•
As you know, I’m deeply proud of my (truly mature) capacity to apologize, to unflinchingly admit it when I’ve been wrong. And since, as Pope has observed, to err is human, I have—a goodly number of times—been wrong. Never, however, let me concede, have I been as massively wrong as I’d turned out to be in the case of Mr. Monti. I mean, if errors were earthquakes, this would be a 9.9 on the Richter scale.
Dwayne, not Mr. Monti, had been sending those murderous messages to Wally. Furthermore, Dwayne saw himself as the turkey and clown. Furthermore, those messages had been warnings not of homicide but of suicide.
I’d made a big mistake. A big mistake.
Now it’s true I’d been right in believing that somebody out there was threatening death, THE CLOWN TURNS INTO A GHOST, as well as THE TURKEY TURNS INTO DEAD MEAT, have, you’ll agree, a decidedly fatal sound. All that I’d actually erred about was who, exactly, intended to do in whom. But this was the kind of error which, if I didn’t stop Elton Jr. and Billy immediately, would end up with Joseph Monti’s being in no condition to accept my apology.
I had to stop Elton Jr. and Billy immediately.
For ratty though Mr. Monti had been—and continued to be—I no longer could claim that he deserved to die.
• • •
Since Wally was going to need to be spending some time with Dwayne and Dwayne’s mother, I offered to drive to Dulles to pick up Miranda. But first there was one imperative piece of business I had to attend to: I had to find a telephone so I could tell my hit men to cancel the hit, I cruised the darkened streets till I found a pay phone which not only worked but which I’d be able to use without being mugged, and hastily deposited twenty-five cents.
“Yo, this is Billy and Elton Jr. Limited Partnership, Inc.,” said Billy on the answering machine. “We’re out on a job right now but if you’ll please leave your name and number we’ll get back to you.”
I hung up the phone and had a 9.9 on the Richter scale dizzy spell. I also gave serious thought to throwing up. Never in my entire life had I yearned to converse with a person the way I yearned to converse with the absent partners of Billy and Elton Jr. Inc. With trembling hands I picked up the phone and dialed their number again—and again a machine, instead of my cohorts, answered.
“I say,” I said at the sound of the beep, doing my British accent, “it’s Prudence Gump here. I’m calling to inform you that the business meeting planned for today has been canceled. Definitively, permanently, nonnegotiably, now-and-forever canceled. I’ll be phoning again to make sure you received this message.”
I jumped in the car and drove, far faster than my usual cautious pace, to Dulles. As soon as I got there I horried to the phone. Please let a human being answer, I prayed to To Whom It May Concern. “Yo, this is Billy . . .” et cetera, said the recording.
This time I left them a message to leave me a message that they had indeed received my message. “If you put it on your machine, I’ll be able to get it,” I said, “the next time I ring you up.” I told them that though I much preferred to speak with an actual person, “I would find such a message”—this was the understatement of the ages—“quite quite reassuring.”
It was time to greet my niece at the mid-field terminal.
Miranda, brown bangs and dark glasses obliterating half her face, arrived in skinny jeans and a well-cut sports jacket, striding along on funky shoes with the odd giraffelike grace of Diane Keaton. “Hi, hi,” she said, enveloping me in a warm but speedy hug. “So how’s The Rose—impossible as ever?” After which, from baggage-claim area right up to my front door, she obsessed about her mother, my sister, “a woman who,” she rat-a-tat-tat complained, “can’t even remember—my friends don’t believe this—which programs her daughter produces, and has yet to take the trouble to sit down and watch one, though you know—admit it, Aunt Brenda—that if Hubert was doing some dog-food commercial on television, The Rose would not only be watching, she’d be sending engraved announcements to the whole world.”
I murmured something intended to be nondenigrating to Rosalie while deeply sympathetic to Miranda, a tightrope walk I have mastered over the years and can do with minimum attention. Which was all I had available since most of my attention was consumed with concerns about stopping Billy and Elton Jr. from murdering Mr. Monti.
