Claudia Silver to the Rescue (9780547985602) (25 page)

“The man who lives here. With you.” She indicated the old green Panasonic. “Who watches that television.” She glanced around the apartment. “And smokes those cigarettes.”

“Robert,” Edith admitted.

Annie sat back in her seat. “Yes,” she said. She sipped her drink. “This is very difficult for me to say. I am speaking to you as a mother who has problems with her own children. And as a woman. Not in judgment. But I have grave concerns about Phoebe.”

“Go on.”

“Robert. He . . . my understanding is . . . he is, possibly, dangerous. He is the reason Phoebe has gone to live with Claudia—and with my own daughter. To escape this situation.”

“Dangerous?”

“He has frightened your daughter, Ms. Mendelssohn,” said Annie. “Maybe worse.”

Edith drank, slowly, then set down her glass. “Do you mean sexually?” she asked, finally.

“I . . . I don't have the details,” Annie admitted. But as Edith dropped her head and hid her face in her hands, Annie felt the stirrings of triumph. They sat in silence, Annie sipping. From somewhere, a clock ticked. “He can't live here anymore,” Annie counseled, firmly, over Edith's bent head. “You have to make him leave. Not just for your children, but for yourself. You haven't spoken to Claudia in two years. Don't you want your family back?”

“It is
she,
” Edith retorted, raising her face to reveal her eyes, red rimmed and filled, “who hasn't spoken to
me.
”

“A mother always speaks to her child,” Annie admonished quietly. “No matter what.” This is how Annie should have spoken, always. To her children, to her husband, to her own mother, and to herself, long ago, as she hesitated at the good doctor's back door in Providence, then turned and ran, all the way back to her dorm, to the pay phone in the parlor, where she had called Paul, and instead of never speaking to him again, had told him she was pregnant, with Martha. “A mother speaks to her child her whole life, and then she speaks from the grave.” This is how Annie would speak, from now on. She had misunderstood the whiskey, for clearly it was fire, not lead. “If you don't believe that, down to your bones—if you don't know
how
to believe that, Edith—”

“Then
what?
” Edith cried.

The women stared at each other across the short distance of old table, Edith's desperation hanging between them. Having just recently revived her own fallow instincts, Annie was briefly mystified by the notion of growing them from seed. But, of course, it could be done. Of course, one could revive whatever was dead within. Annie was sure of it. She had to be.

“Then,” Annie finally replied, “I have the number of every great therapist in New York City.”

 

Claudia tried to shake all possible scenarios from her mind. But it was the concocting of scenarios that kept her in motion.

At three this morning Annie's directive had seemed impossible:
Either you tell Bronwyn,
she'd said,
or I will.

But that was before Paul had destroyed their future with two words:
It's over.

Annie had threatened to tell Bronwyn the truth; Paul had asked Claudia to refrain until he'd had his shot. At three this morning, the headline was that Paul and Claudia were the new occupants of the center of the universe, and that Claudia was soon to be Bronwyn's wicked stepmother. Now, standing in the bitter shards of all that, Claudia saw the scenario with Paul shrunken down to its essence. He was
the worst thing she had ever done
. He made Ruben Hyacinth look like Nipsey Russell. The mess with Ruben had cost her a job. Paul Tate would take with him Claudia's pretend family. She would have nothing left, that was guaranteed. But she could stop being a liar. She could tell Bronwyn in her own words what she had done. She knew that the odds Bronwyn would understand were slim. She knew that the truth, in this case, would not so much set her free as cut her loose. How could she dream of Bronwyn's eventual forgiveness if she couldn't look her in the eye right now? It seemed to Claudia that telling Bronwyn the truth was her chance to salvage the present.

Bronwyn, meanwhile, had alphabetized the release forms, filed the Polaroids for the inspiration board back at
Moxy
HQ, faxed the photographer's invoice to the accounting department, confirmed next steps for the billboards, and made dinner reservations for Holly and the rest of the senior editors at Le Zinc. She was just stepping out into the cold evening when she felt a familiar presence behind her. She turned just before Claudia was able to tap her on the shoulder.

“Claude?” Both girls, mutually startled, jumped back slightly.

