Hanging by a Thread (33 page)

It's a lovely summer night, the sidewalk's empty enough to hear our own footsteps, the humidity low enough that you can't really smell the dog pee from the gutters. On either side of us, graceful old apartment buildings and sleek office complexes soar, majestic and silent. I look up; you can't really see many stars from the middle of Manhattan, but there's a full
moon, reflected a thousand times in as many windows. Alan follows my gaze.

“It's quite magnificent, isn't it?”

“From this perspective, yes,” I say. “Even if it's only an illusion.”

“But does that really matter?” I shift my gaze to his, soft and enigmatic in this light. “If something's beautiful, if it makes you feel good, what difference does it make whether it's an illusion or not? After all, isn't it all perspective? Whether something's real or not?”

I laugh. “Whoa. Too deep for me.”

“Sorry. A good meal tends to make me wax philosophical. So on a more
pedestrian
note…” He looks down at my feet. “How on earth can you walk in those things?”

“Practice. I've been wearing heels since I was fourteen, when I realized this was as long as my legs were going to get.”

“I thought today's women were all about accepting that they come in different shapes and sizes?”

“Oh, I accept my body fine. But short legs are a real pain when you're standing in a crowd. And I find wearing high heels is a helluva lot more practical than hauling around a step stool. Not to mention if I had on flats, we'd have to yell at each other to be heard.”

He laughs, then reaches over and takes my hand. His is warm and dry and smooth. It's…nice. “Have you always been this open and honest?”

Guilt spikes through me. “Am I?”

“Compared with most of the women I know, yes. You are. Which is why I know, when I ask you what upset you back at Pinky's, you're going to tell me.”

And here I'd thought we'd avoided that little land mine.

“I saw Luke and Tina.”

“And that rattled you?”

I'm so screwed. There's nothing I can say that won't either
incriminate me or make me look like an idiot. Or a liar. So I don't say anything.

“I thought you said there was nothing between you?” Alan says softly.

“There isn't.”

“Then…?”

I slip my hand out of his. “Look, it's complicated, okay? And I can't explain it, because it doesn't make any sense, and it's my problem to deal with and nobody else's—”

“Sh, sh, sh, it's okay,” he says, taking my hand again. “Now I know where things stand, that's all.”

I try to remove my hand from his again, but he holds on tight. “And what's that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” he says, smiling, “whatever your conflicts, you're still here with me, aren't you? It means, I'm not going to turn back simply because the road looks like it might get a bit bumpy.”

My brows knot. “You're awfully confident, aren't you?”

“Not really. But I do like challenges.”

“So how come you're not married?”

Have
no
idea where that came from. None. Alan, however, seems to take my erratic behavior in stride. “I was, briefly. A long time ago.”

“What happened?”

There's a fountain in front of an office building nearby; he steers me over so we can sit on the pool's ledge. “My career, in a word. I love what I do, but I'm rarely in one spot for longer than a few months. Next year alone, I've got commitments here, in London, Milan, Houston, San Francisco and Prague.”

“A lot of people would find that exciting.”

“To tell the truth, it's often boring. And incredibly lonely. Especially after so many years.” He pauses, then says, “Marlys and I fell madly in love while we were still at university. And got married. But I went straight from school to
working as an assistant to a top stage designer, which meant I was rarely around. After a while, Marlys began to wonder what was the point of being married if we were almost never together?”

“I'm so sorry.”

“Don't be. She basically asked me to choose between her and my work. And I chose my work. See, she was all for making a cozy little nest in a semidetached in Reading, just as our parents had done. While everything I'd done to that point had been with an eye to escaping cozy little suburban nests. Only now…” He releases a sigh. “I'd kill to have a cozy little nest in Reading. Or a Pinky's to slip off to whenever I felt like it.”

“You must be kidding. With all the traveling you do?”

“And do you know what that makes me, Ellie? The outsider. Everywhere I go. Hell, I can't even really call London home anymore. When I am there, I'm either jet-lagged or sleep-deprived, or so busy getting sketches and models done for the next project I rarely have time to go out. Most of my friends have given up on me. And with good reason.”

The air between us reeks of his loneliness. “And Marlys?”

