Portrait of a Married Woman

by Sally Mandel

  “Oh, my God,” Stephen said. “What can I do? How much was it? Maybe I can make it up …”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Matthew interrupted. “It happens all the time. We’ll sue the bastard.”

  Maggie began to giggle. The others looked at her. “I was fishing for a neutral topic,” she said. “Screwed up. You think of something, Phyl.” The giggles were expanding into choking laughter.

  “Are you all right?” Matthew asked.

  Maggie tried to speak but was gasping now. She gestured helplessly as tears slid down her face.

  “She’s upset about Robin,” Hilary said.

  Maggie nodded. “Upset,” she sputtered. “I’m upset. Oh Lord!” And she was off again.

  “Here, Mag,” Phyllis said, handing her a glass of wine. “Take a few deep breaths and then drink this down in one swig.”

  Maggie did as she was told. Finally her breathing returned to normal and she was able to wipe her eyes. Matthew patted her awkwardly on the back.

  “Sorry, I don’t know what came over me,” Maggie said. “I guess I was more shook up than I thought.”

  “We’re all shook up,” Phyllis said. “We may just as well try to talk about it. I promise I won’t be smug if you guys don’t get defensive on behalf of mankind. Okay?”

  “Fine,” Matthew said.

  “It’s that it’s so unexpected,” Maggie said. “I don’t know as it’s the best marriage in the world, but I certainly thought of it as a permanent one.”

  “We’re going to be hearing a lot of this,” Stephen said.

  “It’s already started,” Phyllis agreed. “Two kids in Zach’s class this spring had parents split up.”

  “Are these supposed to be rough years?” Matthew asked. “I don’t notice any particular stress. Do you, Mag?”

  Maggie avoided looking at Phyllis.

  “It’s the times we live in,” Phyllis said quickly. “We’re all stuck in limbo. Our parents had this nice formula where everybody knew their slot. You just never stepped outside it. Very uncomplicated. Now everybody’s telling us that women have to be more like men and men have to be more like women.”

  “Well, don’t believe everything you hear,” Matthew said.

  “Can’t help it,” Phyllis said. “It sinks in after a while. Besides, it’s true. The old way sucks.”

  “How would you change things, Phyllis?” Matthew asked.

  “I’d be teaching physics at Columbia,” she answered promptly.

  Matthew looked stunned.

  “She was a whiz in the sciences,” Maggie said. “Top of the class.”

  “So why not?” Matthew asked.

  “So I got married and followed my husband to New York and put him through his MBA with my nice little job at Woman’s Companion. And then I got pregnant.”

  “But you could do it now,” Hilary protested.

  Phyllis shrugged.

  “She’s too busy with her tennis game and her manicure and lunch with the girls,” Stephen said.

  “I thought we weren’t going to get nasty,” Phyllis snapped.

  “Truth hurts,” Stephen said.

  “Something happens to all that ambition,” Maggie said. “It gets siphoned off by people needing you all the time.”

  “There are the rare exceptions,” Phyllis said. “Whoever thought Robin would be one of them?”

  “She’s left her husband,” Matthew protested. “That’s not establishing a career.”

  “But if she’s unhappy and has the courage to break away, it’s a start,” Maggie said.

  Matthew stared at her. “They should try to work it out. It’s not courageous to run out on the situation.”

  There was a long silence. Phyllis lit up a cigarette. There were already half a dozen cigarette butts in her ashtray.

  “Kids don’t help any,” Stephen said finally. “Some of our worst fights are over Zach. Although I suppose that’s because we’re not very good parents.”

  “Speak for yourself, darling,” Phyllis remarked.

  “All right. I’m a pitiful father. I don’t know, I say the wrong thing nine times out of ten. I keep meaning to thank you two for letting Zach spend so much time at your house. It’s good for him, being around you and Fred.”

  “It’d be better for him to have a decent relationship with his own father,” Phyllis said.

  “Sometimes I think it’d be a good idea to get into some kind of counseling …”

  “Ha!” Phyllis hooted. “You’ve been saying that for at least five years. You’ll never do it, you just like to parade your good intentions. How about a public pledge? Maybe then you’d actually get off your ass.”

