The Girl That He Marries

by Rhoda Lerman

  The combination of “would you like to go to Atlanta?” with the expectation shtik told me he was willing to pull anything with me. And if he could do that, I could resort to anything to draw the attention back. “I really am a romantic, Richard. I really dreamed of princes in white uniforms with gold epaulets waltzing me across marble floors.”

  “Well,” he said, “come over here now, finish your coffee and then we’ll put on some romantic music for a romantic lady and we’ll dance. I’ve left my epaulets at the palace. Will you forgive me?” He reached his hand out. As I came to him, he used it to spread brie on a cracker and offered it to me. “Would you like to dance, Stephanie?” He didn’t stand.

  “Very much.” I sat next to him. The sofa exhaled as I sank into its plush and a cat, the same ochre as the sofa, leaped away. I hadn’t seen it at all.

  “Platypus.”

  “Funny name.” I tried to mold my face into a dreamy, exalted mien, like a kid in a Seventeen ad for Keepsake Diamonds getting her engagement ring. It was difficult. Richard had brought in delicate rice paper napkins which I lusted to rip.

  “It is a funny name. I never thought of that. I didn’t name her.”

  “Oh.” I asked no questions. The cat loped to the fish tank nearest us. She was wide-faced and scarred. Richard, it seemed, would have had a Siamese.

  “Well, I’m really excited that you’re here finally.” The sweet twitch began at the corners of his mouth. He sought out my eyes, peering, searching for something I hoped would be there. The fish in the tank below the glass coffee table swam in circles around my cup. I looked back into Richard’s eyes which seemed not to blink. If I had allowed myself to watch the circling fish and then look at the sardines on Richard’s tray, I would have become very ill with little more effort. I wanted to go home. I tried to keep my face dreamy and exalted. His eyes were as I had remembered them, gray-flecked and sincere. He tapped my hand. “Stephanie, tell me honestly, what do you think about my fish tanks?”

  “Mmm. That ‘love is all there is, is all we know of love.’ ” I couldn’t help myself. I understood the frustration of Emily Dickinson who also said she would wait forever for her love if he would only tell her how long forever would be. I thought I would soon be in a position for measuring forever. I would also thank her for the line. If I hadn’t had it, I would have screamed.

  “I knew it! The minute I saw you. A true romantic.”

  Below me a pack of feathery armed fish pressed near my saucer. They reminded me of Sissy. “Listen, Richard, I love your fish tanks. They’re terrific.” That was the second time he discovered I was a romantic.

  I found a napkin to tear. I tore it at the side of my hip away from him with my two-fingered act and slipped the shreds under the pillow as he explained his collection. “My five-thousand-buck fish tanks. I’m not really a spender, but once people found out I had fish, they kept giving me more, some kinds that couldn’t live with each other. I tried to keep everybody apart for a while but it got to be too much and now all those precious expensive fish, Blue Angels, all of them . . . you can’t tell what they were.”

  I tried to keep my eyebrows up, alert and keen. Touch me, Richard; feel me, or I will cry or go home or scream. Whatever I will do will be utterly disturbing to both of us. I reached for the napkin on Richard’s lap. He snapped his legs together.

  “It’s more of an indulgence,” he added quickly. “Not really a collection. And it needs constant attention. Just keeping the glass clean and changing filters and feeding them.”

  “You have help then?” Was this what I had come here for? The important talk about the future? Who gives you the fish? Who gives you the cream? Who waters that gorgeous asparagus plant in the stainless steel pot out there in the hall? Who else is there? How will you keep all of us apart in our compartments? And will we all end up in faceless, mutated, ruined, quivering heaps? Goddammit, not me. I don’t want to be aggressive with you, Richard, but I want to strangle everyone who shines your glass and feeds your fish and fills your refrigerator. Every other woman. “Do you have someone to help you, Richard?” I repeated.

  Did I have to make a pass at him? I had, I supposed, a psychic need for this man to make love to me and yet he sat there grinning and being sincere and I sat there tearing up his rice paper napkins and talking about his damn guppies and I wanted to leave, to go home and dream about him rather than be with him. He put his arm over the back of his sofa. Although he wasn’t touching me, it was a step forward. “I couldn’t do it myself,” he said cryptically.

