Rameau's Niece (24 page)

Margaret felt sad and weary with guilt instead of relieved, instead of free at last, free at last. Why really was she telling Lily this? Did she want Lily to feel sorry for her? To comfort her? To jump in and take up the slack? I wonder what I am doing, she thought.

"Yes," she said. "That's what we must do. Separate."

"Margaret, come off it."

I wonder what I am doing, Margaret thought again. "Well, one of these days, anyway," she said.

And she put off the separation for a while. Where would she go, for one thing? And then, she was used to Edward and his ways. She ignored him and he ignored her and she worked on her book and on her new project, an essay entitled "Culture and Teeth."

E
DWARD ADHERED
to his schedule and Margaret did not. She had no schedule of her own to take its place, so she got up later and later each morning. She ate lunch at four or five o'clock, if at all. She skipped dinner. She spent a fair amount of time interviewing Dr. Lipi.

For Dr. Lipi, every man was his smile, and every woman hers. And when Dr. Lipi entered a room, every smile seemed to cry out to him, "Is there a doctor in the house?" He loved talking about teeth and assumed others loved listening. To Dr. Lipi, there was nothing surprising about Margaret questioning him for her essay.

One evening, Margaret went to his office as the last patient was leaving. Feeling shy and unsteady, she followed him into an examining room, where he showed her several x-rays of decaying gums.

Not for the first time, she wondered why anyone would choose to become a dentist. It was not a romantic calling: a dentist did not save lives, the way a doctor did. There was nothing heroic about a dentist. He was necessary, perhaps, but somehow not important. The popular image of a dentist was never a romantic figure. He was a villain, like the dentist in
Marathon Man.
Or a buffoon, she thought, envisioning W. C. Fields with pliers, leaning over his patient, a woman whose legs began flapping wildly, then suddenly wrapped themselves violently, obscenely, around him. Yes, she would have to discuss that in her essay.

"My name is really Lipinsky," said Dr. Lipi. "But I didn't want to cash in on my heritage. I wanted to make it on my own. No special pleading."

Margaret looked at the row of x-rays clipped to the white, lit screen and tried to remember how to flirt. Well, she could just pretend she was Till or Edward. For them, talking was a kind of flirtation, a flirtation with existence, preparatory to fucking its brains out. At the notion of fucking someone's brains out, even existence's, she felt herself suddenly aroused, and frightened in that cold room with Dr. Samuel Lipinsky. She shivered a little.

"Cold?" asked Dr. Lipinsky-Lipi. He gently laid a rubber-coated, lead-heavy x-ray apron across her shoulders. He had moved very close and stayed there. He likes me, Margaret thought. He likes me, too. Perched on the arm of the dental chair with the lead apron on her shoulders, she was at eye level with his charms of gold dangling teeth, with his white polo shirt, with his chest. He stayed where he was, saying nothing. This was it. This was her opportunity. What should she do? How to flirt? Show interest in what someone cares about? She'd been doing that shamelessly. Was there any aspect of the role of the tooth in Western civilization that she had not touched upon?

Flattery, passionate flattery, too. That was flirting, wasn't it? But not really a skill within her grasp, flattery.

"Teeth," she blurted out, "teeth are such ambivalent signs. They smile, yes, but they also bite. They can express friendliness, or they can be weapons."

She sat sideways on the edge of the dentist chair, and the dentist stood before her, against her. His legs in their loose, soft linen pants were just touching her knees. Had they been touching before? Or had Dr. Lipi moved closer?

"The dentist's existence
qua
dentist," Margaret continued in a quick, nervous, strangled voice, "is determined by his relationship to teeth, and so to what teeth signify."

She looked hopefully into his eyes, then quickly away.

"If teeth can be used to express friendliness," she went on bravely, "then the dentist's assault on them is a rejection of friendliness." If only Edward were there. He could do this for her. He would know just what to say. "If, however, teeth are weapons, then the dentist's assault is an attempt at disarmament, at castration."

Dr. Lipi, almost imperceptibly, moved back, just a little bit, just enough.

