Seventeen

Assault and Flattery

EARLY THE NEXT EVENING my apartment looks like the backstage of a tent at Bryant Park during Fashion Week. The girls are getting dressed for Heather’s party, I’m trying to pack for Hawaii, and Naomi’s looking for something to wear to the Miss Subways reunion. Clothes are strewn everywhere. I navigate around a fuchsia organza blouse and a one-shouldered black-and-white ball gown that are lying on the living room floor, but when I sink down on the couch I accidentally crush a pair of chartreuse chiffon harem pants.

“I’m not so sure anyone would actually want to wear these,” I say, fingering the billowy fabric. “But they feel good.”

Naomi’s standing in front of the full-length mirror in the hallway closet, the one that’s slimming. She tugs at the bust-line of a sparkly red Bob Mackie dress that looks like it just came off of a sixty-day tour with Dolly Parton. “I know, this looks ridiculous,” she says, pulling a black cashmere cardigan on over the getup. “But the reunion’s next week and I still haven’t got a thing to wear!”

“Don’t worry, Grandma, we’ll help you tomorrow,” Molly says as she and Paige come over to kiss us goodnight. They look adorable in miniskirts and patterned tights—but then again, they’d look adorable in gunnysacks.

“Laurie’s mother is driving you home, right?” I say, making them each open their shiny metallic purses to check for cellphones and emergency cab fare.

“Yes, Mom, everything’s good,” Paige says, swinging her bag’s silvery chain. “Although it is a little disturbing to see our mother parading around the apartment in a hot pink bikini.”

“It’s not hot pink, it’s carnation. And it’s not a bikini, it’s a two-piece suit,” I say, pulling the waistband of the bottom up toward my belly button. “And if I do say so myself, it doesn’t look half bad.”

“It looks good, Mom. Seriously,” Molly says, giving me a little kiss as she heads out to the party.

“Have fun,” I say. And as the girls slam the door I add under my breath, “But not too much fun.”

“It does look good sweetheart, although you could wear something a little sexier,” Naomi says, as she heads to the back of the apartment. “Maybe the dress of my dreams is waiting for me in your bedroom closet. Mind if I take a look?”

I walk over to the mirror and study my reflection. I remember the absolute horror of shopping for swimwear in my twenties. Either the underwire in the built-in bras poked into my breasts, or worse, the suit had no support at all. And then there was the inevitable moment when I pinched the flesh at my waist and invoked the Menses Defense—sure that I was either getting my period, having my period, or getting over my period. Now, at an age when you’d think I’d be even more critical of my body, I’m actually more content. If I don’t exactly grin at the way I look in the suit, I don’t grimace either.

I pick up the rotting apple core that Paige forgot to throw away last night and my shoes and head for the bedroom to check on Naomi when, naturally, the phone rings. As I grab for the receiver and see Peter’s cellphone on the caller ID my favorite nude-colored suede sling-backs fall to the floor and the apple core spins out of the napkin and messily lands on top of them.

“Damn, my shoes, hi, hi,” I say, cradling the phone to my ear, holding it—and Peter—as close as I can.

“Tr … oooooh …” I hear through the staticky connection.

“Peter, sweetheart, is that really you?”

“Ha … ha …” he says, which I’m guessing means “Hawaii,” and not that this whole separation is one big joke. And then, just like that, the line clicks dead.

I’m still standing in the middle of the room fondling the phone when Naomi comes in carrying an armload of magazines.

“Was that Peter?” She smiles, bending down to pick up my apple-splattered shoes. Then she goes into the kitchen and comes back with a paper towel to absorb the stain—a far cry from the Naomi I knew who was so self-absorbed that just a few months ago she spilled coffee on the living room carpet and didn’t even notice.

“Thanks,” I say, finally letting go of the phone and putting the receiver back in the cradle. I look down at my bathing suit and laugh. “He called. That must be good, right? Now if only I could figure out what else I’m going to pack.”

“Already done,” Naomi says, leading me toward the bedroom and showing me my suitcase, which is sitting by the foot of the bed. She hands me the magazines. “I figure a novel, you’ll be so busy with Peter, you wouldn’t have time to finish. These are to read on the plane.”

“Mom, thank you, you’ve thought of everything,” I say, impressed that Naomi’s even tied a gold ribbon around the bag’s handle so I’ll be able to pick my luggage out from the sea of identical black canvas suitcases on the baggage carousel. The twenty pairs of shoes I insist on taking along never fit into a carry-on.

