Wifey

  “Please . . .” Sandy said.

  “And how much time do I have left? A little happiness is all I ask.”

  “Stop it . . .” Sandy said, “please, stop it!”

  The nurse poked her head in the doorway. “Ladies, could we try to remember we’re in a hospital?”

  Enid turned to face Mona. “I’ll tell you this, my enemies treat me better than my daughter-in-laws. You don’t know how lucky you are to have girls instead of boys. With boys you wind up with tsouris . . .”

  “At least be happy the baby has the Hebrew name you want,” Mona told her.

  “To me she’ll always be Sarah, no matter what Miss High and Mighty calls her.”

  “Her name is Jennifer, dammit!” Sandy shouted. “And I’ve got the birth certificate to prove it!” She could no longer hold back her tears.

  “Ladies, ladies.” The nurse returned, shaking her head at them. “I’ll have to ask you to leave now. Look at our patient.”

  Sandy was crying hard. “Take care, darling,” Mona said, kissing her cheek. “I’d better go too. She shouldn’t drive like this.”

  The nurse gave Sandy a sedative and she slept through feeding time and missed evening visiting hours.

  Sandy was filled with guilt. It wasn’t just that she liked the name Jennifer, and certainly she didn’t dislike the name Sarah. It was that she couldn’t, wouldn’t name her child after Samuel D. Pressman. Sam Pressman had never addressed Sandy by name. He’d called her girl or you, not entirely without affection, but without concern. Samuel David Pressman, owner of Pressman’s Dry Cleaning Establishment, a chain of four stores in Plainfield, Roselle, and New Brunswick, catering to the Black is Beautiful in Cleaned and Pressed Clothes business. And in each store a doberman slept in the front window, a reminder that burglars should take their business elsewhere.

  Two months after the funeral Enid decided to give up her organizations, her luncheons, her shopping expeditions to Loehman’s and her afternoon Mah-Jongg games for the sake of the business. “I can’t expect my boy to do it all by himself, can I?” And she established herself as manager of the Plainfield store, leaving Norman free to expand and improve the business. And he had. He’d opened three new stores that year and four more since then. He was always up to his elbows in a new solution.

  SANDY WAS UNDER THE DRYER at Coiffures Elegante in downtown Plainfield that gray November afternoon in 1963, her head covered with giant blue rollers, which, after an hour of intense discomfort would turn into the popular bouffant hairstyle of her look-alike. She was flipping the pages of the latest issue of Vogue with the stub of her fingers, careful not to mess up the freshly applied Frosted Sherbet on her nails, when the news came over the radio. Sandy didn’t know what was happening since she couldn’t hear anything but suddenly there was a lot of activity in the shop. She raised the hood of her dryer. “What’s wrong?”

  “The president’s been shot!”

  “Is it serious?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Oh God.”

  And the other women pulled their dryers back down over their wet heads. But not Sandy. She’d jumped up, knocking over the manicurist’s table, tiny bottles of polish crashing to the floor. She ran through the shop to the back room, where her coat hung, and as she tore out the door the last words she heard were spoken by her neighbor, Doris Richter. “Alex . . . could you tease it a little higher on the left because it always drops by the next day . . .”

  She drove home quickly, rushed into the house, found Bucky snuggled next to Mazie on the sofa in the den, the baby asleep in her lap, the TV on. “Oh, Mrs. Pressman,” Mazie cried, “the president’s dead. He’s been shot in the head. Lord help us our president’s dead.”

  Bucky made a gun with his finger. “Bang bang, the president’s dead!” He studied Sandy for a minute. “You look funny like that, Mommy . . . like a moonman.”

  Sandy took him in her arms, cried into his warm, puppy-smelling head, then went to her room, took the rollers out of her hair, laid out her black dress and shoes, dug out the black veil she’d worn to Samuel’s funeral, and prepared for mourning.

  “What the hell,” Norman said, when he got home and found Sandy dressed in black.

