See Jane Date (9 page)

“I'll plan a hipster outfit for you and bring it upstairs tonight,” Eloise said, shutting off the light-box. “Oh, and I checked out the Gnat. She doesn't look
that
much like Nicole Kidman. And
hello?
Who wears leather pants past Memorial Day weekend, anyway?”

I kissed her, peered out of her office until I saw Morgan trot off somewhere, then sneaked out for the much-needed cigarette.

 

The tea kettle started shrieking in my kitchen just as I sat down to read the very juicy first paragraph of the Gnat's first chapter. I ran to the stove to turn off the burner.

Ten minutes later, everything I could ever want, for the next two hours, at least, was on a bamboo tray: a cup of
apple-cinnamon tea, two chocolate-caramel rice cakes, a half-full pack of Marlboro Lights and an unopened pack, a lighter, an ashtray and two dark lead pencils. I carried my bounty into the main room of my studio and settled myself on the futon, the first chapter of the Gnat's memoir square on my lap. Cigarette lit and rice cake bitten into, I began reading.

Whip out the violins. And a barf bag, please. Did I really have to read this pornography?

Remke and Jeremy would love it; it was
exactly
what they wanted. Dirty words, sex and enough woe-is-me, boo-hoo baloney to fill a big fat mass-market paperback summer read. What a bunch of melodramatic hooey.

Never had a best friend. Her parents thought she was a disappointment.
Give me a break! Natasha Nutley had had everything handed to her on a sterling silver platter from the moment she'd flashed those green eyes and red ringlets at her mother's obstetrician twenty-eight years ago. Who did she think she was fooling? Maybe the American people at large wouldn't know she was lying through her capped teeth. But I did.
I'd
been there.

The first time I'd clapped eyes on Natasha Anne Nutley was in the sixth grade at P.S. 101, when Mrs. Greenman had introduced her as a new student to our class. The Gnat and her family had moved into an apartment building around the corner from my own. Aunt Ina, Uncle Charlie and Dana lived in a building a few blocks away, where Ina and Charlie still lived, a few more blocks over from Grammy—and Ethan Miles, Incinerator Man. Natasha's father had inherited his father's pharmacy and moved the Nutley family to upscale Forest Hills from Flushing. To this day I remembered Mrs. Greenman introducing Natasha with the pleased smile that had been previously reserved for the class president.

Natasha had scored more invitations for roller-skating and McDonald's and slumber parties on her first day at P.S. 101 than I'd had in the history of my grammar school career. All the girls had wanted to be her best friend. And all the boys had salivated over her. Unable to take their eyes off her, they'd constantly failed tests or lost track of what the teacher was saying. Robby Evers included. I was always staring at him, so I was very well aware that he was always staring at Natasha and her budding breasts. She'd had her eye on Jimmy Alfonzo, the sixth-grade equivalent of James Dean or Dylan from
Beverly Hills 90210.
By science hour, day two, she and Jimmy were a couple. That was when I realized I could have a shot with Robby. Because the girl he wanted was already taken. There was nowhere for him to go but down.

I didn't have a lot of self-esteem in grammar school.

Robby Evers, who'd dreamed of being a hard-hitting journalist like his hero, Walter Cronkite, hadn't been interested in the skinny, quiet girl with the dark eyes and dark hair who hung around with the quieter and skinnier Miner twins. Not in sixth grade, or seventh, or eighth. Or even ninth, when my current C-cup-sized breasts had begun to make themselves known. In eleventh grade, Robby and I had been paired as partners in biology class. He'd been sickened by the idea of slicing open the dead frog, so we'd held the little knife together, my hand guiding his. With the first prick, he'd looked into my eyes, terror and discomfort forcing shut his own sweet brown eyes. I'd made him feel understood, and I'd made him feel
right.
And so Robby Evers began to notice me. Or my C-sized breasts, more likely. He still stared at Gnatasha, but she was involved in her on-again, off-again long-term relationship with Jimmy Alfonzo.

