by Lois Cahall
A little girl with brown hair in pigtails catches me staring down at her. I run a finger under her chin, and then I’m off, glancing at my watch. A deep longing churns in my chest for the cozy familiarity of my daughters coming up the driveway to tell me about their first day of school. The empty nest pangs stab at my heart again - two pangs in one day but who’s counting? Maybe the freedom of the empty nest isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Maybe I do miss motherhood and those school bus stop mornings with lunches being made at the kitchen counter. It was Madeline’s last day of school in her senior year that she placed her hand on my shoulder at the kitchen counter and declared, “Hey mom, this is the last school lunch you’ll ever make.” It hadn’t hit me then. But it’s hitting me now…
So I allow my mind to shift gears to Bebe. Making the leap from pet to child is like making the leap from houseplant to pet. Bebe gets that, right? At age forty Bebe has longed for a child more than any twenty-year old but she still has to realize that a child is not an accessory from Saks Fifth Avenue.
It’s a funny thing about kids…Step kids are the ones we didn’t ask for, adopted kids people do ask for, but then that means somebody else didn’t ask for them. And naturally conceived kids – even they can be an accident. How did the business of children suddenly get so complicated?
Older friends tell me that I’ll worry about my kids until the day I die. And then when I have grandchildren, I’ll worry about them, too. And even though all kids at one time or another are something of a nuisance, our biggest fear in our lifetime the death of our child. Ironically the same child we’d often like to kill for bad behavior.
A woman bumps into me as she passes by me on her cell phone: “What if it rains?” she asks. “Do we have a plan B?” I chuckle at her choice of words. And I’m way ahead of her.
Before long I arrive at the dog run and lift the little latch. It’s an enclosed area for doggies only. Sort of a Club Med where one pooch checks out another.
Dodging the frisky tongue-wagging puppies and rudely drooling hounds, I find the only empty bench near a mud patch created by doggie digging. As I get comfortable, a dachshund races around my ankles, sniffing at the soles of my soles. Made in China.
The Dachshund’s owner isn’t the least bit concerned that her dog might be annoying. That’s because most dachshunds seem to be owned by rich old ladies who are certain that just as they own their expensive Park Avenue penthouses, their dachshund’s own the doggie park. I’m more of a cat person, but dogs have always fascinated me. The twins who already own everything money can buy have been pushing Ben for a dog - which would in turn push me over the edge or at the very least serve Ben his walking papers.
Victor Hugo once said, “Forty is the old age of youth. Fifty is the youth of old age.” When they say life’s too short, they ain’t kidding. I have a time table, and it’s a scary one; in dog years I’d already be long gone. If I only live to be as old as my mom did when she died then I have less than twenty-five years left, which meant I can toss the Paris idea farther than the dachshund’s owner just tossed that bone.
I drop my face into my hands, resting my elbows on my knees. If I leave Ben, will another man comes along to grow old with? This fairy tale doesn’t happen twice in a lifetime. Does it? Aren’t I lucky it happened once? You really do have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find the perfect Prince….
And just then a big Rottweiler comes over and laps me across the face with his sloppy tongue. I wouldn’t mind except I had just watched him sniff a Shih-Tzu’s butt, which in turn gave the Shih-Tzu’s owner a complete meltdown.
The way animals and people behave in New York is a far cry from Cape Cod. I can’t imagine how tough it is to be a dog here. No summer porch or backyards. No mailmen to terrorize at the front door. No fire hydrants on secluded suburban corners. When it comes to doing your ‘business,’ you have to perform in front of hundreds of people, as the Rottweiler is now proving while staring at me.
Being a dog in New York means you wait all day by the front door of your shoe-box apartment, panting for the sound of the key in the lock, signifying that your owner, or the dog walker, has arrived. With tongue hanging, tail wagging and that you-made-me-wait-all-day-and-I-held-it-look, you happily let the newly arrived human leash you up for today’s adventure.
A tanned, toned and shirtless guy runs by me, almost stepping on my toes. I prepare to shoot him a dirty look but he’s already mouthing the words “sorry” before flashing a killer grin. I flutter my eyelashes back at him, my big toothy smile working its magic as he performs his perfect oh-golly-shucks move by whisking his bleached bangs off his forehead.
