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Frida picked up her address book and looked up Barbara’s number as she took a seat on the sofa. Should the news be bad, it was best to be sitting.

“Hellew?”
The voice on the other end spoke in a high-pitched nasal-toned accent. Barbara’s voice. Barbara’s voice made everything she said sound like whining. Frida would never tell anyone this, though, especially Ellie. She didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

“Hello, Barbara, this is Frida, you know, your mom’s friend?”

“Frida,” Barbara said, somewhat perturbed. “I’ve known you my entire life, of course it’s you, who else would it be?”

“I’m sorry, dear,” Frida said, worrying she might have upset Barbara.
Never upset Barbara. Don’t get on Barbara’s bad side.
A flare-up from Barbara could make anyone back down. Her temper was like dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima. “I just didn’t want you to think it was a different Frida,” Frida said, hoping to clear up the dreadful situation she’d gotten herself into.

“All I’m saying is that I know it’s you, Frida. I saw you last night. How are you today?”

“Oh, I’m all right.” She tried to segue into the real reason she was calling: “Actually, I was calling to thank you for last night. It was a lovely party.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Barbara said happily.
Always compliment Barbara.
It was always the way to curb Barbara’s irritation toward you. “Oh, yes, the flowers were just lovely.”

“You didn’t think the arrangements were too ornate?” Barbara asked.

“Oh, no, dear, they were exquisite,” Frida lied, but it was only a white lie.

“And what about the food? Didn’t you think we waited a long time?”

“Do I feel that I waited a long time?” Frida repeated. Frida had learned that when she didn’t have an answer to a question it was best to stall by repeating the question. Truth be told, it did take a while for the food to arrive—about five minutes. Frida thought she might have fainted from the hunger. “Everything came on time,” Frida lied again.
Remember, don’t get Barbara started.

“Didn’t you find the crab cake to be a bit stringy?”

“The lumps of crab in it were very generous.” (What Frida really thought: the crab cake was like paste.)

“Was the lettuce in your salad wilted?”

“It was as crisp as a cracker.” (What Frida really thought: it was so wilted you could have slapped it on something like papier-mâché.)

“Was your steak too rare?”

“It was just the way I like it.” Frida ate the entire contents of the bread basket, insisted she was full, had her steak wrapped up and took it home and stuck it under the broiler for another fifteen minutes.

“And my coffee wasn’t hot enough,” Barbara added.

“I burned my tongue.” Frida got brain freeze.

“What about the cake from the Swiss Pastry Shop?”

“Oh, that was good?” Frida sort of asked.

“I thought it was too sweet,” Barbara grumbled.

“Yes, now that you mention it, maybe a little.”

“That’s the last time I’m going to that restaurant.” Barbara sighed. “I have two standing reservations, but after that I’m through.”

“Good for you,” Frida agreed. Barbara always said she was never going back to The Prime Rib, yet continued to eat there at least once a week. Barbara’s husband, Larry Sustamorn, the dentist, loved it there and insisted on going regularly. He was a timid man, but when he believed in something, like food at The Prime Rib restaurant, Barbara took it to heart.

“Anyway, at least Mom had a good time,” Barbara went on.

“She did. She really seemed to be having a good time.” Frida
perked up. She’d almost forgotten why she had called Barbara in the first place.

“Did she tell you she had a good time?” Barbara inquired.

Frida paused. “Did she tell
me
she had a good time?” she repeated.

“Yes,
you
!”

“She did. She said she had a good time, a wonderful time, a stupendous time.” (Frida’s translation: They hadn’t really discussed it yet.)

“Well, she said nothing to me.”

“Nothing?” Frida gasped. “No, that doesn’t sound like Ellie . . . does it?”

“Frida, she said nothing. When I called her this morning she said that the party was just fine and then she screamed some nonsense about a mouse and that was that.”

Frida became alarmed, but didn’t quite know what to say next. Ellie never mentioned anything about a mouse. She must have been seeing things. “Maybe Ellie had a lot of things on her mind today?”

