Even as “How dare they?” became the mental counterpoint to all my activities in the days that followed our engagement announcement, outwardly I went along with the reporters’ questions, sweet and buttery as a lamb, because in the end: Live by the sword, die by the sword.
The strangest profile of all ended up being the one in the L.A. Times. “This beguiling young lady is going to be married,” it said. “So her picture is printed for that and various other reasons. First, she is a remarkably intelligent young woman, in addition to being beautiful. She writes real poetry and sells it for real money. Not every poet can do that. In addition, this remarkable young person can and does write advertising, a talent that makes her at least twice as rich every year as two members of the United States cabinet combined.”
I might have been gratified, once, at this piece’s emphasis on my earning capabilities. And I did get a small frisson from thinking of Frances Perkins, secretary of labor, who earned $15,000 per year when I was pulling down over $30,000.
But the stories about it had begun to seem vulgar.
I won’t even quote the article about the engagement that ran in my hometown paper, in Washington, D.C., under the disgusting headline of “Love, Women’s Greatest Role.”
Indeed, it was my mother who really sent me over the edge. I read that clipping because she mailed it to me, of course. In doing so, she was the only one in that ecstatic, albeit beleaguered, time who set me to sobbing. It happened one night after getting off the telephone with her, alone in my apartment, reading over old drafts of antilove poems, thinking: You know you have done something horribly wrong if your mother is saying, “I knew it. I told you so.”
I had been so sure when I told Max yes, but the public uproar had shaken me more than I thought it might, causing me—just slightly—to doubt.
Should I do this? Why was I doing this?
But then Max would come over, and I’d know why.
So I did it. And for a few years, I was as happy as I had ever been—as happy, it turns out, as I would ever be again.
Even after our divorce, twenty years later, he’d still sign the notes he sent with his child support checks “love.”
14
Mulligan
The golden Ds on the scarlet awnings—surrounded by laurel wreaths in heraldic style—seem to stand not merely for “Delmonico’s” but also for “do over.”
The restaurant lofts steak smells over the intersection of William and Beaver, and as they waft toward me, I feel, finally, famished. I should be, I suppose, after a three-and-a-half-mile walk.
During our marriage, whenever Max was away on business, which was often, I missed him terribly. What I did not miss were my evening dates with pots and pans. I rejoiced in rest from rump and roast, from spuds and the suds of dishes washed. Max taught me to cook, but it brought me no joy without him, so I kept the food simple when I just made it for me, for me and Johnny: fragrant coffee, honest stew.
We had a cook, too, a few nights a week, to help me then while I was freelancing. She made hearty food: roasted chicken and creamed potatoes, oysters and grilled tomatoes, squash or scrambled eggs or scrod.
For the second and last time in my life I step up the three steps and stand in the doorway where I last stood almost thirty years ago. Whether and how the place has changed I can’t say; I have no memory of the entrance. Despite my damned good health, I do take note of things like steps—and hips, and trips, and falls—differently now than I did in my fifties. Thirty years! I was in sorry shape then, but I was younger, younger, younger.
Alone this time, free from entanglements, I can pay closer attention, see the place for the institution it is and not just for what it means to me. So many ubiquitous dishes were invented here: eggs Benedict, Manhattan clam chowder, chicken á la King, and baked Alaska. The Delmonico’s that served Max and me our final meal together, Oscar’s Delmonico’s, closed in 1977, but the restaurant reopened under new management in 1981. The posted menu appears to include all the classics.
Not that it matters. I’m getting a steak. A make-up steak. A steak to compensate for the spoiling of my last one by the one true love of my entire life.
I place a gloved hand on the brass handle of the wooden door and step inside. Into a crush of people that makes the restaurant lobby resemble a rush-hour subway car.
The harried woman at the hostess stand greets me with shell-shocked solicitude.
“Dinner for one, please,” I say, raising my voice above the clamor.
“Do you have a reservation?”
“Actually,” I say, “I haven’t a reservation. This is a spontaneous undertaking. One last great adventure for 1984.”
“I see,” says the hostess. “I’m afraid we’re quite packed.”
“So I noticed,” I say. “Very good to see such a good business doing good business.”
“Mm-hmm,” she says, eyes down, scanning her list.