Читать книгу Loose Screws - Karen Templeton - Страница 10

“And then what happened?”

It’s the next afternoon. Sunday. Terrie is looking at me with huge black eyes across Shelby’s Danish contemporary dining table in the three-bedroom West End Avenue apartment Shelby’s in-laws bought for some ridiculously low ground-floor price when the building went co-op in the early eighties, then “sold” to Shelby and Mark for an even more ridiculously low price when they decided life was better in Boca. My cousin, a pair of tortoiseshell barrettes holding back her perky little blond bob, sits on the other side of the table, a forkful of Nonna’s ravioli poised exactly halfway between her plate and her mouth. Her expression is equally poleaxed.

I’m still shaking from yesterday. After Bill dropped me and all my junk off about four, then took Nedra (note to self: research feasibility of having some old gnarled Italian female relative put evil eye on own mother) on to her place, I played about a million games of FreeCell on the laptop, went to bed, got up, played another million games of FreeCell, finally deciding this definitely called for an emergency Bitch Session.

Shelby, Terrie and I have been calling these with sporadic regularity for probably twenty years, or approximately for as long as we’ve known that meaning for the word. Bitch, not years. Rules are simple: anyone can call one at any time, no low-fat food items allowed, and whoever calls the session gets the floor first. In the past ten years, I think I’ve called maybe a half dozen, Shelby none, and Terrie approximately five hundred.

And yes, I know what I said, about preferring to handle crises from the comfort of solitude, but these are extenuating circumstances. First off, it’s a known fact that too much FreeCell causes brain rot. And second, these two women are like extensions of my psyche. They’d only nag the hell out of me until I spilled my guts anyway. A favor that, in the past, I have regularly returned.

It’s definitely weird, the way we’re so close, since we’re all so different. But we go way back—Shelby and I to birth, practically, since we’re first cousins and only three months apart in age, with Terrie joining us in kindergarten. I suppose we initially glommed onto Terrie because she’d regularly beat up the other kids who’d hassle Shelby—who was eminently hassleable in elementary school—thus taking the pressure off me to do something for which I have no natural proclivity, namely, shedding blood. Especially my own. As for why Terrie, with her sass and street smarts, hitched up to a pair of white wusses…well, that’s a no brainer. We kept her supplied in Twinkies and Cokes for at least six years.

In any case, even after we grew out of needing her protection—Shelby grew into a Cute Little Thing and wormed her way in with the popular crowd, while I went on to cultivate the fine art of the Cutting Remark—we remained friends. The kind of friends who can say anything to each other, and do, which means we regularly tick each other off but we always get over it. All through adolescence, Shelby and I looked to Terrie to pave the way for us, a role Terrie was more than willing to accept. Not to mention reporting back to the troops, who’d listen in silent, envious awe. Or disgust. (Took poor Shelby six months to recover after Terrie described, in minute detail, her first French kiss. Of course, we were only twelve: at that point, we couldn’t even imagine a boy’s lips touching ours, let alone his tongue. We got over it.) In any case…Terrie got her period first, got kissed first, got felt up first, got laid first, got married first, got divorced first. Twice. Shelby bested us both only in one category—getting pregnant. Other than death or an IRS audit, I don’t suppose there are many firsts left.

So these days we content ourselves with muddling through our lives, dealing with our womanhood and all the crap attendant thereto. Shelby, of course, has been the Resident Married Lady since she was twenty-five; I have, for lo these many years, borne the standard as the singleton; and Terrie has been the switch-hitter, considering herself an expert on both sides.

The Bitch Sessions, and a passion for all things edible, unite us. But these sessions serve more of a purpose than simply outlets for venting and binging, at least for me: I know I can count on Shelby to be sweet, on Terrie to be snide, thus giving me two views of any given situation I may not be able to see myself, even as I know they both only want the best for me, as I for them. Husbands, boyfriends, jobs, may come and go, but these are my friends forever.

