“Ahhh,” Macy said of the ensuing silence, spreading her arms wide. I followed her into one of the two living rooms to wait out baby bedtime. We poured ourselves San Pellegrino and dug into the rosemary crisps and caviar from Eli’s Vinegar Factory, courtesy of Macy’s grateful clients, the ones she’d dissuaded from walking down the aisle to U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” We had curled up on the couches—the ugly brown plaid was, unfortunately, still in residence—and were concluding that we preferred this to reading Goodnight Moon for the seventy-fifth time when the front door opened and someone called, “Yoo-hoo! Anyone home?”
We looked at each other, startled. Lucy hadn’t mentioned anyone else coming to dinner.
“Well, hello there!”
“Mrs. Livingston!” Macy jumped off the couch and greeted Leonard’s mother with her best professional smile. I had met Lenore Livingston only once before, at Lucy’s wedding, and had steered a wide berth around the small, hard-looking blonde scowling her way through the proceedings.
“So nice to see you again,” Macy sang. “You remember Zephyr, one of Lucy’s old friends?”
“Zephyr, of course, you’re the janitor. I remember you, dear.” She embraced me in a falsely tight hug, as if someone had told her she should try to be more affectionate. Her perfume, a cloying, fruity scent, was instantly familiar, though I couldn’t put my finger on why.
“Super. Former super,” I said. “I’m a detective now.” I got ready to don my modest “yes, really” smile in response to the inevitable exclamation of excitement and barrage of questions my job title usually elicited.
“Oh. Well, who’s looking after your parents’ building? Do they have to pay someone now?”
I halted my smile halfway so that my face felt like a jack-o’-lantern.
“Uh, well, they paid me before, so now they pay someone else.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize they paid you. How awkward for all of you!” She walked over to the bookshelf, where she adjusted two framed photos, then shook off her coat and draped it across the back of a chair. Macy and I glanced at each other, realizing at the same moment that any therapeutic benefits of our visit were going to be canceled out by Lenore’s unexpected appearance.
“I see you girls are making yourselves at home. Good, good. And I assume the babies are going to sleep right now, at precisely seven-fifteen?” She tried to laugh, but it came out a snort. “Have you heard about this ‘sleep training’?” She made quotation marks with her fingers. “It’s absurd. I never let Leonard cry.”
“And now I have chronic insomnia. Hi, Mom,” Leonard said, darting down the stairs in his twitchy, slouchy way and dutifully allowing himself to be embraced by his mother.
“Your insomnia is because you work too hard and don’t eat well, not because of anything I did.”
“No, of course not,” Leonard said with a tired half smile. “I assume you’re staying for dinner?”
Macy looked at me, alarmed.
“Only if it’s all right with you and your wife. I did bring couscous and your favorite brownies.”
Without waiting for an answer, Lenore headed for the kitchen. “I’ll make sure the chicken doesn’t dry out. You are having garlic chicken, right? That’s what Lucy always makes for company.…”
Macy and I turned to Leonard at the same time and fired off identical glares. He took a step back, startled.
“Leonard!” Macy snapped, as if reprimanding a child.
“Now, wait a second, Mace,” I warned.
“No, I’m sorry, but this is not okay. It’s not as if Leonard doesn’t know that Lucy needed a night alone with us. She needs to vent. You do know that, Leonard, don’t you?”
I was horrified and thrilled by Macy’s daring. Her question was based on the assumption that Leonard knew exactly how his wife felt about his mother, and while Lucy assured us he did, there could easily be a large marital gap between what she told him and what she thought she was telling him.
Leonard flicked at his ear and searched the ceiling. “I know, I know, but …”
Lucy bounced down the stairs, a huge smile on her face. “Let the fun begin! I am soooo hap—” She stopped short, as if she’d run into a wall. She pointed to the coat on the chair, then turned to Leonard, her eyes wide and her lips mashed together.
“Honey, I’m sorry, she just—”
“Oh, hello, Lucy, sweetie!” Lenore sailed in, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “I hope you don’t mind, I added a little more olive oil to the marinade. It was looking gluey. How are my babies? Sleeping soundly? Did you see the new jammies I bought for them yesterday? I left them on your bed.”
