Happy Any Day Now (28 page)

Irwin and Grace were doing a mean foxtrot to “From This Moment On.” They’d been on the dance floor for most of the afternoon.

“Did you see that? He just dipped her like Fred and Ginger. Amazing. Irwin’s eighty and his knees are better than mine.”

“They look good together,” I admitted. I was making progress accepting the new status quo, was no longer nauseated watching them exchange adoring glances. In fact, I found it mildly endearing. Maybe they were
beshert
, preordained to be a couple, as Aunt Phyllis contended. Who was I to buck fate?

“What a turnout!” Marti was saying. “I can’t believe you pulled a ninety percent acceptance rate for this party. Who knew you had so many friends? Even Sarah Tarkoff came out of mourning for you.” It had been a month since Richard’s passing. Sarah had told me he would have wanted her to be there.

“And that one over there flew cross-country just for this.” Marti nodded toward Tim Beckersham, engaged in earnest discussion with a woman I didn’t recognize.

“He arrived at BWI this morning and afterward he’s going to turn around and catch the red-eye back to California. He left a very pregnant wife at home and traveled twelve hours to be here for five. Now that’s a tribute.”

I’d known Tim since he was a kid and he’d been a good one. Mrs. Beckersham hadn’t dragged him to Bed-Stuy on the days she navigated the New York City subway system to get to me for my lessons, but he’d sat through most of our recital rehearsals at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. While we played, he’d be down in the first row doing his homework or reading his book. Now he was a physician, a gastroenterologist with a wife and twin sons.

“The next baby is a girl,” he’d told me excitedly in the few minutes we snatched to chat off to the side. He’d added with a catch in his voice, “We’re going to name her after Mom. I just hope she has her character.” My beloved Florence was going to have a namesake.

“Tim is a gem,” I said to Marti. I squinted. “Okay, who’s the woman with him?”

“That pretty young thing is my date. She and Tim are probably talking large intestines. Kendra’s an OR nurse at Hopkins. I went for my mammogram, the elevator was crowded, we two were jammed together like moles in a burrow, and the rest is not quite history.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. What happened to Nora?”

“Nora is on a business trip. And I’ve decided commitment is one of those overrated systems like communism. I’ve overthrown it.” She gave me a nudge in the ribs. “Uh-oh, check who’s sashaying by . . . Hi, glad you could make it,” Marti tossed off a greeting as Deena Marquis, flitting a wave, sailed by us, large fake boobs making a prow of her profile.

“Explain,” I said when she’d passed. “What’s
she
doing here?”

“Oh yeah, I meant to tell you about that bolt from the blue. Burt Silverman called me last night to ask if he could bring a date. The date turned out to be Deena. It seems a romance between the harpist and the timpanist has been in the closet for close to a year. Burt said musicians are a bunch of yentas and he wanted to avoid the gossip stirred up by an intra-orchestral romance. You know; you and Geoff had your share of it. Then your birthday reminded them they weren’t sixteen anymore and they decided to make their official debut at your party.” She gave me an impish smile. “I guess Geoff must have been a red herring, or a cover for what was really going on. And that, in turn, suggests the Aussie is, at this very moment, unclaimed.”

“The Aussie is, at this very moment, unaccounted for. Or haven’t you noticed?”

“Oh, ye of little faith, don’t despair. It’s only four o’clock. On the other hand, four o’clock means a big surprise.” She scared me when she got that Machiavellian glint in her eyes.

I groaned. “No more surprises.”

“Don’t be a whiny baby. Of course more.” Marti grabbed my hand and began tugging me toward the bandstand. Then she stopped.

“Now pull yourself together, because your guests are about to sing you the Happy Birthday song.” She made her eyes
Sesame Street
wide. “Are you ready for cake and ice cream and other goodies beyond your wildest dreams?” I allowed myself a small whimper. “Excellent. You’re going to love this. I pulled out all the stops.”

T
he cake’s inscription—“Happy 50, Judith. Tempus Fugit”—had been Marti’s idea, of course. Clever, but not outrageous. You always had to worry about outrageous with Marti.

