Happy Any Day Now (10 page)

“W
hat the hell are you doing here?” I stared pop-eyed and disbelieving.

My father-in-name-only came up with a jaunty response. “I was invited.” He smiled with exaggerated innocence.

That did it. I barked, “Where is she? Where’s my mother?”

She exited the bedroom, her almond eyes chestnut round, to see what the noise was all about. Canny as a fox, the old man retreated to the bathroom to let her deal with me.

“
Aigoo
. Be nice, Judith.” She stood before me, making
calm down
waves with both hands.

“No, I will not be nice. He’s in his
pajamas
. A married man.”

“Not married anymore. Lorna die six months back. Irwin is widow.”

“Widower,” I said automatically. I’d been giving my mother English lessons for most of my life. “Irwin is a widower.” Hearing myself say it made it real. “And look at you.”

At least she wasn’t in her nightgown, one of the new ones she’d bought at Loehmann’s. Damn. I should have known. Her fancy haircut. The weight loss. The sudden interest in fashion. I wanted to kick myself, but I was wearing my Spanx and my ass wasn’t low enough to meet my foot.

She was all dolled up in something I hadn’t seen before, and I knew my mother’s closet. The neckline was scooped way too low for a woman of seventy-eight. Dangling in a cleavage that I swear to God could only have been made by a push-up bra was not her Life Alert lavaliere, but a delicate chain suspending a diamond pendant that had to be a full carat.

“He gave you that.” With a trembling finger, I pointed to the jewel in the cleft. “You know where it came from, don’t you?”

My mother’s hand flew to the diamond.

“From you know who, the dead wife.”

“No, not true.”

Irwin’s voice issued from the bathroom. “Don’t talk what you have no idea about.”

“He took it off her corpse,” I said.

“No, it your grandma Roz jewelry. Your aunt Phyllis give him.”

“You believe that?”

That brought Irwin out of his den, dark eyes shining. He’d changed into chinos and a T-shirt with a Brooklyn Dodgers logo. Not only had he shaved, but he’d slicked his dyed hair into a pompadour circa 1950. Back in the day, on the mean streets of Brooklyn, my father had been what they used to call a “hood,” a bad boy. Leather jacket, garrison belt, huge Star of David on a rope chain so the Italian gang he hung with would never forget they had a ballsy Jew in their midst. I’d seen the pictures. This was my heritage.

He walked up to my mother and draped an arm around her shoulders. They stood there, the two of them, as I’d never seen them standing before. A united front. Sure, now it was easy. There was no me to bring up, no chippie with the lure of easy money opening the escape hatch from responsibility.

I ignored him and said to my mother, “You—just
you
—talk to me.”

“You make big deal, but small deal, Judith. He come in for Seder to Aunt Phyllis. No Seder. But here already, East Coast, so he stop by.”

“You knew about this how long ago?”

“Okay, maybe month.”

“We’ve been e-mailing,” Irwin said, unbidden.

“You e-mail?” I stared at my mother, astounded.

“Winnie Chang teach me. Easy. I join Facebook soon.”

“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” I said.

“None of that,” my father admonished.

“And he’s sleeping here? Of course he is.”

“Listen, kiddo. I can afford the best hotel in town. That Harbor whatever? I could take a suite there if I wanted. But your mother said, Why not stay here? and I thought, Yeah, why not? We got lots to catch up on. We’re making up for lost time.”

“I’m going to vomit,” I said. I actually felt close to heaving.

“You so high-stringed, Judith. Always like Shakespeare.” Grace proclaimed dramatically, “I go vomit.” She made gagging sounds. “You need calm down. Almost fifty. You give yourself new aneurysm.”

Instinctively I massaged my temple. I turned to Irwin. “How long?”

“A week or two.” He pulled a nail file from his pocket and proceeded to dig away. “I want to see the sights. That old boat in the harbor.” The
Constellation
. “Go to D.C. and stop by the White House and all. Eat crabs. I never ate a Baltimore crab.”

“Very good. Baltimore crab best,” my mother said, looking up at him. She showed her teeth smudged with lipstick. A new color, pink, like a young girl’s.

“I’m out of here,” I said. I placed the jars of soup on the
Sun
newspaper laid out on the dinette table.

“Whoa, girlie. I’m a different man now,” Irwin said. “You oughta give me a chance.”

He ambled—actually it was more like a hood’s swagger—to the sideboard and lifted a shirt-sized box wrapped in silver paper. He held it out with both hands. “I brought this for you. A peace offering. What, no? You have no idea what it is.”

“How many birthdays did you forget? How many?”

I caught a quick visual exchange between him and my mother, his eyebrows up, her head waggling a negative cue.

I turned on her. “Boy, you forgive fast. Well, I don’t. All those years he didn’t know I was alive. Left you without a dime.” I tapped my temple. “I can’t imagine what’s going on in there. Have you lost it? Do we need to see Dr. Wolf?” I pointedly named her geriatrician.

She stepped in front of me. “Don’t talk like that, Judith. So rude. I’m mother, you child. No matter how old.”

