The Last Chance (6 page)

Dorothy was going to major in psychology, she wanted to work with disturbed teen-agers. Last summer she had been a counselor in a nice middle-class camp, but this summer she was going to work in White Plains in a mental hospital. It was a branch of Payne Whitney, she said. Would she live in Wilton with her parents and commute? No, Dorothy said, the trip was too much, she would have a little room in the dorm on the hospital grounds, she was damn lucky to get it, she said, nurses got first choice. One gone, like ten little Indians, but Nikki had only two. Lynn had a boyfriend. She had been living with him almost all term. He was a senior at her college, and they were going to hitchhike through Europe together this summer. Lynn already had maps and lists of all the cheap youth hostels. She was going to be a political science major, although she would have preferred English. Lynn carefully chose her courses with an eye to getting into the best graduate school so she could get a good job afterward. How different her girls were from her at their age, Nikki thought with admiration and a sense of loss. Not loss of them, but loss of her own youth, her own best years. She had chosen to have marriage and a career; it had been a brave decision in her day, but now as she looked back on her life and compared it with the life her daughters were entering, it seemed as if she hadn’t really had all of either part, the job or the marriage. She had flirted and cajoled her way through her jobs, and she had flirted and cajoled her way through her marriage. She had never dared be completely honest in any segment of her life.

There was no way she could explain this to Robert. You couldn’t, after twenty-two years of marriage, turn to your husband and say, “None of this has ever been real.” They had a warm, cuddly relationship that had fooled everyone, even themselves, but they had never really known each other, and now it was too late.

Sunday morning breakfast in the large, old-fashioned kitchen, with
The New York Times
spread around and Dorothy and Lynn home and Robert doing the cooking, which he liked to do on Sunday mornings, the old, deaf dog at Nikki’s feet, was like old times, and yet it was temporary too, because Lynn’s boyfriend was coming tomorrow to stay with them until he and Lynn drove back to school, and he would be an intruder. Nikki and Robert had decided to be modern and let Lynn and her boyfriend sleep in the same room since they were living together at college anyway.

“Poor Dog,” Lynn said. “Woof! Can you hear me? Mom, that dog is stone-deaf.”

“He can’t see too well either,” Robert said. “He’s going to die soon.”

“Oh, that makes me feel terrible,” Dorothy said. “I remember when we got him. Who named him Dog, anyway?”

“You did,” Nikki said.

“Poor Dog,” Lynn said again, and fed him a piece of bacon.

They had gone off to their grown-up lives and left their dog, Nikki thought sadly, hardly even noticing him, and that seemed almost worse than leaving their parents, because their parents weren’t dependent on them.

“He was really your mother’s dog,” Robert said. “You girls never even remembered to let him out in the mornings. A dog belongs to the person who feeds him, so he’s your mother’s dog.”

I don’t want him, Nikki thought. Why do I get stuck with everything around here? The responsibilities, the leftovers, and the separations. I’m tired of being Good Old Mom. I want my own apartment in New York and my own life.

She turned to the real estate section of the
Times
. She hadn’t looked at it for years, and she was shocked at how expensive the rent for a one-bedroom apartment was in New York. It would have to be within walking distance of her office, and those were more expensive still. But, so what? She had her salary, it was hers to keep, and if she had to spend every penny she made on her own life, it was about time. She wasn’t leaving Robert. They would spend weekends together in Wilton as always. He could come in to New York once in a while if he wanted to go to the theater with her, or just missed her, and he could stay overnight if he wanted to. But it was important that she pay for this apartment herself so that it would be hers and nobody could ever tell her again what she could or couldn’t do in her own home.

“How about a family conference?” Nikki said.

“Aren’t we a little old for that?” said Lynn.

“You two are too old for that but I’m not,” Nikki said lightly. “Robert, sit down, darling.” She knew why she was doing it with all of them there instead of talking it over with Robert, because he would say no and the girls would say yes.

