by Rona Jaffe
“What are you doing inside a dying relationship?”
It was beyond logic—it was just the way it was. Certainly she too would have preferred it to be some other way.
The days dragged on and she kept counting them, waiting to feel better. Some nights, alone and sleepless, she called Bambi’s house and hung up. Clay never answered the phone; only Bambi did. Sean had assured her there was only one number at the house. Susan thought in wonder at the oppressive self-imposed secrecy that made Clay unable to answer his own phone. She remembered what the psychic had said about Bambi cheating on him and hoped her silent calls made Bambi worry they were from one of her boyfriends. When did she do it? In the afternoon? She could sneak off saying she was going to the gym; Clay would never know.
“Hello?” Bambi said. “Hello?” One night Susan simply held on. She liked that Bambi sounded a little frightened. She hoped Bambi thought it was a lover she had forbidden to call because of Clay. “Hello?” And then Clay took the receiver.
“Who is this?” he said sharply, aggressively, protective of his woman. Susan hung up. She remembered when he had been protective of her. After that there was no point in calling again, and she didn’t.
The publicist from Rutledge and Brown, her publisher, called to ask her if she would be on a cable television interview show to talk about her specialty. She was still nervous about being on TV even though she had done it a few times before, and she was tired deep in her bones, and she didn’t want to.
“I don’t know …”
“It’s the Sandy Pember Show. It’s very good and in a lot of markets.”
“Do they pay?”
“It’s good publicity.”
Like You, Like Me was still selling in paperback. It seemed to go on forever. “How long do I have to be there?”
“For the whole show, an hour. It’s a panel.”
“Oh, all right,” Susan said.
“It’s in two weeks. I’ll send you a letter.”
The letter came, and then a follow-up call. Nina said it was a show that sold books. “I might as well keep trying to sell the book I’ve written,” Susan told Nina, “since I’m unlikely to write anything else for a long time.”
“We’ll think of something,” Nina said reassuringly. “You’ll see. You’ve been through a lot. You need time to recover.”
Sandy Pember was a woman of no particular age, with lemon blond hair, orange makeup, a bright red suit, green earrings, and a multicolored print scarf to hold this all together, or blind you, depending on your feeling about fashion. She dashed through the waiting room to say hello to her panel and went back into the studio to finish something else. The guests, suddenly feeling drab, looked at each other. There was a plump, pale, bald Englishman, a dark-haired woman with angry eyebrows, Susan, and a boy who looked like he belonged in college.
“We almost met,” the boy said to Susan.
She looked at him more carefully. He wasn’t all that young, he was more like in his mid- or late twenties. “Where?” she said.
“I wanted to produce one of your articles for television,” he said. “ ‘White Collar, White Powder.’ My name is Andy Tollmalig.”
Ah yes, that bright, up-and-coming young producer her agent had told her about, the one with the deal with RBS. Andrew Tollmalig. She’d never forget that name. “I should have let you,” she said drily.
“I wish you had.”
He wasn’t drab either. He had a crackling intensity about him that she found attractive. His hair was very dark and straight and shiny, his eyes were almost black and glittering with humor, and he was wearing an expensive-looking gray crew neck sweater, a white shirt under it, ironed jeans, and running shoes. It was the clothes and his indifferent posture that had made her think he was a college boy. But, of course, kids were what television moguls wanted these days. He looked like a cross between a handsome young actor and a raven.
“I wanted to do the part about the woman stockbroker,” Andy Tollmalig said. “I really wanted it. It would have been a terrific movie.”
“Thank you.” She wished he would drop the subject—it was making her irritated at Clay. “So what did you do instead?”
“Biography of a Crime. About the Mafia family? It was a two-part miniseries.”
“Oh, yes.” She’d heard of it, even watched part of it. It had seemed good, but she was too depressed to stick with anything these days. She would have been even more depressed to recognize his name on the credits.
“May I give you my card?” the woman with the eyebrows said.
“And what do you do?” he asked her.
“My book on plant horoscopes has been on the nonfiction best seller list for six months.”
“That’s very interesting,” Andy said gravely. He accepted her card.
“In my book I also discuss the special nutrients we get from foods grown at certain times of the year,” the plant woman went on. “And of course the kinds of foods one particularly needs according to one’s own horoscope. Did you know that there are enzymes in corn that actually promote violence in certain individuals?”
“Really?” Susan said.
“Read my book.” She handed Susan her card, not a book, and then noticing the silent Englishman, handed him one too. “And in what way do you specialize in violence?” she asked him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, isn’t that the theme of this show: violence? That’s what the publicist at my publisher told me.”
“Oh. Well, I’m working on a musical about Jack the Ripper. I guess that qualifies.”
“A musical?” Andy said in that same grave tone. “Yes, that does qualify.” Violence to the theatre was what he meant. Susan couldn’t look at him; she thought she would start to laugh.
“Oh, it’s very dark,” the Englishman said. “Very dark indeed.”
“I didn’t know I was supposed to talk about violence,” Andy said. “The producer’s a friend of mine and she asked me to fill in.”
