Sometimes she thought a baby was the answer, that a baby would make all the difference. Other times she thought she stayed in the marriage because she wanted a baby or because she dreaded her family’s disappointment. Or because leaving would mean admitting to herself how big a mistake she had made. Sometimes she thought she stayed because she still loved Theo, if only she could chip down through the layers of the years and find that love.
Nonspecific infertility, Dr. Abramowitz said. Probably a combination of her age and Theo’s, of the morphology of her reproductive system and his. No obvious problems to solve—just the big, thus far unsolvable problem.
The same kind of thing happened at the zoo. Part of her job there had been trying to breed animals who seemed determined not to reproduce (and at the same time trying to keep hoof stock like sheep and buffalo from overpopulating). The vets used many of the same techniques as human fertility doctors: hormone monitoring, in vitro fertilization. But sometimes Isabel thought the animals knew best. She looked around at the zoo—forty-two acres of steel and concrete and naturalistic plantings squeezed between the Schuylkill River and the railroad tracks. It wasn’t that she stopped loving the place, more that in and around her love, a web of doubt, skepticism, and ambiguity grew up. It was one thing to treat a Massasauga rattlesnake for worms, another to dart a terrified female gorilla in order to take blood to try to figure out why she wasn’t eating. And then to dart her again to get her to surgery, four of them carrying the enormous body on a canvas sheet to the truck to cut her open and find the tumor in her stomach the size of a fist, smaller tumors growing on her intestines and her liver, so much cancer that they just sewed her up again without doing anything. Isabel herself gave the gorilla the euthanizing shot in the vein (as she had injected Daisy when the old dog could no longer move her hind legs, could no longer eat, could barely lift her head to look at Isabel when she came into the room).
Isabel knew as well as anyone that if the gorilla had been “at home” in the mountains of Rwanda, chances were she would have been shot and killed by poachers or her habitat destroyed. But that knowledge didn’t make her feel better about her own role: inflicting suffering on animals in the name of curing them when most of them were, in fact, beyond saving. She had darted cheetahs with ketamine to disinfect wounds the animals would rub raw against a wall as soon as they were alert again, had rehydrated lemurs dying of toxoplasmosis spread by stray cats. The zoo supported conservation work around the world, but still, here in Philadelphia, it kept animals in cages, and as the years passed, Isabel had to work harder not to think about this. Once or twice she had let her feelings show when she shouldn’t have—at a curatorial staff meeting, for instance. She still wondered whether this was the reason she hadn’t landed the job on the permanent veterinary team after her residency, the job she had assumed would be hers. She hadn’t even bothered applying for any others—not that there were any within two hundred miles of Philadelphia. And she was not prepared to leave the city where Theo had just made partner at Hollis and Stoltz, where her sister Alice and most of her friends still lived. Though the truth was that she didn’t see those friends very often anymore. They were busy with careers of their own, as vets or graphic designers or violinists. Or they had joined the sorority of young mothers whose gatherings, though she was always welcome at them, Isabel couldn’t bear to attend. She still went to the park sometimes with her college friend Sarah and her two boys, but since Sarah had moved up to Mt. Airy, it often seemed more trouble than it was worth.
Still, when the zoo had hired someone else, she had told herself it was all for the best. Dr. Abramowitz had said it was possible the stress of her job was making it more difficult for her to conceive, and conceiving was what she cared about the most now. It wouldn’t be so bad, anyway, she’d thought, to have some time to herself. To go to galleries and coffee shops. To paint the house and cook real dinners and read books.
But after a few months, Isabel was restless. She thought about looking for work. Possibly a small-animal practice would hire her, but she didn’t want to spend all day in an office treating ear mites and being friendly to a lot of pet owners. Anyway, she wanted to give her body a little longer. She started leaving the house every morning and just walking—to Penn’s Landing or Fairmount Park or the Italian Market, places she had walked with Daisy. Or she crossed the Schuylkill into West Philadelphia, past the place she and Theo had lived (looking up into the windows and seeing only torn, yellowed shades, always drawn), down the sprawling streets of tumbled houses and abandoned cars and beautiful, locked limestone churches.
