The Housewife Blues (20 page)

In an effort to mollify her feelings, she began to perform
the household chores that she had postponed. Her energy level soared, and for
the next few hours she moved around the apartment in a fury. Not a square inch
of the place was spared, whether it needed attending to or not. She polished
the silver, oiled the furniture, buffed the exposed portions of the floors,
washed the windows, and generally eliminated any morsel of dust that might have
lingered even in the remotest corners.

It occurred to her during this housecleaning frenzy that
maybe all this activity was designed to physically remove any witnesses to what
she now referred to her as semitransgression. Now, that isn't fair, she rebuked
herself. By mid-afternoon she seemed to have smoothed the outer edges of any
guilt feelings and come to terms with the reality of her deed.

Later, when she soaked in the warm water of her bath, her
sense of well-being accelerated. It was purely mechanical, she decided finally.
Neither an act of personal indulgence nor one of spitefulness. Something about
her, an aura, a suggestiveness, a mysterious attraction, made him react. She
was purely a catalytic agent, and as a result she had simply helped him produce
sperm for a fertility procedure. Nothing more. The bonus to Godfrey might be
that he was also cured of his impotence. At least she hoped so.

Just as she stepped out of the bathtub, she heard a strange
sound coming from the living room. Wrapping a towel around herself, she came
out of the bathroom to check on the source of the sound. It was Peter hungrily
lapping away at the milk in the saucer. Hearing her approach, the cat looked up
for a moment to study Jenny's intentions. Obviously judging them benign, he
returned to his meal.

Jenny, talking in soothing tones, moved toward the cat,
then carefully closed the casement window, trapping Peter inside the apartment.
Checking all potential points of escape, she went back to her room and dressed
hurriedly. Her intention was to somehow get the cat downstairs into Bob and
Jerry's apartment before Larry returned from work.

It annoyed her to worry over Larry's reaction, but she had
no stomach for inciting his wrath. Especially not today. She wanted tension to
subside between them, to reconcile their differences.

When she went back into the living room, the cat was
nowhere to be seen.

"Peter," she called as she roamed the apartment.
"Here, kitty-kitty." She looked under furniture, inside closets, in
whatever nook and cranny seemed a logical hiding place.

After a half hour of searching, there was still no sign of
the cat. It was getting late, nearly four, and she hadn't even begun to think
about dinner. No dinner and Peter lost in their apartment considerably dimmed
prospects of an evening of marital reconciliation.

It was then that she thought of Teddy. Surely Teddy's
knowledge of Peter would save the day. She rushed out of her apartment, went
downstairs, and pressed Bob and Jerry's buzzer. No one answered. Then she ran
up the front stairs and pressed the outside buzzer of the Stern apartment. No
answer there, either.

Frustrated, she turned the problem over in her mind again.
Perhaps Peter had found some hidden opening through which he had escaped. Such
a prospect offered little solace at that moment. Time was running out. Larry
would be home shortly. The self-confidence of the evening before had wilted.

She stood at the entrance to the apartment house, her mind
on the razor's edge of indecision, resenting the anxiety induced by Larry's
litany of caveats. But before she could work up a good head of anger, she saw
Teddy heading toward the building from Third Avenue.

He looked somber, crestfallen, self-absorbed, as if he were
contemplating some weighty and gloomy problem. She waited for him to reach the
building.

"Thank goodness," she said. "I've been
looking for you."

"Me?" he asked, puzzled by the question. She quickly
explained her dilemma, watching his face light up with optimism as she spoke.

"I've been looking everywhere," he said.
"Cut school, too." He lowered his voice. "The boys chewed me out
plenty. They blamed me at first. I never let him out. Never. When I come in, I
always make sure he's okay."

"I put milk out," Jenny said as they moved
quickly to her apartment. "Then I closed all possible escape routes. I
think—"

"He's one smart guy, that tomcat."

It was nearing the time when Larry would be coming home,
which increased her anxiety. Inside the apartment, Teddy began his search.

"Peter," he called in a kind of specially
contrived falsetto.

