The Late, Lamented Molly Marx (39 page)

“If you’re not going to take your calls, at least turn off your damn phone,” the woman ahead of me snarled, attracting the attention of everyone in the small room.

Why hadn’t I grabbed that bitch’s place in line when I had the chance? “I’m sorry if I’m bothering you,” I replied, “but I have to keep my phone on.” Delfina might call, or Barry.

“You know, you’re not only annoying, you’re rude,” Squawk Box hissed.

The phone rang again. The room grew silent as the woman’s stare dared me to answer it. The phone blared and the saints marched. I felt trapped and intimidated. “Hello,” I said. “No, I really can’t talk now.” Luke’s voice was casting its usual spell. “I’m not kidding, I can’t …” He went on for a bit, his rhetoric less pleading than calmly, appealingly persuasive. “I disagree—that’s a terrible idea.” Damn, he was persistent.

I felt a force push me toward him, gentle, invisible like a breeze.
“Okay, okay, You should have been a lawyer. Okay, we’ll meet … we’ll talk. But not today, because …” I looked outside. The rain had suddenly stopped. The sun had come out. “Because I’m going … biking.” As I clicked off, my resolve began to crumble.

I sensed that every eye and ear in the room had been trained on me and my call. They were Argentina, I was Evita. I tried to set my cell to vibrate, but the saints blared again. I did my best to lower my head and whisper. “Of course I have feelings for you.” As if that were ever the real problem.

“Molly, I love you,” Luke said, to me and the whole room. Apparently I’d hit the mechanism for speakerphone.

“I’m going biking now,” I said. “We’ll work this out some other time.” I couldn’t listen. “I’m getting off now.” I snapped the lid of my phone shut and shoved it in my pocket, trying to avoid glances and snickers.

Fortunately, the registrar motioned me to step forward. The woman’s fingers tap-danced on her computer keyboard. There would be room for Annabel, the last slot.
Keep breathing
, I told myself.
It’s still a good day
.

As I began to complete the form, the woman in the Chanel raincoat, who I noticed had been standing off to the side, swished past me without saying so much as goodbye.
She certainly runs hot and cold, I
thought just as this woman also got a call.

“Barry,” I was almost positive I heard her say. Her volume wasn’t pianissimo, and unless I was being utterly paranoid, I had the feeling that she wanted to be overheard. “Well, that’s very interesting, but I can top that. You didn’t tell me your wife was attractive. Anyway, news flash. You were right. She is definitely seeing someone.”

I looked up. The woman was gone.

un this by me again—
why
do we need an unveiling?” Barry and Kitty are finishing their second cup of triple-filtered coffee one Sunday. My husband sees himself reflected in the new double-wide, glass-doored stainless-steel refrigerator and thinks what I think: what was wrong with the kitchen his mother put in nine years ago—Shaker cabinetry, granite countertops, and a fridge that kept food as cold as required? When you have enough money, however, as well as an architect on speed dial, you can amuse yourself by selecting warming drawers and six-burner professional ranges and still eat out five nights a week.

For someone who spends more time each year in a one-legged king pigeon pose than in prayer, my mother-in-law is, nonetheless, the Wikipedia of Judaic heritage. “That’s what’s done,” she says. “The ceremony has to take place before the one-year anniversary of a death.”

“Or else?” Barry says.

“Tradition,” Kitty says. She discards the fleeting notion of exhibiting self-control. “Besides, let’s say you and Stephanie get engaged. You’d want the unveiling to be out of the way, wouldn’t you?”

Barry chokes on a thick slab of Bermuda onion, which crowns his poppy-seed bagel.

“I’m talking hypothetically of course,” Kitty says. “Although that girl’s just what you need.”

What qualifications is my mother-in-law referring to? A big mouth? I’m going with the big ambition. Kitty sees women as the hard drive behind male success. While I believe she’s of the opinion that any daughter-in-law is largely just a biological requirement necessary to produce grandchildren, her pragmatic half dictates that as long as a male offspring has to marry, he’d best trade up to someone a lot like her.

“You’re way ahead of yourself,” Barry says after he stops coughing.

