by Ira Levin
She said, “I don’t want anybody being shut out, Joe.”
“It’s just a question of cluing people in on how to behave, that’s all. Don’t worry.”
“That’s great,” she said. “Thanks. Whenever you’re ready. Don’t rush.”
They pedaled exercise bikes side by side. He told her about his ex-after-twenty-years, Veronica, in real estate now in Little Neck, and his daughter, Mary Elizabeth, going for her master’s in economics at Loyola. She told him about the proposed commercial and how pleased she was to be getting actively involved in GC. Both ideas sounded good to him.
She jumped rope, atrociously, while he punched a punching bag, awesomely. “I used to box,” he said, dancing in and out, rat-a-tat-tatting. “Golden Gloves, middleweight.”
“I used to jump rope,” she said, untangling the damn thing from around her ankle. “Omaha Junior High School Championship Team, two years running.”
“I can tell by your form,” he said, rat-a-tat-tatting.
They strode along on side-by-side treadmills.
“Great place, isn’t it?”
“Oh terrific,” she said. “A real morale booster.” A floodlit photo shoot was going on across the equipment-filled room. Small swimsuits on large young women.
Joe sneered and looked away, striding along. “Not my style,” he said. “Ronnie was a fashion model when we started going together. The first time she turned sideways I called Missing Persons.” He smiled at her. “My mother was a broomstick. You know how it is with us guys—‘I want a girl, just like the girl, that married dear old Dad.’ ”
Striding along in place, Rosemary nodded. “Yeah, I know how it is,” she said, “I know.”
She was still edgy when she got back to the suite. She called Judy, who was home sounding teary. She jumped at the invite.
She arrived on the dot of eight, in a kerchief and a wool coat with damp shoulders, holding a big brown Bloomingdale’s shopping bag. Under the coat the sari was peach; out of the bag came a plastic Scrabble board with a built-in turntable and molded nests for the tiles, a beaded drawstring bag, two black racks, a miniature silver-caged hourglass, and—naturally—a scorekeeping gizmo.
They set up on the table by the window. Light snow was falling, powdering the park’s treetops, hazing Fifth Avenue’s cliff of lights half a mile away. Rosemary won first move.
She looked through her glasses at JETTY IR on the rack—trying not to think of ice forming on wings and the damn timer at the side of the table (sand running out)—and lifted the tiles in clusters. She fed them into the nests across the board as JITTERY. “Double on the J,” she said, “double word, fifty-point bonus.”
Judy tapped at the gizmo—not with a special fingernail, just one of a set of matching pearl ovals. “One hundred,” she said. “Good beginning.”
“Thank you,” Rosemary said, giving her an over-the-glasses look while drawing new tiles from the bag.
Judy turned the timer over, looked at the board through her mascara, blinked, and set tiles down below the J, making JINXED. “Double word,” she said.
Rosemary plucked up tiles, reached without turning the board, and began laying in FOXY using the X and the pink space beside it.
Judy wailed and wept and tore at her hair. “Now he’s ruined my Scrabble too! Look what I did! An X by a pink! You win! You win! He’s melted my brain! He’s made my life SHIT! I’m jinxed! Jinxed by HIM! That’s why I saw the word!” She threw herself across the board sobbing, beating her fists on the table.
“Oh dear,” Rosemary said, catching the rolling timer. She set it up straight and got up; moved to the side of the table and bent over Judy, patted her hair, stroked her heaving back. “Ah, Judy,” she said, “ah, Judy . . . No guy is worth getting this upset about, not even oh jeez it’s Andy, isn’t it? Isn’t it Andy? It is, isn’t it?”
Yeses snuffled in among the sobs, yeses and Andys.
Rosemary nodded, sighed. She was getting slow. In her old age.
Judy raised herself from the board, weeping, tiles dropping from her cheek, the mascara holding up surprisingly well. “I hate Andy!” she cried, tearing her button away, tearing silk, flinging the button against the window. “I only wore it because I didn’t want you to guess! I hate him! I’ll make my own button to say how I really feel! Oh Rosemary, if you knew the whole story, if you knew what goes on up on the ninth—”
“Shh, shh.” Rosemary hugged and soothed her. “Shh, calm down, dear,” she said. “Ssh. Take a good, deep breath. That’s it . . . Atta girl . . . There . . . That’s a little better. Now why don’t you go pat some cool water on your face and then we’ll have a good long talk. Would you like something to drink? There’s room service, so if you’re hungry, just say so.”
