The Widow Waltz (11 page)

“G
reetings, stranger.”

“Shots! C’mon!”

“Hey, everyone. It’s Loo-ey.”

Luey knew this pig call was meant to be affectionate. It had never bothered her, until now.

From the time Luey Silver-Waltz started nursery school, she was the person friends counted on to get the party started, or at least keep it alive beyond its natural life span. She still chafed from the injustice of fourth grade, when Miss O’Leary insisted she be sent to a shrink when she had merely conducted a poll on how many blackheads dotted the teacher’s nose. It was math, after all, and despite what Miss O’Leary told her parents, Luey
did
have compassion. By seventh grade, Luey earned the ignominious distinction of being the first girl to show a boy her boobs. In all fairness, there was a limited pool of contenders since most classmates hadn’t yet grown a set and hers went to B right out of the gate.

Did it bother her that a group of mothers in the school called a meeting to discuss “mean girls,” and by “girls” they meant “girl” and by “girl,” Luey Silver-Waltz? In retrospect, yes. Was she for-a-good-time-call-Luey? Throughout high school, probably, but people could change. She was sure of that, too.

On New Year’s Eve, when Luey met up with her friends, it was past ten o’clock and her appetite for revelry had slithered away. The bar was in Williamsburg—her old crowd venerated the L train that connected Manhattan to Brooklyn as if it were the Orient Express. Before she stepped off the subway, Luey checked her reflection in the window. Her burgundy lip gloss now struck her as sadly Blanche Dubois.

When she got to the bar, the DJ was spinning “I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight,” a hit she’d considered overdramatic even before she’d had, as any one of her psychiatrists might have put it, issues. Christmas decorations hung limply, recycled for one too many seasons.

“Not wine—cocktails!” someone shouted.

“Not cocktails, flights of cocktails,” another voice said, as Whitney Kantor yanked her by the arm. She and Whitney used to spend whole weekends playing board games in the blood orange wing of Whitney’s Park Avenue apartment, with its colossal acrylic sculptures and birds of paradise poised to devour lesser flowers. By senior year she and Whitney had drifted apart. They hadn’t spoken since last summer, not counting shiva after her father’s funeral.

Whitney was a beauty, until she spoke. “C’mon, hang your coat. Time for karaoke!” she screamed in her nasal voice over the uproar, swinging her satiny red hair, keeping time with the beat. “We’ve been waiting for you, Lady Gaga.”

“Not in the mood!” Luey yelled back.

“But we always do a duet.” Whitney started to sing
“The Fame.”
What she lacked in subtlety she made up in volume. “Your line next!” she shouted, throwing her toned arm over Luey’s shoulder, pulling her toward the stage. Luey could smell Whitney’s tea rose perfume. She’d never liked it. Yet Luey found herself singing, and then Whitney chimed in, “All we care about is runway models / Cadillacs and liquor bottles.”

Ain’t that the truth, Luey thought?

“Okay, you got it. We’re good to go,” Whitney said, and dragged her to the mike. Luey stared into blackness. As she harmonized with Whitney, she could see only dust floating in the smoky air, for which she was grateful. When Whitney pretended to lick the mike between lines, the room detonated with applause.

Mercifully, the song ended. Whitney and Luey were replaced by one of the former water polo players from their school. Luey wasn’t sure which team member he was. When she watched the meets, the players looked like identical action figures in Speedos, their broad shoulders and hairless chests tapering to narrow waists, their pinheads covered by sleek, black bathing caps featuring padded ears.

“Got to pee,” Whitney said. “I’ll be back in a minute.” This allowed Luey to do a one eighty and spot Harrison Taylor, her former chemistry lab partner. She climbed onto the bar stool next to him.

“Luey,” Harrison said, and kissed her cheek. Unlike Whitney, he smelled clean and worthy, like a new book.

“Harrison,” she answered.

“Happy New Year,” he said.

“In ninety minutes.”

“Let me buy you a drink,” he offered. “What’ll it be?”

“Seltzer with lime.”

He raised his eyebrows. They were bushy, like his hair. Luey always had the urge to pet Harrison as if he were a rescue dog.

“AA,” she said.

“Ah.” He nodded, as if he wasn’t surprised. “How long you been sober?”

“Three weeks,” Luey said.

He turned toward the bartender and snapped his fingers. “My good man, a seltzer with lime for the lady, please.”

Did he mistake himself for F. Scott Fitzgerald? Pretension and irony aren’t the same, my good man,
Luey considered saying.

“To sobriety!” He handed Luey her seltzer, then hoisted his own beer. Their glasses clicked.

