Kenneth moved to the edge of his chair, looking about furtively from one place on the carpet to the next, as though searching for something he’d dropped, his jaw muscles twitching and his eyes darting here and there.
“Remember the party,” he said, “when I walked into that room and caught you with Rudy Swinnington.”
“What are you talking about?”
“At the Sigma Chi house.”
“Oh, for goodness sake, that was more than twenty-five years ago, before we were even dating. Is that what you drove all the way up to New Hampshire to rediscover?”
“But that’s exactly the point. I didn’t know you, yet I forgave you. I called you up three days later and asked you out, after I saw you acting like a goddamn floozy with the biggest sex maniac in my fraternity.”
“You probably called because you thought I was an easy lay.”
“Aha!” Kenneth crowed, as though he had successfully led the prosecution’s star witness to the edge of a cliff. “Tell me, since I never asked you before, did you fuck old Rudy that night?”
“I don’t even remember.”
“Oh God.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t ask Rudy yourself.”
“You just don’t get it, do you, Maggie?”
“I didn’t even know you then, you jerk, so what does it matter?”
“Because you,” Kenneth declared, peering down along his index finger as though it were a rapier, “are guilty of having a double standard.”
“Kenneth, how do you make so much money? Is it that easy, what you do?”
“What do you mean?” he said, with sneering condescension.
“I mean, you don’t think very logically. Are you just a good guesser with all those stocks and derivatives? It must take something besides … intelligence.”
“Don’t start in on what I do. It’s made everything possible for you.”
“I might have been just as successful on my own. And sooner too. Because for so many years I did what I’m good at just for us, never thinking I could market myself.”
“You won’t be able to keep this up on your own, you know.”
“Kenneth, between the books, the videos, the catering company, and the product endorsements, I earned two and a half million dollars this year alone.”
“If you think you can maintain yourself in the style you’re accustomed to on that, you’re out of your mind,” he retorted, adding “Ha!” for emphasis.
“I can and I will, and if necessary, I’ll make more money.”
“Not here. Not in this house.”
“I suppose you’re going to take it away from me.”
“Maggie, I’ve got what they call deep pockets. I can reach down in there and pull out so many goddamn lawyers that your life will seem like a perpetual ABA convention. You will be doing Chinese fire drills in the superior court until you are old and bent and gray and too weak to so much as soft-boil an egg.”
“Thank you for answering my question.”
“Pardon me?” Kenneth said. “What question?”
“How you get by on Wall Street. Apparently you substitute hatefulness for brains.”
Suddenly, he was upon her, springing athletically from his position on the loveseat to hers on the wingchair, from which he dragged her down to the pale apricot carpet. Working with a peculiar combination of brute force, tenderness, and manual dexterity, he quickly peeled Maggie out of her Tuzzi jumpsuit and managed, as well, to pull his own trousers down. Then he grasped the back of her head with one large hand, as though it were a muskmelon, and covered her mouth with his. Maggie punched him ineffectively in the ribs but did not scream for help, aware that the only rescuer within shouting distance was Hooper. She was more horrified at the thought of him barging into the oedipal spectacle of his mother being violated by his father—a scene, Maggie thought, that might turn the boy either homosexual or catatonic—than of herself being violated in the first place. But as Kenneth, all unwashed reek and sinewy limbs, seized one substantial breast, and prehensily nibbled her lips, Maggie gaspingly recalled those moans and hoots that Hooper and the girl had emitted in their throes of youthful passion, and she felt herself yielding to an irresistible tide of mammalian carnality that seemed to reduce all of them to so much living flesh and hair hurtling helplessly through time. Moments later they were both completely naked—Maggie actually assisting Kenneth out of his shirt—enacting one classic position after another (well rehearsed after twenty-five years of marriage)—in an upward-reaching fugue of fuckery that culminated with Maggie bowed backward in a near headstand and Kenneth yogically arched above, as though he were copulating with a wheelbarrow, and then they collapsed in a heap on the floor.
They lay motionless for several minutes, Maggie on her back, Kenneth on his belly, touching only at the forearm.
