by Rona Jaffe
When Carl called the next morning, Gara told him he could come to her apartment for a drink before they went out to dinner, and after work she bought some red tulips. She already had a case of wine stored in the closet, and her one-bedroom apartment was always very neat so she didn’t have to clean it for his visit. She hoped he wouldn’t laugh at her art. She lit candles and then had second thoughts and blew them out because she didn’t want him to think she was trying to create some self-consciously seductive ambiance. She was not nervous, only excited. She hoped he would kiss her hello.
When he came in the size and masculinity of him made her apartment look small and girlish. He kissed her lightly on the lips as he had the day before, and she felt in a strange way as if he were coming home to her. She thought of all the men who had paused in her bed and they no longer existed, they were gone.
“How nice,” he said, looking at her framed prints and photographs.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“You are sweet, complimentary, and nonjudgmental,” Gara said.
“No, I like them.”
She asked him to open the white wine, even though she was perfectly capable of doing it herself, and let him pour it. It was a little quirk of hers, one of the only dependent things she still did when there was a man around.
He looked over her record collection. “How many people live here?” he asked, surprised.
“Just me.”
“Your taste in music is very eclectic.”
“I know.”
Then he took her hand and led her to the couch. “Let’s talk about ourselves,” he said.
“All right.”
They sat side by side, sipping their wine. He was still holding her hand. There was something cozy about it. “I need a lot of affection because my parents were very cold,” he said. He made the statement so mildly and matter-of-factly that it didn’t seem like a line and didn’t make her want to laugh; it actually touched her.
“I need a lot of affection too,” Gara said. “But I put a barrier around myself unless I really trust the person. My mother was physically smothering.”
“And your father?”
“He was afraid to hug and kiss me after I was little; he kind of abdicated his role as my first love.”
“Afraid of your mother or afraid of himself?”
“Aha! A good point. I’ll never know because I won’t ask him. He wouldn’t know what I was talking about anyway.”
“I married my wife because she was so intense,” Carl said. “Later on it turned into intense hatred toward me, but that’s another story.” He smiled and shrugged.
“Did you cheat when you were married?”
“Toward the end. We both did.”
“Why did she hate you?”
“Anything, you name it.”
“I can’t imagine anyone hating you,” Gara said.
“You haven’t met her.”
“I hate to fight,” Gara said.
“So do I. I dislike even raising my voice. People should be able to discuss things.”
“I agree.”
“Were you ever married?”
“Not yet.”
He told her about his travels and she imagined traveling with him. She had never been to Europe and he went there often, to buy paintings, as well as to the Far East. His work sounded like a great deal more fun than hers because it was combined with what sounded like a full-time holiday, while hers was based on people’s pain. But she was helping people, in her way, and she hoped to help them more when she was more established, and that was what gave her pleasure.
When they had talked so long they were almost late for their dinner reservation, they left her apartment and went to the restaurant he had chosen to impress her. It was in the Village, an upscale Italian cafe, and filled with important people from the art world whom he pointed out to her, and whom she had never heard of. She felt stupid and uninformed and hoped he didn’t notice.
He didn’t; he was much more concerned that she be comfortable and happy. Again, something about him touched her. I’m falling in love, Gara thought.
When they realized they were the last people in the restaurant and the waiters were eating their own dinner in a booth, Gara and Carl left. It was very late, and they both had to go to work in the morning. When he took her to her apartment she thought of asking him up, and then thought: It’s too soon. He kissed her goodnight very gently, and she felt the flash of electricity shooting down her body. They hugged and held on.
He was more giving in that moment at her door than most of the men she’d had brief affairs with had been during the entire relationship. Why didn’t more men understand about hugging? Her women friends complained about this all the time, and so did she.
“I had a wonderful time,” she said. “Thank you.”
“No, thank you. I’ll call you very soon.”
“Good.”
She thought about him all weekend and wondered what he was doing and whom he was with. Maybe he had his children for the weekend and he wasn’t with another woman. Then why hadn’t he mentioned he would be with them? Was he secretive? Maybe he needed his own space. Maybe he wanted to give her hers. She tried to pretend she was her own therapist and reassured herself that she had been charming company and that he had obviously liked her and enjoyed himself. It was a beautiful spring weekend, so she ran in the park, hoping she might see him, since all the divorced fathers she knew took their kids to the park on weekends, but of course she didn’t see him even though he might have been there. When another man she didn’t much like called on Saturday night at the last minute to see if she wanted to have dinner with him, she said she was busy. She didn’t have the energy to make conversation; she would rather live on the memory of that kiss and that hug.
