Goodbye To All That

by Judith Arnold

  But Jill couldn’t phone her mother. Her mother was working as a clerk at First-Rate. Ruth Bendel wasn’t a Good Mom.

  Jill pulled out her cell phone and punched in Melissa’s number. Melissa would be at work, too, but lawyers spent lots of their time sitting at their desks, pretending to be engrossed in on-line Lexis Nexis searches when they were in fact reading relationship blogs. Melissa wouldn’t calm her down—calming people down wasn’t a particular talent of Melissa’s—but at least she’d be a friendly voice, a receptive ear.

  Someone who wasn’t Melissa answered Melissa’s phone. “This is Melissa Bendel’s sister,” Jill said. Feeling guilty for her craven desire to lean on someone, she added, “It’s not important.”

  “Oh, wait,” the voice said. “Here she comes. Hang on.” Jill heard a thump—the woman clamping her hand over the receiver—and then her muffled voice: “Melissa? Your sister’s on the line.”

  Not very professional. Jill concluded that the woman who answered was a fellow lawyer, not a secretary. Secretaries knew how to answer phones.

  A few seconds elapsed, and then Jill heard Melissa’s voice: “Oh God,” she groaned. “This trial is going to kill me.”

  “What trial?”

  “Counterfeit handbags.” Melissa groaned again. “The shit-for-brains paralegal who typed up my brief misspelled ‘counterfeit’ I don’t know how many times. I was up until two-thirty last night, or I guess it was this morning, retyping the freaking briefs. Remember ‘I before E’?” She paused dramatically. “They lied. In counterfeit it’s E before I.”

  Jill felt disoriented. This seemed so normal—Melissa whining, Jill listening. Jill wasn’t a whiner, any more than she was a leaner. But Gloria and the damned Old Rockford Inn had twisted everything around. Jill felt a profound urge to whine.

  She wasn’t sure she could. She and Melissa had shaped their thirty-one-year relationship around a certain dynamic: Melissa-whiner, Jill-listener. Much as she wanted to reverse the equation, she found herself sliding into her standard listener role. “So this is a case you’re on?” she asked. “This counterfeit handbags case? Who do you represent?”

  “The good guys, of course,” Melissa said, not that there was any of course about it. “Not the counterfeiters. Their lawyer is such an asshole. He thinks he can win this case on his dimples. He just kept smiling at the judge this morning, and she fell for it. ‘Motion to suppress? Sure thing,’ she said. ‘You need another continuance? No problem-o. Whatever you want, Mr. O’Leary. I’m yours.” Yet another groan. “I swear to God, I’m surrounded by shit-for-brains.”

  “Mr. O’Leary, huh,” Jill said.

  “What?”

  “The opposing lawyer’s name is O’Leary?”

  “Aidan O’Leary. A one-man St. Patrick’s Day parade. I think he should be forced to wear one of those green plastic derby hats into the courtroom, you know the kind people wear to the parade? And a button reading, ‘Kiss me, I’m Irish.’ The damn judge probably would kiss him, too. She’d probably vault right over the banc and give him a big wet one. Do I sound racist? I’m not against all Irish people, I swear. I’m just against Aidan O’Leary.”

  “I understand,” Jill said gently, although the urge to whine continued to rise up in her like lava boiling toward the cone of a volcano. “Forget about him,” she erupted. “I need legal advice.”

  “Like I’m an expert,” Melissa muttered. “About what?”

  “Abbie’s bat mitzvah. We signed this contract with the Old Rockford Inn for the reception, and now they want to up the price per plate by three dollars.”

  “What? They’re charging you for the plates?”

  “That’s what they call an entrée. Actually a whole meal. They’ve decided to charge us three dollars more a person.”

  “Breach of contract,” Melissa said, her anti-Irish bigotry set aside, along with her bleating self-pity. “You want me to draw up the papers?”

  “They said the small print in the contract says they can adjust the price.”

  “And you signed it?”

  “If we didn’t sign it, Abbie wouldn’t have a reception.”

