The Housewife Blues (6 page)

Until the fateful day. Nothing. The more Terry tried, the
more intractable the article. Finally the operation was terminated once again.
There was another option, of course. In an interview the doctor had explained
that in such cases of psychological impotency, the sperm, when produced and
delivered within a short time, could be frozen for future use, meaning injected
into Terry at a time of her choosing. On the surface this seemed like a
splendid idea, except that the very suggestion of such a process had sent any
recovery of potency into limbo.

For months now nothing had happened, although she had been
alert to his nocturnal erections in the hope that they, or only one, could be
productive. It continued to be debilitating and humiliating. At times she
actually would begin to masturbate while he slept, the idea being that she
would be ready to begin the process during the night at a moment's notice.
Unfortunately he always awoke, which resulted in a complete collapse of the
instrument. It was all so depressingly clinical.

Their nerves were stretched thin, and often their eyes
would meet and they would break into tears. How long before this finally rips
us apart? he wondered. It was awful. He felt inadequate. He couldn't
concentrate on his work. The gallery was going to hell.

He got the hooker's name from another dealer who had
admitted to using call girls as a service to his out-of-town clients. Godfrey
had been appalled by the idea.

"You don't sell art with pussy," he had
remonstrated with the dealer.

"You can sell anything with pussy," the dealer
had countered. He was a fat, balding man with thick lips and a gravelly-voiced
gift of gab so originally crude that it was memorable. "Besides, strange
pussy is always exhilarating." It was that crude phrase that stuck in
Godfrey's mind, that phrase that motivated his idea. He had even inquired at
the clinic as to how the freezing process worked, including the specifics of
time and distance. In his scenario the event would be the ultimate surprise
gift for Terry, the means justifying the end. He would tell her he had
masturbated.

"Welcome to the world of corruption," the dealer
told him when he called with his request.

"I'll try your method," he told the dealer.
"I've got one tough client."

"I'll give you Wendy's number. Wendy is surefire. She
majored in art history and is an artist herself. Guaranteed to put a client in
a great frame of mind for art appreciation."

"Is this what we've come to?" he found himself
saying, as if to maintain his moral superiority.

"Your tense is wrong, pal," the dealer said.
"In this business what difference does it make as to how you fuck the
client?"

Godfrey made the assignation for a time when he knew Terry
would be at her regular weekly loan-committee meeting. He couldn't bear the
idea of having his assistant at the gallery lie about his whereabouts. The very
centerpiece of his relationship with Terry was honesty, absolute,
uncompromising honesty. And faithfulness. Even on the phone with Wendy his
guilt was so acute that he offered her double her price, which came to two
hundred dollars, an additional payoff to ensure her silence about his identity.

"Are you kidding?" she said as if she were
insulted. "Silence is the given of my business." She sounded more
like a professor than a prostitute, which did not augur well for what he hoped
to achieve. But she did consent to the double fee.

"You'll earn it," he told her.

"I always do."

He gave her specific instructions. Above all, he did not
want her to be seen entering the building. He had calculated that most of the
people in the building were off to work, except, of course, for Jenny Burns,
who, he assured himself, would probably be in the kitchen making meat loaf. He
chuckled at the flash of humor, which calmed him somewhat. Not that he wasn't
concerned about her spotting them. He would be very uncomfortable about anyone
living in the building possessing knowledge of his infidelity. People gossiped.
There was no denying that.

Jerry O'Hara and Bob Schwartz, the homosexual couple who
shared the ground-floor apartment, could offer a threat of revelation only
because O'Hara talked too much, jibber-jabbered in his singsong fey way, not
caring what came out of his mouth. They and their damned cat, whom they had
named, appropriately, Peter. He was a tabby, a kind of little tiger with the
stripes to match and a fierce wanderlust instinct. He hadn't been neutered,
which might be expected from Jerry and Bob. They were always searching for him,
and the constant drumbeat of "Where's Peter?" could rattle the teeth
of everyone in the building. More than once Godfrey had begged them to fix him,
as did almost everyone.

"How would you like it done to you?" was Jerry
O'Hara's invariable response when any of the neighbors had the temerity to
complain. Jerry worked as a showroom salesman for a Seventh Avenue clothing
manufacturer, and Bob Schwartz was a partner in a design firm. They were rarely
home during the day. Godfrey had sold them two paintings by Hollander, which
was their only point of neighborly reference. Godfrey would hate to have them
know anything about what he was up to, although he felt reasonably secure that
they would be out, especially at that hour.

