Little Pink Slips

by Sally Koslow

  “Are you a friend of Whitney’s from nursery school?” asked the

  medium blonde.

  “Did Whitney and I go to nursery school together?” Magnolia

  asked. What a peculiar question.

  The women exchanged a glance. “Did your child go with the twins to the Ninety-second Street Y?” the short one asked. “We’ve never

  seen you up at Horace Mann.”

  “I don’t have any kids,” Magnolia said.

  “Oh, forgive me,” she said, casting her face in dramatic sympathy.

  “I am so sorry.” Magnolia was afraid the three of them were going to

  hug her. “It’s fine, really,” Magnolia said. This would have been a good time

  to add, “I work.” Except she didn’t.

  “So how do you know Whitney—from a committee?” Lizzie asked.

  “I don’t,” Magnolia said, “know Whitney, that is. Can you point

  her out?”

  As the women turned to search for their hostess, Lizzie’s long blond

  mane swatted Magnolia in the face. “That’s Whitney over by the

  chairs,” Julia-or-Rachel said. “Isn’t it sweet the way she’s made this

  look like a screening room?”

  “Right,” Magnolia said. All she could see of Whitney was that she

  was taller than Lizzie—and Wally, for that matter—and blindingly

  blond.

  The four women stood together awkwardly. As Magnolia drilled

  deeper for schmooze material, she was grateful when Julia-or-Rachel

  spoke up. “Say, maybe you can help me,” the short one said. “My

  housekeeper’s gone AWOL. I’m losing my mind. My son, the apart

  ment … It’s been since Monday. Know of anyone? I’m ready to slit

  my wrists.”

  Magnolia’s weekly cleaning woman had just lost one of her other

  day jobs. “Which day do you need?”

  “Well, every day,” the woman said, as if Magnolia were brain

  damaged. “But for the right person I suppose I could give up Saturday.”

  “What are the responsibilities?” Magnolia asked.

  “The usual. Laundry, ironing, cleaning, errands, cooking, dog

  walking. I like someone to help me get Joshy ready for school, so that

  means starting at seven, but she can go home after the dinner dishes

  are washed and put away. That’s usually around nine-thirty, some

  times ten,” the blonde said and smiled charmingly. “I’m flexible.”

  This woman worked Scary hours. She might be a brain surgeon, a

  district attorney, an Internet entrepreneur with an international

  travel schedule. Magnolia was intrigued. She asked the question

  asked of her at every New York social event for the last ten years, the

  one she was hoping no one would ask today. “What do you do?”

  “Do? ” the blonde replied in the mystified tone Parisians reserve for those who butcher their language.

  “Your job?” Magnolia said. “It must be fascinating.” “I don’t work,” the blonde sniffed. “I’m busy.”

  Magnolia’s comment hung in the air like a fart. She scoped out the

  room, caught Wally’s eye, and waved enthusiastically. He walked over

  to Magnolia and embraced her from behind as she noticed Whitney

  noticing her.

  “I see you’ve met Whitney’s friends,” he said. “Ladies, how do you

  like my ex-wife? See, I always get myself a looker. Mind if I steal her

  away from you beauties?”

  Magnolia imagined they didn’t.

  “You might have told me your friends dress up to watch football,”

  Magnolia said.

  “Whitney’s friends,” he said. “Look at me—I’m the same old slob.”

  “Wally, I know that sweater,” she said. “It’s Tse cashmere.”

  “Doll, you look gorgeous,” he said. “All the guys are looking at how

  you fill out those shrink-wrapped jeans.”

  While she knew she wasn’t dressed like a Hassidic matron, neither

  did she want to be seen as a tart. Even worse, had she gained weight

  and not realized it? “Some apartment, Wally,” Magnolia said, eager to

  change the subject. “This place is enormous.”

  “Five thousand square feet,” he said. “With the kids, we need the

  space.”

  Need or want? Another Manhattanite who couldn’t tell the differ

  ence, Magnolia thought.

