This Side of Married

by Rachel Pastan

  Isabel looked doubtfully at her sister. “I don’t know if you’re in any shape to go anywhere.”

  “Oh, I am!” Alice cried. “I feel so much better!” But even as she spoke, a fresh wave of nausea overtook her, and she heaved herself off the sofa and into the bathroom.

  For the next hour Isabel nursed her sister as well as she could, giving her tepid water to drink and sponging her forehead with a washcloth. She coaxed Alice to take off the ruined dress and put on a T-shirt she found in Anthony’s dresser. She got her to lie down on, if not actually in, Anthony’s bed, with a blanket wrapped around her. She was shivering and feverish, too restless to fall asleep right away.

  “Do you remember what it was like to be sick when we were little?” Isabel said. “Cicily would sit with you and read one of her magazines.”

  “And she made jelly omelets,” Alice said dreamily, her eyes shut. “Cinnamon toast on a tray. I used to wonder why everything tasted different on a tray. Do you think it was being sick?”

  “I don’t know,” Isabel said. “Do you remember that rhyme she used to recite?”

  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

  Bless the bed that you lie on.

  Angels sing your glorious song:

  Sickness come, sickness gone.

  Just saying the words brought back the soft, lilting way Cicily would speak sometimes, though other times her diction was as crisp and clean as a knife. Her hands were rough and wrinkled, toughened from years of washing and of working in the dirt. Her father had had a small chicken and truck farm, and she had told the girls about her garden at home in the country, where she grew collard greens, kale, and tomatoes.

  Her clothes were almost like uniforms in their interchangeable sameness. Slacks and long-sleeved blouses in colors like brown and navy blue, the only bit of brightness the scarves she sometimes wore over her hair, flowers and patterns and swirls of red and yellow, turquoise and violet. She had a little room in their house, an extra bedroom under the stairs with a bed and a TV and a dresser, where she slept four nights a week and sometimes more, to save the long trip by city bus and Greyhound bus all the way down into Kent County, Delaware, where she lived in a house the girls had never seen. She was often stern, but they loved her—differently from the way they loved their mother, who indulged them with kisses and effusions and treats, exclaiming over them with distracted, often misdirected pride.

  “Oh, Isabel, you’re so creative!” Doc would say, looking at a paper plate jack-o’-lantern Isabel had made along with the rest of the third-grade class, and kiss her on both cheeks, big wet kisses Isabel ducked when she could. Sometimes it felt as though their mother were trying to make up in physical affection for what she lacked in time, touching the girls whenever she was near them, smoothing their hair, burying her nose in their necks. When she was home she whirled through the house, asking questions, giving advice, making shopping lists, checking homework, boiling water for endless cups of instant coffee, talking on the phone. “I’m so glad to be home with you girls,” she would announce, while their father sat in his armchair in the living room reading the paper or made a circuit of the house in his bedroom slippers, emptying the trash.

  Cicily was not demonstrative. The girls never jumped up to see her when she came into the house, yet her arrival early on a Monday morning was like the appearance of the sun after a restless night. They loved her, and they thought she loved them, too, although she never said so. Didn’t she have to love them, she who bathed and fed and sang to them, and cooked tidbits of chicken liver for them, and gave them presents on their birthdays?

  Did they ever give her presents? No, they did not. They didn’t even know when her birthday was. They didn’t even know how old she was, although once Alice had asked her.

  “Not quite as old as Methuselah, yet,” Cicily had replied. And then, when they had pressed her, “Little bees that mind their own business don’t get stung!”

  Would she have stung them, then? Or was this awkward maxim merely meant as a warning about the outer world, of which she was suspicious? Did she love them? Or was she merely paid to simulate love, that tall, lean, proud woman who was very good at her job?

  Dr. Rubin used to say, “I don’t know how I would manage without Cicily. I would trust that woman to the ends of the earth. Of course, she is extremely well paid, especially when you consider that we take care of all the Social Security. Still, I wouldn’t want to have to replace her. She has a natural gift with the children!”

