Heartburn (13 page)

And they did. The Siegels went to see a very nice marriage counselor named Gwendolyn. Gwendolyn left her husband three months later, but the Siegels survived. The four of us resumed normal activities. We went to Ohio for the shoofly pie and we went to Virginia for the ham. We were able to discuss other friends’ marital difficulties without Julie’s looking hurt and Arthur’s looking guilty. Last summer they came to visit us in West Virginia, and Julie and I spent a week perfecting the peach pie. We made ordinary peach pie, and deep-dish peach pie, and blueberry and peach pie, but here is the best peach pie we made: Put 1 ¼ cups flour, ½ teaspoon salt, ½ cup butter and 2 tablespoons sour cream into a Cuisinart and blend until they form a ball. Pat out into a buttered pie tin, and bake 10 minutes at 425°. Beat 3 egg yolks slightly and combine with 1 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and ⅓ cup sour cream. Pour over 3 peeled, sliced peaches arranged in the crust. Cover with foil. Reduce the oven to 350° and bake 35 minutes. Remove the foil and bake 10 minutes more, or until the filling is set.

I keep thinking about that week in West Virginia. It was a perfect week. We swam in the river and barbecued ribs and made Bellinis with crushed peaches and cheap champagne. We lay out on the lawn, the sunlight dappling through the copper beech, and Alexandra got her kite into the air and Sam applauded madly and scampered behind her, screaming with joy. Is it hot enough for you, we said, and the water isn’t cold once you get in. We methodically rubbed sun block onto the arms of our children and poured another pitcherful into our glasses.
So we were grownups. So what? Arthur lifted his glass. “I love you,” he said. “I love us.” The phone rang. Mark ran to get it and then called me into the house. We stood with the phone between us and listened to the lady in the hospital say that she had the results of the amniocentesis. The baby was normal. It was a boy. We ran back to the Siegels and drank to the baby. “You’re going to have a brother,” we told Sam. He started to cry. “Nathaniel,” I said. “Can you say Nathaniel?” “No,” said Sam. “Tummy hurts.” Mark took him then, and walked him down to the river. They found a frog. Sam held it cupped in his hands, and giggled. I remember thinking: Lucky me, lucky us, lucky Sam, lucky Nathaniel.
What’s wrong with this picture?

A
rthur and Julie lived just a few blocks from our house. The morning after Mark and I got back to Washington, I slid out of bed and went over to see them. Arthur opened the door and gave me the kind of look you give someone who’s just had a death in the family and hugged me in a long, speechless, what-can-I-say sort of way.

“How are you?” he said.

“I’m back,” I said. “How am I?”

“You’re back,” he said.

“Mark came to New York yesterday,” I said. “He said he would stop seeing Thelma, so I came back.”

Arthur nodded.

“What do you think?” I said.

“I don’t know,” said Arthur.

Julie came out from the bedroom. She put her arms around me and patted me quite a lot, and I cried on the shoulder of her terry-cloth bathrobe.

“Did you see him?” I said.

They nodded.

“I even saw her for a few minutes,” said Arthur.

“Look,” I said, “I’m putting you in an awkward position here.”

“No, no,” said Julie.

“What did he say?” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Arthur.

“Why doesn’t it matter?” I said.

“Because he’s crazy,” said Arthur.

We went into the kitchen and sat down with some of Arthur’s fetishistically brewed coffee. Arthur makes coffee by putting eggshells and cinnamon sticks and an old nylon stocking into the coffeepot. His coffee tastes like a very spicy old foot.

“The week you came to West Virginia two months ago,” I said.

“What about it?” said Arthur.

“Did we have a good time that week?”

“Terrific,” said Julie.

“Did Mark and I seem happy?”

“Yes,” said Julie.

“I was wondering about it,” I said, “because Mark told me that our marriage had been terrible for a long time, and now I can’t remember whether or not it was.”

“He told us that, too,” said Arthur.

“What else did he tell you?” I said.

“He said you were mean to him,” said Arthur.

“I probably am,” I said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Julie.

“I am,” I said. “All summer long I was snapping at him because he was never there.”

“Of course you were snapping at him,” said Julie. “He was having an affair.”

“But I didn’t know,” I said.

