Five Women

by Rona Jaffe

  He didn’t answer, and very briefly she thought it was odd he didn’t concur, didn’t reassure her that of course she would visit often, that she could afford it, that she could rearrange her schedule and take long weekends in the winter as well, but then she told herself that he didn’t have to answer; he knew she would be there.

  She talked to her best friend Jane about the move, on the phone several times a week. Gara realized she discussed her feelings about it much more with Jane than she did with Carl, but he seemed so fragile, so desperate, that she was afraid to tear him down. “What am I going to do?” she asked Jane.

  “You have to let him go,” Jane said. “You have a career here. What if you give up everything to be with him and then the Paris gallery fails? Then you’ll both be out of work. It’s different for me; I’m an old-fashioned wife. I don’t mind being bicoastal, running the apartment here and the house in L.A., and if Eliot goes on location I go with him and bring the Porthault sheets. That’s what I do. But you would hate that.”

  “I know. But he’ll be lonely. What if he cheats? He’s still attractive, he looks younger than fifty-eight. And men can be old and ugly, it doesn’t matter, women still want them.”

  “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, did it really fall at all?” Jane said.

  Gara had to smile. “I guess it will be more romantic to live apart for a while,” she said. “Whenever we get together it will be fresh and new. After twenty years it’s good to shake things up a little.”

  “Absolutely,” Jane said. “Give him a giant box of condoms. Join the resistance, as you like to say.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Gara said.

  He left in September. It was not until Carl was packing that the reality of the situation hit her. He was really going; this was a big move. Suddenly he was taking not just a small suitcase but almost all his clothes. He seemed in a hurry, and as she stood there watching him Gara fought back tears. Once he had made up his mind, everything happened very fast. A moving company appeared and took the art and the sculptures that had been in the apartment for years because Carl had decided to ship them to Paris so he wouldn’t be so lonely, and, as he pointed out to her, she had never liked them anyway. She realized they had always been his, not hers, because he had chosen them and paid for them, and some of it had belonged to him before they had even met, but still she felt somehow betrayed that he was taking his meaningful things with him on this journey and leaving her behind.

  He’s taking his totems, she told herself reassuringly. It’s okay. He needs them. He’s frightened too. But in an odd way she felt divorced, although neither of them intended it that way. She supposed this was what divorce felt like.

  “I’ll stay with Cary until I find an apartment,” Carl said. “I can save money that way.”

  “In that little apartment?”

  “He’s hardly ever there. He has a new girlfriend.”

  “You’re going to put the art in his apartment?”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Carl said, and he sounded testy. She allowed the matter to drop.

  He was gone then, and Gara was stunned by the empty, final feeling in their apartment. She wandered around looking at the new spaces, avoiding his barren closet. This was not another of his brief business trips with a foreseeable end; this might be a separation of a month or more, and the back and forth could go on for years.

  As it turned out, it was two months before he came back to see her, and then he stayed for only five days, full of business talk and excitement.

  “I’m so busy,” he said. “Opening a new gallery is a lot of work.”

  “I want to come to see it,” Gara said.

  “You will.”

  “Why don’t we plan that I come to see you this time? I’ll come for the Thanksgiving holiday. I can take a week off.”

  “But I might be back here then,” Carl said. “I’m going to close the New York gallery. It’s costing me too much money.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gara said, but she realized it was inevitable.

  “Let’s wait and see who visits who over Thanksgiving,” he said. “My life is so unpredictable now. You have to be adaptable. You know I can never make plans until the last minute.”

  “You never could,” she said. “I’ve always accepted that.”

  She was trying to settle into her new routine. In some ways she was surprised to find herself so content. Carl called her every morning, for only a minute because it was so expensive, but after he called and she knew he was all right and still loved her Gara would become absorbed in her work. At night she would read in bed or watch television, able to do what she wanted to do when she wanted to do it, without worrying about anyone else. The refrigerator was nearly empty now, with small packages of leftover takeout lingering until the end of the week when she threw them all out. She tried not to think about sex, and although she often pretended his arms were still around her when she slept, she was also rather guiltily relieved to have the whole bed to herself.

  Their social life had formerly been couples. She realized that all her women friends were married, and so now she sometimes went to the movies alone when she had nothing else to do, and she discovered she liked it. There was no one else to complain that he wanted to leave in the middle of the movie, or to make her stay. The apartment was not so lonely anymore, but she still found herself counting the days until Carl might be back; doing magical numbers, alchemy, putting out her vitamin pills and thinking, He’ll be back before these are gone, he has to be back before the bottle is empty. Somehow the little routine made her feel safe, as if things had not changed that much.

  One brisk Saturday afternoon Gara went downtown to say goodbye to Carl’s old gallery, since he was going to close it. There was a new woman there at the desk, middle-aged, with dark hair.

  “Where’s Lucie?” Gara asked. “Off today?”

  “Lucie?”

  “You know, Lucie, the young Frenchwoman, the manager.”

