Authors: Dorothea Benton Frank
Packing
T
he sun was slowly rising like a fireball, searing the entire horizon in bands of blistering scarlet. Without so much as reaching out and touching the windowpane, I knew it was still bitter cold outside. The world beyond my windows had that bleak look of frozen desolation. Low-hanging clouds were bulging with snow, and if it fell as it was threatening to, I’d probably have my beautiful chandeliers for another twenty-four hours. Electricians were a sensible breed, and foul weather would keep them home rather than have their small vans play slip-and-slide. Besides, you waited for them, they didn’t wait for you. But after everything that happened yesterday, I knew they would arrive.
I was wide-awake, having spent most of the night crying off and on like a complete fool. But in the morning light I was coming to the conclusion that what was there to cry about really? Because there was nowhere to sit except on a mattress and box spring? Because my clothes were in cardboard boxes all around the bedroom, dropped unceremoniously in piles by the burly movers? Because all my family photographs were in a stack on the kitchen counter, their silver frames all confiscated? Because there was no flat-screen television with which to start my day with Matt Lauer and all my imaginary friends on the
Today Show
? Please. It was easier to specify what remained than what was gone. And there was nothing to be done about it anyway.
“Get out of bed and start your day,” I said out loud to myself. I rolled to one side and then pushed myself up into a sitting position. I had not slept on a mattress and box spring on the floor since my college days, and as I struggled to rise I realized those days were a very long time ago. My knees creaked, my balance was definitely off, and I stumbled to the bathroom like an old, arthritic lady. I looked dreadful but it was perfectly understandable. But I still had clean towels and I hoped that a hot shower would get me moving.
I stood there under the hot water for much longer than usual, continuing to count my blessings. Isn’t that what people were supposed to do in trying times? Well, the list of my blessings was short but it was not an insignificant list. I had my health, I wasn’t ugly, and I had a reasonable sense of humor and respectable brains. Good health was a wonderful asset, not to be taken lightly, and good humor would see me through this impressive morass of utter and complete bullshit I was facing. On the material side of the ledger, I could add my diamond studs and diamond ring. And a nice watch. There was some other jewelry but it probably wouldn’t amount to much if I tried to sell it. I imagined that our leased cars would surely be repossessed but that was all right with me. I had never been a car person anyway. In fact, I made a mental note to call Bergen Jaguar and Globe Motors to just come pick them up. And after yesterday, mark that as the intergalactic benchmark for a bad day, I was un-insultable, which I was pretty sure wasn’t a word and I didn’t care one whit. It didn’t matter if I did care. The facts were what they were. At least I had the beginnings of some sort of a plan.
I brushed my hair up into a big barrette, pulled on a pair of pants and a sweater, and wondered how long it would take for the swelling in my face to go down. I looked like a bloated trout. Every time I cried, since I was a little girl, my face would get blotchy and my eyes puffed up like I’d been on a bender. Come to think of it, Patti, Mark, and I did put the almighty hurt on three bottles of wine last night. Maybe that had something to do with the ruddiness of my complexion. But let’s be honest, if ever there was an occasion that merited overindulgence, yesterday had been the ultimate one.
By the time I reached the kitchen to try and rustle up some sort of a breakfast, snow had begun falling in earnest, and Patti and Mark were coming in the door with a box of doughnuts; a bag of paper cups, napkins, and spoons, and a huge Box o’ Joe from Dunkin Donuts; the
Bergen Record
and the
New York Times.
It was just before seven.
“Morning,” I said. “You two are sure up with the birds! How are the roads?”
Patti gave me a peck on the cheek and then stood back and looked at me.
“The highways are probably fine but the neighborhood? Not so great. Next time you buy a house, make sure there’s a politician on the street.”
“Yeah, then you get plowed out first.”
“By the way, shugah, you look like who did it and ran, girl,” she said. “Lipstick.” She reached in her purse and handed me a tube.
