by Rona Jaffe
A nurse came in and smiled when she saw Jill was awake. “How do you feel?”
“I have a headache.”
“Well, you hit your head when you fell. You had three stitches, but the doctor says there won’t be any scar. You’re a lucky girl.”
Jill felt her head with her free hand. There was a bandage going diagonally across her eyebrow. “Where’s my family?”
“They’re waiting outside. I’ll send them in.”
“What hospital is this?”
“Payne Whitney.”
“The nut place?”
The nurse never lost her plastered-on smile. She looked like the girl on the Burger King commercial. “Now, you don’t think you’re a nut, do you?”
“No, I don’t. So why am I here?”
“You’re very lucky to be here,” the nurse said, and strode out of the room, returning quickly with Jill’s parents and Stacey. Ellen looked as if she had been crying, and she rushed over and hugged and kissed Jill, which made Jill cringe. Her father gave her a fake hearty smile and took her hand in his big nice hand. Stacey of course was inspecting the paraphernalia that they’d attached to Jill while she was asleep.
“You have a catheter,” Stacey said triumphantly. Jill followed Stacey’s glance to the floor where a bottle stood, partly filled with urine, with a tube coming out of it which—she discovered with a twinge when she tried to move—was attached to her insides. She felt like a piece of meat. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Now that you’re awake we can take that out,” the nurse said cheerfully. “Would you turn around please, Mr. Rennie?” Her father turned his back and the nurse whisked the tube out of Jill and collected the bottle. “But, Jill, you have to use the tin cup in the bathroom, not the toilet, because we have to measure everything that comes out of you. Ring for the nurse whenever you have to go to the bathroom. Don’t go by yourself. You might fall down.”
Jill looked at the bottle on the stand attached to her arm. “What about that thing?”
“Oh, it goes with you. On wheels.”
“What do you mean, ‘goes with me’? For how long?”
“Until we get you up to eighty-five pounds or you start to eat by yourself, whichever comes first.”
“Oh, my God. It’s the Chinese water torture.”
The nurse directed her endless smile to the other members of the family and left the room. Ellen was stroking Jill’s head. Jill wished her mother would take her paws off her. She wondered how long she had been here. It couldn’t have been long, there weren’t any flowers in the room, also no TV, and her father was wearing the same outfit he’d had on for her mother’s birthday dinner. Oh, God, the birthday dinner!
“Gee, Mom,” Jill said, “I must have spoiled your birthday.”
“What birthday?” her mother said cheerily. “I’m still thirty-nine.”
“I’m sorry I got sick.”
“You just get well,” her father said. “That’s all we want.”
“How long do I have to stay here?”
“A couple of weeks,” her mother said.
“Well, we can’t afford it,” Jill said. “I’ll eat at home.”
“Nobody trusts you any more, Jill,” her mother said.
“Thanks.”
“This time you’re going to get well,” her mother went on. “Your father and I have all kinds of health insurance. In fact, since you have to be in the hospital a couple of weeks, we were lucky enough to get you transferred to the Payne Whitney branch in the country. It’s very pretty there, just like a college campus. They have tennis courts, and trees—”
“Who do I play tennis with, other loonies?”
“There will be a doctor to talk to you every day and find out why you have this obsession with being thin. You’ll work it all out. You’ll see, everything will be fine.”
“We’ll visit you all the time,” Stacey said. “It’s near.”
“And,” her mother finished triumphantly, “I had a plastic surgeon sew up that cut. You won’t even be able to see the scar.”
I’m sure that was the first thing she thought of, Jill thought. Don’t let my beautiful daughter have a scar on her face. Anything that came out of me has to be perfect.
“My arm hurts,” Jill said. “Make the doctor take this thing out. It really hurts.”
Her father looked for a moment as if he were going to lose his composure entirely and burst into tears. Then he collected himself and rang the buzzer. When the nurse finally came he said, “My daughter says she’s hungry.”
“Wonderful!” the nurse said. She scooted away and returned with a tray on which were a little paper cup of custard and a spoon. Just like room service. She cranked up the bed and put the food on the bedside table which she pushed across Jill’s lap.
“I am left-handed,” Jill said. “I can’t eat that unless you take the splint off my arm.”
The nurse peered at her suspiciously. “She is left-handed,” Jill’s mother said.
“I’ll have to ask the doctor.”
“So ask him,” Jill said.
“You’re bargaining with me,” the nurse said.
“What’s the difference?” Jill said. “If I eat we both win.”
The nurse left the room and returned carrying a tray with Band-Aids, cotton, and something in a bottle that looked like alcohol. She unhooked Jill from the torture machine, swabbed her arm, and slapped a Band-Aid on the hole. Jill could see a bruise even outside the bandage. She shook her left hand, which felt weird, and took the spoon. They were all watching her. They looked like a bunch of idiots. She took a spoonful of the custard, which was surprisingly tasteless, and swallowed it. She nearly gagged but suppressed the feeling until it went away. This isn’t food, she told herself. It doesn’t look like food. It certainly doesn’t taste like food.
