“I’m done,” Starr announces. “C’n I be excused?”
I glance at her plate. “You ate three bites.”
“Four. And I’m full.”
Swear to God, the kid is an airfern. How I’ve managed to keep her alive this long is beyond me.
“Yeah, okay,” I say, waving her off. As she scrambles down out of the chair, Jennifer calls out, telling her there’s chocolate mousse for dessert.
“You do realize,” I say when Starr’s gone, “you’re making it very hard to remember why I don’t like you.”
She looks genuinely hurt. “Still?”
“Jen, get real. It’s gonna take more than one meal and a couple of noncombative conversations for me to trust you.” I take a sip of the wine. It’s good, but even I can tell it’s missing something. Like fat-free ice cream, it’s just not the same thing. “I mean, can you blame me?”
“No,” she says on a sigh. “I suppose not.” She takes a small bite of her Chicken Whatever—I’ve noticed she doesn’t eat much more than Starr, which is why I suppose she’s not much bigger than Starr, either—and says, “I’m not here because Stuart lost his job.”
I tense. “You’re…not?”
Sad eyes meet mine, a second sigh drifting across the table like goose down. “No. Oh, he lost his job. And he’s somewhere in the Midwest. Well, I suppose he is. Actually, he could be on the moon, for all I know. Since the divorce papers came from an attorney in Syosset.”
“Oh, Jen…I’m so sorry.” And I am. No, really. As much as I can be for someone I don’t totally trust, anyway.
Judging from the look on her face, there’s more.
“And there’s more,” she says, getting up from the table and disappearing into the kitchen, returning seconds later with a glass and my grandfather’s bourbon. Yes, the same bottle from nearly six years ago. Should be real potent stuff by now. She pours herself a ladylike inch in the glass, only to knock it back like a trucker. “When I first came here, though, I had no idea what was on his mind. Which was, apparently, to dump me. And clean me out. Everything was in both our names, and he took it all. And canceled the credit cards. Except for my jewelry, my clothes and the car, it’s all gone. I wouldn’t have any cash at all if it weren’t for the money from Leo.”
“So…the money from the sale of the house…?”
“Gone.” She pours herself another shot, downs it in one. “Honest to God, I didn’t plan on staying here for more than a week or two.” Her eyes get all teary, although whether to the booze or her situation, I’m not sure. “But now I’ve got no place else to go. I’m homeless, Ellie. I’m fucking homeless.”
No, you’re not, your home is right here with Starr and me, is what I should be saying, right this very minute, my hand over hers, soothing and reassuring. Except right this very minute, a little me is running around inside my brain screaming Aiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Oh, poop. Now she’s crying. Big, honking sobs into one of the linen napkins I never use because they’re a bitch to wash and iron.
Damn. I’d really wanted to finish my dinner.
Oh a sigh, I get up and go around the table, kneeling beside her and taking her hands. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but here goes:
“You’ve always got a home here, you know that. You can stay as long as you need, until you figure out what your next step is.”
I figured I might as well plant the idea that there needs to be a next step, although my comment is met with a wailed, “What the hell kind of ‘next step’ is there for an unemployed t-t-trophy wiiife?”
Hey, she said it, not me. But I’m guessing a liberal arts degree from Queens College, followed by ten years of hosting charity dos and business dinners have not exactly rendered my sister a hot commodity, employment-wise.
My knees are killing me, so I get up while I still can. “We’ll figure something out.”
“You sure?”
Oh, God. She looks so hopeful. So naive. So miserable.
“Sure I’m sure,” I lie, returning to my seat. If I hurry, I can finish up my meal before the chicken gets that icky, gooey stuff all over it. Does this make me a cold, unfeeling bitch? Or just starved—and grateful—for decent food?
Over the next several seconds, her sobs turn to sniffles, then hiccups. She belts back another shot of booze and says, “Maybe I c-could write a bo-ook.”
