The Fixer Upper

by Judith Arnold

  Ashleigh and Kim kept up with her, though, and they made it to the other side of the road without injury. The sky above the Sheep Meadow was filled with kites, and Reva remembered her mother’s corny question about whether Reva wanted to go to the park to see the kites. Flying a kite seemed like about the most boring activity a person could do voluntarily. Sitting through Mr. Calaturo’s European history class was probably a little more boring, but a class was mandatory. People had a choice about flying a kite, and there were dozens of folks at the park today who’d freely chosen to stand on the sprawling expanse of grass, clutching a reel of string and craning their necks to observe their kites. Like this was so exciting, a big colorful thing held up in the sky by a breeze.

  “So, when do you think Froiken is going to announce the Tommy soloists?” Ashleigh asked as they worked their way along the path that bordered the Sheep Meadow.

  “A couple of weeks,” Kim said with a certain authority. Since she would be playing the piano accompaniment, it figured she would have the inside scoop on Ms. Froiken’s schedule.

  “The later, the better,” Reva grumbled. “As long as I don’t know who the soloists are, I can pretend I’ve got a chance.”

  “I thought you sounded fantastic at your audition,” Ashleigh argued. “You definitely have a chance.”

  Reva eyed Kim, who nodded. “You sounded really good,” she confirmed.

  Reva trusted Kim’s judgment more than Ashleigh’s, but she wasn’t convinced. “I had a tickle in my throat when I was singing. I kept feeling like I was going to cough or something.”

  “You didn’t sound that way,” Kim assured her. “You sounded great.”

  “You sounded fantastic,” Ashleigh insisted.

  “I don’t have that good a voice,” Reva said, wishing she could believe her friends. They were only trying to make her feel better, and she appreciated their effort. “Now, Darryl J…that’s a good voice.”

  Ashleigh raised her eyebrows, doing her best to look skeptical. It was hard to look skeptical when you were wearing an ankle-length paisley skirt.

  By the time they reached the eastern edge of the Sheep Meadow, music from the performers at the mall was already drifting toward them—too much music and too much crowd noise for Reva to detect Darryl J’s guitar and voice, but she was sure he’d be set up in his usual spot near the Band Shell. It was such a balmy day, and the park was so mobbed with people enjoying the weather he couldn’t afford not to be there. On a day like today, a street musician could probably clean up.

  She and Kim accelerated their pace as they neared the mall. Ashleigh managed to keep up, which was good because the walkway was really crowded, and if they lost her they might never find her again, no matter how much she stood out with her pale face and those shit-kicker boots.

  “There he is,” Kim said, slipping past Reva and dodging a guy on a unicycle juggling stuffed teddy bears. It was easy for Kim to move through the throng, because she was so tiny. Reva managed to follow in her wake, glancing over her shoulder every now and then to make sure Ashleigh was still with them. And then she heard one of those broad, rich guitar chords that she associated with Darryl J’s music, and her face broke into a smile, almost literally, as if her skin were cracking open to let her happiness escape.

  How could this one musician have such a strong effect on her? She didn’t know and she didn’t care. All that mattered was that she’d survived a long week and now, at last, she would receive her reward: standing in Darryl J’s presence and listening to him sing.

  She wove through the crowd surrounding him—a much larger crowd than last week’s, maybe because it was a Saturday, maybe because it was so warm and sunny. He wore a denim shirt, a leather vest and jeans today, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. No tattoos visible. She sighed in relief.

  God, he was so good! His voice was like this spiced cider she’d drunk at Grandma’s house last winter—smooth and tangy, cool on the tongue but warm going down, a warmth she felt moving through her, in her throat, in her chest, in her gut and in her blood, which carried it throughout her body. It made her want to sway.

  Next to her, Kim stood transfixed. Behind her, Ashleigh whispered, “Ooh, he’s cute.”

  Cute didn’t begin to describe him. He was beyond awesome. He was magical. He was going to wait for Reva to get a few years older, and then he was going to fall madly in love with her.

