Goodbye To All That

by Judith Arnold

  “An escape hatch,” Jill said.

  “Kind of like Mom’s office.” Abbie grinned mischievously. “I know she’s renting the office just to get away from me and Noah because we drive her crazy.” She made her voice deep and spooky when she said that, and waved her hands wildly in front of her mother’s face. “Noah is eating all the carrots. He’s such a pig.”

  “Tell him to eat the broccoli.”

  “Oh, yeah. Fat chance.”

  The doorbell rang and Abbie sprang toward the door. “Aunt Melissa!” she shouted, and Ruth never had a chance to tell her how right she was about keeping the apartment.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  If Jill was to believe Brooke, her Thanksgiving dinner was a huge success.

  Brooke claimed that two signs of a successful party were people eating a lot and people talking a lot. Drinking, less so, because too much drinking could lead to bad behavior. But no one seemed to be drunk, and Noah swore the cider tasted hard, even though it wasn’t, and Jill couldn’t imagine how he would know what hard cider tasted like, anyway. Well, she could imagine it, but not in the context of Noah. He was too blessedly nerdy to be messing with liquor.

  The twins thought the term “hard cider” was hilarious. “It’s a liquid!” they shrieked between hiccups of laughter. “How can it be hard?”

  “It would be hard if you froze it,” Abbie pointed out, which quelled their hysterics.

  Abbie was lording over the other children, which, as the oldest of the young, was her right. She held her water glass by the stem and crooked her pinkie—where she’d picked up that affectation Jill couldn’t guess—and lowered her knife to her plate between bites, and took it upon herself to lead the interrogations of everyone at the table who had some explaining to do, starting with Melissa’s new boyfriend, Aidan O’Leary.

  “Are you a lawyer or an attorney?” she asked him solemnly. “Melissa is a lawyer. Which one are you?”

  “Oh, I’m definitely a lawyer,” Aidan said without smirking. “Attorneys are pretentious.”

  “What’s pretentious?” Noah asked.

  “Stuck-up and phony,” Abbie informed him before turning back to Aidan. “Are you a Democrat?”

  That got a smile out of him. Jill’s mother intervened. “No politics on Thanksgiving,” she said.

  “Why not? I thought Aunt Melissa brought him with her so we could get to know him.”

  “I’m a registered Democrat,” he said, saving Abbie from her grandmother’s disapproval.

  “Last time Aunt Melissa visited, she brought Luc,” Mackenzie commented.

  “Yeah, Luc,” Madison chimed in.

  “He did hair,” Mackenzie said.

  “I do intellectual property,” Aidan informed her, winning points for being unflappable in the face of such tactlessness. “It’s similar to hair.”

  “He also helped me get the price down on the apartment,” Melissa added. “He’s a hell of a negotiator. So—something to give thanks for!” She lifted her wine glass in a toast to herself. “My bid was accepted, and now I’ve just got to survive the mortgage application.”

  Congratulations were shouted, glasses were raised, Doug mentioned something about how the real estate market in Manhattan seemed impervious to the upheavals in other regions and Brooke mentioned the name of an interior designer she knew in Soho, if Melissa was interested. Melissa joked that by the time she was done paying the down payment and closing costs, she’d be lucky to afford an air mattress. Decorating would have to wait.

  “It’s a terrific apartment,” Aidan assured everyone.

  “How many bedrooms?” Jill’s father asked.

  “Two.”

  “Two bedrooms? You need two bedrooms?” Jill’s mother tilted slightly in her chair, as if trying to glimpse Melissa’s abdomen. Jill, at the foot of the table, could have told her there was nothing to see.

  “I might eventually,” Melissa said laconically.

  Aidan was less discreet. “The second bedroom would make a nice nursery.”

  An uproar ensued—a happy uproar, for the most part, punctuated by the twins squealing, “What? What’s everybody screaming about?”

  The hubbub was silenced by Melissa’s vehement announcement: “I am not pregnant.” Jill scanned the long table and noticed more people were staring at Aidan than at Melissa. The object of their critical scrutiny was grinning. He wasn’t photo-spread handsome like Luc, but he had an animated smile and sparkly green eyes. And he was demonstrating an admirable ability to take on her family without quailing.

