by Sally Mandel
“For you. Who’s David Golden?” But he did not wait for her to tell him, just set the telephone on the counter and started off down the hall. Maggie sat still and stared at the white object that held David’s voice. Then she picked it up gingerly and rested it against her shoulder a while before answering. Finally she said hello.
“It’s David. I want to see you.”
“Class,” Maggie said. “Tonight. Isn’t it?” She was trying to squeeze the syllables out through paralyzed lips.
“I mean before. Come to dinner. I’ll fix you something here.”
“God.”
“What is it?”
“Just fear.”
“You’re not afraid of me, are you?”
“No, it’s not you.”
“Will you come?”
“All right.”
“Five-thirty. See you then.” He did not even say good-bye.
Matthew was calling from the hallway. “See you!”
“Okay,” she answered; then, “Wait!” She wondered what would come out of her mouth when she reached Matthew looking all slick and pressed and self-contained by the front door.
“I won’t be here for dinner before my class. Are you coming home early?”
“No. About ten.”
“Fine.”
“Got a hot date?” He grinned.
“A few of us are getting together.”
“Well, have fun.” He kissed her and was gone.
Maggie leaned against the wall and slid slowly to the floor. She wanted to laugh and yet was not sure it was laughter that was caught in her throat. She sat on the hard parquet in her bathrobe and took stock.
David, this man she had kissed, had spoken on the telephone to Matthew, her husband of eighteen years. Absolutely nothing had happened. Not only had the telephone not exploded, but Matthew appeared devoid of suspicion, or even curiosity. Next, Maggie had told Matthew she would be out without even checking first to see if he needed her at home to cook dinner. And finally, she had lied. “A few of us …” she had said, and it had slipped out so easily. Lies were ugly, odious. So why then did she not feel corrupt? Why instead did she feel almost proud?
What kept billowing up through the questions and confusion was one fact: she would see David. Alone. Soon.
She was supposed to meet Phyllis for lunch, but the idea seemed impossible now. First of all, Phyllis would surely notice Maggie’s excitement. Second, Maggie felt a profound need to be alone with her happiness. She wanted to be the miser who locks his doors, pulls his shades, and gloats over his golden treasure in peace.
“Up, Margaret,” she said to herself aloud, and then giggled. “Losing it, I must be losing it.” Other than the occasional blasphemy after stubbing her toe, Maggie could not remember ever talking to herself. “Probably because I simply had nothing to say,” she murmured on her way to the kitchen. “Oh, shut up,” she told herself, and stood by the telephone trying to figure out what to tell Phyllis.
“Matt needs me at his office,” Maggie said. “I’m sorry. Can we make it next week?”
“You sure everything’s all right? You sound odd,” Phyllis told her.
“Yup. Fine.”
“Yup?”
Maggie coughed. “Got a frog in my throat this morning.”
“What’s he want you for?”
“Oh, uh, something with a client. I’m not really sure, but it’s rather urgent.”
“You going down there to get laid?”
Maggie coughed again. “Nope,” she said in a strangled voice.
Phyllis was silent. Maggie could almost hear gears clicking and meshing through the receiver. “Okay, hon. Let’s talk Monday and we’ll set something up.”
“Thanks. Talk to you soon. Sorry. ‘Bye.” Maggie hung up and told herself she would have to do better than this. Phyllis had antennae that could pick up the sexual impulses of a gnat. At the last bridge game, Phyllis had asked twice if Maggie was pregnant. The notion had seemed absurd at the time, but this morning Maggie felt just that way: full up, swelling with something beautiful, wonderful, mysterious. Special, as if she were the only woman in the world to be so blessed.
At five o’clock she changed into her white sundress with the spaghetti straps and dropped a bottle of wine into her straw bag. Out front, a doorman was hosing down the sidewalk in the sunshine. Maggie said good evening, and as she stepped across the puddles, wondered why the water did not instantly turn to steam around her feet. She was high-voltage, crackling, sparking. In the cab across town, she told herself she was not ready for an affair. Danger, she said. Danger! Yet there was nothing menacing in the memory of David’s face. It promised excitement, yes, but shelter and comfort as well. The future lay trembling and full of color, just out of reach.
Each time David looked at her, he grinned as if the sight of her was a thoroughly unexpected surprise. He had led her to a chair at the round table and seated her almost formally.
“Here, sit while I unpack this stuff.” There were two grocery bags on the counter. “I was out all day.” He turned to smile at her again. “I was afraid you might call and back out, so I stayed in the studio and worked.”
“I didn’t call.”
“How about a glass of wine?”
“How about the entire bottle?” But the truth was, she felt relaxed. The sun streaked in the window at the company of statues, which made fantastic shadows across the floor. Maggie could see every hair on David’s hand as he uncorked the wine and poured them each a glass.
“Sit with me a minute,” she said. “We’ve got plenty of time to eat before class.”
He sat opposite her. His feet were bare, and he captured her ankles between them under the table.
“Tell me about your trip,” he said. “I thought about you.”
“Oh, my parents …” Maggie sighed. “My first great unrequited love.”
“That bad.”
