A Polaroid of Peggy

by Richard Phillips

  This period, of lying there fully clothed, feeling nothing but bleak despair and self loathing – I hated myself for abandoning her like this, though not enough to reconsider my position – lasted for at least a couple of hours. But it takes a lot to keep a good man down. Or even me. Gradually, I began to swim around the wreckage, and see if there was anything I could salvage.

  And naturally, again me being me, or unnaturally you may think, depending on just how low your opinion of me is, my first thoughts were about what other people might think. Nobody at home knew I was here to see Peggy. Hardly anybody there knew she existed and nobody, except Keith Lyons, had any idea I knew where she was. So I could fly back, stick to my Jerry Seinfeld story, apologise profusely to my children but explain that it was work and that it had to be done – and don’t we drum into our children from the first, the primacy of work over all things? – and then just carry on as before, perhaps throwing a grand belated fiftieth birthday. (As grand, at least, as my cloth cutting would allow.) Then I would just block the whole thing out, repress it, compartmentalise, and rebuild my life. I should say that I wasn’t sure that even I could manage the last bit, and that it might be necessary to re-engage Donald McEwan for a bit, cloth cutting or no.

  Having sorted that out, I turned at last to Peggy. I hadn’t succeeded in meeting her and I didn’t think she could have seen me from the door. So she wouldn’t know that I’d seen her. Of course, she would realise I had been the mystery visitor, because, after I hadn’t returned to Galloping Way, Betty would have eventually told her my name. But I thought I could see how to handle that without either just leaving things hanging or letting her believe that I was wheelchairist. (Yes, that word actually occurred to me, and I had a brief derisory chuckle, so, as you can see, I was already beginning to feel more like my old self.)

  I calculated that I could call her and say I was in New York for a business meeting – I had the whole Jerry Seinfeld thing set up and ready to roll, didn’t I? – ‘yes, Jerry Seinfeld, remember Pound Ridge? what a coincidence’ – and that, having some down-time, I’d thought I would run up to New Jersey to surprise her. But, while off to get a coffee when she was with the physio, I’d had an urgent call to go back for a meeting in New York and I had to fly back to London tomorrow. So, sorry to have missed you Peggy, lovely to meet Betty, regards to Myron, have a nice life. There. All over, and no real damage done. Except the shattering of my dream, of course. But right now, that seemed like the least of my problems. I called room-service, ordered a burger and a beer, and turned on the telly. (No, neither ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ nor ‘Seinfeld’ were on.) I thought I would allow another hour or so for the imaginary meeting with Jerry Seinfeld and his agent to take place, and then I would call.

  Which I duly did. And Peggy herself answered. And, after all the only-to-be-expected stuff – ‘Amazing that you came all the way to Tinton Falls’ and ‘You really thought Betty was me!’ and ‘Why d’you drive off like that? Couldn’t you have waited another ten minutes?’ – I told her the story exactly as rehearsed. Or almost exactly as rehearsed. Because, not actually being able to see her in the wheelchair, and hearing that marvellous voice that I’d always loved so much, I sort of forgot all about the wheelchair. And, as we spoke, the years fell away just like people say they do, and it seemed like we had both switched straight back on to the old wavelength and were broadcasting and receiving with such unforced ease, that I somehow got a bit carried away, so when she said, “Why don’t I come into the city tomorrow? We can have lunch if you’re free,” I didn’t kill the idea there and then by saying I was catching an early flight or had a meeting, but just offered some half-hearted resistance, saying no, I couldn’t possibly expect her to do that, but which she brushed aside by saying in a slightly more serious tone, “No, Andy, there is something I have to tell you.”