In biology and English, the two classes we shared,
Robby would show me newspaper clippings that he'd brought in to discuss in his social studies class and at meetings for the high school newspaper, which I'd joined to be near him. He'd go on and on about the injustice and the horror in the world around us and declare his intention to travel that world and document the atrocities so that everyone would be alerted and do something about it. I was in love. Robby Evers cared about everything. No other boy in Forest Hills High School gave a hoot about the ozone layer, let alone apartheid in South Africa. He was known for his intensity, and girls liked that, but the intensity combined with his awkwardness worked against him. He was going to be a foreign correspondent, and most girls at Forest Hills High had no idea what that was. I was going to be a poet. He liked that. Once, while I'd been passionately agreeing with him about the devastating photos of children starving in America, Robby had touched my hand. For three days I washed around the spot where his flesh had touched mine.

I'd been so sure he was going to ask me to the junior class semiformal, which was in two weeks. It would be my first dance. Every day after school I'd stop at Macy's and try on the pink gauzy dress I'd spotted while on a forced family shopping expedition to find Dana a dress for her own first dance at Russell Sage Junior High. (She was something of the Natasha Nutley of the seventh grade.) But a week before the dance, Robby still hadn't asked me. And suddenly, we were down to three days. In English class, I was gearing up to ask him, ever so casually, if he'd like to go with me. But then I'd heard the sound that accompanied Natasha Nutley everywhere she went: the jangle of bangle bracelets.

She was giggling and leaning over Robby's desk, her butt in the air. “So you'll pick me up at seven-thirty,
right, Robby?” He'd nodded, a speechless expression of bliss on his face. “Don't forget the corsage, white with a pink ribbon to match my dress.”

My
dress was going to be pink.

Robby watched her sashay her little hips back to her own desk, then pumped his fist in the air with a silently mouthed
Yes!
He'd passed me a note: “Where do you buy a corsage, do you know?” I'd written back that he should stop at Forest Hills Flowers on Queens Blvd, a few long blocks from the school. He'd smiled at me, and then hadn't taken his eyes off the back of Natasha Nutley's ringletted head for the fifty minutes of AP English.

I'd cried for three days. The day after the dance, I'd dared to ask Robby if he'd had a good time. He'd barely lifted his head from his desk. Said she'd canceled at the last minute, that she and Jimmy Alfonzo had gotten back together. He'd spent a whole hour at Forest Hills Flowers, he'd told me, only to end up throwing the corsage away.

The corsage that should have been mine. Robby Evers had been ruined by reality. Natasha Nutley had taken all his sixteen-year-old idealism and introduced the hard facts of real life. And Robby never touched my hand again.

Okay, okay, whip out the violins for me now, right?

As if on cue, the sweeping crescendo of an operatic overture burst through the wall. Opera Man must have gotten into a fight with his girlfriend. I didn't recognize the composer, but I knew drama when I heard it.

I lit a cigarette, took a long drag and leaned back against the futon as I exhaled slowly.

How was I supposed to carefully read and thoughtfully comment on Natasha's chapter while some Italian woman boomed next door? I pounded my fist on the wall. Opera Man pounded back, but he lowered the volume.

Five cigarettes later, I'd finished reading Chapter One.
Ten cigarettes later, I'd finished editing it. I'd penciled notes in the margins.
Expand here. Flesh this out. Show, don't tell.
I'd corrected her atrocious spelling. Natasha Nutley had apparently slept her way into high school AP English, too.

I reached for a cigarette—the pack was empty. Twelve butts littered the ashtray on the Parsons table. I hadn't even realized I'd smoked so many cigarettes. I stood up and stretched my legs, then crumpled the empty pack into the ashtray and carried the bamboo tray into the kitchen.

As the butts and ashes fell into the little garbage can under the sink, I could hear Serge shouting in his Russian accent. “I do not understand, El-weeze! In my country, when people love each other, they spend time together!”

“I need my space, Serge!” Eloise declared.

I thought only men said that.

A few minutes later, a door slammed, and heavy footsteps bounded downstairs. Then came the sound of Eloise unlocking her door and running up the steps. She knocked to the tune of the “Wedding March.” “Open up, I have the best outfit for you for Trendoid Night!”

If I hadn't overheard that little tidbit of a fight, I never would have known that Serge had moments ago stormed out of Eloise's apartment. Eloise's expression gave nothing away.

“El? Are you okay?”

She opened my closet door and hung up the outfit, which involved lots of low-cut black matte jersey. “Yeah. Why? Oh, you heard that?” I nodded. “He's just so clingy, you know? I like to have nights to myself.”