Jenny followed him around the apartment. At one point he
got down on his hands and knees but still couldn't lure Peter out of his hiding
place.

"Could be he's found some exit to the outside,"
Jenny suggested.

"Oh, he's good at that." Teddy shrugged and
continued his falsetto summons.

"Tell me," Jenny muttered, feeling the
accelerating pressure of time. A salad, she decided. She'd make one of those
California-style everything-in-it salads. And broiled chicken. She'd call up a
nearby grilled chicken place that was always stuffing their mailbox with
fliers. The Grillery, it was called. If she was clever, it might pass for her
own. It struck her that this was yet another violation of Larry's rules.

"If you can't find him, just forget it," Jenny
said, growing still more edgy. She picked up the phone and got the Grillery's
number from information. "No longer than ten minutes," she told the
man at the chicken place. "Otherwise forget it." Her own aggressive
tone surprised her. Am I getting just like them? she asked herself.

"No sweat," the man at the other end said as he
took her order. "One quartered chicken."

As she hung up she heard Teddy's shout from the bathroom,
then an unhappy screeching cat sound. When she got to him he was on his hands
and knees, groping under the bathtub. He pulled out a reluctant Peter by one
leg. After a brief struggle, Peter rested comfortably in Teddy's arms. Teddy
stroked the fur behind his ear, and Peter purred contentedly.

"Well then, the crisis is over," Jenny said.

"For now," Teddy said. He was obviously
overjoyed. "I can't wait to tell them."

"They'll be happy, I'm sure," Jenny said.

Suddenly the image of Mr. Stern with his head in the oven
rose in her mind. She studied the boy for a long moment, and he seemed to sense
her evaluation.

"You and your dad..." she began.

"That's over," he said, blushing. "Thanks
to—"

"Please don't," she interrupted.

"I didn't tell him, Mrs. Burns. I kept my
promise."

"I never questioned that, Teddy."

"Dad and I have had some long talks." He lowered
his eyes and continued to stroke the cat. "About ... things."

"That's great," Jenny said.

"It's been a real turnaround for us," Teddy said.
"Like it was a miracle."

Despite a feeling of satisfaction, she felt uncomfortable
about her own curiosity, reminded suddenly of Larry and his prohibitions.

"Anyway, Peter is back." He turned to Jenny and
smiled. "Because of you."

"I'm just a cornucopia of good deeds," Jenny
said, laughing with a touch of self-mockery. At that point the outside buzzer
rang, recalling her earlier anxiety.

"The chicken man," she muttered, relieved,
guiding Teddy with Peter in his arms toward the door. As she let them out she
pressed the buzzer to open the entrance to the building.

"I'm sure Bob and Jerry will be calling to thank
you," Teddy said in the hallway.

"Please tell them not to."

"Mr. Burns?"

"More or less." She shrugged, not wanting Larry
to know of her cat-finding activities. More secrets piling up, she thought, not
without a tremor of fear. Teddy waved good-bye just as the delivery boy from
the Grillery entered the building.

"Burns?" the boy asked in Hispanic-accented
English.

"In a minute," she said, rushing into the
apartment to find her pocketbook. As always, it was never where she thought she
had put it. She combed through the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom. Then she
entered the living room, where she found it lying behind one of the family pictures
on the spinet. Just as she extracted a twenty-dollar bill from her wallet, her
peripheral vision caught sight of Larry coming down the street toward the
house.

Rushing to the open door, she gave the boy the
twenty-dollar bill and he handed her the package of chicken and a bill for
fifteen dollars.

"Keep the change," she said, briefly noting the
startled look on the boy's face as she closed the door and moved quickly to the
kitchen. She took the chicken out of the bag, put the pieces on a plate, and stuck
it in the microwave, ready to be reheated for dinner.

Moments later she heard Larry let himself into the
apartment. She felt tense, fearful, and a growing agitation as she heard his
footsteps approach. It annoyed her to have to deal with such oppressive
emotions. Why do I feel this way? she asked herself, deliberately repressing a
note of protest.

"Anybody home?" he called cheerily, poking his
face into the kitchen. She had busied herself with cutting cucumbers for the
salad on the kitchen island. He approached her from behind, embraced her, and
kissed the back of her neck.

