copyright 2007 Gerhard Skutsch

 

MAXINE

(from Chapter 4 - Where is Izzie?)

 

    When they got home that morning’s final edition of the New York Daily News was on the coffee table.  Izzie saw it first.  He stopped in the middle of the room.
    Maxine closed the door and turned and saw Izzie’s back and then the newspaper.  Her hands went cold.  She did not have to see the paper.  Izzie’s back told her.  She wanted to scream, “No!  Don’t pick it up!  Don’t read it!”  But she couldn’t move either.

    Slowly Izzie walked to the table and picked up the newspaper.  He held it in both hands and stared at the front page.  He turned the page and saw his picture.  It covered the top half of the page.  There was a story underneath, but he couldn’t read it.  The print blurred in his vision.  He looked at Muriel’s picture on the opposite page.  Her eyes seemed to be looking into his.  Underneath he saw the dark, double-size print:  “Dear Izzie.”  He slowly read each word of her letter.  It was continued on the next page in regular print.  It ended at the bottom of the page.  He read the last two sentences over several times:  “I love you, Izzie!  Come home to us if you can, darling!”  Her name at the end was in her own handwriting.  That puzzled him and moved him.  He wondered how they had done it.  He turned to the next page and saw his daughters’ pictures, separately and together with their mother.  He looked at Cathy, and she too seemed to look back at him.  That whole page and the next page were filled with pictures.  He recognized two from one of the albums Muriel kept.  They were from last year at Jones Beach.  In one he was standing with his daughters; and in the other Muriel was next to him, Cathy was standing to his left, and Priscilla and Elizabeth were standing to Muriel’s right.  He remembered the young man who had offered to take the picture of them all together.  He had talked to Priscilla quite a while, and they seemed to like each other.  Muriel said later he was too old for Priscilla.  Izzie had replied they were just talking.  “That’s what you think.  I saw how he looked at her.  She already fills out her bathing suit quite well.”  Muriel certainly filled hers out, but not too much.

    “She’s beautiful, Izzie.  Your wife is beautiful.  So are your daughters.”

    Maxine stood next to Izzie and he handed her the paper.  He looked at her as she looked at the photos.  She turned back to Muriel’s letter and looked at him.  “May I?”

    “Sure.  Why not?  I guess a million other people have.”  There was no bitterness in his voice.

    She read the letter and put the newspaper down on the table, still open to that page.  She looked at Izzie’s photo on the left and Muriel’s photo on the right.  And suddenly she was angry.

    “It’s not right!  They had no right to do this!  It’s a violation.  You’re just there for everyone to leer at.  And your children.  How could they do that to your children?  They have taken all of your lives and just put them on display.  This what's-his-name who wrote the article -”  She bent down.  “- this Ellsworth M. Barnes doesn’t care about you or your family.  He wants notoriety.”

    “I know him.  Muriel brought him home a few times.  She was working on his book.  He was very pleasant.  He was nice with the girls.  He brought each of them a gift.”

    “Well, they’ve repaid him.  He got what he wanted, what he needed from them.  Don’t look surprised, Isador.  I know you can’t get angry . . . at . . . at this.  But don’t you see they’re hitting you over the head?  They’re taking your love for your family and using it against you.  Darling -”  She put her hands on his chest and pressed them there.  “- if you want to go home, then I want you to.  But . . . but not like this.”  Her voice was very low, almost a whisper.  “Not after this.”

    She walked away from him and waited, her back to him.  After a few moments she heard him dialing on the phone next to the coffee table.  She waited for the sound of his voice talking into the receiver.  She forced herself to remain still, to not turn around.  She had no right.  It was his choice.  She would not bludgeon him.  She would never bludgeon him with her love.  She heard him put down the receiver.  He had said nothing.  Now she could turn around.

    They looked at each other from a distance of only a few feet.  He looked diminished to her.  She wondered if she looked the same to him.

    “No one was home.”

    “You don’t have an answering machine?”

    “We do.”

    “But you didn’t leave a message.”

    “No.  I couldn’t . . I couldn’t say anything.”

    “You can call again.”

    “I . . . won’t.”

    He had not said “can’t.”  He had said “won’t.”  She took one step toward him.  Then he came to her.  She pressed her head against his chest and cried.  She wasn’t happy or sad.  But there was no distance between them, as there had been for a few moments.  After a while she asked, “What are you going to do?”

    She felt his hands on her back and his face against her hair.  “I don’t know.  I can’t go back yet.  I can’t talk to her yet.”

    “If she’d answered the phone?”

    “I wouldn’t have said anything.”

    “She would have known it was you.  I would have.”

    “Yes.  I won’t call again.”

    “Ever?”

    “If I go home, I’ll just go home.”

    He had said “if,” not “when.”  Was she drawing him away?  Had she the right to be so close to him now?  Then it struck her that the photos and letter and article in the paper had been to bludgeon her too.  Whether Muriel knew it or not, she was making war on her rival.  Well, she had all the rights, and Maxine had none.  She had a marriage certificate and twenty-five years of memories and photo albums and those daughters, those wonderful daughters Maxine would have loved to have.  She tried to wriggle free of Izzie, but he held her tightly.  Well, she’s got all that but, for now, I’ve got him.  And he needs me!

    Paul found them standing together in the middle of the room.  He glanced at the paper he had bought from a stand, left it and them where they were, and went quietly to his room.  He turned on his computer, tapped at the keys for a while, and turned it off.  He nodded at the blank screen and smiled.  “You won that one, Howard.  You got over that hurdle.  Keep plugging, Howard.”