“There is one more thing,” Naomi begins, when the phone rings again.

I listen to the voice at the other end and grab for my coat. “Tell me later. The twins are at the police station. We have to get down there right away.”

“POLICE STATION” AND “the twins” are words I never ever in my life expected to hear together in the same sentence. Not to mention “fight,” “they started it,” or “the victim wants to press charges.”

“It’s going to be all right, isn’t it? I mean, it’s better than their being in the hospital?”

“At least they’re not hurt,” my mother agrees, although we’re both grasping at straws. I look at Naomi and see that she’s still wearing the sparkly red Bob Mackie dress. Worse, I realize I have nothing on underneath my coat except my bathing suit—in my race to rescue the Paige and Molly, I was in too much of a hurry to get dressed. I wrap my arms around my chest, protectively. If only the fashion police were my biggest worry.

A few minutes later Naomi and I arrive at the local precinct. Like synchronized swimmers storing up oxygen for an important meet, we each take a deep breath. Then we step into the city-block-sized station to find out how much trouble the girls have gotten themselves into.

My eyes dart around the room trying to find them. The precinct’s walls are made out of cinder block painted a grimy gray-green, the fluorescent lighting is enough to make anyone look like a perp, and a large bold-faced clock ticks away precious minutes. Officers in blue uniforms and cuffed suspects wearing everything from ripped T-shirts to Brioni sports jackets file past us, but still no Paige or Molly—where the heck can they be?

Naomi points toward a metal desk where a police officer is sitting in front of an old-fashioned typewriter—the same model IBM Selectric that I used in college to write my papers on Botticelli. There’s a pushpin corkboard on the wall next to him but instead of being decorated with pictures of loved ones, it’s crowded with mug shots of New York’s most wanted criminals.

“Damn!” the officer exclaims as he balls up one set of carbon-paper documents after another and throws them onto the floor in a pile next to his scuffed shoes. “Can you believe the department just spent almost a million dollars on these crappy machines? The NYPD can read license plates from the air but it can’t figure out a more modern way to fill out duplicate forms.” He takes a swig of coffee from a limp paper cup. “What can I do for you folks? Assault, robbery, arson?”

Which would be the lesser of the evils? I want to blurt. But I know this isn’t Deal or No Deal. I don’t get to pick.

“My grandchildren, Molly and Paige Newman,” Naomi says. “We’re trying to find them.”

“Missing pers—oh, you mean the Twin Hitters?” the officer says, recognizing their names. He points toward the corridor and tells us to take the first left.

Paige is sitting on a wooden bench with her arms crossed defiantly. On the other end of the bench I spy Molly, wearing the—ironic, given the situation—Free People T-shirt that her sister had promised to lend her for Heather’s party. The party I gave the girls permission to go to. The party I’m guessing was the site of the melee. Slumped down in between the twins is Brandon Marsh, who’s holding an ice bag against the left side of his face.

Naomi goes over to Molly and I wrap my arm around Paige.

“Are you okay?” I ask, stroking Paige’s hair.

“Oh yeah, Mom, never been better. It’s Brandon who’s suffering,” Paige says blithely.

A moment ago I was filled with maternal concern. Now that I see the girls are all right, I let them have it. I release Paige’s shoulder and stand up so that I’m glowering over her.

“Stop smirking. What the hell is going on?” I demand. “The officer outside told us you were called the Twin Hitters. The Twin Hitters? You and Molly said you were going to a party at Heather’s and that her parents were chaperoning. How did the two of you end up here with … him?”

“We were at Heather’s,” Paige says righteously.

“And her parents were chaperoning. Although they spent the entire night upstairs,” Molly admits. She looks at Brandon and starts to giggle. “Whatever happens, Mom, it was worth it.”

“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. My father is going to be here any minute,” Brandon boasts, pulling back the ice bag to reveal his very purple-black eye. “You shitheads are going to be locked up for the rest of your lives.”

Heather’s parents and a gaggle of agitated teenage girls traipse into the room along with a woman wearing ironed Levi’s and a white button-down shirt. We’ve always tried to give the girls the best of everything—orthodontists, tennis coaches, the top pre-PSAT tutors—but frankly, I never expected to be adding “Denise Rodriguez, social worker” to the list. Everybody starts talking all at once and Denise Rodriguez tugs at a red-and-yellow lanyard around her neck, blowing long and hard on a silver whistle. “One at a time, people. Let’s hear it. You first,” she says, pointing at Paige.

