Riverside Drive

by Laura Van Wormer

  “No,” Alexandra said, smiling slightly.

  Cassy had cleared her throat, taken a sip of water, and said, “Look, Alexandra, I don’t want to hurt you—”

  “Cassy, let’s not make such a big deal out of this, okay?”

  Cassy had looked at her. Alexandra’s face had been flushed slightly, but her gaze had been steady and she had seemed in fine control.

  “I am lonely. I admit it. But,” she sighed, smiling, “that night, I was exhausted, and so were you. I think maybe,” she began, moving her spoon around with her finger, “I felt as though you and I could be a comfort to each other. As for the love part”—she looked up and smiled—I do love you, I think, as anyone comes to love a new friend. So,” she had concluded, shrugging, “I hope you’ll accept my apology for the other night. At the time, my confusion was real, but now I know that my only wish is to be your friend.”

  So much for Alexandra being in love with Cassy.

  Cassy had felt very let down after this luncheon. Without the little ongoing drama with Alexandra, she was left with nothing but the ongoing quiet horrors of her household to focus on—a place she really preferred not to dwell in. At least not twenty-four hours a day. Much as she hated to admit it, the few days before their lunch, with the Alexandra dilemma spinning around in her head, Cassy’s day-to-day life with Michael had been bearable. It had actually been almost pleasant, sitting there in front of the TV—with Michael getting drunk beside her—pondering the question of whether bright, beautiful, young Alexandra Waring was really in love with her or not.

  And, too, Cassy couldn’t deny there had been a vindictive streak in the activity that had seemed to keep her rising anger at Michael in check—that Michael wanted but couldn’t have Alexandra, and that Cassy didn’t want but could have her, if she wanted.

  Cassy packed up the budget reports in her briefcase and went back to the bedroom to undress and take a hot bath.

  Alexandra’s timing had been perfect. She had called Cassy the night after Michael hit her in the street. When Alexandra asked her how she was, after only a moment Cassy had broken down and cried, telling her bits and pieces of what had happened, about Michael not having come home...

  Alexandra had been wonderful, saying all of the right things, suggesting all of the right things, reassuring Cassy on all levels.

  Alexandra was wonderful. Period.

  She had been calling Cassy every day since, asking Cassy how she was holding up, asking if there was anything she could do for her, asking what further news there was. She called at the station in the morning to check if Cassy had eaten anything; she called her at night to check if Cassy was alive. Cassy’s reliance on her had grown quickly; only last week she had called Alexandra at three in the morning in the throes of a horrendous anxiety attack. Alexandra had chatted merrily as if it were twelve noon on Sunday.

  Cassy wondered if it wasn’t the safety of talking to her on the phone and never seeing Alexandra in person that allowed her to open up to her. Well, that wasn’t exactly right. Cassy did see Alexandra every weeknight—twice if she wanted to—on television. It was rather like wearing Michael’s mirrored sunglasses. She could see Alexandra but Alexandra could not see her. (“Your hair looks marvelous,” Cassy said to her on Monday, after the eleven o’clock. “Are you going to someone new?”)

  Cassy was well aware that Alexandra was on a killing work schedule at WWKK, but she believed Alexandra when she declared that she would lose her mind if she didn’t have some kind of life outside of the station. And right now Cassy provided the kind of distraction she needed. (Distraction? Cassy had winced.) And, too, Cassy knew full well that it was only a matter of time before Alexandra found someone in her life, and then Cassy would be—well, left behind. So she might as well take advantage of Alexandra’s kindness while she was still around...

  Twenty-eight? Was that really how old Alexandra was?

  After her bath, Cassy wrapped herself in Michael’s terry-cloth robe. She held the sleeve over her nose and mouth and breathed in. A trace of English Leather. Lime. A trace of Michael.

  Oh, Lord, how she missed him at night. Forty-one years old and Cassy, until now, could have counted the number of nights she had spent alone on one hand. A robe, an empty bed, an empty house, an empty heart. No. It would all work out. Henry would be home in no time

  Five weeks.