I tried to imagine wanting a night to myself when I had a boyfriend. I couldn't. I'd wanted to spend every waking and sleeping minute with Max; he was my only reference.
And if Jeremy Black were mine, would I tell him I needed space? I don't think so.

“Ooh, we're missing
Will and Grace,
” she said, pointing the remote at my thirteen-inch television. “Let's watch it, then I'll dress you and we'll accessorize.”

We dropped down on the futon and cracked up at something funny Grace's secretary said. At a commercial, I slipped the marked-up first chapter of the Gnat's memoir into a folder and dumped it into my tote bag. It was time to forget about Natasha and her semi-charmed life and concentrate on making my own exactly that.

D
elancey Street smelled like a combination of rotisserie chicken, cigar smoke and garbage rotting in the rain. Where were all the quaint pickle barrels a` la the movie
Crossing Delancey?
Where were all the kosher delis? Wasn't the Lower East Side supposed to look like it did at the turn of the last century?

“Ooh, mama!”

Three teenagers piled onto one child-sized bicycle sped past me, licking their lips at me and making kissing sounds. I decided to take that as a compliment. I'd worn a boring black pantsuit to work, then changed into my hot-to-trot date outfit, which I'd lugged to work in a garment bag. Eloise had done my makeup under the fluorescent lights in Posh's women's bathroom. Not that I was wearing much. According to Eloise, this season it was all about lips. Mine were currently lined and shined in Bobbi Brown's Raisin. Which was currently lining and shining
the rim of my cigarette filter. I flicked the cigarette into a puddle of something lining the curb, then popped a Certs into my mouth.

Five thirty-three, 535, 537. I was getting close. Deep breath, deep breath. I still had a few blocks to go before I hit the address Andrew had given me.

The Lower East Side was the kind of neighborhood that was shared by the very old and the very new. Tiny, hunched-over elderly women in kerchiefs wheeled carts down the sidewalks; young trendies in bizarre clothes flocked into the bars, clubs and restaurants that had opened in droves. But as I walked farther down Delancey toward Chinatown, the trendy bars got fewer and fewer. The women pushing carts seemed to multiply.

Here I was—563 Delancey. It was a tenement, much like the one I lived in. A five-story brick walk-up. I leaned my head back and stared up at the ugly building. Five concrete steps led to a metal door. Perhaps the hipster club or hot art gallery was housed on the first floor. No sign, name or indication of an establishment was supposedly all the rage now for the hottest downtown nightspots. Places too cool to be revealed to the general uncool public. I headed up the steps in my three-inch strappy sandals, relieved that I'd let Eloise convince me to borrow her clingy, low-cut dress. I looked like hot stuff tonight. It wasn't every day I got whistles and licked lips from teenage boys.

A plaque of surnames, apartments numbers and buzzers was on the left of the door.
Mackelroy, 4R.
Did Andrew
live
here? Wouldn't he have mentioned the
thing
was in his own apartment? Maybe it was some sort of performance art? I pushed the round button next to Mackelroy.

“Who is it?” sing-songed a child's voice.

Who was that? “Um, it's Jane, I'm—”

The buzzer buzzed. I pushed open the door and was immediately overwhelmed by the smell of frying onions. A long, steep staircase loomed in front of me. I braced my palm on the banister and twisted my head to peer up in the dim light. I didn't see anything. But I could hear the basic apartment building sounds—muted televisions, telephones ringing, footsteps, voices.

My long dress twisted around my ankles as I negotiated the rickety steps. By the time I reached the fourth-floor landing, I was huffing and puffing, and a tiny drop of perspiration rolled down my cleavage. You'd think I'd be used to climbing four flights of stairs, considering that I had two more to go in my own building. Nope.

I fanned myself in front of 4F, took a deep breath, plastered on a friendly smile and walked across the narrow hallway to 4R. A little sticky label under the apartment number read M
ACKELROY
. I pushed the bell.

“Who
is
it?” sing-songed the same childish voice.

“Get away from the door, Jenny!” snapped an older woman's voice. “Go put the soup bowls on the table like I asked you to.”

