The Fixer Upper

by Judith Arnold

“For Reva. What does he ever do for you?”

  He leaves me alone, Libby answered silently, grateful for the fact that he did. “We both work,” she said, forcing patience into her tone. “We both earn incomes. We both agreed there was no need for alimony.”

  “But he left you. A good woman, the mother of his child, and he left you for that stuck-up lady. You should’ve taken him to the cleaners, Libby, I always said.”

  “He’s your son,” Libby reminded her.

  “I should’ve raised him better….”

  “Gilda. Stop it.” She stirred the browning meat vigorously. It sizzled and spat, just the way her temper would sizzle and spit if she loosened her grip on herself. After being trapped in the interview room with Shrill Will, she didn’t care to spend her evening listening to Shrill Gilda wallow in guilt over her son’s stupidity. Nor did Libby want to think about her housing situation. She had to think about it, but she didn’t want to. Thinking about it fried her, just like the meat in the pan.

  She couldn’t give in to anger, though. Being a single parent meant staying in control, projecting confidence and serenity and not indulging in temper tantrums, even when they were called for and there was no therapeutic chocolate or wine within reach.

  “Go to him, Libby,” Gilda urged her. “Tell him to be a mensch. He owes you, bubby.”

  “That’s the problem. He doesn’t owe me.”

  “He left you.”

  And good riddance, Libby thought. “A long time ago,” she said. “Everything was settled ten years ago. I can’t throw our divorce in his face and ask for more money. ”

  “But it’s okay to let him throw his own daughter out in the street?”

  Libby reminded herself that she really did love the woman on the other end of the line. “I appreciate your concern, Gilda, but I’ll figure out how to deal with this situation on my own, okay? It’s not Harry’s problem. It’s not your problem. Give me a chance to work on it.”

  “I should take a hint, right? Fine. You’re upset and you wish I’d shut up—even though it’s my fault. I botched things when raising Harry, and now he’s a schmuck. Take it out on me. I deserve it for raising such a schmuck.”

  “You didn’t raise a schmuck, Gilda,” Libby assured her, wincing at the sheer falsehood of that statement. “Just stop worrying, okay? Things will work out somehow.”

  “They always do,” Gilda said, apparently trying to sound comforting, although her words lacked conviction. “But remember, he’s there, and it’s his daughter.”

  “Okay. I’ll think about it,” Libby assured her. “I’ve got to go. The meat is burning.” She said goodbye and disconnected the call.

  “So what’s going to work out somehow?” Reva asked from the doorway.

  Great. She’d caught the end of the conversation. What else had she heard? “You know Grandma,” Libby said casually, pulling a box of linguini from a shelf and shaking out enough for their dinner. “She gets worried about nonsense.”

  “What kind of nonsense?”

  “Stuff about when Grandpa retires,” Libby said, pleased that that wasn’t a lie.

  It wasn’t the truth, either, and Reva was too smart to let her get away with fudging. “If you don’t want to tell me, why don’t you just say so?” she asked petulantly, her mouth curving in a self-righteous scowl.

  Libby didn’t want to tell her—but she couldn’t say so. Who knew how Reva would react to the news that they might lose their home? Nowadays, asking her to straighten up her room could trigger outrage and door slamming. Informing her that she soon might not have a room to straighten up…Libby didn’t even want to imagine the hysteria that would ensue.

  Still, lying wasn’t a great strategy, either. “It’s just that this apartment is going co-op,” Libby said, praying that Reva wouldn’t understand the ramifications of her statement.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So, I have to do a little recalculating.”

  “Going co-op…” Reva entered the kitchen, sidestepped her mother and flopped onto one of the chairs at the tiny corner table. “Like, what exactly does that mean?”

  “It means that our apartment will no longer be for rent, so if we’re going to stay here we have to buy it. Well, not outright buy it, but buy shares in the building proportionate to our unit. It’s kind of confusing.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” Reva said. “Buying shares in the building is like buying the apartment, right?”

  Libby sighed. “Right.”

  “How much do we have to pay?”

  Libby sighed again. “Too much.”

  Reva shrugged. “Get the money from Dad.”

  “Reva.” Was Libby the only person in the world who hated the idea of hitting up her ex-husband for large quantities of cash?

