Read Online The Late, Lamented Molly Marx by Sally Koslow - Free Book Online Page B

suited to gift wrap, and an unworn pink wool jacket trimmed in lace—Lucy believes infibers built to withstand a trek from Kathmandu to Everest. If our father were president, her Secret Service code name would be Patagonia.
    Lucy pulls her curly hair, the color of dark maple syrup, into a ponytail that bobs beneath a snug knit cap. Its string ties dangle over her ears like the
payes
on a Hasidic rabbi. In a flash of black and purple, without saying goodbye, she’s out the door.
    Lucy’s completed several marathons, which is probably why my equally competitive husband has started training for one. Barry doesn’t especially like to run, but what he likes less is my sister outdoing him, and Luce loves to run—in any weather, at any time of day, her gait long and lithe. At a distance, under her gear, a casual observer wouldn’t know if she is male or female but would admire her grace.
    Sadly, the effect ends as soon as she stops, not so much because her walk is a sturdy clomp but because Lucy is the only person I know for whom exercise becomes foreplay to aggression. After a workout, when most people seem ready to nap, Lucy appears ripe for a fight. The more she runs, the less mellow she becomes.
    At least we can dismiss suicide
, she thinks.
No one would ever think my sister would or could kill herself
. As she hits her stride, she synchronizes every thought with a footfall.
Loved her Annie-bell too much
. She repeats my daughter’s nickname in exactly the too-sweet voice I said it in.
A lot to live for
. She starts up a hill.
But Barry could have driven her to it
. She pushes harder.
He’d drive me nuts—he could make any woman ride her bike into the water
. She turns.
Or off a cliff
. She reaches the top.
All marriages are like that
. Picks up the pace.
Men … morons
. She’s going strong.
Douche bags. Cretins. Fuckers
.
    Wind whistles through bare trees as Lucy runs six miles, her mind circling in and out of possibilities. She whips past the diner where our parents treated us to blueberry pancakes every week after Sunday school. Two former high school friends wave—they’re continuing the Country Kitchen tradition with their own kids. Lucy looks through them.
    “We sent a hundred-dollar fruit basket,” one of the young matrons says. “She could at least stop to say hello.”
    “Run your butt off, Moosey,” the other one hisses softly. “If her sister hadn’t just died, I’d shout it,” she says to her friend.
    Lucy is in her own head and wouldn’t have heard.
Pills, maybe
. Shestarts to pant a bit as she begins her last mile.
Or carbon monoxide
. She catches her breath on the home stretch.
But not this way
.
    Lucy charges back into the kitchen.
    “Where were you?” my mother asks. “You were gone almost an hour.”
    My sister ignores her as she unlaces her shoes and strips, layer by sweaty layer.
    “You’ll never guess who called,” my father says.
    Molly?
Lucy thinks.
    “Barry’s mom,” my mother says. “Inviting us all to New York for the seder.”
    Lucy skewers our mother with a stare. “You declined, obviously.”
    “I thanked her. Said we’d let her know.”
    “Mom,” Lucy snaps. When her face contorts like a gargoyle’s, my sister must give her tiny students nightmares. “Why are you such a sucker? It’s manipulation. Can’t you see that? If Annabel doesn’t visit now, a precedent will be set and—”
    “Lucy, apologize,” my father interrupts, wishing he could be playing poker or listening to his vinyl LPs—Odetta, Buddy Holly, early Bob Dylan—or getting a massage at his golf club, and curses the fact that it’s closed through March. He’d like to be anywhere but here, with the difficult daughter, the daughter who rips and rumbles through life, no matter how much she means well, which she usually does.
    “Dan, calm down,” my mother says. “Lucy has a point. But Kitty claims the trip would upset Annabel. She thinks it’s too soon for her to travel, that it will