Bombshell (5 page)

I
stopped at Zabar's on the way home, feeling a burning need to chop, sauté and simmer. It wasn't often that I cooked, and on some level, I knew its value for me was more therapeutic than culinary. I had decided on stir fry, mostly because I understood that after the emotionally harrowing events of the afternoon, I would have to chop a gardenful of vegetables to soothe what ailed me. And chop I would, having picked up three peppers, a monstrous eggplant, a head of broccoli, a slew of mushrooms and more garlic than one should consume on Friday night if one hopes to find oneself in the company of others. But I had already decided I didn't want to socialize. Claudia had pressed me for a post-work cocktail on my way out of the office, but I didn't feel
like standing at some bar, listening to my more-bitter-by-the-hour boss rail against the injustice of Courtney's sudden rise to the right hand of the Dubrow family, especially when the place she had taken in Michael's heart still stung. And how it stung. Even more so when I saw the way Dianne embraced the happy couple, welcoming Courtney to the family in a way that filled me with a strange longing. I knew now why I never felt a part of the Dubrow “family.” Because I wasn't. And never would be.

That thought sent me straight to the liquor store after Zabar, to pick up a bottle of wine. I had felt a determination to make this evening alone just as pleasurable and relaxing as it might have been had I spent it with someone else. I even splurged on a French Bordeaux.

So it was with a bag of produce and a bottle of wine that I sailed through my front lobby. I even winked at Malakai, my ever-friendly and ever-accommodating doorman, who graciously held open the door, eyeing my purchases as I glided through. “Is my tall friend coming by?” he asked cheerfully, referring to Ethan. Malakai always referred to the men in my life by some physical characteristic. My last boyfriend, Drew, had been his “blond friend.” Even Michael, despite the fact that his visits were few and far between, had earned the moniker of Malakai's “blue-eyed friend.”

This was the problem with doormen. You couldn't hide your love life—or lack thereof—from them. Though we only had one and he only worked five to midnight, Malakai's shift covered that crucial period of the evening when everything did—or didn't—happen in a woman's life.

“No, no one's coming by,” I said, with a bracing smile as I transferred my bags to one arm and headed for the line of mailboxes at the other end of the lobby, trying to escape
Malakai's inevitable teasing comment about how he would never let me spend an evening alone if he were twenty years younger.

I knew he meant well, in the way that aging uncle of yours meant well when he sang you the Miss America song when you were six. But I just wasn't in the mood.

Once at the mailboxes, I slid my key in, then grabbed out the handful of catalogs, bills and credit card offers that were my daily due, when a letter caught my eye, the return address as familiar to me by now as my own.

K. Morova. Brooklyn, NY.

I knew that handwriting, though I did not know the writer herself. Had traced my finger often enough over the signature that had come back on the return receipt for the letter I had sent Kristina Morova, all those months ago.

My mother, at least in biological fact.

The woman whom I had believed, up until this moment, had no interest in meeting me.

I ignored the pulse of pure fear that constricted my throat and quickly slid the letter between the pages of a Pottery Barn catalog, as if to protect myself from its contents, then headed for the bank of elevators that flanked the lobby.

“Finally getting that nice cool weather,” came a voice, startling me out of whatever scattered thoughts I was having. I looked up to see Mrs. Brandemeyer, who lived a floor below me and had been a tenant of 122 W. 86th Street since the sixties. Her long-term residency, combined with her elderly status, seemed to give her certain inalienable rights. Like laundry room usage (you always forfeited the remaining dryer to Mrs. Brandemeyer, who was “too old to be riding up and down, up and down”) or the proprietary air she took when it came to Malakai.
She had treated me rather suspiciously when I had first moved in six years earlier. “I don't like loud music,” she proclaimed just moments after she had learned I was not only single but living in the apartment above hers. Once she discovered that I wasn't going to be having raucous parties every weekend, she immediately bestowed upon me neighborly chatter about such subjects as the weather, the number of menus she received underneath her door on any given day or the condition of the carpeting in the hallways.

I was never one for small talk, and this evening it seemed especially burdensome, when I had something large looming between the pages of the shopping catalog I held. So I just nodded and smiled while she speculated about the sudden drop in temperatures.

“It's going to be a cold, cold winter,” she said with satisfaction as she stepped off, leaving me to ride that last story alone.

 

I felt a momentary surprise when I stepped into my apartment and discovered it was exactly the same as I had left it that morning, except for the fading evening light that was now slanting through the gauzy ivory curtains. Outside the city glittered, and I took solace in the fact that regardless of whatever Kristina Morova had decided to write in her letter to me, New York City would still be just outside my window, waiting for me like an old friend.

Maybe it was that letter and its unknown contents that sent me into the next flurry of activity: putting the produce in the kitchen, hanging up my coat, straightening the stack of magazines that I had yet to review, wiping down the kitchen counters. Then curiosity must have won over the fear throb
bing through me, and I found myself slipping out of my shoes, curling up on the couch and taking that letter in hand with the sense of fatalism that had been subtly stalking me ever since I had sent my own letter seven months ago.

I carefully broke the seal on the envelope, pulled out a single sheet of ivory stationery decorated with flowers at the top. My first thought was that it reminded me of the stationery my grandmother used. The second was that there was only one page of loopy scrawl. I briefly wondered at that, then settled in to read.

I read the letter three times before the contents sank in. Before the cruel truth beneath that shaky cursive and stilted grammar broke through.

She was gone. Kristina Morova was gone.

I felt a momentary relief that at least there was a reason for all the silence of the past months. Followed by a disappointment so keen, tears rushed to my eyes.

Gone.
Gone.

