16

Days went by in silent despair now, Susan waiting, watching for a sign of the next attack, the phones sitting quietly, always in reach of her.

One afternoon, when there was no more housework she could conjure up (the kitchen cupboards were relined, the closets put in order, even Andrea’s toys were organized shelf by shelf), Susan went back to the office to pick up her things.

There was genuine sadness on seeing her. (Because she had been fired, or had Tara told them?)

“We’re gonna miss you, kid,” one of the art directors said as she headed down the long hall of offices to her own. She stopped briefly to acknowledge the kindness.

“I’ll miss you, too, Bud. And your dirty jokes.”

“I’ll call them in to you,” he answered.

“Mail them.” And there was no hint on his face that Tara had said anything.

Her own cubicle seemed foreign to her; the illustration she had been working on was gone, probably handed over to someone else to finish, the drawing board tidy (it never had been when it belonged to her).

Slowly she removed her possessions. The pictures, a loving cup that read “Hausfrau of the Year” (Tara had given it to her when she refused to leave Lou and Andrea to spend a weekend with her at her parents’ upstate retreat), a transistor radio (useless, transmitting only static in the windowless interior).

And then she looked up and saw Tara standing in the doorway, looking at her as if she might cry.

“Hi,” Tara said.

“Hi, yourself.”

“Collecting your junk?”

“Uh-­huh.”

“Mind if I crawl into the package?”

“Love it.”

Tara came into the cubicle and plopped herself, as always, on the drawing board.

“Guess what?” she said.

“What?”

“I’m fellaless again.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means that Yuri found a lady orthopedist with a private practice and forty-­inch tits.”

“I’m sorry,” Susan said but her sympathy was lessened for recognizing that Tara’s sadness was not about her leaving.

“Yeah, well, once an old maid . . .”

Susan’s resentment didn’t last long; she put her arm around Tara and shook her. “Anybody who puts out as much as you do is no old maid. . . .”

“So I’m a promiscuous old maid.”

“Wanna cut out early and get bombed?”

Tara cocked her pretty head, considering it. “I’ve got a ton of work to do.”

“Do it tomorrow.”

She turned to Susan, smiled, glanced around (seeing the result of too many missed days) and said, “You’re on.”

They crossed the street to the Warwick bar and ordered their customary martinis, settling in comfortably in a corner, preparing to mourn, in their separate ways, their separate griefs.

“I really liked him,” Tara was saying when their drinks had arrived and the time for regrets was right. “And goddamn it, I was so good to him. I really was, Susan. I didn’t pull any of my usual shit on him. I was practically normal, for crissake. What the hell do they want?” And her voice rose so that a bartender glanced over at her.

“I don’t know. Probably more of the same.”

“I mean, a lady orthopedist! Is that someone for a grown man?” She laughed. “But enough about me. How’s it going?”

Susan shrugged and ate her olive.

“That bad?”

“Not good.” And she told her about the phones, the three intruders waiting for her at home.

“Maybe Lou had them installed,” Tara said, looking for an explanation, any explanation.

“It isn’t Lou.” Susan stared at a small eddy on the surface of her drink. “You know what it is.”

“I don’t know anything.” And then, suddenly and with enough emotion to cause another glance from the bartender, “Susan, things like that don’t happen.”

“Don’t they? How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“Yes.” Susan touched the top of the viscous liquid, causing it to rise to meet her finger. “I knew it, too, before.”

They calmed (or rather, Tara calmed, for Susan was beyond excitation) and eventually, when there was no more to say, either about the phones or Yuri, Tara said, with a sudden despair, “How am I going to get in touch with you?”

“Call,” Susan answered. “I’m never far from a phone.”

Several days later, Tara did call.

Susan was with Andrea, as she always was since dismissing Mrs. Diamond. Their evenings were filled with each other, the television set fading rapidly into the background. Susan did indeed teach her to paint (as her mother claimed to have taught her). She taught her perspective (“Make the one in the background smaller, honey. That’s right. As things get farther away they get smaller. . . .”) and balance and figure drawing. She seemed filled with a need to be with her daughter, to express her love for her, to absorb her and be absorbed in case she was suddenly missing (like Susan’s father, who had left without really having been there).

Lou came into Andrea’s room a moment after Susan heard the phone ring.

“It’s Tara. Will you talk to her?” he asked, knowing her answer.

“No.”

He left the room and Andrea looked up from the watercolor of a house that they had been working on.

“Are you mad at Tara, Mommy?”

“No, dear. I’d just rather be with you than talk on the phone.” She caressed her daughter’s hair.

Andrea added a dog to the lawn outside the house. A large, fat dog.

“Sweet William,” the child said. “He’s not dead.”

“No, dear. Not to us,” and she went into her bedroom in time to see Lou hang up the phone.

“She says to come to her apartment tomorrow night. It’s important,” he said, and then rolled over, back toward her, to face the television set.

