Young Wives

by Olivia Goldsmith

  Just as Angie began to wonder where in the world her mother was taking her, a restaurant on beautiful grounds appeared on the left. It was a huge old house that had been turned into an inn and Angie pulled up and parked just a car away from her mother’s. “Who are we meeting here?” she asked. “I think this is more than just a little lunch.”

  Natalie laughed. “Oh, you’ll see. It’ll be fun.”

  JoAnn Metzger looked great. She was a famous writer now, but Angie remembered her from years ago, when she had worked at JoAnn’s husband’s office for the summer.

  “How are you?” JoAnn asked. “What a nice, nice surprise.”

  JoAnn had been invited to Angie’s wedding, but had been away in Japan and couldn’t come. Instead she’d sent the most beautiful wedding gift of all that Angie had received: an antique kimono, incredibly embroidered and framed beautifully in a Lucite box. Angela had retrieved it from the condo, and now it was in storage. The thought of the kimono, its beautiful colors enclosed in cardboard and sitting in a warehouse, made her sad. Perhaps she did want her own wall, just so she could hang the kimono.

  “I’m fine,” Angie said.

  Her mother laughed. “Oh yeah. She’s just great,” Natalie said and leaned toward JoAnn on her right while she took Angie’s hand. Natalie told Angie’s story to JoAnn while Angie sat there. Oddly, instead of pain, she felt outraged as she heard it. She thought that might be a good thing—a sign of growth or healing. Either that, or it was the beginning of a complete mental breakdown.

  JoAnn reached across the table and took Angie’s other hand. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

  “Been there. Had that done to her,” Natalie told Angie.

  When the waiter arrived, the three of them looked as if they were about to perform a seance. All three of them ordered Cobb salad.

  “But with the dressing on the side,” Natalie commanded. Angie had to smile. She knew her mother would use up all her dressing and probably finish off skinny JoAnn’s, too. When their drinks arrived, they stopped talking about Angie and Reid and Natalie began talking about the clinic. Angie knew that JoAnn was on the board, but as Natalie spoke Angie realized that her mother had already told JoAnn quite a bit about Angie’s help.

  “Here’s the thing,” she said. “The caseload is increasing, we’re paying Karen while she’s out, but we’ve got to have another attorney and we’re going to have to pay them. So I’m proposing Angie. Do you think that’s nepotism?”

  JoAnn laughed. “Of course it is,” she said, “but that doesn’t make it wrong. I got my son his job in publishing.” Their salads arrived. JoAnn looked across the table at Angie. “But are you up to it?” she asked. “I don’t mean intellectually. I’m sure you’re a good lawyer. What I mean is, are you up to it emotionally right now? After Gerome left me I was, well …” She turned to Natalie. “How would you describe it?”

  “Deluded,” Natalie said. She looked at Angie. “She kept thinking they’d get back together. Which Alaska and Siberia will do again someday, maybe if you wait long enough.”

  JoAnn looked at Angie. “Are you waiting for him to call you? Are you obsessed? Do you think you will go back to him?”

  Angie shook her head. “Never,” she said.

  “I’m proud of her. She went up there, got her stuff, and came right back down.”

  Angie took a deep breath. She hadn’t told about Lisa. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, but looking at the two older women, suspecting they had heard it all, she decided to become another statistic, another dumb woman. “I found out who he was sleeping with,” Angie said. “It was my best friend from work.”

  JoAnn closed her eyes and shook her head. Natalie turned to her daughter. “Oh God,” she said. “The little witch. Don’t let it make you feel like a jerk, Angie. She’s the jerk, not you.”

  JoAnn opened her eyes. “I know it doesn’t help to hear this, but it really could be worse,” she said. “He could be sleeping with your sex therapist.”

  Though Angie’s mouth was full of Cobb salad, she laughed, or something close to it. It was a relief to tell them about Lisa, and it was a relief to hear these sane reactions. “Yeah, but that doesn’t happen in real life.”

