Roller Coaster Read online

  Helen blew out a huge sigh as she wondered just how far down a list some organizer had gotten to find her name. So many screen stars took turns on Broadway that really big names currently in shows were plentiful. "I'll ask after the performance. Now would be suicidal. But I'm not all that enthused either."

  "Seven days, leaving from Miami two weeks from today and heading right for Cancun? It's seven days of nothing but sunshine and for a couple of hours out of two or three days you talk to rich community theater activists about the craft, and you have a couple of cocktail and dinner functions where you make nice. Mostly women. You could get three of these a year."

  "I know. Mostly women? I really will ask." She hung up, giving it more thought as she punched up Justin's number. Was she in the mood for something like this? Not really.

  Justin completely disagreed. She'd told him as a by-the-way but he leaped on the idea.

  "Why wouldn't you? Mom, it sounds great. When's the last time you had a vacation by yourself?" She could hear him clicking and typing while they talked.

  "I come here half the week. Is that homework you're working on so furiously?"

  "Sure, Mom. Yeah, it's homework." His keyboard went silent and she seemed to have his full attention. "We can handle you gone for that little while. Like you always say, your heart tells you what it wants and you're a chump if you don't listen, right? So what do you want?"

  "Children that don't throw my own words back at me."

  "Dream on."

  "What do you think of the new chef? I mean seriously. Really. She's not there, right?"

  "Nah, she's downstairs with Julie in the kitchen I think. She is totally fabulous, Mom. I'm not making it up. She's like a Zen master. She's super laid-back except she's kind of a food Nazi, I mean, really, I can't have popcorn before dinner? She keeps saying no."

  "Justin, you shouldn't even be asking her. You know better. I know you work it off, but you got some bum genes on your dad's side and you refuse to eat it without butter so there's no choice."

  "I know, Mom."

  "You don't need to watch your calories so much as you need to watch the bad heart stuff, and for your entire life if you want to live longer than he did." They had had this conversation many times. "Besides, we both know you have it after she leaves and Grace has retired for the night."

  His tone grew mulish. "You give me a way harder time about what I eat than Julie."

  "Because you're not the same people, my beloved son. And boo-hoo you have to watch your diet like most of the world. She has to watch every bite. So no pity card here."

  "Fu-Freak that noise."

  She laughed into the phone. "So you think I should jet off on a tropical vacation?"

  "They're paying, right? Nice work if you can get it. And you're the one who says you never ever turn down work."

  "All right, all right. Tell your sister her phone is going to ring in a minute."

  As she called up Julie's number she could hear him in her head, shouting at his sister. He did enjoy shouting. Two very different people, but they had a wonderful bond-stronger than she had ever hoped for-and she didn't want it severed, ever.

  When Julie answered, she immediately said, "You should go."

  "Justin told you?"

  "Just that you could get paid to go on a totally free trip to the Caribbean and should go. We're cool here. Hey Mom, could we use some of the back field for an herb garden?"

  Helen heard a voice in the background, low and smooth, and realized Laura was chiming in. Julie must be hanging out in the kitchen-that was a good thing. What a disaster Mary had been. "What's that?"

  "Oh. I wasn't supposed to bring it up. Laura would like to talk to you about it, though. An herb garden, all organic and rotating and stuff. So go on the trip."

  She felt a stray pang of jealousy that the perfect Laura had charmed her children so thoroughly in just a few days, but then again, the way to any adolescent's psyche was totally through their stomachs, and that included Julie's very picky one. These are the choices you made, she reminded herself, so you can walk out on that Broadway stage in twenty-five minutes.

  "Well, I'll think about it. How are you feeling?"

  "I had a really bad headache this afternoon, and the itches," Julie said, "but it was totally my fault. I had some of a vanilla milkshake at school. I was feeling pretty good."

  "And you've learned what from this experience?"

  "That even white is probably a dye. And if I don't know the source..."

