Happy Any Day Now

by Toby Devens

  “Irwin!”

  The music stopped and the old man emerged from the bathroom wiping his hands on his trousers. He was wearing a pair of ratty chinos and a striped pajama top tucked haphazardly into the waistband. His hair was overdue for a session with Grecian Formula—a half inch of silver gave way to a fading beaver color. No Dapper Dan this morning.

  His eyes bugged at the sight of me, but he recovered fast, pulling composure from his salesman’s sample case. “Judy—” His voice was as silky as top-of-the-line nova salmon. “How ya doing?” The smile was bold, but I caught a nervous twitch in the lower lip. “We weren’t expecting you.”

  “No, I’ll bet you weren’t. All I want to hear is that my mother’s not moving out of Baltimore.”

  “Never. Would we leave you?” The “we” didn’t get by me. “Not a chance. Just upstairs two flights. Before you blow your stack, talk to her. She’ll give you the details. Sixth floor, across from the elevator. Door’s open, 6E. Beautiful place. Cross ventilation.”

  • • •

  Apartment 6E was the largest, poshest unit in Blumen House. The oak-floored living room was flooded with light from wraparound windows. The kitchen was eat-in, the powder room had a soft toilet seat for seniors’ bony bottoms, and the built-ins lining the den had mini spotlights to showcase Irwin’s kachina collection.

  I found Grace in the bedroom, wearing jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned “Poker Diva ~ Atlantic City.” She was getting to be quite a chippie herself, my mother. Arranging throw pillows on the bedspread of a California king, she startled when I barreled in and she covered her mouth like a kid caught in the cookie jar.

  “Huh? You scare me, Judith! What you doing here? I told you not home till tonight.”

  “I thought after the ride you might be too tired to cook, so I brought dinner. I left it in your fridge. Your new one that’s the size of a walk-in closet.”

  “Nice, yes? Sub-Zero. I make lots of yukgaejang to freeze for you. You can have all time now.”

  Oh no—she wasn’t going to suck up, up, and away this betrayal. Moving her whole apartment, her entire life, without telling me, her only child.

  “You lied to me, Uhm-mah. And we’re not talking a little white lie here to avoid hurting my kibun.” Out of politeness, to keep harmony, Koreans will sometimes stretch the truth to avoid having someone lose kibun—face, or pride. Kibun was my mother’s favorite excuse for keeping me mis- or disinformed. “But let’s work our way up the line to the big lie. Let’s start with your telling me you weren’t coming home until tonight. So when did you really get back?”

  “Yesterday morning. But I have good reason to not say when.”

  I looked around the room. The bed was either new or—I bought the next thought an express ticket through my brain—the chippie’s hand-me-down. Either way, it had to have been delivered. There was a chest of drawers in Southwestern style draped with a Native American blanket. A butt-ugly rustic mirror, its frame fashioned of twigs, already hung on the near wall. Both were from Irwin’s Tucson house, probably. On my mother’s old dresser—so old, she’d once shared it with him back in Flatbush—sat a television with a screen sized for cataract patients, the Best Buy tag still on. Sixteen hundred bucks. One could assume Bonnie and Clyde had been on a shipping/shopping spree. So this plan had been brewing for a while. Behind my back.

  “Your reason better be very good,” I said.

  “Best good.” By the set of her jaw, I knew she’d been training for this big reveal. “I don’t tell you about move because you tell me no don’t move. Hundred reasons no.” Grace counted off on her fingers. “Irwin bad man, bad father. Leave once, leave again. His money pay for apartment. I take his money mean I forgive everything. You say I be his maid. I work too hard. Aigoo!” She smacked her forehead. “I know what you do next. You throw fit. Try to stop us. Speak to Emma, try to call it off.”

  Emma Lewis was the recently hired, exceedingly young residence manager. And why hadn’t she notified me? She’d thought I approved, of course. I’ll bet that’s what they told her, the two-faced twosome, and since they were above the age of consent, with a hefty check of Irwin’s to back up the contract, there was no apparent problem.

  “And always, if I do what I want, not what you want, you walk around like . . .” My mother made the face of a gargoyle. “You act like brat. Make me crazy.”

