Grand Avenue

by Joy Fielding

  “I need to talk to you about a few things. I thought this would be a good place to do it.”

  Barbara took another look around the crowded room. Why would he pick the middle of a busy restaurant to talk to her? Surely if it were anything important, he would have chosen the privacy of their home. She held her breath, almost afraid to ask what he wanted to talk to her about.

  “I’m leaving,” he said without further prompting, smiling as a couple brushed by their table on the way to their own.

  “You’re leaving? You mean right now? Are you sick?”

  “I’m not sick. That’s not what I mean.”

  “What do you mean? Where are you going?”

  “I’m moving out.”

  “You’re moving out?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Our marriage isn’t working,” he told her simply.

  “What do you mean, our marriage isn’t working?”

  “It’s not working,” he said again, as if this would clear everything up.

  The waiter approached with their salads. “And here’s your dressing,” he told Barbara.

  “You invited me out to dinner to tell me our marriage is over?” Barbara asked incredulously.

  The waiter dropped the small cup of salad dressing to the table and hurried away.

  “This can’t come as a total shock,” Ron said. “You must have had some idea.”

  Barbara fought to make sense of his words. Had she missed something? “When you left this morning, everything seemed just fine, thank you very much. How could I have had any idea? Why wouldn’t I be shocked? What are you talking about?”

  “Could you keep your voice down?”

  “We made love, for God’s sake. What, should that have been my first clue something was wrong?”

  “That was an accident. I never meant for that to happen. You caught me by surprise.”

  “I forced you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “It just wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “No,” he said, grabbing his fork, waving it over his salad.

  If he takes even one bite, Barbara thought, I’ll stab him through the heart with my butter knife. “This isn’t happening.” After all these years, after she’d turned a blind eye to all his infidelities … “Is there someone else?” she heard a voice ask, barely recognizing it as her own.

  “No.” His eyes told her there was.

  “Who is it?”

  “There’s no one.”

  “Who is it?” she asked again, her voice louder, more insistent.

  He dropped his fork to the table. “Pam Muir,” he said softly, as if she should recognize the name.

  “Pam Muir?” An image was slowly taking shape in Barbara’s mind of a young woman in her early twenties with a round face and pale, almond-shaped eyes. “Pam Muir,” she repeated, as the image came into sharper focus. Strawberry blond hair cascading down her skinny back, small, hopelessly perky breasts, and big, sultry lips. Men took one look at those lips and thought of only one thing, she remembered thinking the first time Ron had introduced them.

  Stupid, pie-faced little girl, Barbara thought now. With pimples on her chin, no less. One big one, two smaller ones hovering just below the surface of her ash-white skin. A nose smeared with freckles, like peanut butter on white bread. How dare her husband leave her for a pimply, freckle-nosed, pie-faced coed he’d brought into their home, right into their living room, into their dining room. She’d fed her, for God’s sake!

  “It was so nice of you to invite the study group over for dinner, Mrs. Azinger,” pimply, freckle-nosed, pie-faced Pammy had said, helping Barbara stack the dirty dishes in the dishwasher.

  “My pleasure,” had come Barbara’s immediate response.

  Dear God. “Pam Muir.”

  To think she’d felt almost sorry for the girl. She might have a brilliant mind, as her husband had espoused on more than one occasion—the smartest student he’d taught in almost twenty years of teaching, he’d said—but she didn’t have a clue how to make a good impression, how to make the most of her appearance. As if long blond hair, small, perky breasts, and blow-job-sculpted lips weren’t enough, Barbara thought wryly.

  All right, so he’d been having an affair. She’d suspected as much. So what? He’d been having affairs throughout their marriage. It didn’t mean he had to leave. It didn’t mean they couldn’t work things out.

  “It just happened,” Ron was saying, although she hadn’t asked him to explain.

  The waiter warily approached with their sea bass.

  “Are you hungry?” Ron asked, and Barbara shook her head, although strangely enough, she was famished. Ron waved the waiter away.

