The Late, Lamented Molly Marx

by Sally Koslow

  When I opened my eyes, my little boy was clean and resting on my chest. William Alexander was screaming. He had the most exquisite, pinched face, bigger than a grapefruit, and a few random hairs flattened into a comb-over. “We’re a team now, kiddo,” I whispered into his miniature ear. “I’m your mommy and I love you. I will always, always, always love and protect you.”

  I examined my child carefully. He had wrinkly pink skin, ten fingers, and ten toes. He didn’t, however, have a penis. My first thought was that the baby was deformed. Then I realized that I, Molly Divine Marx, had produced a female child. A very small me.

  “She’s unbelievably gorgeous, Molly.” Brie looked at me, crying. “She’s one of us. I love you both.”

  I was the mother of a daughter. A girl! I hoped she would love me half as much as I loved my own mother. My second thought was that Barry would be disappointed. My third thought: what he felt didn’t matter.

  Soon enough, the baby was whisked away, Brie went home to change, and I was wheeled to a room I had to share with a loud, big woman surrounded by her loud, big family who set the air-conditioning so high I thought I was in a meat locker. After I did some heartfelt begging, a nurse finally appeared with an extra cotton blanket, thin as a sheet. I was doing my best to calm my chattering teeth when Barry walked into the room, carrying an enormous vase of pink peonies and a large white teddy bear.

  I tried to read his expression, searching for regret. But Barry acted if it were normal to have missed the birth of his five-and-a-half-pound daughter and to find his wife marooned in a maternity wing. He tried, at least, to win me over with a compliment.

  “I saw her,” he said. “She’s the prettiest one in the nursery.”

  I hadn’t comparison-shopped, but I said, “I’m sure you’re right.”

  “I’m proud of you.”

  I glared. He stared. I glared some more.

  “And I’m sorry, very sorry.”

  What the apology covered wasn’t clear. Barry was too proud to elaborate and I was too exhausted to ask. For better or worse, wherever it would take us, we were parents now, together. We called an unspoken cease-fire blessed by the birth of our child, who was—thank God-healthy, a Perdue Oven Stuffer trussed in a pink cap and gown. I cradled her silently, with Barry perched tentatively on the edge of the narrow bed.

  “Do you want to hold her?” I asked after a few soundless minutes.

  He looked terrified.

  “Try it,” I said, as if I were coaxing him into sampling gruel. He took his daughter in his arms and started to sing “Born in the U.S.A.”

  “Be careful,” I said as I shut my eyes. “Your tears are falling on her nightie.”

  I hadn’t intended to sleep. When I woke, it was evening and no fewer than eleven supersized versions of my roommate overflowed into my space, sounding joyful in a guttural language. Barry was not in sight.

  “Excuse me, but my daughter-in-law needs her rest,” I heard Kitty say. “I believe the rule is no more than two visitors at a time.” She was using her freezer-burn voice, which could have run Microsoft, and the sound of it caused most of the large merrymakers to scatter. My mother-in-law—dressed impeccably in a fitted gray jacket, black turtleneck, and trim black pants and looking about as much like a grandma as I did the winner of an MTV music video award—grimaced as she brushed away one of the other patient’s neon-orange helium balloons, which had invaded Marx turf. “Mazel tov, darling,” she said. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I ran the marathon in high heels three sizes too small,” I said.

  “She looks like Barry did as a baby,” Kitty said. I took that to mean she was adorable. Was I supposed to thank her for complimenting my child? I’d been a mother for just hours and already was confused, so I said nothing.

  Kitty gazed at her rings. Recently colored honey-blond hair framed her determined face. “I want to ask you a small favor.” She sucked in a breath and lifted her face to look at me, pushing her mouth into an expression almost like a smile. “I’d like you to name the baby for my mother.”

  I nodded. “I see,” I said. “You want me to name my little girl Gertrude?”

  “It tears me apart that she doesn’t have a namesake.” In case I didn’t get the point, Kitty took out a monogrammed handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. I looked carefully. No tears.

  I thought of Granny Gert, four foot ten and two hundred pounds. To her credit, she was said to be an ace canasta player, and based on the stockpile of paper bags found after her death, she’d been a recycler far ahead of her time.

