Tales From the Crib (26 page)

“I got that gig with
Glamour
I told you about last week. They liked my story idea.”

Jack smiled. “Gee, Lucy, that’s great. Feel like celebrating?”

“Yes!” I burst into laughter and jumped around my kitchen. “You would not
believe
how much they pay, Jack!”

“Good for you!”

“Wanna get a babysitter and go out to celebrate?” I said without thinking.

“Sure,” he said without hesitation. Smiling, he added, “I hope you don’t fuck it up, Luce. It’s a mighty big magazine.”

With far too much adrenaline, I rushed over to him and swatted Jack’s head with the first thing I could find, which, unfortunately for him, was a hardcover book. “Oh my God!” I shouted, half laughing, half apologizing. “Your head! Did I hurt your head?!”

He looked at me quizzically. “Who the hell are
you?”

“Very funny!” I said, still elated. “It’d be nice if you would stop using humor as a wedge.”

“Ewww!” he said. “Very good. Touché on that one, Luce.”

As it turned out, we couldn’t get a babysitter on such short notice. Anjoli said she normally would love to, but with just four days until she left for Brazil, there was simply too much to do. Kimmy was going to hear a band she was considering for her reception. Bernice and Rita were in Florida condo-hunting for a winter home. Zoe left for Paris three days after coming to stay with us. Candace always offered to babysit, but she’d already done so much, I felt too guilty to ask.

“Do you want me to run to Lo Fats for carryout?” Jack offered.

“I’ve kind of lost my appetite for that place,” I said.

“How ‘bout sandwiches?” he suggested.

An hour later, I was naked on the coffee table being sketched as I ate my sandwich. If this was a pickup routine, I was totally buying it. He said he saw some kind of irony in my pose. Whatever.

We never had simultaneous orgasms. Jack finishing his sketch at the exact moment I finished my sandwich was the closest we’d come to synchronicity. “Perfect timing!” I giggled.

“Yeah, how often does that happen?” Jack added.

“With us? How ʼbout never, Mr. Let’s Get Divorced in the Second Trimester,” I said, laughing.
Did I just say that aloud?

“Did I just say that a loud?” I asked. He nodded. “I suppose you’re angry at me for making a joke.”

“No, I’m sorry that it worked out that way,” Jack said, heavily. Why couldn’t I sustain a moment of levity between us? “Lay back,” he commanded. He moved our floor lamp next to my body sprawled on the couch.
Oy, I am so not ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.
I refrained from saying a word until I resumed breathing and relaxed into the heat of the lamp.

“Jack?” I said, almost asking permission to continue.

“Yes?”

“Remember when our whole life was going to be like this? Remember how you were going to paint and I was going to write, and we were going to build that arts community?”

He smiled, remembering. “That was a great dream.”

“What happened to it?”

“We didn’t have a clue how much it would really cost to buy that much land, not to mention construction of our house and the cabins,” he said.

“How much would it cost?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“So we still don’t have a clue,” I said, smiling. “Does that mean I can still believe it could happen?”

“Lucy, you
are
writing. I
am
painting. Sometimes you have to compromise in life.”

“Jack, I’m living in New Jersey. I know all about compromise.”

“Do you hate it here that much?”

“I don’t hate it at all,” I said. “I just don’t fit here. It’s not home.”

“Where is, Lucy? Anjoli’s apartment?”

“I don’t know, Jack,” I said, accompanying the sound of his pencil charting me.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Lucy, but when you figure out where you want to live—not just where you don’t want to be—let’s talk. Until then, I really don’t know what I can do to make you happy.”

God, it had been so long since Jack had talked about making me happy as if it were his responsibility. I thought of Kimmy’s wedding, and corrected myself. It had been so long since Jack had talked about making me happy as if it was something he wanted to be part of.

He was silent for another ten minutes as he captured me on paper. “Jack?” I said tentatively. “Are you mad at me?”

He stopped sketching. “No, I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About how I wish I had my camera with me yesterday when I took Adam on the Staten Island Ferry.”

“Oh ,” I said, somewhat disappointed.

“I always have it with me, but yesterday I left it at home and I missed a great shot.”

“What was it?”

