by Mary Gordon
She put on her nightgown and looked around for an ashtray, but of course there wasn't one.
“It's all right, I'll flick it out the window.”
“Careful,” she said. “We don't want to wake Richard and Helen.”
“What's the matter? You don't want them to know what you've been up to?”
“No, I don't want to disturb their sleep.”
“What do you think they'd say? That you were a nasty girl, or an angel of mercy? lezebel or Florence Nightingale?”
“There's no need to be unpleasant.”
“I don't do it out of need. I just seem to be rather good at it. Which is why I find myself alone most of the time.”
He was challenging her to meet his eye, but she wouldn't.
“It's remarkable how many friends a death sentence brings you. For instance, yourself. You'd never have let me have you if you didn't think I was on my way to never-never land.”
“That's not true.”
He snorted. “Oh, get off it. You're not going to tell me you're fond of me, or that you found me strangely irresistible. You fucked me because you think I'm going to die.”
“Nigel, there's no need for this.”
“You're feeling quite good about the whole thing,” he said. “You feel generous and mature, and womanly. You gave of yourself. The supreme sacrifice. Like wartime. Give him a little of what he fancies before the cannonball gets him. But suppose I told you it was all bullshit? Suppose I told you the biopsy report came back and I was given a clean bill of health?”
“I don't believe you,” she said.
“Oh, my dear, it's quite true. I did have a tumor. You see here.” He took her hand and made her feel an indentation in his thigh. “The quacks said it was quite possibly malignant. Well, I was scared at that, and I fell apart, rather. And I told people, I thought, why the hell not. And people were wonderful. I mean, fucking heroic. Better to me than they'd ever been. And of course whose parental bosom did I want to rest my head on but good old Helen and Dick? Normally, I wouldn't have had the nerve to invite myself. But I called up, told them the news calmly, like a good soldier. So they said, of course, dear, come right over on the fucking car ferry. Only just before I left, the doctor called. Quite thrilled. Benign, old chap, he said. Apparently I'll live forever.
“Well, I couldn't tell Helen and Richard that. Think how disappointed they'd be. Dying, I had a certain tragic interest. Healthy, I'm just a pathetic pain in the ass. And think how they've always loved being the still clear pond for the world's lame ducks. Why, they wouldn't know what to do with themselves if everyone's lives were shipshape. They must know it. Certainly you know it. Still, they are a couple of old dears. And not as young as they once were. Which is why I know you'll keep our dirty little secret. Won't you, love?”
He reached over to kiss her.
“You're disgusting,” she said.
“That's as maybe, but I've just fucked you, haven't I?”
“Get out,” she said.
“Right you are. And I'll clear out in the morning. Everyone will understand that I'm abashed after my little weeping fit last night. And I'll let them know you were a real help. A great comfort.”
She wanted to go to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Her mouth felt foul from his foulness. But she didn't want him to hear her doing it.
She wondered if it were possible to make him believe that the whole thing meant nothing to her. That she went to bed with anyone, absolutely everyone, because it was easier than saying no. But she had no idea how she would do that.
He wasn't stupid. He seemed to understand things very well. He'd even made her see the Morriseys in a way she must always have known was possible, but had always avoided. Were they parasites, feeding off the misery of others for their own prosperity? Was the misfortune of those they called their friends the elixir that kept them safe? That kept them from the kinds of risks that could distort or wreck a life? The kinds of risks she'd taken, and her parents had, and Nigel and his wife and his wife's girlfriend? But not the Morriseys. And not their children.
She'd have to stay a couple more days so it wouldn't appear that her leaving had to do with Nigel's. Perhaps the day after tomorrow they'd all go to Coole Park. She'd take them out to a good restaurant. They'd talk about Nigel, the pity of it, the waste. They would say she must come back to Bishop's House again soon. Perhaps next summer.
But she wouldn't. She couldn't now. And when the Morriseys came back to New York, what would happen then? They were getting older. They'd be needing help. But there would be hundreds of people who'd want to help them, grateful, eager people. They wouldn't need her.
