Husbands and Other Sharp Objects: A Novel

by Marilyn Simon Rothstein

  “He is so ridiculous,” she said. “Positively ancient. You know that’s why he hasn’t even tried to bring Bountiful to its deserved place on the Internet. I could set him up in days. But no.”

  “This isn’t about your father,” I said.

  “Oh, wow, now you are defending him?”

  “You’re marrying a Jewish boy. Why wouldn’t you want to celebrate your traditions?”

  “I didn’t want to tell you this, because I didn’t want to upset you, but I guess it’s time to let the cat out of the bag.”

  No, no, I thought. Keep the cat in the bag. Suffocate the cat.

  “Jake is an atheist. And I’m thinking of becoming an atheist.”

  “What does that mean?” I knew what it meant, but I needed time to breathe.

  “He doesn’t believe in God,” she whispered.

  “What’s God got to do with Judaism? We’re talking tradition. Do you think eating a bagel is a religious rite?”

  “Mom, I don’t want to argue. I am having a hard enough time dealing with the fact that I am getting married, and my parents are separated. Is nothing for sure in this world?”

  Go ahead. Hit me with a poisonous arrow.

  I turned toward the business of my French onion soup. But it had grown cold. I didn’t expect my daughter to be an atheist for longer than it took to pray for the next thing she wanted. After all, normally, before she’d started planning a wedding, she’d been very smart and had a lot of common sense. I decided I wanted to get along with Amanda and that I wouldn’t say another word about any of her decisions.

  “Maybe just step on the glass,” I said.

  “Mom!”

  Barefoot, I thought.

  I sat back, disgusted. The whole wedding was maybe three hours. Why had three hours become the debacle of a lifetime anyway? The wedding was ringing in my ears, frustrating me like a honker of an alarm in my car that wouldn’t go off no matter how frantically I searched for the knob that would silence it.

  I still hadn’t told Jon that he was not invited. I was waiting for a good time, but I knew there wasn’t one. “Thanks for the wonderful dinner, Jon, and by the way, Amanda would rather take in toxic fumes in a locked closet than have you at her wedding.”

  Amanda thought we were all torturing her, and if I heard her say one more time that it was “her special day,” I was going to strangle myself with a blue garter belt after swallowing something old—Prozac in a ten-year-old pharmaceutical container.

  When I got to the sloping lot on Eighth Street where I had parked, I stood outside and called Jon. I read the pricing chart as I waited for him to pick up. Parking was twenty-five dollars an hour. For twenty-five dollars an hour, you would think they would have taught my car a second language.

  Finally, Jon picked up.

  “It’s me,” I said like a little lost dog. I loved saying “It’s me.” You know you are extremely close to someone when all you have to say on the other end of the phone is “It’s me.”

  “How did it go?” Jon said immediately in a breath. Imagine a man who wants to know what happened to you before telling you what happened to him. I had dreamed the impossible dream.

  “It was like being at a basketball game,” I reported disappointedly.

  “How bad could that be?”

  “I was the ball.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Amanda says she is now an atheist. She doesn’t want anything at the wedding that would remotely remind anyone that she is a Jew.”

  “What about Harvey? No mistaking him for a Baptist.”

  “It’s not funny,” I said, feeling weepy. “She doesn’t even want potato pancakes.”

  “That heathen,” Jon said, pretending to be outraged.

  I had to laugh. The laugh made me feel better. “Do you think I’m being ridiculous?”

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” I asked as a car shot out of the parking lot too close to where I was standing. I moved farther to the side as the driver in a baseball cap stalled his old Buick to give me a finger.

  “Move over, Mama,” he sneered.

  “I’m not your mama, Grandpa!” I said to the driver.

  “What’s going on?” Jon said.

  “Bad driver.” I felt like a heap of dung. “Is it okay if I come over? I should be back in Atherton in a couple of hours.”

  “See you when you get here.”

