The Widow Waltz

Also by Sally Koslow

Fiction

Little Pink Slips

The Late, Lamented Molly Marx

With Friends Like These

Nonfiction

Slouching Toward Adulthood: Observations from the Not-So-Empty Nest

VIKING

Published by the Penguin Group

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Copyright © Sally Koslow, 2013

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ISBN 978-1-101-62272-8

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To Helen Davis Koslow Sweig, whose love of life inspires me

Fortune helps those who dare.

—
VIRGIL

People are just about as happy

as they make up their minds to be.

—
ABRAHAM LINCOLN

B
enjamin Theodore Silver wasn’t the youngest runner at the track, not by thirty years, but he was a quietly humming machine with a rare grace that turned your head: long legs, fluid movement, a stride that spoke of confidence. Most men his age galumphed around the track—oxen, winded, and hairy. If you passed them, you heard them gasp like a pair of old bellows as they cursed their knees. Ben ran without sound effects, a dancer, barely sweating. His hair was well-cut and graying at the sideburns; his jaw, still strong. Ten years ago, someone once said he resembled a young Jeremy Irons. He liked that.

Today Ben was wearing broken-in shoes and plain black running clothes. He was opposed to logos, although he made an exception for Apple. Ben looked open and approachable, a man you’d cast in a Cialis commercial even if he needed no such drug in real life—nor, according to his doctor, statins. Ben Silver took sweet pride in his cholesterol number.

He was a guy who knew a little about a lot. If you were a stranger who sat next to him on a flight to, say, New Zealand, where he traveled last year with his family, his conversation wouldn’t be too frequent, too dull, or too lengthy. You’d chat about whatever sport was in season, the latest rumble in the Middle East, the play he saw and no one else knew about that would be sold out in three weeks, about where to buy leather in Milan, and whether or not you should drink barrel-aged bourbon with oysters. Then he’d bury his head in a biography or a civil war history. The year he and Georgia married, he was the best man in six other weddings. Today he was the emergency contact on nine phones, not just Georgia’s and the family-plan phones he covered for Nicola and Louisa, daughters on whom he doted as much as Rhett worshipped Bonnie Blue.

Most people didn’t begrudge Ben Silver his enviable life—the law practice, the apartment on Central Park South, the house at the beach, the club memberships, even the urban hedonist’s wardrobe of suits and electronics. He had a lot, but not so much that you felt disgust for an avaricious nature, which wasn’t the first trait, or even the eighth or ninth, that came to mind when you got to know Ben—to the degree that was possible. He worked hard for his money, some of which he donated to obscure microfinance programs and worthy candidates’ campaigns. He was a solid A-minus/B-plus attorney practicing independently—corporate, criminal, matrimonial law. Ben had degrees behind him, educated at Brown on a scholarship rounded out by tending bar at a Providence saloon beloved by the pols, after which a state senator pulled strings to get him into Columbia School of Law, where he graduated with honors. Ben seemed like the last man in the world who’d ever need to cheat at poker, or anything else.

Other men loved Ben, with the exception of Georgia’s brother, Stephan Waltz. He had his suspicions, which Ben reciprocated. Dogs loved Ben. Cats? Not so much, but women especially loved Ben, and the woman who loved him the most was his wife. Georgia Waltz clung to her maiden name as some women do to the hairstyle they wore at the time of their beauty’s peak. Georgia was just fifty and adverse to needles and scalpels, so there was the faintest, softest droop to her face, which hung on fine trestlework. Over the years, at least one close friend had brought a picture of Georgia’s genetically sculpted nose to their surgeon, saying, “I want what she’s got.” In Georgia’s battle for that comely face and a tiny butt, her face was winning, and this upped her appeal. Women like a woman who has at least as much padding as they do.

