Lady in the Lake

He had come by the apartment on Gist Avenue two days after the “burglary.” The matter had been turned over to two detectives, who took a report and told Maddie they would check with the pawnshops, but she shouldn’t expect much. Because she knew there was no ring to be found, she put the matter out of her head, so she was surprised—and a little fearful—when Ferdie Platt dropped by.

“Just checking on you,” he’d said. Every word seemed layered with irony and innuendo. Did his all-seeing eyes stop on the African violet as he scanned the apartment? Did he know its secret? Was it racist to think that a Negro cop suspected her when she hadn’t worried about the white detectives who took the official report?

Then he had stared at her, really stared at her, held her gaze and—oh. She had forgotten about that kind of look.

“I want to check that sliding door.”

“The one in my bedroom?” Her voice squeaked on the last word.

“The one where the burglar entered.”

“The one in my bedroom.”

“Right.”

She led him there, but they’d never made it to the sliding door. As soon as he had her over the threshold, he snaked his arms about her waist, turned her around, and started kissing her. In some part of her mind, she was offended by his presumption, but the rest of her body shouted down that remnant of Mrs. Milton Schwartz. She had been flirting with him in the drugstore that day, and if it had been an empty exercise at the time, she was glad to have her bluff called. She hadn’t felt like this—well, she wouldn’t say Milton never had made her feel this way, but she had been married a long time.

He didn’t even bother to take off her clothes or his, just pushed her down on the bed, her skirt flipped up so it almost covered her face. He’s probably not circumcised, Mrs. Milton Schwartz fretted, but Maddie didn’t care. And what about pregnancy?

He’ll do the right thing, she told her former self.

Then she was moaning, making sounds she barely recognized. Maddie had always enjoyed sex with Milton, but Ferdie was forcing her to consider the idea that maybe she just enjoyed sex.

Her real worry was that this would be all he wanted, this one time.

“We had to get that out of the way,” he said when he was done. He kissed her, grabbed tissues from the bedside table to clean himself and dab at the sheet. “The next time will be slow and pretty. But I haven’t been able to think about anything else since I met you.”

Even in her haze, Maddie assumed this was a lie. He was too sharp, too focused, to lose himself to a daydream. Still, there was nothing wrong with this brand of flattery. How she had missed it. Oh, sometimes a husband got drunk over the years, cornered her at a party, and swore he was obsessed with her, but Maddie had always ducked those sloppy, unpromising embraces with practiced good humor.

This was something different.

“The next time—” she began, although she wasn’t sure what she was going to say. That there would be no next time? That she couldn’t wait for it?

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got no place to be.”

Later, under the sheets, they inspected each other’s naked bodies, satisfied customers. He was circumcised, after all—“Jew doctor,” he said, when her hand lingered. The biggest surprise on his compact, athletic body was his navel, an outie, very large and bumpy. For his part, he seemed most interested in her breasts and her hair. She wanted to ask if she was the first white woman he had been with, but the question seemed rude. It was easier to make love a third time.

His suggestion that she “arn” her hair did not come up for several weeks, after she had moved and they had established a pattern. He would call, ask if she was free. She always was, for him. He would show up with Chinese takeout or pizza. They ended up eating the food cold, often in bed, between slugs of foamy beer. He liked Ballantine’s Ale, so she kept that on hand and drank it with him, although she preferred wine or vermouth.

He called before he came so she could sneak down and leave the lower door unlocked. He arrived after dark and disappeared in the early morning hours. He always wore his uniform. Inevitably, people saw him—and her next-door neighbor did more than see him, Maddie knew. Funny, she had not been loud before. But she wanted someone to hear, to know that she was having sex two, three times a night, even if it was just her motley assortment of neighbors. Sometimes, Ferdie liked to bend her over the sink in her bathroom, and while he kept his eyes tightly shut, she was mesmerized by their images in the mirror. She had never looked so pale and tiny. Before Ferdie, she had thought of herself as dark.