“On Wisconsin!” Luey cheered. “That’s where you go, right?”

Harrison scowled. “Michigan!” he said, pumping his arm. “Premed.”

Luey’s friends at college in Ann Arbor thought they were of a higher stratum than those in Madison, while Wisconsin students dismissed the Michigan crowd as tight-assed grinds. “Sincere apologies,” she said.

“You?”

“Stanford.”

“Always too smart for your own good.”

Luey disregarded what may or may not have been a compliment. “I’m taking a break,” she added. He was the first friend to whom she’d admitted this.

“Internship?” He was shouting over the music, which the DJ had cranked to an eardrum-splitting decibel. “I’m off to Bangkok. How about you?”

She chased her lime with a straw. “Not allowed to announce it yet.”

They sipped their drinks for a minute before Harrison said, “What do you say we get out of here?” He smiled. “Go someplace where we can hear ourselves think?”

She’d always liked Harrison, and not just because she’d gotten an A in chemistry thanks to his lab skills. “Let me hit the bathroom first.”

As she slid off the stool, something sticky trickled down her leg. Could this evening suck worse?

When Luey got to the bathroom and turned on the light, she realized the answer to that question was yes. She was bleeding—not a gush, but her tights were soaked. She sat on the toilet for a minute or two, but it seemed as if the blood flow was increasing and she felt a dull ache. She grabbed a wad of paper towels, shoved them into her underpants, and waddled back to the bar,. Harrison had paid the tab and slipped on his coat.

She clutched her stomach with one hand and put the other on his arm. “I’m feeling a little dizzy.” It was true, and now the ache was a cramp. “I’m so sorry, but could you put me in a taxi?”

“Really?” He made no effort to disguise his disappointment.

She was glad her tights were black, as was her coat, which she threw on. “I’m not shitting you, and I am sorry. Another time,.”

Harrison shrugged, led her out to the cold night air, and whistled for a taxi.

“And can I borrow some money?” Luey asked, as he opened the door and she slid into the cab. Now he’d really hate her, but all she had was twenty bucks. She knew enough to realize she had to get herself to a hospital, and hadn’t a clue where she’d find one in Brooklyn.

Harrison handed over three twenties. He’d always been able to blow through two hundred dollars in an evening, between food, cover charges, concert tickets, drinks, and taxis. “Thanks. I’ll call you!” she shouted as the cab pulled away.

She did a quick search on her phone and gave the driver the address. “Beth Israel Hospital.”

Luey closed her eyes and started to cry.
Bye-bye, baby,
she said to herself.

B
y the time I reach Central Park West in the seventies, my sense of derring-do has drifted away. But here I am, at one of the grand dowager buildings. I won’t let myself turn back.

“Mr. Ross?” I ask the doorman. If he tells me no one lived there by that name, I would flee, relieved. But he says, “The penthouse, miss,” nodding toward an elevator at the end of a deep, chilly lobby.

Miss.
The title underscores how juvenile I feel and that tonight, and possibly every night ahead, I may be one more woman alone in head-to-toe black hoping that choice will render her invisible. I am very likely underdressed or overdressed, New Year’s Eve being an occasion when half the country stays loyal to sweats and the other breaks out skin-tight spangles.

When the elevator arrives, two men exit, their arms bound around each other’s narrow waist. They rush by without as much as a glance, and I wonder if I register as flesh and blood. As I step inside, I say, “Penthouse, please,” liking the way it sounds.

“Hope you brought earplugs,” a uniformed attendant says as the door closes. He smiles, and as I absorb his humanity, in some remote bodily cell I sense encouragement. One foot in front of the other,
I remind myself, as if it’s a fight song. You have widow-worries, not Asperger’s.

When the elevator opens, I see a rack bowing under a crush of wintry garments, and squeeze my coat between a sleek vacuna and a parka engineered to defend against Arctic temperatures. Music assaults me from the opened door at the end of the hall. All I see ahead is a tunnel thick with people.

I have never been anything close to a party animal, not in high school, not in college. I saved my truest, unwound self for Ben and Daniel. Whenever I’d be with other women over a bottle of wine and a bowl of cashews, our shoes kicked off, I would have no comic material to add to their howling histories of the dating front or their husbands’ jolly 3-D flaws. By the time I would feel ready to reveal myself, others would have filled their friendship quotas elsewhere. I was that endangered species, a faithful wife whose story started and ended with her husband. I sensed that women found my social currency lacking, and me unimaginatively monogamous.

