Family Happiness (24 page)

“They seem very … unified,” Polly said. “They're more like a pair of megaliths than a couple.”

“They are,” Mary said. “Pass me your cup. Now that they're married Paul only nods to me. They sent me an announcement but now it's clear that I am simply a trades-person. I love these cups, don't you? I wish someone would buy this set. I don't suppose I could unload it on Beate after the Big Event.”

“She seems very fond of green,” Polly said. “But she also seems very anti-decoration.” Polly passed her cup. She was very grateful to Mary for being so good at conversation.

“So clean, the Swiss,” Mary said. “How did your mother take it?”

“Stunned at first,” said Polly. “Now she's overwhelmed. They're having twins, you know. That's all she talks about anymore. She's waited for this quite a long time.”

“Paula Peckham says your mama says Paul jilted me,” Mary said. “It makes me very cross.”

“She does think that,” Polly said. “Every time she says it, I say the same thing: If
only
Mary had married Paul. How lucky we would have been. I always hoped you would marry Paul but I didn't think he'd ever be so fortunate.”

“Marry Paul! What a ghastly thought. After those appalling Rensbergs. I can't tell you how loathsome they are. They travel in a flock or a pack, or a pride. Those awful sisters! The horrible mother! The actress cousin who's always in
Vogue
magazine showing off her perfect country house! Ugh! I don't know how my little angels turned out so well. Every time they come back from Charlie I examine them for horrible signs. I used to want to have their blood changed, to get the Rensberg out. I'm just a nice Protestant girl from Virginia. And you Solo-Millers! Besides,” she said, lighting a cigarette, “I was never in love with Paul.” She gave Polly a hard look. “Paul was my escort. I was his hostess when he gave a dinner party and we went to the symphony together. But he was my beard. I was in love with someone else.” She blew a smoke ring and squinted. “I'm sure you don't approve.”

“Oh, Mary,” Polly said. A lump rose in her throat. “All the times I saw you, you looked so sparkly.”

“I was quite miserable,” said Mary, exhaling a plume of smoke. “Seeing you and Henry used to break my little old heart, to tell you the truth. In fact I once ran into you and Henry with my best beloved in tow, don't you remember? We were sneaking out to dinner and we smacked right into you on Park Avenue. It was two years ago, right around now.”

“Oh, my,” said Polly. “Tony Patton.” Tony Patton was a partner of Henry's.

“It's just the tiniest little world,” said Mary. “In point of poignant fact, my older sister went to college with his wife, Clover. So all those times you saw me looking so sparkly, I actually was thinking that I was about to die. Seeing you and Henry made me feel very small, I can tell you. I wouldn't say that I was jealous. I simply felt that either something had been left out of me, or something extra had been added to me. At any rate, I was not the kind of person who had things beautifully arranged. When I wanted to make myself really upset, I would lie in bed thinking about you and Henry and how lucky you were to be spared all that.”

Polly drank her coffee slowly. If I do not tell Mary the truth, she said to herself, I will be exactly what Lincoln says my family is: put here on earth to make other people feel like hell. If I don't tell her how un-perfect my life is, I will make her feel exactly like my mother makes me feel. She put her cup down.

“I haven't been spared,” she said. “Maybe this happens to everyone. My life has been turned upside down this year. For the first time in my life I got into trouble. You're not the only person who fell in love.”

“Poor you,” said Mary. She did not seem at all astonished. “Sometimes it gets your life in order, you know, but not always the order you expect. Are you fixing to leave Henry?”

“Oh, no,” said Polly. “I love Henry. If I had wanted to leave him I would have picked someone I could leave him for. Instead I picked someone who likes to be alone as much as possible, is indifferent to children, and thinks most families are hell. He likes a very marginal life. That's just the opposite of what I want.”

“Well,” Mary said, “it just goes to show. I always forget that people never are what you think they are. I need more coffee. Finish your sandwich while I put the water on.”

Polly ate her sandwich and listened to Mary rattling near the sink.

