by Ann Hood
“That poor little girl?” her mother asked.
“Yes,” Lucy said. “This one.” She pointed to Harriet, standing there in the front row.
In the picture, there is a big space between Harriet and the next child, Susan Polk. No one stood close to Harriet Becker. They were afraid of lice and ringworm. When they passed her desk, they made a hissing sound like an aerosol can to kill the cooties.
Lucy’s mother studied the class picture. “We used to bring the mother canned food and old clothes,” she said.
“I heard something terrible happened to her,” Lucy said. “To Harriet.”
“Her mother drank, I think. She wasn’t even grateful for the handouts.”
“I heard she got hit by a car or something,” Lucy said. Her finger rested on the picture, filling the space left between Harriet and Susan Polk.
Her mother shrugged. “I thought they moved to Florida. Someplace warm.”
Staring at that picture, Lucy found herself wishing that Harriet Becker would look up, away from her scuffed Mary Janes and the classroom floor, into Lucy’s eyes.
“He died,” Lucy’s mother was saying. “This Reilly boy. Drugs.”
Her mother tapped the face of the boy holding the small black sign: Mrs. Williams, Grade 3.
Nathaniel Jones courts a woman the way Cary Grant or Rock Hudson wooed Doris Day in the movies. He sends flowers. He arranges romantic dinners. He sends airplane tickets and limousines and reservations in hotel suites. He makes Lucy’s head spin. He has invaded her life. She can’t seem to get away from him. It is the way her father courted her mother back in the forties, the way she had been raised to believe men win women’s hearts.
But despite the daily bouquets of roses and the weekends at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, Lucy feels strangely disconnected from the affair. There is something big missing between her and Nathaniel Jones, something she can’t put her finger on. Julia and Katherine call her for every detail after her weekends in Boston with him. They remind her how romantic all this is. They imagine her future for her—a house on the Cape, an apartment on Beacon Hill, trips to Europe and beautiful clothes. “He’s one of the most eligible bachelors around,” Katherine keeps reminding her. “And he’s after you.”
When Lucy gets back to her own apartment though, she never thinks of Nathaniel Jones. She thinks of Harriet Becker, of her new Dolly series. She thinks of the counting book. Her Four Friends link arms. They are multiracial, dressed in vivid colors like a Benetton ad. Her Seven Seashells are nestled against pink sparkly sand. She comes up with her own idea for the number ten—Ten Tails.
She leaves two pages three-quarters blank. She colors the background blue. The top quarter looks like a brick wall, with ten tails hanging down, some dropping into the blue background. A monkey’s tail. A rat’s tail. A duck’s tail. A horse’s tail. Ten different ones, lazily swishing.
“You’re a genius, babe,” Nathaniel murmurs to her in the soft downy sheets of the Ritz-Carlton that Sunday morning.
He has the picture propped up against his knees. He is smoking a cigar.
“It’s great. It almost looks upside down,” he says. “And it deals with cultural differences and animal identification. The works.”
Lucy is wearing the pastel blue silk robe he has given her. That too makes her feel like Doris Day. Or maybe Marilyn Monroe. She does not wear silk robes. She wears T-shirts or terry cloth. She does not, as she does today, sip mimosas in a hotel suite. Or eat fresh croissants from a silver basket.
“How does it feel,” Nathaniel asks her, “to be there?”
Lucy stops peeling apart the fine layers of croissant. “Be where?”
He laughs and opens his arms, sends cigar ash across the sheets. “There. Here. Almost at the top.”
Lucy cannot even make herself smile.
“Great,” she says.
Nathaniel Jones is a man you cannot say no to. He is relentless. That’s how he got to be famous. That’s why his face sells Scotch. That’s why he sells children’s books. And Lucy, after her weekend at home with her family, gave in to him. As difficult as he is, bossy and demanding, something about him is also easy. He takes charge. He makes all the decisions. And Lucy just has to go along with him, not even think.
