The Fixer Upper

by Judith Arnold

  “Send her up,” Libby said, wondering why Vivienne would be visiting. Libby peeked into the oven and counted the chicken breasts in the roasting pan, as if a few more might have miraculously materialized.

  Maybe Vivienne wouldn’t stay for dinner. And Libby would send Kim and Ashleigh home. Darryl J, too. He might be a fine singer, but he was eighteen years old. He could find his own food.

  Libby closed the oven and finished hacking the cucumber into slices before the doorbell rang. The chime prompted howls of outrage from the technicians in the recording studio.

  After tossing the knife onto the counter, she darted through the dining room to the entry. She saw Ned approaching the entry from the living room, a rag in one hand and a jug-shaped can in the other. “I wasn’t sure—” he began, but was cut off by more howls.

  “Could you please be quiet?” Reva scolded.

  “No, Reva, we can’t,” Libby retorted. “Aunt Vivienne’s here. Once I let her in, we’ll shut up.”

  She opened the door and Vivienne stormed inside, dragging a small wheeled suitcase behind her. Her hair was wind tossed and she wore a dramatic lime-green coat over drab brown slacks. “Hi,” she said, slamming the door behind her, causing the safety chain to clang against the jamb. The moans from the den were so dramatic a person would be forgiven for thinking the kids were sitting shivah for a dead loved one in there.

  “We’re not allowed to talk,” Libby warned, her gaze sliding to Vivienne’s suitcase. Questions crowded her mind—the sort of questions she didn’t think she’d like the answer to.

  “What do you mean, we can’t talk?” Vivienne asked, then turned to stare at Ned. “Who are you?”

  “Ned Donovan,” Libby whispered. “Ned, this is my sister-in-law, Vivienne Schwartz.”

  Ned passed the rag from his right hand to his left, extended his right hand, then thought better of offering it to Vivienne. “Solvent,” he explained.

  “Is this your Irish guy?” Vivienne asked Libby, her expression an odd combination of skepticism and awe.

  “Mom! Puh-leez!” Reva whined from the den.

  “All right, all right,” Libby shouted back, then took Vivienne’s arm and steered her through the dining room. Vivienne dragged her suitcase behind her; the little wheels squeaked ominously against the hardwood floor. “Reva is recording something,” she explained to Vivienne once they reached the kitchen. “We’re not allowed to make noise. What’s in the suitcase?” Maybe it was full of books Vivienne wanted to donate to the Hudson School. Maybe Vivienne had bought new luggage and wanted to give her old suitcase to Reva.

  “Leonard and I had a fight,” Vivienne announced, the answer Libby had been dreading. “Can I stay here?”

  “Of course,” Libby assured her, then spread her arms. Vivienne accepted her hug, rested her head briefly against Libby’s shoulder, then apparently decided not to fall apart. She stepped back and shrugged bravely. “Just a little fight. Not a big one.”

  “Big enough that you came here with a suitcase.”

  “To teach him a lesson,” Vivienne muttered.

  What lesson? Libby wondered. The lesson that if you act like a jerk, your wife will go away and leave you to eat pizza while watching professional wrestling on TV, pee without closing the bathroom door and take over the whole bed? Some lesson.

  What bed would Vivienne take over? As it was, Libby wasn’t sure where she herself would sleep, now that her own bed was heaped high with application materials.

  The practicalities would work themselves out later. For now, her sister-in-law was in the midst of a marital crisis.

  She didn’t look critical. Her eyes were dry, her lips were curved in a slight pout and her blouse—visible as she unbuttoned her coat—was a riot of color that hurt Libby’s eyes. “What happened?” she asked. “Can you talk about it? Should I send Ned to your place to beat Leonard up?”

  “Would he do that?” Vivienne asked hopefully. She glanced out of the kitchen, but Ned must have returned to the fireplace. He wasn’t visible from where she and Libby stood. “No, I don’t believe in violence. He’s cute,” she added, tilting her head toward the living room. “What’s with the solvent?”

  “He’s stripping my fireplace mantel,” Libby said, studying Vivienne, gauging her. She’d just packed a bag and walked out on her husband. Why didn’t she seem traumatized? “It must have been a terrible fight. You’re here instead of at home, making up with Leonard.”