“Well, Brandon is my lab partner and he liked me but then he took my sister out to lunch even though it didn’t really mean anything and we got into this huge competition,” Paige says without taking a breath.

“Brandon was dating me first!” a girl in a silvery minidress gripes.

“He liked me best!” complains another, who I recognize as the party giver, Heather.

“When I asked Brandon why he was dating more than one of us he told me that all the other girls were just hamburger and I was the steak,” a girl in a pink leopard headband reports.

I can’t help thinking that’s it been fifty years since we women burned our bras and declared ourselves equal and yet some boys still look at a girl and all they see is a piece of meat.

Paige steps up to the front of the room and shakes her fist in the air. “Girls were not put on this earth to be boy toys!” she shouts to a rally of cheers. Then she turns toward me. “Mom, that same night, right after you caught Brandon kissing Molly, he met me in the back of the school gym and he was kissing me. Except he told me he wasn’t dating anyone else anymore and I didn’t know he was double-dipping until the next day.”

“Yeah, and then we found out that he was making out with everybody else in this room,” Heather says petulantly, stomping her stiletto into the police station’s gummy linoleum floor.

“Well, not everyone.” Heather’s mother chuckles uncomfortably.

“I mean all of the young girls.” Heather sighs.

“Don’t sass your mother,” Denise Rodriguez says. “Mrs. Hemmings, where were you when the assault took place?”

“In my bathroom, giving myself a home peel. Big mistake,” she says, fingering her lightly blistered cheek. “But Heather said it would be uncool for us to come downstairs.”

“Uncool is exactly what parents of teenagers are supposed to be,” Denise Rodriguez says, furiously entering notes into her case file. “Okay, can somebody cut to the chase and tell me how all of this happened?”

Molly steps forward and raises her hand. “We decided to teach Brandon a lesson. When he got to the party we acted all sweet and told him to wait for us in the den. We pretended like it was going to be something sexy. Then we came in and surrounded the little creeper and locked our arms in a circle so he couldn’t leave. We told him we’d wised up, that we’d made a pact and nobody was going to date him anymore. Ever again.”

“We took back the power!” the girl in the silvery minidress cries.

“It was going really well until Brandon decided he wasn’t going to listen anymore and when we wouldn’t let him out of the circle, he started shoving himself against our bodies,” says Paige. “I mean he purposely shoved his shoulder against Kristin’s boob. That’s when I let him have it and punched him in the eye.”

“I socked him, too!” squeals Molly.

“Girls, we applaud your politics, just not your methods. Violence is never the answer. We’ll talk about this more at home,” I say firmly. “But Ms. Rodriguez, can you tell me how this whole thing ended up at the police station? Kids have fights every day. I don’t mean to make light of it, but I’m not sure how it got so blown out of proportion, either.”

“My father’s the D.A.,” the oh-so-full-of-himself Brandon says, jumping up from his chair. “I called the police commissioner’s office and told them to come over and arrest everybody. You can’t just hit someone from my family and expect to get away with it.”

As if on cue, a man with steely blue eyes and a strong jaw swaggers into the room.

I’d never connected him to Brandon before, though he’s immediately recognizable from his frequent pictures in the newspaper.

“Sit down!” Colin Marsh grunts to his son. Then he pastes a politician’s smile on his face and makes a point to shake each and every one of our hands. “Colin Marsh, Colin Marsh, Colin Marsh,” he repeats so we remember who he is when it’s time to pull the voting lever.

Heather’s mother fawns over Colin Marsh and says that she’d love to throw him a fund-raiser. I’d love to throw him a left hook—the guy’s an obsequious phony and while I’d never in a million years admit this to the girls, I get why it was satisfying to deck his son. As the rest of us start yammering again, the no-nonsense Denise Rodriguez pulls the D.A. aside to make her assessment. After a few minutes, two reassuring phrases rise up from across the room. “Think the parents can handle it” and “You don’t want this story in the papers, not in an election year.”

Colin Marsh stands behind his punk of a progeny and anchors his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Apologize, now, Brandon! I raised you to be a gentleman,” he says a little too grandly. As if he’s speaking to a phalanx of cameras instead of five adults and a bunch of teenage girls.

