Single Wife

by Nina Solomon

  “We might as well,” Kane prodded her. She accepted, aware that the tightness she was feeling around the waist of her skirt was due in part to her sudden affinity for all the sweet things that Laz liked to eat, which she no longer could resist in his absence. It was also due to her sudden, unexplainable urges for foods such as the quesadilla grandé with sour cream she’d ordered the night before, when she’d always been perfectly satisfied with a whole wheat spinach wrap.

  The almond croissant was completely unsatisfying and she immediately wanted another.

  “Nice Baby, Gracie,” Kane commented.

  “What baby?” she asked.

  “The one in the oven, of course. Is there another one?” Grace felt her cheeks flush, and she laughed nervously, then began to cough from the second croissant she was still chewing. She gave Kane a playful nudge on the shoulder.

  “Thank you, it’s Laz’s favorite,” she said finally, after the coughing had subsided and before the hiccups began. Grace always got the hiccups whenever she coughed. According to her mother, Grace did nothing but hiccup in utero, like an embryonic call for help emitted in code. She went to the sink to drink a glass of water from the opposite rim, the only cure for her hiccups, which could sometimes be known to last for an entire day.

  THE DUTCH BABY made a beautiful presentation on the buffet. Since the dining room fixture had still not been rewired, Grace lit candles instead.

  “Very Martha Stewart,” Kane commented, admiring the outlines of leaves that Grace had stenciled with powdered sugar over the popover. Grace ladled raspberry purée onto everyone’s plates except those of the children, who preferred maple syrup, and whose sticky handprints she later found smudged along the windows. Kane took his plate and whispered into Grace’s ear as he pointed to a serving dish of a creamy-white mixture.

  “And that is?”

  “Francine Sugarman’s famous artichoke dip, of course—circa 1997, although carbon dating can be inaccurate,” she whispered. “And if anyone offers you a round orange ball, don’t take it. It’s a sweet-potato-and-shrimp dumpling from last New Year’s brunch.”

  “Pity Laz isn’t here to enjoy this,” Kane said. Grace busied herself rearranging the serving platters, consolidating and shifting food as Kane spoke. “He never missed a Thanksgiving before.” Grace found herself literally unable to look at him, and she realized how odd she must appear performing these tasks.

  “Grace?”

  “Just a second, Kane, I think I left the oven on,” she said, and quickly left the room. She found some solitude in the kitchen until she heard a commotion from the living room and came out to see what was happening. The yellow tip of Woodstock’s crown, then his beak and eyes were pressed against Grace’s window, peering in, his body slamming back and forth in the strong gusts of wind as the balloonists tried to right him. Grace thought the window would surely break. She felt the need to brace herself against the nearest, sturdiest object, which happened to be Bert Sugarman.

  “Look, he wants to try some artichoke dip,” Kane joked, luckily not within earshot of Francine. Grace let go of Bert and ran to the window to pull down the Roman shades in case the glass shattered, just as Woodstock was pulled back under control to the sound of cheers from the street below.

  “Never a dull moment at the Brookmans’,” Kane said.

  HOPING TO BEAT the holiday traffic most of the guests left before Santa Claus passed by on his sleigh. Kane was one of the last to go besides Grace’s mother and Francine, who were busy packing up the leftovers. Grace handed Kane his coat and scarf at the door and he kissed her on the cheek.

  “I’m counting on you for tonight,” he said. “We’ll just have to do it without the creep this year.” Grace had completely forgotten about their post-Thanksgiving tradition of going out and playing drinking games, their way to decompress after an overload of stuffing and family. The thought of Kane alone made her feel awful.

  “I wouldn’t miss it. We’ll have just as much fun without him.”

  “That’s the spirit, Gracie,” he said, kissing her on the other cheek. “Nine o’clock. Tap A Keg.”

  “It’s a date,” Grace said. As she closed the door behind him, she could hear her mother and Francine talking in the kitchen.

  “Half a Dutch Baby. Such a waste!” Francine said.

  “It doesn’t freeze well,” Grace’s mother explained. “It gets mealy.”

  “It’s a crime,” Francine sighed.

  “I told her to do the waffles. You never have a problem reheating waffles.”

