“Would you mind?”
“Why ask me?” Robert said, “I don’t run things around here either.”
“NO,” HER father said.
“Why not, Papa? All you do is shake your head and never say why.”
“You know nothing of my business.”
“You taught Robert, you could teach me.”
“It’s no place for a woman.”
“Papa, I don’t feel like a woman.”
He snorted, loudly.
“I don’t feel like anything. This last year, I’ve been watching and listening and I have some ideas of my own.”
“Like buying a restaurant for your boy friend?”
Margaret felt the warm bleeding sensation of anger begin in her stomach. “No,” she said. “Not my boy friend. I’ll never see him again unless we’re married.” The flooding blood of anger was almost choking her. “Don’t talk to me about buying, Papa.” He gestured in annoyance; she raised her voice. “Not as long as Robert’s around here. That poor slob’s so crazy about money he’d do anything for it. Even Anna. He wouldn’t look at her if you weren’t paying for it.”
“That is enough,” the Old Man said.
“Matter of fact, Georges would probably have married me a long time ago if I hadn’t been a damn fool about money.”
Stupid, how stupid can you be? I can still see the expression on that thin hatchet face. “This is a cold apartment, Georges, and climbing the stairs up here is just terrible. There’s a place right around the corner from me, why don’t I take it for you?” … I knew I’d ruined everything. The bed, the only warm place in that freezing room, became the same temperature as the air outside the blankets. I could feel the surface of his skin turn cold, and that useful male twig fell down just as if it had been cut off. …
“If you don’t like money, why do you take it?” The Old Man picked up his paper.
“Why should I give up anything that belongs to me?” How had she gotten this angry? She was going to have a stroke, all the blood boiling inside her was going to burst out her mouth and she was going to die. … “Papa, will you listen?”
He did not answer.
Georges didn’t answer her telegrams either, she thought. Georges didn’t like the feeling he got around her. And she didn’t like the feeling she got around her father.
She stared at the knobs of her knuckles, their fingers tucked neatly out of sight in her lap. A proper convent gesture.
Instantly she unfolded her hands, put an elbow on each chair arm, a clenched fist on each knee.
“Quit reading a minute, Papa.”
“There is nothing to talk about.”
“Yes, there is. I’ve got something to tell you.”
He went on reading. Her jaw began to tremble. Am I scared of him, she thought, or am I just mad?
“I want what’s mine, Papa,” she said slowly, distinctly. “I’m not going to sit around any more and be grateful for my living.”
“You have never asked for anything you didn’t get.”
“I want what’s mine.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “What’s that?”
“What comes from my mother.”
“You have gone crazy.”
“You listen, Papa, and I’ll tell you. Community-property state, you know that. Half of whatever you had was my mother’s when she died. Her estate goes to me and Anna. I want mine, and I’m willing to go to court to get it.”
His face was bright red. “What the hell are you saying?”
“I tried asking you politely and you said no. You want what’s yours, Papa, and I want what’s mine.”
He began to chuckle, very softly. “Take it and good luck to you,” he said.
MARGARET WAS IN NEW Orleans for six weeks. The cool peat-flavored winter days drifted into the warm rainy weeks of spring before Georges called: “I want you to come to New York—are you coming?”
Margaret caught the Crescent Limited that same evening, with a single suitcase. When she walked into the apartment on Twelfth Street, he was just getting up. He’d finished shaving but was still wearing his pajamas.
“I have to go to work early,” he explained. “I do the books today.”
“Oh.” Margaret put down her suitcase. The room looked exactly the same, quite clean and neat. No greeting for her, no kiss. As if she’d just come back from putting out the garbage. His fresh clothes were spread on the bed, as they always were. He began dressing, his thin angular body moving rapidly. “Your train was due almost an hour ago.”
“It was late,” she said.
“Look,” he said, “do you still want to get married?”
The collar button popped out of the back of his shirt. Automatically she picked up the round bit of ivory and handed it to him.