“Am I?” Kitty turns her back to refill her black-and-white-striped porcelain mugs—hers is lined in shocking pink, his in pistachio green—and predicts an engagement before the summer. Maybe a destination wedding. She’s always wanted to see the Seychelles. Dubai, Bhutan, and Bali are also on Kitty’s wish list, but certainly Stephanie will have her own ideas. One thing Kitty knows is that there’s nothing subtle about a thirty-four-year-old woman who invited her to lunch at Saks and then suggested a stroll to her uncle’s teensy-weensy jewelry store on Forty-seventh Street, where she casually pointed out a 1920s Art Deco diamond solitaire almost as big as the shop. Asscher cut, significant baguettes. Another mother might have been appalled, but Kitty admires Stephanie’s self-assurance. She believes a woman needs focus as much as state-of-the-art bedroom expertise. “Leave the unveiling to me,” she says to Barry. “Order the stone.”

Barry did—which is why Rabbi S.S. is warming up his vocal cords to once again be in service to my family tomorrow, why I can practically smell the cinnamon-raisin babkas, yeasty and plump, rising in their silvery loaf pans, and why a marble monument waits under wraps at Serenity Haven. It’s pinkish gray, not unlike Kitty’s recently installed tinted concrete countertops.

I take a gander under the drape, hoping Barry might have exhibited a trace of originality with the stone’s inscription. While I haven’t decided if I’m more Bette Davis (“She did it the hard way”), Karen Carpenter (“A star on earth, a star in heaven”), or Dean Martin (“Everybody
loves somebody sometime”), surely Barry could have done better than
Molly Divine Marx, beloved daughter, wife, and mother
. Simple and dignified, yes, but where’s my mystery? My élan? My cheeky noir-ish humor? I might have liked
Molly, biker chick
. Or even something in shockingly bad taste:
My grandparents went through the Holocaust and all I got was this?
I did, after all, die at only thirty-five.

My Divines arrived last night, two days ahead of Sunday’s noon service. Annabel will be joining Grammy and Grandpa at the Children’s Museum later this morning, but Lucy’s begged off. I trail her as she leaves a coffee shop on Broadway and begins to walk north. She appears immune to the December air as she tramps briskly past colossal produce markets, Barnes & Noble, and a bank whose unique selling feature seems to be its handy branches in Auckland and Kuala Lumpur. Never looking up, she trudges by glassy condos piercing the gray sky. She all but race-walks, staring ahead.

Not even the somber majesty of Columbia University makes Lucy blink, but on 120th Street she hangs a left and pauses to admire the Gothic splendor of Riverside Church, which makes Temple Emanuel-El, the snazziest synagogue in North America, look as drab as a drugstore. Lucy doesn’t, however, linger. She heads over to Grant’s Tomb.

Now
there’s
a final resting place. Ever since the Parks Department was shamed into spiffing it up—this happened at the moment when Times Square did a 180 from working girls, porn, and peep shows to tourists, Oreo Overload sundaes, and Disney blockbusters—I used to drop in on my friends Ulysses and Julia, parking my bike at the rack outside. “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” was Papa Louie’s idea of a riddle, which he delivered with his Groucho brows wiggling. By kindergarten Lucy and I could spit back, “No one!” The general and the missus are
entombed
in twin Beaux Arts sarcophagi.

Lucy skips the inside of the monument, although she glances at the engraving above its entrance:
Let us have peace
, which I always thought was an ironic epitaph for one of American history’s most hell-bent hawks. Lucy stuffs her hands deep in the pockets of her purple down coat and turns toward the woods skirting one of the designated nature preserves. FOREVER WILD, the sign says.

When Manhattan people think
park
it’s Central, with its showy lakes and gondolas, the kelly green Sheep Meadow, and a zoo that’s
home to neurotic polar bears. Even if they live nearby, few locals venture into Riverside, the anorexic four-mile stepchild also designed by the grand master, Frederick Law Olmsted. Despite the fact that Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks met cute by its flowerbeds in
You’ve Got Mail
, Riverside is low-key, as befits this side of the city. Bikers, runners, and dog walkers take care of business here, but it remains a park for a quick hit, not a holiday.

