Pam of Babylon

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Pam of Babylon Page 9

by Suzanne Jenkins


  16

  Marie let herself into her apartment, violently jiggling the key in the lock, pushing the door with her fist, slamming it shut. She stomped around the place, throwing her bags on the floor of the closet and pulling the blinds open with such force that they swung back and forth for a full minute.

  Finally, she plopped down on the couch and putting her head in her hands, began to sob, wondering what she was going to do now. There wasn’t one single thing to look forward to. She hated her job, only going through the motions to make Jack proud since he had gotten it for her. No one who worked in her office cared if she showed up or not, and she felt the same way about all of them. Pam used to say, “You have to pretend sometimes, and then the feelings will grow to be genuine.” Marie thought that was the tritest rationalization she had heard. Most of the people she worked with commuted from New Jersey anyway. What good would friendships with those people do?

  The one single thing that gave her life meaning was leaving on Saturday and driving to Long Island to see her sister and Jack. After the kids left for college, she thought it would change, but if anything, it became more focused on Jack and, therefore, more fun for Marie.

  He taught her to golf when she was just fourteen, and now she lived for her golf outings with him. He had gotten her a set of specially made clubs. She devoured the golf clothing catalogues and had an impressive wardrobe of golf wear. It gave her something to talk about with other men. Her scores were impressive as well.

  Now what would become of it? Pam didn’t golf. They had a membership at an expensive country club. Marie wondered if she could interest Pam. Why bother? She didn’t want to golf with Pam; she wanted to golf with Jack. But he was dead! “Fuck!” she screamed loudly, not caring if the entire building heard her.

  She sat on the couch looking out the huge picture window with its view of the Hudson River just beyond Javitz Center. She really was a spoiled brat. Here she had this great apartment, could walk to work, was close to transportation, and could go just about anywhere she wanted by walking two blocks, and yet she was miserable. She’d get ready for work for the rest of the week which she never did, always running around late trying to find clothes to wear. It would give her purpose; a sense of accomplishment. She’d call her mother and offer to take her somewhere over the weekend. It would give them both something to look forward to. She would even swallow her pride and call Pam to ask if she wanted company. Those decisions made, she got up, wiped her face off with a tissue, and vowed to begin living again.

  17

  Sandra felt better the next morning as she got ready to go to work. Still just a little queasy, she decided it was due to stress. She left her apartment and began walking south on Broadway. She tried not to think about how the past four days had changed her life, that the day before she had attended the funeral of her lover incognito. The ideal situation would be if she never had to cross the threshold of that goddamned office again. She wondered what the mood would be.

  The train was hot, and she loathed the ride that day even more than usual, knowing that there was no one to greet her, no cocky grin, no graying temples, no hunk waiting for her. She would eat lunch alone, go home to her empty apartment and, having no one to go to dinner with, maybe even skip the meal. She imagined her hips getting slimmer, her breasts disappearing, clothes hanging on her. It had happened in the past; it could happen now.

  She needn’t have worried about the office. There was a meeting for Jack’s department, probably going over his clients and the projects he was immersed in which they would divide up among the others. She was guaranteed a peaceful morning.

  What she hadn’t counted on was what she found hanging over her credenza—the vibrant painting of Riverside Gardens. He had called right after their breakfast together, bought the painting, and had it delivered and hung there. She closed her eyes, imagining him talking on his cell phone, extracting promises of anonymity, and then hanging up and falling over with a heart attack.

  She walked to her door and shut it, closing the blinds on the sidelights. She couldn’t help herself, but the tears came yet again. Will I ever be over it? How much he had impacted her life was directly proportional to how much she felt it being destroyed. She would no longer be able to eat at Chantal’s, listen to Sting, look at certain art, or read mystery novels; all the things a twenty-something woman would miss. This job, not a high point in her life, now had the potential to be intolerable. She didn’t even know if she could stay in the city.