Georgia hadn’t gone aggressively blonde. Her hair was the color of clover honey, almost the brown of years ago. Ben was tall; Georgia was tall enough. A nearsighted nurse once recorded her height at five foot five. Ever after, Georgia respected this error and exaggerated by three-fourths of an inch. That was all she lied about, and this quality attracted people whom, after scrutiny, she’d allow one by one past her velvet rope. Georgia had countless acquaintances and admirers—more than she knew—gathered from heading up school and volunteer committees and years as a docent at the Met. She had buddies from her gym, and women friends with whom she took current affairs classes at NYU and Italian at the New School. Of course, there was an obligatory book club. But the role of First Friend was reserved for Ben, who took greedy pride in the honor. His understudy was Daniel Russianoff, the partner of Georgia’s brother, Stephan.

The New York City marathon was on Sunday, three days from now. For Ben, a Philadelphia native, this would be the first in his adopted hometown, though he’d run the twenty-six-mile endurance test in Boston, Chicago, and, most memorably, Honolulu. For next year, he was flipping a coin between Amsterdam and London. Running emptied his soul of the trivial. As soon as he started, he felt an internal engine turn over, and solutions to problems appeared in boldface, anxiety sluiced away.

Today was one of Ben’s favorite times of the year to run—to be
alive,
damnit—because by now the international runners had gathered in Central Park for warm-up sprints. The sun cast a copper glint and the November air hummed with Japanese, Italian, French, Swedish, and tongues that Ben couldn’t identify. They blended in a universal language of goodwill: in this gathering of outsize fitness, nothing bad could happen.

Yet, something did. Ben had finished the third of what he had planned to be four laps around the reservoir, a well-groomed path jogged, back in the day, by Jackie O. He had passed the sign bearing her name, pacing himself behind a round-rumped redhead whose ponytail bounced with every footfall. As he ran by the steps of Engineer’s Gate he started to pant. His first emotion was embarrassment. Unless he was having sex, Ben never panted. Was he pushing too hard? He hadn’t planned on getting old.

He slowed a bit, and then considerably, letting runners from a Korean team pass. By the time he’d reached the north side of the path, he halted and swiveled to take in the midtown skyline and catch his breath. In the haze, the fountain, equidistant between east and west, looked a mile away.

That’s when a blistering pain crept from his chest like a hot poker heading for his neck. Ben grabbed his left shoulder and started to crumple. When he opened his eyes, two of the Koreans hovered above him. One looked as if he could be his daughter Nicola’s twin brother. He thought of the day he and Georgia met their Mi Cha, whom they renamed for his mother. His mind bounced to Louisa coming home a year later, how full and happy he and Georgia were in that Mount Sinai delivery room. He pictured his wife, a beauty at twenty and a beauty now.
My God,
Ben thought,
I am a lucky man, albeit one who at this moment is having one helluva panic attack.

He was beyond mortified, skidding toward terrified. The sun was in his eyes and as he shut them, he heard,
“Appelez un auxilliaire médical!”
He damn well hoped that meant, “Call a paramedic.”

But who would call
her
? He reached into his pocket. There was his iPhone, but his smaller phone was missing, most likely gone flying when he fell, probably resting now among the weeds beyond the iron fence or sunk to the bottom of the reservoir.

A minute passed, or it could have been ten. A gurney arrived. The Frenchman and the Koreans stepped aside for the husky, red-blooded American EMTs, full of kindness and McDonald’s. They loaded him fast but gently, taking his pulse, asking questions he was too out of it to answer.

His last thought was of how she looked in Hawaii. Like a woman half her age . . .

W
hat is the proper attire for the reading of your father’s will? I’m certain it isn’t the orange yoga pants that hang below my daughter’s slightly convex middle. “Luey,” I bark. “Please change into something decent.”

“Nothing fits,” she snivels. Louisa’s colic has continued for twenty years. Her nettling ways penetrate my thinner hide as she shimmies out of the pants, wagging her behind. On flamingo legs—identical to mine, minus my lattice of spider veins—I see my own behind from fifteen pounds and years ago. On one sharp hip bone a Rolling Stones tongue tattoo taunts me.

“What about these?” Luey presents two pair of jeans, one in each hand. I shake my head. “Or would you prefer a burka?”