I gnawed my lower lip. A few locks were turned and the door swung open. An attractive woman in her fifties or sixties pushed back strands of hair into her gray-blond bun, then wiped her hands on her apron. “Welcome,” she said, extending her wiped hand to me. “You must be Jane.”

Maybe not, I thought. Maybe I'm someone else, depending on who you are. I smiled—sort of.

“I'm Janice Mackelroy, Andy's mom. Come on in. Andy's going to be a little late. Tied up at the office again. The way they work you kids now, you'd think they were paying you a fortune.”

Before I had a chance to process any of the above,
Janice Mackelroy took my hand and led me down a long, narrow hallway into the living room.

“Why don't you have a seat, and I'll bring you a nice glass of wine.” She smiled, then disappeared.

I found myself walking farther into the room and sitting down on a sofa covered with plastic. It creaked. There was plastic on all the upholstered furniture. A rectangular glass coffee table was so close to the sofa that I couldn't lift my leg to cross it. A stack of coffee-table books on art and sailing and a purple glass bowl containing wrapped sour balls was set on the table. I thought about flipping through a book to have something to do, but I felt eyes on me. I followed the feeling to the stern face of an elderly man in a portrait above the television. I darted my gaze back to the top book.
Modern Sailors.

“Are you Andy's new girlfriend?”

A nine-or ten-year-old girl with limp blond hair and a long, thin nose was staring at me. Her eyes were on my cleavage. She had the wariness of a girl who was picked on a lot. I sensed she was headed for a gawky phase that would be hell but that she'd end up exotic looking.

“Um, well, I don't know,” I said, forcing a big smile. “I haven't even met him yet.”

“So what are you doing here?” she asked.

Good question, kid.

“Uncle Andy had a girlfriend,” the child said, “but they broke up. She dressed like you. Always wearing tight stuff and showing her boobies.” Jenny pushed out her flat chest and did an exaggerated little dance.

Janice Mackelroy rushed into the living room, apology on her face. “Jenny, I thought you were Nana's helper. Come on back into kitchen. Don't bother your uncle's nice friend.” Janice Mackelroy grabbed the little girl's hand and escorted her away. A few minutes later, the
woman returned, a glass of wine in her hand. “Here you are, dear. I wish I could sit and talk, but I've got a kitchen full of pots simmering. I hope Jenny didn't bother you.”

“Um, no, of course not. She's so cute,” I said. “Reminds me of me at her age.” That was an outright lie. When I was a kid, if I'd even dared to comment on a guest, I'd have been lectured for a half hour and denied television and Devil Dogs for a week. But Mrs. Mackelroy seemed to be working so hard on dinner that I couldn't bear to cause her any more trouble. “I'd be glad to help,” I added. With what, I had no idea. Was Andrew Mackelroy's
thing
dinner at his parents'?

“No, I wouldn't hear of it,” she told me. “You're our guest. Andy said you loved Italian food—I'm so glad. You're going to get quite a lot of it tonight.”

I smiled—sort of. And Mrs. Mackelroy disappeared into the kitchen.

Several framed photos lined the top of the television. The plastic cover on the sofa crackled as I got up to peer at the family snapshots. The girl, Jenny, was in several, along with a slightly older boy, and a couple in their thirties or forties who I assumed were Jenny's parents. In the other photos were Janice Mackelroy, a man around her age and a younger man, blond, and woman, also blond. Was the younger man Andrew? The younger woman his sister? The mother of Jenny?

I felt Portrait Man's eyes on me and sat back down on the sofa. Another bead of perspiration rolled down my cleavage. If only I had my jacket with me. I was so inappropriately dressed for a family dinner. What would Andrew think? What would his family think? Who came to dinner at a guy's parents' house dressed for a nightclub? Well, that was Andrew's own fault, I reminded myself. He could have mentioned the
thing
was at his folks'.

“Why can't I go in the living room with Andrew's new girlfriend,” I heard Jenny whine. “It's hot in here, Nana.”

I plastered a smile on my face and ventured toward the sound of Jenny's voice. I stood in the doorway to a very warm kitchen. Mrs. Mackelroy stirred a gigantic pot on the stove top. Jenny sat at the square table, her head bent over a loose-leaf binder, her tongue sticking out in concentration.

“Um, Mrs. Mackelroy?” I said, “Are you sure I couldn't help? I feel guilty sitting in that lovely room doing nothing.”

