"So tomorrow," Lee wound up, "Henry has his third and last sperm test. They've been inconsistent up to now, so we're hoping this one finally tells us something." "His sperm have been inconsistent? I hate when that happens." "The test results. After the first one, they said his count was low, and after the second they said it was normal. The morphology was- okay in the second, but abnormal in the first, And in both tests the motility was Grade II,- which means slow and meandering." "What's morphology?" Rudy asked.
"The shape. If the sperm is too tapered, it could be missing the acrosome, which is the packet of enzymes at the tip that helps it bore through the egg's coating." "Hey, I'm eating here." I just wanted to lighten the mood. Lee's battles with infertility have been going on for about two years now, half the length of her marriage, and it's really starting to get to her. I'm so used to her being the cheerful, normal, competent one in the group, it's hard to watch her playing in a game she keeps losing. You know how some people are so chronically, outrageously successful, you can't help feeling a little satisfaction when they finally fail at something? Well, I do. But not with Lee. She has a terrific job, plenty of money, a hunk of a husband who adores her. I've known her for almost ten years, and in my opinion she deserves everything she's got. I never want to see her disillusioned or disappointed, never. It hurts me. A couple of meetings ago, during her fifteen minutes, she got tears in her eyes talking about how much she wanted a baby. That's all -but I couldn't stand it, I had to get up and go in the kitchen. I couldn't look at her.
"Well, at least after tomorrow you'll know more," Isabel said. "The uncertainty has to be the worst part." "The worst," Lee agreed. She stuck her fingers in her short brown hair and ruffled it, a body-language change of subject. Lee -is five-foot-two, small-boned and delicate-looking, but she's anything but fragile. She plays golf and tennis, swims, dances-upper-class sports-and she's good at all of them. One night I had too many gin and tonics and challenged her to an arm-wrestling contest. She twisted me right under the table.
"Well, I'm done," she said briskly. "Rudy, you go next." "That's it? Work's fine, your parents drove you crazy over Hanukkah, and Henry's got a sperm test tomorrow?" "That's it." Lee grinned. "That leaves you twenty minutes, which I'm sure you can use." Rudy laughed, but it's true.
"Well, okay, I'll go. One thing that's going on with me. . ." She leaned toward Lee and touched her hand. "Curtis and I, we've been thinking a lot' about it lately, and..." "What?" "Well, we've decided it's probably time for us to try for a baby." She kept her eyes on Lee and didn't look at me after she delivered this news. I joined in the surprised exclamations and good wishes, but inside I went numb. As long as they were childless, the inevitable collapse of Rudy and Curtis's marriage could only hurt two people, and I only cared about one of them. Oh, no, not a baby. Deeper and deeper. Across the table, Isabel sent me a quick, veiled glance. She was thinking the same thing. Her opinion of Curtis Lloyd is a kinder, gentler version of mine, but when I pin her down we agree on the basics: he's an asshole.
"I thought a lot about whether I should tell you this right now," Rudy was saying to Lee, "but it seemed worse to keep it from you. Like I couldn't trust you to be able to handle it or something-" "Oh, no, I'm glad you told me. Oh, Rudy, I'm really, really happy for you." "And then I thought, well, what if 1 do get preg-nant? Will I have to hide that from her, too?" They started laughing, making jokes about giving the baby to a family of gypsies to raise in secret. Lee might or might not be pretending, I couldn't tell. If anyone in her situation would be glad for Rudy, it would be Lee. But Jeez, what timing. Lee's only human. If Rudy gets pregnant, how can it be anything for her but a stake through the heart?
I got up to get more bread, and when I came back Rudy was talking about the landscaping course again. I kept my mouth shut and let Lee and Isabel urge her to do it, enroll in the program. But I bet she doesn't. Last year she was excited about a job that- would have involved consulting on corporate art purchases for one of the big associations in town, the home builders or the franchise owners, I can't remember. It would've been a miracle if she'd gotten it, since she threw away her master's in art history with nothing left to do but the thesis. But it was good to see her interested in anything, so we all encouraged her to go for it. In the end she never applied, though, never even sent in a résumé. Oh, Rudy, why not? we asked her. Well, it would've involved a lot of travel. So? Curtis didn't go for that.
I cannot stand that slippery, psychotic little prick.
