The Seven Year Bitch (29 page)

“It was his watch and so it was his to lose,” my mother's shrink had said, but I couldn't forgive him for it. Not so much for losing it and for not even noticing that he had lost it but for taking it from me when he knew how much I loved it.

I hadn't really given him a gift since, unless you counted Duncan, but this was just what he wanted. And his birthday was coming. I wrote my name on the bid sheet and the minimum opening bid, two hundred dollars.

“Bidding on something?” Gabe asked, coming up behind me. “These earrings?” He pointed to the beautiful earrings.

“No,” I said. “This one.”

“I think my husband will love it.”

“I wouldn't put my ween in the hands of a doctor named Stuart Little,” Gabe said. “Unless your husband has a very, very small ween. Small enough for a mouse to operate on.”

“If it means not having any more children, I don't think he'll mind.” I wasn't sure why I was talking about my husband or his ween.

“No? You're not going to have another one?”

“Well actually,” I said. “I am.”

“Oh! Well congratulations, m'dear,” he said. His face had gotten serious. “I couldn't tell.” I suddenly felt foolish for being there.

I followed him to a round table filled with couples and stood by as he introduced me, but the speeches were starting, so we took our seats next to each other and our salads were served.

“How long have you two been an item?” the girl sitting on my other side asked.

“Oh, no, I'm his investment consultant,” I said ridiculously.

Alan Dershowitz took the microphone and explained that the Innocence Project used new DNA technology to free prisoners who had been wrongfully incarcerated.

Behind him were what looked like a police lineup of disgruntled-looking men, who then took the stage one by one to explain what they had been convicted of and how hard it had been to get a job once they were exonerated. One man had been in jail for forty years.

Gabe seemed to be ignoring me.

I was so hot, the room was spinning.

I excused myself and went to the bathroom. I wished I hadn't worn panty hose. I couldn't bear to wear them for another minute. That's when I had the idea that I could take off my panty hose and no one would know because my skirt was so long. I took off my black high-heeled boots and peeled off the panty hose that had already torn to spiderwebs between my thighs, and threw them in the garbage can. But when I went to put on my boots, I couldn't do it. They wouldn't go on my bare feet. Someone was banging on the bathroom door.

“Just a second,” I called.

I sat on the toilet and I pulled and pulled, but my feet would not slide into the boots. I was the opposite of Cinderella. I pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled but the boots would not budge. My feet had swelled in the heat of Cipriani. Finally I left the bathroom barefoot and sat on some marble steps and continued to try. I had no idea what to do. If it weren't for my clutch, which I'd left at my seat, I would have just run out barefoot and gotten a cab home. Every girl in New York had at least one coming-homefrom-the-party-barefoot story.

I was practically in tears. It was bad enough I had shown up on my date pregnant, but now I was barefoot.

“Is something wrong?” a gray-haired man asked, appearing in front of me. I pulled the skirt of my dress down fast to cover my legs as best I could. To my horror, I saw that it was the convict who had just spoken who had been in prison for forty years and lost his wife, his house, and any way of making a living. The Innocence Project might have used DNA evidence to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was completely innocent, but I was not convinced.

“I can't put my boots back on,” I said.

“Do you have any lotion or powder or something?” he asked.

“That's a great idea!” I said. “I have some hand lotion in my purse but it's at my table.”

“I'll go get it for you,” he said.

“Wait,” I said. It might seem strange for this ex-con to go up to my seat and walk off with my purse.

“Look,” he said.

By the door, the swag bags, black and shiny with Chanel printed on them, were being set out. He walked over and grabbed one—despite the dirty look he received from the girl who had thought I was calling her brilliant—and brought it back to me. I pulled out a deluxe sample of Chanel Precision, the very product I was supposed to be using for wrinkles.

He opened the jar and I slathered some on my feet.

“You have pretty feet,” he said. “When my wife was pregnant all she wanted me to do was massage her feet. The only thing that would get her to quit complaining was a foot rub. You want help with that?”

“No thanks,” I said.

“When are you due?” He asked the question like “How long are you in for?”

I quickly tried the boots again and they slid right on. I thanked him profusely and rushed back to Gabe's table.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

“I looked everywhere for you. I was afraid you had slipped out without paying for your vasectomy.”

We ate our meals and laughed. His friends were nice.

“This is who I would marry if I had to marry someone,” Gabe announced, putting his arm around me.

“Why don't you?” a man across the table asked.

“She's pregnant with another man's child,” he said.

“And I have a two-year-old,” I said, which I liked to say as much as possible in case people wondered why I wasn't just a little bit thinner.

A woman standing at the microphone said the silent auction had ended and we should go to the back to pay for our prizes.

I stood up.

“Please allow me,” Gabe said. “It's my treat.”

“What? No! I can't let you pay for Russell's vasectomy.”

“It would be my pleasure,” he said. “Paying for a noble cause at a noble cause.”

I tried to stop him but he walked off.

“Well,” the woman sitting next to me said. “Gabe Weinrib finally falls in love and it's with a married, pregnant woman.”

“I'll take you home in a cab,” Gabe said when we'd gotten our coats and gift bags. I couldn't wait to give Shasthi the little gift bag of Chanel.

“Are you going uptown?” one of the other women who had been at our table asked.

There was an awkward pause.

“I'm going to take Izzy home in a cab,” he said.

“No, that's okay. I live pretty close. I used to work right here and I'd walk home.” I didn't know why I was rambling like that.

He hailed a cab. “Are you sure?” he asked as the other woman slid in.

“Oh,” I stuttered. “Did you want to come up to my place?” I had no idea why I was saying this, except that I had worked so hard cleaning up. But it would be crazy. What would Sherry's daughter think, for one thing? The doormen? Duncan, if he, God forbid, woke up? There were sonogram pictures on my fridge. I was pregnant.

