The Late, Lamented Molly Marx

by Sally Koslow

  Yes, I had feelings for Luke.

  No, I wasn’t prepared to act on them.

  Yes, I might always love him.

  No, nothing he could do would change my mind.

  With each rotation of my wheels, I became more convinced. I, Molly Divine Marx, could do this. I began rehearsing.

  Luke, I will love you forever but … Nope. Nobody likes a but.

  Luke, from the beginning we both always knew … Except we didn’t.

  Luke, you are deeply precious to me and because of that …

  I got busy editing away clichés, picking them off like lint. I barely noticed that the late afternoon sky had darkened as efficiently as if someone had dimmed the lights. The raindrops had become a steady march, pelting my helmet. I heard a clap of thunder. Bass drums.

  As I was deciding whether I should skip the lighthouse and go straight to Grant’s Tomb, there was suddenly a second, larger thunderclap. Cymbals.

  The sky started exploding. Which is why at first I didn’t hear the other sound, which began growing louder. And then it was unmistakable: the grinding of another biker’s gears behind me. Closer.

  Too close.

  I thought I heard someone call my name. Had Barry followed me? I twisted back to look over my shoulder. This tailgater apparently had prepared for the weather by cashing in a hefty gift certificate at L.L. Bean. I’m talking serious, textbook gear, rubbery black from toe to head, ending in a hood that slid over a helmet. I was looking at a Garanimal in mourning, a biker so sleek but loosely tailored that the he within might be a she; I could not see the outlines of the person’s body, but I did see sunglasses—large, dark, and heavy.

  Excuse me, did I miss the paparazzi or the forecast for the hurricane? I wanted to shout. But the rider shouted first.

  What was the voice saying? “On your left”? “Be careful”? Or was this person screaming my name? The words were swallowed by thunder. Platinum lightning ripped the heavens and rain began pounding even harder, unmercifully, horizontally. I was trapped in the monsoon cycle of a car wash, but I kept pedaling, trying to ignore the grand vizier of foul weather chic behind me, concentrating on keeping my line. Yet as my wheels skidded through runoff from the sudden squall, I could sense the presence hovering close. Way too fucking close. Didn’t he realize how dangerous this was, or was he right up my ass because he thought I could shepherd him through the tempest? Darth Vader had picked the wrong Girl Scout.

  When he failed to pass, I considered cursing him out in my reliable crazy-lady howl, the one that had worked when a thief with an extra dose of hubris had tried to steal my wallet. In a courthouse. At jury duty. But what if this dick-brain was, say, a deranged bike messenger, out to rob me—or worse? This was, after all, a city with a fairly imaginative crime blotter.

  I needed to get away. I decided to edge as far as I could toward the fence that separated the bike path from the traffic, even though puddles there were already deep. Water splashed my pants and, for the second time that day, oozed into my shoes. I could feel the slosh under my socks. Whether that was Barry or not, he was right. Who rides a bicycle in February? Had I, a responsible mother with biking skills that didn’t surpass average, mistaken myself for a Tour de France contender? I was officially a moron.

  I craned my head. The person was yelling. “… talk to you.” At closer range the voice sounded shrill, nasal, of a higher pitch. Not Barry. And now there was no mistake. He—or she—knew who I was.

  “Molly Marx! Slow down!”

  “What are you doing?” I screamed. But it actually looked as if this wheeled deviant was coming at me. Pissed off and scared shitless, I tried to yell, “Back off! Stay the fuck away.” The sound refused to leave my throat. I started to gasp and wheeze.

  “Pull the fuck over!” the biker screeched while skidding into a puddle, flying at me on the right like a missile.

  I had to pedal away from this banshee freak. I could do it.

  “Face it, Molly. You and Barry are done! He thinks you’re a joke. Ignoring me’s not going to change that! He doesn’t love you anymore.”

  “Who are you?” I shrieked.

  “C’mon, you know exactly who I am!”

  Suddenly I did. I understood everything and was fortified with an emotion both strong and pure. I believe it was white-hot hatred. I twisted to try to get another look—to be completely sure. That’s when we collided and I lost my grip. My arms flew above my head like a demented cheerleader, any control surrendered. One foot broke loose. But the other refused to budge from its clip as my bike zigzagged in a dizzying swerve to the left. I watched this as I might a horror movie, until I had to close my eyes. Finally, the bike started to slow.

