We ended up at a restaurant called Bill Tiffany’s, in midtown. It was one of those oak and stained-glass places that had sprung up like weeds everywhere in the past few years. At least it was unmistakably American. Howard arrived first, with my mother, whom he’d volunteered to pick up. He’d driven for over two hours in crazy traffic, and he was sipping a martini at the crowded bar when I got there. My mother was drinking something that looked like a Shirley Temple. I ordered a martini, too, and until the children came, we talked about the traffic, and about how amazed the Pilgrims would be by self-basting, self-timed, frozen turkeys. At last Spence and Ann appeared in the doorway, and Jason and Sara weren’t far behind. She walked with a swaybacked waddle to accommodate her growing belly, which we each patted in turn, greeting her. She was wearing a pleated plaid skirt that was hiked up in front, and under an army field jacket, an enormous T-shirt that said Women and Children First.
Once everyone was there, Howard hailed the headwaiter and claimed our table, deep in the fern jungle of the dining room. He’d brought the little crepe-paper turkey place cards from home, and he began setting them out and seating us. My mother on his right, me on his left. He’d carried the place cards in his jacket pocket and they were bent out of shape and wouldn’t stand up. He rearranged their pipe-cleaner legs and propped them against the bread basket and the salt and pepper shakers, but they kept keeling over.
The rest of us attended to our menus, and everyone but Jason ordered the standard Thanksgiving dinner. He chose a dish called Sizzling Oriental Shrimp. It was brought to the table in a showy hiss of steam that made everyone at the nearby tables turn to look at us.
The food at Bill Tiffany’s was well prepared and tasty, but it had an institutional quality—all those identical platters of turkey and chestnut stuffing going by. Who were the other families at the other tables, all dressed up and away from their cold, dark kitchens? We could have been inmates of a hospital or a prison, trying to put a brave front on things. Abide with me, I sang inside my head. Fast falls the eventide.
“What a good idea this was,” Ann said, removing slices of dark meat from Spence’s plate, and substituting slices of white meat from her own.
“No bother, no fuss, leave the cooking to us,” Howard said. “We should have done this years ago.” He turned to me. “Do you remember how you always used to say, ‘Days of preparation for one lousy hour of eating’?”
“But I never meant it,” I said. “I never really minded. I was only fishing for compliments.”
“You’ve hardly touched your plate, Sara,” my mother chided. “Remember that you’re eating for two now.”
“She has a T-shirt that says that, too,” Jason said.
“That’s kind of cute,” Spence commented.
“She’s a walking billboard,” Jason said.
“Somebody has to be glad about it,” Sara announced in a tremulous voice, and the whole table fell silent.
Howard raised his wineglass to her. “I’m glad,” he said.
“We’re all glad,” Spence said, and everyone clinked glasses around the table, even Jason. Then my mother said, “Well, if everybody’s so glad, when’s the wedding?”
I was too far away to reach her, and I kicked Jason instead, who said, “Hey! Ouch! Who kicked me?”
“How’s the course coming along?” I asked Sara.
“Well, I’ve got the breathing down pat,” she said. “Jason’s a good coach,” she added, glancing shyly at him.
“She needs to work on the panting,” he said.
“That’s for the last stages,” Sara explained. “I have lots of time.”
“Next year we’ll need a high chair for the baby,” Ann said dreamily.
“He can chew on the drumstick,” Howard said. “We used to give it to you, Jase, before you even had any teeth.”
“Is that when you decided to play the drums?” Spence asked.
“I’ll bet your mother will come up from Florida next year, Howard,” my mother said.
Their extravagant plans were for an expanding family, not a disintegrating one. Next year there would have to be two parties for every occasion—the poor baby would probably be spoiled rotten and completely confused.
By the time the waiter brought the pumpkin pie and the coffee, I had moved away, at least in spirit, from the magic circle of our round table, where the paper turkeys lay on their sides, as if they’d been felled by Pilgrim gunpowder.
24
“HEY, DAD, DO YOU want to go to a wedding?”
“Who is this—Jason?” I said, struggling to come awake. It was Sunday and way too early for both of us, although the room was very bright.
“Yeah, the prodigal son,” he said. “Sara and I are getting married. Do you want to come?”
“That’s great!” I said. “Of course I do. When’s it going to be?” I staggered to the window with the phone and saw that it had snowed again during the night.
“Soon, I guess,” he said. “We haven’t picked the exact date.”
“Have you told your mother yet?”
“No, I called you first, since you were the one pushing for it.”
“Well, let me tell Mom about it, okay?”
“Sure,” he said, and I could picture him shrugging.
“She’ll want to do something nice, probably. You know women, you know your mother.”
“Well, don’t let her make a federal case out of it. We just want to get it over with,” he said, as if we were talking about an operation one of them was facing.
I asked to speak to Sara, and when she got on, I said, “This news makes me very happy, Sara. I’ve always wanted more daughters.”
