“Flexual,” Rachel had told her some of her friends at school called themselves, which she supposed meant whatever. James wasn’t whatever. After the artist there had apparently been a fellow architect, and then an actor. From what she had heard from their mutual friends, each relationship lasted less than the length of time theirs had. She wondered if any of them had gone home with him to Gladwyne, and suspected not. If his father had been contemptuous of art history, the likelihood was small that he’d welcome a young man starring off-Broadway in a play that required him to have his hair dyed blond.
Nora had run into James several times over the years, when she was pregnant with the twins at the screening of a documentary, at a restaurant in midtown, she arriving for lunch, he leaving. “How is your sister?” Nora asked. “You have a sister?” said the man who was with him. Nora couldn’t help but notice that James was aging oh so gracefully, but as he got older, the guys stayed the same age, just slightly older than the age he’d been when he’d broken up with Nora. What had been a charmingly unstudied urbanity when he was in college had hardened into something approaching a performance. Nora hadn’t needed Jenny to tell her that one of the things that had drawn her to Charlie was that he was the un-James. When Nora met Charlie he had never even seen Casablanca.
It infuriated Nora that the sound of James Mortimer on the phone, just a single word, still gave her that telltale and shame-making frisson. Nora had married Charlie on the rebound from something else, something impossible and profound that probably would have become just as everyday as everything else. She knew, had always known, had always told herself, that she had made the right decision. Even today Charlie would say or do something, usually with the kids, that would remind her of why she’d chosen him. He had always been a good father, not one of those who handed off a baby when the odor of full diaper shattered the potpourri air of the living room. He genuinely liked amusement-park rides and Saturday-morning cartoons and tossing that Frisbee around. He was happy to play in the father-son game, which had been changed to the father-son-daughter game, then to the parent-child game because not everyone has a father. Some of the upper-school girls had later decided that the word child was demeaning but by upper school their kids didn’t want to have anything to do with sports events that included their parents. It was bad enough having them stand on the sidelines. “Mom, I can hear you!” Rachel had said after one basketball game at which Nora had thought she’d been relatively contained.
She could almost see James in front of her as she sat with the phone in her hand, although she suspected that he might be a bit more weathered since she’d seen him last in person. “This is a surprise,” she said, and even she thought she sounded a bit harsh.
“Now, now,” he said. “How would that nice husband of yours feel if I was calling you all the time?”
“Don’t be facetious,” she said. Charlie was exactly the sort of guy James had disdained in college, the sort Nora should have been dating in the first place.
One night after a long week at work, Charlie had come home drunk, and she could never remember how they got there, maybe because someone at school had come out at an assembly, but he’d muttered to the twins, who were teenagers by that time, “Hey, you never know. Your mother’s college boyfriend was a gay blade.” After he’d turned off the light and before he’d begun to snore what she thought of as the drunk snore, Nora had said, “If you ever say anything like that again, I swear to God I will walk out of this house and never come back.” Perhaps having seen the look on their mother’s face, the twins never asked about it, either, even Rachel.
“The reason I’m calling,” James said, “is that I have this friend who’s a journalist. He’s working on a magazine cover story about that block you live on, and I told him I would ask you to talk to him.”
“Oh, my God, it’s been months now. The story is so over, which is nothing but a good thing as far as I’m concerned. Even the tabloids haven’t touched us for ages.”
“I understand, but I think he’s envisioning something more expansive, more global. The incident as the peg for a real New York fin-de-siècle narrative. White-collar. Blue-collar. The golf club. You have to wonder whether it would have gotten as much attention without the golf club.”
“I try not to think of the golf club. And I haven’t talked to any of the reporters.”
“I understand, but this writer is quite talented, and I think what he has in mind is something bigger and broader than the newspaper reports. Somewhat literary, I suppose.”
“He’s a friend? What kind of friend?” Nora said.
“Don’t be facetious,” James said. “It’s an interesting idea, isn’t it? Culture clash. How the other half lives. He says your block has this strange Brigadoon feeling. Hermetically sealed. The land that time forgot.”
“If you were supposed to sell me on this idea, you’re failing miserably,” Nora said. “I like where I live, and I like the people who live there. Why would I want to sell them out for a magazine piece?”
“I told him you might feel that way, but that I would ask.” Nora wondered how James had described her. A college classmate? An old friend? Nora wrote the writer’s name on her desk pad, and below it she wrote “James Mortimer” and underlined it twice.
“How’s the aluminum house?” she said.
“Ah, so your friend Suzanne mentioned the millstone around both our necks. It’s fine. It in no way relates to anything around it, the contractor complains constantly about how difficult the job has been for his men, maintaining it in the future will be an extraordinary chore, and the client is difficult. But it will get a lot of attention.”
“And that’s all that matters.”
