The Fixer Upper (18 page)

And Ned…another huge mistake. She couldn’t even guess what was going on between them; she just knew that whatever it was, it was wrong, especially since his son hoped to get into the Hudson School.

She was a failure. She didn’t deserve a revitalized fireplace, and she certainly didn’t deserve getting one free. She couldn’t afford to be indebted to Ned, given how indebted she was to Harry and the bank. Every flake of paint Ned removed from the mantel would represent one more bit of evidence that she was a disaster. And she couldn’t kiss him ever again, because lousy mothers up to their eyeballs in debt weren’t entitled to such pleasures.

If she tried to explain, he wouldn’t understand. He didn’t seem to possess the gene for guilt. Not only wasn’t he Jewish, but he was from Vermont. Did they even know what guilt was in Vermont?

She could phone him and tell him not to come tomorrow. Right, at 11:00 p.m. He’d appreciate that.

Okay. She’d call him tomorrow, as soon as she got home from work—except that as soon as she got home from work she’d have to interrogate Reva. And if Reva lied to her again…She couldn’t bear to consider that possibility.

She turned off the lamp, said goodbye to her fireplace with its layers of thick white paint and trudged to her bedroom, certain she wouldn’t sleep.

She wound up not calling him. The one time she’d tried to phone him on the job, a few days ago, he’d never bothered to call her back. That was then, this was now, but she didn’t want to open herself up to getting not called back again. The woman who’d taken her message last time would recognize her voice. She’d think,
This is the ditz who keeps calling Ned
.

Libby didn’t call him after work, either. The admissions committee included two teachers and generally didn’t meet until after their teaching hours, which meant they didn’t convene until three-fifteen. The first ten minutes of their allotted time was consumed by filling their mugs with coffee and arguing whether three-fifteen was too late in the day to ingest caffeine. Once they’d finished stirring and sipping and bickering, they would review the applicant pool so far, the numbers of openings and the tenor of the kindergarten class they hoped to assemble for next year. That discussion generally continued until at least five o’clock. It didn’t leave a spare second to phone Ned.

By the time she staggered into her apartment, her brief
case bulging and her left hand barely able to close around a thick stack of mail, much of it Christmas catalogs from companies that sold sterling-silver martini sets, ergonomic neck pillows, fleece blankets featuring patterns of mallard ducks and other such luxuries that Libby would never be able to buy because she’d already committed herself to crushing debt, it was nearly six. She was exhausted, yet her heart raced. Would Reva be home? Would she lie to Libby about how she’d spent her afternoon? Would Libby call her on it? Would Ned arrive ninety minutes from now to find the two of them dead on the floor with their hands wrapped tightly around each other’s necks?

Reva waltzed out of her bedroom, looking far too cheerful for someone who’d been grounded. Libby faked a smile. “Hi, sweetie. What have you been up to?”

“Homework,” Reva said. She looked far too cheerful for someone who’d been doing homework, too, but Libby couldn’t give her the third degree. There had to be some trust, even if Libby didn’t trust Reva at all these days.

In fact, Reva remained suspiciously bubbly and chipper as she helped Libby prepare dinner—without being asked. She talked about her solo, about how important singing was, about how she was convinced the world would be a more peaceful place if everyone sang at least once a day. “Like at the U.N.,” she explained, “you’d get all those delegates singing ‘I’m With You’ at the top of their lungs, and by the end, they’d all love one another.”

“‘I’m With You’?” Libby asked as she slid a pan of chicken pieces under the broiler.

“It’s a song by Avril Lavigne,” Reva told her.

Levine,
Libby thought. A nice Jewish girl, so how bad could the song be? Still, while she was in this not-trusting-Reva phase, she ought to listen to what Reva was listening to, just to be sure her music of choice didn’t
contain lyrics offering instructions on how to run away from home.

Over dinner, Reva chattered happily about the dance committee, about her stepmother’s promise to buy her a new outfit to wear when she sang her solo, about Ashleigh Goldstein’s conviction that organized sports were a metaphor for militarism and about the unit on electricity her science class had just begun. Libby wondered vaguely what ever happened to the unit on dead leaves. If Reva ever did a project with those leaves she collected, Libby hadn’t heard about it.

