Tonight’s party is a celebration with me playing hostess and chief celebrant. Four of my dearest friends are coming, plus David, my lover and about-to-be-husband in three months and four days, and of course Roger, the Pigeon Supreme, primed for plucking at the after-dinner poker game. It’s a perfect group: bright, witty, successful people who like each other and me too, I hope. Of course they do. Why else would they drag themselves out on a sleepy Saturday night, struggle through the warm spring evening and pretend to enjoy baked clams, guinea hens, tarte aux pêches, and a lovely, not too fruity Beaujolais Primeur?
It’s only noon, but I’m well under control already. The apartment is in order with the exception of my office, an area that seems perpetually under hurricane attack. Easily solved with a closed door. Ditto for my bedroom, not because it’s messy, which it is, though only gently so, but because it’s too personal. Except for David, I always feel uncomfortably exposed when even my closest friends wander into my bedroom. The night table alone, posing as ordinary furniture, has shelves that spread like an open pocketbook revealing scraps of my private self, more bits and hints of me than I care to give. And, of course, the top is hopelessly cluttered with other revealing trivia: Valium to relieve the anxieties of a single, thirty-three-year-old woman beset by hypochondria and the assorted dreads and fears of contemporary urban life; Maalox for the more mundane ailments; and a salve for an allergy rash that is almost certainly psychosomatic but itches maddeningly all the same. All the trappings of a perfectly normal, happy, healthy, successful writer. And nobody’s business but mine. That door stays closed too.
My guests will be here soon, so I make a last check on the dining room. As always, it’s exquisite. The table, a beautiful specimen of eighteenth-century country French refectory, one crack away from total collapse but still the best piece in the house, is arranged to perfection. My perfection anyway. The decidedly English Robinson silver sparkles next to heavy hand-blown stemware from Provence; ultraformal Rosenthal china lies elegantly under the most sentimental of Irish lace napkins blossoming gracefully from hand-painted china rings that nip in their centers; tiny delicate rose-shaped salt cellars; and two bronze candelabra, each holding four fifteen-inch candles, add the final crowning touch. All enough to take away the appetite of your average high-tech decorator, but I love it, every bit of it. It’s my weakness, my grown-up toys, and as a result of this extravagance, I could never afford to furnish the room beyond my fabulous table and eight chairs. Fortunately for me, the building itself, a seventy-five-year-old Stanford White creation on Central Park West in Manhattan, has lovely carved ceilings and oak-paneled walls, handsome enough to substitute for furniture any day.
I’ve carried my eclectic taste into the living room, another potpourri of English, French, and Spanish stolen at bargain prices from auction galleries and then most casually combined, all in subtle tones of blues and golds with an occasional burgundy accent. The effect is soft and comfortable and warm. The rest of the apartment includes a good-sized old-fashioned kitchen, a bathroom, and, of course, the two verboten rooms.
It takes me a few minutes to straighten up the kitchen and put it in order for David, the true perfection of my life. David, the man I think I’ve been waiting for all my life even though I married someone else years ago, but that was when I was twenty-two, and the whole fiasco actually lasted only three years, including the waiting time for the divorce. I can hardly remember anything about Jack except that he was a decent guy. A nice boyfriend. Then suddenly, one day, there was a lovely old watch that had belonged to his mother, then an engagement ring and peau de soie veils and bridesmaids, ushers, and the time for decisions was lost, and onward was the only direction left.
No parting is easy, but this marriage had so little depth that the leaving was more embarrassing than angry. We split up possessions. I kept the CPW apartment that he never liked, and we went our own ways. At first we spoke often, consulted each other, and held on like once-close cousins. Then he met Rita. Within six months they were married and off to suburbia. Jack calls me occasionally when he’s had a few too many drinks, and we reminisce. It gets harder and harder because I can’t seem to remember more than five minutes of our whole relationship. And most of those moments took place when I decided to tell him I wanted out.
On the other hand, with David, the decision making has been going on for four years. We’ve examined every reason for not getting married and overcome them all. That doesn’t mean it’s a sure winner, but it does increase the odds in our favor. It’s all a deep risk anyway when you’re the child of an unhappy marriage, as I am. Somewhere hidden deep down inside the psyche are the tapes that will repeat the misery of the only example you’ve ever known.
I watch carefully to see that the tapes don’t start spinning. I watch for the warnings, the familiar muffled sounds of the angry spits and hisses or the roars of my childhood. Nothing is ever allowed to get past six on the decibel scale. Fortunately David is low-keyed, a man whose own self-respect gives him a confidence that doesn’t easily threaten. I love him dearly. And I’m ready to take the chance because I want to get on with my life. I want commitments, a husband, children, a family around me that I can be part of and love and complain about and take for granted.
