Close Relations (28 page)

“Why is that crap? When Philip comes home from school, I always ask him that.” Philip taught at New York University Law School. That was in the mornings. He and Barbara tried to spend the afternoons together, unless she had a date with a friend or he had to see one of the Drexler bankers or brokers to decide what to do with his latest million.

“Does Philip ask you the same thing?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you say? How do you answer him?”

“I say I had a fine day.”

“And did you?”

“Yes, Marcia. I really did. I do. I know that doesn’t particularly appeal to you, but it’s the truth. I am”—and she raised her thick brows in a mischievous leer—”happily married.”

“But how can you make a career out of it? What do you do with yourself all day? I mean it, Barb. I’m not being condescending.”

“I know you’re not. I’m busy. I read, probably four or five books a week. I spend time with my friends. I work for four different charities. What do you think is more productive, pushing papers in an office all day or raising money for the Israel Museum and working with a cerebral palsy child, teaching her how to put on a coat? Which benefits society more? And then I have the boys and Philip.”

“And that’s enough?”

“Yes. Why should I go out and open a cookware boutique or something like that and work six days a week selling soufflé dishes to strangers? Why? I don’t need the money, God knows.” We both smiled. “And what’s so intrinsically fascinating about pots and pans—or French lingerie or silver jewelry?”

“Maybe it’s stimulating to run a business. Maybe it’s important to know you can survive and thrive by yourself. Be your own woman.”

“But I am my own woman. I have no doubts about my own competence.” She pierced a piece of lobster and held it aloft. “Anyway, it’s far more stimulating to go to lunch with a friend and discuss Virginia Woolf than sell omelet pans. And it’s a hell of a lot better going to the galleries in Soho than taking some half-assed master’s degree in counseling so I can spend the rest of my life listening to obnoxious teenagers. I’d rather spend the time with my own children. They’re delightful company. Well, most of the time.”

“What are you saying, Barbara? That women shouldn’t work? I can’t believe you really think that.”

“No. I’m just saying that marriage is better.”

“It may be if you’re working on an assembly line and doing something meaningless and mechanical, although even then you’re on your own. But what about me? I have a fascinating, important job. I’m not selling French lingerie. I’m making actual contributions to the way this city is governed.”

“Is it enough, Marcia?”

“Is what enough?”

“Your job. It may be wonderful, satisfying, exciting, but what about you as a human being?”

“Why are you setting up a conundrum that’s impossible to untangle? It doesn’t have to be either-or.”

“All I know, Marcia, is that I see women, friends of mine, taking all sorts of jobs—market researchers, administrative assistants—that contribute very little to the well-being of anyone…. Wait, let me finish. They work eight-ten hours a day and come back to their children so exhausted they barely have strength to push the kids away. Is that meaningful? Is that being your own woman? Because if it is, I think it’s a crock.”

“Don’t you think your perspective is a little off? I mean, being married to Philip, never having to do all those menial, repetitive jobs like laundry, washing floors, grocery shopping. If I had a choice of staying home and ironing or going out and selling negligees, I’d be up to my ass in nighties. Anyway, we’re talking specifics here—or we were. My job is wonderful. Your marriage is wonderful. Maybe we should just be thankful and order dessert.”

“I can’t have dessert.”

“For God’s sake, Barbara. What’s the difference? You’re gorgeous no matter what you weigh.”

“No I’m not.”

“If you worked, you’d have a better self-image.”

“Well, you work. How is your self-image?”

“That’s mean, Barbara. That’s as mean as when you wouldn’t lend me your black evening bag.”

“When was that?”

“In tenth grade. When Mickey Singer invited me to his brother’s bar mitzvah. Don’t you remember?”

“No. But I apologize. For the evening bag and being mean. But try to understand. I’m not spouting anti-feminist propaganda. I’m not wasting my life. I feel I’m doing very important work, at least as important as yours.”

“Don’t you ever want to break out?”

“Of what, Marcia?”

The waiter returned. “You’re paying for lunch?” I asked Barbara.

“Of course.”

“Then I’m ordering chocolate cake to make up for the black evening bag. I’m going to eat it slowly.”

