The Road Taken (24 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

For Peggy, phase two after the shock and grief was a kind of estranged numbness. She was behaving more normally now, but she wondered if other people were aware that she was really not with them when they acted as if they thought she was. After it was clear that Joan had left town for what would be a long time, Peggy and Ed had gone into New York to have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with her parents and the out-of-town family, and to bring Peter to see his young cousins; and Peggy felt as if she were sleepwalking through the whole thing. The only reason she had agreed to make the effort to go was that it was less painful than having Christmas in her own home without Marianne.

When the twenty-four-hour command performance was over and she could return home, she was worn out and relieved, as if she had survived a marathon. Everyone had tried so hard to be nice, and cheerful, and she saw and listened to them as if they were at a distance. She spent the rest of the holiday period in Larchmont, and on New Year’s Eve she and Ed went to bed at ten o’clock.

Before all this happened they would have gone to bed at ten to have sex, after sharing a bottle of premidnight champagne, but that night they only slept, far apart in the large bed. Their mutual exhaustion was a sort of avoidance. She knew she was not being fair to him, but every time he touched her, even brushed against her, something inside her screamed. He was too good. You could not fault goodness, and yet his very decency filled Peggy with despair.

Hate, along with anger, were her constant companions. It was not enough simply to blame Joan, even though it had been an accident; Peggy still hated her all the time. None of this was rational, she believed, but it was the way things were. The passage of months, winter into spring, changed nothing. Only Peter seemed to have recovered. He slept in his own bed again, and he played with his friends instead of clinging to his mother. Peggy thought his timely recovery was partly due to the resilience of children and the survival instinct, and also because Peter sensed that she was so odd.

It was summer then, the first anniversary of Marianne’s death. “We should go on a trip,” Ed suggested. “You and me and Peter, or just the two of us.”

“Why would I do that?” Peggy said. She needed to go to the cemetery and lay flowers on the little grave. She didn’t want to be somewhere else trying to have fun.

“This is such a hard time,” Ed said. “Maybe if we go to another place it will help you to . . .”

“Help me forget?”

“No . . .”

“You want me to forget her, don’t you,” Peggy said.

“No. I won’t, and you won’t. Never. We’re different people now. Reality won’t ever be that carefree again. But it’s time for us to get on with our lives.”

“I thought I was living my life,” Peggy said, although she knew that was not what he meant.

That afternoon, after she and Ed had come back from the cemetery, the house empty, Peter safely at day camp, Ed took her in his arms. Peggy knew that men, more than women, used sex as a way of surviving death. They needed the closeness. Lose a baby, make a baby, even if it was symbolic because you were using birth control. Sex was oblivion. She gently moved away from him. There was no way she could respond, and she wondered if he would care if she did or not, if all he wanted was comfort and not her pleasure.

Who were those people so long ago, young Peggy and young Ed, who couldn’t keep their hands off each other?

They were silent at dinner and she was sure he was hurt, perhaps even angry. Nobody knew this because nobody asked, but she hadn’t let him make love to her for a year. Other husbands would be cheating already. Maybe he was. There were plenty of pretty, young, innocent secretaries in the city who could easily have a crush on the sophisticated, interesting executive. The stress of the past twelve months had taken its toll on Ed, but he was still an attractive man. Thirty-three wasn’t old, it was prime. Some girl would find his look of tragedy appealing, even sexy. She would want to save him. From what?His harridan wife, his dead baby? His celibacy?

As soon as dinner was over Peter went outside to play with his friends. “Go with him, watch them,” Peggy said to Ed, as always. Peter didn’t like being hovered over, but Ed invariably managed to make it all right by playing baseball with the little boys, coaching them, or turning whatever they were doing into a game where he was valuable as an adult.

A woman could not ask for a better husband, Peggy thought. Why can’t I force myself to have sex with him? It would be so easy. He wouldn’t be angry if I didn’t do anything. He knows how I feel. He just wants to be with me. But I can’t do it tonight, not tonight. Not after Marianne . . . Later. Another time.

When would the other time be? Peggy didn’t know. One evening at the end of summer the phone rang, and when she picked it up the other person was silent for longer than was natural, and then she heard a click. Was it a wrong number or did he have someone, some silly girl who called and then hung up? Was it his summertime romance? She looked at Ed, but he didn’t seem different, not nervous. Peggy looked away. Even if he was in mourning, how long could a healthy man go without sexual release? Did he masturbate in the shower? Did he do that to be faithful to her?

