by Susan Isaacs
Leo Hoffman’s hand was dehydrated into a claw, and he clutched my arm for support. I murmured “hmms” and “how interesting” as we walked. He told me about the lichen of Pennsylvania and why the forsythia was a highly overrated shrub. “Does your family live in the country?” he asked, as we approached the front door again. I suspected he already knew the answer.
“No. My father’s been dead for twenty-five years. My mother lives in an apartment building in Queens.”
“I see.” I helped him into his chair in the living room, a large wing chair that emphasized his diminutiveness. “I hear my son has asked you to marry him.”
“Yes. And I’ve agreed to.”
“I see.” He sat absolutely still. “I hope it works,” he said finally. Then, although it was just ten thirty, he excused himself for his afternoon nap.
I walked alone through the woods of High Oaks, past groves of wildflowers, white and lacy, tall and proud and yellow, down to the stables, where I waited for David. I ran my hand over a rough wooden fence in a proprietary gesture. My child would spend summers here, making wildflower bouquets. Winter vacations. I imagined a small red-cheeked child, screeching with delight, throwing half-formed snowballs at David and me. I grabbed the fence.
“Anything wrong?” David asked as he rode up.
“No. I was just hanging around, feeling overwhelmed.” David seemed to ride well. At least his posture was good, he didn’t fall off, and both he and the horse seemed content. “Do you ride well?”
“Yes. Why are you overwhelmed?”
“All this upward mobility.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“I know. That’s the amazing thing, how fast I’m adjusting to all this. Having a maid make the bed.” I watched him get off the horse. “The only problem with that is we can’t get right back into bed and mess it up again.”
“Are you in the mood for messing up beds?”
He was patting the horse’s nose, still paying a little more attention to it than me. “Yes.” I put my arms around his waist and hugged him. “David, I want you so much.”
We did not make it back to the house to mess up the bed again. Halfway through the woods, David asked, “Do you think we could manage standing up?”
For a man who once surrounded himself with darkness, David had learned to love the light. We undressed in a patch of sunshine. When we kissed and I closed my eyes, I sensed his were open. He watched me as I climbed on a rock and, when our heights were equalized and we began making love, he said softly, “Let’s watch each other.” We were so close I could only see his eyes, but they reflected the entire forest, gleaming green and gold and brown.
“Can we have another rendezvous in the woods?” I asked, as we drove home late on Labor Day. “Even after we’re married?”
“Just pick your rock. I’ll be there.”
As we entered the Lincoln Tunnel to Manhattan he said, “We have to make wedding plans. And honeymoon plans. Where would you like to go?”
“France. What did you think I’d say, Niagara Falls? I want to stay in fabulous hotels and gorge myself and go to museums and make love twice a day. Okay? Or do you want to go someplace more exotic?”
“I was considering Miami Beach.”
“David, don’t even kid about that.”
As an afterthought, I had him drop me at the Greenwich Village apartment, so I could pick up some clothes and leave Jerry a final check for my share of the rent. I walked up the stairs slowly. I knew Jerry would not be in. He had murmured something about going on an upstate swing with Paterno. Still, I was nervous and mildly nauseated, although I wasn’t sure whether it was pregnancy or anxiety. On the last flight of stairs I began to pant and sweat. Perspire, my mother would have it, if she would have it at all. Sweating, I unlocked the door and discovered Jerry.
“Just let me rest a second,” I muttered. “Oh, boy. Coronary time. How are you?” I plopped down on the couch, breathing heavily.
Jerry leaned against the wall in the hallway, facing the living room. His own suitcase stood next to him but, unlike me, he was not windblown and gritty from a two-hour ride in an Italian convertible. Nor did he appear sick to his stomach. Instead, Jerry looked cool, as if he had just sipped an iced julep in an evening breeze. He wore a new shirt, a white and blue and green plaid, and it was opened enough to show the top of his flower of chest hair. “You were gone this weekend,” he said.
