Hot Flashes

by Raskin, Barbara;

  That took care of that.

  “You know, not every conniving woman gets her way,” Joanne adds with convincing sophistication. “Lots of women want lots of things from lots of men that they don’t get.”

  “I’m not saying Elizabeth didn’t love Max. She did in the beginning, But she was just starting her career and I don’t think she wanted to be bothered with a husband. She certainly wasn’t going to stay here in Washington and I’m not sure Max could have moved to California and gotten himself a job comparable to his one here. Anyway, that’s not important. I’m just saying that Sukie acted dumb. Well, maybe not dumb, but she sure didn’t play her cards smart. She was holding a lot more power than she showed. She just didn’t respond in as smart a way as she could have.”

  But then none of us was ever very smart in that way. We seldom mixed business with pleasure because we took both of them too seriously. We never tried to translate people into advantages. We were not “users” or “takers”; upon rare occasions we “chipped” just a little. That’s why so few of us have decent incomes nowadays. We didn’t make use of our connections when we had them. Since so many of us mismanaged our careers, the majority of our generation now remains mired in midlife money crises—doing a little free-lancing and invariably getting refunds when we file our Schedule Cs.

  Although some of us persisted and pushed our way through to stable situations, most of us remain paralegals or associates (not partners) in respectable law firms, teachers without tenure (underpaid university adjuncts with unfinished doctoral dissertations), standup comediennes (without cafés or late-night talk shows), freelancers (without staff perks such as medical plans, stamp machines, stationery, WATS lines, or unemployment protection), mid-list authors (whose royalties never earn back their modest advances), and part-time professionals (without any hope of advancement.)

  “I always used to watch Sukie and her girlfriends, you know—her Washington girlfriends like Kate Constant and Marlene Bennett—standing around in her front yard looking at her azalea bushes. And to me, from where I was across the street, they all looked so foxy and smart, I was jealous. And they all liked each other so much; that always got to me. And sometimes they had some of their daughters with them and you could hardly tell them apart because they were as pretty and young-looking and happy as their daughters were. At least that’s the way it looked from across the street, if you know what I mean. Sukie was really different from my mother or my friends’ mothers. Anyway, whether that was a plus or a minus for Carol, I don’t know, but that’s what I used to see.

  “So the thing I couldn’t understand was why Sukie got so scared when Max moved out,” Miranda continues thoughtfully. “Carol told me Sukie was terrified of being alone and that she freaked out when no one was home with her. But I just couldn’t believe that; Sukie was the strongest woman I’d ever met.”

  A glassy lake of silence forms, ruffled only by unspoken words.

  Hot flash …

  Depression Era Babies have always been fearful. Since our earliest days, we suffered from a wide range of symptoms. Some of us get wild anxiety attacks or night frights (Dierdre calls hers nightterrors). A lot of us get migraines and some of us can’t swallow or stand up too quickly. We hyperventilate, harbor vague fevers and have constant bladder or yeast infections. Sukie had a phobia about high-speed highways, plus insomnia. Shirley suffers from eczema, Julie from asthma, Renée from psoriasis, Nora from heartburn and Carla from a bouquet of allergies. Charleen is plagued by middle-age acne and Brenda finally caught her roommate Mindy’s vaginitis by sleeping with Mindy’s steady after they broke up. Many of us have what doctors diagnose as psychosomatic neck, leg, lower back and heart aches.

  We also have a panoply of phobias. Sharon can’t drive across bridges. Once when she was down in the Keys near Marathon, Florida, where Radio Marti originates, she was listening to an American propaganda program, of which she could only catch the word Communismo growled in Spanish through the nasal passage of some Cuban fanatic, when she suddenly saw an unused railroad bridge, parallel to the causeway, that had actually been severed in the center to prevent its use by drag-racers. At the sight of this, Sharon promptly fainted in the front seat. Luckily, Chuck was driving. All her life, Sharon has dreamed of bridges with their centers missing and when she finally saw one, it proved to be too much for her.

