Ms America and the Brouhaha on Broadway (30 page)

Frenchie swallows. I have a feeling Blondie will be sweeping up shorn hair and cutting aluminum foil into squares on many a Monday morning to make up for this. Finally Frenchie is able to speak. “Here at Salon Marceau, the customer’s satisfaction is our number one
priorité
. Therefore I will grant your request.”

I bow my head. “It will give me so much pleasure to be able to recommend this salon to my followers.”

Frenchie goes on. “If there is anything else we can ever do for you—”

“I’ll let you know.” I make a move toward the door. “And I’ll send the bill for the fur’s repair directly to your attention.”

“Wow!” Trixie cries once we’re back on the street standing in the January sun. “You’re a master! You blackmailed the salon, too!”

“I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of, but my mom will be thrilled not to have to pay for the facial.” I really do think those snooty salon peeps saw my mother coming a mile away, so I’m extra pleased with this outcome. I resettle the fur in my arms. “So what do we do about getting her fur repaired?”

We head south on Fifth Avenue, in no rush to board the subway. “It’s ironic that it’s so warm, your mother would never wear her fur today,” Trixie says.

I get an idea. “Maybe the fur salon at Saks repairs its own furs.” I call the flagship store and find out that it repairs furs bought wherever.

“Of course you must have those tears repaired immediately,” I am told by a highly obsequious female. “Under what name is the fur registered?” I didn’t know it was registered at all, but indeed it is, under Bennie’s name. “If you can bring it in right away,” the woman says, “we can have it ready for your mother tomorrow.”

“Now that’s service,” Trixie says.

“She also told me they do reconditioning, glazing, and storage.” I can visualize a donut getting glazed but not a fur. As I am wondering if I can justify eating a glazed donut even though I’ve already downed a waffle and part of a chocolate chip muffin, my phone rings again. This time it’s Pop.

“Happy birthday, my beauty! I’m sorry I didn’t call before, but I had to do a few things at the salon before it opened up.”

Pop’s lady friend Maggie owns a nail salon. Out of loyalty to my mother I refuse to patronize it, although once a month when it has a Margarita Friday I reconsider my ban. “So Maggie’s roped you into helping her out at her salon?”

“Now why do you have to put it that way?”

I suppose that was uncharitable. “I’m sorry, Pop.” Trixie and I walk past yet another greeting card and stationery store with an elaborate Valentine’s Day display in the front window. I know I shouldn’t say what comes to mind, but I can’t help myself. “So, Pop, just what are your intentions toward Maggie?”

Silence. Then: “You really think that’s your business?”

“Yes, I do. I’m your daughter and I have a right to know.” That’s a stretch, but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

“Young lady, it seems to me you’ve got your hands full running your own life. You shouldn’t be trying to run mine, too.”

And he doesn’t even know everything that’s going on with me. “I just—”

“I know what you’re going to say. That you don’t want me to propose to Maggie on Valentine’s Day.”

Actually, I don’t want him
ever
to propose to Maggie and
especially
not on Valentine’s Day. But what I say is: “I just don’t want Mom to get even more hurt.”

“Your mother is doing just fine. Bennie’s got them staying at the Plaza Hotel—”

“How do you know about that?”

“Rachel told me.”

I bet I know how that happened. My mother got Rachel to work it into one of her conversations with Pop that Grandma and Bennie were staying at the Plaza.

My father goes on speaking. “My beauty, it’s your birthday and I don’t want to fight. Not with my beautiful girl who’s the joy of my life.”

Darn. Now I’ll start crying.

“And it’s not that I don’t love your mother, because I always will. It’s not even that I love Maggie the same way I love your mother, because I don’t think I ever will. It’s that your mother and I got divorced for a reason.”

I hate when Pop says stuff like that. It’s a punch right in the gut of one of my fondest fantasies: that my parents will get back together.

“Don’t you want me to find happiness with somebody else?” my father asks.

Actually, no. But I can’t say that. So instead I offer a grudging compromise. “I suppose.”

We move the conversation onto less controversial ground, but before long we’re interrupted by another call on my end. I know immediately that this caller is not trying to reach me to convey birthday wishes. “Get in here ASAP,” Oliver orders. “I want to hear how you kept my father away from the theater last night.”

“Nothing’s wrong, is it?”

“Not a thing. And I want to know how you pulled that off.”

I’ll tell him, but I’ll keep some details to myself. No way will I divulge that Junior’s own father is the source of those AllThatChat.com posts. I don’t know what Junior would do with that information and for my own purposes I must lord it over Senior’s balding head for quite a while longer.

“Tell you what,” Trixie says when I get off the phone. “I’ll drop the fur off at Saks and you go straight to the theater. We can meet for lunch when you’re done.”

“Maybe by then Shanelle will be able to join us.” She had to catch up on work this morning, but knowing Shanelle she’ll fly through it.

I’m emerging from the subway station closest to the theater when I get a text from Oliver. Something’s come up and now he wants to see me in two hours. Great: a wasted trip. Then my mom calls. “You got the fur?” she asks me.

“Yes and no.” I explain what happened, including that the fur’s lining is ripped but now her mongo expensive facial is free. I don’t say it in so many words, but basically she’s getting off scot-free.

“So I’m getting a gift today, too,” she says, “thanks to you. By the way, your gift is back home. It was too big to bring here. Plus, that plane would probably lose it. Anyway, will you come over here and do my makeup for those photos?”

“So Kimberly’s coming through, huh?” That doesn’t surprise me. I’m sure that vixen is super eager to claw her way back to Jason’s good side.