She held out her drink for him to refresh. They drank before dinner, with dinner, and after dinner these days. They didn’t get drunk, or slur their words, or make a scene, they never argued, but the vodka was a part of their routine. Drinking, Peggy thought, is supposed to make people more receptive. Can I make myself more receptive? Can I at least try?

In the beginning she had not wanted him to touch her because she wanted to disappear. Then it was because he was so nice and she was so filled with fury that it took all her energy away. Now Peggy did not have any idea why it was. She had gotten too used to his not touching her. Was this the way it happened in other people’s marriages? She couldn’t ask her friends. Except for their family tragedy, she and Ed were considered perfect people. She couldn’t betray him by revealing they were not.

When Peter had been put to bed and she and Ed went into their bedroom, Peggy couldn’t get the thought of that caller out of her mind. There comes a time when you must fight for what is yours or lose it, she told herself. If it wasn’t his girlfriend it was, at least, a warning.

She undressed in front of him instead of in the bathroom with the door locked as she had taken to doing since she started keeping him away. She knew she still looked good, although she had been too thin for a while now, since she had gone into mourning and stopped eating. But she would always have big breasts. Ed had liked them. He was looking at them now. She was wearing a black bra, and she stood there looking into his eyes as she started to take it off. Ed strode over and unhooked it, and then he put his arms around her and buried his lips in the place where her shoulder met her neck, and he gave a choked little cry.

He carried her to their bed. Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, Peggy thought, with humor and irony, not lust, and she realized she was trying to think of other things than what Ed was doing to her, that she was again trying to get away from her body. She must not, she told herself, she must concentrate. She stroked him and made appreciative soft noises. She helped him take off her underpants, and helped him get on top of her, although he knew very well how to do it himself. He was kissing her, and Peggy thought how odd it was that she had never before noticed how much saliva kissing generated, and how it wasn’t pleasant at all.

When Ed tried to enter her it felt to her as if he were striking a wall. There seemed literally no place for him to go. She knew it felt that way to him, too. Could the vaginal muscles be that strong, to close up, to keep away an erect and passionate man? He was hurting her, but she would have tried to tolerate it if that would have let him get in. The citadel, Peggy thought. The army with the battering ram at the gates of the citadel, and the citadel will not surrender.

It had not hurt nearly that much when she had lost her virginity to Ed, many years ago. The alarming thing was that not only was her husband hurting her on this night when she had meant well, but that short of tearing her to pieces, and perhaps not even then, he could not go where she would not let him. No, where
her body
would not let him. She would have. She prayed silently to herself to relax, to help, or at least not to hinder. But the body had its own strength, and its own message.

Or perhaps it was the mind. The body and the mind were one, and she was the creature who lived within that body and dwelt side by side with that mind, and they ruled. Peggy no longer had any idea why her own mind had turned against her in this way. She felt helpless and frightened. She wondered if what had happened would become chronic.

Ed rolled off her and sighed. He didn’t put his arms around her but he held her hand. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “I’d better not try anymore tonight.”

Or ever, she thought. She breathed deeply and moved closer to him. They lay that way for a while, side by side, their bodies touching because she felt safe now.

“Peggy, you can’t live with hate,” Ed said, finally.

“Hate? What do you mean? I love you!” she said.

“It’s not me you hate.”

“No, it’s you I love,” she said.

“I’m talking about Joan.”

Peggy felt the blood rising into her face as if her head were going to explode. She had not realized she was that angry. Her rage could kill her. No, Joan would kill her, through her rage. “Don’t mention her name in this room,” she said.

“Just think about it,” Ed said. “Please? Don’t let her destroy us. I love you, Peggy.” His tone though, she thought, was not so much loving as ominous.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

It was fall now, no longer hot, and the air on the Lower East Side was not so stultifying, the smells a little lighter, the street activity even happy. The children were in school. The anniversary of Marianne’s death had come and gone. Joan was still working in the obscure, greasy restaurant, still living in the same dismal apartment, and her father was still sending her money, thinking she was in California. Her mother sent notes with the money: sad little flags to make her notice the family she had left behind.

Ginger was Perle Mesta, the “hostess with the mostes’,” Rose wrote. Hugh was happy in his relationship with his “roommate,” Teddy, and had enrolled in a cooking class, laughing because he now considered himself a gourmet and the first thing they were taught to make in class was a hamburger. Maude and Daisy were both grandmothers again, which was so convenient because the children would grow up close. Perhaps Joan would like to send the proud parents a nice card?