  “Gertie Marx,” Kitty said hopefully. “Those old-fashioned names are chic again.”

  Sophia, Sadie, Emma, or Isabella, certainly. Violet, Helen, Hazel, or Lily, of course. Fritzi, maybe. Not Gertrude. Not if I had anything to say about it, which I did.

  Kitty took my measure. “Gertrude as a middle name? Or maybe just a G-name? Grace? Gabriella? Greer?”

  I thought about it for a second. No, less. Like a butterfly, a different name flew into my brain.

  I buzzed for the nurse. “Could you bring me my daughter, please?” I asked.

  Ten minutes later, as my infant snoozed in my arms, Barry returned, armed with turkey sandwiches, chocolate cupcakes, Champagne, and plastic cups. I sat up as straight as my bloated, beleaguered body allowed.

  “You all need to be formally introduced,” I said to my husband and Kitty with a tingle of devilish pride. “Meet Annabel. Annabel Divine Marx.”

  Eighteen

  THE FAMILY DIVINE

  inden,” Detective Hicks tells the taxi driver. “Highland Park.”

  Hicks is riding through Chicago’s northern suburbs, a green belt of wealth that grows more impressive by the mile. He cranes his head to see the flat, gray splendor that is Lake Michigan. The shining Big-Sea-Water … level spread the lake before him …

  In my parents’ neighborhood, many of the houses have been bought by young couples who’ve knocked them down to build at oblique angles and accommodate three-car garages and five-thousand-square-foot turreted, gabled, centrally air-conditioned homes with gyms, disco-balled entertainment centers, and ADD-inducing playrooms. Chez Divine, however, is the beta version and looks more or less as it did in 1928, when a one-car garage wasn’t a quality-of-life-compromising issue. The twenties were when my grandparents were born, and should I come across them in the Duration, I plan to ask them a thing or two. Did Grandma Phyllis fret about her cellulite? Did Papa Lou consider work/life balance?

  My childhood home is neither Snow White adorable nor men’s club macho. It’s homey, with gray shingles, glossy black shutters, and—in the summer—blue clematis that climbs a filigreed trellis. A flagstone walk leads to the door, now all but obscured by an evergreen in need of serious pruning. My parents don’t decorate this towering fir for Christmas, which makes Mrs. Swenson next door gnash her teeth.

  Just take it slow, Hicks says to himself as he steps out of the car and asks the driver to return in three hours. Mine is the first case he’s handled solo. He is nervous but reminds himself, as he digs through my history, that he can simply pretend he is a biographer. It is a little known fact that Detective H. Hicks has an undergraduate degree in English literature from one of the windy upstate branches of SUNY.

  I admire Hicks not only for his professional joie de vivre but also because he is one of those lean men who wear clothes well. An unbuttoned, bronze Harris tweed overcoat hangs handsomely from his broad shoulders along with a cashmere scarf in a spicy brown. He carefully walks around spots of brackish ice that refuse to melt in the March gloom and gives my parents’ door knocker two confident hits.

  With a look of joy and triumph,

  With a look of exultation,

  As of one who in a vision

  Sees what is to be, but is not,

  Stood and waited Hiawatha.

  Detective Hicks of Manhattan’s Twentieth Precinct is twenty minutes late, but now that he’s here, my mother is more atwitter than before
he arrived. A grin paralyzes her face as if she were a stroke victim, and her eagerness is like a cocker spaniel’s.

  On a usual Sunday afternoon, I’d expect to see my mother in the kitchen making soup, wearing Levi’s, an ancient red turtleneck, and worn velvet slippers, her streaky blond hair twisted up in a clip, but today her hair is freshly blow-dried and she’s in a midcalf charcoal wool skirt over flat boots polished to a military gloss. Instead of her usual dangling earrings from a random craft show, she is wearing pearl studs. Her geranium-hued sweater set is so mom-correct I wonder if she speed-ordered it from the Lands’ End catalog when this appointment was scheduled four days ago. I hope she’s tucked the tags inside and will return it tomorrow.

  “Detective Hicks,” she says. “Welcome to Chicago.”

