Portrait of a Married Woman

by Sally Mandel

  Matthew reached behind to unhook the veined fingers that were crusted with rings. “I’m fine, Mother. How was the trip?”

  “I’ve just been telling Margarita. Ghastly. Stuck on that hideous bus in the Lincoln Tunnel with all those noxious fumes. The state of New Jersey has finally invented the supreme method of torturing its mature citizens. Denying us the right to drive.” She flung herself dramatically onto the sofa with a sigh.

  Matthew took his drink from Maggie with a grateful smile. “Only those mature citizens who drive over eighty miles an hour on the Garden State Parkway,” he reminded his mother.

  Rhoda leveled a painted fingernail at him and shook it. “Don’t nitpick with me, Matthew. If I’d been eighteen years old, they would have marked a few points on my license and sent me on my way. Don’t you agree, Margarita?”

  Rhoda Hollander had always called Maggie everything but “Maggie,” which she claimed was a name that smacked of Tennessee Williams and corruption. Sometimes it was “Meghan,” sometimes “Marguerite,” even “Peggy.” A clue to Rhoda’s current affinity for “Margarita” could be found in today’s Mexican attire—multicolored cotton skirt and heavily embroidered blouse. But even at seventy-three, Rhoda was authoritative enough to carry off such costumes. She traveled incessantly—restlessly, Maggie thought—and inevitably arrived home sporting the native dress of whichever country she had just visited. Maggie secretly explained Rhoda’s aversion to Japan by the fact that nowhere in Tokyo was there a single pair of kutsu size ten triple-A.

  Maggie was always struck by the similarity between Matthew’s physiognomy and his mother’s. There was the same square shape, same bold nose and widely set eyes. On Matthew, the features were handsome, on his mother, formidable. When Rhoda made her infrequent appearances, Maggie always found herself searching Matthew’s face for intimations of his father, who was known to her only through photographs from which he peered with vague kindliness. Edward Hollander had been an administrator in a prestigious small hospital in Princeton. Rhoda always referred to him as “poor Edward,” presumably in reference to his early death from emphysema.

  At the dinner table, Maggie watched the two identical mouths chew broiled chicken with jaws moving in unison and decided that Rhoda’s genes had been far too intimidating to permit the contribution of hereditary characteristics from “poor Edward” or anyone else. In the engendering of Matthew, his father had been as close to unnecessary as was scientifically feasible.

  Rhoda regaled them with the travelogue of her trip to Mexico, although as always, the narrative tended to feature greater detail about her travel companions than the exotic landscape.

  “What I appreciate about Marion,” she said, “is her decadence. One sits on a tour bus beside this tidy little old lady with her hair in a bun, just like Helen Hayes, you know, and suddenly she’s talking about fellatio. It’s quite refreshing.”

  Maggie had often expressed admiration to Matthew regarding his mother’s extravagance, conversational and otherwise. Her own parents seemed so ordinary. But Rhoda was an original. “I wonder what I would have been like if your mother had been my mother,” she had said to him.

  “God forbid,” he replied.

  “Well, I think she’s wonderful. Irritating, maybe, but she’s never dull.”

  “Jesus, Mag, it was like having Auntie Mame for a mother. Freshman Week at college she showed up with a handbag full of joints and sat around the dorm smoking grass with my classmates.”

  Maggie laughed.

  “That was her anti-alcohol phase. She figured we were bound to get high once in a while, and marijuana was preferable to booze.”

  “It was a protective impulse anyway,” Maggie said. Ever since that conversation, Maggie had wondered if Matthew had married her because she was his mother’s opposite: repressed, conventional, withdrawn, and colorless.

  “I disapprove of summer camp,” Rhoda was saying. “Get me some Sweet’n Low, won’t you, dear?” she asked Matthew.

  “Mother, you just swallowed seven hundred and fifty calories’ worth of pecan pie.”

  “All the more reason for the Sweet’n Low.”

