Uptown Girl Read online

  ‘Take this and drink all the water,’ he told her. Bina did as she was told without question.

  ‘What was that?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Oh, I just felt she needed a visit from cousin Valerie,’ Elliot told her. It was his code word for Valium, and Kate knew a blue one was ten milligrams.

  ‘She’ll sleep for a week,’ Kate said.

  ‘What a good time for that,’ Elliot told her.

  ‘Okay, Bina. Tell us what happened next.’

  ‘I just ran out,’ she said. ‘Well, ran as best I could in my heels. I went straight to your apartment, Katie, and when I couldn’t find you Max helped me. You can’t believe how hysterical I was.’ Kate silently disagreed with her on that. Bina blew her nose and continued. ‘Max was home. And he told me he thought you were out to dinner and where Elliot lived and I went straight there in the pouring rain and … Ohmigod!’

  ‘What! What is it, Bina?’ Kate asked. Had Bina had a bad reaction to the pill? ‘What is it?’

  Bina reached over to the coffee table and picked up the coaster for the water. It was Bunny’s wedding invitation. ‘Bunny? Bunny is getting married?’ she asked.

  ‘Is that a bad thing?’ Elliot wanted to know.

  Bina ignored him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Katie?’

  ‘I just found out,’ Kate told Bina. ‘I got the invitation yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, this is it! It proves I’m a complete loser,’ Bina wailed. ‘Bunny is going to be a bride and Jack is off to become the Marco Polo of singleness. Why don’t I just open my veins?’

  ‘Well, it’s very messy, for one thing,’ Brice told her. ‘And it’s almost impossible to get blood out of clothes. Very cold water and hydrogen peroxide …’

  Bina put her head under the pillow and sobbed into it. It wasn’t that she was competitive with Bunny, Kate knew. It was just that Bunny had been last to join their group, hadn’t had a date to the prom, had never been pinned. Bunny didn’t do well with men, picking a string of bad boys and scoundrels. One she had lived with had stolen everything – even her sofa and kitchen table – when she went away for the weekend. ‘How can Bunny be getting married? She just got dumped by that guy we saw in SoHo. She’s only just met Barney or whatever.’ Bina squinted at the card. ‘And how did they get invitations so quickly? They must be Xeroxed.’

  How had Bunny met someone? Kate wondered why it was so much more complicated for her than for Barbie and Bev and Bunny. When Kate found a warm man, he was often devoted to her but just a little … dull. Or second-rate. And when she found a man with a first-rate mind and an engrossing life work, a man like Michael, he was lacking in emotional heat. Of course, she reflected, Bina’s father, a successful chiropractor, had doted on her. So, in spite of her current troubles, it seemed only natural that she would eventually find a successful accountant who doted on her. Kate sighed. It didn’t bode well for her. ‘Bina, everything is going to be okay,’ she promised.

  ‘Fine for you to say. You’ve got that doctor Michael to go with. What am I going to do? Go with my brother?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think Katie will want to bring Michael all the way across the Brooklyn Bridge,’ Elliot began. He turned to Kate and gave her a little smirk. ‘Unless you want to prepare him for his journey to Austin, you know, a little bit at a time.’

  Kate grimaced at him. Elliot turned back to Bina. ‘Anyway, if my calculations are correct – and they always are – we have here two women who need dates and two men with an insatiable curiosity for the customs and rituals of deepest, darkest Brooklyn.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Bina.

  ‘Not only that, but I have fabulous formal wear. I’ll definitely be better-dressed than the bride,’ Brice said.

  ‘In a dress?’ Bina asked, her voice about to rise into hysteria again.

  ‘No. A great tux. Versace. And I’ll do your makeup. You’ll look absofuckinglutely great and all your friends will want to know who the greatlooking guy you’re with is. You can tell them whatever you like. I once passed as the Prince of Norway.’ Brice turned to Elliot, gave him a loving but exasperated look and then stared at Kate. ‘I know what he looks like in a rented tux,’ Brice told her. ‘You’re on your own.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Elliot said. ‘No offense meant, I’m sure, and none taken. So it’s set. Brice and I will take you two girls, and we will all have a wonderful time.’

  ‘Maybe that’s a good idea,’ Bina said. ‘But right now I think I have to take a little nap.’

  Kate watched as Bina’s eyes fluttered shut. ‘You guys must be joking,’ she said.

