NINETEEN

 

Mom stared at Dad.

Dad stared at Mom.

“Uh-oh,” said Gertie, always the master of the understatement.

A tension-filled silence blanketed the room.

Mom recovered first, her words sputtering, her face guilt-ridden. “Earnest! We...uhm, I mean...uh, I didn’t expect you until later.”

“Obviously.” Dad’s lips pressed into a tight line.

When Mom reached out to touch his arm, he flinched as though she had zapped him with a stun gun. He stepped aside and glared at Hy, quickly scanning the ultra-sexy, Clint Eastwood look-alike from his shimmering head of thick platinum hair down to his custom-made Italian boots.

Although nowhere near the GQ cover model that Hy was, Dad generally held his own in the looks department, as long as you ignored the excess pounds and the receding hairline. But even back when he was trimmer and not yet follicly challenged, Dad was no Clint clone. His frown told me he was well aware that he came up short in comparison.

Dad turned his attention back to Mom. She wore the Donna Karan black silk pantsuit. Her crimson pedicured toes peeked out from the strappy silver Manolo Blahnik sandals. Her newly colored and styled hair framed her Georgette Klinger made-up face.

“He’s got to admit she looks ab-fab,” said Gertie. “Very elegant and very New York.”

All compliments of Loretta-the-Personal-Shopper and my AmEx card, I reminded her. And definitely not looking anything like Earnest Stedworth’s wife Connie. At least not the wife he last saw in Ten Commandments, Iowa.

Dad’s frown deepened. His eyes filled with a hurt I never expected to see in my always-in-control father. The world as he knew it and expected it to be had spun out of control and crashed at his feet. First at home with his run-amok relatives. Now here in New York.

I wish I had had a chance to prepare him for Mom’s transformation from denim-clad Iowa nobody to designer-draped Manhattan somebody. He was aware of neither Hy nor her budding career as America’s newest crafts doyenne, let alone her ascension to the ranks of Belly Button Artist to the Stars. He had missed her television debut last night and apparently hadn’t spoken with anyone in Ten Commandments who might have caught it. Which in itself was odd. I would have thought the tongue-wagging citizens of Ten Commandments would be speaking of little else after last night.

Unfortunately, Dad had arrived only minutes before Mom and Hy returned. I had no time to catch him up on current events. Besides, I was still recovering from the sight of his traveling companion. Last night, when Dad said, we’ll be there late tomorrow, I mistakenly assumed we referred to him and Marjorie. Not Eugene.

With the appearance of my parents’ handpicked future son-on-law, I began to suspect a conspiracy, possibly one involving Mom, Dad, and Marjorie. Too much of what had transpired since Mom’s arrival continued to make little sense to me. I scrambled to fit the various puzzle pieces together, searching for clues in comments she had made over the past few weeks. However, when she walked in moments later with Hy, and I saw Dad’s wounded expression, I dismissed the theory.

Eugene, it turned out, was in New York for a morticians’ symposium. He had booked his flight weeks earlier. The timing was purely coincidental.

No one else in the room seemed capable of much besides glares and sulks and averted glances, except Eugene. He sat in the corner of the room, in my well-worn, circa-nineteen sixties avocado green armchair, intently observing the circus playing out before him as if he were catching a rerun of Six Feet Under. For the sake of my parents and their marriage, I decided it was up to me to take charge of the tension-filled fiasco unfolding in my living room.

I began with a simple introduction. “Dad, this is my upstairs neighbor, Hyman Perth.” I waved my hand in Hy’s direction, then back toward my father. “Mr. Perth, my father, Earnest Stedworth.”

Hy offered his hand. “Mr. Stedworth. A pleasure to meet you finally.”

Dad eyed him suspiciously, offering a begrudging grunt in place of a handshake.

“That went well,” said Gertie.

I frowned at my father before nodding in Eugene’s direction. “And this is Eugene Draymore, a neighbor from back in Ten Commandments.”

“Neighbor?” Mom raised an eyebrow. “He’s a good deal more than just a neighbor.”

“Family friend,” I amended, scowling at her.

She raised her other eyebrow.

I ignored her. With all the shit that had hit the fan, leave it to my mother to focus on something so totally unimportant. I opened my mouth to tell her so.

“I wouldn’t,” warned Gertie.

My mouth snapped shut, bowing to Gertie’s superior insight. No point adding a bale of dry hay to the already incendiary situation.

I was at a total loss as to how to proceed. My introductions had done nothing to ease the tension.

“Your mother needs to have a heart-to-heart with your father,” said Gertie.

And Dad needs to listen with an open mind. That much I already figured out for myself. Dad, however, had never been much of a listener, open-minded or otherwise, when it came to his own kin. He was too entrenched in his Nick-at-Night concept of the ideal family. Until now.

“Someone switched the channel on him.”

“I’ll say.” The Osbournes and the Bundys had replaced the Nelsons and the Cleavers, and my poor father was at a loss to cope with the seismic shift in his universe.

