Читать книгу Hanging by a Thread - Karen Templeton - Страница 10

The bad news is, it takes me nearly an hour to make the trek on the A train from midtown Manhattan to Richmond Hill. The good news is, our house is only a few blocks from the subway stop. And it’s at the end of the line, so if I pass out—which has happened more than once—the conductor usually gives me a poke to make sure I get off.

Except for a few months, I have lived my entire life in this neighborhood. I don’t hate it, exactly, but the place is like quicksand. The harder you fight to get out, the more it sucks you back in. I’ve watched too many of my friends from high school settle into virtually the same lives as their parents had, even if they moved to another neighborhood, to Ozone Park or Forest Hills or Jamaica. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as long as you’re sure that’s what you want.

I don’t.

And yet my entire body betrays me, sighing with relief the minute I set foot on Lefferts Boulevard. For good or ill, this is home, has been my entire life, and there’s something to be said for leaving the stresses of the city behind on the train. I can almost hear them, banging and howling as the train pulls away on the elevated tracks overhead.

I breathe in the bitterly cold, damp air as I clomp along, my toes freezing in these damn shoes (you will rarely find me in flats—without heels, I look like I’m standing in a hole). Pushing out a crystallized sigh, I pass the duplexes that were pretty much all single family homes when I was a kid, now almost all turned into apartments. Cooking smells accost me as I walk, cruelly taunting my empty stomach—East Indian, Caribbean, Asian stir-fries, the occasional whiff of something solidly middle European. We live near the end of the block, our pair of semidetached houses the same baby blue with white trim as they have been ever since I can remember. Twin front yards flank identical stoops, each just about big enough for ten blades of grass and a tub of marigolds or impatiens in the summer, although the Nyugens installed a small, gurgling fountain on their side last summer. We have a garage, in which resides a 1979 Buick LeSabre that my grandfather drives maybe three times a year, that I drive when there’s absolutely no way I can avoid it.

After my grandfather returned from the Korean War, when my father was six, he used a VA loan to buy the half that Leo, Starr and I live in now. When the Goodmans next door decided to move to Jersey in ’73, Nana and Leo bought the other side for my parents and sister, who was then a year old. The rationale was, since my father and grandfather were now partners in the shoe store over on Atlantic Avenue, why not live close to each other, too? I’ve often wondered how my mother felt about this arrangement, especially as she and my grandmother did not get along. Of course, my grandmother never got along particularly well with anybody, save for maybe my sister.

I pass Mrs. Patel’s, across the street and a couple houses down from mine, trying to remember when she first put up the plastic flamingo. Junior High, I think. Brightly illuminated by a pair of spotlights, he leans rakishly in her speck of a yard, still dressed in his Santa Claus hat.

The windows in both of our houses are lit up; a muted salsa beat throbs from the Gomez apartment, from what had been our living room when I still lived there. My gaze shifts to the other side, where I live now with my daughter and grandfather. And out of nowhere the thought comes, What if you never leave this house? What if you end up marking every season for the rest of your life by whatever outfit Mrs. Patel’s flamingo is wearing?

My blood runs cold. Home is all well and good, but your childhood home is someplace you’re supposed to be able to come back and visit, not rot in—

“Hey, you! You forget where you live or what?”

That’s Frances. Scardinare. Luke’s mother. Figures she’d get home the same time as me. Not that I don’t love Frances, but sometimes there just isn’t room in your head for anybody else.

But I smile anyway. Between Mrs. Patel’s spotlights and these damn halogens, the street’s lit up practically like it’s daytime. “Just trying to figure out if I’ve got the energy to haul my butt up these stairs, that’s all.”

