Smart Women

by Judy Blume

  Okay, so they’d only known each other a couple of months, but still, there was so much promise. This was what she’d had in mind when she’d left Freddy. And certainly, one of the reasons she had left was that they had brought their resentments to bed with them. How could you feel loving toward someone who was constantly putting you down? How could you respond in bed to someone you wanted to smash with a baseball bat? For a long time after Margo left Freddy she thought it might not be possible to find the kind of love she had imagined.

  Okay, so it was too soon to be able to trust completely, to feel secure all the time. There were still moments of panic, of doubting, but she got through those moments, often with Andrew’s help.

  TEN DAYS AFTER ANDREW MOVED IN, Margo invited Clare and Robin to dinner. Puffin came too, of course, since she and Stuart had also become inseparable. Clare had met Andrew a few times in town, but they hadn’t had the chance to get to know each other. And Robin was meeting him for the first time. Robin seemed more relaxed than at Clare’s party and Margo was pleased at how well dinner was going when Michelle turned to Andrew and said, “Did you know when we first moved to town my mother joined Man-of-the-Month Club?” Michelle paused for a second, making sure everyone had heard what she’d said and that she had their attention. Then she went on. “First there was her boss, Michael Benson . . . then there was that asshole physiologist from the University, who always had to have the last word . . . then there was Bronco Billy . . . remember Bronco Billy, Stuart?” But Michelle didn’t wait for Stuart to answer. She kept going. “Bronco Billy used to clean his fingernails with his pocket knife . . .”

  “Eeeww . . . gross . . .” Puffin said, listening intently.

  “Then there was . . . oh, what’s his name . . .” Michelle said, “the one with the bad arm . . .”

  Margo swallowed hard and fought back tears. Why did Michelle want to hurt her this way? Clare and Robin had stopped eating. Clare gave Michelle a look of such contempt that it should have shut her up, but it didn’t.

  “Oh, I remember now,” Michelle said. “His name was Calvin and he was a lawyer . . . and after him there was Epstein, Mom’s token Buddhist . . .”

  “That’s enough, Michelle,” Margo said quietly. She wanted to take Michelle and shake her by the shoulders, wanted to slap her face, scream, Why . . . why are you doing this?

  “But, Mother . . .” Michelle said, wide-eyed, “I’m just getting started.”

  Before Margo had a chance to respond, to really blow it, Andrew placed his hand over hers and said, “Oh, those were just alternate selections, Michelle. They don’t count. I’m a main selection. There’s a big difference. Besides, I thought you knew, Margo’s quit the club.” He smiled at Michelle and then at Margo, letting her know that it was okay, that he could take it. And Margo, relieved and deeply grateful for his understanding, for his sense of humor, smiled back. The awkward moment passed.

  “Well, Andrew,” Michelle said, “at least you’re a useful one . . . you can cook.”

  “Thanks, Michelle,” Andrew said.

  Everyone laughed self-consciously, then went back to eating the lemon chicken with snow peas.

  “A BUDDHIST NAMED EPSTEIN?” Andrew asked later, when they were in bed.

  Margo laughed. “He wasn’t born a Buddhist.”

  “I never knew Buddhists fucked.”

  “Oh yes . . . quite a bit.”

  “How was it . . . was it different . . . did he chant while you were making love?”

  “Not that I noticed,” Margo said.

  Then they both laughed and when they stopped they made love.

  18

  MICHELLE HAD SET OUT TO TEST ANDREW as soon as he’d moved in, because it was better to find out now if he could take it, and if he couldn’t, to get rid of him quickly, before she got to know and even like him. So she’d given it to them good at the dinner party, figuring if they couldn’t handle a little scene like that then they didn’t have a prayer of staying together. And really, if she could scare him away so easily then it was better for Margo to know, even though she might be angry for a little while. Eventually she’d get over it and thank Michelle for making her see the light.

  Also, Margo had been a bitch about the dinner party. She wouldn’t let Michelle invite Gemini.

  “Look,” Margo had said, “this dinner is for Clare and Robin to get to know Andrew.”

  “What about Puffin? She’s invited too.”

  “Puffin is Clare’s daughter.”

  “God, Mother, you’re always telling me who’s related to who around here, as if I’ve got an acute mental disorder.”

  “If Stuart had another girlfriend, someone who was not my best friend’s daughter, she would not be invited to dinner tonight. Now try and get that through your head, Michelle, and if you feel that you can’t behave in a civilized way, then don’t come to the dinner table . . . all right?”

  Michelle might not have come to the dinner table except that during English class, while Ms. Franzoni was telling them they could become members of a book club for only one dollar and get four books free, she had dreamed up her Man-of-the-Month Club number.

  And it had worked beautifully. She’d waited until just the right moment to face Andrew and tell him about Margo’s lovers. Michelle had expected to ruin the dinner, had expected Clare, Robin, and Puffin to get up and leave the house, had expected her mother to dissolve into tears, and then, just maybe, to be slapped around a little by Andrew so that Michelle could call her father and tell him that Margo had a live-in boyfriend who was into child abuse. Upon hearing this news her father would order Andrew out of the house . . . or else. Michelle wasn’t sure what the or else would be, but her father would think of something, she was sure.

