The War of the Roses

12

The house was staked out like a battlefield. Ann tried desperately to maintain a scrupulous neutrality lest it affect her own circumstances, although she did not know how long she could hold on in the midst of the unbearable tension.

Barbara and Oliver had installed locks on their respective bedrooms. At first that seemed to Ann unnecessary until she began to observe the extent of their growing hostility. They had separate phones installed as well, leaving one of the original lines intact for the children. The kitchen was hers. He apparently had given up all rights to both the food and the facilities, although she saw a little carton of orange juice on the ledge of the side window of the guest room, conveying an utterly incongruous boarding-house look. He never took his meals at home, and he maintained Benny from a stock of dry dog food he kept in his room. Benny spent the day poking about the neighborhood, continuing his endless service to the local bitches, and returning home by instinct so that he could spend the night sleeping at the foot of Oliver’s bed.

Oliver also retained rights to the maintenance of his orchids. And he continued to spend a great deal of time in his workroom. By silent consent, it was considered his domain. It was there that he generally met with the children and, at times, with Ann, who used the most transparent pretexts to visit. The Ferrari’s special place in the garage was his domain, as well. Sometimes, when feeling very down, he would strip away the Ferrari’s

cover, remove its fiberglass top, and take it out for a brief spin, or he would spend hours tuning it and polishing its body. Allowing him such pursuits required no sacrifice on Barbara’s part. Besides, she was literally working herself at double time to build her catering business. The house was constantly filled with the aroma of her cooking.

Ann was fully aware of her unrequited feelings for Oliver, which prompted even more caution on her part. It was, she knew, downright dangerous to poke one’s head above the shell holes of no-man’s-land. Even the humor of it, the sheer illogic of the process, paled as the days wore on. By force of will, she maintained an observer’s distance, while inside she seethed with a profound and exasperating curiosity.

Every movement in the house became a signpost, every unguarded look a nuance, every stray word a symbol of some impending action. At night she would go over what she had observed during the day, attributing motives, calculating advances or retreats.

She wondered if they observed her inspection and when she felt anxious about this, she retreated further into her pose of indifference. Even the children seemed to have given up. At first they had been slyly trying to effect a reconciliation, but that had quickly dissipated in the face of their parents’ obvious unrelenting hostility and they assumed an air of grudging acceptance and, finally, tolerance.

‘My parents have simply gone crazy,’ Eve told her one night. The announcement seemed in the nature of an epiphany and Ann noted that Eve was spending more time with her friends, less time under her scrutiny. It was pointiess, she decided, to attempt to maintain a more rigid discipline over the children at a time of such trial. Josh found solace in basketball and other sports and, since he had not lost contact with his father, he seemed to be maintaining a business-as-usual equilibrium.

Sometimes she felt uncomfortable about her inspector’s role. It took effort and concentration. And, of course, she had to hide her own interest. Was it possible for Oliver to see in her an alternative? The question gnawed at her and filled her with guilt.

‘You’re awfully quiet,’ Barbara remarked one day.

‘I hadn’t realized,’ Ann responded.

‘I suppose I can’t really blame you. The way things have altered around here.’

It was her first real attempt at self-justification to Ann, who listened quietly, deliberately averting her eyes so they would not betray her. ‘Who can possibly understand but another woman who has undergone the same experiences? You can never really transfer your outrage. The house, in my opinion, is fair compensation. He can have another one just like it in a few short years. Maybe sooner. I can never have it again unless I marry. Then the whole cycle starts again.’

Although she was working harder, she seemed more beautiful than ever, glowing, in fact; a quality totally incongruous, considering her "plight."

‘I’m not competent to judge,’ Ann replied, remembering the undeclared war of her own parents’ married life. She had rarely seen even the most primitive gestures of respect between them. They seemed to survive on a diet of mutual hate. ‘I’m not a good one to ask about married life. My background is very traditional,’ she lied.

‘I know. The husband pulls down a paycheck and the wife cooks, cleans, and fucks.’ Ann had also detected that Barbara had gotten harder, more vocal and intransigent.

Between Oliver and Barbara communication was, in the early days of the new arrangement, nonexistent. Sometimes it was unavoidable, and Ann would hear scraps of conversation that always disintegrated into a rising crescendo of vituperation.

