Three Women (21 page)

Elena

Elena had never felt such a sense of fullness, not even with Evan and Chad. Then she had been a kid, not in control of anything, doomed to serve out her educational sentence of boredom and humiliation. Now her feelings were even more intense, as if during those years of meaningless sex, inside she had been growing stronger and waiting, always waiting.

Missing him when they were not together was an ache she carried with her like a bad tooth. He was a fluid environment that surrounded her, in which she lived, in which she floated, in which she swam. Her feelings were not inside her, but she was inside them. They were so large they must carry everything before them. It did not matter what Suzanne suspected or what Marta might do, their love was too big and too strong and too intense to be contained by anyone.

They saw each other every day of the week, except weekends. He
told Marta he needed Elena to come upstairs afternoons Monday and Thursday, to act as his secretary on the book project. Marta was actually happy that he wanted a secretary. She thought it was just great they were getting along so well. Elena felt Suzanne watching her when they were together, but Suzanne was in court, Suzanne was at school, Suzanne was even sometimes with that weird little boyfriend of hers. When they were all collected at some meal or event, she and Jim were utterly cool, only watching each other from the corners of their eyes, nothing steamy, no meaningful glances. They cooperated, fitting together without even having to chew it over. It was part of their seamless unity.

Weekends were chancy. Sometimes Marta and Suzanne went shooting. Sometimes Suzanne took Beverly off someplace. Suzanne was making an effort to spend time with Beverly on weekends. Elena knew Beverly found that a dubious blessing but could not say so. Everyone was always telling Beverly what a good daughter Suzanne was to take her in, as if she really had a choice: she could hardly dump her mother in the street. Every day Elena blessed her luck that she had not moved out. She had meant to, but she did not have close friends in Boston where she could crash. Her best friends were in Chicago or New York, places she had lived between college and the present. The people she knew here were kids she had gone to high school with—people she had zero desire to see—and guys from the restaurant. Beverly had turned out to be her best supporter, the only person besides Jim she could confide in—and she could hardly discuss Jim with Jim. Her grandmother had been a slut in her own time and knew a lot about guys. And she was, clearly, totally on Elena’s side.

“Sometimes I wonder if I should get pregnant,” she said to Beverly. “I mean he has a kid with Marta. Adam, a weasel. I could do better than that without trying.”

“Not sure…thing.”

“You mean, that I could do better?”

“That he…like baby.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right. That I should wait till he leaves her and we go out to California.”

Beverly nodded crookedly but fervently. “Wait.”

“But I was thinking it could nudge him along. It’s going to take something to get him to move out.”

“Better…free…choice.”

“Of course he’d choose me. He loves me. He’s crazy for me, Grandma. But he’s entrenched. It’ll take a little dynamite to blow him loose, don’t you see.”

“Big bang…can hurt…you too.”

She went out Saturday night with a guy she knew from the restaurant, the red-haired sous-chef who had a crush on her. She had run into him at Chestnut Hill when she was shopping for a new bathing suit at the late summer sales. Jim liked to swim, and last Tuesday, when he didn’t have any appointments, they had sneaked off to Walden Pond. They had fucked in the woods on a beach towel. It was exciting. He told her she made him feel twenty years younger.

Jim didn’t like her going out with Stan, but she told him it was a good cover. She enjoyed seeing him smoke with jealousy. Stan was just a guy, gangly and adolescent, on Prozac and moody in a totally uninteresting way. He was about as sexy as one of his salads, but he was perfect for going out with on a night she couldn’t see Jim. Evenings were generally off-limits for them. Soon they would be living together and this dodging around would end.

