The Widow Waltz (22 page)

O
n Monday, Stephan calls at eight, an hour earlier than he usually arrives. “Good news and bad,” he says.

“Good first.” It is a new week, after all.

“I’m ninety-five percent sure the ring in my vault is absolutely the one Ben showed me.”

“And the ring I saw?”

“You had to be mistaken.”

Is my mind sufficiently muddled that I imagined the ring on Naomi’s finger?
Cut yourself some slack,
I say to myself.
You’re under pressure, girl.
With scant conviction I am willing to admit—only to myself—that perhaps I made a false assumption.

“The bad news?” I ask, though the ring business is bad, or at least strange.

“We’re missing a small diamond necklace here, last seen around your daughter’s neck.”

Classic Stephan, quick to accuse. I bristle. “I’m sure Nicola simply forgot about it and you’ll see the necklace when she arrives at work.” Her day starts at 8:45. Stephan rarely arrives this early on a Monday, when he drives from Pennsylvania.

“Let’s hope you’re right,” he says, dialing down his wrath by an atom or two. “And I have some other news.”

“Good or bad?”

“You tell me,” my brother says. “I checked the calendar and there’s a new appointment that must have been scheduled late on Friday. It’s your Naomi McCann. She’ll be here at four.”

W
hen Nicola arrived at the shop a half hour earlier than usual, Stephan said, “Good morning,” as she popped her head in to greet him. “How was your weekend, Nicola dear?”

No icy disapproval! “Uneventful,” she said, relieved. “Did Daniel get back?”

“He did. Late last night.”

As if she were in a Pilates class, Nicola started to unclench, muscle by muscle. She pushed a smile onto her face. “Did he find all sorts of promising painters in Italy?”

Her uncle leaned back in his chair and linked his thin, patrician fingers over his navy pinstripe vest. “Never mind Daniel. Is there something you want to tell me?”

Nicola felt a twinge of panic, but took pride in her recovery. “There is—I made a new appointment at the end of the day. A Mrs. McCann is coming in at four.”

“I noticed.” Uncle Stephan knit his eyebrows so tightly his face looked like a fist. “Anything else?”

Nicola attempted to keep her voice as neutral as the beige dress she’d worn in an attempt to render herself invisible. Two alternatives had occurred to her. Admitting the truth was one.

“Such as?”

“I’m speaking of the missing necklace.” He was speaking of it in an exceptionally imperious tone.

“Really? What necklace?”

He leaned forward in his chair, his fist-face even tighter. “Nicola Silver-Waltz, you’re talking to me. The heart adorning your neck on Friday.”

“But I put it in the safe before I left.” The lie popped out as if her father was a ventriloquist, though Ben Silver would have fabricated a plausible and amusing story by now.

“Show it to me, please.” Stephan rose slowly and stood next to Nicola, making her despise the unearned advantage of tall people, able to lord over lesser human beings. “Let’s open the safe together.”

As they marched to the back room, his keys jangled to the beat of her hammering heart. I’ve really done it, she thought. This is not an incidental hiccup.

Stephan opened the safe, going straight for the black leather box in the front, which he snapped open showily to reveal nothing. “May I suggest that we were not robbed?” he said. “That you still had the necklace on when you left the office? That you are prevaricating, right now. This disappoints me. The necklace is either lost or . . .” Mercifully, he didn’t complete his sentence and merely shrugged.

Nicola arched her back and lifted her chin, trying to muster the pique her grandmother might demonstrate if accused, even justly. Her uncle glowered. Nicola returned the glare as she soundlessly counted to ten.

“I have given you my trust, which you have abused.” Uncle Stephan
tsk-tsk
ed as he nodded. “If you return the necklace, there will be no questions asked. If not, we shall continue this conversation when you care to tell the truth.”

He left the room, his pallbearer demeanor intact.

“N
o, you cannot be here when Mrs. McCann comes for her appointment.” Stephan is emphatic. “That’s an inane request.”

“I need to know why she wants to see you.”

“I imagine the visit is for one of the usual reasons, to buy or to sell, but your daughter—who, by the way, has not as yet come clean about the whereabouts of a certain missing necklace—neglected to ask when she set up the appointment, though frankly it doesn’t matter because I’m not without curiosity myself and have more than a prurient interest in this woman.” Thanks to years of acting lessons and a brief flirtation with voice-over artistry, Stephan delivers this speech without taking a noticeable breath.

