The View From Penthouse B (29 page)

I was present for that discussion. I said, “And if you want to do some good and give back, how about helping poor women in a free clinic? Wasn’t that your original plan?”

“My fallback. My plan B. Or maybe C.”

“He wanted to wear a uniform and be a hero,” Margot said. “Which makes total sense after you’ve been a criminal.”

“It wasn’t about being a hero. I wanted to serve my country. Don’t I get credit for at least trying?”

I didn’t say what I was thinking.
You wanted to impress Margot. You wanted a grand gesture that would undo your wrongs.

“Betsy will be disappointed,” said Margot.

“Not as disappointed as I am,” said Charles. “Though let’s face it—her disappointment will be that I’m less likely to be killed now in the line of duty or go MIA.”

“I’ll e-mail her,” said Margot. “I’ll tell her that you tried as hard as you could, but eventually it went all the way to the top, to the Secretary of the Army. And if she doesn’t believe me, I’ll show her the letter.”

I said, “It’s hard for any of us to get a pass from Betsy.”

Margot said, “Birth order. Isn’t that supposed to make us who we are? Is the baby in the family the bossiest one or is that just her?”

“In two words:
Always right,
” I said.

“Always
thinks
she’s right,” Margot corrected.

I realized I was being disloyal in front of Charles, especially in view of Betsy’s being the architect of our residential arrangement and consultant on all matters, solicited or un-. “She’s always buying us presents and treats whenever we go out . . .” I began.

“And loves us,” said Margot. “That’s never a question.”

Charles said, “I think we’d all agree, generosity aside, Betsy can be formidable.”

“And I’m not?” asked Margot.

“You’re plenty formidable.”

“What about me?” I asked.

I interpreted Charles’s smile as charitable. “Thankfully, Gwen, I count on you for being the least formidable sister.” With that, he lifted his big Yale coffee mug, the one he’d recently brought from downstairs and kept in our cupboard. He continued, sounding unsteady. “By which I mean you’re often kind when I haven’t earned it.” With that he rose and hurried away in the direction of the parlor.

Margot and I both watched until he was out of sight. When he didn’t return, she said, “Go see what’s wrong.”

I said, “I know what’s wrong. He’s not used to apologizing, so he’s embarrassed.”

“He’s a man. And a scientist. I think he’s very fond of you and can’t deal with the emotion.”

I said, “This is new.”

“It is! He ends up crying every week in front of our therapist. She thinks it’s male menopause.”

I said, “Which could explain his trip to the army recruitment office.”

She walked to the doorway and glanced around the corner. “One of us should go in there.”

“Why me? You’re his fiancée.”

“He was addressing you. And I sense this could be something you could build on.”

Why did I say yes? Because I thought the same thing, and maybe it was the new Charles in there, the one I’d been hearing about. I took my mug of coffee with me—and his.

He was sitting opposite the TV, the volume barely audible, a bright green soccer field in high definition. He thanked me for the coffee, took a sip, swallowed, said it was cold. He looked up at me. “I ruined my life, didn’t I?”

I sat down next to him on the couch, hoping to demonstrate the very qualities by which I’d distinguished myself as the least formidable sister. “You’re starting over. With Margot. With work. And parole ends in what? A couple of weeks? You’ll deliver babies again, like you did at Saint Vincent’s. I think that’s a good metaphor for a new life, don’t you?”

“I don’t blame you for hating me,” he said.

I asked if he was forgetting I had accepted every single collect call from prison and had kept him company on those meal-plan nights when Margot and Anthony had flown the coop.

He rose and walked to the window, which overlooked West Tenth and a thin slice of Fifth Avenue. “I think you’re the reason she made it through this whole mess, through my incarceration, and even why she’s taking me back,” he said in an uncharacteristically soft voice.

Was this humility I was hearing? I pretended to be momentarily distracted by the hullabaloo on the TV screen, men in red celebrating a goal. I finally said, “Thank you, but I’m quite sure I’m not the reason she’s taking you back.”

