by Ann Beattie
You see through this; understand I was too naïve, even if you factor in that I was young. The ’80s were not a time when women had to put up with male tyrants. No woman had to fit herself around a man’s schedule. To do so was lazy, as well as demeaning. But I didn’t introspect; I didn’t ask enough questions. I expressed passivity by pretending to myself that whatever I did for Neil was charming, old-fashioned dutifulness. More embarrassing still was the fact that I let him support me, that I had delusions about becoming a major essayist (In this culture? as Neil would say).
If you think for a minute, you might guess what happened next, because clichés so often befall vain people.
I moved in with Neil. We lived on the fourth floor of a Chelsea brownstone—a neighborhood Neil loved, because in those days it wasn’t posh and the people who owned businesses were hardworking and polite, helpful and smiling as they greeted customers with their few memorized phrases of English (“Thank you very much” was the owner of the dry cleaner’s; “Come back not too early” owned the laundry), and every block had a distinct character all its own.
The people who shared the building with us in Chelsea included a model who lived with a man who wrote for the Village Voice; Raymond, a psychologist who saw clients at our brownstone; and the landlord’s forty-year-old son, Etch-a-Sketch—as Raymond and I had nicknamed him. Jobless, he, too, often sat on the front steps, fiddling with dials on a plastic box with a pale gray screen on which pictures were created.
One chilly day in June, I was on my way uptown, my fisherman’s bag filled with pens and tablets slung over my shoulder, adjusting to my new red Keds, wearing my uniform of jeans and a little cashmere sweater, over which I wore one of Neil’s nicely worn, roomy jackets.
Sitting on my front steps was a woman, attractively dressed, clearly not a bag lady or one of the loonies who’d been let out of jail. But who was she who had opened our iron gate to sit on our steps?
She was Neil’s wife. She told me in three words.
“Not a clue?” she said. “He was that good at hiding me?”
I don’t know what I said. I know that I sat down several steps above her and looked into the trees. The Episcopal seminary was across the street. I looked at that, too.
“We’ve been in couples therapy,” she said, “but it occurred to me today that what he wants to do is marry you—in spite of all the reassurances he’s given me that he doesn’t—so I thought that for once in my life, I’d try to do the right thing. I thought I’d try to warn you off. Is there any chance you’ll listen to me?”
I used the railing to pull myself up and teetered down the steps to where she sat. There was a pack of cigarettes next to her. I looked at the package. It might as well have been my heart.
“He told me I was the exception. That he didn’t believe in marriage,” I said.
“That’s what he told me, too. And as we both see, apparently he doesn’t.”
“How long—”
“Eleven years,” she said. “I lived with him for a while before we got married.”
I remembered Neil saying, “People say women are catty, but men are doggy: they just walk around silently with their bone, until they want to bury it.”
“I’ve known about you for months. I should have contacted you sooner. I’m just another one of those wives who go to therapy and meanwhile let their husbands ‘work out their problems.’ He told me his affair with you would bring us closer. He did! And that we always could have been closer, if I’d been willing to open up to him. You’ve discovered he likes to give advice? That way he can tell you his opinions and he doesn’t have to question himself. Do you know what I did once? I’ve never told anyone. He had strep throat, and I flushed his antibiotics down the toilet and refilled the bottle with Kaopectate pills. Some part of me really hates him.”
“You can have him,” I said.
“I thought about getting your number somehow and telling you, but the truth is, I wanted to meet you. You’re pretty. I wouldn’t have expected otherwise. I’m pretty, too. There we have it.”
She took out a cigarette, offered me one, shrugged when I declined, and removed a book of matches from the little purse at her feet, struck one, stuck the cigarette into the flame and watched the flame for a while with crossed eyes, before blowing out the match and inhaling. “I have the same bag you have,” she said, on the exhale. “It’s the only sensible bag to have, right? The perfect bag.”
“How long did you say you’d been married?”
“We don’t have children, in answer to your next question,” she said. “Eleven years.”