She flies to Boston every weekend. There is a car waiting for her. There is a hotel room and flowers and even fancy presents. She thinks that if she were in a movie, this is the part that would be a kaleidoscope of spinning images—she and Nathaniel out on the town, kissing in taxis and eating at fine restaurants, toasting each other with champagne and losing themselves in twinkling marquee lights. If this were a movie, she would fall in love with this man and lead the life women are supposed to lead, according to her mother.
But every time she returns to New York and her own apartment, she feels relieved. She puts on her faded T-shirt of the London subway system. She drinks a cold Brooklyn Beer. She doesn’t even answer the phone. She just draws.
Lucy takes a leave from Whirlwind Weekends. My Dolly appears and suddenly nothing is the same. Stores sell out of the book, toy stores sell out of the doll. Dolly is in The New York Times, People magazine. Everywhere Lucy goes, Harriet Becker’s sad little face is looking at her.
She and Julia go to stores in Manhattan and hide behind stacks of Barbies and Cabbage Patch dolls, watching people buy My Dolly. Little girls hug it. Don’t worry, they tell it, I’ll take care of you.
“Are you rich yet?” Julia asks her.
Every day Lucy gets phone calls, reports on reorders and sales, more offers for My Dolly items.
“Almost,” she tells Julia.
They are in a Toys ’R’ Us, watching a new order of My Dollys being put on the shelves.
“Does it feel as good as you thought it would?” Julia asks her.
Lucy nods. Of all the things—the contracts, Nathaniel Jones, the money—this is the thing that feels best, the most right. Having her creation out here in a store in Valley Stream, Indianapolis, San Jose. Having little girls love My Dolly.
Julia squeezes Lucy’s hand. “This is so great,” she whispers, as the shelves are filled with more tangle-haired dolls.
Ashley Hayes’s voice on the telephone says, “Good Morning America! Can you believe it?”
It is another Saturday morning. Outside, the sun is warming Boston. Nathaniel Jones has four newspapers spread across the Ritz-Carlton bed.
But he looks up when Lucy repeats, “Good Morning America? Wow.”
Her hand trembles.
“I’ll FAX you the details,” Ashley says. “Call everyone you know and tell them to watch you on Thursday.”
When she hangs up, Nathaniel picks up the phone. “Send up a bottle of Perrier-Jouet,” he says. “Hell, send two bottles.”
“It’s only a television show,” she tells him when he hangs up.
He takes her in his arms. “You are going up, up, up, Lucy,” he says.
These are the kinds of things that excite him. National television. Magazine coverage. Royalty statements.
He pushes her gently onto the bed. The newspapers crackle under her silk robe.
“I’m going to get newsprint all over this,” she tells him. Sometimes, his elbows seem to stab into her. Their bodies don’t fit quite right.
“Who cares?” he laughs. “I’ll buy you a dozen more.”
She smiles. She smiles because she is succeeding at her craft. Because she is going to be on Good Morning America. Because this man will buy her a dozen silk robes. Because two bottles of champagne are on their way up to her. She smiles because she should be the happiest woman in the world right now. And maybe, if she smiles hard enough, this sad part inside her will dissolve.
“What I think we should do,” Nathaniel tells her as he refills her glass with champagne, “is move you up here.”
“Me?” she says. “Move to Boston?”
“Right.”
There is a cloud of gray-blue cigar smoke above the bed. Lucy waves her hand
to disperse it.
“I don’t know,” she says.
But Nathaniel talks over her. “You can move in with me,” he says. “You’ll love living at my place.”
She has been there only once. He thinks it is more romantic to spend weekends in a hotel. But one night she hosted a party with him at his brownstone. It was filled with modern art, splotches and swirls on canvases, odd-shaped furniture and shelves of awards.
“I don’t know,” she says again. She thinks of a life of silk robes and glitzy parties. She tries to remember what it was that she and Jasper were working for, what it was they used to plan when this day came. But she can’t remember. Perhaps, she thinks, it’s all this champagne that’s clouding her mind.
Zing
KATHERINE DOES NOT GO to Memphis with Spencer. Instead, she goes to Boston and spends a long weekend with Andy. She pretends, during those four days, that she is married to Andy. She tries to find out what she has missed by leaving him that day almost a year ago. While he is at the hospital making rounds, she goes to a fish market.
