Portrait of a Married Woman

by Sally Mandel

  He took a step backward as if seeking shelter from the black stones.

  “There’s another one I haven’t shown you,” David said. He lifted the drape that covered a medium-sized carving in a corner by the window.

  Maggie gasped. It was a bust of two young faces, one elevated slightly above the other. The top of the boy’s head was level with the girl’s temple, and each pair of eyes gazed out at Maggie with the penetrating confidence of youth. David had even captured the asymmetrical shape of Fred’s eyebrows.

  “Oh my God,” Maggie said, and began to cry.

  David reached for a manila folder and handed it to her. Her fingers trembled, and the folder slipped to the floor. The preliminary sketches of Susan and Fred lay at Maggie’s feet.

  “You can keep those,” David said, kneeling to gather them together. “But not the carving.” He stood and put his hand on the statue, his fingers gently cupping Fred’s chin. “It’s all I’ll ever have of them.”

  “What you don’t really believe,” Maggie said through her tears, “is how much I love you and how much I wish there was a way. My heart is breaking … it sounds so pitiful and lame, but it’s true. I wasn’t even half a person when I met you. David, are you going to be all right?”

  “No,” he said. One of the hooks on his overalls had come undone. She longed to fix it for him. She would never touch him again, never see him grow older.

  “I’ll never see you get old,” he said.

  “Oh, David.” The cry was wrenched from some primitive place inside her in a voice she did not recognize. She took one last look at him, and fled.

  Maggie dutifully called Matthew at six o’clock. She was to meet him in the bar at Windows on the World at the top of the World Trade Center. She went through the motions, bathing, dressing, checking the pantyhose for runs.

  Her cabbie was friendly. When he asked how she was this fine evening, she wanted to reply, “In mourning.” Instead she answered, “I’m well. And you?” As she had hoped, the question set off a monologue that lasted the entire trip downtown.

  The cavernous elevator at the base of One World Trade Center catapulted her up a quarter-mile of concrete and steel. Matthew was waiting at a table in the bar. He rose to kiss her.

  “I wanted to see what kind of a night it was going to be before I decided on this place. Spectacular?”

  Maggie gazed out over the pinpoint lights of the harbor. There was still enough twilight left to reflect off the water, turning it into a shiny slate-gray mirror. Helicopters winked far below like fireflies knee-high on the immense Goliath pillars of the twin towers. Maggie felt the comfort of being suspended far above the earth. She closed her eyes and listened to the music from the three-piece jazz band—“Fly Me to the Moon.” They seemed halfway there already.

  “Come on,” Matthew said. He stood up and held out his arms.

  “We haven’t danced in a hundred years,” Maggie protested.

  “Time we got back into shape.”

  They had enjoyed dancing in the early days in New York, but once the children arrived, they got out of the habit. Maggie was usually so exhausted from sleepless nights that an evening out seemed most appealing if it required nothing more than sitting down for two hours and being served something edible on dishes she did not have to wash herself.

  After so many years, she was surprised at how easy it was to let Matthew guide her around the tiny dance floor, expertly, graceful as he always was. They had once choreographed a dance of their own, an elegant lindy-like combination of steps. When the music swung into a Cole Porter medley, Matthew began the first moves and she found herself remembering, gliding along with him. It was gratifying, this effortless collaboration of movement. Maggie remembered David’s accusation, that Matthew was really no more than a habit.

  “Can we sit down now?” she asked Matthew. “I could use a drink.”

  She sipped her wine and looked out the window. Jewels scattered on black velvet as far as the eye could see. So many lights, so many people, so many tragedies. She was tinier than that speck landing way off at La Guardia Airport. What did her pitiful love affair signify in the face of all that vast glittering display? But she felt herself slipping down, down, as if she were back in the drafty elevator, plunging down the shaft, through the bottom of the building and into the black dense suffocating swamp of lower Manhattan. She glanced up suddenly, feeling Matthew’s eyes on her. She smiled at him feebly.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “Nope,” Matthew declared.

  He took her hand, laid it flat open on the table, and traced the lines. “About your lunch date today,” he began slowly. Maggie’s heart started to thump. “Did you manage to set up a bridge game finally?”

  “No.”

  His voice was casual, but he still did not look into her face. “Do you think there’ll be any more?”

  Maggie could feel the thundering reach her temples now. “They’re over,” she said.

  “That’s sad.” Matthew picked up her hand and kissed it.

  “Yes, but life changes. Things happen to people. They grow and change.”

  “If I can help, Maggie. If you get lonely those times you would have been … at the bridge table. Will you call me? I promise I won’t put you on hold.”

  “You are a good man.”

  “I love you, and that’s a fact.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you really know?”

