Heartache and Other Natural Shocks (13 page)

When the phone rings, Bobby jumps up to answer it. It’s
Dad. Mom escorts Dr. Katzenberg to the door. When it’s my turn to speak to Dad, I pick up the phone in the den. I picture him lying on his bed, his shoes kicked off and the
TV
turned down low. “When are you coming to Toronto?” I ask.

“Well, I’m heading into the Christmas season, poopsie. It’s my busiest time of the year. You know that.”

I look up to see my mother watching me as she walks back down the hall. Is she waiting to see if I’ll mention the widowed Dr. Kaztenberg? I give her a cold stare. I finish talking to Dad and follow Mom into the kitchen.

Mrs. Cabrielli comments on what a gentleman Dr. Katzenberg is and how it’s a shame about his wife. Mr. Cabrielli gives her a sharp look and says, “Gina, it’s time to go home.” Suddenly I realize that Mr. Cabrielli hasn’t spoken much tonight. Usually, he jokes around with everyone, but tonight he let Dr. Katzenberg do all the talking. When they say good-night, Mr. Cabrielli glances at me with dark, brooding eyes, and that’s when I know I am not imagining things. Mr. Cabrielli sees what’s going on. Maybe it takes a man to know what another man is up to.

I go to bed and lie awake thinking about Mom and Dr. Katzenberg. Even if they are attracted to each other, they wouldn’t actually do anything, would they? After all, he knows she’s married. I think about how Mom and Dad first met. It’s our family fairy tale. It’s a story Dad loves telling, and Bobby and I love hearing it.

Dad always starts off like this: “So, I’m putting up shelves in the store, and the stool slips and I hammer a nail right into my pointer finger, right here.”

He always shows us the scar, as if it’s some major war wound.

“Well, there’s blood gushing all over the place, so I get the pizza delivery guy across the street to take me to the Jewish General Hospital. So, there I am, in the Emergency, and this tall gorgeous nurse walks out. A real babe.”

Mom always hits him when he calls her a babe, but he does it every time.

“She calls my name and takes me into this little curtained cubicle. Then she cleans up my finger and tells me to pull down my pants and bend over!”

This part sends Bobby and me into gales of laughter, partly because of the way Dad’s eyes bug out and partly at the image of my mother ordering my dad to pull down his pants.

“I tell her, ‘Sweetheart, that ain’t where the problem is,’ and she tells me, ‘If you call me sweetheart again, you’re going to look worse walking out of here than you did coming in.’ Well, I can tell there’s no messing with this babe, so I undo my belt and drop my pants. She takes a giant needle off a tray. I take one look at that needle and say, ‘There is no way you’re sticking that into my
derrière
,’ but she looks at me with those baby blues and says, ‘Don’t worry, Mr. Epstein, this won’t hurt a bit.’

“Well, she jabbed that thing into my
tuchas
, and it hurt like hell, but I swear to you, that was no ordinary needle.
That, my children, was Cupid’s dart. I knew right then that this was the woman I was going to marry.”

The story goes on about how my mother was already dating someone else—a handsome young intern, “a Dr. Kildare type,” as my father scathingly describes him—but my father kept showing up at the end of Mom’s shifts, even at six in the morning in the middle of winter, and eventually she agreed to go for coffee with him and then to a movie because Dr. Kildare was too busy at the hospital—“You snooze, you lose,” says my dad. Finally, she realized that even though Dr. Kildare was a smart, hardworking man, he didn’t make her laugh the way my dad did, so they broke up. Grandma and Grandpa Cohen thought that Mom was crazy to dump a doctor for some schlemiel who worked in his dad’s clothing store, but once my mother makes up her mind about something, it’s a done deal.

All week, I wonder if I’m overreacting about Dr. Katzenberg, but on Friday after school, Mom phones from work and says she’s going out to a movie, so can I please heat up the leftover meatloaf for Bobby and me. When I ask who she’s going with, she says, “Just some people from the office.”
Like Les
, I wonder.

