that from you, you know. Never knowing when to stop.”
That’s okay, folks, don’t mind me.
“Mar’s a big girl, Harold. She doesn’t need Daddy clucking over her like some Jewish mother.”
“Yeah, well, maybe if the Jewish mother she’s got was doing her job, I wouldn’t have to,” he says, then walks away.
I get up, making noises about getting back to my work so I can leave on time tonight—
“He would die if I left him,” Nikky says softly.
“Um…what?”
“I know what you’re thinking. That you can’t understand why I put up with his crap. Well, I put up with his crap because he needs me. And what can I tell you, it feels good to be needed.”
Okay, fine, I can buy that. To a point. Otherwise, how could I constantly deal with Tina and Luke’s string of crises? Why would I be here, for God’s sake? But there’s a difference between being needed and getting off on self-flagellation. And before I realize it’s coming, I hear myself say, “But the way you let him yell at you—”
“That’s right. I let him yell at me. Because I make the money and I bought the house in Bucks County and I’m paying for our daughter to go to NYU and yelling at me is the only way he can still feel like the protector.”
Right. A protector who constantly tears down the person he’s supposed to be protecting? I’m sorry, but this is seriously not working for me.
“Oh, ditch the outraged expression, Ellie,” Nikky says with a gravelly laugh. “It’s all…posturing. He’s never laid a finger on me. And he did put everything he had in this business when I started out. Everything. If I live to be a hundred, I will always owe him for that.” Then she looks at me, hard, like a teacher awaiting my response on an oral exam.
“So…you’re happy?”
Her laugh startles me. “God, you’re so young,” she says, and probably would have said more if her phone hadn’t rung just then. Grateful for the interruption, I scurry out of her office and back to my cubby-of-the-week, wondering how fast I can get my work done, wondering what’s up with Tina and Luke, wondering why a woman like Nikky Katz would be so willing to settle for…whatever it is she’s settling for.
And thanking my lucky stars I’m not like that.
chapter 3
The bad news is, it takes me nearly an hour to make the trek on the A train from midtown Manhattan to Richmond Hill. The good news is, our house is only a few blocks from the subway stop. And it’s at the end of the line, so if I pass out—which has happened more than once—the conductor usually gives me a poke to make sure I get off.
Except for a few months, I have lived my entire life in this neighborhood. I don’t hate it, exactly, but the place is like quicksand. The harder you fight to get out, the more it sucks you back in. I’ve watched too many of my friends from high school settle into virtually the same lives as their parents had, even if they moved to another neighborhood, to Ozone Park or Forest Hills or Jamaica. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as long as you’re sure that’s what you want.
I don’t.
And yet my entire body betrays me, sighing with relief the minute I set foot on Lefferts Boulevard. For good or ill, this is home, has been my entire life, and there’s something to be said for leaving the stresses of the city behind on the train. I can almost hear them, banging and howling as the train pulls away on the elevated tracks overhead.
I breathe in the bitterly cold, damp air as I clomp along, my toes freezing in these damn shoes (you will rarely find me in flats—without heels, I look like I’m standing in a hole). Pushing out a crystallized sigh, I pass the duplexes that were pretty much all single family homes when I was a kid, now almost all turned into apartments. Cooking smells accost me as I walk, cruelly taunting my empty stomach—East Indian, Caribbean, Asian stir-fries, the occasional whiff of something solidly middle European. We live near the end of the block, our pair of semidetached houses the same baby blue with white trim as they have been ever since I can remember. Twin front yards flank identical stoops, each just about big enough for ten blades of grass and a tub of marigolds or impatiens in the summer, although the Nyugens installed a small, gurgling fountain on their side last summer. We have a garage, in which resides a 1979 Buick LeSabre that my grandfather drives maybe three times a year, that I drive when there’s absolutely no way I can avoid it.
After my grandfather returned from the Korean War, when my father was six, he used a VA loan to buy the half that Leo, Starr and I live in now. When the Goodmans next door decided to move to Jersey in ’73, Nana and Leo bought the other side for my parents and sister, who was then a year old. The rationale was, since my father and grandfather were now partners in the shoe store over on Atlantic Avenue, why not live close to each other, too? I’ve often wondered how my mother felt about this arrangement, especially as she and my grandmother did not get along. Of course, my grandmother never got along particularly well with anybody, save for maybe my sister.
I pass Mrs. Patel’s, across the street and a couple houses down from mine, trying to remember when she first put up the plastic flamingo. Junior High, I think. Brightly illuminated by a pair of spotlights, he leans rakishly in her speck of a yard, still dressed in his Santa Claus hat.
The windows in both of our houses are lit up; a muted salsa beat throbs from the Gomez apartment, from what had been our living room when I still lived there. My gaze shifts to the other side, where I live now with my daughter and grandfather. And out of nowhere the thought comes, What if you never leave this house? What if you end up marking every season for the rest of your life by whatever outfit Mrs. Patel’s flamingo is wearing?
My blood runs cold. Home is all well and good, but your childhood home is someplace you’re supposed to be able to come back and visit, not rot in—
“Hey, you! You forget where you live or what?”
That’s Frances. Scardinare. Luke’s mother. Figures she’d get home the same time as me. Not that I don’t love Frances, but sometimes there just isn’t room in your head for anybody else.
But I smile anyway. Between Mrs. Patel’s spotlights and these damn halogens, the street’s lit up practically like it’s daytime. “Just trying to figure out if I’ve got the energy to haul my butt up these stairs, that’s all.”
“I know what you mean.” Frances passes her own stoop, her long, thin arms weighted down with several grocery bags. Let me tell you, when I hit my late fifties? I should look half as good as Frances does. Not that I will, considering she’s a good head taller than I am and has all this incredible bone structure. And legs. Even after six kids, she’s still a size ten. Without dieting. And since she started earning her own money selling real estate a couple years ago, she dresses well. Has her hair done at Reggio’s once a month, too, this really flattering, layered style that sets off her big eyes and high cheekbones. And somehow, it stays looking good between cuts. Me, my hair already looks like it’s growing out by the time I’ve tipped the shampoo girl.
Still clutching the bags, Frances holds out one arm for a hug, her wide mouth splayed in a huge grin. My heart does a little skip: when my mother died and my grandmother didn’t seem any too hot on the idea of filling the gap in my life, Frances did, like a mother cat taking on an extra kitten. The woman scares the snot out of me, but I would not have survived my teenage