  “Oh yes it does,” Natalie said as she raised her eyebrows and inclined her head toward JoAnn. “She was paying that broad two hundred dollars an hour to talk about her sex life with her husband while the therapist was boffing him.”

  “Is that true?” Angie asked JoAnn.

  “Well, I might not of put it exactly in those words,” JoAnn admitted. “It was a hundred and seventy-five an hour and I don’t think that ‘boffing’ is what they were doing while I was seeing her. They were moving up to the actual boff.” JoAnn smiled. “I cared so much then. Now … I don’t consider myself a victim anymore,” she said. “I’ve moved on. It’s not that that wasn’t a bad part of my life, but I’m over it.” She smiled, and her smile was gorgeous. “I guess I’d consider myself a recovering first wife.”

  There was a pause while they finished their lunch. Then Natalie began talking about the clinic and she and JoAnn discussed the budget for a little while until the waiter brought cappuccinos.

  “I wonder if we could go back to Adrianne,” Natalie was saying when Angie paid attention again. She knew they were talking about Adrianne Lender, the famous actress and producer.

  “Does she fund the clinic?”

  “Does an ex-husband send his child support late?” Natalie asked archly. “Honey, she is the clinic.”

  “How much additional funding do you think we need?” JoAnn asked. “Because my new book contract …”

  Angie decided it was a good time to excuse herself. That was for two reasons: first, she didn’t want to hear them talk about her financial possibilities. Second, she suddenly felt dizzy and a little bit nauseated. Maybe she was the one who had had too much of the rich dressing on her salad.

  By the time she had negotiated her way across the room and to the small hallway that led to the ladies’, there was desperation in her step. She walked into the bathroom, threw open a door to a stall, and threw up. The force of it was shocking—three spasms and her belly was empty, but she heaved a few more times. She leaned against the wall, her forehead and upper lip beaded with sweat.

  She guessed that her confession to her mother and JoAnn had cost her more emotionally than she had thought. She averted her eyes from the toilet and flushed it. If it was Lisa and Reid that she was flushing away, she was glad to see them go.

  Nothing like a good projectile vomit to set you up for the afternoon.

  20

  In which Michelle floats alone and Jada floats away

  Michelle pulled the pink sweater over her head, then struggled into the gray flannel skirt. Well, actually, she didn’t have to struggle anymore. The terror of the last week had killed her appetite and probably jumped up her metabolism. Anyway, she’d obviously lost some weight, because she didn’t even have to pinch the zipper together to get the skirt to close. She looked in the mirror.

  Her body, always long and vertical, looked as if it had stretched taller than its normal five feet ten inches. She supposed that she should consider the weight loss becoming, but when she looked at her face her reflection shattered that idea. Her face was bones and hollows, her nose more prominent. Somehow it looked as if her skull had gotten smaller, but the skin hadn’t. Her hair was so blond against her face that it drained it of all color. Michelle had always been fairly effortlessly pretty. But this face was going to take a lot of makeup before she could show it at the bank.

  Michelle had talked with Jada and both agreed it was best to try to return to their work lives. “If you sit at home all day or keep grooming Pookie for hours you’ll wind up in County,” Jada had said, and Michelle knew she was speaking for herself, as well.

  So last night Michelle had told Frank that today she would be going back to her job at the bank. Frank, as always, had told Michelle it wasn’t necessary, but Michelle wa
nted—no, she needed—the regularity of her old work routine. She wanted to be out of this house that had been sullied in a way she couldn’t Windex or Pledge off the walls, windows, and furniture. And at the bank she had some coworkers who knew her. Not real friends like Jada, but a few other women that she’d worked with now pleasantly for years. They had birthday lunches together, and she liked them.

  Besides housework, she had her list to keep herself busy. She’d gotten a notebook, found all her old receipts for her furniture and linens and stapled them to the new ones. But at the bank, Michelle had her loan work; that would keep her mind active in a more productive way than her growing fears over the legal swamp she and Frank had fallen into. Plus, defending themselves was going to be so costly that they might actually need the money, though she didn’t say that to Frank. Frank was worried, but he wouldn’t talk about the trouble with her.