“You contributed! I mean, your circumstances did. Poor Edwin did. Margot realized that anything can happen, at any time. Life can change in an instant. You of all people know that. And you know your sister: She simply cannot be alone. Look how fast she moved you in here. Then Anthony. How do you explain a whole other boarder if it’s not for additional company?”

“Rent,” I said. “And adorableness.”

“She cannot be alone,” he repeated.

I pointed out that it might be true, but it was a moot point because soon they’d be married, which should give her a roommate for a few more decades.

“I know . . .”

“But . . . ?”

And then—because people don’t change overnight; because he couldn’t picture me in any other role than nursemaid and companion—he said, “If anything happens to me, can you promise me you’ll move back in with Margot?”

As if on cue, Margot called from close range, “Everything okay? I’m out here flapping in the breeze. Can I come in?”

Charles whispered, “Case in point. You’ve never noticed this before?”

“She’s very social. She likes company.” And then, what finally needed to be acknowledged: “Circumstances change, you know. I may not always be the ever-available spinster sister.”

I could see in his face the effort he was putting into being an unselfish conversationalist. “Your beau! Of course. How’s that going? I haven’t been paying much attention, given the vicissitudes of my own life lately.”

I said, “I don’t want to jinx anything—”

“Eli, right? The nice man with the mother? How many dates?”

I said, “I’ve lost count. And, yes, he’s the nice man with the mother.”

He was peering at me in a manner I judged to be diagnostic. “I
have
noticed you looking happy lately. It didn’t register till now.”

There was a quick rap on the door, and instantly Margot was in the room. “What are you two talking about?” she asked.

“Eli,” I told her.

“Something’s up, apparently,” said Charles.

“Seriously? You just noticed a change?” asked Margot, squeezing between us on the couch.

“I commented on it before you joined us. I believe the word I used was ‘happy.’”

Margot said to me, “Notice how he doesn’t have to join the army to be MIA.”

Charles sputtered a protest. Margot said he should open his eyes and perhaps discuss this very thing in therapy—his tendency toward self-absorption. “It’s so obvious,” she said. “Look at her. Anyone who was paying just a little attention would know.”

Charles said, “Know what?”

“Can
I
tell him?” asked Margot. “Please.”

“Okay. Sure. You deserve that honor.”

I hadn’t put a name, aloud, to what I’d been feeling, so how did I know that Margot would get it right? But she did.

“Gwen-Laura Schmidt is in love,” Margot announced.

38

Amplifications

M
ARGOT HAS NOW READ
everything I’ve written and believes I have underplayed the good while overstating the bad. She thinks I sound too modest and too mousy. “You need to say something like ‘I know I gave the impression that I was unpopular and not terribly attractive, but I was never considered either of those things. In fact, I’ve grown into my looks, and it’s a widely held belief’”—a pause while she conjured—“‘that I’m the fairest sister of them all.’”

“Who said that?”

“I know for a fact that Edwin did. All the time.”

“Doesn’t count.”

“Dad used to say something along those lines. Remember? ‘A rose between two thorns’?”

“Maybe when you two were fighting.”

“I don’t care. Write that down,” she instructed. So I did.

She’d given me carte blanche to describe these past two years: widowhood for me, singledom for both of us, and the poorhouse for Margot and Anthony. I know now that she was humoring me, letting me tell all, even the exposing of financial and marital secrets better left in the cemetery of dead headlines—because she didn’t think a memoir by Gwen-Laura Schmidt would ever get published.

After I printed out the whole manuscript, I watched as she read it, both of us seated, days on end, at the dining-room table that so often represented the full geography of our social lives. She divided the pages into two piles: those she could live with (the chapters covering her own private life and romantic renaissance) and those that needed beefing up.

“For example,” she said, pausing to fold one offending page into a paper airplane before launching it across the table into my chest.

I opened it and read my own words. “I love this scene,” I protested.

“A kiss in a restaurant? That’s it?” Had I not realized, she demanded, that a kiss was only a snapshot at the end of my second date with Eli, and how were readers supposed to know that everything didn’t collapse before the third? “Remember that song from
A Chorus Line
—‘Dance 10, Looks 3’?” she asked. “Because if I was rating your pages, I’d have to say ‘Roommates 10, Gwen 3.’ And even that might be generous.”