  “C’mon, let me show off my favorite room,” he said. “We can talk

  business there. I’ve read your contract.” He led her to his upstairs

  plaid-as-a-kilt study and closed the door. “Whitney had these shelves

  made for my trophies,” he said, pointing to a wall of shiny, engraved

  silver cups from two decades of golf tournaments.

  She really is a trophy wife. “Very impressive,” Magnolia said.

  “Who are you trying to kid—you hate golf,” he said, grinning.

  He sat in one of two club chairs and patted the other. Magnolia sat

  down. “Listen, I’ve read over your particulars. It’s an interesting

  case.” Magnolia didn’t want her case to be interesting. She wanted it to be

  over, with her savings, pride, and future intact. “How so, Wally?”

  “Well, your company—Scarborough, is it?—could argue that they

  acted in good faith. After they stopped publishing your magazine,

  they did, in fact, give you another job for quite a few months—until

  the end of the year—so they might say they fulfilled their end of the

  deal.”

  “I’m with you,” she said.

  “Then again, this new job, the ‘corporate editor’ thing, one might

  argue that it was bullshit …”

  “One might.”

  “… and that Scarborough did not, in fact, act in good faith—stick

  ing you in a crappy job they planned to eliminate, and, if you’ll par

  don the expression, leaving you up shit’s creek.”

  “That’s my address, all right.”

  “Then again, had I been your legal counsel when you accepted this

  job, I’d have made damn sure we paid attention before you started,

  and addressed the contract issue then and there,” he said. “You and

  your attorney were asleep at the wheel, toots.”

  “I didn’t have an attorney,” Magnolia admitted. She was suddenly

  afraid she might cry. Why hadn’t she gone over the details with a

  lawyer? Because the thought had never occurred to her.

  “That’s my girl, Miss Naive and Frugal,” Wally said in his own

  sweet way. He began to doodle on a legal pad. “I keep wishing there

  was more to this,” he muttered. “Some point where I could really

  stick it to them. Got any help for me in that department?”

  “You know I really didn’t ‘accept’ this job,” she said, after thinking

  it over. “There was never a choice.”

  “Why is that?” he asked.

  Magnolia cleared her throat. “My boss,” she said. “I mean my ex

  boss, Jock Flanagan …” The tears started.

  “What is it?” Wally said, without the bluster now.

  “He propositioned me, that asshole,” she said. “I rebuffed him.

  The corporate editor job was payback. I had to take it—or quit— which I thought meant I’d be breaking my contract, so I stuck it out,

  feeling like a horse’s ass.”

  “Okay,” Wally said, drawing out the word as if he were enjoying it

  as much as a long toke on a good joint. “Now we’re getting somewhere.


  To the best of your recollection, what did you tell that sonofabitch?”

  “Well, I can’t remember, exactly,” Magnolia said. “That I didn’t

  think this was the time for him to make advances—the company was

  already in the middle of a scandal. Bebe had just been caught making

  sexual overtures to this boy, Nathaniel Fine, who worked as our

  intern. The press blasted her. The company was trying to clean up an

  enormous mess.”

  “I heard about that,” Wally said. “The parents are members of our

  club and everyone was talking. Fourteen-karat gold gossip. I felt sorry

  for the kid, but it all went away. The Blake woman paid up big. Your

  company, too, up the wazoo.”

  “Scary paid?” Magnolia said. “Really? I never knew that. How do

  you know?”

  “I was in a foursome with the kid’s dad.”

  “How much did Scary pay?”

  “Settled out of court, close to a half million from the publishing

  company, and more from the talk show gal. But stick to your story,

  darling,” Wally said. “We might be on to something.”

  “I told Jock, ‘I like the way things are now.’ “

  “Not sure I understand,” Wally said. “What did you mean, ‘I like

  the way things are now’?”

  “I didn’t want us to be a couple.”

  “I like the way things are.” Wally let the phrase roll off his tongue.

  ” ‘I like the way things are.’ Now we’re hot.”

