by Susan Isaacs
“She had to have more?” I asked. John looked annoyed.
“Not in that way. Everything was fine.”
“As fine as with us?” I actually asked.
“No,” he said. “Does that make you happy? Is that what you want to hear?” Then his voice got all misty again. “She was my wife. But not a typical wife. There was nothing typical about her.” He paused, then abruptly announced: “Fidelity is a middle-class virtue.”
“So every upper-class person commits adultery?”
“Conventional rules don’t apply to Nan,” he said sharply.
I took a couple of sips of the juice. It was bitter, like drinking liquid tin. No wonder little Nannie preferred mimosas. I said, “Conventional rules don’t apply to Adolf, either.”
John gave me his first real smile. “That’s really not an apt comparison.”
“Why not? Everybody has to obey the rules.”
“That’s too simplistic.”
“I don’t think so. Because if you say Edward Leland’s daughter or Edward Leland or Adolf Hitler has special rules, then why not Henry Morgenthau and Clark Gable? And who decides who gets special treatment? The person who wants special treatment? Me? You?”
“I admire your…sense of fair play, your democratic spirit. Really I do, Linda. But you have to understand, Nan is genuinely extraordinary: intellectually, emotionally—even socially.” He exhaled slowly. “I could only satisfy her”—he got tongue-tied for a second—“that way. And intellectually. Socially…Her mother was related to a President, and her father, well, Edward is one of the most powerful men in the country. Nan spent her entire life in superior company. She went to the best schools, traveled abroad, had every possible cultural advantage.”
“What does culture have to do with it?”
“With what?”
“With cheating on your husband?”
“Please stop it.”
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
“Try to understand: Faithfulness is for people who don’t have the money or the imagination for pleasure.”
“So how come you were faithful? What were you missing? Money? Or imagination?”
John pushed himself up and sat on the edge of the mattress. His back was toward me again. He put his glass down on the table. “You really can’t comprehend the situation.”
“Try me. In English or German. I’m versatile.”
“But you can’t grasp the subtleties. You see, just because someone was graduated from an Ivy League college does not make him upper class.”
“What makes someone upper class? Money? Ancestors?”
“It’s extremely complex.”
“So what are you saying—in the whole history of the world there’s never been an upper-class wife who’s behaved honorably? You know that’s baloney.”
“I wasn’t fun enough for her.”
“Fun? The new husband is fun? What does he do—Jack Benny imitations?”
“Look,” John said, “I’m not witty, I’m not particularly urbane. What can I say to make you understand? I’m not one of them. I can’t get drunk at the Plaza and take off my shoes and wade in the fountain and scream with laughter over Louisa Buchanan’s tasteless wedding invitations.”
I sat up beside him. I took his hand, and he didn’t pull it away. “Is that what you do for fun when you’re so brilliant you’re beyond rules? Get drunk in fountains and laugh screamingly about wedding invitations?”
John lowered his head. When he spoke, his voice was unnaturally slow, as if his throat had been numbed by the ice in the juice. He could barely form the words. “I told you that you wouldn’t get it.”
Did it bother me that I’d left Gladys Slade to broil on a hot boardwalk? I hardly gave it a thought. We’d once agreed, since she had no phone, that if I ever didn’t show up, she’d wait one hour and then assume I’d had some emergency and wouldn’t be able to make it.
I sat in the subway as it hurtled back into Queens, and I tried to think up a good excuse for Gladys. But I couldn’t concentrate. I looked up at an ad for Prince Albert Crimp Cut Pipe Tobacco, with its picture of a boringly handsome middle-aged man who looked the way lawyers were supposed to but never did (except John, who looked better), and worked on feeling bad that I was behaving so rottenly to a friend. But the only thought that came to mind was that an hour in the sun would do Gladys good. Her skin was so white: not Scarlett O’Hara, southern magnolia white, but bloodless, like typing paper. Drenched in the dirty, humid night heat of the subway, I tried to feel guilty for not feeling guilty, but all I could think about was John.
