“Sure,” he said, registering annoyance. “She couldn’t be any more inept than someone an agency would send me and charge an arm and a leg for.”
For all his bellicosity, Mr. Price could also be a pussycat. He hated to interview people because it would mean that he’d have to reject someone. So he would take a staffer on faith…and then abuse them. Go figure.
Louise placed the call. After a minute or so of discussion with Mercedes Santiago, she covered the receiver with her hand (why she didn’t press the “hold” button was a mystery to me), and spoke to Mr. Price. “Mrs. Santiago’s sister is available. She left secretarial and started her own business as a storefront psychic, but it wasn’t working out, so she’s been looking for a job. She can start tomorrow morning.”
It’s your lucky day! I thought.
“Well, she couldn’t be any screwier than anyone else who works here,” Uncle Earwax observed, unwrapping a cheese danish. He took a large bite, and with crumbs dribbling out of his mouth offered the pastry around the room. “Anyone want some of this?” he asked earnestly. “It’s delicious.”
“You’ve got…” I said to him, trying to diplomatically alert him to the bits that had nestled in the corner of his mouth.
My uncle took the hint and wiped his face with his hand. “Where the hell’s a napkin around this place when you need one?” He looked around the office. “Alice, this room is a mess. The first thing I want you to do is go through all these piles of loose papers that my last three secretaries willfully neglected—or buried—and see what you can take care of.” He pointed to several precariously high stacks of file folders coated with a thin layer of grayish grit, their original bright colors faded from sitting on the windowsill since God was a boy.
I looked at the accumulation. “What about a bonfire?” I said cheerily. “No?”
He was not amused.
It took me most of the day to comb through all the papers. By lunchtime I had tossed a few houseflies that had gone to their eternal reward among the files, was sneezing from the dust, and was covered with soot and dirt. Uncle Earwax must not have been too hard up for money because I found two checks he’d received for settling cases stuck in one of the old folders. One had been issued nearly a year ago. When I brought them to his attention, he threw a tantrum worthy of Mr. Price, saying he was spending a small fortune to litigate with the respective insurance companies because he believed his office had never received the checks. “Which secretary misplaced them?” I asked him.
“I think it was the one who left to become a circus performer,” he answered.
“Oh, come on. You didn’t really have a secretary who ran away to join the circus…did you?”
“Yeah, she went to clown college. But she flunked out, took the civil service exam, and immediately got a job as a court officer. Now she carries a gun.” He didn’t look like he was putting me on. “She had a lot of problems, that girl. She had that disease where—what do you call it when you spell all your words backwards or sideways or something?”
“Dyslexia?” I guessed. “Why would someone with dyslexia become a secretary?”
Uncle Earwax didn’t respond, but dug out his wallet, opened the billfold, and handed me a hundred dollars. “It took over a year for three women to create that mess and you untangled it within the day,” he said.
I looked at the bill. It wasn’t too often that I saw portraits of Benjamin Franklin. “Thanks,” I said, suddenly reminded of childhood birthdays when my mother’s other brother, Uncle Sheldon the eccentric millionaire, would magnanimously hand me a dollar after dessert.
When I got home, I told Gram about the surprise bonus.
“So, maybe he’s not such a rat bastard after all,” she said.
“But I don’t believe zebras can change their stripes. He’s just got you hooked again, that’s what I think. Don’t forget, before the other day, the last time you were at your uncle’s office, he called you stupid in front of his clients.”
“Believe me, I haven’t forgotten,” I assured her. “But this time, I swear it’s only temporary. I’m working off a sort of emotional indenture, since he went and found Dorian that crackerjack criminal lawyer and more or less covered his expenses. I didn’t have another survival job prospect anyway, and this time I’ve promised myself that I won’t let it get in the way of auditioning.” I offered her the cash for household expenses but she told me to keep it. “You earned it, sweetheart,” she insisted. “And knowing your mother’s brother, he won’t be content to behave like a mensch for more than five minutes before he reminds you of his munificence.”
