The Late, Lamented Molly Marx (5 page)

I get it.

“I knew you would,” Bob says, and winks. “You’ll only upset yourself trying to communicate that way.” He refers to his notes, then sinks into a loveseat upholstered in suede as soft as kitten fur and pats the spot next to him. I sit.

I’ve never believed in heaven. For that matter, I have also never believed in hell. Most Jews are like that, planning vacations to Patagonia and Prague, but never making long-term celestial plans. But if I
had
imagined heaven, I’d have pictured it like an enormous Guggenheim Museum, with stairs that circle up and up and up into the wild blue yonder. Wherever it is that I’ve landed now, however, looks and feels more like an upscale fitness resort. It could be any day of the year in San Diego—neither warm nor cold. We are in a sunny solarium. Leaded glass windows overlook a lush green park webbed with cobblestone paths where people of all ages are walking briskly as if they have places to go.

“Now, some of our newcomers,” Bob says, “get a little overwhelmed by the ability they discover they have to, hmm, flit about.”

“Like yesterday?” One minute I was in Annabel’s room, and the next I was staring down at Barry. This was before I moved on to Brie
and Isadora’s. I was like the cursor on my computer before I learned how to control the mouse.

“Exactly,” Bob says. “You were the proverbial cheap suit.”

“Could you use a different metaphor, please? How about wallpaper?”

“Fine. Now, Molly, did you ever practice yoga?”

“Occasionally. Badly.”

“Ah,” he says. “Then what I would encourage is for you to simply count up to your age—thirty-five, right?—before you allow yourself to relocate. That’s the term we prefer,
relocate
. This will help you reserve your powers for where they’re needed most.”

“But how will I know where they are ‘needed’ at all?” I sound shrill, but Bob is kind enough not to roll his eyes.

“You will know,” he says, articulating each word slowly, clearly, and—I have to admit—as if he has a warm, beating heart. “For example, you have no need to know whether or not the president and First Lady have intercourse, so stop thinking how ‘interesting’ it would be to see if they share a bedroom and, if so, what they do there.”

Damn.

“This leads me to another point. You have discovered that you now possess the ability to hear what people think.”

“Incredible.”

“You must promise to listen to only one person at a time. If you abuse this privilege, it will end. Do you hear me? Kaput, over. This will mean that while you are monitoring one person, you will miss the thoughts of another, but so be it. Those, dear Molly, are the rules. I cannot emphasize this too strongly. Do you know the term
cacophony?
” Bob asks.

I nod.

“Exercise your eavesdropping talent selectively, or you will feel as if you’re living through a Stones concert in the Times Square subway station during rush hour.”

“Bob, you look grave,” I say. He is a Ken doll that has just lost his job.

“Good one, Molly,” he says, chuckling. “I will like working with you. But let’s stay on point. If you don’t choose to listen to just one voice
or inner thought at a time, I warn you, you will suddenly become …” He pauses for emphasis. “Stone deaf.”

Got it.

“Now, to the power that you ever so delicately referred to as a bullshit detector.”

Am I blushing?

He waves his hand. “As good a name as any. I’ll let you in on a little secret. You always had that ability. You just never bothered to activate it. Not many people who have that gift do.”

I try to take it in, but I am distracted by how earnest Bob is. I picture him in a short-sleeved plaid shirt, shopping at Sears, going to the barber for his biweekly trim, never forgetting to floss or remember his grandmother’s birthday. I wonder if he showed a calf at the Iowa State Fair.

“Not a calf,” he says. “A blue-ribbon sow, as gorgeous as Miss Piggy. And not Iowa. Northern California.” He smiles. “And no, I did not eat a deep-fried Twinkie at the fair, but yes, I was an Eagle Scout, played football and French horn, and graduated from med school. Pediatric resident. Engaged. I had a pretty sweet life until the accident. Drunk driver with a big pot belly filled with beer. Splat. Hit and run.”

I don’t know what to say.

“There’s nothing to say,” Bob says, and looks at me so kindly his eyes are like sunlamps. “Except that, of course, you can ask me anything you wish, either now or later. Anything, do you hear? In the Duration, I’m your Sherpa, remember?”

