Fiction Ruined My Family - Jeanne Darst [53]
The main room was approximately twelve feet by twelve feet. There were two windows facing West Fourth Street. Dad claimed there were two young Swedes who cleaned the apartment directly across the street in the nude once a week. Dad’s long desk was the main piece of furniture, with his big PC and printer and scanner and gargantuan Oxford English Dictionary. The brown metal fluorescent lamp had seemed cool when I was little but looked depressing now. Ditto for all the gray metal file cabinets. There was a futon couch/bed that never made it to couch mode, it was permanently reclined. There was a skinny spiral staircase that once led to the apartment upstairs but now was blocked off. Next to the vestigial staircase lay the raft, shriveled in a clump. The second room was a tiny space with a drafty window. Most people would have designated this the bedroom and cordoned it off with some decorative touch, like a door, but Dad just filled it with random boxes of books.
Mom opened the accordion door of the bathroom and came out right as I was entering the apartment and there was an awkward “You go,” “No, after you” moment. We all gathered the best we could in a space that had one chair and a reclined futon. Mom took the big swivel office chair and Eleanor enlisted Katharine to help her fold the futon into a couch. Julia scooched onto the chair with Mom, who was teeny enough to allow it, and I scooched onto the futon with Eleanor and Katharine despite their identical Fuck off looks.
Dad eventually moseyed in from the hall. “Aren’t those two terrific?”
“Dad, do you have to invite everyone you see to things?” Julia said.
“They’re not everyone, they’re my neighbors. He did some terrific work a few years back photographing Chernobyl, a ghoulish assignment if ever there was one.” Dad went into the kitchen and opened the mini-fridge, calling back to his daughters and ex-wife, “And she’s a knockout, isn’t she?”
He took Eleanor’s birthday cake out of the mini-fridge and brought it into the living room.
“Now, this place is terrific. The best,” he said, putting the cake on the desk.
Claude’s was the best. And expensive. Which is why we were a little shocked.
“Steve, how about a cake knife?” Mom said, trying to help things along.
“A what?”
“A cake knife? And some plates?”
“Absolutely. Absolutely.” Dad headed back into the kitchen, where he rummaged around. “Jean-Joe, why don’t you put La Traviata on the hi-fi? It should be right there.”
Eleanor let out a little huff. She hated opera, drunkenness, Dad, Mom and the West Village. Dad came back into the room with a knife and three plates for six people. He handed the knife to Eleanor.
“Eleanor-a, birthday girl, why don’t you do the honors?”
“What kind is it, Dad?” Katharine asked.
“Chocolate ganache, I believe.”
Everyone watched Eleanor open the white box.
“Dad!” Eleanor screamed. “There’s a piece missing!”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Steve.” Mom gasped.
“It was half-price with a piece missing. We don’t need that piece! To hell with that piece!”
Mom got up. “I’m going outside for a cigarette.”
Eleanor remained speechless, looking at the fancy cake with a piece missing.
I got up to see if I could put together a team of forks. Six forks—well, five, seeing as Mom wasn’t going to be eating—was going to be a nice challenge. I found three forks and a plastic spoon and some chopsticks.
“Jean, what happened to La Traviata?”
I stepped over a box of files and put on the record. I tasted the cake and looked at Eleanor angrily stabbing her cake. It was delicious. Dad asked if anyone wanted some wine, Julia went down to have a cigarette with Mom, and Eleanor looked at her watch, waiting until enough time had passed and she could head back uptown to her apartment to watch TV.
Dad gave me some red wine and said, “At least she went