  He got up and Rhoda turned her attention to Maggie. “Unless it’s a music camp or one of these ethics places where they teach potting and acid-rain testing, that sort of thing. Those dreadful sports factories ruin American children, just turn them into mindless robots who wind up watching Monday-night football every week and never read a book.”

  Matthew returned with the Sweet’n Low. “Thank you, dear,” she said, and emptied three packets of the fine powder in her coffee. A pale cloud rose around her fingers. With a sense of shock, Maggie noticed that Rhoda’s hand trembled as she reached for her spoon. The woman had always seemed magnificently impervious to the cruelties of time. This first evidence of vulnerability filled Maggie with sadness.

  “Though I suppose camp is somewhere to acquire friends,” Rhoda went on. “You don’t realize until you’re an old wreck how valuable companionship is, except that everyone’s continually dying on you.” She turned to Matthew. “Myrna Billings keeled over last week in Shop-Rite beside the produce counter. Humiliating to go out that way, clutching a head of lettuce.”

  “I’m sure she doesn’t care.”

  “You think not? I wonder.” For a moment Rhoda was silent. The next words out of her mouth were unexpectedly tentative. “I’ve been thinking. About death, I mean.” She paused again. “One does, at my age. Obviously.” She waved her hand as if with impatience at her own weakness. “I was remembering poor Edward only last night. I don’t know how long it’s been since I thought about him.” Her eyes met Matthew’s briefly, but he quickly looked away. “Sometimes I wake up in the night and turn toward that side of the bed …” She waved her hand again. “Silly after all this time. I hope I’m not getting Alzheimer’s. Promise me you’ll put me in a home if I ever lose it.” The staunch shoulders hunched forward, leaving a hollow between breastbone and gay frilled blouse. “I understand you’re back at work again,” she said in a voice so abruptly brisk that Maggie nearly jumped.

  “Yes. I’ve been trying …”

  Rhoda scraped her chair back and stood. “Well, come on. Let’s see what you’ve been up to.” She followed Maggie into Fred’s room. “Criminal to allow such talent to flounder. Matthew never permitted his gifts to emerge. I can’t think why.”

  “I don’t have any gifts,” Matthew said in a tired voice.

  “Let’s not get into that again,” Rhoda said, picking up the sunset collage.

  “I think I’ll catch the news,” Matthew said.

  Rhoda inspected the work from all angles. “Interesting, Margarita. But don’t you think a touch primitive?”

  “It’s ‘Maggie.’ ”

  “I beg your pardon?” Rhoda said.

  “My name. It’s ‘Maggie.’ I’d appreciate it.”

  For the remainder of her visit, Rhoda never addressed Maggie by name. She just pursed her lips resentfully, leaving spaces where Maggie’s name should go, and looked deprived. She left two days early, and as soon as the door shut behind her, Maggie was on the telephone to David.

  “How was your mother-in-law?” he asked, holding her at the top of his stairs.

  “She makes me think of the Colosseum.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because she’s a beautiful old ruin, but it’s important to keep in mind that terrible things happened to the lions and the Christians in there.”

  “Poor Matthew.”

  “Yes. Come to bed.”

  Chapter 16

  At a certain moment while she was packing for the trip to Vermont, Maggie plucked the old madras dress out of her closet and stuffed it in the wastebasket. The rush of elation that followed made her so giddy that when Matthew came into the room she was tossing his rolled-up socks into the suitcase from across the bed.

  “How many points for a foul shot?” she asked.


  Matthew appeared not to have heard her. He strode directly into the bathroom. She could hear him removing his shaving things from the medicine cabinet. There had been a few seconds when she had feared that he might notice the discarded dress. But then, he had always teased her about her reluctance to throw it away, and besides, he was obviously preoccupied. He could be stone deaf when he was involved in an interesting case.

  When they had crossed the Connecticut border, Maggie thought about the dress again. There was such satisfaction in having tossed the old relic away, freedom and a titillating sensation of nakedness.

  “How do you suppose snakes feel when they shed their skins?” she asked Matthew.

  “I don’t think they feel anything much, do they?”

  “They look so shiny when they crawl out of those dry old husks. I would think they’d have to feel something. Fresh, unburdened, clean—something.”

