The Ladies' Man (10 page)

He hesitates, letting Adele walk onto the elevator first, then says wryly, “Which would never do.”

“I agree.”

“Even though I haven't eaten all day.”

Adele says, “Third floor.”

Nash asks where these sisters work.

“Lois works for the state, and Kathleen owns a shop downtown.”

“One at a time. What does Lois do at the State House?”

“Not actually at the State House. She works for D.E.S.”

“Which is?”

“Division of Employment Security—‘Unemployment' in the vernacular.”

“And what kind of a shop does Kathleen own?”

“Lingerie. High end.”

Nash conjures crude images of low-end lingerie, but doesn't share them with Adele. “Does she enjoy that line of work?” he asks.

Adele ignores the question, which sounds insincere to her, and suggestive. When the doors open, she leaves the elevator as purposefully as her sore midsection allows. Nash follows her to the end of the hallway. He can hear the phone ringing, but it doesn't seem to incite any urgency in Adele. Nor does she rush for the phone when they get inside.

“Is your machine on?” he asks.

“We don't have one.”

Nash doesn't know anyone without an answering machine. He asks how people living together—women, he means, single women who need to know which men called—get by without an answering machine.

“People know we're at work during the day, so they call when we're home.” He is standing in the foyer, waiting to be invited deeper into the apartment. He asks, “How long have you lived here?”

“Four years.” She doesn't volunteer the circumstances: We kept the house after our parents died, but sold it when Lois married, thinking it was just Kathleen and I.

“It reminds me of your house,” he says.

“All the furniture is from Dean Road. We didn't buy one thing.” He follows when she walks through one predominantly blue parlor into a second rose-colored parlor, which leads into a green-flowered dining room, and finally a yellow kitchen.

“Nice place,” says Nash.

“It's not very interesting,” says Adele, who has opened the refrigerator door and is staring inside.

“Can I help?”

Adele says, “Help how? I'm not making you lunch.”

“No,” says Nash. “Of course not.”

She takes a carton of brown eggs from a shelf, and says, “Here. You be the chef. Scramble yourself some whites.”

Nash doesn't know how to cook, let alone get the whites out of an egg. “Got anything else?” he asks.

“Look for yourself. Take whatever appeals to you.”

“Where are you going?”

“To change into something loose,” she says, but without a trace of the usual innuendo Nash associates with the phrase.

“Could I run you a hot bath?”

“I run my own baths,” she says.

Nash takes an apple from a fruit bowl on the kitchen table and bites into it.

“They're not washed,” she says.

“If you're lucky,” he says, raising his eyebrows, “I might get poisoned.”

Adele doesn't answer. She rearranges a few bottles in the refrigerator, exposing a covered earthenware casserole. “Here—last night's leftovers,” she says. “We had some kind of veal. Kathleen always makes too much.”

“Really?” he asks. “I wouldn't be taking someone's dinner?”

“So what? She'll be honored. Put what you want in the microwave. Plates are in the cupboard over the dishwasher.”

He slides the casserole from the shelf, compliments its Japanese
glaze, takes its lid off, and smiles happily at the congealed, monochromatic lumps of meat and potatoes. “Looks fabulous,” he says.

Adele says, “It's not. We gave it a B-minus, which means we won't see it again.”

Nash seizes on this conversational gambit. “B-minus,” he repeats. “You mean, a grade?”

“We grade new recipes—Kathleen insists—and she only introduces it into her repertoire if it gets an A.”

“Fascinating.”

“No, it isn't. It's mildly interesting. We find it endearing because it's so Kathleen.”

“Is she the only one who cooks?”

“I can cook, but I don't like to, and Lois is hopeless, except for one pot roast made with dehydrated onion soup.”

Nash has been holding the casserole by its two handles. “Can I zap this?” he asks.

“I think so.”

He doesn't move. Adele says, “I'm going to change. Just put it in and give it a couple of minutes.” When he doesn't move, she opens the microwave door. Nash puts the casserole inside, and Adele hits “4-0-0” and “start.”

“I appreciate it,” he says.

“You might want to rotate it halfway through the cooking.”

“You're very kind,” he says.

Adele says, “I certainly don't mean to be.”

Nash laughs.

“Richard would be appalled if I didn't feed you.”

Nash tries a half smile. “I think it's an old Indian custom—feeding the person who saved your life.”

Adele takes an oval straw place mat and a sunflower cloth napkin from a kitchen drawer, and sets one place.

Nash tries again. “Not that someone else in the room wouldn't have known the Heimlich maneuver. You were probably never in any real danger of dying unattended.”

“I wonder,” Adele murmurs.

Nash says, sensing an opportunity, “What
I
wonder is what exactly made me come back at this exact moment in time? I mean, all these years, and suddenly I have to come back to Boston. Do you
believe in stuff like that—fate or karma or some larger force moving us around on a big board?”

“I find that kind of thinking idiotic,” says Adele. She raises her voice. “Was it some larger force that made you run away and humiliate me all those years ago? Was it karma that made me choke on a piece of steak today? In front of you, of all people?” To Adele's horror, her voice cracks. “I hate you,” she says. “I always have and I'm not going to stop now.”

