JUNE
Sow half-hardy annual seeds in protected frames; late in month, sow tender annual seeds . . . . Start mowing the lawn as soon as it begins to grow. . . . Set the blades of your mower high for first trim. . . . Shade young and newly set out plants. . . . Plant caladiums, tuberoses, and cannas. . . . Choose seedlings with stems the thickness of a pencil; avoid leggy, yellowing seedlings. . . . Hand weeding is laborious but effective. . . . Transfer pollen from male flowers to female flowers with a small paintbrush, or push the male flowers into the female ones. . . . Sow a second lot of candytuft, nigella, and cornflowers. . . Watch nasturtium seedlings closely for aphids. . . . Summer mulch may now be applied to everything.
CHAPTER ONE
Robin telephoned Paul. She telephoned him at the office if he was there. If he was at home and she was out, she called him from all over town, from the first-floor telephone bank at Lord & Taylor; from the telephone arcades in the library at Columbia University where from time to time she did some of her husband’s research on Common Market countries; from the phone booth outside the charming little restaurant on Madison and Sixty-first to tell him that a mushroom omelet and a small carafe of white wine had cost her fifteen dollars. Calling Paul was a way of staying anchored while sailing through the streets of the city. It was her first taste of life in a metropolis and she set out—relentlessly, Paul said—to explore every avenue.
She had him summoned from a sales conference to tell him that she had found an entire undiscovered area of New York City. His secretary sniffed at the end of every phrase, letting Robin know how frivolous it was to summon one’s husband from a sales conference at Marketing Associates International.
“Paul, it’s under this bridge—I think it’s the Manhattan Bridge—and a million Mainland Chinese are living here. I’ll swear, it’s more like Kowloon than Manhattan. Come see it. Come and have Dim Sum with me.”
“Robin, I’m busy. I’ll take your word for it. I’ll see the New Territories some other time.”
“Oh, all right. Sorry I bothered you. Wait a minute. Now I remember what I really called about. Can you leave the office at least long enough to dash out and buy a new tie? Summerish? St. Laurentish? Tomorrow’s the garden party. The Beckfords, in the middle house in the block. Remember? They invited us last week. Our first big New York party.”
“But not our last, one supposes. I’ll try. Now, Robin, get off the phone.”
“I will—no, not yet! Wait. Wait, Paul. I’m jammed in the phone booth. The door won’t open. Paul, I’m lost. I can’t see a street sign from here. I can’t tell you where I am. What’ll I do?”
“Oh, Robin, for God’s sake. Push the door in the middle.”
“I did.”
“Pull the handle.”
“There is no handle.”
Paul let a long sigh pass down the line to Robin’s anxious ear. “Tell you what you do next.”
“Paul—what?”
“Are you wearing a bra?”
“No.”
“Open your purse, put on your sunglasses, let your hair hang down, write ‘Help! I am Gloria Steinem!’ on a piece of paper, and hold it up to the glass. Someone will come along and let you out.”
“Paul! Wait!”
ζ
Toward the end of the day, Robin hurried up the stairs at her stop on the IRT local, her calves aching. No wonder the women in New York had such great legs; it took a lot of muscle power to sprint for trains and buses, up and down stairs, across streets, covering block after block, downtown, cross-town, uptown. She must have walked miles today, she thought. In addition, she was weighted down by the bundles in her arms. She had checked out half a dozen new cookbooks from the main library at Forty-second Street and lugged them with her to cooking class; now her arms were full of books and groceries. Out of breath, she emerged from the subway exit and headed in the direction of Park Avenue, toward the bright, sinking sun. At last she knew which way to go when she came up from underground without having to say to herself, “Let’s see, north, south, east, west.” She made herself wait for the green light at Park Avenue, although some hardened city dwellers lined up next to her on the curb decided to make a dash for it. Two nuns, the white hats of their order like paper boats, sailed unconcernedly across without even glancing at the oncoming traffic. How do they know they’ll make it to the other side? marveled Robin, sure that the driver of one yellow taxi had tried to come as close as possible to the billowing black skirts. She wondered when she would get over her self-consciousness at living in New York City and learn to walk blindly through the city like everybody else.
