by Marian Thurm
Sitting on a chaise longue at the pool, Roger watches a young guy towing his toddler on a Styrofoam float; the little boy is sitting upright, his mother’s arm supporting him around his waist, and he looks terrified. The mother is saying, comfortingly, in a sing-songy voice, “Mommy loves you and Daddy loves you, everyone loves little Cooper, it’s true.” But Cooper is in tears now, and wants to be returned to dry land. And he has Roger’s sympathy.
The truth is, Roger’s got a lot to do before this vacation comes to an end.
For one thing, he has a note to write. Actually it may end up considerably longer than a note; he will have a lot of explaining to do and that may take up a couple of pages. Or not.
He brought a yellow legal pad with him from home, for that very purpose. Of course he could type it all out on his laptop, but that seems awfully impersonal, doesn’t it? The things he has to say are enormously important and intensely felt, and handwritten is the way to go, he’s sure of it. Line after line of neatly typed, perfectly formed words just won’t cut it.
He checked on the pistol last night after he and his family returned from dinner at Outback Steakhouse; the kids were dozing off and Stacy was in the back of the Toyota, tenderly rousing Will and Olivia out of their car seats and along the parking lot to the locked front doors of the condo. Opening the glove compartment, running his hand across first one brown paper bag and then the other, Roger felt reassured. But just a moment later, his pulse quickened, and he began to feel more than a little queasy, more than a little light-headed. He thought he was going to vomit up his no-better-than-mediocre steak dinner, but when he pushed open the door on the driver’s side and leaned out, nothing but a thin string of bile fell from his mouth.
Stacy, who was already upstairs with the kids, looked at him anxiously when he walked through the door. “What happened to you?” she said. “What’s wrong? Are you sick, baby?” She put her cool hand on his moist forehead and kept it there.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “Nada. Or nothing that a glass of water and an after-dinner nap wouldn’t fix.” He knew how to lie, and was, in fact, getting good at it.
His kids are waving to him from the pool now, each of them outfitted with inflatable water wings, Will’s imprinted with images of Spider-Man, Olivia’s with smiley faces. Leaning back against the aqua-blue concrete wall of the pool, her arms crossed behind her head, Stacy smiles at Roger in his vinyl chaise longue.
Smiling back, he aims his BlackBerry in his family’s direction, and snaps their picture.
~ 9 ~
Stacy and Roger were in his living room watching Frasier— which occupied a place of honor in her pantheon of TV shows—when, during a commercial, and without fanfare, Roger handed her a small, satiny, black drawstring bag.
Her hand was deep inside a bag of gourmet pumpernickel pretzels, and she withdrew it to accept the gift Roger held out to her. “What’s this?” she asked, brushing salt crystals from her fingers.
“Well, why don’t we find out?” Roger said. The neutral expression on his face told her nothing, but he was rubbing his hands together impatiently, and she sensed a bit of apprehensiveness. He had been generous to her all along, having given her, on their three-month anniversary, a trio of thick, interconnected sterling silver bangle bracelets to complement the armfuls of skinny ones she wore every day, and on their four-month, a pair of gold-and-sapphire earrings from Cartier. The gifts had taken her by surprise, and both times she had nothing on hand to give him in return. She was greatly touched by his generosity, and the sweetness of his sensibility, and ran out to a bookstore the day after each of the anniversaries to pick out a paperback for him—short story collections by John Updike and Flannery O’Connor, two writers whose work she loved.
Turning away from the TV now, Stacy eased the fingers of one hand into the opening of the velvet bag, flipped it upside down, and watched as a diamond ring slid into her waiting palm. “Whoa, is that what I think it is?” she said, and feigned astonishment, when, in truth, she’d sensed, over the past few weeks, that this was what Roger had been contemplating.
She hugged him, exuberant—because this promise of a shared life was what they both so ardently wanted—and started to slip the ring over her finger, but stopped at the first joint, allowing Roger to finish the job. They admired the ring together, switching on the halogen reading lamp at the side of the couch so that the diamond could show itself off, then Stacy, smiling, listened carefully as Roger said, I love you.