They were washing dishes when the doorman buzzed them to announce Ned’s arrival. So much for calling him and canceling tonight’s visit. Let him fuss with her fireplace. Let him make his dream of it come true. She’d review applicant files, or maybe thumb through the glossy catalogs that had been crammed into her mailbox, and familiarize herself with all the gifts she couldn’t afford.

Her doorbell rang as she propped the last dish in the drying rack. Reva, being unnervingly helpful, said, “I’ll get it.” Libby thanked her, relieved to have a moment to collect herself before she had to face Ned.

Collect herself? Ha. She had about as good a chance of collecting herself as a colander had of collecting water. She scooped up her poise, only to watch it dribble out of her through a million tiny holes in her ego.

“Hi, Reva.” Ned’s voice spun through the apartment. He had an absurdly sexy voice, Libby acknowledged with a sigh. The last time she’d seen him, she’d kissed him. Since then, her life had turned inside out and she’d botched everything, and she was losing her daughter, and she was broke.

“Mom?” Reva sang out. “Mr. Donovan and his son are here.”

Ned had brought his son? Well, why not? He shouldn’t have to pay for a babysitter when he wasn’t even charging Libby for this job. She dried her hands on the dish towel, noticed her unpolished nails, wondered whether her hair was as shabby as her hands…and then screwed her courage and emerged from the kitchen.

He was more attractive than she remembered, even with his son standing right next to him in the foyer. Clad in jeans, work boots, his denim jacket and a lumpy wool scarf that appeared to have been hand-knitted by someone who wasn’t very good at knitting, Ned carried a large canvas duffel. She tried to imagine the tools inside that bag, tried to imagine what those tools could do to her fireplace…and then lifted her gaze to his face and forgot the duffel.

Oh, God.
All she could think of was his kiss.

“Hi,” she said. “Hi.” Two times, as if her brain had stopped functioning—which, in a way, it had. Maybe Ned would assume the second “Hi” was for Eric. “Take off your coats. Can I get you anything to eat?”

“We’re here to work,” Ned said with a hesitant smile. “Actually,
I
’m here to work.” He dropped the duffel and gestured toward Eric’s compact backpack, which the boy carried slung over one shoulder. “Eric brought some stuff to keep himself busy. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” she said, forcing herself to play her role as the proper hostess even as her brain clung stubbornly to her memory of kissing Ned. “If you’d like, Eric, you can watch TV or use the computer.”

“I’d like to use the computer,” Eric said politely. “I’ve got this new software I’m working on.” Not bothering to remove his jacket, he carried his backpack into the den.

Reva approached Libby. “If you want me to keep an eye on him, ten dollars—”

“I’m not paying you to sit for him.” Libby cut her off. “Ned and I aren’t going out.”
Because if we go out, we might kiss again, and that can’t happen.

Scowling, Reva pivoted on her heel and stomped down the hall.

“What software is Eric going to put on my computer?” Libby asked.

Ned shrugged, then removed his jacket and unwound the scarf from his neck. “Something illegal, I think.”

From the corner of her eye, Libby noticed Reva pausing halfway down the hall.
Illegal
had apparently caught her interest.

“What kind of illegal software?” Libby asked. “Are the MP3 police going to break down the door and take me away?”

“He’s been playing with a bootleg copy of some software you can use to create Web sites. He and his buddies have been making silly Web sites for whoever they don’t like.” Ned handed her the jacket, and she remembered she was supposed to hang it up. “Fortunately,” he went on, “he doesn’t have any Web space, so he can’t post the Web sites publicly. If he did, we’d all be in trouble. And his after-school sitter would probably quit.”

“He doesn’t like her?”

“He doesn’t like the way she smells,” Ned answered.

Reva reversed direction and wandered into the den.

Fine, Libby thought. Let the kids make phony Web sites using bootlegged software. Let Ned stop staring at her with his seductive blue eyes and get to work on her fireplace. Let Libby hide in the dining room, surrounded by walls of file folders.

“Rough few days, huh,” Ned said.

Damn. He was going to get personal. And she was going to do something embarrassing, like cry. “I’m okay,” she said, sounding about as okay as a prisoner discussing the fit
of her blindfold in front of a firing squad. He continued to stare at her, and she smiled and backed toward the dining room. “I’ve got tons of work to do, so I’ll just stay out of your way. Give a holler if you need anything.” Before he could stop her, she escaped to the cluttered dining-room table.

