Joseph Monti didn’t reply. He stared at me, a quizzical look on his face. He glanced away. He removed and cleaned his glasses. He put them back on and stared at me again. His silence was verging on rude when, picking up on my phrase, he echoed, “Long time no see. Except—it’s funny—it just doesn’t seem that long.”
Birdie Monti—when had she started to look so much like Gina Lollobrigida?—got down to business as soon as we six were seated in the large and leathery den. “Just so you are aware,” she said, “when the lawyers checked, over the documents, it turned out to be that I am Monti Enterprises,” Four Kovners snapped to attention as she softly repeated the phrase, “Just so you’re aware.”
Then Birdie turned to her husband, “Joseph,” she said, “would like to apologize for all the troubles he’s brought upon your family. He knows that this is very important to me.”
Joseph Monti shrugged. “So I’m apologizing.”
“He also”—she turned to Wally—“wants to apologize for picking on you. He knows that this is very important to me.”
Joseph Monti shrugged. “So again I’m apologizing.”
“He also”—she turned to Jake—“wants to say that he’s getting those people who’re suing you to stop suing you. It’s going to cost some money but he knows that this is very important to me.”
Joseph Monti sighed. “It’s costing a fortune.”
Birdie turned to Jeff. “So Joseph shouldn’t be too upset, we’ll be taking your Rockville properties, and we’ll keep the money you’ve already paid on your debt. However,” and she smiled at him reassuringly, “on your car and your condominium, which Joseph won’t be needing anymore, we plan to make an equitable arrangement.”
Joseph Monti groaned. “Equitable? A giveaway!”
Birdie frowned at her husband. “Just remember that this is very important to me.”
Birdie turned in my direction and said, “There’s been some feeling—and I agree—that my husband didn’t do right by your son on those properties he’s stuck with in Anacostia.” She folded her arms across her ample bosom and declared, “We’re going to make this right. I don’t know how, but I promise we will. This is also”—she smiled at her husband—“very important to me.”
I almost squealed with excitement. “You’re saying you want to make it right with Jeff and those properties? You’re saying that this is very important to you?”
“It is,” Birdie Monti replied, raising an eyebrow. ‘Tell me, Brenda, do you have some ideas?”
Boyohboyohboy, did I have some ideas!
The subsequent discussion, which came to a satisfying conclusion some hours later, began with my suggesting mellifluously, “I’d like you to close your eyes and picture something: I’d like you to close your eyes and picture the Monti Homes for the Home less, in Anacostia.”
• • •
Before we left the Montis, Birdie Monti took Wally aside for a brief heart-to-heart. With a minor shift of position—so minor I honestly do not feel you could call it eavesdropping—I found myself able to hear every word they said.
“Jo isn’t here tonight because she’s out with—”
“I know,” Wally said. “A biker. Benito.”
“At least that girl she was dating—what was her name? Vanessa Pincus—was nice and clean-cut. But I’m asking you not to give up on Jo. She’s trying things out She needs to. And when she’s, through she’s going to see that you’re the one for her. Even my husband is finally beginning to see this.”
“And why is that?” Wally asked.
“It’s because”—Birdie ruffled his hair—“compared with Benito and Vanessa, you’re starting to look like John F. Kennedy, Jr.” She paused, “And also because it’s very important to me.”
• • •
Although it was pouring rain when we four Kovners drove home from McLean, I didn’t give Jake any navigational tips. Instead, I snuggled up close and said, as diffidently as I could, “I hope you didn’t mind my coming up with that Monti Homes for the Home less plan.”
“Not at all,” Jake answered. “You did great.”
The opinion was not unanimous. “I minded,” Jeff protested from the back seat. “I think you could have out a better deal. I know you saved my ass, but I can’t believe you’re making me be the resident manager.”
“Think of it,” I said, “as a kind of Clintonian national service.”
“Think of it,” my adorable husband added, “as learning how to be in control of your life.”