  “What?”

  “The apartment.”

  “Oh, no, all that glass.” Let’s get started, Richard. I have to go to work in the morning.

  “Listen,” he sighed. “People would come in and I’d be rattling off the names of all the fish and I’d be an absolute prick. I’m not boring you, am I, Stephanie? Here, put your head on my shoulder. Let’s just sit quietly for a moment.”

  I sat quietly. He didn’t. He talked about bucking the system, how to remain a politician and keep your integrity intact. With geological timing, I moved closer to him. Finally, quite happily close, I whispered, “She’s watching us. I’m uncomfortable.”

  The muscles along the right side of his thigh tightened like rubberbands. “What?”

  “Platypus, she’s watching us.”

  “Oh, I’ll get rid of her. You know, you really are wonderful. God, you are nice!”

  I would have to remember that because he took my hand. “Stephanie, for all the cool and all the style, you really are old-fashioned. You make me so damn happy. Do I make you happy, Stephanie?”

  What had I done to bring about this delight? I had told him what to do. I had given him a command, not advice. I would remember because he leaped from the couch, allowing my head to bump against the sofa, pulled me up, threw his arms around me and hugged and whirled me around and around until I began to feel his joy. “Let’s dance. Let’s really dance, Stephanie. Records. Let me . . . now you don’t move. Stand just as you are, right there, so I can remember this minute. Stand still. I’ll get some music on.”

  He licked his lips and danced with his arms around an imaginary me to a complicated stereo with a noisy mechanism. “Music for a romantic girl. For an old-fashioned romantic girl who makes me happy. Next time you come here, I promise, no more cat. Promise. Show tunes. Ah hah!” He knelt at the stereo. I explored the lines of his back and buttocks and tried to recall desperately what exactly it was I had done that had so appealed to him. It couldn’t just have been that I had told him what to do. I think what I had done was to have avoided relating to him in any way whatsoever all night long. And then told him to get rid of his cat. Jesus. Or a combination of both.

  We danced finally. I don’t recall what we danced to except for the last tune. I was warm all over and tingling, soft, weightless, dream-borne, at peace. I wanted to stay in his arms forever. He sang vague words into my hair, into my ears, into my forehead, his chin leaning on my nose. I followed his footsteps. I would follow him anywhere for this contentment. The noises of the apartments began to fade, the bubbling and pumping of the fish tanks was more and more faint. The cat was gone and we danced.

  He pulled away slightly so I could look into his terribly solemn eyes. His lips twitched. I wanted to kiss them and still them. “I was a prick to make you come running down here in the middle of the night, wasn’t I?” If his eyes hadn’t been so soft and his arms so good around me, I don’t think I would have answered as I did.

  Someone else would have murmured. But I knew what he wanted to hear although it was not what I wanted to say and I said it. “What’s a friend for?” I knew, later, it would cost.

  In response, he held me closer. It had been the answer he was waiting for, although it had been, to be accurate, a question. I had no idea, still, into what my role as friend would really translate. “You’re the right girl, Steph. I really mean that.”

  “One night at a time, Richard,” I reminded him.r />
  Miriam, I would say tomorrow, he’s making it too easy. And Miriam would reply, when it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.

  “Stephanie, do you know what my favorite meal is?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Breakfast.”

  “I should have known.”

  “Strawberries and whipped cream and tossed salad with blue cheese and fresh ground coffee.”

  “Croutons in the salad?”

  “You are so smart. Not with garlic.”

  “Of course not.”

  And we danced. A toilet flushed somewhere as the records lifted and dropped on the turntable. It sounded very close.

  I whispered, trying not to break the moment, “What’s that?”

