by Susan Conley
Annabelle knew for a fact that Lorna had the personal cell number of both the Lifestyle and Entertainment editors of The New York Times, and that they ran in fear of her. She presented competence, exuded confidence, suffered no one gladly, much less fools. Even on a Saturday afternoon, she was painstakingly turned out to the nth degree, and was without a doubt in line to start her own business, sooner rather than later.
Annabelle looked down groggily at her stained and faded T-shirt, and her threadbare sweats. She had style — sure she did. But the idea of dressing up just to cry like a baby didn’t make sense. Her sweetly bobbed hair was lank, her eyes were sore, the underneath part of her nose was red and raw, and in the intellectual part of her mind, she knew that this was beyond miserable. But she also knew it was necessary.
She tended to fall in love quickly, and fall out of it excruciatingly slowly. Well, I’m a romantic, she thought. Okay? She’d have a crush, have some dating, maybe it would soon merit the ‘R’ word, and then … and then.
Hey! Not like she was the one that got dumped all the time. Sometimes — often — she was the one who made the decision to let the thing fade away. Remember Adrian? She was the one who took it slow. She never even kissed him. It was like elementary school, it was so innocent. That faded away very nicely, thank you, no hard feelings, no endless autopsy of the event. Actually got back on her feet and got onto the next thing.
Which had been Wilson.
“ — And then, in she sweeps, not even waiting for permission to enter, and she’s holding a chicken leg by the skinny end with her fingertips, demanding to know how this offensive piece of meat found its way onto her vegetarian plate — ”
Oh, Lorna, she thought. Sometimes I wish I had a bit of your cool detachment. You never get your heart broken. You would have added up the signs, the little behavioral hiccups, you would have known the score. You would have never gotten blindsided like this, never. She’d never been so shocked in her life.
Had she? Really? Been shocked? Totally and completely … ?
Well. Maybe in a while, she’d actually be able to look at that truthfully.
But not now. Now, she was going to sink, sink completely and fully. In previous heartbreak situations, she had dusted herself off, gone on a trip, taken a class, gotten a haircut, you name it. This time was different. She didn’t know why, but something had to be processed. Something had to be let go. Maybe that’s what that tarot card was about. Change, shifting direction, not nice gradual change, but brutal, heartless change. Maybe I should look that up and —
“Hold on there, darling.”
Annabelle had lurched up suddenly and almost fallen over. She plopped back down too quickly, and thought for a horrified second that she was going to puke. She imagined Lorna covered in spew. Standing there in those insanely high heels covered in vomit. She shook her head to release the mental image — she’d been practicing her creative visualization assiduously over the past year, and didn’t want it to start working now.
The phone rang.
They both froze. Even Lorna looked wary.
It rang again.
They looked at each other, and Lorna quirked a brow. Annabelle shook her head.
And again.
Lorna shrugged and gestured. Annabelle shook her head faster.
Lorna rose abruptly.
“We can speak, it’s only the phone ringing. I’ll get it.” She grabbed the receiver without checking the caller ID and answered it, putting on a fake French accent.
“Oui, ’allo?” Annabelle could hear a confused response through the handset. Lorna smirked and mouthed ‘Maria Grazia’, and batted away Annabelle’s reaching hand.
“Esscusem moi, mais I no speak ze Eeenglish tres good. ’Oo ess thees please? ’Allo? ’Allo? — ” Annabelle snatched the phone from her.
“MG? It’s me. No, Lorna. Sure. Yeah. Of course. Yes. Okay. Bye. Bye.”
Lorna was smiling like the Cheshire Cat wreathed in smoke. “She’s so easy it’s not funny anymore.”
“She says she’ll take care of you in person. She’s on her way over.”
Lorna handed Annabelle another box of tissues as she welled up again. “Here. Good Lord. Anna. We love you. Yes? We want to take care of you … for as long as the statute of limitations allows.”
Annabelle laughed, blew her nose, and threw the soggy tissue at Lorna’s head. Lorna leaped up from the couch and in one fluid motion gained her feet, opened the freezer, and removed yet another tray of ice.