  “You’re embarrassing me,” Stephen muttered, his face scarlet.

  “I don’t mind embarrassing you if it’s going to help Zach,” Phyllis replied.

  “You don’t mind embarrassing me just for the fun of it. Besides, I don’t see that eight years of therapy’s done much for you.”

  “Listen, you two,” Matthew interjected. “Why don’t you slug it out in private? Any more marital discord around here and Maggie’ll start giggling again.”

  “You’re right, you’re right,” Stephen said. “Come on, Phyl, let’s quit playing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and have another drink.”

  The remainder of the meal passed glumly but without incident. By the time the bill arrived, they had consumed three bottles of wine.

  Later Matthew turned to Maggie in the dark in their king-size bed. “What a pair they are,” he said.

  “Stephen and Phyllis?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess if I’d had to choose, I would have picked them to split up before the Brodys.”

  “No question about it.” He placed a hand over her breast. “You think that could happen to us?”

  “I suppose it can happen to anybody,” she said.

  Matthew was quiet for a while. Then he stared in the direction of the ceiling. “I guess I don’t say it very often. I figure you know it without my saying so. But I do love you.”

  Maggie’s throat tightened. He was waiting, she knew, for her to respond in kind. “I love you too,” she whispered finally. It was true in a way, she told herself. They had lived together for a long time. You can’t share that many years without loving, in a way. But as Matthew’s caresses grew more insistent, she thought of David with shame. I’m doing this because I have to, she told David silently. As Matthew drew his body across her and nudged her legs apart with his knee, she thought with sickening irony of the guilt she felt in allowing her own husband to make love to her.

  “Fred’s gonna get best boy camper this year,” Susan proclaimed from the back seat.

  “I won’t,” Fred protested.

  “You will.” Susan spoke with the profound authority of her new position as counselor-in-training.

  “Mom, can’t you move the seat up? I’m all tangled back here.” Fred seemed to have grown four inches since June. He was thinner. For the first time, Maggie thought she saw a resemblance to Matthew.

  “Zachary Wheeler may make worst camper,” Susan said. “If he doesn’t get thrown out.”

  “Oh dear, why?” Maggie asked.

  “He’s got a lot of problems, Mom,” Fred replied.

  “I thought you liked him,” Matthew said, swerving to pass a tractor carrying a load of hay.

  “I do,” Fred said. “But he’s probably gonna get busted for smoking dope and messing around with Freda Gross.”

  Matthew shot Maggie an alarmed look. He had a dread of drugs anywhere near the children. “How could he get hold of anything way up here?”

  “Oh, Daddy,” Susan said. “Don’t be so naive.”

  “He never does it around me,” Fred said. “And anyhow, he’s been warned, so maybe he’ll watch it now. They already threw one kid out, and that scared Zach. They told us he had appendicitis and had to go home.”

  “Reuben
Marshall had appendicitis,” Sue said in her capacity as a spokesperson for the camp.

  “That must be why he was popping all those little blue capsules,” Fred said. “To kill the pain.”

  “My God,” Matthew said.

  “Don’t worry about us,” Fred assured him. “We’re much too well-adjusted.”

  “Remember camp, Matthew?” Maggie asked. “Roasting marshmallows over the campfire, hikes in the fresh air, square dances?”

  “Actually we got drunk in the boathouse one night,” Matthew said.

  “See?” Susan exclaimed. “Plus c’est la meme chose.”

  Maggie twisted around in her seat to inspect her children. It always disoriented her to see them after a long absence. They had such fresh attractive faces, the kind she enjoyed looking at in airports and restaurants. By the time Maggie had reached Fred’s age, she had already begun to withdraw. In every class photograph from the sixth grade onward, Maggie wore the same solemn expression. Fred and Susan had open, confident faces. They were brown from four weeks of outdoor activities, except for the mosquito bites that dotted their arms and legs. Maggie smiled.

  “Remember when you both had chickenpox for Christmas?”

  Susan laughed. “Yeah, and you gave us paintbrushes with calamine lotion in our stockings and had us paint each other’s spots.”

