"Does Garrison know about him?"
"Well we haven't had a nice chat about it, if that's what you mean, but he knows. I mean Garrison and I haven't slept together for six years, except for a rather wretched night after that damned birthday party for Cadmus, when both of us got a little mawkish. Otherwise he goes his way and I go mine. It's better that way."
"I see."
"Are you shocked? Oh, please tell me you're shocked."
"No. I'm just thinking…"
"About?"
"Well… the reason I asked you to come here's because I'm going to leave Mitchell." It took a lot to silence Margie, but this did the trick. "It's for the best," Rachel added.
"Does Mitchell agree?"
"He doesn't know."
"Well when exactly were you intending to tell him, honey?"
"When I've got everything sorted out in my head."
"Are you sure you wouldn't be wiser doing what I've done? There's a lot of cute bartenders in New York."
"I don't want a bartender," Rachel said. "With the greatest respect to… what's his name?"
"Daniel." She grinned. "Actually it's Dan Dan the Fuck Fuck Man."
"With the greatest respect to the Fuck Fuck Man it's not what I'm looking for."
"Was Mitchell any good in bed?"
"I don't have that much to compare him with."
"Put it this way: it wasn't a once-in-a-lifetime experience?"
"No."
"So you don't want a bartender. What do you want?"
"Good question," Rachel said.
She closed her eyes so as not to be distracted by the quizzical look on Margie's face. "I guess… I just want to feel more passionate."
"About Mitchell?"
"About… getting up in the morning." She opened her eyes again. Margie was perusing her, as though trying to decide something.
"What are you thinking?" Rachel asked her.
"Just that it's all very fine talking about passion, honey. But if it ever came along-I'm talking about real passion, not some soap-opera baloney-it'd change everything in your life. You do know that? Everything."
"I'm ready for that."
"So you've given up on Mitchell completely?"
"Yes."
"He's not going to let you divorce him without a fight."
"Probably not. But I'm sure he doesn't want us all over the tabloids either. Neither do 1.1 just want to live my life as far away from the Gearys as I can get."
"What if you could have both?"
"I don't follow."
"What if you could have all the passion you could take, and still keep your share of the Geary lifestyle? No divorce proceeding; no judge going through the dirty linen."
"I don't see how that's possible."
"The only way it's going to happen is if you promise to stay with Mitchell. He's got his eye on a place in Congress, and he wants his private life to be as squeaky clean as possible. If you help him look like a saint, maybe he'll look the other way when you go have an adventure."
"You make it sound all very civilized."
"Why shouldn't it be?" Margie said. "Unless he decides to get jealous. Then… well, then you might have to talk some reason into him. But you're smart enough to do that."
"And where am I going to find this adventure?"
"We'll talk about that later," Margie said with a little smile. "Right now, you've got some deciding to do, honey. But let me remind you of something. I tried leaving. And I tried and I tried. And, believe me, it's a hard world out there." iii
Perversely enough it was this last remark that finally convinced Rachel that she had to leave. So what if it was a hard world? She'd survived out there for the first twenty-four years of her life, without the Gearys. She could do so again.
When Margie finally rose, sometime after noon, and was downing her first Bloody Mary of the day (complete with a stick of celery, for the roughage) Rachel explained that she'd thought everything over and decided to take a long drive, back to Ohio. It would give her time to think, she said; time to make up her mind about what she really wanted.
"Do you want Mitchell to know where you've gone?" Margie asked her.
"Preferably not."
"Then I won't tell him," Margie said, very simply. "When are you planning to go?"
"I'm already packed. I just wanted to say goodbye to you."
"Oh Lord. You don't waste any time. Still, maybe it's for the best." Margie opened her arms. "You know you're very dear to me, don't you?"
"Yes I know," Rachel said, hugging her hard.
"So you be careful," Margie said. "No picking up hitchhikers because they've got pretty asses. And don't stay in any sleazy motels. There's a lot of strange folks out there."
So she began the homeward journey. It took her four days and three nights, stopping off, despite Margie's warnings, at a couple of less than salubrious motels along the way. Though she'd thought the journey would give her plenty of time to think, her mind didn't want to be bothered with problems. Instead it idled, concerning itself only with the practical problems of finding places to eat, and choosing between routes. Whenever there was a choice between a bland highway and something more picturesque (but inevitably longer), she picked the latter. It was nice to be in the driving seat again, after two years of being chauffeured around; turning up the radio and singing along with old favorites.
But once she crossed into Ohio, with Dansky only a couple of hours away, her high spirits faded. She had some difficult times ahead. What would she say when people asked her how her life in the lap of luxury was going? What would she tell them when they enquired about Mitchell, her handsome husband, who had given up his eligible bachelorhood to be with her? Oh Lord, what would she say? That it had all gone to hell, and she was running home to escape? That she didn't love him after all? That he was a sham, he and his whole damn world, a hollow spectacle that wasn't worth a damn. They wouldn't believe her. How could she complain, they'd say, when she had so much? When she was rolling in wealth, and they were still living in their one-bedroom tract homes worrying about the mortgage and the cost of a new pair of sneakers for the kids?
Well, it was too late to turn back now. She was crossing the railroad tracks that had always been in her childhood the limits of the town; the place where the world she knew ended and the greater world began. She was back in streets that she still dreamed about some nights; wandered the way she'd wandered in the troubled years before puberty, when she didn't know what to make of herself (doubted, indeed, that she would ever amount to anything). There was the drugstore, owned by Albert McNealy, and now by his son Lance, with whom Rachel had had a brief but innocent affair in her fifteenth year. There was the school where she'd learned something of everything and nothing in particular, its yard still fenced with the same chain-link, like a shabby prison. There was the little park (or so the city fathers dubbed it; in fact the term was pure flattery). There was the birdshit-bespattered statue of Irwin Heckler, called the founding father of the town, who had in 1903 started a little business manufacturing hard, tartly flavored candies which had proved uncommonly popular. There was the town hall and the church (the only building that still possessed some of its remembered grandeur) and the little mall that contained the hairdresser's and the offices of the town lawyer, Marion Klaus, and the dog groomer's, and half a dozen other establishments that served the community.
All of them were closed at this hour; it was well past nine o'clock in the evening. The only place that would still be open would be the bar on McCloskey Road, close to the funeral home. She was tempted to drive over there and get herself a glass of whiskey before she called on her mother, but she knew the chances of getting in and out of the bar without meeting somebody who knew her were exactly zero, so she drove straight to the house on Sullivan Street. She wasn't arriving unannounced; she'd called her mother from somewhere outside Youngstown and told her she was on her way. The porch light was on and the front door stood an inch or two ajar.