by Thea Lim
“Do you think we should wait for thirty?” Mr. Marino says.
What a dope! Frank will howl afterward.
“Why?” Mrs. Marino says softly. This has the effect of making everyone listen.
“Business isn’t so hot this year. I don’t know about a big party, dear.”
“We’re doing it next month, and the theme is Happily Ever After.” The round table is eerily silent. “Your aunt is invited,” Mrs. Marino barks at Polly. “Does she have a date?”
Something about Donna’s love life coming up alongside her husband’s dallying fuses the two in Mrs. Marino’s mind. She becomes fixated on Donna.
“She’s single?”
Polly feels pukish at dissecting Donna’s private life before all the Marinos. But Mrs. Marino is the only woman more fearsome than Donna.
“Why isn’t she married?”
Frank squeezes Polly’s hand under the table.
“So she’s divorced?”
Then the bomb.
“I ought to set her up with my brother, Teddy. He’s also divorced.”
After that, Mrs. Marino is unstoppable. She will impose a happy ending on Donna, forged through Teddy. No meeting can pass without the third degree: What does your aunt do for fun? How tall is she? Does she enjoy the tourism industry? Does she wear pearls? Teddy’s ex-wife loved pearls. What a cow. Could you ask her not to wear pearls? I wasn’t going to make place settings, but if I don’t, I can’t seat Donna and Teddy together.
Thursdays, Frank works the midday shift. He stops at Polly’s on his way home, in the overlap of their off-hours, and they drink tea at the kitchen table. “Couple of grandmas,” Donna says. The first few times, they drank Donna’s home brew, but Frank never finished his, though he insisted it was delicious. What do they talk about, all those hours? When Donna goes to take her bath, Frank puts Polly’s knees between his. He draws circles on the soft of her wrist, sending goosebumps rippling up her arms.
“I feel so close to you,” he says.
She wants to ignore this opening, this invitation to ask him anything, but she can’t. She has to save Donna.
“What happened with your parents?” Polly asks. She wants to begin at the beginning and edge slowly towards the party and his mother’s monkeying, but already she’s grabbed the wrong end.
“What do you mean?” His body talk changes. He leans back, hands jammed in armpits.
“With your dad . . .”
“With my dad?”
“And your mom . . .”
Yesterday’s newspaper has been left behind on the other chair. He reaches for it.
Polly tries to persist. “And the other . . . person.”
He changes tactics swiftly. He swoops and nips her earlobe. Her neck turns hot as summer.
“Can we not talk about my parents when I’m trying to put the moves on you?”
This is the first thing to be off-limits between Polly and Frank. His brothers are the opposite. They are gleeful and crass about their father’s infidelity, to rob it of its power: “You’ll see my pops isn’t in my wedding pictures; that’s when he was shtupping Elaine.” But Frank sickens at the mention of the woman’s name. He carries his mother’s hurt.
Mrs. Marino has a monstrous longing to see love conquer everything, to eviscerate all memory of the year love failed. And Donna is in its path. But asking Frank to tell his mother to stop would be like asking him to make her tell of all those midnights when she couldn’t bear her marriage bed, and so she sat at her kitchen table, peeling apples while noiseless tears slicked her cheeks.
Polly sees if she can work it from Donna’s end. Helpfully, Fiddler on the Roof is on TV Saturday afternoon.
“Do you think it would be nice to have a matchmaker?” she asks her aunt.
“No.”
“It might be simpler? Apparently, arranged marriages last longer.”
“If my marriage had lasted a day longer, I would’ve shot myself. No. I would’ve shot him. No, murder-suicide.”
The next time Yente is on-screen, Donna shouts, “Nosy bitch!”
Polly cannot sacrifice Donna to Mrs. Marino, because Donna would never be anyone’s sacrifice, anyone’s white-gowned blonde, screaming demurely. She has visions of Donna the moment she twigs to this meddling, roaring Nosy bitch! across the packed and bestreamered party room, Mrs. Marino buckling under a platter of Jell-O salad, Frank never speaking to Polly again.
So Polly lies.
When the day of the party arrives, she calls Frank and says she has been vomiting since yesterday. “I’m so sorry.”
