Fate and Ms. Fortune

by Saralee Rosenberg

  “At first she was like no way, I’m happy he’s doing so great but I could care less. Then next thing I know, they’re sitting together at the comedy club and they’re touching and laughing…and I’m like…hello? You do realize that is Josh Vogel you’re coming on to…”

  “So you didn’t know he was bringing her today?”

  “I would have been less surprised if Bill showed up with Monica.”

  Ken laughed. “You think they’re sleeping together?”

  “God I hope not.”

  “Oh come on. It would be great. Joshy gettin’ it on with a super model.”

  “Not this one…I just don’t want to see him get hurt…Julia doesn’t so much dump guys as she donates them to worthy charities.”

  Maybe two minutes went by. Maybe ten. All I know is that we opted for silence over banter, and contemplation over kissing, though the pressure was building. Even Rookie was barking at us, as if to say, Do it already, I haven’t got all night.

  But hell if I was going to make the first move, not after Josh told Ken about my naked-in-bed adventure. Did I really need him thinking all customers were entitled to the same service? Besides, a long kiss might lead to sex, and our first time was not going to happen before I’d had a chance to exfoliate.

  “You were right, you know.” He broke the silence.

  “Yay” I clapped. “I love being right. It’s so rare…About what?”

  “About Mira wanting to make Kyle jealous…about her using me for that.”

  “Oh. Sorry to hear it.”

  “Yeah right. Help me move the furniture so you can do cartwheels.”

  “Well aren’t we all full of ourselves…So how did you leave it with her?”

  “I didn’t…I couldn’t…With everything going on…and you…”

  “Me?” I sat up. “Really? You were thinking about me? But I’m not your type.”

  “I know.”

  I swatted him with a pillow. “I guess when you’ve got your pick of the litter like today…”

  “Oh please. I didn’t even know half those girls…It was crazy…The people I expected to come didn’t show up, and ones I never met were telling me how sorry they were for my loss. And that Kabbala kook with the red string? Thank God that’s over.”

  “Except for the food. Did you see how much was left?”

  “It’s fine. Rookie and I live for leftovers…anyway, if I didn’t already tell you, thank you for doing this today. Every time I turned around you were running the whole show. It was amazing. You mingled, you served, you—”

  “—ate all the desserts.”

  “Yeah. Next time I’m hiding the brownies. That was tonight’s dinner…Rookie, enough with the barking already!” he yelled into the bedroom.

  He tried putting his arm around me and winced.

  I tried lying on his chest. “Does that hurt?”

  “Only when you breathe.”

  “Sorry.” I sat up. “Now go back to the part where you couldn’t stop thinking of me because I have to get home. Believe it or not I have to get up for work in a few hours.”

  “Then stay here. You’re perfectly safe. I can’t even lift my leg without cringing.”

  “Can’t. My set kit is home and I can’t show up for work without it. Every makeup product I own is in that bag.”

  “Got it…It’s just that…Look, I still need help getting dressed…Rookie pitches in, and he’s got the whole fetch-the-socks thing down, but shirt buttoning is for the more advanced dogs…I don’t want to hurt his feelings. Plus, you’ve already seen the merchandise.”

  “I liked the merchandise.” I kissed him and he answered with passion, pulling me nearer.

  Maybe two minutes went by. Maybe ten. All I remember is that we started in neutral and ended in drive, and there was no mistaking his desire as he overpowered me with affection while his hands slowly sought refuge on my body.

  “Wow.” I pulled away. “That was amazing.”

  He nodded with tears in his eyes.

  “I swear you are worse than me.” I wiped his face. “I may have to give you some of my shares in Kimberly-Clark.”

  “Sold!…Rookie! Pipe down,” he yelled into the bedroom. “What is with him tonight?”

  “Want me to see what he keeps barking at?”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing. Probably a magazine fell off the bookshelf. It makes him crazy.”