“I knew we’d get over this,” Kenneth said.
“You are as thick as lentil soup,” Maggie replied.
Kenneth looked confused. Sensing that her remark was not a compliment he said, “Come on, you enjoyed that. Deny it and you insult your own sensibilities.”
“I got swept up in an old habit. It doesn’t speak well for me. I’m ashamed of myself. But it doesn’t change things between us.”
“We’ve always had fights and made up after.”
“That wasn’t making up,” Maggie said. “That was farewell.”
“Aw, you can’t mean it.”
“But I do.”
Maggie sat up, searched the vicinity for her underwear, and began reassembling herself. The jumpsuit hung from a Tiffany dragonfly floor lamp like a dead paratrooper in a tree. Finally, buttoned back in, she fetched the shopping bag of Christmas presents from the closet and stood it beside Kenneth’s head, saying, “These are for you.”
Kenneth peered into the bag at all the little boxes in their black matte wrapping. “Gee, thanks,” he said, all puzzlement and gloom. “Did you open the ones I got for you?”
“These are the ones you got for me, you idiot. Give them to your little cookie.”
Kenneth glanced in the bag again and made a face.
“If you drive me away, you’ll miss me,” he said.
“I can’t wait to find out.”
“You’ve been waiting for an excuse to dump me, haven’t you?”
“What does that make Laura Wilkie? A little test you decided to spring on me?”
“She was a mistake, Maggie, a mistake!”
“That’s right. And a bigger one than you bargained for. You see, what I don’t like, Kenneth, is the idea that you are in any way the aggrieved party here, that something unfair is being done to you for no good reason. You screwed another woman under our roof on Christmas Eve with all our friends around. That’s what this is about. And that’s why you will shortly pack a few suits and socks and underthings and find another place to stay. You and your lawyers don’t frighten me. I am going upstairs now to bathe you out of me. When I’m done, I expect you to be gone. Or else we go back to square one with the police. Am I clear?”
“Shrew.”
“Keep it up and you’ll lose those precious minutes I’ve allotted you to pack your things.”
She left him supine on the carpet. There was a telephone in the master bath in case of any further shenanigans, and the sturdy door was furnished with a brass dead bolt. What more harm could he do now? Maggie wondered. If he set the house on fire, Maggie thought, she would climb out the bathroom window onto the porch roof and escape. These things occurred to her. As the large tiled bath filled, Maggie heard dresser drawers slamming shut and muffled exclamations of a word that sounded like “Christ!” She had just slid into the hot, capacious, welcoming tub when a knock resounded at the bathroom door.
“I’m leaving now.”
“Splendid.”
“Do you have to be such a wiseass in our last moments together?”
“I’m commending you for a job well done.”
“What? Our marriage?”
&nbs
p; “No, packing your stuff quickly.”
“This is good-bye, then.”
“Okay. Good-bye, Kenneth.”
“Just tell me one thing. Did you fuck Rudy Swinnington that night or not?”
“I’m reaching for the phone.”
“Answer me!”
“In a moment I’ll dial the troopers.”
“You haven’t heard the last from me.”
“I suppose not. But from now on, don’t come over unless you call first.”
“I loved you with all my heart,” Kenneth barked. Maggie knew it couldn’t possibly be true, but it brought tears to her eyes anyway as the years suddenly trailed before her in a psychic blue sky like the tail of the kite that was her life. Minutes later, she heard the immaculate motorcar purr to life outside and bear Kenneth forevermore into her past.
4
The Horror of Family
Punch-drunk with emotion, Maggie floated out of the bathroom around noon. She put on a black cotton turtleneck and a drab gray jumper (no makeup whatsoever) and glided into the hall in a cocoon of shock, feeling only the urge to cook something simple and monstrously hearty. Mashed potatoes and turnips came to mind, a childhood favorite, teased into great fluffy cirques and dotted with tarns of golden liquid butter. She had just descended the stairs when the doorbell sounded again. It was an old-fashioned electric bell from the thirties, really ringy. Maggie liked it because it could be heard from any of the house’s remote rooms and outposts, especially during noisy social gatherings, but at close range it was shrill, and Maggie reacted as if she’d stuck her finger in a light socket.
