by Sue Margolis
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF SUE MARGOLIS
“Fans of Nancy Thayer, Cecelia Ahern, and Marian Keyes will devour this … and laugh out loud while doing so.”
—Library Journal
“Margolis’s characters have a candor and self-deprecation that lead to furiously funny moments.”
—USA Today
“[Margolis’s] language … is fresh and original… . [This] is a fast, fun read.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“Another laugh-out-loud funny, occasionally clever, and perfectly polished charmer.”
—Contra Costa Times
“A perfect lunchtime book or, better yet, a book for those days at the beach.”
—Romance Reviews Today
“Margolis has produced yet another jazzy cousin to Bridget Jones.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A comic, breezy winner from popular and sexy Margolis.”
—Booklist
“An engaging tale.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Quick in pace and often very funny.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“[An] irreverent, sharp-witted look at love and dating.”
—Houston Chronicle
“A vivid, inspiring, and often funny read.”
—RT Book Reviews
“[A] cheeky comic novel—a kind of Bridget Jones’s Diary for the matrimonial set … wickedly funny.”
—People (beach book of the week)
“[A] splashy romp … giggles guaranteed.”
—New York Daily News
“A good book to take to the beach … fast-paced and, at times, hilarious.”
—Boston’s Weekly Digest Magazine
“Scenes that literally will make your chin drop with shock before you erupt with laughter … a fast and furiously funny read.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
ALSO BY SUE MARGOLIS
Neurotica
Spin Cycle
Apocalipstick
Breakfast at Stephanie’s
Original Cyn
Gucci Gucci Coo
Forget Me Knot
Perfect Blend
A Catered Affair
Coming Clean
Best Supporting Role
Losing Me
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2016 by Sue Margolis
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY is a registered trademark and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Margolis, Sue, author.
Title: Days like these/Sue Margolis.
Description: Berkley trade paperback edition. | New York: Berkley Books, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016019599 (print) | LCCN 2016024003 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780451471857 (paperback) | ISBN 9780698175631 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Domestic fiction. | BISAC: FICTION/Contemporary Women. | FICTION/Humorous. | FICTION/Family Life.
Classification: LCC PR6063.A635 D39 2016 (print) | LCC PR6063.A635 (ebook) | DDC 823/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019599
First Edition: December 2016
Cover illustration and design by Sara Wood
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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I want to have children while my parents are still young enough to take care of them.
—Rita Rudner
Contents
Praise for the Novels of Sue Margolis
Also by Sue Margolis
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
About the Author
CHAPTER
one
“Gran’ma, did you know that a shrimp’s heart is in its head?”
“I did not know that,” I say, noting that my grandson’s upside-down face has turned a worrying shade of red. He’s doing a headstand on the sofa, his body leaning against the back cushions.
“It’s true. I read it in my Amazing Facts book. And butterflies taste things with their feet.”
“They don’t. That’s stupid,” Rosie pipes up. “Now shut up. I’m trying to watch the movie.”
“Yes, they do. And you shut up.” Sam pokes his tongue out at his sister.
“Sam, don’t do that. Rosie’s right. You’re spoiling the film. And I wish you’d get down off your head. Your face looks like a tomato. It can’t be good for you.”
“Gran’ma. Now you’re talking, too,” Rosie pleads. “I can’t hear.”
I whisper an apology.
“I like standing on my head,” Sam says. “And Mum and Dad say it’s OK.”
His parents are both doctors, so—assuming he’s telling the truth—who am I to argue?
“Well, I think you look stupid,” says Rosie.
“You look stupid.”
Rosie has had enough. She reaches onto the coffee table, picks up the remote and hits the off button. “There.” She’s sitting with her arms folded, her face defiant and cross.
“Hey, that’s not fair,” Sam says. “I was watching that.”
“No, you weren’t. You were talking and standing on your head.”
“I can multitask.” He sounds just like his father.
“And Gran’ma was talking, too.”
“You’re right,” I say to Rosie. “We were both being rude.” I shoot Sam a stern look, which I’m not sure he can see from his upside-down position. “We’ll be quiet from now on … won’t we, Sam?”
He offers a reluctant OK and then tells his sister to put the movie back on.
“No. You’ve both ruined it.”
I’ve apologized. I’m not about to beg forgiveness from an uppity five-year-old.
