Wifey (6 page)

“Look,” Sandy said, “I’m not feeling well and I want to get home.”

“Gee, that’s too bad, Aunt Sandy,” Kate said. “Would you like a joint? That might help.”

“No, let’s just get out of here.”

T
HAT NIGHT
N
ORMAN ASKED,
“Feeling stronger, San?”

“Yes.” She was already in bed, reading.

“You’re getting a nice tan. Are you ready for a little something?”

“I think so.”

“Got your diaphragm in?”

“No, I forgot.”

“Where is it?”

“In the bathroom cabinet.”

“I’ll get it for you.”

“Okay.”

He came back and handed her the case, then looked the other way while she reached under the covers and inserted it. “Ready,” she said when it was in place. Norman turned out the light and climbed into bed beside her.

Rules and Regulations for a Norman Pressman Fuck.

The room must be dark so they do not have to look at each other. There will be one kiss, with tongue, to get things going. His fingers will pass lightly over her breasts, travel down her belly to her cunt, and stop. He will attempt to find her clitoris. If he succeeds, he will take it between his thumb and forefinger and rub. Too hard. He will roll over on top of her. He will raise himself on his elbows, and then . . .

Norman kissed her. He tasted like Colgate toothpaste. She hated Colgate. Question: Did she also hate Norman? Answer: Yes, sometimes.

Norman’s cold tongue was darting in and out of her mouth. One kiss. That was enough for him. Sandy didn’t mind. Her lip hurt. Besides, his kisses no longer pleased her, no longer offered any excitement.

“Ready, San?”

“Yes.” Sandy raised her hips to catch him. In and Out. In and Out. She closed her eyes and imagined herself with the beachboy. She would be on top, bouncing wildly. Almost thirty-two years old and never been on top. How unfair! Uh oh . . . Norman, was beginning his descent. Three more strokes and it would be over.
Hurry, Sandy . . . hurry, or you’ll be left out.
She moved with Norman but it was too late. No main course tonight.

“Sorry,” he said, “it’s been a long time. I couldn’t wait. Wake me in twenty minutes and we’ll try again.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sandy said.
Liar. Liar. Of course it mattered.

Norman used the bathroom. She heard him gargling. Was he afraid that her kisses still bore germs? He returned to his own bed, across the room. In seconds he was asleep, snoring softly. Sandy masturbated, continuing her fantasy with the beachboy. The climax she reached alone was stronger and more satisfying than any she had had with Norman. When she could breathe easily again she said, “Norman, do you love me?”

She knew he was asleep. She didn’t really expect him to answer. And he didn’t.

7

1
970.
N
OT ONLY A
N
EW
Y
EAR
but a New Decade. When they returned from Jamaica Sandy was full of resolutions. She would learn to be a gourmet cook. She would get a slinky dress. She would become an outstanding mother of the year. She would clean out all the closets and organize them. She would make sure the baseboards were as clean as Norman claimed Enid’s were. She would read
Time
magazine from cover to cover and make interesting, occasionally startling, comments. She would devour three books a week from the library and only one of them would be fiction. She would be sexy. Yes, she would be very sexy. Always. Looking her best. Never in need of a shampoo. Shaving her legs before it was necessary. Dental floss between her teeth morning and night. Regular douches with vinegar, maybe wine vinegar for variety, and not just the morning after. She would please Norman in every way. If she made him happier, if she concentrated on his every wish, then she would be rewarded. She would become a happier person. A better person.

“Make his interests your interests. Make his friends, your friends. When he’s in the mood, you’re in the mood. Dress to please him. Cook to please him. What else matters? A happy husband is the answer to a happy life,” Mona Schaedel said to her daughters, Myra Suzanne and Sondra Elaine, December, 1954, upon the former’s engagement to Gordon Michael Lefferts, third-year medical student, excellent catch, who the night before had presented Myra Suzanne with a perfect, blue-white, three-carat Marquise cut diamond engagement ring, purchased from his uncle, Jerome, who, thank God, was in the business and got him a terrific price, because someday when Gordon was a specialist and Uncle Jerome was old, Gordon would take care of him and there would be no charge. Uncle Jerome never thought to ask about Gordon’s future plans. Maybe if he had he wouldn’t have been so generous. On the other hand there was Aunt Fanny and her hysterectomy to consider.

