Modern Lovers (6 page)

H
yacinth sat forty-two people. On a good day, the restaurant was half full at lunch and then busy from six p.m. until nine thirty p.m., with stragglers hanging around the long, narrow bar until eleven, when they closed. Even ten years after opening, Jane couldn't charge what she wanted to charge—no one would pay twenty-seven dollars for skate this deep in—but she got by. There was a small desk right next to the hostess stand, and that's where Jane liked to sit when she wasn't in the kitchen, or upstairs in the office, or downstairs checking the walk-in, or walking the floor, which the servers hated. Jane had to wedge her body in between the wall and desk to keep from getting elbowed by the hostess, but she didn't mind.

She had sous-chefs now, good people whose taste buds she trusted, but there was no substitute to being in the room herself. Jane liked to sweat, and to yell, and there was no better place to do that than in a tiny restaurant kitchen. Elizabeth had found the space—they had looked for months, waiting for the right place, and Elizabeth had taken it on like her own little pet project. They didn't just look in Ditmas, though that's what they wanted, of course. There would be less foot traffic, but they both loved the idea of helping make the neighborhood a place where people wanted to
live
, not just sleep. Jane and Zoe had fallen in love eating food, talking about food, about
what they dreamed of eating down the block from their door. Zoe was old-fashioned and wanted to open a French bistro, somewhere to eat steak frites at night and soft eggs during the day. Jane wanted to do Thai, or better yet, Vietnamese. There was nothing in the neighborhood but pizza and a Chinese place with bulletproof glass in front of the cashier. There were so many holes, and they wanted to fill one.

They'd looked everywhere—in Williamsburg, in Carroll Gardens. Nothing was right. But when Elizabeth called and said she'd found the space, Jane could hear in her voice that she was right—she and Zoe walked over holding hands, giddy. Hyacinth was one of their girl names, for when Ruby had a little sister, but Ruby was already in first grade and it didn't seem like she was going to get a sister after all, so Hyacinth went up on the wooden sign and got painted in gold leaf on the door, and they were open for business.

Jane was in charge of food, and Zoe was in charge of everything else. She picked out the chairs and the water glasses, the flatware and the floral arrangements. She did the payroll and the billing. She dealt with the staff, which was the worst part of owning a small business—someone was always getting fired, or showing up late, or hitting on too many customers, or on drugs. As long as they didn't need money or sleep, life was easy. Ruby's babysitter would bring her straight to Hyacinth after school, and when they couldn't afford the babysitter anymore, Ruby would come on her own, and sit at the bar with her homework. Elizabeth and Andrew would pat her on the head, and she'd join them for some french fries. The regulars loved it—their own little Brooklyn Eloise. After dark, Zoe would take her home and put her to bed and then come back if they were really in the weeds. They had an elderly neighbor who fancied herself the mayor of Argyle Road, and both Jane and Zoe felt sure that she would never let anything bad happen to Ruby while they were out.

It was early, just after nine. They didn't open for lunch until eleven. Jane shut the window with her menus and her lists for the purveyors
and opened the Internet. She wasn't really looking for a new place to live, not yet. Once Ruby left, wherever and whenever that happened, and when Zo found a place she liked, then she'd look. If it really happened. Jane wasn't in a rush. If it were up to her, they'd stay married forever. So what if they weren't as happy as they'd ever been? They were adults, with a nearly grown child. “Happy” was a word for sorority girls and clowns, and those were two distinctly fucked-up groups of people. They were just wading through the muck like everyone else.

At twenty-four, Zoe Bennett was the sexiest thing Jane had ever seen. They met at Mary Mary's, on Fifth Avenue, a proper lesbian dive bar that was always full of service professionals, especially after midnight. Jane went two, sometimes three times a week and rarely did more than drink beer with her friends, but one night, this electric little nymph shows up at the end of the bar, pirouetting around like she owned the place, and by the end of the night, she did. Jane was working as a garde-manger at the Union Square Cafe, and Zoe was a hostess at Chanterelle. They didn't even talk that first night—Jane swore that Zoe fell onto her lap while singing along to a Bonnie Raitt song on the jukebox, but Zoe didn't remember doing any such thing. They were both lushes, ready to eat and drink until the reservoir was empty and the lights were on. Three weeks later, Jane moved in.