This is not to say that after I became Mrs. Someone, men didn’t approach me. Once Ben had staked his claim, other husbands gave me a closer look. I let them, knowing that nothing would come of the game, whose rules had changed now that I wore a gold band, the one I’d recently buried in a drawer. The promotion from wallflower allowed me to see party posturing as married-lady tennis, an innocent sport punctuated by the graze of a male hand or a man leaning in as he talked, sending a message in no way subliminal.

I laughed. I smiled. But I didn’t encourage. I didn’t tease, and even after more than two decades, I never morphed into a wife curious to know what it would feel like to meet another man for a cocktail, or more. When fingers lingered or a face hovered close, I disengaged.

Can I say the same for Ben? Most likely not. But I remind myself that in ninety minutes it will be a new year, a dreary moment for rumination on this dreary subject, especially when I’ve gotten over the first hurdle—walking through the door—and a waiter is sticking a glass in my hand, saying “Chocolatini?”

That’s 342 calories for 4.5-ounces, I think, recalling a stat Nicola recited to me last week. I accept the beverage and clutching the champagne I’ve brought, try to nudge through the throng, where between taller, broader bodies I spot air. I head toward the bubble of light like a miner trapped in a shaft.

When I reach beyond the entry gallery, however, the crowd closes in around me. They are young and old, comely and not. No one looks familiar among these couples and small clusters, each individual his own self-important branch on a stalk. In a city where I have lived for more than twenty-five years, I am continually shocked by how frequently I find myself among strangers.

I square my shoulders, pretending I have a destination, and pummel forward in search of a face I might recognize from one of my own small circles—another parent or docent, a neighbor or an adult ed student, a fellow subscriber to the ballet or Central Park weeder, a pal of Ben’s or Daniel’s or Stephan’s, an acquaintance from an organization or the gym where I used to belong, anyone—and in particular, the hosts. If I could find Chip Sharkey or his boyfriend, Nat, I could thank them for their hospitality, hand them the bottle, and escape.

I feel a promising tap on my back and turn. A plump woman in her sixties or beyond faces me, her red hair swirled into a crowning froth, rhinestone glasses glinting like fish eyes on a small, pointy face. Her lips, stained as purple as eggplant, break into a grin showing large, chalky capped teeth. She is wearing a feathery blue boa and seems to have toddled off a stage for a curtain call.

“Lila Kent!” she says, and throws her arms around me in a tight embrace. “It’s been years! How’s Milton?”

Tonight I could be anyone. I consider impersonating Lila, but lacking the hubris to give that approach a whirl, I say, “Sorry,” and pull away. “I’m not Lila.” Though maybe I wish I were. “Georgia Waltz.”

“Really?” she says, squinting with suspicion. “I could have sworn.”

“Not Lila. I promise.” I force a smile.

“Harriet Ross,” she says. “Nathan’s sister-in-law.”

“Nathan?”

“Our host,” she says, in a tone generally accompanied by an eye roll. “The one who doesn’t believe in fire safety codes. There must be two hundred people here. The shrimp ran out hours ago. Nathan invites everyone he’s ever met.” Harriet Ross sounds indignant. As she shakes her head, a hank of red hair falls from her coiffure. She brushes it away and I stare at her dagger nails lacquered the purplish black of a nasturtium.

“I’m afraid I fall into that category. I just met Nat—Nathan—the other night. I know Chip.” The woman’s doubt reappears. “Chip Sharkey?” I say.

“Ah, yes. The dizzy blond. Nathan’s stepbrother.”

So, stepbrother. Daniel always did tell me I needed a remedial seminar in gaydar.

“Chip’s my real estate broker,” I feel disloyal to the harmless Chip, which makes me add, “He’s a great broker.” Not that I have, as yet, any proof.

“Well, Happy New Year,” the woman says, most likely bored and disappointed that I am not Lila Kent. As she swishes her boa around her neck it tickles me in the face.

“Happy New Year,” I say to her back, as I wriggle between dancing couples. I feel the beat of the music vibrate in my chest and need to get away. I beg-your-pardon myself into the next room, where tiny white lights shine on a Christmas tree hung with homey, mismatched ornaments. There is a crowd here, too, surrounding a table groaning under the weight of cured meats, pigs in blankets, crudités with a green dip of indeterminate provenance, and yes, a bowl in whose melting ice four lonely shrimp are doing the dead man’s float.

“Georgia Waltz, you came!” Chip is walking through another door, wearing a tartan jacket, holly in his buttonhole, and a Santa cap. He reaches me in three long strides and lands a peck on my cheek. “Happy New Year.”