• • •
Later, as we stood side by side in the bathroom brushing our teeth, Jake—to my astonishment—whispered, “I love you.” Caught with a mouthful of water, I gargled and rinsed and then replied, “I love you back.” After which, I was moved to say—okay, I was being greedy—“So embroider a little. What do you love about me?”
“Jesus, Brenda,” said Jake, but not unkindly, “you know that’s not my kind of conversation.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then I’ll give you a couple of hints. ‘Yours is the breath that sets every new leaf aquiver. Yours is the grace that guides the rush of the river. Yours is the flush and the flame in the heart of the flower: Life’s meaning, its music, its pride, and its power.’ Doesn’t that kind of sum up your feelings for me?”
Jake gave me a sideways glance. “Well» no, it doesn’t. No, not exactly. I was thinking more along the lines of ‘You may have been a headache but you never were a bore.’ ”
“That’s what you call embroidering?” I gave him a jab with my elbow “That is it?”
“That’s it,” said Jake. “That’s a lot. We’ve got a lot.” He sighed, sighed deeply, and shook his head. “And Brenda, I’m so glad we didn’t blow it.”
“Me too,” I told him softly, so flooded with feeling I could barely speak the words. We smiled—almost bashful smiles—and hugged each other. And though I know very well that such things don’t happen, can’t possibly happen, except in the movies, our bathroom was filled with the sound of violins.
• • •
This morning Birdie Monti called to say that all bets might be off, that her husband had awakened in the middle of the night awash in anxiety. Yes, he’d replied to her questions, he most desperately wanted her back and would do whatever she said was very important to her. Which meant that he’d never ever be unfaithful again. Which meant that it was okay by him if she kept all the money and property in her name. And which also meant he was willing to make his peace—at the cost of a million plus—with the Kovners.
Except, Birdie Monti groaned, there was this obstacle.
“My husband says that he placed a curse upon the Kovner family, a serious curse, an irreversible curse. And he says that unless he fulfills it, terrible things he can’t even tell me about will happen to him.” She tsk-tsk-tsked. “I know there’s got to be a way around this, but, honestly, I can’t think what it is. And meanwhile, whenever I say to him, ‘Joseph, forget this curse,’ the color goes out of his face and he grabs his—um—privates.”
Oh, God, I thought. Joseph and his stupid superstitions. I sat there holding the telephone and mentally replayed Ms August curse:
“May I never see my wife or my children or grand children again, may I end my days in poverty, may my . . . thing . . . fall off, if I fail to exact full vengeance on your husband and your sons for what you have done to me.”
No wonder the poor fellow was so panicked.
“Brenda,” said Birdie Monti, who hadn’t heard my voice in a while, “are you still there?”
“I’m here,” I reassured her, “and I’m thinking. Believe me, I am thinking very hard.”
I thought for a few more minutes and then—I tell you, sometimes I astonish myself—I had it. I’d figured out how to stop this crazy curse from messing up a happy ending.
“Birdie,” I said, “tell your husband that I know a professional witch who’s able to reverse irreversible curses.”
Birdie laughed, “You’re joking with me
, right?”
“Do you want to solve this problem,” I asked, “or do you really want me to answer that question?”
Birdie didn’t hesitate. “Have your witch get in touch with Joseph today.”
• • •
This afternoon I succeeded in removing the Monti curse, I did it on the phone. It was a triumph. For even though Joseph Monti had initially responded with great skepticism, he soon surrendered to my mystic charms.
“I hear your spirit’s turmoil,” I said, my tone kind of thin and quavery—think of the high lama in Lost Horizon. “I hear it, but I do not understand.”
“What don’t you understand?” grumped Mr. Monti.
“These words your spirit is whispering. Alien words like otrolig. And . . . spindelnät?”
“This is amazing!” Joseph Monti said.
“And now—ah, yes—it’s starting to change into something I comprehend. Fish. I hear fish . . . fishing . . . fisherman . . . Fisher-Todd.”
“This is amazing!” Joseph Monti said.
