The Ups and Downs of Being Dead Read online

  “That was fun,” she said cheerily. “Guess I can scratch the Empire State Building off my list.”

  He glowered at her, hoping she would go away and leave him alone. But she just stood at the curb, her head jutting forward and to the left, searching for the next bus.

  He relaxed his eyebrows. Why was he taking it out on her? It wasn’t her fault that his family was so screwed up.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  She gave her head a frivolous half-shake, like he hadn’t offended her.

  “Where to next?” she asked.

  “How about the Statue of Liberty.”

  Back on the bus, Suzanne babbled about every inconsequential building they passed. When she saw a bar she asked if Studio 54 was still around. All of the restaurants with sidewalk cafes made her wonder aloud what the proprietors did in the winter.

  Robert turned in his seat and perched his elbow on the bar along the seat back.

  “You think I should have done more to try and straighten Robbie out.”

  “Who am I to judge?”

  “I did a lot to get Rachel on the right track. She was ready to run away from home, but I put her to work at our corporate headquarters, I dragged her to manufacturing plants and retail stores, anything to keep her and Amanda separated.”

  “Obviously that attention paid off.”

  “But I couldn’t take on Robbie, too. He was just…so out of control. From the very beginning.”

  She gave a ready nod, like she was willing to believe anything Robert told her. He knew it was all an act.

  “Okay, here’s a great story.” Robert crossed a leg, leaning closer to Suzanne on the narrow bus seat. “It was Christmas. The kids were out of school. Robbie was probably in the fourth grade, Rachel in second. Amanda wanted to make Christmas cookies. I guess she saw some Hallmark Holiday Special, and decided that was the perfect thing for a family to do.”

  Suzanne settled back against the seat and folded her hands in her lap.

  “I was home,” Robert continued, “so it must have been the Sunday before Christmas. Amanda bought the cookies already baked: stars, stockings, Christmas balls. All the kids had to do was smear icing on the cookies and decorate with sprinkles, right?”

  “And by the time they were done, the kitchen looked like a war zone.”

  “No, no. Robbie didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I mean, what little kid doesn’t want to stick his finger into a bowl full of icing and lick it off?”

  “That does seem a little strange.”

  “Yeah. But Amanda got it in her head that they had to decorate cookies, so she bribed Robbie. Said she’d let him open one of his Christmas presents if he helped. So he grudgingly picked up a cookie, spread the icing on so hard that the cookie broke, stuck one—one of those silver candy balls—into the middle of the cookie, and walked out of the kitchen.”

  “And I suppose straight to the presents under the tree.”

  “Oh, yeah. Meantime, Rachel is putting icing on her fingernails and dipping them into the sprinkles. And she takes the little candy stars and presses them into her cheeks. She’s having a ball. But Amanda sees what she’s doing, drags her over to the sink and washes it all off her hands.”

  Suzanne clicked her tongue. “Wow.”

  Raising his eyebrows, Robert gave her a little nod. “You thought I was exaggerating, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Remind me later to tell you about the only time I took my family to the beach.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A long line of tourists waited in a queue for the ferry to Liberty Island. Robert strolled right past them.

  “This should be simple,” he said to Suzanne. “Just stare at the base of the statue, and we pop over.”

  “No!” She grabbed at his arm. “I want to experience the ferry ride and everything, just like they do.”

  She pointed at the huddled masses in their heavy coats, stripped scarves and woolen mittens.

  “Then get back in line,” Robert said, making a motion to shove Suzanne to the back of the queue.

  She giggled, and stuck her tongue out at him.

  They boarded the ferry even though passengers from the island were still disembarking. Suzanne made her way to the wheelhouse with the captain of the boat so she would have the best view of the approach to the statue.

  “Just like everyone else,” Robert mumbled as he stood by her side.

  “Well, after being in the cockpit of a 737, I’ve gotten accustomed to elite status.”

  An even longer line of visitors waited to get inside the statue. And for what? Most of them couldn’t get any higher than the observation deck on the statue’s pedestal. Only two hundred forty people per day were allowed the privilege of climbing the spiral staircase up to the crown. According to an information board near the dock, the statue was closed after nine-eleven and no one had been allowed back inside until the Fourth of July 2009.

  Among the privileged few was a family of four that didn’t look like they could make it up a single flight of stairs. The dad had a ‘Chicaaago’ accent as thick as his gut. The mother was wheezing after the first spiral, puffing out words of caution to her two little brats. The son insisted on counting the steps, but after about seventy, he lost track and wanted to go back to start over. Red-faced and gasping for air like a dying fish, his mother could only shake her head no.

  Robert didn’t stick around to see if the guide with the group carried one of those portable defibrillators in his backpack. Forging ahead, he craned his neck to see up between the swirling stairs and the structure, at the wavy metal folds of Lady Liberty’s skirt. After a couple flights, he simple shot up through the spiral to the top.

  Inside the crown, Robert and Suzanne drifted from window to window, checking out the sights. In the distance, heavy clouds hung over Manhattan like a shearling pelt, the undersides darkened as though the wool had been dragged through the mud.

