Wives & Lovers Read online

  “No, I didn’t know that,” Maizie said. “I haven’t seen Pamela in a while.”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Brill nodded. “This young man she met at a dance in town. Isn’t that quaint? A perfectly nice boy, too. Though he hasn’t got the best prospects. Flunked out of pre-med at the university and just got a job at the car wash, if you can believe it.” She handed Maizie the folded papers. “But I’ve long since given up any pretensions about those kinds of things, if I ever had them. After all, I was a hair-dresser when I met Edward all those centuries ago.”

  Maizie opened the pages. It was a group of signatures, some of which were slightly smeared.

  “I have a pen,” Mrs. Brill said.

  Maizie smoothed the pages out on the table, and the other woman handed her the pen. Leo looked at his wife’s hands, the amazing creamy suppleness of them under the light, and caught himself thinking of what Maizie’s family must’ve said about him in those first days: this clumsy, well-meaning boy from Ohio (he could hear them) with no family to speak of, and no special talent at anything. Maizie had said once that she found him beautiful, that she had chosen him on sight. She used to joke about how she had gone to school to shop, and he was what she had brought home with her. And yet when, recently, she read him her father’s strange letter, sitting up in bed with the piece of paper in her trembling hand as he lay on his side staring into her dark eyes, he had heard phrases that might have been applicable to his own situation. If she hadn’t been so distressed by it, he might’ve told her so. He’d held it in. He’d gone out into the chilly dusk and spent an hour splitting logs for the woodstove, working in a kind of fury, thinking about his wife’s father—the work that had gone into getting the room ready for him—and feeling himself locked in the trap of his wife’s condition and circumstances.

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Brill said.

  “Should I sign it?” Leo said.

  “Oh, sure.”

  He leaned over the table, taking the pen from Maizie. As he signed, the telephone rang, and Maizie reached for it.

  “Hello.”

  Leo handed the paper to Mrs. Brill.

  “This is she. Yes, Mrs. Gehringer. I—yes. Yes.” Maizie looked at him, and then at Mrs. Brill. “I’m sorry, I can’t really talk right now.”

  “I know her,” Mrs. Brill murmured to Leo. “If it’s the same Gehringer. I teach her son.”

  “Mrs. Gehringer,” Maizie said in a strange, brittle tone of voice. “I’m almost nine and a half months pregnant.”

  Pauline Brill put the papers in the pocket of her coat. She and Leo were both staring at Maizie now.

  Maizie was sitting with the phone at her ear and one hand visored across her forehead, the elbow of that arm resting on the table. “I appreciate that,” she said. “It was a friendship.” Then she repeated this phrase.

  “Well,” said Pauline Brill, “I’d better get on.”

  There were other lights in the drive now. James and Helena arriving. There wasn’t going to be an opportunity to talk about this phone call. Mrs. Brill patted Maizie on the shoulder and made her way out the door, along the walk. She greeted James and Helena, and for a moment they stood talking. Mrs. Brill was telling them about her stepdaughter’s coming marriage. In the kitchen, Maizie sat listening to whatever Mrs. Gehringer was saying on the other end of the line. Finally she put the handset down on the table and let her face drop into her hands.

  “Honey,” Leo said. “What is it?”

  She stood with some difficulty and put the handset back in its cradle, set the phone in its place on the counter.

  “Maizie?”

  “I’ve—I told Marty some things.” She seemed at a loss.

  “What things?”

  James and Helena were coming in, brushing the snow from their shoulders. “I don’t know, maybe we ought to turn right around and go back,” James said. “It’s getting bad out there.”

  “You can stay with us,” Leo said, taking Helena’s coat.

  Maizie embraced her brother, then led them all into the living room. They arranged themselves around the coffee table, with its art books and stacks of magazines, and Leo went into the kitchen to make drinks for them. He heard them laughing about something Mrs. Brill had said out on the sidewalk. Maizie sounded like herself. He poured the drinks—whiskey over ice for James, white wine for Helena, sparkling water for Maizie and himself—and made his way back in to them with all of it on a tray. Helena was sitting on the arm of the sofa, above the level of her husband’s shoulders, and she had one hand resting on his back. James sat forward to take his and Helena’s drinks.

  “So,” Leo said, putting the tray down on the coffee table and sitting across from them. “What’s the story?”

  “Story?” Helena said.

  They all seemed to hesitate.

  “What’ve you all been talking about?” Leo said.

  “Where were we?” said Helena.

  “We were wondering when Maizie is going to have this baby,” James said.

  “I took a walk in the snow tonight,” said Maizie. Then, to James: “You remember?”

  “Do I remember what?”

  “Mom’s story, about the night she had me.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, you know it, James. She used to tell it to us when it snowed.”

  James’s face was blank.

  “You can’t tell me you don’t remember the story.”

  James said, “I’ve been thinking about that time when we were at the Fourth of July celebration out at Blue Ridge Park, summer of—what—’eighty-two? We were all there, the whole family. I don’t know why we went that year. Dad was always so reluctant to go anywhere on holidays. We all went, and there was a band playing in a gazebo—this rock band, of all things. Playing in a gazebo in the park. And Mom wandered off. Do you remember? It took us the longest time to find her. We spent the whole afternoon looking for her, and we didn’t find her until the fireworks started.”

