The Housewife Blues Read online

  "Figures," the woman said. "Never mind."

  "But I insist."

  "I don't. Just let me pass. Forget about it."

  "It's my fault, I—"

  "Are you a nut or something?" the woman replied, turning quickly and walking north on Second Avenue. Jenny stood there, rooted to the sidewalk, embarrassed, feeling leaden and stupid. When the woman was a block away, she turned, looked toward Jenny, and shrugged, more in pity than in anger.

  Only then did Jenny start walking toward her town house. What she had done was childish and illogical. She was thoroughly ashamed of herself, of her mindless fear. All she had done was help out a poor homeless man. Where was the harm in that?

  No, she told herself firmly. I must not let that incident color my feelings about the city. What she had done, she decided finally, was to allow the incident with the homeless man to exaggerate her vulnerability. Larry was always telling her to act defensively. She had simply overreacted. Hadn't she?

  It seemed obvious when she finally observed the full length of her street that no one was following her. She had capitulated to blind, foolish, and illogical fear. Larry had apparently succeeded in making the city itself an enemy. She vowed never to give in to that feeling again.

  When she got into her apartment, she noted that three hours had slipped by. Myrna had said to deliver the package around twelve. She got it from under the bed, marched upstairs to Myrna's apartment, put it against the door, rang the buzzer, then went downstairs to her apartment.

  New York was confusing, she told herself, finding humor in the events of the morning. It was a self-deprecating kind of humor. She giggled. It made her feel better.

  8

  ON MONDAY morning, just after Larry had left on his jog to work, Myrna Davis rang her buzzer. It was at about the same time as when she'd visited last week. As then, she was dressed with immaculate taste and in the height of fashion. Dressing for success, Jenny thought, but without envy.

  "It is divine," Myrna said. "And I simply must show it to you."

  "Really, it's not necessary, Myrna," Jenny demurred. After all, she had already seen the coat.

  "I insist."

  She took Jenny's hand, and they proceeded up the stairs to Myrna's apartment, which was beautifully furnished with antiques.

  "They're mostly English," Myrna explained, noting Jenny's interest. She left the room, leaving Jenny to observe and fondle the furniture. When she returned she was wearing the coat, posing like a model. It looked beautiful on her, elegant. Apparently, in her euphoria, she hadn't noticed the slightly singed area, which Jenny had inspected carefully when she'd repacked it. Fortunately, the damage was barely visible unless you knew exactly where to look.

  "You're a knockout in it, Myrna," Jenny said as Myrna pranced around the room.

  "I didn't take it off all weekend, not even when we ... I must tell you, Jenny, it really does something for your libido. Maybe the wearing of the animal skin conveys some of the property of the animal."

  "I wouldn't know anything about the habits of sables," Jenny said. Yet she liked Myrna's forthright attitude on the subject.

  "Would you like to try it on?"

  "I'm much smaller than you. I'd look terrible."

  "Terrible? How can anyone look terrible in sable?"

  After much persuasion she tried it on, and it did indeed feel good on her body, despite its being too long.

  "You've been great about this, Jenny," Myrna said as they left the apartment. "I told you. No big deal. Was I right?"

  "No big deal," Jenny repeated, hoping Myrna wouldn't probe too deeply about her promise.

  As she started down the stairs, Myrna paused for a moment as if wrestling with an intruding thought. "Oh, and my friend really appreciated your help in this as well. Really. Someday you may even get to meet him—that is, someday in the future, not necessarily the near future. There I go. I've said enough."

  Myrna continued down the stairs, then paused again, sniffing.

  "What is it?" asked Jenny.

  "Gas, I think. I've got one of these super noses."

  Jenny sniffed but couldn't detect any odor.

  "Maybe my imagination," Myrna chirped, heading down the stairs. "Anyway, you're home all day. If it gets worse, just call the gas company."

