Authors: Judith Arnold
“Dachshunds?” Julia guessed.
“Yes, that’s it. This woman had four of them, and she was like a spiderweb with all those leashes. So I just came up without being announced. You gave me the apartment number. Very smart of you.” She kissed Julia’s cheek, and Julia made a mental note to find a mirror and check for a lipstick smear. “You’re a very smart girl, Julia. I’m glad my boy is marrying a smart girl.”
Gazing past Julia, she fell silent. Julia spun around in time to see her ragamuffin brother entering the hallway, chomping on a cracker topped with pâté. “Hey,” he said cheerfully, padding down the marble floor in his bare feet. “You must be Joffe’s mom.”
“And you must be…I’ m afraid to ask,” she returned, inching behind Julia as if seeking protection.
“That’s my brother, Adam,” Julia said, aiming a fierce frown at Adam. “You have things to do, don’t you?”
“Actually, I don’t,” he said, his smile gently mocking. Wonderful. Just what she needed: Adam teasing her. “This is great chopped liver,” he added, lifting the uneaten half cracker toward Julia in a toast before he popped it into his mouth. “Nice finish of garlic.”
“Go away,” Julia said, figuring tact would be pointless. She turned to Esther and forced another smile. “Please come into the living room. I’ll get you a drink.”
“Is Ronny here?”
“Not yet.”
“He’s always late,” Esther complained, following Julia into her mother’s living room, a chilly expanse of leather, chrome and glass, the decor chosen because her parents had always believed that furniture with clean, simple lines required less dusting. “You’d think a get-together like this, he’d consider it important enough to arrive on time. Evidently, no.”
“Actually, you’re a little early,” Julia said, more to defend Ron’s honor than because it was true. “And he can’t help being late sometimes. He gets held up at work.”
“I work and I didn’t get held up,” Esther pointed out. “You work, too.”
“I work downstairs in this building. It’s easy for me to get here.” Julia didn’t add that she’d left her office an hour early so she could come upstairs and fret. But as Bloom’s boss, she could leave her office whenever she wanted. Ron didn’t have that freedom. He was a magazine journalist, which meant he had to deal with a demanding editor, elusive data and writer’s block. Such obstacles didn’t automatically disappear at 5:00 p.m. “Now, what can I get you to drink?”
“You got sherry? A little sherry,” Esther answered. “Not too much, just a little. Say, an inch.” She held her fingers up in illustration; they were easily more than two inches apart.
Julia’s forced smile caused an ache in her cheeks. “I’ll get you some,” she said, turning to find her mother sweeping into the room. The top she’d changed into was a simple knit shell in an aqua shade, which she accessorized with a silk scarf in a floral pattern, tied like a Boy Scout neckerchief. The outfit looked no
better than what she’d had on earlier, but it looked no worse, either.
If she’d been wearing striped pajamas Julia still would have considered her a welcome sight. She didn’t want to deal with Esther alone. “Mom! I’d like you to meet Ron’s mother, Esther Joffe. Esther, this is my mother, Sondra Bloom.”
Sondra crossed the room to the couch where Esther sat. Her smile appeared much more natural than Julia’s felt. She clasped Esther’s hands, then plopped onto the sofa next to her. “What a pleasure! Isn’t it wonderful, our two children getting married? I never thought I’d have such
nachus
.”
“Why didn’t you think you’d have such
nachus?
” Esther asked. “You thought your daughter wouldn’t get married? You thought she wouldn’t find a suitable husband?”
Sondra handled Esther’s negativity more deftly than Julia could have. “I always knew she was worthy of a fine man, but your Ronny is obviously the créme de la créme.” That seemed to mollify Esther.
“Mom, I’m getting Esther a drink. Can I get you something?”
“Tell Lyndon and Howard to serve the drinks, sweetie. You should sit and visit with us.”
“No, I don’t mind.” Julia
wanted
to get the drinks. She wanted to go back to the kitchen, where the cooking food smelled so good and no mothers were present.
“I’ll have a Manhattan. Have Lyndon fix it, Julia. He makes the best Manhattans. Esther, do you want a Manhattan?”
“I’m having just a little bit of sherry. Not much.” Esther leaned past Sondra to remind Julia, “Just an
inch.” Again she held her fingers up several inches apart.
“Get a drink for yourself, too, Julia,” Sondra said.
Julia wasn’t much of a drinker, especially when it came to hard liquor. Tonight, however, the idea of drinking herself into oblivion held a certain appeal.
