Ten

A Change of Heart

LIKE A COUPLE OF preteens with their first tampon, Sienna and I are sitting cross-legged on the zebra-print rug in her living room, trying to figure out how to use the Lumigan she’s scored from her eye doctor.

“Why didn’t you just get him to give you a prescription for Latisse?” I ask, twisting the bottle’s rubber-top stopper and wondering why Sienna didn’t buy the beauty-strength version of the new eyelash-enhancing drug instead of the glaucoma medicine from which it’s derived.

“It’s not going on sale until December. Besides, we’re on budgets now, remember?” Sienna says, batting her lashes, which look entirely lush to me. “The glaucoma medicine sells for half the price.”

“Interesting. The American consumer is only willing to pay so much to stave off blindness, but the sky’s the limit for longer, thicker, mascaraless lashes?”

“And this is a surprise?” Sienna laughs.

“What would be a surprise is if this actually works.” Sienna turns to her laptop and Googles for instructions. Bill passes through the living room with a cup of coffee and the Wall Street Journal and bends down to give Sienna a kiss.

“See you at two o’clock, Tru?” Bill asks, confirming our shopping expedition with the Veronica Agency’s new hires to pick out work clothes. Then he plunks his coffee mug down—without a coaster—on Sienna’s prized triangular glass Noguchi coffee table and makes his way toward the door.

Since Bill’s been with Sienna he looks happy and relaxed and I’d swear, he’s even standing taller. As for Sienna, she’s radiant, and why not? Good sex is better for your skin than even the priciest carrot-and-sesame body buff. More impressively, she seems completely unfazed that the perfect order and symmetry of her living room has been upset by the intrusion of this errant coffee mug—or this man.

“Looks like it’s going well,” I say, reaching across the zebra area rug to rap my fist on the blond wood floor. Sienna shrugs.

“We’ll see. My longest intimate relationship to date is with the woman who gives me my colonics.” Sienna scoops up the mug and I follow her into the kitchen where she busies herself piloting a foamy cloth across a spotless counter. “I will tell you one thing about Bill, though,” Sienna says, wringing the wipe with both hands as soap drips onto the counter and a big smile spreads across her face. “We’re having terrific sex.”

“Me too!” I’ve been waiting all morning for an opening to describe my hot elevator tryst with the man I’ve been married to for more than twenty years. “Peter was thrusting inside me. The back of the elevator cab started shaking and I was scared to death the whole time that the wires on the cab might break loose or that the elevator would open and someone would catch us!” I feel my face flush and I cover my mouth with my hands. “It was great.”

“Elevator sex? You and Peter? Like in Fatal Attraction?”

“Well, it was deliciously illicit but I’m not going to end up boiling a bunny.” I smile.

“Maybe just a simple sauté? I thought that kind of thing only happened to us single gals. Doesn’t the marriage license come with a clause about trading passion for security? It doesn’t seem quite fair that you should get them both.”

“I know, I mean, it just came out of nowhere, I can’t imagine what got into Peter.” Although one particular explanation has been haunting my thoughts all night. “You don’t think Tiffany was the foreplay, do you?” I ask anxiously.

“What? Of course not,” says Sienna, slamming down the sponge.

“Well, Tiffany couldn’t keep her hands off Peter and Peter certainly looked like he was enjoying the attention. And my husband and that woman spend hours every day alone, holed up together in our apartment until the girls get home from school.”

“So what? You’re the one Peter … Well, what would be the word here? Plundered? Ravished?”

“Schtupped is what Naomi would say. But really, do you think Peter’s passion for me was all about his wanting Tiffany?”

“Of course not,” Sienna says loyally, because even if she believed otherwise, what else could she say? “You’re sexy and beautiful and desirable and your husband lustily schtupped you in an elevator. The other thing? That silly Tiffany girl? Forget about it. Why borrow trouble?”

Sienna’s right: There’s nothing to be gained in my fantasizing about Peter fantasizing about Tiffany. Though I’d still like to know how Tiffany Glass came to be in my private bathroom, the one that’s attached to my private bedroom, in the first place. Still, at the moment another, more pleasurable picture is forming in my mind—Sienna and Bill making a cozy home together. Because whether or not she realizes it, something pretty seismic is happening to my best friend.

“Just before, when you said, ‘Why borrow trouble?’ You know Bill says that, too,” I hoot. “Better watch it, Ms. I’m-Never-Going-to-Get-Married Post. That man’s getting to you in more ways than you know.”

