What Nora Knew

by Yellin, Linda

  While lying next to him on the Sealy, I told him he was rude and insensitive and no woman wants to hear about the previous girlfriend’s taste in mattresses.

  I went back to my office mad. He went back to his office mad. I’m glad I wasn’t the patient whose neck he was cracking next. I can’t even recall how things escalated or why I was angry. I just knew that I was right and Russell was wrong so he’d have to be the one to call and apologize. I bet he had no clue what my mattress brand was. I sure couldn’t. I just knew it began with an s.

  I conducted a mental inventory of what clothing items I’d left at his apartment and how I’d retrieve them, versus could I live without them? I had a key. I could sneak in while he was at work, toss my belongings into a plastic grocery bag, and haul my ass out of there. Or I could ask Russell to leave my things downstairs with his doorman and I’d pick them up the next time I visited the West Side. Which might be never. Or maybe he could drop my things with my doorman at the same time he picked up his things from my doorman and . . . I resolved to never again leave personal items at a boyfriend’s apartment.

  I was surprised when he didn’t call that night. Russell’s not keen on conflict. It’s his nature to smooth things over, clear the air, talk things out, or at the very least deny them.

  I went across the hall to hang out with Angela, but she was rushing to get ready for a date with her swim coach. She answered the door holding an open bottle of wine. I’d never seen her dressed so girlie. Pink halter dress. Pink sandals. “I think tonight’s the night I learn the backstroke,” she said. She sounded all pink and happy. “Don’t call the cops if you hear screaming.”

  I spent the evening watching Sleepless in Seattle for the umpteenth time, crying at the ending like I always do, but wondering if I really did understand what Nora was saying.

  13

  The day before the Bloomingdale’s fight, Deirdre summoned me to her office. Even by her standards of low necklines, she’d managed to outdo herself. I sat across her glass-topped desk praying she didn’t cough or sneeze, causing her breasts to come flying out at me. Aside from her usual neatly aligned notepads, pens, and laptop, three items were positioned in front of me: what looked like a black metal lipstick tube, a black cigar case, and a short-handled plastic bottle scrubber. “Can you guess what these are?” Deirdre asked. I was about to say a lipstick, a cigar holder, and a bottle scrubber when she said, “Vibrators.”

  Oh, the twinkle in her eye, the devilish grin! She removed the lipstick cap to reveal a rubber semblance of a red lipstick and pressed the bottom of the tube. We both sat there watching the rubber lipstick vibrate. Deirdre pressed the button again and then a third time, causing the little bugger to speed up each time. If it were a real lipstick, only a clown could apply it.

  “Emily discovered these,” she said. She removed the top of the cigar case, unveiling a rubber mascara wand, slightly too large for a real mascara wand and with bristles I wouldn’t want anywhere near my vagina. Again, Deirdre made it vibrate once, twice, at three speeds. I did not want to ask just where Emily discovered these cosmetically disguised vibrators. The bottle scrubber, it turned out, was supposed to be a blush brush and was the scariest of the three. “Do you know what these are for?” Deirdre asked.

  Talk about your awkward questions. “I have a pretty good idea,” I said.

  “They’re designed to fool people so you can toss them in your purse and carry them everywhere. Or leave them on your nightstand without worrying what your cleaning lady might think.” Good to know. The day I hire a cleaning lady, I’ll run right out to buy vibrating cosmetics. “But best of all”—there was more?—“you can take them on an airplane.”

  Why? I wanted to ask. To fly solo in the mile-high club?

  “Emily suggested they’d be a perfect story subject for you.” It’d be fair to say that by this point I was pretty much speechless. Not that Emily’s contribution to my career opportunities was a total surprise, at least not since the angry note I found deposited on my chair: You stole my 92Y panel! Thanks for nothing! Deirdre pushed the three vibrators closer toward me. “Let’s see if you can get these through a security scanner,” she said. “Then women will know if they can grab a lipstick and hop on a plane.” Deirdre loved this assignment. Her smile was amused. Mine was insincere.

  “You want me to fly somewhere?” I said. Maybe I could pick the location.

  “I want you to get past security,” Deirde said. “The courts downtown have similar scanners. See if you can get through. Cheaper than a plane ticket.”

  “Yes, and if I get arrested, I’ll be that much closer to a jail.”