  Walking around to her desk, she sat down and looked at the phone. There was only one other person on this earth she could think of at that moment who knew what she was going through, who could imagine her frustration and non-acceptance of Jack’s death, and that person was his wife. Sandra picked up the phone and dialed Pam’s number. It rang for seven rings, and the answering machine picked up. It was a homogenized male voice instructing her to leave her name and number, which she did. When she was finished, she put her head down on her desk and had a good cry.

  18

  Marie went back to work on Wednesday, although she honestly thought she deserved to have the rest of the week off after what she had been through. She tried calling her sister, but got the answering machine. Softening, she thought maybe Pam was just lying low, allowing herself time to get caught up with her feelings.

  Going to work turned out to be helpful after all. She had a lot to do. None of it was emotion based, and her brain had to really work to sort things out. Few people at work knew Jack in spite of his company fielding work their way, so the comments were limited to “Sorry about your brother-in-law.” It was as if it hadn’t happened. He was still alive, at work two subway stops down, and all she had to do was send him a text message: “Meet me at the hot dog stand on the corner of Exchange and Wall.” He’d be there like clockwork, standing with a dog and a soda, all ready for her. They’d walk down the street and lean up against a granite wall and eat, easily talking, sharing intimacies that no one else would hear, or so she thought. He never, ever breathed a word about Sandra Benson. Was he, in essence, cheating on me as well? She sat at her desk, distraught. The loneliness was palpable. She needed Pam now like never before. She left another message, then a third.

  On Friday evening, walking home from the office, she imagined that it was going to be like any other week-end. She would go home and pack a bag, get her car gassed up, and the next day, Saturday, if she didn’t have anything to do in the morning would be spent going to Long Island. She would usually stop at a farmers’ market on the way to the house and pick up whatever caught her eye; it was the least she could do.

  She had her own room at Pam’s. It was in a separate wing from the master and guest suites, shared by Lisa and Brent when they were children and now when they returned home from college. When they were away, Marie missed them terribly, although then she had her own bath as well. There was something about knowing that all she had to do was knock on one of their doors, and she would have ready companionship.

  In retrospect, she wondered if her niece and nephew minded her presence. She had always been there, but the family still treated her like an honored guest. When Lisa fought with her mother over permission to date an older boy, Jack spoke up and said, “I’m sure Marie doesn’t want to listen to this squabbling.” Lisa and Pam turned and looked at her with impatience. “If she is going to be here every weekend, she’ll hear more than this!” Marie would have packed up right then and never come back, but Jack leaped to her rescue. “She’s keeping us civilized! Let’s go hit a basket of golf balls,” he said to no one in particular, but Brent and Marie headed out the door with him. It was that sort of interaction that kept her coming back. She is sure now that if Pam had minded, she would have said, “Don’t come this weekend. It is too much.” The rare weekend she had other plans, one of the kids would be on the phone asking her if she was coming, and then she would either feel welcome there or guilty for not going. It was too late. She had spent her life there as eithe
r an interloper or a welcome guest. It was too late to change anything; she couldn’t remake history.

  She let herself into her apartment. She was hungry, but didn’t feel like cooking, so she got out a loaf of bread and the peanut butter jar and made a sandwich. She poured herself a glass of wine and went and sat on the couch overlooking the river. She picked up her phone to thumb through the caller ID and one name jumped out at her; Sandra Benson. She put the phone down. What the hell did she want? She picked up the phone again and continued searching through the caller ID numbers and saw that Pam had called earlier as well as her mother. She picked a glob of peanut butter off her tooth.

  She sat her sandwich down on the coffee table, without a plate under it. She called her mother first. She didn’t have anything to say about Pam, except she hoped she was okay, as she wasn’t answering her phone yet. She returned Pam’s call next. The phone rang for five rings and was answered with a soft hello.

  “Did you call?” Marie asked.

