The Housewife Blues Read online

  BOOKS BY WARREN ADLER

  Banquet Before Dawn

  Blood Ties

  Cult

  Death of a Washington Madame

  Empty Treasures

  Flanagan's Dolls

  Funny Boys

  Madeline's Miracles

  Mourning Glory

  Natural Enemies

  Private Lies

  Random Hearts

  Residue

  The Casanova Embrace

  The Children of the Roses

  The David Embrace

  The Henderson Equation

  The Housewife Blues

  The War of the Roses

  The Womanizer

  Trans-Siberian Express

  Twilight Child

  Undertow

  We Are Holding the President Hostage

  SHORT STORIES

  Jackson Hole, Uneasy Eden

  Never Too Late For Love

  New York Echoes

  New York Echoes 2

  The Sunset Gang

  MYSTERIES

  American Sextet

  American Quartet

  Immaculate Deception

  Senator Love

  The Ties That Bind

  The Witch of Watergate

  Copyright © 1992 by Warren Adler.

  ISBN 978-1-59006-098-8

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced

  in any form without permission. This novel is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, places, incidents are either the product

  of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Inquiries: WarrenAdler.com

  STONEHOUSE PRESS

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  For Sunny

  Again and Always

  1

  IF SHE hadn't placed her great-great-grandmother's spinet in that exact spot along the east wall and hadn't set aside time to polish it on this particular April day, Jenny might have avoided any confrontation with this bit of unsavory information.

  First there was Godfrey Richardson letting himself into the main hallway, which was unusual enough, since he was rarely at home during the middle of a weekday morning. She heard him climb the single flight of stairs to the apartment he shared with his wife, Terry, just above hers on the second floor. The Richardsons rarely used the tiny mahogany-paneled elevator, and she heard his ascending footfalls on the steps, not because she was deliberately listening, but probably because his tread was lighter than usual, as if he were walking on the tips of his toes.

  She realized, of course, that she was conscious of the difference because it was out of the ordinary pattern of sound and activity of the weekday life of their building. In the two months that she and her husband, Larry, had lived there, she had discovered that she was usually the only tenant in residence on most days. A couple of the tenants had maids in for an hour or two a week, but they came and went with barely a ripple.

  There were five apartments in their converted East Side Manhattan brownstone, and all of the tenants were normally off pursuing their various vocations during the day. As a housewife, Jenny, too, was pursuing her vocation, which she took as seriously as the others in the building took theirs.

  Godfrey Richardson's tiptoeing up the stairs, despite a rational dismissal of it as being none of her business, had alerted her to what followed. Looking out of the bay window through the lower branches of the budding sycamore tree that fronted the building, she had noted that a young woman had passed the building twice already, lingered in front of it briefly, looked up toward the Richardsons' apartment, then proceeded toward Second Avenue. She was now headed toward the building once again, this time coming from the Third Avenue side.

  Jenny continued to apply polish to the spinet. She had it on her mental schedule to polish the heirloom once a week. This was exactly the way her mother had treated the spinet in their house in Indiana, and one of the conditions of the gift was that it be treated the same way in perpetuity. It had been purchased by her great-great-grandmother, handed down to each generation in turn, and had never left Indiana. So far it had fared quite well in its new Manhattan life, had not warped and had kept its tune, although she rarely played it.

  Her concentration was deflected by this young woman parading in front of the window. The woman was no more than twenty and wore tight jeans, black cowboy boots, and a black leather jacket, which emphasized the fullness of her breasts. Hussy type, her mother might have said, but then her mother, like the spinet, had never been anywhere but Indiana. As a newly anointed Manhattanite, Jenny felt herself superior to such judgments.

  With obviously contrived casualness, the woman stopped in front of the building, looked at her watch, then proceeded up the stone steps to the front entrance. When the woman could no longer be seen from the window, Jenny listened for the faint sound of the outside buzzer. Curiosity, she supposed, had made her hearing more acute than usual. She heard the return buzzer sound, then the door opening, and, after a short interval, the tiny elevator moving in the shaft, stopping on the floor above her.

  It was, of course, the kind of information that she would have preferred avoiding, especially since she liked Terry Richardson, Godfrey's wife. Not that they had been overly friendly, considering Jenny had had them, over Larry's objections, for an informal dinner featuring her prized meat loaf recipe and they had not yet reciprocated. According to Larry they might never, which he told her would be a good thing. Neighbors, according to Larry, were a nuisance, sometimes a danger, and a good thing to avoid, but he had let her have her way just this once to prove the point.

  New Yorkers were like that, Larry had explained, always too busy to reciprocate, although sooner or later they'd invite you out for an obligatory dinner at a restaurant. Such explanations did not jibe at all with her midwestern upbringing. New people were always welcomed by their neighbors, not the other way around.

  Swallowing her pride and against her husband's wishes, she had decided nevertheless not to be standoffish with the neighbors. She wasn't going to change her Hoosier ways just because New Yorkers were crude and ignorant of the social graces. People were people everywhere, her parents had taught her. Prick them and they bleed. Their basic human instincts were the same as hers, the good with the bad. Above all, follow your own value system. Never stoop to theirs.

