Husbands and Other Sharp Objects: A Novel

by Marilyn Simon Rothstein

  “I go whenever Kate does the design.”

  “Who’s Kate?”

  “My agent’s daughter.”

  I grimaced.

  “Think of it as supporting the arts,” Candy said.

  “Is it art?”

  “Barely.”

  Once inside a vestibule, we saw a sign for the show and an arrow pointing up a steep staircase without a railing. I held on to a peeling wall as we climbed several flights. I caught my breath as we reached the entrance to the theater.

  “You really have to love theater to go through this to see a show.”

  “Worse for you yet, the only bathroom is another floor up.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll hold it,” I said. “You know, until we find a ladies’ room on earth.”

  Candy’s agent, Teresa, was at the door in a lemon-and-lime tent dress that seemed to take over the blackened space. She had a streak of silver in her ebony pageboy haircut. She wore hoop earrings the size of pancakes.

  Candy introduced me as the executive director of the Guild for Good.

  Teresa patted my hand. “I am well aware of the Guild. If I can ever help in any way, please call me.”

  We chatted for a moment, then looked for seats.

  “That was nice,” I said to Candy, as I found an aisle seat in the last row, Row E, and I let Candy sit first in the adjacent one. There were about a dozen chairs in the row, the final one against a wall covered in a charcoal-colored curtain.

  “Don’t even bother calling her,” Candy said. “She never returns a call.”

  “She returns your calls,” I said.

  “Only because when I call her, she doesn’t hear a phone ringing. She hears a cash register.”

  “That sounds like something I would say.”

  “I’m catching on,” Candy said.

  “Well, don’t catch on too much. I like you the way you are.”

  The theater filled. We rose so a grandmother holding a cane with ribbons on it could pass. No sooner had we reclaimed our seats than Grandpa, sporting a white cap advertising Long Boat Key, appeared. We rose again. We sat again. We stood so a young couple could pass. They were waving to everyone they knew.

  “I hope that’s it. I’m done standing and sitting,” I said.

  “Why? We could use the exercise.”

  I didn’t see how a woman bedding her personal trainer would need additional exercise. “So what do you like about going to these productions?” I asked.

  “Other than it’s easier than saying no to Teresa?”

  “Yes . . .” And thanks for dragging me along.

  “I feel invigorated when I see artists setting out in the world. I marvel at their promise. I wonder about their dreams.”

  “You envy their blank slates,” I said.

  “You can’t buy a blank slate.”

  A man in gray slacks and a light-blue cashmere crewneck asked me if the seat next to Candy was taken. When I stood, I realized he was only about an inch or so taller than me, maybe five seven. He had a big face with big eyes, like the shortest movie stars always do. In fact, he could have been a movie star. His black hair was slicked back. Also, he was the kind of guy who looked like he’d just come out of the shower even though he might have been at work all day. He had my attention—and Candy’s too. She scooted our jackets off the seat next to her. I placed mine in my lap.

  He smiled at us. He looked like he flossed three times a day. I hated overly organized people. They made me feel so insecure.

  Immediately, he struck up a conversation with Candy.

  “Ellison Graham,” he said with a friendly nod.

  Candy said her name and introduced me.

  He was so intent on her that I realized he had not found the seat randomly. He had spotted Candy and liked what he had seen.

  I listened in. His son had a part in the play. The boy had attended Brown and, before that, the same boarding school as Candy’s son, Jumper. On the basis of that information, I knew Candy would take an interest in him. School snobs unite. Candy was enthralled. I turned to my playbill and looked up his son, Ellison Jr. In his bio, he thanked “Dad, Mums, Lexie, my dog Elizabeth Taylor, as well as anyone who ever advised me to go into theater—including every sports coach at Bosley-Billingsworth.” So the kid had a sense of humor.

  “Did your wife see the play last night?” I asked, leaning over and getting to what I thought was the heart of the matter.

  He looked at Candy. “I’m divorced.”

  “And she’s divorced,” I said, pointing at Candy. “What a coincidence.”

  Candy gave me a look.

  I figured that as long as I had gotten started, I might as well ask him all the questions it would be discourteous for Candy to ask.

  “Have you been divorced long?” I didn’t want her catching him on the rebound.

  “Long enough,” he said.

  Candy laughed—at me. “I hope you don’t mind the inquiries from Lois Lane.”

  There was a request to turn off mobile devices. The curtain went up. When his son took the stage, Ellison Graham leaned far forward, with his hands clasped together. He didn’t recline until junior exited. He did that each time his son appeared. I respected it and found it endearing. I decided I liked him.

  The play was called Enter and Exit. I don’t remember much about it except there was a lot of door slamming. At intermission, I wanted to make an exit myself. But I would have had to leave without Candy, who was busy with Ellison. She had mentioned to me more than once that she didn’t have many female friends. Could it be because she ditched the girlfriend she dragged along as soon as she found a man she liked?

  Candy was extraordinary at flirting. Ellison handed her his wallet so she could see a photograph of his daughter. She rubbed the soft leather deliberately back and forth between her fingers.

