by Sally Mandel
Maggie nodded. “I was going to be a great artist and you a criminal court judge and we’d raise children together, taking turns walking them to school and waking up with them in the night.”
“Well, Christ, look what happened.”
She was silent.
“What can a man do?” Matthew asked. “What do you women really want from a marriage?”
“Theoretically?” she asked, with a touch of bitterness. The candle on the table hissed and flickered.
“I don’t manhandle you anymore,” he said. “Give me credit for that.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful?” Maggie asked. “After pleading for seventeen years and being ignored? You only quit it because I slugged you as hard as I could. Is that what I have to do to get your attention?”
“Not anymore. I’m asking you to talk to me.”
Maggie glared at him.
“Come on, talk,” he challenged her.
“What I have to say isn’t fit for elegant surroundings like these.”
Matthew stood abruptly, dug in his wallet, slapped two fifty-dollar bills on the table, and held out his hand. “All right. Let’s go someplace that is.”
Out on the beach, the wind had quickened. Waves at high tide beat up against the sand and retreated. A full moon dodged the clouds to provoke weird shadows on the shore. Matthew spun Maggie around to face him. She could distinguish every whisker and every wrinkle on his face in the strange light.
“Let’s have it!” he shouted over the wind. “What do you say?”
“You’re an insensitive bastard,” Maggie began. “No, you’re not a bastard, that’s what makes it even more terrible. You’re a nice guy, but you don’t see people. We’re all factors, items, that get arranged to suit your convenience. If somebody says something you don’t like, you don’t bother listening. Being married to you is like flailing at the wind. Jesus Christ, Matthew, how could you not remember that Susan got her goddamn period!” It was all exploding out of her. She felt her face contort with the screaming and knew that nothing could stop her. “You don’t know your own daughter, or Fred, or me, you don’t even know yourself! Maybe you should see a psychiatrist! Maybe that’d be a start!” She began to run. She felt wild, exhilarated, but it was hard going with the sand sliding away beneath her feet. She could hear Matthew just behind her.
“You can’t lay it all on me,” he was shouting. “You’re a silent brooder. It’s deadly. It eats you up and destroys everything around you. Yes, I heard you when you jabbed me in the gut. You should have done it years ago.”
“People shouldn’t have to scream to be heard,” Maggie yelled back.
“Sometimes they do.” He grabbed her arm and she struck out at him.
“I hate you!” Maggie howled. She pummeled his chest with her fists. He pinned her arms against him and they both fell to the sand. She struggled, but he held her fast.
“I hate you, I hate you,” she sobbed again and again until finally all the energy went out of her and she lay still.
“Anything else?” he asked her after a while.
“Yes,” she sniffed, and sat up, brushing sand out of her hair. “You were my friend and you let me down.”
Back in New York, Maggie realized that during the entire week, Matthew had not once tried to make love to her.
Chapter 22
The evening was unexpectedly mild for January. Maggie wore her down coat open, while Matthew was content with a wool sports jacket over his sweater. As they walked down Lexington Avenue toward the Ice Studio, Maggie took a deep breath. She always drew hope from the false spring contrived by a January thaw. It assured her that winter would truly end one day.
Matthew took her hand. His was smooth compared to David’s bony roughness. Guiltily she glanced down the sidewalk, as if David might materialize to find her walking hand in hand with her husband.
“What are you thinking, Mags?”
“Oh, I don’t know. About springtime, I guess.”
“Pretty sober face for such a pleasant topic.”
“Do you know, Matt, I bet you’ve asked me what I’m thinking half a dozen times since we got back.”
“Have I? I’m curious, that’s all. You get this Mona Lisa expression and I don’t know where you are.”
“I’m not complaining,” Maggie said. “I’m just not used to it.”
“Are we on time?” Matthew asked, checking his watch.
“Early, actually. Zach’s skating lesson is over at seven-thirty and we don’t have to have him up at school for the show until eight-fifteen.”
“How come Stephen isn’t taking him straight from the rink?” Matthew asked.
“He’s got a dinner meeting and Phyllis is at the hospital with her mother. I didn’t think it would kill us to go four blocks out of our way.”
“Okay, okay,” Matthew said. “Just asking.”
They walked half a block in silence. The scratchy brown carcasses of discarded Christmas trees lay in a heap at the curb.
“Do you think I could ever be more like you, Mags?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re in it up to your neck. You’ve had babies. I mean felt the pain and bled. You’ve mopped up their vomit and worried all night with them.”
“You have too,” Maggie said.
“I worry until I get out the door in the morning, and then I leave it all to you.”
“But you care about your clients.”
“My clients. That’s not family, that’s pieces of paper. They come and go. There’s no impact on my life, just ripples on the surface. You make things, beautiful permanent things, with your hands. You’re involved with … your friends.-Get all messed up in their lives. You’re not afraid of that, of the mess. You feel things, I know, so deeply, and you suffer …”
Maggie dropped her eyes. Matthew’s grip on her hand tightened. “I’m like one of those bugs that skates on the water, we used to call them skimmers,” he said. “I’ve never really gotten wet. You think it’s too late for me to submerge? Once a skimmer, always a skimmer?”