Okay, even if we would never have a heart-to-heart about Rommel’s strategy, weren’t men supposed to sweet-talk their…? I couldn’t figure out what I was to him. Definitely not his girlfriend. And not his mistress; as far as I could see, letting John foot the bill for my lamb chop didn’t constitute being a kept woman. Not his lover, either, because neither of us was a Greenwich Village bohemian type who had lovers, and also because I knew he didn’t love me; worse, I wasn’t even sure if he liked me. Was sex with me that good that he would put up with someone he didn’t care about just to get more?
Yes. It was that good. It was perfect.
But what about me? How long could I love a man who might never love me back? What kind of love is it that basically says, Sure, fine, I understand that you can’t be seen walking down the street with someone like me.
On that stifling summer night, as the subway screeched under the East River, I said to myself, It doesn’t matter. You will love John Berringer forever. And he may learn to love you someday. Search, look for small signs, anything is possible. But even if he never learns, your love for him—and nothing else—is the central fact of the rest of your life.
I ran into Gladys at the newsstand in the lobby of the office building the next morning when I bought my weekly roll of Life Savers. She was handing over a dime for a tin of violet breath mints.
I hadn’t rehearsed my excuse, but I gave it everything I had. “Gladys, am I glad to see you! I’m so sorry about yesterday.” Then I noticed her tomato face. She looked absolutely awful. “I feel terrible. I was all set to leave, but all of a sudden my mother got so dizzy….” Gladys’s eyes, puffy from sunburn, narrowed, so I knew I had to shovel it on. “She actually fainted! If I hadn’t been there to catch her—”
Gladys simply did an about-face and marched toward the elevator.
“Look,” I said, rushing to her. “I can’t tell you how bad I feel, but that’s why we made those emergency plans.”
“For an emergency!” she spit out.
“But I told you, my mother actually fainted.”
We reached the bank of elevators. There was one ready; the elevator attendant waved us in, and a moment later, half of Wall Street followed, pressing in, almost flattening us against the wall. Gladys stared straight ahead.
“What’s wrong with you?” I said softly.
Her eyes remained focused on the brass-grille door; she spoke between clenched teeth. “It so happens I called your house yesterday, after I’d waited for two hours in the burning-hot sun. I spoke to your mother. And do you know what she said?” Oh, no, I thought. I kept quiet, hoping, I suppose, that silence was contagious. It wasn’t. “‘Lin’s not here, honey,’” Gladys mimicked. “And so I said, ‘Well, Mrs. Voss, we had an appointment, and I’m a little concerned about her, not that I want to worry you.’ And do you know what she said? ‘Listen, don’t you worry, sweetie. Linda’s probably kicking up her heels with her boyfriend. The one she’s with every night. John Whatsisname. You know.’” Gladys turned and glared at me. “‘Her boss.’”
Someone in the conference room had eaten a sardine sandwich, and even though a thick, hot breeze came through the opened window and ruffled the paper napkins, you felt you were trapped inside an airless sardine can. Everyone sat around the table going through the motions of eating her lunch, but this day there was no fun, no gossip. In fact, the room had gotten so quiet you
could hear the squish of pits plopping from Marian Mulligan’s watermelon chunks as she coaxed them out with her pointy Mango Orange fingernails.
Everybody knew something was up. Why else would Gladys Slade have pointedly taken her seat at the head of the conference table and then said—tittered, actually—to Verna Glover, a human slug with a personality one inch from dead, “Verna, come sit next to me.” Then Gladys graciously offered Verna the seat that had been mine for the last seven or eight years.
Helen Rogers sat beside me, but then was afraid to look my way because then she’d have to either talk to, smile at or snub me. Instead, she picked nervously at the caraway seeds from the rye bread that dotted the white polka dots on her blue blouse. The chair on my other side was empty; the girls had caught on fast that something was wrong.
Gladys sat straight, like a school poster for good posture. She’d tucked a napkin over the front of her dress to protect it from the drippy peach she was eating; the white of the napkin against her sunburn made her face look maroon. For at least the tenth time I tried to catch her eye, and, for the tenth time, I got looked through; it was as if I was invisible and she was examining the light switch on the wall behind my head.
