The Last Chance (13 page)

Dorothy was working at the suburban mental hospital. She loved it. “They’re not violent, Mom,” she assured Nikki. “The violent ones get locked in another wing. I get the spoiled teenagers whose parents want to get them off pills and dope at a hundred dollars a day—the hospital, not the habit.” She had her uniforms, her name tag, and her tennis racket. She played with the patients and the other aides. She’d already met a medical student there she liked. Nikki doubted if Dorothy would ever favor her parents with a weekend visit, even with the medical student. A house in the country wasn’t that interesting. Nikki didn’t enjoy the weekends there any more herself. She and Robert were pleasant enough to each other, and they went to barbecues and picnics and gave a brunch, but she was always glad when Monday morning came and she could go back to New York. Going back Monday morning instead of Sunday night was her concession to Robert’s ego, although she found it very inconvenient.

At her office they were working on books for next year. The summer was a more relaxed time, though, because people took their vacations, and that seemed to demoralize the ones who were left. The building never seemed to give them enough air conditioning. On Monday mornings they compared tans. The summer bachelors whose wives were in the Hamptons or on Fire Island had set up housekeeping with their girl friends. One afternoon the whole office went off to a screening of one of the Heller & Strauss books that had been made into a movie. Ellen Rennie sat with Reuben Weinberg and when the screening was over they went off together. Nikki didn’t give it much thought.

The next day Ellen came into her office. “Busy?”

“The usual,” Nikki said, putting down a manuscript she had been reading.

“I had to tell you,” Ellen said. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Sure.”

“I’m in love.”

“No kidding. Who are you in love with?”

“Reuben,” Ellen said.

Nikki knew something of Ellen’s past from Margot, but she had always imagined the men as irresistible somehow, not like Reuben. She couldn’t picture a woman jeopardizing her marriage for Reuben.

“I had to tell somebody,” Ellen said. “I’ve never been in love like this before. You never know who it’s going to be, do you?”

“No, you don’t,” Nikki said.

“I fought it,” Ellen said. “After all, I have to keep my home together. It’s not easy. And Reuben’s married, so that’s trouble too. But I just couldn’t resist finally. He’s so incredible. But you know him, of course.”

“Not the way you do,” Nikki said with a smile.

Ellen sat on the edge of Nikki’s desk and stared off into space with a faraway gleam in her eye. “Such incredible sex …” she said.

“Haven’t you told Margot?”

“Of course,” Ellen said. “I tell Margot everything. We’re life-long friends.”

“Well, I don’t think you should tell anybody else in this office besides me,” Nikki said. “There’s a lot of gossip around here.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it. I only told you, Nikki, because you’re my best friend here and I know I can trust you.”

“You can.” She wondered how many other people Ellen had told already. Ellen seemed too eager to confide, she seemed almost disappointed that Nikki wasn’t pressing her for details. Is it the idea of the affair she likes, Nikki wondered, or the affair itself?

“It’s not easy to be in the same office together,” Ellen said. “Luckily his wife and kids are on Fire Island for the summer, and he goes there only weekends. We use his apartment during the week.”

“Don’t you have to go home?”

“Oh, I mean lunchtimes and after work—you know.”

“I don’t know,” Nikki said. “I’m very boring, I never had an affair.”

“
Never
?”

“I never had time.”

“You must have a very happy marriage,” Ellen said wistfully. “Mine is a nightmare. However, one does what one can to survive. Stolen moments.”

“That sounds like the title of a silent movie. D. W. Griffith.”

“No wonder you’re an editor,” Ellen said.

I’m just like Robert, Nikki thought in horror. I do that thing with words he does. Maybe if you live with someone long enough you become identical twins.

“Believe me, Nikki,” Ellen was saying, “if you had a bad marriage you’d have time to have an affair. Men are always after married women. It’s
too
easy for us.”

Nikki thought back. There must have been at least a dozen men in her life who’d made serious offers. She’d put them all into her mind as if she were holding a dance card and laughed them off. An advance was as good as a
fait accompli
, she’d always thought. And a lot safer. And after all her goodness, there was her husband accusing her of playing around. It certainly was ironic. “Does your husband suspect?” she asked Ellen.