She sat in the chair nearest the window, which overlooked an airshaft. Her ghostly reflection in the dark pane informed her that yes, her hair was as poorly groomed as her hands. The cardigan of the sweater set she’d worn all day was slightly askew.

Turning her back to the window, she picked up the folder closest to her, opened it and shuddered. It contained the application materials of Samantha McNally, the pint-size soprano who’d submitted the CD on which she’d tackled Puccini and taken him down.

From the living room drifted an interesting assortment of sounds: a zipper, the rustle of heavy cloth, a tapping. The clank of tools, more tapping. “Libby, I’m going to open a window,” Ned called to her. “It’s cold out, but when I’m using a solvent, I need the ventilation.”

“Go right ahead,” Libby hollered back.

She hunched over Samantha’s application, but the words danced across the page, a blur of neat print. The famous aria from
Madama Butterfly
resounded inside Libby’s head, but unfortunately, the rendition she heard was Samantha’s, not Maria Callas’s. The shiver that spun down her back Libby blamed on the window Ned had opened, not her tattered mood.

“Wow,” she heard Ned say, followed as closely as an echo by Reva murmuring, “Wow.”

Libby folded Samantha’s file shut, shoved away from the table and marched to the living room, hugging her cardigan more tightly around her as the chilly night air struck her. She’d expected to see Reva watching Ned and exclaiming
over whatever he’d been wowing about, but Reva was still in the den. Her wow must have had something to do with Eric’s software.

Libby had no idea what Ned’s was about. He had draped a thick white drop cloth across the floor in front of the fireplace and inside it, and he knelt half in and half out of the opening. An assortment of ratty old towels, a square of steel wool and a tinted glass bottle lay within reach.

The man sure knew how to fill a pair of jeans, Libby thought. Considering what a lousy mother she was, she had no right to think such a thing, but she couldn’t help herself. “Why did you say wow?” she asked.

Ned ducked his head out from under the fireplace arch and smiled up at her. “Come here,” he said, extending his hand. “You’ve got to see this.”

Once again, he was dragging her into the fireplace with him. Once again she was going to wind up pressed close against him. Maybe the fireplace represented hell. Maybe Ned was Satan. Except she didn’t really believe in hell or the devil. As Gilda had once put it, “There’s no such thing as heaven or hell. There’s only
naches
and
tsores.”

Joining Ned in the fireplace qualified as
tsores.
But he was waiting for her, and running away would be rude. To say nothing of ridiculous.

She eased herself onto the cloth, carefully smoothing her tailored wool slacks over her knees, and tilted her head to peer inside the fireplace. Ned had used the solvent to remove a large swath of paint from the inner trim. He aimed his flashlight at the cleaned area, and Libby saw the long expanse of green marble, silky smooth and rippling with veins.

The marble definitely merited a wow. She tried to utter one, but her voice caught in her throat.

Ned drew her against his chest. She would have resisted if she’d had any balance, but given her position, she tum
bled right into his arms. “I’m not attacking you,” he whispered. “Just tell me what the hell is going on.”

They were inside a fireplace. Their offspring were in the next room, wowing over the computer. Ned’s chest felt too warm in the cold room, too solid. His arm felt too possessive. And she was supposed to tell him what the hell was going on?

“I’m a terrible mother,” she whispered back. “I’ve applied for a mortgage as big as the
Titanic.
I’m beholden to my ex-husband because he’s contributing the down payment. I’m buried under applications to the Hudson School.”
And all I want is to kiss you,
she almost added.

“You’re not a terrible mother.” His breath ruffled her hair with each syllable he spoke.

“I am. Reva is lying to me. She’s rebelling. She’s—”

“A teenager,” he said. “They’re supposed to do that.”

“Eric doesn’t do that. He’s so well behaved.”

“He isn’t a teenager yet.” Ned’s hand moved gently on her upper arm, as if he could stroke her back to equanimity. “But you’re right. He’s well behaved. Remember that while you dig yourself out from under all those applications.”

She was tempted to elbow him in the gut; positioned as they were, it wouldn’t have been hard. But his caress
was
stroking her back to equanimity. She hadn’t felt this good since…