Peggy and Ed were not mentioned.

Joan saw the man on a fine autumn night when he came into her restaurant to eat dinner, alone. She was surprised to see anyone so tall and young and handsome there, when their main clientele were old, overweight, argumentative, and poor. He had fair hair and looked like Ed had when he was first dating Peggy. Joan had a crush on the stranger from the first moment she laid eyes on him. Luckily, she was his waitress.

“Here by accident, I guess,” she said, handing him the menu that was so food-encrusted it made you not want to order anything.

He smiled. He had perfect white teeth and blue eyes. She wondered if he were Ed’s younger brother, brought here by some nightmare of fate, but then she remembered that Ed’s brothers were much older and had never given any indication of wanting to leave Iowa. “What do you recommend?” he asked her.

“Me,” Joan wanted to say. He was the first man she had noticed in over a year who made her think flirting was worth the trouble. “The chicken is edible,” she said. “On the days they clean it.”

“You talked me out of that,” the man said. “I’ll have the pot roast.”

“You want the steak,” she said. She took the menu out of his hand. “Trust me.”

She returned with ice water. “You’re funny,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Joan. What’s yours?”

“Trevor. Well, Joan, with the steak I’d like a baked potato instead of the French fries.”

“It’s steamed,” she said. “They bake them in the morning and then wrap them in foil and steam them all day long until they fall apart. You want the spinach. I’ll have the cook make it up fresh for you.”

“Is it house policy or is it you?” he asked. “To be a stand-up comedy waitress?”

“It’s me,” Joan said. “You’re a gorgeous-looking man and I wouldn’t want to be responsible for your ill health. Besides, I want you to come back.”

He was smiling at her while he ate and she brought food to other tables and removed dirty dishes, and once in a while she smiled at him. She could tell he liked her. She felt a little tweak in the area of her heart and wondered if it was Ed she’d had a secret longing for all these years without knowing it, or whether she liked this Trevor anyway and looking like Ed just made it easier.

“So,” she said when she brought his coffee, “do you live around here or are you lost?”

“I just moved in,” he said. “In fact, I live next door.”

“But you speak English.”

He laughed. “I’m a struggling actor and the price is right. Do you live around here?”

“Yes.”

“And are you an actress?”

“No, I’m a waitress.”

“That’s it? No ambition?”

“None.”

“But you’re so pretty,” he said.

Joan shrugged. “Thanks.”

When he had finished his meal he put money on the check, and when Joan tried to take it away he put his hand on hers. “Where does a stand-up comedy waitress with no ambition go when she gets off work?” he asked.

“Walking,” she said.

“Really? Not drinking, not dancing, not bowling?”

“If you want to bowl you go to Little Italy and play bocce,” she said. “At least, the guys do.”

“Would you like to play bocce with me later?”

In Little Italy? She had never ventured up there for fear someone she knew might see her, but she was tempted. If caught, she could always pretend she was here visiting from California; the family would not expect her to come to see them, at least not at first. “It will be too late,” Joan said.

“Then how about a walk? You can show me the neighborhood.”

“I get off at eleven,” Joan said. She thought how odd it was that men never asked if you had a boyfriend. They just assumed you were free. And there is no one freer than I am, she thought. “I’ll meet you in front of here.”

He was waiting, and they walked down to the East River, to the piers, and sat on a damp bulkhead and talked about their lives. She avoided telling him anything real. She said she came from Sausalito, which was a place she knew a little about since she was pretending to her parents that she was living there. He was from Pennsylvania. He asked her why she had come to New York if she had no ambition, since New York City was the place where young people came to have exciting lives and seek their fortune. She replied that an exciting life without the fortune was enough for her. He did not seem to notice that the life she had apparently chosen for herself was dead end.

He told her how much he wanted to be a successful actor, how he was going to acting classes, and to auditions, and how he had just signed with a small, independent agent. His dream was to go to Hollywood. He was studying theater, and the stage was what everyone aspired to, but he coveted a career in the movies. He talked about himself nonstop, and Joan remembered that most men were perfectly happy talking about every detail of their lives and their day and thought you were a good conversationalist if you just listened. His last name was Winslow. Hers, Joan told him easily, was Coleman. She’d had her new name long enough to be used to it. He asked her if she was related to some Colemans he knew in Philadelphia and she said no. After that he continued to talk about himself.

