Claire Voyant (27 page)

“Oh my God…not the one on 188th?”

“Yeah. You know the place?”

“I'm not sure. Is it a Greek restaurant with flies…what was the name of it?”

“House of Athens,” Grams said.

“Yeah. That was it. Oh my God. I can't believe it, I just happened to walk in there the afternoon I got out of the hospital the first time. I ordered lunch, and the owner comes up to me and says something about the food being only so-so, but the predictions, they're the best.”

“That's him!
Oy
. I hope this don't mean he's getting famous, 'cause he always said as soon as he got famous, he'd have to start to charging.”

“This is unbelievable. I remember now. He asked me if I believed in love at first sight, because he said he could tell that I was in love but didn't want to admit it.”

“Well, whadaya know!”

“Amazing…. I was falling in love with Drew. I just couldn't admit it…. Poor man, I basically told him to go back to making his moussaka because he didn't know what the hell he was talking about.”

“Uch. Too bad you can't go back there now. See what else he sees.
God forbid, maybe a baby already. 'Cause I don't have to tell you you're not getting any younger.”

“Oh yeah. There's definitely a baby in the future…it's just not mine.”

 

A half hour later, Grams took off again to meet up with friends. This from someone who used to complain that her back went out more than she did. Now her social calendar was busier than mine.

I looked at the clock again. Six-fifteen, and no word from Drew. I stopped my world for him. The least he could do is call. Yes, I'd told him I wanted to stay here for the night. But still. For a guy who'd just had his hands all over my naked body, and then shared some mighty huge secrets, you'd think he could at least pick up the phone to say hi.

This was why I hated the start of relationships. I never knew where I stood. What was expected. If initiating something was thoughtful or pushing it. And if he didn't call me, what did it mean? Was he legitimately busy or legitimately avoiding me?

And it's not as if I didn't understand the line of work that Drew and his family were in. They owned nightclubs, for God's sake. And not just any clubs. The hottest clubs in all of south Florida. Maybe the entire goddamn Western Hemisphere.

So it wasn't like when Drew said he had work to do in the office, I expected him to be hanging out at the water cooler taking bets on who'd be the next survivor to be voted off the island. Of course his job description included schmoozing, drinking, and flirting. Anything to keep the party going and the shot girls flush with twenties in their hot pants.

And it's not like, when he finally answered his cell, I expected to hear the sound of clicking keyboards coming from the secretarial pool. Good thing, because I wasn't the least bit thrown when it sounded like a large, raucous party. “Hi. How are you?”

“Great,” he yelled over the din. “You?”

I'm sorry. Was this the same man who only hours earlier was mourning the loss of his grandfather? Who professed his prurient
desire to be with me, rather than his ex-fiancée who might very well be the mother of his first child?

“I'm fine,” I replied. “I just wanted to see how you were holding up.”

“What?”

“I was thinking about you.” I spoke in my crowded-bar voice.

“I can't hear you, Carly, honey. Call me back tonight.”

CARLY? Who was Carly?

“Nicole,” he hollered. “Check it out. Dooley's hot for you. Look at him. He's licking your leg.”

“I gotta go.” I ended the call.

As if that snippet of conversation weren't enough of a mood crapper, I realized that it was six-thirty on a Saturday night and I was sitting by myself in an assisted living center. But not to worry. This could still be my lucky night. Maybe I'd find a hot game of bingo going on, and beat the pants of the old folks who could neither see nor hear. How hard could it be to win enough money to cover the cost of a cab to Miami International?

An alluring thought, if not for one small matter. I didn't want to leave town yet. Certainly not before my meeting with Abe's attorney on Monday, which offered the potential for better winnings than a decent night of bingo. But mostly not before getting to tell Drew thanks, but no thanks. I thought he was great, but I didn't have the stomach to get involved with a guy who got in trouble if he
didn't
drink on the job. To say nothing of a guy who was about to become a father to a baby with whom he might not have a biological link. I'd already seen that movie. “Taxi!”

