Hanging by a Thread (11 page)

 

“Of course, you should go out.” My grandfather practically slams down the dinner plate in front of me. Pot roast, potatoes, stewed tomatoes. Across the kitchen table, Starr is giving me her you-can't-be serious face, but I can't tell if it's meant for my announcement or dinner. “It's not right, a young woman like you never doing anything with her friends. Never going on a
date.
”

Ah, yes. The Ellie Doesn't Date issue. There being no Jewish mothers currently in residence, my grandfather, bless his heart, has assumed the role, matchmaking apparently being a cultural, rather than a gender-specific, calling. But at least I've yet to find some strange guy sitting on our sofa when I get home from work, or get phone calls that start, “Hi, you don't know me, but…” All that may change, however, if I reach thirty without a ring on my finger.

I fork in a hunk of pot roast. “When would I have time to date?”

“If you're going out with this Mari person, you could go out on a date.”

“Not the same thing. I hate dating, you know that.”

“That's because you keep dating shlubs. Or did, when you used to date.”

Can't argue there. “The problem is,” I say, watching Starr poking her fork over and over into her stewed tomatoes, making them ooze, “there's no way to find out if they're shlubs until you've gone out with them. By then, there's nothing to do except suffer through the rest of the evening.”

Leo glances up, cutting his meat. “I worry about you, being alone.”

“Alone? When am I ever alone?”

“You know what I mean, don't be fresh.”

“Hey—it's been a long time since I ventured out from under my rock. Give my eyes a chance to adjust before turning the light on full-blast.”

He grunts. Starr emits a particularly soulful sigh.

“What is it, sweetie?” I say. As if I don't know.

“These,” she says, wrinkling her nose at the mangled tomatoes. “They're dis-
gust
-ing.”

An appropriate enough label for something that now looks like fresh roadkill. “Then don't eat them.”

“What is this, don't eat them?” my grandfather says. “The baby needs her vitamin C. And A. Tomatoes are loaded with A.”

“I'm not a baby—!”

“I know, sweetie. And she takes a multivitamin every morning, Leo.”

“That's not the same as getting your nutrients from your food. And it sets a bad precedent, letting her pick over her food like that. She'll grow up with one of those eating disorders.”

I decide against pointing out that the two have nothing to do with each other. Unfortunately for the rest of us, Leo eats everything. Always has. His rebellion against his mother's kosher kitchen, would be my guess.

“Honestly, Leo—so she doesn't like stewed tomatoes. Big deal.”

“How does she know if she's never tasted them?”

I sigh. We can end this now, or we can drag it out to its painful, and inevitable, conclusion. Knowing full well what Starr's reaction is likely to be, I turn to her and gently say, “You could take one bite, just to taste—”

“That's not fair!” Betrayal screams in her eyes. “You can't change your mind like that!”

Never mind that
she
does at the drop of a hat.

“One bite. Or no dessert.”

Starr actually squawks, then rams her arms over her chest, her face crumbling into a mutinous glare. We may be here for a while.

I turn to my grandfather. “You
sure
you're up for dealing with…things for another few hours on Thursday?”

Leo chuckles. “Like I haven't seen that look before.” He touches my hand, a rare show of physical affection. “You need to spread your wings, sweetheart. I sometimes think it's not right, this life you lead. Not married, not really single… In limbo.”

Naturally, hearing my own thoughts echoed immediately prompts me to refute them. “I'm hardly in limbo. Not with Starr—”

“Who will grow up and leave and start her own life, and here you'll be. Left behind. Wondering what happened to all those years you let slide by.”

I take a bite of potato, but I can feel my face redden. “That's ridiculous.”

“It's true. And I see it in your face, that you know it's true. But you deny what you feel. What you want.” While I sit there, gawking at the man, he reaches for a roll, starts to butter it. “How much time we waste,” he says, more to himself than to me, “lying to ourselves, ignoring the truth—”

Somebody knocks on the back door, making me jump. I get up to answer it, keeping one wary eye on my grandfather, only to jump again when I see the stocky form standing outside. For a second, I think—hope?—it's Luke, only to immediately realize, no, of course not, it's only Jason,

Imploring, puppy dog eyes latch onto mine when I open the door, as, for the second time that day, a tsunami of cologne bowls me over. From underneath the rim of his black beanie, bits of gold shimmer in his eyebrow, both earlobes. The kid forms a shallow, upright
S
as he stands there, his hands stuffed into the front pocket of his hoodie.

