Connie could hear Grace calling goodbye like a ventriloquist with the baby’s voice.
“We love Mommy. Don’t we? We love Mommy. Bye bye. Bye bye…”
Connie curled the car backward onto Earl Court and yanked the gear shift down two into Drive. She reached up and waved out the window.
“Bye bye!” she called out the window, trying to sound cheerful. But in her mind it sounded like a dirge.
16
“Uch, Who made this coffee, the town poisoner?”
Penny Langston was working at her desk over lunchtime, with a green salad from Kwan’s downstairs and a cup of stale black coffee from the machine in the staff room.
She had another sip.
“Lord in heaven. This coffee…” she muttered.
She pressed the intercom button.
“Cathy, could you ask Brian to pick up a can of Folgers for the staff room? I think I’ve finally had the last I can do of Ye Olde Can of Coffee Beans.”
She heard Cathy giggle. “Oh, thank goodness, I thought it was just me. Yes, done.”
Penny slid aside the third draft of ‘Clocking 80’ by her hit author Ron Crouse and pulled another manuscript from the neat stack on her desk.
She glanced down at the pages in front of her.
“The Museum by Jamie Brennan, Chapter One”
Penny held her plastic salad fork suspended in the air with one hand and flipped pages with two fingers from her other hand.
“Celia walked purposefully across the gallery floor.”
"Arghhh..." she whispered.
She picked up her red pen and clicked it to life. She wrote the word “Describe” in red. Then she wrote “New first line?”
Penny circled and crossed out where Jamie Brennan had written, purposefully and wrote, "NO ADVERBS." Underlining it twice.
If there was anything that rubbed her the wrong way - it wasn't bland adjectives - those were often the bane of the editor’s existence - it was adverbs. Show don't tell. And never describe an action. Display a better action.
An irritating start to the read.
Not that her mood was sparkling today to begin with. It had been a week since Dr. Quack told her she probably couldn’t have a baby and then there was last night’s dinner at Caleb’s Pub on Garth Road in Scarsdale with her husband. An outing to lift the spirits. A night out. Checkered tablecloths. Upscale hamburgers. Wine. Should have been fun. It wasn’t. Because three sips of wine in, she brought up a subject and he shot it down.
“We could adopt,” she said.
Davis retracted his head in surprise. “We’re not adopting, Penny.”
“People do.”
“We’re not those people. I’m sorry.”
Penny cast her eyes over to a table with a mid- 40s Scarsdale mom and her three kids. A teenaged boy and two 12-year-old twin girls. Well behaved. Eating burgers. She wondered where the father was. Working late? At home? Living somewhere else?
She glanced up at her husband.
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Are you sorry? Do you even care how much this means to me?”
“Babe, come on, don’t be like that.”
Penny glanced down at the oversize black menu with the cartoony white lettering.
Her eyes sprouted with tears as she let the words she wanted to say instead pile up in a big heap in her throat.
She looked at him. He had his tortoiseshell glasses on tonight, his salt and pepper hair in his eyes. A martini in his hand as he read the menu.
‘A thinking woman’s dreamboat’. Wasn’t that what the article in New York Magazine said a few years ago? He was 10 years older than Penny - so 35 when they got married, 45 now. But he just got better looking, more distinguished, more desirable every year.
“It’s not what we talked about, Penny. Adopting.”
“I realize that.”
“I agreed to try for a kid. For you. Because I love you. But I don’t want to adopt.”
He flicked his eyes up to the specials on the black chalkboard. “I don’t want to raise someone else’s kid.”
“Davis, he or she would be our kid.”
He squinted at the specials board. She could see him mouthing the words he read. Mussels… Prime Rib….
Suddenly his words sunk in. “Wait,” she said, “You agreed to have a child - for me.”
Davis turned back to her, had a sip of his martini. “Well, it wasn’t for me.”
A teenaged busboy placed some bread on the table. Penny smiled politely. “Thank you.”
She turned back to Davis.
