Four of a Kind

by Valerie Frankel

  “Keep me? Am I some kind of human pet?” asked Amy. Her words were hostile, but there was little bile behind them. “Are you pawning me off on Grandma?”

  “Now you want to stay?”

  “No,” said Amy.

  Bess paused, and then spoke the uncomfortable truth. “I’m not trying to get rid of you,” she said, tone measured. “But we can both use a break from each other.”

  Amy nodded slowly. If Bess’s confession hurt her feelings, Amy didn’t show it. “Does Simone know about this?”

  Not even close, thought Bess, a wicked smile creeping across her lips. “I’ll take care of her,” she loved saying.

  “Are you jealous of me spending time with Simone?” asked Amy.

  Insightful, thought Bess. But, then again, the tug-of-war over Amy wasn’t a state secret. “A little bit, yes,” she admitted.

  Her daughter laughed, a sound Bess hadn’t heard in eons. “That was honest,” said Amy. “To be completely honest myself, I was kind of dreading a month with Simone. She talks way too much.” In a smaller voice, Amy added, “And she never listens.”

  Bess almost died of happiness to hear it. “I’ve noticed that, too.” The understatement of the year.

  “So. I guess I should go,” said Amy.

  “Yeah,” agreed Bess.

  Do we hug? wondered Bess. The girl wasn’t walking away.

  Taking a chance, claiming her right, Bess pulled Amy into a tight squeeze. “No matter how much you hate me,” she said, “I’ll always love you.” Bess held on for only a few seconds, long enough to quell her superstitions about putting her child on an airplane alone, but not too long to embarrass or repulse her daughter.

  Amy shouldered her duffel and headed toward the security queue. Before she left, she raked her hair out of her face—first time in months Bess had seen both of Amy’s eyes at the same time—and said, “Thanks, Mom.”

  A single word of gratitude. It was all Bess had wanted.

  Well, not all she wanted. Bess also craved satisfaction. And she was going to get it.

  She rushed back to the parking lot, and got into the car. Bess had to hurry. Only an hour before she had to be in Manhattan.

  Made it with a few minutes to spare. It’d been a hairy drive from LaGuardia back to Brooklyn Heights, and from there, to the Upper East Side to her mother’s apartment on Park and 70th Street.

  The doorman alerted Simone to Bess’s arrival and let her up in the elevator. The elevator door would open directly into Simone’s foyer. The important feminist icon would be waiting there to welcome her grandchild and daughter.

  When the elevator doors opened, however, Simone didn’t look too happy to see them.

  “What’s this?” asked Simone, stepping way back to allow Bess—and Eric, Tom, and Charlie, as well as their stuffed duffel bags—into the apartment.

  “Change of plans,” sang Bess. “I sent Amy to San Francisco to keep Vivian Steeple company. I’m sure you agree, family should care for each other during rough times.”

  The boys were already “OMG”-ing and “check it out”-ing into Simone’s incredible fourteen-foot-high living room ceilings. It was a gilded palace, this place. Old-fashioned and fuddy-duddy Upper East Side décor. Simone sure liked her chintz and chandeliers. A balcony on the second floor overlooked the two-story living room. The boys had found the spiral stairs and were running up and down.

  “The boys have two weeks before they go to camp in Vermont,” said Bess. “I thought, since Amy is unavailable, and you have an empty house in East Hampton, that you should take the boys to the beach instead.”

  “The boys … all of them?” asked Simone, aghast, as if Bess had asked her to entertain a prison colony.

  “Believe me, with boys, three is easier than one. They’ll entertain each other. Just feed them, show them the pool, and you’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t know what to do with them,” Simone protested.

  “You’ll figure it out.”

  Simone grabbed Bess’s upper arm and squeezed. “This isn’t what I had in mind when I offered to take Amy.”

  Offered, ha! thought Bess. She’d demanded the time to nurture and “mold” the troubled adolescent girl whom Simone had decided to anoint as heir apparent. Did Simone care what Amy really needed and wanted, or was she so wrapped up in her own designs?

