by Toby Devens
“In that case . . .” I said.
• • •
“Kiki wins round two on points and the fighters haven’t come out of their corners yet,” Marti said when I told her Charlie’s news.
“Don’t be so sure. I called Lulu Cho for a consult. The fortune-teller? She came up with Kiki’s birth date online and crunched the astrological numbers. She said Kiki is losing her strength while I’m gaining. My magpies are chirping. They symbolize good luck. Kiki’s birds are crows and they’re plunging from the sky.”
“Meaning?”
“According to Korean voodoo, crows are bad omens and their fall signifies her haeng-un—her luck—is on the descent.”
Marti snorted. “Kiki’s between eighty and death, so, yeah, she’s descending. But what kind of collateral damage is she going to take out on her way down? That’s the question. Now, my feeling is the woman isn’t altogether—what did you call her, gaga? Say she’s only half out of it, barely ga, and she managed to get a sneak peek at the guest list. When she saw your name on it, she got a sudden urge to party.” She shrugged. “Just a theory.”
“So you think as soon as I heard about Kiki coming I should have hiked my skirts and run?”
“No way, girl. This is going to be interesting. A test of sorts. How much has Charlie severed the apron strings? Does Mommy still control him by a thread? Does she jerk him around like a Tennessee walking horse on a tight rein?”
“Charlie says she probably won’t even remember me. What if she does? What if you’re right and it’s a setup? What if she makes a scene?”
“That kind won’t make a scene. Restraint has been bred into her bones. She might cut you dead, though.” Marti’s eyes took on an evil glint. “Then again, if she’s well and truly gaga, all bets are off. My grandpaw pulled a gun on my grannie when he was eighty-two. Loaded, but not cocked. Of course, she had to forgive him since he wasn’t all there.” When Marti saw my face, she said, “Come on. Lighten up, kiddo. Everything will be fine as long as you remember your birds are flying and Kiki’s are crashing.”
Maybe. I’d read that morning on the Huffington Post that senators from both sides of the aisle were expected to attend the party for Justice Braithwaite. Sandra Day O’Connor was flying in from Arizona. The Braithwaite kids, who’d shared Charlie’s childhood summers in Maine, would be there. What if they were expecting him to bring Carolyn Brinks? She’d just won a Peabody Award for her series on domestic violence in Afghanistan. I’d Googled her age. Forty-three—a young Botoxed forty-three. Oh God, this crowd was way out of my league. And Kiki, the loose cannon, would be rolling around. What had I been thinking? Okay, I’d simply phone Charlie and say I’d changed my mind or I just remembered a previous engagement.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Marti interrupted. She probably did. Sometimes she was a better mudang than Lulu Cho. “Stop playing ‘Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog’ in your head. Because you’re not. And if you ever were, you sure as hell aren’t anymore.”
Suddenly, her face lit with glee. “Oh Lordy, I almost forgot. I’ve got news about another former unworthy rival for The Barrister’s affections. Last night, I caught one of those interview shows on CNN. And guess who was in the hot seat? None other than your old pal Eloise Flint. Yup, the world-famous cellist from hell who, lo those many years ago, slid into your spot in Charlie’s bed before it had a chance to cool down. She was on for a full fifteen minutes and they even took questions from the viewers. Quite illuminating. Sorry you missed it.” Marti was playing me, enjoying watching my pupils dilate. “Not that you give a rat’s furry ass about what Eloise Flint is up to these days, right?”
I managed to say, “Right. Couldn’t care less. Did you DVR it?”
She gave off a giant guffaw. “Not interested, huh?”
“Whatever. What was she doing being interviewed? Is she a suspect in an ax murder?”
“Tsk-tsk. I wouldn’t want you as an enemy. She was promoting her new book, an autobiography titled Different Strokes. Get it? Strokes? Cellist? That’s supposed to be witty, I guess. You might want to check the index to see if you’re in there. Maybe in the chapter called ‘How I Spent My Summer Vacation Screwing My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend.’”
I winced. Eloise had done exactly that.