  Five weeks more of this?

  Cassy snuggled down into bed and turned on the new Sony. (The doorman had snickered unmercifully when Cassy had him bring it in from the cab. “Might be less dangerous if you just left it down here,” he had said.)

  WWKK’s newscast was scarcely recognizable from the days of Michael’s reign. A new co-anchor had been brought in, Peter Bristol, a former Washington correspondent for Associated Press. Alexandra and Peter worked extremely well together, and it was a smooth, sophisticated yet gutsy broadcast, never shying from hard news and yet always working in some brief, warm, local human interest story.

  There was talk now about combining the half-hour six and eleven o’clock newscasts into a full-hour show at nine, a change Alexandra was pushing for. Since WWKK was really reporting the news these days, it was virtually impossible to do anything out of the ordinary in thirty minutes. An hour would do the trick, and since management refused to increase the newsroom budget further, it would be a way to give Alexandra and Peter more time to work on feature stories themselves and, at the same time, keep the newsroom financially solvent.

  On this broadcast they had managed to squeeze in a two-and-a-half-minute feature by Alexandra on how Donald Trump was rebuilding the Wollman ice skating rink in Central Park in record time (a projected four months), for record money. Prior to Trump, the city had spent seven years pouring millions into the reconstruction, and had only succeeded in providing a princely living for workers while they were in Florida, where, they claimed, they had been diligently learning about building outdoor ice skating rinks for all these years. (Cassy had burst out laughing.)

  True to Alexandra’s style, she ended the piece by praising Trump’s efforts on behalf of New Yorkers, but also said it would be interesting to see if the public support gained by Trump through his good-will efforts might not be the ace he would need to obtain special concessions from City Hall in regard to some of his commercial endeavors. In particular, Alexandra advised her viewers to keep an eye on Trump’s seventy-six-acre development site on Manhattan’s West Side, and the response to it from City Hall.

  After the newscast was over, Cassy flipped through Newsweek,The New Yorker and The Nation. At twelve twenty-seven, the phone rang.

  “Right on time,” Cassy said.

  “I’ve got it down to a science now,” Alexandra laughed.

  “I loved the Wollman Rink story.”

  “Thanks.” Sigh. “I just wish we had more time.”

  “You will. One day,” Cassy said, putting the magazines on the night table. “I hope so.” Cassy reached up and turned off the light. “Cassy, are you going to the Handerville Awards dinner at the end of the month?”

  “Probably,” Cassy said, sinking down under the covers. “Sy Bolin’s nominated for best independent documentary and we were executive producer, so...”

  “I’m going.”

  “You are? What for?”

  “For a story I did at KSCT.”

  Cassy sat up. “What?”

  “As a reporter. On farm foreclosures.”

  “Alexandra!”

  She laughed. “What?”

  “What category?”

  “Middle market, investigative reporting—”

  “Alexandra!”

  “What?”

  Cassy fell back against the pillows. “You mean to tell me that you haven’t always been here?” She laughed. “I keep forgetting—I didn’t even know you in February, so when the nominations came out your name didn’t mean anything to me.”

  “Yes,” Alexandra murmured, “KSCT seems like a million years ago.”

 
; “Yes,” Cassy echoed, taking one of Michael’s pillows and pulling it close. “Well, then, if you’re up for an award, I’ll be sure to go.”

  Pause. “So how are you feeling?” Alexandra asked her.

  “Funny,” Cassy sighed. “You know, it’s so quiet here. I think that’s what’s so hard. How quiet it is.” A laugh. “I got so lonely tonight I called one of Henry’s friends and asked him to come over and make some noise. Skipper makes a lot of noise usually, but even he was leery of coming over to this tomb without Henry around.” Another sigh.

  “Did you eat dinner?”

  “I had some tuna fish.”

  “That sounds exciting. Tuna fish. For heaven’s sake, Cassy, no wonder you feel lonely—if I thought being by myself meant there was no one home worth cooking for, I’d be lonely too.”