It would take them a little while to get on their feet in California, but who cared? She was used to living on the margin, and she’d teach him tricks for getting by on little cash. Soon he would be set up there as a therapist and patients would come to him. She’d get a job in a restaurant or an office, easy. She didn’t need much, and he had told her time and again that owning things meant nothing to him. He was living Marta’s life, he said. All he needed, he could fit in a backpack and a briefcase, besides her. She was what he really needed. They’d go out to bars to hear music and to movies, and it wouldn’t matter who saw them. They would make love whenever they pleased. They would sleep in the same sweet bed. They would wake together and shower together and eat together every morning. They’d live together in a way that would be cool and loose and pretty. She was totally amused that Jim could manage to work up jealousy over Stan, but if he wanted to suffer, good. He should realize that she was attractive to other men, that if he didn’t grab her, someone else would. Slinking around and acting like secret agents was amusing at times, but enough! Maybe they would rent a house in Cal
ifornia where he could use part of it for his office, much nicer than that hole he had now.

It was easy to be cool and sensible when she wasn’t with him, but when he was there and touching her, her brains boiled dry. She couldn’t think, she could only feel at top decibels. That was love, and she had known it once, and never since. She was consumed by it as if she were set on fire from toes to hair. She wondered that people did not turn on the street and stare at her, astonished. Sometimes she felt like a goddess, glowing from within, burning white-hot with a passion that must be palpable to those who came near her. This was hyperreality, this was what was meant to be.

She liked to keep him on edge. When they rode to work together in the mornings, on days when they did not take separate cars, she would put her head in his lap and sometimes she would suck him. Twice he fucked her on the couch between appointments, with her hand thrust into her mouth to bite so she wouldn’t cry out. Once, the next client sat in the waiting room just outside. Sometimes she came when they did these odd quickies in random places, but often she didn’t. She did not care. It was the excitement she craved, the sense that they were out of control, that they were so besotted with each other that they had to take wild chances. If she was going to pry him loose from his boring marriage and his ill-fitting staid life, she had to draw him over the edge, teach him to relish taking chances, give him back his recklessness and daring.

“I’m good for you,” she said, as they lay on his bed upstairs—the bed he shared at night with his fat wife. Marta used to be thin, but lately she had been gaining weight, especially around the middle. She had a belly. Elena, who observed her carefully, noticed her middle-age spread. She was letting herself go. “You don’t think so, but I give you back what you’ve lost over the years.”

“You’re certainly good for John henry.” He put her hand on his prick, flaccid after their recent fuck.

“I’m good for all of you, Jimmy.”

“No one’s called me that in years. Not since high school.”

“What were you like then?”

He laughed shortly. “I was class president. That meant a lot to me.
I’d have killed for it, but I only had to charm everyone. I was on the track team. I was the second-best pitcher. I played in a stupid garage band, the Lords of Chaos. My girlfriend was voted the prettiest in our class.”

“I don’t think I would have liked you then.”

“I don’t think I liked myself. I was putting on an act all the time.”

“Same as you were doing when I met you, Jimmy. You’d gone to sleep. Now you’re fully awake.”

“Not at the moment.” He yawned. “I’d love to take a nap. If only we dared take a snooze…”

“Some afternoon we will. But I’m not sleepy yet.” She rolled over onto him, feeling him harden beneath her. “And neither are you, baby boy.”

Suzanne

Suzanne had her checkbook and returned checks spread out on her desk. What she had feared but dismissed from possibility was true: she was living far beyond her means. She was spending more than she was making, and she had to transfer money from her investment accounts to cover household expenses.

It was expensive for Rachel to spend this year in Israel, and electricity and food costs had risen to more than double what they had been now that Elena and Beverly were living in the apartment. But it was the cost of Beverly’s illness that was bleeding the money away. Sylvia came in five days a week. Medicaid no longer covered the therapists. The medication and the rental on items from the hospital bed to the wheelchair were expensive. In the few months Beverly had been with her, Suzanne’s cushion for the year had gone. She had already used up money saved in the last five years. Modifications to the house had cost well over twelve thousand dollars, wiping out an IRA on which she had to pay a stiff
penalty. She could see the situation clearly, and it scared her. She would have a modest pension from the university if she hung on until retirement, but the expenditures she was looking at were catastrophic.