Susan stared at his back for a moment (it had been days since the silence between them started) and went back to Andrea.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, looking at the picture, recognizing her own lack of talent. “It’s beautiful and you’re the most beautiful girl in the world.”

“No, I’m not,” Andrea said matter-­of-­factly.

“Yes, you are.” And she took her daughter in her arms with more emotion than she wished to show. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in all my life.”

“Okay,” Andrea acceded, squirming out of her grasp.

The next evening, shortly after eight, Susan climbed the steps in front of Tara’s brownstone and entered the lobby. She could smell spaghetti sauce coming from within as she stood before the locked inner door (again, the angry army had to be kept out) and rang Tara’s intercom bell.

“Yeah?” Tara’s voice called.

“It’s me.” The buzzer sounded.

Inside, climbing the stairs, the smell of sauce was beautiful and lessened only as she passed the second floor, where it was replaced by the smell of homebaked bread. Susan momentarily envied these people who could eat their dinners so late; by eight uptown, dishes were done and children bathed, husbands settled before their TV sets and the humdrumness started.

Tara’s head appeared at the top of the final flight of stairs.

“Hup two three four,” she said.

“God, I wish you’d get an elevator—” but Susan didn’t mean it. The stairs, the smells, the freedom were all perfect.

“So, what’s important?” Susan asked as Tara poured her a glass of wine.

“The pillows. Nice?”

Susan sat forward on the couch and looked behind her. She recognized it was Tara’s new matching pillows that had been making her uncomfortable.

“Gorgeous. Now, what’s important?”

“Sweetheart—” she handed her the wine—“what I’ve been through for you. Cheers.”

They sipped.

“What? Will you tell me?”

“Don’t rush me. . . .” And Susan echoed the inevitable “I’ll work cheaper.”

“I’ve been through hell.” Tara, realizing what she had said, added, “Metaphorically, to get in touch with someone from the phone company, and I finally found someone. She’s a friend of a friend of a friend, but I spoke with her last night and she’s coming over here to talk to you. . . .”

“Whatever for?” Susan felt a rush of impatience; she was surrounded by people for whom only the rational was possible. What help could another one be?

“Because I called the phone company and pretended this thing was happening to me and they laughed in my face. . . .”

“I could have told you that, Tara.”

“Yeah, but Harriet didn’t laugh. That’s her name, Harriet Walgreen. She was really concerned. . . .”

“God, here we go again—” and Susan rearranged the hateful pillows out of her way. “First a psychic stud, then a telephone operator . . .”

“She happens to be vice-­president of Ma Bell, so watch your mouth. And you’re damn right, here we go again. And we’ll keep on going until this thing is over, or would you like to spend the rest of your life hiding every time the phone rings?” Tara said angrily, forcing a brief silence.

“Do many people say thank you by biting your head off?” Susan apologized.

“Not many.” And to lighten the mood she added, “You don’t like the pillows?”

“I love the pillows.”

“They’re uncomfortable?”

Susan laughed (the first time in days). “I love you.”

“Yeah, a lot of good it does me. Can you grow a penis?”

“I can’t even grow a plant.”

At eight-­thirty, precisely as arranged, the intercom buzzed and Tara announced that Harriet was on her way up.

“I hope she’s not too old for the stairs,” Susan said.

She was not. Harriet Walgreen was, like Tara, several years younger than Susan and absolutely stunning. (Where does Tara dig them up? Susan thought.) In addition to beauty (a mane of honey-­colored hair, an astonishing smile) she had what secretaries at their office (Tara’s office now) called “style.” Even casually dressed as she was, one could, if one were a woman, smell the faint and delicious odor of money about her.

All of which would have put Susan off her instantly if Harriet hadn’t also been deeply sympathetic.

“I’ve been spooked all day over it,” she said behind her Scotch and water (it occurred to Susan that she and Tara, with their cheap white wine, were infinitely tacky in comparison). “I actually locked myself in my office and had a joint.” Her smile radiated without the least hint of self-­consciousness.

“Got another?” Tara asked.

“Menthol or regular?” She reached into her purse (alligator—Susan almost salivated) and withdrew one.

They lit up, passing the joint among them frequently until the tension of their meeting was replaced by a warm glow of friendship.

“You do believe me?” Susan asked.

“Of course—” and for a moment Susan thought, There is someone else who knows the truth—but Harriet quickly dispelled that. “I believe that someone’s calling you.” She looked apologetic.

“Well, that will have to do.” Susan, mellowed by the wine and marijuana, wasn’t up to pushing the point.

“I checked on the new phones that were installed,” Harriet went on, to prove her intent to help.

“I told her,” Tara said, holding in her breath and the smoke.

“There was no order for them and no record of their having been installed.”

“Of course not.” Susan leaned back and closed her eyes, drifting. “And no record of their reinstalling themselves.”

“Shit,” Harriet said softly. “It’s too much.”

“Much too much. Tara, pass the joint already.”

“When do the calls come?”

“When I’m alone.” (When Sweet William was alone.)

“Do they come at any regular time?”

“No. Whenever.”

