“Great. Hi Winnie, hi Churchill.”
“Be polite, boys. Say hello to Linda.”
The boys wiggled their bodies.
“Clive, I hate to bother you, but would you mind looking in on Buster while I'm in New York for a few days? I don't leave for a couple of weeks yet, but I wanted to give you plenty of notice.”
Clive tipped his cap. “It would be my pleasure.”
“Thank you.” She smiled at him and noticed for the first time what lovely blue eyes he had.
“Are you and Dr. Keaton going on holiday?”
Linda hadn't told anyone about Stuart, other than Wes and the girls. She struggled for a moment, because her tongue was suddenly too big for her mouth. “Actually, Stuart and I are no longer together. He moved out three weeks ago.”
She watched Clive's face register shock and it relieved some of the tight pressure in her throat.
“Oh dear, I'm sorry to hear that, Linda. You must be very upset.”
To her absolute horror, she started to cry.
Clive and his dogs looked around frantically as if to escape, and she thought she would die of embarrassment, but soon realized he was only searching for a handkerchief, which he passed to her as soon as he took it out of his pocket and shook it.
“It's clean. Well, as clean as I can make things. I put it in the wash with a pair of black pants and it's never been the same.”
Linda didn't know what he was babbling about. She felt like an idiot. She took the handkerchief and then grabbed him, leaning against his slight chest and bright blue bowtie.
“I don't know what to do. I'm so lonely. How do I do this? I don't want to be alone. I've never been alone and now I have no one. Even my son is away, having sex at this very moment and not even thinking about me.”
Clive patted her shoulder awkwardly. “There, there. I'm sure that's a good thing. One wouldn't want to be thinking of one's mother while having sex.”
Linda looked up into his perfectly serious face and started to laugh. Thankfully, he joined her. When she couldn't laugh or cry anymore, she blew her nose and felt much better.
“My humble apologies, I don't usually wail at the drop of a hat.”
Clive put his hands in his pockets. “You're never prepared when someone is lost to you.”
She sniffed and fiddled with the handkerchief. “I feel terrible, bleating on like this. You know first-hand how awful it is to be alone.”
He nodded and then smiled. “But I have the boys.”
The boys wiggled at his feet.
“And we'll make sure Buster is well provided for until you come home. I hope you have a good time. Sometimes a change of scene is just what you need. Don't worry; we'll be here when you get back.”
She thanked him again. He went his way and she went hers.
He said he'd be there when she got back. At least someone would notice if she never returned.
Gemma sat at her kitchen table with Anna, reading aloud one word at a time. Anna spelled it back to her. She had a test in the morning.
The phone rang. One of the kids answered it upstairs and yelled, “MAMA.”
Gemma picked it up. “Hello?”
“Houston, we have a problem.”
“Bette? What problem?”
“Augusta isn't coming with us.”
Gemma slapped her own forehead. “
Santa Maria
, I knew this would happen. We have to go talk to her.”
“I'll pick you up. I need to get out of here anyway.”
“Why?”
“Ida's on the warpath. She found a
Playboy
magazine under Izzy's mattress.”
“Why do you insist on calling your parents by their first names?”
“So I can pretend they're not my parents. See you in five.”
Gemma hung up the phone. “I have to go out, Anna. Get your sister to ask you the last six words. You know them all so far. Good for you.”
Anna beamed. “Are you going to Augusta's?”
Gemma nodded and got up to leave.
“Why are her kids so mean to her? I'd never be mean to you.”
“Life is complicated, Anna. Sometimes people lose their way. When that happens, you have to rely on your friends.”
“And you're Augusta's friend.”
Gemma smiled and kissed her. “Bed by nine.”
It took them twenty minutes to get to Augusta's door. This time, Bette came in with her. Augusta didn't look surprised to see them, just worn out. The three friends sat in the kitchen. The girls were upstairs with music blaring.
“Tell me it's not true,” Gemma said.