  I climbed three floors. Jon met me at his door. He unbolted the lock and let me in. He was wearing a flannel shirt, jeans, and a big smile on his face, like he had a secret he was bursting to tell.

  “What smells?” I said. “Is something burning?”

  “Oh no,” he said as he rushed over to the stove in the galley kitchen and removed a sizzling frying pan. “Sit down a minute,” he called out.

  I sat on the chair by the window. I checked my phone. Candy had left a message about a doctor’s appointment she wanted me to go to with her. I texted back that of course I would be there. I looked outside to the alley, where kids were playing, dividing into teams for something. I wondered why life couldn’t be that simple. Then I remembered that it was no picnic playing games as a child. I was a klutz, and I always got picked last. When I was chosen next to last, it was only because there was a girl who was chubby. Then she would be last, and I would feel awful for her.

  “Okay, come to the kitchen,” Jon said.

  On the counter was a small jar of Mott’s applesauce. In his hand was a speckled platter stacked with potato pancakes.

  I melted. “You’re too much,” I said. “Don’t tell me you made these.”

  “Ran down to the supermarket and bought a few boxes of Golden frozen.”

  “I love the frozen ones,” I said.

  He handed me a fork. We ate until there was only one pancake, blackened, left.

  “Don’t eat that one,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Let’s save it for Amanda.”

  “I’ve been thinking . . .”

  “Don’t do that,” I said. “It’s dangerous.”

  “When was thinking dangerous?” he asked.

  “When I was thinking my husband was trustworthy.”

  He looked at me seriously.

  “I have a suggestion. Maybe we need to go to synagogue,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Your issue with Amanda is her lack of interest in Jewish traditions.”

  “Bingo,” I said.

  “But when is the last time you went to synagogue?”

  “I went on Yom Kippur to atone for my sin.”

  “Just one sin?”

  “Oh, wait. I just thought of another one. I may have, maybe once in a whole year, said something bad about another person.”

  He laughed. “I think I know you better than that.”

  “Well, I only count it as a sin if what I said wasn’t true or, worse yet, if it wasn’t funny.”

  “That can get the sin count down, all right.”

  “I was also xenophobic.”

  “Fear of strangers?”

  “No—fear of Zen,” I said. “What about you?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Well, if you are not honest, you will have to atone for that too.”

  “I don’t respect my mother and my father.”

  “I thought your parents were gone.”

  “They are. But I don’t visit the cemetery.”

  “Oh,” I said quietly, as I knew he was being very revealing, and it was probably hard for him to say what he had just said.

  “The truth is, I don’t want to go alone.”

  “I will go with you. I mean, if that’s okay.”

  “Really? You would? A day at a cemetery is not exactly a day at the park.”

  “I like dead people. They don’t answer back. That’s with the exception of my own mother. I hear her talking to me most of the day.”

  “What is she saying?”

  “Go buy a new sweater. M
arcy, be nice to your brother.”

  “I wish I had known her.”

  “You know me. You know her.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Look how I am handling this Amanda-is-getting-married ordeal.”

  “I think you are exaggerating. Ordeal?”

  “Well, that’s what my mom would have called it.”

  “Okay,” he said. “So we will go to the cemetery.”

  “You are so romantic. You stop at nothing in that department.”

  “And we will go to synagogue,” he said.

  “What’s your Hebrew name anyway?” I asked.

  “Yakov ben Chaim. What’s yours?”

  “Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.”

  He twisted the lid on the Mott’s and put the jar in the refrigerator. His refrigerator was full. I liked that. I especially liked that I knew he had filled it himself. That he took care of himself.

  “You know, I used to go to synagogue a lot,” I said. “Especially when the kids were growing up. Before we bar mitzvahed each child, we had to attend Saturday services ten weeks straight. The rabbi wanted to make sure we knew the ropes. Plus, I sent my kids to Jewish camps. You know the kind—team sports are optional.”

