Carnegie Hill, page 5
The last thing she wanted was Francis convincing George not to eat her filet or getting in the way of her efforts to seduce him. “I’m afraid today won’t be good for a visit, George; he doesn’t want to be disturbed during the holiday.”
“Gut yontif!” Francis said to Patricia Cooper, the Jewish chairwoman of the co-op board, as she hobbled by with a menacing wave of her colorful enameled cane. Her nasty Pomeranian yipped at Birdie as they passed.
Seeing her chance to escape, Birdie raced past Patricia, past the fragrant lilies in giant glass cylinders, past the stairwell, past the elegant little mailroom. Only when she reached the elevator did she glance behind her. “À bientôt!” she called out with a friendly wave.
* * *
Birdie didn’t have much time left before sundown, but after setting the groceries down and checking on her stock, she dropped in on her neighbor Penelope for a quick hello. The girl was engaged to Rick Hunter, dashing and moneyed and sometimes quite amusing, and Birdie wanted to soak up some of Penelope’s hope at starting her lifelong journey with him.
But Penelope was watching a zombie show on television and eating candy. The scene was made sadder by the apartment itself; its unspeakably awful previous owner had treated it like a halfway house.
“Don’t you want to dress up the place a bit?” Birdie asked, perhaps too adamantly.
“All of this is going away,” Penelope replied, waving her hand about loosely, “as soon as the stupid contractors can schedule us in.”
That made sense, but still, the girl’s indolence bothered Birdie. It was the path to unhappiness. She saw it in George and, years back, herself. “I find that I’m happiest when I’m cooking,” she said, trying not to sound judgmental. “It’s always an adventure, and it fills in the darker moments with hope and happiness. If you could find an avocation, you would leap out of bed in the mornings and keep a smile on your face until bedtime.”
Penelope looked confused; perhaps the junk food was dulling her brilliant mind. “You sound like my mother. Don’t worry, I’m looking for work.”
“Maybe I can help. I’ll give it some thought.” She said goodbye, unable to tolerate another minute in that apartment.
When she returned to her kitchen, the veal bones had begun to surrender their musky essence. She pinched together a pâte brisée with flour and ice-cold butter on a chilled marble slab and adorned it with sour cherries, sugar, lemon juice, a splash of brandy, and extra dots of butter. She prepared the tomato salad, resisting the urge to suck the tomato seeds and slivers of basil off her dripping fingers. It was, after all, still Yom Kippur, and the magic of the holiday wouldn’t work if she nibbled. She worked herself into a frenzy, giving herself the pleasure of not having to think. Every so often, she peeked into the bedroom, where George was producing a gut-wrenching snore. He’d be up half the night, but he could make his own decisions.
As the sun descended, she strained the veal stock, bewitched by its clean, masculine aroma. It saddened her that the demi-glace, the most delicious sauce in the French repertoire and best friend to all manner of beef, was extracted from the bones of baby cows. But the spirit of those calves made the sauce mellow and velvety. It was impossible not to be seduced by youth, she thought. Its presence and absence vibrated in everything.
Her knees buckled with hunger. In the synagogues, Jews would be wailing the final prayers, their voices desperate with exhaustion, begging to be inscribed in the Book of Life, the magical book that foretold who would live another year and who would die. It was one reason she avoided services on Yom Kippur; she had no desire to be reminded of her death.
* * *
She had everything on the table before calling George. He had showered, shaved, and put on a clean dress shirt and slacks. “You’ve outdone yourself,” he said, kissing her, arousing her with his smoky cologne. “Did a delivery come while I was sleeping?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Were you expecting something?”
“I was.… It should have gotten here by now.” Shrugging, he picked up the spoon in the tomato salad. “May I serve?”
“We still have three minutes before the shofar is blown.”
“God won’t mind if we start a few minutes early.”