Five minutes later the phone rings.
“Oh . . . ? Sure, sure,” she hears her aunt say.
“Who was that?” Polly asks.
“Frank’s mother. She’s insisting I come, with or without you. She says they’re dying to meet me, and otherwise there will be too much food. Persistent lady.”
On the way over, Polly having made an astonishing recovery, Donna says, “It’s so nice of them to invite me. They sound like a terrific family.” For a moment Polly brightens. Then she sees Uncle Teddy. He has the look of a deflated balloon—a tall, shapeless man, trying not to take up space. There is the shadow of a stain over the belly part of his toilet-blue shirt, and it’s easy to picture him trying to scrub it out but being somehow useless, using 7UP instead of soda water, cursing softly. He is exactly the kind of weak-chinned man Donna hates.
Polly tries everything to keep them apart. She has Donna studying twenty-five years’ worth of hallway pictures of Carlo, Johnny, and Frank. She shows her the Venetian tiles in the upstairs bathroom, where and how they might create an addition at the back of the house. Then Mrs. Marino calls her away to toothpick the wieners. She stabs as fast as she can. “Whoa,” says Pia. “You’re a machine.”
When she gets back to Donna, Teddy is saying, “So you see, we’re due for a pandemic. It’s not if but when. You ever hear of Ebola?”
“Gosh, I could use another drink,” Donna says. Teddy volunteers to get one for her. He turns away and Donna hisses, “This worm keeps following me around,” just as Teddy turns back to say, “What were you drinking again?” It’s plain as the squashed nose on his face that Teddy heard. But Donna just says, “Shandy.” She pokes at the tassels on a lampshade boredly, not noticing or not caring.
“Polly, I need help with the toast points,” Mrs. Marino shouts. When she gets Polly alone, she whispers, “You have to leave them to connect!”
Frank is inches away from the canapé tray, athletically mixing a vat of sangria. When his mother turns her back, he kisses Polly’s neck. What if Polly has invented his mother’s investment in Donna and Teddy? What if of course Frank can tell his mother to lay off? Polly grabs Frank’s stirring arm.
“Your mother wants to make Donna and Teddy a thing, but I don’t think they like each other, and Donna is kind of a private person and if she gets that this is a setup, she might lose her mind.” Saying all of this out loud, she realizes how trivial it all is, how silly she was to get into such a tizzy. Except Frank doesn’t laugh.
“Shit. Why didn’t you say something? I thought you thought it was a good idea.”
The impending doom reassembles.
“I didn’t want to disappoint your mother.”
Mrs. Marino turns too quickly and knocks a stack of fanned napkins to the ground.
“Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit,” she mouths.
“She hasn’t been doing so great lately,” he says. “She really needs one thing to go right.”
Polly passes the toast points through the kitchen hatch to Pia and gets a glimpse of the living room. Teddy is standing alone, inspecting the bottom of a hanging basket. Donna is talking to Carlo. She fuzzes the top of her crew cut and she brushes his arm. Polly has the terrible realization that Donna and Carlo are almost the same age.
“Donna and Carlo, Donna and Carlo,” Polly squawks at Frank. “Do something!”
“Say ‘My aunt is going to take Frank to th
e doctor.’ ”
“Huh?”
“AhhHhhHHhh,” Frank says, and crumples to the ground, his hair in the cat’s food. Polly just stands there, baffled. Mrs. Marino comes immediately.
“What’s wrong, Frankie?”
“Shooting pains . . . in my abdomen . . . I need a doctor.”
Polly snaps to it. “My aunt and I will drive him,” she says.
But Mrs. Marino ignores her. “Johnny! Get Carlo to get Sylvia in here!” She’s careful to keep the party going. “Not to worry, Father Medeiros! We’re just looking for the spoons.”
Sylvia undoes Frank’s belt.
“Ay, ay—no funny business,” Carlo says.
Frank groans. His mother shushes him.
“Does it hurt here? What about here?” Sylvia asks. She has a decisive, competent way about her, qualities that are likely overlooked because of her big hair.
“Everywhere . . . everything,” Frank sighs.