  I couldn’t deny it. I would have thrown myself in the path of a runaway train to stop the Irwin juggernaut.

  “You need to change tune. Yes, Daddy do bad things. But I do too. He try to see you when you were little girl. I say no, no. You forgive me. But you don’t forgive him. Why?”

  “It’s different. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Not understand because you”—she waggled her head and singsonged—“are only one so smart. My daughter always so right about everything.” I couldn’t believe she was scolding me as if I were ten. Using sarcasm yet. With finger pointing. “Even if what you say true, I ask big question: you rather be right or be happy, Judith?”

  “What?”

  “Dr. Phil ask on TV show. ‘You rather be right or be happy?’ Irwin make me happy. I love him. He love me. Now together. No marriage. Your father want to, but I say who need marriage? Better to shack up.”

  In the silence that followed my groan, we avoided each other’s gaze. We both fixed on my mother’s shoes. Strappy red sandals. With sexy heels just high enough to twist an ankle on a seventy-eight-year-old woman. I banked that worry for later as a male voice, with an accent as far from Irwin’s Brooklynese as you could get without falling off the planet, called out, “Grace, I got the hammer, darlin’. Now I need you in here to tell me where you want these pictures hung.”

  Geoff Birdsall poked his head in the bedroom, did a subtle double take, and said, “Ah. It’s you, Jude.” His greeting didn’t quite make it to lukewarm. “What are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here? What are you doing here?”

  He presented himself full length in his grungiest jeans and a ratty Maryland Phil sweatshirt, hammer in hand. “Obviously I’m helping move your parents into their new digs.” Geoff had always been quick to read my moods, a trait I used to treasure. I was brewing up a storm. He studied me for a few seconds before turning to my mother. “Grace, darlin’, why don’t you trot down to the maintenance office and see if anyone there has a tape measure?”

  She scurried off, sending me an alarmed look in transit. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to be out of the suddenly frigid environment.

  When we heard her heels click against hardwood, he said, “Is there a problem, Jude? Because I know we’ve discussed that although you and I are, shall we say, divorced, I claim visitation rights with your mum. And now with your dad, since they seem to be a package.” He had the unmitigated chutzpah to attempt an innocent smile, Aussie skunk. In the mirror behind him, though, I saw tension arching his back. Dead giveaway.

  Why is it when you least want tears to spring, they trickle out to remind you of how little control you have over your emotions?

  I struck first this time. “I can’t believe you. It’s one thing for them to pull off a stunt like this. Keeping me in the dark because they don’t want to deal with me and face the truth. But you— Okay, we’re over, but I’ve always trusted you. And believe me, I appreciate all you’ve done for me professionally. But intruding on my personal life here . . .” Geoff stared at me as if I’d escaped from a locked ward on a psych unit. “I never made it a secret how I felt about my self-styled father oozing himself back into Gracie’s life, trying to seep into mine. And for you to be an accomplice in this total disregard of my feelings, this nose-thumbing of my status as a daughter . . .”

  “Whoa. What are you saying?”

  “You know exactly what I’m saying. They never mentioned a word to me about the move. How long have they been up to this? How long h
ave you known? Is this some kind of revenge for Charlie? Because if so, you’ve stooped to a level that’s so beneath—” As soon as I heard myself say it, I knew I was wrong. As soon as I saw the pain in his face, I knew I’d made the biggest blunder since stammering “I do” to Rebound Todd. I knew I’d do almost anything to take it back. But it was too late.

  The reference to Charlie had pulled the pin in Geoff’s grenade. In a flash, his face flamed, his brow lowered to Neanderthal, he gripped the hammer and swung. From my angle, it looked as if he were aiming to fling it on the bed and get the hell out of Dodge fast. But halfway through the rotation, the hammer head separated from the wooden handle and hurled itself into the ugly mirror. Crash! The silvered rectangle exploded. Shards rained down like ice crystals; twigs cracked and flew in a terrifying blizzard. I ducked, covered my eyes, and only looked up when I heard him gasp, though where he found air in that vacuum I had no idea. I was holding my breath.