“We’re supposed to get twelve to eighteen inches,” Mark said and we all moaned.
“Somebody
did
do it and ran,” I said, using her tube of Chanel Ballerina. “But! On the bright side of things, those nice men from the D&D Building left us some mugs and a few other things on the verge of recycling.” I took three mugs from the cabinet. One had the faded image of Jane Austen’s face plastered on it, another one had some bit of trite philosophy printed on its side, and the third one was from the gift shop at Radio City Music Hall. All of them had a significant chip or two. “Can you believe they didn’t want these?”
“No taste,” Patti said.
Mark gave me a brotherly hug and said, “We brought doughnuts.”
“Yay. No carb left behind. Definitely my kind of breakfast,” I said.
“Listen, Cate,” Patti said, handing me a steamy cup of deliverance, “we don’t want you to worry. You’ve been through enough. When the kids leave today, you’re going to come and stay with us for a few days or for as long as you’d like to sleep on a sofa bed with a metal bar jamming your back.”
I giggled at that. Mark and Patti lived three blocks away in a picturesque house for normal, sensible people (not a crazy, over-designed, waste of money, brand spanking new, with a five-car garage, home theater, tennis court, swimming pool, fountain out front spewing water day and night, wireless McMansion like mine), whose greatest selling point was an elaborate gourmet chef’s kitchen with four ovens, two dishwashers, three sinks, and a huge marble slab for making Patti’s infamous featherweight pastry and gorgeous cakes. Most women, myself included, would love a kitchen like that, because it would inspire you to tie on an apron. My witty, irrepressible sister Patti was a classically trained, well-known pastry chef who baked like an angel but only when she felt like it. She had declined countless offers from the Food Network for her own show, because she wasn’t interested in becoming a celebrity. To put this in perspective, two years ago she made Martha Stewart’s birthday cake at Martha’s request and billed her. Martha’s people were aghast that Patti sent a bill and Patti just laughed.
“Pay the bill,” Patti said and they did. “Does Martha Stewart get up in the morning and go to work for free? I don’t think so.”
I greatly admired her sense of self-worth. Even Martha Stewart couldn’t take her somewhere, especially if Patti wasn’t interested in the trip. She charged so much money for wedding cakes it literally gave me hives to think about it. They had no children (their choice) and no pets (Mark is allergic to any and all creatures with dander), and as a result they had money to travel to all the exotic spots on the globe to sample and study their sweets, the one thing of which I was a little jealous.
“Well, I have to say. It’s good to see a smile on your face,” Mark said.
“Yeah, well, I think I’m pretty much out of tears, you know? They seem to have dried up.”
“Yesterday was a little rough,” he said.
“I’m married to the King of Understatement,” Patti said. “It was like the worst day ever. Like something out of a Stephen King novel.”
“Yeah, but you know what?” I said.
“What?” they said together.
“I’m gonna survive. Us Mahon women are built from pretty strong stuff, stronger than I would have thought. I mean, listen, who would
believe
what happened yesterday? It just doesn’t seem possible.”
“Cate?” Mark said. “These days, people are losing their houses and all their possessions right and left. What happened to you is not actually all that unusual, except for the baby pictures and the floosies in the office colliding in one spectacular graveside shit storm. Want a chocolate doughnut?”
“Like we already forgot the details?”
“Are you kidding?” I took the doughnut from him, ate it in two bites, and then I licked my fingers until all the sugar was gone. “Losing the house and everything we owned was bad enough but I agree, meeting Addison’s whore was a nice touch and learning about the secretary and the other women he . . . what? What are y’all thinking?”
Patti and Mark had the strangest expressions on their faces, as though they were hiding something from me.
“Come on,” I said, “what’s up with the weird faces? What’s going on?”
“You tell her,” Patti said.
“This is why we came over so early,” Mark said. “I couldn’t sleep last night worrying about what you were going to do about paying your bills. So I got to thinking and then I remembered something that happened when we were at dinner in the city a few months ago.”