  “Well, it worked. I just couldn’t do you both every day. Together you must have had five hundred poxes. Anyhow, it kept you occupied.”

  Maggie noticed that Susan had pulled her hair back into a ponytail. It was streaked with gold. The soft hairs around her face were bleached white-blond. “You look very pretty, honey,” Maggie said. “Being a counselor must agree with you.”

  “She was a pain at first,” Fred declared. “Ordering everybody around, especially me so she wouldn’t get accused of nepotism. But once she got over being drunk with power, she turned out to be a pretty excellent counselor.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Susan said wryly. “He’s always trying to worm privileges out of me, like not having to set tables.”

  “I need all the support I can get,” Fred explained. “I’m entering puberty.”

  Matthew laughed. “God knows it’s rough to set tables with puberty lurking around the corner.”

  They pulled onto the steep road that led up to the hotel.

  “Who’s the richest black man in the world, Dad?” Fred asked.

  “I haven’t the vaguest idea. Probably some king in Africa. Why?”

  “What about the richest black woman?”

  “Oh, Fred,” Maggie said. They turned into the parking lot and the children scrambled out of the back seat and raced for the hotel entrance.

  “What do you suppose that was all about?” Matthew asked as they trailed along behind.

  “God knows,” Maggie said. “It never changes with him. Remember ‘If you dropped a penny off the World Trade Center, would it make a hole in the sidewalk?’ ”

  “I got ‘If you dropped water off the World Trade Center, at which floor would it evaporate?’ ” He swung his arm around Maggie’s shoulder. “I wish we could take them home with us tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” Maggie said. As she and Matthew stood adoring their children, she struggled to think about David and what he might be doing at this particular moment. But his image flickered evasively in the powerful light of the sunny Vermont morning.

  When Maggie mentioned the subject of Robin and Jackson, Matthew’s hands turned white on the steering wheel.

  “If she took off just because of the adoption thing, I can’t work up any sympathy for her,” he said. “The man already has a kid of his own. She knew that when she married him.”

  “Why shouldn’t she have one of her own?”

  “It wouldn’t be her own. It would be adopted.”

  Maggie stared out the window at the blur of pine trees and telephone poles. It was like the film of a parade speeded up to an unbearable velocity. “I’m not sure it’s just the issue of having children,” she said. “It’s his whole attitude …”

  “Fuck attitude,” Matthew interrupted. “She’s acting like a spoiled child. I don’t know, you women amaze me sometimes.”

  “Oh, we women?”

  “Jackson works his balls off trying to give her a good life and look what he gets for his pains. I suppose he’s going to be paying two rents now.”

  Maggie was silent.

  “I see it all the time in the legal profession. The poor suckers get dragged into court and never crawl out from under the alimony payments. Meanwhile, the exwives keep the car and the fancy co-op apartment and the clothes and the antiques …”

  “You know damn well,” Maggie broke in, “that most divorced women never collect their alimony payments or their child support. You’re really worked up about this.”

  “Isn’t it something to get worked up over?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it.” He snapped on the radio. WPIX. Love songs, nothing but love songs. Roberta Flack was singing “The First Time Ever.” The first time ever David Golden had touched Maggie, his hand had been so gentle. She looked at the angry man who was glaring out at the road with clenched jaw and thought about Robin all by herself in her very own apartment. What Maggie felt was profound envy.

  Chapter 17

  “We’re too goddamn solemn,” David said to her over the telephone.

  Maggie was startled enough to hear his voice at ten in the morning. His lighthearted tone baffled her further. “Oh,” she said.

  David laughed. “It’s a beautiful day and we’re going to enjoy it. Bring a warm sweater, jeans, and rubbersoled shoes, and don’t ask me any questions.”

  “Aye, aye,” Maggie said. There was sudden silence at the other end. Maggie knew that she had reached into his brain yet again and guessed correctly that they were to be on a boat.

  David was already standing at Riverside Drive and Seventy-ninth Street when Maggie got off the bus.

