Madly

by Ruthie Knox

  “Everybody but Mom.”

  She said it without thinking, because looking around, it felt true. In some way she didn’t understand yet, these people were…everybody.

  “Why would Mom be here?” May asked.

  “She wouldn’t. Forget it. You ready to do this?”

  “I’m not doing it. You’re doing it.”

  “Why am I doing it?”

  May pushed her with both hands toward a cleared area by the kitchen. “This is an Allie job if there ever was an Allie job. I’m B-Team.”

  “You should come up here with me and be A-Team.” Secretly, though, Allie liked the idea of being the A-team, even if it was just for public speaking, outlandish outfits, and mad schemes.

  “Nopes.”

  “It would be good if we had sister solidarity.”

  “I’m solid. We’re solid. You’re just the spokeswoman.”

  “One of you get up there and start talking, or I’m leaving,” Chasity said, just as Ben slammed an enormous plate onto the pass-through and said, “Appetizers.”

  “I’ll just take that around,” May said. “Make sure nobody’s too hungry to do good listening.”

  “Traitor.”

  Her sister winked, and Allie smiled.

  It had taken her several sleepless hours, a lot of texts back and forth with May, and an hour’s worth of whispered, interrupted conversation at the 9/11 Memorial for Allie to get to a place where she felt like smiling, but now she kind of couldn’t stop. It just felt so…big.

  It was big to learn that her mom wasn’t a serial adulterer, though Allie was learning to accept that even if she had been, her mom was a woman she could talk to about it, talk about all the kinds of choices women were faced with.

  It was big to learn her mom was someone so interesting—that she was unknown in a way Allie had never considered, and part of the world in a way she’d never understood.

  It was big to hear from her dad, for the first time, exactly what he thought about the circumstances of her birth.

  It was big to think of herself not as the child who’d come along and almost ruined her family—the daughter who could break everything apart—but as the child who’d helped her parents find each other again, in a way. Her dad had been so matter-of-fact about his way of thinking, that Justin had the raw end of the deal, because Justin didn’t get to have Nancy, and Justin didn’t get to have her, either.

  Allie was beginning to feel a little sorry for Justin, too.

  “Can I have everybody’s attention?” she called. She waited for everyone to turn their eyes to her, basking a bit when Nev whistled at the spectacle she made in her green-and-purple belted leisure suit with red cork-soled platform sandals.

  “Tomorrow morning the artist Justice is going to unveil a new installation to a massive crowd of New Yorkers. The city is buzzing with rumors, which have been leaking out bit by bit all week. Most people agree it’s going to happen around ten or eleven, definitely at or near the Brooklyn Bridge.”

  “That’s solid,” Bea called. “My catering guy confirms it.”

  “In lots of different ways, most of the people in this room have been trying to help me find my mom this week. We’ve been narrowing in on this event because it seemed like the one place we knew for sure we would find her. I can tell you now, for sure, that my mom will be there tomorrow. But I can also tell you that pretty much everything else I told you was wrong.”

  Her eyes met Winston’s. He sat with his legs crossed at the knee, his creases perfectly straight, his dark eyes attentive, his posture erect.

  She yearned toward him so hard, she felt like one of those cartoons with its heart beating out of its chest, dragging it across the room.

  “The last time I talked to you, I wanted to try to meet with her today, first, with my family, because we wanted to convince her not to leave my dad for Justice.” She glanced at her father, who was making a mild face of disgust at something on his plate. “I’m happy to announce that’s no longer going to be necessary. My mom isn’t with Justice.”

  “Then where is she?” Chasity asked.

  “No, I mean, she’s with him, but she’s not romantically involved with him. She’s actually working with him. My mom and Justice met in art school back when he was plain old Justin Olejniczak. She’s been masterminding all of his big public reveals ever since.”

  Chasity leaned forward in her chair. “Wait, what’s your mom’s name?”

  “Nancy.”

  “Her full name.”

  “Nancy Fredericks.”

  Chasity waved her hand. “Not her name now, her name when they were in school together.”

  “Van Der Beek,” her dad said brusquely.

  Chasity snapped her fingers. “That. That. Why didn’t you tell me that three days ago?”

  “I didn’t know you’d—”

  “I’ve been pulling permits all over the country, and half of them have ‘N. Van Der Beek’ on them, but nobody knows who the hell N. Van Der Beek is. Never once crossed my mind it’s your ma. That’s fucking amazing.”

  “Wait, your mom is Van Der Beek? Van Der Beek’s famous,” Bea said.

  “She’s not famous. Nobody’s ever heard of her.”

  “Okay, so it’s a very small circle she’s famous in, but she is,” Bea interrupted. “You know I mentioned that documentary film professor who’s making the film about Justice? He’s the one I heard about Van Der Beek from. He thinks Van Der Beek is the key to everything. The name’s on one piece of paper from Maine, when they built that first piece at the jetty. Everyone wants to know who Van Der Beek is.”

  Allie had never seen a word about it in her Internet research. “Dad, did you know that?”

  He nodded. “Nancy follows the gossip.”

  Everybody started talking at once, and Allie shouted to get control of the room. “Hey!”

