The Widow Waltz

by Sally Koslow

  That is where I had driven today. I cruised Hedge Lane several times, then parked in a lot by a church on the next street. Bundled in one of Luey’s snowboard hats with strings that dangle like braids, my face eclipsed by the dark, wraparound sunglasses my mother wore after cataract surgery, I felt as foolish as I looked. This village is where hard-working locals live, away from the high rollers of the über-Hamptons on whom their incomes largely depend. The air was raw and bone chilling and carried the scent of fish.

  I skulked down the street—there were no sidewalks—and arrived at a redbrick house in the architectural style of the Three Little Pigs, solid and snug, defying any wolfish gust off Shinnecock Bay. I tried to stare innocently, as if it’s normal to be riveted by a garden-variety wren perched atop a country-style mailbox. Given the family business, the front yard was no calling card. On the door was a tired evergreen wreath with a dangling tartan ribbon, its message falling short of welcome. There were holly bushes but few other perennials. The grandest feature was a blue spruce big enough to be a third-tier contender for Rockefeller Center.

  I could not imagine Ben dropping anchor—or drawers—in this house. He was a man who favored expensively cobbled monk strap shoes that would have looked at home in Covent Gardens, a guy who rattled on about transforming our East Hampton roof into an herb garden, and, if he made a mega-score, buying a Bentley. He was a man who employed a driver and rarely accepted the first table offered to him at a restaurant. Until my meeting in December with Wally, none of this bothered me.

  My doppelgänger lurched to the door, pressed the bell, and heard it chime. For good measure, she rapped the knocker, shaped like a whale. Real-me was impressed. Where did she find her conviction?

  A woman opened the door and peered from behind the security chain. She had an unlined face, thick eyeglass lenses, and a fluff of snowy hair. I put her age north of menopause yet substantially south of assisted living.

  “Yes?” she said. Her suspicion came across as clearly as a wail.

  No, I thought. I cannot be on this expedition. I coughed several times, although when I left the house I had been in fine health. “Does Clementine D’Angelo live here?” I asked, after I found my voice.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Is she home, please?”

  “She ain’t here now.”

  I heard an unmistakable bleating. “Oh, you have a baby,” I said.

  She grimaced. “The gulls,” she said, tilting her head toward the sunless sky. “Those damn flying rats.”

  While I looked up toward the soundless birds above, I heard a thud. I turned around to say good-bye. The door was closed.

  I hurried to my car and collapsed on the seat, steadying my hands by gripping the steering wheel. After a few minutes I wound through the empty village streets until I passed by Adam and Eve. The van bearing its name was parked nearby, but I would not be knocking on another door. I had used up today’s allotment of courage.

  Without a break I drove eighty miles back to Manhattan, exceeding the speed limit as I told myself I must be deranged. Now, as I get in bed, I expect that tonight will be like all other nights, only worse. My mind will churn. Bogeymen will creep from under my bed. I will hear every car alarm, and New York’s entire fleet of garbage trucks will grunt down my street, grinding refuse. Yet none of this happens. I shut my eyes and sleep like a block of cement, without a thought in my head. This is not to say that I luxuriated cozily until a decent hour. At five-thirty I opened my eyes to darkness, fumbled for my slippers, and felt compelled to check on each daughter. Luey, looking like a fawn, is curled, fittingly, in a fetal position. Nicola’s long black hair sweeps over her shoulders.

  While I indulge in a shower long enough to rid myself of yesterday’s taint, I am my own judge and jury, evaluating how guilty I should be for yesterday’s prying caper by the sea. On a scale of one to ten, I give myself a seven. I’m lost in my ritual cleansing, when I hear the phone ring but miss it. The call is from Daniel and Stephan’s home. I towel off and call back. Daniel tells me it was Stephan who phoned, about some photographs, but my brother has gone to an early meeting.

  Stephen returns my call at ten. I grab the phone before the end of the first ring.

  “What’s in the pictures?” is my greeting. “What have you found?”

  “Good morning to you, too, sis,” he says.

