The Seven Year Bitch (13 page)

“What do you do?” I asked, suddenly wanting to change the subject.

“I play around in finance too,” he said. “I'm an attorney. And I've done some writing.”

“What kind of writing?” I asked. I hoped he wasn't writing a novel or a screenplay or something, because all the lawyers I met were trying their hand at a legal thriller and they were so pathetic about it. Lawyers could never just admit they were lawyers. Not writers or chefs or watercolor artists. Just lawyers. In the four months since I'd been laid off, half the people who had been laid off with me had called me to say they were working on a Wall Street thriller.

“Well, I'm working on a novel, but I also wrote a New Orleans guidebook, post-Katrina. All proceeds go to charity. I helped out a lot down there after the hurricane.”

“I like New Orleans,” I proclaimed. As a New Yorker, if I said I liked a place I always thought I was giving it the ultimate compliment. “Where did you live before your family moved here?” I asked.

“The important thing is not where I'm from but that I came to New York as soon as I could,” he said, which I took to mean he was from New Jersey. People from New Jersey were always trying to come up with clever things like that to say.

The waiter brought a quail's egg with caviar along with two shots of pepper vodka.

He took off his sweater and his jersey rode up a little over his flat, hard stomach, showing a line of dark hair. To my complete shock, I felt myself get as wet as a teenager.

“Excuse me,” I said, standing up. “I'm going to go to the ladies room.”

“It's through there.”

“Oh I know exactly where it is,” I said.

When I got to the ladies room I took a moment to admire the small framed photograph of people ice-skating in Central Park in front of the Dakota. I peeled down my torn tights and sat on the toilet, and that's when I realized I had my period. It was my first period since before I'd gotten pregnant.

Blood was gushing out of me more violently than it ever had. I hadn't gotten my period in so long, I'd forgotten all about it. But there was no way my blood had ever been this red!

Sitting there helplessly in the bathroom made me feel like I was in elementary school, a virgin again, womanly and fertile—able to have a baby. It was like God was giving me a sign. Getting your period after you've had a baby is not unlike getting it for the first time. I was ready to do it again. I was a woman all over again. I could start again, even with someone else.

Jean-Georges wasn't exactly the kind of place with a tampon machine in its bathroom. I knew I didn't have one in my purse or even in my house, it had been so long. I opened my purse anyway and saw a size 4 Huggies diaper. We'd tried both Pampers and Huggies and there was no question but that Huggies were a million times better. When I saw people in the store buying Pampers, I had to stop myself from ripping them out of their hands and insisting they buy the Huggies. So it was with confidence that I opened it and placed it in the crotch of my torn tights as if it were the most normal thing in the world to wear a diaper on a date, let alone a business meeting, and went back to Gabe Weinrib.

As soon as I sat back down at the table our next course arrived, a scallop the size of my cell phone, but I couldn't eat.

“Now business, m' . . . Isolde,” he said. “I believe you wanted to see my assets. I think you'll find me to be very well endowed. Aha! Your eyes just got very wide.”

“They did not,” I said, but I knew they had. He handed me a packet of the financial papers I had asked for, and once again I had to fight my eyes from getting wide.

He had what amounted to about two hundred million dollars in tax-exempt munis, stocks, mutual funds, a precious metals commodities fund, and hedge funds. He had an apartment on Fifth Avenue, several apartments in Paris, a house in Florida, and the house he grew up in, in New Jersey. He had a Matisse and a Basquiat and his mother's diamond ring appraised at one million dollars.

“Richman Gold's Private Client Groups handles your annual portfolio rebalancing,” I said, doing a quick calculation for the second time. Thirty mil in real estate, eighty mil in safe bonds, one hundred mil in a well-diversified portfolio plus a mil in a checking account. “So you didn't need my services.”

“I know,” he said. “I just thought it would be fun. I remember that night I met you, I asked you how much I should invest in a hedge fund and you said, ‘It depends on your appetite for risk.' I think of that line all the time. ʽIt depends on your appetite for risk.'”

He looked like he was enjoying himself.

I sectioned the scallop with my fork and popped a portion of it in my mouth to sustain myself.

“And I see your appetite was big,” I said, looking at the hedge funds. “Wait a minute, you're Arrowsender, LLC?”

When I was considering having my fund buy stock in an IPO, I'd noticed that a huge portion of the privately held stock in the IPO company was held by one investor with a ridiculous name—Arrowsender. When the company went public, all of the private stock was bought out by the investors. He had made a killing.

“So we don't really have any business to do together,” I said, almost disappointed.

“Well that's good because you probably don't sleep with your clients.”

“I'm married,” I said. “I don't sleep with anybody.”

“Happily?” he asked.

I couldn't wait to tell my mother about this so she could tell her shrink. If it were possible for a person to kick
herself
under the table, I would have. We sat there for hours, laughing and joking, and I couldn't remember having so much fun. I knew in the morning I would have to play hooky from Duncan's Baby Time class. After tonight, I didn't think I could eat strange sandwiches with Gerde and hear her German small-town theories about proper fashions for babies. At the end of the night he rejected his chef's tray of desserts. “The chef knows what I like,” he told the waiter.

Then Jean-Georges himself came out of the kitchen with a pineapple and a knife and carved it for us, and a waiter followed with a silver boat of whipped cream.

“Is this an anniversary?” the great chef asked.

“This is only the second time we've met,” Gabe said.

“Oh, I thought for sure this was your wife,” he said.

 

 

“ How was your big
date?” Russell asked when I walked in the door.

“I got my period and had to put a diaper in my tights.”

“Your period,” he said. “I think that's my cue to get a vasectomy.”