  Judith also hates high-speed highways and accidentally knocked over and smashed her TV while rushing to turn off coverage of a stock-car race. Arleen is not crazy about escalators. She once had to flatten out on her stomach when we took the Dupont Circle Metro station “down” escalator, which is one of the steepest in the world. Most of the time now, Arleen rides the elevator reserved for handicapped people where she has struck up several serious friendships. Eleanor fears that the brakes in any car she drives will fail and that she will also. Helen is afraid of fractions, decimals, sets, stats and mathematical word problems.

  Margaret is terrified of mushrooms. She cannot walk near the vegetable section of a supermarket. When she enters someone’s home, she sits around worrying that she might accidentally see a mushroom and is often so anxious she actually has to ask her hostess if there are any mushrooms in the crisper of her refrigerator. She will not take a walk in the country or go to a museum where there might be a still-life painting of vegetables. Louise once pointed out to Margaret what, besides A-bomb explosions, most resemble mushrooms. But Margaret is not interested in discussing circumcised penises. For her, a mushroom is a mushroom.

  Our California contingent remains terrified of earthquakes and continues to devise various methods of detecting tremors. Amy, who is one of our better younger writers, unconsciously uses earthquake metaphors in her short stories and habitually kept a glass of water beside her San Francisco bed to watch for surface ripples produced by early tremors. Ellen, of course, added insult to injury by having some of her characters atop the Golden Gate Bridge during an earthquake. Even Sukie thought that was going too far.

  While we no longer have any fear of flying, a number of us now harbor a horror of high-speed highways. Sukie had begun monitoring fatal truck accidents on the Beltway that pinches the waist of Washington, D.C. Also known as I-495, this six-lane highway features huge semis that barrel along at eighty miles an hour, shaking Sukie’s little VW with vibrations as she scurried out to Bloomies in the White Flint Mall.

  Sukie also oversaw I-66, a speedy highway that whizzes out of Washington into Virginia with special HOV (high-occupancy vehicle) lanes established in an effort to increase car-pooling. Since cars with fewer than four occupants are required to use the inside lane, some commuters bought store-window mannequins that they dressed appropriately and propped up in their backseats to fool police into thinking they qualified as HOVs. Sukie was deeply involved with the ethics, practicality, and safety records of various HOV systems.

  I have thought about all this. It strikes me that we used to have a fear of flying because we didn’t like relinquishing control over our destinies to jaunty, craggy-faced pilots and slim-hipped, swaggering flight engineers. Now that we’re older and no longer resent take-charge people, what we really fear is being in control. Responsible. A car hurtling along a high-speed highway is the perfect objective correlative for this current concern of ours.

  Sukie was afraid of the fast lane. She was also afraid of highway exits, truck vibrations, rainstorms, minimum speed limits, overly friendly teamsters staying abreast with lady drivers in order to see one, mud spray from passing cars, broken windshield wipers, blow-outs, the different tempos at which different drivers pulled onto the highway and ambiguous road signs.

  Invariably every summer when we were at the beach, Sukie would ask me what she was supposed to do if she saw a sign saying Falling Rocks. Proceed? Abandon the car? Cover her head? Or if she saw a sign that said Bridges Freeze Before Roads? What did that mean? What was required? At this point in our lives, we have very little tolerance for ambiguities. Ambiguity is a one-lane one-way roa
d leading to high anxiety.

  Our fears have multiplied with our years. Many of us now dread charcoal lighter fluid, dead batteries, gas stoves, emergency landings, lead paint, soccer games, air pockets, contact sports, O-rings, falling air conditioners, unsafe sex, soft shoulders, pilot lights, white water, stampedes, off-season shellfish, liver spots and other up-to-date horrors. We see danger everywhere we look. We know what it is to feel constantly imperiled in a mortally dangerous universe.

  The sound of the doorbell rattles me back into reality.

  “Jesus,” I groan, shaking my head as I get up.

  This time it is Max standing outside, still damp from a shower, and wearing Levi’s with a Polo T-shirt.

  “Here’s … the mail,” he says, passing me a handful of letters.

