It might have been a more thoughtful notification if Geneva’s update (“Oh, Daphne—hi; I have something to run by you.”) hadn’t been delivered nonchalantly when we crossed paths in the trash room.
“About . . . ?”
“The documentary. Yours and mine. It’s not going to happen.”
Just like that, unexpected and hugely welcome news delivered as if I had only a glancing interest in whether it was dead or alive. Trying to match her bloodless delivery, I said, “What a pity. Can I have the yearbook back now?”
“No! I need it more than ever.”
“For what?”
“Phase two.”
I waited. She busied herself rifling through several issues of someone’s discarded New Yorkers. “A whole new project?” I prompted.
“A whole new medium. Do you know what a podcast is?”
“Of course, but—”
“Maybe eight episodes. Maybe six.”
“About the yearbook, still? And my mother?”
“Most definitely. From all angles. Do you subscribe to any?”
“I do—”
“Everyone does! They’re hot. I’ll need a sponsor or two, but I have some leads. Would you be willing to be interviewed for the first episode where we talk about how I came into possession of the yearbook?”
“No.”
“Just a few minutes: You’ll say, ‘My mother left it to me. Even though I threw it away, I wanted it back. I fought it. Intellectual property blah blah blah’ so the listener immediately gets what I was up against.”
“You were up against my wanting what was rightfully mine.”
“So you say. I want the push-pull that you brought to the project. Every story needs tension.”
“Did you get questionnaires back from any of my mother’s students?”
“A few.”
“And?”
“Off-the-record, as you would say.”
“‘Off-the-record’ is then followed by the goods, which is whatever you don’t want to be made public.”
She smiled in a way I didn’t like. “Stay tuned. I hope to have the first episode up and running by March first.”
“Episode one being me saying, ‘I wanted it back. I still do. You stole it.”
“Along those lines, for sure. It’s not only backstory but the why of the whole thing. Why it meant so much to her that she left it to a daughter in her will.” Hugging the preowned New Yorkers, she smiled proudly. “I already have a name for the podcast, and I think it will grab everyone who ever graduated from high school and had one signed.”
“Let me guess: The Yearbook?”
“Wow,” she said. “Exactly.”
A Google alert I’d set up to monitor the fortunes and possible wedding vows of my ex-husband led me to a fine-print paid obit in the New York Times. His mother, the disagreeable Bibi, had died suddenly, no cause stated. The funeral was in two days at the Episcopal church where her husband’s affairs had taken root. Only a masochist would attend, I told myself. But wouldn’t an appearance attest to the evolution of my self-esteem?
I texted my dad. “Don’t suppose you want to go to my ex-mother-in-law’s funeral. It’s Tuesday, 11 a.m.”
He phoned, out of breath, which was how he sounded when managing multiple leashes. “Hell, no,” he said. “As if she’d ever come to mine. And why are you going?”
“Because you raised me right.”
“Still—above and beyond. You’re up to seeing your ex-husband?”
“From afar, sure.”
Throughout our short conversation, he was exhorting the dogs to keep up, or stay, or stop doing whatever they weren’t supposed to be doing. I asked if Sammi was among today’s clients.
“Sammi I do alone.”
“Do you charge extra for private walks?”
“No. New Leash is good that way. If you tell them she has issues with other dogs, then a solo walk is fine.”
“Does she have issues?”
“You met her! None. It’s my personal preference.”
“She’s very nice.”
“She’s nine years old, but she has the enthusiasm of a puppy, don’t you think?”
“I meant Kathi.”
“Oh. Of course. She is, indeed, very nice. Sometimes I can’t believe what this job has led to.”
I told him I was happy for him.
“Good to know,” he answered, but I could hear in his tone a reprimand; I’d missed some boat in reporting my favorable impressions.
“You could tell I really liked her, right?”
“She liked you, too.”
“If I had a real table, I’d reciprocate.”
“You can’t afford a real table?”
Now I could. I had a few thousand unexpected dollars in my checking account, and the next installment from Sponsor Armstrong due in March. I said, “I just might do that.”
Between my hat, bought just that morning, an unseasonable black organza with a floppy Kentucky Derby brim, and the oversize tortoiseshell sunglasses, I hoped to achieve a look between incognito and conspicuous-attractive.
I took a seat midchurch on the aisle to facilitate a fast escape. I could see Holden in the front row along with, presumably, relatives. Bibi’s gleaming coffin was decorated with nonfloral cascading greenery that someone whispered was copied from Jackie Onassis’s casket embellishments.
A female priest read from the Book of Common Prayer and gave the eulogy. Bibi, she told us, was philanthropic. She loved her dogs, who were her second children. She had a way with orchids and African violets, and was famous for her porcelain vegetable forms—that eighteenth-century cauliflower! The nineteenth-century asparagus server! I looked around to see if this was registering with any other visitors as oddly impersonal. I saw nods: Ah, yes. The cabbage tureen! Those wily salt and pepper shakers shaped like artichokes!