“Cute dog,” I call out, insinuating it’s him who’s hot. A Labrador retriever is a real athletic dog owned by a real athletic guy, the kind who’s forever dragging surfboards, rollerblades and climbing gear from the roof rack of his Land Rover. Just now that very guy is right here in front of me, tossing a Frisbee and calling, “Go-get-it-Bud!” They’re both wearing bandanas. The cute guy and “Go-Get-It-Bud!”
And then I see her – my friend Bebe – waving from across the street as she sprints with “Millie,” her English Springer Spaniel. She whisks through the gate and is at my bench in seconds, dodging dog mess and mud holes in a way that appears impossible by scientific measure.
Bebe pecks my lips hard before plopping down breathless, dropping the leash so that Millie can run with the dogs. Millie goes for Bud. Can you blame her?
“Hey, Lib, sorry I’m late. But I had to take the stairs because the elevator is broken. Again.” She sits forward and flips over her calf to examine the bottom of her shoe for doggie poop. Red soles. Louboutins. I grin.
“Having a rough day?” asks Bebe patting my hand, her 200-watt blue eyes penetrating mine. If “Gone with the Wind’ s” Miss Melanie were reincarnated, surely she was sitting here next to me. Not a vicious bone in her body.
“Oh Bebe, I’m a mess. When it comes to Ben’s kids I feel like I’m fighting the war while he’s sipping champagne in the trenches.”
“Oh, dear, dear, dear,” she says, patting my hand harder. “It can’t be that bad. Surely they’re darling little boys. I wish I had a child.”
“Well…”
“And how blessed are you to have your health and the man you love.”
“Yes, but….”
“And you’re healthy again, Libby.”
“I know, it’s just that….”
Don’t I know it,” she says giving my hand one last pat and looking at me with that I-saw-you-after-surgery look. Somehow Bebe has deflated me in the most positive way. Bebe is the total opposite of Kitty. They make for a nice balance. And for three Libra women, balance is everything. Bebe sees the glass half full, Kitty sees it half empty, and me, I don’t care how you see the glass, so long as it contains a fine Cabernet. Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy a great bottle of wine.
“You’re happy, right, Libby?”
“If by happy you mean trapped with no means of escape….then sure, I’m happy.”
“Good. Now are you ready for this?” says Bebe, as though we’re going to hold hands and jump into a crashing wave. Her eyes begin to fill with an ocean full of tears as she hits the button on her cell phone and hands it to me. I have a feeling I already know what the voice mail is going to say. The tears are contagious, suddenly waterworks. Eight years of waiting for this one damn stinking message:
“Bebe? Good news. It’s Katrina from the overseas agency. I think we found you a baby…”
I drop the phone to my side and pull her in for a long hug. We hold onto each other for a long time, laughing and crying as though from our wrecked ship we can finally see the Coast Guard approaching, carrying a life preserver that says, “Live!”
Chapter Seven
Until you’ve lived in New York, you haven’t really experienced the phenomenon known as the yellow cab. In other cities, you have options. Like driving. Other cities even have parking garages that don�
��t cost $25 for fifteen minutes. Imagine the possibilities.
When you move to the Big Apple, the first thing to say goodbye to is your car. Which means, I suppose, I could walk to lunch. But I never walked nineteen blocks to any destination in the suburbs in my life, so why start now. And besides, walking just forms blisters on top of last week’s blisters because nobody wears flip flops to lunch meetings here. Back home in Cape Cod we wear flips flops to the clam shack. Come to think of it, there aren’t any clam shacks in New York, either.
I can’t seem to get used to stiletto heels – and it’s even harder balancing myself as taxis fly by at record speed, refusing to stop. It took me a while to figure out that a light on top that reads “on/off duty” means a completed shift; no light at all means they have somebody else in the taxi, but a light on in the center means they will pick you up.
Finally, I can lower my arm as a cab slams on his brakes barely millimeters from my burgundy-painted tootsies. I hop in, slide across the smelly, torn vinyl and lean toward the driver - “72nd and Lex please” - and then am slammed back against my seat as he violently accelerates. Glancing around the interior, I clutch my purse closer to my side. Don’t expect the taxi to be, um, sanitary. The backseat is usually coated in a substance best described as God-knows-who-was-sitting-here-before-you-or-worse-what-they-were-doing.
