by Iris R. Dart
On their fifth date, after the babysitter left and she was certain Nina was asleep, Bertie locked the bedroom door and went to bed with Donald Solow. And when he crept out at six in the morning to go home to be with Jason, she sat in the kitchen, drank a glass of milk, chewed on a baby’s teething biscuit, and sobbed.
She couldn’t stand him, or herself for doing it, but she was lonely. Very lonely. No, that wasn’t a good enough reason. The next time he called, she would tell him she didn’t want to see him again. Say it nicely. Sweetly. Want to be friends. Think highly of you. You’re a sweet man, but it just isn’t…doesn’t…can’t work. That’s what she wanted to say. To end it. But he never called her again. One good, strong, healthy, sexy man. No, it wasn’t Donald Solow.
And it wasn’t the real-estate magnate she met at a party, who, after one quiet dinner of fun conversation, went back to New York and sent her a bracelet from Tiffany’s with a note saying that he couldn’t stop thinking about her. And in the weeks that followed sent dozens of flowers and then called and said he’d send the company plane to fly her to him in Bermuda, and when she asked for a telephone number so she could call him back after she’d decided about Bermuda, he said he couldn’t give her his home phone number because his wife wouldn’t understand.
And it wasn’t Frederick the handsome psychiatrist friend of a woman she’d met at an art opening. A practicing successful Jungian shrink who lived his own life by astrology. Rosie would have loved that irony.
“When’s your birthday?” Frederick asked Bertie over drinks.
“September twenty-second,” Bertie answered. Maybe he was going to make a note of it so he could send her flowers.
“Oh, God,” he said, genuinely perplexed, “you’re opposing my Venus.”
“Pardon?”
“Well, so much for that. It’ll never work with us.”
Frederick didn’t even walk her to her door.
And it wasn’t Martin, her married hairdresser, who told her about every other time he’d fooled around on his wife. Or Minos, the Greek restaurateur, who hovered over her cafe table, and when the place cleared out, and Bertie still sat reading a paperback while Nina napped in her stroller, came by and said, “Excuse me, but can I take you home?”
Bertie looked up, confused.
“No, thanks. I have my car.”
“I meant to my home,” he said with a straight face.
Bertie tried to laugh it off.
“Oh. That’s funny. A joke, eh?”
“No joke,” Minos said, moving closer. “One of my bus boys, he’ll watch the sleeping baby for an hour.”
Bertie stood.
“Check, please,” she said.
“No!” Cee Cee had screamed. “You said, ‘Check, please’?” And then laughed endlessly on the phone when Bertie told her about the incident.
“Oh, Bert,” she said through her giggles, “that’s where we’re different. I woulda given him a little cooz-oh for the ouzo.”
“Cee Cee,” Bertie said. The story had been a serious one for her about the terrible behavior of men to single women.
“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” Cee Cee had laughed. “Check, please. You kill me. Gimme a break. So what happened?”
“He wouldn’t give me the check. He refused. Finally, I just wheeled the stroller out and left.”
“Well, Bert, if I were you, you know what? I wouldn’t go back there again. At least not by yourself. You have to wait until Cee Cee comes back to town.”
No, it wouldn’t be Minos.
Nina looked darling in her white shorts and blue and white striped top, and everyone at the tennis club oohed and aahed as Bertie walked and Nina held on to her hand around court four, which was where the girl at the desk had told her she could find Libby Collins.
Court two, court three. Bertie spotted Libby on court four.
“Must have a hole in my damn racket,” she heard Libby say. A pistol. She was playing with three men. When she spotted Bertie and Nina, she stopped.
“Bertie Barron,” she said, “and that little doll daughter.” One of the men must be Wally Collins, Libby’s husband. Collins Contracting. And another man, “Bart Higgins. Nice to know you.” And the young guy with the red hair. Freckles. Lots of freckles. Flushed from too much sun. Probably the pro.
“David Malcolm, Bertie Barron,” Libby said. “And what’s the little doll’s name?”
Before Bertie could answer, Nina piped up. “I’m Nina,” she said. Everyone laughed.
