was at the door and they all stood up to greet him.
“Sit,” Marty said after giving them all perfunctory kisses, as if they were meeting for a casual meal or something. He took a seat on the chair opposite the sofa. “Why isn’t Gail here?”
“The first session is immediate family only,” Dan answered. “Okay by you?”
“Why the hell not?” Marty said and he proceeded to blow his nose into a tissue he pulled out of his baggy sweatpants. He poured himself a glass of iced tea from a pitcher on a tray. Hailey noticed how tired and thin he looked. But more than that, he looked old.
“So,” he said, leaning back, “tell me the good news.”
The twins looked at each other. Marty was quiet, chewing on an ice cube as he considered his granddaughters.
“Why don’t you tell Grandpa about the school play, Jay?” their mom suggested after too long a silence. Hailey looked at Jaycee and smiled naughtily.
This was the first year since nursery school that Hailey wasn’t in the school play. Her mother hadn’t even let her audition because of her “poor academic performance.” So yes, Jay, Hailey thought with hostility. Why don’t you tell Grandpa all about the stupid pla
y?
“Um,” Jaycee started reluctantly, “well, it’s Hairspray.”
“He knows that.” Amanda laughed, even though nobody had said anything remotely funny. Their mom was idiotically invested in this show, not only because it was her first big production at Fair Hills but because, once it closed, she might get to workshop it at some theater in San Francisco. Her mom thought that was a big deal.
They were all looking at Jaycee now. In fact, Hailey noticed mediator Dan looking at her sister with more interest than seemed appropriate. Her stomach tightened into a familiar fist. It was always the same. Jaycee was the prettier twin. Their general packaging was the same, both of them petite with long blond hair, but Jaycee was softer looking, more feminine. Hailey had made a lifelong study out of her sister’s features, carefully logging them and noting where her own came up short. Not only was Jaycee’s nose smaller, but her face and lips were significantly fuller, like their mom’s. Hailey’s chin was too long, and her nose, which tipped downward at the end, also had a higher bridge. Jaycee wasn’t as beautiful as their mom—neither one of them had inherited those wide cheekbones or slanted green eyes—but Jaycee had gotten the lion’s share of their mom’s looks, leaving their dad’s genes to fill in the blanks on Hailey’s face. She glared at Dan and slumped in her chair, racking her brain for something good to tell her grandfather when it was her turn.
Was it good news that her mom had told her she’d done a nice job washing the egg pan that morning? It was the first compliment her mom had given Hailey in she couldn’t even remember how long. Should she tell her grandpa she was homing in on her vocation as a career dishwasher? Would he like that? Would not having a pimple that week qualify as good news? Jaycee had gotten an A on her English paper. Probably she’d talk about that. Mrs. Fallows had called Hailey’s much more ambitious paper on John Green and Tolstoy “a reach.” No, she really couldn’t think of anything at all good to say.
Dan leaned forward. He was all lit up. “Marty, can I ask why it is you want to hear only the good news from your family?”
Hailey was really glad Dan had asked that question. It headed off her turn to talk.