James sighed. “Moneypenny, has anyone ever mentioned that you telegraph judgment effortlessly with your tone of voice?”
“My daughter.”
“How is she?” James said.
“Rachel is graduating from Williams soon,” she said.
“My Lord,” James said. “Did it ever occur to you, all those years ago, that someday you would have a daughter there?”
The silence was her, coming up with a reply. But all the possible responses were so unspeakable, or lame, or humiliating, that instead she said, “I have to go. Tell your ‘friend’ ”—even she could hear the quotation marks she put around the word—“that if he doesn’t get a return call I’ve decided not to cooperate.”
She pushed down the button on the phone, then impulsively hit one of the speed-dial buttons.
“What?” said her daughter.
“Just checking in, honey. How is everything?”
The silence was Rachel, taking her temperature. “Mommy, are you okay?” she said. Her daughter could be combative, egocentric, impossible. But she could read Nora’s voice as no one else could, even Charlie. Especially Charlie.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“So am I, actually. Actually, I’m really good. You know that paper I told you about, about the British suffragettes, the one I was worried about because the instructor is so harsh? I got an A, and she wrote ‘excellent work’ at the bottom.”
“You smartie.”
“Right? I was pretty excited. So I’m more or less all done for the year. One open-book test in poli sci, one paper but not that big a one, and that’s kind of it. I think I might have an A-minus average this time, and graduate with honors. I won’t know for a couple of weeks, but it looks good.”
“You smartie. I’m so proud of you.”
“Plus Oliver is here and we’re making a big dinner for my friends tonight. Bolognese and a salad and Ollie says he’s making some kind of brownies, but I’m a little worried because he’s never made them before. And before you ask, not pot brownies.”
“The thought had not occurred to me,” Nora lied. “That’s so nice that he came to see you, that he misses his sister.”
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“Yeah, right. He misses Lizzie. You know, the one with the curly hair who stayed with us over break? The one whose mom you met once because she was friends with that friend of yours?”
The remarkable thing was that Nora knew exactly who Rachel meant, a small girl with enormous gray-green eyes and a laugh that sounded like it belonged to a much larger, perhaps male person. Heh heh heh heh from the den as they all watched television.
“I didn’t know that he and Lizzie were actually seeing each other,” Nora said.
“Oh, my God, Mommy, seeing each other, really—what is that, even? So in the beginning it was kind of a random hookup, but then they both decided to just hook up but have it be exclusive, and now I guess they’re kind of a couple or something.”
“Wow. I guess I’m happy?”
“Definitely. Nice, smart, not clingy, not crazy.”
Nora laughed. “I guess that covers everything.”
“She has that really annoying laugh. But, yeah, she’s cool.”
“Oliver and Lizzie,” Nora said wistfully.
“You sure you’re okay? You don’t sound okay.”
“I am,” Nora said. “Don’t worry about me, Bug. Still crazy after all these years.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” Nora said. “Love you.”
Please contact me about the block BBQ.
George
“I thought you had the barbecue this year,” Nora said when she saw Linda Lessman that evening walking her cocker spaniel.
“We do. Or we did. I talked to Sherry about it, and we both think we should either put it off, maybe until right before Labor Day, or cancel it entirely.”
“Oh, wow,” said Nora. “That’s kind of a big deal. I mean, we were going to miss it anyhow because it’s at the same time as some commencement things. But even then the twins wondered if we could somehow make it back for the last hour or so.”
“I know, but what can we do? Can you imagine the newspaper coverage? Sherry says their lawyer told them Ricky is back in the hospital for another surgery. I just pictured a photo of his wife at his bedside juxtaposed with all of us with hamburgers in our hands, standing and smiling at the spot where it happened.”
It was the clearest indication yet that the block itself had been wounded by what Jack Fisk had done. Along with the Fenstermacher holiday party, the barbecue had been a major communal event for them all. The first year the Nolans had lived on the block, they had gone to visit Charlie’s family, always a teeth-gritting affair. That Monday Nora had run into Sherry Fisk with their then-dog, Nero. “You all missed the barbecue!” she said.
“What barbecue?” Nora asked.
That was how it had always been on the block, a sense that by osmosis a person would know to apply for a spot in the lot, decorate the front door at Christmas (or “the holidays,” as they all called them, in deference to the Jewish residents), and set aside the last Saturday in May for the barbecue, rain date Sunday. As Sherry Fisk spoke, Nora had realized that the night before, lying in bed as someone on the street sang “America the Beautiful” without really knowing the words, she had noticed a faint tang in the air that she now knew was the scent of residual charcoal. Apparently, five big grills were set up at the end of the block: hot dogs, burgers, chicken, kebobs, and whatever veggie stuff passed for barbecue food. The neighborhood children jumped around in one of those bouncy tents that someone had rented, and the adults sat on the nearest stoops, eating and chatting as though they didn’t see one another every day. The Nolans had never missed the barbecue again.
