Rameau's Niece

Tristesse becomes her, Margaret thought with a mixture of admiration, sympathy, and disgust. As does every other emotion.

Lily twisted the ties of her bathrobe. "Maybe," she said, then squared her shoulders and looked Margaret in the eyes. "Anyway, what do you care if something did happen? You told me you were finished with Edward."

"For good reason, as it turns out. And I didn't mean it." Margaret leaned against a chest of drawers painted with yellow birds caught in twisted blue vines. She put her head in her arms. Finished with him? Finished was right. Finished, finito, fini. "But I mean it now."

"It was nothing, Margaret. Nothing."

Nothing, Margaret repeated dully to herself. But Lily's words seemed hardly to matter, a traffic report playing on the radio on a day when she was staying home. Observe, Margaret. Observe the roaring in your ears. This is because the blood has rushed there. She lifted her head. The room looks strangely distant, as if you weren't in it. This is because you wish you weren't in it. You shouldn't be in it. Edward shouldn't be in it.

"I'll have to be satisfied with a flannel, I suppose," said the voice from the other room, which she did hear, with terrible clarity. "Or, better yet, evaporation. Quite pleasant, if somewhat immodest..."

Edward walked into the room with his sunken chest, her sunken chest, wet above his running shorts.

"Margaret!" he said, walking toward her quickly, his arms out. "My poor Margaret. Are you feeling better, darling?"

"No."

"No?" He bent down to kiss her.

Was this possible? And to think she had once loved him, had once watched him teach and caught her breath, had once, only moments ago, remembered watching him teach, remembered catching her breath, and, remembering, had caught her breath again.

She pulled away from him. "You two-timing slime Brit creep," she said.

"You did have a bad night."

"Yes," Margaret said. "Yours was obviously a lot more eventful."

"Margaret, you're being ridiculous," Lily said.

"Look, Margaret, darling Margaret, wife of my bosom, I'm sorry you've got a hangover, but I see no reason to take it out on me."

"You don't?"

"Not really."

"Then you're stupid. Isn't he, Lily? Lily sees lots of reasons for me to take it out on you, don't you, Lily?"

"Oh, Margaret," Lily said.

"Margaret, let's not quarrel in front of your friend."

"My friend?" she laughed, a snorting sort of laugh.

"Sorry. Our friend."

"Sorry. Your friend."

"My friend?"

"Look, I don't care whose fucking friend you're fucking fucking."

"Fucking? I'm taking a fucking shower!"

"Fuck you," Margaret said and turned toward the door.

"Margaret!" Lily said. "Listen—"

I'm done listening, Margaret thought as she rushed for the door. I'm done talking. My senses have failed me. My senses suck.





Oh, Edward, Edward, snake, reptile, insect, fungus, algae, blue-eyed, silver-haired algae. Margaret stumbled down the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of flights of brownstone stairs from the second floor to the ground floor. Where was the street? Would it ever come? She heard Edward behind her, calling her. She heard his footsteps and ran faster. When would she be free of this house of betrayal and sin? Edward. With Lily. Left alone for twenty-four hours and look what happens. Everything was all right, all right.

I knew it all along, she thought. Edward has betrayed me. He has forsaken my aging flesh for—for what? For Lily's aging flesh! Oh, the humiliation. To lose him to some exquisite little girl with long hair flicking like a horse's mane, a student drawn to him and he to her, intoxicated with the wine-dark words of Walt Whitman, yes, okay, that's as it should be. Well, it shouldn't be at all. But at least that's as what shouldn't be should be!

But this!

On the street, the sun was down, the sky was dark blue, and the breeze blew more refreshingly than before. Fuck you, breeze, she thought.





MARGARET RAN EAST through Central Park in the dusk. Edward was no longer behind her. I've lost him, she thought. In every sense of the word. Now I will be mugged and killed. That will show him. That will show everyone. How dare he? He's my husband. How dare she? He's my husband.

That Edward might be fooling around with his pretty little students, while a proposition quite certain in Margaret's mind for some time, was nevertheless something for which she really had not the slightest shred of evidence. It was just a truth, a fundamental pillar of her belief system, a given, a fact, a fate. Her fate. But this! This was real!

Margaret realized she was panting with anger, like a dragon. Through her nose. That swine. No wonder she'd left him. She stopped running, walking quickly, though, and far, and after three-quarters of an hour she knew where she was walking to, because she saw it before her.

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