But rather than chickening out, I toughed it out. If you could call getting a pedicure on a Saturday night toughing it out.

After I had hung up on or with Drew, depending on how you saw it, I invited my one and only friend in town, Viktor, to have dinner. In an act of cunning, I suggested the Greek coffee shop where he'd once come to get me. But you know as well as I, it had nothing to do with the grape leaves. More like the tea leaves. I was desperate to find out from the owner if there was any hope for my future.

Unfortunately for me, Viktor was enjoying his rare night off with
friends. And not that I begrudged the man a life. I was just a teensy bit hurt that he intimated that his dealings with me were strictly job-related. Apparently I'd confused the friendly bond we'd forged with his being nice in exchange for a paycheck.

He did, however, remember to tell me that Delia and her mother were worried about me, and that I should call to let them know I was fine. Which is how I ended up soaking my feet in hot bubbles on a Saturday night. Seems that they, too, were alone with nothing to do.

“I know this great Korean nail salon that stays open late every night,” Delia said. “Want to go get pedicures?”

“A pedicure?” I cheered like a three-year-old who just got invited to the circus.

“You don't have to have an orgasm over it. It's not that exciting.”

“It is to me,” I said. “I haven't done something that normal in ages. I just can't believe you and your mom want to do this. It's Saturday night.”

“Down here every night is Saturday night. Well, actually, Monday and Tuesday night are more like Thursday night. Wednesday night is the new Friday night. Thursday and Friday are what Saturday night used to be, and Sunday night is still Sunday night. Chinese food and HBO.”

“Thanks for the lonely-girls update,” I laughed.

“Yeah, but you're not gonna be lonely for long.”

“Not true. At the rate I'm going, my Saturday night steady is going to be a Korean guy who knows how to exfoliate.”

“I don't get it. I told Drew you were into him. I thought, you know, he'd—”

“Don't get me wrong, Delia. He's really sweet, but we've both got a lot of stuff to deal with right now, and he's a busy guy.”

“No he's not. I'll talk to him again.”

“No, don't.” I spit out.

“Okay. But, um…there's something I need to tell you. You just got this huge flower delivery.”

“I did? From who?”

“I don't know.”

“Oh bullshit, Delia. You know everything. Are they from Drew?”

Delia didn't answer.

“C'mon, don't play games. Just tell me who they're from. I'll bet they're from my dad, 'cause we had this really nice conversation before, and—”

“Okay, look. They're not from your Dad. Or Drew, either. They're…um…from Aunt Penny. Well, she's my Aunt Penny. I don't know what she is to you.”

I got a chill. “She's nothing to me…absolutely nothing…. Is there a card?”

“You know what? I'll just bring it when I pick you up.”

“No. Read it to me now.”

“You sure?”

“Delia, read me the fucking card.”

“Okay. Well, it's not very long or anything. It says,
Claire, call me tomorrow. Penny Nichol
.”

“Oh wow. That is so touching. Short, but with that nice Hallmark sentiment. Don't you think?”

“Whatever. She's—”

“‘Call me tomorrow,'” I repeated. “Oh my God. Tomorrow is Mother's Day! How presumptuous can you get? Like hell I'd ever call her, let alone on—”

“They're really nice flowers, Claire. It's one huge mother of a bouquet,” she laughed.

“I wouldn't care if she sent me a float from the Rose Bowl parade. I'm not calling her.”

“I wouldn't do that. Aunt Penny gets pretty pissy when you don't do what she wants.”

“Well, that's nothing compared to how pissy I get when someone abandons me!”

“She's trying to be nice. Maybe just call her to say hi.”

“Nope. Sorry. She hung up on me already. Only one insult per customer.”