“Aren't you sweet,” she said with a smile. “Well, if you're sure you wouldn't mind…Jenny, why don't you ask Andy's nice young lady friend if she'll be kind enough to look at your math homework?”

Um, that wasn't exactly what I meant. I didn't know what I'd meant. Setting out napkin rings, maybe? Wineglasses?

Jenny shot up off the chair, the loose-leaf binder in her hands. “Come on, I'll show you in the living room.” She grabbed my hand and marched me back to the sofa, where she plopped down. I did the same. She opened the binder onto my lap. “Are you good at geometry or are you a total airhead?”

Before I could even register that, a key jangled in the door.

“Ma? I'm home. Ma?”

I shot up, which sent Jenny's loose-leaf binder to the floor. “Sorry,” I said, bending down to pick it up.

“Airhead,” Jenny announced. “Just like I thought.”

I sneered at the ugly child as I handed her the binder.

“She here, Ma?”

I assumed he meant me. I also assumed that was the voice of Andew Mackelroy.

“In the living room. She's helping Jenny with her math.”

“Ma!”

“She's pretty,” I heard Mrs. Mackelroy whisper. “A little overdressed though.”

“Shh, Ma, she'll hear you.”

A tall, muscular guy with dirty-blond hair, blue eyes and a large nose appeared in the living room, carrying a briefcase. He looked Scandinavian. He was cute. Very cute. I even liked the suit, which had subtle pinstripes.

“Hi, I'm Andrew.” He shook my hand and stared at my cleavage, then raised his eyes north. “I'm really sorry I'm late. Hey, hot stuff,” he said to Jenny, ruffling her blond hair.

“Stop it! You know I hate when you do that,” Jenny shouted, smoothing her hair back into place. She glared at Andrew. “Did you bring me something?”

He put down his briefcase and crossed his arms over his chest. “That's what you say to your uncle? You haven't seen me in, like, two days, and that's how you greet me?” A smile tugged at his lips. He snapped open his briefcase and pulled out a small paper bag. Jenny snatched it and stuck her nose inside. A huge smile split her sullen face. She pulled out a purple lollipop in the shape of a cat.

She ran off into the kitchen. “Nana, look what Uncle Andrew brought me!”

Andrew smiled at me. “Sorry I was late. It's nice to finally meet you in the flesh.” The eyes traveled south again.

“No problem,” I said, offering him a good-sport smile.
“And it's nice to meet you, too.” I was waiting for the explanation.

Keys jangled in the door again.

“There they are!” Mrs. Mackelroy exclaimed. “How's my little birthday boy, huh? How's my big boy!”

“Nana! Stop treating me like a kid!” demanded the cracking voice of a preteen. “Ewww! What's Jenny doing here? It's supposed to be me and my friends only!”

“Stevie, apologize to your sister right now!” A woman's voice.

“Go see your uncle Andrew,” Mrs. Mackelroy said. “He's in the living room.” She lowered her voice. “He brought a date.”

“Andy?” The woman's voice. A female version of Andrew appeared in the living room, a friendly smile on her face. She and Andrew embraced, then she held out both hands to me and clasped my right hand. “So who's this?” she said, eyeing Andrew with a gleam in her eye.

“Jane, this is my sister, Danielle. Danielle, this is Jane. And this big kid here is my nephew!” He swept up the kid over his shoulder. Delighted shrieks as the two played pretend wrestle. “Happy birthday, Stevie!”

I stepped back and plastered my sort-of smile on my face, which I could tell from the reflection on the television screen expressed half horror, half you-never-know.

Danielle stuck out her hand. “Nice ta meetcha.”

Knocks on the door. Bursts of childish voices.

“Wait till you see Stevie's birthday cake, kids!” Mrs. Mackelroy exclaimed from the kitchen as a horde of boys rushed into the living room. Suddenly there was complete silence as the boys stopped dead in their tracks.

I very slowly sat down on the sofa, the sort-of smile draining from my face.

Seven or eight twelve-year-old boys stared at me. I
should amend that. Seven or eight twelve-year-olds stared at my breasts.

It seemed safe to surmise that the
thing
Andrew Mackelroy had been referring to was prepubescent Stevie's birthday party.