  "I'm sorry, baby. But that's the hand you've been dealt." Helen swallowed hard, trying to go on sounding matter-of-fact. She feared for her daughter, feared for the lifetime of dodging illness that Julie faced. "And now I have to go."

  "Break a leg, Mom."

  She swiveled back to face her makeup mirror. Moxie Taylor stared back, ready to sparkle. But her brain was still thinking about Helen's kids and Helen's worries and, well, Helen's trip to sunny Cancun and Cozumel and other places with equally warm-sounding names. Did she really want to go?

  Moxie looked her right in the eye and said, "Don't be a chump."

  She laughed at her reflection. Okay. She'd show some moxie and ask Nancy about it after the show.

  "Six performances? I can't let you out for six performances on such short notice."

  Nancy tucked her straight brown hair behind her ears, all the while glowering, but Helen had expected initial resistance. She'd waited until her perpetually frazzled director had retired to her tiny office after the first wave of backstage air kisses and congratulations had been made. "Look, I already get lots of the but-Helen-and-Neil-get-days-off, and there are people who don't care that you've earned the arrangement, and it was agreed to when you signed your contracts. I let you out on such short notice and you're not hacking up a lung?"

  "I can make it look like I am." She delivered a protracted, lung-aching cough worthy of Greta Garbo. Nancy was unimpressed. "But I don't want to do that. I don't want to lie and say I'm sick when you and everyone else will know I'm not. And showing up here with a cruise-ship tan. I enjoy working with you. I know I'm box office, but I'm a realist."

  "Would you consider another part to buy my goodwill? Next summer, two weeks, six performances total-off-off-Broadway?"

  Helen raised one eyebrow. "Are you trying to get me into a negotiation without my agent?"

  Nancy grinned. "Yes."

  "What kind of part?"

  "The play is All About Eve. It's...sort of...dinner theater. Um...in Jersey."

  Helen kept her eyebrow where it was.

  "A friend is trying an experiment, looking for a market of people who want a night out and a guaranteed good, meaty play with performers they'd never get to see in such an intimate theater and are willing to pay major bucks-tickets auctioned on eBay."

  "It doesn't sound economically feasible to me." She gave up her arch, disinterested look. "Interesting, but it won't survive."

  "Probably not. But I owe a friend..." Nancy looked hopeful.

  "I could always say it's a favor to a friend," Helen conceded. "I suppose-but if something better comes along..."

  "I know, I know." Nancy waved her away. "We'll see how it all shakes out. It's entirely possible that what minor financing he has will evaporate before then."

  "So I can go on a trip?"

  Nancy sighed. "You can go on a trip. I would appreciate it if you told people I made you agree to horrific conditions. Horrible, terrible, career-ending conditions. Now get out," Nancy finished without heat.

  Back in her dressing room, Helen called Cass, who was surprisingly mellow. It helped that she sounded like she was on her third margarita.

  "Some experimental thing? Okay." The driving beat of house music threatened to drown out Cass's voice entirely.

  "Where are you? It sounds fun."

  "It is. Some place in the Village-a friend brought me. I can't tell you how glad I am to be able to drink again."

  "Don't go face first."

  "Maybe
not into the drink. But other things, well, who knows?"

  "How cute is she?"

  "Very cute."

  She was glad to see Cass thinking of getting back in the saddle, so to speak, after her girlfriend of several years had wilted to nothing under the stress of Cass's cancer diagnosis and treatment. Helen decided not to predict a hangover and only said, "Enjoy yourself then."

  "If she's willing."

  With the connection broken she realized that her dressing room was very quiet. The postperformance backstage noises had quieted-had everyone taken off for various parties without her? She always went out on Friday night, then did penance at the gym on Saturday morning and repairs at the day spa on Saturday afternoon. Her Thursday and Saturday visits to Chanteuse, the miracle worker of Lexington and Third Avenue, easily kept ten years off her face.

  A good night's sleep wouldn't hurt, she told herself.

  She swung around to look at herself in the mirror. Moxie's wig suddenly felt too hot and her makeup sat on top of her skin. She hoped she wasn't about to have a hot flash. Her eyes looked...old. Back to that obsession, are we?