While she’s out, I search her room. I don’t know what I expect to find. Love letters? Gift boxes? I find nothing suspicious. Her drawers smell of her perfume: Yves Saint Laurent.
I open her jewelry box. When I was little, I used to watch her put on makeup and jewelry before she and Dad went out to a dinner party. She’d let me try on her sapphire ring and her charm bracelet. I find the bracelet and clip it around my wrist. It jingles with golden charms, each one a memento for a special occasion: a ballet dancer for when I was born, a musical note for when Bobby was born and a golden heart for my mom and dad’s tenth anniversary. She never wears that bracelet anymore. Is it a sign?

At around ten o’clock, Mom sweeps into the house looking relaxed and happy. She flops onto the couch and tells me that she saw
The French Connection
, a thriller starring Gene Hackman. She says it’s been ages since she’s been to the movies, and really, she should do this more often. I don’t say anything. She may be fooling herself, but she isn’t fooling me. A married woman should not be going out with her boss, especially if her boss is a single man. Even I know it’s not right.

“Wild World”

For two weeks, everything is perfect. Ian and I make out in my basement every day after school, and we finally see the movie
Klute
. Actually, Deb and Mar are pissed off about that because I was going to see it with them, but at the last minute, Ian wanted to go, so I had to cancel Deb and Mar. Debbie made some crack about “boys always coming first,” but I don’t see what the big deal is. You’d think she could be more flexible. Wait till she has a boyfriend; then she’ll see how complicated life is.

Anyway, Sunday morning, after the movie, I get a call from Marlene and she’s practically bursting at the seams with gossip.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“Come over,” she says.

“I’m still in my pajamas,” I say.

“Then get dressed because you’re really going to want to hear this,” she says.

Half an hour later, Debbie and I are sitting in Marlene’s kitchen. Mar makes coffee, and Deb and I get out our
smokes. “So, how was your date last night?” Deb asks in a snarky voice. She’s still annoyed, but I ignore that.

“It was great,” I say. “But afterward, we ended up at Fran’s for coffee, and this bitchy waitress flirted with Ian, right in front of me. And she was old enough to be his mother!”

“What did he do?” Debbie asks.

“He ordered the lemon meringue pie,” I say. “I would’ve killed him if he’d smiled at her. It made me wonder if he’s done it with older women, like Dustin Hoffman in
The Graduate
. He’s certainly done it with younger women.”

“Has he done it with you yet?” Debbie asks.

I roll my eyes. “Deb, even if I wanted to, there’s no place to go. Someone’s always at my house, and Ian still won’t invite me over to his house.”

“Well, there might be a good reason for that,” Marlene says, smirking like the cat who swallowed the canary.

Deb and I both look at her. “Okay,” I say. “Out with it.”

Marlene perches at the edge of her chair. “Last night, I babysat for the Hendersons.”

Deb raises an eyebrow. “The ones who lives on Hawthorne Crescent?”

“Yup. Right across the street from Ian,” Mar says smugly.

“Go on,” I say.

Mar grins. “Well, it was around nine o’clock, the kids were asleep and I was just about to turn on the
TV
, when suddenly I heard this loud bang! So, I ran to the front window, and
there, in the Slaters’ driveway, was Mrs. Slater’s Mercedes with the headlights on, and it looked like she’d just slammed right into the garage!”

“How bad?” Deb asks.

“Well, not horrible. But the garage has a big dent in it.”

“Wow,” I say.

“There’s more,” Mar says. “Next thing you know, Mr. Slater storms out of the house and—”

“What does he look like?” I ask.

“Short, bald, jowly—”

“Really?” I say. “She’s so stunning. You’d expect her to marry Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome.”

“Uh-uh,” Marlene says. “The guy’s no prince, and he’s about fifteen years older than her.”

“I guess she married for money,” Deb says.

“How do you know that?” I ask.

“I’m just putting two and two together,” Deb says in her know-it-all voice. “My mom always told me that whenever you see an old fart with a young babe, it means the woman’s a gold digger and the man’s an idiot.”

I don’t say anything. I pass my ciggies around and light us up. “Go on,” I say to Mar. I haven’t heard such good gossip since … forever!