Responsibility for the barbecue moved annually from family to family, which really only meant responsibility for calling the people hired to make it happen. Even George had not been able to kill the block barbecue, but he had come close, officiously putting up sawhorses at the head of the block to close it off and drawing the attention of the police, who asked to see his permits. Since almost no one drove down the block anyway, they decided after that to leave it open for the barbecue, and someone was always willing to guide a driver who drove in by mistake and needed help backing out. The twins had loved going to the firehouse to tell the firefighters that if they got a call about smoke on their block, it was just from the line of grills.
Even the renters were invited, and most of them came, to eat a hot dog or two. But they tended to be younger than the permanent residents, and they treated the barbecue a bit like a street fair.
One year a group of Swedish kids staying at a hostel a few blocks away swarmed the street and ate as though they hadn’t eaten since they arrived at Kennedy, and they were so good-humored, grateful, and, honestly, good-looking that no one had had the heart to tell them it was a private party. But afterward George had sent out one of his notices:
Only homeowners are permitted to attend the barbecue.
Nora had felt at the time too new to the block to respond, but both Sherry and Linda had given George hell about the mean-spiritedness of this, and the next day another notice had followed:
Please disregard previous notice.
The barbecue was how Nora had become block friends with Linda Lessman instead of just dog-walking acquaintances. Several years after the Nolans had moved in, the city passed a law that, while couched in the kind of legalese that made so many rules and regulations impenetrable, came down to this: large-scale outdoor barbecueing was now forbidden except by restaurants and licensed caterers. A small deputation complained to the two police officers who ate lunch in their patrol car at the end of the block most days, and a community service officer invited them to the precinct. “I wish I could let you go ahead with it—I know you do it right, clean up, keep the noise down,” the officer said, leaning across his desk. “It’s not for you people, it’s for the people who take advantage—you know what I mean? You should see what they do under the highway at A Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street. The music, the cars, old beaters with a keg in the trunk, blankets all over the grass, baby strollers all over the place.”
“Hot dogs everywhere,” Linda said drily.
“You have to see it to believe it, Judge.” Oh, Nora thought to herself, that’s why we got asked in. Linda’s shoulders stiffened, and Nora realized she didn’t like someone using her title in this setting, particularly a police officer.
“I hear they will actually sometimes roast an entire pig,” Linda said.
“You hear right,” said the officer, who clearly didn’t recognize sarcasm when he heard it. But Nora did. She’d initially found Linda a bit cold and she’d never known what to talk to her about because she seemed so serious. But suddenly she liked her, admired her, even. On the other side of Linda, Nora saw Sherry Fisk holding her hand in front of her face to hide her smile. The three of them had walked back to the block from the precinct. “It’s not for us,” Linda said from between clenched teeth. “It’s for those people.”
“We could hire a caterer,” said Sherry. “Caterers can get a permit.” For a year they had held out, hoping the law would be repealed, writing letters, organizing petitions. But one year without the barbecue was plenty, and Sherry hired a catering company called Charcoal Briquettes, which basically did nothing but barbecues, although in the winter they turned into Church Supper and did crockpot food for people who had grown up on it but hadn’t actually had it in years. They all had to admit that the catered barbecue was not as laborious and that the food was better, although it felt somewhat less like the block barbecue than it had before.
“So if there’s no barbecue, why did we get a note from George about contacting him?” Nora asked as Homer marked the spot where Lady had just peed.
“Oh, he’s so irritating,” Linda said. “I swear, I know Betsy is supposed to be saving lives, but if I were married to him I’d arrange to be away from home all the time, too. When I told him we were putting the barbecue on ice, he insisted that
we had to send out some letter to everyone, and when I didn’t jump to it, he came to me with this horrible thing he’d written that talked about the accident, and the events, and the recent unpleasantness, just the sort of thing the papers would have loved to get their hands on and probably print in its entirety if the case ever went to trial. I went slightly ballistic. I mean, this is so not a good time to pretend that it’s business as usual around here.”
It was not. Jack was rarely seen on the block, particularly after the day he had been out getting coffee and had run into Nora and Linda. It was the first time Nora had seen him since he’d been put in the back of the police car, and she was uncertain how to respond. Linda was not at all uncertain. “Good morning, Jack,” she said with the frostiest voice imaginable, without any indication that she would stop and chat even when Jack had squared up in front of her on the sidewalk. Either he was growing a beard or he had forgotten how to shave.
“Judge, you of all people should know there are two sides to every story,” he said loudly.
“I certainly do, Jack,” Linda said. “But I’ve learned over the years that the two sides are often not of equal weight.”
Nora did not speak until they were half a block away. “I feel so sorry for Sherry,” she said. “I think she’s still angry at me for going to see Ricky in the hospital.”