Randy looked like she might cry too. “How are they doing?”
“They’re fine.” I looked away so I wouldn’t have to see her expression. “They don’t know yet. I’m waiting for the right time. I need to take it in before I can tell them.”
She nodded. “Of course. It’s just so shocking. Of everyone I know, it never occurred to me that you two wouldn’t go the distance.”
I sniffled some more. “Me too.”
Maria, the cleaning lady, was banging the breakfast dishes around in the sink when I got home. She came every morning and followed me around the apartment talking about her husband, whose hobby was moose hunting. Maria had half a moose in her freezer at all times. The first week she worked for us, in an attempt to stop her from offering me moose pieces, I told her we were vegetarians. Vegetarianism, it turns out, is a really stupid lie to tell someone you’re employing in large part to do the shopping and cooking. Because then, to cover up the lie, I had to go right on doing all the grocery shopping and cooking myself.
Why Maria was employed by us (me, now, I realized) was a bit of a mystery. Since she lived in mortal fear of Cadbury (a phobia of furry things that sleep most of the day, maybe?), she refused to walk her ever. As the children disliked Maria (she’s a total freak, Mom), her usefulness as a babysitter was limited, and since she didn’t actually clean other than making a few beds, her value as a cleaner was limited.
This morning, she was very busy in the kitchen watching The View. I crept down the hall to the study, where I closed the door, turned on the computer, and sat, shivering, at the desk while I debated what to do first. Call my mother or sister, cry some more, find a PI, call the accountant and figure out how much money I had: these were all on the reasonable option list. Instead, I pulled out my Filofax (that’s how long it had been since I’d worked— my business contact phone numbers were still handwritten) and looked up Charlotte Worth’s work number.
Charlotte was an old friend from graduate school. We’d worked together at City Woman, and she was now the features editor of NYMetro. If I hadn’t known her back when she’d worn the same pair of Doc Martens every day and believed she had found lasting passion with a guy whose main means of support was power washing graffiti off subway platforms, I’d have been intimidated as hell by her glossy, adult perfection. So between that and the fact I had no idea why I was calling or what to say, I had mixed feelings when she picked up her own phone after two rings. “Charlotte?”
“Yes?” It could not have been clearer that she had Something Very Important going at the moment.
“Charlotte, it’s, um, Cassie Martin.”
Silence. Oh, shit. She’d forgotten me! Even in my most humiliating imaginings it hadn’t been this humiliating.
“Cassie-might-as-well-have-disappeared-from-the-face-of-the-earth-Martin?” she said after a long-enough wait to make me seriously sweat. “I don’t believe it.”
Relief at not having to explain who I was flooded through me. “How are you?”
“Good. Great. What’s doing in the outer boroughs? Do you have sushi yet?”
This was a joke. Possibly. Or maybe not. Charlotte prided herself on never crossing the bridge.
“Sure,” I said. “Blue Ribbon. Charlotte, Brooklyn’s the new Tribeca. We have Miranda and Steve from Sex in the City, although I do understand they’re fictional, Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss, they’re real. I think. Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany, Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams. They’re all here.”
As it occurred to me that I had no idea where exactly I was going with this, the door opened and Maria frowned around it. “Why didn’t you tell me you were home?” she demanded, hand on her chest. “You scared me to death.”
“Sorry,” I mouthed. “And we have Williamsburg hipsters,” I told Charlotte. Since I’d started this idiotic line of conversation, I felt compelled to continue digging myself deeper and deeper. I wanted Maria to go away, but she was still standing in the doorway glaring at me. I raised an eyebrow at her.
“That dog, I think she needs to go out.”
I covered the receiver. “Could you please take her, just this once?” I pleaded. “Please?”
Maria crossed her arms. “No. She’s dangerous.”
Yeah, you could die of old age waiting for her to make her way out the door.
“There’s probably still a hipster or two left wandering aimlessly around Williamsburg now that the investment bankers have taken over,” Charlotte said.
“Bring her in here,” I hissed.
“I’m not cleaning it if she has another accident,” Maria warned.
“Fine,” I hissed, hand still over the receiver. She opened the door wider, letting Cad amble in.
“They might as well just rename the whole place, you know those Welcome to Brooklyn signs you get when you cross the bridge? Change them to Welcome to the Borough of Domestic Bliss,” Charlotte drawled. “No entry without a stroller.”
Cadbury threw herself down on my feet and went to sleep. “I can’t speak for anyone else,” I said, “but I don’t think you want my take on domestic bliss at the moment. And frankly, the sushi’s not exactly Nobu.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Blue Ribbon’s pretty good, but—”
“Back up to your hit and run on the domestic bliss thing.”
“Rick left me.” The second time I’d said it out loud. It didn’t feel significantly better than the first, but I was at least already sitting this time. Would the thousandth time still bring the same misery? I tried to breathe my way through the agony.
“I’m sorry.”
“Go ahead and tell me why you never liked him.”
She laughed. I’d forgotten how great a laugh she had. “What makes you think I didn’t like him?”
“I have that sixth sense,” I said. Then, “Maura Ginsberg told me one time after thirteen Appletinis.” Maura was another Columbia J School classmate.
