“And you have never found it?”
“I keep thinking I have, but then…I don’t know.”
“What about Ellen?”
“Ellen’s sweet. But…”
“But…?”
“Oh, I don’t know. What about you?”
“Well, I’ve just gotten that feeling…I’ve met this guy…”
“Really!” She put down her fork. For the first time during our meal, she kept her eyes on my face and did not look around the room. She listened with wide, intense eyes.
“And…”
“Well, he keeps sending out contradictory signals.”
“Umm. Ellen says I do that.”
“Really! And do you feel you do?”
“No. Not consciously.”
“Is it unconscious? But you love Ellen, don’t you?”
“Of course!”
“So…”
“Well, she’s a little dull, you know. Her mind isn’t…really of the first rank.”
“She’s
so
beautiful!” I argued.
“Yes. I know. It’s true, she is beautiful. But…she’s a
secretary,
my dear.”
I was shocked into silence. After a moment, I found my voice. “So are the two of you breaking up?”
“Oh, no!” she cried. “She comes out every weekend. We have a sweet time. It just isn’t
enough,
you know. There’s just a little something missing. A
je ne sais quoi,
you know.” She shrugged. “We get along fine; it’s not that. I suppose I’m quickly bored. But that’s just
entre nous,
my dear. Of course.”
“Ummm.” I was gazing hard at her.
“But you, you have to think about your feelings. I mean, the question isn’t how he feels about you but how you feel about him!”
“I’m crazy about him,” I admitted miserably. “I’m obsessed, really. I wish I weren’t…”
“You can’t worry about how other people feel or act. You know what
you’re
feeling: you’re sure of that. You have to trust that, darling. Trust that.” She laid her hand on her heart. “It’s all you have. All you can depend on. And you’re madly in love. I must say I envy you, sweetie.”
“Envy me?”
“Certainly! Isn’t that what we’re all looking for? All the time? All our fucking lives? To be madly in love with someone we know will make us happy for the rest of our lives?”
“Is that what we all want?”
“Certainly! All women, and all men too, although they rarely admit it!”
“So do you have anyone in mind?” I asked slyly.
Tess dropped her voice, leaned her head forward. “Don’t turn around. But do you see that woman over there in the corner, sitting with the man with the bushy beard? The woman with the gray-blond streaked hair? Isn’t she handsome? Isn’t she distinguished? Isn’t she someone famous?”
“How can I see her if I don’t turn around?”
“Well, don’t turn around while I’m talking about her.”
I laughed. “So talk about something else.”
Tess pointed to the little sconces that lined the walls. “You see those sconces over there? I found them for the restaurant—well, for Nicky, the owner. I found the first one in Mexico and had the rest made to order, copied. You like them?”
I turned then.
“That’s Emily Shoemaker,” I said, turning back. “She lives in East Hampton. She’s a millionaire art collector. She supports all the arts.”
Tess’s eyes gaped. “Really? Do you know her? Can you introduce me to her? Do you think she might be gay?”
Thursdays, Liz Margolis comes to clean my house. She’s young, just thirty, the daughter of my good friend Betty Margolis, a painter who lives in Sag Harbor. Liz is also an artist, a sculptor, but she has to earn money to live, and has found she can earn most, with the least investment of time and energy, by cleaning houses. Jobs that pay more require expensive clothes or commutation, or leave you no spare time. Cleaning houses locally doesn’t take that long and pays fifteen dollars an hour. So Liz cleans six houses a week in three ten-hour days and spends one six-hour day at my house, cleaning and doing the laundry and ironing. This enables her to survive out here if she lives frugally, She rents a little cottage behind Betty’s house for a minimal rent. She wears nothing but jeans and T-shirts, or, in cold weather, sweatshirts and men’s woolen shirts, and she eats mainly vegetables and brown rice. Most of her earnings go to buy her materials, which are terribly expensive—she works in wood, beautiful varieties, or steel, or sometimes in marble. She’s a lovely artist, and I’ve bought several of her smaller pieces, but most of her work is so huge it won’t fit into a house. She’s uncompromising, Liz: museums or nothing.