“That husband of yours called to say she’ll be here in half an hour. By the way, I don’t like how close those two are getting.”

“You’ve never been a big fan of Jason’s, Mom. I would think you’d be thrilled if he went bye-bye.”

“I want you to leave
him
. I don’t want him to leave
you
.”

On that warm maternal note, I reroute myself to the Plaza Hotel. By now I could find it in my sleep. I have just set my mother up in a chair by the window in her room when Miss Kimberly arrives, again today done up in skinny jeans and a curve-hugging top. If she had any more makeup on, she’d get a citation. From the sheepish look she throws my way I can tell she’s still embarrassed by last night’s revelation of her married state.

Poor thing. My heart bleeds for her.

Perhaps my mother also senses Kimberly is wounded prey because she doesn’t waste a second before pouncing. “Where’s my son-in-law?” she demands.

Kimberly looks taken aback. “I think he went for a run.”

“You all done with that shoot of yours?” My mother is being fairly hostile given that Kimberly is doing her a favor, but that’s Hazel Przybyszewski for you.

Kimberly blushes. “Almost. We have a little more to do this afternoon.”

My mother harrumphs. I pipe up. “My mom really appreciates your taking the time to do this shoot for her.”

“I’m thrilled to do it,” Kimberly lies.

She sets her camera bag on the bed and busies herself with her equipment while I go back to work on my mother’s face. Her skin is so radiant that I bypass foundation and apply only the merest hint of powder. “So,” I say to Kimberly, figuring this might be my last chance to bring this up, “I was going over those recordings you make of the preview performances and noticed that you quit taping really early the night Lisette fell.”

Kimberly’s hands stop moving. “Did I really?”

“You missed the entire final sequence. Every other night you recorded all the way to the end.”

Kimberly says nothing. I instruct my mom to close her eyes so I can move on to eye shadow, but instead she twists toward Kimberly and blasts a query in her direction. “How do you explain that?” I guess she can’t resist an interrogation even though she has no idea what the point of it is.

Kimberly swallows. Then: “I got a text.”

I frown. “You stopped recording for a
text
? You’re not even supposed to have your phone on during a performance.” Those flashes of light are a real distraction, to actors and audience members alike. And Kimberly’s recording location, in the front middle of the mezzanine, is visible to both.

Kimberly shakes her head, clearly flustered. “I … I was expecting an important text.”

“From who?” I ask. “Jason? Damian?”

“Who’s Damian?” my mother wants to know.

“How do you even know his name is Damian?” Kimberly sputters.

“Because I overheard you and your Uncle Jerry in the ladies’ room.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Now Kimberly sounds semi-belligerent. “That time you were eavesdropping.”

“I still don’t know who Damian is,” my mother says. “And you can’t eavesdrop in a public place like a ladies’ room.”

Thank you, Mom! “Damian is Kimberly’s husband,” I tell my mother.

Her jaw drops. “Knock me over with a feather! This one is married?”

“I’m getting divorced,” Kimberly says.

“It had to have bothered you,” I say to Kimberly, “that Damian was seeing Lisette.”

“So
her
husband”—my mother gestures to Kimberly—“was keeping company with that woman who died on the staircase?”

“Exactly,” I say.

“Divorced, married, I don’t care,” my mother opines. “No woman likes it when her husband starts dating another dame.”

I only half hear what my mother is saying because my mind has started cranking in a new and shocking direction. I clutch the back of a chair. “Is there any chance, Kimberly, any chance at all, that Lisette fell down that staircase because she got distracted by the light of your phone?”

Kimberly gasps. I would, too, if I were on the receiving end of that kind of accusation. “I can’t believe you’re saying I had something to do with Lisette falling!” She tosses her camera onto the bed and sets her hands on her hips. “Jason told me you were obsessed with this sort of thing, but I thought he was joking. Now I know he wasn’t.”

I’m not thrilled that Jason described me as “obsessed” with sudden death, but I skate right past it. “Just answer the question, Kimberly. Were you texting next to your recording equipment when Lisette fell?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but no, I wasn’t.”

Maybe I believe that and maybe I don’t. “So does that mean you abandoned your equipment before the preview was over so you could text?”

“I didn’t abandon anything, all right? It was an important text. And I was afraid it might be upsetting.”

“Why would it be upsetting?” my mother wants to know. “Did it have something to do with your family? Was somebody sick?”

“Nobody was sick!” Now Kimberly is raising her voice.

“So who would be sending you an upsetting text?” I ask.

“I don’t understand that, either,” my mother says.

“You two are impossible!” Kimberly shrieks.

I have to say my mom and I are pretty effective when we team up. “I am just not understanding this,” I say when more screeching spews from Kimberly’s mouth.

“It was from the calendar company, okay? They were texting about whether or not the shoot was a go.”

“Of course the shoot was a go,” I say, until I take in Kimberly’s flushed face and rapid breathing. “Oh, my God. Are you telling me it
wasn’t
a go?”

She looks away. “It sort of wasn’t a go,” she mumbles.

I throw out my arms. “You and your sort of’s! You’re
sort of
married and now the shoot is
sort of
a go! Which is it? A go or not a go?”

She looks down at the carpet. “Okay, it wasn’t a go.” Then she turns those baby blues on me. Like that’ll work. “But they promised they’d reconsider if they really like the photos.”

“So bottom line,” I say, “you’re doing this whole thing on spec?”

She nods.

Wow. “Does Jason know this?” I ask.

Now she shakes her head.

“I didn’t think so.” He never would’ve taken time off from his new job to do something on spec. “I can’t believe this! It’s like you concocted this whole thing to spend more time with my husband.”