Fate and Ms. Fortune

by Saralee Rosenberg

  “Stick to the story. You married Daddy but the whole time you were thinking of…”

  “Marv…Marvin Teitlebaum.”

  “Marvin Teitlebaum? I’m sorry. That is not the name of someone who makes your heart beat faster. That’s the name of your electrician, or someone from temple who runs bingo.”

  “Believe me, he was quite the catch. Very tall and debonair…”

  “All right. I’m done listening. It’s a helluva story, but this could all be a big waste of time. He could be dead by now.”

  “He’s not dead…He lives in the Phoenix area…has two children, a son and a daughter, three grandchildren, maybe more now, I don’t know…His wife died in a car accident…”

  “Wait. You’ve spoken to him?”

  “No. I hired a private eye. My friend Sonny’s brother’s next-door neighbor. He located Marvin in Scottsdale. Even took pictures, but I said he should hold on to them. Then a few months ago, I found out the spy guy died and his wife threw out the old files. But at least now I know where to start looking.”

  “This is crazy! You can’t just walk out on Daddy to go chase a man who abandoned you.”

  “What do you always say? I’m like obsessed with the idea? He’s all I think about.”

  “You’re a married woman.”

  “It’s not fair.” She mimicked the fifteen-year-old me. “Everyone else is getting to go.”

  “I don’t care what everyone else is doing…Under my roof you go by my rules. Now go to your room and don’t come out until you’ve thought about the terrible mistakes you’re making.”

  “I never talked like that.” She laughed.

  “Like hell you didn’t…God, I can’t believe what you’re thinking of doing.”

  “See? And I thought for sure with all your craziness, you’d understand.”

  “But you already know the rest of the story. Marvin left you. He married someone else.”

  “I’d like to know if he ever thought about me…if he had any regrets…You read stories in the paper all the time about people finding their long-lost loves.”

  “Exactly. But he wasn’t lost. He ran away.”

  “I don’t care.” She shrugged. “I want to ask him straight to his face. ‘Marvin, why did you do it?’”

  “Mom, c’mon…even you’ve got to admit you’re not an easy person to get along with…He probably got scared and—”

  “He said he loved me,” she snapped. “Not like that nincompoop who married you.”

  “Oh my God.” I leaned in. “What don’t you get? David loved me more than he ever loved anyone in his life.”

  “Then how come he couldn’t stop himself from turning into a hoodlum?”

  “We’ve gone over this. Gambling is a disease. A handicap.”

  “Oh that’s a bunch of hullabaloo. If you don’t want to spend the night at the craps table, you go to the movies. A cripple can’t just decide to get up and head for the fridge.”

  “This isn’t just my opinion, mother. Experts have proven that gambling is an addiction, just like drugs and alcohol abuse. Your body has a physiological need for the rush.”

  “So fine. You can’t stop yourself, you get help.”

  “You know how hard I tried to get him into counseling. He wasn’t ready.”

  “Then he didn’t love you enough.”

  “No, he didn’t love himself enough.”

  “Whatever it was, darling, you’re lucky to be rid of him. Now you can look for a man who’ll take care of you so you don’t have to work all those crazy hours…”

  “No! I’m done shopping for love. I’m much happier being alone.”

  “Who’s happy being alone? That’s nonsense. Of course you want to get married again.”

  “Why? So I can end up like you? Hunting down old lovers from forty years ago to see if they’ve still got tread on the tires?”

  “I’m not saying your father and I didn’t have a good life…I’m saying…Remember that movie I like, the one with Billy Crystal in the restaurant with that little blond girl? And she’s showing him how she fakes—”

  “Don’t you dare,” I whispered so loud, the people at the next table stared.

  “What? I’m just saying. I’m tired of being treated like the old chairs in the den. You can sit on them whenever, so where’s the thrill?”

  “That’s why they invented couples counseling.”

  “No! I’m done talking.” She waved her finger in my face. “I’m like a movie director. I want action! Now are you going to help me find Marvin or not? I hear he has a very good-looking son who’s a doctor.”