“There was this group of Orthodox Jewish girls on the deck of the ferry and the wind lifted one of their skirts. Her knees were still covered because she held her skirt down like Marilyn Monroe in that famous shot from
The Seven Year Itch.
Her covered head was tossed back and she was laughing, but she still had the faintest hint of embarrassment. It would’ve made a great shot.”

Great. Just what every woman wants to hear. The man she loves is drifting off into thought about Orthodox adolescents whose skirts have been blown up by the river breeze.

“And I was thinking that I miss you,” Jack said. I tried to remain calm, knowing that peeing on the couch was a definite mood killer. A
Glamour
Don’t for sure.

“How can you miss me when I’m right here?” I said innocently.

“I miss the way it used to be between us. I miss the Lucy I fell in love with in Ann Arbor.”
This isn’t good.

“What made you think of that?”

“Because I’ve seen that side of you again recently. And it’s made me want it back.”

I sighed, and held back tears of joy. “Come here,” I coaxed with my finger. I wrapped my naked arms around his shoulders and kissed him with the single-mindedness I hadn’t had in years. I felt the warmth and fullness of his lips pressed against mine, and thought if ever there was a night I might be able to give Tantra a real shot, this was it. “I’m still here, Jack,” I whispered, kissing him lightly, teasingly. “And so are you.”

Adam let out a wail from his room. “And so is he,” Jack said, smiling. “Lemme get this one. You stay right there, and hold that thought.”

Chapter 31

Hours later I was awakened by the alarm of Adam’s needs. I squinted in the dark, startled to see Jack’s arm draped across a pillow. The sight brought an immediate smile to my face. I brought Adam back to my bed and watched his father sleep as I nursed him. I didn’t know what the future held for our family. Jack very well may have woken up and announced that our brief reconciliation was a mistake, a fleeting moment of passion between two old friends. Or, it could’ve begun our journey back together. Whatever it was, I wasn’t naïve enough to think that one night together would be the panacea for years of resentment between us. But this was a very nice start.

I never got the chance to debrief with Jack. That sounds terribly unromantic, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up and characterize it as morning-after pillow talk. The phone rang a few minutes before six the next morning. It was Cousin Ralph, Aunt Rita’s son-in-law. He was a Chanukah card relative—one sent by his wife nonetheless—so I knew he was calling with news of death or illness. I wasn’t prepared for it to be the fatal heart attack of Aunt Rita. She was an elderly woman with a heart condition in the Florida summer heat, but still, it was completely unexpected. After getting the details of the funeral, which would be in New York later in the week, I called Bernice at her cousin Sylvia’s in Miami.

“We had such a gorgeous day yesterday,” Bernice began. “We should all die like this.” I glanced at Adam and Jack still sleeping in the bed together. I walked down to the kitchen and opened the fridge to pour a glass of tomato juice, a drink Rita always had well stocked. “In the morning we found the perfect condo for ourselves. In Hollywood. Right across the street from the beach, which we’d nevah go to, but the breeze helps keep things coolah. And the apartment has a balcony with a view of the Intracoastal.”

“The what?” I asked, wondering why she wasn’t wailing with grief.

“It’s a wartah-way. I could sit there for hours wondering where the boats were heading. Rita loved it too, which, as you know, dawling, is no small achievement. So we signed the paypahs, then went to Sylvia’s for the matinee of
Goys and Dahrls,
which is Rita’s favorite musical evah.” She sang a few notes. “Luck for my lady tonight.” She sighed and sniffed. “I will miss her. So aftah the show is ovah, a group of ladies decided to go to the Red Lobstah for dinnah. Now, I don’t know if you know this, but Rita adored lobstah, but was always too frugal to spend like that. But you know how it is when you go out with a big group. The bill comes and some big shot says we should split it, nevah mind if she had the lobstah and you had nothing but a bowl of chowdah ,” she said. “So Rita figures she’s going all out and ordered lobstah
and
rock shrimp. Have you ever had rock shrimp?”

“Huh? Oh sorry, no,” I said.

“Next time you come to Florida, you
must
try rock shrimp. It will be our tribute to her! I don’t know what got into Rita last night, but you know how we’re always dieting? Not last night! Aftah she ate her lobstah and rock shrimp, with buttah—they’re so succulent, they taste exactly like lobstah—my sistah decides to ordah key lime pie. Lucy, I can’t tell you what comfort it gives me to know that she ate every last crumb of that pie before she died.”