She rose from her desk to stand at the bay window, staring. What could she do? Rachel had another year of rabbinical school when she returned. She was going to have to urge Rachel to have a small wedding, which she suspected would disappoint her. She would have to approach Rachel again about waiting till she was back in the States to marry Michael. The airfare to Israel and the hotels would be a major expense in a good year; now, she did not see how she could manage it. Was Elena serious about going back to school? If so, where was that money coming from? Could she cut back Sylvia to four days? Could she get Elena to spend one or two days a week with Beverly? She was going to have to do less pro bono work and more law for money. Her life was crumbling before her, and she did not know how to stop the hemorrhage of money and time. She had a man seriously interested in her for the first time in a decade and a half and she barely had time to fall into bed with him once a week. She would lose him. She would lose herself. What options did she have?

The next night as she clung to Jake, the words burst out of her. “It’s not fair, it’s not fair!” At once a panic seized her. He would see how selfish she was; he would be turned off by her callousness and cruelty, in even thinking that.

“Of course, nothing is, so whatever you’re talking about has to be true. I met today with people from Pittsfield, where GE has been dumping PCBs for years and years….”

But she had to talk to him. She felt choked with unspoken words. Who else could she trust? “My mother. We’ve never gotten along. We aren’t close. And here she is like a great stone that’s landed on me. I feel like the ancient mariner, with the dead huge bird, the albatross around his neck. But I didn’t shoot my mother. She shot herself.”

He drew back to look levelly at her. “You really are upset. How about a drink? Would a nice cognac somebody gave me soothe you a little?”

“I don’t want a drink, I want a solution. She went on smoking for years after it was clear how dangerous it was. Well, she wanted to smoke. She’s never eaten in a healthy way. She had her energy and she did
whatever the hell she pleased. Now I’m stuck with the consequences.”

Jake stood looking at her. He grimaced, “So is she, baby. So is she.”

Suzanne sighed, deflating. “I know that. It’s just that I can’t afford all the help she needs. Illness is so unbelievably expensive, it just breaks you. There’s no help to be had. It breaks you financially and it breaks you emotionally and it breaks you into exhaustion.”

“Would it cost less to put her in a nursing home?”

“It would cost even more. And I can’t do it. It’s not an option. She’s been a strong political woman who spent most of her life trying to make the world more decent. She doesn’t deserve terminal storage.”

He was pacing. She wished he wouldn’t. It distracted her and made her a little edgy. It was part of his superabundant energy. He stopped in front of her and said, “This Pittsfield business, we’re going to need your help.”

“My help.”

“I think it’s going to require going to court.”

She groaned and turned away. One more thing she was supposed to do, and it would be gratis, of course. A year ago, six months ago, she would not have hesitated in a good cause: now she was stymied. She could end up representing a client like GE because she needed the money to support her mother.

He was frowning. “What bugs me is how long this minor case in California is taking. It keeps getting postponed. Both sides keep making motions and it goes on and on. I have a chance to go to Greenland and I’m going to have to pass it up. They let me come to Boston because it would be a hardship and the court trusts me that far, but I’m not allowed out of the country.”

She stared at him. “Why would you want to go to Greenland?”

“I like extreme places,” he said. “I like wilderness. Although it isn’t quite. The last time I was there, we used an old army installation, from the days of the early warning system. At some point, the place had been evacuated, and they’d never returned. It was like a crime scene—everything abandoned and left as it was. A frying pan on the stove with old grease in it. A girlie magazine open on the john floor…. One of the things that drove my last girlfriend crazy was that I’ll pick up and go anyplace, Suzanne. I can’t resist it.”

“What is it you can’t resist?” She noticed that his desire for travel
did not frighten her. Better adventure with polar bears than with other women.