One day, out past 50th Street, she came across an old woman working in a vacant lot, a kerchief on her head, hoeing neat rows in the dirt. A bucket of water reflected the morning clouds as they swept across the sky. Isabel stopped.
Most of the lot was packed hard and overgrown with burdock, goutweed, and dandelions, littered with trash and old tires. The woman worked steadily in the thin spring sunshine, her jacket zipped against the wind, faded pink gardening gloves on her hands. After a while she turned and looked at Isabel. “How long you plan on standing there, child?” she said.
And although, except for her skin color, this woman didn’t look anything like Cicily, the rhythm of her speech and the authority in her voice went through Isabel like a knife. “Sorry,” she said, blushing, but still she stood where she was.
“Pass me that bucket, why don’t you,” the woman said. “This dirt is as dry as the Sahara desert.”
Isabel picked up the bucket, but instead of passing it over, she splashed water carefully along the rows herself, while the woman came behind her, doling out seeds from a plastic bag and tamping the dirt down over them.
When they were finished, the woman looked down with satisfaction. “That’ll do nicely,” she said.
“What are you growing?” Isabel asked.
“Tomatoes, sweet potatoes, wax beans.”
“No flowers?”
“I got no time to be fussing over flowers,” the woman said, and Isabel remembered suddenly the sunlit kitchen of her parents’ house and Alice asking, “Cicily, how come you never got married?”
“I got no time to be fussing over men,” Cicily had said.
But she must have found the time, because a few years later she had gotten married and left them.
CHAPTER FIVE
All three girls arrived early on the morning of the anniversary party, a bright, warm Saturday in the middle of May. The caterers had taken over the kitchen. They carved fillets and picked over lettuce, arranged crab balls and mushrooms stuffed with garlic on silver trays, while the exhaust fan roared. Out in the yard, men set up tables and chairs on the cropped grass, pursued by Dr. Rubin giving directions in a fuchsia silk bathrobe and plastic clogs. “No, no—a little farther to the left! A little more. Just a touch back the other way—that’s perfect. But this one’s still too close to those tree roots. Now let’s see—” Until at last her daughters persuaded her to come inside and let the men finish their job in peace.
Two of the men wore black pants and tuxedo shirts, the uniform of the caterers. The third was dressed in grass-stained jeans and a worn checked cotton shirt, his workboots covered with grass clippings. While the first two moved slowly and awkwardly, lurching the heavy round tables across the grass, the third had a quiet efficiency of motion. He worked quickly, finding the most level bits of lawn and the proper distance between the tables without difficulty, so that except for the struggles of the other two, the sisters (watching from an upstairs window) would have thought it was the easiest thing in the world.
“That’s Marco,” Isabel said. “I’m glad Doc likes him. He got fired from the place he was working in Wayne. Some money disappeared and the owner accused him of taking it.”
“You didn’t tell Doc that!” Tina said.
“Of course not. And don’t you tell her, either.”
“I won’t,” Tina said. “But how do you know he didn’t take the money?” She
adjusted the straps of her midnight blue silk sheath.
“Because I know him,” Isabel said.
They stood, watching the men work.
“He’s what, Salvadoran?” asked Alice.
“I think he grew up in Wisconsin or Nebraska or somewhere,” Isabel said.
“He does have nice muscles,” Tina said. “He’s pretty killer-looking, actually.” She paused. “On the other hand, so are the other two.”
Her sisters laughed.
Tina shrugged. “I like men. Women always talk behind each other’s backs.”
“Women pay attention,” Isabel said. “They see what’s going on.”
“Men pay attention,” Tina replied. “Just to different things.”
Alice, changing the subject, said, “How are you ever going to choose between them all, Tina?”
“I’m not worried about it,” Tina said. “You know what Doc says, you just know.” She laughed, but she was partly serious. She was too much her mother’s daughter not to be.
“Oh, please,” Isabel said. “It takes a long time to get to know someone. To figure out whether you’re compatible. Whether you’re even interested in the same things. Whether you mean the same thing when you talk about love, or about having a family!”
Her sisters exchanged a look. “I’m sure Theo’s thrilled when you say stuff like that,” Tina said.
