by Rona Jaffe
“White wine or red?” he asked.
“You pick. I’ll make something that goes with either one.”
She gave him a lingering look when she left. He certainly didn’t look thirty-one. Didn’t act it either, the mean thought crept in. But she didn’t feel twenty-seven, and she hoped she didn’t look it. “You’re so adorable,” she said. “My Ducky.”
“Quack,” he said.
She was so late now she would have to take a cab.
After an editorial meeting, a business lunch with an agent, an editing session with a reluctant author, and a last-minute rewrite on jacket copy she wasn’t satisfied with, Nina left the office at six o’clock and rushed to the supermarket and the Korean to buy the things she needed to make dinner. She had decided on a fairly quick chicken recipe she had seen in Gourmet magazine. She bought flowers at the Korean too, and hurried home with her purchases. Stevie wasn’t there yet, good.
She put on tights, because Stevie liked her legs, and a loose T-shirt, because he said she was flat-chested so why bother, and played her favorite albums while she cooked. When he got home she would replace them with his favorites. It wasn’t until eight o’clock that she began to get upset.
Maybe he’d met some friends at the gym and stopped for a drink afterward. She didn’t like it when he did that, but he got carried away. Then he would have to stop at the liquor store for their dinner. She’d give him another half an hour and then she’d let herself get mad.
At nine o’clock the dinner was finished and getting dry. She called the gym but he wasn’t there, and then she called his favorite bar, the one near the gym, but he wasn’t there either. She called the dump where he played pool, but no one had seen him. She began to worry that he had been mugged or hit by a car.
What if he was in the hospital? If he was waiting in the emergency room he would call her, unless he was too sick, but then eventually the hospital would have to. She didn’t know what to do, and finally she started to cry a little. She wondered if she should start phoning the hospitals herself, and eventually, at eleven o’clock, after she had called the pool place again, she did. He wasn’t there.
It was midnight. He hadn’t called, and she was in a cold sweat. She thought of telephoning Susan to have someone to commiserate with, but it was too late, and besides she was so used to handling things alone that she thought it would be better just to wait some more until she found out what had happened. She had no idea what could have happened, and that scared her more than any fantasy she could have.
She was a little hungry but too upset to eat. There was nothing in the apartment to drink except seltzer. She was tired, but sleep was out of the question. She had stopped trying to keep her ruined dinner warm, and now she left it on the table next to the flowers and the candles and the cloth napkins just in case he was all right, so he would see what he had missed. She heard him fumbling with his key in the lock at half past one.
He was dead drunk but not dead. Her fear slipped away and anger replaced it, the repressed rage of the entire evening. “Where were you?” she screamed.
“I went to the gym and then I had a couple of drinks with Dave.”
“I called the gym.”
“You must have missed me.” He didn’t seem to remember their plans at all.
“You were supposed to be home at seven o’clock,” Nina said. “I made a special dinner, remember? We had a date.”
“Oh, Quackers,” Stevie said, not really contritely, “I’m sorry. I forgot.”
“You forgot?”
“Yes.” He went into the bathroom.
“How could you forget?” she shouted through the closed door, but somehow to her dismay her angry shout sounded more like a hurt puppy’s whine. “I was scared to death that something happened to you.”
He flushed the toilet and came out. “These things happen,” he mumbled, and fell on the bed and went to sleep.
Nina slept on the couch that night, partly because she was so angry at him and partly because he was taking up the whole bed. In the morning she left him still sleeping and went to work. She couldn’t even look through his pockets, not that she expected to find anything, because he was wearing his clothes.
She wondered what was wrong with her that she was still willing to try to save what little they had. She didn’t want to be like her mother, holding on to something that didn’t exist, but she couldn’t just throw away five years of her life either. She and Stevie were an unfinished story.
Why did love disappear like that? They had been in love once; she remembered the happy times, the excitement, the early passionate sex, the close and euphoric feeling of being a couple. She thought of the sweet surprises, the little girl on the mushroom … But she had grown, she thought, and he hadn’t.
If that was the case, why wasn’t she the one leaving him?
At eleven o’clock flowers arrived at her office. They were from Stevie. He had gotten them himself, not just phoned; there was his trademark duck drawing on the card. Above it he had written: “In vino piggyness. Forgive me?”
She sat there for five minutes trying to figure out what to do. He had never been an alcoholic and she was sure he was not one now. He hadn’t gotten drunk and forgotten, she was certain of it. But the alternative was that he had chosen not to come home, and not to call. That was even worse. Finally she picked up the receiver.
“I got the flowers,” she told him.
“Did you like them?”
“Yes.”
“Am I forgiven?”
“Will you promise not to do it again?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes you promise, or yes you’ll do it again?”
“Yes I promise.”
“I was very hurt and scared,” Nina said.
“I know.”
“Did you see the dinner?”
“I ate it for breakfast,” Stevie said.
“Didn’t you have a hangover?” For an instant she thought that he had been pretending to be drunker than he was, that he had only been pretending to be asleep when she left.