Holden spoke next. “My mother was, as most of you know, smart, stylish, even—some might say—charming. She was politically astute and generous when it came to a few pet charities, emphasis quite literally on ‘pet.’ She was passionate about this city, about her home and its furnishings and, yes”—he looked toward the priest—“its knickknacks. She liked to travel. She could take a cruise that lasted six months, or so it seemed to me as a child. And what made that all right? Modeling Princess Elizabeth, who left her children behind when visiting her subjects all over the globe. I think you know where I’m going with this: Bibi wasn’t the most maternal woman in the world. She had me at forty in the last gasp of a marriage and, as she liked to say, with her last egg.” He surveyed the room, eyebrows arched. “Dad? You here? Apparently not,” which got a nervous chuckle in the room.
He continued, “If you’re doubting Bibi’s capacity for great love, just ask any one of the champion French bulldogs who worshipped the ground she walked on. By the way—anyone need a dog?” More nervous chuckles.
I was half-appalled, half-thrilled, wondering if Holden was drunk. The priest seemed frozen. A white-haired man in the front row stood, walked up the altar stairs, met Holden at the rostrum, and said, “If I may.”
“Be my guest,” said Holden. He flipped through the notes he hadn’t yet consulted. “Oh, right. I forgot to say that she graduated from Vassar and was proud of that, though Smith was her first choice.” He shrugged. “In her own way, she loved me.” He nodded. “Yes, I think that’s an accurate statement.”
The man now had his arm around Holden’s shoulders. He identified himself as the husband of Bibi’s younger sister, Mary Jane. “I think our nephew suffered a shock—we all did. Bibi was fine one day. And then the call came from the hospital.” He tilted his head toward Holden, a silent acknowledgement of It’s the shock talking.
Holden softened his unwanted-son expression long enough to say, “Thank you. I’m good now.” Meaning: Go back and sit down.
He closed with “I hope I didn’t make a fool of myself up here.” He started his descent, then darted back to say, “Thanks for coming.”
Was that it for Bibi’s good-bye, two lame eulogies? The mourners were stirring, whispering. The priest read the Twenty-third Psalm and said that the family would form a receiving line in the vestibule. And please don’t forget to sign the guest book.
How to escape? Only one of the aisles led to the receiving line. I excused myself across a row, and headed for the front door that was farthest from Holden. I ignored the guest book, but once past it, I stopped, backtracked. I’d come, hadn’t I? Politicians attended the funerals of their mortal enemies. Estranged children and long-lost friends turned up after decades of not speaking. I might as well go on record.
I was the first to sign. As I pondered whether I should set an example and write a word or two of condolence, I heard a male voice calling my name.
Holden’s. He was gesturing toward the meager line of mourners. “You should be here, too,” he shouted.
I pointed to my own breastbone. Me?
More motioning. Here. Come here.
Does one argue with a man in shock, who pays you alimony, who is alone in a receiving line except for Aunt Mary Jane and Uncle Reg?
I did look the part this day, slightly mournful and dignified in my big black hat and dark glasses. My coat—also black, part cashmere, with mother-of-pearl buttons as big as Ritz crackers—had been purchased by its first owner at Bonwit Teller. As soon as I stood next to Holden, my inner actress came to the fore. “Thank you so much for coming,” I said to the mourners. Or “ I’m Daphne” with no further designation.
When the last mourner had either embraced me or shaken my hand, and his baffled aunt and uncle had departed, I said to Holden, “Didn’t see that coming.”
“Cardiac arrest. No history of heart trouble.”
“I didn’t mean your mother. I meant your pulling me into the receiving line. Why confuse people? They might think we’re back together.”
“So? I never see them.”
“But—”
“Hardly anyone knows we got divorced.”
“Well, this could’ve been a good time to catch them up, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t. I was married and divorced in the space of—what was it—nine, ten months? My mother didn’t advertise that, and I don’t think she ever forgave either of us.”
Instead of pointing out that I was innocent of any wrongdoing except stupidity, I said, “That was some eulogy you delivered. I could’ve done better and I didn’t even like her.”
“That’s cruel. People know me. And it did get a few laughs, didn’t it?”
I said something quasi-kind along the lines of “I’m sure many found your honesty . . . refreshing.”
“Maybe I should’ve talked about the good times. Like a birthday party instead of her abandoning me for six months. Well, not abandoning. I had a nanny. I was no worse for the wear. I probably didn’t even notice she was gone.”
“It’s never easy, even when they’re not candidates for mothers of the year.”
He must have thought we had entered a confidence-sharing zone because he volunteered, “I’m seeing someone.”
“Lucky her.”
“She knows what happened between us—you and me. After I told her, she refused a second date, and a third, because of what it said about me. She thinks I used you.”
“I’d like to have been a fly on the wall when you made that confession. Why would you even do that on a first date? Oh, I know—twelve steps? Rehab inspired you.”
“Except I never made it to rehab.”
The funeral director had entered the vestibule, had collected the guest book, and was standing by in obsequious fashion. “Sir? Are you coming?” he finally asked.
