Me and My Manny (12 page)

Planning a Party

Harry had been in a slump for days. He moped around, saying and doing not much at all. Late in the afternoon on his third day of loafing, I asked, “Why so glum?”

“No reason.” He shrugged. “I just haven’t been myself lately.”

I pressed my hand on his cheek. “You’re sure you’re not sick?” Though only the third week in September, flu season had gotten off to an early start, and several tenants at Whitehall had runny noses and phlegmy coughs.

Harry sighed. “In the doldrums. At least until my next assignment.”

“With the both of us out of work temporarily,” I said enthusiastically, “we could work on the manny manual for our manny manufacturing business, or better yet, why don’t we take a trip? We could drive up north, take the ferry to Kingston, and spend a day or two in Port Townsend. Wouldn’t it be fun—eating Copper River salmon, walking through the lavender fields, and staying at the Tides Inn? I turned to my manny on the recliner. “What do you say, Wolfie. Care to see the old seafarer’s sights?”

“No can do.” The saggy-faced Harry spoke in his place. “Gotta be on call.” He paused for a moment. “Let’s throw a party,” he then said.

“You mean with hors d’oeuvres and champagne?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of an informal gathering of a few beer-guzzling friends.”

“I don’t know.” I looked over the cluttered coffee table, the rumpled sofa cushions, and dusty rugs. “It sounds like work.”

“We’ll keep it simple. Takeout, paper plates, and plastic utensils.”

Even the simplest spread would require me to clean the apartment and set a buffet table.

“You know what your problem is, Judy? You just don’t like people.”

“That’s silly. How could I not like people? I’m a person, and so are you. It would be similar to not liking ourselves.”

“That’s how misanthropes are. They dislike everyone else, sometimes even themselves. So they become reclusive, withdrawn from the world. Look at the evidence. Why else would your best buddy be a dummy?”

“My so-called best buddy has a lot to recommend him. He’s safe, loyal, and is reliable.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Harry went on. “You want a sure thing; you can’t stand uncertainty. So you come up with a gimmick and convince yourself it’s a product.”

“I have this great idea for my own business, and you veto it out of existence. If up to you, there’d be no Slinky, no Hula Hoop, no Pet Rock, or any number of terrific gizmos that made their promoters a pile of cash. How unreasonable is that?”

“What’s unreasonable is that your great idea happens to be absurd. Just because you’re out of touch with flesh-and-blood bipeds is no cause to think paying customers will follow suit.”

“Talk about being out of touch. Here we are the most plugged-in, wired-up generation ever. And you think those bipeds are busting their butts to preserve face-to-face communication.”

“The point is you can’t strike it rich by peddling gizmos. If you cared anything about real people, you wouldn’t try to rip them off.”

“I can’t believe that you actually think I’m a people-hating con artist.”

“Then I take it we’re having a party?”

I blinked, slowly getting used to the idea. “I’ll have to reserve the game room downstairs.”

“Not there, here, in the apartment. That way we can avoid inviting the neighbors.”

“What do you have against the neighbors?”

“Nothing, except they’re always around. Your manny, too, he’s not invited. You got to be human to get in.”

I watched Harry push the manny on his platform into the entryway closet and close the door.

“Let me think,” I said, fetching a pad and pencil. “There’s the Irelands—Jenny and Alfy. And Bill and Babs Fuller, and Hillary what’s-her-name plus a date, if she can get one.”

I wrote out the list of names and scanned my day-timer, jotting down telephone numbers and e-mail addresses. I then went to the alcove and switched on the computer.

“Take a gander, Harry. The recluse is about to e-mail some of the friends she’s kept in touch with over the past several years.”

We planned the party for this coming Saturday. A week’s notice for a small gathering of ten to twelve guests should be sufficient.

“Sounds good to me,” Harry said, sprawled on the sofa with the back of his hand resting on his forehead. He appeared drawn and tired; he’d also been skipping meals and losing sleep.

“Are you sure you’re up to entertaining?” “Just dead in the water. I’ll be fine, come next week.” Watching him, I thought that getting together with old friends might be just what he needed. I spent the next few days cleaning the apartment and shopping for groceries. Toward the end of the week, I chopped up an assortment of vegetables, prepared a variety of dips, and purchased a few bottles of domestic wines and a couple cases of Red Hook beer. Afterward, I set out my satiny white blouse to wear with my black hostess pants and made an appointment to have my hair trimmed and frosted.

Morphing from Harry to Wolf

Saturday night, shortly after the guests began to arrive, Kadee called saying she’d be late. She had trouble getting little Patrick ready for bed. Jenny and Alfy Ireland came first; next the Fullers, carrying a bottle of champagne. “Doubly-bubbly,” Alfy called it. Finally Hillary Blain turned up with a boyfriend whom she introduced as Samuel Pensky, a wealthy stockbroker who looked to be in his sixties. Ever the gracious hostess, I answered the door while Harry greeted everybody, shook hands, and took wraps.

