The Widow Waltz (5 page)

After Nicola and I give Luey’s work its due respect, I say, “Why don’t you hand out the gifts? I’d like a minute with Nana.” My daughters troop out of the room, most likely relieved. I pull over a Queen Anne dining chair, also from our home in Philadelphia, park it next to my mother, and squeeze her hand. “Aren’t the girls lovely?” I say.

“Love-ly,” she repeats, as if she’s learning a word. “Love-ly.”

“It’s been wonderful to have them around”—which isn’t wholly true, but my mother believed in protective artifice—“because, well, Mother, I’m going through a very bad patch.” There is no response. “Did you hear me?”

“Patch,” she says. “I heard you.”

“You remember Ben.” Ben flirted with Camille and Camille flirted back, verbal ping-pong at which they were fairly matched. She asked him to call her Mother. He laughed it off and suggested The Countess, which stuck. I’m fairly sure my mother thought Ben was more in love with her than with me. “Ben died, Mother. It was sudden. A heart attack. He was only fifty-two.” I pull out a picture from my tote—Ben and I at our wedding, a frothy extravagance twenty-eight years ago at my parents’ country club. I am carrying an enormous bouquet of cream roses. The whole wedding was in shades of ivory, as befits an almost-virgin bride convinced by her mother that she was plain vanilla.

“Poor Ben,” my mother says, touching his face.

“Yes, Benjamin Silver.”

It’s then that a clear, sentient tone bores through the dementia. My refined and arrogant mama spits. “You never should have married that
mamzer
.” This is uttered in the voice that’s launched a thousand lectures.

“Mother, why not?” I plead. “What about Ben?” She turns and smiles. Does she see me? I want another volley of conversation. I want a damn filibuster. But she says nothing. “You were talking about Ben!”

“I know Ben,” she says, indignant. “Ben married my daughter.”

“Yes. I’m your daughter.”

She looks full at me. “I’ll say not,” she insists. “Georgia is my daughter. My daughter is young and beautiful. She has a twenty-four-inch waist and dark hair. My daughter looks like Natalie Wood. You aren’t my Georgia.”

“You’re right—Georgia is your daughter.” I hear my own weariness. “Why should Georgia not have married Ben?” My voice trails off as I ask, but I don’t want my mother’s spastic beam of lucidity to simply dissolve into her batty sea like a splash.

“Cheater.”

“Did Ben cheat on Georgia?” I ask this silver-haired stranger.

“Cheater.”

“Yes, but how did he cheat? Who did he cheat?”

“Whom.”

“
Whom.
Fuck it. Whom did he cheat?”

Mother closes her eyes. When she opens them, she says, “Nurse,” sweetly. “Be a dear. Might I have help with my makeup, please?” She reaches for a Mallomar.

“Lipstick?” I ask, proffering a tube of Chanel Fire that she keeps in her top drawer.

She expertly reddens her lips, accepts a tissue to blot them with a kiss, mascaras her eyes, dusts her nose with powder, and runs a comb through her cropped curls before she sprays three bursts of Joy—clavicle, right wrist, left wrist—and admires the reflection of a handsome, albeit unfamiliar, woman. I hear a tap-tap-tap.

“Maurice,” she says as she turns. “Darling.”

“Jacque-leen,” says a man in a velvet smoking jacket. Leaning only slightly on a cane, he remains tall and upright as he walks toward her, extending his other arm, which she accepts. “Shall we?”

“Yes, my love. I’ve missed you.” With that, my mother and Morris Blumstein proceed down the hall, and I behind them. I have met Morris. He is a gentleman indeed, like Papa, who’d also come from Antwerp. Both men made their fortune in the diamond trade, Papa as a master stonecutter in Europe and here, before he opened a shop, and Morris as a gem broker.

Harry Connick Jr.’s voice wafts from The Oaks’s dining room,

“There goes Jackie O with her Maurice Tempelsman,” a resident cackles loudly as they pass. “And I am the queen of Rumania.”

Camille glides past the woman. “Vera Levine, you were homely as a spider when we were in sixth grade, and even more
mieskeit
now.”

