Happy Any Day Now (16 page)

“Yes, you will,” I promised the glowing zero on my phone. Promised myself.

I
rwin Raphael, decked out in white duck pants, a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt, and a white cap embroidered with a gold anchor, emerged from the elevator into the Blumen House lobby. Spotting me, he doffed the cap. Behind him, struggling to keep up but encumbered by the fishing gear he carried, was another surprise: Geoffrey Birdsall. Geoff was suddenly fishing buds with my . . . with
Irwin
? Oh no. Definitely no.

Irwin approached, checking his watch. “You’re early. I hope you’re hungry because Gracie’s got a feast prepared. By the way, kiddo, I’m sorry I screwed up your schedule with her. We’re going to AC tomorrow. They have a special Mother’s Day promotion at Bally’s.” As if he were royalty, the Emperor of No-Goodniks thumped the grip of his fishing rod on the tiled floor.

“Lovely. If you’ll excuse me—” I just short of snarled. I wanted to get my hands on Geoff, preferably around his throat. How dare he barge into my family, cozy up to Irwin the Invader!

I strode over to the traitor, who was trying to juggle a tackle box, his own rod, a cooler, and a couple of windbreakers.

I snatched the cooler from his arms so he was forced to look directly at me. “What’s going on here?”

“Trying to get organized. Not very successfully, it appears.”

“You know that’s not what I mean. What are you doing with—?” I hitched my neck toward the Saturday sailor.

“I’m taking him down to Sandy Point to land some croaker. After that, we’re heading for the Inner Harbor. We’ll tour the
Constellation
, then grab the water taxi to Fort McHenry. If he isn’t tapped out by then, we’ll go for high tea Dundalk style. Crabs and beer. I’ll have him back here by five so I can get to the Berenson by seven.” He gave off a satisfied vibe. He’d answered his version of my question.

“I repeat. What do you think you’re doing?”

“Ah, you’re going for motivation. Two things: a) giving you some time alone with Grace to do your Mother’s Day’s thing, and b) showing him as many sights as I can cram into a single day, which might hasten his return to the desert from whence he came.”

He took my measure and produced a thin smile. “You seem to be unhappy with my involvement in the Raphael family.” He was tapping his foot, a sure sign he was irritated. “Let’s get something straight, Judith. We may have split, you and I, but you didn’t get custody of Grace in the settlement. She’s my mate, my chum as well.”

So was he being manipulative, trying to stay attached to me through my family in some twisted way? Or was he just being a mensch, a man of high moral character? Geoff was a musician, used to waiting a few beats. He vamped as I considered whether to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Go,” I said finally. “Catch a fish. Ride a boat. Maybe he’ll fall overboard.”

Geoff threw me a disappointed look as if to say,
Beneath you
.

The ancient mariner hollered over to us, “Nu, Geoffrey? Time is a-wasting and the fish are a-biting. And if we’re going to fit in hang gliding, we’d better hustle.”

“Hang gliding? He’s eighty years old.”

“And strong as an ox. Don’t worry, we won’t get to it today. Maybe next time.” Geoff called back, “Be there in a jiff, Irwin.” He nodded at me. “Enjoy your mum. We should be gone all afternoon.”

“Thanks.” I’d decided finally that thanks were in order. “Really. I owe you.”

“Put it on my tab,” he said.

• • •

My mother had prepared brunch.

I stood in her cramped dining area, awed by the spread, feeling as if I’d stumbled into some fantasy Disney park Herringland where any moment Mickey Herring would descend from Mr. Herring’s Wild Ride to offer me maybe a glass of tea with a sugar cube to suck between my teeth. And some herring.

Plattered and bowled on the plastic lace tablecloth were herring in wine sauce, in sour cream, chopped with onion, chopped with beets and apple. Also nova lox and kippered salmon. Hard-boiled eggs. Bagels, bialys, and three kinds of cream cheese, one low-fat.

Incredible. All the more because there was no such thing as brunch in Korea. Maybe in a trendy neighborhood in Seoul there was an imitation New York luncheonette offering blueberry pancakes, but Koreans traditionally ate the same foods for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the only meals they acknowledged.