  Although it was mostly true, Jenny did not appreciate the remark about her being home all day. She had begun to note that people treated her differently when they found out that she spent her day being a homemaker. Maybe it was because she and Larry lived in Manhattan and hadn't any children as yet. People had a better understanding of what a homemaker did when there were children around. And yet her mother had continued to be a homemaker long after the children had left the family nest. And was proud of it.

  "Nothing, but nothing, is more fulfilling for a woman, Jenny," her mother had told her many times over. "It's a woman's role in life. That's the way it used to be. Was the world worse for it? No, it wasn't. It was better. More people should realize that. Why should a woman have to give up her role as nurturer just to satisfy blind ambition or make a few more bucks?"

  It was, of course, a grandiose notion, but Jenny believed that there was a great deal of truth in it, despite the armies of female naysayers. No matter what, she told herself, she would continue being a homemaker, and to satisfy not just Larry but herself as well.

  Someday she would bear children and be the bedrock of her family, fulfilling a woman's true destiny. She knew that to many women, especially those who lived in big cities like New York, such a fate was considered a form of imprisonment or worse. She had no illusions about how people assessed her, an underachieving clod, a dumb ninny who wouldn't or couldn't compete in the real world, wherever that was.

  And like her mother, she had firm ideas on the raising of children. There was simply no excuse for any woman who could afford it not to stay home with her children, to rear and nurture them, to provide them with the love and affection they sorely needed. Lots would disagree, she knew. Mothers who weren't prepared to do this shouldn't have children. Was it better for a child to be dumped into a day care center while the mother worked all day? She doubted it.

  All right, she supposed she was being intolerant toward woman who had to work, who couldn't afford to stay home with their children, who were the sole support of their family. Why were there so many single mothers in the first place? How had this tragedy come about? Why did it take two salaries in an intact family to make ends meet? These were just a few of the pressing questions that ran through her mind.

  It was humiliating to have to be defensive about her values and her goals. Most of the time she was afraid to voice them, afraid that people might think her, well, inferior. People like Connie Mazzo would, and who knew what Myrna Davis and Terry Richardson were really thinking? The proof of the pudding would be to see how their children turned out in the end.

  At this thought Jenny felt a slight tug of uncertainty about her future with Larry, but she let it pass. Every marriage was subject to stresses and disagreements. How were couples to get to know each other if they did not establish parameters and boundaries? Wasn't it better to bring these differences into the open instead of letting them fester beneath the surface?

  On Sunday, for example, she and Larry had had a serious conversation about the new business he and Vince were going to start.

  "Believe me, Larry, I'd be proud to be the woman behind the man. A wife has to be a helpmate, and sometimes her point of view can be really helpful." Thinking of Connie, she deliberately avoided saying "woman's point of view." "But to give you the benefit of my opinion, I've got to know what's happening before it happens."

  He appeared to agree. In fact, he seemed willing to agree to almost everything in his contrition, or so she imagined. By the end of the weekend she was even willing to admit to herself that a little conflict and the subsequent ritual emotional apology was an excellent sexual stimulant. He promised never to speak of the incident of the coat again, and taki
ng advantage of his current pliability, she asked him also to promise her not to lecture her again on how she should behave toward the neighbors. She wasn't completely sold on his keeping either promise, but it did make for a pleasant weekend.

  She wasn't in her own apartment ten minutes before she began to smell the gas. Checking her kitchen, she noted that all the gas jets were closed. Sniffing, her nose alert, she went into the hallway again. The odor was faint but unmistakable and seemed to get stronger as she moved upstairs. On the second floor, where Myrna Davis's and the Richardsons' apartments were located, the odor seemed to grow even stronger. She knocked on the Richardsons' door. As expected, there was no answer.

  She started up the stairs toward the Stern apartment, and it quickly became obvious, because of the strength of the odor as she rose, that it was coming from the third floor. Clipping her nose with the thumb and forefinger of her left hand, she pressed her right hand over her mouth and held her breath. When she reached the Stern apartment, she banged on the door.

  "Hello," she cried. "Anybody home?"