  He started singing a slower song, in a minor key. “‘I close my eyes because it’s all been such a loss, and the cost, baby, the cost is the price of my soul,’” he crooned. Reva wasn’t sure what he meant by “the price of my soul,” but it was such a sad lyric, and the chords were so melancholy, the riffs so bluesy, she wanted to break free of the crowd and give him a hug. She wondered who had broken his heart so badly—surely he couldn’t have made up this song out of thin air. It had to have been wrung from some mournful experience he’d suffered.

  She would never break his heart. Never.

  The song ended and he smiled. As the crowd burst into applause, Reva forced herself to acknowledge that maybe he had just made the song up. Maybe he’d been sitting around, writing a bunch of happy songs, and he suddenly said, “Man, I ought to write something sad, just to show how wide my range is,” and he’d knocked off this song about the price of his soul.

  People broke free of the crowd and stepped forward to drop money into his open guitar case. Reva thought about the eight dollars she had in her purse and the pain Darryl J had revealed in his song. He deserved to be paid for his music. If he didn’t make enough money he might just quit the whole music thing and get a job in a bank or at McDonald’s. She couldn’t bear that happening.

  Gathering her courage, she pushed forward, unzipped her purse and pulled out a dollar. Dropping it into his guitar case brought her closer to him than she’d ever been before. He was even handsomer up close—no acne scars flawed his tawny skin and his teeth were a brilliant white. “Hey,” he said as she straightened.

  She glanced around to see who he was talking to, then realized he was smiling right at her. At her.

  “Hey,” she managed to croak out. If she thought she’d sounded bad at the Tommy audition, she sounded about a thousand times worse now, like an asthmatic frog.

  “I’ve seen you before,” he said.

  Omigod. He’d seen her. He’d noticed her.

  She was glad she’d already dropped the dollar bill into his guitar case. Her hands were suddenly so slick with perspiration the money might have disintegrated in her palm.

  She had to say something. He was still smiling at her. “I love listening to you,” she said, hoping she wasn’t blushing or oozing sweat in her armpits. She didn’t have any zits, did she? Was her hair sleek and shiny? Did she look fat to him? She really wasn’t fat, regardless of what Bony said, but next to Kim she resembled a porker.

  Fortunately, she wasn’t next to Kim. Kim was standing with Ashleigh in the crowd, watching her.

  “Well, thank you,” he said.

  So polite! No tattoos and polite—but African-American and cornrowed and earning money by playing music in the park, so it wasn’t as if he was exactly safe. Plus his being years and years older than her, of course.

  But his smile seemed safe, almost. Safe and sexy both. She felt more of that cider warmth slide down from her face into her chest and through her whole body.

  She had to say something. She couldn’t waste this moment. It might be the only time she ever talked to him. “I should thank you,” she said, sounding much calmer than she felt. “Because your music is really cool. I think you should be making records. You’re that good. My name is Reva.” Shit! She’d been doing so well, and suddenly she was blurting out My name is Reva, as if she were brain damaged or something.

  “Well, hey, Reva,” he said affably. “I’m gonna play another song now.” In other words, bug off.

  He was too polite to say Bug off, of course. He had to be polite because she’d stuck a dollar bill in hi
s guitar case. But now he knew her name. And maybe he wasn’t just being polite. Maybe he was actually pleased to have met her. Maybe, just maybe, he’d go home tonight, to wherever his home was—she wanted to imagine him in some tiny, artsy flat on the Lower East Side or an interesting old brownstone in Harlem—and fall asleep remembering the girl who thought he should be making records, who had that much faith in him.

  She smiled, hoping her expression didn’t seem forced, and strolled back to where her friends were standing. “Omigod!” Kim squealed softly.

  “He’s really cute,” Ashleigh declared once again.

  “Do you think he likes you?” Kim asked.

