Almost Paradise

by Susan Isaacs

  What did she think, that new underwear would make everything all right? That she could be as sarcastic and hostile as she pleased, that she could make a public spectacle of him by playing crazy lady on TV and then trot around the bedroom in dark green panties and he’d lunge for her? It was such a stupid, simplistic solution, like a women’s magazine piece: How to Rekindle Your Husband’s Ardor. Jiggle up to him in brand new sexy underwear. He won’t be able to resist. It was the sort of trick the old Jane would laugh at, the new one would embrace: cheap, quick, and meaningless.

  He strode across the room, took the bra, and shoved it back into the box. She was in Connecticut, at a planning meeting with that creep psychiatrist for some phobia conference. He’d love to call her at the guy’s office, break into the meeting, and say, “Guess what, Jane? You wasted your money. My money. The underwear isn’t going to work.”

  Nicholas spotted her hair almost immediately, but she was halfway across Washington Square Park before he was sure it was she. From the back, in shorts, sneakers, and a T-shirt, she didn’t even look like a teenager; she looked like a ten-year-old. Her arms were laden with a huge watermelon and so burdened it looked as if the melon weighed as much as she did. She took tiny irregular steps. He knew it was she when she stopped at a bench, put the melon down, and turned slightly. She was too far away for him to see her face. The front of her shirt had a face he couldn’t distinguish either. But the name Alice Guy-Blaché—the first woman film director—was emblazoned across her shirt. It had to be P. MacLean.

  He was across the park before she had time to pick up the melon. “P. MacLean,” he said to her. “Right?” Her face, pale, with a few freckles across a long nose, turned so white he thought she’d faint onto the bench, over the watermelon. “What’s the P. for?” he asked.

  “Pamela.”

  He picked up the melon. It was heavy, even for him. “Do you usually eat this much?” he asked.

  She shook her head, then realized she had to speak. “It’s for a watermelon basket. For a birthday party.”

  “Yours?” She shook her head again. “Let me carry it for you. Are you going home?” She nodded. “Do you live around here?”

  She swallowed. “Bank Street,” she said. Her voice was as tiny as she. “You don’t have to bother.”

  “That’s all right.”

  They walked through the park. When they reached the street, a taxi swerved, nearly running them down at the curb as the driver spotted Nicholas. Pamela looked terrified. “It’s all right,” he said. “It happens all the time. I haven’t been killed yet.”

  Words finally broke from her. “I feel terrible about your doing this. A friend got it for me for six cents a pound and it’s fourteen at the Key Food near my apartment, so that’s why I have to carry it. From her place to—” She glanced up at him. “I’m very nervous, talking to you.”

  “I know,” he said. “Don’t be.”

  “Could I be quiet for a few minutes?” she asked. “Just till I get used to the fact that you’re carrying my watermelon?”

  “Sure,” he said. She walked like a child, slightly pigeon-toed. He was touched by the combination of her shyness and candor.

  She wasn’t pretty at all. Her nose was too long and her lips were too thin and the chin of her heart-shaped face came to a sharp point. Still, there was something appealing about a girl who knew she had only one good feature and, with sweet desperation, did the most she could with it. Her hair, held up on either side by a blue barrette, fell halfway down her back. Her hair was it. Her figure was like a boy’s who would never make a team: delicate, with knobby freckled knees and elbows. Under her Alice Guy-Blaché T-shirt, she wasn’t wearing a bra, but she didn’t really need one: the only indication of breasts were two small dark swellings under the l and the h.

  “Where did you get that T-shirt?” he asked. “Oh, can we talk or are you still observing your few minutes of silence?”

  “My mother had it made for me. I’m doing my dissertation on Guy-Blaché’s work in America. Are you familiar with it?”

  “No. As a matter of fact, all I know is her name and that she was the first woman director.”

  “You mean you haven’t heard of The Monster and the Girl and The Girl with the Green Eyes? Or Tarnished Reputation?” She was smiling. She had small spaces between her teeth. “Everyone asks me what’s my topic and I tell them and they say ‘Alice who?’”