She stared at her empty plate. “I want to wait.” It would have been hard to defend her request. Here they were, about to tuck into nonkosher meat slathered in dairy, all purchased and cooked during the day of the year when it was most important not to do anything but beg God for forgiveness, and she was going to keep her husband from eating three minutes before the prescribed time. But she wanted to observe the holiday according to their tradition, and that meant hewing to the restriction. Was this making a religion of the food, as Francis had warned?
She got up to dress the filets with demi-glace, rosemary, and Gorgonzola. She freshened her lipstick and rubbed her new serum on her crow’s feet. Upon her return, George was sniffing the lavender centerpiece. She wondered when it had become so difficult to talk to him. He’d been successful at JolieBelle because he knew how to fill a room with his voice, and now he barely spoke.
He sat back and examined her. She looked away. “You look beautiful,” he said. “Did I get you that lipstick?”
“I bought it today.”
“It’s not JolieBelle, I hope.”
She shook her head, smiling. “I would never.”
“Well, you look beautiful,” he repeated. “Just like when we first met.”
She blushed. “Thank you. You look very handsome yourself.”
“I clean up nice.” He grinned, and she couldn’t help laughing.
Staring into George’s eyes in the candlelight and inhaling the cocktail of flavors made her weak with desire. They would enjoy the meal together, seasoned by their appetites, and then, she hoped, proceed to the bedroom. She wanted it desperately.
He cleared his throat. “It’s not often we get a chance to appreciate how delicious and beautiful your food is before eating it,” he said. “I forgot how much I liked Yom Kippur.”
“I’ve missed you, George,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I made an appointment with Dr. Clay to tweak my meds.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“Sorry.”
“I want…” Her voice faltered. The hunger was making her maudlin. “I want to move back to Montreal. I think we’ll both be happier there.”
“Those were magical years,” he said.
“I want them back. We could buy one of those simple flat-roofed houses in Mile End, and I could go to the farmers market anytime I felt like it.”
“And we could get bagels at St-Viateur every morning.”
“And we could buy a spunky little Peugeot,” she said, “like the one I drove when we met, and take weekend trips to the countryside, and stay in those horrible inns.”
He chuckled. “We could do better than a Peugeot. And we could definitely do better than those moldy flea traps.”
“I don’t want to,” she whispered.
“We could winter in Saint Martin.”
“We could summer in Prince Edward Island.”
He reached across the table and took her hands. His gaze was kind and strong. “Let’s sell the apartment and go. I’ll call the broker tomorrow.”
The clock read 7:53. Yom Kippur had been over for a few minutes. But she didn’t let go of his hands. She felt seen, more fully than she had in years.
He glanced out the window. It was dark outside except for the lights in the streetlamps and the windows of nearby buildings. The moon glowed resolutely. “Isn’t it time yet?”
“Just another minute,” she said.
He looked at his watch. “Didn’t you say it was over at seven fifty? It’s seven fifty-four.”
“I’m sorry, I must have hallucinated from the hunger!” She laughed.
He plopped a filet onto his plate and spooned on extra sauce. She reached for the haricots verts and tomato salad, then forked her own piece of meat.
“Baruch atah Adonai, let’s eat!” he shouted.
She gobbled down the food, her body quivering with relief. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so happy.
“Birdie, you’ve outdone yourself.”
“Don’t make me stop to speak!” she cried, catching a piece of tomato as it escaped her lips.
Within a few minutes, her belly felt distended, yet she didn’t feel satisfied. Her stomach had shrunk from fasting: every year she knew it would happen, and every year she managed not to believe it. She put one last morsel of buttery filet in her mouth and forced herself to swallow, then leaned back in her chair and sipped her wine while George chewed.
“Remember when we used to get in the car and just drive?” she asked.
He nodded, swallowing. “Yeah, that was fun.”
“It occurred to me today how miraculous it was that we always ended up somewhere wonderful. Did that ever occur to you, how charmed our lives were then?”
He looked puzzled. “Sweetheart, I always planned out those trips in advance. The left-right thing was a joke. How could you not know that?”
The wine soured in her mouth. “You told me it was serendipity.”
