by Judy Blume
Margo lay down her fork. “Where did you hear that?” she asked quietly.
“From Aliza!” Michelle said.
“Aliza?” Margo asked. “Aliza’s an Israeli . . . Aliza’s a Sabra, for God’s sake. I can’t believe . . .”
“You just don’t know, Mother,” Michelle said. “Aliza is such a princess! Everything is designer in her house. She even has designer dishes. She’s into spending Daddy’s money as fast as he makes it.”
“Come off it, bitch!” Stuart said. “He likes it too. They have their heads together. They’re not trying to prove anything like some people. Why shouldn’t they live well? They’ve earned it, you know . . . he’s worked hard all his life and her parents were both in a concentration camp . . .” He turned to Margo. “Did you know that, Mother . . . that Aliza’s parents were both in Treblinka during the war?”
“Yes, I’ve heard that story.”
“And that’s supposed to make it okay?” Michelle fumed. “That she spends money like it’s going out of style . . . and all because her parents were in a concentration camp?”
“She doesn’t buy anything more than Mother!” Stuart shouted.
“Mother . . . Mother . . . oh, I just can’t believe this,” Michelle said dramatically, hitting her head with the back of her hand. “Mother doesn’t buy anything. Well, hardly anything. When’s the last time you bought a new dress, Mother?”
“I think it was . . .” Margo began, her head swimming.
“And it wasn’t a designer dress, was it?” Michelle asked.
“Well . . . I might have had . . .”
“You see!” Michelle said, “Mother doesn’t waste hundreds and hundreds of dollars on every dress. Mother is aware . . . Mother has values.”
“You want to wear hospital rags for the rest of your life, that’s up to you,” Stuart said.
“What’s wrong with my scrubs?” Michelle asked, smoothing out her green shirt.
Margo listened intently, trying to figure out where all of this was going. Was Michelle suddenly her champion? Had Stuart really turned into Freddy or was this just another phase like spewing facts from the Guinness Book of World Records, like being unwashed, like experimenting with marijuana? A phase that would pass. But if it didn’t. She just didn’t know.
If only she hadn’t had her children with the wrong partner. She had suspected that Freddy was the wrong partner for her even before she married him. But she’d married him anyway.
THE FIRST TIME Margo had gone sailing with Freddy, they’d capsized in Sag Harbor Bay. She’d lost her Dr. Scholl’s, her favorite sweater, and her prescription sunglasses.
At the time, her older sister, Bethany, who was visiting along with her children, said, “Maybe he can’t do anything right.”
“He forgot to lower the centerboard,” Margo explained. “That’s all.”
“Yes, but if he’s the kind who forgets the centerboard . . .”
“There was a squall,” Margo said. “He was trying to bring us in.”
“Worse yet,” Bethany said, “to panic during a squall.”
“He didn’t panic. He forgot. There’s a difference.”
Margo’s younger sister, Joell, who was then twelve, said, “At sailing camp the first thing we learned was control. C-o-n-t-r-o-l.”
“Thank you,” Margo said, “but I already know how to spell it.”
“And to remain calm,” Joell said. “You’re hardly ever calm, Margo.”
“It’s not easy to be calm around here,” Margo said, “with everyone telling you what you should do and what you shouldn’t do and judging you every single minute of every single day!”
“Margo, darling,” her mother said, “who’s judging? We all think Freddy is a lovely boy . . . lovely . . . and he’s going to be such a fine dentist . . . I’d trust him with my teeth completely. Don’t get so huffy, sweetheart . . . you’re just upset because you’re about to be married.”
“Upset because you’re marrying the wrong boy,” Bethany whispered in her ear.
That night Margo met Bethany coming out of the bathroom. “Suppose that were true,” Margo said, “about marrying the wrong boy.”
“Then get out of it now . . . while you still can. Don’t make the same mistake as me. I’m telling you, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Are you saying you don’t love Harvey?” Margo asked.
“I love Harvey, in a way . . . it’s hard to explain. I wish I’d waited, that’s all. And I’d hate to see you flushing yourself down the same drain. Before you know it you’ll be stuck with babies and a house and responsibilities and you’ll grow to hate it just like me.”
“Bethany, I’m shocked. I always thought you and Harvey had a perfect life.”
“Nobody has a perfect life, Margo.”
“But I couldn’t get out of it now, even if I wanted to . . . the invitations are out . . . there’s a roomful of gifts . . . we have a lease on the apartment . . .”
“Those aren’t good enough reasons to get married.”
“It will be all right,” Margo said.
The next morning, at the breakfast table, her mother, sensing Margo’s anxiety and convinced that it had to do with the sailing mishap, said, “Darling . . . you and Freddy will laugh about this for the rest of your lives. Now eat some toast, at least. At a time like this you need your strength.”
Her father, trying to turn it into a joke, said, “So who pays for the new sunglasses . . . him or me?” Then he laughed and everyone else at the table joined in, even Bethany.