I
doze in the backseat of the car, burrowing to escape, and wake with a start as we pull into the garage, each of us wasted and unhappy in her own sour way. Luey and Nicola clomp away without explaining where they’re headed. I am looking forward to solitude. I take the elevator to the lobby, pick up my mail—bills that I won’t open, just yet, and a trickle of condolence notes that I will—and head to the top floor. I am greeted by Sadie, starved for affection as much as for dinner. We do our kissy-face routine then, without removing my coat, I rip open an envelope with a New Mexico postmark.

“Ben and I were fraternity brothers at Penn,” writes David Someone. “I just learned of his death from Josh Adelman and the two of us were remembering that time . . .” I read two paragraphs in praise of my husband’s high jinks and humanity and toss the missive into a basket, already full. One of these days I will address the hotsy-totsy engraved cards that await for me to express appreciation to Ben’s bereavement club. But not tonight. My plan is to watch whatever movie is playing on television and devour leftover chili.

“Okay, Sadie, your turn, doll face,” I say, walking to the closet where I hang her leash. That’s when I see him, a cartoon rat in black calmly poised on my living room chaise, long legs stretched in front of him, his chin resting on slender crossed fingers, his face wearing the slightest smile. I scream so loudly that Sadie echoes with her own screech and hides under the kitchen table.

“Good God, Georgia.” His voice is calm, followed by a low laugh.

“Why did you scare me like that?”

“I’m just being your Byronic brother, melodramatic and melancholy, the Waltz with the highest disregard for society’s norms.”

My chest continues to pound. “Stephan, shut up. You flatter yourself.” I catch my breath enough to say, “If it’s you being gay, I’ve had plenty of time to adjust. How many Bar Mitzvah boys demanded an Oscar Wilde theme for their damn party?”

“How many mothers agreed?”

“How many Camilles are there? Only one, fortunately.” I bend to stroke Sadie, who has returned and is cheerfully wagging. “I saw her today. That shrew needs a muzzle. You wouldn’t believe what she—”

Stephan raises his hand. “Spare me. ‘Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.’ You’ve got to move on.”

“Forgive her? Easy for you to say—she spoiled you rotten.”

“You’ve been pretty spoiled yourself, little sister.”

“‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple.’”

“Ah, an Oscar pissing match. ‘Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.’”

Fair enough, but instead I say, “Is this why you’re here? To torment me? And did you bribe the doorman to get in?”

Stephan jangles a set of keys. “Did you forget you gave me these after Ben died—and that we have dinner plans?” I vaguely recall his invitation, thinking at the time that Daniel put him up to it. “I’m also betting you’re sorely in need of my excellent advice.”

“Ah, a mercy mission.”

“This is getting tiresome,” he groans. “Go make yourself look like my gorgeous sister while I let your poor beast relieve herself.”

Every time I see my brother I am struck by how his deportment clashes with his run-for-office looks. Someone as handsome as Stephan should be blessed with an exquisite soul, but his benevolence is a campaign pledge on which you know the candidate will never deliver—yet you’d vote for him anyway. In my spine I feel a paralysis of hard feelings. I force myself to accept the brush of his lips on my cheek.

“The reservation is for seven,” he says, picking up his black wool flannel coat. It has a detachable cape. I wonder when Stephan will buy a bowler hat.

“Someplace quiet, at least?”

“You underestimate me, Georgia. You always do.”

No house Chianti for my big brother. In a tiny Italian restaurant with a stoked fireplace and matching wine cellar we are on our second perfect Manhattan, nibbling olive tapenade, while he warms me up with tales from the front. “This Mrs. Mob-type came in and groused about how a ten-carat stone wasn’t quite large enough.” He takes a sip. “It looked like a cocktail onion”—with a hand more carefully manicured than my own he measures an inch—“but she apparently wanted at least a good-sized shallot.”

“And it kills you to sell vulgarity so you refused and directed her to a tasteful stone? Three carats in an oval cut?”