“I assumed that a reasonably intelligent woman would have noticed that I stopped letting you pick the turns after a while, or, I don’t know, that we always had a reservation wherever we went?”
She herded tomato seeds around her plate with her fork, trying to reconstitute a memory of knowing what was really going on. She felt idiotic for believing those trips had been magical. She watched him traffic food into his mouth, listened with revulsion to the slaps and snorts of his chewing, wondered how else her memories of their life together might be distorted. He ferried a second filet onto his plate and methodically devoured it. Embracing the bowl of golden tomato salad in one arm, he polished it off, piece by piece. Why hadn’t his stomach shrunk, too? It seemed impossible that someone who’d fasted all day could eat so much.
She jerked upright. “You didn’t fast.”
He kept his gaze on the empty tomato bowl. “It doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I dressed up. I showered and shaved. Can’t that be enough?”
Again she felt deceived, as though all their daydreaming about Montreal had been based on a lie. “It’s our tradition. It’s something we do together.”
“Eating after a fast gives me a bad stomachache. You know that.” He folded a slice of bread into his mouth.
“You promised you’d fast.”
“I did not promise. I never promise anything.”
She wanted to pluck the crooked gray hairs peeking out from his ears. She couldn’t believe she would have considered making love with this ancient ogre just a few minutes earlier.
“Can we please just have dessert?” he asked.
“Dessert is for people who fasted.”
He pushed his plate away and fiddled with the saltshaker. “I am trying to be better to you, Birdie,” he said through clenched teeth, “but you are not making it easy.”
She looked at the slope and hunch of his shoulders and at his belly, squeezed against the edge of the table. His deterioration was an affront. “Trying isn’t good enough.”
He plodded into the kitchen, unbuttoning his shirt. She followed him in and saw that he was heading for the tart.
“No!” she cried.
“Calm down, Birdie. Our neighbors are going to think I’m abusing you.” He selected a knife from the silverware drawer and cut into the tart.
“You are abusing me.” Before she could stop herself, she snatched away the tart and thrust it facedown into the garbage. It killed her to waste such a beautiful creation, but she couldn’t stand that George might even get to taste it. She couldn’t understand why she’d wanted to do anything nice for him. Her hunger had cast a strange spell.
He gaped into the trash can. “And you think I’m the sick one.” He trudged into the spare bedroom and slammed the door.
The shattered pastry shell in the trash can looked like a scream. Her anger was unbearable, but she couldn’t look away from the tart. She wanted to suffer if only to use it as a weapon against him.
A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. It was Ranesh, holding a bouquet of red roses and grinning. “Mrs. Hirsch? These are for you.”
With the roses nestled in the crook of her arm, she opened the tiny envelope containing the card. It read:
Dear Birdie,
You’re the world to me. I know I haven’t been easy to live with recently, but I’m going to try my best to deserve you.
Love always,
George
“I hope this was a good time to bring these to you,” Ranesh said as Birdie stared at the blossoms, dumbstruck. “Your holiday is finished, yes?”
She nodded.
“Oh, good. I know that you didn’t want to be disturbed until the holiday was finished. I learned today that Jewish holidays end at sundown.”
“These came earlier?” she managed to ask.
“Yes, a few hours ago,” he said. “I kept them in the refrigerator room until you were ready to receive them.”
She mumbled a thank-you, closed the door, and placed the bouquet on the console table. The blossoms, two dozen of them, were enormous, the petals velvety and crisp, the stems stripped of their thorns. It was excruciating to look at them. She didn’t think she could go into the spare bedroom to apologize, but maybe he would come out, having heard the doorbell. She stared at the roses, trying to decide what to do. If she put them in a vase, she would certainly cry. She hoped they would survive the night without water.
She cleared the table, stacked the tubs of leftovers in the refrigerator, loaded the dishwasher, and wiped down the counters. Then she sat in the kitchen for a long time, listening to the hum of the refrigerator and the satisfied gurgle of the dishwasher.
