Seven Minutes to Noon (15 page)

“I’m still in love with Simon.”

“Well, that’s no surprise, Mags. But I thought you made a decision.”

“I did.”

Alice stood back and looked at Maggie and waited. She could tell there was more.

“Look, Alice, we sleep together now and then.”

This
was
news. “But you’re divorced!”

“Not exactly.” Maggie’s face creaked open with a naughty smile.

“But you said—”

“I told you the papers had come through. We simply never signed them.”

Suddenly Alice understood. With Maggie’s typical lack of discipline, in the rush of her irreverence, she had shared secrets with Simon, little offerings to bind him to their endangered intimacy. Things he probably didn’t even care about, like the gender of Lauren’s baby, providing him with a blip of amusement or interest. Like a spy Maggie had passed Ivy on to Simon, who had passed her on to Tim. Now that Alice realized what had happened, it made sense. Maggie and Simon’s passion had always spilled over their ability to contain it, messily invading the space of innocent bystanders.

Alice stood across from Maggie. The peonies loomed beside them.

“I understand,” Alice said quietly.

“I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t mean to tell him. It just slipped out. And I certainly never imagined I’d be questioned by the police about it.”

The thought of Maggie explaining herself to the detectives seemed punishment enough.

As the morning progressed, Alice felt a bubbling of anger at Maggie for having withheld such a significant piece of information, not that Maggie and Simon were lovers again, but that Tim had known the baby was a girl. No wonder Frannie and Giometti kept hashing over the same stories, having been given reason to question the friends’ reliability.

Maybe they were right, Alice thought, as she headed home just after one o’clock. She walked down Smith Street lugging groceries in several plastic bags whose
handles cut into her fingers. The labor of carrying the heavy bags and the pain it caused her felt deserved. She had pushed Frannie to investigate Tim, her friend, when all along another friend had held the answer. Alice felt betrayed by
herself,
but also by Maggie for the lie of omission that had led her to the misstep. Much as Maggie had felt betrayed by Simon for never explaining his hours-long absences, and as Frannie had undoubtedly experienced a betrayal, hidden beneath the friendly veneer, when Alice marched into the precinct to announce her own lie of omission.

Alice turned onto President Street, and felt the draining force of her pregnancy. She took a deep breath and marched forward.

As she walked toward their house, past summer gardens lush with impatiens and marigolds and no Lauren — everywhere she went,
no Lauren
— she became aware of an incessant honking. She noticed the jammed traffic, then the moving truck two-thirds down the block, its girth blocking the flow.

That was right, she remembered now: their new landlord was moving in today.

She walked up the stoop into the shadowy front hall, set her bags down on the floor outside her own entrance and called up the wide stairs.

“Hello?”

She immediately heard a rumble of footsteps and a large man came down the stairs. He was wearing gray sweatpants that had been cut off into shorts, but his legs didn’t merit them; they were heavy and pale, with sparse black hairs. He was sweating in a white sleeveless undershirt through which his stomach bulged. His curly pitch-black hair was obviously dyed, and his face was flaccid, jowly. But what most struck Alice, truly surprised her, was his glasses. They were trendy in a way he clearly was not, minimalist rectangles in plastic lilac frames. He hadn’t shaved that morning, but it was his moving day, so it was understandable. Alice decided she would force
herself to accept this man, if only out of a survivor’s instinct.

She offered a hand. “I’m Alice Halpern.”

He shook her hand without bothering to wipe off the sweat. She held her smile.

“Julius Pollack,” he said in a syrupy voice that reminded her, strangely, of yellowed lacquer.

He made hard, immediate eye contact and seemed to wait for her to speak.

“Mr. Pollack,” she began, bolstering her tone with confidence, professionalism; holding herself still against his keen stare. “I don’t know exactly how much Joey told you about our situation. We asked him to explain. We—”

“He told me you were still here.” Julius Pollack smiled stiffly. A plastic smile to match his lacquer voice. He gave her the creeps. “And now I’m here. We’re here together.”

Once again, he stared at her and waited.

“Buying a house takes time,” she told him.

The smile. He knew that; she felt foolish for having said it.

“We have children,” she explained. “We need a certain kind of space. And as you know, the market right now is—”

“I don’t want an explanation.” His syrupy tone had gone chokingly sweet. “Just a date, in writing, before the end of the month. Telling me when you’ll be gone.”