They were picking him up at 1 P.M. It was now almost 7 A.M. I desperately needed to know that the mission was scrubbed. But restraining myself from rushing once again to the telephone, I decided I’d wait for an hour and use the time to do some work on my Thanks-giving dinner. By eight, Jake, Jeff, and Rose—Miranda was trying to take a nap—were drowsily making their way to the kitchen table. I gave them a brief report on Wally’s predawn melodrama and left the room. “The coffee’s done, there’s muffins and juice, I’ve already eaten,” I told them over my shoulder, as I hustled right upstairs to the telephone. And when yet again I heard the same thwarting “Yo, this is Billy . . .” message on the machine, it struck me for the first time that I might be unable to head off Billy and Elton Jr.
And it struck me for the first time that I had better try to head off Mr. Monti.
Hubert, my new best friend, was whining outside my closed bedroom door. “Beat it! I’m busy,” I grrred. Hubert grrred back, grrrs becoming barks becoming howls as I sat on my bed, taking deep breaths and telling myself, You can handle this.
Actually, I found myself thinking, How am I going to handle this? Like, what was I going to say to Joseph Monti?
Hubert was trying to break down my door when Rosalie clattered upstairs, hollering, “Brenda, why are you torturing Hubert?”
Losing my composure, I answered, biting out each word, “I Want. You. To. Take. Your. Fucking. Dog. Downstairs.”
“If that’s how you feel,” said Rosalie, escalating Instantly, “I also can take him straight back to New York.”
Outside my still-closed bedroom door Rose and Hubert had just been joined by Miranda. “Can’t a person,” she groused, “get some sleep around here? I’ll tell you one thing, Mother, if Hubert was sleeping and I was the one who was making this noise, you’d—admit it, Mother—have strangled me by now.”
“Blame your aunt for the noise. She’s the one who wouldn’t let Hubert—”
“Stop it!” I shrieked, then seized hold of myself. “I mean, please,” I said calmly and sweetly, “go eat breakfast. I’ve got a call I need to make—some corrections on one of my columns—but I’ll be back downstairs just as soon as I’m done.”
“Maybe Hubert and I will be there, and maybe we won’t,” said Rose, huffily departing from my doorway. “You took a nap with your makeup on?” Rose had turned her attention to Miranda. “You want to have pores the size of dinner plates? Youth doesn’t last for . . .”
I dialed Joseph Monti’s number, having decided to say—in my Elizabeth Fisher-Todd drawl—that our hostess had fallen ill and had, to her everlasting sorrow, been forced to cancel. I also intended to say that she’d been unable to contact her drivers, who thus might appear at his condo door (I’d had to reveal his name when I switched to Plan B) to pick him up. “Being devoted employees, they might be real insistent.” I also intended to tell him, “on taking you where their employers said they should. So you need to make it clear to them that die dinner has been canceled and that they can call their message machine to confirm.”
Although this ploy was, I’ll grant you, rather klutzy, it was also the best I could think of at the moment and it would, God willing, save Joseph Monti’s life. Having figured it out, I could feel my panic begin to subside, a state of relief that lasted until Mr. Monti’s voice on the telephone said. “Hello, I’m not home right now, but—” Where was everybody?
I left the message on his machine, said I’d be checking in again, and, pulling myself together, went downstairs.
Down in the kitchen Rose and Miranda already were barely speaking, in addition to which Rose was furious with me. Nor was she quick to accept my earnest apologies for, as I oh-so-grovelingly put it, using “insensitive language” about her dog.
“One of these days,” she warned me, when she finally received me back into her good graces, “you won’t get away with this ‘I’m so sorry’ routine. I’m a very forgiving person”—not true!—“but one of these days, Brenda, you’re going to do something unforgivable.”
But don’t let it be today, I silently prayed, as a shudder of apprehension swept through me. “Excuse me,” I said, and rushed upstairs to the phone.
Where, hyperventilating, I put in a call to Joseph Monti and then a call to Billy and Elton Jr. And got their machines.
Where was everybody? Where the hell were they?
