The Girl That He Marries

by Rhoda Lerman

  “See, even the kids know. All I want, Richard, is that I don’t get an Innocent Marie.”

  I started then to laugh. I laughed very hard and very well. I faked most of it, but I was good, holding my stomach in agony and wiping my eyes. “God,” I managed through my desperate gulps for air, “is that a person’s name? I never heard . . . can you imagine . . . naming an innocent kid like that? She must have been born with flamingos in her belly button. A pair. Did you ever . . . did you ever hear about the Ital . . . no, about the flamingos who got married? Oh God, and they bought a pair of Italians for their front lawn?”

  And then, because it was time to notice that I laughed alone and that Richard’s family sat alternately watching my alabaster face and Richard’s reddening face, like a team of demolition experts between two nitroglycerin caps, the nitro is ready to blow, when will it go, how will it go, will we get any birthday cake if there’s a fight? Then, I stopped laughing. No one breathed. If a moment were to be pregnant, this was the moment.

  I released my tiniest, poorest, littlest little-matchgirl-selling-matchsticks-on-a-bitter-winter-night-to-support-her-dying-mother “oh” into the vacuum around me. “Oh.”

  I inquired of everyone’s frozen face. “Is . . . is Innocent Marie a real person?”

  Mark exploded. “His girl friend. Uncle Richard’s girl friend.”

  “Yes,” Pamela, cool and wicked, president of the sorority. “His Italian girl friend, short, squat, and bangs.”

  “Nasty child, Pamela. That’s enough,” Blossom managed unconvincingly. Blossom’s children were, after all, holy. Also Blossom had just joined my team. Ho ho.

  Menacingly, Richard rose from his Hans Wegner Bear Chair. “Stephanie, I really want to talk to you.”

  Where was the magic? It had been such a lovely line. Nevertheless, for old time’s sake, I followed him into the next room just like the night we had met when he really wanted to talk to me except this time I turned to my attentive audience, mimed the long, angry eye-popping face of Richard, crossed myself in abject piety and exited left. A burst of laughter followed me. Richard closed the door on it. “Now, Stephanie . . .” Richard began but there was nothing for him to say. There was no now for him. It was my now. He had stepped out of time into dark limitless chaos and he knew it. I’d show him cosmic spaces. What he wanted to say to me was “Don’t make a scene. Don’t embarrass me,” but, hydra-headed as I was, I had no intention of saving Richard’s two-faced neck. I was through the maze and into the forest and I had the Unicorn at bay, almost in my virginal lap. Loose the hounds, sound the call. This may be it.

  It wasn’t it. But it was fun. As soon as Richard abandoned the closed door to take a position suitable for flogging, facing the bookcase, I opened the door, winked at my spellbound audience and filled my lungs because I was about to project as I had never projected before, the Yma Sumac of Westport, Connecticut, raising the Inca gods at Machu Picchu, a range unequaled in the long history of Woman Betrayed. Tragically, of course. And very loud.

  I chose a middle octave, round, firm, accusative tones. “You, Richard, you to whom I am promised are living in sin.” I moved to upper octaves. “And I hate SIN!”

  “Please, Stephanie.”

  “I hate sin. I hate it. Oooh, I hate it.”

  “Please, Stephanie, let’s discuss this sanely. Keep your voice down.”

  There was no way for him to close the door to his family as I stood before it, defending the fort, guarding the Nibelungen treasure, maintaining my indignity, and if he were, either gently or violently, to move me from the door—whatever—his flesh and blood, his mother and his executor, all of them out there would see his naked face. At that moment, only a shiny collection of Martin Buber, Winston Churchill, and Philip Roth could appreciate his naked revealed face, which I think must have been terrific, a noble prize. And I think, also, that Churchill and Buber would have been on my team.

