by Rona Jaffe
“How can you live like that?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “He didn’t get them. That’s the main thing.”
“Does everybody live like you do?”
“No. Most of my friends don’t care. But I got mugged once before and it really made me mad. There’s this horrible feeling of invasion, and rage, and helplessness. On the other hand, my boyfriend carries around what he calls ‘mugger’s money.’ It’s twenty dollars so the mugger won’t get angry and beat him up or anything. I guess these bastards expect more from men. I mean, if a secretary has only thirty-five cents on her they figure okay.”
“You certainly are cynical for a girl your age,” Nikki said. She gave her the ten.
“Thanks. I’ll pay you back next week.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Elizabeth grinned and tossed her long hair. “Cynical is better than innocent, believe me.”
“I’ll continue to live dangerously.”
After her secretary left, Nikki looked at her handbag for a long time. She remembered the time ten years ago when she’d been working late, alone in the office, and coming back from the ladies’ room had surprised a young man taking her wallet out of her purse, which she’d left on her desk. She had been so filled with rage that she had chased him all the way to the elevator screaming, “Give me back my wallet, you!” He had been a small, scared young man, and she had trapped him at the elevator. He had dropped the wallet at her feet, the money intact, and fled down the fire stairs. When she had told the other people in the office the next day they had laughed. Now people locked their offices when they went out, or took their money with them. Nobody worked late alone. The glass doors to the reception room were locked at five o’clock and employees had keys. There was a guard in the lobby at night and a sign-in book. Things had changed. Even she had changed in little ways. She had become street-wise in the office, but not in the street. She resented having anyone take her freedom away. You could live in a prison of fear in your own mind, and maybe that was just as bad. She wasn’t sure.
The only people who knew it was Ellen Rennie’s fortieth birthday were Ellen’s family, Ellen’s lover Reuben, and Margot. On their birthdays Ellen and Margot always took each other to lunch and gave each other expensive presents. It was a tradition they had started in college. This year Margot took Ellen to lunch at Madrigal and gave her a Gucci handbag.
The restaurant was all yellow and white, as if bathed in sunlight. On the walls were murals of eighteenth-century French troubadours, and on each table there were yellow and apricot roses in large brandy snifters. Set out on display were boxes of fresh raspberries, scarcely to be found in the city, and in back of the room you could see a small garden drenched in vines. They both drank several glasses of wine, each for her own reasons.
“How does it feel, being forty?” Margot asked.
“To tell you the truth, today feels exactly the same as yesterday. Except for the fuss everybody’s making. The kids insisted we have a birthday dinner. They’re cooking it themselves. I had to promise I wouldn’t come home until six o’clock, which turned out to be convenient, because I’m spending the afternoon with Reuben.”
“Just another day,” Margot said, smiling.
Ellen wasn’t sure it was just another day. She had awakened this morning to a feeling of dread, as if a clock had chimed: half over. She had to admit her life was half over, and that made her beginning middle age. There was no way to get around the logic of that. And if she didn’t live to be eighty, or if she became senile or something, that meant now she was well into middle age. She didn’t feel any different, she didn’t look any different, and it wasn’t fair. Well, say the first ten years she was just a kid learning things, and the next ten were the time of trial and error, so she’d only had twenty years of a real life, and it had all gone by so fast. A lot of it had been unhappy. Some of it had been exciting. But it was gone, and now what was left seemed invested with too much importance because for the first time Ellen was aware of how limited time was.
“Don’t look so depressed,” Margot said. “It’s your birthday. I get to have mine in a few months. You’re scaring me.”
“It makes you wonder …” Ellen said.
“What?”
“I wonder what I’ve ever done with my life that was memorable. If I’m this depressed now, how will I feel at fifty? I’ll probably lock myself in my bedroom with a bottle of gin.”
“More likely you’ll be in someone else’s bedroom with a bottle of champagne. Another scalp on your belt.”
“Oh, Margot, how can you say that? I never took advantage of anyone! They were never scalps.”
