Smart Women (7 page)

She thought she saw a tightening of that vein in his forehead, the one that stood out when he was angry or thinking hard. She had planned to invite him in, to offer him a drink, to show off the lovely home she’d made for Sara. But now she wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. “Shall I show you the way to your place?” she asked.

“I’d appreciate that.”

She stood up. Lucy walked down the steps with her and began to sniff him.

He let Lucy smell his hand, then he patted her on the back. “Nice collie.”

“Her name is Lucy.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“From Sara.”

“Of course,” she said. “From Sara.” She hated the idea of Sara talking with Andrew. Telling him about her dog, about her life in Boulder. What else did he know? What else did they talk about behind her back?

“You can follow me,” she told him. “It’s just a few blocks.”

“Okay.”

She got into her BMW. She held onto the steering wheel tightly, trying to steady her hands. She started the car, then began to count backwards from one hundred, in Spanish.
Ciento, noventa y nueve, noventa y ocho.
Often, when she couldn’t fall asleep at night, that’s what she’d do. Usually it calmed her. She kept sight of him in her rearview mirror and drove slowly, up to Fourth, left on Pearl, right on Sixth, across Arapahoe, up the hill to Euclid, right on Aurora to the dead end sign, then up the dirt road to a driveway shared by Margo and the Hathaways. It was just a mile and a half from her house.

He parked alongside her car. “I’ve got the keys right here,” she said, fishing them out of her canvas bag. He followed her up the outside stairs leading to the apartment over the garage. But at the door she had trouble getting the key into the lock, her hands were shaking so badly.

“Here . . . let me . . .” he said, his fingers brushing hers.

“No! I can do it. Just give me a minute.”

“Okay. Sure. Just trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help,” she told him. She managed to unlock the door. She stepped inside and switched on a light in the living room. He was right behind her. “This is it,” she said. “Living room, bedroom, bath, and kitchen.”

“It looks fine,” he said. “Exactly what I’d hoped for. Thanks for finding it for me.”

“They keep it up nicely,” she told him. “It’s just been painted and the sofa’s been recovered. We got them down to three-fifty a month. You’ve got a three-month lease.” She sounded professional now, the reassuring Realtor.

“Renewable?”

“You’ll have to discuss that with the Hathaways. I didn’t draw up the contract myself.” God, what gall, she thought. A renewable lease. Did he think she would go out of her way to make sure he could hang around? In three months she wanted him out of town, out of her life. She walked across the room. “Here are the keys, “ she told him, dropping them on the dining table. “I’m sure you want to get unpacked and I’ve got to run anyway. If you need anything, like a cup of sugar, my friend Margo lives next door.”

“I wish you’d stay for a while,” he said. “We’ve got to talk.”

“I don’t want to talk,” she told him.

“Look, Francie . . . I just want you to understand that I’m not trying to hurt you by being here.”

She choked up and turned away from him.

“I’m here for just one reason,” he continued, “. . . to be near Sara. That’s all there is to it.”

“Maybe for you,” she managed to say. “Maybe that’s all there is to it for you. But what about me? Did you stop to think about me?”

“Yes, I did.”

“I’ll bet,” she said.

“You never did have much faith in me, did you?” he asked.

“With good reason.”

He grabbed her roughly, forcing her to face him. “I’ve spent six years paying for what may or may not have been my fault. I’ll never get over it completely. But I’ve learned to deal with it . . . with my guilt . . . with your hate . . . with losing Bobby . . . and then you, taking Sara away. Six years is enough.”

“Enough for you,” she said.

“Enough for any of us,” he said softly.

He held her for a moment, the way he used to, and when she looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears, he kissed her. Afraid of what might happen if she let herself respond, she broke away and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “What are you doing?” Her voice was hoarse. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Seeing you again . . . remembering . . . I just don’t know.”

He walked across the room, his hands brushing his hair away from his face. She leaned back against the empty bookcase. Neither one spoke.

Finally, he broke the silence. “Can I have Sara this weekend?”

“You can have her on Sunday from ten until six.”

“That’s not much of a weekend.”

