The Wonder Spot (41 page)

. . . . .

When I got back to New York, I called Adam at home, as I rarely did; he wrote on weekends. I said that I was sorry to bother him, and he said, “Dontcha know me, Bert?” his favorite line from
It's a Wonderful Life
. “What's up?”

“I'm worried about Francine,” I said.

“I'm sure she's fine,” he said.

“What makes you think so?”

“She's a good editor.” Then he said that he'd been meaning to call me about a job on a new talk show at PBS: I'd do research on the guests and make up questions for the host. He told me he was sure I'd be good at it. “You ask a lot of questions,” he said.

. . . . .

My apartment was overheated, and I couldn't fall asleep with Neil in bed, and I couldn't fall asleep on the sofa. I was thinking about Francine. In my nightmare daydream, I saw her at Steinhardt, in the area where all the editorial assistants worked—the Cave, we'd called it—and it was dark except for her tensor lamp.

. . . . .

The agency Christmas party was huge and awful—a strobe light, a DJ, an open bar—one of those parties where you have to drink and
drink just to survive. I noticed Ian because he was so elegant in an atmosphere overflowing with inelegance, because he was so tall and so skinny and so sexy; I noticed him because he noticed me.

He came over to the bar and when he introduced himself it was like a silk shade had been thrown over the glare of the evening. He was from the London office, and his English accent made him both hard to understand and more charming.

If I couldn't exactly hear his words, I could see them. He had
Danger
and
Warning
writ large all over him; he himself looked like a skull and crossbones. I liked talking to him, though, and not just because he was smart and funny, deadpan and reserved. He was exactly the kind of man I'd been drawn to pre-Neil, the kind I'd never be drawn to again.

I leaned back and my elbow missed the bar. “I'm not drunk,” I said. “I'm clumsy.”

Still, he suggested that food might be in order.

I said, “If anyone needs to eat, it's you.”

I felt as safe and relaxed as I would have at home reading a novel about a scoundrel imperiling a naïf; I was radiant with superiority, not over him but over the easy mark I'd been.

. . . . .

On Christmas Eve, I called New Jersey Information and got Francine's number in Carteret.

“Hello,” she said, and her voice in that single word reminded me of how pale she was and how pinched.

“Hi,” I said. “It's Sophie Applebaum.”

“Sophie,” she said. Then, nothing. I thought maybe she was stunned to hear from me; I'd never called her.

I said, “I just wanted to wish you a merry Christmas.”

“Thank you,” she said.

I'd forgotten how hard it was to talk to Francine, and I wished now that I'd planned what I was going to say. “And I wanted to thank you for your Christmas card.”
For the last fifteen years.

“You're welcome,” she said.

“So,” I said, “I was just wondering how you were.”

“I'm fine.”

“Great.” I waited a moment to give her a chance to ask how I was, but she didn't. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I was to hear about Steinhardt.”

“Thank you.”

I said, “I guess I wondered if I could help in any way,” though I wasn't sure what I could offer.

“Thank you,” she said. “I'm doing very well.”

As it turned out, after Steinhardt had been sold, Adam had called to ask if Francine would be willing to help his old boss, who was in a real jam; Wolfe needed a top-notch freelance line editor.

I knew it was my turn to talk, but I couldn't. I was thinking,
Ah Adam! Ah Humanity!

Finally, I got out, “That's good to hear.”

She was surprised that Adam hadn't told me. “I thought you were such good friends,” she said, and I thought,
You haven't lost your edge, Francie.

“Well,” I said, winding down.

She said, “Wolfe works at Knopf,” and I heard pride in her voice.

“That's wonderful, Francine,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “I should get back to work now. Thank you very much for calling, and happy Hanukkah.”

. . . . .

I went to Jack's engagement party alone. Neil had plans with Ella for New Year's Eve. He'd offered to ask Beth about rescheduling but said she wasn't exactly eager to accommodate him, and I knew he wasn't exactly eager to ask.

I'd lived in Manhattan long enough not to be impressed by the word
loft;
as often as not, a loft had the feel of a garage. Rebecca's was in west, west, West Chelsea, close to the river, on a dark street past an auto-glass repair shop that offered free estimates. I buzzed Goldberg, and Goldberg buzzed back. In the elevator I pressed PH for penthouse; in the hall I hung my coat on the long rack.

Then I walked into the white dream the word
loft
inspired.

A jazz band was playing.

It was a big party, a party full of dancing, talking, drinking people—and me. I backed into the kitchen, where women in white shirts and black pants were loading and unloading trays of hors d'oeuvres.

I said, “Can I help with anything?”

“We've got everything under control, I think,” a nice woman said. “How about a glass of champagne?” I took one and thanked her.

With my champagne, I stood at the refrigerator and looked at the Before and During pictures of the loft; I tried to act as interested as I would be if I myself were planning a renovation. I made my face say,
Now, how did they do that?

I wondered why Rebecca hadn't hung the After pictures. Then I realized I was in the After picture, and also in the way of the caterers. I asked, “Do you know where the bathroom is?”

It was down the hall. My studio didn't even have a hall; my studio was a hall.

In the powder-room mirror, my skin had the gray-green pallor I associated with heroin addiction. Imitating an antidrug public-service announcement, I said, “Sophie needs help.”

I found it in a small basket of makeup samples. I put on blush. I put on lipstick.

Back out in the world of the party, my mother had just arrived. She seemed shaky, maybe because she'd never driven to New York by herself before, or maybe because she was about to meet the Bronsteins.

“You okay?” I said. “How are you?”