“Yes. To Bucks County. Pennsylvania. Jerry, I have something to tell you.”
“Please. I want to talk to you.”
“Fine.” I paused. “Actually, Jerry, it’s not so easy. I don’t know how to say…” I felt my eyes filling with tears. He looked so splendid, so secure, and I didn’t want to see him hurt, watch him crumple.
“Marcia, I’m leaving,” he burst out. “I’ve been going crazy all summer, trying to find a way to tell you, not to hurt you. You can have the apartment. It’s all yours. I’ll help you with the rent for the next few months.”
“Jerry—”
“You’ve got to hear me out. I’m leaving. I’m leaving the apartment. Leaving you. I’m sorry. Jesus Christ, I don’t know how to explain it to you. It was that night I came in and you were all dressed up, with makeup, going to the theater.” The night I first made love with David. “You were acting so strange, so charged up.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were. You ran out of the apartment, like you weren’t even thinking about me. I knew that since the beginning of the summer things hadn’t been right. I didn’t know what was happening. I knew part of it was my fault. We had been fighting. But you were so different that night, not even saying hello properly. And not looking at me, not caring—”
“Jerry, please listen to me. I can save us both a lot of time, a lot of ill will.”
“No. Let me finish. I didn’t know what was happening to us. So I took a long walk. I went uptown and wound up at Eileen’s. I decided to talk with her. I knew how close you two were, so I thought maybe she could help me understand why you were behaving the way you were.”
“Jerry, Eileen was the wrong person to ask. I hadn’t confided in her. And she’s always been antagonistic toward you. I don’t know why. She says it’s because you’re too much alike.”
“Marcia, listen to me.”
“I’m listening. What did she say, that you were wasting my time?”
“Marcia, we made love that night and we fell in love.”
“Who?”
“Eileen. Me and Eileen.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Marcia, you know there’s been someone else. Does it really matter who? I mean, I haven’t been home a whole night all summer. You knew I was with someone. We just started talking that night, sitting in her apartment—”
“You were drunk.”
“Eileen said you would say that. But I understand. I know what this is doing to you and I swear to you, both of us are sick about it. Eileen’s been wanting to tell you for over a month, but I begged her not to. It was my job. But we feel awful.” He took a step toward me but stopped. “And there’s one more thing.”
“What is it?” I managed to say. The air of the apartment was thick from heat and dust. My throat felt tight and I wanted to escape uptown to David’s, where the air was clean.
“We got married.” The living room was quiet, but the clock in the kitchen whirred noisily. “We weren’t going to, but we want to …”
“What, Jerry?”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Go ahead.”
“We want to have a family.” He sat on the couch beside me. After a weekend of David’s horsey smell, the scent of his cologne seemed almost feminine. “Marcia, if there’s anything I can do …”
I rose from the couch.
“Well…” Jerry reached up and touched the back of my hand, offering sympathy. He wore a thin gold wedding band. When he saw me staring at it, he pulled his hand away.
“Marcia, both o
f us are so sorry.”
“Don’t let it spoil your honeymoon.”
“Please. Try not to be bitter. You’re a wonderful person. You deserve someone who can really make you happy. You’ll find someone someday, sweetheart. I’m sure you will.”
Twenty-two
Jerry Morrissey caught me napping the day before the primary. He cleared his throat so vehemently that my body reacted violently, jerking about in my desk chair before I even opened my eyes.
“Oh,” I said, rather stupidly. “What do you want?”
“You were sleeping.”
“Yes. What is it?”
“I need three speeches for tomorrow. A victory speech and two concessions: one if Parker wins, one if it’s Appel. In the Parker one, pledge our support. Make it fairly friendly. Appel’s can be short, okay but noncommittal.”
“Okay.” I covered my mouth as I yawned. “Excuse me.”
“Don’t you think you could wait till after the primary to get your rest?”