“Happily remarried with a pair of brats and a chocolate Lab,” he says with a wry smile. Then he cocks his head at me. “I don't know why I'm dumping on you like this. Not exactly stellar first date etiquette.”

“S'okay,” I say, linking my hands around his arm. Then I add, as if trying to make him feel better, “I don't actually go there very often. Pinky's, I mean. Especially since Starr was born.”

“Really? That's a shame. They seem like good people. Good friends.”

“They are.” To my surprise, tears gather at the corners of my eyes. I blink them back. “Question—if you hate your life so much, why do you do it?”

“Habit?” he says with a slight shrug. “Ego? And the money's not bad, not at my level. But frankly, I'm damn close to
chucking it all for a teaching job at some college with a great little theater program. How's that for ambitious?”

“I think it sounds a damn sight better than continuing to do something that's making you miserable.”

He twists around to smile into my eyes. Then one hand brackets my jaw and his mouth drops to mine. He's a good kisser, gentle but thorough, and for a moment I feel swept up in something sweet and magical, as close to a fairy tale as I'm going to get. But when he breaks the kiss, even though he then touches his lips to my forehead and strokes my cheek with his thumb, even though he's doing everything exactly right, I can't say that anything's really fizzing here. Yes, he's a nice man who can kiss well, but I'm not really meeting him halfway.

He gets up and pulls me to my feet, keeping my hand in his as we walk back to the garage where he parked the Lexus. I glance up at the thousand moons, and realize it's only magic if I believe it is. That, if I'm being honest, Manhattan is just a place like any other. Its power to mesmerize, to seduce, to excite, is in direct proportion to my willingness to be mesmerized, seduced, excited.

That it really is all about perspective.

On the drive back to Richmond Hill, Alan talks a lot about his work, I bore him to tears (I imagine) with Starr stories. I get the feeling the kiss didn't exactly fire his jets, either. Not that I'm surprised. Or disappointed. Like I said, either the chemistry's there, or it isn't. No harm, no foul.

“You don't have to see me in,” I say when we pull up in front of my house, and Alan chuckles.

“Was it that bad?”

I flush up to my roots. “No, it wasn't bad. At all. It's just…I don't want to waste your time.”

He angles his body to lean his forearm on the steering wheel. I can only half see his expression in the light from the halo
gen streetlamp, but I can tell he's smiling. “I didn't think they made them like you anymore.”

“Like what?”

“You'll slug me.”

“No, I won't.”

“Old-fashioned.”

I slug him. Well, try to. He's got great reflexes. And a selective memory.

“I'm not sure I'd call a woman who doesn't know who the father of her child is exactly old-fashioned.”

He shrugs. “An aberration.” Then he reaches over and fingers one of the earrings. “So. Was that kiss as boring for you as it was for me?”

“You would have to ask that.”

“Then I guess you'd probably think me completely daft for wanting to ask you out again.”

“Uh, yeah. Why?”

“Because I enjoy your company. And I could use a friend in New York.”

Yep, that's me. Miss Port in a Storm.

“I can't believe you don't have other friends here.”

“I have professional colleagues. And acquaintances. But trust me, nobody I can talk to the way I did to you tonight.”

I feel my mouth stretch tight. “I'd be using you, Alan. How fair is that?”

“I'd be using you, too. So we're even.”

I think about this a minute, then say, “Define ‘friend.'”

He grins. “Define ‘using.'”

“Maybe I should get back to you on that.”

“Fair enough.”

He kisses me again—okay, so maybe something stirs this time, but nothing to write home about—and I get out, watching as he drives away. Then I look over at Mrs. Patel's flamingo, spotlighted from opposite angles. Even though In
dependence Day was a week ago, the little fellow's still dressed in his Uncle Sam attire, complete with a striped top hat. He's also still standing like a happy drunk, which somehow seems at odds with his patriotic attire. And I'm sorry, but this is really bugging me. So, being the good neighbor that I am, I troop across the street, hike my skirt up to my crotch and carefully climb over the spiked wrought iron fence to straighten him up.

Which is when an alarm worthy of Leavenworth goes off.

Lights go on, windows fly open, a string of Hindi assaults me.

“It's just me, Mrs. Patel,” I shout over the alarm as I shield my eyes from the glare of a extra-high-powered flashlight beam. As if the spotlights weren't enough?