  “It’s just, you two haven’t known each other very long,” Jill’s mother said. She sounded as if she was selecting each word with care, but it was too late for diplomacy.

  Across the table, Jill’s father turned to Aidan, who was seated next to him, and said, “Not that this is any of our business.”

  “Of course it’s your business,” Aidan said affably. “She’s your daughter.”

  That won him a few points from Jill. “Aidan, have some more stuffing,” she offered, nudging the bowl toward him. “Doug, you look like you could use some more turkey.”

  Doug held up his hand in protest, but when Gordon passed him the platter of meat, he forced himself to spear a slice of breast meat and add it to his plate.

  “So, you didn’t want to have Thanksgiving with your own family?” Jill’s mother asked.

  “They live on Long Island,” he said. “I see them all the time. Besides, I’ve got four sisters and a brother. One less mouth to feed is okay with them.” He grinned and scooped a spoonful of stuffing onto his plate. “Your stuffing is better than my mother’s. She ruins it by putting raisins into it.”

  “Raisins! Eew!” The twins erupted in giggles while Noah made gagging sounds and wrapped his hands around his neck, pretending to choke.

  “Did you know,” Abbie addressed him, “that Grandma is a musician?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Aidan said, glancing quizzically at Melissa.

  Jill’s mother shook her head and waved her hand. “I majored in music, sweetheart. That doesn’t make me a musician.”

  “She wrote a paper about this old composer. What was his name, Grandma? I forgot.”

  “Corelli.”

  “Right, Corelli,” Abbie confirmed.

  “She wrote about his suspenders,” Noah added.

  This elicited some confusion among most of the guests. Jill corrected him. “Suspended seconds,” she said. “Isn’t that right, Mom?”

  “Yes.” Jill’s mother attempted a modest smile, but she sat straighter and a flash of pride lit her eyes. Maybe she was sort of a single woman, maybe she was destined to become a divorcée, maybe she was a clerk in a convenience store—but she’d written an honors thesis on Corelli’s suspended seconds, and that was worthy of respect.

  “I think classical music is boring,” Noah said.

  Abbie gave him a withering look. “You’re probably just too immature to understand it.” She turned back to Jill’s mother. “Next time I visit, will you play me some Corelli?”

  “I’d love to,” Jill’s mother promised.

  “Corelli, schmelli. When she’s not listening to Corelli, she goes dancing at rock clubs,” Jill’s father muttered.

  “Rock clubs?” More tumult. Noah raised a fist in victory and hissed a yes! Doug frowned at Brooke, who turned her hands palm up in the universal “don’t ask me” gesture. Jill simply sipped her wine. She’d known about her mother’s club-hopping, just as she’d known Melissa had fallen in love with the apartment in New York because the second bedroom would make a perfect nursery. She knew Brooke was a lot tougher and smarter than she let on, and she knew Doug was a lot softer and more vulnerable. She knew her father was far more dependent on her mother than her mother was on him.

  Everything was different, and she knew all about it.

  Down at the other end of the table, Gordon caught her eye. He wasn’t different, she thought with a burst of gratitude. He’d been Gordon when
she worked at home, and he would be Gordon when she worked in the minuscule office she’d found for rent on the second floor above the bakery where she bought her father’s rugelach. He was Gordon, the father of a little boy and a little girl, and in a few months he’d be Gordon, the father of a not-so-little boy and a young woman.

  Everyone was eating. Everyone was talking. This was definitely a successful party.

  “MOM?” ABBIE CALLED through the open bedroom doorway.

  Gordon was already in bed, clad in his sweatpants and leaning against his pillow, which he’d turned vertical against the headboard so he could sit comfortably. He was reading the sports section of the Boston Globe, which he hadn’t had a chance to read earlier because the house had been full of company.

  Now they were all gone. Melissa and Aidan had accepted Doug and Brooke’s invitation to stay with them—“We’ve got more room, and Jill’s got her hands full dealing with dinner,” Brooke had pointed out. Jill’s parents had left, and Jill had watched from the front door as her father had opened the passenger door for her mother and taken her hand as she lowered herself onto the seat. Chivalry, affection . . . whatever it was, it had made Jill’s eyes tear up.