“One more round. Just like old times.”
Chapter Four
Maria Grazia bustled. She was perfectly able to affect a sinuous sort of swing of her hips — her lovely and curvaceous hips, as she often thought of them — but it was bustling time, and so she did. Not that Lorna was not a good friend to Belle, but ice was not what was needed right now. A little flash of Italian-American fire would do the trick.
Which inspired Maria Grazia to pull her collar up around her face as she booked down Atlantic Avenue. Holy Mother, if Aunt Angelica got wind she was in the old neighborhood, there’d be hell to pay. She’d never hear the end of it, she’d get cut out of the will, her own mother would rain brimstone down on her head … She cranked up the bustle before she got sidetracked by a bakery.
Sweet or savory? Madonna mia, who knew? She herself knew there was a deli on the corner of Clinton and DeGraw, or maybe it was Hicks and something. She decided she’d hedge her bets. Safely out of the realm of her relatives, she let go of her collar and shook back her strawberry blonde curls. Aw, she loved the old place, even if she was in danger in running into half of her family. They still couldn’t understand why she chose the Lower East Side over the safety of south Brooklyn, but if she was going to be a hot young fashion designer — and she was building up to the boil, she just knew it — she had to be where the action was.
Oh, but look at that glorious window treatment! Maria Grazia was considering branching out into textiles, and the rich satin lining on display only served to emphasize the sheer decadence of the velvet that it lay against. And look at the way the fabrics framed those gorgeously flaming orange tiger lilies! Maybe she’d redo the window of her storefront. She stood and breathed in deeply, as if she could smell the flowers from the street. She took her latest notebook, and a pen, from the pocket of her trench coat — it was her own design, and the cheerful cottage flower print contrasted nicely with the severity of the cut — and, standing there in the middle of the sidewalk, started making notes. She checked the number of the house in case she wanted to come back, and as she looked back to the window, a frowning older woman was standing in the center of Maria Grazia’s view. She smiled — a blinding affair of straight white teeth, dimples, and sheer joy that amped up the sincerity and warmth of her glorious face — a smile that visibly made the woman relax and smile in return. MG waved and moved on, and the women stood for some time watching her walk away.
Maria Grazia had that effect on people. Well, on strangers. Strangers took in her (in her opinion) delightful curves, her tumbling curls (thank you, Mama), her heavily lashed brown eyes (Papa, grazie), and were immediately put in mind of a Botticelli. A Botticelli that liked a good meal.
Once people got used to her, however, her looks no longer created that dramatic effect. Particularly once she opened her mouth. Well, what could she do, she was who she was, she grew up in frickin’ Brooklyn after all, and at best, her gravelly tones called to mind Marianne Faithful. At worst, they merely called to mind a cement mixer. A cement mixer relentlessly churning rocks and grit at top volume — Oh! Snapdragons!
Belle would love those, and flowers were perfect for a broken heart, MG supposed. She herself was too busy to get her heart broken. And how was she supposed to meet any eligible men — straight ones — working in fashion? She had too much to do, too many years yet on the Ten-Year Plan, a
nd who knew, maybe she’d meet somebody, like maybe a reporter or something, coming to do a feature on her for Vogue? No, a website. Men worked on the internet, not at haute couture magazines. And in the article she might remember that on a spring day in Brooklyn, she’d seen snapdragons growing in a garden and had the idea that made her famous, to make a watered-silk evening gown whose skirt perfectly mimicked the shape of the very petals she was contemplating now.
But these were not flowers in a deli that she could just grab. Hmmm. She stood there, gazing at them, as if willing them to pick themselves and cluster in her hand. They’d be perfect for Belle’s altar. And she wanted to get a closer look at the petals, the way they joined the body of the bud … She looked up at the brownstone, its well-kept façade hopelessly imposing. A characteristic burst of confidence had her bounding up the stoop and ringing the bell; the door opened slowly, suspiciously, and MG busted out with The Smile. “I’m sorry to trouble you, but one of my dearest friends has had her heart broken, and I thought ‘Those snapdragons would be just the thing to cheer her up’.” The Smile grew brighter as the door opened wider, and Maria Grazia knew success. As usual.
