The View From Penthouse B

26





Doesn’t Sound Like You


BECAUSE I WAS familiar with Margot’s entire professional team—her internist, gynecologist, dermatologist, ophthalmologist, lawyer, and dentist—I knew that a Dr. Sadler (Post-it reminder of a 3:45 appointment on our bathroom mirror) was an addition to the lineup.

“You’re seeing a doctor today?” I asked, as we passed in the hallway, a towel draped over her arm and a turban covering her hair.

She stopped. Didn’t answer.

“A Dr. Sadler?” I prompted.

“Oh, him! That’s right. This afternoon.”

“Everything okay?”

“He’s a shrink,” she said. “What are you up to today?”

“The usual. Laundry. Fiddling with my résumé. A perusal of the classifieds.”

“Good. We both could use a job. Even if it’s at McDonald’s.”

I agreed: yes, that was true, because we said the same thing every morning. The topic of her shrink appointment receded until she was standing in the kitchen, waiting for her bagel to toast. “Dr. Sadler is a couples counselor,” she announced. “And I don’t want you to think it’s about getting back together. It’s about being more amicably divorced.”

“You’re going with Charles?”

“I have to. This guy only sees the couple together. I said I’d go once.”

I said, “Boy, are you nice.”

Now at the open refrigerator, with her back to me, she shrugged. “It’s fifty minutes out of my fairly pointless existence. He’s paying, and then he’s taking me to lunch at the restaurant of my choice.”

“Toward what end?” I asked.

Margot said, “Maybe I’d be easier to live with.”

I had her repeat that sentence before I managed to ask, “Are you considering living with Charles?”

“No! Easier for you to live with! You and Anthony! Don’t you think I’ve turned into an angry, sarcastic shrew since Charles moved into the building?”

“No,” I said. “I most certainly do not. When you rant and rave about Charles, Anthony and I know it’s about him. We don’t take it personally.” In truth, we may even have enjoyed it. An angry Margot was a sight to behold. Anthony had discovered that laughing during her fuming encouraged her to ratchet up her performance.

This seemed to give Margot pause. Had her anger not leeched into the atmosphere of penthouse B? And had she been sold a bill of goods by the very object and subject of her occasional ill humor?

I said, “To me, there are clear signs that Charles wants you back—the wine, the ham, the fish? It doesn’t take a marriage counselor to see that all those gifts were stand-ins for the long-stemmed red roses he wanted to send.”

Margot didn’t argue back. She said, “People change.” And then volunteered: “The guy’s subspecialty is sexual addiction.”

Fortunately or unfortunately, she pronounced those two words just as Anthony of the acute hearing opened the door to his room.

“Did I hear ‘sexual addiction’?” he asked, accompanied by a quick swing and dismount from his chin-up bar. “It’s not even eight a.m. and you’ve already made my day. I pray it’s someone I know.”

“It’s Gwen,” said Margot, causing both to laugh a little too heartily.

I said, “The correct answer is that she and Charles are seeing a marriage counselor today—”

“Who happens to list sexual addiction therapy on his website, period. I never said that’s why Charles picked him,” Margot told us.

Anthony, as he palpated the lumpy bag of bagels defrosting next to the toaster, noted, “I don’t believe our friend’s legal problems were ever pinned on sexual addiction. Not even by his defense team.”

Was that a derisive “Ha!” coming from Margot, now seated at the kitchen island?

“Do tell,” said Anthony. “Is he actually tomcatting around or just bragging about it?”

Margot said, “No comment.”

“Rather nice of you to accompany him,” said Anthony.

“One time only. And the office is a block away from Le Cirque.”

Anthony asked if they had had counseling the last time.

“Last time, meaning when I threw him out?”

“Correct.”

“No! I refused.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” I said.

“How could it ever have been fixed? Did we have issues? Did we need help communicating? Was the problem fifty-fifty, his and mine, or was it one hundred per cent Charles in the headlines for screwing his patients? Who needed bullshit marriage counseling? I didn’t even want to be in the same room with him.”

“But now it seems doable?” Anthony asked.

“He wore me down. I’m not going because I want us to get back together.”

We waited, but she didn’t explain further. “Then why are you doing it?” I asked. “It can’t be all about an expensive lunch.”

“So he’d stop nagging me. I said no ten times before I said yes.”

“Addiction or no addiction, wouldn’t a guy want to speak privately to a counselor about his sex life?” I asked.

Margot said, “We’re not going for that. We’re going supposedly to find”—air quotes—“peace and harmony. And you know what would help? If the guy hypnotizes me so I leave with marital amnesia.”

“Wanna know what I think?” asked Anthony.

“I know what you think,” said Margot.

“I don’t,” I said.

Anthony patted my hand. “It’s my belief that Charles is looking for peace and harmony, all right . . . in his ex-wife’s bed.”

Margot rose. Did she look offended? Not at all. She yawned and stretched rather grandly. Body language translation? You might be correct.