  “Alice who?” Nicholas said. “Just kidding. Did she make any sound films?”

  “No. Her last was Vampire in 1920.” She lifted her hair for a minute, as if to cool the nape of her neck. The sleeve of her T-shirt gaped. She had a fluff of red hair under her arm.

  “Just out of curiosity,” Nicholas asked, “how come you’re in my seminar? I don’t begin until 1969.”

  “No,” Pamela said.

  “No?”

  “You began in 1940.”

  “That’s right,” he said, “How did you know?”

  Pamela looked away from him and focused on the watermelon. “Because,” she said, “I’ve had a crush on you for eight years.”

  “Do you have a telephone?” Nicholas asked. The apartment was so bare, he was afraid she couldn’t afford one. There were two chairs in the living room, but all her books were spread on the gray carpet, and he realized she used the floor for a desk. The carpet was worn so thin patches of brown backing showed through in spots.

  “In the kitchen,” Pamela said.

  “Why not here?”

  “Because it’s so small in there I have to stand, so I can’t get comfortable and talk and talk. That’s how I keep my phone bills low.”

  “You’re very smart.”

  He felt so relaxed, stretched out on her narrow bed with its sheets printed with tiny nosegays tied with pink and yellow ribbons. Her cheek rested on his chest. He stroked her hair and leaned down to kiss the top of her head. Pamela put her arms around him and kissed him. “Not very smart. Just plain smart,” she said.

  He ran his hand down her naked back. She was so slender and small. He was enchanted by her daintiness. It was as if he were playing with a doll. A doll with perfect breasts that protruded no more than two joints of his finger. “Even if you’re just plain smart, you know that if you kiss me like that you’re only going to get me started again and I’ll never make my phone call. I need two minutes. I was supposed to meet my agent for lunch an hour ago and he’s probably still waiting at the restaurant. Wait here. Don’t move anything.”

  “I have to move something because we only have a half hour before class. Twenty minutes, because it takes ten to get there.”

  Nicholas massaged the delicate vertebrae that protruded down her back. “Forget the phone,” he said. “You and I have more important business to discuss.”

  Nicholas watched Jane from the bedroom: She stood before her wall-long bathroom mirror, fanning her lashes with her hand. As soon as the mascara was dry, she applied still another layer.

  “Could you stop for a second?” Nicholas called.

  “I can’t. I don’t have time. You can talk.”

  She was dressed in white linen slacks with red and white high heels and a sheer white bra. A white blouse hung on a hanger over the bathroom door.

  She didn’t look real any more. He knew part of it was the comparison to Pamela; Jane looked grotesque, a swollen human female. But there was her artificiality too. She couldn’t leave herself alone. Every time she got dressed she behaved as if she were dressing for a Vogue shooting; everything—belts, jewelry, stockings—was part of an intricate plan. And her makeup: along the marble counter in the bathroom were enough jars, bottles, sponges, and brushes to service the entire cast of a De Mille epic.

  “I only have another five minutes,” she said. She emerged, putting on the white silk blouse. He realized, objectively, that she looked good. Even beautiful. She had finally grown into her big, strong looks. When they went out together, men’s eyes turned to her. Not the way women’s did to him
, but she was noticed. But her appeal, her beauty, was external. It wasn’t real; it looked as if it could be peeled off. It had nothing to do with what was inside her. The old plain Jane was the one who had been beautiful.

  She held her chin aloft so as not to get makeup on the front of the blouse while she buttoned it. She couldn’t do anything naturally any more.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Lunch with an editor from Redbook. They want me to do a column.”

  “On what?”

  “That’s why we’re having lunch. And you don’t have to sound so sarcastic. It would be a general interest column. A new topic every month, so you don’t have to worry that I’d be writing about our marriage and violating your privacy.” She went to her closet and came out with two red handbags and held them before her, as if making a momentous artistic decision. She chose a flat rectangle of red straw. “This may not have occurred to you,” she said, “but people are interested in what I have to say.”