Luey may have inherited my lower torso and face, but in almost every other way she is Ben. Though my daughter’s nose is sharp and her gums more evident than she’d prefer, her jigsaw of imperfection works. She has large, round eyes of a color people call hazel by default; lips that are full, pouty, and raspberry tinged.

“Where’s the black suit you wore last week?” I ask, weary. Following even our limpest confrontations, battle fatigue does me in.

“In the pile.”

For any degree of efficiency with which the Silver-Waltz family may operate we should thank, more often than we do, the unmatched competence of Opal Owens who, had she gotten the chance to have gone to college, could have led a Fortune 500 company. She will see that Luey’s suit is transformed into crisply dry-cleaned garments, as well as dispose of her ossified Thai food and trampled magazines. You can depend on Opal to not only unearth the thick biography of Colette that was due back to the Stanford University library four months ago, but to see to it that the book is FedEx’d with a polite apology.

“Skirt?” my daughter says, offering up a tube of brown spandex.

“Better.” Barely.

My daughter hoists the hanger like a Grammy and blows me a kiss. “With thanks to my savior, I will proceed. You are dismissed, Mommy dearest.”

With pleasure
. I pad barefoot back to our—my—bedroom and escape into the dressing room. It smells faintly of cedar and Ben’s aftershave, a mossy scent that when mingled with his sweat, I consider the ultimate aphrodisiac. His suits, size 42 long, fill one wall. Blindingly white sneakers are waiting to be broken in after the marathon he missed by one heart attack. The Zappos Web site, the source of this footwear, promises “Happiness in a box.” Ben would appreciate the irony.

I twist the safe’s combination—two, fourteen, eighty-one, our wedding day—open the velvet-lined drawer, and reach for the ruby brooch, a modest posy on a gold stem given to my mother fifty years ago by my father when I was born. Today I need a piece of Camille Waltz with me, though I am grateful that through her veil of increasing dementia she may have forgotten that I have raised a brat. When we visit Mother, she fixates on Louisa and sees a younger version of me, albeit with hair spiked through the artful use of shiny goop. Despite her histrionics, Louisa Silver-Waltz makes her grandmother smile, and in those fleeting moments I forgive my younger daughter because she returns the mother I have lost, the mother I could use right now as a crutch and a crucible for my wobbly emotions.

I pin the talisman to my proper charcoal lapel and stare at Ben’s photo. Salt-and-pepper hair, cropped close to his well-shaped head; lines bracketing his blue eyes; and the tiniest sag under a sharp chin are the only clues that he is not still my Benjy, whom I started loving before I was a woman. I see the college senior in the man, press two fingers to my lips and gently caress his grin. Ben brought a swagger to every task—making love, money, or mischief, to which he devoted equal time.

A massive coronary? Ben, you were the healthiest person I know, a study in egg-white omelets and soy, although you might have liked your flashy demise, surrounded by a United Nations of marathon runners gathered with their Smartphones to capture the shining city. Seven people dialed 911. I’m told that, until the medics arrived, dozens of runners circled the tall guy clutching his chest, sprawled on the dirt, who was making jokes before he passed out. By the time a stranger called and told me to meet the ambulance at Lenox Hill Hospital, you were gone. A marriage of twenty-nine years,
poof,
over, done.

“Though lovers be lost, love shall not; and death shall have no dominion.”
I have taken to reading my treasured Dylan Thomas. This morning, I am determined not to cry. I open a drawer filled with wraps and am ready to choose one, as much for its cashmere cheer as for its defending warmth. And then I hear Nicola.

“Mother?” she says in her satiny voice. “We need to leave in five minutes.”

“Come on in, darling,” I say, turning toward the door. “I’d like your opinion.” As if it matters what I wear, though my own mother believes it does.
Look the part you want to play,
I can hear her say.

Nicola’s dressed in a dark plum wool sheath, the capped sleeves offsetting its severity; her father’s bulky steel sports watch, which she borrowed so regularly there’s no question that it now belongs to her; and chunky beads she most likely fished from a jumble at the Paris flea. Her chignon is loose enough not to look prim. On the outside—only the outside—she is as pulled together as her sister Luey will never be. Were it not for Nicola’s Buddy Holly eyeglasses, worn today instead of her contacts, you might never guess that she, like all of us, has spent the better part of the last few weeks in tears.

