Good Riddance

by Elinor Lipman

  Just like that—a major secret of both our lives, the one he’d bottled up for thirty-two-plus years—now in the possession of a stranger. I asked her last name and he told me, “Krauss. Kathi Krauss.”

  “Do you think she added the extra days of walking Sammi so she can see more of you?”

  I heard a chuckle. “The schedulers are already teasing me. They’re all young kids at New Leash. They wouldn’t know the meaning of a no-fraternization rule.”

  “And you’re getting a sense that she’s flirting. Or at least interested?”

  “I wouldn’t call it flirting. She’s a piano teacher.”

  A teacher like my mother, the adulterer. How generous and sweet he was—two qualities I might’ve possessed if not for the missing genetics of it. “Does she know you haven’t always been a dog walker?” I asked.

  “She does. I worked that in pretty quickly.”

  “And she’s not just looking for a new pupil?”

  “Give me some credit, Daff.”

  By now, I’d made my way to my laptop and was Googling “Kathi Krauss piano teacher NYC.” It took me to the website of Kathleen Krauss, MA, where I learned that her specialty was giving piano lessons to adults who “fled the keyboard” as children and were now regretful.

  I asked him if Paula from Thanksgiving was officially in the rearview mirror.

  “I’ll find a nice way to tell her I want to be just friends. Manuel says she’ll be cool with that.”

  “I should consult Manuel myself.”

  “About the guy across the hall?”

  Had I told him about Jeremy?

  I asked when Jeremy had ever come up in conversation. “Not ours. I had a brief conversation with him right outside your door. He introduced himself. I picked up a little . . . what would I call it? . . . maybe fond goodwill.”

  “We can’t help seeing each other. I mean, he lives a few yards away.”

  “I got the sense it was more than that. Or it could be.”

  “I wouldn’t call it dating. It’s visits. With no strings attached.”

  “Which is okay with you?”

  “I set the ground rules myself: friends with benefits. Is that hard for a dad to hear?”

  “I’m not easily shocked, not after thirty-six years as a high school principal, most of it during the sexual revolution.”

  Oh, the phrases that were passing between the divorced daughter and the widowed dad these days! “What’s your next step?” I asked.

  “If you mean with Kathi, I’m taking it one appointment at a time. She says Sammi gets excited even before the doorbell rings, as if she knows it’s me and walkie time.”

  With his sounding happy and optimistic, I risked saying, “One more thing, Dad . . . I don’t want to walk on eggshells, don’t want the mention of either Geneva’s movie or even, God forbid, Peter Armstrong to make you freak out again. I don’t want any more calls from booking rooms of police stations.”

  “We had an agreement,” he said quietly. “I had a good reason to, as you put it, freak out.”

  “Who had an agreement? Us?”

  “No, with your mother. And with Armstrong—that he’d never intrude on your life; that if he did, there would be consequences! He had no legal standing. None! Obviously, his word meant nothing. Obviously, he’s a man—and state senator and member of the bar—without honor!”

  Why had I veered off the cheerful topic of his new lady friend? “When did you say you’re next walking Sammi?” I tried.

  “Tomorrow!”

  “Will you let me know how it goes?”

  “I will. Any advice for your old man on how these things should proceed nowadays?”

  My old man. Thank goodness he still thought of himself that way. “Okay,” I said. “How’s this: Over coffee or sherry, presumably as you’re enjoying a very pleasant talk, you say, ‘Can we continue this conversation over dinner?’”

  I heard him rehearse softly. “Shall we continue this conversation over dinner some evening?”

  “She’ll jump at it. Believe me. She’s already told her friends about you.”

  “I doubt that, but wish me luck.”

  17

  Holden’s Willing Accomplice

  I wrote to my ex-husband via his lawyer, requesting the following: an infrared thermometer, two silicone baking sheets, a silicone spatula, a dozen dipping forks and spoons, parchment paper, nesting glass bowls, candy molds, sea salt, superfine sugar, pistachios, dried cherries, and a bain-marie, preferably Meltinchoc brand. I knew I’d get most of the things on that list—not because Holden was generous, but because in the same letter, purely for leverage, I asked for a two-bedroom apartment.

