Four of a Kind (43 page)

Her daughter laughed, a sound Bess hadn’t heard in eons. “That was honest,” said Amy. “To be completely honest myself, I was kind of dreading a month with Simone. She talks
way
too much.” In a smaller voice, Amy added, “And she never listens.”

Bess almost died of happiness to hear it. “I’ve noticed that, too.” The understatement of the year.

“So. I guess I should go,” said Amy.

“Yeah,” agreed Bess.

Do we hug?
wondered Bess. The girl wasn’t walking away.

Taking a chance, claiming her right, Bess pulled Amy into a tight squeeze. “No matter how much you hate me,” she said, “I’ll always love you.” Bess held on for only a few seconds, long enough to quell her superstitions about putting her child on an airplane alone, but not too long to embarrass or repulse her daughter.

Amy shouldered her duffel and headed toward the security queue.
Before she left, she raked her hair out of her face—first time in months Bess had seen both of Amy’s eyes at the same time—and said, “Thanks, Mom.”

A single word of gratitude. It was all Bess had wanted.

Well, not
all
she wanted. Bess also craved satisfaction. And she was going to get it.

She rushed back to the parking lot, and got into the car. Bess had to hurry. Only an hour before she had to be in Manhattan.

Made it with a few minutes to spare. It’d been a hairy drive from LaGuardia back to Brooklyn Heights, and from there, to the Upper East Side to her mother’s apartment on Park and 70th Street.

The doorman alerted Simone to Bess’s arrival and let her up in the elevator. The elevator door would open directly into Simone’s foyer. The important feminist icon would be waiting there to welcome her grandchild and daughter.

When the elevator doors opened, however, Simone didn’t look too happy to see them.

“What’s this?” asked Simone, stepping way back to allow Bess—and Eric, Tom, and Charlie, as well as their stuffed duffel bags—into the apartment.

“Change of plans,” sang Bess. “I sent Amy to San Francisco to keep Vivian Steeple company. I’m sure you agree, family should care for each other during rough times.”

The boys were already “OMG”-ing and “check it out”-ing into Simone’s incredible fourteen-foot-high living room ceilings. It was a gilded palace, this place. Old-fashioned and fuddy-duddy Upper East Side décor. Simone sure liked her chintz and chandeliers. A balcony on the second floor overlooked the two-story living room. The boys had found the spiral stairs and were running up and down.

“The boys have two weeks before they go to camp in Vermont,” said Bess. “I thought, since Amy is unavailable, and you have an
empty house in East Hampton, that you should take the boys to the beach instead.”

“The boys
 … all of them
?” asked Simone, aghast, as if Bess had asked her to entertain a prison colony.

“Believe me, with boys, three is easier than one. They’ll entertain each other. Just feed them, show them the pool, and you’ll be fine.”

“I don’t know what to do with them,” Simone protested.

“You’ll figure it out.”

Simone grabbed Bess’s upper arm and squeezed. “This isn’t what I had in mind when I offered to take Amy.”

Offered, ha!
thought Bess. She’d demanded the time to nurture and “mold” the troubled adolescent girl whom Simone had decided to anoint as heir apparent. Did Simone care what Amy really needed and wanted, or was she so wrapped up in her own designs?

Bess leaned closer to her mother than she’d been in twenty years, right up in the old woman’s face. “I’ll tell you what you had in mind: You’re grooming Amy to be your replacement. You’re afraid to die, and selfish enough to want to live forever through her.”

Simone was shocked speechless. Good thing. Bess had more to say. “We saw you on TV, shaking hands with the president,” she continued. “Eric and Tom
didn’t even recognize you
. That disgusted me. You don’t get to pick and choose your family. We certainly wouldn’t’ve chosen each other. But you are stuck with who you’re stuck with. You don’t have to love us. You don’t have to like us. But you have to show respect and put in the time. That is, if you expect me to put in the time for you.

“And your time, Simone, will come,” said Bess, getting into it. “And a lot sooner than you think. You’re seventy-five years old. When’s the last time you spoke to Fred or Simon? I can tell you, my brothers won’t lift a finger for you when you’re sick, senile, and totally dependent on your family. They’d be happy to lock you in a home, and leave you there to turn to dust. I’m not convinced I should lift a finger for you either.”

“Are you threatening me?” asked Simone, absolutely stunned.

“I don’t care what you call it,” said Bess. “I’m just laying it out as clearly as I can. My cards are faceup on the table. You show me and my children—all of them—the courtesy we deserve, and you can expect the same treatment from us. Otherwise, you can die alone. Your call.” Bess smiled sweetly, savagely.

Simone looked like she’d seen a ghost—the ghost of Summer Future? Or herself alone and withered in some nursing home? Bess smiled, tried not to gloat. This was one of the top ten greatest moments of her life. She’d wrestled with her mortality, wondered whether she mattered, if anything mattered. But she had finally figured out everything that mattered: the people she loved. She’d devote herself to them, just as she’d been doing all along. The guilt—about choosing motherhood over a career—was blessedly dissolved. She’d slain the dragon.

