Young Wives

by Olivia Goldsmith

  “Hey, come on. Doctors are there to help. Unless they work at an HMO,” Jada added. “The bank will pay for it. You’ve got to keep yourself from falling apart.”

  “I hope I can do it,” Michelle said. She thought about Frank and how erratic his behavior was becoming. She knew the pressure was worse on him than it was on her, but she wasn’t taking it out on the children or on Frank—at least not yet.

  “I think Frank needs a tranquilizer or something, too,” she admitted to Jada. “He’s really edgy. But he wouldn’t take one.”

  Jada shook her head. “They can’t take care of themselves,” she said.

  “It’s not fair,” Michelle said. “None of it’s fair.” She was beginning to breathe hard from walking up the incline and her breath, just like Jada’s, was coming out in white puffs of frosty air. “It isn’t fair.”

  “Tell me about it,” Jada said, and promised herself she wasn’t going to cry. “We are expected to take care of everything. I’ve got to take care of my kids. I got to take care of the house. Then I got to take care that I don’t get fired and do what I gotta do to keep my job. That isn’t enough. I also had to take care of my man, and of how I looked for him. Because if I don’t take care of how I look, I’d lose my man, and then I’d be on my own and I’d have to take care of myself and everyone else. But I been taking care of myself the whole damn time.” Jada looked fierce, her brows almost meeting. “’Cause he never took care of me. He didn’t want to know too much about what I was feeling. And he sure didn’t want to take care of the kids.”

  Jada shook her head. “I don’t know where he is with them right now, but I do know that one hour of Shavonne’s attitude plus one hour of the baby’s fussing and he’d put them up for adoption.” She bit her lip; Michelle wanted to reach out and take Jada’s hand, but she was afraid to. “Clinton has only done this to scare and punish me. He doesn’t want, and he can’t handle, the responsibility of the children. He won’t hear about the troubles that Kevon is havin’ at school. Most of the time he doesn’t even wanna be told about the broken damn garage door.”

  “I know,” Michelle sympathized. “I really know.”

  “Of course, you know. Of course, you know. Every damn woman in America knows. But that isn’t the worst of it. Nuh-uh. Ask the First Lady. The worst of it is that after a while we get real damn good at taking care of ourselves. We make sure we take care of ourselves because we have to. That’s the only way we or our children will survive. And then look what Clinton does … He sticks in the damn knife. Then they tell us that we’re hard. That we’ve lost our vulnerability. That we ain’t the little girl they married.”

  “That’s just what Frank said to me,” Michelle said. “But I think he meant it was a good thing.”

  “Oh really?” Jada asked, her voice edged with sarcasm. “Well, this is only the beginning, honey. If you survive this and take care of yourself and Jenna and Frankie Junior, he’s gonna be tellin’ you that you’re a goddamned castrating bitch before this is over.” She increased her pace. “First they promise to take care of you, then they need you to take care of them, then they force you to take care of yourself and your kids. Then they blame you for it.”

  “Oh my God!” Michelle said. “Those are like the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths. Jada, that’s it. That’s it in a nutshell.”

  Jada nodded her head emphatically. “The hell with the Buddha. I’m a Christian. But they’re the Four Home Truths, baby,” she said, and stepped up the pace again.

  “Jada, you should start a twelve-step program, like Al-Anon. Except for all wives, and instead of twelve steps, there are those four.”

  “Mich, you’re a little too late to the party. All married women all over have already gone through those steps. And they’re damn sick and tired of it, especially the last one.” Jada clenched her fists and walked even faster. Michelle was forced to almost run to keep up.

  “Wait,” Michelle begged. She’d lost some ground looking for Pookie and Jada must have gotten twenty feet ahead of her. Michelle held her hand to her rib cage. “I got a stitch in my side,” she called.

  “Get used to the pain,” Jada said. “It ain’t goin’ away anytime soon.” Suddenly Jada stopped, nearly at the crest of the bill. Michelle, who knew Jada hated to break her pace, took advantage of the opportunity, inhaled deeply, and ran up the hill to reach her friend.

