Loose Screws Read online

  “Did I say that?” The microwave beeps at me; I take out the ravioli, sink back into the chair at the table with a disgusted sigh, although I’m not sure what I’m disgusted at. Or with. Or about. My own ambivalence, maybe. Or that Greg’s actions have put me into this untenable position. “Of course I’m not about to crawl back to him.” I look up, fighting the tears prickling my eyelids. “He humiliated me. If, by some chance, he wants me back, he’d have some major groveling to do. But…”

  “Oh, Lord. Here we go.” Terrie lets out an annoyed sigh. Shelby shushes her.

  “But what, honey?”

  “You weren’t there,” I say. “You didn’t see Phyllis’s face when she told me that I was the best thing that ever happened to Greg. That I would have been more of an asset to him than he could possibly have understood. That…” I take a deep breath, setting up the punch line. “That women are always the ones who have to fix things, that pride is a commodity we can’t afford.”

  “That’s true,” I hear Shelby whisper beside me, although Terrie lets out an outraged, “Oh, give me a freaking break.” Her eyes are flashing now, boy, as she leans across the table and buries herself in my gaze.

  “Girl, men have been able to get away with the crap they have for thousands of years because women like Phyllis Munson feel they have some sort of duty to perpetuate that myth. God—it makes me so mad, I could spit.” At this, she gets up, grabs her handbag from the buffet along one wall, rummaging inside it without thinking for the cigarettes that aren’t there, since she quit smoking a year ago. So she slams the bag back down onto the buffet and turns back to me, one hand parked on her hip.

  “What that man did to you isn’t forgivable. Or fixable. I mean, come on—he calls you up and apologizes on the phone?”

  Shelby actually laughs. Terrie and I both turn to her. “Well, of course he did,” she says. “He’s a man.”

  “No kind of man I’d want hanging around me, that’s for damn sure. Besides, none of us is ever gonna break these chains of male domination and oppression if we don’t change the way we think about who’s gotta do what—”

  “Oh, get off your high horse, Terrie,” Shelby says, a neat little crease between her brows. “Women are the peacemakers, honey. We always have been. That’s a sociological, not to mention biological, fact.”

  “And I suppose you think that means we have to kowtow to them on every single issue?”

  “No, of course not. But what good does it do for us to back them into a corner, either?”

  “Making them accountable isn’t backing them into a corner.”

  Shelby goes very still, then says quietly, “Says the woman who’s had two marriages crumble out from under her.”

  Uh-oh.

  I stand up, my hands raised. “Hey, guys? This is supposed to be all about me, you know—”

  “Shut up, Ginger,” they both say, then Terrie says to Shelby, “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  Twin dots of color stain my cousin’s cheeks, but I can tell she’s not going to back down. “That I’ve watched you with your boyfriends, your husbands, how every relationship you’ve ever had has degenerated into a mental wrestling match. How your obsession with never letting a man…control you, or whatever it is you’re so afraid a man’s going to do to you, has always been more important to you than the relationship itself. No wonder you can’t keep a man, Terrie—you castrate every male who comes close.”

  Terrie actually flinches, as if she’s been slapped. A second later, though, she comes back with, “You are so full of it.”

  “Am I?” is Shelby’s calm reply. “Then how come I’m the only one in the room who knows who she’s going to bed with tonight?”

  Holy jeez.

  Terrie glares at my cousin for several seconds, then snatches her purse off the chair and heads for the door, throwing “If you need to talk, Ginge, call me” over her shoulder before she yanks open the front door, slams it shut behind her.

  For a full minute after her exit, the room reverberates with her anger. I’m not exactly thrilled to still be there, either, to tell you the truth, but I can’t quite figure out what to do. Let alone what to say.

  Shelby gets up, starts clearing the table, her mouth turned way down at the corners. “I guess things got a little out of hand.”

  I lick my lips, get to my feet to help her clean. “I thought the point of these was to get mad at other people. Not each other.”

  On a sigh, Shelby carts stuff into the kitchen. “I know. But honestly, Ginge…Terrie’s attitude toward men sucks. And don’t give me that face, you know I’m right.”