  When Candy excused herself to go to the bathroom, I was surprised. I’d thought she would leak before she left this man. But for all I knew, that was strategy too. I followed her. “I think somebody likes you,” I said, as though we were in high school.

  She grinned. “Looks that way.”

  Candy headed up the stairs to the bathroom; I waited on line for a soda. Moments later, she returned.

  “Come into the bathroom,” she said with a tug at my sleeve.

  I wondered what the secret was, and I followed her.

  There was one restroom. She opened the door, and we stepped in. But that’s all the stepping we could do, because it was the tiniest lavatory I had ever seen. Bathrooms in Manhattan are small, but if you can wash your hands while sitting on the toilet, that’s extreme.

  “I’m spotting,” she said.

  “Spotting or bleeding?”

  “The first.”

  Someone knocked.

  “We’re in here,” I said, annoyed and worried about Candy.

  Another knock.

  “Can you please wait?” Candy said through the door as we stood face-to-face.

  “We can go to an emergency room.”

  “In Manhattan? Not happening. I’ll call my gynecologist tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure? What about a walk-in center?”

  She shook her head.

  I didn’t know how much Candy was actually spotting, but I didn’t think waiting was a good idea. From my experience, not dealing with a problem created more problems. But, of course, I could understand that she preferred to see her own doctor.

  “I’ll call my gynecologist tomorrow,” she repeated.

  “It’s important. You shouldn’t wait.”

  She bit her lip.

  “What?”

  “The spotting. It’s not the first time,” she confessed. “It happened in Italy. I didn’t want to look into it there.”

  And you didn’t see a doctor as soon as you got home? I thought.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you think I’m a fool.”

  But you
are a fool.

  “I’m going tomorrow,” she said.

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  I didn’t believe her. I didn’t trust her. I was frightened she would procrastinate longer, and if something was truly amiss, it would get worse, and soon it would be too late to do something about it.

  There was banging at the door. I unlocked it. A woman who looked like someone from a bad dream was standing with her legs crossed, her eyes livid. “Two of you? Well, that must have been fun.”

  Candy and I smiled and started back to the theater.

  “Ellison is interesting,” she said.

  “Did you ask him what he does for a living?”

  “It’s only been an hour. And for forty-five minutes, we were watching a show.”

  “Well, it’s the first question I’d ask,” I said.

  “So when you first met Harvey and asked what he did for a living, and he said he was in brassieres, that wasn’t a complete turnoff?”

  “I guess not.”

  Mercifully, I fell asleep during the second act. I didn’t worry about snoring—a sound effect could only make the play better. When I woke, people were clapping. Loudly, like friends and relatives. I was bored and tired and concerned about Candy, and I couldn’t wait to get home.

  The next morning, I drove to Candy’s place. She answered the door in yoga pants and a loose sweatshirt.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “I’m taking you to the doctor.”

  “I don’t have an appointment. I haven’t called yet,” she said, embarrassed.

  “I’ll get you an appointment when we get there.”

  “How? Without calling?” she said. “Are you convincing him to come to my house too?”

  “Just get in the car,” I said.

  “I can’t go out like this.” She pointed to the yoga pants.

  “Eighty percent of women in America go out like that,” I said. “I took the morning off from work. Just get in the car.”

  Her doctor wasn’t in Atherton. He was five towns over, in Sandy Lake. She didn’t say a word about driving herself or about the way I drove, which was not a good sign. When I came to a short stop at a railroad crossing, she jolted forward, then back, and then looked ahead. None of this was good. It meant she was worried. I thought maybe she had fibbed about spotting. Maybe she wasn’t spotting; maybe she was bleeding.

  Her gynecologist’s name was Dr. Haverford. His name was embossed on the entrance to his office suite. To the side was a plaque with a list of his staff, names temporarily attached. Here one day, gone the next. Immediately, I determined that Candy was not seeing anyone but the doctor.

  “Maybe if I can’t see him, I’ll see a nurse practitioner,” Candy said.

  “Leave it to me.”

  There were only a few women waiting in the room. It had chevron carpet and peach-colored walls. I approached the reception window and rapped once on the glass. The receptionist was an attractive middle-aged woman with frosted curly hair. She wore a necklace over a lilac turtleneck.

  “I love your necklace. What is it made of?” I said, buttering her up.

  “Amethyst,” she said, fingering the stone on the chunky chain. She held it up, toward me.

  I bent closer to the sliding window that separated us. “So tell me, where did you get it?”

  “My boyfriend gave it to me.”

  “Special occasion?”

  Candy was beside me. I could feel her take a deep breath, waiting for me to get to the point. The point was that befriending a receptionist—or, for that matter, the person assigning seats on the airplane, the front office manager at a hotel, et cetera—had always worked well for me.

  “My birthday, yesterday,” the receptionist said.

  “Happy birthday!” I shouted as though she had just blown out candles.

  The receptionist laughed. “What can I do for you?”

  I moved my hand through the window to shake hers. “I’m Marcy. My friend Candy doesn’t feel well and needs to see Dr. Haverford. We would have called, but there was no time.”

  I omitted the part where this medical emergency had been months in the making.

  “I’m sorry, but he doesn’t have a moment. He’s leaving in a few minutes. I can fit you in with one of the technicians.”