We’ve been attempting to watch Wallace and Gromit—the kids on one sofa, me stretched out on the other. Rosie had been campaigning to watch Frozen. Sam, who understandably loathes girlie princess films, was pretty vocal about not wanting to watch it. He was campaigning for Spider-Man. I was with Sam on this. Not only has Rosie forced me to watch Frozen so many times that every time I set the table I find myself singing “who knew we owned eight thousand salad plates?”—I also happen to think it’s sexist twaddle. But I let it go. I’ve refrained from telling her that if she makes me watch it again, I will be forced to eat my own head. I
have also resisted the urge—as has her mother—to spoil the magic by telling her that there’s more to life than being in possession of a hand-span waist, strange steroidal eyes and a handsome prince.
Since Rosie refused to watch Spider-Man, I suggested a few gender-neutral films and in the end we agreed on Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death.
“OK,” Rosie says, partially emerging from her funk. “You can put the movie back on. But you both have to promise to be quiet.”
“Duh. We already did.” Her brother is rolling his eyes. Since he’s still standing on his head, this looks particularly amusing.
I pick up the remote and hit “play”—only it doesn’t. The film starts speeding back.
“Grandma, what on erf are you doing?” Rosie cries. “Quick, press ‘pause.’”
“I am pressing ‘pause,’ but it won’t stop.”
Rosie leaps off the sofa. “Look. You’re pressing ‘select.’ My granddaughter can barely read, but she recognizes every word on the TV remote. She grabs it, hits “stop” and “fast forward” and in a few seconds we’re where we’re meant to be. She pats me on the head. “It’s all right, Gran’ma. It’s complicated for old peoples.”
“Er, excuse me,” I say, grabbing the remote again and with complete accuracy hitting “pause.” “I’m not quite in my dotage. I only pressed the wrong button because I’m not wearing my glasses.”
“What’s ‘dotage’?” Rosie says.
I explain.
“Nana Frieda’s really old. So is she in her dotage?”
I want to say that my mother has been predicting her imminent decline and demise ever since I’ve known her. So you could argue that she’s been in her dotage for the last fifty-seven years. But this isn’t the time for a discussion about how my mum has spent her entire adult life enjoying bad health. So instead I go for a more diplomatic response.
“Well, Nana’s in her eighties, so technically speaking, I guess she is in her dotage. But I wouldn’t say that when she’s around. Plus she’s pretty strong and still gets about so maybe she isn’t quite there yet.”
“Then why does she say she’s ill all the time and that her kit-kas will be the end of her?” I’m laughing to myself. Hearing my grandchildren struggle to speak Yiddish always amuses me.
“And what are kit-kas?”
“It’s pronounced ‘kish-kas.’ And it means guts.”
“Yuck.”
“Nana Frieda says things like that when she gets a bit tired. Don’t take any notice. She’s fine, honestly.”
In fact, right now—despite her numerous ailments—my mother is shopping in the West End. She’s gone with her best friend, Estelle Silverfish, to look at spring coats. I offered to drive them into town. But they said—quite rightly—that even on a Saturday the traffic would be murder. So they schlepped on the tube.
As the film gets under way for the third time, the washing machine beeps from across the hall to tell me the laundry’s done. If I don’t transfer it to the dryer right away, I’ll forget. Then everything will end up smelling of mildew and I’ll need to put it through again. I tell the kids to carry on watching without me. Then I head into the downstairs loo-cum-laundry-room.
I try to ignore the bulging refuse sack sitting on top of the dryer. It’s been there for months, stuffed with Brian’s clothes. Not the decent stuff: the suits, jackets and lamb’s wool sweaters. I haven’t got the heart to bag them up—let alone get rid of them. This is just old jeans, shirts, boxers and the like. Every time I go to the supermarket, I mean to take the bag with me and drop it in the textiles recycling bin in the car park. But somehow it hasn’t happened.
I transfer the laundry to the dryer, set the timer and hit “start.” The whirring of the drum sets up a vibration. A thick navy sock with a yellow toe end falls out of the black sack, onto the floor. It’s one of Brian’s GoldToe socks. He used to say they were the most comfortable socks on the planet. He was evangelical about them. “GoldToe … now, there’s a proper sock,” he’d say to any male companion prepared to have his ear chewed. “It’s like walking on a cushion. The bugger of it is you can’t get them over here, or even on Amazon. I order them from Macy’s in New York. Even with the import duty, it’s worth it.”
He even gave Sam and Rosie’s dad, Tom, a pair to try. Our son-in-law—who shops in American Apparel, wears edgy thick-rimmed glasses and has one of those short-back-and-sides, heavy-on-top hipster haircuts—accepted the seriously uncool socks with admirable good grace.
A few days later Brian wanted to know how he was getting on with them.
“Yeah. Great. Very comfortable.”
