“Hi, Cass,” Jen called. “We brought stuff for margaritas.”
“Great! Margaritas!” I called back. I hate margaritas, always have.
“A couple of these’ll erase all traces of Rick the prick, his mother, and her jumpsuited dog from your memory bank,” Randy called, her voice coming closer.
I could only hope Letitia had developed sudden hearing loss.
Randy stopped in the door, holding a grocery bag, Jen close on her heels, and took in Letitia’s presence. “Hi.”
Letitia, tears gone, was in full Upper East Side hostess mode. Before I could say anything, she said, “The little prick’s mother. Letitia Martin.”
I had to hand it to her; that was nicely done. “And this is Bouvier,” I added, just so I could see the look on Randy’s face. I really wished I’d had the forethought to have a camera at hand.
Jen put her bag on the table. “It’s so nice to meet you!”
Letitia took in Jen, the total package, the diamonds, the untouched-by-home-hair-coloring products highlights, the jacket, the hips, which could only have been achieved with the aid of the finest personal trainer, the Miu Miu shoes, and she lit up like her long-lost sister had arrived.
But not for long, I gloated to myself, because Jen always made it clear just exactly who and what she was. She’d been burned a few times too many by people cozying up to her exterior life and recoiling once they found out that she had the requisite two child prodigies but not the investment banker husband (not that I was in a position to recommend that particular route).
“I’m Jennifer Buckholz, and don’t worry. We won’t judge you based on who you gave birth to.” She pulled some limes out of her D’Agostino’s bag. “After all, some people might be tempted to form judgments about me based on the fact I’m a radical lesbian feminist raising children in a long-term relationship with an African-American partner, so I know exactly how unfair that type of thing can be!” She smiled sweetly, displaying her perfect porcelain veneers.
I sometimes felt like a small child or a disordered puppy trotting along in Jen’s wake while she strode definitively on ahead. But at moments like this, while I was wallowing in the envy, I had to remind myself that her self-assurance was not lightly won.
I decided to throw Jen a life raft. Everyone needs a hand once in a while, and I, after all, knew Letitia. So I said, “Jen’s partner, Nora, is a doctor. A Park Avenue plastic surgeon.”
“Did you say Nora?” Letitia said to me. “Do you mean Nora Hart? She’s brilliant! I almost didn’t recognize Binky Strossman, and I’ve known her thirty years. She looked uncannily like herself. But better.”
Jen nodded, looking proud.
“That’s what I say about Jen.” Randy dropped a bag of Tostitos on the table.
“Like Binky Strossman but better, or like myself but better?” Jen, who had never needed Nora to place a finger on her in a surgical capacity, raised an eyebrow.
Next Randy unpacked maybe the biggest bottle of tequila I’d ever seen.
“I can’t drink,” I reminded her. “I’m pregnant.”
Randy looked startled. Like someone had flipped a switch. “You took it? You actually took it and you’re really pregnant? I thought for sure it was just stress.” Then she burst into tears, standing there, still holding the tequila bottle.
“No, I haven’t taken it yet,” I said, taking the bottle out of her hand and putting it on the table. I’d never seen Randy cry before, and I felt guilty that it was worry about me that was pushing her there. Maybe there was something about my apartment tonight. Because an hour ago I’d have put the odds of both Letitia and Randy bursting into noisy tears in my kitchen about even with those of Johnny Depp showing up with a can of whipped cream and some handcuffs, but now it was looking like maybe I should leave the door unlocked later.
I put my arm around Randy and pushed her hair back from her forehead. Me being the one to soothe her made a change from recent patterns. It actually felt good. “What’s wrong, Ran? Don’t worry. You know I’ll be OK no matter what.”
“I know you will, Cass. Of course you will, and I’m fine.” She pulled out of my arms and walked over to tear off a paper towel. “It’s nothing. Rough day at work.”
Jen and I exchanged a glance as Randy blotted her tears. Randy’s husband had once observed that she regarded rough days at work the way most of us regard afternoons on the massage table at Bliss. “Ran?” I said.
