The Widow Waltz (9 page)

I
consider it a triumph that my family of three has dodged Christmas—yesterday—which neither Ben nor I was raised to celebrate. That is why, perhaps, it became his fetish, no goose or Norway spruce too large, no holly sprig or tinsel wisp too slight. Every year I sent out six dozen cards engraved with a carefully chosen religious-neutral greeting featuring a black-and-white photograph of the Silver-Waltz family. Our clan became a vision of orthodontic splendor grinning from mantels across the land. I squeeze my eyes tight against the memory. It horrifies me to think of the spectacle, the expense.

This year there were no festivities. I sent regrets to invitations and quashed our own born-again tradition, as well. On the Sunday night before Christmas one hundred of our closest friends used to crowd the apartment for Ben’s glogg, my Kansas City chili, and Opal’s bûche de noël, a cavalcade of marzipan and rummy buttercream guaranteed to fatten our gang for the winter. The presents? I am trying not to think of either the gifts or the orgy I made of wrapping them with a cascade of organdy ribbons and my navy blue paper, starchy stiff. Yes, I had a signature paper, ordered in bulk from Charleston, South Carolina.

Truly, I was a risible creature, hostage to a religious holiday to which I had no claim. With Ben gone, I’ve done a pretty fair job of leaping right past it. Except for Fred and Opal’s checks, I have pushed my Scroogeness to a craggy low, even taking a pass on the ritual that Ben and I instituted when Nicola and Luey were in middle school: volunteering on Christmas Eve at a homeless shelter. I signed us up this year, but when the moment arrived. I was too forlorn to go. The girls came through, at least, making me proud but shamed by my absence as well as my paltry donation. Lady Bountiful gone frugal.

“Mother,” Luey says. Her voice is shrill, which is what it takes to rouse me from my funk. “If you sit for one minute more with that crab face, I’m suing you for maternal malpractice.”

She has an open-and-shut case. In a rare show of solidarity, Cola and Luey had pleaded for a tree, a wreath, or at least a lone poinsettia. Perhaps I was wrong to deny them. Self-righteousness used to top my chart of most despised traits, but self-pity is gaining and the current me has become a bore.

“Luey, what do you say we take our stroll tonight?” I ask, since there’d also been no window gazing this year.

I had always looked forward to our walkabout where we sized up the city’s holiday displays. We’d start with the flashy commerciality of Macy’s, proceed to the prim sweetness of Lord & Taylor, then hike north to the Rockefeller Center skating rink before we scoped out Saks. There, one of the girls would say, reliably, “This sucks” or, “I’m freezing,” but I never allowed family members to break ranks. Not that the weather wasn’t chilling and the crowds weren’t thick. I, for one, got a second wind as we progressed to the peacock opulence of Bergdorf, where I scrutinized each diorama as if it were priceless art. Those windows were my secret blankie and my family indulged me as I
ooh
ed and
aah
ed over every feather, dripping crystal, vintage leather suitcase, velvety gown, and taxidermy ostrich. Only after a good twenty minutes of adulation would I give our group the green light to hike east to the painful cleverness of Barney’s.

“Yes, I am definitely in the mood for a long walk,” I say, putting on a smile and noticing that I have devoured two slices of a gift sent by Wally, fruitcake, which I don’t even like.

I am enjoying the grin that flashes on Luey’s face when Nicola joins us. Had daily exposure to her Uncle Stephan terrified her into skipping meals? Cheekbones have emerged in her rounded face and her stomach appears to be ironed flat, though maybe it’s the contrast to her sister that makes this apparent. Luey isn’t showing yet—by her calculation, she is only seven weeks pregnant—but I see a softness that becomes her, though I am keeping that observation to myself, waiting for my opening. All I know is that Luey has been “weighing her options,” and that I found a drugstore bag that contained prenatal vitamins. The profound explanation for my daughter’s rosy glow tops a lengthy list of untouchable topics: their father, our dashed security, the fact that by mid-January our apartment is going on the market along with the house in the country, Fred’s termination and Opal’s vastly reduced hours, how long Nicola will work for Stephan, whether Luey will be returning to Stanford next semester, and how, if she does, I will find the tuition.

We can’t talk so we may as well walk.

“Did I hear you say you want to check out the windows?” Nicola asks, balancing on the edge of an armchair.