3
THIRTY-THREE
Pepper wanted her wedding to be simple. No bridesmaids, no centerpieces, no priest, no band. No butlered hors d’oeuvres, no five-tier cake, no dessert buffet. No gift bags, no stylist, no veil, no rice. No limo, and certainly no cans rattling behind.
She and Rick would pick a date in the spring when a tolerable temperature could be relied upon and do their “I do”s in Central Park. Then everyone would hop in taxis to a low-key lunch at Patsy’s or Pastis or Peter Luger. She’d wear a white lace cutout dress she’d found for twenty-nine dollars at Zara and pick up a box of cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery, where she and Rick often ate dessert for breakfast, the one meal of the day when he allowed himself sugar and fat. She’d email the invitations, maybe through Paperless Post to make sure her friends knew it wasn’t a joke.
They might even be jealous. Her married friends had bemoaned their splashy weddings—one of which was so costly it might have played a role in the couple’s divorce a year later—and when Pepper told her ninety-eight-year-old Grandma Phyllis that she was getting married, the wheelchair-bound dowager beckoned her close and uttered a single husky word: “Elope.”
For his part, Rick’s wedding vision took place in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria, but he deferred to her. “We can do it in our living room, if you want. As long as we do it. And do it. And do it.”
“We’ll do it to our heart’s content,” she had replied, nuzzling into his cheek. And without any warning or ceremony, they made love. After years of experiencing sex with other boyfriends as a tightrope between the amusing and the disgusting, it was a relief to feel at one with Rick’s body, to put herself in his care and know that she was safe.
The simple wedding had another detail to recommend it: it would drive her mother mad. Claudia Lindbergh Bradford was a confection of galas and soirees, garden parties, fetes. The woman had given Pepper a subscription to Elegant Bride when she was fourteen. (Granted, it came free with a perfume purchase, but still.…) Pepper was allergic to Claudia’s rigid social etiquette; she wanted the wedding to be about her love with Rick, not her mother’s photo in New York Social Diary.
She hadn’t found the courage to break all this to her parents, though. They hadn’t even met Rick. In the past, Claudia had taken boyfriend introductions as permission to declare their unsuitability as husbands. Louie was successful and kind, and he would be a great father … but it really was best to partner with someone closer in age, wasn’t it? Duvall was very well-spoken and intelligent … but one had to think about how the children would be treated. She liked Cornelius, she did, but he wasn’t very quick, was he?—and after looks fade, one survives on wit. And Gabriel was an absolute catch … for some young gentleman.
The frustrating thing was that her mother was usually right, in a roundabout way. Pepper left Louie because people assumed that a woman her age couldn’t be his intellectual peer—or that she was his daughter. It didn’t help that he shared her father’s narrow, chiseled face and dry laugh, and practically his name, Lewis. She broke up with Duvall because he was always calling her out on the smallest things: when she complimented his sister’s thick, soft braids, expressed gratitude for the police, and referred (ironically, she’d thought) to the color of his cousin’s skin as “caramel macchiato.” Her affection for Cornelius soured when he admitted that he had never even heard of Virginia Woolf or Dorothy Parker, and it occurred to her that he might not know how to read. As for Gabriel, she ended it because they stopped having sex, and he was spending more and more time at the gym. Six weeks later, his Facebook wall announced that he was in a relationship with a man.
She already knew what her mother would say about Rick: his family had no standing. When he was sixteen, his father had been laid off from a tire factory in Akron, Ohio, after which his family moved to some depressed town along the Ohio River, outside of Cincinnati, where his parents got by picking up odd jobs until they retired. Rick had gone to public school. She could hear the twangy syllables of “Cincinnati” bouncing off Claudia’s tongue.
But he was the smartest man she knew, wry and generous and handsome—he looked like Archie crossed with Superman. He knew her body in ways that she hadn’t. And when he gazed at her, bearing the full weight of his attention upon her, she had never felt so alive. And didn’t it mean something that he had risen from poverty to become an extremely successful wealth manager? She could feel her indignation rise.
