Smart Women (2 page)

When the book was published I held my breath waiting for letters from readers in Boulder telling me I’d gotten it all wrong. I was sure they were thinking it, even if they didn’t write to tell me. I learned how uncomfortable it is for me to set a book in a place I don’t know intimately, and I’ll never do it again. I like to think I can always spot a writer who doesn’t
really
know his or her location.

Right up to the last minute, the book had no title. This wasn’t an unusual situation for me, but it’s one that’s always made me anxious. Years earlier, my editor had called to say he was presenting my new children’s book at sales conference the next day and he needed a title by morning. Talk about pressure! That book became
Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself.
A real mouthful. I wanted a simple title for this novel. I spent days poring over the text of the book, searching for just the right phrase, but I couldn’t come up with anything. George suggested
Secondhand Man.
It was catchy but I agonized over it. Is that how I wanted my readers to think of Margo’s new love? And wouldn’t that make Margo and B.B. secondhand women? Oh, the tossing and turning over book titles! Instead, I settled on
Smart Women
, which comes from a line in the book: “How come smart women like us keep falling in love with schmucks?” Not exactly romantic.

On my book tour I was asked again and again what the title meant. Tired of explaining, I finally gave up and said, “It means the women in the book are smart.” Not everyone agreed. Especially men. I heard from plenty of them. They blamed Margo and B.B. for everything that had gone wrong in
their
lives. Some blamed them for the ills in the world. But there were a few who said that from then on, they were going to pay more attention to their children. Some said they might even pay more attention to their wives. I hope they did.

And I hope you enjoy this story of a new love complicated by old relationships. From what I see in my own family, as well as what I hear about from others, falling in love the second time around hasn’t changed at all (except for Internet dating). I doubt it ever will. That’s good news, right?

Oh, and just so you know—George and I will celebrate twenty-five years together this fall. I’d like to think Margo had a chance at that, too.

J
UDY
B
LUME

June 30, 2004

part one

1

M
ARGO SLID OPEN THE GLASS DOOR
leading to the patio outside her bedroom. She set the Jacuzzi pump for twenty minutes, tested the temperature of the water with her left foot, tossed her robe onto the redwood platform, then slowly lowered herself into the hot tub, allowing the swirling water to surround her body.

The late August night air was clear and crisp. The mountains were lit by an almost full moon. The only sounds were Margo’s own breathing and the gentle gurgling of the water in the tub. She inhaled deeply to get the full aroma of the cedar as it steamed up, closed her eyes, and felt the tensions of the day disappear.

“Margo . . .”

The voice, coming out of the stillness of the night, startled her. She looked around, but all she saw were the barrels of overgrown petunias and geraniums surrounding the hot tub. She never remembered to pick off the dead flowers, but that didn’t stop them from flourishing.

“Over here . . .” the voice said.

He was standing on the other side of her weathered wood fence. She could barely see him.

“What are you doing?” she asked sharply.

“Just wondering if you’d like to have a drink. I’m Andrew Broder. I’m staying in the house next door.”

“I know who you are,” Margo snapped. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s impolite to spy on your neighbor?”

“I’m not spying,” he said.

“And that eleven is too late to come over for a drink?”

“Is it?” he asked.

“Yes, it is.”

“I’m a night person,” he said. “It feels early to me.”

“Well, it’s not. Some of us have to get up and go to work in the morning.” She expected him to apologize and then to leave. She looked away. Certainly she was curious about him but no more so than any of her friends’ ex-husbands. Last Saturday she had seen him struggling with grocery bags. As he had walked from his truck to his house one had torn and everything had come crashing out, including a carton of eggs. Margo had watched from her upstairs deck, where she’d been reading. He’d stood there quietly, shaking his head and muttering. Then he’d cleaned up the mess, climbed back into his truck, and an hour later had returned with two more bags of groceries.

And on Sunday she’d heard him laughing with his daughter, Sara. She’d thought how nice it is for a father to enjoy his kid that way. And then she’d felt a pang because she never heard her kids laughing with Freddy anymore. She didn’t even know if they did laugh together.

“Look,” he said, and Margo realized that he was still standing by the fence. “Francine said that . . .”

“Francine?”

“I guess you call her B.B. . . . she said that if I needed to borrow sugar I could ask you.”

“Is that what you want then, sugar at eleven o’clock at night?”

“No,” he said. “I told you, I thought we could have a drink.” He held up a bottle.

“What is it?” Margo asked. “It’s dark. I can’t see that far.”

“Courvoisier. I’ve got the glasses too.”

Margo laughed. “You’re certainly prepared, aren’t you?”

“I try to be.”

“The gate’s unlatched,” she said.

And then another voice went off in her head.
Margo, Margo . . . what are you doing?

I’m not doing anything.

Bullshit.

Look, he’s not a killer, he’s not a rapist, I know that much.

You know more than that. You know why you shouldn’t let him in.

It’s just for a drink.

I’ve heard that before.

I’m just being neighborly.

Some people never learn.