‘I’ll pay all electric and gas bills that can be attributed to normal household operations. Not to your business activities. Those you pay for.’ He had confronted her in the kitchen late one evening. Ann, who was helping to baste a roasting goose while Barbara prepared a batch of baking dough, quickly faded from the scene, far enough to be out of their vision but close enough to hear.

‘How can you calculate the difference?’ Barbara asked sarcastically.

‘I’m having a man come in from the electric and gas companies. If necessary, we’ll put in separate meters.’

‘What about the power from your workroom and the sauna?’

‘I take no profit from that.’

‘But I help pay for it.’

‘Would you like to charge me for the use of my room as well? The cost of my electric blanket?’

‘If I could, I would.’

‘And I don’t appreciate your fudging on the food bill. Thurmont agreed that you would keep those charges separate. There’s no way the family can use six pounds of flour and three pounds of butter a week.’

‘And what about the orange juice? I know you filched a carton of orange juice the other day. It could only have been you.’ Barbara had asked the question so innocently of each of them, including the maid. Ann had wondered about the intense probing.

‘I admit it. It was a damned mistake. I used it for screwdrivers. I ran out.’

‘I’ve been meaning to tell you. Those juice cartons on the ledge are ugly.’

‘It’s my ledge.’

‘And I don’t see why you have to lock up the liquor cabinet and the wine vault.’

‘What’s Caesar’s is Caesar’s,’ he said facetiously, the logic deteriorating.

‘And what’s God’s, God’s. You bastard.’

‘I’m not kidding about the food, Barbara. I’m not counting the water.’

‘The water?’

‘Water costs,’ he mumbled, but Ann could tell that his heart wasn’t in the argument on that issue. ‘All I’m asking for is a reasonable estimate.’

‘You toss around that word "reasonable" as if it were from the beatitudes.’

‘Now you’re getting biblical. Are you going "born again"?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact. You forced it on me.’

‘Well, you’re not rid of me yet.’

The matter, as Ann soon discovered, was resolved by an injunction. Barbara had charged harassment and violation of their maintenance agreement. Goldstein had gone to court and won, and an injunction forced Barbara to keep her business expenses separate.

‘You’ve only run up our legal bills,’ Oliver told her in still another confrontation.

‘I don’t care.’

‘You can’t just run to the court every time we have a dispute. It’s bad enough we have to wait such a long time to resolve the main matter. But what’s the point of these interim decisions?’

‘I’m not going to let you harass me, that’s all.’

‘I’m not harassing you.’

For a long time after that they did not speak at all, and things appeared to settle down into an armed truce. Oliver’s routine was unvarying, and Ann noted that he had greatly curtailed his out-of-town travel, as if leaving the house meant giving Barbara a special advantage.

He would come home around midnight. After dinner at a restaurant he would go to the movies. Any movie. He carried around with him programs offered by the various repertory film theaters. He had shown them to her with all the dates checked off so that his secretary could record them in his calendar. For breakfast his secretary provided coffee and a doughnut, and a business lunch took care of his midday meal.

He had explained the routine to Ann on those evenings when, with Barbara out on a catering job, she mustered the courage to accost him on his way up to his room. For some reason, she had noted, he was nervous in her presence, a condition that she greeted with even greater curiosity.

‘It’s no life, Ann,’ he told her one evening as they stood in the foyer. ‘But the movies are a fantastic escape. Something about the darkened theater and all those strangers sitting beside you. Not like television. It’s a damned lonely life.’

In the privacy of her thoughts, she could be outrageously blatant in her efforts to seduce him, and, more than once, these fantasies had become quite aggressive. But, near him, she could not bring herself to make a single untoward move, although she watched him carefully for any sign of interest. It was a struggle to put those thoughts aside. Besides, she dared not hope. Her fear of rejection was gnawing at her, and its actuality might have sent her skulking into the street, never to return.

At times even their armed truce erupted into near-violent confrontations. Once, when Ann was out, he had broken into their old room to get a bottle of Maalox he had left on the shelf of their once jointly shared medicine chest.