  No answer came from within the apartment. She tried the doorknob, surprised to find that the door opened, but no more than an inch. It was fastened securely from the inside by a chain. Someone was obviously inside. Again she banged with her fists against the door.

  "Please answer," she cried, trying to break the chain using her shoulder as a battering ram. The door wouldn't budge. Don't panic, she told herself, forcing a mental clarity that allowed her quickly to go over her options. There was no time to call the gas company. No time to call the police. She had to get that door open. And fast.

  A crowbar! Her brain flipped over possibilities. An idea popped into her mind, and she ran down the two flights of stairs to her own apartment. She flung open the window, sucked in fresh air, then scrambled to her bedroom where Larry had his weights. She grabbed a bar that had been stripped of weights. Despite its heft, she managed to get it up the two flights.

  Shoving the bar into the space between the door and the jamb, she put all her weight against it, and the chain lock separated from the wall.

  Sweating profusely, her chest aching, trying to stop herself from inhaling the toxic fumes, she moved swiftly through the apartment. She began to feel faint and light-headed but through an effort of will made it to the kitchen.

  Mr. Stern was seated on a chair, elevated with telephone books. His head was in the oven. First things first, she told herself, sustained by the charging adrenaline in her body. She shut off the open gas jets, then ran around the apartment like a madwoman, flinging all the windows open.

  That done, she turned her attention to Mr. Stern. She grabbed the back of the chair and lowered it to the ground. Mr. Stern was breathing and showing signs of consciousness. His eyes opened and closed.

  "You're alive," she whispered.

  He opened his eyes again, then nodded. His lips moved, but she could not make out what he was saying.

  "Just rest. You'll be fine."

  Rushing to the nearest window, she put her head out and sucked in deep gulps of air until her light-headedness disappeared, although her chest still ached. Sweat was running down her cheeks and her back, and her clothes were soaked through with perspiration.

  But as the adrenaline subsided, so did her clarity. She wasn't sure what to do next. This indecisiveness went on for a few moments, her eyes roving the kitchen until they lighted on the telephone. Running to it, she grasped it and dialed 911. Standing there, waiting for the buzz at the other end, she looked at the man. He had raised his head and was watching her.

  "Please, no," he said hoarsely.

  "You need help," she said. Someone answered the phone.

  "Not that. P-please," he stammered.

  She hesitated a moment, watching him. The color was coming back to his face. His eyes were open, and he seemed to be filling his lungs with the good air that had replaced the gas. He sat leaning against the wall, watching her, his expression glum. She heard voices at the other end of the phone, then she hung up.

  "Don't say it," she said.

  "What?"

  "That I should have let you die."

  He stared at her silently for a moment. There were deep, dark circles under his eyes. Then he lifted his hands, covered his face, and began to sob.

  Watching him, she wasn't certain of any course of action. Her first instinct was to give him a pep talk about standing up to life. She decided against that, not knowing the man's story. Suicide was something she knew little or nothing about. She had never been exposed to that kind of total desperation. Instead of acting or saying anything, she just stood there waiting for his hysteria to run its course, which it finally did.

  "I'm sorry," he said finally, removing his hands from his face, wiping away the tears with the cuffs of his shirt. Shakily he started to rise from the floor, using the wall for support. She ran to help him, but he waved her away. "It's okay." When he had gotten up, he shook his head a number of times. "Back from the dead," he mumbled. Then he looked toward her and, incongruously, actually smiled. "Looks like I bungled this like everything else."

  "How do you feel?" Jenny asked.

  "Nauseous and shaky," he said. Using the wall as support, he moved out of the kitchen. She followed him until he arrived at the bathroom and shut the door. Listening, she heard him retch.

  "Can I get you something?" she called to him.

  He didn't answer, and after a while he came out. His hair was damp and his skin blotchy, but he seemed to have regained some of his strength. Their eyes met, and he shrugged.

  "You want to talk about it?" she asked. It seemed a logical question.

  "You really want to hear it?" He chuckled wryly, then shrugged again.