“It’s enough for now.”

He sighed. “Look . . . either we’re going to work this out by ourselves, sensibly, or we’re going to work it out through our lawyers, and if necessary, through the courts.”

“I can’t believe you’re standing here saying these things. That after six years you think you can walk into my life and destroy everything I’ve put together.”

“You haven’t given me any choice.”

“You haven’t changed. You’re as selfish and irresponsible as you always were.”

“And you’re just as inflexible.”

She strode across the room to the door, opened it, paused, then turned back to him. “One thing . . . don’t expect anything from me while you’re in town. As far as I’m concerned you don’t exist!”

“That’s right . . . bury your head in the sand the way you always have . . .”

She ran to her car. A flash of lightning lit up the sky, followed by a roar of thunder. She turned on the ignition, raced the engine, and tore out of the driveway, tires screeching. It began to rain heavily, then to hail, pounding the roof of her car. But she hardly noticed for the pounding inside her head.

M
EN,
B
.
B
. THOUGHT.
You had to learn to use them the way they used you, the way they had been taught to use you. She’d learned that a long time ago. She’d learned that when she was fourteen and her father had died of a heart attack in the bed of a stock clerk from his store. She was a redhead, like B.B., and young, with two babies and no husband in sight. She was Irish, like him. Kathleen Dooley. Her father had been screwing Kathleen Dooley for more than six months when he died. But B.B. didn’t know it at the time.

Her mother did though. After the funeral her mother had confided that she’d known it all along. “It was the Irish in him,” her mother had said. “He couldn’t help himself. He loved us, Francie, more than anything, but some men, especially the Irish, have it in their genes. They can’t resist, even when they want to. They’re like male dogs, chasing a bitch in heat.”

Francine tried to picture her father as a dog, chasing Kathleen Dooley into the stockroom of the store, Brady Army Surplus, barking his head off, nipping at her legs.

“I want you to know, Francie,” her mother continued, “that I forgave your father. The first time it happened he came home and cried in my arms. I told him,
I don’t want to know about it, Dennis. You have to work late one or two nights a week . . . it’s okay . . . just spare me the details.
And then I put it out of my mind. That’s what you have to do when things get unpleasant. You have to put them out of your mind. You have to concentrate on other things. And then you don’t feel unhappy or angry.”

“You weren’t angry that he was fooling around?” Francine asked.

“He should have died in his own bed. That’s all I’m angry about.”

“I’d have been angry,” Francine said.

Her mother shrugged. “Marry Jewish. That’s my advice. They make the best husbands. Look at Aunt Sylvie . . . look at all the happiness she has with Uncle Morris. A beautiful home, you could call it an estate and not be exaggerating . . . furs, even down here in Miami, where you don’t need them . . . jewels . . . cruises every year . . . and for their children, only the best. So remember Francie, when the time comes, be smart. It’s just as easy to fall in love with a nice Jewish boy, one with a future, one who’ll take care of you.”

“Maybe I won’t get married at all.”

“Bite your tongue,” her mother said. “Of course you will. Learn from my mistakes and learn from Kathleen Dooley too. She wasn’t so dumb. Use what God gave you to get what you want, but try not to hurt anybody along the way.”

So Francine had used what God had given her. Her beauty. She knew she could have any boy she wanted. Just like that! Because boys were stupid and all they cared about was how you looked. In high school she had more boyfriends than anyone else. She was popular with a capital P, her mother told Aunt Sylvie, and Aunt Sylvie said, “Sure, why not? With that Irish nose and red hair . . . she looks like a shiksa. Momma would roll over in her grave if she could see her.”

After high school Francine enrolled at Miami U. She spent her first two years living at home and commuting, but then her mother urged her to move into a dormitory to get a taste of college life, and so she did. That very same year she met Andrew Broder, a graduate student in journalism from Hackensack, New Jersey. She liked his seriousness, his shyness, his sense of humor, and the fact that he was exactly one head taller than she was so that when he held her in his arms her lips came up to his neck.