  She tried for some of Moxie's aplomb. "Maybe you're not old, dollface. Maybe you are lonely. Cass is the smart one. You need to get out and start dating again. You could be dancing the night away with a very rich banker right now, if you lifted a finger."

  She pulled off the wig and ran fingers through her damp hair. "A very rich, married banker." That sort of thing had never appealed to her. Plus she didn't believe that a very rich banker would be happy to hear he took a distant place in her life, Sundays through Wednesdays. She really only had two nights a week for dating. She pushed away the thought of intimacy with a married banker-with any man for that matter. It was just...so much bother.

  Wiping greasepaint and makeup off her face she reminded herself she was happy. She'd successfully managed career and children on her own for sixteen years and she very much had the life she had wanted. Helen emerged from behind the layers and she decided an evening at home would be the best medicine for this fit of ennui.

  A knock on the door was a welcome break from her dour thoughts. Expecting one of the dressers she called out for whomever to enter. Instead, an intern brought in an enormous bouquet of red roses.

  She blushed with pleasure. The children's father had teased her about her love of flowers and had surprised her every Sunday with something special. Reading the card didn't diminish her joy in them-married banker or not. The card said, 'Every night is better than the last,' and he had written his phone number on the card as well. She wouldn't call. A polite note to his office would be best.

  The card left in her dressing room trash can, the flowers cradled in the crook of one arm, she eventually left the quieting theater after turning down invitations from the few people that remained. In two weeks she was going to be wearing a swimsuit in public, quite probably, and for the first time in a couple of decades. Drinks and dessert were the last things her hips needed.

  The stage door was still busy. Neil was just taking his leave of the crowd, and she was immediately besieged, which bolstered her fragile ego. She had signed a dozen autograph books before she realized that Eugene Masterson was waiting at the stage door as well.

  Of course he was, she thought. "Thank you for the flowers. They're lovely."

  "No lovelier than you, of course."

  Oily, she thought. That was it-he was oily. And certain of his appeal. He reminded her of why she didn't miss men and that the children's father had been a different kind of man. Soft-spoken, filled with humor, utterly without ambition beyond making people in his life happy... She missed him, but now she was wondering exactly when she'd started thinking of him as "the children's father" and not "my late husband."

  She'd missed what he'd said, darn it. "I'm sorry-what was that?"

  "I was hoping you'd let me make up for missing out on Birdland," he said.

  "I love Birdland. One night many years ago Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea were just hanging out, having fun with the piano. They played and sang riffs off of 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' for nearly an hour." She smiled with as much charm as she could muster. "But not tonight, I'm afraid. A headache...and an early appointment in the morning."

  "Really, you must let me know when you're free." He was trying and failing to look nonchalant.

  "I have your number," she answered. A fan thrust an autograph book at her and she gave the young man a sweet smile. After signing, she said to Masterson, "Thank you again for the flowers."

  "At least let me arrange a cab for you."

  "I prefer to walk."

  He smiled. "Then I'll be your knight and keep the streets safe for you."

  "Ms. Baynor!"

  She turned to see Jimmy leaning out the stage door. "Yes?"

  "Call for you."

  Puzzled, she nevertheless seized on the opportunity. "Perhaps another time," she said. She hurried to the door, hoping she exuded the pheromones of a worried mother.

  Once she was back inside, Jimmy gave her a cheeky smile. "He was giving you a bit of trouble-the fellow who sent the flowers, I'm guessing."

  "I get flowers so rarely that you notice?"

  "No, but he paid me twenty to text him when you were getting ready to leave."

  "You're kidding!" She wasn't the least bit flattered.

  He settled on his high stool to lean on his desk. "I gave it back, of course. But I kept the hundred he finally offered and figured his type could use a lesson."

  She laughed. "Thank you, Jimmy. You're a sweetheart." She gave him a hearty smooch on the cheek and decided a brisk walk from the main entrance would lose her quickly enough into the foot traffic that choked Shubert Alley until all hours.

