Smart Women (3 page)

“You have unbelievably ugly eyes,” James had said, making her laugh. James had been her first lover and something about Andrew Broder reminded her of him. It could have been the way he looked directly at her or the way he laughed, heartily, without holding back.

Margo had met James when she was seventeen. He was a tall, lanky college freshman, wildly funny, yet sweet and tender, a perfect combination. It was his wry sense of humor that kept them going during their first awkward attempts at making love and from then on their lovemaking was filled as much with fun and laughter as with passion, which wasn’t all that bad, Margo realized later. In fact, there was a lot to be said for it.

James had died of pancreatic cancer two and a half years after they met. She had not even known that he was sick. Her mother had come across the obituary.
James Schoenfeld, twenty, following a brief illness.
Even though Margo and James weren’t going together anymore, hadn’t seen each other for sixteen months, his death had so affected her that she had not made love again until she and Freddy were married.

At the time Margo could not stop thinking about the night she and James had broken up. She could not stop thinking about how she had flirted with another boy at the fraternity party, had actually slipped him a piece of paper with her phone number on it. James had consoled himself by chug-a-lugging a six-pack of Miller’s. Then he’d passed out on the floor. Margo had had no choice but to let the other boy, Roger, drive her home. The next afternoon James had come over, looking pale and acting sheepish, and he had apologized for his behavior. They’d gone for a walk to the pond, but she had not let him kiss her. “It’s over,” she’d said. “I’m not going to see you anymore.”

“Why?” he’d asked. “That’s all I want to know. Why?”

“I don’t know,” she’d said. “It’s just something that I feel . . . or don’t feel . . .”

James had turned and walked straight into the pond, fully dressed, his hands over his head. She had stood on the grassy bank, yelling and screaming and laughing until tears stung her eyes. Maybe she did love him, she’d thought. But there were so many boys to love. She wasn’t ready to love just one.

Her mother urged her not to confuse sadness with guilt. It was not her fault that James had died. Her father cradled her in his arms, stroking her hair. Her sisters, one older, one younger, stood in the doorway to her bedroom, silent.

Margo went to the funeral by herself. After paying her respects to James’s parents and his brother she asked who the small, long-haired girl was, the one who was weeping hysterically, and his brother said, “That’s Rachel. She and James were going together.”

Margo nodded and bit her lip. James had replaced her. Well, what had she expected? She approached Rachel. “I’m Margo,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”

Rachel stopped crying and looked at Margo. “He told me about you,” she said. “About how you were his first girlfriend. It was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

Not so long, Margo thought.

“We were pinned,” Rachel said. On Rachel’s black dress was the Phi Ep pin that Margo had once dreamed of wearing.

She still had dreams about James. James walking into the pond. She would call, “Come back, James. Let’s start over . . .” but it was always too late. She would awaken with tears on her cheeks.

Freddy had been as different from James as any young man Margo had met. Perhaps that was why she had married him.

She had been married to Freddy for fourteen years and had never been unfaithful, although she had certainly thought about it. After Freddy, there was Leonard, and after Leonard, her boss, Michael Benson. Then, a series of brief affairs, some lasting months, some weeks, some just the night. There had been twelve of these men, from a physiology professor at Colorado University, to a Buddhist at Naropa, to more than one construction worker. And then, this summer, for five days, there had been Eric.

Margo kept a list of her lovers at the office, in her top desk drawer, the one that locked. She wondered if other women did the same. She wondered what her children would think if she died suddenly and they had to go through her papers. There were seventeen names on her list. Seventeen men. Not so many lovers for a divorced woman of forty, she thought. She knew some women who barhopped every weekend, picking up men for the night. They could wind up with fifty lovers in a year. She’d been divorced for five years. Multiply that by fifty and she could have had two hundred and fifty lovers by now. She laughed aloud at the idea of two hundred and fifty lovers. It seemed to her both wildly funny and grotesque, and then, terribly sad and she bit her lip to keep from crying, the idea was so depressing.

She switched on the car radio and rolled down her window. A piece of brush blew across the highway, rested briefly on the hood of her car, then flew off. The end of summer, Margo thought.