“Do you?” He was doing his tie now, his mouth twisted with the effort.
“Yes,” she said.
“It will make us both miserable.”
“I want to.”
He finished his tie and faced her directly. “There was somebody else, did you know? Within two days of the time you left, I had somebody else living here.”
“That’s why it looks so neat. Nothing like the woman’s touch.” She walked slowly into the small kitchen. “I was just about sure you’d found somebody you liked better.”
“I did; don’t flatter yourself about that.”
“Why didn’t you marry her?”
“I don’t know.” He reached for his coat and swung it around his shoulders. “I kept thinking about it and putting it off. And I didn’t.” He buttoned his coat carefully, settling it over his shoulders with a shrug. “I don’t want to marry you, I never have, but I will. That’s the difference, you see.”
There had to be more, it couldn’t all be like this. She said: “That’s all right with me.”
“Okay. I’ll take next Wednesday off.”
FOR FIVE years Margaret was happy.
She had the man she wanted. (He for his part was surprisingly contented, surprisingly domestic.) She had her own money as her mother’s estate came into her hands. (Far more than she expected; her father was being generous.) She bought a brownstone on East Fiftieth; the restaurant moved there and prospered. She had her office upstairs, and her apartment on the top two floors. Neither she nor Georges need ever leave the building—she felt protected and enclosed by the thought. Each morning she opened her eyes with a feeling of excitement; each night she closed them smugly delighted with the progress of the day. She began collecting celebrities, methodically, by categories (the idea had come to her one morning)—first the Algonquin group. Pictures of large drunken literary parties appeared on her office walls. When she tired of their practical jokes, she moved to politics, then to Hollywood, collecting any name that sounded familiar to her. She redid the apartment three times, keeping not a single piece of furniture, ending finally with dark red walls and heavy opulent baroque.
“Will you let the place alone now?” Georges asked.
“I like it now. I’ll have to find something else to do.”
“Children,” Georges said flatly. “Ever think of that?”
She shook her head. “Not just yet.”
She met Edward Matthews. He was a baseball player and she was collecting famous athletes at that time. For three months he commuted every week on the Twentieth Century Limited from Chicago to see her; then, as suddenly as it started, their affair cooled off. Too much time on the train, Margaret thought with a silent smile. She already had another lover, a small chunky New York Times reporter; she was fascinated by his circumcision, the first she had ever seen. She left him for a tall Irish coffee importer who lived in the same block on Fiftieth Street. And then Georges Légier got a letter, unsigned and typewritten, in a New York Times envelope. He checked and found the information quite correct.
He did not interrupt his schedule. At midnight he finished with the restaurant, kissed his father good night, saw him to the waiting car. Then he unlocked his apartment door, crossed the bla
ck-and-white foyer, and turned in to the living room.
Margaret was waiting. She noticed nothing—he was often pale when he was tired; he often entered a room silently. She stood up, showing the new lamé pajamas she’d bought. “What do you think?” She turned slowly; as she completed her circle, he slapped her with his right hand, then with his left, slamming her finally into the red damask-covered wall, splitting open the back of her scalp. She slid to the floor and sat there like a dazed doll, legs sticking out stiffly. What, she thought, what, what? She felt something trickle down her neck; she touched it, found her fingers bright red. They’ll be ruined, she thought, two-hundred-dollar pajamas and they’ll be ruined. From her position on the floor she watched while he swung chairs into walls, smashed tables, threw lamps through windows. Methodically he crossed the room, destroying inch by inch. The big sofas and armchairs were too heavy. He kicked at them, upending them; then, pulling a pistol from his belt, he began methodically firing into them, sometimes hitting them, sometimes sending wild shots into the wall. He seemed to have forgotten about her, at least for the moment. The gun emptied, the cylinder turned smoothly with only small clicks. He threw the gun at the chandelier, missed. She put both hands to the back of her head, holding on. He picked up a small chair, swung it at a huge gilt-framed mirror. It cracked, sunburst lines ran across it, but the glass did not shatter. He swung the chair again, this time holding it by one leg. The splintered back caught behind the mirror’s edge, caught and held. He yanked, hard; the mirror tipped, rolled off its hooks, fell forward. He was so blind with rage—Margaret wondered later if he’d had his eyes open at all—he did not see the mirror until it fell on him.
