by Sue Margolis
“OK, I admit a proposal of marriage from Colin Firth would round things off nicely, but a girl can’t have everything.”
“No, it’s nothing like that.” Harmony sat struggling with her thoughts. “OK, have you ever thought that life is like a holiday? You get up on the first morning and think, OK, today I’ll just relax by the pool. Then suddenly it’s day thirteen and you realize you’ve done nothing but relax by the pool. You’ve seen none of the sights. You’ve missed the glass-bottom boat trip, cycling round the countryside and all the little villages. Well, that’s how I feel.”
“What, that you’ve missed a trip in a glass-bottom boat?”
“Dah. You’re being thick on purpose. The point is I’ve earned tons of cash, but I can’t help feeling that I haven’t done anything really worthwhile.”
“Like what?”
She shrugged. “I wish I knew. All I know is I don’t want to cut rich people’s hair for the rest of my life. To make it worse, I have this sense of time running out.”
“Which takes us back to the turning-forty thing.”
“I guess. Did I tell you that I’ve started using Clairol’s Loving Care. And I don’t mean on my head.” Cyn fell about laughing.
“OK, if you think that’s funny, get this. I found this hair growing under my chin.” Cyn made the point that everybody got the odd chin hair. “Not like this, they don’t. It was over an inch long. And white. I just hadn’t seen it. I must have been walking around with it for weeks. At first I thought it was a piece of thread. Then when I tugged it, I realized it was attached to me. God knows how many people must have noticed it and been too polite to say anything. Shit, Cyn, I’m turning into a blind, hairy, shriveled-up old crone.”
“Come on,” Cyn said, putting an arm round her. “You know full well you are young and beautiful and not remotely shriveled or cronelike. You’re just knackered, that’s all. Running the salon, ending it with Justin and all this building work has worn you out.”
“Yeah, right. Tell that to the single mum who’s working six days a week at the supermarket checkout.”
“A commendable thought, I’m sure, but it doesn’t mean that you don’t have the right to get run-down.”
“I s’pose not.” Cyn could see Harmony’s eyes starting to fill with tears. “And there’s something else. I really, really want a baby before it’s too late.”
“Oh, sweetie.”
Cyn sat holding her for a few moments, gently rocking her back and forth. “You know, I think maybe you should get this no-period thing checked out. I’m sure it’s nothing, but it would be best to see a doctor.”
Harmony promised she would.
“Look,” Cyn went on, “why don’t you come and have lunch at Mum and Dad’s? The whole family’s going to be there. Mum always cooks too much and they’d love to see you. It’ll cheer you up.”
Harmony said she’d love to, but she had to go out and choose a bathroom suite. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “The builder’s going mad because I can’t make up my mind. The thing is I’m hovering over the bidet—so to speak. I mean yer upper classes think they’re totally naff, but I just read this article about how the French don’t get yeast infections. What do you reckon?”
Cyn said it was entirely up to her, but she agreed she couldn’t exactly see Hugh Grant sitting astride one.
She arrived at her mum and dad’s just after one. As she walked toward the house, she decided not to say anything about Chelsea. Her dad and brother, being lawyers, would insist on taking legal action. Then, when she told them how she had taken matters into her own hands, the whole family would start beating their chests and climbing the walls with fear. She didn’t want to give her parents anything else to worry about. They had enough to contend with, what with Grandma Faye staying with them while new central heating was being fitted at her flat. She rang the bell. Jonny answered.
“Hi, J.”
“Watcha.” They exchanged kisses. Even though they were now both in their thirties, Cyn still felt odd kissing her brother. She couldn’t help it. In many ways she would have been more comfortable kicking Jonny’s legs from under him, pinning him to the floor and refusing to let him up until he agreed, on pain of particularly excruciating and lengthy Chinese burn, to stop drawing anatomically correct genital features on her Barbie and Ken dolls.
She hung up her coat and asked him what was new. “You know, same ole. Oh, there is one thing . . .” His face broke into a grin. “Me and Flick have finally decided to get married.”
“Oh, J, that is fantastic!” She threw her arms round him. Jonny and Felicity had been living together for three years. It was time. “So, when’s the big day?”
“Second week in May. Flick’s desperate for a spring wedding.”
