“Maybe Shakespeare is too ambitious,” Ruth said in her quiet way. “Perhaps we should try something a bit simpler? What do you think, Martha?”
Martha wasn’t exactly examining her fingernails, but she had definitely disengaged. “Oh, I made my suggestion,” she said. “Now it’s someone else’s turn.”
Martha had never shown the slightest petulance before, and we decided she was obviously still sick. To take the pressure off her, we agreed that each of us would come up with a suggestion for a different play by the next time we met. As we walked back to our apartments, Carla said, “When Martha acts like that, you know she’s really sick.”
“She’s not sick,” Jeannette said. “It’s the General.”
We thought that was just Jeannette being a bit snide. But then she told us that she had twice in the past three days seen Martha and the General together, one afternoon drinking tall glasses of lemonade down in the bar and another time in the shopping center at Nordstrom’s necktie department. And then it seemed that over the past few days we had all had our “sightings,” as Rena put it: the two of them on the putting green, at Baskin-Robbins, standing in line at a movie, once in a downtown Burmese restaurant.
“Well,” Rena said, “she certainly hasn’t been coming to lunch or dinner with any of us.” Not that we ate our meals together all the time. Jeannette, for instance, preferred lunch in her apartment eating the cottage cheese and canned pear that helped her control her weight, Carla often spent a day at the shopping center, and Ellie went out to dinner with old friends from earlier times.
Rena said she didn’t keep track of who was or wasn’t present for meals but without Martha the dining room certainly wasn’t as pleasant as it had once been.
And then we wondered why we had not discussed Martha’s absence. Was it, Ruth suggested, a sense of privacy we protected for ourselves and wouldn’t violate in others? It’s her business, isn’t it? We all nodded and tacitly agreed that it was indeed Martha’s business and we wouldn’t discuss it.
When we met next to decide on the new play, Martha mentioned it to us. “I don’t know whether you’ve noticed,” she said, “but I haven’t been around as much as usual.”
“Oh, we noticed all right,” Jeannette said.
Martha said, “It’s because I’ve been seeing Walter.”
Ellie immediately said, “What exactly does ‘seeing’ mean in this context?”
We all knew Ellie had a vulgar streak, and so we rushed right past her. “Well, we’ve missed you,” Rena said.
“And we’re glad to see you,” Ruth said.
But Carla wouldn’t leave it there. “That explains why you wanted to open the play to Triple R,” she said.
“No, no, not at all,” Martha dismissed that with a wave. “Though I did—do—think we’re getting a tad stale, ingrown. But I’m okay if the rest of you want to keep our gang closed. So what’re we doing next?”
That was all the conversation we had about Martha and the General. As Ruth had made clear, we weren’t about to invade each other’s privacy, except Ellie’s one little mistake. Even later and in private, none of us ever mentioned seeing him. Of course we were curious and had to wonder, but we were old enough to keep our imaginings under control.
We began to discuss our next reading. Ellie suggested Private Lives and Ruth suggested Winterset and then Jeannette said, “How about Clare Booth Luce’s old play, The Women. It doesn’t have a single male character.”
We snuck glances at Martha to see how she would take that, but she just shrugged and said, “Since we can’t seem to settle, let’s think about it some more and decide next week.”
***
Martha didn’t come to lunch or dinner during the week, and when one of us arranged an outing, to a concert in San Francisco one evening and a lecture over at the University another, and invited her, she was sorry but had other plans. And those plans were always with the General. We saw them eating together, going on walks around the premises, getting in the General’s car for a jaunt here or there. After all the years of widowhood when she had not at all been one of those avid old women on the prowl for anything in pants but had been quite content with being a widow among women, here she was, in the twilight of her life with what Gertie persisted in calling a boyfriend.
And then she didn’t even show up for our next meeting, when we were to settle on the next play. We pretended nothing was different but of course everything was. Still, as the General might have said, we soldiered on, making suggestions for what we should try next.
Ellie said, “You didn’t like my suggestion of Private Lives, but how about Blithe Spirit? That would be fun.”
Rena said, “It’s so trivial—it would be a waste of time.”