  And then I did picture her in the wheelchair, and another appalling thought came into my head, one I just couldn’t shake, which was that the wheelchair was the harbinger of something much worse, and that, what she had to tell me was that this was the last time our wavelength would ever be used. That was one thought I just couldn’t block out, at least not at such short notice. So I agreed to meet her at one o’ clock at a place called Angelica’s Kitchen on East 12th St. (After she’d rung off, it occurred to me that it was not a million miles from my old apartment and I had an idea I might have been there once, possibly even with Peggy. I wondered if there was some significance in this. And then I realised it could hardly be less convenient for Penn Central where her train would come in. I couldn’t imagine how she would get to Angelica’s Kitchen in a wheelchair. Perhaps Betty was coming with her. Or a nurse? I shuddered.)

  The rest of my fiftieth birthday was spent in a deep depression. I went alone to a movie, something that rarely decreases one’s sense of isolation, and was so distracted I couldn’t have told you the name of the film five minutes after I’d come out. All I could think about was that Peggy was in a wheelchair and how I would never have been able to deal with that, but that Peggy would not be in a wheelchair for much longer and the thought of that was even worse.

  In the morning, I did what packing I had to do, picked up a couple of phone messages from reception left by the office in London which I didn’t bother to read, paid and checked out but left my bag with the bellboy, went to Times Square and bought a couple of ‘I love the Big Apple’ tee-shirts for Florence and India – not very imaginative, but they’d probably just dump them on the floor and never wear them anyway – and wandered about until the moment could be put off no longer. Then I hailed a cab, and off I went to see Peggy in her wheelchair for what I supposed would be the first and last time. There had been occasions I had looked forward to more.

  *

  I did recognise Angelica’s Kitchen when I got there. It was one of those organic, no known additive places which had seemed pretty flakey in ’79 but which was now packed full of rather well heeled, gluten-free types, mainly women of about Peggy’s age. I wasn’t concerned about finding her in the crowd though, because, even if I hadn’t seen her for twenty years, the wheelchair would surely be a dead giveaway. Characteristically, I was a few minutes late, but, though I scoured the whole place I could see no sign of a wheelchair. I couldn’t imagine she would have been and gone, so when I saw a couple of people leave, I grabbed a table near the door. At least when she arrived, the nurse wouldn’t have to push her far.

  I was in the process of ordering an everything-free carrot juice to fill in time when I felt a tap on the shoulder. I looked around from the waitress to find a woman who was either Peggy or her long-lost twin leaning over me. For a moment I thought it really might be a long-lost twin, because she looked remarkably healthy for a woman who had come to tell me she was about to go off air for the last time.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “This thing” – now I saw she had a crutch – “kinda slows you down.”

  So, no wheelchair, no nurse, and as far I could see, no Betty. The possibility of an imminent demise may have been greatly exaggerated. But still a crutch. Could I live with a crutch?

  “Tennis,” she said, pointing to the crutch. “What can you do?” And then she said, “Oh I forgot. You don’t play, do you?” and let out a peal of laughter.

  It turned out to be a ruptured medial ligament of the left knee, an injury sustained in the Asbury Park Senior Women’s Doubles quarter final when she turned too quickly attempting to run back and retrieve a lob – “didn’t you like that shot, Andy, ha ha ha?” – and which had required an op and physio and six weeks sitting around in a wheelchair if she listened to the medics. Not that she did. As soon as they were out of sight, so was the wheelchair.

  “Actually, I’m pretty nifty with this thing. Can we order? I’m ravenous.”

  Throughout this explanation I simply nodded along. I couldn’t admit to having seen the wheelchair – not without arousing suspicion that my squealing
exit in the Mercury wasn’t directly connected to it, because one of the disadvantages of knowing someone who can read your mind is that they know exactly how you think. And that, in turn, meant I couldn’t express my intense relief that she wasn’t wheelchair bound for life – a life that I had convinced myself was shortly to be no more. An enormous weight had been lifted from me, actually two weights – and even the crutch was only temporary – but I had to keep it all to myself. However, this did have the advantage that I did not have to make the difficult segue, at least not outwardly, from grief to relief and back to the message that I had originally come to deliver.

