“I think you need to leave,” I say.
“Okay, relax,” Tony says. He starts massaging my shoulders with his thick, lumpy hands. It feels good, but I do not want his hands there. “Don’t be so tense. Roz and I have an understanding about these things.”
“You do not. She is not that kind of person.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about Roz,” the glass guy says.
“There is nothing I don’t know about Roz. Even if you do have an ‘arrangement,’ which I highly doubt, I do not want you!”
I get the key in the lock, and he tries to follow me inside. I push him away, and I kick his foot off the threshold. I close my door and I put on the dead bolt.
I hear him breathing, and then he says, “I hope we’re not going to be little children about this, Rachel.” He means that he doesn’t want me to tell Roz and he means that he wants Broadway nights to go on as usual.
Finally, the glass guy leaves, and I want to call Roz and tell her about it, but I don’t. Nothing happened, not really. The key to happiness in life is knowing when to keep your mouth shut.
BEING SIXTY-FOUR YEARS old is like being in high school again.
IT’S NOT SO much the betrayal I want to report—the betrayal is depressing and makes me sad for my friend. It’s that I want to tell her the story.
I’M STARING AT the phone, willing myself not to call Roz, when the phone rings.
“Roz?” I say.
It’s Louis the asshole. “I thought about it for the longest time,” he says. “I know what I did. I know what I said, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that thing about your picture.”
“What thing about my picture?” I say.
“I don’t want to repeat it,” he says.
“You’re going to have to repeat it,” I say. I have no idea what he’s talking about.
“That thing where I said you were so much better looking than your picture. It was stupid of me,” he says. “I mean, how are you supposed to respond to that? Maybe you think I’m insulting your judgment? Maybe you think I’m saying your picture is ugly? And your picture isn’t ugly, Rachel. Your picture is dynamite.”
I tell him that wasn’t it.
“Then what was it?” he wants to know. “It was something, I know it was something.”
I say to him, “Is it possible that I just don’t like you?”
“Impossible,” he says.
“Goodnight, Louis,” I say.
“Wait,” he says. “Whatever I did, whatever I said, can you try to forgive me?”
“Goodnight, Louis,” I say.
I thought literature professors were supposed to be more astute.
The way I see it, I am glad he said what he said about Aviva. It is better to know what someone is like up front.
SIX
I waited for Aviva to call me, wailing that the wife had found out and the congressman had broken up with her.
When she did not call, I thought, Perhaps she is working through this on her own, perhaps this is what maturity looks like. I knew the stereotype of an overbearing Jewish mother—as aforementioned, I am a Philip Roth fan—and I probably met some of those criteria. But honestly, I wasn’t one and I’m still not one. I had a job that fulfilled me. I had friends. My daughter was my love, but she was not my life.
So I decided to leave her be. I sent her lavender-scented hand lotion from Crabtree & Evelyn, but that was all. Lavender was her favorite.
I did not hear from Aviva, not even a thank-you. But that next week, I did hear from Jorge. “Well, Rachel,” he said, “summer’s coming quick. We probably need to get moving if we want to do this before the end of the school year.”
“Didn’t Embeth speak to you?” I said.
“Uh-oh,” he said. “Are you having cold feet?”
“No, nothing like that,” I said. “It’s . . . Well, maybe it’s my misunderstanding, but I thought Embeth had decided the fund-raiser wasn’t a good idea.”
“Nope, I spoke to her this morning,” Jorge said. “She was still completely on board. She said she was pumped for it.”
“ ‘Pumped’?” I said. “Embeth said she was pumped?”
“I don’t know if those were her exact words. One second, Rachel—yes, I’ll be off soon,” Jorge called to someone in the other room. “It’s madness here today,” he apologized.
“Something exciting happening?”
“It’s always madness. So, Rachel, if you’re still good to go, we’re still good to go.”
I don’t know why I didn’t say no. In my defense, I was confused. I think it’s like when you’re on a cell phone call with someone and the reception goes bad and you continue to pretend as if you can hear for a bit, hoping that the cell phone reception will work itself out before the person catches on that you haven’t been hearing her for five minutes. Why don’t you immediately say, I can’t hear you? Why does it feel shameful?
“I’m good to go,” I said, “but I will need to talk to my board.” Of course, I had no intention of going to the board. There was no way they would let me host a political fund-raiser at the school. Politics was a landmine at BRJA. God forbid Levin bring up, for instance, the Rabin assassination!
“Yes, of course. How’s the second Thursday in May? That’s May eleventh.”
“May eleventh,” I repeated. I made an imaginary mark in my calendar. I’d call Jorge back in a couple of days to tell him that the board was unwilling to approve a political fund-raiser, and that would be the end of that.
The thing that left me disquieted was Embeth’s behavior and what it meant about Aviva’s silence.
I phoned Aviva and I asked her how she was and how it was going and did she get the lotion.
“It’s a little thin,” she said. “The lotion. I think they changed the formulation since the last time you bought it.”
“No,” I said. “Last time, I bought the hand cream and that’s thicker. This time I got the body lotion.”
“We haven’t broken up,” she said. “I know that’s what you really want to know.”
I did want to know that, but I also wanted to know if Embeth had spoken to the congressman. “Aviva, what will you do if his wife finds out?”
“Why would she find out?” Aviva said. “Who’s going to tell her?”
“There are a lot of eyes on the congressman,” I said. “He’s a public person.”
“I’m careful,” Aviva said. “We’re both careful.”
“I want you to have the kind of man where you don’t have to be careful,” I said.
“Mom, he’s not like other men. He’s worth it. He’s—”
“He’s too old for you, Aviva. He’s married. He has children. I didn’t think I raised you to have such terrible judgment.”
“How many times are we going to do this?” Aviva said.
“I don’t understand his interest in you,” I said.
“Nice, Mom. Is it so hard to believe that a man like him could be interested in a girl like me?”
“That’s not what I meant. I mean, he’s a grown man, Aviva. He’s my age. What do you two have in common?”
“This is why I don’t call you anymore.”
“But what if she does find out? Will you end it then? Will he?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Good-bye, Mom.”