“It cured my hangover,” he said. “See you tonight after work?”
“Yes,” Nina said.
After all, where else did she have to go?
She made another special dinner the following week, and he showed up on time and tried to be charming, although he was still adamant about their vacation trip. After dinner Nina went with him to the loathed pool hall. There was a red-haired girl there named Leslie who greeted Stevie like an old friend, or perhaps more, and flirted with him right in front of her. Nina sized her up. Enormous boobs, great legs, face like a horse. Giggle for chitchat. Practically drooling on him. Good player. Habitué of the hall. Nina did not like their relationship one bit, but kept it to herself.
When they came home it was late. She wondered if she should make a romantic overture. The part of her that was angry at him for flirting said no, but the part that wanted to believe he still preferred her to anyone else said yes. But when she snuggled up to him he turned his back, mumbled good night, and went to sleep.
So much for that, but she was hurt. She had a hard time falling asleep, going over all her physical deficiencies, real and imagined, permanent and fixable. At least she was intelligent, although perhaps that, too, was a drawback. But she had no intention of pretending to be stupid to please anybody.
Thanksgiving came. They couldn’t go to her mother’s, because Laura was still in the detox hospital, learning how to eat and have an accurate idea of what her body really looked like. Nina admired her very much for her courage and hoped she would make it. They certainly weren’t going to go to California to visit her father and Bambi—they hadn’t even been invited, not that she wanted to go. So once again they went to Stevie’s parents in Florida.
Nina had always liked Stevie’s parents and the warm feeling of a normal family that she had never had as a child. His parents liked her too, and as usual his mother made hints about their getting engaged. S
tevie had two sisters and two brothers, all married, all with kids. Even his friends in New York had finally made commitments. Nina realized that she and Stevie were the only couple they knew their age who were still just going together; neither married, engaged, nor even talking about it. She couldn’t imagine being married to him. It would be nice to have his family without him coming along too, but that was life.
The night she and Stevie came back from Florida he went out to buy seltzer and didn’t come back for forty-five minutes. The fact that they already had seltzer seemed to have escaped him. Something was very wrong; this was not rational behavior. And then, she knew. He was seeing someone, she was suddenly sure of it, or at the least making a long phone call, and she felt sick. She thought about Leslie, the temptress of the pool table, his “buddy,” and something in her said: It’s her. She had no idea why she was so certain of it, but she was. When he came back she was ready for him.
“Where were you for forty-five minutes?” she said.
“Buying seltzer.” His eyes were innocent and he had a bag under his arm with two bottles in it. “I had to go all over, everything was closed.”
“The Korean downstairs isn’t closed.”
The innocent look changed to a closed-off annoyance. “Why are you interrogating me?”
She felt tears trying to break though and fought them down. “If you have a girlfriend just tell me,” Nina said. “I won’t attack you, I’ll accept it, but just don’t lie to me.”
“A girlfriend?” He was all innocence again; injured innocence. “That’s ridiculous. There’s no one else.” He put the seltzer into the refrigerator along with the seltzer that was already there.
“You must be very thirsty,” Nina said.
“We’ll use it up.”
“If you have a girlfriend I’ll catch you,” she said.
“Don’t be paranoid. There’s nothing to catch.”
Was she imagining it? She was tired, and she had to get up early the next morning to go to work. She didn’t want to spend another sleepless night wondering what she had done wrong. “If we’re having problems, Stevie, let’s discuss them,” she said. “Please.”
“There are no problems, Quackers. You’re so dumb.”
When he was asleep she went into the bathroom to cry so he wouldn’t hear her.
During the week she and Stevie tried to pretend everything was all right. On Friday afternoon he called her at the office just as she was about to leave. “I’m going to the gym with Dave,” he said. “And afterward I’ll have a drink with him, so don’t get nervous if I’m late.”
“How late?” she said.
“I’ll be home by ten.”
“But what do you want to do about dinner?”
“We can go to the cheap Thai place up the street, it won’t be crowded by then. Or, you know what? Why don’t we play it by ear; if you get hungry you eat, and I’ll just find something at home.”
Friday night … He was leaving her alone again. She could, she supposed, try to get into a movie. But walking home, looking at the couples who were already lifting their first beers at the neighborhood cafés, she suddenly realized that he couldn’t possibly be with Dave. Dave was married. His wife had just had a baby. They lived out in Queens. There was no way Dave was going to hang around Manhattan on a Friday night having a drink with his bachelor friend. Nina ran the rest of the way home.
She found Dave’s number in Stevie’s address book and dialed, but when his wife answered she got so rattled she hung up. What was she going to do, ask for Dave? Then she formulated her plan. She called again, but this time Dave himself answered.
“Well, hi,” Nina said with false cheer. “I haven’t talked to you guys since you had the baby and I wanted to know how things were.”
“Hectic,” Dave said. “We never get out anymore. But the baby’s great.”
“I’m glad.”
“How are you two?” he asked.
“Fine,” Nina said.
“Well, when things settle down we’ll have to get together.”
