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“Hey!” I yelped, pulling the blanket back up, but sitting up all the same. “I was sleeping!”
Bubbe patted her immaculately set bob, which was loaded with so much hairspray it hardly moved. It was Sunday, which meant that she had her weekly mah-jongg game at the community center, but not until three. She was dressed in her favorite outfit, dark-brown, poly-blend slacks and a matching sweater set, over which she had her favorite kitchen apron, which, if the pattern of orange and brown flowers was any indicator, was purchased around the same time my dad was born.
I couldn’t help but smile a little at the sight of her. Bubbe wasn’t the most stylish lady on the block, but she was, as my dad would say, definitely an old-school dame. She also looked like a garden gnome.
“Skylar,” she said again, pointing a manicured finger at me. “First you traipse down to the club last night and drink too much whiskey with your father. That’s right, he told me. My Danny doesn’t keep anything from his ma.”
I sighed, rubbing my temples. God, my dad wassucha mama’s boy. After escaping my apartment yesterday morning, I had chosen to hole up at the NYU library rather than face Bubbe’s interrogation in Brooklyn. I had begged another family emergency with my instructors and gotten a round of apologetic support from them.
I had surfaced at Nick’s sometime after eleven. Messina and his crew were nowhere to be seen, but Dad was. He wouldn’t play for the foreseeable future, but he was as dedicated to his band as ever. He didn’t seem surprised to see me, said nothing when I took a seat next to him at a small table near the band. He just raised his soft-casted hand to Nick for another drink, his other hand holding the cane he needed to get around.
We had watched them play for hours, us two wounded Crosbys with our sad little glasses of whiskey. The combination of liquor and jazz managed to keep me from looking at my phone; the sight of my dad cradling his maimed paw while he watched his best friends make music without him was enough to maintain my resolve until morning.
Now I faced my grandmother.
“It’s eleven o’clock,” Bubbe said as she tapped on the face of her gold-chain watch. “Your father’s been up since nine, and he was out just as late. It’s time to have breakfast like a civilized family before you go back to school. I don’t know why you’re here, Skylar, but you need to get your keister back to Boston tonight.”
She cocked her head, waiting for my smart-ass response, but when our eyes met, she crossed the room and pulled me to her small body.
I didn’t cry—Crosby women rarely cried, and mostly when no one was there to see them. I had left my tears on the train. But I laid my head on her shoulder and let her rock me like a child, taking comfort in her familiar scent of wool, flour, and Chanel No. 5.
“Was it that richgoywho stayed at the Waldorf?” Bubbe asked, brushing my hair lightly, occasionally picking out tangles.
Wordlessly, I nodded. She patted my head once more and then pushed me back upright so she could look me over properly. It didn’t matter that I was twenty-six; I would always be her little girl.
“Tell me everything,” Bubbe ordered.
So I did. I started at the beginning, with the chance meeting in the middle of a snowstorm. I left out the steamy parts that no one in their right mind would tell their grandmother. As I recounted the past few months, Bubbe listened with her characteristic poker face, with only an arched eyebrow when I recounted my rebuff of the trip to Paris and a low sigh as I filled her in on Brandon’s current marriage and what he had done for our family. I left out the exact trouble he’d gotten into with his friends, but made it clear that Miranda had incurred his debt. When I mentioned Messina’s name in the divorce documents, she straightened slightly, but remained silent until I finished my story.
Then it was done. My hands clasped over my knees, I waited for her verdict.
“Well,” Bubbe said after a long, uncomfortable minute. “That’s quite themacheryou found for yourself, isn’t he?”
It was unclear what exactly she meant.Macherwas a Yiddish word that roughly meant someone with a lot of ambition, but it could also be used as an insult, like “fat cat.” I sighed, ready for the inevitable onslaught against idiotgoyimand why I should be dating a nice Jewish boy.
“A mess, but amensch,” Bubbe said. A man of worth, a man to be respected. She tapped me on the knee. “So, what are you doing here, Skylar?” Bubbe asked sharply. “Despite his troubles, you’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
I breathed out a long sigh and dropped my head back to my knees.
“I can’t, Bubbe,” I muttered into the bedding.
“What? I can’t hear you when you’re talking into your blanket,” she snapped.
“I can’t!” I protested to the ceiling beams as I thrust my hands out. “You heard the story, Bubbe. You want me with a man like that? A man who’s already someone else’s husband, who’s in some kind of nasty business with the guy who almost killed Dad?”
Irritably, I pushed the comforter aside and stalked across the room, where I yanked a pair of old jeans out of the beat-up dresser. With a loud huff, I stuffed my legs into them, ignoring Bubbe’s obvious disapproval with the holes in the knees.
“I don’t know why you insist on walking around like such aschlumper, Skylar,” she remarked. She was sitting on the edge of my bed as if it were her throne. “I know you have nice clothes—I’ve seen the pictures on the Facebook.”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed an equally ragged sweatshirt—an old gray and purple NYU hoodie that I had bought my first day in college.
“Can’t I be comfortable in my own home?” I muttered.
Bubbe loved to argue, and I was used to being picked on. Growing up with her probably predestined my career as a lawyer.
I finished buttoning my jeans and turned around as Bubbe stood up herself. She brushed nonexistent wrinkles out of her slacks and then propped her hands on her hips as she looked me over.
“Please don’t start, Bubbe,” I said, but she held up a hand again.
