Kate Jacobs (16 page)

* * *

Lucie walked all the way to Astor Place and got
a
chai
tea at Starbucks. She took two sips and then
threw it in the garbage. Damn that Darwin Chiu! If she told anyone, well, they
would have a problem. Marching back down Lafayette Street, Lucie made a plan to
tell that woman to keep her mouth shut. She crossed the street at
Bleecker
and returned to the entrance of the clinic, then
stood there, realizing she had no way of knowing if Darwin was still inside. Or
if there was a more serious reason why she might have been there.
Mad at Darwin for ruining her plan of secrecy and mad at herself for not
considering what Darwin might be dealing with, Lucie began to slowly walk up
and down Mott Street.
Aaagh
, she thought. What now?
Do I know her well enough to reach out? No. Is she so much a stranger I can
just walk away? No. I'm stuck, concluded the TV producer, I'm stuck. I'll just
wait five minutes and then go.
Fifteen minutes later, Darwin emerged, her face in a frown. She was clearly
startled to see Lucie just outside the doorway.
"Goodness," she said, then repeated it. "Goodness. I didn't
expect you to wait for me. I didn't think you would."
"I forgot something and had to come back." Lucie lied, all too
familiar with the desire to be by herself and out of judgment's way.
"Oh."
"But here I am anyway. And it's nearly lunchtime, you know," said
Lucie. "Have you eaten?" Of course Darwin hadn't eaten, she thought
to herself; she's just been in the clinic all morning. Stupid-head.
"No." Darwin seemed subdued; she hadn't asked an inappropriate
question or commented on
Lucie's
condition in several
minutes.
"Let's get a bite, come on, over here at
NoHo
Star." Gently touching her forearm, Lucie motioned for Darwin to follow.
"We'll eat something healthy like spinach salad and then spoil ourselves
with chocolate cake. And not even to share—we'll each get our own. Come on,
it's my treat."
Darwin followed, about a pace behind, until they came to cross Lafayette again.
God, I'm getting my exercise today, thought Lucie; at this rate, she'd be able
to keep off the pounds for a long time.
"Please don't tell anyone you saw me at Planned Parenthood," blurted
Darwin.
Lucie threw her a sidelong glance, slowly nodding her head.
"Right back at you, kiddo. Now let's go get a nosh and I'll be like Anita,
patiently letting you ask me crazy questions about knitting."

nine

Anita spread a thin layer of seedless
strawberry jam onto
her toast, then put her knife down and took a tiny bite. She looked up
and was surprised—but only for a moment—to see her husband, Stan, drinking his
coffee, sitting at the far end of the table. He met her gaze and smiled, the
lines around the corners of his brown eyes crinkling.
"Hello, my dear," he said. "It's a lovely day today."
Glancing to her side, Anita could see the sun's rays glinting off the shiny
hardwood floors. She could feel the warmth on her skin.
"Yes, it looks lovely," she answered. "We should go to the
park." Anita had the strongest feeling that something important was going
to happen in Central Park today.
"You know, Stan, I had the most terrible nightmare. I dreamed you weren't
with me anymore."
Stan frowned with concern, then his face relaxed.
"Don't worry, sweetheart, I'm right here across the breakfast table, just
like I am every morning."
Anita was flooded with relief, then felt foolish, a bit embarrassed. She took a
sip of coffee, then another. Coffee. Suddenly a man's face flashed in her mind.
Marty. Anita felt a rush of guilt and confusion. If she knew Marty, then how…
She took a breath.
"I don't know why I had such an awful dream because you're right
here," she murmured, then peeked across the dishes and coffee cups to get
a better look at her husband. His appearance always made her feel so proud; he
was a very handsome man, the kind of distinguished older gentleman whom
passers-by nodded at almost imperceptibly, pleased by the very look of him.
But the sun hit her eye and it was difficult to make out Stan's shape
clearly—Anita could see his charcoal cardigan, the one she'd knit on the Panama
cruise, but it was hard to find the features of his face. She felt a tingling
in her limbs and a mounting sense of worry. He had to know it was him, he was
the one she wanted, that there never would be anyone else. Certainly nothing
had happened with that Marty fellow. "I love you, Stan," she said,
her words a rush.
"I know you do, sweetheart," he replied, his voice deep and strong.
"And I love you. Always and forever."
Anita's eyes flew open, her upper lip beaded with perspiration, a feeling of
dread and heaviness coming over her.
She moaned softly to herself as her mind raced through the last fifteen years
of her life, always leaving her with the same conclusion: Stan was dead. Really
gone. And she was still here, alone.
Groggy, Anita remained motionless in her bed, staring at the ceiling. How many
times had she had that dream? The grief seemed to cycle in endless phases;
sometimes she dreamed about Stan night after night, and other times months
would pass between seeing him in her sleeping hours. And then the dream would
return. Always it was the same—Stan was alive!—and always the waking reality
was the same: Anita was a widow.
She would see him in the living room, on the street, at a party. The sequence
never altered—the shock at the sight of him, the embarrassment over her
mistake—what sort of wife would believe her husband was dead when he was right
there in front of her?—then the intense relief that left her wanting to fall to
her knees and thank God that he was still alive.
It seemed so real. Each and every time. She felt stupid when she woke up, but
everything seemed so logical in the dream. So matter-of-fact. Anita would tell
Stan how she had worried, and he would laugh and call her his sweetheart and
she would feel so goddamned overwhelmed that his supposed death had all been a
misunderstanding. Of course it was! Everything was okay! And that meeting, the
moment of talking with Stan, would be so raw and exciting and truly perfect
that she would be enveloped by a happiness beyond any she had ever imagined.
The feeling was pure joy.
Just at that instant she would awaken, right when she had sorted through all
the possibilities and come to the conclusion that yes, Stan was alive, and all
was right again.

