Blessing in Disguise (6 page)

“You don’t have to come up with me,” she told her brother, who, after walking her to the elevator, now stood waiting for it to arrive. “I’m
sixteen,
you know, not six.” She was immediately sorry she’d snapped at him.

But Ben only gave her his usual water-off-a-duck’s-back shrug. “It’s no big deal. I’ll keep you company till Mom gets home.”

Nothing new about Mom being out, Hannah thought. But this time she kept it to herself.

On the fourth floor, as she and Ben made their way down the cavernous hallway, Hannah found herself walking softly so as not to disturb any of the neighbors. Ever since she was little, for some reason, this place, with its dimly lit art-glass fixtures, ceiling coves, and heavy paneled doors, had reminded her of a corridor in some huge mausoleum. The kind of place where you felt you had to whisper. She remembered, a year or two ago, when some of the co-op members had wanted to cover the hallway’s old Victorian tile floor with carpeting. There was a big skirmish, spearheaded by her mother, as chairperson of the preservation committee. And since Mom usually got what she wanted, Hannah now, despite her best efforts, didn’t succeed in keeping her movements from sending old Mrs. Vandervoort’s Rottweiler, in 4C, into a frenzy of barking.

She unlocked her front door quickly, before Mrs. Vandervoort could poke her head out and give them one of her scowls. Ben followed her inside, where instantly their footsteps were muffled by a Chinese runner so well padded it felt like walking on a foam mattress.

“Sounds like Mom is back,” Ben whispered.

Music trickled in from the living room, soft and forgettable ... one of those New Age CDs Mom liked. Music for when you were in a bad mood and needed cheering up, or when you were in a good mood and needed
affirmation
of it; music to put you to sleep, or wake you up, or, for all she knew, to take a crap by.

It was like everything else in this apartment—the watered-silk walls and Aubusson carpets, the English hunting prints and needlepoint pillows, the fringed shawl draped over the back of the antique sofa—artful and
coordinated.
Yet somehow not quite real, like a Ralph Lauren showroom. Shrugging her coat off, Hannah felt its hem catch against the bundle of dried grass sticking up out of the antique umbrella-stand next to the front hall closet. Watching bits of fuzz and broken stem drift onto the carpet, she felt a dart of panic. God, Mom was going to
kill
her. She usually tried to be so careful ... only, damnit, why couldn’t there be
umbrellas
in the stand instead of some stupid arrangement you had to tiptoe around?

“Ben ...
darling, is that you?” Mom’s voice drifted toward them, hopeful and lighthearted.

Hannah winced. Why did Mom just assume it was
Ben?
Ben had moved out
ages
ago—Mom only liked to pretend he still lived here. It should have been the other way around, Hannah thought. If Hannah had her own apartment, Mom wouldn’t even notice she was gone. Hannah Gold, the Amazing Invisible Daughter. She hadn’t minded so much when Daddy was here, because he’d always been so
happy
to see her, as if there was nobody on earth he’d rather be with.

But now Daddy had Grace.

And she had ...
who?
Conrad?

All her talk at dinner, but she still wasn’t so sure how Conrad felt about her. Oh, he was big on all the stuff that
went
with liking someone; he could go on for hours about all the reasons they should go to bed together. But that was just sex. Not necessarily the same as wanting to
be
with her.

“Tell her I just dropped you off, that I couldn’t come up,” Ben said in a low voice against her ear. Hannah saw that he wasn’t taking his coat off.

“Tell her yourself,” she said. He was getting all the attention, and he didn’t even
want
it.

“Han, give me a break. ...” In the dim hallway, she could see Ben’s eyes narrowing. He darted an anxious glance at the track-lit entrance to the living room.

Hannah fought back her resentment. Yeah, okay, so Ben didn’t have it that easy, either. Mom leaning on him all the time, refusing to give up her subscriptions to the Met, her chamber music series, ABT, and just expecting Ben—no,
pressuring
him—into escorting her to every opera, concert, ballet. Not to mention the charity affairs and dinner parties. Sometimes, Mom didn’t even tell people he was her son, Ben had confided to her. Almost as if she
wanted
everyone to think he was her date.

“It’s me, Mom!” Hannah called out, adding
sotto voce
to her brother, “You’re off the hook.”