The offering was more than generous, and she went on her industrious way, only to stop short again as she smelled some glorious smell wafting past her. Food, food, food; raised as she was, food was central to her life, and she’d go out of her way for a rich, enticing flavor. She decided to follow the smell; it now seemed it was to be savory that she sought, and wandered down Baltic Street toward Hicks, deeper into Cobble Hill.
What a rotten time to get dumped. It was almost full springtime, the crocuses pushing up out of the small patches of dirt that ringed the trees that curved over the streets like the vault of a cathedral. She breathed deeply and could smell (under the carbon monoxide) dirt and trees and leaves and everything that made her want to move out of the city and into a house perched on the side of a hill, overlooking a field of wild flowers. Her family would go completely insane if she left the city. That’s why it was vital that she work her way over to Europe (Year Seven, maybe Eight) and into the pockets — er, closets — of the continental rich and famous. One photo shoot in Hello! and she’d be in. But until then …
Mmmmmmm. Look at that prosciutto. And that perfect oval of crusty bread. There was nothing for it but to buy the loaf, buy the ham, and maybe some cheese, and some of those garlicky olives. She’d bet that Belle hadn’t been eating, just smoking and crying, poor kid, poor kid. Maria Grazia had never seen her friend fall apart like that, ever, not in almost twelve years.
It had to be a good thing. Her old nonna, who was, God love her, one hundred and two years old, had always said that the way to the heart was through its cracks. Despite the fact that she herself was single, and didn’t give a damn about men, not at this point in the Plan (Year Three), she had a pretty thorough working knowledge of the courses that various relationships took, having grown up around nothing but relationships.
If things worked out the way she thought they would, Belle was going to meet the love of her life. She smiled, and two little boys blushed and ran.
She was glad about this magic thing as well. Her other old nonna (ninety-seven and a half) used to read palms, and was she always right, or was she was always right? She was always right. It had to be a gift, sure, but who knew what kinds of things somebody could do if they didn’t try to do them? She liked to think she had an open mind. Now, Lorna could do with an old oiling of the hinges on her mind, the snotty bitch, MG sighed fondly. She wanted the best for both of her best girlfriends, and if Belle found it in abracadabra and Lorna found it in wheeling and dealing, who was she to judge?
Turning left onto Union Street, she stopped, very close to where she’d lurked that day, the day of the dumping. She couldn’t help but wonder what it was that made Wilson act in such a bloodless fashion, beside the fact that he maybe didn’t even have any blood, that frickin’ standoffish, cold fish. What could the sex have been like? What was his family like? Belle had never met them. This made MG suspicious straight off the bat. Anyway, the bastard broke her dear friend’s heart, so to hell with him. She spat in the gutter, and made a gesture that had the ladies across the way crossing themselves in protection.
She looked at the window that faced onto Union Street, and wished she had some magic — wished she really believed in it, old nonna or no old nonna — that would help Belle through what was going to be a shitty, shitty time. She could maybe set Belle up with a few of the cousins … MG almost spat again. And if you wanted a boyfriend and they weren’t related to you, would you go out with them, Maria Grazia Bevilacqua? Hell, no. Not some frickin’ dime store guido for her girl.
Ultimately, Belle needed somebody very much like herself: enterprising, sensitive, sympathetic, creative — and someone who wouldn’t bat an eye upon getting a load of Goddess Central.
Hey. It could happen.
• • •
Maria Grazia breezed in and let the banter begin.
“Hey, blondies! You know, we’ve known each other almost thirteen years.”
“Thanks for the update.” Lorna sniffed.
“It’s more like twelve,” Annabelle objected.
Maria Grazia set the bags she’d brought on the counter. “Twelve, thirteen, what difference does it make?”
Lorna allowed herself a small scowl. “All the difference,” she retorted.
“Lorna, you don’t look a day over 30.”
“I am 30! We’re all 30!”
“And you call me easy. Are those daiquiris?”