  The lawyer crossed the edibles, the parchment, the Meltinchoc, and the apartment off my list just to show who was boss and as an unspoken reminder of the get-nothing prenup I’d signed.

  Jeremy was proving to be a good audience for both my progress on the confection front and for all anecdotes that vilified my ex. I noticed the funny look I got the first time I pronounced my ex’s fancy moniker. He asked me to repeat it, then said if it had been a regular-guy name—a Joe or a Dave or even a Geoffrey with a G—he’d be less judgmental. But Holden? So pretentious and lit-ambitious. What was the story there?

  I told him it was a family name, that the first son in every generation got it, like it or not, a century before Catcher in the Rye.

  Further empathic questions: Were these in-laws nice to you? Did they take sides in the divorce? Did they know what he was up to, marrying you to kick-start his trust fund?

  I said his father was out of the picture, the apple having fallen not far from the adulterous tree. His mother was a sharp cookie, nice enough when I was the shadow daughter-in-law but ultimately possessing a heart of plutonium. Her name was Bibi, short for nothing. She’d had Holden late; the most personal thing she’d ever confided was that he was conceived on her fortieth birthday after a surprise party, after they’d given up hope. At our first meeting, family heirloom on my ring finger, she stated that she was relieved that her bachelor son was settling down with a woman who wasn’t . . . well, you know.

  I said, “No, tell me.”

  “A woman my generation would have called easy.”

  I should’ve dropped it there, but instead I asked, “Did you meet many of these women?”

  “Some.”

  “And what gave you the impression they were easy?”

  “You can tell. Sometimes it’s the makeup or the clothes or the way they carry themselves.”

  I saw her practically never during my short marriage. Family dinners consisted of Holden having Manhattans and not much else at his mother’s apartment, solo. After the first few of these exclusionary suppers, I smelled a conspiracy. Was he unhappy and confiding in her? Or had I become as unfortunate a choice as the skanky also-rans? Evidence to the contrary and always reassuring: He’d come home with a beautifully wrapped cashmere cardigan or an evening purse I’d never use, or an Hermès scarf with a note that said, “For no reason! Kisses, Bibi.”

  A few weeks into our separation, she called me. Had I received the German nutcracker she’d sent home with Holdy last Monday? She’d found it in a box with ornaments . . . on and on to news of her two dogs and their monogrammed Tyrolean winter coats.

  “I assume he kept it for himself,” I told her.

  That provoked only silence until she asked, “Could you put Holdy on?”

  “I can’t.”

  “He’s out?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Was it my job to fill in the blanks? Because she wasn’t my mother, my confidante, my problem, I decided not to elaborate. “When was the last time you talked to him?” I asked.

  “Monday. I left a few messages, but I haven’t heard back.”

  “Try a text.”

  “I don’t do that.”

  “I’ll text him and tell him to call you.”

  She said coyly, “And tell him he’s a terrible son! But maybe
if he calls, he gets another chance.”

  Was she clueless? Or perhaps she’d been in on the plot and was only feigning congeniality.

  I texted him, CALL YOUR MOTHER & TELL HER ABOUT US!

  I gave it thirty-six hours, then called her back, newly motivated to squeal if the coward hadn’t come clean about the separation. I suggested lunch.

  “What a good idea! You’ll be my guest. I insist. Pick a place. You know what I like.”

  I picked a favorite restaurant of hers that was a doozy, figuring I might as well make it a very expensive, five-star sayonara.

  I had to admit she was handsome in an august way, with the white pageboy and bangs of someone who’d once been a natural blonde. She was wearing the pearls, three strands that she’d told me would be mine some day and then, please God, a granddaughter’s. I’d planned to tell the story of our dissolution over coffee, but I was having trouble making small talk in the face of my suspicion that she was Holden’s willing accomplice. I began with “I know this might be the last time you want to see me . . .”

