Fourth Comings (13 page)

thirty-one

“I
’m friendly with someone sort of famous….”

“Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace!” My sister had heard this story already, but was up for it again.

“Cinthia Wallace?” asked Meredith. “The party-girl-turned-writer-turned-philanthropist?”

“The same,” I said.

“The one who just got a huge inheritance from her father?” asked Liesl.

“The
same.”

“You
know
her?” asked Dierdre skeptically.

“Yes,” I said with a sigh.

“How?”

“Look, do you want me to tell the story or not?”

“Yes!!!”

“Anyway, she asked me to join her at this event called Shit Lit that’s held once a week in this cabaret slash club on the Lower East Side.”

“What club?” Meredith asked.

“Why do you care?” Dierdre snapped.

“You won’t know it,” Liesl added.

“I might,” Meredith said.

“You haven’t been out clubbing since 1998,” Dierdre replied.

“It’s called Come,” I said.

Meredith pretended to contemplate whether she was familiar with this club. The others mouthed “I told you so” to one another.

I pressed on. “So at Shit Lit, performance artists and actors and writers read from the worst books ever written.”

“Like what?” Meredith asked.

“Always with the questions, Dorothy,” cracked Dierdre.

“Someone read from Leif Garrett’s autobiography,
I Wasn’t Made for Dancin’: The Ups and Downs and Ins and Outs of the Ultimate ’70s Pinup.
And every Shit Lit includes a segment known as ‘Thirty Seconds of Pat Jamison,’ which is a dramatic reading of the worst paragraph in the latest bestseller from Pat Jamison’s hacktory.”

“I kinda like his books,” my sister said. “They’re quick reads.” She looked at the others for support. Liesl seemed with her, Dierdre and Meredith against. I doubt my sister will read another Pat Jamison paperback.

“So Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace wrote a book when she was seventeen, all about going undercover at a suburban New Jersey high school.”

“I remember that book! Came out a few years ago. Hot-pink cover.” Meredith again.

“Right. Well, it was my high school she wrote about, and me and my friends in particular.”

All but my sister gasped. “Omigod!”

“Anyway, it turned out not to be much of a big deal because the book sucked and the movie they made it into sucked even harder. So Cinthia was there to read from that book.”

“What was the name of the book again?” Bethany asked.

“Bubblegum Bimbos and Assembly-Line Meatballers.
And as I said, it really sucked. Perfect for Shit Lit. So the master of ceremonies is this cult hero of the downtown demimonde known only as Homo Hitler. He looks exactly like
der Führer,
only his Nazi uniform is a lovely shade of lavender and his swastikas are striped with queer-friendly rainbows.”

“No way!” they all cried.

“Yes way,” I replied. “And he flits around the stage and lisps,
‘Sieg heil,
bitches!’”

The MILFs gasped with laughter, then formed an even tighter circle around me, pressing me for more details.

“So I’m sitting at the same table as my friend Cinthia and a few others. Homo Hitler introduces her, and she gets up on the stage to thunderous applause. Her seat doesn’t remain vacant for long because it’s a packed house. I look to my left, and this towering drag queen has swooped down and taken the spot beside me in a whirl of sequins and feathers. He extends his manly, manicured hand and introduces himself in this super-deep voice that doesn’t sound female at all.”

“Royalle G. Biv!” My sister can’t help herself

“And I take his hand and tell him my name. And then Royalle booms, ‘You
are
a darling!’ And I roll my eyes. Then he’s like, ‘How many times have you heard that line, right?’ And I tell him that I’ve heard it many, many times before, but never from a man wearing a sequined evening gown. And he goes, ‘Well, dearheart, there’s a first time for EV-ER-RAY-THANG!’”

I notice that my sister lip-synched EV-ER-RAY-THANG.

“Then Royalle winks at me, no small feat considering each individual false eyelash is the length of a swizzle stick.”

This got some giggles.

“Royalle does not make an attractive woman. If she were a woman, she’d be the most hideous woman I’ve ever seen, one who could file a class action lawsuit against the ugly stick.”

Dierdre and Meredith laugh first; my sister and Liesl quickly follow.