“Do you have any complaints about my work? Do you? Because if not, there’s no reason for you to be criticizing me just because I shut my eyes for five minutes.”
I was tired. Each lunch hour I met David and we hiked around a square-mile area of the East Side, searching for a new cooperative apartment. “What’s wrong with yours?” I had inquired. “It’s not exactly material for Tenement Monthly?
“It’s too small. Look, we’ll need a bedroom for us …”
“I can just strap a mattress onto my back.”
“… one for the baby, three for my children, for when they visit, then possibly an office for each of us. And what if we have another child? If we can find two adjoining apartments, it might even pay to tear down a few walls and renovate.”
“David, that sounds like an awful lot of money.”
“Well, I have an awful lot of money.”
We found a huge apartment on Park Avenue, terribly run down from two generations of neglect but potentially grand, with dark wood walls and high ceilings. And bedrooms. Bedrooms for pre-existing Hoffmans and future Hoffmans.
I met David’s children the weekend after Labor Day. I half expected they’d be the missing kink in David’s character I’d been searching for—small, hazel-eyed psychopaths or unregenerate snobs. But they were pleasant and polite. The two older children, Dan and Jim, had David’s pale brown hair and mouths full of metal braces. They were too embarrassed to hug and kiss their father, but they let David ruffle their hair and they gave him frequent manly slaps on the back. Seven-year-old Bonnie barely climbed off his lap all weekend. I was afraid she would be resentful, but she was very affectionate with me too, holding my hand as we walked along Madison Avenue. I took her for a haircut and then out for a hot fudge sundae. “My mother doesn’t let me eat anything with sugar,” she confided, after taking her last lick of the spoon.
“You should have told me that before, Bonnie.”
“Are you kidding?”
They were bright and friendly and put their napkins on their laps without being reminded. All three of them kissed me good-bye.
“Whom do you have in mind as a decorator?” David asked.
“The one who did my mother’s apartment. You can get a couch and two chairs in the same fabric for just five hundred—”
“Why don’t you ask Barbara who helped her?”
A woman who looked like Queen Victoria arrived and surveyed the new apartment. She found it had potential. She spoke through her nose, mainly to David. “I know your aunt. Louisa Patterson. She is your aunt, isn’t she, Mr. Hoffman?” David nodded. “And you, my dear,” she said, finally turning to me. “Have you any thoughts on the living room?”
“I think a marquetried bombé would be perfect over there, in that corner.”
“Yes. Yes, it might just do.”
Later, David demanded, “Where in God’s name did you come up with a marquetried bombé?”
“Are you kidding? I spent an hour and a half in the Forty-second Street Library this afternoon. She scares me, David.”
“Me too.”
Jerry pulled a rickety bridge chair up to my desk. He tested it with his hand before sitting on it. “I’d like to talk to you seriously,” he said.
“All right.”
“This isn’t working out, the three of us here. Eileen hides in her office all day. It’s painful for her to see you. I feel funny, uncomfortable.”
“I know you do.”
“I thought you’d understand.” He pulled his perfect dark eyebrows together in thought. “Wouldn’t it be better,” he said gently, “if you left? I mean, you wouldn’t have to feel awkward.”
“What are you talking about?” I boomed at him. “I don’t feel awkward at all.”
“Marcia, don’t try to shout me down. Of course you do. We all do. It’s an unnatural situation. Listen, we all made mistakes. Wouldn’t it be better for you to start someplace fresh, someplace where you’ll feel more at ease? You’ve had loads of job offers over the years. Eileen says—”
“Jerry, listen to me. I am staying here. If your wife feels she has to hide in her office, that’s her problem. What does she think I’ll do, spring for her jugular? And if she can’t take hiding in her office, let her move her ass and find herself another job. She’s a lawyer, for God’s sake. There are jobs all over the city where she could do a full day’s work without feeling ashamed. And as far as you go—well, I think we can manage. We had a lovely time together, and hopefully pretty soon we’ll be able to remember that and forget the bitterness.”