“Thank you, Mr. Flax,” she said. “We hope you’ll be there. And Mrs. Flax, too.”
“Oh, we’ll be there, all right. How about your folks? Have you told them about this?”
There was a long, charged silence, and then she said, in a wavering voice, “They won’t talk to me. Maybe my sister will come, though.”
“Good, good!” I said heartily. “The more the merrier.” I was thinking about Paulie, and how she’d react to this news. Would she give me some credit for it, even if I hadn’t really carried it off? Jason might repeat to her that I’d been the one “pushing for it.” I’d have to come across with the substantial wedding gift I’d hinted at, but I knew Paulie wouldn’t object to that. I wondered what had happened to make Jason change his mind. Thanksgiving hadn’t done it, certainly, but maybe Christmas had. All those street-corner Santas, and the store windows filled with toys. In any case, I wasn’t going to rock the boat by asking too many questions.
As soon as I hung up on them, I called Paulie and got her damn tape. She’d changed the recorded message; now it said: “This is Paulette Flax. If you’ll leave your name and number at the sound of the tone, I’ll get back to you.” Paulette! Since when did she call herself that? And she’d dropped that uncertain little “Thanks” at the end. She sounded more confident now—single, somehow, and ready for anything. When the tone beeped, I wasn’t ready, and I sputtered and said, “Uh … listen, it’s me. I have to talk to you—it’s important—so call me whenever you get in.” Shit, I’d forgotten to give my name! And those machines could distort your voice so that your own mother wouldn’t recognize it. Some of the cheaper models made you sound as if you were talking in a tunnel, or underwater. Everybody and his kid sister had one now, even Jason, who could hardly pay his phone bills. His outgoing message started with eight bars of Black Flag’s “Scream.”
It wasn’t even nine o’clock. I hated being awake at that hour—there was that Sunday stillness, like the world had stopped, and the snow only made it worse. But I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I took Shadow for a walk. It was a real winter wonderland out there—no wind at all, and the sun was dazzling. Where was Paulie this early in the morning? The Times was still waiting in plastic bags in everyone’s driveway, and the new snow was broken by only a few footprints. I let Shadow off his lead to plow
through drifts for the buried scent of other dogs. As soon as he was free, he ran around barking, as if he’d suddenly remembered the bliss of a puppy winter.
When we came home, the phone was ringing. “What’s the matter, Howard?” Paulie asked before I had a chance to say hello.
“Nothing,” I said, “nothing’s the matter. It’s something good—Jason and Sara are getting married.”
“They are?” she said. “Oh, that is good. When did he tell you?”
“At the crack of dawn,” I said. “He woke me up. Where were you that early?”
“I wonder why he gave in,” she said.
“Yeah, I wondered, too. Maybe Christmas softened him up, or it could have been his New Year’s resolution. I know that I sure worked hard to convince him.”
“Will they let us give them a little reception?” she asked.
“I guess so,” I said. “If he’s going this far. We could probably do it right here.”
“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” she said. “But maybe Ann would let us use her house, or we could get a private room in a restaurant.”
“They won’t want anything big,” I warned her. “Remember, they’re not Andrew and Fergie.”
After we hung up, I remembered that she’d never told me where she had been when I’d called her. But she’d said “we” and “us” each time she mentioned the wedding plans, and I took some comfort from that. Small comfort, though. My notion of us getting together when Jason and Sara married had lost most of its shine. A few weeks before, I’d received a letter from some prick of a divorce lawyer she’d hired, advising me to get one of my own. I’d finally called what’s-his-name, the lawyer who’d drawn up Gil’s and Sharon’s wills, and told him just to make things move as slowly as he could.
I had breakfast and then I called Ann and Spence, waking them up. They spoke in tandem from the twin telephone extensions in their bedroom, and they were thrilled by the news. Ann immediately volunteered their house for the wedding. “I wish it was springtime, though,” she said wistfully, “so the ceremony could be in the garden.”
“I don’t think we ought to wait,” I said.
“Unless the caterers boil lots of water,” Spence threw in.
“I’ll have to take Sara shopping for a wedding dress,” Ann said. “God, will they have anything decent in the maternity shops?”
“See if you can get one that doesn’t say anything across the chest,” I suggested.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Spence said. “Why not ‘Just Married’ or ‘I’d Rather Be Hang-gliding.’”
“Very funny, you moron,” Ann said, and then I heard shrieks and muffled laughter that probably meant the onset of a pillow fight.
I was so high I called Paulie’s mother, who said, “Oh, Howard darling, you should see me—I’m crying from happiness. Just remember that good news always brings more good news. You wait and see—a little child shall lead them.” My own mother was less cryptic and less ecstatic. Maybe long distance encouraged economy and clarity. “Jason’s still a baby himself,” she remarked, Ann’s words of a few weeks ago, but with a more sympathetic inflection. I asked if she’d come up for the wedding, and she said, “We’ll see.”