“Come, it’s up here,” Maggie said, opening a heavy wooden door with a narrow staircase behind it.
At the top, another door opened into a frosty room with benches, and beyond that, a picture window overlooked a small square rink. Three girls sat on benches unlacing their skates and giggling. A gum-chewing attendant leafed through Variety at the desk. “Help?” he asked Maggie and Matthew without enthusiasm. The sound emerged from his mouth in a mist of condensation that smelled of Juicy Fruit.
“We’re just picking someone up,” Matthew said, approaching the window. “It’s colder in here than it is outside. Hey, that’s Stephen.”
“Yes, he always skates with Zach. He doesn’t trust anybody else to teach him,” Maggie said.
“What’s he going to do, wear his skates to his meeting? Christ, he’s pretty good,” Matthew said.
Stephen executed a neat jump. The piped music was barely audible outside the glass cage. “It’s like a silent movie,” Maggie said.
Zachary watched his father carefully and tried to imitate him, but his ankles kept collapsing inward. He could barely stand, let alone attempt the tricks Stephen was urging on him. Suddenly the boy fell. His ludicrous version of Stephen’s leap had caused him to catch a pick in the slushy surface, and he went down hard. He grasped his knee and tried to bite back the tears. Stephen stood above him, talking and gesticulating while Zachary huddled in his wet jeans, one hand on his knee and the other extended to his father.
“Help him up,” Matthew muttered.
But Stephen ignored the hand. Tears were forming raw streaks on the boy’s face. He tried to struggle onto his feet, but the weakened knee would not support him and he went down again. His cry penetrated the heavy plate glass.
“Goddammit,” Matthew said, as Stephen angrily thrust Zachary’s hand away. Matthew rapped hard on the window. Stephen turn
ed in annoyance, but Matthew beckoned insistently. Once Stephen recognized Matthew, his face rearranged itself into a friendly smile. He came to the door and opened it while Zachary began a painful crawl to the side of the rink.
“Hi. We’re learning the first rule of skating. How to get up after you fall on your ass.”
“Yeah,” Matthew said. “Hey, Zach, you ready?”
“But we’ve got another fifteen minutes,” Stephen protested.
“Sorry, but we’ve got an errand to run on our way to the show.” Matthew held his hand out to Zachary, who gratefully clutched it and made his way to the nearest bench.
Stephen’s face was at war between irritation and hero worship. “Well, thanks for picking up my little klutz here,” he said. “Sorry I can’t make the show, Zach.” He glanced at the wall clock. “I’ve got a little time before I have to be downtown. Think I’ll just stick around in there for a couple of minutes.” He escaped back onto the rink.
Outside, Matthew ushered Maggie and Zachary into the coffee shop across the street. “Here, sit in a booth and order something gooey,” he told Zachary.
“Is this our errand?” Maggie asked.
“Mm,” Matthew said.
Over a butterscotch sundae, Zachary bemoaned his lack of athletic prowess. “My father can never figure out how I can be so bad when he’s so coordinated.”
“I’m sure you’re good at other things,” Matthew said.
“I suppose I have my strengths.”
Maggie watched Matthew study the boy. “Can I ask you a personal question?” Matthew asked.
“Yeah, sure.” Zachary rolled his cherry in the butterscotch sauce and popped it into his mouth.
“How’d you get your name?”
Zachary looked up, his face darkening. “Old family handle from Mom’s side.”
“You don’t like it?” Maggie asked.
“My father says it’s a faggot name.”
Maggie noticed that Phyllis was always referred to as “Mom” while Stephen was invariably “my father.”
“What about our esteemed president Zachary Taylor, Old Rough-and-Ready?” Matthew asked. “He was pretty tough.”
Zachary stared at Matthew with his mother’s piercing intensity. “Do you think a name can make you …can make a person into what … well, say your name is … uh, Mike or Jack or something, like, strong. You think that has an effect on you so you end up being like your name? Say I had a name like Chad Stallion or maybe like that guy John Wayne. His name could’ve made him real solid, I bet.”
Matthew thought for a moment. “First of all,” he said, “I don’t imagine John Wayne’s real name was John Wayne. It was probably Percy Higgenbottom.”
Zachary laughed. The sound was light and clear.
“I suppose it would have an effect if you let it,” Matthew went on. “But after all, a name is only an arbitrary label. You can change it anytime you like.”
“Nah, Mom loves it. It was the name of about the only relative she didn’t hate.”
“Well, then, maybe you could compromise. Keep Zachary for your middle name, for instance.”
They watched him think this over.
“What name would you choose if you changed?” Maggie asked.
“John,” Zachary said promptly.
“John Wheeler,” Matthew said. “John Zachary Wheeler. It’s nice.”
Zachary topped off his sundae with a Coke. Then Matthew paid the bill and said, “Okay, John, let’s go get some culture.”
When they got to the auditorium, Zachary saw Susan and Fred waiting near the stage and took off for them.
Maggie pulled on Matthew’s elbow. “Matt?”
“Yuh,” he said, searching for two empty seats.
“I don’t think you’ll always be a skimmer.”
He put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed it.