  “Yes. Now tell me about your day.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What you did, whom you talked to, which clients.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Well, let’s see, first I worked on a merger agreement between two little film companies. Do you really want to hear this?”

  “Yes,” Maggie said, “but I have a confession. At least half the things you tell me about your work go right over my head. I used to try to look as if I knew what you were talking about, but really I didn’t.” Over the years, Maggie had learned little catch phrases to give the impression that she understood him. She was like her deaf grandmother, nodding brightly as if she had heard every syllable when in fact there was merely a bewildering hum. “You’ll think I’m incredibly stupid when you see how much I don’t know, but I’d like you to explain it all to me as you go along. If you’ve got the patience.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to understand what it is you do for that huge chunk of time I’m not with you every day.”

  Matthew smiled at her but did not talk.

  “Well?” Maggie said.

  “In a minute,” he replied, and kept on smiling.

  That night in bed, he held her without making love to her, just allowing her to snuggle against him for comfort like a child with a nightmare. She could not help but think about David and wonder where he was now, with no warm reassuring body to curl up to. She imagined him standing alone among the cold stones in his darkened apartment, looking out over the icy water of the Hudson. She shivered, and felt Matthew’s arms tighten around her in his sleep.

  Chapter 24

  Maggie walked north on Fifth Avenue past the wroughtiron gates of the Frick Museum with its soft green lawns and flowers blooming thick along the verges of the formal gardens. There was still a bite in the air, but the exercise of walking from the Fifty-seventh Street galleries had warmed her. She switched her heavy portfolio to the other hand and drank in a deep breath of early June that was only slightly polluted by traffic. Surely Robin would be outside on such an afternoon. Maggie turned into the park at Seventy-sixth Street and strolled down toward the boat pond.

  A painter had set up his easel halfway down the hill. Maggie glanced curiously at the pleasant if unoriginal oil rendering of the silvery water. Though she had been required to work in public several times, she had never enjoyed painting under the eyes of inquisitive onlookers and sidewalk critics. Still, there was no point
attaching herself to a gallery if the idea of public display intimidated her. She smiled at the artist and moved on.

  There was no Robin on the benches circling the pond, only nannies and here and there a drunk stretched out to bask in the sun. Maggie turned right and was nearly knocked over by a roller-skater with a bare chest and earphones. But the Alice in Wonderland statue reposed unperturbed in bronze splendor on its vast platform. As always, children clambered up Alice’s slippery surface, clinging to sides worn shiny by the many wriggling bodies that preceded them.

  Maggie climbed the steps, and there beside the statue sat Robin. Maggie watched her for a moment, smiling at the scene. With one hand, Robin held a copy of People magazine unopened in her lap. With the other she rocked the baby carriage. Her face had the vacant exhausted look typical of new mothers. She seemed stunned, as if she had been confronted with some monumental fact that she could not absorb.

  Maggie sat down on the bench. “Hi,” she said.

  Robin blinked. “Hi. Well, hi!”

  “I figured I’d find you at your usual spot on such a pretty day.”

  Robin squinted up into the sky. “Yes, it is nice, isn’t it?”

  Maggie laughed. “Did you sleep last night?”

  “Oh, we’re doing much better. She made it from eleven until three, her first four-hour stretch.”

  “You’ve been up since three?”

  Robin nodded. “Mostly, and look at her now, the little beast, peaceful as can be.”

  The minute figure in the carriage was barely visible under her quilt. Tiny spiky eyelashes lay against a pink cheek.

  “I wish she’d get up so I could hold her,” Maggie said.

  “Drop over anytime between three and six A.M.”

  “When are you going to get some help, Robin? You’ll wear yourself out.”

  “We’re doing all right. Jackson’s a big help.” Robin stood and leaned over the carriage to fuss with the baby’s quilt. “Come on, Phoebe, let’s walk Maggie home.” They started up the path away from the boat pond. “I always knew a baby would make me happy, and she has. I wish you would be happy too, Mag.”

  “I’m not unhappy. What makes you say that?”

  “There’s something. But I’ve been so preoccupied …”

  Maggie laughed. “I’ll say. Listen, one of these days we’ll have a very long conversation, but in the meantime, don’t you worry about me. I’m fine.”

  Truly, the searing pain of those first months without David had eased. When she was miserable, she turned to Matthew and he was always there to comfort her, requiring no explanation other than her feeling low. And she found relief, and sometimes even joy, in her work. She felt like an amphibian who was slowly, inexorably evolving into a land animal. She would drag herself out of the surf only to stagger as the heavy spray broke over her head. She splashed about for a while, then touched the sand beneath her feet and began the struggle all over again. It was sad, abandoning that watery world, and sometimes she longed to flip back into the waves and let them wash her down, down. But dry land rose ahead, and she liked the firm feel of it, liked directing her own steps rather than drifting with the current.