  “Thanks for waiting,” she said, breathless.

  “I wasn’t waiting. I was thinking,” Jada told her. “Michelle, what the hell are we doin’ this for?”

  “Doing what for?” Michelle asked. “You mean staying married? You mean taking care of our families?”

  “No. I’m talking about this damn walking. In the cold. In the dark. We’re doing this walkin’ so that we can still look like we’re twenty-five when we’re thirty-five-year-old grown-up women.” Jada looked at Michelle. “Think about it. You’re worse than I am, but I spend hours every week trying to stay the same weight I was in junior college. It’s ridiculous.” Jada turned her back on the rest of the hill. For the first time ever since she and Michelle had started walking, Jada was going to quit. Michelle watched her as she started to walk down the hill.

  “Meanwhile,” Jada said, “my husband has stolen my kids and is probably lying in a warm bed with a woman who’s got a fat black ass. I’m not doing this anymore, Michelle. I am not gettin’ up at the crack of dawn, walking out into the New York cold, and dragging myself up and down Westchester hills to make sure that the cellulite on my thighs isn’t forming. I got better things to do.” Jada kept walking, if anything, even faster than she had before. Michelle had to almost skip to keep up with her. A thrill of fear, not just the chill of November, went through her.

  “Jada, listen. I know how bad you feel. Well, almost how bad. This thing Clinton did to you is terrible. But we’re not doing this just to look good or for health. At least I’m not. Honestly.” She reached out and took her friend’s hand. “I’m walking with you because I want to be with you. Because I want to talk to you. You’re my only real friend, Jada. And you’re so good for me. Our walks are the only time I have during the day when I get to be …” Michelle searched for the words. “When I get to just be myself. To be honest. And not think I’m stupid or crazy when I am.”

  Jada looked down at her. “Well, you are stupid and crazy if you think spending time with the likes of me is good for you,” she said, but she leaned over and hugged Michelle hard. Michelle hugged her back. She was amazed at how grateful she felt for Jada’s small act of friendship.

  “You’re right, Mich,” Jada said. “I think that’s why I pushed you into your jacket this morning. We both need these walks.”

  “Thanks,” Michelle said. They had come to the end of Laurel Street, the place where they turned around. Jada looked over at Michelle.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Touch the post. I know you want to.”

  “The hell with the post. I used to touch it for good luck, but it hasn’t worked, has it? Absolutely nothing is going right for either of us,” Michelle said. Then despite herself she gave in and tapped it.

  “Forget about luck. Think about God,” Jada said, and then a big smile broke out on Jada’s face. “Just when you think that, God sends a miracle.”

  Michelle turned to look in the direction Jada was pointing. There, padding out from behind a garage, came Pookie, looking as if he were doing nothing more than following them on their usual walk. Michelle dropped to her knees and clapped her hands and he trotted over. She put her face down against the dog’s soft head.

  “We found him! Or he found us! It is a miracle,” she said.

  “No,” Jada answered. “I knew we’d find him. The miracle is that I’m happy to see him. The spoiled little spaniel.” She looked over at Michelle. “It’ll make things better for the kids, won’t it?” Michelle hugged the dog and nodded her head. “Let’s try to cheer up,” Jada said.

  And Michelle did. As they walked home, Jada spoke about h
ow much she wanted to see her children, alternating with how much she wanted to murder Clinton. Michelle agreed with her the whole way back.

  19

  In which realizations are rather thick on the ground

  When she got back from Marblehead, Angie had a hard time keeping her head clear. She was glad her father was away—she couldn’t face explaining her stupidity to him. The only thing she longed for was sleep. Any thoughts that came into her mind in the mornings when she woke up or at night, back at her father’s, were full of such hurt, such rage, and such humiliation that she couldn’t tolerate her own consciousness. She’d had a hard enough time believing that Reid, the low-life slime ball, had betrayed her. But it was far more difficult to accept that he had betrayed her with Lisa. What an idiot she’d been! There had to be a name for the kind of jerk, the kind of stupid, trusting, moronic idiot she was, but she couldn’t think of one except for “Angie.”

