Portrait of a Married Woman

by Sally Mandel

  The first time Susan had performed in a play was in the third grade. She won the lead in an original musical written by the school drama teacher. For three weeks the Hollanders endured her songs at breakfast and dinner. One of them Maggie still remembered was sung to the tune of “Don’t Fence Me In”: “Gimme smog, gimme dirt, gimme egg creams for dessert—New York’s my town!”

  On the day of her performance, Susan’s confidence had dissolved into tears and sweaty hands. On the way to school, she had stopped dead in front of the dry cleaner’s on Madison and Eighty-fourth Street.

  “I think it’s my appendix,” she said.

  “Real nervous, huh?” Maggie asked.

  “I’ve got a stomachache. Well, it doesn’t really ache, it’s jumping all over.”

  “That’s called butterflies in the stomach.”

  Susan smiled. “That’s good. Just what it feels like.” Then the smile turned to a grimace. “Let’s go home.”

  “What is absolutely the worst thing you can imagine happening on that stage today?” Maggie asked.

  “I’ll fall down and forget my lines and mess up the songs and then I’ll just die.”

  “Will you really?”

  “I’ll wish I could.”

  “And then what?”

  “We’ll go back to music class.” She thought a moment, then said, “You know what, Mom? I think a few butterflies just flew out of my mouth.”

  Maggie had given her a squeeze, and they went on to school and triumph. Watching Susan now, Maggie imagined her surrounded by a cloud of butterflies, a delicate snowstorm on the stage. The image was so intense that Maggie felt her fingers twitch with the need to get it down on paper.

  The Stage Manager was making a speech about marriage, about the natural urge to live life “two by two.” But was it so natural? Maggie wondered. Here she sat next to a man who seemed at this moment no more related to her than the paunchy stranger across the aisle. Wasn’t marriage an artificial alliance, and weddings an empty rite that bound two incompatible species together in something aptly termed wedlock?

  Their wedding had been outdoors. A blue-and-white striped tent was erected on the Herricks’s back lawn for refreshments in the event of rain. But the early-August day was bright. Maggie had lingered in bed that morning thinking about how little she knew herself and how she knew Matthew Hollander even less. And yet pairing off this way had been going on for so long there must be some merit in it. Even apes chose special mates, she had reassured herself, gazing at the white ruffled curtains that softened the morning light at her window. Then she had reached out to her bedside table for the worn Raggedy Ann she inherited from Joanne and clung to it. No more little girl, no more daughter. She would be Matthew Hollander’s wife. Who the hell was he? She sniffed, still clutching the doll, sat up on the edge of the bed, and stared at his photograph. He was so handsome. Square face wearing the expression of a Viking warlord standing at the prow of his ship. But there wasn’t a shred of vanity in him. He was direct to the point of brutality, so that when he said he loved her and thought her beautiful, she knew he meant it. He was the first person outside of an art class who truly appreciated her work, and the fact that the mere proximity of her body kept him in a continual state of arousal had its charm as well. But mainly she was marrying him because nothing bad could happen to somebody with that face. And as his wife, nothing bad could ever happen to her either. This man was as close to perfect as anyone she was ever likely to meet.

  There was a tap at the door. Joanne poked her dark head inside. “Nice day for a hanging,” she said with a grin. “Are you ever getting up? Your presence is required downstairs in Panicsville.”

  “I’m up.” Maggie yawned.

  “Think he’s actually going to go through with it?”

  “Who, Matthew? Maybe.” But Maggie knew he would.

  Joanne came in and tugged at the doll under Maggie’s arm. “You still have this old thing?”

  “I wish I could take her with me,” Maggie said.

  “Old Matt wouldn’t mind.” She put her hand briefly on Maggie’s head. “You’re a good kid. All the best.” Then she fled.

  After the triumphant curtain calls, they went to the Summerhouse restaurant on Madison Avenue. Susan asked to be seated by the front window beside the old painted wooden rocking horse. She was flushed and agitated. Her eyes were huge under dark splotches of makeup.

  “Oh, God, did you hear old George Gibbs, I mean, Adam Newman? Oh, God, he was grotesque! Scared to death, just frozen solid, poor thing. I had to rescue him a million times. And I screwed up something rotten in Act Two with the wedding …”

  “What would you like to eat, Stage Manager?” Matthew interrupted her.

  “Oh, God, I couldn’t eat a thing! Oh, well, maybe I’ll try the creme brulee, it’s so elegante. Oh, God, did you see how everybody cried when Emily passed into the great beyond? The place was absolutely awash!”

  “Yeah, that must have been when Dad was making notes for tomorrow’s meeting,” Fred said.

  Susan’s monologue stopped short as if someone had flipped the Off switch operating her tongue. Maggie stared at Fred. Susan stared at her father. Zachary looked down at his plate.

  “You didn’t watch,” she said.

  “I did,” Matthew replied. “M-most of it.”

  Maggie had never heard him stammer.

  “Oh,” Susan said. “Well, I guess since you’d already seen it before …”

  Maggie looked away from the shamefaced Fred and gazed at Matthew. He was struggling with something. After a moment he said haltingly, “You forgot your line for a second and I couldn’t stand it. I was too nervous.” He put his hand over Susan’s. “I’m sorry. I’m very proud of you.”