“Get comfortable, there’s plenty to eat.” I swept my hand across the well-stocked buffet table that included a variety of dips and chips. Consistent with our nautical theme, made apparent by the tiny anchors on the napkins, an assortment of seafood snacks was also available.

As the group helped themselves, I took Harry aside. “Your hair looks awful plastered down like that.”

“The blow dryer’s on the fritz,” Harry said.

I mentally noted to buy a new one, but when I went into the bathroom to set out some new hand towels, I switched the blow dryer on and it worked fine.

“Hey, it’s Kadee. Glad you could make it,” somebody yelled as the front door closed.

I elbowed my way toward the entry and gave her a hug. “You’re looking great,” I said, taken by the colorful beads entwined in her crown of mini-braids.

“Thanks. Sorry I’m late. My mom’s sitting sugar-bear.” We converged on the buffet table where I poured two red wines. “She just finished moving in with me,” Kadee related, raising the glass to her lips. “I won’t have to list the house now that she’s helping with the mortgage.”

“Mind if I look around?” Jenny asked Harry, as he closed the glass doors over the fire in the gas-log surround.

“Where’d you get those bell-bottoms? They look ancient.” I turned in time to see Babs Fuller, looking at Harry’s flat stomach and the buttoned flap across his crotch.

“Navy surplus. They’re back in style,” he said, dusting his hands. Then Babs asked, “Have you lost weight?” And Harry said, “A little.”

“Eight to ten pounds in a week or two is more than a little. Are you on a crash diet or something?” I asked in a quiet voice.

Before he could answer, Hillary interrupted with a gushy exclamation. “Oh how darling! I thought it was a person, but it’s not,” she cooed with respect to my manny by the fireplace, perched on a padded chair brought up from the game room. The pointed red-white-and-blue-striped party hat on his head added to his air of joviality.

“Harry, did you…” It was foolish to ask if he’d reneged on his word to keep Wolf out of sight since he obviously had.

Hillary along with a few other guests gathered around Wolf, openly admiring him. “He looks kind of familiar. But I just can’t place him,” Hillary said.

“It’s my duplicate,” said Harry. “Judy had it made from of snapshot of me.”

“Now I see it.” Hillary glanced back and forth. “I love those wacky ears. But those cocked eyes…”

“He looks like a comic-book version of Errol Flynn,” her date remarked.

Kadee snapped her fingers. “The swashbuckler. That’s exactly what I thought. My late granny, who was kind of psychic, went to a party on his yacht. She was just a teenager then. I even got a picture of the two of them.”

Finally it registered: my husband was emulating the manny. By example, Harry was determined to prove that he was being taken over. And he was doing it in front of witnesses who could testify to the change.

“Crash diets are dangerous.” Babs frowned.

“I’m okay, except my joints are a little stiff and achy.”

“It’s a bad case of manny-itis,” I mumbled, and Harry, turning to me, batted his long wispy eyelashes. I squinted, suspecting the lashes had been darkened with mascara.

“Harry, you really should eat something,” Kadee said, herself chewing. “These pizza slices are terrific.”

“They do look good,” said Harry, who actually hated anything with tomato sauce on it. “Only I’m not hungry.” He then flopped into the recliner, droopy as a puppet dropped on its strings.

Bill Fuller twisted the top off a bottle of Red Hook beer and took a swig. “Have one of these; it’ll stimulate your appetite.”

“No, thanks; I’ll just sip a little water.” The limp-wristed Harry lifted a plastic bottle on the end table.

“Hey, Alfy. Harry’s on the wagon.”

“Him a teetotaler? He’s got to be sick,” Alfy said.

“Harry
hasn’t
been feeling too well lately,” I offered.

“Sorry to hear that,” Bill said, and Babs, still looking concerned, reiterated, “Crash diets are hard on your health.”

“It’s the most curious thing.” Hillary shifted her eyes from Harry to the manny and back again. “It’s as if
you
look more like your caricature than it looks like you.”

Like hell curious, I thought. Harry’s slicked-back hairdo, his ancient mariner’s outfit, his physique in general—all calculated to appear as if he were in fact being shape-shifted.

“It’s like
The Picture of Dorian Gray,”
Jenny said, now on the hassock next to Harry, who exchanged a knowing glance with me as we’d seen the film together years ago.