“I’m sorry?”

“No you’re not.”

Bloodsuckers,
Alice heard the snap of Lauren’s voice.
I’m starting to hate those bloodsuckers for putting us through this.
A strong emotion curled through Alice’s mind, a hybrid feeling of deepening and unrequitable love for Lauren merged confusingly with loathing. Already she detested this man, this Julius Pollack, and they had only just met. This was the man who had signed the Thirty Day Notice. The man to whom she needed to
explain their situation; to politely ask — no,
beg
— for more time. What
was
their situation? A sealed-tight real estate market and now this,
this,
the unbearable loss of her beloved friend. Lauren’s loss was like a bag over her head, incapacitating her, heightening her senses. She wanted to tear off the bag, find herself somewhere in the mush of this last week, strip off every raw iota of pain and throw it at this awful man for insulting her. Scream at him,
This is for Lauren.
She
would not have tolerated your arrogance.
You
wear the bag, you asshole.

But Alice wasn’t Lauren; her words did not spark as nimbly off the flare of emotion. Alice stood in the hallway, struck dumb, unable to react, while Julius Pollack,
owner,
turned away from her and stepped into a slant of light at the front door. His voice cloyed at the movers:
“Please
be careful with my things!” As he walked onto the front stoop, Alice noticed the hulk of his back rising in two hairy flanks from the neck of his undershirt.

She carried her bags into the apartment, where on the kitchen table she found a note from Mike. He had taken the kids to the movies. Without them the apartment felt empty. Hollow. She put the groceries away and sat in the quiet of her kitchen, only it didn’t feel like her kitchen anymore. After fifteen years, it suddenly didn’t even feel much like her home. It was Julius Pollack’s house. The Thirty Day Notice had made that perfectly clear, and now the man, in person, more than anything an
owner,
had
owned
his right to begin eviction proceedings if they weren’t out in, now, twenty days.

Glancing at the notepad on the table, scribbled with notes and lists and phone messages, she thought of the appointment her mother had made for her to meet with that real estate broker. Alice peeled back the two top sheets and felt a pang of comfort at the sight of her mother’s rounded script:
Monday, 10 a.m., Pam Short, Garden Hill Realty, meet
@
office, see 3 houses.
Pam Short was the one Sylvie claimed could find a house for anyone. Alice had not planned on keeping the appointment — the idea of house hunting in her emotional
fog had been impossible — but now she knew with certainty that she had no real choice.

A date, in writing, before the end of the month. Telling me when you’ll be gone.

Creep.
Bloodsucker.
But Alice knew she couldn’t fight him. They had no lease and it was his house. She picked up the phone and confirmed her appointment by leaving a message on Pam Short’s voice mail, deliberately making it harder for herself to change her mind.

Garden Hill Realty was on Court Street next to the monolithic Old St. Paul’s Church, where you could play bingo on Saturdays, pray on Sundays, attend AA meetings on weeknights and shop for organic produce on Tuesday afternoons in summer. Through Garden Hill’s gated storefront window, Alice could see a gold etching of the Brooklyn Bridge with trees blending into the words
YOUR GATEWAY TO BROWNSTONE BROOKLYN. LICENSED BROKER: JUDITH GERSTEN.
The window postings of house sales showed prices upward of two million dollars. They couldn’t possibly have something in Alice’s price range, she thought, but regained herself quickly; she wouldn’t let the high market deter her. There
had
to be something out there for them, even if it was just another rental.

Alice looked at her watch. It was ten past ten; Pam was late. She looked as far down Court Street as she could, studying faces for one that might be Pam Short. But it was, of course, from the other direction that the woman arrived, startling Alice.

“Hello!” Her voice had the tonal clarity of a bell. “I’m
so
sorry I’m late!”

Pam Short was in fact not short at all; she was a good three inches taller than Alice’s five foot six, and at least fifty pounds heavier. Pam’s caftan, with its swirling pink and orange print, reminded Alice of things her mother used to wear in the late sixties, when she had seemed so
cool
to a very young Alice. Pam’s shoulder-length brown hair shone with the bright red patina that had recently come into fashion. Her pink lipstick matched a predominant shade in her caftan. Lastly Alice noticed the woman’s shoes: her feet bulged out of the same red, rhinestone-encrusted leather flip-flops that had looked so dainty on Sylvie’s slender feet. As a foundation for Pam Short’s large, magnificent persona, the sandals were a sly wink. Perfect, Alice thought, for how they defied expectations.