The household was awakened by Barbara’s frantic pounding on his door. The fury of her attack frightened the children and they huddled beside Ann on the third-floor landing, like spectators at a bullfight.

‘You broke into my room, you bastard,’ she had screamed. She had been supervising a late buffet and had discovered the break-in when she returned. He had opened the door and confronted her, bleary-eyed with sleep.

‘I needed a damned Maalox. I had a hiatus-hernia attack.’

‘You have no right to break into my room.’

‘All I took was the damned Maalox. It was too late -’

‘There are all-night drugstores.’

‘I needed it immediately. I had no choice. I had run out. Really, Barbara, I was in pain.’

‘You had absolutely no right. That was violation of our agreement. A legal violation.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Breaking and entering. I have every intention of calling the police.’

‘There’s the damned phone.’ He had pointed to the phone in his room and in her anger she stormed in and picked it up, dialing 911.

‘I would like to report a robbery,’ she said. ‘Barbara Rose, sixty-eight Kalorama Circle.’ There was a long pause. ‘I’m not certain what else was stolen. But I do know that ‘a bottle of Maalox was taken. My husband broke into my bedroom. No. He did not rape me.’ She took the phone away from her ear and looked into its mouthpiece. ‘God damn it. We pay you to protect people. Not to ask silly questions.’ She banged the phone in its cradle. He had rarely seen her so agitated and he was amused.

‘Feel better?’ Oliver had asked smugly. He leaned against the doorjamb, smiling.

‘You had no right,’ she sputtered, storming across the corridor, slamming the door behind her.

‘Don’t talk to me about rights,’ he called to her through the door.

‘This house has become a loony bin,’ Eve had whispered.

‘It’s like a television show,’ Josh said. ‘I wonder how it’s going to come out.’

Again Barbara took Oliver to court, resulting in an injunction that Oliver was forbidden to break into her room in the future.

‘Will they put him in jail if he does?’ Josh had asked his mother at the dinner table after she had announced the judge’s decision.

‘I’m afraid so,’ she had answered gently. But Josh was visibly shaken and had thrown his napkin on the table and run up to his room. Later, after she had comforted him, Barbara had knocked at Ann’s door.

‘May I come in?’ She had already opened the door. Ann was reading.

‘Of course.’

Barbara wore a dressing gown; her face was cold-creamed, her hair pinned back. She looked considerably younger, more unsure and vulnerable.

‘The worse part is having no one to talk with. At least Oliver listened. But I always felt I was hiding something. It never seemed like the truth.’ She sat down on the bed and bit her lip. ‘This is one hell of a trial by fire, Ann. It isn’t half as simple as I thought.’ She looked at Ann’s face, pleading. There was no avoiding the confidences about to come, Ann knew.

‘I suppose you think I’m an unfeeling rat.’

Barbara waited for a reply, for which Ann was grateful.

‘Actually’ – Barbara thumped her chest with outstretched thumb – ‘I hate myself for what I know in my heart I must do. If I were religious, I would think of myself as a female Job.’ She bowed her head as her eyes filled with tears. They spilled down her cheeks. ‘I’m not superhuman. I don’t like what all this is doing to the kids. Or even Oliver. I just wish he would walk away and leave me alone. That’s all I ask.’ She looked up at the ceiling, her lips trembling. ‘I suppose I could compromise. But I know I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. I have to do what I have to do. Can you understand that, Ann?’

‘Please, Barbara,’ Ann said gently, sitting beside her on the bed, holding her hand with sisterly affection. ‘Don’t put me in a position where I have to make a choice of some sort. The whole thing is heartbreaking. I adore you all. I feel bad for all of you.’

‘I’m not a beast, Ann,’ Barbara whispered. ‘Really, I’m not. In my heart I know I’m right. Looking back…’ She paused and sighed. ‘I felt persecuted. Helpless. We have only one life, Ann. Only one. I wasn’t happy.’

‘I’m not here to judge,’ Ann responded. But she was judging. How could Barbara be unhappy with Oliver? It was incomprehensible. I

‘If only he had left the house, like an ordinary rejected spouse.’