“You must have known,” said Arthur. “I knew.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know,” said Julie.

“I didn’t know about Thelma,” said Arthur, “and I didn’t know for sure, but I thought he was up to something. All those trips to the dentist.”

“What was the matter with me?” I said. “If you could see it, why couldn’t I?”

“Stop beating up on yourself,” said Julie. “You trusted him. You have to trust someone you’re married to, otherwise you’d spend your entire life going through the phone bills and American Express receipts.”

“It’s going to be all right,” said Arthur.

“You’re only saying that because you have to leave to teach a class and it’s a good exit line,” I said.

“I’m saying it because I have to leave and teach a class,” said Arthur, “but it’s true. He’ll come to his senses. Jesus Christ, Rachel. Sam’s still a baby and you’re pregnant.”

Arthur kissed us both goodbye and went out the door. Julie waited until she was sure he’d taken the elevator.

“I didn’t know Mark was having an affair,” said Julie. “I want you to know that. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d known, but I didn’t know.”

“I know,” I said. “What should I do, Julie?”

“Go home. Go on working. Take care of Sam. Have the baby. Wait the thing out. Eventually he’ll get tired of her.
Eventually she’ll turn into as big a nag as he thinks you are. Eventually he’ll get just as bored in bed with her as he is with you. And when that happens, he’ll decide that it’s less trouble to stay with you.”

“But Mark isn’t going to see Thelma anymore,” I said. “So how is he going to get tired of her?”

“He will,” said Julie.

“He will what?” I said.

“He’ll see her again, and he’ll get tired of her.”

“And I’m supposed to sit there like a lox in the meantime?”

“Yes,” said Julie. “If you want to stay married.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say,” I said.

“I know,” said Julie, “but it works. I did it. Sometimes I don’t know why I did it, because it’s so horrible and painful and humiliating, waiting the damned thing out. Sometimes I think I’d have been better off if I’d just left.”

“Aren’t you glad you’re still with Arthur?”

“Oh, sure,” said Julie.

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know,” said Julie. “Sometimes the idea of being single interests me. For example, I woke up this morning and realized I’m never going to have bondage. It’s just never going to come up with me and Arthur. I don’t want to have it particularly, but it’s never going to come up.”

“I’ve never done it either,” I said, “though I guess if I wanted to I could always ask.”

“Arthur would just laugh at me,” said Julie.

“Although I’m not sure what Mark would tie me to,” I said, “since we don’t have a headboard. You pretty much need a headboard, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” said Julie. “That’s the whole point.”

“I guess you could always check into a hotel,” I said. “Hotel beds have headboards.”

“You could call room service for the rope,” said Julie.

“It’s really bad, isn’t it?” I said.

“It’s always bad when it happens,” said Julie. “And then it gets better. You’ll see. In a while, you’ll be able to spend entire fifteen-minute periods without thinking about what they did together.”

“And in the meantime,” I said, “I can think about all the things in my future if it doesn’t work out.”

“What besides bondage?” said Julie.

“Amyl nitrates,” I said. “Threesomes. Japanese movies. Roller disco. Thai food.”

“I thought you hated Thai food,” said Julie.

“I do,” I said, “and if my marriage breaks up, I’ll never have to have it again. It may be worth it.”

Julie looked at me. “I think something happens to them,” she said.

“You mean men,” I said.

“I’m not saying they’re worse,” said Julie. “I’m saying they’re different.”

“You are too saying they’re worse,” I said.

“I know,” said Julie.

“So what do we do?” I said.

“We hang on,” she said, “and if it doesn’t work, we try again with the next one.”

