The Fixer Upper

by Judith Arnold

  “Didn’t it occur to you that I’d be frightened, not knowing where you were? Didn’t it occur to you that I have a right to know where you’re going, and with whom?”

  That was exactly it, of course. Reva didn’t think her mother had that right. But to say so would make about as much sense as attempting to stop a speeding cab by stepping out into the middle of the street and holding your hand up. Only a suicidal idiot would try such a thing.

  “I’m trying to hold everything together,” her mother continued, her voice shivery with tension. “I’ve got Hudson School applications out the wazoo, I’ve got interviews with applicants lined up all next week and I have to figure out a way to buy this apartment so we can continue to live here. The last thing I need is to be worrying about my daughter because she’s traipsing around the city with her cell phone off.”

  You’re also seeing some guy who wants to overhaul our fireplace, Reva added silently. That might have something to do with her mother’s hysterical state. Whatever had happened with Mr. Donovan last night was unquestionably a big deal. The woman didn’t date. Maybe the men she met were hung up on hubcaps, too. Maybe they never grew up. This new guy’s fixation with the fireplace might be…what was the word? Sublimation. In English class, Mr. Mullin talked about how Laura in The Glass Menagerie sublimated her desire for a boyfriend by obsessing about her glass unicorn. Reva had considered that a stupid play because she thought guys were much more likely than girls to have desires they needed to sublimate. Most girls—even if they were crippled like Laura—would just as soon skip the crystal tchotchkes and go to a movie with their friends, preferably a movie starring someone really cute. Someone like Darryl J, for instance.

  Did Mr. Donovan sublimate something by obsessing about fireplaces? Did he want to renovate her mother’s fireplace because he really wanted to take her mother to bed? Gross.

  “Are you hungry?” her mother asked.

  She wasn’t. They’d eaten pizza in the Village, and of course Luke hadn’t paid for her slice, which proved to Reva that he didn’t really like her, regardless of what Katie thought. But things might go smoother with her mother if she agreed to eat something. “Sure,” she said. Maybe once they were eating, the subject of Reva’s afternoon in Greenwich Village would get forgotten. Her mother still hadn’t told her what her punishment would be, probably because she hadn’t yet decided on an appropriate sentence. But even without much appetite, Reva would rather eat than find out she was grounded until her fiftieth birthday.

  “We’ll have to eat in the kitchen,” her mother remarked. “The dining-room table is covered with applications.”

  Like Reva was blind or something. She’d have to be not to notice the mess on the dining-room table. “The kitchen is fine,” she said, hoping her mother would make something light—a salad or scrambled eggs. Reva would force herself to eat a bit, she’d be polite, and as soon as she was done she’d shut herself up in her room, phone Kim and discuss the situation.

  Situations, plural. She needed to tell Kim about Luke, her mother’s fireplace guy and, most important, the disappearance of Darryl J.

  Macie Colwyn kept fluttering like a red cape in front of Ned. Not that he was a bull, but she certainly seemed to be inviting him to charge at her.

  Ned was not in the mood. He was enraged at the world, most especially that part of the world occupied by Libby Kimmelman, who had not phoned him since their terse, snarly conversation Saturday evening. What had he done to deserve her wrath?

  All right, so wrath might be an overstatement. She’d snipped and snapped at him, clarified that her daughter’s well-being was more important than he was—a legitimate claim; he wouldn’t quarrel with that—and implied that she would let him know once Reva was home, safe and sound.

  Now it was Monday, and he still hadn’t heard from her.

  He assumed Reva had made it home. If she hadn’t, the newspapers would have been full of stories about a missing young teenager from the Upper West Side. Even in New York City, Reva’s disappearance would have made headlines.

  So Reva had returned home and Libby hadn’t called. Add it up and the sum didn’t appeal to Ned.

  Let her hate him. Let her cut him out of her life. He could survive that. But whatever she had a bug up her ass about, if she let it influence her decision on Eric’s admission to the Hudson School, he would never forgive her.

