Philly Stakes (3 page)

My mother informed me that I had fallen further behind in the marriage sweepstakes. Not only had one of her casual acquaintances’ daughters—a plain girl, she said, nothing special—acquired a two and a half carat, gem-quality, emerald-cut engagement ring three days ago, but worse, the same evening, a neighbor’s obnoxious, undeserving daughter snared an investment banker with only one ex, no children and an already paid lump settlement. A free and clean, barely used male.

I tried to make it clear that I couldn’t talk, that I had to leave. I immediately regretted my words, the verbal equivalent of the doctor’s rubber hammer tapping her knee.

“A date?” All reflexes in order.

“The school party. I told you.”

My mother doesn’t remember parties that don’t have the prefix “wedding” or “engagement.” She considers my job busywork, a waste of prime husband-hunting time. She even resents it when I call my students “my kids.”

“Working nights,” she grumbled. “Throwing away your life. Did you see the Today show this morning?”

“Mom, I leave for work at—”

“A report said it’s never too soon to prepare for menopause.”

“I’m thirty! Barely.”

“Still seeing Chuck?”

“Who?”

“The detective.”

“Oh. That Chuck.” I had made up the name to give her a point of reference. I didn’t know how to answer. Yes to the detective, no to Chuck? I couldn’t say that while I knew C.K. Mackenzie in the biblical sense, I didn’t know his first name. My mother would be appalled by both facts.

I said I was still seeing the detective. I didn’t add that I wasn’t seeing him enough, or clearly.

“A U.S.A. Today poll says marriage is back in style.”

Maybe Mackenzie was afraid of trendiness.

I pushed us back to neutral ground. “You know, I’m running late. I just got home from that class at Silverwood. I told you I was teaching there temporarily, right?” I did another round of peanut-butter dipping while she complimented my kindness to the elderly. I eyed the cookie tin, but again resisted temptation. And remembered that there was something I should tell her—except I couldn’t remember what.

A little more peanut butter restored a portion of my brain cells. “A woman in my class said she knows you, Mom.” Except, I’d forgotten who it was. Jenny, the one who looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy in drag? Harriet of the gruff voice and heart of mush? They’d both come up to talk to me afterward.

“Who? Who?” My mother sounded like an owl.

It was a short person, I thought. I was looking down while she said it. Wheelchair. Minna! “You know somebody named Minna White?”

In much less time than it would take a computer to do a similar search, my mother sorted her past. “Minna! Minna. Of course! Minerva White, from when we lived on Brooke Street. You must remember her!”

I was seven, if that, when we moved from there, and all I remembered offhand was a place I used to hide under the back porch, a girl with bright red pigtails who could spit farther than anybody, and how awful it was to have to lie still on a cot during kindergarten rest time.

“She had a fluffy white cat,” my mother said, pulling the complete file out of her memory, “and a boy they called Junior. Nervous kid with a strawberry mark on his chin? Good friends with that freckled boy, Barry, the one whose father was a baker, that big fat man with a lisp who—”

Philadelphia has millions of residents, but to my mother, it is a tiny village and one of her self-proclaimed roles, even after relocating to the Sunbelt, is as its official historian.

“There was some trouble, too, with Minna’s husband. At least I think so. Maybe it was Junior? No, he’d have been too young. This was before she moved away. When you were in elementary school.”

Historian, yes. Accurate, no. She realized how wobbly her facts were and changed ground. “I heard from Mrs. Bloom that poor Minna isn’t doing well. Is it true that she’s blind from her diabetes and crippled with arthritis?”

“Afraid so,” I said.

My mother tsked. “And is it true what she said, that Junior turned out pretty much a no-good? Mrs. Bloom said he never comes to see Minna, but he still takes money.”

“I don’t know about that kind of thing. We talked about The Scarlet Letter and Vanity Fair. She didn’t even connect me with you until this afternoon.”

“You know what I remember about her? She loved cannoli. Loved them.”

“Which reminds me. I’m supposed to have dinner with sixty-five hungry people in ten minutes, and they are thirty minutes away.”