  Alice was asleep. Her thin face glowed like a pale moon. If Anthony could see her, Isabel thought, he would awaken her with a kiss as though she were Sleeping Beauty and marry her on the spot. Quietly, so as not to disturb her sister, Isabel got up and looked around the apartment for something to read.

  Anthony had evidently not lived here very long. The rooms were sparsely furnished. No pictures hung on the walls, and except for the stereo equipment and a few CDs, the shelves in the living room were empty. The kitchen cabinets held only a few dishes, and probably only the microwave got much use. Isabel found a stack of moving boxes still taped shut in the coat closet, and at last, boredom and curiosity overtaking any remaining scruples, she turned the knob of the door to the second bedroom, the one where Simon Goldenstern was staying.

  Like the rest of the apartment, this room had little furniture—only a bed and a straight-backed chair and a small table—but in every other way it was completely different. The bed was a single, tucked under the window and neatly made with a striped Hudson Bay blanket. The table held a computer and a milk crate jammed with file folders, a jar with pens and pencils, a few notebooks, and some round stones the size of plums. The printer was on the floor under the table, and all around the room—against the walls, arranged carefully in stacks as there were no shelves—were books. Paperbacks and hardcovers, novels, books about politics, religion, China, the Middle East, classics and new volumes with shiny covers, and a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica bound in blue. Over the bed, three photographs were tacked on the wall, each showing two boys, aged about six and eight, making faces at the camera. Both had brown hair falling in their faces, sun-browned skin, missing teeth. While Isabel was taking all this in, she heard a key scrabbling at the front door lock, and she went quickly back into the living room to greet Anthony.

  But it wasn’t Anthony. Instead, Simon Goldenstern came into the hall. His face looked red, as though he had just climbed a lot of stairs (Isabel had taken the elevator up), and his black hair was disheveled in a way that made his bald spot seem more prominent. He looked blankly at Isabel for a moment, and then he said, “You’re the wrong sister!”

  It was so exactly what she might have expected him to say that Isabel would have laughed if she hadn’t been so flustered. As it was, she found herself blushing as she explained what she was doing there, which didn’t make her like him any more than she had before.

  “I’m sorry Alice is sick,” Simon Goldenstern said blandly, stepping into the living room. He yawned, stretching his arms over his head and opening his mouth wide, showing his uneven teeth. “What a day, what a day.” He threw himself down on the leather couch. “Where’s Tony?”

  “At work.”

  “Of course! Whereas you merely took the day off from, what? Grocery shopping? Washing windows? Does anyone wash windows anymore? My mother used to do it on the first Monday of the month.”

  Isabel said nothing.

  “Was that rude? I can’t help asking personal questions. It comes from being a reporter.”

  “Or maybe,” Isabel said, “you became a reporter to justify your habit of asking personal questions.”

  Simon smiled. “I didn’t think I was so transparent.”

  “Oh, sure,” Isabel said. “You just need to know one or two circumstances of a person’s life, after all, and you can infer everything important about them. Don’t you think?”

  “That depends on how astute the observer is. What else do you infer about me, besides
why I chose my career?”

  It was a relief to dislike someone so straightforwardly, to express hostility without guilt. “Oh, I think that you and I are a lot the same, temperamentally,” she said airily, almost enjoying herself. “We’re both moody and judgmental and consider ourselves superior to everyone.”

  Simon laughed, a loud, ringing laugh that gave his face a warmth she hadn’t seen in it before. “That’s an excellent description of me! Whether it applies to you equally well, I don’t know yet.”

  “You’re reserving judgment, then?” Isabel said. “I don’t think I’m worth the effort.”

  But he was looking at her now with new interest, thinking that in fact, despite a certain superficial resemblance (the same brown curly hair, the same sharp brown eyes), she wasn’t anything like his ex-wife, with whom he had just had an extremely acrimonious lunch. “Do you want a drink?” he asked. “I’m going to have one.”

  “Why not?” Isabel said. It was turning out to be such an odd day.