Her block—the block between Park and Madison—was putting out its best small-scale charm today. Not much longer would the high-rise apartment buildings that were creeping up the East Side allow this little remnant of an earlier New York to escape destruction. The line of contiguous narrow brownstone homes stood behind a row of plane trees. Each front stoop led to solid double doors with polished brass fittings. Through windows at different levels she could as she walked catch a glimpse of chandeliers, a wall of books, a flight of stairs. The winter jasmine vine from the Jensen house near the middle of the block had inched its way abroad for so many summers that it now hung like a great hairy green curtain over the fronts of five of the neighboring houses; Robin had welcomed a curling green tendril into the window of her upstairs study, thinking that all too soon, when the time came to close the window against the autumn chill, she and Paul would be gone, their time in the sublet brownstone up, and Paul’s stint in the home office completed.
Robin glanced along the street. In the distance, Central Park turned lilac under the trees. She bypassed the flight of stairs leading to the formal first floor of the house and let herself in by the door under the stairs, which opened into a cheerful blue and white tiled kitchen. There was no time to change. She threw down her bags and books, placed the braided loaf from cooking class carefully on the counter top, and began to prepare the evening meal.
She had started the countdown toward dinner that morning soon after clearing away breakfast and getting Paul off to the office. She had taken two chicken breasts from the refrigerator, inserted her thumb at the pointed end and peeled them like a glove, then holding a breast firmly at both ends bent it back until the prow-shaped breastbone popped out. She pulled the bone out and with a sharp knife cut the breast into halves.
Shaping the meat into flattened ovals, she carefully rolled each supreme around nuggets of sweet, chilled butter into which garlic, parsley, tarragon and lemon had been smoothed with a wooden spoon. The herbs she grew herself, in pots in a sunny spot on the terrace. Next she had wrapped the filets carefully, sealed them with egg yolks and breadcrumbs, and lined them up on a platter to sit on the refrigerator shelf until cooking time. Removing them, she checked her watch and saw that Paul would be home any minute. She’d better get a move on. As she began to drop the filets into the hot oil, one by one, she rehearsed the rest of the menu: with the chicken, they would have newly shelled green peas and diced cucumber, warmed in sour cream, with a pinch of fresh dill thrown in; the braided brown loaf still warm from the cooking-school oven, kneaded and punched with her own hands and rating the qualified approval of a hard-to-please Cordon Bleu-trained instructor; wine; and freshly ground coffee. Back home, she’d probably be frying pork chops. It was paradise to practice the culinary arts in New York City, where every ingredient, no matter how exotic or out of season, could be found, and any dish could be assembled.
Peering in through the steam that had collected on the kitchen window, Paul rapped for Robin to let him in. “Easier than fumbling for my keys,” he explained as Robin tripped the latch and threw open the door. “What are you cooking in here—steamed pudding?”
“That’s the coffee!” Robin said. She had an automatic coffeemaker in her kitchen in Ohio, and was not used to remembering to turn off the stove. She ran for a potholder, snatched up the steaming coffeepot from the burner, and advanced with it to the center of the room, where she hesitated as if lost in thought. Paul circled her warily on his way to deposit his briefcase and jacket in the hall closet.
“Robbie, what the devil are you doing?”
“What? Oh—it’s funny,” she explained. “The coffee is still perking. It feels like a heart beating, in my hand.”
“Put it down, for God’s sake, and I’ll give you the hausfrau’s reward—what every noble American woman is getting at this time of day in this time zone from every red-blooded American husband—” Paul gave her an exaggerated wet smack on her cheek and went on to nuzzle her neck. His arms went around her and his hands slid down to her ass. For a minute, as he hands reached lower, his weight on her shoulders was oppressively heavy, so that she twisted away and began busily to pile dishes and silverware on a tray. They had made it a practice, since taking temporary possession of the house, to eat supper in the big candlelit dining room that opened onto the tiny terrace at the back of the house, even when just the two of them were there for dinner.
In the two years they had been married, this had always been the most important part of the day, the time when they seemed most connected. At the table, with everything in place, Robin looked across at Paul a little anxiously. It’s ridiculous, she thought, to feel that every meal is crucial, to think that the success of the dish is somehow equal to the success of the relationship. She breathed a sigh of relief as Paul’s raised fork pierced the chicken and a jet of hot, aromatic butter shot forth—the test of this particular dish. He tipped his glass in her direction in a toast. All the light in the dim room gathered on the surface of her wine and mooned up at her. Idiot, she said to herself, dismissing her anxiety, her desire to please.