“I should have known.”
“You should have. Did you really think he was always working?”
“My friends were suspicious.”
“My friends hate him, but still: a lot of them fantasize about sleeping with him.”
“My friends do, too. They call him. Flirting.”
“Then he asks you what he should do about them, right? Letting you know how loyal he is, and at the same time making sure you know how untrustworthy your friends are.”
We said nothing for quite some time.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Lisa,” she said. “And of course I’m so enlightened, I keep my maiden name: Lisa Pauline Haley. And you are Jane Jay Costner. The Jane Jay Costner. I figure the Jay was your mother’s maiden name. Maybe you’re Southern, though you don’t have an accent.”
“You’re right, if you consider Washington the South.”
“I wouldn’t be the first to remark on the number of women writers who have three names, would I?” she said.
“Jane Austen,” I said. “George Eliot.”
A squirrel went up a tree. A boy walking a beagle yanked its leash, then stopped to watch the squirrel climb.
“Eudora Welty,” I said. “Mavis Gallant.” I concentrated as if my life depended on it. “Flannery O’Connor,” I said. “Alice Munro.”
“So here I am, sitting on a step in Chelsea, my marriage done with, and you don’t want him, either. It turns out to be his bad day, doesn’t it? But there’s no spark between us. Am I wrong? I thought if there was, I’d ask you to have coffee.”
“Maybe it’s jealousy, but I don’t really feel drawn to you,” I said.
“I have several good friends,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”
She smoked her cigarette. Next door, a famous actress walked down the steps and headed off for her morning of reading Variety and the International Herald Tribune at the Empire Diner. One of the waiters told me she brought her own tea bag, and asked for hot water, which they didn’t charge her for. Her little dog’s paws never touched the sidewalk. She was said to have been a lover of Marcello Mastroianni. She sometimes said hello, but today she didn’t. She turned left toward Tenth Avenue.
“I can imagine what the rent on this place must be,” she said. “Does he make you pay your share?”
I shook my head no.
“He inherited a house outside San Francisco when his grandfather died. All the legal problems involved, and he never mentioned it. Interesting. Shall I tell you who he rents it to? No curiosity? Well, he can certainly afford the gesture.” She dropped her cigarette on the step and moved her foot sideways to squash it. A little puff of smoke rose from beneath her toes and wafted away.
“Where do you live?” I said.
“East Eighty-eighth, off Second. When we got married, we lived in a one-bedroom, then the one next door came up for sale. We borrowed money and bought it, had the adjoining wall knocked out. We gutted the second kitchen. He has a collection of Murano glass in there on glass shelving, with recessed lighting. Below the shelves are his first edition poetry books.”
“He’s rich?”
“He didn’t have as much money as he has now until Edgar died,” she said. “That was what—five years ago? I was going to have coffee with you, then go see my lawyer uptown. The subway’s not exactly convenient in Chelsea. I took a cab. I’m go
ing to try to get as much of Neil’s money as possible. He already hates women, so what the hell. You know that, right? He hates women.”
“I guess he does,” I said.
“I don’t have much of a sense of you,” she said. “Are you in shock, or are you a very low-key person?”
“Shock, I think.”
“I guess it’s possible I wouldn’t have known, either, except that we’re married. And also, he has such a need to be found out. He’s not two-timing both of us with another woman and telling you about her, is he?” She clasped her hands. “Just kidding,” she said. “Oh, you really are pretty,” she said, standing. She reached down for her cigarette pack and her purse. “Younger than me. Smart. I read that interview with you. Are you giving interviews now? It seems like you shone very brightly for about a week, and then you disappeared.”
“Do you hate women, too?” I said. “That’s a pretty nasty thing to say.”
“The older I get, the less I like people,” she said. “You, being my husband’s mistress, of course I’d have every reason to dislike.”