“Have you ever been to the Museum of Holography down in SoHo?” He nodded. “It was a little like that. I felt as if I could walk around them all right, view them from all sides. They have three dimensions. And yet, well, they’re not solid somehow. There’s no reality to them. I could stick my hand out and it would pass right through them without encountering anything.”
“And Matthew?”
She dropped her eyes.
“You don’t like me to mention him.”
“You talked to him this morning.”
“Yes.”
“Did it feel odd?”
“Not the way you think,” he answered. “I didn’t feel guilty.”
“I guess that’s what I meant.”
“No,” he said. “Angry. Jealous.”
Maggie looked at him incredulously.
“He’s got you and I haven’t,” David explained.
“I don’t know if that’s exactly true.”
They stared at each other for a moment. Then Maggie said, “I never plan on talking to you this way. How come we always seem to get right into it?”
“What should we talk about?” he asked.
“Oh … art, I guess.”
David stood abruptly. “I’ve got something for you.” He opened his bureau drawer and removed a package.
“I don’t remember telling you I had a birthday,” Maggie said.
“No. This is just something I think you should have, if you don’t already.”
Maggie opened the gift and caught her breath. It was the Georgia O’Keeffe studio book. She covered her face with her hands and began to sob. David knelt beside her and stroked her hair.
“What is it?”
“I’m happy. I can’t even tell you,” she choked. “Oh, David, I feel so lucky.” She kissed him on the mouth, a long full kiss.
“How hungry are you?” he whispered.
“Very,” she said hoarsely.
They kissed again. His hands followed the line of her body from her neck down her bare s
houlders and arms. He slipped the straps off her shoulders and unzipped the front of her dress. He pushed the fabric aside gently, releasing her breasts. Maggie felt his name catch in her throat as he kissed her nipples. So gentle, his mouth and hands were like butterflies against her skin. She felt the heat rising from a part of her that had long been cold and dark. He was a magician, drawing fire with the lightest touch.
They undressed each other, frenzied now, with frantic kisses and hands searching. Finally David was inside her. Maggie cried out, a moan, a sob, a kind of deep laughter against his mouth. And soon they lay together, two long naked bodies clasped like a companion piece for the other stone figures, serene and complete in the sun.
“David, I’m so happy I don’t care if I die this second.” They were on his bed on the floor now, exhausted and glistening with sweat.
“Please don’t.”
She was silent a moment. “What if we hadn’t signed up for that class, David?” she went on. “What if only one of us had? God …”
“I would have found you anyway, by the smoked salmon at Zabar’s.”
“You don’t really believe in fate.”
“I never did, but I have to tell you I’ve been giving it some thought lately.”
“You make me want to work,” Maggie said, watching their fingers twine together on his chest. “What do other people do when they feel something so strongly, so strongly that it won’t stay inside their bodies? When there’s not enough room to contain it?”
“I don’t know how many people feel things that way,” David replied.
“It can’t only be creative people. Children do, I think.”
There were patterns on the ceiling now, the windows’ outlines stretched into long rectangles. “You see that?” David asked, taking her fingers and pointing at the shapes. “That’s the very first thing I remember in this life. Patterns on the ceiling above my bed, or crib, I guess. There were leaves and slats from the blinds, all moving. Beautiful.”
“Any color?”
“Grays, I suppose.”
“Funny …” Maggie began, then stopped.
“What’s funny?”
“No, it’s just that something’s happening. I’m not sure what. With making art, I mean. The shapes. I’ve never been involved much with that … more with color. Form, too, but … I can’t explain. It’s almost as if suddenly I’m more interested in the margins around the pictures than the pictures themselves. I did something at my parents’ house, unlike anything I’ve done before. With scissors and glue.” She laughed. “Like a child with cutouts. Only it was so exciting. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“You’d better explore it.”
“I guess I’d better.”
They lay quietly for a while. Finally Maggie said, “David, I’m in love with you.”
“I know.”
“Are you going to make me dinner?”
“All right.”
She stood up and held out a hand to help him. “But let’s not get dressed. We should always be naked.”
“Wait till January and my landlord turns off the heat.”
They stared at each other, both wondering where they would be in January.
“When I was talking about holograms,” Maggie said, “my parents?”
David nodded.
“That used to be me, too. But not anymore.”
He reached for her and held her for a long time.
Chapter 15
Fred’s small room was the perfect size for a studio. Maggie liked being confined while she worked; that way her ideas hung close around her in the air and could not escape beyond her reach. Her old accomplices had recently disappeared. The tortured tubes of oils were heaped in a cardboard box in the closet. No brushes poked from cans on the windowsill. The stinging scent of turpentine had been replaced by the sweeter aroma of glue. Her easel stood neglected against the wall like a reproachful spectator. Maggie sat at Fred’s desk surrounded by a wild array of colored paper: tissue, cardboard, newspaper, ribbon, tags from new clothes, dry-cleaner receipts, the chopsticks wrapper from a Chinese restaurant. It was midmorning, but she was still in her nightgown. The breakfast dishes were unwashed, the newspaper unread, even the mug of coffee beside her had turned cold as she snipped, pasted, arranged, and rearranged.