The phone rings.
“Johanna?” It’s my David.
“Hi, love. What’s up?” I say, taking him completely for granted.
“I’m done. It went faster than I expected so I can be on my way in about a half hour. I’ll pick up the wine, the bread, and what kind of cheese?”
“Should we try the goat cheese this time?”
“Sure. And what about a Camembert?”
“Good idea.”
“Anything else?”
“I’m thinking . . .”
“Meantime I’ll get ready. Give me a call if you come up with anything else. Johanna …”
“Yes, love.”
“. . . I’m hurrying.”
I hang up and smile because it’s so incredibly glorious to be in love with someone so perfect and loving and consistent. Not dull, expected consistent, but strong, dependable, comfortable consistent. I’ve driven my friends into near-coma listing David’s good qualities, but they’re all genuine. He’s all those things, and the best part is he doesn’t even know it. And he loves me. And that’s pretty good too, because he knows me fairly well. Oh, I’m not a monster. But I’m not a David either.
Then who am I? I’m me, Johanna Morgan, a woman who writes for a living. I’m not going to fall into the trap of trying to encapsulate a description of myself in one paragraph, or one page, or one anything. I can’t, because though the basic pattern is pretty consistent on the outside, the inner contours keep changing. This part grows, that part shrinks. There’s a blurring and fading and then a sharpening into focus that sometimes surprises even me.
I guess the physical part isn’t that difficult to describe. Bare statistics: five foot six; wavy dark-blond hair kept light by the marvels of science; my best feature, greenish eyes ever so slightly almond shaped. Good if modest figure. Small feet. Long fingers and neck, and other features that take me well into the territory of the physically advantaged. Someone once made a study of physically attractive children and found that they enjoyed benefits far beyond those that befall the less lustrous child. It’s true. I always have, but I’ve never allowed myself to exploit them because it’s too dangerous to depend on an advantage so accidental, so transient, so unearned. But it does make much of life easier and smoother, sort of the equivalent of being born with money, except that sometime around the late middle of your life you lose it all. I’m not near losing it all yet, and I’ve developed enough other resources so that I’m well ahead of the game.
Reduced to the easily graspable, you’re dealing with a good-looking woman on the edge of a risk. Not only am I about to change my life-style completely with marriage to David, but after at least a year of agonizing indecision I’ve decided to give up a lucrative magazine-writing career and plunge into the unexplored, uncertain, insecure world of the novelist.
Until about three years ago I worked full-time for Lark magazine. Since then I’ve free-lanced for numerous magazines—Esquire, New Yorker, Vogue, and a few other well-known publications. The free-lancing was only a preparatory step to the big one—the novel.
I think I’m being fairly well organized about it. I have about $20,000 saved. Most of it came from my last magazine piece—a profile of Avrum Maheely, the cult leader who murdered Ambassador Lyndon’s debutante daughter Caroline and four of her jet-set girl friends in San Francisco two years ago. The crime itself and the trial of Maheely and his weird coterie made sensational headlines, you’ll remember, for a good five months. It was a long three-part series, and I got $15,000 for it. After taxes and expenses I figure what’s left of the money should carry me at least five months, and by then I will be safely married to David, and he’s not likely to let me starve. Then all I have to do is finish the novel (I’ve given myself a ten-month deadline), and my agent Neil Waxman sells it, and poof!—best-seller list. Or, no poof!—and back to the magazine jungle to gather enough coconuts to try again.
I think I’ve got a good idea for the novel. It grew out of my interviews with Avrum. The man is more than fascinating. He is an enigma of extravagant cruelty and explosive violence juxtaposed with a most numbingly ordinary middle-class mindset. That combination seems to provide a unique mulch for the growth of the most riveting, extraordinary presence I have ever encountered. That’s only a thumbnail sketch. It would take a whole book to unravel the mystery of Avrum Maheely, his purpose, his power, his drive, his needs, and that’s what I intend to do for the next ten months.
