Farewell, Dorothy Parker (8 page)

“Oh, no,” Delaney said. “Not
him.
”

“Hello, ladies.” He grinned, and in the morning light Violet noticed that his teeth were blue-white. His orange complexion was leathery but so well moisturized he looked sautéed.

“What are you doing here?” the girl asked.

“I came to pick you up for your piano lesson.”

“But I was going to take her,” Violet said, trying to make sense of Malcolm’s sudden appearance. Why would he drive all the way from Smithtown when the piano teacher was so much closer to Violet’s house? And with all that greasy lotion, how did he keep from sliding out of the driver’s seat? “It’s less than five miles from here,” she said.

“I know,” he said, “but I have an errand to run in the area, so I thought I’d help out.”

Violet looked past him at the red car by the curb and figured it out. The poor guy was looking for any excuse to zip around in his new RAV4.

“I’m going with Aunt V,” Delaney said.

“But I’m already here,” he said.

Violet was torn. Delaney wanted her to send him away, but he looked so pathetic standing there, freshly combed and oiled, smelling of aftershave and other grooming products, and so eager to help.

“Please,” Delaney said, tugging on Violet’s sleeve. “I don’t want to go with him. The last two times he was late picking me up and I was just standing there on the sidewalk like forever.”

“I promise I won’t be late this time,” Malcolm said.

Violet got an idea. “I’ll tell you what,” she said to her niece, “you go with your grandfather, and then this afternoon I’ll take you to a screening.”

Delaney always wanted to come with her aunt to movie screenings. It was a perfectly acceptable thing to do, as critics were invited to bring a guest. But the scheduling seldom worked out, as Violet usually attended showings during school hours. Besides, so many of the films were rated R that bringing Delaney wasn’t an option she would consider. Today, however, there was a scheduled screening of a new PG-13 film—a comedy with Steve Carell that the kid might actually like.

“Really?” Delaney said. “In the city?”

Violet smiled. “We’ll leave right after lunch.”

And that was it. Violet had made both grandfather and granddaughter happy. A perfect compromise. She kissed her niece good-bye and went back to finishing the breakfast dishes.

A few minutes later she noticed that Delaney’s binder was still on the kitchen table. The kid would surely need it for her lesson, so Violet grabbed her car keys and went to deliver it.

Delaney’s piano lessons were in her teacher’s home in an old North Shore neighborhood where the streets were small and the houses packed tightly together. As Violet drove through the winding blocks, she noticed something odd—a brand-new salsa-red RAV4 in the
driveway of an unfamiliar home a few blocks from the teacher’s address. Violet slowed down. It was almost certainly Malcolm’s car. What was he doing here? Did he have a friend in the neighborhood?

Violet shrugged it off. After all, the guy was entitled to have acquaintances in this town, right?

After delivering the binder, Violet went back into the car to wait for Delaney to finish her lesson, as there was no sense in going home. She called Malcolm’s cell to tell him not to bother coming back for the girl, but he didn’t pick up and his voice mailbox was full.

Violet toyed with the idea of driving back to where she saw his red car and knocking on the door to the house, but thought it might be intrusive. So she called Sandra.

She explained the situation with the piano book and Malcolm’s cell phone, but left out the part about spotting his SUV in a neighbor’s driveway, as she was curious to see if Sandra knew that Malcolm was paying a call on someone.

“Do you know where he might be?” Violet asked. “If he’s visiting with a friend, maybe you could call him and tell him not to bother coming back?”

“There’s no way for me to reach him. He usually just drives around after he drops Delaney at her lessons.”

“He does?”

“Sometimes he goes up the beach, takes off his shoes, and walks around. One time he did that and came home with only one sock, the old coot.”

Interesting, thought Violet.
Very
interesting.

Sandra sighed. “Sometimes I think he looks for any excuse to get out of the house.”

There was a note of sadness in her voice, and Violet actually felt sorry for her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s too—”

“Never mind,” Sandra said, recovering her bristly composure. “I…I was just kidding.”

Oh, no, you weren’t, Violet thought, sensing, for the first time, that there was trouble in the marriage. And as hard as it was to imagine Malcolm with a girlfriend, the pieces were starting to create a picture that resembled what Delaney had been saying about her grandfather being on the make.

