Edith

“So, are we going or not?” asked James. “Are you coming?”

Edith didn’t answer. She had put her headphones back on, lit another cigarette, and was taking a long slow drag, absorbed in the music pressed to her ears as she gazed out the window.

“Are you coming, or will I go by myself?” James repeated, tapping her foot.

Edith turned her face toward her husband and made one of her idiosyncratic faces—a kind of pout that expressed both surprise and irritation. Was it necessary to answer every question? Wasn’t it obvious she didn’t feel like going?

“Can’t you go by yourself?” she replied in a flute-soft voice.

“But you know the Dobsons adore you!”

James only said that because, in truth, the first time he had introduced Edith to his friends a year earlier, Michael and Margarita Dobson had felt awkward meeting this woman.

Edith had overplayed the vamp: egocentric, seductive, scattered, elusive, and a charming nincompoop.

Michael Dobson, a Yale professor James had met fifteen years ago when they were students, had been polite, but clearly thrown off.

Margarita had stayed cold.

Now Edith and the Dobsons knew each other better, but their worlds remained apart.

“There’ll be lots of people. You know, we’re celebrating Michael’s new book. I’m sure you’ll have a good time.”

“I'd promised Cynthia I’d pick her up after her rehearsal, and we were supposed to have dinner together.”

James was used to Edith’s last-minute objections, always surprisingly precise. It made him fatalistic—this whimsical, unfathomable woman he had been madly in love with for three years. He had changed since meeting her—he was no longer quite so rational.

"Well, why don't you ask her to come along?" he suddenly thought.. “We’ll pick her up on the way.”

James didn’t care about Cynthia, but if that’s what it took for Edith to come… Edith, who had slipped back into the music…

“Let’s take Cynthia with us!” he shouted into her headphones. Edith looked at him again with wide, steady eyes.

“Yep! Why not?” she said, taking off the headphones. She grabbed the phone from the coffee table beside the sofa and dialed a number.

“Could I speak to Miss Donnemartin, please?” She waited a few seconds, staring at her toes fanned out.

“Hello, Cynthia? It’s Edith. Wanna come with me to a party at some friends’ tonight? I’m going with James. There’ll be a bunch of eggheads.”

Cynthia replied something into the phone that James couldn’t hear. Clearly, his wife’s private life happened inside headphones.

“It’s to celebrate a thesis or a book, or something.”

Whatever Cynthia said—which James also couldn’t hear either—made Edith burst out laughing.

“Yeah! Great. So you’ll come with us?”

Her friend agreed. They’d pick her up in half an hour at the Hudson Theater, on West 44th Street, and go together to the Dobsons’.

Edith put on a CD and lit another cigarette.

“Darling, don’t you think it’s time we get ready? What are you planning to wear?” her husband asked, with rising impatience.

Edith looked at him as if he were a little green man sending contact signals from another planet.

She stubbed out her cigarette, stopped the music, stood up, threw her arms around James's neck, showered him with half a dozen kisses—on his eyes, nose, mouth, and neck—and said, in a burst of excitement:

“I’ll wear my pink stretch pants and my pistachio silk blouse.”

And she disappeared into the bedroom, door closed. Twenty minutes later, she emerged dressed, made up, and perfumed.

James, now wearing his black velvet evening suit, wanted to make love to her, but decided they hadn’t the time.

In the elevator, between the eighteenth floor and the lobby, he nonetheless managed to check every garment she was wearing..

They asked the doorman outside to call a taxi.

the Georgian driver, as if practicing for the Indianapolis 500, got them to the theater in less than ten minutes. James got out to get Edith’s friend.

A few minutes later, he returned with Cynthia Donnemartin, a tall brunette as tall as him, moving like a dancer, upright as if balancing an invisible basket and light as if walking on eggs. They squeezed into the back seat and headed for the East Village.

“We’re going to the Dobsons’,” Edith told Cynthia. “They’re old university friends of James'. Michael Dobson just published a book on the comparative influences of customary law and codified law on the development of social structures in Western Europe in the late Middle Ages.”

“Awesome!” said Cynthia. “It’ll be a change from Edward Albee.”

They had buzzed in at the building, then climbed three flights of stairs, and when they reached the landing, Margarita Dobson was waiting, backlit in the doorway. She wore a black strappy dress on bare shoulders and had tied a little white apron at her waist. Behind her, in the well-lit hallway, groups of people gathered, talking animatedly, glasses in hand. A murmur of voices and music, like the sound of surf among the rocks, spilled from the apartment. Edith and Cynthia entered, followed by James and Margarita. Soon, Michael Dobson, hair curled around a crimson face flushed from drinks, appeared in the hall, wearing a burgundy waistcoat over a slightly billowy cream shirt.