  “If your name were Jane Heissenhuber, do you think anyone from Redbook would give a good goddamn about you?”

  “I’ve made a name for myself.”

  “As the big-mouthed, neurotic wife of a famous actor.” He waited for a slap. He was ready to slap her back. Instead, she marched to her dresser, upended a white handbag, and picked over the contents, transferring some of them into the red. “Did you hear me?” he boomed at her. Her back stiffened, but she did not respond. She opened a drawer, took out a jewelry box, and put on a pair of pearl button earrings. “Don’t you realize people are laughing at you?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Give her a microphone and she’ll do anything. Don’t you realize how pathetic it is? Listen to me. I’m trying to save you from becoming even more of a public laughingstock. You go on TV and—”

  “You’re the one who’s sick,” she said. Her voice was oily and false. “It so happens that after I was on Talk, NBC got over five hundred letters, and they want me back on in a few weeks to talk about how I plan dinner parties.”

  “You’re pathetic,” he said. “You really are. That jerk will say, ‘Well, Jane, what’s it like to have all the biggest and most glamorous stars gathered around your table?’ and you’ll say—”

  She hurled the white handbag onto the bed. “Don’t you have anything better to do? Just leave me alone.”

  “I won’t leave you alone!” The blood was rushing to his head. She did it all the time, made him so furious he lost control. His head felt ready to explode. “You’re a goddamn parasite, that’s what you are. That’s all you’ve been. You’re using me—”

  “I am not!”

  “You’re using me the way you always used me. You know goddamn well why you married me. And you got just what you wanted.”

  “What are you talking about?” Her mouth hung open. She looked stupid.

  “You married me for my money.”

  “Money? Are you serious? We had nothing. I had to go out to work and—”

  “You knew damned well it wouldn’t last forever. You liked the idea of my money and my social position. Don’t bother to deny it. You were very ambitious, but you didn’t have five cents to your name and you had no place to go. That lovely, charming family of yours didn’t want anything to do with you. So you grabbed onto the golden ring. What the hell did I know? I was twenty goddamn years old.”

  “It so happened I loved you,” she said. Her voice was so mild he knew she had to be putting it on. “I loved you very much.”

  “Oh,” he trilled, “thank you so much, my dear. And I, of course, loved you too.”

  “Nick, please, I can’t take any more.”

  “I remember how my heart beat, pitter-patter, when I first saw you. It was so deeply and profoundly moving. You the brilliant, gifted actress and me, a dumb fraternity jock. And how you deigned—”

  “Nick, stop. We have to stop! What kind of a marriage is this? At least we can—”

  “At least we can admit you were a gold digger. A nice, bright, pleasant gold digger, but still and all, you loved that smell of New York money, didn’t you?”

  “I married you because I loved you, Nick.”

  “You know, I’d at least respect you if you were honest with yourself.”

  She picked up her handbag and held it in front of her chest as if it would protect her. “Do you want honesty?” she demanded. “Then be honest about why you married me. You wanted a doormat. You married me because you wanted—no, you needed—someone who was so blindly in love with you, so grateful for whatever attention you could spare, that she’d lie down and let you walk all over her. And I did. Anything you wanted, I was only too happy to give you.”

  “You’re wrong, Jane. You never had the foggiest idea of what I really wanted.”

  There was silence. They faced each other for what seemed endless minutes, staring into each other’s eyes, waiting to see who’d break first. He wasn’t going to let her off. Her eyes, huge, dark blue, surrounded by the thickened lashes, looked like eyes in a bad painting. Cheap waif eyes. He stared into them. Jane broke first. He knew she would; she had no real class, no courage. She turned her back to him, took a string of pearls from her jewelry box, stuffed it into her handbag, and rushed out of the bedroom.

  Nicholas followed her into the hallway. Her heels clacked on the curved stairway that led to the first floor of their duplex. “My parents want to meet us tonight for drinks and dinner. Seven at my mother’s.” She continued to clack downstairs. “Did you hear me, goddamn it?”

