by Jane Heller
“I am,” I insisted. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not convinced,” he persisted.
“Please, Bill.”
He wouldn’t take his eyes off me, as if he were studying me, waiting for me to say “April Fool’s.”
“This is really unexpected,” he said instead. “I thought we were—”
“I’m sure you did,” I cut him off. “But this is the best thing, Bill. Believe me.”
“If it’s the best thing, then why does it hurt so much?”
When I remember this conversation, replay it in my mind, it’s that line of his, that question, that gets me. I’d worked with children for most of my adult life and couldn’t bear to see any of them hurt—ever. And now, in Bill’s case, I was actually doing the hurting, was actually causing the hurt. The guilt was unimaginable.
When I didn’t respond, Bill rose from the sofa and walked very slowly toward the door.
“I’m sorry,” I managed.
“You already said that,” he replied.
“I mean it, Bill.”
He shrugged. “You mean it. You don’t mean it. It doesn’t matter in the long run.” He opened the door. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Nancy.”
I already did, I thought as I watched him go.
Chapter Eleven
During the last week of school before the Christmas break, I found myself stuck in a somewhat unhealthy routine: I went to work, came back from work, ate dinner standing up at my kitchen counter, and thought about Bill.
I thought about Bill at his job, presiding over all those diamonds and rubies and emeralds. I thought about Bill at his apartment, getting the place ready for his sons. I thought about Bill in his bed, thanking his lucky stars that he’d gotten the heave-ho from Nancy Stern, the journalist-sociopath.
Every night I reached for the phone to call him, and every night I devoured a half-dozen Vienna Fingers instead. Why call him? I said to myself. What would be the point? Not only is he busy, but he probably hates you.
No, it’s the other Nancy Stern he hates, I tried to convince myself. He doesn’t know you exist.
Even if you finally told him the truth, he’d hate you, I always concluded by the time I drifted off to sleep. He hates people who lie. Give it up already.
And so it went, my interior dialogue. If it weren’t for the kids in my class, I might have driven myself crazy, but they proved to be much-needed breaks from my preoccupation with Bill. Sure, they were hyper around Christmas, and they did talk an awful lot about gifts gifts gifts, but they arrived at school each day with an aura of expectancy—an infectious sense of awe and wonder at the approaching holiday. They sat on the rug, twitchy yet wide-eyed, captivated by the stories Janice and I read to them about reindeer and snowmen and sleighs full of toys. They were also full of stories themselves—stories about the time they got a puppy for Christmas or a new baby sister or a trip to Disneyworld. One of the reasons I love teaching four-year-olds is that they’re like lab experiments, developing and mutating and transforming right before your eyes. There’s so much going on in their brains at that age, such change, such a learning curve. When they start school in September, they’re still little hatchlings, struggling to survive the separation from their mothers, but by Christmas, they’re little people, able to form their own judgments about the world. I never tire of watching their growth, never cease to marvel at what precious gifts they are, speaking of gifts. That Christmas, most of all, they were the perfect distraction for me—the Christmas I spent pining for Bill.
On the final day of school before vacation, Hector Alvarez, the janitor at Small Blessings, was felled by a stomach virus and couldn’t assume his usual role of Santa Claus. As a result, Deebo was pressed into service. She made a fine Santa, fortunately, and more than filled out the costume, especially in the shoulders.
“Ho-ho-ho! And look what I have for you!” she told each child, handing him or her the gift that had been brought to school by their parents.
“Ho-ho-ho! And look what I have for you!” said Fischer when it was his turn with Deebo/Santa. He was about to yank her beard off but, after catching my eye, thought better of it.
“You’ve been such a good boy lately, Fischer,” I said when his caregiver arrived to pick him up at the end of the day. “I hope you have a great time on your vacation.” The Levins were leaving that night for London. A “Dickens Christmas,” Gretchen Levin had dubbed the trip.