  “He’s got plenty,” Reva pointed out. “You know what he charges his clients? Hundreds of dollars an hour. I figured it out once, and he’s hauling in like over half a million dollars a year. And he doesn’t spend it all on food, because Bony never eats. She’s so skinny it’s disgusting.”

  Reva’s mention of food drew Libby’s attention back to the stove. The water was boiling, and she added some dry linguini to it, then nudged the sticks of pasta down into the pot as the water softened them.

  “You should buy fresh pasta,” Reva remarked. “Kim says it tastes better.”

  Fresh pasta costs more, too. If Libby had any hope of financing her apartment purchase without begging Harry for assistance—as everyone in the whole damn world seemed to think she should—she was going to have to start watching her pennies. No fresh pasta. Chuck steak, not sirloin. Store-brand ice cream instead of Ben & Jerry’s. Maybe she ought to race over to Gristede’s and stock up while the swordfish steak was on sale.

  “Dry pasta tastes fine,” she said, then clamped her mouth shut before her frustration spilled out. Shrill Will’s whines had subsided to a background din in her skull, a grating accompaniment to the messy condition of her life. She did not want to go to Harry. She did not want to lose her apartment. She did not want the water to boil over the top of the pot, but it was doing just that, hissing as it spattered against the stove’s glowing red coils. She turned down the heat and stirred the pasta until the water sank back below the rim, then dealt with the meat, which was brown and dry, nearly burned.

  She was an utter, abject failure. She couldn’t budget, she couldn’t cook and she couldn’t maintain her objectivity when she interviewed brats.

  “So Kim and Ash and I are going to the park this Saturday,” Reva was saying, evidently no longer interested in discussing financial crises with her mother.

  Frankly, Libby was no longer interested in the subject, either. She wished it would just go away. “Who’s Ash?” she asked as she pulled a jar of tomato sauce from a shelf in the door of the refrigerator.

  “Ashleigh Goldstein.”

  “That girl with the black nail polish?”

  “You don’t like black nail polish?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Libby replied, eager to avoid an argument with Reva. One of the advantages of working at the Hudson School was that she was familiar with most of the kids and their manicures. Ashleigh Goldstein’s father was a Park Avenue orthodontist, and Ashleigh seemed determined to present herself as anything but the daughter of a Park Avenue orthodontist.

  “What’s going on in the park on Saturday?” she asked. “You don’t have to collect more leaves, do you?”

  “There’s always something going on in the park on Saturday,” Reva said.

  “I meant, something specific. One of those toy boat regattas, or a kite-flying contest?”

  Reva rolled her eyes. “Yeah, like Kim and me and Ash would want to watch a bunch of assholes fly kites or play with their little toy boats.”

  “You used to love those regattas,” Libby reminded her. “Everybody lined up along the edge of the pond with their remote controls, steering their boats around the buoys, and people cheering….”

  Reva made a ret
ching sound. “No, we don’t want to watch the boats,” she said. “We just want to hang out.”

  “I guess it’s all right, if you don’t have too much homework.”

  Reva opened her mouth as if to comment on her homework, then changed the subject altogether. “They had tryouts for the fall concert solos today. Ashleigh was really good. She says her voice is flat, but it’s not.”

  “Did you try out?”

  “Yeah. I sucked.”

  “Ask Muriel Froiken if you can try out again.”

  “Mom.” She rolled her eyes again. “What, you think she’ll give me a solo because my mom works at the school? Forget that. I’m not going to ask for favors.”

  Libby refused to apologize for being on the Hudson staff. “Why don’t you set the table,” she suggested, struggling to filter her annoyance out of her voice.

  Looking gravely put-upon, Reva pushed herself to her feet and crossed to the silverware drawer. Libby considered telling her to set the dining-room table, instead. Every now and then they ate dinner at the big table, and they even lit a centerpiece candle sometimes, which made the meal seem terribly grand. Maybe eating in there and not at the cramped table tucked into the corner of the kitchen would cheer them both up.

  But the big table might emphasize how alone Libby felt right now. No Harry to bail her out financially. No other adult to vent to, to dump all the tension of her long, wearying day on. No one to assure her that she could afford to splurge on fresh pasta every now and then, that she wouldn’t lose her home, that her daughter would never paint her nails black like Ashleigh Goldstein’s. No one to say to her, “I can’t promise everything’s going to work out, but I can sympathize.”

