Portrait of a Married Woman

by Sally Mandel

  “I know why.”

  Maggie picked up his hand, kissed it, and returned to her sushi. “Matt thought I was crazy, sitting there at Fred’s desk making little piles of circles.” She stopped suddenly. David’s face had flinched at the mention of her husband’s name.

  “I’m sorry,” Maggie said. “I forget sometimes …”

  “You live with him. He’s part of your life. But it’s worse when you call him ‘Matt.’ ” He smiled ruefully and shook his head. “I’m a very possessive man.”

  “I know that.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because you can’t part with your carvings.”

  David drained his beer. “Your kids will be home on Friday.”

  “Don’t be jealous of them.”

  “I’m not jealous. I want them in my life. They’re part of you. They came from your body.”

  “It would be easier if they hated their father.”

  David shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t. You can’t bear to think of depriving them of anything, much less that.”

  “David, I want to be with you all the time, not just a few hours in the middle of the day. It shouldn’t be a novelty waking up in the morning with you beside me.”

  “Then …” he began, and hesitated. “I’m afraid to pressure you. I’m afraid you’ll bolt on me.”

  “Other people find ways when these things happen. Why am I paralyzed?”

  “Because you don’t want to hurt anybody.” He sighed.

  “He’s a decent man, David.”

  “If you tell me that one more time, I’ll have you shot.”

  A young woman in an elaborate kimono stood quietly beside their table. “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “Everything is fine,” David said. She bowed and disappeared with sandals slapping against tiny feet.

  “I wish we lived in Japan,” Maggie said. The ambience of the place, with its perfectly ordered decor, its carefully presented food, its beautiful polite waitress, seemed so controlled and passionless. Perhaps in Japan, love affairs were never chaotic.

  David read her thoughts. “Ever take a good hard look at Japanese art?” he asked.

  Maggie smiled, remembering the blood and the lust. “Yes. I guess there’s no escape.” They were both silent, lost in yearnings. “You know what,” Maggie said finally. “I want to do a whole wall. A huge white space about eighteen by ten.”

  “With your hole punch?”

  “Yes, and other things. It’s been struggling in my head. I’m going to need too much space, though.”

  “Put it on my wall.”

  “Are you serious?” But she saw that he was. She contemplated the open white rectangle that was washed with intense river light. “It’s about perfect.”

  “I figure it ought to take you at least thirty-five years.”

  “God willing.” She got up. “Let’s get an ice cream cone and walk back home.”

  She told Matthew that she was working on a project requiring space and that a fellow student from last summer’s class had offered his studio for a few hours a day. Matthew asked no questions. In fact, he appeared not to have heard her.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Maggie asked. Listen to me when I’m lying to you, she thought.

  Matthew looked up from the Times. “You’ll be working in someone’s studio, person from class. I heard you.”

  Anyway, it wasn’t even a lie, Maggie told herself.

  Before long, David began to see her every afternoon. At first, he would stay home and wait for her. She would smile at him, hold his hand, even make love with him, but he felt all the while how she was drawn to that great white wall on the other side of the room. Soon he gave her a key and began leaving the apartment before she was due. Then when he came back to her much later, he was always rewarded with her exhausted, grateful smile.

  She began by transporting the accumulation of many years’ work across the park in her black leather portfolio. She kept the papers in a pile on the floor beside the wall and each evening when she had gone, David examined piece after piece, reading her past as if he were poring over a photograph album. There were early experiments with fabric designs, undisciplined but fabulously colored. There was a series in various color washes that from a distance seemed merely attractive nubbly-surfaced abstractions. Close up, however, row upon row of tiny faces, each different, peered out. There was another group portraying the surfaces of tree bark: oak, birch, pine, maple. There were several renditions of baby’s hands and feet that David found particularly poignant.