“Hey!” Claudia barked, well aware that she had just struck exactly the wrong tone, defensive and alarmed. Her heart was pounding, from deep in her bowels, where it had suddenly dropped.

Bronwyn shivered and pulled her cashmere watch cap more snugly around her ears. “How did you know I was
here?
” she asked. Claudia's arrival, unexpected, in the dark, at this obscure location, did not temper Bronwyn's memory of the wee hours. Red-handed Claudia, backing away into the night, with nary a reciprocal “I love you, too,” leaving Bronwyn alone in a dark hallway. That had been very strange, and so was this.

“I called your office,” Claudia explained.

Bronwyn frowned. “They shouldn't be giving out that kind of information to a random caller. Not that you're random,” she added, unconvincingly.

“Oh, I'm hella random.” Claudia offered a cockeyed smile that hung there and dissolved.

“You just missed Phoebe,” Bronwyn blurted.

Claudia's hand flew to her chest. It had been at least an hour since she'd pictured her sister. She liked the idea of Phoebe back at the apartment, listening to her
Uprising
cassette and fixing ramen noodles. “As in she was
here?
” Claudia looked up and down the sheltered run of sidewalk, strung with construction lights. “Why?”

“Claudia,” Bronwyn began. “I have to tell you something.”

Claudia's worry took on a whole new dimension. “Is Phoebe okay?”

“She's fine. Actually—she's great. She's . . . ,” Bronwyn trailed off.

Gone forever? Eyeing the ashtrays in a social services waiting room? Married to a Rasta? Moved in with Ms. Krinsky? Claudia felt the sudden urge to shake the details out of Bronwyn, and violently, but she couldn't. Not with the grenade she had in her pocket.

“Do you want to grab a drink at Fanelli's and maybe talk for a few minutes?” Bronwyn continued. “I have to meet my parents at Café des Artistes at eight. And actually, Phoebe's going to be there, too.”

“Phoebe's coming to dinner with your
parents?
”

“She's part of the celebration.”

“Me no understand.” Claudia marveled at how quickly Bronwyn had jacked her ambush.

“Hence
Fanelli's,
Claude.” Bronwyn took a step closer. Her expression was encouraging. She slipped her arm through Claudia's, as she had a million times before. The gesture's goodwill, the possibility of leaning, just for a minute or two, just slightly, against a warm somebody else, flooded the anxious cavity of Claudia's chest and threatened her resolve. “Don't be a stress case,” Bronwyn said. “Haven't you ever heard of good news? Besides. Nothing a little hangover tomato soup won't cure.”

This is,
Claudia thought as they set off, their heels clicking in time,
the last day of our acquaintance.

“How was your
Hope Valley
interview?” Bronwyn asked.

Claudia was amazed that Bronwyn could delay whatever it was she had to say until they were tucked into a cozy pub. Possibly, Claudia thought, this was the ultimate difference between WASPs and Jews. WASPs nursed their drinks. “It was okay,” Claudia replied.

“What did they say?”

“It was sort of a don't-call-us-we'll-call-you situation.” Claudia spotted the bright cursive of the Fanelli's sign, a block ahead. It was the first bar she and Bronwyn had frequented as actual adults. Bronwyn would probably get it in the divorce.

“I'm sure they're going to call,” Bronwyn encouraged. “What did you wear?”

“This.”

“Did the executive producer love that you're from Brooklyn?”

“She would've loved me more if I'd gone to Erasmus.” They paused at Fanelli's front door to let a gaggle of laughing friends pour out past them.

“I may get a brandy,” Bronwyn said.

Through the windows, Claudia could see the place was packed and cheerful, the bar three deep, squadrons of piping-hot baked stuffed squash and big raviolis in oily puddles of red sauce landing at the crammed tables. “What about
your
first day, Miss Moxy?” she asked Bronwyn.

“That's exactly what I want to tell you about,” said Bronwyn. “Come on.” She slipped her arm from Claudia's, pushed through the front door, and made her way confidently through the crowd. Bronwyn was wonderful at entrances, especially into loud, chattering watering holes. Her lanky grace, loose strands of blond hair, and persistent slimness despite the many layers, caught the admiring eye of every athletic MBA with his grip on a dark beer in the place.

