I should have been home asleep with the baby, but in the late afternoon, my supervisor called to ask if I could help with a presentation. After dinner, I put the baby down at her house, and since the work took longer than expected, I didn’t leave until midnight.
The main street of town was deserted. I drove along slowly, dreamily until a phantom rose out of the sidewalk. It was Peter (my husband), walking slowly and dreamily too, with both his arms draped around a strange girl. At that instant, my love for him drained away. Later, I wished (with all my heart) I had run the car over the curb into his body. But instead, I went home and threw up.
The next morning, I discredited what I saw. I called Marco where Peter sometimes spent the night so they could rehearse without disturbing the baby.
“Marco?” I asked calmly. “Could I have possibly seen Peter in town late last night? With his tennis partner?”
“Lisa McElduff?” Marco sounded calm, too.
“Maybe it was Lisa McElduff. I don’t really know Lisa.”
“Hasn’t Peter told you about Lisa?”
I hung up. For a few minutes, I waited for a plan of revenge to formulate. The plan was trite (since The Count of Monte Cristo, there’s never been anything original about revenge). I vowed to leave Peter and never let him see our baby again.
I attacked every drawer and closet, piling up in Peter’s studio whatever I had made or given him: lovingly hand-sewn shirts, beautiful crocheted mufflers, an embroidered denim jacket, darned socks, many books of poetry, sable brushes, a bagpipe, and two pairs of silk boxers. All of these, I methodically (and gleefully) tore, shredded, crumpled, and cracked. Then, I dumped a can of red paint over the lot.
Next, I burned his letters to me. And tossed out a box of memorabilia, the items that had initiated me into womanhood: my first bra (28 AAA), my first garter belt, the empty but still stinky first pack of cigarettes (Winston box), a stained Kotex belt, the blouse I had on when I French kissed Steve Fink, a straw pillbox hat pinned with dried rosebuds that I wore when I married Peter, and a green plastic wallet from sixth grade containing my Buckhead library card, a lucky silver dollar, and a picture of me taken in a photo-booth at Myrtle Beach.
I traveled light to California. Suitcase, diaper bag, baby.
“Peter called,” my cousin announced at the airport. “He asked if I knew where you were.”
“And?”
“I told him you were on a plane.”
“And?”
“He started to cry. He said you destroyed his life and his studio. He wondered if I knew why.”
“Because it felt good,” I said without guile. Harsh as it was, it registered as less severe than what Peggy did when she left Freddie Mason. After she found Freddie in bed at home with his lab assistant, she cut the left arm off all his sweaters, jackets, shirts, and coats and snipped the ends of his ties.
In California, I cried, too, for weeks, the baby and I both. Sometimes, Peggy joined us. Once we got started, there was no end of inspiration and regret. And the baby just couldn’t help herself.
Peggy helped me find a cottage in the Berkeley hills. We took walks to the park. We relaxed in cafés. It was a serene, uncomplicated time.
Peter often called. He wanted to know how I had transmogrified into a vengeful person. I told him people were capable of anything. He only had to read the newspaper (once in a while) to know that. When he said he was coming to California, I tried not to react. I tried to be what the Buddhists call detached.
“Don’t you want me to come?” he asked.
“I don’t need you to come,” I told him, thinking of the past tranquil months with the baby. “What about McElduff?”
Peter called me a fool. A week later, he arrived with whatever belongings I hadn’t ruined. Stuff enough to shatter the peace inside my tiny space. He was happy to see us, and as it turned out, we were happy to see him, too.
Years have passed since that period of separation and reunion. Peter and I have fought, reconciled, and fought again. Through our child, time has assumed a forward propulsion. She has gotten bigger, stronger, louder. While the changes in our lives appear minute, hers have been colossal.
We have stayed in Berkeley. We now live in a bigger cottage in a less attractive area. Peter works as a handyman. I’m a receptionist at a gym. Rents have escalated, and we aren’t sure we can afford to stay much longer. Although crime rates have fallen, fear has risen. Parents are urged to have their children finger-printed (in case of kidnaping). The faces of missing youngsters appear on milk cartons, staring at us every morning over breakfast. Our neighbors spend substantial sums on alarms, window bars, and guard dogs. Everyone has grown paranoid.