  “I did. Sorry I didn’t leave a message. I wanted to tell you that Sandra Benson called, and she really needed someone to talk to. I was hoping you would meet with her, be a sounding board, if you are able. It is the least we can do. She loved Jack, Marie, she really did.” Pam was silent then for a few minutes. “I just can’t talk to anyone yet. Do you understand? I have to sort through my own feelings about his death before I can help you and the kids and Sandra sort through your feelings. I am okay with his affair. I don’t hold that against her. It was of my own making.”

  “She called here. I saw her number on the caller ID,” Marie said.

  “I tried calling her back and left your number on her answering machine. I am truly sorry if that was not okay with you, Marie.” Pam took a deep breath and then sighed. “I can’t talk anymore. I’ll call you in couple of days, okay?” They said good-bye, Marie feeling empathy for her sister, but still a little icy, still a little jealous. She could not rationalize her feelings. They just were what they were. She tried to understand what it would take to have made her feel better about everything, when she realized that she didn’t feel like part of the family now, and probably never would again. It was Jack who made her feel welcome, who seemed to want her there. Was he just being polite? She would never know.

  She pushed some papers off the couch and lay down sideways on it. She watched the sun go down in the western sky and the lights go on around her and across the river in New Jersey. What a crappy way to spend a Friday night. She didn’t turn the lights on in her apartment and eventually fell asleep.

  Sometime in the night, Marie woke up and went to her bed to sleep. Sandra Benson kept popping into her head, but she just couldn’t make contact with her, not yet anyway. She wanted to see her sister, too. In the still of the night, she missed Pam, missed her cordial cool demeanor, the way she never allowed her own discomfort to stand in the way of the comfort of others. Case in point: Sandra Benson. Why, oh why did Pam care whether or not Sandra was happy? Or sad? Marie tossed and turned for a while, and finally fell back asleep.

  19

  Saturday was hell for Sandra Benson. How did a week pass already since Jack’s death? She was beginning to feel the four walls of her apartment closing in on her. She was going to have to get out this weekend and visit friends or go shopping.

  The other problem, if it was a problem and not just a figment of her imagination, was not going away. She was still a little queasy, a little tired. Her period was due that day, Saturday. She kept running to the bathroom every time she felt the slightest moisture. Nothing. She took the pill, albeit not without some forgetfulness. Today was the day, she thought. It was never late; because of the pill, it was always like clockwork. But she had forgotten to take it two days in a row at the beginning of the month when she went on business to Philadelphia and stayed overnight.

  By noon, she had had enough and left to walk to the drugstore on Broadway to get a pregnancy test. There, I said it! Pregnancy test. Pregnant. Baby. Jack’s baby. She walked quickly down Broadway. The drugstore was crowded. She prayed that no one she knew would come in while she was waiting in line.

  She read the labels on the different brands of test. They were all similar. One had a pink plus sign if the test was positive. Another had a smiley face, a yellow, round circle with a black smiling face on it if you were, in fact, pregnant. Were they kidding? Where was the skull and cross bones if it dared to be positive? She didn’t want cutesy; she didn’t want plus signs and balloons. She wanted negative. A giant NO printed in black.

  She chose the test that was the quickest and also guaranteed to be accurate even before your missed period. She put it in her handbasket and walked over to the candy aisle, grabbing bags of M&M’s and mini Almond Joys, knowing she would end up eating every piece of candy. She couldn’t wait to tear into the bags and pop little candy bars into her mouth or handfuls of M&M’s. She put the obvious out of her mind and thought of a cupcake recipe her late mother used to bake, putting a piece of Almond Joy into the center of it. She would find that recipe in the box of cookbooks she had that had belonged to her mom and bake them tonight. It was a fitting way to spend a Saturday night, she thought sarcastically.

