With Friends Like These... Read online

  “I’m sure we were invited tonight because we’d be the only people there who knew Cindy and that time in his life. A tragic time.” She sighed and stopped looming over my father and, instead, sank onto Beth’s chintz-covered love seat. “Right, Gilbert?” My father appeared to be visiting outer space, and to be having a good time there.

  My mother put her hands up. “He doesn’t like to talk about it.” Whenever she is truly upset with my father, she speaks of him only in pronouns. “Lyle kept a gun in his house. For protection. They lived in New York, after all. We told him it was a bad idea, dangerous. Then one day—it’s so horrible—Cindy’s little girl found it and killed her mother with it.”

  “Accidentally.” My father’s blissful obliviousness had been replaced by a perturbed expression. Cindy was making it through the drug barrier. “They have laws some places for that now. He’d go to jail nowadays for leaving a gun where a three-year-old child could find it.” He shook his head, still appalled.

  “When did all of this happen?” Beth asked.

  My mother began her infamous circular computations. “Let’s see, it was just after Uncle Lewis’s seventy-fifth birthday, so when would that be? He and Aunt Gloria had a big anniversary party—their silver—the same day as your first birthday, Mandy, and I remember he married late in life, he was a famous bachelor around town, which means that by then he must have been—”

  “For heaven’s sake!” my father said. “Cindy died nearly twenty years ago.”

  When I was ten or eleven. How could I have missed an accidental homicide in my own family? What else could have occupied my attention back then when puberty hadn’t even kicked in? Beth looked equally baffled.

  “Well, it happened in New York in their home,” my mother said. “You barely knew her, anyway. She never lived near us. Besides, you were away at the shore at the time, visiting Grandma. What was the point of going out of our way to tell you terrible news about somebody you didn’t even know? Parents are supposed to protect their children from bad things when they can. That’s what we did.”

  I appreciated the sentiment, but I nonetheless felt uncomfortable. Family secrets jutted like hard-edged foreign objects under the smooth skin of our lives.

  “What happened to his little girl?” Beth asked softly.

  “Betsy?” my mother said. “She wasn’t Lyle’s, biologically. Cindy was one of those flower children. And then she became one of those flower mothers. The flower father was nowhere to be found.”

  My father looked away from us, as if he still found Cindy’s history embarrassing.

  “Did he keep her—the little girl—Betsy, after…” Beth’s voice dribbled off.

  My mother shook her head. “He was all to pieces, beside himself. Hattie, Lyle’s aunt, who raised him, took the baby. Lyle couldn’t be around her. Your father and I talked about adopting her.”

  “Look,” my father said, cutting to the chase, “the…um, natural father was back from Vietnam by then, and when he found out what had happened, he took Betsy. He wouldn’t speak to the family after that.”

  My mother stood up. “And we weren’t so much better. Never really tried to see Lyle after that, poor man.”

  “He should have kept the baby. Besides, he did fine without us.” My father sounded uncharacteristically hostile.

  “I hope nobody ever told that little girl what she’d done,” Beth said, provoking a long, heavy silence.

  My mother finally broke it with a pragmatic return to the issue at hand. “I still think it would be wrong to stay away from his party. He wants so much to make peace finally. Did you see the invitation, girls?” She walked to the hall table and rummaged in her pocketbook, returning with a large, cream square.

  At first glance it looked quite standard. Heavy stock with bold engraving. It might have been a wedding invitation, except that it was so verbose, like nothing I’d ever seen before.

  Most of life moves double-time, too quickly to see each individual frame or even to make sense of it. But the half-century marker is a time to pause, take stock and seriously consider the course. I’m very excited about my next fifty years as I switch from one rodent image (the rat race) to another (the country mouse).

  But now, before I move on, I want to believe that you—and I—can go home again. Please join me back where my voyage began, to celebrate the points along the way where our lives touched. You are a part of my story, and I of yours, and the only birthday present I want is a chance to see my life in front of me, whole, in your faces, to heal what needs healing and to drink a toast to auld lang syne.