The bell over the door rang, and Jane looked up. Johnny, her UPS man. He wheeled in a tower of boxes—paper towels, toilet paper, all the things she never wanted to have to think about. That was Zoe's job, keeping them stocked and ready for the apocalypse. They hadn't figured that part out yet—what about Hyacinth? It would be strange for Zoe to keep doing her job, but it would be stranger for her to stop. Everything was in both of their names. They didn't need to be married for them to keep working together, of course, but what if Zoe started sleeping with Allie, the adorable hostess? They always joked about her, about how she was in love with Zo, but now, if she were
single, what if it were true? Jane could see it so clearly—peeking out of the kitchen and seeing Zoe touch Allie on the back, or tuck her hair behind her ear. Maybe Jane would fire her before Zoe got the chance—she wasn't great at her job anyway. It wasn't part of Jane's job, dealing with personnel, but she was the chef—everything was her job, really.

“Hey, hey,” Johnny said. He nodded toward the supply closet. “Want it over there?”

“Please,” Jane said. She wasn't just talking to him, she was beseeching the universe. When Johnny was gone, she locked herself in the bathroom and cried. It was the only room with a door that locked. She'd told her mother that they were considering splitting—not any friends, not the staff, no one else. Jane thought that if no one ever found out, it might not really happen, the way they didn't tell anyone that Zoe was pregnant until she was four months along, or like when Jane was sixteen and knew she was gay but didn't come out until she was twenty. If it really happened, her parents were going to be crushed—they'd always loved Zoe, her mother in particular. Maybe Jane could avoid talking to them entirely for a few months, or a year. Maybe they didn't have to speak until Ruby got married, at which point they might be eighty and hard of hearing and not fully understand. Maybe she could wait until they were dead.

Someone knocked on the door to the bathroom. “Yeah,” Jane said. She stared at herself in the mirror. She was over fifty, with moles she'd been meaning to get checked out and a lone chin hair that sprouted up again every time she plucked it. Life was a fucking disaster, but it was time to organize the lunch prep and to call the butcher, and so Jane unlocked the door.

T
he Mary Ann O'Connell Realty Group was a boutique firm, with just five agents. Elizabeth was the only one who didn't have the last name O'Connell—in addition to eighty-three-year-old Mary Ann, there were her two children, Sean and Bridget, plus Sean's wife, Deirdre. The office was on the corner of Cortelyou and East Sixteenth Street, half a block from the rumbling Q train. Elizabeth and Deirdre shared a desk, which Elizabeth had always found a bit odd, that Sean would rather share a workspace with his sister than with his wife, but the O'Connells were nothing if not odd, and so it was to be expected. Family businesses were deeply complicated organisms, and it was almost always best to stay as far away from the decision-making processes as possible. Elizabeth would happily have worked from home, as she had when Harry was young, but Mary Ann got nervous when she didn't see her crew hard at work or hear the jingle of keys as they left for a day of showings. Her office was in the back, and the door was never closed. When you came in or went out, even if it was just to get a sandwich, Mary Ann's white corona of hair would begin to vibrate slightly, like a rung bell. Deirdre liked to joke that her mother-in-law had been struck by lightning as a child and the jolt reappeared whenever she thought she was about to make money. She also liked to joke that the only reason she and Sean were allowed to get married
was that on paper she (born in Trinidad) sounded as Irish as he did. Deirdre was the only O'Connell whose company Elizabeth actually enjoyed.

It was a glorious day outside—not yet the full summer warmth, but balmy enough for people to bare their arms and legs without the fear of goose pimples. Those windows of time were so short in New York City, which was in all ways a place of extremes. They'd thought about leaving, for that reason among many others, but the steadiness of California's seventy-two-degree days didn't appeal either. It was good to have things to complain about, to build character. Elizabeth leaned back in her chair and admired what she could see of the day through the window. The three desks were arranged by seniority, which meant that Elizabeth, a company veteran of only a decade, was sitting three feet from the sidewalk outside.

Sean walked in from lunch after a morning full of showings—early summer was always their biggest season, and inventory was high. The bell tinkled, and Elizabeth heard Mary Ann start asking Sean questions before he'd passed fully through the doorway. He nodded a greeting at Elizabeth and kept walking into his mother's office. Elizabeth's cell phone rang and she answered without looking at the caller ID.

“Hello?” she said. There was a pause, then a click.

“Holding for Naomi Vandenhoovel,” a young woman on the other end said.

“Excuse me?” Elizabeth said. She put a finger in her right ear to block out a fire truck roaring down the street. “Hello?”

“Lizzzzzzzy,” another voice said. “Thank you so much for speaking with me. I so appreciate it.”

“I'm sorry, who is this?” Elizabeth swiveled her chair away from the window. The whole office dotted with sunspots. “This is Elizabeth Marx,” she said, wondering if someone had called the wrong Elizabeth, scrolling quickly through the E section of her contacts.

