“I’m sure she’s fine,” he says and returns his attention to the road.
He’s scaring me. “Are we going to be orphans?”
Marcus pushes the brakes too hard when he tries to stop at the light, and the car skids a little. “Rosie, the roads are slick. I better concentrate.”
He drives extra carefully the rest of the way to the Giant.
“I’ll take care of you, Markie. That’s what big sisters do,” I tell him as we’re getting out of the car. He won’t believe me, because he was the one who used to take care of me when we were kids. I’d huff off to my room and throw myself around, and Marcus would come and sit on my carpet, and sort his baseball cards until I calmed down. But when he got older he stayed in his own room most of the time except for when he and Dad would sit in the den drinking root beer and watching the Bills.
“That’s right, Rosie. You’re my big sister,” he tells me over his shoulder, still without meeting my eyes.
Marcus and I wait in a twenty-minute checkout line at the Giant. He buys the last carton of milk, a three-pound canister of prunes for Mom, hot dogs for me, and half a cartful of other food all totaling seventy-three dollars and thirty-two cents. I’ve never spent more than thirty-one dollars at the grocery store, but then, I eat the exact same thing every day: a bowl of Life cereal with two-percent milk for breakfast, a peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich for lunch, and a Stouffer’s manicotti for dinner.
On the way home from the grocery store, Marcus’s cell phone rings.
“Hi!”
I can tell it’s Robin on the line, because his whole face breaks into a grin. When he smiles at Mom and me, he only uses his mouth.
“The Giant parking lot with Rosie. How’s Justin?”
“Rosie, they’re coming home tomorrow morning,” he says as if he’s just found out the best news of his life. He used to look like this right after he’d wolfed down his dinner so he could go visit Mindy Greenblatt, his high school girlfriend.
When we get home, Marcus makes a business call while Mom puts the groceries away, rearranging Robin’s pantry in the process. Mom’s pouring milk in a pan for cocoa when Marcus tells us that one of his delivery trucks slid into a snow bank on the way to a hotel out in Virginia, his bakery’s biggest account. The driver fractured his collarbone. “I’ve got to take care of this, it’s a disaster. You and Rosie want to take a nap or watch something on television?”
“Maybe we’ll stretch out. I had a big week.” She turns to me. “We went and got our mammograms together Tuesday, I had the podiatrist Wednesday, and lunch with Muriel Kaplan on Thursday. Such a noodge, always at me to winter with her in Boynton Beach when she knows I don’t have the time.”
“I remember when the two of you volunteered for Planned Parenthood. You wore those necklaces with the gold-plated hangers.” Marcus taps his Adam’s apple and glances at the silver chain around Mom’s neck. Dad’s wedding band hangs there now.
“I remember those hangers, Mom.” As soon as I say this, she and Marcus give each other one of those looks I hate, like I’ve missed something. Everyone knows what happens to a baby when you swallow a coat hanger. Please.
“Why don’t you take Muriel up on her offer and spend time with her in Florida next winter? Take Rosie with you.”
“I have a job, Marcus.” He’s getting me mad again. Does he think he’s the only one with responsibilities? My boss once told me that I’m the hardest working employee the Toy Chest ever hired, and that I understand more about stuffed animals and games than he does. I huff off to my bedroom and watch back-to-back episodes of The Facts of Life. Robin bought me two whole seasons on DVD, and this is the one where Tudie steals a present for Mrs. Garrett because she can’t afford to buy one herself. Tudie is my favorite character.
On my way to the bathroom, I notice the door to the second guest room is open a crack. Mom’s curled into a ball on the edge of the bed. She never used to nap. I shut the door and rush back to my room just in time to catch Mrs. Garrett making one of her funny faces. That makes me feel better.
“I’m sorry if I made you mad,” Marcus says as he appears in my doorway. “I just worry about you and Mom.”
“If you worry so much, why don’t you ever call?” I feel like I’m going to cry. “The phone lines run two ways,” I add in Mom’s voice, and we laugh together.
“I’ll call more often.”
“No, you won’t.” I sniffle. “You’re just saying that because you feel bad about treating me like a baby.”
I can tell that I’ve embarrassed him, because his neck turns red and he looks down at his feet.
