But it was a glorious day in Brooklyn, a community that suddenly seemed not unlike Sesame Street. Folks—like so many Big Birds—chatted about whatever (sleep training, victory garden composting, due dates, renovation plans), blocking the sidewalk with giant strollers and laundry carts. Manhattan’s postwork crowd began to drizzle from the subway, plodding cheerfully toward couches, takeout, and Netflix.
Marjorie was distracted by all this, which was probably why her brain registered alarm long before she consciously understood what lay ahead. By then, it was too late: On the corner of Dean Street, a residential stretch straddling gritty and sweet, three men clustered in conversation. She made eye contact with the slim dirty blond among them. And all smugness vanished on both sides as recognition set in.
Mac rearranged his shocked expression into a grin as he broke off conversation. The other men—one in jeans, work boots, and a worn T-shirt, and the other, the diametric opposite, in a suit and tie—followed his gaze.
Marjorie had no choice but to stop. She adjusted the tote on her shoulder, praying that her dark circles from exhaustion were less visible in direct sunlight.
“Madgesty. Fancy meeting you here.”
“And here I thought you didn’t dare set foot in the outer boroughs, thought I was safe!” She crinkled her nose adorably.
Mac looked sheepish. “Yeah, well, duty calls. This is Hank and Keith.” He gestured toward his companions. “We just met with the Barclays Center people about having a DIRT annex there, down the line.” (The brand-new stadium had caused uproar, as locals feared it might disturb the peace—scalpers loitering in corners and such. The developers had yet to deliver the neighborhood improvements they promised in exchange for permission to build. Protesters stood behind a barrier outside, wielding signs and shouting at workmen, who weren’t in a position to change anything.)
Marjorie shook hands with Mac’s friends, assuring them with her brightest smile that it was a pleasure to meet them, while planning her escape.
“So.” Mac rocked back on his heels. “What are you doing here? I didn’t think you hung out in Brooklyn either.”
“Well, there’s an Everest-high mountain of things you don’t know about me, so…” She forced an even wider smile.
Mac lowered his voice, leaned in. “Are you mad at me, Madgesty?”
“Why would I be mad at you, Mac?”
She was struggling to be civil. He represented everything wrong in her world.
“Weird that you ran into each other, since you both never come here,” inserted Hank, the casual of the two and DIRT’s executive chef.
Actually, Mac and Marjorie—like two electrons magnetically drawn together—had a long history of accidental meetings: in the Miami airport, a Chicago hotel, an outdoor café in St. Thomas, the painkiller aisle at a Duane Reade pharmacy uptown, long after they’d both moved south. “We always run into each other,” said Mac. “It’s fate, right, Madgesty?”
“I think the kids call it stalking.” She winked.
“Not when it’s an accident.”
“That’s what all the stalkers say.”
The men laughed. Mac did not. There was an awkward silence.
“What’s wrong, O’Shea?” asked Marjorie. “Cat got your tongue? And by that I mean, ‘Some stripper named Kat give you oral herpes?’”
“I like her. She’s funny,” said Hank. Keith nodded, enjoying the show.
“Well, I better be going. Going, going, going.”
Mac, off his game, seemed desperate to stall and right the exchange. “Oh. Um. Where are you—I mean … sorry. Are you headed back to the city?”
“I’m getting the train at Atlantic. Why? Are you guys heading that way too?”
“No. We’re going to that new Pork Slope BBQ place.”
“Oh. Did you just want to tell me that or—?”
The guys laughed again. And Mac was suddenly reminded of an instance in fourth grade, when the housekeeper was off and his mother sent him to school with a paper bag lunch of Carr’s crackers and Camembert cheese. Kids teased him about the smell for weeks.
“Anyway. Okay, bye,” said Marjorie. “Nice meeting you!”
Mac bent to kiss her cheek, but she stepped away, stranding him midpeck. Performing her best Miss America wave, she headed toward the subway, cursing their synchronicity. She hoped her anger hadn’t been too obvious; she didn’t want to be the “crazy pissed chick” they discussed when she left.
As it happened, she was the object of speculation once out of earshot.