  Beth let go of her half of the invitation. “Forgive me, but I think it’s weird,” she said. “Slightly creepy. Inappropriate. Sounds like he has a lot of enemies, for one thing. And then—oh, maybe he just needed an editor, a more careful choice of words. But the way he said it—seeing his life before him—that’s not a birthday wish, that’s what’s supposed to happen to a dying man.”

  It wasn’t like my sister to be morbid, so her words struck with extra impact. Which is not to say they deterred my mother.

  “You’ll go with me, won’t you? It could be awkward,” she said to me, “without your father there. It’s important.”

  And because of the need in my mother’s eyes, the image of a long-dead flower child, and the odd wording of an invitation, I wound up borrowing panty hose and a cocktail dress from my sister and going to a party for a man I didn’t know.

  And that, in turn, meant that later in the evening I was there to witness it when, just as Beth had suggested, Lyle Zacharias got his wish and saw his life pass before his eyes. Exactly the way a dying man is supposed to.

  Two

  BASED ON MY DEEP PREJUDICE about the glitz set, I would have expected Lyle Zacharias to hold his gala at the Museum of Art—after he had it refurbished to his taste, of course. Certainly something splashier than a former boardinghouse turned into a small hotel in a not superglamorous neighborhood—even if the small hotel had been written up in travel magazines as a place to be.

  If I had to go to the party, I wanted it to be more spectacular, even vulgar, so I could sneer. “Why The Boarding House?” I asked as we drove.

  “He grew up in Queen Village, across the street from it,” my mother answered. “That’s where Hattie lived and raised him. And if I recall correctly, when she was a young woman, she lived in the real boardinghouse itself for a while. Or if not that one, another one. Of course, back then we didn’t call it Queen Village, just part of South Philly, and it was pretty hardscrabble.”

  So Lyle’s desire to go home again was not pure metaphor. This was half party, half pilgrimage.

  The windshield wipers swept back and forth, clearing brief glimpses of street scenes between blurred and aqueous blindness. Driving was difficult and unpleasant and I felt very much the martyr.

  I drove past the edges of Society Hill and crossed South Street, its mix of chic and funk on and off visible, like wet strobe lights.

  “Did I really see that?” The wipers had cleared a view of a pink awning that stood out even in the rain and dark. “A store called Condom Nation?” My mother’s voice squeaked just a bit.

  “Clever wordplay, huh?”

  “I try to be modern and up-to-date, but honestly…” She seemed relieved when the brick row houses became more modest and the stores less outrageous. Even here, however, there were signs of creeping gentrification in the scaffolding around buildings and the flower boxes that matched brightly painted window frames and front doors.

  My mother sat low, huddling inside her ancient Persian lamb, as if afraid someone might spot her. She was horrified about wearing fur, but refused to buy a replacement because she had no need of a winter coat in Florida. Beth and I reminded her that lambs were not on the endangered list, but in truth, the particular lamb whose curls my mother wore had most definitely been endangered while becoming a coat, so that argument seemed weak.

  Thoughts of the sacrificial lamb made me think again
of my father’s surprising revelations: a foster sister, a baby, and a terrible accident. The radio played a suitably melancholy song as background to my mulling.

  And then an announcer, sounding self-important and solemn, replaced the music. My mother automatically upped the volume. She had become a weather junkie since moving to Boca Raton, and was transfixed by meteorological excesses. Obviously, retired life in Florida didn’t offer a whole lot of excitement. “Forty below in Fargo!” she’d exclaim. “I can’t believe it! Why, at home it’s probably seventy-five or eighty.”

  It was always seventy-five or eighty at home, even when it was actually a hundred and twelve or in the midst of a hurricane. I guess it meant she was a happy transplant, but I found it hard to take.

  “Flash floods from Paoli north,” the announcer said, even before getting to world news. My mother rolled her eyes and tsked. Only now with the weatherman’s statistical reassurance could she truly believe in the torrential rain pelting the car. She sighed with pleasure. “I’ll bet it’s hot and sunny at home.”