And so Margo had married Freddy and they’d flown off to the Virgin Islands, to Bluebeard’s Castle, for their honeymoon. While they were there they’d met another honeymooning couple, Nelson and Lainie Berkovitz, from Harrisburg, and one day on the beach Lainie had cried to Margo, had cried and confessed that she and Nelson just weren’t able to do it, that it wouldn’t go in and she didn’t know what they were going to do or how they were going to go home and face their families with her still a virgin.
Margo suggested some of the jelly that she smeared inside her diaphragm and Lainie agreed to give it a try. Late that afternoon Lainie knocked on Margo’s door and Margo squeezed some jelly into a paper cup for her. Lainie thanked her very much, then went back to her room where she hoped to convince Nelson to give it another try because by then Nelson was feeling very depressed.
Margo and Freddy laughed about poor Lainie and Nelson and felt smug because they were able to do it with no trouble at all. Of course Freddy did not know that Margo was experienced, that she had slept with James, who had died.
They came back from their honeymoon and settled into an apartment in Forest Hills and sixteen months later Stuart was born and a year after that, Michelle. When Michelle was two they moved into Manhattan, to a spacious apartment on Central Park West where they lived for the rest of their marriage.
Margo did not know exactly why she and Freddy were divorced, except that she couldn’t stand it anymore, couldn’t stand Freddy or her life or any of the endless shit, and felt that she was headed down a long road going nowhere and that she had to get out in order to save herself.
By then Freddy was an oral surgeon with an outstanding practice and a fine reputation and Margo’s parents were confused and concerned about her plan to divorce. They urged her to see a marriage counselor, but Margo’s mind was made up. She wanted out. Besides, Freddy had already found an apartment on the East Side and was invited to one dinner party after another, where he was seated next to attractive divorcées who thought he was some good catch.
Stuart had been twelve and Michelle eleven when Margo and Freddy separated. Stuart had withdrawn, saying it was their problem, not his, and that he was not going to get caught in the middle. Michelle had screamed at Ma
rgo, “I hate you, you fucker . . . I hate you for ruining my life. Daddy says it’s all your fault. That you’re just an immature baby who doesn’t know when she has it good.”
“If you hate me, then go and live with Daddy!” Margo screamed back. Oh, it wasn’t working out the way it was supposed to. None of it. Margo felt lonely and frightened and disoriented and was on the verge of tears from morning until night, although she still made it to work every day. “Just go and live with Daddy if you think he’s so great!”
But Michelle had cried, “I won’t live with Daddy. And you can’t make me. I hate him as much as I hate you. I hate you both and I hope you die tomorrow because I don’t give a shit about either one of you. You hear me? I don’t give a shit about you or about him! You’re both fucking assholes!”
Michelle carried on for more than a month. Then one day she approached Margo. “I’ve decided to get on with my life,” she said. Margo had breathed a sigh of relief and had tried to get on with her own.
Seven months later she had met Leonard. It had been the middle of winter in New York and freezing. She had worn fleece-lined boots and wool socks to the party and had carried a pair of sandals to change into once she was there. The party had been given by Lainie Berkovitz, who had been divorced from Nelson for six years. Lainie was earning thirty-five thousand dollars on Wall Street. Lainie, who couldn’t do it on her honeymoon, was doing it regularly now with her live-in mate, Neil, an investment banker. Margo imagined that Lainie and Neil got into bed at night and had long, involved discussions about money.
Leonard was Neil’s friend and a tax lawyer. At the time Margo had had no idea that he was married. He had approached her, offering a cracker spread with caviar.
“Thanks, but I don’t like caviar,” she’d said.
“Everybody likes caviar,” he’d told her.
“Not me.”
He had sat down next to her, had eaten the cracker himself, and had made small talk for more than an hour, letting his arm brush against hers, letting his hand rest on her knee. She’d felt warm and excited and very desirable and when she’d excused herself for a minute to use the bathroom, he’d followed her down the hall, to Lainie’s bedroom, and had locked the door behind them. They had kissed without speaking, then had fallen onto Lainie’s bed, on top of the coats that were piled there. He’d unbuttoned her silk shirt and kissed her breasts. She’d raised her skirt and kicked off her panties and had felt something soft and furry under her ass. Mink, she’d thought, as she came.
She and Leonard had met every day for a week and at the end of that time he’d told her about his wife and children. About how he kept a small apartment in Gramercy Park that he used weeknights, but that on weekends he went home, to Pound Ridge, to his family. He wanted a divorce, he’d explained, but Gabrielle wouldn’t give him one, although he was sure she would eventually. Margo believed him.
Their affair had lasted more than a year and had ended, finally, because Margo realized that it wasn’t the family he couldn’t leave, but his collections. And then, of course, there was the incident with Gabrielle and the gun.
Leonard had flown out to Boulder once, to try to convince Margo to return to New York, but by then she had begun her new life, her children were set in school, and she was involved with her boss, Michael Benson. Even though she was wise enough this time to know that she and Michael weren’t going anywhere, he did help her understand there were other fish in the sea and for once she was able to look at Leonard objectively and she didn’t like what she saw, an infantile man who wanted it all, on his own terms, without giving an ounce to anyone.
