Manhattan Lullaby (8 page)

Janie tried again to interrupt. “Ah, Steve …”

But Steve hadn't finished yet. “That's why I got Tony. He's my family now. Good old Tony.” He took another jolt of champagne. “It's not the same as kids, though. God, I miss my kids.”

In spite of her desire not to get involved, Janie felt a great wave of empathy rolling over her. She wanted to say something supportive, something helpful. “Couldn't you get joint custody or something so you could see them more often?”

Steve looked even more depleted. “I tried that. But how can a bachelor living in Manhattan compare with a happily married couple living in Fairfield, Connecticut, with a station wagon and a yard? The judge almost laughed me out of the court.” He sighed heavily. “I suppose I could ask for a variance on the court order, but I don't want to put the kids through that again. They've been through enough already.”

“You could always get married again and have another family,” offered Janie the optimist.

Steve shook his head. “Nope. Just ain't possible. All the good women are already taken. Besides, women these days don't wanna have kids. They wanna have careers—like Lavinia. She thinks that buying fancy clothes for all those rich social types to dazzle each other in is a worthwhile way to spend her life. She thinks that having kids is boring.” Through bleary eyes he looked down at Janie. “You wanna have kids?”

“Sure I do. One of these days.”

“You wanna marry me?” He was only half kidding.

Janie decided to concentrate on that half. “Sorry, I'm afraid I'm one of the good women who's already taken. Or at least I will be as of Saturday.”

“See what I mean?” And he knocked back the last of the champagne.

“What about Lavinia?”

“Lavinia?” Steve took a sideways glance at the voluptuous body in the violet dress. “Maybe one of these days when I get tired of resisting her efforts to get me down the aisle. Who knows? But she's too old to have kids now.”

“You could adopt.”

Steve shook his head. “It just ain't the same. A man's gotta raise his own flesh and blood, you know what I mean?”

Janie was just about to respond when a few more visual arrows darted her way from across the room. Lavinia Dodge was obviously a cum laude graduate from the if-looks-could-kill school of social graces. Janie decided she had done enough empathizing for one evening. It was time to get back to her own life. Besides, she had never been any good at archery.

She started to rise from the chair, but Steve, who had intercepted a few of the arrows himself, put his hand on her shoulder and pushed her gently back down. “Take it easy. I don't have a Sold sign on me yet. If I want to talk to you, I'll talk to you, and Lavinia can go …”

“Lavinia can what?” said Lavinia, who had approached the chair just in time to overhear Steve.

Steve, who had passed tipsy and was well on his way to a serious case of champagneitis, looked up and grinned. “Well well, if it isn't the mother of the bride.” He tried to wrap a friendly arm around her waist, but she pushed him away. “Where's the happy couple?”

Lavinia pursed her mouth, thought the better of what she was about to say and answered the question. “The bride is asleep on your chair in the den and the groom is curled up in his basket.”

“Well,” said Janie, taking the opportunity of Lavinia's intervention as her signal to leave, “I certainly hope you both enjoyed the wedding.” And she swiveled her hips sideways out of the chair to avoid coming into any closer contact with Steve and Lavinia. “Thank you for the champagne.”

“Hey, wait a minute, I'll walk you to the door,” said Steve, lurching off the arm of the chair, still clutching the empty champagne bottle.

Lavinia put a restraining hand on his forearm, but he brushed it off. “I said I'm walking her to the door,” he slurred firmly, and Lavinia released her grip and anxiously watched him go.

Having put the champagne bottle down somewhere on the way to the front hall, Steve held out Janie's coat for her.

“Sorry if I bent your ear off tonight. I don't usually drink this much.”

Pulling her scarf around her neck, Janie said, “That's O.K. We all need to bend a few ears from time to time. Just think of it as part of the service.” She put out her hand. “Well, good night, Steve.”

Steve shook her hand. “G'night.” He opened the door for her and watched her walk down the hall toward the elevators. He waited until one arrived. And then, just as she was getting on, he called after her, “You sure you're getting married on Saturday?”