  There really wasn’t much to see, but tourists clicked away with their cameras at the dull skyline. People posed and smiled and offered to take group pictures for others. A guide meandered through the crowd answering mundane questions, like now many stairs were there—354, or how tall was the statue—151 feet, like they were taking notes for a quiz.

  Robert quickly got bored and motioned with his head that he was leaving. Suzanne followed.

  “You know,” she said, “I couldn’t help but notice the door that was barricaded with a wire cage. What do you want to bet there’s a stairway up Lady Liberty’s arm?”

  She wagged an eyebrow at him.

  When he didn’t answer, she said, “They have to get up there to change the light bulb, don’t they?”

  “And of course,” he said, “You want to check it out.”

  “Of course!”

  He drifted down the stairs, then swept an arm for her to go first through the blocked door with the bold sign that read: NO ENTRY.

  They shinnied up a narrow ladder that did indeed lead to the torch. The view was no different, but Robert had to admit that it was exhilarating to know he was someplace few others had been.

  Back on the double-decker bus, they managed to go a good six blocks before Suzanne wanted to get off for Chinatown. Robert decided it was easier to just go along than continue fighting the tour-a-thon.

  “Look at all the junk,” he said, peering through a cluttered window. “This place alone must keep a hundred Chinese families fed for a year.”

  Suzanne wanted to go inside a kite shop, where paper birds, and dragons, and insects hung suspended from the ceiling.

  Next door, a restaurant was slammed with customers dining on dim sum from roving carts. Plates of lo-mein and stir-fry were slung on other tables as fast as the waitstaff could carry them out of the kitchen.

  “It’s funny how we never feel hungry, isn’t it?” Suzanne asked as they strolled further along the sidewalk.

  “Yeah.”

  “I just wish I could smell
it all.”

  “Me, too,” Robert said. “Especially the fish heads and chicken feet.” He tilted his head toward a grocery window.

  “Oh, look!” He waved an arm to hurry Suzanne along. “Another kite shop!”

  At Washington Square, Suzanne stood under the arch, leaning way back with her hands on her back for support. Thank God, no one could see her affected ‘tourist’ stance. Then she flapped her arms and pretended to fly up to the top where she alighted gently on the toe of her right foot like a ballerina. Robert joined her, sans the on pointe.

  “You see all these pictures in magazines,” she said, “but I never connected the fact that this park is smack in the middle of NYU. What a fabulous place to go to school.”

  “And right over there is Greenwich Village,” Robert said.

  That’s when he got an idea.

  “Come on, I want to show you something.”

  It took him a minute to get his bearings on West 8th Street, but finally he said, “This looks like the place.”

  He led Suzanne through a wrought-iron gate between two apartment buildings, and into a huge courtyard.

  Spreading his arms wide, he gave a little ‘ta-da’.

  “This is where Alfred Hitchcock got his idea for the courtyard in the movie Rear Window. Or so I’m told.”

  “Oh, my God!” Suzanne exclaimed.

  She drifted up to the second floor to peek into windows, then hovered overhead to take in the whole scene from the vantage point of where Jimmy Stewart must have sat in his wheelchair.

  “Wouldn’t it be fun to live in one of these?” she gushed.

  “Yeah, if you like people spying on you.”

  By the time they got back to the Plaza, it was dark. The wind had picked up, and pedestrians were leaning into it, their coats held tight at their throats. Robert was half into his Bela Lugosi zone before he even got to the front door.

  But then Suzanne squealed, “Look! Someone’s hired a hack!”

  Dear God, some tourists from Antarctica must have thought a ride through the park would be perfect on a balmy night like this.

  Without waiting for Robert, Suzanne scooted back through rushing traffic and planted herself in the seat opposite the couple.

  From their ruddy complexions, and Slavic accents, Robert guessed they were German. He slumped into the seat next to Suzanne and closed his eyes.

  “You’re not having any fun, are you,” she said.

  Stretching his feet out in front, he crossed his arms.

  “I just don’t know if I can do this for the next seventy-five years. I mean, sure, it was fine today. But tomorrow we’ll be back out again. And the next day. It just sounds so tedious.”

  “How can you say that? You have a chance to visit every city in every state…in every country of the world!”

  “That would be great if I worked for Conde Nast.”

  “But maybe when you come back, you won’t want to work in the fashion industry. This is a golden opportunity for you to explore cultures, and foods, and buildings.”

  He tried to stay annoyed, but Suzanne’s enthusiasm wouldn’t let him.

  “All right, all right.” He threw his arm across the back of the seat behind her, and gazed up into the trees that formed a bough overhead. Thousands of clear lights twinkled in the bare branches.

  The German couple across from them snuggled close, their hands intertwined over a heavy wool blanket that wrapped around their legs.

  “I tried a few times to get my wife to take a carriage ride with me,” he told Suzanne. “She never would, said the horses smelled. But I don’t think she could muster up enough affection to hold hands with me that long.”

  “I’m sorry your marriage wasn’t more fulfilling.”

  “I don’t know what I expected. My folks never showed any affection for each other either. I think the more my mom watched those movies with all the fairy-tale romances, the more unhappy she got with my dad. She finally ended it.”