  She and Robin strolled slowly north along the plaza in front of the Metropolitan Museum. Sunshine was glistening on the fountains when Maggie’s heart suddenly caught in her chest. It happened often, and each time the jolt left her shaken and tearful. There was always some familiar feature, a lanky walk, an angular face, a gesture from long fingers. She strained to track him as up ahead he glided through the throng like some slim and elegant sea creature swimming among the reeds and tall grass, only to disappear forever in the shimmering light of the water. As always, she lost him, but there was a rainbow dancing in the spray from the fountain as they passed.

  More from Sally Mandel

  Change of Heart

  Sometimes love is worth risking everything. A New York Times bestseller.

  “What a beautiful book! Readers will be haunted, as I am, by the characters who become so real and come to matter so much. I loved it.” - Danielle Steel, author of First Sight and Matters of the Heart

  Sharlie Converse is twenty-six with a vivid and romantic interior life. Born with a heart defect that has defeated an army of specialists, she has lived her short life from moment to moment. Everything that matters most to her—color, excitement, adventure—is forbidden except in her imaginings and in the secret yearningss that she has long accepted will never be made real.

  Until, on a cross town bus packed with Christmas shoppers, she falls into Brian Morgan’s arms. And Sharlie, whom love can kill, must make the agonizing choice: to risk her life by loving or never really to live at all.

  Out of the Blue

  A poignant and provocative romance about a remarkable leap of faith.

  “A novel of soaring spirit, steadfast love, and the willingness to reach for dreams … A wonderful book … filled with hope and faith.” - Luanne Rice, author of The Lemon Orchard

  Anna Bolles is a born athlete whose life was irrevocably changed after a multiple sclerosis diagnosis five years ago. Anna fills her days with the vibrancy of life in New York City, teaching at a private school, but shutting the door on any possible romance. Until Joe Malone enters her life.

  A businessman, pilot, and amateur photographer, Joe Malone has it all – except happiness. He sees far more in Anna than just her MS diagnosis, and takes Anna on a roller coaster of love, hope, and hanging on.

  Heart and Soul

  An undeniable talent is coaxed into the spotlight in a witty and tender romance.

  “With wit and wisdom, Sally Mandel illuminates our deepest hopes and secret fears, showing us what matters most.” - Deborah Smith, author of The Stone Flower Garden

  Bess Stallone is brash and bold, until she is placed center stage. A self-taught musical prodigy from the rough side of Long Island, the only thing Bess has in common with her Julliard classmates is her passion for classical music, and her extraordinary skill on the piano. A skill that crumbles under the weight of self-doubt when she plays for an audience.

  Virtuoso David Montagnier is drawn to Bess’ wild talent, and gives her the opportunity she’s been waiting for to escape her blue-collar existence. He holds the key to Bess’ dreams – and surprisingly, she may hold the key to his – if she will surrender to the music and believe in love.

  Quinn

  An unlikely romance struggles in the face of dueling dreams, from New York Times bestselling author Sally Mandel.

  “Mandel has a gift for true and incisive dialogue; she searches her characters probingly and captures them in a phrase precisely. These are people to enjoy and even to love.” - Publisher’s Weekly

  Headstrong and beautiful Quinn Mallory makes the impulsive decision to offer herself as the first prize in a college contest. Will Ingraham applies in verse, and wins the prize. Their personalities couldn’t be more different, but a true love blossoms between them that, they believe, will last forever. Until Quinn’s dreams of a career in the big city collide with Will’s longing for a quiet life together in his Idaho home—leaving Quinn to choose between the life she wants and the man she loves, and neither choice feeling like the right one.

  Take Me Back

  The triumphant return of New York Times bestselling author Sally Mandel presents an intimate multigenerational portrait of the troubles and triumphs of a 20th century family.

  Lily Adams is the animating spirit of those around her, even in her twilight years. Perhaps none is more touched by her presence than her granddaughter, Amy, whom Lily saves from a teenage crisis. The family saga of three generations of the Adams clan is filled with crises of identity and the pains of romance, with Lily’s presence profoundly felt throughout.

  Take Me Back focuses precisely, poignantly, and sometimes painfully, on the spaces between us, emphasizing the impact we can have on the lives of those around us, even in the mere echo of ourselves after we have
gone.

  Connect with Diversion Books

  Connect with us for information on new titles and authors from Diversion Books, free excerpts, special promotions, contests, and more:

  @DiversionBooks

  www.Facebook.com/DiversionBooks

  Diversion Books eNewsletter

  www.scribd.com/DiversionBooks