She woke herself up screaming. Matthew snapped on the light.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nightmare.” Maggie’s face was soaked in sweat. Damp tendrils of hair clung to her cheeks like claws.
“What about?”
Maggie sat up and tried to unpeel the nightgown from her back. “I was me, now, but sort of a child, too. I was in this kind of tent, I think at my parents’, and I was all alone. This person came and he … no, it was a woman … she had a long knife, and she cut a circle in my stomach and pulled out my insides. I was eviscerated. Emptied out. There was just this dark hole left. I looked down into it. The odd thing was, I didn’t fight her at all. I was completely passive. There was this sense of inevitability. It just had to be, that’s all.”
“Can I get you something? A glass of milk, maybe?”
“No, thanks, I’ll be fine.” But when Matthew turned out the light again, she lay next to him and thought about David and how he had made her feel rich and full. She pressed her hands flat against her stomach and hoped that he was lost in the sweet oblivion of sleep on the other side of the park.
Chapter 23
“I have to see you,” Maggie said into the telephone.
“What’s wrong?” David asked.
“I can’t talk. Matthew’s still here.”
“I was just about to leave for the studio. Meet me there.”
“All right.” She hung up and moments later Matthew came into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee.
“Who were you talking to on the phone?”
Maggie buried her face in the newspaper. “Phyllis.”
“Isn’t it a bit early in the day to call Phyllis? I didn’t think she ever crawled out until noon.”
“Just confirming our lunch date.” Maggie’s cheeks were flaming. It had been so easy when Matthew was indifferent. She knew that if his eyes could penetrate the op-ed page, he would surely guess the truth. But Matthew did not press her. It seemed that whenever he came close to the truth, he backed off or circled around it. Sometimes she wondered if David was right, that Matthew knew.
“How about dinner tonight?” Matthew asked. He glanced at his watch and bolted the last of his coffee.
“With the kids?”
“No. Just us.”
“Where?”
“I’ll surprise you. Call at six and I’ll tell you where to meet me.” He bent to give her the usual brief morning kiss, then lingered to kiss her again, slowly and thoroughly. Finally he went down the hall bellowing, “Off to the wars!” A minute later she heard the front door slam.
Her body felt like stone, but leaden, not full of movement and grace like David’s carvings. She dragged herself to the bedroom, pulled on a pair of pants and a sweater that did not really match, slung her bag over her shoulder, and left. She was deaf to the doorman’s good morning, and his bewildered concern went unnoticed.
As soon as she stepped out of the freight elevator, Maggie heard David’s air hammer pounding. It was a comforting sound. The only thing she ever truly dreaded for David was that he could not work. Creative silence was the great unendurable terror, and she believed that he would prefer annihilation to the death of his art.
She had to beat on the door to be heard over the din. David was covered with marble dust. It clung to his hair in streaks and frosted his eyelashes and eyebrows.
“Where’s your mask?” Maggie asked.
“I forgot,” he said. When he closed the door, a choking cloud swirled around them. Maggie began to cough. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Let me get you some water.”
She sat on the folding chair and drank. It was painful to look at David’s face. Sweat and dirt traced deep lines beside his mouth. His eyes seemed to have sunk into dark caves beneath his forehead. Maggie tried to calm the sick trembling of her stomach by concentrating on the uncut stones that lay in jagged heaps on the floor. She knew that if David were to rinse away the thick film of dust, their rough beauty would be revealed. The texture and translucence would emerge, veined in lovely patterns of blue, rust, gray,
white. David had performed that magic trick with her, too, she thought, when she had been as drab and inert as that raw marble.
“Do you want to see what I’ve been doing?” David asked.
“Of course.”
In the two months since she had last been here, ten new pieces protected by canvas drapes had filled the long shelf. One by one, David removed the covers and wet the sculptures with a spray bottle. Each was carved from dense black marble. Some were sharp spears, like shards split by lightning. The others were perfectly round highly polished masses whose interiors had been roughly gouged out. The gaping holes were all the more disfiguring in contrast to their serene surfaces.
Maggie took David’s arm and buried her face against the chalky denim of his workshirt. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “How long have you been …” She gestured at the dark shapes.
“Since we met in the bar that night.” He touched one of his carvings. “I call these pieces Omens. They are omens, aren’t they?”
Maggie took his hand in both of hers and held it to her breast.
“Do you love me, Maggie?”
“Yes.”
“Why can’t you leave him?”
“Because he’s trying so hard. Because he’s the father of my children. Because I can’t imagine my life without him.”
“He’s a habit, not a lover. Not even a friend. It’s the children.”
He extracted his hand, and it hung like a dead thing against his side. Maggie felt the strain of sharing the same space without being physically connected.
“It’s not just Fred and Susan,” she said. “It’s Matthew, too. He’s so much what I am.” She saw David flinch. “Oh God, I have to tell you, don’t I?” He nodded, and she went on. “If I had met you years ago—David, don’t you know it would have all been different? But we didn’t meet, and I married Matt and had a family, and they’re as much a part of me as my hands and eyes and bones. I can’t start all over again, pulling all the pieces apart and redefining myself.”