  Deirdre sat back, pleased with herself. “I appreciate when my staff members come up with ideas for one another. It fosters a supportive work culture.”

  I picked up the vibrators, stood to leave. “Now I’ll have to come up with a book for Emily to review. I hear Proust is snappy.”

  “Tuesday deadline?” Deirdre said.

  “If not sooner,” I said.

  When I returned to my desk, I didn’t bother looking to see if Emily was in her cubicle. I knew she was and I knew she was listening in on her side of our shared wall. “If you used these first, I’ll kill you!” I said.

  * * *

  I didn’t randomly choose a courthouse. I gave my options considerable thought. Family court? No, too embarrassing if I got stopped. There might be children around. Criminal court? Also unappealing. There might be criminals around. After ruling out the Supreme Court—it just felt wrong—and its appellate division, the one I can never understand, I settled on the civil court building. Landlords suing tenants. Insurance companies suing everyone. Nonthreatening legal activities.

  Friday morning I headed down there first thing. I figured a Friday would be less crowded, fewer cases being heard so the judges could head out to their weekend homes early. I didn’t want the line to be so short that the scanner guards would have nothing better to do than focus on me and my handbag, nor so long that if they did detain me, hold up my blush brush, and holler out, “Okay! Who’s trying to sneak a vibrator into court?” there’d be a large crowd witnessing my humiliation. How would I respond to a “Hey! This isn’t a lipstick!” What would I say to a “Will the lady who owns the vibrating mascara please step out of line?” I’d stay right where I was, look around accusingly at the other women in line, and make a face like How could you! In a public courthouse yet! And what if my vibrating cosmetics did pass through security? What if they caught on? I’d hate to think what might be taking place in the state bathrooms, let alone the federal ones.

  Those were my thoughts while waiting for my turn. A man in a dashiki was dumping his keys and wristwatch into a small plastic bin. A woman who had to be a lawyer—not only was she wearing a suit, but she was wearing pantyhose in the middle of July, for crying out loud—set a leather briefcase on the table. Maybe she had a vibrator tucked inside, a big ol’ honking Rabbit. My own big ol’ honking Rabbit was hidden in a pouch beneath my bed with its relatives, the dust bunnies. I only used it between boyfriends and preferred a boyfriend to a Rabbit.

  Pre-Bloomingdale’s, Russell and I had joked about christening his new mattress, how we’d have to spend a great deal of time breaking it in. It was important to him that I help choose the mattress; he wanted me to be comfortable, too. Maybe Russell was content to sit at home when I’d rather go out. Maybe I could barely remember why we were drawn to each other in the first place, or that at times it seemed all he needed was someone, not necessarily me. But he was sweet. Thoughtful. Reliable. And I was a few months from turning forty. Good reasons to hang on to Russell and keep my Rabbit under the bed.

  The line moved forward. With more than a little trepidation I placed my handbag on the roller belt, then watched it travel merrily on its way right after a backpack and ahead of a long, zippered canvas bag that looked suspiciously like a gun case. One of the guards informed us we could keep our shoes on. Good news. If I ever cross paths with that m
an with the string coming out of his shoe, it won’t be pretty.

  I stepped through the security arch. The guard nodded; he looked bored to death. My handbag with its secret stash came riding out. Then stopped. Retreated. The roller stopped. My heart stopped. The roller resumed and my bag reappeared. No detonators went off. No alarms blared. I wasn’t carted off to detention and a cell full of prostitutes. I grabbed my bag, waved good-bye to the guards and left.

  Stepping into the sunshine, I dug out my phone and called Russell’s office. His receptionist said he was with a patient, but ten seconds later he was on the line. I apologized. He apologized. He said he’d bring over a DVD and we could order in Chinese.

  * * *

  A week later, I was sitting in the reception room of Dr. David Lewis, DDS, waiting for my six-month cleaning. On the wall opposite me hung a poster of the Three Stooges dressed like dentists, holding hammers and wrenches, Dr. Lewis’s idea of humor. Behind an open sliding-glass window a young woman in a medical smock was cursing at her computer. I sifted through the magazines on the corner end table. Cycle World. Golf Digest. Field & Stream. I wanted to curse, too. The one other patient in the waiting area, a woman with close-cropped hair and the bone structure to warrant it, was reading an iPad. “Pathetic choices,” she said, wrinkling her nose and acknowledging the magazine selection. “Whenever I come here, I bring my own reading material.”