“No,” he said. “It's late. Another time.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding hysterically. I felt like a desperate fool. I thought of myself scrubbing the toilet, changing the sheets, throwing out newspapers. Why had I done all this? I wondered.

“Oh, I almost forgot, here's your vasectomy, and I bid on a little something else for you too. A small memento of this evening.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and handed me a Renee Lewis jewelry box with the earrings inside splayed out on black velvet. They were dangling mismatched gemstones, a ruby and a diamond and an emerald and an amethyst.

“Oh!” I was completely shocked. “I can't.”

“You're worried about what Russell will think?”

“No, I . . .”

“Just tell him there was a raffle. They'll look good with that dress. You of all people know I can afford it.”

“Right,” I laughed. He could. “Thank you. They're beautiful.”

I put one on and then the other, unsure of how they didn't end up in the murky gutter. The cool gold on my earlobes reminded me how much I had loved to be kissed there.

“So things must be pretty good between you,” he said.

“No,” I said, surprising myself. “I didn't think I could get pregnant.” I shouldn't be saying this, I thought. I shouldn't be explaining myself.

“You must love him,” he said.

I must, I thought. Or I must have at one time. I felt drunk even though I hadn't had so much as a drop of wine. I must have loved him at our wedding. Taking the dancing lessons, choosing my ring. I must have loved him when I was pregnant with Duncan. I had wanted a baby so badly. I had loved him that winter weekend so long ago in the country when we stayed alone in Marlon's house—our first weekend away together. I'd lain upstairs in bed listening to beautiful piano music coming from the living room, then I'd floated downstairs thinking, If he can play the piano like that, then he really is a genius. I imagined the talent our future children would one day display. But the piano bench stood vacant, Marlon's hideous floral piano cover still in place like a giant tea cozy. It hadn't been him playing the piano, it had been the radio.

Without warning, I burst into tears. I choked back sob after sob. No matter how hard I tried not to, my tears kept coming. They betrayed me. And I betrayed Russell. No sexual act would have been more of a betrayal than those tears.

Gabe said something to the woman in the cab and she sped off without him.

He walked me home and we stood in front of my building.

“You sure you don't want to come up?” I said. What was wrong with me! “I have to walk my dog while the sitter's still there.”

“I'd walk him with you, but I have a pretty early day tomorrow.” I cringed in my earrings. “Thanks for the offer though. Well, thank you for coming, m'dear. And I'll call you to check how you're feeling. Take care of yourself.”

“Yes,” I said and walked into my building.

 

 

Standing in my lobby,
I opened my clutch and looked at the time on my cell phone. It was only ten thirty. I ran back out onto the street and hailed a cab and made it to the New York Health and Racquet Club just in time. I handed my ID card to the girl behind the desk.

“Gym's closing in ten minutes,” she said.

“I'll just be a minute.” I walked past her into the locker room and, hands trembling, turned the knob to the right, then the left, then the right again. 19-21-23. The happiest years of my life. I took off my earrings, put them back in their leather case, along with the gift certificate for the vasectomy, and placed them in the back of my locker.

Trying to get a cab home, I stepped onto a subway grate, and a gust of wind blew my halter dress all the way up. It fluttered up around my waist, leaving my bare thighs and panties and big round stomach exposed. I shrieked and struggled to hold it down around me, just like a pregnant Marilyn Monroe.

Run from Your Life

O
ne day, when I was pregnant with Duncan, after I'd cajoled and cajoled, begging to know if it was a boy or a girl, Dr. Lichter had said, “I see a wee-wee.”

“You mean . . .”

“It's a boy,” Dr. Lichter said.

My whole life, I'd thought I would be the mother of a boy. I'd had a recurring dream since childhood that I was taking care of a small black boy.

I had a soft spot for boys. I loved them.

But now, with a wee-wee inside me, I thought there must be a terrible mistake.

I didn't know anything about dinosaurs. I knew about ballet and tea parties with the tea set I had saved from my childhood to give to my daughter and dolls. I knew about the Nancy Drews I had saved from my childhood to one day give to my daughter and Eloise at the Plaza and in Paris and in Moscow and at Christmastime, all saved from my childhood to one day give to my future daughter.

Cars, trucks, bulldozers, sports, pirates, Lego, boats, and trains—I would have absolutely nothing to talk about with this kid. I wasn't interested in anything he was interested in.

I wept on the table, naked from the waist down.

Dr. Lichter was unable to console me.

I called my mother from the cab home, crying. I couldn't even speak.

“What is it?” she said.

“There's a wee-wee in me,” I said. “And now I'll never ever have anyone to have lunch with when I'm old.”

My mother was silent because she knew it was true. I knew she wanted to say that she would have lunch with me but then she knew I would have to point out that she couldn't have lunch with me because she would be dead, so we both just silently, futilely, searched for a solution.

When I got home and told Russell, he was elated. He took it as some sort of personal victory. He had won and I had lost.

“You don't know anything about dinosaurs either,” I said. And forget about sports. That was the one good thing about Russell: He didn't watch sports.

“Like hell I don't,” he said.

“Name one thing.”

“There are herbivores like the brachiosaurus and the brontosaurus, and carnivores like the
Tyrannosaurus rex
, otherwise known as T. rex. Dinosaurs became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period. The stegosaurus, or old plate-back, as he was known by his friends, was an herbivore who lived in the Jurassic period. And I'll be sure to tell him about the pterodactyl who could fly.” Russell spread out his arms and flapped them like a pterodactyl, running all around the room. “Forget it, you're outnumbered.”