Dorothy on the Rocks (11 page)

“I think you'd be surprised. I bet a couple of survivors are in there just waiting for a chance to meet the right Mr. Sperm.”

“What's happened to
your
tough outer shell, for goodness sake? You sound like a besotted grandmother.”

“Here's to babies,” Charles says, raising his wineglass. “Here's to sweet round cuddly babies.”

“To babies,” I say reluctantly and click Charles's glass.

Charles's client shows up for lunch and I head back uptown. I'm more than a little tipsy and can't wait to lie down and take a nap. On the subway stairs a woman is struggling with a baby stroller. I offer to help and she gratefully nods. I grab the bottom half of the stroller and start down the stairs. The boy sitting smugly in the
seat kicks his work boots and hits me square in the forehead and giggles with baby glee. The mother apologizes. I shake my head and smile sweetly as in
don't worry about it.
At the bottom of the stairs I put my end of the stroller down and rush off to catch the train, my head throbbing from the impact of baby's boot.

I sit on the train. My head is not only throbbing but pounding as well. I wasn't completely truthful with Charles about the baby issue. I had considered having a baby before—years ago. I was actually pregnant for five months and seventeen days. And I was married. I often forget that detail of my personal biography. The marriage. It was brief, ill advised perhaps, but ultimately fairly painless. Fairly, except for the miscarriage. A late miscarriage. Something went wrong and the baby had to be aborted. It was a girl. She died in vitro and fortunately the doctor was able to do the procedure immediately. Sometimes when it happens, the
nonviable fetus,
as it is referred to, has to stay put for a time and then labor is induced and the baby is delivered, a nightmare I was lucky enough not to have to endure.

I was twenty-six. Hugh, my husband, was twenty-seven. He was a graphic designer. He had a sheepdog named Ernie and lived in a duplex apartment on the Lower East Side. We met in Tompkins Square Park on a Saturday afternoon. I was reading Kurt Vonnegut's
Breakfast of Champions
and smoking a joint.

“That's a great book,” Hugh said as he sat down next to me on the bench. “I've read it four times.”

“Wow,” I said and offered him a toke of my joint and thus began our relationship. We were inseparable for six months, I moved my things into his duplex apartment, then I got pregnant and we went to city hall one Thursday afternoon and got married. I never
even told my family. I figured I would surprise them the following Christmas. Most of my friends didn't know because Hugh and I spent all of our time one on one. We picked out names for the baby; Hugh worked on freelance assignments; I stopped getting high and made beaded bracelets that I sold on commission out of a shop on Eighth Street.

Then at five months, just after I started to show, I experienced some pains and went to the doctor and three days later was in Roosevelt Hospital having the
procedure.
Hugh was devastated. I was numb. The doctor told us it was a girl. We named her Abigail and then had her little nonviable body cremated. Hugh, a lapsed Catholic, still believed, if not in God, at least, in the power of ceremony. I put some of the ashes in a locket. Hugh had an urn made for some and the rest we took to St. Luke's on Hudson Street and scattered on the rose garden next to the parish house. I still visit the garden at least once a year when the roses are in bloom. At the time I didn't know why we decided to put ashes there, Hugh's love of ceremony perhaps, something guided us, maybe Abigail herself, but for whatever reason, I'm grateful we did. The train stops at Eighty-sixth Street. I'm so lost in thought I almost miss my stop, but I manage to get out just as the doors are closing. I make my way out of the station and into the daylight again.

Hugh got a job offer in Chicago a month after the
event
as we came to call it. He decided to take it. I stayed in New York and got cast in a tour of
Godspell,
and three months later I filed for a divorce. It was a mutual decision. A month after that I ended up in the psych ward of a hospital in Des Moines, Iowa. That came about because one night during the tour I started screaming and couldn't stop, so the company manager took me to the emergency
room of the local hospital and from there I was admitted to the psych ward and spent a month putting together jigsaw puzzles and talking to a shrink once a day. Hugh flew out from Chicago and got me out and took me back to New York and life went on. I have never told Charles about any of this. I think he would be shocked to learn how fragile that tough outer shell he says I wear so fetchingly actually is.