  “It’s not sunny at night. Even in Florida.”

  She changed the subject. “I feel bad that I’m not using the room Lyle rented. I hate to waste things.” The radio duly reported news of revolt, bloodshed, and inhumanity. My mother turned down the volume.

  I had agreed to be my mother’s date. I had agreed to wear my sister’s black and white beaded dress after I’d tried the excuse that nothing I owned suited champagne and caviar. I had tolerated being allowed back in my house only long enough to feed Macavity, check my silent answering machine, and retrieve my lipstick and black silk shoes. But I drew the line at lingering at the event one minute longer than I had to, and that definitely included sleeping over. The Boarding House’s rooms were for Lyle Zacharias’s out-of-town guests. I fit neither category. Nonetheless, my mother was disappointed. I suggested, as tactfully as I could, that she was behaving rather cavalierly about my injured father.

  “You wouldn’t want to leave Dad alone all night, would you?” That was a better argument than the real one, which was that I wanted to be home. There was always the chance that Mackenzie and his pals would find either the killer or the dead man’s fingers and call it a night.

  “I promised to bring him whatever’s delicious. Remind me, okay?” My mother babbled, girlishly excited by the evening, or by being on the town without her husband. “I hope he still likes tarts.”

  “Daddy? He loves your—”

  “Lyle. Years ago, he said they were his idea of heaven, and the only snake in Paradise was sharing them. So I wrote ‘No Sharing This Time’ on the tag. You think he’ll get it? Still remember?”

  I hoped so. I also hoped he was so ecstatic about Bea Pepper’s tarts that he failed to notice that her daughter had arrived uninvited and empty-handed.

  “Otherwise,” my mother continued, “what could a person like me give a man like him? Dad thought of it, actually. He said my tarts were one thing Lyle couldn’t buy with all his success. I made lemon and cherry-almond and hazelnut-cream and peach-pistachio. Fifty. One for each year. But now I’m wondering: what if he’s developed a cholesterol problem, or a weight problem?”

  My mother was debating herself and did not require input. The good news was that the hotel was a matter of minutes away, so her festering could not go on indefinitely.

  “I’m afraid I packed them too tightly. They’re probably all crumbled. If that messenger drove as wildly as some I’ve seen…I put cardboard between the layers, but…”

  The radio announcer spluttered something about a traffic jam due to a three-alarm fire. It didn’t seem possible that anything could burn in this downpour, but weather was my mother’s specialty, not mine. I listened carefully, wanting to detour around it, if necessary.

  “And what about the tin?” my mother asked her invisible auditor. “Did it seem sick? I thought it was funny in the store, but now…”

  The tin the messenger had delivered was enormous and black, with silver lettering on its side that said over the hill. Its main failing was its clichéd predictability, but I didn’t tell her that. I was too busy listening. It seemed the fire was just outside the city, in Cheltenham. No problem. And then the location registered.

  “The Cavanaugh Hotel had a second life and became something of a local landmark during Prohibition, and will be remembered for…”

  “Oh, no!” I said. “The hotel!”

  “Here? We’re there?” my mother asked.

  I shook my head. The Cavanaugh Hotel was where Philly Prep was holding its Senior Prom at the very end of May. Had been going to hold. Could you rebuild a massive Victorian in ten weeks?

  I knew the answer without asking. I also knew the amount of trouble we were going to have finding an alternate site. Poor kids. Between weddings, graduation parties, and proms, nothing suitable would be left to rent.

  “You’re right! We are here!” my mother said with audible delight. And we were, to my surprise. There was even a parking spot not too far from the entry to The Boarding House.

  I imagined the building without green awnings and planter boxes filled with forced azalea bushes. I pictured men in handlebar mustaches and muddy boots, and stenographers wearing shields to protect the cuffs of their shirtwaists. Lyle’s parents, perhaps, along with his aunt Hattie, who, my mother had explained, had raised him after her brother and his wife both died.

  There had been an awful lot of loss in Lyle Zacharias’s life, and I could understand my parents’ decision to accept his invitation despite their sad associations with the man.