  “I wouldn’t care if he was the goddamn surgeon general. How could you even ask me for help? Daddy may be weird and crazy, but he’s my father and I love him.”

  “Fine. I’ll find him myself.”

  “Just tell me this. After all these years, why now?”

  “You know what the famous Rabbi Hillel said. ‘And if not now, when?’”

  “Nice quote, mom. But it’s doubtful he was talking about divorce.”

  “You interpret it your way.” She raised her glass. “And I’ll interpret it mine.”

  Chapter 7

  ONE OF MY FONDEST childhood memories was of spending summer days with my grandpa Danny, building miniature rocket ships that could be launched from his backyard in Brooklyn. I was maybe four at the time, too young to be able to do anything other than help Grandma Rita serve the cookies and lemonade. But my age gave me a distinct advantage over Phillip.

  Since he got to help Grandpa with the assembly, I got to push the button that set the launch in motion. And nothing beat shouting out the countdown. “Three…two…one…blast off!”

  As the rocket soared, smoke billowing from the base, Phillip and I would cheer, pondering the mission’s fate. Would the shuttle reach new heights and the parachute open over Ocean Parkway, or plummet into Grandma’s blackberry bushes?

  Mind you, even at four I knew the rockets went no farther than the neighbor’s backyard. Or perhaps the rare one traveled as far as the A&P parking lot. Who cared? It wasn’t the rockets we loved. It was the fantasy.

  Funny that for a memory so grand, it took thirty years to recall, and that the prompt came from my mother lighting a marital match, revealing her decades-old union for what it was. A steadily worn down vessel that was imploding due to hairline cracks in the relationship caused by extreme pressure in the master bedroom, and one partner not fully committed to the program.

  It got me wondering. Was not every marriage born of heat and energy, launched with great fanfare in the hopes of assuring a long, happy trajectory? Yet who among the invited guests believed that love and passion were all it took to fire up a successful mission? If that were so, then why did so many marriages crash and burn?

  It couldn’t always be attributed to stress and disappointment. Both sets of my grandparents’ marriages withstood war, the Depression, and disease, yet they orbited happily for decades until first one, and then the other, lost their spark.

  And take Phillip and Patti. They began their wedded life on shaky ground, zigzagging through religious differences until finally wealth propelled them to their suburban sphere, where their biggest battles centered around kitchen renovations and which Lexus to lease.

  On the other hand, for my friend Rachel, she of the Psychics-R-Right club, the score was a surprising ex-husband, one, her and her kids, nothing. And at work, it sure seemed as if everyone was divorced, except for Benitez, who had been with Angelina for thirty-two years (theirs would have been a great marriage if they’d ever exchanged vows). Simon was on his third wife. Gretchen was divorced from her first husband, though I’d heard rumors that she had been married once before him, to a high school sweetheart she dumped when the network discovered her doing the weather at a local affiliate in Charlotte. And now with she and coanchor Kevin riding the infidelity train, it was likely the next stop for Kevin and his wife, Anne, was divorce court.

  My marriage, t
hough accompanied by a lavish Manhattan sendoff and an all-expense-paid honeymoon to Aruba, clearly had fatal flaws. The relationship was shoddily constructed of dishonesty and recklessness, and anyone who examined the workmanship closely would have been able to predict our demise.

  But of all marriages, the one I presumed would stay airborne forever was my parents’. In fact, they were together so long, they weren’t on anyone’s radar. Yet out of the blue, their raucous but stable relationship was hurtling to earth in a fast, downward spiral, and it didn’t look good for survivors.

  I wondered. Did marriage, like life, have a destiny all its own? One guided not so much by love and devotion as karma and fate? Because if the success of a marriage was predetermined by some mysterious, celestially scripted backroom deal, then my mother would be crazy to escape one marriage rocket, only to try to hop a ride on another, and frankly the same would be true of me.

  On Monday morning, with my mother sleeping soundly on a pullout couch in my spare closet/bedroom, and no interest in checkout time, with whom could I commiserate?

