Mrs March

by Virginia Feito

  Mrs. March had initially regarded her delivery of Jonathan as a victory over her sister—at last her mother would be proud of her for something Lisa couldn’t do. Mrs. Kirby often said that having children and a family was the greatest achievement of a woman’s life. By the time Mrs. March had Jonathan, however, her father had died, leaving her mother rather quiet, and soon after the baby arrived, Mrs. Kirby was already exhibiting signs of dementia. “Lovely Lisa,” she said when she first held Jonathan.

  “It’s so cold outside,” said Lisa, red-nosed. “Isn’t this time of year just lovely?”

  Lisa’s husband Fred waddled toward Mrs. March with a vacuous smile. Insufferable, pompous, fat Fred. Mrs. March had disliked him from the moment she met him. He went out of his way to make her uncomfortable in social situations. The kind of man who would announce bumptiously that their antique cedar tea table was passé. “Eighteenth-century is so cheap now. How much did you pay for this?”

  Fred had seen a good portion of the world. He had carved Mani stones with the Buddhist monks of a Tibetan monastery, he’d swum with sharks in Bali (“not that scary”), and he had of course, regrettably, made his own foie gras on a visit to a French farm. Mrs. March, remaining within the self-imposed boundaries of the United States and Europe, couldn’t help but find his stories intimidating and tedious. None of these humbling, enlightening experiences, however, seemed to have humbled or enlightened Fred in any way.

  He slapped George on the back and planted a kiss on Mrs. March’s cheek, moistening it with his sweaty jowls, which she would feel on her face—her hand itching to wipe it off—throughout the evening.

  “Let’s finally drink some decent wine in this place, Georgie-boy,” said Fred, chuckling, as he produced a ridiculously oversized bottle of wine, “and not whatever it was you served us last time. And this,” he said, extracting a smaller bottle, “is some elderberry wine I made. For the ladies.”

  “We’d like to try the good wine too, dear,” said Lisa, eyeing herself in the foyer mirror.

  “No, no, you gals have the elderberry. You can’t appreciate how good this wine is.”

  “We can too!” said Lisa, though her heart wasn’t in it.

  “You said it yourself—you can’t tell the house red from the Vega Sicilia.”

  Mrs. March looked sideways at George, who laughed good-naturedly as he took the bottles. She pursed her lips. She and George had been cajoled into drinking some very sour wine the last time they had been at her sister and Fred’s home in Maryland. There were impressive vintage reds in their kitchen wine rack, yet Fred had poured from a bottle that must have been sitting, opened, on their counter for at least four days.

  She stared at Fred as he bragged about how little they had paid for their plane tickets. “Bargain, absolute bargain,” he was saying. Then, “Thanks, darlin’,” as Mrs. March took his coat. “Where’s Martha? Where’s that ball-busting old gal?”

  “Martha has the day off,” said Mrs. March, taking her sister’s coat as well—a soft pink woolly thing, too cutesy for her taste—and hanging them in the small coat closet. “It’s New Year’s Eve, after all.”

  “Our help always stays on, New Year’s Eve and Christmas,” said Fred. “You have to work that sort of thing out straight off the bat, otherwise they’ll take advantage.”

  “This is beautiful,” said Lisa, admiring Mrs. March’s brooch. She said it in such an exaggerated way that Mrs. March knew it was a lie. She had gifted Lisa a similar brooch for her birthday years ago and had never once seen her wear it.

  “Oh wow,” said Fred as they entered the living room—where Mrs. March had been trying, casually, to steer them ever since they stepped into the apartment—“that book must really be doing well, George. Look at this place.”

  “It is doing well, isn’t it?” said Lisa. “I’ve read rave reviews. Haven’t gotten around to reading it myself yet—”

  “Lisa pretends she reads,” snorted Fred, his cheeks flushed like those of an aproned Victorian baker-woman.

  “I do too read,” said Lisa, a flash of exasperation in her eyes.

  “Whatever you say, honey. Is that an original Hopper? How much did that cost?”

  “That’s been there for years. You commented on it last time you were here,” said Mrs. March, careful to appear helpful rather than defensive.

  “I’m sure I’ve never seen this in my life.”

