After Annie (9781468300116) Read online

  This is an old game with them. It used to be like foreplay but these days it’s more like nostalgia.

  “Her face was the deal. She had a very provocative mouth.”

  “Mmm. You like a good mouth.”

  “I do.”

  He kisses her softly on the lips; she makes a small sound in her throat—not quite a moan—and they settle into each other.

  “Provocative how?”

  “It turns down, you know? Like she’s been sad for centuries. But a very appealing mouth, very… approachable.”

  “Kissable.”

  He grunts and kisses her again.

  “Like Jeanne Moreau,” she offers.

  “Yeah, like that, but… you remember that girl in the Piero della Francesca?”

  “The pregnant Madonna?”

  “Yeah. Could be the same girl.”

  “Wow.”

  “I couldn’t tell about the rest of her. The room was dark and she was behind the bar, but I think she had all the parts.”

  “Did she want you?”

  “Yeah, she wanted me to get out of there as soon as possible.”

  “You wait, honey. They’re going to be lined up around the block. You’re going to get all the girls you ever dreamed of.”

  “I’ll put in a revolving door to handle the traffic.”

  “You’ll see.”

  Herbie didn’t want any girls. It wouldn’t be any fun without Annie. She likes girls almost as much as he does. In the old days when they would take on a lover together, Herbie would be like the lifeguard—he’d just lie back and watch as the girls got themselves all warm and rosy and then, when the moment was right, he’d allow them to take advantage of him. He’d just be there for whenever they needed what he had that they didn’t. Well, sometimes he would take a more active role, suggesting they do this or that, but that usually broke the spell. The girls didn’t go for him being bossy. But if he could control himself and just wait until they got the idea, he could have himself some high-class sex.

  It’s been a while, though, since they have had a lover together. It got too complicated. You never realize how difficult something is until you stop doing it. A third person in your bed can be a lot of fun, but she’s a person—with problems and history, with neuroses and habits, with friends and relatives—and believe me, a girl who’ll jump into bed with a married couple can have some pretty interesting friends. And finally, every single one of them wanted Herbie and Annie to be their parents, which was the last thing they needed or wanted. So after the last one graduated—they really thought of it that way—they took a break and realized how much easier it was just the two of them. Of course, easier can lead to boring, so every now and then, when the situation presented itself, they would help themselves to a little snack—not a full meal, just an amuse-bouche.

  “Tell me more about the bartender,” said Annie and she ran her finger over his heart, where she knew he was hurting.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CANDY AARON STRIDES DOWN THE HOSPITAL CORRIDOR dressed to the nines in cashmere and Italian leather, carrying a coffee cake in a little box tied up with string. All the nurses stare in appreciation as she walks by even though they’ve seen her every morning this week. Candy’s got that thing. She’s not beautiful, not in the current sense of perfectly regular, cookie-cutter features—but she’s a knockout. She has her father’s nose—the family honker—which would be a serious detriment on any other face, but on Candy’s, somehow, it’s an asset. It’s like the prow of a ship, a figurehead forging its way through the raging ocean. Whereas with Herbie, the very same nose looks like a big thumbs-down gesture plastered onto the middle of his face. Herbie’s nose reminds us that we’re not perfect whereas Candy’s trumpets our singularity. And then, of course, there’s her hair, her astonishing mop—Irish red all tangled up around her face and down around her shoulders. It’s like her head is on fire. Candy’s hair is her pride, her signature.

  She peeks into the room and sees her mom and dad curled up together in the hospital bed like two puppies in a box. She intakes an involuntary, inaudible gasp and tears spring to her eyes. She shakes her head as if to make it go away. Her mom and dad have always inhabited a world unto themselves. When she was a little girl, it was like they were surrounded by a protective circle, a magic bubble that she could never penetrate. Annie and Herb, Herbie and Ann—and then there was Candy. Not that she wasn’t wanted and adored, and supported and encouraged. She was their kid, after all. But she always knew that she would never be loved by anyone the way they loved each other. She grew up with that, wearing it like a badge, until it virtually defined her.