“Blimey, doesn’t give you long.”
“Tell me about it. Mum’s already doing preliminary sketches for ice sculptures.”
“But I thought it was traditional for the bride’s family to do all the organizing.”
“Yeah, but, you know, Flick’s mum’s broke.”
When Flick’s father died a couple of years ago, he left no life insurance and a pile of debt. At one time he had been a hugely successful wine merchant, but for two decades or more he had drunk more than he had sold. Flick’s mum, Bunty, who was in her sixties, lived in the country. Although she hunted and continued to be invited to all the best parties, she had barely a bean to call her own. She wasn’t nearly as well-to-do as Hugh’s parents, but like them she fell into that category of elderly poshies down on their luck, quaintly referred to in polite circles as “distressed gentlefolk.”
Jonny and Flick had offered to pay for the wedding, but Barbara wouldn’t hear of it. No child of hers was going to pay for his own wedding. Jonny said, “Dad butted in at this point and said, ‘You know, Barbara, I think maybe we should hear Jonny out on this,’ but she bashed him over the head with her oven glove.” The upshot was that Barbara and Mal were organizing and paying for the wedding.
“So far,” he continued, “Mum is refusing to invite the Canadian cousins, after they didn’t make the effort to fly over for Uncle Sid’s funeral in 1984. Grandma Faye says let them come, but sit them next to the kitchen. Dad says don’t invite them because it’s two couples less and he’ll save money. Flick thinks we should be a bit daring for once and go for a reception with a Hawaiian theme. Grandma says that’s fine so long as we can still have the cocktail fish balls, the melon balls, the matzo balls and the chocolate fountain.” By now Cyn was falling about.
“Wait,” he said. “It gets better. Because Flick is Catholic, we have a major problem about where to hold the ceremony. You should have been here five minutes ago when Flick calmly announced that she would like to get married at the Blessed Virgin in Highgate. Grandma practically had a stroke. I think her precise words were: ‘Why don’t you just stick a knife in me and have done with it?’ ”
“And what about you? What do you want?”
“I just want to get married—don’t really care where. Having said that, I have totally put my foot down about the Hawaiian theme. I’ve told Flick that I will agree to love, honor and cherish her, but nobody, not even her, is going to get me in a church, synagogue or wherever, wearing a garland of flowers and a sodding grass skirt.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Cyn giggled. “I think with your full hips, you could carry it off.”
“You really think so?” Jonny said, starting to walk down the hall wiggling his bum.
“Hey, J . . .”
He turned to face her. She reached out and put her arms round him. “God,” she said, feeling her eyes filling up, “suddenly my little brother’s all grown up.”
“Yeah, so grown up I’m thinning on top and going gray.” He ran his hand across the top of his head. “I think it gives me a certain gravitas, though, don’t you?”
She assured him it did. Jonny was only thirty and yet physically and emotionally he was careering into middle age. Unlike
Harmony, who would probably still be slapping Clairol on her pubes at ninety, Jonny appeared to be embracing getting older. He seemed perfectly content, now that their father had retired, to be running the high street law firm Mal had set up thirty years ago. It didn’t seem to bother him that the work involved nothing more thrilling or challenging than conveyancing, drawing up divorce petitions and helping rich, vindictive old ladies add codicils to their wills. He made no secret of the fact that he couldn’t wait to settle down, buy a nice house in a nice suburban neighborhood where he and Flick would raise three nice kids and an Old English sheepdog named Prince.
Flick’s take on life was much the same as Jonny’s—conservative and intensely practical. That of course was her attraction—along with her being Catholic, a bit posh and in possession of a well-developed stiff upper lip. In other words, the antithesis of the intense, arty, constantly emoting Jewish girls he’d been out with in the past.
It wasn’t that either of them was dull or lacked humor. Flick in particular was an immensely game, jolly soul, but neither of them was a risk-taker. Jonny was a firm believer in letting the rest of the world take wild gambles and chances. He would keep his bank account in the black and carry on paying into his pension plan, thank you very much.
The difference between Cyn and Jonny was, of course, that Cyn had come to see how emotionally and spiritually confining playing it safe could be. She had never actually challenged Jonny on the subject because she thought it would sound like she was judging him, but she’d sort of skirted around it. A couple of times she’d asked him about his ambitions and whether there were any dreams he wanted to fulfill.