  Sometimes when David was sketching to prepare for a new carving, he stayed and sat at the round table, looking up every now and then to watch Maggie. At first, she did nothing but sit on the floor and cut up her work with a pair of scissors. She would make a selection from the pile, then study it carefully for what seemed a long time. When she began cutting, she often worked against the flow of the design to create movement and tension. This process went on for many days. Then one afternoon she arrived at the apartment in a state of agitation.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Is it that I’m here? I was going to sketch today, but I can do it at the studio.”

  “No. I’m ready to begin on the wall today. I’m terrified.”

  Like the first strike into the stone, it was a commitment. Even if you changed your mind later, the initial impulse reverberated with a kind of tyranny.

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  “No.”

  He saw that it did not matter. She smiled apologetically.

  “I won’t let myself be jealous of your work,” he said.

  She kissed him, shrugged off her coat, and spilled the wild array of shapes and colors onto his floor. David fixed himself a cup of tea, and sat with the sketchpad untouched.

  For nearly twenty minutes Maggie stared at the wall, sighed, sat on the windowsill and stared some more, then went to ponder the cutouts. Finally, with the acuity of an osprey after a fish, her hand dived into the multicolored patchwork and picked up a piece. It was crescent-shaped, fashioned from a fabric design of bold green and burgundy. She strode to the wall and taped the fragment to the upper-left area of the space. Then she returned to the center of the room and stared some more.

  Pretty soon she swooped after another piece, this time a square of intricately woven strips from the tree series. She placed it to the lower right of the first, then retraced her steps to stare again. This process went on all afternoon. David barely sketched at all, so enthralled was he with watching her redesign the fragments of her history.

  There was a kind of radiant intensity in her face that might have been frightening had he himself not experienced the emotions that produced it. As she paced back and forth, he watched the long bones of her legs swing as she walked, the flat pelvis pivot with each turn, and he appreciated their movement as he supposed only a man who loved stone could. But Maggie was living stone, warm-blooded and graceful, and her presence in his home produced a peculiar convergence of excitement and peace. Everything in his life seemed suddenly to make sense. There was coherence where there had once been restless discontent.

  Maggie flung herself down at the table. “Whoa, maybe I’m too old for this. Got some tea for me?”

  He poured her a cup. It was lukewarm but she gulped it thankfully. Both of them gazed at the wall for a moment.

  “Why that particular spot?” David asked. “Where you began.”

  “I don’t know, really. I always seem to work out of the upper left-hand corner. It’s where my focus is.”

  “Ever try starting somewhere else?”

  “Oh, sure, but I always wind up feeling lost. There’s never any balance.” She took his sketchpad and saw that he had made only a single preliminary drawing. “Oh, David. I’m not good for you.”

  “You are good for me. You’re the best thing to fall into my life since my first hunk of alabaster. In fact, I think I could
give up my work before I could live without you.”

  “I don’t want that kind of power.”

  “I can’t help you there.”

  “Besides,” she continued, “I don’t believe it. As long as you’re still breathing, you’ll be carving stone.”

  He considered this. “Tell you what, let’s not test it, okay?”

  After she left, he turned on all the lights and scrutinized what she had done. The wild collection of colors and the juxtaposition of fantastic shapes seemed to leap off the wall and dance in the air.

  “I know I shouldn’t call you,” he said into the telephone, “but I’ve been looking at your wall. It’s thrilling, Maggie. You’re doing something extraordinary here.”

  “Thank you.” She sounded pleased, with none of the usual strangled remoteness of other phone calls.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you.”

  His eyes kept returning to the wall. It was as if she was living there with him at last, singing, crying, and speaking in many voices from the other side of the room.

  Chapter 19

  Maggie’s fingers trembled as she picked up the telephone to dial her doctor. With one hand she gripped the receiver. The other she held unconsciously to her right breast.

  “This is Margaret Hollander. I’m calling for my autopsy report. I mean, oh, sorry, my biopsy report.”

  “Just a moment, please.”