The three of them looked at her tolerantly. “Mind if I get another cup of coffee first?” Robert asked. It infuriated her, his attitude that something so important to her was nothing more than a form of entertainment to him, like TV, and he wanted a snack to go with it. He put the hot coffee and a slice of coffee cake in front of him and sat down.

“I have decided to rent a little apartment in New York to stay in during the week, and I’d like your ideas on the subject,” Nikki said.

Robert took a sip of his coffee. “As I remember, at family conferences you’re supposed to start with ‘I was thinking of,’ not ‘I have decided.’”

“I guess I forgot,” Nikki said. “It
has
been a long time. Okay, I was thinking of renting …” There was a knot in her stomach.

“Why?” Dorothy asked.

“Because I waste four hours a day commuting, it takes valuable time and energy away from my life and my work, and you girls are grown and don’t need me here.”

“What about me?” Robert asked.

“You and I hardly see each other during the week. We’d enjoy our weekends together more if I weren’t so tired.”

“I think you and I should discuss this alone,” Robert said.

“I’d like to discuss it as a family,” Nikki said.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Dorothy said.

“Me too,” Lynn said. “Mom’s never lived alone. It’s great to be on your own, you really learn a lot.”

“I notice you didn’t stay alone very long,” her father said wryly.

Lynn raised an eyebrow at him. “Mom might get lonesome and come home. But I think she should have her chance if she wants it.”

“I don’t know what’s so unusual about this, Dad,” Dorothy said. “If you had the apartment in New York and Mom was staying out here in the country, nobody would think it was odd. Half the population of New York City goes away for the summer—the women and children.”

“We’ve already accepted the fact that I love my job and I mean to keep it,” Nikki said. “We have always accepted that fact. Now we should begin to accept the fact that I’m entitled to certain considerations.”

“If you had an apartment, could we come to stay with you?” Dorothy asked.

“Of course! I’ll get a convertible sofa in the living room.”

“Great!”

“I want you to know, Nikki,” Robert said, “that if you get your own apartment you’ll have to do it with your own money, and I won’t set one foot in it. Ever.” His tone was cold and even.

Nikki felt a little chill of fear that unexpectedly turned into one of delighted anticipation. “Do you mean that?”

“I mean it. If you want your own apartment I won’t stop you, but for me it will be as if it doesn’t exist. I’ll see you here.”

“He’ll change his mind,” Dorothy said sympathetically.

“He might not,” Nikki said. Her eyes locked with her husband’s. She smiled. “If that’s the way he feels, he’s entitled.”

The next morning before she went to her office Nikki looked at one of the apartments she had seen listed in the newspaper. She looked at two more during her lunch hour (which was always two hours), having canceled her lunch date. She fell in love with the third one. It was on the second floor of a brownstone in the East Fifties, in front, facing the quiet street, with a dear little balcony outside the living room windows, just big enough for a few potted fir trees in winter and some geraniums in summer. There was a tiny old-fashioned elevator that wouldn’t hold more than two people, but she was used to stairs and the second floor was convenient. The building seemed clean and well kept. The apartment itself was really just a huge living room with a high ceiling and a working fireplace, a sleeping alcove with a window in it, that had once probably been a dressing room, a kitchen and a bathroom. It was big enough for one person, all right for an overnight guest, and too small for two. Nikki immediately decided where she would build her bookcases. She went back to the rental agent, filled in the forms, and wrote out checks for the deposit and the first month’s rent.

“You get a free paint job, of course,” the agent said, “and the super on the premises will fix anything you need fixed. Here’s his phone number. You’ll want to get your own locksmith to change the locks, of course.”

“Of course,” Nikki said absently.

“Some tenants like to give the super a spare key, in case they lose theirs or they go away. But he doesn’t take care of packages.”

“I can get packages at my office.”

“The previous tenant wants to know if you’re interested in buying the bedroom air conditioner.”

Bedroom? Oh, that alcove. Nikki giggled. She’d have to get used to being a city person. In many ways she was just a hick. “That rusty old piece of junk? Make him take it out, and I’ll buy my own.”

The agent nodded. “You’re right.”