“Elizabeth, it's
Naomi
. Naomi
Vandenhoovel
. I've been in touch about the rights for the Lydia biopic. I work for the studio. We've e-mailed.”

“Oh, Naomi, yes,” Elizabeth said. She turned back around and opened her e-mail, frantically searching for Naomi's most recent missive. “I've been meaning to get back to you.”

“Listen, Elizabeth, I know it seems crazy, after all this time, to just sign over the rights to your work and to your story, but this is a go picture. Do you know how hard it is to get a movie made these days?” There was a whooshing sound. “Sorry, I'm in my car. Let me close the window.”

“But how did you call me from your car? Your person just had me on hold!” Elizabeth was asking a serious question, but Naomi only laughed.

“I know, right?” she said. “Anyway, we really need the song. You know we need the song. And the life rights. I know that sounds scary—like,
LIFE RIGHTS
, but it's just a fancy term for agreeing for there to be a character who may or may not have anything in common with you. Really. I can give you a few more weeks to work on your husband, but that's really it. They want to start shooting in the fall. Don't you want millions of teenage girls to go to the movies and see some badass fucking chicks playing rock 'n' roll? Like, wahhhhhhh on the whammy bar, or whatever, you know? Don't you want to be an inspiration? Forget about Lydia—just think about a girl in the middle of nowhere who thinks life is sucky and boring and then she sees this movie at the mall and she goes and buys a guitar and starts writing songs in her bedroom.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes. She hadn't been able to talk to Andrew about Lydia at all. He'd gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid the conversation—he'd booked dentist appointments, taken their otherwise neglected car in for an oil change. This imaginary girl in her bedroom, though. That might work. Her life saved by music, by the
movie, by them! It was certainly working on Elizabeth. She felt tiny tears forming, as suddenly as with a truly excellent Kleenex commercial. “I'll try.”

“I'll send over the forms again. The world needs to see this story, and to hear your song. Anecdotally, it's my favorite song of all time. I'm sure you hear that a lot, but it's true. I have the chorus tattooed on my rib cage.”

“You don't,” Elizabeth said, though it wasn't the first time she'd heard of such a thing. Once she'd seen a whole slide show of them on BuzzFeed.

“I do!” Naomi said. “I'll send you a photo.”

“You really don't have to,” Elizabeth said.

“Oh, I want to! It looks fucking great!”

Elizabeth's e-mail dinged, and she swiveled around to look. Sure enough, there was a rib cage with the words
I will be calm calm calm calm
in cursive. “Wow,” Elizabeth said. “Wait, how did you just send that, aren't you driving?”

“I was so tan this summer, it was sick,” Naomi said, ignoring the question. California was a terrifying place. “Anyway, sign the forms and get them back to me as soon as you can, okay? Thank you so, so much.”

“I will,” Elizabeth said, not meaning to agree, but just that she'd let her know. She was nothing if not polite. Harry was always teasing her for calling to cancel restaurant reservations or appointments at the Apple Store Genius Bar.
No one cares,
Mom,
he'd say, but Elizabeth believed in courtesy. She waited for Naomi to say more, but realized she was already gone.

T
he garage was unfinished—unlike some of their neighbors', who had converted the spaces into playrooms or offices, and put in plumbing and heat and wood floors, Andrew and Elizabeth had the old-fashioned kind, with rusting shovels and half-empty cans of paint. They pulled the car in only when huge snowstorms were expected—otherwise, the large center of the space was empty, with a rug from Andrew's parents' house and two creaky wooden chairs. Elizabeth's small Marshall amp was on her side, and Andrew's boxy Orange amp was on his. Andrew rolled the garage door high enough for them to walk under, and then slid it halfway back down to the ground. People walking along the sidewalk could see their legs, maybe, but only if they were really looking, and there were far more exciting things to look at. Middle-aged rock 'n' roll hobbyists were about as thrilling as old ladies gardening, and significantly more embarrassing. Andrew knew how things looked.

He had his notebook with him. He'd been writing things down, not whole lyrics but ideas for songs. Elizabeth was much better at making things sound good. She had a notebook full of lyrics, too, or at least she used to. Now her notebook was filled with this couple or that's likes and dislikes, their contingencies, the size of their bank accounts.

“Want to play that one from the other day, the bum-bum-bum-
ting
one?” Elizabeth asked. She settled into her chair and pulled her guitar onto her lap. She plugged it in and slid the strap over her shoulder. Andrew loved the way his wife looked with a pick between her teeth. It went straight to the very essence of him. Once, in high school, his history teacher had gone on an epic tangent about how Barbara Stanwyck was his “sexual profile,” and everyone got extremely creeped out, but that was how Andrew felt about women who played the guitar. It didn't matter if they were really good or really bad or just holding one. If they could really play, forget it—he was done. It was deeply sexist, and so he'd never said it out loud (that was what Oberlin had been good for, teaching him that most things men thought on a daily basis were rooted in sexism), but it was true. With Elizabeth, it wasn't just that she could play, but that she was really fucking good at it.