“Do I have to?”
“Have to what?” I asked. “Because I hope it’s not the cemetery you’re skipping.”
“No, the crematorium.”
The funeral director said, “Not at all. Most don’t.”
Holden said, “Okay, thanks. You’ll drop off the ashes?”
“Of course.”
When the funeral director had bowed his way out of the church, I said, “You forgot to tell him not to bother you; just leave the ashes with your doorman.”
“Don’t be mean, Daff.”
I had been mean. I touched his forearm. “Okay. Finish what you were saying about the girlfriend. Obviously she agreed to give you another chance.”
“I’m seeing a shrink. That was one of the conditions to reestablish trust with Julie.”
I was tempted to mimic his “reestablish trust” as both psychobabble and a fib, but all I asked was “If everything is so fine with Julie, why wasn’t she here today?”
“I told you. I couldn’t show up with a new woman by my side when hardly anyone knew about our divorce.”
“So they’d find out right here in the receiving line. ‘Yup. Single again. Didn’t my mother tell you? No, don’t feel bad. It was never meant to be. Say hello to Julie.’”
“You know why Mother kept it under wraps? She thought people would talk, might say, ‘Like mother, like son.’”
I had to ask, didn’t I, before parting; before never crossing paths with him again, “Is everything going to you?”
He looked up from whatever text he was writing. “Are you asking about my mother’s will?”
“I am.”
“I have no idea. Nor would it be any of your business.”
“It’s kind of my business, because I didn’t know when I signed the scroungy prenup that I’d be out on my ass and living on paltry alimony payments. You do realize that I’m struggling?”
“Like you were when I met you. And that was struggling without an alimony check every month.”
“I think a raise is fair, considering your new circumstances. And as Julie pointed out, you used me.”
“You really think this is the time and place?”
I looked around with some stagy gaping. “What place? An empty church right after I did you the giant favor of standing next to you and accepting condolences for your mother? I was duped into marriage. And when a woman signs a prenup, she doesn’t think, This is what I’ll be living on.”
“Because you thought this—us—was forever?”
“I certainly didn’t expect I’d be out on my ass in a year.”
“Correction: You threw me out.”
Technically, he was right, but why litigate that now? “I’m assuming you’re getting everything—the apartment, the money, the furnishings, the artwork, the ceramics. You need to do some deacquisitioning. I can help, in a way.”
“What way?”
“After you liquidate all that, you can give some to me.”
He expelled a Ha that was pure scorn. “As compensation for coming today?”
“No. Out of fairness and to help clear your conscience. You knew from the get-go that the prenup would be my living wage until I got back on my feet. I sure as hell didn’t. I signed it under false pretenses.” I added, for good measure, “A jury would award me damages for pain and suffering. You’re going to be richer than ever while your only ex-wife is living in squalor. We could be the plot of a tragic opera.”
“You stand by that—pain and suffering and squalor?”
“I live in an apartment that could fit into”—I gestured around us—“this vestibule, no, two-thirds of it.”
“Didn’t I buy you that apartment?”
“See? You have no idea what my situation is. No, you did not buy me the apartment. I rent.”
“I have to talk to my lawyer and the trust attorney—”
“Those tightwads? They’ll both say no. And let me say on Julie’s behalf—hire someone with a heart to draw up your next prenup.”
“That’s a leap. I’ve only known her for a few months. And I’d prefer to leave Julie out of this—”
“Fine. Do you have a check with you?”
“Who would hit up a man at his mother’s funeral?”
“Don’t change the subject. I didn’t know this would come up today. But carpe diem.”
That was true. My demand wasn’t premeditated. I’d planned nothing more than slipping into a pew and leaving before any condolences needed to be expressed. I seemed to be making progress, though. “I don’t see any reason to wait until your mother’s assets are distributed. We can end this conversation right now if you promise to put a check in the mail—”
“Jesus! I’m not writing you a check.”
I took off my sunglasses to achieve more penetrating eye contact. “Did you want to follow that with a ‘but’?”
“But . . . I’ll consider a cost-of-living raise.”
“I’ll need it in writing,” I said, pointing to his phone. “Send me an email. Twenty percent raise okay?”
“Don’t be absurd. Five percent.”
“Don’t you be absurd.”
“Seven and a half percent.”
“Ten percent.” I dared him to guess what his Scrooge accountant was direct-depositing into my checking account every month, usually late. He didn’t know and, to his credit, looked surprised to hear what he was underpaying me. “Eight and a half percent, take it or leave it,” he said.
“That is bullshit. I could go public, you living in splendor, me in a garret. I’m going to be telling my story in a podcast soon. Make it ten and you won’t have to worry.”
“This is blackmail. In church, no less.”
“Not that again. How about ten percent till I get a full-time job? That way I get a cushion and you get to tell Julie you’re a new man, making amends. Win-win.”
“Don’t think you’re coming back next year asking for another raise. This is a one-off.”
“Ten percent?”
“Until a job comes through.”
What a good and distant deadline that was going to provide. “Deal,” I said.