Tales From A Broad (20 page)

‘Hey, there's no way this is gonna fit in my oven,' I said nervously.

‘No problem.' A band of merry hatchet men arrived and chopped it into four smaller pieces. I took it home to the tune of $400.

The trick of making a good brisket is to wrap it securely in foil, cook it on a low heat, and leave it alone.

I steal out of Michelle's playgroup after three hours and slip back into the apartment to check on my brisket.

‘Posie?' I call.

She appears in the kitchen. A second later, I hear a door close.

‘Was that our door?' I ask her.

‘I was napping,' she says.

‘That's fine. I just wondered about the noise.'

‘I didn't hear noise. I was asleep.'

‘No, just now.'

‘Yes, I only just got up.'

‘Yes, but I heard it while you were in here.'

‘I had to nap. I have female pains.'

‘Oy
gvalt
, okay. I'm just checking on the meat. Take some aspirin.'

The perfect scent isn't hovering so I reckon it isn't done. I hike up the oven to six and take the kids to the playground. When I get home, four aluminium pans are sitting on the counter.

‘Posie!' I holler. She appears from her side of things, still looking tousled and groggy. ‘Did you take this out?'

‘I smell a burn, Ma'am.'

‘It's not your fault that you don't understand brisket.' I say it more as a ‘calm down, Fran' mantra than for her sake, but nevertheless I can hear my voice take on a dangerous trill.

‘I think it was in too long, Ma'am.'

‘
It's really not your fault that you don't understand brisket, Posie
.'

She peels back a corner of the foil.

‘
What are you doing?
' I jump up and down, the first steps to the monkey dance. ‘You think you can uncover my brisket? Who do you think you are? You, who knows nothing about brisket!'

‘Yes, Ma'am. I want to show the burn.'

‘It's not burned! It's got a still-a-long-way-to-go smell. I know.
You
don't know. I know!' I cover it tightly, not even looking at it because eye contact with an unfinished brisket immediately gives it the kybosh.

‘Posie,' I say, with tortured, measured calmness, ‘I'm throwing a birthday party for Frank tomorrow. This is –'

‘Sir was born two days before Jesus?' Her eyes light up; she claps her hands in glee.

‘Yeah –'

‘Very blessed is he.'

‘Yeah,
this
close to being King of the Jews … anyway, I have a big dinner party tomorrow. You'll have to work with me, okay? Right now I have to meet up with Samantha for a run.
Don't touch the brisket!
Understood?'

‘Yes, Ma'am. Have a nice run. I'll give Sir and the kids dinner and their bath.'

‘Frank won't be home until late tonight.' Her face falls.

After letting Samantha talk for a few minutes, I contemplate confiding in her about something I cannot get off my mind. Her life, as usual, is full of treasured moments, little gifts and endless satisfaction. It's terrific stuff to keep you leaping through a long, hot run. But today, my thoughts are wedged in too tightly to allow my spirits to lift. She's talking about how her daughter, Heidi, helped a sick cat give birth to nine healthy kittens. Meanwhile, I'm remembering something that happened very recently in Manhattan, just before we came back to Singapore. I was walking down the street and heard someone behind me. ‘Yo, yo, yo, hey baby. You the one, baby …' He went on for a while like that and I was loving it. Then I realised that any self-respecting woman shouldn't. So I turned around to glare at him but before I could work up a scathing look, he said, ‘Oh, you
old
…' Crestfallen, I faced front and continued on. He was a nice molester, though. He tried to make me feel better: ‘Dat's not to say you don't have a few good years left, baby. You okay. Aw, I was just teasin'.'

Before Samantha can tell me the name of the ninth kitten, I cut her short and blurt, ‘I promised Frank I'd bring another woman to bed when he turned 35.'

