The Spellmans Strike Again (16 page)

[Partial transcript reads as follows:]

MORTY
: You know what they call a widower in Miami?

ME
: No.

MORTY
: A guy with too many girlfriends.

ME
: Was that a joke? Because it was a bad one and the timing and phrasing are all wrong.

MORTY
: No, it’s not a joke, Professor Shecky Green. It’s a fact. The old guys here whose wives have passed on are like players.

ME
: Who taught you the word “player”?

MORTY
: I watch a lot of the television.

ME
: Just say “television” or “TV”; don’t say “
the
television.”

MORTY
: I’ve been speaking for a lot longer than you have. What makes you the expert?

ME
: I don’t want to have the “things change” talk again. Can we agree to switch subjects?

MORTY
: Fine by me.

ME
: Has your shuffleboard game improved?

MORTY
: That’s a very rude stereotype.

ME
: So, it hasn’t improved.

MORTY
: You know the shiksa and Gabe are still together?

ME
: Morty, her name is Petra.

MORTY
: Right. I’m old. I got a bad memory.

ME
: You always remember she’s a shiksa.

MORTY
: With tattoos.

ME
: Yes, she has a few tattoos.

MORTY
: I sure hope Gabey doesn’t get them.

ME
: They’re not contagious, you know.

MORTY
: Do me a favor and go visit them sometime. I want to make sure that my Gabe doesn’t have any ink.

ME
: Ink? Where’d you learn that term?

MORTY
: From the television.

ME
: I’m going to hang up now.

THE RETURN
OF SUNDAY-NIGHT DINNER

Picture a table of five adults and one seventeen-year-old, all clothed in navy-blue T-shirts with the
FREE SCHMIDT!
slogan in yellow felt letters across the front. Keep that image in your head as I describe the rest of the meal.

“Isn’t Schmidt free yet?” I asked over salad.

“No,” Rae replied, emoting with the appropriate shade of social conscience. “You should be helping,” she added.

“We’ve already had this conversation,” I replied.

“Even Dad’s helping.”

I turned to my father, a look of surprise, I’m sure, sliding over my previous expression, whatever that was.

Dad sighed and then spoke. “It’s a serious case of police misconduct. A horrible travesty of justice. Whenever this happens it puts a cloud over my whole profession.”

Maggie smiled at my dad. “Thanks again for the help,” she said.

“Dad’s helping with the Schmidt case,” said Rae. “Did you hear that, Isabel?”

Then Maggie turned to me as if to absolve me of my sins. “He’s just helping interview witnesses. We’re getting ready to file an appeal and I want to make sure everything’s in order. We have it covered.”

I was wearing Schmidt. Did I have to talk about him all night long? It wasn’t that I didn’t feel for Schmidt, but I was busy with other things.

Fortunately, or not, David decided to change the subject.

“So how was secret Wednesday?” he asked.

“We’re calling it Lost Wednesday,” I said.

“It was fine. Your father and I had some quality time together,” Mom said, reaching over and running her fingers through what’s left of my father’s hair.

“Yes, we did,” Dad echoed.

Rae coughed, as if she were choking on a particle of food, and said, “Please don’t talk about it while I’m trying to eat.”

David eyed my parents with a dose of skepticism and then asked Mom what else was for dinner.

“Al, will you grab the turkey loaf and the pilaf?”

David made a face when he heard the menu, which my mother caught but ignored. My dad did his best oblivious act and served the food. Once the table began its unchoreographed dance of serving dishes and salt-shaker swapping, the previous line of conversation was revisited.

“What’s this Lost Wednesday you’re all talking about?” foolish Maggie asked.

“You can retract questions in this house,” Rae informed her. “It’s in the rule book.”
¹

Maggie turned to David for an explanation. “Is it a secret? I don’t mean to pry.”

“You’re not prying,” my mother casually replied. “Al and I just feel that at this point in our marriage we need to spend more time getting to know each other.”

“Did you know you can plant fingerprint evidence with regular old Scotch tape?” Rae said.

“We call it ‘Lost Wednesday,’” Dad explained, “just because we lose a day. We don’t work and stuff.”

“How do you fill the time?” Maggie asked.

“You
definitely
want to retract that question,” Rae said.

“We’re creative,” Mom replied.

“Did you know,” Rae interrupted loudly, “that in the Ice Age giant beavers roamed the earth? Beavers the size of grizzly bears. I can’t imagine. Can you?”

“Rae, would you like to take your dinner to your room?” my mom asked. It was a simple question, not a punishment.

“Not this particular meal,” Rae replied. “But I wouldn’t mind going to my room with other nourishment.”

“Fine,” Mom said. “Just make sure there’s some protein in the mix.”

Rae made a run for it to the kitchen, quickly scrounged around so she wouldn’t hear any more “Lost Wednesday” chatter, and raced up the stairs.

Some peace and quiet arrived upon Rae’s exit, while the remaining diners consumed their bland dinner. It was my mother who broke the silence and also the basic laws of good taste.

“There’s nothing wrong with trying to figure out how to put a little spice into your relationship. I mean, even when Al and I were first dating, we had to figure a few things out.”

Maybe to you that statement sounds innocent enough. But it wasn’t innocent. It was loaded with meaning, which I will now share with you. Apparently Mom didn’t buy my text message about the headhunter and did her own investigation on the big blonde, acquiring the same knowledge I did. Judging by the way my father picked and gawked at his hideous turkey loaf, he was clueless and guiltless. However, Olivia had to be stopped before Maggie realized that my mother was essentially trying to talk about sex therapy with my brother’s girlfriend of only three months.

There was no time for subtlety.

“Mom!” I shouted. This got her attention.

I slit my finger across my throat.

“Relax and eat your dinner, Isabel. I’m just making conversation.”

