by Sally Koslow
I carefully open the envelope and find a check from Fleigelman, Kelly, Rodriguez and Roth made out to me. The sum is for $100,000, each zero staring at me in bug-eyed shock, which I return.
“So, you’ve starting to find our money?”
“Not exactly. It appears you have a secret admirer,” Wally says, grinning.
“I don’t understand.”
I expect a story with embellishment, but all Wally says is, “A money order arrived in the office yesterday.”
“From where?”
“There was no return address.”
My eyes dart to Daniel. If this is his—or Stephan’s—way of bailing me out, I am overwhelmed and immensely moved, yet I cannot keep their money. This much I have learned during the past few months: I will earn my own respect only by taking care of myself—self-sufficiency has become my all and everything. But I believe I know Daniel fairly well, and he looks as startled by this check as I must.
“You don’t know who sent it?” I ask Wally.
“I couldn’t say.”
“‘Couldn’t say’ or won’t say?” I ask. Perhaps Wally wrote it himself, overcome by guilt bred from faulty advice. This check might be his prickly ethical payback.
“The money was sent to the estate of Benjamin T. Silver,” he informs me. “Your benefactor has gone to a fair amount of trouble to protect his identity, so while I’d like to trace it, there’s no way. This donor obviously wants to stay anonymous.”
“What the hell?” I didn’t intend to say that aloud.
“The philosopher Maimonides is famous for saying anonymity is the highest level of charity,” Wally adds.
“Charity? I am not a charity case.” I drop the check as if it’s dusted with Agent Orange. It must be from Stephan, and if he wants to give me money, I’d prefer that he hand it over directly. “What do you suggest that I do with this check?”
“I suggest, Georgia Waltz, that you deposit it. I’m guessing it’s from one of Ben’s deadbeat clients. Maybe someone grew a conscience.”
I sit dumbly for a moment, then stagger along with Wally to the front hall and collect his coat. He kisses me lightly on the cheek. “You have no idea how good it feels to a lawyer who gets to deliver good news,” he says, and leaves in a cloud of smugness.
“You’ve been staring at that check like it’s a land mine,” Daniel says.
He throws his arm around my shoulder and hugs, tight. “Why don’t you accept that you’ve gotten lucky?”
I’ve always believed the essence of luck is to recognize her when she camps out on your front lawn. Should your streak run sour, if you see that interloper at all, you expect her no to turn around and tell you that she owns the property—and that you owe back rent. Which is why the only luck I wholly trust now is the sort I make myself.
“What do you say we deposit the sucker, like your lawyer suggested?” Daniel adds. “Later on if you find out who your benefactor is and are revolted, you’ll give back the money.”
I nod in numb agreement, my hands shaking, and Daniel understands that I am in no condition to be behind a wheel, so Sadie and I tumble into Stephan’s car. At the ATM I can barely complete the deposit slip, though when I feed the check to the jaws of the bank, I feel a jolt of relief.
From there Daniel and I hit the beach, where Sadie is as oblivious to her improved circumstances as I am mystified and mistrustful of mine. It’s chilly, but brisk air is the tonic I need. “It’s not enough for me to live on until I’m one hundred, you realize,” I say as I toss a stick for Sadie. “I still need to sell the house and find a way to finish paying for Luey’s education and support myself”—possibly for more than forty years.
“Think of it as a down payment on your happiness,” Daniel says, Hallmark card-ish, “not some bunker of gloom.”
“Where did that check come from?” I ask at least four times, as if I am Camille wondering when lunch will be served. I also make a mental note: Georgia, visit your mother.
“Like Wally said, maybe it’s from one of Ben’s clients who got religion and paid a debt.” If the money came from Stephan, Daniel is not going to out him.
Daniel and I scuffle along under a shale gray sky until the cold, hunger, and impending nightfall defeat us. On the way home, we buy the makings of a celebratory dinner—steak, the first spring asparagus, and a chocolate cake iced in mocha decadence.
When we get back to the house, Luey and the car are nowhere to be seen. “I won’t be home late, don’t worry,” a note says. She knows I will.