“Maura has a big mouth.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, “but I still want to know.”
“Why?”
“Because”—as I answered, I started to feel like I was almost poised on understanding—“he’s such a standup guy, everyone loves him.” Or everyone other than my mother, but I already knew the hows and whys of that. “As far as I know, this is the only shitty thing he’s ever done. I want someone to tell me something bad so I can see if it makes sense. I need help reconciling this.”
“I still remember the first time I met him. Remember, you brought him to that awful party Ben Strohmeyer threw after he had his letter to the editor accepted by the Village Voice?”
I laughed. “Actually, I think it was an op-ed.”
“Whatever.” She paused. “I wonder whatever happened to Ben. Anyway, Rick, I don’t know. You want this straight up, Cassie? Really?”
I glanced out the window at the serene blue stretch of harbor under an achingly clear sky. Was my world about to unfurl even more? “Does it involve Rick hitting on you or anything?”
“No, nothing like that.” She was quiet.
“Then, yes.”
“OK. I always felt like he never wanted you to be more than an accessory to him and his life.”
I knew what she was getting at and felt the need to defend him—both of us—here. “Me staying home was a mutual decision, you know, not anything he dictated.”
“But why not keep a hand in? Writing’s one of the few things you can do and stay home. Of all of us in our class, you probably had the most ability. Unfortunately it was coupled with the least belief in yourself.”
“How is that his fault?”
“It’s not. It’s just a shame you ended up with someone content to believe that too instead of pushing or encouraging or whatever it is you needed. You always wanted to be the straight reporter, which wasn’t what you were cut out for. You’re neurotic as hell, but it translates into something quirky and funny on the page—like some young, female Woody Allen—”
“Is that supposed to be flattering? Because, ugh.”
“Actually, yes, but I recognize it didn’t come out right. I just meant your quirkiness translates into originality on the page. I sometimes still send writers your City Woman clips to show them that a dull subject doesn’t have to mean no writer’s voice.”
I rubbed my forehead. “I still don’t see how Rick’s at fault here.”
“Only in what he declined to see and neglected to do. He lived with you and loved you but didn’t really see you. As far as I could see, he was dismissive of what he should have nurtured— the part of you that was interesting and different. He was interested in the other, the conventional, compliant, soothing part.”
I thought of my interesting, different, unconventional, un-compliant, distinctly unsoothing mother. Him and me both. “We made our decisions together,” I said.
“The thing about his kind of smugness,” she said, quickly enough that I knew it wasn’t the first time she’d thought this through, “is that it’s contagious. Or at least easy to get carried along on.”
“Like Yertle,” I said.
“Who?”
“Yertle the Turtle. It’s a Dr. Seuss story about a power-mad turtle king that I’ve read…” a few hundred thousand times. “Never mind.” Like I said before, I got it about potential smugness where Rick was concerned, but I preferred to see the flip sides—constancy and certainty. “Look, we all have to rationalize the choices we make, working or staying home, or we wouldn’t be able to live with them. And I’d make the same decision again.” I closed my eyes for a second. The sun off the harbor was almost too bright. I would. Wouldn’t I?
“Hey, as long as it’s a choice, great. I’m just saying you embraced granola mom martyrdom to the exclusion of all else in a way people do when they’re trying to convince themselves something is right for them when they think maybe it’s really not.”
I’d been wrong about wanting to know. I really didn’t want to think about this. “That’s the thing about marriage,” I said, feeling desolate, “after a while you stop knowing who’s who.”
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
Why not? “He left me to find himself.”
“He was lost?”
“Apparently so. Lost, stifled, shackled and enslaved, actually.”
“Wow,” she said. “Lost is tough. Lost and stifled is miserable, even without the shackled, but lost, stifled, shackled and enslaved! Well, no wonder.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But it turns out, it was my fault for enabling all this misery.” Then I told her about the Barry Manilow thing.
When I was done: “You’re making this up.”
Somehow I suspected I’d be getting this response again before all was said and done. “Charlotte,” I said. “How bad would the truth have to be for me to make this up? And do you honestly believe I’d have come up with the phrase post-ironic discourse of blank parody on my own?”
After the moment of silence this deserved, she said, “I don’t suppose you’ve thought about the million ways you could spin this professionally?”
“So far I’ve pretty much confined myself to managing to breathe.”
“Totally understandable, but seriously, this is a lot of material. It’s like a gift.”
“I prefer the ones from Cartier.”
“Well, who doesn’t? But you gotta work with what you have. And this is like gold. I mean, if he’d left you for his secretary, ho hum, you and half the women in the world, but come on, Cass, he freaking left you for Barry Manilow. It doesn’t get better than that.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t see it that way.” But I was laughing. Going on the theory that any laughter was better than lying prostrate on the floor at this point, this conversation was turning out to be a good thing. I was grateful to whatever impulse had made me call her.
“So?”
Was she going to offer? Should I ask? I stared down my insecurities, fears, and worries (I’ve been out of the work force forever). There are a million really good writers out there. Why would she want something from me? She did say some really nice stuff about me, though. What if I can’t write anymore? What if she says a point-blank no?