When I got home, Mark was out in his office writing a jolly column about the Eastern shuttle. I walked into the kitchen and found Sam with Juanita, the maid. She was teaching him
to say “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas” in Spanish, which in some ways is the motto for Juanita’s life. Juanita had lain down for twelve years with her husband, Hernando, and when he finally crawled out of her life, taking her Sears, Roebuck charge card with him, he left behind a rash of bad debts and old girl friends and faulty automobile parts that seemed destined to dominate Juanita’s life forever. At least once a week she would turn up late for work, and explain through sobs that the Sears credit department was about to seize a stereo component she knew nothing about, or that her husband had stolen the spare tire from her car trunk, or that someone named Theresa had turned up at the front door asking for Hernando’s stopwatch. “I tol’ her he takes two minutes, drunk or sober,” said Juanita. “What she need to time it for?” Juanita was a very brave woman, really—she was single-handedly supporting her three children—and I always tried very hard to love her, but she made it difficult because she was so disaster-prone. One morning, for example, on her way to work, she was stuck in a traffic jam on the Beltway, and when she got out of her car to see what was holding things up, in that split second, someone crept in through the passenger door of her car and stole her purse. Another time, she was standing in line in the Georgetown Safeway when a woman in front of her collapsed, and after Juanita revived her with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, the woman tried to have her arrested for making improper advances.

Juanita looked up from Sam when I came in and burst into tears.

“Juanita,” I said, “I’m not up for this. Whatever it is, I’m not up for it.”

“Oh, Missee Felman, I feel so bad for ju,” said Juanita. Even
Juanita knew about it! The day after I’d left for New York she’d turned up to discover Mark and Thelma having a heart-to-heart talk on the living room couch.

“I know that lady,” said Juanita. “She no good.”

“I know,” I said.

“
I
know,” said Juanita. “I work for her ten years ago.”

“What’s wrong with her?” I said.

“She very messy,” said Juanita.

Juanita gave me a big hug, which was awkward since she was only about four feet six inches tall, and a hug from her felt like the Heimlich maneuver. Then she pulled back and managed a huge smile that was meant to cheer me up—but instead revealed her mouthful of gold teeth, which only served to remind me of the time I had spent two days on the telephone with her dentist, negotiating a long-term payment for Hernando’s root canal work.

“Everything be okay,” she said. “You see.”

I went up to the little room on the third floor that I used for an office. In the typewriter was an article I’d been writing about potatoes. I took it out of the typewriter and put in a fresh sheet of paper. I must write all this down, I thought. Someday I may write something that’s not a cookbook, and this will all be grist for it. But I couldn’t. To write it down was to give it permanence, to admit that something real had happened. I walked around the room trying to pretend that nothing had happened. I thought about potatoes. The first time I made dinner for Mark I made potatoes. The first time I made dinner for just about anyone I ever cared for I made potatoes. Very very crisp potatoes. I must make some potatoes tonight, I thought; mashed potatoes. Nothing like mashed potatoes when you’re feeling blue. I could hear Mark’s typewriter from
the office over the garage; I kept hoping he would leave, go out for more socks, so I could dash into his sanctuary and go through the phone bills and the American Express receipts, but he was still there, tapping away. Maybe
he’s
making notes for a novel, I thought. Worse, maybe
he’s
making notes for a
column.
That would really do it. There would be my entire marital disaster, reduced to an 850-word column in 109 newspapers. I knew just how he’d write it, too. He’d write it in that dumb Hemingway style he always reserved for his slice-of-life columns.
The old man had told him it would happen. The old man had said to him, Sasha, it will happen someday. You will be on the river. You will be going downstream. You will hit a log.

The phone rang.

I picked it up.

“Rachel, it’s Betty.”

“Oh, God,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

“I know, I know,” said Betty.

“You know?” I said.

“It must have been awful,” said Betty.

“How do you know?” I said.

“It’s in the paper,” said Betty.

“In the paper?” I said.

“Why didn’t you tell me that Vanessa Melhado was in your group?” said Betty.

“The robbery’s in the paper?” I said.

“In the Style section,” said Betty.

“We’re not allowed to tell anyone who’s in the group,” I said.

“What’s she like?”

“We’re not allowed to tell that either,” I said. “Listen, I feel terrible about missing your party.”

“I understand,” said Betty. “I knew something awful must have happened to you if you weren’t there, and now I see that it did.”

“Yes,” I said. “It was awful.”

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” said Betty, “because I found out who Thelma Rice is having the affair with.”

“Who?” I said.

“You’re not going to like it,” said Betty.

“Who is it?” I said.

“Arthur,” said Betty.

“Arthur Siegel?” I said.

“Yes,” said Betty. “They were having drinks in the Washington Hilton yesterday afternoon. Nobody has drinks in the Washington Hilton unless something secret’s going on.”