  “Shh.” Reva clung desperately to her poise. She didn’t want them to know how rattled she was, how wet her hands were, how fluttery her heart felt, beating like a ticking time bomb in her throat. “He’s playing a song.”

  Darryl J swept the crowd with his gaze and then zeroed in on her. “This one’s for my new friend, Reva,” he said, then let loose with a rowdy flurry of guitar chords.

  He was singing this song for her! Just the way she’d dreamed, just the way she’d fantasized. He was singing to her…and she could scarcely even listen to the song because she had to concentrate all her energies on remaining upright when she was this close to fainting dead away.

  The girls stormed the apartment in a tumble of chatter, laughter and stomping feet. They shouted a chorus of “Hi’s” at Libby on their way to the kitchen, where they armed themselves with a two-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi and a bag of cheddar-cheese popcorn, and then they vanished into Reva’s bedroom. Hearing Reva’s door slam shut, Libby shook her head and grinned.

  She would rather die than have to relive her thirteenth year. Her memories of that year were ghastly. She’d been gangly and mismatched, her nose suddenly too big for her face, her chin too small, her figure devoid of curves and her knees and elbows as rough as sandpaper. And as much as she would have liked to ignore her appearance altogether, her mother had constantly harped on it: “Don’t eat that, it’ll give you pimples!” “Don’t wear that skirt, it makes you look chubby.” “I wish you’d let me do something with your hair, Libby.” Her mother had undoubtedly meant well, but every comment had informed Libby that she was a disaster.

  Her mother had been beautiful, and still was. Her father appreciated his wife’s beauty more than any of her other traits, which was probably a good thing, given that Libby’s mother had been a dreadful cook, an even worse housekeeper, a dilettante who always swore she’d get a job but never did, and a sometime volunteer who complained about the hard work she was doing without compensation. “I’m answering phones for this outfit all day. The least they could do is pay me,” she’d grouse, even if the outfit was a soup kitchen or an organization raising money for research on dyslexia.

  “Better yet, they should make you their spokeswoman,” her father would say. “A beautiful woman like you, all you’d have to do is smile and the donations would pour in.”

  Libby had promised herself then that she’d never harp on her own daughter’s appearance—assuming she ever had a daughter. Once Reva had been born, Libby held on to that promise. In truth, she believed Reva was the most beautiful girl in the world, but she never said so. If she did, she would undoubtedly embarrass Reva. To be thirteen was to be overly conscious of every minor flaw, every misplaced freckle and torn cuticle. If Reva asked, “Does this shirt match these pants?” or “Is my hair straight in back?” Libby would answer honestly, but other than that she kept her mouth shut about her daughter’s appearance.

  Through the closed bedroom door Libby heard muffled giggling and shrieks. She turned her attention back to the application open in front of her. Phoebe Evans was apparently quite the four-year-old, already capable of writing the entire alphabet backward, a talent Libby supposed would come in handy if she ever became a subversive inventor like Leonardo da Vinci and wanted to write her notebooks in code. Her parents pointed out on the application that they’d managed to secure a place for her in her extremely prestigious preschool two months before she was born. “We believe in planning ahead, and so does Phoebe,” her parents wrote.

  Libby set aside Phoebe’s application and opened the next folder. Madison Harkinian was a spectacular gymnast, according to her father, with hopes of competing in the 2016 Summer Olympics. This sounded familiar to Libby…and then she saw the Post-it fastened to the inside of the folder, with her preliminary notes on Madison’s application jotted onto it. She’d already reviewed this application. Her piles must have gotten mixed up.

  She leaned back in the dining room chair and groaned. Not even two weeks into the process, and all the applications were sounding alike to her. She’d read at least four essays about youngsters who hoped to compete in the 2016 Summer Olympics, and a few more who expected to compete in the 2018 Winter Olympics. Shoving Madison’s folder away, she reached for the next one in the pile and prayed that the child had no Olympics aspirations.