“I never,” she said, “never will understand how you get involved in such—”

I had been asking myself the same question nonstop for weeks. I had a chance to ponder it anew while my mother debated which of my father’s genetic flaws accounted for my weaknesses. I also screwed the top back on the peanut butter, put away the crackers, and dusted off the counter.

“You’re running yourself ragged,” she said. “Teaching all day and after school, then giving an enormous party.”

“It’s not my party, I’m not doing much at all.” Nobody was except the caterer that Santa Claus had provided, the public relations firm he kept on retainer, and the merchants who had donated gifts. “A parent’s taken charge.” It was obvious that my mother hadn’t been reading her Philadelphia Inquirer thoroughly. Clausen had managed to get himself and his party onto the front page today, and there had been two other significant features about it this week as well.

The one thing I was supposed to do for the party was show up, and I was definitely late. And I still had unmarked compositions. Damn, if Mackenzie arrived tonight, I’d have to spend some of our time hunting run-on sentences and indefinite pronouns. “I have to leave,” I said.

“You know, dear, next time you see Minna, do something for me—take her cannoli for old time’s sake.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again. The class ended tonight.”

“But now that you know she’s an old friend, Amanda! The poor woman. It must be especially hard on her around the holidays.”

I vowed to enlist Mackenzie’s aid in mastering the answering machine this very night.

“She isn’t lucky, like me. Her child doesn’t visit her. Think about it.”

From now on, when I expected a call from Florida, I’d have a therapist on standby. “I will,” I said. “But right now I’m really in a rush.”

“Why? Do you expect to meet the wino of your dreams tonight? Listen, Mandy. I’m sure you’re tired after a long day. Why risk pneumonia? Stay home. Take a bubble bath. Pack for Florida. Forget this party.”

Why, just that once, didn’t I listen to my mother?

Two

DESPITE BEING LATE, I DID TRY TO ENJOY THE RIDE. AFTER ALL, THE CITY WAS twinkling away in holiday attire. The least I could do was look.

I headed for East River Drive. There were, of course, no crew teams out at this hour or season, but the park setting was nonetheless picturesque. Every Victorian turret on Boat House Row was outlined in white lights that glimmered off the dark river.

Once off the drive, I passed tightly packed homes that I knew had blistered, chipped paint, missing parts, visible wounds. But not tonight. Not this season. Now they were all red and green lights, candles, wreaths, Santa faces and messages of peace and love.

And then the houses became more splendid and the decorations more subdued. I have a love-hate relationship with Chestnut Hill. Once, I lusted for one of the many houses still owned and rented by the developer’s family, nearly a hundred years after they were built, but the necessary interview—checking everything from my lineage to my educational credentials—cooled my ardor and I gave up the idea before they could order me gone.

Of course I was late. Since I didn’t want to be there at all, this wasn’t a real problem, except that it made it impossible to find a parking space. I circled the Clausens’ block again and again but the area was clogged with residents’ cars, mini-vans from various agencies and a chartered bus unloading people of all known ages, shapes, sizes and races, plus a few who looked like new inventions. However different they may have been originally, their shabby clothing and wary expressions made them look united, or at least related.

I didn’t blame them for being suspicious. I didn’t know what any of this meant, either. I circled the block again, wondering whether the Innercity Services Van, the Septa Senior Charter, and the Palate Pleasers catering truck would occupy their parking spaces during the whole party, their drivers dozing over their wheels. “Give me a break,” I muttered. “Sleep somewhere else.” They didn’t.

On the next pass, I thought I had a spot when a taxicab pulled away, but the car in front of me had also been waiting, and I set out again, wondering what variety of homeless arrives in a cab.

By the next go-round, I recited every parked vehicle’s make and ownership as if I were putting a curse on them all. They still didn’t budge. I was about to leave, to call in sick, when a neighbor, probably sure our gala was lowering his property value, took to the road. His legacy was a genuine parking spot.

The Clausens’ place was perfection. Much as I disliked its owner, I admired his taste in domiciles. It was where you’d go after you met the prince and needed a place for the happily ever afters.

Tonight, the house was not only glorious, but packed. Round tables with green cloths and poinsettia centerpieces filled enormous nooks and spacious crannies.