In short, the character in Oscar Wilde’s novel is a beautiful young man who gets his portrait painted that when finished turns out to be his exact likeness. Dorian examines it and makes a mad wish for eternal youth. A Faustian bargain where the guy forfeits his soul. He remains forever young while his picture shows the ravages of old age. Then one night, the portrait painter visits Dorian and pleads with him to reform. In response, Dorian takes the painter to the attic and shows him the hideous portrait. Suddenly Dorian is overcome by hatred for the painter. He stabs the painter to death and, afterward, blackmails an acquaintance into disposing of the body for him. By this time Dorian’s no longer redeemable, but he still performs a good deed and rechecks the portrait, only it doesn’t affect the ugly image. He then destroys the portrait with a knife by stabbing the canvas. A cry sounds, the servants rush to the door of this room and force their way in. They see a perfect portrait of their master on the wall. But, dead on the floor is the body of a grotesque old man with a knife in his heart.

The guests were quiet as Hillary had recounted a similar retelling of the story.

“Still,” she concluded, “it’s an interesting concept, getting someone else or something else to pay the price for you.”

Jenny glanced at the slider half opened to the balcony. “I heard a rumor that someone in the witness protection program lives here.”

“A flasher, too,” Babs added, turning to me. “I heard it from that amateur paparazzi.”

“So about Dorian Gray,” Harry addressed Hillary. “How did he strike the bargain?”

“If I remember right, Dorian just makes a wish. Sorcery is only implied.” She twirled her wine glass. “The idea of transferring a soul is nothing new. The notion came way before organized religion.”

Babs looked at Harry. “Yeah, it’s like those primitives. They won’t let their pictures be taken. They’re afraid the snapshots will steal their essence.”

Considering Wolf as Harry’s Son

One weekend night, nearing our bedtime, Harry hovered over Wolf on the recliner looking cute as an adolescent abandoned to sleep. When I asked his motive, Harry answered, “That manny of yours, he’s forever around. He’s like the skunk at a garden party. Or the turd in the punchbowl. You keep pretending you don’t see it, but it’s still there.”

From Harry’s criticism, I assumed he had something radical in mind. And given Harry’s jealousy toward Wolf, I had an inkling of what it was. An ultimatum, either him or Wolf. That didn’t bode well for ever getting Harry on board with manny manufacturing.

“Harry, sweetie, don’t you think it’s kind of good he’s always in plain sight?” I said preemptively. “You know, out in the open where we can keep an eye on him. That way you’ll know if any alterations start to take place.”

“It’s more like he’s keeping an eye on us,” Harry said in a hushed tone.

“I’m sure he wouldn’t seem intrusive, if you viewed him differently. Or in a different role actually.”

“Such as?”

“Well, such as your son. A sort of chip off the old block.” I dismissed Harry’s grimace and continued. “You two look so much alike you could be mistaken for father and son.”

“A son. My little boy. My big boy,” Harry crooned as if taken by the idea.

“As parents we’ve already missed a lot. His first steps, his first tooth, his first word. Not really, but on the plus side, we didn’t have to put up with sleepless nights and dirty diapers.”

As I spoke, I realized I’d just assigned myself the role of my manny’s mom. To make my maternity official, I’d need to adopt the little wooden darling. In the event of a divorce, my being legally responsible for Wolf would help eliminate a custody battle. Legal guardianship would also put me in charge of the manny’s future family tree. In terms of manny marketing, I could spin off as many branches as I pleased.

Harry again eyed Wolf, lazing comfortably in his favorite chair. “Hard to take pride in a son like that. He always looks so…so stoned.”

“Typical teenager.”

I again turned to Harry, looking puzzled as I spoke. “Since Wolf has attained full manny-hood, adoption’s probably not necessary. But I do think that we should consider drawing up wills to avoid dying intestate and having Wolf sold at an estate sale.”

While Harry’s confusion deepened, I created a mental portrait of my newly established family. First, I saw Harry in his fancy dress uniform standing behind me with his hand on my shoulder as I, covered with diamonds and wearing a flowing red gown, sat on a golden thrown with Wolf, also in uniform, perched on my lap.

“Life comes without guarantees.”

“True,” I said, wondering what prompted that thought, “but some are assured a better outcome than others. That’s how mannys can be of benefit. Listen Harry, a manny could help civilize the human family. As a prop to practice on, a manny could teach people to treat one another with more dignity and respect. It’s like what happened to Jeffery Dahmer. If you see a family member abusing a defenseless manikin, you know you got a problem in the making.”

Harry had been staring at me as if I had a problem. “Honey?” He stepped closer and spoke in a confidential tone. “Don’t tell anyone else about the stuff you just said.”

“Why not?” After a length of silence, I narrowed my eyes. “Oh, I get it. Trade secrets, right?”

Harry’s mouth pinched into a weak smile. “I guess with you under a strain, struggling to make our ends meet and looking for a job and all, it’s okay if the manny sticks around a while.” Harry took my hand and kissed my fingers. “Later on, when you’re less stressed,” he said in a consoling tone, “we’ll work something out.”