by Susan Isaacs
Other than my lawyer, who had to drag the facts from me, she was the only person I told about finding Barry getting his licks from Noreen. I confided in her the history of my cold, dead marriage, warmed only by the heat of sex. I said to Barbara, Swear to me you’ll never tell anyone, and she said, Of course, of course. And yet it seemed, once the first shock had worn away, my Aunt Estelle was a little too sanguine over my ditching a future doctor and my mother’s reflexive disappointment at my failure was too muted.
Sometimes I felt that Barbara was simply a modern-dress version of my Aunt Estelle. Wasn’t it wonderful to have a happy husband! And children! The light of your years. And the joys of creating a gracious home, to spend a long afternoon stalking the perfect guest towel.
But Barbara didn’t take her mother seriously at all. She’d chuckle, “That woman’s pretensions are boundless. Boundless. She goes around telling people about my staff of servants. Can you believe that?” The Drexlers had a cook, a houseman, a couple of maids, a gardener, and a laundress. “And she actually says things like ‘sorbet’ for ‘sherbet.’ She’ll say, ‘What lovely blackberry sorbet.’ I can’t even look at Philip when she does that because we’ll both start laughing.”
Barbara seemed to be her own woman. She followed her own interests, not her mother’s. She went to the ballet, theater, concerts, lectures. She planted prizewinning azaleas. She read fiction in the south of France, poetry on the window seat of her boudoir. She knew enough about politics to hold her own with me in conversation, and she was astute enough not to fall into the shallow cynicism outsiders often do. She was a pillar of the Embroiderers’ Guild, a fellow of the John Donne Society.
And she had done exactly what she was supposed to do.
By those same standards, I had screwed up unforgivably.
But she shared her French antique canopied bed with a bald and nasal Philip. I had Jerry. And that night, he came home.
I heard him as he came in but pretended to be sleeping. I stirred a little as he sat on the edge of the bed, letting a feigned dream sigh escape.
“Marcia, it’s me. Jerry. Marcia?” He shook my shoulder gently. I did the standard Hollywood awakening, yawning, blinking my eyes a couple of times, murmuring a little in the back of my throat.
“Jerry?”
“Hi. You awake?”
“Yes.” I added a starlet bit, running my tongue over my allegedly dry lips. “What time is it?”
“Late. The plane was supposed to land at ten thirty, but we ran into lousy weather and had to circle for an hour and half the passengers were airsick. And then I couldn’t get a cab. I thought we could go out somewhere, have a drink, talk.”
“I’m not dressed for anything fancy.”
“I can see that.” He put his hand under the covers and ran it over my thigh. And that was how I knew things were dandy again.
“Jerry, let’s talk.”
“Sure,” he said, continuing to rub, putting on a little more pressure. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Jerry, your appeal isn’t working.” I sat up and pulled the cover high across my chest. As I did, I noticed he needed a haircut; a fringe hung over his ears. I brushed it back. The only light in the room came from the moon, but it was sufficient to spotlight Jerry, to play upon the contrasts in his hair and bring out the phosphorescence of his pale skin.
“Of course my appeal is working,” he said, crooking a finger over the edge of the blanket and pulling it down.
“We have to talk,” I said, but I was already taking off his tie, unbuttoning his shirt, pulling off his undershirt, and running my hands over his chest.
“Talk to me,” he said, helping me out of his pajama top. “What do you want to say?”
“Kiss me.”
Could the Philip Drexlers and David Hoffmans sit in moonlight and shine so that they had to be embraced to contain their brightness? Could they kiss so deeply as to bring tears?
If asked, and even if not, my Aunt Estelle would explain that handsome men couldn’t be trusted. Things came too easy to them, you see, so beneath the shining countenance was a soul the size of a cockroach.
My mother would ask, You know the expression beautiful but dumb? Yes. Well, they didn’t make it up for nothing.
Barbara told me I had to distinguish between enchantment and love.
Jerry lay on top of me, grinding himself deeper and deeper into me. My arms flailed up and down the mattress, banging down on it, then fluttering, like a bird trying very hard to fly.