  Maggie chided herself for ever harboring uncharitable feelings toward Matthew. She knew how difficult it was for him to break through his natural emotional constraint. He loved his daughter. Maggie would never go to that art class again. David Golden was not reality. Matthew was reality. And her beautiful children, one radiating triumph and the other struggling with envy, they were reality. It was enough. It ought to be enough.

  Chapter 10

  Matthew had just disappeared out the front door when the telephone rang. It was Robin.

  “I’m bleeding,” she said in a very calm voice.

  “I’ll be right there,” Maggie said.

  “I can’t get it to stop.”

  “Hang up, call the doctor, and lie down. I’m coming.”

  Downstairs, Maggie pleaded with a harried businessman to let her take the taxi that had stopped out front.

  “Lady, there aren’t any other cabs,” he protested.

  She slid into the back seat while he held the door open in confusion. “It’s an emergency. Sorry.” She slammed the door. Fortunately, traffic was light and they made it to Robin’s apartment house in six minutes.

  Robin met her at the door with a bath towel packed between her knees.

  “I can’t get it to stop,” she said again.

  “Come on,” Maggie said, holding out her arms. “The cab’s waiting.”

  “I can’t go like this. Let me get something clean.”

  “Screw that.” Maggie took off her cardigan and tied it around Robin to cover the blood-soaked cloth.

  During the ride to the hospital, Robin leaned her head on Maggie’s shoulder. Her eyes were closed. A film of sweat covered her face, making the freckles glisten. Her arms, crossed under her belly, tensed with each jolt of the cab.

  “Is Jackson still in Chicago?” Maggie asked.

  Robin nodded. “I keep telling it to move, and it won’t move,” she whispered.

  The emergency staff helped Robin onto a mobile stretcher. “I’ll take care of admitting,” Maggie said. She smoothed a lank piece of hair off Robin’s forehead.

  “It’s still not moving,” Robin said.

  “You’ll be okay, honey,” Maggie said. />
  As the attendant started to wheel Robin toward the elevator, her eyes filled with tears. “Don’t leave me,” she pleaded.

  “I’ll be right there,” Maggie said.

  They deposited Robin in a labor room. Maggie could hear the cries and groans from a cubicle next door as a woman worked hard to bear her baby. They don’t call it labor for nothing, Maggie thought. But for Robin it’s always been for nothing.

  A resident approached Maggie with clipboard in hand. “Where’s her husband?” he asked.

  “Out of town.”

  “Can he be reached?”

  “I can try. Is she miscarrying?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “May I stay with her?”

  “Far as I’m concerned. But give me a few minutes to examine her.”

  He disappeared into Robin’s room. The entire floor seemed hushed suddenly. The eerie silence lasted a few moments, then the resident came out. “I don’t think there’s a whole hell of a lot we can do this time around. You can go in.”

  Maggie sat down next to the bed. Robin opened her eyes.

  “Hi,” Maggie said.

  “I love you,” Robin said. Maggie grasped Robin’s hand and held tight.

  “I always thought you looked like Katharine Hepburn,” Robin said after a while. “That first day I met you at Woman’s Companion and you were so nice and took me to Schrafft’s in your navy-blue dress.”

  “Katharine Hepburn. Thank you,” Maggie said.

  “People always thought I looked like Doris Day. I never could warm up to Doris Day.”

  “Why not?”

  “She always played dippy ladies who can’t stand on their own two feet. I don’t want to be like that.” She sucked in her breath and wrung Maggie’s hand as another contraction struck.

  “Can I get you something?” Maggie asked. “I’m sure they’ll let you have something.”

  Robin shook her head. “Nothing really helps unless they put you out. Maggie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t let them throw it away until I’ve seen it.”

  “Maybe it won’t come to that,” Maggie whispered.

  “It will.”

  Robin began to cry softly. “It’s not the pain,” she explained.

  “I know,” Maggie said. She laid her head next to Robin’s on the pillow until the obstetrician came and asked her to leave.

  After Fred and Susan went off to do their homework, Maggie told Matthew that Robin had lost the baby.

  “I’m sorry. Is she all right?”

  “Physically.”

  “Damn shame. That’s the second time, isn’t it?” He snapped on the news: Roger Mudd reporting from Washington.

  “Third,” Maggie said. She got up and went into the bedroom. Lying there mourning for Robin’s baby, she remembered the births of her own children. Susan’s arrival was obscured by the paralyzing numbness of Pentothal. There was still pain. Maggie was aware of the hurt, but the person who hurt was somehow not exactly Maggie. The birth itself seemed depersonalized as well. About three days afterward, while her hormones were doing their wild dance, she became convinced for a few hours that Susan was not really her baby.

  When she found she was pregnant again, she decided that this time she would not be robbed of the experience.