* * *

And so the waking up meant everything was all
wrong. The regret was much worse than during the day, when she gazed at his
photo on the mantel or thought wistfully of the good life they had shared. At
those times, she was in her warrior mode, her shields and defenses at the
ready. In her sleep, she was vulnerable to her hopes and to her sorrows.
"The grief will pass," she had heard from mourner after mourner at
Stan's funeral. That's what everyone had said to her, in quiet tones, briefly
touching a shoulder or offering a gentle kiss on the cheek. "Give it time,"
her loved ones told her in the days after Stan's heart attack. She knew the
words; she had certainly said them often enough herself to friends and
relatives.
So Anita gave it time. She waited for the day that she felt better. And yet the
feeling of loss just didn't fade away. Certainly, the pain was not as acute as
when she sat
shivah
and her sons held her hands and
their capable wives asked if couldn't they please just get her to eat a little
bite, just something to keep up her strength? (Which they couldn't; Anita lost
far too much weight after Stan had died.) No, the cold shock of it had long ago
settled into acceptance.
For Anita, what lingered all these years later was something just as
uncomfortable. It was heartbreak that remained. She lived with a constant,
nagging sense that something was missing, that Stan was just out of reach, and
the loneliness was often overpowering. There were days when she felt he was so
close that she only had to talk aloud and other moments when he felt so far
away that it left her feeling lost and newly abandoned. On a seesaw that never
stopped.
Of course, whom could she tell? Anita knew that no one really wanted to listen
to the tales of woe from an old woman: Her friends were all dealing with sick
or deceased spouses themselves and her family wouldn't know what to do if she
told them. It would only be a burden. She hadn't wanted to talk with her own
mother about the loss of her father; she'd been too busy raising her sons and
being Stan's charming better half at the dozens of functions that filled up
their social calendar. It was enough, wasn't it, that she had invited her
mother over every Saturday after
shul
and taken her
out to the hair salon on Wednesdays? That she called several times a week?
Anita had made a fuss over her mother at every holiday and made sure she had a
place of honor at every recital and graduation. It was enough.
Now she knew it hadn't been enough.

* * *

This generation was different, but not so much.
Her friends were all atwitter now that their adult daughters were on a kick of
getting to know them as equals. "I want us to be friends," she heard
that these grown children kept insisting to their mothers. Of course, what
these daughters really wanted was to be able to bare their souls to the one
person in the world who would love them without restraint, whose approval was
priceless, who would find them and their myriad life issues endlessly
fascinating. It is a beautiful gift, thought Anita, to have your mother be your
very dearest and best friend. It is quite another to try to be hers. Then you'd
have to actually get to know her. As a real person.
She was the mother of three sons; well, it wasn't as though they were going to
call and have great heart-to-hearts. Maybe some boys did. Not hers. Too busy
with providing for their own families, they left the chatting up to their
wives. All good girls, too, but too busy with the day-to-day business of
running a family, just as she once had been. It was no wonder then that she
loved Georgia as much as she did, their friendship precious and free of the
mother-daughter acrimony that would linger after a decade of teenage rebellion.
But even her relationship with her beloved Walker girls was unbalanced. It
wasn't as though she would pick up the phone to tell Georgia her secrets; that
wasn't the role she'd signed on for.
Young people—whom Anita counted as anyone under fifty—never really thought
about the generations ahead being the same as they were, she knew. Every pair
of lovers thinks they invented sex. No one wants to consider that at
seventy-two, she'd like to be kissed quite thoroughly by a man who loved her,
that she still felt desire, and that not having anyone to whisper to under the
covers was louder than silence.
And so there is the trouble, thought Mrs. Stan Lowenstein as she turned on the
water for her morning bath. She remained a vibrant, sexual, smart creature,
nursing a broken heart for a man who was never coming back. And a guilty
conscience for hankering after a certain man who
was
around.

