The Fixer Upper

by Judith Arnold

  “About what?”

  If he were any more brusque, Libby would get windburn from his words, right through the phone. “It’s important, and I can’t go into it when you’re on your way out.”

  “Is it about Reva? Is she okay?”

  She’d give him half a point for remembering that they had a child together. “Reva is fine,” she assured him. “But what I have to discuss with you affects her. When can we talk?”

  “You’re the one who’s asking for this talk,” he said. “When do you want to talk?”

  “I want to talk now,” she told him, striving mightily to keep her tone calm and even. “We can’t talk now because you’ve got a squash game.”

  “How long a talk are you anticipating? Can we do it when I get Reva tomorrow?” Reva usually saw her father Sundays, a routine they’d developed a few years ago, when he’d taken charge of her Hebrew-school classes in preparation for her bat mitzvah, and the classes had met on Sundays. Now they just spent the day together. Reva had dinner with him and Bonnie and then she returned home to sleep, since she had school the next morning.

  “All right—but I’d rather not discuss this in front of her. Or Bonnie, for that matter.”

  “It’s a big secret?” His voice held a touch of mockery. “Oh, boy. I love secrets. Fine. We’ll talk tomorrow. I’ve got to go.”

  “Go. We’ll talk tomorrow.” Libby hung up before she could say anything else, like Fuck you, shithead. No one could bring out the bad language in her like Harry.

  She dreaded having to ask him for money face-to-face, but maybe it would be harder for him to say no when he understood that Reva’s home and her stability were at stake. He did care about her, and although fatherhood clearly didn’t come naturally to him, he put some effort into it.

  Libby carried the phone back to its base in the kitchen and felt her shoulders slump. What had she accomplished with that call? She’d laid some groundwork. She’d bought herself twenty-four hours to figure out how to persuade Harry to help her out. She’d made herself nauseous.

  She returned to the dining-room table and saw Eric Donovan’s folder lying open in front of her chair. If only there were a scholarship fund for people like her, who were desperate to hang on to their overpriced apartments. She’d fill out an application just as Ned Donovan had, and fax it to someone, and hope that a bouncy assistant stuck it into the correct file, and then—because she was a good person and a hard worker and she deserved to keep her apartment—she’d receive a letter saying she’d been approved for aid. And she and Reva would live happily ever after, right here in this place that had been their home for thirteen years.

  She heard a surge of trilling laughter from behind Reva’s closed door. For her, Libby thought. Harry had damn well better come through for his daughter.

  Seven

  “You want me to what?” Harry bellowed.

  “Shh!” Libby batted the air with her hand, signaling him to lower his voice. Reva had vanished into her bedroom as soon as she and Harry had arrived at the apartment, but even through her closed door she would hear every word of this difficult discussion if he insisted on shouting. For that matter, the Shapiros downstairs and the Gordons upstairs would probably hear every word. When Harry got worked up, his voice had the resonance of a foghorn.

  It wasn’t as if Reva needed to be protected from the idea that her mother would ask her father for money, given that she herself had suggested it. But Libby would prefer not to have her daughter witness an argument. She and Harry had done a decent job of divorcing without rancor, and when they disagreed, they did so as calmly as possible for Reva’s sake.

  Libby really hoped this talk would be calm. Harry’s reaction didn’t bode well.

  “Sit,” she said, gesturing toward the faded sofa in the living room—a sofa that had entered the apartment when Harry still called the place home. “I’ll make some coffee.”

  “I don’t want coffee,” he retorted in a tone maybe one or two decibels lower than before. “I just ate a very nice dinner with Reva and Bonnie.”

  As if someone who’d eaten a very nice dinner couldn’t possibly follow it with a cup of coffee. Libby wondered where the very nice dinner had been—somewhere near his downtown apartment, she assumed, since he’d told her he had dropped Bonnie off at home before driving Reva to the Upper West Side to engage in this conversation Libby had requested.

  “Well, sit anyway,” she said, steering him to the sofa. The coffee table—a scuffed but solid oak piece that also dated back to Harry’s marriage to Libby—was strewn with sections of the Sunday Times, and Libby made a halfhearted attempt to straighten them into a pile before settling into one of the wingback chairs.