  GRACE TIDIED UP the pillows on the window seat and felt a chill from the casement windows. She pressed her palm to the glass. It felt like snow. She didn’t need to watch the Weather Channel; she could feel it in her bones.

  8

  THE BUTTERBALL

  Grace chopped up two cups of walnuts on the butcher block countertop and added them to the cranberry relish. The walnuts gave the mixture a more substantial look, which was necessary because she’d neglected to buy another bag of cranberries. After the holidays, things would be much less hectic, or maybe more so, depending on whether or not Laz was home by then.

  She dressed in the tan-colored leather pants Laz’s mother had given her, thinking it was only polite since the elder Mrs. Brookman would be joining them for Thanksgiving. Grace had some trouble lacing up the front of the pants, sucking in her breath as she tied a bow. They were a little snug, but it was the first time she’d worn them, and she assumed that they would loosen over the course of the day.

  The first time Grace’s parents met Nancy Brookman, they had acted as if they were preparing for royalty. Grace’s mother had her hair and makeup done by Phaedra at Frédéric Fekkai, instead of by Renatta at her usual salon down the block, and she bought a new outfit. She even hired Marisol to help serve, tying a starched white apron around Marisol’s waist. Grace’s father broke out a bottle of cognac from 1917, which was served out of the Baccarat snifters they’d received for opening an account at Apple Bank. Bert affected a strange, quasi-European accent all evening, as if he’d been schooled in Bombay. The only one who had not acted impressed with Nancy Brookman was Francine, who snubbed her all evening.

  “I know a girl from the ‘Coops’ when I see one,” she told Grace’s mother after Laz’s mother left, not realizing that Laz was standing in the doorway behind her.

  The Coops was a progressive apartment complex, built in the 1920s, north of Allerton Avenue, where Francine and Bert had met as teenagers. Grace had always wondered about Nancy Brookman’s hybrid accent, which switched depending on the situation, going from upper-crust diction to practically street slang, when she spoke to the garage attendants in her building.

  “She’s not from the Bronx; she’s from Newport,” Bert corrected Francine.

  “And that outfit—a knockoff of a knockoff! Who does she think she is, anyway? The Queen Mother?” Francine continued, sealing a Ziploc bag.

  “No,” Laz answered, sneaking up from behind and taking a bite of leftover spinach pie. “That job’s already been filled.”

  WHEN GRACE LEFT her apartment building, snow was falling like powdered sugar being sifted over the city. It seemed to defy gravity, flurrying upwards and sideways, and Grace couldn’t imagine how it managed to stick to the pavement. The first Valentine’s Day she and Laz were together, snow had piled up on her windowsills overnight. Laz had rung her buzzer at six in the morning, running up the stairs while carrying two pairs of skis under his arms. It had been strangely light out; even though it was not yet dawn, the sky glowed pink through the shutters.

  “Get dressed. We’re going skiing,” he said. He was wearing an orange stocking cap with a pom-pom on the end. He looked like a jester.

  “You’re nuts. It’s Sunday—and just barely,” she said, turning to go into the kitchen. “Come on—I’ll make us breakfast.”

  “I got you the day off tomorrow. The car’s still running,” he said. “The mountain awaits us.” Grace stopped and thre
w her arms around him. She had never so much as taken a personal day before.

  Grace taught ceramics at a private school in Manhattan. She got immense pleasure from watching her students work, forgetting everything else as they transformed the clay and themselves. Once she and Laz married, she gave up the job without so much as a word of protest after Laz pointed out that it was just glorified babysitting and that she should focus on her own work. But after she resigned, sculpting became less of a priority, somehow. At the time, it hadn’t occurred to her to put her job, along with the key, in the frozen fishbowl.

  On the drive up to the mountain that Valentine’s Day, they talked nonstop, as if they needed to get caught up after decades, and not days, of not seeing each other. Laz told her about one of the two times he’d seen his father since he left, at a diner near his prep school.