S
ERIOUSLY, WHO DOES THAT?
W
HO HAS A BABY, DITCHES THE KID, THEN
thirty years later sends flowers and a card that says call me? What did the fabulous Penny Nichol think? That she was in some sappy film by Nora Ephron that had your predictable let's-kiss-and-make-up scene, followed by a happy ending? Roll credits?

As I waited for Delia and Shari to pick me up, and wrote Grams a note telling her where I was going, I had a chilling thought. Abe had become a great humanitarian, in spite of witnessing untold atrocities and the insidious underbelly of evil. Yet his biggest disappointment may have been that he had spawned a daughter who had beauty and talent, but a defective heart. Who came from a loving home that cherished family, but who in a slap-of-the-face act chose a life that shunned motherhood and commitment.

In fact, who could have guessed that of all the heroic acts that Abraham Fabrikant performed in his eighty-four years, his greatest act of compassion would be deciding to let me grow up in a normal environment? How wise and fortuitous he was to understand that if he forced his daughter to raise her daughter, I would be subjected to emotional abuses that could scar me for life.

Oh yeah. I would definitely be calling my mother to wish her a happy Mother's Day.

No, not that one.

 

When I awoke the next morning in Cousin Drew's bed (yes, he was back to being Cousin Drew), I tried to remember what I did last Mother's Day.
Oy.
How could I have forgotten? I'd spent it with Sydney and her mother. And Sydney's stepmother. And her ex-stepmother, too. In fact, it was practically raining mothers at Pedal's, the trendy Santa Monica bistro, where we'd been invited to brunch with Sydney's father.

How very chic, I'd thought at the time. And so very California to have a civil assemblage of women all connected to one man, feasting on cold, poached salmon and green apple martinis. The fact that two of the women had recently had their antidepressants upped, and the third had just been released from the hospital after a little bout with attempted suicide, did in no way diminish the cordial chatter about the one issue on which we were all united: the urgent need for cow cloning so as to guarantee an endless supply of the all important botulinum toxin that made frown lines disappear.

But this Mother's Day would surely go down as the mother of them all. Too bad Hallmark didn't sell one card for the woman who forgot you existed, and another for the woman who woke up one day, got word that she was being called up for active duty, and had to report to Camp Motherhood at once.

Or maybe they could set up a special hotline offering advice on solving sticky mother problems. Like the one the folks at Butterball ran on Thanksgiving for those last-minute questions on preparing the holiday turkey.

I would e-mail my suggestions later. Meanwhile, I would try to fall back asleep, as I'd spent most of the night tossing and turning over what to do about my own sticky Mother's Day problem.

“Knock, knock.” I heard Shari's voice on the other side of the door.

“Hi.” I sat up. “C'mon in.”

“Did I wake you?” She stuck her head in.

“No, I've been up…. Happy Mother's Day.”

“Thank you, Claire. I came up to…I'm not sure how to tell you this…”

“What?”

“Penny is on the phone for you.”

“What the…Why?”

“I don't know. She called earlier, and I said I wouldn't disturb you. But she just called again, and I said, ‘All right, let me go up and see if she's awake.'”

“I can't believe her. She disappears for thirty years, and now it's like she's stalking me.”

“She's not stalking you.” Shari laughed. “She just seems anxious to, you know…talk.”

“I'm sorry. I don't mean to put you in the middle of all this, but there is nothing to talk about.”

“I know you're hurt and upset, but please don't be like this. It's Mother's Day.”

“Exactly. All the more reason to tell her to leave me the hell alone.”

“Maybe you could just pick up for a minute and listen to what she has to say.”

“No way! And if this offends you, then I'll be more than happy to pack my things and go.”

“No. No. Of course not. You're a grown woman. I respect your decision to handle this however you think best. It's just that…I've never heard Penny like this. She actually seems nervous.”

“Good. She should be.”

“It's so rare for her to show her vulnerable side. That's why I thought you might—”

“Wait, wait, wait. You just said you respected whatever decision I made.”

