The Late, Lamented Molly Marx

by Sally Koslow

  I could go on recounting my negatives, and probably will. One thing I did right, though, was to hire Delfina Adams and pay her a living wage.

  Today Delfina has recruited her friend Narcissa and a few other stray Jamaican dynamos and the apartment looks as buffed as it ever has. Dull black synthetic fabric, supplied by a funeral home, drapes the enormous mirror in the foyer, and around the living room, following Jewish custom, squat cardboard boxes—where the immediate family will sit—have popped up like online ads.

  On the piano, next to a bouquet of lush white roses—which Delfina must have bought, because Jews aren’t big on flowers during mourning—at least ten framed photos have been gathered and stand in a conga line that represents the life of Molly Marx: Lucy and me as newborns; me dressed as Malibu Barbie for Halloween; my high school graduation picture, proving definitively that short brown Audrey Hepburn hair is not my look; Brie and me burdened with backpacks during our postcollege Roman holiday; my wedding portrait in the strapless gown now carefully preserved for Annabel; big fat me, hugely pregnant; beach-bunny me, and damn, I didn’t look as bad in my bikini as I thought, which makes me wish I’d had dessert every night, as kitchen magnets suggest.

  “She was cute,” a brunette in skintight black suede pants observes, “in a midwestern way.” Who is this stranger who feels comfortable enough to critique my appearance on the first afternoon of a weeklong shiva? She must be a friend of the funeral’s soloist because together they march over to Barry and give lingering hugs.

  “I am so sorry for your loss, Dr. Marx,” Black Pants says as she leaves her hand on Barry’s arm. “I’m Jennifer, Adrienne’s sister. I wanted to pay my respects.”

  To his credit, Barry doesn’t extend the conversation, although—I can’t be positive—he may have rested his hand on Adrienne’s perky behind for one short beat, which is one beat too long. I do notice that he is wearing a small black ribbon with a tear in it on his lapel. If he were really traditional, he would have cut his funeral suit, which would have been a shame. It was expensive, even if it’s faux.

  “What a waste,” I hear Lucy say. I’m not sure if she is referring to my life, my death, or the food. I think it is the last of these, since the delicacies Kitty has ordered, augmented by the crowd’s offerings, cover every inch of the dining table: a sea of Nova Scotia smoked salmon and sable sprinkled with capers, pickled herring, sturgeon, whitefish salad, cream cheese with and without pale shoots of green chives, bialys, bagels, and babka, both chocolate and cinnamon. Much babka. All washed down with cup after cup of high-octane coffee. Kitty must have rented dishes for the occasion, because my Tiffany china-service for ten, a blue and white chickadee pattern—is nowhere in sight. Shiny silver bowls heaped with cashews, chocolate truffles, and other delicacies line the side tables. Kitty obviously made sure that Delfina and her crew got out the polish. I was lax in that department. Flaw number fifty-one.

  By four o’clock, the crowd swells to more than a hundred. Guests leave their coats downstairs on a rack off the lobby. At our front door Delfina’s sister, in a dignified black dress instead of her usual sequined jeans, gracefully accepts bakery boxes tied with red string. End to end, there is enough rugelach to pave a road to Scarsdale. Inside the kitchen, platters of sandwiches and mountains of fruit—fresh and dried—artfully arranged under colored plastic wrap arrive by messenger at the apartment’s back service entrance. Manhattan Fruitier should write me a thank-you note, although I’m not sure why people think the bereaved have a sudden yen for unripe papayas. I predict that my practical mother and sister will eventually check out whether City Harvest accepts donations.

  “Molly would have loved this party,” Brie says as she divides a white-chocolate-covered pretzel and feeds half to Isadora. Indeed, a party is what it seems to have become. Guests drift away by five-thirty but come back in triple the force by eight, when Rabbi S.S. holds a short service.

  After the prayers, Annabel’s meltdown begins. My parents put her to bed, Alfred the bunny at her side and her thumb in her mouth, although she hasn’t sucked it for over a year. Her serious blue eyes close in less than a minute.