  Even glowering at her from the other side of the coffee table, Harry was a handsome man, lean and buffed, his dark hair brushed straight back from his polished face. When she’d started dating him at Columbia, her friends had nicknamed him “Ken” because he looked a little like a Ken doll. Unlike Ken dolls, however, he was anatomically correct, which was how she’d wound up pregnant just weeks before graduation.

  He’d done the right thing. He’d offered to accompany her to a clinic if she wanted an abortion, and when she’d told him she didn’t—a decision that had surprised her as much as him, although as soon as she’d reached it she’d been certain she’d made the right choice—he had agreed to marry her. He’d been finishing his first year at Columbia Law School, and a dean he’d gotten chummy with had somehow finagled them into this apartment. The wedding had been simple, Libby in a loose-fitting white dress, Harry in a beautifully tailored suit that had cost more than her dress, a ceremony at his parents’ synagogue followed by an elegant dinner hosted by her parents at the Faculty House on campus. Everyone had told her the food was terrific, but she’d been suffering from morning sickness, which in her case had been morning, noon and night sickness until well into her fifth month. Her only memory of the wedding dinner was that it had returned on her as soon as they’d arrived home.

  The rooms of this apartment had been empty when they were newlyweds, the windows uncurtained, the fireplace dusty, the naked hardwood floors echoing Libby’s and Harry’s footsteps. Gilda and Irwin had scrounged some cast-off furniture for them, and after a few months, once Libby had landed a job as an administrative assistant in the admissions department of the lower school at Hudson, she had replaced the inflatable mattress she and Harry had been sleeping on with a real bed and purchased the living-room sofa at a discount outlet in the Bronx. She’d set up the crib Gilda had located for her—Gilda’s neighbor’s niece’s colleague at work had been willing to sell the thing for fifty bucks when her youngest child graduated to a junior bed—just days before Reva arrived.

  Libby had nursed her daughter through countless sleepless nights in this apartment. She’d scraped strained peas off the walls, mopped fingerpaints off the moldings and rescued LEGO blocks from the hearth of the never-used fireplace. She’d splurged on a few multicolored rugs to warm the hardwood floors and muffle her footsteps. She’d observed pigeons roosting on the sill outside the kitchen window. She’d read Green Eggs and Ham a thousand times to Reva, seated side by side with her on the couch where Harry now sat, and then she’d watched Reva prance around the room shouting, “That Sam-I-Am! That Sam-I-Am!”

  She was not going to give up this apartment. Not without a fight—or a grovel, if that was what it took.

  “Harry,” she said, “I hate asking you for money, but I’m in a bind. Either I buy this apartment or we move. Moving would mean a long schlep for Reva to get to school. It would mean longer trips for you to visit her. A quarter of a million dollars—” she raced through the figure, hoping he wouldn’t think too hard about it “—isn’t that much when you consider how essential it is for her to stay in the only home she’s ever known.”

  Libby held her breath, fearing he might propose something ridiculous, like taking primary custody of Reva and having her move into his SoHo loft so she wouldn’t have suc
h a long schlep. But from SoHo to the Upper West Side wasn’t exactly a short schlep, and anyway, Bonnie would never want to be a full-time mother. Besides, Harry didn’t want to be a full-time father. That was one reason he and his second wife were such a good match. The only other reason, as far as Libby could tell, was that they both liked money a lot.

  Not that Libby was in any position to criticize. Right now, money was one of her favorite things, too—or it would be if she had any.

  Harry sighed and rubbed his Adam’s apple, as if swallowing had become a challenge for him. Swallowing Libby’s plea for assistance obviously had. “I know you don’t want to leave this apartment, Libby. I didn’t want to leave, but I had to.”

  Under other, less desperate circumstances, Libby would have pointed out that he’d had to leave the apartment only because he’d chosen to leave their marriage. He’d had his law degree and his megabucks job as an associate at a fat-cat Wall Street firm, and he’d yearned for a glamorous life, not one that included a decidedly down-to-earth wife and a three-year-old daughter with dried ketchup on her shirt and pink Play-Doh in her hair.