  And so, mightily relieved for both her and me, I began to tell her the whole story: how Alison had found the Polaroid, how that had forced all the buried memories to the surface, how my marriage had disintegrated, how I’d lost all interest in my business, how I’d come to see that I simply had to find her, how I’d tracked down Miller Prince, how he’d provided the vital clue, how I’d flown to America for the sole purpose of declaring my undying love and reclaiming my lost past. And, as though it were Exhibit A, the evidence that proved beyond doubt that my case was unanswerable, I pulled out of my pocket, and lay before her, right by her tofu salad which had just been delivered by the waitress, the Polaroid. The Polaroid with the financial calculations of my divorce on the back, the Polaroid of her in the bluey-green dress with the big buttons taken just after Robert Palmer had sung, ‘Doctor Doctor, Gotta Bad Case of Lovin’ You.’

  She looked at it, with, perhaps, not quite the expression I hoped for. What I sought was some sort of confirmation, a slight nod of the heads perhaps, a determined set of the mouth, a message coming from behind the brown black almondy eyes, something that said she understood exactly where I was coming from, and now that I had shown her the way back, she too was in exactly the same place. But what I saw on her face – a little more lined than I remembered, by the way, but still strikingly pretty – was first, confusion and then disbelief and then something disturbingly familiar. Very similar, in fact, to the look that had come over Geoff’s face when I had told him about Peggy that day in the BA lounge at Heathrow, when we hadn’t been able to take off for Paris – the look that accompanied the words, ‘you need to see a fucking shrink’.

  She didn’t quite say that though. What she said was,

  “Andy. Andy – I’m married. I have a husband. A family. A life – here. Do you seriously expect me to give all that up because you suddenly drop out of nowhere after twenty years? Is that what you thought would happen?”

  I said nothing. I didn’t know what I thought. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I hadn’t thought – period.

  “Look,” she said, and leaned forward and put her hand over mind, the same well-meant but unacceptable gesture of pity that she’d made in the bar the night she finally ended it after the Dr Pepper concert. “Look, I came here to tell you something. You know, I am really pleased to see you, of course, I am, but even if you hadn’t told me all this, even if you had just been here on business, and, I don’t know, got my address somehow and just dropped in to say hi, I was going to tell you, you just can’t do that. Andy, it’s too risky.”

  Now I spoke. Too risky. What did that mean? She picked up the Polaroid and pointed at herself.

  “Didn’t you ever think, Andy?”

  “Think? Think about what?”

  “Think about me.”

  “Think about you? What the fuck do you think I’m doing here?”

  “No, look at me. Not now. In the picture. What do you see?”

  “I see you. What else is there to see?”

  “What else? Betty is what else!”

  “What!”

  “Look at me. Didn’t it ever cross your mind? Didn’t you ever notice I was busting out of my clothes? You knew how tiny I was really. I was pregnant Andy. That was what I was going to tell you that weekend we went to see my dad in the show. Remember that weekend? When you told me the story about that – that girl. And then I was going to tell you at the Dr Pepper Concert. Only before I had a chance, you told me you were going back to London. And Andy, I knew then that was it – there was no way I was going to a strange country where I knew no-one to have a baby with a guy – who – who, oh never mind. It was never going to happen. And even if I’d told you, and made you feel so responsible that you’d stayed here, I knew you’d never have been happy. You had this great offer in London – you were so excited about it. If you’d stayed you’d have resented me and oh I don’t know. I just knew – know – it would never have worked.”

  I still hadn’t taken it in.

  “Betty is my daughter?”

  “No. I mean, yes she is, biologically. But, in every other way, she is Myron’s daughter, that’s what she believes, that’s what she’s always been told, and she is completely happy with that. Myron has been a wonderful father to her, just like he has to our son.”

  It was sinking in at last. I started to ask the obvious questions.

  “When was it?”

