The Three of Us (23 page)

As she works she chats incessantly. ‘In Croatia I trained as a pedicurist and then my father sent me to restaurant management school,' she says, vigorously mopping the kitchen floor. ‘I am married but we do not have sexual relations,' she adds baldly. ‘He was my childhood sweetheart, we married when we were both eighteen, then I caught him cheating on me, so pshhhtt – he was out!' She pauses to tear off a huge wodge of Brawny kitchen roll. ‘Well, not totally because we still share the same house,' she sighs. ‘We are separated, but I make him stay to help me with our children. I have two. My little kid is four. The other is fifteen and she is too fat, I keep telling her to lose weight, but all her friends are fat, you know? It wouldn't happen like this in Croatia.'

Maya and her errant husband came here from Croatia on a year's visa nine years ago and stayed on. ‘So I'm illegal? Big deal. What do I need papers for? There's no reason to leave ever. America has everything I want.'

Sunday, 25 October

Peter

I am meeting Toby for lunch at Tea and Sympathy, a tiny café which Joanna tells me is favoured by the likes of British models Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss and Stella Tennant. It aspires to imitate a British transport café and serves tea in pots and boarding school food. Toby is late and the English waitress tells me in an Estuary accent, with Sloane peeping through, that I may not take a table until he arrives. Furthermore, due to the cramped conditions, she forbids me to wait inside.

‘That's not a very sympathetic attitude,' I remonstrate feebly, pointing at the restaurant's name on the door. She indicates a handwritten notice over the counter, which reads, ‘Rules of the House: the waitresses are always right.'

Toby finally turns up but without his trademark silver puffa jacket and Nikes with flashing heels. Instead he is clothed in Harris tweed and wire-rimmed glasses. ‘It's part of my new strategy,' he says in his naturally amplified voice as we squeeze around a tiny table, brushing elbows with fellow diners, ‘to exploit the Anglophilia currently rife in New York.'

I toy with the idea of toad-in-the-hole or Welsh rarebit, but in the end plump for shepherd's pie followed by a cuppa Tetley's.

‘What happened to your nose?' Toby asks. My nasal defacement is still evident two days after my experiment with nostril expanders. His expression suddenly brightens. ‘Did someone belt you?'

‘No, no. Nothing that dramatic. I caught it on the door of the bathroom cabinet.'

Toby looks unconvinced.

‘Look over there,' he says, clearly audible to all twenty covers. ‘It's Rupert Everett. He looks pretty depressed. I'll bet he's still smarting over not getting an Oscar nomination for
My Best Friend's Wedding.
'

Indeed it is Rupert Everett, all of three feet away from us, sitting on his own, head bent down with a woollen bobble hat pulled low over his brow, looking rather miserable.

Monday, 26 October

Joanna

In two weeks' time I will be officially land-bound, no longer able to fly safely. So, anxious to exploit our last opportunity to travel, I trawl the classified ads in the
New York Post
and book us a last-minute bargain break in the Bahamas.

I ask the agent to fax the details of where we are billeted. Eventually a groggy photocopied brochure struggles through the fax machine sufficiently smudged to make it unreadable. The only details I can make out about Elbow Cay, our destination, seem rather ominous. ‘Visitors to Elbow Cay will find it one of the quieter, more informal corners of the Bahamas.' The photo of what I hope to be the palomino beach is so blotchy it appears to be strewn with seaweed or even jellyfish. I decide against showing it to Peter.

‘It sounds wonderful,' I lie cheerfully. ‘We can spend all weekend reading on the white sands and have supper in a beach restaurant.' But he remains convinced I have fallen prey to a telephone rip-off and predicts that construction of the hotel will not be completed.

‘Oh, who cares what it's like as long as the weather's good,' I retort.

Thursday, 29 October

Peter

Instead of the basking sun we have come here to enjoy, it is relentlessly wet on Elbow Cay. The hard, slanting rain pelts the bedraggled palms. It pimples the turquoise water and splashes against the sun-faded timber jetty. It bounces off the white veneered husks of the upended fibreglass boats, under which the mangy marina dogs have taken refuge. Only the mangrove delights, dancing to the deluge.

