Portrait of a Married Woman

by Sally Mandel

  She felt like screaming at them: How could you? But instead she pulled down the shade and threw herself on the bed and sobbed. The collection reappeared in its nest that evening. Maggie took each drawing out and ripped it into tiny pieces. Then she flushed them down the toilet. Norma never mentioned the empty hole on the shelf.

  Maggie sat up and took a deep swallow of her drink as her mother came through the back door with a trayful of crackers and cheese.

  “Having a nice sunbath, dear?” she asked.

  Maggie switched herself into the present tense. “Lovely. I didn’t check the barbecue. Should I have?”

  “No, let’s wait to see the whites of their eyes.”

  Norma stood looking down at her. Maggie tried to shade her eyes against the bright sunlight, but her mother’s features were blackened and dazzled with multicolored dots.

  “Have you been going to exercise class?” Norma asked.

  “No. Good Lord, no,” Maggie answered. “Why?”

  “You look … I don’t know, Margaret. Different. Rather glowy.”

  “Well, you know how fast I tan,” Maggie said, but she was pleased. Norma was rarely complimentary. She was always rearranging Maggie’s collar, tucking in a blouse, checking her stockings for runs.

  Matthew, Colin Herrick, and Joanne trooped out the back door one at a time with enough space between exits for the stiff spring to slam the screen each time with a loud snap. Here they come, Maggie thought. Husband: SNAP! Father: SNAP! Sister: SNAP! There was a ritual quality about their arrival that seemed appropriate. Maggie stood up and swayed from the sudden elevation.

  “Hello, Dad, you’re dapper as always.” She kissed him on the cheek, but was suddenly nearly toppled over by a hug from Joanne, who had grabbed her around the middle. “Whoa!” Maggie yelped. The sisters did a little dance until Maggie regained her balance. Then she held Joanne away from her and took a good look. Joanne was medium height, but her roundness made her seem shorter. She had full breasts, but never wore a bra, so that she sagged and bobbled with every movement. Her hair was wild, wiry and black with reddish-brown frizzled ends so that she looked as if her head might recently have been set afire. She had a pouty child’s face and bit her nails.

  “You look smashing,” Joanne said.

  “Thanks. So do you,” Maggie replied.

  Joanne shook her head impatiently. “I don’t, but that’s all right. You look really smashing. Are you pregnant?”

  Matthew hooted. “She’d better not be.”

  Joanne disengaged herself and made a futile effort to smooth her hair. “Well, y’all’re doing something right.” Maggie noticed the Southern accent. Wherever she alighted, Joanne quickly adopted the local intonations.

  “Where did you fly in from this time, Jo?”

  “New Orleans.”

  Maggie’s heart lurched. “Where’s Hob?” At the time of her child’s birth, Joanne had been deeply immersed in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, hence the name “Hobbit” for her baby.

  “With his father for two weeks. He’ll come back all freaked out,” she said with a shrug, “but it’s nice to be free.”

  Maggie had never noticed that Hob in any way cramped his mother’s style. He went along in a backpack when he was small enough to carry—to peace marches, all-night parties, gallery openings. Later on, he got left at home along with the telephone number of some reliable neighbor to keep him company. Maggie kept waiting for the dire effects of Hob’s haphazard upbringing to surface, but the last she had seen of him, he appeared well-adjusted enough, if prone to a somewhat unorthodox diet. Maggie had once watched him eat Mallomars and canned tuna for breakfast.

  “Drinks, anyone?” Colin asked. His face was round and pink, but the softness was deceptive. He had been sufficiently shrewd and tough to make a success of his investment firm amid the established Connecticut financiers.

  “I’ll have a vodka, straight up, Daddy,” Joanne said. “A little more … fine, that’ll do just fine.” Maggie noticed that the drawl was becoming more pronounced. Joanne plunked herself down at the foot of Maggie’s lawn chair. “Now let’s hear what y’all’ve been up to,” she said.