I took a deep breath and told myself, You can handle this.
• • •
Wally, looking drained but relieved, came home a little past ten. “It’s all turned out for the best, I think,” he said, explaining that Dwayne, having, scared himself with his suicide attempt, had agreed to sign into a psychiatric hospital.
“Incidentally, Mom,” he said, “remember that van that was chasing me back in September? Dwayne told me he was driving it. He says it was a message—a cry for help.”
“Mmmm,” I muttered noncommittally.
“And it also turns out that Dwayne was the person disguised as that clown on my birthday. He says it was another cry for help.”
“Mmmm,” I muttered noncommittally.
“In fact, he says he sent a lot of messages to me, but I don’t know where he sent them—I never got them.” A sudden thought seemed to strike him. “Mom, did you ever happen to see any messages?”
I stopped being noncommittal. “Of course not,” I lied.
Wally went up to rest and I stuffed the turkey and started it roasting in the oven, after which I yet again attempted—and yet again failed—to contact either my hit men or Mr. Monti. By now there was only one reason why I wasn’t having my own psychotic break: I folly intended, if worse really came to worst, to drive down to the Watergate and stop Elton Jr. and Billy when they showed up.
This meant I would need, to be safe, to be down there no later than 12:45. It was now already 11:28. Fortunately, however—from a scheduling point of view—my guests would not be striving till half past three. I-think-I-can-think-I-can-I-think-I-can, I chanted, as I showered and put on my holiday attire. Except—uh oh!—if I was meeting Billy and Elton Jr., I’d need to be wearing my Prudence Gump disguise.
I called again, got machines, and decided that Billy and Elton Jr. were out on the streets attempting to steal a limo. I couldn’t imagine where Mr. Monti might be. A flash: Could Billy and Elton Jr. have somehow revised my plan, picked him up early, and already done him in? This was indeed a plausible thought, but such a hideous one that I immediately banished it from my brain.
Jake came into the bedroom. “Your sister and niece,” he said, “are going at it again. It’s the first time I’ve actually seen someone engage in sibling rivalry with a Great Dane.” He tilted his head and smiled at me. “So how come you’re not interceding with one of your . . . constructive interventions?”
“Qui, moi?” I answered innocently. “Why would I want to do that? I’m trying to work on being less what certain people insist on calling controlling.”
I needed to try those calls again, but my portable phone was busted, and every room with a phone was occupied: Jake getting dressed in our bedroom. Wally attempting to nap on the third floor. Rose and Miranda sniping at each other while doing the dishes in the kitchen. And Jeff in my office staring glumly into the middle distance and reminding me (as if I needed reminding) when I asked what was on his mind, “December first is my deadline, when Monti Enterprises gets everything else I own.”
I wished I had time to give him my whole maternal/supportive number, but unfortunately I had to cut to the chase. “Just remember, whatever material goods they take away from you, they can’t”—my eyes moistened—“take you away from you.”
“Yeah, right. I’ve already heard that song, Mom. But thanks anyway,” Jeff said, resuming his brooding. He needed more work, but I couldn’t do it right now.
I hurried down to the living room, occupied, only by Hubert, who was stretched out on my entire four-cushion couch. There, having finally found some relative privacy, and some privacy from the relatives, I dialed my two numbers for the final time.
Nobody home. I would have to go to the Watergate.
“Got to pick up a few things at the store,” I called to Rose and Miranda, firmly fending them off as each of them offered, insistently, to come along. “I need some private time and space,” I said to Miranda, who understood such needs. “I need you to baste the turkey,” I said to Rose. Then, stealthily shoving certain items into my canvas tote bag, I left the house solo.
First stop was a trip to the ladies’ room of the National Cathedral, where I put on my Prudence Gump hair and hat and suit, after which I drove to the Watergate, parked next door at the Kennedy Center garage, and nervously paced the front entrance, awaiting the longed-for appearance of Billy and Elton Jr.
