Tapestry of Fortunes A Novel

4


I am sitting in the family room in David’s recliner looking at the Martha by Mail catalogue and remembering a time when I had a long-lasting flu and David came home with a handmade quilt that he’d bought for me. He covered me with it, then lay down beside me and read me a story from a collection I’d just bought. And then he made spaghetti for him and Travis, and soup for me. That was Before. When did After start? I don’t remember it starting. I only remember it having arrived. Things were bad for such a long time before he left. But I miss him. I can feel loneliness in me like circulation; as constant and as irrefutable.

I see that Martha has some very lovely hors d’oeuvres accessories. Paper leaves on which to serve cunning canapés that take about a month to make. I don’t really believe that Martha herself does any of this. People say she does, but I just don’t think it’s true. I’ll bet she lies in the bathtub and weeps and her staff does everything. I flip through pages of matelassé bedding, egg-shaped soaps, ribbon mirrors. I’ll bet she’s lonely as hell and no one knows. They think she’s rich and happy and they don’t understand how blank her slate is.

I’ll bet no one even calls her, except for business. I heard she lives in Connecticut, was it Fairfield? I pick up the phone, call information, hear the automated voice ask, “What city?” “Fairfield, Connecticut,” I say. “What listing?” the voice asks, and I say, “Martha Stewart.” “Please hold,” a real voice says, and I hang up.

The phone rings immediately and I let the machine get it, then hear Rita say, “Are you there? It’s me.”

I pick up the phone. “Oh, God, Rita. I thought you were Martha Stewart.”

“What?”

“Never mind. How are you? You got my letter?”

“Yes, I got your letter. Why didn’t you call me?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t feel like talking about it.”

“Do you now?”

I say nothing.

“Well, I never liked him. You know that. And I’m not just saying that to make you feel better.”

“Oh, don’t worry, no chance of that.”

“I mean, remember when you got engaged, and you showed me the ring? I thought you were crazy. I didn’t like that ring. It was tasteless. Almost two carats, when we were eating dinner from cans!”

True. We did eat dinner from cans, Rita and I. We were in our first apartment, still students. We ate Hormel Chili, Franco-American Spaghetti, Dinty Moore stew—usually unheated. If we were stoned, we made do with chocolate chips.

Then one evening when I was riding the bus home from class, I met David. He asked me for a drink, told me in the smoky bar that his car was in the shop, that’s why he was on the bus; normally he never rode the bus. He looked exactly like Paul Newman with brown eyes, that’s what I told everyone; and everyone who met him agreed, with a kind of reluctant awe—after all, what was Newman without his eyes?

David came from a family of extraordinary wealth, but he claimed not to be affected by it; said he preferred, actually, living well below his means. With certain exceptions. His car, for instance, an antique Morgan that he loved so much for its voluptuous lines he forgave it every inconvenience. His clothes, too, that David said were no big deal, but whose labels and fabrics suggested otherwise. After making love with him the first time, I walked around the apartment for the rest of the night wearing only his pale yellow V neck, so as to fully appreciate the feel of fine cashmere. “Keep it,” he’d said, yawning, when he left that night, and went home wearing a jacket over his T-shirt. Later, Rita had borrowed the sweater and spilled red wine on it, which only prompted David to buy two more—one for each of us.

“You were jealous,” I tell Rita.

“I was not! I felt sorry for you, that you … I don’t know, you stopped having fun. You started being serious all the time, trying really hard to be whatever he wanted you to be, whatever the hell that was. I honestly felt sorry for you. Everybody did! You just … lost yourself.”

I am too busy to respond to such an accusation. I am concentrating on drawing a square on my knee with my finger. The sides are not coming out even, I can tell, even though the square is invisible. I can’t draw, either.

“You don’t believe me?”

“Oh God, Rita, I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

I do remember, though. I felt, marrying David, like a child handed a gift that was too big. I was convinced that I loved him, but it was a nervous love, even at the start; and there was a certain holding back on his part that seemed mean-spirited. But I was sure I could change that. His family was cold; it wasn’t his fault; what he wanted more than anything was to open himself up. I would be his wife and help him. Over the years, I looked for ways into him, for an essential kind of access; and I failed at finding it again and again.

