Authors: Judith Arnold
When he opened his eyes he was smiling. Elyse, he thought. Why the hell not?
Ron arrived at six-forty, weary and apologetic. His editor had gotten an angry call from a Fortune 500 company whose questionable hiring practices had been the subject of Ron’s business column in last week’s
Gotham
magazine. Ron had had to spend the next two hours reviewing his notes with his editor, playing the tapes of his interviews and proving to her that he could substantiate every single word he’d written, every accusation, every fucking punctuation mark.
“Don’t use that language,” Julia whispered. “Everyone’s here, including my grandmother.”
“Have my parents killed each other yet?”
“No. Your mother is drinking sherry and critiquing the quality of the living-room couch’s upholstery. Your father has barely said a word. He brought flowers, though.”
“Why is your grandmother here?”
“She didn’t want to watch
Ferris Beuller’s Day Off
. Don’t ask.”
Ron gathered her into a hug. She could tell he was tired by the weight of his arms and the faded glow in his eyes. His kiss was slow, more warm than hot, but
it reassured her. He made a sound that was half a sigh, half a groan, then pulled back. “This is going to be fun,” he said, and she caught a glint of a smile teasing his lips.
His kiss had been fun. Leaving her mother’s apartment after this doomed dinner party, returning to Ron’s apartment and kissing him some more—even if he was so tired the kisses led nowhere further—would be fun. The hours between now and their departure were going to be excruciating.
“I liked that eloping idea we discussed,” she murmured.
“We can still do that. It’s not too late.”
“Ronny?” Esther bellowed from the living room. “Is that you? Finally?”
“It’s too late,” Julia said, slipping her hand into his and leading him into the living room.
“Hi, everyone,” he said, then made the rounds of the room, hugging his father, kissing his mother’s cheek, kissing Julia’s mother’s cheek and smiling and nodding at Grandma Ida, who shrank from him as if afraid he might try to kiss her cheek, too.
“You should have gotten here earlier,” his mother carped. “This is an important occasion. We have to make wedding plans.”
“Nobody’s made any plans yet,” Sondra said, giving Ron a warm smile. “We’re just getting acquainted. Look at these beautiful flowers your father brought. Aren’t they lovely?”
“It was lovely of you to invite us,” Norman said. “Lovely flowers for a lovely hostess.”
Julia didn’t think now was the right time to mention that
she’d
made all the arrangements, issued all the invitations and twisted all the arms to make this dinner
party happen. If Norman wanted to think her mother was the lovely hostess, Julia wouldn’t interfere.
Lyndon appeared in the doorway to announce that dinner was ready. “I don’t have any help,” Esther told Julia’s mother as she rose from the couch. “You’re very lucky, having help. I understand your husband died a couple of years ago?”
Sondra’s smile dissolved into an appropriate expression of sorrow. “From food poisoning, may he rest.”
“Not that it’s my business, but it’s nice you don’t have to be all alone. You have help.”
“He’s my help,” Grandma Ida announced. Esther looked bewildered, but she let the subject drop.
The group filed into the dining room. Julia realized that Grandma Ida’s presence made the table more symmetrical. Her mother sat at one end, Grandma Ida at the other, and Lyndon deftly guided Esther to one side of the table and Norman to the other, steering them to seats that weren’t directly opposite each other. “What fancy plates,” Esther commented, lifting her dinner plate and tilting it to scrutinize its gleaming surface. “What is this, Wedgwood?” She flipped the plate over to look. “Royal Doulton. Very nice.”
“It was our wedding pattern,” Sondra said, slightly misty-eyed. “All these years and I still love it. Julia, you and Ron haven’t registered yet. Add it to your to-do list.”
Julia didn’t want to register for china. She had handsome ceramic dishes; she didn’t need a set of expensive bone china that would take up precious cabinet space and never get used.
“What are we supposed to register for?” Ron asked.
“I’ll explain it later,” Julia told him.
“Your daughter has excellent taste,” Norman com
mented, his cheeks creasing with dimples as he smiled at Sondra.
“You mean, for when she registers her patterns?”
“I mean, she has excellent taste in men.”
“She takes after me,” Sondra boasted. “I have excellent taste in men, too.”
Julia swallowed to keep from gagging. Besides the discomfort of being referred to in the third person while she was in the room, she knew her father had been a difficult man and a less than wholly devoted husband. Her mother’s taste in men was debatable.
She noticed her mother’s smile, not quite so misty as she gazed at Norman. Sondra had touched her hair lightly, tucked a strand behind one ear and tilted her head toward him when she’d made that remark about her taste in men. Was she flirting with Ron’s father? The possibility was too horrible to contemplate.