  Did that evoke anything? No. She crossed her knife and fork over her untouched lobster salad.

  I started off delicately, or so I thought, with “Things could never be the same after he ruptured several commandments—”

  Who was this usually dainty Episco-Republican opposite me, now practically spitting? “Don’t talk to me like I’m some . . . some . . . Southern Baptist! Commandments! Ha! You don’t think I know that you threw him out!”

  I leaned across my own salad, and hissed, “For good reason! Did he tell you that he stayed out all night with a woman he’d met in a hotel bar? I even know her name: Amanda. Because he confessed.”

  No answer, just an unnerving stare.

  “And that confession led to a bigger one: that he’d been having sex with other women from the time we met: when we were dating, when we were engaged, then after the wedding. I think the only time he was on hiatus was our wedding night.”

  “And . . . ?”

  And? My face must’ve registered my incredulity, because her next question had a tinge of humanity. “Is there any chance . . . ?”

  “Any chance of what?”

  “Any chance he exaggerated his extramarital love life?”

  Was that a smile of sisterhood she’d just flashed? “It’s not as if Holden is a specimen,” she explained.

  “Bibi! He told me he was a sex addict. And he’d go to rehab—like drug addicts and alcoholics—in some place like Minnesota.”

  She had started shaking her head with the first syllable I uttered. “Wouldn’t I know that? Wouldn’t he have come to me first to say, ‘Mother, I have a problem’?”

  “‘Mother, I’m a sex addict’? I don’t think so.”

  Was Bibi looking thoughtful? Was she summoning a mother-son conversation from their past? I asked what she was thinking.

  “You didn’t know Holdy’s father. No, how could you? He was ancient history by the time Holdy met you. What am I saying? He was gone in many ways by the time I brought Holden home from the hospital as a newborn.”

  I knew she’d been divorced but wasn’t positive which of her ex-husbands had been Holden Phillips III. I asked if by “gone” she meant that he’d passed away that early in their marriage.

  “Unfortunately not.”

  I said yes, now I remembered. Then, just for meanness’ sake: “Back in the day when broken homes were rare enough that Holden felt like the only kid in the class without two parents on visiting night.”

  “I don’t like to talk about it.” Her voice was now tight. “Of course, when supposed friends in your church are sleeping with your husband, you have to take a stand, don’t you? You don’t just show up and smile at the two b-words who were having relations with your husband. It’s so humiliating.”

  Whoa. I’d brought out the best or worst in Bibi. I asked how she found out about the women.

  “I connected the dots. It wasn’t that hard.” What followed gave me another glimpse into the very un–New Hampshire, Upper East Side world of privilege and drama: “I hired a private detective. The rest was easy. They know what to look for. He wasn’t caught in flagrante delicto but in what you might call the comings and goings, the before and after.”

  “Did he confess once he was busted?”

  She actually smiled. “Do you know how I handled it? I told our minister, ‘You fix it. You get all of them in here and tell them the jig is up!’”

  “Did he?”

  “That mouse! No, he begged me not to put him in the middle. I said, ‘When I can’t come to church because my husband’s mistresses, plural, are in the next pew, who else is going to help me?’ And at the time, Dear Abby always told women to talk to their ministers or spiritual advisors. Have I mentioned they were married women whose husbands went to our church, too? On Fifth Avenue! Of course, I later found out that the pastor was no angel, either.”

  I didn’t have to ask if there were only two paramours because Bibi volunteered, after summoning our waiter for another whiskey sour, “My divorce lawyer called it Don Juanism—his need to bed countless women.”

  “If you’re saying this is an inherited vice, it doesn’t make me any more sympathetic.”

  “Why did Holden marry?” she asked. “Why didn’t he continue sowing his wild oats?”