“You always had a sadistic streak. At least we’re even now. But listen, seriously. You know I love you and I’m proud of what you’re doing. Nothing can change what you’ve accomplished. All I’m saying is try not to live just day to day. Look at the rest of your life.”

“I’m looking.”

“All right. I just have one more thing to say—even if you don’t want to hear it. Marriage can work. It can be fun.”

“Maybe. At the beginning.”

“No. It gets better.”

“Better than what?”

“Marcia, I know what Barry did to you. Emotionally, I mean. But to use that one horrible experience as the standard for judging all men is wrong.”

“I’m not using him as any standard.”

“Yes you are. You equate marriage with Barry, with hurt and humiliation. And that’s why you ran around from one man to another afterward. You were escaping from marriage.”

“Barbara, be serious.”

“I am. You be serious. Then you wound up with Jerry because you can’t take promiscuity anymore, but you’re still safe. Do you know why?”

“Because he’s Irish and a bachelor and therefore won’t want to marry me. Is that your analysis?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe what’s happening to you. Your genes are taking over. You’re sounding more and more like your mother. Next thing you’ll be telling me how the Baroness de Rothschild sets her hair.”

“She doesn’t set it. She wears it short and brushes it back. I met her in Sardinia last summer. She’s darling.”

“Hot shit, Barbara.”

“It’s better than selling soufflé dishes, Mar.”

W
illiam Paterno was too swarthy for a red flush, so when he became angry his face purpled, like a giant eggplant. It did so now, even under his television makeup.

“I am not afraid of confrontations,” Sidney Appel had just snapped. “You, Mr. Paterno, have mismanaged New York City! And you,” he continued, turning his head to Larry Parker, “you, Governor, have mismanaged New York State!”

“That’s a lie!” Parker shot out.

“A lie? If the governor wants to talk about lies—”

“Gentlemen,” the moderator intervened, his western clean looks and bland television voice working to tranquilize the New York crazies, “this is a debate. I have to remind you that we agreed to a set of rules.” He smiled at the camera. His knowledge of New York was negligible, although he had probably been to the top of the Empire State Building.

“That’s fine with me,” Paterno said magnanimously, much less purple than a moment before. He sat on the last chair on the set, next to Appel. This was unfortunate, because his large head looked huge beside Appel’s allover diminutiveness. When they appeared on the monitor together, it looked like a normal man debating Humpty-Dumpty.

“Who the hell asked you, Paterno?” Larry Parker hissed.

His speech writer, standing next to me in the studio, clapped his hand to his forehead and hissed back, “Your mike’s on, Governor!” Parker looked confused, as though someone had yelled at him in another language.

The show’s producer mouthed an enraged “out” as she stepped over the cables on the floor, pursuing the entourages of the three candidates out of the studio. Her assistant, clutching her clipboard as if afraid one of us might grab it, herded us out the door and said, “God. You people behave like children.” She directed us to a waiting room equipped with a set. The debate was live.

“… in the nursing-home industry?” the moderator was asking. Paterno would be eloquent on this subject, so I flopped onto a segment of the long modular couch that clung to the walls of the room. I stretched my legs in front of me and closed my eyes so I would not have to talk with anyone. Jerry had been gone for three days. He had not called.

“The governor seems to think age is a disease he’s immune to,” Paterno was saying. He was performing well. I tuned out the television.

The only news I had of Jerry had come two days earlier, when Paterno returned from Rochester. “I saw your friend yesterday.”

“How is he?” I had asked, pushing a ball-point pen hard on the paper, trying to force it to give up its ink.

“Fine. Still a little stiff in the old back, but he’ll soon be as good as new. You want another pen?”

Jerry never displayed profound emotions in front of other people. I knew what he felt because he told me. So, because much of our recent time together had been spent in ungiving silence, I could not predict how he would behave when he came home. He had given no signals. He might hold me and plant gentle kisses on my eyelids. He might toss me a casual hi. He might not speak at all. Or he might suggest I find a new apartment. I wanted him back. I feared his return.