  “Cooking for one, though—”

  “I do it.”

  “Well,” Cassy sighed, “your generation is different from mine.”

  “Oh, forgive me, for a second I forgot I was talking to Grandma Moses.”

  Cassy laughed. And then yawned. “My mother called today.”

  “And how is she?”

  “Terrible.” Cassy laughed again. “I mean she’s fine, but she was terrible. She told me to divorce Michael—quick—before he gets home.”

  “She’s not very fond of him, is she?”

  “Fond of him? She despises him. According to her, you see, he has ruined my life and hers.” Sigh. “She forgets, conveniently forgets, all that Michael has done for me over the years. Had it not been for him...”

  “What?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Cassy said, turning on her side and pulling the covers up over her shoulder. “I think I’d probably be living down the block from my mother, with four or five children, waiting for my husband to come home from Thompson Electronics.” She laughed. “I’ll be damned if that doesn’t sound pretty good tonight.”

  “Really?”

  “No, not really. But it sure would be nice if one flesh-and-blood human being lived here. I hate being alone, I always have...”

  Silence. “I’m working on a feature about single mothers,” Alexandra said. “I was shocked at the statistics—you city people sure don’t stay married much, do you?”

  “Many of us don’t get married to begin with—”

  “That too—but I was struck by how much it costs—how, say, five single mothers are paying for five separate apartments, with five separate children, and they all say it’s nearly impossible to keep up, to—”

  “Are you preparing me, Alexandra? Are you telling me I’m going to come out of this a single mother?”

  “No, silly. I’m trying to tell you about my story.”

  Cassy rolled onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. It was windy outside; the air whistling in through the window frames was moving the shades, moving the light and shadows on the ceiling.

  “I did an interview yesterday with two women who combined households—”

  “Are they—”

  “No.” Pause. “Do you suppose people will think—”

  “What would it matter?”

  Alexandra chuckled. “It would put a slightly different slant on the story... But you know, now that I think of it—”

  “What?”

  “I never did ask them.”

  “What, Alexandra? You were going to bring a camera in and ask them if they’re lesbian lovers?”

  “No.”

  “Alexandra, stick to your story. How many children do they have?”

  “Three.” Pause. “One said she moved in, not because of finances, but because of her need for companionship.”

  “Well,” Cassy said, “she’s right. Everybody needs companionship. You know, someone to eat with, someone to watch TV with, someone to say good night to.” She yawned again. “You know, Alexandra, that’s what you’ve been doing for me. I don’t know what I’d do without talking to you.”

  “You’d talk to someone else.”

  “I doubt it.” Cassy was getting very sleepy. “No, I’d probably just stay right here in bed until Michael came home.” She puffed up the pillow. “Do you know I even miss him leaving the toilet seat up? You have no idea how horrible it is to find every toilet seat in the house down—’Everybody’s gone, Cassy,’ it says to me.”

  Pause.

  “Cassy, are you going to go with Sam to that group?”

  “Monday.”

  “I think that’s great.”

  “Easy for you to say.” Sigh. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. It’s just hard for me. I think I’d just rather go on pretending none of this is really happening. That Michael’s on a trip for WWKK...”

  Silence.

  “Maybe you should try and get some sleep now,” Alexandra said gently. “Do you think you can?”

  Cassy nodded. “If I stop thinking about him. I’ll think about—I’ll think about—

  “Henry,” Alexandra finished for her. “On the river. Laughing and having a wonderful time.”

  “I don’t want him to have a good time,” Cassy said, mocking herself. “I want him to want to come home—”

  “Cassy—”

  “I know, I know. This is all temporary. ‘It shall be revealed,’ Sam keeps telling me. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but it sounds good.”

  “It means you’ll soon know what to do,” Alexandra said.

  “Yes.” Sigh. “Alexandra?” “Yes?”

  “What if he doesn’t come back?”

  Silence.

  “He will,” Alexandra finally said. “He will.”

  “The thought of living in this tomb by myself—”

  “Cassy, Cassy, it’s all going to turn out all right.”