  Her mind filled, involuntarily, with a picture of Ned Donovan. He was probably rattling around his apartment with his son right now, fixing dinner just like Libby. He would have removed his jacket and his thick-soled work boots; he might be wearing form-fitting jeans and a snug T-shirt—and thank you, God, for giving men physiques that looked so good in jeans and T-shirts. His hair would be mussed because, living alone with his son, he had no one to comb it for. No one to shave off his five o’clock shadow for. Just him and his son and a plate of—why not?—spaghetti and meat sauce.

  What was she thinking? A guy like him would undoubtedly have a girlfriend, someone young and attractive and solvent, someone without an obnoxious teenage daughter and a looming housing disaster. His girlfriend would be puttering around the kitchen with him right now, all the while assuring him that his son would get into Hudson or some equally esteemed private school. She would listen as he described his day, his hard work fixing things up. She’d ask him how things went at the Hudson School that morning, and he’d say, “Tell me, honey, what the hell is a loofah?”

  Other adults had adults. Libby did, too—although a ridiculous number of them were her ex-husband’s relatives. Vivienne was right; she needed some men in her life to turn to, to sleep with, simply to lean on. If they wanted to help her buy her apartment, that would be fine, too. But right now, just having a man to talk to would be nice.

  “So, you like those jeans?” Ned asked Eric.

  “They’re okay.”

  Given what Ned had spent on them, Eric ought to demonstrate a little more enthusiasm. But then, the kid was ten years old, and boys that age would rather die than pretend they cared about clothes.

  One thing Ned missed about Vermont was normal prices. In Manhattan, even the discount stores charged obscene amounts for kids’ dungarees, plus a staggering sales tax. And Eric was going to outgrow the jeans Ned had just bought him before he came close to wearing them out.

  Still, Manhattan had its compensations, Ned conceded as he and Eric strolled down Broadway. Manhattan had life, sidewalks teeming with people chattering, nudging one another, holding hands. Couples. Healthy adult couples whose body language shouted that they had sex on their minds.

  Not that Ned had sex on his mind. He was out shopping with his son, for God’s sake. Sex was the furthest thing from his mind.

  Yet the young couple with their arms looped around each other’s shoulders and their hips colliding with every step dragged the subject just a little closer to Ned’s mind. The couple disappeared through the door of a seedy-looking bar. They hadn’t looked seedy themselves; maybe the bar was nicer than it appeared from the street.

  Now that Ned was living hundreds of miles from Woodstock, Vermont, he might just have the opportunity to usher a woman into a bar. Or out of a bar and somewhere more private, more intimate, somewhere conducive to the sort of activity that should have been the furthest thing from his mind but wasn’t.

  He’d usher the woman into a nicer establishment, of course, and he’d take his time to learn if she was someone he’d really want to share that particular activity with. He wasn’t desperate. He’d gone without for quite a while, and he could go without for a little longer. He could be picky. He could wait for a woman who wasn’t too young or too old, a woman who was smart and involved in an interesting career…a woman with thick brown hair and eyes as big as silver dollars, only dark and luminous.

  Someone like Libby Kimmelman, for instance.

  Well, no. He didn’t want to waste his time with a snooty prep school admissions director.

  Libby Kimmelman hadn’t seemed particularly snooty, though. She’d been remarkably accessible, and she’d had a warm smile, and when she’d said the word loofah it had sounded inexplicably erotic. He wondered what it would be like to make loofah to a woman like her.

  Before he could congratulate himself on his clever pun, Eric said, “You think maybe I could get some new T-shirts, too? Everybody wears them real baggy here.”

  T-shirts. His son. Right. “If we can find some that aren’t too expensive, sure,” he said, resolving to put sex and Libby Kimmelman and loofahs where they belonged—in that region a man could convince himself was the furthest thing from his mind even when it was located at the very center of his consciousness.

  Six

  Finally. Saturday. This had to have been the longest week in Reva’s life.

  Every night after dinner for the past week, her mother had emptied her briefcase onto the dining-room table and read applications, a task that turned her into a total bitch. Reva supposed that having to read hundreds of essays about five-year-olds who could speak three languages and design rocket ships might get old pretty fast, but still.

