The Last Chance

by Rona Jaffe

  There was no way she could explain this to Robert. You couldn’t, after twenty-two years of marriage, turn to your husband and say, “None of this has ever been real.” They had a warm, cuddly relationship that had fooled everyone, even themselves, but they had never really known each other, and now it was too late.

  Sunday morning breakfast in the large, old-fashioned kitchen, with The New York Times spread around and Dorothy and Lynn home and Robert doing the cooking, which he liked to do on Sunday mornings, the old, deaf dog at Nikki’s feet, was like old times, and yet it was temporary too, because Lynn’s boyfriend was coming tomorrow to stay with them until he and Lynn drove back to school, and he would be an intruder. Nikki and Robert had decided to be modern and let Lynn and her boyfriend sleep in the same room since they were living together at college anyway.

  “Poor Dog,” Lynn said. “Woof! Can you hear me? Mom, that dog is stone-deaf.”

  “He can’t see too well either,” Robert said. “He’s going to die soon.”

  “Oh, that makes me feel terrible,” Dorothy said. “I remember when we got him. Who named him Dog, anyway?”

  “You did,” Nikki said.

  “Poor Dog,” Lynn said again, and fed him a piece of bacon.

  They had gone off to their grown-up lives and left their dog, Nikki thought sadly, hardly even noticing him, and that seemed almost worse than leaving their parents, because their parents weren’t dependent on them.

  “He was really your mother’s dog,” Robert said. “You girls never even remembered to let him out in the mornings. A dog belongs to the person who feeds him, so he’s your mother’s dog.”

  I don’t want him, Nikki thought. Why do I get stuck with everything around here? The responsibilities, the leftovers, and the separations. I’m tired of being Good Old Mom. I want my own apartment in New York and my own life.

  She turned to the real estate section of the Times. She hadn’t looked at it for years, and she was shocked at how expensive the rent for a one-bedroom apartment was in New York. It would have to be within walking distance of her office, and those were more expensive still. But, so what? She had her salary, it was hers to keep, and if she had to spend every penny she made on her own life, it was about time. She wasn’t leaving Robert. They would spend weekends together in Wilton as always. He could come in to New York once in a while if he wanted to go to the theater with her, or just missed her, and he could stay overnight if he wanted to. But it was important that she pay for this apartment herself so that it would be hers and nobody could ever tell her again what she could or couldn’t do in her own home.

  “How about a family conference?” Nikki said.

  “Aren’t we a little old for that?” said Lynn.

  “You two are too old for that but I’m not,” Nikki said lightly. “Robert, sit down, darling.” She knew why she was doing it with all of them there instead of talking it over with Robert, because he would say no and the girls would say yes.

  The three of them looked at her tolerantly. “Mind if I get another cup of coffee first?” Robert asked. It infuriated her, his attitude that something so important to her was nothing more than a form of entertainment to him, like TV, and he wanted a snack to go with it. He put the hot coffee and a slice of coffee cake in front of him and sat down.

  “I have decided to rent a little apartment in New York to stay in during the week, and I’d like your ideas on the subject,” Nikki said.

  Robert took a sip of his coffee. “As I remember, at family conferences you’re supposed to start with ‘I was thinking of,’ not ‘I have decided.’”

  “I guess I forgot,” Nikki said. “It has been a long time. Okay, I was thinking of renting …” There was a knot in her stomach.

  “Why?” Dorothy asked.

  “Because I waste four hours a day commuting, it takes valuable time and energy away from my life and my work, and you girls are grown and don’t need me here.”

  “What about me?” Robert asked.

  “You and I hardly see each other during the week. We’d enjoy our weekends together more if I weren’t so tired.”

  “I think you and I should discuss this alone,” Robert said.

  “I’d like to discuss it as a family,” Nikki said.

  “I think it’s a great idea,” Dorothy said.

  “Me too,” Lynn said. “Mom’s never lived alone. It’s great to be on your own, you really learn a lot.”

  “I notice you didn’t stay alone very long,” her father said wryly.

  Lynn raised an eyebrow at him. “Mom might get lonesome and come home. But I think she should have her chance if she wants it.”

  “I don’t know what’s so unusual about this, Dad,” Dorothy said. “If you had the apartment in New York and Mom was staying out here in the country, nobody would think it was odd. Half the population of New York City goes away for the summer—the women and children.”

  “We’ve already accepted the fact that I love my job and I mean to keep it,” Nikki said. “We have always accepted that fact. Now we should begin to accept the fact that I’m entitled to certain considerations.”

  “If you had an apartment, could we come to stay with you?” Dorothy asked.

  “Of course! I’ll get a convertible sofa in the living room.”

  “Great!”

  “I want you to know, Nikki,” Robert said, “that if you get your own apartment you’ll have to do it with your own money, and I won’t set one foot in it. Ever.” His tone was cold and even.

  Nikki felt a little chill of fear that unexpectedly turned into one of delighted anticipation. “Do you mean that?”

  “I mean it. If you want your own apartment I won’t stop you, but for me it will be as if it doesn’t exist. I’ll see you here.”

  “He’ll change his mind,” Dorothy said sympathetically.