  She paid for the test and her candy and hurried out of the drugstore before she ran into someone she knew. Getting home couldn’t happen fast enough. Throwing the candy bags on the chair in the sitting room, she dug the test out of the bag and read the directions again. She took the plastic stick out of the box and took it into the bathroom. She placed it on the edge of the sink and unbuttoned her jeans, pulling them down to her ankles. The stick was short so she had to contort to get the thing close enough to her crotch to pee on without taking her jeans off.

  If it turned green, she was pregnant; blue, she wasn’t. She peed on it and waited. The she looked at her watch and waited some more. After a minute, she looked, and it was green. The stick turned green. She thought, Great! What the hell am I going to do now?

  She threw the stick in the trash and washed her hands, pulling her jeans up and buttoning and zipping them. She looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, at the dark circles under her eyes and her lips swollen from nightly crying marathons. It would be the first of many times that she would be relieved that her parents were both gone. Having to tell them she was pregnant with the baby of a dead married man would have been intolerable. Goosebumps on her arms and a sick feeling in her stomach taunting her, the idea that there was nothing she could do about the news right then was a relief. She would think about it later. The box of cookbooks that had belonged to her mom was in a closet downstairs. She ran down and dug it out, ripping the packing tape off and lifting the books out. She thought it was in a self-published, church fundraiser book and picked several of them out to thumb through. Taking the stack of books upstairs, she turned the teakettle on. A cup of tea and looking through cook books—a good diversion.

  Sunday came. Marie had spent Saturday going through the chain of events of the previous Saturday, remembering each thing and trying to imagine what she could have done that would have altered the outcome. If she had made her presence known when she saw Sandra and Jack on the street, he wouldn’t have left town then, possibly having his heart attack in a place where help could’ve come sooner. She could’ve taken him back to her apartment and made him a drink so he would’ve relaxed, possibly not even having a heart attack. He would be alive. She would have been on her way to Pam’s afterward, expecting to spend the next three days on the beach; eating hot dogs and burgers off the grill, Mom’s potato salad, and cake and desserts from Heavenly Cake; playing Uno with Lisa; and sneaking a smoke from Bill’s pack. Instead, she had the worst week of her life, and her beloved Jack was dead! Once again she asked the unanswerable question; What the hell am I going to do with my life now?

  Sandra slept like a dead person on Saturday night. Having eaten three cupcakes with Almond Joys stuck in the center of them had no effect on her. They were hot and gooey, the candy bar melted and deli
cious.

  Sunday morning came, and she was so depressed. Getting out of bed was a struggle. What am I going to do today? Would another two thousand calories of candy help get me through the day? She couldn’t force herself to bathe or dress. Mildly nauseated again, the thought of food was not an option. For a second she pretended that Jack was still alive, across the river and in Babylon. She imagined him wearing white tennis shorts and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, running around the tennis courts at his country club. Or with long linen pants on and a golf shirt, golfing in Bermuda. She never actually saw him like this, but he’d talked about those activities and she could see him in her mind’s eye. She stuck a cup of tea made the day before into the microwave and sat at the table looking at her brick wall and drinking the stale tea, pretending she was doing those things with him, that he was her partner in more than illicit sex. She suddenly felt so alone, so empty.

  Pam couldn’t concentrate on the book she was reading. She made herself a huge iced tea, arranged cheese and crackers on a plate, got a sweater in case it was chilly out on the veranda, and picked up her book. She made the effort, but just couldn’t get into the book. She read the flyleaf, the last page, the back of the book. Maybe it wasn’t going to be a good fit.

  She stood up and looked out at the water. Her footprints from earlier in the day were visible halfway down the beach and then mysteriously disappeared, as though she had picked herself up and flown away. The water had lost its allure so early in the season. She had no one to walk the beach with now, no one waiting for her at the house, no one inquiring if she found any of her favorite beach glass. There was a large, clear glass ginger jar on the kitchen counter filled with small pieces of blue and green glass and the rare red. Marie came into her mind. She walked to the phone and picked it up, keying in her number. She answered on the second ring, a breathless, questioning hello.

 

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