“Is that you again!” she hollered at the door. No reply. This time, she vowed, she would kick Kenneth in the balls, no questions asked. As an insurance measure, she seized an umbrella from a brass stand by the door. It was a Swilby and Tuttham bumbershoot, the finest in the world, bought in London a year ago for 120 pounds sterling, exceedingly sturdy, with a nickel-silver tip that would make a nice impression on Kenneth’s soft tissues, in case he blocked her kick. When Maggie flung open the door, there stood Kenneth’s mother, Georgia, all four feet eleven inches of her, in a scarlet Chanel suit and matching hat (trimmed with green sprigs of holly) that might have appeared festive on someone who did not look exactly like the ancient Mexican mummy displayed on the fourth floor of the Museum of Natural History.
“Merry Christmas, my dearest girl!” Georgia screeched, throwing her hands up like a crippled cheerleader. Her visits, which had stabilized at about five per year, always began on this note of nearly hysterical affection before swerving off into carping and criticism. The sight of her mother-in-law propelled Maggie out of her comfortable cocoon of shock into an orbit of panic, which only worsened when she saw her own mother and stepfather’s black Mercedes turn through the distant gateposts and roll ominously up the driveway.
“Expecting rain?” Georgia asked.
Maggie blinked, chucked the umbrella back in the stand, and bent to peck Georgia’s heavily rouged and powdered cheek. “We’ve had some trouble around here,” Maggie said.
“What sort of trouble?”
“Uh, rumors of a prowler. Yes, a prowler.”
“Prowlers?” Georgia said as though the word had five syllables. “In my day prowlers did their prowling at night. What is the world coming to?”
“I wish I knew.”
Behind Georgia loomed Maggie’s mom, Irene, and her husband Charlie Moss. Charlie Moss was a second-generation New York City slumlord who extracted his wealth from hundreds of decrepit buildings in Manhattan and the Bronx the way strip mining companies extracted coal from the hollows of Appalachia. Irene met Charlie three years after she divorced Frank Hedjuk, moving, with little Maggie in tow, from Factorsville, Pennsylvania, to the great metropolis of Gotham—a lifelong dream—where Irene found work as an usher at the Morosco Theater. She had struck up a chat with Charlie during the intermission of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, while his first wife was off in the powder room. “How do you like the play, sir?” Irene asked with her winning smile, sizing up his beautifully tailored glen plaid suit and gold cuff links. “Story of my life,” Charlie said with a humorous snort, and inside of two minutes Irene had conveyed her telephone number, her marital status, and the nature of her availability. After that, Charlie didn’t have a chance. Eight months later, in October of 1962, Irene (now the second Mrs. Charlie Moss) and Maggie moved from their one-bedroom flat on Ninety-second Sreet, in the shadow of the old Knickerbocker brewery (where the whole neighborhood stank of hops), into a fourteen-room duplex on Sutton Place. By this time, Frank Hedjuk had spiraled into the alcoholism that would kill him, and it was Charlie Moss whom Maggie Hedjuk had to thank for her years at the Brearly School and Smith College.
“Why, Maggie,” Irene remarked over Georgia’s humped shoulders, “what a dreary costume for the day of days.” This was the quintessential Irene.
“It’s a very special Christmas,” Maggie averred in a sort of growl.
In the interval since Kenneth’s assault, Maggie had completely forgotten that the whole parental gang was scheduled to pay its usual holiday afternoon call. Aside from the fact that enough ill feeling existed between both wings of the family, as well as between the generations, to sink any clan gathering, there was the problem of breaking the news about Kenneth. Now, panic filling her brain like one of those gelatinous blobs in a lava lamp, Maggie’s mind sought refuge in the question of what she might feed everybody.
