Goodbye To All That

by Judith Arnold

  “Not Melissa. Jill,” Brooke corrected him, stirring the sauce as if she actually had to do that to make it cook properly. “She called earlier and said she needed you to go to her house on Saturday afternoon. I told her you’d be playing golf with your father then, and she said no you wouldn’t.”

  Frowning, he turned from Brooke and veered around the island to the cordless phone. He and his father played golf every Saturday afternoon. If his father spent his Saturday mornings at synagogue, Doug didn’t know. He didn’t ask. Fortunately, his father didn’t ask him, either. The only time Doug entered a synagogue lately was if someone was getting married or bar mitzvahed. Funerals, most people opted for graveside services these days. Sometimes a memorial at a shul a month later. Doug didn’t know too many dead people, thank God.

  But just about every Saturday between late April and early October, he and the old man golfed eighteen holes at Sandy Burr. It was their routine, their manly celebration. Men were outnumbered by women in the Bendel family, and throughout Doug’s life his father had always come up with activities for just the two of them, official testosterone rituals. Boy Scouts, Little League, fishing at Quabbin Reservoir. Hikes through the rolling hills near Amherst during Doug’s college years. And now golfing. Doug’s father wasn’t particularly skilled at swinging a club, but they didn’t play to win. They played for the excuse it gave them to stroll a few miles around gorgeous, manicured lawns and talk about things that had no real importance in their lives: the Red Sox pitching staff, some article on arrhythmia in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the qualitative differences between this and that brand of golf ball.

  Doug couldn’t imagine his father canceling their regular date at the club—especially when they had only a few good weeks of golf left before the weather turned cold—just because Jill, of all people, was making demands. Jill never made demands. Melissa was the one always frantic, always frenzied, in desperate need of guidance or assistance.

  He punched in Jill’s speed-dial number and wandered into the pantry while the phone rang on the other end.

  Jill answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s me,” Doug said, his gaze roaming over the glass-fronted cabinets that lined the pantry’s walls. On the other side of the glass stood neat stacks of Brooke’s special-occasions Wedgwood china, as well as cookbooks and implements—an electric skillet, an ice-cream maker—that he’d never seen her use. “What’s this crap about Saturday? Dad and I are playing golf.”

  “No you’re not,” Jill said in an officious voice. It was the same voice she used to trot out when they were all little and he and Melissa would get into a fight. Jill, the noble middle child, the mediator, the one who insisted on their forging a truce before Mom and Dad barged in and started handing out punishments, would always get that I-am-the-only-sensible-person-in-this-room voice. She might be twenty-five years older today, but her tone of voice hadn’t changed at all. “Everyone’s coming to my house. One thirty. Dad will be here, too.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  It took him a moment to remember his birthday was in March. Jill couldn’t be planning a surprise party for him—although a birthday party six months early would sure as hell be a surprise.

  He didn’t like surprises, birthday or otherwise. If Jill had suggested a surprise party in his honor, Brooke would have vetoed the plan. She would have insisted on hosting the thing herself, and she would have conferred with Doug on the choice of caterer, the menu and the decorations. She would have chosen a theme for the party. He didn’t understand her obsession with themes, but her parties were always classy, and according to her, classy parties had themes. Last June, the twins’ birthday party had had a circus theme, complete with a calliope, a clown who juggled bowling pins and a tightrope set six inches above the ground that all the children got to walk across while clutching Brooke’s and Doug’s hands. The theme of the party she’d thrown for Doug to celebrate the opening of his corrective-eye-surgery clinic was—no surprise—vision. She’d decorated the rooms with oversize plastic eyeglass frames and posted eye charts on the walls, and served hors d’oeuvres on round glass plates shaped like gigantic contact lenses. His parents’ fortieth anniversary party a couple of years ago had featured a jukebox filled with rock songs that had been popular during their youth. All the guests had been required to dress like hippies.

  His family knew better than to attempt to trump Brooke when it came to entertaining.

