Smart Women (37 page)

“I’m a failure at eighteen,” he said sadly, shaking his head.

“No,” Margo told him, “that’s not true. We make too much of college. It’s not your whole life.”

“Maybe not to you . . . but what about Dad? What’ll he think?”

“He’ll understand,” Margo said, praying that he would.

“I got six-fifties on my Boards, I have a solid B-plus average, I play second on the tennis team. What more do they want?” He paused for a minute. “Tell me, Mom . . . tell me the truth . . . is something wrong with me?”

“No, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you.”

“Then why?”

“I don’t know, Stu. Probably there were just a lot of kids with even higher grades and scores. And that’s what they looked at.”

“Maybe I came on too strong during my interviews. But I didn’t want them to see me as some hick from Colorado.”

“Rejection always hurts,” Margo said.

“What do you know about rejection?”

“Plenty.” Let it go at that, she thought. Let him learn to deal with one kind of rejection at a time. Later he would find out that college was just the beginning.

That had been on April 15. By May 15 Stuart had settled on Penn. “It’s Ivy League,” he’d said, consoling himself. “And it’s Dad’s alma mater.”

Still trying to please his father, she thought.

Freddy had been a dental student at Penn when Margo had met him, the summer following her junior year at Boston U. She had been waiting tables in Provincetown and taking painting classes during the day. He had been vacationing with two of his buddies. He had seemed so full of life to her then.

Now Freddy sat two seats away from her, at their son’s graduation. He sat on the other side of Michelle and on his other side sat Aliza, dazzling in a navy Chanel suit, her hands fluttering to her head, protecting her newly blond hair from the strong breeze, each of her long manicured fingernails painted a dusty shade of rose. Her hands did not look as if she ever washed a dish, yet Margo knew that she liked to cook.

The graduates, more than six hundred of them, began their long march—step, pause . . . step, pause . . . step, pause—to the same music as Margo had marched to at her own high school graduation. She watched for Stuart and at first sight raised her hand as if to wave, then, realizing that he would be embarrassed, lowered it.
Stand up straight,
she told him mentally.
That’s it . . .

Michelle reached out and touched Margo’s arm. Margo turned to her. “He’s on the wrong foot,” Michelle whispered. “Isn’t that just like Stu?”

Margo smiled. She had not been sure that Michelle would recover from the pain of loving, then losing Eric. But a few weeks ago when Margo had gone to Michelle’s room to say goodnight, Michelle had been sitting up in bed, holding a small cactus plant to her chest.

“He never lied to me, Mother. Not once.”

“Well, there’s a lot to be said for honesty,” Margo said.

“Do you think I’ll ever get over him?” Michelle asked.

“I think you’ll always remember him, honey, but eventually, when you’re ready, you’ll allow yourself to love again.” Oh, she’d sounded so wise, so knowing. Did children ever suspect what shaky ground their parents were on when they advised and comforted them?

“Is that how it was with you, Mother?”

Did she mean after James . . . Freddy . . . Leonard?

“Yes,” Margo said. “That’s how it was with me.”

Michelle nodded.

T
HE GRADUATES TOOK THEIR SEATS.

Andrew sat on Margo’s left side and next to him, biting her fingernails, was Sara. Behind them, Clare, Robin, and Margo’s parents. Margo was glad her parents had been able to come. She was reminded of her own grandmother’s death a few months before her high school graduation.

Two endless speeches followed, one by the valedictorian and one by a Congressional hopeful, a former graduate of Boulder High School. Endless speeches about going out into the world early in this decade, about the beginning of their adult lives.

Adult? Margo thought. No. Adulthood started somewhere around the age of forty.

Andrew squeezed her hand.

Margo thought back to that cold November night when, snuggled close in her bed, Andrew had first proposed the idea of living together and they had agreed to give it a try.

For how long?
her mother had asked, when Margo had told her of their plans.

For as long as it works,
Margo had said.

The idea of it seemed so simplistic now that Margo laughed out loud. Both Andrew and Michelle looked over at her, probably thinking she’d found something funny in the politician’s speech.