He was awed by her beauty and she used it to tantalize him because this was the man she was going to marry. It took her a while to convince him that he wanted to get married. But finally one balmy night she climbed into his bed, naked, and she let him touch her all over. She let him hold her close and rub up against her until he came, leaving her thigh wet and sticky.

They were married a week after she graduated, on the grounds of Aunt Sylvie and Uncle Morris’s estate, under a chuppa covered with roses. She wore a white batiste cotton dress, nipped in at the waist, with a square neck, and a wide-brimmed garden hat instead of a veil, and she carried a single white rose.

Before the ceremony Uncle Morris took her into the house, into his private den, and slipped an envelope into the bosom of her dress, inside her strapless bra. “Twenty-five hundred smackers,” he told her, his hot pudgy fingers squeezing her small left tit.

“Thank you, Uncle Morris,” she said politely.

“You’re a gorgeous girl, you know that, Francine?”

“Thank you, Uncle Morris.”

“I wouldn’t mind shtupping you myself. You know what I mean?”

“I know that you’re teasing me, Uncle Morris.”

“Teasing, shmeasing . . . don’t be too sure. Look, if he doesn’t come through, this guy you’re marrying . . . come and see me. Understand?”

“I’m not sure . . . but thank you very much for your generous gift and for giving us the wedding.” She pecked his cheek, then ran out of his den, her heart pounding. He had felt her up! Uncle Morris had felt her up on her wedding day.

Sex. That’s what they were all after. You had to give it to them though. At first, just enough to keep them interested. Then, enough to make them think you really enjoyed it. You had to, otherwise they wouldn’t marry you. And once you were married, you had to keep doing it, twice a week, at least.

But that part, the doing it part, wasn’t nearly as nice as the hugging and kissing, Francine discovered on her honeymoon. Andrew seemed to think it was though, so she never told him what she thought. He would moan at the end, then collapse on top of her, as if he were dead. At first, she worried that Andrew would die the way her father had, but as the week went on, she saw that it was nothing more serious than exhaustion. “Oh, Francie . . . my beautiful darling . . . you’re so wonderful . . .” he would whisper.

For the next two years they lived in Georgia at Fort Benning and she got a job working as a receptionist in a real estate office. The business fascinated her and she began to study for her broker’s license.

They continued to have sex twice a week. On Wednesdays and Saturdays. It hardly took any time at all. She still preferred the kissing and the hugging, but the trouble was, if she started kissing Andrew, he got it all wrong and thought she wanted more, thought she wanted to do it. And she didn’t know how to tell him she didn’t. So she stopped kissing and fooling around, waiting for him to take the initiative. That way she always knew how it was going to end.

After two years they went back to Miami and he got a job on the
Herald
and she passed the Florida Realtor’s exam and went to work for Pride Properties. She took six months off when Bobby was born and four when Sara was born and when she went back the second time she was named second vice-president in charge of residential properties.

By then Andrew had his own byline and was talking about taking a leave of absence. She tried to convince him not to do it. They had too many responsibilities.

“Fuck responsibilities! Let’s blow it off and go to Fiji.”

“Andrew, sometimes you scare me with your crazy ideas.”

“Then New York,” he’d said. “Let’s go to New York for a year.”

“It gets cold in New York,” she’d told him. “This is the best place to raise children. They can be outside all year round.”

“I’m going out of my mind here, Francie,” he’d said. “I’ve got to have a change.”

“This just isn’t the right time for a change, Andrew. Take up tennis or something. You’ll feel better.”

Instead of tennis, Andrew bought a little sailboat, spending most of his weekends out on the bay, teaching Bobby to sail. Which would have been fine, except that now he wanted sex more often, and in different positions, and with the lights on. She went along with some of it. She had no choice. She didn’t want to leave him, or worse yet, for him to leave her. His need for constant excitement worsened. He was no longer satisfied with a nice vacation in Jamaica, lolling about on the beach. He wanted to raft rivers, to explore jungles, to live on the edge. She tried to remain calm.

“It’s just a mid-life crisis,” her mother had told her.

“But he’s only thirty-four,” Francine had said.

“So, he’s an early bird. Just as well to get it out of the way now . . . one less worry for later.”