He says, “You game for a little more shoveling?”
We go outside and before we start shoveling, I toss a handful of snow at him. “Gotcha back.”
“So you did, Rosie.”
We work in silence. My clothes get so sweaty that they stick to my body. We finish our shoveling, and I follow Marcus to the backyard. He clears snow off the trampoline and then takes off his boots and climbs on. He bounces once, then twice, then high, higher. I listen to his panting and the sound of his wet socks slapping against the canvas. Breath. Splat. Breath. Splat.
I don’t want to be left out, so I climb up on the trampoline and plunk down on the cross in the center. Marcus is breathing harder now, and he looks at me like I’m barging in on his fun, like he used to when I tried to talk to his friends as they ran off to a football game and left me home watching Fantasy Island with Mom and Dad. I’m not budging, though.
He tries to bounce me, but I’m a lot heavier than I was when I was a kid. Maybe I weigh more than he does now. He jumps, and I just slide around a little.
“Marcus, jump harder!”
He tries again, but I still don’t move much.
“Marcus, jump higher!” I scream at him, like our lives depend on whether he can bounce me into the air.
He bounces a few more times, staring at his feet. And then he jumps as high as he possibly can. It’s starting to snow again, and I turn my head through the light flakes, toward the kitchen window where Mom’s looking on. I look up at Marcus, and for the first time all weekend, maybe the first time since we were kids, he faces me and looks at me hard. I lean my head back and smile at him as he comes down. When he lands, my body moves ever so slightly in the direction of the darkening sky.
LADIES NIGHT
Robin Weiss-Gold, June 2002
Robin wiped a glob of guacamole from the expensive suede jacket she’d bought Marcus for his birthday. Now they couldn’t take it back. “I’m sorry,” he said for the one hundredth time that week. He was sorry that his bakery’s largest account, a hotel chain, had gone bankrupt, and sorry that his retailers had cut their bread orders; thanks to Atkins and South Beach, carbs were the new bubonic plague. He was sorry that he’d tried to save his business by draining their 401Ks and Justin’s bar mitzvah savings account.
“No need to be sorry. You can take anything back to Nordstrom,” she said brightly, and relayed an anecdote she’d heard about a woman who successfully returned a pair of sandals with a hole in one of the soles. Cheerfulness was Robin’s best weapon to fight her mounting anger toward her husband.
“I think I’ve made too big of a mess.” He leaned against the large kitchen island, a brass rack of Calphalon sparkling over his head.
She wet a paper towel and dabbed the stain maniacally. “I think I’m getting it,” she said as she constructed the sob story she’d give the saleswoman. Sheila? No, Shelly. She’d tell Shelly that next week the bakery would file for bankruptcy and she and Marcus would lose everything: the house, the trampoline, and the chocolate-colored suede jacket that smelled like success.
He started to reach for her, but he stopped.
“The kids are waiting upstairs for you to help them with their homework,” she said. “I’m hosting ladies night, remember?”
Marcus tried to fish a broken Dorito out of the bowl of guacamole. She shooed him away. He’d done enough damage for one nigh
t, actually for one lifetime. She poured year-old Halloween candy into a dish. This was the first time ever she hadn’t baked for ladies night. And there would be no gourmet pita chips to accompany the unnaturally green artichoke dip from Whole Foods. Too expensive. She opened a bottle of wine and downed a glass. She rarely drank.
Robin gave herself her hourly reminder that she was being a big baby. People went to bed hungry every night all over the world, and here she was whining about having to serve stale candy to a group of well-heeled women? Waa-waa. Her mother would never have spent a week’s worth of grocery money on one night of fancy snacks and wine. She lit a thick candle, wishing that the group was gathering around Becca’s fire pit tonight. Some time away from the house would do her a world of good. Still, she knew she could count on the ladies to distract her from herself for a few hours, perhaps help her redirect the tropical storm that was brewing along her inner coast.
She put an assortment of her music on their CD player: Cowboy Junkies, Indigo Girls, and Tracy Chapman. Woman-power lyrics always perked her up. She barely heard the knock of her sister-in-law, Hannah, orchestrator of this book club that had turned into ladies night because nobody ever read the books.