I learned something else the hard way last week. Do not under any circumstances pick up the newspapers on the floor! Those are there to absorb wet shoes from rain. Not to read. I often turn to my driver for entertainment, but he’s either frighteningly outgoing or completely hostile. He speaks so little English that it rarely matters anyway. Occasionally a man named Hossain or Muhammad will offer a geography lesson on “the world’s smallest country” – his. Sometimes, Francis O’Laughlin from Queens will regale you with tales of his hard-scrabble childhood and how he almost became a Priest.
Today I have a Russian driver named Anatolij, who vents decades of pent-up and incomprehensible rage. But you don’t need to worry too much about taxi etiquette, because you’ll soon find yourself grasping the door handle for dear life as the driver employs the ferocious skills he developed from years of navigating the alleys of Karachi. Cutting off other cars, yet miraculously hitting none of them, he makes you feel as if you’re spending your last precious minutes inside a Sony PlayStation.
Better to close my eyes and think of Kitty – my best friend now. Thinking about how we met….
It was three years ago. I was packing up some boxes for the church and I remembered the words of a favorite friend just before he passed away as he ran the last zip of packing tape across the carton marked “pots and pans.” He was a neighbor whom my daughter Madeline and I depended on as the fixer-upper guy. While fixing up something or other, he actually dropped dead. Unfortunately nobody could fix that. But he had managed to fix me up with his retired business partner’s niece, Katherine.
I had been working on a freelance article for Marie Claire magazine about women being single and loving it called “Could You Swear Off Men for Good?” That’s when my neighbor said: “Have I got the girl for you! You should interview her! She’s like a niece and she lives in New York. Whip smart gal. Promise me you’ll call her. Name is Katherine Morgan but she goes by ‘Kitty.’” He dropped dead a week later. The guilt was on. And the article was due.
Kitty and I set up drinks at Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel when I was in town visiting Ben. She was easy to recognize, her flaming red hair and green eyes transmitting some bold luck-o-the-Irish across the room. It’s a funny thing about redheads. They’re either homely and pale - their invisible eyelashes begging for mascara - or they’re stunningly beautiful, commanding the room like Scarlett O’Hara batting her eyes with those Tarleton twins at Tara. Kitty was the latter and acted like Scarlett O’Hara, too.
Before the waiter could take our orders, we raised our water glasses to my dead neighbor while I indulged in the idea that this New York City girl could share my same New England sensibilities. She did. Every bit: the accent, the fried clams – the ones with the bellies-the hatred of traffic at the Sagamore Bridge on July 4th, even the Red Sox and the green monster that included the adoration of the fact that they had actually won the World Series thus ruining that age-old moan of “maybe next year.” Instantly, we were sisters separated at birth, wondering whether we should find our real mother who gave us up for adoption.
Kitty is the kind of woman who says it like it is. She’s like an Xray machine; revealing, penetrating and sometimes uncomfortable. But I love her. And I loved her interview for my article. She babbled a mile a minute. “I’m an art advisor – I have a small gallery - and I’ve learned to enjoy absolute freedom, to be the mistress of my own universe,” she said, sipping her champagne. “Men? Ha! We love them, and they’re undeniably wonderful but most women I know would agree that just like kids, they can be a huge distraction. The joy of being single in New York is the freedom it brings.”
I let her ramble until midnight, when the bartender told us it was last round. Even the piano player had wrapped at ten p.m. after playing “Someone to Watch Over Me.” Truth is, I was so taken with Kitty that if she had had a penis I might have dumped Ben on the spot and gone home with her for sex. But she didn’t. And since both of us secretly adored men whether we needed them or not, we settled on best friends, or as I say to her “Love-you-like-a-sister-only-better.”
One day, about six weeks after we met, she said, “What are you doing this weekend?”
“Nothing,” I replied. “Ben’s at a polo match with the twins. Why?”
“Pack your bags. We’re going to Miami. Art Basel’s there…”
“Oh? Is he a friend of yours?” I asked.
She roared with laughter. “Art Basel? It’s a famous art gathering. It’s huge!” Everything is huge to Kitty.