In a classic, almost Shakespearian betrayal, my classmate at the New England Conservatory—another Brooklyn kid, which made it all the more painful—had stabbed me in the back straight through to the heart.
Add up the hours I’d spent over the years trying to figure out what Charlie had seen in her and I probably lost eight months of my life. Eloise wasn’t even his type. Working-class background. Fixer-upper looks. Great hair—thick, curly, and auburn—pretty little nose, good cheekbones. But hippo hips and the legs of a Steinway. If she tweezed the unibrow and got hold of a good dentist, she’d be attractive, neck up. By our senior year, she’d ditched the New York accent and had begun to sound vaguely like Judi Dench, though her voice was still the texture of a potato grater. And then, when Charlie and I split, she sprung for the complete makeover—caps, electrolysis—and went after him. No one was better at realizing—no, wringing out every last drop of—her potential than Eloise Flint.
After they’d hooked up, she and I stopped talking, of course, and I never heard from him—he should have been ashamed, going back to the same sandbox for his next playmate. But I’d see flashes of them around town, or walking across the Common. And then it was summer and I went home to eat my heart out in private. By October, their mismatched affair was over. The scuttlebutt was that it was Charlie who’d ended it.
It might have been over for him, but I wasn’t finished with Eloise Flint. Five years later, I got the chance to take back my own.
Marti used her elbow to nudge me out of my reverie. “Trust me, Eloise Flint’s man-poaching days are over. High-def TV is ruthless. She looked old enough to be your mother. As for Carolyn Brinks, the media dish is she jumped straight from Charlie’s arms into the bed of that horndog—what’s his name, the Italian prime minister. So no threat there. And if your Charlie did any growing up in the last twenty-five years, he knows pâté when he tastes it. That’s you, girl. If you ask me, you’re way too good for him.”
Which is what friends are for. To say that when it’s obviously not true.
“Anyway,” Marti continued, “it’s Kiki you really have to worry about. She’ll duel you to the death for the soul of her son. I’m warning you, Jude—this time, watch your back.”
Chapter 13
Friday afternoon, I brought two containers of my homemade chicken soup and a ziplock bag of the matzo balls to my mother. I was a good daughter.
As a kid, I was good because I had no choice. By default, Grace was all I had. If she’d died, what would have happened to me? My father, sunning himself in Arizona, showed no interest and even if, pricked by conscience, he decided to rescue me, I doubt the chippie would have allowed him to take in his half-caste daughter. Grandma Roz, who thought of me as part of her meshugena son’s biggest mistake, couldn’t take on such a responsibility. By the time I was ten, she was in her seventies and bent nearly in half by osteoporosis. The only haven left for me would have been with Aunt Phyllis, who actually liked me and would have been constrained by her social worker’s principles and her good heart not to let me slip into foster care. But life with her daughter, my bitchy cousin Staci, would have been hell. So my mother couldn’t die.
Her dying was the central theme of my nightmares and most of my anxious daydreams. I was consumed by all the ways she could bite the dust and leave me alone in the world.
As I’d read through the Getting to Know Performers in Music series, the biography of Isadora Duncan always stopped me cold. The book ended with Isadora strangling on her own scarf while driving a French sports car. How many times did I reread that gruesome paragraph, obsessing? We didn’t own a car, my mothe
r didn’t drive, but she worked with sewing machines every day and her long hair could get caught in the handwheel and . . .
In fourth grade, we covered New York City history and learned about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. The image of the women sweatshop workers tumbling from the windows like tossed rag dolls was etched in my memory. My mother labored in a clothing factory. The building was old and high. What if . . .
After Mrs. Beckersham intervened because I was throwing up before my lessons, my mother took me to visit Slimline Swimsuits. She pointed to all the brightly lit exit signs and introduced me to Mr. Hersh, her boss, who told me he would personally keep an eye on Gracie so nothing would happen to her on his watch. “We love your mom here. Now you stop worrying. Such a serious little girl.”
I needed to save my mother. When she went to the market for our dinner after work, I met her at the subway station so I could help carry the grocery bags. When she sniffed with only the possibility of a cold, I dosed her with aspirin. I unlaced her work shoes and brought her slippers and tea before I set the table for dinner. Anything, anything to keep her alive.