Do you want mushrooms?” Jack asks, standing in the middle of my living room, buck naked, with his cell phone pressed to his ear.

“Sure, and extra cheese.” I am sitting on the toilet with the door open a few inches so we can talk. “And get some beer.”

Jack came over about eight o'clock. The minute he walked in the door he took off his shirt, I took off my blouse, he took off his jeans, and I took off my pants. It was like strip poker without the cards. We made love on the couch and on the chair and on my grandmother's maple Ethan Allen coffee table.

“And ask them to put in lots of napkins. I'm all out.” I wash my face and apply lotion and then quickly powder and put on some blush and a little lipstick. I have a feeling the
conversation
is coming and I want to look pretty. Hell, I want to look drop-dead gorgeous. I squint into the mirror and realize that pretty will have to do. I slip into my Victoria's Secret red silk bathrobe (on sale for $24.95) and fluff my hair.

“Mags,” Jack says, looking up from the paper as I enter the
room and head for the kitchen. “Let's go downtown and hear some music later.”

“Great,” I say, reaching into the kitchen cupboard and pulling out a bottle of scotch.

“Want some scotch?” I ask.

“Scotch?”

“Yeah, you want a shot of scotch?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I pour two glasses.

“Straight up or on the rocks?”

“Straight up, baby,” Jack says with a laugh.

“What's so funny?”

“Nothing. There is nothing funny about a shot of scotch.”

I hand him his glass and sit down in the chair across from him.

“Cheers.” I drain the glass. Jack does the same.

“Another round?” I ask.

“It's your call, Sweet Pea.”

I go into the kitchen and get the bottle and pour us two more shots and set the bottle on grandma's coffee table.

“Here's looking at you, kid,” I say.

“And you too, kid,” Jack says.

And we look at each other like gunfighters in a face-off. We finish the drinks. Jack picks up the bottle and pours again.

“Mud in your eye,” he says.

“Mud in yours,” I say. We finish at the same moment and slam the glasses on the table.

“We are getting drunk,” Jack declares with a slur. I pour another round and look him hard in the eye.

“What did you want to talk about, Jack?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your message this morning. You said and I quote, ‘You and I have to talk.' ”

“Ahh, yes,” he says and, of course, just then the buzzer rings.

“It's the pizza man,” Jack says getting up too quickly. He takes a moment to steady his balance and then crosses to the door.

“You got any money, Sweet Pea? I don't think I'm going to have enough.”

“I have a little money. Just a tiny bit. Four dollars and thirty-seven cents.”

“So precise,” Jack says, opening the door. The delivery guy is holding the pizza and a brown bag with a six-pack of beer. Jack hands him a couple of twenties that he got out of the jeans he quickly stepped into on his way to the door. He gets the change and closes the door with a flourish.

“Pizza, at your service,” he announces placing the box on the coffee table.

“I thought you said you didn't think you had enough money? I would say forty dollars is plenty of money.”

“Well the forty dollars has to do me for a while. I have to pay for the parking garage and the tolls every time I come here. I know I look like a million bucks but looks are deceiving. I thought maybe you could contribute to the cause,” Jack says as he opens a Rolling Rock.

“So is that what you wanted to talk about? You want to talk about money and how I don't contribute to
the cause
?”

“No, it wasn't about money.”

“Because I would like to point out that I have some overhead myself. I do pay the rent on this love nest, after all.”

“All right.”

“I'm not living at home with my parents.”

“Parent.”

“Parent. What's the difference really?”

“Look, this is getting off base. You have no idea what I want to say. You can't even listen long enough to hear,” Jack says.

“Go on then, I'm listening. I'm all ears,” I say putting my hands behind my ears and pushing them forward like the three-year-old child I've become.

“I don't have to defend my life to you.”

“Am I asking you to? I'm just making observations,” I say punctuating my statement with a swig of scotch.

“Look, Mags, I think I'm going to take off.”

“Boy, it doesn't take much to get rid of you, does it?”

