Grand Avenue (29 page)

“They hurt.” Can’t you at least kiss them and make them better? she almost said, but didn’t. She was tired of the perfunctory little kisses that dotted her days. A kiss good morning at the breakfast table, a kiss good-bye as each left for work, a kiss hello on their return, a kiss good-night as, exhausted, they climbed into bed. Kisses as punctuation marks, Susan thought, wondering when pleasantry had replaced passion in her marriage, when their lovemaking had become so routine, something they did because it was expected, almost
polite
. While they still had the ability to satisfy one another, they’d lost the ability to surprise. When
was the last time they’d tried a new position or technique? When was the last time they’d made love in the morning? Why not right now? Susan found herself thinking, taking a step toward her husband. Maybe I could ambush him, unbutton his freshly laundered white shirt, unbuckle his shiny black leather belt.

“Don’t you think you should get dressed?” Owen asked.

Susan stopped cold, glanced down at the flesh-colored bra and panties she was wearing, and felt as if she’d been doused with a bucketful of cold water.

“Are you all right?” her husband asked.

“Fine.”

“Running a bit late, aren’t you?”

“Damn it,” Susan said, realizing the time, returning to the closet, struggling with a pair of panty hose, pulling a beige silk dress off its cedar hanger and dragging it down over her head, pushing her arms through its long sleeves, then tugging it roughly across her hips. She marched into the bathroom, ran a brush cursorily through wayward chin-length hair, scowled at her reflection in the mirror. She was putting on weight again. No wonder Owen was losing interest. Not that he was in such great shape himself. Not like Peter Bassett, who worked hard to keep his body trim with thrice-weekly visits to the gym.

“You should join me there one night,” he’d suggested just last week, and she’d laughed, although she wasn’t sure why she was laughing and said she’d think about it.

What was there to think about? No way she was going to let Peter Bassett see her in unflattering sweatpants,
or worse—a leotard. She was so out of shape, she probably wouldn’t last ten minutes on the treadmill. She hadn’t worked out in ages. Which was stupid. Not only would regular exercise help her shed those extra pounds, but it would give her fresh focus. She spent altogether too much time worrying about her mother, fighting with her daughter, and eating everything that crossed her path. “I look awful,” she said out loud.

“You look okay,” Owen said, coming up behind her, kissing her cheek.

“Thanks,” Susan said dully.
Okay
was not exactly a ringing endorsement.

“Have a good day,” he told her as he left the room.

A minute later, Susan heard the rumble of the garage door as it opened and closed. “You too,” she muttered.

“Talking to yourself again?” Ariel asked dryly, popping into view, her newly spiked blue-black hair sitting like a nest of dyed porcupine quills on top of her head.

Susan jumped, as she always did these days when she saw her older daughter, this delicate little angel she’d nursed at her breast, her soft golden hair so full of wonderful baby smells and future promise. The promise of what? Susan wondered now, trying to take Dr. Slotnick’s advice and think positively.

Well, let’s see: Ariel had beautiful eyes, even if she insisted on surrounding them with what appeared to be layers of black soot; she had lovely skin, although it was sometimes hard to see it under all that white powder; she had a beautiful figure, although the oversize rags she wore were far from flattering; she had a sharp mind.

And a sharper tongue.

Think positively. Think positively.

She had a mind of her own.

Was that a positive?

“Where’d you get that dress?” Ariel’s question had the sting of an accusation.

Same store I got my purple sweater, Susan thought but didn’t say. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” she said instead, then silently cursed herself. Definitely the wrong thing to bring up when you were trying to avoid a confrontation. Hadn’t Dr. Slotnick advised her to let the school deal with Ariel’s chronic lateness? It’s their issue, the balding therapist had stated, not yours.

Susan suddenly recalled the first time Peter Bassett had summoned her to his office. He’d been on the phone with his daughter’s school, discussing this same problem. No wonder he seemed to understand her so well. They had a lot in common, Susan thought with a smile.

Surprisingly, Ariel also smiled, pronounced dimples breaking through the coat of white powder that covered her face but stopped at her neck, so that she looked as if she might be the victim of some creeping skin disease. “Yeah,” she admitted, cracking the knuckles of her left hand with the fingers of her right as Susan tried not to cringe visibly. “I’m late, and there’s a big math test first period.”

