The Fixer Upper (25 page)

He set the wine bottle on the mail table and removed his jacket. “Who exactly is Darryl J?” he asked.

“Some stray my daughter picked up.”

“Hey, could you guys keep it down?” Reva scolded. “We’re recording in here!”

Libby rolled her eyes. “We’re not allowed to make any noise,” she warned.

“Well, that lets out some activities,” he muttered, wiggling his eyebrows lecherously.

Libby didn’t think they were that noisy—but then, in the heat of passion, she was hardly aware of whether she was breathing, let alone moaning or screaming or…She felt her
cheeks grow warm and busied herself hanging up Ned’s jacket. “I’m figuring we’ll wait with dinner until they’re finished,” she whispered. “Is that all right with you?”

He shrugged. “I can work on the fireplace while they’re doing their thing.”

In khakis, a dark plaid shirt and loafers instead of his clumpy work boots, he wasn’t dressed for fireplace work. But he’d gotten most of the messy part done already. The paint was completely off and he’d removed the wooden board someone had glued to the mantel shelf. A residue of glue remained. Perhaps that was what he intended to work on. Libby had told him to leave his tools, solvents and drop cloth at her place instead of schlepping them back and forth, so everything he needed was already here.

“You can’t make any noise, though,” she reminded him. “The impresarios will throw a fit if you do.”

“Well, I sure wouldn’t want them to throw a fit. I can work quietly.”

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” she said, giving his arm a pat and carrying the flowers and wine with her. She hoped the rice hadn’t boiled over again. She also hoped she could remember where she might have a vase. The last time she’d had flowers on display in the apartment might have been after her wedding, when she had insisted on bringing home one of the centerpieces. She’d held the artfully arranged bouquet on her lap during the cab ride home after the dinner, and the floral fragrance had made her queasy. But then, everything had made her queasy during her pregnancy.

She hadn’t needed a vase for those flowers, because they’d been wedged into green packing foam in a plastic bowl. What she’d needed then was a table to put the flowers on. The dining-room table hadn’t become a part of her life until she was eight months along, her belly so huge she could barely push in her chair.

Entering the kitchen, she heard the lid of the rice pot rattling, but the water wasn’t boiling over. She checked the chicken again—nothing burning there—and rummaged through her cabinets for a vase. Unable to find one, she grabbed a jar of pickles from the refrigerator door, discarded the pickles, rinsed out the vinegar and spices and stuck the flowers in. Not exactly elegant, but it would do.

Darryl J’s music reached her faintly. Words spilled out of his mouth so fast she couldn’t decipher them, although they had an infectious rhythm and she found her feet moving to the syncopated beat. God help her if those lyrics were some sort of catchy rhyme about shooting up or shooting guns or enjoying unprotected sex with whores. Libby hoped she’d raised her daughter to have good taste when it came to music. But Reva was thirteen, so all bets were off.

Libby carried the pickle jar into the dining room, then decided the table’s surface was too scratched to go naked. She pulled a tablecloth from the sideboard and shook it out, trying to remember when she’d last used it. It had a pale pink stain on one end. Wine? Cranberry sauce? For the life of her, she couldn’t remember the occasion. She vaguely recalled that the tablecloth had been a wedding gift from some distant relative. She wouldn’t be surprised if the last time she’d used it had been when she was still married to Harry.

The stain wasn’t too bad. She’d cover it with the salad bowl—if she ever finished making the salad.

She was once again attempting to slice a cucumber when the intercom buzzed. Three groups of visitors had arrived at her doorstep without being announced; apparently, the doorman had suddenly decided to do his job. She would have to yell at him for his failure to stop Darryl J, Reva’s friends and the Donovans. Once she owned her apartment, maybe she’d get a seat on the co-op board and yell at the doormen on a regular basis.

She dried her hands on a sheet of paper towel before lifting the intercom receiver. “Yes?”

“A woman named Vivienne is here to see you,” the doorman reported lethargically.

“Send her up,” Libby said, wondering why Vivienne would be visiting. Libby peeked into the oven and counted the chicken breasts in the roasting pan, as if a few more might have miraculously materialized.

Maybe Vivienne wouldn’t stay for dinner. And Libby would send Kim and Ashleigh home. Darryl J, too. He might be a fine singer, but he was eighteen years old. He could find his own food.