They all hung around until she had finished the custard and drunk a glass of water, and then they hung around some more to make sure she wouldn’t throw up. Jill had no intention of throwing up. She was going to be a saint in this hospital and also in the loony place in the country, and as soon as she got to be whatever they considered well, they would let her out. The doctors wouldn’t let her blow up into an enormous freak, a fat balloon. She’d be safe. Then she could be free to resume her normal life. She would tell the doctor whatever he wanted to hear. Maybe she would tell him she wanted to be a model. He would believe that. And he would have to let her out while she was still slender. Nobody ever heard of a fat model. She wished she was old enough to get her own apartment, to make some money. It was hell to be trapped with your family, at their mercy. They were trying to take over her last private thing, her own body. She would never let them have it. She was smarter than they were, even though they had the power. Jill knew she would win.
For the second time that week Kerry didn’t come home for dinner. Margot had rushed back to her apartment from the studio the minute she got off the air, started cooking, bathed, put on something nice and sexy, and then waited. She played his favorite records, drank a few glasses of wine, called her answering service twice more in case they’d made a mistake the first time when they said no one had called, and waited. She phoned his apartment. No answer. She turned down the heat under the blanquette de veau so it wouldn’t get overcooked, phoned Kerry’s apartment again, and finished the bottle of wine. She hated stew, she was making it only because it was the one thing she could think of that wouldn’t get ruined if he was late. She could have made a steak, of course, but it smelled up the apartment and that wasn’t very romantic. She had the air conditioners on in both rooms and was burning scented candles. Lily of the valley, because it was June. It smelled like cheap lollipops, and she blew out the candles.
She wanted to call someone, to have someone to talk to because she was lonely and frightened, but she didn’t want to tie up the phone. Why the hell hadn’t she gotten two lines? Too cheap, that’s why, knowing her friends could call her at the office where there were a million lines, a
ll free. Even through all these years of being self-supporting she had never quite gotten over the first fear she’d had of being broke. It had amazed her to be making what her father proudly called “as much money as a man,” but she kept worrying that her luck would go away. So one minute she was extravagant, giving Ellen that Gucci bag for instance, at over a hundred dollars, when Ellen would probably have preferred a gift certificate to a gourmet shop so her family could at least eat. And the next minute she was stupidly economical, not getting two phone numbers. She was trapped here, waiting for Kerry to appear or to call, and knowing in her heart he wouldn’t call, that he would show up when he was ready and not a minute before. There was no point in being angry about the phone, she should have been angry about her choice of man.
Margot was getting furious. She opened another bottle of wine. She’d lost weight from nervousness since knowing Kerry, so she could drink as much as she wanted to tonight. If she got drunk maybe she would tell him exactly what an inconsiderate little pig he was. He had no right to treat her as if she were nothing. Who was he anyway? Just a kid, with an unpublished novel he’d never even let her read. Maybe it was callow, narcissistic, like its author. She was sure it was. His influential father had probably gotten the publisher to give the kid a contract and a token advance as a favor. The publisher probably thought Lawrence Fowler would buy ten thousand copies and warehouse them, give them away for Christmas presents; he could afford to. Little brat. Why didn’t he come home? He knew damn well she was doing the eleven o’clock news all next week as well as the early evening news and they wouldn’t be able to have a decent evening together. This week was supposed to be special. He could fool around next week. Where was he that was more important than being here?
It was half past ten and Margot was pacing around the apartment like a caged animal. She wasn’t even hungry, just high and furious, but not so drunk that she wasn’t still in control of herself. She wouldn’t yell at him, she would just tell him calmly what her needs were and why he was being unfair. He would apologize as he always did, but this time she wouldn’t let him win her over. She would make him know how she felt. He really didn’t have any idea, his apologies were just part of his easy charm.
A quarter to twelve. She heard his key in the lock and her heart turned over. She had been afraid he was dead. She remembered when she’d been a little girl and her parents had left her alone at night with the maid, or a cousin, or some adult they could scrounge up. Margot, the good little girl, had lain in her bed as still as a mummy, in a sweat, sleepless, until the moment she heard that key in the lock. It had sounded as loud as a shot, echoing through the entire silent apartment. She had sighed blissfully at the first murmur of her parents’ hushed voices, and was asleep before they even got into her room to look.
“Kerry!”
“Hello, love.” He looked calm and fresh, not even sorry. “I smell something burning.”
“The veal,” she said dully. She just didn’t want to be alone. How could you say that to someone? It was the worst thing you could say, because then he’d tell you to find someone else.
He went into the kitchen, peered into the casserole, and turned off the flame. “It’s saved,” he said. “We just won’t scrape the bottom. Sorry I’m late.”
“Oh, you noticed.”
“I’m sorry. I was helping a friend move into his apartment. I know I should have called, but he didn’t have his phone yet.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to,” he said sweetly. He hung his jacket in the bedroom closet and then came over to her and rumpled up her hair. “You look cute.”
“I’m very angry,” Margot said. “You are very inconsiderate and I don’t like it.”
“Oh,” he said. “I guess I am. You know what I’m like, I forget normal things. I’m not good at domestic arrangements. Is there any wine?”
