After Claude (7 page)

“You’re not being fair.” Marine’s perfectly round, bright brown eyes were pools of Jewish wisdom. “It could affect anyone’s mental stability to wake up from a deep sleep and find a black stranger sharing her bed.” The great liberal now called all of them, including writers, senators, singers, and the doorman, black.

We had had this discussion at least one thousand times, but Maxine, whose mind was as matured as her spine, couldn’t hear it often enough. A look of sublime bliss settled on her moon face. I did not intend to run through the routine again. A person had to live with Rhoda-Regina’s twitches, her spasms, her asthma, her blinking, her stuttering, before understanding why, on a mission of mercy, I had miraculously produced a man to appease her torment.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get Marcello Mastroianni, but he was busy knocking up Catherine Deneuve that night.”

“But she was fast asleep.”

“Rhoda awake is unfuckable, and if that’s all you have left on your agenda to talk about, I can survive your leaving.”

Maxine lit another cigarette with a neat click of her 18-carat gold lighter.

“We won’t talk about it,” she promptly agreed. “But I just want to say one word. I think you’re being unfair to Regina. The fact is, she took you in when you were flat broke, you had nowhere to live; you forget, but you were a breathing skeleton when you got back to America. She acted like a true friend.”

It occurred to me that if I smeared lip gloss all over Maxine’s squat, soft body, I could probably force it down the incinerator.

“I agree,” I said bitterly. “She certainly was a better friend than you, who never gives anything but lip service.”

“If you saw the stack of unpaid bills Jerry has on his desk this minute, you’d understand why we can’t possibly hand out money.”

“Have you come here to scrounge a couple of dollars out of me?”

That shut her up, but only momentarily.

“It’s impossible to have a conversation with you.”

“You’re doing okay,” I reminded her. “And now, if you don’t mind, I’m having guests for dinner.”

Maxine, who was the laziest practitioner of yoga in the West, didn’t move from her perch on the wicker armchair. I left her and went into the kitchen to unload the groceries. Only her piercing contralto followed me.

“The thing you won’t believe is that Rhoda-Regina is not your enemy. Far from it, she’s worried about you. We’ve discussed how you lay, day after day, flat on the mattress in her studio, either too exhausted or too afraid to go out. She thinks that something awful happened to you in Europe, and I do, too. But you’re so sensitive and angry, I’m afraid you’ll jump down my throat if I ask you.”

I came back into the living room and took one of her Kools.

“What happened in France?” Maxine leaned forward eagerly.

“I found out I wasn’t French.”

“No, no, something happened to make you come home this way. Was it a man?”

“Maxine, you know I had mononucleosis.”

Maxine dismissed the disease with her well-married hand. “My doctor says mononucleosis is psychological.”

“If you’re working into your psychiatrist spiel, I’m going to call the police and have you thrown out of here.”

“You see,” she said triumphantly. “You won’t listen. Harriet, I’m your oldest and probably only friend. You can’t go on this way. You must go to a doctor. I’d send you to mine, but to be honest, I don’t want to share him. It’s very possessive and childish of me, I know; we’ve been working on it for months.”

“You have my promise, I won’t steal him away from you.”

“But Harriet, your behavior isn’t normal. You’re so furious all the time, so rude, so disagreeable. I’ve known you all my life, and I forgive you. But I swear, I don’t know how Claude stands for it. This place always looks like a cyclone hit it.”

“I can live without him, too.”

“Something is wrong between you and Claude.” She pounced on the possibility with all the eagerness of Dr. Barnard finding a beating heart in a battered donor.

It occurred to me that one of the worst aspects of the breakup would be the free pleasure it would give Maxine. If I could at least charge her admission.

“Harriet, Harriet,” she wailed, “you must go for help. You can’t go on this way, alienating friends, lovers, your family, everyone. A woman can’t survive in this society completely isolated, alone, unloved. And the basis of it all, of all your problems, is that you don’t love yourself. It’s so clear. Just look at how you’re neglecting yourself. It breaks my heart. It’s all self-hate. How can anyone love you if you don’t love yourself? Fix yourself up.”

She gave me a quick once-over and launched into her cosmetic view of the universe.

