The Fixer Upper

by Judith Arnold

  Libby had tried to ignore Ned, too. She’d sat at her dining-room table, diligently reviewing the application of James Quimble, who, according to his mother, wanted to be a lion when he grew up. That alone was enough to place him on the “recommended for acceptance” pile.

  But as hard as she tried to remain focused on the applications, she couldn’t shut off her awareness of Ned. And it wasn’t just because of the smell and the cold evening air wafting through the living room, across the entry and into the dining room. Nor was it because she could hear his tools making rasping and clanking noises, or because she could hear muffled thumps as he shifted position, as his huge boot-clad feet clomped around her floor.

  He whistled. Like a dwarf in a Disney movie, he whistled while he worked, a pleasant, unrecognizable tune. Did he always whistle on the job, she wondered, or was his whistling a special expression of the joy he took in rehabilitating her fireplace? Or maybe the joy he took in being in her apartment, doing something for her? Or his joy at thinking she would have to let his son into the Hudson School because he was doing something for her?

  Actually, she believed he was doing this for himself more than her. He was the one who was so psyched about her fireplace’s potential.

  “Hey, Libby—you’ve got to see this,” he called to her at one point.

  “I’m not crawling into the fireplace with you,” she called back. She’d already done that twice, and both times had left her discombobulated.

  He resumed whistling and chiseling and whatever else he was doing. Ten minutes later, he appeared in the dining-room doorway and announced, “I’m dying of thirst. Any chance I can get a glass of water?”

  “Help yourself. The sink works,” Libby said, trying to stifle her grin as she gestured toward the kitchen doorway. His hair was mussed—undoubtedly from crawling in the fireplace—and he’d rolled up the sleeves of his flannel shirt to his elbows. He had the sexiest forearms she’d ever seen. That she would even notice his forearms and think of them in terms of their sex appeal rattled her.

  “I don’t know where you keep your glasses,” he pointed out.

  With a great show of reluctance, she shoved away from the table and preceded him into the kitchen. Just as she reached up to open the cabinet door, he planted a hand on her shoulder, turned her to face him and covered her mouth with his. “This is what I’m dying of thirst for,” he murmured between the first kiss and the second.

  She ended the second kiss before it lasted as long as the first. “The kids—” she murmured.

  “Are at the other end of the apartment.” He completed the sentence before zeroing in for a third kiss.

  She broke that one off, too, even though she would have had to think long and hard to come up with anything she’d rather do than stand in her kitchen kissing Ned. She’d never considered solvent as an aphrodisiac before. By the end of the third kiss, she’d never consider solvent as anything but an aphrodisiac.

  She was going to see him tonight, just the two of them. On a date. Spending her morning in prayer seemed like a good idea.

  She followed Vivienne into the sanctuary and chose a seat near the back, in case Vivienne’s sweater failed to keep her awake during the service. The moment they settled on the upholstered bench, Vivienne gave her a sharp nudge. “That’s him,” she whispered.

  “Who?” Libby asked, peering around.

  “Ari.”

  “Harry?” What was Harry doing here? Couldn’t he be religious downtown in his own neighborhood?

  “Ari,” Vivienne stressed. “The younger man.”

  Libby’s gaze followed Vivienne’s discreetly pointed finger to a thin young man in khakis and a white shirt, an ill-fitting yarmulke sitting askew atop his thick brown hair. He appeared absurdly young. Libby was already financially linked to Sharma, the boy-man mortgage officer at her bank. She certainly didn’t intend to start a relationship with a boy-man possible lover, especially one who didn’t know how to wear a yarmulke properly. Even Ned would look better in a yarmulke than Ari did.

  He smiled shyly at Vivienne, who smiled back and fluttered her fingers in a wave. “He’s really very sweet,” she confided to Libby.

  He lives with his parents, Libby wanted to retort. But who cared? She didn’t need Vivienne to set her up with anyone.

  “That’s Harvey,” Vivienne whispered, motioning with her chin to Libby’s left. Libby glanced in that direction and saw a beefy man with dense black curls covering his head and creeping down into the collar of his shirt. He probably had a hairy back. He probably looked as though he was wearing a fur coat when he was naked. Libby shuddered…and then stopped shuddering when she thought about Ned’s back. If it was hairy—and she simply couldn’t believe it was—at least his hair would be fair, not black and wiry.