Ruth said, “I was thinking, how about Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard?”
Carla said, “We should never try Chekhov again, after that awful Three Sisters.”
One by one we dismissed each other’s ideas with impatient sighs and a flap of the hand. And then Jeannette said, “I still think The Women would be great.”
Rena whipped around to face her. “Harping on that is what drove Martha away.”
“Wait just a second,” Jeannette said, her face flaming.
Gertie in her airy way said, “Oh, come on, Jeannette, if the shoe fits…”
Ellie turned on Gertie and said, “Must you always speak in clichés?”
We pushed back our chairs, gathered up our belongings, and left the room, furious with each other and ashamed of ourselves. Were we envious that Martha had found the General and we had not? Maybe, but most of us had long since given up any expectation that our life could take a romantic turn and in all sincerity would not have wanted that turn and its inevitable complication.
Were we simply jealous of the General because we had lost Martha to him, just as we had been jealous as girls when some stupid boy picked off our best friend? Yet we would not admit how distressed we were. We said it was only the inevitable order of nature, just as when the peacock spreads his fancy tail feathers before the peahen and the rest of the covey scatters.
***
So we scattered. Although two or three of us occasionally went to a play or concert or ate together, we were no longer a gang. We had lost the center of our circle and the group fell apart. Ellie became a Bar Fly and one evening the night manager had to put her to bed, and for three days she stayed out of sight. Jeannette decided to lose twenty-five pounds, and every morning she exercised with the Weight Watchers and every evening emptied the breadbasket. Rena took up golf again and spent long hours alone on the putting green, bent over, trying to figure out which way the grass grew. Gertie began playing gin rummy with whoever happened into the card room, and occasionally she was asked to fill in at the bridge table. Like a butterfly in a high wind Carla seemed unable to land and became a Floater. Ruth took her meals up to her room, reverting to her natural state of Lone Ranger.
***
About seven months after our gang broke up, the General died. He and Martha had been attending a mixer when he dropped his glass of wine on the carpet, gave out a muted groan, and crumbled to the floor. Martha dropped to her knees and rubbed his hands between hers, beseeching him to be all right. But he died almost instantly. The night manager took charge and hurried the General’s body out the back door of Triple R, and the desk clerk quickly escorted Martha up the service elevator to her apartment.
Apparently the General had never been ill a day in his life, except once when he broke his elbow falling from a horse during a steeplechase. We all thought he would have made a very demanding patient, and that all in all a one-minute heart attack was not a bad way for such a man to go. Or, really, anyone.
***
For the first week or so after the General’s death, Martha did not venture out of her apartment. She and the General had been such a tight twosome that they had not made couple-friends, and of course Martha’ s children didn’t take the romance seriously and hardly showed up after the first da
y. Although we were still smarting a little, we swallowed our pride and went up to her apartment. As we embraced her, we silently forgave her for deserting us and ourselves for deserting each other. The next day Ellie brought a bottle of dry sherry and Jeannette a wheel of Brie and crackers and Carla an armload of flowers. Rena and Gertie took turns making sure the staff prepared Martha a hot dinner each night, and Ruth collected the mail from Martha’s mailbox.
After almost two weeks, Martha did what we would expect her to do. She had her hair done in the basement beauty salon, put on her makeup, donned a beautiful lavender dress, and came forth to meet the world as it would be.
Jeannette arranged for the seven of us to sit together at the large round table in the window. Ellie ordered a special wine, and Carla made sure the flower arrangement matched the daffodils and iris just beginning to bloom in the garden. Martha was the last to appear, her lightly colored hair swept back, her shoulders as squared as the General’s had ever been.
She sat down, unfolded her napkin across her lap, and looked at each of us, one by one, smiling, as though reminding herself of how much we meant to her. And then she said, “Shall we try The Cherry Orchard again?” Beaming with pleasure we said what a marvelous idea that was. And we felt safe again.