“Like what?” Barbara insisted. “Frida, really, what could possibly have been more important than thanking her caring daughter for the seventy-fifth birthday party she gave her? Do you know how much time and effort I put into planning that party for her? Do you know how many hours it took to get the right flowers, the right guest list, not to mention the seating arrangements, with the way your friends don’t speak to each other. I thought I was going to scream. If I heard one more time, ‘Don’t sit Edie next to Lila because they’re still fighting over that bill from Outback Steakhouse three months ago . . . ’”

“I thought they had gotten over that, and Edie agreed to split the tip fifty-fifty,” Frida interjected.

“No, she won’t budge on forty-sixty,” Barbara corrected her.

“Oh, what a shame.”

“Frida, honestly, women your age act like little girls sometimes.”

“We do, don’t we?” Frida wholly agreed, sighing inside.

Frida fantasized about telling Barbara to stick it you-know-where. What did she know about the controversy over the Outback Steakhouse bill? Barbara knew nothing about a fixed budget. Lila always over-ordered when she split the bill, and all the other ladies were fed up. In Frida’s eyes, it was right for Edie to stand up and fight. Lila had no right to get the soup
and
the salad
and
dessert and not pay a little extra.

“Well, all I’m saying is that it took a lot of time and effort, and what does my mother do? She makes up some excuse to get off the phone with me, and a dumb one at that. I even thought we’d have a nice lunch today. I thought she’d want to shower me with thank-yous today, but instead she’s going out to lunch with you. Good for you, Frida. Please give my mother my deepest regards and tell
her highness
that I’m ready at her beck and call.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. It’s time you stand up to my mother and tell her what’s right.”

“No, Barbara, what I meant to say was”—Frida took a deep breath, dug her fingernails into the arm of the couch, closed her eyes, and prepared for the ensuing drama—“I’m not having lunch with your mother today.”

“WHAT?”
Barbara roared. “She told me that you were
having lunch together, and that’s why she couldn’t see me! She has my very best pair of sunglasses that I left in her purse and she wouldn’t let me even come down and get them. What do you mean she’s not meeting you for lunch?”

“I-I . . .” Frida stammered.

“Spit it out!”

Frida wiped her brow. “Well, Ellie called me this morning and asked if I was feeling okay. She wanted to know if I had any reaction from the dinner last night.”

“I knew the beef was too rare!” Barbara snapped.

“Well, I said that I was fine. A little dyspeptic, but I’m always dyspeptic.”

“Get to it,” Barbara prodded.

“Well, then I asked Ellie if she’d like to get together today, and she said that she was going out to your house.”

“She didn’t!”

“Oh, yes,” Frida responded carefully. She ripped off a piece of the newspaper and started fanning herself. This was too much.

“So she lied to me?” Barbara was astonished.

“Well, I’m not quite sure. See, then I got worried. Ellie didn’t sound right. Maybe she was keeping something from me. Ellie always thinks I worry about every little thing . . .”

“Which you do.”

“Well, I’m concerned for those around me, of course.”

“So then what happened?”

“So then I started to think about it a little more. There was something about the tone of her voice.”

“It did sound high this morning.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I noticed. So now you can plainly see why I was alarmed.”

“Yes, of course! Any rational human being could see why you would be troubled like this.”

“So then I took my key—you know that Ellie and I have each other’s keys, just in case?”

“Yes, yes.”

“So a couple of hours later I went down to see if she was okay.”

“And was she?”

Frida brought the phone to her mouth so she could whisper her next words. “She wasn’t there,” Frida said as gently as she could.

“She what?”

“But that’s not all.”

“Frida, I can’t hear anymore.”

“Well, this is a very important part of the story.”

“What is it?”

“Lucy was there.”

Barbara paused. “What was Lucy doing there?”

“I have no idea. She was with another woman. They had some cakes lined up on Ellie’s dining room table. Ellie would never have allowed that, and that had me a little alarmed. They didn’t even have a tablecloth set up.”

“Lucy put cake on my great-grandmother’s table that grandmother Mitzi oiled and salved every week of her life?”

“The very same,” Frida answered and then regretted it. She didn’t want to get Lucy into trouble.

“Okay, so let me get this straight.” Barbara sighed, then took a deep breath. “My mother told you that she was going out with me.”

“Correct.”

“My mother told me she was going out with you.”

“Yes.”