“Hank? Never. Or if he does, he doesn’t want to admit it to himself. People are very self-protective.”

“I guess so.”

Ellen went back to her office and her dream world and Nikki went back to her manuscript. She wondered if her daughter Dorothy was doing it with that medical student. Wouldn’t it be funny if both her daughters ended up marrying doctors? Her mother would be so thrilled. God, I’ve got to stop thinking marriage, Nikki thought. Girls don’t get married any more just because they’re sleeping with somebody. Or because they want to. They just play around. And their mothers play around. I’m not that much older than Ellen. She looks older than I do. “Too Old” is a trick our mothers invented to keep us in the seraglio. First we’re Too Young, then we’re Too Old. Not that I want to do anything, but if I ever do I’m not going to let being forty-two scare me away from adventure.

Her secretary, Elizabeth, rapped on the doorframe. “Nikki, can I borrow ten dollars till payday? I got mugged last night.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No, really. Ripped off. I was coming home from shopping—the stores were open late last night—and some guy cut my shoulder bag right off me with a pair of scissors. Whack, it was gone. I turned around and saw him taking off for the subway entrance, and I wasn’t going to follow him there.”

Nikki looked at the pretty Chinese girl, twenty years old, long, thick, straight hair, blue jeans, no hips, and thought she was lucky she was only robbed, not raped. “What did you do?”

“Well, luckily I’d spent most of my money. But what really bugged me was there was this skirt I wanted a lot, and I told myself I was too extravagant and it would be good for my soul if I didn’t give in for once, so I didn’t buy it. And then this junkie takes my money. I was so mad!”

“Look at it this way,” Nikki said, “you could have bought the skirt and then he could have taken
it
.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Can you spare ten? I hate to ask.”

“Of course.” Nikki dug into her bag and found her wallet.

“You carry all your credit cards?” Elizabeth said.

“Sure, why not?”

“And your money, and your keys? Some guy could rip you off and get to your house before you do.”

“I doubt that’s going to happen,” Nikki said. She remembered her would-be robber and felt a slight chill. “What happened to your keys last night?”

“I keep them in my pocket.”

“How can you
live
like that?”

Elizabeth shrugged. “He didn’t get them. That’s the main thing.”

“Does everybody live like you do?”

“No. Most of my friends don’t care. But I got mugged once before and it really made me mad. There’s this horrible feeling of invasion, and rage, and helplessness. On the other hand, my boyfriend carries around what he calls ‘mugger’s money.’ It’s twenty dollars so the mugger won’t get angry and beat him up or anything. I guess these bastards expect more from men. I mean, if a secretary has only thirty-five cents on her they figure okay.”

“You certainly are cynical for a girl your age,” Nikki said. She gave her the ten.

“Thanks. I’ll pay you back next week.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Elizabeth grinned and tossed her long hair. “Cynical is better than innocent, believe me.”

“I’ll continue to live dangerously.”

After her secretary left, Nikki looked at her handbag for a long time. She remembered the time ten years ago when she’d been working late, alone in the office, and coming back from the ladies’ room had surprised a young man taking her wallet out of her purse, which she’d left on her desk. She had been so filled with rage that she had chased him all the way to the elevator screaming, “Give me back my wallet, you!” He had been a small, scared young man, and she had trapped him at the elevator. He had dropped the wallet at her feet, the money intact, and fled down the fire stairs. When she had told the other people in the office the next day they had laughed. Now people locked their offices when they went out, or took their money with them. Nobody worked late alone. The glass doors to the reception room were locked at five o’clock and employees had keys. There was a guard in the lobby at night and a sign-in book. Things had changed. Even she had changed in little ways. She had become street-wise in the office, but not in the street. She resented having anyone take her freedom away. You could live in a prison of fear in your own mind, and maybe that was just as bad. She wasn’t sure.

The only people who knew it was Ellen Rennie’s fortieth birthday were Ellen’s family, Ellen’s lover Reuben, and Margot. On their birthdays Ellen and Margot always took each other to lunch and gave each other expensive presents. It was a tradition they had started in college. This year Margot took Ellen to lunch at Madrigal and gave her a Gucci handbag.