“That kipper herring. Kipper mean smoke. Very good.” My mother smacked her lips. “Lox. I don’t like, but maybe you like. You love lox when you baby. Daddy bring home.”

What she didn’t remember was that as soon as Irwin took off for points west, we never had lox in the house. And after finding out he’d made half a living selling it, I’d always turned up my nose when Aunt Phyllis served it.

“We go to deli on Liberty Road owned by Russian people. Your father know all about lox. Russians very impressed.”

“Did he pay for this?” The bagel would stick in my throat.

“No, why should he pay? I pay. I have money.” She sat herself firmly at the head of the table.

I parked myself in the chair next to hers, speared a bagel, sliced it, and shmeared cream cheese. I took a sip of my mother’s homemade
horicha
, barley tea with honey
.

The conversation was surprisingly easy, as if there’d never been a breach, until I mentioned Geoff’s trying to cram in Baltimore’s sights to nudge Irwin’s return to Arizona.

“That so stupid. He not go back so fast. Maybe not go back at all.” She concentrated on peeling the white from the yolk of a hard-cooked egg. “Maybe stay here.”

“Here?” I had a serrated knife in my hand. The question was in which direction I would plunge it.

“Not here in 4C,” my mother clarified. “We look for big apartment in Blumen House. Two bedroom. For hobbies. He make Indian doll. Ka-chi-na.” She pronounced it carefully, as if she’d been coached. “He have space. I have space. Bigger kitchen so I cook more.”

I felt myself flushing. “The idea of having you here was so you’d cook less. Oh, for heaven’s sake,
Uhm-mah
, you can’t be thinking of taking him back. What are you,
dol dae ga ri
?” Literal translation: stonehead. Colloquially: a dolt, a dunce.

Now she slammed the bagel on her plate. “Don’t insult. Terrible to insult mother on almost Mother’s Day. And I
am
smart, Judith.” This was an important enough statement to warrant the use of the verb.

“Yes, you are, Mommy. But he’s smarter,” I said, not meaning to insult her. “In a sneaky, underhanded way. Can’t you see now that Lorna’s dead he needs someone to take care of him? Cook for him. Do his laundry. Look at him with goo-goo eyes.”

“What goo-goo eyes?”

I rolled an adolescent lovesick glance.

“That not me.” She laughed. “Old days maybe, but not now. My heart also smart. Even sneaky a little. He make me laugh. Buy me things. Show me good time. We go places. Atlantic City. Arizona. Maybe we go to Seoul. I never been back. He promise Seoul end of summer.”

“So this is about money. He has money and . . .” I couldn’t finish as my rage bubbled up to my throat. I forced a deep breath and found my voice. “He left you, a stranger in a foreign country, to fend for yourself with a six-year-old daughter who loved him, who thought she was crap because he left and he didn’t care enough to even stay in touch . . .”

Now, I have been known to tear up in my time, but full-out weeping with torrents of splashy sound effects? That I usually saved for films featuring dying lovers, doomed mutts, or abandoned kids. Abandoned kids—
bingo!

My mother eased herself out of her chair and came around to me. “Nonono. Judith. Judith.”

She tried to stroke my hair, but I jerked away. “How can you take him back?” I sobbed. “He’s a real bastard, to his core.”

“Not to core, Judith. You don’t know.” She patted me helplessly on the shoulder.

I whirled on her. “You tell me I don’t know. Aunt Phyllis tells me I don’t know. What’s the big secret? What’s to know? I’m forty-nine years old, for chrissakes. Whatever it is, isn’t it time to tell me?”

She pressed a fresh napkin on me. “Blow nose. Wipe eyes. Okay? Okay. You right, you big girl now. I tell you.” She settled herself in the chair next to me and took my sparrow-boned hand in her dove-soft one. “Ay,
aigoo
.” She expelled one of her incomparable sighs. “I tell you, but don’t throw fit.

“At beginning, I very mad at your father. Leave me for chippie. First month he send stuff. Then I don’t hear from him many months. When he make phone call, I hang up. He call again, ask for you. I hang up. Bad mother. But I very, very hurt inside.” She was nervously peeling the nail polish from her left thumb. “He send card from California. Card from cruise. He go with her to England, send card. Address: Judith Raphael. Sign, ‘Love, kisses, Your Daddy.’ I find in mailbox and tear up. So bad mother.”