But it’s all too much. I feel as if I’m at a job interview where I’ve been quizzed for two hours and now can’t manufacture one intelligent question in response. “These powers I have, Bob,” I say finally. “How long will they last?”

There isn’t a harp in sight, but someone has cued Elvis, who’s singing, “I can’t help falling in love with you.” The taste of raspberries is on my lips. In the distance, a Milky Way of dewy white roses catches the morning light and, faintly, their fragrance wafts our way. It is a fragrance far more pleasing to my nose than Eternity.

“Molly, that I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. None of us knows. But you are lucky—for most people, these powers are over before they even get here. For a few, of course, they last forever.” Bob
touches my arm. “I believe,” he says, “and this is purely private speculation, that our powers last only as long as they need to last. I am not a religious man, though neither am I a cynic.”

I blink.

Bob is gone. Nearby, a plump robin lands on a branch. I could swear I see it wink.

arry and I were married in my parents’ backyard beneath a canopy of willow branches twinkling with—may the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob forgive me—tiny white Christmas lights. Rain misted us halfway through the seven benedictions, so by the time I heard “makest the bridegroom to rejoice in his bride,” I was fully engrossed in whether my hair would frizz and thought only for an instant about Barry.

Several months before the wedding, at a restaurant in the Village where Barry and I went for my birthday lunch—I was turning twenty-seven—I found a Burberry box on my chair. Attached to an umbrella inside was a poem Barry had written about protecting me from life’s storms. There was also a hunky emerald-cut diamond ring.

I stared at it as if it might explode. We hadn’t even talked about living together. I was hoping Barry might be extravagant, and had visions of an Art Deco bracelet or a pair of expensive gold hoop earrings I’d been stalking at Saks. Instead, after only six months of dating, he was asking me to marry him.

“Molly Divine, you are the woman for me,” he said. “I knew that the moment I met you.”

After Barry and I had briefly dated in college, I’d had three serious relationships: Trevor, who dumped me for Sarah; Jeff, whom I dumped when I began falling asleep during sex; and Christian, whom I broke up with not because he was Christian but because if your idea of hors d’oeuvres is deviled eggs made with Miracle Whip, you can’t grow old beside me.

I considered Barry’s good qualities. There was his playful manner with friends’ small children, and his ability to navigate life without maps—the man was a living, breathing GPS who from memory or by scent, for all I know, could retrace his steps five years later to a remote address he’d visited once, while I have the uncanny ability to consistently turn left for every right. I considered the breadth of his shoulders, the taper of his waist, the length and steadiness of his immaculate surgeon’s fingers. I noted the fact that he seemed to know exactly the life he wanted, whereas I couldn’t tell you if I’d rather eat a Cobb salad or tuna for lunch.

I liked that he liked me. Wanted me. Loved me, apparently.

I decided on the spot that twenty-seven was the perfect age at which to get engaged: you’re young enough not to be too cynical or wrinkled for a long white dress, and old enough—presumably—to know what you’re getting into. You also have a fair shot at conceiving before life becomes hot-and-cold running infertility specialists.

The day he popped the question, Barry Marx had all the right words. “I will marry my soul to yours,” he said. I cried, spilling tears on the tablecloth. I actually thanked him for proposing.

He must have assumed I’d say yes, because from the restaurant we drove immediately to his mother’s apartment, where at least a dozen relatives and family intimates had gathered to toast our future happiness. “To Dr. and Mrs. Marx,” Kitty said, raising a glass of Veuve Clicquot. Until that point, it never occurred to me that I’d ever not be Divine. My name was as good as it gets, even if I had to share it with an obese drag queen. But Barry echoed Kitty with “To Mrs. Marx,” and I was smothered by well-wishers. Only late that evening, when Barry dropped me at home on Jane Street, did I call my parents.

“Larry who?” my father asked.

“Barry,” I said. “Barry Marx. The doctor.”

“The plastic surgeon?” my mother asked.