“And, hark”—do witches say “hark”? oh, well—“I hear yet another whisper from your spirit. Org . . . orgast . . . some words that begin with ‘Or.’ ”
“Okay. All right. That’s enough,” Joseph Monti said. “Let’s just work on getting this curse reversed.”
Getting rid of the curse was a cinch once I’d established my supernatural bona fides. The nice thing about a curse is that it is gone as soon as the curser believes it to be. And indeed Joseph Monti believed it gone when I mumbled some arcane phrases which I characterized as a curse-reversing spell. (You’ll find the full text of the spell in Brenda’s Best.) But though he seemed convinced of my witchy powers, he expressed a few residual anxieties.
“You’re sure it’s all okay now?” he asked.
“I’m sure,” I replied, “The curse is reversed and you have made peace with your enemy.”
“And nothing bad will happen to me?”
“Nothing bad,” I replied. “Indeed, your spirit will soon be free of turmoil.”
“That’s nice about my spirit. Very nice,” Mr. Monti persisted. “But what about the rest of me? Like . . . my body?”
“The curse is reversed,” I witchily assured him once again. “And your body, I can promise, is safe—unless . . .”
“Unless?”
“Unless you should harm the Kovners or”—I figured I owed one to Birdie—“cheat on your wife. In which case, I can promise, your thing will fall off.”
• • •
After talking with Joseph Monti, I found myself having further thoughts on the subject of cheating. Indeed, I found myself faced once again with the question I’d raised at my birthday party last April, the trouble some question that came to mind as I contemplated my husband and my three lovers. Was I, I had asked that night, a star on a Donahue show called “My Mom Is a Slut”? Or was I Lady Brett in The Sun Also Rises?
Here, after all these months, is my final answer:
First of all, I’ve decided that this is not the right question to ask, that the only right question is, “Are you sorry you did it?”
To which I’ve decided, second of all, that the only right answer for me is “no” and “yes.”
No, because I have learned what it is like with other men. I have learned what I am like with other men. I have learned about the G-spot and the Jumping White Tiger position—though I never did learn what happened to Paulie and Joan. I’ve acquired carnal knowledge of a younger man, a married man, a genius. Of a man who belongs to a different religious persuasion. Of a black man, a celebrity, a committed political activist—and a twin. No longer can I complain, as I look back on my forty-six years, that I’ve been deprived, of sexual variety. In one fell adulterous swoop, I have acquired enough variety to last for the final twenty-three years of my fife.
So no, I can’t say that I’m sorry, because I wanted to possess this carnal knowledge.
Except yes, I am sorry. Deeply deeply sorry.
I’m sorry because I hate the fact that I’ve slept with another wife’s husband. I’m sorry because I still hold fidelity high. I’m sorry because I long to be—in addition to carnally knowledgeable—guiltless, blameless, virtuous . . . unadulterated.
Fortunately! am able to live with ambivalence.
• • •
It’s 7 P.M. and I’ve lighted a fire in our living-room fire place and the Chardonnay is chilling and I’m heating up a curried-crab hors d’oeuvre. Both Jeff and Wally are out and I await the arrival of Jake, with whom I am planning to spend a cozy evening.
Sinatra is bittersweetly singing “It Was a Very Good Year.” I am feeling grateful.
I’m grateful there’s no more curse on the Kovner family.
I’m grateful that Jake is back in love with me.
I’m grateful that I am still (despite many setbacks) a can-do woman (though far, far humbler than I used to be).
I’m grateful for my children, my friends (among whom I count Birdie Monti), and even for my sister Rosalie.
And I’m grateful—profoundly grateful—to my unconscious, dumb luck, and To Whom It May Concern that I didn’t manage to murder Mr. Monti.