Howard circled the table, filling the crystal goblets with Chardonnay. “A toast to our wonderful children,” Norman proposed, raising his glass.
“Can I toast with my sherry?” Esther asked, ignoring the wine and lifting her glass of sherry.
“Do you really think it matters?” Norman asked acerbically. “We’re drinking a toast to the children.”
“I don’t like white wine,” Grandma Ida said. “I’ll toast without.” She held up her empty hand, her fingers curled around an imaginary glass.
“To our wonderful children,” Sondra said quickly, and everyone drank—or, in Grandma Ida’s case, mimed drinking—before tempers could flare out of control.
Julia steered her mind back to the subject of registering. While Lyndon carried serving dishes out to the table, she pondered what she should register for. Not
china, not silver flatware, but maybe some kitchen appliances. The new microwaves had features her old one lacked. A matching set of utensils would be nice, and perhaps one of those wooden blocks with the different-sized knives protruding from stab-sized slits. And neither she nor Ron owned an electric eggbeater. If they ever wanted to make meringue, they’d be in big trouble.
All those items were sold at Bloom’s. Would it be terribly tacky to register at her own store? Did they even have a bridal registry? If they didn’t, they should. She’d have to talk to Dierdre about setting one up. Susie could do a nice article about it in the
Bloom’s Bulletin
.
Assuming Susie didn’t leave the city for good. Was she running away? From home, or Casey? Why couldn’t she and Casey resolve things between them, one way or another? People broke up and made up all the time without leaving town. And why did Susie have to leave town to work on Rick’s movie? Why did she call it a movie, anyway? It was supposed to be an infomercial. Cheap and informative and utterly lacking in cinematic artistry.
Julia realized Norm was holding the platter of poultry for her to help herself, and she dragged her focus back to the table. “You never told me your mother was so charming,” he murmured.
She almost retorted that she’d met him only once, and during that meeting, the subject of tax loopholes had dominated the conversation. She might have added that after twenty-eight long years of knowing her mother, she had a better comprehension of her mother’s charm quotient than he did. But she only smiled and
used the two serving forks to lift the smallest hen onto her plate.
“The Plaza is very expensive,” Esther was saying. “Not that I want to count pennies at a time like this, but I’m a court stenographer—a
divorced
court stenographer,” she added, shooting Norman a hostile look “—and money doesn’t grow on my trees.”
“The bride’s family pays for the wedding,” Grandma Ida announced.
“But the groom’s family has certain obligations,” Esther argued. “The liquor, for instance. Liquor at the Plaza—”
“I’ll take care of it, Esther,” Norman muttered.
“The way I see it,” Sondra declared, “Julia and Ron will have one wedding in their lives, am I right? You don’t scrimp at such a time.”
“Wait a minute!” Julia held up her hands like a traffic cop trying to halt vehicles in all directions. “We’re not getting married at the Plaza Hotel, so—”
“Now, Julia. We’ve already talked about this.”
“You’ve talked about it. I’ve looked into some other options.” She gazed around the table to find everyone watching her. Norman seemed curious, Sondra impatient, Esther apoplectic, Grandma Ida surly and Ron highly amused. Nothing about the discussion was amusing, and she resented him for finding anything to smile about at a time like this. “As you say, Mom, we’ll have only one wedding in our lives. It should be what we want.”
“Oy, gevalt.”
Grandma Ida pressed a hand to her chest. “You’re not going to have one of those weddings on Coney Island, with everyone barefoot and the rabbi arriving in a boat, now, are you?”
The concept had never occurred to Julia. She ex
changed a glance with Ron, who shrugged as if to say,
What a great idea!
“There are some lovely venues we can rent,” Julia said. “The Explorer’s Club, the Player’s Club, some other town houses. The Cloisters is available for catered parties, too, although—”
“The Cloisters? The medieval museum?” her mother asked.
“Yes. They’re pretty restrictive, so—”
“That’s a beautiful spot,” Norman commented.
“But all those crosses and stuff.” Esther shook her head. “The artwork there is very Christian. Paintings of Jesus, paintings of saints—as artwork, yes, it’s very impressive. But at a Jewish wedding?”
“Still, they have lovely gardens,” Norman insisted.
“A lovely garden with a big wooden crucifix? This is where you want Ronny getting married?”
“All right—forget the Cloisters,” Julia said, intervening before a major war erupted between Ron’s parents. “The sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art is another possibility. What I’m saying is, we can find a nice location and have Bloom’s do the catering.”