“He prefers
cosmetic
.”

The silence between New York and Chicago stood between us like ice. “Are you sure, sweetie?” my mom continued. “You just ended things with Christopher.”

“Christian,” I said. “And it’s been nine months.” Our breakup had been a load off for my mother, who offered me a subscription to J-Date within hours of hearing the news. “Marriage is hard enough without Jesus coming between you,” she’d said.

“When will we meet this Barry?” my parents asked more or less in unison; then and there I saw myself as an ungrateful brat because I’d impulsively agreed to marry a man my parents had never laid eyes on. My mother and father, I always felt, had been nothing less than perfect-two people I genuinely respected, who were generous and just interfering enough for me to know they cared.

“We’ll work it out,” I said quietly.

“Has Lucy met him?” my father asked. If Lucy approved of Barry, it would be good enough for him. Divine family lore classified my father and Lucy as the sensible ones, while I was considered to be a good-hearted and dizzy blonde like my mother.

“Not yet,” I said. This wasn’t going the way I’d hoped. I wanted my parents to be bouncing with happiness, not shooting questions as if our conversation were a press conference. “Aren’t you pleased?” I finally asked. If I whined, I note in my defense that it was late and my face hurt from smiling.

“Molly darling, if you want to marry this man, he must be extremely special,” my mother said. Not only was she always a steel beam of support, she knows when to end a conversation. “But don’t rush. Have a long engagement.”

The next day, Barry and I set a date for only four months later and I kicked into action. Calligraphy or my mother’s distinctive penmanship? DJ or band? Cornish hens or Chilean sea bass? Tent or no tent? Peonies or hydrangeas? Noon or twilight? Vintage Bentley or a Cadillac in Mary Kay pink? Hair up or hanging loose? No detail was too small to be deconstructed as if it were a line from the Talmud.

Except for the Bentley and band, Barry didn’t voice strong opinions. “You’re only going to do this once, Molly—I’ll go with whatever you want,” he said, and made me feel as loved as I ever had by a man.

“I never took you for a psycho bride,” Brie said as we gown-shopped in New York three months before the wedding.

Brie was right. I fulfilled every cliché, obsessing over decisions as if the lives of babies depended on them. A pink wedding? Too cupcake. Yellow? Unflattering on 80 percent of skin types, claims
Allure
. Blue would do, but “nothing too Cozumel,” I lectured as I whipped out a paint chip to show the wedding coordinator, whom I’d forced my parents to hire at considerable expense. “It’s got to be barely blue, like a duck’s egg.” Terms like “too matchy-matchy” infected my vocabulary. I am sure people were mocking me, but ensconced as I was in my bride bubble, how could I hear or see?

When it came to the gown, however, Brie talked me down to earth. After I considered no fewer than five hundred possibilities culled from every bridal magazine—even
Las Vegas Wedding
—and we had the ooh-la-la shopping experience, tea and all, I spent one-fifth the cost of a Vera Wang when Brie dragged me to a garment-center hole in the wall. “I’m the last person in the world to ever say no to designer clothes,” she said, standing tall and tailored as I tried on fourteen gowns in thirty minutes. “But don’t throw money at a dress. You could look good in a dry cleaner’s bag, and honestly, strapless is strapless.”

In the world of fashion, I’m a foot soldier, not a commanding officer, and so I did whatever Brie suggested. She guided me to a slim column of satin with just a spritz of blue-gray crystals. “To pick up the blue of your eyes,” she said, but I suspect she was thinking a sheath made me look thinner. We sewed a pirated Carolina Herrera label into the lining and Kitty not only never knew of the counterfeit, she bragged about the gown to her friends at the engagement party she threw a month later. This is when my parents met Barry. Between his surgery schedule and my bridal dementia, we’d never made it to Chicago.

At the party, held at the country club Kitty made her second home even as a widow, Barry danced with my mother and Lucy and invited my dad to play golf. I assumed the evening had gone splendidly. “So?” I said in my parents’ rented car on our drive back to the city, the first moment when we were alone together. “What do you think?”