  No effect. She lifted her hand in the air, shouted “Hey!” again, and noticed Winston watching her, his expression so bemused, so pleased with her, that she flushed warm all over.

  Allie smiled.

  It should have been impossible, but Winston smiled back.

  They grinned at each other like idiots until Ben filled the counter with sandwiches, slamming plates down, breaking the spell. Allie lifted her fingers to her mouth and made the piercing whistle she’d once used—and would use again—to get her dogs to come to the door.

  “I know it’s kind of a lot to take in, but I’m not done, people. My dad’s here, in Manhattan, because he’s never had a chance to see my mom in action. He’s never seen a Nancy Van Der Beek production, right, Dad?”

  Her father nodded.

  “Be inspiring,” Allie urged. “This is a historic moment.”

  Her father rolled his eyes, but then he put down his sandwich and his napkin and stood. “Tomorrow is Nancy’s day. It’ll be good if she has people there who love her, and you guys”—he gestured at the assembled strangers—“are welcome to come, too.”

  He sat back down, so Allie supposed that was all the public speaking she would be able to drag out of him. “Right. So, we all think Mom deserves to have a big crowd tomorrow, and we’d love it so much if all of you guys, who helped me this week, and supported me, and listened to me bitching about my problems, and took care of me when I was sad or felt like giving up—”

  Here, again, her eyes went to Winston. He uncrossed his legs, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and smiled again, all the smile lines at the corners of his eyes, the precious creases at either side of his mouth, the sparkle and hotness and rightness of him.

  She lost the thread.

  “Allie!” May said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Clipboard.”

  She pushed it into her stomach and made herself look away.

  You don’t throw away something that’s always been good because one of you’s hurting, her dad had said. You just don’t.

  She wouldn’t throw Winston away. She didn’t know how she’d keep
him exactly, but she fully intended to give it a whirl.

  “Allie!” May said.

  “Right. So if all of us could be there tomorrow for my mom, I’d really like that. Nobody’s ever been there for her when she did this, just for her. I think she’s accomplished something pretty amazing—actually a lot of amazing things, like thirty years of marriage and two daughters who are doing more or less okay, plus a secret career turning Justice into a star, and we’d like to show up tomorrow with flowers and, you know, fireworks, and a whole cheering section that’s just for her.”

  “I wouldn’t miss this,” Jean said. “It would be like walking out before the end of a really good movie.”

  “Same here,” Cath said. “We’re in.”

  “I’m definitely going to be there, with cameras,” Bea said. “I’m thinking there’s loads of people who want to tell Justice’s story, but how awesome would it be to tell the Nancy Van Der Beek story?”

  “Assuming she wants it told,” May interjected.

  “The cat’s out of the bag now,” Chasity said. “Her name’s all over the permits.”

  “You found that information in the course of your work,” Winston said mildly. “One might argue that it’s subject to the confidentiality terms of your employment.”

  “You’re saying you’re gonna fire me if I leak the word about Van Der Beek?”

  “And here we thought you’d left your blackmailing days behind,” Cath said sweetly.

  “Anonymity may not be an option for your ma anymore.” Chasity wheeled closer to Winston. “And you try to fire me, I’ll tie you up in court so fast your head spins.”

  “You really do rather like me, don’t you?” Winston asked.

  “You’re a pain in my ass.”

  “I trust we’ll be great friends.”

  Allie looked at her dad, but her father only shrugged. “She’s kept her secret a long time, and I don’t see how it’s gotten her anything. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the world finds out.”

  And that felt big, too—learning the truth about her mother right before the rest of the world did, on the cusp of something so enormous, with so many changes in her life at once, and so many people to share them with.

  “Everybody in?” she asked.

  And when they nodded, and smiled, and Bea cheered, Allie had to push the clipboard into her stomach again and hang on tight to keep from floating away.

  —

  After Allie finished her announcements, everyone lingered at their tables, eating and talking. Winston found himself drifting away from the crowd to inspect the restaurant more closely.

  Allie was right—it was much too small, obviously a space meant to be a sandwich counter, into which Ben had shoehorned a full-service restaurant serving three meals a day.

  He admired the ambition, but there were better options for this space, particularly if the food Ben had prepared was a fair sample of his talents.

  Winston edged around a table, in search of a better view of the kitchen, and bumped into an occupied chair. “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “Remind me who you are again?”

  Allie’s father. Bugger. He extended a hand, and Bill enclosed it in an intimidatingly powerful grip. They bobbed their arms up and down a few times, a ritual that Winston had always found faintly ridiculous.

  “Winston Chamberlain. I’m a friend of your daughter’s.”

  “Which daughter?”

  “Oh, of course. Of Allie’s. She’s been staying with me for the week.”

  “And who are those people, there?”

  “That’s my brother, Neville, and his partner, Cath. The woman in the chair is my personal assistant, Chasity.”

  “The one over there, with the colored hair?”

  “That’s my daughter, Beatrice.”

  “She’s a hoot.”

  “Yes. She is, rather. Yours, too. Allie, I mean. She’s…” Bill’s eyes narrowed as Winston searched for a word to describe Allie that would capture her without offending her father. He gave up and settled for, “I’m sure you’re very proud of her.”