“Why don’t we have lunch?” Libby asked Bertie.
Bertie was relieved. She hadn’t played tennis since camp, and she was sure if she tried in front of all these strangers she’d be terrible at it.
“Have to go to the bathroom,” Nina whispered, tugging at Bertie’s tennis skirt.
“Take her right over there to the ladies’, hon, and I’ll see you over at the dining room.”
“Nice meeting you all,” Bertie said, giving a general nod. The three men nodded back.
When Bertie and Libby and Nina were seated near the window in the dining room, Nina perched in her booster chair spooning an orange freeze into her mouth, Libby gave Bertie a tap on the arm and a little smile and said, “Well. He likes you.”
“Who?” Bertie asked, even though she knew as sure as she was sitting there Libby was going to tell her that Wally’s friend, that Higgins guy, wanted to ask her out. Men that age always sparked to her.
“He’s here from California making a deal. Malcolm. Wanted to know all about you. Malcolm Industries. Father’s Rand Malcolm.” Rand Malcolm, industrialist. Involved in politics. Bertie tried to remember the face of David Malcolm. Handsome. That’s all she remembered. Red hair.
“Wants to call you,” Libby said as if it was the best news she had ever delivered to anyone.
“No, Lib,” Bertie said. Some good-looking guy from California. Here for a day or two. Needs company for dinner. Exactly what she didn’t want.
“He’s rich,” Libby said, downing her own glass of water in a gulp, then Bertie’s.
“I have all the money I need,” Bertie said. No. No. No more fix-ups.
Libby must have known by the look on Bertie’s face that she wasn’t being coy so Libby would convince her.
“I’m hungry!” Nina announced. Libby gestured for a waiter.
“You sure?” Libby asked Bertie, making one more try.
“You bet,” Bertie said.
David Malcolm called her that night. Goddamn it, she thought.
“Bertie,” he said, “please forgive Libby Collins for giving me your number. I assure you it was under the duress of my telling her that if she didn’t, when I renovate my buildings in Sarasota I won’t use Collins Contracting on the job.” Bertie wasn’t amused.
Fuck off, Cee Cee would say to somebody who didn’t interest her. Just plain fuck off. “Oh,” Bertie said. Somehow David Malcolm braved her cold response. In fact, as the conversation went on, he seemed to have a pleasant personality.
“The kiss of death,” Cee Cee would say about that. “That’s when you should have known to run for the hills, Bert,” Cee Cee would tell her. “That’s the first tip-off that they’re no good—if they sound good on the phone.” Now he was telling Bertie about how he’d never married, but that he was crazy about children.
“They’ll lie,” Cee Cee would say. “They’ll lie through their fuckin’ teeth to get in your goddamn Christian Dior panties. They’ll do any goddamned thing they can. And afterwards, kid, forget it. I mean, forget it. After that they do what they want.”
“…for a drink,” he was saying. Something about coming over or meeting for a drink.
“I don’t drink,” Bertie said. God, she sounded snotty. Nasty, maybe. She didn’t want to sound nasty or mean. But really, another evening with a guy in what business? She didn’t know anything about industry. Real estate. Whatever it was. She was certain that if he’d never married, he didn’t know a thing about children. They had nothing in common. Ha
ndsome. He was very attractive. She remembered that. Red hair and freckles. Lots of freckles.
“When?” she asked, sure she shouldn’t ask.
“Tomorrow night,” he said. “My last night here.”
God, Bertie thought. Exactly what she didn’t want. Why bother?
“Just for a quick drink or coffee or something,” he said. “I’ve got a dinner meeting later that I can’t break. So why don’t we get together for an iced tea?” he asked. “Before my dinner meeting and before your dinner plans.”
How polite, she thought, not volunteering that she hadn’t had a dinner plan in months, and now—“Why not just say hello?” he asked.
Why? Bertie thought. It’s absurd. He’s leaving. I’m not going to do this to myself.
“Fine,” she said.