But she shook her head. “I’m fine.” Then, as if to prove it, she balled up her paper towel and threw it in the trash. “Forget it. So, Cass, are you taking that test or what? Don’t you want to know if Barry’s going to be a daddy?”
Letitia’s eyebrow shot up.
“It’s not what you think,” I said quickly. “Barry equals Rick.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” Letitia looked so perplexed, I actually felt sorry for her.
“The reason he left, he, um, Rick left me for Barry Manilow.” There was clearly never going to be any way to impart this information in one sound bite.
She went pale. “Now I’m sure I don’t understand.”
“Me either,” I told her. “But I’m told the pairing’s creative, not romantic.”
“He’s working with…Barry Manilow?”
Randy was laughing. “You look like my mother did when she found out what Glenn—my first husband—did for a living.” She tore off another paper towel and dabbed at her eyes. “He was a dealer.”
“Oh, dear,” Letitia said in horror. “Cars?”
“Drugs,” Randy said, and then added, “he’s very successful.”
Letitia looked relieved.
“Rick’s gone to spearhead a retrospective production of Barry Manilow’s career,” I explained to poor Letitia.
“But what should I tell people?” Letitia looked truly puzzled.
“Whatever you want. Letitia belongs to the ultimate snotty club,” I explained to Jen and Randy. “In Connecticut. Bragging, making money, being the appropriate white male or”—I shot her a quick look—“the widow of the appropriate white male and/or having had ancestors on the Mayflower are required to get a tee time.”
Letitia said, “They’re selective. The waiting list is very long, you know.”
“Do you think they want a mixed-race lesbian couple?” Jen asked.
“Well,” Letitia sounded doubtful, as well she might. “Do you golf?”
“No,” Jen replied. “But Nora does.”
“What’s her handicap?”
“Six.”
That meant next to nothing to me, but Letitia looked awed.
“Um, not to be narcissistic or anything by bringing this back to me,” I said, “but I think I’ll go take this test, if that’s OK.”
“Perfect. Then you’ll know for sure whether you can have a margarita.” Randy turned to get the salt out of the cupboard.
Bouvy scampered after me. “Bouvy! No!” I heard Letitia say. He ignored her.
“Give it up,” I told him as he trotted through the bathroom door next to me. I did not want to spend one of the most emotionally significant moments of my life with an overdressed rat. “No.” I tried to scoop him up, but he wiggled away. “Out!” I pointed to the door. “Go back to Mommy.”
He gave me an insulted look but went. I locked the door behind him, turned around, and tripped over something. Not a little stumble kind of trip, an all-out, feet-in-the-air, flying-across-the-room kind of trip. I spent at least ten minutes suspended, hovering over the floor, thinking, Fuck this is going to hurt, before eventually splatting onto the floor. It did. I scrambled into a sitting position, flexed my wrists, which had taken the brunt of the landing, and turned to see what I’d fallen over.
A mop.
What a mop was doing lying across the middle of the guest bathroom floor was anybody’s guess. It’s true that Jared and Noah had once tried using a couple for jousting, but my reaction was such that if they were ever going to do it again, I’m guess
ing they’d cover their tracks. Plus that requires two mops, and as this, despite its obvious capacity for destruction, was clearly only one mop, I assumed Maria had left it there. Since, as I might have mentioned, Maria doesn’t clean, this was a mystery.
I crawled between the toilet and sink to retrieve the pregnancy test then tried to stand, but my bruised knees protested and I ended up sitting down, fast, on the toilet. Or rather, thanks to one of the children having left both the lid and seat up, I sat down almost in the toilet. I was keeping myself from hitting water via the (thankfully well-secured) toilet paper holder when Randy knocked. “Cass?”
I hobbled to the door and opened it. “I haven’t taken it yet.”
“I thought I heard a lot of crashing and banging from down here. Are you limping?”
“I tripped.” I sat back down on the toilet.
“Well, I don’t want to scare you, but your mother-in-law is on like her third margarita in three minutes. She didn’t take the change of career news well.”