It had been a full summer. She’d worked long hours on a new project with Michael Benson, a complex of solar condominiums in town. She’d taken only one break, a week in Chaco Canyon, where she had gone to be alone, completely and absolutely alone for the first time in her life. It was to be a test of self. To prove—she wasn’t sure—that she could survive on her own, she supposed. But on her second day out she had met Eric, twenty years old and irresistible. Eric, she decided later, was to be the last of her impulsive sexual encounters. Because afterwards she always felt empty. Empty, lonely, and afraid.

She would wait the next time she felt tempted and make an effort instead to find a steady man. In the meantime she would concentrate on her work, which was going well, and on her kids, who were coming home.

She had been up early this morning to cook their favorite dish, a tangy chicken in rum sauce. She hoped it would be a happy homecoming, hoped the new school year would be an improvement over the last one. She was going to try. She was going to try to give them more time, more understanding, to be there when they needed to talk, to be less judgmental, to be the warm and gentle earth mother she had always wanted to be, yet never seemed able to pull off. This would be her last chance with Stuart. He would graduate next spring, then go off to college.

And with Michelle, she didn’t know. She didn’t think she could take another year of hostility. Maybe when the plane landed she would find that Michelle was not on it. That Michelle had stayed in New York with Freddy and Aliza. What would she do then? Jump on the next plane to New York and drag Michelle back? She wasn’t sure. If only Michelle could understand that you don’t quit just because of rough times. That you work through your problems not by shutting out the people who love you most, but by letting them in to help and comfort you.

Margo turned off the Valley Highway, then followed the signs to the airport. She was twenty minutes early. Good. She’d have time for a quick cup of coffee before the plane landed. Time to relax for a moment before her reentry into motherhood.

L
ATER THAT NIGHT,
after the welcome home dinner, Margo showered and put on the robe that her friend Clare had given to her last week for her fortieth birthday. God, the feel of the silk against her nakedness. Yards and yards of pure silk, the color of a young girl’s blush.

“When you put it on in the morning you’re supposed to glow,” Clare had said. “That’s what the saleswoman told me, anyway. So what do you think?”

“I think it’s not the kind of robe you put on in the morning,” Margo had said, “unless it’s the morning after . . .”

They had laughed over that.

There were rumors around town that Clare was part Navajo, rumors that Clare enjoyed more than anyone. And when she played it to the hilt she did look like some gigantic, exotic half-breed, with her dark, silver-streaked hair, two slashes of color accenting her high cheekbones, deeply tanned skin, and ropes of turquoise and coral wrapped around her neck. Had Margo met Clare ten years earlier she might not have taken the time to get to know her. She might have put Clare down as an oil heiress from West Texas, with an accent so offensive you couldn’t possibly get past the first sentence.

“When I celebrated my fortieth birthday, last year,” Clare had said, “I bought myself a sheer black nightgown and a feather boa.”

Margo was reminded that she still had a drawerful of sheer black things, left over from her time with Leonard, but she hadn’t worn them lately. Hadn’t even thought about them. Too bad.

Leonard had been one of the reasons Margo had left New York three years ago. She’d been running away from a no-win affair with him, running away from Freddy and his new bride, and finally, running away from herself, hoping to find a new self in the mountains, and if not exactly finding one, then creating one.

She’d decided on Boulder because of her interest in solar design and was lucky enough to land a job with a small architectural firm, Benson and Gould, based on her portfolio, a letter of recommendation from her boss in New York, and an interview that had gone very well. Later, she’d found out that Gould was spending more than half his time in the Bahamas, that Benson had a neurotic fear of responsibility, and that they had been overjoyed when she’d accepted their job offer.

Margo moved to Boulder in mid-August and, with her half of the cash from the sale of the co-op on Central Park West, bought a house on a dirt road, tucked away against the mountainside. A funky, upside-down kind of house, with the kitchen and living room on the second floor, to take advantage of the view of the Flatirons, and the bedrooms on the first, with a hot tub outside the master, which is what really sold her. The Realtor, a woman called B.B., assured Margo that the house could only go up in value.