  “I’m sitting shiveh for the president.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t sit shiveh when my father died.”

  “That has nothing to do with this.”

  “And the Kennedys are Catholic!”

  “So what?”

  “I think you’re really going off your rocker this time. I think you’re really going bananas.”

  Sandy shrugged. “I don’t expect you to understand . . . you didn’t even vote for him.”

  “And neither did you!”

  “That’s how much you know.” She gathered several sheets from the linen closet and draped one over the mirror in their bedroom.

  “Jesus Christ, now you’re going Orthodox?”

  “This is the way we did it when Grandpa died,” Sandy said, “I remember.”

  “I can’t believe this. You’re not Jackie, you know, just because you won that fucking contest.”

  How could Sandy explain? In a way she was Jackie, with blood and brains all over her suit. “I know exactly who I am and exactly what I’m doing.”

  “We’re due at the Levinworths’ in two hours. You better do something about your hair. It looks like hell.”

  “You’ll have to call to say we can’t make it.”

  “Not we, Sandy. I’m going anyway.”

  “Don’t you have any feelings? Don’t you know the whole country’s in mourning?”

  “So we’ll mourn at Lew’s house. It’s not going to make any difference. It’s not going to bring him back.”

  “No!” Sandy headed for the dining room, to cover the mirror above the sideboard.

  “Pardon me, Mrs. Pressman,” Mazie said. She’d changed out of her uniform into a green wool suit and she carried a small suitcase. “I’m going to take a few days off to go down to Washington . . . to the funeral . . . you know . . .”

  “That is absolutely out of the question, Mazie,” Norman said. “You can see what condition Mrs. Pressman is in.”

  “Same as me,” Mazie said, “sad and sick.” She put down her suitcase and helped Sandy drape the sheet over the mirror. “I don’t know just when I’ll be back, Mrs. Pressman . . . maybe three or four days . . . after the weekend. I just don’t know.”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me, Mazie,” Norm said, raising his voice, “but there’s no way you can have time off now. Who’s going to take care of the children?”

  “Take care of them yourself, Mr. Pressman.”

  “If you go, you can kiss this job good-bye!”

  “Norman!” Sandy came alive. “What are you saying? Mazie loved the president! If she wants to go to his funeral . . .”

  “It’s just an excuse, Sandy, can’t you see that? Every goddamned fucking excuse.”

  “I won’t tolerate no language like that,” Mazie said. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Pressman, but I can’t work for no Communist!”

  She picked up Jen, who was in her infant seat, and carried her down the hall to her room. Bucky followed, wailing, “Mazie . . . Mazie . . .” Sandy followed too. Mazie put the baby into her crib and kissed both children. “Good-bye, sugars, you be good for your mommy, hear?” Then she grabbed her suitcase and marched out the front door. “Goodbye, Mrs. Pressman. I’m really sorry.”

  “Oh, Mazie,” Sandy cried, “I don’t know what we’re going to do without you.” She closed the door, trying to keep out the chill night air, and said to Norman, “I can’t believe you did that. I’ll never forgive you. Mazie was wonderful.” She brushed past him and went to the bedroom. Suddenly she felt very ti
red. She had to lie down. To contemplate. How did Jackie feel at this moment? A widow, with two young children. And Caroline used to parade around in her pumps, interrupting his meetings . . .

  The phone rang. Norman picked it up. “Yes, Lew, how are you? . . . Well, certainly, we were just about to call you . . . No night to celebrate, that’s for sure . . . Yes, that’s right, Sandy feels especially close to Jackie, always has. I can hear Hannah crying . . . yes, same here, they’re very emotional . . . You too, another time. Uh huh . . . Bye . . .” He hung up. “That was Lew.”

  “Hypocrite!”

  “That’s the thanks I get for covering for your emotional immaturity?”

  “Mommy, I’m hungry,” Bucky called.

  “Just a minute,” Norman called back. “Mommy’s coming.” He whispered, “Your children are starving. Will you quit this idiot act and take care of them?”

