This is what I saw in my head when I was half-asleep this morning. You're getting it pretty much as it comes to me.
#
Malkin made sure no one was looking, then checked her teeth in the glass on Marty's diploma. (Why he put it up in his dining room she would never understand.) Those spinach-stuffed mushrooms were great, but perilous. It...
"Mary? Mary Brandt?"
Here was yet another person she didn't know. Marty had promised it would be just friends. Now she knew what that was worth. "You've got to finally come to one of my potlucks! It'll be great, come on, it's real relaxed, it's just friends." Yeah, his friends.
Perhaps that was what he thought she'd meant.
"Mary? You are Mary Brandt, aren't you?"
"Guilty." She wiped her hand against her side, where with any luck the stranger wouldn't see, then went in for the shake.
Hm. Oddly hard for a woman. It actually hurt. Malkin forced herself to pull the nervous blur into focus. The stranger coalesced into a big-shouldered red blazer, a big spreading skirt, and big spreading hair, graying. Malkin saw eyes that were warningly bright.
"...Hi," she said.
"So I understand you're Marty's secretary."
"Ah! I'm glad you don't use the odious 'administrative assistant.' Yes, I am Marty's secretary," Malkin said.
"I have two," said the woman. "Secretaries."
"Good for you. Gosh, look at the time."
"And you are one."
Malkin paused. "Um...yeah?"
"I," explained the woman, "am a professional. You aren't."
This was what she'd most feared--that she'd go back into this world, Marty's world, and someone would humiliate her. Marty was tone-deaf about that, he didn't understand. To him, her obviously shared background with him meant she still belonged. She knew better. She, after all, was the one who 'got away.' The one who shoulda-coulda. The downward mobility. The, um, yeah, failure. Everyone knew it. Now finally someone had said it.
Yet it somehow didn't turn out like she'd expected. She didn't redden or cry or run away. (She would have hit somebody anyhow, if she'd tried; the house was packed.) Instead, everything became silent, like in a dream, and her body started to swim like she'd turned into a ghost.
She heard herself say "That's right; you couldn't pay me enough to be one of those assholes." It sounded like she was smiling.
Bright-Eyes looked her up and down slack-jawed. Malkin had the sense that she'd up-ended the woman completely, but was unable to process it or feel anything around it. Or at all. She just watched.
Bright-Eyes noticed that, noticed Malkin watching, and drew back into the big shoulders of her jacket. She seemed confused, even almost frightened. A flash of deep hatred came into her eyes, and she turned and skulked away.
Noise crashed back in on Malkin. The faces of the ones who filled Bright-Eyes' space in the room leered past her. She felt her heart racing. Now the flushing, now the tears, now everything she feared. She dove straight for Marty's back door out the kitchen.
That, of course, was where Brighty had retreated to. Malkin saw her back.
Brighty turned, and seemed to hiss like a snake. "Your son. Dumped my daughter."
So this was Cherie Bower!
But that meant the insult wasn't just pure plutocratic contempt. It was personal! Somehow that made it all better.
For a split-second. Then, worse. Cherie Bower, the mother of the girl her son just, yes, broke up with. Hmmm. Fancy meeting her here. Now who would have done that?
Probably not Marty. But oh, that wife of his...Malkin put that aside. There was no time for Sheila now.
So. Cherie Bower. Well, Malkin certainly never expected the mother of a high school sophomore to be quite so gray.
Whoever had said "you couldn't pay me enough to be one of those assholes" picked that right up inside Malkin's head. "Daughter?" it batted its eyelashes. "You mean your granddaughter, don't you?"
That person, fortunately, was not near the controls right now. Malkin just wiped her eyes and said "I'm sorry."
She wondered how she meant it: cravenly? Humanly? Of course it didn't matter. Brighty was going to see what she wanted to see. Malkin, head down, turned for the door.
"I hate you," followed up Brighty.
Malkin stopped on the doorstep. Wasn't that a bit...Ah yes, of course. She took a second look, but yes, the eyes. She'd seen it, she'd known, she just hadn't known she'd known. "Got someone to drive you home?" she asked.
Brighty started to form the "w" for an indignant "What!?", then crumpled the effort up and threw it away. Malkin knew what that meant. She was at the point where there was no point.
"I will," said Malkin. "I'll drive you home. Okay?"
If Brighty had hated her before, she truly loathed and despised her now. "Why! Why!" she demanded. Why do you cross this line. Why do you mess up our boundaries.
Malkin thought "Because your daughter needs you." She thought "Because I still love my mother, god help me." She thought "Because you're already gray."
She said "Because. I'm a secretary."
Brighty blinked.
"Yes!" smiled Malkin. "Yes, and you're the boss. Remember?"
Brighty squared her shoulders. "I'm the boss," she said.
"You're the boss. C'mon. Let me take you home, boss."
Brighty grandly linked her arm.
She wondered what, if anything, she would tell her boy tomorrow morning.
#
There ya go. Take it for what it is, nothing more. These were the people who visited me this morning.