Friends who, at the moment, are hanging breathlessly on my every word as I relate the conversation between Phyllis and myself. I’ve already dumped on them about my mother, Greg’s phone call, and Bill’s flirting—every Bitch Session needs a little comic relief—although I decided to forgo the Nick business for now. See, Nick was the main course at a particularly hot Bitchfest some ten years ago. Dragging his sorry butt into a conversation now would only raise too many eyebrows—not to mention rampant speculation—for my comfort.

Anyway. Terrie, sporting about a thousand sleek little braids that hit her just below the collarbone, is giving me her get-on-with-it look. Not one to be rushed, I drag over the cheesecake. It’s presliced. I pick up a slice as if it’s a piece of fruit and bite into it. Much as I adore Nonna’s ravioli, today I go straight for the hard stuff.

“So,” I finally say, “after my mother leaves with Concetta, Phyllis leads me into her study. So I figure my best bet is to apologize for my mother before Phyllis can say anything.”

Shelby pops the fork out of her rosebud mouth. “What’d she say?”

“Well, she laughed, which was the last thing I expected. Then she went on about it was just a motherhood thing, you know. Nedra protecting her pup. Then she says something about knowing all about women like Nedra.”

That got a grunt from Terrie, whose beaded braids were beginning to remind me of a Gypsy fortune-teller’s plastic bead curtain. But don’t you dare tell her I said that. “There are no women like your mother.”

“That’s what I would have said. But then she said…what was it? Oh, right—” I take another bite of cheesecake “—about how when she was in college, she had to deal with all these liberal, feminist types who were convinced she was whoring herself because she did beauty pageants….”

I fade out for a moment, chewing and thinking about Phyllis’s pale blue eyes as she spoke, like a pair of small, cautious creatures peering out from behind a thicket of heavily mascara’d lashes.

Oh, they made a lot of noise, and raised a lot of hell, all those women whose families could afford to pay for their education, about women’s rights and how people like me were setting the women’s movement back by at least three centuries. None of them ever bothered asking me what I really thought, or bothered to consider that perhaps there were worse things in the world than a woman using her looks to get ahead.

I’d caught a whiff of desperation then, which I’d never noticed before, in her voice, her expression, the way her makeup was a little too carefully applied….

Terrie smacks my arm, making me jump. “Hey. Back to earth.”

I blink, fill them in, at least about Phyllis’s comments. Terrie opens her mouth as if she has something to say, only to close it again. Frowning, Shelby reaches for the cheesecake while there’s still some left. As I repeat the conversation as best I can remember it, I realize rehashing it is stirring something inside me, way below the surface, too far down to identify.

“Then she said something about how we all make choices, and that it doesn’t really matter what they are, as long as we’re happy with them—”

“Well, I think that’s very true,” Shelby says.

“—that so many women today seem to forget, or perhaps they don’t want to acknowledge, that sometimes we have to take what seems to be a step or two back in order to get enough momentum to propel ourselves through the barriers men have been erecting in front of them since time began.”

“Huh.” Terrie grabs her own piece of cheesecake, opting as well for the direct-from-box-to-mouth approach. “Spoken like a white woman who had choices.”

“Not as many as you might think,” I say. “She didn’t come from money, remember. Which is why she got into the beauty pageant stuff to begin with. But, anyway, that’s just a sidetrack issue, because then she says, out of nowhere, that she just wanted me to know Greg didn’t back out because of anybody else.”

Two sets of eyebrows dip simultaneously.

“I know,” I say. “So of course the minute she says that, I’m like, oh, crap—is she covering up something?”

But Shelby shakes her head. “No,” she says, then swallows. “I don’t think that’s why he dumped you, either.”

Terrie and I just look at her. Shelby continues eating, oblivious.

Then Terrie squints at me. “But you are ready to rip his entrails out, right?”

Shelby glances up for this. I sigh. “I don’t know. I should be. I mean, I am, but…” I look from one to the other. “I think mostly I’m just confused. And hurt.”

Terrie humphs. Shelby nods, even though I can tell the whole thing’s going over her head. She clearly can’t imagine her and Mark ever going through anything like this.

“So,” Terrie says. “She know where the jerk is?”