Only after Charlie ditched me and I survived the most pain I’d ever known was I able to let go. If anything happened to my mother now, I knew I could make it on my own. With that knowledge, I rebelled and married Rebound Todd. Probably so I wouldn’t have to make it on my own. My mother had warned me. “Not for you. He very strange boy. You love Charlie, he don’t want you, so you think Todd better than nothing. Sometimes nothing better than something.”
For about twenty years I didn’t worry about her dying. I was busy; she was still relatively young. Then perimenopause unleashed its crazy-making changes in me at the same time she began to show her age. It was a toxic combination. I insisted she get out of Bed-Stuy just as the neighborhood was turning around. I found her a small apartment fifteen minutes from my house in a predominantly Jewish section of northwest Baltimore. Grace had an affinity for Jews. She’d been in the Pikesville apartment for four months when she slipped in the shower, and that’s when I moved her to Blumen House.
Finally, I could exhale. But habits, especially death-defying ones, were hard to break.
Two days into Passover, carting a cool pack with containers of soup, I drove to my mother’s. In case she got the flu or a sore throat or frostbite in April, she’d have chicken broth available for a microwave zap.
I always knew where to find her on Friday afternoons. Not that she wasn’t in the activity room most days, but she never missed “Pimlico at Blumen.” This game—residents bet on DVDs of horse races run years ago, but new to them—always drew the biggest, rowdiest crowd of the week. Out in the parking lot, I could hear the shouts whipping the ponies through the homestretch. Inside, the room was pandemonium.
God forbid you should distract the Blumen Housers when the field was in motion. Asking Mrs. Botansky if my mother was in the ladies’ room evoked a backhanded shoo. “Upstairs.”
My heart sank when the apartment doorbell went unanswered on the second ring. The time my mother took the fall in her Pikesville apartment, I’d let myself in to find her sprawled against the tub, unable to hoist herself up. Blumen House had grab bars in the bathroom and didn’t allow scatter rugs, but you never knew.
I used my key. One step in, I sensed something was off and just as quickly that it wasn’t an emergency. The table in the dinette held a glass of iced tea, cubes floating. My mother didn’t drink iced tea—hot, yes, cups and cups of pale green nok cha, but never iced. The apartment was too warm. And humid, as if someone had just showered. Dance music filtered from behind the bedroom’s closed door, and—ugh—the stink of cigarette smoke hung in the air.
As I stood in the tiny foyer adding it all up—I’d never been swift at arithmetic—the mystery solved itself by emerging from the bathroom. I hadn’t seen him in two decades, but he hadn’t changed much. Still a putz. Irwin Raphael, wearing only pajama bottoms, a fake orange tan, and a smear of shaving cream on one cheek, peered at me with a nearsighted squint.
“Judy. Jesus,” he said. “You don’t knock? You could give someone a heart attack.”
Chapter 14
“What the hell are you doing here?” I stared pop-eyed and disbelieving.
My father-in-name-only came up with a jaunty response. “I was invited.” He smiled with exaggerated innocence.
That did it. I barked, “Where is she? Where’s my mother?”
She exited the bedroom, her almond eyes chestnut round, to see what the noise was all about. Canny as a fox, the old man retreated to the bathroom to let her deal with me.
“Aigoo. Be nice, Judith.” She stood before me, making calm down waves with both hands.
“No, I will not be nice. He’s in his pajamas. A married man.”
“Not married anymore. Lorna die six months back. Irwin is widow.”
“Widower,” I said automatically. I’d been giving my mother English lessons for most of my life. “Irwin is a widower.” Hearing myself say it made it real. “And look at you.”
At least she wasn’t in her nightgown, one of the new ones she’d bought at Loehmann’s. Damn. I should have known. Her fancy haircut. The weight loss. The sudden interest in fashion. I wanted to kick myself, but I was wearing my Spanx and my ass wasn’t low enough to meet my foot.
