The Fixer Upper (29 page)

On his fifth attempt she picked up. “Hello?” She sounded leery. She must have guessed who’d be calling her at this hour.

His anger rose again, swelling like an approaching storm cloud. That image reminded him of the time he and Libby
had walked home from Hudson in the rain, sharing his umbrella. She’d already had him by then. One brush of her shoulder, one shared smile and he’d wanted her.

And now she was there when she ought to be here, in his bed, with him. He prayed for the cloud to keep its distance, because if it started flinging daggers of lightning, he wasn’t going to accomplish much with this call. “Libby.” He swallowed to smooth out his voice. “Come back.”

“I don’t think so.” She sounded a little uneven, a little uncertain.

“Libby, I don’t understand why you left.”

“Well, you shut yourself up in the bathroom and didn’t come out. I assumed you were throwing a tantrum.”

“A tantrum?” Thunder rolled off the cloud. He took a deep breath and clung to what little control he had. “I was upset, so I went somewhere to cool off. That was no reason for you to disappear on me.”

“It was one reason. There were others.”

Patience
, he ordered himself, even as he felt the first splatters of rain on his soul. “What other reasons?”

“Do I have to spell it out? You want your son to get into the Hudson School. Lots of parents want their children to get into the Hudson School, and they ply me with goodies. They try to bribe me to admit their kids. They send me gifts.” She paused, then said, “You renovated my fireplace.”

“You think I renovated your fireplace so you’d get Eric into Hudson?” A cold gale blew the cloud back, hinting at a different kind of storm. Now Ned wasn’t just angry that she’d walked out on him. He was furious at what she was implying.

“It’s not just the fireplace.” She paused again, then continued. “You went and patched things up for me with Harry, and…and other things.”

Other things
. Like making love to her. Apparently, as the
song said, she
was
sorry now. Rage buffeted him with hurricane-force winds. This was one ugly, destructive storm.

“Libby,” he said, forcing his voice out around the knot of bitterness clogging his throat. “Where I come from, if someone you care about has a problem and you’re in a position to fix it, you fix it. Your fireplace had a problem, and I could fix it, so I did. You had a problem with your ex, and I knew I could fix it, so I did. This is what people do for the people they—” He couldn’t say
love
, not now, not when he was drowning in a deluge of fury. “Care about,” he murmured. “My son has a problem with public school, and you’re in a position to fix it.”

“I’m sure that’s what all the parents who send me gifts and flattering notes think, too. They’re in a position to send me chocolates, so they do. And I’m in a position to get their kids into Hudson, so in exchange for the chocolates that’s what I should do.”

“You think this whole thing was quid pro quo? You think…what? I seduced you to get my kid into Hudson?”

“Right now, that’s how it feels.”

Ned didn’t know enough curse words to cover how it felt to
him
, but he mouthed a few of them. They didn’t bring catharsis, though. They only made him feel as if he should suck on a bar of soap.

“So now what?” he said into the phone, once he was sure the words emerging from him wouldn’t leave blisters on Libby’s ear. “Are you going to tell your department that Eric Donovan shouldn’t be admitted to the Hudson School because his father tried to bribe you by rehabbing your fireplace and giving you multiple orgasms?”

There was a really long pause this time. Maybe he’d blistered her ear after all. Finally, she spoke. “I told you, Ned, I’m going to recuse myself from Eric’s application. That
means I won’t ease him in and I won’t ease him out. The rest of the committee will decide.”

“Fine,” he growled. “Let the committee decide. You want to break my kid’s heart, go right ahead.” Break my heart, too, he almost added, but the storm was inundating him. He shivered in it. Deafening thunderclaps echoed inside his skull. He couldn’t talk anymore.

He hit the off button on the handset and put the phone on the stand. Then he staggered down the hall. He stopped at Eric’s bedroom, opened the door and saw the lumpy, motionless silhouette at the center of the loft bed. A whispery snore filled the room and he closed the door.

Oh, God.
He was the world’s worst father. Not because of anything he’d done but because he couldn’t fulfill Eric’s wish. Eric wasn’t like most kids. He didn’t pester Ned for expensive toys, video games, overpriced sneakers. He didn’t march through life acting as if the world owed him something, even though it did. Eric had lost his mother and yet he refused to use that tragedy as an excuse. He simply accepted it and got on with things.