  “He might not,” Nikki said. Her eyes locked with her husband’s. She smiled. “If that’s the way he feels, he’s entitled.”

  The next morning before she went to her office Nikki looked at one of the apartments she had seen listed in the newspaper. She looked at two more during her lunch hour (which was always two hours), having canceled her lunch date. She fell in love with the third one. It was on the second floor of a brownstone in the East Fifties, in front, facing the quiet street, with a dear little balcony outside the living room windows, just big enough for a few potted fir trees in winter and some geraniums in summer. There was a tiny old-fashioned elevator that wouldn’t hold more than two people, but she was used to stairs and the second floor was convenient. The building seemed clean and well kept. The apartment itself was really just a huge living room with a high ceiling and a working fireplace, a sleeping alcove with a window in it, that had once probably been a dressing room, a kitchen and a bathroom. It was big enough for one person, all right for an overnight guest, and too small for two. Nikki immediately decided where she would build her bookcases. She went back to the rental agent, filled in the forms, and wrote out checks for the deposit and the first month’s rent.

  “You get a free paint job, of course,” the agent said, “and the super on the premises will fix anything you need fixed. Here’s his phone number. You’ll want to get your own locksmith to change the locks, of course.”

  “Of course,” Nikki said absently.

  “Some tenants like to give the super a spare key, in case they lose theirs or they go away. But he doesn’t take care of packages.”

  “I can get packages at my office.”

  “The previous tenant wants to know if you’re interested in buying the bedroom air conditioner.”

  Bedroom? Oh, that alcove. Nikki giggled. She’d have to get used to being a city person. In many ways she was just a hick. “That rusty old piece of junk? Make him take it out, and I’ll buy my own.”

  The agent nodded. “You’re right.”

  “I want everything painted white,” Nikki said. She would do it all in glass and chrome, very spare, in contrast to the ri
ch oldness of the architecture. A double bed in the alcove instead of a queen-sized would give her more room. If Robert wasn’t going to set foot in her apartment, then a double bed would be big enough, and if he changed his mind, then he could see that she had taken him at his word. No one was going to push her around any more.

  “Send the lease to me at my office,” Nikki said. It would have been nice to have Robert look it over since he was a lawyer, but she knew that was impossible. She would show it to one of the men she worked with, they were all experienced in being heads of households. And of course she would read it carefully herself. She wasn’t a dumbbell. She’d been running that house in the country all these years. The only thing different about a place in the city was that it was smaller and easier.

  When one of the women Rachel knew asked her to join a few of them in forming a consciousness-raising group, Rachel thought it was ridiculous. Did those women think they had been unconscious all their lives? But when she thought over her daily schedule she realized that although all her hours were filled she was really alone all day. Her hairdresser, her manicurist, the people who waited on her in shops, none of them were actually friends. She’d always had a determination not to be one of those women who confided their private lives to their hairdresser. Rachel had never had anyone to confide in, but she hadn’t thought she needed anyone, and she couldn’t imagine spilling everything out to a group of women, one of whom she only knew socially and the others strangers. She, who never even made lunch dates because she’d rather sleep, and because she had to put up with enough boring women nearly every evening, was going to meet at noon on Central Park West with a consciousness-raising group? Well, why not? Lawrence always told her she ought to have women friends. She was an only child, she didn’t even have a sister. So she said yes, and promised herself not to laugh at them although she was sure she would want to.

  She wanted to dress properly for a consciousness-raising session, and she figured they would all be into women’s lib, so she bought a pair of prefaded blue jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers, and wore them under her mink coat. (She wasn’t going to freeze to fit in.) She wore no makeup and tied her hair back in a thin wool scarf. With her big sunglasses she looked like a model again in that outfit, but it was the best she could do. She took a cab. She wasn’t fool enough to walk across the park even in the daytime. The kids who mugged you today were getting younger all the time. What had happened to school?

  “I’m so glad you came,” Millie, the woman she knew, said when she opened the door. It was in one of those enormous West Side apartments, as big as Rachel’s but not elegant. There were six other women sitting in the living room, all sizes and shapes of women in all sorts of attire. The only thing they all had in common was that they seemed to have been born in Rachel’s decade.

  Rachel was introduced to them by first names, occupations, ages, and marital status. “What do I call you?” Millie asked her, “Housewife?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Rachel used to be a model, now she’s married. Thirty-five. No children.”

  The woman who lived in the apartment had set out a tray with coffee and sandwiches because the ones who worked had given up their lunch hours to meet here. Rachel, who had just had breakfast, declined and lit a cigarette. She seldom smoked, but she was nervous.

  “I think it’s a good idea for us to meet like this,” Millie said. “I, for one, was brought up never to trust or really like other women. When we were dating, other girls were competition for the boys, then when we were all married I never trusted any of the women in the group if she fell out by getting a divorce …”

  They all laughed. “A divorced woman took my husband away,” said a large-bosomed woman, Rhoda, a psychologist. “Or at least that’s what I thought until I remembered nobody takes someone away unless he’s gone in the first place. I realized that everything I told my patients were things I believed in my head but that in my heart I was just as guilt-ridden and prejudiced as they were. Maybe more.”