  I leveled into low octaves. “I am ashamed.” Dirge speed. “I am ashamed. I thought the Jewish people were decent. Was I so wrong? I thought the Jewish people were ethical. Was I so wrong? I thought the Jewish people were moral. But this—this?” Although I was addressing Richard’s back, I wasn’t addressing Richard. I was addressing the nation of Israel, ancient and modern. If Solomon slept with the dark foreign Sheba and brought down Israel and the wrath of Jehovah, so could my Richard. I let it be known to all assembled that the judgment of the entire Christian world, of which I was a major representative and not an unheard voice, that the entire world’s judgment of the Jewish tradition would pivot on Richard’s behavior with the woman of sin. Actually, until that moment, I had never thought one way or another about which religion had higher morals. Men were men. Miriam had taught me that. Any other distinctions were after the fact. But it was gorgeous. Richard’s shoulders shrank into his camel cashmere jacket. He managed a few weak Stephanie pleases.

  I turned to my audience in the den. Low, vibrating, stage whisper. Ring out, sing out, fling out your empty arms. “Richard and I, that man, have never slept together. Richard told me we shouldn’t sleep together and I believed him. Do you hear that? Richard and I have never gone to bed because he’s going to do it right. And do you know what doing it right means for Richard? It means living in sin. With a woman. In sin. It means, Mark and Pamela, that while your grandmother and your grandfather made love and your mother and your father make love, your Uncle Richard fucks. That is the difference. That is sin. And I hate sin!”

  “Stephanie,” Richard said softly, still facing Buber, Churchill, and Roth, “you knew I was living with someone.” He turned to me. His eyes were pathetic.

  “How should I know?” I pointed to his family. “They all know. I’m the last to know. The woman is always the last to know.”

  “She brought you the key, Stephanie.”

  “That?” I resisted holding my forehead or clutching a breast. “That is Innocent Marie? Oh, no! Oh my God, don’t let that be the other woman. Oh, Richard, why couldn’t she at least be pretty? I wouldn’t have to suffer this shame if she were at least pretty. Or honest, or decent, or famous, or nice or even had good teeth. Or smart. Some redeeming feature I need. Well-dressed. Would that have been too much to have asked of you, Richard? That if you had to sleep with someone, that she be well-dressed?”

  “They sleep naked, Aunt Stephanie.” Someone clapped a hand over Mark’s mouth.

  I clasped my shoulders, holding myself, and strode back and forth before the door. “I hate sin. Oooh, I hate sin. I hate sin so much.” Richard somehow moved through my defense and closed the door.

  “Now just hold on, Stephanie.” Richard faced me and spoke to me between his orthodontic teeth in a pained whisper. There is something decidedly sexy about violence. I could see where folks could get off on it. Maybe that was why I was doing so well. Richard felt he had to hold back here too. Anything but an emotional commitment. “Now just hold on.”

  “Let me guess. I think it’s Gary Cooper but I can’t get the title.”

  “She is decent and she is pretty and she’s smart and nice and honest and I won’t have you talking about her.”

  I walked nearer the door. “I hate sin, Richard. Oooh, how I hate sin. Ooooh, I can feel it I hate it so much.” And I opened the door. “Don’t you hate sin too?” I asked his family raptly assembled. They all nodded at me affirmatively. “And her name is shitty, Richard. I never heard a shittier name in all my life. If you could only tell me one thing about this hippie women’s lib ragpicker kook, one thing so I could hold my head up in public. I beg of you.”

  “She’s an honest woman. She has integrity.”

  “Does anyone who lives in sin have integrity?” I asked rhetorically of my audience. They shook negatively this time. Mark asked what integrity was and Pamela told him to shut up.

  “One thing, Richard. I’m waiting.” I crossed my arms over my chest.

  Richard offered his defense to his family. “She’s a nurse. She helps people.” He
really meant it. I would never have that kind of love from him.

  I threw my head back and laughed. “You mean a Natalie Nurse?” Then dropped to my lowest octaves, quivering, deep, agonized. “You come to me from her, from the bedpans, from the staph infections, from the cancer, from the lymph nodes, from the bedsores . . .”

  “White with foam,” Pussycat sang out bravely.

  “Shah!” Richard’s mother commanded behind her birthday cake. “Shah, Pussycat! I don’t want to miss anything. What did she say? Did I miss something? Isn’t she wonderful?”

  “I said she is death. I said that Richard comes to touch me and he comes to me from death. Richard touches his mother and these clean children and that birthday cake and he contaminates the people who love him.”

  “See here, Stephanie, she’s maternity. You’ve got her all wrong. That’s life, maternity.”