  A fine mist required her to turn up her collar so she disappeared, turtle-like, into the crowds.

  The walk seemed longer the closer she got to her condo. It was twenty short blocks and several long ones to Fifty-Sixth and just past Lexington, but the almost mile-and-a-half was just what she needed. The cool echo of her footfalls as she crossed the entry hall to the elevators was one of her favorite sounds of New York. A marble floor sounded like no other. The doorman/security guard murmured "Good night, Ms. Baynor," as she passed him. She replied in kind and let her weariness rise along with the floor numbers. At eight she followed the long corridor to her door, one of four, and moments later she was on the other side.

  The hot shower was delicious.

  Finding herself in her robe and slippers before midnight on a Friday night was certainly novel, though. The rooms seemed cold and empty. Dark, like an unlit stage, it reminded her of her occasional nightmare-that she was onstage and didn't know her lines or even what play it was. She put the roses in a vase and set them on her dresser. They helped.

  She made cocoa and added a good dollop of Irish cream and had a rare moment of wishing she had a television. She could surf the web, she supposed, but that would mean getting her laptop out and then she'd be up all night watching some movie she'd seen fifty times when she was supposed to be getting a good night's sleep.

  She was so awake that she decided to inflict herself on her children. To her surprise neither of them answered their cell phones. She tried the main number for the house, hoping someone would answer or she'd be up all night worrying.

  A warm but businesslike voice answered with, "Baynor-Browning residence."

  "This is Helen-is that you Laura?" She was there late.

  "It is. How are you?"

  "Well. All is well. I was hoping to talk to either of the kids."

  "They're right here. I'm being taught the finer points of Texas Hold 'Em." She added quickly, "We're playing for pretzel sticks."

  "They cheat," Helen informed her.

  Laura's, "Really?" implied that she had suspected. "And I thought it was just twin mojo. But I was told that everyone plays it and I should know how."

  "Why aren't they answering their cell phones?"

  "Well...I was using my phone to l
ook up the rules and probabilities, which they said was slowing down the game and I said I'd turn mine off if they turned theirs off. Since I suspected they were texting each other-"

  There were shouts of protest in the background.

  "And wouldn't you know," Laura went on blithely, "I've been doing much better since we went phone silent."

  Helen felt that pang of jealousy again, but it quickly turned into homesickness. What was wrong with her? Hormones-it had to be hormones.

  "Here's the tall one," Laura was saying.

  "What's up, Mom?"

  "Nothing, I just wanted to let you know I'm going on that cruise."

  "Way to go! That's totally sick. What do I have to do to get an all-expenses paid vacation on a cruise?"

  "Devote thirty or forty years of your life to a single craft until you get good at it?"

  "Details." He snorted into the phone and she wondered if he knew that he sounded just like Clark Gable. "Here's Julie."

  "Mom!" Her daughter's voice bubbled out of the phone. "I'm so excited. You're really going? That's awesome. You need a swimsuit."

  "The horror. We'll go shopping on Sunday afternoon. That means I'll be gone an entire week. You won't see me from a Tuesday night all the way to the following Friday."

  "We'll survive, Mom."

  That's what she was worried about, she supposed. They wouldn't miss her. "What are you guys having for a snack?"

  "Some kind of hard sort of nutty cheese with celery and apple slices."

  She made a face at her cocoa. Cheese with celery and apple slices sounded really good. "Don't keep Laura till all hours. She's got a life, I'm sure."

  "Got it, Mom. Justin ate all his pretzels so the game is just about tapped out."

  "I miss you guys. See you Sunday morning."

  She sat for a while, tapping her phone against her knee.

  Ennui. Hormones. The clear tick-tock of the kids going to college. Even though the play was financially sound, she was already anticipating the need to secure her next part and that always made her anxious. Strange, realizing that she thought of Justin Senior as "the children's father" when tonight, for the first time in many years, she was feeling like a widow. She missed him. Those first few years without him had been so hard with two babies.