“I'm sure,” she said, and the doors closed on her smile.

Chapter Seven

“Joyce?” Harry tapped lightly on the bathroom door. “Are you all right?”

“Uuuuuuurghhh!” came the moan from within, followed by the sound of retching.

“Can I get you anything?”

There was no reply. Whatever Joyce had picked up in China, she was having a really hard time with it. A moment later he heard the toilet flushing. And a few seconds after that the pale ghost of the former Joyce opened the door and tottered unsteadily into the hallway.

“God, I feel awful,” was all she said as she brushed past him and headed straight for the bedroom. Not knowing what else to do, Harry followed. He was worried and he felt helpless. He had no idea how to deal with a sick woman. Maxine had never been sick a day in the twenty-five years they had been married. Or if she had, she had kept it to herself. Thank God.

But ever since Joyce had come back from China she had been like this. And he was fast running out of ideas on how to care for her. He offered Aspirin; she refused. He made chicken soup; she said the
smell
of chicken soup made her want to vomit. He brought her washcloth and her toothbrush into the bedroom so she could clean herself up a bit and feel better, and she complained that her gums bled every time she tried to brush her teeth. All she had done other than that was alternate between bouts of crying and sleeping. And, when he had finally urged her to go to a doctor, she said she was too sick to go to a doctor and begged him to just get the hell out of the apartment and leave her alone to suffer in peace. Which, grateful there was at least
something
he could do, he had done.

Unfortunately, while his absence may have provided some peace for Joyce, it had caused him nothing but aggravation. His little sortie to the Rainbow Room, for instance, had turned out to be a very bad idea. There had been too many ghosts up there in spite of the renovations. He had let himself get carried away and Maxine had ended up calling him an emotional bigamist. And while he didn't think she was right, he wasn't sure she was totally wrong either. In fact, there weren't too many things he was sure about anymore, except that he was confused.

Joyce was lying on the bed with her eyes closed. “I think I'm dying,” she groaned as he placed a cold cloth over her fevered forehead.

“Does that mean you don't want to go to the wedding this afternoon?” asked Harry in all seriousness.

Joyce pushed the cloth aside and opened her eyes. “Are you kidding? Do you think I'm actually going to let you go to that wedding without me? Do you think I'm going to let all your relatives and friends think that just because I'm your
second
wife I don't count? That I'm not good enough to go to your son's wedding?”

“I—I—” stuttered Harry, who had not been thinking any of those things.

“Well do you?” she demanded with as much force as she could manage.

“No, Joyce, of course I don't. It's just that you're sick.” He knew he had to tread carefully now. Whatever was wrong with Joyce was certainly making her emotionally erratic. She ran the gamut from depressed to despondent to depressed, and he had learned in the few days since she had been home not to antagonize her in any way. Just go along. Agree when possible. Keep silent when not. And above all, don't offer her Chinese food.

“All I meant was, if you
want
to stay home, you can. I don't mind,” he finished lamely.

“Over my dead body,” said Joyce with determination and pulled the cold cloth back into place over her eyes.

With a sigh, Harry left the bedroom and closed the door. Let her sleep for a while. It was the best thing for her. For him too, he thought glumly and went to find the studs for his tuxedo shirt.

A hundred and fifty guests and eighty-five mink coats had gathered at the Holy Blossom Temple to witness the wedding of Janie and Bradley. But the only thing they had been able to witness so far was the anxious face of the groom and the ever-thinning line of his mother's mouth as she constantly checked her watch.

In the room where the bride was dressed and waiting, propped up against a chair because she didn't want to sit down and risk creasing her dress or losing any of the several thousand seed pearls that decorated it, another mother was looking at another watch. “Why don't we get started?” she cried, fussing with Janie's veil for the twentieth time.

