Four of a Kind (5 page)

Stan said, “The ulcers have since healed, I assume.”

“All better now,” she agreed, impatient for him to leave already.

He didn’t, though. Stan stared at the illuminated skyline. They were silent for a minute. Robin’s impatience grew. Then Stan said, “It’s kind of insulting, how you assume I’ll react like an asshole. If you don’t feel
—think
—things are going well between us, just say so.”

Robin sighed. Why did Stan have to be the one in a hundred who could intelligently process information? “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“But you did intend to get rid of me.”

“Okay, yes. I gave you an out,” she said. The date beyond blown now, she reached into her purse for a cigarette. “I thought we might have a connection from our emails. But when we met tonight, I didn’t feel it. You’re a complete stranger, and I have no interest in getting to know you better. That said,” she added, “if you don’t mind my not giving a shit about you, we could probably have decent sex once or twice. Up to you.”

“Does your daughter know you smoke?” he asked.

“That’s none of your fucking business, Stan.”

“Okay, then,” he said, pushing away from the Promenade railing. “Think I’ll pass on the sex.”

At this point, Robin was ignoring him completely. Why was he still there?

He watched her smoke. Robin wanted to flick her cigarette at him. “It’s too bad, is all,” he said, and then
finally
took off.

Robin looked down at the East River below, and at Lower Manhattan across. Another dating disappointment. Another cringe-inducing parting. She’d hurt his feelings, and that was too bad, as he said. She’d been on scores of dates in the last five years. Although she’d slept with some of the men, she hadn’t registered a ripple of attraction—emotional—for any. It hardly seemed possible to be numb for so long. Yet, every day and date, Robin’s cool streak continued. She loved her daughter, of course. But loving a child, however intensely, just wasn’t enough.

Tomorrow night, she was going to Windsor Terrace, to Carla Morgan’s house, for a Diversity Committee meeting. Each of the other members had husbands. Alicia and Carla had office jobs. Bess was president of the school Parents Association, as well as organizer of a few different committees, and spent a few hours each day in the
PA’s basement office at Brownstone. They all got out of their houses, had daily face-to-face interactions with other people. If Robin didn’t have a date, weeks could go by without her having to talk to anyone for longer than three minutes, besides Stephanie, her ten-year-old daughter.

Was Robin looking forward to surrounding herself with women who had fuller lives than she did? Short answer: not sure. The whole diversity agenda seems like dewy idealism, but she’d gone along simply to do something (anything) with other adult females. Robin had enjoyed playing cards last time at Bess’s house. She couldn’t say she felt bonded (would she even know what that felt like?), despite their swapping stories. She wondered what those three women thought of her, if they pitied her single motherhood, or were fooled by her jovial cynicism. She’d have to pretend again, but it was just more of the same, like she did every day on the phone, in emails when trolling for dates, at school drop-off when gossiping and chatting with Brownstone parents.

Robin stepped on her cigarette butt and suddenly felt exhausted. Time to go home, treat herself to a nightcap. She noticed Alicia had been counting drinks at the last committee meeting, but Robin hadn’t felt harshly judged. She’d had decades of experience being harshly judged, on sight, by just about every person she met. Being obese had honed her paranoia or perception, depending on the setting. In this neighborhood, feeling judged was a near constant. Single moms might be plentiful in Bushwick. In Brooklyn Heights? Not so much. At Brownstone, she was a rare and dangerous species. Overcompensating, she flaunted her freedom, referring obliquely to cigarettes and cocktails, her many hot dates. Robin could gauge the happiness of the other mothers’ marriages by how interested they were in Robin’s social life. The women who avoided her like Ebola, or cornered her in the playground to get their vicarious thrills, had problems. The moms who seemed polite but indifferent—the majority—chalked her up as (1) a freak, (2) a pity case, and (3) not a candidate for double dates.

Thus far, Robin hadn’t felt reviled, pitied, or envied by Alicia, Carla, and Bess. Nor has she formed solid opinions (or taken the emotional temperature) of the other three women—yet. At this point, she was most intrigued by Carla, if for no other reason than that she was black. Robin had no black friends: not much opportunity, no gravitational pull toward any particular black woman, and the fact that her limited social energies were focused on men. Exclusively white men at that (although not necessarily Jewish). Habitually, she clicked the “Caucasian” box in her online searches to find a racially compatible potential stepfather for Stephanie. The idea of dating a black man intimidated her a little. Robin had a white girl’s fear of black masculine power. She couldn’t help picture a huge black penis slapping against powerful black thighs. Robin would probably meet Carla’s husband tomorrow night. She’d be sure to check out his package. Bess’s husband Borden’s trouser basket had been a bit disappointing.

Walking the five blocks home, Robin forced her thoughts away from penises of many colors. She fluffed her hair in the breeze, hoping to get out the smoke smell. To answer Stan’s question, Stephanie had no idea Robin smoked, or had nightcaps, or slept with men she barely knew and didn’t care about. Of course, Robin preached to Stephanie about the dangers of cigarettes, alcohol, and casual sex. The hypocrisy of modern parenting in a nutshell.

“Sorry we’re late,” said Bess. Her teenage daughter, Amy, stood behind Bess in the hallway outside Robin’s apartment.

“Welcome,” said Robin, inviting them in. “Stephanie can’t wait to meet you, Amy. And thanks again for pinch-sitting.”

Amy nodded. Robin smiled at the sullen girl whose eyes were hidden behind a drape of dirty blond hair. Bess was, as always, preppy perfection, her shimmering yellow hair tucked behind her ears, falling silk across her shoulders. It’d be hard to have a beautiful mom,
thought Robin, although this Amy had potential in the looks department. She was tall, and had decent bone structure (from what Robin could see of it), her skin was relatively clear. Most important, Amy was skinny. Skinny was the ultimate genetic prize. Everything else could be fixed with makeup and gel.

