Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn (15 page)

 

Con and Peggy met at an Italian restaurant not far from Peggy's place, a long walk from Con's, so she took a taxi. The waiters knew them by now and deferred to Peggy, who sometimes talked a little Italian with them. When Con was late, Peggy ordered a glass of wine and gossiped with the bartender, mostly about real estate in the neighborhood. Tonight Con was more than half an hour late. When she came in, the warmth was welcome, and small piercing lights picked up gleams in dark woodwork and tabletops. Peggy, looking more like a lifelong neighborhood woman than usual, was wearing a possibly too elaborate tight knitted sweater with silver around the V neck and a flower pattern. It made Con nostalgic.

Peggy's long thin nose had wrinkles at the top that softened
her face, which would otherwise have been severe. She'd once told Con her whole career at NYU had come about because she had a scary face, so she could say no and get away with it. Con now caught her eye, slid into the seat facing the wall, and ordered a glass of Pinot Grigio when the waiter appeared at her elbow. She looked down at her own sweater. “You remind me of old Brooklyn,” she said.

“Old Brooklyn?”

“Women with lots of sisters and sisters-in-law,” she said. “Dressing up and getting together with family.”

“We still do that,” Peggy said. Then, “I was just thinking about your mother.”

“You were thinking about my
mother
?” Con said.

“I was thinking about when you and I met, when she died.”

“I don't think about her death,” Con said. “I don't like to think about it.”

“I was remembering that when she died, I brought you lasagna my mother had made.”

“Because she died? I don't remember. I bet it was wonderful.”

“I think the lasagna wasn't particularly good but you were polite,” said Peggy.

“You know what? Joanna showed up, just as I was leaving.”

“You're kidding. How did she get here so fast?”

“The charges were dropped and she got a good flight.”

“That's good—but what will you do now?”

“I'm not sure I need to do anything,” Con said.

“Of course you do! She spent a night in jail!” said Peggy, her temper suddenly engaged.

Con was not bothered when Peggy spoke sharply. She knew it was style, Brooklyn style. If Con had ever had that sharpness, the years in Philadelphia had worn it off.

“That's what Joanna says,” Con said. “But she was drunk. I think bartenders and cops are pretty careful—they know what's legal.”

“We don't know she was drunk, and she had a right to speak even if she was.” The waiter was hovering again. Peggy opened her menu, and spoke quietly again, as if she'd made up her mind to postpone this topic. “The lasagna here is better than my mother's,” she said. “You were so lost and sweet and young, that week.”

“Was I?”

“You seemed thirty years younger than I was.”

“What's the lasagna tonight?” said Con. The specials were scribbled on the blackboard.

“Pumpkin, for the season,” Peggy said. “That sounds stupid.”

“Big slabs of pumpkin, like butternut squash?” said Con. “Are you getting it?”

“No.”

Con felt young again, as she had apparently been all those years ago, young and naive and ignorant, too stupid to order the right thing in an Italian restaurant, insufficiently critical of Peggy's dead mother's lasagna. She tried to remember whether Peggy's mother had cooked it for her on purpose because her own mother had died. She thought she and Peggy had met a few times when her mother was alive.

“I didn't think that would have happened—what happened
to Joanna,” Peggy said. “I knew things were bad, but I didn't think a girl would be arrested in a bar in this country for saying the war in Iraq is a bad idea.”

“I know. Maybe it didn't happen quite like that.”

“She wouldn't have lied,” said Peggy.

This was true; Joanna didn't lie or even exaggerate. Sometimes she made herself sound worse than she was. But she was confused about this incident. “If they asked her to leave, that's legal,” said Con. “First the owner had to ask. Then the cops had to ask. I admit that she says they didn't ask her to leave—that they told her to be quiet.”

“Then you have to do something,” Peggy said.

“What can I do?”

“You're a lawyer.”

The waiter showed up. Con inquired of her taste buds and found she wanted pumpkin lasagna. Peggy had fish. They tore off bits of bread. They ate salad.