I looked back at the treetops. The sky was cloudless. In a children’s book, one little cloud would skittle across the sky and be a topic of conversation and wonder. The sky was pure blue. As she walked away, a man I didn’t know walked down the steps, several stoops away, then turned and went quickly toward Ninth Avenue. I watched him overtake her, and saw her falter. I knew she thought it was Neil, coming up beside her. But it was only a tall man with a briefcase, in a hurry.
You correctly assume that I did not simply leave him. If I had, there wouldn’t be much of a story. Not that I stayed for that reason. I stayed because of personal failings. I didn’t believe a word of his remorse, I was not moved by his tears, and I told him he was lying when he said he’d been on the verge of telling me. I did not agree to take a walk with him. I took the drink he poured only to say, “This is wine, not ‘a drink,’” and threw the glass across the room. I told him to sleep at Tyler’s with the rest of the animals, or go back to his wife’s. I pointed out that he did not have many friends to call, to ask if they could put him up. Wasn’t Tyler his only male friend? And pretty much a loser? When Neil would not leave, I shoved some things in my bag—Kleenex and tweezers and a little box of bitter mints—and walked downstairs to the psychologist’s. He was not home, but Etch-a-Sketch was and was gallant about offering me his couch. I was relieved, though surprised, that Neil did not knock on the door.
But he wouldn’t do that, would he? So predictable. That was bad: to be predictable. To walk downstairs, beg. That was for sitcoms, not real life.
Etch had been playing solitaire and drinking Orangina. He produced a blanket from a zippered bag, and a seat cushion he lifted from a chair and slipped into a pillowcase. He folded the blanket in half and tucked the end under the sofa cushion. He muttered, in a worried way, about how bad things happened to everyone. He offered me Tylenol. I took only the glass of ice water. He reassured himself that everything was fine, tomorrow would be another day, such things happened. Then, knowing he’d been talking to himself, he pulled up a chair, as I sat leaning against the back of the sofa, on top of the blanket. He told me that he had gone to D.C. years before, to protest the war in Vietnam, and the person next to him—the guy he’d ridden next to in the bus, and eaten a sandwich with just moments before—had stepped back and doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire. He cried into his fist, then wiped his eyes and said good night, telling me there were eggs in the refrigerator, if I got up before he did. When he went away and closed his bedroom door, I looked at the clutter on the coffee table. He had a blue Gumby, and he read The Paris Review. I kept thinking, about Etch-a-Sketch: I’ve misjudged him, I’ve brought unhappiness into his life, this is all my fault.
I was conflating my feelings about Etch with my feelings toward Neil.
“Talk,” Neil said. “When did I ever say talk solved anything? It’s a device of politicians, to obfuscate. It might be slightly useful for priests who are cornering altar boys. Or to teach a dog its name. Talk? That’s what’s wrong with relationships: we’ve been made to think we can communicate through talk.”
“And your idea is what? To pantomime regret?”
“It’s better than talk,” he said, dropping to his knees. “If I stay here with my knees digging into the floor, if I kneel until you tell me I can get up, you’ll at least have the satisfaction of knowing I’ve suffered.”
“Don’t try to turn this around to make me the bad guy. I’m not the one who didn’t care who suffered. I want you to clear your things out of here. You can shuffle around on your knees like some beggar in India while you gather them up. I won’t be here to watch it.”
He stayed where he was and dropped his head. I picked up my bag and coat and left, leaving the scarf behind, as if it were a dirty tissue.