When a small box arrived from an unknown sender, I observed it cautiously. It was poorly taped, and my full name, large and tentative, was written as if someone didn’t know how to spell. It was post-marked Atlanta, but the return address was Owen Huff in Roswell, Georgia.
I put the box outside on the porch until Peter came home.
“Do you know anyone in Roswell?” he asked.
When I was growing up, Roswell was a distant outpost, synonymous with banishment itself.
“Huff doesn’t ring a bell?”
“Maybe, my cousin sent a bomb.”
“Impossible,” Peter said. My cousin, Malcolm, had recently initiated a nasty lawsuit with his sister, Peggy, over their inheritance.
Peter picked up the rectangular box, the size of a pair of children’s shoes. He gently shook it. “Do you want me to call the police?”
“No,” I said.
“Then we’d better open it.”
When Sarah ran across the yard, I ordered her to stand back on the sidewalk. “It might be dangerous up here,” I advised.
She plunked down on the curb, squirming with excitement while Peter took out a Swiss Army knife and cut the tape. He shook the box again. Gingerly, he pried open two top flaps. Underneath a sheet of the Dunwoody Crier were several folded layers of bubble-wrap which made it impossible to see anything.
“Can’t I come now?” Sarah shouted.
“We don’t know what’s in the box.”
“Owen Huff is a careful wrapper,” Peter said.
As he started to unfold the bubble-wrap, I saw something bright green trapped in the center like a tree frog in an ice floe.
“My wallet!” I cried.
“Did you lose it?” Peter asked.
“My wallet, my wallet!” I waved for Sarah to come up. “This is the wallet I had when I was your age.”
Sarah was disinterested.
“Here’s my Buckhead library card.”
Sarah was indifferent.
“Here’s a picture of me at Myrtle Beach. Aren’t I hideous?”
Sarah glanced over.
I clutched the wallet to my chest. A missing piece of childhood had returned like a message in a bottle.
“Here’s my lucky silver dollar,” I said, unzipping the coin purse. “You take it.”
Sarah stuck out her hand. A dollar, even silver, was also uninteresting.
Buried deeper than the wallet was an envelope with my name. Inside Owen Huff reported that his father, Owen Huff senior, had recently died.
Peter read aloud:
About a dozen years back when I was in school, I went on a field trip.
I do not remember exactly where I was exactly but I found this wallet and intending to return it but being I did not know how. I’d forgotten until daddy passed away. We moved around a lot but liked to save special things and took them with us. I was cleaning out his attic and found the cute wallet in a box with the cute picture and lucky $, you better needed it. I called your last name in the phone book and they given me your address in California.
Sincerely, Owen Huff
“That’s a strange thing,” Peter pondered. “Do you remember losing your wallet when you were a child?”
“No, I kept it for years,” I admitted. “I kept it in a box. Then, something came over me one day, and I threw it away.”
Although Marguerite never worked a day in her life, she experienced the frustrations and tedium of the humdrum, workaday world. In furies and fits, she attacked gas pumps and doors. She barked at traffic signals. She raced around Atlanta, cursing her dead husband who, unlike her own father, never made enough money to hire a chauffeur.
Signal lights, however, were trivial compared to the maledictions directed at telephone operators, doctors, insurance adjusters, manicurists, repair men, stock brokers, and clerks. In the couture department at Rich’s, she was known as “code blue” (meaning anyone would rather die than have to wait on Marguerite Breen).
“If people could just do what they’re supposed to,” that was her lament. And her job, so to speak, was to let everyone know when they weren’t properly doing theirs.
This week’s grievance? The price tag on a brassiere at Neiman Marcus. “Two-hundred-and-twenty-five dollars?” Her eyebrows arched dangerously. “It’s an outrage what they think they can get away with.”
“They’re imported from Paris in France,” the salesgirl explained.
“I know where Paris is,” Marguerite seethed. “I want to speak to the buyer.”
“She’s out to lunch, ma’am.”
“Then, who’s supposed to be in charge?”
The girl disappeared behind a curtain and reappeared with a heavy-set man. “Mrs. Breen,” he greeted her affably.
“Who do you think you are? Charging $225 for a flimsy nothing?” The launch was loud enough to be heard in Shoes.
“We don’t regulate prices here,” he flushed.
“Then, I’d like you to telephone Dallas,” she said, fondling the satin bow tucked between two perfect baby-blue cups. In all her experience, first-class and worldwide, she had never seen such workmanship.