Carl called on Monday, and said, as she had hoped he would, that he’d had his sons for the weekend, and Gara realized she had known all along that he liked her as much as she liked him and that he would call. He took her to dinner, and that night they made love and he stayed over. She had never known such a sensitive and passionate lover, and when finally they went to sleep he held her all night as if he couldn’t stand to let her go. She was enchanted by his body, the size of him, the feel and scent of his tawny skin, his golden, glowing looks. He seemed exactly what she had wanted all of her life.
“I love you,” he said the next morning, and somehow she was not surprised.
“I love you, too,” she said, and meant it.
After that they were together every night, at her place or his, and spent all weekend together when he didn’t have his kids. She did not even mention his existence to her parents yet because she knew her mother would grill her and then find things to complain about, as she always did when Gara had picked the man herself.
That summer Gara finally met Carl’s two sons, Cary and Eric, who were well mannered and shy and very cute. She campaigned to have them like her. She conversed with them as if they were adults, and made it clear that she valued them as people. In short, she treated them the way she had not been treated when she was their age. They quickly became very fond of her and she of them.
Carl’s apartment was dark and sloppy and he seemed not to notice. He was personally very clean, but in his living habits he was messy. Cartons, filled and empty, took up most of the living room, and there were books and papers everywhere. The walls were covered with art, some of which she liked and some of which she didn’t understand. He had odd sculptures, too: a chair with water pouring on it, a fur-lined teacup. His battered bicycle leaned against the wall. There had been a leak, as there often was in New York apartments, and the bedroom ceiling was coming down.
“You need to fix this place up,” Gara said.
“I know. I was thinking of moving.”
“That might be easier.”
“Will you help me look for an apartment?”
“I’d love to.”
“We could decorate it together. Would you like to do that?”
“Sure,” Gara said.
“And then will you live with me?”
She hesitated. She was so sure of him now, so comfortable in the knowledge of his love. Everybody lived together. And yet she didn’t want to give up her apartment in case something went wrong. “I don’t know about living together,” she said.
“But I knew right away,” he said. “The night I met you.”
“That you wanted to live with me?”
“Yes.”
But for how long, she wondered. Forever, a month?
“Would you ever consider getting married again?” she asked.
“I never said I wouldn’t.”
“To me?” she asked.
“Not to anyone else.”
“I want to be married to you,” she said.
This time he was the one who hesitated. In that instant, which seemed much longer, Gara thought she had made a mistake; she should not have been so aggressive, so demanding, in such a hurry to make him commit.
“Then I guess I’d better think of a romantic way to propose,” he said.
They took a bottle of champagne up to the roof of his apartment house and watched the sun set. He asked her to marry him as if it had been his idea all along, and she accepted solemnly. Then they both laughed with surprise that their future had been settled so easily. They were both filled with joy. They went back downstairs and spent the rest of the evening in bed, making love, finishing the champagne, sending out for Chinese food. How lucky she was, Gara thought, to have found a man who understood her.
A week went by, and she still had not broken the news to her parents, protecting her happiness, the breathless feeling of perfect romance. Then her mother called. The building her parents lived in, where she had grown up, had gone co-op, and they had bought their apartment at the insiders’ price. There were some other, smaller apartments available.
“We want to buy you an apartment in our building,” May said.
“What?”
“It’s a wonderful building, and then we can be close and see each other more often. It’s time you owned something.”
The thought of living in the same building as her mother again, to take up again the invaded life it had taken her so long to be able to flee, was bizarre. How could her mother even think she would want to do that? “No,” Gara said. “Thank you anyway.”
“Don’t give up this chance,” her mother said. “Then when you find a man to marry you’ll have someplace to live.”
Gara sighed. She had to tell her mother; it was time. “I have been seeing a man,” she said. “We’re going to get married.”
“Oh.” There was a silence. The offer had apparently been withdrawn.
“I want you to meet him,” Gara said.
“Married?”
“Yes. We just decided.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Carl Whiteman. He’s an art dealer. He’s thirty-eight. He’s divorced and has two adorable little sons. They stay with him on holidays and alternate weekends.”
“Children?” her mother said, with obvious distaste. “You’re going to take care of some other woman’s children?”
“You’re so full of love.”
“They won’t like you. They’ll always compare you to their mother.”
“And you’re so encouraging,” Gara said.
“Don’t be sarcastic. Wait until you have to deal with reality.”
“I thought you’d be glad that I’m finally getting married,” Gara said. “And he’s even Jewish.”
“I am glad,” her mother said distantly, her voice trailing off. “Since you’re probably going to have your own child too, there isn’t anything in this building right now that’s big enough. When I die, you can live in this apartment.”
“What about Dad?”
There was a pause. It seemed her mother had forgotten her father existed. “Men die first,” she said, finally. “This Carl, he’s a lot older than you . . .”
“Ten years. Hardly ancient.”
“Well, you know best,” her mother said.
Gara wondered why she ever bothered to speak to her mother at all.