I am suddenly so delighted to hear my name, I am afraid I may cry. “What a party!” I say with shaky enthusiasm.

“Nat’s ready to murder me. He thinks I put up a flyer on a street corner. Have you seen him?” Chip looks left then right.

“Not yet,” I say. “I just arrived.”

“Party hopping, are we?”

“Not exactly,” I say, as a tall man with a shiny shaved head swoops down on Chip and kisses him on the lips.

“Bongo! You slut!” Chip shrieks. “Georgia, I’ll be back in a minute.” He is swallowed by the crowd.

As I get pushed aside, a tear starts. I need an escape hatch, if only for a few minutes, and then I will try again to impersonate a mature social butterfly. I find a hallway. On either side are bedrooms piled with coats, mostly furs valued too highly by owners to leave in the hall, and in room a couple on an iron bed. From behind another door I smell marijuana. I open two more doors that lead to closets, but a third is, fortunately, a bathroom, where a woman not much older than my daughters is enthroned. Her sequined skirt is pushed up around her hips, and I hear her tinkling. “Excuse me!” I say, horrified.

“No biggie,” she says. “And say, could you grab me some tissue? The TP’s all gone.”

I hand over a fistful of tissue and I bolt. I am finished with this party. The celebration feels like a diorama of revelers working too hard to have fun. My desire to be here is officially extinct. Retracing my steps, I reach the end of the dark hall. I hope to find the dining room, but emerge instead in a paneled library where the redhead and others are gathered around a piano, blasting “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”

“Lila,” she shouts. “Join us!”

In my family, Ben and Luey were the singers, his baritone blending with her throaty alto. The Beatles featured prominently in their repertoire, too. My range is a half-octave with a voice that’s reedy and flat, and I remember only the first line or two of most lyrics. Yet this is the best invitation I’ve had all night, as long as no one expects me to sing. I park the champagne, which I am still carrying, on a table and hoof it to the piano, a baby grand with a menorah as ornate as Liberace’s candelabra. Guests are three-deep.

“I Wanna Hold Your Hand” turns into “All You Need Is Love,” followed by “Back in the USSR.” But when some depressive asks for “Eleanor Rigby,” another voice shouts, “Give us a break—let’s at least hear some Billy Joel, for God’s sake.” The pianist, an elf in skinny black jeans seamlessly breaks into “Uptown Girl,” garnished with trills.

As I glance at my watch, a low voice shouts out my name. I look up and see my host Nat with a leash in his hand that leads to a black standard poodle so elderly its face has turned white. “You made it.”

“Wonderful party,” I mouth over the singing.

“Great to see you—hope you’ve gotten something to eat,” Nat says, then joins the singing, shaking the dog’s leash as if it were a maraca.

From here, the pianist goes to “Only the Good Die Young,” the song I was afraid he might play. I feel myself stiffen. This, I decide, is my cue to leave. I turn to Nat, salute him with my empty glass, and say, “I better go—but thanks for everything”

“But you’ll miss the fireworks—and they’re the point.”

The pianist tilts his head toward Nat. “Duet?” he says.

“You got it,” Nat answers, and slides next to the younger man, handing me the leash. “But not this,” Nat says, and begins “Through the Years,” which the crowd breaks into with gusto.

Ben sang this to me at our twentieth anniversary party.
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry
, I tell myself. The dog drops her body down to the floor with a sigh and I’d like to do the same. When the song is over, Nat returns to my side.

“You can sing,” I say, and find a smile that I believe will pass for genuine.

“Desperate measure to make a lady stick around.”

I am trying to think of a response when I hear the ping of my phone. It’s Nicola, I’m guessing, with New Year’s greetings. She and Luey used to call from wherever they were; I guess it’s come to this, a text. I find the phone but can’t see the small print without my glasses, which I’ve left at home. I don’t have a choice and hand Nat the phone. “Could you read this for me, please?”

“Pleasure,” he says, squinting into the phone. When he looks up, his face has darkened. “It’s from someone name Lou who’s in the hospital and wants you to call ASAP.”

“No! It’s my—never mind. I better call back.” I do, trying to make out what Luey’s is saying through the din, though all I can know for sure is the name of the hospital, and shout, “I’ll be there as fast as I can!”

Nat hears me, and in a scramble, helps me find my coat on the rack, moving with efficiency and asking no questions beyond wondering which coat is mine. Outside, he hails a taxi and I clamber into it. As it pulls away from the curb and I call Luey, he waves. Minutes later, the sky explodes with the colors I see when I have a migraine. The
pow
of the fireworks matches the thunderclap of my heart.