  “It was a ridiculous argument about his ridiculous Brandeis buddies and their ridiculous brunches. And their ridiculous get-togethers for a drink after work, and their ridiculous Sundays when they watch football on the tube and eat chazzerai. I’ve had it with his ridiculousness.”

  “Are you going to leave him?”

  “I already did.” Vivienne gazed at her suitcase, then lifted her eyes back to Libby. “Divorce him, you mean? I didn’t bring enough stuff with me to divorce him.”

  “Okay.” The lid on the pot of rice had stopped rattling, and Libby turned the burner off. She didn’t want to know if the rice had overcooked. Who cared about rice when Vivienne had just realized that her husband was ridiculous? “Ned and his son came over for dinner, but we’ve got plenty.”

  “As if I have an appetite.” Vivienne attempted a pathetic sigh, then said, “It smells good. What did you make?”

  “Hawaiian chicken. Your mother’s recipe.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll have a little.”

  The doorbell rang again, without benefit of the doorman’s warning. Libby flinched, and when Vivienne caught her eye, she saw her own panic reflected in Vivienne’s expression. Could Leonard have followed her here? Not that Libby feared him, not that she thought he had enough chutzpah to stalk his wife, but still…That doorman was going to be severely reprimanded once Libby owned her apartment.

  This time, the resounding chime didn’t provoke shrieks and curses from the den. Libby walked through the dining room, Vivienne trailing her and the suitcase trailing Vivienne, as if she couldn’t bear to part with it. Ned remained by the fireplace, wiping a corner of the shelf so hard she wouldn’t be surprised to find a dent in the green marble once he was done. His hair was scruffy, his sleeves rolled up, and she paused for a moment, thinking of how lucky she was to have him in her life, rather than someone like, say, Leonard, or…

  Harry. She stared at her ex-husband through the peephole in the door. Despite the hole’s fish-eye lens, he looked like a Ken doll. A Ken doll made out of Silly Putty.

  She opened the door and glowered at her ex-husband. Perhaps the doorman had recognized him, since he came to the building so often, dropping Reva off after her weekly visits. The doorman still should have announced Harry, though. Harry was not welcome right now. Harry was rarely welcome.

  He had on an elegant suit and carried a fancy leather briefcase that Libby assumed was one of those brands that advertised in the biannual “Fashions of the Times” section of the New York Times. His tie was an iridescent silk that shimmered blue and silver. Even though the time was—she checked her watch—six-thirty, which meant the chicken had been in the oven long enough to have developed a texture not unlike that of Harry’s briefcase—not a hint of beard shadowed his jaw. When he was married to her, she was positive he used to sprout stubble. Had Bonnie figured out a way to suppress his facial hair?

  Harry ignored Libby and gaped at Vivienne. “Viv! What are you doing here?”

  “None of your business,” Vivienne retorted, sounding like the bratty kid sister Harry had always considered her.

  “I had to meet with a client in the neighborhood,” he said to Libby, entering the apartment without awaiting a greeting from her. “So I thought I’d drop by. We have some things to discuss. Is that a suitcase, Viv?”

  “None of your business.”

  He narrowed his eyes, then widened them at the sight of Ned, who once again approached the entry with his rag and bottle of solvent. The sharp chemical smell overpowered Harry’s fancy cologne.


  Libby sighed. This was one of those awkward moments people wrote to advice columnists about: Dear Ms. Know-it-all: What is the proper etiquette for introducing one’s former husband to one’s current boyfriend?

  Just do it, she answered herself. “Harry, this is my friend Ned Donovan. Ned, my ex-husband, Harry Kimmelman.”

  “How’s it going?” Ned said pleasantly, extending his hand. Obviously, he’d wanted to protect Vivienne from exposure to the solvent, but Harry’s delicate skin he didn’t care about.

  Clearly nonplussed, Harry shook his hand, then squinted at his palm. “What is it?” he asked, pointing at the bottle.

  “That doesn’t concern you,” Libby said, just to be contrary. “We’re having a dinner party, Harry, so—”

  “She made Mom’s Hawaiian chicken,” Vivienne told him, a nyah-nyah undertone to her voice.