  “I found her,” Helena said. “She was sitting down by the edge of the pond, watching the ducks.”

  “Do you remember, Maizie?”

  “I guess so,” Maizie said.

  “I remember,” Helena said. “It was getting dark. I couldn’t even make her out from a distance. It was the hat—I saw that straw hat she wore, sitting next to her. So I walked up and said, ‘Andrea?’ I said it two or three times before she heard me. I said, ‘Andrea, what’re you doing? We’ve all been crazy looking for you.’ And she said, ‘I went for a walk.’ Really, she said it so simply, I wondered what I’d been so upset about.”

  “She was always doing things like that,” James said. “You’d look up—at the parties they threw, all those people around. It happened more than once. You’d look up, and she’d be gone. She’d be off in another room of the house, or out walking. She’d just slip away.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” Maizie said.

  “We can talk about this,” said James, “can’t we?”

  For a small space, no one said anything.

  “She was my mother,” James said, “and I don’t feel like I ever really knew her.”

  “We’ve been going through this,” said Helena. “We keep listing qualities—traits, you know. She liked elegance. She worked at it. She ran a dance studio for little girls. She had a way of looking right at you when she laughed. She was good at conversation.”

  “I woke up one time and she was standing by my bed, staring at me,” James said. “I was about thirteen years old. She was standing there, perfectly still. I thought it was a ghost or something, and when I yelled, she moved and scared me even worse. It was like a statue coming to life. It took her a long time to calm me down that night.”

  “Remember how she used to be about Christmas?” Helena said. “When did that stop?”

  “I keep getting these flashes of memory about her,” said James. “When she and Dad were having problems, she’d leave some part of herself undone. There’d be a but
ton loose, or a strand of hair. Or she’d forget to put both earrings on. Remember that, Maizie? It was a conscious thing she did, like a statement or something. I said, ‘Mom, your eye liner’s smeared a little,’ and she gave me the strangest look and said, ‘I know.’ Just like that. Like there was nothing unusual or in need of correction. A perfectly natural thing, in a woman who was always so concerned about how people saw her.”

  “Please,” Maizie said. “I don’t want to talk about her anymore.”

  “Maizie, you can’t tell me you’re not thinking about all of this.”

  They were quiet again. They heard the wind in the eaves of the house.

  “I keep thinking about how everything looked in the motel room,” James went on. “She’d hung her clothes up in the bathroom, for Christ’s sake. They were on a hanger on the back of the door.”

  “I’ve been seeing that picture of her,” Helena said. “Sitting by that pond in the twilight. It’s like I could almost call to her. I’ve dreamed it. I used to watch her standing in front of the house waving at us as James and I drove away. She always stood there until we got out of sight. Rain or shine. She’d get so small in the distance, still waving.”

  “When I was a kid,” Leo said, “my mother used to talk about getting out of earshot. She didn’t like the feeling. I’d head off to school and she’d keep saying my name, saying good-bye. I lived a block and a half away from school, and she’d yell so loud I could still hear her as I climbed the front stairs of the school. It was like a game, and we laughed about it. But when she was serious, she’d say something about how it always hurt her—the fact that I’d be out of earshot, away from the sound of her voice.”

  The others looked at him.

  “What you said,” he said to Helena. “It made me think of it.”

  “No,” she said. “I understand.”

  “Every year,” James said, “for how many years, she had that party for those little kids in her dance studio. We had to help out. Remember, Maizie? Didn’t she—remember she slipped out of a couple of those, too. Once I found her sitting in the office with the lights off. Sitting at her desk in the dark.”

  “I’ve done something like that,” Helena said. “I used to sit in my closet when I was a kid. It made me feel safe.”

  They sipped their drinks.

  James said, “I have this memory of her, running to get out of the rain. It haunts me. She was laughing—I can see it so clear. This young woman, this person I thought I knew, enjoying life.”

  “She had such lovely skin,” Leo said.

  “Remember how she used to get about the way we dressed?” James said to Maizie. “She gave me such a lot of grief about my hair. She was always worried about other people. It seemed to me that she never thought about herself at all.”

  “Oh, she thought about herself, all right,” said Maizie.

  Now they all looked at her.

  James shook his head slowly. “I still can’t—” He broke off.

  “I’ll be back,” Helena said, rising. “I have to powder my nose.”

  “Jesus, Helena,” James said. “Couldn’t you come up with something more original than that?”

  Helena bent down and showed him her nose. “I’m going to powder my nose,” she said. Then she turned and made her way down the hall to the bathroom. Leo took a drink, watched for a while as Maizie tried explaining to her brother about their mother’s walk-in-the-snow story, then excused himself—neither of them heard him—and went into the kitchen to start the dinner. He put rice on, and came back toward them to ask if they wanted coffee with the meal, and as he entered the space between the kitchen and the living room, he heard Maizie say, low, “I had a call from Marty Gehringer’s wife today.”

  “Who?” James asked.