  * * *

  The economics of both The Boarding House’s guests and its decor had been upped several social stratifications since its original days. As soon as we opened the door, the sounds of people celebrating their enormous good fortune in having been born themselves flooded us. They were not immediately visible. Instead, we faced a bald and jovial man who sat at a minuscule mahogany desk which constituted the reception area. My mother launched into a lengthy overexplanation of why she wasn’t going to sleep in her room. The man at the desk didn’t care, but he let her anxious apologies run their course, and then he handed her an enormous brass tag and said to feel free. Whatever. He smiled ever more broadly.

  In the parlor to our right, the cheery group burst into laughter, then someone made a toast to Lyle and to birthdays in general. “What, after all, is the alternative?” I heard. The decor, although of a long-ago style, was polished and glowing: dark woods, inlaid or waxed tabletops, garnet velvet upholstery, and richly patterned carpets.

  The guests, however, were exceptionally now, giving off so much self-assured heat that I knew without looking that all their teeth had been fixed to perfection, their hair lovingly arranged, their bodies toned, their wardrobes brilliantly conceived. I was also sure without checking that these were the TV outlanders from the Big Apple, and I immediately became a proper hick and felt inferior and defensive.

  “Look!” my mother whispered. “That one, there, by the fireplace. That’s Dr. Sazarac.”

  “Your doctor’s here?”

  Her laugh was incredulous. “Not my doctor! He’s the doctor on Second Generation.”

  He was fiftyish and pink-skinned, properly topped with silver hair. Give me a break.

  My mother plunged a lamb-covered elbow into my side. “His real name is McCoy. Shepard, but they call him The Real.”

  “Who was the Real McCoy?” I asked.

  She waved away my question. “He’s single again,” she hissed. “I read about his divorce in Parade magazine.”

  “He’d make a better date for you than for me!” Except, of course, she was married and I was not, and that was the sum of it to her.

  A woman with a full-length mink coat and none of my mother’s fur qualms swept into the vestibule along with a blast of cold air.

  Like peasants, my mother and I automatically stepped back, allowing the grande dame free passage. My mother mouthed the woman’s name in my direct
ion. I didn’t catch it, and I didn’t care. Another character from Second Generation. “Why don’t we get rid of our coats and join the other guests?” I quietly suggested. “Let’s at least use our room as a closet.”

  She looked troubled. “Mother,” I whispered. The fur lady, whose perfumed aura was nearly as dense as her mink, registered. “Stop gaping. You’re Lyle’s guest as much as she is.”

  “I know I am. What are you talking about?”

  “You look so worried, I thought…if it’s not that, then what’s bothering you?”

  “My tarts. Where do you think they are?”

  I looked to the concierge, but he had bustled off with the mink lady. There did not seem to be a table, as for a wedding, with gifts on it. The out-of-towners making merry in the living room had probably left their offerings upstairs, and in-towners were arriving slowly.

  “What if they never got here?” she whispered. “What if they’re in a warm place? There’s whipped cream on some of them. If they sit out for too long in a heated… How could I have let your father talk me into such a troublesome gift?”

  My mother’s competence had dissolved in the presence of semicelebrities. I half expected her to get the vapors, or to curtsy for the TV contingent. I shook my head and guided her around and behind the staircase. Somewhere there had to be a kitchen, and I was willing to bet Mrs. Pepper’s tarts were in that same somewhere.

  We went through open double doors that led into a bright and modern, mildly chaotic kitchen. A young and harried-looking man scooped frilly lettuce—a small mountain of it—into enormous plastic containers. “Oh, God!” he kept saying. Then, with a wave to us, he left the room.

  There was evidence of prior chopping, peeling, and slicing all over the counters, but only one other worker visible; a pudgy figure in white bent over the sink.

  The Boarding House had opened for business only a short while ago, and despite rave reviews for the rooms and the restaurant, Lyle’s party was probably the biggest crowd and challenge of the hotel’s short career. The fragrance of tension was almost as strong as the more delicate aromas filling the room.