  Geoff’s horrified triple take swerved from the headless handle he was still gripping to the shattered mirror to me. When he spoke, it was a blast to the ceiling. “Goddamn you, Judith!” Shouting my name, his voice broke.

  I backed away as he stormed from the room. I heard the apartment door slam behind him. It sounded like the bang at the end of the world.

  • • •

  “Oh, crap. Look at my beautiful mirror, all in smithereens. That piece is irreplaceable. It’s an heirloom, in Lorna’s family for years.”

  Irwin stared balefully at a twig that had come off in his hands.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’ll have it fixed.”

  It was fifteen minutes later and I was still trying to pull myself together after Geoff’s meltdown.

  Irwin was saying, “Here, let me take a look at you. You didn’t get cut, did you? Sometimes these little bits of glass get stuck . . .” He adjusted his reading glasses, peered at my face with magnified frog eyes, and rotated my jaw to inspect my skin.

  He’d never before laid a finger on me and I was about to shake him off when I noticed the row of dimples lined up in the flesh above his top knuckles. Just like mine.

  For the first time, I realized I bore some resemblance to the Raphael side of my family. With my mother’s people, I could see it vividly even as a kid, when I’d compared my round chin and chubby cheeks to the faded black-and-white photo that was all she had left of the Ryang grandparents. With the Jewish clan, I’d never felt that visceral connection that comes with recognizing yourself in someone else. Which of these big-boned, light-eyed white devils did I resemble? Certainly not Grandma Roz, who looked like she was descended from a long line of walnuts. Or my aunt Phyllis, with the blond bouffant and the size ten feet. Or my cousin Staci, who had her auburn hair chemically straightened at an upscale African-American salon in Far Rockaway. But now, as he moved in to inspect me, I could see that I had my father’s high-bridged noise, a schnoz perfectly suited to a Talmudic scholar, and his ears, C-shaped shells with the lobe deficiency—genetic anomalies handed down from Moses.

  Incredible. I looked like Irwin. A little. And because of that millimeter of tissue and bone bumped up here or shaved down there, something inside me shifted a millimeter.

  “Nah, you’re fine.” He picked up the hammer. “But that Geoff went off his rocker, didn’t he? I took him for an even-tempered guy. Go know. You have to wonder what could have set him off like that.”

  “It was an accident,” I said, sure of it. “Though he was furious with me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I thought he was in on the scheme you and Mom cooked up to hide your move. I couldn’t believe he’d keep a secret like that from me. We used to be close.”

  “Yeah, your mom told me you dumped him for the Park Avenue lawyer. The guy who broke your heart all those years ago, which told me, Ivy League or not, the lawyer was a dummy.” Irwin bestowed what could only be described as a fatherly smile on me. “Personally, I liked this Geoff guy up till today. He’s a real man’s man. As to whether he screwed you over, pardon the expression, I can tell you without a doubt he did not. No way.”

  Had Irwin Raphael sworn on a stack of Bibles, I would have checked to see if they included Leviticus and all the Psalms, because he’d probably picked them up half price at a fire sale.

  “Your mother told him that the upgrade on the apartment had your stamp of approval. She said you were playing house with the old boyfriend this weekend, which is why you couldn’t help us get the new place set up.”

  “She said what?”

  “Something about your being with the lawyer, which you were supposed to be, right? So she stretched the truth a little. No big deal. She told me if the Aussie knew the real setup, he’d never be able to keep it from you.”

  Why, that old conniver. She was even slicker than Irwin. Credit, though—she understood what Geoff was and wasn’t capable of. She’d always been a good judge of character, with the notable exception of her ex-husband. If I’d ever had the touch, I’d lost it. Irretrievably.

  “Oh God,” I said, eyeing a scattering of glass shards on the bedroom carpet. “I accused him of . . . He’ll never forgive me. I need to find him. Right now. I’ve got to apologize.” Even as I babbled my remorse, I knew Geoff couldn’t have any mercy left for me to throw myself on.

  “Hey, calm down, sweetheart. This ain’t the end of the world. Besides, he’s long gone. Took off like a shot. Best settle it by phone, anyway. Seriously, I wouldn’t get too close to a guy with that kind of a temper. You could have fooled me. He never came off as a nutcase before.”