Lenore put Lucy in an armlock that only distantly resembled a hug.
“Thank you, Lenore,” Lucy said stiffly, her voice shaky.
“She simply will not call me Mom!” Lenore singsonged to us. “Lucy, honey, sit down; you must be exhausted. Let me wait on you, and you enjoy your friends.” She returned to the kitchen. Leonard gave Lucy a pleading look that said, See, not so bad?
“Oh, please,” Lucy spat. “I’ll be paying for this largesse with my very blood.” She sniffled.
“Well, I think that’s a little bit of an over—”
“Leonard,” she snapped, “go help your mother in the kitchen so I can complain about you and her to my friends. More efficient,” she muttered, leaning over the coffee table and scooping caviar straight into her mouth. “God, that’s good,” she breathed as Leonard slunk off.
“Luce,” I rebuked. “Give the poor guy a break! He’s on your side.”
“If he were on my side, I’d still be talking to Mercedes via semaphores over Perry Street, not having my soul disemboweled by that black-hearted, money-obsessed control freak. Why didn’t she come, by the way? Mercedes, I mean.”
“Concert,” Macy answered, curling up on the sofa again and pulling Lucy down with her, her arm around her shoulder. “See, so you couldn’t have been flashing handwritten messages like a couple of ten-year-olds, not tonight.”
“I don’t think I can get through another dinner with her, I really don’t,” Lucy moaned, leaning into Macy. “Watch. She’s going to dominate the conversation with stories that are alternately boring, nasty, or incomprehensible, while playing up what an involved, self-sacrificing grandmother she is and what a subpar mother I am and how the babies—”
“Oh my God,” I exclaimed. “Sorry, but I just realized …”
My friends looked at me.
“Her perfume,” I whispered, starting to laugh. “I just figured out where I’ve smelled it before. One of … one of Roxana’s prostitutes, the only one I ever met. She used to wear the same scent as Lenore!”
Lucy opened her eyes wide and raised her eyebrows. She took a deep, cleansing breath. “Thank you, my love. I believe I will now survive dinner.”
* * *
In fact, none of us emerged unscathed and, in the end, I managed to take Lucy’s relationship with her mother-in-law a notch lower than it already was. Lenore was in fine form that evening, veering, as Lucy had predicted, from a story about the travails of mastering “suzuki” puzzles—boring—to a gleeful story about a formerly wealthy neighbor who’d lost his home—nasty—to a complicated tale about a friend of a friend who had dated a rich man who had treated her to lobster every single night for a year as a successful incentive to lose fifty pounds, after which he dumped her—incomprehensible.
The dishes were cleared and the brownies were presented, but it didn’t look like Lenore was leaving anytime soon. Leonard’s father was working late—it was no mystery why Maxwell stayed at the office whenever possible—and she was in no hurry to get home. Lucy, in a desperate attempt to have a conversation that did not include Lenore, mentioned that she wanted to bring the kids to my apartment the next time they visited New York, to play with my rabbit.
“Hitchens?” Lenore interjected, dabbing at the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “What a funny name for a bunny rabbit!”
I just smiled, but immediately a mental tocsin sounded, alerting me to dangerous territory. Even Leonard sensed it.
“Mom, these brownies are amazing. Did you use extra chocolate?”
“Why did you name him Hitchens?”
I glanced at Lucy, who looked nervous. “Oh, just a guy I know. These really are fabulous brownies.”
“He’s not named for that atheist, is he?” Lenore laughed, a short, hard honk.
I looked to Macy for help, but she stretched her arms high above her head and settled back in her chair, as though the evening’s entertainment was finally beginning.
“Uh, well …” Stand up for your convictions outside the safety of the four liberal boroughs, Zephyr. Be a man. “Yes. Yes, he’s named for Christopher Hitchens,” I said proudly.
“You’re not an atheist, are you?” Lenore put her hand to her chest. Macy snorted, and immediately I saw that this couldn’t end well, so I might as well enjoy it.