“So what are your plans?” Rita asks.

I look out the kitchen window. Puffy clouds like the kind Travis used to draw, a deep blue sky. It’s beautiful outside. The earth turns. Yesterday, I made a list that said: Clear yard of debris. Get gas. Return calls. I might as well have added: Eat. Breathe.

“I don’t really have any plans,” I say. “Plans are too hard. All I’ve done so far is to spend a whole bunch of money.”

“Well, good. That’s a start. What’d you buy, underwear? That’s what my friend Eileen did. The day her husband left—for a f*cking dental hygienist who’d given both of them these weird gum massages—she went to Victoria’s Secret and spent five hundred dollars in about fifteen minutes. She got matching everything. And a whole bunch of dirty stuff. Lewinsky thongs, garter belts …”

“I went to Tiffany’s. I got china. And silver.” I won’t mention the bracelet. No need to get into that.

“You’re kidding!”

“No.”

“You don’t like that stuff.”

“Well, I never did before, but now I do. I just want … something different. I’m going to live another way. I have to live another way. I mean, even things like learning not to be afraid of the dark. Did you know I’m afraid of the dark? I lie awake at night now, wondering who’s in the basement getting ready to come upstairs and murder me and Travis. I keep a fish knife under my bed.”

“A fish knife?”

“Well, I’d never used it. I figured I might as well use it. It’s very nice. Pearl-handled.”

“I’m sure the killer will appreciate that.”

“That would be a pretty nice change, being appreciated.” All the things I really want to tell Rita are stuck in my throat. I cannot say them, it’s too embarrassing. I sat in the middle of the living-room floor and howled like a dog, Rita. I’ve been contemplating “accidental” death. I bought a book on self-esteem, and when the author said to make a list of what I liked about myself, I couldn’t do it. I could not write down one thing. After two days, I made one that kind of copied the suggested list, then hid it in my underwear drawer, then burned it. I can’t think straight; my head is full of cobwebs. I have to concentrate really hard to open a can of soup.

Gently, Rita says, “Sam, why don’t you get away for a while? Come out here. I’ll take time off from work, I’ll take care of you.”

Why don’t I visit Rita? She lives in a beautiful house in Mill Valley, in Marin County. I could fly out to San Francisco tonight, lie around in the hammock in Rita’s beautiful backyard tomorrow, staring at the gently rounded hills, at the ocean glittering in the distance. We could eat avocado and tomato and sprout sandwiches, take long walks, make bouquets of the extraordinary wildflowers that grow everywhere. Rita’s husband, Lawrence, is a humanities professor, gray-eyed and bearded and calm. He casts coins for the I Ching. He is an inventive chef, and he cooks at least twice a week. He would leave us alone when we needed to be left alone, join us when we wanted him to.

Rita always puts fresh flowers in my room, as well as a huge box of chocolates and a National Enquirer. She plays the music she and I used to listen to when we were roommates: the Temptations, Janis, Odetta. We talk for hours, laugh until we cry.

Finally, though, I say, “I can’t come out there. Travis is in school. I can’t just pull him out. And I don’t want to leave him with David.”

“Leave him with your mother, then. She loves to try to wreck him.”

“I think I need to hang around. I mean, this is hard for him, too.”

“Oh, I know. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to underestimate any of this. I really don’t. How is Travis, anyway?”

“Mostly not talking. I think he thinks it’s just a big fight.”

“Is it?”

“No. It’s been coming for a long time. I don’t think he ever loved me. It’s sort of astonishing, isn’t it?” I start to cry. Again.

“Oh, honey,” Rita says. “I know how this hurts. I’m so sorry. I wish I could be there now, I’d do something.”

“I know you would. It would be something wonderful, too. What would it be?”

“Well, I would … I have no idea, actually.”