* * *

If she'd been wiser, Anita told herself often,
she'd have just shriveled up, instead of hanging on and
duking
it out with the universe. She watched the tub fill. "If one more person
tells me I'm feisty, I'm going to scream," she told the soap. "I'm not
a spitfire. I'm just me, the same me I've always been. Only now I look
wrinkled." She marveled at her body, its lines and soft skin. How did she
get so old so quickly? She couldn't believe she was a grandmother, so many
times over. And most of those little faces would be at her table for Passover
in just a few days, flying in from Atlanta. And Israel. She would hug and
inspect and admire and then they would all be on their way again, back to their
own lives and leaving her alone with hers. Of course she would have loved to
see all of them more often, but Anita had always been afraid to fly. And her
sons found wives and careers that took them all around the globe, doing good
things, raising good families. It was okay. It was enough.
"I am not alone," she said aloud as she stepped into the water. They
were the same words she said to herself every morning. "I am not
alone."
She rested her head against the tub, closed her eyes as she lay back into the
steamy water. Thank God for her family, far-flung though they were. She loved
them more than they could know. And thank God for the steady diet of opera and
Broadway matinees with Dakota and knitting club and working at the shop. It was
what sustained her.
And yet, Anita thought, and yet. She was still hungry.

* * *

At precisely 11:27 A.M., James picked up his
sports coat off the back of his Aeron chair and headed out of the office. He
had to catch the C train up to the West Side for his noon appointment with
Anita. "Try not to be tardy," she had warned the first time. "I
have to be at the shop in the afternoon."
It was true that he pushed for some time to talk with Anita, knowing that she
was Georgia's most trusted confidante, but he had expected to meet her for a
quick coffee, on neutral ground. James was used to driving every situation.
But then he hadn't met someone like Anita before.
"Hello, Anita," he said upon initially meeting her in the shop many
months ago. She smiled pleasantly, though not exactly warmly.
"Oh, please," she said. "Do call me Mrs. Lowenstein."
The next few times he had dropped by the shop—sometimes scheduled, more often
not—he'd received a similar formal treatment. When he got with his new program
(the calling ahead, double-checking-major-purchases thing), Anita had been much
friendlier. Georgia, too, of course. But anyone could see that you had to go
through Anita to get to Walker and Daughter.
"Yes, James, you're right," she responded to his suggestion that they
get to know each other better. "It looks like you're staying put on this
go-round." Anita looked him straight in the eye, daring him to leave.
"Yes, ma'am," he answered lamely, feeling more than a decade's worth
of guilt and shame in one moment.
"Very good then. I'll see you for lunch on Monday at my apartment."
And that had been that. Once a week during the previous month, James had been
making his way to the San Remo to sit at Anita's dining table and discuss
everything from the latest headlines to his work projects to the time he was
spending with Dakota to his shock over the booming New York real estate market.
The one thing they did not discuss—ever—was Georgia.
James had tried, feebly, to press Anita on the matter at the first lunch.
"So I think Georgia is a bit surprised by my relocating to the city,"
he said casually while spearing a potato in his
salade
Niçoise
. He pretended to be more interested in his
food than in Anita's response.
"You'd have to ask Georgia how she feels about that, James," Anita
had said reasonably, her fork at the side of her plate and her hands in her
lap. She was a vision of repose, her expression impenetrable. "But I, for
one, am not surprised. It is never too late to make a different choice, and it
is never too late to make the right one. Do you agree?"
"I don't know," he'd replied, losing his appetite although half of
his salad was still untouched. When he was with Anita, he had a sensation of
being Dakota's age and being found with his hand in the cookie jar. She was a
wise old bird, he could see that. She enjoyed laughing at his jokes, was quick
to join in his banter, could hold up her end of a conversation on the state of
the global economy or talk just as comfortably about a current movie. She was
equally elegant and intelligent. Anita would have been a great CEO, he thought.
Especially because she never fell for his practiced charm. He wanted—he
needed—her to be on his side. And he was learning, quickly, that the only time
he had her full attention was when he was being sincere. It was new to James,
dropping the act of the suave man-about-town and just being himself. More than
that, it was liberating.
"I know it, Mrs. Lowenstein, I know what I did," he told her that
first lunch. "And I'm sorry."
"Very good, then," she said, then looked past him and smiled.
"We both know Dakota is a delight and she gets half her genes from you.
Keep that in mind, James. There's hope for you yet."