“You could talk about RBS,” Susan said, thinking about Clay. “They’d qualify.”
Andy smiled. “Actually,” he said, “they’ve been nice to me.”
They would be. “Your Mafia miniseries then.”
“That was yesterday,” he said. “I want to think about today and tomorrow.”
“Me too,” Susan said. Suddenly she meant it; she loved his electricity—it made her feel that there were good times to be had somewhere out there, energetic lives being lived, if only she could find them.
“May I give you my card?” Andy said, and handed it to her. From his arch look she could tell that he didn’t mean just for business.
“I don’t have a card,” she said, “but here’s my phone number.”
The show went well. Despite his complaints he was a pro: warm, modest, knowledgeable. Afterward everyone rushed away, with things to do, meetings to go to. Susan pretended she had an important appointment too. At home she tucked Andrew Tollmalig’s card under the edge of the telephone on her desk so she wouldn’t lose it. She wondered if he would call.
A week went by, then ten days, and she looked at his card from time to time and thought about him. He was attractive, she should make an effort, she should call him, suggest lunch. The card had both his New York and Los Angeles numbers on it. She wondered if he hadn’t phoned because he was away, or if he had forgotten her. He probably had a girlfriend, or even, God forbid, a wife. Best case, a lot of girlfriends. Some best case. But she had to start somehow to live again, and lunch with him would be a start.
She called him.
“Susan!” He sounded genuinely happy to hear from her. “I’ve been meaning to call you; I’m glad you called me. Wasn’t that show something? That plant lady—she eats people. Hundreds of thousands of readers buy that stuff, can you believe it? I picked up the book afterward, I had to. Too bad my deal isn’t for comedy development. Do you want to have lunch with me on Thursday?”
“I’d love to.” At least he would talk.
They met at a little restaurant that looked like an upscale pub. Susan got there first and sat in the seat that showed her more flattering side. When he came in he had on another nice sweater and jeans; she supposed he was too important ever to have to wear a suit. He sat down and grinned at her and they ordered Diet Cokes.
It seemed to be necessary to him that he tell her about his life, in a kind of urgency that she know him; as if she were a woman he was trying to impress. He talked in images: growing up in Philadelphia, his family, first job, first love, first heartbreak, Harvard, NYU Film School, overkill he called it, he would rather be a writer and director than a producer, but being a producer gave him some control; things would work out so he had it all.
He told his stories with humor and charm, but she was so nervous at being on a date—this date—that she found herself tuning out completely and missing blocks of what he was saying. To make matters worse he kept touching her; just his fingertips grazing her arm; and his touch was so disquieting that she huddled into herself, trying not to jump away.
What was she doing with this man? This was what people did; they went out, they got to know each other, they liked each other … He wasn’t married or living with anybody at the moment. He was young and very attractive and it was she, after all, who had called him.
All of a sudden he stopped in midsentence. “I love your nose,” he said.
“My nose?”
“Yes.”
She tried to figure out why. “That’s because it looks just like yours,” she said finally.
“And your smile,” he said. “You have a great smile.”
“Thank you.” Actually he was right.
They sat there smiling at each other for a minute.
He asked her about herself then, and because she had to tell him something she told him briefly about Clay. He was appalled by what Clay had done to her, but particularly the way Clay had taken the property he, Andy, had wanted. His attitude was that of course people can leave each other, that was life, but to lie, to virtually steal, in the name of love, was criminal. He was much more upset than she was. She had only told him because business was an acceptable subject to discuss with men.
The waiter came over again, asking if they had made up their minds what they wanted. They ordered to get rid of him. It was two o’clock and people were starting to leave. She wasn’t hungry at all, but when their chicken salad came Andy devoured his as if he were starved.
“You don’t eat, do you,” he said.
“Yes I do,” Susan said. “I eat.” Just not with you.
They were the last customers in the restaurant. The waiters were having lunch. Susan looked at her watch. “I have to go to my analyst,” she said.
He signed the check. “Will you tell him about me?”
“It’s a her.”
“Tell her we met,” he said impishly. He put her into a cab, and for the first time since she had been in therapy Susan wished she didn’t have to go.
When she came home there was a message on her machine from him. “I know you’re at your analyst, but I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed having lunch with you today. I hope we’ll be good friends, at the very least.”
At the very least! She felt unexpected stirrings of new feelings: surprise, flattery, a little excitement, even happiness. She played his message again. He had a nice voice; straightforward, warm, a bit seductive. His tone made it clear that “at the very least” didn’t mean he was talking about a professional relationship.
Did he actually want to have an affair with her? She was eighteen years older than he was. He didn’t seem to notice, or if he did he didn’t mind. Maybe it intrigued him. It occurred to her that he had never asked her how old she was and she had never told him.
Clay had made her obsessed with age by leaving her for someone younger. She was haunted by her flaws and defects because he loved someone else. All of these things had been there always; her normal growing older, her human imperfections, and they had meant nothing at all. Now they loomed larger than life. He had made her feel beautiful and then he had taken it away.