  My spirit settles in beside her, arms around my tiny, motherless child. I try with all my strange might to will her to dream of us together, so she can feel how much I love her. I conjure up her third birthday, where every guest brought her favorite doll and we had a real tea party. “Mommy, can we do this every year?” Annabel had asked. “Of course, Annie-belle. It’ll be our tradition.” I had already started planning her fourth-birthday party, for which I’d wanted to order a real tea set. The catalog sits by my bed, with a stickie on page thirty-two. Now what? Will Barry take her to McDonald’s instead, hire a juggler, and give her a video game?

  I want that tea party dream as much for me as for Annabel, but she is too tired to dream. She sighs deeply and curls into a fetal position, a tiny comma whose blond curls barely peek above the soft white blanket. I breathe in Annabel’s powdery innocence and count her sweet breaths, wishing my chest could move along with hers. And then I force myself to return to the living room, vibrating with nearly 150 visitors. Which is why, at first, I don’t see him. Luke arrives with Simon, his business partner, and brings paperwhites in a white china pot. I am sure anyone who notices Luke and Simon assumes they are a couple: matching handsome men wearing kindness and Italian loafers of fine, thin leather.

  Simon walks toward people he knows. Luke searches the room. “You must be Mrs. Katz,” he says, approaching my mother-in-law, who appears surprised and flattered by the attention of this black-haired stranger.

  “And you would be …?”

  “Luke Delaney,” he says. “A friend of Molly’s.” No reaction from Kitty. “From work.”

  “Luc?” she says. “Like Jean-Luc Godard?”

  I hear him think, Cool Hand Luke, what I called him. “Like Luke Skywalker.”

  The reference is lost on Kitty. “Where did you say you and Molly worked?” she asks.

  A small smile begins to light up Luke’s face, crinkling his eyes. “I’m a photographer,” he says. “We met on a shoot in London.”

  Kitty says nothing.

  “Molly was very talented,” he adds.

  “I see,” Kitty says. “Do you know my son?”

  “No,” Luke says. “But of course Molly talked about him all the time.” Guilty as charged.

  Kitty looks around the room. Luke thinks she is trying to find Barry, but I know she is simply pretending to do that because she has no interest in Luke, which is fine, because Luke does not want to meet Barry. Not tonight, of all nights. Kitty excuses herself. Luke walks over to the photograph display.

  The picture he stares at is of me cuddling Annabel when she is a month old. I hear him think, You’re beautiful, both of you, even though I am without makeup and my hair can benefit from not just a cut but a shampoo. When he senses no one is looking, he touches my lips gently, as if he can feel them. He moves his finger back and forth.

  I swear that I can feel the warmth of his fingertips.

  Five

  I, GOOGLER

  keep thinking there’s something I could have done.”

  “You weren’t even in this hemisphere,” Brie’s lover, Isadora, murmurs. She tenderly kneads almond oil into Brie’s long back, starting at her square, slim shoulders and ending where smooth olive skin meets the top of her heart-shaped tush. I look away, and not just because I always thought Brie’s butt was better than mine, which was shaped like a bustle no matter how skinny I got, or because girl sex has never been my thing. To exercise my gift now feels like a grievous violation of intent. I’m sure my ability wasn’t given to me so I could visually Google a friend.

  “But there had to be a clue,” Brie says as she sits up on the tautly made white bed. Her dark brown hair, unfurled from its braid, spreads across a crisply starched pillow sham. The design of the loft shows well-muscled discipline. Every surface is black or white-white, the floors are a deep walnut, and e
ach piece of metal—down to the hinges-is matte stainless steel that shows not one fingerprint. Books and magazines sit in neat piles, as if the owners go on a daily rampage with a T square. The furniture is the direct offspring of esteemed midcentury designers—Knoll and Saarinen and names lost on me. It’s so pure here I always wanted to show up wearing rock-and-roll drag, carrying carnations dyed electric blue.

  To live as Isadora thought they should, Brie jettisoned three-fourths of her possessions. It may still be unknown to Isadora that the stuff wasn’t sold on Craigslist, as Brie led her to believe, but landed in a Bronx mini-storage bin. At least Brie listened to me on that one. I’ll bet right now she wishes she were wrapped in an old granny quilt, rocking in the rickety blue chair we scored at a barn sale in Bucks County.