  Bill settled back in his chair, his visual inspection of Winston still uncomfortably acute. “For what, exactly, do you think I should be proud of her?”

  “Ah. Well. Her success in business, I suppose, and her intelligence, her wit, her great personal vivacity, her sense of style, her joie de vivre, her—”

  “What was that last one?”

  He had managed to annoy Allie’s father. “Sorry, it’s French. It means her enjoyment of life, her exuberance.”

  “Mm-hm. So what did you say you do, Winston?”

  And for the next ten minutes, Winston discovered that reaching middle age, experiencing divorce, raising a daughter—none of these things made it a titch less excruciating to present oneself to the father of the woman one had fallen in love with.

  He barely escaped with his life.

  It was Allie who rescued him, pulling him away from the table with breezy words to her father that he couldn’t recall afterward, so distinct was the sensation of her hand on his elbow.

  “I can’t eat this food,” she said under her breath. “I love Ben, and I think he’s probably some kind of genius, but you want to go get a hot dog from that stand by your office? I’m starving. We can make Jean drive us.”

  “We’d be consigning Neville and Cath to ride back on the train with Chasity and Bea.”

  “I already talked to them. They say they’ll somehow get through it without your presence. Come on.”

  She grabbed her bag off a table and led him through the door Jean was already holding open. Winston began to feel he’d been maneuvered into an elaborate sort of escape—a sensation he associated quite strongly with Allie, and particularly with the night they’d met at Pulvermacher’s.

  “You’re such a schemer,” he said, holding the car door open for her.

  She stopped, crouching halfway into the backseat of the Lincoln, her face stricken. “Shit. You’re right, I’m sorry. I get so excited. You don’t have to get a hot dog with me, it’s like an hour in the car. Do you even want to? I mean, you’re probably mad at me, and I did this wrong, maybe.”

  “Get in the car, darling.”

  She slid the rest of the way in, and he walked around to his side. The sun was high in the sky, no clouds in sight, the city bright and hot and pulsing with life. He felt light in his shoes, buoyed by the presence of the woman he loved.

  He had a quiet word with Jean before he got in. The privacy screen rose, creating a silent area in the back of the car for him to share with Allie. When the car pulled away from the curb, he took her hand. “I like your schemes.”

  She pulled her palm from his, depositing a clasped fist into her lap. “I couldn’t sleep last night,” she said. “I kept thinking about all the things I failed at, with trusting my parents, or with May, even with Matt.” She glanced at him. “With you, maybe, too. But I don’t want to fail with you.”

  “You haven’t. You won’t.”

  “I don’t know, I just kept thinking about the thing about the mailman. You’re supposed to start practicing how to be authentic with the mailman so that you can get better at it, and eventually try it out on someone you see more often, until you’re ready to try it out on the people you love. And you and me”—she looked right at him, her blue eyes bright and full of longing—“we skipped so many steps on the mailman thing.”

  “I’d prefer it if you never again referred to me as your mailman.”

  “Sure, but what I mean is, we went from strangers to friends to lovers and—and more than lovers—all the time telling each other things we never told other people, things that were scary, and I started thinking, when does that stop, you know? Because it wouldn’t go on forever. Sooner or later I’d fail you. I’d start holding parts of myself back, or hiding them away, and you—maybe you’d fall back on your old patterns, too, and want to control me, want me to dress different or act different, be someone who f
its you better.”

  “Allie, no.”

  “But you don’t know. We don’t know. I’m scared, Winston, because I don’t want to fail anymore. Not when it’s this important. Not with you. And I have learned from the past few days—I’ve learned that I have to work harder to trust the people I love, and I’ve learned that I need to maybe stop acting on what the worst-case scenario is all the time. Like, I get that I shouldn’t have run out on you the other night just because I could imagine how much it would really hurt if I messed up with you in the future, or couldn’t handle being with you. But I don’t want to fail with you, I don’t. So I need you to help me.”

  She cupped her hands in the lap of her purple leisure suit, her head bent. And suddenly Winston understood what it was he was meant to say.

  “You’re going to fail.”

  She looked up at him, her expression all surprise and disappointment.

  “You’re going to fail again and again. You’ll fail spectacularly, in fact. You will probably fail more, Allie Fredericks, than anyone else I’ve known.”

  “That’s kind of mean to say.”

  “It’s not, though.” He took her hand. “All it means, truly, is that you commit yourself completely, over and over again. You give the world your all, and when you fail, you learn something, and you try again. That’s what failure is for. It’s what’s brought so much beauty into your life. You wouldn’t be wealthy and successful at such a young age, I’m certain, if you hadn’t put everything on the line more than once. I suspect you’ve done things that men twice your age called short-sighted and harebrained.”

  “Impulsive. Reckless.”

  “Yes, and I’d also bet that some of them have failed.”

  She smiled, slightly. “There was this thing I tried with illuminated roller-skating carhops and ice cream, the Frosty Lites.”

  “Do you have pictures?”

  “Some.”

  “I’d love to see them.”

  “May will never let me live it down. The Frosty Lites. Oh my God, it was such a disaster in every way.”