“Who is me, please?”

“Ellie. Levine. Um…you might want to turn off the alarm before you piss off the neighbors?”

She disappears from the window; five seconds later, the alarm mercifully dies. Although my ears will be ringing for a week. Then she pops back at the window. “Ellie? What are you doing out there, please?”

“The flamingo was crooked.” A giggle bubbles up in my throat. “I was just trying to fix him, that's all.”

“Oh. Oh, I see. Well, thank you. But next time, perhaps it would be better if you just told me and let me do it?”

“I'll do that, Mrs. P.” I say, hefting my form back over the fence. “'Night.”

“Good night, dear,” she says, and the window slams shut.

Brother, I think, as the giggles take over. I can't even straighten out a meshuggah plastic flamingo without screwing things up. How the hell am I supposed to straighten out my life?

T
he kit arrives the next day. During the very five minutes I'd zipped next door to check out a “funny noise” in Mrs. Nguyen's kitchen, which turned out to be a rattling wok on top of her refrigerator.

As promised, the box is discreetly labeled. However, since Ellie Never Gets Packages, and since clearly nobody, including the cat, has a life, a trio of eager, curious faces greet me upon my return.

“What is it?” Starr asks.

I really thought I was ready for this.

Ha. Ha.

“It's a test.”

“For what?”

Oh, boy.

“To help us find out who your father is.”

My sister's head spins around so fast I'm surprised it doesn't launch into orbit. Starr, however, just frowns.

“How does it work?” she says. Hmm…maybe she doesn't understand how babies happen as clearly as I thought she did. My heart rate ratchets down a notch or two as I calmly explain the cheek swabbing process. Although I suppose I kinda give the impression that I only need her sample in order to find out.

Starr speculatively eyes the box in my hands. “Will it hurt?”

“Not at all.”

Not physically, anyway.

“And then we'll know?”

“After the results come back from the lab, yes.”

“Does this mean he'll come live with us?”

Oh, God. I squat down and take her hands. “I don't really know what's going to happen. But I doubt anything's really going to change.”

“Just checking,” she says and leaves the room.

I turn to my sister, sitting on the sofa, clutching the cushion welting on either side of her thighs as though afraid of being launched into orbit after all. Figuring I might as well get this part of things over with, I sit down beside her and wait. Sure enough, she glances around to make sure the kid's not within earshot, then whispers, “I don't know what's more unbelievable—that you don't know who Starr's father is, or that you waited this long to find out! Jesus, Ellie—what were you
thinking?
”

“Jen? If you think you can possibly make me feel worse than I already do, fuggedaboutit.”

“But
why?
Why would you do something like that?”

Bile rises in my throat as I see in her horrified face a sample of what I'm going to face dozens of times over the next little while. I get up, walking over to the window with my arms tightly crossed over my roiling stomach.

“All I can say is, I had my reasons. Reasons which I thought made sense at the time. And believe me, it's no picnic know
ing that no matter what I do now, or what I did then,
somebody
is going to hate me for it, or think I'm stupid or selfish or a total twit.” I turn to her, tears fogging my vision. “That Starr will think that, one day.”

“Oh, shit,” Jen says, getting up to wrap me in her arms. She has never, to my knowledge, hugged or held me before, and it feels very strange now.

“Honey,” she says into my hair, “if you're stupid or selfish or a total twit, where does that leave me?” She loosens her hold to grimace at me. “It's just…a shock, you know?”

“Yeah. I know.” Then I think, oh, what the hell, and tell her the rest of it.

“Luke?”
she squeaks, her eyes huge.
“While he was married?”

“Give me
some
credit, for God's sake! Of course not! It happened before. And it was one of those drunken insanity things.”

“But you're not sure?”

Now it's my turn to grimace. “I'd slept with Daniel two days before.”

“Jesus.” She pauses. To recoup, I'm guessing. Then: “Does Luke know? That she might be his?”

“He can count, Jen.” At her flummoxed expression, I add, “For what it's worth, the decision to keep this secret wasn't just mine.”

She lets go of me, crossing her arms. “Let me guess. To protect Tina.”