“You’re my favorite-est teacher, Miss Stern,” he said. “I wrapped your present all by myself.”
Small Blessings discouraged the parents from buying presents for the teachers, but they all did anyway—perfumes, scarves, gift certificates at Bloomingdale’s, a “day of beauty” at Elizabeth Arden. I wondered briefly what Gretchen Levin had chosen for me, then remembered from an earlier conversation with Fischer that he claimed to have picked it out himself.
“Thank you, Fischer, honey,” I said, hugging him again. “I can’t wait to open it.”
When the children were gone, back into the bosom of their families, I felt positively bereft, as if they were my own children and they’d just abandoned the nest. Janice took one look at my face and shook her head.
“You need some cheering up, kid,” she said.
I nodded. “Any ideas?”
“We could start by dividing up our loot.” She pointed at our pile of festively wrapped presents. “I brought a bunch of shopping bags. A couple of them for each of us.”
“That was considerate of you, Janice. I forgot to bring my bags this year.”
“I figured you would. You’ve had other things on your mind. Have you heard from him by the way?”
“Who? Bill?”
“No. Kevin Costner.”
“No, I haven’t heard from him and I’m not surprised. I blew him off, remember?”
“Yes, but some men don’t give up so easily. Some men are persistent.”
“Bill isn’t ‘some men.’ He has self-respect.”
“Whatever. I was only trying to make you feel better, Nance. Your body language screams broken heart.”
“Does it?”
“Check yourself out in the mirror. You’re so mopey your shoulders are down around your ankles.”
“That’s attractive.”
“Hey, you can always call Bill and tell him the truth, you know. You have that option.”
“Calling Bill and telling him I pretended to be someone else is not an option, Janice, so let’s not even go there.”
“Fine. Then let’s go here.” She sat down on the rug beside the pile of presents, and patted the space next to her.
I sat too, and we sifted through the Christmas gifts, depositing the ones with our names on them into our own bags.
When I got home, I stuffed my bags of unopened gifts into my hall closet and showered and changed for the Christmas tea party that Penelope was hosting for the staff. The soirée was an annual affair held at her place on Park Avenue—one of those high-ceilinged, bookcase-lined, prewar apartments that are so hard to come by in New York. (Penelope had come by hers by fawning over the head of the building’s co-op board, who just happened to be the father of one of Small Blessings’s preschoolers.) I would have preferred to skip the party this year but decided it was probably good for me to get out and mix with people, instead of staying home alone and sulking.
Penelope’s apartment was reminiscent of her office at Small Blessings, which was reminiscent of Penelope herself. It was prissy, fussy, filled with teeny tiny objects from past centuries—crystal figurines, china cups and saucers, porcelain dolls—all of which were fragile-looking and scared me to death. Whenever I went near them, I was overcome by the irrational fear that I would freak out and smash the entire collection. Perhaps it was time for me to deal with my hostility toward Penelope, yes?
Everybody who worked at Small Blessings showed up at the party, except for Hector Alvarez, the janitor who couldn’t play Santa Claus because he was home with a bu
g. In addition to the classroom teachers and the administrative staff, there was Carrie Mosby, the creative movement teacher; Donna Davecky, the librarian; Shelley Sheinbloom, the speech and language therapist; and Dr. Isabel Leaf, the psychologist.
We chatted over tea and scones. Victoria Bittner, the frustrated painter, told me she was contemplating a divorce from her husband, the frustrated sculptor, because she found him in his studio with a nude woman who was not his model but his brother’s wife. Nick Spada, the teacher by day/grad student by night, expounded on his theory that potty training is a political issue, akin to freedom of speech, and that children should have the right to remain in diapers as long as they like. And Fran Golden, the Romper Room throwback, revealed that she was now making Play-Doh from scratch for her class instead of using the store-bought kind. (Recipe: 3 cups flour; 1½ cups salt; 3 tbsp. oil; 3 tbsp. cream of tartar; 3 cups water; food coloring. Mix all ingredients and simmer on stove until liquids take on solid yet squishy consistency.)