  “What can I do?” Barbara asked. Tears filled her eyes and she lifted her chin to prevent them from falling. Ten years off her face, the doctor had promised when she’d had her eyes done. Ron hadn’t even noticed. Should have asked for twenty, Barbara thought.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” he told her. “It’s not your fault.”

  But of course it was her fault, Barbara understood. Simply put, she wasn’t the girl he’d married; she’d grown up, grown old. Despite the makeup and the plastic surgery, new wrinkles kept a constant vigil just below her skin’s surface, waiting to ambush her at the first sign of complacence. Gravity continued its relentless assault on all sides, even while she slept. Perfect plastic breasts only emphasized the imperfections everywhere else.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” he said again.

  “There must be something I can do to change your mind,” she begged, hating the neediness in her voice, hating herself even more. “I’ll do anything.” She would have gotten down on her knees if they hadn’t been in the middle of the most popular restaurant in town. She lifted her hands in the air, as if to implore him, thought better of it, and returned them to the table in defeat, her skittish fingers inadvertently sending the cutlery flying toward the floor.

  “Was that necessary?” Ron asked, as if she’d done it on purpose.

  “Was this? I guess I should be grateful you didn’t surprise me on the Phil Donahue show.”

  Ron clearly had no idea who Phil Donahue was. “I just thought that being in a public place would help keep things on an even keel.”

  “Crowd control,” Barbara muttered.

  “Something like that.” He smiled.

  Barbara slumped back in her seat. “Coward.”

  “I was hoping we could avoid the name-calling.”

  “Asshole.” What the hell? She’d lost him anyway.

  “Okay, I understand you’re upset.”

  “You don’t understand a damn thing.” Did she? What exactly was she so upset about? That her husband was leaving her for another woman? That that woman was half her age? Half her size? That he’d had the temerity to bring her into their home, introduce her to his wife and daughter? That he’d chosen this most public of venues to break the news? That he’d made love to her this morning knowing he was going to dump her tonight? That he’d been planning his escape for at least a week? “That’s why you went to see your mother last night,” Barbara said, realizing this was true only as she spoke the words. “You told her you were leaving me.”

  “For what it’s worth, she said I was making a mistake.”

  “Well, she’s certainly right about that,” Barbara said, speaking over her surprise, deciding to call Vicki as soon as she got home, to take the bastard for everything she could get her hands on—the house, his pension, his precious Mercedes.

  Except she didn’t want any of those things. What she wanted was her husband back.

  Why?

  Because she was used to having him around? Because she didn’t like the idea of being a single mother, a lonely statistic, of sleeping alone night after night? Because she was afraid of growing old alone? Any or all of the above?

  Or did she want him back so that she could do it right this time, so that she could b
e the one to walk out, the way she should have done years ago, when she was still relatively young, when she was still heart-stop-pingly beautiful, when she still had some pride? When was the last time she’d felt proud about anything? Except for Tracey, of course. The only thing in her life she’d managed to get right. Perhaps if she’d been able to have more children, if she’d been able to give him a son …

  “What will we tell Tracey?” she asked, her voice a monotone.

  “That we love her,” Ron said, sounding much too mature for a man who was leaving her for a girl half his age. “That my leaving won’t change that. That just because her parents can’t make it work—”

  “Because her father can’t keep his dick in his pants!”

  Ron’s face glowed an angry red as he glanced toward the nearby tables. Somewhere beside them, a woman tittered nervously. Ron lifted his napkin from his lap, threw it across his salad, rose to his feet. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

  “No. Please. Allow me.” Barbara jumped up from her seat and raced toward the washrooms in the far corner of the restaurant. She pushed open the heavy blue door, feeling it whoosh shut behind her. She leaned against it, took a series of long, deep breaths, gulping for air, as if she were drowning. A good description, she thought with a crazed chuckle as she surveyed the walls of deep blue mosaic tiles, heard the trickling of water from the long waterfall that doubled as a sink. “He can’t be doing this,” she cried, hearing an embarrassed cough from inside one of the stalls.

