She would have to leave Edward. She'd already put it off too long, out of inertia, nostalgia, whatever. But you're a big girl now, Margaret, she thought. You're a big grown up girl with an inquiring mind and a roving eye.
She looked forlornly around her bedroom, at the curtains, the toppling pile of books, the chest of drawers, the basket overflowing with dirty laundry. But our dirty laundry will mingle no longer, she thought. She began to cry.
When Edward went out to run, Margaret called Richard at his house in the Berkshires and woke him up.
"It's Sunday morning," he said, his lovely voice heavy with sleep and with sadness at being awakened. "Early Sunday morning."
"Can I stay at your apartment for a while? I won't bother you. I need a place to go."
"Don't you have a mother?"
"Come on, Richard. It's important."
Reluctantly, and only because he himself would at least be gone for several days and wanted at that moment to go back to sleep, he agreed and arranged with a neighbor to give her the keys.
Hurriedly, so she wouldn't weaken and change her mind, Margaret wrote out a note to Edward. It said, "I can't stay here. I need some peace and quiet and isolation to finish this book. Without having someone around all the time. You're never home. So you won't mind if I leave. I will be staying in Richard's maid's room. Margaret." There! She had done it. She had left Edward. She quickly packed a box of books and papers, a small suitcase, and took a cab across town.
Margaret got the keys and lugged her stuff, as she had been instructed, back to the maid's room, a dreary slot painted yellow in a misguided attempt to cheer it up.
"You know," Lily had said on the phone, "you were always like this in college, dumping guys for no good reason, but you were also with them for no good reason. But this is not college, and Edward is different. Be careful, Margaret. He might not take you back."
"I might not want to go back."
Especially when I can stay here in this charming little hideaway! she added now, to herself. She stood on the threshold of the maid's room. Inside was a sagging cot, a sink, and a wastebasket.
Margaret dropped her box and suitcase with a thump, set up a card table that took up almost the whole room, and put out her books. Rameau's niece didn't have these problems, she thought. She just motioned to the gardener, and he did as he was told.
Edward. She had left him. Just an hour or so ago. This, this is what they mean by a heavy heart, she thought.
Margaret tried to make herself comfortable in Richard's apartment, although she knew just how uncomfortable her comfort would have made him. As uncomfortable as it made her. She was in a forbidden place. She was on the wrong side of his desk.
She walked from room to room almost on tiptoe, almost afraid, furtive, glancing at the furniture and the pictures, then sneaking back to her own squalid room. The apartment, as much as she could see from the corner of her guilty eye, was decorated with piles of books and a few pieces of nondescript furniture and some Audubon prints that she was sure were real and dozens of large, old, loudly ticking clocks.
It was very clean, Richard's apartment. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. The clocks rattled and clattered. Maybe I should just stay here, she thought. Live with Richard. He could devote himself to me. A life of forever-unfulfilled pedagogical, sexual tension. Editing, editing me from morning till night. A life of flirtation. An exquisite life.
But Richard could not be depended upon for a lifetime of editorial flirtation. Richard had other fish to fry, uncles and other writers and friends and boyfriends and assistants and a mother and sisters and brothers to fry. A grandmother, too, no doubt, to fry.
The horrible clocks began to chime and bong. They were everywhere. They hung from the walls. They stood on the floor. They perched on the countertops. Margaret tried to count the chimes, but there were so many clocks calling out from so many places that their hollow rhythmic noise blended and swelled into one awful, echoing voice. No, she could not stay here for very long.
What time is it, anyway? Margaret wondered when the noise had subsided, for the only room without a clock was the maid's room. She looked at her watch and saw that it was still only eleven. I have miles to go before I sleep, she thought. Sleep with whom, though? Sleep with whom?