29 - Melting
At that time, moving from her living room to her bedroom,
the whole situation was still largely a mystery to me, and it wasn’t until that
phone call three decades later did the final pieces of this human tragedy fall
into place.
How Robert, the love of her life, completely betrayed her,
leaving her with an emptiness inside she could not fill, and how much hope she
had held out to live a normal life, to become someone’s bride, and mother
someone’s children.
I didn’t know the truth about Robert until I talked to the
Hackensack firefighter, who had hoped to replace Robert in her life.
Although Peggy was a popular girl in high school – when she
actually attended that is – Robert stood tall among all the other boys who
craved her affections.
He was the great love in Peggy’s life, and despite her
worldliness, Robert remained an icon of love, a high school sweetheart she so
adored she could not let him out of her sight, going everywhere he did, being
with him always, one of those remarkable romances everybody in high school
noticed, and something that appeared to have survived graduation the way most
high school romances generally did not.
She had built her whole life around him, only to have a
landslide bring her down (one of her favorite songs by Fleetwood Mac because of
it).
I never learned the specific details, except that it became
clear the dancing played a huge role in their demise, Robert – as the
firefighter later told me – getting angry about her showing off for other men,
his intense jealousy leading to violence and when she broke it off, stalking.
Drugs, alcohol and the fast life did the rest. By the time I
met her, the naïve girl had vanished – except the one I saw deep into the night
when she cried out from her dreams.
While awake, she pretended she had control of her life; when
sleeping, her world shook with pain and regret.
I was confused by her, and still felt a bit irritated by her
making fun of me, a smoldering fire inside me even as she set up the portable
TV and situated it on a TV cart at the foot of her bed.
A fire had been lit inside me, making the eventual explosion
inevitable.
As Peggy returned to the kitchen to make her last drink of
the night, I sat on the edge of the bed fuming.
I disliked being called stupid – even if she meant all men,
not me in particular.
Most of the fist fights I got into in high school came as a
result of some vicious bully-type trying to impress girls by putting me down.
I also didn’t like that idea that I was merely one piece in
the jigsaw puzzle of Peggy’s life, which she was trying to figure out whether
or not it fit, and whether or not to keep me around or discard me.
I didn’t merely want to “get lucky” the way her friend’s
husband had. I wanted all this to mean something more than just a casual
affair, not yet realizing that she wanted the exact opposite.
Her Bobby (as she called him in high school) had ruined her
for other men (as had the miscarriage which had caused her to abandon the fire
fighter, who continued to love her long after she likely forgot him, loved her
even when he married somebody else.
“My wife called Peggy a whore,” he told me. “She wasn’t a
whore. She was someone special”
That much I agreed with, even though I studied her closely
when she returned to the bedroom with her glass, each of her moves as
choreographed as a Broadway musical, a kind of life dance of established
routines she needed to go through in order to get through this moment in time.
She put down her glass, puffed up her pillows, spread the
covers and eased her feet down under them, her fingers reaching for the remote
control to the black and white TV set before she motioned for me to settle
nearer her on the bed.
In came here cat, strolling across the bottom of the bed as
if she was royalty, too, golden eyes dilated in the dim light so that they
seemed like a mirrored reflection of a lunar eclipse. She eased up to my side,
tilted her head and rubbed against the back of my hand.
“Jessie likes you,” Peggy said. “She wants you to play.”
Peggy meant for me to play music.
I wasn’t in the mood and said as much.
“Maybe later,” I mumbled, drawing Peggy’s scolding glance,
somewhat mocking, although she also had a serious look in her eyes.
“I mean she really likes you,” Peggy said. “She doesn’t take
to most of the men I bring up here.”
This was the wrong remark at the exactly the wrong time,
stirring up in me the froth of already agitation.
“I suppose she only takes to guitar players,” I said,
snidely.
“No,” Peggy said either missing my tone or deliberately overlooking
it. “She likes harmonica players, too.”
Then, she said something about a man she’d invited up, but
the hum of increasing rage in my ears blocked it out.
The fuse, which was burning low already flared up and burned
faster, fueled by just one more story about how interchangeable men were to
her.
I glanced at the door in the kitchen, and wondered how I
could escape before the whole thing blew up.
My emotions were a confused tangle in me, a mingling of
jealousy and indignation, which I could not unravel easily.
After a few years of complacency,
I had assumed myself free of petty jealousy, only to find myself overpowered
with jealousy again, by ghosts, Bobby’s ghost, the harmonica player’s ghost,
and the ghosts of all the other men I imagined marching through Peggy’s life
before – and after me.
“Maybe I should go,” I said.
“Shush! Ronnie’s on,” Peggy said, waving her hand at me as
she indicated the talking head of Ronald Reagan just coming onto the evening
news.
Her forefinger pumped up the remote’s volume control so that
Reagan’s voice filled the room.
Peggy had told me previously that she had registered as a Republican
and had even worked for the Garfield Republican committee during the last
campaign.
I had not taken it seriously, nor many of her other claims,
such as her working as a volunteer for United way, even though her calendar on
the kitchen wall indicated numerous similar appointments, including the first
names of other men, including mine, though most of the dates remained vacant.
Seeing the look in her eyes as she looked at Reagan on the
screen did more to verify the truth than any of her previous statements.
She looked at this picture on the TV with the same adoration
she’d reserved for picture of John Wayne, and Reagan was even still alive.
This amazed and surprised me.
I had gone to college with people her age who still retained
the liberal values of the 1960s, as for the most part, had I.
Could I actually fall in love with a practicing Republican?
Apparently, I had.
Peggy said she would never take down the large American Flag
she had put up on her fire escape, saying it belonged to a family member who
had died in combat as a hero.