  But Sandy wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t speak, and Norman, unable to cope with the situation, frantic at the idea of feeding the kids supper by himself, and convinced that Sandy was really going off the deep end, phoned Gordon, as if Gordon could look into Sandy’s head the way he could look into her cunt. Gordon advised two aspirin and a good night’s sleep.

  And then, while millions of TV viewers, including Sandy and Norman, watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, the call came from the highway patrol. Sandy’s father, Ivan Schaedel, had had a flat tire on the Pulaski Skyway. Mona had sat on the hood of the car, shooing away cars with her scarf, as Ivan attempted to change the tire. But he never finished. He was smashed by a Juniper Moving Van and killed instantly.

  And then the shiveh began in earnest.

  5

  LAST DECEMBER while Sandy was recuperating in Jamaica, Norman was making a name for himself as athlete of the century. He’d jump out of bed at six, jog around the grounds of La Carousella for half an hour, perform Royal Canadian Air Force exercises for twenty minutes, swim a dozen laps, play eighteen holes of golf, rush out to the new court for doubles, followed by singles, followed by mixed doubles, and before dinner, while the others were napping, he was back in the pool, holding his breath under water.

  “Daddy can count to one hundred,” Jen told Sandy. “How high can you count under water?”

  “If I hold my nose I think I can make it to five.”

  “That’s not very good.”

  “It’s good enough. I don’t expect to ever have to hold my breath under water.”

  “But suppose you do?”

  “I’ll drown, I guess.”

  “But Daddy says . . .”

  “Never mind what Daddy says this time. Go and get ready for lunch.”

  “Can I eat in the kitchen with Lydia?”

  “I guess so, if she doesn’t mind.”

  “She likes me and I like her. She’s the best cook. Why don’t you ever make fried bananas?”

  “I never thought about frying them but I used to feed you mashed bananas when you were a baby.”

  “Mashed bananas, yuck! Will you fry them when we get home?”

  “Maybe, now go and find Bucky and tell him to wash up for lunch.”

  ON THE TWENTY-SEVENTH Myra threw a party for her friends, three couples from The Club who were also vacationing at Runaway Bay, two of them in rented houses, and the third staying at the hotel on the beach. All were thinking seriously about buying a piece of property of their own so that they could continue to vacation together. Besides, it was tax deductible, they reminded each other, daily.

  Before the party, while Myra scurried around filling candy dishes, rearranging furniture, and checking the bar, Sandy asked, “Don’t you find it boring to be down here with the same people you see all the time at home?”

  “Not at all,” Myra answered. “We love it.”

  “But don’t you want to meet new people down here?”

  Myra dumped a jar of Planters dry-roasted nuts into a silver bowl. “It would be awful.” She tilted her head back and dropped a handful of nuts into her mouth.

  “I think it would be nice.”

  “Awful to have to find games, I mean.” Myra chewed and swallowed the nuts, then brushed off her hands. “Take golf . . . they could say they’re class A players when they’re really B’s, and if I had to play with beginners, well, frankly, I’d rather not play at all. And then there’s tennis,” Myra said. “Playing with people who aren’t in your class is horrendous. There are people who’ll tell you they’re high intermediates when by your standards they might be low intermediates or, worse yet, high beginners.”

  “What are you?”

  “I’m low advanced, but I can handle any average advanced player and upward. Norman, for instance, is headed for high advanced, but he and I can still have a good game. How do you think the candy looks? Do you like it piled high or spread out in rows?”

  “Piled high.”

  “Me too. Remember how Mona used to spread out the after-dinner mints?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’d you get that dress?”

  “It’s not a dress, it’s a skirt and top.” Sandy fingered the material, an Indian cotton print in bright colors, with elephants marching around it. She enjoyed the comfortable wraparound style. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s cute.”

  Sandy felt that Myra was waiting to be admired. “I like yours too.”