  “Really, you have.”

  “No, I would remember.”

  “Let’s sit, shall we?” said George. “I’m starving.”

  They entered the dining room through the French doors. The table shone grandly, decked in a magnolia wreath centerpiece and hand-painted porcelain dishes and tureens and bearing a sumptuous banquet of seared scallops with brown butter and pineapple-glazed ham. Mrs. March was aware that Jonathan detested pineapple, but this was the most impressive dish she could have served (Tartt’s roasted pineapple ham, in all its apparent simplicity, was the pinnacle of gastronomic erudition). She also appreciated the familiar coziness of the dish, how it looked when George carved it for his family, as if posing for a Norman Rockwell painting. Jonathan would have to make do with the scallops.

  “Oh, the table is simply lovely,” said Lisa.

  “Be honest, now. How much of this did you cook yourself?” asked Fred, in his detestable jocular way.

  “Oh,” said Mrs. March, “I had some help, of course.”

  “I’ll say,” said Fred, and he grinned, revealing rows of tiny, neat teeth—like milk teeth.

  They sat, and as the men tucked into the food with the speed and silence often evoked by male hunger, the women filled their stomachs with water and the random steamed vegetable. Mrs. March studied Lisa, mimicking her habits throughout the meal. She would only take a bite when Lisa did.

  Fred, attempting no such restraint, attacked his plate loudly. He had the revolting habit of breathing through his mouth between bites, and every now and then he would emit a curt chortle.

  “Leave some for the rest of us, dear,” said Lisa, in a light tone laced with caution.

  Holding her wineglass as she anticipated her sister’s next nibble, Mrs. March noted how Lisa meticulously rationed her bread, how she dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her napkin—even when she hadn’t eaten anything. She had been prim since childhood, even when they played pretend as children, conjuring up images of their ideal future husbands. Lisa invariably described the same man: tall, floppy-haired, European, a little awkward but sweet. A modest intellectual. Mrs. March’s gaze turned to Fred, cheerfully balding at the crown, his clammy double chin streaked with razor burn, his hands balled into fists on the table. She fantasized about going back in time, to their parents’ apartment, to their bedrooms connected by the bathroom. Young Lisa would never believe the real husband that lay in store for her—Mrs. March could barely believe it herself. Lisa would be jealous to learn her younger sister’s future husband would be a famous writer. Possibly a rapist and murderer, too. Mrs. March’s smile faded.

  “Pass the potatoes,” said a small voice beside her. She looked down at Jonathan. She had forgotten he was at the table. She overcompensated with a dramatically large serving of potatoes, then pushed his hair back in what she hoped was an obviously loving gesture. Jonathan resumed eating.

  “What’s wrong with him?” asked Fred, who had been watching their interaction, Mrs. March now realized. Sometimes she caught Fred staring. At first she had assumed that he was attracted to her, but over the years she considered his intentions to be much more sinister.

  “Nothing is wrong with him,” said Mrs. March, a little too shrilly, because she had often wondered the same thing.

  “I was much more lively at his age,” said Fred, his small eyes gleaming, his cheeks bulging with ham. “Always getting into fights. Little boys have to get into fights, that’s how they learn to be men.”

  Lisa raised some lazy objection, to which Fred said, “It’s true. Otherwise they’ll never know how
to defend themselves.”

  “Well, maybe therapy would be good for him,” said Lisa.

  Mrs. March went cold at this betrayal and looked at her sister with what she could only hope was pure, unequivocal hatred. “I don’t think that will be necessary,” she said, helping herself to more vegetables, even though she hadn’t finished the portion on her plate.

  “Why not?” asked Lisa.

  “I don’t believe in therapy,” Fred cut in. “Children have to face life on their own. Or they’ll never learn to do it by themselves. They’ll always need help from others.”

  “Really, why won’t you send him to therapy?” continued Lisa, ignoring Fred. “Is it because of your experience? Did you not think it helped you?”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Mrs. March, her face hot. “This has nothing to do with me. I hadn’t even thought of that in ages. I forgot all about it.”