  ‘No way.’

  11

  Two weeks later, Kate and Bina, both carrying presents, were waiting for Elliot and Brice three blocks south of St Veronica’s Roman Catholic Church, the place where Kate had made her first Communion in the dress Mrs Horowitz had sewed for her. Kate, all grown up now, was unaware that in the simple, calf-length, navy-blue dress that set off her fiery hair she looked stunning. She didn’t think of her Communion dress; she was just grateful that she didn’t have to wear one of the loopy bridesmaids’ gowns she was usually stuck in. They were always ugly and the polyester in them was always hot.

  Bina, at Kate’s side, was already hot and actually holding Kate’s hand. She felt really damp, looked totally Brooklyn and smelled like fear. She wore a pink dress that poofed at the skirt. Her dark-brown hair was done up in lacquered swirls of French twist curls as if she were going to their senior prom. Sal, the hairdresser who had ‘done’ both of them for the prom, had probably done Bina this time, too.

  ‘Is it going to be a High Mass?’ Kate asked, remembering her boredom at the standing, the kneeling, the standing again in the interminable services of her youth.

  ‘Mass-shmass,’ Bina said, dismissively. She craned her neck, looking for the guys. ‘I’m safe during the ceremony. It’s afterward that I’m dead meat.’

  ‘Bina, this isn’t a firing squad. These women are your friends,’ Kate tried to reassure her. ‘You’ve known them since we were little girls. They’re not going to judge you.’

  Bina turned back to stare at Kate. ‘Are you kidding?’ she asked in amazement. ‘That’s exactly what they’re going to do. That’s what friends are for.’

  ‘Hey, look: we got a great strategy,’ Kate reminded her. ‘Everyone may assume that Elliot is Michael, it will take a while to straighten that out and I’ll distract them with it. If Bev opens her big mouth and calls him Michael I can do half an hour of material to make it look like I’m embarrassed. And everyone knows Jack left. So showing up with Brice will just daze and confuse them, or maybe even blow them away; I mean, he is gorgeous.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Bina agreed dispiritedly, ‘but he’s no Jack.’ Jack had gone to Hong Kong without calling, and Bina had heard nothing from him since. Now, she looked up and down the street again. ‘Where are they?’ she demanded.

  ‘They’ll be here,’ Kate reassured her, looking down the all-too-familiar Woodbine Avenue. She felt slightly dizzy and she wasn’t sure if it was the heat or the location. Returning to Brooklyn and the old neighborhood gave her a kind of vertigo.

  ‘But, Kate, what if they don’t show up? I’ll have to go in alone. I can hide in the back during the ceremony, but if at the reception I have to go Jackless and ringless they’ll all want to know the reason he broke up with me and …’ She was working herself up into what Kate was starting to think of as Bina-less-Jack frenzy.

  ‘Bina, calm down,’ Kate said, with more than a bit of concern in her voice. For the past two weeks, Bina had been spending every day and almost every night alternating between Max’s and Kate’s. After a few days Kate had remonstrated, but Bina refused to cross the bridge. ‘I can’t go home. Everything reminds me of him’ was Bina’s first excuse. Kate had been happy, initially, to provide Bina with a safe haven but after four days she’d insisted that Bina call her father and mother herself and break the news. Dr Horowitz had threatened to fly to Hong Kong right there and then to ‘k
nock that pisher’s block off’ but Bina had implored her father to stay in Brooklyn and had thereby kept Jack’s block safe. Mrs Horowitz, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, remained convinced that her daughter was engaged. Denial was a great temporary convenience at the time.

  ‘I can’t take this,’ Bina said. ‘I’m melting from nervous perspiration. I’ll never wear this dress again.’ Kate thought that was probably a good thing. Just then, a black Lincoln town car pulled up and Elliot and Brice emerged.

  ‘You’re late,’ Kate said in place of a greeting, but she was happy to see the two of them.

  ‘Well, hello to you, too.’ Elliot smiled, his usual cheerfulness intact. ‘Who’s late?’ He looked at his watch. ‘You said the ceremony was three o’clock. It’s two fifty-seven.’

  Kate sighed. ‘Being on time is late in a situation like this.’

  ‘Haven’t they heard of fashionably late?’ Brice asked.

  ‘This is Brooklyn,’ Kate reminded him. But as she looked both men over she couldn’t be angry.