Frasier’s live audience roared with laughter, but Stacy hadn’t, of course, been paying the slightest attention, and she allowed herself, for a split-second, to wonder what was so funny.
Her cheek was against Roger’s shoulder, and she could feel the warmth of his skin through his thin shirt. “I love you so much,” she said easily, understanding in that instant that her affection for Roger had ripened into what was surely the deepest sort of love.
She thought immediately of calling her parents; it was one of those times when, even now, years after their deaths, she couldn’t quite believe that a phone call to them wasn’t within the realm of what was possible. Neither of her parents had lived long enough to see her in any way settled; her father hadn’t even made it to her college graduation. She could borrow Roger’s BMW, drive out to visit their graves, far away in Suffolk County on Long Island, and share the news with them . . . But that was just a little creepy, wasn’t it? It was one thing, she supposed, if you believed in an afterlife, but frankly, the very notion of one was, to her, no more than wishful thinking at its silliest.
She picked up the phone in Roger’s kitchen and called her grandmother, apologizing for awakening her, even though it was barely nine o’clock.
“This better be good,” Juliette said. “Just a minute, let me find my glasses.”
Stacy studied her ring as Juliette took her time. It was a beauty; she could see all the way through the center of the diamond to the platinum band beneath it.
Following her into the kitchen, Roger snuck up behind her, and laced his arms around her waist. “Let me talk to Gram,” he said, and took the phone from Stacy.
She listened as he sweet-talked her grandmother, saying, “I will . . . I will . . . I will, don’t worry . . . Of course I do. Sure . . . you bet.”
When Stacy got the phone back, Juliette said, “Mazel tov, baby-doll! But I have to tell you that I’m not in love with the fact that he’s a man in his forties. On the other hand, I believe him when he says of course he’s going to take very good care of you.”
“Oh, he absolutely will,” Stacy assured her.
Roger had poked his head inside the refrigerator, and he withdrew a bottle of Cristal with a noticeably shiny gold bow attached to it. “Come on, hang up,” he mouthed, and rolled his eyes exaggeratedly, but Stacy shook her head.
She let her grandmother go on and on, mostly about how sad it was that Stacy’s mother had missed out on the opportunity to shop for a wedding dress with her. Then Juliette moved on to the subject of “your mother’s idiot boyfriend who we’ll always hold personally responsible for the death of my beloved child and your beloved mother.” There were tears in Stacy’s eyes as she held the receiver away from her ear and tried her best to ignore her grandmother’s rant. She watched as Roger busied himself opening the bottle of Cristal, which Stacy would later learn—to her amazement—had cost him more than a hundred dollars. How could she tell him that she preferred Diet Coke, nectar of the gods, to the taste of champagne? It seemed embarrassing to admit, and might even be seen by him as a flaw in her character. She had plenty of other flaws, she thought, that, in the five months they’d been together, Roger had yet to discover. The one she’d worked hardest to hide from him was the shameful fact that, unlike Grace, her mother, Stacy wasn’t much of a housekeeper. Her mother had rules: always make your bed first thing in the morning; never leave home with dirty dishes or silverware sitting in the sink; clean the bathroom thoroughly every day with Ajax, Windex, and bleach; du
st the top of your dresser once in the morning and again at night before you went to sleep—these rules of hers were exhausting just to contemplate, Stacy thought. And the truth was, the one thing she’d always believed about rules was that they were meant to be broken. Thus the less-than-pristine condition of her bathroom and kitchen when there was no one around to check up on her; Roger, for example, or her sister, who’d inherited her mother’s respect for neat and clean. In Stacy’s view, life was all too brief (hadn’t the random cruelty with which her parents’ lives were extinguished shown that to her?). And after she was finished with work for the day, there were just too many books to read, too many movies to see, TV shows to watch, and music to listen to; given these abundant pleasures, why would she bother to agonize over the sink she’d scrubbed only half-heartedly?
