The Fixer Upper (20 page)

“My dad’s a fixer upper,” Eric told her. “He’ll make it beautiful.”

“Well, okay, then.”

“Eric?” Mr. Donovan called into the den. “It’s getting late. School night.”

“It’s not that late,” Eric said to Reva, but he dutifully closed the Web site window and pulled his CD out of the computer. “So, I guess I’ll see you,” he said kind of shyly.

Reva realized he probably didn’t hang out with many older girls like her. He was, what, a fourth grader? Most eighth-grade girls wouldn’t acknowledge his existence. She hoped he didn’t think there was anything too special going on here. They were just kids of parents who were…well, making the fireplace beautiful. There was a cute euphemism, Reva thought cynically.

Still, if his father and her mother were going to beautify the fireplace, Reva might as well get along with Eric for as long as the beautification lasted. They could be friends, even if he was way younger than her. Especially now that they were partners in the creation of Darryl J’s Web site, they could wind up being really good friends.

Not long after Ned and Eric left, Reva said good-night to Libby and disappeared into her bedroom. Libby knew her daughter hadn’t gone to bed; she considered herself much too mature to retire for the night at nine-forty-five. She was just freezing Libby out.

Reva’s icy detachment wasn’t necessary. The open living-room window was freezing Libby quite effectively.

She slid the window shut. It stuck in its tracks, and she had to exert herself to get it completely closed. Once she owned the apartment, sticky windows were going to be her responsibility. But they would be
her
sticky windows, and this would be
her
fireplace, which she hoped would eventually look better than it did now, streaked with stripes of paint and semidiluted paint and marble more gray than green. Ned had only worked on one side of the hearth so far. He hadn’t even started on the mantel shelf.

But it was
her
fireplace.

The hell with it. She flopped onto the sofa and grinned. The hell with the fireplace, the sticky window, her bitchy daughter and her loans.

Ned desired her.

She tried to remember the last time she’d felt so utterly desirable. The few relationships she’d had over the years had always been stable and sweet and…well, not exactly passionate. She’d been seeking safety, a man who wouldn’t walk out on her and Reva the way Harry had, a man who considered a hardworking single mother in an unglamorous job perfectly acceptable.

And indeed, she’d felt acceptable. But not
desirable.

What a fabulous word that was. She rolled it over her tongue, then experimented with the word
sexy.
No, she didn’t quite feel sexy. Her tush was too spongy to qualify as sexy, and her hair was too ripply—not stylishly wavy but lumpy and unkempt, no matter how carefully she brushed and styled it. She dressed in unsexy clothes and spent most of her days asking five-year-olds what their favorite letter of the alphabet was, and she came home tired and cooked utilitarian meals and struggled with her daughter. There was nothing sexy in that description.

In spite of all that, Ned desired her. She reveled in the knowledge.

She would see him Saturday. Friday she’d be too frazzled, after a day at Hudson, to give her all to anything resembling a date. Saturday she’d be better rested. They’d make a plan, just the two of them, something more substantial than a drink at a neighborhood pub and a stolen kiss in the alcove of a shoe boutique. They’d talk about their favorite movies and books, and she’d ask him about his childhood, and they’d argue politics. Or maybe not. Maybe they’d just spend the whole evening gazing at each other, and she would read his desire for her in his eyes.

Not that she’d let him follow up on that desire. Not yet. She was still much too new at this.

But it felt good. After too many days filled with anger,
anxiety and guilt, Libby lounged on her old sofa, inhaled the cool air, which still carried the slightest scent of solvent, studied her splotchy, smeared fireplace and smiled. Tomorrow she’d get back to suffering from guilt again, but right now…

Right now, she was desirable, and it felt good.

S
aturday morning found Libby entering Congregation Beth Shalom with Vivienne. Her life seemed so bewildering at the moment, she figured a dose of religion might help her regain her bearings.

The only problem was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to regain them.

She’d agreed to attend services with Vivienne on a whim. Also, she didn’t have any fresh bagels, and she figured that on her way home she could stop in at Bloom’s and stock up. Before she’d left the apartment, she’d given Reva permission to invite Kim over, but insisted that they would have to stay in the apartment—a semigrounding.