“Then you’d better get going.” Susan checked, then rechecked her watch. Closing in on nine o’clock. Even if Ariel left right this minute, the odds were she wouldn’t make it to school on time. And she wasn’t even dressed yet. Or was she? Susan tried not to stare
at the dirt-stained sweatshirt and baggy, ripped jeans her daughter was wearing.

“Something wrong?” Ariel’s tone was a dare in itself.

Susan shook her head no, gazed at her toes.
You can’t fight if you don’t bite
.

“I was hoping you’d give me a lift.”

“A lift?”

“To school. So I won’t miss my test.”

Susan held her breath, silently counted to ten, opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, counted to ten again. They’d been through this how many times? “We’ve been through this.”

“Come on, Mom. One time …”

She’s never going to learn if you keep rescuing her, Dr. Slotnick had warned. You have to let her face the consequences of her actions. “I can’t,” Susan heard herself say.

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“Ariel, I have an important meeting at nine o’clock. I don’t have time to drive you.”

“It’ll only take a minute.”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“I have to get dressed.”

“You
are
dressed.”

“I look awful.”

“So?”

The question was stunning in its simplicity. Who cares if you look awful? the word asked. Who looks at you anyway? Who sees you? You’re a middle-aged woman, for God’s sake. Don’t you know you’re invisible?

“So, I’m afraid you’ll just have to get to school on your own.”

“And be late for my test?”

“Maybe you should have thought of that half an hour ago.”

“Maybe you should go to hell,” came Ariel’s blistering response.

“Now just one minute, young lady,” Susan began, but Ariel had already vanished in a puff of self-righteous fury, her feet bullying their way down the steps. The front door opened and slammed shut, the unpleasant reverberation thundering through the house as Susan raced into Ariel’s bedroom and propelled herself toward the window overlooking the street. “Didn’t take an umbrella,” Susan muttered in frustration, watching her daughter pull a pack of cigarettes out of her back pocket and light up, seemingly oblivious to the late-April rain beating down on her head as she sauntered lazily toward the corner. “It’s pouring rain and she doesn’t even notice.”

She should have driven Ariel to school. One more time. One less cigarette. It was raining, for God’s sake. Now her daughter would be late for class and she’d fail her test and probably get pneumonia to boot. Susan stood in the middle of Ariel’s room, this room that looked as if a tropical storm had just ripped through it, and almost cried. What an unsightly mess! The bed, the desk, the floor, every available surface was littered with clothes, makeup, tape cassettes. Abandoned pennies lay scattered across the carpet like a trail of bread crumbs. A used plastic tampon tube stood upright on the floor at the foot of the bed. Susan closed her eyes,
praying she didn’t find its discarded other half as she bent down to scoop it up, then dropped it in the empty wastepaper basket, probably the only item in the room that wasn’t filled with something. “God, how can she live this way?” Automatically, Susan began retrieving items of clothing from the floor, shaking them out, folding them neatly. She opened the closet door, pushed soiled and neglected items aside, made room for more of the same.

It was then that she saw it—scrunched into a tight little ball and pushed to the far end of the second shelf. Her purple cashmere sweater. The sweater she’d spent half the morning searching for, the sweater that Ariel had disavowed any knowledge of, the sweater she’d wanted to wear to the meeting this morning, the one Peter said brought out the violet in her eyes. “I’ll shoot her,” Susan whispered, seeing another of her sweaters, a white angora turtleneck she hadn’t seen in months, peeking out from underneath a stack of crumpled T-shirts. She grabbed the sweaters and returned with them to her room, although she knew they were too dirty, too riddled with smoke fumes, to be worn anywhere anytime soon. Think positively, she thought. Maybe it meant Ariel’s taste was improving. “She lied to me,” Susan said, stopping in her tracks, hearing her daughter’s voice echo in her ears.

How would I know where your stupid sweater is?

“Try not to take it personally,” she heard Dr. Slotnick advise.

