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I
was never so relieved to have a mother with a laissez-faire approach to parenting. A more analytical model might have read into my statement and said, “Who’s dead? Some
guy
? Some
old
guy? Some old
married
guy? Shame on you! If that’s the kind of person you’ve been running around with, then you’d better pack your things and catch the next flight home, young lady!”

Or perhaps no mother could lay claim to such formidable powers of extrapolation. Even so, I felt a familiar pang of wistfulness for a more nurturing childhood when she happily shifted gears after the most amorphous of explanations:

“Sorry, Mom. Thought you were someone else.”

“Well, I should certainly hope so! Now, I wanted to wrap up some loose ends regarding your father’s birthday celebration.”

What Lucinda Mayo lacked in parenting skills, she made up for in wifely devotion. The party was slated for April 1, and it was only the second week of November.

“Don’t you think five months is a little early to—”

“It’s his centennial!”

“I think it’s more accurately referred to as a centenary.” I was fairly
sure both terms were equally acceptable, but my brain seemed to be hardwired for passive aggression when dealing with my mother.

“Fine. Your father’s one-hundredth birthday—how’s that? Land sakes, you and your twenty-dollar words!”

Land sakes?
I silently repeated, rolling my eyes skyward. Ever since she and my father retired down south, my mother’s expressions have become increasingly antebellum, even though she’s originally from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and Florida is hardly the heart of Dixie. What would she come out with next? “My stars”? “Saints preserve us”?

“I’ve been thinking your father might enjoy having all his children in attendance,” she went on. “But I thought I’d consult you first.”

This was a surprise. Anything—or anyone—associated with either of the first two Mrs. Mayos gave her pause. Despite forty-three years of marriage, she still paced in the kitchen every time “one of your father’s sons” gave him a call.

“That’s your decision,” I said. “I’ve never even met those guys.” I was telling a half-truth about my half brothers—literally. I’d never laid eyes on Jeffrey (“Jeffer,” in family parlance), the product of my father’s second marriage, who was in his mid-fifties and sold real estate in Southern California. Tom, Jr. (“Tom-Tom”), the offspring from Dad’s initial union, was a fine-art dealer who had just celebrated his seventieth birthday, lived in high style on the Upper East Side, and was one of my favorite people in the world—a fact I’d always assumed my mother was better off not knowing.

“Don’t you think you’d feel a little strange having them there?” I said. “Especially Tom-Tom. I mean, isn’t he two years older than you?”

“Great day in the morning! If that was the sort of thing I spent my time fretting about, I never would have married the Commodore in the first place!”

I declined to point out that fretting about exactly that sort of thing took up more of her time than tennis and Sudoku combined.

“Tell you what,” I said. “You call Jeffer, and I’ll sound out Tom-Tom.”

“Aren’t you sweet! You’d do that for me?”

“Why not? His number’s been in my address book for decades by now. This is as good a time as any to get acquainted. I’ll let you know how it goes in a day or so—tell Dad I say hi.”

“I’m sure he says hi back!”

I was sure he did, too, but I couldn’t help thinking it would have been nice for him to actually get on the phone and speak the word once in a while, and not just on Christmas and my birthday.

Not that he didn’t love me. Of course he did. He’d fed and sheltered me and sent me to camp and college. He’d given my senior prom date the evil eye, handed me a damp towel after I’d returned home drunk and gotten sick in the downstairs powder room, then yelled at me the next morning—even though he was more upset with my having swilled wine from a box than the sin of drinking to excess. (“Rotgut makes the hangover that much worse, kid. Stick to corks.”)

My father was pretty much over the whole parenting thing by the time I came along—although to be fair, he did wait to relocate the family headquarters from Westchester County to Florida until the day after I left for college. And having no childhood nest to retreat to turned out to be a blessing after I’d graduated and moved to the Village. I’ve long held that the best time to tackle New York is at the youngest possible age, when one has nerve and grit and the constitution to survive on an unrelenting diet of instant ramen and chocolate chip cookies from the 99 Cent Store.

“You look good, kid,” Dad would tell me on my rare visits from college to the Estates at Waterway Village. “Now, take this,” he’d invariably add, pressing Tom-Tom’s phone number into my palm. “I expect you and your school friends will be going down to the city once in a while. If anything happens, at least you’ll have somebody to call.”

“Oh, Dad. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Make your old man happy. Keep it in your wallet.”

For once—twice if you count the boxed-wine tip—I’d listened to his advice. It turned out to be a wise decision after I found myself imprisoned in the Manhattan detention complex—more commonly known as the Tombs—one ill-fated spring break, when I was a dumb sophomore out on the town with my even dumber boyfriend, George Landis (or George Landis-in-Jail, as my half brother eventually renamed him).

“How could this
happen
?” Tom-Tom shrieked when I called collect from the pay phone in my holding cell. I couldn’t tell if he was shrieking in shock or because he was struggling to be heard over what sounded like the wildest party north of Rio de Janeiro.

“My boyfriend bought a dime bag of pot,” I whimpered, taking pains to avoid stepping on a junkie in full-scale withdrawal, who was sprawled at my feet doing a masterful impression of bacon frying on a griddle. “We were walking down Saint Mark’s Place—”

“Oh, sweetie. I know we’ve never met, but take some advice from your big brother. You’ve really got to start dating smarter men. Why didn’t he score in Tompkins Square Park like any reasonably intelligent person?”

I couldn’t answer the question, but I had a feeling the image I’d been harboring of a stodgy old queen was about to undergo a radical transformation.