And with Jerry propelling me, I could soar.
Fifteen
Please come,” my cousin Barbara pleaded. “Really, you haven’t been out to the house for ages. It’ll be fun.” Each July Fourth, Barbara and Philip threw a picnic, a triumph of Americana, a ketchup-covered celebration of their assimilation. A Dixieland jazz band played on the back lawn. Barbara wore a casual summery cotton whipped up by her favorite American couturier. Aunt Estelle went out of her way to make the black faculty members of Philip’s law school feel comfortable. My mother squinted in the sunlight. Philip’s roommate from Choate wore yellow slacks with splotchy white flowers on them. Uncle Julius wanted to know, “Is that how they dress for casual or is that guy a fairy?”
Hot dogs and hamburgers and steaks sizzled on a brick barbecue overlooking Long Island Sound. Silvery pails filled with ice were studded with cans of soda and beer and the inevitable sugar-free cola. Frank, the Drexlers’ houseman, who had probably been a major war criminal, guarded the vat of corn on the cob. “You vant a corn, madame?” he would demand.
You could bring your racquet and play tennis on their court. Bring your suit and swim in their solar-heated pool. Bring your lotion and sit on the beach that brought their backyard to an end and watch the impudent little waves of the sound lap the sand. Or bring your lover and walk in the woods that stretched over the eastern four acres of Drexler-land, lie on the mossy earth, or stoop to pick wildflowers.
“I have a couple of appearances with Paterno. By the time I’m finished, it’ll be too late. Next year, Barbara. Okay?”
“No, it’s not okay. Everyone wants to see you.”
“Who is everyone?”
“My parents, my in-laws, you know.”
“You wouldn’t be planning any surprises, would you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you wouldn’t be planning on trotting out any of Philip’s friends, would you? Lock us away in a room and give your mother the key?”
“You’re certifiably paranoid. Look, of course Philip is going to invite his friends. But that has nothing to do with you. I swear it. Now that you’ve kissed and made up, you can even bring Jerry.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. I want you to understand something. I love you the way you are. I only want for you what you want for yourself. I’m not my mother. I’m not your mother. Anyway, I’m dying to see him.”
“This is some sort of a ploy.”
“Marcia, I swear, I’ll hang up on you. Really, I’d like to meet him.”
“So would my mother. It would give her a good excuse for having a stroke on your patio and blaming it on me. But it won’t work. He’s upstate again.”
“Well, with or without him, I insist you come and I’m not going to listen to any excuses. Whenever you’re finished politicking, just grab a cab or a plane or something and get over here. Okay? Remember, I love you and I’m going to hang up now so you won’t be able to give me any arguments.”
Certainly no one else gave me arguments. Jerry called late at night on July third, briefly expressed his condolences that I had to spend the holiday with my family, and spent the next fifteen minutes telling me, in fine detail, how the Onondaga air made him horny and how he would like to have me writhing underneath him. I lay on my stomach as he spoke, on top of a heating pad, hoping the codeine I had taken for my menstrual cramps would soon take effect.
“Do you miss me, Jerry?” I was nauseated also.
“It’s so terrible without you.” I inhaled. “Jerry, can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“It’s hypothetical. What would you say if I told you I wanted to have a baby, wanted to get—”
“Marcia, come on.”
“It’s just a question.”
“I would tell you what I told you the night you moved in. I don’t want to get married. I don’t want to have children. Sweetheart, you know how I feel about you and sometimes I’m very tempted, but it wouldn’t work.”
“Do you think it would be that much of a change from what we have now?”
“Yes. It would change everything. Really it would. Look, I wish I could make you happy….”
“You do, Jerry. Honestly. It was just a question.”
“Wait till I get home. You’ll see how happy I can make you.”