  “Sounds like a toilet flushing.” He paused, holding me still, at arm’s length. “Oh, here’s the song I’ve been waiting for.” And then, although there were no epaulets on his sweater and the floors weren’t marble, he became my fantasy for he stretched out his arms to me as the music began and folded me to himself and we danced to “The Girl That I Marry.” I smiled into his shoulder. I nuzzled into his turtleneck. He had planned this when we were walking on the sidewalk so long ago this evening. He didn’t need a white uniform. Rather, I didn’t need a white uniform; he had created my dream and it was happening. Sweet, magical, solemn.

  “‘Stead of flittin’ I’ll be sittin’—Next to her and she’ll purr like a kitten. A doll I can carry, the girl that I marry must be.” Richard lifted me from the floor when the song ended and carried me to the couch. I kissed his cheek lightly as he put me down on the couch. It was then that he said, “I have a lousy speech writer. I bet you could help me with my speeches.” And it was then, before I could answer, that I heard the shower running and a girl singing. He settled down beside me and pulled my head back onto his shoulder. I think if he had touched my nipple, forget the shower, forget the speeches, I would have had an orgasm with no further effort. But the shower was forcing its way into my consciousness and the dreamy film drifted and lifted away because I heard, I thought, and then was certain I heard that same voice of the girl at the party singing that same song Richard had just been singing to me and singing it in Richard’s bathroom or, more accurately, in their bathroom somewhere beyond the closed double doors of the living room and in the direction of the beige plush bedspread I had so wanted to be spread upon.

  “My God!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  I rammed open the doors. Her voice rang clear and powerful in the hallway. I wrestled with hangers for my coat and fled from his apartment. He was shouting after me and she sang on, trumpeting triumphantly while my walls came tumbling down. I looked back once at Richard’s astonished face. “Will you be all right? Call me as soon as you get home. I’ll take you home, Stephanie. Call me.”

  By the time the cab reached my building, little pearly bits of hope were penetrating the black roach shell of anger in which I had encased myself and by the time I pressed the button in the elevator I was no longer certain that the voice I’d heard had even been in Richard’s apartment. A neighbor may have heard the song and sung along. Walls are thin. I hear the couple next to my bedroom fighting late at night. Next time I would listen, perhaps even ask. Next time. I walked down the long hall with all its doors locked and bolted, a long empty feeling of no one to say hello to when I came home. Next time. And as I neared my own door I heard the phone ringing and ringing and ringing and I ran down the hall, the roach shell slipping away, the keys jingling in my fist, and my spirit lifting and stretching to the phone. My heart pounded. “Hello?”

  “Thank God you’re home. Stephanie, why are you so hostile to men? What is this hostility? Why did you leave like that?”

  I couldn’t begin to think. Am I hostile? I didn’t even know why I’d left any more. “Richard?”

  “Oh? Do you do this kind of thing twice a night? Are you some kind of castrator? Of course it’s me.”

  The shell was gone and I had no skin to cover me up. Hope slid out like an oyster. “It doesn’t sound like you. That isn’t the way you talk.” It was after three. Four crosses were arriving by ship tomorrow and I didn’t know how I would wake up for work. Nor could I imagine how I would sleep. I had made a terrible mistake and I wanted to hang up before I made another one. “If I didn’t care so much for you, Richard,” I tried, “I wouldn’t have left. I thought . . . I thought there was someone else in your apartment.”

  “Dumdum.” His voice was gentle at last.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t stay with you, Richard.”

  “I’m sorry too, honey. I was so upset and worried about you running around the city in the middle of the night. I wish you would have let me take you home. Say, did you lock your door?”

  “Oh, no. Hold on.” I knew he could care less but I would be damned if I were to give him the satisfaction of hearing anger in my voice. But he must have heard some of it because when I came back to the phone and told him the door was locked, he made his next move.

  “Honey, when can I see you? I must see you. Would you like to go away for the weekend? Are you free the weekend after next? I don’t mean to beg. . . .”

  Cold water splashed on my collarbone. Had he said beg or bed? What was wrong with this weekend? My mind began to click into place. “Do you know what I would like, Richard? I’d like to put my head in your lap and have you stroke my hair until I fall asleep.”

  “Poor baby. You must be so tired. I would sit next to you and hold your hand while you slept and if you woke up, I’d sing you back to sleep.”