  I nod and turn to put them in an oblong basket Sukie kept on the tall thin radiator in her foyer. The basket is already stuffed. Apparently someone brought in yesterday’s mail because I can see a number of unopened envelopes and a Fall Forecast flier from Woodies. The cover shows a suit that Sukie might actually have liked quite a bit. We know each other’s tastes in clothing just as we know each other’s shoe sizes, favorite candies and other weaknesses. We also know that we are all subject to flare-ups of fall fashion fever because, since childhood, we have measured time by academic, rather than calendar, years.

  The crowd of mail in Sukie’s basket makes me feel as if she is only out of town for the weekend and will return to deal with her unfinished business after the holiday. I can see bills through the sporty little windows of their envelopes and also one letter addressed to Mr. Max Amram. Not so long ago, Sukie had complained to me about how much time she wasted forwarding mail.

  Nowadays we all spend more time looking up and writing down forwarding addresses on incoming mail than ever before in our lives. We still receive letters for ex-husbands, bills for former lovers and postcards for kids who have flown the coop or left the nest—depending upon the nature of their exit. Those of us who increased our incomes by renting out bedrooms in our empty nests during tight times still provide daily mail services for former boarders. Once in a while we’ll even get a letter from some long-lost lover who suddenly wants to get together for a weekend in Atlantic City “ASAP.” Sukie told me she once received such an invitation along with a SASE apparently addressed to some safe-house or business address.

  I straighten out today’s mail, along with the other letters, and then, feeling slightly dizzy, lead Max back into the kitchen. Since he is behind me, I feel rather than view his shock at seeing Miranda. Miranda is visibly upset by Max’s arrival, but she regains enough composure to say hello as he hurries to the counter to fix himself a drink.

  “So?” Elaine prods Max. “What’s been decided?”

  Max leans back against Sukie’s little desk and takes several long swallows of his Scotch.

  “The service is going to be Monday at three o’clock in Brownell’s nondenominational chapel. I looked at it and … it seemed okay.”

  “Do you think Sukie’s dad or the kids will mind it not being in a synagogue?” I ask.

  “I don’t think so. Sukie’s dad is sort of a cultural, rather than a religious, Jew. And I think David and Carol will like this chapel a lot. Some staff person over there, an arranger or something, suggested we have an open-forum kind of service where any friends who want to speak just come forward. I thought that sounded pretty right for Sukie. What do you think?”

  We nod. So relieved are we not to be responsible for the arrangements that almost anything Max planned, short of a circus, would sound fine.

  “Then I bought one of the last three burial plots in the Rock Creek Cemetery. I haven’t gone over there yet to look, but I saw a … picture, believe it or not.” His eyes are glassy and he doesn’t seem to be totally in touch with what he is saying. “It was expensive, but I’m sure Sukie’s dad will take care of that. Oh. The lady at Brownell’s said she told one of you about bringing … some clothes over there?”

  We nod tensely.

  “Did you find out about a … coffin?” Joanne asks.

  “I took the one they suggested. The one they said was ‘appropriate.’”

  And with that, Max psychologically tunes out on funeral arrangements and turns toward Miranda.

  “So,” he says in a baiting voice. “I thought you were out at the Bay. In fact, I sort of thought Elizabeth might have gone out there to visit you before she went to California.”

  We all look at him. A shudder passes between us like a basketball during a pregame warmup.

  Miranda loses the color in her face, and her longish front teeth suddenly begin ploughing into her bottom lip as she responds.

  “I assure you she didn’t visit me.”

  Max shrugs, clearly stung by Miranda’s show of solidarity with us.

  “Well,” Miranda says with false matter-of-factness, “I guess I’d better get going.” Gripping her purse with white-knuckled hands, she nods goodbye to each of us, casting only a quick glance at Max. “I would like to come back tomorrow if that’s all right,” she asks, looking toward me for approval.

  I smile faintly and nod.

  “I’ll let myself out,” she says quietly.

  And then she too is gone.

  CHAPTER 9

  “So, what’ve you been doing here all day?” Max asks uneasily in the silence that coalesces after Miranda’s departure.

  “Not much,” Elaine says. “Trying to get ourselves ready to start looking through some of Sukie’s things, her papers and stuff.”