The next day, my handbag filled with enough tampons to see me through menopause, I rented a car and drove up to a park in northern Westchester, where the combined police forces of the county were having their annual Independence Day outing. Many of them were Irish, and of these at least a third looked good enough to be Jerry’s distant relatives. They lounged around the softball field waiting for their turn at bat, shirts off, smelling of beer and sweat. I would have liked to have been second base. Instead, I followed Paterno as he shook hands and smiled. He wore a plaid sports shirt opened an extra button’s worth to show he was one of the fellas. He chatted with policemen’s wives, mostly young and fair women, dressed in aqua pantsuits. He spoke about capital punishment and what a lovely sunny day it was. He rumpled the hair of at least ninety children and afterward found a men’s room where he could wash his hands. “There’s head lice going around,” he confided to me. “It’s reaching epidemic proportions.”
From there I followed his station wagon, festooned with BILL PATERNO CAN DO IT banners, to another park about ten miles south to meet Lithuanians. Then to the Bronx, for the Italians, where we both relaxed, trusting the food. “Marcia,” Paterno said, holding a fresh fig in his hand and looking at it fondly, “the new polls look good. Appel’s falling, plummeting.”
“How much ahead are you?”
“We’re even now. Neck and neck. By next week I should be ahead.” He sighed then, remembering probably that he had two more picnics and a fireworks display that day, and another two hundred thousand hands to shake before the September primary. “Let’s get going,” he said. “I think we can stop off at the Botanical Gardens before we hit the Zoo. There’s an extra half hour we picked up somewhere along the line.”
I asked him if he would mind terribly if I left his caravan and visited my relatives on Long Island. Knowing me well enough to realize I was not traitorous, Paterno looked at me as if I were loony. I had never before asked for time off during a campaign.
“Gee,” he said.
“It’s a shindig at my cousin’s house. Philip Drexler. Remember him?” Philip had written a tasteful check for one thousand dollars to the campaign.
“I remember him,” Paterno said.
“Well, he’s having this big party and a lot of his rich friends will be there and I just thought it would make sense to go up there and smile and tell everyone how terrific you are. Unless you feel you want me at the Zoo….”
“No, that’s all right. Go. Go ahead. Have a good time.”
I considered it, although by the time I reached my cousin Barbara’s house on Peacock Point, a community on the north shore of Long Island for the congenitally rich, I began to feel that shaking hands with baboons at the Bronx Zoo would be preferable to a Shochet-Green-Lindenbaum-Drexler holiday.
“My dear!” Mrs. Drexler said, as I walked up to the front porch. “How beautiful you look. Politics must be wonderful for the complexion. Look, Alfred,” she said to her husband, Philip’s father, “doesn’t Marcia have the most flawless skin you’ve ever seen?”
“She certainly does. How are you, young lady? It’s good to see you. Are you still working for Mr. Paterno?” Mr. Drexler, tall and thin and slightly stooped, looked like an Episcopalian bishop, self-possessed but understated to the point of seediness. He sounded like a bishop too, saying cahn’t for can’t and clearing his throat whenever he didn’t want to respond to a question. His grandfather had discovered copper somewhere in South America. His father had found zinc. Mr. Drexler did not have to find anything. He had houses on two islands and three continents and spent his time writing treatises on the Marranos, the Jews of Spain and Portugal who were forced to convert during the Inquisition. He was a respected Judaic scholar. He was an even more respected philanthropist, giving away at least two percent of his yearly income and keeping a lot of charities happy.
“Yes,” I managed to say, “I’m still working for Paterno. We’re right in the middle of a campaign now.”
But of course Mr. Drexler knew all about the campaign, even though he viewed the Democratic Party as the institutional embodiment of the mob; it was his obligation as a citizen of the Republic to know what was going on. And Mrs. Drexler had heard about it too, although she was generally too busy supervising the making of silk flower arrangements for her houses and attending planning sessions for charity fashion shows to read about the details in the New York papers. “You know I went to Wellesley with Jean Gresham, don’t you, dear? She was the governor’s mother. Of course she was Jean Willets then. I hear she still hasn’t gotten over it.”
“She means the shock,” Mr. Drexler explained.
“Marcia knows what I mean. Don’t you, dear?”