  “I forgot to ask your name,” I said.

  “Janine,” she said, clearly unaccustomed to anyone asking her name or making conversation with her.

  “Janine, you seem so wonderful. Maybe you could just ask him. My friend lost her father,” I whispered. “I am very concerned.”

  “What’s the problem?” Janine whispered back.

  “She’s bleeding.” I figured the worse I made it sound, the more likely the doctor would see us sans appointment. “Blood. Red. I hope you will help us.”

  “Well, since you’re so nice . . .” She headed toward the examination rooms and whispered something to someone near the door. She returned to her chair, and she winked. “He’ll see you.”

  I knew Candy was thankful I had talked our way into seeing the doctor, but that she wouldn’t chummy up to land the last seat on the last lifeboat leaving the Titanic.

  Then she surprised me.

  “Thank you, Janine,” Candy said. “And by the way, I love your hair.”

  Chapter 7

  Christopher Kingston stopped into the office on his way to Vermont. He was a large and wealthy man who had been in finance but now owned a respected gallery. He was chairman of the Guild board, my boss.

  “The new office looks good,” Christopher said. “I should come more often.”

  “Well, you like to hold meetings in your gallery. And I enjoy going there.”

  His eyes landed disapprovingly on Cheyenne, who was at her desk, dipping her chicken nuggets in sauce. I introduced the two.

  “Would you like coffee?” Cheyenne asked.

  Christopher waved her off and turned to me. “Tell me about Art Explosion.”

  Art Explosion was our most lucrative event. I came up with the name because it was held in an old ammunitions warehouse. The proceeds supported creative programs in inner-city schools.

  “We already have forty artists willing to display. Would you like to discuss it now?”

  “No. We’ll meet in the gallery next week. I can’t stay long today. I’m heading to Burlington to see my son.”

  We talked about the Guild for a while. He asked me how my personal life was. I told him I was seeing Jon, who was also on the board.

  He smiled. “Keep making the good choices, Marcy.”

  Easy for him to say—he was the kind of person who had always been the captain of his ship. As for me, I’d been a skipper. I had gone aboard the Harvey and sailed wherever my husband wanted to go. Back then, I had no idea there was any other way to do it.

  After Christopher left, my phone rang.

  “What are we going to do about Dad?” Amanda blurted before I could say hello.

  “What happened?”

  “He wants the wedding to be in Connecticut.”

  And so do I.

  “It gets worse.”

  “Worse than Connecticut?” I said sarcastically.

  “He wants it to be at the synagogue.” She drew out the word “synagogue” like it had eighteen syllables.

  “What’s so bad about that?” I had already called the synagogue to see what dates were available.

  “Mom, getting married in a temple is so 1979. I might as well wear a daisy crown in my hair.”

  “I wore a daisy crown.”

  “See. I’m right. Old-fashioned.”

  I pushed down my disappointment. I had always imagined a wedding at our synagogue, but if that wasn’t what she wanted, it was fine with me. I wanted her to have what made her happy. I wanted everyone to get along. I knew it wasn’t easy having parents. I had had two of my own.

  “Where do people get married now?” I asked.

  “In botanical
gardens, on cattle ranches.”

  “You want to get married on a cattle ranch?”

  “Of course not, but my friend Julia did.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Her father is a neurosurgeon, but he owns a cattle ranch in Wyoming.”

  I heard my Mom: “Being a doctor wasn’t enough for him?”

  “So you want us to start herding cattle so you don’t have to get married in a synagogue? I can see your father now—galloping on Little Joe Cartwright’s horse, his toupee blowing in the wind.”

  “Very funny, Mom. You know what I’m saying.”

  I knew that Harvey was not going to go for any of her ideas, all of which would be laughable to him. But it was her wedding, ultimately her decision, so I went with the flow. “Do people get married in museums?”

  “Yes.”

  “In art galleries?”

  “Very popular.”

  “Christopher Kingston was just here. He owns the most beautiful gallery I have ever seen. I’ll bet it holds 150 people.”

  “Mom, I’m not getting married in your friend’s gallery. Besides, we want a destination wedding.”

  You’re the new and improved Marcy, I reminded myself. Shut up, and let her do what she wants. Get on with your life, not her life.

  “Honestly, I think you should get married wherever you want to get married. And whether it’s on a cattle ranch or the Orient Express and one of us is murdered, it’s fine with me.”

  “So, you’ll talk to Dad?”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t want to have to deal with Harvey.

  “I was thinking about a resort in Kauai,” she said.

  “Hawaii?” What an insane idea. Had she gone nuts? Harvey would definitely put the kibosh on that one.

  “Sounds nice, Amanda,” I said. Stop there. Don’t say more. On the other hand, maybe I could get my points across, help her see the light, if I remained more diplomatic than a UN envoy. “Hawaii might be too far, though, don’t you think? It will take a long time to get there. What’s more, airfare will be very expensive for your guests.”

  “Which would be great, because then a lot of people won’t come.”

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  My mother: “She doesn’t want people to come?”

  “Do you mean that you are inviting people, but you don’t want them to come?”