Bad Timing

by Betsy Berne

  An hour later the phone rang. He was the last person I expected it to be. It was so soon. I wasn’t prepared. “It’s Joseph Pendleton,” he said in a guarded tone. “I had a message you called.”

  “Why did you ditch me?” No rehearsal, and I screeched like a fishwife.

  “What are you talking about?” He was incredulous, no longer guarded, but venomous. Maybe he didn’t understand slang.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” I didn’t like how I sounded—who likes to sound like a fishwife?—but it couldn’t be helped. Apparently, he had had to go out of town for business. That was his initial excuse. He didn’t preface it with an apology. Instead he became polite and distant with intricate details. He had had a business meeting with some investors regarding the record company. Oh, yes, and while he was there he had picked up some photos at a gallery. Not that he was doing much collecting anymore, but these were rare shots of Coltrane. The details didn’t register. All that registered was polite, and it fueled my rage. I told my neighbor once, “I see right through your disdainfully polite,” and he’d shot back, “We may have just hit on one of those traits you’re so fond of. Name me one polite Jew.” I came up with one but he really had me there.

  “Why couldn’t you just call me? Oh, I guess they don’t have phones in Chicago. You could at least have called yesterday. You made it so much worse. You were nice the other day. I wasn’t prepared. How could you turn around and be so awful?”

  “Awful? What do you mean so awful?” he hissed. “You never once made me feel a part of this. And yesterday, I couldn’t call you yesterday, how could I call you yesterday? I thought I was the last person you wanted to hear from. I had no idea you cared. I was under the impression that you never wanted to see me again.”

  I was dumbfounded. It was so preposterous that it made sense.

  “Really?” I barely squeaked it out.

  “Look, maybe it was because I was in the middle of a business meeting when we spoke and I was distracted, but I had no idea how you felt. You have my deepest apologies.” He used the voice.

  “Oh” was all I could manage, and we rested in our corners like fighters in a ring.

  “Well, do you still want to get together?”

  •

  I was still sitting there when she called.

  “Honey, are you busy?”

  “No, no, no, not at all.” I played extra cheerful.

  “Well, I was just making some calls, attending to some business, and I thought I’d check in.”

  “Great, great. What’s new?” It wasn’t near five o’clock. She smelled a rat.

  “I’ve been doing some research. I’ve been looking into funerals. These days it’s eleven or twelve thousand for burial alone. Can you imagine? You know the prices are going up.” She paused. “As we speak.” She paused again. I could hear her calculating. “How much do you think it’s going to cost to bury Grandma?” Grandma was closing in on a hundred and had been willing her own demise ever since Penn Central went bankrupt twenty-five years ago, diminishing the meager inheritance I was still eagerly awaiting. Causing an inheritance to diminish was one of the worst sins an elderly Jew could commit. “Well, I just locked in the price. And I checked on the reserved plots. Thirty-four of them. They’re all still there.”

  “Hey, that’s great news!”

  “If you know anyone who needs one, let me know. There’s going to be a lot of extras. With any luck, Grandma won’t be around to find out.”

  Trying to keep Grandma, well, not alive, because clearly she was going nowhere, but in relative peace, had taken its toll on my mother. At six A.M. the phone would ring and a tremulous voice would announce: “Guess who left last night,” and the voice would add the name of a nursing-home crony (or more likely an enemy). “Oh, where she’d go?” my mother would reply. “You know where.” “No, I don’t. Tell me. Where’d she go?” Vindictive silence and a dial tone. And that was only the beginning. Needless to say, Grandma was not a cherished member of the nursing-home community. In order to placate the staff, who struggled to meet her six-foot, 250-pound shrill demands, my mother had become a voluntary member of the staff. The second she entered the home on her daily visits, cursing under her breath, the entire elderly front line would wheel over to stroke her and be stroked.

  “Apparently, the ground is rising. Nothing’s for sure—don’t make any rash promises—we could lose some. Listen, honey, when Daddy and I go, cremate us and just throw the ashes anywhere. It’s got to be cheaper. I don’t want you kids to spend the money. Don’t even bother with an urn.”

