Looking for a Love Story (11 page)

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For me? Don’t be. Chicky was right: I am good with old farts.”

“But you were a dancer on Broadway!” The words slipped out before I could stop them, and I hated myself.

“Excuse me, I am the leading—and, I might add, the only male—Swinging Grandma. I just can’t do it for longer than fifteen minutes, and I have to bring my ice bag to performances.” He paused. “To paraphrase
Evita
, Don’t cry for me, Francesca. I’m in my mid-forties—which is probably why I got hurt in the first place—and the shelf life on my career would have been expiring anyway. Dancers I used to work with are scrambling around trying to figure out what to do next as we speak. I just got a head start on them.”

Everything he was saying was responsible and mature. I shivered, just thinking about it. Because what if that was all there was for me—just a Plan B existence I’d have to like because I didn’t have a choice?

A vision flashed through my mind. It was the first big charity party Jake and I attended. We stepped out of our rented limo in front of the Museum of Natural History, as photographers’ flashes lit up the dark sky. And I heard someone say, “That’s Francesca Sewell!”

“I’m still going to write another book of my own,” I told Show Biz defiantly.

“Sure. Why not?” he agreed.

“What I’m doing for Chicky is a job. I’ll do it as well as I can, but it’s not my real work.”

“What is?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your real work. What’s the new book?”

Oh, God
. “I can’t talk about it yet. That’s why I’m doing this biography for Chicky. So I can make enough money to finish my novel.”
Or finally start it
.

Show Biz nodded knowledgeably. “Yeah, when you’re doing your creative thing, you’ve got to have a day job to cover the bills.”

That was when I realized Chicky hadn’t paid me. I had the contract we’d signed safely tucked away in my purse, but in the flurry of saying good-bye, somehow we’d forgotten my check. I thought about running back to Yorkville House to ask her for it, but that seemed pushy. She’d forgotten it. I knew old people could be touchy about memory loss, and I didn’t want to embarrass her. I decided to phone her when I got home and remind her. Very gently.

CHAPTER 10

Chicky wasn’t embarrassed at all when I called to remind her that I was not yet a paid employee. “Doll Face, at my age I’m lucky if I can remember the day of the week,” she growled over the phone. “I figure I’m ahead of the game if I can come up with the president’s name.” She paused for dramatic effect. “It’s Roosevelt—right?” We both chuckled. Then she said, “Seriously, I’m glad you called. I wanted to say something about the book.”

“Of course.”

“It’s a love story. That’s what it’s really about.”

I sighed. I’m sure there are people less qualified to write a love story than I am—the late Jack the Ripper, for instance, and that vicious guy who judges people on
American Idol
—but I’m definitely in the bottom tenth percentile. I mean, check out my track record.

“‘A love story,’” I repeated. “Thanks for the heads-up. I can’t wait to get started.”

Right after I go play in the traffic in Times Square
.

But after I’d hung up, I lay back on my bed and thought about the time when I was a romantic. Back when I was kid. Back when my parents were still together. I was a true believer back then.

MY PARENTS WERE
married when Alexandra was nineteen and Dad was twenty-two. Alexandra was the oldest daughter of a prosperous Greek American family that had moved from the Bronx to Riverdale after World War II. Dad—Nathaniel Townsend Sewell III—was the only son of the impoverished wing of a powerful wasp clan that had migrated from Massachusetts to Manhattan sometime after the War of 1812. Grandpa Karras was a truck driver who built himself a small empire of parking lots, garages, and a fleet of moving vans by working eighty hours a week until a month before he died. Grandpa Sewell lost most of his tiny trust fund playing baccarat and drinking at the Yale Club. What he didn’t lose, he took with him when he deserted his wife and son for parts unknown before Dad turned five. There is no record of Grandpa Sewell ever working at anything.

When young Nathaniel hit puberty, the Sewells called the family to an emergency session to discuss what should be done with him. Dad rated this concern because he was the only son of the clan’s only son and therefore the sole male left to carry on the Sewell name. It was decided that he must be properly groomed to take his place in the world. In Sewell terms this meant immediate removal from his mother’s care—and her dingy East Side apartment—to the school that had been educating Sewell men since the American Revolution: Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, known simply as Andover to the initiated. Here Nathaniel would pick up the basic tenets of muscular Christianity before proceeding on to Yale—another Sewell tradition—where he
would forge the friendships that would guarantee him a well-paying gig upon graduation and entrée into all the right social circles. This was how it had always been done in Dad’s family, and no one saw any reason for a change.

There was one hitch in this scheme, however. There was no way Dad’s mother, Harriet, could afford this pricey regimen of higher learning on her salary as an elevator girl at Saks. The family, which had totally ignored her financial plight up to that moment, was going to have to provide. Two of Dad’s maiden aunts were assigned to pick up his tuition at both Andover and Yale—possibly this punishment was imposed on them for not producing heirs of their own—and it was further decreed that when Dad began his freshman year at college, another cousin would take him to Tripler’s on Madison Avenue to purchase the navy blue suit, three white cotton shirts, and two silk ties required by all Sewell males attending Yale. Dad would also be given a small check for the rest of his clothes and told to spend it wisely at the Gentlemen’s Resale Shop, also on Madison Avenue. Money for his clubs and fraternity would be sent to him as needed by another, even more distant cousin.

The family made it clear that in return for all this largesse, my father was supposed to avoid following in his father’s footsteps. He was to make a success of his years at prep school and college. This meant maintaining grades that did not go too far above or below a gentleman’s C—no one wanted either a grind or a dummy in the family—and dating the kind of discreetly well-pedigreed girl who could someday become the mother of another generation of Sewells. Instead, Dad never got less than an A in any of his courses and began going out with my highly unacceptable mother in his junior year of college.