  “Are you telling me that you didn’t know about the provision in his grandmother’s trust that he’d get the windfall only when he married?”

  “Oh, that,” she said. “That was on his father’s side.”

  “He used me! He thought I was a country bumpkin who wouldn’t notice he was a philanderer, who’d be grateful to marry someone with, as my mother would’ve said, means.”

  “Check, please,” Bibi called.

  We’d hardly touched our matching lobster salads. I asked to have mine wrapped up, then forgot to take it.

  Jeremy said that this lunch must’ve been more painful than I was making it sound and that it couldn’t have been that long ago. A year? Eighteen months? Had there been any follow-up?

  “Nope. That was it. I haven’t seen her since. Or her precious son, either. Did I mention that the scarves were hideous? I don’t even think they were new.”

  “‘Holdy,’ seriously? Holden’s bad enough.”

  We were watching Jeopardy! on his bed, fully clothed, laptop open, contemplating what to order for dinner. “Were you named after anyone?” I asked him.

  “If you can believe that my mother admitted this—Jeremy was one of the brothers in Here Come the Brides.”

  “Maybe she sensed, in utero, that you had a future in television.”

  “Ah, yes. As Timmy.” After a pause, he added, “Which perhaps you recall is the name of my character.”

  Was Jeremy hurt that I hadn’t caught up with Riverdale? Why hadn’t I upgraded my package to include his channel? Maybe because he played a junior in high school and I was having sex with him several nights a week. I said, “I’ve been economizing on my cable bill, but I’m calling them tomorrow.”

  “Not necessary.”

  “I think it is.” We turned back to the laptop, to Seamless and our delivery history. When we agreed to hit reorder from our favorite Cuban restaurant, Jeremy said, “This is the third time we’re getting these exact things. I wonder if it means we’re going steady.”

  Of course, he was using that ironically. I knew from season one that it was a retro phrase often heard in a booth at Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe.

  The smell of coffee in an NYU mug woke me. “I guessed milk and sugar for someone with a professional sweet tooth,” he said.

  I lifted the covers to evaluate my state of undress. Complete. I told Jeremy I’d wait till he left before getting out from under. The coffee was excellent, thank you.

  “I’ve got to run. Feel free to use the shower.”

  “No need. I’ll slip across the hall.” I reached for his retreating hand. “Another plus.”

  “Along with . . . ?
”

  What answers did the modern woman give? I mentioned his coffeemaker, his view of the Hudson, his martinis, and his talented hands.

  “Why, thank you. Come back soon.”

  “You can leave. I’ll make the bed and wash my mug.”

  “I left a key for you on the table by the front door.”

  A key? I’m sure possession of that didn’t have any meaning beyond my being a trustworthy neighbor should an emergency arise.

  18

  Well, That’s a Surprise

  And there it was among my bills, catalogues, and circulars, a white envelope of the highest stationery grade, its return address a Concord, New Hampshire, law firm. I opened it slowly, suspiciously, expecting nothing good. It said:

  Dear Daphne Maritch:

  I am pleased to inform you that our client, Peter D. Armstrong, has instructed me to make this initial distribution of $5,000 to you, enclosed. We shall hold funds that are to pay you this same sum each calendar quarter. The federal income tax status of these payments is not clear at this time. You will receive further information as we know more. Please don’t hesitate to call with any questions you may have.

  Sincerely yours,

  Francis A. Barber, Esq.

  Five thousand bucks times four! Should I? Could I? What were the ethics of such a windfall? Had my benefactor died? Should I call him or call Francis A. Barber, Esquire? Return it? Cash it?

  Be reasonable, I told myself. Five grand every three months would be a shot in the arm for someone living on subpar alimony checks.

  I knew whom I’d not be asking for advice: Tom Maritch, who would surely consider this the buying and selling of my affections. Not to mention a violation of the promise Armstrong had allegedly made not to butt into my life. And the last thing I wanted to hear was my widowed dog-walker father saying I should return this and every subsequent check because he’d match it.