“Hey, Marcia! Marcia, over here!” I opened my eyes to locate a faintly familiar voice. “Here.” The room was full, with about twenty people, some of them standing. It took me a moment to locate a beard behind several pairs of shoulders. It was the governor’s speech writer. I waved unencouragingly “Hey, Marcia, Paterno was well prepared on that one. But don’t worry, we’ll get him yet.”

“Right, Ted.” He was a know-nothing from upstate whom I had known in Washington. He had been working for—and subsequently fired by—a congressman from Bing-hamton who was almost his intellectual equal. I snapped my eyes shut again before he had a chance to come over and chat. I wanted to think about Jerry.

“Excuse me,” another voice said. Sensing it was addressing me, I opened my eyes. It was a man I had spotted with the Appel contingent. “Are you Marcia Green?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m David Hoffman.” Even casually dressed, like the rest of the Appel group, he looked like a man of substance. His jeans were so smooth they must have been dry cleaned. His shirt was a white and brown and gray tattersall, and its sharp-edged collar formed two perfect v’s on either side of the neckline of his lightweight beige sweater. Like his posture, controlled and conscious, his clothing seemed well thought out.

“Hi,” I said, somewhat nervously. Occasionally my reputation preceded me. Sometimes I ran into men who had heard about my speech-writing abilities. Sometimes I ran into men who heard I was an easy lay. Both types seemed friendly and eager, and I hated the slow agony of discovering their interest.

“I’m really glad to meet you,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“I’m a friend of Philip Drexler. Your cousin Barbara made me promise I’d introduce myself to you if we ran into each other.”

I flashed a smile that would have satisfied even my Aunt Estelle. “I’m glad you came over. Do you want to sit down?” David sat on the segment of couch next to mine. He smiled. His teeth were large and white, but they merely added to his substantial appearance. No one would ever make Bugs Bunny jokes about David Hoffman. “How do you and Cousin Philip know each other?” I asked.

“We went to law school together.”

“’Law school.’ Well, you have incredible restraint, not blurting out ‘Harvard.’”

He kept smiling. Even on the low couch, David Hoffman managed to look impressive. Most of us had given up, allowing gravity to curve our spines into weary arcs; he sat erect among the slouchers, but not so erect as to seem stiff. “How do you think the debate is going?” he inquired.

“That depends on who your candidate is. You’re with Appel?” He nodded. “Well, you might consider being a little nervous, because he’s coming across as glib.”

“He is glib. In all the years I’ve known him, he’s never uttered a single thoughtful sentence.” David Hoffman sounded like what a friend of Philip Drexler’s should sound like. My mother would have observed that his voice was cultivated. In any case, it was deep and pleasant.

“May I ask you a question, David?”

“Of course.”

“How come you’re working for Appel?”

“How come?” He seemed to find the question intriguing.

“Yes. I mean, you look like a solid citizen, a nice, normal person. Not the sort who’d wind up working for a politician.”

“Well, I’m not exactly working for him. I’m helping out a little. But I actually came here tonight to see what a television studio looks like, to watch the debate live.” He peered at me. “You look like a normal person,” he observed. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes, but not in your sense. I keep crazy hours, spend most of my day dealing with megalomaniacs and sociopaths. Most people would run from it, screaming.”

“But you like it?”

“I love it.”

“Well, you don’t sound
ab
normal. Besides, you’re Barbara Drexler’s cousin. She’s one of the finest, sanest people I know. How crazy could you be?”

“Just mildly deranged.” We smiled again. He was not wearing a wedding band. “But you still didn’t answer my question.”

“Excellent. You’d make a good lawyer.”

“David, it doesn’t take three years at Harvard to figure out you don’t enjoy talking about Sidney Appel.”

“Oh, Sidney. He’s my uncle.”

“Your uncle? Uncle Sidney? You don’t look anything like him.” David’s face was big and squarish; even sitting, he looked fairly tall and large-boned. He bore no resemblance to an elf.

“He’s my uncle by marriage. He married my father’s sister.”

“Oh! Cat food!” Then I added quickly, “Sorry.”

He lowered his head and laughed. “I keep away from cat food. I practice law.”

“On your own?”

“No. With a large midtown firm. I specialize in tax.”

“And that’s more fascinating than cat food?”

“Barbara warned me you’d be snide.”