  I said, “I’m impressed you remember to do that.”

  She shrugged. “Bad teeth.” She went back to her iPad, chuckling, then sighing, then looking up and asking, “Do you ever read EyeSpy?”

  “Sure!” I said. Maybe she’d compliment something I wrote.

  “Some of their articles are ridiculous,” the woman said. “You couldn’t pay me to do the crazy things one writer does. But this piece is adorable. Totally different for them and totally charming.”

  It didn’t sound like it was about vibrators. “What’s the topic?” I asked, trying to peek at her screen.

  “Love. Romance. Recognizing the one.” She read aloud: “ ‘Bestselling crime novelist Cameron Duncan writes that finding love is the ultimate mystery.’ ”

  If Dr. Lewis had stepped into the waiting room right that second, it would have been an excellent time to lecture me on grinding my teeth. “May I see that one teensy minute?” I asked the woman.

  Her eyes narrowed. She gripped her iPad. Like maybe I’d snatch it out of her hands and hightail it out of there.

  “One little second? Please? I’ll give it right back. Promise!”

  “Only one second,” she said, handing it over.

  “I swear.”

  At first I skimmed the article, then I slowed down, absorbed in Cameron’s words. Love is a catalog of emotional needs and you need to prioritize what’s important to you. For some it’s arousal and erotica, for others it’s a playmate or security. Once you choose your priority from the catalog of love, you discover what’s critical to you. I read his interviews with couples who believed the energy and vibrancy of New York fostered romance. These were effusive, rhapsodic, lyrical couples, not the subway cranks I cross-examined. I read his list of New York’s most romantic settings. I’d written a list. I’d included a list in my article. I liked my list much more than his list. He wrote how he was waiting for that sense of magic and recognition he knew he’d feel from the first moment he held his soul mate’s hand and exchanged that first memorable kiss. I wanted to hate the article. But it was sweet, romantic. We try. We trust. We make safe choices, foolish choices, wrong choices, wrongheaded choices. We fall off the course and climb back on again.

  He didn’t write at all like Nora Ephron. Even the wonder boy couldn’t pull that off. But like a Nora Ephron movie, he made love sound fairy-tale idyllic and sparkling with possibility.

  The woman started coughing, leaning closer to me. “Excuse me,” she said. “Perhaps you can hand me that copy of Field and Stream.” She was pissed.

  If you have good distance vision, it’s actually possible to hand an iPad back to its owner while continuing to read the screen. That’s what I was doing when I caught one more paragraph. In Sleepless in Seattle, we know Meg Ryan will end up with Tom Hanks. She’ll end up with Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally. But we still keep watching. We’re still mesmerized by the journey.

  Cameron had totally ripped off what I’d told him at the book party! Did the guy walk around with a hidden wire? Did he have no shame!

  “iPad hog,” the woman was saying, stuffing the tablet into her purse.

  The receptionist who’d been cussing at her computer was now smiling. She and her computer must have made up. “He’s ready for you, Miss Brichta,” she said.

  Miss Brichta served up one final snarl as she made her way through the door to the treatment rooms.

  When I was finally stretched out in a dental chair, a green paper bib clipped around my neck, with Lynn the hygienist gloved and masked and picking away, I thought about how flattering it was, beyond flattering, an homage of sorts, that bestselling author Cameron Duncan had swiped what I’d said. What a compliment! What an accolade! What nerve. I bet he stole half the article, like all that business about magic and memorable kisses. While Lynn scraped, I made a list in my head of my memorable kisses.

  Johnny Zwierzko. Fifth grade. Gum in his mouth. Juicy Fruit. I hate Juicy Fruit. Grade: C-.

  Pablo Mullen. High school. Sophomore year. Lactose intolerant. Passed gas while kissing me in a Baskin-Robbins. Grade: D+.

  Bradley Bernett. High school. Junior year. Making out big-time, kissing me good-night on my front steps. My father suddenly opens the door, pulls me inside, and shoves a corned-beef sandwich in Bradley’s hand, saying, “Here! Chew on this!” Bradley: A-. Sidney Hallberg: F.