“C'n I hang here for a while? My folks are, like, driving me insane.”

“Of course you can, Jason,” Leo booms behind me, getting up from the table. “We've got chocolate cake for dessert, would you like some?”

“Sure, whatever.” He shuffles in and over to the table, where Starr's still giving the tomatoes the evil eye.

“Stewed tomatoes?” he says. “Dude. Those are the
bomb.
”

My daughter shoots him a look as if he's totally lost it, but damned if she doesn't shove a bite of tomatoes in her mouth. Granted, she's making faces as she chews like she's been poisoned, but eventually, and with a grimace worthy of a woman birthing a twelve-pound baby, she swallows. After a melodramatic shudder, she grabs her milk glass and gulps down half the contents.

“That was,” she announces, “the
worst
experience of my entire life.”

Jason turns to me, beaming at his accomplishment. And looking like he's expecting something in return. Something I cannot, and will not, give him.

Some princess I am. I don't even get frogs. Just tadpoles.

 

An hour later, I'm down in the basement, pinning pieces of muslin onto Beatrice, my dress form, padded out to match Heather's measurements. Leo and Starr are upstairs, reading together. Jason is here with me, following every move I make like a moony cat.

I know I should just send the kid home, but I can't. Yeah, yeah, I'm a pushover, we've already established that. And I know I'm going to eventually ask him what's wrong. Because something definitely is, more than his usual “life sucks” mood.

Now he's shifted his attention from me to stare at the bulletin board I've set up against one paneled wall, on which I've pinned both the photo from the mag and a few of my own sketches to flesh out what I can't see. My grandparents did the whole rumpus room thing with the basement when my dad was a kid, so it's very
Leave it to Beaver
down here. All we need
is a cocker spaniel to complete the look. The Ping-Pong table even converted quite nicely into a cutting table.

“You're, like, really good,” he says.

My mouth's full of pins—yeah, I know, bad habit—so all I can do is mumble, “Shusta cuppy,” which he somehow understands.

“Like hell, dude. This is way cooler than the dress in the magazine.”

You think maybe this is how Stephen Cojocaru started out?

We're both silent for several seconds; Jason's jamming out to some punk rock he put on the CD player earlier. I'd prefer Alanis Morrisette, myself, but he's the guest. Then he says, “You think Heather and Pete'll work out?”

“I s'pose they've got as good a shot as anybody,” I say around what's left of the pins. “They've been together a long time.”

“Yeah, well, so were Luke and Tina.”

My eyes shoot to the side of his face; I ditch the rest of the pins before they end up in my throat. “What are you talking about?”

“I overhead Mom on the phone this afternoon, talking to Luke. I couldn't help listening in, she was kinda loud. Anyway, they must've split up.” He frowns, the light dawning oh-so-slowly. “You didn't know?”

“No. I…we haven't been in touch for a while.” My chest tight, I take a pull from the can of Diet Coke beside me, then twist the form around, pretending to stare at the back. “Are you sure you didn't misunderstand?”

“I overhead Mom talking to Pop later. She was, like, in total shock, goin' on about how totally random this was.”

Somehow, I doubt Frances said “totally random.” But I say, “I don't know, Jase. Maybe they're just taking a little time apart or something.”

“That's what Dad said, but Mom said they'd already filed the papers.”

I sink onto the stool by the form, the wind knocked out of me. I mean, yeah, they were having problems,
serious
problems, but they've been on the outs before, and they've always patched things up. So I just figured…

What? That Luke was making it all up, about their growing apart? That I'd just imagined the fear in Tina's eyes? A fear that first made her decide to go through with a pregnancy she didn't want, only to turn around and terminate it, then lie to both Luke and me about what had happened?

And why am I taking this so personally? Why do I feel as if, somehow,
my
life's just been torn apart?

“Ellie?”

I look over into Jason's worried eyes.

“I'm sorry, El. I thought you knew. I didn't mean to dump all that on you.”

“No, it's okay. That you told me. I'm glad you did, actually.”

“I figured maybe I'd better, since I heard Mom say something about seeing if you could talk some sense into them.”

Heart attack time. “Tell me you made that part up.”