“James, Edith, what a pleasure to see you!” He draped an arm familiarly around Edith’s neck and kissed her cheek. Since she’d known them for the past year, Edith had seen Michael and Margarita change: Michael was more relaxed, more urbane, less reserved; Margarita, on the other hand, more distant, more introverted, less connected with her husband.

“Let me introduce Cynthia,” James said, shaking Michael’s hand, “a friend of Edith’s who plays in a theater. I thought you should meet.”

James’s eyes swept Cynthia from head to toe.

“Delighted to meet you… But come on, let’s not stay here. Can I get you something to drink?”

They elbowed their way through the crowd to a buffet by the large bay window overlooking Washington Square.

Accepting a gin and tonic, James, who held his wife’s hand, joined a group discussing education in the Third World. Seeing David Bronfstein, a vaguely familiar psychiatrist across the room, Edith slipped her hand from her husband’s and walked over to greet him. Margarita passed by, offering glasses of Chablis and hors d’œuvres on a large tray.

“Hello, I didn’t know you knew the Dobsons,” Edith said to Bronfstein.

“How are you?” he answered simply.

A little put off by his lack of chattiness, Edith waited a few moments, then ventured, just to fill the silence:

“I never know whether I should accompany my husband, James Packer, to all the parties he’s invited to.”

“What do you mean?”

“These academics are so boring!” Then to change the subject: “And you, what brings you here? Do you know anyone ?”

“Right now, I’m talking to you…”

If he was making fun of her, she wasn’t going to give him the chance, so with a big smile, she turned away. Behind her, three men were talking courses, tenure, careers. Next to them, a discussion about a recent, apparently controversial, appointment. Turning again, Edith saw Margarita now talking earnestly to Bronfstein. She crossed back to the buffet.

On a couch, Michael Dobson was animated, gesturing as he spoke with Cynthia, whose eyes were shining, as she almost drank in his words. As Edith walked by, she caught:

“The theme of aggression, a consequence of fear exacerbated by alcohol, is, in Albee, a sense of vertigo before any risk of challenge by another. It must then be analyzed as a dichotomy of the self compared to—” Michael was saying, when Cynthia cut him off.

“But when my partner, by provoking me, is really shouting his own anxiety, and the director tells me to take two steps back while still fixing him with my gaze, whereas I feel—” At that moment, Cynthia saw Edith, broke off and called out:

“Edith, come over! Your friend has finally made me understand my role at the Hudson!” She turned to Michael, “You’ll come see me, won’t you?”

Michael said of course, then excused himself to greet other guests.

“Your friend is amazing!” exclaimed Cynthia Donnemartin.

“He seems so,” Edith replied.

“It’s incredible, all that he knows. And when I told him I did theater, he started talking about Albee. He didn’t even know I was in rehearsals at the Hudson! Can you believe it?”

But Edith was barely listening. She thought how it was in similar circumstances she’d met James three years before. And for several months now, she’d been feeling a certain weariness. When he wasn’t traveling, he was always in his office working. At first, James had encouraged her to work on her singing and voice, but as the months passed without any engagements, he seemed less interested in her activities. Oh, he still loved her, for sure. And for that, he was always ready. But Edith felt neglected. It even seemed to her that she herself was less interested in James—they were drifting apart. Everyone here tonight seemed just like James: brilliant, no doubt, but, how to put it, not very much fun.

She excused herself from Cynthia and went away.

Margarita passed by with another tray. Had she really been cast as a maid at her husband’s party tonight? Her face was distant, as if she was focusing on carrying out perfectly her duty of distributing food and drinks.

“What a party! You have all of New York in your apartment tonight!” Edith said, just to say something.

“Oh, these are Michael’s friends and contacts,” said Margarita tiredly. “He’s destined for a great career. And many of these people already know they’ll be indebted to him.”

“Can I help with the trays?”

“Thank you. But I don’t think it’ll be necessary.”

“Oh, but let me. That’ll keep me busy.” And Edith followed Margarita to the kitchen.

A few minutes later, she was carrying around little sandwiches from group to group and went over to the one where her husband was chatting.