Pam rattled a large keychain out of her purse and unlocked the long metal box on the wall that contained the storefront gate’s chain pull. With a few deft tugs, the gate scrolled up. Inside, Pam brushed a hand upward on a panel of switches and the lights came on all at once, opening the room like the page of a pop-up book. The walls were pale pink, and what looked like an original tin ceiling had been painted cream. Two antique ceiling fans slowly turned. On every wall, pinpoint lights illuminated photos of Old Brooklyn with its pastures, farms and shanties, paired with photos of New Brooklyn with its gracious homes and gardens. An oriental-carpeted aisle separated two rows of four desks each, all with tidy desktops, except for one at the far end on the right side. That desk alone was busy with knickknacks, and behind it were three framed needlepoint legends Alice couldn’t read from the distance.

Pam sat at the very first desk on the right, the one with the best view of the street. Alice sat in a chair at the side of the desk. Folding her pudgy hands together on top of a white binder, Pam faced Alice squarely.

“Before we start, I’ve just gotta tell you how sorry I am about your friend. Sylvie told me about her and I’ve been reading about it in the papers. You must be a wreck, and in your state. I
feel
for you.”

“Thank you,” Alice said. “I appreciate it. My mom thought I should get back on my feet, so she made this appointment, but—”

“We can do this another time,” Pam gently interrupted. “We can reschedule.”

“No, I have to do this now. My mother’s right. Our new landlord already served us a Thirty Day Notice. He wants us out, no discussion.”

“Don’t tell me you have the lower duplex.”

“We have the lower duplex.”

“I hear you, honey.”

Pam booted up her computer and started flipping through the white binder. “Your mother said you were looking for a house, minimum two-family, but frankly we’d be idiots not to look at three. The double income makes a big dent in the mortgage, and she said you could look in the eight-hundred-thousand-dollar range, but I think you could start higher. Hell, you’ll
have
to start higher in this market, but don’t worry, we’ll do the math and you’ll see what I mean.”

As Pam spoke, she stuck hot pink Post-it notes on the edges of some of the notebook’s pages. She wore four rings on each hand, including a wedding ring that was almost lost beneath a red plastic sphere.

“Do you want to look at rentals too? Give yourself time to find the perfect house to buy?”

The perfect house.
Was there such a thing? Alice saw herself surrounded by towers of boxes, her lungs filled with dust, her muscles aching through and through from shuffling all their stuff from one place to another. Two demanding children and, soon enough, two crying babies. “I am not a gypsy,” Lauren had said to Alice just three weeks ago, accepting half of Alice’s bagel at the Autumn Café. She could see Lauren biting down into the dense bread and taste the cool, rich cream cheese on her own tongue. “In America we have rights,” Lauren had said. “That’s the whole point.”

“No,” Alice told Pam. “We just want to buy. I don’t want to move twice.”

Pam nodded. Alice was sure she saw the quick pull of a dimple in Pam’s cheek, the suppression of a smile as she flipped the pages of her notebook, sticking on Post-its.

“It looks like there actually might be a few possibilities,” Alice said.

Pam stopped turning pages and fixed her eyes on Alice. “Honey, there are always possibilities. I’m in the business of making things happen. I’ve never failed a customer who seriously wanted to buy.”

Pam quickly lined up appointments to show Alice houses: two first thing the next morning, one later in the afternoon, and one the day after.

The next day Alice dropped the kids off at school and then wandered slowly toward the address Pam had given her on First Place between Court and Clinton Streets. Because she was early for the nine o’clock appointment, she took a circuitous route up Carroll Street and all the way to Henry, basking in the long shadows of the houses on the north side of the street. Each brownstone facade was a cipher of history and tumult and the passions of lives that had passed through it. Most of the houses in the neighborhood were built in the 1800s, back when babies were born at home, deeds were kept in the family, and grandparents died in their childhood beds. She turned the corner at Henry onto First Place, passing tall, wide houses with their gated front gardens abundant with roses.