Myra let Sandy try on her ring and from that moment on Sandy’s goal in life was to become engaged.

T
HEY’D BEEN BACK
from Jamaica for two weeks when Sandy bought a pictorial sexual encyclopedia. “I have an idea,” she said to Norman. “Let’s do it every night for a week.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, and a different position everytime.”

“Starting when?”

“Tonight?”

“You’ve got yourself a deal!”

But when she tried to explore his body he tensed. “No, not there,” he said, when her hands touched the soft patches of hair under his arms. “I don’t like to be touched there.”

“Oh, sorry.” She kissed his neck, then made her way down to his chest.

“No,” he said, squirming, as her fingers rested on his nipples. He took her hands in his. “What do you think I am, a fag?”

“I’m just exploring,” Sandy said, “like the book says.”

“To hell with the book!”

She had planned to work her way down to his feet, where she would bite and kiss his toes, and then, hopefully, he would follow her lead and do to her all the lovely things she had done to him. He would lick her nipples, round and round, and kiss her inner thighs until she was wet, until she had to have him; and only then would he enter her, long and stiff and they would move together for hours, maybe all night.

But she could see now that there was no point in going on. It wasn’t going to work. She might as well get on with the different position. She climbed on top of him.

“What are you doing?”

“Let’s try it this way.”

“No, not with you on top.”

“It’s a very common position, Norm . . .”

“For dykes, for women’s libbers who want to take over.”

“No, it has nothing to do with that. It’s supposed to feel good this way . . .”

“I’m the man in this family. I get on top.”

“That’s silly, Norm, it has nothing to do with being the man.”

But he was on top of her now, pushing into her. “You’re my wife, not some whore.”

“I could pretend to be a whore, just for fun.”

He pushed harder. “You’re my wife . . . there, there . . .” he said, coming into her.

Every night for a week, proving that he was the man.

Every night for a week, and Sandy was sore.

So much for her New Year’s resolutions.

N
ORMAN JOINED
T
HE
C
LUB
in early February and was promptly asked to serve as chairman of the Grievance Committee. “That’s some honor for a new member!” Myra told Sandy. “You should be very proud.”

“Oh, I am. Anything that makes Norm happy.”

And he was
very
happy. His enthusiasm for The Club carried over to the children. “Can I learn to play golf?” Bucky asked.

“Of course, there’s a practice range and a putting green and you can take lessons this spring.”

“What about me, Daddy?” Jen asked. “Can I take lessons too?”

“Certainly, Princess.”

“What about Mommy?” Jen and Bucky looked at her.

Sandy shook her head but Norman said, “Mommy’s going to learn to play golf and tennis too.”

“Come on, Norm . . . don’t tell them that . . . you know it’s not my thing.”

But for her birthday Norman gave her a set of matched clubs in a lemon yellow bag, brown and white golf shoes, reminiscent of her beloved junior high saddles, and a dozen pairs of peds with different color trim.

And for Mother’s Day he presented her with a Davis Classic racquet, Tretorn tennis shoes, two Head outfits, a tennis sweater, and three cans of fuchsia balls.

All right. She would try. She’d make an effort. After all, eighth grade was twenty years ago. Her coordination might have improved. She’d had babies since then and masturbation took coordination, didn’t it? Especially while driving.

8

T
HE MAN ON THE MOTORCYCLE
returned on Monday morning, but this time he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt although he wore the same helmet and rode the same bike. As soon as Sandy looked out the window he unzipped his jeans and dropped them to his ankles. No underwear. Interesting. He worked quickly, making it on the nineteenth stroke. After, he waved to her. She didn’t wave back. At least he didn’t ride up on the lawn this time.

