“Your mother did approve of her, then,” Sophia said.
“Oh, sure. Both my parents approved. It was Natalie’s who objected. They’d heard stories about me, of course. Also, I was wearing my hair about halfway down my back that summer. Natalie’s father called me Jesus. ‘Will you and Jesus be going to the movies tonight?’ This was when they were still allowing her to see me. Later, we had to sneak. I’d hired on at Rent-a-Back by then, and she would ride along on my jobs — spend the day with me while her parents thought she was swimming at their club.”
“Oh, forbidden fruit! No wonder you two were attracted,” Sophia said.
I was about to go on, but then a sort of hallucination stopped me in mid-breath. I swear I saw Natalie’s arm, just her arm, resting on the window ledge of my car. She was waiting in the passenger seat while I was with a client. And I was stepping out the client’s front door, walking down a flagstone path, heading through brilliant sunlight toward Natalie’s bare, tanned arm.
Sophia said, “What happened next?”
“Oh …,” I said. “We got married.”
“That seems awfully sudden,” Sophia said.
“Well, she was about to go off to college, see. She was leaving in September.”
Sophia hesitated. Then she asked, “Did you have to?”
“Have to? Oh. Have to get married. No,” I said, “we didn’t have to. I’m sure all the neighbors thought we did, though. To the neighbors, I was the bad guy. Natalie was ‘that lovely sweet innocent Bassett girl.’ It must have disappointed the hell out of them when Opal didn’t come along till fourteen months after the wedding.”
Sophia said, “So why …?”
“But anyway!” I said. “You can imagine her parents’ reaction. Mine took it more in stride. I think they hoped marriage would settle me down some. They got together with Natalie’s parents and worked out all the arrangements — agreed we’d live over the Bassetts’ garage and both of us would attend Tow-son State, and I’d keep on at Rent-a-Back in order to look like the breadwinner. Not that I really was. Our parents bankrolled just about everything. Our two mothers got into this decorating war, and pretty soon we barely had room to slither between all the furniture. And after Opal was born! They went wild. Cradles, strollers, changing tables … I don’t know where I was in this. I mean, there are huge chunks of time I honestly don’t remember. All at once I was standing at our front window one day, looking down at the driveway, and Natalie was buckling the baby into the car. This was a Volvo wagon her parents had given us when Opal was born. And I watched her shut the passenger door and walk around to the driver’s side, and I said to myself, ‘Why, great God in heaven! I seem to have married one of those station wagon mommies!’ So we got divorced.”
Sophia paused in the middle of licking her fingers. “Just like that?” she asked me.
“Well, no. Not instantaneously. First there was a lot of messy stuff. I admit I wasn’t a model husband. Finally she took Opal and left. Didn’t even warn me. Didn’t even offer me a second chance. Well, you’ve seen Natalie. You’ve seen how she kind of floats along in this sealed-off, stubborn, exasperating way Or maybe you didn’t get a close enough look at her.”
“No, not that close,” Sophia said. “She did seem very … poised.”
“To put it mildly,” I told her. Then I said, “But why are we wasting our time on all this? Don’t we have something better to do?” And I picked up our two plates and set them on the floor, and then I lifted her napkin.
Every word I had told her was true, but there was a lot I’d left out. Why we’d gotten married, for instance. I didn’t tell her that I was the one who had pressed for it — that I was dying to marry, wouldn’t take no for an answer, wouldn’t agree to wait. I didn’t tell her that at first I felt as if I’d finally come home. Hard to believe, I know; hard for even me to believe. “Did all that really take place?” I wanted to ask somebody. “Could that really have been me? How did I appear from outside? Would you say I seemed aware of my surroundings?”
The only thing I knew was, one morning I looked out the front window and thought, Great God in heaven! I felt as if I’d awakened from a long, drugged sleep, and the last thing I clearly remembered was Natalie bringing me lemonade. “Could I interest you?” she had asked. And I had taken a single sip and all at once found myself married to a station wagon mommy.
Sophia started catching a morning train back from Philly on Sundays so that we could see more of each other. (The roommate spent Sundays with her family in Carroll County, and we knew we’d have the house to ourselves.) I would meet the train and drive her to her place, and we’d fix a big lunch that was really a breakfast — bacon, eggs, waffles, the works. Then we would climb the stairs to her bed, which was not a four-poster, after all. It was a spool bed — same general idea. And there was a curlicued nightstand with a silk-shaded lamp on top, and a bureau with cut-glass knobs. The drawers were packed with neat, flat layers of clothing; tiny flowered sachets were tucked in all the corners. I know because I checked when she was in the bathroom. I smoothed everything down again just the way I’d found it, though. She didn’t suspect a thing.
Later in the afternoon we might watch a videotape or take a walk, but we separated earlier than other days because she had her Sunday routines to follow — her stockings to rinse out, hair to shampoo, blouses to iron for the coming week. “Go, go,” she would say, and I would go, grinning, and spend the evening picturing her in her quilted bathrobe, her shower rod strung with damp nylons. Even her most mundane rituals seemed dear to me, and touching.
She had two sets of friends who were married couples. All the others were single women, and I knew them only by hearsay — their latest diets or trips or boyfriend problems. The couples she introduced me to personally. She took me to the Schmidts’ for supper, and the Partons were invited as well. They were okay. Nice enough, I guess. I borrowed a khaki sports coat from Joe Hardesty, because I couldn’t wear my tweed anymore now that it was summer. We talked mostly about the Orioles. I think one of the husbands had had something to do with building the new stadium.
She asked me, what about my friends? Couldn’t we double date with someone? Oh, women get so social, sooner or later. She asked about my brother and his wife. I said, “Lord God, Sofe, you don’t want to spend a whole evening looking at baby pictures.” She said she wouldn’t mind a bit. Well, I did want to do things right this time. I said, “I know what! I’ll talk to Len Parrish. Maybe we could go out with him and one of his girlfriends.”
Because I couldn’t think of anyone else — any of my coworkers, for instance. Martine and Everett seemed to have broken up, or so I gathered from the fact that Martine never had the truck nowadays. Not that either one of them would have been Sophia’s type. Ray Oakley’s wife didn’t like me; she claimed I was a bad influence. My only hope was Len. Which goes to show how desperate I was.