“Feed her something.” I unwrapped the test. “Just make sure there are no carbs involved and it’ll be fine.”
Randy was staring at the test, looking sort of haunted. I didn’t think anymore that this was about concern for me, but I had no idea what it was. I was worried about her. “Ran?”
It seemed like it was an effort for her to move her gaze from the package to me. “Yup?”
“It seems like something’s really upsetting you. Can I do anything?”
“Oh, no. God. I’m fine.” She said it in a really fake not-like-Randy way. “Absolutely fine.” Then she went to try to feed Letitia.
I peed on the stick, stood it in a Sponge Bob cup on the counter, and counted backwards from sixty, thinking about how much I would have liked another baby under different circumstances and how totally fucked it was going to leave my life right now.
Finally, I pulled in a deep breath and took a look at the little window. I couldn’t believe what I saw: the line was blue. Not pink but indisputably, confoundingly, blue. The control line was perfect. I dropped the stick in the trash. I wanted to believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. I was relieved, thrilled, incredibly disappointed, and a little reluctant to go out there and announce my non-news. I unwrapped the second test and did it again. Same results.
Hmmm. Same batch of wee. Did that skew the odds of two false negatives?
What the hell was wrong with me that I could be anything but a hundred percent relieved under these circumstances? I dropped the second stick into the trash, washed my hands, and unlocked the door. If I wasn’t pregnant, where was my period? I was just getting going on some serious anxiety that it was early menopause (which would make me an even less desirable single person, surely?) when I walked into Letitia weaving drunkenly through the kitchen brandishing my brand spanking new Femme Contour 3500. “I saw one about this color once but it was—”
“Ahem,” I said, from the doorway.
“Well?” Randy looked like she was quivering with nerves.
I shook my head. “I’m not.”
Everyone started whooping and screaming like I’d just crossed the finish line at the New York marathon. I smiled even though I wasn’t feeling all that smiley. Jen handed me a margarita.
Letitia was obviously as drunk as a 17-year-old with a brand-new fake ID. “Cassie”—she whizzed the Femme Contour 3500 past my nose—“you can’t possibly use this…thing.”
I was blushing from head to toe. I took a big gulp of the margarita. God, that burned. “It’s not for me. It’s for—”
“If you say a friend I’m going to die laughing.”
“—I was going to say my blog.” I gave her a dirty look.
“I—your what?” She paused, the FC3500 in midair.
“It’s like an online diary,” Jen said helpfully, refilling Letitia’s glass.
“I know what a blog is,” Letitia said. “What I don’t know is what that would have to do with…this.” She waved this again.
“What it has to do with that is that I’m blogging about being middle-aged and suddenly single, having been a non-player on the sexual frontier for a good fifteen years.”
Letitia came over and draped an arm around me. “Cassandra, my love, you can’t possibly write about this thing. If you’re going to write about getting yourself a vibrator, for God’s sake, get yourself a Rabbit! And now, I think I’ll have just one more. To drink to Cassie”—she waved her empty glass at me—“not being pregnant.”
Randy gave me an is-this-a-good-idea? look. I shrugged. Letitia was of legal age, and I was sure she had some poor driver huddled down in the car waiting for her. I had no grounds for refusal of service.
“I must say that this evening has been surprisingly enjoyable,” she announced.
OK. Right there. Grounds. I did not want her to associate me, in any way, with enjoyable hospitality. “It’s the margaritas,” I said. Maybe she’d have a vicious hangover and develop a sensory memory forever associating me and my apartment with crippling headaches and never, ever come back and finish crying and telling me about what a horrible mother she’d been.
“Perhaps I should make some coffee and we can toast with that,” Jen suggested diplomatically.
“Oh, no, don’t be silly.” Letitia waved her away. “You can’t toast anything properly with coffee.”
“Coffee doesn’t sober people up,” Randy hissed. “That’s an old wives’ tale.”
“No, but time does,” Jen whispered back. “I’m trying to buy some of that.”
“If you’re buying it, I’d like some of mine back,” I told her. “It’s starting to look like I wasted a lot on—” the door buzzed.