David Malcolm was handsomer than Bertie remembered, but his handsomeness was an unimportant feature compared to the rest of him. He was sweet and gracious and bright and worldly and funny, and Bertie hated how much she hoped he’d excuse himself and go find a phone and come back to say he’d canceled his dinner meeting and wanted to take her to dinner. Just to be prepared, she’d warned the babysitter to be flexible, that she could be home in one hour or several.
“I’ll get back to Florida again,” he told her, “in a few weeks,” and then he took her hand. All right, Bertie thought. Here comes the seduction. Make me think there’s a future.
“Great,” she said. Any minute he’d make a move. Now he was looking at her fingers thoughtfully, the way she used to look at Michael’s. First he turned her hand palm up, then palm down. His hands were pale and freckled, and at his wrist below the cuff of his light blue shirt, she could see silky golden red hair like the hair on his head. When she imagined what the rest of the golden red hair on his body must look like, she was embarrassed by the thought.
“We’d better go,” he said. “I’m sorry. I wish I’d planned this a little better.”
When they got to Bertie’s house, he walked her to the door, squeezed her hand, said, “Call you,” and left.
Sure.
Cee Cee called that night and Bertie didn’t even mention her date with David Malcolm. It was as if there was something fragile about it, and if she did talk about it, maybe it would go away, and he wouldn’t call or wouldn’t come back to Sarasota. As if something bad would happen if she mentioned his name, especially to the irreverent Cee Cee.
But Cee Cee didn’t want to know anything about Bertie that night, anyway. She was rambling on about a house she wanted to buy, and an actor named Zack she was dating who had been discovered in some show off-Broadway and “some studio people saw him, Bert, and he’s gonna be huge-o-major, maybe even as big as me.” She laughed. But Bertie knew she was serious when she asked, “Whaddya think, Bert, two humungous egos in one house? Me and Zack. We’d kill each other inside a year, isn’t that right?”
“Maybe not,” Bertie said distractedly.
“Hey, maybe you’re right,” Cee Cee said, grasping for straws. “Maybe not. I mean, two people if they really want to can—Christ, Bert, wouldya listen to me? Why do I always think it’s gonna work? I oughtta know better. I oughtta be like you and just say there’s no way some magical guy is gonna drop in outta the sky and save me, and the sooner I quit expecting that one of ’em will, the better off I’ll be. That’s old Bertie’s philosophy, right?”
“Mmm,” Bertie said, thinking about David Malcolm, of the way he had held her hand earlier.
“Well,” Cee Cee said, “I gotta go get dressed. Zack’s comin’ over and we’re going to a screening.”
“Night, Cee.”
A screening? So late? That’s right, it was three hours earlier in Los Angeles. Here it was ten o’clock. Nina long asleep. Maybe she would read herself to sleep.
The phone rang. Her heart was pounding. No. She wasn’t going to hurt herself this way—want it to be David and be disappointed when it wasn’t.
“Hello.”
“Bertie?”
“David,” she said, certain her voice gave away entirely too much. More than she wanted to. More than she should.
“God,” he said. “I was really a jerk. When I think that I could have been sitting somewhere with you, looking at your pretty face, instead of listening to some boring bankers drone on endlessly about business. Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I think you’re a terrific woman and that if it would be all right with you I’d like to call you from Los Angeles tomorrow. Just to chat and to get to know you better.”
“Of course,” Bertie said, but she was worried. This was feeling too good. And the next day, when she looked at the clock and subtracted three hours from the time, ten forty-five here, seven forty-five there, too early, one-fifteen here, ten-fifteen there, probably hasn’t arrived yet, three-thirty here, twelve-thirty there—won’t call now, probably at lunch. At five, the phone rang just as she got back from picking Nina up from dancing school. She heard it as they were coming up the walk. Nina was gabbing about how Robin, her friend, had pushed her at nursery school and how Mrs. Weingarten saw it and moved Robin to the back of the line on the way to recess.
Bertie was in the door and at the phone, but by the time she’d grabbed the receiver and held it to her ear, whoever was trying to reach her was no longer there. Damn.
She sat at the dinner table only half-listening to Nina. Excited in a way she couldn’t remember being in years, maybe ever. Who had made her feel this way? Made her mind refuse to think of anything else?