Lucy winds down an overgrown path to the level above the lonesome Hudson, where the wind whips off the water, chilling her face and reddening her cheeks. It feels fifteen degrees colder than on Broadway. Whoever is around at this hour moves at a quick clip, whether on two feet or four. As she strides forward, the tassels of her knit hat bob like Heidi’s braids.

Two golden retrievers zoom past. Their master soon follows and stops to check his watch. It’s past nine, the witching hour when dogs must return to the leash, lest their owners get slapped with a fine big enough to buy a decent dinner for two. “Sigmund,” the owner shouts, “Hamlet, come here.” But the dogs ignore him, perhaps embarrassed by their names. They run to Lucy, who bends down to stroke their furry heads and give them a welcome behind-the-ears scratch.

“There you boys are,” the man says, reaching them as the larger of the dogs jumps up to lick Lucy’s face and the other tries to bite one of her tassels.

She decides that a pet lover is safe for conversation. “Can you tell me how to get down to the river, please?” She points in the direction of the George Washington Bridge, which dangles in the distance like a strand of gray Majorca pearls.

“Sure,” the man says with an open smile. He looks like the kind of guy Lucy might like—shaggy-haired and broad-shouldered, not a label in sight, discounting the Yankees cap. He carries the
Times
sports section under his arm. Columbia professor or shrink, I guess. This neighborhood is well stocked with both. “Let’s see. There are a few twists and turns.” He strokes his beard as he looks into Lucy’s eyes. His eyes are green, his accent Australian, and his tone cheery. “I could lead the way.”

I decide that he’s divorced. His kids are with Mommy this weekend and he has a day stretching ahead of him in which he’s going to braise
short ribs with blood-orange juice and
herbes de Provence
while he drinks a Châteauneuf-du-Pape, listens to the Saturday afternoon opera, and reads a sturdy biography of Winston Churchill. Lucy, buy this lottery ticket. I worry about you being alone, and this dog owner has good guy written all over him.

I wish I knew how to flirt
, runs through Lucy’s head.
Other women meet men everywhere. Me? Never. And I could do worse. This man’s eyes are intelligent. I like his taste in animals and reading material
.

But does my sister let him lead the way? “Oh, that won’t be necessary” is her knee-jerk response.

“Chicago,” the stranger says, and smiles again, wider this time. There is a small, dear space between his front teeth. He knows he’s crazy, but what if this woman would join him for a cup of coffee? He likes her face, devoid of makeup or a visible attitude. They’d get to talk, maybe do a movie, browse a bookstore and then, who knows?

“Chi-caw-go, yes. How can you tell?” Lucy, like every midwesterner, believes everyone has an accent but her.

“Actually, I got my degree at the university there,” he says, and waits for Lucy to banter. A man would have to sky-write “I am trying to pick you up” before she might notice that someone found her appealing.

“Great school,” she says finally.
Should I tell him I live two miles from Hyde Park?
she thinks.
Nah. Why would he care?
“So, if you could point the way for me?”

He does, and curses himself—why didn’t he ask for her number?—as he watches Lucy walk north until she is the size of his fingernail, her purple coat small as a berry.

Finally, my sister reaches the water. She stares at New Jersey as if it will reveal the answer: how did Molly die? Barry, she’s convinced, has pushed for tomorrow’s unveiling to put a lid on the wrack and ruin of was-she-pushed-or-did-she-jump? The unspoken, preposterous assumption wafting toward Chicago seems to be that I must have engineered my own death. “Molly would never do something so idiotic,” she screams at the river. Her eyes follow a barge that makes its sluggish way on the choppy water. “Molly’s been goddamn Swift-boated.” Lucy shakes her head and makes a sound, a laugh mated with a moan.

Lucy spoke to Hicks yesterday. What does he know? Nothing, it
seems, at least nothing he’s going to tell Lucy. She’s been fishing for weeks, debating. Should she show him the photo? She wishes like hell she’d never found my adulterous ephemera, evidence—but of what?