Madam Page 14

  When they’re young and beautiful, they work for me.

  Alla, however, lived with her parents. The money she made as an escort went into a savings account. She was going to be prepared when she graduated with her M.B.A. and opened her own business. But in the meantime she lived at home, and her father always answered the phone.

  I had become her friend, Catherine. Catherine and Alla apparently studied together quite a lot, especially in the evenings. Once he asked me—in such heavily accented English that I could barely understand what he was saying—what classes we were in together, and I said something vague about contracts and start-ups, which he in turn probably didn’t understand either. As far as I was concerned, our level of communication was just fine.

  I wouldn’t have jumped through so many hoops if Alla hadn’t been so profitable. She wasn’t particularly pleasant to the guys she saw. In fact, she had this cold, haughty air that certainly wouldn’t make me want to sleep with her. But then again, I haven’t got that much in common with my clients. They certainly couldn’t get enough of her. “Is Alla working tonight?” was the first thing out of a whole lot of people for a good year and a half running.

  She didn’t have a car. And not only did she require a driver, but a driver who didn’t mind taking her on side errands for no extra compensation that I could see. But I didn’t ask too many questions. It was inconvenient for me, though. Instead of dropping Alla off after a call and being available to drive someone else to a call, a driver could end up spending all sorts of extra time doing Alla’s bidding.

  If a client even looked at her the wrong way, she’d refuse to see him again—or else would see him and require a surcharge, which, to my utter astonishment, most of them paid without a peep. And remember, these are guys who complain about everything. But not about Alla.

  I liked to book her in advance when possible, to avoid the Cerberus that she lived with at home. Or is it the Sphinx, with its endless riddles? Perhaps this is a more appropriate mythological analogy for my relationship with Alla’s father. Whatever it was, when I could escape the grilling, I was happy to do so.

  She was usually amenable to scheduling in advance, not that that meant anything. Prearranged calls are not seen as written in stone, I have found, by either the client or the girl—but especially not by the girl. Sometimes Alla showed up for prescheduled calls, sometimes she didn’t. She never apologized—jshe ust took her automatic forgiveness and acceptance for granted.

  Whenever that grated on my nerves, I reminded myself how much money Alla was bringing in and bit my tongue. I can be as acerbic as the best of them, but I’m not stupid.

  She quit without bothering to tell me. It was the client who casually mentioned that he wouldn’t be using the service anymore; he was marrying Alla.

  I did mention that a lot of them are masochists, didn’t I?

  The Road to Happiness

  So who, exactly, are my clients?

  Clients are the proverbial Everyman. They come in all shapes and sizes, all rungs on the economic ladder, all personality types.

  What they are, mostly, is lonely.

  I have clients, and had clients from day 1, who will just call me and ask, “What’s going on?” They don’t want a call; they don’t even necessarily get the voyeuristic thrill of finding out who is working and what they look like. Mostly, they just want to talk to me.

  I used to find that amazing, that there are guys so lonely out there that they think of their service providers as their friends. That when they need to talk to somebody, they don’t have anybody else to call but somebody who makes money off their loneliness. I remember an episode of Frasier when Niles, newly separated from Maris, is struggling (for about the hundredth time) with whether or not to tell Daphne about his feelings for her.

  “So,” Niles is saying on the telephone, “you think that I should go ahead and tell her? Yes, yes, that makes sense. Thanks for your advice.”

  He is interrupted by the doorbell.

  “Oh, I have to go,” Niles says into the phone. “So, okay, that’ll be a one-year subscription, and I’ll take the travel alarm clock.”

  I remember watching that episode with my mouth hanging open. Niles was just like one of my clients, I thought, asking me—a person who is in his life on a purely commercial basis—for advice, expecting me to provide caring and support in times of need and indecision.

  I used to think that was pathetic. Long ago, I even used to laugh at these people.

  Now? Well, I’ve gotten a lot more empathetic. The Dalai Lama says that the true route to happiness is through compassion—and life is proving him right, as it has a tendency to do. I may have mourned not having grown up Catholic, but if I have any faith and practice at all in my life now, it’s Buddhist. The route to happiness is through compassion. It’s through feeling what the other person is feeling, and knowing, with absolute certainty and conviction, that it’s really only a quirk of fate that he’s in his shoes and you’re in yours.

  There was a song back in the folk-singing sixties that I remember my mother singing, sometimes, when she used to shampoo my long tangled hair on Saturday nights.

  Show me the whiskey stains on the floor

  Show me the drunkard as he stumbles out the door

  And I’ll show you, young man

  With so many reasons why

  There but for fortune go you or I

  You or I.

  I’m not sure that she ever got the point of it. If my mother ever empathized with anybody, she wouldn’t have been able to express it in any way, certainly not in her circles, but the song taught me something. Just because I’m on this end of the phone and they’re on the other doesn’t mean that I am any better, smarter, or more together than any of my clients.

  They may be messed up now, but I’ve been pretty messed up myself, so who is to say if either of us has it more together than the other?

  We’re all the same, in the end. The road to happiness is through compassion, and that’s where my faith is these days, in knowing that any of us can fail, or fall, at any time. And even when we don’t, we’re surely no better than those who have.

  I was in a gallery on Newbury Street looking at some Asian artwork when I turned a corner and saw a Ming vase. Suddenly, all I could smell was furniture polish. There was something there, something I couldn’t quite remember, a tip-of-the-tongue feeling. Ming vases and furniture polish—and then I had it.