“Bloom’s! What, you’re going to serve bagels and lox at your wedding?” Esther shrieked.
“What’s wrong with bagels and lox?” Grandma Ida retorted. “That’s better than rowboats at Coney Island.”
Julia rolled her eyes—and hallucinated the oddest sight: Adam walking down the hall past the arched dining-room doorway, carrying the platter of leftover canapés, and behind him a slender young woman with exquisite posture, her blond hair twisted into a bun at her nape and a neck as long as Alice’s after she’d eaten
the cake that said Eat Me. Who was that? Where was Adam taking her and the hors d’oeuvres?
As if it mattered. As if any of this mattered.
Elopement was sounding better all the time.
S
usie took the elevator up to the third floor of the Bloom Building. Amazing to think that a few weeks ago she would have gone out of her way to walk through the store just to catch a glimpse of Casey, to exchange a wink and a smile with him. Now here she was, sneaking up the back way like a coward.
She wasn’t a coward. She was a mess, but cowardice had nothing to do with that.
She’d survived a long, dreary weekend, taking in two Jet Li movies, one Jackie Chan movie and a festival that her roommate Caitlin had dragged her to at a scuzzy little theater on Saturday night, featuring semi-pornographic videos of Japanese transvestite rock stars licking one another’s faces, crotches and guitars. Susie wasn’t sure what the videos were supposed to be about, especially since she didn’t understand Japanese. Caitlin said they were called Fan Service, but as far as Susie could tell, the rock stars, not the fans, were being serviced.
Not that she’d count herself as a fan. The videos made her painfully aware that these days, the kind of men who attracted her tended to be tall and blond, with hazel eyes.
Casey would have found Fan Service fascinating. If he’d gone with her to the festival, he would have sat
up half the night with her, picking apart the videos, laughing over the sillier stunts and dissecting the music. He would have spent the other half of the night licking her in all sorts of interesting places.
Julia had called her on Saturday while she was out. They’d played phone tag for the rest of the weekend, until Susie realized that she could talk to Julia on Monday when she went to the third floor to work on the
Bloom’s Bulletin
. She felt totally uninspired about putting together the newsletter this week; her odds of coming up with a clever limerick were about as good as the odds of her father returning from the dead with a new recipe for gefilte fish stuffed into his pocket. But she could write up the pages of the bulletin pertaining to sales and specials at the store, interview Myron for an employee profile and spend enough time sitting at her hallway desk to make people think she took her job as Bloom’s creative director seriously.
And she could talk to Julia.
Julia’s door was open, and Susie entered without knocking. The office had changed since their father had occupied it. Although Julia hadn’t lavished a lot of money upgrading the carpet, painting the walls a brighter shade, replacing the worn leather sofa or removing the scratched and scuffed desk, now tucked into a corner of the small room, which their grandfather had used when the office had been his, she’d perched a few potted plants along the windowsills and hung some framed prints of the Manhattan skyline on the walls. She had picked up the prints from a sidewalk vendor, and they reeked of cheap sentiment. One of them featured the World Trade Center against a violet sunset sky, obviously a play for melancholy nostalgia. Susie wished Julia would find something better to dec
orate her walls with. A
Rocky Horror Picture Show
poster, maybe. Or a mirror. Staring at herself would be less depressing than staring at the Twin Towers.
At her entrance, Julia glanced up from her desk, leaped to her feet when she saw who her visitor was and raced over to the door to close it. This placed her within three feet of Susie—close enough to indulge in a deeply analytical inspection of her face. “You look like shit,” Julia said.
Okay, so maybe staring at the Twin Towers was the happier choice.
The word
shit
could not be used to describe Julia. Her glossy black hair was clipped neatly back from her face, her tweedy gray pantsuit draped her body beautifully and her eyes had the glow of a woman who’d been licked in all the right places in the not-too-distant past.
Julia grabbed Susie’s hand and dragged her over to the battered sofa. Unlike the smooth, elegant leather furniture in their mother’s living room, this couch was webbed with lines and cracks, and was more weathered than Grandma Ida’s face. But the cushions were comfortable, and Susie was happy to sink into them.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Julia demanded, dropping down next to her on the couch. “Why are you running away?”
“I have to leave town, it’s either that or get married,” Susie explained, wondering if her answer sounded as ridiculous to Julia as it did to her.
“Married? To whom?”
Leave it to Julia to use impeccable grammar at a time like this. “Casey,” Susie said, then leaned forward and rested her chin in her hands, feeling terribly sorry for herself.
“Casey wants to marry you?”
