The Widow Waltz (21 page)

“G
o to bed, honey,” I say, rousing Luey. The evening with Chip and Nat is pushing midnight. Cola canceled—her medical student friend made a drive-by appearance—so it was the four of us, laughing during dinner and screaming through
Vertigo
, the first movie in what we have decided will be a continuing Hitchcock film festival. I turn off the television.

“Echhh. I have to give the dogs their last walk,” Luey, half asleep, mumbles
,
rubbing her eyes and drawing a blanket close.

“Absolutely not.” Chip gets up and heads toward the back door. “Allow me.”

“You’re a prince,” she says, and yawns extravagantly as she follows him to leash up our squad of snoozing boarders.

That leaves Nat and me in the kitchen. He didn’t ask to help but dug right in. Which I like.

Throughout the evening, I felt his glances, as I have whenever we’re together. Tonight my internal GPS recalculated and I felt a crackle of connection. I didn’t want to look away. Perhaps it was the full monty of seductive clichés—wine, candlelight, a fire, and a movie that requires you to grab an arm—because I believe nothing essential has changed. I’m happy to hear from Nat, but I don’t stare at the phone and will it to ring and for me, obsession has been the only rule I’ve known.

Not that I feel married. If Ben hadn’t left behind a hash, I’d be in a closet, crying into his clothes, but given my financial trouncing, I try not think about him at all. I don’t want my confusion to mushroom into hatred. I don’t want to unlove Ben.

This has meant that I am finally living in a demilitarized zone denuded of his pictures and possessions, most of which have been reassigned to oblivion or packed away. There is no Church of Dad at which Luey and Cola can worship. Phantom-Ben has, for the most part, deserted my dreams, though his avatar is much on my mind when I am awake. My husband lurks in corners and sails through doors, his spirit in a cool rush. But this evening his back is to me, and I do not hear the echo of his laugh.

I may be ready to move on.

Nat punctures our silence. “I see you’re not one of those clean-as-you-go cooks,” he says, surveying a mess. He begins to attack a heavy skillet with hot, sudsy water and elbow grease.

“Guilty as charged,” I say, grateful for habits that will guarantee at least thirty minutes of side-by-side work.

In my wifely years, I had looked forward to a sociable cleanup, the encore to an evening well spent. Ben and I worked as a team, washing dishes, packing away leftovers, wiping down counters, sweeping, critiquing the cooking, and, if it was one of the better nights, the quips. As couples do, we’d speculate on the stresses and strains of friends’ relationships or snipe about how this guest or that could possibly stand his—or her—partner especially with the bombastic political opinions or the drinking. We made bets on which husband and wife were so excessively lovey-dovey that they’d probably announce their separation the following day. This functioned as the equivalent of a postcoital cigarette, our own private prom party.

I am feeling that hum of contentment now with Nat. I survey the breadth and squareness of his shoulders and the sureness of his movements. He is as steady as a train on a track. I like how he sings and sometimes even dances as he works. The small bald spot on the back of his head has begun to remind me of the empty circle on Cola’s teddy bear where she loved away his fur.

Nat Ross has become a safety deposit box for confidences. I’m weighing whether he can do the same for my emotions. It’s true that Nat doesn’t haunt the devil’s playground. No roué, he, a man who lacks clear and present danger. Thirty years ago—or even last October—a measure of recklessness felt like required foreplay. Then I remind myself what living on the brink, even unwittingly, has gotten me. So I am ready when Nat turns, takes off his professorial glasses, and pulls me toward him. We kiss.

I have sold him short. The kiss is better than a few weeks ago, a new riff on bliss.

“I’ve wanted to do that again for some time,” he says.

“I’ve wanted you to,” I say, although technically I came to that conclusion only this evening. The second and third kisses are even better, deeper and longer. Eyes open, I pull him toward me and feel as if I am beginning to recall the lines of a poem I once memorized. Nat is solid in my arms and neither of us hurries to stop. But for the fourth kiss, Ben shows up in the form of a shudder, and I break away as Herb and Sadie invade the kitchen, leading the pack. The kisses linger in the air when Chip follows. His quick look around tells me he senses a palpable awkwardness.

Shall I try to signal Nat to stay? Grab his hand?
In that moment doing nothing becomes a decision, and within several heartbeats he says, “Thank you—what a wonderful evening, Georgia.” The sound of my name rolls out like a term of endearment.

I am a true coward. I should haul this man to bed.

