Until the Real Thing Comes Along

by Elizabeth Berg

  “Came for dinner, huh?” Artie asks, rising up out of his recliner to greet me.

  “Yes, Muriel was kind enough to invite me. It smells great, too.”

  “It’s just pot roast,” Muriel says. “It’s nothing. Although it was a very nice cut, I must say. You have to ask the butcher, they keep the best stuff in the back, I have no idea why.”

  “Their families,” Artie says.

  “What?” Muriel holds her hand out for my coat, and I give it to her.

  “It’s for their families, they keep it back there for their families.”

  Muriel stares at him. “What would you know about it? When was the last time you shopped? If it weren’t for me, you’d never eat.” She looks at me. “If it weren’t for me, he’d never eat.”

  “You just said that, Muriel, what do you think, the girl doesn’t hear? You think she’s deaf?”

  “I was telling her,” Muriel says. “First I was just saying, then I was telling her specifically. You don’t mind, do you, Patty?”

  I smile, shake my head no.

  “You see?” she asks Artie.

  “I see, Muriel.” He sits back down.

  Artie’s lost weight—his knit-shirt collar gapes around his neck. It is, as usual, buttoned all the way up to the top. He wears a lime green cardigan that looks like a golf sweater, brown pants belted high, leather slippers. Muriel wears slippers, too, a fleece-lined type that look warm and comfortable and very old. This is my idea of a good way to spend married life: in your house that is just big enough, a fire going, dinner in the oven, and slippers on your feet. And a sure love, regardless of the form it takes.

  “People like to be addressed specifically, Artie, it makes them feel important,” Muriel says.

  Artie sighs. “She never stops.”

  Muriel might have lost weight, too. Her face looks thinner. Or maybe it’s just that she’s tired. There are bags under her eyes.

  She hangs up my coat in the tiny hall closet. Then, hands clasped nervously in front of her, she asks, “Would you like a drink?”

  “A drink?”

  “Yeah, you know, a cocktail.”

  “I can make you a martini that’ll curl you hair,” Artie says. Then, looking at my hair, “More.”

  “Okay. I’ve never had one.”

  “You’re kidding!” Muriel says. And then, to Artie, “Can you believe it? She’s never had a martini!”

  “Come on down to my bar,” Artie says, “I’ll fix you right up.”

  I follow him through the dining room, where our places are set with china, with flowered cloth napkins. Two forks! Then through the warm kitchen to the basement door. “Come right back up,” Muriel tells us, manning her position in front of the stove. “I’m starting the gravy right now. And I don’t want things to get cold.”

  Gravy! My spirits lift like a dog’s head when he hears the word out. Gravy is something single people don’t make. It’s something my mother never makes anymore, either, because of my father’s severely restricted diet. If there’s gravy, surely the potatoes will be browned and crisp at the edges, the carrots curled, the onions softened into a yellow sweetness that can be spread on bread like butter.

  “Ta-da!” Artie says, turning on a light switch that bathes a corner of the basement—his bar—with a pinkish neon light. This must have been his paradise, at one time. Perhaps it still is. The bar is huge, a burgundy Naugahyde with diamond-shaped tufting accented by round gold studs. There are six stools, their padded seats also burgundy Naugahyde, rips in two of them inexpertly repaired with silver duct tape. Next to the bar is a wooden clothes rack draped with Muriel’s flag-sized underpants and industrial-strength bras. Artie moves it to the other side of the basement. I wonder why she air-dries her lingerie; it looks as though it could withstand being laundered on rocks at the river.

  “Now!” Artie rubs his hands together briskly, then goes behind the bar. “Used to be the hot spot of the neighborhood,” he says. “ ‘Artie’s place,’ we called it. We had parties down here almost every weekend.”