  “Look, they haven’t indicted me. They got nothing,” was all he’d repeat to her, but she knew he was spending hours on the phone and in conferences with Bruzeman. How could Frank afford to spend less time on work, yet spend more than ever on costs—cleaning up the house and replacing everything, as well as paying attorney’s fees?

  Michelle left the bedroom and walked down the hall to get her hot rollers, which, typically, Jenna had borrowed and never returned. She heard a noise and stopped, poised to listen. Scratching. Was it the dog? She immediately ran downstairs, taking two steps at once.

  “Pookie! Pookie!” God, it had made all the difference to Frankie now that the dog was back. He was sleeping through the night again.

  The dog was scratching at the door. Was there someone—a cop or worse—hanging around out there? Frank had been paranoid about even using the phones, afraid they might be tapped. But Michelle would not be intimidated in her own house. She flung open the door only to find the local “freebie” newspaper, one she’d requested they not deliver, at her feet. Michelle couldn’t even gather the energy to bend over to pick it up. She simply shut the door and bent over to scratch Pookie’s ears. “Good dog,” she said.

  She got the hot rollers, went into the bathroom, opened the little cabinet on the wall where she kept close to forty plastic jars, tubes, and compacts, and selected a handful to begin painting onto her face. She plugged in the rollers, then shook the foundation bottle hard, because otherwise she wound up smearing some oily water with occasional cementlike chunks of color on her face. No wonder they called it foundation! Looking at her pale skin, the sootlike marks under her eyes, and her colorless lips, Michelle shook her head. Then she got busy.

  As she rolled up her hair and began painting her face, she thought of the song that began, “Gray skies are going to clear up, put on a happy face.” She couldn’t remember the rest of it, but she forced herself to hum it. She had to stop feeling sorry for herself.

  After she finished with the blusher, she started working on her eyeliner. However bad she felt, she reminded herself that Jada was ten times worse off. What was it like right now for Jada, with her children missing and no news since Clinton had taken them, except for a quick call on her answering machine that said “I have the kids and they’re all right” in Clinton’s voice? It was cold. Jada had made her come over and listen to it.

  Yes, Jada had it so much worse. Michelle still had her husband and children. She still had her family intact. She couldn’t imagine what it felt like to Jada, adrift, alone, isolated from everyone she loved and cared for. Her horror wasn’t public, but in a way that was worse, far worse than Michelle’s. Putting another layer of mascara on her lower eyelashes, Michelle had to stop because her eyes had gotten so wet. Well, she was finished anyway.

  She looked in the mirror at her renovations. Her skin was now evenly ivory, with no freckles but with pleasantly pink cheeks and a matching mouth. The creases above her eyes had just the right amount of pale brown eye shadow, while the darkness under her eyes had disappeared. Funny how we’re supposed to have shade over our eyes but not under, she thought. She looked fine. In fact, she’d taken pains, so she looked better than usual. She was ready for the day. Now she just had to be brave and achieve re-entry. As she walked out of the bathroom, as a little encouragement to herself she began to sing about how gray skies were going to clear up.

  Michelle and Jada had talked it over and decided Michelle could come in a little bit late this morning. Jada was going in, too. She couldn’t afford to take another day off from work, not with the legal bill she was going to have to pay. And though both women would have preferred driving in together, Jada hadn’t thought it was a good idea. For a moment, Michelle had been hurt and thought that Jada might not like to be seen with her in public. Then she got her head straight. They almost never drove to work together before. Why should they do it now?

  Michelle pulled up to a parking space just before nine o’clock, got out of the car, and took a deep breath. This was normality, and it felt better than the ups and downs of the last week. Just be brave and friendly now, she told herself. You’re guilty of nothing. She walked to the employees’ entrance and rang. Bobby, the part-time security guard, opened it for her. He was a nice kid. “Say, hey,” he said casually and she smiled. Maybe this would be easy as pie.