“No. Or so she swears. But then…she said I should forgive him, give him a second chance.”

“Like hell,” Terrie says. “Besides, it’s kinda hard to forgive somebody whose sorry ass isn’t around for you to forgive.”

I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. I feel Shelby’s hand light on my wrist. A light breeze from the air conditioner stirs her hair. “You still love him, don’t you?” she asks, a note of hope hovering in her wispy voice. Shelby cannot stand an unhappy ending. I don’t think she’s ever quite forgiven Shakespeare for Romeo and Juliet.

“The man stood her up,” Terrie interjects. “What do you think?”

“What’s that got to do with how she feels?” My cousin may be the most gentle soul in the world, but that doesn’t mean she can’t stick up for her convictions. And right now, she’s glaring at Terrie like a Yorkie whose chew toy is being threatened. “I mean, Mark once forgot my birthday, and I was so hurt I could have spit. But that didn’t mean I didn’t still love him, did it?”

I can tell Terrie is fighting the urge to bang her head on the table. Shelby is no dummy, believe me—she’d been a crack editor for a major magazine prior to her deciding to stay home with her first baby—but her eternally optimistic nature has definitely corroded her brain when it comes to matters of the heart.

In any case, I wrest back the conversation, since I called the meeting. “Anyway, what I said was, I didn’t know what I was feeling.”

They’re both frowning at me again.

Exasperated, I throw both hands into the air. “Whaddya want me to say? Okay, no, it’s not like I expect this to get patched up—sorry, Shel—but I’m not like you, either, Terrie. I haven’t had the practice you’ve had at getting over men.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Okay, so that didn’t exactly come out right, but you know what I mean.” I reach for the cheesecake; Terrie slaps my hand. So I guess I’m stuck with the ravioli. I get up to stick the plastic tub in Shelby’s microwave. “In any case, while a good part of me says I should write him off, there’s another part of me that isn’t sure. I mean, if he should come back.”

Terrie is clearly appalled. “You have got to be kidding. You’d crawl back to the skunk?”

“Did I say that?” The microwave beeps at me; I take out the ravioli, sink back into the chair at the table with a disgusted sigh, although I’m not sure what I’m disgusted at. Or with. Or about. My own ambivalence, maybe. Or that Greg’s actions have put me into this untenable position. “Of course I’m not about to crawl back to him.” I look up, fighting the tears prickling my eyelids. “He humiliated me. If, by some chance, he wants me back, he’d have some major groveling to do. But…”

“Oh, Lord. Here we go.” Terrie lets out an annoyed sigh. Shelby shushes her.

“But what, honey?”

“You weren’t there,” I say. “You didn’t see Phyllis’s face when she told me that I was the best thing that ever happened to Greg. That I would have been more of an asset to him than he could possibly have understood. That…” I take a deep breath, setting up the punch line. “That women are always the ones who have to fix things, that pride is a commodity we can’t afford.”

“That’s true,” I hear Shelby whisper beside me, although Terrie lets out an outraged, “Oh, give me a freaking break.” Her eyes are flashing now, boy, as she leans across the table and buries herself in my gaze.

“Girl, men have been able to get away with the crap they have for thousands of years because women like Phyllis Munson feel they have some sort of duty to perpetuate that myth. God—it makes me so mad, I could spit.” At this, she gets up, grabs her handbag from the buffet along one wall, rummaging inside it without thinking for the cigarettes that aren’t there, since she quit smoking a year ago. So she slams the bag back down onto the buffet and turns back to me, one hand parked on her hip.

“What that man did to you isn’t forgivable. Or fixable. I mean, come on—he calls you up and apologizes on the phone?”

Shelby actually laughs. Terrie and I both turn to her. “Well, of course he did,” she says. “He’s a man.”

“No kind of man I’d want hanging around me, that’s for damn sure. Besides, none of us is ever gonna break these chains of male domination and oppression if we don’t change the way we think about who’s gotta do what—”

“Oh, get off your high horse, Terrie,” Shelby says, a neat little crease between her brows. “Women are the peacemakers, honey. We always have been. That’s a sociological, not to mention biological, fact.”