“What ‘tempus fugit’ mean?” my mother asked, staring at the letters in red icing.

“It’s a saying in Latin. Time flies. You know, life goes by very fast.”

“She put this on cake? Hahahaha. Very funny woman, Marti.”

What happened next was nothing less than inspired. A waiter rolled out a trolley cart draped in a tablecloth. For one exquisitely normal moment I thought the cloth was hiding maybe a make-your-own-sundae bar. Then Marti produced a hot pink sequined blindfold, secured it over my eyes, and I knew I was in for it.

“Go along with this,” she hissed in my ear, “or I swear I’ll have you barred from every halfway decent restaurant in Baltimore.”

Whatever she’d concocted involved my mother, I deduced, inhaling the scent of Shalimar at my right shoulder before I heard the crinkle of paper unfolding and Grace begin to read. Marti must have written the script, because it had appropriate tenses throughout and a full freight of articles.

“Many years ago— Okay, not so many because I say ‘many’ she be very mad,” my mother improvised, to the crowd’s amusement. “Judith had a first birthday party called
tol
in Korea. In this tradition, the baby chooses the symbol of how her life will turn out from a
toljabee
table. Judith chose a musical instrument. Today she plays principal cello with the Maryland Philharmonic Orchestra.” Much cheering from out front. “Now, for the second half of her life, she will choose again. What she picks will decide the course of her future. Good luck, my dear daughter.”

Caught between laughter and tears, I swung my arm right, trying to grasp my mother’s waist, and nearly lost my balance.

“Stop fooling, Judith. You act like child. You fifty-year-old now.” My mother’s mike was on and the audience whooped with delight.

I felt a breeze under my chin as someone whipped the drape from the cart.

My mother urged, “Go, Judith. Now.”

As I groped the air, shouts from the audience directed me. “Warm,” someone yelled. “Warmer.” “Cool.”

Oh no—mere mortals directing my life would anger the gods. I spun around, reached out, and grasped . . . what? Marti snatched off my blindfold.

I held a heart in my hand (better than the toilet plunger she’d positioned dead center). A doctor’s anatomical model of a human heart, one of those awful four-chambered breakaway replicas with the auricles and ventricles in living color.

“Life size, I’ll have you know. On loan from my cardiologist,” Marti said into the microphone.

“Judith made the very best choice,” Lulu Cho, edging in, pronounced to scattered applause. She was no spring chicken and her voice magnified was tremulous, but still commanding. “The heart is the symbol of love. This means Judith will have love forever in her life, to give and to take. And now let us sing happy birthday to her in two languages. English first, then Korean.”

The cake was presented, I blew out the candles, and my guests sang the English rendition. For the Korean version, waiters threaded among the guests handing out the traditional sweet rice cakes. Then, with the lights dimmed, the words projected on the wall, and the band reprising the tune, I was serenaded with:

Sang-il chookha-hapneeda
Sang-il chookha-hapneeda
Jul guh woon sang-il ulh
Chookha-hapneeda

Forty-nine voices sang out—no, fifty. In the front row, standing next to and towering over my father as the old man blotted his eyes, was Geoff Birdsall. He must have just slid in. He let loose in his lusty bass
Chookha-hapneeda!
And as the last note faded, he touched his fingers—those elegantly long, sublimely supple fingers—to his lips, and released a greeting kiss.

The butterfly beneath my breastbone soared at the sight of him. The bewildered moth that shared its habitat bashed around in the dark wondering what the hell was going on. Hi-Jude kisses to start. Bye-Jude kisses no doubt at the finish. Well. I wasn’t kissing so fast.

Oh God, even if only for the length of my party, Geoff was back.

• • •

“Glad you made it before the cleaning crew arrived,” I grumbled preemptively as we seated ourselves at a corner table out of the Electric Slide line of fire. Irritation was a stand-in for the sadness I felt just below the surface. I shoveled in a forkful of Fugit. I needed a sugar hit to get through what promised to be a depressing conversation.