All he’d ever asked of Ned was the right to be happy—and a place at the Hudson School.

Ned had done his best to deliver on the first item, but the second—not only was it beyond him, but he might have ruined the kid’s chances forever. He couldn’t believe Libby was so vindictive she’d punish Eric for the sins of his father, whatever they were. But who the hell knew?

That stupid song drifted through his head:
Who’s sorry now?
Easy question. Lousy answer. Ned returned to his bedroom, pulled a rolled-up pair of socks from a bureau drawer and slammed them into the wall.

H
ey, Riva, whassup? The Web site is working its magic, thank your little buddy Eric for me. So this dude who says he knows your father got in touch with me, he’s in the music business and he wants to book me into some small clubs and see what happens. When I got his e-mail, hey, maybe you heard me screaming all the way from Brooklyn. And then we met and made arrangements. Once I have the dates I’ll be performing, I’ll send you the info and you can get Eric to put them on the Web site. I am so incredibly grateful, Riva. Your dad turned out to be not such a bad dude after all, hey?

Reva reread Darryl J’s e-mail and scowled. Three weeks had passed since he’d recorded his sound clip, and finally, he was bothering to communicate with her, and he couldn’t even spell her name right. The turd.

All right, so he’d misspelled her name. She bet Eric
would be even more pissed off to know Darryl J had called him her “little buddy.” Still, that her father had somehow put Darryl J in touch with someone who could book Darryl J into clubs was pretty awesome. Weird, but she was learning not to analyze things too much.

She thought about responding to Darryl J’s e-mail, then decided he could wait. Instead, she instant-messengered Eric. She hadn’t seen him in nearly as long as she hadn’t seen Darryl J. And the strangest thing—which she also wasn’t going to analyze—was that she kind of missed him more than she missed Darryl J.

At least they e-mailed each other. Something had gone rotten between their parents, and they were in the dark what it was. Reva had knocked herself out trying to analyze that, and she’d drawn a blank. So had Eric. Things had seemed so great between her mother and Mr. Donovan, and now all she had to show for it was a mother in a perpetual state of misery and a green marble fireplace.

Webman,
she typed—that was Eric’s nickname, because he thought he was some kind of genius at creating Web sites—
heard from Darryl J and he’s gonna be famous, thanks to us.

A few seconds later, Eric wrote back:
Riviera
—that was her nickname; it sounded a little like Reva—
good for Darryl J. We should charge him for Web hosting. We’ll get rich.

Reva laughed, then typed:
You can charge him. I’ll get rich singing my own songs.

Eric responded:
You’re doing your solo tonight, right?

Yup.

Nervus?

Reva considered her answer before typing:
Not really
.

I got this idea
, he wrote.

Reva stared at the screen and waited for more words to
appear. He kept her in suspense for a while before writing:
Promise you won’t think I’m nuts?

Never, Webman
.

Again he made her wait. Ten seconds was a really long time when you were IM-ing.
I was thinking my dad and I could come to your concert
.

Reva couldn’t help analyzing this idea. On the one hand, if her mother saw Mr. Donovan again, maybe she’d realize that whatever had broken them up wasn’t so important, and they’d get back together, which would make everybody happy, including Reva and Eric. On the other hand, if Reva wasn’t nervous now, having Mr. Donovan in the audience might make her nervous. Eric she didn’t care about. Of course her mother would be there, and her father and Bony, and Bony would be yakking to everybody about how she’d picked out Reva’s outfit, they’d found it in this little boutique on Mercer where only people who were seriously cool shopped, and didn’t it flatter Reva and slenderize her? But Mr. Donovan…If he was there, her mother might become a wreck, and if she did, Reva would, too.

But on the first hand, if her mother and Mr. Donovan saw each other and realized they should get back together, no one would become a wreck, and Reva would sing like an angel.

You think I’m nuts
, Eric wrote.

No. I think you’re smart. Could be risky, though.

He probably won’t want to go, anyway
.

Probably not
. For some reason, that thought saddened Reva. She liked Mr. Donovan. He’d been there the day she’d won the solo. He’d drunk a ginger-ale toast to her. He’d helped her buy Darryl J’s domain name. If things weren’t so screwed up between him and her mother, she’d want him at the concert.

It was just an idea
, Eric wrote.