  So why did he have to go to Jill’s house? Obviously not for a party. A family pow-wow of some sort. Maybe Grandma Schwartz was deteriorating—although that certainly shouldn’t entail a Bendel summit meeting. The woman was ninety-four. She wore diapers and sang unrecognizable melodies most of the time. She seemed happy enough when Doug visited her at her assisted-living community.

  “I don’t like secrets,” Doug told Jill.

  “I don’t either, but Mom made me promise.”

  And you’re Mom’s favorite, Doug almost retorted, but that wasn’t really true. Their mother loved all her children equally, or so she often insisted. And since Doug was clearly their father’s favorite, he supposed he was ahead by half a length. “Tell me what’s going on, or I won’t come,” he tried. Sometimes ultimatums worked.

  Jill made a sound that was halfway between a sigh and a groan. The asthma of frustration, he diagnosed it. “I can’t, okay? It’s just . . .” Another little wheeze. “It’s a mess, and the whole family needs to get together and sort it out. Melissa’s coming up from New York, too.”

  Doug frowned again. Melissa created messes. She didn’t sort them out.

  “Look,” Jill continued, her tone now conciliatory. “You’ll come, Dad’ll be here, and if everything goes well, you and he can leave and play golf. I don’t care. I don’t want any of this.”

  “Then why are we doing it?”

  “We have to help Mom and Dad.”

  Shit. Were they having financial problems? Doug’s father’s income was lower than Doug’s; preventing patients from dying of heart ailments clearly wasn’t worth as much as reshaping their corneas. Still, his father did very well.

  But he was getting older. He might have another five years of practice left in him, maybe ten if his patients didn’t mind having their heart palpitations monitored by a septuagenarian. Once the old man was retired, though, how well were the folks set up? They had equity in their house, and Doug was sure his father’s practice had established a 401K plan for their staff. His parents weren’t extravagant. They didn’t take world cruises. They didn’t drop thousands of dollars at the casinos. Unlike Brooke, Doug’s mother wasn’t a big fan of manicures and overpriced perfume.

  Where could their money have vanished to?

  If they were facing destitution, of course, Doug would be expected to kick in the most to help them out. He had the most to kick in. As an associate with a New York law firm, Melissa earned a generous income, and if she made partner that income would rise. But she lived in Manhattan, and whatever part of her salary didn’t get devoured by rent was spent on sprees at, as she called it, “Cousin Henri’s.” Brooke had had to explain to Doug what Henri Bendel was. Pricey store, no relation.

  “What time is this gathering?” he asked Jill, toying with a dish towel that hung over the knob on one of the drawers. Where had that come from? And why did it feel so soft? Like suede.

  “One-thirty,” Jill said.

  “Make it one o’clock. If we finish early, Dad and I can still get in eighteen holes.”

  “One-thirty, Doug. Don’t give me a hard time, okay? I don’t like this any more than you do, and I’m not even a golfer.”

  She might not like it, but at least she knew what was going on. Doug was the eldest. And not to get sexist about it, but he was the only son. It wasn’t fair that Jill knew things he didn’t know. “Jill,” he said in his sternest older-brother voice. “You have to tell me what this is about.”

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bsp; “I promised Mom.”

  “Mom put you in an untenable position. We’re sibs, right? United we stand. I covered for you when . . . well, you never did anything wrong, so maybe I didn’t cover for you. But we both covered for Melissa a million times. And I got you through that stupid biology course you took in college.”

  “I shouldn’t have signed up for that class,” Jill admitted. “My advisor kept telling me I wasn’t well-rounded and I needed science in my schedule.”

  “If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have made the Dean’s List that semester. I was there for you, Jill. I had your back.”

  She fell silent. He imagined guilt and indebtedness simmering through the wires between them. “All right,” she said finally, reluctantly. “But you can’t tell anyone.”

  “Fine.”

  “Not even Brooke. I mean it, Doug. Mom made me promise—”

  “I won’t tell Brooke. What?”

  “They’re getting a divorce.”

  Doug scowled. “Who?”