“I don't practice in North Carolina,” said Con. “That's what Joanna said: ‘You're a lawyer.'”

“But you know how these things work. Maybe have a local lawyer write a letter?”

The food arrived. The lasagna was wonderful. There was something she didn't want to think about, something that had come up in this conversation. She liked the music in this restaurant. “Who's that singing?” she said.

“Barbara Cook?”

“Maybe.”

“It's Barbara Cook. I know this recording,” said Peggy.

“Okay, okay.”

“And anyway, nobody else sounds like Barbara Cook.”

“O
kay
,” said Con.

“At least they turned off the radio and put on a tape,” Peggy said, fork in hand. “The news came on before you got here, and each story was worse than the one before. They're activating more reserves and sending them to Iraq. Bush signed the ban on partial-birth abortions. Also, I didn't quite get this, but there's some kind of story that at the last minute, Iraq tried to avoid the war, and our guys just wouldn't budge. They were just determined.”

“I can't stand to talk about it,” Con said. She tore up a piece of bread and ate it. She ordered a second glass of wine. Then she changed the subject. Peggy liked hearing about her work. She talked about employment discrimination against victims of domestic violence.

It was unusual to feel bad when she was with Peggy, whose sharpness was kind, with the ease afforded by love. They often disagreed, and pretended to insult each other. Con felt prettier near Peggy, who took the trouble to look nice though she was older than Con. When Peggy was around nobody could say older women weren't sexy. “I can't wait to see Marlene,” she said. “What does she want to do?”

“You'll never guess. She wants to go to the El Greco show at the Met, and something at the City Opera.
Turandot.
I wonder if I can still get tickets.”

“What a day!” said Peggy. “Buy me a ticket. And let's bring Joanna. It will do her good.”

“She won't come. She doesn't like Marlene.”

They ordered coffee. Con had decaf but Peggy could still drink coffee right before bedtime. “What's new at work?” Con
said. They talked about that, and then about Peggy's lover. Con always spoke of him as Paul, but his name was Phil.

“I've been seeing Phil for two years,” said Peggy, “and you've said Paul every time you've mentioned him.”

“He looks like a Paul.”

“You met him once.”

Phil's wife was sick; she had aggressive breast cancer. “Oh, poor lady. Does that make him want to break up with you?”

“No, he needs to talk about it.”

“Are you hoping she'll die?” said Con, putting cream in her decaf.

“What a thing to say! I care about her!”

“Oh, come on,” said Con quickly. “You've been sleeping with her husband for two years!”

“I care about her quite a bit.”

“Don't tell yourself what isn't true, Peggy,” Con said. “You've been sleeping with married guys so long you've forgotten it's not the basic reality, as if everybody came in threes: a man, his wife, his mistress.”

“Isn't that how it is?” said Peggy. She drank coffee black, but she stirred it first to cool it.

“You think Jerry had lovers? Or Fred?”

“What went wrong, if it wasn't that?” Peggy stirred her coffee again, blew, tasted it and put the cup down. Still too hot. “I mean Jerry. Fred probably hadn't gotten around to it yet.”

“Jerry's coming tomorrow, I think,” Con said. She was certain he hadn't had a lover.

“Oh, right, you said. Staying for weeks and weeks. Well, it's your life.”

“A week. It's one of his trips.”

“Are you going to bring him to the opera?”

“Oh, no, he'll be busy.” Peggy sounded as if she thought it was stupid to let Jerry come, but Con was too tired to argue. She wanted to go home, not just because of Joanna.

The waiter asked if they wanted anything more, and Peggy said,
“Il conto, per favore.”
They split the check, but as Con was shrugging into her jacket, Peggy said, “Wait a minute. There was a reason I was thinking about the week your mother died. Do you remember asking me about a man named Lou Braunstein?”

“Asking you? No, I never heard of him.” She stood. “I'm exhausted.”

