Then the next day was Sunday. She liked to spend her Sundays alone. A lazy afternoon with the Sunday Times, and then maybe a walk in the park if the weather was nice, and possibly a movie or a concert if there was something interesting and if she was in the mood.
And then that would be one more week off the calendar, and Monday morning she would be back at work. There was nothing to it, really. You just took it one day at a time and there was nothing to it. It was easy, really, this business of getting along.
David had been nice, reasonably interesting company, a good lover. They didn’t have all that much in common and they could never be anything much to one another, but so what? If she saw him more than once a week she would find dozens of things about him that irritated or bored her, and no doubt she would have a similar effect upon him. But they were not going to see each other more than once a week. They might not see each other again at all — although she was fairly certain he would call and almost as certain, she would want to see him again.
Oh, it had been a successful evening. For a day that started with no hot water and a brazen cockroach, it had certainly finished up well.
Another sip of scotch, and time for another cigarette. A deep drag on the cigarette and blow a cloud of smoke at the ceiling and then another sip of scotch. A sip of this and a puff of that and you got through the days, taking them one at a time, taking them as they came.
She went to the bathroom, and before she left it she opened the medicine cabinet. If any roaches were inhabiting it at the moment they kept out of sight, but she had not opened the cabinet to check for roaches. She took a small plastic vial from the second shelf and uncapped it, pouring its contents into her palm. She counted the twenty-four Seconal tablets. An even two dozen of them, precisely the number she had brought with her from Buffalo. So far she had always managed to get to sleep without taking one of them, and that was a good sign.
So she still had two dozen of them. And two dozen were enough, more than enough.
She replaced them in the plastic vial, capped it, put it back on its shelf. And closed the medicine cabinet and returned to her bed.
Oh, she had no intention of taking those pills. No intention at all.
But several times a week she would count them, and on those occasions when she miscounted she would check to make sure that they were all there. It was a comfort to know they were there, though she could not have said why.
Saturday
May 10, 1975
Although their twelfth wedding anniversary came on a Monday, the Benstocks decided to celebrate it on the preceding Saturday. Andrea began working on the guest list early in March, and before long it had grown to the point where the party could not be held at their home. The new house on Lebrun Boulevard was larger than the old house in Tonawanda but it was still too small to hold all the people on her list.
“So I guess it’s the club,” she had told Mark. “Either that or seat all these people on each other’s laps.”
“Might be fun. Who would I get on my lap?”
“I don’t know. Someone fat and ugly, I guess. Sheila Caplin? How’s that?”
“Oh, God.”
“I’d better see about booking the club. Do we have to give them dinner? I suppose we do, don’t we?”
“Maybe we could tell them to bring sandwiches. Anyway it’s not the food that’s a killer, it’s the booze. I wonder where that myth came from that Jews don’t drink. Our friends seem to drink like fish. How many people are we having, anyway?”
“I have ninety listed, but not everybody will come, I’m sure. I suppose—”
“Ninety people? I don’t know ninety people.”
“The hell you don’t.”
“I don’t know ninety people well enough to buy food and booze for them. Or do I?”
She handed him the list. “Tell me who to cross out,” she said. “Go ahead. Bearing in mind who you have to invite if you have someone else. Go ahead.”
He stood reading through the list for a few minutes, then went into the other room for a pencil. He returned with it and went over the list making checkmarks. “Take a look,” he said.
“Cass and Ellie, Roger and Eileen, Barb and Jerry, Eddie and Terri — are you crazy? These are the people we’re really close with.”
“I know.”
“So you want to drop them?”
“I want to drop the others. I checked seven couples. That’s fourteen, sixteen with us, and you can seat sixteen at the dining room table with the extra leaves in, can’t you?”
“I think so. Or make it buffet, it’s no real problem. I thought you wanted to have a big party.”
“I did, but not ninety, and you’re right that it’s impossible to pare your list down to size. But we can have seven couples and not worry about anyone else feeling left out because it won’t be such a big deal in the first place. You look doubtful.”
“Well, we owe a lot of people.”
“So we’ll owe ’em a little longer.”
“We never had a big housewarming, and—”
“You want to have a big housewarming party at the country club? I don’t follow the logic.”
“No, no, no. We’ll have the seven couples you checked and have a big party next year. No, next year’s our thirteenth, isn’t it? Hardly the time for a major celebration. Well, in three years we can celebrate our fifteenth. I feel old thinking about it. I guess I don’t have to call the club tomorrow.”
“Unless you want to book it for three years from now.”
“No, I suppose it’s a little premature.”
“And maybe we won’t be able to afford it then, either.”
She put her hand on his arm. “That’s the reason, huh?”
“What else?”
“Is it that bad?”
“Well, it’s not good. It’s not bad enough to worry about yet. We don’t have to start feeding the kid dog food and the bank’s not going to take the house away from us, but it’s bad enough to keep me from spending a thousand dollars on drinks and dinner for ninety people.”
“Would it cost that much? Yes, I guess it would.”
“Or damn close to it. The damnedest thing is that business isn’t all that bad. We get the work all right. What we don’t get is paid. Everybody owes us money, and I don’t mean just individuals. I mean all the companies we do work for. Everybody’s slow-paying everybody else, so that even a business that’s doing well winds up hurting for cash.”
“Everything will straighten out, won’t it?”
“You mean for us or for the whole country? I think we’ll come out of it all right. I don’t know about the country. If things don’t turn around soon there’s going to be a ton of personal bankruptcies in the next year and that could have a chain reaction effect. And I’m relatively optimistic. You should hear Cass on the subject.”
“I can imagine.”
“The Republicans only know one remedy for inflation, and it’s called depression. And I haven’t noticed that it’s having any effect on the inflation anyway.”
“And you don’t even have to do the grocery shopping. Well, to hell with feeding ninety people. We’ll have seven couples and us, and maybe I’ll give them all hamburger. Or better yet Hamburger Helper.”
“Oh, things aren’t quite that bad.”
“I certainly hope not.”
But the main course was neither hamburger nor Hamburger Helper. It was a roast tenderloin of beef, and Andrea and her mother stood admiring it Saturday afternoon before it went into the oven. “I won’t even ask what it cost,” Mrs. Kleinman said.
“That’s good, because I don’t want to think about it. It’ll feed sixteen with no trouble, anyway.”