* * *
At times in our marriage I loathed him. I saw, with a kind of dull disc of dread in my chest, that with his pleasant distance, his mild expressions, he was unavailable. But worse. Because beneath his height of pleasantness there lurked a juvenile crabbiness, a scowl that flickered across his soul, a pudgy little boy with his lower lip thrust forward who blamed this person and that person—he blamed me, I felt this often; he was blaming me for something that had nothing to do with our present lives, and he blamed me even as he called me “Sweetheart,” making my coffee—back then he never drank coffee but he made me a cup each morning—setting it down before me martyr-like.
Keep the stupid coffee, I wanted to cry out sometimes, I’ll make my own coffee. But I took it from him, touching his hand. “Thanks, sweetheart,” I would say, and we would begin another day.
* * *
As I rode home that night in a taxi, across town and through the Park, I thought about Estelle. She was so pretty, with her reddish-brown wild hair and twinkling eyes, and she was very good-natured. She was, William had told me once, never depressed, and I thought it was unconsciously mean of him to tell me that, since I had been depressed at times during our marriage, but tonight I thought, Well, I’m glad she’s never depressed. She had been floating around as a stage actress when she met him. William had seen her in only one play, they were married by then, and the play was called The Steelman’s Grave, in a small off-off-Broadway production, and my husband and I went to see it with William one night. I had been aghast to see that when Estelle was on stage and not speaking, her eyes looked involuntarily to the audience as though searching for someone. Since that time she had gone to countless auditions for which she practiced at home, walking through their large living room doing Gertrude or Hedda Gabler or any other kind of role, and she remained cheerful when she did not get the parts. But she had done a few commercials, there had been one on a local New York television station where she was talking about deodorant. “It’s the right one for me,” she said, adding, with a wink, “And I bet”—pointing her finger toward the camera—“it will be the right one for you.”
People often said to them that they were a charming couple. And Estelle was a good, if somewhat scattered, mother. William thought this, and I did too. Bridget was scattered as well, and they looked alike, this mother and daughter, people also seemed charmed by that. One day—William told me this—he had watched them walking down a sidewalk together, they had just come from a clothing shop in the Village, and he was taken with how similar they were in their gestures as they laughed with each other. Estelle had seen him and she waved extravagantly, which is something William does not do, and she jokingly chastised him that day. “When a wife is so happy to see her husband, she would like to think he was happy to see her too.”
* * *
Recently, sitting in my apartment, gazing through the window at the view of the city—we have （I have） a lovely view of the city and of the East River too—but as I was looking at the lights of the city and the Empire State Building way in the distance, I thought of Mrs. Nash, the guidance counselor from my school who drove me to college that first day—oh I loved her! As we drove along she suddenly pulled off the turnpike and drove to a shopping mall, and tapping my arm she said, “Get out, get out,” and we got out and went into the mall and then she put a hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes and said, “In ten years, Lucy, you can pay me back, okay?” And she bought me some clothes: She bought me a number of long-sleeve T-shirts in many different colors, and two skirts and two blouses, one was a pretty peasant kind of blouse, and what I remember most and loved her for the most was the underwear she bought me, a small pile of the prettiest underwear I had ever seen, and she bought me a pair of jeans that fit me. And she bought me a suitcase! It was beige with red trim, and when we got back to the car she said, “I have an idea. Let’s put everything in here.” And she opened her trunk and put the suitcase in the trunk and opened the suitcase, and then she so carefully and kindly took off each price tag with the tiniest little scissors I had ever seen—I have since learned they were manicure scissors—and we put all my stuff into the suitcase. She did that, Mrs. Nash. In ten years she had died; it was a car accident that killed her, so I never paid her back and I have never forgotten her ever. （Every single time I went shopping with Catherine, I thought of that day with Mrs. Nash.） When we got to the college that day I said to Mrs. Nash, sort of jokingly, “Can I pretend you’re my mother?” And she looked surprised and then said, “Of course you can, Lucy!” And even though I never called her Mom, when she went into the dorm with me she was nice to people and I think they thought she was my mother.