“Marcia—”
“I like this job. I like Paterno. I am staying. This is the second time you’ve asked me to quit work, to screw up my career on your behalf. If I didn’t do it before, Jerry, can you think why I would possibly consider doing it now?”
Jerry crossed his legs and rubbed the cleft in his chin. He was about to deal his big card. “Marcia, I happen to know for a fact that Bill approved a month’s leave for you starting the week after the primary. Now that’s not just because you’re tired. You’re planning on job hunting anyway. So why not let me help you, make some calls.”
“Jerry, I will tell you something that really doesn’t concern you. The Sunday afternoon after the election, I am getting married. The following morning my husband and I will be getting on an airplane and flying to France, where we will spend four weeks on our honeymoon. Then I will come back to work, and by that time I’m sure we can begin to enjoy a pleasant working relationship.”
“You’re bullshitting me,” he whispered. “Where did you find someone so fast? Where?”
He called out “Where?” again as I stomped out of my office and down to Paterno’s. “Excuse me, Bill,” I said.
Paterno lifted his big head from his hands. “Didn’t hear you come in.”
“How are you doing?”
“Fine. It’ll all be over tomorrow, one way or another. How are you doing?”
“Fine. I just have those three speeches to do, the victory and the other ones.”
“Where would you put your money?”
“On you, Bill. Win or lose.”
“Thanks.”
“Can we talk?” He nodded. “Jerry was just in to see me. He mentioned something about how awkward things are, with the two of them and me….”
“That Morrissey. I don’t get him. He’s a good-looking fella. Why does he have to keep picking people on my staff? Can’t he look outside?”
“Well, he won’t be looking anymore,” I observed. Paterno agreed, looking away from me in embarrassment. “Bill, he suggested that because things were so—well, uncomfortable, for Eileen and for him, that I resign.”
“He what?”
“I just wanted to make sure that it wasn’t coming from you, that—”
“Are you kidding? That son-of-a-bitch. Let me tell you something, Marcia. That wife of his, that Eileen, is no shrinking violet, and she can learn to handle things or get out. So can he and so can you. I’m a
city official, not a producer of some damned soap opera, and the three of you can either put your personal lives behind you or get the hell out. All of you. I mean it.”
“Okay, Bill.”
“Hey, why am I yelling at you?”
“Maybe it feels good.”
“Listen, this whole thing isn’t your fault. I don’t know whose fault it is. Crazy, carrying on in the middle of a campaign, like it was spring fever. Who has time for that? Your boyfriend, that’s who, that crazy Morrissey … Oh, sorry.”
“That’s okay. Listen, I’ll see you tomorrow night, at the victory party.”
“Marcia, come on. You’ve been straight with me for too long. Don’t start changing now.”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
“And after that? No matter where?”
“As long as you need a speech writer.”
The polls closed at nine o’clock. By ten, the ballroom of the Hotel Knickerbocker was pulsating with a badly amplified three-piece band and shouted conversations. A limp Paterno banner hung from the empty stage. Balloons hung in a net from the ceiling, waiting to be released in case of victory.
Volunteers from the boroughs and the suburbs milled around, their smiles still as wide as Paterno’s was on the campaign buttons on their lapels. They peered up at the balloons, gazed in awe at the TV correspondents, and sipped their free drinks. Some of them dashed around purposefully, jotting down telephone numbers, knowing this was their last chance for a big romance.
By ten thirty, the returns began coming in. I stood beside Joe Cole, in front of one of the four television sets in the ballroom, each tuned to a different station. “Look at Westchester County,” he said. “Twenty-eight percent for us. Just twenty-eight percent. Shit, that LoBello must be grinning from ear to ear. We counted on at least forty.”
“My God, Queens,” I replied. “His home borough.” Paterno was pulling in only thirty-eight percent of the vote.