Within the carefully cultivated voice of this woman in her twenties I hear the child. I can see an eight-year-old Cola in flannel pajamas eating cookies after we finish decorating the tree. Ben is lifting her to the top, the angel in her hand. Where is that angel? In tearing apart the apartment I don’t recall seeing any of the yuletide trappings, but trying to solve this peculiar mystery is a distraction that tonight I will force myself to deny.

Maybe I need a little Christmas after all. “Get your coats before I come to my senses,” I say. “I am having a spasm of cheer.”

“I’m in!” Luey shouts. She pulls on her Uggs, sleeping like lazy puppies beneath the coffee table, and saunters to the closet, where she stuffs her hair under a peaked knit cap and slips into Ben’s black down jacket. Nicola bundles herself into a red toggle coat that I haven’t seen in years. As she artfully winds an orange scarf around her neck, I grab the worn shearling jacket I use for Sadie’s outings. I consider taking her along and decide against it, in case my mood lasts long enough for us to toast this terrifying year at a real bar. I am eager to leave before I change my mind.

“That’s what you’re wearing?” Nicola chides in a tone I recognize, same as that which I suspect I inherited from my own mother.

“Take me as you get me.”

“Where’s your sheared mink?”

“Keep up, Cola,” Luey says. “Georgia took that beast to the Ritz Thrift Shop three weeks ago.”

“No!”

“Yes,” I say, with no regrets. After I returned from the beach, I went on a tear, ditching the furs and bringing baubles to Stephan. It felt strangely liberating to begin stripping away, although it might be weeks or months or never before I see a dime from the consignments.

“Nana’s black broadtail, too?” Nicola asks, her jaw dropping.

“No, darling, I saved that one for you.” Only Nicola fits into this fanciful garment with its bracelet sleeves and tricky frog closures, a coat strictly for show, not warmth, not unlike my mother.

“Well, then,” she says, half smiling.

“Well, then,” I say, reaching for my key.

Two hours later, we have completed our rounds, ending at Barney’s, which we declare to be even more arch than ever. The air has the damp smell of snow. I find myself telling my daughters, “I’m glad you talked me into this.” This is true. “And I’m not in the mood to go home yet.”

“Neither am I,” Nicola says. I see her hesitate. “We could stop at the Pierre.”

“Definitely not dressed for the Pierre,” I counter.

In unison, both daughters sigh, and say, “Not the Plaza,” which has renovated away its
Eloise
-esque appeal to resemble any upscale condo complex from Atlanta to Santa Barbara.

“There’s the hamburger joint at the hotel on Fifty-seventh Street,” I say, despite the fact that Ben considered it our neighborhood diner, a no-name, grease-spattered rec room knockoff tucked behind thick red curtains, the Parker Meridien’s idea of caprice. Ben said it reminded him of the places he went to as a kid in Philadelphia.

“Okay with me,” Nicola says.

“I have a much, much better idea,” Luey says.

“Not a hansom cab, please.” A weary horse would make me weep.

“Or beer,” Nicola adds.

“St. Patrick’s,” Luey announces, pleased.

“The cathedral?” her sister asks.

“Is there a bar by that name?”

“Why?” Nicola wants to know.

“I like the place,” Luey says. “I find it soothing.”

The things you don’t know about your children. It touches me that my prickly girl wants soothing. Which is why I say, “Let’s go.”

In ten minutes we find ourselves entering the Gothic, marble-clad oasis, and I am sorry the word
awesome
has been co-opted and forever tarnished. The grand cathedral is quietly swelled with visitors. Many are marveling at the soaring arches and vaulted ceiling, the dozens of red-ribboned wreaths hung high, marching toward the distant nave, and the jewel-hued stained glass, the vastness of it all. Others kneel or sit in pews, one by one or in small groups. I hear the echo of a soft sob, and from somewhere far off, holiday music. I am not sure what to do or where to go within this holy, humbling place of worship that I don’t wish to treat as if it were a hasty pit stop on a traveler’s agenda.

“Mother, I’m going to light a candle,” Luey says. She gestures toward banks of burning lights. In the dark, they look like a distant village illuminated against a midnight sky.

“Honey, really. I don’t think that’s right.” It’s one thing to appropriate Santa, another to brazenly trespass on the hallowed. But my daughter has already moved toward the candles.

“Who do you think she’s going to pray for?” Nicola whispers.

“Your father, I suppose,” I say and shrug. My gut tells me that Luey has confided nothing in her sister, and that she will be praying for the decision she apparently hasn’t made.