After a while they might say, “We haven't heard much of Lavinia lately.” They'd assume it was because she was happy.
The Translator's Husband
I never told Barbara about being married before. It didn't occur to me that there was any point. It had happened long before I met her, it was very brief, and I couldn't imagine they'd cross paths.
Brenda was very young when we married. So was I, of course. We were both students. She was over on a year's exchange from Birmingham. She wasn't too serious about her studies. She had an ear for languages, but that didn't mean she was a real student. A kind of giggly girl, and there was a market for that kind of giggly English girl then, in the late sixties. The Beatles and all. You know that kind of blonde girl with milky skin and chunky calves, the kind that her own kind would have called “a thoroughly good sort.” The kind who wouldn't mind a friendly slap on the rump from a stranger who'd had an extra beer or two. The kind who wouldn't take things the wrong way. She was really good-natured, Brenda.
She left me for someone else. A ski instructor. I was the one who'd hired him. I was the one who thought I needed help, she thought the whole thing was a big joke. She could have easily broken her leg and spent the entire time in the hospital. She was completely unprepared. Hans, his name was. He was Austrian. They spoke German to each other. I was completely in the dark.
I suppose I was always too serious for her. “You're so serious, Dickie,” she used to say. No one but Brenda called me Dickie. I used to be called Dick, but now everyone calls me Richard. She said she liked it, that I was so serious, but I think she got tired of it pretty soon. My mother'd warned me; she said Brenda was flighty. I was working hard; it wasn't easy getting accepted in comp lit at Indiana in those days. I had to pass proficiencies in French and Spanish, which is how I met her: she was offering Spanish tutoring. I mean, I couldn't be out on the town every night with the kind of exams I had to take. I don't blame her, but it's impossible not to connect my failing the prelims with her leaving me for Hans. Well, they were very competitive, a lot of people didn't make it. I'm not the only one in the world with a terminal master's. Barbara says that sounds like some kind of mortal disease, when I mention it. But it qualified me well for what became my job. I teach French and Spanish in a very fine prep school. One of New York's very very best, and that means among the best in the English-speaking world.
That's how I met Barbara: her son was failing Spanish. I really pulled him through. She was very grateful. A lot more grateful than Nathan was. He was never much of a student. Which is surprising in the child of two such accomplished parents. Barbara's former husband is a neurologist and anyone who has the sense of literary fiction knows her name.
I hadn't heard from Brenda in fifteen years when I met Barbara. We've been married for twelve years now, and we dated for three years before we tied the knot. “Tied the knot.” That's the sort of expression Barbara laughs at me for. She says I'm the only person she knows of who qualifies for the description “quaint.” Sometimes she calls me her old-fashioned beau.
She teases me a lot, and I don't mind it really. It's all in good fun. All her friends join in, sometimes it might seem a bit rough, but I never let on when they've cut a bit close to the bone. I think her friends consider me a babe in the woods. They'd be surprised if they knew what a lively time Barbara and
I have between the sheets, and they'd be shocked at the number of students’ mothers who made their way into the foldout bed in the studio where I lived before I moved into Barbara's duplex on Park and Eighty-ninth.
Barbara's novels are translated into several languages. I used to keep track of the French and Spanish. You'd be appalled if you knew how many mistakes are let through the net. I used to make a list and send it to the translators, but Barbara told me to forget it, they wouldn't change anything and it just made her look “compulsive.” Is there a line between compulsion and accuracy, I asked. She said I should just relax, that she had better things in mind for my energy. And she pulled me into bed.
So I never even looked at the Spanish translation of her latest book, which is why it wasn't till we were actually in Madrid that Brenda's name jumped at me from the page. Or rather, hit me like a ton of bricks.
What were the chances of it happening? That my first wife should turn out to be the translator of my second? I mean, really. I couldn't have anticipated it. If I could I certainly would have told Barbara about Brenda. But it wouldn't have occurred to me that Brenda would turn out to be that intellectual. Translating someone on Barbara's level. I mean, she left me for a ski bum. And Barbara is of the very first water. It only just dawned on me that both my wives have two-syllable names beginning with b and ending with a. I don't suppose it means anything really.