Two months after we adopted Nicola, who began her life in a Korean orphanage, I discovered I was pregnant. My daughters are one year and a universe apart. Biology is the least of it. Where Nicola cooed from the moment she settled in my arms, Luey has challenged me since she could talk, the message as audacious as skywriting.
Why did you bring home that other little girl first? Cola’s the phony. I’m the real deal.
Luey may be my blood, but in Nicola I see myself.

Embracing, we meet as equals. “When we’re finished, I think we should have lunch,” she says. “The three of us.”

The three of us: a fractured family and trio of females who have always depended on Big Ben, a man a bit too ready to whip out a credit card to solve a problem. A daddy ready to spoil his girls—and that would include me—three lap dogs in an estrogen-soaked Mary Cassatt reverie. Ben adored his harem and served up unassailable opinions on genteel, feminine rituals. I had to convince him that it was inappropriate for a father to buy teenage daughters skimpy teddies and thongs. How perspicacious of God to give my husband daughters: Litigator Silver would have obliterated sons as surely as if they were opposing counsel.

From a pile on my closest shelf I pluck a lilac shawl and turn for Nicola’s approval, which she bestows with a nod. “I’ll be glad when this meeting is over.” My voice shakes. “Today is the first day of the rest of my life and all that.”

“Who’s this lawyer we’re seeing?” My daughter averts her eyes from Ben’s archived rows of belts and ties.

“The attorney who handled your father’s private affairs.” In the mirror, I am positive I see my daughter wince. Shall I clarify: his
business
affairs? I will let it pass. There were rumors. I’d hoped they had escaped my girls.

“Name?”

“Walter Fleigelman.” Wally is boorish, brilliant, and remarkably kind, a Muppet shark among the hundreds at Ben’s memorial, as well as one of the more welcomed faces at the house during the week. I cannot remember which monument of fruit he sent or which evening he stopped by, only that he took me aside, held both of my hands, and after heartfelt condolences, murmured, “Georgia, we need to talk. I’d be happy to make a house call.” When he saw my reaction, his face beaded with perspiration and turned even redder than usual, and I knew that Walter Fleigelman Esq.’s proposition was strictly professional. This made me blush as well.

“Is there some sort of hurry?” I asked.

“Of course not,” he said. “I didn’t mean to rush you.” But the following morning someone from his firm called to arrange an appointment, which, when I awoke this morning, I was nonetheless ready to postpone. After weeks of outlying cousins and acquaintances oozing sympathy, I wanted to do nothing today but nap, walk Sadie, and spend the afternoon and evening watching Diane Keaton movies that I could now lip-synch. Then I thought of Nicola and Luey: the mother-love chip implanted in my heart was activated and I realized I had to at least try to behave like the dignified woman I never expected to be.

What did the rabbi say of “the mourning process”? Beats me. I know we spoke for forty-five minutes but I remember nothing more than that he should clip his ear hair.

“Mother, are you there?” Nicola says gently.

I look up, startled. “Make sure your sister hasn’t punked out and decided to wear a nightgown.”

“Exactly what Luey wants, another prison matron.”

“For me, darling.” I stop short of begging. “Please.” Nicola turns to leave. I know she will do as I ask.

Before I go public, I need a minute. Gray roots are winning against my dark blond. Buck up, Georgia, I tell the mirror with its hollow eyes and puffy lids. You’re a more fortunate woman than most. You’ve known long-lasting love. You have children. You want for little—the city apartment, the house on the beach, the trips, the cars, and an overload of possessions. And we’ve been philanthropic, though the donations are also the quid pro quo that has won me committee memberships. Pay to play, New York City’s bumper sticker.

“Georgia!” I hear Luey yell. “You coming?”

“I’m Mom, Mother, or Mama—I will even accept Ma,” I shout back. “Extend me that small courtesy, please.”

“Sorry, Ma.” She sounds surprisingly contrite.