While the steaks marinate, Daniel and I settle down for Scrabble. He is an ace, given to kicking off games by using all seven letters and scoring fifty extra points. He also has an uncanny ability to draw the Z, X, and J, which he plays on premium squares. I begin with cark. Given the muzziness of my mind, I’m not half-bad today.
“You made that up,” he says. “What’s a ‘cark?’”
“It means worry,” I say. “Trust me, that’s a subject on which I am an expert. Want to challenge?”
Daniel backs down, knowing if he loses the challenge, he’ll forfeit his turn.
He plays rowan.
“That’s a name,” I say. “No proper nouns.”
“Also a tree,” he informs me.
Gloating, a few plays later I put down oryx on a double-word score.
“Well done,” he says. He plays yahoo.
I snap back with dilly.
On a triple-word score Daniel builds dillydally.
I carefully put the letters for napery on the board. Fifty-point bonus!
“You can’t play that,” he informs me.
“I most certainly can. It means table linen. You know, napkins, tablecloths. My mother always uses the word.” At least she used to.
“I know what it means, but there’s only one p. I’m going to challenge,” he says. “Where’s the Scrabble dictionary I gave you?”
“Luey’s room, probably,” I say. “She and Cola were playing a few weeks ago.” I go upstairs and begin to search but I can’t find it anywhere in the anarchy of her possessions. “We’ll have to check online,” I inform him.
“Isn’t it against the law to live in a house without a dictionary? It’s like not having a smoke detector. Next thing you’ll tell me you’ve never registered to vote.”
Now that he mentions it, I never did, out here. “You know, there may be a dictionary in the books I brought from the city,” I say in my defense. It would be in the box with the first gift Ben gave me, a book of Dylan Thomas poetry.
We go to the basement, which is damp and dim. Ben’s windsurfer fills one corner, a hulking monument to middle-aged denial that Luey plans to sell on Craiglist this summer. A refrigerator and freezer, circa 1985, handed down from my parents’ house, stand side-by-side, unplugged. The last time I used either one was for extra drinks and ice cream last summer when we gave our Labor Day barbecue.
Boxes brought from the city are in the corner, two labeled KIDS’ BOOKS. I start with one of the other boxes, where I find a complete set of Shakespeare, college art history texts, and many lavish tomes about home decorating and antiques. Daniel searches through a load of potboilers, Harry Potters, and reference books.
“Pay dirt,” he shouts, and pulls out a relic whose binding is dried and broken, a leather-bound American Heritage College Dictionary embossed in fading gold with the initials BTS, my gift to Ben when he graduated from college. I know its inscription. “To Benjy, with a heart of happiness. Please see page 819. I will love you forever. Georgia.” Page 819 features the definition of love, which I underlined and circled with a girlish red heart, faded to sienna.
I look over Daniel’s shoulder until he finds the page that begins with nanofabrication and ends with narcotic. When he gets there, a scrap torn from a yellow legal pad flutters to the floor. The paper is filled with handwriting t
hat looks rushed and unmistakably Ben’s.
I pick up what appears to be the draft of a letter. “Darling,” it begins. But this isn’t meant for me. It’s filed under the page that includes, “Na-o-mi (ney-oh-me,) the mother-in-law of Ruth and the great-grandmother of David, from a Hebrew word meaning ‘pleasant.’”
“This is hard to write, but I will try. I realize I have been lying to myself. I despise when I lie,” he begins.
“Naomi, love, I thought I could leave Georgia, but I can’t. As harsh as this sounds, it doesn’t change how I feel about you. I adore you. Every moment we have shared is authentic, and I have felt that way since Hawaii.”
His Honolulu marathon was five years ago. I didn’t travel there with Ben because Luey was still in high school. I was the parent who remained on duty.
The next paragraph is slashed through, yet legible: “If I’d met you first, things might have been different. I will try to do right by you—by all of us—but I can’t find a way to you, because—there you have it—I am unable to leave my first family.”