“Streak your hair a little; some highlights up front would brighten that muddy look of yours. Get a manicure. Lose some weight. Buy a few decent clothes. It’s a pity you’re so tall or I’d give you my old things. My girl walks around looking like a million bucks. Make yourself attractive so Claude can be proud to be seen with you. It’s not too late. All relationships go through their difficult periods. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you some of the insurmountable obstacles Jerry and I have conquered, because we were willing, because we worked at it together.”

Imagine my surprise to find myself listening attentively to Maxine’s abuse.

The bitch picked up the scent of my attention. “Is it another woman?” she demanded breathlessly. If she had had a tail at the end of her stunted spine, it would have pointed straight up into the air. Would that my life was the mindless soap opera Maxine yearned to hear.

“Could you manage not to be a fool for five seconds a day?”

“Well,” she demanded, “what’s happening between you and Claude? Isn’t he planning to marry you and take you back to Paris with him?”

If there’s one thing on this earth that irritates me, it’s when a dumpy, frigid, former nymphomaniac assumes that my tongue is hanging out, thirsting for marital bliss. It goes without saying that though ideally suited and ecstatically happy, Jerry and Maxine had flown directly from their wedding ceremony to group therapy, paying top prices for the privilege of insulting each other in front of an audience.

“I’ll make you a promise, Maxine, and then let’s adjourn this summit conference. I promise you that the day I decide to marry anyone I hate as much as you hate Jerry, one: you’ll be the first to know, and two: I’ll seek professional help.”

Did Maxine get the message and leave me in peace? Not a chance. She sat there radiant with superior knowledge. “My dear, that is precisely your sickness. You think everybody hates their life. You’re wrong. I don’t hate Jerry. I love him. My heart may not palpitate when he walks into the room, but I’m happy with him. I appreciate his devotion and goodness. I love our child, our home.”

“Excuse me very much, but if it’s love, sweet love, that makes you parade the streets like a crazed drag queen, if it’s happiness that drives you to come sniffing around here like a starved alley cat, give me hate and misery.”

Hurrah. I was heard. I wasn’t speaking in a dead tongue. Maxine heaved herself upright, sucking in her stomach, and performed a full
grande dame
on me.

“You’re hopeless, you and your defenses. You’re even sicker than I feared. You remind me of a girl in group we had to throw out. If anyone touched on the truth, she turned into a howling cornered animal.”

“So that’s what we’re having. A sample group-therapy session. I thought we were taping for the Johnny Carson Show. Leave. Go quick, tell Rhoda how hopeless I am before you forget one word of this interview.”

Maxine proceeded silently to repack the tons of crap that had exuded from her vinyl satchel. I might have had the small but gratifying satisfaction of delivering the last word, but Lady Luck is obviously being paid handsomely to ignore my existence. The phone rang, and it would have required a deadly karate blow to the jugular to get rid of the intruder.

It was Claude, sounding as though he was reporting in to his parole officer.

“Harriet?”

“Claude darling, I’ve been waiting for your call.”

Maxine went into a full Marcel Marceau extravaganza so I should say hello for her.

“The plans for tonight have changed,” he told me.

“Oh, rats, I’ve been cooking and cleaning and shopping like a field hand all day. Well, darling, we’ll have a nice quiet dinner alone.”

“Will you let me finish what I was saying?” he snapped.

“I’m all ears, sweetheart.”

“I was able to reach Charles, and we’ve arranged to have an early dinner at La Bonne Femme.”

“Oh, no,” I said, because my loathing for uptown fag restaurants is practically a phobia.

“Harriet, I was thinking it would be better if I have dinner alone with them and get home early.”

If not for the hostile spy sitting in my living room, I could have been very explicit about my objections. Maxine took a metal teasing comb out of her valise and messed up her streaked mop of hair to look as though a battalion of mercenaries had had a go at her and one Turk more or less wouldn’t faze her.

“Nonsense,” I said gaily, “I’d love to join you.”

There was a very long pause from the other end of the wire.

“Hello, Claude?”

“I’m still here.”

“Wonderful.”

“I think it would be better if you didn’t come tonight.”

“Darling, I’ll be at the Bonne Femme with bells on, I promise you.”