“And I suppose you think that means we have to kowtow to them on every single issue?”

“No, of course not. But what good does it do for us to back them into a corner, either?”

“Making them accountable isn’t backing them into a corner.”

Shelby goes very still, then says quietly, “Says the woman who’s had two marriages crumble out from under her.”

Uh-oh.

I stand up, my hands raised. “Hey, guys? This is supposed to be all about me, you know—”

“Shut up, Ginger,” they both say, then Terrie says to Shelby, “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Twin dots of color stain my cousin’s cheeks, but I can tell she’s not going to back down. “That I’ve watched you with your boyfriends, your husbands, how every relationship you’ve ever had has degenerated into a mental wrestling match. How your obsession with never letting a man…control you, or whatever it is you’re so afraid a man’s going to do to you, has always been more important to you than the relationship itself. No wonder you can’t keep a man, Terrie—you castrate every male who comes close.”

Terrie actually flinches, as if she’s been slapped. A second later, though, she comes back with, “You are so full of it.”

“Am I?” is Shelby’s calm reply. “Then how come I’m the only one in the room who knows who she’s going to bed with tonight?”

Holy jeez.

Terrie glares at my cousin for several seconds, then snatches her purse off the chair and heads for the door, throwing “If you need to talk, Ginge, call me” over her shoulder before she yanks open the front door, slams it shut behind her.

For a full minute after her exit, the room reverberates with her anger. I’m not exactly thrilled to still be there, either, to tell you the truth, but I can’t quite figure out what to do. Let alone what to say.

Shelby gets up, starts clearing the table, her mouth turned way down at the corners. “I guess things got a little out of hand.”

I lick my lips, get to my feet to help her clean. “I thought the point of these was to get mad at other people. Not each other.”

On a sigh, Shelby carts stuff into the kitchen. “I know. But honestly, Ginge…Terrie’s attitude toward men sucks. And don’t give me that face, you know I’m right.”

I grunt.

Shelby turns on the water, starts to rinse off our few dishes prior to sticking them into the dishwasher. This kitchen does not look like a typical prewar Manhattan kitchen. This kitchen, with its granite countertops and aluminum-faced appliances, looks positively futuristic. I half expect Rosie, the robot from The Jetsons, to come scooting in at any moment.

I cross my arms, lean back against the countertop. “She’s entitled to her opinion, honey.”

“And if that opinion made her happy,” Shelby replies, “I wouldn’t say a word.” She slams shut the dishwasher, looks at me. “But she’s not. She wants the world to mold to her view of the way things should be, and since that’s not going to happen, she’s turning more bitter and cynical by the day.”

I humph. “Terrie was born cynical.”

A bit of a smile flits across Shelby’s mouth. “But not bitter.” Then she reaches over, grabs my hand. “The thing is, Greg’s mother is right. We are the ones who have to fix things. Forgiveness doesn’t make us weak, no matter what Terrie thinks. If anything, it only proves we’re the stronger sex.” Then the smile broadens. “Besides, if men were left to their own devices, we’d all be extinct by now.” She reaches up, brushes my hair back from my face. “You just have to ask yourself if you’d be happier with Greg, or without him.”

I knuckle the space between my brows, then sigh. “Well, I sure don’t like the way I’m feeling right now. As if somebody ripped off a major appendage.”

“Then maybe you should work with that.”

“So you’re saying you think I should give Greg a second chance, should the opportunity present itself?”

“I’m saying, just because a man is clueless, that doesn’t mean he’s hopeless. Here—” She hands me the ravioli container, now sparkling clean. “Don’t forget this.”

I take it from her, managing a wan smile.

The instant I step outside, the heat crushes me like groupies a rock star. Taking the smallest breaths possible so my lungs don’t incinerate, I troop toward 96th Street and the crosstown bus. After that little scene in Shelby’s apartment, I’m more confused than ever. But I refuse to believe my world is falling apart, despite the evidence to the contrary.