Paul reached for the loaf of fresh bread, breaking off a piece. “Is this the product of today’s labor at M’sieu Henri’s establishment?”
“Yes. I passed bread with flying colors, but I flunked brioche.”
“How’d you do that?”
“My brioche looked like a muffin. It didn’t have a bump on top. It had sunk to nothing. The bump’s obligatory. I said I had made an American brioche by mistake, and I think some of the other pupils accepted that. Not M’sieu Henri, of course.”
“Naturellement. M’sieu Henry wasn’t fooled for a minute.”
Contentedly, Robin watched him enjoy the meal, as if she were watching, through the candlelight, one of the shadowy figures she sometimes ministered to in dreams.
ζ
They spent the evening watching old movies on Channel 13. “Again?” Robin had protested as the credits for The Maltese Falcon rolled across the screen.
“Pipe down. I love it,” said Paul, playfully settling her on the couch, his hand warm under her blouse.
It was after eleven o’clock when Robin, on her way to bed, glanced out of the window, looking down from her bedroom at the back of the top floor to the small flagged area where she sometimes sat in the thin spring sunlight. I must do some work there later in the week, she reminded herself. The potted geraniums needed topping, and there were winter leftovers of dried vines and leaves to be cleared away. It would be fun to do the small-scale gardening that city living allowed. Beyond the paving at their back door there was a small pear tree, bravely blooming in the city air. She could smell the rising scent of the pear blossoms. And beyond that, there was a central area, consisting of a formless garden with a pebbled path, a few lilacs and ailanthus trees and a sentimental fountain, the common property of all the householders whose homes opened onto the center court.
Looking down the length of the garden, at the lights spilling from rear doors, Robin was struck by the thought that, in a way, in opening onto the common garden all the doors also opened into each other. Probably some of the neighbors knew each other well enough to use the back door, as informally as in a small town. Perhaps tomorrow, at the Beckford’s party, they would meet most of the people who lived in this double row of brownstones and put names to the faces she had already begun to identify as people from their block. She was looking forward to it; she loved parties.
The summer’s arrangements had really been more for her benefit than for his. Paul, spending time in both Ohio and New York, could as easily have been based at home, commuting to New York during the week, but they had decided that a summer in the city would be enlightening that it was an opportunity to get a taste of city life before they were tied down with kids.
“We were really very lucky to get this house,” said Robin as she slipped a nightgown over her head.
“What? Hey, don’t put that on. I’ll only have to take it off again. Oh, the house, yeah.”
“I’m so glad the Leas went to Europe. You know, they really wanted us to have the house, didn’t they? Funny how people who love New York always want everybody to see the city the way they see it.”
“Don’t be naïve, Robin. What they probably wanted was the rent, which the company was willing to subsidize to have this summer training program work.”
“No, they really wanted us to live in their house. Remember, they were talking about it last year, when we first met them at the new products market. They said then that someday they wanted us to love New York the way they did.”
“Well, enjoy it while you can, baby. In three months, it’s back to the suburban split-level for you. How long will it take your New York veneer to wear off?”
“Wasn’t aware I had one. In fact, I was thinking today when I was crossing Park Avenue that I’m still in culture shock,” answered Robin absently. She stripped off her gown and stood scratching her thigh, a slender woman with long limbs and narrow wrists and straight shining brown hair that fell below her shoulders.
“Come here and I’ll do that for you.”
Robin bounced onto Paul’s side of the bed for a good scratch. Like a kitten, she responded to the long, luxurious strokes. Gradually his nails dug deeper until she started and rolled away when one long scratch furrowed the skin on her back and ass, but Paul’s heavy leg came over and pinioned her. What did it mean, she wondered, when his caresses began to hurt? In the first months of their marriage, it had been her unspoken fear that Paul harbored a secret antipathy toward women—toward her, toward her sexuality—but later she came to feel that what she was seeing was simply the form his curiosity took as he studied her body and its responses. Thinking about it again, she wondered now if it was actually Paul—offering this playful roughness—who liked it? Was he inviting her to treat him violently in return? She shook her head. What could she do to Paul? He was a big man, a head taller than she. Nothing she could do would hurt him.