His own mother, Harriet, was responsible for this disaster—not directly; she was a timid soul who would never have dreamed
of defying her terrifying in-laws—but she had been the cause all the same. It had happened one warm Saturday in August when she was manning the middle elevator at Saks Fifth Avenue. Just as she had stopped the car and was about to announce Ladies’s Lingerie, she felt dizzy—it was probably the heat and the fact that she had skipped breakfast—and passed out. My mother happened to be on the elevator that day, shopping for her college wardrobe. It should probably be noted that this excursion represented a major victory for young Alexandra. She was the first Karras female to go beyond high school, and her father had been against it on the grounds that higher learning would turn her into an old maid. Mother had worn him down in a battle that had lasted over two years. So even though she hadn’t yet morphed into a feminist crusader, the signs for the future were clearly there.

And anyone who knew her could have predicted that when the elevator operator—my grandmother Sewell—slid to the floor in front of her, Alexandra would spring into action. Dropping her packages, she knelt next to the woman and administered first aid as she had learned it in a lifesaving class at summer camp. After Harriet had come around, she was still rather wobbly, so Alexandra escorted her to the office of the store’s manager and demanded that someone take her home immediately. The manager agreed to give Harriet the rest of the day off, but he drew the line at paying for a taxi. She could take the bus, he said. Furious, Alexandra called for the limo her father always provided for her, when she left the safety of Riverdale for the big city, and insisted on hauling the now totally mortified Harriet back to the apartment she shared with her son.

My father, Nate, was working nights that summer, so he was home when his mother and mine burst through the door of Harriet’s small fourth-floor walk-up. When I was a child I liked to picture Alexandra as she must have looked to him at that moment.
She wasn’t a pretty woman by the standards of her day—her nose was too long and her mouth was too full—but her blue eyes were gorgeous and, indignant as she was, they must have been shooting fire. Her cheeks would have been flushed to the deep rose color that sets off her eyes perfectly, and her mass of red-brown hair had probably escaped from the combs she used to hold it back. When she’s angry, and her cause is righteous, my mother can be compelling in a way that goes beyond mere beauty. And my father—with his hazel eyes, blond hair, and patrician features—was always a knockout. So that was what they saw that first time, a passionate girl and a knockout. When I was a kid I was sure it was love at first sight.

Of course, Pete always said I overdid it. “You’re trying to make them into some kind of fantasy,” he used to say. But damn it, they
were
one. At least, that’s what I wanted to believe.

Their families weren’t happy about the relationship. The Sewells held another of their famous summits, this time with Dad in attendance. It was pointed out that the family had invested a considerable amount of cash in him and it had certain expectations, which did not include a girl who did not know it was vulgar to say one was “at Yale,” because everyone who was anyone said “in New Haven.” Dad’s response to that piece of old
WASP
snottiness was to quit Yale and go to work selling cars. See what I mean about true love? The guy gave up an Ivy diploma for her!

Alexandra’s father shouted and threatened, but in the end he gave his daughter a wedding. This time it was his wife who went to the mat with him. The truth was, Alexandra often got her own way in the Karras family because her softhearted stepmother felt so sorry for her. Not only had Alexandra’s birth mother died when she was only three, but after her death not one member of the woman’s family had attempted to contact Alexandra. What was even sadder—as far as Grandma Karras was concerned—was that
the poor little girl didn’t even look like the rest of the Karras family.

Alexandra’s mother had been fair; she was probably of English or Irish descent, although there might have been some German mixed in, and Alexandra’s blue eyes and red-brown hair set her apart from her dark-eyed, dark-haired father, stepmother, and half brothers.

“I’m a mutt!” young Alexandra would weep when she wanted something. “I don’t belong in this family. No one understands me!” And Grandma Karras would bend over backward to make her feel loved.

So it should have been no surprise that when my mother announced her intention to marry a man who was not Greek Orthodox and Grandpa Karras threw a tantrum, Grandma Karras fought for Alexandra in a way that she never would have for either of her sons. And Grandma Karras and Alexandra won.

The actual wedding was a simple affair—Grandma Karras believed in quitting when she was ahead. The wardrobe Alexandra had collected for her first year at college became her trousseau. The ceremony was held at her church, and Harriet was the only Sewell to attend the festivities. Even she ducked out before everyone went back to the Karras home for lunch. There are no wedding pictures that I know of. Still, the newlyweds were happy in the beginning. I believed that for years—no matter what Pete said.

I OPENED MY
eyes. It was six o’clock, time for dinner. I try to tell myself that I’ve moved on from my childhood, and in most ways I have. But I guess we never really get past certain things, because the pillow was damp. Which seemed to suggest that I’d been crying. Just a little.

CHAPTER 11

The next day I wanted to get an early start, so I dragged Annie out of the apartment at the crack of dawn. Actually, it was only the crack of dawn for Annie and me because we’d been keeping vampire hours; for the rest of Manhattan it was just morning. Which meant, when we stepped into the elevator, we were sharing it with a nanny, a kid in a stroller, and another woman, who was dressed for work and had a minuscule Yorkie on a leash. The nanny was carrying on a conversation sotto voce on her cell phone, and as the elevator door closed, the Yorkie’s mistress and I exchanged one of those awkward smiles New Yorkers do when they’re trapped in a tight space with strangers. This polite silence was shattered after a few seconds by the Yorkie, who, with a shrill declaration of war, launched itself at Annie. The following dialogue ensued, pretty much simultaneously.