  “Fine, I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “One more thing, honey, I just want you to know. Grandma’s in plot number twenty. Just in case I drop dead tomorrow.”

  “Okay, I’ll remember.”

  “Honey, write it down.”

  “I’ve got it, plot number twenty, right? Now, what else is going on?”

  “Not much. We made it home in five hours flat. We loved the show. Any action?”

  “There are reserves on two paintings, but that doesn’t mean anything until the check is in the mail.”

  “Any reviews?”

  “It’s only been a week. Take it easy.”

  “Oh, honey, don’t be silly. It’s the last thing on my mind. Are you depressed?”

  “No, I am not depressed.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I wasn’t—until you called.”

  “Oh, honey, that’s not even funny. The show looked wonderful. You’ll get reviewed and you’ll make some sales. Did Perry have the baby yet? She looked terrible.”

  “Not as far as I know. Oh, Mom, I just got another call. Can you hold on?”

  “Take the call, don’t be silly, take the call.”

  “Just hold on for two seconds.”

  “No, no, please God, take the call.”

  “Just hold on for two fucking seconds. It might be my editor—let me just get this. I’ll call you back.”

  “No, no, don’t waste your money. Take the call, hurry, take the goddamn call.”

  Ordinarily I would not welcome a call from a magazine editor, but at this moment, on this day, I did. Initially.

  “How are you? Good, good. Well, we’ve got some glitches. Brown lipstick is not doing as well as we expected. By the time this is on the stands brown lipstick will be history and red will be back. Maybe burgundy. And pink, you know what? We don’t know where pink will be.”

  “Oh. Couldn’t you just replace the word brown with the word red and pink with burgundy? For the time being?”

  “You know what? I wish it were so easy. We’re on deadline, darling. And frankly, the piece is not your best. Can I be honest? You didn’t hit a grand slam.”

  “I didn’t?”

  “You know what? There’s nothing new, nothing hot. Do you hear me? It’s got to be new, it’s got to be hot.”

  “Any suggestions on how to make lipstick hot?”

  “If I had any, I would not hold back. I give you my word. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Are you listening?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “If something should change, I’ll tell you what—I’ll call you. In the meantime, if you come up with any ideas, you call me.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll try to think of some.”

  I shuffled back into the studio and put the headphones on earsplitting loud, loud enough not to hear any kind of buzz or ring.

  C H A P T E R

  8

  ON MONDAY I received a familiar kind of phone call. Curt and impersonal—the kind you’d expect from a secret agent on a mission. I no longer took umbrage. On the contrary. The caller identified himself as Joseph. No surname; we’d made progress. He suggested a bar in midtown. It was fine with me as long as I didn’t have to participate in making a plan or a decision.

  I waited on a wooden bench at the entrance of the bar. It was a weathered hotel bar with its own history and some of mine, too. I frequented hotel bars, and there weren’t many
in town that didn’t hold some of my history, not necessarily of the heart, but history all the same. In our youth, Perry and I had made regular pilgrimages to this bar before my Sunday graveyard shift at a law firm where I proofread to support my painting habit. We’d begin the evening with a movie in Times Square—arguing the whole time whether Times Square was more southern or northern when it was really neither; it was just garish and gnarled-with-romance Times Square. After the movie we’d go to the same Chinese restaurant for inedible food, which prevented me from indulging at four A.M. when the other proofreaders ordered their Chinese. Then we’d saunter over to the swanky (in those days) hotel bar a block or two away and join the sad sacks out late on a Sunday night for a beverage and a couple of bowls of free cashews, and at eleven I’d head up to the law firm with a swanky afterglow, which would vanish by eleven-thirty.

  Just yesterday I’d visited Perry, tangle-haired and swollen, stuffed in her new Mission rocking chair unable to rock, wallowing in misery. I’d steeled myself but had to avert my eyes nonetheless. I didn’t react to her litany sufficiently, so she turned on me. “Where is your dignity?” she ranted. “What’s happened to your morals? This guy, whoever he is, this scourge to humanity—what could you possibly see in him?”

