The View From Penthouse B - By Elinor Lipman Page 0,60
engaged in their own project: writing, performing, Visual Artist or yet to be classified—but not a Mime, as I am.
26
Doesn’t Sound Like You
BECAUSE I WAS familiar with Margot’s entire professional team—her internist, gynecologist, dermatologist, ophthalmologist, lawyer, and dentist—I knew that a Dr. Sadler (Post-it reminder of a 3:45 appointment on our bathroom mirror) was an addition to the lineup.
“You’re seeing a doctor today?” I asked, as we passed in the hallway, a towel draped over her arm and a turban covering her hair.
She stopped. Didn’t answer.
“A Dr. Sadler?” I prompted.
“Oh, him! That’s right. This afternoon.”
“Everything okay?”
“He’s a shrink,” she said. “What are you up to today?”
“The usual. Laundry. Fiddling with my résumé. A perusal of the classifieds.”
“Good. We both could use a job. Even if it’s at McDonald’s.”
I agreed: yes, that was true, because we said the same thing every morning. The topic of her shrink appointment receded until she was standing in the kitchen, waiting for her bagel to toast. “Dr. Sadler is a couples counselor,” she announced. “And I don’t want you to think it’s about getting back together. It’s about being more amicably divorced.”
“You’re going with Charles?”
“I have to. This guy only sees the couple together. I said I’d go once.”
I said, “Boy, are you nice.”
Now at the open refrigerator, with her back to me, she shrugged. “It’s fifty minutes out of my fairly pointless existence. He’s paying, and then he’s taking me to lunch at the restaurant of my choice.”
“Toward what end?” I asked.
Margot said, “Maybe I’d be easier to live with.”
I had her repeat that sentence before I managed to ask, “Are you considering living with Charles?”
“No! Easier for you to live with! You and Anthony! Don’t you think I’ve turned into an angry, sarcastic shrew since Charles moved into the building?”
“No,” I said. “I most certainly do not. When you rant and rave about Charles, Anthony and I know it’s about him. We don’t take it personally.” In truth, we may even have enjoyed it. An angry Margot was a sight to behold. Anthony had discovered that laughing during her fuming encouraged her to ratchet up her performance.
This seemed to give Margot pause. Had her anger not leeched into the atmosphere of penthouse B? And had she been sold a bill of goods by the very object and subject of her occasional ill humor?
I said, “To me, there are clear signs that Charles wants you back—the wine, the ham, the fish? It doesn’t take a marriage counselor to see that all those gifts were stand-ins for the long-stemmed red roses he wanted to send.”
Margot didn’t argue back. She said, “People change.” And then volunteered: “The guy’s subspecialty is sexual addiction.”
Fortunately or unfortunately, she pronounced those two words just as Anthony of the acute hearing opened the door to his room.
“Did I hear ‘sexual addiction’?” he asked, accompanied by a quick swing and dismount from his chin-up bar. “It’s not even eight a.m. and you’ve already made my day. I pray it’s someone I know.”
“It’s Gwen,” said Margot, causing both to laugh a little too heartily.
I said, “The correct answer is that she and Charles are seeing a marriage counselor today—”
“Who happens to list sexual addiction therapy on his website, period. I never said that’s why Charles picked him,” Margot told us.
Anthony, as he palpated the lumpy bag of bagels defrosting next to the toaster, noted, “I don’t believe our friend’s legal problems were ever pinned on sexual addiction. Not even by his defense team.”
Was that a derisive “Ha!” coming from Margot, now seated at the kitchen island?
“Do tell,” said Anthony. “Is he actually tomcatting around or just bragging about it?”
Margot said, “No comment.”
“Rather nice of you to accompany him,” said Anthony.
“One time only. And the office is a block away from Le Cirque.”
Anthony asked if they had had counseling the last time.
“Last time, meaning when I threw him out?”
“Correct.”
“No! I refused.”
“That doesn’t sound like you,” I said.
“How could it ever have been fixed? Did we have issues? Did we need help communicating? Was the problem fifty-fifty, his and mine, or was it one hundred per cent Charles in the headlines for screwing his patients? Who needed bullshit marriage counseling? I didn’t even want to be in the same room with him.”
“But now it seems doable?” Anthony asked.
“He wore me down. I’m not going because I want us to get back together.”
We waited, but she didn’t explain further. “Then why are you doing it?” I asked. “It can’t be all about an expensive lunch.”