Two months after Margo moved in, B.B. introduced her to Clare, who was looking for an architect to renovate her gallery.

N
OW
M
ARGO WALKED DOWN THE HALL
to say goodnight to her children. Michelle was sitting up in bed reading
Lady
Chatterley’s Lover.
“How do you like it?” Margo asked.

“I’m only reading it because I have to . . . it’s on my summer reading list,” Michelle said defensively.

Margo laughed. “Not the book . . . this . . .” She twirled around the room, showing off the silk robe, keeping time to the music coming from Michelle’s stereo. It sounded like Joan Armatrading, but Margo couldn’t be sure. Michelle was very into female vocalists singing about the female experience.

“God, Mother . . . what
is
that thing you’re wearing?”

“It’s a robe. Clare gave it to me for my birthday. Isn’t it gorgeous?”

“It’s a weird gift for one divorced woman to give to another. She could have given you a painting from her gallery. We have a lot of bare white walls.”

“I think she wanted to make it a personal gift.”

“Yeah . . . well, it’s personal all right.”

“So how do you like it?”

“It’s okay, I suppose, if you’re into silks and satins.”

“I meant the book.”

Michelle looked up at Margo, her mouth set defiantly, ready to do battle. “I told you . . . it’s assigned reading.”

“I know that. But you can still either like it or not like it.” Margo warned herself to stop. This conversation was going no place.

Michelle closed the book and rested it on her lap. She gave Margo a hostile took. “It’s an interesting book . . . in an old-fashioned way.”

In an old-fashioned way, Margo thought. That was hard to take. She remembered when she’d read
Lady Chatterley.
She had been in college and she’d found the sex scenes so steamy she’d locked herself in the hall bathroom and stood under the shower for an hour. “D. H. Lawrence lived in the southwest . . . in Taos. Did you know that?”

“Of course I know that, Mother. But this particular book is set in England.”

“Yes,” Margo said, “I know.” She approached the bed and tried to drop a kiss on Michelle’s cheek, but Michelle squirmed away.

“Please, Mother . . . don’t be disgusting.”

“Goodnight,” Margo said, trying to sound pleasant, trying not to let Michelle see that she was getting to her.

“Goodnight,” Michelle answered, opening her book again. “And Mother . . . you really should do something about your breath. Have you tried Lavoris?”

“I had chili for lunch.”

“Well, you don’t have to advertise.”

Margo sighed and left the room.

She did not understand how or why Michelle had turned into this impossible creature. Margo would never voluntarily live with such an angry, critical person. Never. But when it was your own child you had no choice. So she kept on trying, kept hoping for the best, kept waiting for the sweetness to come back.

She passed the bathroom that separated her children’s bedrooms and stopped in front of Stuart’s closed door. She knocked.

“Yeah?” Stuart called over the latest album from the Police.

“Just wanted to say goodnight,” Margo said.

“Yeah . . . okay . . . goodnight . . .”

Margo had been speechless when she had first seen Stuart at the airport that afternoon. It wasn’t just the haircut, but the clothes. A Polo shirt, a sweater tied over his shoulders, a tennis racquet in one hand, a canvas duffel in the other. He looked as if he’d stepped right out of some Ralph Lauren ad in the Sunday
Times.
She’d had to suppress a giggle. She wasn’t sure if she was glad or sorry that her son had turned into a preppie over the summer.

“Where’d you get all the new clothes?” Margo had asked him, driving back from Denver.

“Dad took him shopping . . . to East Hampton,” Michelle said.

“I can talk for myself, Mouth,” Stuart said. “And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking a little pride in the way you look. Even Mother has a new haircut.”

“I noticed,” Michelle said.

Before Margo had a chance to ask Michelle what she thought of it, Stuart said, “I want to get my college applications in early. Dad said he’ll take a week off in October and we’ll do the tour and interviews together.”

Margo felt a pang. She’d always thought she would be the one to take him to his college interviews. She had saved a week of vacation for just that purpose.