“I know what you mean.” Frances passes her own stoop, her long, thin arms weighted down with several grocery bags. Let me tell you, when I hit my late fifties? I should look half as good as Frances does. Not that I will, considering she’s a good head taller than I am and has all this incredible bone structure. And legs. Even after six kids, she’s still a size ten. Without dieting. And since she started earning her own money selling real estate a couple years ago, she dresses well. Has her hair done at Reggio’s once a month, too, this really flattering, layered style that sets off her big eyes and high cheekbones. And somehow, it stays looking good between cuts. Me, my hair already looks like it’s growing out by the time I’ve tipped the shampoo girl.

Still clutching the bags, Frances holds out one arm for a hug, her wide mouth splayed in a huge grin. My heart does a little skip: when my mother died and my grandmother didn’t seem any too hot on the idea of filling the gap in my life, Frances did, like a mother cat taking on an extra kitten. The woman scares the snot out of me, but I would not have survived my teenage years without her. Or at least, I doubt anyone else would have.

She lets go, a frigid breeze toying with her dark hair. “Did you hear? Petie and Heather are finally getting married!”

Pete’s—nobody, but nobody besides Frances can get away with calling him “Petie”—the brother after Luke, a year younger. Heather Abruzzo was three years behind me, I think, but her older sister Joanne used to hang out with Tina and me from time to time when we were teenagers. “No! When?”

“June, when else—?”

My front door pops open; with an affronted, “Geez, finally!” my daughter shoots out of the house and down the steps to the icy sidewalk, fusing to my hip. I hug her back, noticing she’s in her nightgown and Elmo slippers.

“Get back inside, you’ll catch your death!”

Through her glasses, reproachful, and slightly pitying, brown eyes roll up to meet mine. “You don’t catch colds from the cold. You catch ’em from germs.”

I do know this, actually. But it’s unnerving hearing it from someone who’s still short enough to ride the bus for free.

“Maybe so.” I scoop her up into my arms—it’s like picking up a dust bunny, she’s so light—and kiss her on her cold, freckled little nose. I want to eat her up, even as the thought that we’re stuck with each other forever still gives me pause. “But you could get frostbite,” I say, “and that would be a lot worse, ’cause then your toes’d fall off.”

That gets a considering look. I can tell she doesn’t quite believe it, but is this really a chance she wants to take?

“Go back inside, Twink,” I say, putting her down, feeling like a fraud, wondering if I’d feel less like one if she’d been planned. If I could tell her the truth about her father. If I knew the truth about her father. “I’ll be up in just a minute, I promise.”

“Swear?”

“Swear.”

She trudges back up the stairs, a tiny, shivering figure in flowery flannel, only to turn and threaten me: If I’m not inside by the time the big hand’s moved to the next number, she’s coming to get me.

After the door closes, Frances laughs. Then she says, “You’re getting home kind of late, aren’t you?”

“It’s not seven yet,” I say, but she gives me this reproving stare, her mouth all screwed up, then sighs.

“You work too hard.”

“And you don’t?”

“My kids are grown. Or nearly.” Her five oldest sons are out of the house; the youngest, Jason, is seventeen and probably wishes he was. “It doesn’t matter if I’m not there to cook their dinner.” I laugh, and she rolls her huge, almost black eyes. “Okay, so maybe I never did cook their dinner, but at least I was there. And speaking of dinner—” she shifts her bags to one hand, flexing the fingers on the other “—we’re going up to Salerno’s, you and Leo and the baby should come with us. Our treat.”

Frances and Jimmy are always like this, wanting to take us to dinner, their treat. Of course, my grandfather is just as bad, which gets to be a major headache when he and Jimmy start fighting over the bill.

“Starr’s already in her jammies.”

“So she’ll get dressed again. It’s barely seven. What’s the big deal?”

“Leo did brisket.”

“Which is always better the next day, right? So come on, you look like you could do with a night out. And if you’re there, we might even be able to enjoy our meal without looking at Jason’s sulky face all night.”