They sat on the sofa.
“He spoke at a benefit for Indian flood relief,” Judy said, dabbing. “Last summer at Madison Square Garden. I brought a proposal I had written for improving methods of food distribution, and was able to hand it to him personally. Right then, there was a little spark between us.”
Rosemary nodded, listening.
“A few days later,” Judy said, “he called me here, to his office, and invited me to join GC, as a secretary at first but with the prospect, the promise, of going higher. We began a relationship—as equals—but within days, nights I should say, he gained complete mastery of me. You can’t begin to imagine what an incredible lover he is.”
“No,” Rosemary said, “no, of course not, being his mother. No, I certainly can’t. No.”
“I meant that in the general sense,” Judy said. She leaned closer to Rosemary. “In my culture,” she said, “women readily confide in one another about intimate matters. I have two married sisters, and my roommates at Vassar liked nothing better than to discuss their sexual activities. So even though I’ve only known one other man myself—a slimeball named Nathan about whom the less said the better—I know that all men, not only he, are more concerned with their own satisfaction than that of their partners. And in truth, as the climax approaches, women are too, n’est-ce pas? Don’t we all ultimately become involved solely with our own mounting excitement?”
Rosemary nodded.
“Not Andy,” Judy said, and sighed. “It’s as if a part of him is always in control, always aware of me and my needs and my feelings. And now it’s HER needs he’s aware of, HER wretched feelings! I can’t bear it!” She grabbed at her hair.
Rosemary caught her wrists. “Whose?” she asked. “Who?”
“The woman he’s in Rome with!” Judy cried. “And going to Madrid with! His new beloved! The woman he was with after your dinner on Thanksgiving, when I waited all night for his call! The one he took to the retreat for the weekend instead of me! There has to be someone! Why else not a word, Rosemary, not a single WORD, in eight days and nights? Why else?”
Rosemary stayed silent a moment. Shrugged. Said, “I don’t know ...”
“And if only that were the worst of it. . .” Judy drew a breath, shook her head, cast a sidelong look at Rosemary. “He led me into—practices I didn’t even know were—”
“Stop right here,” Rosemary said, pressing a hand on Judy’s arm. “I really don’t want to hear details. You’re upset for no reason. He isn’t going to Madrid; he’s cutting the trip short because there’s someone here he misses very much. He told me so yesterday morning.”
“He did?” Judy stared at her.
Rosemary nodded. “Yes,” she said. “He’s coming back tomorrow. I’m absolutely certain he’ll be calling you. I’ll bet on it. And I’m sure he’ll have a good reason for not having called you. I’ll bet on that too.”
“Oh, Rosemary, do you really mean it?” Judy asked. “Are you sure you’re not saying this just so I’ll feel better?”
Rosemary smiled at her. “Judy,” she said, “I’m Andy’s Mom. Would I lie to you?”
Judy shook her head, smiling. “No,” she said, “no. Thank you, Rosemary! Thank you!” She dabbed at her eyes,
sighed, shook her head. “Look at me,” she said. “I was an intelligent, capable woman with a meaningful job to do—and he has me completely derailed, a blubbering ninny who puts an X by a pink.”
Patting her hand, getting up from the sofa, Rosemary said, “Come on, we’ll start over.”
“No!” Judy said, getting up, going after her. “It wouldn’t be fair, you had a hundred! It’s easy to put back: you were ‘jittery,’ I was ‘jinxed,’ you were ‘foxy.’ ”
Rosemary, sitting at the table, shook her head. “No, dear, a new game. I insist on it.”
“Okay, but you go first.”
As they gathered tiles, Judy asked, “Are you good at anagrams too?”
Rosemary recalled the time, weeks before giving birth, when she had shifted tiles back and forth between STEVEN MARCATO and ROMAN CASTEVET, realizing that the neighbor who had befriended them was the son of Adrian Marcato, the nineteenth-century Satanist who had lived at the Bramford. “Pretty good,” she said.