  “A dinner party?”

  “Dad?” Reva bounded in from the den, slightly flushed and beaming. “Oh, Dad, this is so cool! You’ve got to come and hear this! Eric put this sound clip on the Web site, and…”

  Before she could continue, the rest of the recording engineers spilled out of the den, followed by Darryl J, carrying his guitar. “It came out so good, man!” he crowed. “You’ve gotta hear this. Eric, you the man!” He slapped Eric’s hand. Eric seemed to take the praise in stride, though he was grinning.

  “Well, I want to hear it,” Ned said enthusiastically. “Come on, let’s go hear the sound clip.”

  Libby could tell from Harry’s scowl that he didn’t want to hear the sound clip. He eyed Darryl J with blatant distrust, Eric with condescension and Libby with overt suspicion. “What the hell is going on?” he muttered.

  “You have no right to turn into a grouch,” Vivienne chided. “Nobody asked you to come here.”

  Nobody had asked Vivienne to come here, either. But how could Libby object when the poor woman was having marital difficulties? Besides, Vivienne had been announced by the doorman. Harry hadn’t.

  “Dad,” Reva said, grabbing her father’s hand and dragging him down the hall. “Listen to the sound clip.”

  Harry appeared deeply annoyed as he trudged along with Reva. The den was barely big enough for them all to fit in, but they managed to clear a path for Eric to reach the computer desk. He sat down, clicked the mouse, and the room resonated with a flourish of guitar chords and then Darryl J’s voice, crooning, “‘You can’t leave her, you’ve got the fever, she’s in your blood, you’re delirious. In a way it’s almost hilarious. And you’re hooked, brother. She’s your drug, brother. You got it bad, brother. She’s your dru-u-ug.’”

  Wonderful, Libby thought. A song about drugs. Well, not really—a song about love, using drugs as a metaphor. Perhaps he could have chosen a different song for his Web site, one that likened love to, say, spring flowers or sharks. But then, the first time she’d made love with Ned, she’d feared—rightly, it turned out—that she’d become addicted.

  If looking as though one was about to shove his fist through a wall was a sign of approval, Harry approved of the song. Libby could practically feel waves of anger and indignation rolling off him. He turned to her. “We have to talk,” he growled.

  Ignoring him, she smiled at Darryl J and then at Eric. “The sound clip is great.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Reva said, sighing passionately. “Dad, isn’t it great?”

  “It’s great,” he snarled. “Your mother and I need to talk. Excuse us, please.” He acted as if he were the host, in charge of the evening, and Libby realized some of the waves of anger and indignation she felt were rolling off her.

  She held her ground. “We’ll talk in a few minutes,” she called after him as he stomped out of the den.

  “Oh, my God!” he shouted from the entry. “What the hell did you do to the fireplace?”

  “Libby didn’t do that,” Ned said, ignoring the quick shake Libby gave her head. She didn’t want Ned to intervene. Whatever Harry had a bug up his butt about, Ned was not responsible for debugging him. Neither was Libby, but she’d been married to him and she had a certain familiarity with his bugs, as well as his butt.

  Ned sauntered through the entry to the living room, Libby right behind him. He joined Harry, who stood stiffly, studying the fireplace and seething visibly. “See,” Ned said amiably, “this is a beautiful marble fireplace, but someone slathered tons of paint onto it. I hope it wasn’t you.”

  “Of course it wasn’t me. Do you think I’d waste my time painting a fireplace?”

  Ned shot Libby a smile, as if to assure her he wasn’t insulted. He’d been wasting his time unpainting the fireplace—except, of course, it hadn’t been a waste of time. Libby loved the way it looked.

  Reva sidled up behind her father. “Darryl J is packing up now,” she informed Libby, “and then I guess Ash and Kim are gonna leave, too. So how do you like the fireplace, Dad?”

  “I’m in shock.”

  “Eric says his dad is a fixer upper. He sure fixed up our fireplace.” She smiled at Ned. Obviously, after the hour she’d spent with Darryl J, she had smiles for everyone.

  “Who the hell is Eric?”

  “Stop saying hell,” Libby told Harry reproachfully.

  “Eric’s my son,” Ned said.

