Icing On The Cake

Sally believes in karma, kismet, ouija boards and pretty much anything else that will give a girl a psychic edge. “Ted created bad karma by cheating on you. So then forgetting to rewrite his will was the unpleasant ripening of the karma he created.”

“How about being sued by my ex-husband’s widow? This sounds like an improvement in my karma?”

Sally makes a moue. “Darling, I never criticize. Yet I’ve never understood how you thought marrying Ted young validated your need for independence. It should have been a starter marriage. If such things had been in fashion in my day, it would have saved so much fuss and bother.”

“What bother? You said you never wanted to marry my father.”

She shrugs. “If I’d known we were only practicing being married, I might have for your sake, knowing the relationship wouldn’t outlive the sex. Of course, the sex was spectacular. But who knew at fifteen how rare that would turn out to be?”

“Too much information, Sally.”

She gives me a strange look. “I’ve never understood how I reared a prude.”

“Overcompensation.”

“So then, dearest, listen to the voice of wanton reason.” Sally drains her glass. “Take what Ted’s will gives you. If not for yourself, then do it for every wife who’s ever been dumped by her husband for the other woman.”

“So it’s as if I won the payback lottery?”

“But that’s perfect!” Sally sits forward. “I know just how to capitalize on this! I’ll call my friend in booking at Good Morning America. She’s always looking for human interest stories from the American heartland.”

“I’m only in New Jersey. Besides—”

“Oh, and I might be able to pull a favor and get you a small mention, as my little sister, in Vanity Fair. Well, maybe not, since you’re not celebrity status with anyone but me.” She blows me a kiss.

“Can we table this discussion for now?”

“Certainly.” Sally tosses a throw pillow, which probably cost more than my phone bill, onto the floor and curls her legs up on the sofa. “So, what else is new in your life? Is there a wonderful man in it?”

The only topic that interests Sally as much as money is men. I hesitate only a second. “Harrison is fine.”

“Oh, dear. Not the car salesman?”

“He owns two Lexus dealerships. That’s a little different.”

She shrugs. “Is he at least entertaining in bed?”

“It isn’t that kind of relationship.” I avoid her eye while trying not to think of my one-time sex act with Harrison. Micro-expressions are Sally’s specialty.

“If he doesn’t set your hair on fire, Liz, what’s the point?”

“You’re right. I’m going to stop seeing him, when I have time to explain.”

“Darling, no! Never, ever explain. That will only cause an argument, which will make you feel bad. Remember karma. Cut him cleanly from your life. No calls, no notes, no regret. Why do you have such difficulty with men? You never learned it from me.”

That’s an understatement. “Do you know what my earliest memory of you is?”

Sally lifts a hand of protest. “Don’t tell me if it’s the reason you’re in therapy.”

“I’ve never been in therapy.”

“Really? Good for you. Tell me.”

“Grandma and I were waiting for you in a cab outside Radio City Music Hall. You came out still in full makeup, wearing a skimpy Santa suit with spangled tights and silver shoes. Following you was this good-looking man in a cashmere topcoat.” Sally taught me to recognize quality materials when other girls were learning their shapes and colors. “He was shouting, ‘Why? Why?’ You simply closed the door and told the driver to take off.”

Sally blinks. “I don’t recall.”

“Why should you? It must have happened many times. But I remember because no man has ever looked at me with the yearning I saw on that man’s face as we pulled away from the curb.”

“My, aren’t we feeling sorry for ourselves today. At your age I was fielding three suitors at a time.” Sally leans forward, as if to impart a secret. “The only reason you’re not living the life you want is because you don’t demand it. What have I always said?”

“There will always be the next great opportunity, the next great adventure, and the next great man.” And this is why I come to Sally. She sees no roadblocks. Why should she? Life and love have always been willing to batter down her door.

We chat a little longer, wherein she gives me legal pointers about contesting a lawsuit and offers the services of her own attorney, which I promise to think about. Then she announces that she has an appointment and, really, I must come again when she has time to plan and we’ll do tea at the St. Regis.

Once on the sidewalk I am reminded that, while Sally is high on life and it on her, I live on the ground level where a sudden chilly rain can blow in and soak a person who didn’t think to bring an umbrella.

As I stand under the apartment awning shivering while I wait for the doorman to flag down a taxi, I wonder what sort of cosmic jokester thought it would be fun to dangle solvency before me with only one stipulation: that I deal with her.

Maybe it is the karma I deserve.

I should have been happy in my twenties and thirties being a striving career woman who worries about calories, checks her bank account obsessively because she can’t pass up purchasing that “have to have” wardrobe item, and fields her share of disappointments in love and life.

But I am Sally’s child, and whenever she swept into my middle-class upbringing, contrary to what she says, she had expectations.

Being destined to be somebody is a burden, especially if it’s someone else’s version of your life. A plan like that needs the raw material of some kind of talent. When I grew up, Madonna had not yet made an art of doing nothing well, spectacularly.

When I was sixteen Sally coaxed her gentleman friend of the moment into footing the bill for me to attend a Swiss finishing school, Surval Mont-Fleuri on Lake Geneva. For eighteen months I lived with seventy-five nice but lonely girls from six continents who only had in common their parents/guardians desire that they become the ne plus ultra of international hostesses. The course load was surprisingly heavy: forty-two hours a week of French and German, International Etiquette, Protocol, Savoir-Vivre, PR, Floral Art and Table Decoration, Enology, etc. My electives were cooking and pastry classes. And I fell in love, with baking, again.

When I graduated, and to show off my education, Sally arranged for me to prepare a seven-course meal for my benefactor and his select friends. At the end of the very successful evening, Sally said, “Just think what she’ll be able to accomplish after a term at the Sorbonne.”

But I’d had enough of formal education and said that if another sojourn in Europe was required I’d just as soon it was at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.

My patron said he hadn’t spent twenty thousand—a considerable sum in those days—on somebody else’s little sister just so she could become a pastry chef.

Sally, bless her, came right back at him and said that was because he was too bourgeois to appreciate truly excellent cuisine. And, by the way, the “pasty chef” had inventoried his wine cellar and said it was execrable.

There was a howling fight. Shortly thereafter, Sally left for Paris. I stayed home and went to Rutgers. Then married, because Ted asked me.

Looking back, I can admit marrying Ted was a quick fix of stability. Women do that, knowing all the while that they are making a mistake, like choosing an inexpensive fun fur over a full-length mink because it looks so “right now” when waiting to have the money for the real thing that would have kept them warmer and remained timelessly chic.

What if by marrying Ted my karma is permanently skewed?

That would be so sad.

As I enter the miracle of a rainy-day cab, my heart begins to pound in my ears. And I’m holding my breath. Panic attack?

“Oh, no,” I moan, and stretch out flat on the back seat of the taxi.