  While she waited with the dead air against her ear, the knot in her throat threatened to gag her. It felt a bit like the forbidden lump of laughter that used to choke her as a child at somber occasions like funerals.

  “Mrs. Hollander, this is Dr. Berg. It was negative. You’re fine. It’s just a cyst.”

  “Oh God, thanks,” Maggie said. “What do I do now?”

  “Go on with your life. I’ll see you in six months.”

  Maggie sat on the edge of the bed and tried to analyze her reaction to the news. Go on with your life, the man said, as if that was such a simple matter. Checking into a hospital seemed like a respite. Major surgery would have kept her isolated for a few weeks anyway, and after that, if it turned out that they had not managed to remove every malignant particle, perhaps she would soon achieve a permanent reprieve. No guilt. No decisions. Her heart began to thump. Death. The word flew about the room like a huge black bird, beating its wings against the walls, the windows, her face.

  The phone jangled. “Hello,” she said, certain it would be David.

  “Hi, Mags. Did you get your results yet?” It was Matthew.

  “Yes. I’m fine. It was okay.” She could not remember telling him she would find out this morning. There was silence on the other end.

  “That’s great,” he said finally. She heard the catch in his voice. “In a meeting. See you at dinner.”

  As soon as he hung up, Maggie began to cry. What was Matthew doing showing concern for her health? And what was she doing reacting with tears? She tried to imagine herself telling him about David. What was the kindest way to say it? Matt, I’m leaving you and taking the kids. Does one do such things over dinner? Or first thing in the morning, perhaps, when everybody is presumably stronger.

  This situation is giving me lumps in my breasts, Maggie thought. I’m giving myself cancer. She got off the bed, washed her face, threw on a heavy jacket, and went out. She walked aimlessly along Seventy-ninth Street until she found herself in front of the Metropolitan Museum. It was cold and damp, but not raining yet, so she sat down on one of the benches. I will watch these other people, Maggie thought. I will observe them and I will learn.

  A large yellow school bus stopped at the curb. The doors opened and released a tumbling chattering collection of Oriental children dressed in black uniforms. They chased across the plaza, settling on the empty benches like a flock of starlings on a telephone wire. Soon they were herded together by their chaperons and swept up the vast stone stairs into the museum. Two young women with strollers passed, eyed Maggie, and then sat down on a bench nearby. Out came the Smurf and Strawberry Shortcake thermoses and the plastic Baggies full of raisins and whole-wheat cookies. The toddlers, freed from their strollers, began to grab at each other’s snacks.

  “Jason! We want to share. Melanie always shares with you. Give her a cookie.”

  “That’s all right,” Melanie’s mother responded.

  As Jason continued to hoard his cookies, his mother’s voice began to lose its guise of reasonableness. “Please share your cookie, Jason,” she wheedled. “I’ll be your best freh-hend.” She wrenched a cookie from Jason’s tiny fingers and handed it to Melanie. Jason promptly flung himself to the ground and began to wail. His mother stood over him helplessly. “Jason, this is not appropriate behavior. You know I love you, darling, but I do not love your behavior.” Jason began to kick and flail. His mother looked at her friend. “He didn’t have a nap yesterday. He’s overtired.” She picked up the howling child, ducking the swinging feet. “It’s all right, Mommy loves you,” she crooned. “Come, I’ll take you to McDonald’s and buy you a nice burger and fries.”

  Maggie glared at the woman and tried to transmit her thoughts through the air. I hate you, Maggie said in her head. You are so stupid, so criminally stupid. Your child will grow up sick and twisted and destructive because you are such a fool. You’ll probably have three more babies and turn them all into monsters and the world will have to cope with them. I hate you.

  Jason’s mother turned to intercept Maggie’s furious gaze. The young woman’s face was full of bewildered love.