“This is lovely.”
“You wanted the truth.”
“When the bloody hell did I ever say I wanted that?” she muttered.
Davis let out a laugh. His eyes sparkled. “God, you’re beautiful and brilliant and feisty and how did I get so lucky?”
“Oh, good lord.”
“I mean it.”
He reached across the table and took her hand. His grey eyes crinkled as he grinned his crooked smile. The sexy rogue’s smile she used to love and wasn’t sure about anymore, because it wasn’t hers anymore. It wasn’t just for her. It was for other women. She knew it but had no desire to say it because to say it would make it real.
“How did I get so lucky?” he smiled.
“Yes, Davis, I’m marvelous. You won the bloody fucking lottery.”
“I did.”
“That’s right you did.”
“I’m not kidding,” he said.
She cast her eyes over the salads. “Neither am I.”
“I wish you could know how beautiful you are.”
“Thank you, Cosmo magazine.”
He chuckled.
“Look, Pen - can I at least think about it? Adopting?”
Penny felt fresh tears spring to her eyes. She forced herself to stare at the list of appetizers.
“Of course,” she said. “Yes, of course.”
But she knew he wouldn’t think about it. He just wanted to have a nice dinner.
And that’s where hope of a brighter tomorrow ended for the evening.
So she drank a full carafe of white wine and turned the subject to books and art exhibitions.
And when they got home, she stumbled drunk out of his ridiculous M.G., headed a few steps up the walk, tripped and hit her head on the door knocker. What a swell evening.
“Gershwin should write a song of this,” she had muttered to herself, holding ice to her head on her way up the stairs to bed.
And now, sitting at her desk, this morning’s hangover headache began to tippy-toe back to life.
Penny lifted the styrofoam cup to her lips and took a sip of her sludgy black coffee.
She flipped manuscript pages. Jamie Brennan’s chapter.
Celia, the lead character, was having a conversation with a security guard named Silvio. "New Name" Penny had written and underlined in red. Then she’d made notes by the dialogue. ‘Tighten…’ ‘Add more of this.’
Something was missing from the writing. In the first chapter, a woman was taking over as the head of a museum. There were descriptions of Italian characters and local cats and views from the lead character’s apartment.
Penny sighed, irritated at the way the words were there but they were almost too perfect. Not vulnerable. Not true.
“Come on, Jamie Brennan. Tell me something true. ”
And as if by request, Penny turned the page and the truth kicked her in the face.
“As the uniformed, gloved workers unpacked the art from crates and hung the Vermeers and the Van Eyck’s and the one perfect Klimt, Celia stood at the edge of the gallery. Because here’s where she always was. Just outside. The art, the life that surrounded her, and yet… The days that turned to nights. And here was the simple truth, that naked truth which she saw inside a painting that no one could see in her. Celia felt herself dying piece by piece.”
Penny felt all the air leave her lungs in a quick heave. It
was faster than a sigh and deeper than a breath. It was like getting the wind knocked out of you.
She glanced up, away from the manuscript. Her eyes landed on a framed photo of her and Davis and James Baldwin at a reading at the 92nd Street Y.
She picked up her pen, wanting to write something in the margin, something like, “Start from here.” Or “More like this.” But she couldn’t.
She looked around her office, feeling completely exposed. Like the whole world could see her. And everyone knew. What she alone hadn’t seen. She was dying piece by piece. She was the only one who didn’t know.
Her phone buzzed. She pressed the intercom button numbly.
“Yes?”
“You have an editorial meeting in the boardroom in five minutes.”
“Thanks, Cathy.”
She flipped the pages closed and on the top page she wrote, “Needs work.”
She slid the manuscript on top of the stack on the left hand side of the desk.
She’d get back to that when she had the time.
17
“Leo, what do ya think happens when you die? You think Jesus meets ya?”
Bridget slipped the last of the boxes of books onto the trolley by the loading dock and leaned against the packing table.
She watched her workmate Leo as he shifted the boxes into place.
