Wifey (3 page)

3

B
Y NEXT
H
ALLOWEEN
she was sure she’d be fully recovered. Maybe she’d even encourage the kids to throw a costume party, a good way to help them make new friends once they moved, Sandy thought, sweeping up the broken plate. She finished the kitchen and was sitting in the den, watching the Monday-night movie and wondering how Bucky and Jen were doing at camp when Norman returned with Banushka. “Three sticks and two wees,” he said. “Would you mark his chart, San? I’ve got to make an important phone call.”

Sandy waited until the first commercial, then went back to the kitchen and marked Banushka’s chart. Banushka’s chart had been Norman’s idea. He’d recorded every pee and crap the dog had taken since they’d brought him home from the kennel, four years ago. When the children were born Norman had insisted that Sandy keep charts for them too. Careful records of their temperatures and bowel movements, with the appropriate descriptions, exactly as his mother, Enid, had kept for him when he was a boy. Sandy threw away the children’s charts three years ago, when Bucky was eight and had checked off seven bowel movements in one day. She’d given him a huge dose of Kaopectate before finding out that it was Bucky’s idea of a joke. Norman had never forgiven her. He and Enid still discussed bowel movements and their bathroom cupboards were filled with disposable Fleet enema bottles, just in case.

They got ready for bed without speaking, Sandy brushing her teeth with Crest, making blue spit in her sink, Norman using Colgate, as he had all his life. He got into his bed, wearing striped permanent-press boxer shorts, Sandy got into hers, dressed in peach nylon baby dolls, her hair pinned up with barrettes because lately she’d been perspiring in her sleep, strands of hair sticking to the sides of her face, causing an acnelike rash. An adolescent at thirty-two. Norman turned his back to her, she turned hers to him.

Sandy shivered and rolled herself into a ball, pulling the covers up around her head. Norman kept the house like a goddamned refrigerator, the air-conditioning always turned up too high. But he was never cold. He had body heat. That’s what he called it, not that it did Sandy any good. He didn’t like sleeping close so they had twin beds, attached to one headboard, a royal pain to make in the mornings, but why should she complain? Florenzia made the beds four mornings a week.

One bed for Norman, with cool, crisp sheets, preferably changed twice a week, not that he didn’t want fresh ones daily, but even he knew that was an unreasonable, never mind impractical, request. And one bed for Sandy, where once a week, on Saturday nights, if she didn’t have her period, they
did
it. A Jewish nymphomaniac. They fucked in her bed, then Norman went to the bathroom to wash his hands and penis, making Sandy feel dirty and ashamed. He’d climb into his own bed then, into his clean, cool sheets, and he’d fall asleep in seconds, never any tossing, turning, sighing. Never any need to hold hands, cuddle, or laugh quietly with her. Three to five minutes from start to finish. She knew. She’d watched the digital bedside clock often enough. Three to five minutes. Then he’d say, “Very nice, did you get your dessert?”

“Yes, thank you, dessert was fine.”

“Well, then, good night.”

“’Night, Norm.”

She’d learned to come in minutes, seconds if she had to, and she almost always made it twice. No problem there. She almost always got her main course and her dessert. But usually it was a TV dinner and an Oreo when she craved scampi and mousse au chocolat.

And there was no agonizing itchy pussy for Norman either, to keep him up half the night. It was driving her wild. Scratching, scratching, all night long, reminiscent of her junior high condition but concentrated only in her vaginal area. Digging her nails into the soft delicate flesh of her lower lips, tearing them open and in the morning, when she sat down to pee, the unbearable sting of her urine hitting the open wound. She’d tried creams and lotions and powders and cornstarch and antihistamines and cotton underpants, but so far nothing worked.

“We’ve ruled out the possibility of a fungus,” Gordon told her, “and there’s no sign of infection. We’re still considering an allergic reaction, to Norm’s semen, but at the same time we also have to consider the possibility that it’s strictly functional . . .”

“Functional?”

“Yes, psychosomatic, relating to your sex life. So how is your sex life, Sandy?”

M
Y SEX LIFE?
Oh, you mean my
sex
life. Yes. Well. Let’s see. Ummm, if you want to judge it strictly on the basis of orgasms it’s fine. Terrific. That is, I masturbate like crazy, Gordon. You wouldn’t believe how I masturbate. God, I’m always at it. Driving here, for instance, this morning . . . driving, get that, in traffic, no less . . . no, not the Cadillac, Norm took that to work. The Buick . . . driving the Buick, I hear this song on the radio . . . from my youth, Gordy . . . like when I was seventeen or something . . .
Blue velvet, bluer than velvet was the night
 . . . it reminds me of Shep . . . and I get this feeling in my cunt . . . this really hot feeling . . . and just a little rubbing with one hand . . . just a little tickle, tickle on the outside of my clothes . . . just one-two-three and that’s enough . . . I’m coming and I don’t even want to come yet because it feels so good . . . I want it to last. And guess what, Gordy? I never itch after I come that way. I itch only after Norman. So, you see, it must have something to do with him. Maybe I
am
allergic to his semen . . . maybe I’m allergic to his cock . . . maybe I’m allergic to him! Wouldn’t that be something?

