“Don’t worry, Sister,” Marcus called from behind the grill. “It’s buy twelve, get twenty free on the croutons today.” Marcus had been here long enough to know that the sisters were famous for their frugality, and it was not often that they ate in the cafeteria, all of their meals generally being served in the adjacent convent.
“Thank you, Marcus,” Sister Frances said. “We were having Salisbury steak in the sisters’ dining room today, and I just can’t abide that many onions in one meal. Not to mention that lunch is nearly over by the time I can get back to the dining room from my last morning class.” She harrumphed a bit more while heaping some more croutons on her plate, adding some ham, and dispensing herself a hefty diet cola from the soda machine. The cup was almost as big as she was.
I was so busy watching Marcus flip our burgers on the grill that I didn’t notice that Mary Lou had wandered down toward the end of the line. When I realized she was gone, I looked around, spying her talking to the cashier, Maria; she slipped her several bills, all of which Maria quickly stashed in the register.
Marcus handed me two plates, each with a cheeseburger and fries, and I waited for Mary Lou to return before moving down the line. Sister Frances was in front of us and exclaimed in delight when Maria told her someone had picked up the check for her lunch. Maria professed not to know who it was or where she had gone but mentioned that the lady had said “bon appétit” after she had paid. I turned and looked at Mary Lou.
“Shhhh,” she said as we moved down the line.
Sister Frances scurried off, a big smile on her face, her croutons dancing merrily atop her healthy salad.
Mary Lou and I took a seat at a table by the window, one that had a full view of the Hudson in all its resplendent beauty. “That was awfully nice of you,” I said, plucking a fry from the stack on my plate and dipping it into some ketchup. “You made Sister Frances’s day.”
Mary Lou cut her burger into several smaller pieces, removed the top half of the bun, and salted the whole thing. “How can they serve lunch if she can’t even make it in time, poor thing?”
“You’d be surprised what goes on around here,” I said. “I have a lot of respect for the nuns. Many of them went into the convent as teenagers and have been here ever since.” I took a big bite of burger. “I agree, you’d think that the least they could do is keep a plate warm for the old gal.” I pointed toward Mary Lou’s burger. “Good?”
“Wonderful,” she said, taking a dainty bite. “I’m trying to take some weight off, so I’m cutting down on carbs.”
“You? You’re a rail.”
“Thank you,” she said, blushing slightly. “I haven’t always been. It’s such a struggle to keep it off.”
It was hard to imagine this sylph of a woman any heavier; she had a fabulous figure and wore clothes like a fashion model. I looked at my burger and decided that eating half was plenty. I pushed my plate away, but not before grabbing a last handful of fries. “So, you’re enjoying the class?” I had never gotten the sense that many people enjoyed my classes, or maybe that was just my paranoia presenting itself. I wanted confirmation from Mary Lou that indeed, what she was getting from the class was what she expected.
She took a sip of soda and looked out the window before answering. I didn’t take that as a good sign, but she was more enthusiastic once she started talking. “At first, it was hard, what with being with a bunch of young people, but now, I’m loving it.”
“Your writing is quite good,” I said. I had read the beginning of one of her short stories the night before, and although it was rough, it was headed in the right direction.
“You think so?” she asked, a smile spreading on her face.
I nodded. “I do. It could do with a couple of minor tweaks, but it’s definitely a good start.” I couldn’t resist the burger sitting on my plate, so I pulled it back in front of me, my waistline be damned. “Have you started your novel yet?” The class wouldn’t be starting the outline process on a longer work for several weeks, which I’d let her know on her first day. “Because if you have some ideas, you can start sketching them out. I don’t think that will take away from what you’re doing with the short stories.” I didn’t want to sound too curious about her husband or his murder, so I stopped talking for fear of sounding like a nosy-body. Which I am.
She looked pensive. “Do you think?”
“Whatever you want to do.” She seemed reluctant to take my advice, so I delved a little deeper. “Is it because of the subject matter of your novel?” I asked. “The death of your husband?”
She looked down at her plate and nodded.
“Are you sure you want to write about something so painful?” I asked.
She crossed her arms on the table and went back to gazing out the window. “I’m not sure,” she said.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. “Listen, take your time,” I said. “You may have another story to tell. It’s a few weeks before we start that unit, so think about it.”
She smiled, but I could tell that she was troubled; about what, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that writing about murder was heavy business and she didn’t seem to have the strength to do it, as much as she told herself she wanted to.
“For now, just enjoy the class,” I said. “Without you, I’m not sure what I would do. You seem to be the only one who gets my jokes.”
“You are very funny,” she said.
“Not too sarcastic?” I asked, still feeling the sting of Joanne Larkin’s criticism.
“Sarcastic? You?” she asked, smiling. “I don’t believe I know what you’re talking about.”
It was right then and there that I decided that I really liked Mary Lou Bannerman. The woman obviously had very good taste.