  “Well, um, Pound Ridge. Must have been.”

  “The first night then?”

  “I guess,”

  “But how?”

  “I think even you know that Andy.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant I thought you were on the pill.”

  “Why? Did you ask? Did I tell you?”

  What I wanted to say, but didn’t, was that this was 1979, pre-Aids, or before anyone had realised the bomb was ticking, and we all thought condoms were history and every girl was on the pill. Anyway, I didn’t really have to say it. She’d been there. She knew. What I did say was,

  “So if you weren’t on the pill, why did you …”

  “Because, I don’t know, I got careless. Over-confident.”

  “Confident about what?”

  “Confident I wouldn’t get pregnant. I – Miller and I – wanted a baby, and I came off the pill. Tried for a year. Nothing. So I just didn’t think it would happen I guess.”

  Weird conflicting emotions here. Jealous that she’d wanted to have a baby with Miller – still jealous after all these years, as the song doesn’t quite go. But absurdly, shamefully proud that I’d managed to get her pregnant so quickly when Miller had tried and failed for so long.

  Ludicrously, I tried to claim some moral high ground.

  “Didn’t I have a right to know?”

  “I tried to tell you.”

  “Not hard enough.”

  “Maybe. I did what I thought was best.”

  And bit by bit, all the rest of it came out. She’d thought about an abortion, but decided against it. Myron Davis, whom she’d known slightly for some time, was ten years older than she was, a friend of a cousin of hers, and one night – a few weeks after I’d gone back, I think it would have been – she’d seen him at a party, and, for some reason – a wavelength thing? I winced at the thought – she’d told him everything. (I wasn’t sure how many months pregnant she must have been, but I suppose, by then, it would have started to seriously show.) He’d been wonderfully understanding she said – and presumably besotted with her – and within a month had asked her to marry him, offering to bring the child up as his own.

  I sat there like the dummy I was. Stunned. Empty. Bereft. I had now not only lost the girl of my dreams but also my daughter by the girl of my dreams. What on earth was there to say? Eventually I tried this, even though I knew it would have absolutely no effect.

  “I have two daughters, you know. Florence is twelve, thirteen soon, and India – she’s nine. Wouldn’t Betty like to know them? How old is Betty by the way? Nineteen I suppose.”

  “Twenty in March. And yes, I’m sure she would. But to know them, she’d have to un-know a lot of other things, and I cannot see that would do her any good. Or Myron. He doesn’t deserve that. There’s an old saying Andy, What you’ve never had, you don’t miss. She
’s never had two sisters. She won’t miss them.”

  No, I thought, but from now on – for the rest of my life, I’d miss Betty. And blocking her out was never going to be an option.

  The waitress came to remove our plates – both still completely untouched despite Peggy’s claim to be ravenous – and I asked for the check. While we waited for it, I aimlessly said, “Nice you called her Betty. I remember Mrs Lipschitz very well.”

  She looked up and for the first time since the tennis jokes, she laughed.

  “Not Betty with a ‘y’,” she said. “Bette with an ‘e’.”

  I frowned. I didn’t quite understand and by way of explanation she sang the title of one of Tevye’s big numbers.

  “Tradition!”

  I still didn’t catch on, so she said, “Never mind, you’ll work it out.” And then, as I handed over the money to the cashier, she kissed me on the cheek and said, “Andy, I’m glad we met today, but please don’t ever try to get in touch again.”

  Then she put her crutch under her arm and limped away. I watched her hobble – but not too badly – up 12th Street, and I couldn’t help thinking she was right: she was pretty nifty with it.

  And she was right about the ‘y’ and the ‘e’ thing too. I did work it out. But not until I was half way across the Atlantic. I was reading a book, or trying to, when suddenly it came to me.

  ‘Bette’ I thought. With an ‘e’. Of course! And then I wondered what the son was called – Sammy?

  And then it occurred to me that I had never got around to asking her about the Vivien thing.