Rosie, who was sitting on my lap, whispered in my ear: “Daddy’s fibbing. Mummy won’t let him wear them ’cos she says they’re for old mens. But let’s not tell Granddad ’cos he’ll get upset.”
I gave her a squeeze and said that might be for the best. Not that Brian would have been remotely offended if Tom or Abby had handed back the socks. Brian was many things, but thin-skinned wasn’t one of them.
I pick up the sock and hold it to my cheek. Pretty soon I’m blubbing. It’s been eighteen months since I last saw him. Touched him. Heard his voice. I’m still raw. Memories still lacerate.
For months, Abby has been nagging me to get rid of the sack of clothes. Last weekend when she stopped by for a cup of tea, she was on me again.
“Mum, why is all that stuff still in the loo?”
“Come on. You have to admit I’ve made progress. The bag’s been in my bedroom for months. At least now I’ve moved it downstairs.”
“You have … into another holding area,” she said, leaning against the kitchen worktop and taking another sip of tea. “How long do you intend to keep it there?”
“I don’t know. Until I’m ready to part with it, I guess.”
“But it’s just old underpants and socks.”
“I know, but your dad’s clothes help me stay connected to him. Imagine if they were Tom’s.”
She took the point but she didn’t back off. “Why don’t you let me deal with it? There are recycling bins at the end of my street.”
“Darling, I know you’re trying to help, but you have to stop putting pressure on me. I’ll know when the time is right.”
“Somebody has to put pressure on you. It’s been well over a year since Dad died and you still haven’t cleared out his things. How many times have I offered to come and help? You need to do this.”
“Why?”
“To move on.”
“Why does the whole world want me to move on? Suppose I don’t want to?”
“So instead of getting on with your life, you’re going to stay like this … in some weird limbo. I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t,” I said, aware that my words sounded sharper than I had intended. “Because you’ve never had your husband of nearly forty years die on you.”
“I know, but …”
“You have no idea what I’m going through. How much I’m still grieving. Every day I decide that this will be the day I’ll get rid of the bag and then I find an excuse not to do it. I procrastinate because it feels like I would be abandoning him, casting him adrift.”
Abby put an arm around my shoulders. “Oh, Mum … that’s daft. You wouldn’t be abandoning him. It’s your memories that are important. Nothing could destroy those—certainly not getting rid of some clothes.”
“You’re right. I know I’m being ridiculous… .”
“And you know that Dad would have wanted you to get on with your life. It’s time to start. It really is.”
“And I will, soon. I just need a bit more time.”
Abby sighed but didn’t push it any further. We stood there, not saying anything for a few moments. Then, by way of lightening the atmosphere, she asked after her grandmother. “So, which bit of her body is Nana Frieda complaining about now?”
“Her kishkes seem to have gone quiet for the time being. Right now it’s her legs and her
back.”
“I honestly don’t know how you cope. I love Nana to bits, but she’s so bloody needy.”
When she was a young woman, my mother’s ailments were imaginary. In her old age they are real, although—much to her disappointment—not particularly serious. These days my mother doesn’t so much suffer from hypochondria as from hyperbole. The touch of arthritis, acid reflux and slightly raised blood pressure are real. The problem is the drama. Mum never has a bit of an ache or a pain. She is always in agony. When she catches a cold it’s “an acute chest infection.” A headache is a migraine. A stomach pain is gastric flu. You can bet your life that if my mother ever gets pneumonia, it won’t be double—it’ll be triple.
Her GP, the endlessly tolerant Dr. Moore, whom she’s been seeing for a decade or more, might send her for the occasional test. Mum gets straight on the phone to her friends from her seniors’ day center: “The doctors”—note the plural—“have no idea what’s wrong, so they’re sending me for a battery of tests.”
My mother uses illness to get love.
Time and again when I was a kid, I would come home from school to find her reclining on the sofa, forearm draped over her brow. “Judy … darlink … my back is in two.” Only she pronounced “back” as “bek.” She’d been in this country since she was seven years old and she’d never lost her German accent. “And maybe you could make me a hot water bottle.” Or she would have one of her “migraines” and be in bed with the curtains drawn. In the summer her ankles would swell up so I would be the one schlepping bowls of cold water into the lounge so that she could soak her feet. “You’re a goot girl,” she would say. “Come here for a kiss.” She would make room for me on the couch and cuddle me in her bony arms. Then she would start singing—softly, wearily as if she weren’t long for this world: “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine… .”
I knew that people didn’t die of backache or swollen ankles, but even so I worried about my mother. It didn’t help that she was so tiny and birdlike. Even without her symptoms, she gave off an air of vulnerability. I remember taking my fears to my father. I don’t know how old I was—six or seven maybe.