  I grunt.

  Shelby turns on the water, starts to rinse off our few dishes prior to sticking them into the dishwasher. This kitchen does not look like a typical prewar Manhattan kitchen. This kitchen, with its granite countertops and aluminum-faced appliances, looks positively futuristic. I half expect Rosie, the robot from The Jetsons, to come scooting in at any moment.

  I cross my arms, lean back against the countertop. “She’s entitled to her opinion, honey.”

  “And if that opinion made her happy,” Shelby replies, “I wouldn’t say a word.” She slams shut the dishwasher, looks at me. “But she’s not. She wants the world to mold to her view of the way things should be, and since that’s not going to happen, she’s turning more bitter and cynical by the day.”

  I humph. “Terrie was born cynical.”

  A bit of a smile flits across Shelby’s mouth. “But not bitter.” Then she reaches over, grabs my hand. “The thing is, Greg’s mother is right. We are the ones who have to fix things. Forgiveness doesn’t make us weak, no matter what Terrie thinks. If anything, it only proves we’re the stronger sex.” Then the smile broadens. “Besides, if men were left to their own devices, we’d all be extinct by now.” She reaches up, brushes my hair back from my face. “You just have to ask yourself if you’d be happier with Greg, or without him.”

  I knuckle the space between my brows, then sigh. “Well, I sure don’t like the way I’m feeling right now. As if somebody ripped off a major appendage.”

  “Then maybe you should work with that.”

  “So you’re saying you think I should give Greg a second chance, should the opportunity present itself?”

  “I’m saying, just because a man is clueless, that doesn’t mean he’s hopeless. Here—” She hands me the ravioli container, now sparkling clean. “Don’t forget this.”

  I take it from her, managing a wan smile.

  The instant I step outside, the heat crushes me like groupies a rock star. Taking the smallest breaths possible so my lungs don’t incinerate, I troop toward 96th Street and the crosstown bus. After that little scene in Shelby’s apartment, I’m more confused than ever. But I refuse to believe my world is falling apart, despite the evidence to the contrary.

  Who am I kidding? That was totally weird. Not to mention downright scary. Oh, sure, we’ve had about a million squabbles over the years, but nothing like that. And you know what? It ticks me off, in a way. I’m supposed to be able to count on Terrie and Shelby to restore my equilibrium when things get a little strange, as they count on me. They’re supposed to help me see things more clearly, not scramble my brains.

  Well, forget it. Just forget it. I simply cannot wrap my head around this, not today. I am too hot and enmeshed in my own tribulations to care. Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll work up to trying to figure out how to smooth things over between them, but not now.

  Now, I just want to go home, maybe have a good cry, finish the book I’m reading, even though it’s a romance which means it ends happily ever after, which is just going to depress the life out of me. It’s hotter than hell in my apartment, but I can strip to my panties if I want to, which, at the moment, is eminently appealing.

  I turn east on 96th Street, trek up the hill toward Broadway. A hot breeze off the river slaps me in the back like a nasty little kid pushing me in line. I pass several people lurching downhill toward Riversid
e Park: a young couple with a toddler in a stroller, a pair of joggers, a middle-aged man with a Russell terrier. Well-dressed, affluent, secure. A far cry from the people who used to inhabit most of these buildings when I was a kid, until gentrification in the early eighties purged the legion of seedy SRO—single room occupancy—hotels on the Upper West Side of their decidedly unaffluent inhabitants.

  As I pass the recently sandblasted buildings with their newly installed glass doors, their fatherly doormen, I remember my parents’ horror as, one by one, the helpless, hopeless occupants of these buildings were simply turned out onto the streets like thousands of roaches after extermination. Joining the already burgeoning ranks of the homeless, many of them were left with no recourse but to panhandle from the very people who now lived in what had once been their homes.