“Fine. You’re right. I need to stop worrying about you.” A proposal I didn’t believe for a minute. “We’re both grown women. But this, I can’t deal with. So call me when he’s gone.”

Irwin was snapping his right thumb and third finger noiselessly. It was obvious I made him nervous and he was jonesing for a cigarette. I lobbed my final shot. “For your information, it’s against the rules to smoke in the Blumen House units. They find out, they’ll evict her.”

“I smoke on the balcony,” he said. But he stood his ground.

My mother held a jar of my soup in each hand. “You wait one minute, Judith. I have stuff for you too.”

“Next time.”

“No room in freezer. You take now. Don’t insult. One more minute only. I have
japchae
in kitchen for you.” I couldn’t resist her sweet potato noodles with veggies.

“I’ll wait outside in the hall,” I said, which was juvenile of me, but the brat I never had a chance to be as a child exploded every once in a while from my adult self.

“See ya, Judy,” Irwin said as I closed the door behind me.

“You don’t give kiss?” my mother asked at the elevator a few minutes later as she handed over a shopping bag.

I never left my mother without pecking her on the cheek. But I couldn’t. I stood there, a block of ice, thinking I’d probably be visited by a plague of locusts and boils for this fifth-commandment transgression. But I just couldn’t.

“I know you so angry. But he be gone soon. Sad man. Pity. Wife dead. He need family now.”

I snapped, “I’m not his family and neither are you. He made sure of that long ago.”

No one could sigh like my mother. She pulled it up from her feet and as it passed her heart it picked up a quaver. At her voice box it added a thread of soprano sorrow.

“Okay. I call you later. Or I send you e-mail address and you write after you calm down.”

I was nearly hyperventilating when I reached the parking lot. As I clicked my remote, a huge cheer surged from the Blumen House activity room. I checked my watch. It was the last race of the afternoon and someone had just won the trifecta, the big jackpot. My mother had pulled that off twice the year before and had taken home expensive prizes: a juicer and a certificate for a massage at a local spa. A gambling woman, she bet long shots. Not me.

I popped the Toyota’s trunk and, maneuvering the jars of
japchae
to stand upright in the shopping bag, caught a flash of silver paper at the bottom. My sly mother had tucked Irwin’s gift in the bag. Or maybe he had. I removed the box and shoved it to the back of the trunk, next to the emergency kit and an old blanket. Out of sight, out of mind.

M
aybe if Marti had been around to hammer some sense into me, I would have kept my family drama contained. But she was somewhere in the Caribbean doing research for a
Herald
article about food service on cruise ships departing from Baltimore Harbor. And she swore she was going incommunicado on her assignment cum windfall vacation.

On my own, I phoned my aunt Phyllis. After her unsolicited report on the current state of her bladder, I brought up my most recent surprise.

“It was entirely Irwin’s idea to see your mother,” she explained. “I didn’t recommend it, but now that he’s there, maybe it isn’t altogether off the wall. I know you’re in shock, Judith. So take a deep breath and don’t make any rash decisions.”

“I’ve had forty-three years to come up with my decision, Aunt Phyllis.”

“Very clever. Look, I’m not saying my brother is a perfect person, but who is? Not you, Judith. Though you’ve done well for yourself in your career, you’re not an expert in the romance department to say the least. Which says to me you’re not well equipped to give relationship advice to Grace, especially considering your last move.”

My mother, with her big mouth, had told her about my split with Geoff.

“Frankly, your track record stinks.” Unlike that of my cousin Staci, divorced from a two-timing orthodontist, now married to a proctologist who was a walking, talking advertisement for his medical specialty. Seth Cohen-Shenker, MD, was a certified asshole.

“Also, where your father is concerned, you don’t know the whole story. Believe me. And I’m in no position to tell you. But take it on my say-so—he’s not the terrible, awful man you think he is.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning ask your mother. My lips are sealed.”

I would, but before Aunt Phyllis hung up, we had one more of Irwin’s lies to confirm.

“He gave her a necklace. With a diamond. He told my mother it was from Grandma Roz, but I’m sure it was the chippie’s.”

“You’re sure? See how you jump to conclusions. It
is
from your grandmother. She left me her engagement ring and my brother got the diamond drop. I was executor of the will and I held off handing it over to him until the chippie . . . until Lorna died, because I was afraid he’d give it to her.”

Okay, he’d told the truth about that. But there was a Korean proverb: “Even into a mouse hole, light shines.” I didn’t quote it, but I was certain it applied.

“Grandma Roz had diamonds?” Not much money in that household, and I strained to recall if I’d ever seen her wear anything around her neck other than her reading glasses on a lariat. Her knuckles, swollen with arthritis, had been bare. Of that much I was sure.

“Only two pieces and they were in and out of hock during the Depression. When she got them back for good, she kept them in a bank vault. Well, well, so Irwin gave the jewelry to Grace. This is what I mean about a basically good human being.” I heard the muffled click of call waiting, but my aunt ignored it. This was serious business. She wouldn’t be interrupted.