  She had been told that her second labor would no doubt be half the duration of the first. But Fred was a big baby. Maggie even wondered if a part of her was trying to hold him back inside, this final child. Matthew sat beside her labor bed and coached her through the various types of breathing. But her contractions were erratic. Just when she thought the peak had come and gone, another wave of twisting, wrenching agony would tear into her. It went on that way for twenty hours. Matthew, pale and frightened, pleaded with her to take a spinal block. But Maggie had not endured all of this only to relinquish her ultimate participation. Finally the obstetrician announced that she could push. By this time, her abdomen was transformed into a solid block, no longer yielding and round, but squared like an immense fist. Everything in her lower body worked to urge the baby out. After several pushes, she could feel the fetus loosening, swimming down into the birth canal. The sensation elated her and gave her the energy to keep on. She was bringing this baby into the world. What joy to be giving life with her own courage, her own body.

  In the delivery room, it took only three more pushes for the head to crown. There was such pressure that Maggie felt she would surely split up the middle, but the terrible pain had disappeared. The doctor performed an episiotomy, which was also painless. Another push, out came the head, then one more giant shove and he was born. The thrill was almost sexual, like some spectacular orgasm.

  Soon Fred began to howl, and turned from pale sickly blue to bright red. Maggie comforted him until he stopped yelping. He lay across her belly with solemn eyes wide open and his tiny fist crooked around Matthew’s finger. After the umbilical cord was cut, they took him from Maggie.

  “Where is he going?” she protested.

  “Just to get weighed and have his feet printed. You don’t want to take home the wrong baby, do you?”

  “I couldn’t. I know him now.”

  When they gave him back, he was bundled in a soft white blanket. He felt solid and warm. Both of them were transferred to a clean bed and pushed down the hall to the recovery room. Matthew brought champagne. Then Maggie and Fred drifted off to sleep with Fred nursing expertly at Maggie’s breast.

  Looking back on that golden day, Maggie wondered if sharing Fred’s violently intimate beginning had influenced her feelings about him forever after. There was something direct and warm in her relationship with him that she missed with Susan. And yet the intensity between Maggie and Susan stimulated and challenged her. Oh, how she loved them, and how she grieved for Robin lying alone in her hospital bed with an empty womb.

  Chapter 11

  After ten minutes in Zabar’s, Maggie always found herself sailing off into a kind of trance. So much food, so many people. It was very pleasant. She had been lingering and swaying over the stuffed veal when she felt a hand on her bare arm. She turned and blinked into David Golden’s face. He was grinning, the stark lines lifted in delight.

  “What are you doing over here?”

  “My kids are going to camp tomorrow. I’m loading up on favorite things.”

  “I’d like to see your kids.”

  On the one hand, Maggie felt like whisking him home to meet Fred and Susan this instant. On the other, she wanted to bar him completely from her life on Seventy-ninth Street. But to protect whom? she wondered.

  “I’ll help you. Then come see my place. You’re only a couple of blocks away.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t why?”

  “I made this promise. It’s too complicated to explain.”

  “Try me.” They were jostled by a shopping cart. David held her around the waist as if they were dancing.

  “You know those rash things you say in moments of severe stress … to whatever might be up there in the heavens?”

  He smiled.

  “A pregnant friend of mine was about to lose her baby. First I promised God that if He let her keep it, I would never see you again. Except in class, of course.”

  “And what happened?”

  Maggie shook her head.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Then I had this feeling,” she continued, “that she was being punished for my sins and I shouldn’t see you anyway.”

  “But you don’t think that now.”

  “No.” Too fast, Maggie thought. Altogether much too fast.

  “I want you to look at my work.”

  Maggie caught sight of her reflection in the meat-counter glass. A sensible face, rather haunted, not happy, getting older.

  “All right.”

  On their way down Broadway, David held one shopping bag and she the other. Their unhampered arms were lin
ked. Maggie thought briefly about being recognized and dismissed it. She was too giddy to care.

  “I hope you appreciate my self-control,” David was saying. “I haven’t called you.”

  “I noticed.”

  “I hoped you’d be pleased.”

  “Disappointed. Grateful.” Maggie could not identify what it was in David that made her feel so outrageously free.

  He lived in a once-elegant building on West End Avenue near Seventy-eighth Street. He followed her up the five flights of marble stairs. Her light summer dress swept against her legs with each step. She felt his eyes on them, and her breasts grew tight as if they were swollen. By the time they reached the top, she was gasping and glad for the long ascent to excuse her discomfiture. They stood in front of his door while Maggie’s pulse thumped. She told herself she could still turn and walk back down. But instead she watched David’s hands unlocking the door—long brown muscular fingers.

  At last the key turned, the door opened, and he ushered her inside. The sun was high in the west over the Hudson. Light blasted in through tall windows that ran the length of one huge room. The floor was polished and gleaming. There was an unobstructed view of the narrow strip of green that was Riverside Park, the Seventy-ninth Street boat basin, and the river. New Jersey was a black shadow on the other side of the sunlight.

  Part of the room was a living area. There were a chair and a reading light in one corner. Against the near wall was a small built-in kitchen, a table and chairs. Beyond the table, a mattress lay on the floor. Maggie averted her eyes, but not before she had seen that the bed was unmade. A pile of books stood on the floor next to the bed and there were bookshelves running all along the bottom quarter of the wall like wainscoting.