IT WAS PATRICIA, our ex–money manager, who suggested that we bypass Madison Avenue and hunt for lingerie bargains on the Lower East Side. My parents used to take me there every Sunday when I was a kid, but as I emerge from the subway to meet Bill and our new employees for our shopping expedition, I see that a second wave of immigrants—the hip and trendy—have arrived. Brand-new balconied apartments jostle turn-of-the-century tenement buildings. Cute little designer shops and cool-looking after-hours clubs have sprouted up along the area’s narrow streets, like dandelions poking through cement. My walk down Orchard Street turns into a stroll down memory lane as I pass a store where I used to buy penny candy that now sells forty-dollar candles, and just a few doors down from Russ & Daughters (where my father always went for “the best” sturgeon), I spot the Landmark Sunshine Cinema, so chic that they have red-carpet premieres. Still I’m glad to see that Patricia’s lingerie shop is one of the last of the old-fashioned hosiery stores, the kind I remember shopping in with Naomi.

As our little group crowds into the store, a man who identifies himself as Morris rises up from behind a wooden counter. Morris is wearing a once-white shirt that’s now yellow with age, baggy suspenders, and a yarmulke—he’s about as sexy as a Geo Metro. But he knows his underwear. And his clients. Morris takes our measure and matches each of us with the perfect “bit.”

Patricia snags a dark blue underwire number with a ribbon bow. For Rochelle, Morris selects a bustier with crisscross straps and Swarovski crystals dotted across the cups.

“A good piece of lingerie, it brings so much happiness,” Morris sighs, as Rochelle returns from the dressing room, grinning.

“Maybe you could suggest something for me?” a willowy blonde named Georgy, steps forward to ask. “I was wondering, do you have that pantyhose that eats cellulite?”

“No, but I have a bridge I could sell you.” Morris laughs. “Sweetheart, a dimple here or there, who cares? It’s women who worry about the cellulite, not the men. You wear the black bra and panties with the semi-sheer baby doll that grazes the thigh, I promise, no man will be able to resist.”

I finger a delicate crushed-silk camisole. I’d promised myself that after the benefit I was going to buy some pretty lingerie, but so much happened that I never got around to it. Still, now that Peter and I are having elevator sex—and Tiffany Glass is hovering—I’m going to do my best to make it worth my husband’s while to want to take off my clothes. And a sexy nightgown puts me more in the mood, too. A luscious satin teddy makes you feel like hitting on your hubby. Not like those sweatpants and T-shirts I’ve gotten into the habit of wearing, that are better suited to attacking the bathroom with a scrub brush.

Morris wraps up our purchases and Bill puts the charges on his credit card. “You can pay me back after you start working,” he reassures the women. “No rush.” At $1500 an hour our employees will be earning more than some top runway models and, according to Bill’s research, clients enjoy watching their escorts undress. “Most of the guys I know saw their first naked woman in Playboy, just like I did, wearing fishnet stockings or some kind of frilly panties,” Bill says nostalgically. Then he picks out a gorgeous embroidered bra for Sienna and a lacy peekaboo corselet.

“That was so much better than when I went shopping for my first bra,” I say with a laugh once we’re outside the store. “This saleslady screamed out in a big loud voice like she was announcing a lottery winner, ‘Thirty double-A, do they even make a double-A?’ I think my chest shrank another three inches along with my confidence.”

“Honey”—Lucy grins—“that’s nothing. Just imagine being a twenty-eight double-A—even my brother had bigger nipples.”

Bill peels off from our group. Either we’re starting to embarrass him or he really has to get back to his law office. The rest of us—heartburn be damned—are on our way to Katz’s Delicatessen, the restaurant where Meg Ryan had her fake orgasm in When Harry Met Sally. Bill Clinton has eaten there, too—though after his quadruple bypass surgery, the management removed his picture from the wall. But as we stroll past an innocent-looking awning, Patricia suggests a shopping detour before lunch.

“Toys in Babeland? I used to have so much fun shopping for the girls when they were little,” I say wistfully as Patricia pushes open the door.

“Tru, sweetie, these aren’t the kind of toys a mother buys you,” Patricia says, picking up a very large, very purple acrylic dildo. I blush, and she hands me a slightly smaller, less flashy pale-pink-colored model.

If you didn’t look closely you really might mistake the brightly lit store filled with open shelves of colorful toys for FAO Schwarz. A gamine student fingers a clitoral massage toy tagged BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE. A grandmotherly type in Crocs asks for “a vibrating penis ring, the rechargeable kind—we don’t want to be running out of batteries at a critical moment,” she says with a wink. If I didn’t know better I’d think that grandmother was shopping for a head, er, of lettuce.