“Shit.”

They lit another joint, faced with the apparent helplessness of their now mutual problem (it occurred to Susan that Harriet was an extraordinarily nice woman, but then, why shouldn’t she be, looking like that?).

“You’re really a doll to try to help me,” Susan said suddenly, loudly, the marijuana lifting her onto a new, more excitable plateau.

“A doll,” Harriet parroted and then started to laugh. “My mother used to use that word.”

“A regular doll,” Tara said and she started to giggle.

Paranoia hit Susan, but only briefly, and then she joined them in their drugged giddiness.

“He makes a good living,” she said, to laughing approval.

“He comes from money,” someone else said. “Money, Ohio.”

“She’s a regular person.”

“Don’t keep yourself strange!” (At that, the three of them guffawed.)

Later, when the giddiness had passed and was replaced by a somber melancholy, Harriet turned to Susan and said earnestly, “I’m going to have a trace put on your phone, Susan.”

“My God, just like in the movies,” Tara, wishing the giddiness to return, said.

“Will you?”

“Uh-­huh.”

“Thank you—” and it occurred to her that it wouldn’t do any good. “What if the calls can’t be traced? If they come from someplace you can’t trace?”

“That’s impossible.”

“What if it happens?”

“We’ll find you an exorcist.” She saw the painfully lonely look on Susan’s face. “It’s impossible, honey.”

“So was the Titanic.”

“Look, let’s have lunch tomorrow and talk about it. Meanwhile, somebody help me find my feet. If I’m late one more night, Larry’ll kill me.”

“Who’s Larry?”

“My hubby. The one who comes from money.” She struggled to her feet. “One o’clock, the Maison Française on Fifty-­sixth, okay?”

Susan also had difficulty climbing out of the couch (where she was wadded in among Tara’s damned matching pillows). She took Harriet’s hand warmly and wanted to say something important.

“Thank you,” was all that came out.

Later, when Harriet was gone, Tara was the first to verbalize what they both had been thinking.

“When I grow up, I want to be her.”

“I’d settle for being her purse.” And briefly, at least, life was normal.

At one o’clock the following day Susan entered La Maison Française, mentioned Harriet’s name to the head waiter and was shown to their table.

“May I get you a drink?” The waiter seemed decidedly subservient, embarrassing her. (Had it been Susan’s usual table instead of Harriet’s, she knew he would have been normally curt.) She ordered a Scotch and water (imitation being the sincerest form) and settled in to wait for Harriet.

“God, that’s a gorgeous suit,” Harriet said as she slid onto the banquette next to Susan. “Sorry I’m late. Where’d you get it?”

“Saks,” Susan answered, pleased that she had taken great pains in dressing. (Harriet’s outfit was, of course, a classic.) “And yours?”

“Ralph Lauren, but don’t hate me for it. It was a present from Larry. We ate in for two weeks to pay for it. Hi, Joseph.” The waiter, unasked, brought her drink, placing it before her with a warm smile of admiration. “How did Edward like the Yankee game?”

“Loved it, Miss Walgreen. Thanks again.”

“Well—” Harriet raised her glass to toast Susan. “Congratulations. You’ve now got a tapped phone.”

“Already?”

“We don’t kid around at Ma Bell.”

“What part of heaven do you come from?” Susan asked, overwhelmed by her new friend’s kindness. (When it was over, if it was ever over, they would be friends; Susan would then have the courage to ask Harriet’s advice on dressing, hair style, living, breathing.)

“The part that’s in Brooklyn.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope, but I worked at it. Christ, did I work at it—” and she toasted herself. “I was so stoned last night . . .”

“Me, too.”

“When I got home, I ate everything in the refrigerator including the ice cubes and then I attacked Larry.”

“Was he stoned too?”

“He doesn’t have to be. Thank God I married a sex maniac.”

Susan thought of Lou, sleeping far from her on his side of the bed; how long had it been since she attacked him?

“Listen,” Harriet said, suddenly businesslike, “we’ve got to do some planning. The next time he calls you . . .”

“He?”

“He, it, them, whatever, I want you to stay on the phone as long as possible. . . .”

“Harriet, I can’t,” and she saw Sweet William, once again in the back of her closet, shivering, snarling, mad. “Even a moment of it terrifies me.”

“Susan, we can’t trace the call if you hang up. Look, put the phone down and get out of the room, but don’t hang up. That’s important, don’t hang up.”

“All right,” she agreed, reluctantly.

“Also, when I want to reach you, I’ll ring once, then hang up and redial so you’ll know it’s me.”

“It won’t do any good, Harriet. It can cut you off.” And the uselessness of her plan, of any mere human’s plan, was painfully evident.

“Do it anyway, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And stop looking so sad. We’ll get him. Nothing can beat Ma Bell. That’s what’s so nice about being a monopoly. Now, you like coq au vin?”

They ate without further reference to Susan’s caller, and Harriet, cheerful and secure, almost succeeded in making her feel the same.

For a while, at least.