  Matthew shot Maggie a look of amusement at the same time that Norma and Colin exchanged glances of faint disgust. Then all four looked at Maggie. For a wild moment she wondered what would happen to those four pairs of expectant eyes if she were to say: Hey, listen, I’ve met a wonderful man and I want to sleep with him, but it goes against everything I’ve ever thought I believed in. What do you think I should do? Instead, she said the next-best thing.

  “I’m getting involved in art again.” Maggie waited for some shock waves, or at least a few ripples.

  “Lucky you,” Joanne said. “I think I’ve just burnt myself right out. Nothing’s happening anymore.”

  “I thought you just finished an exhibit in Santa Fe,” Norma said.

  “Yeah, yeah, but nothing sold. Nobody wants representational stuff anymore, especially portraits. Unless they’re somebody’s kid or favorite aunt.”

  All right, Maggie thought. She would try again. “I’m taking a life class with Eliza Austin,” she said, rather loudly.

  “Didn’t I see her work in an exhibit on Newbury Street in Boston once?” Colin asked.

  “Yes, you probably did, back in the sixties.”

  “I’m not wild about her stuff,” Joanne said.

  Norma turned to Maggie. “Maybe you know some people in New York who might be interested in Joanne’s work. If you’re involved in the art world these days.”

  “I’ll look into it,” Maggie said quietly. She looked down at her hands. Perhaps she could have brought up David Golden after all. No doubt Joanne would respond that she had once had such a lover, or that she had not had one and wished she had. The conversation continued about the sad state of Joanne’s finances while Maggie imagined herself standing up and calmly stripping off her clothes. No one would notice unless somebody needed something. Then all eyes would turn to Maggie. Even then, they would see what they expected to see. Maggie visualized herself as a vending machine. Each little window displayed a particular body part: an ear for listening to tales of woe; a selection of mouths—one for kissing bruises, one for deep sexual kisses, one for advice; a hand for performing the necessary tasks like drying the dishes or writing checks; a foot for walking to the dry cleaner’s and the grocery store; two breasts, one lactating, one not. She began to get very excited. Her fingers were tingling in the old way. She stood up abruptly, spilling her drink on the arm Joanne had draped across her knee.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Bathroom.”

  There was a moment’s pause in the conversation, but by the time Maggie had taken a few steps toward the house she heard her mother talking to Joanne again. It was the tone Norma reserved for addressing people who were very young, very old, or handicapped. For the first time, Maggie began to wonder which of Norma’s children was better off. Perhaps in this household it was preferable to be ignored.

  Maggie went up to her old room and rummaged through the desk for paper and a pencil. Quickly she began sketching her vending machine. A profusion of shapes was emerging, an intriguing balance of curves and sharp edges. If she pushed the idea just a little further, perhaps it could really mean something. She was working very fast now, trying out various combinations. She sketched the ear toward the center, but somehow that destroyed her focus. She realized with surprise that there was no eye here, but then she understood the significance of the omission. This was a blind machine.

  Finally she achieved a drawing that pleased her. And yet something was missing. She stared at the strong black marks on the white paper and was struck with a tremendous sense of excitement. Scissors! That was it! She wrenched open the drawer and hunted down a pair of child’s blunt scissors. Then she began cutting out the drawing, but not exactly conforming to its edges, here and there slicing across the sketch itself. She was so elated that s
he did not hear Matthew come in.

  “What the hell are you doing? I thought you were sick or something,” he said.

  “I … wanted to do this. It was the scissors I needed …” Maggie stammered. She felt jarred, as if she had been awakened from a delicious dream by being shoved out of bed onto the floor.

  Matthew leaned over her shoulder and peered at the cutouts. He made no comment about them, just told her that dinner was ready and left the room.

  “I hope this is still your favorite birthday dinner, Margaret,” Norma said. Maggie watched her mother’s reflection in the dining-room mirror as she dipped into the mixed salad and portioned it out onto five salad plates.

  “Wonderful,” Maggie said. “But I’ve still got a few more hours of being thirty-eight.”

  “Five to be exact,” Matthew said. “Then you’ll be starting your fortieth year.”

  “Lordy, my sister almost forty years old,” Joanne said. “That must mean I’m a grown-up too. How revolting.”