The twins and their friends giggle smugly. Until I tell them they have to apologize, too.

Denise Rodriguez issues a strong warning not to get into any more trouble. “We have your names. I know your faces. Next time you won’t get off so easily!” she says in a voice that lets everybody know she means business.

I’m bounding down the station house steps to get my family out of there as fast as I can when Colin Marsh, D.A., pushes in front of me and pulls me aside.

“If you ever breathe a word about what happened—about how a group of simpering high school girls made my son look like a sissy—I’ll bring you down, Mrs. Newman,” he hisses.

“What?” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. Be rational, Tru. Don’t panic. Colin Marsh is just being a bully. If the D.A.’s office knew about the Veronica Agency, you’d already be in jail.

“You heard me. There must be something,” Colin Marsh blusters. “Everybody has something in their past they don’t want people to know about. And believe me, if I make it my business to, I’ll find it. Do we understand each other?”

“Just keep your son away from my girls!” I say firmly. Proud that I’ve stood my ground. And then, before my voice cracks or Colin Marsh can see me shaking, I gather Paige and Molly in my arms and tell Naomi to hail a cab.

Heather’s chauffeur pulls up as we step out onto the curb. “Good work, girls!” Heather says, giving the twins a high five. She’s about to join her parents in the limo, when Heather turns toward Naomi and looks her up and down. “Love the outfit, Mrs. F!”

“Thanks,” Naomi hoots, fingering her sparkly red dress. “You should see what my daughter’s wearing.”

AS SOON AS we get back home I head toward the bedroom. I want to splash some water on my face. Change out of this ridiculous bathing suit. Call Bill and tell him about Colin Marsh’s ominous threat.

Hurriedly, I unbutton my coat and throw it on the sofa. As I race past Molly, she breaks into a giggle. “O-M-G, Mom. Don’t tell me you went out without your sash?”

I swivel around and plant my hands on my hips. “I assume you mean the one that says, ‘Mother of the Twin Hitters’? Never again, do you hear me, ladies?” I say angrily. At least I try to say it angrily. Paige and Molly start giggling. Naomi lets out a howl. And in a burst of relief, I start laughing, too.

I put on some jeans and a sweater and we sit down around the kitchen table. While I was dressing the girls made tuna fish sandwiches, and Naomi serves up steaming mugs of hot chocolate. I don’t ever remember my mother making her “assimilated chicken soup” when I was a kid, but ever since that pre-dawn heart-to-heart we had about Peter and Nana and how resilience can get you through just about anything, it’s become Naomi’s signature drink.

“I knew from the beginning that Brandon was a little turd,” Naomi says, wagging her finger. “You know, girls, men—even boys—tell you all you need to know about themselves in the first hour. It’s just that we women have to listen.”

“What do you mean?” asks Molly.

“I mean that Brandon told you he was dating both of you and you even knew he went out with other girls. What, did he have to wear a sign on his forehead?”

“But Grandma, when Brandon took both of our hands that day in the hospital you asked which one of us was going to win him,” Molly reminds her.

“That was the old Naomi; she didn’t always give good advice. But this is the new Grandma.” My mother laughs. “You should pay attention to her, she’s very very smart.”

“When I met Daddy …”

“Oh no,” Paige groans.

“Make fun all you want, but when I met Daddy I knew he would be good to me,” I say quickly and loudly, so despite the fact that they’re screeching like six-year-olds I know they hear me as they run to their room.

“Peter has been good to you. You’ve been good to each other. For each other. Every marriage has its bumps,” says Naomi. “You’ll go to Hawaii tomorrow, you’ll straighten everything out. Just one more thing,” my mother adds, grinning mischievously and handing me an envelope. “I told you we need a plan. When you get to Hawaii you call this number. I think it’ll be a big, big help.”

As soon as Naomi leaves, I pull out my cellphone to call Bill. “Colin Marsh doesn’t have a thing on us, I promise,” he reassures me. “He was just making an idle threat. You’re the one who has something over him. Go to Hawaii, straighten out things with your husband. Stop worrying, okay?”

“Okay,” I say, as Bill wishes me luck and clicks off the phone. I check my luggage to make sure my name tags are legible. I take Naomi’s envelope and stick it in my passport, then I carefully put my passport inside the pocket of my handbag. I know you don’t need a passport to go to Hawaii—but at the moment I feel like you can’t be too careful. About anything.