  Except that he was doing it. As always, Ron Azinger was doing exactly as he pleased. Yes, sir. It was business as usual, and she had no choice but to carry on with her life. She had to be strong, if not for herself, then for Tracey. Besides, she was hardly unattractive. There were plenty of other fish in the sea. “Fish in the sea,” she said out loud, as a burst of hysterical giggles escaped her throat. “Nothing like keeping with the theme.” She laughed again.

  A toilet flushed, although no one emerged from any of the stalls. Probably afraid to, Barbara decided, straightening her shoulders, sucking in her stomach, pushing out her impressively augmented bosom. She opened the bathroom door and stepped back into the main part of the restaurant, not surprised to discover that Ron had already left.

  “The gentleman took care of the bill,” the waiter informed her.

  Barbara smiled, wondering at what precise moment her life had slipped out of her grasp. She’d just turned around for half a second, she thought, and it was gone.

  Eleven

  Susan awakened slowly from a dream in which she was delivering an important speech to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, her eyes opening at the precise moment she realized she was standing completely naked in front of the large crowd that included the president and virtually his entire cabinet. “Why do I always have to be naked?” she moaned, looking at the clock beside her bed. Seven twenty-nine. Seven twenty-nine! Hadn’t she set the alarm for seven o’clock? Susan reached across her sleeping husband and grabbed at the clock accusingly, forgetting it was plugged into the wall, so that the electrical cord slithered roughly across Owen’s nose and mouth. He immediately bolted up in bed, swatting at his face, frantic fingers trying to pluck the offending object away from his lips. “I’m sorry,” Susan said quickly, trying to calm him. “I was just trying to check what time I set the alarm for.”

  Owen exhaled a deep breath of air, scratched at his balding head. “I was having a dream about being on safari. Suddenly I felt this thing moving across my face. I thought it was a snake.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Susan fought the urge to laugh. Her husband always looked so vulnerable first thing in the morning, especially when he’d spent the night trekking through the jungle. “Are you all right?”

  Owen leaned over to kiss her just as the alarm went off in Susan’s hands. They both jumped, Susan dropping the clock to the bed, then having to ferret through the billowing white comforter to retrieve it and turn the damn thing off. “God, that’s loud,” she said.

  Owen returned the clock to its position on the nightstand. “Seven-thirty on the dot. Same as always.”

  “Damn. I meant to change it.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I’m speaking to Ariel’s class this morning about my job. It’s career week or something, and I promised I’d take part. Anyway, I was really hoping to finish up some work before I went into the office.”

  “What time did you come to bed last night?”

  Susan rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, hearing Barbara tell her to stop that at once. The skin around the eyes is delicate, Barbara would say. Especially as women get older. Didn’t she actually read any of the stories she edited? “I guess it was sometime after midnight. I was working on that article about what makes investment banking sexy.” She laughed, although the work had been slow and tedious. So much of being an assistant editor involved correcting the writer’s grammar, rearranging ill-conceived concepts, trying to organize a series of jumbled parts into a well-constructed whole. Is that what she’d say to Ariel’s class?

  “I’ll bite. What makes investment banking sexy?” Owen asked.

  “I think it has something to do with money.” Susan smiled, throwing a white terry-cloth robe over her shoulders and sliding into a pair of fuzzy pink slippers. She shuffled out of the room and down the hall toward her daughters’ bedrooms. The shower in the bathroom between the girls’ rooms was already running.

  The door to Whitney’s room was open and her bed was empty, the nine-year-old’s clothes arranged neatly on the bed, awaiting her return. Susan smiled. Whitney was always the first one out of bed in the morning, the first one dressed, the first one finished with breakfast, the first one out the door. In school, hers was the first hand to shoot up in answer to a teacher’s question, to volunteer for a special assignment, to offer to read her composition out loud. She didn’t have to be reminded to wash her hands after she went to the bathroom or to brush her teeth after every meal or to go to bed at the appropriate hour. She was unfailingly polite and sweet-tempered. In every respect, a living doll.