I licked brownie off my fingers with a loud sucking sound. “In fact, I am. An all-American atheist.”
I watched Lenore’s face contort as she prepared to hold forth. To my knowledge, her own son, in time-honored tradition, had not set foot in a synagogue since the final amen of his bar mitzvah, so I didn’t know why she was getting all huffy. And then I remembered that she was a convert with all its attending zeal and, in her case, a limited perception, perhaps even a fear of, the tribe’s protean nature.
“Well, you know,” I reminded her brightly, “Judaism can be an ethnicity or a religion. It doesn’t have to be both.”
“It is both.”
“Nooo. For me, it’s an ethnicity. The way you can be an Italian Catholic or an Italian … okay, well, say a Spanish Catholic or a Spanish Jew or a Spanish atheist. I’m a Jewish atheist.” I felt like I was talking to a five-year-old.
Macy leaned forward and put her freckled elbows on the table. Leonard looked at the floor and tugged vigorously at his ear. Lucy covered her face with her hands.
“So you don’t believe in God?”
“Seriously?” I asked before I could stop myself.
She sat back as if I’d slapped her.
I tried to think of a way out of this Religion for Dummies conversation without veering into the “well, I am spiritual” realm. I didn’t owe this woman any kind of explanation.
“I just feel religion is for those who need it.”
Lenore pushed her seat back from the table. I glanced at Lucy but couldn’t tell whether she was going to laugh, cry, or cheer.
“I don’t mean that in a mean way,” I explained quickly. “I only mean I don’t need religion to feel gratitude or to compel me to be good. Though I realize I’m in the minority,” I sputtered in a vain attempt to save Lucy from some incalculable aftermath.
Lenore stalked out and, a moment later, the front door clicked closed.
Leonard looked at Lucy, his lips and brow contorted with anxiety.
“Oh, go,” Lucy said, and Leonard shot out of his chair. “Go make nice with her. God knows Zephyr can’t.”
* * *
Seven hours later, I crept downstairs and shuffled in the dark toward Lucy’s kitchen. I was feeling around for the refrigerator when Macy’s voice came at me from the direction of the marble-topped island.
I gasped and fumbled and accidentally turned on the bright overhead lights.
“Turn it off, you idiot! Turn it off!” Macy yelped as I hit the switch and returned us to obscurity, my heart pounding. The insomnia I’d been suffering was now guaranteed to last another few hours.
I clutched at my chest with one hand and blindly took aim with my other, successfully clocking Macy.
“What was that for?”
“You scared the hell out of me,” I spat. “I thought I just left you upstairs in the bed.”
“You didn’t notice I wasn’t there? Great work, detective.”
“It was dark,” I protested, “and there was a big mound of covers. I thought you were under there.”
“As if I could sleep after that train wreck of an evening.”
By the collective light emanating from the digital clocks on the microwave, the stove, the coffeemaker, and the refrigerator, I could begin to make out Macy’s hunched shape, sitting on a stool at the counter. She was eating something, and as my eyes adjusted, I could see it was the cake Lucy had made in honor of our visit.
“You’re not even going to get a plate?” I commented, taking the fork out of her hand and helping myself to a bite. “Oh my God,” I said, my mouth full. “Even when she’s homicidal, infanticidal, and suicidal, she still makes a better chocolate cake than I can on my best day.”
“I might have to fake a client call,” Macy moaned. “Especially if that woman from whose loins Leonard sprang is planning on joining us at the orchard.”
“It would be a little like a fairy tale, though, right?” I mused, shoveling in more cake. “Evil witch, poisoned apple.”
Macy took the fork back and gouged out another bite. She was wearing a billowing fuchsia T-shirt bearing the logo of her favorite florist. Since Lucy and Macy were both about the size I’d whizzed past at the age of ten, I’d borrowed a shirt from Leonard to sleep in. I was hoping that no one would notice or smell the fact that the next day I’d be wearing the same clothes I’d arrived in.
“When did Lucy learn to cook?” I asked, opening the fridge to size up the state of the leftovers.