“Toward the end of that week—the week your mother died—something upset you. Well, your mother died, of course that was terrible. But then something else upset you, and it had something to do with a man named Lou Braunstein. You wouldn't tell me what it was, but you wanted to know if I knew anything about him, and I didn't. But I wrote down the name. A few weeks ago I was cleaning out a drawer and there's a piece of paper that says, ‘Lou Braunstein—find out and tell Con.' And I remembered you asking me. We were outside, somewhere.”

Con didn't want to think about whatever did or did not upset her fourteen years earlier. “I'm sure it doesn't matter,” she said.

“No doubt. But for whatever it's worth, I Googled him. He was a gangster from Brooklyn in the forties. He went to prison a couple of times.”

“I can't imagine why I would have known the name,” Con said.

“We'll never know,” said Peggy, as she kissed Con gently.
Their apartments were in different directions. Con spotted a taxi and waved it down. She was uncomfortable all the way. The too-smooth upholstery seemed likely to spill her at every turn.

Joanna was watching a reality show in the tiny room Con called her living room, knitting her greenish twine. On the program, a young woman was lost and exhausted. A smug young man said she was the last person to arrive, and she cried.

“This makes me feel like a shit,” said Con, looking at the young woman's face.

“You're supposed to laugh,” said Joanna. “You're only supposed to feel guilty about what's on public television. Guilt makes you give them more money. With commercial television, you feel superior, so you buy things for yourself.”

“Well, you must be feeling better!” said Con.

“No, I'm not,” said Joanna.

“Sorry.” She thought for a while. “I didn't make you break up with him.”

“I know that.”

“Do you want to talk about it or would you rather I kept quiet?”

“Probably he's a bastard. But I'm sorry I ended it. So I feel as if he ended it, which doesn't even give me the satisfaction of ending it.”

“Are you going to be friends? When you get back there?”

“We'll see. We'll see if I get back there,” said Joanna. “Maybe I'll find a teaching job. I'm sick of working with fiber anyway. I should do something different. I'll get white lung disease if I keep this up.”

Con had wondered about breathing the stuff. Little threads
were everywhere. “By the way, would you vacuum around them?” she remembered to say. “Marlene is coming, as you know—and do you know Dad is coming for a week? It's one of his trips.”

“A week?” said Joanna. “Why did you let him do that?” She had turned off the television and dropped the knitted mess on the floor. Now she stood, fingertips in the small front pockets of her jeans, looking down at her mother, who was again perched on the arm of the big chair, in her jacket. Two of Joanna's green creatures loomed nearby, like attentive but helpless listeners.

“God knows.”

But Joanna had turned to leave the room; soon Con heard the rise and fall of her voice as she talked on her cell phone.

First thing Thursday morning, still in her bathrobe, Con went online and found the City Opera Web site. Tickets for
Turandot
on Saturday night were still available. She retrieved her credit card from her purse and was just about to buy three—surely Joanna would not want to go to the opera with three old ladies—when she heard her daughter shuffle down the hall to the bathroom. When Joanna came out, it turned out she did want to see
Turandot
. “I've heard it's decadent,” she said. “The music is supposed to be great but the story is sick.”

The four of them couldn't sit together, but Con bought two pairs of tickets, not far apart. Of course she'd sit with Marlene. She hadn't been to an opera in years. She checked the
Times
Web site, which featured the various items of bad news Peggy had delivered the night before.

“You deserve a night out after the week you've had,” she said over her shoulder to Joanna, but her daughter was no longer
lingering in the doorway. She'd gone back to sleep, and Con didn't see her again before she left for work. It looked like rain and she took an umbrella.

“Here I come,” said an e-mail from Jerry, which she read when she got to the office. She e-mailed Peggy about the tickets. “Joanna's coming,” she added. She e-mailed Marlene, who responded with her itinerary. She'd arrive at LaGuardia at 5:33 the next day, Friday, and stay for two nights. It would be good. They'd talk. Con could still say anything to Marlene. Friends envied her for Marlene. Marlene had never been predictable, and was not hard of hearing though she was old. She had remained grouchy but cheerful, while Con couldn't remember when she herself had last felt cheerful. “Turandot,” Marlene wrote, “is about a Chinese princess who kills her would-be lovers!”