  I thanked God. As Papa Louie liked to say, if a Jew doesn’t expect miracles, she isn’t a realist.

  Then I saw my destination, the sharp, serrated edge of a rock. In slow motion, it met the soft plain of my forehead and gashed my skin, dripping blood into my mouth. My bike landed on top of me in a deafening clatter of entwined spokes and jeering, hideously cheerful yellow metal.

  “Christ!” someone said. “Don’t you dare do this.” I was fairly sure the disembodied voice was not my own.

  I heard my bike splash and the spray of the Hudson iced my face, my neck, my shoulders. Then I felt … nothing.

  The bike-bitch towered above me and freed my foot. Or perhaps I disengaged myself, like a hero-mom who’d hoisted four tons of mini-van that had pinned her toddler. I was at the water’s edge. All I could see and smell was the brackish river. How demon-fast was that current? When was the last time I’d had a tetanus shot? Would I even remember how to swim?

  As the Hudson threatened to suck me into its maw, I snaked myself forward—bouncing and sliding in a desperate break-dance—and stretched to reach for the spike of a protruding green-slimed rock. I forced up my arm, the pain virtually unbearable. In the sudden movement my eye caught a glint stuck to the Velcro that fastened the wrist of my windbreaker. I’d snared a treasure, a glittering pink heart pendant encircled by plum-colored pavé stones, the same heart that had dangled from the necklace Barry was going to give me, that or its evil twin. Happy Valentine’s Day, Molly Here’s another knife in your heart.

  With a frozen hand—my glove shredded—I reached for the taunting bauble. I snatched it, cool, hard, and glossy to the touch. As if I were grasping God, I wrapped my fingers tightly around the heart.

  My leg seared. My shoulder pulsed with savage pain. I was soaked, yet sweating profusely. From what I remembered of anatomy, I guessed I’d cracked my clavicle as easily as if it were a wishbone on a rotisserie chicken, yet my leg and shoulder were half the agony of my insides.

  I wanted to shut my eyes again.

  Gather my breath.

  Take a time-out.

  I thought I heard a voice imploring me to stay awake, to not surrender to the slicing ache, to the rush of frigid water. It cried, “Molly,” a distant soundtrack coming from the middle of a bell. It was a voice that I’m not sure even existed, a voice both filled and filling me with fear.

  “Sorry,” it said.

  Someone bent low. Was the person going to help me or kill me? But all that happened was that the heart was pried from my hand. I heard a small splash. Footsteps. And then I heard … nothing.

  I was alone now, drowning in my own silence.

  I could see the sky. While I couldn’t move my neck or raise my head, I could faintly make out a billboard on the parkway. Getting home late? it said. Tell your TiVo to start without you.

  I tried to laugh, and when I couldn’t, I cried out, yelling, “Help … help me … help me, someone,” but the traffic was deafening. Could anyone even hear me where I lay, discarded like a piece of garbage, hid amid the brambles? I screamed, flinched, and screamed once more. Each time I yelled out, it felt as if razor blades were digging into my ribs, yet I would catch my breath and scream again and again and again … continuing until all that came out were feeble animal mews and gurgling
moans.

  Someone would find me. Someone had to find me. Soon.

  I told myself, out loud, in a whisper, to stay calm and awake. I counted to one thousand and recited the alphabet—in English, then in French—and played the rhyme game, as Lucy and I had done in grade school, taking turns calling out the first word that came to mind.

  Lucy, Moosey, juicy, Gary Busey, Watusi, Cousin Brucie, goosey, Debussy.

  Molly, trolley, volley, Bengali, dolly, Ollie, holly, Norma Kamali, collie, Salvador Dalí, jolly, Polly, golly, Mexicali, “Zum Gali Gali,” folly.

  Pure folly.

  Was that Luke I was seeing, standing above me—telling me to hang on, that he was going to get help? Was that him, or just a hope, a prayer, love dressed in blue jeans?

  Luke, duke, Dubuque, Baruch, fluke, Herman Wouk, puke, spook.

  Had I actually been run off the road by a marauding hag dressed in black, Coco Chanel’s worst nightmare, or was this a hallucination, a vision fucking with my mind? Had a woman claimed she loved Barry? Was it that Barry loved her and not me?