  “What I was thinking,” Macie said, her hair featuring some new coppery highlights that clashed with the purple ones, “is pillars in the bathroom.”

  “The bathroom?” Ned nearly dropped the tape measure he’d been using to block in the locations for the major appliances in what would eventually be her kitchen. “You want columns in the bathroom?”

  “Just the master bath,” she clarified.

  “Why?”

  “It’ll give the room a Roman-orgy feel. What do you think?”

  One thing he thought was that a bathroom didn’t strike him as a particularly promising location for an orgy. The master bath in this apartment would be spacious by Manhattan standards, but it certainly wouldn’t be big enough to hold an orgy in. All those hard surfaces wouldn’t be too comfortable, either.

  “We’ve already talked about the tub design,” Macie continued. “Marble, sunken, dramatic. If you framed the tub with two pillars—I envision the Corinthian kind, just like in the living room—it would be terribly sensuous.”

  Emphasis on terrible, Ned concluded grimly. He inched backward because Macie was standing too close to him, her pointy high-heel boots nearly touching his steel-toed work shoes and her perfume, something heavy and musky, clogging his nostrils. He didn’t like standing so close to a client, especially while discussing terribly sensuous tubs.

  “You’d lose valuable floor space,” he argued.

  “How valuable is floor space in a bathroom?”

  He sighed. “Then there’s the cost….”

  “Money is no object,” she told him. “You’re a flexible man, Ned. You can be flexible about this.”

  Ned’s flexibility had limits. Perhaps if Macie had hit him up with this orgy brainstorm when he’d been in better spirits—another outing with Libby on his agenda, maybe a date that would entail some time alone in a more private place than the alcove of a shoe store on Broadway—he’d say what the hell and order some Corinthian columns for Macie’s master bath. But he wasn’t in good spirits. “What does your husband think?” he asked.

  “About the bathroom? He doesn’t care, as long as it’s got a toilet.” Macie dismissed Ned’s concern with a wave of her hand. Mitch had mentioned that Colwyn was significantly older than his punk-artist wife. The poor guy might have a coronary if he wandered into the master bath and found himself in the midst of a Roman orgy. Of course, more than columns were required to make an orgy, but an old man with a frisky wife and a sunken marble tub…Ned didn’t want the man’s death on his head.

  “I don’t think the columns would work in the bathroom,” he said, because he wasn’t in the mood to accommodate anyone right now, not even the client.

  “In the bedroom, too,” Macie said, as if he hadn’t even spoken. “A couple of columns sort of framing the bed. That entire part of the loft could have a sybaritic feel.”

  Great. She wanted sybaritic. He wanted some socks to throw against a wall. “Macie, let me be frank with you,” he said.

  “I wish you would,” she purred, shifting closer to him again. He eyed her boots with some concern. The toes were so pointed he wondered if they could puncture the leather covering his insteps.

  “Sybaritic is the sort of thing you count on a decorator for. You can go with big pillows, animal skin prints, whatever. I’m focused on the structure. Where the rooms go, how they make sense, how they’ll contribute to comfortable living. Anything else, you should work with an interior designer.”

  “But you do the pillars, don’t you?” She peered up at him and batted her eyelashes. Given the unnatural smoothness and immobility of her fore
head, he figured she must have undergone more than a few Botox injections between her eyebrows in the not too distant past. She was lucky she could still blink.

  “They’re columns,” he emphasized, just to be contrary. Pillars, columns—what they really were was pretentious. “Right now, let us finish framing the rooms. We can deal with the cosmetics later.”

  “I thought it would be easier if you ordered the pillars—I mean columns—in bulk.”

  Oh, sure. Column manufacturers loved bulk orders.

  Fortunately, he didn’t have to respond, because the cell phone hooked onto his belt started chirping. It belonged to Mitch, or more accurately to the company. Mitch liked to be able to contact his crews, so he supplied the foreman of each crew with a cell phone. One of these days, Ned supposed he’d have to subscribe to his own personal cell-phone service. Sooner or later, Eric would deem himself old enough to roam the city with his friends, and Ned wouldn’t want to go nuts worrying about him the way Libby worried about Reva.

