For that much money, 187 children could have been operated on for cleft palate, with $120 left over. Did you know that one in ten such children will die before their first birthday? I found this out the other day, on operationsmile.org, and did the math. This was something I never knew to consider when I got out of my side of the bed, with its Dux mattress, and put my piggies down into that soft wool. I must be singling out the rugs to obsess over because they were on a human scale. Like the way we’d convey the magnitude of this or that calamity to the readers of Newsweek: Every day, a town the size of TK, the writer would write, and the researcher would look up places in the heartland with however many thousand people and pick one with a leafy name.
Beneath the showy part of the house was a basement with a laundry room, an exercise room, a music room (complete with baby grand piano) and a guest suite: bedroom, sitting room, bathroom, a coffeemaker, a microwave and a mini-fridge, with a private entrance giving onto the driveway. He called the guest quarters “the Bunker,” or “the Black Hole of Calcutta,” and, after Iraq, “Abu Ghraib.” All those little things of his—not jokes, exactly; I don’t know what the word would be—like calling Verdi “Mean Joe Green,” or Lake George “Lago di Giorgio,” or a futon a “futilitron,” or pronouncing herpes “air-pess.” When Target stores appeared, he called them “Tar-zhay” until everybody else started doing it. The house had no garage: he said it would clutter up the design, though of course our cars cluttered up the driveway, and in the winter we had to clear snow and scrape windshields.
When we moved in, he bought all new furniture, dishes, silver and whatnot. Except for the books—his father’s library merged with his—he put most of the stuff from Rhinebeck in a storage unit, in case his daughter might want it someday. For all I know, it’s still there.
She never paid her farewell visit to the old house—she told him it would be too sad—but she did come to see the new place. “Seriously?” she said as we got out of the car.
“Do I take that as a compliment?” he said.
“It looks like it’s about to take off and fly.”
“You hate it.”
“No,” she said. “It’s like where somebody famous would live. Actually I guess you are sort of famous.”
“That was back when giants walked the earth,” he said. “Nowadays I’m content to sit up here and watch the passing parade.”
“Are you? I worry about you.” She turned to me. “Is he?”
“What a thing to ask,” he said. “ ‘Is he a bitter old man?’ What do you expect her to say to that?”
“I think your father’s amazing,” I said.
“See that?” he said. “Amazing. Now let me show you the inside. We’re going to put you in the Holding Tank.” He went around to get her bag.
“I’m assuming he means the basement,” I said. “It’s really comfortable.”
“I don’t know how you live with it,” she said. “I mean I love him and everything.”
“I guess we’re a lot alike,” I said.
“You and him? Or you and me?”
“Well—both. We both care about him.”
“Yeah, that,” she said. “Can we talk sometime?”
After he went up to bed, she helped me put away stuff from the dishwasher and pointed to a bottle of Rémy on a top shelf. “Would it be okay?”
“Pour me some too,” I said. “Snifters are over in that cupboard.”
I took an end of the sofa, thinking she’d join me, but she took her high-tops off, got into the leather armchair and put her stocking feet up. “So here we are again,” she said.
“More or less,” I said. “Is it strange seeing him in a new place?”
“I don’t know, maybe less so. In a way. Could we have some music? If we put it on low?”
“What do you like?”
“You choose. Not jazz.”
“I’m with you on that.” I put on Rumours, since who didn’t like Rumours, except probably my husband. “This okay?”
“I guess. What is it?”
“You’re as bad as your father.” I handed her the jewel case.
“Oh right,” she said. “That’s them? She’s pretty. I mean, they’re all pretty. Listen, I know I said I wanted to talk, but do you mind if we just kind of be here?”
“Of course not. I’m a little tired myself.”
“Am I keeping you up?”
“No, I’m just—I don’t know what I am.”
She got out of the chair and picked up her sneakers. “I’m keeping you up.” She pointed to the jewel case. “Can I take that down with me, for my Walkman? I want to hear it.”
“No, stay,” I said. “I’m enjoying it too.”
“We both need to go to bed,” she said. “I didn’t even realize.”
I missed saying goodbye to her in the morning, when her father drove her to the train. I hadn’t been able to get to sleep, and around three in the morning I finally got up and drank more Rémy—and, I have to say, masturbated in my workroom—then didn’t wake up until ten o’clock. I looked for the Fleetwood Mac CD on the shelves, then in the guest room. Maybe I’d given it to her and not remembered. Or had I meant to give it to her and she’d somehow known?
—
In good weather, I’d bring coffee out to the deck and read the Times; part of his morning routine was to trot down the half mile of driveway, get our copy from the box, then run back up and shower. Then I’d look out across the river and watch the light creep down the mountain as the rattlesnakes came out to take the sun. I’m just being imaginative here: of course it was too far to see them, and they might after all have been just a local legend, and the earth turns too slowly for anyone to detect the creeping of daylight. Once I believed I saw a tiny figure making its way up a cliff and had the insane thought that it was my first husband. When I was done dawdling, I’d get down to business. You can watch the creeping of the word count at the bottom of the screen. Three hundred fifty-three, three hundred fifty-eight. And then, when the sun got too strong, the deck too hot, I went inside to my new room of one’s own. My husband’s door would already be closed, the music in there already going.
My first idea was a book to be called 5 Blondes. The figure 5, not spelled out: I think I had something in mind about women being commodified. Meditations on five women, real and imaginary: Marion Crane, Sylvia Plath, Blondie (not Deborah Harry, the one in the comic strip), Jayne Mansfield and myself. (Marilyn Monroe had been done to death, no pun intended.) I’d have to trust to my ingenuity to make it all hang together, though first I’d have to trust to my ingenuity to come up with things to think about them. Three of them came to bad ends, there was one thought, which they had deserved because of sexual transgression—wasn’t that how the culture read their stories?—while Blondie and I went on and on, to no end at all. Blondie was drawn by an artist named Chic Young, and I planned to make much of the notion that Blondie looked both chic and young, despite the housedresses. Yet she was so stupid that only Dagwood would want her. She never had an affair—of course, what did you expect in a comic strip?—or even a flirtation. Not that Dagwood seemed to want her either, so I guess there was her punishment. Which left me—this was going to be the personal part. How I fit in was that I’d dyed my hair blond when I was sixteen, then let it grow back out.