She gestured to it instead of rushing to pour him a glass, the way she usually did, his geisha. “It’s quite good,” she said. She was afraid to carry the fight further, but she wasn’t ready to make up with him either.
Kerry poured himself a glass of wine and came to sit down next to her on the floor. Not good at domestic arrangements, she thought. He doesn’t even need a chair. He doesn’t need food. He doesn’t need me. He sipped the wine and gave her a sad, sweet smile.
“You’re so angry, aren’t you, love?” he said.
She shrugged.
“I have to tell you,” he said. “I want to move back to my own apartment. I have to be free. I want to see other girls. Other people. I want to be alone.”
She felt as if all the little cuts from all the years of hurts inflicted had opened up again. She’d thought they were healed. They were as fresh and burning as if no time had passed at all for mercy. She could hardly breathe.
“We’ll still see each other,” Kerry went on. “We’ll date every so often—I do love you, you know, and I want to keep seeing you.”
“Date?” Margot breathed. She wanted to punch him in the mouth, to draw blood.
“We’re friends, aren’t we?” he said.
“Friends? You wouldn’t know what a friend is!”
“I’ll be a good friend, you’ll see.” He smiled at her, that old winning smile he was so sure of. “I’ll build you new bookcases.”
“When did you want to leave?”
“Well, we might as well have dinner and spend the evening together. What’s left of it. It’ll be good for you to talk—you’ll get all your feelings out and then you won’t be mad at me. You can tell me what a rat I am. And then tomorrow morning I’ll get my stuff out of here.”
“Tomorrow morning?” she said.
“Well, it’s late already. If you want, I can sleep on the couch.”
“And then you’ll leave, because it’s more convenient in the morning. It always has to be what’s convenient for you, doesn’t it?”
“I’m a terrible, selfish person,” Kerry said calmly.
“So am I. I want you to leave now.”
“Now?”
“Right now.” She stood up, her arms spread wide, thinking she probably looked like an avenging witch. “Get out!” she screamed at him. “Get your things now and get out!”
Don’t leave me, she wanted to say. She was thinking it so strongly she couldn’t understand why he didn’t hear her. Don’t go, don’t leave me, take it all back, you didn’t say it.
“Look, if you want I can just go, and then tomorrow I can come take my stuff while you’re out. We’ll set a time. I’ll leave my key on the dresser.”
Maybe he’s changing his mind. She looked at him, trying to see behind those cool eyes. “Look,” she said, “you’re free now. You come and go as you please. You have a key. Let’s talk about it a little bit.”
“I should have gone a couple of weeks ago,” Kerry said. “I wanted to tell you. If I had moved out when I wanted to then, I wouldn’t have caused you all this pain by being late and forgetting things. It would have been better for both of us.”
“Is there someone new?” She could have killed herself for asking it, it wasn’t part of the game. He shook his head, no.
“I just can’t be tied down, Margot. I have to be on my own.” He went into the bedroom and began gathering the few things he had left in her apartment. She realized how few they actually were. The silk robe she had bought for him, a pair of jeans, some shirts and sweaters. He didn’t even wear underwear. He went into the bathroom and took his toothbrush. He had always used her comb and brush, a habit she had deplored, but now she would do anything to have him back using them again. He dropped his razor into the wastebasket. It was one of those plastic razors that came free with a package of blades. She wondered if he had bought it on purpose to be temporary. The only reason he had bought it at all was that when he used her razor he complained she made the blade dull.
He tossed everything into a shopping bag he found in the kitchen. She watched him, pacing around after him, bi
ting her nails until they hurt. When he had packed, he took his key—her key—off his key chain and put it on the dresser. Then he went up to her and put his hands on her shoulders, looking down into her face.
“I want you to know, Margot, that no woman has attracted me as much as you have. Ever.”
She didn’t say anything. He left. She listened until she heard the elevator door close after him, and then she locked and bolted her apartment door, went into the bedroom closet, shut the door, sat down on the floor, and screamed and screamed until she was completely hoarse.
July 1975
Rachel Fowler liked spending summer weekends at her house in East Hampton. It was casual, and everything smelled so good—the air, the ocean, her skin warm from the sun. She avoided getting sun on her face now, had for several years, because she was afraid of wrinkles, but she let her body in a string bikini get as tan as it could. She swam in her pool, never in the ocean, and she wore a bathing cap and kept her head out of the water. She wasn’t going to negate those boring three hours she spent every month at the hairdresser’s getting the proper amount of sun streaks put into her hair. Lawrence found sitting in the sun a total waste of time. He sat there, but he surrounded himself with books and papers. He did, however, turn from time to time to get an even tan. It delighted Rachel to see that he was just as vain as anybody else, it made him more vulnerable and lovable.
Kerry came for the weekend sometimes. He had a new girl. It surprised Rachel that he had gone on to one girl so quickly after breaking up with Margot. He always wanted what he couldn’t have. Perhaps he couldn’t quite win this new girl over yet, and that was why he lavished so much attention on her. She was a black model—beige, really—only twenty, and beautiful. She was so tall and thin that Rachel thought she was probably part Watusi. She made a hundred dollars an hour. Her name was Haviland.
