That missing page, where was it? Why was there no mention made of what she had done to get P. to need her so!
“Madison, May 24, 1962.” A month after she had discovered me in the phone booth telephoning Karen; a month after she had taken the pills and the whiskey, put a razor to her wrist, and then confessed about the urine. An entry that caused a wave of nausea to come over me as I read it. I had been leaning over the table all this time, reading on my feet; now I sat down and read three times over her revelations of May 24, 1962: “Somehow”-somehow!-
P. has a deep hostile feeling for me and when face to face the emotion I sense now is hatred. Somehow I’ve finally become despairing and hopeless about it all and feel utterly cheerless most of the time. I love P. and our life together-or what our life could be if only he weren’t so neurotic, but it seems impossible. It’s so joyless. His emotional coldness grows in leaps and bounds. His inability to love is positively frightening. He simply does not touch, kiss, smile, etc., let alone make love, a most unsatisfying state for me. I felt fed up with everything this morning and ready to throw it all over. Yet I know I must not lose heart. Life is not easy -P.’s naive expectations to the contrary. However, I sometimes think that to think about and try to ferret out P.’s neurosis is fruitless, for accurate as I may be, even if he were analyzed it would take years and years with a case like his, and no doubt I’d be discarded in the process anyway, though he might at last see what a madman he is. The only satisfaction is that I know perfectly well that if he does give me up, he will inevitably marry next someone who has her own talent and ego to match, who will care for that instead of him. Would he be surprised then! I almost wish it for him except I don’t wish it for myself. But he is killing my feeling so that if all this coldness from him should continue, finally my star will ascend and my heart will be stony instead of his. What a pity that would be, tho’.
“West 78th St., 3/22/66.” The next-to-last entry, written just three weeks earlier. After our day in court with Judge Rosenzweig. After the two go-rounds with the court-appointed referee. After Valducci. After Egan. After alimony. Four years after I’d left her, seven years after the urine. The entry, in its entirety:
Where have I been? Why haven’t I realized this? Peter doesn’t care for me. He never did! He married me only because he thought he had to. My God! It seems so plain now, how could I have been mistaken before? Is this insight a product of Group? I wish I could go away. It’s so degrading. I wonder if I’ll ever have the luck to be in love with someone who loves me, the real me, and not some cockeyed idea of me, a la the Meziks, Walkers, and Tarnopols of this world. That seems to me now nearly all I could want, though I now know how practical I really am-or how practical it’s necessary to be to survive.
And the last entry. She had written a suicide note, but it would seem that no one had thought to look for it in her three-ring school notebook. The handwriting, and the prose, indicated that she was already under the influence of the pills, and/or the whiskey, when she began to write her final message to herself:
Marilyn Monroe Marilyn Monroe Marilyn Monroe Marilyn Monroe why do they do these Marilyn Monroe why to use Marilyn why to use us Marilyn
That was it. Somehow she had then made it from the table back to the bed, nearly to die there like the famous movie star herself. Nearly!
A policeman had been watching me from the door for I didn’t know how long. He had his pistol drawn.
“Don’t shoot!” I cried.
“Why not?” he asked. “Get up, you.”
“It’s okay, Officer,” I said. I rose on boneless legs. I rose on air. Without even being asked I put my hands over my head. The last time I’d done that I’d been eight, a holster around my sixteen-inch waist and a Lone Ranger gun, made in Japan and hollow as a chocolate bunny, poking me in the ribs-a weapon belonging to my little pal from next door, Barry Edelstein, wearing his chaps and his sombrero, and telling me, in the accent of the Cisco Kid, “Steeck ‘em up, amigo.” That, by and large, was my preparation for this dangerous life I now led.
“I’m Peter Tarnopol,” I hurriedly explained. “I’m Maureen Tarnopol’s husband. She’s the one who lives here. We’re separated. Legally, legally. I just came from the hospital. I came to get my wife’s toothbrush and some things. She’s my wife still, you see; she’s in the hospital-“
“I know who’s in the hospital.”
“Yes, well, I’m her husband. The door was open. I thought I better stay here until I can get it fixed. Anybody could walk right in. I was sitting here. Reading. I was going to call a locksmith.”
The cop just stood there, pointing his pistol. I should never have told him we were separated. I should never have told Rosenzweig I’d had “a love affair” with a student. I should never have gotten involved with Maureen. Yes, that was my biggest mistake.
I said some more words about a locksmith.
“He’s on his way,” the cop told me.
“Yes? He is? Good. Great. Look, if you still don’t believe me, I have a driver’s license.”
“On you?”
“Yes, yes, in my wallet. May I reach for my wallet?”
“All right, never mind, it’s okay…just got to be careful,” he mumbled, and lowering his pistol, took a step into the room. “I just went down for a Coke. I seen she had her own, but I didn’t want to take it. That ain’t right.”
“Oh,” said I, as he dropped the pistol into his holster, “you should have.”
“Fuckin’ locksmith.” He looked at his watch.
When he stepped all the way into the apartment I saw how very young he was: a pug-nosed kid off the subway, with a gun and a badge and dressed up in a blue uniform. Not so unlike Barry Edelstein as I’d thought while the pistol was pointed at my head. Now he wouldn’t engage my eyes directly, embarrassed it seemed for having drawn the gun, movie style, or for having spoken obscenely to an innocent man, or, most likely, for having been discovered by me away from his post. Yet another member of the sex, abashed to be revealed as unequal to his task.
“Well,” I said, closing the three-ring notebook and tucking it under my arm, “I’ll just get those things now, and be off-”
“Hey,” he said, motioning to the bedroom, “don’t worry about the mattress in there. I just couldn’t take the stink no more, so I washed it out. That’s how come it’s wet like that. Ajax and a little Mr. Clean, and that did it. Don’t worry-it won’t leave no mark when it dries.”
“Well, thank you. That was very nice of you.”
He shrugged. “I put all the stuff back in the kitchen, under the sink there.” hne.
“That Mr. Clean is some stuff.”
“I know. I’ve heard them say that. I’ll just get a few things and go.”
We were friends now. He asked, “What is the missus anyway? An actress?”
‘Well…yes.”
“On TV?”
“No, no, just around.”