  “Then you’re stuck.” Melissa fell silent for a minute. “What the hell. You can still fight it. I could write something threatening on the firm’s stationery. It’s got a scary-looking letterhead.”

  Melissa’s offer tempted Jill. She shook her head, even though she was sitting in her car and Melissa couldn’t see her. The shade of a maple tree draped across her windshield and an empty waxed-paper cup with a straw poking through the lid sat on the floor in front of the passenger seat, evidence of a Diet Coke she’d snuck a couple of days ago when she’d found herself with fifteen minutes to kill between dropping Noah off at his soccer practice and picking Abbie up from her Science Olympiad team meeting. She hadn’t been actively looking for a McDonald’s, but one had suddenly loomed before her like an oasis in the desert, and she’d been unable to keep herself from steering to the drive-through window and ordering a Diet Coke. She’d sipped it like a closet alcoholic, slouching behind the wheel and sucking the drink in with an enthusiasm bordering on desperation. Wasn’t there some rule that if you drank something in the car it didn’t count? Or if you downed it in under ten minutes? Or if it didn’t come from your own refrigerator?

  “Let me think about it,” she said, remembering Melissa’s offer to help her with the Old Rockford Inn. “I didn’t call you to ask you to write a threatening letter. I called you because I wanted to sound off and Mom isn’t available. She’s working at First-Rate.”

  Melissa groaned. “I can’t believe she’s doing that. Why couldn’t she find a classier job?”

  “Why couldn’t she stay with Dad? Then she wouldn’t need a job at all.”

  “First-Rate. God. I can’t believe she’s working there.” Melissa fell silent for a minute, then asked, “Do you think they’re really going to get a divorce?” She sounded suspiciously whimpery, as if a sob was clogging her throat.

  “Not if I can help it,” Jill declared. But could she help it? Or was this one problem Jill couldn’t solve? Here she was, whining to her sister and aching to lean on her mother. Did that mean she’d lost her position in the family, her ability to be the peace-maker, the moderator, the stable center of the Bendel clan?

  Her parents were separated. Nothing was the same, not even her role. “How can we get them back together? Brainstorm with me, Melissa.”

  “My brain is stormed out from dealing with this stupid case. The counterfeiters should go to jail and my clients should win a gazillion-dollar settlement. But there’s this tiny part of me that keeps wondering, if no one can tell the difference between a real Prada bag and a fake Prada bag, why should Prada be charging thousands of dollars for the exact same bag some sweatshop in China can make for fifty bucks and change?”

  “Because the Prada people originated the design, and they should be compensated for their creativity,” Jill reminded her. As someone who wrote for a flat fee, she felt grossly undercompensated for her own creativity. But then, she wasn’t Prada. She was just Black Pearl’s text writer, and Prairie Wind’s, and Velvet Moon’s.

  “You’re so smart.” Melissa sighed. “You’re absolutely right. Honoring creativity. That’s why I’m handling this case—that plus the billable hours. So what are you going to do about Mom and Dad? How can you get them back together?”

  “Why are you saying you? Why can’t we both do this?”

  “We just established you’re smart,” Melissa argued. “Doug’s smart but . . . You know the way he is. He’s a doctor. He can’t be bothered. It’s up to you.”

  “I don’t want it to be up to me,” Jill complained. “I have no idea how to get them back together.”

  “You always get everyone together,” Melissa reminded her. “Go visit Mom at her First-Rate store.”

  “And do what?”

  “I don’t know.” Melissa fell silent for a moment, then said, “Tell her Dad’s dying.”
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br />   “He’s not dying.”

  “Lie. If she thinks he’s dying, she’ll realize how much she loves him.”

  “She’ll realize how much she hates me for lying to her.”

  “She’ll forgive you once she sees that you were lying only to force her to admit how much she loves him.”

  Jill wasn’t sure how smart she was, but if that was Melissa’s best idea, Jill was a hell of a lot smarter than her.