Maybe by allowing Reva to socialize with her best friend when she was under house arrest, Libby was spoiling her. Maybe if Libby regained her bearings, she would feel bad about that. Maybe spending a couple of hours at Congre
gation Beth Shalom would clear her mind and teach her the importance of being a strict disciplinarian, especially when one was a single mother and one’s daughter was plunging headlong into adolescence.

“So this thing with the Irish guy, it’s serious?” Vivienne asked in a hushed voice as they wove through the crowds milling in the vestibule of the old limestone building. Vivienne had on a hot-pink sweater with a fringed collar. The color was blinding in contrast to the more sedate apparel of most members of the congregation. Beth Shalom was a conservative synagogue, and the majority of the people schmoozing their way toward the sanctuary were dressed soberly. No one except Vivienne dared to wear neon-pink. The color alone would keep Libby awake if the service made her drowsy.

Libby had worn a simple wool below-the-knee skirt and a demure sweater. Although her parents had had a love-hate relationship with organized religion, her mother had indoctrinated her to groom herself properly for temple. Libby might have defied her mother in all other fashion circumstances, but she’d understood the importance of dressing correctly for God.

“Because if it’s not serious,” Vivienne continued, still in a near whisper, “I could introduce you to Harvey Golub. And there’s a very nice young man, maybe a little younger than you, but why not, you know? His parents have been in the congregation for years, and now he’s attending services with them while he looks for a new job.”

“He’s living with his parents?” Libby asked. “How young is he?”

Vivienne poked her arm. “He has a PhD. How young can he be?”

Wonderful, Libby thought with a barely suppressed snort. An unemployed PhD living with his parents. Just what she wanted.

In fact, just what she wanted was Ned Donovan. He’d come to the apartment yesterday evening to continue working on her fireplace. He’d brought Eric along again, which was fine with Libby, since Reva seemed willing to treat Eric civilly, for some reason. The two of them had huddled at the computer, whispering and giggling and ignoring Ned as he scraped and scrubbed and filled the living room with the chemical scent of solvent and the nippy evening air.

Libby had tried to ignore Ned, too. She’d sat at her dining-room table, diligently reviewing the application of James Quimble, who, according to his mother, wanted to be a lion when he grew up. That alone was enough to place him on the “recommended for acceptance” pile.

But as hard as she tried to remain focused on the applications, she couldn’t shut off her awareness of Ned. And it wasn’t just because of the smell and the cold evening air wafting through the living room, across the entry and into the dining room. Nor was it because she could hear his tools making rasping and clanking noises, or because she could hear muffled thumps as he shifted position, as his huge boot-clad feet clomped around her floor.

He whistled. Like a dwarf in a Disney movie, he whistled while he worked, a pleasant, unrecognizable tune. Did he always whistle on the job, she wondered, or was his whistling a special expression of the joy he took in rehabilitating her fireplace? Or maybe the joy he took in being in her apartment, doing something for her? Or his joy at thinking she would have to let his son into the Hudson School because he was doing something for her?

Actually, she believed he was doing this for himself more than her. He was the one who was so psyched about her fireplace’s potential.

“Hey, Libby—you’ve got to see this,” he called to her at one point.

“I’m not crawling into the fireplace with you,” she called back. She’d already done that twice, and both times had left her discombobulated.

He resumed whistling and chiseling and whatever else he was doing. Ten minutes later, he appeared in the dining-room doorway and announced, “I’m dying of thirst. Any chance I can get a glass of water?”

“Help yourself. The sink works,” Libby said, trying to stifle her grin as she gestured toward the kitchen doorway. His hair was mussed—undoubtedly from crawling in the fireplace—and he’d rolled up the sleeves of his flannel shirt to his elbows. He had the sexiest forearms she’d ever seen. That she would even notice his forearms and think of them in terms of their sex appeal rattled her.

“I don’t know where you keep your glasses,” he pointed out.

With a great show of reluctance, she shoved away from the table and preceded him into the kitchen. Just as she reached up to open the cabinet door, he planted a hand on her shoulder, turned her to face him and covered her mouth with his. “This is what I’m dying of thirst for,” he murmured between the first kiss and the second.