I tell myself not to go there. If she thinks I didn’t hear her, maybe she’ll move on to something more practical. Like becoming a paratrooper. But nooo, apparently this is the idea that catches fire in her underutilized brain.
“I could get an agent, and he—or she—could get me an advance, and then I could get my own place, nothing too fancy, maybe a cute little one-bedroom on the Upper West Side, where I could look out at Central Park while I write.”
I’m not making this up, I swear.
“What would you write about?”
Her brow crinkles. For about two seconds. Then she brightens like the sun coming out after a storm. The classic symptoms of alcohol-induced manic depression. “My life as a trophy wife, what else?”
And with that, she pops up from her seat and begins snatching dishes off the table (when she goes for my plate, I grab it and growl at her), prattling away about titles and chapter headings and God knows what else, ending with, “Can I borrow your computer? I might as well get started right away, while the idea is still fresh.”
Wow. I didn’t even know she typed. Except then she says, “It does have Via Voice, doesn’t it?”
“What the hell’s that?”
She sighs, but it’s the sigh of someone confronting an unexpected, but otherwise minor, obstacle to her goal. “I suppose I’ll just have to make do,” she says, then sweeps into the kitchen, her hands full of plates, only to turn back and say, “But don’t think for a minute I’m going to mooch off you and not keep up my end of the workload. From now on, think of me as…as your housekeeper!”
I just manage not to choke.
Heather’s wedding is two weeks away.
Jen is now the fastest hunt-and-peck typist on the Eastern seaboard (and cooking fabulous meals every night—this, I could get used to), I’m up to my eyeballs in chiffon and taffeta, and I keep shoving the Luke/Starr issue to the back of my brain like that sparkly sweater on the top shelf of my closet that Leo gave me five Christmases ago. The one I either need to give away or wear, already.
I called Luke and apologized for being an unreasonable, hysterical, pain in the can. He said it was okay, he understood, but considering he immediately said he was busy and rang off, my guess is he hates me. Since I’m none too thrilled with myself these days, I can’t exactly blame him.
And it’s hot. The first week of June and the temperature’s already hovering around ninety. With humidity somewhere in the thousand percent range. Rain forest without all the pretty birds. I put in a small window air conditioner down here out of deference to Dolly, but the cool air stops precisely ten feet from the appliance. My work area is precisely a foot and a half beyond that. Even with a six-foot tall industrial fan blowing right on me, it’s like sitting in a vat of stew. Why would anyone in their right mind love summer? Call me crazy, but I prefer seasons where I don’t worry about mold growing under my breasts.
Except for Jennifer, who, even without the booze, is in a state of euphoria with this book of hers, my black mood has apparently infected everyone around me. The cat won’t even stare at me anymore. Starr spends more and more time at the Gomezes’, or with Jennifer, which is making me feel more and more guilty—about dumping on Liv, about being too busy to play with my child, which was the whole reason for my staying home to begin with—which in turn is making me even crankier.
Even Dolly is making me cranky, which only goes to show how close to the edge I am. Being cranky with Dolly is like being cranky with Mrs. Santa, for God’s sake. Besides being a crackerjack seamstress, she’s one of those people who just never seems to get upset about anything. Which
is probably what’s annoying me about her. Bitching is meant to be a group sport, dammit.
I glance across the room, where we’ve rigged a pipe over a pair of ladders to hang the dresses that are nearly finished so their hems will “grow” before we finish them, and some of the crabbiness dissipates. I have to say, seeing the gowns all in a row like that, they’re really pretty. And I’m proud of them, that I made them from scratch. Of course, it’s a fluke, this design—remember all the ones I tossed?—but all the girls look good in it, and Heather’s happy, and that’s all that matters.
What’s strange, though, is that, as much as I’m looking forward to getting this project out of my hair, I think—I can’t believe I’m saying this—I’m going to miss it, too. In other words, I wouldn’t mind taking on another wedding, or making a prom dress now and then. At least until I figure out what I really want to be when I grow up.
You can stop laughing now.