  She stands in the doorway, one hip cocked expectantly and the string of the bakery box dangling between her thumb and forefinger. She sighs as if her disapproval could wake them. Herbie gets the message and stirs. He waves to her and holds a finger up to his lips. Don’t wake your mom.

  She gestures, “Should I come back?” Herbie shakes his head.

  “I brought coffee cake,” she whispers.

  Herbie carefully extricates himself from the tubes and takes the cake from Candy, kissing her softly on the cheek. “Thanks, honey.”

  “God, Daddy, you look like shit.”

  He nods. “You look good.”

  Candy raises her eyes to the ceiling and sighs—like the compliment is too much to bear. “Maurice is leaving me.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. He’s seeing somebody else. It’s over.”

  Herbie is not ready for this information. He’s slept maybe an hour, tops; he’s still half in the bag from the vodka and his words pop out edgy and hostile. “What are you talking about?” His voice rises and his head tilts forward on his neck like he’s on the attack. “What the fuck are you talking about?” All of Candy’s danger signals go off—bells, whistles, sirens—and she feels a huge rush of adrenaline. All she can think to do is to attack back. She jabs her finger down into Herbie’s face—she’s taller than he is, even without the Italian boots—and hisses, “What? What’s your problem?”

  “This is not the time or the place for your drama,” spits out Herbie as if he’s talking to a thirteen-year-old. “This is not your time.” Candy feels like she’s been hit. Her attack mode vanishes and she’s suddenly the bruised and bleeding victim. Her chest caves in; she becomes strangely shorter and smaller; her eyebrows are innocent question marks perched above her nose, now the nose of her forefathers, the nose of bondage, persecution and injustice. She shakes her head in disbelief.

  “I don’t believe you said that, Daddy. That is the meanest thing you ever said to me. What’s your point? That I don’t care about Mommy? That I don’t love her? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “Honey, go home and take a shower.” This is Annie from the bed. Her voice is calm. She’s the only one in the family who’s not stressed out by her dying. Whatever adjustment she’s had to make, she’s made. Herbie’s still all puffed up and he starts pacing the room and sighing.

  “Just go, honey. I want to spend some time with Candy. Take a shower and get some sleep. And I’ll see you later.”

  Herbie nods and starts to put his coat on. He looks at Candy a little sheepishly and then tries to give her a kiss on the cheek. She’s having none of it. He shrugs and waves good-bye.

  Annie pats the bed and Candy sits next to her. They take hands and sit in silence for a while. Annie, who can barely lift her arm anymore, feels stronger than she’s ever felt in her life. She has no conflicts, no doubts. She’s dying, which feels exactly like the thing she should be doing right now. But—there’s always a but—before she breathes her last, she’s going to fix everybody one last time.

  “Give Daddy a little space, honey. He’s lost.”

  “Fuck him, he’s lost. What about me? I’m lost, too.”

  “Tell me what happened with Maurice.”

  Candy snorts ruefully, opens the box and breaks off a nice hunk of the cake. She offers the box to Annie, who takes a
smaller piece. They get crumbs on the blanket, like they did when she was a kid.

  “You remember Susan Hoff? She was Jean-Luc’s editor for a while in Paris?”

  Jean-Luc is Candy’s former beau. He’s a documentary filmmaker of note—world-renowned, actually. Although Herbie always said he could never figure out how those documentary guys earn a living. Nobody ever goes to see their movies, he says. They just get prizes. But he’s one of the best, apparently, and Candy was with him for six years. Jean-Luc is one of those wiry guys that do all the extreme sports—helicopter skiing, trekking in Nepal, double triathlons. And for work, he goes all over the world filming pygmy head-shrinking rituals and things like that. All of which is amazing, given that Candy is a dedicated indoorswoman and always was. But she co-produced four films with him and they were a good team. They had a great apartment in Paris and Annie and Herb got to visit them a lot and they usually had a good time together. Herbie thought a lot of Jean-Luc. He thought he was a very nice guy for a Frenchman.

  “Which one was Susan Hoff? I’m trying to picture her. Did we ever have dinner with her?”