No. She was made of sterner stuff. She had a mission to accomplish—to convince her mother and her future in-laws that Bloom’s was the perfect caterer for her wedding reception. A second mission might be to facilitate a friendship between her mother and Ron’s parents. A third mission might be to keep Ron’s parents from plunging butter knives into each other. She had to stop wringing her hands and act like mission control.
Squaring her shoulders, she marched into the kitchen. “Lyndon, can you fix my mother a Manhattan? She says you make the best.”
“She’s right,” Lyndon said without a hint of boasting. “Howard, keep an eye on the wild rice.”
“What do I have to keep an eye on?” Howard retorted. “It’s steaming. The pot’s just sitting there.”
“Keep an eye on the pot.” Lyndon glanced at the assortment of liquor bottles arrayed on one of the counters, then checked the contents of the silver ice bucket. “Where does your mother keep her glasses?” he asked.
Julia provided him with one stemware glass and poured two and a half inches of sherry into another.
“You want a drink?” Lyndon asked her.
“Water. I’m on a mission,” she said with grim determination. “Three missions, actually.”
“Uh-oh.” He grinned. “Watch out, Howard. She’s on three missions.”
“Maybe she should keep an eye on the pot,” How
ard suggested. “If she can handle three missions with such panache, she can certainly handle a fourth.”
The doorbell rang. “What’s with the doorman?” Julia muttered, wondering whether the poor guy was trapped in a web of dachshund leashes. She put down the glass of sherry and exited into the hall.
She needn’t have rushed. Adam was at the door, swinging it wide.
Please, please, please, let it be Ron
, she whispered.
“I’m overdressed,” Norman Joffe said.
Julia had met Ron’s father only once. She and Ron had traveled to New Jersey to visit his brother and his father had been there. Tall and thin, with a mix of silver and slate-gray hair as wavy as his son’s, he’d said little, explaining that he’d had a root canal that day. He’d exerted himself to move his jaw only when the conversation settled on one of three topics: the Yankees, tax loopholes and the risk of bee stings causing anaphylactic shock. He was an accountant, so she could understand his interest in tax loopholes, and as a native New Yorker he’d probably been born afflicted by Yankee fever. But his obsession with bad reactions to bee stings had mystified her. According to Ron, he didn’t suffer from allergies.
“Norman!” Julia smiled and hurried down the hall to nudge Adam out of the way. Ron’s father stood in the doorway, holding a massive bouquet of flowers wrapped in green tissue paper. He wore a sport coat and khakis, and his complexion was the sort of tan she expected to see in mid-August, not the last week of May. She wondered if he used a sunlamp. She’d advise Ron to discuss skin cancer with him. “Come on in,” she welcomed him. “This bum is my brother. He doesn’t know how to dress properly.”
“They didn’t teach that at college,” Adam confessed with a sheepish smile.
“Why don’t you go call Tash or something,” Julia suggested. Turning back to Norman, she saw that he still hadn’t entered the apartment. She cupped her hand around his elbow and pulled him inside. “These flowers are lovely.”
“They’re for your mother,” Norman said.
“How sweet. Come, you can give them to her yourself.” Her hand still at his elbow, she swiveled him away from Adam and into the living room.
“Oh, my!” Sondra gasped when she saw the flowers. “What’s this?”
“For you,” Norman said, extending the bouquet. His gaze collided with Esther’s and his courtly smile vanished.
“You never brought me flowers,” Esther complained.
“You told me you didn’t like flowers.”
“I had to save face.” She addressed Sondra as if they were old friends. “A husband never brings his wife flowers, she has to save face, right?”
Julia’s mother was too busy inhaling the delicate perfume of the blossoms to respond. “Would you like me to put them in a vase?” Julia asked her.
“Yes, and then bring them in here so we can all enjoy them.”
Julia glimpsed Esther’s scowl. She would definitely not enjoy them.
She carried the flowers into the kitchen. “Wow,” Howard said. He’d abandoned his vigil over the rice pot to complete arranging the platter of canapés.
“Did Joffe bring you those?” Lyndon asked, a drink in each hand. “He’s a good man. Marry him.”
“He’s a late man,” Julia muttered as she rummaged in her mother’s cabinets for a vase large enough to hold the bouquet. “His father brought these.”
“Maybe you should marry him, instead.”