  “I couldn’t have worn this in the old days,” Myra said, “but now I can go braless if I feel like it.” Her dress was a long, clingy, black jersey with a high neck in front, plunging to the waist in back. Her frosted hair hung to her shoulders and framed her face, like a lion’s mane. And under the black jersey Sandy could see the outline of Myra’s perfect 34-B breasts, of her perfect, rose-colored nipples, each one the circumference of a quarter, where Sandy’s were only the size of dimes.

  “I wish to hell Gordy could play tennis like Norman,” Myra said. “If he could, we’d win all the married couples tournaments at The Club. As it is I’m embarrassed having a shelf full of trophies when Gordy’s never won anything.”

  “Does he mind?”

  “He says he doesn’t.”

  “Well, then, don’t worry.”

  “I’ll bet Norman’s great in bed.”

  “Myra!”

  “Does that embarrass you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “They say you can tell a lot about how a man performs in bed by watching him play tennis.” Myra was at the bar now, arranging brandy glasses on a tray.

  “I’ve always heard you can tell by the way a man dances,” Sandy said, “and Norman can’t dance at all.”

  “Are you saying he’s no good then?” She looked over at Sandy, raising her eyebrows.

  Sandy looked away. “I’m not saying anything, one way or the other.”

  “You’re not having trouble, are you?”

  “No, who said anything about trouble?”

  Myra sighed. “I remember when Daddy told you that Norman was phlegmatic and you left the room in tears. I was shocked myself. Who would have guessed Daddy even knew such a word . . .”

  “That was years ago.”

  “But Mona said he was a good catch,” Myra added, “and she turned out to be right, as usual.”

  “Yes.”

  “You used to tell me everything, San . . . you used to come to my room with questions, remember? I wish we could be that close now.”

  “I don’t have any more questions.”

  Myra busied herself with the cocktail napkins, counting out equal piles and distributing them around the room. “Tell me something,” she said in a low voice, looking around to make sure no one was in sight or hearing distance. “Do you suck?”

  “Myra, please!”

  “Oh, come on. You can tell me. Every
body’s doing it these days.”

  “Including you?”

  Myra shrugged. “Of course. So how about you and Norm?”

  Sandy hesitated. “Certainly.”

  “Do you swallow?”

  “Do you?”

  “I asked you first,” Myra said, “and anyway, it’s pure protein, it can’t hurt you.”

  “I know.”

  “Mother!” Kate called in her fishwife’s voice. “I think your friends are here. I heard a car drive up.”

  Myra ran her hands over her hair and her tongue across her teeth. “I don’t have lipstick on my teeth, do I?” she asked Sandy, making a horse face.

  “No, you’re fine.”

  “Why don’t you run in and put some on. You could use the color . . .”

  “I think I’m getting a herpes . . . I’m using Blistex . . .”

  “HELLO . . . HELLO . . . HELLO . . .”

  Barbara and Gish. Lucille and Ben. Phyllis and Mickey. Myra’s friends. It was hard for Sandy to keep them straight. She’d watched them on the court each day but dressed in their Head color-coordinated outfits they all looked the same. They’d tried to get her to join them, tried to make friends. “I’d love to play,” she’d explained. “But I’ve been sick and I have to take it easy for a while.”

  Now here they were, out of their daily uniforms, into their evening ones. The women wore clingy jersey dresses, like Myra’s, and the men were all in plaid slacks and Lacoste shirts. During the week, Sandy had given the women code names, to help her remember who was who. Brown, Luscious, and Funky instead of Barbara, Lucille, and Phyllis. Sandy thought she might like Funky, with a bandana tied around her head, loaded down with Indian jewelry, best, until they got into a discussion about Plainfield.

  “Plainfield, my God!” Funky said. “I thought Plainfield was all black.”

  “Not quite.”

  “You mean not yet! If I were you, I’d get out while the going’s good and move up to the Hills. We built our final house in Watchung last year. We can see the lights from our living room, just like stars. It’s fantastic . . . you’d love it . . . is your Plainfield house your first house?”