“Lucy was with some strange woman in her apartment eating cake.”

“That’s right.”

“You stay on the line for a moment. I don’t want to lose the connection. I’m going to call Lucy on my cell phone and get to the bottom of this.”

Frida heard Barbara put the phone down, and then the
clack clack clack
of her heels on the hardwood floors of the kitchen getting more distant. Then, just as fast as the
clack
ing stopped, it started again, louder and louder as Barbara
clack
ed back toward the phone.

“Lucy, this is Mom. Aunt Frida is on my landline, worried sick about Grandma. Frida told me you were in Gram’s apartment this morning with some woman eating cake. Please give me a call. Aunt Frida is very worried.” Barbara got back on with Frida. “Let me call Lucy’s home phone. She never uses it, just the cell phone, but I’ll try just in case.”

Barbara called.

“Lucy, it’s Mom. I know you never use your home phone, but Aunt Frida is very worried about Gram, and she needs to know if you’ve seen her. Please call me.” Barbara picked up the land phone again. “I should call Lucy back and tell her to try me on both my landline and my cell phone. Hold on one more second,
Frida.” She switched phones again. “Hello, Lucy? It’s Mom. Try me on both my cell phone and my home phone. Aunt Frida is very worried.”

Barbara picked up the land phone and said to Frida, “That was her home phone. Let me leave the same message on her cell.” She put down the land phone again.

“Hello, Lucy? It’s Mom again. Don’t forget to try me on both my cell phone and my home phone. Aunt Frida is very upset. Love, Mom.”

Barbara picked up the land phone again.

“Well, that’s all I can do for now. Why doesn’t Mom get a cell phone? I keep telling her it’s very important.”

“I don’t have one, either, Barbara,” Frida told her. “They’re too expensive. If someone wanted to call me, they’d call me at home.”

“Because situations like this could arise!”

“Oh.” Frida pondered this. “Well, that’s very true.”

“So who was the woman Lucy was with?” Barbara inquired.

“A woman about Lucy’s age, maybe a little older. But you know how these girls dress older, so maybe they were the same age.”

“Well, with the way Lucy dresses . . . Did you see how she looked last night?”

“I thought the dress was a bit short,” Frida agreed, which was one hundred percent true.

“Well, as long as she’s making her own way,” Barbara reasoned.

“And Ellie is very proud of her.”

“The two of them speak their own language.”

“Yes, I noticed that, too.”

“Sometimes I just don’t get the two of them, the way they think.”

“I agree.”

“What I wish is that Lucy would just settle down already. She’ll be an old maid before she knows it.”

“You’d think she’d have found someone already, with all of her good qualities.”

“She says she wants to make it on her own first. She sounds like Mary Tyler Moore!” Barbara chuckled, and Frida followed her cue. Sometimes Barbara could make Frida feel at ease, but it didn’t happen often. “I mean, sometimes Lucy can be so immature.”

Frida continued laughing. “Barbara, you speak the truth. What I can’t get past is why Lucy presented that woman in the apartment as her cousin from Chicago. You don’t even have any cousins in Chicago.”

Barbara stopped laughing. “What do you mean she said the woman in the apartment was a cousin?”

Frida paused. “Didn’t I mention that?”

“No, you didn’t! Frida, how could you leave out the most important part of the story?”

“I . . . I . . .”

“Well, what did Lucy say?”

Frida grabbed the paper and started fanning herself again. She’d never regretted anything more in her entire life than making this call. “Well, she said that the woman was Ellie’s brother’s granddaughter from Chicago.”

“Why would she say that?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I was so worried.”

“If you were so worried, why didn’t you tell me this piece of information in the first place?”

Frida put her head in her hands. “Oh, Barbara.” She sighed. “It’s been such a crazy morning, with Ellie calling me and then her not being in her apartment and finding Lucy with the cakes. I guess it just got away from me.”

“Hold on just a second.”

Barbara put the phone down and dialed Lucy’s cell number. “Lucy, it’s Mom. Did you lie to Aunt Frida and tell her that the woman she saw you with in Gram’s apartment was your cousin from Chicago? You know very well that we have no family in Chicago. Why would you do that? Call me back. Aunt Frida is very worried.”