5
The Empty Chair
The three aged parents settled around the great kitchen table sipping rum toddies while Maggie prestidigitated a Christmas luncheon out of the odds and ends at hand. An hors d’oeuvre loaf of Maggie’s own veal and fig pâté, ringed by slices of her sourdough bread, occupied a silver platter at the center. The rum toddies were designed to get the old folks tanked rapidly. The warmth and sweetness disguised their kick.
“Where’s my big boy?” Georgia asked in her crowlike voice.
Maggie deftly ignored her, ducking into the walk-in fridge to snare a carton of eggs, some red peppers, two heads of limestone lettuce, and one of radicchio. Back at her station in the kitchen, she grabbed the phone and dialed the orchard cottage.
“Yunh … ?” Hooper answered.
“Are we up yet, darling?”
“More or less.”
“Your grandmothers are here. And Charlie, too. We are going to have lunch. I do expect you’ll join us. Pronto, if possible. Catch my meaning? Bye.”
“Where is our little Hooper?” Georgia inquired. “Where is everybody?”
Maggie refreshed Georgia’s drink. Soon she had a batch of cheddar scones baking in the oven and heaps of red peppers, onions, and potatoes sautéing on the stove. Charlie ranted about the underclass, setting forth well-rehearsed positions that Maggie had heard perhaps sixty-three times before. It was nearly all Charlie ever talked about, and loudly, too, and it was one of the reasons she did not invite Irene and Charlie to her annual Christmas Eve extravaganza. Another was Irene’s humiliating habit of asking everybody what things cost: their jewelry, their clothes, their summer houses, their children’s college tuition. It drove Maggie crazy. Luckily, Charlie had Danny, a married son from his first marriage and a third-generation slumlord, who conveniently threw a party of his own every Christmas Eve, where, thank God, Charlie and Irene were the star attractions.
“They’re like monkeys,” Charlie now declared of the African-Americans who occupied many of his apartments. “They piss in the stairwells. They break the fixtures, the lights, the toilets. They don’t care. They live there, you see, but they don’t care. Someone, please, tell me why a person would piss in the hall where they live? I don’t care how much you hate your landlord or whitey or whatever. I don’t live there. Sure, I own it, but it’s not like they’re pissing on me. They’re pissing on themselves. They’re like monkeys. If I gave out free bananas I could rent every last miserable unit.”
“Miserable.” Maggie said, tossing a steel colander noisily into the sink. “That’s the operative word, right Charlie?”
“Aren’t we testy,” Irene observed.
“Excuse me,” Charlie said. “Affordable housing. And the reason it’s affordable is that it’s less desirable. That is the way the world works, and the way it has always worked.”
“I blame Eleanor Roosevelt,” Georgia exclaimed and then, holding her eighteenth-century etched flip glass in Maggie’s direction, said, “Pour me another, dearie.”
A certain clattering in the mudroom preceded the entrance of Hooper and Alison.
“Good God! It’s that prowler again!” Georgia cried.
“What prowler?” Irene said.
“The daytime prowler,” Georgia said. “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
“I never have.”
By now Charlie was on his feet, poised as though awaiting an enemy invasion, but the two youngsters slouched in giggling and Charlie visibly deflated. Hooper sported the popular headgear of his generation, a baseball cap worn backward so as to display the interesting plastic adjustment strap. Alison’s gold nose ring glinted in the afternoon light.
“Where’s Dad?”
“I sent him out for something,” Maggie said. “Everybody, this is Heather, Hooper’s friend.”
“Alison,” the girl corrected her with a friendly giggle. Maggie wondered if the two of them were stoned but decided it was more likely the transports of love that made them so goofy. They both reeked of sex, a rich, zooey stink. The aroma embarrassed and frightened Maggie, dredging up jagged reminders of the Laura Wilkie incident. Her hand shook as she broke a dozen eggs into a steel bowl.
“Aren’t you going to offer us a beverage, Mom?”
“Of course,” Maggie said with a catch in her voice. “Help yourselves. It’s on the stove.”
“Heather,” Irene inquired, “whatever possessed you to pierce your nose?”
Maggie Darling Page 5