I trip up at “first family.” I have known Ben to be more eloquent. Should I take solace in the banality, or is there another, smoother version of this letter somewhere? Did he even send it? How much of it is true?
“Georgia, Nicola, and Louisa—each one is tender in her own way. I say this not to hurt you or diminish what we have. I wish I could clone myself and be by your side as well as theirs, because you, too, are wrapped around my heart. You need to know and believe that, because it is true.”
He has a sense of humor, even in a love letter, because he writes, “I dream every man’s fantasy, that we could all live together.” It isn’t crossed out.
“This is torment, to disappoint you and to deceive Georgia. I don’t know what to do with the torture, which grows by the day.”
45.
In the Tao of Nicola, a baseline tenet had been to always mistrust her sister. So when Luey spoke in breathy exclamation points, she did not rush to call back.
“I gather this isn’t the best time for you, with the necklace and all,” Luey said when they spoke. Nicola had been hoping Luey didn’t know. “About that . . .” Luey added. “What does it look like?”
“Eighteen-carat gold, pave diamonds—a heart. Why?”
“Do you have a picture?”
“Like, from a Web site? No. I’ve been telling Uncle Nineteenth Century how much we need one.”
“How about the kind of picture lovesick puppies take whenever they’re out in public?”
“Possibly,” Nicola said.
“Well, if your Michael T. has a picture, send it to me.”
“Why?”
“Just send it.”
Nicola did. In the picture, the necklace was clearly twinkling though her mouth was agape, mid-admonishment, telling Michael T. to get his phone out of her face.
“Meet me at the Astor Room at six,” Luey said when the picture arrived.
Nicola proudly took the subway to Astoria and found Luey at the restaurant, another achievement.
“I’m sorry, we’re booked,” the hostess informed them. Her sneer said, It’s eight o’clock on a Saturday night. What did you expect, losers?
Luey stepped forward. Before Nicola’s eyes, her pregnant sister transformed into their father, who with winning resolve had not only always been able to articulate his demands but generally enjoyed an 80-percent-and-above success record in having them met to his satisfaction. As Luey shook the hostess’s well-manicured hand, she held up Nicola’s picture. “We wondered if you’d seen this necklace?” The hostess smoothed her bob, as shiny as wet shoe polish, while Luey continued, “The stones are cubic zirconia and not worth a thing, but our dead father gave it to our mother so it has a lot of sentimental value.” Luey’s kick in the ankles told Nicola to shut up.
The hostess and Luey sized each other up. “Wait here,” she said. “And have a cocktail on us.”
“That would be lovely.” Nicola did not recall lovely being in Luey’s standard vocabulary and her tone was all breezy confidence. The hostess led the sisters to the bar and whispered in the bartender’s ear before she melted into the dark restaurant.
“I’ll have a Pink Lady,” Nicola said.
“Cranberry juice and seltzer with a twist,” Luey said.
Nicola wondered why her sister was knocking herself out. Was Luey on a mission initiated by their mother, or feeling guilty for being, until recently, a pain in the butt who at least once a month Nicola wanted to upgrade to a more user-friendly model? “This is pretty terrific of you to go to all this effort,” Nicola managed to say, “even if the necklace doesn’t show up.”
“I needed an adventure.” As if having a baby alone wasn’t adventure enough, Nicola thought.
“How’s the job?” Luey asked.
“Great til Uncle Stephan got pissy over . . .” Nicola searched for a word—who could blame him for getting angry? “This carelessness of mine, and decided I must be a thief.”
Her cocktail arrived and Nicola was impressed with its pinkness—like a carnation dancing with a salmon. She stirred the swizzler and took a sip. It tasted less demure than its name suggested.
“Tell me, does Michael T. have a chance?” Luey asked. “Seriously, Cola. After speaking to the guy for five minutes, I could tell he was nuts for you.”
“I like him, but he’s in Boston and my life feels too ragged right now to get serious anyway.” She considered how exposed she felt by what she said, every bit of which was true.
“When hasn’t your life been like that?” Luey asked.