  Adding to her mother’s crabbiness was the whole money thing. She refused to consider getting money from Reva’s father. Not only did she refuse, but she actually got into a worse mood whenever Reva raised the subject.

  And last night, when Reva had done her mother the favor of changing the subject, and asked if she could get a second hole pierced in each ear, her mother had gone ballistic. It wasn’t like Reva was asking to get her nipple pierced, or her belly button, or even an eyebrow. Just an extra hole so she could wear two earrings per ear. Lots of girls had more than one hole. But when her mother got like this, she was so unreasonable.

  Aunt Vivienne had stopped by Thursday evening. She’d said she couldn’t stay for supper, but after chugging down the wine Reva’s mother had poured for her, she’d wound up calling her husband and saying she’d be home later, and she’d shared their dinner of broiled swordfish steaks, which had tasted pretty dry and bland to Reva, even though her mother and Aunt Vivienne had insisted they were delicious.

  Aunt Vivienne, too, believed Reva’s mother should ask Reva’s father for money. Over dinner she’d remarked that guys were jerks so you might as well get what you could out of them. Reva had considered that an odd thing for a newlywed to say. Aunt Vivienne had gotten married only a year ago, and Reva had to admit that her husband, Leonard, definitely lived on the asshole side of the street, but Aunt Vivienne had married him of her own free will, so how bad could he actually be? Anyway, the bottom line was that Aunt Vivienne agreed with Reva that her mother ought to hit up old Harry for the money she needed. And her mother had said a
bsolutely no way.

  Pride could be pretty stupid—to say nothing of costly.

  But Reva wasn’t going to think about her mother or her father or the apartment today. The sky was sunny, the air was mild and she had eight dollars and change in her purse—enough to buy a hot pretzel and an ice cream or one of those souvlaki subs they sold from pushcarts around the park. Kim probably had even more money with her. She got ten bucks a week allowance, and her parents bought her most of what she needed. Reva didn’t know how much Ashleigh got, but she probably spent it all on cosmetics—the black hair dye, the nail polish, the pale powder and dark eyeliner she liked to wear. Makeup cost real money if you bought the quality brands.

  Reva met up with Kim and Ashleigh at the park entrance by Strawberry Fields. Kim was dressed like a normal person, in blue jeans and a cotton sweater. Reva was dressed normally, too, in black jeans and long-sleeved T. Ashleigh wore an ankle-length paisley skirt and a black shirt with a studded leather belt cinching her waist, ankle-high black boots with big buckles on them, her ankh and her chai on chains around her neck, peacock feathers dangling from her ears and small gold hoops poking through them—she had two holes per ear, and it obviously hadn’t turned her into a monster—and gobs of black liner edging her eyelids.

  “So, where’s this fabulous musician?” she asked. Her voice held a challenge, as if she suspected that Reva and Kim had been exaggerating when they’d told her how cool Darryl J was.

  Reva caught Kim’s eye. Kim clearly wasn’t thrilled about including Ashleigh on this outing. Maybe Reva had made a mistake by inviting her to join them. But Darryl J needed a bigger audience, and who better than his most loyal, devoted fans—Reva and Kim—to bring that audience to him? Today Ashleigh, next week Monica Ditmer and Katie Staver, and maybe the week after that Reva could entice Katie’s brother Matt and those guys he hung out with, Micah Schlutt and Luke Rodelle. The record companies probably wouldn’t take Darryl J seriously if he didn’t have some guy fans.

  In any case, she wasn’t going to let Ashleigh’s presence or Kim’s scowl ruin the day she’d been waiting for all week long. “This fabulous musician,” she said calmly, “is probably performing near the Band Shell.” She strode past the Imagine mosaic imbedded in the ground—her mother always got teary-eyed when she saw the mosaic, but it didn’t do much for Reva, even though it usually had some candle or withered flower lying on it in memory of that Beatle who got killed—and on to the road that looped around the lower park. It was closed to automobiles today, but the traffic was still pretty dense. Bikers, skaters, skateboarders and joggers all sped past, moving in the same direction. Jogging was supposed to improve your health, but it seemed to Reva that jogging amid all those bikers and skaters could cost a person his life. Just crossing the roadway, she felt she was risking major bodily harm.