  Larry thought this attitude naive, instructing her daily in the survival tactics of New Yorkers. Live defensively. Double-lock doors. Avoid carryout deliveries. The delivery man could be a thief, a rapist, or a murderer. Stay off the streets after dark, and in the daytime be wary. Trust no one. When in doubt, cross the street. Since she had never been to New York before their marriage, she had no other frame of reference than his various caveats.

  Once, about two weeks after she and Larry had moved into the building, Terry Richardson had come downstairs and asked if she could borrow a screwdriver because Godfrey, who was "all thumbs," had misplaced theirs somewhere. Jenny had obliged and invited Terry in for coffee. It was Sunday morning and Larry was off playing tennis with friends from the advertising agency where he worked.

  Terry was an open-faced brunette with hazel eyes and a broad, toothy smile. To Jenny's surprise she had volunteered a great deal of information about herself. Not to pry was another in Jenny's catalog of values inculcated by her Indiana upbringing.

  Terry was
a vice-president of Citibank, which sounded very awesome and important to Jenny, to whom bankers and banks, at least in the Midwest, still ranked, along with doctors and hospitals, as trusted professionals and institutions.

  "That's quite impressive," Jenny exclaimed.

  "That's what my mother thinks," Terry said, sipping her coffee. "But the pay is not quite commensurate with the title, and I'm one of many. I will admit, though, that it does have a wow factor in certain circles."

  "It does to me," Jenny agreed. Back in Indiana a woman vice-president of a bank would have had real prestige.

  "Prestige shmestige, my mother says. She'd rather see me pregnant." Terry sighed and shook her head. But her hazel eyes revealed a stab of sudden pain. "We tried this fertility clinic three times and are about to go for number four. We're batting a thousand in strikeouts."

  Jenny didn't quite know what to say. Encouraging Terry to continue her revelations seemed patronizing. It also crossed her mind that her own and Larry's fertility had not yet been tested, and she decided, probably on superstitious grounds, to make no comment that might encourage Terry to continue the subject.

  "Puts a lot of pressure on Godfrey," Terry persisted, speaking into the brief vacuum of silence. "I'm the weak sister in the combination. Something about the sperm dying before it hits pay dirt. Like the fallopian tubes were a kind of gas chamber. Only the doctors don't quite know why. Anyway, we're going to try yet again." She contemplated the thought in silence for a moment, then turned her attention to Jenny.

  "Don't wait too long," Terry said. "I'm thirty-seven. We didn't try until I was thirty-five."

  In the pause that followed, Jenny held back any comment, except to offer her own age, which was twenty-five, and to point out that she and Larry were only married a little over two months and were not planning a family for a while. After all, friendship and intimacy took time to develop. That was another item in her value system. Perhaps that was the reason the conversation drifted away and Terry swallowed her last mouthful of coffee, thanked Jenny for the screwdriver, and went back to her apartment.

  There was something open and fresh about Terry, and as soon as she had left the apartment, Jenny regretted not opening up more than she had. Telling somebody such personal information was, in fact, a confidence, which should really be returned. Jenny made a mental note to reveal something equally as intimate about herself, but she wasn't exactly sure what that might be.

  Certainly she could never tell Terry what she was "witnessing" at this very moment. She tried to push the obvious from her mind and put a better light on the circumstances. Perhaps she was jumping to conclusions. Then why was the woman so cautious, passing the building a number of times before going in? And there was something about the woman that suggested, well, sex. Clandestine sex.

  All right, she admonished herself, she was just a hayseed from Indiana, a Hoosier hick, but under that blond blue-eyed curly-topped adorable—some might say Lolita—look, she was not totally naive. She felt a strong rapport with Terry, who was at that moment, Jenny was dead certain, being betrayed by her husband.

  The idea took some of the natural joy out of her day. Why couldn't he do his dirty work away from their home? A home was a sacred place, a nest. Birds never fouled their own nests.

  Although she had never crossed the threshold of the Richardson apartment, she imagined that the deed was being done on the marriage bed, in the bedroom, exactly above where Larry's and her bedroom was located. As if to validate that point, she walked to the bedroom and looked upward at that point where she was certain the Richardsons' bed was placed. It had to be queen-size. A king or a double would simply not fit properly.

  She admonished herself for allowing the silence to exist, knowing that she was deliberately listening for the sounds of lovemaking, feeling ashamed. Worse, she felt that telltale tingle of her own sexiness. The power of suggestion, she rebuked herself, taking a surreptitious glance at her face in the mirror and seeing the slight flush on her cheeks.

  She went into the bathroom, ran the cold water tap, and patted her cheeks, then returned to the spinet and resumed her polishing. But she could not rid herself of the idea of those two up there and the sympathy and outrage she felt on Terry's behalf.

  It hadn't occurred to her when they first rented the apartment that she would be the only tenant whose daily chores revolved around the apartment itself. Of course, she did have lots of errands outside the apartment. It wasn't easy putting a home together, and there was the regular shopping to do, although most of the food shopping was done on weekends with Larry, who particularly liked those fancy gourmet stores.

