Mrs. Everything (30 page)

My fault
, she thought.
My fault for dropping acid, my fault for being stoned. My fault for being with Dev in the first place, and believing that he wanted to be with me.
That night, she joined Liz and Marcy for drinks at Tangier, a bar down the street from Hudson’s, where the floors were sticky and the barstools’ vinyl seats were torn, and the only nod to anything foreign or exotic was a single faded paper lantern that hung above the far corner of the bar. Bethie ordered a gin and tonic that came in a squat, smeared glass, and drank it as she listened to Liz chatter about her upcoming wedding, and Marcy complain about her husband.

“Uh-oh,” Liz said, her voice low. “Gals, we’ve got company.” Bethie looked up to see Mr. Breedlove, the long strands of his sparse black hair combed across the brown-spotted dome of his skull.

“May I join you ladies?” he asked, squeezing his bulk into their booth. “Bartender, another round!” Another gin and tonic with an anemic wedge of lime arrived. Bethie sipped, breathing through her mouth to avoid Mr. Breedlove’s stale coffee breath. He was telling them about his last trip to Miami, leaning so close that Bethie could see the blackheads that dotted his nose. “The gals there, whew, let me tell you,” he said, and made a fanning gesture, to indicate their sexiness. “Talk about itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny bikinis!” Liz, who needed all the overtime he could pay her, giggled, and Marcy glanced at her watch, and Bethie excused herself to go to the ladies’ room, where she spent another long spell studying her reflection. An idea was starting to come to her. Her face was still pale, but her eyes, instead of looking blank and exhausted, sparkled with mischief and bad intentions. She felt alive again, like a struck match fizzing into flame, the same way she’d felt slipping Uncle Mel’s glass paperweight into her pocket, on the way out of his door. For the first time since she’d laid back on the hotel-room bed, Bethie could imagine possibilities. Doors were opening, and maybe she could walk through.

Mr. Breedlove was waiting for her, right by the telephone
booth outside the restroom door. He crowded her into a corner, maneuvering his bulk to trap her against the wall, extending one arm and putting his hand by her head. “Want to grab a bite?” he was asking. Some part of Bethie’s brain must have noticed one of his suit jacket pockets hanging lower than the other, and while her mouth was smiling and saying, “Of course, let me just freshen up,” her hand was easing forward, dipping into his pocket, extracting the wallet and tucking it quickly into her purse.

Mr. Breedlove smiled at her, and gave her fanny a little pat as she disappeared back into the bathroom to powder her nose. Bethie locked herself into the stall and flipped open the worn black leather wallet, where she found sixty dollars and a Diners Club credit card, behind a plastic folder full of photographs of a woman who had to be Mrs. Breedlove, several small Breedloves, and a chocolate lab, by far the best-looking of the bunch.

She tucked forty dollars into her pocket, and put lipstick on her lips without meeting her own eyes in the mirror. On her way back to the table, she dropped the wallet on the floor and kicked it toward the bar, confident that one of the other patrons, or Tangier’s single weary waitress would discover it and give it back. “I’m so sorry,” she said, picking up her jacket, which she’d draped over the back of her chair, “but I forgot I need to pick my mother up at the synagogue tonight. It’s the anniversary of my father’s death,” she said, to sympathetic murmurs from Marcy and Liz, and a disappointed frown from Mr. Breedlove.

Outside, it was sleeting sideways, a wicked wind blowing off Lake St. Clair. Bethie shivered, pulling her coat closed, tugging her hat down over her ears. Forty dollars wasn’t enough to pay Jo back, or even pay for a plane ticket back to London. But it would be enough for a one-way bus ticket to San Francisco. Dev had talked about California like the promised land, where it was always sunny, where it never snowed, where the Man wouldn’t hassle you for burning a little rope. The next morning, she went to work as usual, but she left early, claiming debilitating cramps. She took the bus back home, and in the empty house, she found
her sister’s rucksack, gathering dust in the rear of their closet. Her blue-and-white dress still hung there, the pretty dress she’d brought on her visit to campus, the one she’d been wearing the night she’d met Dev. She left it hanging there, filling Jo’s rucksack with the clothes that still fit her, underwear and bras and socks, a few books, a toothbrush and a comb, and walked out the door toward the bus station, and California, and whatever new life awaited her there.

Jo

L
’chaim
!” roared three hundred wedding guests, as Denny Ziskin’s heel came smashing down to shatter a napkin-wrapped glass.