“Look, I'm sorry, there's no point. I wouldn't have a good time anyway. They're right. What if something did happen? In today's world, you never know. Then who would look after them? I'm not like you, Gemma. I don't have a husband and relatives all over the place. There's Mom and that's it. I have to be careful.”
Bette and Gemma looked at each other. It was Bette who spoke first.
“You could fall down the basement steps with a load of laundry, too. It amounts to the same thing.”
Augusta hid her face with her hands. Bette jumped out of her chair and put her arm around her friend. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that.”
Augusta took her hands away. “No, you're right. That's the problem. I'm always afraid something's going to happen, to me or to them. I'm walking on eggshells all the time. It's hard.”
Gemma straightened her back. “Life is hard. Everyone has something they're terrified of, but you keep walking anyway.”
“I'm tired of walking.”
“Then you should've laid down beside Tom and died too.”
Augusta gasped.
“Gemma, don't,” Bette said.
“No. I'm sick of this, Augusta. For three years I've watched you get smaller and smaller. Do you think Tom would've wanted you to be so afraid of your own shadow that you stopped living?”
Augusta gave her a dirty look, but it didn't matter. Gemma couldn't stop now. “And I know something else. Tom was a great papa and I think he'd be horrified if he knew how these girls blackmail you. You have got to stop apologizing for the fact that you lived and he didn't. Of course they're angry about it. But it wasn't your fault, so they have no right taking it out on you.”
Augusta's shoulders slumped. “I know. I just don't know how to fight it.”
“One day at a time,” Bette said. “That's how I get through life. Otherwise I would've blown my brains out years ago.”
The three friends smiled at each other.
“You're coming with us,” Gemma said, “because if you don't go, we don't go. It's as simple as that. And you know how much Linda needs this right now.”
“All right, but how do I tell the girls?”
“Do you mind if you leave that up to me?”
“I'm such a coward.”
Gemma rose from the table. “Make some tea. I'll be down in a minute.”
She left the kitchen, walked up the stairs, and poked her nose into Summer's bedroom. Summer jumped, as if she'd had a fright. “Why are you here?”
“Get your sister, please. Then come back in here. I want to talk to you.”
“Why⦔
“Just do it.”
Summer stomped past her and did as she was asked. A minute later, two girls with mutinous faces sat on Summer's bed.
Gemma took a deep breath. “Do you girls love your mother?”
“What kind of silly question is that?” Summer asked.
“It's a simple one. Do you or don't you?”
“Of course we do.”
Raine nodded in agreement.
“Well, from where I'm standing, it sure doesn't seem like it.”
“Look, this is none of your business. You have no right to come in here and tell us what to do.”
Gemma took a step closer and pointed her finger at Summer. “I have every right. I've been your mother's friend for forty years. I love her and I care what happens to her. She used to be a happy person. She laughed all the time, full of joy and wonderment. She loved to paint and create things. I've always wanted to be like her.”
They were silent.
“But not now. Now she's a scared little woman who worries all the time. And you've made her that way.”
“That's ridiculous.”
“Is it? Were you happy for her when you heard she had the chance to go to New York with her best friends? Did you make her feel good about it?”
Summer's face grew dark. Raine's eyes filled with tears.
“For three years, she's stayed by your side. She wanted to have four days to herself. Four. How long will you keep her a prisoner here?
How long are you going to make her pay for your father's death? You two weren't the only ones who lost someone that horrible day. She lost her lover and her best friend. They were so in love they couldn't see straight. All of us wanted what she had with your father. Believe it or not, as much as you miss him, she misses him a thousand times more.”
Augusta's daughters burst into tears. It was awkward. Gemma passed them a box of Kleenex. “Now go downstairs and tell your mama to have a wonderful time in New York.”
For once, they didn't argue with her.
Bette gave up. It seemed her parents were determined to extract their pound of flesh before she left for New York. So be it.