“I do. Absolutely. It's just that it's…you know…”

“Mother's Day. Which is why I plan to call my mother, and my grandmother, and my friend Sydney's mother. I'll call your mother. I'll call everyone I've ever met who is a mother. I'm just not speaking to the woman who had the nerve to call at…what time is it?”

“Nine-thirty.”

“Nine-thirty on a Sunday morning so she can try to smooth over a little misunderstanding we had when I was born. ‘I'm sorry. Was I suppose to raise you? Silly me. I completely forgot.'”

“Actually, she happened to mention something about a possible film role.”

Damn!
“I don't care. If she wants to bribe someone, let her call a congressman.”

“Oh c'mon, Claire. I thought you were a bigger person than this. You do realize it's only six-thirty her time. And, my God, she must have been up at the crack of dawn when she called the first time.”

“You don't understand. The very idea of hearing her voice makes me want to—”

“I swear, you are just like her!”

“I'm sorry?”

“I'm saying, you are most definitely her daughter. You're as obstinate and pigheaded as she is…you can't tell her a goddamn thing.”

So, fine. Maybe I had inherited Penny's stubborn streak. All the more reason she should have understood that when I said I didn't want to speak to her, I meant it. And nothing would change my mind. Not her
ferkakte
flowers, not the other calls she made that day, not the e-mails she sent (thanks for giving her my screen name, Delia), not the insistence of the entire Fabrikant family.

In fact, the greater the pressure they applied, the angrier I got. No one had any right to ask, let alone push me into doing something that felt so inextricably, undeniably, I'd-rather-eat-bugs-on-
Fear-Factor
wrong.

I was not trying to punish Penny, as Shari remarked (well, maybe a little), I was not trying to humiliate her (Ben's two cents), not trying to hurt her feelings (Drew), not even trying to guilt her into being nice so she ended up buying me a house, a car, and taking me to Paris for a shopping spree (do you even need to ask who said that?).

And with apologies to Dr. Phil, I saw no need to work on my “kamuni-cation” skills. I was simply exercising my rights as a wronged person. Whatever lay ahead for me wouldn't involve her, so why open the door?

My father was right, I told him when I called home. I had a mother. I did not need another who was clueless, insincere, and beyond fashionably late to the party. Although, to my surprise, even
The Lenny and Roberta Show
urged me to at least ‘listen to what the woman has to say.'

As did Sydney: “Get over it. You were fucked. Let the bitch make it up to you.” Viktor: “She is not so bed, really. Maybe you tell her she hez to find job for you in the movies, end then yule talk. Em I right?” Even Grams: “Whadaya got to lose? And tell her to make it up to you, she has to come over here and sign autographs at our big dinner dance next week. That son-of-a-bitch Vic Damone dropped out. I never cared much for him anyway.”

Still, I turned my back on Penny, just as she had turned hers on me. Didn't care that it would deprive Grams of being a hero for delivering a big celebrity to the dance. Didn't care that I was offending my gracious hosts. Didn't care that I was spurning a woman who could call any of the biggest Hollywood producers and demand that they send me scripts. I chose, instead, to be “Penniless.”

For here is what no one but me seemed to get. No matter how grown up I appeared, I had officially reverted back to the emotional equivalent of a five-year-old who spent the whole day stomping and screaming, “It's not fair. It's NOT fair!”

It's not fair that there was no justice in life. That Penny hadn't suffered for her crime of abandonment. Instead, she was at the top of her game, earning millions every year, being glorified by the media, and living lavishly in a dream mansion. Surely anyone who left her tiny baby in a crib with a diaper bag and a note was not deserving of such riches.

And it wasn't even that she'd been young and stupid when she made her dreadful mistake. It's that she had grown up and laughed in the face of destiny without apparent remorse or regret. Otherwise she would have made herself known to my family. Not disguised herself in name and appearance, then built a fairy-tale existence to pretend that she was born without a past.

It just wasn't fair.