She ended the second kiss before it lasted as long as the first. “The kids—” she murmured.

“Are at the other end of the apartment.” He completed the sentence before zeroing in for a third kiss.

She broke that one off, too, even though she would have had to think long and hard to come up with anything she’d rather do than stand in her kitchen kissing Ned. She’d never considered solvent as an aphrodisiac before. By the end of the third kiss, she’d never consider solvent as anything but an aphrodisiac.

She was going to see him tonight, just the two of them. On a date. Spending her morning in prayer seemed like a good idea.

She followed Vivienne into the sanctuary and chose a seat near the back, in case Vivienne’s sweater failed to keep her awake during the service. The moment they settled on the upholstered bench, Vivienne gave her a sharp nudge. “That’s him,” she whispered.

“Who?” Libby asked, peering around.

“Ari.”

“Harry?” What was Harry doing here? Couldn’t he be religious downtown in his own neighborhood?

“Ari,” Vivienne stressed. “The younger man.”

Libby’s gaze followed Vivienne’s discreetly pointed finger to a thin young man in khakis and a white shirt, an ill-fitting yarmulke sitting askew atop his thick brown hair. He appeared absurdly young. Libby was already financially linked to Sharma, the boy-man mortgage officer at her bank. She certainly didn’t intend to start a relationship with a boy-man possible lover, especially one who didn’t know how to wear a yarmulke properly. Even Ned would look better in a yarmulke than Ari did.

He smiled shyly at Vivienne, who smiled back and fluttered her fingers in a wave. “He’s really very sweet,” she confided to Libby.

He lives with his parents,
Libby wanted to retort. But who cared? She didn’t need Vivienne to set her up with anyone.

“That’s Harvey,” Vivienne whispered, motioning with her chin to Libby’s left. Libby glanced in that direction and saw a beefy man with dense black curls covering his head and creeping down into the collar of his shirt. He probably had a hairy back. He probably looked as though he was wearing a fur coat when he was naked. Libby shuddered…and then stopped shuddering when she thought about Ned’s back. If it was hairy—and she simply couldn’t believe it was—at least his hair would be fair, not black and wiry.

Not that she was going to see his back anytime soon. A few kisses were one thing, but removing clothes…No. She was a long way from that.

She turned back to Vivienne and found her smiling warmly at Harvey, who smiled back. “Where’s Leonard?” Libby blurted.

Vivienne’s smile waned. “He’s having brunch with a friend.”

“What friend? Why didn’t they invite you to join them?”

“It’s a guy he went to college with. I didn’t care to join them. When they get together, all they talk about is Brandeis. It’s boring.”

In truth, Libby often found Leonard boring, even when he wasn’t talking about Brandeis. Vivienne loved him, so he was fine with Libby. But she’d rather attend services than listen to him discuss his alma mater.

Still, she thought it odd that Vivienne had a glowing smile for Harvey Golub and baby-faced Ari, and her smile disappeared when Libby mentioned Leonard. If Vivienne mentioned Ned, Libby wouldn’t be able to stop smiling. Maybe it was easier to smile when the man in your life was a boyfriend and not a husband.

Was Ned her boyfriend? Just contemplating the possibility caused the corners of Libby’s mouth to twitch upward.
Boyfriend
. Such an adolescent term. Reva was the right age for boyfriends—well, no, she wasn’t, but in a few years she would be. Libby, though…Wasn’t a boyfriend someone you were supposed to meet at your locker? Wasn’t a boyfriend someone who gave you his ring to wear on a chain around your neck? Wasn’t thirty-five too old to have a boyfriend?

The cantor entered and started chanting in a sonorous voice. Vivienne straightened and affected a pious expression. Libby commanded herself to stop thinking about Ned and pay attention.