  Simon got up and went into the kitchen, returning with a half-empty bottle. “Do you know anything about Scotch?” he said, setting the bottle on the glass coffee table where she could look at its label.

  “Nothing.”

  “This is very, very good Scotch.” His eyes narrowed, and Isabel understood suddenly that he was drunk already. “I’m celebrating,” he said. “I bought a house. Tony will have to take care of himself now. If he can.”

  “He’s a grown man,” Isabel said, but Simon smirked at her.

  “Drink it slowly,” he instructed, pouring two glasses. “It’s expensive.” Even when he was sitting there was something restless about him, as though his mind were always whirring away a little too fast and his long limbs could never quite find a comfortable position.

  “Anthony won’t mind?”

  “It’s not his. Tony only drinks blends.”

  “To your house, then,” Isabel said, raising her glass. She was glad he was moving out.

  He watched her as she tasted the Lagavulin. It burned her tongue and slid hotly down her throat. “Well? Do you like it?”

  “It’s very nice,” she said politely.

  “My wife prefers Drambuie.”

  “Your wife?” Isabel asked in surprise. “Are you married?”

  “Ex-wife, I should have said. Well, I’m thirty-seven. By the time you get to be thirty-seven, everybody’s married. Or has been.”

  “My sister isn’t,” Isabel said.

  Simon was silent for a moment. “Your sister seems like a very nice person.”

  Isabel looked at him, trying to gauge the tone of his comment. She remembered the way he’d put his arm around Alice when she had been talking to Anthony at the party, the way he’d looked at her and said, Don’t go with him. “Alice is an extremely nice person,” she agreed.

  “And she’s very pretty, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why isn’t she married?” he said. “Did something happen? Did someone break her heart? Did she dedicate herself to Diana?”

  Isabel put her glass down. She had thought this question over so many times that she could barely think about it anymore. It was like a high, slippery wall that her mind balked at. The fact was, not only had Alice not gotten married, she had never even come close. She had never dated anyone for much more than a year (Wally, the litigator). Mostly it was just a matter of a few dates or a few months’ worth of dates. A lot of men had been smitten with Alice. They pursued her with phone calls and flowers, but somehow these were never the ones Alice liked. She had glowed over a few of the others: Wally; Jim, who did publicity for the Academy of Music; Carlo, the urban planner. She had looked forward to their phone calls, had hinted to Isabel that there was a kind of natural understanding between them, that they looked at the world the same way she did.

  But each time, something happened. The man got a job in Japan and moved away (Wally), or he announced he needed time to get over a previous relationship (Jim), or he just stopped calling (Carlo). Why was that? Was she too quick and devoted in her behavior once she decided she liked someone? Did she frighten them off? Or was she, on the contrary, too old-fashionedly demure and reserved? Or did it have nothing to do with her behavior at all, but with something else? Her judgment, perhaps? Did she only want precisely the kind of men who couldn’t appreciate her? Was she unlucky, or did she unconsciously sabotage herself?

  Did she, against all protestations, not really want to be married?

  “She’s never found anyone good enough for her,” Isabel said at last, and Simon Goldenstern grinned.

  “Of course not!” he exclaimed. “But you know, Tony isn’t good enough for her, either.”

  Isabel laughed out loud. “There’s a friend for you.”

  Simon laughed, too, companionably, as though they were on the same side. “I like your sister. I know you wouldn’t want her to make a mistake. I’ve known Tony a long time, and he always looks like the golden boy. I’ve known him since we were twelve years old.”

  “You said that the other day.”

  “We were in Little League together. Did I tell you that? He was the pitcher and I was the catcher.”

  “No,” Isabel said. “You didn’t go into it.” She tried to imply that she had no interest in him doing so now, either, but he clearly wanted to tell her about it.

  “We developed an—alliance,” he said. He took a slow drink from his refilled glass and looked at Isabel thoughtfully, as though deciding how much to say. “I had to keep a secret for Tony. A secret I knew because I was his catcher.”

  “Why did you have to?” Isabel asked, interested in spite of herself.

