Pam of Babylon (12 page)
But Sunday she felt returned to herself. After the morning beauty ritual, she made her standard pot of coffee and went from room to room opening the curtains. She left a message on her cleaning lady’s phone to please return to work as soon as possible. Then she grabbed her purse and her own car keys and left for the gym.
She worked herself without mercy after a week furlough. No one asked her where she had been, and if they knew about Jack, reading something in the
Times
or the local paper, they didn’t acknowledge it. She enjoyed her anonymity. How she had maintained that after living in the same house for as long as she did said something to her about the busyness of life. You were either born into an area or remained a stranger forever.
After a good workout, she freshened her lipstick in the car and drove to the grocery store. It was part gourmet delicatessen, part carry-out restaurant. There, she would buy enough food to stock her refrigerator for a week and not have to cook a thing. She was only thinking up until Friday. She would have to again deal with those painful issues of Jack not coming home from the city then, and not before.
This week, she would get the death certificate, go to Social Security for the kids, see their lawyer, go to the insurance company, and into the city again to clean out the refrigerator in the apartment, once and for all. She hadn’t thought about what to do with the apartment much, but the idea crossed her mind to rent it out. She would think on that for a while.
The groceries needed to be put away, so she went straight home. The rain was letting up, and some blue sky peaked through. She wanted to walk on the beach, a good, long walk. But first, she would go to the library and choose some books to read.
Okay, I have exercise, reading, walking on the beach, and eating. When those things are done, what is left?
She began to get frightened. She was alone.
M
arie let herself into her apartment, violently jiggling the key in the lock, pushing the door with her fist, slamming it shut. She stomped around the place, throwing her bags on the floor of the closet and pulling the blinds open with such force that they swung back and forth for a full minute.
Finally, she plopped down on the couch and putting her head in her hands, began to sob, wondering what she was going to do now. There wasn’t one single thing to look forward to. She hated her job, only going through the motions to make Jack proud since he had gotten it for her. No one who worked in her office cared if she showed up or not, and she felt the same way about all of them. Pam used to say, “You have to pretend sometimes, and then the feelings will grow to be genuine.” Marie thought that was the tritest rationalization she had heard. Most of the people she worked with commuted from New Jersey anyway.
What good would friendships with those people do?
The one single thing that gave her life meaning was leaving on Saturday and driving to Long Island to see her sister and Jack. After the kids left for college, she thought it would change, but if anything, it became more focused on Jack and, therefore, more fun for Marie.
He taught her to golf when she was just fourteen, and now she lived for her golf outings with him. He had gotten her a set of specially made clubs. She devoured the golf clothing catalogues and had an impressive wardrobe of golf wear. It gave her something to talk about with other men. Her scores were impressive as well.
Now what would become of it?
Pam didn’t golf. They had a membership at an expensive country club. Marie wondered if she could interest Pam.
Why bother?
She didn’t want to golf with Pam; she wanted to golf with Jack. But he was dead! “Fuck!” she screamed loudly, not caring if the entire building heard her.
She sat on the couch looking out the huge picture window with its view of the Hudson River just beyond Javitz Center. She really was a spoiled brat. Here she had this great apartment, could walk to work, was close to transportation, and could go just about anywhere she wanted by walking two blocks, and yet she was miserable. She’d get ready for work for the rest of the week which she never did, always running around late trying to find clothes to wear. It would give her purpose; a sense of accomplishment. She’d call her mother and offer to take her somewhere over the weekend. It would give them both something to look forward to. She would even swallow her pride and call Pam to ask if she wanted company. Those decisions made, she got up, wiped her face off with a tissue, and vowed to begin living again.
S
andra felt better the next morning as she got ready to go to work. Still just a little queasy, she decided it was due to stress. She left her apartment and began walking south on Broadway. She tried not to think about how the past four days had changed her life, that the day before she had attended the funeral of her lover incognito. The ideal situation would be if she never had to cross the threshold of that goddamned office again. She wondered what the mood would be.
The train was hot, and she loathed the ride that day even more than usual, knowing that there was no one to greet her, no cocky grin, no graying temples, no hunk waiting for her. She would eat lunch alone, go home to her empty apartment and, having no one to go to dinner with, maybe even skip the meal. She imagined her hips getting slimmer, her breasts disappearing, clothes hanging on her. It had happened in the past; it could happen now.
She needn’t have worried about the office. There was a meeting for Jack’s department, probably going over his clients and the projects he was immersed in which they would divide up among the others. She was guaranteed a peaceful morning.
What she hadn’t counted on was what she found hanging over her credenza—the vibrant painting of Riverside Gardens. He had called right after their breakfast together, bought the painting, and had it delivered and hung there. She closed her eyes, imagining him talking on his cell phone, extracting promises of anonymity, and then hanging up and falling over with a heart attack.
She walked to her door and shut it, closing the blinds on the sidelights. She couldn’t help herself, but the tears came yet again.
Will I ever be over it?
How much he had impacted her life was directly proportional to how much she felt it being destroyed. She would no longer be able to eat at Chantal’s, listen to Sting, look at certain art, or read mystery novels; all the things a twenty-something woman would miss. This job, not a high point in her life, now had the potential to be intolerable. She didn’t even know if she could stay in the city.
Walking around to her desk, she sat down and looked at the phone. There was only one other person on this earth she could think of at that moment who knew what she was going through, who could imagine her frustration and non-acceptance of Jack’s death, and that person was his wife. Sandra picked up the phone and dialed Pam’s number. It rang for seven rings, and the answering machine picked up. It was a homogenized male voice instructing her to leave her name and number, which she did. When she was finished, she put her head down on her desk and had a good cry.