“I want everything painted white,” Nikki said. She would do it all in glass and chrome, very spare, in contrast to the rich oldness of the architecture. A double bed in the alcove instead of a queen-sized would give her more room. If Robert wasn’t going to set foot in her apartment, then a double bed would be big enough, and if he changed his mind, then he could see that she had taken him at his word. No one was going to push her around any more.

“Send the lease to me at my office,” Nikki said. It would have been nice to have Robert look it over since he was a lawyer, but she knew that was impossible. She would show it to one of the men she worked with, they were all experienced in being heads of households. And of course she would read it carefully herself. She wasn’t a dumbbell. She’d been running that house in the country all these years. The only thing different about a place in the city was that it was smaller and easier.

When one of the women Rachel knew asked her to join a few of them in forming a consciousness-raising group, Rachel thought it was ridiculous. Did those women think they had been
unconscious
all their lives? But when she thought over her daily schedule she realized that although all her hours were filled she was really alone all day. Her hairdresser, her manicurist, the people who waited on her in shops, none of them were actually friends. She’d always had a determination not to be one of those women who confided their private lives to their hairdresser. Rachel had never had anyone to confide in, but she hadn’t thought she needed anyone, and she couldn’t imagine spilling everything out to a group of women, one of whom she only knew socially and the others strangers. She, who never even made lunch dates because she’d rather sleep, and because she had to put up with enough boring women nearly every evening, was going to meet at noon on Central Park West with a consciousness-raising group? Well, why not? Lawrence always told her she ought to have women friends. She was an only child, she didn’t even have a sister. So she said yes, and promised herself not to laugh at them although she was sure she would want to.

She wanted to dress properly for a consciousness-raising session, and she figured they would all be into women’s lib, so she bought a pair of prefaded blue jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers, and wore them under her mink coat. (She wasn’t going to freeze to fit in.) She wore no makeup and tied her hair back in a thin wool scarf. With her big sunglasses she looked like a model again in that outfit, but it was the best she could do. She took a cab. She wasn’t fool enough to walk across the park even in the daytime. The kids who mugged you today were getting younger all the time. What had happened to school?

“I’m so glad you came,” Millie, the woman she knew, said when she opened the door. It was in one of those enormous West Side apartments, as big as Rachel’s but not elegant. There were six other women sitting in the living room, all sizes and shapes of women in all sorts of attire. The only thing they all had in common was that they seemed to have been born in Rachel’s decade.

Rachel was introduced to them by first names, occupations, ages, and marital status. “What do I call you?” Millie asked her, “Housewife?”

“I don’t know.”

“Rachel used to be a model, now she’s married. Thirty-five. No children.”

The woman who lived in the apartment had set out a tray with coffee and sandwiches because the ones who worked had given up their lunch hours to meet here. Rachel, who had just had breakfast, declined and lit a cigarette. She seldom smoked, but she was nervous.

“I think it’s a good idea for us to meet like this,” Millie said. “I, for one, was brought up never to trust or really like other women. When we were dating, other girls were competition for the boys, then when we were all married I never trusted any of the women in the group if she fell out by getting a divorce …”

They all laughed. “A divorced woman took my husband away,” said a large-bosomed woman, Rhoda, a psychologist. “Or at least that’s what I thought until I remembered nobody
takes
someone away unless he’s gone in the first place. I realized that everything I told my patients were things I believed in my head but that in my heart I was just as guilt-ridden and prejudiced as they were. Maybe more.”

“I don’t know why it’s so important to have a husband,” said a thin divorcée named Pat. “I left my husband, he didn’t leave me. And there was no other man either. I just wanted to be able to think about myself for a change instead of gearing my entire life to what he wanted, to making him comfortable, to protecting him from reality.”

“I think women are better able to cope with reality than men are,” Millie said.

“Men and women really aren’t different to begin with,” said Anne, a dance teacher. “But we’re taught all our lives that we’re different and that they’re better. We ought to start here by telling all the ways we women are better than men, and then when we’re feeling terrific we can figure out how to get along without them.”