The doorbell rang. Julia refrained from dropping the flowers and racing down the hall to answer the door. Ron could damn well wait—or else he could deal with Adam.
Adam’s voice drifted down the hall, and then he appeared in the doorway. “Grandma Ida’s here,” he announced.
“I knew she wouldn’t like Ferris Beuller.” Lyndon issued a grim sigh.
Julia clutched the flowers so tightly she snapped the stem of a lily. “What am I going to do?” she whispered to Lyndon.
“Set another place at the table. There’s enough food.”
“I don’t want her here!”
“She’s your grandmother,” Lyndon reminded her.
“I’m bringing the hors d’oeuvres into the living room,” Howard announced, lifting the magnificently arranged platter and leaving Julia and Lyndon alone to strategize.
“If the dinner is cooked and just needs to be served, I can take care of it,” she whispered. “Howard can help me. You can take Grandma Ida back upstairs to her apartment, and—”
“Julia.” Lyndon clamped his warm brown hands onto her shoulders and stared directly into her eyes. “Be gracious. You’re the first of her grandchildren to get married.”
“I’ve already got my mother driving me nuts. And Joffe’s parents.”
“So what’s one more nut? Go be a blushing bride, Julia. Give your grandma a kiss and stop worrying.”
Julia managed a sickly smile. “Thanks for the pep talk. But I’m never going to be a blushing bride.”
“Of course not.” With pats on both her shoulders, he released her and nudged her toward the living room. Once again she reminded herself that she was tough, strong, a former attorney, a company president. A Wellesley graduate. A big sister—whose little sister was apparently having some kind of breakdown and whose little brother looked like a poster child for the National Slob Foundation.
She could handle this. She handled everything. Handling things was her raison d’être.
Walking into the living room, she shaped another false smile—she’d had so much practice faking smiles, she was getting good at them—absently rubbed her cheek in case Esther had left a lip print on it, and headed directly for Grandma Ida, who sat at the edge of an oversized leather chair, apparently afraid the thing would swallow her if she settled too deeply into it. “Grandma Ida,” Julia greeted her. “What a lovely surprise! You’ll stay for dinner, won’t you?”
Adam couldn’t remember the last time anyone had hosted a party in this apartment. Not that this gathering of relics and relatives exactly qualified as a party. They were playing no tunes, inhaling no illegal substances, chugging no beer. No one was flirting. No one was even smiling. That phony smile of Julia’s didn’t count.
The food sure smelled good, though. Trying to eat like a normal person in his mother’s home was more challenging than getting his honors thesis on imaginary numbers finished before the due date. Adam had grown
up learning about the four food groups, but his mother had only two food groups in her kitchen: diet food and off-the-diet food. Celery sticks and Cheez Nips. Cherry tomatoes and Cherry Garcia ice cream. Fat-free yogurt and fudge.
He wanted some of that good food Lyndon and his friend had whipped up. But he didn’t want to have to tolerate the company the food was intended for. If Joffe were around, it wouldn’t be so bad. He was cool, and Adam was both pleased and a little surprised that Julia had found him. Before him, she’d always dated yuppie guys suffering from ego erectus. Joffe had a healthy ego, but it seemed proportional to the rest of him.
Well, Adam wouldn’t be tolerating the company, because Julia had made it very clear he wasn’t welcome to join them. Maybe Lyndon could fix him up a plate to bring back to his room, where he could watch
Saturday Night Live
reruns on Comedy Central while he ate.
Shit. He was so bored. In the past two weeks he’d seen dozens—maybe hundreds—of
Saturday Night Live
reruns, featuring every cast from Chevy Chase to Cheri Oteri. He needed something more. He needed things to do. He needed his friends.
Julia had told him to call Tash. Not a bad idea, except that it was only the middle of the afternoon in Seattle and she was probably busy liberating a dolphin or something. His ex-roommate, Buddy, was down in D.C., same time zone, but he’d landed an internship at the Department of Agriculture and Adam couldn’t bear the thought of whining to him about how he had nothing to do.
He should get a job, but doing what? Selling shoes?
Delivering restaurant take-out orders on a bicycle? Even working at Bloom’s would be better than that.
He needed a job, and he needed some local friends.
Closing his eyes, he pictured a skinny, duck-toed woman with a toothy grin. He’d gotten her phone number that day at Lincoln Center. What the hell? They could have some laughs, if she wasn’t busy doing her
barre
work or whatever dance students at Juilliard did to give them those graceful hands and flexible hips.