Seventh Avenue (27 page)

“I’ve had my suspicions, but I couldn’t prove a thing,” he said judicially.

The children in the background were roaring with delight as Neal spun Jay round for “blind man’s buff.” They had joined hands in a circle and were now spreading out. Neal dove between Rhoda’s ankles and tittered, while Jay with hands outstretched ambled to the opposite end of the room where the record player was squalling . . . “Clap your hands till Daddy comes home/For Daddy will bring you a cakie home/One for you and one for me/And one for all of the family . . .”

“
It’s that Eva, isn’t it?”

“Eva? You must be kidding. She’s Marty’s piece, always has been.”

“
Maybe they take turns.”

“Jay? Not in a million years. He doesn’t believe in sharing. As if I have to tell you . . . He’d never.”

“
They whore around together.”

“Not in the office. Maybe he has someone, but I’ve never seen her. For a crude, obvious man, he’s pretty cagy. Keeps secrets well. Half the time I don’t even know what goes on in the business, and I keep the books. Everything he does is legitimate. Doesn’t even try to cheat the government, and believe me he could with no trouble.”

“
What makes you so sure Eva isn’t the one?”

“For one thing Marty signs a check every month for her rent; he pays every account she’s got at the department stores. They always leave together.”

“
What does that prove?”

“Nothing, I guess. But when you add all the little bits together, the picture you get is Marty and Eva. When a man’s having an affair with a woman, he treats her in a special way; Jay looks at Eva as one thing only: a business asset. If they have one bad season, she’ll be out.”

Rhoda persisted although she sensed that her surmise was weightless.

“
Don’t they go to the factory together?”

“Don’t be stubborn. He might have somebody up in Syracuse, but it ain’t Eva.” He held her hand affectionately. “Rhoda, would it do any good if you found out that he had somebody? Would you divorce him?”

She bit her nails anxiously and sighed.

“I might if I met the right man, but I don’t think he wants a divorce. It would mean breaking up the home, and he couldn’t see Neal all the time. He wouldn’t do it, although Christ I’ve thought enough about it.”

She pursed her lips tightly and wondered if Al realized that she had lied; she had only thought of a divorce at that moment. She had been eased over the precipice of good sense by Al’s need to confirm her suspicions. She had difficulty acquiring confidantes of either sex - the function had been part of Myrna’s attraction - and she was caught in a crosscurrent. Al fed her hunger for details of Jay’s activities, and she was also conscious of the subtle disguises and rationalizations that betrayal assumed. But hadn’t Jay betrayed her any number of times? Were there any rules in this kind of game? What happened if her suspicion turned out to be true? Would she divorce him? The word had such an ugly, debased ring to it that she banished both it and the action it prescribed from her mind.

The children were tired and rolled on the floor away from pursuing parents. Tears and a fight commenced in the foyer, and Rhoda lifted herself out of the deep sofa. An odd wave of depression, not unlike nausea, came over her, and she knew she had forgotten to take her afternoon pill, without which she sank into a morass of lethargy and indifference. She slipped into the bathroom, found the pills in a bottle labelled “saccharine” and swallowed a whole one without water. She broke another one into quarters and chewed a bit. When she got back to her guests, she had the slight dizzy sensation that always preceded the elation Benzedrine brought with it. The lights twinkled mysteriously at her and as she looked at the tired, dirty faces of the children a great warmth came over her and she loved them all. She saw Jay picking up the railway tracks and cars assembled in the living room that he had demonstrated to the children earlier in the afternoon. It was still light outside, and she had a strong desire to go for a long walk in the park with Jay and hear the rustle of dried leaves caught in the early evening wind. The impossibility of this hope became apparent to her when she saw Jay put on his coat, help his mother with hers, and go towards the door. Her sister-in-law Sylvia led the way.

“Momma’s staying over with Sylvia,” Jay said as he cautiously moved past her, a brace of children pushing behind him.

“
So
why’re
you going?”

He glared at her.

“
I have to drive
her,
that’s
why.”

“
I thought Harry was coming for
them.”