  On Tuesday, when she didn’t call, her mother had telephoned and threatened to come over, get her out of bed, and chase her down. Angie had managed to get dressed and show up at the office, looking more like a desperate client who needed help than a lawyer prepared to give any. But the staff had been so kind: Michael Rice had patted her hand. Bill, the paralegal, had taken her to lunch and confided to her about all the men who’d broken his heart, while Susan, the receptionist, had brought her a whole box of Yodels. “And you don’t have to share them,” Susan told her.

  After everybody’s kindness, Angie made her decision. She couldn’t just spend the rest of her life lying on her father’s sofa—although she felt as if that was all she really wanted to do. Instead she could at least help other women. Her mother was right—that was a worthwhile way to spend your life. She would take this job—even if it wasn’t permanent—and she’d do her best. She’d make a difference for others, even if it was too late for herself. And if they couldn’t use her when Karen Levin-Thomas returned (if she ever returned) then Angie would find another job with Legal Aid or the NOW Legal Defense Fund or something like it, and do the kind of work that she always should have been doing.

  She stared at the files in front of her, dozens and dozens of them, but the words in the documents floated in front of her eyes. So much pain, so much betrayal, so much disappointment. She knew she wasn’t the only Angie, the only stupid trusting woman in the world who had let her life be ruined through her own poor judgment, but case after case after case of Angies seemed overwhelming.

  She stayed late that first night, trying to focus. It wasn’t easy, but she could either do that or sleep some more, and she couldn’t face the thought of her dad’s empty house, her rumpled bed, and her empty future.

  Her coworkers said goodnight on their way out. Angie had to turn the desk light on as the darkness outside matched her internal darkness. She kept going through the cases, taking notes, putting down court dates on the big tracking calendar. One thing law school had taught her was how to stick with something, how to work through distraction and fatigue simply because you had to.

  She didn’t take a dinner break. At about seven o’clock she broke into the Yodel box, and by nine-thirty she’d eaten every one of them. And then something happened. She wasn’t sure if it was her mind clearing, or if the sleep had done the trick, or if it was only a sugar high, but as she sat reading her notes she began to get angry. Very, very angry.

  None of this was fair. And it wasn’t the fault of Mrs. Huang, whose husband had falsely translated and then made her sign documents that gotten her embroiled in all of his malfeasance, and in trouble with the IRS as well as Immigration. And it wasn’t the fault of Terry Saunders’s that her husband of twenty-seven years had taken all their money, including her inheritance from her family, forged her name, and deposited it in off-shore accounts, where he was now living with her children’s baby-sitter.

  It was all unfair, rotten behavior. It was better to live life as a trusting soul than to be a J’in Huang or a Henry Saunders, willing to lie and cheat a partner. Better to be an Angie Romazzano than a Reid Wakefield or a Lisa Randall, she thought, and for the first time since her anniversary, the shame that had bound her fell off. She actually stretched her back, as if, like some bug that drops its carapace, something stiff and dark that had enclosed her had dropped off. For God’s sake, she thought, what did she have to be ashamed of? What did any of these women have? They had followed the rules, behaved honorably. For most of them, their only sin had been to be too trusting.

  She stretched her shoulders back again and made fists with her hands. Anger moved like blood through her whole body. The trouble with most of the women that she’d seen at the clinic was that they weren’t mad. They were ashamed or frightened or both.

  Angie would focus on the work at the clinic. Oddly, it would comfort her to feel the rage that many of the women clients she spoke to were afraid to express. Her rage was big enough for all of them.

  The clinic, she decided, wasn’t just her temporary job. It was her mission. With Natalie’s help in getting licensed, she would take on these cases and she would win them. She knew she was smart, and more important, she knew how to work hard. This was not how she would have chosen to spend her life or her energy, but it had chosen her. There was nothing for it but to push ahead.

  She might have had a life in a pleasant house in Marblehead, working at a respectable private law firm, and raising one and three-quarters children while her husband, a delightful, handsome, popular guy, discreetly cheated on her and she turned a blind eye. But that wasn’t the life she was going to live and there was nothing she could do about it now. And she had picked this new focus. She wasn’t stuck in it—she was selecting it. She might not have fun, but she was going to make a difference.