“It was so long ago for you, you don’t remember,” Alice teased.
Downstairs the doorbell rang. Their mother called out, “Girls! Somebody get that!”
“I’ll go,” Alice said.
Tina lingered for a last look at the men out the window. Watching her, Isabel tried to make herself remember that her sister was twenty-nine, an age at which Isabel had considered herself entirely grown up. Tina, however, despite having her own apartment and a respectable job, looked to Isabel exactly as she had in sequined, satiny, dress-up clothes and makeup stolen from Doc’s dresser drawer.
“Coming?” Tina asked. She smoothed her dress over her hips and went out of the room, heels ticking against the polished wooden steps like a time bomb.
Isabel got downstairs just as the front door was opening. A tall, olive-skinned man she had never seen before stepped into the hall. He had thick, dark, curly hair just starting to gray at the edges and dark brown, deeply shadowed eyes that made him look as though he didn’t get enough sleep.
“Come in, come in!” Dr. Rubin said, dressed now in a gold silk suit and gold sandals. “I’m so glad you could make it. William is around somewhere, and I did especially want you to meet—Oh, here she is. Alice, come say hello to Anthony Wolf. Anthony, this is my daughter Alice.”
She stood back, flushed with hope. She couldn’t bear the thought of Alice living alone in that horrible apartment forever, subsisting on ramen noodles and cottage cheese. She was too thin, and she didn’t make enough money to live decently. Having a job that helped the poor was very nice—Dr. Rubin was all for it—but if you didn’t earn enough to move out of South Philly yourself—well, it was all right now, but what would happen when Alice got older? Dr. Rubin had always been a proponent (and an example) of women’s liberation, but nonetheless, Alice needed someone to take care of her.
“Glad to meet you,” Anthony Wolf said.
Alice smiled. Her small white freckled hand disappeared inside his big dark square one. She flushed pink, and her red gold hair glowed and sparkled in the light falling through the open door. She looked youthful and particularly slender in the pale yellow sundress—like a wood nymph who found herself accidentally indoors—and something seemed to pass between them as they gazed at each other there in the hall: pale, clear, expectant blue eyes into brown. Dr. Rubin beamed.
A second man came in. He too was tall, but less well proportioned, so that he seemed, if not gawkier, exactly, more angular, as though his shoulders and elbows took up more room than they should. He had black hair, thinning across the top, and a trimmed black beard—not quite a goatee—and he was dressed in a brown wool suit jacket, slightly rumpled and too heavy for the season, over a rumpled shirt. He cleared his throat as he came in and looked around with casual confidence. “Hello,” he said with a laconic smile, showing small, uneven teeth. “I’m Simon Goldenstern. Tony said it would be all right if I tagged along.”
Anthony, apparently with some effort, disengaged his hand from Alice’s. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said to Dr. Rubin with his own white, even smile. “Simon has been staying with me.”
“Of course not,” Dr. Rubin said with just the slightest shade of annoyance. “Very glad to meet you. Alice, please show Anthony where to put his gift. You really didn’t have to bring anything.” She stepped deftly forward to detain the uninvited guest, who was casting an eye across the foyer, with its modern black steel table topped incongruously with pink azaleas in a crystal vase; its woven wall hangings from New Mexico; its faux elephant’s-foot umbrella stand.
“So you’re a friend of Anthony’s,” Dr. Rubin said inquiringly, and was suddenly overcome with fear that Anthony would turn out to be a homosexual. There always seemed to be difficulties and obstacles where Alice was concerned! Maybe she created them for herself, Dr. Rubin thought in her darker moments. Maybe it was her extremism. She seemed agreeable and mild mannered until you really knew her, and then you saw that under the surface she was actually dragonlike: immovable in her beliefs and opinions. Fire-breathing. Perhaps men sensed it. Although, of course, she reminded herself, if Anthony Wolf turned out to be a homosexual, it wouldn’t be Alice’s fault.
“Anthony’s oldest friend,” said Simon Goldenstern. “Maybe his only remaining friend.” He laughed. He had an odd, exaggerated manner that made it hard to tell to what extent he was joking.