  She stopped on the second to the last step and looked up. “I won’t be able to make it,” she said.

  “Listen, I don’t ask very much of you any more. All you have time for is being your own person, and I say fine, go ahead, be your own person, whatever that is. But you know damn well you’re not doing anything that’s so important it can’t wait.”

  “It so happens,” she said, “that I’m taping The David Susskind Show. But please give your parents my best. Tell them I’m glad…” She paused. “Tell them I’m glad things worked out for them.”

  “It’s all terribly one-sided,” Pamela said. “I know so much about you. It’s not that I tried. I just have a retentive memory.”

  “What do you know about me?” Nicholas asked.

  They had been lovers for a week. It wasn’t just sex, although that was a big part of it. Nicholas loved how affectionate she was. She did not just carry on a conversation. She carried on a conversation curled into a small ball in his lap, snuggling beside him or holding his hand and tracing the veins in his arm with her finger. He was sitting on her threadbare gray rug, his back against the wall, his knees bent to form a cradle for Pamela’s head. She, in turn, was tracing the shape of his hand as it rested on her stomach; the span of his outstretched fingers was nearly as wide as her pelvis.

  “I probably remember everything I’ve ever read about you. Isn’t that awful? That you played lacrosse in college and you like symphonic music but don’t like opera that much. And you hate oregano. Is that true?”

  Nicholas laughed. “Yes. But I can’t believe it was ever written up. Where was it?”

  “Let me think.” She closed her eyes and put her hands over his, pressing it harder onto her stomach.

  “Does that help you think?” he asked. He was getting aroused but trying to hide it. Pamela had to be wooed out of her shyness. He couldn’t just grab her; he’d tried that the first time and she’d gotten horribly upset, saying Please, no, shivering even in the heat of her un-air-conditioned apartment. He had to approach her gently, kissing her hair, her cheeks, cuddling her, almost like a child, until slowly she began to open up, curling herself around him, running her hands over him until they were like two wild, eager little animals racing over his body. Each time, at the start, he had to reassure her: It’s all right. Easy, Pam. Shhh, don’t be afraid. But when she opened up, she wanted to hear him let go. To talk dirty. Tell me, she’d insisted that first time. Tell me what i
t feels like. He’d felt embarrassed, barely able to say what he realized she wanted to hear; it was like scribbling dirty words on a church wall. But as he spoke she grew more abandoned, and so did he, and now he could barely contain himself until she got worked up enough for him to turn from sweet talk to smut. He loved it; each filthy sentence raised them higher.

  But she was being softly girlish. “Your hand feels so nice,” she said. “Oh, I know where I read about the oregano.”

  “Where?”

  He felt something was wrong. Pamela lay absolutely still but then pushed away his hand and sat up, curving her legs to the side. “It was in some woman’s magazine. An article about you and your wife.” She put her head down, then lifted it to look at him. “Nicholas, I don’t feel right about this.”

  “I told you,” he said, “the marriage hasn’t been good for a long time.”

  “But it’s still a marriage. Nicholas, I’m not cut out for this. I don’t want to be a one-week or a one-month stand or—”

  “Pam, stop it.”

  “It’s going to end, it’s got to end, and I won’t be able to stand it. Okay? I wish I could be sophisticated about this, but I can’t. I’m twenty-two years old and I’ve spent twenty-one years of my life in New Jersey and that doesn’t equip me for casual liaisons with worldly men. I’m sorry the whole thing ever got started. It was like a dream, and I guess I was the sleepwalker. But I have to wake up. It’s the wrong kind of dream. I don’t belong in it.”

  He reached out, pulled her against him, and would not let her get away. “In all the things you read about me, did anything ever imply that I was a ladies’ man?” For a moment she stayed pressed against him, motionless. Then he felt her shake her head. “All right. This is not a casual liaison. Do we understand each other?”

  “Yes,” she said against his chest, then peered up at him. “But I don’t want to be a kept woman.” Her lower lip was thrust out.