“I love this song,” Hannah said as she entered the kitchen. “Is it Tracy Chapman or Joan Armatrading?”
“Tracy Chapman,” Robin said. “Can you really not tell the difference?”
Hannah shrugged, and Robin noticed her new diamond stud earrings. They probably cost more than Robin’s mortgage, a thought that never would have occurred to her a few weeks ago. Her brother Danny had always been a generous gift giver, and now he was an enormously successful realtor. After Hannah had Goldie, she’d given up her job running a nonprofit that taught parenting skills to inner-city teens. Too much travel. Robin wouldn’t have pegged Hannah as the stay-at-home type, but babies and wealth became her.
“Am I too late to say goodnight to my niece and nephew?” Hannah kissed Robin’s cheek. Hannah was still making up for what she called her “uber-bitch” phase, when fertility hormone treatments and pregnancy stress made her too bitter and nervous to bond with Justin and Sydney. Now she was the mother of two girls and hands down the most content person Robin knew. Robin longed for the time when she’d been the happier one.
“Of course not. Maybe you can help Justin study for his math test.” Robin laughed.
“Oh, I seriously doubt that.”
Hannah trotted up the steps while Robin poured herself a second glass of wine. She anticipated that they would either have to rent their house or sell it, move back to Rochester, and live with Marcus’s mother for the summer. Esther had already found her a dental hygienist gig. Robin loved her mother-in-law, but the idea of sharing a home with Esther made her breath catch. And what would they tell the kids? Justin had been counting the days until his second summer at a sleep-away camp that had been kind enough to refund their deposit. Sydney had been picking up tension in the house lately and had begun chewing her nails until her fingers bled.
Becca Coopersmith let herself into the house without knocking. “It’s just the three of us tonight,” she said.
“No Amy?” Robin asked. Hannah’s sister worked long hours, but when she did join the group she always entertained them, originally with tales of her romantic escapades and now with wickedly funny commentary on the suburban life she was leading with her new husband, Leon.
“Nope. And Maggie called,” Becca said. “Eric had to go up to New York for a shoot.” Maggie never left the kids when Eric had a job in Manhattan, not after he’d been on a shoot blocks from Ground Zero when the towers were hit.
Hannah came downstairs. “Justin’s math is beyond me, but I did get to see Sydney’s new cartwheel. Hey, where’s Maggie?”
“Eric’s in New York,” Becca said.
“Oh.” Hannah grabbed a Milky Way from the dish. “Poor baby.” She meant Maggie, but Eric was her brother, and she worried about him too.
Robin felt a rush of love for her ladies. She knew they would listen compassionately if she chose to describe the nightmare of the last two weeks, and she knew they would brainstorm about ways to help, but she was too embarrassed by the stigma of going broke and her prior obliviousness to their situations.
Becca and Hannah poured themselves some wine, walked into the great room, and settled into their assigned comfy chairs. Hannah slid off her sandals and wiggled her freshly pedicured feet. Robin kicked off her Danskos and polished off her second glass of wine.
“Okay, so let’s get to the important stuff. Did you invite Nikki?” Hannah asked, ready to dine out on Bertrand Court gossip.
“No, I forgot,” Robin said, hoping Nikki wouldn’t see them through the big living-room window as she launched into a Tad-bashing tirade. A month after the Chamberlains had moved to Bertrand Court, Tad ended up in her dentist’s chair, and it took her a full hour to scrape an inordinate amount of plaque from his teeth. He didn’t acknowledge her, even though she’d appeared at his front door with a banana bread only the week before. Clearly he didn’t have room for a dental hygienist in even the outer periphery of his social circle. Rumor had it that before he and Nikki moved to the neighborhood, they used to ski with the Gores. Now the Republicans were in office, and Tad, out of his White House job, couldn’t find work anywhere.
Hannah tucked her feet under her legs. “I saw their new dog. Christ, it’s the size of a horse.”
“Hugo, I think his name is,” Becca said. “He was walking Nikki the other day, and she had to bring a Hefty bag to clean up his poop.”
“I can’t imagine Nikki cleaning up shit,” Hannah said.
“Me neither,” Becca agreed. “But I like her.”
“Me too, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop talking about her,” Hannah said.