  Along the back wall of the bar a smoke-colored mirror veined with gold reflects a bit of fringe on the back of Artie’s head; his baldness shines above it. He turns on a phonograph, puts on an album, and Sinatra begins singing, “The Lady Is a Tramp.” Artie sings along under his breath so wildly off-key I think maybe he’s joking, but when I look at him closely I see he is not. He reaches under the bar for glasses, raises his eyebrows up and down at me. It is the fifties; he is Hugh Heffner. Then, looking at the dust on the glasses, he says, “Well. Let me just wash these off first.” It is the nineties; he is Artie Berkenheimer, who carries two bottles of pills in his front shirt pocket. Sometimes they click together, making a sound like ill-fitting dentures.

  “Two MINutes!” Muriel screams down the stairs.

  “Oy.” Artie turns his back to me to pull down bottles of liquor from the shelf above the mirror. He nudges the phonograph so Frank stops skipping, then opens the little refrigerator for ice, dumps some into a tall silver shaker. “Been a long time since I drank anything but seltzer down here,” he says. But his movements are smooth and practiced; it’s like watching a real bartender.

  I look around a little, see a weight bench and some barbells in another dim corner of the basement.

  “Do you work out?” I ask.

  He looks across the room, smiles. “Years ago,” he says. “I had a little book, charts and everything. Jack La Lanne. You measured yourself once a week—biceps, abdomen. Thighs.” He shrugs. “I don’t know what happened, why I stopped. Maybe I hurt myself. I don’t remember, it was a long time ago.” He goes back to making drinks. I settle back on the bar stool, cross my legs. “So,” I say.

  “So.” He doesn’t turn around.

  “So you really want to buy that cottage, huh?”

  He sets two glasses and the shaker on the counter before me. “This is how you do it, Patty. You want to use the best gin around. That’s Bombay Sapphire—expensive, but well worth the price. And you use some dry vermouth. Five-to-one ratio, gin to vermouth, or you’re just playing around. You mix it with a lot of ice—you got a martini that isn’t freezing cold, you got nothing.” He shakes the mixture briskly, then pours it into two glasses, adds two olives to each one. He slides my drink in front of me, takes a generous sip of his own. Then he puts his glass down carefully, spreads his fingers apart, lifts his lips away from his teeth, and sucks in air. “Yes, indeed,” he says.

  I taste mine, stop just short of gasping. “Wow!”

  “Goddamn right.” He takes another generous swallow.

  “Wow,” I say, again.

  “Very close now,” Muriel yells down.

  “We’re coming!” Artie yells back, but we don’t move. Frank is onto “Summer Wind.” I am onto watching Artie at Home, a new person. This is not the man who sat quietly sweating in the backseat of my car.

  I take another sip. And notice something. “Hey, Artie,” I say. “The stems on these glasses are naked women!”

  He flushes. “Got ’em when I was in the army, stationed in Korea. I’m sorry if they offend you.”

  “No, it’s …” I’m really not offended. I think probably Artie is grandfathered in for this sort of thing. I look at the glasses more closely. “But I’ll tell you one thing, Artie. Nobody has boobs like this.” The breasts on the woman tip up impossibly. Impossibly.

  “Know what I used to say about these glasses? I used to say, ‘Listen, you’re a very important guest. For you, I’m going to use my breast glasses.’ ”

  “Very funny,” I say. Then, looking again at the mesmerizing anatomy of the stem woman, “Is this what guys really like? Seriously.”

  “Artie!” we hear.

  “One MINUTE!”

  “No, NOW, the gravy’s DONE! I want to get everything on the TAble!”

  “Will you for Christ’s sake wait a minute, Muriel! I haven’t even told her yet!”

  A moment, and then Muriel starts down the b
asement steps, stops halfway. She has a sheer white apron tied around her waist, a dishtowel in her hands. “So tell her.” Her voice is quiet, simple sounding.

  He looks at me, bites at a corner of his lip, then turns away.

  Muriel comes down the rest of the way.

  “Artie?” I say.

  “Yeah.” He keeps his back to me, starts putting things away.

  “You want I should tell her?” Muriel asks.

  “Tell me what?” I say, giggling a little. Then, holding up my glass, “Bartender? May I have another?”

  Muriel sits beside me, folds her dishcloth into a neat rectangle, lays it on the bar. “I wouldn’t mind a martini myself, Arthur.”

