Smart Women (34 page)

She had had a call from Freddy that afternoon, accusing her of using his support payments to care for another child.

“That’s ridiculous!” she’d told him.

“You’ve taken in his kid, haven’t you?”

“She’s living with us while her mother is in the hospital.”

“The looney bin, as I understand it.”

She’d held the phone to her chest and inhaled deeply. She would not allow him to throw her into a frenzy.

“Do you think it’s fair, Margo,” Freddy had continued, “taking in his kid at the expense of your own?”

“It’s not at the expense of my own.”

“You have to devote time and attention to her, don’t you?”

“It’s not your business, Freddy.”

“Anything relating to my children is my business. And I don’t want my money used to take care of his child.”

“Not a penny of yours goes toward the care and feeding of Sara Broder!”

“Good. I’m glad to hear that. Now that we’ve got that straight, what about graduation?”

“What about it?”

“Have you booked us a room yet?”

“I sent you a list of hotels.”

“I’m trying not to remind you that if you had stayed in the city Aliza and I would not have to fly out to never-never land for Stuart’s graduation.”

“All right,” Margo said. “I’ll book you a room.” She no longer blamed Freddy for his hostility regarding the distance she had put between him and the children. She had learned, from living with Andrew, what it’s like to lose your children to the geographical whim of a former spouse. She had learned how it could tear a person apart and she was not sure the law should allow it under any circumstances.

If only Freddy had made the time for Stuart and Michelle when they had all lived together, if only he had made it clear that he had loved them and had not wanted to lose them. Life was full of
if onlys.

Maybe divorce should be outlawed, Margo thought. Divorce screwed up as many lives as disease. She tried to imagine a world in which there was no divorce, a world in which she would have been forced to make some kind of life with Freddy. Probably she’d have taken a lover. More than one. Probably Freddy would have too.

Michelle came into the living room and eyed the tulip plant, the cheeses, the basket of crackers and pumpernickel bread. “It looks like you’re expecting the queen, Mother.”

“It does look that way, doesn’t it?” Margo said, surprised at how easy it was to avoid unpleasantness. A year ago she would have become defensive at Michelle’s remark and there would have been a major confrontation.

“Eric is coming over at six. We’re going to an early movie.”

“Don’t you think you’re seeing too much of Eric?”

“I don’t have time for a lecture now, Mother,” Michelle said, skipping down the stairs.

No, not now, Margo thought. She closed her eyes, picturing Andrew and herself on a sailboat, moving silently through the emerald green waters of the Caribbean. She could almost smell the salt air, taste the spray, feel the wind whipping through her hair. She had not been sailing since the day she and Freddy had capsized in Sag Harbor Bay, but she and Andrew often talked about a sailing trip. Maybe this summer . . . if they could get it together.

Stuart came barreling up the stairs and began to attack the food Margo had set out so carefully. “Please, Stu . . . wait until the Broders get here.”

“I’m hungry now,” he said, his mouth full of food.

“Then take something from the kitchen.”

“Jesus, you’d think Andrew’s parents were more important than your own kids.”

Margo clenched her teeth.

Stuart laughed and pecked her cheek. “Just a joke, Mom. No one’s more important than your own kids, right?”

“Right,” Margo said.

Finally, the front door opened and Margo ran down the stairs to greet Andrew’s parents.

The Broders were a handsome couple, in their early seventies, both slim, silver-haired, and perfectly groomed. Nettie Broder wore a pale pink Ultrasuede suit with a strand of coral around her neck. Her lipstick was bright, with a purple cast, and when she smiled Margo noticed that it had smeared onto her front teeth. In Sam Broder, Margo could see Andrew in thirty years. The same jaw, the same smile, but without the sparkle in his eyes.

Sam Broder had sold his Buick agency in Hackensack twelve years ago. He and Nettie had settled in Florida, not just because it was the place to go when you retired, but because Andrew and Francine had lived there, with the grandchildren. Now Bobby was dead and Francine had brought Sara to Boulder. So much for carefully conceived plans.

Margo wished again that she and Andrew had shared the last twenty years so that by now they would know each other so well, would love each other so deeply, that nothing could ever come between them.

Margo would have embraced the Broders, but she did not want to come on too strong. So she offered her hand and each of them shook it warmly. “Well,” Margo said, “shall we go upstairs?”