Libby closed the oven and finished hacking the cucumber into slices before the doorbell rang. The chime prompted howls of outrage from the technicians in the recording studio.

After tossing the knife onto the counter, she darted through the dining room to the entry. She saw Ned approaching the entry from the living room, a rag in one hand and a jug-shaped can in the other. “I wasn’t sure—” he began, but was cut off by more howls.

“Could you
please
be quiet?” Reva scolded.

“No, Reva, we can’t,” Libby retorted. “Aunt Vivienne’s here. Once I let her in, we’ll shut up.”

She opened the door and Vivienne stormed inside, dragging a small wheeled suitcase behind her. Her hair was wind tossed and she wore a dramatic lime-green coat over drab brown slacks. “Hi,” she said, slamming the door behind her, causing the safety chain to clang against the jamb. The moans from the den were so dramatic a person would be forgiven for thinking the kids were sitting shivah for a dead loved one in there.

“We’re not allowed to talk,” Libby warned, her gaze sliding to Vivienne’s suitcase. Questions crowded her
mind—the sort of questions she didn’t think she’d like the answer to.

“What do you mean, we can’t talk?” Vivienne asked, then turned to stare at Ned. “Who are you?”

“Ned Donovan,” Libby whispered. “Ned, this is my sister-in-law, Vivienne Schwartz.”

Ned passed the rag from his right hand to his left, extended his right hand, then thought better of offering it to Vivienne. “Solvent,” he explained.

“Is this your Irish guy?” Vivienne asked Libby, her expression an odd combination of skepticism and awe.

“Mom! Puh-leez!” Reva whined from the den.

“All right, all right,” Libby shouted back, then took Vivienne’s arm and steered her through the dining room. Vivienne dragged her suitcase behind her; the little wheels squeaked ominously against the hardwood floor. “Reva is recording something,” she explained to Vivienne once they reached the kitchen. “We’re not allowed to make noise. What’s in the suitcase?” Maybe it was full of books Vivienne wanted to donate to the Hudson School. Maybe Vivienne had bought new luggage and wanted to give her old suitcase to Reva.

“Leonard and I had a fight,” Vivienne announced, the answer Libby had been dreading. “Can I stay here?”

“Of course,” Libby assured her, then spread her arms. Vivienne accepted her hug, rested her head briefly against Libby’s shoulder, then apparently decided not to fall apart. She stepped back and shrugged bravely. “Just a little fight. Not a big one.”

“Big enough that you came here with a suitcase.”

“To teach him a lesson,” Vivienne muttered.

What lesson?
Libby wondered. The lesson that if you act like a jerk, your wife will go away and leave you to eat pizza while watching professional wrestling on TV, pee without
closing the bathroom door and take over the whole bed? Some lesson.

What bed would Vivienne take over? As it was, Libby wasn’t sure where she herself would sleep, now that her own bed was heaped high with application materials.

The practicalities would work themselves out later. For now, her sister-in-law was in the midst of a marital crisis.

She didn’t look critical. Her eyes were dry, her lips were curved in a slight pout and her blouse—visible as she unbuttoned her coat—was a riot of color that hurt Libby’s eyes. “What happened?” she asked. “Can you talk about it? Should I send Ned to your place to beat Leonard up?”

“Would he do that?” Vivienne asked hopefully. She glanced out of the kitchen, but Ned must have returned to the fireplace. He wasn’t visible from where she and Libby stood. “No, I don’t believe in violence. He’s cute,” she added, tilting her head toward the living room. “What’s with the solvent?”

“He’s stripping my fireplace mantel,” Libby said, studying Vivienne, gauging her. She’d just packed a bag and walked out on her husband. Why didn’t she seem traumatized? “It must have been a terrible fight. You’re here instead of at home, making up with Leonard.”

“It was a ridiculous argument about his ridiculous Brandeis buddies and their ridiculous brunches. And their ridiculous get-togethers for a drink after work, and their ridiculous Sundays when they watch football on the tube and eat
chazzerai.
I’ve had it with his ridiculousness.”

“Are you going to leave him?”

“I already did.” Vivienne gazed at her suitcase, then lifted her eyes back to Libby. “Divorce him, you mean? I didn’t bring enough stuff with me to divorce him.”

“Okay.” The lid on the pot of rice had stopped rattling, and Libby turned the burner off. She didn’t want to know if
the rice had overcooked. Who cared about rice when Vivienne had just realized that her husband was ridiculous? “Ned and his son came over for dinner, but we’ve got plenty.”

