Heartburn (8 page)

I see that once again I’ve gotten off the track, that I’ve drifted back to Mark, to Mark and Thelma, but I can’t help myself. When something like this happens, you suddenly have no sense of reality at all. You have lost a piece of your past. The infidelity itself is small potatoes compared to the low-level brain damage that results when a whole chunk of your life turns out to have been completely different from what you thought it was. It becomes impossible to look back at anything that’s happened—from the simplest exchange between the two of you at a dinner party to the horrible death of Mr. Abbey—without wondering what was really going on. See the couple. See the couple with the baby. See the couple with the baby having another baby.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Everything, as it happens.

But I was telling you about Mr. Abbey’s death for a reason, and it has nothing to do with betrayal. I simply wanted you to understand that when my group was robbed, I was almost grateful: it gave me another shot at being a witness to a crime.
And this time I knew stuff, I really knew stuff. I had actually laid eyes on the bugger. I couldn’t wait to be deposed, or whatever it is they call what they do to you.

They took us to the station house in a paddy wagon. This was fairly insulting, since we were the victims, but the detective in charge of the case had so many statements to take that he wanted to do it with stenographers and typewriters and tape recorders nearby. We spent the afternoon in a small green room and each waited his turn. First the police talked to Vera, because she was in charge of the premises, as they say, and then they talked to Vanessa, because she was the most famous and beautiful (I’ve come to terms with the fact that Vanessa is the most famous and beautiful, but it really irritated me that day since after all I was the one who knew the most about what happened), and then they talked to Diana because she insisted she would hold them responsible if she missed her Supersaver flight to Los Angeles. Finally Detective Nolan got to me.

I told him everything. I said the robber was about six feet tall. Sandy hair. Watery blue eyes. A little squint. Pinkish complexion. A long, thin nose on a wide, shiny face. Weighed about 165—I can never be sure what men weigh. A fat neck. A red and green plaid cotton shirt, a khaki jacket, jeans and running shoes. I first noticed him when a Japanese man on the subway took my picture. My guess is that the Japanese man has a picture of the robber.

“What did the Japanese man look like?” asked Detective Nolan.

“Japanese,” I said. “You know.”

“I know,” said Detective Nolan. “Small and Oriental and wearing a dark gray suit, with a camera around his neck.”

“Yes,” I said.

“What kind of camera?”

I shrugged. “I thought I was doing pretty well till we got to this part,” I said.

“You are doing very well,” said Detective Nolan.

“You say that to everybody,” I said.

“No I don’t,” he said.

“Yes you do,” I said. “I was a witness to something else recently, and the detective kept telling me how well I was doing, but I wasn’t really.”

“What else were you a witness to?” said Detective Nolan.

“A murder in Washington,” I said. “I wasn’t actually a witness—I just heard the shouting. Why?”

“I just wondered,” said Detective Nolan.

“You just wondered if I was the kind of woman who attracts criminals the way other women attract alcoholics or sadists.” (I have a friend who attracts dwarfs. Every time she turns around, a dwarf is following her. It’s very disturbing.)

“No,” said Detective Nolan. “What made you notice the man on the subway?”

“He winked at me,” I said.

“I see,” said Detective Nolan.

“It was probably my fault,” I said, “because I was smiling at the Japanese man, because I’d rather have my picture taken when I’m smiling because when I’m not smiling I look as if I’m frowning, and that’s when the robber winked at me, so I wondered if he was single, and then he winked again and I wondered if he was a mugger, and that’s when I put my diamond ring into my bra.”

“You mean you just looked at him and automatically wondered if he was single?”

“Well, he winked at me,” I said.

“What made you think he might be a mugger?”

“I didn’t really
believe
he was a mugger,” I said. “I just realized that he might not be a suitable object for fantasy. I didn’t even know if he’d gone to college.”

“Are you sure there wasn’t some detail you can’t quite remember that alerted you in some way?”

“Like the bulge of his revolver under his jacket?” I said.

