She had really to search for some switch to throw, something to divert the current that was building up to carry her toward an affirmative reply. “My kids, you know, are little Protestant kids. Markie’s circumcision was strictly pragmatic, I don’t want you to be tricked by that. He’s a slow learner, Sid, and it may take him fifteen years to figure out what a Jew is. And Cynthia may turn out to be an anti-Semite; she comes home with something new every day. My grandmother, you know, is a flying buttress still of the DAR—” Yet even as her mouth released all this feeble chatter, she remembered her old grandmother’s balanced judgment on the men of Zion: “They’re tight-fisted ugly little fellas, Martha Lee, but they’re good to their wives and children.”
“Martha, you don’t have to give me an answer in the next sixty seconds.”
When it came to honoring the other person’s surface emotions, Sid Jaffe was a very sweet considerate man. “Let me think about it, Sid — all right?”
But he had suggested she wait, apparently, not expecting she would choose to; he had to turn away to hide the fact that he was crushed. Suddenly Martha had a vision of Sid proposing to girls ever since high school.
And then he was pressing her to him. She was wearing her one other extravagance, her white silk V-neck blouse, and Sid had buried his head in the V. His mouth sent through her an arc, a spasm of passion, and if Markie was not sleeping in the other room, if Cynthia’s jump-rope song had not ceased, if the phone had not all at once begun to ring, Martha Reganhart might have had a far different future.
“Martha, we can just have the most wonderful—” His mouth went down and down and she closed her eyes.
“Wonderful wonderful—”
“—The phone.”
“Let it ring.”
But it stopped ringing.
“Mommy! It’s Daddy!”
“What!” She was racing for the kitchen — racing away, not toward. “What is it, Cynthia? What?”
“It’s Daddy from New York! For Mrs. Reganhart! You, Mommy! The operator!”
She took the receiver from Cynthia’s hands, wondering — among other things — how long the child had been in the kitchen. Couldn’t she even get felt up in private? And now this — Dick Reganhart! From where! “Yes? … Operator? This is Martha Reganhart.”
“It’s not Daddy, however,” said the voice at the other end.
She sank down in a chair. “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
“Shall I hang up?”
“Certainly not — my child’s drunk on Mott’s apple juice. How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Where are you?”
“Daddyland,” Gabe Wallach answered. “New York.”
“Oh do excuse her. She gets overexcited when she’s not in school. I think she’s reacting to the company.” She lowered her voice, for she saw the company pacing back and forth in the living room. Was he trying to overhear, or was he walking off lust? How unnatural everything was.
Gabe Wallach asked, “Who’s there?” He sounded a little demanding, but Thanksgiving was doubtless a strain on everybody.
“An old friend,” Martha said. “He stimulates the children.”
“And you?”
More demanding yet. She would have been annoyed were it not as though some hand had reached down to pull her out of the fire. “No, no. No — that’s true. Listen, I’m sounding tragic. How’s your father’s party? Is there really a father and a party, or is some tootsie nestled beside you in her underwear?”
“I call in the absence of the latter.”
“It’s very sweet of you to call. Happy Thanksgiving.”
“I’m having a nice unhappy one.”
“Mommy!” Cynthia said. “I want to talk to him — I want to—”
“Just a minute, will you?” Martha said into the phone. Then, away from it, “Cynthia, it is not Daddy!”
“It is!”
“It is not! I’m telling you the truth, Cynthia. Go talk to Sid, he’s all alone. Cynthia!” The child was threatening to throw a lollipop at her. “Cynthia!”
In tears, the little girl went toward the room where Markie was napping.
“I’m back,” Martha said.
“Good,” Wallach said.
Good for what? What kind of weak-kneed out was she going to make this into? Surely she couldn’t reject a man who had been so good to her through all these rotten years for another with whom she’d eaten one lousy dinner two weeks before? What right had she to use this flukey phone call against Sid — in fact, to use Sid?
She could tell instantly from the voice on the other end that she had hurt the feelings of still another gentleman. “I just wanted to say Merry Thanksgiving to you.”
“Thank you …” Then she realized that he was about to hang up. “Shall I go ahead,” she asked, “and invite you to another meal? Will you eat leftovers when you come back?”
“I’ll be back Monday.”
“Come then,” Martha Reganhart said, “for dinner.”
“Yes, I will … Who’s Sid?”
“He’s a man who just asked me to marry him.”
“I see.”
“You’ll come Monday night.”
“As long as you’re still single,” he answered, “I suppose so.”
“Single as ever,” she said.
“Does that upset you?” Wallach asked.
“Specifically, no; generally, I’m not sure. This is some longdistance conversation.”
“Long distance should be outlawed anyway,” he said. “Were you expecting a phone call from your husband?”
“My ex-husband — from whom I have no expectations whatsoever.” A cry went up from Markie’s room. “Oh God, my son just hit my daughter with a chair or something. Give my love to the girl in her underwear.”
“You give my love to Sidney.”
She felt, when he said that, all the strangeness of their conversation; she wouldn’t have minded being angry with him. “We can’t possibly be jealous over anything,” she said, “so we shouldn’t really play at it. Should we?”
“I’m a little deranged today, Martha. I’m wondering,” he said, in a very forlorn voice, “if well ever manage to level with one another.”
And then she wanted really only to be level — she wanted to be serious, to be normal; she wanted to be soft and feminine; she wanted a love affair that was no jokes, just intensity; and because the man on the other end was practically a stranger, she led herself into thinking that he could service her in just that way. She wanted to be out of what she was inextricably a part of — her own life. “You come Monday, Gabe. I’ll be single. They shouldn’t outlaw long distance,” she said, holding the phone very close to her. “I feel you’ve saved my life.”
And on the other end he was saying, “There is a father and a party, you know. And I look forward to seeing you.”
And she was explaining, “Sid is Sid Jaffe — he was my lawyer. He got me my divorce half-price, and I’m very indebted to him, Gabe, and the children are crazy about him, as crazy as they can be about anybody, anyway. And I have to stop talking on your money. Forgive me, please.” She hung up, thinking herself her own woman.
But while she changed into her waitress uniform, she heard laughing and chatter from the kitchen. The uproar in the kid’s room had been a false alarm, and Markie had gone back to sleep; the two people having such a good time were her daughter and her lawyer. When she emerged in her starchy blue waitress uniform — her Renoir proportions having taken on the angles of a coffin — she saw that Sid had his sleeves rolled up and was washing the dishes. And Cynthia — complainer, beggar, favor-monger, liar, fatherless baby — Cynthia wiped, and wore upon her face the very sweetest of smiles.