Georgy picks up a strand of blue pop-it beads and starts to fasten it around her neck. Lucy comes over to explain that the graduated rings of plastic are worn lower down and inserted inside the body. “Ick, I think I know what you’re talking about, but I don’t want to think about it,” Georgy says, dropping the beads like a hot potato.

Patricia recommends that everyone buy the Rocket Balm cream. “It makes your John’s penis more sensitive. He’ll have the orgasm of his life, which means you’ll get a bigger tip.” But I’m more intrigued by a toy that has the esteemed Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

“I love the Naughtibod!” says a young saleswoman who sees me eyeing the vibrator. “You can plug it into an iPod or a CD player and it pulses to the music. I like to do it to the ‘William Tell Overture.’ ”

I laugh. “Hm, music to accompany a vibrator? How about ‘My Boyfriend’s Back’?”

I hem and haw for a few minutes, but when the salesgirl assures me that she’ll pack my purchases in a plain brown paper bag, I take the Naughtibod and a tin of Rocket Balm along with the sexy teddy. This certainly isn’t the Lower East Side that my parents used to take me to. Then again, I’m not the same girl that my parents used to take to the Lower East Side.

“POSTURE,” I SCOLD good-naturedly as I walk into the office and find Sienna sitting at her Knoll desk, hunched down in her ergonomically correct chair. I toss the brown bag filled with my exotic new lingerie and toys on top of my own perfectly serviceable IKEA workstation, kick off my shoes, and pad barefoot to the kitchen, which Sienna was supposed to have stocked with drinks and nibbles. I open and close the refrigerator door. “No Fresca—or anything?” I ask as a quick check reveals that the cupboards, too, are bare.

“I didn’t have time to get to the supermarket,” she says with an edge of defiance.

“That’s okay, I’ve probably had enough to eat today,” I babble, still exhilarated from the afternoon’s fun. “After we went to Katz’s we found this adorable little pastry shop. Lucy, remember, she’s the beautiful gal I told you about with the rabbit jacket …?”

“That must have been nice,” Sienna says, cutting me off. “I spent the day fielding phone calls, returning the folding chairs to the super, and trying to make sense of this bloody accounting system. How did I ever get saddled with that job? I don’t even balance my own checkbook.” She snatches my paper shopping bag and pulls out the musical vibrator. “But I’m glad to see your afternoon was so productive.”

“Bill bought something for you too. Two somethings. They’re really beautiful, he’s going to surprise you with them tonight,” I say, standing over Sienna’s chair and this time running my hand soothingly across her back. “Tough day?”

“I guess.” She shrugs. Sienna nudges a small pile of papers toward the edge of the desk with the eraser on her pencil until they topple onto the floor. Then she sighs, and we both bend over to pick them up.

“Sorry. I’m used to being in the newsroom, stories breaking, people running in and out all day long. It’s a little weird to suddenly be on the sidelines. I think I’m probably just going through reinvention pains.”

“Hey, switching your career, opening a new business, and falling in love with a guy for the first time in umpteen years has got to get your heart rate pumping.”

“Falling in love? Who said anything about falling in love?” Sienna asks stubbornly. And then, she can’t help it, the corners of her mouth turn up into a little grin. “Let’s just call it ‘like,’ okay? That way when it’s over I won’t feel so bad.”

“Okay, ‘love,’ ‘like,’ I’m not going to say anything to spook you. Though I think our Bill is a keeper. But to tell you the truth, I’m feeling a little overanxious these days myself. I mean, so much is changing. Peter’s working with that ridiculous Tiffany Glass person and she spends so much time at our apartment that I’m thinking of charging her rent. Of course, she’s paying our mortgage, which may be why she’s acting like she owns the place.”

“Don’t worry, her office renovation has to be finished sometime. Even the Taj Mahal only took twenty years to build. Besides, you’re going to be able to pay your way all on your own soon. We start working with customers in just a few days.”

“I know, I’ve been thinking about that.” My voice drops to a whisper. “I don’t want to send any negative thoughts out into the universe. But do you ever worry that something could, you know, go wrong? Like somebody finds out what kind of business the Veronica Agency really is and we end up going to jail?”

Sienna shakes her head. “No, Bill’s very careful. He knows all of the clients personally.”

“Well, let’s just make sure that no one gives out our phone number to Charlie Sheen. Or Eliot Spitzer.”

“Agreed. Although come to think of it, maybe you wouldn’t mind giving out your own number to your husband? I had two calls from him today wondering where the heck you were. He said it was important. Don’t tell me you forgot to charge your cellphone again?”

“Damn.” I reach into my bag to retrieve my red Nokia, which is in fact dead. Sienna laughs at my predictable disregard of all things electronic and hands me her BlackBerry, which is never more than half an inch away from her fingertips.