“Sure, Bridget. Don’t you think?”
She loved Leo. He was Dominican and had a girlfriend named Dominica, and for some reason, Bridget loved that. Leo was a few years older than her and was always dressed for the disco. Today he had on tight, orange pants and a multicolored polyester shirt, open at the collar revealing a cross. He took great care in his appearance and always had a pick in his afro or in his back pocket.
“This about your guy, Bridget?”
“Nah, just a general question,” she smiled. “You goin’ dancing tonight?”
Leo grinned. “Every night.”
“Studio 54?”
Leo shrugged. “Probably. Or maybe the one out in Brooklyn.”
“What’s the secret to a good disco dance?”
Leo smiled. She really liked the gap in his teeth. “Sex appeal, baby...”
“Confidence?”
“Yeah, that too. But ya gotta be able to own the floor. You want me to show you some moves?”
“Ach, I dunno. Leo, I don’ really think I’m disco.”
Leo pushed the last box into place. “You rock and roll, Bridget?”
“I am, Leo.”
“I respect that.”
Bridget laughed. “Thanks.”
And this is how it went. They always had something to talk about. Something light. Something real. Bridget had heard from that blabbermouth Dennis on the first floor that Leo had done time for robbing a grocery store when he was 17. But now it was all about marrying his girlfriend, their wedding plans and doing the Hustle.
He was salt of the earth and she could trust him with anything.
“So… I kissed Jamie Brennan..”
Leo straightened the boxes on the trolley. His eyes widened. He whistled.
“Whooo, that’s a good one. She’s a fox,” he chuckled. “All the guys down here are in love with her. I keep tellin’ ‘em she’s not into boys.”
Bridget knew Leo and these guys didn’t give a shit what you did. They didn’t give a shit if a girl was gay. They couldn’t care less about anything other than who you were. And if they could trust you. If you were one of them, you were one of them. And she was one of them. And Jamie probably too. A good heart got you a long way.
“You read her book?” Leo asked.
“Aye – did you read it?”
Leo nodded. “Sure, man! Hey – I mean, didn’t buy it, just read it sittin’ here” Leo chuckled. “But fuck, man – Jamie was the nicest person here to me when I started workin’ here – so I’d read anything she wrote. You guys gonna be a thing?”
Bridget shrugged. The truth was she didn’t know. She didn’t know much of anything these days. She wasn’t the person she used to be and she wasn’t some new person yet she recognized.
Bridget reached into her pocket and slipped out her smokes. She watched as Leo pushed the trolley towards the entrance into the back of the bookstore.
“She’d be a lucky girl to have you, Bridget.” Leo smiled.
“Aye. That she would, Leo.”
As Leo pushed the trolley through the doors into the bookstore, Bridget stood in the sudden emptiness of the loading dock. The echo of traffic from 10th Street.
In silences, sometimes everything reminded her of what she’d done. And who she’d become in the name of what she said was love and loss.
Don’t think about it, she’d told herself a million times since. But she did think about it. She thought about her black heart in the name of love.
She thought about missing her Ma and Leanne and her other sisters and her brother. And mostly she thought about any different path she could have taken and didn’t.
Jamie Brennan was something special. If Bridget deserved anything good, Jamie Brennan might be something good.
But she didn’t deserve it. How could she?
18
“This painting is by a man named PLINY THE YOUNGER…as you can tell there was an OLDER PLINY who was… his… Elder…. Father or… basically not this person.”
Friday afternoons were the most hilarious day to be up at the Met. All the best tour guides worked on Saturdays, so Friday afternoons were the fourth-string Docents badly leading tours.
Jamie was wearing a t-shirt, Levi’s and her black converse. And sitting on the leather bench in the middle of the East Wing Gallery at the Metropolitan
The museum was one of her favorite places to work. It had the two A’s - artsy and air conditioned.
She glanced up to watch the tour group trundle by. A Hanna Barbera looking Mix’n’Match clump of tourists. Like a Poor Man’s Murder on the Orient Express.