Mar takes a deep drag and continues. “Well, Mr. Slater took one look at the car and went ballistic. He charged over to the Mercedes and flung open the driver’s door. Mrs. Slater
didn’t budge. I opened the living room window to hear better, and at first, I wondered if Mrs. Slater was hurt, because I heard this gasping noise, like she was sobbing, but then Mr. Slater pulled her out of the car, and I saw that she was actually laughing. Laughing hysterically, like a madwoman!” Mar does an imitation of Mrs. Slater laughing, and she looks like a cross-eyed, shrieking psycho in a lunatic asylum.

“No shit!” Deb says.

“Yeah,” Mar says. “It gave me chills just listening to her because there was
nothing
funny going on! Anyway, Mr. Slater was not amused. He grabbed Mrs. Slater and tried to steer her into the house, but she kept stopping and doubling over with laughter, which only made Mr. Slater even more furious. So he tightened his hold on her, like this.” Mar grabs my shoulder and digs her fingers into my flesh like a claw.

“Ow,” I say. “Okay, I get it.”

“Gee,” Debbie says. “I bet that left bruises.”

“You know what I think?” Marlene says, leaning across the table. “I think she was drunk out of her skull!”

Deb nods. Mar can hardly sit still. I don’t say anything, but I can practically hear the puzzle pieces of Ian’s life snapping into place. I was right about Mrs. Slater and her drinking. No wonder the mansion is off-limits.

Deb, Mar and I chain-smoke and speculate about the Slaters’ marriage. We figure that Mrs. Slater was the most beautiful girl in North Bay, and she married Mr. Slater, a rich
mining executive, even though she didn’t love him, because she thought he’d be her ticket to the good life. But in the end, he turned out to be a jerk and she became an alcoholic trapped in a loveless marriage with a messed-up kid and nowhere to go.

It’s a smart guess, if you ask me, but I don’t want Deb and Mar spreading malicious gossip about
my
boyfriend, so I say, “Well, we don’t know anything for sure.”

“Yes, we do,” Marlene says. “We know Mrs. Slater crashed her car into her garage and Mr. Slater dragged her into the house. I saw it with my own eyes.”

“What if her foot slipped?” I say.

“Carla, get real,” Deb says.

“Okay.” I say. “So, what if you’re right? What if Mrs. Slater is an alcoholic and Mr. Slater is an asshole? What if they left North Bay because everyone in town knew about their messed-up family?”

“Yeah,” Mar says, like a movie detective. “Yeah. That fits.”

“Well, the point is, they’re probably trying to get a fresh start. So, do we really want to be trashing them? And have you thought about what this would do to Ian if it got out?”

“I’m not trashing them,” Mar says weakly.

“Marlene, you can’t tell anyone,” I say firmly.

Marlene looks totally deflated, and I don’t blame her. With a story like this, she could have been the Tom Thomson gossip queen for at least a week. She scowls at me and slouches in her chair.

I say, “Poor Ian. I wish I could do something nice for him.” And then I get this fabulous idea. “Deb, you can invite him to your party!”

“I’m not having a party this year,” Deb says.

“Yes, you are. Everybody looks forward to it.” Deb’s birthday is on October 31, and she always has a costume party. I love costume parties. Last year, I dressed up as Pebbles from
The Flintstones
. I wore a skimpy, fake-leopard-skin, off-the-shoulder mini-dress and a bone in my hair. I was so cute! Everyone said so, even Sherrie Cumberland. And she’s not the type to dish out compliments.

“I hate having my birthday on Halloween,” Debbie whines. “It’s like a freak show. Why couldn’t my mother squeeze her legs together and hold off for another twenty-four hours?”

“Debbie, your parties are always so great!” I say, sucking up to her. “And you’d be doing me the biggest favor in the world. Pleeease,” I plead. “I’ll even help you clean up.”

Debbie sighs and looks over at Mar.

“It would be fun,” Marlene says.

“I guess,” Deb says.

I give her a big hug. “You’re the best!” I say. “Let’s make a guest list. We’ll invite everyone we know, except Julia Epstein.”