Five Women (30 page)

He didn't send her flowers, and he didn't call. She was both glad and disappointed. You made a bargain, Billie told herself. You made the rules. Don't consider yourself cheated. Six weeks later when her period was late and she felt a little queasy, she went to her gynecologist.

“You're pregnant!” he said with false jollity, just in case she was glad about it, a single career woman, nearly forty. He waited for her to complain.

“Good,” Billie said.

She didn't take another drink or smoke another cigarette from that day on through her entire pregnancy. Her concern for the fetus was even stronger than the pains of withdrawal. She ate what she was supposed to, she took vitamins, she made herself walk. When her customers at Yellowbird saw how happy she was to be pregnant, they were delighted for her. The amniocentesis showed a healthy baby boy.

The two transvestites, Gladys and Lucy, insisted on giving her a baby shower at Yellowbird, inviting her list of friends. Billie was a little surprised to see how small that list actually was. She had always been so busy it had never occurred to her. But then, she had never been a woman with many friends. She did not invite Toad or the guys from the band, from the old days. She hadn't seen them for years. Once she was a mother, she knew, she would have different friends. Her son would go to school, she would join the PTA. Or maybe not.

She investigated birthing centers, where no one would ask her who the father was, but in the end she was afraid of complications and opted for the more conventional way of having the baby in a hospital. Her doctor was pleased; a hospital, he felt, was more equipped for emergencies, a first baby at her age. . . .

She was in labor for twelve hours with her son. When they finally laid the warm little person against her body, she felt the ripple of electricity go right through her, from her breast to her toes. You are me and not me, she thought. She had never felt so profoundly human in her life. I can't believe I did this, she thought in awe, I can't believe I made you. How can anybody possibly think having a baby is ordinary?

I will take care of you my whole life, Billie promised him silently. Or at least as long as you want me to.

When she had to fill out the birth certificate she named her son Billie Redmond. She would call him Little Billie. She wrote down her own name, Billie Redmond, for the mother, and when she had to write down the name of the father, she did not hesitate for a minute. William Redmond, she wrote.

Now, she thought, you are a hundred percent mine.

Chapter Twenty-six

F
ELICITY AND
R
USSELL
had been married for three years. She was sometimes surprised it had lasted that long. What she had misread as his sophistication and demanding good taste had turned into what it really was: the fear of a man who thinks he is a fake, and the constant critical barbs of a control freak. She felt as if he didn't like anything about her. They had sex once a month, if that, and only after she had bathed and perfumed herself to his satisfaction. “You smell,” he often told her, turning away.

She was horrified, bewildered, hurt. Had he always felt that way? “Nobody ever said he didn't like the way I smell,” she would protest.

“I don't like it when you talk about other men.”

After their passionate honeymoon Russell would never perform oral sex on her again, although he always wanted her to do it to him. From a superb lover he became a cold and selfish man whose foreplay was minimal, whose barely repressed anger turned her angry in turn, so now his enormous penis was no longer a national treasure—now it hurt, and she wished it were half as big.

“Do you have to wear that dress?”

“What's wrong with it?”

“It makes you look cheap.”

It was almost as if he and her mother had conspired to make her feel like nothing. Felicity was beginning to think there had been a horrible mistake and she had married her mother. She felt like an inadequate little girl again, still living at home, but this time she was in his home. She remembered when she was chasing him, thinking at that time in how many ways Russell's temperament was like her mother's, but she had been too much in love to understand what it would be like to have to deal with this.

When she was courting him she had made excuses for everything. When she married him she had thought she had won the war. Now she realized the war would never be over.

“I want to go to couples counseling,” Felicity told him.

“Why?”

“Because I'm miserable and we're not getting along.”

“It's your fault if we're not,” he said.

She bought and arranged flowers for their apartment and he complained if they shed before she took them away. If she left the bureau drawer open half an inch he yelled at her and told her she was a careless slob. In the morning when they opened their eyes, the first thing he told her instead of good morning was, “Wash out your mouth.”

He was still punishing her for making him give up his freedom, and she was thinking seriously of getting a divorce before it was too late.

“I'm leaving you,” Felicity said.

Russell looked up from the TV. All he did now when they were at home together was watch sports events on television; he had nothing to say to her and didn't want to listen to what she had to say to him. But of course he had always done that, hadn't he, and hadn't she pretended to like sports as much as he did?

“You're what?” he said. He actually sounded wounded, mild.