  “But the amount of money you’re asking for—I mean, Libby! It’s outrageous!” he declared, barely managing to keep from shouting. Libby could see his exertion. Some people had difficulty projecting their voices. Harry had difficulty not projecting his.

  “What’s outrageous about it?” Libby asked. “The only outrageous thing about this is the cost of real estate in Manhattan.”

  “Why the hell can’t you cover the down payment?”

  “I can cover part of it,” she said defensively.

  “All you need is a quarter-million dollars. Christ.” He closed his eyes, as if the situation presented a gruesome spectacle he couldn’t bear to view. “What did you do with all your money?”

  “All what money? My salary at the Hudson School doesn’t compare with what you corporate lawyers earn. I pay the rent, I pay for food, I pay for supplemental life insurance, I pay for Reva’s subscription to Mostly Mozart, and every now and then I buy new stockings. My old ones get runs in them.” She felt herself scowling and tried hard to relax her face. If she came across as too angry, he’d have an excuse to say no. “It’s a miracle I’ve saved as much money as I have,” she argued, thinking wistfully of how she’d earmarked that money for a special vacation trip with Reva someday, and Reva’s college, and even a wedding at the Faculty House at Columbia if that was what Reva wished. Now all her savings would have to go toward the down payment on the apartment. Libby could only hope Harry would pay for Reva’s college and her wedding. She highly doubted that he’d offer to pay for a special vacation trip.

  “Is the apartment actually worth that much? Have you had it appraised?”

  “It’s worth more than they’re asking,” she told him. “They’re offering me an insider’s price. Other apartments in this row—” she gestured up and down to indicate the identical apartments above and below hers “—have gone for much more in the past few years.”

  “In other words, buying this place would be an investment.”

  “Yes!” She felt triumphant, delighted that Harry could regard the purchase as a positive thing. Her triumph faded fast, though. If he provided the down payment, would the apartment become his investment? Would he think he owned it? Even if she paid the mortgage?

  Oh, shit. Would they have to draw up a formal agreement, with the title in both their names? Would she have to hire a lawyer to negotiate terms with Harry? Lawyers cost too much money. Some—like the one currently sitting on her sofa—got paid several hundred dollars an hour.

  She slumped against the chair’s slack upholstery. Like the sofa, the two armchairs in the living room dated back to her newly wed days. Harry had taken a few items with him when he’d left: a brass coat tree that used to stand in the entry, the Wedgwood-china serving for four that had been a gift from his dour aunt Ethel—it was the same pattern as her own china, and Libby had always suspected Aunt Ethel had simply given them some extra settings that she didn’t need—and a fussy pair of lamps with overly ornate pseudo-Ming Dynasty bases that Gilda had donated to Libby and Harry after buying herself new bedroom lamps. But most of the furniture had been too shabby to match Harry’s upwardly mobile self-image, so he’d left it behind. The apartment’s furnishings were ten years shabbier now, but familiar and comfortable. Libby couldn’t imagine redecorating, even if she could afford to. The chairs were indented to cup her tush; the sofa cushions cradled her shoulders perfectly. The upholstery colors—at one time teal and dun, but now a sort of murky bluish-green and brownish-green that reminded her of the ocean—worked with the rugs and the curtains.

  Sitting in her beloved old chair, she eyed Harry cautiously. For a casual Sunday dinner with his daughter, he’d dressed awfully formally, in a crisp shirt, a blazer, tailored trousers and loafers so thoroughly polished they gleamed like chrome on a hot rod. Even when he’d been a struggling law school student, he’d dressed with precision. Libby suspected that when he played squash with Gerald Wexler, he wore starched white shorts and a polo shirt with a pocket-embroidered logo so exclusive no one knew who the designer was.

  “If I supplied the down payment,” he said slowly, his dark eyes narrowing on her, “and mind you, I said if, I’d expect to be paid back.”

  “Of course,” she assured him, proving she could be eminently reasonable as long as he wasn’t going to claim ownership of the apartment.

  “And how would you pay me back?”