An understatement if ever there was one. My needing a night out, I mean, although I know what she means about Jason’s sulking, too. Poor kid. Adolescence has hit him harder than all his brothers combined. Not that the Scardinare testosterone surges didn’t terrorize the neighborhood for several years—there was an eight-or ten-year period when there were at least four teenagers in the house at any given time—but I guess it’s harder on Jason, being the baby and not having his older brothers around all that much. He’s like a walking David Lynch movie—very dark, very weird, with lots of incomprehensible erotic undertones. If I hadn’t baby-sat for him when he was little, he’d probably creep me out.

To further complicate things, I think he has a crush on me. He’s over here constantly when I’m not at work, following me around, his big moony eyes peering out at me through his straggly black bangs, like prisoners who’ve lost all hope. Think Nicholas Cage in Moonstruck, then multiply by ten. And like Cher, I want to smack the poor kid and yell “Snap out of it!”

But I don’t have the heart.

Then I remember, with a sickening thud, the main reason, or reasons, I can’t leave the house tonight: Tina. Whom I’m supposed to meet in a little over an hour.

“Mama!” Starr’s shrill little voice darts out from the doorway. Her hands are on her hips. “The big hand’s moved past two numbers! That’s ten minutes!”

“Another time,” I say to Frances.

She sighs and shakes her head, then turns toward her house, shouting, “Dinner, here, Sunday, Heather wants to show off her ring,” over her shoulder as she goes.

And I head up the stairs, wondering how somebody with no discernible personal life can have so many demands on her time.

An hour later, I’m by the front door, slipping my father’s coat over an outfit more appropriate to Pinky’s—Levi’s, slouch boots (with heels that could double as shishkebob skewers), a dark red vintage mohair sweater I found on eBay for ten bucks. I don’t know why I prefer older clothes to new, other than the obvious fact that I can’t afford to buy new. Nor do I know anybody who can. I mean, I read Vogue and think, chyeah, right. Not that I don’t think some of the stuff is seriously hot, but Jesus. Even if I weren’t a foot too short to wear any of it, by the time I could afford it, I’d be so old I’d look like a freak in it, anyway. I mean, two grand for a fringed skirt shorter than something I’d let my five-year-old wear? Please. And let’s not go anywhere near the six-or eight-or fifteen-hundred-dollar handbags. You’re supposed to be afraid that somebody might steal what’s in your purse, not the purse itself. Or am I missing something here?

So I wear old, cheap and/or free stuff. Mind you, having never harbored a secret desire to look like a bag lady, it’s old, good-looking cheap and/or free stuff. I do have, if I say so myself, a certain flair. For the ridiculous, perhaps, but at least nobody can accuse me of looking like everybody else.

Or around here, like anybody else. Sorry, but I don’t do big hair.

Anyway…by the time I read Starr the next chapter of Through the Looking Glass—interrupted a billion times by her pointing out words she recognized—and did two thorough monster sweeps of her room (there’s a big hairy purple one with a snotty nose and “sticky-outty” teeth who’s been a real pain in the butt lately) and tucked her in, it’s too late to eat, and my stomach is pitching five fits.

My grandfather, who’s been vacuuming the downstairs rooms, glances up from winding the cord into a precise figure eight, over and over, around the upright’s handles. It drives me nuts when I use the machine after he does. I keep telling him, it takes twice as long to do it this way, why not just loop it around the handles and be done with it? All that matters is that it’s up and out of the way, right? But he insists it’s neater the way he does it, that’s the trouble with the world these days, nobody takes the time to do anything carefully.

“You’re going out?” he says, hauling the Eureka out of the room.

“Yeah.” I cram an angora beret over my hair, yelling out, “Just to Pinky’s for a bit. Tina asked me to meet her there.”

Leo returns, plopping down into his favorite armchair and picking up the Nintendo controller. A second later, one of the Mario Brothers games blooms on the TV screen. The game system’s a hand-me-down from some Scardinare brother or other. Leo plays for hours, insisting it keeps his reflexes fine-tuned. “What’s up with her?”

“Couldn’t tell ya.”