The same was true of the Sterns, Sally and Barry. Barry was
in real estate in Brooklyn, dealing apparently in slum-type property, and Sally
was an accountant with one of the Big Five accounting firms, he couldn't
remember which. He and Terry decided that they were workaholics on the basis of
how much time their son, Teddy, spent alone. He was about sixteen and went to
some fancy private school in Manhattan. There didn't seem much risk in the
Sterns being home.

As for Myrna Davis, who lived across the hall from them,
she was off in the wee hours every weekday and didn't return until very late.
She was an associate editor for
Vanity Fair
who always seemed to be
hassled and disorganized.

She had offered them bits and pieces of her history, mostly
on the run. She had been married twice. Both had ended in divorce. And she had
lived with a rather handsome middle-aged man for six months in the apartment, a
Ronnie something, who rarely spoke, as if he were hiding from someone, which
was probably true. He had simply disappeared.

At the moment Myrna had a mysterious weekend lover, of whom
they had yet to catch a glimpse. He'd apparently arrive very late on Friday
night and leave very early on Monday morning. Their routine was to send in from
carryouts and never leave the apartment all weekend. He and Terry speculated
that Myrna's lover was a celebrity cheating on his wife.

After one of those weekends Myrna always looked exhausted.
All fucked out, they agreed. Myrna could be depended upon to be working, especially
at that time of the month, deadline time.

Except for Jenny Burns, he felt reasonably secure. Jenny
did not seem to be the prying type. Nevertheless, it would bother him that
anyone who knew Terry might find out that he had betrayed her. That's the way
people would see it, notwithstanding the mitigating circumstances.

He had let himself in the front door with his key and had
walked up the stairs like a thief, counting each little squeak of the steps.
The place seemed quiet. Occasionally, he knew, one or another of the tenants
would have a maid in a couple of hours a day, but he didn't count them as any
threat. They were mostly invisible people. Besides, they didn't know him or
Terry.

His anxiety level did not decrease when Wendy finally
arrived at his apartment door. He was already worrying about her leaving the
building without being seen.

"Nothing untoward to report,
mon capitaine,
"
Wendy said as she entered the apartment, offering a salute.

"Voice down," he whispered, inspecting her. She
was young, well endowed, with black hair and olive skin. He took her for
Italian. She looked more like a student than a prostitute with a carryall slung
over her shoulder.

"What's the protocol?" he asked.

"Usually payment in advance," she said, smiling
coyly and shrugging. "We all have to eat."

He put two hundred-dollar bills in her palm, and she put
them into the carryall, unhooking it from her shoulder.

"Where is the bedroom?" she asked.

"No," he said. "Here. On the couch."

Not in their bed, he decided. The couch seemed less
culpable, a hollow idea since the entire apartment might be said to be bearing
witness. Terry's presence was everywhere.

"You seem nervous," she said, taking his hand.
"And your hand is like ice."

"Everything is like ice," he said nervously.

"We'll see what we can do about that."

"I have condoms," he said, placing the box on the
end table beside the couch. He also had the little cup the fertility clinic had
given him, hidden behind a picture on the end table within easy reach. His idea
was to remove the condom at the moment of ejaculation and use the cup for
storage. The clinic preferred the cup.

"I come supplied as well," she said. He sat on
the couch and stood before him. He felt tense, sitting up straight, his hands
on his knees. "You have an art gallery?" she asked as she began to
undress.

He watched, half listening, offering perfunctory answers.
He sensed a growing anger in himself as she slowly revealed what by any measure
would be a sensual body. She posed and gyrated in what was certainly a
provocative performance.

Then she began to undress him. He closed his eyes. He felt
ashamed. He hadn't expected such a reaction, and he knew from the moment that
she touched him that this would result in one more failure. Yet he allowed her
to persist, and she was quite resourceful and imaginative.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"Don't be. It happens."

"So does shit."

She was kind and knew exactly what to say under such
circumstances. After a while he did feel more relaxed, but empty of any
excitement or reaction. He did tell her that he was going through this bout of
impotency, although he could not bring himself to mention the conception
problem.

"It'll come back. As long as it's nothing
organic." Then she proceeded to tell him of the various procedures that
had been developed by the medical profession. "I've serviced men with
implants and pumps."

"Do they ejaculate?"

"Yes, they do," she said, going into details on
how these devices worked. She seemed expert on the subject.

"Very informative," he acknowledged.

"A man has it tough," she told him. "He just
can't fake it."

