A New Kind of Bliss

by Bettye Griffin

  I felt she was safe for a while. Marsha wore a cap-sleeved knit sweater and plain tan Capri pants. Somewhere along the line she’d learned that classics worked best. It would prolong the stylishness of her wardrobe. “This isn’t any of my business, Marsha, but didn’t it ever occur to you that one day something like this might happen? Roger’s profession isn’t exactly known for career longevity.”

  She sighed. “You know, Roger never told me how he made his money, other than he was a hardworking entrepreneur. He had a couple of businesses set up that were pretty much bogus, as fronts to launder his money.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first wife who got duped into thinking her husband was an honest businessman.”

  “He did an excellent job concealing it from me. In fifteen years there were no calls in the middle of the night or things you might expect from a drug kingpin.”

  “You really had no idea, Marsha?” I hated to sound so doubtful, but come on. “Not in all that time?”

  She shrugged. “All right. I did start to get suspicious once I realized how he always kept his cell phone on. He kept it on vibrate and slept with it under his pillow. And how some of the stores he owned didn’t seem to carry much merchandise. But, Emily, by then I was so caught up in the lifestyle. If there was anything I wanted, I could just go out and buy it. He never complained about the bills or anything. Our kids went to the best private schools.” She chuckled. “Of course, some of their classmates were kids of mobsters, and some porn king had his kids enrolled at those schools, too. Then again, Eddie Murphy used to live in Englewood Cliffs, so there were residents who made their money without breaking the law.” A wistful smile formed on her lips. “Emily, there’s nothing like being able to buy anything you want without having to ask the price. It’s a whole new…” She trailed off, perhaps overcome with emotion for what she once had had and lost.

  I’d had a taste of what she described just from my brief time with Aaron. I understood why it left her speechless. It was a whole new kind of bliss, one that poor girls from Euliss could only dream about.

  “Of course, once you marry Aaron you’ll probably experience that,” Marsha stated matter-of-factly.

  I could only shrug at that.

  She continued sharing her memories. “Roger never complained about the bills. Plus, I was able to give my mother money.”

  My forehead wrinkled. Money was nice, but so was having a decent place to live. “I’m surprised she didn’t ask you to get her out of Sherwood Forest.”

  “She probably has the nicest furnished apartment in the place.”

  “Why didn’t she want to leave?”

  “She kept telling me Roger had to be doing something illegal, and if he got caught, the government would confiscate everything, including any co-op apartment or condo we bought her. And, of course, that’s exactly what happened.”

  “Gee, I’m sorry, Marsha. I wish there was something I could do to help.”

  She chuckled. “I guess we’re a pair, aren’t we? Living with our mothers like two old maids, except we’ve been married. And, of course, you’ve got a shot at getting married again. I’ve got no prospects.”

  I hated seeing Marsha look so sad. But she was right. Her future did look bleak, both for herself and for her children. Heaven knew what type of kids they were coming into contact with over there in crime-ridden Sherwood Forest.

  Then I thought of something, courtesy of Elias Ansara’s blond companion. “You know, there are some medical fields you can get into that require only a two-year course, like phlebotomy.”

  “Fla-what?”

  “Phlebotomy. Phlebotomists are the people in labs and hospitals who take blood.”

  Marsha made a face. “Well, that sounds pretty disgusting. Giving people needles? Filling up those vials with blood? I’m way too squeamish for that, Emily. Plus…well, I’m not as smart as you.”

  I guess everybody wasn’t up to handling patients who sometimes faint during blood draws or trying to find the tiny, mobile veins of babies, but I hated to hear her call herself stupid. “That’s no way to think about yourself, Marsha. Do you think every practicing physician and attorney in the country today finished at the top of their class? Who knows how many times they failed their medical boards or the bar exam. The fact is that the great majority of us possess average or just above average intelligence. But we can still make a living.”

  She shook her head. “I really think the best way out for me is to find another husband, one who’ll take care of me and my children.”

  Her attitude was straight out of 1950, but I realized that while my parents had always told me that I would go to college and have a profession, Marsha’s mother had probably instilled in her that the best thing she could do as an adult would be to find a good man. I was sure some mothers were still telling their daughters that, even in the twenty-first century. If those were the circumstances behind her attitude, I really couldn’t blame Marsha for thinking the way she did—we were all products of what we learned at home to a certain extent—but my heart ached for her just the same. She was about to find out the world didn’t work that way.

  Chapter 14

  I was almost sorry when the waitress discreetly laid the dinner check near Teddy’s elbow. It had been a fun evening spent at this out-of-the-way bistro near Euliss’s business park. Teddy had turned into a charming man, very different from the kid who wore a perpetual scowl back in the day. The scowl had disappeared after he’d gotten eyeglasses, and now I knew there’d been a connection between his poor vision and his continual grimacing, which had disguised his squinting. He had a wicked sense of humor that reminded me of someone, except I couldn’t recall whom. He had me in stitches as we trashed our hometown.

  I’d been updating him about the latest on our class reunion when the waitress had appeared with the check. “What a nice time I had tonight, Teddy,” I said, almost shyly.

  “How about stopping by my place for a nightcap?”