As Roger poured champagne for them into a pair of polished-looking flutes, and signaled comically one more time for her to get off the phone, she thought of what a comfort it was to know that, in all the world, it was Roger who wanted to take care of her; this was, she recognized now, at the very foundation of her love for him—this need and desire of his to watch over her and keep her happy. Though perhaps they weren’t perfect soul mates—they were, after all, a social worker and a real estate developer inhabiting sharply different worlds that had barely a note in common—it was still possible, wasn’t it, to find yourself free-falling toward love nonetheless.
S
After Roger called his mother and sister, both of whom asked to speak to Stacy and welcomed her happily into the family (Thrilled to death! Clare shrieked into the phone), Stacy dialed her sister’s number in Connecticut. Her brother-in-law, who was named Chuck, answered the phone. He was a modestly successful woodworker and cabinetmaker, and Stacy had always wished they’d liked each other more. She’d sensed almost immediately that Chuck was not a fan of hers, and she never quite understood why; she always worked perhaps a bit too hard to try and win him over, even though she knew full well that it was a losing battle.
“Hey, Chuck,” she said, and took a sip of champagne. Why was it always so hard to talk to him? Because she had gone to Harvard and he hadn’t gone to any college at all, not even for a single semester? Could that simple fact really have been the reason? She’d always worried that it was her own fault Chuck didn’t like her, but maybe, as Roger had delicately suggested, she was being too hard on herself. She had, more than once, tried to find out from Lauren if she’d ever offended Chuck in any way, but Lauren’s response had always been, Come on, that’s insane!
She asked now about the twins, who’d just gone to sleep, one of them with an ear infection and a fever of 104. “Oh, that’s awful,” Stacy said, and after hearing about a couple of trips to the pediatrician, wanted to know if her sister was around.
“She’s in the shower,” Chuck reported, but Stacy didn’t believe him. She told him why she was calling, and was glad to hear the word “congratulations” in his response, even though it was a word uttered without much animation. She hated it that his indifference pained her, and then she was shocked to hear Chuck say, “He’s in commercial real estate, right? So is he rich?”
She looked over at Roger, who was sipping his champagne and paging through some magazine—duPont Registry: A Buyer’s Gallery of Fine Automobiles—she’d never seen anywhere except in his apartment. She wanted to tell her brother-in-law to mind his own business, but instead she murmured, “I honestly don’t know.” But how could she not? There was this spacious apartment of his here on West End, his top-of-the-line BMW, all the lovely, expensive restaurants he took her to every weekend, the vacation he’d treated her to in Acapulco. She was a caseworker for a nonprofit; she spent her workdays helping the poor and the fucked-up, the disenfranchised and the voiceless; she didn’t keep track of other people’s money and how they spent it. To be honest, she just didn’t care. Nor did she worry too much about how Roger earned his living—he was, he’d explained, someone who helped to build places where retail companies could create jobs for those who needed them. Every time a mall of his went up, he was helping to stimulate the economy, wasn’t he? Why should she have moral reservations about that? Not everyone was suited for the sort of sometimes-emotionally draining, ill-paid work she’d been drawn to; she’d have to be an idiot not to recognize that. And, too, she recognized that Roger did have a social conscience—she’d once seen, on his desk here in the apartment, resting carelessly on top of a layer of magazines, a $5,000 check he’d written out to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the sight of which caused her eyes to fill.
So is he rich? “I don’t know,” she repeated to Chuck, and a moment or two later, Lauren picked up the phone.
Her congratulations sounded genuine, but then, immediately afterward, she began to limn the details of Danielle’s ear infection. “I had to keep her out of school all week. If you think babysitters come cheap out here in the ’burbs, well, you’re wrong,” she finished, the sound of her voice marred by a trace of self-pity.