  “Excuse me,” he said to Macie, grateful for the excuse to turn away from her. He unclipped the phone, flipped it open and pressed the button. “Ned Donovan here.”

  “Ned?” Mitch’s secretary said. “You just got a call here at the office from a woman named Libby…Kibble, I think. She said she’s at work and you could call her there.”

  Libby Kibble. Ned permitted himself a grin. “Did she say what it’s about?”

  “No, just that you can call her at work. Do you need the number?”

  Ned wasn’t in any rush to return her call, but he balanced his clipboard against one of the studs in a wall that wasn’t yet finished and jotted down the number the secretary provided. After thanking her, he flipped the phone shut.

  He stared at the number for a minute, then tucked the clipboard under his arm and yanked the tab on the tape measure. If he looked busy enough, maybe Macie would leave him alone. Let her go bug one of the other guys. They had the boom box tuned to a Latino station and they were happily chatting about an acquaintance who did a brisk business bootlegging cigarettes from Virginia, where the retail price of a pack was about two bucks less than in New York. Maybe they’d like to discuss whether someone wearing shoes as pointy as Macie’s would be able to stub out a cigarette on the ground.

  The Sub-Zero would go here, he thought, measuring the dimensions carefully and marking them on the floor. The dishwasher had to go right next to the sink to simplify the plumbing. Screw Libby Kibble. He’d phone her when he felt like it, and not a minute sooner.

  Unless, of course, her call had something to do with Eric’s application.

  Shit.

  He snapped the tape measure shut though he remained kneeling on the floor, staring at the dusty boards but seeing too many other things: boots—not Macie’s but wild, colorful patchwork cowboy boots. Eyes, large and dark and framed with a few lovely, human lines. Hair that was silky and wavy and natural. A mouth…

  Shit.

  If the reason she’d called him was to discuss Eric, when there was so much else they should be talking about, so much else they should be aiming for, he’d hate her. And if the reason she’d called him was to discuss all those things they should be talking about, well, he’d hate her for having not called him sooner.

  Either way, he wanted to throw socks.

  He’d call her back later. Much later. Maybe.

  Fifteen

  By the time Libby phoned Ned’s work number, she’d already spent two hours interviewing prospective Hudson kindergarteners. She’d listened to five-year-old Anna Weinblatt recite a garbled version of the Gettysburg Address, after which she’d admitted that she had no idea what Gettysburg was but its address was too long to fit on an envelope. Libby had also discussed the environment with five-year-old Anna Pelletier, who’d explained that global warming was something like what happened to Hot Pockets in the microwave. And she’d witnessed five-year-old Anna Rossini’s rendition of a song from Annie—her favorite musical, because it almost had the same name as her. Anna Rossini had an unfortunate speech impediment, and the song had come out as “It’s a hard-wuck wife,” but Libby had somehow managed to keep a straight face throughout the entire performance.

  She’d also interviewed five-year-old Justin Belkow, who was oddly fixated on rye bread. “I like the kind with seeds in it,” he’d told her. “Those seeds, you know what I mean?”

  “Caraway seeds,” she’d said helpfully.

  “Yeah. They look like dirty fingernails.”

  Libby had decided she would never again eat seeded rye.

  As she emerged from the playroom with Justin, Tara caught her eye. “Your husband phoned while you were doing the interview,” she said.

  “Harry?”

  “Yeah. He’s at his office and he wants you to call him ASAP.”

  I’d rather call him a-s-s, Libby retorted silently, annoyed that he would identify himself as her husband. She shut herself in her office and dialed his work number. Her gaze strayed to her desk calendar. Three more interviews with prospective students today, and one meeting with a mother. She’d inked a star next to the mother’s name, which meant either the mother was a Hudson alumna or she’d promised a huge donation to the capital fund. Neither detail would guarantee her kid a place at the school, but if Libby had that kind of information about the parent ahead of time, it helped. Forewarned was forearmed.