  When Maggie and Matthew first moved uptown, they used to see a woman who haunted these benches and the street near the museum. It was difficult to guess her age. She was tall, slim, wore her hair in a neat pile on her head. Her face was weathered, but attractive. She was always just barely smiling, either sitting with her hands crossed in her lap or striding up Madison Avenue—in the street, never on the sidewalk. People always looked at her. But it soon became apparent that there was something off kilter. Either her otherwise impeccable attire was marred by stockings that hung in sagging wrinkles around her legs or it was mid-July and she was wearing a heavy wool scarf twisted around her neck as if it were January.

  Maggie constructed endless romantic tragedies around the woman. She was an heiress driven to insanity by a lover who had betrayed her. She was a brilliant artist who had forsaken her children to paint, only to lose her great gift. Maggie searched the benches, but there was no sign of the strange elegant presence. She glanced down at her own ankles. Her stockings clung smoothly. Her jacket was buttoned tightly to her chin like everyone else’s. I am an ordinary woman, Maggie told herself. What did ordinary women do in a situation like hers? There must be thousands of them, suspended between husband and lover. Perhaps there were some who could live like this interminably. If she had been raised in a cave by wolves, for instance, instead of in a suburban Connecticut colonial by Colin and Norma Herrick. Maggie imagined herself standing in a pit while two cement walls slowly, inexorably closed in upon her, creaking and scraping. It might have been a scene from an old James Bond movie. But Maggie was not a James Bond heroine, and there was no hero to rush in at the last moment and release her from her own dilemma. “What I’d better do is go home and cook dinner,” Maggie said aloud. Peripherally, she saw Jason’s mother turn her face away quickly, the way one does to avoid eye contact with a crazy person.

  And when I cross the street, Maggie thought, careful now to keep the words unspoken within her head, perhaps I shall be run over by the Number Four bus and be crushed into oblivion.

  Matthew was jaunty at the table but he did not mention Maggie’s test. In fact, he barely looked at her, as if the intensity of his telephone call needed to be diluted.

  “So, Frederick, your sister says you have a girlfriend,” he remarked.

  “She’s full of it,” Fred answered. His voice had begun to crack since the summer, so that the last few words emerged half an octave lower th
an the rest.

  “I don’t know why you’re so defensive,” Susan complained. “She’s only the richest girl in school, even if she does have bow legs.”

  “Listen,” Fred said menacingly, “I don’t go mouthing off about your precious David, do I?”

  Maggie’s heart shut down completely for several seconds.

  “Jeez, you must really have it bad,” Susan said.

  “The trick is to be cool,” Matthew advised Fred. “You always rise to the bait, which is why your sister can’t resist giving you the business.”

  “Don’t take away all my fun, Daddy,” Susan said. Her braces had been removed in late October and she had developed a dazzling smile.

  “Who’s David?” Matthew asked.

  “If you mean David Zimmerman,” Susan said to Fred, “we are strictly platonic.”

  “To your disgust,” Fred said.

  “Mother, don’t you think Fred got surly over the summer?”

  Maggie smiled at her son. His complexion had developed red spots, and fine dark hairs shadowed his upper lip. He was much thinner.

  “It’s just adolescence,” Maggie said. “You ought to know all about it.”

  “Yeah, it sucks,” Susan said.

  “Watch it,” Matthew warned.

  “Anyway, Mom’s not so normal either,” Fred observed. “She’s been in never-never-land since we got home. Right, Sue?”

  Susan chewed her dinner roll and nodded. “We decided it was early menopause. Have you been getting hot flashes, Mom?”

  “What are you talking about?” Maggie asked.

  “You’ve gotten much too skinny, and you don’t hear people when they talk,” Sue said. “I told you three times about my play tryouts, and this morning you asked me when I was having my play tryouts. I mean, really.”

  “Last week Sue got my laundry in her drawers and I got all her stuff. Even a bra,” Fred protested. “Size twenty-eight triple-A.”

  “Shut up, Fred,” Susan said.