  “That’s so weird. I had the same thing happen in my room. I had a stack of these old Mad magazines that—”

  “Mad magazines?” Ken sat up so fast we nearly knocked heads.

  “Yeah. Remember those?”

  “Are you kidding? We lived for those, especially Mo. He was a total Mad freak. He had every issue. No, he memorized every issue. He had the lunch box, the board game, he was Alfred E. Neuman every Halloween…”

  “Yeah, well I once had a huge collection too, until my mother decided to throw them all out. Thank God Julia saved the day because she had a bunch of issues she never gave back and—”

  “Did you say that’s what was falling off your shelf?”

  “Yeah. In fact, I’d forgotten that’s where I put them until—”

  “I bet that was Mo.”

  “Oh stop. That’s just creepy.”

  “Well how would you explain it? All of a sudden his favorite magazine starts falling off your bookcase?…I gotta go see what’s going on in there. Help me up.”

  We hopped to the bedroom to find Rookie sniffing a magazine on the floor beside Ken’s desk.

  “Did you leave Road and Track on the floor?” I picked it up.

  “No, it was definitely on my desk.”

  We looked around the room. Did we have company? Then Rookie started barking at the air and our eyes widened.

  “Do you remember the other night at my uncle’s house when we were sitting around the dining room?” Ken asked. “And I was staring at you…”

  “Uh huh.”

  “It was the strangest thing then too. I felt like Mo was there with me and it hit me that I was looking at the girl who took my favorite picture of us…I was in shock.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was the last one of us together…Two weeks later, Mo was dead.”

  I shivered. “So…do you think…are you feeling…is he here?”

  Rookie barked again, and we both knew the answer was yes.

  I did not make it home that night. Or the next. In fact, for the first time in all the years I worked for Gretchen, I called in sick when I wasn’t. For in spite of my fear about losing my job, now there was something that frightened me more…witnessing a nervous breakdown.

  This is what happens when someone is haunted by a story that begins with these words:

  “At least my dad’s death wasn’t my fault. Not like Mo and Larry’s…If it wasn’t for me, they’d both still be alive.”

  Chapter 25

  OH, TO BE ABLE to choose our defining moments, for they would surely be a reflection of our greatest virtues. Grace under pressure and wise resolve in the face of adversity.

  But all too often, the experiences that shape us come at an age when we have neither the acumen to make good choices, nor the maturity to accept what lies in the wake of foolishness.

  Mostly what defines us are the dates with destiny no one sees coming.

  Kenny Danziger, Larry Gerber, and Richie Morris were energetic toddlers drawn to one another at Oceanside Park in the spring of 1974 by a connection their mothers could only describe as instinctual. How else to explain a bond that formed with language intelligible only to them?

  If only their mothers found one another as engaging.

  Judy Danziger called Larry’s mom, Terry, the queen of show-and-tell. In between broadcasting her latest vacation and home improvement plans, she made sure you took notice of her jewelry and pocketbooks, the prices of which she was happy to share.

  “What does she think? We’re all on the G.I. Plan (generous in-laws)?”

 
In turn, Terry didn’t appreciate that Richie’s mom, Carol, was so self-absorbed that she would drop off her son for play dates, but rarely reciprocate. And if she did, the play date was short and timed to coincide with her having to leave for other, more important commitments.

  Judy thought they were both meshuggenehs, and urged Kenny to broaden his social circle. “Why don’t you play with that nice Joshua Vogel?” she’d say. “He’s got a big pool in the backyard and his mom I like!”

  But by kindergarten, the mothers resigned themselves to the fact that their sons were glued to the hip for good, and it made sense for them to try to become friends as well.

  In fact, it was over lunch at Twenty-four Hour Bagel that Judy told Terry and Carol about walking into Kenny’s room and discovering the boys had taken every tie from Howie’s closet and were trying to tie them together so they could climb down the side of the house through a window.

  “I knew something was up when they were being so quiet,” she said. “I tell you, they’re like the Three Stooges.”