“Ooh. Harsh.” Nicola said, though that was not true of the cocktail, which she decided might become her drink of choice.
“Don’t blow it with Michael T., Cola.” Luey’s voice had turned as uncharacteristically pacifying as elevator music.
Behind her, someone cleared their throat. Nicola turned. There was the hostess, who opened her hand and without ceremony placed the necklace in Nicola’s hand.
“What?” Nicola shrieked. “Oh my God! Where did you find it?”
Luey pushed herself off the bar stool, waving away Nicola’s question. “Okay, then,” she said. The hostess, her back already to them, was moving quickly away despite five-inch heels. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll drive you home.”
“How did you do that?” Nicola asked. “I called and—”
“Did you learn nothing from Daddy? Cola, I greased her palm.”
46.
“Mother, I’m sorry it’s been so long.” I troop into The Oaks dripping guilt and perspiration. All is not right when it’s seventy-four degrees in March. My magnolia tree bloomed a month ahead of schedule, and now that I don’t employ Adam and Eve, I’ve been working outside in a T-shirt.
My mother doesn’t—or won’t—respond. It’s been three weeks since I was here, and in that time she seems to have shrunk into a satellite of herself. I rub her arm gently. “It’s Georgia,” I say. “I’m here.” She grits her teeth and shakes off my touch.
“Camille hasn’t been talking much,” Alice, her favorite caretaker, says, offering her ginger ale, which she pushes away.
“That’s what the head nurse told me when I called yesterday, but she didn’t know why,” I say.
“She might have asked me.” Alice sniffs. “Camille’s all clammed up and teary because Mr. Blumstein’s gone.”
“Morris? No! He didn’t . . .” I mouth the word die.
“Oh no. Moved away last week. Such a shame. He was a grand bit of stuff, that fella. Everyone’s favorite.”
“My mother must miss him terribly.”
Alice clucks in agreement. “Camille here, she was his special bird. He already sent all the girls a big crate of oranges, but Camille got her own box and a letter. When I read it to her, she tore it up and flushed it down the loo
. I tried to help her write back, but she refused.”
“Was he sick?”
Alice brushes away the thought. “What happens is the children, they get old, too. His daughter retired to Tampa and she didn’t want to leave him up north, all alone.”
“He wasn’t alone—he had me.” It’s my mother speaking, her head turning stiffly toward us, an animatronic figure coming to life, her voice croaky from disuse.
“Mother, I’m so sorry to hear about Morris leaving,” I say. “Maurice, excuse me.” Is there anyone else she’ll even talk to?
“Men!” she says. “Can’t trust the shits, can you?”
I usually second my mother’s motions, a habit I picked up when I realized my father considered this the path of least resistance to four-part Waltz harmony. But now I refuse to let myself become a woman whose knee-jerk response to Camille’s question is yes, because for every Ben on his worst day, there was a Ben on a better day. There are Nat and Daniel, always, and much of Stephan, at least lately. I hope I am never done with men.
“Morris moved to be with his family.”
“But he had me,” she frets, and sticks out her bottom lip. “He didn’t even say good-bye.”
“Now, Camille, that’s not true.” Alice’s brogue takes the edge off her upbraiding. “He came ’round special for you every dinner hour, and at his going-away tea you were seated by his side like the queen of the May. Your friend was in a tiff about it. She’s a mean old biddy, that Vera,” she adds, conspiratorially, her voice lowered.
I hope the mention of my mother’s loyal opposition will please her, but she frowns. “Maurice took off like a bat out of hell.” Her truth and she’s sticking to it.
Alice laughs. “Anything more I can do for you ladies?”
“Thanks for everything. We’ll see you later.”
I sit across from my mother and reach into my bag. Camille Waltz has never failed to light up at the sight of small boxes, silky ribbon, and shiny paper, though it has become difficult to find presents now that she can no longer focus on a book, turn on a CD, and has lost interest in clothes. I bring candy, flowers, or a plant—today it’s yellow tulips—as well as a bonus, which she unwraps. It’s a photograph.
