Mrs. Everything (57 page)

Lila’s cheeks and neck flushed an ugly shade of red. “Oh, as if. Like guys in their seventies with hairy ears who smell like Vicks VapoRub are really what I’m into.”

“You’re into anyone who can pay your bills,” Missy said. “You’re allergic to actually holding a job.”

“No, I’m allergic to old perverts who think they’ve got a right to grab my boobs.”

“Is that why you’re on that website?” Missy asked sweetly. She turned to Kim. “What did you tell me it’s called. Sugarbabies? Is that it?”

Lila lurched to her feet, glaring at Kim. “You fucking snoop.”

“Oh, Lila,” said Kim, as Lila stood up. In her heels, she had to be at least six feet tall.

“You’re a narc,” she said, pointing at Kim, then turning to Missy. “And you’re a bitch.”

“Girls,” said Jo.

“Language,” said Sandra.

“Get a job,” Melissa spat at her little sister. “Stop being a freeloader. You’re going to be thirty soon. It’s getting embarrassing. Men aren’t going to just pay your bills forever.”

“Yeah, well at least I’m not pimping out my own sister to keep my boss happy.”

Beside her, Jo heard Shelley suck in a shocked breath.

“I was trying to help you,” said Missy. Her voice was quiet. “I thought maybe you’d like getting paid for honest work. For a change.”

At the other end of the table, Kim’s head was bent, and Matt was smirking.

“Could everyone just settle down?” Kim said. “Lila, let me fix you a plate.”

“I wouldn’t eat your fucking turkey if I was starving,” Lila snarled. Jo saw Lila’s gaze move over the table. She could practically hear the calculations.
Oh, no
, she thought, and stood up so fast that her chair fell over behind her. Just as Lila made her move, Jo grabbed for her Jell-O, but Lila was quicker and had gotten a better grip. She wrenched the platter out of her mother’s hands, turned, and hurled the quivering mass at Missy’s face. Only Missy still had her athletic reflexes and managed to simultaneously duck and turn sideways. The Jell-O flew over her head and hit the wall, and the abstract oil painting, behind her with a loud, liquid splat. Kim shrieked, handed Sandra the baby, and raced around the table, calling into the kitchen for rags and seltzer. Matt was red-faced, pointing at Lila, bellowing about insurance; Flora had started to cry, and Missy was glaring at her sister. “You bitch,” she said as Sandra grabbed Flora’s hand, trilling, once more, “Language!” as she hustled the little girl out of the room.

Lila straightened herself up, gave her hair a shake, turned, and strutted toward the door. “Wait,” Jo called.

“Leave me alone,” Lila called back, quickening her pace. Jo hurried after her.

“Lila.”

“They don’t want me here.”

“Lila, wait,” Jo said, and Lila’s heel must have caught in the fringe of the antique Turkish rug in the hallway. One minute she was upright, the next she was airborne, and the minute after that, she was on the floor, clutching her ankle, yelling, “Shit, shit, shit!”

Bethie

K
im and Matt tried to sponge off the art—it turned out that it wasn’t a painting but an encaustic collage, the work of some rising star on the New York art scene. It had cost six figures, or so Matt kept yelling. Missy sat at the table, white-faced. Bethie and Harold went to tend to Lila, who was writhing on the floor, with Jo on her knees beside her.

“Why don’t Harold and I take you to the hospital?” Bethie said, thinking that the smartest thing to do might be to get Lila away from the drama. Jo nodded.

“Fine,” Lila muttered. Bethie and Harold helped Lila up off the floor and supported her as she hopped down the walkway and into the back seat of their Audi sedan. Bethie loved her car, with its rich-smelling leather interior and its seat warmers for the handful of mornings in Atlanta cold enough to warrant their use, but she’d bought it with a twinge of shame, knowing what her father would have said about her buying an import, and a German one at that. Harold got in the driver’s seat, Bethie climbed in beside him, and Lila rolled onto her back, groaning.

“Well!” Bethie said. “That was memorable!”
Poor Lila
, she thought. Jo’s youngest daughter reminded her of herself during her years on the road. Of course, Bethie still didn’t know if Lila had a story beyond the divorce, and the teenage embarrassment that must have gone along with having your father ditch your mother for the lady who lived three doors down, then having your mom fall in love with a woman. Kim and Missy only had to put up with all of it for a year or two before they went off to college, where they could tell their new friends as much, or as little, of the story as they cared to share. They had the luxury of seeing their mother’s new life unfold from a distance. Lila hadn’t had that option. High school couldn’t have been easy, Bethie thought, and Jo’s youngest had never seemed especially mature for her age.
Lila’s taking longer
, Jo would say. But there was taking your time, Bethie mused, and then there was this. Her niece was clearly drunk, or high, or both . . . and what, exactly, had she been yelling about?