  “You know?” Terry laughed. “Even their names are the same. Kenny’s got that big head of ringlets, so he’s Curly. Richie Morris is Moe, and Larry, is, well, Larry.”

  And so they became known, and not only by family and friends. Teachers, camp counselors, and coaches were quick to discover that when there were pranks, pratfalls, and anything resembling trouble, one of those boys, if not all, was responsible.

  Even Maureen at Dr. Glatt’s office knew if she was making an appointment for one checkup, she’d better make them for all three. Especially if Richie was due for a booster shot, for without his two best friends holding his hands, it would take half the staff to restrain him.

  Holiday dinners, vacations, Hebrew school, Little League games…Where one went, the other two followed, and it was a natural assumption that nothing would keep them apart. Until they reached high school and Richie’s mom, Carol, found proof in her pharmaceutical rep husband’s briefcase that he was cheating on her with a radiologist in Connecticut whose code name was Babycakes.

  It was the decisive blow to an already maladjusted, we-know-people-talk family, what with money problems and Mo’s older sister, Jennifer, home from college, pregnant and chain smoking.

  The boys were worried. Mo wasn’t one of those resilient kids who bounced back easily, particularly since adolescence. Like his Three Stooges namesake, Moe, he also didn’t need much provocation to become agitated. Or to drink.

  At first it was amateur stuff. A few beers behind the garage. Then it was vodka binges. Then alcohol wasn’t his only substance of choice. Then he didn’t wait for the weekends.

  Larry and Kenny finally confided in their guidance counselor, but when the school intervened, a now separated Carol and Michael rebuked the administration’s efforts, and at least in this instance, maintained a unified front.

  As long as their son’s conduct in school was fine, they had no right to interfere in what was a personal family matter and if the district pursued this, they would be hearing from their lawyer.

  Judy and Howie also tried reasoning with them, only to run head on into the blame game. Michael said the only reason Richie couldn’t function was that Carol had coddled him for so damn long, and it was too late to try to make a man out of him. Meanwhile, Carol claimed if Michael had paid enough attention to Richie as a kid, he wouldn’t have a need to rebel, but she was sure he would eventually straighten himself out.

  “His parents sounded like assholes,” I said. “How could they not get him help?”

  “I agree,” Ken said. “But in Mo’s case, he really did do it on his own. He got himself into rehab, started college at Nassau Community, and then he met this girl he really liked whose dad gave him a job at the gym he managed…

  “Which is why that weekend he and Larry came to see me at school was the best. He was sober the whole time. It was like the old Mo…”

  I sighed, knowing that no matter how nice a time they had then, the story ended tragically.

  I got up from the kitchen table to pour us coffee and peek at Daybreak and did a double take. I had been trying for months to convince Gretchen to let me experiment with her eyes, but she was so resistant to change. Now a sub was in for one day, and boom, suddenly she was open to the more playful violet tones.

  Normally, professional jealousy would lead to a slow burn. But how riled could I get, for I was guilty of something far more unthinkable. It was eight o’clock on a Monday morning and there I was playing hooky with Rookie and Ken, devouring rugeleh and reading the Times.

  In an act of faith, but mostly fulfillment, I had spent the night there. And though the most intimate thing Ken and I did was kiss intermittently, we spent hours talking through tears.

  Ken, of course, having just buried his father, had reasonable cause. But it was his dance around the divorce question that sprung the big leak. Nina was amazing. Beautiful and brilliant. An accomplished tennis player and skier. A wonderful cook.

  She just had this thing about emotional baggage. It had to be either checked at the door or thrown overboard, for why dwell on the past when you could be having lovely lunches with friends and shopping for country homes in Nantucket?

  So when Ken learned on the morning of September 11 that he had lost his only remaining best friend, she was sympathetic, but determined not to let it affect their future happiness. Sadly, counseling did not provide a rapid enough cure for Ken’s depression, and rather than helping row the boat ashore with love and support, she jumped ship.