“What if I were out of sight?”

“I won’t have my place of business turned into a French farce. You can depend on me to call as soon as the woman leaves, and in the meantime, talk sense into your daughter.”

Since no law prevents a customer from perusing magazines in the newsstand of the lobby where S. Waltz makes its home, it takes profound restraint not to drive into the city and swan about like an aging Bond girl while keeping one eye on the people coming and going. Instead, I prevail on Nicola.

“Did Uncle Stephan put you up to calling me?” she hisses into the phone.

“What’s this nonsense about a necklace?”

“It’s gone missing.”

“All on its own?”

“I wore it home and misplaced it.” This is the daughter who I considered to be the responsible one.

“Tell your uncle the truth.” I try to be gentle. “He deserves that—he’s been good to you.”

“Mother, how could I make this mistake?”

She is weepy, but all my edges feel rough and, possibly for the first time in my life, I am not in the mood to console another living soul. “Cola, forgive me, but you’ll have to solve this problem on your own. I know you can.”

“I hear you,” she says, contrite.

“And I have a favor to ask, please. Later on a Mrs. McCann has an appointment, correct?”

“How did you know that?” Curiosity is besting her.

“I recommended Stephan to her.” God forgive me for lying. “Will you let me know when she arrives and leaves?”

“What’s this customer to you? Am I supposed to say hello from you or something?”

“God, no.”

“Mother, you’re weirding me out.”

“I’ll explain later.” If there’s anything to say. “Don’t worry.”

The day passes with the illusion of time-lapse photography’s crawl. I should be visiting my mother—I haven’t seen her for weeks—but I’m too overwrought for that particular persecution, so I move down the food chain of personal pogroms and call Wally.

“No new developments,” he says after an incantation of arcane legalese . . .
burden of proof . . . testamentary
capacity . . . judgment debtor . . . be it resolved.
 . . . terms that must mean
I’m clueless.
“I won’t be charging you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he adds, rather sheepishly.

“I didn’t think you would”—because you’d know I wouldn’t pay you.

On to Daniel. “Amazing trip. In Siena I ate a dish called
scottiglia
—rabbit, lamb, possibly gophers—cooked with the best olive oil in the world,” he says. “I’m bringing you a bottle. And I signed four artists, all brilliant; I’ll tell you about them this weekend. And you? Give me a quick download.”

“I’ve figured out if I pretend to be brave, something almost like courage shows up. Does that make me a fake?”

“It makes you a philosopher,” he says. “I can’t talk now, though—I’ll drive out Saturday and you’ll fill me in.”

I invent a reason to call Nat. “For our next film, how about
Easy Virtue
?” I ask.

“There’s a concept I can get behind,” he says, sounding pleased enough to hear from me.

“By Noël Coward,” I add, but Nat, too, cannot fritter away his workday chatting and says he’ll call in the evening.

I’m hitting the low watermark, so I decide to tackle an item festering on my to-do list, to try to create a Facebook page for my college essay writing. Luey insists that this is essential. She calls what I do a business, though I don’t want to commit to having become a cog in an inequitable machine—almost everything is despicable about offering privileged students an even greater black-belt edge to get into college—and a business suggests permanence. Never mind that the checks it delivers put food on the table and help pay a mortgage.

Creating this site is, Luey promises, a “just follow the prompts” snap. But none of the directions are transparent for me, possibly the last woman in America to own both a dumb-phone and a hotmail address. I stare at the screen as I have at the dashboard of any car I’ve ever rented, wondering how the rest of the universe intuits symbols and rank-and-file directions. After two fruitless hours, I find myself defeated, slipping further and further down a cyber-hole.

This is why I had children born in the late 1980s, I remind myself. It’s time to enlist Luey. She starts happily tapping away on my keyboard while I peer over her shoulder, pointing. “You’re putting it
there
?” I ask. “What are you doing now?” “How did you do
that
?
”

After ten minutes, she growls, “Get out of my face, Ma.”

I slink away, which restores my screaming meemies, wondering what will happen with Naomi and Stephan. And it’s only two-thirty.

I grab my coat and drive to the double-coupon-every-day supermarket. I am fulminating with myself over whether it pays to buy twelve rolls of Scott tissue on sale or use my coupon for an eight-pack of Charmin when my cart gets jostled from behind. “Oh, excuse me. I’m so sorry,” I hear.