  “Please don’t keep me in suspense.”

  “It’s a rather fascinating PDF, actually. From Idaho, of all damn places.”

  Potatoes. A canceled ski trip to Sun Valley. Hemingway. Baby-faced hustlers in a movie starring River Phoenix, poor little addict. What could Idaho have to do with Ben?

  “Emmett, Idaho, a grand Gotham in the county of—you’re going to love this—Gem. That’s where the diamond-and-emerald whopper Ben brought in has turned up. At least someone’s got a sense of humor.”

  I am sure Stephan can sense that my forehead must be blinking Huh? “You’re sure it’s the same one?” I mumble.

  Stephan sighs heavily. “The ring I saw was an emerald with two diamonds of the same size, all superb gem quality, exquisite clarity, D color, as white as you get, unusual old cuts from the early 1900’s—sharp corners and an open cutlet,” Stephan says. “And of course when I saw it, I assumed the chances were good that it would wind up on your finger. Naturally, I kept pictures.”

  “Could you have made a mistake?”

  “Gemstones are like fingerprints—no two alike—though despite what you may think, I am not so arrogant that I couldn’t admit to making a mistake. I need to examine the ring to be certain.”

  “How did the picture make its way to you?”

  “We’re a small fraternity, practically a barbershop quartet. Not that many of us deal in rare cuts of this size and lucidity.”

  Stephan started one of his lectures on crown facets and how the cut was a forerunner of modern round brilliants. That it had a line down the center, a cutlet, and the bottom facet looked black. Blah, blah, blah.

  “When will you have the ring?” I interrupt.

  “It should arrive by courier within forty-eight hours. But Georgia,” my brother says, uncharacteristically gentle, “these aren’t the most important questions you should be asking.”

  I know.

  25.

  Luey would sooner admit that she loved baton twirling than confess that she had an Oprah-esque fascination with aphorisms and homilies. Two hundred years earlier she’d have been happy to tat her favorite bromide du jour on a sampler.

  Today she’d taken to looking up what the wise and famous had to say on making decisions. Theodore Roosevelt was no help. “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing is nothing.” Thanks a bunch, Teddy-O, Luey thought. How do I tell what the best thing is? Why did anyone elect you president—because you could blow the head off a moose?

  Luey had been chewing on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen” when Nicola knocked on her door. Luey granted her entry, and her sister had flung herself at Luey, begging her to keep the baby, offering in some abstract way to help. As Nicola crunched her in an embrace, Luey realized in that instant she’d already made up her mind and thought, Okay, pregnant I will stay. Yet the minute the words hurtled from her heart to her brain, she wondered how she’d ever be up to the task. Sure, she liked babies; she also liked vacations in Napa but the idea of buying a vineyard was best left to made-for-television movies and venture capitalists. Babies were cute and sometimes interesting. They turned, however, into expensive, demanding, lasting creatures requiring U-Hauls full of tuition, sports equipment, attention, and patience. Luey could feel sweat dripping from her armpits. Babies were best raised by grown-ups.

  Why do you want to keep the baby, Ms. Silver-Waltz? She kept hearing th
e question, as if she were being simultaneously interrogated and smacked on the head by a Supreme Court justice. She was fairly sure it was Justice Ginsburg, identifiable by the dowdy glasses and flouncy lace jabot that looked as if it was ordered from Etsy. Justice Righteous looked down at Luey and asked, Are you selfish?

  Yes, ma’am, without a doubt.

  Are you insane?

  Maybe.

  Are you a right-to-lifer?

  No, no, noooo. Luey didn’t feel at all compelled to stay pregnant for religious reasons. Her personal code of ethics aligned with the right to choose.

  Do you have a monster ego?

  Yes! Now she was getting someplace. Luey really wanted to meet and know her own child. What could be more narcissistic? But before she had time to brood on this point, the justice shouted, Is your decision because of losing your father so recently? Justice Righteous morphed into Dr. Heckler, her kiddie shrink. Dr. Heckler and Justice Ginsburg had the same taste in glasses and ponytails.