Oh, you’d rather hear about my sex life
with
Norman? Yes. Of course. I understand, Gordy. Bearing on the case. Certainly. Well. Every Saturday night, rain or shine, unless I have my period. Variety? You mean like in the books? Well, no . . . Norm isn’t one for variety. Changes make him uncomfortable. And I’m not one for making suggestions, Gordy. You think I should? I don’t know . . . I’d have to think about that . . . maybe . . .

Oral
sex? Oh, Gordy . . . now you’re getting so personal. Must we? I mean, really. Well, of course I see that it’s part of my sex life. Yes, certainly we’ve tried . . . but the one time Norm put his face between my legs . . . well, poor Norm . . . he gagged and coughed and spent half an hour in the bathroom gargling with Listerine afterward and I felt terribly guilty. He was like a cat with a hair ball. All that suffering just to please me. And then there’s the problem of smell . . . odor, you know . . . Norman hates the smell of fuck. He always complains the morning after, opens all the windows in the bedroom and sprays Lysol. That’s why I douche with vinegar . . . cunt vinaigrette . . . to make it more appetizing . . . you know, like browned chicken.

“
S
O HOW IS IT,
Sandy?”

“What?”

“Your sex life.”

“What does that have to do with my problem?”

“It could have a lot to do with it.”

“I don’t think I can discuss it with you, Gordon.”

“Would you like me to send you to someone else?”

“No, I don’t think I could discuss the subject at all.”

4

S
HE USED TO LOOK
like Jackie Kennedy. Everybody said so. In 1960 she won the Jackie Kennedy look-alike contest sponsored by the Plainfield
Courier-News.
Norman’s mother had sent in her photo. She hadn’t even known she was a contestant until they’d called her to say she’d won and they were running her picture on the front page, two columns wide. A celebrity. A star.

Of course she’d voted for Jack. It was her first presidential election and there was no way she was going to support Norman’s candidate, even though Norm was treasurer of the Plainfield Young Republicans’ Club at the time. But Norman didn’t know, didn’t guess what she was up to. He thought his politics were her politics; his candidate, her candidate. Oh, the thrill of pulling the lever for Kennedy, defying Norman, even secretly!

“You should be out there ringing doorbells with me,” he’d told her, during the campaign.

“If you tell them I’m pregnant, they’ll understand.”

“All right, as long as you do your share like a wife should.” So Norman brought home lists of registered voters and every night during election week Sandy sat at the phone making calls. The Young Republicans’ Blitz.

She’d done her share to support her husband. She’d earned the right to celebrate secretly over Jack’s election. For the first time Sandy had been touched by politics, by a current event. There had been no depression or world war to affect her life and Mona and Ivan were determined to spare their children the insecurities, the anxieties they had known. She had once asked her mother, after spending two weeks in the country with Aunt Lottie, “How is the war in Korea?” And Mona had answered, “The same, and don’t worry your pretty little head about it. It has nothing to do with you.”

Until now. Sandy and Jackie. They’d been pregnant together. John-John was born first, in November, and Bucky followed, in December. Sandy didn’t watch the delivery in the overhead mirror although Dr. Snyder wanted her to. It was bad enough that he’d placed the baby on her belly fresh out of the oven, all bloody and ugly. She was high on Demerol. “Take him away,” she’d cried, “he’s a mess.”

Dr. Snyder had laughed. “You don’t mean that, Sandy. This is the happiest moment of your life.”

She’d dozed off. Later, a nurse had carried Bucky to her, clean and wrapped in a soft blanket, all cuddly and warm. And the nurse had undressed him so that Sandy could examine his tiny fingers and toes, his navel, his miniature penis, and acknowledge the fact that she and Norm had produced a perfect baby.

They’d named him Bertram, after her grandfather, but agreed to call him Bucky until he was old enough to handle such a serious name.

“Bucky?” Enid had snickered. “What kind of name is that for a Jewish boy?”

“It’s as good as Brett,” Sandy had answered, tossing out the name of Enid’s other grandson.

“From Miss Piss I expect a name like Brett,” Enid had said. “From you I expected something better.”