As I punch in Peter’s number, I’m already thinking up excuses for where I’ve been all day. I’d like to be able to say that I categorically hate lying to my husband, that it’s bad and that I’m going to stop doing it soon. But my whole world has always revolved around Peter and the girls, and having a “secret life”—a life in which I’m a businesswoman with plans of my own and where no one knows me as “Peter’s wife” or “Paige and Molly’s mother”—is turning out to be surprisingly satisfying. Besides, how much do I really know about what Peter’s up to these days? How much did I ever know? My husband was out of work for three whole months and I didn’t have a clue. Maybe that’s why I’m keeping this from Peter now, to get back at him and prove that he’s not the only one who can have a double life. Besides, I’m not actually lying to him about having a business.… If my husband comes right out and asks, “Tru, are you running an escort agency?” I’ve promised myself that I will absolutely, positively say yes. But until then, or until I’m ready, there are some things that I’d just rather not talk about.

Peter picks up on the second ring and before he has a chance to say a word, I’m blathering an explanation.

“Sorry I was out of touch, I forgot to charge my cellphone again, it’s a good thing my brain doesn’t have to be plugged in, or my head would constantly be beeping like one of those smoke detectors whose batteries are wearing down. Anyway,” I say, trying to keep the rest of the story simple, so I don’t get caught in some trap of my own making, “I’m with Sienna now. I was shopping, I got—”

Peter gives up waiting for an opening and plunges into the reason for his call.

“Tru,” he says, “I’m at Mount Sinai. You’ve got to get over here right away. Naomi had a heart attack.”

“HEART ATTACK, MOTHER,” I repeat numbly as Sienna and I practically knock over a woman with two young children to elbow our way into a taxi. “Emergency,” Sienna says, and the cabbie puts his pedal to the metal to get us to the hospital stat.

Having watched every hospital TV show from Doogie Howser to House, I thought I knew what the inside of an emergency room looked like—but I was wrong. Instead of the fast-paced drama that it takes to keep viewers glued to their TVs, in real life an air of torpid resignation hovers over the hospital waiting area, and there’s not a George Clooney or a Hugh Laurie in sight. Vacant-eyed patients are slumped down in thinly padded metal chairs that are bolted in place to the floor. (Not that anyone seems even remotely as if they’d have the energy, never mind the inclination, to steal one.) Children are wheezing, people are clutching their heads and stomachs, and there are enough runny noses to make Kleenex seem like, if anything can be these days, a good investment.

I’m the only person on line to talk to the nurse at the information desk, but she refuses to look up from her paperwork. “It’s an emergency. Naomi, F-I-N-K-L-E …” I start spelling my mother’s name after having said it—and gotten no response—twice.

“Yes ma’am, they’re all emergencies, that’s why this is the emergency room,” she says curtly, still declining to make eye contact and talking to her desk full of reports.

I’m just about to threaten to call the head nurse, the head of the hospital, or the head of CNN when Paige and Molly come rushing over. And with them is Brandon Marsh.

“Mrs. Newman, your mother’s all right,” says Brandon. His take-charge tone is meant to be calming, but frankly, coming from Brandon, I can’t help but hear an edge of imperiousness.

Molly leans in and gives me a kiss. “She’s okay, Mommy, really. The doctor says Naomi’s heart attack was mild, more like a warning.” Paige gives my hand a little tug and the three of them guide me and Sienna through a short maze of corridors so I can see for myself.

My mother, God bless her—and he or she obviously has—is lying on a narrow cot. She’s hooked up to an IV, and draped over her ears is a thin plastic blue oxygen tube that leads to a prong fastened around her nostrils and a series of saucerlike electrodes wired from her chest to a bleeping EKG machine. Naomi looks like a weird science experiment, albeit one with a good manicure. She lifts her head slightly and motions us toward her bedside—where she’s already holding court with Peter, Dr. Barasch, and Tiffany Glass.

“The Dalai Lama couldn’t make it.” Naomi smiles weakly, straining to speak above a whisper. “But all of my other loved ones did. They came like lemmings.”

“Not lemmings, dear,” Dr. Barasch says nervously. “Family.”

“Lemmings, family, everyone came. Except you, Tru. You are a little late,” Naomi says reproachfully.

“She’s here now,” says Peter, taking my hand and placing it in Naomi’s.

I’m not sure when Tiffany or Brandon became “family.” But it’s no time to quibble about bloodlines. Naomi looks exhausted. Her naturally high color is washed out and I’m not used to seeing my mother, who’s usually a whir of motion, lying quietly in a bed. But she’s lucid (not to mention complaining), and I can tell by everyone’s face and the tone in the room that she’s going to be all right. Still, I feel my eyes well up with tears.