And somehow this had led her to a stranger’s home not that far from that apartment on Gist Avenue, Maddie’s cheek pressed against the gingham cover of an ironing board, waiting for the kitchen magician to straighten her hair. The woman was tall and broad, wearing a shapeless dress and slippers. Her own hair was covered by a kerchief.

“How’d you hear about me?” she asked.

Ferdie had coached Maddie on what to say. “My mother’s cleaning lady.”

“You can get the same style putting your hair up on orange juice cans.” She pronounced it urnge. “But this will last a little longer, if there’s not too much dampness in the air.”

When it was done, Maddie wasn’t sure how she felt. Beautiful, yes, not unlike an actress she had seen on several television shows as of late, with big brown eyes and long, glossy hair. But she also felt as if she had surrendered part of herself, especially when she went to pick up Seth and he said: “What have you done?”

For a second, she didn’t realize he meant the hair.

She touched her straight, shining locks, imagined Ferdie’s fingers in it, hoped he would call before it began to frizz again. “Just wanted to try something different.”

“Haven’t you tried enough different things this year?”

Could he know? Maddie had noticed that the more sex she had with Ferdie, the more men seemed to notice her on the street, almost as if she were giving off some animalistic scent. But Seth was just a sullen teenager, doing what sullen teenagers do, torturing his mother. He was angry with her. Of course he was. She should have waited to leave, she supposed, until he was out of high school.

Her midweek “dates” with Seth were always awkward. She’d tell him to choose the restaurant, he’d say he didn’t care, she would pick the Suburban House or the chop suey place on Reisterstown Road, and then he would complain about her selection. She asked him questions, he grunted one-syllable answers. They were both relieved when it was over.

Tonight, however, she tried to press him. “Seth—if you’re angry with me, that’s okay.”

“Well, thanks.” They were at the Suburban House, where he had ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and fries, and she had let it pass, not bothering to lecture him about his complexion, with which he had just recently won a delicate truce. He ate with his mouth open. She didn’t have the energy to correct that, either.

“I’m really sorry that your father and I are getting a divorce.”

He shrugged, dragged a French fry through ketchup. “No skin off my butt.”

“Seth. You don’t even know what that means, not really.”

He stopped to think. “Sure I do. It means—”

“Well, it’s not nice. And it’s not how you speak to your mother.”

“You left. You’re not my mom.”

“I’ll always be your mother. I just didn’t want to be your father’s wife anymore.”

She could see him trying to feign nonchalance. But he couldn’t help himself. “Why? You don’t fight. Well, you do now, but you didn’t before. I don’t get it.”

“I’m not sure I can put it into words. It’s as if I had a glimpse of—like in the poem, the road not taken. I don’t think I’m the person I was meant to be.” She added hastily, “I was meant to be your mother. You had to exist, the world needs you, Seth. That was part of my destiny. But not all of it. You’re almost grown. I want to do something with my life.”

“Like a job? But you’ve never worked. What would you do?”

Maddie did not fault Seth for not realizing that he had been her work. She hadn’t seen it that way either. Running a household, raising a good if somewhat sullen boy, being a devoted wife—up until she left—these things were not work. Your children gave you cards on Mother’s Day. Your husband, if he was prosperous enough, gave you jewelry on your birthday. Every culture was full of folk songs lauding mothers. But it wasn’t a job.

As a boy, Seth had read biographies about the childhoods of great Americans—presidents, sports figures. The series included a few girls and some were outstanding—Jane Addams, Amelia Earhart, Betsy Ross. But one of the chosen women was Juliette Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts, a pretty minor accomplishment, in Maddie’s eyes. How brilliant did one have to be to come up with a female version of the Boy Scouts? The series was so desperate for females to include that they even devoted one volume to Nancy Hanks, whose only role in history was to give birth to Abraham Lincoln.

“I know I have only two years of college, but there’s a lot I could do.”

“Like what?”