“My friend Cinthia is doing the intro to her reading, explaining how the book was published when she was eighteen and how there was avid speculation as to the authenticity of the work—”

“Oh yeah, I remember that,” Meredith said.

“—and how she wishes she could lay the blame elsewhere, but she has to confess that this faux ghetto affront to the written word was hers, all hers. And the only fitting way to atone for her literary transgressions was to read them out loud….”

I was kind of losing them. They wanted more of Royalle.

“Okay, so just as she starts to read, I feel this huge hand on my knee. And I, like, totally launch myself out of my chair, I’m so shocked. And I shoot a look at good ol’ Royalle, who is, like, puckering his overdrawn, red, waxy clown lips in my direction.

And before I could continue, my story was interrupted by uterus-curling shrieks (“MOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”) coming from the playroom. Without a word, all four MILFs made a mad dash downstairs to find out who was the unhappy source of the sound.

thirty-two

Y
ou were with me that night. That is, until you had the Shit Lit Hissy Fit and bolted. I only told them half the story, but here’s the other half, the part you missed:

After you stormed out, Royalle asked me if he was to blame for your hasty exit.

“I was only fooling around, dearheart!” Royalle boomed.

“I know that, and so does he,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Why aren’t you going after him?”

“Because this is what it’s all about. This is why people come to New York City. It’s just this quintessentially bizarre New York experience….”

“Whatever do you mean, dearheart?”

“This,” I said, gesturing around the room. “You,” I said, pointing at him/her. “Getting hit on by a drag queen named Royalle G. Biv. Ostensibly, this is what I want out of living here.”

“Os-WHAT? Honey, you’re losing me with your big words,” Royalle replied. “KISS, KISS. Keep It Simple, Sunshine!”

If that wasn’t the kind of crazy, single-in-New-York night I’m supposed to remember, then I don’t know what is. But even then I was already thinking of it as an experience that would be better retold as a funny story than actually lived.

(And I was right.)

thirty-three

I
wasn’t alone on the rooftop for long.

The husbands generally ignore me, except Mr. Dierdre, who sleazes all over me in his wife’s absence. Mr. Dierdre seems intent on adding me to the roster of barely-legal concubines ready to do his adulterous bidding. He’s always trying to impress me with his cash, his connections, his “comedy.” He’s got a pointy bald head, and too much flesh hanging around his neck. The resulting combination gives him an unlikely yet striking resemblance to an uncircumcised penis. I secretly call him Rumpelforeskin.

Rumpelforeskin always corners me at Bethany’s parties, which isn’t too hard to do because I’m usually lurking in the corner.

“You still working for that brainy magazine?” he asked, adjusting the tan knit cap covering his dome. I swear to God he looked just like a life-sized demonstration for Safer Sex Awareness Week.

“Yeah,” I said, barely able to mask my laugh with a cough.

“You’re so pretty,” he smarmed. “You should be working for
Cosmo.
Or that other magazine my wife reads…”

Were women really impressed by this? Enough to become his whore du jour? Just because he was rich? And why did Dierdre put up with it?

(Then again, perhaps Dierdre and the MILFs are on to something. They—my sister included—are a bit of a throwback to the early seventeenth century, when
everyone
married for money. Back then, as throughout human history, marriage was primarily a financial arrangement, more about the merging of property and assets than hearts and souls. If you were lucky, you eventually fell in love with the person you married, but it was by no means a given. Couples stayed together because of the stigma of divorce, of course, but also because they learned to live happily together within these lowered expectations. Ironic but true: It’s only when people started marrying for love, and not money, that connubial miseries intensified and divorce rates skyrocketed.

Okay. Bridget isn’t the only one who has done her research. You’ll forgive me for wanting to make an informed decision.)

“So where
is
your
wife
?” I asked, searching the rooftop for someone who would save me.

He ignored the reminder of the Mrs.

“Vogue
? You look like the
Vogue
type.”

Rumpelforeskin was trying to spin lies into carnal gold. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I had borrowed an emerald green drop-waist silk jersey tunic from Hope. She wears it comfortably and fashionably over jeans, and promised it would work similar magic as a minidress on me. It did not. The green fabric billowed in all the wrong places and came off as a maternity muumuu. And when paired with the busted high school–era Chucks recovered from the
MOM AND DAD
box, the overall effect would certainly keep fashionistas guessing.
Wait, are you going for a sort of knocked-up teen runaway look?
I was definitely more vague than
Vogue.