  “Thank you,” he answers, carefully wiping his shoes on the doormat. “Sorry—my driver couldn’t find his way out of an empty parking lot.” He sounds harsh, which is not his intent. “But at least I got to see more than I expected. You have a beautiful city.”

  Could this be any more uncomfortable? both of them are thinking. My father appears only slightly more relaxed. “Take your coat?” he offers after he shakes Hicks’ hand—cool, firm grip meets cool, firm grip—and repeats to himself, Keep it together, keep it together.

  “Glad you didn’t run into that blizzard coming our way,” he says out loud. The knowing nose predicts snow before nightfall—special delivery from Canada—and the air feels slightly damp.

  For my dad’s sixtieth birthday, Lucy, Barry, and I gave him a colossal television set—Barry’s idea—which dominates one wall in the den, where my father generally parks himself. He’s Chicago bred, suckled on team spirit—da Bulls, da Bears, and of course da Cubs—and only last year quit playing sixteen-inch softball, the indigenous sport of his youth. But this afternoon French doors close off his darkened sanctuary, and my parents guide Hicks through the neglected living room, where a fire has been kindled and lamps softly glow.

  “Lucy called,” my father reports. “The roads are icing up—she’s gotta take it slow. She said to eat without her.”

  From its bosom leaped the sturgeon …

  For this occasion, my mother has bought out Once upon a Bagel, and not just the sturgeon but the whitefish, the pickled herring, the nova, the works. It’s shiva all over again, minus cardboard boxes on which the immediate family shift their butt cheeks, avoiding another cookie for fear that the precarious seating will collapse. In the absence of a pamphlet to guide a mother on how to entertain an officer of the law investigating the mysterious death of her daughter, Claire Divine is making it up as she goes along. She considers hospitality an art form. A New York detective is visiting—on a Sunday, not Saturday, since she and my father are in the traditional, yearlong mourning for a child, and Saturday is their Sabbath, which includes going to the synagogue. Hence, my mother has produced Sunday brunch, in the tradition of our tribe.

  “Your daughter Molly—did you have any reason to think she was unhappy?” Hicks begins gently after he offers condolences and they take their seats.

  My parents look at each other to determine who should answer. “From what we could tell, she was over the moon,” my mother says. “A child, a marriage, a lovely home, even a part-time job—she had it all.” She’s already cracking. “What kind of monster would take this away?”

  “Can you think of anyone who might have meant Molly harm?” Hicks asks.

  “What are you talking about—reckless endangerment?” My father, whose favorite author is Elmore Leonard, jumps in. “Of course not. People adored our daughter.”

  “So you think that if this was … a crime … the perpetrator was a stranger?”

  “To begin with, of course it was a crime,” my father says, careful to not add fucking. “As to who did it, there are so many goddamn nut jobs out there, I wouldn’t know where to look first.”

  “So you’re thinking it wasn’t anyone Molly knew.”

  “I’m not sure about anything,” my father says. “Because people, you know, well, they have their secrets.”

  My mother glances at him as if to say, What people would that be?

  “Are you thinking of anyone in particular?” Hicks asks. The detective and I both wait for him to expand on the thought, but my father only shakes his head. So Hicks moves on to “How would you describe your daughter?”

  I wouldn’t be surprised if a string quartet popped out of the den and played a requiem commissioned by my parents. “Adored; many, many friends; a good wife; a great mother,” my father says.

  Let’s canonize her, Hicks thinks. What about the woman’s faults? How do I ask about those? “Anything else you can tell me to round out the picture?”

  My dad stares blankly out the window at snow powdering the edge of the lawn. “Molly could be impulsive, a little scatterbrained, and unsure of herself, especially with her husband’s family.” His answers sound as if he is responding in a job interview when you’re asked to produce faults and you fish for assets disguised as flaws.

  “What did you think of your son-in-law?”

  Not as worshipful of Molly as he should have been, my mother thinks. Spoiled egomaniac rattles around my father’s brain. Way too attached to that haughty mother of his. But what they offer, in unison, is “We loved him,” and they immediately know from Hicks’ face that he isn’t buying it.