“Absolutely,” she said.
Just wait till Stevie calls him for his alibi, she thought as she replaced the receiver. I wonder what story he’ll have for me then. She was so angry she didn’t even cry. She walked around the apartment looking at the things that were hers. None of them were really important; all she wanted was her clothes and her art. She could put some things at Aunt Tanya’s, in her mother’s closet. She’d hear what Stevie had to say when he got home, and then tomorrow she would go.
Go where? A hotel was too expensive. She’d have to find another apartment, unless he was willing to leave and let her have this one. She was making enough now to pay the entire rent if she economized on everything else. She looked at her possessions. On second thought, why should she leave him anything? He wouldn’t have a dish or a spoon or a decent towel if she took everything that she had brought into this relationship. He wouldn’t even be able to watch TV. Let him go move in with his new girlfriend if he didn’t like it.
Why did he have to be such a liar? Why couldn’t he have just told her the truth? Stevie, her father … What was wrong with men anyway? Why did honesty frighten them so much?
She called Susan and told her what had happened, and then in spite of her best control she finally started to cry.
“You can sleep on my couch until you find something,” Susan said.
“I hate to impose.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I guess I could sleep in my mother’s room at Aunt Tanya’s until she comes back, but I just don’t feel like being charming.”
“You’re staying with me,” Susan said.
“Thank you … you’re such a good friend. I’ll repay you someday.”
“You already have.”
Stevie came home at half past one in the morning. Nina was just finishing packing, and she had cried all the tears she had in her for one night. She looked calm. He looked drunk.
“What are you doing, Quackers?”
“Leaving you.”
“I didn’t have a drink with Dave,” he said.
“Oh?” He must have called Dave and found out his alibi had been blown.
“The reason I haven’t been coming home,” Stevie said, “is that lately you’ve been wanting to get married, and it scares me.”
“Married?” Nina said. “Me? There is no one on earth who less wants to get married.”
“Your mother said she wants grandchildren.”
“She never said any such thing.”
“And you’ve been reading Bride’s magazine.”
Nina was astonished. “The only time I ever read Bride’s magazine was that night at the 7-Eleven when you were taking so long buying chips that I had to do something, and there was nothing else to read there but Playboy and Popular Mechanics.”
“I don’t want to get married,” he said.
What a lame excuse! “Obviously I don’t either,” Nina said, “since I’m moving out in the morning.”
“You can’t.”
“Watch me.”
“But why?”
“So you can live with Leslie, I guess,” Nina said.
Such an obvious look of guilt flashed over his face that she wanted to hit him. He didn’t have to say anything more.
She dropped some things at Susan’s on the way to work. The Stevie story wasn’t over, and wouldn’t be until she was clean away from him and never had to see him again. She knew she would never take him back, but still she missed him, and knew the feeling wouldn’t just go away. Now she really began to understand how Susan felt about her father, but of course that was far, far worse.
She called Stevie a few days later to ask him what he wanted to do about their apartment. She had to call several times before she could find him in. “I guess I’ll move downtown,” he said.
With Leslie, she thought. Suddenly she didn’t want the apartment either. There were too many memories, and a woman alone should have a d
oorman. She began looking at available apartments at night, sure it would be easy to find something, but they were all claustrophobically small and frighteningly expensive. A woman alone, she told herself, doesn’t need much space.
The days of her childhood at The Dakota were long gone. For the first time she wished that she were really rich. In the end she compromised on a studio that had been advertised as “a flexible one bedroom,” with air-conditioning and a doorman, for what she and Stevie had been paying for their entire four-room apartment. It was already painted the obligatory white, and she could move right in. The only thing she had to buy was a bed without a past—a sofa bed, to look nice for company in the small room. Who did she even know to invite?
She sat in Susan’s apartment and they talked about men. “They’re all vile,” Nina said. “No matter how old, no matter how young. Why do they have to lie? I begged him to tell me if there was someone else, but he denied it.”
“I asked Clay, and he denied it too.”
“Do you think there really is an Anwar?” Nina said.
“Who knows? Clay never mentions him anymore.”
“Well, he doesn’t have to ‘visit’ him anymore, does he.”
They sat there thinking about their betrayal. “I can’t believe I didn’t know when I saw his clothes were gone,” Susan said. “I kept refusing to see everything I should have seen, because I wanted things to work.”
“Why do we stay with them and try to make it work?” Nina said.
“Love. Maybe we’re just neurotic.”
“They’re the ones who are neurotic! Why do they need to cheat? All right, Stevie and I had problems, and we grew apart, but you and my father had a perfect relationship. You two had so many things in common. He was lucky to have you. Why did he have to pick her?”
“Maybe he wanted a new life and he thought he could find it through a new woman.”
“Why couldn’t he make a new life with you?”
Susan shrugged. “I’m going to show you something I wrote,” she said. “I never showed it to anybody. I wrote it when I was in the hospital.” She got up and went into the bedroom, and then she came out with a piece of lined paper in her hand. She unfolded it. “Read this.”