The island is as still as a weekday cemetery. Our fellow holiday-makers remain indoors playing solitaire, reading thrillers or week-old copies of
Time.

On our final day the rain lessens a little and we boat over to the nearby Man o' War Cay. It is an extraordinary little island of small, gaily coloured clapboard houses and a network of narrow concrete pathways, along which the locals, most of them as big as Sumo wrestlers, ride in their electric golf buggies. In the quaint graveyard, virtually all the headstones bear the name of Albery, for Man o' War Cay is populated almost entirely by the descendants of this one family, originally from Carolina, who remained loyal to the British during the American Revolution, and were forced to flee when the Redcoats lost. For their loyalty to the crown they were promised fertile farm lands in the Bahamas, though the British knew the soil here is far too salty for crops.

We stroll around until we chance upon what is now evidently the main industry, a tiny sailcloth factory in which half a dozen large Alberys feed brightly coloured canvas into their sewing machines, fashioning it into duffel bags and holdalls, floppy hats and sponge bags. Unusually, I find myself infected with the urge to buy and I come away with an armful of these gaudy sailcloth items.

Thursday, 29 October

Joanna

In the three days we have been here we seem to have eaten nothing but conch. Conch fritters, conch stew, deep-fried conch, marinaded conch, blackened conch, conch salad, conch burger and tonight, conch
à la crème.
We are all conched out and secretly relieved to be Manhattan bound.

Friday, 30 October

Peter

In our absence a sketch of a witch, complete with pointy hat and warty chin, has appeared in the elevator, asking all residents willing to be trick or treated, to sign up. Fourteen people have already agreed and Joanna adds our names.

‘I notice Richard Dreyfuss hasn't signed up,' I say.

‘Shall I add his name anyway?' asked Joanna, her pen hovering.

Saturday, 31 October

Joanna

I'm rooting through our cardboard boxes frantically looking for a costume for a dinner party we are holding tonight.

‘The thirty-first? Excellent,' said Mary, when I called to invite her and Bill. ‘What will you be wearing?'

‘Oh, the only black dress I can still squeeze into,' I said, thinking her question rather formal.

‘You're not wearing a costume?' she exclaimed. ‘Oh, but you must, it's Hallowe'en.'

‘You can if you like, but I'm not wearing a costume,' said Peter, when I broach the subject later.

‘Well, I've committed us now and everyone else will be wearing one,' I mumble. ‘And I know Mary is going to go to some trouble, she told me she's going to make it herself.'

Grudgingly, Peter has purchased a rather effective wolf mask, leaving me at a disadvantage. The door bell interrupts my costume hunt. It is a small band of trick-or-treaters, including several TeleTubbies.

‘Don't you have any Snickers bars?' asks Po, refusing the basket of candycorn I offer. His plastic pumpkin bucket is already half full of Milky Ways, Hershey bars and Kit-Kats.

Another group spills out of the lift and is similarly unimpressed. ‘What's that,' asks a miniature Robin Hood, poking an arrow at the basket.

‘Candycorn,' I reply brightly. ‘I thought it was traditional at Hallowe'en.'

‘We only liked wrapped sweets,' he says solemnly, already on his way to the next apartment.

‘We've had to insist, I'm afraid,' his father apologizes. ‘There was a case some years ago when someone used candycorn to try and poison some kids.'

‘Trick or treat?' shout a new group, scampering up the stairs.

‘Trick,' says Peter.

They stare back in silence. Then a small ghost steps forward. ‘You're supposed to give us candy,' he says crossly.

‘Or money,' a tiny wizard adds hopefully.

‘Let's go do Richard Dreyfuss,' the ghost suggests and they wild off up the stairs.

I go back to my costume hunt and finally unearth an old jellaba Peter brought back once from a trip to Pakistan. It will have to do.