Margaret thought: Feel it trickle down my neck. How much blood do you have to lose before it’s serious? He’s half under the mirror. The cornice got knocked off, after all the trouble I had getting it here; not a chip or a scratch on it, great Empire piece, perfect shape. And Georges broke it. Must look for those pieces, maybe glue them back together. Put the gilt on thick to cover the cracks. It was a gorgeous mirror. … Why doesn’t he move? Do I call the police or do I call a doctor? I call a doctor. What was his number? It’s gone, disappeared. Right out of my head. God, what a headache.
She was standing by the phone, one hand holding the receiver, still trying to remember the number, when the police kicked in the front door. She hadn’t heard their knocking or their shouts.
WITH HER scalp neatly stitched and a new hat covering the shaved portion of her head—while Georges was still in the hospital with a fractured skull and a broken arm—Margaret went to Reno. Georges sent no message. Her father-in-law argued against her leaving. “You are in love with him, and I know my son, he is in love with you. …”
“Look,” Margaret said, “I’m not going to get killed by your son.”
“He lost his temper; a man loses his temper sometimes.”
Margaret stared at the small round red-faced man who bounced up and down like a ball in his anxiety. He looks like a headwaiter, she thought, a very nervous anxious headwaiter. … And then she thought wearily: I know why he’s so worried. … “Look, you don’t have to worry. You can keep your restaurant. I’m not going to insist on taking my money out.”
Her father-in-law stopped moving abruptly.
He was listening, Margaret thought, to what he wanted to hear. … “You can buy me out over a period. Or something; I don’t care, whatever you want. But you don’t have to worry about it.”
Six weeks later, divorce proceedings completed, Margaret sent her last telegram to Georges: “A broken mirror is seven years’ bad luck. Be careful.” Then she went back to her hotel. Thinking: What do I do now? Where do I want to go? I can go anywhere, but I have to have a place name.
Just inside the broad palm-lined hotel lobby, she saw them—the tall heavy man, the tall slender woman. “For God’s sake.” She walked on steadily, letting a polite smile crease her face.
She had to think of something to say. Something short and direct. Something that would put everything in its proper order. “Fancy meeting you here, Papa,” she said. “Which one of you is getting a divorce?”
That wasn’t too good, she thought. She could have done better if she’d had more time. But still it wasn’t bad. It put a funny look on both their faces. And it let them know that they were not coming to rescue her.
MARGARET WENT BACK to New Orleans. I guess it really is my home, she thought; it’s where I go when I can’t think of any other place.
At her father’s house, she thought: I was born here and I lived here and I never noticed how shabby it is. How the red tile steps have cracks in them, and the stucco is cracking because the house has settled. How the passing streetcars rattle and clang, and the ground shakes with them. How miserable the rooms are; nobody’s looked at them for twenty years. Like this living room—fake tapestry on the wall, fat china angels on the mantel, and a fireplace so small it looks like a black hole. No wonder fires don’t burn well. … She squinted into the grate. Only a few tiny red coals winked at her.
“Papa,” she said, “this place is terrible; you’ve got to move.”
“If the house bothers you, find another.”
Margaret considered this tall old man with the ruddy wrinkled face, the shiny bald head. Because of a couple of convulsive movements with my mother, here I am. Related to him forever. How do you shed a father? Snakes shed their skins, leave them lying on the ground. How do you get rid of your beginnings, your genes?
“I’ll find you a proper house, Papa, and I’ll run it for you. I’ll live with you like a dutiful daughter.”
“Settled,” the Old Man said.
