“And did he prove to be the patron of the arts you’d been dreaming of?”
Maggie looked down at the scuffed knees of her jeans. “Not really. Bill was never very much interested in the arts. Oh, we had all the requisite subscriptions: symphony, ballet, opera. But somehow I…”
“Somehow you what?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps I’m being unfair. But I think maybe it was just some sort of a business thing. Being seen. Like going to a client’s box at the Skydome. I mean, he’d be excited about going to the opera, for example, take ages getting dressed up in his tux and fuss about what he wanted me to wear, then we’d have drinks in the members’ bar beforehand, rub shoulders with colleagues and clients, all the local bigwigs. But I just got the impression that the music itself bored him.”
“Did any problems manifest themselves early on in your relationship?”
Maggie twisted her sapphire ring around her finger, the “freedom” ring she had bought after she had thrown Bill’s wedding and engagement rings into Lake Ontario. “Well,” she said, “it’s easy to identify things as problems in retrospect, isn’t it? Claim that you saw it coming, or should have, after you’ve found out where things were leading. They might not have seemed strange at the time, might they?”
“Try.”
Maggie continued twisting at her ring. “Well, I suppose the main problem was Bill’s jealousy.”
“About what?”
“Most things, really. He was very possessive, he didn’t like me talking to other men for too long at parties, that sort of thing. But mostly he was jealous of my friends.”
“The artists?”
“Yes. You see, he never had much time for them, he thought them all a bunch of deadbeats, losers, and he felt he’d somehow rescued me from them.” She laughed. “And they, on their part, didn’t want to mix with corporate lawyers in Armani suits.”
“But you continued to see your friends?”
“Oh, yes. Sort of.”
“And how did Bill react to this?”
“He used to make fun of them to me, put them down, criticize them. He called them pseudo-intellectuals, no-brainers and layabouts. If we ever met any of them when we were together, he’d just stand there, looking up at the sky, shifting from foot to foot, glancing at his Rolex, whistling. I can see him now.”
“Did you defend them?”
“Yes. For a while. Then there seemed no point.” Maggie remained silent for a moment, then she went on. “You have to remember that I was head over heels in love with Bill. He took me to movie premieres. We’d go for weekends in New York, stay at the Plaza, take horse-and-buggy rides in Central Park, go to cocktail parties full of stockbrokers and CEOs, you name it. There was a romantic side to it all. Once we even flew down to L.A. for a movie premiere the firm’s entertainment lawyers had been involved with. We went to the party, too, and Sean Connery was there. Can you believe it? I actually met Sean Connery!”
“How did you handle all this high living?”
“I fit in well enough. I was good at mixing with them – businessmen, lawyers, entrepreneurs, the movers and shakers. Believe it or not, many of them are far more cultured than the artsy crowd thinks. A lot of them sponsored corporate art collections. My friends believed that everyone in a suit was dull and conservative, and a philistine to boot. But you can’t always go by appearances. I knew that. I think they were being very immature about it all. I think Bill saw me as a positive enhancement to his career, but he saw my friends as dead weights that would drag me down with them if they could. Maybe him, too, if we weren’t careful. And I didn’t feel anywhere near as uncomfortable in his world as he did in mine. I began to feel I’d only been playing the starving artist role, anyway.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, my dad’s a pretty important architect, and we always moved in elevated circles. Traveled around the continent a fair bit on commissions, too, when I was younger, just after we emigrated from England. Sometimes, if it was school holidays, he’d take me with him. So I didn’t come from a blue collar background, or a bohemian one. Dad appreciates the arts, but he’s very conservative. And we weren’t poor. Anyway, as time went on, I suppose I began to agree with Bill. He wore down my defenses, like he did in a lot of other ways. I mean, all my friends seemed to do was drift from one social security check to the next without making any attempt to do anything because it would compromise their precious art. The greatest sin in our crowd was to sell out.”
“Which you did?”
Maggie stared out of the window for a moment. The blossoms were falling from the trees in slow motion. She suddenly felt cold and hugged herself. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose I did. As far as my friends were concerned I was lost to them. I’d been seduced by the almighty dollar. And all because of Bill. At one of his firm’s parties I met a small publisher who was looking for an illustrator for a children’s book. I showed him my work and he loved it. I got the job, then that led to another, and so on.”
“How did Bill react to your success?”
“He was pleased at first. Thrilled. Proud that the publisher liked my work, proud when the book was published. He bought copies for all his nephews and nieces, his clients’ kids. His boss. Dozens of copies. And he was pleased that it was because of him all this had happened. As he never ceased to tell me, it would never have happened if I’d chosen to stay with my deadbeat friends.”
“This was at first. What about later?”
Maggie felt herself shrinking in the chair, her voice becoming smaller. “That was different. Later, after we were married and Bill still hadn’t made partner, I think he started to resent my success. He started referring to art as my ‘little hobby’ and suggested I might have to give it up at any time and start having babies.”
“But you chose not to have babies?”
“No. I had no choice. I can’t have babies.” Maggie felt herself slipping down the rabbit hole, just like Alice, darkness closing around her.
“Margaret! Margaret!”
She could hear Dr. Simms’s voice only as if from a great distance, echoing. With great effort, she struggled up toward it, toward the light, and felt herself burst out like a drowning person from the water, gasping for air.
“Margaret, are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m… I… But it wasn’t me,” she said, aware of the tears flowing down her cheeks. “It isn’t me who can’t have babies. Bill can’t. It’s Bill. It’s something to do with his sperm count.”
Dr. Simms gave Maggie a little time to dry her eyes, calm down and compose herself.
When she had done so, Maggie laughed at herself. “He used to have to masturbate into a Tupperware container and take it in for testing. Somehow that seemed so… well, Tupperware, I mean, it all seemed so Leave It to Beaver.”
“Pardon?”
“An old American TV program. Mom at home, pop at the office. Apple pie. Happy families. Perfect children.”
“I see. Couldn’t you have adopted a child?”
Maggie was back out in the light now. Only it felt too bright. “No,” she said. “That wouldn’t do for Bill. The child wouldn’t be his then, you see. No more than if I’d had someone else’s sperm in artificial insemination.”
“Did the two of you discuss what to do?”
“At first, yes. But not after he found out it was his physical problem, and not mine. After that, if I ever mentioned children again, he hit me.”
“And around this time he came to resent your success?”
“Yes. Even to the point of committing little acts of sabotage so I’d be behind on a deadline. You know, throwing away some of my colors or brushes, misplacing an illustration or a package for the courier, accidentally wiping images from the computer, from my computer, forgetting to tell me about an important phone call, that sort of thing.”