The restaurant was all yellow and white, as if bathed in sunlight. On the walls were murals of eighteenth-century French troubadours, and on each table there were yellow and apricot roses in large brandy snifters. Set out on display were boxes of fresh raspberries, scarcely to be found in the city, and in back of the room you could see a small garden drenched in vines. They both drank several glasses of wine, each for her own reasons.

“How does it feel, being forty?” Margot asked.

“To tell you the truth, today feels exactly the same as yesterday. Except for the fuss everybody’s making. The kids insisted we have a birthday dinner. They’re cooking it themselves. I had to promise I wouldn’t come home until six o’clock, which turned out to be convenient, because I’m spending the afternoon with Reuben.”

“Just another day,” Margot said, smiling.

Ellen wasn’t sure it was just another day. She had awakened this morning to a feeling of dread, as if a clock had chimed: half over. She had to admit her life
was
half over, and that made her beginning middle age. There was no way to get around the logic of that. And if she didn’t live to be eighty, or if she became senile or something, that meant now she was well into middle age. She didn’t feel any different, she didn’t look any different, and it wasn’t fair. Well, say the first ten years she was just a kid learning things, and the next ten were the time of trial and error, so she’d only had twenty years of a real life, and it had all gone by so fast. A lot of it had been unhappy. Some of it had been exciting. But it was gone, and now what was left seemed invested with too much importance because for the first time Ellen was aware of how limited time was.

“Don’t look so depressed,” Margot said. “It’s your birthday. I get to have mine in a few months. You’re scaring me.”

“It makes you wonder …” Ellen said.

“What?”

“I wonder what I’ve ever done with my life that was memorable. If I’m this depressed now, how will I feel at fifty? I’ll probably lock myself in my bedroom with a bottle of gin.”

“More likely you’ll be in someone else’s bedroom with a bottle of champagne. Another scalp on your belt.”

“Oh, Margot, how can you say that? I never took advantage of anyone! They were never scalps.”

“Maybe if I got married to someone Kerry would like me better.”

Ellen felt her heart turn over and she hoped she hadn’t gotten pale. Was Margot digging at her? Maybe that little fink had told her. He wouldn’t dare. Margot would have told her directly, she would have thrown a fit, and they certainly wouldn’t be having this nice birthday lunch. Just when she thought the whole embarrassing incident with Kerry was over and gone, it had to pop up like this. But Margot looked totally innocent and self-absorbed.

“The next man you fall in love with you should marry,” Ellen said.

“Good old mother Ellen. You’re a fine one to talk about the glories of marriage.”

“You should be married,” Ellen said. “You need one man. You need love and security.”

“I think I’m too set in my ways to get married,” Margot said. “I really don’t like to share things.”

“That’s a crock,” Ellen said.

“I don’t see any happy marriages around me, do you?”

“You would have one.”

“Nope, it wouldn’t work. If it worked I’d have married someone years ago, anyone. I can accept myself now. I admit I never wanted it.”

“Second marriages work better,” Ellen said. “If marriage was such a dead loss, how come most of the people who get divorced at our age get married to someone else?”

“Or just live together,” Margot said.

“I’m not the ‘living together’ type,” Ellen said. “If I ever divorced Hank I’d only do it to marry someone else.”

“Anyone special in mind?”

“No. Just having the birthday blues. It’s very depressing to be forty and married to Hank.”

Margot laughed. “
That
I can believe.”

“No, seriously, Margot. Tell me the truth. Do people look at Hank and me and think: I wonder what she ever saw in him?”

“I do.”

“Not you. I mean strangers, casual acquaintances. Do they think Hank is a loser?”

“It depends on whose friends they are, yours or his.”

Ellen sighed. “I don’t know why I asked. I know the answer. Even
his
friends think he’s a loser. God, how can you know at twenty what’s going to happen when you grow up?”

“Why don’t you divorce him?” Margot said. Her eyes were serious. “You’re not too old. Get out while you still have a chance. You have the girls for company. Wouldn’t you love to live in your own apartment with Jill and Stacey? No Hank—think of it.”