By the same time the next day, I was sandwiched between artists Jack Pierson and movie director, Julian Schnabel, as we lounged on cushy pillows by the pool of the Delano plopping cherries and cheese cubes into our mouths. Dennis Hopper held up the empty bowl for me to spit my cherry pits.
I loved watching Kitty in her element, demanding faux-urgent ten minute “holds” on auction bids, or romping through the design district, matching eclectic lamp shades to newly discovered artists. Nearby, New York’s biggest dealers, people like Larry Gagosian and Mary Boone, tried to listen in on what Kitty was in on. She was the Pied Piper of her world, bringing artists, dealers and investors together. At private Sotheby’s dinners the Veuve Cliquot flowed wildly, as insiders worshiped the latest contemporary artist from Prague who was going to be ‘huge!!!”
And then we’d be up at the crack of dawn to get into the NADA Fair early enough to see….
“Daniel Reich’s booth!” she’d explain calling back to answer from twenty feet in front of me. “Come on, Libby. Hustle,” she’d return to my side to drag me along with one hand, her other hand clamping her cell to her ear. “Don’t go higher than one million! No. Hold there. Because I said so!”
Kitty’s passion for art pierced right to any potential buyer’s soul, whether naïve with money to burn or the most discriminating - like those who promised never to sell - only to find themselves seduced by Kitty to “Buy now! Are you crazy? This is Amazon.com in 1999!”
Kitty could pedal a painting the way Monet could make a lily shimmer, the way Pollack could drip dots on a canvas and be called a genius, and the way Peggy Guggenheim could sip champagne in a Parisian café while the French countryside was being bombed. And when Kitty loved an artist, she loved him, even if nobody else did, just like Guggenheim, who, when told by the Louvre that her collection was “worthless,” stashed all those soon-to-be famous paintings in a barnyard. And no doubt, calmly ordered another glass of champagne.
Kitty managed to get us into every party. In her Prada attire she was more colorful than a Miami sunset. In my Ann Taylor dress, I’d just stand and smile, sipping my sauvignon blanc, looking li
ke a sneaker lace stuck in an escalator and going nowhere. Eventually, I was edged out of the circle of conversation. What did a woman who wrote “To Breast Feed or Not to Breast Feed: That Is the Question?” have to say to Jerry Speyer, a “famous collector” about Abstract Expressionism?
When the artist Kehinde Wiley shook my hand, all I could think was “Kehinde? That’s really your name?”
Kitty was like radar to every potential collector. In the 80s, she had turned one million dollars into fourteen million for Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic records. Her main clients were wealthy Wall Streeters who knew nothing about art, but everything about spending, spending, and more spending. Now Wall Street had crashed, the art market had slumped, and Kitty had an ever bigger problem – the Wall Street guys’ wives. It was clearer than the financial scroll across a CNN screen that they were threatened by Kitty’s beauty. When Kitty saw one of these wives standing stupid like a damsel-of-the-art-world-distress, she’d whisper to me, “She’s a wealthy wife. Her scarlet soles give her away.”
“You can tell she has money by the bottom of her shoes?” I asked.
“Red bottoms mean Christian Louboutin,” said Kitty. “French shoes - short for money.”
“Learn something new everyday,” I mumbled into my crystal flute, but Kitty was already sauntering over to the potential buyer.
*
My daydreaming comes to an abrupt halt as I grab onto the door handle of the taxi and rearrange my rib cage. Anatolij, my Russian driver, makes a screeching stop outside the café, because when you’ve reached your destination and your heart has returned from your stomach, be prepared to jump out of your cab quickly – as quickly as you ripped open your wallet to pay the driver. He’s on a clock after all, so the sooner he rids his taxi of you, the sooner he’s onto his next…er, quarry?
I rearrange my dress, pulling it down to cover my knees as I slide out the to avoid the Britney Spears crotch shot. I ask myself ‘why do we take taxis in NYC? Because we have to?’ Well, sure, but there are other advantages. It’s the one place you can talk on your cell phone at the top of your lungs. After all, that’s what the driver’s doing. It’s a great place for discreet calls to your mistress, your drug dealer, your plastic surgeon. Besides, it’s the only down time some of us have, the only place in the whole bustling metropolis where we can stop and smell – well, usually the driver.