Stages (31 page)

Kathy was getting the idea, however, that Alison’s future was not all that Aaron meant to secure. Ever since the energy crisis he’d been showing a determination to block the kicks of the economy and life in general. He seemed to be making himself into part of a defensive line. One day, when Kathy was cleaning out their closet, she found a box of his wide ties. Men weren’t wearing them anymore, or wide lapels, either. The flared trousers had disappeared too. Everyone had had his wings clipped.

That very night Aaron came home with the news that he had been made a partner. Picking up little Alison, her father whirled her around and around, and the child shrieked with pleasure, and Kathy, tears of joy running down her cheeks, tried to hug them both, but she couldn’t quite catch hold.

When he put his daughter down, Aaron pulled a blue box out of his pocket. In it was a gold bracelet, for Alison.

“Aaron, she’s too young for anything that expensive,” Kathy said.

“No she isn’t,” Aaron said. He nuzzled the little girl and added, “Nothing but the best for you, Miss Lowenthal-Goodman, right?”

“That’s going right back to the store,” Kathy said.

“You go away,” said Alison to her mother.

As it turned out, the best was none too good for Aaron, either. Within a year they had left Manhattan for a house in Scarsdale. The house came with an empty two-car garage, which Aaron filled with a Volkswagen station wagon for Kathy and a BMW for himself. Sometimes he and Kathy and the baby would drive into the city on a weekend and walk around Soho. Aaron said he wanted to start an art collection. Kathy reminded him of Alison’s college and, when they were in a gallery, looked the other way.

Then one Saturday when he’d said that he had to go into the office, Aaron came home with a surprise purchase. It was wrapped in brown paper, and it was so big Aaron had to bring it into the house through the sliders in the family room.

“What
is
it?” Kathy asked.

“Is it a bike?” asked Alison.

“Wait’ll you see it,” Aaron said. He began to tear off the wrapping paper.

Kathy stood there dumbfounded as the thing emerged like the mummy from its sarcophagus.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” said Aaron.

“What is it?” said Kathy weakly. She had no idea what it was supposed to be, but she knew all too well what it was.

“This is our first acquisition,” Aaron said. “Our first major work of art.”

“Who did it?” said Kathy. It occurred to her that she had asked the very same question of Alison not three days ago, when she’d found a stain on the bedroom wallpaper that might or might not have been the dog.

“Julian Schnabel,” Aaron replied.

“Who’s he?” asked Kathy

“It’s not who he is
now
,
” Aaron informed her. “It’s who he’s
going to be.
This guy is going to go places, and we’re buying him before his price goes up.”

The thought went through Kathy’s mind that she had congratulated herself only this morning for saving a dollar-seventy at the market with her coupons. Her heart sank. As the full horror of the “work of art” before her began to penetrate, Kathy’s heart sank faster; it plummeted. Between thick globs of ugly-colored paint were bits of broken dishes, chicken wire, pipe fittings, tin cans,
junk.
It looked like the artist had swept the street and then gone to work with Elmer’s Glue.

“Well, what do you think of it?” Aaron asked.

“I hate it,” Kathy said. “I think it’s absolutely awful.”

“What are you talking about?” Aaron said indignantly. “Look at this, Kath. Really look. Open your eyes.”

Kathy squinted.

“Tell me what you see,” Aaron urged.

“It looks like…a cover painting from the
Reader’s Digest,
” Kathy said at last.

“What?”

“No, really. I’m serious.” She pointed at the left side of the canvas.

“See,” she said. “There’s a seagull. Right there, in that clump of dried-out seaweed. There’s a seagull—the remains of one—rotting on the beach.”

“
You
are a
Philistine
,
” Aaron said. He propped the painting against a wall, announced that he was going to make himself a drink, and went in a huff to the kitchen.

Alison crept up to the painting, stared at it, turned around, and said to her mother, “Pukey.”

Aaron returned with a hammer, a picture hook, and a big glass of Scotch.

“I’ll be hanged before this monstrosity will,” Kathy said. “Why didn’t you consult with me before you went out and spent the money on a thing like this?”

“Because I earn the money, that’s why,” Aaron replied. “You don’t. And I can spend my money any way I want to.” Before she could deal with what she’d just heard with her own ears, Kathy had to sit down.

“I don’t believe you said that,” she said. “My father used to say things like that to my mother, about how he was the bread winner—as if what she did wasn’t worth anything at all. Aaron. My God, you know better. That was just a cheap shot, wasn’t it, because you’re mad?”

“All right, I am mad. We’ve never hesitated to express the way we feel, neither one of us. And if you want to know the truth, I frankly resent your unwillingness to grow, to be part of anything outside your little world of this house. I can’t believe that anyone as committed to women’s lib as you are could be content living like some middle-class hausfrau.”

“So that’s what you think I am.”

Alison began to cry.

Her father picked her up.

“Leave her alone, can’t you?” Kathy said. “There’s no harm in her knowing that sometimes people fight.”

“I want to put this picture up,” Aaron said, jouncing his daughter with grim determination. “I want you to just live with it for a while and then see what you think of it.”

“Okay…if I can buy a shade for it that I can pull down during the daytime. I only exist in the daytime, you know. I would like that much…to keep the integrity of my daytime existence—as a hausfrau.”

The shade was never bought, but special lighting for the Schnabel was. The painting was a pain in the neck to dust, so Kathy used the vacuum’s brush attachment on it. Every so often she’d hear particles from the composition rattling in the tube.

At night an undefined fear would come over Kathy. Her sex life with Aaron had come down to a Friday or a Saturday night, and seemed to depend upon how good a time he’d had—and how much he’d had to drink—when they’d been invited out or had gone to dinner and a show. It took as long for passion to arise in him as it did for him to get out of bed on a Sunday morning. Dedicated as she was to housework, Kathy kept every day in perfect order, but she was still afraid, somehow, for tomorrow.