  But he was away again, concentrating on the traffic, which had thickened as they approached the turnoff heading north. Though Maggie drove well, Matthew always preferred to take the wheel. She could not remember his ever having relinquished the driver’s seat, even on their three-week honeymoon across the country.

  It was uncanny what had happened to her, she thought. She had become two entirely separate women. There was the David-Maggie—sensuous, confident, spontaneous. Today she was Matthew-Maggie, the cautious, withdrawn, efficient mother-of-two. She imagined Matthew-Maggie as the freeze-dried version of herself. When she crossed the park to the West Side, a magic transformation took place: just add David and stir. Presto! The essential Maggie Hollander, full-bodied and steaming.

  There was a place where both Maggies coexisted. In Fred’s room, her little studio, all the ingredients blended into a rich stew. Everything poured out into her constructions: the longing for David, the deep attachment to her children, the turbulent feelings for Matthew, the need for creative isolation and the contrasting magnetism of family and friends. Ambivalence and conflict thrived in that room. Sometimes the atmosphere became so thick that she was forced to the window for air. But she was never frightened there. Her scissors and glue and odd fragments of paper made her omnipotent. It was venturing outside that filled her with dread. She understood that the two Maggies must not mingle outside the sanctuary. Keeping them balanced and separate was the only insurance against loss. An integrated Maggie meant choice, and choice was unthinkable.

  Her heart had begun to beat very fast. She watched the oncoming cars with terror, certain that one of them would surely leap the barrier and smash into them head-on. What if there was an accident and Matthew was killed? The thought surfaced like the snout of some hideous swamp creature coming up for a breath of fetid air. If Matthew were dead and she survived … Maggie pressed the monster back into the dark waters where it belonged and thought about how much she missed David. If they could just hold out until the children were in college, Maggie thought. There’d be a divorce and the children could come home to David and her … But her mind veered from the concept. Somehow David and her children seemed mutually exclusive. Fred and Susan adored their father. David had not shared the years of anxiety and pleasure that accompanied the parenting of these two particular human beings. Maggie tried to imagine Susan and Fred cavorting among David’s sculptures, or sprawled on the floor watching the television that would have to be imported since David had none. No, instead the young people would sit stiffly at the round oak table staring accusingly at Maggie and David.

  Her head began to ache. She inched closer to the window to let the breeze cool her face.

  “You know, I really can’t stand my mother,” Matthew was saying.

  “What?” Maggie was not sure she had heard him correctly.

  “I hate her,” he said, then looked at Maggie with a triumphant grin on his face. “Whoa, how terrific.”

  “What do you suppose inspired that?”

  “I don’t know. I was just remembering the way she puts on her lipstick with that kind of kissing action at the end, and I wanted to strangle her.” He shook his head wonderingly. “If this is what going to a shrink does, maybe I ought to try it. I must have been saving that up for forty years.”

  “Well, I hate my mother too,” Maggie blurted. Then they both began to laugh.

  “Oh, Christ,” he moaned. “I’d better pull off or we’ll wind up in the ditch.”

  The laughter brought Maggie dangerously close to sobbing. Matthew was not permitted to indulge in sudden insights or make emotional declarations. These were David’s province. She took the tissue Matthew offered, wiped her eyes, and glanced at him. But he was peering ahead already, lost in thought. If she spoke to him, she knew he would not answer her.

  Maggie had surprised herself with the declaration of hatred for her mother. Whenever she had thought about the house in Stafford, there had always been a bad taste in her mouth that she interpreted as the typical vague resentment one feels for one’s family. Today’s particularization of the emotion caught her off guard. If anyone was going to be hated, Maggie assumed it would have to be Joanne. But examining her feelings for her sister now, Maggie found merely a kind of fond pity. Maggie’s outburst over Joanne’s hypothetical birthday present must have cleared the way for a more potent disaffection. Mother, Maggie thought, one of these days I will get around to you.