  Colin arrived from the backyard with a huge steak still smoking and sizzling from the grill. “I’m sorry we couldn’t celebrate on the actual day,” he said. “It’s this affair at the club. With my being president and all, I couldn’t really.”

  “You don’t worry about being grown up, do you, Joanne?” Norma asked with a smile, or the facsimile of one. Maggie supposed the intention was to dilute the effect of any words that might offend. Norma almost always smiled when she spoke. In fact, Maggie had noticed the same tendency in many women. They could say the most appalling things with a bright smile stretched across their faces. Maggie had listened to the mother of one of Fred’s classmates describe her husband’s affair with the baby-sitter. The woman grinned throughout the entire narration. Maggie had found it difficult not to respond with a ghoulish smile of her own. She had begun to catch herself at it now and then. Good sport at all costs, she thought. Watch us smile as our souls splinter.

  Colin was holding his wineglass up in a toast. “To my daughter Margaret on her thirty-ninth birthday. May she taste the sweetest fruits life has to offer.” He drained his glass and sat down. Maggie searched his face and thought she discerned sadness there.

  Joanne spoke first, into the hush. “Hear, hear,” she said. “But, Daddy, what are the sweetest fruits?”

  Maggie noticed that her mother was looking down at her plate.

  “That depends on Maggie,” Colin answered. He speared a slice of steak. “Medium or medium-rare, Maggie?”

  Maggie thought of David’s voice, David’s face. Forbidden fruit, and surely sweet. “Rare,” she answered.

  Norma had embarked on a monologue about vandalism at the golf course. “Perhaps there’s malice in it, but I rather think it’s more casual than malicious,” she was saying. “They drive their cars straight across the greens and dig these great yawning chasms with their treads. Children are no longer being endowed with consciences. It’s the parents’ fault.”

  Maggie noticed that her father maintained a glazed countenance when Norma was talking. He held his head tilted toward her in apparent attentiveness but the eyes were operating in a different sphere altogether. Maggie resolved to appraise her mother’s face when Colin began to speak.

  “There were some pretty conscienceless people in your generation too, Mother, after all,” Joanne said. “Look at Nixon and that tribe. No wonder kids behave like delinquents.”

  “Oh, Nixon again,” Norma sighed.

  “I have a young man in my office,” Colin began. “A Negro fellow, or black, I should say. He came to us through one of those programs that encourage businesses to hire ex-convicts …”

  Maggie quickly glanced at her mother. Norma was rapt. Maggie imagined her mother’s ears vibrating with the effort to capture every syllable Colin Herrick uttered. Maggie pictured Matthew reciting passages from a bicycle-repair manual and she, Maggie, kneeling at his feet, gazing up at him with total concentration. We are children, Maggie thought. My mother is still a little girl and so am I. It suddenly became clear to Maggie why she felt so utterly confused about David: she could not ask Matthew to make this decision for her.

  A large box was placed under Maggie’s nose. She had entirely missed Colin’s story about the ex-convict.

  “Happy birthday, Margaret, from your father and me,” Norma said. Her gift packages were legendary. Norma claimed that her gift-wrapping talent was her sole contribution to the artistic ability of her children. This present was decorated with sprigs of flowers from the yard, and it smelled as good as it looked.

  Inside the box was a dark gray cashmere sweater, V-neck cardigan with pockets on the sides. “It’s very … practical,” Maggie said. She failed to track down an appropriate facial expression, so she smiled.

  “I thought it was handsome,” Norma said. “I should think you’d get a lot of wear out of it.”

  Maggie glanced at her father. This was not a sweater in which to taste the sweet fruits of life. Maggie remembered her pink ruffled dress, the most treasured item in her fourth-grade wardrobe. It had been a gift from Maggie’s grandmother.

  “I can’t imagine Mother sending you a ridiculous piece of fluff like that,” Norma had said.

  But Maggie had loved it. When her ninth birthday arrived a few days later, she put it on.

  “You’re not going to wear that to your party,” Norma said.

  “But I like it,” Maggie protested.