  “Where are we going?” She gave him a quick kiss and allowed him to take her arm. Lately, her vestigial fears of being seen with David had dissipated. She thought perhaps it was because her life on the West Side had become so vivid and essential it now seemed inviolable. Sometimes she wondered if there was an unconscious wish to be caught and thereafter forced into decision, but the reality of such an event seemed so horrific that she repressed such notions as soon as they surfaced.

  David led her across the intersection and along a path that bisected the ribbon of Riverside Park. Suddenly they rounded a bend and blinked at the dazzling spectacle of the Seventy-ninth Street boat basin. Maggie had seen the marina from David’s windows, but the aerial view left her unprepared for the sight that confronted her now. Except for the muted roar of traffic and ambulance sirens shooting past on the West Side Highway, she might have been in a quaint fishing village. Dozens of tidy sailboats and powerboats nestled against the docks and bobbed in the September sunshine. There were some square-shaped vessels as well, like boxes on platforms, a small barge with an ancient beetle-shaped Volkswagen aboard, and a jaunty red tugboat.

  David followed her line of vision and gestured toward the tug. “Fellow picked that up on the Jersey shore after it spent a long career towing sand barges. It’s quite a house. There’s even a baby grand piano nailed down in there.”

  Maggie laughed. “This is like Hilary’s apartment.”

  “Why’s that?” David asked as he unlatched a gate and motioned her out onto the pier.

  “Serendipity. She lives at the top of a dingy old warehouse in SoHo. If you survive the rickety elevator, you step out into this huge white space with polished floors and skylights. She’s furnished it with antiques and needlepoint rugs, a real surprise, like pianos in tugboats. And this place perched on the edge of the river.” Suddenly she pulled back. “David, didn’t you tell me Eliza Austin has a boat here?”

  “Yes. She lives on it.
”

  “I don’t think I want to do this.”

  “Liza’s a good friend, Maggie. I want you to know each other.” Reluctantly Maggie let him urge her along. “After all,” he continued, “she was really the beginning of everything for us.”

  They made their way along the pier and off onto a spur to the left. David halted beside a thirty-foot fiberglass boat and rapped on the hull. A muffled voice called “Come!” David climbed aboard, gave Maggie a hand, then disappeared below while Maggie stood awkwardly on the teak deck wishing she could hop back on the crosstown bus. Her feet in their battered tennis shoes were pointed toes-inward like a schoolgirl awaiting punishment.

  After a moment, Eliza Austin’s gray cropped head appeared, then shoulders, and finally the entire six feet of her, clad in overalls and navy-blue wool turtleneck. It was difficult to accept the fact that Eliza was approaching seventy. She was slim and straight, and had the same type of face as David’s, clean and spare, with nothing hidden by excess pouches of flesh. There were wrinkles, of course, but they only served to soften the severity of her high forehead and cheekbones. She might have been David’s mother.

  Eliza watched, amused, while Maggie made her surreptitious inspection. Then the older woman held out her hand. “Welcome aboard. The overalls are a necessity. Sometimes it gets pretty hectic alone at the helm, so I always keep a supply of emergency equipment in here.” She reached into a roomy pocket and drew out two cigar-shaped pretzels and a can of grapefruit juice. “And here. And here.” Another pocket held a pair of sunglasses and some Band-Aids, a third a miniature tool kit.

  “It was nice of you to invite me. Us,” Maggie said. But Eliza was already busy coiling lines and pushing buttons on an instrument panel.

  “We’ll be set in a minute. David, ready to cast off?”

  David stood at the bow. “Anytime you say,” he called.

  Maggie sat down and watched as the two expertly maneuvered the boat away from the dock, David pushing off with his foot and Eliza reversing with one hand on the wheel. Soon they were free of the marina and heading north up the Hudson. Although it had been quite warm back at the dock, there was a stiff breeze on the water. Maggie turned her face into the wind and let it whip back her hair. A tanker, moving seaward, split the golden surface of the river, leaving a foamy wake. Far ahead, the George Washington Bridge stretched in a graceful span from New York to New Jersey. Along the shore on the Manhattan side, the trees had begun to turn, mostly yellow with an occasional burst of scarlet from a sugar maple.