  Or maybe they’d teared up because of the monumental mess awaiting her attention in the kitchen. Pots, plates, leftovers, half-burnt candles. Silverware. Stemware. Picked-over crudités.

  But things had gotten cleaned up, with assistance from Abbie, Noah and Gordon. Noah stuffed things into the dishwasher the way professional basketball players stuffed balls into baskets, and Gordon’s concept of clean counters differed drastically from Jill’s, but eventually the kitchen had been restored to its usual state of semi-neatness. Jill had rewarded herself with a Diet Coke once the last of the mashed potatoes had been snapped inside a plastic container and crammed onto an already overcrowded shelf in the refrigerator.

  She’d been in the bathroom when Abbie had summoned her. Noah was slumbering peacefully in his bed; ten years old meant he no longer fought her over bedtimes. He seemed to be growing an inch a day, and he needed sleep to recover from the strain. It was too early for Abbie to retire when she didn’t have school the following day, but she was dressed for bed in an L.L. Bean nightshirt.

  Jill was dressed in a nightshirt, too. She’d just finished rinsing her toothpaste and Gordon’s down the sink. No way would she complain about his having left blobs of toothpaste stuck to the porcelain. She was in too good a mood, and he had wiped down the kitchen counters, sort of.

  “What’s up, honey?” she asked, emerging from the bathroom into the bedroom.

  “Earlier today, Aunt Brooke told me I needed to have a theme for my bat mitzvah.”

  Jill nodded. “You don’t need to have a theme. Aunt Brooke thinks that makes for a better party, but we had a great party today and it didn’t have a theme.”

  “Yes it did,” Abbie argued.

  “What was the theme?”

  “Thanksgiving,” Gordon shouted from the bed.

  “Family,” Abbie corrected him. “That was the theme.”

  Jill pondered Abbie’s statement and found nothing to dispute. “Okay. That still doesn’t mean you need to have a theme for your bat mitzvah.”

  “Well, I’ve got a theme.” Abbie lifted her chin slightly, a posture of pride. “Independence.”

  “Independence?”

  “Yeah. That’s the theme.”

  Jill suppressed a smile. “I think Aunt Brooke was thinking along the lines of, you know. Soccer. Or Star Wars.”

  “Gross!”

  “Or the Red Sox. Something that would lend itself to the decorations and the invitations.”

  “Independence would work. We could have the Statue of Liberty on the cake. And party favors that looked like the Declaration of Independence.”

  “You mean, a Colonial theme?” Jill supposed that would work. Stars-and-stripes bunting, red-white-and-blue tablecloths . . .

  “No, an independence theme,” Abbie emphasized. “Like freedom. Liberation. It’s my bat mitzvah, and it means I’m taking charge of my life, and I can be anything I want to be. Anyone can, if they’re willing to fight for it. Like Grandma getting her own apartment. And you getting an office. Liberation.”

  It sounded awfully amorphous to Jill, but she loved the idea. More important, she loved Abbie for having come up with it. “We’ll talk to Aunt Brooke about it,” she said. “You and she can brainstorm and figure out how to make it work.”

  “You too, Mom. I want you brainstorming, too.”

  “All of us, then.”

  “We can meet in your office.”

  Jill smiled, trying to picture all three of them squeezing into that tiny space. They might all fit if she and Brooke wound up buying a small desk. And maybe only one file cabinet, instead of two.

  “Fine. We’ll meet in the office.”

  Abbie broke into a joyous grin. “Thanks,” she said, gathering Jill in a surprisingly strong hug. “’Night, Daddy,” she hollered in Gordon’s direction before skipping down the hall to her own bedroom.

  Jill waited until Abbie had closed her door before shutting her own bedroom door and turning to Gordon. He folded the sports section and tossed it onto the floor beside the bed.

  Jill considered picking it up and putting it on his dresser, then thought, what the hell. Right now his chest was more important. His naked chest. His adorable, familiar smile. His flyaway hair. His strong arms empty, waiting.

