The Seven Year Bitch (26 page)

“Three,” he said, writing something on a prescription pad. “But I wish we had had more.”

When I left his office I looked down at the prescription he'd handed me, thinking it would say “Have 1 child a year for 3 years.” But it was a prescription for the thyroid medication—half in the morning and half at night.

I stood on the street trying to decide what to do next. I hated myself when I did that, just stood there frozen, and I always noticed when other people did it. Duncan was with Shasthi. I had the rest of the afternoon to myself.

I hailed a cab and told the driver to take me to Fifty-sixth between Fifth and Sixth and then got out in front of the Norma Kamali store.

Standing in the dressing room, I examined myself in the mirror in a red ruched bathing suit. I imagined Gabe Weinrib looking back at me, wondering what he would be thinking when he saw me in it in Miami. The bathing suit was a size large, which seemed to mean that I must be a size large, something I had certainly never been before. But it really wasn't so bad. I had the same shape, just a little bit bigger. My hair looked great, maybe a little wild, my legs, my shoulders.

I'm not buying this bathing suit for Gabe Weinrib, I told myself. I'm buying this for the pool at the gym. But when I handed my credit card to the salesgirl, I knew I really had bought it for Gabe, because you don't spend $280 on a bathing suit to wear for six old ladies at the gym.

Afterward, with my Norma Kamali shopping bag on the seat facing me, I had lunch at La Bonne Soupe. I noticed a miserablelooking couple at the next table. The woman was in her fifties, with a nose and boob job, dressed in a suit with a hint of Goth to it. The man, well past his prime, looked uncomfortable, handsome, dumb.

“You're disgusting,” the woman said to the man. “You're a reprehensible piece of shit.”

“So then don't marry me,” he said.

“Oh believe me, there's no way in hell I would marry you. Why would I marry you? So you can take all my money? I don't think so.”

“Fine,” the man said, as if this were the most normal conversation. He took several bites of his soup with interest.

“You're a reprehensible piece of shit.”

The woman caught my eye and I tried to give her a sympathetic smile, to show we were sisters in the war of love.

“Everywhere we go, people laugh at us,” the woman said to the man.

He just ate and grunted. “God you're an insufferable cunt.”

“What kind of man goes to his accountant and asks if you will save money on taxes if you marry me?” the woman said. “You know what kind of man? A piece of shit. A reprehensible piece of shit. What must he have thought of you when you asked that question? He must have just thought, What a reprehensible piece of shit.”

I wondered what would happen if I turned to them and said, “I don't think it's so bad that he asked that question.” But then I thought better of it and ten reprehensible piece of shits later, I realized something. They were still both sitting there. They were eating their meals with relish. Neither one of them was going anywhere. That was marriage. Theirs would be a more solid marriage than most.

Do you—Isolde Pearl Brilliant—take this reprehensible piece of shit—Russell Ellis Trent—to be your lawful wedded husband?

I do.

And do you—Russell Ellis Trent—take this insufferable cunt—Isolde Pearl Brilliant—to be your lawful wedded wife?

I do.

I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now give each other the finger.

 

 

When I got home
I told Russell the good news that I couldn't get pregnant, and that night, with Hum by our side, we made love. Sex for sex's sake. At least for that night, not having a second child was not an issue. He didn't have to dig around in my underwear drawer for a condom, rip it open and put it on, and then carefully dispose of it afterward, so that Shasthi wouldn't see it.

R
ussell was not good at getting on planes. He wasn't afraid to fly, but something about the transition from being in the airport to being on the plane was too much for him. He couldn't handle taking off his shoes and going through the metal detector. Anyone who saw it would think he was harboring a bomb up his ass. “I'm doing the best I can,” he yelled at the man behind him.

“Will you calm down!” I screamed at him. “You're acting like a lunatic.”

“Just stop it. Leave me alone. I will not be attacked like this!” he screamed back, one shoe on, one shoe off, a hole in his fruity striped Paul Smith sock revealing his big toe. Where was Gra when you needed her?