  Mrs. March had not, in fact, forgotten her sessions with Dr. Jacobson. The waiting room, its thumbed kids’ magazines with already filled-out puzzles. The long corridor leading to his office, the closed door, the muffled voices behind it. The way Dr. Jacobson asked her how she felt about everything, the pressure to make up answers to please him.

  “When did you go to a psychologist, honey?” asked George.

  “Oh, a long time ago—as a child. It was nothing, just a session or two. Apparently I bit the maid once, so.” She rolled her eyes, smiled.

  “It wasn’t just about biting the maid,” said her sister. “You know that, right?”

  Mrs. March looked away but could feel her sister’s eyes boring into her. George went back to munching the leftover bacon-wrapped shrimp.

  Fred, who was slumped over the table as if tired of bearing his own weight, proposed a toast to the new year and to their generous hosts, the Marches. His fat puckered lips shone wetly as he leered at Mrs. March. She tried to hold his gaze but couldn’t.

  THE FOLLOWING morning—the first morning of a fresh new year—she brewed a cup of tea and blew on it gently as she stood by her bedroom window. “Rabbit rabbit rabbit,” she breathed, looking out at the neighboring building, at its lifeless windows. She continued, her volume rising until she was screaming, her breath fogging up the glass, “Rabbit! Rabbit! RABBIT!”

  A week after school resumed, Jonathan’s principal summoned Mrs. March to her office. “I’m afraid there’s been an incident,” the principal said. “It’s a little … delicate to discuss over the phone.”

  And so Mrs. March prepped for the role of stylish, charismatic mother, one who would be concerned for her child but also intimidating to staff; enigmatic yet warm. She took a cab to the Upper West Side in high spirits, wearing her best clip-on earrings, but grew somewhat carsick from the driver’s repeated abrupt braking all the way up Central Park West.

  As a child she had been driven to school by her father’s chauffeur. He ferried her back and forth for ten years yet she rarely ever saw his face. She remembered the nape of his neck, though—square and prickle-haired—visible through the gap in the headrest. On days when her father went into work a little later, he would be in the car with her, dressed in his tailored suit and reading the business sections of the morning papers, which would be waiting for him in the backseat, fanned out. The gasoline-like smell of the newspaper ink never failed to nauseate her. Once she’d vomited all over the leather interior and the door’s wood trim (she’d been aiming for the window). The chauffeur had been comforting and discreet, as always, and she’d felt bad for him—but at least she’d had the good sense to wait until after her father’s stop. The following morning the car arrived clean and fresh-smelling, as if nothing had ever happened.

  Fanning herself to abate her current wooziness, she exited the cab in front of Jonathan’s school, where the second graders were playing in the adjacent basketball court amidst cheers and the occasional shriek. They were all wearing the school’s mandatory uniform.

  She spotted a man hovering near the fence. She knew well what kind of men loitered around schools and parks. Her mother had warned her, very early on—when sending her off to confession for the first time, aged nine—from ever fully trusting a man. “What about Daddy?” Mrs. March asked, expecting some kind of exception to the rule, especially as her mother had only ever spoken words of praise about her father.

  “Never let your guard down,” her mother answered.

  Inside the school, the air carried a scent of metal and damp wood. It didn’t smell of children, which Mrs. March was grateful for. The walls, penitentiary green and treacle-colored, were disrupted here and there by colorful artwork on corkboards. It was reverently quiet, like a church, except for the low, monotone drone of a teacher that loudened as she made her way across the liver-spotted terrazzo flooring of the hallway.

  The principal, whom she remembered vaguely from an initial tour of the grounds, was a woman with a tower of teased maroon hair, a thin smile, and a small sharp nose, like a sparrow’s. She welcomed Mrs. March into her office—a cramped space adorned with colorful rugs and mismatched furniture. They sat, at the principal’s suggestion, opposite each other in a pair of fat armchairs, one paisley, the other plaid.

  “Thank you so much for coming in, Mrs. March,” said the principal as Mrs. March sank into the bulbous chair. “Sorry for the inconvenience—I just felt that this discussion should be had in person.”

  There was silence. The principal smiled reassuringly, crow’s-feet branching from her squinting eyes.

  “Of course,” said Mrs. March.