One o’clock came and went. One-oh-five came and went. So did one-oh-six, seven, eight, and nine. At ten minutes after one I was forced to revive my banished question: Had I seen the light too late to prevent the execution of an innocent man? This was the kind of miscarriage of justice that has made folks ferocious opponents of the death penalty. Twelve minutes after one, and after years and years of favoring capital punishment, I’d become a ferocious opponent of the death penalty.
At quarter after one a car—but not the car I’d expected—slowed to a stop to front of the Watergate.
And there was Joseph Monti—alive and well and exceedingly perky—climbing out of the passenger’s seat, then coming around to the driver’s seat, then bending down into the car to engage in a long, deep goodbye kiss with . . . Birdie, his wife. I guess it was quite a kiss because instead of saying goodbye, he tenderly loosened her seat belt, slid in beside her, and started in with the kissing all over again.
I looked up and down the street. If Joseph Monti was here and intact, could Billy and Elton Jr. be far behind? And if they weren’t around, which they clearly weren’t, then I needed to. move almost instantly into my fallback position.
I ducked behind a parked truck and reached into my tote bag (equipped, of course, for this contingency), withdrawing my violet contacts and my Elizabeth Fisher-Todd wig and installing them on the appropriate parts of my body. I just had time to scrawl on a beauty mark, unbutton four buttons on my Prudence Gump blouse, and emphatically shove my breasts upward in search of cleavage, when Joseph Monti offered his beaming Birdie a final embrace and entered the lobby. I was right behind him.
“Hah there,” I hummed ecstatically. “Lordy, lordy, I am so pleased to see you”.
Joseph Monti was flustered. “Why are you here?” he wanted to know. “Wasn’t the limo supposed to get and then you?” He scowled and fingered the sleeve of my suit. “And, excuse me for mentioning this, but how come you’re not more dolled up for this big-shot fancy pants Thanksgiving dinner that you’re taking me to?”
He was, of course, referring to my Prudence Gump ensemble, which even four unbuttoned buttons couldn’t de-frump.
I explained that I wasn’t dolled up because our dinner had unexpectedly been canceled. “I’ve been trying to call and tell you since eight A.M.”
Joseph Monti actually blushed. “Well, you see,” he said, “I didn’t sleep here last night. My wife and I got together for dinner, and one thing led to another, and we . . .
“That is so wonderful. That is so fabulous. I am so happy for you.” My relief was turning me into a babbling idiot. “So it’s all working out jes fahn, and you’ll be having Thanksgiving dinner with your family?”
Mr. Monti shook his head. Why was he telling me no? “Why are you telling me no?” I impatiently asked.
“She doesn’t want to spring it on the children all at once. She thinks they have to get used to the idea. So”—Mr. Monti clasped my hand—“since neither of us has a place to eat turkey today, you and I are going out to a restaurant.”
My mind went into overdrive. “No, wait, I can’t,” I replied. “I mean, like you said, I’m not dressed for the occasion.” But when Mr. Monti pressed (“What’s your problem? A nice respectable meal. No monkey business”) and refused to return my hand till I acquiesced, I made my escape by telling him that I’d go home and change my clothes (“I’ll get all dolled up”) while he called around and made us a reservation.
“Give me an hour,” I told him, as I pushed/escorted him to his elevator, ‘I’ll phone you when I’m ready to be picked up.”
Euphorically—I had saved the day!—I wafted through the front door of the Watergate building, and there at the curb, in the longest stretch limo I’d ever gazed upon, were a neatly liveried Billy and Elton Jr.
Luckily, I saw them before they saw me.
Darting behind the same truck behind which I had made the quick switch from Prudence to Elizabeth, I took out my contacts, rubbed off my beauty mark, buttoned my buttons, put on my limp brown wig, and re-emerged as Prudence once again. Leaping into the limo, I emitted a terse “Let’s roll,” and two seconds later Billy and Elton Jr. and I—Elizabeth, Prudence, Brenda—were cruising toward Virginia on Rock Creek Parkway.