She gives me quite a shocked look. ‘Oh, no, no, no, don't worry. I wasn't asking you. How funny. I mean, not that you aren't his type. Jeez, anyway …' And I begin to explain. Who knows how the pact came about, but, over the years, it's loomed and hovered like my own personal cloud. I feel like if I don't come through, the wild child he married will be forever gone, replaced by this 32-year-old frumpinstein who reminds herself that Wednesday isn't tuna day any more and carries moist towelettes. Samantha laughs and dabs her forehead with a
shmattah
. I continue, ‘After ten years of promising, it's like judgement day … am I still a ride on a Harley or a tilt on the recliner rocker?' She offers me her second
shmattah
. ‘Thanks,' I dab. We used to stay up late and spend Saturday mornings drinking Baileys and having sex. We once did it in an alley in the city. And another time in the file room at his office … On a train once! Jeez, before I met him, I had two men. At one time. Okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to just call some service and make a memory. Yeah, and this 23-year-old, flawless, never-had-a-baby – never mind that my babies were too big to even call babies – Asian, lithe girl will knock on my door wearing better clothes and better legs. And me, the nice old lady of the house, can pay her and see her safely to a cab.

We arrive back at home. I thank Samantha for listening and she wishes me luck, adding, ‘You know, Fran, Frank loves
you
.' She says she can see it in his eyes.

Like what I saw in Darren Wynoski's? Darren was my sister's boyfriend from college. He campaigned for a ménage à trois with Bonnie every time he called and I picked up and every time he visited. He was a Mack truck of a guy who led the football team to victory, an African–American adopted by a Polish family late in his youth. I don't remember what happened to his own parents, but he took on the name Wynoski and did his best to be an African–American Pole, which is hard without many role models around. Now, if I had brought home a 600-pound, made of kryptonite, black guy, my dad would have thrown me across the room and locked me in for a fortnight. Which was why I always snuck around. But this was sweet-sweet Bonnie and no one really ever got mad at her. My parents thought Darren was great.

One day he came over for dinner and we were all on the front lawn tossing a football. I fumbled and the ball hopped over a little shrub and smashed my dad's study window. Darren scooted down and reached in to get the ball. We were called to dinner and went inside. No sooner had the corn landed on the table, but there was a knock at the door. Dad went to get it.

‘Sorry to disturb your dinner,' said the sergeant, detecting Dad's paper napkin tucked into his shirt. ‘Neighbour reported a thief at your house. A large Negro fellow in black shorts, seen breaking your window.'

Dad explained that he was our guest and a ball had smashed the window. The officer hesitated, looked squarely into my father's eyes to be sure he was telling the truth and hadn't been coerced into protecting the criminal. Unconvinced, he pulled out his card. ‘Here's my name and number if you remember anything else.'

A few years later, without intervention, Bonnie married a Jewish boy from New Jersey.

I still have some of tomorrow left to find my solution. I also have a bazillion things to do. I walk in, sniff. Yes, it's done to perfection! I place the pans on the counter. I walk away. PS, you don't view the brisket until the next day. It's all a matter of trust.

I wake up at 5 am, have coffee, check emails and faxes, and feel sorry for myself for being up so early, until I hear someone get into the elevator and realise I'm not so alone. I go for a run, come back to a still-sleeping household and write ‘HAPPY 35th BIRTHDAY' in red lipstick on every mirror in the apartment. I wake Frank up with a birthday kiss under the covers and, while he showers, I make him his favourite breakfast – an onion omelette with cheese, sausage and bacon, beans on toast, and coffee with Baileys. (But forever damned be the simple hardboiled egg!) He says he has to go into the office for just a few hours, which is surprising since he claims to have never gone to school, classes or work on his birthday. I could use his help watching the kids while I work on the party.

Still, it's early and there's no need to start stressing out. The brisket is done and just needs carving, the appetizers just need thawing, and other odds and ends can't be done too far ahead anyway. We'll need to get the beer and wine and ice and set up, but I tell myself to calm down, there's still ten hours till showtime. Besides, I have Posie. She's no dummy, she's a pro, she's dying to be busy. I don't use her enough, in fact. So, yeah, let's send Posie out with a shopping list. I need to unwind.