I wasn’t avoiding Penelope per se, although, after our initial greeting, I didn’t seek her out. The person I did seek out was Dr. Leaf, a talkative, outgoing woman whose ambition was to have her own call-in radio show just for young children. Never mind that young children don’t listen to the radio for the most part, nor do their parents encourage them to place their own phone calls. What’s more, young children don’t do their own shopping, which would make advertisers unlikely to support such a show.
“I have this friend who’s been fantasizing about leading a more glamorous life,” I told Dr. Leaf. “In your professional opinion, does she have a psychological problem?”
“Of course not,” she said. “Fantasizing is perfectly normal.”
Normal. So far so good. “What if this friend wished she could trade places with a woman who she thought led a more glamorous life?” I said. “Would that constitute a psychological problem?”
“No,” she said. “We all wish we could step into another person’s shoes from time to time, just to get a taste of what it would be like.”
“Okay, shifting gears now, say this friend fudged the truth about herself, in order to impress a would-be boyfriend,” I said. “Would you consider that a psychological problem?”
“Well,” she said, “I suppose it would depend on how much fudging we’re talking about.”
“Deep, dark, rich fudging,” I said.
“I see.” She reached inside her handbag for her business card and a pen. “Here,” she said after writing something on the card and handing it to me. “I don’t work with adults, but I’m referring you to a colleague of mine who does. Give her a call, Nancy. Before the fudge melts.”
I nodded and walked over to Janice to report my conversation with Dr. Leaf.
“She’s the one who’s warped,” Janice insisted. “You don’t need a shrink. You need a drink. Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
We made our way over to Penelope and thanked her for having us.
“Then you’ve accepted that you won’t be calling Fischer Levin’s parents with all that unpleasantness?” Penelope asked me.
“No, but I didn’t think your party was the place to bring it up again,” I said. “The good news is that Fischer seems to have calmed down a bit. Maybe the New Year will bring more positive changes in his behavior. If so, my calling his parents will become a nonissue.”
Penelope fingered her pearls. “Your calling them is a nonissue now, Nancy. As we’ve already discussed.”
She smiled that tight, bullshit smile of hers and moved on to her other guests. Janice and I took that as our cue to split.
Janice agreed to throw nutritional caution to the wind, so we went to one of the zillion interchangeable Italian restaurants that have sprung up in Manhattan like portobello mushrooms, all of which have a name that ends in either -luna or -luma. We shared a bottle of wine (two bottles, actually), had dinner, and talked about our plans for the holidays, which weren’t very impressive. Neither Janice nor I was leaving the city to spend Christmas with our family, and neither of us had a date for New Year’s Eve.
“Do you think men hate the pressure of New Year’s as much as women do?” she asked. “I mean, aren’t we all sick and tired of feeling like we have to have a date for that stupid night?”
“Please. Not only do we have to have a date, we have to have the sort of date that’s special, exceptional, memorable—on a par with the senior prom.”
“I didn’t have a date for that either,” said Janice.
After deciding to spend New Year’s Eve together at her apartment, surfing the Internet for cyberdates, we said good night and walked home.
It was close to ten-thirty by the time I made the turn onto Seventy-first Street, only to find that the entrance to my building, not to mention the entire block, was swarming with cops and television news crews and curiosity seekers.
“What’s going on?” I asked the doorman after elbowing my way through the crowd. “Was there a murder in the neighborhood or something?”
I was half joking when I’d said that. No, murder is nothing to joke about, but the crime rate in New York has gone down in recent years, and people have taken to thinking that they’re no longer vulnerable—or, at least, that they’re less so.
“In the building,” said the doorman, his face flush with all the hubbub.
“What about the building?” I said.
“The murder,” he said. “It was here in the building.”