Still, no tears fell. Maybe because for me, she had never really been there. Could I really mourn someone I did not technically know?

I stood up from the couch with some idea that I should do something. But uncertain what that thing was, I walked woodenly to the kitchen, stared at the bags of produce I'd left there and, as if on autopilot, pulled out the cutting board. Grabbing a head of garlic from the bag, I peeled away the crisp outer shell on one of the cloves and began to chop, with some idea that this meal must be prepared, come hell or high water. Not that I was hungry, but I needed some sense of purpose, even if it was simply to keep this newly purchased bag of produce from rotting, neglected, in the bottom drawer of my fridge.

It wasn't until I got to my eighth clove of garlic—about four cloves more than I actually needed—that I came out of my dense fog. And this only because I had somehow managed, in all my stoical chopping, to take a sliver off my index finger.

“Fuck!”

And then, because I felt a rush of tears that was most definitely more than this little cut could possibly provoke, I stopped, took a deep breath, and after dousing the wound with cold water, wrapped my finger in a napkin and grabbed the phone.

“Angie, it's Grace,” I said into my best friend's machine. When she picked up the extension, I felt a noticeable relief wash over me.

“What's up?” she said urgently, as if she sensed some underlying emotion in the three words I'd uttered on her machine. More likely she was just surprised to hear from me. It wasn't like me to call her on a Friday night to chat.

Then, as casually as I might convey a car accident I had witnessed from the safety of the curb, I told her everything.

“Good God, Grace, are you okay?” she sputtered. Then, “Never mind. Don't answer that. I'm coming over.”

 

I didn't have the energy to argue. Or, maybe for once I didn't want to. Because whatever feelings I thought I should or shouldn't be having about Kristina Morova's death, I did at least sense that something momentous had occurred. Something that couldn't be glossed over in my usual fashion.

And so I let Angie march into my apartment that night, even felt emotion clog my throat when she hugged me fiercely. It was this, more than anything else, that convinced me I should allow her to console me, to sit on the couch and regale me with advice because I somehow couldn't bring myself to talk about it. And when she was done with that, to feed me.

“How can you tell if the chicken is done?” she called from the kitchen. She had insisted on finishing the meal— I think the way I sat mutely on the couch during her consolatory speech convinced her that she needed to do
something
for me. So I had curled up on the couch with the glass of wine she poured me, only to remember that when it came to matters of the kitchen, Angie was one who should have stayed in the living room with the glass of wine.

I felt a smile trace its way across my mouth as I uncurled
myself from the couch and meandered into the kitchen. A smile I quickly lost the moment I saw the havoc Angie's latest culinary attempt had wreaked: mutilated vegetable carcasses littered the counter while strips of what looked like chicken fat swam in an olive oil spill near the stove. The meal itself looked like a disaster in the making. The vegetables were cooking just fine—in fact, they were probably over-cooking. But the chicken was still in huge, cutlet-size hunks.

Apparently, Angie had never made stir fry before.

“Mmmm…I'm not sure it's going to cook that way,” I said, stepping in and taking over. Once I began pulling the chicken out of the pan and cutting it into smaller strips, I felt better. All of Angie's coddling had only made me feel helpless, and that wasn't a feeling I liked to cultivate.

Now Angie stood by helplessly but also visibly relieved that I had taken over, though she kept apologizing.

“Maybe we should order in,” she muttered, eyeballing the still-pink flesh of the chicken as I began to toss the strips into the pan. Angie had a fear of death by microbacteria.

“Don't worry, I'll make it edible,” I said, slicing up the last cutlet and stirring it into the mix.

 

By the time we sat down to eat, I was feeling like myself again. In control. Satisfied. And no longer in the mood to dwell on things that might have been. I hadn't really lost anything. I was still the same Grace Noonan I was the day before. There was no funeral to attend, no condolences to accept. I wasn't, technically, the grieving family. So technically, there was nothing to grieve, right?

I had also come to a decision, despite Angie's prodding that I meet this newfound aunt and sister. Although I was more curious about them than I let on, I decided I didn't want to
know them. Didn't want to care for the family who had only contacted me out of a sense of obligation.

“That was delicious, Grace,” Angie said, leaning back in her chair, having eaten so heartily of the stir fry once she had been assured the chicken wouldn't kill her, she looked ready for a cab ride downtown and a pillow. That was fine with me. I was more than ready to be alone.

Unfortunately, Angie had other ideas. “So, I brought over a toothbrush and a change of underwear….” she began.

“Oh, Angie, you don't need to stay,” I immediately protested. But feeling bad at the hurt look in her eyes, I relented.

She beamed. “Great. I'll run out and get us some Double Chocolate Häagen-Dazs. This is gonna be fun, Gracie. Just like old times when we used to do sleepovers back in Brooklyn….”

 

It was more like old times than even I expected, especially when Angie forewent the sofa bed, insisting instead on sharing my bed.

So there we were, lying side by side in the dark, just like when we were in junior high. We had indulged ourselves on ice cream while Angie talked excitedly about the location Justin had found to shoot the opening scene in his film. We eventually moved on to other topics we shared in common, like men.

Angie listened quietly while I expressed my relief over having Ethan out of my life. “I don't think he would have handled this whole business with Kristina Morova very well….” I said, unexpectedly bringing up the subject I had studiously avoided all evening.

I felt Angie's eyes on me in the dark. As if she sensed the
unease I was feeling. Without saying a word, she took my hand in hers. And despite this independent front I was trying to put on, I was painfully glad I wasn't alone right then. Even so, it wasn't until I heard Angie's breath fall in the deep, rhythmic pattern of sleep that I allowed myself to weep.