Of course, it was entirely possible someone else had a special-order RAV4 in salsa red. Not likely, but possible. Violet looked at her watch. There was still more than enough time to drive to the neighbor’s house and peek inside the car to see if there were any clues to the owner’s identity.

So she turned the ignition key and drove the short distance to where she had seen the vehicle. She parked and walked right up to the tinted windows so she could peer inside. And sure enough, there was a paper slipper on the floor—the kind they gave you at nail salons.

That night, after Delaney had gone, Violet sat in front of her laptop, trying to compose her review. She was having trouble concentrating, as her mind kept going back to seeing Malcolm’s car in the driveway. The evidence pointed so strongly to an affair, and yet…it was Malcolm. Goofy, pathetic Malcolm. Surely there was another explanation.

Violet decided to kick it around with her new friend, and a few minutes later they were face-to-face in the wingback chairs. Violet had a cup of tea, and Mrs. Parker was making do with scotch from the not-yet-restocked bar.

“I disagree,” said Mrs. Parker, as she sipped her drink. “I add two plus two, and I get Grandpa, who can’t keep his pants on.”

“You might not feel that way if you met Malcolm,” Violet said. “He’s so…guileless.”

“He has a dick, hasn’t he?”

A dick? Violet smiled, amused by Mrs. Parker’s euphemism. The modern-sounding term must have been around for generations.

“I try not to think about that,” she said.

“Trust me, the man is cheating.”

Violet shuddered at the thought. “You know what? It doesn’t even matter. It’s none of my business.”

“It may well be your business,” Mrs. Parker said. “Don’t you think it would help your custody case if it turned out the grandparents were of questionable moral character?”

Violet considered that. Certainly in Dorothy Parker’s day an extramarital affair would be scandalous enough to make all the difference. Today, though, it would constitute only a single round of ammunition in a lawyer’s arsenal.

“Maybe a little,” Violet said.

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“What am I supposed to do?” Violet asked. “Follow Malcolm around? Stake out the mysterious house?”

“For starters.”

“Forget it.”

“You could hire a private investigator,” Mrs. Parker offered.

“This is my life, not a movie…or a Dashiell Hammett novel.”

She thought her guest would appreciate the reference to one of her contemporaries, but Mrs. Parker practically growled. Then Violet remembered reading that they had been adversaries. Dashiell Hammett—famous for creating iconic detectives, such as Sam Spade—was attached to playwright Lillian Hellman, one of Dorothy Parker’s
closest friends, but he made himself scarce whenever she visited. They just never got along.

“I’m sorry,” Violet said. “I forgot that you two—”

“Never mind,” Mrs. Parker said, waving away the comment. She took a long sip from her drink. “I’d rather talk about this other horse’s ass, Malcolm.”

“There’s nothing more to talk about,” Violet said.

“Don’t you want to win your case?”

“Of course I do. Just not…like this.”

Mrs. Parker put her drink down on the side table and stared at Violet. “I see.”

Her tone of voice implied that she saw more than she was letting on, but Violet wasn’t sure she wanted to know what her guest was thinking. “I should get back to work,” she said.

Mrs. Parker was undeterred. “You’re far too gentle,” she said. “You don’t want to hurt Malcolm.”

“You make it sound like ‘gentle’ is a character flaw.”

“It’s not,” Mrs. Parker said, “if you’re a poodle. But for a woman trying to make her way in the world, there is a lot to be said for acrimony.”

Violet folded her arms. “I might not be as sweet as you think,” she said. “You should see what they say about me on the Internet. People think I can be pretty brutal.”

“But only in your reviews, my dear. That’s not where it counts.”

Violet sighed. She’d heard it all before. Mostly from her sister, ironically, who often told her she needed to apply the courage she used in her reviews to her personal life. Ivy never took any responsibility for the role she played in making Violet so tongue-tied. And she certainly didn’t relate to her sister’s anxiety. Gregarious types like Ivy and Dorothy Parker could never understand how paralyzing social phobia could be. They thought all she needed was a little guidance, a pep talk, a set of instructions. If only it were that easy.

Violet changed the subject. “Look, I’m on deadline. I really should write this review and get it submitted.”

Mrs. Parker polished off the last drops of her drink. “I’d like to watch.”