  “A clue?” Isadora says. “Like a mysterious phone call?”

  Color rises in Brie’s face.

  “Kidding,” Isadora says in her seductive Spanish purr.

  “I was hoping,” Brie says, “a postcard, at least, with a word on it.”

  “Well, the New York mail may be bad, mi amor,” Isadora says, “but it’s been over a week.” She reaches for Brie’s hands, but Brie slips on her robe—whipped-cream white, matching Isadora’s—walks to the window, and stares toward the street below. “I’m sorry,” Brie’s lover says. “I know you’re hurting. I wish there was something I could do.”

  Isadora leaves the room—she realizes nothing she can do or say right now will be a comfort or received well. Brie continues to look into the beating rain. “I can feel you, Molly,” she whispers. “I know you’re here, close by. I can’t explain it. I swear I can smell your perfume.” Every duty-free shop called my name; I’d worn Eternity each day of my life for the last five years. Half a bottle of the eau du toilette spray still sits on my bathroom counter.

  “Yes, I’m here,” I say. “I’m here. Turn around.” Brie was as true a friend as any woman could want. There was nothing syrupy about her, yet she always let me know she wanted only good things on my behalf. Brie brought out my best self. In her presence, even if it were only over the phone, I wanted to rise to the occasion and try to be more—funnier, happier, sharper. I wish she knew I was with her now. “I’m here,” I say.

  Brie looks out the window, seeing nothing. “Molly, send me a sign,” she says.

  Six

  THE DURATION

  ’m Bob,” he says as he shakes my hand. “I’ve been assigned to be your guide.”

  “Are you an angel?” Have I read one too many of the Guideposts Delfina has left behind?

  He is well pressed, dark-haired, square-jawed, as snappy as the young priest the Vatican puts on television. “Are you?” Bob asks seriously.

  Am I?

  Bob clears his throat and laughs. “Yes, Molly, that was humor. We try not to use loaded words like angel. A little woo-woo for us. Think of me as a personal trainer, a seeing-eye dog, a big brother.”

  “I never had a brother.”

  “We know,” Bob answers. “That’s one reason I was assigned to your case. I’d have introduced myself sooner, but you seem to be figuring out the rules on your own.”

  Is this a compliment?

  “Yes,” Bob says. “You can take it as a compliment.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “Frankly, over the last few days, I’ve been dealing with my needier cases. You know the type. Can’t tell an insight from an isosceles triangle.”

  I try to remember what one of those looked like, or if I ever knew.

  “Molly, don’t worry,” Bob says. “Taxes? Spreadsheets? Unless you do logarithms to amuse yourself, math is entirely optional here.”

  Perhaps I will like wherever it is I am.

  Bob takes out a clipboard. “We should, however, review some basics. Let’s start with just now, when you were hoping to reach Brie in her bedroom.”

  “Yes?”

  “Everyone tries that at least once.” He tsks. “You remember that phrase your mother always used, ‘Like talking to a wall’?”

  My mom said that to Lucy and me at least four hundred times. “Bedtime, girls.” We’d tune her out, glued to Love Boat. “Molly! Lucy!” No answer. “Like talking to a wall,” she’d mutter.

  I get it.

  “I knew you would,” Bob says, and winks. “You’ll only upset yourself trying to communicate that way.” He refers to his notes, then sinks into a loveseat upholstered in suede as soft as kitten fur and pats the spot next to him. I sit.

  I’ve never believed in heaven. For that matter, I have also never believed in hell. Most Jews are like that, planning vacations to Patagonia and Prague, but never making long-term celestial plans. But if I had imagined heaven, I’d have pictured it like an enormous Guggenheim Museum, with stairs that circle up and up and up into the wild blue yonder. Wherever it is that I’ve landed now, however, looks and feels more like an upscale fitness resort. It could be any day of the year in San Diego—neither warm nor cold. We are in a sunny solarium. Leaded glass windows overlook a lush green park webbed with cobblestone paths where people of all ages are walking briskly as if they have places to go.

  “Now, some of our newcomers,” Bob says, “get a little overwhelmed by the ability they discover they have to, hmm, flit about.”

  “Like yesterday?” One minute I was in Annabel’s room, and the next I was staring down at Barry. This was before I moved on to Brie and Isadora’s. I was like the cursor on my computer before I learned how to control the mouse.

  “Exactly,” Bob says. “You were the proverbial cheap suit.”

  “Could you use a different metaphor, please? How about wallpaper?”

  “Fine. Now, Molly, did you ever practice yoga?”

  “Occasionally. Badly.”

  “Ah,” he says. “Then what I would encourage is for you to simply count up to your age—thirty-five, right?—before you allow yourself to relocate. That’s the term we prefer, relocate. This will help you reserve your powers for where they’re needed most.”

  “But how will I know where they are ‘needed’ at all?” I sound shrill, but Bob is kind enough not to roll his eyes.

  “You will know,” he says, articulating each word slowly, clearly, and—I have to admit—as if he has a warm, beating heart. “For example, you have no need to know whether or not the president and First Lady have intercourse, so stop thinking how ‘interesting’ it would be to see if they share a bedroom and, if so, what they do there.”

  Damn.

  “This leads me to another point. You have discovered that you now possess the ability to hear what people think.”

  “Incredible.”

  “You must promise to listen to only one person at a time. If you abuse this privilege, it will end. Do you hear me? Kaput, over. This will mean that while you are monitoring one person, you will miss the thoughts of another, but so be it. Those, dear Molly, are the rules. I cannot emphasize this too strongly. Do you know the term cacophony?” Bob asks.

  I nod.

  “Exercise your eavesdropping talent selectively, or you will feel as if you’re living through a Stones concert in the Times Square subway station during rush hour.”

  “Bob, you look grave,” I say. He is a Ken doll that has just lost his job.

  “Good one, Molly,” he says, chuckling. “I will like working with you. But let’s stay on point. If you don’t choose to listen to just one voice or inner thought at a time, I warn you, you will suddenly become …” He pauses for emphasis. “Stone deaf.”

  Got it.

  “Now, to the power that you ever so delicately referred to as a bullshit detector.”

  Am I blushing?

  He waves his hand. “As good a name as any. I’ll let you in on a little secret. You always had that ability. You just never bothered to activate it. Not many people who have that gift do.”

  I try to take it in, but I am distracted by how earnest Bob is. I picture him in a short-sleeved plaid shirt, shopping at Sears, going to t
he barber for his biweekly trim, never forgetting to floss or remember his grandmother’s birthday. I wonder if he showed a calf at the Iowa State Fair.

  “Not a calf,” he says. “A blue-ribbon sow, as gorgeous as Miss Piggy. And not Iowa. Northern California.” He smiles. “And no, I did not eat a deep-fried Twinkie at the fair, but yes, I was an Eagle Scout, played football and French horn, and graduated from med school. Pediatric resident. Engaged. I had a pretty sweet life until the accident. Drunk driver with a big pot belly filled with beer. Splat. Hit and run.”

  I don’t know what to say.

  “There’s nothing to say,” Bob says, and looks at me so kindly his eyes are like sunlamps. “Except that, of course, you can ask me anything you wish, either now or later. Anything, do you hear? In the Duration, I’m your Sherpa, remember?”

  But it’s all too much. I feel as if I’m at a job interview where I’ve been quizzed for two hours and now can’t manufacture one intelligent question in response. “These powers I have, Bob,” I say finally. “How long will they last?”

  There isn’t a harp in sight, but someone has cued Elvis, who’s singing, “I can’t help falling in love with you.” The taste of raspberries is on my lips. In the distance, a Milky Way of dewy white roses catches the morning light and, faintly, their fragrance wafts our way. It is a fragrance far more pleasing to my nose than Eternity.

  “Molly, that I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. None of us knows. But you are lucky—for most people, these powers are over before they even get here. For a few, of course, they last forever.” Bob touches my arm. “I believe,” he says, “and this is purely private speculation, that our powers last only as long as they need to last. I am not a religious man, though neither am I a cynic.”

  I blink.

  Bob is gone. Nearby, a plump robin lands on a branch. I could swear I see it wink.