“Your
wife
reads
Vogue
?”

“Did I say wife? I meant my
ex-
wife. Actually, she’s dead. She died. That’s why I’m here now. Mourning.” He put on a pout, causing the fleshy overhang to retract just a bit.

“Oh, really? I could have sworn I just saw her tending to your
children.”

“You must be mistaken. My wife died in a stingray attack,” he said, squeezing his voice in pretend sorrow, wiping fake tears from his eyes. “Just like the Crocodile Hunter. The barb tore right through her heart….”

Oh, did I mention that Rumpelforeskin was as topical as he was comical? And he went on, without any encouragement on my part other than the fact that I was still standing there and hadn’t jumped over the rooftop fencing and parachuted to safety with the excess fabric of my mommy-to-be muumuu.

“And the weird thing about it was that it happened in a swimming pool….” Then he broke character and started cracking his own shit up. The rubbery flesh bobbed up and down. Erect. Flaccid. Erect. Flaccid. Ew.

I was one second away from screaming, “Rumpelforeskin! Rumpelforeskin! Rumpelforeskin!” when Bethany came and tugged on my elbow.

“Can I steal you away for a moment?” she asked.

And as I went off with my sister, I thought about how the MILFs would have loved the story of Rumpelforeskin, that is, if he didn’t happen to be married to one of them. “s Marin okay?” I asked. “Oh, she’s fine,” she said. “Liesl’s son, Driver, was having a moment.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, thanks for rescuing me.”

thirty-four

“I
s Marin okay?” I asked.

“Oh, she’s fine,” she said. “Liesl’s son, Driver, was having a moment.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, thanks for rescuing me.”

She didn’t respond. Since Marin wasn’t involved in the fracas, I assumed Bethany had faked her urgency. But when she led me past the partygoers, downstairs and into the quiet of her bedroom, I realized that she really did want a one-on-one. I spent a lot of time at my sister’s place, but rarely entered her bedroom, which was expensively decorated in a minimalist and modern fashion designed to showcase the grandest panorama in all five boroughs.

“Christ,” I whispered under my breath. “You can see everything, from the Statue of Liberty to Lower Manhattan.” I pressed my head to the glass. If I stretched my neck, I could even see the spire of the Chrysler Building.

My sister pointed out, “See that crane, right there? That’s where the World Trade Center used to be. The towers were twice as tall as any of the other buildings in the skyline.”

Then we stood next to each other, silently looking into that empty space in the sky, both imagining what it must have been like to wake up every morning to that sight. And on that one morning in particular.

“You know what’s weird?” Bethany asked.

“What?”

“That the best thing about our home is the view of someplace else.”

Intentionally so or not, it was one of the deepest observations I’ve ever heard come out of my sister’s mouth. I almost said so, but she spoke first.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about a few things,” Bethany said after a few moments, gesturing for me to sit next to her on an ochre velvet chaise at the foot of her mahogany platform bed.

“Bethany,” I said, interrupting. “I know what you’re going to say….”

“I don’t think you do,” she said softly.

“You want me to work for the Be You Tea Shoppe,” I said. “I think it’s a great idea, but…”

Bethany shook her head, and the sun bounced off individual strands of her hair that were more golden than others. “That’s not what I’m going to say.”

“Then what?”

“I want to make you Marin’s legal guardian.”

That is definitely not what I thought she was going to say.

“Oh my God!” I gasped, digging my fingernails into her upper thigh. “Are you sick? Are you dying?”

Bethany mustered a laugh. “No, no,” she said. “I’m perfectly healthy. So is Grant. The chances are very unlikely that you would ever be called upon to act in that capacity.” Bethany’s impersonal word choice hinted that she had rehearsed this speech before delivering it. “But you know, things happen,” she said, darting a nervous glance out the window. “And we need to know that Marin will be in good hands….”

And those good hands were mine? Watching her for two hours every afternoon is one thing, but being her parent? I mean, I didn’t take one step toward the playroom when I heard the shrieking. I wasn’t programmed to react like any protective parent would. Was it instinct? Or could I learn how? And the most vexing question: Did I even want to?