  Bess leaned closer to her mother than she’d been in twenty years, right up in the old woman’s face. “I’ll tell you what you had in mind: You’re grooming Amy to be your replacement. You’re afraid to die, and selfish enough to want to live forever through her.”

  Simone was shocked speechless. Good thing. Bess had more to say. “We saw you on TV, shaking hands with the president,” she continued. “Eric and Tom didn’t even recognize you. That disgusted me. You don’t get to pick and choose your family. We certainly wouldn’t’ve chosen each other. But you are stuck with who you’re stuck with. You don’t have to love us. You don’t have to like us. But you have to show respect and put in the time. That is, if you expect me to put in the time for you.

  “And your time, Simone, will come,” said Bess, getting into it. “And a lot sooner than you think. You’re seventy-five years old. When’s the last time you spoke to Fred or Simon? I can tell you, my brothers won’t lift a finger for you when you’re sick, senile, and totally dependent on your family. They’d be happy to lock you in a home, and leave you there to turn to dust. I’m not convinced I should lift a finger for you either.”

  “Are you threatening me?” asked Simone, absolutely stunned.

  “I don’t care what you call it,” said Bess. “I’m just laying it out as clearly as I can. My cards are faceup on the table. You show me and my children—all of them—the courtesy we deserve, and you can expect the same treatment from us. Otherwise, you can die alone. Your call.” Bess smiled sweetly, savagely.

  Simone looked like she’d seen a ghost—the ghost of Summer Future? Or herself alone and withered in some nursing home? Bess smiled, tried not to gloat. This was one of the top ten greatest moments of her life. She’d wrestled with her mortality, wondered whether she mattered, if anything mattered. But she had finally figured out everything that mattered: the people she loved. She’d devote herself to them, just as she’d been doing all along. The guilt—about choosing motherhood over a career—was blessedly dissolved. She’d slain the dragon.

  If the story of your death was also the story of your life, then caretaker Bess, the gracious host, would die surrounded by family and friends. The thought of it gave her a happy jolt.

  She called out, “Boys!”

  “Up here!” yelled Eric from the balcony above.

  “Come kiss me good-bye. I won’t see you for two weeks!”

  Her sons stampeded down the spiral staircase, and rushed toward her. They surrounded Bess and shamelessly hugged her the way boys do. She kissed them all, and then waved good-bye to her mother before stepping into the elevator.

  Borden whooped when she told him the story in bed that night. “We should celebrate,” he said. “We can do anything. We’re completely childless for two weeks. Has this ever happened before?”

  “Let’s go away,” said Bess. “Can you get off work?”

  “I can take a long weekend. Where do you want to go?” he asked. “You’re going to say Atlantic City.”

  Bess smiled, and said, “I’ll raise that bet.”

  “Oh?”

  “Monte Carlo?” she asked.

  Borden laughed. “Just promise you’ll spend as much time on the nude beach with me as you will playing poker.”

  “You want to be seen on a nude beach with a forty-one-year-old, perimenopausal hag with a scar on her breast?” she said.

  “A hundred women on the beach, you’ll be the only one I see,” he said.

  And then they made love like they were young.

  16

  Carla

  Hurry up and wait, thought Carla, checking her watch. She’d rushed to get to her app
ointment with her bosses at LICH. Dr. Clifton, unfortunately, hadn’t extended her the same courtesy. Carla had cooled her flats for half an hour outside his office—so far. A dose of her own medicine, sitting outside a doctor’s office long past her appointment time. She was guilty of overscheduling, making appointments every fifteen minutes, but what else could she do? Patients needed to be seen.

  “Hello, Mommy,” said Tina Sanchez, coming around the corner, dressed in a neat little skirt suit. Where had she bought it? In a juniors department somewhere.

  “I barely recognized you out of scrubs,” said Carla, standing to give her former nurse a hug. Tina had applied for a job in the administrative department of the hospital, attending to the transfer of records from paper to server. Tina hadn’t wasted a moment feeling sentimental or nostalgic about the clinic’s demise. When Carla asked her about her ennui, Tina replied, “It’s business, not personal.”