When Russell had to have a procedure to test his fatty liver, he'd clutched on to me all the way up to Mount Sinai and I'd had to promise him the whole time he wouldn't die. And that was just his
liver
. I didn't think there was much threat in him volunteering for an operation on his penis.

I went into our room and lay down on our bed, still in my clothes and diaper. Russell followed after me.

“Did you have fun?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Does that mean you want to go back to work?” he asked.

“I don't know,” I said.

 

 

On my way to
Aquacise at the gym, I called Dr. Heiffowitz's office and spoke to his assistant, a woman named Scottie. It was my thirty-ninth birthday and I had that revved-up, birthday, time-is-of-the-essence feeling. “I have a quick question,” I said. “My nanny . . . sitter . . . can't get pregnant. But she doesn't have any money and she's here in this country illegally, so I was wondering if . . .”

“Well, I don't know what we can do if she's here illegally. Has she filled out a patient questionnaire?”

“No, not yet,” I said. I felt like a complete idiot. It was a mistake to tell Scottie her status, which when I thought about it had nothing to do with it really. Dr. Heiffowitz was a fertility endocrinologist, not an immigration attorney. It must, I thought, be possible to get pregnant without a Social Security number, people probably did it all the time.

“I'd like to make an appointment for her,” I said. “Send the patient questionnaire to my address.”

Dr. Heiffowitz was such a genius, they might as well send the baby in the envelope along with the patient questionnaire, because it was practically a guarantee he could get you one.

Walking along Washington Square North, I tried not to notice the changes that were being made to the park. Big signs from the Parks Commission had been placed on the ugly wire fence now lining the perimeter, explaining the plans for the beautification of Washington Square Park. One-hundred-year-old trees and burial grounds were being dug up. Someone had tied balloons to the fence and drawn sad faces on them.

A sad face painted on a balloon is the last thing you expect to see on your birthday.

The cobblestones were all gone. A trench had been dug around the park exposing layers of earth that no New Yorker wanted to know about.

I saw the old ladies selling their wares.

“Do you have any hats?” I asked.

“Doris, do we have any hats?”

“Hold on, Marilyn.” Doris went into the senior center and came out with a tiny orange baby hat with a green stem, made to look like a pumpkin.

“I meant for a man,” I said. “Like a skullcap.”

“You mean one of those African-looking things? My rabbi wears one of those instead of a yarmulke. He's very young. Unmarried,” Doris said.

“We'll have it for you next week,” Marilyn pushed in. “Custom made. I can have one of my girls do it right away. Any particular colors?”

The one I'd spilled wine on was black and orange and red. I told them what it should look like.

“Your husband is a lucky man.”

“It's not for my husband,” I said.

“Oh?”

“Just a friend,” I said.

“No judgments,” Marilyn said, crossing her knitting needles in front of her. “My girls just knit. We don't ask any questions. We don't judge our customers. We're all mothers here. Between the three of us we've done everything under the sun.”

The third old lady, Gert, just sat on the steps staring off into space. It was hard to imagine she'd done much of anything under the sun at all.

“We're all divorced,” Doris said. “Marriage did not agree with me. It was fine until the children came and then I had to harp on him for everything. Just to get him to come home. I called it ʽThe Making of the Shrew.' It was horrible.”

“You were already a shrew,” Marilyn said. “You're still a shrew. The question is which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

Doris laughed. “The answer happens to be, the chicken
and
the egg. I was a spring chicken, and then became a mother, before I was a shrew, believe me. When we were first married, my husband had a harmless crush on another woman in our beach club. She always wore the same purple bathing suit, and she would hang it on a hook to dry after she rinsed it when she came in from swimming. My husband was always bringing her up, saying what nice legs she had and tush, and why couldn't I have a bathing suit like that one. So one day I grabbed it off that hook and I put it on, and I flaunted myself all over the beach right where everyone could see me, and it was the funniest thing. We would always play tricks on each other and have fun. We had a spark. Then, for the children's sake, I had to nag and pester him all the time. He wasn't a bad father and he wasn't a bad husband, but he was a bad father and husband if that makes any sense. He couldn't handle it, both together. I had to do everything—the school, the doctor's appointments, the vet, and the house payments. He turned me into a nag and a pest.”

“Maybe if you'd had a nice ʽfriend' things would have been different,” Marilyn said.

All three women looked at me.

“So what about something for you?” Marilyn said. “A nice scarf? I made these here, but I don't want you to think you have to buy one of mine, because all my girls do wonderful work. I just happen to like this one.” She held up a purple eyelash number, reminiscent of the purple bathing suit in Doris's story.

“Did you make that one?” I asked.

“I did, but that's not why I'm recommending it. I just happen to like it.”

“Well it is my birthday,” I said, taking a twenty out of my coat pocket. I hadn't bought myself anything since I'd been laid off and it felt good to do it.

I spent my thirty-ninth birthday sitting in the dining room of the senior center drinking lemon tea and eating lemon pound cake. Then I attended a special seniors' Weight Watchers meeting on the second floor. Why not, I thought. Thirty-nine was forty and forty was fifty.

At home I changed for our dinner reservation. But Russell wouldn't get off the phone. He talked and talked and talked and talked. It was an emergency. A review in the
New York Times
of a book by one of his authors had begun “In this terrible novel . . .” He talked and soothed and strategized. From the other room I heard him say, “It's my wife's birthday,” and then he laughed. “I know, I'm in trouble.”

Our babysitter sat on the couch reading a book.

“It's a ten o'clock reservation,” I screamed. “Ten o'clock. Not six or seven or eight but ten. You can't even get off the phone at ten o'clock on my birthday.”

What had become of me? I wondered.

E
verything caused a fight. Everything was a negotiation. Something as simple as dressing Duncan in a sweater turned into a full production of
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Blood was always dripping from my chops.