The Fixer Upper (13 page)

He apparently wasn’t going to tell her
well what
. All he did was lower his hands from the sides of her head, leaving her cheeks chilled and her jaw suddenly aware of the absence of his thumbs. He caught one of her hands in his, interlaced their fingers and ushered her out of the alcove and onto the sidewalk, steering them near the buildings to avoid getting trampled by the high-speed traffic of their fellow pedestrians.

She’d already established that the last time she’d been kissed so magnificently had been never, so she tried to recall the last time she’d held hands with a man. When she was eight, she recalled holding her father’s hand while they crossed a busy intersection together. She’d held hands with boys as a teenager. But with a man? Harry wasn’t a hand holder.

Ned was both a hand holder and a kisser.

And this, she acknowledged as they turned off Broadway in the direction of her apartment, was a date.

“L
ook,” Vivienne said. “Someone’s going to snatch up all those available men if you don’t come to synagogue with me today.”

Libby yawned, then filled a second mug of coffee without bothering to ask Vivienne if she wanted any. Dressed in dove-gray slacks and an orange tunic as bright as a traffic cone, her hair and makeup meticulously done, she appeared brisk and chipper, clearly not in need of caffeine. But Libby had never known her sister-in-law to turn down a cup of coffee.

Libby herself was desperately in need of caffeine. She’d hardly slept last night, and she felt foolish about her restlessness. A grown woman shouldn’t be plagued by insomnia just because a gorgeous man had kissed her.

Okay, so Ned Donovan was more than a gorgeous man. He was a gorgeous, unattached, age-appropriate man. In New
York City, most gorgeous men in their thirties were either married, gay or chasing after babes barely out of high school. Libby hadn’t met the synagogue fellows Vivienne seemed so determined to introduce her to, but she’d bet that if they were unattached, they were either not age-appropriate or not gorgeous.

Vivienne accepted the steaming mug from Libby with a grateful nod. Before she could ask for artificial sweetener, Libby pulled a few packets of Splenda from the cabinet and tossed them onto the table. Then she slumped into a chair and tried to stifle yet another yawn.

“I really shouldn’t stay,” Vivienne said as she emptied the sweetener into her cup. “I’d hate to miss the service.” She took a sip, then gazed around the kitchen. “You didn’t happen to get to Bloom’s this week, did you?”

“I bought bagels, if that’s what you’re asking. If you want one, they’re in the fridge,” Libby said, gesturing toward the refrigerator. “Help yourself.”

“That’s all right. I’ll eat at the kiddush. You shouldn’t refrigerate bagels, Libby. It makes them dense.” She took another delicate sip of her coffee, managing not to smear her coral-hued lipstick. “You sure you don’t want to come to shul with me? One of the men, Harvey Golub, is in the fur business. You could do worse, Libby. Just think, he could have you in a nice little mink by New Year’s Eve. Maybe you could get a discount on something for me, too. A fun fur, nothing fancy. Leonard is never going to buy me a fur.”

“How do you know that?” Libby asked.

“He said, ‘I’m never going to buy you a fur.’”

“I guess that’s an indication.”

“He’s afraid someone’ll throw fake blood on it. He said, ‘I should spend all that money so someone can throw fake blood on you?’”

“He has a point.”

“Yeah, right between his ears.” Vivienne planted her mug on the table, shoved herself out of her chair and crossed to the refrigerator. “I’m thinking, just one bagel. I’ll skip the schmear. I need to lose a few pounds.”

Vivienne didn’t need to lose any weight, but Libby lacked the energy to argue with her. “I’ve got low-fat cream cheese,” she said.

“Low-fat? Well, okay, maybe just a little.” She pulled the bag of bagels and a tub of cream cheese from the refrigerator, then helped herself to a plate and a knife. “So, you’re not interested in meeting some nice Jewish men? What, you want to live the rest of your life like a nun?”

“Are those my only choices?” Libby asked. “Nice Jewish men or marriage to Christ?”

“What other choices do you want?”

Libby closed her eyes and her mind filled with an image of Ned. Tall, dimpled Ned with strong, callused hands and a mouth a more gifted woman could write poetry about. Libby had never been particularly poetic. At best, she could probably scrape together a haiku about him:
This man has a tongue/He knows how to use it/Ned Donovan is hot.

“Libby Kimmelman,” Vivienne clucked. “You’re blushing.”

Libby’s eyes jerked open. “I am not!”

Vivienne slammed her plate down on the table and dropped into the empty chair. “Tell me
everything,”
she demanded in a firm voice.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“She went out with a guy last night,” Reva announced from the kitchen doorway. “Hi, Aunt Vivienne.”