“Mom, what happened? Are you sure you’re okay?” Peter steps behind me and anchors his hands on my shoulders.

“We were at the bodybuilding class,” Dr. Barasch says, and then, overcome with tears himself, he pauses to wipe his eyes.

“Your mother was bench pressing,” says Tiffany, “symmetrical bench pressing, right, Naomi? So one side of your body doesn’t look more developed than the other.”

“Yes, biceps,” Naomi murmurs, as she makes a fist with her left hand to show us her muscle.

“Naomi got a little chest pain, then it got bigger. She was having trouble catching her breath. I called 911,” says Dr. Barasch. “In the ambulance, they put that little nitroglycerin pill under her tongue.”

“She’s had aspirin and a beta blocker and the doctor says that according to her EKG, there was no significant heart damage,” Brandon reports as efficiently as any bright-eyed TV intern. Any moment, I expect him to grow a stethoscope.

Molly comes over and strokes Naomi’s brow. “That’s good news, Grandma.”

Naomi had been drifting off to sleep, but suddenly her eyes are wide open. “What did you call me?”

“ ‘Glam-ma,’ Molly called you ‘Glam-ma,’ ” says Brandon, barely missing a beat and making an impressive save. “Like Goldie Hawn. Only prettier.” He’s standing squarely between Paige and Molly and he reaches over to take each of their hands.

“Prettier than Goldie Hawn, I can live with that.” Naomi smiles, turning toward her granddaughters. “This Brandon, I like him.” Then, provocatively, she adds, “Which one of you two is going to be his girlfriend?”

That’s my mother—you can slow down her heart but you can’t stop her tongue. I suppose I should find it reassuring that even a brush with mortality can’t tame Naomi’s pot-stirring ways. But frankly, nothing at the moment feels reassuring.

A stern nurse comes in to check Naomi’s monitors and chases us out of the room. “This is a heart attack, people, not a party. I don’t know who in the blazes let all of you in, but you have to get out of here, now! We’re keeping Mrs. Finklestein overnight for observation, and if everything goes the way it’s supposed to, you can pick her up after morning rounds. That is, one of you can pick her up.” I tentatively raise my hand. “Come back tomorrow. You better plan on having your mother stay with you at least for several days.”

We say our goodbyes and troop out of the room. As she’s leaving, Tiffany, who was with Peter when he got the phone call and insisted on driving him to the hospital, tells Naomi she’ll visit her at our apartment later in the week. “I’m there all the time, anyway. I’ll bring all my samples and we’ll give you a complete makeover.”

As we make our way back down the corridor, the enormity of everything catches up with me and I feel the blood rushing to my head. I stop to lean against the wall and start sobbing uncontrollably. Sienna and Peter rush over to comfort me.

“Your mother’s a tough old bird, she’s going to be fine, sweetie,” says Sienna, rubbing my arm.

“Sienna’s right,” says Peter. My husband must be the last man in America to still carry a hankie. He pulls a linen square out of his inside coat pocket and reaches over to gently dab my swollen eyes. “Naomi’s indomitable. By next week she’ll be back in weight-lifting class, bench pressing seventy pounds.”

“I know, I just never imagined, I mean, it’s true, Naomi’s going to come out of this better than new. She’ll probably convince the cardiologist to get her health insurance to pay for a tummy tuck,” I say, trying to be brave.

After a few moments I pull myself together and turn around to look for Dr. Barasch. He loves Naomi. He was with her when this happened. I can only begin to imagine how horrible today’s been for him, too. I see him standing by himself off in a corner, and I go over and give him a hug.

“I’m sorry, it must have been so scary. How can I ever thank you?” I say wrapping my arms around him. “I’m just so grateful that you were with her.”

“Good job, Dr. Barasch,” Brandon says, perhaps the only eighth grader on the planet confident—or cocky—enough to plant a hearty slap on his headmaster’s back.

Dr. Barasch’s shoulders are hunched, and his normally imposing frame seems crumpled, as if his bones have collapsed, made weary by the weight of the world. He pulls away from my embrace, covers his face with his hands, and starts to cry.

“The Chinese say that if you save someone’s life you have to take care of them forever.” Dr. Barasch stuffs his hands in his suit jacket pockets and looks down at his shoes. “I can’t, I can’t do it, I watched my wife.” Then he stumbles down the corridor, and makes his way toward the brightly lit red EXIT sign. “Tell Naomi I’m sorry. I can’t go through it again.”