Humming, she set the music stand up in the bare expanse of living room. Two mantels faced each other across gleaming floor, and morning sun streamed in the windows to the east. Soon it would reach the sunroom at the front, five windows wrapped around it, through which she could see yellow leaves, red brick on the house across the street. Taking the violin out of its case, she began to tune.
WRAAAA, the doorbell zapped, outraged. WRAAAAAA.
Stunned, she held her breath. Perhaps if she stayed motionless?
A young blond woman’s face appeared in the first window of the sunroom, peering in. Margy recognized her instantly. Tiffany was exactly who they had been hiding from, along with James and most of their old friends. Tiffany had bombarded them with letters, phone calls, and suicide threats, and Margy had already listened to her for several hours on the phone. When Tiffany was six, her father had handed her a baby duck at Easter time, on his way out of town for good. After the duck grew up, her mother had driven Tiffany and the duck out to a pond to let it go, and a fox had killed it in front of her. All her lovers had left Tiffany the way her father did, but Webster was the worst.
“Stubbed me out like a cigarette,” was what she had said.
Nevertheless, she was a gorgeous (if bleached) blond, taller and younger than Margy by a great deal, and Webster said she had done everything there was to get the perfect body, liposuction, silicone, fingers down the throat. She also studied lake biology, Webster’s own field. Peering in the window as if she had a right, she examined everything with cool blue eyes. But when she noticed Margy staring back, at least she had the grace to look startled.
“Tiffany!” cried Margy heartily.
Hearty cheer was how you talked to children, wasn’t it? When they had gotten back together, the head of Webster’s lab had asked him to make sure Tiffany got out of school in one piece, with at least a master’s degree. Margy of course would have to help. She was a grown-up, happily married. She could handle this. She flung the front door wide.
“Come in. Webster isn’t here. Would you like some tea, or milk, or something?”
Tiffany slumped in, wary and morose.
“I know. He’s at the lab. I came to talk to you. Coffee would be nice.” A smile flickered on her lipsticked lips as she gazed around the living room.
“We threw out all of your stuff,” she said and strode toward the kitchen, as if she knew exactly where it was.
Well, not threw out, thought Margy, certainly. What was she supposed to say, I know my chicken? She smiled. Webster never threw out even a used razor blade. Some of her ripped-up clothes were in the car right now, and in his lab, converted into rags. Their furniture he’d given to benefit a camp for Native American kids where Margy sometimes taught the violin. Even at the time, that had seemed a clear enough message to counteract the rage.
“Yes, it’s a wee bit empty, isn’t it? The kitchen has two chairs, though. Come on in,” she said unnecessarily, since Tiffany was already inside the room.
Making more coffee, Margy found cookies (only somewhat stale) and put them on a plate. While she moved around the kitchen, she felt the girl’s eyes on her, studying her bony, aging, freckled legs and arms, her flat chest, frizzy hair. When Margy turned to her, she looked stunned, eyes propped open in astonishment.
She set down the mugs. “Careful of the table. It wobbles. Webster made it, and of course he had to do it without even screws or anything. The Miwok way, you know.”
Tiffany stared at her blankly. Hadn’t Webster even talked to her about his Indian obsessions? Perhaps there wasn’t time. They’d spent only a few weeks in each other’s company, and Webster had made clear that most of that had been in bed. Margy felt a warm flare in her cheeks. She gave one quick glance at the girl’s expensive body. But Tiffany had put on flowing Katherine Hepburn pants, a loose jacket. What to wear to see your lover’s wife? Margy almost liked her for having taken so much care.
Tiffany also appeared to blush under her poreless, porcelain makeup.
“It’s him I came to talk about. I’m just hoping you can explain it to me.”
“Well, I’ll try, of course. What is it exactly you want explained?”
Tiffany looked daring, lifted one arched brow. “I know you have to think that it was not important, what happened between me and him. But it was, you see. He wanted to marry me. He begged me to marry him, about a week before you came back home. I can’t even believe he ever looked at you again. It’s not like him at all.”
