Claudia Silver to the Rescue (9780547985602) (28 page)

“Daddy!” Martha cried, bursting into tears as she headed for the bar.

“Let's go, Feebs,” Claudia said to Phoebe.

“
Excuse
me?” Phoebe crossed one very long leg over the other, tethering herself to her stool. She looked at Bronwyn's mother and a fully formed picture came to her mind. Annie Tate, by her side, at Image Model Management. Having signed her working papers. Ramona Parker had promised her:
It didn't hurt to ask.

“Claudia,” Paul said quietly, “you should
go.
” He was relieved to have his family there, and frightened of them. He wanted to embrace them, to beg them, but not to see their facial expressions. He was unspeakably glad to have finally been found out, after teetering for years on an invisible mountain at the end of the line built from stray bobby pins, restaurant matchbooks from remote neighborhoods, and invented business meetings. Bold and brave, tethered by faith, but with his back turned, he would rappel from that mountain and hit bottom in a verdant valley called forgiveness. The worst was a girl called Claudia Silver. The worst was over.

Claudia braced herself for Paul's inevitable shooing gesture. She wanted it to be that everything between them had happened long ago, to other people. The girl who had pictured the beach wedding with the rowboat full of beers was her enemy now. She was dead, but her cheeks still burned.

“Susan Curry-Baum
died,
” Martha announced plaintively, picking up one of her father's large hands in both of her own as she glanced between her parents, fairly oblivious to Phoebe's presence. Paul had no earthly idea who Susan Curry-Baum
was,
but he was desperately grateful for his oldest daughter's touch. Annie opened her eyes to find Agnes pointed at her, unnervingly, and took a step into the intimate dining room to escape her middle daughter's ungodly stare.

“We're going,” Claudia said to Phoebe. “Put your jacket on.”

Phoebe hooked her ankle around a leg of the stool. “It's on,” she replied, defiant.

“Then button it.”

“You don't need to leave,” Martha said, seeing Phoebe for the first time. “This is Bronwyn's dinner, after all.”

“Where
is
she?” Agnes asked, suspicious.

Annie glanced at Claudia, then back to Paul. “Running late, I imagine,” she said, darkly.

“You're a
liar,
” Phoebe declared loudly, accusing Claudia as her eyes filled. The Tate women were now staring at Claudia, as Paul looked away. “You lied to
me.
”

“Yup,” Claudia concurred. “Let's take it outside.”

“What the hell is going
on?
” Agnes demanded, dialed in to the room's palpable frequency.

Claudia knew she was supposed to vanish, taking her charge with her, but her rage was moving faster than her big feet possibly could. It was the sight of the Tates, knitting together before her eyes. Why did some families knot, and others unravel?

“Claudia,” Annie explained matter-of-factly to her frozen daughters, “is Daddy's girlfriend.”

Phoebe's eyes widened as Bronwyn Tate now appeared, unsteadily, on the threshold, borne on an insurmountable wave of shock, confusion, betrayal, disgust, sorrow, humiliation, and judgment. Her eyes were red rimmed. Her pale lips, devoid of the signature red lipstick, disappeared into her wan face. The sight of her father at the bar with Claudia nearby caused Bronwyn's shoulders to sag, as though her camel-hair coat had become unbearably heavy. Somehow, her father's handsomeness made it all worse.

Claudia gripped Phoebe's upper arm. “
Now
let's go,” she said to her sister, bringing the stunned girl to her feet as she yanked. With the physical strength that she rarely flaunted, Phoebe yanked back.

“Does anybody have a cigarette?” Bronwyn asked, as Phoebe bolted past her. Claudia paused, torn. She wanted to catch her sister, quickly, and manage the younger girl's resistance with her thirty-pound advantage, and she also wanted the last word with Bronwyn.

“Please,” Claudia said to Bronwyn, quietly, pausing at her side on the way out. Bronwyn, after all, was now Phoebe's colleague. Phoebe and Bronwyn would work together, seeing each other more often than Claudia would see either of them. Stonily, Bronwyn stared straight ahead. “Look after my sister,” said Claudia. Then: “Thank you.”