‘I’m sure it will all turn out for the best,’ Ann said stupidly, disgusted with her hypocrisy. She wished she could be truly honest. She could sense Barbara’s pain. She understood helplessness. But Oliver was someone special, a prize. Hurting him seemed willful, obscene. Still, she couldn’t hate Barbara, whose anguish, despite Ann’s feelings for Oliver, moved her. Suddenly Barbara embraced her. Ann felt the moist heat of her cheeks, the sweet, womanly smell of her body. She felt the fullness of her large breasts. In some oddly bizarre way, the closeness reminded her of Oliver, and she returned the embrace.

‘Women understand,’ Barbara whispered.

After a while Barbara disengaged herself and stood up, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve.

‘You’ve been a real treasure, Ann. I want you to know that. We all owe you a debt.’

Ann felt unworthy of the gratitude.

It was Eve’s idea to have a Christmas tree and she and Josh and Ann dutifully set it up in the library.

‘I don’t care what’s going on in this house. Christmas is still Christmas,’ Eve had announced, treating Ann to a long litany of the joys of family Christmases past – ski trips to Aspen, sunny days in the Virgin Islands and Acapulco. When they stayed at home, they would set up a Christmas tree in the library and both sets of grandparents would come down from Boston and there would be a fabulous Christmas dinner and a big eggnog party for all the friends of the Roses’, both generations.

Actually, Ann hadn’t intended to stay with the Roses over the holidays, but they all seemed so forlorn and depressed that she felt a sense of obligation.

On Christmas Eve both children were invited to parties and Barbara was out, cooking and supervising a large dinner. To keep busy Ann had welcomed the opportunity to assist Barbara in the making of pastry loaves, a new recipe she had concocted, which she was preparing for a Greek Embassy buffet. Barbara had been specific in her instructions, which Ann had written down and followed to the letter. The ingredients were already prepared. All she had to do was mix them. She put beef, onion, salt, and pepper into a large mixing bowl, on the kitchen island, mixed in the bread, then added wine and broth to the batter. When it had been mixed to the right consistency, she made seven rectangles, wrapped them in tinfoil, and put them in the refrigerator, very satisfied with her effort. Barbara had been concerned that making the pastry loaves would interfere with Christmas Day. She was determined, she had told Ann, to spend the day with the kids.

Helping out was the least she could do, Ann thought self-righteously, not in the least perturbed about not spending Christmas with her parents, an exceedingly bleak prospect. Her parents invariably got blind drunk on Christmas Eve, and the day after consisted of nursing bad hangovers and coping with sometimes violent irritability.

When she had washed up, Ann filled a tumbler with wine and walked to the library, where the Christmas tree stood, decorated and sprinkled with tinsel. The gifts lay wrapped and scattered around its base. She noted that, true to form, Barbara and Oliver planned not to exchange gifts. Yet she was pleased to see that both of them had gotten gifts for her. As she contemplated what Oliver had bought her the lights, which switched on and off, suddenly flickered and lost their luster. She was about to pull the plug when she heard Oliver’s familiar step in the foyer. She hadn’t seen him for a week, although Eve had reported that he would attend the gift-opening on Christmas morning. Both apparently had agreed to be on good behavior for the sake of the children.

‘It’s a hell of a Christmas Eve,’ he said, walking to the armoire and pouring himself a heavy scotch.

‘To better Christmases,’ he said, raising his glass. She raised her glass in response.

‘Everybody’s gone,’ she said, sensing her own deliberate mischief. He finished off the scotch and poured another.

‘I saw two Italian pictures. Down and Dirty and Bread and Chocolate. The place was nearly empty. Just one or two other losers. I would have seen the pictures over again, but they cleared the theater. Christmas Eve. The projectionist, I suppose, wanted to be home with his family. Home with his family. Such simple joys.’ He sighed and poured himself another drink. He looked up suddenly as if acknowledging her presence for the first time.

‘Why aren’t you home with your family, Ann?’

It was a question she didn’t really want to answer. ‘I guess I’m needed here,’ she whispered.

‘Good for you, Ann. At least you’re needed somewhere. I am apparently needed nowhere. Not even as an audience.’

He finished his drink and squatted beside her. She had seated herself Indian style at the edge of the gifts, watching the fading, flickering lights.