I and the victim-to-be had worked out our differences, I notified my cohorts. Their services wouldn’t be needed after all. I suggested that in the future, if they were hired for a hit, they should show up on time, not half an hour late. I told them that they could keep the five thousand dollars I had paid them in advance, and asked them to please turn around now and drop me off.
“Not till you give us the other five grand,” said Billy.
“For what?” I protested. “You don’t have to kill the man.”
“And we won’t,” said Elton Jr. “We won’t kill him—but only if you pay us the other five grand.”
Having been made an offer I couldn’t refuse, I reached in my tote bag and paid them the rest of the money.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” said Elton Jr. when they stopped the car.
“Any time,” said Billy, coming around and gallantly opening the door.
I was starting to walk away when Billy said, “Hold up there a minute,” and scrutinized me meditatively. “I’m gonna give you a tip. You go out and get a hot red dress, you get some red shoes, you color up that hair, and you’re gonna look like—what’s that blondie’s name?” He pointed his finger at me and said, “Yeah, right You gonna look like Goldie Hawn’s first cousin.”
• • •
I was back at the house by two, prepared to lie about a flat tire, but no one seemed to notice how long I’d been gone. Everyone noticed, however, that I was totally manic with joy as I bopped around the kitchen stirring, sautéing, and singing, at the top of my lungs, a pull-out all-stops “I’m Sitting on Top of the World.”
The Thanksgiving dinner was beautiful.
Our dinner guests were beautiful.
The report on Dwayne—the hospital called to say he was doing very well—was beautiful.
I was sit-sit-sitting on top-top-top of the world.
• • •
On Friday Jo phoned Wally to say that her father had come to the house Thanksgiving evening and taken her mother off to a motel.
On Saturday Jo phoned Wally to say that she fully, without reservation, accepted the validity and the legitimacy of the lesbian lifestyle.
On Sunday Jo blazed up to our house on the back of a highly aggressive-looking motorcycle. Dressed in studded black leather, with an earring in her nostril, Jo wasn’t looking any too gentle herself. I hovered out of sight but not out of earshot, and heard Jo tell Wally, “You said you wanted to talk to me, so I’m here, but I don’t have much time. Benito is waiting.”
“Well, maybe that answers my question,” said Wally, his voice on the borderline between anguish and anger, ‘I’m trying not to crowd you, but I need to know about you and Vanessa Pincus.”
Josephine replied that although she fully, without reservation, accepted the validity and legitimacy of the lesbian lifestyle, she’d nonetheless concluded that she herself seemed to be of an alternative inclination.
“That’s real good news,” said Wally, “I’m glad—”
“And besides”—Jo hadn’t stopped talking yet—“a woman can be a fully feminine woman, and still be strong and brave and independent.”
“You’re right,” Wally said. “You’re right and—”
Jo still wasn’t finished. “But you will meet people who want to call these masculine characteristics. Which, as I certainly hope you agree, is sexual stereotyping of the worst kind.”
“I agree,” Wally said. “You’re completely correct, and I—”
Jo kept going. “And also,” she said, “a woman—it’s not just guys who feel this way—can crave excitement, can want to—uh—walk on the wild side.”
“Or”—Wally’s patience was fraying—“ride on the wild side. So maybe you’d like to explain about that hulk hunched over the Harley. And why you’re all done up like a Hell’s Angels groupie.”
“I’m not explaining anything,” Jo replied with withering dignity. I heard her heavy trots clonk down the hall. “But I think you ought to know that Benito says the Hell’s Angels have gotten a really bum rap.”
• • •
Later on Sunday Birdie phoned. She wanted us to come to her house that evening. “I’m sorry it’s such short notice»” she said, “but Tuesday’s December first, and I think we need to have a big discussion.”
“You mean, about Jeff and his contract with Monti Enterprises?
“I mean,” said Birdie mysteriously, “about everything. So maybe after dinner—let’s say eight-thirty—you and Jeff and Wally and Jake could join us.”
“Us?” I inquired.
“Us. Joseph and me.”