  “Take it off,” Norma said, and began undoing the buttons at the back.

  Maggie wrenched herself away. “No! It’s pretty! I never get to wear anything pretty!”

  “Margaret!” Norma had shouted. “What in the world has gotten into you? You get ahold of yourself this instant if you want your party, and take off that ridiculous dress. Look at your legs sticking out under those flounces. You look like an ostrich.” Norma withdrew with a white face, leaving Maggie to stare at herself in the mirror. Her legs were long and skinny. So were her arms. What was more, her face was funny-looking. Silently she unbuttoned the pink dress and put on the paisley jumper and white blouse with the Peter Pan collar.

  “I’ve got something for you, Mags,” Matthew said. “I was going to wait until tomorrow, but …” He handed her an envelope embossed with the name of his law firm: Berwick, Saunders & Ross. It was certainly not the new Georgia O’Keeffe book Maggie had hinted about and then finally asked for outright. Somehow she had not wanted to buy it for herself; she wanted it to be given to her. She opened the envelope. It was a check for five hundred dollars. She noticed that the five had been changed from a three.

  “Thank you, Matt. You’re very extravagant.”

  “I didn’t think a book was quite enough,” Matthew said.

  “There was not one second to shop in New Orleans,” Joanne was saying. “I’ll find you something fabulous and mail it up.”

  There was silence. The words “It’s okay” were hurling themselves against Maggie’s clenched teeth, fighting to get free. But Maggie knew that Joanne would forget, or would send some totally inappropriate item, like the plastic lizard pin that arrived two weeks after Christmas, complete with a jewel in its mouth and instructions as to how it was to be worn on one’s shoulder. And now there was this awful sweater, and Matthew’s hastily produced check. They were all staring at her.

  “You know what?” she said to Joanne. “Don’t bother.”

  “Excuse me?” Joanne said. Her speech was clipped, with no reference to the Deep South.

  “Don’t send a gift. It wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”

  “Margaret,” Norma said.

  “No, Mother, don’t get nervous. I’m just speaking my mind.” She turned to her sister. “You didn’t remember, Jo. Well, that’s not so terrible, though it would have been nice, since I always remember yours and Hob’s.”

  “But I almost always do eventually,” Joanne protested. “I just sent Matthew’s birthday present.”

  “Yes, two mo
nths late. And six silk ascots?”

  “Maggie, I don’t mind,” Matthew said.

  “You should,” Maggie retorted. “Matt, you wouldn’t wear an ascot if God himself ordered you to.”

  Maggie had a sudden sensation of cool air surrounding her, as if the air conditioning had been switched on. She began again, softly, to Joanne. “I’m asking you to think a little. That’s what being thoughtful means, being full of thought for another person. I’m always doing it for everybody else. Couldn’t you do it for me now and then?”

  “All right, Mags.” Joanne’s eyes were damp.

  Maggie reached across the table and squeezed her sister’s hand. Then she got up. “If we’re all done, I’m going to go call the children.”

  In bed, Matthew asked, “What was all that about with Joanne?”

  “It seemed immoral somehow to let it go on and on.”

  “They were horrified.”

  “So were you.”

  “I’m not used to your doing that sort of thing.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose it’ll happen very often.”

  “A blessing.”

  “Why is it a blessing to let Joanne get away with behaving like a self-centered child forever?”

  “I just think you’re better off saving the moral indignation for the really important stuff.”

  “Oh,” Maggie said. He had the most uncanny knack for making her feel trivial. It was so much simpler just to release the easy words: It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. No problem. I don’t mind.

  She woke up sometime in the middle of the night. The illuminated bedside clock said one twenty-five A.M. The room felt alive with another presence, someone vital and greedy and hot. Well, David Golden, she thought, I’m thirty-nine. One more year and I’m forty.

  Chapter 14

  The telephone rang at eight-thirty Wednesday morning. Matthew grabbed the receiver on his way out of the kitchen, said hello, and then stood poised in the doorway for a moment. Maggie could tell from the way he was listening that the caller’s voice was unfamiliar. He held the phone out to her.