by
Elise Marenson
Connie Walling got into bed with Gérard Depardieu. He lived next door to her provincial retreat in Languedoc. For weeks, they had been timidly (furtively) eying each other across their common hedge while Connie watered her orchid garden and Gérard chopped wood next to his barn. This was the night they couldn’t hold back their passion any longer.
Connie Walling had been riding the train from Stamford to Grand Central for the last three years, ever since her second son had been packed away to boarding school in the ninth grade. On Tuesday evenings, she met her husband Taylor, Buck to his friends,
at a trendy restaurant in town to keep up the illusion that their marriage was as vital as she thought it should be. Her mother and dad had stayed together long enough to sell
the house in Rye and buy a condominium in Phoenix. Her mother had finally succumbed to asthma out West, and Dad became the star attraction to all the widows who signed up for his poolside financial planning seminars.
Connie opened her eyes to see the dingy tenements with the potted begonias on the window sills, grayish curtains overlooking the elevated train tracks. She wondered if
real people really lived there. It was a thought too depressing to pursue, so she closed her eyes again to return to St. James Palace where she was having lunch with Prince Charles. (Camilla was away in Scotland; she was no homewrecker)
Connie’s cubicle in the public relations department of the conglomerate headquartered on Park Avenue had no window, windows being reserved for the male executives with seniority. She had not insisted that her name be put on the door; that would have been
a concession to the hum-drum society she didn’t belong in (she had always understood from her dad that she was special). After the third or fourth month at work, she accepted that there would be no office romance like in The Best of Everything. That cold truth might be a blessing in disguise since she didn’t want to end up jilted and have to throw herself out of a moving Lincoln.
“Hey, how’re ya doin’?” said George of the graphics department, inserting his head
in her doorway.
“Not bad, not bad,” Connie said.
She had managed right away to pick up the office small talk, the stock phrases of pleasantries. “How was your weekend?” “Ooo, I like your new haircut. Who did it?”
“I can’t get rid of my cold because the weather’s so crazy.” She considered herself
above the bitching that went on. “Doesn’t anybody do anything right in this place?”
“Mr. Graham is such an idiot. I’m doing all his work.” “Lenore screwed up all
my accounts.”
“PR,” Connie said, picking up her phone.
“Hi, hon.” It was Buck.
“What’s up?”
“Did you remember that Friday night I have that guy coming in from Houston?
We have to do dinner with him and his wife.”
“Saturday we have to be up at Andy’s school. It’s the final game of the season.”
“No problem. We’ll tell Houston to make it early. Gotta run,” Buck said.
“Are you coming home for dinner?”
“Not sure yet. We have a five o’clock meeting. Then I’ll probably have to have
drinks with mergers and acquisitions.”
“Okay. See ya later.”
“Hello,” Connie said, picking up another phone line.
“Good morning. My name is Tom Lorenzo. I rep Intellit Communications.
We handle corporate video systems for inter-office communication.”
“Uh-huh. And what can I do for you?”
“Test our newest product on the market. Colgate-Palmolive, Westin Aviation, Eaton are just some of the companies that have already installed our systems for in-house meetings and client presentations.”
“Sounds real interesting,” Connie said. “Why don’t you send me your sales packet? Mark it to my attention.”
“Will do. Actaully, I was just calling to touch base with you. Perhaps, we can get together for a few minutes?”
“Sure. Let me take a look at the literature first, and then maybe we can set up some time next week,” Connie said.
“Great. I’ll give you a call Monday.”
“Looking forward to it. Bye,” Connie said.
Connie didn’t mind the train ride home. Today she would be talking with Bill Moyers for his PBS series on great minds. “It is no longer a question of free market versus Socialism. That argument is obsolete at the dawn of this new century,” she had been telling Bill all week. “We must reinvent our society which has become less and less
a populist democracy.” “Is grass roots democracy what the founding fathers had in mind?” Bill asked her. He loved to be a contrarian.
Connie paid the cab driver. Buck’s car wasn’t in the driveway. She picked up
the mail lying in the foyer. The United Way, the bill from the gardener, the TV Guide,
a letter from Sam from college. She went upstairs to her bedroom. The first thing she always did when she came home was to change out of her suit and high heels. She had
a million things to do. Answer Christmas cards from four months ago, write to Sam.
She was forever in the middle of Tender is the Night.
She lay down on the bed, without pulling the bedspread down. After three years,
she was not used to the stillness at the end of the day. With the boys gone, she had always planned to make up for the years she didn’t have when she married Buck at age twenty-one. Shotgun wedding.
“I didn’t do it that way, vous savez.” Simone de Beauvoir had seated herself at the edge of the ottoman. She had an air of confidence that made Connie envious.
“You didn’t think things through properly. You sacrificed too much your own needs for your children and your husband,” Madame de Beauvoir said.
“She’s just jealous.” Dale Evans, wearing her cowgirl hat, had lodged herself side saddle on the window sill. “Roy and I had seven children and then we went and adopted a whole bunch more. You, you only had two. Piece o’ cake,” Dale said.
“All God’s children are mine,” Mother Teresa said, sitting cross-legged on the floor.
“I had children, but I didn’t let that stop me from having my passions,” Joan Crawford said, stretching out on Buck’s side of the bed. “I really think you can have it all, the family and the career, I mean.”
“That’s not fair. You’re a movie star,” Mother Teresa said. “It was easy for you. Personally, I didn’t want the children or the passion.”
“I didn’t have enough time for children. But I knew passion,” Joan of Arc said, standing erect next to Simone.
“Let’s try to show a little more compassion and lovingkindness to Connie,”
Mother Teresa said.
“Mrs. Browning, you understand the beauty of love,” Joan Crawford said.
“Yes, I believe I do. Robert and I were totally devoted to one another,”
Elizabeth Browning said, in the supine on Buck’s recliner.
“But, Miss Barrett Browning, we don’t all get that lucky. If only I could have had
a great romantic man like your Robert come and rescue me,” Connie said.
“Quelle horreur!” Simone de Beauvoir said. “A woman is perfectly capable of standing on her own two feet.”
“You can’t trust a man,” said Eleanor Roosevelt who had joined Simone on the ottoman. “A woman has to throw herself body and soul into a project of her liking. Something she believes in.”
“But that’s exactly what I did,” Joan of Arc said. “Body and soul.”
“Love your fellowman and your soul will be saved,” Mother Teresa said.
“I loved my fellowman,” Joan Crawford said.
“I love my kids and I suppose I loved my husband. But sometimes I feel so empty,” Connie said.
“Write a sonnet. That’s what I would do,” Elizabeth Browning said.
“Bunk! The family is the core and foundation of American life. What else can you ask for? Roy and I rode side by side for years and I never regretted one day of it,”
Dale Evans said.
“C’est vrai. But you rode several paces behind him,” Simone de Beauvoir said.
“My dear, dear girl. I was a shy, retiring youngster,” said Eleanor Roosevelt, coming over to take Connie’s hand. “There was nothing I thought I was cut out for. A real late bloomer. Your time will come.”