Susie nodded.
“And you said no?”
“I just can’t see it, Julia. I’m only twenty-six. When you were twenty-six you were working as a lawyer and dating that creepy Wasp guy who ate sushi all the time. I’m twenty-six and I don’t know where my life is going, either.”
“Don’t compare yourself with me,” Julia advised her. “We’re very different.”
“Yeah. You’ve got your act together. I’m not even sure what act I’m in.” Susie dug her chin into her palms and issued a sigh deep enough to empty her lungs. Self-pity could be fun in its own perverse way. If she was going to indulge in it, she might as well enjoy it. “Ever since Casey popped the question, I’ve been having nightmares about picket fences and preschools and routines.
Routines
, Julia. You know what I mean?”
“I know what a routine is.”
“I dream that an alarm clock wakes me up at the same time every morning, and I’m always where I’m supposed to be, and Mom talks me into getting laser surgery to remove my tattoo.” She gestured toward her ankles, bare above her leather sandals. The butterfly tattooed to her left ankle seemed appropriate to her now, but what if she were married? Did wives have tattoos?
“Mom would be so thrilled if you got married, she’d probably never mention your tattoo again,” Julia pointed out.
Susie didn’t believe that. Until the day she died, Sondra Bloom would hate Susie’s tattoo—which was one reason she’d had it done. “I have nightmares of waking
up one morning and realizing I have absolutely nothing to say to Casey, because we’ve said everything we could possibly say to each other already,” she lamented. “I have nightmares about…” She hesitated, then forced out the words. “
Doing laundry
. Once a week. The same day every week. And using bleach in the white load.”
Julia grimaced.
“You have laundry nightmares, too, don’t you,” Susie guessed. “You dream about dryer sheets and wake up in a cold sweat.”
Julia shook her head. “Actually, no.”
“You don’t have laundry nightmares?”
“I don’t have any nightmares at all.”
Susie cursed. Why couldn’t her sister have nightmares? Why did she have to be so damn perfect? “I bet your dinner party was a nightmare,” Susie grumbled.
“I was awake for that,” Julia argued. “It doesn’t count.”
“How did it go?” Susie asked. Even if the dinner Julia had hosted at their mother’s apartment didn’t count, it might have been calamitous enough to undermine Julia’s perfect life, at least a little. Not that Susie wished her sister ill—of course not—but having a sister who was perfect all the time was awfully hard. A bad dinner party would go a long way toward restoring Susie’s ego.
Julia slouched back in the sofa and sighed. “The food was excellent. Lyndon and his friend Howard prepared a feast. Adam invited this girl over.”
“He invited a girl to your dinner party?”
“They weren’t part of the party,” Julia explained.
“He just invited her over, and they ate leftovers in his bedroom.”
“In his bedroom?” Susie smiled for the first time in days. “Adam had a girl in his bedroom? In Mom’s apartment?”
“The door was open. They watched TV.”
“Even so…What about Tash?”
“Tash is in Seattle. Adam’s in New York.” Julia gazed toward the window as if a vision of Adam’s dinner companion had appeared on the other side of the glass. “I have no idea who this girl was, whether he met her at Cornell, what. She was really thin and her feet pointed out. What’s that called? Duck-toed? She had great posture. She held her chin up, like this.” She demonstrated, angling her chin toward the philodendron sprouting from a plastic pot on the sill.
“She sounds like a freak,” Susie said. “Does she shave her legs, at least?”
“I don’t know. She was wearing jeans, and I wasn’t about to ask. I had my hands full as it was.”
“Full of what?”
“Grandma Ida decided to join us for dinner. She was a grouch. I thought she’d back me up when I said Bloom’s should cater our wedding, but she didn’t. She spent the whole evening being critical. She told Ron he chewed too slowly. She told his mother that yellow wasn’t her color—she was right about that, but still. She told Ron’s father he shouldn’t have brought flowers because they might attract bugs into the house. She told Lyndon he should have made
flanken
.”
“She sounds like quite the belle of the ball,” Susie muttered.
Julia wasn’t done. “Joffe’s mother’s a
kvetch
. She
had nothing nice to say. Joffe’s father said nothing at all.”
“How about Mom?”
“She’s not talking to me.”
“Julia?” Their mother’s voice reached them through the door.
“She’s talking to you now,” Susie whispered.
Julia groaned, shoved herself to her feet and crossed the office to the door. She opened it and Sondra Bloom charged in, her hair flying about her face and her eyes a touch too bright. “You’ll never guess who just phoned me.”
“Eleanor Roosevelt,” Susie called from the couch.