“As if I have an appetite.” Vivienne attempted a pathetic sigh, then said, “It smells good. What did you make?”

“Hawaiian chicken. Your mother’s recipe.”

“Well, maybe I’ll have a little.”

The doorbell rang again, without benefit of the doorman’s warning. Libby flinched, and when Vivienne caught her eye, she saw her own panic reflected in Vivienne’s expression. Could Leonard have followed her here? Not that Libby feared him, not that she thought he had enough chutzpah to stalk his wife, but still…That doorman was going to be severely reprimanded once Libby owned her apartment.

This time, the resounding chime didn’t provoke shrieks and curses from the den. Libby walked through the dining room, Vivienne trailing her and the suitcase trailing Vivienne, as if she couldn’t bear to part with it. Ned remained by the fireplace, wiping a corner of the shelf so hard she wouldn’t be surprised to find a dent in the green marble once he was done. His hair was scruffy, his sleeves rolled up, and she paused for a moment, thinking of how lucky she was to have him in her life, rather than someone like, say, Leonard, or…

Harry.
She stared at her ex-husband through the peephole in the door. Despite the hole’s fish-eye lens, he looked like a Ken doll. A Ken doll made out of Silly Putty.

She opened the door and glowered at her ex-husband. Perhaps the doorman had recognized him, since he came to the building so often, dropping Reva off after her weekly visits. The doorman still should have announced Harry, though. Harry was not welcome right now. Harry was rarely welcome.

He had on an elegant suit and carried a fancy leather briefcase that Libby assumed was one of those brands that advertised in the biannual “Fashions of the Times” section of the
New York Times.
His tie was an iridescent silk that shimmered blue and silver. Even though the time was—she checked her watch—six-thirty, which meant the chicken had been in the oven long enough to have developed a texture not unlike that of Harry’s briefcase—not a hint of beard shadowed his jaw. When he was married to her, she was positive he used to sprout stubble. Had Bonnie figured out a way to suppress his facial hair?

Harry ignored Libby and gaped at Vivienne. “Viv! What are you doing here?”

“None of your business,” Vivienne retorted, sounding like the bratty kid sister Harry had always considered her.

“I had to meet with a client in the neighborhood,” he said to Libby, entering the apartment without awaiting a greeting from her. “So I thought I’d drop by. We have some things to discuss. Is that a suitcase, Viv?”

“None of your business.”

He narrowed his eyes, then widened them at the sight of Ned, who once again approached the entry with his rag and bottle of solvent. The sharp chemical smell overpowered Harry’s fancy cologne.

Libby sighed. This was one of those awkward moments people wrote to advice columnists about:
Dear Ms. Know-it-all: What is the proper etiquette for introducing one’s former husband to one’s current boyfriend?

Just do it,
she answered herself. “Harry, this is my friend Ned Donovan. Ned, my ex-husband, Harry Kimmelman.”

“How’s it going?” Ned said pleasantly, extending his hand. Obviously, he’d wanted to protect Vivienne from exposure to the solvent, but Harry’s delicate skin he didn’t care about.

Clearly nonplussed, Harry shook his hand, then squinted at his palm. “What is it?” he asked, pointing at the bottle.

“That doesn’t concern you,” Libby said, just to be contrary. “We’re having a dinner party, Harry, so—”

“She made Mom’s Hawaiian chicken,” Vivienne told him, a nyah-nyah undertone to her voice.

“A dinner party?”

“Dad?” Reva bounded in from the den, slightly flushed and beaming. “Oh, Dad, this is so cool! You’ve got to come and hear this! Eric put this sound clip on the Web site, and…”

Before she could continue, the rest of the recording engineers spilled out of the den, followed by Darryl J, carrying his guitar. “It came out so good, man!” he crowed. “You’ve gotta hear this. Eric, you the man!” He slapped Eric’s hand. Eric seemed to take the praise in stride, though he was grinning.

“Well, I want to hear it,” Ned said enthusiastically. “Come on, let’s go hear the sound clip.”

Libby could tell from Harry’s scowl that he didn’t want to hear the sound clip. He eyed Darryl J with blatant distrust, Eric with condescension and Libby with overt suspicion. “What the hell is going on?” he muttered.

“You have no right to turn into a grouch,” Vivienne chided. “Nobody asked you to come here.”