Saturday, 31 October

Peter

An impressive degree of high-tech imagery has been employed by our guests in their choice of Hallowe'en costumes. John is the worldwide web, Dana is Windows 98, Suzanna is ‘fatal exception error'. Bill is the monster from
Mars Attacks!
and Mary, the Tin Man, handmade from foil. Walter is a mine safety inspector and Meryl is a flapper girl. Melanie is Melanie from
Gone with the Wind,
and Joanna wears her jellaba, which covers her whole body but for a lace filigree window over her eyes. I am wearing a Brazilian red wolf mask purchased at the Cathedral shop of St John the Divine. The mask is made of scarlet rubber. It has rows of impressive white rubber fangs, and a bottom jaw that toggles open by pulling a little tag. To make it more effective I have covered the exposed part of my face in scarlet face paint.

The most exciting moment of the evening comes when I open the door to an aggressive-looking character in camouflage fatigues, army boots and a face streaked with black and green cream. This is Andrew Solomon – at last – in person. In the course of the evening he banters entertainingly, gives us tantalizing glimpses of his voluminous social roster and his exotic travels. He does not appear to be at all depressed. For three-quarters of a million, I begin to suspect, I may be better qualified to write about depression.

NOVEMBER

The baby weighs nearly 5 lbs and measures 13 inches from crown to rump.

Babies born at this time usually survive in the hospital.

Your baby is running out of room and his head is most likely resting on the bone in preparation for dropping into the pelvis.

BabySoon.com

Monday, 2 November

Joanna

Peter ventures out briefly, lugging a bag of dirty laundry. He returns purple faced, bearing cappuccinos and announcing it is the coldest day he can remember.

We appear to have no control over the old-fashioned cast-iron radiators in our apartment, though New York City law is myopically specific about heating. According to Section 75 of the Multiple Dwelling Act (which is pinned to our mail room noticeboard) after 1 October (known locally as Radiator Day) the heat in the apartment must be 68°F, between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when outside temperature falls to below 55°F. The apartment must be heated to 55°F between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., when outside temperature falls below 40°F. Heating can be switched off again on 31 May.

The first evidence we had that our landlord took Radiator Day seriously came when we were awakened by a terrible banging and clanking coming from the radiator in our bedroom. The noise continued until 6.30 a.m. when it metamorphosed into a severe fizzing and then finally sputtered out.

Assuming that it was the system readjusting itself after six months in hibernation, we did nothing. But the next morning at the same time the chorus of banging and clanging and fizzing started again, so Peter entered the problem in the logbook kept at the front desk by leisurely Lugo, the handyman.

Just because a problem is entered in the logbook, of course, is no guarantee that Lugo will come and fix it. Sometimes I think he relies on the placebo effect that once written down the problem will go away. But after our third sleepless night and two more entries in the logbook, he appeared at 7 a.m. armed with his monkey wrench. He banged ferociously on the radiator and pronounced the problem fixed.

The next morning we woke at 4 a.m. again to even worse knocking, this time coming from the bathroom radiator.

We have slowly grown used to the individual radiators knocking and hissing on and off with no relation either to each other or to the weather outside. This morning the kitchen is freezing, though both bathroom radiators are churning out heat with a Saharan ferocity. Meanwhile, the temperature in the baby's room has plummeted so low that Peter says it's far too cold to go in and finish off the painting.

Tuesday, 3 November

Peter

‘Have you heard what happened to Andrew Solomon?' gushes Suzanna down the phone. ‘He was
arrested
after your party?'

‘What for?'

She has no further information, so I phone him, only to be intercepted by his answer message. ‘I hope the rumours of your little local difficulty with the NYPD are exaggerated,' I say, trying to make light of it. Later, however, I log on to find a round-robin e-mail from Andrew Solomon to his friends. It is written from his hospital bed.

Hallowe'en night, I attended a costume dinner party. I wore a leather camouflage outfit from John Bartlett and smeared my face with my sister-in-law's Enriching Mud Face Mask, and I looked rather convincing as a guerrilla or paratrooper – I never quite decided which. I had numerous compliments on my costume, which I was variously told was ‘sexy', ‘scary', ‘witty', and ‘chic'. At about 1.30 a.m., the party wound down. As it was a brisk, clear night, I began walking a little way by myself, enjoying the night air, replaying in my mind amusing episodes from dinner, checking out the costumes that went past on the street.