She said, “Great,” while her eyes said,
Save me.

I held her hand, and we walked around. We talked to Robert and Naomi, who was pregnant with their third child and just beginning to show.

The big, beefy Bronstein brothers, the two in real estate and the black-sheep investment banker, introduced themselves and their wives, two of whom seemed to be named Julie.

Mindy came over looking as beautiful as any fiancée ever had. We
all kissed and cooed. She was wearing a long black dress with a white sash like the one in the picture of Dovima. It was at that moment that I realized I'd been on the wrong search all along: I'd thought I wanted Dovima's dress when what I really wanted were her elephants.

A moment later, Mindy's parents, Sandy and Ellis, introduced themselves. Sandy wore a spangly dress, and my mother's eyes got spangly looking at her. When my mother got her back up, as happened with only a few women and never with men, she lifted her chin, and she lifted it now.

“I'm so thrilled about Mindy,” she said.

Sandy said, “We couldn't be happier about Jack.”

All the Bronsteins were standing together now, and father Ellis had his arm around Jack. I knew from Jack that the Bronsteins were rich and powerful, but they were richer and more powerful than I'd imagined: They were a family. That was what Jack wanted. He was willing to go to every bris and bar mitzvah. One Saturday he couldn't go to the movies with me because he was taking Mindy's grandmother to the optician. He would work to be part of Mindy's family as he'd never worked to be part of our family. But then, no one had asked him to.

Rebecca joined us, holding the hand of a man she introduced as her boyfriend, Eugene, who was an even lighter shade of pale than she was. She hugged my mother, whom she called “Aunt Joyce”; she called me “Cousin Sophie,” as though we were Quakers at Meeting.

Her mother headed over, looking even more uptight than I'd remembered. I was only a part-time believer in the theory that people became more themselves as they got older, but her face was carved in stone like a commandment:
Thou Shalt Relax.

“Sophie,” she said. “I don't believe it!”

What?
I wanted to ask,
What don't you believe?
Instead, I said, “Hi.” I'd grown up calling her Aunt Nora, and decided just then that I didn't have to anymore.

I stopped myself from asking where Rebecca's father was, which I realized would've been a theological question at that point; he'd died
years before my own father. My mother had dragged us to his funeral, and I remembered that in the car Jack had said, “Uncle David, we hardly knew ye,” because the man had never said a word to any of us.

The Bronsteins had already taken a tour of the loft, but Rebecca asked if my mother and I wanted one. Of course we did.

I walked behind Rebecca, a dance therapist who still carried herself like the ballerina she'd been as a child—shoulders back, feet duckish.

As we crossed the living room, I spotted Jack's friend Pete from Martha's Vineyard, standing like an island.

I motioned for him to join the tour;
Come on,
my arm said, and he caught up.

“So, you're in advertising,” my former aunt Nora was saying. “Do you love it?”

I thought,
Why would you think I love it?
but said nothing, and she didn't notice. Nora Goldberg did not have big ears, and thus I kept my jazz to myself.

A peek into the powder room, and we were off to the bedroom and the bathroom. Rebecca's mother called the second bedroom her pied-à-terre, and my mother said, “How often do you come in?”

“About once a week.” Rebecca was out in the hall, but her mother still lowered her voice when she told mine, “I hope to share it before too long.”

It took me a moment to realize that she wasn't talking about the room as a future love nest, but as a nursery for what might be the palest grandchild in the history of the world.

My mother, however, didn't realize. She said, “Are you seeing someone?”

“God, no.” Her friend laughed, and then said, “Are you?”

“No, no, no,” my mother said, “no.” No one knew about Lev, and I saw now how it isolated her. I saw her try to summon up the Joyce Applebaum she was expected to be, but that Joyce Applebaum wasn't on speaking terms with this one; what followed was the emptiness of a credible imitation.

I wish I'd known then and could have told her what was going to
happen: Though Lev Polikoff refused to leave his wife, in another year she would get cancer and leave him and everyone else. Piece by piece, my mother would ship her mother's brass and china to her brother. She and Lev would go to flea markets and hunt for blue bottles, which are supposed to be lucky, and he would convince her to hang them in a tree in the backyard.

. . . . .

Rebecca told us that if we wanted to go out on the terrace, we should get our coats. I helped my mother on with hers, an old fur of my grandmother's that was worn down in patches. I said, “I think you might be molting.”

In a low voice, Pete said, “Play nice.” Over his corduroy suit, he wore a red down jacket patched with silver duct tape.

We went out to the terrace, and when I saw the Hudson spread before us I said an involuntary, “Jesus.”

Rebecca said, “I know,” and she said it as though the dazzling view belonged to me, too.

“Well,” I said, “I guess you kids won't be having that New York real-estate dream anymore.”

Rebecca said, “What?” a muted version of how she'd spoken to me when we were younger.

“You know,” Eugene said, “you find a door that you never noticed and it leads to a terrace or a huge room or even to a whole other apartment that turns out to be yours, too.”

“I never had it,” she said.

I said, “It's actually a nice dream.”

My mother said she was cold and going in, and then Rebecca and her mother and Eugene said they were, too.

I told them, “I'm right behind you,” but I wasn't.

Pete stayed on the terrace with me. After a few minutes, he said, “You don't really love advertising, do you?”

“Nope,” I said. I told him that I was applying for a job as a researcher in public television, but I was also thinking of becoming a cartoonist, a songwriter, an underwater photographer, a peace activist,
and a zookeeper for a really good zoo, the kind animals would have to apply to get into.