* * *
Carl went on a quick trip to Japan, and came back with some art and two pearl-and-gold spray pins, one set in yellow gold, the other in white. He gave them to Gara, and he also brought a yellow gold ring that was set with a large, beautiful pearl, which he gave her for her engagement ring. She was thrilled. They were going to her parents’ apartment for dinner because it was her mother’s birthday. She would present her intended, with his ring on her finger, and that would be that.
She wondered what she should buy for her mother’s birthday. It was so hard; May never liked anything Gara chose herself. But that pin set in white gold would be perfect. It was a little matronly, a little too conventional for Gara’s taste, so her mother would probably love it. And it would be from Carl too, from his business trip. It would make him look generous and interesting.
“Could we give my mother the white gold pin?” she asked.
“Don’t you want it?” he asked wistfully.
“Oh, sweetheart.” She was so touched her eyes filled with tears. “I just wanted us to make a good impression on her.”
“All right.”
“And I know she’ll lend it to me. She lends me anything I want.”
The birthday party, like all her mother’s parties, was intimate, with only her aunt and uncle and their spouses, and her mother’s two old friends with their husbands. Her mother didn’t have many friends, preferring the company of her own family. May’s sister and brother were both lean; it was only May who had an eating disorder. The table was covered with platters heaped with rich and extravagant food, and the sideboard was laden with creamy desserts. Carl towered over everyone, as if he had come from another world, and he had. Gara had never before realized how tiny her family was. Even her obese mother—how could she have been so afraid of a woman as small as that?
Carl did not seem at all nervous. He conversed easily with everyone, and they looked at him with approval, even respect. How could they not? He was so handsome, so interesting. Her mother thanked them both politely for the pin, and looked at Gara’s engagement ring without comment. She was obviously disappointed that it was not a diamond, but Gara knew a diamond would not have pleased her either. Her father, however, looked at the ring and Carl with shy pleasure, and smiled. Gara remembered then, as she seldom did, how much she loved this invisible man, despite everything.
Her uncle took Polaroids of everyone, and gave some of them to Gara as a keepsake. She and Carl left as soon as they could.
“I like your mother,” he said.
“You do?”
“Yes. She’s very intelligent, and she’s very unhappy in her marriage.”
“She is?” But of course she was. No man Gara had dated had ever noticed that about her mother before, or certainly the subject had not been discussed. Either they had been fooled by the facade, or they had not even cared. As for herself, Gara had preferred not to think about her mother’s marital unhappiness. It lurked there in her consciousness as a given, and then was ignored.
“You’re so perceptive,” she said. “I wonder why both my therapists let me graduate from treatment without ever having brought it up. It’s really important.”
“They probably thought that an unhappy marriage was an acceptable state for people of that generation.”
“But not for us,” Gara said. “We won’t let each other be unhappy, will we? We’ll tell each other, we won’t let it fester, we’ll make it right.”
“Of course we will,” he promised. “We’re not our paren
ts, we’re completely different people. We’ll be happy.”
She met his parents, who had been cold to him when he was a child. With her they only seemed diffident, but she knew how to see beyond that. She was determined to make it up to him for their lack of affection and nurturing, now and forever.
She and Carl found a new apartment on the Upper East Side for the two of them to live in when they got married and decorated it as quickly as possible, in the dark, masculine way that Carl preferred. Gara was willing to give in since it made him happy, and besides, with two growing boys it seemed practical. She told him she didn’t want to have a baby for a long time and he said that was fine with him. She didn’t want to say never. Maybe she would change her mind, and it was good to keep her options open while she could. Her gynecologist kept telling her to have a baby soon because it would be very difficult to have one when she was older than thirty-six, but Gara didn’t care. That was eight whole years away.
They had wanted to get married in a hotel, but every place they liked was booked so far in advance they couldn’t bear to wait so long, so Gara’s best friend Jane, who was married to a rich plastic surgeon and already had a Fifth Avenue apartment and two children, volunteered her living room, which had a view of the park with its blazing fall leaves. The elegant room was a wonderland of flowers, and Gara wore a traditional white satin and lace gown. Jane was the matron of honor. Carl’s brother, who had come in from California, was the best man. Jane suggested having Carl’s two sons be ring bearers for the double ring ceremony, but Gara thought that would be rubbing it in since they loved their mother, so she let them be ushers even though they were so young, and they liked it.
Her mother had been jealous and displeased by the idea of Gara’s being married in “some stranger’s” apartment, but she came around and actually was happy by the time the wedding day came, probably because Gara had let her choose the food, the flowers, the wedding gown, the cake, the rabbi, and most of the guest list. The only thing Gara insisted on picking herself was the music.
She spent more time than usual with her mother, making these choices, and she noticed that May had never worn the pin she and Carl had given her for her birthday. “Don’t you like the pin we gave you?” Gara asked finally. “You never wear it.”