“Is everything okay here?” the security guard said, approaching us with caution, the way he was trained to do.

It seemed being stopped by security was becoming a regular thing for us.

“You have to be married to understand,” Russell said.

“Do you need my assistance here, sir?” the guard asked.

I imagined Gabe Weinrib easily sliding off his Gucci loafers, folding the stroller with one hand and scooping up Duncan with the other, taking off Duncan's shoes with David Copperfield finesse and putting them back on, all the while handling his carry-on bag and mine, and all of our millions effortlessly.

Duncan ran over to a garbage can and threw his new Oscar the Grouch doll, which I had just purchased for him, right into it. “That's very bad,” I scolded Duncan, although when you thought about it, it was really very clever, putting Oscar the Grouch, who lives in a garbage can, into a garbage can.

“What's your name?” the woman who took our tickets asked.

“Duncan Trent,” he said.

“And how old are you?” she asked. We had lied and said he was under two so we wouldn't have to pay for his ticket.

“I'm two, except when I go on an airplane, then I'm only one,” he said.

 

 

“ We're in Miami,”
I told Duncan.

“I like Mommy's Ami,” Duncan said.

“No, not Mommy's Ami,” Russell said. “Miami.”

“Daddy's Ami,” Duncan said.

“Not Daddy's Ami,” I said. “Miami.”

“Mommy and Daddy's Ami,” he said, already a little expert at solving our fights, I worried.

We checked into our hotel room at the Raleigh with its colorful batik pillows. Thinking of Shasthi, I showed Duncan the ocean for the first time. I felt terrible that we hadn't brought her, but it was supposed to be a family trip, my time to spend with Duncan. And, I thought, Gabe Weinrib.

“Let's go,” he said.

“I'm surprised you agreed to come here,” Russell said. He knew how much I hated South Beach, with its boob jobs everywhere you looked. Driving along parts of Collins Avenue was no different from driving along Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills.

“So what are you going to do when I'm working all day?” Russell asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “Beach, pool. Maybe I'll have the hotel arrange a car service and I'll take Duncan to Parrot Jungle or something.”

“I have a few hours,” Russell said. “I'm going to take him down to the beach.”

I changed Duncan into his blue bathing suit, with a bright orange pattern of starfish. Russell took off his pants and his striped socks and put on his bathing suit.

“I'm dex-cited,” Duncan said, and they headed out together holding hands. “I want to push the button,” I heard Duncan, fading, down the hallway.

I walked around the hotel room, noticing all the mirrors it had in it. I looked at myself in each one and I thought how few mirrors I had in my apartment. Just one, now that I thought about it, on the inside of a closet door, and around the fireplace was some old mirror, and over the fireplace, but that was too high to see yourself in, and of course the medicine chest in the bathroom. I made a mental note to buy a few and put them around the house. It was important to see yourself. It had a grounding effect to see yourself every minute. I found it comforting.

I called Gabe Weinrib and got his voice mail.

“I'm in Miami,” I said. “Or Mommy's Ami as Duncan calls it'cause he thinks when I'm saying
Miami
it's really
My
Ami.” Why was I mentioning Duncan? I wondered.

A beep interrupted me and a woman's recorded voice said, “To accept and send this message press one. To erase and rerecord this message press two.”

I pressed two with the relief of a convict being released from death row.

“Hi Gabe it's Izzy, I'm here in Miami at the Raleigh, call me on my cell, bye.”

I hung up and put on my red Norma Kamali bathing suit and looked at myself in one of the mirrors.

 

 

That night Russell went
to a business dinner and Duncan and I ordered room service. Duncan sat in a dresser drawer watching
Bambi
on pay-per-view.

My phone rang. “So you're here,” he said.

“Yes, are you?”

“Yes, m'dear. I'm in Bo-ca.” He said it the way he said everything, in this sort of seventies swinging-single way.