  Over the past decade, the homeless aren’t in as much evidence as they were. I’m not sure where most of them went, since God knows there are even less places in Manhattan for the poor to live than there ever were. Even apartments in so-called “dangerous” neighborhoods now command rents far out of the reach of the middle class, let alone those struggling by on poverty level wages. But the dedicated homeless are still around, a life-form unto themselves, with their encrusted, shredded clothing and shopping carts and bags piled with whatever they can glean from garbage cans and Dumpsters, hauling their meager possessions about with them like a turtle its shell.

  And yes, they make me uncomfortable, as they do most New Yorkers fortunate enough to not count themselves among their number, mainly because I’m not sure how to react to their plight. I’m as guilty as anyone of ignoring them, of looking the other way, as if, if I don’t see them, their problem isn’t real. At least, not real to me.

  I know the vast majority of these poeple are not responsible for their present condition. Who the hell would choose to live on the street, after all? Many are mentally ill, incapable of achieving any success in a city in which that concept is measured in terms most of them couldn’t even begin to comprehend, let alone aspire to. Others have been beaten down so often, and so far, over so many years, that I doubt they have the slightest notion of how to even begin digging themselves out. So I do feel compassion. Just not enough to override my inertia. Or my guilt.

  I used to think winter was the worst time to be without someplace to go. The wind that whips crosstown between the rivers can be brutal, icing a person’s veins instantly. But today, as heat pulses off the cement, as the humidity threatens to suffocate me, I’m not sure summer is much better.

  And I suppose I’m thinking about all this because, as I’m standing under the Plexiglas shelter at 96th and Broadway, in a clump of six or seven other people waiting for the bus, one of these men approaches us. I watch as, as discreetly as possible, everyone else casually removes themselves from his path, turning from him, deep in their cell phone conversations, their newspaper articles, their own clean, neat lives.

  The urge to follow their lead is so strong I nearly scream with it, even as I’m disgusted at my own reaction. But the man reeks, making it nearly impossible for me not to recoil. As I have most of my life, I wear my shoulder bag with the strap angling my chest to deter would-be purse-snatchers; however, my hand instinctively clutches the strap, hugging the bag to me.

  Mine, the gesture says, and I am sorry for it.

  I am now the only person still under the shelter, although dozens of people swarm the intersection like lethargic ants. The other bus waiters, undoubtedly relieved that I’ve been singled out and they can breathe more easily—literally—hug the curb and storefronts a few feet away, still close enough to easily catch the bus when it comes.

  The man creeps closer, forcing me to look at him. He is filthy and unshaven, his posture stooped. Nearly black toes peer out from rips in athletic shoes only a shade lighter, a good two sizes too large. I cannot tell his age, but behind his moth-eaten beard, I can see how thin he is.

  He holds out his hand. It is shaking. From the heat, hunger, the DT’s…? I have no way of knowing. I do, however, feel his embarrassment.

  Nedra would have emptied her wallet into that hand, I know that, without a moment’s hesitation. But then, my mother’s crazy.

  I glance away, my mouth dry, then back.

  “Are you hungry?” I ask, the words scraping my throat. I notice a well-dressed Asian woman a few feet away turn slightly in our direction. But I only half see her frown, her head shake, because my gaze is hooked in the gray one in front of me, buried under folds of eyelids. Hope blooms in those eyes, along with a smile. He nods.

  The rational part of me thinks, I should take him to a cheap restaurant, feed him myself. If I just give him money, what will he spend it on?

  And then I think, who am I to judge?

  But before I can make up my mind, a cop comes along and hustles the protesting man away, at the same time my bus squeals up to the stop. I board, behind the disapproving Asian lady, who asks me, as we take seats across the aisle from each other, if I was afraid. I say no.

  The bus is air-conditioned and nearly empty, and I feel some of the tension that’s wormed its way into my head over the past few days slink away. We pull away from the stop; outside the man shuffles off toward Amsterdam Avenue, and my insides cramp.

  As unsettled as I feel, as unhappy as I am, I still have a job. I still have a home. I still have my friends and my shoe collection and even, I have to acknowledge, my family. Life might be a little bizarre at the moment, but it’s far from horrible.