  “Divorce?”

  “No, she killed herself by running her car into a telephone pole.”

  “Oh, my goodness. Are you sure it wasn’t an accident?”

  “She was driving on a county road that ran straight through Indiana farmland. It wasn’t late at night. The pavement wasn’t wet.”

  “How awful for you.”

  “Actually, it was months before I understood the significance of the fact that there were no skid marks on the pavement. She was escaping my dad and his Bargain Barn. She’d had enough of the mud and the stink and the attitude of rural Indiana. She just gunned that old LeSabre and ran it into the only thing besides corn.”

  * * *

  Robert came out of his Bela Lugosi trance the next morning to find Suzanne standing in front of him.

  “You sleep in the lobby?” she asked.

  “I’ve already seen the rooms.”

  “Well, I’ve decided,” she said, “that we’re going to do whatever you want to do today.”

  He was honored by her unselfish gesture, but he didn’t think she’d enjoy sitting around Marc Jacobs’ design house all day on the off chance that Jacobs, or someone similarly famous might show up.

  “Why don’t we check out the holiday decorations in the department stores? We can start with the traditional stuff like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s. I’ll save Barney’s for last.”

  As he suspected, the windows had lots of winter scenes, and toy trains, and delighted children decked out in holiday finery. Robert let Suzanne ‘ohh’ and ‘ahh’ at the little skating bears and dancing snowmen, but he didn’t let her go inside the stores.

  Not until they got to Barney’s where the really cutting edge designs set the pace for the rest of the country. The window displays were as bizarre as ever.

  In one scene, a caricature of Elvis peeked out of the fireplace, and Martha Stewart’s head was being carved instead of a turkey.

  “Now, we go inside,” Robert said after Suzanne had scrutinized every inch of the displays.

  He stood just inside the front door to let her take in the massive ground floor.

  “I imagine it will take the rest of today and most of tomorrow to get through all nine floors,” he told her.

  Suzanne whirled on him. “Are you serious?”

  “No. But that’s how I feel when someone suggests going to a museum.”

  “Very funny,” she said.

  “Let’s head up to the second floor. That’s designer women’s clothes. And third floor if you want to ogle evening wear. It’s up to you on shoes.”

  She didn’t just ogle, she screamed, she squealed, she choked at thousand-dollar price tags.

  “I used to wander through here for hours getting ideas for Audrey’s. I brought the whole family once for the holidays. Rachel was probably only seven or eight, but she fell in love with the avant-garde styles. That’s probably where she got her start.”

  Robert drifted over to a fabulous red satin evening gown that draped elegantly at the waist. He examined the back, and the sash tied at the shoulder.

  “Of course, we had to leave when Robbie smeared chocolate from a candy bar on the back side of a mannequin wearing white slacks.”

  He rolled his eyes as he looked back at Suzanne.

  “I paid for the pants.”

  Suzanne loved looking at the shoes, even though most of the time she was either mocking the avant-garde styles or complaining about the pointy toes and extremely high heels.

  She was horrified that women might spend hundreds of dollars on a small clutch, or sling a handbag the size of a suitcase over a shoulder.

  And in the jewelry department, most of her comments were also about cost. “Who could afford eight hundred dollars for a pair of simple gold earrings? Target probably has a pair just like that for less than ten dollars.”

  After years of watching Amanda spend money with abandon, Robert found Suzanne’s frugality almost endearing. But he couldn’t resist teasing her.

  “Now Angie actually
did have shoes when she went to school,” he asked Suzanne.

  She took the ribbing well. “Yes, she did. In fact, I paid over fifty dollars for a pair of Doc Martens that she insisted would last forever. They did, but the style didn’t.”

  At the elevator, Suzanne asked Robert if he wanted to check out the men’s wear.

  With a dramatic sigh, he pressed the back of his hand against his forehead.

  “That would be too painful. Seeing all those suits and ties and knowing I don’t need them any more.”

  After they left Barney’s, they cut over to Fifth Avenue and walked to Bryant Park, window-shopping at Prada, and Fendi’s, and Sak’s along the way.

  Robert wanted to show Suzanne where fashion week used to be held, before it moved to Lincoln Center. Standing at the fountain in Bryant Park, he tried to explain how the whole area was all enclosed in massive tents twice a year.

  “Sounds a little chintzy to me,” she said. “Didn’t it get cold inside?”

  “You don’t understand. It was first class all the way,” he assured her. “And the parties after the show were incredible. You knew how important you were by which parties you got invited to.”

  “Like the parties on Oscar night?”

  “Exactly.” He gave Suzanne his best dead-pan look. “I never got invited to any.”

  By the time they boarded a bus back to the hotel, workers were flooding out of office buildings. Angry cab drivers honked at the evening gridlock. Robert thought of the many times he’d hustled to make a connection during rush-hour. It wasn’t that he was anxious to get home; he was fired up to get to his next destination. Again he was plagued by uncertainty. Would his next life be as fulfilling?

  He was still lost in his doubts when Suzanne asked him how he felt about Broadway plays.

  “Ugh.”

  “Don’t mince words with me, Robert. If you don’t want to go, just tell me.”