"But then the dentist is an ambivalent symbol independently, too," Margaret continued, hanging on to a last shred of hope. "For, on the one hand, he is the enemy, a stranger from outside attempting to disarm his patient, his victim, to strip away the defenses. On the other hand, he is a caring health professional, a healer, relieving pain."

Dr. Lipi cleared his throat. He stepped away from her. "Precisely," he said. "Precisely."

Margaret lay in bed watching
Claire's Knee
on Channel 13 and thinking of Lily's knee, Dr. Lipi's knee, Martin's knee. She turned the TV off, unable to concentrate on French witticisms. I'm not making sufficient progress, she thought. I'm stagnating. That's because I'm suffocating. Because Edward is always here, in this apartment, always around, always talking to me, at least he used to always talk to me, always listening to me when I talked, attentive, bringing me coffee, giving me encouraging kisses when I worked. No wonder I'm making so little progress! He has no consideration. And now, he's never even around! Just because I barely speak to him does not mean it's right for him to come home late, to devote so much time to his students and his sordid little didactic love affairs with pretty girls.

It was no one's fault. That's just the way it was, irresponsibility and betrayal on his side; the simple search for independence on hers. She would have to stop fooling around and tell him. The fruit was ripe, ready to fall from the trees. Quit standing around in the shade palms up, waiting. Shake the branches, Margaret.

She would have to leave Edward. She'd already put it off too long, out of inertia, nostalgia, whatever. But you're a big girl now, Margaret, she thought. You're a big grown up girl with an inquiring mind and a roving eye.

She looked forlornly around her bedroom, at the curtains, the toppling pile of books, the chest of drawers, the basket overflowing with dirty laundry. But our dirty laundry will mingle no longer, she thought. She began to cry.

When Edward went out to run, Margaret called Richard at his house in the Berkshires and woke him up.

"It's Sunday morning," he said, his lovely voice heavy with sleep and with sadness at being awakened. "Early Sunday morning."

"Can I stay at your apartment for a while? I won't bother you. I need a place to go."

"Don't you have a mother?"

"Come on, Richard. It's important."

Reluctantly, and only because he himself would at least be gone for several days and wanted at that moment to go back to sleep, he agreed and arranged with a neighbor to give her the keys.

Hurriedly, so she wouldn't weaken and change her mind, Margaret wrote out a note to Edward. It said, "I can't stay here. I need some peace and quiet and isolation to finish this book. Without having someone around all the time. You're
never
home. So you won't mind if I leave. I will be staying in Richard's maid's room. Margaret." There! She had done it. She had left Edward. She quickly packed a box of books and papers, a small suitcase, and took a cab across town.

Margaret got the keys and lugged her stuff, as she had been instructed, back to the maid's room, a dreary slot painted yellow in a misguided attempt to cheer it up.

"You know," Lily had said on the phone, "you were always like this in college, dumping guys for no good reason, but you were also with them for no good reason. But this is not college, and Edward is different. Be careful, Margaret. He might not take you back."

"I might not want to go back."

Especially when I can stay here in this charming little hideaway! she added now, to herself. She stood on the threshold of the maid's room. Inside was a sagging cot, a sink, and a wastebasket.

Margaret dropped her box and suitcase with a thump, set up a card table that took up almost the whole room, and put out her books. Rameau's niece didn't have these problems, she thought. She just motioned to the gardener, and he did as he was told.

Edward. She had left him. Just an hour or so ago. This, this is what they mean by a heavy heart, she thought.

Margaret tried to make herself comfortable in Richard's apartment, although she knew just how uncomfortable her comfort would have made him. As uncomfortable as it made her. She was in a forbidden place. She was on the wrong side of his desk.

She walked from room to room almost on tiptoe, almost afraid, furtive, glancing at the furniture and the pictures, then sneaking back to her own squalid room. The apartment, as much as she could see from the corner of her guilty eye, was decorated with piles of books and a few pieces of nondescript furniture and some Audubon prints that she was sure were real and dozens of large, old, loudly ticking clocks.