I’d sunk my head in my hands when she mentioned the phone calls. Covered my eyes. What I really wanted to do was stuff my fingers in my ears.

“Aunt Phyllis tell me I do wrong, but he hurt me very, very bad here.” She banged a fist against her chest. “I don’t want this bad man in your life. I think you do okay. After year or two you stop asking question, Where my father? Why Daddy not call? Why not visit?

“He stop calling after I hang up so much. But he keep writing. And start sending checks.”

At that, I snapped my head up so hard I gave myself one of those teeth-jarring shocks to the jaw.

“When you in six grade he start sending checks.” The rest I heard in a state of heightened awareness, my mother’s voice coming through magnified, the colors in the room shining bright and sharp, the sentences running into one another like streams converging.

Irwin hadn’t been working until then. The chippie wanted him at her disposal. To dance with her on the cruise ships, hold her handbag on their world tours. The globe-trotting stopped when Lorna was diagnosed with lupus. From then on, they were home in Tucson for long stretches, which meant he was able to hold a job. Not a full week, just part-time. “Your father very good salesman. Sell cars, sell Amway, work different places. Not steady, but he send me check here, check there from what he make.”

He’d never held on to any job long enough for Grace to rely on his payments for rent in a better neighborhood, but she’d squirreled the money away. “And he pay for your cello lessons.”

I was still reeling from the first revelation, but this one—striking so close to my kishkes, my vitals—made me see stars. “He don’t know I use it for that,” my mother amended, and I released a breath. “He want me buy you clothes, toys, like that, but I think Mrs. Beckersham very important. Also, he buy your first cello.”

At which point I lurched to my feet. My mother kept a bottle of
soju
, a Korean rice vodka, in the china cabinet. I poured her a shot and me a shot and, in the old-fashioned way, turned from my elder out of deference and gulped down the slightly sweet liquor. It made fire in my throat, warmth in my belly, anesthetic in my brain.

Fortified, I faced her. “You never told me,” I said. I wasn’t accusatory, just trying to understand.

“Tell you? I tell you, you stop lessons, throw cello in garbage. When teenager, you scream if he ever come back, you kick his ass.” Thanks to my Bed-Stuy peers, I’d had a way with words. “You say nothing he do make up for run away, remember? He leave us for rich lady and you hate him and his lousy money, you say. So I don’t say nothing.”

“When did the checks stop?”

“Not for long time. How you think you go to Boston? Korean spirits,
yo-sansin
, come down from mountain and help? Only part scholarship to conservatory. You think Aunt Phyllis and Uncle Arnold so generous? Sure, they buy school clothes and books, but not made of money and cousin Staci in college same time. Your father’s check pay rest for school. And I can’t tell you or you quit. You be so mad.”

She was right. That’s exactly what I would have done.

The kicker was that even knowing his daughter was in the dark about the source of her tuition, Irwin continued to send checks when he could.

My mother groaned, lifting herself from the chair. She poured herself another shot of
soju
, watching my eyes with the caution of a low-flying bird eyeing a rumbling volcano. But I was too overwhelmed, too tapped out to blow.

“Now maybe time come for you to stop so angry inside. Make you crazy. You can’t even play music. Geoff tells me you scared and nervous onstage. All from bitter and angry.” She tossed the liquor down and followed it with a long
Ahhh
. “Okay, so Irwin not best man in world, but not so bad either. He try. I take much blame too.” That was a first. “Time to forgive, Judith. You almost fifty. Nice present for yourself, for everyone.”

• • •

By the time I got home I had a raging headache. Maybe it was the three shots of
soju
, the two and a half cups of coffee plus the revelations I could barely swallow, but my temples were pounding as if our timpanist had taken a mallet to them. It wasn’t an aneurysm headache—that pain was more a screaming atonal assault by Christopher Rouse—but it was a bruiser. The nausea had hit as I turned into my driveway. Upstairs, I’d dosed myself with a couple of Advil and a swig of Pepto-Bismol, collapsed on my bed, and lay there, teeth chattering, stomach roiling, staring at the ceiling, playing my mother’s betrayal over and over in my brain.