“Thanksgiving night,” Judy said, “while I was waiting for Andy’s call, I finally solved the all-time killer anagram, after more than a year of working at it in trains and buses and waiting rooms.” She sighed, smoothing her hair down. “Quite minuscule compensation, in truth.”
“It sounds like a killer,” Rosemary said, drawing tiles from the bag.
“That was an observation,” Judy said. “The anagram is ‘roast mules.’ ”
“ ‘Roast mules’?”
“R, O, A, S, T,” Judy said, turning the timer over, “M, U, L, E, S. They can be made into one common ten-letter English word, so common that even children of five and six use it.”
Switching tiles around on the rack, Rosemary said, “I’ll get on it later.”
“Don’t come begging for the answer,” Judy said, drawing tiles from the bag. “You’ll be wasting your breath; I’m unyielding. And no fair using a computer.”
“I don’t know how to,” Rosemary said, “but I’ve really got to learn. What a great tool! Who ever thought they’d be so small and cheap? They filled whole rooms! Double on the Y, double word.” Starting at the central pink space, she laid out the letters of DANDY.
9
HE BROUGHT her an angel—a curly-headed lad with a lyre and a book and a fine pair of wings, reclining in terra-cotta relief on a plaque about four inches square, white on della Robbia blue.
“Andrea della Robbia made it,” he said. “Circa fourteen seventy.”
“Oh my God, Andy!” she said, cradling it in both hands, adoring it. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!”
“It’s named ‘Andy,’ ” he said. “For him, I guess.”
Smiling, she tiptoed to kiss his cheek. “Oh thank you, darling, thank you!” She kissed Andy della Robbia— lightly, very lightly. “My handsome angel Andy!” she said to it. “I adore you! I could eat you up!” She gave it another feather-kiss.
Sunday brunch was the first chance they had to be together. At the airport, he had come out of the VIP pass door with two elderly men. They seemed to be in an ongoing discussion, so after a hug and two handshakes outside the limo—one with a Chinese, one with a Frenchman—and a little eye language with Andy, she had ridden back to the city the way she had ridden out, up front with Joe. They listened to tapes of fifties big-band music, chatted about the musicians, and admired the billboards that had begun going up December first— Andy beaming at them over the lines of copy: Here in New York we’re lighting our candles at 7 p.m. on Friday, December 31st. Love ya!
When they got out of the limo on the building’s lower garage level—at two in the morning Rome time—Andy was jet-lagged. They made their morning date.
Rosemary and the waiter had shifted the Scrabble table aside a few feet to make room by the window for the brunch table and chairs. She walked there slowly, hands cupped, and leaned the plaque carefully, very carefully, against the side of the jam caddy—so Andy della Robbia could see and be seen.
Andy Castevet-Woodhouse, seated, smearing cream cheese on bagel, said, “You look great. That’s just the kind of negligee I was picturing.”
“I’m meeting Joe at the spa at eleven-thirty,” Rosemary said in her pink sweatsuit and sneakers, sitting down.
He said, “Uh, you and Joe...?”
“Enjoy each other’s company,” she said, unfolding her napkin. “I would tell you to mind your own business, but I played Scrabble with Judy the other night so I’m not in a position to talk. Indian women sure do, at least the heartbroken, maltreated ones.”
He groaned, filling her cup with steaming coffee.
“You really ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she said, shaking a packet of sweetener at him. “She’s such a nice girl. And what a champ! She beat me twice, and I’m good. I’m not used to a two-minute limit, not that that’s an excuse. We’re having a rematch tomorrow or Tuesday.” She tore a corner from the packet.
“She no longer appeals to me,” he said, lifting a slice of salmon on the tines of a silvery fork. “What do you want me to do, fake something I don’t feel?”
“You could at least have spoken to her face-to-face about it.”
“Oh sure,” he said. “You haven’t seen her in her District Attorney mode.” He laid the salmon over the cream cheese.
“I have a feeling you’d stand up under cross-examination,” she said, stirring her coffee.
He bit and chewed, looking out the window.
She sipped, looking at the plaque. “It’s just so beautiful, darling,” she said. “Thank you so much.” She sighed, drew the basket of rolls and bagels nearer, poked among them.