Miss Piss was married to Norman’s brother, Fred, a California Casualty agent in Sherman Oaks. Other people called her Arlene. They saw each other only on rare occasions and Sandy always marveled over Arlene’s never-ending change of hair color.

Six months later, when Norman’s father, Sam, dropped dead while firing a cashier for pocketing cash, Enid had cried to Sandy, “If only you were having the baby now, he could have a proper name. Who knows how long I’ll have to wait for Miss Piss to give me another grandchild. Or for that matter, you.”

Jen had come along two and a half years later, just months after Jackie had lost her infant, Patrick, to hyaline membrane disease. Sandy had named her Jennifer Patrice. Jennifer because she loved the name; Patrice for Jackie’s baby.

“Don’t you think we should name her Sarah, after my father?” Norm had asked.

“Sarah can be her Hebrew name,” Sandy said, and Norman hadn’t argued. After all, she’d done all the work. And they’d both found out, through Bucky, that Norman’s idea of
father
meant paying the bills, period.

Enid and Mona had arrived together, for afternoon visiting hours, each bearing a gift for the latest grandchild. A musical giraffe from Mona, a pink and white orlon bunting from Enid. Sandy had a small private room, filled with cards and flowers, the most elaborate a bouquet from Norman. To make up for the fact that he hadn’t been around to drive her to the hospital? Sandy wasn’t sure. By the time he’d been located on the sixteenth hole she’d already delivered the baby.

She wore the pink satin bed jacket Myra had sent when she’d had Bucky, and she’d pinned her hair up in a French twist, sprayed herself with Chanel, and put on makeup, denying the fact that under the blanket she sat on a rubber doughnut to ease the pain of her stitches and that she was slightly fuzzy from the Darvon Dr. Snyder had prescribed to numb her tender, swollen breasts.

At night the nurse provided ice packs to hold under her arms. “It’s always you little girls who fill up that way . . . such a shame to let it all go to waste.”

“I don’t believe in nursing,” Sandy told her. “I was nursed for eight months and I’ve always been sick.”

“You should have told that to your doctor. There are shots, you know.”

“I did tell him.”

And Dr. Snyder sympathized with Sandy’s discomfort. “I thought you’d change your mind this time,” he’d said.

“I’ll never change my mind about breast-feeding.”

“Well, next time we’ll give you a shot right after delivery so you won’t have to suffer this way.”

Next time? Who said anything about next time? She’d been expected to produce two children, preferably one of each sex. She’d fulfilled her obligation.

The first time Norman had been so impressed with the sudden growth of her breasts he’d brought his Nikon to the hospital, snapping pictures of Sandy in her bed jacket, unbuttoned enough to show some cleavage. This time he was less enthusiastic, realizing that the change was only temporary and would leave her as small-breasted as before, unlike her sister, Myra, who had inherited Aunt Lottie’s mammoth breasts, and who had, two years ago, undergone a breast reduction operation because “you can’t imagine what it’s like to carry around a pair of tits like these!”

“Too bad she can’t give some to you,” Norman had said at the time, adding, “ha ha . . .”

“Yes, too bad,” Sandy had answered. “Ha ha ha . . .”

“
S
O, WHEN IS MY LITTLE
S
ARAH
going home?” Enid asked, reading the cards lined up on Sandy’s dresser.

“Her name is Jennifer,” Sandy said, “Jennifer Patrice. Didn’t Norman tell you?”

“He said
Sarah.
”

“Well, yes, in Hebrew it’s Sarah, but we’re going to call her Jen.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“It’s true,” Sandy said. “I’ve already signed the birth certificate. Jennifer Patrice.”

“Mona, tell me I’m dreaming,” Enid said, with one hand to her head, the other to her chest.

“The baby is hers to name,” Mona said. “You had your chance with Norman and Fred.”

“Oh, God, oh, God.” Enid swayed, then sat down. “I feel weak, like I might faint.”

Mona poured a cup of water for Enid. “Try to relax,” she said, “don’t get yourself all worked up for nothing . . .”

“Nothing? You think my son didn’t want to name his own baby after his father, may he rest in peace. No, it’s her . . .” Enid said, with a nod toward the bed. “She thinks she’s too good for a simple, beautiful, biblical name like Sarah.” She sipped some water.

“It’s not that . . .” Sandy began.

“Miss High and Mighty!”

So she’d been christened too.

“Miss High and Mighty is too good to care about her poor old mother-in-law and did I or didn’t I once send her picture to the
Courier-News,
making her a celebrity?”

“Please . . .” Sandy said.

“And how much time do I have left? A little happiness is all I ask.”

“Stop it . . .” Sandy said, “please, stop it!”

The nurse poked her head in the doorway. “Ladies, could we try to remember we’re in a hospital?”