It was funny to hear her use Yiddish. It was spoken at home when she was a kid, but after she ran away and then married Danny Finnegan, her family had more or less written her off for dead, and as a private form of revenge she’d adopted her husband’s brand of lapsed Catholicism.
Gram took my hands and looked me straight in the eye. Her expression was one of loving concern. “Alice, I hope you get to the end of that rainbow you so richly deserve.”
“So do I, Gram.”
“Why do you think I’m sticking around here so long? I want to be able to tell everyone on your opening night on Broadway, ‘That’s my granddaughter up there!’” The fierce pride in her voice didn’t match the quiet sadness in her eyes.
“If you say it too loud, the usher will come down the aisle and shush you up!” I teased.
“Let her try.” Gram gave my arm one of her playful squeezes. “You’re going to be a big star. If it weren’t for you, I would have thrown in the sponge long ago.”
“Towel, Gram.”
She looked around, misunderstanding me. “Where?”
I shook my head. “You throw in the towel. Not the sponge.”
She threw up her hands and laughed. “Is that what I said? The sponge?”
“Yup.” She was doing that a lot lately. Using the wrong words for things. Or she’d be in the middle of a sentence, going full tilt, and suddenly she would stop, like a horse shying at a fence, her memory stymied, and she would search for the word she wanted. I could see from her eyes that she knew the word, but it was as though one part of her brain wasn’t speaking to another.
“Oh, Alice, do you know that the thing is broken?” she asked.
“What thing are you talking about, Gram?”
“You know…the…the sitting-on thing that was my mother’s.” She pointed at the antique settee in our living room. It was a sort of low-backed fainting couch that always made me think of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Worn, but loved, it had been reupholstered on a number of occasions, but never within my lifetime, as far as I can remember.
“No, I didn’t know,” I admitted. “What happened to it? Where is it broken?”
Gram showed me where there was a crack at the apex of the decorative wooden curvature that went up around the head of the settee and down along the back. “And one of the feet seems to be shot, too,” Gram observed. “It’s like it just decided to give up the ghost all of a sudden.”
Neither one of us weighed enough to break a piece of furniture, however fragile, by sitting on it.
It’s old, Alice. Like she is.
I looked at Gram. “I guess we’ll have to find someone to repair it.”
She smiled at me. “That’s all taken care of. I’m not senile, you know. A few weeks ago I saw a bunch of business cards tucked into the edge of the bulletin board by the mailboxes, so I picked one up.” She puttered into her bedroom and opened the drawer of her nightstand. It contained a total hodgepodge of junk, including paper clips, loose, unwrapped cough drops, the tiny wooden pencils people use to score bowling games, a manicure set, broken ballpoint pens, and various business cards. She withdrew one of the cards, hunted for her eyeglasses, which I pointed out to her were hanging by a chain around her neck, then read the card aloud. “‘Dan Carpenter, custom carpentry and cabinetry. One-of-a-kind designs and repairs our specialty.’ I called this man. He sounded very nice on the pho
ne. So he’s coming over this evening to see what he can do for the loveseat.”
I started to correct her, since technically the figure-eight shape of an old-fashioned loveseat doesn’t resemble in the slightest the piece of furniture in our living room, but I figured it wasn’t worth it.
“And Dorian is coming by for a lesson, so he’ll be staying for dinner, of course.”
I hadn’t seen Dorian since Sy Davidoff had gotten the charges of trespassing and theft thrown out of court. “You may be in for a treat,” I told him when he arrived for his tap-dancing tutorial. “That guy I’ve run into a couple of times, Dan Carpenter, is making a house call at some point this evening to try to fix Gram’s settee, so…”
“House call.” Of course. The same words Dan himself had used. No wonder I’d decided he was a pediatrician.
“What did you say he looks like?” Dorian asked, changing his shoes.
“Tall. Sandy hair. Goyish. Kind of a Jeff Daniels type, or like that Canadian ice dancer a while back used to look.”