“Don't do that. This is your call, not mine. I thought we were having some pizza and maybe hear some music and maybe have an adult discussion. It's called a date. Not a showdown.”

“This is just a stopover for you, isn't it? A drive-by fuck on the way to the rest of your life. Go on. I wouldn't want to keep you,” I say taking another mouthful of scotch. I feel my toes getting numb. “I wouldn't want to keep you from the rest of your life in Queens, which I would like to point out I have never been invited to visit. Do I embarrass you? Is that it, Jack?”

“What are you talking about? Do you even know what you're talking about? We've only known each other a week. When did we have time to go to Queens?”

“I'm talking about us. About you and me and how miserable I feel right now because there really is no you and me, is there?”

Jack starts untangling the clothes on the floor, finds his shirt and puts it on. He pulls on his socks.

“You're drunk,” he says. “And this is out of hand.”

“And who are you to judge what's in and out of hand?” I say, not knowing what the hell I'm trying to say, but trying nonetheless.

“I think you're right. I think I should leave and let you cool off and then maybe we can talk. Now where are my shoes?”

“I don't know? Are you leaving? Is that it?”

“Didn't you tell me to?”

“Well if you want to leave, you are certainly free to leave. Go right ahead.”

“I am going right ahead the minute I find my shoes,” Jack says.

I get up and start looking. I pull the cushions off the couch.

“I'm sure they're here somewhere. Aha,” I exclaim, seeing them under the bookcase next to the bathroom. Jack turns and looks. I throw them, one at a time, directly at his head.

“There are your fucking shoes,” I say. I don't hit him—the half bottle of scotch I have ingested impedes my aim—but my intention is dead on.

Jack doesn't say a word. He gathers up the shoes, checks his pockets to make sure he has everything he came in with, and exits through the front door.

I
SIT DOWN
on the couch and try to figure out what just happened. How did it get so crazy so fast? Bixby, my cat boy, jumps on the couch next to me and kneads my leg with his paws.

“What have I done, Bix? What the hell have I done?” Bixby settles against me and starts to purr. Goodie lands in the middle of the coffee table and shakes his wand.

“Why do you have to be so dramatic all the time? Life is a lot simpler than you make it,” he scolds.

“Simple? Life isn't simple.”

“Sure it is,” Goodie says, picking some lint off his feathered skirt. “All you have to do is keep both shoes on and be home before midnight.”

“Don't make jokes,” I say

“All right, let's not joke. Let's be dead serious,” Goodie says. “I am seriously worried about you, Maggie. I'm worried that you're all tied up in a tight ball of yourself, and you're so afraid that life is going to pass you by and you're not going to get what you want and maybe you don't even know what you want and all you can think about is what you don't have and not what you do have and you can't stop for a second and really see what's right in front of you.”

“Are you done?” I ask.

“I'm only telling you what I see, and telling you what I learned. You and I were a lot alike, Mags. I didn't see my life most of the time, and then it was gone. I know this is one big cliché, but sweetie, wake up and smell the roses. I only say this because I love you.”

“You're living in a fairy tale.”

“No, you are, stop living in some bad movie version of what you think the drama of your life should be. It doesn't have to be a tragedy.”

“I think I want to be alone right now.”

“Oh, that's smart,” Goodie says. “Wallow.”

“That's enough, Goodie,” I say. “Get the hell out of here and leave me the fuck alone.”

“All right. I know an exit line when I hear it. But be careful, Maggie Mae,” Goodie says with a wave of his wand. “I'm warning you.” And with that Goodie is gone.

“What's that supposed to mean? Is that a threat?” I yell over the trail of fairy dust.

Somewhere in my scotch-soaked brain I remember I'm supposed to be taking care of Mr. Ed for the next couple of days. There was a message on my machine from Sandy. Shit. The thought of getting up and even putting my shoes on seems too much for me. What does it matter if Ed takes a walk or not? An uninvited picture of dog dung smeared into the delicate pile of Sandy and Dick's eight-thousand-dollar imported oriental rug gets me on my feet and looking for my Dr. Scholl's.