When it was my turn, I told a pretty funny story about the blind date I had on New Year's Eve-which, believe me, wasn't funny at all while it was happening. Lee laughed so hard, she had to get out a Kleenex and wipe her eyes. "Oh, Emma, that is priceless," she wheezed, "where do you find these guys?" "I'm a rotten date magnet, they stick to me like lead filings. You girls have no idea how lucky you a-re. Well, that's it, I'm done-Isabel, you go. Nothing else is new with me. I've got this Washingtonian deadline on Monday, that's it. Now, Isabel." Lee said, "Wait a second, not so fast. What about your married guy? Anything happening there?" A couple of weeks ago, in a really stupid moment, I made the mistake of mentioning Mick to Lee and isabel. But I didn't-say his name or give any details that would've identified him. I just said I was occasionally seeing a man who happened to be married and we didn't do anything but I was incredibly attracted to him and it was driving me out of my mind. Which trivializes what I feel, but I figure the group knows me well enough to decipher my self-protection codes. Anyway, it just spilled out-I couldn't control it. And it didn't even give me any satisfaction, since I couldn't go into any gory specifics. Lee's taking dance lessons with Sally now, and Henry's becoming pals with Mick, and it's all just a big, ugly mess. So I told them he was "somebody from work," which you must admit is technically true.
"Nope," I said, "nothing new on the married guy scene." "You've stopped seeing him?" "Oh, I still run into him every once in a while. We just talk." "So-does that mean you're still interested in him?" "Oh, you know. It's hopeless, so-" I grinned, shrugged, got really interested in spacing my silverware just so.
Lee got the hint. "Okay, I just wondered, because you haven't mentioned him lately. But you're okay, Em, right?" "Sure, I'm fine, and the reason I don't talk about him is because there's nothing to talk about." "Okay." "Okay," I said, laughing. Rudy sent me a very dry look, which I ignored. "Now, Isabel. Tell us how school's going." "School is wonderful-I got an A minus on my families-at-risk final." Cheering and table thumping. Isabel's getting a master's in social work at American U. "Other than that We waited, but she just shook her head and smiled. She was unusually quiet tonight, I realized. I looked at her more closely. Isabel grows younger and prettier to me all the time. Most of her long gray hair fell out while she was having chemotherapy, and when it grew back it came in curly and soft, like a young girl's hair. It suits her, doesn't look incongruous or too youthful, because her calm face is almost unlined. She doesn't look placid, though; that's not what I mean. Serene. Beneficent. She has a quality of repose I associate more with medieval saints than social work grad students. She's not like anyone else. Isabel is unique.
"Nothing at all is going on?" Lee pressed.
"Not really. Nothing much." - "What about your neighbor? And didn't you have a doctor's appointment-" "Well, I was thinking about Gary today," she said quickly. Everybody groaned. "Or more precisely, I was thinking about infidelity and forgiveness. Sexual infidelity, how it's different between men and women.
For us, it's all but unforgivable. For them, it's nothing." "Not all men," Lee corrected. "No." The softness in her voice when she said that one word, the way she touched Lee's arm just for a see there's so much love between those two, I felt a stab of jealousy. "Definitely not all men." She put her chin on her folded hands. "I'll tell you a story during my fifteen minutes," she said. "Gary's been on my mind lately. I'll tell you about his last girlfriend." "You mean Betty Cunnilefski?-" We snickered-as we always do when Betty's name comes up.
"No, Betty was his first girlfriend. Or at least the first one I knew about. There were others." "Others? Plural, Isabel?" I glanced at Rudy, who looked as surprised as I felt. Lee said nothing-she must already know about this.
Rudy blurted out what I was thinking: "Why didn't you ever tell us?" "It was-I just-" Isabel gave a helpless shrug. "Because-I didn't want to. Until now." "Were you embarrassed?" Rudy theorized gently.
"No. Well, yes. Yes, partly. It is hard to admit you've loved a man who was unfaithful for most of the twenty-two years you lived with him." "Oh, but-" "But mostly-I think I had to be able to forgive him myself before I could tell you." "Forgive him? Forgive that bastard? Isabel, it was bad enough when it was only the cunnilingus bitch. Now-how the hell many women are we talking about?" I was swearing at Gary, but the truth is I was angry with Isabel, too, for keeping this little detail about her-life a secret from us. She knew it, too; she held her hand out toward me along the tablecloth.
"Emma, it was too ugly. If I'd told you, there would only have been more anger, more bitterness." "You're damn right." "But don't you see, it wouldn't have helped. It would only have added to the negativity." "Oh, okay. I get it. Balance, you wanted cosmic balance. Well, say no more." She made a patient face. "Don't be mad. There's a time for everything, and the time for telling you this about Gary and me wasn't right. Until now." "It's all right." I smiled-no hard feelings-and didn't mention that the time for telling Lee this had been right quite awhile ago, apparently. But that would have been admitting to childish jealousy, a card in my hand of character flaws I like to keep close to the vest.