“My husband,” she tells the man behind the counter, “likes fresh swordfish steaks.”
The man has gray hair and watery blue eyes. His face is windburned to a ruddy color, his lips are cracked and chapped. As he weighs the fish, Katherine sees a gold wedding band on his finger. This man has probably been married for twenty, maybe even thirty years, Katherine thinks. She is sure no woman ever left him searching for passion. Somewhere in Boston there is a wife for him, who gives him lemons to cut the fish smell on his hands, and sleeps with him every night.
“Anything else?” he asks her in a thick Boston accent.
Katherine shakes her head. But she doesn’t move. Instead, she stands at the counter and watches him.
The next customer, a middle-aged woman with her teenaged daughter, says, “Hey, Mike. How’s the scrod today?”
The daughter has a poor complexion, long stringy hair. Her nose twitches against the smell of fresh fish, and she looks, bored, out the window toward the harbor.
Someone is married to this woman, Katherine thinks. She cannot imagine her marrying for passion either. And the teenager. She probably kisses boys who ride motorcycles, boys who drop out of school. Is that passion? Is that love?
“You all set here?” Mike is asking her.
“Oh,” Katherine says. “Yes.”
She stumbles out the door, into the bright day.
Katherine and Andy are meeting Lucy and Nathaniel for brunch at the Ritz-Carlton.
“Is Lucy the same as ever?” Andy asks while they dress. He carefully knots a red and blue striped tie.
“No,” Katherine answers quickly. “She’s different.”
He laughs, tightens the tie. “She used to be a spitfire,” he says. “Guys were terrified of her. A real wiseass.”
Katherine considers this. Lucy did not have many boyfriends in school. The ones she did have were always different from the fraternity guys everyone else clamored to date. For a while she saw a graduate oceanography student. And then a guy who taught sailing.
“Was she aloof?” Katherine says.
“Aloof,” Andy repeats. “I guess so. But I loved those little cartoons of hers.”
“Lucinda Luckinbill,” Katherine says. She brushes her hair, sprays hairspray on the bangs.
Andy pats her on the back like she’s an old pal.
“Ready?” he says.
Nathaniel Jones is not nearly as handsome as Katherine imagined. He is shorter, slightly paunchier than he seems in those Scotch ads. Lucy seems to not even notice that he is there beside her, hanging on her elbow, watching her as she talks.
“I haven’t seen you in years, Doctor,” Lucy says to Andy.
“That’s what Katherine and I were just talking about,” he says.
He glances at Katherine. It feels good to be here with him, to have these signals, she thinks. She places her hand on his thigh, and lets it rest there.
Nathaniel talks and talks. He orders champagne. “For my star,” he says, hugging Lucy.
Lucy still seems not to notice him. “He’s making me a drunk,” she says.
They are halfway through brunch when Nathaniel finally asks Andy what kind of doctor he is. They are almost finished eating before he talks to Katherine at all. Over coffee he says, “Help me convince Lucy to move up here. With me.”
Lucy groans. “Not now,” she says.
In that instant Katherine suddenly likes Nathaniel. Maybe he isn’t exactly rude, she decides. Maybe he’s just in love. And then her good feelings about her and Andy start to fade. It looks like Lucy has met someone who adores her, who is passionate about her. She starts to wonder how Spencer is doing. But when she tries to imagine him on his pilgrimage to Graceland, she reinvents him, makes him taller, thinner, better dressed.
Later, back at his apartment, Andy says, “Lucy’s just the same.”
This surprises Katherine. “I see her so differently now,” she says.
“Is she going to marry this guy?”
Katherine shrugs. She says, “Who can figure out love?”
Andy says, “I can.”
“Let’s spend the entire day in bed,” Katherine tells him on her last morning there. “Let’s make waffles and eat them right here. Let’s have sex right up until I have to catch my train.”
Andy laughs and kisses the tip of her nose. “You nut,” he says.
