The Last Chance

by Rona Jaffe

  She lied to Robert when they went back to her apartment and told him she had her period, so he would keep away from her. She couldn’t face the idea of two men in one day. She took a sleeping pill before they went to bed, because even though she was tired, she was nervous, and when she went to sleep she dreamed that she and John Griffin were riding away on a horse together, up into the sky, like in a Chagall painting.

  She didn’t have anything to write to him about, but she kept hoping in the office that he might at least send her a postcard. He never did. Well, maybe it took a long time for mail to arrive from Yugoslavia. Besides, he was very busy. But she knew he wouldn’t ever write. One day, at the end of November, she read in the Post and the Daily News that John Griffin was involved in a new, torrid romance with a starlet in the film he was making.

  For some reason it hurt her, although it really didn’t surprise her very much. Why wouldn’t he have an affair? He was a very sexual man. Besides, actors were always in love with whoever was playing a part in their lives at the moment. For a while she had been his costar, and he had been playing his serious-author role. Now he was in another fantasy, across the world. She felt as if she had never really known him, and yet she felt that she knew him as well as anybody. She knew all there was to know about John Griffin. What was she expecting, secrets?

  She went home to Wilton for the weekend as she always did. “Look, Nikki,” Robert said. “I want you back.”

  “I know,” she said. “I think we’re both close to it, don’t you?”

  “No. I’ve changed, but you haven’t. I’ve been making concessions. But you have everything your way.”

  “I do?” Nikki said, surprised.

  “I drag myself in to that tiny little apartment after a long, hard day at the office, I take you out, I sleep over and have to get up early and take the damn train to Stamford, and what do you do?”

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “Do you want to come back? Do you want us to be the way we used to be?”

  “You mean happy?”

  “Yes. Happy.”

  “You know I do, Robert. I’m trying. I want everything to be the same. Maybe after a long time marriage just changes.”

  “Bullshit! Our marriage never had a chance,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that there are jobs here. You could work in Stamford. You could work on the local newspaper—they’d be glad to have you. You think that company you work for is the greatest thing in the world. It’s nothing. It’s just a second-rate company. Why don’t you wise up, Nikki? You’re throwing away your life for false gods.”

  “Thou shalt have no other god before me,” she murmured.

  “You think those people you work with are intellectuals. They’re just second-rate failures. They’re living in a tight little world where everyone lies to everyone else and people tell each other they’re powerful and important. Do you think anybody outside of publishing even heard of you? Do you think if you left that the world would fall apart?”

  “I am the lord thy God and thou shalt have no other …”

  “What are you mumbling about?” Robert said.

  “What do you want, Robert. What do you really want?”

  “I want you to quit that job and get rid of that apartment and come home. I want us to share our life together. The girls are grown and on their own and we only have each other, Nikki. I want you to be with me.”

  “But you don’t even know me.”

  “I know you better than anyone else in the world does.”

  “No,” Nikki said. She felt as if she were going to cry. “You just know me longer, Robert.”

  “Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “It counts for a lot. It makes it very hard to leave you.”

  “You know we can’t leave each other,” he said.

  “Robert, didn’t you even wonder why I didn’t get mad when you said what you just did about my job and my friends and my life and my self-respect?”

  “Because you know I’m right. Look, maybe I was a little harsh, but I just don’t want you to waste our lives, Nikki.”

  “I didn’t get mad because, Robert, I don’t care what you think about me any more.”

  “You’re just saying that to get back at me,” he said.

  She shook her head, no.

  “Go ahead,” he said, “get mad.” He sounded a little frightened.

  “I’m not mad, Robert. I’m very hurt, but I’m not angry. You don’t want me back. You just want someone to fit in with all your ideas of what your wife should be.”

  “You are what my wife should be.”

  “Obviously not. The way you described me, I wouldn’t want that person back.”

  “I want to change that person,” Robert said.

  “I know,” Nikki said. And she smiled, a cold, deadly smile without any flirtatiousness or humor. It was more a grimace of resignation. “Dinner is at seven.” And she went upstairs to pack her clothes.

  The easiest thing to do, she decided, would be to have a lawyer serve Robert with papers. She had nothing else to say to him. She felt bloodless. A year ago, even six months ago, if he had said to her what he had just said she would have argued with him and cried. It would have seemed a betrayal of the grossest kind. But now it just seemed like a nasty little boy kicking and screaming at his nurse. She didn’t want to be kicked and she didn’t want to be his nurse either. She wondered if he really meant what he had said about her. It didn’t matter. He had been able to say it. She could no longer live with a man who had such a deep contempt for the best she was able to do.

  They all knew Nikki had left her husband. Nikki told Rachel, Rachel told Margot, Margot told Ellen. Poor Nikki, Rachel said, knowing only her own happy marriage. Poor Nikki, Margot agreed, knowing only the loneliness that kept coming closer and closer, threatening to choke her. Lucky Nikki, Ellen said, and I’m next.