Stephan throws back his head and laughs, a sound both rakish and cosmopolitan that he perfected long ago, perhaps by working with a coach. “I told her if I have to go to Belgium myself, I’ll find her that stone.”

“Mr. Waltz, always the gentleman.”

Stephan himself wears only knotted gold cuff links, a simple sapphire ring, and, on ceremonial occasions, discreet diamond studs that belonged to our father. My brother’s taste is exquisitely expensive, perhaps determined by a sartorial focus group who believes that even paisley is left wing. If it weren’t for Daniel, their home wouldn’t have a spot of color. A caramel suede pillow required a negotiation, and Stephan drew the line at purple. Whenever I visit, I taunt him by bringing jelly beans, parrot tulips, and, the last time, months ago, monogrammed magenta cocktail napkins.

He picks up the menu and begins to read. “Ready for dinner, sis?”

Worrying is a better way to lose weight than hiring a personal trainer. I am wearing pants I haven’t been able to button for years. But as the server delivers gnocchi to the next table, the promise of pasta taunts.

“Yes,” I say. “Famished.”

“Excellent, and now it’s your turn to talk.” It sounds like a command. “How are the little women?” he asks after we order.

My daughters adore Uncle Stephan and consistently defend him against slurs that cross my lips. Thanks to Stephan, Nicola appreciates Charles Aznavour and Luther Vandross, Luey has seen every Hepburn and Tracy movie, and on Mother’s Day one will give me a Diptyque candle—tuberose or gardenia—and the other a bouquet of peonies. In a show of solidarity, on my fiftieth birthday I received a first edition of
Wuthering Heights
, a gift from both daughters surely prompted by Stephan and Daniel.

What my daughters don’t know is that Stephan links their shabbiest behavior to every misstep I’ve taken as a mother. “You let Nicola get away with procrastination because she’s adopted and punish Luey for having all the spit you lack,” he says, feeling free to don his pointy shrink hat.

“You offer me this observation based on your many years of fatherhood?” I invariably respond. Accusations fly.

“The girls are sad and fussy,” I say, “and flash-frozen. Nicola keeps postponing her return to Europe—though I can’t figure out quite what she’d be going back to or what she ever did there beyond peel carrots and parsnips—and Luey’s on hiatus from school.” In my day we called that dropping out. “They have way too much time on their hands. They’re aimless as chickens, going out late, staying in bed until noon.”

As soon as I stop yammering, I regret my candor because I’ve opened myself up for Stephan to say, rightfully, “Does any of this surprise you? You’ve never set limits
.
” And yet he adds, “Want one of them to work with me?”

Immediately, my mind jumps to Luey making hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of precious gems disappear.
I borrowed those
hoops and one fell off at the club
.
I
flushed the bracelet down the toilet.
Or, worse, an indignant lie,
I resent that look
.
I have no idea what
became of that sapphire pendant and why are you accusing me?

“You can’t be serious,” I say, when
Thank you
would have been a better response.

“I’m not promising tenure,” he says. “But when my assistant gets married next month, she’s taking a long wedding trip and I’d rather not hire an unknown temp.”

His is a discreet upstairs jeweler—the kind that doesn’t have to advertise, be it in Basel, Düsseldorf, or Paris—or in S. Waltz and Company’s case, tucked into a hushed Fifth Avenue suite, literally looking down on neighboring street-level emporiums: Harry Winston, Tiffany, Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, H. Stern, and Bulgari. Stephan sells impeccable riffs on their wares as well as fine estate pieces. Customers reach him through recommendations, whispering the language of money in their native tongue, be it Arabic, Spanish, or Staten Island English. Nobody shouts. Nobody sweats. The customer is always right, because Mr. Waltz has asserted his subliminal yet strategic influence—Buy this stone, not that; Go with the platinum over the gold; Do not allow this one-of-a-kind ruby bracelet to leave the shop on a lesser woman’s arm.