Her mother leaned sideways to peer around Julia. “Susie! What are you doing?”
“I’m always here on Mondays. I have to write the
Bloom’s Bulletin
. I’m the creative director, remember?”
Sondra planted herself across the coffee table from Susie and scrutinized her. “You look terrible,” she said.
“Thanks.”
Terrible
was an improvement over
like shit
.
“Is something wrong?”
“No,” Julia and Susie said together. Just one reason that Susie loved her sister so much: she protected Susie from their mother’s nosiness. “Who phoned you?” Julia asked. “It wasn’t Eleanor Roosevelt, was it?”
“Of course not. Eleanor Roosevelt’s dead,” Sondra said. Then her cheeks flushed and she smiled almost bashfully. “Norman Joffe.”
“Ron’s father? Why? Is there a problem?”
“No problem.” Sondra’s gaze widened to encompass both daughters. She touched her disheveled hair
absently. “He asked me if I’d like to go out for coffee with him.”
“Coffee?” Susie blurted out. Either Joffe Senior was cheap or he was out of practice. A man interested in a woman would ask her out for a real drink, not coffee.
A man interested in a woman? Wait a minute. This was their mother they were talking about. Their mother and Ron’s father.
“You’re kidding,” Julia said, going very pale.
“Why would I kid about something like this?” Sondra sounded almost giddy. She touched her hair again, then clasped her hands in front of her. “What should I wear?”
“What do you usually wear when you drink coffee?” Susie asked.
“Did he ask you out on a
date?
” Julia’s face was rapidly losing its last traces of color.
“He asked me out for a cup of coffee. It’s not a date.” But the way Sondra preened and fluttered, she clearly thought a cup of coffee was more than a cup of coffee.
“When?”
“Saturday morning at ten.”
“That sounds like a date,” Susie said.
“It’s not a date,” Sondra insisted, her voice rising into coloratura range.
“It’s a date,” Julia said glumly.
“It’s coffee. We’ll drink coffee and discuss the wedding. That’s all.” She turned to Susie. “Norman was so generous about wanting to contribute to the cost of the wedding. Of course, there are things the groom’s side is supposed to pay for—the liquor, the flowers, the rehearsal dinner…” She ticked items off on her fingers and stared at the ceiling, trying to conjure a list. “What
else, Julia? The band? I don’t remember. And presents for the ushers, of course.”
“How many ushers is Joffe planning to have?” Susie asked.
Julia scowled. “Who the hell knows? His brother will be the best man. Other than that, he doesn’t tell me anything.”
“Well, just as long as the ushers like Bloom’s food,” Susie said, her spirits more buoyant than they’d been in days. She was a rotten human being, allowing her sister’s obvious angst to cheer her up. But there it was.
“The menu hasn’t been settled yet,” Sondra said firmly. “Well, I’ve got a few days to figure out what to wear. Nothing fancy, of course. It’s just coffee.”
“You might order a croissant,” Susie pointed out. “Then it would be more than just coffee.”
“No croissants,” her mother responded. “They’re too fattening. Do you think I could lose five pounds by Saturday?”
“No,” Susie and her sister chorused. “Don’t even think about it,” Julia added. “Quickie diets are dangerous. And as you said, it’s just coffee.”
“Right. Black coffee. No cream, no sugar, no calories. Susie, I’m worried about you. You really look lousy. Who’s cutting your hair these days?”
“The same guy at Racine who cut it when you said you loved it,” Susie told her. “I’ve got my period, that’s all.” She didn’t, and even if she did, it wouldn’t affect her appearance. But she wanted to end her mother’s interrogation before it gained momentum.
“Mom, Susie and I have to go over the material for this week’s bulletin,” Julia said. “I’m thrilled beyond words that Norman wants to discuss the wedding with
you over coffee. But I’ve got to get these details worked out with Susie.”
“Fine.” Sondra seemed too elated to mind that Julia was blowing her off. She leaned over the couch and gave Susie a bruising hug, then hugged Julia, then pranced out of the office.
Julia followed her as far as the door, shut it and leaned against it, her eyes closed and her cheeks the color of library paste. “Oh, God. I can’t believe this.”
“What?”
Julia’s eyes snapped open. She stared at Susie, apparently appalled that Susie wasn’t as appalled as she was. “Mom and Ron’s father? I’m going to be sick.” Instead of vomiting, however, she stalked to her desk, lifted the phone receiver and punched in a number. Susie figured that if Julia had wanted privacy for the call she’d have asked for it, so she kicked her feet up on the coffee table and settled in to eavesdrop.