  “No. She’s a Brit. Remember we went shopping, the three of us? At that arcade in the Second Arrondissement? And you bought that green umbrella?”

  “Kind of short with big breasts?”

  Candy nods.

  “I still have that umbrella,” says Annie. Candy can see the green umbrella; she knows exactly where it is—hanging in her parents’ bedroom closet, on a hook just inside the door. She thinks that she’ll take the green umbrella back to her apartment and keep it forever. She tries not to think about it—about what life will be like after Annie is gone—but like a canker sore, she can’t stop picking at it. Annie reads her face and punches her softly on the arm.

  “C’mon, tell me about Susan Hoff.”

  Candy composes herself and lets out a big breath. “She’s fucking Maurice.”

  Annie looks at her like she’s crazy. “Maurice loves you, honey. I know this. I know the man very well.”

  “If they’re not fucking, they will be.”

  “How did Susan Hoff get together with Maurice? Isn’t she in Paris? Or London?”

  “No, she’s here.”

  “And…”

  Candy puckers up her lips like a little kid and her eyes look up to the ceiling, as if to say, don’t look at me, I’m just a little innocent girl.

  “Oh, honey. Why do you do this?” Candy has a history of fixing up her boyfriends with women who are perfect for them. She has a 100 percent success rate. Jean-Luc is now married to one of Candy’s college roommates and has two kids. They all ski.

  “Susan Hoff is a sheep. She’s a reasonably intelligent, reasonably attractive sheep with big tits. She’s exactly what Maurice needs. He doesn’t want a woman; he wants a sheep. And I’m not a sheep.

  “What are you?”

  Candy sighs and shakes her head. “I don’t know—a rare bird, like a snowy egret. I mean I could be a sheep. I’ve done it before—with Jean-Luc—I was totally a sheep with Jean-Luc. And a Sherpa. And I was definitely a sheep with Eric Katz. Remember that motherfucker? And I was a sheep with that other guy, the one from Florida. So I could do it with Maurice. I’ve done it. I mean the clothes are great. And the travel. And Maurice is no dummy, he’s brilliant at pretending I have my own life, my own career. He gave me a title, with an office and a secretary, but it’s all bullshit. I’m there for him—to be on his arm, to bounce all his brilliant ideas off of, to be in his bed. But finally it’s all for him.”

  “And what’s for you? What do you want?”

  “I don’t know. I told you, I’m an egret—what do egrets know? Sometimes I want to be taken care of and sometimes I want to be my rare bird self.”

  “What about both? You could have both.” Candy sighs and looks long at Annie, who has always had both.

  “Easy for you to say,” says Candy. They smile and take hands.

  “That’s your father’s favorite joke.”

  “Which?”

  “The guy comes home and tells his wife that the doctor just told him he has ten hours to live. The wife is all upset and says that she’ll cook him his favorite dinner—roast chicken with mashed potatoes—and he says no, he wants to make love to her—all night—over and over again. That’s easy for you to say, says the wife. You don’t have to get up in the morning.”

  “That’s terrible!” screams Candy. But she can’t stop herself from laughing. “How come I never heard that?” They laugh together and then they hold each other.

  Herbie decides to walk home through the park. He’s still pissed at Candy and he wants to walk it off. He also has a new coat and he wants to see if it works in the cold. It’s like a regular coat, as opposed to those Michelin Man things that make him feel like he’s twelve years old. This is a wool coat—stylish, threequarter length with nice, deep pockets—and then inside, that you can zip in and out, is a lining made of that Michelin Man stuff, but the thin version—that just keeps you warm but doesn’t make you look like an igloo. It’s a nice coat. He pulls down the earmuffs that are part of his tweedy little cap and he’s all set.

  It’s the only way she can deal with this, he says out loud with gestures as he crosses into the park above Ninety-sixth Street. She’s got to make it her drama. No way Maurice has another woman. Maurice, whatever else he is, is not a fucker. They’ve lived together four years now for Christ’s sake. They do everything together. He proposes to her once a week and she, of course, keeps turning him down. Like all the other guys. Can’t pull the fucking trigger.