“Who knows? Maybe she talks about us too?” Becca said.
Robin practically snorted. “Us? I don’t think so.”
This conversation was not bringing Robin her usual guilty satisfaction. She imagined Tad and Marcus bumping into each other at Starbucks in the middle of the morning, both unemployed and lost. She decided to forgive Tad right then and there for his plaque and arrogance.
Once they got their Tad and Nikki fix out of the way, the women moved on to discussing their summer plans, as it was early June.
“What are you guys up to this summer, Bec?” Hannah asked.
Typically, Becca amused Robin with her unbridled enthusiasm for — well, everything. She’d dragged them all to a steamy yoga studio in the District to sweat their asses off for ninety minutes, but who was counting? She’d lured them into fire-pit bull sessions, belly dancing, Zumba, and the adult bat mitzvah class that Robin had dropped out of. Robin only half listened while Becca described the trip she and Adam were taking to Italy while the boys were off at the same summer camp where Becca and Adam had met.
“Have a gelato for me.” Robin’s tongue was growing thick from the wine. She poured herself a third glass.
“Slow down there, girl.” Becca put her hand over her own wine glass.
“So tell me, Hannah, where is my fabulous brother taking you and your girls this summer?” Robin tapped her sister-in-law’s knee a bit too hard.
Hannah gave Robin a look and twirled her diamond stud around in her ear. “British Columbia.”
“And will you be bringing your staff?” Robin tried to sound innocent when she asked the question, but a thorny rim around the word “staff” gave her away.
Hannah looked hurt. “I hadn’t planned on it.”
Becca glanced from Robin to Hannah and fiddled with the chamsah charm on her necklace. Robin’s inner storm was picking up in speed and intensity. The wine was not helping matters. “Excuse me,” she said, and got up and went into the kitchen.
She heard Marcus come downstairs and close the door to his office. She was grateful that he didn’t stop to say hello to Becca and Hannah. She placed both hands on the counter and drew her shoulders back, the way her physical t
herapist had taught her, to relieve the muscle spasms that were a casualty of her work. She took a glass out of the cupboard and held it under the Deer Park water dispenser. They’d have to get rid of this forty-dollar-a-month luxury. Robin hadn’t worried so much about money since she was a kid and her father went broke after investing in a Ponzi scheme. Danny set out to earn back every penny his dad had lost, and their sister Denise married for money, but Robin decided to learn a trade. People would always need their teeth cleaned. Robin and Marcus had used her meager salary to fund vacations, and she’d also tucked away some money to indulge in expensive gifts for the children, but even if she worked full time, she could never support the family, much less pay off the bakery’s debt.
She felt a warm hand on her shoulder. “You okay?” Becca startled her from her thoughts.
Becca stroked her friend’s back, the gesture triggering Robin’s fierce longing for her mother. She wanted to ask her how they’d managed to survive Daddy’s bankruptcy. But both of her parents were dead, and here she was drinking too much wine and sniping at Hannah because of her financial security.
“Let’s go back in,” she said.
“Okay, then,” Becca said, and they returned to the great room.
Robin removed a Hershey’s Kiss from the dish and handed it to Hannah. “Peace offering,” she mumbled. There, she could be nice. Maybe the storm was going to die down and not hit land at all.
“It’s okay,” Hannah said, but Robin could tell she was still hurt.
“God, I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch. Forgive the PMS, ladies.”
Hannah gave the Kiss back to Robin. “Maybe you need the chocolate more than I do.”
“You’re right, Han.” Robin stroked her sister-in-law’s arm.
Becca and Hannah wore sympathy all over their faces. Robin was tempted to confide in them with the childish hope that Hannah would suggest wanding Danny’s money at the problem and everything would return to normal. Then she remembered a book club discussion — back when they read the books — about a woman who had denied her mentally ill brother financial assistance. Hannah had been the lone member to side with main character. “My dad told me never to lend large sums of money to relatives. It caused all sorts of weirdness between my grandmother and Aunt Sylvia,” she’d said, and Robin had filed away the comment. Now her face grew hot, and little beads of sweat pooled on her cheeks. She smiled as warmly as she could at Hannah, again taking in her earrings, as well as the Tumi bag nestled beside her.
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