“I can't be married to a man who hates me.”

“Who said I hate you, Baby?”

“I do.”

“But I love you.”

“You have a fine way of showing it.”

“Don't I support you?” he said, in that same innocently aggrieved tone. “Could you ask for a better life?”

“That's not the issue. You insult me.”

“When do I do that?”

“All the time.”

“I never insult you. You're crazy.”

“You tell me I'm not attractive, that I smell bad.”

“Baby, you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.”

“That's not true,” Felicity said. “I know I'm not so pretty, but I'm pretty enough. I try all the time. You don't care.”

“When was the last time I brought you flowers?” Russell asked sternly.

“Two days ago,” she admitted.

“Then how can you say I don't care?”

How could she, an intelligent woman, a trained attorney, be so helpless to put a cogent argument together when she was talking to him? He frightened her, and needing his approval she floundered and drew back. What could she make of a man who belittled her one minute and was unexpectedly sentimental the next?

“You're just working too hard,” Russell said. “I see how much work you bring home from the office.”

“I'm surprised you notice anything. You're always glued to the television set.”

“I don't want to bother you.”

Could that be true? She backed down, she wondered, she tried harder.

Two more years went by. She was promoted at the office to partner. She knew she was their symbol: a woman and a black, but she also knew she was good. She realized that for the moment Russell was right about not wanting a baby, that it was the wrong time. She continued to be the good wife, but now she didn't have time to cook for him so often, they didn't entertain as much. But every six months they had a party for his friends.

She and Russell had been to India together, to Hong Kong and Singapore and Indonesia, to Portofino and Naples and Venice, to Nice and Cannes. He liked to plan their trips with careful perfectionism, to take complete charge. On these expensive and exotic vacations he seemed to enjoy showing her off. He was kind to her and she felt close. Back home in New York they were always nice to each other in public. They were affectionate to each other, with their nicknames, with their coyness. People thought they were a happy couple. But now the sex had dwindled to the point where three and four months would go by without Russell's ever wanting to touch her. When she made overtures he drew away.

“Why?” Felicity asked him.

“You're just my wife,” he said. “You're here every day. I told you I could never be satisfied with one woman.”

It made her cry when he said that, but hadn't he told her before they were married, hadn't he warned her? She was sure that now he was having an affair again. He had to have someone, or a lot of women, if he wasn't going near her.

“I want to be more exciting to you,” Felicity said. “Tell me your secret fantasies. Tell me what you like.”

He shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I want you to wear sexy lingerie,” he said finally, but he was just throwing her a bone.

“That's easy enough!”

She dressed up for him: the garter belt and stockings and high heels with no underpants, the panties with the hole, all the black and red and ruffled things she could find in the department stores and the sex shops. It was a complete waste of time. Now she was just his wife in a pathetic costume. She felt unattractive and unappealing and foolish and wronged.

“You're having an affair, aren't you?” Felicity said.

“No I'm not.”

“Of course you are.”

“Believe what you like. You won't listen to what I tell you anyway.”

Then one night she went out for drinks with a colleague from the office, a man she wouldn't be interested in in a million years but who made her laugh; and when she came home Russell was waiting up for her, angry and jealous and accusing her of being the one who was cheating, calling her a slut. He hit her three times and pushed her against the wall. She tried to run out of the apartment but he locked the door and stood in front of it so she couldn't get away. She was screaming. She hadn't been so terrified since the days when she was little and her mother had chased her around the house with the belt. Cheating had never even occurred to Felicity as an option for herself—only leaving had.

The next day she sneaked in to work embarrassed about the way she looked and desperate to change her life, and talked to a divorce lawyer at her firm who took Polaroid photos of her bruises, and that weekend she went home to see her mother.

“I'm leaving him,” she told Carolee. “Look at these pictures of what he did to me.”

“What did you do to deserve it?” her mother asked.

“Nothing!
Nothing!”

“Where will you be if you leave him?” her mother said. “Who will you be? Just another lonely divorced woman looking for husband number two. I lived in an unhappy marriage and so can you. There are always compensations. Russell is a catch. Most women would think you're lucky to have him.”

“I'd rather have a kind husband like my sister has,” Felicity said, although she didn't actually mean Calvin.

“You'd never settle for a man that pathetic-looking and you know it.”

“He's a catch for Theodora.”