  “I had a grilled cheese with tomato and a milk shake. I remember he kept taking out his pocket watch to look at it, but it wasn’t even wound up. And he didn’t offer me a ride back to school,” Laz told her, swallowing hard and clearing his throat. “But he gave me his broken watch. He asked me if I had enough change for the bus, and then he put his hands in his pockets as if he was afraid I might ask him for something else. I only saw him once more, at my college graduation, and afterwards he disappeared into the parking lot, without even saying good-bye.”

  Grace and Laz arrived at Belleayre before it opened and got the first lift tickets of the day. BE MY VALENTINE was printed on the tickets. On the ski lift, Laz told her that he wanted to marry her. His lips warmed her cheek. As Grace’s skis alighted on the snow, Laz blazed the trail ahead of her. This pattern had seemed so simple then, desirable even. All she’d had to do was follow.

  WHEN SHE ARRIVED at her parents’ apartment in the afternoon for Thanksgiving dinner, her mother had already set out a large selection of bowls and platters for Grace to choose from in which to put her contribution to the feast. There were bowls made of leaded crystal, stainless steel, porcelain, wood, even huge melamine ones in neon colors from her mother’s modern period. Most of the bowls were actually for Francine Sugarman, who would empty the contents of her plastic containers into the appropriate receptacles, but only after a lengthy discussion of the serving situation—into the middle of which Grace had just entered.

  “The asparagus need an oblong platter,” Francine complained. “You can’t serve asparagus bent like that.”

  “Francine, I don’t think I appreciate your tone,” Grace’s mother said, grabbing the asparagus as though they were a bunch of weeds and dumping them onto another platter. “There, is that better?” In Paulette’s haste, a few of the spears had snapped in half like twigs, still partly frozen from Francine’s Sub-Zero. Francine’s jaw clenched but she didn’t say a word. Bert, still wearing his wool coat and galoshes, walked into the room carrying bakery boxes.

  “Here are the Sacher tortes from our trip to Vienna last spring. You’re going to die when you taste them.” He put the boxes down on the sideboard and surveyed the proceedings. “Everything looks beautiful, Paulette,” he said, dipping his finger into the sweet-potato purée. “Needs a touch more in the microwave, though.” And then, as if on cue, he added, “Where ever did you find baby asparagus this time of year?”

  Francine and Paulette suddenly burst out laughing and put their arms around each other, admiring the table as if it were a piece of art.

  “What?” Bert asked quizzically. “What did I do now?”

  GRACE’S FATHER WAS busying himself in his study, as was his habit. He’d invariably appear just in time to perform his appointed tasks, which, for Thanksgiving dinner, involved answering the doorbell when guests arrived, serving drinks, and carving the turkey. He thought it wiser to stay clear of the combat zone until the last possible moment. If Laz were here, he’d have been in the study as well, while Grace’s father proudly showed off his latest high-tech gadget, such as the paper shredder, which he used to shred everything from junk mail to newspapers.

  Grace’s mother and Francine went into the kitchen to check on Francine’s sweet-and-sour meatballs. Grace sat down at the kitchen table and began filling the turkey-shaped salt cellars and rolling the linen napkins into the minipumpkin napkin rings. The pilgrim centerpiece she’d made in the fourth grade had only recently been relegated to the hall closet after having adorned the Thanksgiving table for two decades.

  “It’s times like this I wish I had a second microwave,” Grace’s mother sighed.

  “Did I mention I’m going to Paris in two weeks?” Francine announced.

  “Really? On a tour?” Grace’s mother took the meatballs from the microwave and poured them into an orange melamine bowl.

  “Don’t waste the sauce,” Francine said, using a plastic spatula to wipe around the inside of the bowl until it was so clean that it looked as if it had just come out of the dishwasher. “Too bad Laz is missing my meatballs again,” Francine said. “Grace, should I pack up another container for him?” Grace looked up from the table, thinking about the other containers still in the freezer at home.

  “You really don’t need to go to any trouble,” she answered.

  “Don’t be silly, it’s my pleasure. Just bring back my containers this time.” Even if Grace weren’t a vegetarian, there was no possible way she could have consumed that many meatballs before the next Scrabble game.

  “Why don’t you give her the recipe, for goodness’ sake?” Grace’s mother asked, for what could easily have been the hundredth time. Francine bristled.