  She had one more appointment, with a woman who worked two jobs and couldn’t come in until after nine. Sometime around half-past, Angie looked up to see the door open and her new client come into the office, shoulders hunched, head down, a woman used to being bested by everyone, an immigrant who didn’t know her rights and was afraid of all male authority. Poor Mrs. Huang.

  The next morning Angie was ushering a client out the door, patting her shoulder in a pathetic attempt to comfort her, when her mother bounced down the corridor from behind her and tapped Angie on her tush. Mrs. Gottfried left and Angie turned to her mom. “You busy for lunch?” Natalie asked.

  Angie raised her eyebrows. “Well,” she said, “I do have a date with Brad Pitt, but I hear he’s cheating on me with a Soprano, so I could blow him off.”

  Natalie heaved a big sigh. “Honey, I didn’t want to tell you. It isn’t just a Soprano, it’s the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  The two of them put on their coats. “Maybe you want to comb your hair. Are you letting those streaks grow out or what? And take your car,” Natalie said. “I might want to linger.”

  “Car?” Angie asked. “To go to the deli? I wasn’t even going to bring my purse. You’re buying, right?”

  “Not exactly,” Natalie said. “Bring your bag and your car keys.” Angie nodded agreement, though she didn’t feel up to much more than a quick sandwich. She put on some lipstick, brushed her hair, and added some mascara. She still looked like shit, but now she looked like shit that tried.

  They were out the lobby, almost to the parking lot, when she jerked her head and pointed across to the Blue Bird Coffee Shop. “We’re not flipping into the Bird?” she asked.

  “No,” said Natalie. “This is a fancy-shmancy lunch. Just follow me.”

  So Angie tried to, despite Natalie’s driving, which had to be the worst she’d ever seen—and she’d lived in Massachusetts. Since Angie still didn’t know the neighborhood, she followed blindly while her mother weaved across the busy streets until they were driving one right behind the other in a mostly residential area on a narrow lane. Natalie drove on the right shoulder, except for when she drove over the white line. As Angela watched, her mother made a left
across the other lane without signaling first.

  Now her mother put on her left blinker, but she didn’t make the next left-hand turn. Angie shook her head. Only a woman who had spent most of her life living in New York City without a car could drive this badly. But Angie lost the smile quickly. It suddenly hit her that she had no life, and living with her dad and driving this old clunker he’d lent her was no way to get a life.

  She ought to think about some kind of a living arrangement—not that she was making a living. The clinic had been paying her only a tiny per diem that didn’t do much more than pay for her lunches and gas money. She wasn’t sure if they could or would pay more, and where would she live if she didn’t live with her father? The idea of a place of her own frightened her. Somehow it had been fun and easy to pick out sheets and a vacuum and a coffeemaker when it was for her home with Reid. But doing it for herself? It all seemed expensive, difficult, and maybe pointless. But it was pointless to do it for a man who was sleeping with your best girlfriend, too, she reminded herself. Maybe making a home was important. She sighed. She had too much to think about.

  She looked around at azalea, mountain laurel, and privet that dominated the landscaping in the neighborhood they were driving through. This part of Westchester was beautiful and expensive. Like the plantings, it was mature as well. Somehow, Angie couldn’t see herself living there. Nor could she see herself in White Plains or the other larger towns in Westchester. She could only see herself in New York City, but she couldn’t afford an apartment there and had avoided the city because she knew how difficult it was to get a good legal job. The competition was fierce.

  And now, against her will, she was kind of hooked on this do-gooding stuff. The stakes seemed so much higher than in the wills and estates she had done before. And she had so much autonomy—maybe too much. The clinic was so overwhelmed with potential clients that there wasn’t a lot of time for supervision from the senior people. And the senior people didn’t act particularly senior; everything was friendly. At her law firm there had been a strict hierarchy—like Victorian children, associates were regarded best if they didn’t speak to a partner unless they were spoken to.