  “You can’t drink on your medication.”

  “Neither can you.”

  “I have a joint,” I say.

  They both look at me.

  “Did you ever try it?”

  “Are you talking about marijuana?” Muriel says.

  “Of course she’s talking about marijuana,” Artie says. And then, to me, “Are you talking about marijuana?”

  “Yes.”

  “You smoke marijuana?”

  “Well … hardly ever. Really. But I do have a joint that somebody gave me.” Mark, actually, on one of the dates we had. We went to the zoo and got stoned.

  “Well, I’d like to try it,” Artie says.

  “Oh, my God.”

  “I would, Muriel. What the hell. We always wondered what it was like.”

  “I’ll get it,” I say. “It’s in my purse.”

  “Oy, she carries dope in her purse,” Muriel says. “Our real estate agent is a dope addict. Who drives us around in her car. We could have been killed! We could have gotten busted!”

  “I’m not a dope addict!” I say, at the same time that Artie says, “Muriel! She’s a nice girl! You love Patty!”

  “Well,” she sniffs. “I used to.”

  “You know, Muriel,” I say, “it’s no big deal. It’s kind of like your martinis for our age.”

  “I hardly think so.”

  “It is, but it’s less dangerous.”

  “Ha! That’s what they tell you. The next thing you know—smack.”

  “Oh, that’s not true,” I say. “It’s just something I do every now and then for fun.”

  “Go get it,” Artie says. And then, to Muriel, “Come on. I want you should try it with me.”

  Muriel’s hands are folded in her apron. She looks down at them, then back up at me. “Turn off the flame on the gravy when you go up, would you? Does this take long?”

  “Not long at all,” I promise.

  When I come back down, I open my wallet and take the flattened joint out. “Oh my God, look at that,” Muriel says. “Is that a rubber you have in there, too?!”

  I look up, embarrassed.

  “Muriel,” Artie says.

  “Never mind, that’s exactly what it is.”

  He gives her a look.

  “Fine,” she says, looking away and busying herself with the curls at the nape of her neck.

  I squeeze the joint back into shape, put it to my lips, and look at Artie, Bacall. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out his pipe lighter, and puts the flame to the joint, Bogart. I take a hit, then hand the joint to him. “Hold it in,” I say in the pinched voice of the participant.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “How do you know?” Muriel asks.

  “I’m sure he’s seen it a million times,” I answer for him.

  Artie inhales, passes the joint to Muriel. She hesitates, holding the thing like it’s fifty times bigger than it is. Then she squeezes her eyes shut and inhales deeply. She coughs spectacularly, opens her eyes, and says, “That’s it. No more,” and passes the joint to me.

  “I really can’t believe we’re doing this,” I say.

  “You can’t,” Muriel says. “Imagine if our grandchildren could see us! Artie, can you imagine? Can you imagine what little Howard would say?”

  “Well, everything’s changed.” Artie turns around to take the needle off the record, which ended some time ago. Then he turns back to me, shrugs. “I got cancer. Terminal.”

  I feel instantly sober. I look at the joint in my hand, ridiculous now, low; and put it out. “Oh, Artie.” I have no idea what to say next. What I feel is a peculiar sense of sad and frustrated privilege: I’m honored that they are sharing this with me; I feel obliged to do something about it; and I know I can’t. I look at Muriel, at her soft, crushed face, and get off my stool to hug her. Then I lean over the bar to hug Artie.

  “All right,” he says, patting my back. “Okay.”

  “Maybe I could just have a little martini,” Muriel says.

  He leans over the bar, kisses her forehead. “You got it, my beautiful girl.” We are all tearful and we are all pretending that we are not.

  “You wouldn’t know it to look at her now,” he tells me, “but she was some hot tomato.” He puts an inch of drink into a glass, hands it to her.

  “I’m telling you,” Muriel says, agreeing with him. And holds her glass up to him for a long, silent toast.