A day off. A book to write. Art. Paintings. Tourists. Jamie Brennan took it all in and filled herself up.
She dusted some croissant from earlier off her Levi’s and glanced back to her notebook. By some miracle, she had managed to churn out one chapter this week for Penny Langston.
Now she was blank again, so she doodled the name ‘Bridget’ in her notebook.
Then she wrote the words, “How do I feel about you?”
Bridget, TEN REASONS WHY YOU’RE RIGHT FOR ME:
1. I should be writing my book right now.
2. I like the way this gallery smells like lemon pledge.
3. You’re extremely sexy.
4. Lists are fun
5. It’s hot out…
6. I want to write my book about art.
7. You’re pretty much not interested and unavailable. Which of course I like.
8. You are fun to be with. I could fall in love with you.
9. Uh oh.
Jamie glanced up and saw a woman go by with a bag from the gift shop.
She knew that gift shop well. Her ex, Sarah, got a job there when she was doing her Art History Masters. And Sarah and Jamie had had various fights in the Metropolitan Museum during their passionate two-year relationship. There was: I wasn’t flirting with her, I was giving her directions to the ladies room, in the Asian Art Treasures Gallery; Fine, I won’t cook - let’s just order Chinese for the millionth time, in the Treasures of the Dutch Masters Galley, and Why is that Patronizing? in the Vases from Antiquity room.
Jamie and Sarah were stormy at times and perfect the rest of the time.
They'd met five years earlier. When Sarah Guitierrez was this mid-twenties, dark-eyed dreamboat that then-heterosexual Jamie Brennan would see every Saturday morning when she would pop in to Jacque’s Tarts on Seventh Avenue South to pick up the weekly croissants for herself and her musician boyfriend Sam.
Over the many Saturdays, Jamie and the cute girl behind the counter struck up interesting conversations about books. (Joyce Carol Oates, Joan Didion, J
.D. Salinger, others.) And life. (Sarah was from Boston, her father was in the oil business somewhere overseas, they both had never traveled and wanted to).
Sarah was smart and feisty and feminine and feminist. Like a princess of an undiscovered nation with a penchant for poetry and war. Dark haired, dark eyes that flashed with warmth or fire or lust or all of the above at once. Her glasses made her even cuter, like Batgirl or a goddess moonlighting as a librarian.
Brains, beauty, art, literature, serving tiny cheesecakes. Jamie Brennan’s knees got weak at the sight and sound of her. But for Jamie, being 23 and straight and never having considered being with a woman, it was weird and impossible.
But then Sarah made it real - she asked Jamie out.
"Movie sometime?" Sarah said while reaching into the display case for a lemon tart.
The first word that came out of Jamie’s mouth wasn’t the right one. “Huh?”
Sarah laughed. Eyeing Jamie with a little smile, while fiddling with some coconut macaroons.
“Wanna see a movie together or something? I’m asking you out…”
And the next word that came out of Jamie’s mouth changed her life.
“Yes.”
So it was goodbye Sam, goodbye being straight. Jamie and Sarah fell in love. And Sarah moved in to Jamie’s studio apartment overlooking University Place.
Love, lust, sex, brilliant conversation, an amazing listener, the world a beautiful place, big plans to travel together. Talk of a cat or dog from Bide-a-wee.
Until two years in, one April evening, Jamie came home from working at the bookstore and Sarah’s things were gone. She left a note on the kitchen table.
“I’m sorry, Jamie. I can’t lie anymore.”
They had talked about it enough - Sarah hated lying to her parents about who she was.
“Tell them, then,” Jamie would say.
“It’s not that easy. I’d lose everything.”
Jamie, on the other hand, had told her own family about her newly gay self and her new girlfriend.
“Huh. Weird. Okay.” Jamie’s sister Christy said. Then never mentioned it again.
And her brother called from Berlin where he was working. “James, everyone in Berlin is like that. What’d mom say?”
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