"Got it," he said.

"Got what?" she asked.

"The loan, silly. Terry called late this afternoon.
See? Business is based upon relationships. Just as I explained."

He dipped his fingers in the salad bowl and popped a
cucumber round into his mouth.

"Sounds good," Jenny replied, making an effort to
appear enthusiastic. Shouldn't she be? she wondered, feeling oddly distant and
unaffected by his sense of victory.

"Good? It's great. Especially in this environment. Not
to mention that we've had five turndowns by other banks. There's still some
open questions and, of course, the paperwork, but Terry says it looks in the
bag."

She resisted facing him, fearing that he would see the
distance and lack of enthusiasm in her eyes.

"And don't let it be said that I didn't fill you in on
the details," he said. "I couldn't wait to get home to tell
you."

What details? she wondered, remembering the night with
Vince and Connie. There had been talk of signatures, her signature, being
required. A note of malevolence crept into her thoughts, which she quickly
dismissed.

"So when do you actually open the doors?" she
felt obliged to ask, as if she were really part of it.

"Soon as the loan is closed, Jenny. But why trouble
your pretty little head about such things? The broad strokes are we're in
business."

"I'm very happy for you, Larry."

The statement was flat, mechanical. Surely it was the
wifely thing to say.

"For us, Jenny. For us."

She took that to be the proper husbandly response. The
dialogue seemed performed, as in a stage play, with each actor playing a
clichéd role.

"We should open the claret now," Larry said,
moving away from her. "It will go great with the meat loaf." He
started to fiddle with the bottles in the wine rack, looking for the claret.

"I wouldn't," she said, turning finally,
irritated by a sudden onslaught of panic. "I made chicken instead."

"No meat loaf?"

His smile dissipated for a moment, then quickly returned,
as if it were a gesture of forgiveness. For what?

"Okay, then. Have we a white on ice?"

A tremor of nervousness washed over her, and she felt an
internal trembling. "I forgot, Larry," she croaked, clearing her
throat.

Again his smile faded, but for a longer time. Finally,
obviously forgiving her again, he smiled. "No sweat. I'll ice one. It's
celebration time."

She turned back to the process of making the salad,
listening as he extracted a white from the wine rack, then filled a bucket with
ice cubes and jammed the bottle into it. That chore done, he embraced her again
from the rear, squeezing her breasts and rubbing his pelvis against her
buttocks.

"I'm going to shower," he whispered in her ear,
his implication clear. Another thing gone awry, she thought, sensing the
absence of desire.

When he was gone, she busied herself with finishing the
salad, setting the table, putting out candles, knowing that all this was merely
the props for his version of a reconciliation ritual. Although she tried to
work up some genuine enthusiasm for the process, she felt a hollowness and
disinterest that worried her. It isn't right to feel this way, she told
herself. Not wifely. Not dutiful.

He came to the table wearing a new yellow silk kimono and
smelling of after-shave. The dampness made his curly black hair seem more
curled, more jet black.

"You look nice," she said, knowing he was
expecting the compliment.

"For you, Jenny."

On another occasion, wearing a kimono that revealed his
hairs to midsternum would have been a turn-on. Not tonight. Inside of herself,
she felt a mass of contradictions.

"To us," he said. "Up and away." They
clinked glasses and drank. The wine was tasteless on her palate.

"Great chicken," he said, eating with his hands.
"Good idea." He looked at her as he denuded a chicken bone.
"You're something. What a great girl I have. Tell you the truth, I don't
deserve you."

She shrugged, remaining silent.

Considering what she was feeling, she didn't want to hear
this avalanche of compliments. Suddenly he pointed the now meatless bone in her
direction. "This I promise." He raised his other hand. "Word of
honor. I'm going to make sure you're clued in on everything. Business.
Everything. And once we get things going, we're going to make a baby. Maybe two
or three. Would you like that?"

She nodded but could not bring herself to speak. Feeling as
she did, this was hardly the time to bring up that subject. She thought
suddenly of Godfrey Richardson and smiled.