  “As you know, I have never called you up here before, and I’m hopeful I won’t have to again.” She took a deep breath. “Is Jonathan under some sort of pressure at home? Did something—emotionally straining, perhaps—occur over the holidays?”

  Mrs. March blinked. “No,” she said.

  “It could just be pure curiosity, you know, sometimes they’re confused at this age, they want to … explore. They don’t know that they can … hurt others.” The principal sighed, folding her hands on her lap. “I’m afraid that Jonathan has acted out. Everything seemed fine when he returned from winter break—he seemed to be settling in all right, but then, well …”

  As the principal talked, Mrs. March took in the tattered rug, upturned in one corner; the framed photographs of skiing trips on the desk; the child psychology books on the shelves. She had been sent to the principal’s office only once as a child, after writing a nasty note to another little girl in her class. “Dear Jessica”—Mrs. March had hated the name ever since—“everyone hates you, and you shall soon die. It is God’s will,” the note read. “Signed, a fourth grader.” It made no sense to her now why she had zeroed in on Jessica, an objectively unremarkable child. She used to observe Jessica in the playground, noticing with rage the way her socks slid down her calves, exposing her pink legs in the stark winter months, when all the other girls were layered in corduroy and woolly tights. She watched an unsuspecting Jessica play—dancing goofily, arms akimbo, as she laughed in a high-pitched squeal, her blond tresses bouncing on her chest. She studied Jessica in class—how she bit her nails, head bent over her notebook, her slightly parted lips revealing slightly parted teeth. How she’d overdo it when she raised her hand, her whole body swelling as she emitted little whines and me, me, me’s. She sat in the audience when Jessica performed at the school ballet recital. Watching Jessica dance, her white blond hair swept into a sweet bun, her tiny nipples poking through her pink leotard, had charged her with a searing envy that ran through her like a pulse. An envy that continued to thrive in her bloodstream when she sat down after math class and wrote that note, and without a second thought, slipped it into Jessica’s book bag.

  There had been a whole thing, of course, once the note was discovered. The concerned teacher photocopied it and passed it around to all the fourth-grade teachers. Mrs. March chided herself for identifying her grade level so smugly in the note, but then again, she hadn’t expected Jessica to show it to anyone, the rat.

>   “I know Jonathan,” the principal was saying, “and he’s never done anything like this before, but you must understand that I can’t have him corrupting my other students …”

  Mrs. March quivered. She often felt nauseated when she was hungry, and she’d had very little breakfast. Why had she had so little breakfast? She struggled to remember.

  “And so, you see,” the principal continued, “we simply can’t have this sort of behavior at the school. You do understand.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good, I’m glad. Of course Jonathan will be welcomed back as soon as his suspension is over—”

  “Suspension?”

  The principal frowned. “Well, yes, Mrs. March. As I was just saying, his behavior must not go unpunished. It wouldn’t reflect well on the school. Or, frankly, me. It would also be unfair to the parents of the little girl involved. We must set an example.”

  “Yes, I understand,” said Mrs. March, not understanding at all. She was sweating in her heavy coat, which she had not removed, and to do so after all this time indoors would be awkward, and she no doubt had patches of sweat on her shirt.

  “As I said, Jonathan can finish the rest of the school day. We’ll welcome him back next week.”

  The principal rose, which Mrs. March took to mean that the meeting was over, and stood up as well. Both women thanked each other, so repeatedly that Mrs. March wondered what they had each done for the other to be so thankful. The principal escorted her to the door and smiled her out.

  In the act of hailing a cab on Columbus Avenue, a homeless man accosted her. “You’re unfuckable!” he yelled as she scurried into a cab and slammed the door behind her.

  As she approached her apartment building, Mrs. March came upon a cluster of people on the sidewalk, huddled together against the cold. One was pacing in circles, while another stood a bit further away, smoking a cigarette. It was difficult to see any of their faces or to determine their genders, as all were strapped into puffy winter coats and wore winter hats pulled low over their eyebrows. Most, if not all, were carrying the same book—George’s new novel. The glossy cover winked in the light at Mrs. March from the gloved hands of one, from the coat pocket of another. One of them must have sought George out, she surmised, or spotted him going into the building—and now they were all waiting around for him, hoping to get a picture or an autograph.