  What did it matter? The only thing that counted was staying alive.

  I tried to concentrate on the top spire of Riverside Church, Annabel’s Burger King crown pinned against the charcoal sky. I began to run through Annabel’s life, starting with that night that I was fairly sure the sperm had gotten the egg and all the cells were busy growing a new person. Almost nine months of astonishing pregnancy, every flutter kick a promise. William Alexander. Alexander William. Would I ever get to meet him? I skipped to Annabel’s delivery. Bringing home my pink, bald, beautiful baby. Nursing in the wee hours, a milky team, the two of us alone together rocking in the green velvet chair. Annabel’s first tooth, first laugh, first ice cream cone, first lollipop, first doll, first tantrum, first haircut. Learning to crawl like a crab along the shiny wood floor, to walk, to say “mommy.” Starting nursery school, ballet, starting everything.

  I tried to remember each birthday party, each party dress, each cake, especially the chocolate teddy bear I’d baked myself for her third birthday, showering it with coconut to hide frosting I’d heaved on in slabs to cover my sloppy work. Blowing out candles. Are you one? Are you two? Are you three? Are you four? Not four. Not yet. I had to stay alive for four. I needed to get to four. One, two, three …

  I will always be Annabel’s mother. I will always be Annabel’s mother, I repeated over and over again. My last thought before I closed my eyes.

  Forty-five

  HERE’S TAE US

  ternity is an endless comfort, settling like a baby’s breath or a sweet dusting of confectioner’s sugar. In the Duration, I fly through time like a jet does clouds. Time piles up in snowdrifts, pristine and endless. We do not measure in days or decades. We do not measure time at all.

  “Back then”—such bad form to say alive—“did you think much about death?” Bob asked once. “Did you have nightmares? Premonitions?”

  Sam did. As a shrink, he lived in people’s heads, one of the world’s most consistently terrifying places, tangled by twisted relationships and moth-eaten regrets. Patients would depart his office and, as surely as they exhaled with the relief he afforded, Sam would repeat the captured anxieties in his sleep, working through the puzzles of their hearts.

  Worries? Certainly I had them. Worry was my ring tone; I heard it all day long. But authentic nightmares? Rarely. I ruminated about worst-case scenarios, mostly. Yes, too many of them did come true. Yet when I try to recall these problems burning holes in my happiness, my memory feels thick and lumpy as oatmeal.

  Sam and Bob are still part of my expanding circle, which gives new meaning to “it takes a village.” Jordan, Stephanie’s son, is here now, the fatal victim of a heli-ski accident in the Bugaboos. He was gazing at grand granite spires, and kaboom. Gone.

  Afterward, Stephanie was never the same, the only good that came from that tragedy. She’s become tortured by thoughts of divine retribution, which has made Barry’s life tricky. A daughter of Great Neck, Stephanie Lipschitz Joseph Marx has taken a turn toward freakishly frum. She now keeps glatt kosher, covers her short gray hair with a wig, and believes this headgear looks like the real McCoy Stephanie refuses to get in the car on the Sabbath. This makes it hard for Dr. and Mrs. Marx to get to his honeymoon gift to her, a soaring glass and steel weekend retreat on a beach on Long Island. Whenever Stephanie’s not looking, Barry smuggles spareribs into the cathedral-sized kitchen.

  Still, the two of them are almost 100 percent monogamous. If Barry has schtupped anyone else these past twenty-some years, his wife doesn’t know or doesn’t care. It helps to have so much money she could use it to wipe her tears. That and the anger management classes, which Dr. Stafford insisted Barry take: he and Stephanie were having a joint session in Dr. Stafford’s office and Barry threw a book at Stephanie and shouted, “Shee-it, I wouldn’t piss in your mouth if your teeth were on fire.”

  Barry blames Stephanie for … something. He doesn’t know the half of it, nor does anyone else.

  Narcissa arrived soon after Jordan. Diabetes. Delfina badgered her about how big she’d gotten—for her son’s wedding she had to sew two emerald green bugle-beaded dresses together—but Narcissa never listened. I love how Narcissa and Jordan have grown to love each other. She took that loose-limbed, frizzy-haired teenager to her ample bosom, and I often see the two of them laughing and singing, he spanning octaves in his Roy Orbison imitation, Narcissa in a sweet soprano that belies her size. Jordan has followed Narcissa to the Born-Agains. What a friend he has in Jesus!