Sandy didn’t call Norman. She didn’t call the police either. What was the point? They hadn’t believed her before. Besides, he wasn’t hurting anyone. But who was he? And why had he singled her out? Or did he go to a different house every day? Yes, last time he had come on a Monday too. Maybe Monday was
her
day.
Some day he’ll come along, the man I love . . . and he’ll be big and strong, the man I love . . . maybe Monday
 . . . Oh, the possibilities were endless.

She had to hurry if she was going to make the nine-thirty-two train. She had a date to meet Lisbeth in New York for lunch and wanted to do some shopping first. She needed something for the Fourth of July formal at The Club, something black and slinky like Myra and her friends had worn in Jamaica. Maybe she’d get her hair cut too, if there was time.

The phone was ringing when she stepped out of the shower. She wrapped herself in a towel and answered.

“Mrs. Pressman?”

“Yes.”

“This is Hubanski.”

“Who?”

“Sergeant Hubanski, Plainfield PD.”

“Oh . . . yes . . . of course . . .”

“We found a sheet.”

“You did?”

“Yes, plain white, exactly the kind you described.”

“Where?”

“The corner of Sunset and Morning Glory.”

“That’s not far from here.”

“We know.”

“When?”

“When, what?”

“When did you find it?”

“Oh. Yesterday afternoon. I was off. My boys picked it up, so I didn’t know about it until this morning. We’re checking out the laundry marks now. When we’ve got something we’ll give you a call.”

“Yes, please.”

“Just wanted you to know we’re hot on his trail.”

“Yes. Well, thank you for calling, sergeant.”

So, they’d found a sheet. Was it his? Was that why he was dressed differently today, because he’d lost his sheet? Unlikely. He must have more than one sheet. This one that Sergeant Hubanski had come up with probably belonged to some neighborhood child who had been playing tent and left it outside.

“Good morning, Mrs. Pressman,” Florenzia called from downstairs, slamming the front door. “That’s just me.”

“Good morning, Florenzia,” Sandy called back.

“You got some mail . . . You like to see?”

“Yes, please.” Sandy met her halfway down the stairs. Florenzia handed it to her. “Thank you.”

“It be very hot today.”

“You can turn the air-conditioning back on now. I turned it off for my shower.”

“I be doing downstairs today in case somebody come looking to buy house?”

“Yes, that’s a good idea.”

“Mr. Pressman, he tell me to keep house looking good and he be giving me a raise.”

“Oh?”

“That’s so. He tell me two weeks ago.”

“I didn’t know, Florenzia, but we’re certainly very pleased with the way you keep the house.” How like Norman to offer a raise when they were about to move.

Sandy took the mail to her bedroom and closed the door.

Nothing from Bucky yet but there was a card from Jen. The first.

Dear Mommy,

Camp sucks! I am starving to death. There is no steak. There is no roast beef. Only one cookie a day. You should see me. I am all bones. Please, please, get me out of here. And hurry!

Your daughter,
Jennifer P.

That proved it! Jen was too young for camp. She shouldn’t have listened to Norman. Just because Enid sent
him
off to camp when he was five didn’t mean Jen was ready. Poor little Jen. Sandy had a mental picture of her behind barbed wire, crying. Painfully thin. A concentration camp for overprivileged youngsters.

Oh, God.

But wait. She had visited Camp Wah-Wee-Nah-Kee last summer. Had seen how lovely it was. Across the lake from Bucky’s camp. Iris Miller, the director, had shown them around. Pretty little bunks lined up at the crest of the hill. Manicured lawns. Flower beds. Modern bathrooms. Tennis courts. A dining room with a view of the mountains. And certainly no barbed wire. Jen would be all right. She had to be.

Sandy picked up the phone and dialed.

“This is Camp Wah-Wee-Nah-Kee in the heart of the Berkshires.” A cheery voice sang out.

Sandy asked for Iris Miller, then waited while she was paged.

“Yes, this is Iris Miller.”