  Nikki refused to take alimony, although her lawyer urged her to. He mentioned the many years she had been married to Robert, the sacrifices she had made, the two children she had borne and brought up so well. He talked about inflation, the cost of living in New York, the fears she should have of being fired, or of retirement. Nikki didn’t want anything from Robert, except that he continue to support their daughters until they no longer needed him, even if they didn’t live at home. She knew he would, of course. As for herself, she wasn’t sure if Robert would be willing to support her or not, but she felt that if she was leaving him over his protests the only thing she wanted from him was her freedom.

  Ellen was trying to decide what to give Reuben for Christmas. She didn’t have much money, and what little she had was for Jill and Stacey, who both needed new winter coats. She didn’t plan to give Hank anything. It would be too hypocritical, since she was going to tell him the very next day that she wanted a divorce. She finally got an idea for Reuben from a needlecraft book she was promoting. She would make him a needlepoint pillow for what would be their new apartment. At least she would make the front part. Maybe she’d better do it in crewelwork. She hated handicrafts, and crewel was a lot faster than other needlepoint. It wouldn’t cost much if she made her own design and just bought the canvas and wool. She had already decided what to embroider on it: the day of her liberation and the joining of her destiny with Reuben’s, December 26. She bought the materials and started working on the pillow in the office during her lunch hours whenever he had a business lunch. She felt that she had made her first real commitment, and she smiled as she worked on it. Wouldn’t Reuben be surprised and delighted!

  Ellen was being remarkably pleasant lately to everyone. Even Thanksgiving dinner went smoothly in her household. The girls helped her cook, Hank washed the dishes, and they all watched those dopey parades on television together. She wanted them to remember her well when she disrupted their lives, so that they would have faith in her and know she would continue to make them happy even though she was exchang
ing one husband for another. All except Hank, of course. She knew he would be devastated. But he’d had enough years of her life. It was time she thought of herself. If Nikki could make the break when she didn’t have anybody to go to, how cowardly it would be for her to continue to hide here in this pretense of a marriage when a man who adored her was waiting.

  Ellen had just finished the Dece in her crewelwork when Reuben came into her office. She shoved the thing under some papers on her desk. “What a surprise,” she said. “I thought you had a lunch date.”

  “I broke it.”

  “To be with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, lovely. Let’s go.”

  She put on her coat, and they walked to the elevators together, pretending to be casual, even though everyone in the office knew.

  “I thought I wouldn’t be able to see you until this afternoon,” Ellen whispered. “This must be my lucky day.”

  “I couldn’t wait,” he whispered back.

  They carefully avoided looking at each other in the crowded elevator. When they reached the street he asked, “Are you hungry?”

  “There’s something to eat in the apartment, isn’t there?”

  “I didn’t notice. Let’s pick something up.”

  They took a cab and stopped at the deli near his building to buy sandwiches. Then he insisted on stopping at the liquor store to buy a bottle of wine and a bottle of vodka.

  “I suspect we’re planning to take the afternoon off,” Ellen said, smiling.

  “We might,” Reuben said, but his answering smile was tight. She wondered what was the matter. Mad at his wife, probably. Certainly not mad at her, she hadn’t done anything.

  “You seem upset,” Ellen said.

  “Let’s get upstairs.”

  They went into his apartment in the hotel. Ellen thought it seemed different, but she couldn’t figure out at first what it was. Then she noticed it was neat. All the papers and books that had littered the living room were gone. She took off her coat, and while Reuben was messing around in the kitchen she went into the bedroom and looked around. It seemed too clean and colorless too. The photos of his two sons were gone. She ran to the closet and looked inside. There were no clothes hanging there, but instead there were two large suitcases standing on the closet floor. She lifted one and it was heavy. She rushed to the dresser, opened all the drawers, and saw that they were empty, except for one, in which the few little things she had left in his apartment were neatly folded. They would all fit into a shopping bag, and indeed he had put a clean shopping bag next to them, folded too.

  “Reuben!” Ellen went into the living room just as he was coming out of the kitchen with two large glasses of vodka and ice in his hands. “What happened, are you moving? What’s going on?”

  “Take this,” he said. He handed her the drink and she saw that his hand was very steady. He didn’t seem upset, but he wasn’t himself either. He took a long drink from his glass. “Sit down, Ellen.”

  She sat on the couch. “Will you tell me why you’re all packed?”

  “Ellen, I’m going home.”

  “You’re what?”

  “I went to the lawyer with my wife—Look, don’t interrupt me, okay? This is hard enough as it is. I sat there and discussed dividing up our things, and the money she wanted, and all of a sudden the whole thing became terribly real. I mean, before it was a dream, a wish, a fantasy. But in the lawyer’s office, with papers to sign, it wasn’t make-believe any more. And my kids. I … I just couldn’t stand to look at their faces. They were scared, Ellen. They’re just little boys. They need their father. I felt so guilty. I missed them. I can’t go off with you, Ellen. We can’t get married. I can’t leave my kids.”

  “Your kids?” At first, while he was talking, the enormity of what he was about to do to her had left her numb, but now she saw it all, and she was filled with anger. “Your kids? You can’t leave your kids? What about what I was going to do for you? What about my kids?”

  “And my wife.”

  His words hung there between them as if they were visible. They looked black, Ellen thought, like burned paper. And my wife.