I guess it's a good sign that Brenda didn't write to Barbara first crack out of the box to tell her what they had in common. But then it's possible she didn't know. Likely even. My name isn't mentioned on the book jackets. Only “Barbara Hanover lives in New York.” She thinks more information is vulgar.
It isn't such a big thing really, except for that one little sentence. I mean, if Brenda had translated any of her other novels it wouldn't have been a major event at all. And it's only that one sentence, just a very small detail really. It's very likely Brenda didn't even notice.
Barbara likes me telling her things about the sexual behavior of the women in my past. It isn't that it turns her on. “Material” is what she calls it. I mean she is a novelist. Human behavior is her bailiwick. It would be like keeping the details of a disease to myself if I were married to a doctor. I simply wouldn't feel I had the right to do it.
Brenda did have this odd little tic. She liked to be on top, that was the only way she liked it. There's nothing so unusual in that. But when she climbed on she'd start saying this nursery rhyme. Quite a silly thing, really. “Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross / To see a fine lady upon a white horse.” She would get more and more excited as she said, “Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes.” And when she got to the word “ever” in “She shall have music wherever she goes,” well, that was her point of climax. You have to admit it was noteworthy.
Barbara used it in this novel. The one Brenda translated. It's not spoken by a major character or anything. Just a little fling of the protagonist. The whole episode between them is over in two pages. It's hardly even there at all. And I was married to her less than a year.
I told Barbara's Spanish publisher he didn't have to have the translator come to Barbara's interviews. My Spanish was flawless, I told him. I made a point of saying that Barbara and I were very much on a wavelength. He kept saying. “No, no, my dear sir. You must rest. Or see our beautiful city.” I'd already told him I'd never been to Madrid before. There wasn't any way I could unsay that. Water over the dam.
The day we were supposed to meet Brenda, I told Barbara I was feeling sick. She's used to my having a jumpy stomach, particularly when we travel, so she didn't bat an eye.
I'm sitting on the couch in our suite in the Ritz on the Place Cybele. Right down from the Prado. God knows how many thousands of pesos it's costing a night. I've now finished the fourth little bottle of Glenfiddich in the minibar. I'm starting on the fifth.
I've been sitting by the window for an hour waiting to snap to attention the minute I see Barbara walking up the plaza, approaching the entrance to the hotel. It's been a very long lunch. But I guess that's a Spanish custom.
Oh, dear, Barbara doesn't seem to be alone. She's with another woman. It seems to be Brenda. I can see them walking up the plaza now, between the rows of plane trees. Their arms are linked. They are swinging their free arms, the ones that are holding their black purses, which are very similar.
That's a relief. I'm sure now everything will be all right. I hadn't remembered they're exactly the same height. Barbara colors her hair platinum. For all I know Brenda might still be a natural blonde. I mean, it has been thirty years.
They don't look a bit angry.
They're both laughing.
Now they're under the awning. Now I can't see them. They must be waiting for the elevator. They'll be here any minute.
I am casually but quite correctly dressed. Brooks Brothers khakis, yellow Lacoste shirt, Bally loafers with tassels. Brenda will be quite impressed. Last time she saw me I got my clothes in the Salvation Army. And I was thin as a scarecrow. I work out three times a week with Barbara at the gym. We're both fit as fiddles.
I'll be very casual when they'll come in. I think I'll say, “Of all the gin joints in the world, you have to come into this one.” I'll say it in a Humphrey Bogart voice. I'm sure she'll laugh.
Now Barbara's key opens the door.
I close my eyes. I hear them both still laughing.
“Richard, darling,” Barbara croons.
“Dickie, love,” cries Brenda.
I must say they're both being marvelous about it. They both keep saying “what a hoot.”