  “I don’t know why it’s so important to have a husband,” said a thin divorcée named Pat. “I left my husband, he didn’t leave me. And there was no other man either. I just wanted to be able to think about myself for a change instead of gearing my entire life to what he wanted, to making him comfortable, to protecting him from reality.”

  “I think women are better able to cope with reality than men are,” Millie said.

  “Men and women really aren’t different to begin with,” said Anne, a dance teacher. “But we’re taught all our lives that we’re different and that they’re better. We ought to start here by telling all the ways we women are better than men, and then when we’re feeling terrific we can figure out how to get along without them.”

  “Why do we have to get along without them?” Rachel blurted out.

  They all turned and looked at her. “You have to be able to get along without them in order to get along with them,” the busty psychologist said.

  “Hear, hear!” someone said.

  Rachel cringed down on the sofa and lit another cigarette. She gazed out the window at Central Park and wondered if it was going to snow. The sky was awfully gray. If it snowed, she’d never get a cab home. These women were so dreadfully earnest. Life was funny, wasn’t it? You had to have a sense of humor to survive. If she didn’t make fun of some people in her mind while she was lying to them and flattering them she wouldn’t be able to stand it.

  “My husband has never cared about what I wanted in bed,” one of the women was saying. “After I told him, he tried, but he was so obviously trying to be nice that it made us both angry.”

  “As far as I’m concerned I can do it better to myself,” Pat said. The other women smiled and some of them nodded agreement.

  “Women are much more sexual than men,” Millie said. “All the books say that.”

  “All my women friends say that,” someone said, and they all laughed.

  “You know,” Anne, the dance teacher, said, “I’m so sick and tired of people putting down women who don’t have a man around. I don’t need a man to be somebody. I like women better anyway. You can talk to a woman, we’re more loving, more understanding, and if I fell in love with a woman and she fell in love with me we’d probably have a much better love relationship and sexual relationship than I would with any of the men I’ve been involved with.”

  Oh, just wait till I get home and tell Lawrence, Rachel thought in delight. “Did you ever?” she heard herself saying. “Have a …?”

  “A love affair with a woman? I’m thinking about it.”

  “I think we must be free to do whatever we want to, but we mustn’t do anything out of anger,” the psychologist said. “The purpose of our meeting here is to express our anger and get rid of it.”

  “What’s wrong with anger?” Pat asked. “I’m mad as hell.”

  Some of the women applauded. Rachel looked idly at the dance teacher’s body. She had probably been a dancer once, and her body was still lovely, lithe and slim. Rachel couldn’t imagine wanting to go to bed with her, but it did make her think that she ought to go to the gym more often. Two afternoons a week wasn’t enough. From now on she would get up early every morning and go every day.

  The meeting broke at two. The sky outside the window looked dark and threatening. The women with jobs scurried out the door to get back before the weather delayed them. Rachel was about to take her coat when she felt Millie’s hand on her arm.

  “Let’s help Barbara with the dishes,” she whispered. “She doesn’t have a maid. It would be the nice thing to do.”

  “Of course,” Rachel said.

  “How did you like the meeting?” Barbara asked her as they carried the plates and cups to the kitchen.

  Rachel was going to lie as she usually did and say she enjoyed it, and then she decided not to. “I think if they knew what they were talking about here for the past two hours,” she said, “then each one would have carried her own plate and cup to the kitc
hen and washed it, or at least put it in the sink.”

  “But I have a dishwasher,” Barbara said.

  They’re all so damn trivial, Rachel thought when she finally was alone in the elevator. Millie had remained with her friend Barbara to continue the discussion on their own. Rachel turned up her coat collar and decided to walk along Central Park West to get some air. It was safe here, and she could continue along Central Park South and then up Fifth Avenue until she got home, thus avoiding the park. It was dreary but not snowing and she needed the exercise to work off the feelings she couldn’t quite sort out.

  She hadn’t expected anything and yet she felt cheated. She had been looking for friends, not a place to make accusations. Was this friendship? Maybe, but not the kind she wanted. She wanted a woman friend to laugh with, to feel cozy with. When she’d been a little girl back home in Kansas City she’d had a best friend, and now, after all these years, Rachel suddenly missed her, even though she knew they both had changed and wouldn’t have anything in common any more. I have to find a new best friend, she thought.

  Who could it be? She admired Margot King, but Margot was so busy with her TV shows, and now with Kerry, so she didn’t need a new best friend. Besides, Margot had Ellen Rennie. Rachel noticed she was just passing Ellen’s apartment building. Ellen and Margot even lived near each other. It was nice to have an old school friend, but she didn’t have any in New York. What about Nikki Gellhorn? Rachel had always admired Nikki too. Now that Nikki had just moved into her own apartment in the city she would have more free time. Maybe they could go to the gym together! That would be a great incentive for me, Rachel thought. I’ll get Nikki to come to my gym. We can go in the mornings before she goes to her office, and then we’ll get to know each other better, and we can have drinks together sometimes when Lawrence is having drinks with all his men, and we can talk. Her heart leaped at the thought of having a best friend. Nikki always enjoyed everything so much, she would be so much fun.