The View From Penthouse B (6 page)

I’m not sure where he meets these young ladies, but he must, wherever he goes. His phone vibrates and barks fairly constantly. He is exceedingly polite in our presence. Whatever calls, e-mails, and texts pour in, Anthony doesn’t return them until dinner and conversation conclude.

He asked both of us, after weeks under our roof, if we dated. He hadn’t noticed too much traffic of that variety, coming or going. “None of my business, of course,” he added.

I don’t mind answering his questions, which would be awkward if he was a man my age instead of the kid in running shorts and flip-flops, eating leftover Chinese food straight from the refrigerator. His youth provides the comfort level. He is like a teaching assistant in a psych course called Spinsterhood. So I admit, “I might be a candidate for Chaste Dates myself. But less so now than a year ago.”

Margot yells to him from the dining room, “Now tell us who you were out with last night.”

“The lucky lady who got the pink cupcakes,” I add.

Anthony does a very sweet thing at this moment. He takes me by the hand and leads me into the dining room, where he says, “Please be seated.”

I do, but he continues to stand, Chinese food abandoned in the kitchen. He says solemnly, “I just realized, when Margot asked me who I went out with last night, that I’ve put you on the wrong track.”

“Which is what?” I ask.

“Let me put it this way: Young ladies don’t appreciate cupcakes. They’re all on diets. They dump them or regift them.” He pauses, smiles. “On the other hand, dudes scarf them down.”

Margot and I are still smiling expectantly, not realizing that his announcement is whole and complete, if not eloquent.

“Hmmm,” he says with a theatrically perplexed hand to his chin. “I see that I haven’t made my point.”

“You’re not going to be baking cupcakes anymore?” I ask.

Anthony says, “Let me put it this way: Dear ladies, I’m gay. I thought you might have guessed that already, but apparently not.”

Margot says, “Well! I am a little stunned.” She puts her coffee cup down, hitches one nightgown strap back in place. “But not in a bad way.”

“Did the INS guess faster than we did?” I ask.

“Quite. Like immediately.”

I said, “I hope you know we are very, very pro-gay. I think I can speak for both of us.”

“She certainly can,” says Margot. “In fact, I can’t believe how lucky we are. We get a man under our roof, a man’s opinions and his mechanical ability, but without any sexual tension whatsoever. It’s almost too good to be true.”

“And vice versa,” he says.

Margot and I did not realize how fascinated a homosexual man would be with the details of a life lived under the banner of gynecology. Another thing we failed to anticipate was that anyone with even a modicum of intellectual curiosity would Google the family scandal that brought Margot—and consequently we her boarders—to this beautiful home.

Most of the Charles-centric conversations took place between Anthony and me when Margot was out or asleep. I was feeling a little guilty and disloyal discussing her traumas behind her back, but Anthony pointed out that the holes in my knowledge were rather astonishing. I had not attended the trial of my brother-in-law?
Really?

I said that he and Margot were separated by then and she was virtually in hiding so I spent those days with her. Besides—

“I know,” he said—was it a little wearily?—“your own personal tragic loss.”

I said, managing to smile, “My footnote to everything, right?”

“Understandably.”

“And the basic facts were bad enough—the cheating and the fornicating. Did I really need all the details?”

As ever, he was at his laptop. He asked if I drank beer and I said yes, sure. Did he mean now? We had
beer?

“We do, Miss Gwen. My treat.”

With refreshments served, he pulled the second kitchen stool closer to his laptop and said, “Sit. Shall we?”

The headlines he produced referenced Charles—not by name but by variations on “Jersey Sperm Doc” and “Fertility Chuck.”

Anthony said, “Based on what I’m seeing, it was huge. Hard
not
to know the details.”

I thought I had paid some attention at the time, but apparently I was deaf to many nuances. I had missed one of the biggest bombshells, which was the appearance, live on the witness stand, of women who’d paid five thousand dollars for unsterile fertility procedures conducted on a leather couch in the doctor’s private office. Yes, they admitted in cross-examination, it was consensual. Yes, they had been draped. No, there had been no kissing or fondling. And yes, they had been desperate to have a child and yes, maybe they had sobbed when told that the donor didn’t show up on the appointed day. And yes, both parties had agreed that they shouldn’t let the window of opportunity pass.

“What a jerk,” Anthony grumbled. “And where was his nurse?”