I was given a key to my friend Janelle’s apartment. Except for Wednesdays, when Jan’s brother used the apartment to have sex with a wine delivery man who supplied the restaurant next door, the room was mine until she got back from work. Next door, there were cries of passion much of the afternoon. I was amazed at the lovers’ ardor, until I finally figured out there was a prostitute in there. In front of the door (which had two peepholes) was a mat depicting Santa and his reindeer, with “Happy Holidays” curving in a long streamer above the sled, from which Santa beamed and waved his black-gloved greeting. Christmas had passed months before. No one was ever in the apartment at night. I tried to be a good guest and changed the water in Jan’s flower vase. (I also supplied the flowers.) I vacuumed. The place was so small, there wasn’t much to do. I would lie on the couch/bed (covered in the day with an Oriental rug, my sleeping bag shoved underneath) and cry, watch daytime TV, study the Sunday crossword puzzle Jan had already worked, fill in an answer she’d missed, if I knew it, and by late afternoon I would think seriously about getting a job. I provided my own toilet paper and Kleenex. Usually by the time she came home I would have showered, put on under-eye concealer, brushed my hair, and opened the newspaper to a different page than the job listings: the movie listings. The movies were always my treat. She put up with me for about two weeks, then made up the excuse that her brother needed the apartment more often.
She insisted on accompanying me to the Chelsea apartment; she would be protection if Neil hadn’t cleared out. When we got there, nothing was gone—had I really expected otherwise?—but there was an envelope for me at the top of the stairs. It contained ten one-hundred-dollar bills, and a note with a phone number: “Have the mover take my stuff to the Salvation Army if you’re serious. I’m at Tyler’s. I love you.”
“He’s trying to make you look bad,” Jan said. “Manipulative bastard. Why don’t you throw a Goodbye, Asshole party? You can pile his stuff in the corner and tell him you had a celebration, instead.”
“I’ve already taken too much of his money. That was my mistake, not to make my own income.”
“Oh, I see. You didn’t deserve any compensation for being his research assistant and doing all the housework. That makes sense to me.”
“I was kidding myself to think it wasn’t an issue.”
“I’d say that if he can keep two apartments going, and if he tucks a thousand bucks into an envelope, it’s not a pressing problem for him.”
“Are there any openings where you work? Or do you think I could talk to his publisher and see if they might have anything? I’m going to end up a waitress. I know I am.”
“It’s New York. Waitresses become famous all the time.”
“Name one.”
“What’s her name, Jessica Lange. Right from the Lion’s Head to the fist of King Kong, and the rest is history.”
“Are there any jobs open where you work?”
“If it’s a serious question, I don’t think so.”
I walked over to Neil’s chair and sat down. “Okay, I’m an idiot, and I feel sorry for myself, and it’s my fault I believed him and he’s a jerk. B
ut now I have to get out of here, and I’m not going to be able to get an apartment without having a job.”
“So get one. You went to college. You’re really smart! You’re pretty! We’ll figure it out. Right now I need some dinner—which I insist he treat us to—and what you need is a pep talk about how everything’s not impossible. That’ll be easier if I have a couple glasses of wine. We’ll go to Claire’s. Marvin will send us appetizers and tell us whatever crazy stuff’s going on in the kitchen. You could ask him if he needs a waitress. I’m sure he doesn’t, but it might make him think of something.”
“You think he might let me be a waitress?”
“Stop it with the waitress tragedy,” she said. “It’s insulting to waitresses.”
“I don’t look down on waitresses. I want to be a waitress.”
“Let’s order a bottle of chardonnay and have a serious talk about how you’re done with Neil,” she said. “You can bet that egomaniac’s sitting across town, tapping his fingers, completely certain you’ll show up in SoHo.”
Which I did, slightly drunk, about 2 a.m.
The vet’s building on Greene Street had been lit up like a place that was expecting me. The second Neil opened the door, I felt the sorrow. It hit me like a cold wind. The people’s unhappiness—not his or mine. The sound track was Philip Glass, too loud, and not exactly reassuring music to begin with. There was an eye-wincing smell of disinfectant.
A woman in an evening dress smeared with blood was sobbing in the vet’s waiting room, and an older man was patting her hand and holding a whimpering yellow lab on a leash when Neil opened the door. I walked into his arms wearing a raincoat over my nightgown, and high heels I’d mistaken for a pair with lower heels, pulling them out of the closet in the dark. If I’d gone back to change, I would never have continued on. I knew I had to keep going, past Raymond’s, past Etch’s, out the door, down the steps, into the first cab.