“This is Sandy Pressman, Mrs. Miller . . . from New Jersey . . . Jennifer’s mother . . .”

“Yes, Mrs. Pressman. I saw Jennifer at breakfast. She’s doing beautifully.”

“But, Mrs. Miller, I just received a very disturbing postcard from Jen saying that she’s starving.”

“Really Mrs. Pressman,” Iris said, laughing, “I promise you, she’s not starving.”

“Something about no steak and no roast beef.”

“She’s been here less than a week . . . she’s a first-year camper . . . there’s always a period of adjustment . . . and as it happens we had steak on our first night. But we refer to it as beef here. We certainly give our campers the very best, believe me.”

“Well, I hope so, but you can understand how upset I was when I got Jen’s card.”

“Of course. But don’t worry. She’d have written a letter if she was really unhappy. The postcard is a sign that everything’s fine.”

“I’d like to talk to Jen.”

“You know that’s against the rules, Mrs. Pressman. No phone calls before visiting day. Write her cheerful letters. Believe me, she’s well cared for here.”

“I guess it’s just that . . .”

“See you on visiting day and don’t hesitate to call whenever you’re concerned.”

“Yes . . . well . . .” Sandy began, but Iris had already hung up.

She’d have to write to Jen tonight, explaining about the beef, suggesting that if she was hungry to demand peanut butter and to promise that on visiting day she would bring her all sorts of goodies. Pepperidge Farm cookies, fruits, potato chips, candy. No, that was wrong. Jen had to learn to get along without her. That was what camp was all about, wasn’t it? That’s what Norman said. Sandy didn’t know. She’d never gone herself. Mona didn’t trust camps. “You want polio, that’s a good way to get it,” Mona had argued when Myra begged to go to sleep-away camp. “But it’s hot and I want to go swimming,” Myra whined. “You’re hot, go sit in the bathtub,” Mona answered.

S
ANDY BARELY MADE THE NINE-THIRTY-TWO
and found a seat in no-smoking. She’d been looking forward to this visit with Lisbeth. They hadn’t seen each other in months, not since January, when Sandy had returned from Jamaica. And on that day Sandy was sporting a full-blown herpes virus on her lower lip.

“You still get those things?” Lisbeth had asked.

“From the sun.”

“So why don’t you wear something to protect your lips, like zinc oxide?”

“Zinc’s so ugly, all that white goo.”

“No offense, San, but it’s not as ugly as a fever sore.”

“I know, and from now on I’m going to cover my lips before I go out in the sun. I’ve made up my mind, it’s crazy to suffer this way.”

“Didn’t you have one when you and Norman were married?”

“Yes, a very small one.”

“And when your father died?”

“Yes, at his funeral. I had the tail end of one at my Sweet Sixteen Party too.”

“Do you think they come from emotional upheavals?”

“No, from the sun.”

“But your father died in November, didn’t he? The same time as JFK?”

“You know something, you’re right. I never thought about that.”

“You see, there’s more to it than the sun.”

“Maybe . . .”

Lisbeth Moseley, Born Zelda Rabinowitz. Changed her first name on her fifteenth birthday, refusing to speak to anyone who didn’t address her as Lisbeth from that day on. It was she who encouraged Sandy to change the spelling of her name from Sandra to Sondra, not that it mattered. Everyone continued to call her Sandy. Lisbeth. Editor in chief of the Hillside High
News.
Girl Most Likely To . . . with straightened black hair and an inexpensive but successful nose job. The only one of the old crowd to go to Barnard. Lisbeth, who married a goy, when Sandy wasn’t even brave enough to date one. A genuine goy who also happened to be her professor. An elective poetry course for those students exempt from freshman English. Blond and tall and slim, he smoked a pipe and wore tweed jackets with elbows patched in leather. The stereotypical professor. Vincent X. Moseley, from Connecticut. With background. Never mind that he also had a chunky, snub-nosed wife and two little boys in a crowded apartment on West 116th Street.

He
did it
with Lisbeth anyway.