  Michelle had been surprised that Andrew had taken it so well. You just never knew.

  That night, after the dinner party, after Clare and Robin and Puffin had gone home, Andrew and Margo had put on their vests and had gone for a walk. Michelle was in bed reading Franny and Zooey when Stuart burst into her room. “What the fuck were you trying to pull tonight?”

  Michelle did not answer. She kept her book in front of her face and pretended to go on reading. Pretended that she didn’t even notice that Stuart was standing over her, his face red, his breath coming hard.

  But then he swatted the book out of her hands and sent it flying across the room. “I said, what the fuck were you trying to pull tonight?”

  She could feel Stuart’s anger and it frightened her. But the best way to handle it was to stay calm. So she said, “Oh ho . . . aren’t we getting violent?” She scrambled across her bed and reached down to the floor to retrieve the book.

  Stuart yanked her back by the arm. “It’s about time someone got violent with you, you little bitch!”

  She was sure he was about to smash her. She tried not to cower, she tried to stare him down, and after a minute he punched her panda bear instead.

  “I just don’t want Mom to be hurt again,” she explained. “I don’t want to go through another Leonard.”

  “Leonard was years ago,” Stuart said. “Why don’t you just leave her alone for once. She’s happy. Or is it that you can’t stand to see her happy?”

  “I’m the one who has to suffer through it every time one of her love affairs fizzles. Me . . . not you!”

  “It’s her life, Michelle, so just butt out of it.”

  “It’s my life too. And when she’s miserable, I’m miserable.”

  “You better cut the cord, Michelle, before it’s too late. Besides which, she’s not miserable, she’s in love.”

  “Oh, sure. Now. Today. But what about next week, next month, next year? You’ll be gone, so what do you care? But I’ll still be around.”

  “You worry too much,” Stuart said. “You
’re getting to be just like Grandma Sampson.”

  “I am not! But somebody around here has to think ahead. And since when do you care about her anyway?”

  “I’ve always cared.”

  “Yeah . . . well, you’d never know it.”

  “I keep my feelings to myself.”

  “I’m glad to know you have feelings, Stuart. That’s a real revelation.”

  “Hey, bitch . . . I’m the one who defends you every time somebody makes a rude remark about you and your Indian maiden.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Wake up, Michelle . . . everybody’s saying you’ve got a thing going with Gemini.”

  “That is the most intensely stupid remark I’ve ever heard.”

  “Hey, look . . . it’s nothing to me if you’re gay.”

  “I am not gay!”

  “Or bi . . .”

  “I am not bi!”

  “Then don’t get so defensive. I just thought you should know what everybody’s saying.”

  “Some people don’t recognize friendship because they’ve never experienced it. All you know is sticking it up Puffin.”

  He grabbed her by the arm again, roughly, his fingers digging into her flesh. “I swear, Michelle, I’ll kill you if you ever say anything like that again!”

  She pulled away. “Get out of my room, you fucking asshole!” He turned and left. As he did she threw her copy of Franny and Zooey at him, but it missed, hitting the wall instead. She looked at her arm. His fingers had left red marks on it. She began to cry into her pillow. Life was not turning out the way she had planned. Everything was screwed up. How could they say those things about her and Gemini? Gemini was the best friend she’d ever had. Gemini even understood her poems, calling them outstanding examples of contemporary thought.

  A couple of times Michelle had thought about showing her poems to Margo. But at the last minute she’d always changed her mind. Margo was too busy. Margo wasn’t interested in Michelle, especially now that she had a live-in boyfriend.

  One day Margo would be sorry. Sorry that she’d had a daughter and hadn’t bothered to get to know her. Sometimes Michelle thought about slitting her wrists, the hot blood flowing out of her body. She pictured her family finding her on the floor, dead. They would blame themselves, each of them feeling guilty forever. Plenty of poets killed themselves. Even modern poets like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. The only trouble with killing yourself, or with dying in general, was that you wouldn’t be around to find out how everyone took it. It would be different if you could come back and say, Well, all right, now you have another chance and this time you better treat me right.

  Anyway, Michelle wasn’t about to kill herself. There were other ways to get even with people. Like when her poems were published and Michelle was interviewed on the Today show and Jane Pauley said, Tell us, Michelle . . . did your mother encourage you to write? Michelle would say, My mother? My mother was too busy with her boyfriend to even notice.

  Michelle got out of bed and walked across the room to her desk. She picked up a pencil, opened her special notebook, and jotted down a few lines. She yawned then, feeling incredibly tired. She closed her notebook. She would finish her poem in the morning. She got back into bed and fell asleep.

  19

  SARA COULD NOT BELIEVE IT. Her father, who had come to Boulder to be with her, had moved in with Margo Sampson. And Sara was never going to forgive him. Never! Now all of her plans, her secret plans, were spoiled. Because she had been thinking that maybe she would tell her father about her mother’s screaming fits and that Daddy would say, Well, Sara, in that case, why don’t you come and live with me? And she would.