“Since moving to a town where all the restaurants have ‘fine dining’ on their signs,” Lucy said from the doorway. She turned on the lights and dimmed them to a tolerable level.
“Jesus!” I slammed the door shut. “The two of you should have bells around your necks.”
“You’ve gotta be the jumpiest detective in all of New York,” Macy observed.
I swatted the back of her head on my way to giving Lucy a hug.
“Zephyr, you’re thirty-one,” Macy complained. “Stop slugging people.”
“Thirty. You okay?” I asked Lucy.
Lucy sank down on the stool next to Macy’s and shrugged. “I think I married the wrong guy.”
I froze. Macy whipped her head around.
“I do. I mean, I’m not going to do anything about it. I’m just accepting it,” she said with theatrical resignation.
“Luce,” I began. “I can tell you objectively that your mother-in-law would test any marriage.”
“Of course she would, but don’t you think I’d be able to laugh it off, at least occasionally, if he and I were stronger?”
“But everything’s so hard with kids. You have to think back to when you guys were first dating—try to recapture that.” It was embarrassingly facile advice but valuable nonetheless.
“You know how I first decided I was in love with Leonard? We went to Rocco’s for a black-and-white cookie one night—”
“Oooh, the ones with the raspberry jam under the icing?” Macy asked.
“We went to Rocco’s and I only wanted the vanilla half and he only likes the chocolate half and so I decided he was the one. How pathetic is that?” Lucy dropped her head onto her arms.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not the only reason you married him.”
“It is,” she moaned from under a curtain of blond hair. “I chose my husband based on pastry.”
Macy rolled her eyes at me. Despite the patience that had been shown her in her time of need, she was not always one to reciprocate in equal measures.
“Lucy,” I said, squeezing her bony shoulders. “Until you moved to Wisteria Lane with less-perky boobs, you guys were fine. You’d probably be fine here, too, if you could get a handle on the monster-in-law.”
Lucy lifted her face hopefully. “Do you know any hit men?”
Samantha Kimiko Hodges crossed my mind briefly. Was she for hire?
“Sorry, sweets. I meant more like, can you get Leonard to help set some limits?” I asked lamely.
Lucy gave me an impatient look. “Says the
woman who couldn’t just name her stupid rabbit Thumper!”
“Okay, well, look, what about moving back to New York? Is that such a crazy idea? I’m sure Leonard doesn’t want you to be miserable.”
“I’d still have the kids.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Luce,” Macy crabbed. “The kids are cute! They’re warm and soft and they’ll miss you when you’re dead. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Ear wax is warm and soft, too. If they’re so great, why are you and Zeph leading the charge in population control?” She jumped up and dragged her stool to the refrigerator. I was sure she was going to pull out a bottle of Stoli, raising the curtain on yet another demon in her life. Instead, she opened a cabinet and extracted a Tupperware full of primary-hued gewgaws.
“Look at this. Look at this.”
Macy squinted at the pile of plastic and sequins and sparkles.
“These,” Lucy explained, “come out of party-favor bags. I do not know what they are. I do not know why people think that one-year-olds need party favors. They would choke on them or poke each other’s eyes out or clog the toilet with them. What are they?” she pleaded.
“These?” I said, picking up one of the mysteries. “These are pre-garbage. These were manufactured in China specifically to be put right here.” I flipped open the trash can and swept the entire pile onto their rightful place atop scraps of garlic chicken. “They’re not a reason to hate your kids.”
Lucy kicked at the can. “I don’t hate them and I don’t hate Leonard. I do hate Lenore and I really miss my job. And I love that you guys are up here, but I’m so damn jealous, it’s almost hard to have you.”
“Excuse me?” Macy said, sitting up straight on her stool. I could see her calculating what we’d spent on train tickets in recent months.
“You try to make me feel better, but you get to go home to a life where you can distinguish the weekend from the weekday, where the most exhausting thing you do on a Sunday is choose between Danal and Grey Dog for brunch. I miss that. I wish I hadn’t done … this.” She gestured vaguely around the catalog-perfect kitchen.
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