“ ‘Always'?” he repeats. “You agreed to marry someone you hated? That can't be true.”

“I can't remember ever feeling”—she considers employing the word
love
, but can't in front of him—“anything but hate.”

Nash shakes his head throughout her speech, then says woefully, “You loved me.”

“If I did, I stopped in one night, and every single member of my family feels the same way.”

“You loved me,” he repeats.

The microwave beeps. Neither moves toward it. Nash thinks, This is hard; harder than usual. In most cases, such anger can be soothed by holding the subject in his arms until she gives up the fight. But Adele looks icy, not disposed to thawing, and has a broken rib. Besides, under fluorescent light, without lipstick, she looks her age. “Do you want me to leave?” he asks.

She nods.

“Love and hate,” he muses. “It sounds a little childish, doesn't it? To be using such extremes about something that happened a lifetime ago?”

“Get out,” says Adele. “Take the whole goddamn thing with you. I hope you choke on it. And I hope no one's around who knows the Heimlich maneuver.”

He accepts the casserole dish and walks past her to the front door, looking wounded but dignified like the better man he has become over the intervening thirty years. The earthenware casserole is a nice prop, he thinks: He will have to return it, and Adele will have to explain to her outraged sisters why it's gone.

Kathleen sees a stranger in her vestibule holding a glazed casserole identical to the one she bought at a seconds sale in
Woodstock, Vermont. Her first thought is, I have a pot like that. But as soon as the glass door between them opens, she smells Veal Marengo.

“Excuse me?” she asks. “Where are you going with that?”

Nash recognizes immediately what has happened: The sister with the soft heart and the lingerie shop has been summoned, and has rushed home to tend to Adele.

“I feel so foolish,” he says. He puts the casserole on the floor at her feet and puts out his hand. “I'm Nash Harvey,” he says. “You don't have to tell me who you are.”

“Kathleen—”

“The baby,” he says.

“Where are you going with my dish?”

Nash says, “I'm not stealing it. I was going to return it as soon as I thought Adele would let me.”

“Is she okay?”

“She has a broken rib.”

“I know. Richard told me.”

“So he told you about the choking in the restaurant?”

Kathleen presses her hand to her chest, and swallows. “I can't believe it. She could have
died
.”

If you weren't there
, Nash silently prompts.
If you hadn't come to the rescue
.

“I can't believe Richard went back to work,” says this sister.

“I insisted.”

She stoops over to get the casserole, but straightens up to say, “ ‘Insisted'? What gives you the right to insist on anything having to do with my family?”

This sister has a heart-shaped face, and no gray in her red hair. “I'm sorry. I hadn't eaten anything all day. Adele heated it up for me. She asked me to leave so she could get more comfortable, but said I should take this.”

“It seems funny she would have given you my casserole dish instead of Tupperware.”

“I'll return it, washed, of course.” He waits a few beats then says, “Kathleen, you do realize who I am?”

“Of course I do.”

“The Harvey who used to go out with Adele? Because I haven't seen you since you were a little girl.”

Kathleen repeats scornfully, “ ‘Used to go out with Adele'? I wasn't
that
little. I was sixteen. I was there that night. And I was old enough to take her home and put her to bed.”

“Of course you were,” he says. “Which makes it all the more astonishing when I look at you right now.”

Kathleen stares, waits.

He smiles. “Well, if my math is right, and if you'll allow me, your driver's license must say forty-five, but your face says thirty.”

She hears her own voice say faintly, “I'm forty-six.”

“And I understand you're in ladies' … apparel. Adele told me. I'd love to see your shop while I'm in town.”

Later Kathleen will say it happened like a crime of passion, without premeditation. She won't be able to pinpoint which inflection, which inch of his face infuriated her—or what made her raise her arms and bring the veal-filled casserole down on his astonished head.

N
ash is not knocked out by Kathleen's assault, but does recognize, as soon as he hits the tile floor, the possible advantages of playing near-dead. The casserole lies broken in jagged pieces, its contents smelling of onions, splattered on his pinpoint-check jacket. He slumps against the door, affecting what he hopes is the slack jaw of a man seeing stars. His head genuinely hurts from a sharp, localized pain, as if he'd walked into the corner of a cabinet door, and he thinks there may be blood mingling with the gravy on his face.

Kathleen is whimpering, a stream of
Oh nos
and
Oh my Gods
. Nash can tell she is coming closer, about to do something caring and diagnostic, kneeling without regard to the glop under her knees. A good actor, he doesn't flinch when she slides her fingers onto his carotid artery. “Oh, Christ,” she murmurs. She repositions her fingertips and says more urgently, “Oh, shit.” Nash feels a poke in the shoulder with a finger that has a sharp fingernail. He flutters his eyelids once, twice, but leaves them closed.

“Harvey!” she shouts like a cop trying to rouse a drunk. “Harvey?”

He thinks he shouldn't answer any too soon. He hears her high heels click on the tile, then the buzzer sounding a long blast. He opens his eyes a few millimeters. He can see up Kathleen's skirt to
the hem of something black and lacy. Adele's voice answers after what seems like a full minute.