‘Posie,' I call.

She appears at my side. ‘Yes, Ma'am.'

‘I need you to do some shopping for Frank's party.'

‘For Sir?' she says, brightening.

‘Well, for the party. Yeah.' I tell her what to get, and write it down as well. ‘I'll need corn chips, they cost about $4; cheddar cheese, $7; smoked salmon, $7; caviar, the black kind, $10; Greek-style yogurt, $3 …' I draw a sketch of the type of baguette I want and extend my arms to show her ‘this big'. I write down the names of all the wines we need and their prices. I tally up for her the money she will likely need. I grab the coffee can where we keep some household money and hand her $300. ‘Now, that should cover it. See you soon.'

The kids and I go out. It is a cloudless, glorious day – hot as ever and perfect for a morning at the pool. Everyone is already there. My friends are poaching in the shallow end of the baby pool and the kids are teetering on the edge of the turtle pond. I sunscreen Sadie and Huxley, put Hux in his inflatable armbands and waterproof diapers, and set them free. I take my place next to Valerie.

‘How goes it, matey?' she asks.

‘Ugh, I've got some problems,' I answer. I didn't know I'd be going down this path but she caught me off guard with the ‘How are you?' I could have said ‘Fine', like most normal human beings. But I have always been so touched by the term ‘How are you?' that I've never been able to remember the word ‘Fine', or that I'm not supposed to pause, contemplate and launch into a monologue. When I say ‘Well', it's not my final answer; I'm not saying ‘Fine'. I'm beginning: ‘Well … I had an awful day already …' Sometimes people walk away, but, hey, they asked an intelligent question and I'll talk as long as I bloody well like. Valerie is too relaxed and too firmly planted between my hips and Tilda's to do much else but listen.

I tell her about the promise I made ten years ago and how it has not been forgotten but, rather, has snowballed in meaning. I tell her about the man who followed me in New York, and we laugh.

Tilda asks, ‘What's so funny?'

‘Well, you know it's Frank's birthday … you are coming over, aren't you?' She nods. Tess, Caroline and Dana make their way over. ‘You're all coming tonight, right?' They nod.

‘Sorry, Valerie, but I'll have to back up.' I repeat it all.

‘Frannie, only you would feel old on someone else's birthday,' Dana says.

Sadie paddles over. ‘What's so funny, Mom?'

We burst out laughing.

‘I know,' Tilda says, ‘why don't you have Sadie and Lucy asleep in your bed when we get back tonight?' Lucy is her daughter. Her kids, in fact most of our guests' kids, are coming over tonight. By the time we all go to Anywheres, they'll be sleeping on floors and sofas and beds, to be taken home later in parents' arms. The sense of extended family at Fortune Gardens is probably the single most precious aspect of my new life. In the light of day, around my friends, I feel the complications easing up. They are upbeat and pull the humour out of me easily and appreciatively. The environment is safe, perhaps because it is relatively temporary but also anchored by how important each day is to small children. We are well suited to each other and are quickly becoming essential to one another, sharing events and histories, dreams, learning the depths and oddities of each other's character, without ever having to revisit places in the past where we don't want to venture. To them, I am not the person on the freezing cold deck worrying that life was not working and working was not life. The beauty and relief wash over me. And then I start picturing each one naked with Frank.

‘Put two Barbies on the pillow,' Valerie guffaws. She's got nice shoulders, good stomach – too good, actually.

‘Dress up in a wig,' Tess offers. She has a beautiful face, luxuriant hair. Nu-uh.

‘Have Collin dress in a wig,' Dana adds. If Dana covered her eyes and strapped down her boobs … she'd still have those lips.

I am surrounded by sensuous, lovely, adored women, mothers, my age. I feel better thanks to their efforts to package my issues up as a gag. But somehow, in the course of my life with Frank, this 35th birthday quest was merely a salient example of my vow that I would never grow up. Cantor Donald prophesised: ‘Changes will challenge the ties you forge today.' Amen, Cantor Donald!