  Since Carla’s business was to tend to the personal problems of the human body, she had trouble making the distinction. What job was more personal than being a doctor? Carla had learned to keep her emotions out of it, but only to a point. For example: her love-hate relationship with the clinic itself.

  “You’re here to see Dr. Clifton?” asked Tina.

  “He’s forty minutes late,” said Carla. “I’m going to take the rover job.”

  Tina looked surprised. “You’re going to haul that ass all over Brooklyn for ten hours a day?”

  “I don’t have a choice,” said Carla.

  Tina shook her head, clicked her tongue. “There’s not another job out there for you? Have you explored your options?”

  “ ‘Explored my options’? Two weeks in a suit and listen to you. We are in a recession, in case you haven’t noticed,” said Carla, starting to feel defensive. “Jobs aren’t falling off cliffs. I mean, trees.”

  Tina said, “Take it easy, Mommy. You do what you need to do.”

  After an awkward and quick good-bye, Tina clicked down the hall. Carla stared after her, the pequeña dynamo who’d always questioned authority and demanded what she deserved. Look at her go, thought Carla, smiling. Life would not dictate to her. Tina would put God on hold.

  Another ten minutes of waiting. Carla let her mind drift to dinner, last night, when she told the kids that she planned to take them to Disney World after all. The response had been underwhelming. “You don’t seem that excited,” she said.

  Zeke said, “Let’s go to Atlantis in the Bahamas. They’ve got a shark tank, and water slides. Charlie said it’s awesome.”

  Manny said, “How about Knicks season tickets?”

  Claude didn’t speak a word. His expression said, “I told you so.”

  Later on, Carla admitted to Claude that he had been right about Disney World. The poker money was still hers, though, and she’d decided what to do with it.

  “I know what you’re going to do with it, so go right ahead,” he said.

  “That’s impressive, since I have no idea,” she replied.

  He said, “You’re going to save it. It’s not in your nature to splurge or take risks. Considering how you got the money, if you did anything but save it, you’d feel guilty.”

  “I earned this money,” she said. “I worked hard to win it.” The defense sounded hollow, though. What was worse, Claude had been exactly right. After the Disney bubble was punctured, Carla’s first thought was to deposit the money into her savings account until they agreed on a destination. She wasn’t sure whom she resented more: Claude for calling her predictable, or herself for being predictable.

  The thrill of playing poker with her friends was in taking wild risks. In Atlantic City, she’d been Careful Carla. No risks, only rules. She’d won that way, too. But she’d felt like a cold machine, not a warm-blooded human.

  Right now, she just felt tired. If she had to wait one more minute, she might spill right out of this chair and across the hallway floor. They’d have to put her on a stretcher.

  A glimpse of her future, the fat woman who’d exhausted herself onto a stretcher due to extreme predictability.

  Yesterday, she got a voice message from Dr. Stevens. His practice was still for sale, and he was rooting for her to buy it. She would dearly love to. One problem: she was $495,000 short.

  How do you turn $5,000 into $500,000?

  She’d asked herself that question a hundred times, and hadn’t come up with an answer. Perhaps a magic wand? Genie in a bottle? Bet it all on black, win, and let it ride, doubling her winnings seven times in a row? Buy 5,000 Lotto tickets, and keep her fingers, toes, legs, and arms crossed?

  Her cell rang. “Bess,” said Carla, answering.

  “How was the meeting?” asked her friend.

  “How do you turn five thousand dollars into five hundred thousand?” posed Carla, her head fixed on the enigma. “I keep asking myself. But I got nothing. Clearly, I’ve been asking the wrong person.”

  Bess said, “Borden might have an idea.”

  “What’s his number?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Do I sound like I’m kidding?” A few months ago, Carla would never have dared ask Borden Steeple—or anyone—for help. Her pride would have forbidden it. To show any sign of weakness had been anathema to Carla. But, as she’d come to realize, friends (especially a diverse group) were strength. Asking a friend for help was flexing your muscles.

  Bess gave Carla Borden’s work number, and then asked, “I take it the rover job is not going to happen.”