Stephan James Waltz inspires confidence. He is highly regarded within a coterie of elite jewelers, many of whom have been trying to hire him away for years. This amuses anyone acquainted with my sibling, who could never have a boss. That included our father, whom Stephan deserted when he was twenty-six, abandoning Philadelphia—a city he’d never call Philly—along with cheesesteaks and Eagles season tickets, for an apprenticeship in London. Before he was thirty, albeit a very old thirty, he opened his own small New York operation. Stephan was never Steve, Stevie, or Steph, never easy and never young.

“For the sake of argument,” I say, “let’s say Nicola came to work with you. What would she do?”

“Besides track the inventory on Excel? Greet customers, answer the phone, serve cappuccino, polish the goods, look absolutely splendid, model jewelry, make people feel good about spending fifty-thousand dollars in fifteen minutes.”

I take in the restaurant’s tiny white lights, inhaling the fragrance of evergreens.

“It might work.” It might.

“She won’t be bored and quit after a week?” Stephan asks.

My brother’s eyes, which are my eyes—almond shaped, charcoal, deeply set—are sharp upon me. There it is, the rusty nail waiting for my bare foot. Is he going to remind me that Cola left her first job, in the fashion department at
Elle,
when she was asked to come in on a Saturday to pack eleven trunks? “You know my daughter,” I say. “She’s got her virtues, but if you don’t want to be disappointed, you better find someone else.”

“I see you’re not suggesting Luey.”

“I’ve only lost my husband, not my mind.”

“All right, have Nicola call.” He finishes his martini. “How is Luey?”

“Distant.”

“Aha,” he says. “And you. Holding up?”

I was able to confide in Daniel because I knew he wouldn’t suggest that I was responsible for getting screwed. But now I face a higher judge who may or may not have been informed by Daniel. I drain the last few drops of my cocktail, shifting in my seat.

“You look like hell,” Stephan adds. At least he has noticed. I read this as a term of endearment.

“Do you know anything about Ben cheating?” I ask, emboldened by the drink.

His eyes hold me. “On you?”

“That’s a good place to start.”

Stephan brushes back a lock of his black hair, his temples distinguished by a feathering of silver. “Couples have their indiscretions,” he says. “Look at our parents.”

“I’d rather not.” I’m bleeding enough without reliving the six months after my father packed his stalwart leather luggage, leaving us to minister to our mother cursing in a dark room, complaining of a migraine. Not that much changed when they reunited. More migraines, more moaning.

“Why do you care about cheating now?” he asks. “The poor bastard’s buried.”

“It matters because I may have been left with next to nothing.”

He frowns. “Georgia, don’t play the thespian.”

“You’re allowed showmanship and I’m not?”

“Cut the accusations, too. You’re one exasperating, prevaricating woman. Just the facts, please.”

“This is what you need to know.” Although I wish I didn’t have to repeat them, I tell him. “The worst-case scenario safety net Ben assured me was in place—well, there is no net. He’s sold stock, drained accounts, borrowed on his life insurance, and taken out second mortgages. We owe money everywhere. I’m not down to nothing, but I’m getting there fast.” I see my brother trying to decide where hyperbole seeps into truth. “I’ve been all over it six ways to Sunday with Wally Fleigelman—“

“Fleigelman! What a clown. He’s your first mistake.”

“Who says I’ve made a ‘mistake’?” I’ve allowed myself to stumble into what feels like a trap and I need to wriggle myself free, even if it means gnawing off a toe. “Wally may not be your style,” I say, pulling myself tall in my seat, “but he’s the attorney handling the estate and I happen to like and trust him. If there’s any money anywhere, he’ll find it.” I look at the sharp knife that the waiter puts down next to Stephan’s plate and picture myself sticking it into my brother’s hand. I am horrified by this image, yet grateful for the two cocktails that have helped me achieve it.

“From what Ben reported of your finances,” Stephan says with an edge, fully intended, a trenchancy that implies bragging and lying, “it wasn’t an insignificant amount that’s missing. How’s Attorney Fleigelman doing?”

“He’s investigating—and I’m tearing my place apart, actually, trying to find God knows what. I had Ben’s secretary send me all his canceled checks, cell phone records, the works. I’m going over them like Nora Charles.”