She was all dolled up in something I hadn’t seen before, and I knew my mother’s closet. The neckline was scooped way too low for a woman of seventy-eight. Dangling in a cleavage that I swear to God could only have been made by a push-up bra was not her Life Alert lavaliere, but a delicate chain suspending a diamond pendant that had to be a full carat.
“He gave you that.” With a trembling finger, I pointed to the jewel in the cleft. “You know where it came from, don’t you?”
My mother’s hand flew to the diamond.
“From you know who, the dead wife.”
“No, not true.”
Irwin’s voice issued from the bathroom. “Don’t talk what you have no idea about.”
“He took it off her corpse,” I said.
“No, it your grandma Roz jewelry. Your aunt Phyllis give him.”
“You believe that?”
That brought Irwin out of his den, dark eyes shining. He’d changed into chinos and a T-shirt with a Brooklyn Dodgers logo. Not only had he shaved, but he’d slicked his dyed hair into a pompadour circa 1950. Back in the day, on the mean streets of Brooklyn, my father had been what they used to call a “hood,” a bad boy. Leather jacket, garrison belt, huge Star of David on a rope chain so the Italian gang he hung with would never forget they had a ballsy Jew in their midst. I’d seen the pictures. This was my heritage.
He walked up to my mother and draped an arm around her shoulders. They stood there, the two of them, as I’d never seen them standing before. A united front. Sure, now it was easy. There was no me to bring up, no chippie with the lure of easy money opening the escape hatch from responsibility.
I ignored him and said to my mother, “You—just you—talk to me.”
“You make big deal, but small deal, Judith. He come in for Seder to Aunt Phyllis. No Seder. But here already, East Coast, so he stop by.”
“You knew about this how long ago?”
“Okay, maybe month.”
“We’ve been e-mailing,” Irwin said, unbidden.
“You e-mail?” I stared at my mother, astounded.
“Winnie Chang teach me. Easy. I join Facebook soon.”
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” I said.
“None of that,” my father admonished.
“And he’s sleeping here? Of course he is.”
“Listen, kiddo. I can afford the best hotel in town. That Harbor whatever? I could take a suite there if I wanted. But your mother said, Why not stay here? and I thought, Yeah, why not? We got lots to catch up on. We’re making up for lost time.”
“I’m going to vomit,” I said. I actually felt close to heaving.
“You so high-stringed, Judith. Always like Shakespeare.” Grace proclaimed dramatically, “I go vomit.” She made gagging sounds. “You need calm down. Almost fifty. You give yourself new aneurysm.”
Instinctively I massaged my temple. I turned to Irwin. “How long?”
“A week or two.” He pulled a nail file from his pocket and proceeded to dig away. “I want to see the sights. That old boat in the harbor.” The Constellation. “Go to D.C. and stop by the White House and all. Eat crabs. I never ate a Baltimore crab.”
“Very good. Baltimore crab best,” my mother said, looking up at him. She showed her teeth smudged with lipstick. A new color, pink, like a young girl’s.
“I’m out of here,” I said. I placed the jars of soup on the Sun newspaper laid out on the dinette table.
“Whoa, girlie. I’m a different man now,” Irwin said. “You oughta give me a chance.”
He ambled—actually it was more like a hood’s swagger—to the sideboard and lifted a shirt-sized box wrapped in silver paper. He held it out with both hands. “I brought this for you. A peace offering. What, no? You have no idea what it is.”
“How many birthdays did you forget? How many?”
I caught a quick visual exchange between him and my mother, his eyebrows up, her head waggling a negative cue.
I turned on her. “Boy, you forgive fast. Well, I don’t. All those years he didn’t know I was alive. Left you without a dime.” I tapped my temple. “I can’t imagine what’s going on in there. Have you lost it? Do we need to see Dr. Wolf?” I pointedly named her geriatrician.
She stepped in front of me. “Don’t talk like that, Judith. So rude. I’m mother, you child. No matter how old.”
“Fine. You’re right. I need to stop worrying about you.” A proposal I didn’t believe for a minute. “We’re both grown women. But this, I can’t deal with. So call me when he’s gone.”