“Okay,” I said, sounding like Shasthi.

“Shall I pick you up tomorrow at your hotel? We could go to the beach?”

“Actually I promised I'd take Duncan to Parrot Jungle,” I said. I didn't know why I had said that. I had absolutely no desire to go to Parrot Jungle but it had just nervously come out of my mouth. It was the only thing I could think of to get out of going to the beach with him.

“That sounds like fun,” he said. “Parrot Jungle it is. My treat.” The man had two hundred million dollars. He had to stop saying “my treat” all the time, for Christ's sake. Some things went without saying.

“Okay,” I said.

“Shall we say eleven?”

“Sure,” I said. He must really like me, I thought. I sat down on the hotel bed and smoothed my hair like a fifties housewife. If I'd had an apron I'd have smoothed that too. “Let's meet there, though. We have our cell phones, we'll find each other.”

“Oh, okay,” he said, knowingly.

“Oh, okay, what?” I said.

“Just okay,” he said.

“No really, what?” I said, like a fifties housewife talking to a seventies swinger, like Lucy had somehow lost Ricky and somehow wandered aboard the Love Boat.

“Great,” he said. “So I'll see you around the entrance at eleven.”

I got off the phone completely bewildered.

 

 

Everywhere you looked at
Parrot Jungle there were birds walking around eating garbage. There were parrots to pet and tortoises to photograph and a tiger named Champa, which Duncan got a huge kick out of because that was also the name of one of the other nannies in the playground, a friend of Shasthi's. There was every kind of preening, colorful male species.

The only thing there wasn't was Gabe.

Finally, when Duncan passed out in his stroller after ice cream, I called him.

“Sorry, m'dear. I got held up in Bo-ca.”

“Oh, no problem,” I squawked. “We were coming here anyway.”

“I would have liked to have met your son. Next time I'll bring my son and we'll all go.”

“What? You didn't tell me you had a son!”

“Didn't I? That's strange. He lives in France with his mother and her yoga instructor boyfriend who I support.”

“Why do you support him?” I asked.

“Because he lives with my son and my son's mother and I want my son to be totally comfortable in every way. His name is Mathieu and he's eight. His mother is a French model who I had a short fling with. And now it's worked out very well. I spend half the time in New York and half the time in Paris with him and I couldn't be happier. But back then, when she told me she was pregnant, I thought it was the end for me. I begged her to get an abortion. I offered her millions of dollars. I threatened her, I said I would demand a paternity test, give her nothing. But she wouldn't even consider an abortion. So I have a son. And it's the best thing in the world. And I have you to thank for it, m'dear.”

“What am I to thank for?” I asked.

“I met the mother of my son the day I landed in Paris, the day after I met you at Don Hill's. If you had come with me I wouldn't have met her. I wouldn't have Mathieu. You might not have Duncan. I'd love to have another baby one day, this time with a wife who I actually live with in the same country. Do you want to have more children?”

All the mothers in Duncan's toddler class were constantly asking each other if they were going to have another baby. It was so personal, so private, yet it was the first thing out of everyone's mouth and considered totally acceptable.

“Russell—my husband—and I aren't getting along that well,” I said, which I seemed to be saying to men left and right lately. I didn't even know why I was talking to him at all. I had sat down on a bench without realizing it and tucked my legs under me. I felt like he was there watching me, but I couldn't see him. I felt like I was in a confessional.

“I'm sorry,” he said. I didn't know what he meant by that. Why was he sorry, exactly?

I had come all the way to Florida for this, I thought. I had made a fool of myself, getting stood up by this man, almost exposing my
son
to him, risking my entire marriage, and he was sorry I wasn't getting along with Russell? I vowed right there and then to devote myself completely to Duncan. And to spend the entire next day on the beach with him looking at shells. His little tank top that Shasthi had gotten him that said “I'm the Boss” was covered in ice cream.