  A little while later, in the overly articulated speech of the moderately drunk person, Muriel says, “I told him, what the hell do I want that cottage for, Artie? I got everything. I was only playing around with the real estate thing.” She leans in close to me, blinks. “I’m sorry. I guess we wasted an awful lot of your time.”

  “I didn’t mind a bit.”

  “I still think we should get it,” Artie says. “One of us might as well have our dream spot.”

  “I got what I want,” she says. “And that’s all. I know my own mind. You think I don’t know my own mind?”

  I smell something burning. “Muriel?” I say, sniffing.

  “Oh, Jesus.” She stands up, then stops, holds her forehead. “Uh-oh. I guess I’m a little dizzy.”

  “I’ll go,” Artie says.

  I follow his zigzag progress up the steps, then watch as he uncovers the ruined dinner.

  We hear Muriel come slowly up the stairs, and then she is standing with us, looking into the pot. “But I planned this,” is all she says.

  After tuna sandwiches and sliced tomatoes and frozen yogurt, Artie walks me out to my car. “You’re sure you’re all right to drive?” he asks.

  “I’m fine. Are you all right? And Muriel?”

  “Don’t worry. We had a good time.”

  “I’m glad you decided against the cottage. I think you have a lovely place right here.”

  “Yeah. But maybe we’ll still come and look sometimes, huh?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Okay, kid.”

  “I really would, Artie.”

  “Listen, Patty, Muriel wanted to give you a tip. For … you know, all you’ve done. But I thought it might insult you. I guess I think of us as friends. I hope I wasn’t wrong.”

  “Well … how much of a tip?” I say. We smile. And then I kiss his cheek and get in the car.

  On the drive back, I think, maybe this isn’t so sad. They got to have their lives together. She will be with him ferociously until the end. That’s not so bad, considering.

  At home, there is a message on my machine from Elaine to call her. I sit down with my coat still on, dial her number.

  “Artie Berkenheimer has cancer,” I tell her.

  “Oh no, really?”

  “Yeah. But they’re … all right. They’re just carrying on as usual, you know—she kvetches, he kvetches back. We got stoned together.”

  “Who?”

  “Me and the Berkenheimers.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You got stoned with the Berkenheimers?”

  “Yeah!”

  “It sounds like a contradiction in terms.”

  I laugh, slide my coat off. “I know.”

  “Hold on a second,” Elaine says, and covers the mouthpiece of the phone. “It’s Patty,” I hear her say. Then something el
se I can’t understand. And then, to me, “Listen, I need to ask you something.”

  “Who’s over there?”

  “Well, that’s what I need to ask you. Sort of.”

  “Is it Mark?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t care, Elaine.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No, I told you. He’s not right for me.”

  “So … if we …”

  “If you want to fuck him, Elaine, then fuck him. I don’t care.”

  “See? You’re pissed. You do care.”

  “No I don’t care. I don’t care if you sleep with him, I don’t care if you marry him! I just don’t like this whole … set-up thing. I don’t like that the two of you are over there talking about me. Just do what you want, it’s not up to me. I don’t have anything to do with Mark anymore.”

  Silence.

  “What?” I say.

  “You’re pissed, Patty, why can’t you just say it?”

  “All right, Elaine, I’m pissed, but it’s not because of Mark!”

  “What’s it because of?”

  “It’s because of you, all right? It’s because of you.”

  “But what did I do? I apologized a million times to you for—”

  “I told you, I don’t care about Mark. You’re welcome to him.”

  Silence, again.

  And then I say, “Look, we’ll talk about it another time. I’m tired, now. I want to go to bed.”

  “Yeah, all right. Me, too.”

  “Right. As you indicated.”

  I hang up pretty hard. The receiver falls off the phone, and I put it back on, then take it off again. I don’t want anybody to call me for anything. I want to be alone. And I am. And Elaine is not. And I guess that’s what I’m angry about. It’s not that she has Mark. It’s that she has somebody. As she always does. As she always does, there is never a doubt. I would like to have her privileges, for just a day. Just for one day, I’d like all the favors she is granted because of her goddamn looks to be handed to me. Jesus, it’s a wonder she doesn’t suffocate.