I have enough material left over from the profile to do a full-length nonfiction book, but I feel the natural mode for this story is fiction. That way I can have the freedom I need to explore Avrum completely. I was held back by the finite limitations of facts when a deeper explanation required the freedom of the imagination. I also plan to interview his followers, especially the two women in prison. I saw them at the trial, but they would never allow any communication. Now they’ve both agreed to talk to me. Understanding Swat and Imogene is crucial to knowing Avrum. I want to trace their indoctrination from its very beginnings. I have to know why the brutal crime happened and what holds them even now when it’s all over, when they’ve all been convicted and their leader’s power should have ended. Avrum’s closed himself off to the press, and these people are the only way into him. I must get there deeper than before. I want to feel the essence of him, make myself a part of it, and then write from the inside outwards. Am I sounding obsessive? I don’t think I am, but I admit to being inordinately fascinated. One day, at my leisure, after the book is a brilliant success, I might examine the elements of my own deep fascination, but right now suffice it to say, it’ll make a good book. And a good ten months of labor.
Not even David knows about the book. He thinks tonight’s dinner is only to announce our marriage. It’s my surprise gift to him. I can’t remember ever feeling so high about my life. The anticipation is delicious, enhanced by just the slightest hint of preproject panic. Both projects.
David arrives at four-thirty loaded down with French breads, wine, and cheeses. He is witty and intelligent, with a sincerity and generosity that are utterly charming, and a totally undeveloped judgment about things like goat cheese. I can freeze the breads, but I’ll be eating goat cheese for weeks. Another area where his judgment tends to slip a bit is his wardrobe. He has never conquered the art of matching stripes or plaids or even knowing what colors go well together, so he figures that the safest way is to stay with the same numbing monotones. His feeling is that you can’t go wrong if the pants and shirt are both the same basic color. Today is a perfect example. He’s a festival in navy blue. All he needs is an emblem on his shirt and he could be Navy Man, protector of all truth and goodness. He would make a wonderful Navy Man because he’s so damned nice. And besides, he has a great body.
“The guy in the store said to take the cheese out about an hour before you serve it,” David says, unwrapping one of the four packages for me.
“It seems very ripe,” I say. “Will it hold till tonight?”
“That’s the way it’s supposed to be. You’re just not used to goat cheese. You’ll love it.”
“I know I will,” I say, and he kisses me and I kiss him and there’s goat cheese between us and he’s right. I’m starting to love it already.
“Can you take some time out?” David whispers to me, and his body feels warm against mine and all that could possibly touch is touching.
I shake my head yes and take his hand, and we go into my bedroom.
It’s lovely making love with David. A kiss, a touch, the feel of his smooth body is all I need to ease me into that other dimension, that sensual level where one feeling melts into another and everything is tingly and hazy and feels so good.
“I love you, Jo, my God, I love you. . . .”
“Oh, David, darling.” The feel of his fingers lightly teasing me, our mouths lost in each other, and the hardness of his penis sliding along the inside of my thighs all send me racing faster than I want to go, aching with a need that only the feel of him pushing deep inside me will soothe.
“Now, David, come into me. . . .”
“Easy, baby . . . play a little. . . .”
But I can’t. I’m rushing forward and I can’t slow it down. My body is arched against his and my arms tightly wrap around his waist. By twisting and turning my hips I force him to slide into me, and for an instant he hesitates, wanting to prolong the foreplay, but my body needs his power, it needs the hard rhythm of the pounding, the thrusting, and the driving that send me soaring up, up, up, almost to that cosmic height I want desperately to reach—but I don’t. Something scares me off. Some last second fear snatches it all away from me and I come sailing down, slowly, nicely, but somewhere far behind my eyes—a tear.
David knows. We’ve talked it into the ground for the last four years, but nothing changes. I love making love to him. It’s glorious, and if it’s incomplete the loss is small compared to the fullness I feel being loved by him.
We lie together on the smooth sheets with the blanket kicked to the floor and the air conditioner blowing cool air across the tops of our bodies. David turns toward me, his head propped up on one hand, his elbow dimpling the pillow. He traces the outlines of my breasts lightly with his fingertips, running them down over my hip, stopping on my thigh to write something that has to be, “I love you.” I push him down off his elbow and write a big ME TOO all across his chest and down his stomach with the last O circling his flaccid penis which instantly begins to come to life.
“Uh, uh.” I talk directly to the culprit. “No way unless you know how to prepare dinner for eight.”
“I know he can handle six,” David says, smiling and pulling me up to him. I reach over him to turn the clock back facing us. It’s past five-thirty, and suddenly I have too much to do.
“Let’s move it, David, I haven’t even put up the guinea hens yet.”
“Instant action,” he says and in one leap bolts upright and onto the floor. “To the showers!”
Showering together after sex can be invigorating, rejuvenating, and wonderfully romantic, except if you live in a seventy-five-year-old building and the shower is a skinny rail of a pipe attached to a huge old tub crouched on giant claw feet. The shower was probably added some time in the thirties and never was your bracing needle spray to begin with and, after forty years of trying, is down to a lot of coughs, some spits, and a pee. It’s still better than cleaning the bathtub. And then it’s just nice to be together.