“If you’re smart—and no one can deny you’re book smart—but if you have
seykhl
, common sense, you’ll let your mother make her own decision as to how to deal with my brother. What you decide for yourself is your business, but I hope you make your judgment based on facts, not speculation. I can’t say more than that.”

Again with the sealed lips? It must have been one hell of a secret she was hiding. On the other hand, I could make a case for her inflating some minor Hebraic drama into Greek tragedy. “And my last word is, you ought to rethink getting rid of the Australian. His quality doesn’t come along every day and you’re not getting any younger, Judith, if you know what I mean.”

I knew what she meant.

“Which reminds me, we got your party invitation and we’re a yes, your uncle Arnold and I. I’m not sure about Staci and Seth. They may be in Israel that week.”

I’d included my aunt and uncle on the guest list. But Staci and Seth? Was this Marti’s idea of a joke?

“And one very last word, my dear niece—whom I love in spite of her hardheadedness, and I wonder where you get that from. Irwin Raphael is your father. Whatever else he may be, he’s your father. And when he dies, and he’s not so young, you don’t want to be left with regrets.”

“The regrets will be all on his side,” I said. “I promise you.”

• • •

I’d told my mother to phone me when Irwin was gone. No word on Saturday. And tightening the screws, digging in my heels, I didn’t call her. In the last five years, we’d rarely missed a day talking either in person or by phone, but it was fine.
She
was fine. She had him.

I had no one—not to think through the new situation with anyway. Charlie’s message on my answering machine Friday night was thirty seconds of firming up plans for meeting in D.C. Besides, even if he had the time or the interest, there was no way I was going to discuss my family problems with Charlie Pruitt. I’d learned my lesson the first time around.

Geoff, who really was skillful at analyzing relationships as long as they weren’t his own, did a good job of keeping his distance. In the musicians’ lounge pre-performance, he stood off to one side sipping coffee and conversing with Deena Marquis, our on-call harpist, whom I’d always suspected of having the hots for him. Now she had a clear path, which she’d scurried up as fast as her long legs could carry her.

Well, good for her. And him. This was a couple made in magazine-cover heaven—he tall, buff, and handsome; she model slim and glossily attractive, if you liked the perfectly made-up, surgically refined, breast-enhanced type. Geoff must have. He seemed captivated by whatever she was telling him, though I did catch the flick of his gaze toward my general vicinity.

As I drained the last of my Diet Dr. Pepper, he pretended to be seeing me for the first time and waved. Deena swept me with a blank, uncomprehending stare as if I were a stranger, which at this juncture I pretty much was. When the five-minute warning buzzed, I left them still chattering away.

The performance that evening was less than brilliant. Brass held up, but strings seemed listless to me, and my stand partner gave me a roll of her eyes at the lackluster violins in the first half. Only the harp was in top form. Deena’s glissandos were positively ecstatic.

On my way out, Geoff caught up with me. “Shit performance, wasn’t it?”

I nodded.

“Just a reminder,” he said. “I’ll be at your place Monday morning. You’ve forgotten, haven’t you? We need to get cracking. Your audition will be here before we know it. Schedule two hours this time. We’ll go over the selections and then, well, we’ll see.”

So Marti had been wrong. Me too. I knew him better than she did and
I
hadn’t figured he’d hang in after I’d strung him up. Amazing. He was going to make good on his coaching offer. Which was beyond even Geoff’s everyday Aussie generosity. Or maybe, just maybe, he’d decided that keeping a hand in and an eye on me was his best chance of a) getting the inside scoop on my revised love life or b) being around to pick up the pieces when it collapsed.

I scanned his expression. Open, genuine, pure Geoff. No trace of a self-serving motive. More likely, I was the cynic here. Suddenly my life seemed infinitely, depressingly complicated.

I tried to uncomplicate it. Match him noble gesture for noble gesture. “I’m really very grateful, Geoff. But under the circumstances, I’d understand if—”

“Ten. Promptly. All I ask is coffee on the boil and a melody in your heart. Ah, the infamous Raphael lip curl. Very well, just the coffee will do. Joining the gang for dinner? No? See you Monday, then. Cheers.”

And he was off. To where and with whom, I didn’t know or care. All that much.

• • •

My mother sent me an e-mail on Sunday night. A first. It had been posted by [email protected] at seven p.m. I didn’t get on my computer until nine.

Why yu not call. Mean chile. No matter what I luv yu. Who yu think I luv more. Father. No. Yu always. But yu need grow up. Judith. Yu be like kid. So stupid. Grow up. Call.

I luv yu.

Momi

I called her home phone and got my own voice, the incoming message I’d recorded on her answering machine. She must have been out with Irwin. I phoned her cell. She didn’t pick up. Maybe she was in the apartment but otherwise occupied
. Aigoo!

I left a message. “Call me, please.” I didn’t include the “after he’s gone” this time. Aunt Phyllis’s hint about some deep, dark family secret had been nibbling at me, so I added, “You’re right, time for a chat.” Then, quickly, “Love you too.” Because I really wasn’t a mean chile.