In a strange way he felt relieved that nothing had
happened. This couldn't count as unfaithful. After a while they got dressed and
talked about contemporary artists.

"I'd like to see your work sometime," he told
her.

"And I'd be grateful," she said.

By then nearly two hours had passed, and he told her that
she had better get going. He also told her he appreciated her understanding
and, of course, her knowledge. That in no way mitigated his utter sense of
hopelessness and failure. This had been a terrible idea, a desperation measure,
and it left him more depressed than ever.

She kissed him on the cheek as she left. "Don't
worry," she whispered. "I'll be as quiet as a mouse." He
listened, heard the elevator move in the shaft. Again he had forgotten to tell
her to use the stairs. It was as if he consciously wanted to be found out, to
be caught.

From the window he watched as she went out the door and
headed quickly toward Second Avenue, losing her in the parade of pedestrians.
Relieved, he washed, then quickly but carefully straightened the apartment,
and, as if he even had to exorcise her aura, he sprayed the apartment with
Lysol. Then he let himself out and walked down the stairs. There no longer seemed
any need to be cautious.

He got down the front steps okay, then suddenly his
attention was arrested by something in the tree. Turning, he looked up. That
damned cat. But there in the window of her apartment, looking directly at him,
was Jenny Burns. Yet neither of them made any effort to acknowledge the other.
No nod. No smile. It was as if both of them were determined to render
themselves invisible.

If only you knew my pain, he said to her in his heart. It
is not at all what it seems.

Then he turned away and hurried down the street toward Third Avenue. He did not look back, but he could feel Jenny Burns's eye observing him as he
fled.

JENNY met Myrna Davis, who lived in apartment 3 directly
across the corridor from the Richardsons, when she went upstairs to deliver a
package from Bloomingdale's that she had consented to take when the Bloomie's
delivery man rang her buzzer one afternoon. That was another thing that being
home most weekdays entailed. She was open to delivery men leaving packages or
messages.

"Oh, my God, my shoes," Myrna exclaimed, taking
the package from Jenny. She was a tall, very attractive brunette in her
mid-thirties with an air of cocky assurance and a bearing to match.

"I'm Jenny Burns down in apartment one. The driver
left it with me. I was home, you see...."

"You can't imagine how much I appreciate this, Mrs.
Burns," Myrna said, offering a plastic smile with just enough warmth to
show gratitude but not friendliness.

"Jenny. We've just moved in and—"

"Well, I do owe you one, Mrs.... Janey."

"Jenny, and don't mention it."

"It certainly was nice meeting you, Jenny."

"Same here"—Jenny hesitated before
continuing—"Myrna."

Giving one the right to use one's first name was, in
Jenny's value system, a transaction that made first-name use acceptable to both
persons.

Further conversation was deflected by the ring of the
telephone from the interior of Myrna Davis's apartment.

"Damned phone," Myrna said, shaking her head and
offering what was clearly a mock look of exasperation. From that expression,
Jenny deduced that Myrna was relieved by the interruption.

"Well, it was nice..." Jenny began, letting the
sentence drift away.

"Thanks again," Myrna said, the plastic smile
disintegrating as her life apparently turned to more pressing events.

"Don't mention it," Jenny said, feeling suddenly
awkward, hating the idea that she was repeating herself, nodding and smiling
with more energy than she wished, then backing away. What had she expected? she
wondered, trying to shake off an undeniable sensation of intimidation.

"In love with her own self-importance," Larry
told her at dinner that night after she had reported her encounter with Myrna
Davis. "I was married to a journalist, remember. I know the type well. All
of them are ambitious, self-centered bitches."

His inflammatory comment made her regret that she had
recounted the incident in a negative way, and it had slipped her mind that he
had once been married to a journalist. Actually her comment about Myrna was
only mildly negative. She had merely mused aloud that it would have been a nice
gesture on Myrna's part to have invited her inside the apartment, not simply
letting her stand in the hallway like some messenger boy.

She acknowledged to herself that perhaps she was also
reacting to her own irritation, independently of Myrna Davis. Her prime rib had
been overcooked, and the chocolate soufflé had collapsed. Larry, too, was in a
bad mood, having fired one of his assistants for a sloppy interpretation of
demographic information during a pitch to a major client. He had called her
from the office to vent himself, as he often did, and to lift his spirits, she
had planned this special dinner.

"Overdone," he had complained, forcing a tolerant
smile. At that point she had told him about the incident with Myrna, realizing
instantly that it reflected other irritations as well, both past and present.