  Harry’s gaze shuttled between Ned and Libby. His stubble-free cheeks lost a little color. “We need to talk, Libby.” He reached for her elbow, but he must have sensed that she’d inflict pain to a sensitive part of his anatomy if he touched her. He let his hand drop. “Where can we go to get away from all these people?”

  Acknowledging that Harry had promised to lend her a huge sum of money, she relented. “No one’s in the bedroom. Reva, honey, say goodbye to your friends for me.” With that, she stalked down the hall to her room.

  Harry followed her in, slammed the door and suffered yet another visible spasm of horror at the sight of her files spread across her bed. “Libby, what the hell is going on?”

  She wondered if he’d deliberately emphasized the word hell to piss her off. “What do you mean, what the hell is going on? I’m hosting a dinner party. If you’d called before dropping by, I would have told you that tonight isn’t a good time for you to visit.”

  “A dinner party? You’re hosting a zoo! That man—that fixer person—he’s, what? A boyfriend?”

  Vivienne would have answered “None of your business.” But Libby shared Reva with Harry. That made his current wife her business, and, she supposed, her current boyfriend his business. “Yes,” she said.

  “He’s a laborer! He smells like turpentine!”

  “Not all the time,” she said.

  “He comes in here, into my daughter’s home, and does that to my fireplace?”

  Libby caught herself before erupting. “First of all, Harry, it’s not your fireplace. Second of all, he made the fireplace look much better. Third of all, he loves that fireplace more than you ever did.” So did she, especially after she and Ned had christened it with their midday fun and games a few days ago.

  “And my sister—what the hell is she doing here?”

  “She got mad at Leonard.”

  “So she left? Why didn’t she stay home and make him leave?”

  “I don’t know,” Libby said coolly. “I assumed it was a family trait. You let me stay and you left.”

  “I wasn’t mad at you,” he muttered, his dark eyes flashing. “I’m mad at you now, though. You’ve opened your house to all these people. You’re parading your boyfriend in front of Reva and letting him mangle the fireplace. And that man—that musician. Who the hell is he?”

  “He’s a friend of Reva’s.”

  “A friend? He’s old enough to be—”

  “Her older brother,” Libby said.

  “In case you didn’t notice, he’s the wrong race to be her brother.”

  “Do you have a problem with his race?” She could list plenty of reasons not to be happy with Reva’s friendship with Darryl J—his age, of course, an
d his occupation, and his songs about drugs. As far as she was concerned, his race was a nonissue.

  Obviously, Harry was bothered by it. “I always thought you were sensible, Libby. What, are you having a midlife crisis?”

  “I’m not old enough for that,” she retorted.

  “I can’t believe this. I feel like I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. A strange black man hanging out with my daughter, some little boy using the computer I bought Reva, a handyman sleeping with my wife and—”

  “Your ex-wife,” Libby interrupted. “And you have no right to discuss my sex life. You have no right even to think about it.”

  “You’re the mother of my child,” Harry roared, “and you’re acting completely irresponsible.”

  “And you’re acting like a complete schmuck.”

  “That’s it.” He shook his head and waved his hands in a show of profound indignation. “I came here to make arrangements for transferring funds into your account so you can buy this damn apartment. And I’m looking around and wondering why the hell I should hand over all that money so you can host a circus here. Give me one good reason I should pay you for turning my daughter’s home into chaos.” He eyed the mess on her bed and winced.

  “Here’s one good reason. You promised,” she said, fear clawing at her innards. He wouldn’t renege, would he? He wouldn’t back out now, when Sharma was well into the process of arranging her mortgage. He wouldn’t dare.

  Apparently, he would. “I’m going home, Libby. And let me warn you—” he jabbed his finger into the air barely an inch from her nose “—if you don’t rein Reva in, there will be consequences.”

  Before she could respond—before she could slap his face, which was the first, and probably the best, response she could come up with—he pulled the door open so forcefully he nearly tore it from its hinges, and strode down the hall. She heard him open the front door, then slam it hard enough to leave the building shuddering in his wake.

  She remained where she was, trembling with rage and dread. “Hey, Mom?” Reva hollered from the kitchen. “The rice burned!”

  Libby couldn’t move. She could scarcely think.