“Does it hurt when I press or when I release?”
“Both,” he says.
“Are you sure?”
He gargles inarticulately.
“You appear to have appendicitis. You might need surgery.”
“Frankie.” The bustle goes right out of Mrs. Marino. She gets down on her knees next to the cooker. She strokes Frank’s forehead. He is her middle son, but he is her heart. Carlo pats his ankle and Johnny hovers in the doorway. Frank is everyone’s favorite. He is the most fun and the most tender; what Polly feels is not just a delusion of the beholder.
“Can you get your aunt to take him to the hospital?” Mrs. Marino says.
Donna and Teddy are chuckling together on the couch. Teddy tears a corner from the page of a TV Guide, Donna dictates something, and he writes it down, maybe a phone number.
Polly barrels back into the kitchen. She bends to give Frank a cool cloth and whispers, “Donna and Teddy are hitting it off.”
Frank sits up.
“Take it easy,” Johnny says.
“I feel much better. Let me up.” They all scooch back, butts against kitchen drawers.
Frank jiggles his gut. “I think it was just gas.”
Carlo throws a dish towel in his face.
“Is it time for us to say something?” Mr. Marino asks through the hatch.
A glass clinks and people gather. Frank loops his arm around Polly’s neck. They can’t meet eyes. Laughter is swelling in him, his side is shaking. Polly clamps down hard on the inside of her cheek, Frank bites the back of his thumb. His mother is thanking everyone for their love through all the years. Their eyes are tearing, their lungs burn. The good times and the bad. When there’s clapping, they take a huge gulp of air. Now, his father speaks. He’s not one for long speeches. In a few hours, Polly will learn that Donna was just selling Teddy a vacation package, all-inclusive, to Acapulco. But Mr. Marino says he’s written a poem. Frank stills.
“In sickness and health, till death do us part.” He pauses to snicker, but when he tries to talk again, he can’t; there is a hitch in his voice. Polly feels her eyes water. He manages to keep going. “My life would have been much worse without you, forever you have my heart.”
The crowd’s stunned hush collapses into catcalls and wolf whistles. For once, Mrs. Marino is silenced. Mr. Marino sweeps her into his arms and smooches her. Everyone applauds.
Frank frog-marches Polly into the bathroom. He lifts her onto the vanity, her bum falls in the sink. He kisses her to muzzle her yelps of laughter. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” he says.
Some Journeymen were exceptional at the art of keeping busy. Huffing up and down with brushes and mops, unhooking their curtains to wash them, putting their hair in newsprint curlers, taking their bedside rugs to the roof for a beating. Polly trailed them all day Sunday, helping to haul washbasins and sweep away the soot that gathered at the ends of the hallways where the south wall was missing. Other Journeymen watched her jog past their open doors as they lay in bed in their undershirts. If she kept her thoughts and her body occupied, if she could create a diversion, her mind could rout the impossible, and a solution would materialize. All of the people dusting and scouring and folding held this hope in their hearts: that cleanliness would cure them. This sameness didn’t dawn on Polly, and she closely guarded her near despair.
Every few instants, she’d catch the edge of something terrible: she’d made a bad miscalculation; in this country, she had no credibility or leverage at all. But then the edge would slip away from her. There was no way she could grasp how low her status was and carry on, so she kept letting the thought go.
Polly and Misty helped an old lady named Sue move two boxes of videotapes from beside her fridge to under her bed.
“Where did you get these? Why do you keep them?” Misty asked.
“Once they start making VCRs again, I’m gonna make a mint doing rentals.”
“Smart,” Misty said.
“You got me. I’m an old softie. Inside this box is the only place now where Hollywood still exists.”
Polly had been stationary too long. Gloom rolled in.
“What needs to be done next?” she said.
Frank would say, It’s human to be sad. You can’t beat your emotions. Let’s lie down.
Polly ran down the stairs. Misty could hardly keep up.
The girl with the perfect red bob had everyone gathered around her in the lobby.
“This button makes it cold,” she was saying. A fat-barreled hair dryer lay in her hands.
“Gorgeous,” someone said.