  “That’s it,” she said. “Coward.”

  “I’m so sorry. You don’t know how badly I feel, Ellen.”

  “Liar.”

  “I never lied to you, I swear it.”

  “You were going to leave them.”

  “I was.”

  “But you took one look at how much it was going to cost you …”

  “Do you think that’s unimportant?”

  “I’m sure it’s essential.”

  He shook his head. “It’s the guilt, Ellen. I just can’t leave them. I’m going home tonight.” He finished off his glass of vodka in one long series of gulps and looked very relieved. “Drink your drink, Ellen, you’ll feel better.”

  She threw the vodka in his face, glass and all. He ducked the glass, and it bounced against the rug and lay there. Some of the liquid had splashed on his shirt and tie. He took out his handkerchief and carefully mopped it off. “I don’t blame you if you hate me,” he said.

  “I despise you. I despise cowards.”

  “You have every right to despise me. And I’m sorry.”

  Ellen looked at him, and suddenly she realized that she was doing all the wrong things. No man had ever left her before. Instead of throwing a tantrum she should be acting weak, crying, begging him not to leave her. Why would he want to come back to a woman who behaved the way she was doing? She let her eyes fill with tears, and then she was genuinely unhappy and she began to cry. “Oh, Reuben, don’t leave me.”

  “Please don’t cry,” he said sadly. “You make me feel worse. Ellen, please believe that I didn’t ruin your life. Nothing has changed for you. Thank God we didn’t do anything rash. You can go on just as before. You’ll find someone a lot better than me. You can have any man you want. You don’t need me.”

  “I do need you,” she said. She blew her nose. “This is a terrible thing to do to me. How can you do it?”

  “Guilt,” he said. “It’s my most prominent characteristic.” Surprisingly, he was smiling. He looked as if the confession had been a catharsis for him. He went into the kitchen and made them each another drink. Then he sat in the chair, still not next to her on the couch. Ellen had the horrible feeling that Reuben was never going to touch her again. She wondered if she should try to get him into bed. Would that work? If it did, for how long?

  She wiped her eyes and drank a little of her drink, looking at him, and then she lit a cigarette. He let her look at him, sitting there silently under her gaze like a prisoner in the dock, waiting for sentencing. She looked at the old acne pits, the crooked teeth, the face she had found so irresistibly sexy, and she remembered all the reasons she had first chosen him. She had wanted him for his guilt. She had always chosen well, and she had never been wrong. Reuben Weinberg, she had thought when she picked him, is a man with the proper amount of guilt. He’ll never leave his wife.

  She had been right. She had chosen him too well.

  She let him leave the apartment first, with his suitcases, just to be sure he really meant to leave. She watched from the window and saw him drive away in a taxi. She threw her things into the shopping bag, and then she put it down next to her purse on the floor and made herself a fresh drink. She was in no condition to go back to the office this afternoon and she couldn’t go home yet. Methodically she smoked the rest of the pack of cigarettes even though they made her throat hurt, and drank two more glasses of vodka and ice although she disliked the taste. She felt numb and was probably drunk. She looked in the bathroom for her toothbrush, but it was gone. Then she remembered the piece of paper he had made her sign promising to join him on December 26. What a liar! He had even lied to himself, which made him weak besides. She hated him. How dare he ditch her? He had been lucky to have her. What had he done with that piece of paper? She looked into the wastebasket and saw some empty envelopes, some crumpled pieces
of paper with scrawls on them, which, on inspection, seemed to be work from the office. And underneath all of that were some tiny pieces of paper that he had torn up as if a detective were going to come after him and investigate his tracks. Ellen put a few of the little pieces together. They were the infamous contract. “I, Ellen Rennie …”

  She gathered them up and methodically flushed them down the toilet. Did Reuben think he was the only one who had to protect himself? Weak, castrated bastard! She had to get out of this place before it stifled her.

  She fled to the street. It was dark already, and Sixth Avenue and the cross street were clogged with traffic, bumper to bumper. Everyone was going home. She had a home too. She would go to it. She only hoped that Reuben was as miserable as she was, and that he always would be, forever and ever.

  December 1975

  The Christmas holiday season brings out the worst as well as the best in everybody in New York. Christmas was truly meant for children. For adults it is a time of remembering, of depression, of loneliness. Every year there seem to be fewer celebrations. Perhaps it is a backlash against consumerism, or inflation, or simply the lack of money. When we were children Christmas was the time of anticipation, of decorating trees and waiting for Santa Claus with his gifts; as adults, it is we who have to buy the gifts, or make them, decorate the trees, pay the bills, and there is never enough time.

  “Let’s not give each other presents this year,” Margot said to Ellen.

  “But we always give each other presents.”

  “It’s so expensive,” Margot said. “I’m not even giving those horrible office gifts.”

  “I want to have a really bang-up Christmas and forget my troubles,” Ellen said. She had been nervous and irritable ever since Reuben had left her, and she avoided him in the office. Luckily she had no business to do with him anyway that couldn’t be passed on to someone else in the publicity department. “Nikki says we should have a party.”