  I took the platter to the sink and washed it. Then I scrubbed the burned pan.

  “I can do that,” he said.

  “No, you made the pancakes.”

  “So you went to synagogue for your kids, but have you gone for yourself?”

  “Wow, Jon. I didn’t know Jews proselytized.”

  “Well, I am just saying maybe you are being a tad hypocritical about this Amanda thing. Maybe Amanda doesn’t know how much this all means to you.”

  “Believe me, she knows. She understands that Judaism has nothing to do with religion.”

  “Judaism has nothing to do with religion—is that a quote from the Torah?”

  “Deuteronomy,” I said as I turned off the faucet and faced him.

  “You mean like the cat with that name in Cats? It sounds familiar.”

  “Jon, I know what I am talking about.”

  “Okay, she’s your daughter. You would know.”

  “When’s the last time you went to synagogue?” I asked.

  “I went to a service yesterday morning,” he said.

  “You went to synagogue on a Thursday?”

  “Ten people are required for a service, so if they run short, they call me, and I dash over. No big deal. It’s across the street.”

  “That’s really nice.”

  “Lots of people do it.”

  “If lots of people did it, they wouldn’t be hard up for a tenth person in a synagogue that has five hundred members.”

  Jon shrugged. He went behind the counter and turned the faucet, as I had left it dripping. I stepped behind him. I rubbed his neck in circles with my fingertips. He turned to face me.

  Together, we moved to the living room and fell onto his couch.

  I was at home, reading Sunday’s New York Times in bed. I was up to the style section, the wedding announcements. Was there anyone in the world who did not graduate from Harvard Law, whose father wasn’t a partner in a hedge fund?

  I wondered whether Amanda was planning for an announcement in the Times. I thought how it would read: “The bride’s father owns Bountiful, the brassiere empire. Her mother works as executive director of the Guild for Good. The bride’s parents separated when her father announced he was having a baby with a lingerie model who wore a 32DD. This wedding is being held at an inconvenient time.”

  I heard a buzz. There was a text from Amanda.

  Save-the-date card?

  I typed back. ???

  When to send?

  Three months before.

  What if you don’t want someone to come?

  Like?

  Almost everyone Dad has invited.

  I heard Dana’s voice from the bottom of my staircase.

  I have to go. Dana’s here.

  “Put down that New York Times, and come talk to me,” Dana said.

  “No. You come up here.”

  “Come down.”

  What was this? A contest to see which one of us could be laziest? She had no hope of winning. “Come up.”

  “Meet you halfway,” she said.

  I met her on the stairs. We each sat on a step. “What’s going on?”

  “Calvin wants his mother to come live with us.”

  “Whoa. In your house?”

  “No. In your house,” she said dully.

  “Very funny.”

  “He doesn’t want to move to Boston.”

  I held back a smile. I was sure Dana could expand her business no matter where she lived, so I was happy to hear she was staying in Connecticut.

  “He claims I can handle both offices from Atherton. He wants to build one of those freestanding mini houses on our property and have his mom live in it. It’s a trend now. You build a three-hundred-foot shack with a pinch of a kitchen and a bathroom with a handicapped toilet and a shower stall, and that’s where you stash the declining relative you’d rather not live with.”

  “I thought that was what nursing homes were for.”

  “He says she’s not yet ready for a nursing home.”

  “Well, she is his mother,” I said. “He wants to take care of her. He wants to do the right thing. Look, it could be worse. He could want her to stay in your house. After all, you have three empty bedrooms.”

  “That’s what he wanted. But I refused. Do you know what she did the last time she stayed with us? She went through my cabinets and tossed out all the dishes that didn’t match.”

  “But you’re like Jon. None of your dishes match.”

  “Exactly. You know what else? She combined all the cereals.”

  “What?” I said to that ridiculous notion.