She’s uncompromising in other ways too, and so is constantly unhappy either with her current lover or with her lack of a lover. One of them complained that Liz was so uncompromising, she could not drive on Long Island parkways because she was paralyzed by the sight of the word
merge
on a road sign. Over the past few years, I’ve listened to Liz’s laments about Lotte, who was lively but perhaps too lively and, besides, lived in Germany and was never available; and Emma, who was sweet but maybe too sweet, who wanted to be with her all the time and hung on her, which drove Liz crazy, given the size of her house. Before that, there was Nora, who was moody and unpredictable and kept Liz on edge; and Dorian, who was cold and aloof and had a hard time touching another person. But for the past six months, Liz had been complaining about loneliness, the silence of her little house when she goes home at night, the paucity of opportunities for cruising out here in the boonies, and the general unfairness of life.
“What do you think about a poetry reading? Is that a good place to meet women?” she asked as she emptied the dishwasher. “God knows I can’t afford to join the yacht club.” She snorted. “Poetry readings are free.”
“I don’t think you’d meet anybody you’d be interested in at a yacht club, Lizzie,” I said from my chaise, where I was sipping a midmorning coffee. I always reserved an hour for conversation with Liz on Thursday mornings. I knew it made all the difference to her feelings about her work, so I treated it as part of her salary. “Poetry readings sound good. The right kind of venue.”
“The right kind of venue! Oh, Hermione! What a nice way to put it! Makes it sound so…respectable!” She wiped down the stove. “So how’s
your
love life?”
She always asked this, although in all the years I’d known her, I had never had any answer for it except “What love life?” I figured she felt she had to ask me: it was quid pro quo; she was a feminist and wanted to be sure she didn’t dominate the conversation. But this time, I shocked her.
“Terrible,” I moaned.
Her head shot up. “Really! What! Woman or man?”
“Man.”
“Oh, well, what do you expect?”
I forbore from pointing out that she had been less than successful with women.
“Umm. I’m just having trouble reading his signals.”
“Oh, one of those ambivalent creeps who give out double signals? Nora did that all the time! Drives you crazy! ‘Spend the weekend with me.’ So you cancel all your plans. Then she says she wants to be alone. Jeez, Greta, give me a break!” Liz started to mop the kitchen floor. “So what’s this guy do?”
“Well, like that. Asked me to have lunch with him every day last week, but never stayed longer than an hour. Asked me—with great intensity—how I’d feel if he worked in New York, then not only drops the subject, but leaves town. Goes running in to examine my bedroom every time he visits my apartment, says he’d love to spend time with me, but never puts a finger on me, doesn’t even kiss me hello or goodbye. And he always has to run off.”
Liz was leaning on the mop, staring at me sympathetically. “Umm. Weird. Sounds weird. Are you in love with him?”
“Well…” I looked away. It was too embarrassing. Liz was so much younger than I; she was from a different generation.
“Oh, poor Hermione. Poor thing.”
“Sounds bad to you, does it?” I asked tentatively.
“Umm. Yeah. Especially for a man. You know, they always want to get in your pants right away. But sounds to me as if you haven’t…”
“No,” I said quietly.
“So it’s weird.”
“Maybe he can’t,” I said.
“Yeah. How old is he?”
“Fifties.”
“Maybe he’s gay,” she offered.
“You think everybody’s gay.”
“That’s true. Still, you’d be better off if you’d get involved with a woman, Hermione.”
“I probably would.” I started to rise. Our hour was nearly up. She was still leaning on the mop, gazing at me. I put my cup and saucer in the sink. “At least there’s work,” I said, with as much cheer as I could muster. “What’s wrong?” I asked, looking at her face.
“I just can’t believe it keeps on like this. Does it keep on like this forever? Forgive me, Hermione, but how old are you? You must be close to my mom’s age. She has Jack, of course, for whatever he’s worth. But you’re still going through stuff like this?”
I have to confess she was making me cross. “I don’t tell my age,” I snapped.
“I’m really sorry. Really!” She slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand. “It’s just that…all these years, no matter what happened, even when someone really broke my heart, I had this idea, this
dream
—I was
positive
that someday I’d meet the woman of my dreams and we’d live happily ever after. It never occurred to me that this stuff could keep going on, right into your sixties, your seventies—my god! It’s a nightmare! I don’t think I can stand it!” Bursting into tears, she dropped the mop, which clattered to the floor. She snatched some tissues from a box on the counter and ran out to the dock.