Since pretty much everyone I knew who would even think about showing up unannounced at close to midnight was already here, my heart went into my throat. But surely the doorman wouldn’t buzz for Rick? We all stood for a second in that awkward silence you get when everyone’s thinking the same thing but no one wants to be the one to say it.
Jen said, “Do you want me to go?”
I didn’t know. My pulse was going like I’d just run stairs. I was stuck in limbo, somewhere exactly halfway between Thank God you’re back, honey and Get the fuck out of my sight and stay there.
“Cassie?” Jen nudged me toward answering her question.
The buzzer went again. I shook my head at Jen. The few steps to the intercom seemed endless, like one of those dreams where you’re being chased but your legs don’t work. “Yes?”
17
All the Time
No reply, which meant that whoever the visitor was, David, the night doorman, must have been sure enough of their welcome to be bringing them up. It was so silent in the kitchen behind me that I wondered if everyone could hear my heart slamming.
The awkward silence didn’t last long. The three of them started talking loudly and slowly, presumably so we’d feel comfortable we weren’t being overheard. And the second I opened the door, Bouvier, in the kitchen, started emitting frenzied yaps that probably woke people in Queens (Cad, the tireless guard dog, remained asleep, presumably with her head under the guest toilet).
I stood in the open doorway, my heart thudding, wondering what I was going to do. Throw my arms around him? Tell him to go fuck himself? Where did exactly halfway between the two fall? Did Emily Post have recommendations for this?
The elevator door slid open. A small person dressed in black and olive drab, trailing tears and long, light brown hair, screamed, “Cassie!” and flew out of the elevator into my arms. Unless he’d swapped Barry Manilow for Avril Lavigne, this was not Rick. So all that agonizing on the proper situational etiquette? Total waste of time. It was my niece, no etiquette necessary.
I peeled her off me enough that I could see her. Heart-shaped face, almondy brown eyes, no mouthful of braces this time, but definitely my niece. Nothing unusual in my sister being MIA, but for her daughter to be at my door at midnight, instead of tucked away safely at boarding school—well,
something was wrong. I pulled her back into my arms. “Harmonye?”
She sniffled into my neck. “I’m so sorry about Rick. Grandma told me. That really sucks.”
“Thanks.” I was sure she was sorry. I was also sure that wasn’t the reason for her arrival. “But what’s up with you?”
“Oh, you know, not so much.” She lifted her head and frowned. “What’s that insane noise?”
“A visiting rat, um, I mean dog.” I took her by the hand and pulled her toward the kitchen. “It’s not that I’m not thrilled to see you, because I am, but shouldn’t you be at school?” I was already suspicious that this was not a technical school holiday, but knew for sure when, instead of answering me, she threw her duffel bag on the floor and said, “I’m like starved, Cassie. Can I have something to eat?”
“Sure. There are a few people here, though.” We started down the hall.
She stopped. “Are you having a party or something?” Actually she said, “Are you having a party or thomething?”
“No, my friends Randy and Jen and, um, Letitia, you know, Rick’s mother are here. Are you lisping?”
“A little.” She stuck out her tongue. “I just had this done.”
Ouch. Her tongue was swollen around a little silver bar. Me being me, I immediately started to worry about infection. Before I could say anything about self-mutilation, Bouvier came skittering out, growling and yapping. I saw Harmonye take in his outfit. She gave me a questioning look. “He belongs to Letitia,” I said.
“Phew. Thought for a sec you’d lost it.”
“I probably have,” I admitted, “but I haven’t sunk that far. Yet.”
She giggled. At least she’d stopped crying. “So, um, like Rick’s mom? For real? I didn’t know you guys like hung out.”
“Me either,” I muttered. “So come on, let’s introduce you and get you some food. What would you like?”
“Something soft?” She motioned at her mouth.
“You’re in luck.” I bit back the depressing realization that the kids would be getting up right about the time I got to bed. “Jell-O, applesauce, pudding?”
Carpool Confidential Page 16