He pauses the game to give me a more considering look, although I can’t really see his eyes through the sofa lamp’s glare off his glasses. But I can sure feel it. You have to understand, my grandfather is by no means some shriveled, sunken little old man. Still more than six feet tall, with a ramrod posture he expects everyone around him to emulate, even seated he’s an imposing figure. Age-loosened skin drapes gracefully around features too broad, too crude, to be called handsome, as though the sculptor had been in too much of a hurry to do much more than get the basics down. If he chose to be mean, he would be frightening. As it is, no mugger in his right mind would dare mess with him. Ironic considering that nobody’s a softer touch than Leo. I don’t dare take him into Manhattan—he’d be broke before he’d been off the train ten minutes, giving everything away to every panhandler he saw.

“Did you eat?”

“When I get back, I promise.” I cross the thickly-piled Oriental—in mostly blues and dark reds, to match the overstuffed Ethan Allen furniture my grandmother bought the year before she died—bending down to give him a kiss on his scratchy cheek. Heat purrs soothingly through the registers; the house smells like brisket and freshly washed clothes (there’s a basketful on the sofa, waiting for me to fold) and my grandfather’s spicy aftershave, and all I want to do is crash in my bedroom with a slab of meat large enough to feed Cleveland and watch one of my Jimmy Stewart movies. But instead I’m dragging my hungry, exhausted carcass back out into the bitter cold, because my friend needs me. Because I know Tina would do the same for me.

And has, I think as I hike to the bar, braced against the wind.

I mean, there was that time a couple years ago when we all came down with the flu—I’m talking near-death experience here, not your run-of-the-mill chills and fever crap—when Tina, despite an aversion to illness bordering on the obsessive, basically moved in, force-feeding the lot of us Lipton’s chicken noodle soup and ginger ale for two days and disposing of mountains of tissues like the Department of Sanitation clearing the streets after a blizzard.

Or going back even further, to when we were fourteen and had lied to our families about going to Angie Mason’s for a sleepover. Instead we went to this party at Ryan O’Donnell’s (remind me to never believe anything my teenage child tells me, ever), where I, being basically stupid and having zip tolerance for alcohol, got so drunk I wanted to die. And Tina, who even then could hold her booze like a three-hundred pound sailor, and who also knew if I went home in that condition, I would die, hauled me into the john and forced me to puke, made coffee in Ryan’s kitchen, sat there with me while I drank it, and got me home, shaky but sober, by curfew.

She was also there, at her insistence, when I told Dad and Leo I was going to have a baby.

I push open the heavy wooden door to Pinky’s; hops-saturated steam heat rushes out to greet me like long-lost relatives, defrosting my contacts. Like most neighborhood bars, the decor runs primarily to neon beer signs, dark wood and linoleum. At eight on a weeknight, the place is nearly empty—two or three guys at the bar, staring morosely at the rows of bottles lined up in front of the mirror; a couple talking softly at one of the small tables in the center of the floor. As Madonna yodels from the not exactly au courant jukebox, I take off my hat and gloves, shoving them in my coat pockets as I blink, willing my eyes to adjust to the dim, albeit smoke-free these days, light.

“Hey, Ellie, how’s it goin’?”

My gaze sidles over to Jose, wiping down the bar. A year or so older than me, Jose’s been the night bartender here for the past couple of years. He’s got this whole pit bull thing going. Solid, you know? Not necessarily looking for a fight but up for one should the occasion present itself. In the summer, when he’s wearing a T-shirt, the tattoos are nothing if not impressive. The man on the stool closest to me bestirs himself long enough to give me the once-over. I give him a withering look, then pop out the dimples for Jose.

“Pretty good,” I say, then ask about his wife and kids—they’re doin’ okay, thanks, he says—then I ask if he’s seen Tina.

“Yeah, she came in a while ago. In the back. She looks like shit.”

Hey. If you’re looking for diplomacy, steer clear of Pinky’s.