Denny raised his arms in triumph, flushed with pleasure at the feat of breaking the glass, and of marrying Shelley Finkelbein. The crowd stomped and clapped and began to sing “Siman Tov U’Mazel Tov,” and Denny grabbed Shelley’s hand and danced her down the aisle, toward the reception hall doors, behind which, Jo knew, four thousand dollars’ worth of delicacies awaited, including an ice sculpture of a Star of David, grapefruits topped with maraschino cherries to be served with a flaming brandy sauce, prime ribs of beef, twice-baked potatoes, a three-foot-long challah, and a reproduction of the Temple Mount constructed from chopped liver, olives, and carrot and celery sticks.

Jo was under the chuppah, wearing a bridesmaid’s gown of apricot-colored satin with a white satin sash, white Mary Jane platform shoes, and a white headband in her curled and sprayed hair. She was holding Shelley’s bouquet, in addition to her own. Shelley had given her a small, sad smile when she’d handed it over,
before turning to the rabbi and taking Denny’s hand. The bouquet was made of orchids and delphiniums and hydrangeas, all winter-white, and Jo had wanted to throw it, hard, preferably at Shelley’s face, but she’d promised to behave herself. Her presence was the price that Shelley had exacted for giving Jo the name of a doctor who could help Bethie. “I’ll tell you,” Shelley had said when Jo had called, “but you have to be my bridesmaid.”

Jo felt like she’d swallowed a stone. “No,” she blurted. “Why?”

“Because I don’t have any girl friends,” Shelley had snapped, with a flash of her old spirit. “If you’ll remember, I wasn’t spending a lot of time senior year with my old sorority sisters.”

Jo, who remembered exactly where Shelley had been spending her time, hadn’t answered. “Denny was a Sammy. He’s got eight fraternity brothers he wants to be his groomsmen. Plus his real brothers, plus his cousins,” Shelley said. “I’ve got to come up with some more gals.” Her voice had softened. “And I miss you.”

I miss you, too
, Jo wanted to say.
I miss you, I love you, I’ll love you forever, I never stopped.
Instead, she swallowed and said in a stiff voice, “If that’s what you want, I’ll do it.”

On the Thursday before the wedding, she’d left her house on Alhambra Street and driven to Shelley’s house, where for three days straight she had been with Shelley, and if some evil demon had devised a perfect way to torture her, it could not have hurt worse. She’d accompanied Shelley to the beauty salon, where the girls in the wedding party had gotten manicures and had their hair styled. She’d sat next to Shelley at a bridal luncheon on Friday afternoon, and at Shabbat dinner with her family Friday night. They were always together, but never alone, and every minute, Shelley was right there, close enough to touch; lovely Shelley with her shining hair arranged in a graceful twist, amplified by lengths of fake hair the hairdresser had clipped in; Shelley with her pale skin and her sooty lashes, Shelley with her shining gray eyes and tobacco-scented breath, hugging Jo good night on Friday after dinner before dispatching her to the same blue guest room where Jo had slept during her visit the previous spring.
That time, Shelley had snuck into Jo’s bed at two in the morning. The night before the wedding, Jo lay awake, past midnight, past one o’clock, past two, waiting, hoping against hope that Shelley would come to her, that Shelley would say
I can’t do this
, that Shelley would say
Let’s run away together; let’s just go.
Jo was ready. She’d filled her mother’s car with gas before leaving home, she had her bag packed, the car keys on the bedside table. But Shelley never came.

On Friday afternoon, it had started to snow. Leo Finkelbein had stood by the living-room window, fretting about the guests who hadn’t yet arrived and the foolishness of a January wedding in Michigan. By dinnertime, the snow turned into rain, which made Leo’s mood darker. “Vurse,” he had muttered. “It’ll freeze!” The rain had frozen, but plows had cleared the roads and, on the morning of the wedding, the Finkelbein household arose to find the landscape transformed. Everything, from the ground to the trees to the rooftops, had been coated in a sparkling crust of ice. The whole world, especially the grounds of the West Bloomfield Hills Country Club, glittered as if sprinkled with diamond dust. The club sat on top of a hill above the golf course, with wide windows that offered a view of the sparkling slopes and the pine trees, with their boughs frosted with snow.

Jo told herself that she felt nothing as the happy couple came skipping down the aisle, Shelley, adorably gamine, and Dennis, gawky as a schoolboy in his heavy glasses and his white dinner jacket, with their guests clapping and stomping and singing, their hands clasped, arms raised triumphantly, as if they were boxers who’d just won a fight. She watched them and thought,
I want to die. I do not want to exist in a world where this has happened.