  Not that she was going to see his back anytime soon. A few kisses were one thing, but removing clothes…No. She was a long way from that.

  She turned back to Vivienne and found her smiling warmly at Harvey, who smiled back. “Where’s Leonard?” Libby blurted.

  Vivienne’s smile waned. “He’s having brunch with a friend.”

  “What friend? Why didn’t they invite you to join them?”

  “It’s a guy he went to college with. I didn’t care to join them. When they get together, all they talk about is Brandeis. It’s boring.”

  In truth, Libby often found Leonard boring, even when he wasn’t talking about Brandeis. Vivienne loved him, so he was fine with Libby. But she’d rather attend services than listen to him discuss his alma mater.

  Still, she thought it odd that Vivienne had a glowing smile for Harvey Golub and baby-faced Ari, and her smile disappeared when Libby mentioned Leonard. If Vivienne mentioned Ned, Libby wouldn’t be able to stop smiling. Maybe it was easier to smile when the man in your life was a boyfriend and not a husband.

  Was Ned her boyfriend? Just contemplating the possibility caused the corners of Libby’s mouth to twitch upward. Boyfriend. Such an adolescent term. Reva was the right age for boyfriends—well, no, she wasn’t, but in a few years she would be. Libby, though…Wasn’t a boyfriend someone you were supposed to meet at your locker? Wasn’t a boyfriend someone who gave you his ring to wear on a chain around your neck? Wasn’t thirty-five too old to have a boyfriend?

  The cantor entered and started chanting in a sonorous voice. Vivienne straightened and affected a pious expression. Libby commanded herself to stop thinking about Ned and pay attention.

  The cantor sang and the rabbi spoke. Libby had a vague idea of what the prayers meant, although what little she knew of Hebrew had pretty much evaporated in the days immediately following her bat mitzvah. Harry had been more religious than Libby, and she’d made an effort for him. She still remembered her first seder as his wife. Gilda had hosted it, and Libby had missed most of it because Reva had fussed and demanded to nurse the entire time, and popping a breast out of her blouse at the seder table to feed the baby wouldn’t have been appropriate. She’d sat in Gilda and Irwin’s bedroom, nursing Reva and burping her, rocking her and changing her diapers, while the aromas of wine and rich chicken soup with matzo balls and pot roast and a potato kugel wafted in from the dining room. By the time she and Harry had gotten home, she’d been ravenous. She’d put Reva into her crib and then stuffed a peanut-butter sandwich into her mouth. Harry had gone ballistic because she’d eaten bread.

  Next to her, Vivienne leafed through the prayer book, running her index finger right to left along the Hebrew text the way people did when they wanted to pretend they understood what was being said. Occasionally, the rabbi would lapse into English. Libby tried hard to pay attention, but her mind drifted. What should she wear tonight? And what about her hair? Should she borrow Reva’s straightening iron? Imagining Ned’s reaction if her usually bushy hair suddenly fell sleek and limp past her shoulders made her smile.

  She glanced at Vivienne’s prayer book, then at her watch. She shouldn’t have accompanied Vivienne to shul, except that Vivienne h
ad been asking her for weeks. Did Leonard ever go with her? Or was he always having brunch with that old Brandeis gang of his? True, the last few times Vivienne had tried to drag her to synagogue, Libby had instead convinced her to stay at the apartment and eat bagels, their own minibrunch.

  If she’d stayed home today, though, she would have wandered around the apartment in a frenzy, worrying about what to wear and all that other adolescent crap. Worrying about the adolescent crap and getting a dose of God at the same time was far more efficient.

  Finally, the service ended. Vivienne insisted that they go downstairs to partake of the kiddush, which consisted of challah, wine that tasted like cough syrup, cheese that had been sliced so long ago it had dried to the consistency of roofing shingles, bowls of warm, limp grapes and coffee cake stale enough to serve as packing foam. Libby put her plastic cup of wine down after one sip and concentrated on the grapes.