  “Okay, the guy could be a hothead—he wasn’t the husband I thought my daughter deserved—but he’s not a killer,” my father says. “That’s preposterous.”

  “No one said he’s a killer.”

  “Well, Detective, if you’re wondering, I’m not thinking it,” my father says. “Last time I looked, being selfish isn’t against the law.” His voice rises. “Doesn’t even make you a sociopath.” It’s only taken my father five minutes to lose it. “So, for Christ’s sake, let’s not mince words and waste our goddamn time. Who do you think did it?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Divine,” Hicks says evenly, glancing first at my father and then at my mother, “we’re looking … everywhere, and at everything.” He feels flop sweat gather in his armpits, and is glad he’s wearing a sport coat. “And on that score, what about Molly’s … mental health?”

  I can’t imagine that my parents have ever once considered any aspect of my health that wasn’t physical. I got braces and every appropriate inoculation, took jars of vitamins, and left for college with birth control and a fact sheet about chlamydia. My mother and father are born midwesterners whose set point is caution and optimism, one foot solidly planted in each camp. If anything, they’ve always thought that Lucy was their meshuggener, their nut job, not me.

  “Excellent,” my father guesses. “Molly’s ‘mental health’”—he drags out the words—“was exemplary.”

  “Molly would never hurt herself,” my mother adds, picking the world’s most obtuse euphemism, “if that’s what you’re getting at. Never. Obviously, someone meant ill to my daughter, but if you think she brought it on—blaming the victim? Outrageous.” As she tenses, I notice that her carefully applied foundation has settled into delicate vertical lines around her lips. I long to reach out and pat it back in place. “Maybe our daughter was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s what I think. I always told her she shouldn’t be riding that bike alone….”

  She did. I never listened, just as I ignored her when she’d told me to major in education, stay in Chicago, join Hadassah, wear pastels, and not rush to marry Barry.

  My mother stares into the middle distance. I can see that she pictures me as I looked at twelve—scrawny, all legs and arms—and wants to reach out and hold that child and breathe in the scent of her newly washed hair and well-scrubbed skin.

  “Claire, honey, what is it?” my father says to her, and covers her hand with his large paw. She only shakes her head, dabs away a tear, and takes a deep breath.

  “Detective, I can’t go on just now,” she says. “Please, let’s have lunch.” I’d r
ather they were talking about my death, she thinks. Why couldn’t it have been me?

  The conversation dwindles away as the three begin to politely peck at their bagels and all four kinds of fish, picking up speed as the meal progresses. They are ready for apple cake—baked by my mother, to mitigate the excess ethnicity—when Lucy blasts through the front door. She hangs her bulky white fox-trimmed parka in the front hall closet, kicks off her Uggs, and walks in green stocking feet to join them, while she shouts, “Hi, everyone—I’m here.” She kisses each parent hello. “I’m Lucy,” she says, extending her hand to Hicks and meeting his eye. Her hands are a miniature version of my father’s, broad and capable.

  “Hiawatha Hicks.”

  He’s got to be kidding, Lucy thinks. She almost succeeds in keeping a straight face as she wonders if he has a sister, Minnehaha. Ha, ha, ha. “Sorry … traffic,” she says, failing to recover self-control before both of my parents show a pulse of embarrassment. “What did I miss?” Before Hicks can answer, she loads up a bagel, including a substantial slice of Bermuda onion, which the others have politely avoided along with difficult questions.

  The detective is young and good-looking, Lucy notes, and no gumshoe. He’s wearing decent leather oxfords that have escaped slush stains. She registers that his skin is a rich milk chocolate and his hair short and recently barbered. She can’t pin him down as either Puerto Rican or African American. A more exotic cocktail, she decides.

  “So, your name—someone liked nineteenth-century American poetry, huh?” As Lucy rips into the bagel, she catches our mother’s eye and shoots a look that says, What’s with the food? This guy probably wants sausage and eggs.

  “Fortunately, Mr. Longfellow’s not around to ask for a licensing fee,” Hicks answers. Nobody laughs, so he moves on to the shock-and-pity approach. “The truth is I never got to ask about the whole name saga. I was eight when my mother was killed in a car accident. I was raised by my grandmother.”