“We’ll talk tomorrow after the couple from California comes by again,” Chip says. The people who are taken with this house want to see it once again before they fly back to Marin County.

“What are your plans for Sunday?” Nat asks.

“Essays,” I say. I have to find a way to tell one overweening scholar why Notre Dame may not be as impressed as he is that his Hail Mary pass single-handedly won the homecoming game, and another that a play-by-play of his summer in Italy spent writing forty pages of a novel isn’t going to cut it, either. Henry James, for example, would have found a synonym for
weenie
.

Warming in my bed, I close my eyes and relive Nat’s mouth on mine. Sensations that have gone AWOL flood my body as I drift to sleep, thinking of how I will need a bikini wax.

“I wish the kitchen were newer,” Chip’s customer complains the following morning.

“We could replace the butcher block with marble,” her husband points out. “Or soapstone.”

“I like the grounds,” she says, referring to what I’ve never thought of as more than a back yard. “I believe those bushes are lilacs.”

White as well as purple, I want to offer from my perch on the stairs.

“It needs hollyhocks and anemones,” she adds.

They’re there, hibernating with hundreds of tulips and daffodils.

“If we get rid of the patio,” the man said, “there’s room to expand the garage.”

Does this couple own a limousine service?

In the city, I’d been spared the indignity of watching potential buyers scrutinize my home, kvetching about how the bedrooms are dark, its bathrooms cramped, and storage for bikes nonexistent. The neighbor who bought the apartment, flaws intact, wanted only a walk-through that I didn’t, fortunately, witness. Here I have the same two choices when Chip brings one of his few customers: leave or hide. Until today, I left.

Chip, I’ve discovered, says little beyond answering questions. “The pool is heated.” “No, you’re on your own in taking garbage to the dump—people usually hire a service.” “Yes, the owner can vacate by May.”

Can she? I should be casting a gris-gris spell and fondling amulets with the hope that this couple will come through. My financial security is still MIA and my hand-to-mouth, pay-as-I-go system has severe limitations, no matter how many dogs Luey boards or essays I rewrite each week. I have to get rid of the house, find a more modest place to live, and figure out a dependable method to produce an income. I could see myself in a studio apartment back in the city, but that’s not anything I can explore as long as No Child Left Behind is my operative philosophy. What’s ahead looks like a blockade. I’d like a reprieve from selling—for a few more months; I took Chip at his word that it would take forever to unload the house and this is coming too soon. I have not hatched a plan B.

It appears that I do want to live on the brink.

“Thanks, Georgia, I’ll call you,” Chip says, and leaves with the customers. Minutes later he phones from his car to say they’ll stick with the bid. “Great news, huh?” He waits for a hoo-ha of joy.

“Let’s see if they’ll go higher,” I reply.

“I’m confused.” I hear him taking a breath. “It’s not as if customers have been beating a path to your door, and this is a solid offer. Ten percent below asking price, but better than we thought you’d get, frankly.”

“See if they have deeper pockets,” I respond.

“S
ure, it’s a gimmick,” one reviewer wrote. “But it works. Boston DJ Peter Eisenberg performs in a preposterous bison head and goes by the name of Buffalo Bob. By creating a persona, he makes Buffalo Bob stand out in the faceless world of electronic music, though the irony is that without the mega-mask that swallows his head, Eisenberg would be as anonymous as his peers.”

Untrue! Luey finds Peter’s face distinctive—drowsy, heavy-lidded blue eyes; a pointy chin and a strong, slightly aquiline nose; small, milky teeth; and long, loosely curled white-blond hair. Anonymous? Not to her. His features hang together well, like a Rauschenberg. She is hoping her baby resembles a miniature of Peter, minus the schnoz.

“Despite the blizzard outside Madison Square Garden, it was a sold-out crowd where the ladies favored spike heels and miniskirts, with the occasional Lycra bodysuit in neon colors,” another critic wrote. Luey could picture these women, fashionably tilting toward slutty, swarming the stage and ripping off Peter’s clothes after the concert. “Male fans wore artful scruff along with T-shirts that revealed physiques the fans sweated to achieve. The crowd danced in the aisles for a solid five hours . . .”

Five hours!

“. . . to a series of electronic artists, culminating in an hour-long set from Buffalo Bob himself, who performed from a tall, tower-like DJ booth that also served as a video screen for projections. He skillfully produced a series of high-pitched bleeps and blorps early in the set. In a robotic voice, Buffalo Bob repeated his lines over a deep, pounding beat
. . . .”