Margy shrugged good-naturedly. Marry Tiffany? Sure, there were those weeks in bed, and Margy had done something like it, more or less, with James.
“Marriage is a mystery,” she said evenly. “I’m sorry you were hurt by ours. It was messy, bringing other people into it, and we certainly did. It was immature of us. But we were both hurt, you see, and using other people to try to hurt each other. Webster used you, I’m afraid. I hope you’ll believe me when I say I’m sorry about that.”
Vehemently, firmly, Tiffany shook her head. “No, you see, that’s not the way it was. He may have kept this from you, but I think you should know the truth. I hate to have to tell you, but he was really totally in love with me. He said he was glad you left him, and it was really more like he left you. You see, he’d figured out you were this awful person, and I was wonderful, and he loved me. He—he told me things about you. Sexual things,” she said and glanced at Margy boldly. “Things he hated that you did in bed. They didn’t sound real good.”
“Oh, dear,” said Margy with a quick, light laugh.
Sexual things? Well, surely nothing much. Okay, the last few months before she left, of course it all went wrong. But wasn’t that to be expected, after all they’d said? She could recall one time, possibly their last attempt before she left. Webster had been shouting at her about something—driving the car too much, polluting the atmosphere?—and somehow they had started to make love. He had his head between her legs when Margy realized how furious she was. Putting the soles of her feet against his shoulders, she had shoved him out of bed. After that point, they were both insane.
“We were a little nuts then, I’m afraid. I hope no one was taping anything we said, because we didn’t mean it half the time. We’re trying to forget about it now.”
“I know,” Tiffany said patiently, as if she were the grown-up here. “But that looks like the weirdest thing of all. I have no idea why he’s back with you. He never explained it. Did he explain it to you? Or tell you anything about me? He must have said something. It would really help to know what he told you about me.”
It was like being with a golden retriever, Webster had said once, trying to reassure Margy. Very cute, but I had to keep throwing the stick. Margy grimaced. Did grown-ups always have to lie, smooth over things? She made her face sincere.
“He said you helped him at an important time, when he needed it. He speaks very highly of you.”
It was true, most of it. Tiffany had helped him. It was much better that he had called her, and slept with her as often as he needed to, instead of using that kitchen knife while he knelt beside the bathtub drain. Tiffany had kept him alive for her. Margy tried to feel a tiny spurt of gratitude.
“Listen, someday you’ll be married too. It’s not like being with a guy for a few months. There’s this deeper thing that can happen. It gets into your DNA. Sure, there can be bad periods in a long relationship. But if you’re lucky, you’ll find out you’re connected in a way that you can’t change. And that’s where it begins, the happiness. You just have to give in and accept it, accept being happy. That’s what we’re doing now.”
Tiffany also tried to make her face sincere. “I just want to make sure he’s being good to you.”
Margy tried to look relieved and grateful. “Well, that’s happening.”
But it seemed pathetic to say that now. How could she tell? It was too soon. What sexual things?
They were silent for a while. Tiffany widened her eyes. “Don’t think I envy you.�
��
“Of course not. Why should you envy me?”
Margy seemed to have trouble getting air into her lungs. She smiled at Tiffany, and felt herself turn blue. Tiffany swirled her cooling coffee in her mug, took a last sip, and stood.
“Well, thanks, I guess. Thanks for the coffee anyway. Guess I’ll be seeing you.”
“Sure, now that we live here near the lab. I guess you will.”
Margy walked her to the door and waited while she walked out, closed it behind her. Neither of them said another word.
She spun around the house, up and down the stairs, splashed cold water on her face. She felt a sudden urge to sell the house and flee, how far? Someone would find them, anywhere they went. James sent his letters to the symphony, and he had called there, sent a short blast of telegram (You ought to be ashamed of yourself). He also wrote to Webster, asked to meet with him, but Webster refused.