She picked at her dinner. This is dumb, she thought again. Schmucky is what Cee Cee would call it. Who was this man? Son of a rich father, Libby Collins had said, Malcolm Industries. So what? That’s all she knew. That, and a one-hour date during which he told her how much he loved Libby and Wally Collins, how he grew up in Los Angeles, how he spent a lot of time in northern California and bought land and developed property and…something like that. She should have listened more carefully instead of looking. Counting the freckles on his handsome face.
“Time for your bath, Neen,” she said.
“Oh, Mom, I don’t want a bath. Please, no bath.”
“Nina, come on, why do we have to have a discussion? Let’s take our plates and clean up in here and—”
The phone. Seven o’clock here is four o’clock there. Another ring. That would be perfect. Day winding down. Figured I’d be here. Another ring. “Okay,” she told Nina, “no bath.” She picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Bertie? David Malcolm.”
He still used his last name. Of course, because they were strangers. Nina skipped off to her room, and Bertie sat at the table, the plate containing her barely touched dinner in front of her, and took a deep breath. Take a moment. Not to sound too glad.
“Hello, David,” she said. “How was your trip?”
After that he called constantly. Sometimes in the morning. Sometimes very late at night, with apologies for the hour, but saying that his day had been full and he had thought about her all day, but just couldn’t find a moment when there wasn’t some reason why he couldn’t get near a phone. And she would tell him it was just as well because she had been running all over with errands and her daughter. But she was only telling half the truth since she deliberately had every one of her errands done by noon here, nine o’clock there, so she would be home by the time he’d even dream of calling.
There were three weeks of endless conversations. Bertie usually sitting, melted, in a chair or flopped across her bed like a teenager. At the end of the third week, David mentioned something about his education at Stanford. He had gone to school there during the war, she thought she heard him say. War? What war?
Young. He looked young, but not that young. Not too young. Bertie was thirty-five. How much younger could he be? No. She’d better…during the war?
“How old are you?” she asked him one night.
“Twenty-seven.”
Oh, Jesus. That much younger. Bertie was glad he couldn�
�t see the look of surprise on her face. Robbing the cradle.
“Do you have any idea how old I am?” she asked. She knew she looked younger. Maybe thirty-three, maybe thirty. But wait until she told him the truth. She had to tell him. She didn’t want to, but before this thing got started, she ought to. Well, actually, it was already started, but at least now everyone could back off before they were too involved or…
“To the day,” David Malcolm said. “September twenty-second, 1944.”
“Oh, God,” she said. “How?” Libby. It must have been Libby. Of course, but…
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Not one bit.”
Sweet, she thought. And funny. This is funny. He’s known all along. That I’m…an older woman. She was an older woman to this boy. Guy. Man. At thirty-five. Now that he’d said it didn’t matter to him, the idea of it all made her smile. Good heavens.
When she was twenty-two, already married to Michael, David Malcolm was fourteen and in prep school. Hah. Imagine if he’d walked up to her then, a little red-headed flat-topped boy and said, “How’s about a kiss, sweetie?” A kiss. Bertie grinned at the thought. They’d never even shared a kiss—only barely touched—and she was smitten, gone, fallen for a man she’d seen twice in her life. She loved his gentle voice on the phone and his sweet sense of humor. He told her all about what he called his “overprivileged youth” and all the adventures he’d had “by virtue of the remarkable accident of my birth.” About his extraordinarily powerful father’s influence on his life, and all of it was told without any pretense or any attempt at seduction, but simply as an unfolding of himself.
At first, almost because she felt he was telling so much she had to tell at least a little, Bertie began to talk about herself. Her own childhood, how it was to be raised by a single mother, how sometimes she heard herself saying things to her little daughter that sounded like her own mother.
“Bertie,” David said one night. “I really want to see you. Get to know you better. Spend some time with you. And I’ve been trying, I honestly have, to schedule coming to Sarasota, but between my own business and a lot of business I’m doing for my family, I can’t seem to get out of here. Why don’t you come and visit me here?”