That night, after dinner, I sat on my screened porch in the darkness, staring out at the water, visible only in streaks of reflected moonlight. When the moon vanished, I decided to sleep on the porch, and fetched linens to make up the daybed. It was sweltering in my bedroom, even with all the windows raised, but on the porch, I needed a blanket. I lay snuggled in and warm, breathing the wonderful clean night air, feeling safe and comfortable enough to return to memories of my early years.
I sat unmoving while Jerry and Delia embraced me tearfully. Though I welcomed the embrace and the apparent forgiveness, I was uncomfortable with what I felt were slightly false grounds and with the way Jerry swung into action. His firm chin and lips, his beetled brow, the rigid set of his head on his neck as he nodded it up and down, told me that no interference from me was desired. He was a man with a mission. The only thing I had that he wanted was Bert’s telephone number. With a strange certainty, I knew that it gave him pleasure to be so outraged, that in fighting for me, he was drawing on emotions that had nothing to do with me at all. I sat, swollen-faced and drained, watching what seemed to me like an overacted performance, the making of an Alp out of a little mound of dirt. I felt like a small soiled thing, about to be laundered; a corpse, grateful that other people were buying the coffin and arranging my body in it, planning the rites needed to move me into my future, such as it was. But I said nothing. It was also true that once Jerry took over, I relaxed; I felt cared for, protected. That night I slept until morning for the first time in weeks.
Saturday, after the three of us had finished breakfast, we went into the living room, where we sat in silence until ten o’clock. On the dot of ten, Jerry, looking at his watch, stood portentously, walked into the tiny entry hall of the apartment, and picked up the phone. Delia and I rose and followed him, hovering in the archway. Jerry took an extremely casual posture, leaning against the wall with his legs crossed at the ankles like Fred Astaire. But the knuckles of his hand holding the receiver were white.
“Mrs. Shiefendorfer? The mother of Bert Shiefendorfer? Yes. My name is Jerry Schutz. I’m Elsa's older brother. Elsa Schutz, yes. Well, I would think that name would be familiar to you. Is that so. Well, we have a matter to discuss, and I’d like to come over and see you and your husband. Bert should probably be present.”
A long silence on Jerry’s end.
“You know, Mrs. Shiefendorfer, it would be better if we could handle this matter in a calm and friendly way. You have to think ahead, Mrs. Shiefendorfer. A grandmother shouldn’t alienate the mother of her grandchild and her family. I feel sure that Bert must have discussed this with you, Mrs. Shiefendorfer. You know I manage a million-dollar corporation, Mrs. Shiefendorfer. Yes, the Homey Honey Bread Company.”
Actually he was the assistant manager.
“So I have some resources, Mrs. Shiefendorfer. But I would hate to have to hire a lawyer and go to court and expose your son in the newspapers, especially since the boy got my sister drunk, fed her beer, which she’d never had before in her entire life, a college girl, an innocent girl who never even had a boy friend…
“Right. Right. Sure thing. I can be there in an hour. You wanna give me directions?”
Jerry scrawled on a pad, hung up, and turned to face us with a big smile. He held up his hand, making a circle with his thumb and middle finger. “Success! She’s scared to death,” he announced. “Her precious boy’s future’s threatened. There’s not gonna be a problem,” he assured us.
Delia hugged me and kissed Jerry. I smiled at him, but it was a tense smile. I couldn’t tell him that I hated what he was doing, that I couldn’t stand it, that I didn’t want any of it, that I just wanted to be dead. I said I didn’t feel well and went back to my room and lay down and tried to will myself to die, just the way I had when I was little and Mother scolded me.
Jerry was right. When confronted, Bert collapsed and cried, admitting his guilt—the beer, the sex. Then the Shiefendorfers too collapsed, grudgingly accepting that he was responsible, although they spoke my name with sour mouths. But they didn’t criticize me to Jerry: they were afraid of him. He was an executive, a man who knew about lawyers and newspapers. (They never guessed that the “manager” of a bakery actually walks around in shirtsleeves, nagging slow workers, arranging for rat extermination, ordering machinery repairs—or making them himself—and overseeing deliveries of things like sugar and flour.) They agreed that Bert would have to quit school and get a job that paid more than waiting table. His two years of college and being on the track team could maybe help him get on the cops, Bert’s father suggested. Bert’s father was in with the cops; they hung out at his gas station, and he played poker with a sergeant on the Bridgeport force. And the idea seemed to appeal to Bert, Jerry reported.