The three of us wait, unspeaking, for the elevator. As we exit our building I link arms with my daughters and walk to the car. For better or worse, we will need one another. “Good morning,” I say as I slide into the back, after Nicola. Fred has been our driver for five years. I suspect he knows more about my private life than I do. He shuts the door after Luey.

“Fine day, Ms. W,” he says, taking his seat. I hadn’t noticed that it’s oddly warm for this late in the fall. I picture a polar bear stranded on a dwindling iceberg. “Where to?”

“One hundred twenty Broadway, please.”

“Tell me again what’s happening today,” Luey says.

“A formality,” I say, as I have, twice. “A lawyer will explain your father’s will.”

Luey knows that Nicola came into the first third of her trust fund at twenty-one. The big bang will occur when Second Daughter discovers that I will be her guardian until she is thirty. This is what Ben and I decided three years ago when, without consulting us, she dropped out of Stanford in the middle of her first semester to go work at an elephant camp in Zimbabwe with a boyfriend, now long gone.

Whenever I consider the august responsibility of being a solo parent, especially Luey Silver-Waltz’s, I retreat a bit more into myself. Ben weighed in on every decision for the girls. Not just Stanford or Duke, but matters most mothers and daughters resolved by themselves. Gymnastics or horseback riding? Short hair or long? Red dress or blue? Ben had a viewpoint on everything. I allowed my thirty-year friendship with my college roommate to expire when she said she couldn’t stand to see me “act like a weak cup of tea.” I never talked to Jill again until last week, one of many at Ben’s funeral, because I liked the way my marriage worked. Ben Silver had an aptitude for happiness. No matter what he said or did, he could wheedle his way back into my heart.

“Here we are,” Fred says, pulling in front of a grand tower. “How long do you think you’ll be?”

“I’m guessing an hour.” I fish a twenty out of my alligator handbag. “Please get yourself some lunch and I’ll call when we’re ready.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, accepting the bill, then gets out, comes around, and gives me his arm as I climb out of the black Lincoln.

Six heels clack up the steps and shoot straight through the marble lobby. A man in his thirties rubbernecks in our direction, though surely I am invisible next to my daughters. Once, I had a phalanx of admirers. Then along came Ben. When we met, I was less polished and far prettier. As I walked the sidewalks of Providence, I, too, turned heads, and even when I was with friends, I knew and they knew the stares were for me. My hair, with its shaggy bangs and layers, fell obediently into place to reflect the sun. My teacup breasts were round and high, which was enough, this being decades before implants inflated bosoms and expectations. My hips were slender, as were my legs; my skin, the creamy sort that you have no idea will crinkle with faint crow’s-feet before twenty-nine, and beyond forty, betray you with a crush of wrinkles.

Time is history’s bulldozer. I am no longer a glorious bloom in the ecosystem. I can almost hear people saying behind my back,
You should have seen her in college—Georgia Waltz . . . a knockout.
I try to evaluate my daughters as the rubbernecker must, gliding with the posture of ballerinas. “Stand up straight, shoulders back.” Every time I said it, I heard my mother’s voice. At least Nicola and Luey listened, though they’re tall enough to get away with a little slouch. When you’re like me, every quarter inch counts.

At the end of the lobby, a concierge asks for identification. “Luey, do you have yours?” My tone is freighted with impatience. She scowls at me as she presents her driver’s license and the three of us ride an elevator to the thirty-fourth floor, which, along with the floor below, is occupied by Fleigelman, Kelly, Rodriguez and Roth.

I expect to have to wait—we are early—but when I check with the receptionist, I’m told that Mr. Fleigelman is ready. She escorts us to a corner office with windows facing north and west. As we cross its threshold, Wally marches toward me on slightly bowed legs. He is wearing a somber dark suit and a white shirt. As I notice his stubby arms, I see a penguin.

“Georgia,” he says, pulling me toward his barrel chest. Wally Fleigelman must shower in eau de toilette. I fight the reflex to squinch my nose. He can’t see the gesture, but Nicola and Luey can; I respect Wally and want them to as well. “You brought your daughters?” He seems surprised.