In that lazy space on Sunday, between late breakfast and time to dress
for a cocktail party, Lucia, with whom I was sharing an apartment, tried
to define “ex-wife.”
“Not every woman who used to be married is one. There are women about
whom it is more significant to know that they work at this or that, or
like to travel, or go to symphony concerts, than to know that they were
once married to someone or other.”
She looked at me, reflectively. “You’re an ex-wife, Pat, because it is
the most important thing to know about you . . . explains everything
else, that you once were married to a man who left you.”
“You’re one, too, by that definition. That you once were married to Arch
explains most things about you,” I said.
“Yes, but I convalesce somewhat. One isn’t an ex-wife if one’s in love
again, or even if one never thinks about one’s husband any more.”
“How many years does it take to get to that stage?” I asked. I had been
to dinner with Pete the evening before, and knew that I would be
miserable for a week.
“There, there, child,” she said, “you’ll feel better tomorrow.” She
began again. “An ex-wife is a woman with a crick in the neck from
looking back over her shoulder at her matrimony.”
I contributed. “An ex-wife’s a woman who’s always prattling at parties
about the joys of being independent, while she’s sober . . . and
beginning on either the virtues or the villainies of her departed
husband on one drink too many.”
“An ex-wife,” Lucia said, “is just a surplus woman, like those the
sociologists used to worry about, during the war.”
“Nobody worries about an ex-wife though, except her family—or her
husband if she is one of those who took alimony,” I said.
“We don’t need to be worried about, yet, darling. We’re too much in
demand. Wait ’til we’re forty . . . if we’re not dead of insufficient
sleep, before then.”
“I’ll be dead of drinking bad absinthe,” I announced, resignedly.
Lucia protested. “I really wish you would stop drinking that stuff. It
will hurt your looks.”
But her voice was languid. We were just talking. Pretty soon it would be
time to make up one’s face, and put on a velvet frock, and things would
start happening fast again. It was not a bad life, while things happened
fast. And they usually did.
I tried one more definition. “Ex-wives . . . young and handsome ex-wives
like us, illustrate how this freedom for women turned out to be God’s
greatest gift to men.”
We laughed. The winter sun came warmly in over our shoulders. It was
pleasant, sitting there. Peter and I had fought like hell the night
before.
“Don’t think about him,” said Lucia. “I can always tell when you are; it
does horrid things to your mouth.” She talked about ex-wives again,
abruptly.
I felt bitter. After awhile I said, “An ex-wife is a young woman for
whom the eternity promised in the marriage ceremony is reduced to three
years or five or eight.”
Lucia: “Brought up under the tattered banners of ‘Love Everlasting’ and
‘All for Purity’ we have to adapt ourself to life in the era of the
one-night-stand.”
Then she remembered that she was trying to make me feel gayer.
“Darling, what’s the difference. . . . We are awfully popular, and we
know endless men, and we go everywhere.”
“They all want to sleep with us,” I said. “So soon as they get here for
dinner they begin arranging to stay for breakfast.”
“And that isn’t very important, either, Pat. You know it isn’t. You are
just feeling flat today. . . . What are you going to wear?”
I told her, and went to dress. When I came downstairs again she had
mixed two Martinis. I felt better, when I had mine.
After that Max came. We gave him a Martini and he said, “Here’s to crime
and other pleasures.” He always said that for a toast. Then he inquired
about our health and our jobs. I suppose because jobs seemed important
to him.
They were not to us. We both did advertising. Lucia was in an agency. I
was fashion copy-writer in a department store. We averaged about a
hundred dollars a week apiece, with odds and ends of free-lance writing.
We had what we called a garret, on Park Avenue. The rent was a hundred
and seventy-five dollars a month, and we spent most of the rest of our
money on clothes. We never saved anything.
Lucia said she used to save money when she was married. So did I. Once I
saved five dollars a week for a year, for a rug that would be “nice
enough to keep when we had a house.” After Peter left, I sold the rug
for forty dollars, and bought a pair of shoes and a hat with it.
While I was married, I saved money and made plans for the next fifty
years and so on. Afterward, I did not make plans for the month after
next. It seemed such a waste of time.
* * * * *
When there didn’t seem to be much else to say to Max about our jobs, we
took him along to the cocktail party. He loved observing the younger
generation. So he said.
We did not know many Jews. He was one of the nicest. He was old; looked
like a Rembrandt portrait; had made about a million dollars in the junk
business; and been taken up by people who wanted him to give money to
their philanthropies. He had a huge wife whom he adored. One day he told
us proudly that she was learning to write. We thought for an instant it
was to write books; but he meant a-b-c’s.
He was not one of our set. But it was not a set; just unmatched pieces.
The names in my engagement book for the first year post-Peter show well
enough the sort of people we knew. (I can’t remember for whom some of
the initials did stand.)
“Dinner—Richard” . . . he used to be Sunday feature editor of a
newspaper. He went to Hollywood on one of those three month opportunity
contracts. I’ve heard he’s writing sports in San Francisco now.
“H. R. G.—8 o’clock” . . . author of one play that was a hit, and two
that flopped. I went with him to the opening of one of the flops. It was
not a gala evening.
“David—Sunday breakfast” . . . who was David? Some vaguely unpleasant
association. Oh yes, that was the night I actually did get out of a cab
on Eighty-Sixth street in a rage and a snowstorm. David imported sausage
casings from Russia. Odd occupation, that.
“Hal—to go beer-gardening in Hoboken” . . . he was just an
ex-ambassador who thought he was very, very young at heart.
“Leonard—at the Russian Bear—8 o’clock” . . . he was rather sweet. A
former Rhodes scholar working for thirty a week on a tabloid.
“C. L. C.—the Ritz—7:15 o’clock” . . . _the_ younger generation
novelist. He always admitted it without being asked.
“Dominic—to dine at the Cecelia” . . . such a solemn young Italian
surgeon, he was; and danced like an Argentine professional.
“Gerard—the Brevoort—6:30 o’clock” . . . he was minor Wall Street.
“Ken-Ken-Ken” . . . at least three times a week through most of that
year. When I see his name, I see lights of Harlem dance halls glittering
across the most golden hair I ever saw. He might have been the greatest
art director in the movies. He and I had the loveliest time imaginable.
But he never once kissed me.
“John—Samarkand—9 o’clock” . . . painted murals for gas-houses, and
Elks’ clubs and places like that.
“Ned—his house—6:30” . . . he did something in publishing; collected
Napoleon—and served endless quantities of marvellous cognac.
The men were like that. I didn’t have many engagements with women.