“Do you want to tell me what you were talking about with Missy?” Bethie asked. Instead of an answer, she got Lila’s familiar glowering silence. Bethie tried again. “I guess your internship with Lester didn’t end well?”

Lila gave a scornful snort.

“What happened?” Bethie asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Lila. “It’s over.”

“It matters,” Bethie said. “It matters to me.”

Harold steered the car around a curve, humming a little under his breath, the way he did when he was nervous. The silence stretched, so long that Bethie didn’t think her niece would answer. But, finally, Lila started to talk. Her tone was arch and cynical, but Bethie could hear the hurt underneath.

“Lester’s imprint or whatever was moving offices. Two floors down. They needed people to help pack up the books, and people’s desks, and whatever. It was a three-week temp job. Missy got them to hire me.” Lila hissed in discomfort. Bethie heard the leather creak as her niece shifted in the back seat. “Lester figured
out right away that I wasn’t a book nerd. I can’t even remember how. I probably pronounced some word wrong, or didn’t know who Thomas Pynchon was, or I mixed up the Jonathans. But he figured it out. All the other editors and interns, he’d ask them what they read over the weekend. He’d ask me what I did. Where I went. He said he valued my connection to the real world.” Lila’s voice was becoming bleak. “Then he’d started inviting me into his office by myself, and asking me about my personal life. Who was I dating; were they treating me right. He’d ask about . . . you know, personal stuff. Was I happy. Was I satisfied.”

“Oh, boy,” Bethie said. She knew where this was going.

“We had a pantry in the office, with snacks and a fancy espresso machine. He’d come in to fix himself a coffee, and he’d always find a way to bump into me, or he’d give me a squeeze with his arm around my waist, only his hand would be up near my boob. Sorry, Uncle Harold.”

Lila sighed. “Everyone in the office hated me, because Lester liked me so much. They were all jealous, except Missy. She was thrilled. I guess Lester would tell her how glad he was that I was there. How I was his conduit to millennial culture or whatever.” Lila shifted, giving another pained hiss. “I didn’t want to get Missy in trouble. But I didn’t want to have to, you know . . .” Her voice trailed off. Rain had started pattering against the sunroof and the windshield. Harold flicked the windshield wipers on. “Anyhow. The first Friday of every month, Lester would take everyone for drinks at the King Cole Bar in the St. Regis. The martinis cost, like, twenty dollars. Lester would run a tab. Sometimes, writers would come, or agents, or other editors, or book scouts. Important people. At least, Melissa said they were important. They all looked like schnooks to me. One Friday, I was coming out of the ladies’ room and Lester was there waiting for me.”

Bethie swallowed hard, remembering her uncle, his smelly breath, his scratchy face. She was old now, so old that sometimes her own face in the mirror startled her. She’d attended her thirtieth high school reunion; she’d celebrated her sixtieth birthday;
she’d survived the deaths of both of her parents. In all those years, she’d forgotten all kinds of things, names and faces and tastes and sensations, but she knew that she would never forget how it felt to be in Uncle Mel’s car, the stench of his breath, the foggy windows, that feeling of being trapped, of how nothing she could do would free her.

“So Lester kisses me. He jams his tongue down my throat, and I push him off me, and he laughs, like it’s some game. He says he likes feisty women, and I tell him if he ever touches me again I’ll go to HR.” Lila was talking fast and breathing hard.

“Did you tell your sister?” Bethie asked.

“Not until tonight.” Lila’s voice was tiny. “Missy worships him. She would talk about how great he is all the time. How he was Philip Roth’s first editor, how he and John Cheever were drinking buddies. How everyone who’s worked for him goes on to have a great career because of his connections. Lester knows all the publishers, all the agents. I didn’t want to get her in trouble or, you know, make her choose. So I just left.” Lila sniffled. Bethie couldn’t see her niece’s face in the darkness of the back seat, but it sounded like she was crying. “He probably found someone else to move the rest of the books the very next day, someone from Smith, or Vassar, or one of those places. He’s probably grabbing some Seven Sisters boobs in the pantry.”