“My mother got me through that bloody mess,” Mary said. “I must have been mortified at myself, because with the exception of my mother and sisters, I've never told another soul until now. I don't suppose you confide this sort of thing to Wendy, do you.”

The idea of confiding her love affair to Wendy was so outlandish and dreadful it caused Polly to laugh. Having a mother to confide in sounded like the most exotic, unreachably liberated notion.

“I told a friend at my office,” Polly said. “A wonderful kid, but if she hadn't been around, I think I could actually have held out and not told anyone.”

“That's no good,” Mary said.

“Sometimes I think I've gone for most of my life without telling anything to anyone,” said Polly. “It's taken me years to talk to anyone, and I seem to have done it all in a year: my marginal chum, my office friend, and you.”

Mary lit a cigarette and dropped the match into her pottery ashtray. It occurred to Polly that the company of a fellow sufferer was consoling. It was not that misery loved company; it
needed
company—the company and guidance of someone who had suffered the same misery.

Polly and Mary talked until late in the afternoon. From time to time the telephone rang and Mary fended off a customer. “Mrs. Rensberg is in Guatemala,” she said. “They never know the difference,” she said to Polly. “They just like to wave money around or bring their appraisers in.” When someone came and rang the shop bell, she waved them away and pointed to the
CLOSED
sign.

When it was time for Polly to leave, they both stood up. They said good-bye with a sisterly embrace.

“Thank you, Mary,” Polly said. “Thank you for telling me what you told me. Thank you for giving me lunch. You're the only person I know to talk to, except my chum at the office. She's wonderful, but she's single and she doesn't have children.”

“That probably doesn't make any difference,” Mary said. “Love is love and trouble is trouble.”

“Not where I come from,” Polly said. “Oh, Mary, you really make a person feel better.”

“I'll tell you something,” Mary said, opening the door. “If you love Henry, things will probably work themselves out. People do drastic things to make things change and things do change.”

“Sometimes it looks very bleak,” Polly said.

“Buck up, kid,” said Mary. “Come back and have lunch again. Nothing stays terrible forever. It only
seems
that way.”

Polly walked home exhilarated, but by the time she reached her door she felt a terrible remorse. What have I done? she said to herself. She was mortified by her confession. She picked up the telephone.

“Rensberg Antiques.”

“Mary, this is Polly.”

“Oh, Polly, did you leave something behind?”

“No, Mary,” said Polly. “It's just … I know I needn't say this, but …”

“Don't worry, kiddo,” said Mary. “Your secret is safe with me, and mine is safe with you.”

Twelve

Family life is deflective: it gives everybody something to do. It absorbs sadness and sops up loneliness. It provides work, company, and entertainment. It makes tasks for idle hands and allows an anxious spirit to hide in its capacious bosom.

With no one around her, Polly felt as if she had slipped out of earth orbit. She sat on the edge of the chaise in the bedroom. Her own room looked strange and sinister to her. She had absolutely nothing to do with the hour and a half she had until it was time to go to Martha's. If she had planned better she could have been baking a cake, but she had not planned. It was a small thing, but a sign of how Polly had let things get out of hand. Since she had not known how long she would be with Mary Rensberg, she had decided not to bake. She had bought an apricot tart on the way home, and now, when she felt so frightened and lonely, she was deprived of the diversion of measuring, sifting, rolling, baking, and timing.

A wave of longing for Lincoln broke over her. Not an hour went by that she did not look at her watch, calculate the time in Paris, and wonder what he was doing. She imagined his hotel room, him ambling down a street, him sitting at a cafe reading the
Herald Tribune
. She saw him standing in the empty gallery the way he stood in his studio when he was thinking out a problem: with his hands in his back pockets and his shoulders slightly hunched. Once in a while Lincoln worked while Polly was at the studio. It pained her how rarely she saw him paint. She loved to watch him.