She had no idea how to deal with Andy’s interest in her. She was so wounded, and she hardly knew him. And beyond that was the reality that people weren’t supposed to go to bed with new friends these days. It was much too dangerous. What a terrible time to break up a long romance—right in the middle of the AIDS epidemic! But she wasn’t going to think about any of that; it was premature. She wondered if she could ever have sexual feelings for anyone anymore.
All she knew was that this man would want to see her again, and she hoped it would be soon.
34
1987—NEW YORK
Nina had been with Stevie Duckworth for five years—nearly a fifth of her life. It was as long as she had spent learning how to walk and talk and dress herself and read, longer than she had spent in college, almost as long as she had been in publishing.
She was a senior editor now at Rutledge and Brown, and making decent money, as he was with his illustrations. She thought they should think of moving to a better apartment, take a trip to Europe, try to widen their lives and have some interests together. He said they did, but the fact was they were very different. Even their hours were different. He worked at home and she worked at the office. When she came back after her day, relieved to be away from office politics and eager to be alone with him, he needed to get out of the house, to go running or to the gym, and after she cooked dinner if he wasn’t immersed in TV he wanted to go to play pool and drink with his friends.
Frat Hogs, she called them. She had to bring manuscripts home most nights, to finish reading by morning, so she often let him go by himself. She didn’t like that he came home hammered at one A.M., but hanging around watching him do it wasn’t any better. He didn’t like her to try to play pool because he said she was lousy at it. She who had always tried to excel at everything didn’t even really care. She had noticed that when some bimbo with big tits and a small brain tried to play, Stevie was much more charitable. Sometimes she wondered if their relationship was worth saving.
But another part of her insisted she save it. Women, she believed, were stronger than men. Men were out of touch with their feelings, even their thoughts. It was up to the woman to shape up her hapless creature, to sustain romance when he took it for granted, to instigate discussions about what was going wrong. A man certainly wouldn’t try. She thought of her parents and her strange childhood. She knew she couldn’t spend her life with Stevie, but she wasn’t ready to give up on him either.
Every so often when she was feeling annoyed and ambivalent this way she strayed to their bookcase and took down the children’s book about the little girl that he had illustrated two years ago. She remembered the day when she had gone to his drawing board to look at what he was keeping so mysterious. There was his painting of the tiny girl, sitting on a mushroom in the forest; pretty, delicate and winsome … with her face! It was unmistakably her, immortalized in his brushstrokes, an homage. She was surprised and deeply touched.
“You caught me,” he said, smiling, sneaking up behind her.
“Oh, Stevie, she’s me.”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“You did. It’s wonderful.”
He had beamed.
She would get so angry at him and then he would do something totally unexpected and nice and she would remember all over again why she had fallen in love with him.
Unfortunately, recently she had to drag up the happy days of the past more and more. She put the book back, glanced at her watch and finished her coffee. He came stumbling out of the bedroom as she was rinsing her cup.
He looked so cute and boyish in the morning, with his hair all touseled, a little vague and grumpy. She felt a rush of tenderness toward him. “Why don’t I make a special dinner tonight,” she said, “and we’ll really spend time together. I won’t bring home any work, you won’t watch TV, and we’ll talk.”
“Talk
about what, Quackers?”
Somehow lately in one second he managed to ruin her mood; she was on an emotional roller coaster. She restrained herself from telling him, for the millionth time, that she hated it when he called her Quackers. He would only say that she used to like it, and she would reply that she never did, and ten minutes later he would be calling her that again.
“How about where we’re going to go for our vacation?”
He looked nonplussed. “I thought we were going to Club Med in Mexico again,” he said. “Our friends are going.”
“Wouldn’t you like to go somewhere different? Europe, for instance? We could go to Paris and I’d show you all around. It would be so romantic. And then we could go to the South of France, or to England, where I’ve never been, or even Italy. There are so many places I want to see.”
“But our friends are going to Club Med,” Stevie said.
“They’re not our friends,” Nina said, “They’re yours. They don’t like me.”
“You don’t like them, Quackers.”
“True,” Nina said. “And since that’s the case, why would I want to spend my precious limited vacation with them?”
“Because I do.”
She held in her temper. She was going to have a romantic evening if it killed her. “Why don’t I make something new and wonderful for dinner, and you pick up some nice wine?”
“Okay. And then you come with me to play pool.”
The truth was she had been thinking more on the lines of sex after dinner. They had not made love for a month, and it hadn’t been very good for a long time before that. Stevie’s idea of foreplay was her sucking his cock. He had chased her so ardently in the beginning, which now seemed so long ago, but as soon as they had settled down he had reverted to what she now reluctantly realized was his true self. Men only did things to you to get you. They really didn’t like it. He didn’t even seem to like her body. What he liked was getting it off.
“Let’s play it by ear,” she said, trying to sound seductive, but not so seductive that she would scare him. She had to leave for the office or she would be late. She kissed him good-bye. “We have a date,” she said. “Seven o’clock.”