We all go out to supper. They say it has to be my treat. Which is a little hard, since the publisher was prepared to pick up the tab for all Barbara's expenses. Under the circumstances, though, I suppose I have to go along with the gag.
Brenda introduces me to the waiter as “our husband.” He looks puzzled, but he nods and smiles. I think they've both had a bit too much champagne. Dom Perignon. Of course, I don't begrudge them. I really should be celebrating too when I think of what the situation could be.
Every now and then one of them breaks into “ride a cock horse,” and they both fall over laughing. They seem to get along like a house on fire. I've hardly got a word in edgewise the whole evening.
Not that I have that much to say.
The Epiphany Branch
Florence Melnick went to the library every day. Well, not every day: the library was closed on Sundays and legal holidays. Christmas was considered a legal holiday although in her opinion there was nothing legal about it, it was religious, and Florence was Jewish and Christmas was nothing but another day to her. So she resented it that everything was closed up on that day. She thought it violated the principle of separation of church and state, which had been so important to the Founding Fathers.
The branch of the New York Public Library that was, unfortunately in her opinion, closest to where she lived was called the Epiphany Branch. It was on Twenty-third Street between Third and Lexington Avenue, or, as everyone who didn't have something wrong with them said, Third and Lex. That was one thing she took comfort from when she moved there from Brooklyn: it seemed friendly that she'd be living on a street that had a nickname.
But she'd never been happy in the neighborhood, never. She'd never felt that she belonged. In the old days in Flatbush, she'd known everybody, but everybody had moved out when they had the chance. Including her, when her nephew Howard had presented her with the opportunity. Her sister Ethel had had a stroke. Ethel was a widow and Florence never married. Why exactly she never knew. She would have been willing with the right kind of man. But not a fool, not someone with nothing in his head except what was between his legs, not someone with no ideals who only thought about food and money. Florence loved to read, she always hoped to meet someone who loved to read, but it hadn't happened. Not with any of the men she'd met in the forty-five years she'd worked as a saleswoman at Lerner Shops on King's Highway. Of course, you could say, in her line
of work, retail clothing for women, it wasn't that likely that you'd meet so many men. Salesmen you'd meet, but rarely of the right type.
So she'd retired after forty-five years. They gave her a lovely party and a silver tray with her name engraved. Everyone said, “Keep in touch, Florence,” but when she tried to think who she really wanted to keep in touch with, no one came to mind. Her parents had died. Ethel was in Manhattan, but she had a life of her own, they didn't share too many interests. But when she had the stroke and Howard made the suggestion— tactfully trying to point out that Flatbush wasn't what it had been, and that his mother had a two-bedroom apartment that he was paying the maintenance on, not chicken feed but nothing compared to what a nursing home would be, to say nothing that his mother would rather die first— well, it all seemed to make a great deal of sense.
And really there was nothing she really missed about Brooklyn except the Main Library at Grand Army Plaza. That was a library: marble and carpets and big ceilings and mahogany. They knew how to use materials in those days. They spared no expense. The library was right on the park, and the other side was a square with a statue of a soldier. When she walked into the door, the word “cavernous” came to her mind: empty space, dark air. Even the air was scholarly. You could take a book off the stacks, walk up the stairs, and read it in the reading room. Real wood paneling. The Epiphany Branch was one big room, materials skimped everywhere. But what could she do; it was where she lived, she was seventy-eight, she wasn't up to much traveling. Not in Manhattan.
Ethel only lived two months after Florence moved in. And there she was, in the middle of Manhattan, but no, not in the middle, it wasn't really midtown. It was the middle in the worst sense. It was in the middle of a lot of things, downtown from the theater district and the museums, uptown from the village, which she'd always wanted to explore. She had come too old to Manhattan; the streets overwhelmed her and she never ventured uptown to the Forty-second Street Library or to the Metropolitan Museum, which she'd thought she'd visit quite often when she'd imagined herself a Manhattanite. She didn't move far beyond a five-block radius. Even so, she didn't really know anybody in the neighborhood. Nobody seemed to speak English, or at least no English she understood.