  Harry’s secretary answered and Libby gave her name. She was put on hold.

  Swell. She had a crammed schedule, she was still recovering from Reva’s delinquent behavior on Saturday, she was still recovering from whatever had happened between her and Ned Donovan on Friday, and Harry put her on hold. The bastard.

  “Libby.” He broke the silence on the line.

  “I’m very busy, so—”

  “I just had an appointment cancel on me. I have two hours open this afternoon. Meet me at the bank and you can get your mortgage application started.”

  The calendar before her went blank. Or maybe it was her mind that went blank. What exactly had Harry said? “My mortgage application?”

  “For the apartment.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “When am I not serious?”

  She realized the answer was never. “Why? I mean, what made you decide—”

  “I told you, a client canceled on me.” He said nothing for a moment, then, “Reva needs stability in her life. After the mishegas she pulled this weekend, she needs parameters. She needs roots. We can’t have her roving around the city not knowing where her home is.”

  “Okay.” Libby wasn’t sure a connection existed between their daughter’s unplanned jaunt to Greenwich Village and her need to continue living in the same apartment, but she wasn’t going to argue with Harry. “When do you want me to meet you at the bank?”

  “I’ll be there at two-thirty. Set it up.” With that, he disconnected the call. Typical Harry: even when he was doing something nice, he had to be unpleasant about it.

  The calendar came into focus again, with all her appointments written on the page. Libby buzzed Tara and asked her to rearrange the schedule. Tom Hedrick, the math specialist who was one of this year’s faculty members on the admissions committee, could interview the children. The wealthy-alumna mother could be rescheduled. Libby was going to buy her apartment.

  Oy. The thought of signing that mortgage and committing herself to a loan big enough to support a rural village in China for several years scared the hell out of her. Losing her home scared her even more. So she’d commit herself to a crushing debt for the next fifteen years. So what? That was better than moving to Jersey.

  She phoned the bank, begged and pleaded, and won a place on a mortgage officer’s schedule for two-thirty. Hanging up, she glanced at her watch. A few minutes past one. She’d have to stop off at home to get her paperwork—the sales contract she’d been sent by the management company, with its nonnegotiable insider price, and all her documents attesting to her wealth, which was skimpy enoug
h that the word wealth really didn’t apply. If she left at one-thirty, she’d make it to the bank in time.

  She looked at her watch again. She had to tell someone what she was about to do.

  The first person she thought of was Ned.

  She should have phoned him yesterday. Or Saturday evening, once Reva was safely home. He’d asked her to call him, but she’d been too upset with Reva on Saturday and too upset with herself on Sunday. What kind of mother was she? How could she have raised a daughter who would do such a thing? Reva’s misbehavior was all Libby’s fault because she was the custodial parent. Okay, maybe Harry deserved a tiny sliver of blame for having walked out on his wife and daughter, but Libby had obviously failed Reva far more profoundly.

  Ned was a single parent, and his son was charming—bright, funny, poised and polite. Unlike Reva, who used to be all those things but had turned like a container of milk two weeks after its sell-by date. How could Libby telephone a perfect father like Ned and tell him what a loser she was?

  Yet now, when she was about to become a proud but deeply indebted homeowner, the first person she wished to tell was Ned. Not Vivienne, not Gilda and Irwin, not even Reva, whose hopes Libby preferred not to raise until the mortgage application was approved and the sale went through, and who was still on Libby’s shit list, anyway. She wanted to call Ned.

  And say what? “I am unworthy, but I wanted to share my happiness with you.” No, because the mortgage application might fall through. “I am unworthy, but I wanted to share my potential happiness with you.” “I am a lousy mother and a lousy friend, and I’m still not sure if Friday night was a date, but I wanted you to know that the fireplace can be renovated without the management company being dragged into the process.”