His name was Peter Yacyniak, who had perished in the
Normandy Beach invasion in 1944, a 248-pound, five-foot-seven-inch machine shop
worker who memory was enshrined along with others in a World War II monument at
the end of Harrison Avenue, a spot where I saw Peggy during the memorial day
service two months later.
The flag later missing from the fire escape was my first
clue Peggy had vacated the Harrison Avenue apartment and relocated to her
sister’s house on Lincoln Avenue in Little Falls later in 1987.
At that moment in that bed, Ronnie was just one more
annoyance, and one that pushed me over the edge.
“You ought to wise up about him,” I said.
“About Ronnie?”
“He’s a phony.”
“Please, Alfred, don’t
do this.”
I just couldn’t stop my mouth once it started.
“He’s all blood and guts as long as it’s not his life on the
line,” I said. “That also goes for your pal on the wall in the other room.”
“You’re pushing things, Alfred,” Peggy said, pushing herself
away from me, her back to the backboard of the bed as she glared – the intensity
of her rage exploding in her eyes.
“I’m just stating the truth,” I said.
“As you see it,” she said, the rage in her eyes tainted a little by a look of
hurt.
“I’m not the only one who feels that way,” I said. “Much of
the world thinks Reagan is crazy.”
“Because the rest of the world is jealous,” Peggy exploded. “He
stands up for America.”
We both knew the argument between us had nothing to do with
Ronald Reagan.
I was out of control, and desperate to find some way to plug
this flow of undeserved attacks on her before it ended everything between us.
But I couldn’t stop ranting about Reagan and she started to rant back. Her eyes
showed her rage. I did not need to see my face in a mirror to know I had a
similar look.
A thought occurred to me. Perhaps I was doing this
deliberately (if unconsciously), trying to end this thing between us,
suspecting that sooner or later she would come to the conclusion that I did not
deserve her, could not afford to be her sugar daddy, and that she would dump me
the moment she found someone who could keep her in the life style she craved.
She had made so many references to how she had lived the
high life before I met her, and how I did not compare to those who she’d been
with before, and I felt utterly insignificant, unworthy to even be in her presence.
Why did she bother associating with me? I could not afford
to supply her with cocaine. Why hadn’t she found some wealthy Republican who
could take care of her in a manner to which she was accustomed.
I pictured the restaurant she had brought me to, the mob
place with black window awnings and cloth napkins on their tables.
I told her she hadn’t a clue as to what went on in other
countries.
“I’ve seen them for myself,” she barked back.
“When? How? On Vacation?” I asked.
“Sort of,” she said. “
“Did you go for the company you work for?”
“No,” she said, hesitating. “I went with a friend.”
“A rich friend, no doubt.”
“A poor one wouldn’t have been able to let me tag along.”
“So, you witness poverty from the back seat of a limousine –
real educational.”
“How I saw it doesn’t matter,” she said coldly. “Maybe you
should go out into the world and see it for yourself.”
“I don’t have a sugar daddy.”
Her drink, ice cubes and all, exploded on my face, contents
dripping down my cheeks and jaw and onto my shirt, ice cubes bouncing first on
me, then the bed and finally on the floor.
“Now, look what you made me do,” she said. “I wasted a Good
drink on you. The least you can do is pick up the ice.”
The anger was gone.
The vodka and pineapple juice had washed it out of me.
I grinned like a fool, then got down on my knees to fetch
the ice cubes off the carpet.
Peggy’s cat eyed me from the corner of the room, looking
skeptical but not surprised, having no doubt seen worse in her life time here.
She had seen the fury of Peggy’s true love, Robert.
The ice cubes melted in my hand as I searched the room for a
place to put them, and finally deposited them in Peggy’s glass ash tray on the night
table next to the bed.
Peggy, who had gone to the kitchen to refresher her drink,
returned looking and acting as eloquent as a queen, almost even smiling – that is
until she saw where I put the ice cubes.
“You put ice cube in my ash tray,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “So what?”
“Ice cubes melt and then you have water, and I don’t want
water in my ash tray. Empty it.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I am not kidding,” Peggy said. “Take the thing into the
kitchen and dump the cubes in the sink.”
“And if I don’t want to?”
Peggy’s painted eyebrows rose.
“Do what you’re told, Alfred,” she said.
I sighed.
“All right,” I said, but didn’t get up. Instead, I grabbed
the ashtray and threw it into the kitchen, where it hit the wall near the sink.
The ice cubes clattered on the kitchen floor.
Before the last of the ice ceased moving, Peggy’s second
drink hit me in the face – more ice cubes bounding off me onto the bed and then
onto the rug.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
“You threw my ash tray. Why did you throw my ashtray?”
“You said you wanted it emptied, so I emptied it.”
“I meant for you to get up and empty it.”
“That was too hard.”
“Well, now you can pick up these ice cubes along with the
ones melting on the kitchen floor and walk them all to the kitchen sink.”
I didn’t move.
“Well?” she asked, tapping her now empty glass with her
sharp fingernails.
I started to rise, but not to pick up the ice cubes. I put
my hands on her shoulders and pushed her down onto the bed.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked.
“What does it look like?” I said, easing one hand under her
t-shirt, my cold and sticky fingers drawing a shudder from her as I cupped her
breast.
“Alfred, I demand you take your hands off…”
I smothered her mouth with my mouth, my tongue easing in and
out of in and out between her lips, as my hand continued down and settled
between her legs.
It took some doing to undress myself, but somehow, I managed
it, and managed to ease myself inside her, no fumbles this time, no outrage
from Peggy. I was gentle. I eased in and off very slowly, halting the moment
she looked in pain, then starting again, this time at her insistence.
“Just remember,” she whispered breathlessly. “Don’t get me
pregnant.”
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