Eleven
Don’t ask me how this group came together, but it was Saturday night and I found myself in a dive bar that was a midpoint for everyone in attendance, drinking cheap white wine from a glass that may or may not have been clean, sitting on a bar stool that was losing the stuffing from its cushion. Surrounding me were Crawford, Fred, and Max, and Christine and Tim, and much to my growing surprise, we were waiting for a table to open up so we could sample the fine culinary delights offered by this sketchy establishment. Who’d have thought there would be a wait? Not I.
Max, clad in leggings and a baggy Ramones T-shirt that drooped off one shoulder, was looking around suspiciously. This from a woman who thought that Maloney’s, the bar where we spent the better part of our senior year at St. Thomas, was fine dining until at least the late nineties. I took in her outfit, her leggings going down into a pair of throwback Doc Martens. Yep, still having a tough time with her upcoming birthday. She looked like the Max that I had carted out of CBGB back in the day, the one time I had seen liquor get the better of her. The most disturbing thing was that she had accessorized with a pleather pocketbook, not her usual thousand-dollar bag. Something was definitely afoot, and I wasn’t sure it was just her birthday. I wondered if she was having some kind of psychotic break; it just wasn’t like her not to look stunning at all times.
She leaned in and I got a whiff of her perfume, which, mixed with the smell of peanut shells and cheap beer, was not a pleasant scent. “What are we doing here?” she hissed. “And with these people? I thought it was just going to be us.”
“I told you that Christine and Tim were coming.”
She was not pleased. “Well, I didn’t think they’d actually show up. Her brother just died, for God’s sake.”
When Max had one thing in her head, and things went another way, it was trouble. She was clearly in a pissy mood.
“This is worse than Maloney’s.”
“I thought you loved Maloney’s.”
“Sure, in the nineties when I didn’t know any better.”
“Just pretend that it’s the nineties, then,” I said, not bringing up that she looked as if she had dressed for a nineties frat party. She’d have fit right in in that outfit.
Fred looked
cranky, but that’s his general mien. “I want food.”
Max looked at him. “Well, why don’t you go ask the maître d’ if we’re going to be seated soon,” she said, looking at me. “Oh, right. There is no maître d’.”
Christine, who had gone to the ladies’ room—and I use that term loosely—returned. “It will just be a minute,” she said. This had been her idea. She had read about this place on some Web site where it had been deemed the “best rib joint this side of the Mississippi.” That, coupled with the fact that it was exactly the same distance from Connecticut, Westchester, and New York City, made it a good suggestion, at least until we had actually walked in.
Christine took in Max’s reaction. “We can go somewhere else,” she offered.
“No, it’s fine,” Max said kindly, but the passive-aggressiveness was in full display for me, her oldest friend.
After another round of cheap hooch, and a third glass of seltzer for the designated driver, Max, we were led to a red vinyl booth, complete with nail heads to hold in the Naugahyde, and seated around a large round table. The sides of the booth went up so high that no one could see over them to the next table. It was cozy, to say the least. So cozy that I could feel the muscles in Fred’s thigh pressing against my own; it felt like I was sitting next to a two-by-four.
“Alright, so bring on the barbecue,” Max said, turning the flimsy menu over in her hand, looking at both sides, unimpressed. “Did this article you read talk about what we should order?” she asked.
Christine scanned the menu. “Try the mac and cheese and the spare ribs.”
Satisfied with that suggestion, Max put her menu down. I had to admit that even though we were all making our best effort to make this outing not weird, being together was still new to everyone, and it was bordering on the absurd. Christine was definitely hell-bent on illustrating the fact that she had once been married to my husband, and had two children with him, was a nonissue. I wasn’t sure what to make of her attempts to make us all friends; it seemed forced and a little unnatural, but I was giving it the old college try, if not for Crawford—who didn’t seem remotely interested in having a relationship with Tim—then for the girls, who would be better off knowing that we could all get along. As for Fred and Max, we had invited them along as our “buffer couple,” Christine having known Fred for far longer than I did. I had explained that to Max when we made the plan. Crawford and I figured that if the conversation lagged, one of those two would pick up the slack. We hadn’t taken into account Max’s black mood, nor the fact that Fred rarely spoke.
All in all, the whole thing was hurtling along toward a miserable end, so I tried to change the subject, asking Tim if he could explain exactly what a hedge fund manager did and why so many people did it. The first part seemed to be inexplicable, because when he was done, I still wasn’t any closer to an understanding of the occupation, but the second part was far clearer. They did it for the money.
“Ah,” I said, nodding. “Definitely a lure.”
Apparently, Max picked up something in his tone that suggested that all wasn’t peachy-dandy at Westcore Financial Trading. “What do you really want to do?” she asked.
He looked at her, surprised that she had picked up on a little shred of dissatisfaction that the rest of us had missed. “I’d love to open a sandwich shop,” he said.
“Really?” she asked. “I’d like to be an exotic dancer.”
We all turned toward her, waiting for her explanation. We knew one was coming. She was a ditz sometimes, but she gave things a lot of thought when she was hot on something.
“Work nights, all cash, exercise every day,” she said. “Flexible hours. What could be better?” She looked around for our server. “I need another drink.”
No, you don’t, I thought, remembering then that she was drinking soda and saying a silent prayer of thanksgiving.