  I almost gathered friends for an emergency summit, but decided to consult with the one person who knew my parents as well as me and had as much of a vested interest in their marriage.

  “What the hell time is it?” Phillip whispered.

  “Four forty-five…I’m in a cab on my way to work…Gotta love New York. It’s already rush hour…hold on…Excuse me. Sir? You have to take Ninth Street to Third and take a left by that big, ugly building for the Battery Tunnel…Yes I know what I’m talking about. I do this every morning…”

  “Robyn, you just woke me out of a dead sleep. Is Mom okay?”

  “Oh wait. Hold on. Sorry. I have to take this. It’s Simon…”

  “You’re killing me,” Phillip groaned.

  “Relax…Hey Simon…No, I didn’t forget. All three names. Sierra Paige Mather. Yeah, it’ll be great. I can really use the help.” Maybe I should talk the driver into taking a different detour. A little trip over the Williamsburg Bridge. Literally.

  “I’m back. Sorry…So Mom slept in my tiny little guest room last night, which I thought would freak her out because she’s not used to sleeping in such tight quarters, but instead she says, ‘If Jane Fonda can leave Ted Turner and move into her daughter’s place, so can I.’ So I said, Yeah, but you don’t own twenty-three other houses you can go to when you’ve overstayed your welcome.”

  “Is there a point here?”

  “Yes. She had so much fun yesterday, I’m looking at a life sentence without parole.”

  “I’m sure this will blow over, Rob. She’s just going through a phase.”

  “That’s what I thought, but you don’t know the whole story. She’s been keeping a secret that’s going to blow you away.”

  “You mean about the cancer?”

  “I’m sorry?” I shivered.

  “She finally told you about the lump in her breast?”

  “Driver. Stop the car,” I screamed. “Stop the car. Pull over. I’m going to be sick.”

  “Shit,” Phillip said. “She didn’t tell you? I thought that’s what you were getting at.”

  “I kent stop, lady. Where you like me to pull over? This is highway…Look ’round.”

  “Oh my God.” I leaned my head back and started to cry. “Oh my God.”

  “I’m sorry. She said she would tell you. If it’s any consolation, she kept it from Patti and me at first too. But she’s fine, and it probably explains where all this craziness is coming from.”

  “I can’t even speak,” I whispered. “I think I’m going to heave.”

  “Not in thi car, miss.” He miraculously found a place to pull over. “Get out. Quick.”

  I crawled out of the cab and bent over a guardrail.

  “Robyn, where are you?” Phillip yelled. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not six anymore. How could she have cancer and nobody tell me?”

  “Because she found out the same week your divorce papers came through.”

  “Oh my God.” I fell into a heap.

  “Lady, if you’re not enymore sick, get beck inside. I have plenty more pickups.”

  Ever the obedient one, I climbed back in and blew my nose.

  “She’s fine. I swear,” Phillip said. “It was a little lump in her right breast. They removed it, she had three weeks of radiation, and now she’s on this new wonder drug that seems to be working great. Trust me, she’s got plenty more years to bug the crap out of us.”

  “When did she have the radiation?” I blew my nose. “Where was I?”

  “Remember last summer when you went to Rome with the show? And then after you got there you decided to stay an extra week?”

  “I stayed an extra week because my brother didn’t have the decency to tell me our mother was sick. What the hell were you thinking, Phillip? I should have been there for her.”

  “Hey look. We were afraid you’d go off the deep end, okay? But at least now we’re all on the same page, and you’re going to make sure she goes home where she belongs.”

  “Believe me I’m trying,” I choked. “But she’s not listening. You talk to her. She knows you longer.”

  “I don’t have time to deal with this crap right now. I’m up to my eyeballs at work, we’re still in the middle of the kitchen renovation, God knows why Patti hired that dickhead contractor, you wouldn’t believe the incompetence; Max made the division one ice hockey league, which is great for him, but it means even more shlepping for me; and you have no idea what it’s like every day with the girls and Patti constantly going at it—”

  “Phillip. Stop. I can’t listen to you. You just dropped a bomb on me. I’ll call you later.”