What was she doing? In all my life, I’d never felt such anger. What I’d done to Gladys was wrong, but we’d had all those years, all those Sundays. I didn’t deserve being cast out like this, like I’d committed some horrifying crime. No one would look at me.
The room was completely stiff and still, like an old photograph, except for the tiny dust twinkles that danced in the lines of sunlight coming through the wooden slats of the venetian blinds. Breathing was hard.
Suddenly, Gladys turned to Anita Beane and said, in her most regal, pearly Queen of Lunch tones: “You haven’t spoken about your wedding plans in days. Tell me, have you chosen your tablecloth color yet?”
You could hear the great sigh of relief at the return to normalness: a chorus of ten or twelve voices exhaling together. And then, on and on, Gladys, Anita and the girls debated the pluses and minuses of daffodil versus goldenrod. But every once in a while, I’d get a look, a flash of wonder or curiosity—or downright antagonism.
And that’s when I knew that if I didn’t stop Gladys, I was finished. One by one, all afternoon, they’d float through the halls, slip over to her desk, ask, What’s with Linda? and finally she’d say, I wish you hadn’t asked, but you know me. I have to tell the truth. I called Linda’s house Sunday and her mother said…
So right after lunch, when Gladys bolted for the door, I bolted too—and faster.
“Gladys,” I called loud enough for all the girls strolling back to their desks to hear, “I know we talked about not sitting together all the time, but you know something? I kind of missed you.” I clutched her elbow as though I wanted a quick arm-in-arm promenade with my best friend, and hurried her down the hall. From the relaxed murmur that rose behind us, I knew I’d subdued at least a couple of doubts.
“Let go of me!” Gladys tried to jerk away, squeezing her arms tight against her body as I rushed her along. Her elbow had red fingerprints where I’d grabbed it. “I want nothing to do with you,” she spit out. “Is that understood? You played me for a fool.”
“Please, let me explain—”
“You let me go on and on, all these months. Carrying on with him, pretending you didn’t even like him, even when I said, ‘Oh, Linda, you must have a crush on him.’ And you said, ‘Oh, no, Gladys. I’d tell you. We’re such good friends. But Mr. Berringer is so boring, with his big blue eyes. He’s too good-looking. Like a third-rate movie star.’ That’s what you said. Oh, you must have felt so superior, you smug—”
“Please, let’s sit down after work. I want to explain—”
“Explain?”
“Gladys, what else could I have done? I know you won’t believe me, but I feel terrible. I’ve done you a great wrong, and I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“What does ‘shouldn’t’ mean to someone like you? You’ve been doing it with him!”
I couldn’t help it. “Oh, stuff it up your nose!” I blurted out. Was she ever the wrong person to say that to! “Look, Gladys, standing you up yesterday was a rotten thing to do, okay? And not confiding in you was…maybe…was worse. But let me tell you, what I did doesn’t compare to how you almost ruined me in there. Everyone was treating me like a leper. They’re going to think—”
She cut me off. “You must be so proud of how you deceived me. ‘I can’t meet you for a drink, Gladys. Mr. Berringer’s rushing off.’ He was rushing off to you! ‘I’m sorry, but I have to work late.’ Work.” She rubbed out a fingerprint from the patent leather on her handbag. “What kind of ‘work’ do you do for him? Does he pay you overtime?”
“Is that what you want, Gladys? The details? Fine. You want me to give you a blow-by-blow description?”
“You are utterly revolting!”
“Listen!” My voice sounded far off, and strangely tough. “I don’t want to hear one more damn word from you. And if you ever pull anything like what you tried at lunch today—”
Gladys simply walked away. Well, why not? She was positive she had me. She could be mysteriously cold to me for a week or two, savor the attention and then…One word to Helen or Marian, and in ten minutes all the secretaries would be whispering. By three o’clock, enough hints would be dropped to enough bosses that the lawyers would start finding excuses to go past John’s office, past my desk, to look me over, and then go laugh in the men’s room. By four o’clock I’d be called in, maybe by John with a “You stupid…” or even by one of the senior partners. Oh, my God, by Mr. Leland: Under the circumstances, Miss Voss…
“Gladys!” I barked.