Every wall and most of the polished wooden surfaces were decked with holly and evergreen, punctuated by crimson velvet bows. In discreet corners and on mantelpieces fat green candles threw off soft light and the holiday smell of bayberry. At the far corner of the living room, a towering tree shimmered with gilded and spun fantasies, straight out of my every childhood dream of Christmas.

I grew up with rather low-key and unenthusiastic holiday celebrations. Both my parents are half-somethings, representing most of the major religions, and they long ago decided on an ecumenical smorgasbord for their daughters. Interesting and democratic as it probably sounded, it translated into droopy, noncommittal holidays.

Such was not the case Chez Santa where dwelled the all-out, definitive spirit of Christmas Present and Past.

Aside from the handpicked needy, there was Maurice Havermeyer, a harried-looking press photographer, a tall, bearded observer of some kind, and my friend Sasha Berg, there by permission of S. Claus. She waltzed around the room, large and flamboyant in purple velvet, convincing people to sign model releases so that she could capture them for a photo essay on food. There were also three Palate Pleasers employees in checkered dresses and a dozen Philly Prep students who were, at my insistence, waiting tables. These student servers were my only victory over the Clausen-Havermeyer bloc, which had wanted professional waitpersons. But to achieve victory, I had sweetened the moral pot with extra credit that didn’t involve writing or memorization.

Of course, Santa was also very much in residence, appropriately bedecked in velvet, tufting, beard and resonant “Ho-ho-ho’s,” glad-handing his rather stunned-looking guests.

The press photographer snapped candids and grabbed hors d’oeuvres from passing students. Alice Clausen, Santa’s Mrs., intermittently peeked around a corner, smiled tensely and disappeared again, reminding me of those hobbling plastic birds perched on the rims of glasses. Maurice Havermeyer cleared his throat and searched the ceiling for inspiration. I estimated his endurance at forty-five minutes, and checked my watch to begin countdown. As for me, after I’d reassured myself that the Palate Pleasers could more easily run the kitchen and the students without my interference, and that Sasha was too engrossed stalking mouths and edibles to talk, I had little to do but become part of a human-interest story. I talked with, or listened to, a family of four who lived in a rusting VistaCruiser station wagon, a pugnacious man who mentioned ’Nam every third word, sneered at the rich kids’ school and the rich bastard who owned this house, and made spitting noises for punctuation, and to a woman in her sixties who nervously picked at her skirt and checked behind her every few seconds. I found chatting exhausting when what I really wanted to do was wave a wand and offer solutions. When the timid woman walked off, checking over her shoulder, I sighed with relief and leaned against the wall.

“Want some?” A bearded man held out a glass cup. He was well dressed and self-confident. Not a guest, obviously. The visible portion of his smile suggested that he was offering me more than punch. “Not good,” he said, “but available.” I assumed he referred to the punch this time and accepted.

“We were afraid to serve anything with alcohol,” I said. “Given the crowd.” It had been solemnly decided that liquid red dye was less dangerous than traditional gloggs. People wound up dead, but not sleeping on grates, from carcinogens.

“I’m Nick Riley,” he said. “I’m writing a piece about Clausen. And you’re Mandy Pepper, the English teacher.” He rolled his eyes in mock horror. “Are you going to make red marks all over my copy?”

I detest the coy “Yikes! an English teacher” school of approach. I am also suspicious of beards, now that they don’t make any political statement. Or maybe I’m jealous because no amount of equal rights will ever give me a man’s ability to camouflage weak jaws and funny features with hair.

“I hear you thought up this shindig,” he said, nodding toward Havermeyer. “So thanks. Made it easy to get to Clausen.”

“I had a very different shindig in mind. Feel no need to thank me or mention my name in your article.”

He cocked a brow above eyes the color of fudge. In all fairness, his visible parts weren’t at all bad. Nice nose, eyes with a generous sprinkle of laugh lines, good cheeks. “A little hostile?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure what he wanted from me, or I from him, so I began what I hoped was a discreet interrogation. “Who’s the piece for?” I asked.

“It’s on spec.”

Nobody wanted it. There was something to be said for his honesty. He could have lied and named any magazine he liked to impress me.

“Have you been writing long?” I asked next.

“Off and on. Mostly fiction. Sold some, but it isn’t a living, so I have to stop too often, too long.”