Until the end of the school year, at least,
they had promised each other. Well, graduation was the end of the school year, wasn’t it? And tomorrow Andrew was flying to Miami . . . and Margo could not erase his parents’ message from her mind.

O
N THE MORNING
that Andrew had been driving his parents back to the airport for their return flight to Miami, Margo had gone out to a five-acre building site in Sunshine Canyon to walk the property with Michael’s clients, a couple from Cincinnati who had plenty of money, whose children were grown, and who wanted to change their lifestyles.

Michael had been in Aspen at the time, skiing with a woman he’d met through a personal ad in the
New York Review,
a woman who was willing to relocate if she found the right man.

The couple from Cincinnati wanted a southwestern-style house, like the ones they had seen in Santa Fe over Christmas, with white plaster walls, rough wood ceilings, and Mexican tile in the kitchens and bathrooms, plus a separate guest house for when their children came to visit.

Margo tried to concentrate on their questions, but she hadn’t been able to get the Broders, and what they had said to her, out of her mind—that Andrew wouldn’t be happy until he had Francine back, that Margo was just second best. With all of her problems, with all of her doubts and insecurities, which came and went, she had never thought of herself as second best and she wasn’t about to start now.

When she got home from the canyon she left her muddy boots in the front hallway and went to take a hot bath. Soon she heard a thud, followed by Andrew’s voice. “Goddamn it, Michelle . . . can’t you ever put your things where they belong!”

“They’re not
my
boots! Why do I always get blamed for everything?”

Margo wrapped herself in a towel and rushed out of the bathroom to see about the commotion. Andrew had tripped over her boots as he’d come into the house and had fallen.

“They’re mine,” Margo said. “I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

“Bruised my knee,” Andrew said.

She helped him to his feet.

“Sorry, Michelle,” Andrew said, “it’s just that it hurt like hell and I was mad.”

“Yeah, well . . . it could happen to anyone, I suppose.”

He leaned on Margo and she helped him hobble down the hall to their bedroom. He pulled off his jeans and lay down on the bed.

Margo rubbed his knee. “Did your parents get off all right?”

“Not without giving me hell.”

“For what?”

“Where do you want me to start?”

“At the beginning.”

“Okay . . . first, I have no job security. How am I going to meet my obligations, which, I assume, means my financial obligations to Sara and you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. They see that as the man’s responsibility. And they can’t understand that freelance writing is a job. They want to know why I don’t go back to the
Herald.
At least I had a pension plan, medical insurance . . .”

“What else?”

“Then there was the part about us.”

“What about us?”

“That we’re not setting a very good example for Sara, or for your children.”

“Not setting a good example . . .”

“We shouldn’t be living together without being married.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“I told them it’s not their business, and besides, we’ve been too busy to think about marriage.”

Margo laughed. “I once told my mother the same thing.”

“What’d she say?”

“She said,
Darling . . . there’s no such thing as too busy.
”

Andrew laughed with her.

She lay down beside him and he ran his hand over her face. “They’re usually not so difficult. I think they were just feeling self-conscious and had to put in their two cents.”

“They asked me if I thought you really loved me,” Margo said, “or if you were just trying to prove something to B.B.” Her mouth felt very dry. She licked her lips and swallowed.

He pulled away from her and sat up. “Jesus! I can’t believe they said that. They still think I want her back?”

“Yes. They’re convinced she’s the reason you came here.”

He shook his head and exhaled deeply.

“Is that true? Did you come out here to get back together with her?”

“Not consciously.”

“Subconsciously?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I can’t deny that I had this fantasy of getting back together . . . that enough time had passed to make it a possibility.”

Margo untangled herself from him. She jumped off the bed and marched around the room, trying not to explode. “Did you make love with her . . . here, in Boulder?”

“No, but I would have that first night.”

She sucked in her breath. “God, Andrew . . .”

“It was before I met you,” he said.