  ‘Wow,’ Bina said. ‘I love your outfits.’

  Kate smiled. ‘You two do clean up well.’

  ‘Of course,’ Brice said. ‘We’re gay.’ With that he grabbed Bina’s arm. ‘But not for this afternoon.’ He lowered his voice to a baritone. ‘This afternoon I’m devoted to you. Can’t keep my hands off you.’ Bina actually smiled.

  ‘Shall we, honey?’ Brice asked. Bina nodded. ‘Hmm. Who did your hair?’ Kate heard him ask Bina, that ‘anything-she-can-do-I-can-do-better’ tone in his voice.

  ‘Sal Anthony. He has a little shop at the corner of Court and …’

  ‘Burn it down,’ Brice ordered. ‘And we’ll see if we can’t soften it up a bit.’

  ‘He’s so bossy,’ Kate said softly to Elliot.

  ‘Yeah. Isn’t it great?’ Elliot asked. They got to St Veronica’s and walked up the formidable steps to the entrance of the church. Once inside, Kate indicated the way to the ladies’ room downstairs.

  ‘Follow me, princess,’ Brice told Bina and led her off to the basement.

  Coming in at the very last minute wasn’t a bad strategy, Kate thought. There was no time to meet and greet – and to be interrogated. Kate and Elliot left the foyer and took a place in the next-to-last pew. Soon Brice and Bina joined them. They tried to be unobtrusive, but by now everyone was waiting for the ceremony to begin and, with their entrance, heads turned. Then, to Kate’s relief, in only a moment the organ began to play the wedding march.

  Bunny, a meringue of tulle and taffeta, made her way down the aisle on her father’s arm. There was the usual ‘oooh’ from the guests. Oddly, Kate felt tears well up in her eyes. She’d never been very close to Bunny – she couldn’t honestly say she even liked her. But the tears were there nevertheless. She wondered if she was simply being empathetic for Bina, who must be finding this almost unbearable, but it felt far deeper than that.

  Kate blinked away the moistness, then took a chance and looked around at the other guests. She wondered if they had as many doubts and fears as she did about picking a mate for life. Certainly, Bina and her other friends had talked of little else for many of the years they were in school together. Boys, and then young men, who was going steady, who was breaking up, marriages and honeymoons were the fodder of many – maybe most – conversations. Yet, despite all the talking and all the romantic notions, hopes and dreams, Kate didn’t see intelligent or realistic choices being made, and she also didn’t see any marriages or relationships she envied.

  She wondered sometimes if her view was darkened by her early home life or her professional training. But the truth was that she remembered very little of her parents’ marriage and didn’t believe that it was bad or violent. Her father’s serious drinking had started after her mother’s death. So why was she so frightened? Was everyone frightened and they just hid it better? Specializing in child psychology, she knew when the seeds of relationship problems to come were planted but her training with and for children certainly hadn’t focused on dysfunctional marriages – or how to avoid them.

  So what was Bunny doing now? She’d just met this guy. Was she simply on the rebound from whoever had dumped her? Or was she smitten, deep in that sex haze of infatuation that never seemed to last longer than several months? How could she be taking these steps so quickly down the aisle beside her father? Though her Catholicism had lapsed, Kate was still idealistic enough to believe marriage should be forever.

  Here, standing in St Veronica’s watching Bunny meet the groom at the altar, she felt an uncomfortable combination of jealousy and fear: jealousy because she doubted she could give herself to Michael or any man without hesitation, and fear because she wanted to and might lose her opportunity to do it. Though she had made up with Michael, his lack of compassion for Bina had made her look at him in a new way. Would he always dwell on his own issues and concerns and be insensitive to others? He had seemed sincere in his apology, but Kate felt it was important to watch him. Above all, she needed a partner with empathy for others.

  Kate sighed. Elliot, beside her, gave her a smile, then craned to see ahead. Maybe it was Manhattan. Here in Brooklyn love seemed so much easier, Kate reflected. Young women met young men. They dated for a while and either broke up or made a commitment to make a commitment. Women pressed for marriage and the men, albeit sometimes reluctantly, seemed eventually to fall into line. It was expected. And families, ever present in the background, pushed for it.