“Uh, no. What, you don't want to see them back together?”

“What I want has nothing to do with this. With them. What on earth does Frances think
I
can do?”

“Dunno. I guess she thinks because you guys have been friends so long…” He shrugs. “I dunno.”

“Well, I do.” I stand up, spinning Bea around to jab pins in her left boob. “It's Luke's and Tina's problem to work out, or not, as they see fit.”

“But I thought—”

“You thought what?”

“Geez, Ellie—it's always been the three of you, as long as I can remember. You can't walk away now.”

I know he doesn't understand. And Frances isn't going to like this, either. But…“Things change, Jase,” I say gently. “We've changed. Tina, your brother, me. We're not the same people we were, so our relationship can't remain the same, either.”

He stares at me for a moment, then lets out, “That just blows.”

No shit.

O
n Thursday evening, Mari—looking teeth-grindingly gorgeous in faux fox, three inches of lace skirt and these totally hot royal blue Fendi pumps with bows and chains and things—suggests a club not too far from her work. In my vintage (and yes,
I
mean vintage, not leftover) pink cashmere sweater complete with the de rigeur dive bomber boobs, paired with one of my grandmother's old wool pencil skirts that actually makes me look more than two feet tall, I'm not sure I'm dressed for clubbing. At least, not in this decade. More like Woolworth's counter, Brooklyn, 1962. Half a Rita Hayworth.

Aside from my attire, however, I'm even less sure I'm in the
mood
for clubbing. Not that this is saying much, since I've never been real big on the whole bar scene. Partly because, after a single glass of wine, I've been known to haul my sorry self onto the nearest elevated surface and belt out showtunes
like some down-on-her-luck drag queen. I swear, lab rats have a higher tolerance for alcohol than I do.

But aside from that, I'm just the teensiest bit distracted right now, between Jason's revelation two nights ago about Luke and Tina, and Frances's begging me—he was right about that, too—to see what I could do. Since I wasn't about to go into the whole
mishegoss
about why I hadn't talked to either her son or daughter-in-law for all these weeks, I mumbled something vague and inconclusive and let it go at that.

However. Since Leo threatened to lock me out of the house unless I went out, here I am, trying to play grown-up. Yeah, I hear things about what's hot and not in the city, but since it's not like I ever actually get to any of these places, my recommendations are usually based on a three-line blurb in a copy of
New York Magazine
some tourist left behind in the subway or a snippet of conversation gleaned over somebody's tinkling in the stall next to me.

“I've never been here before,” Mari says, handing her jacket to the coat-check person—and I'm not being PC, I honest to God can't tell—and peering into the bar beyond. “Have you?”

“Nope. New to me, too,” I say, suddenly missing Tina—missing
Pinky's
, for godssake—with an intensity that borders on painful.

Hmm, Mari's looking at my chest. Since I doubt it's because she suddenly has a yen for me, I take a gander at myself, wondering if I've got egg salad on my boob or something. “What?” I say, yanking down my sweater to get a better look.

“Girl, only you could pull off that look.”

“What look?”

She laughs. “The one that's got all the guys checking you out.”

“Uh…” We move toward the back, her like a gazelle, me like that little chubby dude in
The Lion King,
not the one with Nathan Lane's voice, the other one. The warthog, that's it. Mind you, I don't usually go through changes about my ap
pearance. Among other warthogs, I can definitely hold my own. Next to a gazelle, however…

“That's not me they're checking out,” I say, “that's you.”

“Honey,” Mari says with a hand flap, “this city's got chicks like me comin' out their ears.” No argument there. You can't walk three feet in Manhattan without tripping over something tall and stunning. “But you've got your own thing going. Voluptuous and feminine and
real.
” At my flummoxed expression, she says, “Why do you think implants are such big business?”

“Not for hips, it isn't.”

Mari rolls her great big, gorgeous eyes and grabs me by the shoulders, twisting me around so I can see in the smoky mirror behind us, then says in a low voice that only I can hear, “Trust me, Ellie—
that's
what nine out of ten of the straight guys in this place are gonna have wet dreams about tonight.”

Assuming there are nine straight men in here. Although…maybe that guy over there is giving me the eye. And like I said, I've never thought of myself as a dog—or a warthog, actually—but while short, chunky quasi-Jewish girls are a dime a dozen in the greater metropolitan areas, they're not exactly the gold standard for what constitutes beautiful in these here parts. Keeping one's self-confidence highly polished isn't always easy.