“
Harry hasn’t got a car,
remember?”

“
What
time’ll
you be back?”

“I’ll write you a letter.” His mouth twisted in a snarl, and she became conscious of Sylvia’s sickeningly sweet voice.

“
. . . It was such fun, Rhoda. I can’t
get
over
the
apartment
.
. .
the most beautiful one I ever
saw
in my
whole life. Lucky girl.” Sylvia gave
her a
sister-in-
lawly
embrace, a compound of commisera
tion and envy: nobody had it easy, she wanted to say. Rosalee followed her, paid her obeisance, and trotted out after Jay.

He’s got two sisters, Rhoda reflected sadly, whom he never bothers with except when it suits him . . . two sisters who resent me because he’s successful; and the only friend I have, the only one who could help me, is where I can’t reach her, locked in a nightmare world. She made a solemn pledge to herself to visit Myrna the following week. If Jay could chauffeur his mother around there was no reason why he couldn’t drive her up to Peekskill to see Myrna. She couldn’t, however, in her heart, find fault with Jay’s treatment of her sister, for it was he who paid for the treatment, ungrudgingly, and with absolute magnificence. The bill ran to something over three thousand a year, and the whole Gold family knew that if not for Jay, Myrna would be doomed to a state institution. What made his position virtually unassailable was that he never mentioned the cost, nor asked for thanks. As a consequence, Rhoda could never complain to her family about him, for in the ever-changing hierarchy of familial affection Jay had now become a savior to both her parents, and to Howard he was God incarnate. His manner, long held to be insolent and unpleasant, had become “his way, and you can’t hate him for it,” in her mother’s reassessment. Everyone’s life was more secure and happier because of Jay, and Rhoda’s attempts to belittle him boomeranged. It seemed to her an extraordinary fact of life that money bought not only respectability and loyalty but also love. Jay had given both her father and Howard what amounted to sinecures; the old man earned twice as much money doing half as much work, as an invoice checker in one of J-R’s depots, and Howard, after a six-month stint as a clerk, was put in charge of an inventory-control system that Jay had devised to prevent staff pilfering . . . nice, pleasant work at twice what he was worth. The only ally she could count on was Al, and she sensed that despite his unscrupulousness, and his intent to damage Jay, Jay was several steps ahead of him. Still, when one is friendless in a hostile world, one can’t be too fussy about the credentials of an ally, and one can’t insist that he be motivated by altruism.

Maggie, the colored maid who lived with them, was busy sweeping in the kitchen. Jay had given her a dress for her birthday and two salary raises, and she would not hear a bad word about him. Rhoda, completely stymied, stared at her.

“I’ll put Neal to bed,” Rhoda said. “You want to go to the movies, don’t you?”

“Thanks, Mrs. B. I’ll vacuum first.”

“Don’t bother, Maggie. You can do it in the morning. It was very nice of you to give up your day off.”

Maggie smiled and waved her hand graciously.

“Mr. B. asted me to, and I can’t say no to anything he wants. I think if he asted me to walk off a cliff I’d do it.”

Rhoda gave her a wan smile. She would have liked to cut her own throat. Maybe Howard had been right when he intimated that she had a persecution complex. She went into Neal’s room and saw him grinding the wheels of a locomotive against the wall. She pulled the train away from him, and he snarled at her.

“Where’s Daddy?” he demanded.

“With his whore somewhere,” she snapped.

The child smirked at her. There was something evil and knowledgeable in the smile, and she lashed out, striking him across the face. He rubbed his face with the back of his hand, and she saw her fingermarks, like a tattoo on his cheek. Then he began to cry, not out of fear or pain, but in outrage, she thought. She undressed him and soothed him, asking for forgiveness, and chiding herself for wanting his approval. Neal averted his eyes, and when she pulled his face roughly around, instead of the expected tears he was sneering at her brazenly.

“I don’t know what you expect from me,” Jay said. “I should be with my mother.”

Eva threw back her head and laughed.