  They considered themselves quite lucky to find the apartment. They both detested those big impersonal high rises, which made people feel more like transient cave dwellers than human beings. The location, too, was perfect, being on Thirty-eighth Street between Second and Third, which meant that Larry could actually jog the two miles to work at the advertising agency on upper Madison Avenue, where he was a vice-president in charge of the research department.

  Mrs. Bradshaw, the rental agent who found them the apartment, told them she knew instantly when it became available that it had their name on it.

  "I know this building intimately," she told them, her half-glasses perched on the end of her nose, as she stood in the middle of the living room reading the listing card and reciting the history of the building. The two brownstones joined together, both built in 1911, had first been converted to apartments before World War II, then refurbished in the early sixties.

  Jenny marveled at the spaciousness of the apartment, which was on the first floor of the building. She inspected the high ceilings trimmed with wonderfully elaborate molding, the working fireplace, the exposed brick kitchen with shiny stainless-steel appliances and a gas cookstove and oven, the wall of bookcases, the little mahogany-paneled den, the dining room with a small crystal chandelier, and, best of all, the white-tiled bathroom with the marvelous bathtub that sat on sculpted claw feet. She adored the bathtub and could picture herself lying there enveloped by tingling soap bubbles. There was nothing like a good warm soak to settle the mind and calm the spirit. Mrs. Bradshaw was right about one thing: the apartment certainly had her name on it.

  "A steal at three thousand dollars a month," Mrs. Bradshaw said, smiling, the laugh lines on the sides of her eyes crinkling. She had a grandmotherly air that Jenny liked and seemed sincerely interested in their welfare.

  "You're right about that," Larry said without cracking a smile. He had told Jenny earlier that he had had one of his researchers check out comparable rental values in the area. "It's really way out of line. In fact, outrageous." He looked toward Jenny, who had stiffened inside of herself. Larry had warned her not to appear enthusiastic: "Please restrain yourself, Jenny. We mustn't give them the advantage."

  All this was against her grain. She hated negotiating, exercising those little ploys and manipulations. The idea of it implied a sense of being sharp, of trafficking in rejection and hurtfulness. Larry, on the other hand, had no compunctions in that department. "In New York, it's screw them before they screw you," he had lectured her, part of his endless laundry list of advice about how to survive in the Big Apple. Above all, he cautioned, trust no one. No one!

  "That seems like a mighty cynical assessment," she had countered, offering her own time-honored homily: "People are essentially good and the same everywhere."

  "Everywhere but New York, Jenny. Trust me."

  Why would he say that? she had wondered, especially after saying, "Trust no one." She put the idea quickly out of her mind. He didn't, of course, mean himself.

  She hoped he wouldn't be too hard-nosed about the apartment. It was beautiful. Just what she had imagined living in Manhattan would be like. Surely he felt the same way. Then why was he bargaining so hard? It surprised her, too, that the grandmotherly Mrs. Bradshaw didn't bat an eye at Larry's statement about the price being "outrageous."

  "Out of range of your financ
ial ability or out of line pricewise?" Mrs. Bradshaw asked. She had taken off her half-glasses and was distributing her gaze between Larry and Jenny.

  "There is a clear line between fair and gouging, Mrs. Bradshaw. If I couldn't afford it, I wouldn't be wasting my time. And yours," Larry said smugly, shaking his head. Jenny wished she hadn't heard his remarks.

  "What do you think, Mrs. Burns?" Mrs. Bradshaw said, turning to Jenny.

  "Me?"

  Jenny was startled at the question and looked quickly at Larry, who blinked his eyes in a kind of signal for her to stay out of it.

  "Get real, Mrs. Bradshaw," Larry said, shrugging, turning his body as if it were a gesture of total rejection. Jenny felt her pulse throb with anxiety. Larry took a folded paper from his inside jacket pocket and unfolded it, then waved it in front of Mrs. Bradshaw. "I've got the comparable rental values in the area."

  "You can't compare apples to pears, Mr. Burns," Mrs. Bradshaw countered. The cute little crinkly laugh lines had smoothed out, and her lips were tight as she waited for a response. When none was forthcoming, she said: "This place has charm, personality. Anyone can see it's one of a kind." She looked at Jenny, her eyes boring in. "Surely you can see that, Mrs. Burns."

  Jenny shifted her eyes quickly to Larry, who was now assuming a pose of bored indifference.

  "I'd say two thousand a month tops," Larry said casually, without apparent interest. Jenny felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. He couldn't. She loved this place and was already visualizing how she would decorate it. And that wonderful bathtub!

  Mrs. Bradshaw started to arrange the papers in her hand and opened the clasp of the large pocketbook that hung from her shoulder as if she, too, were drawing the negotiation to a close.

  "I don't know if I can show you anything better. Sorry about that," Mrs. Bradshaw said, snapping the clasp of her pocketbook with much fanfare. They had seen enough apartments to confirm that observation. Jenny knew that the woman was right, and she was finding it difficult to hide her disappointment.

  "We're sorry, too," Larry said with indifference.