  Nightcap, my ass. I knew exactly what Teddy was getting at. There’d been an undercurrent of sexual tension flowing between us all evening. I’d felt it, and I’m sure he had, too.

  And I didn’t hesitate. “Sure!”

  I knew it was a little wrong to set foot in Teddy’s house, especially when I knew what could happen. But a part of me that hadn’t been satisfied in a long time made it impossible to say no.

  Teddy lived in the Trevor Tower—in Euliss, most of the apartment buildings have names—a thirty-story building on the banks of the Hudson with fabulous views, including of the George Washington Bridge, in the distance. I still wasn’t impressed with the Palisades, but I guess looking at the steep cliffs beat the alternative view, which would be the cityscape of Euliss, including a long-abandoned, onetime luxury mid-rise Tudor-style apartment house.

  Londontowne was a boarded-up symbol of white flight that had taken over when the surrounding garden apartments and mid-rises had become increasingly occupied by blacks. The rumor was that Londontowne’s owners refused to rent to black tenants, and they chose to abandon it as their residents left for greener—no, make that whiter—pastures. The owners did, however, have no problem renting out parking spaces to blacks at somewhat inflated rates. Anything to pay those pesky property taxes, I suppose.

  Teddy’s apartment was on the seventeenth floor, and he had a small terrace—the city dweller’s answer to a backyard. A compact gas grill and a side table maybe a foot in diameter flanking two beach chairs took up most of the space. Still, it was comfortable, and the green outdoor carpet he’d put down allowed him and his guests to go outside barefoot.

  By New York standards it was a top-of-the-line apartment, with beautiful parquet floors throughout, and long vertical windows, to make the most of the view. “Teddy, this is lovely.”

  “Thanks,” he said from the kitchen, where he poured white wine into stemmed glasses. “I’ve lived here almost fifteen years, and they keep going up and up and up on the rent.”

  I n
odded understandingly. The builder of Trevor Tower had the misfortune of completing construction just before white tenants began moving out of Londontowne across the street thirty years ago. Initially the tower had been occupied by mostly whites, with a smattering of blacks. Located just steps away from a Metro-North station, it was a popular choice for Manhattan commuters. But the racial make-up of the neighborhood became too uncomfortable for the new tenants, and when their leases expired they moved farther up the river to neighborhoods not yet infiltrated by blacks. The gym and the club room on the lobby floor closed, and the building became one of those income-restricted properties where tenants had to provide management with their W-2s every February. Of course, anyone with a computer was able to doctor his or her W-2s to reflect incomes much lower than what they actually earned.

  I remember being shocked when I moved to Indianapolis and learned that Al and I could rent an apartment that came with carpet and our choice of either blinds or curtains. In New York, renters get four walls and not another damn thing. Of course, rising rents are a fact of life no matter where you live. That was the biggest benefit I’d realized in the years since buying my house: my mortgage payment stayed the same, but my income rose. For Teddy and other tenants of Trevor Tower, it was hard to get ahead when your rent ate up your salary increase every year.

  “And the kiss of death came last year,” he said, handing me a glass and joining me on the couch. “Apparently, the ruling class decided that these apartments are too nice for us working slobs. A resolution was passed to start charging rates more in keeping with the market. So starting October first, I have either to cough up seventeen-fifty a month or move out.”

  “Seventeen hundred a month!”

  “Well, it could be worse.” He chuckled. “I could be living in midtown Manhattan, in which case the rent on a one-bed-room with terrace would be more like twenty-five hundred a month.”

  “Still, seventeen hundred seems like a lot of money for Euliss.” The mortgage on my town house was only six-fifty, something I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

  “Haven’t you heard, Emily? They’re redoing the entire waterfront. They opened a beautiful new library by the train station. They’ve got a new water taxi that takes people down to the Wall Street area that stops here. One of the celebrity chefs opened a new restaurant on the pier. A hundred dollars a person for dinner, and forty-dollar brunches.”

  I’d eaten there with Aaron to celebrate my new job, but Teddy sounded so disdainful, I chose to keep that quiet, too.

  “And apartments in those brand-new mid-rises right on the waterfront are going for about two grand a month. I predict that in five years this entire area will be all, or at least mostly, white.”

  I was dumbfounded by this. “But now it’s all black, and a lot of them can’t afford those rents. Where’s everybody going to go?”

  Teddy shrugged. “A lot of them are talking about down-sizing into studios, which they can get for fourteen hundred. Others are talking about becoming roommates and splitting half of a two-bedroom, which will go up to two grand, two thousand seventy-five if there’s a terrace. And most of the people who have balconies are trying to get into apartments without them, since that adds seventy-five bucks every month to what they’re paying.” He took a slug of wine, downing half the glass. “It’s a damn shame, if you ask me. Black people have lived in this part of Euliss for the last sixty, seventy years. Now we’re being run out of town like bandits in the Old West. The only ones who are safe are senior citizens.”

  “I don’t remember seeing any senior citizens in this building.”

  “No, not really. But this building isn’t the only one with the problem. They’re going to run everybody out of River Road and Hillside Avenue before they’re done.”

  “But there are private homes on those streets, Teddy. They can’t force home owners out.”