  Do you think your father is being reincarnated in some bizarre way? Dr. Heckler asked, totally reasonable, as if she wondered whether Luey wanted another one of the gummy bears she kept in a bowl on her table.

  Luey wanted to say no when the correct answer was Bingo. In having a baby, some part of her father would live on. She liked that. She felt that it was not just important but essential. More than that, it was destined. Beshert, as Nana would say.

  And yet Luey was utterly confused. She wasn’t sure if she believed in heaven or, in any case, if Ben Silver would have made the cut to enter. She did know that wherever her dad was now, he would probably be the last person to suggest that she keep the baby. He’d want to see her back at Stanford, to “make something of herself,” not another human being. Her mother was all quiet concern on the other side of an uncharacteristically firm boundary. Luey now recognized that this barbed-wire gauntlet of respectfulness that Georgia refused to cross was one reason she’d been having so much trouble deciding on the right course of action. Her mom wasn’t weighing in, as she usually did. Was this because she was up to her ears in her own problems, or because she didn’t know what Luey should do?

  Both, Luey guessed, and arriving at this realization took no time at all. Now she needed only to determine if she kept the baby, or allowed it to go to another, better, parent.

  26.

  This morning I was in Stephan’s office looking at the diamond-and-emerald gewgaw my brother was convinced had to be the ring that Ben had shown him months ago. It fell into the category Stephan called notice-me jewelry, a Cosa Nostra wife’s trinket, making Signora the envy of her friends. If the ring could speak, perhaps it would share the secret of how it traveled from Ben to Gem. But it had its own omerta. The dealer in Gem had bought the stone from a jeweler in St. Louis. The St. Louis jeweler bought it from a Chicago jeweler, without a record. That was all Stephan knew. I left his office none the wiser.

  An hour later, as I enter the foyer of what will be our home for five more weeks, Luey calls out, “Look who I found lost on our street.” I am expecting one of her canine clients until I look up and my stomach does a contortion.

  Clementine’s hair is now the purple-red of port. She seems even taller than when we first met. Her lightly freckled wrists stick out of her jacket as she perches on the edge of the couch, wearing jeans and boots—black, well-shined city footwear—her legs stretched out in front of her, clumsy and vulnerable at the same time. Even from ten feet away I can see her pale eyelashes are wondrously long. Until now I also hadn’t noticed that her eyes are the avocado green of the refrigerator in the first apartment I shared with Ben, the first apartment I shared at all, since I skipped the roommate stage. She takes in my face and appears not to blink. The news crawl marching across the bottom of the image reads: Georgia Waltz, beware. Two can play this game. Hurricane ahead. Proceed with caution. Deep breath. Do not let drop your paranoia like a bomb. Georgia Waltz . . .

  Luey puts a glass down on the wood table in front of Clementine. This is not the moment to remind my daughter to find a coaster. Having Clem here calls for a fusion of strength, composure, and intimidation. Since I choose not to stand on a chair to be on equal footing with her when she rises, I try to channel Camille, who used to be impossible to dwarf even at five-foot-two.

  “Hello there,” I say. “I forgot you two know each other.” More important than this disingenuous statement, How much do you, Clementine, know? “What brings you to the city?” To my borough, my block and my living room?

  Luey is scowling, wondering, Why so rude?

  “A doctor,” Clementine says. She examines her watch in a conspicuous gesture. “I have to leave or I’ll be late.”

  I believe none of this. She stands and, as her jacket flaps open, I see she’s as thin as a wire sculpture. Except, of course, for breasts that could entertain a man for hours.

  “Thanks for the water, Luey,” she says. “Good to see you.” The glass is still full.

  “If you come to town again, let me know—I’m not in college this semester. We could hang out, see a movie, or I could take you to some of the clubs.”

  My next thought is how lonely my daughter must be, with her nearby friends caught up with three-ring sideshows at Columbia, NYU, and Sarah Lawrence. When one pal gloated about taking a film seminar with James Franco, Luey threw a plate across the room. One fewer item for eBay.