If the story of your death was also the story of your life, then caretaker Bess, the gracious host, would die surrounded by family and friends. The thought of it gave her a happy jolt.

She called out, “Boys!”

“Up here!” yelled Eric from the balcony above.

“Come kiss me good-bye. I won’t see you for two weeks!”

Her sons stampeded down the spiral staircase, and rushed toward her. They surrounded Bess and shamelessly hugged her the way boys do. She kissed them all, and then waved good-bye to her mother before stepping into the elevator.

Borden whooped when she told him the story in bed that night. “We should celebrate,” he said. “We can do anything. We’re completely childless for two weeks. Has this ever happened before?”

“Let’s go away,” said Bess. “Can you get off work?”

“I can take a long weekend. Where do you want to go?” he asked. “You’re going to say Atlantic City.”

Bess smiled, and said, “I’ll raise that bet.”

“Oh?”

“Monte Carlo?” she asked.

Borden laughed. “Just promise you’ll spend as much time on the nude beach with me as you will playing poker.”

“You want to be seen on a nude beach with a forty-one-year-old, perimenopausal hag with a scar on her breast?” she said.

“A hundred women on the beach, you’ll be the only one I see,” he said.

And then they made love like they were young.

Hurry up and wait
, thought Carla, checking her watch. She’d rushed to get to her appointment with her bosses at LICH. Dr. Clifton, unfortunately, hadn’t extended her the same courtesy. Carla had cooled her flats for half an hour outside his office—so far. A dose of her own medicine, sitting outside a doctor’s office long past her appointment time. She was guilty of overscheduling, making appointments every fifteen minutes, but what else could she do? Patients needed to be seen.

“Hello, Mommy,” said Tina Sanchez, coming around the corner, dressed in a neat little skirt suit. Where had she bought it? In a juniors department somewhere.

“I barely recognized you out of scrubs,” said Carla, standing to give her former nurse a hug. Tina had applied for a job in the administrative department of the hospital, attending to the transfer of records from paper to server. Tina hadn’t wasted a moment feeling
sentimental or nostalgic about the clinic’s demise. When Carla asked her about her ennui, Tina replied, “It’s business, not personal.”

Since Carla’s business was to tend to the personal problems of the human body, she had trouble making the distinction. What job was more personal than being a doctor? Carla had learned to keep her emotions out of it, but only to a point. For example: her love-hate relationship with the clinic itself.

“You’re here to see Dr. Clifton?” asked Tina.

“He’s forty minutes late,” said Carla. “I’m going to take the rover job.”

Tina looked surprised. “You’re going to haul that ass all over Brooklyn for ten hours a day?”

“I don’t have a choice,” said Carla.

Tina shook her head, clicked her tongue. “There’s not another job out there for you? Have you explored your options?”

“ ‘Explored my options’? Two weeks in a suit and listen to you. We are in a recession, in case you haven’t noticed,” said Carla, starting to feel defensive. “Jobs aren’t falling off cliffs. I mean, trees.”

Tina said, “Take it easy, Mommy. You do what you need to do.”

After an awkward and quick good-bye, Tina clicked down the hall. Carla stared after her, the
pequeña
dynamo who’d always questioned authority and demanded what she deserved.
Look at her go
, thought Carla, smiling. Life would not dictate to her. Tina would put God on hold.

Another ten minutes of waiting. Carla let her mind drift to dinner, last night, when she told the kids that she planned to take them to Disney World after all. The response had been underwhelming. “You don’t seem that excited,” she said.

Zeke said, “Let’s go to Atlantis in the Bahamas. They’ve got a shark tank, and water slides. Charlie said it’s
awesome
.”

Manny said, “How about Knicks season tickets?”

Claude didn’t speak a word. His expression said, “I told you so.”

Later on, Carla admitted to Claude that he had been right about
Disney World. The poker money was still hers, though, and she’d decided what to do with it.

“I know what you’re going to do with it, so go right ahead,” he said.

“That’s impressive, since I have no idea,” she replied.

He said, “You’re going to save it. It’s not in your nature to splurge or take risks. Considering how you got the money, if you did anything
but
save it, you’d feel guilty.”

“I
earned
this money,” she said. “I worked hard to win it.” The defense sounded hollow, though. What was worse, Claude had been exactly right. After the Disney bubble was punctured, Carla’s first thought was to deposit the money into her savings account until they agreed on a destination. She wasn’t sure whom she resented more: Claude for calling her predictable, or herself for being predictable.

The thrill of playing poker with her friends was in taking wild risks. In Atlantic City, she’d been Careful Carla. No risks, only rules. She’d won that way, too. But she’d felt like a cold machine, not a warm-blooded human.

Right now, she just felt tired. If she had to wait one more minute, she might spill right out of this chair and across the hallway floor. They’d have to put her on a stretcher.

A glimpse of her future, the fat woman who’d exhausted herself onto a stretcher due to extreme predictability.