  Which was precisely why Ariel hated her.

  “She’s an alien,” Ariel regularly scoffed. “Haven’t you noticed how she never spills anything, how her hands are always clean, how she’s always got this stupid smile on her face? She’s not normal.” Ariel would tell her sister to her face, “You’re an alien.”

  “You’re just jealous,” Whitney would calmly reply.

  “Oh, yeah, right. Like I’d be jealous of an alien.”

  Whitney never rose to the bait. She’d shrug and walk away, which, of course, only enraged Ariel all the more.

  “A fat and ugly alien,” Ariel would call after her, but Whitney never looked back.

  “Ariel, honey,” Susan called from the doorway to her older daughter’s room, “time to wake up.” A large hand-printed sign taped to the door with a Band-Aid proclaimed: KEEP OUT! PRIVATE! ABSOLUTELY NO ALIENS ALLOWED! Susan knocked gently, then again, louder the second time so that her daughter, who was buried under an avalanche of pink blankets and whose radio was loudly blasting rock music into her ear, might hear. “Who am I kidding?” Susan asked herself, stepping over the threshold and negotiating her way through the clothes littering the floor. “I know there’s a carpet under here somewhere.” Susan tried to find it with her bare toes, thinking, Two children raised by the same two parents in the same house with the same set of values, and they couldn’t be less alike. She reached the bed, lifted the blankets from Ariel’s shoulders while removing the pillow from her head, then leaned down and kissed her daughter’s sleep-warmed cheek. “Wake up, sweetie pie.”

  Without opening her eyes, Ariel reached up and grabbed the pillow from her mother’s hands, returning it to her face.

  “Come on, sweetheart. Help me out here. I’m already running late, and we have to leave here by a quarter to nine at the latest.”

  “Big deal if we’re ten minutes late. Who cares?�
� came the muffled reply.

  “I care. If I’m late for your class, that makes me late for work and …” She stopped. Why was she explaining herself to a thirteen-year-old girl who obviously couldn’t care less? “Just get up,” Susan said, and walked from the room.

  “Hi, Mommy,” Whitney greeted her cheerfully, emerging from the bathroom wrapped in a soft yellow towel.

  Susan loved to be called Mommy. Just the sound of the word infused her with pride and joy. In another year or so, Whitney would undoubtedly abandon the word for the less childish Mom or the dreaded Mother, as Ariel had taken to calling her lately. She felt a twinge of sadness, already mourning its loss. “Hi, beautiful girl,” she said.

  “She’s not beautiful. She’s an alien,” came the cry from the other room.

  Amazing what Ariel could hear and what she couldn’t, Susan thought, folding Whitney into a warm embrace, the child’s skin damp against her cheek.

  “Close my door!” Ariel barked. “Something out there smells bad.”

  “Get up and close it yourself,” Susan called back as Whitney disappeared into her room to start getting dressed. “Two girls raised in the same household,” Susan muttered, entering her en suite bathroom and starting the shower, “with the same two parents and the same set of values.” She was still muttering as she undressed and stepped under the hot rush of water. “Just let her be out of bed by the time I’m ready to go.”

  Of course Ariel wasn’t out of bed, and when Susan finally succeeded in getting her up, she couldn’t decide what to wear, then she couldn’t decide what to have for breakfast, so of course they were late getting to the school, which meant Mrs. Keillor got to give her speech first, and Susan was forced to sit through an incredibly boring recitation of exactly what was involved in being a dental hygienist, followed by a question-and-answer period that Susan prayed would be brief—surely the woman had covered everything in her speech—but the question-and-answer session proved to be fairly lengthy as well, due in large part to Ariel’s sudden and inexplicable interest in the subject. Question after question on territory already covered, but Mrs. Keillor seemed flattered by the attention, and went over everything with Ariel patiently again.