  Oh God, he says, what a thought—Candy on her own again. Please God in heaven. She’ll start another one of her careers. Frescoing. Or neuroscience. She’ll go back to school—in Bologna or Prague or Helsinki—and I’ll have to pay for everything, because, for all her worldliness and experience, Candy doesn’t have two dimes to rub together. She’s like her mother— no fucking use for money at all. Except to give it away. Please God, she’s just being hysterical and they’re fine.

  Herbie would miss Maurice. The two of them have developed a very nice relationship over the years. He always thought it was considerate of Candy to get together with a guy who was his own age. He and Maurice are four months apart and they get along well. It’s also not bad having a friend who gets invited to the Owner’s Box at Yankee Stadium. Maurice is a major mover and shaker. He has companies, he’s on boards, he gives to the big charities, he dines on occasion with the mayor. Maurice is one of the great high-level hustlers of all time— real estate, cable companies, some kind of hedge fund, lots of fingers in lots of pots. They couldn’t be less alike, the two of them—Maurice being mainstream and Herbie being a boho— but they understand each other in a basic way. Yeah, he would miss Maurice.

  There’s no way she would lose him, he says. They live in a four-story townhouse down in the Village; they’ve got the house in Southampton; they’ve got that cute little jet plane to fly around in. Come on, no way. She should break down and marry him. Which she’ll never do because it’s not fucking dramatic enough. If she doesn’t have a Greek play going on around her, it’s not worth her getting out of bed in the morning. It’s hard to out-dramatize your mother dying of cancer, but believe me, Candy’ll give it a shot.

  He starts to rant at Annie, too. How could he? How could he be angry with his wonderful Annie? His life partner, his muse, his heart? Because she’s fucking dying, that’s why, he yells to the trees. We made a deal—I go first. We signed it; we had it notarized. It was an ironclad deal and she’s welshing on it.

  It happened so fast he still can’t catch his breath. A month ago she was fine. They had her cancer from twenty years ago always hanging over their heads like a scimitar. But they were used to that. And then—in one week—the three words you never want to hear, one right after the other. Recurrence. Metastasis. Riddled.

  Despite the earmuffs, Herbie can’t get warm. His teeth are rattling like he has a fever. He must have walk
ed two miles easy at this point, ranting and raving and waving his arms, and he’s exhausted. Whatever was left of the vodka buzz is gone and he has a full-blown hangover. He turns the corner at Eighty-third Street onto Broadway, right where that big delicatessen is, and there’s this guy standing out front, staring at him. The closer Herbie gets, the more the guy is locking eyes with him. Now, this has happened many times—Herbie used to be on TV and people still occasionally recognize him. Or more likely, the guy thinks he knows him but he doesn’t know from where. They went to high school together or camp in the Adirondacks. This happens all the time to him. Herbie slows down when he gets to the guy and he gives him the old “how ya doin’” self-effacing smile and the guy holds out a little brown bag to him.

  “You like Jewish food?”

  “What?”

  “I have a half of a bagel-and-nova sandwich. I haven’t touched it and I don’t want it. Please, take it.” He jiggles the bag a little.

  “No, I got food at home. Thanks.” And the guy looks at him with a really pathetic look and jiggles the bag again and Herbie realizes that the guy thinks he’s a homeless person. At the same moment, the penny drops for the guy—like maybe this guy’s not a homeless person and I just made a big mistake. They back away from each other and start walking in opposite directions—even though Herbie is actually headed downtown, too. Then he stops and thinks what the fuck, and he calls to the guy, “You’re really not gonna eat it?” And the guy wheels around and heads back, “No, I was gonna throw it out, I swear.”

  “You got a little slice of onion on it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And you didn’t take a bite out of it?” The guy crosses his heart with is free hand.

  “What the fuck,” he says, this time out loud to the guy, who smiles and gives him the bag, still not sure that Herbie’s not a homeless person. They wave to each other and Herbie crosses the street—he’s got to get away from this guy.

  “What pisses me off,” he says out loud, “is the coat. A new fucking coat that cost eight hundred dollars and he thinks I’m sleeping in it. What the fuck is that all about?”