“Stephanie is straight down the hall, first door on the right,” said Robin, pointing Amy down the long hallway of her two-bedroom apartment toward her daughter’s room.

The teenager skulked away. Bess said, “She hates me. She has no respect for me. She told me tonight that I don’t deserve to consume ‘everyone else’s oxygen.’ ”

At sixteen, Robin had said far, far worse things to her mother. “It’s a stage,” said Robin. “What started the fight?”

“I asked if she’d written thank you notes for her sweet-sixteen party, and she just went off on me. ‘Sweet sixteen’ is an oxymoron,” said Bess.

When Robin had been a sour sixteen, she’d refused a party, offered unenthusiastically by her kiss-kiss-slap-slap mother. What kind of celebration would it have been? Robin had three friends. Her mom would have forced Robin to invite the scores of girls who hated her and wouldn’t have come to her party if they’d been paid.

“Did Amy cry?” asked Robin, thinking of her own teenage sob-fests.

Bess laughed. “We both did. Can’t you tell?”

Robin searched Bess’s creamy skin for puffiness, blotches, or smeared mascara, and found none. “It’s good to cry,” said Robin. “Like eating fiber, I make a regular and concerted effort to do so.”

From the other side of the apartment, Stephanie burst out of her bedroom, dragging Amy along to show off her DVD collection in the living room.

Robin leaned close to Bess and said softly, “If all goes well, we can make Amy’s babysitting a regular thing.”

Bess said, “Keep her off the mean streets of Brooklyn Heights?”

Robin laughed. “Couldn’t hurt.”

“Can I use your bathroom before we leave?” asked Bess. They were to drive in Bess’s BMW to Carla’s house in Windsor Terrace.

“That way,” said Robin, pointing Bess toward the powder room. Then she stepped into the living room doorway. Stephanie was excitedly cataloging her DVDs for Amy, trying to impress the older girl.

Amy glanced at Robin and then quickly away. Robin moved a step closer. Again, the teenager shot her a look, cautious, a warning. “Don’t get too close,” said the teen’s body language. Robin could practically hear the grinding ax in Amy’s teenage head.

“Did we agree on a fee?” asked Robin. “How about five bucks an hour?”

Amy said, “How about ten?”

Evidence of pluck, thought Robin, liking it. “Ten bucks an hour,” said Robin. “That’s a lot of money.”

“I’m worth it,” said Amy, pushing away her hair to make direct eye contact for the first time.

“I’ll bet you are,” said Robin, seeing the glint of steel in Amy’s brown eyes. Robin doubted that the girl would be half as brazen if her mom were in the room. Robin took advantage of Bess’s absence to ask, “Big plans for the money?”

Amy blinked like a rabbit at a fox, and instantly retreated behind her veil of hair. The girl was about to lie her ass off, thought Robin.

“Just clothes,” said Amy. “Shoes.”

“Shoes,” said Robin, checking out Amy’s tattered Vans. Obviously, the girl had other plans for her income. In time-honored teenage tradition, Amy would probably spend her babysitting money on pot, beer, music, taxis, and concert tickets.

Quickly, while Bess was still out of sight and Stephanie was distracted, Robin whispered to Amy, “Okay, I’ll pay you ten. But there’s no drinking or smoking
anything
in my house. No boyfriends or girlfriends. If you show up stoned or drunk, I’ll know in a heartbeat. And if you break anything, you buy it.”

“I hear and obey,” said Amy.

Bess came into the living room. Now that they’d reached an understanding, Robin and Amy were all smiles. Bess seemed puzzled by the sight of her laconic daughter and new friend grinning mechanically at her.

Bess said, “I’m double-parked out front. We should go.” The women left the girls with the TV on.

Bess had to circle only once to find a spot close to Carla’s house, a real house, not a townhouse. The three-story white Victorian, if dilapidated, had blue trim, gingerbread detailing, and a scalloped, shingled roof that made Robin’s heart fly. This was mansion Brooklyn, as opposed to brownstone Brooklyn, where you could imagine the expansive spread into the borough of nineteenth-century families, eight or nine kids in petticoats and short pants, running around the yard playing with hoops and sticks, a horse and carriage parked in the mud out front. Each house on the block had a lawn, and a patch of earth behind. Plenty of room, but Windsor Terrace was an hour commute to Manhattan. The classic trade-off of city living: you could have location or space, or both if you were one of the five people left in America with insane wealth, like Bess.

Robin had a decent-sized cushion. She wasn’t fantastically wealthy like the Steeples, but she had, as New Yorkers understood it, “money.” She’d been left a sizable inheritance by her father, who died of lung cancer when she was twelve. Her mom followed Dad ten years later, netting Robin the remainder of the Stern accumulation of jewelry, property, and investments.

Free of parental intervention and supremely well off at twenty-two, only-child Robin indulged excessively during her early orphan years. A lot of extravagant restaurant meals. Travel was a bit difficult because of her size, but she took a series of lengthy cruises. She bought jewelry, if not clothes (shopping was a depressing trial). She
lavished gifts on a string of opportunistic men. And then, as quickly as it started, the wild spending stopped. Throwing money around hadn’t made her happy, alas. She purchased her apartment—the Hicks Street two-bedroom where she still lived; modest, but in a luxury building in a great ’hood—and scaled back to a frugal, hermetic life. She got pregnant, and was instantly grateful for having spent only a portion of her inheritance. She’d lost a lot less than most since the market downturn, thanks to having put the bulk of her nest egg in insured, triple tax-free bonds. Their interest was enough to support her life completely and indefinitely.