  I continued undeterred. “From the festering fetuses, from the bleeding wombs, from death. She is death.”

  “Go on, Richard, let her have it.”

  “Daddy!” I heard Pamela, as calm a little castrator as there ever was, “I can’t believe that you would defend Uncle Richard’s sinning.”

  “Pussycat doesn’t mean anything, Pamela, honey. He’s just sorry for Uncle Richard. We are all sorry for Uncle Richard.”

  Richard’s voice cracked and rose on what he interpreted as sympathy. “She’s a nice girl. She doesn’t even scream like Stephanie. She’s not a fishwife like Stephanie.”

  “You better believe it like a fishwife. You want to hear screaming? You just continue with your immorality, with your deceit, with your dishonesty, with your hypocrisy. God, to think you are allowed in a court of law. To think.” I addressed now the heavens. “Oh, but they’ll find out. The world will find out about you, Richard Slentz. The world will find out what you’ve concealed under that curly head. And if they don’t, I’ll follow you into the courtrooms and I’ll tell them what I know. God help me, if only he had been living with someone decent. What have I done that I deserve a trafficker in death? Do you actually kiss her?”

  “Look . . . Jesus . . . Stephanie,” Richard came toward me, arms outstretched.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “You’re really getting carried away. Anyway, she’s a hell of a lot more decent than you are. I don’t know what you’re so ashamed of.”

  “Watch, soon he’ll tell you I’m crazy. Just remember, the truth is I was sane until he betrayed me.” Richard was standing too close to me and looking at me soft-eyed, hurt, incredulous. I was tiring myself. I summed up. “Oh, Richard, if she had something, like taste, a different name, anything to recommend her, Richard.” I let my voice break in sorrow. “Isn’t there anything about her we can take pride in? Give us something, darling, so we can forgive the man we love.”

  He offered me hesitantly and sincerely his something. “She loves me.”

  I filled my lungs as he backed away. “Out! Get out of here! Get out of this house. This is a decent house with decent people and you don’t belong in a decent house with decent people. This is an honest house and you don’t belong in an honest house.”

  “An honest house with honest people,” Blossom assisted me. I was getting bored and had lost my flow, structure all off.

  “I’m going.” Richard pushed past me. “Goddammit. I’m going.”

  “Go, Richard, and if you ever come back to me, you’ll have to make a choice, Richard, between Death and Life. Hands that touch bedpans shall never touch mine. Go.”

  Past his mother, and out. I’ve always wondered at what point Richard realized I’d thrown him out of his sister’s house.

  Mark pulled at my sleeve. “I hate sin too, Stephanie.”

  Pamela kissed my cheek. “You were divine. Just divine.”

  And Blossom and Richard’s mother just stood rubbing my back. “Don’t get upset. He’ll come back. If not now, later. He’ll come back.”

  Pussycat came to us bearing plates toppling with birthday cake. “Poor son of a bitch, he didn’t even get a piece of cake.”

  “Don’t worry,” his mother told me, “he’ll come back. One thing Richard likes is to be comfortable. All you have to do is make him comfortable.” I guessed it was the secret she had been waiting to tell me. It wasn’t so extraordinary. But then most secrets like that aren’t. “Soft chairs, good lighting, silky sheets, a nice place. Don’t worry, sweetheart, we’ll fix it. He’ll come back. Don’t worry.”

  19

  BY THE NEXT MORNING I WAS ON MY WAY BACK TO THE CITY. I WASN’T SURE if I were totally numbed or simply feeling no pain. Nor did I care to make interpretations. I shared the backseat of Blossom’s station wagon with a very ugly four-foot wall-eyed pike who lived in a plastic bag on the floor of the car and sloshed back and forth as we drove to the city. Blossom, Mrs. Slentz and Mark sat up front. About as often as the car hit the expansion joints in the highway, Mark asked to sit in back with the fish. The women ignored him. He continued to ask. I had preferred his Mothra act.

  Mrs. Slentz had bought the pike in Southport on the way out. Although I knew the pike was for the gefilte fish she would prepare for the Jewish New Year, I couldn’t understand why she’d bought it so early unless they force-feed the fish with herring or capers or something equally exotic from Zabar’s so it would be worthy for the holidays. Which meant she intended to keep it alive until then. Mid-September? Was she crazy? I had forgotten the day she stole the crocus plants and threatened to crucify the guard.