“Oh, Christ. Will you behave yourself with Charles and his girl friend?”

“I’m dying to meet her. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. What time did you say?”

There was another monstrous pause. Maxine was leaning forward in her chair, her flexible spine no doubt tingling.

“Seven,” he said finally. “But if you make any trouble…”

“Isn’t that the place where they serve that fabulous cheese platter with all those broken crackers?”

This time there was no confusion about the silence, because he slammed the receiver down.

Since there was now no need to go into my scrublady routine, I flopped down on the couch and lit a Marlboro.

I could tell, from the expression on her face, that Maxine had elected to forgive me. Let it never be said that pride got in the way of her pleasure.

“Ugh,” I said, “could Jerry shoot some Novocain into my gums and freeze my face into a smile for tonight?”

“Why didn’t you give Claude my regards?” my sit-in pouted.

“For crying out loud, Maxine, could you please stop thinking about yourself for one second?” I myself was already struggling with the issue of what to wear. Entertaining at home, I would have been sublime in bare feet and a saffron Burmese prayer robe, but to appear before a pack of hostile faggots would have given pause to Cinderella’s godmother.

What’s wrong between you and Claude?”

I couldn’t answer because quite incredibly tears of exasperation filled my eyes and throat. My guest levitated off the wicker chair and landed beside me.

“Harriet, tell me. Let me help you. I see you’re suffering.”

“Please, Maxine, get the hell out of here.”

“He wants to throw you out,” she announced with hideous precision. “You’re going to be back in the same mess as when he picked you up. Harriet, Harriet,” she moaned, and it passed through my mind that of all the countless treacheries my mother had perpetrated, naming me Harriet was the most infamous.

“I can’t stand by and let you ruin your life like this. You can’t waste any more years on these affairs. You’re almost thirty. What’s going to happen to you?”

It came then, the fleeting nightmare of me, old and gray, dispensing paper towels in Bloomingdale’s rest room.

“It’s not as if you were me, born to be a wife and mother, or even Regina. She’s an artist, a teacher. She can take care of herself. But you? What can you do? What do you want? You have to want something in this life.”

“I want you to stop torturing me, Maxine, and go home.”

“I’m your friend, Harriet. I beg of you.” She clasped her hands together, and if not for her Jewish knockers protruding at me, I might have mistaken her for Deborah Kerr.

“Please, go to an analyst, a clinic, a group, get help before it’s too late, before you’ve ruined your chances for having something permanent, something real. A woman needs security. A home, a place. I don’t say you have to get married, though I know you’d marry Claude in a second if he asked, but it has to come from somewhere or you’re ruined.”

“Me marry Claude? Are you insane?” I shrieked. “Marriage is all you and Claude think about.”

“Don’t try to tell me he’s asked you to marry him, my dear. He knows your story. He knows you’ve been passed around from man to man, and he’ll just pass you along. Why should he worry about you when you don’t worry about yourself? Claude will get married one day, but not to you. He’ll find a respectable girl and have a respectable home. Believe me, I know what Claude wants.”

I for one had had enough of her disgusting jealousy.

“Maxine, I’m sick and tired of you hanging around here drooling over Claude. I didn’t force you to marry that nauseating piece of blubber you keep complaining about. If you’re unhappy, divorce him, but I advise you not to do so on Claude’s account. If I was not so pathologically incapable of hurting people, I’d tell you exactly what Claude thinks of you, the artificial respiration I’ve had to apply after you’ve smothered him in your mountainous boobs. Many’s the time I’ve had to remind him that you’re my friend and I expect him to be courteous to you. Now I see I was wrong, because your fantasies are eating away at the little sense you were born with.”

It was rewarding to see the demented vivacity go out of Maxine’s fat face. It reminded me of Joan Fontaine when Rochester takes her up to the tower to meet his, maniac wife. Maxine pulled herself upright on her rhinestone platforms, but she refused to be offended. She persisted in forgiving me. I suspected that if I commenced to hammer a nail into her head, that look of toleration would stay smeared all over her understanding face.

“I only hope you find out what you’re missing before it’s too late.”

“Thanks. I only hope you don’t, or you’ll go up on your roof and become the first topless mass murderer of Central Park West.”