“Mama, stop fussing, you're making me nervous,” pleaded Janie for the nineteenth time.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” Doris fluttered over to the window and peered out again. But all she could see was the brick wall opposite and the long grungy alleyway that led to the shaft of light where the street began. “I don't see anything,” she said, twisting her handkerchief into a knot.

Janie sighed. “Mama, relax, please. For me.”

Doris came back to where the bride was standing and rearranged the flounce on the skirt of the wedding dress, being careful of the pearls. Then she stood back and looked at her daughter. “So beautiful. My baby …” The handkerchief caught the runnel of tears before it could do any serious damage to her makeup.

“Don't cry, Mama. Please don't cry.” Janie sighed in exasperation as she reached out a comforting hand. She didn't know how much more of this she could take. Her mother was driving her crazy.

Doris snuffled back another tumble of tears. “I'm trying not to.” She sniffed again. “It's just that my baby is getting m-m-married.”

“Mo-ther,” warned Janie.

“I'm not crying,” said Doris in defense. “It's just that you're getting married and you'll never come home again, sleep in your old room, play with your toys.” She waved the damp handkerchief once to punctuate each of her expected losses.

Janie rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Mama, I'm twenty-seven years old and I've been living with Bradley for four years already, and before that I was away at college for three.”

“College doesn't count. And living with is not the same. There was always the chance you would come home again. Now you won't.” The sob stuck halfway up her throat.

“Of course I'll come home again, Mama,” said Janie soothingly. “I'll visit you.”

“Visit,” sniffed Doris. “After twenty-eight years of sacrifice, what's a visit?”

“Mama, I'm only twenty-seven,” corrected Janie.

“I'm counting the nine months of morning sickness
and
the twenty-two hours of labor.”

Janie sighed loudly. Why did it have to be like this? Why?

Doris decided she had made her point. “So, does a visit include staying for dinner?”

“Of course, Mama.” Janie smiled her relief. “How could I go the rest of my life without your cooking?”

Somewhat mollified, Doris looked at her watch again. “I'm going to see what's the problem.” And much to Janie's relief she left the room.

Just as Doris came down the hall into the synagogue, the door at the back of the temple opened, ushering in a draft of cold November air and an embarrassed Harry Kraft. The room immediately fell silent. The absence of the father of the groom was no longer meat for discussion.

Maxine, who had been waiting by the last row of pews, was at the door in a flash. “Where the hell have you been?” she hissed, though in the dead silence of the gathering it sounded more like a call to arms.

Harry fidgeted, smiled briefly at the assembled faces and tried to look as though he wasn't really late for his only son's hopefully only wedding.

“Joyce is still sick,” he hissed back at his ex-wife.

Maxine looked behind the bulk of her ex-husband for the ailing Joyce and found only a vacant space.

“She's not coming to her own stepson's wedding?”

“Of course she's coming. She just feels a little nauseated. She's outside getting a breath of air.”

“Air? We haven't got time for air. You're already forty-five minutes late.” Maxine threw up her hands. “The rabbi's getting impatient. He has another wedding at five o'clock. The bride's mother is having conniptions.” She nodded toward the recently appeared Doris, who was dabbing away the last of the moisture from her eyes.

Harry summed up the situation right away. There were three women to placate. On fuming, one crying and one vomiting. He decided to go for the best two out of three. “All right, all right, keep your voice down, Maxine. These people are here for a wedding, not a news update on the condition of the bridal party. I'll go and get her.” And he went to open the door again.

“Wait!” Maxine opened her purse and shuffled the contents around for a moment. “Here, give her these.” She held out a package of soda crackers. “If she's got an upset stomach this will help.”

Amazed, Harry took the crackers. “You carry soda crackers in your purse?”

“After twenty-five years you didn't know that?” said Maxine, shaking her head to emphasize the unbelievable extent of his ignorance.

Harry shook his head back. He knew women carried strange things in their purses, but never had he imagined that that included soda crackers.

“That's why we got divorced,” said Maxine, nodding her disappointment. “Now hurry up.” And she pushed him toward the door.