Robert Tanenbaum: Falsely Accused

You wind them up, Marlene thought, and they go off by themselves, and then they start to wind themselves up, which was the stage Lucy was moving into now. She had friends; sleep-overs were starting to become more important than having Oz books read at bedtime and being tucked in. As much as she hated to admit it, with Lucy away in first grade for the full school day, the hours were starting to hang. This thought reminded her of Ariadne, and she called out, but got no answer. She continued her chopping and stirring.

The girls helped her set the table, and then Janice Chen’s mother arrived to take her home. Mrs. Chen smiled a good deal and looked wide-eyed around the loft. People lived in factories in Guandong, where she came from, but not factories like this one. Some remarks were exchanged in primitive English about noodles-a point of cultural intersection-and then the Chens left.

Marlene went to check on her friend, and found her, as she had feared, curled around the toilet, snoring gently, tenderly cradling the empty bottle in her arms. Marlene removed the bottle and shook Stupenagel. No reaction. She cursed, and was considering stronger measures when the sound of the door opening and Lucy’s “Daddy’s home” announced the arrival of Karp.

She left the bathroom and went to greet her husband. The greeting was an unusually warm one, and Karp looked at her closely. “That was a hot kiss,” he said huskily. “Did I do something right for a change?”

“The other possibility is that I want something expensive from you,” said Marlene in the same tone. “Did you make lots of money today, Daddy? Millions?”

“Only thousands.” He sniffed the air. “Not Italian food again! ” The family joke. They sat, Karp admired the linguine and heaped praises upon its little manufacturer. Then he glanced around.

“She left?” he asked, his voice hopeful. The visit from Stupenagel, which was supposed to have included dinner, had been announced well in advance. Karp was not one of the journalist’s numerous fans.

“She’s blotto on our bathroom floor,” said Marlene.

“What’s blotto, Mommy?”

“Very sleepy from drinking too much wine, dear,” Marlene answered her daughter, and then to Karp, who had assumed a sour and unpleasant expression, said, “She’s had a rough time, Butch. She can get her load on in my house if she wants.”

“I don’t see why you put up with her, Marlene,” said Karp defensively. “She’s always dumping on you and then passing out.”

“Well, since I see her about once every couple of years, ‘always’ is not the best word. And as far as dumping goes, maybe I occasionally need dumping on.”

“From your friends?”

“Who else? I seem to recall someone else in this family who has friends who are not models of supportive behavior.”

“Who in this family, Mommy? Me?”

“No, not you, sweety. Your father.”

At the word “sweety” a Neapolitan mastiff the size and blackness of a classic R69 BMW twin-cylinder motorcycle padded into the dining room from its rug in the kitchen and stood panting redly at Marlene’s elbow. Lucy laughed.

“Sweety thought you meant him, Mommy.”

“Oh, Sweety, go back to bed. I’ll take you out later,” said Marlene. The dog gave her a heartrending look of disappointment, deposited a dollop of drool on the carpet, and departed.

Karp was glad of the interruption. Marlene’s dart had struck home; he did indeed have several close friends from his days at the D.A., men whose little ways re: support made Ariadne Stupenagel look in comparison like a golden retriever. For this reason he was content to drop the subject entirely, but Marlene seemed determined to press on in the woman’s defense.

“I realize,” she said, “that she’s a pain in the behind on occasion. She’s tricky and unreliable. On the other hand, I’m probably the only old friend she has left-yes, don’t say it, there’s a reason. But she makes me laugh; and if she pees me off … I don’t know, maybe it’s a message. Maybe I’m getting too self-satisfied. She described me as a bourgeois matron-”

“What bullshit! Why do you listen to that crap?”

Marlene raised an eyebrow. They had agreed to lower the level of foul language at the dinner table.

“May I be excused?” asked Lucy wisely.

“Sure, baby. Get ready for bed and you can watch some TV.”

The child took her dish to the kitchen to be pre-cleaned by the mastiff, and trotted off to her room.

“As I was saying,” continued Marlene, “there’s something in what she said.”

“Can I say ‘bullshit’ now?”

“If you choose.”

“Okay, bullshit! You know damn well she only says stuff like that because she’s jealous of you and wants to make you feel bad.”

“Her intentions are not germane, counselor,” replied Marlene coolly. “We’re talking about veracity here. In fact, it’s time for me to make some changes. Lucy’s in first grade and I’m getting antsy.”

Karp thought carefully before replying. The last eighteen months had been very nice for him indeed, and, he supposed, for Marlene and Lucy as well. A nice meal on the table every night; no hassles about leaving work and picking the kid up from school; an unexhausted and unharried mate. And while he knew that this would not be a permanent state, that Marlene was a bright and talented person and would not wish to live the sort of life her mother (or, more to the point, his mother) had lived, the inevitable change had, in his secret heart, been pushed into the indefinite future, almost like death itself. Justice and selfishness therefore waged brief war within him, justice winning but taking heavy casualties.

“What,” he ventured, “do you think you’d like to do?”

“I’m not sure. D.A.-ing is out for now. I don’t want to be tied down to regular hours and court dates. Aside from that …”

“I could talk to Orenstein. They’re always hiring associates.”

Marlene’s wide brow darkened. “No, you will not talk to Orenstein or anyone else. I am never again going to work in the same place you work.”

“Sorry. Another firm, maybe.”

Marlene shrugged. “ I don’t know. It doesn’t exactly make my heart leap. I think what’ll happen is, now that I’m ready for it, something will turn up. Uh-oh, I think our guest is conscious again.”

They could hear the sound of water running, and groaning, and cursing, quite imaginative obscenity in three languages. Five minutes later, Stupenagel appeared in the dining room, dressed, made up and coiffed, only a slight dampness on her neck and hair indicating the velocity with which she had brought herself up from nude stupor.

“Jesus, Marlene, why the hell did you let me drink so much? I got an appointment uptown in an hour. Hi, Butch. Yeah, I could eat something. In fact, I’m starving to death. What is this, linguine and clam sauce? Marlene, you’re such a little guinea! Nobody eats this stuff anymore …” With which, and similar, Stupenagel sat down at the table and ate a mound of cooling pasta approximately half the size of her own head, with the remains of the salad, three chunks of bread, and a pint of medium-good Soave.

In between bites she talked. “… Christ, you see I’m itching? Some kind of parasite I picked up, it’s probably turning my liver into sludge. I wanted to visit this massacre site, the Red Cross guy in Guat City told me about it, also the nuns. There was a teaching order near San Francisco Nenton, where the massacre happened, the Sisters of Perpetual Dysentery, no kidding, that’s what they called themselves. Great bunch-anyway, they took me under their wing, a nice Catholic girl like me, and they introduced me to-”

Marlene interrupted, “Stupe, you’re not Catholic.”