“Really, all the way?” Sandy asked.

“Yes, and it was wonderful . . . wonderful . . . much better than we ever thought when we used to play our silly games.”

“It didn’t hurt?”

“No.”

“Did he use a rubber?”

“No.”

“But Lisbeth, suppose you get pregnant?”

“I’m going to marry him, anyway.”

“But he’s already married.”

“She doesn’t understand him. He’s a poet. He’s very sensitive. All she understands are diapers and bottles. He’s asking for a divorce.”

Their child, Miranda, was two years older than Bucky. Lisbeth’s mother looked after her until Lisbeth got her degree, and then, when she had a job, a job with a real future, as a textbook editor at Harper’s, Miranda went to live with her parents in New York. “She’s brilliant, beautiful, and sophisticated, just as you’d expect,” Lisbeth said, matter-of-factly, to anyone who asked about Miranda.

They lived in a co-op on Riverside Drive now, and had a cabin off the coast of Maine with no indoor plumbing. Lisbeth had shown pictures of the three of them, frolicking in the outdoor tub, naked.

Lisbeth, whose mother kept kosher when the rest of the crowd ate bread over Passover, whose mother never tired of singing “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” to her daughter’s embarrassment.

Lisbeth, Sandy’s best friend. Sandy’s first lover.

T
HEY WERE TWELVE,
going on thirteen. It was New Year’s Eve. The bedroom door was closed but not locked. There were no locks on the doors in Sandy’s house. A child might get locked in that way. And God forbid, in case of fire . . .

Mona and Ivan were in the basement recreation room entertaining their friends. Myra was out on a date. Sandy and Lisbeth were in Sandy’s bed, under the quilt. Sandy was on top, being the boy. She moved around and around, squiggling, rubbing against Lisbeth until she got that good feeling. Then it was Lisbeth’s turn to do the same. Sometimes they played
Rape
and other times it was
Just Plain Love.
They touched each other’s breasts, but never
down there.

The door opened. It was Mona. “Happy New Year!” she sang, slightly tipsy, a glass of champagne in one hand. “What are you doing in the same bed?”

“Keeping warm,” Zelda/Lisbeth answered.

“You’re cold?”

“Yes,” Sandy said.

“I’ll turn up the heat, but first, come downstairs and say Happy New Year to our friends.”

“Do we have to?”

“Yes, everybody wants to see you.”

“Like this?”

“Put on your robes and slippers.”

Mona didn’t know that under the quilt the girls were naked.

“We’ll be right down,” Sandy said. “Could you close the door so nobody can see us in our pajamas.”

“There’s nobody here but me,” Mona said.

“Please, Mom, Zelda doesn’t want you to see her in just pajamas.”

“Since when?”

“Since I’ve gotten modest, Mrs. Schaedel. It just happened a few weeks ago.”

“I see,” Mona said. “All right, but hurry down because then you have to go to sleep even if it is New Year’s Eve.”

“Whew . . .” Zelda/Lisbeth said, when Mona was gone.

They got into their pajamas and robes and went downstairs, where they were hugged and kissed by Mona and Ivan’s friends. Friends from the Sunday Night Club, where the women played Mah-Jongg and the men played poker, friends from the Tuesday night group, where the women played canasta and the men played poker, and friends from the Friday Night Dance class, where Mr. Zaporro came to the house and taught them the cha-cha-cha.

Sandy had to call the friends
Uncle
or
Aunt,
and let them pinch her cheeks. When she and Zelda/Lisbeth went downstairs, Aunt Totsie spilled champagne on Sandy’s robe and Uncle Jerry was too busy to kiss her because he had his hand up Aunt Ruthie’s dress. Aunt Ruthie wore black stockings and the girls could see clear up to her garters, even caught a glimpse of her black girdle. That was really funny because Aunt Ruthie was married to Uncle Ned and Uncle Jerry was married to Aunt Edie.

“Do you think they’re going to do it?” Zelda/Lisbeth whispered to Sandy.

“No, they’re just good friends.”