“But back to this sandwich thing,” she said. “What’s the deal?”
Tim blushed, unaccustomed to the interrogation stylings of Max Rayfield. “I love to cook, but I love sandwiches the best,” he said.
“Duh,” she said. “What is it about a sandwich shop in particular that makes you think you’d like it?”
He considered for a moment, not having given this as much thought as Max had given her imaginary career as a stripper. “The creativity. Figuring out different ways to put ingredients together to make a special sandwich.” He shrugged. “Not sure, I guess. It just sounds like it would be a great way to spend my days.”
“You need a hook,” Max said, ever the marketer. “You know, like bread baked on the premises, or all-Italian, or salad mixed with sandwiches. Or guys who work shirtless.”
“I think that’s against the Health Department guidelines,” Tim said without a trace of irony.
Max waved a hand in the air. “Whatever. You need something to set you apart. It can’t just be a regular old sandwich place.”
Tim leaned in, all ears.
“You’ve got to make sure you have a story and a concept all worked out before you dive in.” She waved her empty glass around, hoping, I guess, that someone would take pity on her and refill it. “Otherwise, you’ll fail.”
“Fail,” he murmured, saying a word that he hadn’t had a lot of experience with, if his hedge fund was doing as well as he said it was.
Max let it go. In an uncharacteristic show of sensitivity, she changed the subject and asked Christine how she was doing after her brother’s passing.
Christine’s mood changed at the mention of Chick. She dropped her head and stared at the table. I looked over at Max as if to say, “Good going.” She shot me back a silent “What?!”
When Christine looked up, her eyes were wet with tears. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it,” she admitted.
Max wisely kept her mouth shut.
“He was so happy to be back,” she said. “I just can’t believe that he would take his own life.”
I thought back to my brief conversation at the funeral with Mac McVeigh. He seemed pretty sure that it had been suicide, but his final report hadn’t been rendered. I had been in that apartment; the note and the drugs seemed to point to suicide even if Christine couldn’t believe that it was.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, looking at me. “He was a strange guy. I know that. But he was just so happy to be back with us, and I’ll never forget that. I don’t think he came back just so he could leave again,” she said, and with that, her crying began in earnest.
Our server, a tattooed fellow with a scruffy goatee, came by, nervously took in the scene, and told us he would give us another minute before taking our order. I reached across the table and gently squeezed Christine’s hand. “This must be really hard for you.”
“You have no idea,” she said sadly. Then she seemed to gain strength from my show of sympathy, quickly becoming defiant, a side of her I had never seen. “My brother did not kill himself. I know that.”
I resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow at Crawford, preferring instead to keep my eyes trained on Christine. Crawford, as was his way when the emotional chips were down, kept his mouth shut, something he’d be hearing about later in the evening.
“You’re looking at me like I’m crazy,” she said, directing her comment to everyone at the table, thankfully not just me. “Chick was happy to be back. He was happy to be home.”
If he was happy to be in that fleabag of an apartment with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars stuffed in his mattress, the guy was crazier than I initially thought. Honestly, the one evening I had spent with Chick had left me thinking that he was capable of just about anything, and even though suicide wasn’t one of the things that would have crossed my mind, it didn’t surprise me a bit. The guy had been gone for a long time. Who knew what he had done, what he had seen? I was sure Christine didn’t know the half of it.
She continued to look at all of us crowded around the table. Finally, when it appeared that no one was on her side, she cr
awled over her husband and left. He peered around the high banquette and watched where she went.
“Ladies’ room,” he said. He got up and put his napkin on the table. “I’ll be back.”
The four of us looked at each other; it didn’t seem proper to go back to discussing the menu, so we did the only thing that seemed appropriate under the circumstances: We ordered more drinks. The wine that I was drinking got better with each successive glass, lightening my mood, at least. While Tim and Christine got themselves together in the ladies’ room, we ordered a few appetizers; once they arrived, we devoured them, leaving only one potato skin and a sad-looking wing on a plate that had once been piled high with food.
Christine apologized when she returned. “It’s going to take a while.” That’s all she said; all talk of a nonsuicide—a murder presumably—was done.
We all murmured that we understood how she felt, even if we didn’t, and then undertook the task of ordering a meal that was way overdue if the glasses in front of us were any indication.
Christine smiled. “I would really like to do this again. Soon.”
Inwardly, I groaned. Did we have to? Could it be in another six months or so? I had to work out some of the issues in my head, the ones that had no place being in my head, yet there they were, taking up a lot of room. This was perfectly pleasant—albeit seemingly a little too soon after her brother’s passing—but instead of rehashing the good old days with my husband’s ex-wife, I wanted to go back to Saturday nights spent on the couch with my husband in our pajamas, watching Food Network competition shows and programs about greasy spoons. I looked over at Tim to see what his reaction was, but he looked as impassive as always. If I were Tim, I’d look the same way; before Christine, he had been a chubby widower with a receding hairline and four little kids. As far as he was concerned, he had hit the jackpot with his new wife, an attractive dark-haired woman with a great body, and he wasn’t going to rock the boat.
Extra Credit Page 7