  Nameless Kappa Sigma fraternity pledge. College. Freshman year. Regal Cinemas in Albany. Where nameless pledge somehow managed to poke his penis through the bottom of the cardboard popcorn box in his lap and then offered me popcorn. Grade: Incomplete.

  Evan Naboshek. A+. Unfortunately.

  Richie Rossier. Five weeks after my divorce was finalized. Washed my tonsils with his tongue. D-.

  Russell Edley. Solid B.

  “Did that hurt?” Lynn the hygienist asked, stepping back. Before I could answer, she said, “Drink and spit.”

  * * *

  That afternoon, I could hear Emily in her office pretending to read Cameron’s article and commenting out loud. “Wow, Cameron Duncan did an amazing job on this romance story. Not that it was hard to write, I’m sure. Any fool could have done it, but he sure did a great job!”

  I wanted to tell her that the best paragraph in the entire article, the one with the most profound insight, was mine, that he swiped it from me, took an innocent conversation shared outside of a powder room on Central Park South and absconded with it as his own.

  But since I’d rather not talk to Emily, at all, ever, period, I didn’t mention that.

  I slipped my headphones on and researched organic restaurants. That was my next assignment. Writing about food I never ate. My mouth ached. My mind strayed.

  Lynn the hygienist had really dug in. There are almost 82 million results when you google organic restaurants. That should be a good start. I couldn’t get past being called an “iPad hog” even if it was true. Okay, so maybe I held on to it longer than I’d promised, but why resort to childish name-calling? If I had an iPad and someone asked to borrow it, I’d say, Take your time, no rush at all. So why was I annoyed with that lady and not upset with Cameron Duncan? I thought I was upset with him. I tried to stay upset with him. I read that the number of organic restaurants was expected to grow 14 percent over the next year. I told myself Cameron didn’t remember it was me who said we still keep watching even when we know the ending. He wasn’t half as good-looking as Russell. Imagine all the women who must be swooning over his romance piece. Russell’s new mattress was too soft. Oh, Molly, what’s wrong with you?

  * * *

  After w
ork I stopped in the Barnes & Noble on Eighty-Sixth, grateful it hadn’t turned into a discount clothing store like the Barnes & Noble on Sixty-Sixth. I paused for my usual five-minute reverie where I imagined my own published book. My acerbic observations on The Great Gatsby. My smart-alecky commentary on Pride and Prejudice. My snarky appraisal of Washington Square. Hallberg, the literary heretic, embraced by critics and fans alike. I tossed in a few book tours and autograph signings.

  After I got past that mental malarkey, I found the crime section. Cameron’s three novels took up an entire shelf; several copies were available for each title. I didn’t know if that was a good sign because the store ordered lots of copies, or a bad sign because nobody was buying any copies. The artwork showed Mike Bing with a different dame on each cover. Probably the girlfriends he kept killing off. I figured I’d buy the first book first and see where Mr. Duncan got his big start. Russell already owned the first book, but I never borrow Russell’s books. Russell mangles books, dog-ears them, underlines passages with black marker that bleeds through to the opposite side, drops books in the toilet or leaves them on buses. I don’t even want to touch Russell’s books.

  Maybe I’d go buy an egg-salad sandwich at the Barnes & Noble café. If I read fast enough, I could read Cameron’s book while I sat there and not pay for it. I’d just have to be careful with the pages. I have enough of a moral code to draw the line at reshelving books I’ve smeared with egg salad. But whipping through a couple hundred pages or so while sampling a book for free? I’m cool with that.

  I was weaving my way through fiction toward the café when I saw Russell’s head. I peeked over from my aisle to see his aisle. Poetry. Russell was in the poetry section. What the hell was Russell doing in poetry? A normal girlfriend would have walked up to her boyfriend, expressed delight at their fortuitous unscripted meeting and casually asked, What the hell are you doing in poetry? But I went for option B. I spied on him. Why, I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time, more than any deep-down desire to be a sneak. It’s fascinating to observe someone who thinks he’s walking around unobserved. You never know what you might learn. Like I learned, for instance, that Russell was buying a poetry book. There was only one possible explanation. He was buying the book for me. I’d have to hide and wait until he left. If I showed up now, I’d spoil his gift. I ducked around to the Women’s Issues section. He’d never find me there.