Last week from David’s apartment, Maggie watched a flock of birds over the Hudson River. Those near the surface circled relentlessly, as if caught in the funnel of a water spout. But soaring in the sky with the sun setting behind them were three who had broken free. They sailed and dipped and dove in a sea of salmon-pink light, as if they had exploded upward, out of the merciless pattern of the others. The beauty of their swirling freedom had moved Maggie. And now she sat staring down at a square of deep rose-pink Christmas wrap. The paper was a glossy foil whose reflective qualities suggested to her the brilliancy of a sunset over the river. She had cut white triangles out of various types of paper and had arranged them so that the heavier weight shapes were near the bottom of the shiny square. Those near the top were sheer tissue, which she wrinkled slightly as she pasted them down. She imagined becoming so light, so diaphanous, that the wind could lift her effortlessly and send her spinning into the air in a wild, free dance.
The telephone rang. At first she ignored it, remaining suspended like the birds. But soon the sound began to tug at her. She was to see David this afternoon. What if this was he, calling to cancel their appointment? She let it ring again. What if it was the camp in Vermont reporting an accident? She leapt up and dashed to reach the telephone before it stopped.
“I knew you were there,” Phyllis said.
Maggie was too breathless to respond.
“I want to know why you won’t see me,” Phyllis said. “It’s okay, you can catch your breath. But I’m not hanging up until I have an explanation.”
“I’ve been, ah, busy, you know I’m working again,” Maggie began. “I mean, not a job, of course, but making art …”
Phyllis interrupted. “The kids are in camp, Matthew’s at the office, you can’t possibly create masterpieces every minute of every day. What the hell is going on? I haven’t seen you since bridge at Robin’s and neither has anybody else.”
Maggie felt as if the telephone receiver had melted and stuck to her ear, that no matter how hard she tried to pry it loose, it would hang there forever on the side of her head like a grotesque appendage.
“Listen, roommate, if you don’t have lunch with me today, you can kiss me right off. Are you my friend or not?”
Maggie was to see David at two o’clock. But Phyllis’s voice, despite the upbeat banter, could not disguise its urgency. “Okay, Phyl. An early one, twelve at Mortimer’s?”
“Fine. See you then.”
When Maggie arrived, flushed and panting, Phyllis was waiting at the bar on a tall stool.
“You’re late,” Phyllis commented.
“Sorry.” Maggie glanced at her watch. “Only seven minutes.”
The maître d’ was able to seat them immediately, allowing Maggie the chance to compose herself by consulting the menu she already knew by heart. Once they had ordered, however, there was nowhere to hide. In the bright light of the table overlooking Lexington Avenue, Maggie felt as if she were on display to Phyllis and the rest of Manhattan.
“So how are you, Phyl?” Maggie asked, leaning forward on her elbows. A good defense is a strong offense, Matthew always said.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Phyllis replied. “You can’t get away with it, Hollander.”
Maggie tried to look bewildered.
“Don’t insult my penetrating intelligence. The subject of today’s luncheon meeting is Margaret, not Phyllis.”
Maggie sat back and drained her glass of white wine. She knew it was no use. “All right,” she admitted. “I know I’ve been sort of unavailable lately.”
Phyllis hooted and signaled to the waiter for two more glasses of wine. Then
she looked at Maggie for a long time with a smile on her face. “Listen, Mag,” she said when Maggie had begun to squirm. “I know you’re seeing someone.”
Maggie’s mouth opened and closed but no sound came out.
“No, it’s all right, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“What on earth makes you think such a thing?” Maggie asked.
“Don’t get clutched. I’m sure nobody else has any idea. It’s only because I’ve known you such a long time. And besides, I can usually tell. There are signs.” She looked around at the noisy fashionable crowd. There was a sprinkling of famous faces at the choice tables. “Some people can spot a nose job or a face lift,” she went on. “I’m an expert at love affairs.”
Maggie swallowed a third of the wine in her glass.
“Oh, every once in a while I get muddled between pregnancy and adultery. Pregnancy lends a similar voluptuous look to people sometimes, in the beginning, a smugness. I know you’re not pregnant, and you’re positively oozing sexuality. I bet you’ve got men following you on the street like dogs these days.”
Maggie was concentrating very hard on maintaining eye contact. If she looked away, it was capitulation. But Phyllis was right. In the space of five blocks between her apartment and Mortimer’s, she had been whistled at twice and saluted with an awful sucking noise by a van driver on Seventy-sixth Street.
“I don’t suppose there’s any point in denying it,” Maggie said finally. “You really want to believe this.”
Phyllis smiled and shook her head. Then she reached out and covered Maggie’s hand. “Honey,” she said softly, “I don’t mean to torture you. I only wanted you to know I knew so you wouldn’t hide from me anymore. I’ve missed you. Besides, it can be pretty rough sometimes. If you ever need to talk or if there’s anything I can do …”
Infuriatingly, Maggie’s eyes brimmed. At the sight of Maggie’s tears, Phyllis’s eyes grew moist as well, and the two women began to laugh.
“So let’s change the subject,” Phyllis said, wiping her eyes carefully so as not to disturb her mascara. “What’s going on between Robin and Jackson?”