  “No, but they can offer them a ton of money. Most of those home owners are old people with old houses with no mortgages. I guarantee they’ll take it and move to Delaware or North Carolina.”

  He had a point. I found myself glad that the five-family house my mother lived in was a full half mile from the river.

  “The buyers will bulldoze those old homes and build modern ones in their place,” Teddy continued. “They’ll modernize those older apartment buildings and rent each one for thousands. Now, the folks who won those new-house lotteries, they’re the ones who’ll benefit. The values of their homes are going to skyrocket.”

  I remembered Mom telling me about the ten new homes they built on a block of River Road that had been affordably priced and awarded by lottery in an effort to get working-class people into homes of their own.

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ve still got a couple of months to make up my mind. But I know this much: I don’t want to worry about it right now.” He moved closer to me and gently lowered the hand that held my wineglass down. I let go of the glass when my hand was level with the table, but Teddy didn’t release my hand. “I’ve got a better idea.” His breath felt warm against my skin, and while I didn’t meet his face halfway as it moved closer and closer to mine, I didn’t pull away, either.

  I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I was a pushover. I wasn’t in Teddy’s apartment fifteen minutes before I was stark naked. The only time I’d undressed faster was in the gynecologist’s office, because I was always afraid that the doctor would show up before I’d pulled off my drawers and hopped up on the exam table with that oversized napkin covering my lower body.

  Teddy was a completely satisfying lover. Like Aaron, he had the gift, but unlike Aaron, he really knew how to use it. Making love was an art, and there wasn’t a single Crayola missing from his box.

  “So you’re seeing somebody, huh?” he said to me after Round Two, propping himself up on one elbow while I lay beside him on my back, gasping for breath.

  “Um…sort of. We’re having a rough spot right now. It can really go either way.” At least that sounded like it could justify my behavior. Even if I knew better.

  “He must not be too much on the ball if he’s not doing everything he can to keep you.”

  “I really don’t want to talk about it, Teddy.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to talk.” He pulled me to him, cupping my breast and squeezing my nipple as he rolled on top of me and reached between my legs. “You don’t have to talk at all, Emily.”

  And I didn’t say a word. Unless moans count as words.

  My guilt started the moment I drove off. It was after midnight when I left his apartment. He walked me to my car, opened the door for me, and before I could get in, pulled me close for a good-night kiss. “Let’s do it again soon.”

  I felt my body stiffen and quickly moved out of his embrace. The sex had been electrifying. I’d given myself to him with an abandon that surprised me, jumping his bones like he was the last barbecued spare rib on earth. Of course he wanted to do it again; what did I expect?

  Good Lord, what had I done?

  It took me less than five minutes to drive home, and by the time I crept into the apartment my stomach was knotted tightly enough to anchor a boat.

  I’d hoped Mom would be asleep, but she called out to me in a weak voice, “Emily, is that you?”

  I went into her room. “I’m home, Mom. Go to sleep. It’s late.”

  “I’ll say it is. Aaron called.”

  Shit. I’d told him that I was having dinner with an old school friend—the truth, of course—and that we’d probably sit up and gab till late; I’d considered the possibility of being out late, but with an activity other than talking. I’d hoped Aaron would take the veiled hint that he shouldn’t bother calling because I wouldn’t be there, but obviously he hadn’t. “What time did he call?”

  “Just before nine. He said he thought you’d be out late, but he just thought he’d try you anyway. He said he’d talk to you tomorrow.”

  He’d waited until a
s late as he could; nine o’clock was regarded as the cutoff time for calling the home of anyone who didn’t live alone. That was fine. I could tell him I’d gotten in by ten.

  The thought of covering up what I’d done with Teddy with a lie made me feel physically ill. I told Mom good night and headed straight for the shower. Scrubbing away all traces of Teddy’s touch didn’t make me feel any better. Yes, I was completely satisfied, sexually speaking, but emotionally, I felt lower than the average savings interest rate.

  I worried that I’d lie awake half the night, but I fell asleep right away.

  By late Friday morning I realized the underlying reason for my stomach cramps and fatigue. My period had started.

  There were times in my younger days, long before I knew that conception would be so difficult for me, when “seeing red” was reason for rejoicing, and this was a late addition to that list. Not because of any pregnancy fears, for of course Teddy had used a condom. All three times. But Mother Nature had just given me a reprieve, the best reason in the world for not being intimate with Aaron tonight.

  Fortunately, he took the news well. “I figured it would happen sooner or later,” he said when I gave him the news. “Why don’t I pick up some food, bring it over, and we’ll curl up on the couch and watch TV?”

  “That sounds wonderful,” I replied, relieved. I didn’t feel like facing the world, but suddenly I felt very eager to face Aaron. I wanted to see him. The very prospect excited me. He’d been so easygoing about not having sex this weekend. It appeared we were moving into an old-folks-at-home stage of our relationship, where it wasn’t about expensive restaurants, but just the two of us spending a quiet evening at home, talking and maybe necking a bit.

  I greeted him at the door with an enthusiastically wet kiss, enjoying how it caught him off guard. He mouthed the words, “Your mother?”