“And?” Patti said, opening her eyes wide and flailing her arms as if to say
come on already!
“I swear to God, Mark. He is the slowest storyteller in Bergen County. Quit prattling!”
“Excuse me, ma’am, but the details are very important here,” Mark said and continued. “So we’re at Le Bernardin getting ready to lay waste to some mighty fine black bass and I’m reading the wine list. I said to Patti, gee, honey, remember that Pomerol we bought for like fifty bucks a bottle back in ’94? She says, yes, dear, although I’m not entirely confident about her honesty on that one. You know? I mean,
yes, dear
is pretty much thrown around the house without a lot of veracity attached to it.”
“Puhleese!” Patti said. “He thinks he’s the only one who remembers anything about our wine collection. Believe me! I
know
what the man spends.”
“And
I
know what
you
spend, too!” Mark wagged his finger at Patti. “Well, anyway, don’t you know it was four hundred dollars! The same maker and the same year!”
“Basically, what he’s telling you is that . . .”
“Ahem!” Mark said. “This is
my
story, not yours.”
“Sorry,” Patti said. “Just get to the point! Jeesch!”
“Cate? You’re sitting on a gold mine downstairs. Addison’s cellar is probably worth a hundred thousand dollars! Maybe two.”
“Maybe four!” Patti said.
“So what are you two thinking? That I should run out in the snowstorm and sell it on the corner? Don’t you know that the sheriff said they were sending a special wine mover with a refrigerated truck to get it?”
“A sommelier repo guy?” Patti said. “I didn’t know they had those.”
“I’m not saying that you should sell it!” Mark was getting excited.
“He’s thinking you should swap it,” Patti said. “It’s kind of ingenious, really.”
“What? Swap it?”
“Listen, the liquor stores open at nine. I’ve got the Expedition, right? That thing can go anywhere in any kind of weather.”
“Yep, it sure can,” Patti said.
“I’ll go pick up twenty cases of something decent and we just switch it! How clever is that?” Mark was smiling from ear to ear. “We put your wine in our cellar temporarily, sell it either to a broker or at auction later on down the line, and that’ll put a cool twenty-five thousand in your pocket. Maybe fifty! So what do you think? Smart, right?”
Silence hung between us for a moment while I tried to figure out if they were serious.
“Can you drive the Expedition to hell? ’Cause that’s where y’all are going.”
“What do you mean?” Patti said, completely mystified by my apparent lack of enthusiasm for their plan to send me to jail on top of everything else.
“Do you understand fraud? Great God, Patti! Mark, if we switch the Chateau Magnifique 1980 for the House of Mediocre Rat Piss 2010, it’s fraud, it’s a felony, and it probably breaks about another twenty laws. Good grief, y’all!”
All the air left the room in a great whoosh to be immediately replaced with yesterday’s heavily laden gloom.
“She’s right, Mark.”
Mark, looking crestfallen as I pulled the plug on our adrenaline-pumping life of crime, shook his head in agreement.
“Damn it all! I thought it was such a great idea,” Mark said. “I mean, wine? What regular judge in a New Jersey bankruptcy court knows jack shit about the value of rare wine? You know those guys don’t drink anything but whiskey. Probably. Maybe single malts.”
I was now doubly appalled that my heretofore saintly brother-in-law would assert that those learned gentlemen of the bench, in whom our society places a powerful sacred trust, were to be found after hours down at some seedy pub on the corner, knocking back shots of Jack Black and perhaps even doing something as commonplace as playing darts. Shocking.
“But maybe not. Come on, Mark. That’s a very dangerous assumption to make. With all the business they’re doing these days? You said it yourself. Bankruptcy courts are crazy busy. And those judges aren’t exactly a bunch of dummies, you know. It would take those guys all of about a week to get up to speed and get their own reality show on the topic.
The Jersey Judges Do Vino!
Besides, all they’d have to do is subpoena the books or whatever it is that they do to the auction houses and the big distributors around here.”