Who am I kidding? That was totally weird. Not to mention downright scary. Oh, sure, we’ve had about a million squabbles over the years, but nothing like that. And you know what? It ticks me off, in a way. I’m supposed to be able to count on Terrie and Shelby to restore my equilibrium when things get a little strange, as they count on me. They’re supposed to help me see things more clearly, not scramble my brains.

Well, forget it. Just forget it. I simply cannot wrap my head around this, not today. I am too hot and enmeshed in my own tribulations to care. Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll work up to trying to figure out how to smooth things over between them, but not now.

Now, I just want to go home, maybe have a good cry, finish the book I’m reading, even though it’s a romance which means it ends happily ever after, which is just going to depress the life out of me. It’s hotter than hell in my apartment, but I can strip to my panties if I want to, which, at the moment, is eminently appealing.

I turn east on 96th Street, trek up the hill toward Broadway. A hot breeze off the river slaps me in the back like a nasty little kid pushing me in line. I pass several people lurching downhill toward Riverside Park: a young couple with a toddler in a stroller, a pair of joggers, a middle-aged man with a Russell terrier. Well-dressed, affluent, secure. A far cry from the people who used to inhabit most of these buildings when I was a kid, until gentrification in the early eighties purged the legion of seedy SRO—single room occupancy—hotels on the Upper West Side of their decidedly unaffluent inhabitants.

As I pass the recently sandblasted buildings with their newly installed glass doors, their fatherly doormen, I remember my parents’ horror as, one by one, the helpless, hopeless occupants of these buildings were simply turned out onto the streets like thousands of roaches after extermination. Joining the already burgeoning ranks of the homeless, many of them were left with no recourse but to panhandle from the very people who now lived in what had once been their homes.

Over the past decade, the homeless aren’t in as much evidence as they were. I’m not sure where most of them went, since God knows there are even less places in Manhattan for the poor to live than there ever were. Even apartments in so-called “dangerous” neighborhoods now command rents far out of the reach of the middle class, let alone those struggling by on poverty level wages. But the dedicated homeless are still around, a life-form unto themselves, with their encrusted, shredded clothing and shopping carts and bags piled with whatever they can glean from garbage cans and Dumpsters, hauling their meager possessions about with them like a turtle its shell.

And yes, they make me uncomfortable, as they do most New Yorkers fortunate enough to not count themselves among their number, mainly because I’m not sure how to react to their plight. I’m as guilty as anyone of ignoring them, of looking the other way, as if, if I don’t see them, their problem isn’t real. At least, not real to me.

I know the vast majority of these poeple are not responsible for their present condition. Who the hell would choose to live on the street, after all? Many are mentally ill, incapable of achieving any success in a city in which that concept is measured in terms most of them couldn’t even begin to comprehend, let alone aspire to. Others have been beaten down so often, and so far, over so many years, that I doubt they have the slightest notion of how to even begin digging themselves out. So I do feel compassion. Just not enough to override my inertia. Or my guilt.

I used to think winter was the worst time to be without someplace to go. The wind that whips crosstown between the rivers can be brutal, icing a person’s veins instantly. But today, as heat pulses off the cement, as the humidity threatens to suffocate me, I’m not sure summer is much better.

And I suppose I’m thinking about all this because, as I’m standing under the Plexiglas shelter at 96th and Broadway, in a clump of six or seven other people waiting for the bus, one of these men approaches us. I watch as, as discreetly as possible, everyone else casually removes themselves from his path, turning from him, deep in their cell phone conversations, their newspaper articles, their own clean, neat lives.

The urge to follow their lead is so strong I nearly scream with it, even as I’m disgusted at my own reaction. But the man reeks, making it nearly impossible for me not to recoil. As I have most of my life, I wear my shoulder bag with the strap angling my chest to deter would-be purse-snatchers; however, my hand instinctively clutches the strap, hugging the bag to me.

Mine, the gesture says, and I am sorry for it.