  “Gehringer. The one I told you about in September.”

  “Okay.”

  “She’s blown everything out of proportion, and now Gehringer’s moved into an apartment in Point Royal. She blames me.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I don’t know what to say to Leo.”

  There was a pause then, in which Leo felt as though they might have realized that he was near. From down the hall came the sound of water running in the bathroom. He braved a silent step backward, then froze again as Maizie began to speak.

  “How is it now?”

  “Better,” her brother said.

  “You gave her grief about powdering her nose.”

  “I was teasing.”

  “It’s really better?”

  “I’ve simply decided to wait until I recognize her again. She looks very beautiful tonight, don’t you think?”

  “I love Helena,” Maizie said.

  “I love Leo,” said her brother.

  Leo made his way to the kitchen and ran the tap—wanting some sound to place himself in another part of the house. After a moment, he turned the tap off and set the fire going under the skillet. He watched the oil corrugate with the heat. When he put the flour-coated fish in, it crackled and sent several needle-sized drops of oil onto his wrist. He turned the fire down, hearing his sister-in-law come back through from the hallway, and now the three of them were talking about a movie that Helena had seen, and liked. It came to him that the whole evening remained to get through. He looked out the window at the snow, the swirling flakes under the streetlamp. It was quite possible that James and Helena would stay the night. In the other room, someone had put music on.

  He checked the fish, took the salad out of the refrigerator. After a few minutes his brother-in-law strolled in, sipping his whiskey. The women were talking animatedly in the other room. James went to the back door and looked out the window there.

  “Bad,” he said. “Bad, bad.”

  “You can spend the night,” Leo said automatically. He couldn’t look the other man in the face.

  “Maizie had a contraction just now.”

  “Braxton-Hicks,” Leo told him.

  “What’s that?”

  “Contractions that don’t mean the baby’s being born.”

  James was quiet a moment. Then he seemed to come to himself. “Hate the winter,” he said. “Makes me feel like things are closing all around me. You know, the early dark.”

  “Whatever,” Leo said.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Not a thing,” Leo told him. “Everything’s completely jake.”

  “Jake.”

  “It’s an expression,” Leo said.

  “Okay, yeah, I remember.” James sipped the whiskey. “Did I say something to piss you off?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Leo said.

  The other man shrugged, looked out the window again, and sighed. “Maizie said the old man called.”

  “He wanted to know how Maizie was. Is. And I really couldn’t tell him much.”

  “I haven’t heard from him,” James said without much inflection. “How does he like Florida?”

  “I forgot to ask. We didn’t talk very long.”

  James was silent. In the other room, the women had also fallen silent.

  “He sounded chipper enough, though,” Leo said.

  “Chipper.”

  “I mean he didn’t seem to be—”

  “No, I know,” James said quickly.

  “Maizie’s still mad at him about the room. And the letter, of course.”

  “The letter shouldn’t make her mad.”

  “The anger in it surprised her. She wasn’t ready to have it said out like that.”

  “Hell, I’m angry,” James said. “Isn’t she angry? How can she not be angry?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Leo turned and concentrated on the frying fish.

  “I’m mad as hell,” James said. “Still.”

  There didn’t seem anything else to say.

  “Everybody’s a victim,” James went on. “Right? I’m so sick of that shit. And I’m still mad. And Dad’s right. No pity. No fucking pity. A part of me hopes he’s forgetting her
. I hope he’s got himself a girlfriend or something.”

  Helena entered the kitchen. “You hope who’s got himself a girlfriend?”

  “Who do you think?”

  “Well,” Helena said, “he’s about to have himself a grandchild.”

  For a little space, no one said anything.

  “Did you hear me?” Helena said. “It’s started.”

  THE TRIP TO THE hospital was smoother than they’d feared it might be. The roads were covered with the snow, but it was mostly slush. They drove through it as though it were rainwater. “Do you need us to go faster?” Helena asked, because Maizie had abruptly taken hold of her arm and begun to squeeze; she was having another contraction. “Can you go faster?” Helena asked Leo.

  “He’s going fast,” said James. “You want us to crash?”

  “It’s fine,” Maizie said.

  “Can I do something?” Leo said. “Do you want me to count with you?”

  “No,” said Maizie. “Jesus.”

  A minute later, she said, “It’s going.” Then: “Oh, that was hard.”

  They turned onto Hospital Hill Road and drove past the Mountain Lodge Motel. Leo glanced at the several lighted windows and couldn’t help wondering which was the one. He looked at James, who had turned and was attending to Maizie. For a few minutes, no one said anything. They pulled up the hill and around to the emergency room entrance. Maizie got out on her own, then seemed to cringe, leaning against the wet car in the still-swirling snow, holding on to herself. “Wait,” she said. “Oh, God.”

  James had run into the building, and Leo and Helena began helping her move toward the doors. They were supporting her by her elbows.

  “Wait,” she said.

  And now an orderly came out pushing a wheelchair, accompanied by a nurse. They got Maizie into the chair, and Leo walked alongside her, through the bright open space of the waiting room, past double doors into a corridor and other rooms. He’d lost track of James and Helena.