“None for you, not if we’re going to go for a trot down memory lane.”
Annabelle listened to her friends bicker, as they always did. Twelve years worth of boys and men, jobs and careers, dreams and realities. It made her eyes fill again as she sorted through the odd assortment of things that MG had brought. She sniffled and immediately felt herself embraced by Maria Grazia and enveloped by her ever-present cloud of Thierry Mugler’s Alien.
“Good Lord, Maria Grazia, do you bathe in that stuff?” Lorna grabbed herself a tissue and held it over her nose.
“The only thing you two have in common are your highly sensitized noses.” Annabelle hugged Maria Grazia back, and watched Lorna totter over to the window to open it.
“We got tons of stuff in common!” MG protested. “College, travel, that apartment in Midtown — God, what were we thinking! — lingerie sales, ambition — ”
Lorna cut in. “Our penchant for fruity girl drinks, costume dramas, Marcus Andersen — ”
Annabelle hooted. Her first hoot in days. “Marcus ‘The Mandersen’ Andersen. I forgot about that. Too bad he moved back to Stockholm or else I would have taken a crack at him, too.”
“It wasn’t about ‘taking a crack’,” Maria Grazia insisted. “It was, quite obviously, a terrible mistake.”
“An astonishingly, impossibly ignorant mistake. How he mixed us up, I’ll never know.” Lorna sat back and reveled in her mind’s eye. “Despite the blondeness in common.”
“He was thicker than the ice on the Hudson in February.”
Annabelle cut in. “But didn’t the lack of The Smile stop him?”
Lorna smirked. “My mouth was otherwise engaged.”
They all hooted as one, and raised their glasses for a toast.
“To The Mandersen,” said MG. “Long may he wave.”
Maria Grazia began to elaborate on Marcus’ less obvious charms, and Annabelle wondered if Marcus ever thought of any of them. Did he ever stop and smile fondly of the year away he had spent in New York, and all that it had entailed?
Did Wilson ever think of her now? Not like that much time had passed … Was he second-guessing himself at all? Did he miss her, even the tiniest little bit? Had he uncovered some little something that she had left behind, that he had missed in his sweep of the Upper
West Side to rid himself of all of her things? Did he pick up the phone several times a day to call just to hear her voice on the answering machine? Did it occur to him that he’d made a terrible, horrible mistake …
Maria Grazia’s hand on the top of her bob brought her out of her torturous reverie, and she didn’t even know she’d been in tears until the tissue touched her cheek. MG pulled up a chair, and gave Annabelle another in a series of much-needed hugs and brisk, profanity-laced, words of comfort — in much the same way as she had done, on the very day that Wilson had dumped Annabelle …
• • •
In a blur of her own fine tailoring, Maria Grazia ran across the street, and took Annabelle’s stoop three steps at a time. Her strangled voice answered the buzz, and MG quickly said, “It’s me, it’s me.”
Annabelle’s flushed, teary face greeted her at the door. Without a word, MG embraced her and led her to the couch. They sat, saying nothing, Annabelle crying and Maria Grazia soothing.
It seemed impossible that Annabelle’s relationship could be over. Just three days ago, Saturday, they had all hung out at his place, a quaint one-bedroom on Riverside and Ninety First, eating a pseudo-gourmet meal (not freshly prepared, Maria Grazia sniffed) and drinking loads of wine, watching a video … Annabelle had been working pretty hard revising the most recent draft of her latest historical fiction thingie — Maria Grazia didn’t pretend to understand Belle’s work, it seemed so coldly objective, and so not Belle’s own personality — anyway, this was practically her first night out in over a week. Wilson had seemed … well, how did Wilson ever seem. They had appeared as affectionate as ever — or was the affection all on Belle’s end, always touching, stroking, smiling?
The thing that had been interesting about this particular relationship was that Annabelle didn’t seem to need to talk everything over, to ‘figure it out’ in front of her friends. Maria Grazia had assumed that she was doing that actively with her boyfriend. There had been a calm to the last seven or so months that, to her, spoke to a maturity in relationship, a departure from slumber party mentality.