  “Good morning,” Michelle said in passing, then opened the closet to hang her coat, put her gloves and hat in the place on the shelf where she always kept them, and walked directly to the coffee machine. She’d only been away for a few working days, but she was touched to see that her mug was still in its place. She poured herself an almost-full cup. She took it to her desk, but before she could put her coffee down, she realized it wasn’t her desk. Her pictures of Frank, the kids, Pookie, the little ivy plant she’d gotten last Mother’s Day—nothing was there that was hers. Her stomach tightened, and shyly, almost fearfully, she looked around at the others.

  Was this some awful, mean joke? Were they all watching her to see how she’d react? Several officers were talking with customers. Ben and Anne were on the phone and everyone else seemed to be avoiding her eyes. She sat down anyway, unsure of what to do. Her hand began to shake. She’d spill the coffee if she didn’t set it down soon. Then Anne hung up the phone and walked over to her.

  “Hi, Michelle,” Anne said in a brittle voice. “So, while you were gone the consultants rearranged the desks. Yours is over there now, in the bin.” She pointed to the spot where the internal wall took a jog, creating a small alcove near the vault. It was a spot coveted by some, because it gave you privacy from the eyes of the bank customers. Of course, that was why it was inappropriate for an office to be located there.

  “But Betsy sits there,” Michelle protested. Betsy serviced the lockboxes and needed easy access to the vault, which was what had made the wall jog there.

  “Betsy will be servicing them from the front, over there, so that we don’t get interrupted by being asked for the safety deposit person. Something about efficiency.” Then, without another word, Anne turned her back on Michelle and moved over to her own desk, where she sat and managed to keep her head down, busily looking through a file drawer.

  Michelle, her face reddening under the ivory foundation makeup, stood up slowly and walked over to her new desk. She slid between the wall and the desk and then sank into her own chair. Seated in the alcove, her back almost hitting the wall, the desk became a bulwark in front of her. Michelle could almost have been in a closet; her range of vision was cut off.

  She thought of the nuns who had taught her in grammar school. They wore wimples that had acted as blinders, just as this desk’s position did. Michelle couldn’t see any of the customers as they came in, nor could she see the first two rows of officers’ desks. All she could view was Anne’s desk and Jada’s glass-windowed office behind it. She was all alone, isolated, and out of view. Was it just a coincidence? She didn’t think so. Michelle lowered her head and pretended to look at the loan requests on her desk, but she was actually trying to remember how to put on a happy face.

  Michelle had
worked through the morning, catching up on paperwork and making a few calls to customers who had neglected to complete parts of the loan application properly. She also had had a few approvals, but she was saving those calls to make at lunchtime, when some people might be home. She’d like to give somebody some good news. There didn’t seem to be much good news here for her, though.

  It was almost eleven-thirty and aside from two loan applicants, no one had spoken to her. She’d been too frightened to get up and walk over to Ben’s desk or to one of the tellers and try some small talk. What if they rebuffed her as harshly as the woman at the bake sale had done? Michelle couldn’t have taken it.

  She wondered again whether her desk had been moved to keep her out of the sight of “decent people.” She didn’t want to be paranoid, and she didn’t think Jada would let the consultants or the bank staff do such a thing, but she wasn’t completely sure. After all, Jada was not only her friend but also a working mother who had to take care of her children financially. The job meant everything to Jada.

  Now that it felt jeopardized, Michelle realized that emotionally her job meant a great deal to her as well. She liked to help people. She enjoyed teaching them ways to reorganize their financial needs, to fill in the forms, and it was very gratifying to feel that she’d done them some good. It gave her other adults to talk to, even if it was just about a funny Seinfeld episode or the new luncheonette that had opened next to the bank.

  It gave her something to talk about in the evening, too. When Frank told her about his day, she could tell him about hers. Although sometimes the job was complicated, and sometimes she had the heartbreaking situation of turning down money to people who were desperate for it, she found most of the work fairly easy and had time to joke and enjoy herself during the day.