  Blossom and Mrs. Slentz talked unendingly about Richard. Richard didn’t stand any more of a chance than the fish. He and I were going to have a setup, a terrific apartment which Uncle Myron would find and which the ladies would furnish and when Richard came home—Mrs. Slentz clapped her hands together so hard I thought a tire had popped—trapped. The two women prepared lists as we drove. Mrs. Slentz, beetle-browed, pursed lips, scratching into a notebook, was not the same sweet and simple mama she’d been.

  There was a new kind of Kali power I’d never noticed before. Both women envisioned empty kitchen drawers and cupboards and efficiently, as if this were the voyage of the Beagle, categorized my needs and the evolution of our marriage. But they laughed too often. “An egg slicer. You can’t be happy without an egg slicer.”

  For some reason that was very funny. Blossom added, “And a potato masher. How can she live with Richard without a potato masher?”

  “A food mill,” threw them both into gales of laughter. I didn’t want to get involved at all, but hearing them, I thought there were surely some levels I wasn’t operating on. “Thermometers,” Blossom giggled. “You forgot the thermometers.” Both wiped tears of laughter from their eyes.

  “Could you see my son without his Q-tips?” Even Mark paused in his requests to sit with the fish to laugh at the Q-tips. I closed my eyes and leaned my cheek against the cool window. Mrs. Slentz obviously noticed from the back of her head and turned around to reassure me. Her eyes were tearing with laughter.

  “Don’t you worry, Stephanie. He’ll be happy. Just make Richard comfy. That’s all he needs. He really wants to get married.” The way in which she looked at me that moment, half with fear and half as if I were a Balenciaga she’d found on a bargain table at S. Klein’s, I wondered why she was helping me. I couldn’t understand why she would want me to marry Richard. She must have known that in two years Richard and I would hate each other. But she also must have known that I wouldn’t be a threat to her and that in two years I’d be helping her chop the gefilte fish and anything else she wanted because I would need her to fight with Richard. She must have known. I should have known.

  At a rest stop, Mark climbed into the wayback and took the fish with him. He lay on his belly, supporting his chin with the palms of his hands and emulating the fish, every solemn slosh-eyed fish-eyed move, all the way into the city. When the fish rolled, Mark rolled. When the fish swam in his plastic, Mark swam. “Mama, do fish get nervous?”

  “Does he ma
ke you nervous, darling?”

  “No, but do you think he’s nervous?”

  “No, darling, I think he’s happy because he’s going to be part of our holidays.”

  “I like him. He has a name. His name is Newton.”

  “Isn’t that nice,” Mrs. Slentz commented, annoyed to have her lists interrupted. She was, after all, ordering lifetime supplies in wholesale lots. All of her connections and her relatives would be involved. Washington had far less help supplying the Continental Army. Richard and I would never run out of anything.

  “Doesn’t he get sick from all the sloshing, up and down?”

  “Mark, your mama and I are making lists. We have to concentrate.”

  But Mrs. Slentz interrupted her lists to tell me about Richard’s second cousin Philip, the writer. Philip kept marrying shiksas (her word) because he hated shiksas and as soon as he married one, he set out to destroy her and when she cracked up, wrote a book about her. Five already. Philip, however, was really nuts. Richard, she explained, had no hate in him, not an inch. And he didn’t write. A loving boy. I knew then—had really known late the night before, after the fight, after Richard had left—that Mrs. Slentz was well aware there was nothing in me even faintly bordering on the Semitic and that she’d known I’d been lying when I threw my birthday scene. She knew, but she didn’t really want to know about my manipulations. I wondered briefly if I were simply a two-year holding device just to get rid of Innocent Marie. But no, the lists were too complete. I was it.

  Mark continued to chant up and down, up and down, up and down, until we had to stop at the roadside to clean Mark, my suitcase and the carpet of the car up and down. “Vomiting,” he told us from his mother’s lap, “makes me very nervous.”

  “Mark,” I suggested, “maybe getting nervous makes you vomit.”

  The grandmother and mother looked at me as if I were the mad one. I shut up and continued to wipe my suitcase up and down with oak leaves.