It was a lot for me to process.

“Why are you asking me now?” I asked.

“Well, there are several reasons, actually,” she said, tracing circles into the velvet with her fingertip. “Marin starts school tomorrow, and I had to fill out all this paperwork—you know, emergency contacts and such. And it just got me thinking about who would take care of her in the event of a real emergency.”

“You waited until now to designate someone? She’s four years old. What if something had happened already?”

“Oh,” she said, looking down. “Until now, Mom and Dad were her legal guardians. But…”

I knew what was on the other end of that “But.”

“Not this again!”

“I have reasons to be worried….”

“Mom is
not
leaving Dad just because you caught the wrong episode of
Oprah.”

“Jessie,”
she said with big-sister irritation. “All the Signs are there.”

The Signs That My Mom Is About to Leave My Dad

1. She’s Asserting Her Financial Independence

My mom brings in more income than my dad’s post-retirement pension by redecorating, or “staging,” homes for sale in a way that makes them more attractive to potential buyers.

“You think it’s just a coincidence she named it Darling’s Designs for
Leaving
?” my sister argued.

2. She’s Improving Her Physical Appearance

The Botox was one thing. But now my mom’s face is so full of high-tech fillers that on a molecular level, it more closely resembles my running shoe than anything animal in origin.

“She’s a GILF,” my sister said.

“Ack,” I said.

3. She’s Distancing Herself from Her Spouse

It’s true, my mother is hardly ever at the condo anymore.

“But I saw them having sex!” I cried.

“Can you
please
stop reminding me that you saw Mom and Dad having sex?” Bethany snapped.

“You
just called her a GILF,” I shot back.

“You walked in on them two years ago,” she pointed out. “And that doesn’t prove anything, anyway.”

I know she’s right. I’ve convinced myself that the only upside to walking in on my parents having sex was knowing that they still loved each other, despite all evidence to the contrary. I know it’s naive to believe that one afternoon delight is enough to keep any unhappy couple together, but it’s all I’ve got.

“I’ve seen it before, Jessie.” Bethany nodded sagely. “I know the cycle.”

“Where have you seen it before? And talk shows don’t count.”

“With one of my friends,” she said.

“Dierdre?” I whispered, shooting a furtive look at the closed bedroom door.

“No!” she said, her eyes exploding with surprise. “Why Dierdre?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe because her husband was
just totally hitting on me.”

“He was?”

“Yes! Ack! He was!”

“Are you sure he wasn’t just being friendly?”

“No, he was being skeevy.”

“Wow,” she said, looking off into the middle distance for a moment.

“Okay, so who is leaving her husband?”

“Liesl,” she said.

“Liesl?” I was surprised. “But she and her husband have sex ten times a week!”

“Again with the sex,” Bethany said. “Is that all you think mature relationships are built on? I hope not for the sake of your future with Marcus.”

(I suppose I could have told her right then about the proposal, but it just didn’t seem appropriate.)

“Anyway, even if I’m misreading the signs, and I’m just being totally crazy here, it doesn’t change the fact that Mom and Dad are getting older and aren’t the best choice anymore.” Bethany took my hand and looked me in the eyes. “You are.”

“And Grant agrees?’

“Well, yes,” she said with a sigh. “He doesn’t think much of his own parents’ child-rearing skills. And his brother is the eternal frat boy. Grant says that the idea of him being Marin’s legal guardian would make an amusing Adam Sandler movie, but in real life? Not so much.”

I wanted to tell her that the idea of me being Marin’s legal guardian was like a Kate Hudson movie, only without flattering lighting and designer wardrobe. But it wasn’t a time for jokes.

“Even though I’m single? Shouldn’t Marin have a father figure?”

Bethany mustered a rueful laugh. “Her father figure is hardly around as it is.” (I’m glad she said it before I did.) “And you make it sound like you’re going to be single forever….”

(FOREVER.)

“So me.”

“So you.”

I don’t know how long we sat next to each other, listening to the sounds of the party above, gazing out the window into the void. Then I finally responded.

“I need to think.”

“Don’t stress yourself about this,” Bethany said. “Don’t think
too
much.”

(Where have I heard that before?)