The ringing of the doorbell broke the percolating tension that engulfed my crowded apartment. In my rush across the living room, I nearly tripped over my own feet. I didn’t care who was at the door. At this point I’d welcome the diversion of an Avon lady or a politician.

Instead, I got Reese and Gabe, and since my basement apartment opens directly onto a small exterior landing, I couldn’t get rid of them before they muscled their way inside. Under the circumstances, I would have preferred half a dozen proselytizing Jehovah’s Witnesses. At least the Jehovah’s Witnesses would have been clueless to Connie Stedworth and her burgeoning belly button empire.

“Hey! We’ve been thinking about it,” said Gabe, “and we decided we need our belly buttons cast.” He wrapped a damp leather arm around my shoulders and planted a wet smacker on my cheek.

“Right,” said Reese. She shook the rain from her multi-colored dreadlocks and added a peck to my other cheek. “And since we have an ‘in’ with the Belly Button Queen’s daughter —” She stopped short when I closed the door, and she spied the roomful of people. I watched as her glance skipped from one person to the next and she drew the obvious conclusion. “Your father’s here already?”

I nodded.

“Oops.”

Gabe offered up a sheepish grin. “Guess this isn’t a good time, is it?”

I shrugged. “Guess not.”

But it was too late. My father had heard every word. His eyes bugged out; his jaw dropped as his attention shifted from Gabe to my mother. “Belly Button Queen?” I could tell the exact moment he made the connection to that afternoon so many years ago when my mother had lost her patience and slapped a glob of plaster onto my stomach. My father, the man who never raises his voice and has never to my knowledge taken the name of the Lord in vain, bellowed, “Jesus Christ, Connie! Have you lost your mind?”

My mother wobbled on her Manolos and turned white under her Georgette Klinger. “Earnest, I can explain.” But she didn’t. Her head snapped from Hy to me and back to Hy, her expression begging one of us to jump in and take command of the out-of-control situation.

Hy quickly put two and two together and arrived at the only possible conclusion. He turned to my mother. “You haven’t told him about us?”

Not the best choice of words under the circumstances. Dad’s jaw dropped even further, his voice boomed even louder. “Us! What exactly does he mean by us? What the hell’s going on here?”

Mom stared at Dad for a split second, her face registering the shock of hearing profanity erupting from her normally soft-spoken and decidedly reverent husband, before she threw her hands up in the air and screamed at him. “Not what you’re thinking!” She turned her attention back to Hy. “No, I haven’t told him about us. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him about anything. He rarely answers the phone, and when he does, he’s always too busy with his precious town business to listen to me.”

Then she pierced Dad with a stony glare, stomped her foot, and stormed out of the room. A moment later, the slam of the bedroom door reverberated throughout the apartment.

Dad stared after her, his face as red as a jar of Mom’s picked beets. His fists clenched into tight balls, he turned on Hy. “What have you done to my wife?”

Before Hy could answer, I stepped between them. “Dad, you need to calm down before you have a coronary.”

“What I need is answers. From him.” He jerked his chin toward Hy. “You stay out of this, Nori.”

My father is not a violent man. Even with all his conservative views, he never subscribed to the spare-the-rod/spoil-the-child theory of childrearing. When I was growing up, punishments fit the crime, but they never included spankings. My father didn’t believe in corporal punishment or solving disputes with physical force.

To my knowledge, I was the only kid in Ten Commandments who never got walloped on the rear at some point during my childhood. As a teen, I once asked Mom about that. She said it had something to do with his time in Vietnam but refused to elaborate.

Even though, in my opinion, Dad’s style leaned more toward benevolent dictator than Gandhi-like statesman, his pacifist nature had always dictated his actions. Until now. Before his fists made contact with Hy’s face, I grabbed my neighbor and urged him toward the door. “I think you’d better let me handle this,” I told him.

Hy dug his heels in. “No, I owe your father an explanation. He seems to be under the mistaken impression that your mother and I—”

“That you what?” yelled Dad, reaching over me to grab for Hy’s arm. I blocked him with my body, sandwiching myself between the two men.

“This is no time for chivalrous platitudes,” I told Hy, jerking open the door with one hand and shoving him outside with the other. “Let me do the explaining. You go upstairs before he makes mince meat out of your face.”

He eyed Dad once more and nodded. “Maybe that’s a good idea.”

“You bet your sweet Armani it is.” I closed the door in his face and spun around to confront my father. “What has gotten into you?”

He sputtered for a moment, his face growing from pickled beet red to near purple, before he could force out any words. When he finally gained enough control of his emotions, instead of answering, he bombarded me with questions of his own. “With me! What’s gotten into your mother? Who is that man? What is she doing with him?”

I slumped against the door and heaved a sigh. My mother should be the one offering explanations of her seemingly bizarre behavior, not me. I walked to the bedroom and knocked. “Mom, please come out and talk with Dad.”