Geoff looked up from toying with his cake. “Sorry. Getting home turned into something of an adventure. My original flight was canceled last minute and then there was a mix-up with . . . Well, in the end, I’m here and happy to be. This is a spectacular party.”

“Thanks to Marti and my mom,” I said. “They put it together. Always there for me.”
As you used to be before your defection to the redcoats
was the implied and extremely unfair accusation.

Geoff didn’t or wouldn’t pick up on it. Instead he said, “Jude, you’ve got an entire cheering section these days. Starting with your colleagues. Vijay told me you had a brilliant audition. He said the
Don Juan
was the best he’d ever heard it played. The bloody Phil can count itself lucky to have you in the principal seat.”

And there it was on a silver platter, my lead-in. I took it. “And I’m sure the UK Concert Orchestra is busting its braces to know Geoff Birdsall will be on trumpet. Sounds like a dream job,” I said, doing my damnedest to sound sincere, not quite pulling it off.

He must have caught the rough edge on my voice. “It wasn’t something I initiated,” he said. “I got an e-mail from an old friend who plays with the UKCO—”

I interrupted. “You don’t owe me any explanations, Geoff.”

“No, I want you to know how it went down. My friend said the trumpet seat was about to open, he’d already spoken to management about me, and I had a leg up. Their vetting process is not nearly as structured as ours. I told him I’d think about it. Next thing I knew, management was on the phone. They needed to fill the seat in a hurry and asked would I hop over.”

“So you hopped.”
For God’s sakes
, I scolded myself,
cut the attitude
.
Make your exit with some dignity.

“I thought it might be time for a change of scenery,” he continued. “After all, you and I were over and done with. And I didn’t want to be the mourner at the wedding feast.” He swiveled to take in the room. “Where
is
Charlie, by the way?”

“Been and gone,” I said. “Very been and very gone.” But Geoff was fighting jet lag and the inference zipped by him.

“Yes, he’s a busy man, no doubt.” He resumed: “So I thought perhaps it was time for a move. I’m always up for a bit of adventure—that’s what I told myself. And it was a plum of a job. Odd coincidence, but the same day you were auditioning here, I was giving them a little sample there. And I reckon I wasn’t half bad.”

“They made you an offer on the spot?”

“They did.”

Had that five-pound plastic model of a heart fallen off the
toljabee
cart, it couldn’t have plunged any faster than my own flesh-and-blood heart.
Get a grip
, I told myself. My white-knuckled hand was already clutching the edge of the table.

Always sensitive to my moods, Geoff’s
uh-oh
detector must have gone off. “Something wrong?” Those stunning hazel eyes were cloudy with confusion.

“No, fine. You were saying?”

Only I realized I didn’t want to hear what he was about to say. At that moment, whatever Geoff and I had over the last three years—a liaison so light it couldn’t help but take off in the first ill wind—turned heavy. Not the kind of heaviness you couldn’t lift. Not a burden to be shouldered or a cross to be borne. This was a weight like a bundle of feathers—lightness multiplied infinitely—that anchored you in place so you didn’t get blown away, didn’t even think of running. You stayed and allowed whatever it was to find you and wrap itself around you.
Love
. The breathtaking, in addition to the heavy-breathing, variety. We’d had it all along, but who knew? I didn’t, until Geoff’s absence defined its presence.

He was still talking. “So I auditioned, they offered, and we spent a long afternoon haggling over the contract. I had some reservations about the benefits package. I asked for a night to sleep on it. Then you called, Judith.

“I heard your voice—that’s all it took—and the whole deal came apart. I asked myself, Who was I kidding? I couldn’t get far enough away to erase what the sound of your voice alone did to me. The adventure excuse was bullshit from the start. The truth was I just didn’t want to witness your happiness with Charlie. Selfish of me, I know, but I was afraid I’d be hurt beyond healing seeing you with him.” He pushed his plate away. “It’s never a good idea to run away from your fear, is it? I could tell myself that I was moving toward a new start in London, but I knew it was really running away. And that never works. Ask Irwin.”