“Sleeping Beauty! Have I ever seen you up this early on a Saturday morning?” Vivienne asked, rising to give Reva
a hug. Libby prayed for Vivienne to ask Reva about school, her friends, her solo in
Tommy
—anything to keep the discussion from focusing on what Libby had done last night.

The reprieve didn’t last, however. Vivienne returned to her chair and glowered at Libby. “You went out with a guy? What guy?”

“We didn’t go out,” Libby said. “I mean, technically we did, in the sense that we left the apartment and went outside. He’s going to fix the fireplace.”

“What’s wrong with the fireplace?”

Eager for something to distract Vivienne from this interrogation, Libby watched with hope as Reva entered the kitchen. She had on faded jeans that were tight on top and flared at the bottom, and a skimpy knit top that revealed a sliver of belly. Her hair was brushed to a high gloss. “Are you going someplace today, Reva?” she asked.

“I
told
you. I’m meeting some people at the park.” Reva slid a bagel from the bag and bit into it without bothering to slice it or add cream cheese.

Ned Donovan might be hot, but he hadn’t emptied her brainpan last night. “You never told me you were going to the park today.”

“I did. You probably just weren’t paying attention. We’re meeting at the Imagine mosaic.”

Libby didn’t comment on Reva’s accusation. Of course she’d been paying attention. She always paid attention to her daughter. If Reva had mentioned this Central Park outing, Libby would have remembered.

But she didn’t see much value in arguing about it. If Reva
had
discussed the outing with her, she would have given her consent. “Will Kim be there?”

Reva shrugged. “She can’t come. Her sister’s playing in some stupid recital. I’m just, like, gonna hang with some other kids.”

“What other kids?” Ashleigh with the black nail polish? Libby wondered.

Reva’s shrug this time was accompanied by a look of transparent annoyance. “Some Hudson kids.”

Libby considered pressing her, but saw only flaring tempers and a contest of wills at the end of that route. Hudson kids were generally good kids, she reminded herself—and Reva was a good kid. And the day was sunny and Reva knew Central Park. “What time are you meeting these Hudson kids?”

“Around noon. So Aunt Vivienne—” Reva turned the tables on Libby “—Mom went out with this guy and she made me babysit for his kid.”

“You went out with a
father?”
Vivienne seemed to find this shocking, for some reason.

“His son is ten years old,” Libby said. “And when we came back home,” she added, slanting a glare in Reva’s direction, “this poor, put-upon babysitter was busy playing computer games with him.”

“He’s pretty good at Space Colony. That’s kind of like the Sims, only in outer space,” Reva explained.

“I like the Sims,” Vivienne remarked. “Maybe I’d like Space Colony, too.”

“Yeah, it’s a good game. I just watched him play awhile—until Mom and his dad got back.”

“So, who is this man?” Vivienne directed her question to a space midway between Libby at the table and Reva, who had hoisted herself up to sit on the counter. Obviously, Vivienne assumed that if Libby didn’t answer, Reva would.

“He’s a fireplace guy,” Reva obediently told her. “His kid applied to Hudson.”

“What’s his name?”

Reva was chewing. Libby had to field this question. “Ned Donovan.”

“Ned Donovan?” Vivienne’s voice rose to a coloratura pitch. “Irish?”

“I think he’s American,” Libby said dryly.

“Still,
Donovan
…that’s not a Jewish name.”

“No,” Libby said. “He’s not Jewish. He’s from Vermont,” she added, hoping that would forestall further questions.

“Vermont? They don’t have Jews in Vermont, do they.”

“In the big cities, maybe,” Libby said.

“What big cities do they have in Vermont?”

Libby sent Reva an imploring gaze. Reva was clearly not inclined to help her mother. She only grinned before taking another hearty bite of her bagel.

“Burlington,” Libby finally said, because Vivienne’s frown was intensifying by the second. Were there any other cities in Vermont? Did Burlington even qualify as a city? Did Libby care?

“What does he look like?” Vivienne pressed. “Does he look Irish?”

“What does Irish look like?” Libby retorted. “Give me a break, Viv. He came over to check out the fireplace. Then we took a walk.” She edited out the part about their having a drink in a bar, because Vivienne would probably consider that tawdry, and she edited out the part about the kiss, because that would freak out everybody, including her. “And then we came home, and he picked up his son and left.”

“You took a walk? What kind of date is that?” Vivienne glanced at Reva. “He sounds cheap. Harvey Golub, you’re talking mink coats. And this guy’s idea of a date is to take a walk?”