  Vivienne cornered Harvey Golub and dragged him over to meet Libby. She tried to signal Vivienne with a subtle shake of her head, but Vivienne on a mission was unstoppable. Harvey had a thick nose, thick fingers and black hair on his knuckles. Imagining those hands stripping the pelts off adorable little minks and foxes made her queasy. Or maybe what made her queasy was the bad wine.

  No, what was making her queasy was the way Vivienne kept smiling at Harvey.

  Libby swallowed one last lukewarm grape, told Harvey it was a pleasure meeting him, then clamped her hand over Vivienne’s shoulder and steered her away from the table. Apparently, the basement room doubled as a preschool, because the half of the room not being used for the kiddush was cluttered with boxes of toys and art supplies and a tyke-size plastic kitchen, complete with a plastic stove, a plastic refrigerator and a colorful plastic sink filled with plastic toy dishes. Libby wondered if the kitchen was kosher.

  “What are you doing?” she asked Vivienne through gritted teeth.

  “What, what am I doing?” Vivienne sipped her wine and looked gravely put upon. “I’m trying to set you up with a nice Jewish man.”

  “You’re flirting with him.”

  “What? You’re crazy! Completely meshugge.”

  “You keep smiling at him,” Libby said. “And he keeps smiling at you.”

  “He’s a mensch. We know each other. I’m trying to set him up with you.”

  “I’m not interested,” Libby said firmly, then added, “and you’re married.”

  “You want to go out with an Irish chimney sweep? Be my guest.” With that, she spun away from Libby and stalked back across the room, nearly kicking a plastic toy vacuum cleaner en route.

  Libby remained where she was for a moment. Was she crazy? Was she so besotted with Ned, or with the mere idea that she would be going on a date tonight, that she read flirtation into an innocent exchange of smiles? And why were all the toys housekeeping toys, anyway? Did the preschool encourage its male students to learn domestic skills, or did the boys all get to play tag while the girls hung out in the little plastic kitchen, cooking little plastic hamburgers in the little plastic skillets and then using the plastic vacuum cleaner to clean up the plastic crumbs afterward?

  A cloud of misery descended upon her. She hadn’t meant to pick a fight with Vivienne. Instead of sharing her giddy excitement with her ex-sister-in-law, she’d alienated her. If Vivienne wanted to smile at hairy Harvey, let her. Her idiot husband was off singing the Brandeis equivalent of “Boola Boola” with his buddies. Vivienne deserved to have a little fun, too.

  Still, even after Libby apologized to Vivienne, forced down a slice of desiccated cheese to prove there were no hard feelings, and then left, telling Vivienne she had a lot to do that afternoon, she felt unsettled. The sky was a gentle blue, the sun tunneling light down to the sidewalk between the towering apartment buildings as she strolled toward West End Avenue. Reva would be in a good mood when Libby arrived home, because she’d allowed her to invite Kim over. And tonight Libby would see Ned. She ought to be dancing home, bursting into song in the middle of the sidewalk the way Reva had the day she’d gotten her solo. But Libby felt uneasy.

  Nerves, she thought.

  When she arrived home, Reva and Kim greeted her at the door. They must have heard her key in the lock, because they were standing in the entry, gazing at her so hopefully her panic increased. “What did you break?” she asked as she tossed the mail—mostly bills—onto the table and removed her coat.

  “Nothing,” they said simultaneously.

  “We were just wondering…” Kim began.

  “Please!” Reva added.

  All right. They hadn’t broken anything. Libby could scratch that worry off her list.

  “The thing is,” Reva said in a singsong voice, “Kim’s got a piano at her house.”

  “And my mother said it was okay with her.”

  “What’s okay?” Libby asked.

  “Me sleeping over at Kim’s house,” Reva said.

  Libby took a deep breath. The air carried a trace of chemical smell. It didn’t smell like an aphrodisiac when Ned wasn’t around. It smelled like turpentine.

  Trying not to think about the smell, she analyzed Reva’s situation. The girl was supposed to be grounded. She had been grounded for a week. Kim was her best friend, and she had a piano. “A piano?”

  “So we can practice Tommy,” Kim explained. “Reva needs the practice.”

  Reva needed the practice the way Harry needed an ego.