  “I’m not the first woman Jock’s tried to harass at work,” Magnolia

  added quietly. “He’s the matinee king. If you could get to Elvira, his

  secretary … She keeps his calendar, makes his reservations, pays the

  hotel bills… .”

  Magnolia heard a knock at the door. “Just a minute,” Wally said as

  he took notes. The knocking became a pound. “Coming,” Wally shouted. “Coming.”

  Wally got up to open the door as Whitney Fleigelman flew through

  it, blond hair flying.

  “You fucking creep, Wally,” she said, slapping him in the face.

  “Not again! ‘I like the way things are,’ ” she mimicked. “How many

  times are you going to use that old line? And you!” She jabbed Mag

  nolia with her finger, which had a long nail tip manicured the pink of

  a baby’s tush. “You! ‘I like us as a couple,’ ” she whined. “You had your

  nerve to call my home. You piece of dreck. And you come to my home

  in fuck-me jeans. Get out!” she ordered. “This minute!”

  “Whew, Whitney, honey,” Wally said, grabbing his wife by her nar

  row shoulders. “Calm down. You heard things wrong. And there’s no

  need to insult Magnolia.”

  “Magnolia!” she said. “Like I care. And what kind of a bullshit

  name is that?”

  “It’s her name, Esther Rose!” Wally said. “Oh, excuse me, Whitney, the mother of Morgan and Harper. And what were you doing eavesdropping anyway?” His voice was as loud as Magnolia remem

  bered it could be.

  “Wally, I’ll fuckin’ listen to anything I want to in my own house,

  thank you very much,” Whitney screamed, her face as red as her

  slinky sweater dress. Magnolia wondered if Whitney got a dis

  count at Tse Cashmere or had just scored at the pre-Christmas sample

  sale.

  “Magnolia! You’ve never gotten over that tramp, have you, Wally?”

  “Get a grip, you crazy bitch,” Wally said. “We have guests. You

  know, I shoulda stayed with Magnolia. At least she doesn’t sit on her

  fat ass all day.”

  “You’re saying my ass is fat?” Magnolia and Whitney asked the question in unison. But neither of the Fleigelmans heard Magnolia.

  They were too busy dismembering each other.

  Magnolia left the study. “I’ll call you,” Wally yelled as she shut the

  door. “I’ve got an idea or two about your case.”

  Magnolia went downstairs. Guests were cheering in the media room, and the box of chocolates she’d brought was still sitting on the

  table where she’d left them.

  “I forgot something,” she said to the intern-turned-waitress, who

  just then walked through the foyer en route to the kitchen. Magnolia

  opened the box, offered a truffle to the waitress, and took one for her

  self. She closed the box, put it under her arm, and left.

  C h a p t e r 3 3

  Yesterday’s History, Tomorrow’s a

  Mystery

  “You’re getting a what?” Magnolia asked Abbey as they trolled the Sunday flea market two weeks later.

  “Getting a get,” Abbey said. “A Jewish divorce.”

  “You’re only half Jewish.”

  “My mother’s Jewish—that’s what counts.” She rummaged

  through a box of old coins, examined one, and deemed it unfit for her

  new collection of chokers and charm bracelets.

  “Tommy’s conversion was pretty lightweight—you weren’t even

  married by a rabbi.” Magnolia had been the maid of honor at the

  wedding, which featured an officiating judge who couldn’t have

  passed a breathalyzer test.

  “Immaterial,” Abbey said. “If a Jewish woman remarries without

  a proper religious divorce, any kids she might have in a second mar

  riage are considered illegitimate,” she recited, as if she were being

  tested on the answer. “Didn’t you get one with Wally?”

  “I refused. If his kids are bastards, I take no responsibility, and he’s

  not going to hear it from me—not when he’s been providing such

  excellent pro bono work on my behalf.” “How’s that going?” Abbey asked.

  “Scary caved some, but Wally’s holding out for more,” Magnolia

  said, putting down an art deco bracelet as soon as she saw the price

  tag. “Back to you—where’s Tommy with all this?”