Then he gets up and in a few minutes she hears the shower running, and Schubert playing on the radio.
Instead of going straight back to New York, Katherine goes home to Connecticut for the night. Her sister Shannon picks her up at the train in her new car, a black Acura Legend. “My grown-up car,” she calls it.
The big white house with the black shutters looks good when they pull into the driveway.
Katherine says, “It’s so quiet here.”
Shannon cuts the engine. “What?” she says. “The urbanite likes a little peace and quiet?”
Katherine doesn’t answer. She gets her suitcase out of the backseat and goes inside. At first, she stands in the front foyer, and breathes in the familiar smell, like lemons and wax. She touches the desk, rubs the shiny mahogany. She knows what is kept in every drawer in that desk—postage stamps, envelopes, pens, and unsharpened pencils.
Her mother finds her there and says, “What do you need? An invitation?”
Katherine shakes her head. “Everything just looks so good.”
There are canapés set up in the den. Sitting there, on the dark maroon leather couch, Katherine feels like a guest. It is the same way she feels at Meryl King’s. She feels she doesn’t really belong anywhere at all. She tries to picture herself living in Queens, listening to Elvis songs, eating bad Italian food but having great sex. The thought depresses her. She cannot see Spencer in this room. She cannot imagine introducing him as her husband.
Shannon is saying, “Can I tell her now?”
“Go ahead,” their mother says. “Before you burst.”
She stretches her hand out to Katherine. “Da-dah!” she announces.
Sparkling there on her ring finger is a large pear-shaped diamond.
Suddenly, Katherine starts to cry.
She sees the worried looks Shannon and her mother exchange.
“I’m all right,” she manages to say.
“I thought you were over this,” her mother is saying. “Is this about Andy still?”
Katherine looks at Shannon. “It’s about me,” she says. “How do you know it’s right? How do you know you and Rich should get married?”
Shannon looks at her mother again.
“Honey,” her mother says, “you just know.”
“I don’t buy that,” Katherine says.
Shannon smooths the hem of her lime green sweater. She studies that instead of Katherine’s face.
Katherine says to her, “You don’t know either, do you?”
Shannon laughs, a short nervous laugh. “Yes, I do,” s
he says. “We have it all planned. We booked the club and everything.”
“Do you have orgasms with him?” Katherine blurts. “Do you die whenever he touches you?”
“Katherine!” her mother says.
Shannon blushes bright pink.
“There’s this guy in New York,” Katherine continues. “Spencer. He’s a little nerdy guy. I don’t think I love him, but it gets confused because the thing I didn’t have with Andy, passion—”
Her mother and Shannon both stand.
“That’s enough, Katherine. Honestly, you have me worried sick. I don’t know what you are going to do or say next—”
“But this is important,” Katherine insists.
Her mother pretends to study her Rolex watch. “We had better get a move on, girls. We have to meet your father at the club at seven.”
Later, in her own bed that night, Katherine stares up at the words she wrote on the ceiling. Softly, she sings the songs to herself. “Uh … uh … uh … uh … stayin’ alive. …”
There is a soft knock on her door.
Shannon says, “Kat?”
Katherine doesn’t answer, but Shannon opens the door anyway. She stands there, silent, a few minutes. Then she says, “No. At least, I don’t think I do. You know, have them. You know. Climax.”
Katherine swallows hard.
“One time,” Shannon says, “I started to feel something. Something different, you know? Something great. And I didn’t know what was happening, and I said, ‘Rich? Rich?’ And then he finished and I felt like I was left hanging in midair.” She sighs. “Maybe that was one. I don’t know.”
Katherine doesn’t answer her.
“Sometimes,” Shannon says, her voice as soft and small as a child’s, “I imagine going off and having a wild weekend. Having an affair with a stranger. Really feeling what it’s like.” She giggles. “Forget I ever said that.”
“All right,” Katherine says.
Shannon hesitates. “Well,” she says, “goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
“Kat?” she says. “Do you think I shouldn’t marry Rich then?”
Katherine sighs. “No,” she says. “I don’t know what to think.”