  Their resort was carefully scattered among the trees along the top of a ridge called Frenchman’s Notch. There were tennis courts, racquetball courts, indoor and outdoor pools, saunas, even a small indoor iceskating rink. Maggie liked the place because the architects had left its wild surroundings intact. Even the parking lot had been constructed with deference to the shade trees that prevailed over the macadam here and there. Only a few spots were available when they pulled in; parents’ weekend always jammed the hotel to its limit.

  “I wonder if the others are here yet,” Maggie said. She looked around the lot for other New York license plates. There were several.

  “It’s touch and go with the Brodys, isn’t it?” Matthew said, hauling the suitcases from the trunk.

  “Last I knew, they were coming.”

  But there was a message at the front desk for Maggie to telephone Robin in New York.

  “Have the Wheelers arrived yet?” Matthew asked the clerk.

  The young man punched some keys on his computer. “Yes, sir. Just barely.”

  As soon as the door shut behind the bellhop, Maggie sat down on the edge of the bed and called Robin.

  “It’s me. We miss you already.”

  “I’m sorry,” Robin answered. “I kept trying to hold out until after the weekend, but I just couldn’t. And then yesterday this apartment came up, and I went over there this morning and signed a lease.”

  Maggie was stunned to silence.

  “I’m moving out this weekend.”

  “I didn’t realize. I thought it was because of what happened. The baby …”

  “I hated to put a damper on things, but there’s no way we could have faked it. If you want to make up a story for the others until you get home …”

  “I don’t think I could do that.”

  “I’m sorry, Mags. Don’t let it ruin everybody’s fun.”

  “Robin, whatever made you …”

  “Let’s talk about it face to face, okay? I’m fine. Jackson’s okay, too. I’ll see you next week.”

  “All right,” Maggie said. Robin, sweet Robin, who was so intimidated by Jackson that she did not own a single pair of pants because he disliked how she looked in them.

  “Are you all right?” Matthew asked. He was staring down at her as she sat motionless on the edge of the bed, her hand resting on the telephone.

  “She’s moving out,” Maggie said.

  Matthew laughed. “That’s ridiculous. She would never leave him.”

  “She signed a lease. She’s moving this weekend.”

  Matthew headed for the closet with an armful of clothes from the suitca
se. “I’m sure she’s just trying to give him a scare, that’s all. But why she’d want to make Jackson miserable is beyond me. He’s a terrific guy.”

  Maggie did not answer. When he returned for another batch of clothes, he ruffled her hair. “Don’t take it so seriously, Mag. They’ll be back together in no time.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Phyllis exclaimed. Her voice traveled in the muted elegance of the hotel dining room. “It’s like Santa and Mrs. Claus getting divorced.”

  “Nobody said anything about divorce,” Maggie protested.

  “Did you have any notion this was coming?” Stephen asked.

  Maggie shook her head.

  “She’s just trying to throw a scare into him,” Matthew said.

  “Because he won’t adopt?” Hilary wanted to know.

  “I don’t suppose it’s as simple as that,” Maggie said.

  “Well,” Phyllis said, “I must say I’m impressed. She really has an apartment?”

  “That’s what she said,” Maggie replied.

  “And I always thought she was your basic lapdog,” Phyllis mused.

  “You sound as if she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize,” Stephen said.

  “I think of it more in terms of the Boston Tea Party or the Slave Rebellion,” Phyllis answered. “I propose a toast.” She raised her glass. “To Robin Brody. The worm turns.”

  Matthew’s jaw muscle was clamped tight shut and Stephen’s face looked murderous.

  “Matt, Stephen says he sent you a client,” Maggie said, hoping to steer the conversation into cooler water. “Somebody getting into the movies.”

  “Yeah, Miles Farber. Did it work out okay?” Stephen asked.

  “I meant to call and thank you,” Matthew said. “Very interesting situation, one of the more challenging things I’ve had on my desk this year.”

  Stephen grinned like a small boy getting a handshake from an astronaut. Phyllis winked at Maggie.

  “I hope he paid the bill,” Stephen said.

  “Nope, he stiffed us,” Matthew said.