  “He asked me to. And I promised. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did. And then, after that, I felt responsible for him.”

  “I don’t think a promise like that is binding,” Isabel said. “Not if it’s something serious. Something that affects other people, for instance.”

  “Don’t you? I think if it affects other people, it makes the promise that much more compelling. If nothing’s at stake, your good faith doesn’t matter much to anyone, does it?”

  He looked so serious that Isabel’s curiosity got the better of her. “What kind of secret was it?”

  “Should I tell you?” he asked almost slyly.

  “It’s so long ago. It can’t still be important, can it?”

  “Can’t it? You’ll have to decide.” He took another drink. “He used to cheat. The truth is, Tony wasn’t a very good pitcher. But he was a good cheater. He used to scuff the ball. He kept a piece of nail file hidden in his pocket. No one ever found out. Probably it didn’t even make any difference, not at the speeds he was throwing. But he felt like it did. That was the point, I guess. How it made him feel.”

  Isabel laughed, but it was a forced laugh. A pall had settled over the room, and she couldn’t help feeling that it did indeed still matter and that she wished she didn’t know.

  In the late afternoon, Alice woke up and felt well enough to eat some soup. Luckily Anthony had a few cans, or maybe they were Simon’s. Simon had gone to work.

  Isabel would have liked to arrange everything on a tray the way Cicily used to, but she couldn’t find one. She had to carry each item in separately: the bowl, the cup of tea, the plate of crackers. She helped Alice sit up, fluffing the pillows for her and smoothing the covers the way she had imagined doing for a child.

  Alice ate a few bites of soup. “I feel so much better,” she said. But she seemed to have let go of her determination to go home. “I’ve ruined your day, haven’t I,” she said.

  “No,” Isabel said. “I was glad to come.”

  “You’re taking such good care of me. You’re going to be great when you have kids.”

  She knew Alice said this not to hurt her, but just the opposite—to insist on the reasonableness of the idea that Isabel would have children. She forced herself to smile. “You’re easier to take care of than a child. You don’t whine.”

  “I
can if you want me to,” Alice said.

  The apartment door opened and Anthony’s voice called out from the hallway. “Alice? Alice!” He came into the room in his striped shirt and his pressed slacks and his paisley tie, finding the two sisters looking up expectantly from his bed. The one on the edge was robust and pink cheeked, with her wild brown curls pulled back carelessly in a clip, while the other, under a blanket, was pale and elegant, her fine hair falling loosely over her shoulders. It was a sight, Anthony thought, any man would be pleased to come home to after a day’s work.

  “Hello!” he said. “I’m so pleased to find the patient awake and smiling. And look who I found at the hospital.”

  It was Dr. Rubin, her broad face furrowed with concern. “Poor Alice, let me look at you!” she said, stepping toward her daughter and lifting her chin to inspect her. “Poor thing, you’re so thin. How do you feel, sweetheart? Have you been able to keep anything down? Some soup? Good, good, that’s the best thing, you’ll be yourself again in no time.” Then turning to Anthony, she said, “Usually she’s as healthy as a horse.”

  “I never know why people say healthy as a horse,” Isabel said. “When I was on my large animal rotation we saw the sickest horses. Contagious equine metritis. Equine infectious anemia. Glanders.”

  Dr. Rubin laid her hand against Alice’s cheek. “Where’s the thermometer?” she said.

  After the examination, the two doctors agreed the patient wasn’t well enough to go home. Anthony seemed very pleased to look after her. When Isabel and Dr. Rubin left, he was sitting close beside her on the bed, coaxing her to drink a little more tea. He took her hand in his lap and held it there, counting her pulse.

  “They look so natural together,” Dr. Rubin said to Isabel as they went down together in the elevator. And even Isabel, who hated to agree with her mother, felt things were going reasonably well.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was June, the season of weddings, bar mitzvahs, and graduations. Dr. Rubin, although not without regret that she had no landmark events to celebrate, nonetheless called each of her daughters one rainy afternoon to summon them for Sunday brunch.