“Should we go?” Mac sighed, struggling to shake off the chance meeting.
“Um. Who the hell was that?” asked Hank.
“Nobody. Let’s go.”
“Dude. I’m not moving ’til you tell me what’s up.”
“Just some girl I went to high school with. She’s—nobody.”
“She’s hot,” said Keith, Mac’s financial adviser and resident dickwad. He stuck a finger in his collar for effect … and ventilation. It was a warm day.
“You like her?” pressed Hank.
“Is this seventh grade? Do I like her? Do I want to play Seven Minutes in Heaven with her?”
“I do.” Keith grunted.
Hank studied Mac’s face. “So you aren’t into her?”
Mac shrugged. “We used to hook up sometimes.” It was a minor exaggeration, really.
“Then give me her number,” oozed Keith. “I’m a sucker for a fire crotch.”
“She’s not really a full-on redhead.”
“Whatever. Don’t matter if the carpet matches the drapes.”
Ignoring Keith, per usual, Hank shook his head. “I never thought I’d see the day. You’re actually into her, which is a first. And, I don’t know what you did, but she’s pissed. You better find a way to fix that or you’ll regret it.”
Hank spoke from experience: His wife, Clara, was once a casual fling, whom he messed with between other conquests. It wasn’t until she cut him off to date an architect (and Bradley Cooper doppelgänger) that he realized he’d let someone amazing slip away. He groveled for seven months before winning her back. They were married within that year and were now rarely apart despite his late hours. It was always him with the baby strapped to his chest, her making self-effacing jokes about her cooking, them hanging in a beer garden with friends.
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” said Mac. He was far from it, at once embarrassed and tortured by the memory of her lips, parted in question, and her glare, in vivid opposition to the encouragement she’d whispered against his ear just nights before.
“You stuttered, man. The guy who can talk to anyone just fucking stuttered.”
Keith finally lost patience. “Enough with the girl talk. My balls are sweating. I want an overpriced IPA from some shitty second-rate city like Portland. Now. Let’s go.”
And with that, a conversation that might have lasted hours among three emotionally evolved women ended as the (mostly stunted) men moved on.
12
On the walk from the train to her apartment, Marjorie’s phone signaled a text from Vera with a furious bong!
U need to have apt cleaned. Keep my half of deposit. Will more than cover cost. Assume u r moving. I let Victor know. He says leave keys inside apt when u leave Weds. I leave tomorrow.
Marjorie would have loved to tell Vera to shove her half of the security deposit, but pride was above her pay grade. She had thirty-six hours to pack before slumlord-in-training, Victor, started charging some inflated day rate.
In the building’s dingy basement that smelled of dead something, she miraculously remembered the storage unit’s padlock code. Vera’s belongings were gone. Inside sat only a broken skateboard—a gift from one ex-boyfriend, broken by another during a failed ollie—and some empty cardboard boxes Vera had called her a “hoarder” for keeping.
Once upstairs, Marjorie surveyed her bedroom and considered climbing into the closet to hide forever. Then she dove in.
The time l
imit meant no nostalgic pit stops along memory lane: no rereading yearbook entries (“Have a good summer, beatch!”) or staring at photographs of herself with rounder cheeks and self-cut bangs. No scanning passages from favorite books by Jane Austen, Joan Didion, and J. D. Salinger. No time to read the apology letter from the boyfriend who broke her skateboard.
Marjorie did linger on one twenty-first-birthday card: Vera and Pickles had thrown her a surprise dinner at a friend’s West Village bistro. The note—scrawled in Pickles’s left-handed chicken scratch on letterpress stationery—read:
Our Dearest Morningstar! (Get it? You will when you see the present! And then you won’t even care because it’s so awesome—ha!)
We love you, baby. Trio for life! Happy birthday and a million more—at which we’ll STILL be toasting with you at 2B (or not 2B!).
Love you 4-eva and eva! xoxoxoxoxo S & P
The gift had been gold stud earrings in the shape of stars, specked with tiny diamond chips. Marjorie loved them so much that when she wore them, she obsessively pressed her earlobes to make sure they hadn’t fallen out.