I laugh, blow my nose. “So you always thought he was a jerk, huh?”

“I really did.”

“Did you talk behind his back?”

“Constantly.”

“I hope you mentioned what a terrible dancer he was. Absolutely no sense of rhythm. Not that he knew that.”

“We covered that, I’m sure. As well as that reptilian gesture he made whenever he cleared his throat, sticking his chin out that way. And Sam, I know you feel awful now, but I think, in the end, you’ll be so much better off without him. You used to wear mascara to bed.”

“Well.”

“And when you had Travis, you were embarrassed that David saw the umbilical cord.”

Oh God, I’d forgotten that. But it’s true. I’d felt bad about how ugly it was.

I hear the clock chime three. “I’ve got to go, Rita. Travis will be home soon.”

“Call me tonight.”

“What for?”

“I need support, okay?”

Upstairs, I wash my face, reapply some eyeliner. Then I take off all my clothes and stare at my naked self in the bathroom mirror. I turn to the side. Good breasts. But the beginning of dimpling at the tops of my thighs. And there is my stupid, flabby stomach. I wonder at what age pubic hair turns gray. I don’t see how people who were married for a long time can ever take their clothes off in front of another person. Another lover. How can there ever be another lover? The hands would be wrong. The face. The smell. You’d open your eyes from a kiss and … what? No map.

I put my clothes back on. Then I head downstairs to make some peanut-butter cookies for Travis. Also chocolate chip.

It’s Friday, the weekend looming ahead. Tonight we’re going out to dinner, to an Italian place on Newbury Street that has no business charging what it does. We’ll valet park. We’ll get appetizers before our entrées and dessert after them. “To drink?” the waiter will say, and I will consult the wine list, pick by price.

“I don’t want an appetizer,” Travis says. He is trying to keep his voice low, but he is agitated. We are seated at the restaurant after having been shown to our table with a certain restrained condescension. It is early, five-thirty; no other customers have the poor taste to be here. Most of the waiters sit in a small, white-coated group at a table in the back of the room, lazily gossiping, laughing, drinking what looks like ice water with lemon slices in it.

“I just want spaghetti with butter and cheese.”

“Yes, well, you can have that,” I tell him. “But wouldn’t you like to start with something else?”

“Start what?”

“Start your dinner, honey.”

“Spaghetti is my dinner.”

“Yes, but you can have an appetizer as well. You can have both. Come on, you know that.”

“Fine.” He snaps his menu closed, slumps back in his chair. He yanks at his tie, loosening it.

“So!” I say. “What will it be? You can have anything you want.”

“I don’t care. You’re the one who wants it. You pick.”

I straighten in my chair, smile at the approaching waiter. He is so elegantly gay I feel ashamed of myself, of my predictable domestic status. Breeder. Divorced. Knowledge of nightlife and art scene nil.

The waiter stands before me, raises an eyebrow. “Have we decided?”

Antipasto? I’m thinking, a little panicked. Shrimp in lime vinaigrette? And then, because Travis is right, this is all only exhausting, I say, “Spaghetti with butter and grated cheese for my son, please. And for me, too. Don’t be stingy with that Parmesan, either. Two Cokes, no ice. Four cannoli. And the check.”

“All right,” the waiter says, and accompanies the snappy motion of his pen sliding back into his breast pocket with a tight smile.

“All right!” Travis yells, and sits up straighter.

“Travis?”

He looks up at me, fearful, I know, of being told he’s talking too loud.

“Why don’t you take off that tie?” I slip my heels off, lean back in my chair.

Travis removes his tie, coils it into a neat arrangement at the side of his plate. Beside it, I lay my belt.

Hours later, after Travis and I watch Star Wars twice, he falls into bed. I wash up and go into my bedroom, intent on reading one of the new books I bought the other day. I turn back the bedclothes and then, just like that, all the good feeling I’ve built up today seems to drain out of the soles of my feet. I stand there for a while. And then I get down on my knees, and whisper, Help me into my folded hands.