How to Fall (14 page)

 

“No dependent clauses,” said the principal back home, in August. “No Middle Ages.” She was muttering, but in a kindly fashion. She was trying to decide whether to enroll us in the fourth grade or simply to declare it skipped. “Tell me what you did learn.”

Willy sat looking out of the window at the playground. I sat looking at Willy. “What did you learn?” the principal gently repeated.

We kept mum. So we had to repeat fourth grade, or endure it for the first time, who cared, same difference. Willy did master long division. I never figured out how to forget.

“H
ildy's mother, she must be wondrously preponderate,” said Devlin's mother.

“Preponderate? That's no word.”

“'Tis. 'Twas a verb, but it raised itself to an adjective. Scrabble is a fine university. I'm dying to meet her, Hildy Tartakoff's mother. Lillian, she's called, or so I believe.” And Devlin's mother twinkled at her son like an entire constellation. These damned Celtic mannerisms, he thought; they seemed to be an affliction of her old age. Other people's parents descended sorrowfully into Alzheimer's; his was turning into a leprechaun.

Meanwhile, Hildy Tartakoff's mother—she
was
called Lillian—was saying in an offhand manner that she'd like to meet Devlin's mother. “That is, if your affair is going to continue. And I must admit,” she chummily elaborated, “I'd be disappointed if it didn't do that.”

“If what didn't do which?” Hildy asked.

“If the romance didn't go on. So shouldn't we meet, she and I?” Lillian reasonably wound up.

No one could argue with her mother's logic, Hildy knew, since there was never any logic to argue with. There was merely determination masquerading as syllogism. Lillian had held sway over many organizations using this rhetorical principle.

“Shall I call her Laura?” Lillian asked.

“If you like,” sighed the defeated Hildy. “Her name is Maura, though.”

 

So Devlin Fitzgerald—whose affair with Hildy Tartakoff
was
continuing, at least for now—arranged a luncheon for four in his hotel on the border of Godolphin and Boston—a small hotel in the European style, the advertisements ran, though such embodiments of subtle hospitality were getting rare even in Europe. Christmas was coming. Abundant greenery, though not a touch of tinsel, decorated the carpeted reception hall. A fire blazed in a marble hearth. Off to one side was the private dining room. There, Dev and Maura awaited their guests.

As a young man busily creating his now renowned hotel, Devlin had married a good-tempered woman who remained good-tempered through decades of neglect. But after their two daughters were grown she left him for a retired army officer who liked to putter around his
own
house. Granny Maura stayed friendly with the woman she still called her daughter-in-law. “Ex is not in me alphabet,” she was fond of saying, Irishing her conversation in that irritating way.

For this special meeting she was dressed in a gray wool dress with a white lace collar, and Dev could have murdered her. He knew,
because he had paid for them, that she owned a couple of Armani knock-offs; why couldn't she have worn one of those? Lillian would arrive looking authoritative as usual, handsome, even military. He admired Lillian, from whom Hildy inherited her height, her rich hair (graying on the daughter's head, resolutely dark on the mother's), her energy, her cleverness. Hildy's green eyes came from her deceased father; her extra weight—twenty pounds, Devlin estimated—was her own doing. She was a high-school guidance counselor. Twenty year ago she had endured a brief, childless marriage. She and her husband had bickered all the time, she told Dev, eyes amused, or maybe reflective, or perhaps even yearning.

Lillian in old age (Late Middle was the term she preferred) still walked several miles every morning, a slender figure in corduroys and a sweater. After this workout she got dressed in some fashionable outfit, its skirt at whatever length Milan decreed—so it was a shock to Devlin when she entered the room in an old lady's dress that was almost a dead ringer for Maura's, brown rather than gray, a necklace of amber beads rather than a collar, but still . . . you'd think the two birds had conferred ahead of time, were up to something.

“My dear Mrs. Fitzgerald,” said Lillian without waiting to be introduced.

“Mrs. Tartakoff, me dear dear,” said Maura.

 

They were each other's destiny, hinted the tall old Jewess. The tiny flower of Erin concurred. Over the soup they decided to attend the Yo Yo Ma concert together next week; they'd use Lillian's tickets and scalp Maura's. They'd go to the Foxwoods Casino in January, they settled over the chicken. Lillian liked blackjack—she was an expert
card counter. Maura preferred roulette. This difference in taste would not come between them, they predicted. And—they discovered while spooning up dessert—their apartments were less than two miles apart. “Is that not a coincidence?” demanded Lillian.

“Lillian,” said Devlin, producing what he hoped was a chuckle; “Godolphin measures two miles by three; most people live . . .”

“Yes, dearie,” interrupted Maura, “but
my
being in Godolphin in the first place—that's the astounding complementarity.” A decade earlier Maura had finally agreed to move out of the shabby South Boston house she'd raised her family in. But a retirement community?—“Over my corpse.” She allowed Devlin to pay the rent on a first-floor flat near the Godolphin fire station. “Visiting nurses; be off with you. I can manage injections on me own.” And she could, and did, testing her glucose with one of those disposable finger sticks she carried in her purse, then uncapping the one-dose insulin syringe, sticking the thing into a convenient bit of flesh. Her son had seen her perform this routine several times at a restaurant, God help him, God help her: she glanced at the blood-sugar reading while other people were inspecting their menus; yes, too high; she unbuttoned the lowest button on her silk blouse and stabbed herself in the stomach and buttoned up again. No one ever noticed the exercise except his horrified self. Once she injected herself
through
the garment, then winked at him.

“You live only two miles from my house—just think of it,” said Maura to Lillian.