“It is the correct price, madam.” His head lifted with loyalty and pride. “See the code?”
“I see nothing but a ridiculous price tag.”
“French design, Belgian lace,” his closing argument.
“Who the hell is going to pay that?” Sportswear heard the shriek. Marguerite pounded the carpet and stomped through the wall of double glass doors. “Who?” She interrogated the parking attendant whose English wasn’t qualified to understand the question.
Dr. Cohen motioned his patient to the tobacco leather couch. “What has happened to get you so upset?”
Marguerite buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook, and her stomach rumbled with chicken salad.
Nearby, Dr. Cohen sat in the wing-chair, swinging a silver fountain pen across his knee. It usually required thirty swings for a patient to compose herself. Marguerite Breen required more. Last year, he suggested she “repress” her feelings.
“Whoever heard of a psychiatrist telling a patient to repress? Especially feelings?” my mother asked me.
A week later, when she returned to the couch, she demanded, “Do you mean I should keep the things that tear me to pieces to myself? And not let other people know what they do to me?”
Even with a medical degree from the Ivy League, the doctor could be intimidated by Marguerite. “Life might be calmer if you did.” He said, blending sympathy with caution.
“Calm is not why I was born,” she rebutted. “I am a woman of passions, Richard.” She was not about to address anyone with less than half her life experience as doctor of anything.
“You spend much of your time getting upset,” he reminded her.
“It isn’t me who’s upset. They’re upset because they fail to do anything right. It rubs off on me, that’s the problem.” Marguerite rose abruptly, brushed off her crushed silk pants, and collapsed back on the pile of cushions. “I had an awful thing happen today.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I got the letter Wednesday,” she announced. “I got the phone call this morning.”
“And?”
“Sue has not visited me in a year. Now, she informs me she’ll be coming from California for her cousin’s wedding. She’ll condescend to stop in Atlanta on the way.” Marguerite sputtered. “Sue has never cared about me. She has lived as far away as possible from me. I make the sacrifice and traipse out there, a place I hate, but she is my daughter. That’s why I make the effort.”
Marguerite gulped a glass of water and handed it to Dr. Cohen for a refill.
“She takes up with shiftless men whom she prefers to me. She has their children who do not know me, who do not call me Nana, who have no idea what I did for Sue when she was growing up.”
On two hands, Marguerite inventoried piano and ballet lessons, Girl Scouts, swimming instruction, horseback riding, summer camps, and private schools.
“Of course, I told her the truth, I can’t help that. I asked her, ‘Who in the hell wants to watch a 45-year-old woman get married?’ Then, I reminded her she can’t afford to fly across the country. She has to work, doesn’t she? She has to support those hungry kids. She doesn’t have that kind of money. I’m sure not giving it to her. Get one of her boyfriends to give it to her. I do not have it. I can’t buy a new car. I can’t take a trip this year. And today, in Neiman-Marcus I sacrificed something I wanted very badly.”
Marguerite stopped to catch her breath.
“Invited or not, I won’t be going to the wedding. ABC gum is what I told her. Already-Been-Chewed is not what normal people call ‘romantic.’ A middle-aged woman with dyed hair marrying an orthodontist with a pot belly? If that is romantic, I will shoot myself.”
“Perhaps Sue is trying to tell you something about her own choices,” Dr. Cohen offered.
“She should have thought of that when she still had her looks,” Marguerite said, twisting the skin around her fingers. “My sister struts around Atlanta like the Queen Mother. She set up a registry at Saks. Who in the hell is going to buy china and silver for a woman who has already been married? Twice!”
The doctor stood. That was his signal. Their hour together was up.
Marguerite did not like leaving Dr. Cohen. She disliked the thought of going home. Her apartment was lonely. She could think of no one to call. She had abandoned her old friends, and her new young ones weren’t so interesting after all.
“What is it?” she asked him.
“What is what?”
“I’ve forgotten, damnit.”
Forgetfulness was rare. Age had not dimmed Marguerite’s accounting abilities. In reverse of nature, anger and frustration had only served to sharpen her wits.
“When you remember, write it down,” he suggested.
“Until next week,” she said, her face deflating, the fight drained from her body.
Richard Cohen turned to his desk. Beyond the reception area, he could hear the echo of what his patient had failed to say.
“I detest this family!” she screamed. The words ricocheted in the hall as the elevator doors closed behind her.