Later, as I was reheating the coffee, I remembered that that was what she’d said all through my childhood whenever I’d wanted something: a new toy or money for the movies or candy, that it was her way of withholding pleasure, of exercising power and control. In the long run, I always got what I’d wanted—everyone said she spoiled me silly—but the game left me feeling weak and angry. Well, I wasn’t going to let anybody or anything get me down today. I whistled while I was cleaning up, and I even made the bed for a change, without reasoning that I’d just be messing it up again in a few hours. Only the business of Paulie’s early-morning whereabouts stayed in the back of my mind.
When the doorbell rang after lunch, I was sprawled in the living room with sections of the paper all around me, and Ruby Braff blasting on the stereo. A couple of kids had been by before, and I’d hired them to shovel the snow from the driveway. I thought it was probably them again, coming to collect their money, although I could still hear the scrape of snow shovels over the music. I opened the door and Paulie was standing there in the blinding light. “I thought you were Robbie Castelli,” I said stupidly, blinking at her. She was wearing a red knitted hat, and her cheeks were as pink as a girl’s. “But what a nice surprise this is,” I said, recovering. “Come on in.”
I began getting scared as soon as she stepped inside. The vestibule seemed ominously dark after the glare of the snow. Shadow had rushed in to welcome Paulie with rapturous yelps, and she’d greeted him absentmindedly. “Let’s sit down,” I said. “Can I get you some coffee? Would you like something to eat?”
She sat on the sofa, with the sports section crushed under her, still wearing her hat and coat. “I don’t want anything. You sit down, too,” she said, patting the cushion beside her.
I shut off the music and sat down next to her on the sofa. Her face was grave. I knew she hadn’t come on some minor errand, or even to discuss plans for Jason’s wedding. “Tell me,” I said, thinking: Don’t tell me.
“Howie,” she said, taking my hand between her mittened ones. I smelled the cold air on her clothes and skin, her own scent of raisins. “It’s bad news,” she said. But her mother had told me good news brings more good news.
“Who?” I asked.
“Gil,” she said. “He died this morning, clearing a path to his house.”
“Oh, Jesus,” I said, starting to shake.
Paulie gripped my hand harder. “Sharon called me. She said it happened very quickly. A massive coronary.”
“Oh, sh-shit,” I said, my teeth rattling.
“Howie,” Paulie said. “Please, honey.” She pulled off her mittens and put her burning hands on either side of my face. I wouldn’t look at her; I couldn’t stop shaking. “I know,” she said, “I know. Can you cry, Howie? Crying helps a little.”
I looked up at last and saw that tears were streaking her own face. I wasn’t sure why, but that calmed me somewhat. “I just don’t b-believe it, you know?” I said. “We were supposed to play again this Tuesday. I witnessed his w-will a few weeks ago. It was like a wedding, somehow. This woman was there in a bathrobe …” I started to cry then and Paulie put her arms around me. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, embracing on our sofa, until the doorbell rang again.
“I’ll go,” Paulie said. “You rest.”
I heard her talking to the Castelli kid. “There’s money on the kitchen table,” I called, and listened to her footsteps in the house. She came back inside and I said, “Paulie, thanks for coming here to tell me.”
“Well, I didn’t want you to be alone when you heard about it,” she said.
“I appreciate that,” I said. “It started off like such a good day, didn’t it? Jesus, poor Gil.” I reached into my pocket for the nitroglycerin.
“His condition was worse than yours right from the beginning,” Paulie said. “He suffered a lot more damage. You have to keep that in mind.”
“He didn’t even pass the fucking stress test,” I said.
“I know, Sharon told me.”
“Then why the hell was he out shoveling snow?”
“To test himself, maybe. Who knows?”
“When is the funeral?” A plain pine box, I remembered. More for the living.
“Tuesday or Wednesday. Gil’s sister is in Europe. They’re trying to get in touch with her.”
“Paulie, can you stay here with me for a while?”
“For a little while,” she said. “Not too long.” At least she didn’t say, “We’ll see.”
There were a few beats of silence, and then I said, “Did I tell you that I stopped smoking?” It was true, as of that moment, anyway.
“You did? That’s great,” Paulie said. “It’s about time.”
“I called everybody about the wedding.”
“I know, y
ou rat, you beat me to it. It’s an awfully mixed-up day, isn’t it? Such happy news, such terrible news.”
How long was a little while? I didn’t want her to leave, and I scrounged around for something else to say that would delay her. “Where were you this morning when I called?” I said. That just popped out; it wasn’t what I’d meant to say at all.
“Why do you want to know?” Paulie said.
“I was just curious. And I couldn’t wait to tell you about Jason and Sara.”
“Please don’t be curious about me anymore, Howard,” she said. “We have separate lives now.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve noticed that. And in case I hadn’t noticed, I got a letter from Perry Mason.”
“I’d better be going,” she said, looking at her watch.
“How did you get here?” It was the first time I’d thought about that; it was as if she’d simply materialized because I’d been thinking about her.
“The train. And I took a cab from the station.”
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