My cell rings; at the sight of Liv’s number, my heart jumps into my throat. I was never like this before I had a kid, always expecting the worst. And what’s crazy is—knock on wood— Starr’s never had anything worse than a skinned knee or a cold. Liv has boys, Liv sees gushing blood on a regular basis, yet she doesn’t get as flustered with her three as I do with my one—
“Aren’t you going to answer your phone, sweetheart?” Dolly asks.
“Hey, Liv,” I say calmly into the phone. “What’s up?”
“I really hate to bother you, but my kitchen sink’s stopped up and I can’t get it unclogged, no matter how much Liquid-Plumbr I put in it. I think maybe one of the boys dropped something in the drain. And Mickey won’t be home for hours.”
Since nowhere in there are the words “your child is unconscious,” all is well. Clogged drains, I can handle.
“No problem, I’ll be right over. Just run lots of cold water in the sink to dilute all that Liquid-Plumbr, okay?”
Telling Dolly I’ll be back soon, I gather up my (Leo’s) handy-dandy toolbox and head next door. The apartments really don’t take much of my time, as it turns out, although I noticed the other day all the windows need new screens. Some of them have holes big enough to let Bigfoot through. Theoretically, I could make them myself. I mean, really—how is this different than making a dress? You cut the screening, you fit it to the frame, right? Piece of cake.
Once there, feeling oddly proud of myself, I shoo everyone out of the kitchen, don my heavy rubber gloves, goggles and face mask in case of splashing Liquid-Plumbr (ah, if they could see me at Nikky Katz’s now) and take my trusty wrench to the pipe trap under the sink. A few minutes later, ta-da!
“What was it?” Liv says from the doorway.
I hold up a half-decomposed chunk of plastic. “I’m guessing a Lego guy.”
Liv sighs, then says, “Is Dolly working today?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Liv gets her purse down from a hook by the back door and digs something out of it. “Would you mind giving this to her? She bought some groceries for me the other day, I need to reimburse her.”
“Sure, no problem.”
Liv hands what turns out to be a check to me, faceup. On pure reflex, I glance down at it.
And nearly faint.
chapter 21
“Is everything okay?” Dolly says from her machine when I return. She’s feeding a layer of chiffon through the hem-rolling attachment; when I don’t answer, she looks up, giving me a puzzled look through her glasses. “With the sink, I mean?”
“The sink’s fine.”
“Then what—?”
“Liv gave me something to give to you.” I walk over and hand her the check, my heart pounding. “I take it Dolly’s not your real name?”
She starts, then slowly, carefully folds the check and slips it into her apron pocket. “It’s my nickname. Nobody’s called me Sonja for years.”
“Except my grandfather?”
“What…what makes you think—?”
“You’re in his will.”
On a soft gasp, she turns away, her hands trembling like frail, indecisive insects. When she speaks, it’s barely above a whisper. “He wasn’t supposed to do that…tell anybody…”
“Is that why you never said anything to me?”
Her hands, still shaking, smooth the chiffon, over and over. “Why would I have said anything if I thought you didn’t know?”
She has a point.
“But people suspected,” I say gently. “You have to know that.”
She stills. “And what, exactly, did they suspect?”
“That my grandfather was having an affair.”
“I see.” Her voice sounds far away; the oddest little smile tilts her lips, as though this news actually pleases her a little. She finally looks at me, worrying her lip in her teeth for a moment before asking, “You said I was in his will?”
“Yes. You’re the beneficiary of a mutual fund. A fairly nice one, according to the lawyer—”
“I don’t want it. You keep it, save it for Starr.”
“I can’t. It’s yours by rights. I mean, you can do whatever you want with it, give it away, whatever—”
“Yes, yes, I see.”
Her mouth pulls tight, a clear indication this whole conversation is making her nervous. But she says, staring hard at the rumpled chiffon under her hands, “It was a long time ago.”
“Was it?”
Several seconds pass. “I loved your grandfather. But I’m not proud of what we did. Of how…we handled things.”