His curving fingers had turned into probes now, jabbing at her, just missing the clitoris; why couldn’t he remember it was more to the front? She clasped his hand and guided it forward. In, out; in, out; the growing moistness made it better. Friction, moistness, warmth . . . nice. Wouldn’t it be nice to come like this and then be ready when he entered her to come again? She was almost there when disappointingly he shifted his fingers, and the signal was lost, Robin fading and confused on its trail.
Now Paul’s full weight rolled upon her, and he lifted her legs, creasing her into the tightest possible casing for himself. He kissed her, his tongue entering her mouth at the same moment he penetrated her. She gasped. Then there was a long, timeless pounding until he released her and she straightened her limbs in a long stretch. Had she come, finally, had she finished, or had she been on her way to another level of response? She felt a spasm in her belly and decided that wherever she had been going, she hadn’t quite reached her destination.
Robin pulled the top sheet from the bed and wrapped herself in it like a cloak. She paused on her way to the bathroom and leaned her head against the cool windowpane, rolling her forehead back and forth. The scent from the little pear tree flowed across the windowsill in a wash of air that moved around her ankles.
She realized she had been staring down into the middle court for several minutes. There in the common garden, the abandoned fountain stood half in deep shadow and half in the perpetual soft light of Manhattan’s night. Robin was still. She could see a woman leaning against the fountain, her hips braced against the broad lip of the bowl. The woman’s hair hung loose about her shoulders; light gleamed along her cheek when she raised her head to let it fall back against her shoulder, pillowed by the flowing hair. She had the full, heavy-breasted figure of a classical statue . . . perhaps it was a statue? I must go out and look around tomorrow, Robin told herself. The common garden is not uncharted territory . . . I won’t fall off the map.
Her eyes sharpened their focus. No, it was not a statue. It was perfectly clear that it was a woman, resting languidly against the side of the fountain. Robin’s eyes swept the length of the garden. There were no lights burning at the backs of the houses, everyone was asleep then—or, like her, sleepy spies on their way to bed, hesitating invisibly at darkened windows.
The tight shadows across the garden shifted and broke up, and another figure stepped from the row of lilac trees and walked slowly forward, not stopping until he stood between the woman’s legs. He came so close that he might have overbalanced her except that his hands went out to anchor her hips, and her hands came up to hold his shoulders, as her skirt fell back and her legs came up to wind and clutch. . . .
“Paul!” Robin whispered urgently.
“Hmmmmm?”
“Oh . . . nothing. I think I must be dreaming. Or there must be some other explanation. I mean, they can’t be—” Why, she thought, that looks like—oh, who is he, the man who lives in the house with the skylight. But what is he doing?
Robin found a fresh pane to rub her cheek against. The cool glass flashed on her hot face. She knew she couldn’t really be dreaming because her eyes had that strained, dry feeling that comes from the lids having been pulled back too wide. The scene in the garden below was real. The man was real. He was moving his body against that of the woman in long, perceptively powerful strokes. At each slow impact, her body was almost lifted from the edge of the fountain where it rested.
The woman’s head snapped far back on her neck. Robin could see her face. She opened her own mouth in a silent moan that matched the unheard one below. The woman must have cried out. But upstairs, closed away in her bedroom that seemed suddenly airless, her hands before her wide-open eyes, Robin did not hear a sound.
ζ
The empty garden had grown darker when Robin stumbled to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. She dried her cheeks with a rough towel, and then rubbed away the stickiness between her thighs. Lying on her side of the bed, still wrapped in the sheet, she tossed from side to side for a while, then fell into a restless sleep, later sliding into deep slumber, where she dreamed of a man whose hand would touch her sex like the bell of a flower.
______________________________________________________________For authors, The Perfect Write® provides
FREE QUERY LETTER REVIEW AND ANALYSIS.
Post your query to mailto:theperfectwrite@aol.com (no attachments)
and visit the Sample Letters Page for examples of successful query letters.
For authors, The Perfect Write® also offers a
FREE OPENING-CHAPTER CRITIQUE.
Post you opening chapter (up to 5,000 words)
to the body of an e-mail (no attachments) and
mailto:theperfectwrite@aol.com.
The Perfect Write® offers comprehensive editing services, from
manuscript critiques to complete revisions, including line-editing,
along with query letter design and composition. For pricing, send
your project requirements to mailto:theperfectwrite@aol.com