“Jo? You okay?” That was Denny’s sister Julie, pregnant beneath her apricot satin. Jo nodded, forced her lips into a smile, and followed Julie into the ballroom, where it looked like the inside of an ice castle. The tables were laid with pure white tablecloths, glittering crystal, and towering arrangements of white orchids and white ranunculus, creamy lily-of-the-valley and white
gardenias, peonies and hydrangeas, all mixed with gracefully curving branches that had been sprayed with white paint and glitter. Mr. Finkelbein, short and stout as a teapot in white tails, stood at the front of the room, in front of the nine-piece orchestra, patting his hands together, smiling in delight as Dennis and Shelley made their way onto the floor for their first dance to “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” which was followed by an exuberant hora. The guests formed circles, one inside of the other. Shelley and Denny were ushered to the center, seated on chairs, and hoisted to shoulder height by shouting, perspiring men, who hefted them up and down in time to the music. Dennis was beaming, and Shelley was smiling, clutching one end of a white handkerchief while Denny held the other end, looking as if this was all she’d ever wanted in her life.

Jo ignored the wedding guests who’d tried to grab her hand and draw her into the dance. She stood at the edge of the crowd, watching, her eyes on Shelley’s face. When the hora was over, she went to the bar. She’d had two sloe gin fizzes, one more drink than she usually allowed herself, and was working her way through an unprecedented third, when a young man approached. He was tall and lanky, with thick, dark hair, a narrow, fox-like face, and an appealing smile. He pulled out the chair beside her, flipped it around so that he was straddling it, and took a seat, leaning forward, saying, “Hiya, babe.”

“Babe?” Jo’s voice was cool. The boy was undeterred as he nodded his head toward the dance floor, and a group of fellows in tuxedos who stood in a group by the stage.

“My buddies bet me that I couldn’t make you smile.”

Jo noticed his forearms: lean, sinewy, tanned golden-brown, so different from Shelley’s pale skin. His dark hair was thick and shiny, and his eyebrows looked like emphatic dashes drawn above his eyes. She sighed and looked away, but the boy was undeterred. “So how about this?” he asked. He leaned close, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ll tell you every joke I know, you’ll laugh, my buddies will pay up, and we’ll split the loot.”

“You said smile.”

“Beg pardon?”

Jo set her glass down on the white tablecloth. Speaking carefully, making sure not to slur, she said, “You told me your buddies bet that you couldn’t make me smile. Not laugh. Smile.”

“Well, look at that. You’re smiling already.”

“I am not.” Jo waved her hand, like she was shooing a fly. “Go away.”

“Before I’ve even introduced myself?” He shook his head in mock sorrow at his own bad manners and held out his hand. “David Braverman, at your service.”

Jo’s tongue was heavy. “I don’t need any services.”

“Then how about a dance?” He squeezed her hand, and Jo was so tired, tired of talking, tired of fighting, that she let Dave Braverman pull her to her feet. He was taller than she was, even in her heels, and it was not unpleasant to be held by someone taller, not unpleasant to feel small in his arms. Dave was an excellent dancer, guiding Jo through a smooth fox-trot as the band played “Runaround Sue.”

She barely spoke, beyond telling him that she’d graduated in June, but Dave talked for both of them. Jo learned that Dave was a senior at the U of M, even though he was a year older than she was. He was the youngest of three, with an older brother and an older sister. His father owned an auto parts store; he had a semester left before he graduated, with an economics degree. She learned the name of Dave’s fraternity, and that his dog was named Bingo, and that he drove a Mustang convertible. Had Jo heard the new Rolling Stones album yet? Jo shook her head. Had she seen
Dr. Zhivago
, which had premiered that Friday night? She shook her head again.

If Dave noticed her silences, or how she failed to do the girl’s work of keeping the conversational ball aloft, he covered for her, maintaining an easy patter, answering the questions Jo would have asked him if Jo had been a normal girl, and not heartbroken and halfway to drunk.

“You okay?” Dave asked, as they danced close to the happy couple. Jo must have been staring. She hoped that, if Dave had noticed, he’d decide that she was pining for the groom and not the bride. She didn’t say anything. Dave danced her away, toward the other side of the ballroom, and his hands were gentle, his voice solicitous, almost as if they’d struck a bargain and he had agreed to take care of her, to see her safely through the wedding without leaving her side.