Dr. Rubin laughed, too, deciding to hope that she was wrong, that maybe things would work out for the best this time. What else was there to do, after all, but hope? “I’m sure Anthony has lots of friends,” she said. “It’s just so hard starting over in a new place at his age.”
“Tony’s very good at starting over,” Simon said.
The doorbell rang again. “Excuse me,” Dr. Rubin said. “Isabel, this is Simon Goldenstern. Please find him a drink. Simon, this is my daughter Isabel.” The door opened and she turned toward her incoming guests with exclamations and embraces.
Isabel shook Simon Goldenstern’s hand, more amused than annoyed at her mother’s tactics. This man wasn’t good enough for Alice or Tina, so he fell to her to look after.
“So you’re one of the daughters,” he said. “I saw one of the other ones when I came in.”
“That was Alice. There are three of us.”
“Like in a fairy tale. Which are you?”
“The middle one.”
“Not destined for the prince, then,” he said with an ironic smile.
Isabel could only assume he was trying to be funny. “You’ll have to ask my husband what he thinks about that,” she said lightly.
Simon seemed surprised. “You’re married? Tony told me the daughters were all single.”
“He told you wrong.” Isabel looked over his shoulder for a reason to excuse herself but could not immediately find one.
“Well, good for you. Good luck with it! So few people seem to manage marriage for long anymore,” he said. “Luckily it’s not as necessary as it used to be. Men cook, and anyone can take the car to the garage to get the oil changed.”
“If you think marriage is purely about the division of labor, I guess you’re right. There isn’t much point to it anymore,” Isabel said carelessly.
“That just leaves love.” Simon Goldenstern smiled his not altogether pleasant smile. “That old wild card.”
“I don’t know,” Isabel said, irritated by his manner. “Plenty of people seem to manage love just fine outside of the confines of marriage.”
“Confines of marriage,” he repeated. “There’s a phrase for you.”
“It’s just an expression,” Isabel said.
&n
bsp; He smiled and changed the subject. “I’m an only child,” he said. “I don’t know what it’s like to have siblings. I never had to share anything.”
“It must have been lonely,” said Isabel, who couldn’t imagine life without her sisters.
“I don’t have anyone to blame but myself. My parents were going to have more kids, but after me they decided they didn’t want more after all.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, I was a limit tester.” He laughed. “My mother used to say if she’d known what I was going to be like, she would have got a golden retriever.”
“She actually said that?” Isabel was as shocked by his half-gleeful tone as by what he said.
“It bothered me when I was a little boy, but I developed a thick skin. I’m grateful, actually. It turned out to be very useful. In my line of work.”
“Which is what?” Isabel asked automatically, and then wished she hadn’t. She knew what would be coming in another minute but, slightly panicked, couldn’t think of any way to forestall it.
“I’m a journalist. It’s my job to ask a lot of uncomfortable questions. Sometimes people don’t like it, but it never bothers me. And you?”
“Me?” Isabel said, and to her annoyance she felt herself blush.
“What do you do?”
“Oh—I’m not working right now.” She didn’t feel she could say she was a vet. She didn’t think it was likely she’d ever work as a vet again. Anyhow, it was none of his business.
Simon smiled, condescendingly, it seemed to Isabel. “You’re doing the mom thing, then?”
Isabel’s face went from red to white. “I don’t have any children,” she said, holding her gaze defiantly to his. She could see he thought she was a parasite with some harmless hobby like tennis or pottery. She could hardly blame him. Many days she thought so herself.
CHAPTER SIX
It had to be admitted that Dr. Rubin’s idea of inviting Anthony Wolf to the party had been a good one. He was, as she had said to Simon Goldenstern, an agreeable man. He was bright, knowledgeable on a broad range of topics, quick to laugh and to pay a compliment. He was full of praise for the house and the food, for the champagne and the company. Alice took him on a tour of the garden, and Isabel, who had watched her sister freeze up and seem cold and haughty in the presence of self-assured, attractive men before, was pleased to see her blossom, her eyes sparkling, her laughter quick and lively. It seemed too good to be true that their mother could finally have got it right. And yet it had to happen sometime, didn’t it? A beginning. A first few heady hours.
This Side of Married Page 3