“Haven’t you ever gotten the urge to jack it all in and do something wild like going round the world on a Harley?”
“What? To get taken hostage and shot in Colombia? No, thanks. A villa in Tuscany’s more my style. You know, I think Mum’s illness made me realize early on that the only things that matter in life are to be healthy, in a loving relationship and financially secure. So far I’ve scored three out of three. And do you know what, Cyn, I’m the happiest bugger I know.” Maybe he was. Or maybe he just convinced himself he was. It often occurred to her that deep down, he had doubts about the way he lived his life the same way she had doubts about hers.
Cyn followed Jonny down the hall, him telling her that it would be her turn to tie the knot next and her making the point that in order for it to be her turn, she would need to find a man prepared to marry her.
“What about Neil Applebaum from school? Apparently his Tourette’s is really under control. Maybe you should give him a ring.”
“Hah, hah.”
“Just a thought,” he laughed.
In the kitchen, Barbara was standing next to the stove, molding fish cakes with yellow-rubber-gloved hands. “Hi, darling,” she said to Cyn. “Jonny told you his wonderful news?” She gently placed a couple of fish cakes in the frying pan and took a step back as the oil hissed and spattered. Then, holding out her rubber-gloved hands in front of her like a surgeon breaking off in midoperation to have his brow mopped, she presented a cheek for Cyn to kiss.
“It’s fantastic.” She kissed her mother, who smelled of Body Shop White Musk and minced fish. Cyn could feel Barbara examining her face. “You OK, darling? You look a bit peaky. Everything all right at work?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a bit tired, that’s all.”
“I knew it. Those people you work for are pushing you too hard. I’ve a good mind to pick up the phone and . . .”
“Mum! Don’t you dare. I’m thirty-two, not five. What would you do, demand they let me have an afternoon nap?”
Barbara shrugged as if to say, “Look, I worry, that’s all.” Cyn gave her another kiss that said, “Sorry, I know you do.”
“Cyn, you’re a clever girl,” Grandma Faye called out from the table in the Alpine breakfast nook. “What rhymes with tumor?”
“Come again?” Cyn said, baffled. Jonny explained that one of Faye’s best friends had died a few days ago, aged 104, and since the woman had no close family still alive, Faye had been requisitioned into writing a rhyming obituary for the deaths column in the local newspaper.
“I dunno, Grandma,” Cyn replied, going over to kiss her. “What about humor?”
“Let me see if that scans.” Faye lifted her glasses to her forehead, brought the writing pad close to her eyes and squinted. “ ‘You never heard a moan from Estelle Silverstone / She bore her tumor with great humor.’ Great. That works for me.”
“Brill,” Cyn said, stifling a giggle. She and Jonny exchanged a look as they sat down at the orange pine table.
“So, Mum,” Barbara called out, “what did Estelle die of?”
“Childbirth . . . She was a hundred and four. What do you think she died of?”
It was as much as Cyn and Jonny could do to keep straight faces. Barbara said, “Well, pardon me. I was only asking.”
Cyn asked Grandma Faye how she was. Faye shrugged. “Oh, you know, comme ci, comme ça. My blood pressure’s up, I’ve started getting shooting pains in my back, my stomach’s a bit iffy—I get this terrible acid. And my circulation’s not what it was. But you know me, I’m not one to complain.”
Cyn looked at Barbara, who was looking heavenward and clearly beseeching the Almighty to speed up central heating work at Faye’s flat.
“You know,” Grandma Faye whispered, moving in toward Cyn, “it would be nice if you found a young man by the time Jonny gets married. All your cousins are married or engaged. You’re the last. Sometimes I think you’re too fussy. Who was that nice boy down the road who used to go to your school? Had a bit of a twitch.”
“Neil Applebaum,” Jonny said, grinning. “I already suggested him, but Cyn’s not interested.” Cyn kicked Jonny’s shin under the table, making him wince with pain.
“Shame,” Faye sighed. “You’re such a beautiful girl, Cyn. I don’t know why somebody hasn’t snapped you up. You know, if you found somebody, you’d be making your mother so happy.”