“Where were you?” asked James Packer, vaguely miffed. “So now you’re passing around hors d’oeuvres? Let me introduce you to Kenny Jackson, from UNESCO, with whom I’m leaving for Kuala Lumpur next month…”

But Edith was already off with her tray. In another room, she spotted Michael Dobson, once again deep in conversation with Cynthia.

 

*                           *                          *

 

In the Riverside’s sun-filled cafeteria, Edith, sitting one leg under her buttocks on a red bench at one of the booths facing the window by the long counter, was still looking at the oversized, laminated menu, while James Packer, sitting across from her, had already made his choice and set his down. It was ten o’clock on a bright May morning. They’d called each other two days before and arranged to have brunch together. James was sipping a huge mug of rather tasteless coffee that a fat Black waitress was topping up every two minutes. He was about to order eggs Benedict with a blueberry sauce. Edith chose raspberry pancakes doused in maple syrup.

After the party at the Dobsons’ the previous October, Edith and James Packer had split. Edith had told her husband that their life together no longer made sense and that she needed a change. She’d moved into a small condo up on Riverside, not far from Harlem.

James had experienced their breakup as if a meteor had crashed onto him. He’d stayed alone in their apartment, changing just enough of the décor to reduce signs of Edith to a few mementos. He buried himself in his work at UNESCO. Several long trips helped him not to think too much about his misshap.

Edith and her ex-husband stayed in touch. James helped her move in. They saw each other every other month or so, for lunch, a stroll in Central Park, or sometimes a play. They never talked about the causes of their breakup. Edith had been straightforward and firm: she had to change her life. She hadn't said more. Strangely enough, now James was more interested in his ex-wife’s singing career. She’d found work again. James listened to her descriptions of the venues and the people she worked with.

After the night they had taken Cynthia along, James saw less of the Dobsons. He couldn’t really have said why. At the beginning of the year, he’d learned that Margarita and Michael Dobson were no longer together either. Michael had had a relationship for several months with Cynthia, which Margarita had tolerated in silence. Then, ironically, when things began to sour between Michael and Cynthia, Margarita decided to leave as well. She was now, the rumor said, living with Bronfstein.

In the cafeteria, James was a calmer man than when Edith had married him two years earlier. Crow’s feet had formed at the corners of his eyes, and silver threads wove through his hair, which was now less unruly, as he kept it shorter.

He updated Edith on Michael Dobson: Margarita gone, the thing with Cynthia over.

“It’s all rather sad. Michael seemed so happy with Cynthia,” said James. “I don’t understand it.”

Edith, who already knew that Michael Dobson, the brilliant Yale professor, and her friend Cynthia Donnemartin—whose show at the Hudson had run for four months—were done, looked at James in surprise. There was a flicker of tenderness in her eyes, perhaps like when the vamp had first been charmed by the brainy scholar, but it shifted into a look of affection, mixing motherly tenderness and regret that James understood so little. Then she explained that Michael and Cynthia were simply not made for each other; that he, James, and she herself, weren’t made for each other either; that intellectuals are overgrown children who want to marry their mothers, sisters, or maybe their cousins, but who aren’t ready to marry a real woman, to take care of her, to understand her, to make her happy.

James was surprised Edith would say all this—she, the whimsical, elusive woman he had known who played the fool. He said he understood, that he had always sensed this too, but that in a way, it was a choice he, like Michael and their friends, had made; that their whole lives—even their relationships—were lived as a string of objectives, projects, efforts, successes or failures, but daily life—everyday love—they didn’t know what to do with.

Now it was Edith’s turn to be surprised by her ex-husband’s confidences.

James Packer confessed that, for some time, he’d been thinking of writing it all down—making it a novel, novels. There was so much to say, yet so little. Would it be interesting? They talked of literature, of how creation transforms reality, not just chronicles it. Not so different from a good song, said Edith.

She tapped her spoon on the bottom of her cup, stirring the sugar into what was left of her coffee, and suddenly James clearly heard the sound of Edith’s high heels three years earlier as she would come to see him, climbing the stairs to his third-floor apartment on Tenth Street.

Then, all at once, a cascade of tangled, multicolored memories tumbled through his mind—memories of moments he’d lived intensely, each one. And there, in the cafeteria, in front of his barely touched eggs Benedict, he understood he really was going to start writing. After a few conventional words, he stood, kissed Edith goodbye, and went home.

James Packer got to work. He began to write down his most vivid memories, carefully removing each one as if from a game of pick-up sticks, not wanting the whole thing to collapse—for, he sensed confusedly, that was the key that might let him finally change his life.