Silence. I opened the door and found Mom staring out the window. Tear tracks streaked her cheeks. As soon as she heard me enter, she swiped at her face in a vain attempt to hide the evidence, but her efforts only further striated her expensive makeup.

“Mom?” I crossed the room and placed my hand on her shoulder. “You have to talk to him. He’ll understand.”

She inhaled a shuddering sniffle. “Will he? You saw how he reacted. I’ve never seen him like that.”

“He’s scared. He thinks he’s losing you. Go straighten things out.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. He’s too close-minded. That’s why you left. I realize that now.”

“I left because I wanted to lead my own life, not live a life planned for me by someone else, no matter how well-meaning his intentions.” I paused, trapping her gaze with mine. “Or yours.”

She turned to face me. A fresh stream of tears trickled from her eyes. “So do I, Nori. I’ve been living a dictated life for too long. I didn’t realize how long until I came to New York.” She inhaled another sniffle, and a sob caught in her throat. “Until I met Hy.”

A shiver skittered up my spine. “Mom, you’re not falling for Hy, are you?”

Her eyes widened. “Of course not! How could you even think such a thing?”

“And you still love Dad?”

She stabbed her French-manicured finger in the direction of the living room. “That man out there is not your father. Or my husband. I don’t know who he is, but he’s not the man I married.”

I couldn’t disagree with her. Dad certainly wasn’t acting like Dad had ever acted. “You didn’t answer my question.”

She collapsed onto the bed with a sigh. “Yes, I still love him.”

“And he loves you.”

She answered me with a raised eyebrow and an acerbic snicker. The first snicker I had ever heard from my mother. But then again, it was an afternoon of firsts. After all, I had never before heard my father curse, either.

I countered the snicker with a bit of rationality. “If he didn’t love you, would he have bothered to go ballistic out there?”

She turned away from me and shrugged. “Who’s to say why men act the way they do?”

I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. Instead, I tamped down my own violent urges and tried for some diplomacy. “I’m going to take Eugene, Reese, and Gabe out so you and Dad can have some time together to straighten everything out.”

“I doubt that’s possible.”

“You won’t know unless you give it a try.”

I left the bedroom and headed back to the living room, feeling as though the mother-daughter dynamic had flip-flopped onto its head. She’s acting like a recalcitrant child, I told Gertie.

“And he’s acting like a bully.”

 Right. So now it was up to me to bully some sense into the bully. I had only stood up to my father once before.

“Oh?” 

All right. I didn’t stand up to him. I ran away.

“That’s more like the truth.”

And he’s still holding a grudge over that one act of defiance.

“He’ll get over it. Eventually.”

Sure, when I give in and see things his way.

I stopped at the entrance to the living room. Reese and Gabe stood in the middle of the room trying to avoid eye contact with my father who kept glaring at them. I imagine he must have been badgering them for information on their belly button comments. Eugene hadn’t moved from his observation chair in the corner of the room. “You, you, and you,” I said pointing my finger at each of them in turn. “Get your coats on, and come with me.”

“Where to?” asked Reese.

“Bean. And you,” I said, walking up to my father and staring him down, “go listen to your wife.”

I had never spoken so forcefully or bluntly to my father, much less ordered him around. He stared at me, speechless, as if he didn’t recognize me. I hardly recognized myself. After all, Earnest Stedworth’s daughter would never speak to her father in such a disrespectful manner.

“No, she tucks tail and runs off to New York instead of standing up for herself.”

So I’m a coward when it comes to my own life, I told Gertie, but now I’m fighting for my parents’ marriage. The stakes are much higher.

“Or maybe you’re finally developing a backbone.”

Maybe. Possibly. I did feel more in control on my own turf. Back in Ten Commandments, I often felt as though it were me against the entire town. Everyone seemed to know what was best for me. And no one hesitated to tell me. Or cared what I wanted. It had never occurred to me that others might feel the same way. Like Mom.

Without waiting for Dad to recover from his shock and reply, I grabbed my coat and purse, yanked open the front door, and stepped onto the landing where I waited for Reese, Gabe, and Eugene to join me.

“Wow! What a tyrant,” said Gabe, over his shoulder as he walked beside Reese and ahead of me and Eugene. “No wonder you left home.”

“He’s usually not like that,” said Eugene. “I’ve never seen him lose his temper or raise his voice.” He turned to me. “Have you?”

I shook my head. “Never.”

Gabe stopped short and spun around to face Eugene. “Who are you, by the way?”

I realized I had neglected to introduce everyone, a lack of social graces I rushed to correct as we hurried along through scurrying evening commuters and a light mist of rain. “Reese Blackwell. Gabe Hoffman. Eugene Draymore.”

Gabe stared, eyes wide with surprise, his mouth hanging open. “You’re Eugene?”

Reese landed a light jab to Gabe’s upper arm. “Who else would he be, Bozo?”

Gabe shrugged. Then he extended Eugene both his hand and a huge grin. “Welcome to New York.”