I said I did. We stood on the front porch of the house, a huge Victorian mansion which Barbara once estimated to have thirty-four rooms. It was painted a white so pure and so clean that it seemed nearly sacred. “Do you mind if I sit down?” I asked. The combined assaults of picnics, heat, bare-chested Irishmen, Italian sausage, and my period hit me simultaneously in the head and gut.
“Right here, dear,” said Mrs. Drexler, guiding me to a big rattan porch chair. “Alfred,” she said to her husband, “go get Marcia a large glass of water. Not too cold and please hurry. She looks faint.”
Mr. Drexler looked at me and obviously agreed. He trotted into the house.
I did not like feeling faint in front of the Drexlers. It was another confirmation that the lower classes were weak and deserved to remain lower class. Mrs. Drexler could be bleeding to death, but she’d still spend her Volunteer Wednesday at New York Hospital and attend her college reunion and order fresh potpourri from her herbalist in London. She took out a handkerchief and patted my temples; it was scented with bluebells. “Your time of the month?” she whispered.
“Yes,” I whispered back, and then added in a normal voice, “And I was running around Westchester and the Bronx all morning with Paterno.”
“My dear! Why?”
“It’s July Fourth, Clarisse,” Mr. Drexler explained, placing a tall thin glass of water in my hand. “All their people have picnics then. The candidates travel from one to the other, shaking hands and eating ethnic foods. Although after Jimmy Gresham, you’d think they’d have more sense. Feeling better, Marcia?”
“Yes. Thank you.” The Drexlers were peering at me, concerned but—unlike my relatives—under control. Mr. Drexler gave me water, not the phone number of Albert Einstein Medical School’s top specialist in heat prostration. Mrs. Drexler patted my head; she did not once suggest abandoning her opera subscription for the next six months to care for me, nor did she confide the story of her neighbor’s niece, who died from severe menstrual complications.
“Marcia? Marcia?” It was my Aunt Estelle’s voice, and soon she followed it out the front door, wearing a flouncy beige dress and an enormous-brimmed hat, so she looked like Scarlett O’Hara’s distant relative. “My God! What’s wrong with you?”
“She’s fine, Estelle,” said Mr. Drexler, not looking up. “A little too much heat. We have things under
control.”
“We’ll send her out to you in a few minutes, dear,” Mrs. Drexler said to her. It was as if a drill sergeant had bawled, “Dis-missed!” My aunt about-faced, murmuring “Fine, fine,” and marched back into her daughter’s house. Or her son-in-law’s house. And Mrs. Drexler flashed her husband a very brief but meaningful glance and he blinked back in understanding. Then they both smiled back at me. I felt as though I were under the protection of the prince of a major city-state.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll just sit here for a couple of minutes. Then I’ll join everybody.”
“Of course, dear.” And the Drexlers walked toward the party.
I suppose Barbara must have paid extra for it, but at that moment a wonderful cool breeze blew across the porch, stirring the skirt of the pink cotton dress I was wearing, drying up the perspiration. How wonderful to have the Drexlers, even if it meant taking Philip as part of the package. They were polite and nice and restrained. Refined. But still not completely able to leave well enough alone. They gave me about four minutes and then sent Barbara out.
“Oh,” she said. “Glad to see you’re not dead.” She bent over and kissed my cheek. “Want to take a nap or anything? I can file you away in a guest room for a couple of hours.”
“No, I’m feeling better. Your in-laws are really nice.”
“I know. Remember how panicked I was about meeting them, right after we became engaged? I was afraid they’d snub me or convince Philip that marrying someone from Queens was an act of blatant self-destructiveness. But they were so lovely. And very fond of you, incidentally. By the way, when you’re up to it, your mother’s out in back.”
“How is she?”
“Cheerful and charming.”
“Very funny.”
“Very true. She’s sitting under a crab-apple tree, being romanced by David Hoffman. Isn’t that nice?”
“Shit!”
“I swear to you I had nothing to do with it. He found her all by himself, and apparently it was love at first sight.”