  Sigh. “Yes, but in the meantime—”

  “In the meantime, invite some people over.”

  “Who?”

  “Me, for starters.”

  “Would you want to come over?”

  “Sure. We could watch a movie or something.”

  Cassy sat up in bed. “Wait a minute, Alexandra, before I get delirious at the thought of having another human being here, just when would you have the time?”

  “Saturday. Sunday. Whenever, we’ll figure it out.”

  Pause. “Really?”

  “Sure. It would be fun.”

  “Fun?” Cassy fell back against the pillows. “Alexandra, you don’t know what it’s like around here. What I’m like—remember the Bride of Frankenstein? That’s me, tottering around the halls of the haunted castle—”

  “So I’ll chain you to the radiator,” Alexandra laughed. “We can still watch a movie.”

  After hanging up the phone, Cassy curled up on her side around Michael’s pillow and thought about Alexandra. Would this be all right? To invite her here—alone? Was this a wise thing to do? Cassy knew what Alexandra had said, about being friends, but still... she couldn’t help wondering sometimes.

  She was being ridiculous. Alexandra was not a threat. She was not manipulative. Alexandra did not prey on people.

  She wondered what she should cook for dinner. She wondered what movie they would watch. She wondered if Alexandra liked Cary Grant .

  Cassy fell asleep.

  23

  IN WHICH MRS. GOLDBLUM

  IS DETERMINED TO LEARN

  ABOUT HER AFFAIRS

  Three weeks after her hip replacement operation, Mrs. Goldblum informed Amanda that she was as right as rain and would appreciate it if Amanda refrained from hovering about as if she were going to die at any moment.

  Amanda was not hovering out of fear; Amanda was hovering about a miracle, warming her heart and her spirit in the glow of Mrs. Goldblum’s recovery.

  The changes in Emma Goldblum were startling. After a few days of largely Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream (whose sugar and caffeine, Nurse Sendowski explained to Amanda, had a therapeutic effect on older malnutrition cases), Mrs. Goldblum was on a strict diet of wholesome meals and snacks th
at were designed to build her up. Build her up? How about rebuilding her altogether? From the fragile, elderly old lady who had been admitted to St. Luke’s, there was now a vital, energetic woman of seventy-seven.

  Amanda had contacted Daniel Goldblum, Mrs. Goldblum’s son, the day after she had been admitted. While Amanda had expected very little, she had not been quite prepared for Daniel’s reaction to the news. “What the hell can I do about it? Mother knows I’ve got too many obligations here as it is. I can’t go running around the country right now.” Controlling her temper, Amanda had said the polite things to Daniel—for him not to worry, that a phone call to his mother would do great things for her recovery (not that he had called, the stinker, for four days)—but to herself and to Howard (when he had still been around), Amanda had vowed to take a contract out on his life if he did not behave better.

  That first week, after an unsuccessful trip to the Social Security office, Amanda had called her mother to ask her advice; Tinker had called the family estate attorney, old Mr. Osborne, and within forty-eight hours Mr. Osborne had arrived in New York. Mr. Osborne (now seventy-eight himself) reviewed what vague information Amanda could offer and then turned her over to “a very fine attorney, right here in town,” a Mr. Thatcher of Wyndom, Tuttle & LeBlanc, who, according to Mr. Osborne, knew all about these matters.

  Mr. Thatcher sent a paralegal to St. Luke’s to interview Mrs. Goldblum about her personal history and that of Mr. Goldblum. Then Mr. Thatcher dispatched Amanda to Mrs. Goldblum’s apartment with a long list of documents he wished her to excavate. With Mrs. Goldblum hanging on the phone, Amanda spent the better part of a day digging and sifting through Mrs. Goldblum’s secretary, closets and boxes under a bed in one of the bedrooms. (When she came across Mrs. Goldblum’s canceled checks, she was enraged. One after another, year after year, “Daniel Goldblum,” ten, twenty, twenty-five, thirty thousand dollars!)