My Summer With George (10 page)

Several groans and confessions: “Discover? We already know.”

“I know I believe in it. Not with my brain, but with my heart…”

“No, it’s with your imagination.”

“Well,
I
don’t believe in it anymore. Not at all!”

“Maybe it’s just our generation.” Enid sighed. “Maybe it was the period when we were brought up.”

“We’re not all the same age,” I argued.

“Well, those of us over forty-five. We were raised to believe that all we should want and all we’d ever have was a husband, kids, and a house. And that if we got it, we’d live happily ever after.”

“But Leni and Dotty have it too, and they’re in their thirties and forties. What about you, Mary?”

“I like to think I’m immune”—she smiled—“but after listening to you, I won’t count on it.”

“What about younger women, women in their twenties?” Babette glanced around the table.

Heads shook with questions, murmurs of doubt.

I considered. “The only young women I know are my daughters and their friends. And heaven knows Lettice is still waiting for Prince Charming, without a doubt. She really believes some man is going to make her happy forever after. Despite having had two husbands and two kids. So is Stephanie. And Lettice’s best friend, Sally. Oh! And there’s Liz Margolis, out at Sag Harbor. She’s searching desperately for Princess Charming.”

“You mean it’s universal?” Mary screeched.

“Hell, I don’t know,” I grouched.

“What about men? Do men have it?” Hazel asked.

“I was talking to James the other night on the phone,” I offered. “I was telling him about George—”

“You tell your son your private business?” She was shocked.

“I do. And he tells me his. Up to a point. Anyway, I asked him if he had this fantasy. And he said, ‘No, no. I don’t.’ Then he paused. ‘But maybe I imagine that I can make someone happy for the rest of
her
life.’”

Female expressions of affection, oohs and ahs.

“Oh, that’s just your son! That’s just because James is such a sweetie pie. I don’t believe most men feel that way,” Dotty argued.

“Do a survey!” Hazel ordered Babette. “Have the government mount an investigation.”

“Wonderful,” Babette said nastily. “I can see the look on the face of the chairman of the Appropriations Committee when I tell him I want funding to do a survey to find out how many men believe that someday they’ll meet a princess with whom they’ll live happily for the rest of their lives. How many men do you suppose would admit to it?”

Catcalls and guffaws erupted, and the evening ended in hilarity.

That night, between 1:00 and 4:00 a.m., I sold my Fifth Avenue apartment. George had sold his big old colonial in Louisville, realizing enough on it to buy a three-room apartment on Central Park West. We decided to buy two apartments, one above the other, and build a connecting staircase. That way we’d both have privacy, but we could be together every night if we chose. Much of my night was spent in imaginatively enjoying what we did on the nights we spent together, but there was a limit to those activities, and practical matters surged into my brain.

First I decorated my seven-room apartment, then I decorated George’s place. I wanted him to do it himself, but he claimed he wasn’t good at it, that he needed help. I insisted he go with me, so I wouldn’t pick out anything he disliked. His living room I did in shades of blue, the turquoise blue of his eyes, toning it down with grays and black. The walls were blue, the carpet was a blue-gray (he didn’t want Orientals), the couch was charcoal, the side chairs were different shades of grayish blue. I didn’t use drapes but chose shoji screens and palms, which gave the whole room an airy Eastern feel. It was beautiful. For his bedroom, I reversed that scheme, painting the walls a grayish blue—it took me a while to find the perfect color—that matched the rug exactly. The bedspread was charcoal, and I sprinkled electric blue throughout the room—in the side chair, the throw pillows, and a few glass ornaments. I put shoji screens on those windows too.

When it was all finished, we wandered through it hand in hand. He was happy. He said he’d never had such nice rooms. We decided to cook dinner in his apartment that night. He said he loved lamb stew, so we took the subway downtown to Jefferson Market, where I could buy a breast of lamb, and I made lamb stew with carrots, onions, and dumplings with parsley—the lightest, fluffiest dumplings I’d ever made. They were delicious.