  My father’s here now. Choked on a thick, juicy steak, medium rare, the day after he ran a marathon with Lucy. Not the worst way to go, although he was only seventy-four, with silver hair curling over his neck like a movie director. “Daddy,” I repeated about a hundred times when he and I were reunited, holding on to each other for what we used to call dear life. “Daddy, Daddy …”

  “Molly, sweetheart,” he responded. “You were robbed, honey.” But I shushed him. In the Duration, we don’t question when people fall short of their Biblical three-score and ten. We leave the judging for the living. What was, was.

  My father couldn’t wait to tell me about the Molly Marx trial, hung jury and all. The hideous mess, I learned, was dissected to the point where anyone with an IQ beyond 95 would happily commit corporate reports to memory rather than be tortured with another nanosecond of breathless tabloid coverage. But because the players were photogenic, worldly, and white, producers and editors ran with the story instead of, say, reports of limbless, brain-injured soldiers returning home from Iraq.

  “The trial became a Rorschach,” my father said. “One day I logged onto AOL and could have voted for who I believed was guilty. By the way, sixty-eight percent of women polled found your friend Luke innocent.”

  He always calls Luke my “friend,” as if the two of us never shared more than a strawberry soda and a taxi.

  “I was offered a cameo in the made-for-television movie,” he adds. “To play a crusty old detective. Can you believe the bad taste?”

  I can. It’s been a long time since I was an invisible looky-loo sticking my nose into life below, but I hear things. I hear a lot. What I wanted my dad to talk about, though, was Annabel. Did she really grow up to be brilliant and beautiful and almost five-nine?

  “Oh, yeah. She got Kitty’s figure, your mother’s face, and Lucy’s height.”

  “Too tall to dance Clara in The Nutcracker?”

  “Well, that, and she gave up ballet for basketball.”

  “Didn’t she get anything of mine?”

  “Yes, darling. Your wonderful hair.”

  Did he not know that I owed my blondness to chemistry? Then I saw a twinkle.

  “Annabel got your smile, that way you lit up every room. You can’t not love that girl. She’s you all over again.”

  “Why did she go to college in Scotland?” I had it on good authority that she’d been accepted to Princeton—the director
of admissions arrived here after she was gunned down by an alum whose child she’d rejected.

  “To get away,” my father said, “from strangers pointing fingers, from the squabbling between Barry and Stephanie. And she took Jordan’s death hard. Those two kids would always be standing together off to the side, heads together, like ducks on their own private ice floe.” He stopped talking and simply gazed into my eyes. For a moment, I could feel what it was like to be whole and alive.

  “But life is funny,” he said.

  Isn’t it?

  “If Annabel hadn’t gone to Scotland, she’d never have met Ewan. At first your mom and I were upset. We thought your little Annie-belle was searching for some kind of father figure. But Lucy came to her defense. She was right.”

  She often was.

  “When she got married, Annabel might have been a child herself—nineteen, a baby—but Ewan is exactly what she needs.”

  “Tell me about her wedding. Did you and Mom go?”

  “Of course! Your mother found Ewan very dashing in his kilt. There were so many candles I thought that old pile of a castle might melt, but your daughter said she wanted it to look like The Age of Innocence because Lucy swore it was your favorite movie.”

  My first thought is that my sister keeps my flame alive as if I’m Princess Diana. My second: is Martin Scorsese still directing?

  “Each toast was better than the next,” my father said, and broke into a pretty fair Scots accent. “Here’s tae us; who’s like us?” he said, answering his question with “Damn few—and they’re a’ deid.” Then he looked around and the two of us roared in laughter as only those in the Duration can.

  Forty-six

  UNENDING LOVE

  ’d stopped going below when I recognized my visits as cruel and unusual punishment, self-flagellation making me sadder, angrier, and lonelier. I learned to simply float within the Duration, and allowed my memory to wash away. If I ever knew exactly how I died, I gradually forgot more than I had ever learned or remembered. I stopped searching for answers and started searching for peace.