I spot her in the booth farthest in the back, waving, so I grab a bowl of pretzels off the bar and head in her direction. Except the woman sitting at the table turns out to be Lisa Lamar, who sat next to me in half my classes all through high school and who will be forever after known as not only the first girl in our class to give a boy a blow job, but to pass on her newfound knowledge to a select few of us the following day. An act which solidified my standing in the ranks of the “cool” girls, which means I owe Lisa my life.

So of course we have to do the thirty-second catch-up routine. Only thirty seconds stretches into a good two minutes while she introduces me to her date, some guy named Phil whose unibrow compensates for the receding hairline, then fills me in on Shelly Hurlburt’s parents’ divorce after thirty-six years, could I believe it? (actually, I could) and asks me if I know whatever happened to Melody McFadden’s cousin Sukie, who was supposed to marry that baseball player, whats-his-name (I don’t, but I tell her I’ll ask around, one of the Scardinare daughters-in-law probably knows). Then after noisy hugs and both of us swearing we’ve got to get together, soon, I continue back to Tina.

Jose’s assessment was, unfortunately, not an exaggeration. Even in the murky light, she looks like holy hell.

While neither of us is, or was, a raving beauty—at least not without a lot of help—Tina’s always had a knack for making the most of what she has. No taller than I am, and in no danger of being mistaken for an anorexic, either (we were known in high school as the Boobsey Twins), her eyes might be set too far apart and her nose could use a little work, but with enough lip gloss and a Wonderbra, who cares? And she’s the only woman I know who can actually get away with that cut-with-a-weedwhacker-hairstyle—it hides a narrow scar over her right ear from where her mother threw a bottle at her when she was six—albeit with dark brown hair instead of blond. But tonight we’re talking Liza Minelli, The Dissipated Years.

“I know, I know, I look like crap,” she mutters as I slide into the booth. As usual, she’s wearing black, a heavy knit turtleneck that hugs her breasts. If I know her—and I do—the ass-cupping black jeans and hooker boots are right there, too. And in the corner, I see a hint of fake leopard. Mind you, none of this stuff is cheap. It’s just that Tina never really caught on to the concept of subtle. “I’m two screwdrivers ahead of you, so catch up.”

At least the girl’s getting her Vitamin C. However, since I haven’t eaten, and since that experience at Ryan O’Donnell’s left me bitter and disillusioned, I opt for a Coke. She makes a face and slugs back half her drink. I don’t like this. See, there are two Tinas, Okay Tina and Total Mess Tina. For most of our childhood, she was Total Mess Tina, mainly characterized by the absolute conviction that she somehow provoked and/or deserved her mother’s relentless physical and mental abuse. The girl had the self-confidence of a blind flea. Okay Tina only came out from time to time, like when I was puking up my intestines. It took Luke and me—with the help of various family members—years to send Total Mess Tina into remission. After all our work, relapse is not an option.

But I keep these thoughts to myself. For now.

“So I take it Luke doesn’t know you’re here?”

She laughs, but it’s not a pretty sound. “What, do I look like somebody with a death wish?” She finishes off her drink and gestures toward Jose for another. “Jesus, it’s cold tonight. You sure you don’t want something with a little more zing to it?”

My mother alarm goes off. “Tell me you didn’t drive over here.”

“What are you, the DUI police?”

I decide to leave it for now. But if she’s not walking steadily when we leave, no way is she getting behind the wheel. “So what’d you tell Luke?”

“He thinks I’m grocery shopping.”

I stuff about fifty little pretzels into my mouth at once, then say around them, “You don’t think he’ll get suspicious when you get home with no groceries?” Not to mention the fact that she’s gonna smell like, well, somebody who’s been hanging out in a bar.

“Like I’m not gonna pick up some things before I go home, geez, Ellie. Besides—” she picks up a little white box off the seat beside her “—I made a swing by Oxford’s and picked up a couple of those Napoleons he likes so much.” At my crestfallen look, she smiles and produces a second box, which she shoves across the table. “And éclairs for you.”