The cantor sang and the rabbi spoke. Libby had a vague idea of what the prayers meant, although what little she knew of Hebrew had pretty much evaporated in the days immediately following her bat mitzvah. Harry had been more religious than Libby, and she’d made an effort for him. She still remembered her first seder as his wife. Gilda had hosted it, and Libby had missed most of it because Reva had fussed and demanded to nurse the entire time, and popping a breast out of her blouse at the seder table to feed the baby wouldn’t have been appropriate. She’d sat in Gilda and Irwin’s bedroom, nursing Reva and burping her, rocking her and changing her diapers, while the aromas of wine and rich chicken soup with matzo balls and pot roast and a potato kugel wafted in from the dining room. By the time she and Harry had gotten home, she’d been ravenous. She’d put Reva into her crib and then stuffed a peanut-butter sandwich into her mouth. Harry had gone ballistic because she’d eaten bread.

Next to her, Vivienne leafed through the prayer book, running her index finger right to left along the Hebrew text the way people did when they wanted to pretend they understood what was being said. Occasionally, the rabbi would lapse into English. Libby tried hard to pay attention, but her mind drifted. What should she wear tonight? And what about her hair? Should she borrow Reva’s straightening iron? Imagining Ned’s reaction if her usually bushy hair suddenly fell sleek and limp past her shoulders made her smile.

She glanced at Vivienne’s prayer book, then at her watch. She shouldn’t have accompanied Vivienne to shul, except that Vivienne had been asking her for weeks. Did Leonard ever go with her? Or was he always having brunch with that old Brandeis gang of his? True, the last few times Vivienne had tried to drag her to synagogue, Libby had instead convinced her to stay at the apartment and eat bagels, their own minibrunch.

If she’d stayed home today, though, she would have wandered around the apartment in a frenzy, worrying about what to wear and all that other adolescent crap. Worrying about the adolescent crap and getting a dose of God at the same time was far more efficient.

Finally, the service ended. Vivienne insisted that they go downstairs to partake of the kiddush, which consisted of challah, wine that tasted like cough syrup, cheese that had been sliced so long ago it had dried to the consistency of roofing shingles, bowls of warm, limp grapes and coffee cake stale enough to serve as packing foam. Libby put her plastic cup of wine down after one sip and concentrated on the grapes.

Vivienne cornered Harvey Golub and dragged him over to meet Libby. She tried to signal Vivienne with a subtle shake of her head, but Vivienne on a mission was unstoppable. Harvey had a thick nose, thick fingers and black hair on his knuckles. Imagining those hands stripping the pelts off adorable little minks and foxes made her queasy. Or maybe what made her queasy was the bad wine.

No, what was making her queasy was the way Vivienne kept smiling at Harvey.

Libby swallowed one last lukewarm grape, told Harvey it was a pleasure meeting him, then clamped her hand over Vivienne’s shoulder and steered her away from the table. Apparently, the basement room doubled as a preschool, because the half of the room not being used for the kiddush was cluttered with boxes of toys and art supplies and a tyke-size plastic kitchen, complete with a plastic stove, a plastic refrigerator and a colorful plastic sink filled with plastic toy dishes. Libby wondered if the kitchen was kosher.

“What are you doing?” she asked Vivienne through gritted teeth.

“What, what am I doing?” Vivienne sipped her wine and
looked gravely put upon. “I’m trying to set you up with a nice Jewish man.”

“You’re flirting with him.”

“What? You’re crazy! Completely
meshugge.”

“You keep smiling at him,” Libby said. “And he keeps smiling at you.”

“He’s a mensch. We know each other. I’m trying to set him up with you.”

“I’m not interested,” Libby said firmly, then added, “and you’re married.”

“You want to go out with an Irish chimney sweep? Be my guest.” With that, she spun away from Libby and stalked back across the room, nearly kicking a plastic toy vacuum cleaner en route.

Libby remained where she was for a moment. Was she crazy? Was she so besotted with Ned, or with the mere idea that she would be going on a date tonight, that she read flirtation into an innocent exchange of smiles? And why were all the toys housekeeping toys, anyway? Did the preschool encourage its male students to learn domestic skills, or did the boys all get to play tag while the girls hung out in the little plastic kitchen, cooking little plastic hamburgers in the little plastic skillets and then using the plastic vacuum cleaner to clean up the plastic crumbs afterward?