“Thanks,” he mouthed, backing out the door.

In the living room, Hannah found her mother, dressed in a black wool-crepe sheath with an Hermés scarf swirled over one shoulder, sunk into the overstuffed chair by the fireplace. She was balancing an open book of upholstery samples across her smoke-stockinged knees. As she glanced up, the light from the cloisonné floor lamp beside her made her hair glow, a blend of honey and buttered maple. Hannah knew that it cost her maybe a hundred and fifty dollars a month at Recine to make it look like she’d been born with it.

“Hi, sweetie,” Mom said distractedly as she went back to poring over her samples. “How was your evening?”

“Fine,” Hannah lied. “How was yours?”

“Good. Did I tell you who I was having dinner with? He’s a client, a divorced investment banker with
loads
of money and, better yet, absolutely
no
idea what he wants. I’m doing his entire apartment. Sixties off Fifth prewar. Lots of paneling, zero light, so I was thinking ...” She flipped a page, fingering a square of cabbage-rose chintz.

Hannah waited, hoping against hope that this time would be different.
Just once, why don’t you ask me what I think?
Not just about upholstery samples, but how she felt about the divorce, and Daddy having a girlfriend, and ... oh, school, and what college she might want to go to, and even Con,
especially
Con.

More than anything, Hannah longed for her mother simply to hold out her arms to her, and hug her the way Grace was always hugging Chris—whenever he would let her, that is.

But what did she know about Grace and Chris,
really?
Aside from tonight’s dinner, she’d only been dragged along on a handful of so-called family outings—apple-picking up in Pawling, and the few times they’d gone to the movies and caught a bite to eat afterwards. And, yeah, the night Daddy had gotten them all tickets to a Mets game. That time, even Ben had come along.

She saw her mother look up sharply, as if she’d read her thoughts. Hannah knew what that particular gleam in Mom’s eye meant, and she felt herself shrink from it.

“How did it go tonight?” Mom was keeping her voice light, the right note of mild interest, but Hannah could see the tightness in her neck.

The room felt like a stage set, with Mom at the center, spotlit for effect. Behind her, the tall glass-front bookcase lined with leather-bound sets of Dickens and Thackeray and Mark Twain that these days no one ever looked at. On the small piecrust table beside her mother, a collection of antique snuffboxes left no room for a book, if you happened to be reading one.

“I told you.” Hannah dropped to her knees in front of the teak cabinet which held the stereo, and began searching for her Chris Isak CD. “We had dinner, Ben drove me home. That’s about it.”

She thought about telling her mother that she’d gotten sick. Mother would be sympathetic ... for about five seconds. Then she’d want to know
how
she’d gotten sick, and why on earth her father hadn’t
told
Grace beforehand that she was allergic to nuts.

Why don’t you ask me how I feel about Daddy and Grace instead of pumping me for info?
she wanted to ask.

“That’s not an answer—that’s
haiku,”
Mom said with a brittle laugh. “Where
is
Ben, anyway?” She looked over Hannah’s shoulder, as if still expecting him to appear.

Hannah felt herself go cold inside. “He couldn’t find a parking space. He said to tell you hi.”

“Oh dear, and I wanted to remind him about the Philharmonic tomorrow. I was thinking we could have supper at the Russian Tea Room with the Minkins afterwards.”

Hannah found the CD she was looking for. “Do you mind if I put on something else?” To hell with whatever stupid tête-à-tête Mom had planned for her and Ben. Besides, this drippy New Age stuff was really getting to her.

“You haven’t
really
told me anything about how it went tonight,” Mom said as if she hadn’t heard Hannah’s question.

“It was okay.” Hannah felt the coldness inside her begin to spread.

She could hear her mother sigh. “Really, Hannah, you act as if I
care
what your father and his ... that
girl
he’s seeing ... are up to. I was
only
asking out of politeness.”

Sure,
Hannah thought,
and I’m Paula Abdul.

“Okay, we had lasagne,” she said, keeping her back turned and her voice neutral. “And chocolate cake for desert.” No, she wouldn’t tell her mother about getting sick. Much as she disliked Grace, she found herself feeling strangely protective of her all of a sudden.

Anyway, her mother didn’t need to know everything.