I clutch the box to my bosom, inhaling its bakery smell. “I owe you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m gonna hold you to that.”

Jose brings us her drink and my Coke; she picks it up, her wedding rings a flashing blur. Her first engagement ring was so small you had to take it on faith there was a diamond in it. But Luke does pretty well now, I gather. So for their fifth anniversary last year, they upgraded to two carats. Looks real good with the long maroon nails.

I set the box on the seat beside me so I won’t be tempted to rip into it before I get home, then get down to business. “So. What’s going on?”

That gets another long look, then Tina hauls a purse the size of Staten Island onto her lap; before I know it, she’s lit up a cigarette. Which is now a huge no-no in New York bars.

“What the hell are you doing?” I growl across the table. Tina spews out a stream of smoke and holds the cigarette under the table, giving me a look like a she-wolf whose pups have been threatened.

“There’s like nobody here, okay? God, quit being such a priss.” Then, after another quick, surreptitious pull, she says, with no emotion whatsoever, “I’m pregnant.”

We stare at each for a heartbeat or two. But the instant her cigarette bobs to the surface, I lunge across the table and grab it, dumping it into her drink.

“Bitch,” she mutters, calmly lighting up again. Tina’s got these pale blue eyes, like ice. And right now, the look she’s giving me is fast-freezing my blood. Which doesn’t prevent me from going for the second cigarette, but her hand ducks under the table before I can get it. “Chill, for God’s sake. It’s not like I’m keeping it.”

My gaze jerks to hers. “You’re not serious.”

“You bet your ass I’m serious.”

This is too many shocks on an empty stomach. “But Luke…” I lean over, whispering. “You know how much he’s always wanted a kid—”

“And you know how much I don’t. And swear to God, if you tell him, I’ll never speak to you again.”

My eyes burn, and only partly from the smoke. I hate this. Hate secrets. Especially ones that put me in the position of having to lie to somebody. “So why are you telling me this?” I sound whiny and I don’t care. “Why are you making me an accessory?”

“Because I need you to go with me when I…you know.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you, who else? What, I’m gonna ask my mother? Luke’s mother? One of my sisters? Who else can I trust, huh?”

I feel sick. Who knew being trustworthy could be such a liability?

Tina puffs some more, then says, “God knows how this happened. We always use protection. Always.” I look at her with what I expect is a chagrined expression; I was on the Pill when Starr happened, too, which she knows. Tina sighs. “Sorry. I forgot.”

And because I am doomed to be the sympathetic one, I realize just how much this is tearing her apart. Criminy, she’s shaking like somebody coming off a three-day bender.

“Yo, Tina,” Jose shouts from the bar. “Put out the cigarette, babe, you wanna get my butt in a sling here?”

She blows out a breath and dumps the second butt in her drink, then goes for my pretzels.

“How far along are you?”

Her shoulders hitch. “Three weeks. More or less.”

“Then maybe you should give yourself a few days to think about this. I mean, right now you’re just in shock.”

“No shit. But the last thing I want to do is think about it.”

I know what she means. Oh, boy, do I know what she means. Because thinking about it opens the door to making it real. Makes it harder to not start thinking in terms of “baby.”

“And they say it’s easier the earlier you have it done,” she goes on. “I’m not waiting.”

Arguing with her right now would be pointless. But if she won’t go without me, maybe I can put her off for a couple days, buy some time for her to think this through. Yes, it’s all about choices, but my guess is panic’s short-circuiting her synapses right now. And when you’re freaked is not the time to make a decision that’s going to impact the rest of your life. Especially when there’s somebody else involved, I think with a sharp stab of pain.

“Tina, honey…you didn’t always feel this way. About not wanting kids.”

“Yes, I did,” she says flatly. “I just thought—hoped—I’d get over it, you know? For Luke’s sake? But I see all my sisters with their kids…and I can’t do it, Ellie. I’ll fuck the kid up, I know I will, just like my mother fucked us up.”