I said yes, she was making that quite clear.

“It might be enough of an ending in an old black-and-white movie, where the kiss is the last thing the audience sees as the music swells and the credits roll. And, yes, in a simpler world, a kiss could mean ‘happily ever after.’ But you’re not Doris Day.”

When I said, “I was trying for subtlety,” she looked up. “Oh, really? Because I notice you didn’t hold back when it came to Charles and me. I come across as something of a vixen.” She grinned. “Which I thank you for.”

I asked, “How far do I have to push it?”

“You’re the writer in the family! Put in some reassurances. Put in some flesh and blood.”

So here is more, dedicated to Margot, who gave me backbone but is still, apparently, the boss. My dates with Eli increased in frequency from weekly to semiweekly to what my mother would have called “an understanding.” Still, everyone (Margot, Anthony, Charles, Betsy, and even Chaz) noticed that progress in certain areas was slow. Totally understandable, I reminded everyone. Eli and I often, maybe too often, referred to our dead spouses, and perhaps with that topic came a sad or dreamy look that discouraged a wandering hand. Margot and Anthony were their usual, unsubtle selves, asking after each date, “Still? Nothing?”

Thus, I did what any red-blooded woman would feel an urge to do on a beautiful moonlit summer night, back from another warm and chastely romantic date that didn’t progress past first base: I sent him an e-mail. Wrote, erased, composed, deleted, revised. How to ask? To be euphemistic or direct? With a glass of Chardonnay at my fingertips, I finally wrote:

Dear Eli,

Thank you for another lovely evening. I just wanted to say that if you, some day, wanted to move the relationship in a horizontal direction, I would welcome that.

xo, Gwen

He wrote back so fast that I thought I was getting an out-of-office reply.

Dear Gwen,

I’ll be right over. (Kidding, but only due to the hour.) How’s tomorrow night?

Love, Eli

The next morning, merely walking down the hall toward the linen closet, I must have conveyed something with my expression or skin tone because Margot grabbed my wrist as she passed me.

“You look different,” she said. “Flushed. What’s up? You can tell me.”

“Eli’s cooking me dinner tonight. At his place . . .”

And with only that, she negotiated me backward into my room for a conference. Actually, it was a wordless conference; she went straight for my underwear drawer. And as soon as she completed her inventory and refreshed her lipstick, we went shopping.

So we got to the other side of this project, at his apartment, between cocktails and dinner and Egyptian cotton sheets. Who knew what I was capable of? Not this Gwen-Laura Schmidt.

Over lobsters steamed and delivered by an obliging fishmonger in his neighborhood, Eli said, “I seem to have worked up quite an appetite. And if that sounds like code for something else, it is.”

I looked down at my plate, then up at him. “Lobster is just as good cold, don’t you think?”

“Better, actually.”

“C’mon,” I said.

Later, side by side at the microwave, remelting the butter, Eli said, “I just remembered. My mother invited us for dinner this weekend. How would you feel about that?”

I said I’d like that very much. Was he sure the invitation included me?

He left the kitchen and returned with his phone. There on the screen was Myra’s e-mail, enlarged and unambiguous:
When are you bringing Gwen home to meet me? Love, Mom.

“Radar,” I said.

Two days later, on a scalding Sunday, I found myself on the Number 7 train to Queens, dressed in a sundress and sandals bought for the new season Margot had dubbed the Summer of Second Chances, holding a potted orchid on my lap. Its card said only
MOST GRATEFULLY, GWEN
.

Greeting us at the door with arms opened wide, Myra Offenberg looked like the vigorously retired school principal that she was, with excellent posture, a French twist, and eyeglasses on a hot-pink cord. She was taller than I, nimble, smiling, tanned. “Come in, come in. It’s cool! I have cold white wine and iced tea. Sweetie? Get my wedding goblets. I didn’t want to get up on a step stool. Let’s have a toast to something.”

I told her the apartment was lovely, adding—a line I’d had at the ready—“Eli told me you moved here from Washington Heights when he was starting first grade because the neighborhood elementary school was better.”