  Still, the suggestion that Jill visit their mother at the First-Rate outlet where she was employed had possibilities. Seeing her at her job might give Jill some ideas. The woman was probably running a cash register eight hours a day, constantly on her feet, and she had to wear one of those ugly red aprons. Maybe she was miserable, and eager for an excuse to go home. Maybe if Jill could get her to recognize that she’d made a mistake . . . or not even admit it. All Jill had to do was make her acknowledge that rinsing her husband’s beard hairs down the sink was preferable to wearing that icky First-Rate apron.

  As if those were the only options a woman had in life: clean up after a husband or take a boring minimum-wage job and wear an icky apron. But if Jill could convince her mother that those were her only options, maybe she’d return to Jill’s father.

  She checked her watch again. If she left this minute and encountered no traffic, she could get to her mother’s First-Rate, spend fifteen minutes there and drive home, pulling into the garage before Abby’s bus dropped her off. Not that it would be the end of the world if Abby came home to an empty house, but Jill was a Good Mom, and whenever possible a Good Mom should be waiting for her children with open arms and Granny Smith apples when they got home from school.

  “All right,” she told Melissa. “I’ll visit her at the store. Maybe something there will inspire me.”

  “They sell scented candles, don’t they?” Melissa said. “Scented candles inspire me.”

  They probably inspired her to jump into bed with her hot beautician—assuming she and the hot beautician were still an item. Jill didn’t have time for a detour into Melissa’s love life, not if she was going to make it to the First-Rate and home before Abby’s bus turned the corner and wheezed down her block.

  She said good-bye to Melissa and started the car. The drive took less time than she’d anticipated. Not much traffic on the road, and she tended to drive faster when she was angry. Honestly, three dollars more per plate? Because of fuel prices? Maybe she should run the contract through a shredder and host Abby’s reception herself. How much trouble could it be to prepare hors d’oeuvres, dinner, dessert and a sheet cake with “Mazel tov, Abbie” written on it, along with a torah created out of colored frosting?

  And drinks. An open bar for the adults, and for the kids enough soda to float Noah’s Ark.

  Could she use paper plates? Or would she have to rent dishes and flatware? Shit. Those rental places probably tacked on a fuel surcharge, too. The dishes had to be washed, didn’t they? And dishwashers required electricity, which was powered by coal or natural gas or something else that cost more than it did two months ago.

  The strip mall where her mother’s First-Rate store was located looked like dozens of other strip malls within a ten-mile radius of Jill’s house: First-Rate on one end, Fashions For Less on the other, and a typical assortment of retail outlets—sandwich shop, bank branch, Nails By Lia, and one of Toby Kotzenberg’s father’s sneaker stores—lining the sidewalk that spanned the two anchors. Jill parked near the First-Rate, shut off the engine, closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths.

  She had to be calm before she went into the store. She had to be ready to face the shock of seeing her mother in a First-Rate apron without letting that shock register on her face. She had to come up with a better explanation for why she was there—and why her mother should get back together with her father—than to claim her father was dying.

  Because we’re a family, Mom, she rehearsed. Because we count on each other, we rely on each other, and our family has always been a solid unit, and you can’t just break it apart on a whim. No, that sounded too scolding, too judgmental.

  Because Abbie’s bat mitzvah is going to be a disaster if her grandparents aren’t reconciled, sitting side by side, kvelling together over their magnificent granddaughter. And if I have to pay three goddamn dollars more per person, my parents had damned well better sit side by side and kvell.

  Not great, but better than calling her mother’s whim a whim. And definitely better than Dad’s dying.

  She swung out of the car, locked it and crossed the lot to First-Rate. The hinged doors accordioned open automatically and she entered.

  Every First-Rate looked like every other one, she acknowledged as her gaze circled the store. The racks, the shelves, the flooring and the glaring ceiling fixtures were identical to her local First-Rate. The only thing different about this store was that Jill’s mother was standing behind the front counter at one of the cash registers, ringing up a customer’s purchases.

  A tall, skinny kid stood behind her, his hair a mess of white-boy dreadlocks and a piece of silver jewelry perforating his eyebrow. Like Jill’s mother, he wore a First-Rate apron over his street clothes. He nodded as Jill’s mother removed item after item from the customer’s basket and slid them under the scanning gun, which rested in a bracket beside the register. The customer was apparently schizophrenic: everything in her basket was either a weight-loss aid or candy.