DONE
• The Following June
•
EPILOGUE
These last several months have been painful for Wally, but, as I’ve already mentioned, he happens to be a remarkable young man. lndeed, despite an aching heart, he showed (with just a few lapses) surpassing patience as Josephine moved from Vanessa to Benito to Zbigniew, then on to a saxophone player and a Tae Kwon Do instructor. His steadfastness has paid off: This Sunday Wally and Jo will be married, assisted—since Jo doesn’t know yet if she wishes to convert—by a rabbi and a priest. And I’ll tell you, what with her great mental health and Wally’s enormous joy, I’ll take my future daughter-in-law any which way whatsoever that I can get her.
We’ve seen a lot of the Montis since the wedding date was set—he subdued and uxorious, she vibrant and very much in control of her life. From time to time Birdie goes to an AFGO meeting and speaks to the women about the importance of knowing what’s very important to you. She is also quite hands-on involved with the newly renovated Monti Homes for the Homeless, where Jeff, she has assured me, is doing well and “getting his shit together.”
“Birdie,” I gasped when she used that phrase, “where, for heaven’s sake, did you pick up such language?”
Birdie, looking pleased with herself, replied, “From these men who sometimes help when we have problems at the homes. Two nice men named Billy and Elton Jr.”
Billy and Elton Jr., in fact, are making themselves indispensable by keeping the Monti Homes free of guns and drugs. In gratitude, Jeff has sold his flashy Jaguar to Elton Jr., replacing it with a car more modestly suited to his role as resident manager. Jeff is also subletting his Watergate condo and currently living in Anacostia, since resident managers—Birdie Monti insisted and I concurred—ought to be residing among their residents. And though he’s still dating women I cannot imagine becoming the mother of my grandchildren, he may be developing character at last.
He may even, my sister says enviously, have found himself a meaningful career, Something Rose continues not to do. Which is why she is now taking a course to prepare for the LSATs and plans to apply to law schools this coming fall.
Speaking of Rose, I’ve been thinking she might be right about my resourcefulness, that I might find a way to outwit my short-lived genes. Indeed, with my dizzy spells gone and my body and soul in mint condition, I’m feeling convinced that I’ll make it past age sixty-nine.
Which I certainly hope to do because I wish to walk into the sunset with the man who’s lying next to me in bed, a man covered head to toe in a full gorilla suit (mask included)—except for a slit in a highly strategic location. I, in turn, am wearing Jake’s most favorite T-shirt-nightshirt, the one he had made for me, the one that says: FOR PEACE OF MIND, I HEREBY RESIGN AS GENERAL MANAGER OF THE UNIVERSE.
Jake finds it deeply comforting, he tells me, to see those words emblazoned across my chest.
But, as I’m not reminding Jake, but often tell my readers, people shouldn’t believe everything they read.
Books by Judith Viorst:
Poems
THE VILLAGE SQUARE
IT’S HARD TO BE HIP OVER THIRTY AND OTHER TRAGEDIES OF MARRIED LIFE
PEOPLE AND OTHER AGGRAVATIONS
HOW DID I GET TO BE FORTY AND OTHER ATROCITIES
IF I WERE IN CHARGE OF THE WORLD AND OTHER WORRIES
WHEN DID I STOP BEING TWENTY AND OTHER INJUSTICES
FOREVER FIFTY AND OTHER NEGOTIATIONS
Children’s books
SUNDAY MORNING
I’LL FIX ANTHONY
TRY IT AGAIN, SAM
THE TENTH GOOD THING ABOUT BARNEY
ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY
MY MAMA SAYS THERE AREN’T ANY ZOMBIES, GHOSTS, VAMPIRES, CREATURES, DEMONS, MONSTERS, FIENDS, GOBLINS, OR THINGS
ROSIE AND MICHAEL
ALEXANDER, WHO USED TO BE RICH LAST SUNDAY
THE GOOD-BYE BOOK
EARRINGS
Other
YES, MARRIED
A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS (TO A LIBERATED HOUSEHOLD)
LOVE AND GUILT AND THE MEANING OF LIFE, ETC.
NECESSARY LOSSES
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Murdering Mr. Monti Page 28