As if on cue, we both turned to follow Irwin the runner, who was walking very slowly and carefully toward us, balancing a tray of full champagne flutes.

“I know to you he’s half bastard, half buffoon,” Geoff said. Actually, not quite anymore; he hadn’t been updated. “But it took a lot of courage for your dad to try to make amends. Anyway, I spent most of that night thinking through the move. It sounded ideal. But there was an awful lot of Mahler on the concert calendar. So depressing. And the Brits are a bit stodgy for this Aussie. Also, English weather really does suck. It rained for the entire week I was there. I’m a fan of sun, as you know. Bottom line, I told them thanks but no thanks.”

I thought I’d misheard him. The band was loud. “You said no?”

“Yes, I said no. I declined the offer.”

Which is when the world, or maybe it was just my heart, stopped for at least ten seconds.

“So it appears I’ll be hanging around a while longer. At least until something better comes along. Which isn’t bloody likely. Don’t worry, Jude. I’ve pretty much made peace with the new order. I won’t get in your way.”

I want you in my way,
I thought. Didn’t say. Couldn’t talk.

“With the symphony season just about over, I can make myself scarce. Maybe I’ll visit my folks for a start. And I’ve been thinking Tahiti would be just the ticket to take the chill off after that.”

I found my voice, but nerves made me babble. “Tahiti, really? I’ve always wanted to go to Tahiti. Since I saw my first Gauguin at the Brooklyn Museum, I’ve dreamed about Tahiti.”

“It’s a good place to holiday.” He went glum. “I have a feeling even Charlie could stand a week there if he was guaranteed reception for his BlackBerry.”

“Honestly, I can’t see Charlie wearing a pareo.” The image of the distinguished judge wrapped in a sarong made me giggle. At that moment, almost anything would have made me laugh.

Geoff had turned seriously somber. “In any case, I’ve come to terms with the situation. I wish you the best, Jude. Whatever makes you happy.”

The band had just gone on break, and in the sudden silence it all came in loud and clear. “
You
make me happy,” I blurted, astonished to hear myself say what I realized I’d been feeling, tamping down for a while now.

He gave me a searching look. Vamped three beats. “No kidding? You’re saying
I
do? Me, not Charlie?”

“The Charlie fling is over.”

“It was a fling, was it? That’s all it was? And you’ve sent him packing? Really? Poor bloke.” Geoff looked remarkably cheerful for a man expressing sympathy. “He’s going to take it hard.”

“I think he’ll be fine.” He would be, too. Oh sure, it might sting for a while, but that would be pride more than love. Not the kind of love I needed, anyway. “He’s got a rich, full life, Charlie does. More than he can handle.”

“Well, I can tell you
I
missed you. Those weeks without you were like someone lopped off my right hand. And you know how important a right hand is to a trumpet player.”

“Me too. My bow hand. It was only after it was gone that I realized how much I needed it . . .” My voice was shaky. “. . . to make music.”

“Really?” He couldn’t quite get over it. “Isn’t this a corker? Me, not Charlie.” He took a long pull of beer. “Fortifying myself.” Then he planted the beer bottle on the table, took my hands in his, and said, very formally, very adorably, “I may be presuming here, but I’ve got to chance it.” He cleared his throat. “You do know I love you, Jude. And . . . if you want to get married, I’m willing. More than. There, I’ve said it and I’m still standing. Marriage is a definite option. I’m up for it, if that’s what you want.”

“Not necessarily,” I said.

Taking the “necessarily” off the table made me feel suddenly, incredibly free—free enough so I could foresee a day when “possibly” might find room at that same table.

On a wing and a prayer I said, “I love you too.” Softly, because it scared me so. As I’d been recently reminded, I didn’t have the most sterling record when it came to picking men. But Geoff heard it, I could tell by his hard swallow. And then because, what the hell, I was risking my ass anyway with this conversation, I reached over and stroked his jaw, bristly with the red-eye flight stubble he hadn’t stopped to shave. “My love,” I said, and again, “My love.”