• • •
We joined them in the den because the Monti living room had been demolished. The furniture was gone. The drapes were gone, The beige-on-beige wool carpeting was gone. “I’ve sent out the couches and chairs to be recovered in golds and maroons,” Birdie softly explained to me while her husband and my three men exchanged tense pleasantries. “And I’m thinking of doing the drapes”—she pressed some boisterous swatches upon me—“in one of these prints.”
I nodded enthusiastically. “Very unstagnant,” I told her. Then giving Mr. Monti my hand and one of my lesser smiles, I dissemblingly said to him, “Long time no see.”
Joseph Monti didn’t reply. He stared at me, a quizzical look on his face. He glanced away. He removed and cleaned his glasses. He put them back on and stared at me again. His silence was verging on rude when, picking up on my phrase, he echoed, “Long time no see. Except—it’s funny—it just doesn’t seem that long.”
Birdie Monti—when had she started to look so much like Gina Lollobrigida?—got down to business as soon as we six were seated in the large and leathery den. “Just so you are aware,” she said, “when the lawyers checked, over the documents, it turned out to be that I am Monti Enterprises,” Four Kovners snapped to attention as she softly repeated the phrase, “Just so you’re aware.”
Then Birdie turned to her husband, “Joseph,” she said, “would like to apologize for all the troubles he’s brought upon your family. He knows that this is very important to me.”
Joseph Monti shrugged. “So I’m apologizing.”
“He also”—she turned to Wally—“wants to apologize for picking on you. He knows that this is very important to me.”
Joseph Monti shrugged. “So again I’m apologizing.”
“He also”—she turned to Jake—“wants to say that he’s getting those people who’re suing you to stop suing you. It’s going to cost some money but he knows that this is very important to me.”
Joseph Monti sighed. “It’s costing a fortune.”
Birdie turned to Jeff. “So Joseph shouldn’t be too upset, we’ll be taking your Rockville properties, and we’ll keep the money you’ve already paid on your debt. However,” and she smiled at him reassuringly, “on your car and your condominium, which Joseph won’t be needing anymore, we plan to make an equitable arrangement.”
Joseph Monti groaned. “Equitable? A giveaway!”
Birdie frowned at her husband. “Just remember that this is very important to me.”
Birdie turned in my direction and said, “There’s been some feeling—and I agree—that my husband didn’t do right by your son on those properties he’s stuck with in Anacostia.” She folded her arms across her ample bosom and declared, “We’re going to make this right. I don’t know how, but I promise we will. This is also”—she smiled at her husband—“very important to me.”
I almost squealed with excitement. “You’re saying you want to make it right with Jeff and those properties? You’re saying that this is very important to you?”
“It is,” Birdie Monti replied, raising an eyebrow. ‘Tell me, Brenda, do you have some ideas?”
Boyohboyohboy, did I have some ideas!
The subsequent discussion, which came to a satisfying conclusion some hours later, began with my suggesting mellifluously, “I’d like you to close your eyes and picture something: I’d like you to close your eyes and picture the Monti Homes for the Home less, in Anacostia.”
• • •
Before we left the Montis, Birdie Monti took Wally aside for a brief heart-to-heart. With a minor shift of position—so minor I honestly do not feel you could call it eavesdropping—I found myself able to hear every word they said.
“Jo isn’t here tonight because she’s out with—”
“I know,” Wally said. “A biker. Benito.”
“At least that girl she was dating—what was her name? Vanessa Pincus—was nice and clean-cut. But I’m asking you not to give up on Jo. She’s trying things out She needs to. And when she’s, through she’s going to see that you’re the one for her. Even my husband is finally beginning to see this.”
“And why is that?” Wally asked.
“It’s because”—Birdie ruffled his hair—“compared with Benito and Vanessa, you’re starting to look like John F. Kennedy, Jr.” She paused, “And also because it’s very important to me.”
• • •
Although it was pouring rain when we four Kovners drove home from McLean, I didn’t give Jake any navigational tips. Instead, I snuggled up close and said, as diffidently as I could, “I hope you didn’t mind my coming up with that Monti Homes for the Home less plan.”
“Not at all,” Jake answered. “You did great.”