Tomorrow came on a Saturday night when they did not go out. They had eaten a small supper in front of the television set at nine o’clock, a half hour after Alison had gone to bed and an hour after her father had gotten home.

Aaron said he wasn’t hungry. He picked at his food for a while, and then he said, “Kathy, we have to talk.”

“About what?” Kathy said. Something in his tone of voice put her instantly on her guard. She was suddenly frightened, terribly frightened, but she didn’t want him to know. She picked up her napkin as if it were something she was trying to save from a fire.

“We have to talk about us,” Aaron was saying.

“About all of us…or just we two?” Kathy said.

“We two. Alie isn’t part of this.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call her
Alie
.”

“I might as well come straight to the point,” Aaron said, depositing his silver on his plate.

“And what might that be?” Kathy couldn’t look him in the eye.

“Kathy, it’s hard to have to say this—very, very hard. And I want you to know that basically you aren’t to blame. You’re a good person, a wonderful person. But the fact is, for me…there’s somebody else now.”

It wasn’t that she hadn’t suspected, but actually hearing him say it went through Kathy like a bolt. She couldn’t stop the tears from coming to her eyes.

“Kathy,
don’t,
” Aaron said.

“I’m all right,” Kathy said after a moment. “I’m okay. I feel rejected, and hurt, and sick at heart…but I’m okay. Really. So tell me, who’s the lucky girl?”

“Kath, please try to understand… It was just one of those things. She works in a gallery—”

“In Soho?”

“No, in midtown.”

“Have you set the date yet?”

“Kath, we’re just going to have to work things out…somehow.”

“What are your plans for our little girl?”

“Of course you can have custody of her…but I’d want to see her every week, and take her on some trips…” Kathy was crying again. She couldn’t stop herself this time. She hid her face in her hands.

“Kath, I’m so sorry,” Aaron said. “I really, truly am.” He reached out to touch her, but Kathy pulled away from him.

After a while she got control of herself again. She was exhausted, completely exhausted, and that dulled her pain a little.

“I can’t help wondering, you know,” Kathy said. “What she’s got that I haven’t got.”

“You’re both wonderful, incredible people. But she’s the one I’ve come to love…more. I have loved you, though, Kathy. You’re a wonderful, wonderful mother, and you’ve always kept the house immaculate, and you’ve always encouraged me, helped me along—”

“Is this my Bicentennial Minute?”

“It’s just that I want you to know you’ve been loved, and appreciated.”

“Thanks. Now, where do we go from here?”

“To tell the truth, I haven’t given it that much thought, Kath. I feel you’re entitled to this house, if you want to live in it, and of course I’ll take care of Alison—always—and whatever you need…to get you started.”

“Started over, you mean,” Kathy said. She looked around her kitchen as though she hardly knew it.

“I have to start from scratch,” she said. “What am I? I’m a housewife, plain and simple. I’m no good to anyone but Alison. My only…distinction…is that I went to school with Veronica Simmons. I wonder what she learned that I didn’t.”

“Don’t put yourself down, Kath,
don’t.
”

“Paula the movie star. I wonder if she’s ever really cared about anyone. She probably doesn’t give a damn now, about anyone or anything, except herself. They can’t even get near her—let alone dump her.”

From the bedroom down the hall came the sound of crying.

“My baby,” said Kathy. “She’s right on cue.”

53

The day after her divorce became final, Kathy met Melanie in the city for lunch. They had decided to go to Joe Allen’s, a theater hangout with brick walls that were covered with posters from flop shows. Both of them ordered bloody marys, and hamburgers with french fried sweet potatoes. Melanie had tried to come prepared with energetic advice and counsel, but when she sat down with Kathy, she realized that there really was nothing she could say. If there was one thing that Melanie had learned about life, it was that no matter what, you were going to suffer blows. And maybe the quickest way to go down again was to try to get back on your feet too soon.

“How’s Alison?” Melanie said for want of anything else to say.

“She’s fine,” Kathy replied. “She’s with her grandmother. She asks for her daddy a lot. But so do I, in my dreams at night.”

“I know,” Melanie said. “It’s rough. I don’t know any woman who doesn’t dread something like this happening to her. Even women who aren’t so crazy about their husbands. Everybody thinks that the worst thing is being alone. But you know, I’m not so sure that it is. These people who’ve never been alone—you wonder how they can ever have
completed
themselves, as human beings. How can you if there’s such a big part of you that’s always
depended
on others?”

“Funny you should say that,” Kathy said. “That’s the one thing that I’ve decided—that I’m not going to be dependent on Aaron. These women that exist in this nether world of alimony payments. That’s not for me.”

“You’ve got to eat, though,” Melanie pointed out.

“I know,” said Kathy. She stirred her bloody mary, setting flecks of horseradish swirling.

“Mel, you promise not to laugh?”

“Sure…but why?”

Kathy looked at the wall. Then she said nonchalantly, “I think I want to go into real estate.”

Melanie looked at her quizzically. There was no shock or dismay or skepticism in her expression, just a lack of understanding. Real estate was simply something that had never occurred to Melanie. She knew it existed, like the Stanley Cup playoffs, but it belonged to the realm of experience of others.

A young out-of-work actor, a little annoying in his prettiness, brought them their hamburgers.

“I’m going to take a real estate course,” Kathy explained. “I want to be a real estate agent, and a broker too maybe, eventually. I want to do this not just for me, but for Alison too. For her sake, I want to
be
somebody—besides her mother, I mean. So she’ll know that a woman can be on her own, and that a man isn’t necessarily…everything.”