  Jill’s mother looked the same as she had last week, when the family had gathered around Jill’s dining room table for Ruth and Richard’s big announcement, and she also looked different. She had the same chin-length, shapeless salt-and-pepper hair, the same narrow face, the same warm brown eyes. Probably the same body, too, although who could tell when she was wearing that stupid apron? Red was not her color, at least not that red.

  Her posture was straighter, however. Her chin was thrust forward, although whether that was a sign of confidence or pugnaciousness Jill couldn’t say. Her mother’s hands looked different, too. Specifically, her left hand. Specifically that hand’s naked fourth finger, where she used to wear her wedding ring.

  Her lips were pursed, tense with concentration. Checking out a customer’s purchases evidently required deep concentration. But the scanner gave a friendly beep each time she passed an item through its beam, so she must have been doing her job correctly.

  Being a Good Daughter, Jill ducked down the shampoo aisle, remaining out of her mother’s line of vision. She wouldn’t want to distract her mother and make her ring up a candy bar or an Atkins Diet milkshake incorrectly—although if her mother made a mistake, maybe the store would fire her and she’d go home.

  Not likely. She’d only be discouraged, her self-esteem punctured. Returning home a failure wouldn’t do. Her mother had her pride, and that pride could be Jill’s entry. She could convince her mother she’d made her point, proven she had the right stuff, had a grand adventure and emerged a better person. Only then would she willingly put her wedding ring back on.

  From the shampoo aisle, Jill could see the front door. She pretended to be fascinated by the selection of super-hold styling gels while watching for the diet-conflicted customer to leave. As soon as the woman passed through the folding doors, Jill emerged and approached the counter.

  “Jill!” Her mother broke into a huge smile. “Jill! Oh, my God!” Before Jill could answer, her mother turned to the lanky kid behind her. “Wade, this is my daughter Jill. She never shops here—she’s got a First-Rate in her own town. Jill, what are you doing here?”

  “Obviously, I’m here to see you,” Jill said, eyeing the kid warily before returning her mother’s smile. “If I wanted to shop, I’ve got a First-Rate in my own town, just like you said.”

  “Jill—” Why did her mother have to keep repeating her name? Was she afraid that now that she’d embarked on her new life as a single woman, she might forget her children’s names if she didn’t say them over and over? “—this is Wade. He’s been breaking me i
n.” Her mother giggled. “That’s what they call it, anyway. You’ll never guess what his last name is, Jill.”

  Her mother seemed oddly hyper. Jill humored her. “Okay,” she said pleasantly.

  “Go ahead, guess.”

  “You said I’d never—”

  “Smith,” her mother declared. “His last name is Smith. Can you believe it?” Once again, she didn’t give Jill a chance to comment. “And this—” she gestured toward the woman at the next register, who took a moment out from ringing up another customer’s order and gave Jill a friendly nod “—is Rosita. And that’s Bernie, straightening out the Halloween candy. Bernie, come and meet my daughter!”

  Jill hadn’t traveled all this way so her mother could show her off. Nor had she come here in order to meet her mother’s new playmates. But before she could react, a short, spunky gentleman who appeared old enough to have celebrated his twentieth anniversary as an AARP member bounded over and clasped her hand in his. “Ruth, you didn’t tell us you had such a beautiful daughter,” he exclaimed.

  If Jill were Abbie, she would have rolled her eyes and made retching noises. If she were Noah, she would have said, “Later, dude,” and run out the door. Instead, she shook the gentleman’s hand and said, “That’s very sweet of you. Mom? Can you spare me a few minutes?” Dad’s dying, she wanted to add, if only because those two words would probably scare the effusive Bernie away.

  Her mother glanced at the kid, who glanced at the woman named Rosita, who nodded. Did it bother her mother that she had to get permission from people so much younger than she was if she wanted a break? As if the apron wasn’t humiliating enough.

  “We’ll go to the staff room,” she said, sauntering the length of the counter to the end, where a gate allowed her to escape into the store. “You want something to drink?”

  “No, thanks—”