“What planet is this guy from?” he said. And he was right, clearly. When you exploded your life in pieces in the air, better not to listen to the people on whom they fell.
She had to practice fast and dress and drive uptown. She kept her mind on Brahms, trying to think impressionistic, not slushy. In the second movement, she needed to underplay, slip under the hearer’s consciousness. When you want to be heard, whisper! she shouted to herself. Don’t think so much when you play. Sexual things, her mind murmured. He begged me to marry him.
At Orchestra Hall, she avoided the locker room downstairs, where her friends would be, and slipped straight into her place near the back row, began to tune. As her friends came in, she pretended to be absorbed. Mirasu was one of them, a gray-haired Asian cellist with a bitter mouth. Her only husband had gone on to marry two more times, each wife a decade younger than the last. Mirasu had laughed when Margy said she was going back to Webster. Did Mirasu know something she did not, that it was never possible to trust at all?
One day, making love to Webster, she had noticed she was flopping underneath him like a salmon out of water, helpless, holding nothing back. She felt afraid. Didn’t men use sex to make you helpless, so they could laugh and walk away?
Then she had noticed he was also thrashing the same way. He seemed a trifle helpless too. Since then, she almost trusted him. She might as well have given up her skin, been flayed. Was it even possible she could survive if they broke up again?
Exhausted, limp, she tried to think about the Brahms. It seemed like endless hours that she had to play and play, barely holding on.
There was no concert that night, thank God, and she could get into the car and inch through traffic, lumber home. When she let herself into the house, the autumn evening light shone gold across the empty hardwood floors, stabbing her with beauty and betrayal now.
“Mouse!” called Webster happily, from the kitchen in the back.
When she went in, he was rolling pasta dough with just a rolling pin, since he had thrown out their machine. He stood expectant with a dishtowel on his shoulder, face a study in delight. He had two wine glasses on the table, and a bottle of good red open on the counter. Leaning over, he kissed her six or seven times.
“Okay day?”
“Fine. Mostly fine.”
“What’s mostly?”
She examined the vegetables he had put out, started washing the asparagus.
“Your lab seems to give out this address.”
“I don’t think they do, actually. Why do you say that?”
She found a knife, roughed up one spear. “Oh, nothing much. Just, Tiffany dropped by for coffee.”
“Ouch.”
He smacked his forehead, left a flour print. “She could have followed me, I guess. How did it go?”
He held his hands out fast.
“Not that I want to know. I’m afraid I can imagine it.”
“Did you tell her you planned to marry her?”
He let his air out in a rush. “I don’t think so. But anything is possible.”
“Do you like the way I make love?”
“Ha!” he laughed, one unconvincing burst. Grimacing, he sobered, took the knife out of her hand.
“Let’s not discuss this with one of us holding a knife, all right? I’m extremely sorry that happened today. I’m sure you realize she came here to hurt you. She’s not as helpless as she looks. I guess she managed it.”
Gingerly, he wrapped his arms around Margy and sighed.
“What do you think, that I do this to torture myself? Let me tell you something. You are the sexiest woman I’ve ever known, and the best lover. I’ve never been bored with you for one second. You’re the one who walked out on me, remember? I had to crawl through flames to get back to you. I’ll crawl through flames again if I have to.”
“And you don’t wish that you had married her instead and had a young wife with a perfect body who never did bad things to you?”
“No. I would have been the saddest husband in the world, and the most bored. I wouldn’t even have known what was wrong with me, or how good life could be. Look, you have to believe me. You have to. Okay, now I’m too anxious to eat. I need some reassurance here. Let’s forget dinner and go upstairs.”
Who should you believe, your husband, or your ex-girlfriend-in-law? Which one will make you happier? There was the truth, and then there was the feel of his body. The pasta could dry out and crack. The wine could turn to vinegar. Drying her hands on his paint-splattered jeans, she leaned against him as they turned to climb the stairs.