  I shut my phone and squeezed it in my palm, hoping that a tight grip would somehow placate the hand tremors. Cancer. Oh my God. The frightening six-letter word for malignancy. But no point asking how a tumor ended up in my mother. The statistical probability was way up there after a lifetime of inhaling noxious tar and nicotine. Both her parents smoked, she smoked, as did my father until his heart attack, and just about all their friends.

  I flashed on me at four hiding cigarette cartons in my dollhouse. Me at ten coming home from school with pamphlets on the dangers of secondhand smoke. Me at thirteen telling my mother that a film they showed us said she would end up with black lungs and froggy voice if she didn’t quit. Me in college calling to say that my roommate’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and I had a dream she was next.

  All to no avail. My mother loved the ritual of smoking, the smell of lit tobacco, the deep inhalations, the Bette Davis glamour with the dramatic swirl of smoke, and her favorite, the conversational stall, as she fumbled with her fourteen-karat-gold lighter from Cartier.

  To hell with the surgeon general’s report, she coughed. Or the hacking morning phlegm. The stale odor on her clothes. Not even the threat of wrinkles. When the time came, she would have me show her a few tricks to camouflage the evidence.

  But now what? Call her and say I told you so? Serves you right for not listening? Of course not. I would act as if her disease was a random act of God, like a tornado whose path was an equal opportunity destroyer.

  Only trouble was, I didn’t believe that she was a victim, any more than David was when he was prosecuted for dealing cocaine. Collateral damage brought on by self-inflicted wounds was just that. A loaded gun you pointed at your head. Could you really cry foul if the safety dislodged?

  What was I saying? That my mother’s cancer was no different than my ex-husband’s addictions? Ridiculous. But then, the crisis did feel eerily familiar, like a movie I’d seen and remembered hating.

  First reaction was to feel anger that a loved one had brought a pox on their own house. Next came resentment that their illness would consume my life. Finally there was dread that even if I came to the rescue, there was no guarantee of a happy ending.

  Regardless, I would be there for my mother, just as I had been for my husband, and I
wouldn’t allow myself to pass judgment. Only the Xanax.

  When you work someplace for a long time, you develop rituals. The way you greet the security guard with a high five. The way you kiss the cheek of the coffee man if he says you remind him of Audrey Hepburn. The way you ask the lady at the newsstand about her granddaughter’s flute lessons (and hope she’s too busy to talk).

  So you’d think that after six years of bantering with the same cast of characters, one might notice I looked a little blue. Maybe offer to bring me some tea when they went on break, or find a quiet spot in the dark, cavernous studio to sit and listen to my woes.

  Not that I was trying to advertise my troubles. It just would have been nice if someone stopped and said, “Jeez. You look terrible, Robyn. What’s going on?” And then I would tell them the whole pathetic tale and they’d say, “Wow. And you came in anyway? You’re so brave.”

  Instead, three people passed me in the hall and waved hello. Finally, someone noticed I wasn’t my usual perky self. “You look like death.” An associate producer sped by. “Simon’s asking for you. Don’t stop to collect your two hundred. Just go…”

  “Robyn, there you are.” I heard Gretchen’s shrill voice. “I seem to have misplaced those cucumber melon eye patches you left me. I assume you have more.”

  “I have plenty, but I’ll be right back…Simon is looking for me.”

  “Well how long will that take? My lids are very irritated.”

  Not as much as me. “Two secs.” I took a deep breath. “Why don’t you use the green tea bags for now? They’re in your top right drawer, left-hand corner next to the udder cream.”

  “Please hurry. I shouldn’t be having to do these things myself. They pay me to—”

  “Gretchen.” I swallowed. “You will look amazing as always. In fact, I got a sample of that beautiful new foundation primer I told you about. It’s super sheer but works great at covering sunburn. Now go look over your notes…I have to go do a small favor for Simon.”