  There were, of course, the exceptions like Jack, but despite this glitch, Kate felt almost certain that he could get over the hump, have some fun in Hong Kong and return to Bina, the woman he loved. But for how long, if they married, would they love each other? Looking at the older couples in the pews beside and ahead of her, Kate saw bored, middle-aged men and stoic or overly sentimental women. Many held handkerchiefs or tissues to their eyes. When Kate saw an older woman cry at a wedding – and she’d been to a lot of weddings – she often thought they cried because unconsciously they remembered their own hopes and the subsequent disappointment that marriage had brought them.

  Kate stood there, between her two best friends, and between two worlds, and realized that she was not only envious but also very, very sad. Even if Michael wound up being the right man for her, and it was possible, she simply couldn’t imagine wearing the gown, she certainly wouldn’t be in a church, her father couldn’t walk her down any aisle, and it seemed impossible she’d feel the joy that she’d glimpsed on Bunny’s veiled face. Worst of all, she’d probably want Elliot as her matron of honor, which would cause all kinds of difficulties and hurt feelings among her old crowd.

  Kate had to smile at the thought. Of course, Elliot would love it. She looked over in his direction and saw that, behind Bina, on the cushion of the pew, Elliot and Brice were discreetly holding hands. It was so sweet that Kate, without a Kleenex, again felt tears rise to her eyes and film them over. She was so happy for Elliot, who had searched and searched for a wonderful partner. But it sometimes made her feel more lonely than she had felt in years.

  ‘Having fun?’ Elliot asked in a whisper as he nudged her out of her reverie.

  ‘Just thinking,’ Kate murmured.

  ‘Bad idea at any time,’ Elliot advised. ‘Particularly bad during rituals.’ He flashed Kate another quick smile. ‘And did I tell you, you look extremely fetching in that dress?’

  Kate smiled but put a finger over her curved lips. Religion was serious in Brooklyn. The ceremony was beginning. And so was the trouble.

  Even though she was not Catholic, and was standing yards and yards from the altar, the moment the priest began to speak Bina began to sob. At first they were silent, shoulder-shaking sobs. For a few moments Kate didn’t notice them. But by the time Bunny and her groom had knelt and stood up and knelt again, Bina was audible halfway up the nave. Kate and Elliot eyed one another, then leaned forward and gave Brice a look. He already had one arm around Bina’s shoulder and shrugged in the tradi
tional what-else-can-I-do gesture.

  Kate looked toward the altar, desperate to think of options. A little crying at a wedding was acceptable, even mandatory, but this was getting out of hand. For no reason, her eyes focused on the incense-filled censer, hanging from the hands of an altar boy. Really handy-looking. For a moment Kate wished she could get a hold of it and give a swing at Bina’s head. Not, of course, to knock her out, but merely to knock some sense into it. It was going to be hard enough to get through the reception without Bina blowing her cover now by making a spectacle of herself.

  Already a few heads had turned toward them. Kate smiled and nodded, wiping at her own eye, as if she was acknowledging everyone’s tears of joy. ‘So beautiful,’ she mouthed to someone’s mother. Brice, in a moment of brilliance, turned Bina to him and planted a kiss on her lips. For a few seconds Bina’s total surprise silenced her. Elliot, putting his arm around her neck from the other side, discreetly covered her mouth with his hand. Bina took the warning and they all watched as the couple stood up, knelt yet again, then stood up and faced one another.

  ‘Is this a wedding or an aerobics class?’ Elliot asked. Kate would almost have laughed out loud but when the couple got to ‘love, honor and cherish’, Bina cut loose, crying louder than the baby somewhere up front.

  Before everything got completely out of control, Brice reached over, turned back Elliot’s cuff and removed a straight pin. Then, without a moment of hesitation, he stuck it into Bina’s upper arm.

  Kate, shocked, was not as shocked as Bina, who yipped, shut up and looked from Elliot on one side to Brice on the other. Brice just leaned forward, whispered in her ear and, magically, the crying stopped.

  At last the service was over, the bride and groom kissed, and Brice and Elliot had to let go of each other’s entwined hands to hold Bina’s down so she didn’t cover her face and begin to sob again. ‘Hey, look,’ Kate said, taking Bina by the shoulders because she felt that Bina needed some more tough love or she wouldn’t be able to get through the next phase of the event. ‘Pull yourself together. This isn’t the worst part,’ she told Bina. ‘The worst part is about to begin.’