Luey snapped her laptop shut. She felt beyond pissed. Under any circumstances she would have liked that concert, but her circumstances were exceptional, and that an apocalyptic snowstorm had thwarted her now made Luey want to fling her laptop across the room. Since the other evening she’d sent tweet after tweet to Peter. It was Sunday and there had been nothing in return. DM @Buffalobob:
Miz Kitty really really misses you. Meow,
was the last message, hurled into the anonymity of cyberspace an hour ago though apparently as unread as a stale tweet from American Express.

Herb chased Sadie into her room, which reminded Luey that a walk was due. She dragged herself along the road with the two of them, returned to the house, and then leashed up Al, Gloria, and Piaf. The air was frosty; the sky, cloudless. On nights like this, Luey used to pick out constellations with her father and wish on the first star she saw. Luey wanted him here now. I wish I may, I wish I might / Have the wish I wish tonight. “I’d like to talk to my father again,” she said aloud, hoarse and dejected.

She’d trudged about a quarter of a mile down the road when her pocket rang. The blast of
The Pink Panther
’s theme song—
bum da-bum, bum da-bum, da-bum da-bum
—rang out like thunder.

Luey was always on the prowl for omens and portents. If she’d lived in the Victorian age, she could have been a medium. Her father adored
The Pink Panther
. Terrified, she looked at the caller ID—
RESTRICTED,
it said—before she answered her phone. Despite the cold, she began to sweat. Luey put the phone to her ear.

“Sorry you had to miss the concert.” Her father hadn’t responded. Peter, however, had. “What happened? I thought you were coming
.
”
He sounded as far away as the stars.

Luey began an answer worthy of a meteorologist, which he interrupted. “Where can I see you?” he asked. “And when?”

“H
ave you looked under the seats?” Nicola had asked Michael T. hours after he left on Saturday. Did she need a Powerpoint presentation to demonstrate the situation’s gravity, which was crisis-intervention awful. Her voice had risen, nearing a squeal. “My uncle’s going to burn me alive.”

“Cola.” He’d spoken as if he were talking to the canine obedience class dropout. “My dad has the car now. He’s lecturing at U Penn medical school and won’t be back for two days. I’m sorry. You’ll have to hold tight.”

Rats, rats, rats, she thought. “Think back. Do you remember if I was still wearing the necklace in the restaurant?”

Michael T. laughed, which a part—unfortunately, only a sliver—of Nicola recognized as his effort to lighten the mood. “When you saw me drooling, did you think it was because of your
accessories?” Nicola ignored the compliment embedded in the question. “Have you searched all over the bedroom? There was a fair amount of action there, if memory serves.”

If memory serves.
“What should I tell my uncle? I forgot to take off the necklace and an asteroid hit me on the way home?”

“Tell him you lost it and suffer the consequences.”

“I can’t. I just can’t.” It would mean admitting that she’d broken two of Uncle Stephan’s rules.

“Then tell him you sold it on Friday afternoon.”

“Right. The customer paid forty-five hundred in cash and I neglected to write a receipt and lost the money.” Nicola groaned.

“I’ll give you the money.”

“Forty-five hundred dollars? Never. This is my stupidity and my problem.”

“Then I’ll lend you the money.” Michael T.’s exasperation had become evident.

“That’s enormously kind—very, very sweet—but I’m going to pass”—and not be beholden to Michael T. in perpetuity, she thought. “When the restaurant opens, I’ll call. Maybe they have it.”

She said good-bye and paced the townhouse stairs—three flights, up and down, five times—then took herself to the Promenade, where she parked on a bench and gazed at Manhattan with equal parts longing and self-loathing until it was late enough in the morning to phone the Astor Room. The hostess switched Nicola to the mistress of lost-and-found who meticulously reported her inventory, the usual assortment of keys, library cards, glasses, BlackBerries, Droids, cigarettes, nasal sprays, wallets, lipsticks, gum, tampons and condoms—unopened, she emphasized—Nooks, Kindles, an iPad, and one actual book, a Bible. No jewelry except an I Love NY lapel pin.

Why did her father have to
die
? He’d have turned the solution to this problem into a caper, thought it was killer funny, and “lend” her the money. Not an hour passed when Nicola didn’t think about Ben. Today, looking at Manhattan, a town she always felt he owned, she mourned for her father as if the news of his death was new and raw. She wondered when, and if, she’d ever get used to his absence. She wondered if a daughter could. Her mother might remarry, but she’ll have only one father. Well, two, technically, in her case, but one didn’t count.

And then she cried.