“You need to go to Epstein's Pharmacy and renew all these prescriptions.” Her mother wheeled toward Bette with a lapful of pill bottles.
“Are you kidding? There have to be forty containers here. How old are these?”
Ida shrugged. “You want I should keel over on the floor when you're gone? You'd deny a dying woman her pills?” She clapped her hands together in prayer and shook them. “Oy, the pain, the shame of it. A daughter who pushes her mother down the stairs the first chance she gets.”
“First I deny you pills and then I push you down the stairs. You should be on Broadway, Ma. Why don't you come with me and audition for Neil Simon?”
Ida stopped with the hands and her eyes widened. “I can come with you?”
Bette opened the fridge door to take out the cream cheese for her morning bagel.
“You know when you can come to New York with me? When pigs fly.”
Izzy walked in the kitchen. “You hear that, Ida? You better grow some feathers.”
“This from a man who can't close his own fly or his big yap.”
Bette slammed the fridge door. “Will you two knock it off? Why can't you be happy for me? Is that too much to ask? I'm having a little holiday. When was the last time that happened?”
“Holiday,” her father said. “In my day, no one had a holiday. We worked, seven days a week, eighteen hours a day. You sit on your bum downstairs and hand people bread. For this, you should have a vacation?”
Bette pointed her finger at them. “I don't need a vacation from work. I need a vacation from you two.”
Ida pursed her lips. “Fine. Go. When you come back to find our carcasses on the floor, you'll be sorry.”
Her father lit a cigarette and took a big drag. “When you pick us up off the floor, remember, I want Howard Lipshitz's Funeral Home to handle the arrangements.”
Ida spun around. “Lipshitz? That idiot?”
“What's wrong with him?”
“His name says it all, you can't trust a word he says.”
“Ma, you'll be dead. It doesn't matter what he says.”
“Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd like me to be dead and have a big fat liar drag me away like an old mattress.”
Bette stabbed the cream cheese with her knife and spread it over the bagel. She sat down at the table and looked at her mother. Her mother looked back.
“I can't win, can I?”
Her mother entwined her fingers and twirled her thumbs.
“I didn't think so.”
Bette called Linda the first chance she got. “Is there any way we can extend our trip?”
“For how long?”
“Three years.”
“What did they do now?”
“Does it matter?”
“I feel for you, kid. I really do.”
“Listen to me. All I do is whine and there you are with your own problems.”
“At least my problem lives five miles away.”
“Are you sure about this, Linda? Are you really going to charge everything to his credit card? He'll find out, you know.”
“Stuart hasn't come up for air in a month and a half. The only thing he's thinking about at the moment is his dick. No, you don't have to worry on that score. I've always handled the finances. He wouldn't know a bill statement if he fell over it. And besides, he's got about ten credit cards. By the time he realizes anything's up, we've come and gone.”
Bette felt better. “Oh, I can't wait. So it's definite, then? We leave next Monday?” She heard Linda rattle papers over the phone.
“I've got everything booked right here. When we arrive at La Guardia, we'll take a taxi to the Waldorf Astoria and whisk ourselves up to our fabulous room and voila. New York City on a platter.”
“The Waldorf Astoria. I can't believe it.”
“We're going first class all the way, baby. I want to see it all and do it all.”
“Can we really do everything in four days?”
“Why not? Who's going to stop us?”
They laughed until they were giddy.
Gemma packed and repacked her suitcase. She didn't have a thing to wear; nothing but flowered tents. She grew more despondent by the day.
“What about this, Anna?” She held up a square cloth with a little opening in the top and a huge opening at the bottom.
“I like it.”
“You like everything. What do you think, Sophia?”
Sophia cracked her gum. “It looks like a flour bag.”
Gemma dropped her dress on the floor. “I knew it. What am I going to do? Linda says we're staying at the Waldorf Astoria. That sounds fancy. I'm not going to fit in.”