“Which one?” Dorian was a big fan of figure skating and followed the athletes and rankings the way major league baseball scouts follow triple-A stats.
“Underhill and Martini. I never knew which was which,” I confessed. “You know. The guy was a real hunk and he had a fantastic butt and used to skate their programs in really tight ripped jeans and a T-shirt, like he was trumpeting his heterosexuality.”
“You’re thinking of Paul Martini,” Dorian said, his eyes sparkling. He pretended to brandish a thick cigar, and lapsed into the characterization of an old-time vaudeville comedian like Milton Berle. “Ya know, I could use a dry martini right about now,” he rasped.
“He’s straight, Dorian.”
“I was just kidding you. I know Paul Martini’s straight. He’s married with a family.”
“So’s Dan Carpenter. At least he’s got a daughter. I wouldn’t know if there’s a wife in the picture. He brought the kid—Lucy—to the first Yankees game I saw with Eric Pondscum; and then I ran into him at the folk music bar that Pondscum took us to the night we double-dated with Izzy and Dominick.”
Gram noisily emerged from the kitchen. She wiped her hands on a dishcloth and turned to Dorian. “Ready?” She’d been wearing her tap shoes while she fixed our dinner.
“I’ll take over,” I offered. “What are we having?”
“I’m roasting an oven stuffer and we have Kennedy potatoes and broiled tomatoes with bread crumbs.” She went into the living room and put a CD on the stereo, then clackclacked her way into the foyer. “Tea for Two” came on and she took Dorian by the hand. “He knows an entire routine now,” she boasted.
Gram had a right to be proud. Actually, they both did. She’d worked a miracle with Dorian. He had elegance and grace and executed the choreography, though basic, with confidence. I was genuinely impressed. At the end of the song, I applauded. “Bravo! Brava!” I had tears in my eyes. My Gram and my best guy friend had given one another a priceless gift.
I went into the kitchen and checked on the chicken, while Gram and Dorian continued to repeat the tap number. I heard the downstairs buzzer and hit the intercom button. “Who is it?”
“It’s Dan Carpenter. Furniture repair, ma’am,” came the muffled reply.
I let him into the lobby, then waited near the front door for him to ring the bell. “You called me ma’am,” I smiled, when I opened the door. He was carrying the black Gladstone bag.
“It’s you,” he said.
“It’s me. Alice Finnegan.” I extended my hand.
We shook. “Well, hello again. Yes, I remember you, Alice Finnegan. You have a very nice singing voice.”
“Thanks.” I motioned for him to come in. Gram stopped dancing long enough for me to introduce her and Dorian, who made me laugh by staring so longingly at Dan that he practically tripped over his own feet.
“Would you take care of things, sweetheart?” Gram asked me without missing a beat. “She gets her talent from me, you know,” she added, flirting shamelessly with Dan.
“Sorry I’m so late,” Dan said apologetically, as he stepped down from the foyer into the living room. “I would have been here sooner but I got caught up at another job.” He noticed our piano. “Do you play as well?”
I shook my head. “No patience for it, I’m afraid. But Gram can’t imagine a home without a piano. So, here’s the invalid,” I joked, pointing to the settee.
Dan took a minute or two to silently appraise its condition. “She’s a very…cherished piece,” he sighed, “but I think we can get the old girl shipshape again. It’ll take some work, though.” He got down on his hands and knees and looked underneath. “It’s pretty shot down here, too,” he said. “Come look at it. I’ll show you what’s going on.”
Now on all fours, I peered under the settee. “The straps are completely worn through,” Dan said, hitting the deteriorating underpinnings with the beam of his flashlight. “Yup,” he murmured to himself, “this baby’s going to need a whole overhaul if you want her to last another few decades.”
I looked over at Gram reliving her glory days, humming along with the melody to “Tea for Two” as she and Dorian went through the song again. “You have to get the steps in your body,” she reminded Dorian. “They should become second nature, like breathing. Or making love. And once they do, you won’t have to think about where your feet are going. They’ll just take you there.”