  She opened the folder and immediately noticed a Post-it with her handwriting on it: “Fin Aid App.” This was Eric Donovan’s application. She’d jotted the reminder to make sure his father filed the form. Flipping through the folder, she found a copy of Eric’s financial-aid application, several faxed sheets. Tara must have filed them.

  Libby pulled out the financial-aid application and studied it. Ned Donovan was neither rich nor poor. He lived in New York and worked for a firm called Greater Manhattan Design Associates, where he got paid what would be considered a comfortably middle-class income in any other community but what in Manhattan was a just-getting-by income. He’d bought his apartment for a typically obscene amount of money. He had a savings account but no investments. He and his son were clearly not caviar class.

  But he owned his apartment outright. Libby would be thrilled just to have a mortgage. To qualify for one, however, she needed a down payment.

  She’d already visited the Human Resources Department at Hudson to discuss the possibility of borrowing against her pension; they’d advised her not to do it. She’d also visited her bank, where a loan officer told her he’d be happy to discuss mortgages with her once she had a sufficient down payment. Vivienne didn’t seem to be coming through with any rich single guys from her synagogue.

  Libby wondered if Ned knew how lucky he was. He might not be able to afford the Hudson School’s annual tuition—hell, she couldn’t afford it, either, and if Reva hadn’t been eligible for a free ride at the school, she’d be stuck, like Eric, in an overcrowded public school. Or else Libby would have left the city, moved to a more affordable suburb and enrolled her daughter in the local school district. Nowadays, though, the suburbs were almost as expensive as the city. Imagine having to bankrupt herself to buy a tract house somewhere, miles from everything, with sky-high property taxes. And she’d have to buy a car, and Reva wouldn’t have Central Park to hang out in with her friends, or a student subscription to Mostly Mozart.

  Life was too damn expensive.

  Sighing, Libby shut Eric Donovan’s folder and tossed it onto the dining-room table. Then she pushed herself out of her chair and trudged to the kitchen. Her ex-husband’s phone number was programmed into the cordless phone’s memory to make Reva’s life easier—she phoned Harry far more often than Libby did—but Libby had assigned him number nine on the memory list. No way did he deserve one of the first few numbers.

  She pressed the memory button and nine and listened to the phone ring on the other end. Maybe she’d get lucky and no one would be home. That would give her a few more days to prepare herself mentally for the difficult task of begging him for assistance. Not that she had a lot of time to spare. She needed to come up with the money or move by January.

  “Hello?” Bonnie spoke into the phone. She had an odd accent, nasal Brooklyn burnished with polished notes of Westchester, kind of like Dijon mustard on a greasy hot dog.

  “Bonnie? It’s Libby,” she said. “Is Harry there?”

  “If you’d call
ed ten minutes later, he wouldn’t be,” Bonnie told her. “He has a squash date with Gerald Wexler.” Bonnie liked to engage in friendly small talk with Libby. She probably considered it terribly civilized that a former wife and a current wife could shoot the breeze rather than each other.

  Libby tried to recall who Gerald Wexler was, then decided she didn’t care. “Can I talk to him?” she asked, a part of her wishing she’d waited ten minutes before phoning, and another part of her lecturing herself to be mature and sensible and get this god-awful conversation over with.

  “Let me see if I can grab him before he bolts,” Bonnie said. “You know how he can be.”

  Actually, Libby didn’t know how he could be. The only time he’d ever bolted during their marriage was when he’d bolted from the marriage itself.

  She heard a click as Bonnie put her on hold—why the woman couldn’t just put down the phone and holler for Harry was a mystery—and then, after a few seconds, another click. “What’s up?” Harry said. Unlike Bonnie, he didn’t seem to feel any compulsion to be civilized.

  Libby steeled herself for her mission. To call him and complain about his failure to pick Reva up on time or his letting her watch R-rated movies when she visited him was one thing; to ask him for financial help was quite another. “I need to talk to you,” she began, then realized she couldn’t possibly talk to him about her apartment if he was on the verge of bolting.