Pregnancies

"I'm at home with a Jewish man this week," Phaedra remarked, hoping the casualness of the revelation would shock Madelene. In this, she was disappointed.

"How exotic," Madelene allowed, sighing. "And what does Bernard think of that?"

Phaedra brought the cigarette holder to her plum lips, drawing in the smoke. She considered for a moment, then released it heartily, like a steam locomotive confined in a marshalling yard and anxious to get underway. "Who knows what Bernard thinks? He's in Zurich." Belatedly, she asked, "You don't mind if I smoke, do you?"

Madelene shook her head slightly. After fifteen years of being asked two minutes too late, why should she begin to take offence now? "I notice you're not at home now, though." She lifted the Manhattan to her lips, peering over it.

"No, I needed to break away," Phaedra moaned. "Thank God you were available, otherwise I think I'd be haunting the newsstands or something."

The waiter, who had been standing stoically at their table for some time, wore the pinched, sour look of a man trapped in a cramped elevator with a flatulent moose: nothing he can say will do him the slightest bit of good, and can in fact only make things worse. He waited.

Finally the doors opened to enable his escape in the form of Phaedra deigning to address to him a single word. "Scampi," she said, flicking the menu up stiffly.

"Is that your order or your obit?" Madelene breezed. Neither of them noticed the faint upward turn of the corners of their waiter's mouth.

Phaedra hurried to take another draw on her cigarette and immediately cast the smoke into exile before condemning Madelene's joke at her expense as "Boring."

"Well, not nearly as exciting as spending the week in bed with a Jewish man," Madelene enthused. She slightly improved, but only slightly, on Phaedra's rudeness by telling the waiter, "The braised canard, please. And I hope it's better done than last time." The waiter nodded and wordlessly retreated.

There was a gloriously warm overcast to this late spring day as the people crowded past the patio and the traffic lazed its way along the street like sleepy logs carried on a river to some common destination. Madelene sunk a little deeper into the muck of her cocktail and said, "So tell me his name, this Hebrew Lothario of yours."

"Oh, you wouldn't know him," Phaedra waved her cigarette. "Hell, I barely know him. His name's Joel, though. Joel Fine."

"And is he?"

"Is he what?"

"Fine?"

"Oh. He'll do, I suppose. He's an actor. Or hopes to be, or something. I met him backstage at South Pacific last month. We've been keeping a little discreet time, here and there."

"And Bernard doesn't know?"

"Oh, Bernard knows, I'm sure. If not the who, exactly, then the what. He does a lot of 'what' himself, of course. Well, we all do from time to time, don't we."

Madelene made no reply other than a sip. She considerd the traffic and people passing by. "I was surprised when you and Bernard made it official. I always thought you were going to end up with Claude Dennison," Madelene said.

"Claude?" Phaedra sputtered, amused by the notion. "He's Catholic."

"Not so impossible these days," Madelene suggested.

"Oh, please, think about it. All that time playing with beads, getting up and down off your knees like some Latin American peon between revolutions, and you spend your whole life pregnant." She sucked the cigarette holder. "Good Lord, you'd think there'd never been a Reformation. No, Claude was a distraction... nothing more."

"If you say so." Then Madelene dared: "Seemed a prolonged one."

Phaedra blithely shruged one shoulder, untroubled to provide either an explanation or excuse.

"I wonder what Claude is doing these days," Madelene asked her Manhattan.

"Seven years for kiting cheques," Phaedra said.

"No."

"Yes! Trying to paper over a short loan to keep his Hudson dealership afloat. The paper didn't extend quite far enough, though, unfortunately. The cheques bounced before he could put sufficient cash under them to cover their fall."

"That's just tragic," Madelene said.

"Isn't it, though." Phaedra sighed a cloudy, smoky sigh. "What a world." She watched Madelene piloting her drink back and forth between the table and her mouth and frowned. "What is taking so long with that drink?"

"I'm sorry, dear, did you order one? I don't recall that you did."

"Didn't I? How remiss of me."

"I certainly thought so."

"Garçon!" Phaedra wailed, raising her hand and peering over her shoulder. No waiter was in sight. "Damn. Those people are never around when you want them. Always perched on your shoulder when you don't, they vanish into dark corners the minute that you—there you are," she said, as their waiter approached. "I'll have what the lady is drinking."

Again, the mute waiter indicated his comprehension and retreated into the restaurant.

"You know, I kind of envied you Claude," Madelene confessed.

"Go on, did you?" Phaedra actually was aware of this, but it was pleasing to hear it from Madelene herself. "Well, you could have had him."

"Maybe if I'd been Catholic."

"You? Catholic? My dear, you're hardly the type; you're no brood mare."

The corners of Madelene's mouth pulled slightly and she glanced away.

Phaedra cursed herself. "Dear, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way. I know how hard you tried and I admire you for it." Pity, actually, but admire is a much kinder verb. "Surely your heart was in it..."

Madelene nodded softly, still not looking at her.

"I know how much you wanted children," Phaedra beckoned, thinking guiltily of Richie, nicely out of the way in a boarding school.

"Not as much as Leonard," Madelene observed.

"Still..."

Madelene finally looked up to meet Phaedra's eyes. "It wasn't meant to be. Not for me, anyway..."

"Maddy, are you sure it was you and not Leonard? Men have their gremlins too..."

In response, Madelene returned to the well of her Manhattan, dipping her lips into it. Rising from it, she asked, "Do you remember Sandra Foster?"

"Marilyn's daughter? The debutant?" Okay, she's 26. My, how time flies...

"She's having his baby."

Phaedra blinked.

"He's asked me for a divorce."

Phaedra shut her eyes. "Bastard," she said softly.

"He was very kind about it. He explained how it came about. Told me how sorry he was. But... you know how much Leonard wanted to be a father."

Phaedra had had no real idea just how much, until now. A million things to say flashed through her mind; you're too good for him, better off without him, plenty of fish in the sea... none of them appropriate. Neither was, she realized now, her empty boasting of skewering a loveless marriage that meant nothing to her.

"Maddy, I'm sorry. I should have my teeth torn out for some of the things I've said today..."

"It's alright, you were just trying to be interesting," Madelene smiled wanly. "Oh Phaedra, what am I going to do?"

Phaedra set her jaw firmly, as though to squeeze back any semblance of tears. She said, with the force she might have used speaking to the mirror, "Start living again!" She held up a hand when Madelene began to protest, then reached across the table to take Madelene's in it. "Say your good-byes, take a breath, and start to live again." She knew how feebly inadequate it sounded. Nevertheless, it was true.

"But my life is over, Phaedra."

"No, it isn't, Maddy; it's changing." She wanted to tell her like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, but that hardly seemed the appropriate simile for this moment. And anyway, only the fullness of time could reveal whether it was that kind of transformation or not. But a transformation it definitely was, and so she left it at that.

The waiter arrived with Phaedra's Manhattan. She dug into her pocketbook and held out a bill far exceeding the value of the order so far. "Waiter," she said, catching his eye, "two more of these. Please." It was a moment where kindness, any kindness at all, was the foundation upon which the whole world tottered. Maybe, she reflected, maybe it always was.

"Yes, madam, at once," nodded the waiter, cordially failing to notice Madelene's melancholy, and he retreated once more into the restaurant, that great dark womb of comforting food and blissfully obliviating libations.