  “We could work out a payment schedule once I paid off the mortgage.”

  “In other words, I’d have to wait thirty years for you to reimburse me.”

  “I was figuring on a fifteen-year mortgage,” she said, even though she hadn’t given it much thought. She’d be thrilled to qualify for any mortgage at all.

  “We could all be dead in fifteen years,” he pointed out.

  That was a cheery notion. Maybe as a lawyer, he found it useful to consider worst-case scenarios. In fifteen years, a high-tech war might vaporize the planet, and then this building would be gone, and Harry’s precious investment would be worthless. In fifteen years, Martians might take over Manhattan and choose this West End Avenue address as their headquarters. In fifteen years, Reva might be married and Libby might be insane, muttering gibberish in a cozy padded cell somewhere. In which case, Harry could sell the damn apartment and get his down payment back.

  “Why don’t we operate on the assumption that that won’t happen,” she said sweetly.

  “Well.” He surveyed the living room, his gaze lingering for a moment on the painting hanging on the wall next to the fireplace, a trite but inspiring rendering of the Brooklyn Bridge in the fog. Libby had bought it a few years ago from a sidewalk artist who was clearly not destined to have his own show at the Museum of Modern Art anytime soon, but she loved it. Harry registered his disapproval of the painting with a grimace. “A quarter of a million dollars, Libby. It ain’t chopped liver.”

  “It certainly ain’t.” She’d agree with anything he said, including bad grammar, if he would come through for her.

  “I have to think about this.”

  Think fast, she wanted to demand. She didn’t have much time. In less than three months, the new owners would expect her to buy or move. “Of course,” she said, determined to be nice. “Of course you have to think about it.”

  “Given the investment value of the place,” he added, his gaze sweeping the room once more and his upper lip twitching slightly as he glimpsed the Brooklyn Bridge painting, “you really ought to do more to maintain it.”

  “If I owned the place, I’d do more,” she said, although it had never occurred to her to do anything with the apartment, other than vacuum it whenever the dust bunnies threatened to crawl out from under the sofa and raid the refrigerator. What would she do to it? Paint the walls? Install a marble vanity in the bathroom? Hell, if she bought the place, she would hardly be able to afford toilet paper, let alone new v
anities.

  “I’ll get back to you.” He pushed himself to stand, as lean and slim as he’d been when she’d first met him. As arrogant, too. As snooty and superficial and Ken-doll plastic.

  But he hadn’t said no. He’d said he would think about it. He could be as arrogant and snooty as he wanted to be; if he said yes, she would consider him the most wonderful Ken doll in the world.

  She walked him to the door, ever the gracious hostess, and gave him her most winning smile. He didn’t return it. Smiling had never been one of his talents. She tried to recall moments in their lives when she’d seen him smile with genuine pleasure. At their wedding? No, but then, she herself hadn’t smiled that day, given her profound nausea. When Reva was born? He might have cracked a glimmer of a smile that day, but mostly she remembered him sitting beside her in her hospital room in the maternity ward and outlining the financial pressures this new baby placed upon them. “All right, we can name her Reva,” he’d said, as if this was a huge concession for him when he’d been the one to suggest the name, which had belonged to his late paternal grandmother. “Now, how soon will you be able to return to work?”

  He might have smiled the day their divorce was finalized. Libby vaguely recalled his mouth curving when she’d told him he could take the lamps, Ethel’s ugly china and the coat tree in the foyer.

  So he didn’t smile on a regular basis. She could smile enough for both of them. And if he came through with the down payment, she’d be smiling enough for the entire population of New York.

  As soon as he left, Reva emerged from her bedroom, smiling enough for Libby. “That went pretty well, huh, Mom?”

  “You were eavesdropping?”

  “Daddy yells,” Reva said with a shrug. She bounded past Libby, into the kitchen, and pulled a box of chocolate-chip cookies from a cabinet shelf. They were a low-fat brand, which meant they tasted like dried spackle, but the chocolate chips still resonated. “He always talks like he’s addressing the Supreme Court, you know? And he’s not even a…what’s the word? It sounds like an alligator.”