Murdering Mr. Monti: A Merry Little Tale of Sex and Violence by Judith Viorst

been the man Mary Martin tried to wash out of her hair in South Pacific .
    Our father, who died two years ago, sang decades of popular songs—from “Jeepers Creepers” to “Bésame Mucho,” from “Goody Goody” to “White Cliffs of Dover,” from “Some Enchanted Evening” to (keeping up with the times) “What I Did for Love.” He sang at BarMitzvahs and weddings and on trips down to the shore (during which Mom and Rose snoozed and I sang along), and although he was surely no Pinza he could put a lump in your throat with his “Once you have found her, never let her go.”
    Dad at least had a vision of what perfect happiness was: making beautiful music up on a stage. Rosalie, on the other hand, is forever revising her life and she still hasn’t got a clue as to what she is going for. She has been an airline stewardess, sold real estate, ran a gallery down in SoHo, worked as the pastry chef at La Folie. She has ranged, since her divorce, between defiantly single (“Who needs them?”) and desperately single (“I’m nothing without a man”). Currently a blonde, she was briefly brunette with a stick-straight Lulu-in Hollywood bob and has also tried her luck as a frizzy haired redhead. She has also tried being a mother, which has worked out just fine with her dog, but not with her only human child, Miranda, an independent producer who is living out in Los Angeles and keeping in cautious touch with her mother by fax.
    Remember that woman who dealt with bad times by saying “Could be worse”? Rosalie lives by the motto “Could be better.” Which means that, wherever she is, it—by definition—is never the place where she wants to be. “How’s the convention business?” I ask, and she gives me forty-five minutes on why she finds it deeply unfulfilling. “You know who’s being fulfilled?” she asks me. “Landscape architects. I’m giving serious thought to a career change.”
    This career-change talk used to be the cue for me to do forty-five minutes on wasn’t it time she resolved her identity crisis, and didn’t she need to channel and focusher energies, and shouldn’t she come to terms with her limitations, and why in God’s name didn’t she grow up already!
    We irritated the hell out of each other.
    I once confessed to Jake that I loved my sister but didn’t like her. I believe Rose would have said the same about me. But when our father died and was laid to rest beside our mother in the Kedron section of the King Solomon Cemetery, we both resolved to make greater efforts at sisterhood.
    I would make efforts to stop with the critiques.
    And Rose—though she viewed whatever I did, including being born, as a critique—would make efforts to be less defensive and less touchy.
    Which is why Rose tries not to tell me to shut the fuck up when I give her advice on how to live. Which is why—although my column advises everyone else how to live—I’m trying really hard to not advise her. Which is therefore why, instead of making my why don’t-you-grow-up-already speech; I said, as I finished the last piece of yellowtail at Hatsuhana, “Landscape architect—that’s really interesting.”
    And then I told her some interesting stuff about me.
    “I’m appalled,” Rose said when I’d filled her in on my short-term adultery plans. “I’m fainting with shock and horror. Tell me more.” We were at her apartment now (she has a nice place on East Seventy-fourth Street) and Hubert (Rose’s Great Dane) was sprawled at our feet, the beauty of his countenance, his charm and wit and intellect and grace having already been commented on ad absolute nauseam by his doting mistress. Rose stared at me contemplatively as I brought her up to date with my back-of-the-limo encounter with Mr.Monti, and then she said, “I disapprove. I really disapprove. God, this feels good. This feels great. I mean, this feels fabulous.”
    “What does?”
    “Feeling morally superior to you.”
    “Well, okay, fair enough.