  “Mom and Dad. Don’t tell anyone. They want to tell us all in person. Except that I made Mom tell me. And now I’ve told you.” Jill’s voice wavered, as if threatened by a sob.

  “All right, all right,” he said, too focused on calming her down to digest what she’d just told him. “It’s going to be all right. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Not even Melissa.”

  “Especially not Melissa.” Why the hell not Melissa? he wondered, then answered his own question: because Melissa would freak out.

  Not like him. He had nerves of steel. He made microscopic incisions in people’s corneas several times a day. He could handle this.

  A divorce? A fucking divorce? His parents?

  “And you have to act surprised,” she added. “When Mom and Dad tell us, you have to act like you didn’t know.”

  “Right.” Jill’s news was beginning to sink in. Jesus Christ. A divorce. Mom and Dad. Ruth and Richard Bendel, who’d been together so long their names had merged. RuthandRichard.

  He heard his daughters’ voices chirping down the hall as they approached the kitchen. They were chattering about something, both speaking at once, as they frequently did. For some reason, they could talk and listen simultaneously, only with each other and usually in such a way that no one else could begin to absorb their words. Maybe they’d developed that talent in utero.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said, peering down the in the direction of the family room. “I’ll see you Saturday.”

  “One-thirty,” Jill reminded him.

  “Right.”

  “And don’t tell anyone.”

  “Right.” He thumbed the disconnect button and stifled a groan. A divorce. How? Why?

  Son of a bitch. A faint smile caught his mouth as he considered the most obvious why. His father—that old fox—must have something going on the side. A patient, maybe. Someone whose life he’d saved with a well-placed stent who simply had to show her gratitude to him. Or a lusty young nurse. Doug had never met the sort of nurses he used to read about in girlie magazines when he’d been in high school, but maybe they existed. Maybe his father had crossed paths with one.

  Doug wished more than ever that he’d be hitting the links with his father on Saturday. The old man wouldn’t open up about his extracurricular activities in front of Jill and Melissa. And of course he wouldn’t feel comfortable discussing his peccadilloes in front of his wife. But he and Doug, man to man, somewhere around the fourth hole . . . He’d love to hear what the senior Dr. Bendel was up to.

  His amusement was instantly replaced by a remorse-tinged flare of indignation on his mother’s behalf. If the senior Dr. Bendel was performing pelvics on some lusty, busty young nurse, Doug might have to chew him out. He might have to lecture him to shape up, to show some respect for the woman who’d borne his children. For God’s sake, Doug’s father was too old to be having a mid-life crisis.

  Of course, if the nurse was really hot . . .

  Shaking his head, he returned to the kitchen and set the phone back in its cradle to recharge. Brooke had moved to the sink and was hunkered down so she could view the girls at eye level while they blathered at her about something they’d just seen on television. Something utterly hilarious, given their shrill giggles and breathless descriptions.

  He hovered near the cooking island, watching them through the plumes of steam that rose from the pot of boiling pasta. Madison wore a striped jumper and Mackenzie had on pink overalls. They refused to dress identically, which made life easier for their teachers and friends. They no longer looked identical to him, either, but that was because he was their father and knew them so well. He knew Madison liked to suck on her hair and Mackenzie tilted her head when she wanted to ask a question. When Madison was excited, she tended to hop on one foot, whereas Mackenzie preferred to bounce on both feet.

  Right now, they were so involved in describing the show they’d been watching that they didn’t even notice their father’s arrival in the kitchen.

  Brooke didn’t notice him, either. She looked slightly blurry through the fog rising up from the pot, nodding and smiling and managing to sneak a sip of her wine as the girls twittered and fluttered like baby birds attempting to fly.

  He didn’t understand a word they said. Watching them was like watching a foreign film without the subtitles. He observed, admiring his girls, his beautiful girls, all three of them, all of them his. He observed and wondered what Brooke would think when he told her about his parents.

  Chapter Four

  One bedroom with big closets, or two bedrooms with small closets? The truth was, Melissa needed more space for her clothes than she did for herself.