“Yeah.” At her snort, I add, “But you weren't around then, you didn't know—”

“Trust me, once a manipulative little bitch, always a manipulative little bitch. And before you jump to her defense, remember who you're talking to.” Her mouth pulls to one side. “We're like alcoholics, you know. We're never really cured.”

I open my mouth to defend Tina anyway, only to remember all too clearly our last conversation. And back before that, how she always knew exactly how to get our sympathy, how
adept she was at playing Luke, knowing where his soft spots were. Are.

Mine, too.

“God. You must think I'm a weenie of the first order.”

“Sometimes. But that's only because you want to see the good in people. And be helpful. And be liked.” When I wince, she says, “Which is one of the reasons I hated your guts when we were kids. Because you
were
liked. By pretty much everybody.”

I let out a sigh. “Guess those days are over.”

Jen slings an arm around my shoulder. “Welcome to my world, babycakes.”

 

Over the past twenty-four hours, I've left four cryptic messages on Luke's various answering machines, fielded a call from some woman named Renee Tomaszewski who'd been at Heather's wedding who has a dress shop in Forest Hills and would I maybe be interested in whipping up—her words—a few gowns for her more zaftig patrons (I told her I'd get back to her), allowed Alan to talk me into going out with him again (I need the diversion) and thought a lot about what Jen said about Tina.

A lot.

See, the thing is, I'm finally beginning to realize most of the mess I'm in stems from my being an approval seeker of the first order. In school I was a major brown-noser; in every job I ever had, I'd knock myself out just to eke out a word of praise from my superiors. What can I tell you, working for Nikky Katz fed my ego. So basically, I'd do anything—and overlook anything—in order to ensure I stayed in someone's good graces.

Now I think I can finally, maybe, accept that not everybody is going to like me, no matter how much I want them to. That I might have to occasionally tick off somebody in order to save my own neck. And that, amazingly enough, I'll still probably be able to have a relatively okay life. However, what I hadn't fully understood (before Jen so eagerly shoved my face in it)
was that in my zeal to keep Tina as my friend, I guess I did sorta overlook her tendency to be a mite on the manipulative side now and then.

Like every chance she gets.

That's not to take away the times she was there for me. Or that her childhood really was crummy. Nor do I think she's “bad” because she had an abortion, or because she doesn't want kids. But she knew damn well that Luke and I felt sorry for her, and she milked it for every drop.

And she still is.

What I'm going to do about this, if anything, I have no idea. But I think I just snipped another thread tethering me to someplace I no longer need to be.

Whee.

I try Luke's number again. Still no answer. Finally I take the bull by the horns and call Frances, figuring if anybody would know where Luke was, she would. “He's gone away with Tina for a few days, baby—didn't you know?”

Okay, that does it. I'm tired of trying to fix this all by myself, tired of worrying about hurting this or that person's feelings, tired of the whole stinking deal. So, after I hang up with Frances, I pack up the kit, with Starr's sample safely tucked inside, schlep the damn thing to the post office and mail it to him. Whenever he gets around to taking care of it is fine with me.

Meanwhile, I've got a life to live.

Somewhere in here.

 

Two days later, he calls.

“What the hell's the big idea,
sending
this to me?”

“I got tired of leaving messages. So sue me. Why? Is she there?”

“Who?”

“Tina, who else?”

“Tina?” He actually sounds confused. “No. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

He sighs into the phone. “Let me guess. Mom told you we'd gone away.”

“Well, yeah, when I couldn't get hold of you, I asked her. I guess she didn't figure it was like this big secret or anything.” Criminy—what's with the reversion to teenybopperdom here? “So anyway, I figured sending it to you was the easiest thing, that's all. The instructions are in it, just send it on whenever you're ready—”

“She told me.”

My heart skips a beat. “She told you what?”

“That she had an abortion.”

“Oh, Luke—”

“And that you knew.”

He doesn't sound angry as much as…worn-out.

And hurt.

My insides get so twisted up I can barely breathe. “It wasn't like I
asked
to know. But once I did, what was I supposed to do? Do you guys have any idea how often you've stuck me in the middle with all these secrets—?”

“Yes,” he says. “I do. And now…” He lets out another sigh, then says, “Funny thing. All these years, the three of us thought we had this unshakable relationship, when actually…I dunno, El. Were any of us ever totally honest with each other?”