Canary in the Mine
She was not supposed to laugh, or cry, or think of anything. She was supposed to lie still on her back, while needles dripped a drug into her arm. She was pregnant, but she wasn’t good at it. The first time the doctor had told her the good news, it lasted about a week. Then she got in bed with her own husband, and a pool of blood began to spread across the sheet. The second time, she had just left the office of her obstetrician, who had said everything was fine.
It might have been for the same reason it had happened to her mother, whatever that was, or because of drugs her mother took to have Margy. Or it might have been the British doctor with his horrible long knives. Whatever it was, her doctors now made clear that this would be her final chance. She had to give up her whole life, as if this really were her only purpose now. They wired her to electrodes, needles, IV drip. Beta-blockers stopped contractions of smooth muscle, and could also stop her heart. After ten weeks of lying on her back, could she remember how to play the violin? For that matter, she wasn’t sure she could walk. Astronauts’ legs, they said she’d have, valves in her veins relaxed, blood changed from a river to a pool. All the hours she had spent trying to tighten her vibrato, round her tone, years of work to make it all sound effortless. Now she was just a lump of failed biology, here on the bed.
“Hey, you. You in there,” she said.
Rat-a-tat-tat, the baby’s heartbeat boomed out of a monitor in polka time. Her belly rose up like a speed bump, pale blue in the flannel gown.
Lightly she tapped against her drum-tight skin, beating out the “Blue Danube Waltz.” It was all she could think of, and it was maybe age appropriate, for the minus-three-months set. The baby was just palm-sized now, but it could hear, and think, wonder about the tapping sound. Only, the trouble was, it couldn’t breathe.
“Hey, you. You in there. Don’t come out yet, you hear?” Tap-tap-ta-tap, she went. “Stay where you are, okay?”
Her windows looked out toward Lake Michigan, where it was February, gray water crossed with waves. Thin light filtered through the window to the gray linoleum, the metal bed frame like a paper clip, the rolling bed tray like a staple that fit over her. On the ceiling hung a water spot like a man in a chef’s hat. It was her sole decor. She had been in too long for flowers, even cards. Her friends were sick of it.
“You’re still in the hospital?” they said when she called. “Do you really think this is a good idea? Some people aren’t cut out for parenthood, you know.”
They sent h
er books, self-help psychology, as if pregnancy were something she should snap out of. Even her pregnant friend, Eileen, called only to brag about her “third-trimester bliss,” how big she was, how huge her baby was going to be. What had ever made her think she liked Eileen?
“Nine pounds at least!” she crowed, while Margy thought in ounces, days. The start of the third trimester was a mirage that hovered, still a week away.
Suddenly the ceiling came down over her like shrink-wrap. The man in the chef’s hat was now a quarter inch above her nose. She couldn’t breathe. The hospital shrank tight around her, like a body bag. It happened several times a day, this strange contraction of the room, as if she were a baby in a womb, about to be expelled.
Groping with one hand, she found the phone, tapped in the number of Webster’s lab. Just talking to him sometimes made the ceiling back off from her face. But now his taped voice answered, gruff, inscrutable. He would be off staring at pond scum through a microscope, or intoning his prophecies of doom to undergraduates. Nature was nearly dead, he said, like his long-lost ancestors. Pond plankton was dwindling, and when it went, the rest of them were going too. Miscarriage was on the rise. After her first, he had sat at his computer weeping till he proved it for the city of Chicago, and St. Louis, and Detroit, and then for farms within a two-mile radius of some Midwestern ponds. Soon he’d have the model working on a global scale, and publish it so anyone could find the ratio of ghost shrimp larvae to fetal death in remote regions of Manchuria.
The door swung open, and the day nurse strode in, a large black woman who took in the situation at a glance. Nurse Jones had grandchildren, though she was only thirty-five. Margy was thirty-six, and she resented this. Nurse Jones assumed that Margy was an idiot, unable to manage even one live child, and wasting all this nursing effort in a bed where fifty capable young women could have punched out babies by this time. Standing by the bed, she turned back the coverlet.
Angels Go Naked Page 17