  "I make a good cup of coffee," Jenny said, offering a smile.

  Mr. Stern looked about him with uncertainty.

  "Why not?"

  She went out the open door of the apartment, pausing in the doorway.

  "You'll have to fix this," she said. "Sorry." But when she turned he was not behind her. Before she could call out, he was back, folding an envelope and putting it in his side pocket.

  "My suicide note. I'm too embarrassed to read it again."

  In her apartment, he sat at the kitchen island while she measured out the coffee and water and turned on the automatic coffee maker.

  "Nice of you," he said. She could feel his eyes studying her.

  "I don't often get a chance to have a coffee klatch with a neighbor," she said, hoping that the light touch might cheer him up.

  "I don't mean that part. I mean what you did."

  "Oh, that."

  Facing him, she noted that he turned his eyes away and began to look at his hands as if they conveyed something of profound importance.

  "It seemed like the only alternative," he said.

  "That was apparent," she said.

  "Something just came over me. Everything seemed so bleak and overwhelming. Sally's ... my wife's illness. My business going under. The eviction notice. Oh, yes. I got this eviction notice yesterday. Pay up or get out. I haven't got a job. I can't pay up. Then this business with Teddy."

  "Teddy?"

  "My son. I'm sure you've seen him around."

  "Yes, I have. Sweet kid."

  "Too sweet, maybe," he said, looking off into space. He reflected in silence for a moment. When he lifted his eyes toward her, he seemed frightened, as if he had revealed too much. "Never mind. It's not important."

  "You may be just imagining..." She found it difficult to continue. What she wanted to say but couldn't was: Teddy's not what you think.

  The coffee was ready, and she poured a cup for him and one for her. Shakily he brought the cup to his lips and sipped.

  "You're right. It's pretty good."

  "I've got the coffee touch," she said, sitting down on the high chair beside him. She looked at him and smiled. "Mad at me?"

  "At you?"

  "For saving your life."

  "God,"
he said. "It's embarrassing. I can hardly believe it. Why did I do it? I even wrote this stupid note." He took it out and tore it into little pieces, which he put on the surface in front of him. Then he sighed and shook his head. "This morning after they both left, I just blundered into it, I guess. Obviously, in my haste, I chose the wrong method."

  "I wouldn't know," Jenny replied.

  "I should have used pills."

  "Would have saved me a lot of trouble," she said.

  "Crazy talk," he said. "Can you believe this?"

  "Maybe this is what people talk about when they come back from the dead," Jenny said. Oddly, she suddenly thought of Myrna and her sophisticated repartee. She felt imitative, yet strangely superior, morally superior.

  "You must think I'm pretty weak," Mr. Stern said, as if he had been reading her mind.

  "Who am I to make any judgments like that?" Jenny said. "I guess it happens. People get overwhelmed and lose their courage. I'm not exactly an expert on it. Except..." An idea was forming in her mind, the branch of an idea rooted in her life, her values, back in Indiana. She imagined she heard her father's twang, her mother's words.

  "Except what?" he asked.

  "I ... I don't want to set you off ... make you run off and do it all again." She watched his expression for any sign of that, not that she could have told if there were a sign.

  "No. That's over. Definitely over. Temporary insanity, let's call it." He sucked in a deep breath. "Please. Please don't say anything. Not to..." His eyes looked up, his message clear. "Not to them, especially. I'll be eternally grateful."

  "I was about to say," Jenny said, "that it was an act of extreme selfishness." There, it was out, and she felt better for it.

  "Who can argue with that? You can't imagine how small I feel. It's not the end of the world. Hell, so we get evicted. I'll get a job. I can be quite an earner. Damned recession kicked me in the butt." He looked up suddenly. "Bet I sound like a kid whistling in the cemetery. Shit." The color drained from his face, and he seemed to Jenny to be sinking back into a suicidal depression. Can't have that, she told herself, feeling somehow responsible for the man, as if saving his life gave her some proprietary interest over him.