  I started to explain that it wasn’t just what I’d seen in him, it was what he’d seen in me, but Perry wasn’t listening. She was sure my lapsed morals had caused her first contraction.

  He arrived at the bar looking extremely impatient. He couldn’t miss me at the entrance, tan and summery in my light linen shift, affecting nonchalance. Joseph Pendleton hesitated briefly in acknowledgment and continued rapidly across the plush golden carpet. I rose and followed, to a dark room that was not so comely. It was more sleazy, sleazy with loud tourists. We settled into our habitual positions. He posed imperiously in his taupe summer suit on the hard chair at the end of the table, while I wreaked havoc on the light linen dress by slithering back and forth on my trusty banquette, a weathered brown one this time with historical cracks in the leather.

  “How are you feeling?” he said, stony-faced.

  “I’m trying not to. I’ve been painting.” No response. “I wrote a lot of articles last month, so hopefully I can just paint for a while. You know, to regain my sanity.”

  His eyes were empty. I rambled about lipstick and liposuction and the beauty editor and the art world until he succumbed and we were off and running like two city slickers on a highly successful third, or maybe fourth, date. I told him my hero and his band were coming to town soon and it would make my twenty-sixth concert.

  “Can they still play?” He smirked. “Anyway, how did a nice East Coast Jewish girl happen to pick such a fellow as her hero?” I glared. “I might know somebody. Maybe I can get tickets for you.” He added, “Hey, why didn’t you tell me about your show?”

  “When was I supposed to tell you?”

  He ignored me. “I had a drink with your dealer last week.”

  “You know my dealer?”

  “From Paris. We used to do business. He’s not a bad guy. Just watch him—he’s tricky.” He would try to get down to the show soon. He might be able to get so-and-so to review it—if so-and-so would still take his calls. He still knew a few collectors, too; maybe he’d send them down. Try, maybe, and might. Not that I was complaining. I was content to banter evasively all night. He was the one who steered us over to the unpleasantness of the past.

  “I think we have some things to talk about,” he said. I grimaced. “You were nasty that afternoon at the bar.”

  “I’m sorry. I had no idea what I sounded like.”

  “You were hostile. Why were you so angry at me?”

  “I was just trying not to like you. I thought you could tell.” When I raised my head he had his chin up and he was looking sideways. I took his hand. It was just lying there on the table, and I saw no other way. “I thought you knew I wouldn’t, that I couldn’t keep it.”

  “How would I know? You began by goading me about my alleged past. Then you casually mentioned a blackmail plan that you’d concocted with your little friend—and added that the two of you found the evening you and I spent together very humorous. You told me you couldn’t recall what I looked like. You said I had everything. You were so dismissive. You acted as if I’d engineered the entire situation on purpose. And then you stopped speaking altogether. How would I know anything? Was I supposed to read your mind?”

  “I guess I left some things out. I forgot that you didn’t know me.”

  “Know you? How would you draw that conclusion when you didn’t even remember what I looked like?”

  “I did remember. I just said that.”

  “How could I possibly know that? By the time we left I was convinced you were a psychopath who engaged in endless sexual encounters with strangers.” That comment was beyond my sphere of reference. It hardly registered. “I spent that weekend convinced you were going to have the baby without any regard for my feelings.”

  My defense was poorly constructed. I feinted and swerved, using the same thin excuses, gripping his hand instead of gripping the arms of chairs or stripping labels off bottles of olive oil.

  “You kept insisting I was going to be mean and shrugging it off—laughing—when I asked for an explanation.”

  “Did I? Did I do all that?”

  “Yes, you did all that. Why were you so angry at me?”

  “I don’t know. I had no idea I was. I guess I didn’t think you cared one way or the other. I don’t know. You’re the man, you’re supposed to be the bad guy. They said you were the bad guy—and I fell for it.”

  “They? This they—there never should have been a they. What do they have to do with us? Why didn’t you tell me first? Wouldn’t that have been the most logical way to proceed?”