M
arie went back to work on Wednesday, although she honestly thought she deserved to have the rest of the week off after what she had been through. She tried calling her sister, but got the answering machine. Softening, she thought maybe Pam was just lying low, allowing herself time to get caught up with her feelings.
Going to work turned out to be helpful after all. She had a lot to do. None of it was emotion based, and her brain had to really work to sort things out. Few people at work knew Jack in spite of his company fielding work their way, so the comments were limited to “Sorry about your brother-in-law.” It was as if it hadn’t happened. He was still alive, at work two subway stops down, and all she had to do was send him a text message: “Meet me at the hot dog stand on the corner of Exchange and Wall.” He’d be there like clockwork, standing with a dog and a soda, all ready for her. They’d walk down the street and lean up against a granite wall and eat, easily talking, sharing intimacies that no one else would hear, or so she thought. He never, ever breathed a word about Sandra Benson.
Was he, in essence, cheating on me as well?
She sat at her desk, distraught. The loneliness was palpable. She needed Pam now like never before. She left another message, then a third.
On Friday evening, walking home from the office, she imagined that it was going to be like any other weekend. She would go home and pack a bag, get her car gassed up, and the next day, Saturday, if she didn’t have anything to do in the morning would be spent going to Long Island. She would usually stop at a farmers’ market on the way to the house and pick up whatever caught her eye; it was the least she could do.
She had her own room at Pam’s. It was in a separate wing from the master and guest suites, shared by Lisa and Brent when they were children and now when they returned home from college. When they were away, Marie missed them terribly, although then she had her own bath as well. There was something about knowing that all she had to do was knock on one of their doors, and she would have ready companionship.
In retrospect, she wondered if her niece and nephew minded her presence. She had always been there, but the family still treated her like an honored guest. When Lisa fought with her mother over permission to date an older boy, Jack spoke up and said, “I’m sure Marie doesn’t want to listen to this squabbling.” Lisa and Pam turned and looked at her with impatience. “If she is going to be here every weekend, she’ll hear more than this!” Marie would have packed up right then and never come back, but Jack leaped to her rescue. “She’s keeping us civilized! Let’s go hit a basket of golf balls,” he said to no one in particular, but Brent and Marie headed out the door with him. It was that sort of interaction that kept her coming back. She is sure now that if Pam had minded, she would have said, “Don’t come this weekend. It is too much.” The rare weekend she had other plans, one of the kids would be on the phone asking her if she was coming, and then she would either feel welcome there or guilty for not going. It was too late. She had spent her life there as either an interloper or a welcome guest. It was too late to change anything; she couldn’t remake history.
She let herself into her apartment. She was hungry, but didn’t feel like cooking, so she got out a loaf of bread and the peanut butter jar and made a sandwich. She poured herself a glass of wine and went and sat on the couch overlooking the river. She picked up her phone to thumb through the caller ID and one name jumped out at her; Sandra Benson. She put the phone down. What the hell did she want? She picked up the phone again and continued searching through the caller ID numbers and saw that Pam had called earlier as well as her mother. She picked a glob of peanut butter off her tooth.
She sat her sandwich down on the coffee table, without a plate under it. She called her mother first. She didn’t have anything to say about Pam, except she hoped she was okay, as she wasn’t answering her phone yet. She returned Pam’s call next. The phone rang for five rings and was answered with a soft hello.
“Did you call?” Marie asked.
“I did. Sorry I didn’t leave a message. I wanted to tell you that Sandra Benson called, and she really needed someone to talk to. I was hoping you would meet with her, be a sounding board, if you are able. It is the least we can do. She loved Jack, Marie, she really did.” Pam was silent then for a few minutes. “I just can’t talk to anyone yet. Do you understand? I have to sort through my own feelings about his death before I can help you and the kids and Sandra sort through your feelings. I am okay with his affair. I don’t hold that against her. It was of my own making.”
“She called here. I saw her number on the caller ID,” Marie said.
“I tried calling her back and left your number on her answering machine. I am truly sorry if that was not okay with you, Marie.” Pam took a deep breath and then sighed. “I can’t talk anymore. I’ll call you in couple of days, okay?” They said goodbye, Marie feeling empathy for her sister, but still a little icy, still a little jealous. She could not rationalize her feelings. They just were what they were. She tried to understand what it would take to have made her feel better about everything, when she realized that she didn’t feel like part of the family now, and probably never would again. It was Jack who made her feel welcome, who seemed to want her there.
Was he just being polite?
She would never know.
She pushed some papers off the couch and lay down sideways on it. She watched the sun go down in the western sky and the lights go on around her and across the river in New Jersey.
What a crappy way to spend a Friday night.
She didn’t turn the lights on in her apartment and eventually fell asleep.
Sometime in the night, Marie woke up and went to her bed to sleep. Sandra Benson kept popping into her head, but she just couldn’t make contact with her, not yet anyway. She wanted to see her sister, too. In the still of the night, she missed Pam, missed her cordial cool demeanor, the way she never allowed her own discomfort to stand in the way of the comfort of others. Case in point: Sandra Benson.
Why, oh why did Pam care whether or not Sandra was happy? Or sad?
Marie tossed and turned for a while, and finally fell back asleep.
S
aturday was hell for Sandra Benson.
How did a week pass already since Jack’s death?
She was beginning to feel the four walls of her apartment closing in on her. She was going to have to get out this weekend and visit friends or go shopping.
The other problem, if it was a problem and not just a figment of her imagination, was not going away. She was still a little queasy, a little tired. Her period was due that day, Saturday. She kept running to the bathroom every time she felt the slightest moisture. Nothing. She took the pill, albeit not without some forgetfulness.
Today was the day
, she thought. It was never late; because of the pill, it was always like clockwork. But she had forgotten to take it two days in a row at the beginning of the month when she went on business to Philadelphia and stayed overnight.