I angled his laptop toward me and began clicking the
NEXT
arrow at the bottom of the breathless stories. I sipped my beer straight from the bottle and said, “Maybe I
should
know more. I’m the one who accepts Charles’s calls from the pokey. Maybe I’ve been a little too nice.”

“There’s more.” Anthony took back possession of his keyboard and typed something into a search box.

A timeline and birth certificate were before me, and a photo of the son, probably in third or fourth grade—assuredly a school photo, its background a web of blue and pink laser beams.

This is the world now. This is how Anthony, within minutes, found a son spawned by Charles: He went on Facebook and “friended” him.

Notice

A
YOUNG WOMAN WITH
short, cowlicked blond hair and dark roots was asleep on our living-room couch, lavender spaghetti straps visible above an heirloom granny afghan we considered too dowdy to display. I might have yelped, but there was something about the way her shoes—red ballerina flats—were neatly, almost mathematically, lined up at the approximate spot where her feet would land upon rising that seemed trustworthy. Should I wake her? Or wake Margot or Anthony to fill in the blanks? It was not yet seven a.m., so I decided to grind some coffee beans and let that racket serve as the alarm clock. First, though, I tiptoed closer to the sleeping intruder for clues, at which point I solved the mystery myself. Next to her, having floated to the floor, was a Post-it note in a familiar hand. It said, “Meet Olivia, my sister. Will explain. xo A.”

I felt that the calm and mature thing to do was not to wake anyone but to carry on. I retreated to the kitchen and poured myself juice. Yesterday’s
Daily News
was on the island, open to a photograph meant for critical analysis: a shot of Mrs. Bernie Madoff furiously exiting a Burger Heaven on Lexington, take-out bag in hand. The headline, circled, read
GOTTA BEEF, RUTHIE?
Margot, who’d added devil’s horns to Ruthie’s baseball cap, would be blogging about that culinary comedown later, I was sure.

And then, in the doorway, taller than she’d looked horizontally, taller than her brother, was our unexpected guest, red plaid boxer shorts below a lavender camisole, pink-encased smartphone in one hand. She introduced herself: Olivia Sarno, sister of Anthony. I said, “I know. Your brother left a note on you. I’m Gwen.”

She asked what time it was. I pointed to the digital clock on the microwave—7:05—which caused Olivia to mumble, “Oh, shit.”

“Too early?” I asked. “Or too late?”

“Late. But, you know—so what? I gave my notice yesterday.” Then, with a grin and a slide onto the nearest kitchen stool, she said, “Fuck ’em, don’t you think? How about a little comp time for once?” She pulled the newspaper closer, pointed, and said, “Oh, right. Anthony told me that one of you lost all of your money to this Madoff guy.”

“Margot. Still asleep. And you’re the au pair sister?”

“Not for long,” she said. “Two more weeks.”

I asked if she’d like coffee, which made her jump off the stool and say, “I’ll get it! Here? Filters are where?”

I said, “Sit down. You’re a guest.” I pointed to the cell phone in her hand. “Do you want to call your employer and tell her you’ll be late?”

“Tell
him.
She’s out the door already. Her hours are insane.”

She volunteered that the baby’s mother took a mere two weeks off for maternity leave. “Noel was the one who took family leave, six weeks. Until I got hired,” she said.

“Noel is the husband?”

“Noel . . . would be the husband.”

From what he liked to call his “wing,” from the chin-up bar he’d installed over the pantry door, Anthony called, “That’s right. The husband. And paramour.”

Ten athletic grunts later, he was in the kitchen, barefoot and wearing only sweatpants. He crossed to the refrigerator, opened it, and took out butter and a carton of eggs. Olivia and I watched him crack too many eggs into a bowl and beat them rather mercilessly. “Hers,” he finally stated, pointing. “My sister’s paramour.”

The eggs met the melted butter with a sizzle. “Want me to tell Gwen what’s going on, or would you prefer your own spin?” he asked.

Olivia said, “Go ahead, Anthony. Knock yourself out.” She asked me which bathroom she should use and could she borrow a towel. I led her toward mine, and when I returned to the kitchen, I said, “She seems pretty much . . . together.”

“You are correct,” said Anthony. “Oh, is she ever together. I see it, too. Miss In Charge. Miss What Goes Around Comes Around. She doesn’t understand the damage she can do.”

“
She
can do? Even though her employer made sexual advances? I’m missing something here.”