“Linda, that’s ridiculous. How much of your LifeFund are you paying to run that thing?” They recognized Sandy’s voice. Linda rolled her eyes, but it was too late. Sandy had ruined it. The crowd dribbled away.
“How’d you get that?” Misty said.
“My boss got it for me in Houston.”
“How? Why?” Misty gave exactly the spluttering reaction Linda sought.
“I did some extra work for him.” It was all the detail Linda would give.
Misty’s eyes got so big, they swallowed her cheeks.
“Calm down,” Sandy said. “She just did some housekeeping for him. Probably a month’s worth. Idiot.”
“Do bosses do that?” Polly asked.
“What?” Misty said.
“Get things for us? If we do work for them?”
“It’s completely illegal,” Sandy said.
Could Polly ask Baird to go to Twenty-Fifth Street?
* * *
If she asked Misty to go to Twenty-Fifth Street for her, they would think Misty was a stowaway. Norberto would refuse: he was too married to regulation. Baird might do it for a price, but what could she give as payment? What did he like?
All day Monday she watched for clues. He thumbed through a waterlogged Saks catalogue from ’62. He looked out the window. He worried away at his nasal passages with a thumb. By evening she had a bizarre gift list, with just three items: drink, sleep, and the past. She had none of these to give.
She could just ask. The worst he can do is say no, Donna would say. Still, she almost didn’t ask, convincing herself she could wait until Wednesday. But on Tuesday he was sober. Who knew if that would hold true for the rest of the week?
“I’m trying to find my cousin,” she said.
He didn’t reply. He was applying varnish to the legs of a vanity bench, using feathery dabs to emulate the stroke pattern of the bench’s first maker.
The janitor who came to clean the blood closet arrived.
“This area is off-limits!” Baird shouted.
Each week it was a different person; they must have drawn straws, no one was willing to touch strange blood. Each paused to study the posted Safe Handling Guidelines, checking and rechecking their gloves, though every second in the freezer scored the skin. One boy cried. Any one of the blood bags could carry the kind of world-ending germ that had flung them so irretrievably from home.
“It’s the cleaner,” Polly said.
<
br /> Baird watched the woman until she entered the blood closet.
“I can’t find my cousin,” Polly tried again.
He squinted at her.
She dropped it. She could not talk about her quest without jogging his delicate, angry wounds. She sympathized with him so keenly that it did not cross her mind that Baird might carry something else: not grief, but guilt. On a sea of strange, she needed him to be her twin, so from very little evidence, she compelled a story for him that mimicked her own. This also insulated her from his contempt.
Norberto flagged Polly down that evening, as she was passing. “I have something for you.” He was eating a bowl of beans and he turned his head away until he finished chewing. “Sorry.” He swallowed. “Tell me about this contact form.”
“Did you find it?” Her lungs felt too large for her chest.
“No.” Norberto said this with no regret, and she felt an irrational fury that flamed anyway.
“It was something they had at my departure,” she explained again. “A special form they would send to your beneficiaries if something changed.”
“Did they charge you for that?”
“No.”
“Small mercy. I don’t think it’s real. Was it an official form, or did someone just ask you to scribble down details on a scratch pad?”
“No. It was real.”
“I’m just asking. No need to get salty.”
“Okay. Well.” She moved towards the stairwell.
“Wait. I told you I have something for you. Come in.”
She followed him past rows of provisions. Likely, it was a form that needed to be signed, or another pamphlet. But maybe it was a letter from Donna, maybe Frank was on the phone.
“I’m not totally positive this contact form is a fake, but I didn’t find any trace of it. I looked through your whole file. There’s all sorts of garbage: flyers, stuff not even particular to you.” He was trying to drum up appreciation. She nodded and smiled to boost his speed. “But I found this.” He put a half sheet of paper in front of her. “Ta-da!”
The paper had been separated using the edge of a table. Like so many TimeRaiser papers, it looked like a tax form, with all the little boxes. But it had been filled out by a sloppy hand that overran the lines and left most of the boxes empty. Polly had to study it to understand it. Subject: Polly Nader. Inquiree: Frank Marino. Result: in transit.