“It wasn’t a date,” Libby said with finality. She might not be able to convince herself of that, but surely Vivienne should be easy enough to fool. The woman was eating Libby’s bagels, after all. The least she could do was believe Libby. “Reva, did you tell Aunt Vivienne about your solo?”

Reva leaped off the counter, suddenly too excited to sit. She talked about the solo. She sang it. She described the auditions, did a hilarious impersonation of Muriel Froiken, sang her solo again, analyzed whether she should try to add a British accent to her pronunciation “because
Tommy
is set in England” and went on at such length that Ned Donovan, the cheap Vermont Irishman, was forgotten. By the time Reva wound down, Vivienne had to leave to get to synagogue if she hoped to catch any of the service.

Good work,
Libby silently praised her daughter. Dating might not be so difficult if she could count on Reva to distract Vivienne. Not that Libby wanted to keep Ned a secret from them—not that she was dating him, anyway—but until she knew what the hell was going on in her life, she saw no reason to let anyone else meddle in it.

Reva really wished Kim had been able to join her, but she had that stupid recital to go to. “My sister’s playing Schoenberg,” she’d told Reva. “So, like, even if she plays everything perfectly it’ll sound awful. But I’ve got to go, my parents said. Besides, you don’t want me tagging along if you’re going to be with Luke Rodelle.”

“I don’t think it’s a date,” Reva had explained. “He didn’t ask me like it was a date.”

“But he asked you for a Saturday. That means it’s a date.”

Reva doubted that. But even if it
was
a date, she would want Kim along for moral support. She had never gone on a genuine date before, but she’d heard around school that bringing your best friend along on a date was perfectly acceptable.

If only Kim’s sister didn’t have to play Schoenberg. Reva wasn’t sure who Schoenberg was, but if Kim said his stuff sounded awful, it probably did.

Luke had said he’d meet her at the Imagine mosaic at one,
but Reva had told her mother noon so she’d have an excuse to leave early. She’d been too restless in the apartment, pacing her room until she stubbed her toe on her night table, then schmoozing with Aunt Vivienne, then wandering into the living room and trying to picture the fireplace green. “A dark green, with lots of veins,” her mother had described it last night. Dark green with lots of veins sounded disgusting, like a monster in a cheesy horror flick. “If you’d like to see the marble, get the flashlight from the kitchen and crawl into the fireplace. You’ll find a couple of spots where Ned scraped off the paint.”

One thing Reva wasn’t going to do was crawl into the fireplace. Even though she couldn’t remember a fire ever blazing there, the whole idea of wedging herself into a place where stuff was supposed to burn grossed her out.

In order to avoid a fight with her mother, she wore her fleece jacket even though it was too warm, and she took the cell phone with her. The ten-dollar bill she’d earned doing nothing last night was stuffed into her purse, along with her sunglasses, lip gloss and a tube of mascara, which she’d apply to her lashes once she got far enough away from the house.

She had time to kill, so she headed to 72nd Street and window-shopped. Too many of the stores had been there forever, like even Grandma might have shopped there when she was Reva’s age. Broadway had much cooler stores, but Broadway wasn’t going to lead Reva to the park.

While she walked, she plotted in her mind how she ought to act with Luke. Friendly but not too friendly. Like she understood this wasn’t a date, unless of course he took it in a major date direction, in which case she’d just go with the flow. Up to a point, of course. This was the first time she and Luke were actually together, and she wasn’t going to do any of that stuff that Larissa LeMoyne and the other
divas were rumored to do. Monica Ditmer had told Reva that the divas did it to guys with their mouths, which struck Reva as remarkably disgusting, plus maybe it could affect your voice. Like, imagine if you were about to sing your
Tommy
solo, but your voice wouldn’t come out right because your throat was all clogged with boy gunk.
Gross
.

Reva didn’t even know why she was thinking about it. This was not a date.

The showcase window of a shoe store that specialized in really ugly footwear—fat, rounded toes, thick brown leather, flat heels, the kinds of shoes her mother would probably love—was trimmed in shiny chrome, and Reva used the chrome as a mirror to put on her mascara. Just a light touch to darken the tips of her lashes. She didn’t want to come across as Goth or anything. It wasn’t like she was trying to impress Luke with her eyelashes, anyway. She just happened to look better with a little mascara on. And her lip gloss. She wore a shade that was the same color as her lips, only more so.

And if he wanted to fall in love with her, well, she wasn’t going to stop him. Even though Reva didn’t hang out with the dating kids, and she didn’t go down on boys and she was actually kind of a total dork in some respects, Luke might just like her. Stranger things had been known to happen.