  I had never thought of us as us, and what did logic have to do with any of this? I lapsed into a silent attack, and he bristled. “That’s what you did before. Don’t.”

  “I don’t know why. I mean, I do know why. I hardly knew you, but I felt like I did. I knew that you wouldn’t want me to keep it—I had to make up my own mind first—and I had to tell somebody. Then when I did tell you, I felt like you knew me, you’d get it somehow. I was pregnant. The hormones. I don’t know.”

  I gave up and looked over to the loud tourists at the next table to see if they could give me an answer. They had to avert their eyes quickly to pretend they weren’t watching and listening.

  “Aren’t you aware that you’re not allowed to say ‘I don’t know’ after the age of thirty?” he said slyly, with just enough of the momentous smile to make me crumple. “You’re a highly intelligent woman.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Everything you say is interesting,” he said intently, leaning toward me.

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, don’t be afraid to talk. I know you have things to say. That kind of behavior, it’s infuriating. It brings out the worst in me. You have to tell me things.”

  “What’s the point in telling you anything? You’re married. You’re married and I’m not.”

  “You’re married and I’m not.” He repeated it again and laughed. I didn’t see why it was so funny. But I didn’t ask, since one why might lead to another why and another and another and veer out of control. Or perhaps bring us back under control, which might be less desirable. He extricated his hand from my deadlock grip. He took both of mine in both of his and stared at me with the muddy eyes. There was an almost imperceptible crack of shyness across his face—the sharp, worn planes that didn’t quite connect.

  “Would you like to start fresh?”

  I’d had plans to start fresh, but they didn’t include him. Then his eyes made my eyes go as weak as my body, and I said okay. He meant this instant and stood up to make the necessary plan reversals. “I need to make a phone call. I’m supposed to have dinner with a possible investor, Richard Eberle. You know Richard.” The art dealer. I didn�
��t exactly know him, although I surely wouldn’t have minded knowing him. It occurred to me that he was trying to impress me. He ignored the hard chair when he returned and slid into the booth next to me. Expertly. I refused to look at him.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That I was sick.”

  “What kind of sick?”

  “Never,” he chided, “never specify an illness.”

  My will dissolved, and I turned to face him. Released from the hard chair at last, pressed close to me on the banquette, it seemed his will dissolved, too, and our depleted brains went out the window. We started fresh right then and there. In the booth with the tourists next to us, no longer modestly averting their eyes, but staring unabashed. I can’t remember who started it. With others, I was able to keep track. I tried, I tried valiantly to keep track with him, but I never could remember. It always came on like a card trick and you couldn’t tell who was dealing. He recovered his presence of mind first and had us upright and gliding over the golden carpet, through the bar with its history, now finished for me with our history, and he guided me into a cab, where we took right up where we left off. Starting fresh.

  It was a long ride downtown, and there was traffic. I wriggled away from him just once, apologizing, “I have to make sure this guy knows what he’s doing,” and he repeated my words, laughing until I went back to him. On my corner people were raucous and crazy, spilling out of the bar. The goatlike hippie was gloating on his bench, and our eyes met. The grizzled potbellied painter was on his stool, and my super was next to him on his. I hustled Joseph Pendleton out of the cab, my own presence of mind returning.

  We started up the stairs and my presence of mind made up for lost time. My memory returned, too, and I remembered the last time and the consequences and what had transpired on Thursday and I remembered what I wasn’t supposed to do until I healed medically, and I hadn’t healed medically or in any other respect. I didn’t mention it. I fixed us cold drinks. It was hot and we were thirsty. I sat on the pink couch and he joined me. I swallowed what I should have been remembering because I liked remembering what he felt like more and I liked remembering the way he whispered and I whispered back. When I whispered back what I’d remembered medically, he whispered back he’d forgotten, and I could have gotten outraged but I wasn’t outraged, and it wasn’t going to change the course of things for either of us no matter who’d remembered or who’d forgotten. He whispered: “I’ll be gentle, I’ll be gentle,” and he was gentle, though neither of us was feeling just gentle. He opened me up urgently, and later when he put me back together again, gently, fear returned.