  “This is actually the first time I’ve ever been in New York City by myself,” Clementine says, as if she has made a solo expedition to Saudi Arabia.

  When she admits this, my mother-molecules stand at attention. Clementine’s honesty and vulnerability, if that’s what I’m seeing, make me like her. I don’t want to like her.

  “Where’s your doctor?” I ask. She offers an address on Christopher Street, which makes it twice as odd that she was nearby.

  Luey jumps in. “That’s easy to get to if you take the subway—I’ll give you directions,” she says. “But it’s tricky after that.” The route will require turns through the maze of the Village, and if you attempt a shortcut, you can lose your mind as easily as at Ikea, where you can find yourself buying a new kitchen when you came in for Swedish meatballs. “Shall I go with you?”

  Clementine and Luey do not need additional time to bond. “I’ve got to take out Sadie,” I say. “Wait a second and I’ll get you headed in the right direction. I’m sure you can find your way at the other end.”

  And so it comes to pass that Clementine D’Angelo and I are together again. Neither of us speaks and then both of us blurt out, “Why did you come to our house?”

  “You first,” she says.

  I try to steady my voice. “I apologize for dropping in. Did I upset your mother?”

  “My grandmother?”

  “Grandmother. I thought you and I might talk.” I turn toward her. “I sense some unfinished business.”

  She stares again, holding my eyes, unnerving me. “Mrs. Silver,” she says. “I’m very sorry Ben died.” Ben. “He seemed like a . . .” She grapples for words. “A great guy,” is the best she does after she looks across the street for the answer. “But please. Leave me alone. I don’t know what you think I know. I have nothing to say to you, nothing, and neither does . . .”

  “Does who?”

  She shrugs in a gesture common to first graders.

  “Who, Clementine?” This time I touch her arm.

  “It’s been hard enough,” she offers, as she shakes me off and her eyes fill with tears she brushes away.

  “Please tell me,” I urge.

  In violation of a red light and good manners, she responds by bolting across the street, dodging cars. I blink and she is gone.

  I head home. The two blocks feel like ten. As I pull out my front door key, I—who lately have been so preoccupied that twice I haven’t noticed one of my own daughters walking twenty feet ahead—
spy the Adam and Eve van rounding the corner. It parks in front of a hydrant, near the next intersection. I run toward it, Sadie barking with the thrill of an adventure, stubby legs flying. In the opposite direction, there is Clementine, sprinting toward the vehicle.

  “Clem!” I shout. “Clementine!” Sadie barks loudly. Clementine eyes me and picks up her pace. Someone in the van opens a door. She hops in and tears off. “Damn!” I say, loud enough so that the Ecuadorian flower seller who used to tell me which roses were freshest—when I would buy two dozen every four days—looks up and says, “Missus, you okay?”

  “Everything’s fine, Alberto!” I shout as I continue to race toward where the van had pulled away. By the time I get there, it is lost in thick traffic.

  Until this moment I have not realized to what degree the appeal of my 10019 zip code has faded, with its downtrodden horses, piles of dung, and tourists certain they’ve spotted a rock legend prancing out of the Ritz Carlton or a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist cruising for a well-dressed prostitute. Time to move on.

  Sadie and I trudge back home and are almost at our front door when I hear the screech of brakes and a thump echoed by a whinny and a smash. Voices begin to yowl with accusation. Now I am running back to where three cars and a horse carriage are locked at an intersection, bumpers and fenders dinged. Their drivers stand outside their vehicles as they curse in several languages and scribble license plate numbers. New York, once my kind of town.

  After it is established that the horse is unharmed, and the damage is only to cars, I am ready to go home to a stiff drink and a hot bath, since anesthesia isn’t available. Then I do a double take. In the fray, the accident has caused considerable gridlock, and up ahead the Adam and Eve van is stalled between a Lexus and a hansom cab. I run to it faster than I realized I could, Sadie leading the charge.

  Clementine, inside the van and focused on the standstill ahead of her, startles as she sees me rap on the door. The window is rolled down an inch. She closes it tight.