 

Midway through a lovely Mother's Day dinner at By the C, I leaned over to Cousin Drew and asked a huge favor. Could I please borrow
his car, as there was someplace important I wanted to go after we dropped off Grams? He said yes, but followed with an immediate offer to have either he or Viktor take me wherever I wanted to go. How to tell him that that wouldn't help me?

For one thing, I didn't want Drew to know I was headed to a Greek coffee shop in order to consult with the psychic owner. For another thing, I would be too ashamed to ask Viktor to take me to the very place I'd offered to take him to dinner. Then he'd know my invitation was premeditated.

“Have you ever driven a Porsche before?” Drew asked.

“Many times.”
Once
.

“All right, then. But under one condition. Tell me why you've been acting so cool to me.”

“I am not acting cool,” I whispered. “I just think we should both try to get our lives in order before we jump into a new relationship.”

“You mean because of Marly,” he said.

“I mean because of Marly, and what's going on with Penny and I, and because I'd like to fully recover from my injuries, and decide where I want to live, and—”

“I've rethought things, too. And I don't care what happens with Marly, or Aunt Penny, or your injuries, or your career. I want us to be together.”

“Well, that sounds really swell. But it seems to me as if your life is all set here. You've got a big business to run, an endless supply of girls who dig you—”

“Whoa. Slow down. What girls? For the past two years, I was mostly with Marly.”

“Look, Drew. I think you're amazing. And whenever I'm with you, I feel safe, I feel happy. It's just when I'm not with you, the doubt creeps in. I wonder what you're doing, who you're with…who the hell Carly Honey is—”

“Carly Honey…. Do you mean Carly Deveraux?”

“I don't know. Who's that?”

“My cousin on the other side. My mom's brother's daughter. They
just moved to Atlanta, and she calls me almost every day to bitch about how much she hates it.”

“Oh. Guess I blew that one…. I called you last night and you thought I was her. I just figured—”

“That was you? I'm sorry. I should have looked at the caller ID. I just assumed you were with your grandmother and you needed some time alone…. And that is one hell of a jealous streak you've got…a little scary, actually. This is a crazy business, Claire. But for me, it's only business. I'm not into the whole bar scene anymore. In fact, I hate it. It's one of the reasons I want to get out and do my own thing. The girls are all like Delia. Out-of-their-minds crazy, and after a while it's so degrading. All they want from you is drugs and sex.”

“Actually, it's no different in L.A. Did you know it stands for lotsa ass?”

“Hey, that's what Miami needs. A catchy slogan like that.”

“No, wait. You haven't heard my favorite. It was one of those local public service announcements about sexual harassment in the work-place. The tag line was the best. ‘Ladies, don't forget. Harass is not two words.'”

Drew laughed, then kissed me for all the world to see. Or at least his family and employees. But how embarrassing when they all cheered, and Ben scribbled something on a napkin. It said,
9.5
.

“You can do better than that, son. Your dismount was a little shaky.”

Was it just my imagination, or was everyone genuinely happy for us? The answer came in the form of a tune. I could swear I heard Delia hum, “Ding dong, the witch is dead.”

“I'm sorry I jumped to conclusions,” I whispered. “I've never thought of myself as the jealous type. But when you want something so badly, you panic just thinking that something will mess it all up.”

“So that whole business before about needing time to get your life together—that was a crock?”

I nodded.

“Good, because if I can't have you, then I'm down to only one other first cousin, and she's definitely not my type.”

“Oh. Not blond?”

“Not straight.”

 

When it was time to leave, Drew offered to come along on my errand, but I begged to go alone. I knew how to get there, promised it wouldn't take long, and that I would tell him about it when I got back. Except that, as with everything else in my life, my little excursion didn't go according to plan.

After driving around for ten minutes, the only parking spot I could find was three long blocks from the House of Athens. The streets were dark and deserted, and by the time I finally arrived, an out-of-breath mess, the
CLOSED
sign was hanging over the door. And yet there was a light on in the back.