Phoebe hadn't made it far along Sixty-Seventh Street before Claudia grabbed her elbow and spun her around. The sisters stared at each other. The knobs of Phoebe's wrists jutted from her sleeves as she folded her arms tightly. A faint drift of sparse flakes had appeared in the damp air.

“Is that
true?
” Phoebe demanded. “Are you, like,
sleeping
with that old preppy guy?”

“No . . . ,” Claudia faltered. Then: “Not anymore.”

“Since when?”

“Recently.”

“What the fuck is
wrong
with you?” Phoebe cried. Her body jolted with exasperation.

Claudia sighed. “I'll explain at home. Let's go, okay?”

“Home?
” Phoebe scoffed. “No. I'm not going with you.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning you are not my mother.”

“Come on, Feebs.”

“No! I'm serious. You are not my mother. You are not the boss of me.”

“I don't want to be your mother,” Claudia muttered. “Believe me.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Jesus Christ!” Claudia cried.

Then, silence.

They stood on the sidewalk. Nobody walked past or stared, or came in or out. The snow suspended gently between the sisters, mingling with their breath before vanishing on the ground. “That's so fucked up,” Phoebe said finally, her red eyes refusing to spill. “That's so . . .
Mom.
”

“Yeah, well. I get to be fucked up, too, okay?” said Claudia. “It isn't just for breakfast anymore.”

“What does
that
mean?”

“It's a commercial for orange juice,” Claudia explained.

Phoebe pressed her hands to her face. “Sorry,” she said, from behind them.

“You have no reason to be.”

“Not
me,
” Phoebe said. “
You.
You
are,
and you
should
be.”

Claudia hesitated. She wanted to tell Phoebe that if she was capable of turning a phrase like that, then she really had no business getting a D-plus on a
Huckleberry Finn
paper. “I am,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Okay.” Phoebe sighed. “I'll see you around.”

Claudia grimaced. “See me
around?
The fuck is
that?
” She grabbed for her sister. “We're not
dating,
Feebs—”

It was then that Phoebe, with an actual growl, flung herself at Claudia's shoulders, pushing her. Claudia stumbled back. The fierce, final look on Phoebe's face, coupled with the unexpected gesture and animal noise, startled Claudia out of giving chase. As Claudia watched Phoebe lope away toward Lincoln Center, she let herself hallucinate, vividly. Phoebe's pivot, her sprint back. But with every passing second, Phoebe was swallowed further by the city.

 

“Claudia Silver is your
girlfriend?
” Agnes repeated. She couldn't help but smirk—the idea was that bonkers. At the same time, given that over the years she'd abandoned a graduate degree, psychoanalysis, Big Sisters of New York, and a massive floor loom that had forced her mother's baby grand piano into storage for months and left marks in the carpet while producing not so much as a doily, it was a relief to consider that her father might be a bigger disappointment than herself.

The consommé had cooled at the table, and only Agnes had taken a seat. She held a skinny breadstick in her fingers like a cigarette, taking occasional nibbles and tipping the imaginary ash as the cracker shrunk. Martha had fled to the bathroom.

“No,” said Paul, from his spot at the bar. “She's not.” His voice was firm but his face was in motion, flushed and wobbling. He ducked his chin to his chest and reached for his youngest daughter: Bronwyn had steadied herself against the next bar stool. Bronwyn watched her father's hand approaching. It was fascinating to briefly consider his hand on the body of her ex-best friend, then gag on the image.

Annie had caught the bartender's eye moments before he'd had the good sense to disappear, warning the wait staff to hold off on delivering menus for the time being. She'd just downed a vodka, neat, and now she was standing. That's all she knew.

“If Mommy hadn't caught you, how long would you have kept on with Claudia?” Bronwyn asked, snatching her hand away.

“Bronwyn . . .” Paul's voice held an unmistakable, weary plea. “Mommy didn't catch me.” He lifted his eyes and searched, vainly, for his wife's. “I . . . wanted it to stop. I . . .” His voice broke, and a strange, lone sob flew from his chest. He remembered the drive to the beach in the old, vaguely rusted Town & Country station wagon, listening to the radio and singing along with Bronwyn, or trying to (
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
), then the walk over the dunes, the bent, slatted fences sloped low among the sharp grass, Bronwyn high on his shoulders, his hands gripping her ankles, the heels of her red sandals bouncing against him. He dropped his head in his hands.