“Lasting another few decades would be nice,” I said softly. “As long as her quality of life isn’t diminished.”
Dan knocked wood. “She’s a trouper,” he replied, fingering the carved frame of the settee. “Don’t worry, I’ll be able to restore her.”
“I hope so.” I told him the provenance of the piece and its importance to Gram.
“Mrs. Finnegan, I can repair your settee,” Dan called to Gram over the music. “But I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it all in one visit.”
She kept dancing, but she looked anxious. “Well…then…how much will it cost?”
I touched his arm. “I don’t give a shit what it costs. I’ll find a way to pay for it somehow.”
“I’m sure we can work something out,” he told Gram.
“Don’t worry, Gram,” I assured her.
Dan told me he needed to dismantle the settee in order to repair it properly, including removing the carved wooden frame so that it could be carefully rejoined. A new underside had to be made and attached, and the legs removed then reinforced and rejoined. While he worked and Gram and Dorian continued their lesson, I finished fixing dinner. Soon it was nearing the end of Dorian’s tap lesson and Dan was still there. I felt very awkward about the three of us sitting down to eat while Dan continued to work on the settee. I went over to Gram and whispered something in her ear.
“Mr. Carpenter, can you stay for dinner?” she asked him.
We were all pretty silent through the appetizer course. Then Dan broke the ice a bit by offering to carve the chicken, a task he performed quite deftly. As we began to eat our main course, Gram leaned forward in her chair and, addressing Dan, said, “So you’re a carpenter who is a Carpenter.”
He nodded. “Indeed. I am what I am.”
“I like that,” Gram replied. “I like a man who is exactly what he is. No chance for duplicity or betrayal.”
Dan looked confused.
“Mrs. Finnegan has something she calls the ‘name game,’” Dorian explained. “She’ll take someone’s name and analyze it and then give you a ‘reading’ on their character and personality based upon her interpretation of the meaning of their name.”
“And a Carpenter who is a carpenter is good,” Gram reiterated. “No surprises.” I was stunned that she hadn’t mentioned his first name. I looked over at Dorian and mouthed the word Dan-ny.
Dorian gave me a furtive look, brought his finger to his lips, and shook his head. Don’t, he mouthed back.
“Well, with me, what you see is what you get,” admitted
Dan.
“Unlike this rat bastard my granddaughter dated a year or so ago.”
“You mean Pondscum?” I said.
Gram nodded. “Pondscum.”
“Wait a minute—you dated someone named Pondscum?” Dan asked incredulously.
“No, she dated a man named Witherspoon. Resilient to a point, but then he—”
“Folded like a house of cards,” I said, completing the sentence.
Gram made a sour face. “Eric Witherspoon. But he may as well have been pond scum for the slimy way he treated Alice.”
Dan asked me if that was the same Eric he’d met at the ball game and at the Troubadour East.
“Yup.”
“So, you’re no longer…?”
“We’re history,” I said. “Like the bubonic plague and the Spanish Inquisition.” Just then I remembered what he’d said to Eric after I sang at the Troubadour.
Fucking magical.
I blushed.
Dorian left soon after we ate dessert. He had an early call time for a film shoot. “Keep me posted,” he said as we hugged goodbye.
I gave him a funny look. “On what?”
Gram was fishing in her purse for her wallet. “What do we owe you for this visit?” she asked Dan. I saw that there were only a couple of dollars in her billfold. “Can I give you a check?”
“I’ll get this, Gram,” I offered.
“You already did,” Dan replied, packing up his tools. “Give me a call when you’re able to have me come back to work on the settee. And consider this evening’s house call paid for in full. Thank you both for a delicious dinner.”
After he departed, I realized that I’d meant to ask after Lucy.
In the middle of the night on Sunday, I was awakened by a tugging on my arm. “Gram, is something wrong?” I asked anxiously.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she answered, agitatedly clasping her hands together. “So I turned on the TV for a little company. And it’s full of Japanese men.”
Temporary Insanity Page 22
