On Turpentine Lane(72)

“Were you married at the time?” I asked Tracy.

“Separated.”

“I don’t think we need to rehash all the wheres and whens,” my father said.

“Let me take some ownership of this,” said Tracy. “Your father was all business, all artist, literally splattered with paint. He was not the kind of man who flirts with a would-be patron, especially someone like me.”

“Someone like you?” I repeated.

“A young, married, reasonably attractive Jewish woman, mother of two. And a lawyer.”

“He knew that?” Nick asked.

“It came up in our first conversation.”

My father explained, “She thinks her law degree prevents someone from taking advantage of her—in case they think she won’t read the fine print.”

“Of course,” said Nick.

“The point I want to get across is that your father was effectively an innocent bystander. I was the one who made the first, second, and third moves. I look back and I think—it’s crazy! Who can explain it, who can tell you why, as the song says.”

I said, “Funny, isn’t it—the double standard?”

“How do you mean?”

“Where we come from, what you described would be sexual harassment.”

She laughed. Wasn’t Faith delightful!

“But something took hold, obviously,” said Nick.

Tracy’s answer was a kiss blown in my red-faced father’s direction.

“I’m curious,” Nick said, “as to why you’d keep trying if you were getting rebuffed.”

“Rebuffed? I wouldn’t go that far. It was more . . . Henry? Can you explain?”

“I’d rather not,” he said. “I think Faith has heard enough.” I was starting to wonder where the Emily Dickinson–quoting, teary-eyed, besotted lover boy of the previous month was.

Tracy continued. “He was acting so noble that instead of making me walk away it became a challenge—”

I believe this was the juncture at which I threw my napkin back on the table and rose to my full height. “Really? Must I hear how you came on to my married father, who presumably fought the good fight until you—what?—ripped off your clothes and took matters into your own hands?”

Did she protest or apologize? No. Her smile said, How did you know the rest of our adorable story?

“Dad?” I asked. “Can I talk to you?”

Out of range, I said, “This is who you chose—someone so fucking confident, so proud of seducing you that she doesn’t know when she’s sticking a knife in a daughter’s heart? I can’t do this.”

“What do I tell her?” he whimpered.

“Tell her that two cocktails made me woozy and we’d better call it a night. Or tell her I hate her.”

All he could say was that those cocktails were named Blue Angels in tribute to the original Chagall he copied.

Just in time, Nick appeared with my purse. He shook my dad’s hand. “Thanks, Mr. Frankel. Really. Our door is always open. And”—with a nod back to the table—“good luck.”

Until that moment, I hadn’t known what I’d report back to my mother. But as we turned away, my father’s mumbled answer was exactly what I’d bring home. “I’ll need it,” he said.





43





Overall Frankel Anxiety


“TRUST ME, HE’S miserable,” Nick said on the drive home. “Miserable and filled with regret.”

I asked whether he meant misery over the night’s double booking and my related meltdown? Or because he’d broken my mother’s heart? Or simply because he was with Tracy?

“Keep in mind I was meeting him for the first time, but I’d say he’s a man who’s in deeper than he wants to be.”

I felt a surge of optimism. Would “being in too deep” imply a need to crawl out of such a misguided hole and back to my mother?

Mind reader that he often was, Nick said, “I’m not saying he wants out. Maybe he knows how ridiculous he’d look if he changed his mind after putting everyone through this for what? A fling?”

“Why couldn’t he have kept his flings to himself?”

“Flings? Plural?”

“I’m thinking so, more and more.”

“Maybe he got what he deserved,” Nick said, followed by an excellent impression of Tracy’s breathless self-reverence: “Initially, your father didn’t want me, despite my brains and beauty, so the next visit I took matters into my own mouth—whoops, I mean hands—and well . . . Hank, do you want to take it from there?”

“Pretty damn close!” I said. “You’d think she was bragging to girlfriends while they’re side by side, getting their mani-pedis.”

“Ha! Faith Frankel’s unkindest cut: mani-pedis!”

I said, “He needs an exit strategy!”

“How about out the front door and into his car? They’re not married. Those aren’t his kids. He’s been there how long? Two, three months?”

“If that! And he needs to take back his art. I don’t mean the actual pictures; I mean the concept, art for art’s sake, the freedom to copy whatever painting he wants to without someone saying, ‘We need you to make the boy a girl and change the donkey to a Chihuahua.’?”