  “I’m Martha. I’ve been here for two months. Lucie went back to Paris to work in Mr. Whiteman’s new gallery there.”

  “You mean now?”

  “No, when I came. Can I help you?”

  Lucie went to Paris when Carl did? She had been there for the past two months and he had never mentioned it? He had said she was going to run the gallery here in New York. Had he simply changed his mind?

  “No thanks,” Gara said, and left. She hadn’t even bothered to tell this woman, who didn’t know her, that she was Mr. Whiteman’s wife.

  She walked all the way home, a distance of miles, through the blowing paper, the honking traffic, the shuffling crowds, numb and confused. It was probably nothing. She was reasonably sure there was nothing going on between Carl and Lucie. Lucie was twenty-eight, with a slender, long-legged young girl’s body, and short, spiky, bleached-white hair. She had a pouting upper lip and a high, childish voice just this side of babyish, that went up at the ends of sentences as if they were all questions. Carl could not possibly take someone like her seriously.

  Nevertheless, when Carl called the next day Gara said, “I went by the gallery yesterday and there’s a new manager there.”

  “Oh, she’s terrible,” Carl said. “She’s just temporary.”

  “I didn’t know you took Lucie to Paris.”

  There was a tiny pause, as if she had caught him. “Well, she’s so good,” Carl said. “And she’s French, which helps me.”

  “France is full of French people,” Gara said mildly. “Why Lucie?”

  “What is this about Lucie?” Carl said. “She’s just a girl who works for me. People always take their staff with them when they relocate.”

  “But what about your son?”

  “What about him?”

  “I thought he was going to help you.”

  “He
is. He does.”

  “Then when did you decide to take her?” Gara asked, carefully keeping her tone very neutral.

  “I don’t know. What difference does it make?”

  “I just think it’s odd you didn’t mention it.”

  “Honey, there are many things about business I don’t tell you,” Carl said, sounding very irritated. The way he said “honey” was more like name-calling than an endearment. “I have a lot of financial problems and things on my mind.”

  “I wish you would share them with me.”

  “I do,” he said.

  “Don’t get upset,” Gara said. “I’m on your side.”

  “Then act like it.”

  “I am.” There was a silence. “I’m sorry,” Gara said, feeling foolish and guilty for being so annoyingly jealous. She wished for an instant that she could be Lucie: young, admiring, following the older man to make her future career, her whole life ahead of her. Lucie going out with young Frenchmen, smoking cigarettes, drinking in cafes, getting laid, not worrying about cellulite. And underpaid, insecure, worrying about AIDS, all the bad things about being young . . .

  “It’s just that I miss you so much,” Gara said.

  “I miss you, too.”

  “And I love you,” she said.

  “I love you, too. I’ll see you soon.”

  As it turned out, it was Carl who came to New York for Thanksgiving, but only for three days. He didn’t tell her he was leaving so soon until he had already arrived, and by then it was too late for her to try to rush back with him for a mere two days. He spent a lot of time on the phone, and they made love only once, and perfunctorily. They had Thanksgiving dinner at Jane’s apartment with Jane and her husband and Jane’s two children from her first marriage and their dates, and Jane’s sisters and their husbands and children. Looking at all these contented people, Gara found it difficult to be joyful about her own life or to find thanks in her heart for anything but friends and food. She supposed that should be more than enough when other people didn’t have even that, but she also felt Carl had ruined their eagerly anticipated holiday by cutting it so short and acting so distant.

  There were so few holidays. Christmas would be here soon. Christmas would be four months since he had left, and so far they had seen each other only twice. At this rate they would be seeing each other six times a year. They should be taking turns visiting one another, but she hadn’t even been to see him yet.

  “For Christmas and New Year’s let’s all go to the Swiss Alps!” Jane said. “Eliot, don’t you think you could manage that? Gara, you and Carl come with us. The advantage of living in Paris is it’s so close to all those great things in Europe. We’ll rent a house. A cheap one, and we’ll all share.”

  “What about it?” Jane’s husband, Eliot, said to them, looking interested.

  “We’ll see,” Carl said.

  Gara was sure that meant no.

  What was she to think about a marriage in which they saw so little of each other? Was this just the way it was in the beginning when Carl was trying to get on his feet, or would things get worse? That night when they got home she and Carl had a fight, instigated by her, which ended with her in tears and him angry. The next morning she apologized and they made up, because they had so little time together. And then he was gone, with nothing decided, nothing promised, everything still on hold.

  The next day Gara went out and bought a Supersaver plane ticket to Paris for Christmas week. When Carl called her she told him.

  “But what if I come to New York that week?” Carl protested.

  “Everything will be closed in New York,” Gara told him firmly. “You can’t do any business. I want to be with you in Paris for Christmas and New Year’s. It will be romantic and fun.”

  “But . . .”

  “My plane tickets were a bargain and they’re nonrefundable. What you have to do is make hotel reservations at some little place for us, you pick it. Unless Cary is gone, and then we can stay at his apartment.”