  “He’s not a nutcase. I’m the nutcase.”

  “Nah, you’re a Raphael. We’re all very stable. Look at your aunt Phyllis. Eighteen years of therapy and she still can’t drive the Long Island Expressway.” My father winked. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. I’ll have housekeeping clean this up. See, that’s the beauty of living in a place like this. No cleaning. And now that I’ve taken over the cooking, it’s like your mother’s on vacation. She can play keno online all day long if she wants.”

  “You cook?”

  “Like a Frenchman, though I specialize in Mexican. There’s a lot you don’t know about me, kiddo. But you’ll learn.”

  His arm found its way around my shoulders as we walked together out of apartment 6E. I let it be. I was grateful for the support. For a lapsed second or two, I let myself lean against him. It felt good, dammit.

  Chapter 37

  I’d deal with my criminal of a mother later. Geoff was top priority. I called him from my car. He didn’t pick up, so I left a tearful apology. Not enough, I decided. I needed to present myself at his high-rise so he could see for himself my sackcloth-and-ashes penitence. Halfway there, I decided against it. That was after calling Marti, who’d said, “Wow, you’ve just set some kind of record. Driving two men out of your life in the space of four hours. One goes quietly. One goes crazy. Good job, Judith. No, in my opinion it’s not the best idea, you going to Geoff’s flat. Why not give him a little time to cool off?”

  When I got home, I found his message waiting. He could have phoned my cell, so I figured he wanted his response on record and he didn’t want to talk to me.

  “Judith . . .” Deep sigh. “Please know I’m sorry about the mirror. I left a message for your mum that I’d pay for the repair, and I got hold of the building’s handyman. He’ll hang her pictures. Of course, I apologized to Grace and Irwin. As for us, if need be, we’ll hash this out at a later date. Right now you must put everything out of your mind except the audition tomorrow. The rest is secondary. Focus. Concentrate. You’ll do yourself proud.”

  Typical Geoff. The Aussie with a heart as big as the outback. Sweet, even at the bitter end. And then, for whatever we’d had that we had no more, I buried my face in my hands and wept.

  • • •

  At eight o’clock the following morn
ing my mother showed up at my front door, Tupperware bowl in hand. I could see my father at the wheel of the Jaguar idling in the driveway. Obviously he wasn’t coming in.

  Just as well, because we might have lost whatever gains we’d accrued from our short but sweet bonding experience of the day before. I was cranky after a bad night. My mind racing with reruns of the day before and qualms about the day ahead, I’d grabbed only snatches of sleep, getting up twice to brush up the selections I’d be called upon to play.

  I’d expected a longer period of adjustment to the new cello. Cellos have personalities, cellists have idiosyncrasies, and by some stroke of fortune the Goffrillers and the Raphaels fit well together from the start. I had to tweak my technique somewhat, and with me it didn’t give off the dense, luxurious sound Richard had coaxed from it but, if it was different, it was equally sublime. Most of the time. There were a few bumps I wished Geoff had been around to help me smooth out. More to the point, I wished Geoff had been around.

  My need reminded me that I’d always taken his got-your-back presence lightly. But lightly was how he’d wanted to be taken, right? Lightly was what we’d both wanted, yes? My confusion had triggered a second cleansing cry earlier that morning. I’d watched the sun come up on my patio and sobbed into my coffee. Not a good way to start a demanding day.

  My mother, examining my red-rimmed eyes with her worried ones, made no move to cross the threshold. “Not inside visit today. Only stop to bring breakfast. Just make on new stove. Doenjang. You love doenjang.” I did love the soup of soybean paste and greens. “Not heavy. No garlic, so you won’t stink at audition.” She pressed the container into my hands. “I know you, Judith. Big deal today, so you get nerves and don’t eat. But must eat. Give you strength to play best.”

  “Thank you, Uhm-mah.”

  What was the use? I could never be cross with her for long. I should have confronted her about the moving violation, but it had been Grace and me against the world for my entire childhood and since our last estrangement the thought of an angry distance between us had made me uneasy.