“Upstairs?” Nettie asked.

“The living room,” Andrew explained.

“The living room is upstairs?” Nettie said.

“Yes,” Margo told her. “It’s an upside-down kind of house.”

“A split level?” Sam said.

“No, not exactly,” Margo said.

“We looked at a house once with the living room halfway upstairs,” Nettie said, “but you still had to go up another four steps to get to the bedrooms. Remember that house, Sam?”

“But that was a split,” Sam said.

“Our bedrooms are on this level,” Margo said.

“You don’t mind sleeping on the ground floor?” Nettie asked. “You’re not afraid someone will come in?”

“We’re used to it.”

Andrew started up the stairs and his parents followed.

“How about a glass of wine?” Margo asked, after they had settled on the sofa.

“Just club soda for me,” Nettie said. She opened her purse, took out a compact and looked into the mirror. She quickly wiped the lipstick off her front teeth, then smiled awkwardly at Margo, and Margo realized that Nettie was not at ease either, in this house in which her son was living with a strange woman.

“So where’s our little Sara?” Sam asked.

“She’s taking a bath,” Margo said. “She’ll be up soon.” Margo had insisted that Sara bathe before dinner. Sara had argued that she didn’t need a bath, that she had taken a bath yesterday, but Andrew had backed up Margo, telling Sara, no bath no dinner at John’s French Restaurant.

“Andrew tells us you have two children,” Nettie said.

“Yes . . . they’ll be up in a minute too.”

Nettie tapped her foot nervously. Sam sipped a glass of wine.

Margo heard the sound of the motorcycle turning onto the dirt road, then Eric banging on the front door and Michelle, calling, “It’s for me . . . I’ll get it . . .”

“My daughter,” Margo said.

Nettie and Sam nodded.

Why didn’t Andrew engage them in conversation? Margo wondered. Why was he just sitting there like a lump across the room? She still wasn’t used to him without his beard. She had asked him what he looked like without it so many times he had finally shaved it off, surprising her. That night in bed, in the darkness, she’d felt as if she were with a stranger.

The next morning he’d said, “Well?”

“I miss it,” she’d told him.

He’d laughed. “I can grow another one in a month.”

At breakfast Michelle had said, “Why, Andrew . . . you’re good-looking. Who would have guessed?”

“Guessed what?” Stuart had asked. He hadn’t even noticed.

But Sara had taken one look at Andrew and had cried, “Why did you have to go and do that?” She had left the table in tears.

Now Margo wished that Andrew were sitting next to her, with his arm around her shoulder, showing his parents how close they were. But he was acting as if he hardly knew her, as if he were a visitor in her home, like his parents.

Michelle and Eric clomped up the stairs, both of them wearing hiking boots and work clothes. They looked like soldiers in the Israeli Army, Margo thought. All that was missing were the rifles slung over their shoulders.

Andrew said, “Eric, Michelle, these are my parents, Nettie and Sam Broder.”

“Hey, how’s it goin’, Nettie?” Eric asked, pumping Andrew’s mother’s hand. “How’re you doin’, Sam?”

“This is your son?” Nettie asked Margo.

“No, this is Eric,” Margo said. She paused, searching for the right words. “A . . . family friend.”

Michelle did not approach the Broders. But she did say, “Hi, glad to meet you, welcome to Boulder and all that. How do you like it so far?”

“It’s so windy,” Nettie said. “I never felt such wind. I could hardly catch my breath.”

“Yes, it can be windy in the spring,” Margo said.

“And no ocean,” Sam said. “Nettie and I like to be by the ocean.”

“We have mountains,” Michelle said.

“What can you do with mountains?” Nettie asked.

“Climb them,” Michelle said.

Eric was munching on the cheese and crackers when he noticed the bowl of chopped liver. “What’s this?” he asked.

“You don’t know chopped liver?” Nettie said.

“Chopped liver . . . never saw the stuff, but I’m always willing to try.” He took a blob, dropped it on the center of a cracker, and wolfed it down. “Interesting,” he said, brushing off his hands.

Margo felt her face stiffen into a half-smile.

“Well,” Michelle said, “we really have to go. Nice to meet you Mrs. Broder, Mr. Broder . . . see you on Sunday, if not before.”