“But I run my own affairs.” She poked at the smoldering fire; the gray coals fell open, flamed for a moment, went out. “I had a good house in New York, but I’ll have a better one here.”
“And your next husband?”
“I wonder.” She blew at the coals, waited to see if her breath would reach to them. It didn’t. “I’m still in love with Georges.”
The Old Man folded his hands meekly. “Then why the others?”
“I don’t know, Papa, I never did figure that out.”
The hall clock struck the half hour. She looked up. “That’s the first thing to go, that damn clock.”
“Agreed,” the Old Man said.
“Now for the rest.” She picked up a bottle of Scotch, shook it to check its contents, took a second unopened bottle. “I’m going to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow evening, or maybe the next day.”
“Agreed,” the Old Man repeated.
SHE DRANK directly from the bottle, singing with each small sip, “Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go.” Why that? Have a sip, m’lady. Hail and farewell, Georges. Go join Harold. Growing list of ex-husbands. Get a few more and we’ll have a club. Well. There it goes, the first lurch. Merry-go-round starting. The gears slip at first. Listen to it creak, sounds like metal rubbing. Have another sip. And wait. The room will start to move pretty soon. Round and round. The perfectly circular spin flattens out and the circle becomes an ellipse. From shallow and flat, it gets deep and deeper. Way down at the bottom, it’s perfectly black. That’s where I’m going. Hooray for me.
She lay back and sang Veni, Creator Spiritus.
Wouldn’t the nuns be proud of me? All those four-note Gregorian chants. Little black boxes of notes, marching up and down across the sheets. Droning, fragile women’s voices. Sounding dry as locusts, in the arches of the chapel. Sheltered within her uniform, white blouse and blue skirt, she sat in the furniture-polish dusk. The eternal dusk within stained-glass windows. … Little round hat, little round face, look at me, God, look at me, Margaret Mary Oliver. The fourth hat from the end of the pew; count it and find me among all the others. Lined up like bees in our hive, sipping the honey sound, the thin ancient sound. Not even an organ fluttering its reeds. Pass a miracle, God, do something. If you care whether I believe. Give me a hundred in my math test tomo
rrow. Translate my Virgil for me. Make me beautiful so that men stare at me on the street. But do something. … God lurking in that locked little oven on the altar. Why would God live in the dark there when he could run around, sail with the winds, and bounce with the sunbeams? Why would he wait for a priest to unlock him and release his presence into a damp chapel full of women who are thinking of everything else? Except maybe the nuns. Do nuns think? Faces look empty. Look like they even stop breathing. Maybe they’re waiting to levitate, like St. What’s-Her-Name, go flying around, stretched out stiff as an ironing board, sailing like a paper glider, black robes fluttering, starched wimple rattling and crackling. … She’d prayed for that once, prayed hard, lit candles every day—red vigil lights too—and even made a novena. I don’t have to fly, God, and I don’t have to have any thunder and lightning. But move me just a little bit. Lift me just an inch over my chair. Raise my feet from the floor. Or shake me side to side, just one shake would do. Just once.
Margaret smiled at the ceiling. Only motion I ever had came from a bottle of Scotch.
The circle flattened into wider swings. Lovely, lovely. This is the way we go. She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes, she’ll be coming round the mountain. …
Was she singing out loud? She wasn’t sure; there was too much noise for her to tell. The old gears were really creaking, protesting. Need oiling. Listen to the racket. Great. Singing of the spheres. Here we go round the mulberry bush. …
That deep point of perfect black wasn’t so easy to reach. You had to go slowly and if you made a mistake you fell off the sides and tumbled back to where you had begun.
She looked at her wrist watch, couldn’t seem to make out the hands. Foggy in here. How’d a fog get inside? There was a crack in the wall; the crack wiggled and made a little hand, a little black-and-white hand, and waved to her. She waved back, politely. Always be polite to cracks. She reached for the bottle again. Gently, old girl, gently. … This time I’ve got it. There’s the stretching circle, there’s the bottom. I’ve got it.
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