You’re sweet
, Reva wrote back. She hoped he wouldn’t
take that the wrong way.
Gotta go drink lemon juice and warm up my vocal cords
. Ms. Froiken said lemon juice cleaned out the throat and singers should sip some before a concert.

Good luck. You’re gonna sing beautifly
, Eric assured her.

Reva’s eyes suddenly filled and her throat felt so thick with tears she might need a gallon of lemon juice to clean it out. She wished badly that Eric and his dad could come to the concert. She wished things were right with her mother. Knowing everything was screwed up would spoil the evening, her great moment in the spotlight, her long-awaited solo. Even if she sang her heart out, she couldn’t fix whatever was wrong, because she didn’t have a clue what was wrong.

Catch you later
, she typed, then shut off the computer. She sat in the silent den, struggling to collect herself. From the kitchen came the sounds of her mother putting together dinner. Reva had to be at Hudson by six-thirty, so her mom had gotten home early, even though she was right in the middle of admissions madness, and had brought with her two chicken Caesar salads from Bloom’s. Reva couldn’t possibly eat anything heavier than a salad tonight.

She shuffled into the kitchen in her socks, trying not to glance at the magnificent marble fireplace on her way. Her mother gave her a smile so big and beaming Reva assumed it was fake. “Getting nervous?” she asked.

“Why does everyone think I’m supposed to be nervous?” Reva snapped, then bit her lip and prayed for her mother not to ask who “everyone” was. Reva didn’t want to tell her she was IM-ing with Eric. She covered with a convenient lie. “Kim asked me three times today if I was nervous. She’s got to play the piano through the whole thing. If anyone should be nervous, it’s her.”

Her mother nodded and pried the plastic lids off the con
tainers of take-out salad. “Maybe
she’s
nervous, so she’s projecting onto you.”

“Yeah. I guess.” Reva wasn’t sure what her mother meant by that, but she let it go. “Are
you
nervous?”

Her mother shaped another supersize smile. “Why should I be nervous?”

“Well, maybe you were projecting onto me or something.” Reva picked at her salad. The romaine was crisp despite the oily dressing. Bloom’s takeout was always good. Too bad she didn’t have an appetite. She forced herself to eat anyway, so she wouldn’t faint from hunger in the middle of the concert. “So, are you doing the acceptances?”

“At Hudson, you mean?” Her mother carried two glasses of ice water to the table and dropped onto the other chair. The table was so small their plates practically touched. “Yes, it’s acceptance time. Also rejection time.”

Reva wondered if Eric was going to be accepted or rejected. The day she’d met him wasn’t only the day she’d gotten the
Tommy
solo, it was the day he’d had his interview. They’d talked about Hudson a few times since then. He thought it was like Emerald City or Walt Disney World or something, this big, happy place where everyone was smart and no one ever acted mean. Of course, it wasn’t like that at all. But it was better than most of the city’s public schools, and Eric would probably love the place. He’d take over the computer lab and turn it into his own private playground.

Whatever reason her mother was pissed off at Eric’s father, Reva hoped her mother wouldn’t take it out on Eric by denying him admission to the school. The decisions were made by a committee, but her mother was the head of the committee. Did that give her veto power? Reva wasn’t sure how the process worked.

She struggled for a discreet way to ask her about Eric’s
status. “Are you doing the kindergarten applications or the older kids’ applications?”

“We always start with the older kids’ applications,” her mother said.

She appeared fatigued to Reva, with gray shadows circling her eyes and her hair frizzier than usual. Her mouth looked tense and tight, even as she opened it to stick a forkful of chicken and greens in. She chewed slowly, as if her jaw hurt.

For the past couple of weeks, Reva had been annoyed with her mother for being such a crab and spreading bad cheer throughout the apartment. But today, when she should be thinking only of herself and her imminent glory at the concert, she suffered a pang of sympathy for her. The woman hadn’t been sleeping. She was working too hard. Whatever had gone wrong in her life might be her own fault, but pain was pain and Reva’s mother was deep in it.

“I hope things get better,” Reva said, then shoveled in enough of her salad to sustain her through the concert, and stood. She swung open the refrigerator, located the little plastic lemon-shaped bottle on a shelf in the door and squirted some juice into her mouth. Her tongue curled reflexively and she grimaced as the bitter liquid slid down her throat. “Ms. Froiken said that’s good for the voice,” she explained. “I’m going to go get dressed. I’ll eat the rest of this after the concert.”