The opinion was not unanimous. “I minded,” Jeff protested from the back seat. “I think you could have out a better deal. I know you saved my ass, but I can’t believe you’re making me be the resident manager.”
“Think of it,” I said, “as a kind of Clintonian national service.”
“Think of it,” my adorable husband added, “as learning how to be in control of your life.”
• • •
Later, as we stood side by side in the bathroom brushing our teeth, Jake—to my astonishment—whispered, “I love you.” Caught with a mouthful of water, I gargled and rinsed and then replied, “I love you back.” After which, I was moved to say—okay, I was being greedy—“So embroider a little. What do you love about me?”
“Jesus, Brenda,” said Jake, but not unkindly, “you know that’s not my kind of conversation.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then I’ll give you a couple of hints. ‘Yours is the breath that sets every new leaf aquiver. Yours is the grace that guides the rush of the river. Yours is the flush and the flame in the heart of the flower: Life’s meaning, its music, its pride, and its power.’ Doesn’t that kind of sum up your feelings for me?”
Jake gave me a sideways glance. “Well» no, it doesn’t. No, not exactly. I was thinking more along the lines of ‘You may have been a headache but you never were a bore.’ ”
“That’s what you call embroidering?” I gave him a jab with my elbow “That is it?”
“That’s it,” said Jake. “That’s a lot. We’ve got a lot.” He sighed, sighed deeply, and shook his head. “And Brenda, I’m so glad we didn’t blow it.”
“Me too,” I told him softly, so flooded with feeling I could barely speak the words. We smiled—almost bashful smiles—and hugged each other. And though I know very well that such things don’t happen, can’t possibly happen, except in the movies, our bathroom was filled with the sound of violins.
• • •
This morning Birdie Monti called to say that all bets might be off, that her husband had awakened in the middle of the night awash in anxiety. Yes, he’d replied to her questions, he most desperately wanted her back and would do whatever she said was very important to her. Which meant that he’d never ever be unfaithful again. Which meant that it was okay by him if she kept all the money and property in her name. And which also meant he was willing to make his peace—at the cost of a million plus—with the Kovners.
Except, Birdie Monti groaned, there was this obstacle.
“My husband says that he placed a curse upon the Kovner family, a serious curse, an irreversible curse. And he says that unless he fulfills it, terrible things he can’t even tell me about will happen to him.” She tsk-tsk-tsked. “I know there’s got to be a way around this, but, honestly, I can’t think what it is. And meanwhile, whenever I say to him, ‘Joseph, forget this curse,’ the color goes out of his face and he grabs his—um—privates.”
Oh, God, I thought. Joseph and his stupid superstitions. I sat there holding the telephone and mentally replayed Ms August curse:
“May I never see my wife or my children or grand children again, may I end my days in poverty, may my . . . thing . . . fall off, if I fail to exact full vengeance on your husband and your sons for what you have done to me.”
No wonder the poor fellow was so panicked.
“Brenda,” said Birdie Monti, who hadn’t heard my voice in a while, “are you still there?”
“I’m here,” I reassured her, “and I’m thinking. Believe me, I am thinking very hard.”
I thought for a few more minutes and then—I tell you, sometimes I astonish myself—I had it. I’d figured out how to stop this crazy curse from messing up a happy ending.
“Birdie,” I said, “tell your husband that I know a professional witch who’s able to reverse irreversible curses.”
Birdie laughed, “You’re joking with me, right?”
“Do you want to solve this problem,” I asked, “or do you really want me to answer that question?”
Birdie didn’t hesitate. “Have your witch get in touch with Joseph today.”
• • •
This afternoon I succeeded in removing the Monti curse, I did it on the phone. It was a triumph. For even though Joseph Monti had initially responded with great skepticism, he soon surrendered to my mystic charms.
“I hear your spirit’s turmoil,” I said, my tone kind of thin and quavery—think of the high lama in Lost Horizon. “I hear it, but I do not understand.”
“What don’t you understand?” grumped Mr. Monti.