  “You know real cooks don’t follow recipes,” she responded, with a quick toss of her head. “Anyway, I’m off to Le Cordon Bleu soon,” Francine continued. “Two weeks with the world’s most renowned chefs—what could be better?”

  Bert walked into the kitchen and sat at the table, his coat off, but still wearing his galoshes.

  “Those frogs won’t be able to improve on these,” he said, spearing a meatball with a plastic toothpick. “How much would you pay for these meatballs in a restaurant?” he asked, while making a second attempt at spearing another meatball, which was swiftly intercepted by Francine. “And I’m losing my dancing partner.”

  “Bert, really, I think you of all people can make some sacrifices for once,” Francine said, shooing him away from the table.

  “And who will take care of my butterflies?” he asked.

  “Oh, right,” Francine said, “The lepidopterist. A plastic butterfly garden and he thinks he’s Vladimir Nabokov. All they need is a little sugar water. I think you can manage.”

  “You need a dancing partner, Bert?” Grace’s mother asked, shooting Grace a look that made her want to crawl under the table.

  “Mom, no, please.”

  “You can dance? How’s two weeks from next Tuesday? It’s Mambo Night at Hadassah,” Bert said. Then he grumbled, “That is if Laz doesn’t mind, although I wouldn’t blame him for laying low while the press is swarming. It’s been a veritable hotbed of controversy over his book. Everyone is—”

  Grace’s mother’s mouth fell open. “Why, Grace is a fabulous dancer!” she shouted with enthusiasm in an effort to drown out Bert. “She would love to join you at the Hadassah dance.”

  Grace fumbled with the napkin she was holding. While part of her wanted to engage in the conversation with Bert, she allowed herself to be waltzed away by her mother’s well-choreographed intentions. She thought about the dance classes at the Barclay School of Dance she’d taken as a child. Everything from the powdery insides of her white gloves to the squeak of her Mary Janes felt immediate and tangible. She’d won second prize in the dance competition—a disappointment that her mother was never able to let go of—taking home a ballpoint pen that could perform the times tables and division, instead of garnering the silver ballet slipper trophy.

  “Yes, Mambo Night at Hadassah,” Bert said. “You don’t want to miss that.”

  “I’ll have to let you know.”

  “Fine, but don’t wait too long,
I might be snapped up by some twinkle-toed chippie while Francine’s away.”

  THE BUTTERBALL TURKEY was taking longer to pop than expected and was causing some concern. Even Grace’s father found himself drawn unwittingly into the drama that was ensuing in the kitchen.

  “It’s been in since eleven. I had it on a timer so it would start while we were over at Gracie’s,” her mother said.

  “Don’t get yourself all worked up, Paulette,” Grace’s father said, stroking her hair with his oven-mitted hand. “I’m sure it just needs a few more minutes. It’s very scientific, you know.”

  “I think we should try to unpop it, in case it’s stuck,” Francine suggested. “I just have a sense about these things. This would never happen in a microwave.”

  “I hate turkey,” Bert said, peering into the oven. “It’s so dry.” As he stood up, he caught Francine’s eye. “But yours is delicious!”

  “Nancy will be here any minute,” Paulette said, wiping her hands on an orange-and-yellow checkered dish towel. “And I’m not even dressed.”

  “Not to worry, dear,” her husband reassured her, tying an apron around his waist. “Your turkey is in good hands.”

  NANCY BROOKMAN WALKED into the kitchen just as the popper was unstuck with a set of pliers. It shot off like a missile, hitting the ceiling and landing in the dish drain. “I knew it was done,” Milton said triumphantly.

  “I let myself in,” Nancy announced. Grace’s father rushed over, wiping his hands on his apron.

  “You look wonderful, as always,” he said, taking her shorn mink coat.

  “Naturally,” she answered, removing her sunglasses. She handed him her gloves and her tan-and-white Prada bowling bag, which she’d picked up in Milan the previous summer, months before the waiting lists started forming at the Madison Avenue boutique. Of course, bowling bag was a misnomer since it probably contained little more than some tissues and a pair of leather riding gloves. “I understand my good-for-nothing son won’t be gracing us with his presence—no pun intended,” she said, but accentuating the word nonetheless.