Then the guy over at the bar grins, lifting his glass in a toast. Wow. Maybe there's something to this getting-out-more thing after all. So I do a little chin-lifting and boob-thrusting and Mari winks at me, all those succulent curls swishing over her regal, bony—but in a nice way—shoulders. Having shed the dead animal wannabe, she's wearing this slinky, shimmery bronzy halter top that shows off her adorable little breasts, nipples and all. On Mari, this is okay, since she's got tits that stay put when she removes her bra, unlike those of us for whom the effect is more like a pair of grain sacks plummeting several stories.

We head into the back, settling in at a cozy little table. It's
early yet, only sixish, so the place isn't exactly hopping. “Damn,” Mari says, getting right back up. “I'll be back. Whoever came up with the idea of drinking eight glasses of water a day should be taken out and shot.”

I sit back, feigning “cool.” But I can't exactly say I'm comfortable. Just being in one of these places brings back memories. Way too many memories, and not just of my impromptu musical performances. All that thinly veiled desperation, thicker even than the cigarette smoke (then), the manic laughter.
Whoo-hoo,
everyone seemed to be saying.
Look at me, having fun! Interacting! So drunk I can't feel my feet anymore, but hey, I'm sure I'm having a blast!

Why do so many people think they can't enjoy themselves unless they've got enough alcohol in their system to warrant a HIGHLY FLAMMABLE! sticker on their forehead?

That was Daniel's pickup line, actually. So a note to any guys who might be reading this: If you can read a woman's body language enough to echo her thoughts, you're in.

It was a breath-sucking June night, the humidity a good ten percent higher than your average Central American rain forest. I'd just graduated and landed an assistant buyer's job in Saks's junior department. Mari and some blond, anorexic chick whose name I've mercifully consigned to oblivion decreed this a cause for celebration. Unlike moi, who, being acutely aware that I was still stuck in Richmond Hill for the foreseeable future—since assistant buyers earn less than street cleaners and the prospect of a four-way share in an apartment barely large enough for one person and a goldfish didn't exactly ring my chimes—was not in much of a celebratory mood. However, they were having none of my Eeyoria, and finally strong-armed me into going with them to some dive in the Village with all the ambiance of an internal combustion engine.

“ISN'T THIS GREAT?”
Nameless Anorexic Chick shouted over eardrum-splitting music. Before I could answer, how
ever, we were sucked into the sea of gyrating bodies like socks into a washing machine's agitator. Seconds later, bruised and sweaty and alone, I was spit out at the other end.

I should have left then, I know that now. But for some reason—probably the thought of fighting my way back out through all those icky bodies—I stayed. I figured, fine, I'd stick it out for a half hour, until I'd finished my wine or began to suffocate from the smoke, whichever came first. I wasn't too concerned about anybody hitting on me. For one thing, nobody ever did. For another, the noise level reduced communication to about the level of what must have transpired when the Dutch bought Manhattan off the Algonquins for twenty-four bucks worth of tchotchkes.

However, precisely at the twenty-nine minute and thirty-second mark, what looked like a quartet of Jersey City accountants appeared on what I suddenly realized was a stage. So I decided to stick around for a second, see what they were up to.

What they were up to, was jazz.

Now, I'm a total sucker for jazz. The old stuff, especially, from my grandfather's collection—Billie Holiday, Thelonius Monk, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington. Ella. For years, I thought jazz was
supposed
to sound scratchy. But I knew good stuff when I heard it. And for a bunch of nerds, these guys were pretty damn good.

Okay, so maybe I don't have much room to talk, looks-wise, but I reserve the right to define my eye-candy. These guys were more like eye-spinach. At least, three of them were. Because suddenly the tobacco fumes parted, and I got my first really good look at the piano player.

Lust sprang awake inside me like somebody'd dumped a pail of water on it. Was it my imagination, or were Piano Guys's eyes…yes! Yes, they were! He was looking right
at me!
And he was smiling in that “Yeah,
you”
way! My heart beating wildly in my chest, I smiled back—

“Could I buy you a drink?”

What?