Two’s Company
Rosa Perdido was four feet eleven inches of muscle and energy, every erg packed with prickle. Virginia Blankenship was six slender feet of controlled good manners. One dark, the other fair. One poor, the other well off. One an immigrant from Manila, the other not quite back to the Mayflower but close. Of an age, which was a year or so over sixty. For eleven months, they had met every Tuesday in the Blankenships’ seven-room flat on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where Rosa did the cleaning and the laundry and Virginia wrote children’s books.
Rosa admired Mrs. B, as she called Virginia. The cashmere sweaters, the well-kept nails, the brownstone full of expensive textures and elegant antiques, the husband who wore dark suits and silk neckties and spoke in a soft voice. And she was proud of working for a writer, a real writer. Shortly after Rosa had begun working for the Blankenships, Mrs. B had given her a copy of The Crocodile’s Dinner Party signed “To my friend Rosa.” On her way home to Brooklyn, Rosa often stopped in at Barnes and Noble in Grand Central to make sure the book was prominently displayed in the Children’s Books section and to tell the clerk that Virginia Blankenship was her very good friend. At these moments Rosa loved Mrs. B.
But something would happen between them, and then the woman’s very existence brought bile to Rosa’s mouth and rage to her heart. Leaving the room before Rosa had finished her story. Explaining how to run the new vacuum cleaner or how to apply for citizenship, things Rosa knew better than Mrs. B did. And sometimes Mrs. B spoke with irritation when Rosa was trying to do her work. Just a stupid rich woman.
Rosa was sure that she was smarter than Mrs. B and knew things Mrs. B had never even heard of and done things Mrs. B would shudder to know and lived in places that would frighten Mrs. B bald-headed. If she had had half Mrs. B’s chances, she would have done much better than Mrs. B ever could. She would have a grander apartment than Mrs. B’s, not decorated in pale, washed-out colors but in rich reds and blues. She would have written a large, important book, a book for grown-ups, not a teeny tiny book for kids who couldn’t even read them. And she wouldn’t be married to a wimp like Mr. B but to someone bold and confident—at least that son-of-a-bitch Antonio hadn’t been a sissy with a puny voice and soft useless hands.
Virginia never came close to “loving” Rosa, but she did admire her gritty determination. She admired the fact that Rosa had taken classes at night school and spoke an absolutely perfect English, that Rosa took pains with her appearance and came to work decked out in stylish designer clothing that she proudly said she bought for a song at a nearly-new shop just off Madison, that she took pride in doing a good job, dreary as the work was, and left the apartment gleaming. And she was absolutely honest. Virginia never had a moment’s doubt of that. Rosa was too proud to steal.
But Virginia found Rosa’s very presence intrusive and annoying. From the moment Rosa arrived, the air seemed to swell with her bustling energy, chairs scraping, doors slamming, pots and pans clanging. Worst of all was Rosa’s proud voice telling endless stories of her life. Whenever she saw Virginia, even just passing in the hallway, she seized the moment to launch into one of her tales, how she had overcome the misery of her childhood, how she had defeated the “scum” she encountered on the subway, and, more cheerfully, how she had taken a fancy to a little Puerto Rican boy. It was as if part of Rosa’s pay was access to Virginia’s ear. Even when Virginia managed to escape to her workroom, Rosa soon brought in her bucket of cloths and sponges, saying, “Okay if I clean in here?” as though Virginia were just playing with the crayons, like a child. When Virginia had complained to Lawrence about Rosa, he had blithely answered, Just tell her to come back later. He could be incredibly dense. She couldn’t possibly say, Go clean the toilets while I diddle with these crayons. It was unbearable. She’d have to let Rosa go, give her two weeks’ pay and send her on her way. But not yet. Not with this new book contract hanging over her.
***
At the stroke of nine-thirty, here came Rosa and the struggle was on. She smiled into the hall mirror and called, “Right on time, as usual.” She hung her coat (Donna Karan) in the closet, stashed her handbag (Furli) on the top shelf, changed from her spike heels (Manolo) into sneakers (unidentified), and walked into the kitchen where she found Virginia at the breakfast table, drinking orange juice, fresh from the juicer on the counter, not from one of those waxy cartons no telling how old and soured. Rosa liked that. She would never work for trashy people.