"She could have had a lot of things on her mind,"
Jenny said, retreating. After all, the telephone had rung and that became a
priority. Or did it? It always upset her to think ill of people before giving
them a fair chance to absolve themselves. Myrna had not been impolite, merely
self-absorbed.

"The issue is that you went out of your way to be
nice. Am I right?" Larry pressed.

"It seemed like the neighborly thing to do,"
Jenny pointed out, knowing she was setting him off again on his favorite
subject: staying clear of the neighbors and minding one's own business.

"It was neighborly," Larry assured her. "And
look where it got you."

She had not told him about Godfrey Richardson's paramour.
He might have called her a gossip, a term of opprobrium she did not wish
attached to her. Her mother's characterization of gossips was people who
suffered from boredom and got their kicks creating negative and mostly false
ideas about people. Jenny agreed, and she did not want Larry to put her in that
category. She was not bored. She liked running her little household, despite
the prevailing attitude of women her age.

"She's a hotshot magazine editor for
Vanity Fair,
which puts her right up there with the worst of them," Larry went on.
"Probably thinks she's on the cutting edge of trendy, and with people
kissing her butt most of the day, she's lost any connection with reality."

"That seems a wee bit harsh, Larry," Jenny said,
pouring the last of the wine into Larry's glass.

"I know the type well. Superior. Deliberately
intimidating. Too sophisticated for words. She continues to be uppity, I just
won't recommend any more advertising buys for
Vanity Fair
. I happen to
have a bit of power in that department. The agency does do some business with
that book."

"I could be misinterpreting her attitude," Jenny
said, fearful that she had done enough to stir his hostility. "I think she
was just rushed."

"Sure, rushed," Larry said. "She wouldn't be
so rushed if she knew what I did for a living."

Why couldn't he stop? she wondered. Myrna hadn't been that
rude.

"I really don't think she warrants that much anger,
Larry."

"That's because you've never really been exposed to
people like that. I have. She's one of those ball busters. Trust me. I know
these career-obsessed women. No softness. No sweetness. Hard-edged. Experts at
the put-down. Never give you the right time." Suddenly he mimicked in
falsetto, "Oh, so you're Jenny Burns, the sweet little housewife in
apartment one. How wonderfully quaint."

"She didn't say anything like that," Jenny
countered. She was getting confused by Larry's overreaction and decided that
she had best deflect the conversation. The soufflé having collapsed, she had
put together a quick peach melba.

"I hope you like this as a substitute," she said,
beginning to eat hers. She concentrated on the taste. "Not bad if I say so
myself," she said, looking across the table at her husband. He hadn't
touched his dessert.

"You're so damned naive, Jenny. You think all the
people in this town are as honest and forthright as the folks back home. They
aren't. Why can't you take my advice? Believe me, I know. Why open yourself up
to insult?"

"It wasn't exactly—"

"Oh, yes, it was," Larry remonstrated. "You
can't deny it, Jenny. No way."

She studied her husband. What was going on here? She felt
terrible for pushing him into a foul mood. She remembered her mother's
prescription for dealing with a husband in a funk. "Tiptoe through the
tulips until he works it out of himself. He's probably reacting to something at
work and is using the subject at hand to vent his anger."

"Eat your dessert, Larry. You're missing out on
something good," she said pleasantly, hoping to close the issue. She
spooned up the last of her peach melba. He still hadn't touched his.

"I think you should stop serving desserts," he
said, patting his flat stomach and getting up from the table. "And stop
being Mrs. Goody-Goody."

He couldn't seem to get it out of his mind, which was
disturbing. She tried another tack.

"Are you saying, Larry, that you would not have
accepted the package?" Jenny asked. It came down to that, she had decided.

"Probably not," he declared. He had gotten up
from the table and had begun to unbutton his dress shirt in preparation for
weight lifting in the bedroom. "In fact, I wouldn't. She should have had
it sent to her office. She knew she wouldn't be home for a Bloomie's delivery,
which happens only in the daytime. She also probably knew that you were the
only person in the building who didn't work."

After he had gone into the bedroom she began to load the
dishwasher, mulling over his comment. Not work, she wondered. Then what is this
I'm doing?

Sometime later, after she had cleaned up the kitchen, she
found him in the bedroom lifting weights. She sat on the bed and watched him, a
process he greatly enjoyed. After a while he turned to her and she could see
that his mood had changed.

"Like what you see, baby?" he said.

"Love those buns," she told him coyly.

"Then come on over and butter them up."

She did, watching the activity in the two standing mirrors.

It was, in fact, impossible to ignore the other tenants.
Despite all Larry's caveats, she was not the kind of person who could pass
someone in the hallway, turn her eyes away, and refuse to acknowledge their
presence. Admittedly the episode with Myrna Davis, particularly Larry's
reaction to her explanation of it, made her a bit gun-shy.

There was also no way not to observe them or to prevent
herself from speculating about their lives. For example, there was Teddy Stern,
who lived with his parents in the apartment on the third floor, the only floor
that contained only one apartment.

Jenny had seen them in the hallway on weekends. Barry
Stern, Teddy's father, was a chunky man in his early forties, balding, with the
beginnings of a paunch and jowls and a serious, self-absorbed expression, as if
his mind were perpetually occupied with weighty thoughts. When she passed him
in the hallway while he waited for the elevator, she would always nod and smile
pleasantly and offer the time-honored platitudes about the weather.

"On the chilly side for May," she would say as
she headed for the front door.

"A bit," he would grunt indifferently, as if the
statement had interrupted his far more important contemplations. His wife was
only slightly more forthcoming and looked harassed and sickly with a sallow
complexion and a glazed expression. There was a dark puffiness under her eyes
as if she were on the verge of exhaustion.

Jenny had first seen Teddy Stern with his parents one
Sunday as the three of them emerged from the elevator just as she was entering
her apartment. She had smiled politely, and they'd all nodded and moved past
her to the entrance of the building.

She'd observed him again one late afternoon through her
front window. She guessed he was about fifteen or sixteen years old, a lanky,
handsome boy, still at the awkward age. He had jet black hair and a sallow
complexion like his mother's and wore blue pants and a gray sweater that had
some kind of insignia sewed on to it, and she'd speculated that he probably
went to some private school. Instead of coming in the front door, he had walked
the few steps down to the entrance of the ground-floor apartment. There he'd
fished in his pocket for a few moments, then let himself in with a key.

It seemed rather odd, since he lived on the third floor.
She knew from the nameplates on the front door that the two gentlemen who lived
there were named Jerry O'Hara and Robert Schwartz. She had met one of them,
although she wasn't sure which one. He was a handsome blond man in his
mid-thirties who had rung her apartment buzzer one late afternoon looking for
his cat.

"I'm so sorry to bother you," he had said,
smiling, showing even white teeth. "I seemed to have misplaced
Peter."

"Peter?"

"My cat," he said.

She had seen a tabby sitting on the branch of the sycamore
directly across from her apartment window, assuming it was merely an alley cat
that had wandered about all night and was taking a morning respite. She hadn't
thought about it much until that moment.

"A tabby?" she asked.

"You saw him?"

"Not today," she added quickly when she saw his
sudden eagerness.

"Every time the maid comes this happens," the man
said, shaking his head. "Hates cats. Something very ... very unfeeling
about people who hate cats, don't you think?"

She knew Larry hated cats, but only because he was allergic
to them. It was not the kind of information to pass along to a cat lover.

"I haven't thought about it much," Jenny said.
"Growing up, I had dogs, standard poodles.... "She remembered that
she had begun to reminisce, but he had interrupted her.

"I must get on with the search," he said,
hurrying away through the little lobby and out the door.

But when she saw Teddy enter their apartment with a key,
she noted that there seemed to be a furtive air about him, as if he were doing
something illegal or forbidden. Admittedly she became mildly curious,
especially when it appeared to happen with some regularity.

Bearing in mind Larry's caveat about not getting involved,
she forced herself to put it out of her mind, not mentioning it to Larry. Yet
it was Larry who brought it back to her attention.

He had come in from his Sunday morning regular tennis game,
which by then had become a kind of ritual. She always had a wonderful breakfast
feast ready for him when he returned, mimosas, mushroom-and-cheese omelet,
homemade muffins and jam.

Larry usually showered at the tennis club and came home in
a jogging outfit. But on this particular Sunday he had showered at home and
come to the table in his wine-colored terry-cloth Polo robe. As always, they
chatted about his game. He loved to recount his tennis prowess, cataloging
various killer shots that he had made to overwhelm his opponents. Larry liked
to win. When he didn't, he returned deeply depressed and was often irritable
for hours after.

On this particular Sunday he had lost and was in a foul
mood. Married nearly three months by then, she knew these moods and had learned
that the best way to ride them out was to ignore them and proceed with any
conversation as if his mood were placid and content.