“So you’ll be able to come to the, um, engagement brunch Roger’s mother decided to have for us next weekend?” Stacy asked. How pathetic would it be if, except for her grandmother, no one at all from her side of the family showed up?
“I’ll have to ask Chuck,” Lauren said, “but I kinda think we’ll be there, don’t worry.”
Before the conversation ended, Stacy waited for her sister to offer a little more on the subject of her congratulations—to elaborate, perhaps, on how happy she was that Stacy was finally settling down with one of those good guys, thoroughly steady and solid, someone you’d choose to be the father of your children when, in fact, you were ready to have them. The only time Lauren and Chuck had met Roger was at dinner one night toward the end of the summer, and it hadn’t gone as well as Stacy had hoped. Le Bernardin, the restaurant Roger had chosen, was among the most expensive in the city, and Stacy could see how uncomfortable her sister and Chuck were when it came time for them to make their selections from the menu. Even though Roger had quietly mentioned that he was treating them to dinner, Stacy was pained to see the resentment in Chuck’s face as he ordered the very pricey calamari filled with prawns and shiitake mushrooms, and for Lauren, the equally expensive peekytoe crab. She realized it had been a mistake to take them to this restaurant they could never have afforded on their own, and Stacy had wanted to kick herself afterward for having been so dense. But she understood, too, that for reasons she couldn’t quite fathom, it was important to Roger to be able to treat family and friends to an extravagant meal—to announce to them in this way, perhaps, that he was doing very well.
She could wait all night now for Lauren to reassure her that she had chosen wisely, that Roger was a prince, a prize, a keeper. She could wait all night, all the way through to tomorrow, but it wasn’t going to happen.
“Gotta go, one of the twins is crying,” Lauren was saying, but for the second time tonight, Stacy told herself that she knew a lie when she heard one.
“Okay, bye, love you,” she said to Lauren. Of all the different kinds of unrequited love, this was hardly the worst, she thought. Still, it would have been nice . . .
S
They’re lunching at a plastic table at Burger King when her phone, positioned next to a tall, waxy cup of Diet Coke, begins to ring. She sees that it’s Marshall, and also that there’s ketchup smeared above Will’s brow and under his nose, a vividly red purée which she wipes off with the flimsiest of paper napkins as she talks to her brother-in-law, who is very distressed about something to do with Beverly.
She thinks of her mother-in-law and the assisted-living center overlooking the East River where Beverly is doomed to spend the last years of her life on the single floor reserved for those residents with Alzheimer’s.
The one piece of jewelry Beverly took with her when she moved into her room at Renaissance Living Center was her engagement ring, a small marquise-cut diamond that, Clare had hoped, would serve to remind Beverly of who she was.
T
his proved to be a mistakenly optimistic notion, as, before too long, Beverly ceased to remember much of anything. She has been inhabiting another planet, one of her own creation, ever since moving to Renaissance two years ago.
Now her diamond ring is gone.
And Clare.
According to Marshall, who heard it yesterday—during one of his occasional visits to Renaissance—from someone who works security there, in all likelihood the ring was slipped off Beverly’s wizened finger the other night when no one was looking, then pocketed by one of the women who was subbing for Starquasia, Beverly’s regular caregiver. Someone whose job it is to escort Beverly to the bathroom whenever necessary, give her a shower every day, and wash and condition her hair on Tuesdays and Fridays.
“Oh, Marshall, I’m so sorry about the ring,” Stacy says. The cuticles of two of her fingers are rimmed with the ketchup she wiped off Will, and she needs to get up and wash her hands. After that she will have to tell Roger all about his mother’s diamond.
“My mother?” Roger mouths. “Does he want to talk to me?”
Marshall says, “At least Clare’s not here to see this, to see how people are all too eager and willing to take advantage of a pathetic old lady with dementia.”
Yes, at least there’s that.
“You know, I still haven’t given away Clare’s clothing,” Marshall says. “I just can’t bring myself to go into her closet and do what has to be done.”