“Yes,” said Detective Nolan.

“I don’t think so,” I said, “but it’s possible that he was looking at my ring before I twisted it backwards, and I knew that. Subconsciously, I mean.”

“Subconsciously,” said Detective Nolan.

“I just remembered something,” I said. “The Japanese man was wearing a little identification card. The kind they give you at conventions.”

“Excellent,” said Detective Nolan, and left the room. A few minutes later he came back and sat down.

“How long do you think it would take me?” he said.

“To find the Japanese man?” I said.

“To have therapy,” he said. “How long would it take?”

“What’s wrong with you?” I said.

“Nothing much,” he said.

“Nine years,” I said.

“How long did it take you?” he said.

“Nine years,” I said. “Of course, I’ve had two years off for good behavior, but now I’m back. And there was nothing much wrong with me, either. That’s why I graduated in the first place. The ones there’s really something wrong with are in forever.”

“Why did you start nine years ago?” asked Detective Nolan.

“I wanted a divorce,” I said.

“From this guy who’s being so terrible to you now?”

“From the first one,” I said. I looked at him. “Diana told you, didn’t she? I know she did. That bitch.”

“I’m sorry to bring it up,” said Detective Nolan. “It’s not even relevant. Although it might explain why you were wondering whether the guy on the subway was single.”

“That’s true,” I said.

“I was thinking of going into therapy because I can’t decide whether to have a hair transplant,” said Detective Nolan.

“You already have an awful lot of hair,” I said.

“It’s not mine,” said Detective Nolan.

“It looks pretty good,” I said.

“You think so?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m just telling you that so you know something about me, and since I know something about you, we’re even.”

“I don’t think you need therapy,” I said. “You might be the only person in America who doesn’t.”

I finished being interviewed by Detective Nolan, and gave him my father’s telephone number and my number at home in Washington just in case. It wasn’t until I was past the newspaper photographers and on the subway that I wondered whether Detective Nolan was single. He wasn’t exactly my type, but look where my type had gotten me. Then I wondered if he was uncircumcised. Then I wondered if I could be happily married to a policeman. Then I wondered why I was so hopelessly bourgeois that I couldn’t even have a fantasy about a man without moving on to marriage. Then I stopped
wondering. For one thing, the subway arrived at my stop and I got off. For another, it seemed clear to me that it would never matter. When I got to my father’s apartment, I was sure, Mark would be there.

And he was.

I
met Mark Feldman at a party in Washington at my friend Betty’s. Betty Searle and I went to college together, and we always used to talk about living together afterward; but one day Betty said that I was a brunette and belonged in New York and she was a blonde and belonged in Washington, and she was right. Betty went off to Washington and became famous for her local television show, her dinner parties, and her affairs with a first-rate cross section of the American left wing. Every Christmas she had a party that everyone in Washington came to, and there, one Christmas, was Mark. I recognized him the minute he walked in because I’d seen him on
Meet the Press
, and once you see that beard you never forget it. He has a black beard, but the part of it that’s on the left side of his chin has a little white stripe in it, where the skin underneath has no pigment. Just like a skunk is what you’re thinking, and you’re right, but it can look very odd and interesting. I’ve always liked odd and interesting-looking men because I’m odd and interesting-looking myself, and I always figured I had a better
shot at them than at the conventionally good-looking ones. (Water seeks its own level, et cetera.) My mother would have loved Mark Feldman’s beard. “A scar but not” is what she would have called it.

Mark is a syndicated columnist, that’s why I’d seen him on television. He writes about Washington as if it’s a city like any other (it’s not), filled with rich and interesting characters (it’s not). He’s known for being chronically perverse about politics. For instance, some people think it’s terrible that Washington doesn’t work, but Mark thinks it’s wonderful, because if it worked, something might actually be accomplished and then we’d really be in bad shape. This is a very clever way of being cynical, but never mind.

“Stay away from him,” Betty said, when she saw me looking over at him.

“Why?” I said.

“He’s trouble,” she said.