  I pull out my novel, try to reimmerse myself in Gunther and Abigayle’s trials and tribulations, which has the unfortunate effect of only yanking my thoughts back to the men-and-women discussion of earlier. At the moment, I have to admit I’m inclined to side with Terrie on one thing: men are expendable. Their sperm might not be, but they are. I personally don’t need one to survive, or even flourish. I guess, if push came to shove, I could even go without sex. Nuns do. And it’s not as if I haven’t had my share of dry spells. And then there’s my mother, who’s gone without for, gee, how long is it now? Fifteen years?

  I mean, really—are they worth the aggravation? Because, much as I’m inclined to agree with Terrie’s theory about how things should be between men and women, I think Shelby’s the realist. Oh, maybe there are true equalitarian male-female relationships out there, but by and large, women do have to defer to the men in their lives in order to keep harmony, don’t they? At the moment, I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, it just is. And right now, I don’t have the energy to be a feminist. I’m having enough trouble dealing with being a woman.

  I give up on the book, stick it back in my purse. The Asian woman gets off at Central Park West; I settle in for the short ride through the Park, as I mentally settle in for the next phase of my life. Tomorrow, I go back to work. Tomorrow, I resume my normal, predictable, pre-Greg life. Selecting wall colors, I can handle. Sketching window treatments, I can handle. Charming the pants off a new client, I can handle. Granted, I’m not exactly eagerly anticipating the idea of facing Brice Fanning—my egomaniacal boss of the past seven years—and his inevitable snideties, but at least my work is one area of my life I can count on. I bring in a helluva lot of business, so we both know I’m not going to leave, and he’s not going to get rid of me. So. My plan is to reimmerse myself in my work, which, if not exactly exciting, is at least fulfilling and stimulating. Or at least it was.

  And will be again, I vow as another layer of tension shucks off. After all, what’s the point of missing what I’ve never had, right? What do I know about being married anyway? Let alone about living in Westchester? I’m not only used to being single, I think I’m pretty damn good at it.

  As of this moment (she says without the slightest shame whatsoever) I’m burrowing so far into my comfort zone, nothing on God’s earth is going to blast me out of it.

  Not even the memory of a brief, hopeful smile beneath discouraged eyes.

  Five

  So her
e I am the next morning, clicking smartly down 78th Street in my tobacco-colored linen sheath (short enough to be chic but not slutty) and my new Anne Klein pumps, my fave Hermes scarf billowing softly in the breeze, when I notice a small herd of police cars clogging the street about a half block away. Which would, coincidentally, place them just outside the building where the offices for Fanning Interiors, Ltd., reside. It is not, however, until I notice the trembling band of yellow police tape stretched from one side of the entrance, around the No Parking sign out by the curb, on around the Clean Up After Your Dog sign, then back to the other side of the steps that I get that awful, knotty feeling in the pit of the my stomach that this does not bode well for my immediate future.

  Still, I’m doing okay until I see the chalk outline on the sidewalk. Somebody screams—me, as it turns out—which garners the attention of at least three of the cops and one sanitation engineer across the street. Okay, so maybe my reaction is a bit over the top, but just because I live in Manhattan doesn’t mean I stumble across body outlines on anything resembling a regular basis. Besides, I haven’t had my latte yet. Not to mention that it’s barely eight-thirty and the temperature/humidity index is roughly equivalent to that on Mars. And I was already in a bad mood because my hair looks like Great-Aunt Teresa’s wig, which, trust me, is not a good thing.

  “Jesus, Ginger,” I hear a foot away, which makes me scream again. I pivot, my purse smacking into some gawker who is dumb enough to come up behind a hysterical woman, to see Nick Wojowodski frowning at me. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  His rough voice, the creases pinching his mouth, give me a pretty good idea he’s not having a wonderful morning, either. My shaking hand clamped around my still-lidded latte, I stare at him, but all I can think of is that outline. And the dark red stain I saw ooching out from it. I shudder, then say, “I work over there.”

  “Oh,” he says, a world of meaning crammed into two letters. By now, onlookers are beginning to clot around us, including a couple of the other designers, the receptionist, the lady who does most of our window treatments.