“I’m going to light a candle for him, too,” Nicola says after a minute of silence.

I put my hand on her sleeve. She removes it, and half a minute later Nicola is standing next to Luey. My daughters glance to their right and left to size up the protocol before they each kindle a white taper.
No harm done,
I hear Ben say to me.
No harm done
.

Everyone seeking refuge within this fatherly enclosure must have a story of grief and loneliness, but I am thinking only of mine. Plain and simple, I miss Ben. He is gone, my husband who has left me trembling with fear. I hate that he can’t respond when I cry out to him at night, both sleeping and awake. I want explanations and ledgers, anecdotes and apologies. As much as I worry about what has happened to me, in my heart I cannot wholly despise Ben, a man whose absent laughter and touch is more powerful than my beseeching and animosity.

I am taking the steps that a responsible woman must to swim upstream and reconstitute her life, if my state is in fact permanent. But I remain in shock, encased in an icy carapace of disbelief, and as bad as it has been, I am only now realizing it has been worse in this season of false merriment, where every ho-ho-ho feels like a jab. In a few days, the calendar will turn over to a new year. That is something for which I can honestly thank God and do, mouthing a silent prayer that ends with,
I will not cry
, which I repeat like a mantra. But the enormity of the cathedral has swallowed my self-control. I feel a tear run down my cheek, paving a salty path to the corner of my mouth.

“Georgia?”

My knees buckle and shoulders shudder. I stumble as a strong hand catches my arm.

“I thought that was you,” he says.

The face is remotely familiar.

“Chip. Chip Sharkey.”

“Ah, excuse me,” I say, spooked, as I flick away the tear. The broker and J.Crew disciple. “Of course.”

He grins. “I do the same whenever I see people out of context, which, for a salesman, is unforgivable.”

I am at a loss for a polite response, but he continues. I’d like to think this is because Chip is a kind soul who realizes he has caught me off guard. As I try to turn myself into a sociable human being, he says, “This place overcomes me, too. I always stop here this week. You?”

“Never,” slips out. “I know the cathedral mostly from my daughters renting
Spider-Man
.” I feel myself blush, sorry for my remark until a man who has appeared at Chip’s side laughs.

“I’m not a regular either,” he says. “I only know it from that James Patterson novel
.
Chip dragged me here.”

“Georgia, Nat. Nat, Georgia,” Chip says. As he turns his head from side to side, Chip’s glossy blond hair—expensively colored, definitely—reflects a spotlight. “Georgia owns a house I’m positive I’m going to sell once we’re past the holidays, and clients get real.”

“Happy to meet you.” I extend my hand. “Season’s greetings.” What English-speaking person says
Season’s greetings
? I may as well whip out a Star of David.

Had I ever considered what Chip Sharkey’s partner might look like, it wouldn’t have been someone this rumpled, in cords with shaggy salt-and-pepper hair and the sort of thick, black glasses I associate with serial killers. That my real estate broker has attached himself to such an unmade bed of a guy makes me actually notice Chip, who up until now has been merely a functional widget in my life. It also makes me like him.

“Are you in the city for the week?” I direct the remark at Chip.

“I’m the city guy,” Ned-or-Nick answers. “Chip’s the houseguest.”

“The guest who makes the party happen, I might add.”

“This is true. Without Chip’s intervention I’d spend the holidays—”

How, I’ll never know, because Chip interrupts with, “Say, why don’t you join us on New Year’s Eve? Come early or come late, but be there to watch the fireworks.” He recites a Central Park West address. I know the building, where Luey used to see a shrink named Dr. Heckler. “We look east, tenth floor.”

“Thank you—that’s so kind, but I couldn’t.” I mean that.

“Of course,” Chip says. “Why would a woman like you be free on New Year’s?”

“That’s not it. . . .” I trail off. I haven’t let myself think about New Year’s, an evening that Ben and I reserved for ourselves and—when they were willing—the girls. After our family graduated from lasagna and ginger ale to pâté and champagne, Ben and I went full circle, back to a solo celebration crowned by oysters we gorged on when our daughters abandoned us for better company. While the clock struck twelve, we’d dance to “Sea of Love,” our bodies melting together as we saw out one year and greeted another. Then we’d toast our good fortune, a cocktail of health, devotion, and privilege. I’d thank Ben for giving me everything and he’d say the same to me. I wonder, what part of this was true?