Suddenly, she felt so alone that she couldn’t breathe. She leaned back against the side of her bed and, desperate, tried her mother’s tactic: There’s my desk, there are my books, there, beyond that door, Vera is finishing packing.
Marjorie grabbed her purse and fumbled for her phone, dialing.
“Hello?” The voice was less harried than expected.
“Pickles? It’s Madge.”
“Madge! It’s positively heaven to hear your voice.”
Pickles Marie Schulman, whose real name was Priscilla, had a flair for the dramatic and a vernacular more suited to a 1920s screen siren than a contemporary New York City housewife.
“I’m surprised I caught you.”
“Me too, sweetie. Me too. Surprised to function most days with these rug rats harassing me! But you called at precisely the right time: Riley just went down after her afternoon feed. Just need to note which boob she nursed on in this app, then I’m yours. How the hell do iPads work, anyway? Which boob, which boob,” she sang. “I’m like a cow, sweetie. A total cow!” She let loose her shrill laugh, rumored to have shattered crystal at Bill Clinton’s second inaugural ball. “He can inaugurate me anytime,” a young Pickles had sassed at the time, having no real idea what she meant.
The Schulman family—bolstered by generations of Schulman Farms packaged deli meat money—had been longtime Democratic delegates, although Barack Obama had caused internal struggle for the older generation. Claiming not to be racist and actually tolerating a young black man as president of the United States turned out to be different beasts. But then Pickles’s older brother came out of the closet and, with gay marriage in the balance, the family had no choice but to succumb. Plus, Pickles’s Grandma Rue had to admit that “the homosexuals” did throw the most well-orchestrated weddings. The family got over the hump. In fact, Pickles’s mother, Binky, was—at this very moment—choosing between peonies and roses for a fund-raiser supporting the incumbent POTUS.
Binky’s involvement was in part at Barbara Plum’s suggestion long before. At the height of Clinton’s economic boom, hordes of wealthy women—including Mrs. Schulman—descended on the Plums’ apartment every Tuesday morning at 10:00 for Fairway muffins and direction toward enrichment with solutions ranging from new hobbies (political activism!) to divorce. The girls had first met as preteens at one of these “boring” life-coaching seminars, when Pickles’s mother forced her to tag along while she was on spring break from school. They became fast friends, sharing a love for cropped tops, caprese salads, The Notorious B.I.G., Smashing Pumpkins, the movie Clueless, and “Serial Killer Week” on Discovery Channel.
“One second, hold on, almost there, okay! Go!” Pickles rambled. “I’ve turned the blasted thing off and am ready to convene. How are you? Did I ask how you are?”
Marjorie had to smile. Pickles’s enthusiasm was contagious, even if it meant she sometimes forgot to listen. Her closest friends knew that on the flip side there could be low lows, punctuated by hopeless sobbing. But mostly she was the picture of joie de vivre.
“I’m fine. You?”
“Divine, honey. You know how I do. Only you don’t sound fine at all. You sound down in the depths. Am I right? Are you Dumpster diving? Do tell. Let Mama fix it.”
“I’m not sure where to start.”
“At the beginning. Where else?”
“Okay. You know Mac?”
“I haven’t lately been lobotomized, despite what pregnancy brain might suggest, so yes.”
Of course she knew Mac. When Pickles got caught with pot and unceremoniously kicked out of her Upper East Side girls’ academy, she was accepted at Marjorie’s high school. (The new Schulman Athletic Center was erected the following year.)
“What’s up, sweetums? I’m not gonna lie. Mentioning Mac is ominous from the get.”
Better to rip off the Band-Aid. “I slept with him.”
Silence.
“It wasn’t like me.”
“I was going to say. Historically, you leave the poor decision making to me.”
“I’m going through a tricky time; try not to judge.”
“Not me, sweet pea. We’re all just trying to get by. A little worrisome, though. You know I love to live vicariously through your single lady antics, but…”
For years, Marjorie had played rapt spectator to wild child Pickles. She wasn’t beautiful (though she never knew it) but projected effortless sex appeal, a by-product of minor damage. Below sly almond eyes and an otherwise nude face, her wide lips were always brightly painted. And thanks to her flat belly and heart-shaped “French” butt, she looked as hot in a fitted T-shirt and low-slung bell-bottoms—skin peeking out between the two—as most do in black microminis.