“Boundaries, Mom. Boundaries.”

“I want us to be the kind of family that talks about everything.”

“Let’s not get carried away,” Dad said, still oblivious.

“Mom, if you say one more word on the topic, I will come around the table and tackle you to the ground.”

“Am I missing something?” Dad asked.

David then turned to Maggie and said one simple word: “See?”

Maggie chuckled to herself. “So who knows?” she asked, scanning the faces of her fellow dinner companions.

I turned to her. “Just me and Mom, I think. And, I swear, I did everything I could to keep her in the dark. Also, I just want to add, the only reason I was investigating you was because Mom blackmailed me.”

“So everybody knows but me?” Dad said, sounding really left out and kind of hurt.

David, once again, directed his words to Maggie: “You need to know what it’s like before things go any farther. Can you deal?”

“Can we at least tell them the truth first?” Maggie said, squirming under the four sets of eyes that were gauging her expression.

David turned to my mother.

“Mom, we weren’t seeing a sex therapist. We were fake-seeing one.”

“What does that even mean?” Dad asked.

“It was a setup,” David explained. “Maggie and I are thinking about moving in together and I wanted her to understand that if she did, her expectation of privacy would have to significantly diminish.”

“Talk about thinking ahead,” I said, trying to break the tension.

“So, you two are okay in the—”

“Not another word, Mom,” said David.

“Olivia, can’t you just leave the kids alone? They’re turning out all right on their own,” said Dad. “
Especially
David.”

“Hello, I’m sitting right next to you,” I exclaimed.

“You win the most-improved-camper award,” Dad replied, smiling his big, goofy no-hard-feelings grin.

During the course of the entire meal I had never seen so many expressions morph across Maggie’s face. It was like watching a very subtle silent-film actress in an epic saga about a journey across the globe. But the final expression was one of amusement, not fear, and that meant the night would end as a comedy, not a tragedy.

“Who wants dessert?” Mom said, as if this were just another end to just another meal.

TROUBLE BREWING

A second Lost Wednesday passed with yet another disturbing result.

Rae, on her way out the door to school, once again approached the whiteboard and drafted another rule.

Rule #38—Put your DVDs away when you’re done!!!!!

Once again, Rae tossed a brown-bagged item on Mom’s desk and refused to make eye contact. She departed without a single word. It was kind of nice, actually.

I could not contain my curiosity and looked inside the bag. Imagine my shock and horror upon discovering a salsa dancing video. I shook off the image and began my brief interrogation.

“This has to be joke,” I said.

“That’s what I thought,” Dad replied.

“You didn’t do this, Dad, did you?”

“No comment,” he replied, focusing intently on the computer screen.

“Why don’t you mind your own business, Isabel?” Mom suggested.

I ignored her, of course.

“You don’t have to salsa if you don’t want to, Dad.”

“Excuse me, I’m going to make some tea,” my father said, making his escape.

“Mom, do you want to have lunch today?” I suddenly suggested.

“Just you and me?” Mom replied.

“I think that would be for the best.”

“Love to,” Mom replied. And that was the end of that conversation.

Over lunch I tried to delve deeper into the salsa mystery, but I got nowhere. Mom was a dead end.

“We’re trying something new. That’s all. I don’t think you have to worry about us entering any dance contests,” she said over a
salade niçoise
at this French place on Polk Street.

“Honestly, Mom. Is everything okay between you and Dad?”

“Yes,” Mom said. Only there was something incomplete about the delivery. Mom can lie, but she can’t cover up every sparring emotion inside of her. I didn’t push at that moment, since I knew I wouldn’t get any hard facts. And, to be perfectly honest, it was my goal to trim my extracurricular investigations to a minimum. Some things that transpired between my parents I didn’t really want to know about.

Instead, I decided to use my quality time with Mom to see whether I could put a dent in her meddling.

“Mom, how long are you going to hold Prom Night 1994 over my head?”

“I don’t believe in long-term blackmail. This incident will be forgotten once you go on, say, twenty lawyer dates.”

“How about ten,” I countered.

“The best offer I’ll give you is sixteen. Since that’s the age you were when the incident took place. Don’t forget that. I saved your ass.”

“Fine, sixteen lawyer dates. Thirteen to go. I want it in writing that we’re done after this.”

As Mom drafted our agreement on a place mat, I tried to get to the bottom of her brand of meddling.

“What is the point of all this?”

“Connor is not the guy for you.”

“How do you know?”

“I know,” Mom replied in a tone as solid as steel. Then she asked for the check.

I guessed the conversation was over.

Sometimes you get the feeling that your life is going to take a sudden and alarming twist, but the feeling is vague and you can’t put your finger on what might go wrong. Therefore you see signs in everything and remain on guard at all times.

Rae phoned me later that night.

“Izzy?”

“Hi, Rae.”

“Something is wrong.”

“Please don’t ask me for a ride. I’m busy.”

“I’m home.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“I went downstairs to grab a snack and I caught Mom in the pantry crying.”

“Mom was crying?”

“Like really hard.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. I went back to my room. Should I have done something? What do you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think she was crying about the salsa dancing? I know I would.”

“I think that probably wasn’t it,” I replied.

“Is something bad happening?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, the usual bad stuff. Somebody is sick. She and Dad are getting a divorce.”

“They’re not getting a divorce.”

“How do you know?” Rae replied.

“Who else would have them?”

“Good point. But she was crying really hard, Izzy.”

“Sometimes people cry, Rae.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want me to come over there?” I asked.

“No. It’s late. But I’m still hungry and I think Mom’s still in the kitchen.”

“Don’t you have anything stashed in your room?”

“No. Wait. Oh yeah. I have those leftover Doritos from the camping trip in my desk.”