  “In Australia with his new honey but willing to get it done,”

  Abbey said. “He’s flying in tonight, and I don’t want to lose track of

  him again.”

  “But you certainly aren’t getting any pressure from Cameron, that

  crusty old WASP,” Magnolia said. “Are you?” She wasn’t sure if she

  even wanted the answer.

  Abbey grimaced, which with her delicate features managed to look

  enchanting. She struck some people as fragile, but Magnolia knew

  she was a waif built of titanium. “You’re spending too much time

  with a lawyer—what’s with the third degree?”

  “Something’s off,” Magnolia said.

  “What may be off is Cameron and me,” Abbey said. “I like him—

  he’s smart and makes me laugh and is a god under those flannel shirts

  and baggy jeans—”

  Magnolia closed her eyes. “Too much information.”

  “—but I met someone on my trip to Paris. Someone Juif. “

  “Juif ?”

  “French and Jewish. Gorgeous in that dark, brooding, existentialist way. He’s been e-mailing, but he’s very traditional and won’t go out

  with me until I get a get.”

  “Does Frog Man have a name?”

  “Daniel Cohen.”

  “A name that crosses borders,” Magnolia said, “like the euro.”

  “He has piles of those. Grandmère is a Rothschild. They own vineyards.” Abbey was practically bouncing. “So, will you come with me

  tomorrow afternoon when I get a get? Rabbi Nucki recommended

  that I bring a friend
.”

  “As in nooky?”

  “As in Nachum. Means ‘wise.’ “

  “Sweetie, I’m so sorry, but I may be busy,” Magnolia said. Every where, Magnolia heard doors slamming. She didn’t want to be part of another ending, even if it was the conclusion of a marriage which

  never should have been.

  “Busy how—cleaning your closets?”

  “Don’t mock your unemployed friend,” Magnolia said. “Believe it

  or not, I have a job interview Wednesday, and I am devoting myself to

  maintenance—highlights, haircut, eyebrow and leg wax, manicure,

  and shoe shopping.” Magnolia failed to mention that most of these

  events could wait for Tuesday. “But if this means a lot to you, I’ll

  reschedule.”

  “Let’s flip,” Abbey said.

  “Fair enough,” Magnolia said. “Heads, I go.” The brave on the

  buffalo nickel seemed to wink at her as he hit the table, face up. “Gogetter reporting for duty,” she said. “Tell me where to be.”

  Monday afternoon, address in hand, Magnolia searched a street for a stately cross between the neo-classic courthouse downtown—

  the one where Martha Stewart flirted with the press—and Temple

  Emanuel. Unless Abbey gave her the wrong information, however, the

  high rabbinical court of the land dwelt in a dingy, postwar building eas

  ily at home in any Communist-built section of Moscow. Magnolia

  checked the wall directory: twelfth floor, the Beth Din of America.

  “Welcome,” said a ruddy-faced receptionist, whose desk was

  crowded with a computer, an oversized box of tissues, and paper zin

  nias arranged in an empty seltzer bottle. She looked no older than

  twenty and wore a long, gathered denim skirt; a frilly, high-necked

  blouse, and a blond wig. “I’m Malka,” she said as she extended her

  childlike hand, which featured a dainty diamond solitaire and a gold

  band. Around her wrist was a red string.

  “I’m Malka!” Magnolia said, “I’m named for my father’s greataunt.” The only time she’d been called by that name was at her Bat

  Mitzvah on a windy November morning twenty-five years ago. Was

  she Malka bat Elliot? She couldn’t recall her proper Hebrew name.

  “So, we’re like sisters,” the receptionist said. “Are you here for

  your get?” “I’m the support team,” Magnolia said. “My friend will be here

  any minute now.”

  “So, Malka. Sit. Some tea maybe? Soda? Rugelah?”

  “No, thanks,” Magnolia said. “I’ll settle in with my book.”