He turned at last to face her. “My childhood was dull. Dreary. I think my parents never talked to each other except when they were traveling. Maybe I still think traveling is the answer to boredom. Perhaps I’m just not a very imaginative person and I need a change of scene to keep my blood flowing. But I can’t stand the idea of places I’ve never been. And if I’ve had a good time in a place, I want to go back. It’s a permanent itch.”

“Maybe a trip with a purpose is for you what an interesting case is for me.” It was a relief to think about Jake, even briefly, instead of herself and her life.

Rachel was back to communicating on E-mail. She sent short messages every couple of days, although sometimes she got long-winded and lyrical with endless descriptions of Jerusalem, like a woman with whom Rachel had fallen in love and who also angered her constantly, as faithless lovers will. Jerusalem belonged to too many. You could never have an illusion you had discovered her or even that she was special for you. She was special for everyone. She touched them all into rich madness. For three thousand years poets and prophets and priests and nuts had sung her praises, and they still fought to the death for her.

Rachel seemed so distant, she had an impulse to pick up and go to her. She missed Rachel’s positive, level mind and temperament. Of course she could not. Suzanne had a brief interval between summer school and the beginning of classes in the fall. They used to go out on Cape Cod. Then they went up to Maine. Now she was lucky if she got as far as the corner deli. She could not barge off and leave Beverly alone in the house, with Elena working. Elena had been better with her grandmother than Suzanne had ever expected, and she was grateful. Elena spent hours with her grandmother, who seemed more responsive to her than to Suzanne or anyone else, except Sylvia.

“I really, really appreciate your kindness to Beverly,” Suzanne said to her daughter. They were both in the kitchen having a quick breakfast. Elena was bound for Jim’s office and Suzanne was headed for court.

“It isn’t kindness. You don’t understand. Nobody does, except maybe Sylvia. Grandma’s all there. She’s still all there inside.”

“Of course I understand—”

“Then why are you always in a hurry with her?”

“I don’t think I am….”

Elena laughed sharply. “You can’t ever wait for her to finish a sentence.”

“I just try to anticipate what she’s trying so hard to say.”

“She hates that.”

“I think you’re projecting.”

“She told me she hates it.”

Suzanne was embarrassed. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

Elena shook back her black mane. “You’d finish that sentence too. Some other way.”

Suzanne felt as if they had conspired to put her in the wrong. She was trying so hard to make it all work and to carry the load of the house. She had a moment of blind furious exasperation. Her hand clenched on her coffee mug. She had a brief desire to throw it at her daughter, an urge she was ashamed of as soon as she became aware of it. “It’s hard for all of us,” she said softly.

“How hard is it really for you? You’re out of the house most of the time. Sylvia does nine tenths of the work.”

“Fine. I’ll quit everything and stay home with my mother. Will you get a job that pays enough to support this entire household?”

“I couldn’t support a pet dog, and you know it. It always comes down to money with you. Beverly’s right!”

“It all comes down to money with everybody, Elena. Food on the table, shelter overhead, Sylvia, her medicine…”

“Just don’t ever talk that way to Grandma or I’ll never, never forgive you.”

“Elena, I brought her here. From the time she had her stroke, I flew down to see her every weekend. Obviously I care about her and I’m perfectly willing to sacrifice to make her comfortable. It requires effort from all of us.”

Suzanne went off to the bathroom and shut herself in, trembling with frustration and irritation. I’m perfectly willing to sacrifice, huh? What choice do I have? Who asked me what I want, anyhow? I’m sick and tired of being good, but there’s no escape from duty, is there? And no use fuming about it. Elena will leave when she wants to, and I’ll still be
here with Beverly, now and tomorrow and next year. It could go on for twenty years.