  “Have you come across her manuscript yet?” Max has his back to us as he pours himself a second drink. “David said she had a big hunk finished.”

  Joanne flashes me a cautionary glance, but during the second in which our eyes link and lock, Elaine invades our silence.

  “A friend of hers who’s editing it has it over at his place.”

  Knowing Max, I flinch in anticipation of his reaction to what he will erroneously consider an infringement of his rights as well as an abridgement of his authority.

  “Oh Christ,” he swears, shoving the scotch bottle back against the splash tiles. “What friend? Who?”

  “It’s just … a young friend of hers,” Elaine answers nervously. “I don’t remember … the last name.”

  “God damn it!” Max returns to the table and slams down his glass. “You let her last piece of fiction walk out of this house the day after she dies? I don’t fucking believe it. You crazy or what?”

  “Hey, Max,” I say gently. “He had it. We didn’t give it to him, Sukie did. And if he hadn’t told us about it, nobody would have known where it was.”

  “Well, who is he? Is it that lover of hers? That wacko Vietnam vet?”

  Now we form a stony wall of silence. We are not ready to accept indignation from Max on any score.

  “What the hell’s his name anyway?”

  “Hey, cool it, Max,” I counsel, standing up to enhance my authority.

  So he sits down again and tries to regain his self-control. Lighting a cigarette, he samples his drink. But he is clearly seething with anger.

  “Look,” he says more calmly. “It’s not right. A million different things can happen to a manuscript under these circumstances. Just for openers, it can maybe get lost. Also, it can maybe get mangled by some phony editor or get published under someone else’s name. Right? So I think we should go pick it up from what’s-his-face.” He turns inward for a moment, delving for a sound. “Jeff,” he exults. “Jeff Conroy. Do you know where I can find his number?”

  Silence.

  But Max has been waiting for us to give him a hard time, so he’s ready. “Well, let’s just take a look in Sukie’s little black address book.”

  And without a pause, he reaches out for the khaki shoulderbag that has sat in the center of the kitchen table since Mary Murphy deposited it there Friday morning.

  Both Elaine and Joanne cringe.

  It is a matter of protocol. T
he question is whether or not it is right to ransack a dead woman’s purse. The question is whether or not The Enemy should be allowed behind allied lines. Although Max obviously knows Sukie’s purse from a previous life, when it was in some sense community property, the question is whether or not he abnegated his access to Sukie’s belongings when he aborted their marriage.

  Instinctively, Elaine had made a move to stop Max at the very first moment, but then had stopped herself instead. So we all end up watching Max open Sukie’s purse. He removes a see-through makeup kit, a crowded wallet, and then the soft, supple, black address book that Sukie had carried around the world. The little leather book is clearly tired; the corners are curled, the covers bent, and most of the black alphabet tabs missing.

  “What do you want, Max?” I suddenly explode.

  It is perfectly clear Max is worried that Sukie’s new novel might be about him. Heartburn has frightened half the husbands in Washington. Talk about endangered manuscripts.

  “What’s your problem, Diana?” Max replies while his fingers continue rippling the pages of the address book. “I want to find this guy Jeff and get the manuscript back because it belongs to my kids. It’s as simple as that. Okay? Anyway, here it is,” he announces, somewhat appeased. “Jeff Conroy. Oh shit. There’s no phone number, just an address. Well, I’m going over there—3203 M Street. Who the hell can live on M Street? It’s all discos and bars.” He begins to slip the address book into the breast pocket of his shirt.

  “Uh-uh,” I say. “Put it back in her purse, Max.”

  He does.

  “And I want to come with you. Give me five minutes to get dressed.”

  At first he looks as if he’s going to say no, but then he sits back down at the table again, so I hurry upstairs.

  In the second-floor bathroom, I strip and slip into the shower. Under the hot spikes of water I think about Jeff. I think about Miranda. I wonder what happened between Elizabeth and Max and I worry about getting Sukie’s clothes to the funeral home. I think about women and men and wonder how Sukie would want us to treat Max. I wonder about Max.