But before I can figure out what to say, he says, “I'll send this out tomorrow, okay?” and hangs up.

I nearly crumple from the sudden emptiness I feel inside, a void so great and vast and cold I can't imagine how I'll live through it. Because maybe Luke didn't say that was the end, but I could hear it in his voice. That our friendship had been like a sweater with the first rows off-kilter, so the more we kept adding to it, the more off it got. And now we have this huge,
ugly, unwieldy
thing,
but no one in their right mind could call it a real sweater.

And who has the energy to rip it all out and start over?

Frito jumps into my lap; I hug his mangy, furry body to my chest and hang on. He doesn't seem to mind. In a way, this is almost harder than having someone die. Because at least that's final. Yeah, it hurts like hell, but there's nothing you can do about it except grieve and move on. But this…

This just sucks.

 

A week later, when Jen's gone into the city for a couple of job interviews, Dolly calls and invites Starr and me to lunch. I eagerly accept, since I've determined that I am
not
going to sit around and mope about Luke like some dorky adolescent. Or eat myself into oblivion. So, since moping and eating were taken off the schedule, that left me with cleaning and fixing.

The house actually
sparkles.
I even cleaned behind the refrigerator (found an earring I haven't worn since tenth grade, among other things). And the rental house not only has all new screens, but I've got most of the wood trim around the porch scraped and ready for new paint.

I am hot stuff when I'm depressed, let me tell you.

Anyway, so Dolly asked us to lunch, and we accepted. She and I have talked a few times since the Big Revelation (according to Liv, after the initial shock, the family's really rallied around their mother/grandmother. Oh, and by the way? Dolly's mother, grandmother and maternal aunts all lived well into their nineties. So maybe I've got a little more time to figure things out than I'd thought.) and Dolly's taken Starr for an outing or two, but this is the first time I'll have spent any real time with her since then.

We make quite a picture, we three. If there's a color in the rainbow not represented somewhere on our bodies, I don't know what it would be. And we're all wearing hats—me, a cute
little straw with a turned up brim; Starr, a bright yellow ball cap crammed onto her frizz; and Dolly, a purple, floppy-brimmed number, secured under her chins by means of a gauzy, floral scarf. But you know, she looks twenty years younger. And, she says on the bus going up to Jamaica (she says there's this great little Italian place she's been wanting to try, but she doesn't like eating out alone) she's lost ten pounds.

“Without even trying,” she says, beaming, her face slightly lavender underneath the purple brim. “There's a lot to be said for shedding a burden you've been lugging around for fifty years.”

So that's the secret? Ditch your problems, lose your butt? Who'd've thought?

Anyway, we have our lunch in this joint, it's nothing special, I'm not sure I see what the big deal is. I'd also like to know why my daughter keeps giving me this furtive little grin, like something's going on. Sure enough, after Dolly pays the check, she says, “There's something I want to show you, a couple blocks up.”

Starr's smile widens.

“Oh? What?”

“You'll see,” my daughter says, slipping her hand into her great-grandmother's. We start out down Jamaica Avenue at a dignified, full-of-pizza pace, (so much for not eating myself into oblivion), but my grandmother and daughter suddenly pull out in front, urging me to get the lead out, already. Now I can see someone, a woman, standing out on the sidewalk, obviously watching and waiting for us.

Frances?

Then a second woman appears.

Jennifer?

“What's going on—?”

“Promise you'll keep an open mind,” Jen says as Frances unlocks the door to the tiny, nondescript three-story building,
flanked by a shoe repair shop on one side and a florist's on the other. It's your basic little store, retail space in front, complete with a few leftover racks and display cases (as if the previous tenants stole away in the middle of the night), storage room/office in back, tiny bathroom, kitchenette. A pair of minuscule dressing rooms. Two large floor-through apartments upstairs, Frances says.

It's not even officially on the market yet, she says.

And an unbelievable bargain.

So we'd need to move fast.

I look at her. “What the heck are you talking about?”

“Oh, for heaven's sake, Mama!” Starr huffs. “Get with the program, already!”

“It
would
be perfect,” Frances says as I gawk at my daughter. “You could have a shop down here, but convert the second floor into a workroom.”