Her assessment of her mother’s relationship with her three daughters is, unfortunately, not an exaggeration. Renee Bertucci was a real piece of work. I have no idea why she put her girls down all the time, why she seemed to think it a sign of weakness to show them any affection. But I do know Tina didn’t spend so much time at my house, or Luke’s, just because of us, but because our mothers spoiled rotten everyone who set foot across their thresholds.

Which apparently Tina, in her near-hysteria, is forgetting.

I know I have to tread carefully through the minefield of Tina’s fragile psyche. One wrong step and she’s gonna blow. So I point out that she’d had plenty of examples of good mothering, then add, “And maybe you should give yourself some credit for learning from your mother’s mistakes.”

Her eyes flood. “Then I’ll probably make other ones, ones I won’t even know I’m making until it’s too late. And what if what they say is true, that our mothering instinct’s in our genes?”

“But sweetie—your sisters are doing okay, right?”

“They’re older. They got out before Mom got really bad.” She looks down at her shaking hands, then back up at me. “I’m not like you, the way you are with Starr.”

My laugh clearly startles her, even as my stomach does another flip. “You don’t actually think I know what I’m doing? Believe me, I’ve lost plenty of sleep wondering if I’m going to screw her up. But honey…this isn’t all about you. You know that—”

“Yeah, but see, here’s the thing, Luke’s totally okay with not having kids. We already discussed it. He says what we have, just by ourselves, is fine.”

Nobody knows more than I what Luke would say, or do, to protect Tina. But I can’t let this go.

“That’s not what he said to me,” I say gently, and her eyes flash to mine.

“Oh, yeah? And when was that? When we first got married? Before that, when we were just kids? I’m his freakin’ wife, Ellie. I think maybe what he tells me carries a little more weight that something he might have said to you ten years ago.”

“I’m not talking ten years ago. I’m talking last month at his parents’, when J.J. and Julie came in from Jersey with the new baby.”

Confusion knots her brows. “Where was I?”

“I dunno, in the bathroom, maybe? Anyway, Luke came into the kitchen, holding the baby. Said the only thing that could make it better was if the baby was his.”

Her fingers tighten around the glass; she lifts it, remembers the butts floating in there like dead fish, clunks it back down. “I don’t believe you.”

“You can ask Frances. She was there.”

We stare at each other for several seconds, then she awkwardly skootches out of the booth, grabbing her coat and punching her arms through the sleeves. “I always thought I could count on you,” she says, her words trembling. “Just goes to show how much I knew.”

She throws money down on the table, then grabs the bakery box with Luke’s Napoleons and storms out. Without even a hint of a stagger.

I ache with that dull pain that comes from being torn between wishing you could turn back the clock and acceptance that you can’t. I slide out of the booth, slip my coat back on and settle up with Jose. For a second or two, I consider leaving the éclairs—they seem tainted now, somehow—then reason prevails and I return to the booth to retrieve them. I cram on my hat and button up, almost looking forward to the slap of frigid air in my face.

On autopilot, I start back home, huddled against the cold, my own thoughts not much less screwy than Tina’s are right now, I don’t imagine. I’m shattered that there’s no way I can be objective about this, whether I understand—in theory—her dilemma or not. In fact, it stuns me, how much I’m against her having an abortion. Because doing it behind her husband’s back…how is that right? But if she tells him…

I know Luke. There’s no way he’d ever make Tina have that baby if she really didn’t want it. But it would kill him, I know it would, if she didn’t.

Hunger, cold and confusion have joined forces in an attack at the base of my skull. I quicken my pace as if I can outrun this irritable, judgmental, hypocritical person trying to take over my body. All I want right now is my grandfather’s house and my brisket and my kid and, if I hurry, Will and Grace—

A hand snakes out of the darkness and grabs my wrist, spinning me around as I let out a scream loud enough to reach Yonkers.