Still, after I finally fell asleep, I dreamed that I was walking to Zabar’s to buy coffee and butter and cheese to take out to the country. On the grassy median strip on Broadway, two broken-down, ancient-looking bag ladies sat on a bench. One had no teeth; the other had only some tufts of hair. They were talking volubly, laughing wildly, with glittery eyes and blushing cheeks. As I passed them, one punched the other’s arm and said, “You know what? Harry said I was good-lookin’! How do you like that! Good-lookin’.”

“Wow!” the other cried. “Maybe he wants to marry you.”

G
EORGE CALLED EARLY SATURDAY
morning. “Hey. Wanna have lunch?”

“Today?” I could hear querulousness in my voice.

“Yeah. Come on! It’s great out!” Eagerly.

“Okay,” I said, not very enthusiastically.

“How about a picnic in the park?”

Oh! My heart tumbled a bit: such a romantic idea. I hadn’t picnicked in the park since…since Mark. When I bought the Fifth Avenue apartment, I hired the architect Mark Goldman to modernize it, and during the planning phase, we saw each other regularly. We had to discuss the design and work out the details; later, we had to shop for bathroom and kitchen fixtures. But we spent much more time together than was strictly necessary, because we were both feeling that terrific edge of excitement that comes from desire. Often we went into the park to have lunch under a tree. Mark would arrive at my door with a wicker basket filled with paté, cheeses, fruit, and French bread, or a salade niçoise or a chicken-and-potato salad he’d bought at Bon Marché over on Lexington. I’d pack my own wicker basket with chilled white wine, crystal stemware wrapped in linen napkins, and a large soft blanket. We’d walk across the street and into the park, leaving the paved walkways to wander until we found an idyllic isolated spot. That was in June too, 1971. Twenty years ago! Memories of those days, those feelings, flooded over me as I spoke to George from my desk facing the park.

“I’d love that.”

“I’ll get the lunch.”

“Lovely,” I gushed.

“What kind of sandwich do you want?”

Oh.

“Uh. Ham and cheese?”

“Whatever you want. What do you want to drink?”

“I’ll bring some wine.”

“I can’t drink wine at lunchtime. I fall asleep.”

“Okay. What do you want?”

“I’ll pick up a Diet Coke. You want one? No? Okay. I’ll pick you up at twelve. See ya.”

He hung up. No lingering for him. Unlike Mark, who, during our courting days, could not bring himself to hang up the phone. And he remained that way even after we were married. Certainly we went on having picnics in the park. We had one two weeks before he died, even though he was terribly weak. He loved the park. And he was always romantic. At least, that’s how I remember him.

George’s idea of a picnic might be unimaginative and skimpy, but he looked fresh and bright when he appeared at my door. His eyes were brilliant and greenish, reflecting his green-blue shirt.

“God, this place is fantastic!” he exclaimed as if he had never seen it before. “Can I go look at your bedroom again? Do you mind?” He strode off down the hall toward my room, which was large and bright and overlooked the park. After Mark died, I found it too painful to enter the bedroom, and I slept in my study for a few months. Then I redecorated the bedroom in a style that erased Mark, that would not make me think of him, with English prints in lavenders, purples, and greens, a canopied bed and flounced slipper chair. It was obviously a woman’s room. I wasn’t sure just what George found exciting about it. I felt it couldn’t be the view: after all, it shared the same view as the living room and study. I hoped his interest had something to do with me. But I wasn’t at all sure of that.

“God, that’s a gorgeous room. What a view! It’s got the best view of the whole apartment,” he announced, returning, smiling at me with those speaking eyes. I stood there and, letting them wash over me, smiled back, hoping my eyes spoke too.

“Ready?” he said.

It was a beautiful June day, perfect for a picnic, warm without being humid. Within minutes, we found a shaded grassy plot away from the walks and drives that meander through Central Park, and settled ourselves on the blanket I had brought, still in its old wicker basket. I poured myself a glass of wine from the chilled half-bottle I’d brought, while George cracked open his cola. I wanted to lie back on the blanket but very carefully did not. Instead, I leaned against a tree.

George seemed excited. His eyes were very bright, and his mouth kept curving into almost a smile. He drank deeply, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and leaned against his tree. “So. How would you like it if I moved up here for a while?”

I gasped.

“This guy, Warren Holt, he’s an editor at
Newsday.
He was in the seminar, and he asked if I’d like to spend the summer as a guest editor there. What do you think?”