MARGO TOOK A SIP OF COFFEE and was surprised to find that it was already cold. She heard music coming from her children’s rooms and hoped that they had started their homework. She stood up, cleared away the dinner dishes, and picked up the phone. Margo was concerned about Clare. She had been in a frenzy at the party last night, the sleeves of her long silk kimono flapping like the wings of a bird trapped in a glass house. Last weekend, before Clare had flown to Dallas for a reunion with Robin, Margo had tried to warn her. “People don’t change,” she had said. “They may try, they may pretend for a while, but then they revert.”
“Look,” Clare had said, “if Robin hadn’t run off with the Doughnut we’d still be together.”
“But he did run away with the Doughnut,” Margo had reminded her. “That’s the whole point.”
Margo dialed Clare’s number and Clare answered the phone on the third ring.
“It was a wonderful party,” Margo said.
“Really . . . I couldn’t tell . . . I was a wreck.”
“I know.”
“Tell me it’s going to be okay . . . that I’m not making a terrible mistake,” Clare said.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Suppose you’re right . . . suppose he runs off again . . . with or without a Doughnut . . .”
“We all make mistakes,” Margo said. “You can always get out of it.”
“You’re only allowed so many mistakes,” Clare said.
“No . . . you’re allowed as many as you need,” Margo told her. “There’s no limit.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes . . . look at me!”
Clare laughed. “I want it to work. God knows, I really want it to work. Maybe I shouldn’t have had a party . . . maybe it was too soon. He used to love parties, but last night he was like a frightened child.”
“Give it some time,” Margo said.
After they’d hung up, Margo made herself another cup of coffee. She took it into the living room and settled on the sofa with the Sunday Camera. But she found herself thinking about Clare’s party again. It had been strange seeing Clint there. She had once had a fling with him. He had whispered to her in Spanish while they were making love. She hadn’t understood a word he was saying, but she had thought of whispering back to him in Yiddish, if only she could remember some of her grandmother’s favorite expressions. The idea of speaking Yiddish to him had made her laugh. He had been offended, thinking she was laughing at him. Last night Clint had been putting the make on Margo’s friend Caprice, who owned the antique shop where she had bought her rolltop desk. She wondered if she should have warned Caprice about Clint. But what would she have said?
Margo was tired of Boulder parties. She longed to stay at home on Saturday nights, working on her quilt, sharing a quiet evening with someone special. She thought about Andrew Broder and how, when she had returned the book to his house that morning, he had invited her to go hiking with him and Sara. Margo had been tempted, but when she’d seen the look of surprise and hurt on Sara’s face she’d decided against it. She wasn’t about to come between a man and his daughter.
She didn’t see him again until Wednesday night, when he called, asking if she’d like to take a drive. It was clear and brisk outside and she zipped up her vest as she walked to his truck. They drove up to the Red Lion Inn, found a table in the back, and ordered brandies. She thought about telling him that she couldn’t see him again. That she felt she had to stop before it was too late. That Boulder was a small town and since she and B.B. lived here, worked here, and were raising children here, she simply could not risk getting involved with him.
But as soon as they sat down he took her hand, looked directly into her eyes, and said, “I’ve missed you. Where’ve you been?”
“I’ve been working on a fund-raiser for the Democratic Professional Women’s Organization.”
“I didn’t know you were active politically.”
“I’m not. I mean, I might be, but I can’t work up any enthusiasm for Carter. This is just a luncheon I was asked to co-chair. And Michael was out of the office for a few days . . .”
“Michael?”
“Michael Benson . . . one of the partners in the firm.”
“Oh, I thought maybe there was competition.”
She didn’t laugh. She swished the brandy around in her glass. “And I’ve been thinking too . . . about us.”
“So have I. Your note was beautiful. Thank you.”
She had written a note about his book, telling him that it was tender, funny, sad. She shouldn’t have written anything.
“The book is based loosely on the accident,” he said, “but I guess you knew that.”
“The accident . . . what accident?”
“When Bobby was killed.”
“Bobby?”
“My son. He was ten.”
“Oh God.” Her throat closed up. She looked away from him. Tears came to her eyes. She’d had no idea.
“You’ve known Francine since you came to Boulder and you didn’t know about Bobby?”
She shook her head.
“Jesus!” He ran his hands through his hair. A vein in the center of his forehead stood out. “Does anybody here know?”
“I doubt it,” Margo said softly. “I would have heard.” She wished she’d known sooner, wished she’d known all along.
“I was driving,” Andrew said. “She blames me. And for a long time I blamed myself. Writing the book was a cathartic experience. My way of dealing with it . . . of facing up to it.”
Margo thought of B.B.’s cool exterior, the vacant eyes.
“It tore us apart,” Andrew said. “She’s never forgiven me.”
Suppose Freddy had been driving, had had an accident, and Stuart or Michelle had been badly injured, had been killed. Would she have been able to forgive him? God, what an impossible situation.
“I don’t know what to say,” she told him, covering his hand with hers. Suddenly she understood so much.
“I was sure you knew,” he said. “I was sure everyone knew.”
“No wonder B.B. didn’t want you to come here.”
“I came because of Sara.”