  “Oh, you don’t want to stay there,” Carl said. “It’s not civilized enough for you.”

  “Then get us a pension.”

  “They’ll be full.”

  “Not in the winter they won’t. Don’t you want me to come?”

  “Of course I do,” Carl said.

  “Then I’m coming,” Gara said cheerily, trying to make it sound like the adventure they had pretended it would be . . . or she had pretended to herself it would be. “We’ll buy each other Christmas presents when we’re there, and we’ll have a wonderful time.”

  After they hung up she cried again. There was only one reason she could think of why her husband didn’t want her to be with him, and that was because he would rather be with someone else.

  That night Gara couldn’t sleep, and finally gave up and watched the clock. She had often told her patients when they were trying to figure out whether or not their spouse was cheating on them that if you have an instinct about someone you know that well, then you’re probably right. Now she had to give that advice to herself, but she prayed that this time she was wrong and that there was a good excuse for Carl’s behavior. She felt it was a fruitless prayer. When it was three a.m. in Paris she called Cary’s apartment.

  Cary answered, sounding as if she had awakened him, which was what she had intended to do. She was sorry about that, but it was the only way she could also wake up Carl—if in fact he was even there—and set her mind at rest. “I need to talk to your father,” she said.

  “Gara?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll see if he’s here.” He came back. “I guess he went out.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, is he coming back?”

  “Yes, I’ll tell him you called. Is everything all right?”

  “It’s fine. I’m sorry I woke you up. I forgot how late it is there.”

  “That’s all right,” he said. “Goodnight.”

  After she hung up Gara sat there for a long time thinking. There is still something not right here, she thought. What is Carl doing sharing a tiny one-bedroom apartment with his thirty-year-old son who supposedly has a girlfriend and is never there but was certainly there tonight? He and Cary were never even that close. And could Carl possibly be out this late with clients? He never did that at home. As far as she knew he never even did it on business trips. So now the new Carl is a night owl, unless he’s peacefully asleep somewhere else, with someone else.

  Merry Christmas, she thought bitterly. Happy New Year. I just hope it isn’t Lucie, because that would mean it’s been going on longer than I ever would have believed.

  Gara packed her nicest clothes for Paris, although her heart wasn’t in it. She felt as if she was going to a funeral. Carl called to tell her he had reserved a room for them at the little Hôtel Lenox on the Left Bank, not far from his new gallery. He also told her Paris was cold and damp, and to bring warm things to wear. At a previous time in their lives that would have seemed romantic, but now it was only inconvenient.

  He met her at the Orly airport on a chilly morning under a lowering white sky that seemed as unfriendly as he was. He had a little French car now, another thing he had neglected to mention. They drove to the hotel and he told her he would wait in the bar and have coffee while she unpacked because their room was too small, that she should take her time. What might have been considerate seemed distant instead. Gara was acutely conscious that although they hadn’t seen each other for a month Carl hadn’t even kissed her hello. He had every sign of a husband who is having an affair and is guilty and resentful. When she was putting away her clothes she noticed that he had brought only one change of clothing with him, and thought it was odd. Of course, Cary’s apartment, where Carl was supposedly living, was not far away, so he could always get more, but it made her feel even more
temporary than ever.

  She unpacked and went downstairs to join him at the bar where they were still serving breakfast. The large comfortable chairs were far apart and the place was nearly empty anyway, which was almost as good as being alone. They drank cafe au lait neither of them wanted and looked at each other with inscrutable faces.

  “Is it Lucie?” Gara said.

  He reddened. “Is what Lucie?”

  “The woman you’re having an affair with. You can’t fool me, I know you too well.”

  “None of this has anything to do with her,” Carl said.

  “Where are you really living?”

  “Paris, I guess.”

  “I mean, where in Paris are you living, Carl?”

  He looked at his hands, front and back, as if he had not seen them lately and was surprised to see them still attached to him. Then he looked at her. “I want a divorce,” he said.

  Her heart banged in her chest. Her throat felt as if she had swallowed ice. She had been expecting a confession, but not this. She realized she had been ready to let him have his fling and get over it. But now all she could do was stare at him, devastated, and ask, “Why?”

  “I wish I still loved you the way I did in the beginning,” he said, “but I don’t.”

  Why did he have to say that? All she could do was fight for him in the best way she knew how. “You’re not supposed to,” Gara said. “You don’t have to. Things change. We love each other in a different way. You always say you love me. You must love me in some way.”

  “I do,” Carl said. “Like a friend.”

  He was twisting her soul and destroying everything she had believed in—that they were special, that they were above all this, blessed and charmed. “Couples go through these crises,” Gara said.

  “Don’t use your professional voice on me, Gara.”

  “You’ve never heard my professional voice.”

  “I don’t want to be married anymore,” he said.

  “Not married, or not married to me?”

  He hesitated for an instant. “Both.”