I swivel around at the familiar voice and find not just Clementine, but a passenger—small, pacifier-sucking, and wearing a red snowsuit and red-and-white polka-dot hat. My mouth says, “Clementine, what a surprise,” while my eyes dart to the child.

Clementine flushes and brushes her hair out of her face. “Hi, Mrs. Silver,” she says. “How are you?”

Wondering what your mother has in store.
“And who have we here?” I ask.

“Theo, say hello, please.” She gives the tiny arm a protective pat and the toddler opens and shuts a chubby hand.

My heart goes gooey. My legs tremble. All at once I want to scream and bolt and reach for a tiny, sticky finger so I can touch the child’s velvety skin, “Hello, Theo,” I say, crouching until we are face-to-face. “I’m so happy to meet you.”

Dimpled cheeks, a grin featuring four mini-Chicklet teeth, long-lashed cornflower blue eyes, red-blond curly wisps escaping from the hat, and creamy skin. I search for a resemblance—to Ben, to Luey, to Clem. But the child looks only pleasantly generic, as if ordered from Land’s End.

“I’m sorry, but we’re rushing. Say good-bye to the nice lady, Theo,” Clem instructs. At this, Theo—is that the name I have heard?—removes the pacifier, tosses it a few feet in front of their cart, laughs, and claps his hands. “You little rascal!” Clementine says. Tenderness nests in her voice.

The two of them continue down the aisle to retrieve the pacifier, and after Clementine puts it in her pocket, she removes another—presumably cleaner—pacifier from her bag. “So long,” she says, as they turn at the intersection of laundry detergent and macaroni. I stand transfixed, and damn myself for not asking the question I was too stunned to call out,
Is this Ben’s child?

I move on to the dairy section, scoping out the Greek yogurt, and thinking of every kid I know with a gender-neutral name—Alex, Morgan, Rory, Avery, Sasha, Gray, Calder, Harper and Jordan—and I wonder, is Theo a boy or a girl?

When I’m deciding on milk—I will spring for organic—I hear my phone. “The eagle has landed and flew into Uncle Stephan’s office,” Nicola whispers.

“What did she say?”

“Not much. I offered her water, coffee, and tea. She declined all three. Tell me again how you know this woman?”

It’s taken me fifty years to realize life does not require an answer to every question. “Will you be joining Stephan during the appointment?”

“I would if he were speaking to me.”

“Call when she leaves, please.”

Which Nicola does twenty minutes later, when I am in the middle of preparing chicken that will not be cooked with the thirty-nine-dollar-a-pound porcini mushrooms for which the recipe calls. “She left without even glancing at me.” My daughter says, sounding disappointed.

“What did Stephan say about the appointment?”

“Have you not heard me? We aren’t speaking.”

“Can you blame him?”

“I’ll transfer you to your brother.”

“I’ll get right to it,” he says. “The woman was here with a ring she wants to sell.”

“
The
ring?”

“I had some deeply disappointing news for our Mrs. McCann.” His dramatic understatement is intact. “I explained that what she owns is not inconsequential, but worth a fraction of what she’d hoped.”

“The ring isn’t the one Ben showed you?”

“Keep up. The ring in my vault trades for upwards of three-quarters of a million, not, say, twenty-five thousand like the bauble on her hand. On close inspection, I could see the stones are flawed and the setting less than fine.”

“How did she react?”

“Her skepticism was significant. I rather felt sorry for the woman, so I got out the other ring and the loupe and spent a considerable amount of time comparing the pieces. Ultimately, I believe she was convinced, and terribly taken aback. Sharoosed, if you will.”

I’m plenty sharoosed myself. “I’m stunned,” I admit.

“Not as aghast as Mrs. McCann, I assure you,” Stephan says. “I believe she came here to cash out and was looking forward to a juicy payday. Maybe she’ll get it with a fool somewhere, but she won’t get it from me.”

“So what you’re not saying, Stephan, is that the ring that came from Gem was or wasn’t the one you saw last fall? You’ve seemed so sure.” Cocksure.

As each second ticks by before my brother responds, I imagine his face flushing until it’s the color of a carnelian, one of his favorite semiprecious stones. “Georgia, I have been known to make mistakes,” he says with a deep exhale.

The value to me of that admission: priceless. “Who doesn’t?” I say.

But he quickly recovers himself. “However, I would swear on Daniel’s life that the ring in my vault is the one your husband showed me.”