She stopped only because she hadn’t expected to hear anything more from me. I caught up with her and walked along beside her. I smiled as Mr. Ervine from Real Estate passed. We made way for him and he said, “Hello, girls,” and kept walking.
“Gladys, listen to me, because if you don’t you’ll be sorry.”
“Don’t you threaten me, you tramp.”
“You say one word, just one word to anybody—the secretaries, Lenny Stevenson, the janitor—and you’re finished.”
“No,” she said. “You’re the one who will be finished.” A nasty look, pretty close to a malicious smile, passed over her face. “I really wasn’t going to say anything in there, you know. But now you’re threatening me, and I do not like threats.”
“I don’t care what you like, Gladys. Just shut up and listen. I know that one word from you, and the whole office will know. And I guess that will give you satisfaction.”
“I’m not that small-minded.”
“It’ll give you satisfaction,” I repeated, “but it’ll also get you fired.”
“Oh, come on!”
“John is ready, willing and very able to do anything I ask him,” I said. “I have him in the palm of my hand.” She blinked, then did it again and again, until it became a nervous tic. Blink, blink, blink. She couldn’t stop. “Don’t test me, Gladys. No more cold shoulder at lunch, or you’ll find yourself out on the street. Do we understand each other?”
She blinked again.
“John loves me. Whatever makes me happy makes him happy.”
“All right,” Gladys said at last.
“So if you like your job…”
“I never had any intention of saying anything.”
And then she rushed away.
10
September 7, 1940. The Battle of Britain was in its second month. On that afternoon, a Saturday, the German Dreck-enschweine sent three hundred bombers and six hundred fighters to attack the London docks. And later that night, they sent in more bombers; dark orange fires burned along the banks of the Thames, lighting the night fliers’ path toward their targets. But that was over there.
Here, between daylight and dark of that day, I sat on a green plaid couch finishing an article in an overthumbed Good Housekeeping from January.
“Hollywood has little trouble finding new and lovely girls to photograph—witness Dorothy Lamour, Rosemary Lane, Sigrid Gurie and the lush Hedy Lamarr, to mention only a few of today’s raw recruits—but able actresses are not come by so easily.”
Good Housekeeping knew. “You’re a lousy actress, Linda.” Dr. Guber shook his head wearily a few minutes later in his office.
“Me?” I asked, opening my eyes wide so I’d look honest and innocent, unlike lush Hedy Lamarr.
“Come off it, kiddo.” His desk chair creaked as he leaned forward. “I’ve known you all your life.”
Dr. Guber was so tall and thin you could see the stringy muscles where his arms dangled out of his short-sleeved white doctor coat. He was built like a cowboy but talked with a thick New York accent.
“I got a cancer and a rheumatic fever out there,” he went on. “You think I’m gonna play Let’s Pretend that it’s your mother’s specimen that killed the rabbit? Your mother drinks so much her uterus probably looks like a pickled corned beef.” Dr. Guber pushed back his chair and stood up. He must have looked at me then, at the moment the smile I’d worked so hard on collapsed, because he came over to my chair and squeezed my shoulder. “Come on. You’re a big girl.” He paused. “You must’ve had a clue.”
I must’ve. Even a supreme moron could add up what sex seven days a week plus two missed periods equals. It took high intelligence to have found new ways to keep avoiding reality the way I did. Every morning I woke up and ran to the bathroom, and when I didn’t find my period, I’d think: Oh, God, oh, no, please! But then I’d think: No. Calm down. It’s nerves. You’re getting yourself in such a stew you’ll never get another period again. Relax!
But then, oh, I knew. Every afternoon the last month, I’d felt sick. Like I was going to give back my lunch when I leaned over a drawer in the filing cabinet. And smells. Mum deodorant: sickeningly sweet, like decaying corpses in detective stories. The roll of Life Savers in my purse stank, especially the purple ones. And I couldn’t help it, but I kept thinking of food, maybe because I wasn’t able to eat all that much, but I’d imagine a hamburger patty or split-pea soup, and a wave of nausea would rise up in me.