She had helped him pack his paintings for shipping to France, and she wondered how he would hang them. She knew the date of his opening, and had checked out a newsstand near her office that carried foreign papers and journals. She knew that she would buy them all on her way to work and read them in her office to see whether he was reviewed. She knew that she could call his brother, Gus, and get the telephone number of his hotel. She knew that she could call him, and that for an hour she would feel better just for having heard his voice. But that was not fair to him, or to her.

Supposing in Paris he met someone and fell in love? Supposing Polly had given him a yearning to have someone in his life for good? Supposing he came home and brought this person with him? What did he need Polly for? She was married. She could not go to him even if he wanted her to. She could not even get to Paris for three days. It was better to leave him alone, to get out of his life, to let him think by himself.

It did not occur to her to call Henry. If he was not at a meeting, then he was in his hotel room preparing for a meeting, and her call would be a disturbance. It was not fair to ring up a busy, harried man just because you felt lonely and useless.

She could not wait to go to Martha's. Anxiety, she thought, was like a flock of birds on a telephone line. When people came around they flapped off, and when the people went away they hopped back on. The minutes dragged by. Polly was amazed at how long a quarter of an hour could be.

Wendy Solo-Miller believed in action. Inaction bred sloth and discontent. Messy lives were the product of weak wills. Polly had been trained with the notion that order cancels out sadness every time. A plan, an activity, a project, the idea of getting something done was the cure. Polly stood up. A shower would take between seven and ten minutes. Figuring out what to wear would take about two. Putting her clothes on would take five. She sat down again, picked up the telephone and called Martha.

“Would you mind if I was early?” she asked.

“Absolutely not,” Martha said. “In fact, I'd love it. I laid out everything for dinner in the kitchen and every time I go in there I get scared. You can come and make your own dinner.”

Polly picked up her handbag, threw on her coat, and rang for the elevator feeling that she had been saved.

If Polly had expected solace from Martha, she did not get it. Martha was in a tear.

“I cleaned up the house, and that's all I can do,” she said. “I'm in a dangerous mood and Spud and I just had a fight on the telephone.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” said Polly, taking off her coat. “What about?”

“About?” said Martha. “We don't fight about
things
. We just fight. I don't want to talk about this. It's too depressing. Come into the kitchen. I'm starving. Feed me.”

She led Polly into the kitchen and then sat down. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I invited you for dinner and now I just can't cope.”

“It's fine with me,” Polly said. “I'm feeling sort of awful myself, and cooking dinner will give me something to do.”

“I love to see an upstanding person fallen low,” Martha said morosely. “You have no idea what a comfort you are to me. If you would actually cook those lamb chops and figure out something to do with the string beans, I'd be very happy to listen quietly to your problems and give you the benefit of my many years of expensive psychotherapy. After all, it should be of some use to someone.”

“I don't want to talk about my problems,” said Polly, rolling up her sleeves. “Where I come from, we don't do that sort of thing.”

“Well, it must be very dull where you come from,” said Martha. “Where I come from we think that is the very stuff of life. What are you doing to those lamb chops? They cost me half my salary.”

“I'm trimming them,” said Polly, “and I'm sticking a little sliver of garlic right next to the bone.”

“Gee, that's cute. I ought to learn how to do that, huh? Spud likes that sort of thing. Now what are you doing?” Martha had gotten up and was leaning over Polly.

“I'm topping and tailing the beans. For God's sake, Martha. You're breathing down my collar.”

“You're my domestic role model,” said Martha. “I have to watch your every move. Are you finished now?”

“No,” said Polly. “I'll teach you how to make salad dressing and then we can sit down and you can tell me all your small, feeble problems.”

“I'm too tired,” Martha said. “I'll just open the wine and sit here without moving.” She rooted around in a drawer for a corkscrew. “This is my basic kitchen skill—opening the wine. Also turning on the faucet and turning off the faucet. Talk to me. What did you do today?”

Polly accepted a glass of wine and told Martha about her lunch with Mary Rensberg.

“Isn't confession sweet?” Martha said. “Did you tell her who it was?”