I don’t mean, or want, to sound judgmental. I only want to find out what happened. But I know, no matter how carefully I ask the questions burning inside my head, or how I phrase them, she’s going to think I’m condemning her.
“Were…either your husband or my grandmother still alive when you—”
“No!” Her head whips around, her eyes on fire. “Not in the way—” Leaving the chiffon panel pinned to the sewing machine like a butterfly specimen, she bounds out of her chair, sending a box of straight pins delicately clattering onto the linoleum. “I can’t…I’m sorry,” she says, fumbling for her purse from beside the sewing machine. “I’m…not feeling well, I need to go home….”
“But the will—”
Her sharp, achy gaze cuts me off. “Not today, sweetheart. Please.”
After she leaves, I grab the magnet I keep for just this purpose, squatting down to gather the pins. If Dolly—Sonja—didn’t want me to know her identity, why’d she insinuate herself into Starr’s and my life? To maybe, somehow, reconnect with Leo? I sigh. Who knows?
Crazy. All those years Liv’s lived next door, all the times I’d seen her grandmother come and go, and I’d never suspected—
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Am I slow or what? Liv and Mickey getting that apartment wasn’t some random occurrence. And all that about my not being able to sell the house as long as the original tenants wanted to stay…
I go over to Dolly’s machine and finish off the rolled hem, then remove the chiffon panel from the machine. My head is spinning. Now that Dolly knows I know, will she eventually tell me more?
Or will I even ever see her again?
I suddenly can’t quite catch my breath. What if she never comes back, and I’m left with all these bridesmaids’ dresses to finish on my own?
Sorry. That just sort of slipped out.
As do a couple of tears. Okay, maybe I don’t know all the particulars—or any of the particulars, when you get right down to it—but I knew Leo. And Dolly might be a bit eccentric (who isn’t?), but she’s sweet and generous and kind. I can see why my grandfather fell in love with her. Especially as sweet and generous and kind were never qualities I associated with my grandmother. God, how awful it must have been for Dolly to have heard about my grandfather’s death without even being able to talk to anybody about it. Or even react. It’s all so romantic and tragic, I can’t stand it—
“Ellie?”
I grab a tissue to wipe my cheeks, then lo
ok up to see a glowing Jennifer standing at the foot of the stairs, waving a sheaf of papers in her hand. “I finished Chapter One!”
Ohmigod. Jennifer.
She’ll be thrilled to bits to hear this news, doncha think?
“I see,” my sister says when I finally tell her that night, after I put Starr to bed. We’re in her room, me cross-legged on the bed eating an apple (yes, I do occasionally eat G-rated food), her twisted around in the chair in front of the old desk where she’s set up the laptop she bought after she sold off a tennis bracelet.
“That’s it?” I say when nothing else seems to be forthcoming. I’d expected ranting, raving. Foaming at the mouth, at the very least. Instead, I’m facing a picture of total calm.
Creepy.
Jen frowns. “What am I supposed to say? Am I happy about her working for you? No. Is this important relative to the mess my own life is in right now? Again, no.”
Ah. Once again, it’s All About Jen. Have to hand it to her, though—she sure knows how to prioritize.
I take a bite of my apple. “We don’t know for sure that either of them were actually unfaithful.”
“Tell me you’re not that naive.”
“There’s a difference between naiveté and accusing someone without proof.”
Jen gets up, grabbing her ever-present bottle of Evian and joining me on the bed, where she piles pillows behind her back and settles against the old maple headboard, legs stretched out, feet crossed at the ankles. Her toenails, peeking out from beneath the hems of a pair of raw silk drawstring pants, are a brilliant rose color, reminding me of how long it’s been since I painted mine. She takes a swig of her water, screwing the top back on before saying, “Do you think I’m self-involved?”
Uh-huh. This from a woman who, in less than five seconds, for no discernible reason, switched the subject from Dolly and my grandfather to herself.
“What is this, a trick question?”
Hanging by a Thread Page 27