My heart really tumbled then. The whole summer! “That’s great!” I cried.

“So what do you think?” he persisted, staring at me with those turquoise eyes. “You think I should do it?”

What was he asking me? Did he want objective advice or my feelings? I remembered an old friend, Oscar Deile, a political scientist who’d come up north to teach at Columbia for nine months and been miserable the whole time. Partly this was because his self-image was terrifically important to him, and he thought of himself as a liberal. But he was a liberal only as long as he stayed below the Mason-Dixon line. When he hit New York, he dwindled into a moderate, even a conservative on some issues. But it was also because he and his wife came from a small community that was warm and close-knit, despite its many vendettas, and they could not adjust to the rootless separateness of life in New York.

I decided to take an impersonal line. “Well, you have to think about whether you can stand it up here. In the North, I mean. I’ve known some southerners who couldn’t, who missed the friendliness and close ties they enjoyed in the South. It’s very different here. People are nasty—you know, bus drivers, supermarket checkout clerks, subway token salespeople. We don’t meet each other’s eyes on the streets; it’s too dangerous. You have to consider what you would miss.”

He shrugged. “Liddy’s in Africa, anyway. I’d probably see Edgar more than I do now. But I want to know what
you
think. How do you feel about it?”

Was he serious? Was this a statement? Could I reveal myself now? I could feel my face softening, turning into an intimate face. He was staring at me as if my answer mattered to him, as if he was hanging on it.

“Well, I’d love it,” I said softly, and smiled into his eyes.

He smiled in satisfaction and seemed to relax. He handed me a sandwich and unwrapped his own. We were both having ham and cheese. He bit into his sandwich.

My mind was riding on a plane above the earth, like a blue line in the sky, above the lowest clouds but not quite soaring. It couldn’t soar until he said something more concrete, but it was high, elated, ready to soar. He was considering staying in New York for a while, and he had intimated that my attitude might determine whether he did it or not. That was as close to a declaration of affection as a person could come without making one, wasn’t it?

So what now? It seemed to me that having extracted an admission of—well, of something: interest at least, sympathy, affection—he owed it to me to offer an equivalent profession. Of interest or sympathy at least, if not affection. I hung on his words…

He turned and looked off toward the footpath. “Yeah, it might be interesting.
Newsday’s
an interesting newspaper, if you know its history…” He launched into it.

I listened. He finished talking when he finished eating. He wiped his fingers together, dropping crumbs; he dabbed his mouth with his napkin and swallowed the last of his soda. I recognized the signs. I glanced at my watch. It was one o’clock. He had picked me up at noon. An hour. Exactly. Again. “Well, gotta get going,” he announced. “I’ve got a plane to catch.”

“A plane!”

“Sure. Gotta go back to Louisville this afternoon.” He stood and reached his hand out to help me up.

“What about the
Newsday
job?”

“Well, I’ve gotta work that out with the
Herald.
If I take it, I’ll be back in a couple of weeks. I’ll call you.”

I felt as if every cell in my body were bouncing, not in the heat of rage, not seething, but shuddering with nervousness. I felt like someone who’d been kissed, slapped, hugged, then hurled against a wall. Curled up on the floor against the wall, bruised and bloody, I gazed, dazed, up at a man who was smiling at me with love. When I reached my apartment, I sat down on the cushioned bench in my foyer. I laid the wicker basket on the floor beside me and just sat there, my hands hanging down beside me. Lou and Ko Chao don’t come in on Saturday, so the apartment was, thank heavens, empty. I could not have borne to speak to anyone.

After a time, I got up and went into the kitchen and poured a tall glass of water. I drank it like someone parched, someone who’d been lost in the desert for days. I stood there, looking at the kitchen cabinets, seeing nothing. I poured more water and carried it back to my study. I sat at my desk. My head was shaking back and forth, back and forth, as if I was saying no, no, no.

After a long time, my disciplined self stood up. It went to the foyer and opened the basket, shook out the blanket and folded it neatly and packed it away for another twenty years. I washed my wineglass and left it to drip dry. I rinsed out the wine bottle and put it in the recycling bin.

Then I went to bed.

I lay there unmoving, staring at the ceiling, my hands crossed on my chest like the hands of a corpse.