Margo poured herself a glass of wine and drank it quickly, as if it were water. Then she poured another.

“Some handsome boy,” Nettie said, when Eric and Michelle were gone. “Is he Jewish?”

Margo coughed on her wine. “No.”

“I didn’t think so, never to have seen chopped liver. You don’t mind that your daughter goes out with a boy who’s not Jewish?”

“Michelle’s not marrying him, Nettie,” Andrew said, coming to life.

Anyway, he’s circumcised,
Margo thought about saying.

How would you know?
Nettie would ask.

I know because I fucked him,
Margo would say.

Oh, my God! Sam, did you hear what she said?

Yes, Nettie. She said that she fucked him. And that’s how come she knows he’s circumcised.

I fucked him three or four times a day for a week.

Three or four times a day,
Sam would say
. That’s a lot of fucking.

I’m feeling faint,
Nettie would say.

It’s probably the altitude,
Margo would tell her.

“Oh, here’s our little Sara,” Nettie said, as Sara and Stuart came up the stairs.

“Hi Grandma . . . hi Grandpa. This is Stuart.”

“Margo’s Number One Son,” Stuart said.

“You have more than one?” Nettie asked.

“No, that’s just an expression,” Margo told her.

Nettie nodded. Then she appraised Sara. “That’s how you’re going out to dinner . . . in dungarees?”

“Blue jeans, Grandma. In Boulder you can wear them anywhere. Look at Margo’s skirt . . . same material.”

“Well, if it’s all right with your father . . .”

“It’s fine with me,” Andrew said.

“Did I miss Eric?” Sara asked. “Is he gone already?”

“They went to an early movie,” Margo said.

“Oh, shit!” Sara said.

“Sara!” Sam said. “Such language.”

“Sorry, Grandpa . . . I forgot you don’t like me to use those words.”

“What movie did my sister and The Acrobat go to see?” Stuart asked.

“He’s an acrobat?” Nettie asked. “He works in a circus?”

Margo laughed.

“No, Grandma,” Sara said, and she laughed too. “He can walk on his hands. That’s why Stuart calls him The Acrobat.”

“That’s not all of it,” Stuart sang.

“Stu . . .” Margo warned.

M
ARGO WANTED TO LIKE
THE
B
RODERS,
for Andrew’s sake. She had known beforehand there would be questions. She had tried to prepare herself, planning to answer them honestly, in a friendly manner. But she hated having to tell them about Freddy over dinner, about a life that she no longer lived. She sensed, from their questions, they were trying to find out what problems she might bring to their son.

After dinner they dropped Sara off at Jennifer’s, then drove out to the Harvest House. On the way there Sam ran his hand along the back seat of her car and asked Margo, “You like these little imports?”

“Yes, I’ve had my Subaru for three years.”

“I had a Buick agency, you know.”

“Yes, Andrew told me.”

“It’s very hard for a person of my age, a person who remembers everything about the War, to see young people riding around in these Japanese cars.”

“The War’s over, Dad,” Andrew said, pulling into the Harvest House lot.

“Please, Andrew . . . I may be seventy-four, but I still know which end is up.”

“I like a roomy American car,” Nettie said, as they walked toward the hotel. “We have a four-door Buick, cream-colored. Light colors are best in Florida . . . they reflect the heat.”

Margo nodded.

They went into the lounge and found a table in the back, away from the singles crowd, which gathered around the bar. They ordered two Irish coffees and two plain.

“We’ve been to see Francine,” Nettie said. “I didn’t want to discuss it in front of Sara, but I thought you should know.”

“She didn’t recognize us,” Sam said.

“Of course she did,” Nettie argued. “She just wouldn’t talk to us.”

“She twirled a rubber band around her fingers,” Sam said. “The whole time we were there she twirled a rubber band around her fingers. Like a little kid.”

“She was nervous,” Nettie said. “She’s always been high-strung.”

“She looked terrible,” Sam said. “Her eyes all sunken in. She used to be such a beauty.”

“She will be again. All she needs is a good haircut. As soon as she gets out she’ll get her looks back,” Nettie said. “But her mother, Goldy . . .”

“That’s another story, “ Sam said.

“She’s aged overnight,” Nettie said. “God forbid, it could happen to any of us, but Goldy is only sixty-five.”