“I'll walk over sometime,” said Lillian to Maura.

“Tomorrow, then,” said Maura.

“Tomorrow,” said Lillian.

Dev poured more wine.

“I don't drink at lunch,” said Hildy. “Well, never more than one,” she corrected, draining her second glass.

 

“I'm
the one who deserves to be diabetic,” said Lillian to Maura about a month later. “I'm Jewish and I'm eighty-five.”

“Eighty-five, exactly my age,” said Maura, who was eighty-six.

Lillian suffered only from high cholesterol and occasional cavities. The admiring Maura had taken up walking under Lillian's influence. They met Wednesdays and Fridays out at the Reservoir and circled it three times, Lillian looking like a long wading bird, Maura resembling a sandpiper.

Under Maura's influence Lillian had recovered an interest in whisky. She now repudiated white wine. “The stuff's just grape juice, when you come right down to it,” she announced.

“What do those two talk about, do you think?” Devlin asked Hildy. It was a Thursday night; they were meeting for a hamburg in a tavern before Devlin went back to the hotel to inspect some new fabrics and Hildy went back to her desk to write references for lastminute college applications.

“Our mothers? They talk about us, Dev. My mother talks about how elegant and cultivated you are.” She watched him lightly preen. Well, shouldn't he be proud, she inquired of her critical side: he reads novels in French; he attends early music concerts; he flavors this mixture with regular attendance at boxing matches . . . “And distinguished,” added Hildy, baiting him without his noticing. “What about
your
mother,” she asked. “What does she say about me?”

He considered the question, bending on her the fine dark gaze that made hotel visitors feel singled out for attention, that made the
hotel staff want to die in his service, that made his daughters forgive him his absences because his presences were so satisfying. “She thinks you have the world's most interesting eyes. She wants an ornament made exactly of that pale jade.”

Hildy grew warm.

“And she finds your insights keen,” Dev went on.

Hildy grew warmer still, though it might just be her uncomfortable time of life—hot flashes, and extra weight, and the Lord knew what was happening to
her
cholesterol. “Maura probably thinks I'm fat,” Hildly said in a light tone.

“No, no,” Devlin assured her.

“Yes, yes.”

“Maybe, maybe. A few pounds.” How stunning she'd look in a velvet dress the color of eucalyptus he'd seen in a window; but the garment needed lissomeness . . .

“Damn, damn,” said Hildy.

“I
think you're perfect,” said Devlin in the tone of a forced convert. Hildy, who had planned to leave her French fries untouched on her plate, now began to pick them up one by one, in silence. She was not usually silent. She could do the talking for both of them, he reflected; he was basically unsociable, though because he kept a hotel he had to pretend otherwise. He imagined that they would grow old together with a minimum of regrets.

He might have told her this—it would have saved the evening. But he had blarneyed enough, and she was still eating those fries, one after the other.

 

Lillian's big apartment was decorated in colors that Maura thought of as Pallor, Jaundice, and Congestive Failure. (Maura had worked as a
Nurse's Aid while the kids were growing up. “My mother is retired from the health profession,” she'd heard that scamp of a boy say; such airs.) At Lillian's place the two women often played Scrabble and talked about movies. At Maura's—bright yellow walls, a tiled fireplace—they played gin rummy and recalled their childhoods.

“People sussurate about the emerald hills,” said Maura. “But what I remember most favorably is the stone houses and the Liffey, slow as vaseline.”

“In my time New York was swarming with Socialists,” said Lillian. “My parents were Reds, if you want to know the utter truth.”

“Utter truth, there's no such thing. I'll knock with three.”

Meanwhile Dev and Hildy talked about where they might live—her little house, so comfortable, his flat at the top of the hotel, so handy. They talked about which gubernatorial candidate was most deserving of their vote, the district attorney full of righteous indignation (“he hounds people,” said Hildy) or the excop, a charming rogue (“up to his nose in debt,” said Dev). The Red Sox lineup—each would have rearranged it, but differently. Their discussions sometimes subsided into lovemaking and more often flared into fights—that is, Hildy fought, Devlin grew silent.

“Conflict is the stuff of life,” Maura reminded her son. His handsome face grew stony. “You always sidestepped trouble,” she sighed.

“You don't have to defend every damned one of your principles,” said Lillian to Hildy. “Swallow some of them; they'll go down like Jello.” Then she stopped talking. It was too late to teach her daughter the value of hypocrisy.

And after a while Hildy and Dev, the one delighting in battle and the other craving peace—acknowledged their differences and broke up.

Maura, hearing this awful news, hastened on foot to Hildy's house, ablaze in the spring evening. “You have broken my heart,” she shouted when Hildy opened the door.

“Will you have some tea? Devlin and I . . .”

“Whisky.”

“. . . are too unalike in psychological stance, in cognitive style . . .”

“Ice cubes are an abomination.”

“. . . to remain together,” continued Hildy, trying to remove the offending ice with a spoon and then using her fingers. She handed the glass to Maura. “Devlin is interested in how things seem, I am interested in how things are. He caters to guests' physical needs, I to students' emotional wants . . .”

“Yobba, yobba, stop blathering.”

Hildy, who had been about to drink a cup of heavily sugared tea, abruptly dosed it with whisky. They were both standing in the kitchen, and Maura was still wearing her coat.

“You're a pair of stubborn cockerels,” said Maura. “Don't you know that differences bring us together? Or do you want to marry somebody just like you? Your own self, if you can manage it. A clone with a dong.”

Hildy sighed. Oh, she would miss this fearsome old lady. “That's not what I want, really . . .”