Rudy broke an uncomfortable pause to ask, "So who was this last floozy, Isabel?" "Her name was Norma, and she wasn't much of a floozy. She was an accountant, another one of Gary's office conquests. After Betty, I always knew when he was seeing someone, but this-" I couldn't keep quiet. "Jesus, Isabel, how many were there?" Gary Kurtz? I still couldn't picture it. He's this stocky, middle-aged guy with a beard, sort of a Santa Claus type of fellow but without the heartiness. A government drone, probably a GS-14 or so, does something in the Commerce Department that's so dull I can't remember what it is. Back when I used to speak to him, he talked a lot about his grass.
"I don't know how many," Isabel answered, raising an eyebrow at me in a rare show of testiness. "1 just know the last one wouldn't go away.- So I went to see her." We gasped.
"Really?" "You went to see her?" "I looked her up in the phone book, and there she was-Norma Stottlemyer, in an apartment on Colesville Road." - "How did you know her name?" "Gary told me. He never denied anything, I'll give him that. He never lied to me." "I just think that makes it worse," Lee said fiercely.
"I picked a Saturday morning when he was home, and told him I was going to the Safeway. I drove over to Silver Spring, one of those brick garden apartments set close to the road on Colesville. Children outside, plastic toys everywhere-I was terrified she was married and I'd end up wrecking her home. But I had a story in- case a man answered, or a child-I was collecting for leukemia." "Good one." "Except you didn't have any ID.," Lee noted, always practical.
"Anyway, she came to the door herself, wearing a pink corduroy bathrobe. Even before I went in, I knew she lived alone. Just something about her." "How old?" I asked.
"Late twenties." "Rat bastard. What did she look like?" "It was still early, I'd caught her off guard, she hadn't fixed up yet." Rudy and I shook our heads at each other: Are you hearing this? Trust Isabel to make excuses for the slut who was banging her husband. "So she was ugly," I said.
"No, not ugly, just not attractive. Not sexy, not even interesting-looking. Quite ordinary. When I said, 'I'm Isabel Kurtz,' she looked blank. Then I said, 'Gary's wife,' and I thought she was going to faint." "She didn't know?" "Yes, she knew he was married, but she was shocked, not thinking fast. She backed up, sort of waved me in, and that's when I knew we weren't going to be having any dramatic scene. There was just no fight in her." "Wimp. Dirtbag wuss." "Her apartment was all Pier I and Door Store- you'd have written something scathing and- funny about it, Emma." I decided to take that as a compliment. "She took me into the kitchen, not the living room. I could hear music from the apartment next door, just the bass thumping. -There was half a bowl of soup on the counter, I remember-she'd been eating soup for breakfast. Bean with bacon." She smiled with one side of her mouth, dry and wistful and bitter at the same time.
"She had one of those cheap, six-jar spice racks over the stove. Glass jars with name tags. She bought spices and poured them into the little jars and wrote CINNAMON and BLACK PEPPER and GARLIC POWDER on the labels. Only six." She looked around at us in pity and amazement, but I don't know what she found more pathetic, the fact that Norma labeled her spices or that she only used six. "And-she had kitten magnets on the refrigerator. One played a tune. She backed up against it and it fell on the floor and started to play 'You Are My Sunshine." "Isabel," I said, "you're killing me." "So what happened?" Rudy said.
"I could see she wasn't going to start us off, so I said, 'I just wanted to see what kind of person you are.' I meant it literally; that's exactly why I'd come, to see her, try to understand what Gary found so attractive. But she took it as a condemnation and started to cry." "Oh, Jesus." "What did you do?" "I cried with her. I did. We turned our backs on each other and buried our faces-well, I had my handkerchief and she used a paper towel." Rudy was trying not to laugh. "God, I can see it." "After that, I just lost interest. She was such a pitiful enemy, I couldn't even hate her. But for the first time, I felt contempt for Gary. Just utter contempt." "Gary's a pig," I said. "Norma stopped crying and said she was sorry, so sorry, and she would stop seeing him. I asked her if-she was in love with him, and she said yes." She smiled faintly. "But, you know, I don't think she was. And I think she realized it at that moment. I said it didn't matter to me if she kept seeing him or not, because I was leaving him. And I said I thought she could do better." I clapped my hands. "Good one." "After that, I went home and told Gary it was over. My only mistake-" "Was leaving him instead of throwing him out," Lee finished for her, and we all nodded grimly. That satisfying gesture had cost Isabel the house in the divorce settlement. Gary the pig is still living there in suburban splendor, still mowing his fucking lawn, while Isabel makes do in a cramped, one-bedroom apartment on a tough street in Adams-Morgan. She got breast cancer less than two years after she left him, and Gary demonstrated what a class act he is by trying to get her cut out of his government health insurance policy. She finally won, but it wasn't a battle she needed to be fighting at that particular time in her life. I think I hate him for that more than anything, even the womanizing.