After a second or two, during which I processed the fact that Piano Guy hadn't somehow managed to speak to me via telepathy, I whipped around, my eyes flashing (well, I'm sure they were), intent on killing the bozo rude enough to snap me out of the first decent fantasy I'd had since junior high. Because let's be realistic, here: generally speaking, the only time men like Piano Guy notice me is when there's nobody else on the subway platform and they've left their watch at home. This was truly One of Those Moments, a moment now shot to hell by…by some dude with frizzy black hair and a beard in serious need of a hedge trimmer.

Although (even in hindsight I have to admit this), he had kind of a nice smile. What little I saw of it, anyway, before my glower sent it skittering away.

“Sorry,” he said, looking crestfallen. “I didn't think you were with anybody.”

And I thought, Jesus, somebody worse at this bar thing than I am. Then I thought, See? I can't even attract the guys with the decent pickup lines. Or even the bad pickup lines, for that matter.

It didn't help that he continued to sit there, looking crestfallen, while my brief flirtation with bitchiness went bye-bye. Granted, the Urban Jewish Mountain Man look doesn't normally do it for me, but from what I could tell, the only thing obnoxious about him was his hair.

Then I remembered Piano Man's smile for me and thought,
What am I thinking?
The Black Forest or a possible lifetime of jazz on command?

While I was pondering this dilemma, the music stopped and suddenly Piano Man was right there beside me, ordering a round, smiling at me, and I tilted my head in what I prayed was a provocative slant and purred, “That was really great.”

“Thanks,” he said, which was as far as the conversation got because then some blonde with legs longer than the Mississippi sidled up to him, shoved her tits through his ribs and whispered something in his ear that made him laugh. And kiss her.

To this day, I have no idea if they knew each other or not. But then, what difference would it have made?

Anyway, so there I sat, my fantasy lying in limp tatters at my feet, and Hedge Face gave me the HIGHLY FLAMMABLE! sticker on their forehead line, and I laughed and he smiled. And suddenly, the Black Forest didn't look so bad after all. “I'm Daniel,” he said, holding out his hand. Which was warm and dry when he wrapped it around mine.

“Ellie,” I said.

Then he said, “I know I wasn't the front runner, but I'd still like to buy you a drink.”

And like a damn fool, I said, “Make it a Diet Coke and you're on.”

 

Mari returns at last from the ladies' room and we order, an apple martini for her, a wine spritzer for me. I realize that's only a half step removed from a Shirley Temple, but morphing into Bernadette Peters isn't on my agenda this evening. For the next twenty minutes, we play catch-up. Sorta. I don't need wine in my system to realize how totally uninteresting my so-called professional life is, especially compared with hers. I can't evade the topic completely, however. And Mari easily picks up on the subtext.

The noise level has increased considerably as more people file in after work. But I can still easily hear her gentle, “I don't get it. You were so incredibly focused in school. How the hell did you end up working for Nicole Katz? You were meant for more, El.”

“You don't know that—”

“The hell I don't.” She takes a sip from the antifreeze-col
ored martini served in a glass as big as her head. “So what happened?”

After a suitable pause, I say, “I had a kid.”

Mari's eyes get huge. Then her entire face lights up. “No shit? When?”

“Five years ago.”

“That was practically right out of FIT!”

“Yep.”

Even in the dim, bar-ry light, I can see her trying to digest this information. After the muscles in her face relax, she says, “Boy or girl?”

“A girl. Starr.”

“A little girl! But that's fantastic!” Her smile fades when the rest of what I haven't said clicks in. “Oh. No daddy in the picture?”

“Nope.” I tilt my glass, realize it's empty. Realize, too, that I have just the slightest buzz going. My shrug is blasé. Worldly. “Just one of those things.”

“That's cool. It's not like it's any big deal, being a single parent these days. Not that I mean it's no big deal what you're doing,” she quickly adds. “Just that it's practically become the norm.”

“You wanna take a crack at it?”

“No damn way,” she says on a laugh. Then she gets this pensive look. “Look, I'm gonna say something here, and you can tell me to go to hell if you want, okay? But you never struck me as the type to use having a kid as an excuse to check out.”

“I hardly call what I'm doing ‘checking out.'”

“That's because you're not sittin' on this side of the table.”

“Okay, so maybe I've been a little…cautious about my career the past few years.”

“Girl, you're working for Nicole Katz. That's not cautious. That's suicidal.”