“Maybe if I got married to someone Kerry would like me better.”
Ellen felt her heart turn over and she hoped she hadn’t gotten pale. Was Margot digging at her? Maybe that little fink had told her. He wouldn’t dare. Margot would have told her directly, she would have thrown a fit, and they certainly wouldn’t be having this nice birthday lunch. Just when she thought the whole embarrassing incident with Kerry was over and gone, it had to pop up like this. But Margot looked totally innocent and self-absorbed.
“The next man you fall in love with you should marry,” Ellen said.
“Good old mother Ellen. You’re a fine one to talk about the glories of marriage.”
“You should be married,” Ellen said. “You need one man. You need love and security.”
“I think I’m too set in my ways to get married,” Margot said. “I really don’t like to share things.”
“That’s a crock,” Ellen said.
“I don’t see any happy marriages around me, do you?”
“You would have one.”
“Nope, it wouldn’t work. If it worked I’d have married someone years ago, anyone. I can accept myself now. I admit I never wanted it.”
“Second marriages work better,” Ellen said. “If marriage was such a dead loss, how come most of the people who get divorced at our age get married to someone else?”
“Or just live together,” Margot said.
“I’m not the ‘living together’ type,” Ellen said. “If I ever divorced Hank I’d only do it to marry someone else.”
“Anyone special in mind?”
“No. Just having the birthday blues. It’s very depressing to be forty and married to Hank.”
Margot laughed. “That I can believe.”
“No, seriously, Margot. Tell me the truth. Do people look at Hank and me and think: I wonder what she ever saw in him?”
“I do.”
“Not you. I mean strangers, casual acquaintances. Do they think Hank is a loser?”
“It depends on whose friends they are, yours or his.”
Ellen sighed. “I don’t know why I asked. I know the answer. Even his friends think he’s a loser. God, how can you know at twenty what’s going to happen when you grow up?”
“Why don’t you divorce him?” Margot said. Her eyes were serious. “You’re not too old. Get out while you still have a chance. You have the girls for company. Wouldn’t you love to live in your own apartment with Jill and Stacey? No Hank—think of it.”
“What would he do without me?” Ellen said. She couldn’t understand why Margot didn’t see the inescapable logic of it. “I’m the one bringing in the money in this family.”
“Then you wouldn’t have to feel guilty leaving him,” Margot said with her own brand of logic. “He won’t have to support you.”
“I can’t kick him when he’s down, Margot. Hank loves me.”
“He certainly must. You’ve always been very sloppy about covering your tracks.”
“I know,” Ellen said. “Hank isn’t a curious person. Strange, but not curious.” She laughed. “Let’s not be bitchy about my poor husband. He’s the only one I’ve got.”
It was so nice to be here with Margot, just like the old days at school, dishing the boys. It was almost as if Hank were just one of her faithful puppy-dog dates, someone she cou
ld laugh at and get rid of when he bored her. Ellen wished it were true. If she could just disappear into the past like Alice down the rabbit hole. If she had it all to do over again she would pick an intellectual, like Reuben, someone who loved books and talked books and had power, who knew interesting people, who was creative, and who made love so gloriously, as if he had just discovered sex for the first time and couldn’t get enough of it. The poet of the bedroom, she had told him one day.
“Would you like to live your life over again?” she asked Margot.
“Yes,” Margot said. “Provided it was different.”
“Well, that would be the only point, wouldn’t it?”
After lunch Ellen went directly to Reuben’s apartment, which happened to be on the West Side, not too far from her own. He had taken the afternoon off too, in honor of her birthday, and was waiting for her there. The doorman knew her by now and didn’t stop her to ask where she was going, and Ellen wondered how many doormen all over the city were nodding courteously to women who were going to visit men whose wives were away for the summer.