She had an acute sense of being in a trap. She stood in the bathroom, not the most spacious room, painted a pale blue, and stared at the white ceiling. She sank onto the cover of the toilet, clutching herself, feeling pecked to death, pulled and stretched to dangerous thinness. Her nerves were hot as overloaded wires. Her brain was a neglected radiator. She did not know what to do with her frustration, her anger, her weariness. There was no one she could hand it off to. She had started out feeling gratitude toward Elena for spending time with Beverly, and she had ended up wanting to break something over her daughter’s head.

She ran upstairs to Marta, who was standing in her slip putting on makeup in the bathroom. “Target practice, target practice this Saturday, please, please. If I don’t get to shoot something, my head is going to explode. We haven’t been going often enough.”

Marta looked at her over her shoulder as she carefully darkened her brows and eyelashes, giving her face more definition. “Are we in a crisis?”

Suzanne nodded. “I’m overextended and crazy. I need it. Promise me.”

Marta stood finishing her makeup and running over her schedule in her head. “We could steal away for an hour and a half Saturday morning, if we get going early. Ten minutes to get there, ten to get back. We should have a full hour to shoot once we set up.”

“There’s no way I can pay more of Rachel’s expenses,” Sam said bluntly. “So you have your mother? I have Stephanie, Jonah, and Emma. An old lady lying in bed doesn’t touch what one active kid burns up in piles of cash—a kid who wears out clothes every day and takes fourteen kinds of lessons with all that gear and private school and doctors and dentists up the wazoo. Therapists. Orthodontists. Their clothes cost as much as my suits.”

She recognized that voice of Sam’s. It was not his negotiating voice. It was his, This is my final offer voice. “I’m getting further in debt with every day. Rachel’s year in Israel is not cheap, as you may have noticed….”

“It wasn’t my idea she become a rabbi.”

“Right. She could always get a restaurant job.”

“At least Elena doesn’t send me tuition bills every time I turn around.”

Saturday morning as Marta and Suzanne stood in front of the shooting table at the rod and gun club they had joined years before, she thought, there’s something satisfying about handling the gun, aiming, and then that moment of percussion and destruction—harmless, appeasing to the tension within, punishing only the target and releasing the week’s frustration and rage. They had used to go every Saturday, enjoying the incongruity of two feminists shooting together. Gradually they had let the game lapse until they went only once a month or so.

“Why did we stop doing this? It’s fun. It’s a tremendous release.”

“Why?” Marta grinned, taking careful aim. Since they were wearing ear protectors, they talked loudly to hear each other. They were early, and the range was half empty. “Why did we stop going to movies? Why did we stop going for walks in the country? Why did I never get another dog after Archie died?” She got every shot into the target. Marta was a better shot than Suzanne, but Suzanne’s clusters were more consistent.

It was Suzanne’s turn. “Because we don’t have time, only projects and duties and relationships.” Soon Marta would have a baby and her time would be even more limited. An elderly invalid downstairs and a new baby upstairs: they would be one crazy overextended household. Suzanne got most of her bullets in the target, missing only twice on that round. “Have you told Jim yet about the baby?”

“Soon. Very soon.”

“What are you waiting for? The onset of labor?”

“My doctor’s coming back from the Cape and I have an appointment to see her the first Monday after Labor Day. If everything’s on schedule, I’ll tell him that day.” Marta was missing most of her shots.

“The longer you wait, the more he’s going to feel out of the loop.” She wanted to urge Marta to tell him now, before it was too late, because she had an increasing sense of trouble coming.

Suzanne loved fall. It meant going back to school, as it had in her childhood, and she enjoyed teaching. She looked forward to the new classes, to the new students, and to her research assistant, Jaime, back
from the Philippines where he had been visiting relatives. She wanted to get on with the law review article that had been languishing in her computer since February. She was tired of heat and air-conditioning equally, of soft asphalt underfoot, of fading cottons and browning grass and weary leaves on the maples along the street. She was beyond irritation at the kids next door screaming under her window when she was trying to work. She was sick of trying to figure out what to feed her family that wasn’t hideously expensive and wouldn’t heat up the kitchen.