  “Over my dead body,” said Carla. “And I mean that literally. That job would kill me.”

  “Carla! Sorry I kept you waiting,” said Dr. Clifton, scurrying toward her. “Meetings pile up on the other side of the complex.”

  Carla said a quick good-bye to Bess, and then stood up to receive a handshake from her once and former boss. “Don’t apologize. I want to thank you for being late.”

  “Thank me.”

  “It gave me a little more time to think,” she said. “I respectfully decline your job offer, sir. I wish you the best of luck with the new program.”

  Dr. Clifton nodded. “I can’t say I blame you, Carla.”

  “That’s Dr. Morgan,” she said, and turned and walked out of there, never to return.

  The stack of papers rested on the dining room table. Claude and the boys were outside with their neighbors for the annual block party. She’d sent them out to deliver a platter of hot dogs and buns to the food table. Carla would join the party as soon as possible. Mrs. Browne’s famous crab cakes went quickly. They were huge, the size of baseballs. Eating one would be Carla’s just reward.

  But first, she had some dirty work to do.

  Papers arranged to her liking, she went to the front door and opened it. She immediately spotted Claude. Her eye always went right for him. He was laughing, holding a Coke, standing with another father in the middle of a game of running bases. The kids were zipping by on both sides. The two men were officiating in some way. Manny ran up to the base, and then jumped off provocatively. Claude made a move for him and then Manny dashed away with graceful agility. Claude shouted something at Manny, and the boy laughed. Claude’s pride in his son shone on his handsome face.

  He was a good man. A good father.

  She called and waved her arms. Claude noticed, made an apology to the neighbor, and jogged toward Carla on the porch.

  “Come into the dining room for a second,” said Carla.

  Claude followed her in, and saw the stack of papers on the table. “What’s all that?”

  “I need you to sign some of these documents,” said Carla, pushing them forward.

  Claude walked over to her, put his sweaty Coke can directly on the table. (Carla flinched, but let it go.) He didn’t touch her. He hadn’t kissed her or touched her all day. She’d come to realize he only touched her out of bed when he wanted sex that night. Carla wondered if a protocol of hugging or an RDA of casual affection could have prevented this moment. Although Carla had f
elt sorry for Alicia in a sexless union, at least Tim hadn’t deprived his wife of friendly contact, cheek kisses, pats on the back. In a trade—genital-only vs. nongenital-only touching—Carla couldn’t honestly say which she’d pick.

  “You haven’t told me what I’m looking at,” he said.

  “I’ve spent the last three days with Borden Steeple, Bess’s husband. He works at Merrill Lynch and helped me get the package together.” She patted the stack of papers.

  “You were at Merrill Lynch? I thought you were doing orientation for the rover job.”

  “Oh, no, I turned down that job,” she said. “I must’ve forgotten to tell you.”

  Claude opened his mouth to roar, but quickly realized he was in no position to yell at her about that, having kept losing his previous job a secret for a week. He said, “We agreed that you would try out the rover job for six months.”

  “No, you told me to do it and I got tired of telling you I didn’t want to,” she said. “You repeat yourself so many times, you grind me down. Or you refuse to do what I ask so many times that I stop asking. That’s how you get your way.”

  “I never get my way,” he insisted.

  “I believe that you believe that,” she said. “Acting put-upon and long-suffering is another way you manipulate me. And I let you do it. I am guilty of that.”

  The can of Coke was beading, making a puddle on the table. That water mark would be bad, but Carla refused to be distracted. She clicked the ballpoint pen on top of the stack, and pushed the pile toward her husband.

  “See the ‘sign here’ Post-its? There are twelve total,” she said. While he flipped through the pages, she explained what they were. “Two sets of documents. The first is an agreement to use our house for collateral against the small business loan for five hundred thousand dollars, along with the paperwork for the loan itself. The second is my contract with Dr. Stevens to purchase his practice, effective as soon as we can transfer the loan money to him. You don’t have to sign the purchase contract, but I thought you might want to see it. You do have to sign for the loan, and the collateral agreement.”