  “And my mother said it was okay with her. We already checked,” Kim continued, beaming her sweet, innocent smile. Libby had always considered Kim a good influence on Reva, smart and kind and obedient. But the girl was cunning, she acknowledged. Her innocent smile hinted at a fair amount of finagling.

  “Let me call your mother,” Libby said. The instant the words were out of her mouth, she realized they contained her decision. If Reva were truly grounded, Libby wouldn’t be phoning Kim’s mother. She’d be saying no.

  Her brain was kaput. The overloaded wiring had short-circuited. A morning with Vivienne and God was enough to erase Libby’s memory of punishments meted out.

  She strode into the kitchen, grabbed the cordless phone and punched in the memory button for Kim’s number. Marise Noguchi answered, and within minutes she was chattering away about what a lovely girl Reva was, and how exciting it was that she would be singing a solo and Kim would be accompanying the chorus on the piano, and Reva’s sleeping over tonight would in fact work out to the Noguchis’ benefit, because Kim’s older sister was having friends over, and Kim always got whiny when her older sister was entertaining, but if it was all right with Libby, Reva could keep her occupied so she wouldn’t whine tonight.

  “Sure,” Libby said. “Fine.” She could have suggested that Kim stay over at her place, instead, but since she was going to be out for at least part of the night—at most part of the night—she’d feel better knowing Reva and Kim were someplace that parents would be present.

  She disconnected the call, turned and found the girls crammed into the doorway, staring at her with wide eyes. “Okay,” she said, and was assaulted by shrieks of ecstasy. “But you’ll go directly to Kim’s place and you’ll stay there,” she warned.

  “I promise I’ll phone you every ten minutes,” Reva said, bursting into the kitchen and flinging her arms around Libby. The last time she’d had arms around her in the kitchen they’d been Ned’s arms. And she shouldn’t be thinking about that while her daughter was hugging her.

  “Don’t phone me every ten minutes,” she said. “Just leave the cell phone on so I can reach you.”

  “I promise. I promise I’ll leave it on until the battery dies.”

  “And then recharge it.”

  “You can always call the apartment,” Kim sensibly pointed out. “You won’t need to call Reva on the cell, because we won’t be going out.”

  What a good girl. So much better behaved than that crowd who’d led Reva astray last weekend. “I guess I could do that,” she said, wondering if she actuall
y would.

  Thank God for healthy babysitters, Ned thought as he left the apartment. Lindsay from the other end of the hall was over her strep throat and happy to empty Ned’s bank account by staying with Eric for a few hours. Eric had grumbled that he was too old to need a babysitter, but at least Lindsay didn’t smell of oatmeal, so he kept his complaints to a minimum.

  Ned headed down the stairs at a sprightly pace. He’d had mixed feelings about moving into a walk-up, but walking down was a breeze. Eric liked to grip the railings and hurl himself down the last three steps of each flight, as if he were maneuvering some sort of indoor ski jump with lots of ninety-degree moguls. And given the difference in price between a walk-up and an elevator building, well, Ned could use the exercise.

  He’d cleaned the apartment that afternoon. He’d dusted while Eric vacuumed—the kid liked noisy equipment with wheels. Ned had also put a bottle of white wine in the fridge and left a bottle of red handy on the sliver of counter space between the stove and the sink. He’d even fluffed the cushions on the sofa.

  Hell, what was he thinking? As promising as things seemed between him and Libby at the moment, exactly one week ago he’d been ready to write her off—or, more accurately, he’d been sure she’d written him off. He knew her, but he didn’t know her. Tonight he’d take her out for dinner and they’d talk…and if the talk went well and she wanted to return to his place, he had wine ready. And fluffed sofa cushions. And maybe by the end of the evening he’d know her a little better. His expectations went no further than that.

  The doorman at her building stopped him, asked who he was and then phoned her apartment. “You can go up,” the man muttered, giving him a begrudging stare. Ned couldn’t imagine why he’d aroused the guy’s suspicions. He’d put on khakis and a gray shirt with a pattern woven into the threads that the salesclerk at the Gap had told him was really cool, and on top of that his dark gray wool blazer. He’d shaved, showered, shampooed, and shined his loafers. If he didn’t pass muster with the doorman, then the guy’s standards were too high.