“A murder in our building? My God. How horrible,” I said, stunned as well as alarmed, my mind focusing immediately on the creepy delivery men who were constantly wandering from floor to floor. In fact, after taking another minute to process the information, I realized I wasn’t just stunned and alarmed; I was angry—downright furious that the lack of security in the building could have resulted in a death.
A death. Suddenly, the reality of that hit me and I experienced an overwhelming feeling of grief. The thought that someone I might have nodded to or exchanged pleasantries with or actually befriended could have been brutally, savagely killed was very upsetting.
“Which of the tenants was murdered?” I asked hesitantly.
“Miss Big Shot,” said the doorman. “That’s why the media’s so interested.”
“Miss who?”
The very instant the words were out of my mouth I knew, of course. I knew but I didn’t want to know. I knew but I couldn’t face knowing.
“The pretty one with the fancy job and the boyfriends,” he said. “Your pal in 24A. The other Nancy Stern.”
As I recall, I literally went limp after he uttered the name, not fainting exactly, but keeling over, in a sort of swoon. I probably would have sunk to the ground if the cop—one of the officers assigned to the case—hadn’t caught me.
“You live here?” he asked as he stood me upright.
I nodded, still feeling dizzy, weak, nauseous.
“Name?”
My lips trembled but nothing came out.
“Your name?” he repeated, his pen poised to write in his notepad.
“The same as hers,” I finally managed.
“The same as whose?” he said.
“The deceased’s,” I said, hoping he’d get it if I spoke in cop talk.
“Oh, so you’re telling me you’re Nancy Stern?” he said skeptically, as if he suspected me of being a sicko, a nut job, a crime scene junkie.
“That’s what I’m telling you, Officer,” I said as persuasively as I could under the circumstances. “I’m Nancy Stern.”
And I’m not the wrong Nancy Stern, either, I thought with no small amount of relief. Not this time.
Part Two
Chapter Twelve
Sleep was out of the question, so I milled around the lobby for an hour or so, huddling with other tenants and exchanging remarks like “I can’t believe this!” and “Isn’t it awful?” and “Who could have done such a thing?”
Eventually, I went upstairs and called Janice, who said,
“I can’t believe this!” and “Isn’t it awful?” and “Who could have done such a thing?”
“I don’t know,” I said in answer to the last one.
“You know more than you think,” Janice asserted, “since you were getting her phone calls and letters. Maybe you have information the police could use, information that could crack the case.”
“Me? Crack the case? I highly doubt it, Janice,” I said. I felt myself cracking at that moment. I couldn’t stop shaking. I was still in shock, I suppose.
“I’m serious, Nance. You should make a list of the people who called you thinking they were calling her, and give their names to the police. Including Bill, by the way.”
“Bill? Why? He never met Nancy. Well, except for that time in the elevator. But even then he had no idea who she was.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Janice. “Some animal murdered the woman, some insane creature. I think you have an obligation to give the names to the cops—all of the names—and let them figure out who’s a suspect and who isn’t.”
Bill a suspect? My Bill? The very notion was ridiculous, impossible, didn’t make sense. He thought I was the other Nancy Stern. He thought I was the celebrity journalist. He thought I—I stopped, a new realization registering. “He’s going to find out about me,” I said numbly. “The jig is up, Janice.”
“What are you talking about?” she said.
“Bill. Bill. The man I was trying so hard to impress. He’ll read about the murder in the paper or watch something about it on TV, and he’ll see that my face is different from her face and it’ll dawn on him that I was an impostor!”
“You’re right,” Janice conceded. “The other Nancy Stern wasn’t Barbara Walters, as we’ve said a thousand times, but her murder will probably get some publicity, considering that she was white, lived on the Upper East Side, was better-than-average-looking, and hung out with famous people.”
“Oh, they’ll run her photograph and he’ll see it,” I repeated, my heart sinking. “He’ll see her face, not to mention her hair and her boobs, and he’ll think, Who was that flat-chested brunette I went out with?”