Enid turned to face Mona. “I’ll tell you this, my enemies treat me better than my daughter-in-laws. You don’t know how lucky you are to have girls instead of boys. With boys you wind up with tsouris . . .”

“At least be happy the baby has the Hebrew name you want,” Mona told her.

“To me she’ll always be Sarah, no matter what Miss High and Mighty calls her.”

“Her name is Jennifer, dammit!” Sandy shouted. “And I’ve got the birth certificate to prove it!” She could no longer hold back her tears.

“Ladies, ladies.” The nurse returned, shaking her head at them. “I’ll have to ask you to leave now. Look at our patient.”

Sandy was crying hard. “Take care, darling,” Mona said, kissing her cheek. “I’d better go too. She shouldn’t drive like this.”

The nurse gave Sandy a sedative and she slept through feeding time and missed evening visiting hours.

Sandy was filled with guilt. It wasn’t just that she liked the name Jennifer, and certainly she didn’t dislike the name Sarah. It was that she couldn’t, wouldn’t name her child after Samuel D. Pressman. Sam Pressman had never addressed Sandy by name. He’d called her
girl
or
you,
not entirely without affection, but without concern. Samuel David Pressman, owner of Pressman’s Dry Cleaning Establishment, a chain of four stores in Plainfield, Roselle, and New Brunswick, catering to the
Black is Beautiful in Cleaned and Pressed Clothes
business. And in each store a doberman slept in the front window, a reminder that burglars should take their business elsewhere.

Two months after the funeral Enid decided to give up her organizations, her luncheons, her shopping expeditions to Loehman’s and her afternoon Mah-Jongg games for the sake of the business. “I can’t expect my boy to do it all by himself, can I?” And she established herself as manager of the Plainfield store, leaving Norman free to expand and improve the business. And he had. He’d opened three new stores that year and four more since then. He was always up to his elbows in a new solution.

S
ANDY WAS UNDER THE DRYER
at Coiffures Elegante in downtown Plainfield that gray November afternoon in 1963, her head covered with giant blue rollers, which, after an hour of intense discomfort would turn into the popular bouffant hairstyle of her look-alike. She was flipping the pages of the latest issue of
Vogue
with the stub of her fingers, careful not to mess up the freshly applied Frosted Sherbet on her nails, when the news came over the radio. Sandy didn’t know what was happening since she couldn’t hear anything but suddenly there was a lot of activity in the shop. She raised the hood of her dryer. “What’s wrong?”

“The president’s been shot!”

“Is it serious?”

“Looks like it.”

“Oh God.”

And the other women pulled their dryers back down over their wet heads. But not Sandy. She’d jumped up, knocking over the manicurist’s table, tiny bottles of polish crashing to the floor. She ran through the shop to the back room, where her coat hung, and as she tore out the door the last words she heard were spoken by her neighbor, Doris Richter. “Alex . . . could you tease it a little higher on the left because it always drops by the next day . . .”

She drove home quickly, rushed into the house, found Bucky snuggled next to Mazie on the sofa in the den, the baby asleep in her lap, the TV on. “Oh, Mrs. Pressman,” Mazie cried, “the president’s dead. He’s been shot in the head. Lord help us our president’s dead.”

Bucky made a gun with his finger. “Bang bang, the president’s dead!” He studied Sandy for a minute. “You look funny like that, Mommy . . . like a moonman.”

Sandy took him in her arms, cried into his warm, puppy-smelling head, then went to her room, took the rollers out of her hair, laid out her black dress and shoes, dug out the black veil she’d worn to Samuel’s funeral, and prepared for mourning.

“What the hell,” Norman said, when he got home and found Sandy dressed in black.

“I’m sitting shiveh for the president.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No.”

“You didn’t sit shiveh when my father died.”

“That has nothing to do with this.”

“And the Kennedys are Catholic!”

“So what?”

“I think you’re really going off your rocker this time. I think you’re really going bananas.”

Sandy shrugged. “I don’t expect you to understand . . . you didn’t even vote for him.”

“And neither did you!”

“That’s how much you know.” She gathered several sheets from the linen closet and draped one over the mirror in their bedroom.

“Jesus Christ, now you’re going Orthodox?”

“This is the way we did it when Grandpa died,” Sandy said, “I remember.”

“I can’t believe this. You’re not Jackie, you know, just because you won that fucking contest.”

How could Sandy explain? In a way she was Jackie, with blood and brains all over her suit. “I know exactly who I am and exactly what I’m doing.”

“We’re due at the Levinworths’ in two hours. You better do something about your hair. It looks like hell.”

“You’ll have to call to say we can’t make it.”