“And Russell is a catch for you. You're my beautiful favorite daughter. You deserve the best. He was only jealous because he loves you so much.”

“Oh, Mom.” She always melted when her mother was kind to her. “Russell doesn't even want to have sex with me anymore.”

“Men want what they can't have,” her mother said. “I know.”

Felicity went home to Russell. He apologized and promised he would never hit her again, but although she finally forgave him she didn't really trust him anymore. They both agreed to try harder to make their marriage work, but as the months went by Felicity didn't see any difference. She thought he was possibly too old, too set in his ways, ever to change for her. Maybe she was too hurt and angry to try to change for him. After that she just coasted along, depressed and confused. Sometimes she pretended she wasn't interested in Russell at all, which was now more true than not, and once in a while, to catch him off guard, she tried to seduce him, just to see if she wasn't totally repulsive, even though she didn't enjoy it when she succeeded. He took her when he decided he wanted her.

She was still trying to figure out when that was. At first she had tried to find out so she could get him, but now she wanted to know so she could avoid him. He wasn't her lover, a lover wouldn't be so selfish. He wasn't her best friend, hadn't been for a long time. A best friend would not be so critical. She had to admit she still loved him, but now it was not as a husband but more as a dear and long-known member of her family with whom she had shared a past. She also had to admit she hated him.

She knew other people put up with sexless marriages, the way her father had, but she was too young and vital to settle for a life like that. How ironic that everybody thought she was so lucky to be Mrs. Russell Naylor, even her mother, who was supposed to love her.

How even more ironic that Russell said he loved her, too. Maybe he meant she was just a dear member of his family, the way she felt about him. He probably didn't even bother to figure out what he felt, as long as she continued to be conveniently there.

Her firm had a new client, the successful black suspense novelist Jason Collins. Felicity had met him once when they signed him. He was an attractive, youngish middle-aged man with a mischievous twinkle in his eye that she had liked. He had seemed to appreciate her as a woman and his attitude hinted he was prevented from flirting only by the office setting and their professional relationship. At the time she had been surprised and flattered. Despite his jealousy Russell had by now also made her feel no man could possibly be interested in her. Now Jason Collins's new manuscript was in, and she was to read it for possible libel, and then she was to have the usual meeting with him to ask him who each character was, whether they were real or imaginary or a composite. The publishers insisted on being protected when an author had as big an advance as he did.

She stayed up until four o'clock in the morning, reading and taking notes, and despite the fact that she had to read his novel for other than pleasure she found it well put together and engrossing. She found herself lingering over the sex scenes. You couldn't help picturing the author in them to some degree. Wouldn't she like to ask him, in their meeting, “Is this you?”

I'm really desperate, Felicity thought, smiling to herself, when I start daydreaming about an author because of the sex scenes he's written. That's how bad
my
life has gotten.

Her new office was furnished with English antiques and flowered chintz. Two spotted ceramic dogs sat on the corner of her desk and there was a wall full of law books. She was wearing a black suit with a short skirt and very high heels, and as always her makeup was perfect. When Jason Collins came in he looked at her appreciatively. She was flattered all over again, but she was also aware that they were both wearing wedding rings. She was sure his marriage was happier than hers. She supposed his lucky wife was the inspiration for those sex scenes, and wondered what she looked like.

Felicity sat on the small sofa and he sat on the chair, because she had decided quite a while ago that to sit behind her desk in situations like this was too intimidating to the client. After all, she was on his side. When they both had coffee at hand she went down her list. It was quite straightforward. Jason Collins was enough of a pro to know how to disguise characters who were real, and in this particular book, although he had done a great deal of research with the police, it had been mainly to verify or explain things he had made up and wanted to be accurate.

She looked up to see him looking at her legs. She would have tried to tug her skirt down to cover more of them, but it would have seemed too girlish, and besides, it couldn't be done. He smiled at her.

“Do you work out?” he asked. “You have incredible muscles in your legs.”

“I used to dance as a kid,” Felicity said. “And I still try to get to the gym.”

“I can see that.”

She thought he looked like he worked out too, but said nothing. He was still looking at her in that same appreciative way, and suddenly, for the first time in a long time, she felt pretty.

“Well,” she said, tapping the manuscript, “I think you're fine. And I would like to add that I loved the book.”

“Thank you.”

“You kept me up all night. I mean, it did.”

He laughed, as if people didn't say that to him all the time, as if she were somehow seductive and clever. “Can I take you to lunch?”