Pickles made bad choices, falling into (and out of) love too easily. She dragged on cigarettes like lifelines, tossed back whiskey without wincing. She developed obsessions—often inspired by new boyfriends—like opera or video art or helping starving children from Haiti to Detroit. Then, as the shimmer faded and reality set in, she would decide that her causes didn’t need help as much as she did and she’d swoop Marjorie away to a Schulman compound in Sun Valley, Idaho, Tuscany, or St. Barts. Boundless resources had not helped tame her.
But almost six years prior now, Pickles had made another, less expected plunge: She got married, youth be damned. She’d made a shockingly strong choice. Her husband, Steve—an MBA, absorbed quickly into the family business—was sweet, smart, stoic, and took pleasure in Pickles’s flights of fancy. Soon after came children.
The kids changed Pickles. One minute she was treating some boy toy to Vegas lap dances and the next she was taking bourgeois pole-dancing classes with her “mommy group.” Marjorie was glad that Pickles ditched her old ways, having feared that her old friend might panic and flee when confronted with the sometimes ugly realities of marriage and motherhood. It was just hard to picture her covered in spit-up—that didn’t originate with some wasted drummer.
Ultimately, Pickles dove into child-rearing full throttle too, which proved obnoxious. For the first time, she had followed through with something, and that made her miraculous—worthy of applause. During the first pregnancy, Marjorie shared her friend’s excitement, shopping months early for impractical baby clothes from J Brand jeans to Steven Alan dresses. But the obsession proved exponential. Before the baby’s birth, Pickles had already spurned anything that wasn’t bamboo, organic cotton, hemp, or deemed otherwise acceptable by holier-than-thou mommy blogs. If possible, she would have constructed her whole world from kale.
And it only fed the beast when—out of politeness—an acquaintance called pregnant Pickles “glowing,” referenced “the miracle of life,” or acted as if her health was of national importance. Both Vera and Marjorie began dreading Pickles’s phone calls, during which she bragged about how easily she got pregnant (“The first time we tried, sweetums!”), as if the a
ct had required skill instead of biological luck.
Leading up to labor, she’d preached about natural birth (“Who needs medication? I’ve done enough drugs!”), quoting her doula and midwives (yes, plural). When push literally came to shove, though, and the baby refused to budge after five hours and enough Pitocin to induce a small elephant, she settled for a C-section. And for that too she was self-congratulatory: “I’m so relieved: Everything is still intact down there!”
Her son Jasper’s actual arrival did nothing to quell the beast, though perhaps the self-adulation had quieted down some since the more recent birth of Riley. By then, she had lectured so much about fair trade sweet potatoes that even her mother, Binky, had to roll her eyes—no easy feat with all that Botox. And Marjorie had started reaching out less and less. This call was a wary crossing of a burning bridge.
“The Mac thing is a hot mess, but it’s actually the least of my problems. Are you ready for this? Vera is moving in with Brian.” Marjorie awaited commiseration. None came.
“Right, right.”
“You knew?”
“I did.”
“For how long?”
“Gosh, I’m not sure. Maybe she told me six weeks ago at brunch? This lovely raw food spot near me. The best flaxseed—”
“You had brunch? Without me?”
“It’s not unheard of to convene without one of the trio, love. You and Vera have been living together for years without me.” Pickles hesitated. “She specifically wanted to see me alone.”
Alarms blared in Marjorie’s head. Phone cradled between her shoulder and chin, she crossed to her desk and began shoving stacks of unread books into a box. “So what did she say about me?” she asked with forced calm.
A palpable pause. “About you?”
“Pickles, I’m not dumb. She obviously wanted to vent.”
“She mentioned being worried about you, that’s true. But mostly she wanted to talk about what was happening in her life … without having to feel bad.”
“Wait, what does that mean?”
Will You Won't You Want Me?: A Novel Page 8