Reuben opened the door the moment Ellen rang his bell, and they kissed and hugged as if they hadn’t seen each other for a month. One of the things she most loved about him was that he was so affectionate. She had asked him once if he was an affectionate father as well as lover (she didn’t say “husband”) and he had said yes, he always hugged and kissed his two little boys, because his own father had been cold. He had then added, with a gleam in his eye, that perhaps he wasn’t as affectionate a husband as he ought to be. He was so perceptive, and so kind. He knew when she wanted to ask something and hadn’t, and he always answered.
“Wait till you see what we have!” he said happily and pulled her into the living room. It was the first time Ellen had ever seen the living room without all the furniture covered with sheets. Reuben’s apartment always amused her because his wife had covered everything, even the lampshades, just like an old woman, so it wouldn’t get dusty during the summer while she was away. Never mind that poor Reuben had to live there during the week. The only place she’d left for him was the bedroom and the kitchen.
He had put out a cooler with ice in it, and in the ice was a bottle of Dom Pérignon. Beside it were two tulip glasses chilling. On a silver plate was an open jar of Beluga Malossol caviar, Ellen’s favorite, and a plate of toast he’d obviously made himself. He had even cut it into little squares and trimmed off the crusts. And the final touch was a small box from Cartier.
“Happy birthday, darling,” he said.
“Oh, Reuben, this is the best birthday I ever had!”
He produced a wrench and opened the champagne with a satisfactory pop and sizzle of frosty steam but no overflow. Ellen applauded. “I learned that trick from a bartender,” he said. “My hands aren’t very strong.”
He poured the champagne, they toasted each other and drank, and then he made her eat caviar although she wasn’t hungry. Then he gave her the present. She opened the box and saw a small, delicate gold chain that would just fit around the base of her throat.
“Oh, put it on me,” Ellen said. He did, and kissed her neck above the chain. “I’ll never take it off,” she said.
“I thought perhaps I shouldn’t,” he said. “But I do love you. And you can make up something in case he asks, can’t you?”
“Of course. I’ll say I got it from Margot.” She thought of the Gucci bag. Reuben hadn’t even noticed the box, or if he had he had already forgotten it. So she could just put the bag in her closet, and when she started using it Hank would never give it a thought.
“Two presents?” Reuben asked. “Your Margot is a big spender.”
“You never lose your capacity to surprise me,” Ellen said.
“I hope I never do.”
She wore the necklace while they made love on the bed, and she thought that now it really was his gift to her because it had the touch of his skin on it, and, she imagined, even the scent of his skin. Even though she would wear the necklace in the shower and in the world outside it would still be a part of the two of them making love. She liked the idea. She also liked that he had taken the sheets off the living room furniture and had entertained her there, so she would not feel like a summer interloper. He really was a very thoughtful man. She supposed that when fall came he would find another place to take her where they could both feel safe and comfortable. She didn’t picture Reuben in a motel somehow. He was much too naive, too idealistic. He would probably have a close friend with a bachelor apartment.
“I love you,” he was saying over and over. “I love you, I love you.”
That was so nice. She could listen to that forever. “I love you too,” Ellen said.
Stacey had spent the entire afternoon baking a birthday cake. She had also bought her mother a bottle of perfume. Jill had bought her mother a book she herself wanted to read anyway, and spent the day reading it, very neatly, and then wrapped it up again in its gift paper. Of course she could have waited until her mother was finished with it and then borrowed it, but it gave her a special, secret pleasure to have it first. Jill was a fast reader. Now that the book was all hers, safe in her mind, it was nothing but a shell, like an old squeezed orange, a perfect birthday present for her shell of a mother.
Stacey finished the last laborious icing decoration. “There! Just like the store.”
“It’s too good for her,” Jill said.
“Like Mom says, no point in doing something if it isn’t perfect,” Stacey said cheerfully. “It’s time to put the chicken in. Did you wash the salad?”
“Not yet.”
“Jill! I can’t do everything.”
“It was all your idea.”
“But you said you’d help me,” Stacey said.
“Don’t whine.”
“You don’t understand, I’m doing all this because I like doing it. The party is just an excuse.”