“These words your spirit is whispering. Alien words like otrolig. And . . . spindelnät?”
“This is amazing!” Joseph Monti said.
“And now—ah, yes—it’s starting to change into something I comprehend. Fish. I hear fish . . . fishing . . . fisherman . . . Fisher-Todd.”
“This is amazing!” Joseph Monti said.
“And, hark”—do witches say “hark”? oh, well—“I hear yet another whisper from your spirit. Org . . . orgast . . . some words that begin with ‘Or.’ ”
“Okay. All right. That’s enough,” Joseph Monti said. “Let’s just work on getting this curse reversed.”
Getting rid of the curse was a cinch once I’d established my supernatural bona fides. The nice thing about a curse is that it is gone as soon as the curser believes it to be. And indeed Joseph Monti believed it gone when I mumbled some arcane phrases which I characterized as a curse-reversing spell. (You’ll find the full text of the spell in Brenda’s Best.) But though he seemed convinced of my witchy powers, he expressed a few residual anxieties.
“You’re sure it’s all okay now?” he asked.
“I’m sure,” I replied, “The curse is reversed and you have made peace with your enemy.”
“And nothing bad will happen to me?”
“Nothing bad,” I replied. “Indeed, your spirit will soon be free of turmoil.”
“That’s nice about my spirit. Very nice,” Mr. Monti persisted. “But what about the rest of me? Like . . . my body?”
“The curse is reversed,” I witchily assured him once again. “And your body, I can promise, is safe—unless . . .”
“Unless?”
“Unless you should harm the Kovners or”—I figured I owed one to Birdie—“cheat on your wife. In which case, I can promise, your thing will fall off.”
• • •
After talking with Joseph Monti, I found myself having further thoughts on the subject of cheating. Indeed, I found myself faced once again with the question I’d raised at my birthday party last April, the trouble some question that came to mind as I contemplated my husband and my three lovers. Was I, I had asked that night, a star on a Donahue show called “My Mom Is a Slut”? Or was I Lady Brett in The Sun Also Rises?
Here, after all these months, is my final answer:
First of all, I’ve decided that this is not the right question to ask, that the only right question is, “Are you sorry you did it?”
To which I’ve decided, second of all, that the only right answer for me is “no” and “yes.”
No, because I have learned what it is like with other men. I have learned what I am like with other men. I have learned about the G-spot and the Jumping White Tiger position—though I never did learn what happened to Paulie and Joan. I’ve acquired carnal knowledge of a younger man, a married man, a genius. Of a man who belongs to a different religious persuasion. Of a black man, a celebrity, a committed political activist—and a twin. No longer can I complain, as I look back on my forty-six years, that I’ve been deprived, of sexual variety. In one fell adulterous swoop, I have acquired enough variety to last for the final twenty-three years of my fife.
So no, I can’t say that I’m sorry, because I wanted to possess this carnal knowledge.
Except yes, I am sorry. Deeply deeply sorry.
I’m sorry because I hate the fact that I’ve slept with another wife’s husband. I’m sorry because I still hold fidelity high. I’m sorry because I long to be—in addition to carnally knowledgeable—guiltless, blameless, virtuous . . . unadulterated.
Fortunately! am able to live with ambivalence.
• • •
It’s 7 P.M. and I’ve lighted a fire in our living-room fire place and the Chardonnay is chilling and I’m heating up a curried-crab hors d’oeuvre. Both Jeff and Wally are out and I await the arrival of Jake, with whom I am planning to spend a cozy evening.
Sinatra is bittersweetly singing “It Was a Very Good Year.” I am feeling grateful.
I’m grateful there’s no more curse on the Kovner family.
I’m grateful that Jake is back in love with me.
I’m grateful that I am still (despite many setbacks) a can-do woman (though far, far humbler than I used to be).
I’m grateful for my children, my friends (among whom I count Birdie Monti), and even for my sister Rosalie.
And I’m grateful—profoundly grateful—to my unconscious, dumb luck, and To Whom It May Concern that I didn’t manage to murder Mr. Monti.