  What would she do with a second bedroom, anyway? She wasn’t about to turn it into a nursery. She wanted kids, but she also wanted to make partner at the law firm, and she figured she ought to secure a partnership first. Plus, she probably ought to get married, although that wasn’t a necessity. Lots of women had babies without getting married. Professional women. New York-type women.

  On the other hand, having a husband as well as a baby meant that in the two-tenths-of-a-percent of your life that wasn’t consumed by changing diapers and nursing the kid and trying to keep your career from flat-lining, you might be able to squeeze in a little sex. Without a husband, you’d have to go out and find a guy, and who’d have the time or the energy for that? Or else use a vibrator, which seemed kind of desperate to Melissa and also potentially hazardous with a child in the house.

  She glanced over at Luc and tried to assess his husband potential. She’d known him only a few weeks, so it was hard to say. He did have a lot going for him. He was an amazing hair stylist, a creative cook, a good dancer. He dressed well. Football bored him. He was practically gay, except in bed, which made him damned near perfect.

  Plus, he’d gotten access to this car, which meant she could travel to Jill’s house in style. Well, not exactly in style; the car, which belonged to his roommate, resembled a chop shop reject. The CD player wasn’t working. The vinyl upholstery was faded and cracked, and a patch of duct tape bandaged one part of the back seat. The ceiling fabric was held up by thumb tacks, the floor mats had gone so long without a cleaning that Melissa couldn’t guess their original color, something rattled in the trunk every time they hit a pothole, and a set of red plastic rosary beads swayed from the rear-view mirror, as if a few prayers were all that kept the car from stalling right in middle of the Cross-Bronx Expressway.

  But even a crappy car was better than the bus, so Melissa wasn’t complaining. She usually took Greyhound instead of Amtrak when she visited her family, because the bus terminal was closer than the train station to where everyone lived. She hated that on the bus, you couldn’t stand and stretch your legs during the trip, and the little lavatory across from the back seat emitted putrid odors, and you usually wound up sitting next to someone who snored or had dirty fingernails, or who was so fat his blubber oozed under the armrest and into your territory.<
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  Of course, you could get stuck sitting next to a fat, dirty snorer on the train, too.

  She’d been willing to tolerate the bus trip this weekend because Jill had insisted that her attendance at this all-of-a-sudden family shindig was essential. “I know it’s a schlep for you,” she’d said, “but Mom and Dad really need you here on Saturday. We all do.”

  Melissa and Luc had already made a plan for the weekend. She’d intended to spend the morning checking out a few apartments for sale, and then in the afternoon she and Luc had figured on taking in a movie—another terrific thing about him was that he didn’t mind chick flicks—and dinner, and maybe some club-hopping followed by a night in bed. He often worked on Saturdays, either seeing clients in the salon or doing hair for a bridal party at this or that hotel. Lots of women got married in New York every weekend. Maybe someday Melissa would be one of them, and she’d get a stylist from a salon like Nouvelle to come to the hotel and do everyone’s hair. Expensive, but given the total cost of a Manhattan wedding, who’d even notice? Hair was at least as important as the flowers. Maybe even as important as the dress.

  But Luc happened to be free this weekend, and she’d been looking forward to their first Saturday afternoon together until Jill had phoned and summoned her home. Melissa had whined and fumed, to no avail. She’d attempted to find out what was so freaking essential that it required her to drop everything and come running, also to no avail.

  Jill could be outrageously bossy.

  Wallowing in disappointment, Melissa had phoned Luc to break the bad news to him about their thwarted weekend plans, and he’d told her to hang on a minute, and when he’d come back to the phone he’d announced that his roommate didn’t need his car that weekend. Luc would have to do all the driving—Alan didn’t trust just anyone with the keys to his precious wreck of a car—but driving to Massachusetts with Luc would sure beat spending four hours each way on the bus seated next to a filthy, obese snorer and inhaling rancid fumes from the lavatory.