“Fuck off,” Susan told the good doctor, returning to her closet and slipping into a pair of new brown heels. They were a little higher than she normally wore,
higher than she was comfortable wearing, but she was in need of a little lift, she decided.

God knows I need something, she thought.

“Susan, could I talk to you for a minute?” Peter Bassett asked as she was leaving the boardroom at the conclusion of the morning meeting.

“Of course.” Susan flexed her toes inside the shoes that had been pinching her feet all morning and watched the other editors and their assistants file from the room.

“Why don’t you close the door.”

She immediately closed the door to the large room, one of only two rooms on the floor that wasn’t surrounded by glass. Peter preferred this room for meetings because it provided few distractions. There were no windows, either interior or exterior, nothing to entice a wandering eye. Four beige walls surrounded a long wooden table and sixteen uninteresting beige chairs. The only color in the room came courtesy of three rows of framed
Victoria
covers that lined one wall. The other walls were blank. A coffeemaker sat on a counter at one end of the room. A plate of untouched muffins sat beside it.

Susan had been fighting the urge to grab one of those muffins since she’d first walked into the room, but she’d been ten minutes late and the meeting was already well under way. Besides, she noted no one else at the table was eating anything. They’d all obviously had time for breakfast, those of them who actually ate anything. Damn all those skinny thighs anyway, Susan cursed, thinking she was starting to sound like Barbara.
When had she started worrying about such things? “I’m sorry I was late,” she said before her boss had a chance to upbraid her.

“Everything all right?”

Susan shrugged. The shrug said, Same old stuff.

“Daughter still giving you problems?”

Susan smiled. “I shouldn’t let her get to me.”

“It’s hard sometimes. Trust me, I know.”

“Anyway, it’s no excuse for being late.” Shouldn’t he be the one saying this? Susan wondered.

“Forget it,” he said instead. “It’s not the end of the world. How’s your mother doing?”

“Not great.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Thank you.” She returned to her chair, not sure why she was here. She’d assumed Peter was going to chide her for being late, remind her that, much as he sympathized with her plight, they had a magazine to produce, that she couldn’t let her personal problems get in the way of her doing her job. Hadn’t Judi Butler been given her walking papers for exactly that reason several months ago? Instead, here was her boss telling her not to worry, it wasn’t the end of the world. And he was smiling, not scowling, his legs stretched out in front of him, his hands curved behind his head, his head resting inside his entwined fingers. “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?” she broached cautiously.

“I wanted to give you a progress report.”

“Progress report?” What was he talking about?

“You didn’t think I’d forgotten about your suggestions for improving the quality of the magazine, did you?”

It took Susan a minute to figure out what Peter Bassett was referring to. It had been so long since they’d had that initial conversation, she couldn’t even remember what her suggestions had been.

“Things move very slowly in the magazine business. The people in charge don’t like to tamper with a successful formula, even when that formula is getting pretty stale. I’m having a hard time convincing the powers that be to change the basic mandate, especially in light of increasing sales figures. Management argues that
Victoria
’s readership will continue to expand only if it remains glossy and pretty and, above all, shallow.” He shook his head. We’re in this together, the motion said. “But I want you to know that I haven’t given up, that I intend to keep pressing for improvement. And I am more determined than ever to sneak in a few articles of substance.”

“How can you do that?”

“Very carefully,” he said with a wink. “Sneak in a page here and a page there. Provide more background, more context, greater depth. Eventually—who knows?—we might even be able to insert a more serious-minded article into the mix.”

“That would be great. Actually, I have a whole bunch of ideas.”

“Such as?”

“Well, I’ve been hoping we could do something on this new hormone replacement therapy that the medical establishment is all excited about. Actually, it’s been around a long time, but suddenly it’s all the rage. I know it’s not something that will necessarily appeal to our younger readers but—”

“Can you make it sound sexy?” Peter interrupted.

“What?”

“Sexy. Like your shoes.” He winked again.

Susan felt her cheeks burn bright red. Good thing she hadn’t worn her purple sweater, she thought. She’d clash terribly. “I guess we could give it a sexy kind of title,” she stammered, trying to concentrate on her idea. “Something like ‘HRT—the New Fountain of Youth?’ ”