“Then why didn’t you have a party for your friends?”
“She would have said it was too expensive. This is one of our big Family Charades. You’ll see, she and Dad will be thrilled.”
Jill sat down on the kitchen chair. She had been feeling faint lately, spots in front of her eyes, periods of nausea and lassitude. She didn’t like the way she felt, not at all.
“You look kind of green,” Stacey said. “Are you all right?”
Jill bit her lip. “It’ll pass. Get me a glass of bottled water from the fridge, please.”
Stacey brought it at a run. Jill drank a little and felt like throwing up. She felt cold sweat breaking out on her face and running down her sides. “I’d say it was something you ate,” Stacey said, “but seeing as it’s you, it’s probably something you didn’t eat.”
“I wonder if I have cancer,” Jill said.
“Cancer! It’s either the twenty-four-hour virus or starvation. Or both.”
“The family doctor.”
“If you can just make it to Halloween, kid, we can send you out trick-or-treating as a skeleton.”
“Har-de-har-har,” Jill said. She was feeling a little better. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and was surprised to find her hair was wet. Her forehead felt cold, no fever, far from it. Her hand was cold too. Her fingernails looked bluish under the fluorescent kitchen light. She hoped she could make it through dinner. The kitchen clock said a quarter past six. Her mother wasn’t home yet, and her father was taking a shower, planning to get all dressed up. Stacey had started washing the salad greens, casting Jill anxious looks.
“You look lousy,” Stacey said. “I wonder what your blood pressure is.”
“Don’t you have a little set in your room?”
“I bet your blood sugar’s low too.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what, Stace. When I die you can do the autopsy.”
“I’ll use this,” Stacey said, waving the kitchen knife and grinning. “But wait till after dinner, I need it.”
Their father came into the kitchen dressed i
n clean slacks and a clean sports shirt and smelling of pine. He beamed at the two girls. What a domestic scene, Jill thought in disgust. Stacey’s ass-kissing, I’m dying, Dad’s putting on his act, and Mom’s out with her lay. I wonder if she’ll even remember to come home for dinner.
Ellen came home at half past six. She went directly to her bedroom, then to the bathroom, took a shower, and came into the kitchen in her bathrobe. “What are we wearing tonight?” she asked cheerily. “Well, Hank, don’t you look nice. I guess I’ll wear pants, then,” and she went into her bedroom without waiting for anyone to answer her.
Hank mixed some Bloody Marys and took one to the bedroom for Ellen and one for himself. Jill was still sitting on the kitchen chair like a lump. She didn’t think she could work up the strength to stand.
“I’m going to change my clothes,” Stacey said. “Jill, will you watch the chicken? Take it out when the timer rings. Jill?”
“I heard you.”
“If it burns, it’s your fault. If the timer doesn’t work—and it sometimes doesn’t—take it out at seven fifteen. Jill?”
“Yes.”
“When the little hand is on the seven and the big hand is on the three.”
“Up yours.”
“I’ll hurry, and then you can get dressed. Unless you plan to remain like that.”
“Stacey,” Jill said, “I can just see it now. You’re going to grow up to be somebody’s mother.”
“Up yours.”
“I haven’t got one.”
Jill heard Stacey’s radio playing her favorite country music and wondered which of her sister’s collection of T-shirts with things written on them they were going to be honored with tonight. The sound of the music kept going in and out. She felt as if the chair was very gently rocking. Her body felt very heavy, endlessly heavy, so heavy she couldn’t move it, drawn inexorably toward the ground. She weighed a thousand million pounds, a stone body, paralyzed. When she hit the floor she didn’t even feel it.
She came to in what felt like a car, but she fell asleep, and when she came to again she was lying in a bed in a strange room. One of her arms was strapped to a board and there was a needle taped into the big vein in the arm; tubing ran from the needle to a big bottle hanging above her on a steel stand. Her arm vein hurt like hell. There was a buzzer taped to the pillow. She rang it with her free hand. Hospital. Now, which hospital, and where?