Faye was right, it would make Barbara happy if she found a man. It was hard to believe that Barbara had been a bit of a feminist in her day and that when Cyn was a teenager, her frequently repeated mantra was “Little girls made of sugar and spice grow up to be cheesecakes.”
In her midforties, most likely spurred on by having beaten cancer, Cyn thought, Barbara enrolled in a women’s studies course at the local adult education college. Cyn still remembered overhearing her mother telling Grandma Faye that she and some of her fellow students had gone along to this women’s group where everybody stood around in a circle using their makeup mirrors to “make friends with their vulvas” and Grandma Faye replying, “Wouldn’t it be better to take it to a car mechanic?”
These days, with Cyn not married, the “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” poster that had been stuck to the fridge door for years was long gone. Barbara had given in. After years of fighting her off, she freely admitted that she had—horror of horrors—“turned into my mother!” and gotten in touch with her yenta within.
“You know . . .” It was Barbara from across the kitchen. Cyn wrinkled her face. She was sure her mother was about to remind her of yet another article she’d read in the Daily Mail about women’s fertility declining after the age of thirty-five. When it turned out to be more of her thoughts about the wedding reception, Cyn’s face relaxed. “I’m not sure,” Barbara went on, “about having all these balls on the dinner menu. Maybe it would be better to go for the melon balls, but drop the matzo balls and the fish balls.”
“Funny, I didn’t know fish balls dropped,” Grandma Faye said, winking. She may have been eighty-four, diabetic and getting a bit frail, but her wit was as robust as ever.
Just then Flick came in. She’d been out on an errand for Grandma Faye and her cheeks were flushed with the cold. Flick was what Faye described as a “hardy English rose.” She was blonde and pretty with perfect cream skin, sturdy thighs and a whopping great
bum. (Jonny had a thing for women with big behinds.)
“Hi, Cyn,” she said brightly, kissing her on both cheeks. “Wow, fab skirt.” It was a dusky pink and black Marc Jacobs rip-off she’d bought at Topshop for thirty quid. “God, I’d give anything to have your figure. I’m just so huge and galumphing.”
Flick was forever running herself down like this, which made Cyn feel awkward and guilty at the same time. She felt guilty for having been blessed with a good figure and awkward because there were only so many times she could trot out the same white lie about Flick not being remotely huge or galumphing. The unfortunate truth was that Flick did have something of the hockey-playing fairy elephant about her. Today Cyn decided to change tack. “Come on, Flick, I’d give my right arm and a certain amount of offal to have skin like yours.”
“Clarins Beauty Flash Balm,” she said, waving away the compliment. “Nothing to do with me.”
“I keep telling her she’s beautiful.” Jonny shrugged, looking at Cyn. “But she just doesn’t seem to get it.”
Flick bent down and kissed him. “You are just biased, Pooh Bear.”
At this point Grandma Faye broke in: “So, Felicity, did they have some indigestion tablets up at the shop?” Flick passed her a tube of Tums. It seemed that since Flick’s suggestion that she and Jonny get married in a church hadn’t quite caused Faye to have a stroke, the old lady was now playing the gastric reflux card.
“You can chew a couple of these after meals,” Flick said kindly, “but don’t overdo it. These chalky medicines aren’t good for your kidneys.”
“Thank you, my darling. You are an angel. I think maybe I’ll take one now.” Grandma Faye started to grapple with the foil on the Tums packet. Cyn couldn’t help thinking how her stiff, gnarled finger joints clashed with her perfectly manicured scarlet nails. Suggestions of church weddings aside, Faye adored Flick. It was partly because she was sweet and thoughtful. It was also because she was a nurse. At last Grandma Faye had somebody permanently on hand to offer advice and counsel about her ever-increasing list of ailments. “Felicity, darling,” Faye said, starting to chew the Tum, “maybe you could take my blood pressure again after lunch. I brought my sphygmomanometer. Oh, and my urine tester kit is in my handbag. I think my sugar might be up again. If I go to the bathroom after lunch, would you take a look?” Flick assured her it wouldn’t be a problem. Cyn watched Jonny give Flick’s hand a quick squeeze as if to say: “Look, I know she’s a pain, but thanks for being so patient.” Flick returned the squeeze with a kiss on his forehead.