Andy sighed. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s not my finest hour. I’ll call her later. She sleeps late Sundays anyway.”
Rosemary chose a thin slice of bagel. “We’re invited to a fund-raiser for cerebral palsy,” she said. “Against it. You know. In the ballroom, Wednesday, black tie. I’m going with Joe. He says he’s a great dancer; is he?”
Andy shrugged. “Pretty good,” he said. Took a bite.
“I thought maybe you and Judy...”
“Mom,” he said, chewing, “she doesn’t appeal to me anymore. I can’t help it. Okay? I wish I could.”
She spread a thin layer of cheese onto her bagel slice, squinting at it. “Bring someone else,” she said. “Does Vanessa have a steady?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
She took a small bite and chewed. “I did a little trading in the Bergdorf boutique,” she said. “Six old-lady outfits for a satin sheath right off Ginger Rogers’ back. I figure if Joe thinks he’s Astaire, I’ll humor him. I hope I didn’t go overboard.” She took a larger bite and chewed, peering out the window at something of interest.
Watching her, Andy smiled. “Aren’t you the foxy one,” he said. “You win, we’re a foursome. But after New Year’s we’re going on a little vacation alone, just the two of us. We’re going to need it; we’re going to be really busy all month.” He wound the fork’s tines around a sliver of salmon on his plate, frowning. “There’s a real danger of the timing getting screwed up,” he said. “We just got polls showing eleven percent of seniors worldwide still think the Lighting’s at midnight everywhere. Can you believe it? We’re going to have to do something more. And there’s the PA commercial. I’d like to meet on it tomorrow at three; is that all right with you? Craig, Diane, and Hank. Maybe Sandy too; she comes up with good ideas.”
“You know everybody, I don’t.”
He raised the forked curl of salmon and put it into his mouth, ate it facing her as she sipped.
She lowered the cup. “Don’t do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Just stick with the hazel, Mr. Wise Guy,” she said. “I mean it, Andy. And don’t tell me it was my imagination either.”
Specific information on representative PA groups might be useful at the meeting, Rosemary realized, so she eased past Monday morning’s Film Society meeting with a whispered “Hi, everybody”�
��to Craig, Kevin, Vanessa, Polly, and Lon Chaney Jr., sprouting face hair— and went right on into what she had begun to think of as her office. Craig’s assistant Suzanne would be reclaiming it the Monday after New Year’s but maybe they could share it, as long as there were two desks.
She searched among the news and documentary tapes, and was about to recruit a computer-literate research assistant when she found a tape of a year-old PBS production called Anti-Andy.
Watching it, she had some doubts about its overall objectivity—the narrator, a charming if loquacious Southerner, was wearing a large I ANDY button— but the footage he eventually got around to showing spoke concisely for itself, ranging from the foolish to the frightening.
The likeliest winner in the foolish division was the Ayn Rand Brigade, whose half-dozen sallow, crewcut members wore large dollar signs painted on their T-shirts and small ones tattooed below their sweat-bands. They opposed tax exemptions for religious institutions and supported “In Reason We Trust” on paper money—everybody’s, not just the United States’. They had hijacked a freight train in Pittsburgh, tied banners to both sides of the engine reading PAY YOUR TAXES, ANDY AND ALL WITCH DOCTORS!, and driven it cross-country with their one female member at the throttle, a piece of symbolism based on one of Rand’s novels but by and large meaningless to the general public. The train had been abandoned in Montana, where the Brigade was believed to have found refuge in an enclave of laissez-faire capitalists.
The middle ground of anti-Andy protesters was best represented by the ACLU, still around and still fighting the good fight. Their spokesman made it plain that he loved Andy and admired everything he had done to improve race relations, ease the abortion conflict, settle the Irish troubles, and get the Arabs and Israelis back yet again to the negotiating table. Good grief, wasn’t he wearing two I ANDY buttons? He just felt that as long as Andy was addressing groups like the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the governors of all the states, then GC should be renamed WC, for World’s Children, and if that was a problem in Europe, then EC for Earth’s Children. And did Andy really have to lean quite so heavily on his resemblance to Jesus Christ?