“You have the worst shower I have ever seen,” David says. “Can’t they fix it?”
“I guess so.”
“What’s the problem?”
“No problem. All you have to do is catch the super when he’s sober, my love,” I tell my love. “Consider that your first project after you move in.”
“Consider it done,” he says, and then with a very pleased smile, “It’s not so far off, is it?”
David and I have decided that he’s going to move into my apartment after the wedding. For one thing, it’s bigger than his, and, though it’s not a giveaway, the rent is realistic. But the real clincher is that David’s apartment is located deep into the singles’ jungle of East Eighty-third Street, while mine is on Central Park West and Sixty-fifth, an easy walk to midtown.
“Eleven weeks.”
“Nervous?” He starts soaping my back.
“Maybe a little.”
“Don’t be. It’s only me.”
“I’m OK until I start thinking about that monster wedding.”
“What are you talking about, it’s only a small celebration.”
“That’s what you say. And that’s what it really should have been, just a small party with a few close relatives and friends.”
Now I’m soaping his back, and some of the old irritation about the wedding starts to come back.
“Hey, easy with that brush.”
“Sorry. . . .”
“Johanna,” David says, putting gentle hands on my shoulders, “it gives my parents pleasure, and they have the perfect place for it, and besides, seventy people isn’t exactly a monster wedding. Most people have twice that.”
“I appreciate what your parents are doing, and the penthouse is beautiful, but I just think it would have been easier . . .”
“Easier?”
“Well, less complicated. Oh, David, I don’t know why I’m rehashing this whole thing again. Pay no attention to me. It’s prenuptial panic, that’s all. It’s going to be lovely, and I’ll probably have the best time of all. Or the worst.”
David kisses my brave smile, and by now we’re both so lathered with soap that I have to fill the Water Pik holder at the sink to get the suds off. We’re happily drying off when David asks, “Have you told your sister yet?”
I’ve been dreading this conversation. “Not yet,” I tell him, “but I’m planning to write her this week.”
“We should probably invite your nephews, at least the two older ones. What do you think?”
David’s so family-minded that it’s hard for him to understand my relationship with my sister, but Sephra is almost twelve years older than I, and besides, she’s only a half sister, and—I don’t know—we’re just not close. “Leave it to me, David. OK?”
“Are you upset?”
Like drunks, people who are upset always deny their condition. And now I say, “No, no. Not at all,” and David looks at me and shrugs his shoulders.
“We have time to worry about that later,” he says, trying to pass it off. But I want to deal with it now.
“There’s nothing to talk about. I just think it would be a better idea not to burden them with such a big expensive trip. That’s all.”
“But they’re your only family. Don’t you want them to come?”
“Of course I do,” I tell him, but I don’t. It’s never been much good with Sephra and me. Something soured her a long time ago, spoiling any chance we had to be close and keeping a cold distance between us. And in that gaping space, there’s something that’s not right. I’ve felt that way as far back as I can remember. I don’t know what it is and she swears it doesn’t exist, but I don’t believe her. It has nothing to do with the way she’s treated me. She’s been exceptional, practically raising me after our parents died. I was only four and she was sixteen when they were killed in an auto accident on the Jersey Turnpike. For a couple of years after that we lived in a foster home with the Winstons, very kind, sweet people but quite old, even then. He died right after we moved out, and I kept in touch with Mrs. Winston until she died eight years ago.
Sephra was barely eighteen when she married Wes, and as soon as they got their own apartment, they took me in with them. She’s always done all the right things for me, but I never felt comfortable. And it wasn’t Wes. He was terrific. I don’t know, maybe it was something simple like her resentment at having to be a mother to me so young, or maybe it had something to do with my mother who was her stepmother. I have no memory of their relationship toward each other. In fact, I know very little about either of my parents, and Sephra hasn’t helped. Anytime I’ve asked her about some distant memory I have, she closes right up. I’ve learned it’s a subject you just don’t discuss with her. And there’s no one else to ask.
The little I do remember is more in the form of an impression than an event, and it’s only about my mother. I have always felt that she was very unhappy, but I don’t know why. My memory of my father is nearly a complete blank. He was a Lutheran minister and quite possibly very involved with his congregation and not around home much, but there’s one thing I’m certain of—Sephra didn’t like him. Nothing could darken Sephra’s face quite so much as any reference to our father, even from Wes, who doesn’t seem to know any more than I do.