“Really?”

“I’ve seen people using these things in the Algonquin,” she said, pointing to Violet’s laptop. “But I’ve never really understood what it was all about.”

Violet took a seat at the desk and opened her notebook computer. “I’ll show you,” she said, and clicked the document she had been working on.

“Is this the Internet?” Mrs. Parker asked, peering over her shoulder.

“This part is more or less a glorified typewriter. I type documents in here and can then use the Internet to send them.”

“Edify me.”

Violet opened her browser and showed Mrs. Parker her e-mail account. “These are all electronic messages. This one’s from Buck Skelly, my editor,” she said, opening an e-mail she had read earlier. “He’s reminding me that he’s going away for a few days and won’t be able to edit my next review before the issue closes. He trusts me enough to self-edit but says his assistant will eyeball it for any glaring errors. And see here? This line that says ‘cc’? That means his assistant got a copy of this e-mail, as well.”

“In my day,
cc
stood for carbon copy.”

“Now it stands for nothing.”

“Like your politicians. Are you going to reply?”

“Sure,” Violet said. “Watch.” She clicked reply and typed her message:
We’ll try to behave while you’re gone. Have a great time in Dallas, Buck.
She hit send.

“That’s
it
?”

“That’s it.”

“How long will it take him to get it?”

“It’s usually instantaneous.”

“Goodness.”

“Here’s another one,” Violet said. “It’s from a colleague asking me to be the guest reviewer for a TV segment. I always turn these down.”

“You should accept.”

Violet laughed. “Me? On television? You’ve got to be kidding.” Violet typed her message, expressing polite regrets, and hit send. Start to finish, it took less than thirty seconds.

“Extraordinary,” Mrs. Parker said. “Can I try one?”

“You want to respond to one of my e-mails?”

“I do!”

Violet grinned. “Be my guest,” she said, and rose to give Mrs. Parker her seat.

“What should I do?”

Violet showed her how to use the mouse, and let her click on an e-mail to open it. “I take kung fu lessons at a local studio, and this is from my instructor to our whole class. He wants to know if everyone would like to go out for coffee after this week’s lesson.”

“How do I answer it?”

“See where it says ‘reply all’? Click that, and then type a message saying I’d love to go but can’t make it.”

“Why can’t you make it?”

“I have an editorial meeting at work the next morning, and I need to make it an early night. So just express my regrets and then click here to send.”

Violet folded her arms and stood back, excited to watch the great Dorothy Parker actually compose a sentence. Her hero poised her fingers over the keyboard and quickly typed the letters D-e-l-i-g-h-t-e-d. Before Violet could let out a single choked syllable, her guest hit send.

“What did you do that for!” Violet said.

“You need to socialize more.”

“That’s the
last
thing I need.”

“I beg to differ.”

Violet began to pace back and forth, thinking about the people in her martial arts class. There wasn’t a single person in there she could have a meaningful conversation with. She thought about Suzette, the twenty-two-year-old anorexic girl who always came straight from a kickboxing lesson. Violet had tried to make polite chitchat before class, but the girl was interested only in getting sympathy for the fact that people were always trying to get her to eat more. “I
do
eat,” she had said to Violet, “but mostly apples.” Another classmate was Jason, a hairdresser from Hicksville who had such a short attention span that Violet tended to lose him in the middle of “I’m fine, thanks.” Then there were the
Linda
twins, who weren’t actually twins, or even sisters, but a pair of middle-aged suburban friends who shared the same name and an obsession with real-estate prices. The most intimidating classmate was Mariana, a stunning Latina and aspiring Broadway actress who had appeared in several television commercials.

And then, of course, there was Michael Jessee, the instructor, a mocha-skinned ex-Marine who looked like Terrence Howard with a thick neck and muscles. But it wasn’t his looks that made Violet swoon, it was his voice. Before she even met him in person she had called his studio, the Red Dragon Kung Fu Academy, and listened to him on the answering machine. If it weren’t for a tiny but endearing speech impediment—a sibilant
s
that created a soft whistle in certain sounds—Violet would have thought he had hired a professional to record his message. But no, it was Michael. And now, thinking about the way he sounded, Violet remembered a line from a short story by Dorothy Parker:
His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets.