The Last Chance (24 page)

“I can’t control either of them, but I don’t want to,” Nikki said. “I could send John away—that’s control. But I can’t make him fall madly in love with me and ask me to leave my husband, and I wouldn’t want to. Robert is being wonderful, but I don’t ever feel it’s permanent. I think he’s just trying to get me back. If he could convince me that he really takes me seriously—my worth, I mean—then I’d feel safe again. I just haven’t felt safe for such a long time.”

“What exactly do you want Robert to do?”

“I don’t know. He’ll have to do it, and then I’ll know.”

“Do you love him?”

“Robert?” Nikki said.

“Yes. Do you love him?”

Nikki thought for a few moments. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m so tired. Sometimes I wish both of them would go away and leave me alone.”

Ellen had faced the early Labor Day weekend with foreboding, knowing it meant the end of summer and that Reuben’s wife and two children would be coming back to the city. All over New York the summer bachelors were getting their winter divorces from their girl friends, relegating them back to the five-thirty quickies, the after-dinner “walks,” the endless waiting for phone calls. Ellen expected more from Reuben, but it was important to leave the arrangements to him. Now she was testing him. He did not fail her.

He had a bachelor friend who lent him an apartment. Ellen and Reuben met there for lunch or after work every weekday, and on Fridays they took the afternoon off and met there right after lunch. Ellen made sure that the bachelor friend of Reuben’s did not know whom he was taking there, had never heard of her in fact. It was a pleasant little apartment—a bedroom, a living room, and a kitchen—but it had a temporary look. The man who lived there had been through a divorce that stripped him of most of his material possessions; he had heavy alimony and child-support payments, and his apartment was furnished with castoffs. Ellen felt this was an unwholesome atmosphere for her romance with Reuben.

She bought some hardy green plants and set them in straw baskets in the living room and bedroom. They made a tremendous difference. At least the place didn’t look as if whoever lived there had given up. She said the plants were a thank-you gift for their host. Reuben bought a set of nice wine glasses and a Lucite cooler.

“I don’t know how anybody can live like that,” Ellen said. “He ought to get a girl friend. Bachelors have the shortest life expectancy of anybody, and I can see why. Did you look in his refrigerator?”

“You’ve made a difference just being around,” Reuben said. “You always make any place you’re in come to life.”

“Why, thank you.”

“This isn’t the best arrangement,” he said, “but I thought it would be safer than a hotel. And nicer.”

“I just want to be with you,” Ellen said.

“And I with you.”

The switchboard at Heller & Strauss was turned off at five o’clock and Ellen didn’t bother to give Hank or the girls her night line, so when she said she was working late they had to believe her. Some evenings she didn’t get home in time to fix dinner, but they went right along without her, scrounging for themselves. She was glad Jill and Stacey were old enough to take care of themselves. Reuben’s wife was used to his working late. The only difference in his life was that now he left the office early; he came home at the same time as usual.

Ellen became aware of what a sacrifice Reuben was making for their affair in terms of time he had ordinarily spent working. In the afternoons when they met at their borrowed apartment he always had manuscripts with him, to take home to edit. He groaned over one that was a thousand pages long, saying he had hoped the paper shortage would have ended books like that. But he loved his work, even when he complained. He was excited by the business dealings as well as the creative part. “Look at this, the perfect disaster novel—I signed it for very little money, it needs a lot of work, but I can sell it for a good six figures to paperback.” Ellen wished she had something as interesting in her life to keep her busy. Part of Reuben’s mind was always on his responsibilities, but she was an adult now and she realized she wouldn’t want a man who ignored his career for her. She never wanted to be anywhere near another failure.

What was painful was the weekends. Reuben immersed himself in manuscripts from the office, and tried to be particularly attentive to his two sons. He neglected his wife to the point where she worried about his health, never imagining it was because he was thinking about another woman. Ellen, who had no weekend work, took long walks, cleaned the apartment, and yelled at her daughters. She thought about Reuben. They had discussed accidental meetings at various believable places, such as a museum or a department store, but had then rejected the idea because it would be too painful to pretend. They longed for another whole weekend away together, even an entire night, but they couldn’t figure out how to arrange it.

“This is much worse than I anticipated,” Reuben told her.

“In what way?”

“In every way. I’m obsessed with you. I can’t keep up this charade at home. I want to leave my wife and live with you all the time.”

“Oh, wouldn’t that be lovely …”

“No, I’m not kidding. I mean it, Ellen. Would you leave your husband?”

“I … hadn’t really thought about it except as a daydream. What would we do then?”

“I’d marry you of course. I’m a man who has to be married. I want only one woman. There’s no reason not to be married if one doesn’t want to run around. I want you and me to have a real home, a life. We could sleep in the same bed together every night, take our vacations together, have all those weekends to ourselves. You’d love my kids, Ellen. And I know I’d love yours. We’d have a normal life instead of hiding like criminals.”

All right, Ellen told herself, now you have to decide. You do what you’ve always done and break it off, or you play for time, or you make the move. This is it.

“You look so miserable,” he told her tenderly. “Why do you look so sad?”

“I’m thinking.”

“Does my idea sound so horrible? If it does, I’ll take it back.”

“No, don’t take it back. I like it. Would you really do it?”

“I will if you will.”

“All right,” Ellen said.

She had no intention of telling Hank anything until she was totally sure of Reuben; in fact, she wasn’t really going to face the enormity of the whole idea until Reuben proved he meant what he had said. It was not that she didn’t believe him, he was the same as the others, but this time something more was required of her and she had to protect herself.

On the last Monday of September Ellen and Reuben met at the borrowed apartment at lunchtime. They made love, as they always did, and then they lay in bed eating sandwiches and drinking wine.

“I told her over the weekend,” Reuben said. He sounded almost too casual, but there was a catch in his voice that made Ellen sure he was telling the truth and was only trying to control his overwhelming emotion.

“And what did she say?”

“She said goodbye. She’s a proud woman.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I said I wanted to live apart from her and think things out. And that I feel our marriage is over. I didn’t tell her about you because she knows who you are and I didn’t want to make it any harder for you when you tell Hank.”

“Did she ask if there was someone else?”

“Yes,” Reuben said. “I guess that’s natural. I said there was, but I wouldn’t tell her who.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s your turn now.”

“I know,” Ellen said. “I will. But where will you live?”

“I’m moving out this weekend to the Salisbury. It’s a residential hotel on Fifty-seventh Street. I’ll have a living room and a bedroom and bathroom and a real kitchen. We can live like human beings. You can move in with me this weekend.”

“I can’t move in with you till we’re both divorced,” Ellen said, horrified. “That’s adultery. Your wife will name me corespondent, my husband will kill me!”

“I guess you’re right,” Reuben said sadly. “I was moving too fast. But it all seems like a fantasy come true. I feel so free. I feel guilty of course, but I feel reborn too. You’re going to tell Hank tonight.”

“It’s Stacey’s birthday this weekend,” Ellen said, remembering. “She’s going to be fourteen. We got her tickets to a rock concert, it’s her first big grown-up night out with her friends. We’re going to have a family celebration dinner before. I can’t tell Hank till after this weekend.”

“Then when will I see you?”

“I’ll spend the day with you Saturday and help you get your new apartment all fixed up. And I’ll come over Sunday morning and spend the whole day.”

“And then we’ll have our own place,” Reuben said.

“It
is
like a dream come true,” Ellen said.

“Do you trust me now?”

“Of course.”

They kissed. “I want you to trust me,” he said against her mouth. “Trust me.”

“I do.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“I know.”

“I’ll take care of you now.”

They made love again. Sex was explosive. She thought of this man, a real man, finally taking care of her after all these years of being the strong one, and she felt herself melting into his soul with relief and gratitude.

But afterward she thought that there were so many things Reuben couldn’t do for her even though he wanted to. He couldn’t leave Hank and the girls for her. She had to do that for herself. She was glad it was Stacey’s birthday on Saturday. It put things off a little. She would live for the moment.

Reuben moved into the Salisbury Hotel on Friday afternoon. Ellen bought hardy green plants in straw baskets and put them in every room—the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen, even the bathroom. Dampness was good for plants. On Saturday she helped him arrange his things. There wasn’t much to arrange; he had put his clothes in the closets and dresser, his books and papers were scattered around on tables the way he said he liked it, and he had ordered in a supply of food from a nearby market. There were six photographs of his two boys on the dresser, all in thin silver frames. He had lined them up like a reproachful shooting gallery, directly opposite the bed. They christened the bed that afternoon. Ellen was glad he was facing in the opposite direction from the photos.

What kind of man, she wondered, put pictures of his kids right opposite the bed, so he would have to face them first thing in the morning and last thing at night, and after having sex? How could he stand it? Maybe his wife had made him take the pictures with him. Or maybe he had taken them to give the appearance of a doting father. Or maybe the pictures didn’t bother him the way they did her. Men had different sexual makeups from women, different systems of morality, she thought. She didn’t know how Reuben could get an erection looking at a baleful photo of his sons. It didn’t seem to hinder him.

There was a bottle of Dom Pérignon waiting for them in the refrigerator. They drank a toast.

“To our new life,” Reuben said.

“To our new life.”

She saw that he had even bought her a toothbrush. It sat on the ledge of the bathroom sink in its box, like a party favor. He had put a little card on it with her name and he had tied a silly bow around the box. Ellen was so touched that she wanted to cry.

October 1975

The day after her sister’s fourteenth birthday party Jill got her first period. She scrounged around her sister’s messy closet until she found the tampons. It was ironic, she thought, that she was sixteen and taking her baby sister’s tampons, because she had thought she would never need any of her own. Having a period horrified her. She tried to get the tampon in, but she got too tense and couldn’t. She didn’t want anything invading her body, especially down there. She threw the thing down the toilet and flushed it, put on her raincoat, and walked down Broadway until she found the drugstore that was open on Sundays. She was getting terrible cramps, so she bought an assortment of pills for that, some aspirin, and some pads that were supposed to stick to your underpants. She just helped herself to the things she needed and slammed them down on the counter as if she was used to such purchases, and the man who added her bill didn’t pay any attention to her at all. She had joined the rest of the female world. He had no idea what a trauma this was for her.

Luckily her mother was away all day. Jill was relieved about the new guy, because he kept her mother out of her life when she most needed privacy. She took her pills and curled up on her bed, her knees to her stomach, wondering why cramps burned so badly when they were supposed to just cramp. Tears rolled down her face. She supposed now she would grow and change in every way. She wanted to die.

Stacey was out doing homework at a friend’s house and her father was watching some sports thing on TV. Jill locked her bedroom door and waited on the bed until the pains got milder. She felt a little groggy. She got up and inspected herself in the mirror on the closet door, and then she stripped off all her clothes and inspected herself again, front, back, and side. She didn’t look any different. Her buds of breasts felt sore but they didn’t look bigger. There was a reassuring hollow between her hip bones, and her ribs went right up to her collarbone, it seemed. When she put her knees together she could get her fist between the insides of her thighs. Her backside was absolutely flat. She could count every little button on the back of her spine, and her shoulder blades stuck out like the tail fins on an old car. There was no place on her body where she could pinch the skin and find even a morsel of fat. She went into the closet and stepped on the scale. Eighty-nine. She’d lost all the blubber they’d forced on her in the hospital.

Jill danced in front of the mirror, admiring her thin naked body, praying to whatever power there was up there that nothing would change. She wasn’t really having a deluge, just the beginning of a period. Maybe she wouldn’t have them every month. Stacey didn’t in the beginning. She wasn’t built like Stacey anyway, so maybe her body wouldn’t change much. God, she hoped not. She didn’t want men looking at her. She was scared.

She got dressed again, put some records on the stereo, and went to bed. Those pills really knocked you out. She’d never taken any pill before except vitamins. She slept, and when she woke up it was seven o’clock. The last record had clicked off and the apartment was awfully quiet. She wondered where everybody was. Then she remembered her horrible condition and raced to the bathroom to inspect the pad. She wished everything was still normal like it was yesterday. She felt cold.