“Comfort food,” Mom said a little too sweetly. “How
cozy.
I suppose you all gathered around the TV afterwards to watch an old episode of
The Waltons.”

“Mom, come on. It was no big deal.”

“I did a loft in that building once. Horrible place—the elevator always breaking down, no security whatsoever.”

“The elevator works fine now.”

“I suppose you’d know better than I would, spending so much time over there.”

“I’ve only been at Grace’s once before, and that was just for a few minutes. Usually we go to a movie or something. Or hang out at Dad’s.”

“I see. You mean she spends the night. You don’t have to protect your father, Hannah. It’s not as if it’s any of
my
business ... though I would have thought he would at least have enough sense to know what’s appropriate for his sixteen-year-old daughter.”

“They don’t do it in front of me, if that’s what you mean!” Hannah whipped around, accidentally knocking over a stack of CDs on the low lacquered table beside her. They clattered to the floor with a sound like breaking glass.

Mom squeezed her eyes shut, her fingers tightening about the vinyl edges of her sample book. “You don’t have to shout. I’m only expressing concern over your welfare. And will you
please
try to be a little more careful.”

Hannah’s stomach clenched into a hard fist. Now she
did
want to scream, and
really
break something. What would Mom do if she smashed one of her precious porcelain candlesticks, or that dainty French clock on the mantel? Have her sent off to a school for the incorrigible? Or lobotomized?

“Mom, I wasn’t shouting.” Hannah forced herself to lower her voice, then scooped up the CDs, wincing when she saw the scratch she’d left on one of the polished parquet floor tiles. She set them on the table and took a deep breath, rocking back on her heels. “I just hate it when you put me in the middle—you know, like getting me to say stuff about Daddy.”

“You don’t think I should have the right to know what kinds of situations you are being thrown into?”

“Look, why don’t you just ask Daddy?”

Mom slapped her sample book shut. “Do you think he would tell me anything? If you had any idea what I’ve been through, you wouldn’t suggest that I ...” Her eyes glittered, and her lower lip began to tremble. “Do you know what it’s like, to be fifty years old and simply cast aside like a ... a worn-out sofa? After all the years of putting
my
needs on hold so your father could finish school, and then staying home with Ben ...”

I don’t count,
Hannah thought,
because she had me after they could afford a nanny.
She thought of cocoa-skinned Suzette, who had taught her to sing Jamaican nursery rhymes, and had bandaged her skinned knees, even come to see her in school plays. In those days Mom was just getting her business started, and was almost always wrapped up in a business meeting or running around to antique auctions. Daddy had been the one who showed up at parent conferences, and helped out at her school’s annual Christmas fair.

But Suzette was long gone, and now so was Daddy. Mom was all she had left, and Hannah, if she’d been small enough, would have crawled into her lap and laid her head against Mom’s heart. She’d heard this particular speech about Dad often enough to be able to mouth the words along with Mom; still, Hannah knew her mother was hurting, and she wanted to be able to make her feel better.

Kneeling on the floor in front of her, Hannah took her mother’s cool, slender hand in her own. “Mom ... I’m really sorry about what happened, the divorce and everything. But you’re not the only one. I feel like Daddy left me, too.”

For a moment, Mom’s expression softened, as if she were on the verge of saying something sympathetic. But then she withdrew her hand and pressed it to one temple, her eyes tightly shut, as if she were suddenly getting a headache.

“Oh, Hannah,
really.
Your father would walk over hot coals for you. I
don’t
think you can compare my situation with yours.”

Maybe if you’d been a little nicer to him he wouldn’t have left you!
Hannah felt like shouting. Why couldn’t Mom just once admit that she might have had something to do with their splitting up?

Holding her frustration in, Hannah pleaded, “Mom, please, can’t you just let go? You have a great career, this apartment, friends who love you.”
A daughter who wants to love you, too.

“Easy for you to say,” Mom snapped. “You have your whole life ahead of you.”

Hannah hated it when anyone told her that—as if she were a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint just waiting to be chewed. Just because she had a whole lifetime to be miserable, did that mean she had no right to be miserable now?

She fought back the sharp words on the tip of her tongue, and said softly, “But
right now
I feel like ... like all this stuff with Dad is really messing things up with
us.”