“I know, but still . . .” She rested her hand on the old pottery lamp that sat on her dresser. She fought the urge to throw it at him. “Why didn’t you tell me all of this before?”

“Tell you what? That I had some crazy notion of living happily ever after? What’s so surprising about that?”

“Plenty.”

“I would have told you before if I’d thought it was important . . . or if you had asked.”

“Why should I have asked? I never thought about it until your parents put the bug in my head.”

She walked across the room to the rolltop desk. She remembered her excitement on the day she’d found it in Caprice’s shop. She had given it to Andrew on the night he’d moved in.

“But it’s your desk,” he said. “I can’t take it.”

“I want you to have it,” she’d told him. “I love the idea of you working at it, using the cubbyholes to organize your notes.”

“What about you?”

“I need more space anyway. I’ll set up a door on sawhorses.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.” She had painted the sawhorses blue.

Now she stood in front of the desk, fiddling with Andrew’s collection of pens. “This is all a little hard to take,” she said.

“Look, Margo . . . my fantasy of getting back together with Francine lasted for about ten minutes. And then I realized that nothing had changed, that nothing ever would, that we wouldn’t have stayed together even if Bobby hadn’t died.”

Margo stacked his pens in a mug that had a picture of a dog on it. It was the only mug left from a set Michelle had given to her the last Christmas they had lived in New York.

“You were a fantasy in the beginning too,” Andrew said.

“Me?” she asked, looking over at him.

“I’d been watching you for days. I knew you were Francine’s friend, I knew I should stay away, but you were too appealing. So finally I worked up the courage to come over. I’d never done anything as ballsy as stripping off my clothes and sliding into your hot tub in my life.”

“It was ballsy, all right.”

For a moment after that neither of them spoke, but Margo was aware of the sound of their breathing. “Were you using me to make B.B. jealous?” she finally asked.

“No, but I liked the idea of her seeing that another woman, a smart woman like you, found me attractive.”

“I don’t feel very smart right now. I wish that you hadn’t wanted her when you came to town. I wish I could be sure you had no ulterior motive when you met me, conscious or unconscious.” She pulled down the top of his desk, then opened it again. “It would hurt too much to think that I’ve just been the pawn in some intricate game between you and B.B.”

“How can you even think that?” he asked, his voice catching. “How can you doubt that I love you more now than I did in November . . . that I expect to keep on loving you more . . .” He stood up and hobbled across the room.

She held out her arms.

T
HE GRADUATES WERE CALLED
to receive their diplomas in alphabetical order. Margo was sure they would never reach the
S
’s, but finally, Stuart’s name was called and Freddy jumped up with his Olympus OM2, complete with telephoto lens, to catch Stuart, smiling broadly, as if he had the world by the tail, not at all as if he believed he were a failure at eighteen.

After the last graduate received her diploma the chorus stood and sang. Puffin was in the first row, dressed primly, like the others, in a black skirt and white blouse, hands clasped in front of her waist. Margo turned around and smiled at Clare. Clare touched Margo’s shoulder.

A few days ago Margo and Clare had been talking about raising kids, about the way you feel their pain as well as your own and Clare had said, “Puffin is still heartbroken about breaking up with Stuart.”

“Has she told you why they broke up?” Margo asked.

“No . . . she won’t say anything.”

“Neither will Stuart.”

“Do you think they were sleeping together?”

“I don’t know.”

“I gave Puffin a sex information book and told her if she had any questions she should come to me. But she never did.”

Margo laughed. “I gave one to Stuart too.”

“Puffin wants to go away for her senior year,” Clare said, “so I’m taking her to look at Fountain Valley next week. She’s having a hard time. I think it has to do with not knowing what’s going to happen with Robin and me . . . not knowing whether we’re going to stay together this time.”

“Do you know?” Margo said.

Clare shook her head. “I wish I did. It’s going a lot better since he took over B.B.’s business. He has a sense of purpose now. He doesn’t mope around the house questioning the meaning of life.”

Margo had noticed the change in Robin too. Since he had volunteered to take over B.B.’s business a month ago, he seemed more interested in life.