  At first I was flattered, and frankly surprised, that he was being so forthcoming in divulging these painful details, as up until now, he had been as impenetrable as a detective who never removed his bulletproof vest. Piercing questions bounced off him, preventing possible injury to his heart.

  But when he began spinning words in a verbal free fall about the night he lost Mo, I realized he wasn’t talking because I was a good listener. He was talking because with the loss of his father came the loss of his resolve. He could simply hold back no longer.

  “Things fell apart that first Christmas break from school.” Ken picked up Rookie. “Larry was up at Binghamton and had gotten home a few days before me. I remember because I was still studying for finals when he called to say he thought Mo was back to his old tricks.

  “Then when I got home, I took one look at Mo and knew Larry was right because he’d do this thing where he rocked his head like he was listening to music, only there was no music. And I was pissed because I didn’t want to deal with this crap anymore. The babysitting, the puking…I mean I loved Mo like a brother…I just couldn’t watch him self-destruct again…”

  “I know where this is going,” I said. “He was driving drunk and he died…”

  “No.” Ken looked down. “I wish that’s what happened…”

  “What?”

  “You know what?” Ken stretched. “Forget it. I don’t need to do this.”

  “Are you sure? Sometimes talking—”

  “Believe me, I’ve talked my ass off…been in and out of therapy since I’m eighteen.”

  “But obviously you’re still in pain.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Okay. Well, at least it solves the mystery of what happened to you. The reason you didn’t come back to school the next semester…Thing about it is, what happened was a terrible tragedy. Beyond awful. But, and I know I sound like Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting—”

  “It wasn’t my fault. Right? That’s your best shot? Let it go, it was God’s will…”

  “I don’t mean to sound cliché. I just—”

  “Don’t.”

  “Wait. I’m just saying, the reality is you weren’t the one who made him drink, you didn’t make him drive…”

  “The reality is,” Ken yelled, “I fucking hit him with my car, okay?”

  “Oh my God!”

  “Yeah. I hit him with my car and he died.”

  “I’m sorry.” I took his hand. “I
’m so sorry.”

  “I hit him with my car and he died.” He rocked back and forth. “I killed my best friend.”

  “On purpose?”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that…how…what happened?”

  Rookie barked at me for making Ken cry, and I felt so ashamed I wanted to flee. Then he started talking about a party.

  “Forget it,” I whispered. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “What the hell?” He wiped his eyes on a napkin. “I’ve already told you more than I’ve told ten people and you didn’t leave…It doesn’t even faze you when I cry.”

  “Hey. I’m Miss Waterworks…So is my dad. To me it’s not a sign of weakness…In fact when you were talking before, I was thinking about him…I remember he’d be sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper and I could hear him sniffing so I knew he was trying to hide…I was little then, and I’d say, Daddy why do you read the paper if it makes you sad?”

  Ken smiled. We were partners in pain. Surely I would not judge him as had Nina.

  “Larry’s roommate at Binghamton was this kid from Merrick…lived in this huge house on the water…you had to see it…the Jag in the driveway, the twenty-foot speedboat in the canal…His parents were out of town so he was having this big blowout party…Larry wanted to go but he’d just had his wisdom teeth out and didn’t feel up to driving, so he said to come with him so I could meet his new friends and I was like yeah, great, but let’s not tell Mo…he’ll get totally wasted.

  “So what does Larry do? He tells Mo to come after he gets off work so he wouldn’t feel left out…Sure enough, Mo shows up with a joint in one hand and a beer in the other, and I’m like c’mon man, don’t. You were doing so great…So now he’s all pissed at me, so I go fine, then give me your keys and he’s like stop being my fucking mother, and that was it. I walked away…I told Larry to hell with him, you invited him, he’s your problem…But Larry’s mouth was killing him from the surgery and he said he was leaving but not to worry about driving him home because this girl he knew was going to give him a ride and to just keep an eye on Mo…He must have said it six times. Keep an eye on Mo.”