I reminded her, on what we were calling our daily constitutional now that the weather had inched into the sixties, that she was still dating Roy.

“Roy? Here’s the trouble with Roy: He doesn’t have a red cent. It’s no longer cute.”

“But you’ve known that from the start. And it’s not as if you have much in the way of disposable income, either.”

“I know! But I have the apartment. And my alimony. And my fabulous boarders. I don’t feel as poor as I actually am.”

I said, “I’ve never thought of you as someone who needed a rich boyfriend.”

“Rich? I didn’t say rich. I don’t need rich.” We were passing a market with fruit and vegetables displayed outside. An aproned young man was tossing out the old, the yellowed, and the overripe. “But would I like to stop picking up every check for two cups of coffee and two glasses of wine? Yes.”

“I guess the question is, do you like him anyway?”

Instead of answering, she asked the vegetable guy in pantomime if she could have the cabbage leaves he was paring off and presumably discarding. He handed her a plastic bag with a wave of the hand that said Help yourself.

She said with a grin, “Sopa, sí?”

“Sopa,” he answered with an instant grin indicating some happy recovered soup memory.

That was so Margot. You could call it good manners or friendliness, but really it was charm. “Cómo se llama?” she asked him.

“Mañuel.”

“Gracias, Mañuel.”

He offered two bruised tomatoes, but she said, “No mas! Gracias.” I knew she had exhausted her Spanish, which was limited to the vocabulary of menus and amenities, but still she’d won a friend.

After our adioses and a few blocks in silence, I asked, “Isn’t it going to be hard to break it off with Roy after you’ve been sleeping together?”

Margot said, “Not that hard.” She nudged me with her elbow. “Especially since I haven’t heard from him in a while. Tomorrow it’ll be two weeks.”

“Does that hiatus have something to do with Charles?”

“I am not admitting any interest in Charles. Nada.”

And then the question I’d been waiting for an opportune moment to ask: “How did it go today with Dr. Sadler?”

She headed for a bus-stop bench and I followed. “I was dying for you to ask! I enjoyed every minute. It was ladies first, so Sadler asked for a little history and what brought us there today. So I had the floor for the whole time! Of course, everyone thinks that appointment number two is Charles’s turn.”

“But it’s not?”

“I only agreed to go once, remember?”

“But wouldn’t it be fair to go for one more?”

A bus had pulled up and was waiting after two passengers disembarked. Margot yelled, “We’re just sitting. Thanks!” She slid closer on the bench. “You think I need to be fair?”

Reflexively, I said “No.” But then, “It depends. Do you want things to get better? I don’t mean a reconciliation. Just working toward . . . something more comfortable.”

“Oh, it’s plenty comfortable,” she said. “More than I saw coming.”

Should I request amplification? Betsy would. Anthony would, too. So I asked, “Have you slept with Charles since he got out of prison? You can tell me. I won’t be judgmental. I know that kind of thing happens.”

She said, “I’ve thought of it. He’s thought of it every night for the past—as he likes to put it—ninety-nine weeks. You’d think he’d been marking days off in chalk on his cell wall.”

I asked if she thought she’d have to forgive him in order to take him back into her bed.

When she didn’t answer, I said, “I won’t be shocked either way.”

“Do I think what he did was forgivable? No. But is he sorry? Extremely sorry? Insanely sorry? Yes. Do I have flashbacks about the good times? Yes. Do I think my bed is too big for one? Often. So maybe one answer is ‘Hate the sin but have sex with the sinner.’”

I didn’t expect I’d react with anything but surprise and scorn, but there was something about the image of an empty bed that caused my voice to choke. Eventually, I said, “You’re lucky. All you have to do is forgive Charles. Not everybody can be brought back with mere forgiveness and marital amnesia.”

“I know what you’re saying. I do. I worry: How would Gwen feel if one of us was able to turn back the clock. If we weren’t the team we are now.” An arm snaked around my shoulders. “Because you know what we are, don’t you? Two eligible women in the most exciting city in the world. Two dames on the verge of . . . something.”

That interpretation of us seemed to require more energy and action than merely sitting at a bus stop. We rose, and suddenly we were costars in a bygone movie—two sisters seeking their fortunes in Manhattan, cabbage leaves swinging from the elder’s resourceful hand.

Were we happy? Should we be? That unspoken question made me miss a beat in our tandem high-step. But I recovered. “Do we need these old leaves?” I asked. “Haven’t we had enough second-time-around cabbage soup to last a lifetime?”

“You surprise me, Gwen-Laura Schmidt.”

I said, “I know. I surprise myself.”





MetsFan9 to MiddleSister: I Iove making dinner for that special person. (steak or crab legs) with candle light and or bbq. Love to hold hands, cuddling, making love for hours, but very picky and choosy. Told I am a very good kisser, Very romantic, extremly sexual. NOT looking for a 1 night stand. Enjoy board games, cribbage, Scrabble, skinny dipping etc.