“Please don’t throw me in the brier patch,” I said.

So Mark Feldman and I went out to dinner. He told me the story of his first day in the newspaper business. I told him the story of wanting to play the ukulele in the school orchestra. And then we went to bed. We stayed there for about three weeks. Every so often he got up to write a column, and I got up to call my answering machine in New York to see if there was any reason not to be in Washington for a while longer. There wasn’t.

At some point in those three weeks, we had gotten out of bed for some reason or other, and we were taking a walk near the Pension Building. It’s a huge, block-square structure with a frieze of Civil War soldiers, thousands of soldiers moving cannons and guns and wagons and horses slowly around the
perimeter of the building. We went up the stairs to the entrance, and the guard let us into the inner courtyard. It was barely lit. The guard went down the hall and turned on the lights, and suddenly I could see the huge open space in the center of the building, pillars three stories high, leaded glass at the top. For many years, the inaugural balls were held in the Pension Building. We could hear the guard’s radio, with an old Sinatra song coming from it. Mark held out his hands.

“I can’t dance,” I said. “I’ve never been able to.”

“I believe in you, Rachel,” he said.

We started to dance.

“You didn’t believe me,” I said.

“I’m not going to step on your foot,” Mark said.

“I know that,” I said.

“No you don’t,” he said.

He stepped back and put his right hand on the front of his waist and his left hand on the back.

“Right here,” he said. “That part of you is mine for the next three minutes. After that I’ll give it back. But you have to give it to me for now.”

“I have to trust you,” I said.

“Right.”

“I have to
follow
you,” I said.

“Right.”

“Oh, God,” I said.

“You can do it, Rachel,” he said, and he put his arms out again. We started to dance. I closed my eyes. And I relaxed. People are always telling me to relax—the hairdresser tells me to relax, and the dentist, and the exercise teacher, and the dozen or so tennis pros who have attempted to do something about my backhand—but the only time I think I’ve ever really
relaxed in my entire life was for three minutes in the Pension Building dancing with Mark Feldman.

“I’m dancing,” I said.

“I love you,” he said.

So we were in love. We were madly in love. We flew back and forth on the Eastern shuttle and we called each other on various WATS lines and I became best friends with his best friends and he became best friends with my best friends, and there were presents and concerts and three-pound lobsters at the Palm, and then one day I came down to Washington and walked into his apartment and found a Virginia Slim cigarette butt in an ashtray.
Who’s been eating my porridge?
Mark said it was the maid’s. I pointed out that the maid smoked Newports. Then he said it was his sister’s. I pointed out that his sister had stopped smoking. Then he said he had bummed it from a copy girl at the office. I said that even copy girls at the office weren’t naive enough to smoke Virginia Slims. Then he got angry and said if he’d wanted to live with a detective he’d live with a detective and why didn’t I trust him? Then I got angry and said if he was going to bum cigarettes he ought to bum Marlboros so I wouldn’t think he was cheating on me, and why didn’t he at least have the decency to empty the ashtray into the garbage disposal.

Next thing you know, we were at a party—a party for his book about Washington—and I looked across the room and saw him talking to a reporter from the
Sydney Morning Herald
, and she started laughing, and even her laugh had an Australian accent. I walked over and carefully linked my arm through his. “Oh,” she said, “Mark was just telling me the most amusing story about his first day in the newspaper business.”

Then off he went on his book tour.

“
Hi, I’m Irv Kupcinet, and my guests tonight are Mark Feldman, syndicated columnist and author of the new best-seller
Return to Power;
Toby Bright, director of the Institute of Sexual Analysis and herself the best-selling author of
Good in Bed;
former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson; and Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet, who is here today to talk about Jesus Christ.
”

A couple of days after I saw the show on television, I was having lunch with my friend Marie, at the omelet place on Sixty-first Street.

“I met Mark,” Marie said.

“When?” I said.

“I was in Chicago a few days ago when he was on his book tour.”

“Where did you meet him?

“
Playboy
had a party for some book.”