“I didn’t say sexual predator. I said paramour. My stupid sister is in love with him! They were
welcome
sexual advances! Very! And she’s enjoying it because she hates the wife!” With a dishtowel around the skillet handle, he bumped the pan to an unlit burner and muttered, “Why did I start this now? They’ll be cold by the time she’s dressed.”

“I’ll have some,” I said.

He opened the dishwasher and began emptying it with too much clanging.

“Leave it. Tell me the rest. What is Olivia’s version?”

“She took the job because of him—hot, according to her—and because she felt sorry for the baby, having a mother who held her like she was holding out her arms for a stack of clean towels. Classic!”

I asked how old Olivia was and how long she’d been working for this couple.

“Twenty-four. And on the job for six months, seven? Something like that. She knew right away. She told me—confessed after a half pitcher of sangria one night—that she had a crush on the dad. And you know what I said? I said, ‘Well, that makes the job a little more interesting, doesn’t it?’ Like I’d say to a kid in high school who had a crush on her math teacher. Who knew it was mutual? Who knew that the guy who married a ballbuster attorney in Armani was going to fall for a scruffy little college dropout?”

“You’ve met these people?”

“No, he has
not,
” said Olivia. She was back, now in jeans, a parka patched with duct tape, and a fluffy pink scarf framing a face that was—though scrubbed and unadorned—beautiful.
Employment agencies might take cautionary notice
, I thought.
Bad idea to have early-morning, unaffected beauty so evident in a live-in nanny
.

She turned to me. “Did he tell you that I’m in a very sticky situation? That my boss confessed he was in love with me?”

Anthony said, “Which I’m not buying.”

Olivia said, “Noel told me that he couldn’t deny it any longer, that he knew I felt the same way, that he and his wife hardly ever had sex since Skyler was born. And not because Davida was working 24-7, or because she had no sex drive after the baby was born—all true, by the way. And now, because of me”—a squeak of a sob escaped—“and he was in agony.”

Anthony snickered.

“Not that kind of agony. He meant emotional agony. Psychic agony.”

Anthony turned to me. “Would you believe it? A lawyer? Of the do-good variety? In this day and age? What an asshole!”

“What would you have done if you were in love with him?” Olivia demanded. “Push him away? Say, ‘Take a hike’?”

“Yes! For legal reasons! For—I don’t know—for Nanny Cam reasons! You should’ve said, for the record, ‘If you ever do that again; if you ever suggest what I think you’re suggesting, I quit.’”

Olivia said, “Yes, Anthony. I know how pissed off you get when a hot guy comes on to you. Puh-lease.”

Anthony said, “I gave your eggs to Gwen. That’s your juice on the island. And you can take a cupcake—over there, in the Tupperware. Then get going, though I forget why I’m sending you back there, especially if what’s-her-name—”

“Davida.”

“If Davida’s left for the office and her poor, misunderstood, horny, middle-aged husband is waiting for you under their designer duvet.”

“He’s middle-aged?” I asked.

“He’s thirty-four!” said Olivia. “They were only married like a week when Davida got pregnant. Big mistake! She was all nice until they marched down the aisle. She spent the entire honeymoon on the phone with her associates and paralegals—some big federal case that was going to trial.”

“So now what?” Anthony demanded. “He’s going to admit to the world, ‘I’m a walking cliché. I’m divorcing my mean wife and I’m in lust with my nanny.’”

Olivia turned to me. “Did my brother tell you about his own personal, ridiculous wedding? How he married someone he didn’t love and never could? So you’ll excuse me if I don’t take your advice, Tony Baloney. Sometimes this happens: Two people fall in love, for real, even if one of them is the help. Some people, some sympathetic people, might even view it as fate, that of all the applicants the agency could’ve sent, of all the potential au pairs, why me? What force in the universe put my résumé at the top of the pile?”

I admit: I liked that. I didn’t want to say it aloud, but I was starting to see the miserably married, love-starved, paternity-leave-taking, and pro-bono-inclined Noel as sincere. I also didn’t want to admit how I was factoring in Edwin. What if he had already had a wife when I first saw him at the Steinway grand? What if he’d played an Irving Berlin love song that was a metaphor for a future together and later, over our first innocent coffee, had confessed his marital misery? Would I have rebuffed him? I put an unfrosted carrot cupcake in a Baggie for her. Some biologically based need to pair things up made me pack a second one. Olivia thanked me. “Anthony’s been telling me how great you and your sister have been.”