“If you could only see yourself . . . I have to be with my mommy.” She mimicked him unmercifully whenever she had been drinking, and he had begun to resent it.

“I can’t stand you when you drink. Lushes make me sick to my stomach.”

“You don’t do so bad yourself.”

He slammed his drink down guiltily on a mosaic-topped table and stormed across the room. He always had difficulty working himself up into a rage when he was in
their
apartment because the moment he entered it he dropped his usually formidable defenses. He loved the room, everything about it. Eva had selected every piece with loving care, from the white Adam fireplace to the lilac drapes. The room virtually forced him to be a gentleman and even though he moved about with a proprietary air, there was in his attitude and indeed in his mien a curiously naive sense of awe and respect for something beautiful. His whole past and the net of deceits he had woven were swept away by the room. Although Eva was its principal constituent, she was not necessary for him to enjoy the room, and occasionally he would slip away from the office during the day, when he knew she wouldn’t be there, just to go back to the apartment, have a quiet drink and enjoy the view of Fifth Avenue and Washington Square Park. They had been happy for more than four years in the apartment, and the whole place not only exuded a quality of warmth, love, and comfort, but also of pure living joy. It had cost him a fortune and was still not completed, because Eva took her time picking out every object in it. He had waited a year for her to find the right shaped ottoman, six months for the hairy Scandinavian rug. He disliked having to think when he was there, and Eva was making him think.

“Aren’t you happy, honey?” he said, turning her around on the red velvet barstool.

“
I guess not.”

“
But we’re happy here, on our own.”

“Frankly, I’m not very happy with myself, Jay,” she said, waving her hand dramatically and eventually pointing to herself. “Look what I’ve become. A nag . . . a moaner. Someone permanently with a gripe. Christ, it’s hard to believe. I used to be the most uncomplaining person in the world. And now, whenever I see you, there’s only one question in my mind: when? When’s he going to leave his wife? When? It colors my whole life. The other day I went shopping in Saks, and I stopped at the lingerie counter and stared for about ten minutes at this poster they had up of a mannequin. She was wearing one of those negligees that don’t even seem sexy in the movies and in real life are an eyesore, but women keep buying them, and the poster said: ‘You want him eternally.’ Terrible corn, and I stood there like some bumpkin from Wichita Falls, saying, ‘Yes, I do.’ For better or worse I’ve become a woman with a mission in life . . . a destructive one and I hate the idea of it.” She shook her head unbelievingly. “Crazy . . . that the only thing I want to do is break up your marriage, but that’s what it comes down to.”

He rubbed her face affectionately and smiled wryly.

“You can’t break up what never existed.”

In a scolding voice she said: “It had to exist, something had to exist, for it to last this long!”

“Neal,” Jay said softly.

“Neal? What’s a kid got to do with it? Don’t tell me you can’t leave because of him.”

“That’s exactly what I am saying. For the thousandth time.”

She reached for the bottle of scotch and poured what was left into her glass.

“It’s not fair to make me suffer for your conscience.”

He turned chalk white and knocked the glass out of her hand. The drink splattered the wallpaper behind the bar.

“Now look what you’ve done,” she said in a tired voice.

“It’s my fucking money, isn’t it? I can do as I goddamn please.”

“You think you can, but it’s not true. And just remember
who
you’re talking to. I’m not Rhoda!”

“Anything I want I do.”

“Above everything, aren’t you?”

“I run out on Neal’s party, lie to my mother, just to come here and fight with you! I must be nuts . . . not to see . . .”

“What? Finish what you were going to say. Let’s be honest with each other just for a change. You like fucking me, and that’s about the size of it.”

“You’re just a piece of ass, like I said the first day I laid eyes on you.”

“If I am it’s because you made me one.”

“Now listen, sweetie, you were dying to jump into bed with anybody and because I was a yokel it was all glamorous to me.”

She shook her head furiously, and her hair fell over her face.

“Oh, God, tell me it isn’t true. Is this all there was? And I’ve given up my life for a man like this. You’re not a man . . . you’re a filthy animal. All the soft talk, the
schmooz,
what was it for?”