I lived with Sephra and Wes until I went off to college. I was lucky. I got a scholarship to Sarah Lawrence just as Wes’s job moved them all to California. After college I came straight to New York. In the beginning, I went out to California a few times for Christmas, but one year they went away for the holidays, and the next year I went skiing in Vermont, and then I went out there once more just before I met David about five years ago, and I haven’t seen them since. We talk or email occasionally, but that’s all.
I can’t explain any of these things to David because they’re really not defined enough in my own mind, so I reach around for some sort of ordinary reason, something that will stop the questions.
“It’s just not easy for Sephra to pick up and go completely across the country for a wedding. And it’s probably not fair to ask her because then she’d feel obligated, and the truth is it’s hard for Wes to get the time off, and she’s got that house and all those kids. Besides, the idea of bringing even two of them is out of the question. It simply costs too much. I would feel horribly guilty allowing them to do all that for something as unimportant as a party—God, David, it’s only a wedding.”
One look at his face and I want to bite my tongue.
“Is it?” he says, standing in the middle of my bedroom in his undershorts, obviously offended and trying for more dignity than his attire will allow him. It touches me. I go over to him and put my arms around his waist. He doesn’t respond.
“I didn’t mean that it wasn’t important. To us it’s crucial, but I feel selfish shoving my priorities down anyone else’s throat, even if it is my own sister.”
He puts his arms around me. He’s such a pushover. I love him for that.
“You’re right. Sometimes I forget we’re not holding NATO talks. We’ll send her lots of pictures.”
“Oh, great! Here, Sephra honey, here are some pictures of that wedding you weren’t invited to. As you can see, everybody else was there.”
David laughs.
“Well, I guess I’ll just have to put off meeting the elusive Sephra for a little longer.”
Much longer than he knows.
It’s hard for David to appreciate my situation because his family is so very close. I enjoy his family as I could never enjoy mine. I’m even beginning to feel part of them. As for my sister, I’m satisfied knowing that she’s well and happy out there. I don’t have to see for myself. And it seems pointless for David to meet them all. How much can you get to know people when you see them once for a couple of days? Besides, I am who I am to him, and I want to keep it that way. It’s clean and simple. I stand or fall on my own identity, and it’s not muddied up with someone else’s ideas of who I am.
The more I think about it the more certain I am that I don’t want Sephra here at all. Ever. My life is what I’ve made it, and I don’t want any baggage from any other time being dragged in and complicating things. I haven’t needed any of them for years. I’ve outgrown them, and it makes me almost angry that I could be made to feel guilty for feeling the way I do.
“Hey, Johanna.” David comes up behind me, and I see his sweet reflection in the mirror along with my own scowling face. I rarely allow myself to dwell on my relationship with my sister, but this time I got carried away. “Something wrong?” he wants to know.
I give him a big smile that relieves his concern, smudges my mascara, and makes me feel very happy to love someone as sensitive and caring as David.
“Are you making the tart for tonight?” I ask him.
“Absolutely, did you get the peaches?”
“Three pounds, and most of them are very ripe.”
We head into the kitchen. It’s almost six o’clock. A couple of days ago when David was here he made the dough in the Cuisinart and stored it in the fridge, so it’s ready for rolling. I love the fact that he’s so involved in the kitchen. I’m a fairly good cook, but baking has always eluded me. Maybe I’m too impatient and careless. But David’s come such a long way for a late starter. In fact, I think he’s truly amazing.
When our relationship first began, sometimes he would surprise me with breakfast, and it really was a surprise. The eggs were all right, but the kitchen looked like the invasion of a dozen seasick monkeys. It’s been a long, hard process, but he’s so smart and anxious to learn anything that he mastered baking of all kinds brilliantly, pastries, breads, pies, cakes, anything. Nothing scares him. Even the monkeys have been tamed, and now he leaves the place cleaner than when he found it. In fact, he cleans up as he works. David baking a cake is the most unnerving, precarious spectacle I’ve ever witnessed. It’s a series of leaps from stove to sink, a grabbing, shoving, dropping, dripping, and wiping up that I can’t bear to watch. Amazingly enough, the end product is excellent and often beautiful to look at. Unless he’s got Miss Grimble hidden up his sleeve or the monkeys are smarter than I thought, he’s made it.
“The dough is on the second shelf in the fridge,” I tell him, “and the peaches are in the fruit drawer. I’ll be inside doing some last-minute things to the table. Call me if you need anything.” And I flee.
I take my time, and I hear him singing in the kitchen. We’re going to be very happy together. I know it.