What is it with older women and pie?

Bernice continued. “It was like that story about the Buddha who ate the grape before he was eaten by tigahs.”

“Do you mean the Zen Buddhist?” I asked.

“Exactly! My sistah Rita, the Buddha of Red Lobstah. Oy, she’d die if she heard me say she was like that tubby Chinaman.”

“So Rita just died right there in the restaurant?!”

“As soon as the waitah gave her the check, she started clutching her chest. We all thought she was joking, saying the bill was so high, but she fell ovah onto the floor and we all started screaming. The manager thought she was choking and started giving her the Heimlich maneuvah, but some other man came over and checked her out and said she was having a heart attack. By the time the ambulance arrived, she was gone,” she said, sniffing again. “I’m heartbroken, of course, but it was such a Rita way to go. She ruined everyone else’s dinnah at the Red Lobstah. Can you imagine watching someone die at the next table while you’re trying to enjoy dinnah? Anyway, the manager was absolutely lovely. Our meal was one hundred percent on the house. You know how she could always get our restaurant bills reduced by complaining that this wasn’t right, or that didn’t please her? She wasn’t even trying to get a discount this time. I only wish she were here to laugh about it.”

“Wow,” was all I could say. “You sound like you’re taking this very well.”

“I’m devastated,” Bernice said, her voice growing heavy. “We were together every day. We were going to live together like we did when we were girls in Brooklyn. She perked up. “I’ve made a decision, though, and before I tell you I want you to know that I’m not crazy. I had a lot of time to think about this last night, so promise me that even if you don’t agree with it, you’ll help me.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve decided that if I make it to ninety, I want to check out the way Rita did.”

“Auntie! You can’t plan a heart attack at Red Lobster.”

“Listen to me, big shot! What I want is to have a gorgeous day with the people I love most, have a delicious dinner-rock shrimp-then I’m out.”

“What do you mean? “

“I don’t want to be caught by surprise. Irv died on the bathroom floor. Rita left a mess on the table with all those lobstah shells.”

“You want to tidy up before you die?”

“I’ll be ninety! I’ll have a girl take care of that. My point is that I’m not going to let death catch me off guard. After my perfect day, I’m going to jump off my balcony into the Intracoastal.”

“What?!”

“I’m going to jump off the balcony and into the Intracoastal,” she repeated as though I was a dullard for not absorbing it the first time. “And I need you to help me climb up onto the rail. I couldn’t pull that off now, much less in eight yeahs.”

“Auntie, I think you may be in shock,” I said. “It’s been a stressful twenty-four hours. Why don’t we talk about this in a few weeks?”

“Okay,” she said sweetly. “So what’s new with you?”

“Auntie, I think you need some sleep,” I suggested.

Aunt Rita was not the expert on funerals that her sister was, but she had definite ideas about how hers would be conducted. She left behind a twenty-four-page typed manual on handling her burial and memorial service. She even wrote the eulogy for her son.

Whenever someone dies, some moron always says, “This is the way she would have wanted it.” And chances are the deceased is rolling over in her grave wanting the exact opposite. To clarify what it is that I
do
want, I am leaving behind a few notes. Think of it as
Death’s Little Instruction Book.

Rita was right. No one would have ever guessed that she would have wanted such a lavish memorial service. Not once in her life did she entertain in the manner that she would for her death.

As directed, after Rita was buried next to her husband at a Jewish cemetery in Queens, her friends and family gathered at Tavern on the Green for lunch. I sat in this same room for my high school prom—the large room that looks like a greenhouse with windows covering most of the ceiling and wall space. We overlooked a quiet patch of lawn with thick-trunked trees and chipper squirrels. Each table had a clear glass vase with large white stargazer lilies. Black rocks sat at the vase bottoms, holding the stems in place. A string quartet played Mozart. Unobtrusive waiters laid decorative plates of food before us. Filet mignon with tiny sprigs of asparagus rested over a Rorschach design of hollandaise sauce. I was impressed by their ability to lay more than one hundred plates before us in just a few minutes.