Down Boy! What did I have to lose? “What if I did? Think about it from a professional standpoint, that is. Would you be interested?” Not exactly a hard sell, but edging into the water.
“Considering I just finished a whole character assassination on Rick for not encouraging you, do I have a choice other than yes?”
“Yes.”
She laughed. “True.” My heart thudded when she went silent for a minute, then: “Would you do something on spec?”
Spec was a nightmare. It meant I wrote the entire piece, submitted it, waited for them to decide whether to use it, and then waited again until they decided to pay me. It’s like telling the doctor to go ahead and do the tests and you’ll pay him if you like the diagnosis. “No.”
More silence. “What was the last piece you had published?”
I knew she knew. She’d been writing the same stuff— “Shoulder pads, the briefcase as a fashion accessory. Something like that. OK, you’ve made your point.”
“Let me have a think and I’ll call you back in a bit.”
I didn’t want to do that. I was afraid that if we hung up I was letting go of a chance, but what could I do? Refuse? “OK. And thanks, Charlotte.”
“Call you later.”
After we hung up, I looked out the window, at the sun slanting off the glass across the river, and wondered whether she really would or whether that was a brush-off. And then Rick and last night invaded. I tried not to want to curl up and die as pain and fear welled up in me, but it was hard to see my life stretched out in front of me as anything other than a series of days, like a mountain of ice, too slippery to climb.
I told myself I had to muster the togetherness to take Cad out before disaster struck, but the phone rang before I could get far.
“Cass.”
Rick. My heart skyrocketed so hard it was like the breath had been forcibly knocked out of me.
“Are you there? It’s a lousy connection.”
“Yes.” Please come home. Please. I need you. It took everything I had to hold onto my pride and not say it out loud.
“I—,” he said.
Kind of bypassing the pride thing, I burst into tears. “Please, Rick. Where are you? Please, come home. That’s where you belong. I love you and I need you and the kids do too, more than anything, and I can’t—”
“You’ll be fine, Hon. Listen, I don’t have much time, but I realized I forgot to cancel my personal training and massage sessions at NYAC—City House, not Travers Island—for next week. Monday was squash, Wednesday was Pilates, and Friday was a total cardio. You should do it ASAP because if you don’t give forty-eight-hours cancellation, they bill you for no-shows.”
“Rick, please.” Snot was running down my face.
“I thought I was doing you a favor by giving you a heads-up, Cass. Those sessions aren’t cheap, and I know it’s not my call how you spend it, but in my opinion you don’t have that kind of spare cash right now. I guess I shouldn’t have bothered letting you know.”
He sounded so put out, so wronged, I found myself apologizing and thanking him for letting me know. Hmm. Even as I did it, I recognized there was something wrong with that picture. I was just so desperate to placate him. Some part of my mind must have thought if I was accommodating enough, he’d come home.
He hung up, and I noticed for the first time that the caller ID was kindly explaining to me that the caller had withheld their number. Of course he fucking had. I could have pretty much guessed that one. I couldn’t decide whether to sob or throw something, but was saved from the decision by a face-slapping waft and the corresponding telltale expression of guilt on Cad’s face.
I stood up to get cleaning stuff from the kitchen. “Don’t worry, Cad,” I said, blotting my tears on my sleeve. “You’re
not the first to shit all over me today.”
7
Can’t Smile Without You
Katya said, “Hi, leave a message and I’ll get back to you,” on her machine.
“Dr. Tooth’s—just kidding! Dr. Judy Traske’s—office is closed for vacation this week,” my mother’s receptionist chirped into the answering machine.
My father’s receptionist was in person and more dignified. “Sorry, Cassie. He’s at a conference. Do you want to leave a message in case he checks in?”
“Hey! Leave a message.” Click. This is what Luke’s said. At least it didn’t say “Dude! Leave a message” any more.
Then I did the same drill with home numbers for parents (no answers). Cells for all except my mother (same again), and work for Luke (ditto).
How was it possible that in this age of instant communication my entire family and my husband could all manage to be incommunicado? Most days I couldn’t make it through the paper towel section in the grocery store without my cell ringing five times. Maybe they’d all been abducted by the same alien pod that had gotten to Rick.
It was debatable anyway whether any of them would see this as a crisis—just another family marriage tanking. In fact, I should probably think of it as genetic. Inability to stay married as something that should go in your medical file, like the breast cancer gene or high blood pressure. You can be aware of the predisposition, struggle against it, but in the end, if it’s going to get you, it’s going to get you.
My maternal grandmother prided herself on never having spoken more than twelve words in a single day to my grandfather since 1969. She was not kidding. And on my father’s side, my grandfather announced—formally, at his ninetieth birthday party—that as a gift to himself, to mark his entrance into his ninth decade, he would be leaving his wife of seventy years and moving himself into a bachelor pad at an upmarket retirement complex. Within a month, he announced plans to take my grandmother back. She had, by this time, set off on a cross-country mobile home trip with a woman named Ralph whom she’d met over the Internet. She didn’t come back until my grandfather dropped dead of a heart attack following a vigorous Thursday morning water aerobics session.
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