“You’re in luck,” he continued. “One of the best criminal defense attorneys in town is attending my little soirée tonight. He’ll get your charges thrown out in no time. We’ll be on our way just as soon as he changes.”

“Changes?” I echoed, wincing at the word “criminal.”

“Clothes, sweetie. It’s a costume party. Really, how would it look if Marie Antoinette took the stand for the defense?”

I punched in two digits of Tom-Tom’s number before remembering he was in London all week, bidding on Impressionist masterworks for assorted captains of industry. I made a note to call back later, then tried to remember what had been going on before the phone rang.

Of course: Ray Devine was alive.

“Guess Renée saw right through your Simone Saint James act,” Elinor Ann said.

“Either that, or she tells everybody he’s dead.” For all I knew, scores of women had shown up at her open houses to make discreet inquiries about her father. I remembered Ray coming to work one morning, putting his hand in his pocket, and withdrawing a half dozen scraps of paper in bewilderment. They turned out to be phone numbers. A half dozen women from the gallery opening he’d attended the previous evening had slipped them into his pocket when he wasn’t looking. He’d laughed about it. I’d stifled a pang of what I refused to acknowledge as jealousy.

Elinor Ann sighed. “You know, Dana, if you’d just thought to call him in the first place, you could have spared yourself an awful lot of trouble.”

“To say nothing of sparing Renée’s Uggs.” I had a discomfiting mental image of her traipsing through the streets of Bay Ridge in her socks that would linger in my mind until Alzheimer’s set in.

Thanks a lot, Lark,
I thought to myself for at least the hundredth time since that mortifying episode. If she hadn’t spurred my quixotic quest for self-enlightenment, Renée’s boots—as well as my self-respect—would be intact.

“So, what’s your next move?” Elinor Ann wanted to know. “Are you going to call Ray back?”

“Maybe.”

“
Maybe?
After all that?”

“Maybe.”

The thing was, after all these years, I wanted Ray to get in touch with me—and this time, to remain on the line long enough to speak. The way I viewed it, a salvo had been fired when I’d attempted to make contact. Now it was his turn. As any seventh grader would agree, those were the rules.

But enough time had elapsed since the double hang-ups that I knew the call wouldn’t come that afternoon. And since the only thing I’d managed to keep down all day was a superannuated Quaalude, hunger was quickly becoming a more pressing issue than resolving an affair that was even older than the pill in my stomach. I grabbed a jacket and my keys and tossed a treat to Puny.

As soon as I reached the sidewalk, a sharp rapping on the glass of Vivian’s storefront made it clear lunch would have to wait.

“Well, it’s about fucking time,” she said when I walked through the door of Chase, Manhattan, which is what she calls her shop. Chase is Vivian’s last name, and even though she receives regular cease-and-desist letters from the similarly named bank, she refuses to heed them. (“I know my rights. As long as that comma’s in there, they can go to hell.”) She grabbed a formal gown off a rack and thrust it into my arms. “You’ve got to put this on right now.”

“Can’t we do it later? I’m starving.”

“Are you kidding me? This is a never-worn fifties Balenciaga with sleeves.”

I gathered this was a great rarity in the Balenciaga oeuvre, since she pronounced the word
sa-leeves
.

She rummaged underneath her desk and emerged with a digital camera. “I need to get a picture for the Web site. Hit the dressing room.”

There was no point in arguing. Vivian’s edicts were never subject to debate. Besides, I worked for her. Posing in her latest find came with the job. I’m tall and skinny enough to wear pretty much anything—once the bodice is stuffed to compensate for my triple-A cup size. Vivian was too
tiny to serve as her own model; she stood barely five feet tall and wore sizes that ran the gamut from zero to double zero. Walking next to her made me feel like a Clydesdale clomping alongside a gazelle.

“Would you
look
at that beading,” she said after I emerged from behind the velvet curtains to strike my pose. “I’ll get four for it easy.”

“Four thousand?”

“No—four dollars. What do you think?”

Not for the first time, it occurred to me I might be severely undercharging her for my work.

We’d met several years ago when I stopped by the shop for a glass of the free wine she was offering during Grand Opening week. “I live upstairs,” I told her. “Directly overhead, as a matter of fact.”

“God, I wish you’d move,” Vivian said. “I’m already strapped for space in here. I’d love to knock through the ceiling and turn this place into a duplex.”

“Uh, I don’t think that’s going to happen,” I replied, a much more polite response than what I’d originally planned to blurt out, which was, “Try it, and I’ll turn my living room into a round-the-clock salon for the tap-dancing community.” I’d been in my apartment for fifteen years by then; the rent was less than half what my next-door neighbors were paying.

After sizing up my paint-spattered jeans and sweatshirt and obviously dismissing me as a potential client, Vivian immediately swooped down on a young Japanese woman who’d just wandered in, cocooned in fur and clutching an Yves Saint Laurent tote large enough to park a Hummer in.

“I’ve got absolutely the perfect thing for you!” She seized a sixties baby-doll shift and held it under the startled girl’s chin. “It’s gamine… No, it’s naif! Audrey Hepburn by way of Swinging London! And only six twenty-five. It’d be absolutely adorable with these fabulous new-old-stock go-go boots I tracked down on my last buying trip. Now, let’s see.… You’ve
got
to have these Lucite earrings.…” Without letting go of her
customer’s elbow, she worked her way through the shop to the rear dressing room, snatching accessories at every turn. The girl trailed after her, nodding energetically and wearing an ardent expression common to religious zealots and winners of large jackpots on
The Price Is Right
. I settled on a couch with my glass of wine, took out a pen, and started doodling on a napkin.