Claudia drifted along in Bronwyn's wake and prayed that there wouldn't be a table. Fanelli's, she was quickly realizing, was no place to tell your best friend that you'd seen her father naked, that you'd miscalculated everything, from timing on up to intention, that yes, you'd put her out of your mind to accomplish the thing that, it turned out, didn't exist, but now her flushed, familiar face took up the entire screen, and that the only way you could do things differently was moving forward. The correct venue for that sort of thing would be a cathedral nave, or the empty private dock at the edge of a glassy lake with a gabled family manor behind, or maybe the corner of Never and Go Fuck Yourself. But here was a goddamned two-top, with its cocksucking red-checked tablecloth, right beneath the blackboard where the specials were listed with festive chalk drawings of yam fries, where all eyes would go when Bronwyn's brandy was tossed angrily in Claudia's face.

“I got Phoebe a job,” Bronwyn announced as she hung her camel-hair coat on a brass hook.

“You
did?
”

“At
Moxy.
Well—she got it herself.”

Claudia sat, still in her hat and jacket and messenger bag. “Wow. Is that what you wanted to tell me?”

“Yup.” Bronwyn slid into her seat, tucked a strand of errant flax, and looked hopeful. “Are you mad?”

“God, no.”

“Phoebe thought you would be.”

“Mad?”
Claudia marveled. “I'm
relieved.
Mama needs a new pair of utility bills.”

Bronwyn gestured at Claudia's hat. “Let's park that thing.”

Claudia shook her head. “I'm still cold,” she said. It was true. Despite the flushed milieu, she felt chilled, feverish really. Now that she was here, facing Bronwyn, meeting her maker, paying the piper, whatever it was that was happening, and she knew that Phoebe was fine, fetching coffees for the art director or whatever it was that Bronwyn had made happen, Claudia surrendered. There was no such thing as timing. Cold sweat began to pool at the small of her back.

Bronwyn sat and reached for the red plastic breadbasket. She dug for a foil-wrapped butter square. “Don't you want to ask what the job
is?
”

“I do. And I will. But Bronwyn—” Claudia leaned across the table—it was more of a lurch, really—and grabbed her hand. Bronwyn dropped the butter. “I really,
really
need to tell you something, and if I don't say it right now I swear to you I may not ever be able to get it out.” The room became a smudge. It disappeared. There was a thrum. It was Claudia's blood rushing in her ears.

“Are you pregnant with Ruben's baby?”

“
What?
No. Jesus!”

“Anything else in the world cannot be that bad,” Bronwyn declared, “so just go for it.”

“I . . . I've been sleeping with someone for the last few weeks.” Her voice had a mind of its own. Claudia removed her body from the voice. She removed the past and the future from the present. “It was a bad idea at the time, but while it was happening, it made sense. I mean . . . it made sense to
me.
” She looked down on herself speaking as though she was already floating above the bus accident in a white nightgown and freshly bathed feet with a pair of sturdy wings. “And he just dumped me.”

“Oh no!” Bronwyn sympathized. “Do I know him?”

“You do.” The chin that was hers was wobbling, the corners of her mouth yanked by invisible wire, but there was a time delay. She had gotten to the dire part, and Bronwyn was still amused.

“Oh my God,” Bronwyn said, a smile spreading across her face. “Is it one of the associates from Daddy's office you were flirting with on Christmas Eve? Is it Carter fucking
Kemp?
What an absolute
tool.
” Bronwyn raised her palm. “I hereby proclaim he no longer exists.”

“No, Bronwyn. Not exactly.”

The waiter, a portly fellow with a veneer of chipped cheer over a deep loathing, arrived at their table and pulled the pencil from behind his ear.

“Not
exactly?
What does
that
mean? C'mon. Tell me!” Bronwyn's laugh downshifted. “Wait. Are you
crying?
”

“What can I get you girls?” the waiter asked, invisibly.

“He's married,” said Claudia.

Bronwyn gave a little gasp. “Oh no!” she exclaimed. She reached across the table and grabbed Claudia's wrist, lowering her voice.
“Quel scandale.”
Then: “What's his name?”

“Paul.”

“Paul?” Bronwyn repeated, confusedly.