When dawn came up Trevor Winslow walked her to her apartment house. He lived just down the street, it happened. He invited her to go to a free play with him in a church basement on her day off, and she accepted with pleasure. He kissed her good night, which sent her off into an instant lustful fantasy, and he waited until he saw that she had entered her building safely before he walked away; on top of everything else he was a gentleman.

After they went to the play in the church basement, an amateurish and unintelligible effort that was as bad as Joan had expected it would be, she and Trevor went for a drink and dissected it. “There are so many people here who want to act,” he said bitterly. “And most of them are hopeless. I just need my chance.”

“Of course you do.”

“I’ve started studying fencing,” Trevor said.

“For what?”

“So I can do Shakespeare. Every actor needs to cut his teeth on Shakespeare. And I’m taking diction lessons too, so I can be in classical plays and have an English accent.”

“When do you have time to work?” Joan asked.

“It’s a lot of work.”

“No, you know, earn money to pay for all of that.”

He looked embarrassed. “My father sends me money.”

“How generous of him.”

“It’s mainly because he doesn’t want me to come back.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. I don’t get along with him, or with my stepmother.”

“Where’s your mother?”

“Remarried. I hardly ever see her. Her husband is a jerk.”

“How sad,” Joan said, thinking how alone he was. Except for Aunt Harriette’s husband, she didn’t know anyone who was divorced. People just put up with each other, unless they were socialites or movie stars, who got divorced all the time.

“And you?” he said. “What is your family like?”

She felt a chill. They are wonderful, she thought, and I miss them, and two of them hate me. “Oh, just a family,” Joan said, in a tone that told him not to ask more.

On their next date Trevor invited her to come to his apartment for dinner, and suggested she chip in for the food and help him cook. Joan didn’t mind. There was no way she could have entertained properly in her horrible apartment. She and Trevor shopped for food together, and he bought a bottle of scotch and paid for that himself because he was the man.

His apartment was not much better than hers, except that he had apparently painted it, and hung up some theatrical posters. Because it was his and not hers, Joan found it cozy. They cooked and laughed and ate, and cleaned up together, and then they listened to his favorite Frank Sinatra album,
Only the Lonely,
which was very melancholy. They sat on the studio couch, which was also the bed, of course, and they sipped more scotch, and they necked.

How sexy he is, Joan thought. How gorgeous. When he started trying to go further she let him. In order not to disturb the spontaneity of their encounter, should there be one, she had put in her diaphragm before she left home.

“Are you . . . prepared?” he asked. “Do you want me to . . .”

“I can’t have children,” Joan said. She didn’t know where that lie had come from; it had just popped out of her mouth. She had no idea if she could have children or not, but most people could. What she had really meant, she supposed, was that she didn’t deserve children.

There was a tall mirror on the wall opposite the bed, without a frame, propped on the floor, and when they were naked Trevor had her sit on the floor in front of it with her legs apart, with himself behind her holding her breasts, and he told her to gaze at the picture they made together. It seemed to make him excited. “Isn’t that beautiful?” he said.

Joan had the feeling he was talking about himself. After all, he was an actor. “Yes,” she said.

He looks like young Ed and I look like Peggy when she was happy, she thought. We are Ed and Peggy. If Trevor Winslow and I had a baby and it was a girl it would look just like Marianne.

She thought about that later when she lay pressed against him in his narrow bed, sleepless. She knew it was leading to a crazy idea, and she didn’t know where it had come from. She wasn’t even that drunk. But she couldn’t get it out of her head. And then in the night, smelling the warm beachy scent of him, listening to him breathe, so alive, so filled with energy, Joan began to see the random illumination as an actual plan.

I could have a baby with Trevor, Joan thought, and then I could give it to Peggy, and then she would forgive me. I could actually replace Marianne. I wouldn’t tell her it was my baby, I’d just see that she got it, and then she would have a normal life again, and once she was back in the world of new motherhood she would be able to see everything much more clearly. How it wasn’t really my fault, and how I’m not a terrible person. I could do all that if I really thought it out.

She could get pregnant and disappear again. Trevor wouldn’t know she was pregnant and wouldn’t care that she moved on. If he got his dream he would go to Hollywood, and the last thing on his mind would be to invite her to come with him. She could not imagine falling in love with him; he was just another of those wrong guys she always met and became attached to. Why, Joan wondered, had she not thought of this insane, wonderful, perfect idea before? A baby would solve everything for Peggy and Ed. That is, if the baby was a girl.