Bethie heard the echo of her mother’s voice in her head.
But you can forget about those East Coast colleges, those Six Sisters. Seven Sisters
, Jo had said.
That’s okay. The U of M is fine.

“You remember something like that happened to me,” Bethie said.

“I remember,” Lila said. “You told me about it. The summer I came to Atlanta.”

In the back seat, Bethie saw Lila push herself upright. “So, what?” she asked. “I’m supposed to tell Missy what happened? You think Missy’s going to save me?”

“I think you should give her a chance to do the right thing.”

Lila gave a sigh. “Yeah,” she said as Harold pulled the car
underneath the portico by the entrance for the emergency room. “Yeah, that’ll happen. Because I matter just as much as her career.”

“Of course you do!” said Bethie. Lila snorted again and didn’t say another word until they helped her out of the car.

In the waiting room, Lila hobbled over to the receptionist, waving Bethie and Harold over to the seats along the wall. “Do you know if she has insurance?” Harold asked, his voice low.

“No idea,” Bethie whispered back, so Harold went up to the counter, telling the woman behind the desk that they’d pay for whatever Lila needed. Bethie sighed, thinking about how much she loved Harold, and that he would take care of her, of Lila, of whatever he could. She’d gotten so lucky with him.

Lila filled out forms on a clipboard and sat with her uninjured leg pulled up against her chest. She leaned against the wall, underneath a poster about food-borne illnesses, and closed her eyes. Bethie called her sister to give her an update, and she and Harold sat with Lila as the television set played overhead and the room filled and emptied with a procession of the walking wounded: men who’d cut themselves carving the turkey or gotten their noses broken during family fights, a little boy who’d shoved a walnut up his nose. After an hour, Lila was finally loaded into a wheelchair and taken away. Bethie took out her phone, intending to call Kim’s house again, when Jo, with Shelley behind her, came hurrying into the room.

“Everything okay?” Jo asked.

“They just took her back. How are things at Kim’s house?”

“Everything’s fine but that painting,” Jo said. “Or the artwork, I guess you call it. It’s not a painting. Matt was extremely clear on that point.” From the capacious tote bag that she carried instead of a purse, she pulled a Tupperware container, paper plates, paper napkins, and a fistful of plastic forks. “You guys missed dessert, and, I have to say, all things considered, the bourbon pecan pie was amazing.” Jo took the lid off the container. There was pecan pie, pumpkin pie, apple pie, fresh whipped cream, and even a few chocolate-chip cookies.

“Hey,” said Bethie after Jo had distributed the plastic forks, and she’d savored a mouthful of pie. “Did Lila ever talk to you about what happened with Lester Shaub?”

Jo shook her head. “Not a word. But I think I can fill in the blanks. Missy’s furious.” Jo lowered her voice. “She said Lila came to work looking like she was dressed for the club, and that she flirted with everyone.”

“So she’s saying that it’s Lila’s fault?”

“Not exactly.” Jo shook her head, looking miserable. “She said she isn’t sure that anything even happened. She said that Lila exaggerates. Which, unfortunately, is true. Or at least it’s been true in the past.”

“Do you think that Lila’s exaggerating?”

“I don’t know.” Jo shook her head and raised her hands to her temples. “She’s my daughter, and I love her. But if I’m being honest, I can imagine her coming to work dressed inappropriately. I can imagine her flirting. But coming on to a seventy-two-year-old man? A guy who’s her sister’s boss, too?” Jo shook her head. “Lila’s judgment isn’t always great, but I have a hard time thinking she’d do that.”

“So you think Lester tried something inappropriate.”

Jo sighed, twisting her hands. “Maybe. Or maybe Lila misinterpreted. Or maybe she’s exaggerating. Maybe he did make a pass at her, which would be gross, not to mention inappropriate, because he’s her boss, only maybe—”

“How’s the patient?” asked Harold, his voice loud and hearty. Bethie looked up and saw Lila coming toward them. She had crutches under her armpit, a boot on one foot, and a loopy grin on her face. “Guess who got Vicodin?” she singsonged, pulling a plastic bottle out of her pocket and rattling it happily. Beside her, Bethie heard her sister give a long, resigned sigh.

“Hey,” Bethie said, remembering. “Don’t you need to tell Lila something?”

“Oh,” Jo said, looking stricken, shaking her head. “We can do that later.”