  Jennifer said that Sara was more than disappointed. Jennifer said that Sara was depressed. And Jennifer should know. One time Jennifer had been so depressed she’d had to see a shrink three times a week. That had been a long time ago, when they were in fifth grade. Jennifer said that she would help Sara through her depression. Jennifer was the one who had clued her in on what was going on between Margo and her father in the first place.

  It was on the Saturday night before Halloween and Jennifer had come to Daddy’s house with her. The three of them had played a marathon game of Monopoly and then Daddy had cooked them baked ziti, which Jennifer refused to eat until Daddy explained that it was just spaghetti in a different shape. After dinner Margo had come by and she and Daddy had gone for a walk while Sara and Jennifer had watched a movie on TV.

  That’s when Jennifer had asked, “Are Margo and your father lovers?”

  “I don’t think so,” Sara said. “Do you?”

  “Yes,” Jennifer told her, “without a doubt.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I’ve had experience with my own parents.”

  “I don’t think you’re right,” Sara said. “They’re just friends is all.”

  “You’re so naive, Sara,” Jennifer said. “If you don’t believe me you can smell the sheets.”

  “Smell the sheets?”

  “Yes.”

  So she and Jennifer went into her father’s bedroom and pulled back the blanket and Jennifer bent down and sniffed the sheet. “What’d I tell you?” she said. “They’re doing it, all right.”

  Sara sniffed the sheets too, but she didn’t smell anything strange. Still, it gave her a funny feeling to think about her father doing it with Margo. She had noticed that one time Daddy and Margo were holding hands, but still . . .

  Their was just one way to find out for sure. On Sunday night, when her father drove her home, she asked him. “Are you doing it with Margo?”

  “Doing what?”

  “You know . . . sex.”

  Her father took a deep breath and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “What makes you ask?”

  “I’m curious.”

  “Well, it’s true that Margo and I are very good friends.”

  “But are you doing it?”

  “Sometimes, yes.”

  Sara squeezed her eyes shut for a minute.

  “Does that bother you?” her father asked.

  “I guess not,” Sara said, biting her nails. “I just like to know what’s going on.” Damn her mother! If only her mother had been nicer to Daddy then he wouldn’t be doing it with Margo. He’d be back home, where he belonged. “Margo’s not as pretty as Mom, is she?”

  “They’re very different,” her father said.

  “But Mom is prettier, don’t you think?”

  “This isn’t a contest, Sara.”

  Even if her father wouldn’t admit it, Sara knew it was true. Her mother was the prettiest woman in Boulder. Everybody said so. It would be nice to look like her mother, Sara thought. But she didn’t. She looked more like her father’s family, like a Broder. Sometimes she couldn’t remember what her father looked like underneath his beard, so she’d take out her photos, the ones she kept hidden away, and she’d study them. In the photos Sara could see that she and her father had the same eyes. Bobby had had them too. Sleepy-looking eyes that changed from gray to green, depending on the light. And she had her father’s thick hair which Jennifer called dirty blond, but which her mother called honey, and she had her father’s teeth, which was why she had braces and couldn’t eat raw carrots anymore. She wondered what Bobby would look like if he hadn’t died. He’d be about the same age as Stuart Sampson. Maybe they’d be friends.

  “Do you like Margo better than Mom?” Sara asked.

  “Sara, honey . . .” Daddy said, “your mother and I are divorced and have been for a long time.”

  “I know that! Don’t you think I know that? What I mean is do you like Margo more than you liked Mom when you first met her?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

 
“Why not?”

  “Because it’s not fair to compare how I felt at twenty-two and how I feel at forty-two. It’s very different.”

  “But suppose you were just meeting Mom now, for the first time. Wouldn’t you think she was beautiful?”

  “Yes, I suppose I would.”

  “I thought so,” Sara said.

  When her father pulled up in front of Sara’s house he turned off the engine and faced her. “You’re beautiful too, Sara. Your beauty comes from inside, like Margo’s.”

  “I’d rather look like Mom than like Margo,” Sara said.

  Daddy took her in his arms and talked into her hair, so softly that she could hardly hear what he was saying. “Just because Margo and I are close friends . . . are lovers . . . doesn’t have anything to do with the way I feel about you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I guess,” Sara whispered back.

  “Because I love you very, very much and nothing will ever change that.”

  Sara let him hold her that way for a long time. She liked being close to him. She liked the way his hair smelled from that shampoo he bought at the health food store. She liked the feel of his denim jacket, which was so old it was soft against her cheek. She liked being absolutely alone with him. She wished they were the only two people in the whole world. She wished that Margo and her mother were both dead.

  It was that night, after she’d said goodbye to her father, that she’d gone inside and had made the terrible mistake. She never should have told her mother that Daddy and Margo were sleeping together. And maybe she wouldn’t have if her mother hadn’t started in on her right away.

  “God, you stink when you come back from his place, Sara. Doesn’t he ever make you take a bath or brush your teeth? And look at your hair. I’ll bet you didn’t brush it once all weekend, did you? Now get into the shower and scrub everywhere, or else I’ll come in and do it for you!”