  “That’s what I’d like. And I’d like you to brush my hair.”

  “You have lovely hair. Next weekend. I promise. Now you lie down, close those beautiful eyes and think about me stroking your head and singing and holding your hand. And try to get a good night’s sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow and tell you where we’ll go so you can plan your clothes. Could you meet me next Friday at my place at four-thirty? I’m in court and I’m not exactly sure when I’ll be out but you can take a drink and I’ll be there within the hour.”

  “Richard, I don’t want to go back there.”

  “No one will be there, Stephanie. No one. I’ll have the key sent up to your office. Do you want to go anyplace in particular? Sun, sand, surf ?”

  “Anyplace.” I was drowsy already. I would sleep, charmed. Seek the stars.

  “Stephanie, one last thing. Whatever the reason you left, whatever I did or you felt I did, I’m glad of one thing that I’ve learned about you tonight.”

  “Mmmm?” How is it that this stranger can detoxify me so? What magic has he that softens me and reassures me?

  “I’m glad that a girl of your caliber, a girl like you, that you’re just too wonderful a girl to be small-minded and jealous. I’m so glad of that. Now, put that head down and sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He clicked the phone down. My fingers stiffened on it, clutched.

  When I could release them, I took the Manhattan classified to bed with me and tore every page under Ranges & Stoves—Dlrs. & Svce. in the yellow pages. Then methodically, I began with Appliances—Built-In and worked toward completion. I had to check every crack, scratch, chip, mark, quality of stone on those four crosses tomorrow before I accepted shipment. God, it’s the only situation in my entire life in which I am actually able to judge authenticity. Maybe there was a girl. Maybe there was no girl. There must have been. Why else would he mention jealousy? But he was so surprised. Was he surprised that I would leave or was he surprised that someone else being in the apartment would bother me? Am I really that square? I shared bedrooms once with another couple and a date in a beach house. I didn’t adore it but I didn’t drown myself either. Why was I intellectualizing this man? Why couldn’t I just accept the magic he offered? If he made sure I was home safely and my door was locked and brushed my hair and sang me to sleep and held my hand, he might even pin that note on my chest when I die: She’s gone to seek the stars. It was small to be jealous. To nag a
nd ask questions.

  My pillow became his lap and I could feel his hands on my hair and his voice soft and mellow. “She’ll wear satins and laces and smell of cologne. . . .” I’ll have to buy some pretty gowns, diaphanous, and we’ll sail away for a year and a day to the land where the bong tree grows and there in a wood . . . God, I wish my breasts were fuller. And they danced in the light of the moon, the moon. And I would buy some underwear like Anne Bancroft wore in The Graduate, serious grown-up sexy stuff and when he begins to really trust me and be sure of me, he’ll be less ambiguous. I know it. I woke up the next day with a drumming headache, very late, in a bed of yellow confetti with the lower half of Women’s Apparel—Retail intact, the page clutched in my hand next to my cheek. And I’d have to get a new phone book.

  8

  DURING THE NEXT WEEK I LEARNED A NUMBER OF THINGS. I LEARNED THAT Miriam in the name of love was going off the wall. I learned that Sissy in the name of love was going off the wall and that Richard in the name of love was pushing whoever it was who loved him off the wall. I learned that Richard and the Unicorn more or less equaled each other, which meant that the more I knew about either of them the less I knew them at all. I had an inkling that the fiery script on the wall would spell Stephanie and that sooner or later I would have to choose between in the name of love and the wall. By the end of the week I had reduced all of my equations and theorems to the lowest common denominator—which is a fairly reasonable vantage point from which to view romantic love—a simple maxim: love and truth do not a marriage make.

  I had hoped that the week as it progressed was simply the kind of week in which everyone in New York goes to his astrologer. Then the universe moves forward a notch and once again morning’s at seven. It wasn’t that kind of week. Sissy for instance was going to the hospital.

  She called sobbing Friday night. Could she have Monday off? I allowed her Monday off. For only one day I didn’t feel obligated to ask what was wrong.