  “She poured every open cereal into one big plastic bag, tied a knot in it, and put it back in the cabinet. I had Raisin Bran in my Rice Krispies.”

  “It’s a cruel world, Dana, a cruel world.”

  “Not as cruel as my daughter-in-law is to me.”

  “Things are bad?”

  “Actually better. I’m doing everything I can to earn points with Moxie. She’s allowing me to babysit again this Saturday. She needs a sitter on Saturdays so she can be in Connecticut. She’s going to some classes here.”

  “For what?”

  “She’s training to become a certified psychic.”

  “You have to train to become a psychic? Couldn’t you just see into the future and know what to do?”

  Dana shrugged. “Who cares? I see an opening. It’s my chance to look like a hero. I told her to bring the baby to Connecticut, and I will watch him. The problem is, I have so much on my plate—babysitting, the agency, the twins, and now my mother-in-law. As much as I hate to say this, and I never said it before, I am not thirty anymore.”

  “That’s right. You’re thirty-one,” I said.

  Dana knocked my shoulder as we laughed.

  “I’m glad we’re laughing,” I said. “Because I doubt I’ll be chuckling it up tomorrow.”

  “Candy’s operation?”

  “Yes.” I was so sad at the thought of what Candy had to go through. I could feel it deep in my body.

  “I’ll call you at the hospital. You’ll be at Saint Mordecai, right?”

  I nodded. “Let me ask you something,” I said. “If there are so many things you can do to avoid cancer, how is it Candy did them all and ended up like this? She exercises. She eats the right things. I think she would faint if I held a potato chip in front of her.”

  “You have chips?” Dana said, excitedly.

  I sighed and shook my head. “What happened to the I-will-not-be-a-fat-grandma diet?”

  Chapter 19

  Once Candy was admitted to Saint Mordecai, I went to the cafeteria to wait. Candy and I had spent heaps of time there back when my mother and her father were sick.

  I knew I should eat something healthy,
because that was what Candy would want, so I bought a banana and an apple when I really wanted a bag of Fritos. It’s amazing how much junk food there is in hospital cafeterias. It’s like they are feeding you just so they will wind up with more patients. I mean what’s with the fried chicken, the oily French fries, and the Salisbury steak soaking in gravy?

  My phone went off, and I looked to see a number I didn’t know. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone I didn’t know, so I almost let it ring, but then I picked it up.

  “Good afternoon, Marcy.”

  Good afternoon? I didn’t know anyone who said “good afternoon” as a greeting over the phone. I thought I was about to be sold insurance.

  “Ellison Graham here.”

  “Oh, Ellison. Hi.”

  “I have been trying to reach Candy, and she hasn’t returned my calls for three days, so I thought I would give you a call and make sure she’s okay.”

  My guess was she didn’t want to worry Ellison, but I really hated being on the spot.

  “Is she?” he asked.

  “Is she what?” I said, stalling, trying to decide what I should or should not tell him.

  “Marcy, is she okay? I don’t know why she isn’t calling me back. We had a great time when we went out on Saturday, and then I heard nothing. It’s unusual.”

  “I’m sure she’s just busy,” I said.

  “Have you seen her?”

  “Of course, of course.”

  “Okay, well, will you tell her I am trying to reach her? In fact, tell her I am very disappointed, and that if she no longer wants to see me, she should have the courtesy to tell me so.”

  I didn’t want him to think Candy was ill-mannered or, worse, that she didn’t care for him.

  What if she got out of surgery and I told her he had called, but I hadn’t told him she was ill, and he broke up with her, and it was my fault? He was perfect for her, and I was not going to be the one to ruin it.

  “Ellison, I know she wants to see you. She likes you.”

  I felt so seventh grade. Like I should be scribbling “Mrs. Candy Graham” on lined, three-holed paper.

  “Tell her I called.”

  “I will.”

  I ate my banana, then my apple, and then I returned to the cashier and bought the large bag of Fritos I’d wanted in the first place.