He opened the gate and walked across the small yard to the hot tub. He sat down at the edge and poured them each a drink. “To neighbors,” he said, lifting his glass.

“It’s dangerous to drink in a hot tub,” Margo told him. “The alcohol does something . . . it can kill you.” She dipped her tongue into the glass, tasting the brandy, then set it down. Her body was submerged in the foaming water and the steam had made her black hair curl and mat around her face.

“You look different up close,” he said.

“Up close?”

“I’ve seen you a few times, walking from your car to your house.”

“Oh.” So, he’d been watching her too.

“You look like the girl on the Sun-Maid raisin box.”

“I’m hardly a girl.”

“Her older sister then.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“I like raisins,” he said.

Margo tried to remember how the girl on the raisin box looked, but all she could picture was a floppy red bonnet.

“I’ve never been in a hot tub,” he said. “What’s it like?”

“Hot,” she told him. “Some people can’t take it.”

“I’d like to give it a try,” he said.

“There are several hot tub clubs in town, but Boulder Springs is the best. You should call in advance. They get booked up.”

“I was thinking more of now,” he said.

“Now? In my hot tub?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” he said, pulling his sweatshirt over his head.

“Hey . . . wait a minute . . .”

He kicked off his sandals, loosened his belt buckle, and dropped his jeans. He wore bikini underpants. Margo was suspicious of men who wore boxer shorts. Freddy had worn boxer shorts, had insisted that they be ironed. “Wait a minute . . .” she said again, as he stepped out of his underwear. She hadn’t looked directly at him as he had undressed, but she’d seen enough to know that he was tall and lean and very appealing. She’d seen that while she’d been watching him last weekend. She’d seen that while he’d been fully dressed. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He slid into the tub, facing her. “I thought you said
okay
 . . .”

“No, I didn’t say that.”

“You want me to get out?”

“I didn’t want you to get
in.
”

“Oh, I misunderstood.”

“Yes, you did.”

“But now that I’m here, is it okay? Can I try it for a few minutes?”

“I suppose a few minutes can’t hurt.”

When the Jacuzzi timer went off he climbed out and reset it for another twenty minutes. But before it went off again he told her he was feeling light-headed. Margo urged him to get out quickly, before he fainted. He did, and just in time. As it was she had to wrap a blanket around him, revive him with a glass of Gatorade, and help him back to his place. It wasn’t easy getting him up the steep flight of outside stairs leading to the apartment over the garage.

“I warned you,” she said, as he slumped onto the sofa in his living room.

“It was worth it,” he told her.

“You’d better take a couple of aspirin and get some sleep.”

“Can I try it again tomorrow?” he asked.

“I don’t think so. It doesn’t seem to agree with you.”

“I’ll get used to it.”

“I’ve got two kids, you know.”

“I’ve got one.”

“Mine are teenagers.”

“Mine’s twelve.”

“Mine have been away all summer, visiting their father. They’re coming home tomorrow.”

“I’d like to meet them.”

“Don’t be too sure.”

“You’re very defensive about them, aren’t you?”

“Me, defensive about my children?”

“You have beautiful breasts,” he said.

Margo looked down and flushed. Her robe was open to the waist. She pulled it closed. “Another piece of useful information,” she said. “Hot tubbing is not a sexual experience.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” he said.

“Goodnight,” she told him.

“Goodnight, Margo.”

T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON,
while Margo was driving to Denver to meet her children at the airport, she thought about last night and her strange encounter with Andrew Broder. She never should have let him into her hot tub. It was going to be tricky living next door to him for the next three months now. Her impulsive behavior, though she was well aware of it, continued to cause her problems.

Didn’t I warn you?

Okay . . . okay, so you warned me.

Margo knew that B.B. was divorced, but unlike other divorced women, B.B. never complained about her former husband. Never said a word about how cheap he was or how miserable a father. Never talked about how he ran around with girls young enough to be his daughter or the fact that he had no sense of humor or that he was colder than a fish. Never laughed bitterly about the lack of style in his lovemaking. B.B. never shared the details of how or why her marriage to Andrew had failed and Margo didn’t feel close enough to ask. Until last May, until the day that B.B. had called Andrew a fucking bastard, Margo had never even heard B.B. say his name.

It had probably been a mistake to arrange for him to rent the apartment in the Hathaway house. B.B. should not have asked for her help in finding him a place to live. But what’s done is done, Margo thought.

She glanced at herself in the rearview mirror, wondering what her children would think of her new layered haircut. For years she had worn her dark hair shoulder length, parted in the middle, and blown dry, but this summer she had felt ready for a change.

“Look,” Stan, the hair stylist, had said, assessing her, “you might as well take advantage of what you’ve got . . . good skin, nice eyes, and naturally wavy hair.”

That’s it?
Margo had thought.
After forty years that’s what it comes down to?

After her haircut she had vowed to let her hair grow back and never cut it again. But now she had to admit, it did show off her eyes.

“We should have named her Hazel,” her father used to joke, “for those big eyes.”

“Who knew she was going to have such eyes,” her mother would say.