  “Hey, buddy,” she murmured, crossing the room to the bed and tugging open the buttons of her night shirt. “Wanna show a girl a good time?”

  “Let me think about it,” he joked, though his eyes were warm and those strong arms reached eagerly for her.

  She had an office. Paying for it meant she might never be able to afford France. Or maybe she would be able to afford it, eventually. Anything was possible.

  And in the meantime, she thought as Gordon pulled her closer, she had this.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ruth was stuffed. She didn’t think she’d eaten more this year than she had at previous Thanksgiving dinners. But this year, she hadn’t done any of the cooking or cleaning up, so she hadn’t had an opportunity to burn off any of the feast she’d consumed: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes—a nice change of pace from the yams, she had to admit—Brooke’s crudités, several glasses of wine and a generous slice of that banana cream pie Melissa’s guy had brought.

  She wasn’t used to eating such huge meals anymore. She hadn’t taken the bathroom scale with her when she’d moved, so she had no idea what she weighed these days. Without Richard to cook for, though, she existed quite happily on suppers of soup and salad or fruit and cheese, and recently, she’d noticed her slacks fitting her a little more loosely at the waist. She felt . . . lighter.

  It could be a psychological thing. She’d shed some burdens, jettisoned some emotional stuff. Could losing psychic weight change the way her pants fit?

  Beside her, Richard drove, his face settled into a relaxed smile reflecting the sort of contentment that came from spending an evening eating good food while surrounded by family.

  “So,” she asked, “what do you think of Melissa’s new boyfriend?”

  “He’s not Jewish,” Richard said, then shrugged. “At least he’s not a hairdresser.”

  “I liked him,” Ruth said. “I thought it was very sweet that he brought a pie.”

  “Who brings a banana cream pie to Thanksgiving?” Richard shook his head. “Apple pie, cherry pie, pumpkin pie, sure. Banana cream pie?”

  “It was delicious.” Ruth sighed happily. “The way he and Melissa were talking about nurseries . . . I think they’re serious.”

  Richard shot her a quick look. “Did she say anything about getting married?”

  “No. But she seemed awfully happy.”

  “She can hire Brooke to plan her wedding.”

  Ruth grinned. “Maybe her old boyfriend will do her hair for the event. Maybe he’ll do all our hair.
”

  “Marlon Brando,” Richard muttered, glancing Ruth’s way again. “Don’t let him near your hair. It looks fine the way it is.”

  Ruth realized with a start that he’d said something nice about her appearance. She tried to recall the last time he’d given her a compliment, the last time she was even aware that he’d noticed her hair. Not that she blamed him; you live with a person for forty-two years and you stop seeing that person. “Thank you,” she said.

  Richard slowed the car as they neared the entry to her apartment complex. His smile faded as he steered a meandering route past the blocky brick buildings and the parking lots, in and out of pools of light from the street lamps, until he reached her building. He pulled into one of the unnumbered visitor spots and shut off the engine. Then he turned to her.

  She braced herself. Was he going to plead with her to come home? Point out that the wonderful evening they’d had, not just with their family but with each other, proved their marriage was still solid and healthy and they should be together? Blubber that he missed her?

  If he did, how would she respond? Would she break his heart if she told him she wouldn’t come home? She adored her cozy little apartment and her simple suppers. She appreciated her newfound lightness. And while she admittedly felt affectionate toward him right now, maybe even loving—she had drunk quite a bit of wine, after all—she didn’t miss him.

  “I had a good time tonight,” he said somberly. “I’d like to see you again.”

  Like a date. She stifled the urge to laugh at his stilted, polite request. He seemed so solemn, she didn’t want to insult him by bursting into giggles.

  “I was going to ask you to come back to the house with me,” he continued when she remained silent. “But I realized . . . this will sound strange, but I’m not ready for you to do that.”

  It did sound strange. Her urge to laugh waned as she studied him in the uneven light. He looked bemused, as if he didn’t understand his own feelings.

  “I don’t know how to say this, Ruth. You’re my wife. I love you. But . . . I like channel surfing. I’m not sure I want to stop clicking the remote.”