“Slept late, did you?” she said. “I wish I could.”
That Virginia had worked until nearly three the night before, trying to meet her deadline, was none of Rosa’s business, but Virginia didn’t want Rosa to think she had just been lying abed. “I worked very late on my book.”
“How’s it going?”
“Sometimes yes and sometimes no.” Virginia wouldn’t talk about the book with Rosa. Rosa would be full of suggestions as though she were an editor or a writer. “Coffee?” She gestured toward the stove. “Bacon?”
“I’ve had breakfast. Believe me, I couldn’t get here if I didn’t have something in my stomach. It’s a long trip and standing up all the way. The subway gets worse every day. You’re lucky you don’t ride it.”
Virginia heard judgment ringing in Rosa’s tone. “I do ride it,” she protested. Her publisher was near Union Square and how could she get there in less than an hour except on the subway? Or to Midtown in less than forty-five minutes? “Of course I ride the subway.”
“Not in rush hour you don’t,” Rosa said, her tone dismissive. “It’s different then. A zoo. Animals. They should be locked up in cages. People crawling all over each other like a bucket of worms, jabbering away, pushing and shoving. You’re lucky I got here.” She launched into the story of her morning, an old man who grabbed her you-know-where, a young man who told her to go you-know-what herself, a little dried up yellow woman shouting at her in her high-pitched Chinese singsong. Rosa blew air through her nose contemptuously. “Stupid people can’t even speak English.” She drew a deep breath, as though preparing to charge on with the story. “Today was the worst.”
Virginia pushed away the orange juice and stood up. With her editor breathing down her back, she didn’t have time to listen to the saga of Rosa’s morning. “New York can be brutal,” Virginia said, hoping that would be the end of it.
“Ha!” Rosa laughed and shook her head. “Not for you, it isn’t. You don’t have to mix with those people. You were born lucky, Mrs. B. You got to admit you were born lucky.”
Virginia felt miffed by that—as though lucky were somehow a moral failing. She could have told a few stories when she hadn’t been lucky—a date rape when she had been a freshman at Bennington, her drawer bulging
with rejection slips when she had tried to write for grown-ups, a thousand minor mistakes and mishaps. Still, she knew that if there had been a competition for worst-luck, Rosa would win hands down. “Yes, I guess I was born lucky.” With this concession, maybe she could get away. She started toward her workroom.
“I sure wasn’t.” Rosa went to the sink and poured detergent into the iron frying pan. “I’ve had to work since I was eleven when my mother died.”
There was no way Virginia could just walk out with that statement hanging in the air. “That must have been very hard,” she said.
“It was. But I managed.” As she scoured the pan, Rosa said that to stay alive it was either sell herself to the tourists as a lot of girls, and some boys, too, did or find something else to sell. “Every day I’d go up to where Manila’s garbage was dumped and pick out anything I could sell. See a little glint at the top of a pile of fresh garbage, and I’d go for it, fish heads and dirty diapers up to my knees. I was hoping aluminum, but more likely turn out to be just a tin can full of worms and beetles. But I’d wash it out and sell it and make a few pennies. Once there was a rat in a big tomato juice can. He tried to bite me, but I grabbed his tail and threw him to the other side of the mound. And then I sold the can.”
A shiver rose up Virginia’s neck. Rosa had told many stories of her life in Manila, but never anything this horrible. A little girl alone in a wicked world, wading knee-high in slime and filth, flinging away a vicious rat. Yet she had managed somehow not to be destroyed by it. There was, Virginia thought with a sudden rush of emotion, something heroic about Rosa, brave, even noble. She put her hand on Rosa’s shoulder. “That’s so terrible,” she said. “I don’t believe I would have survived.”
“I know you wouldn’t have,” Rosa said. “You’d have died, easy life you’ve had.”
And the moment was over. It was always that way with Rosa. You say something nice, pay her a compliment, and she turns it against you. The more sympathy you showed, the more arrogant she grew. Virginia removed her hand. “Well,” she said with a smile that felt like paste around her lips, “I can’t imagine how you managed.” She began to sidle toward the door.
Old Ladies Page 9