Martha returned from the bathroom, blowing her nose in a wad of toilet paper, to find her sisters staring at their broken father. Determined, she crossed to Paul and placed her hands on his shaking shoulders. Paul reached for his oldest daughter, but did not look up.

Finally, Paul spoke. “I have a problem,” he said.

Bronwyn considered her mother's vacant face. She was tempted to rail at Annie—
How could you?
or alternatively,
Why couldn't you?—
even though Annie's particular fault in the hideous matter of Claudia Silver was hard to define. But in regard to Paul, Bronwyn wanted something violent and ineffable. She could not tolerate his vulnerability; she'd need to grow herself bigger. She wanted to give his malfeasance a run for its money. Something that neither of her sisters had ever tried before. Something far beyond a hand in a cookie jar, a married boyfriend, a touch of anorexia, or an Edgartown holding cell.

What was so totally
maddening
about Paul's obscenity was that it was
impossible
to best.

“Someday, when I get married,” Bronwyn said, “I'm going to have—” Here, Bronwyn paused. “I'm going to have
Agnes
walk me down the aisle,” she decided. “I'm not even going to
invite
you.” At the moment it was the worst thing she could think of. Agnes, smoking the last of her breadstick, wasn't sure whether to be flattered or offended.

“Okay,” Paul said, quietly.

Annie, more regal and serene than ever, glanced at her husband with the same look she'd worn as she handed Claudia Silver a spare blanket, just last night.
Factual,
was the best way Paul could explain it to himself. She was looking at him
factually,
from what seemed like a great and unfamiliar distance, as though he were over here, and she were far away, over there. His wife had begun a new thought process, a relentless, audible connecting of the dots, like the manic clicking of knitting needles. Paul was grateful, in a way, to know what he was in for.

He would endure a season of punishment before they could get on with it.

“We're going to the funeral,” Annie declared, with a new, steely tone. “It's the right thing to do.”

“Funeral?” Paul repeated, dazed. “Who died?”

Martha sighed, gently. “I told you, Daddy. Susan Curry-Baum.”

“Married Michael's wife,” Agnes explained.

“What did you call him?” Martha demanded.

Annie made eye contact with the bartender and raised her index finger. There would not be an overnight departure for a new life under her maiden name. Instead, they would make a handsome entrance, with their good coats and their square posture, except for Agnes. They would occupy a pew. They would ride out the storm in the sturdy ritual.

The Tates
needed
Susan Curry-Baum's funeral.

They were mourners now, too.

 

Claudia Silver hesitated on the sidewalk in front of Caffe Reggio. She'd removed her notebook from her messenger bag and now hugged it to her chest, contemplating the rivulets of condensation trailing along the plate-glass window. Comparing them to tears would be a little much.

And yet.

Home is a place
—she was sure she'd botched the quote, coined by some patrician white guy of American letters or other—
that when you go there, they have to take you in.
The truth was she had no such conviction, and never had. Not about Edith's, which had once been her
house.
Not about her apartment with Bronwyn, which had been her
place
—and especially not now.

So she had
pretended
herself several homes. The Tates had been one, and college before that. And this particular café, where not that long ago Claudia would rent a few square feet of sticky West Village real estate by the hour, for the price of a painstakingly nursed Americano and a slice of Italian cheesecake.

She'd once sat here, nightly, glue stick in hand, free-associating into her fat journal, bound in black, making a collage of the bits and pieces that she'd gathered on her travels through life. Not sure where all of the scribblings and pastings would take her, but understanding them as sketches, preparations for something. Maybe for her eventual life as a member of the creative professional class.

Claudia exhaled to the count of seven, as her college therapist had once counseled her to do, squared herself, and ducked in.

At ten o'clock on a Friday night, the café was crowded and steamy. She scanned for a table, not remotely sure she'd stay. Faces glanced up, one or two vaguely familiar, but many new ones. Claudia considered ordering the linzer torte as a symbol of her determined break with the past. She had no idea how much money was in her wallet, or if it would be enough.