It was very clean, Richard's apartment. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. The clocks rattled and clattered. Maybe I should just stay here, she thought. Live with Richard. He could devote himself to me. A life of forever-unfulfilled pedagogical, sexual tension. Editing, editing
me
from morning till night. A life of flirtation. An exquisite life.

But Richard could not be depended upon for a lifetime of editorial flirtation. Richard had other fish to fry, uncles and other writers and friends and boyfriends and assistants and a mother and sisters and brothers to fry. A grandmother, too, no doubt, to fry.

The horrible clocks began to chime and bong. They were everywhere. They hung from the walls. They stood on the floor. They perched on the countertops. Margaret tried to count the chimes, but there were so many clocks calling out from so many places that their hollow rhythmic noise blended and swelled into one awful, echoing voice. No, she could not stay here for very long.

What time is it, anyway? Margaret wondered when the noise had subsided, for the only room without a clock was the maid's room. She looked at her watch and saw that it was still only eleven. I have miles to go before I sleep, she thought. Sleep with whom, though? Sleep with whom?

Forget Richard and his horrible house of clocks. She must clarify the three propositions. Which one represented reality? Experience must teach what reason cannot.

She went into Richard's room, sat down on his bed, and looked at some magazines—gray quarterlies, a
Publishers Weekly.
She flipped through, shyly looking up at Richard's bedroom now and then, a pleasant, simple, white bedroom with far too many clocks. Hickory dickory dock. Her gaze retreated to the magazine, and something there caught her eye. An ad. An ad for a book by Art Turner. Art Turner?
Her
Art Turner? He had finished and actually published this famous book? The long-awaited work of his entire adult life was available between two cardboard covers, available to the scrutiny and scorn (scorn, surely) of the public, to the scrutiny and scorn of her, Margaret, his beneficiary and secret sworn enemy?

Of course, Art had spoken of his book being almost finished, about to come out. Months ago, when she'd last seen him. But he'd been doing that for years, for as long as Margaret had known him. Margaret grinned helplessly, malevolently. It is not enough that I succeed, said someone, someone French. My best friend must fail. Art is a monster and must fail, and he is not even my best friend.

Margaret went into her new home, the grimy rectangle, which, she now noticed, had a mop and bucket in the corner. She listened to the clocks, rattling like a drawer of tin pots. She went to the window and looked down eight stories at a dog straining at its leash, dragging a young woman on high heels, and Margaret could see the heels clicking, for she could not hear them from that distance.

Margaret went into the kitchen and thoughtfully ate a jar of preserved peaches she was sure Richard was saving to give to someone else. Today, she thought. She would begin to experience, to know, today, and she would begin with Martin.

"I will take you to
Katya Kabanova,
" he had said, calling her when he returned to New York. "You will read the synopsis. You will see, you will understand, you will understand everything. Then I will take you back to my client's house. My client and friend. He is away in the country while I install my electronics. I will take you home with me there, and you will hear
Katya Kabanova
on a recording. You will hear, and you will understand everything."

At Lincoln Center, Martin stood by the fountain, holding a small nosegay of violets.

Margaret's heart beat faster. I must be in love. No one brings you flowers unless you're in love with him.

"Marguerite, my darling girl." He kissed her, first on one cheek, then the other. The feel of him, and the scent, reminded her of the airplane, when he was a stranger, silent and sprawled across her, his face buried in her breast.

"You are so kind to accompany me on my little visits here and there, and so I bring to you these flowers."

Margaret held them, wondering what to do with them during the opera, and thanked him, taking the opportunity to kiss him again, lingering there against his cheek, against him for a second too long, then self-consciously pulling away.

Maybe I can check the flowers, she thought.

"Again you have forgotten the book for my father? Marguerite, you are impossible. But at least you have not forgotten me, my friend. Ah, this is really something, to hear such singers today."

They sat down and Margaret put the flowers under her seat. When she sat up, Martin leaned close to her and put his hand on hers. His long eyelashes were half lowered, his lips drawn together in a slight smile.

"Marguerite," he whispered, in a voice almost teasing, "you have forgotten the keepsake for my father. But I have not forgotten you. I have for you a surprise."