Before her mother could stop her, she hurried out of the kitchen, trying to fend off another wave of tears. She hated being so sad, tonight of all nights. Even more, she hated that her mother was so sad. Life would be simpler if she could ignore her mom’s sadness, but she just wasn’t selfish enough. So she carried her sorrow along with her own.

Thank God she at least had a really neat outfit to wear tonight. If she’d had to wear the same old outfit she’d worn to last spring’s concert…Now,
that
would be sad.

“You want to go to the concert tonight?”

Fork in midair, spaghetti slowly unwinding from the tines, Ned gaped at Eric. “At the Hudson School? How did you even know the concert was tonight?”

“It’s on their Web site,” Eric told him. Marinara sauce stained his mouth like lipstick. “And Reva’s doing her solo. Remember Reva?”

Did he remember Reva? Jesus. It took all his willpower not to fling his plate of pasta against a wall and howl. Of course he remembered Reva. He remembered her big, dark eyes, so like her mother’s, and her sassy smile and her stick-straight hair—and the way she’d waltzed down West End Avenue in the rain, singing her solo at the top of her lungs. He remembered Reva’s vanishing into the bowels of Greenwich Village and making Libby insane with worry. He remembered her shouting at everybody to shut up so her musician friend could record a song for his Web site.

He remembered sitting with her in the waiting area outside Libby’s office the afternoon Libby interviewed Eric, when she was so excited she couldn’t sit still.

“We drank a toast to her,” Eric reminded him. “On account of her getting the solo. The concert is tonight. I think we should go.”

Ned stared at his son as if he were a recent arrival from a distant planet. Same blond hair, same flinty eyes and stubborn jaw—although the jaw seemed just a little thicker lately, and the eyebrows a little darker. Eric had grown in the past few weeks, too. His head reached Ned’s shoulder now.

And he wanted to go to a fucking concert at the Hudson School.

Ned lowered his fork to his plate and focused on twirling spaghetti onto it. “Look,” he said, figuring that after three
weeks without a word from Libby, without even a hint that she was aware of how she’d misjudged him, let alone been sorry for it, he had to come clean to Eric. “You shouldn’t get attached in any way to the Hudson School. The odds of your getting in there aren’t good.”

“I don’t want to go there to be a student,” Eric argued. “I want to go there to hear Reva sing her solo.”

“Yes, but you’ve got your heart set on attending there next year. And it’s not going to happen.”

Eric’s eyes narrowed. “Did you hear from them? They rejected me?”

Ned shook his head. “We won’t hear officially until the beginning of January.”

“But you know something?”

“No.” All he knew was what his gut told him: that he’d fallen in love with Libby and she’d viewed his love the way she viewed the bath sponges some other applicant’s parent had sent her. All he knew was that he’d assumed she would extend a hand to his son and he’d assumed wrong. All he knew was that a woman who would walk out on him the way Libby had wasn’t someone he could count on. “I’m just saying the odds aren’t good.”

“Well, yeah.” Eric relaxed in his chair and devoured another forkful of spaghetti. “I’d still like to hear Reva sing her solo. Wouldn’t you?”

As a matter of fact, Ned would. He leaned back in his chair and slugged down some iced tea, wishing it were beer. “The truth is, Reva’s mother and I aren’t on good terms.”

“Duh.”

“Okay, so that’s not exactly a news flash. I just—I’m afraid seeing her at the concert would make us both uncomfortable.”

“Well, I sure wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable,” Eric said with the sarcastic swagger of a full-fledged adolescent.

Ned squinted at his son. He hadn’t started growing a mustache. He hadn’t sprouted pit hair. When had he acquired the attitude?

“I thought you liked her,” Eric added in a gentler tone.

“I did.”

“So what happened? She decided we’re not rich enough or something?”

“No, of course not. Do you think I’d like someone who had those values?”

“So, what happened?” Eric ate another baseball-size coil of spaghetti. This conversation might have stolen Ned’s appetite, but it hadn’t had any impact on Eric’s.

“That’s none of your business,” Ned said, cringing at how prissy he sounded.

“I guess that means you did something really bad to her, huh.” The sarcastic attitude had returned.

“I didn’t do a damn thing to her,” Ned retorted. He shouldn’t have to defend himself to his son. He shouldn’t have to defend himself to anyone.