‘I’ll fix those tonight. Wires need some soldering, I guess.’

She stole a view of him in profile, then her eyes lingered. She watched his lips move.

‘Christmas is only for the kids anyhow,’ he said. His lips began to tremble and he could not go on. She put her hand on his arm. Without turning, he put his hand on hers and pressed it.

‘What a bore this must be for you, Ann.’ He turned to look at her. ‘I can’t imagine why you put up with it. I don’t know why I put up with it. None of it makes any sense, you know. Two jackasses rolling around in the mud.’

‘I’m not here to judge.’ She reflected suddenly that that was what she had said to Barbara.

‘You should have been here last Christmas. It was a real old family time. My father made a toast. "You’re a lucky man," he said. "A truly lucky man." He doesn’t understand what’s happened. He thinks I’ve got a mistress and Barbara’s going through change of life. I tell him it’s neither, but he’s out of it. How do you explain this to anybody?’

‘Don’t try. It’s nobody’s business,’ she snapped, surprised at her assertiveness.

‘I think it’s coping with being alone that bugs me the most. The loss of companionship. I think that’s what I miss the most.’

‘You’ll find somebody,’ she said cautiously, her heart pounding. Notice me, she begged him in her heart.

‘That’s out for now. Goldstein says I should cool it. I never thought my life would one day be controlled by an ex-rabbi with halitosis.’ His arm played around to her shoulder.

‘Dear Ann,’ he said. ‘You’re like the only anchor in this damned, stormy sea. I don’t know how we’d survive this without you being here. And the kids. What a godsend you’ve been to the kids. I’ll bet you never bargained for this when you first came here. It was one of Barbara’s better decisions, I guess.’

The house was quiet. To Ann it seemed as if the earth had stopped rotating. She dared not move. His nearness was like an electric current pulsing through her. She felt his breath against her ear.

‘I haven’t had a single moment of solace,’ he said. ‘I can’t seem to wake up from the nightmare.’

For once she resisted caution, yielding to her body’s responses. She turned to face his lips, her eyes probing his. His face moved closer and his lips reached for hers. She felt his tongue move inside her mouth, reach for hers, and, finding it, move and caress it. Her fingers reached for his hair. It had been a particular detail of her fantasy, her fingers entwining themselves in his beautiful, wavy salt-and-pepper hair.

She felt his urgency, the pressing hardness, as his hands groped upward along her thighs, knowing as she opened to him how deeply she wanted him to take her and enter her as she engulfed him. Just as she touched him she felt the shuddering response in herself, startling in its ferocity, like thousands of caressing fingers on every nerve.

His sudden disengagement surprised her, a wrenching movement, and a moment later she heard what had apparently startled him, the front door opening. She was on her knees immediately, straightening her clothes as she kneeled, fussing with the gifts, not turning when she sensed Barbara behind her. Her heart had leaped to her throat and Oliver had moved into the shadows behind the armoire, just out of her vision.

‘That, you, Ann?’ Barbara called. Ann turned briefly in response.

‘Just rearranging the gifts.’

She felt Barbara’s eyes on her back. Please don’t let her go any further, she begged, invoking God.

‘I’m dead on my feet,’ Barbara said. ‘Did you finish the mix for the pastry meat loaves?’

‘Yes.’

‘Kids not home yet?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Well, tomorrow is Christmas. I dread it.’

Ann could feel the tension in the room. She held her breath, frightened that Barbara might want to talk. She did not think she could bear it.

‘Better get some sleep.’ Barbara yawned, backing away. With relief, Ann listened to Barbara’s footsteps ascending the stairs. It was only after the bedroom door had closed that Oliver stepped from the shadows.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

Reaching out, Ann grabbed his hand and kissed the center of the palm. He quickly drew it away in what seemed like a gesture of rejection. Or rebuke. He tiptoed into the foyer, opening the front door, creating the impression that he had just come into the house. He hurried up the stairs. Straining to listen, she heard him turn the lock of his door.

She stayed in the library a long time, kneeling on the floor before the Christmas tree. Had Barbara seen them? She would not let such speculation intrude on her happiness.

Her eyes drifted upward toward the weak, flickering lights. It was only then that she realized that she had not reminded him to fix them.