I am now the only person still under the shelter, although dozens of people swarm the intersection like lethargic ants. The other bus waiters, undoubtedly relieved that I’ve been singled out and they can breathe more easily—literally—hug the curb and storefronts a few feet away, still close enough to easily catch the bus when it comes.

The man creeps closer, forcing me to look at him. He is filthy and unshaven, his posture stooped. Nearly black toes peer out from rips in athletic shoes only a shade lighter, a good two sizes too large. I cannot tell his age, but behind his moth-eaten beard, I can see how thin he is.

He holds out his hand. It is shaking. From the heat, hunger, the DT’s…? I have no way of knowing. I do, however, feel his embarrassment.

Nedra would have emptied her wallet into that hand, I know that, without a moment’s hesitation. But then, my mother’s crazy.

I glance away, my mouth dry, then back.

“Are you hungry?” I ask, the words scraping my throat. I notice a well-dressed Asian woman a few feet away turn slightly in our direction. But I only half see her frown, her head shake, because my gaze is hooked in the gray one in front of me, buried under folds of eyelids. Hope blooms in those eyes, along with a smile. He nods.

The rational part of me thinks, I should take him to a cheap restaurant, feed him myself. If I just give him money, what will he spend it on?

And then I think, who am I to judge?

But before I can make up my mind, a cop comes along and hustles the protesting man away, at the same time my bus squeals up to the stop. I board, behind the disapproving Asian lady, who asks me, as we take seats across the aisle from each other, if I was afraid. I say no.

The bus is air-conditioned and nearly empty, and I feel some of the tension that’s wormed its way into my head over the past few days slink away. We pull away from the stop; outside the man shuffles off toward Amsterdam Avenue, and my insides cramp.

As unsettled as I feel, as unhappy as I am, I still have a job. I still have a home. I still have my friends and my shoe collection and even, I have to acknowledge, my family. Life might be a little bizarre at the moment, but it’s far from horrible.

I pull out my novel, try to reimmerse myself in Gunther and Abigayle’s trials and tribulations, which has the unfortunate effect of only yanking my thoughts back to the men-and-women discussion of earlier. At the moment, I have to admit I’m inclined to side with Terrie on one thing: men are expendable. Their sperm might not be, but they are. I personally don’t need one to survive, or even flourish. I guess, if push came to shove, I could even go without sex. Nuns do. And it’s not as if I haven’t had my share of dry spells. And then there’s my mother, who’s gone without for, gee, how long is it now? Fifteen years?

I mean, really—are they worth the aggravation? Because, much as I’m inclined to agree with Terrie’s theory about how things should be between men and women, I think Shelby’s the realist. Oh, maybe there are true equalitarian male-female relationships out there, but by and large, women do have to defer to the men in their lives in order to keep harmony, don’t they? At the moment, I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, it just is. And right now, I don’t have the energy to be a feminist. I’m having enough trouble dealing with being a woman.

I give up on the book, stick it back in my purse. The Asian woman gets off at Central Park West; I settle in for the short ride through the Park, as I mentally settle in for the next phase of my life. Tomorrow, I go back to work. Tomorrow, I resume my normal, predictable, pre-Greg life. Selecting wall colors, I can handle. Sketching window treatments, I can handle. Charming the pants off a new client, I can handle. Granted, I’m not exactly eagerly anticipating the idea of facing Brice Fanning—my egomaniacal boss of the past seven years—and his inevitable snideties, but at least my work is one area of my life I can count on. I bring in a helluva lot of business, so we both know I’m not going to leave, and he’s not going to get rid of me. So. My plan is to reimmerse myself in my work, which, if not exactly exciting, is at least fulfilling and stimulating. Or at least it was.

And will be again, I vow as another layer of tension shucks off. After all, what’s the point of missing what I’ve never had, right? What do I know about being married anyway? Let alone about living in Westchester? I’m not only used to being single, I think I’m pretty damn good at it.

As of this moment (she says without the slightest shame whatsoever) I’m burrowing so far into my comfort zone, nothing on God’s earth is going to blast me out of it.

Not even the memory of a brief, hopeful smile beneath discouraged eyes.