“What?” Elizabeth said, the pick still between her teeth.

“Nothing,” Andrew said. He grabbed his bass by the neck. “Sure, let's play that one.”

“Actually, honey, I meant to tell you—the people called about Lydia again.” Elizabeth puckered her lips. “Can we talk about it? We're supposed to let them know soon.”

A garbage truck clattered down the street, its brakes squealing every thirty feet. Andrew let go of his bass and ran his fingers back and forth through his hair. “I just don't like the idea of signing a piece of paper that hands over the control to some giant corporation. Next it'll be in a Kleenex commercial.”

“I'm pretty sure that we can stipulate exactly how they can use it,” Elizabeth said. “The movie is about Lydia, not about us. They don't care about us, honey.” She leaned the smooth back of the guitar against her sternum.

“That's exactly my problem,” Andrew said. “You didn't write those words for Lydia to sing. We didn't write that song to have teenage girls in the mall in New Jersey pretend to be punk.”

“You mean like teenage boys who grew up in Manhattan pretended to be punk?” She rolled her eyes. “Pot, kettle.”

“It was the eighties! I wasn't pretending! I was fucking angry, and the fact that my parents were Reagan-loving demons had a lot to do with that. Come on, Lizzy.” Andrew crossed his arms over his chest and took a few deep breaths. “I just don't want to contribute to some soft-focus portrait of Lydia Greenbaum as some kind of folk hero. Why should we help them?”

“Because they'll give us money?”

“Are you really that cheap?”

Elizabeth felt the words as acutely as a slap. “Excuse me? Andrew, I understand that you and I feel differently about this, but the fact that I am willing to get paid a very healthy additional fee for work I did two decades ago does not make me cheap. Harry is going to go to college, you realize. Soon. This house needs twelve new windows. Our basement is a resort for cockroaches. We could use this money—the Marx family trust doesn't have to pay for our lives, you know. I'm not being greedy.” She started to sweat. “And it's not just about Lydia, you know, or us, even. It's about being inspiring to young women, to girls who feel like maybe they could play music, too. Like that Girls Rock Camp or whatever.”

When they'd met, in Ohio, so far away from their families and from their real lives, there was no way to tell that Andrew had money and that she didn't. Everyone was exactly the same. They all wore thrift-store clothes and carried bags from the army/navy supply shop. Elizabeth had always thought her parents' house was normal—nice, even—until Andrew reluctantly brought her home for a visit during their senior year's winter term.

They drove Elizabeth's car—Andrew didn't have a license, nor did he seem to have a sense of how to get around. He kept directing Elizabeth to go one way and then cursing when he realized he'd sent them in the wrong direction. They spent an extra hour driving in circles in
New Jersey before finally finding the Lincoln Tunnel, then another hour crawling through traffic to the Upper East Side. Elizabeth drove with her shoulders hunched over the wheel, looking for a parking spot on the quiet, dark streets.

“This is where your parents live?” she'd asked, when he pointed out the building. It was on the corner of Seventy-ninth and Park Avenue, with a giant metal sculpture of a cat out front. They lugged their bags into the lobby, all marble and spotless black countertops. A doorman with a cap hurried to help them and greeted Andrew by name.

“Yeah,” he'd said, mortified. That night, when they curled up together on his childhood bed, in a room that overlooked Central Park, he'd told her how he fantasized about running away, about hopping on trains or sleeping on a bench in Tompkins Square. At Oberlin, Andrew majored in religion and was doing his senior thesis on Hindu goddesses. He wanted to move to Nepal. He wanted to sleep on the floor. He told Elizabeth over and over again how little his parents' wealth mattered to him, and when she said that she was hungry, he called a diner on Lexington Avenue and had them send over scrambled eggs.

“I'm sure your parents have eggs in the kitchen,” she'd protested, but Andrew insisted that the diner's were better. Elizabeth thought about those eggs on an annual basis, if not more often—still warm, and yes, delicious—and how they told her more than Andrew ever could about how he'd grown up. Sometimes even the brightest people had truly no idea.

“We don't have to decide today,” Elizabeth said, shaking her head. “You play, I'm going to make lunch.” She put her guitar back on its stand, clicked the amplifier off, and walked out of the garage.