  Standing in the hallway of my parents’ house on South Battery Street, next to a table, smelling the furniture polish. The housekeeper must have just cleaned that morning. Smelling that furniture polish and listening to muffled voices talking inside the room. My father dying.

  My father dying, and asking for me. I had that to hold onto—but there was more. I narrowed my eyes, looking at the vase. There was something about it… .

  I was standing in the hallway and the others had left, the doctor still talking to my mother in low, concerned tones, the two men in business suits following in their wake, grown-ups as usual taking no more notice of me.

  The bedroom door was shut. I wanted to go in, I could feel it as though it were happening now, that closed door tugging at my heart, pulling me toward it… . I took a step, my hand going to the knob—it was glass, the knob was made of glass, and as I touched it, my mother’s voice: “Abby! Come down here!”

  I pulled my hand back as quickly as if it had been burned. “Yes, ma’am,” I called. I didn’t move.

  “Abby! Did you hear me, child? I mean now!”

  I stood in the hallway, indecisive, looking at the door. Daddy was in there, and if I opened the door, he would want to see me. If I opened it, I wouldn’t have to be brave anymore, I could cry and cry and cry and Daddy wouldn’t mind, because he was just as sad about dying and leaving me as I was about him, I just knew it. Daddy wouldn’t mind that they had told me not to go; Daddy would tell –

  “Abigail!”

  “Yes, ma’am!” I shrieked, turning aw
ay from the door one last time. The vase was sitting on the table, priceless, important. Things, I had been taught, were very important.

  With all of my strength, I picked up the vase and hurled it to the floor.

  The Most Important Person

  After I had been in business for almost ten years, I was asking myself questions about the future. Well, not about the future as a generality, but my future.

  I was popular. I was well known. An article about me had appeared in Boston Magazine. Not about me as Abby, of course: that was my secret. The articles were about me as Peach, everything was about me as Peach.

  Bartenders in the hottest clubs knew me by name. I was making good money, I was independent, I was happy. Or rather, I should have been happy.

  Benjamin wasn’t happy, and was making that very clear.

  “Hey, Abby, I’m thinking about going into business with this guy at school, when we graduate, I mean. Open a business out in California.”

  California. My stomach contracted in panic. “Why not here?”

  He shrugged. “He’s from out there, and there’s a lot of work. Victorians in San Francisco, you know, stuff like that.”

  Frightened, my initial reaction was to become difficult, prim. I’m revolting when I go into lecture mode, and I only do it when I’m scared. “That doesn’t make sense. There’s a lot more restoration work to do in the East. There have been buildings here a lot longer.”

  He hardly spared me a glance. We were eating brunch at the Swisshotel at Lafayette Place and he had the newspaper open next to his croissant and freshly squeezed orange juice. He was paying it as much attention as he was me. “I don’t know why, but the work is there,” he said, briefly, his eyes scanning the headlines. “This guy has a lot of contacts, too, somewhere near Morro Bay.”

  I was twisting my napkin in my lap. “So what about me?”

  He folded the paper with deliberation, took a sip of coffee, and sat back before he finally looked at me. “What do you mean?”

  “What about me? What about us?” I was dangerously close to whining.

  Benjamin appeared to think about it for a moment. “I’m not so sure there is an us, Abby,” he said, finally. “It’s you, and me when you want me to be there. That was fine for a while, that was a lot of fun, don’t get me wrong. But I’m ready to grow up now.”

  “What are you talking about?” I knew exactly what he was talking about. “You’re the one who’s always decided when to come and go. You’re the one who won’t move in with me.”

  He smiled, but there wasn’t a lot of warmth in the smile. “I’ve made decisions inside the parameters you’ve left me,” he said. “Face it, Abby: you want me around when the others aren’t there. When your apartment isn’t full of people admiring you. When you’re sad and lonely and hung over, that’s when you want me. The rest of the time, Sid and Court are company enough for you. The rest of the time, you have more important people to spend your time with.”

  “That isn’t true! There’s no one more important than you!” I hadn’t known it, not really, until that moment.

  “Then prove it.” His voice was cool, detached. He could have been discussing one of the headlines in the newspaper.

  “How?” My hackles went up again. “I’m not moving to California with you!”

  He glanced around, quickly, and I realized that my voice was getting louder, strident, maybe even a little out of control; people were looking at us. “I’m sorry,” I said more quietly, not contrite at all. “But you can’t expect me to move to –“

  “I don’t.” There was a smile playing with the corners of his mouth. “I’m not so sure I want to go there myself.”

  “So you were just saying that to get me going.” I was huffing and puffing again.

  “No.” He leaned across the table and put his hand on top of mine. “Stop it, Abby. Slow down.” He didn’t move his hand, even though I tried to tug mine away. “Just listen, for once, okay? I love you but I don’t love our life together. I need to know that it’s not always going to be like this, and I’m not sure that’s something you can guarantee. I think you like things the way they are, and that’s a problem for me.”

  I was still stuck on the first part of his monologue. “You love me?”

  The smile became real and warm. “Yeah. I love you.”

  “Oh.” I wasn’t trying to move my hand anymore. This was nice. So maybe I’m way too romantic at heart, especially for someone in my profession, but this was still really nice.

  Benjamin wasn’t finished. “But I can’t see us in the future—”

  I hesitated, and looked at him. “You really love me?” I knew what the answer was, but I needed to hear it, again and again if necessary.

  He seemed nonplussed. “Of course I love you, Abby.”

  We stayed like that for a moment, close, feeling each other’s breath. He smelled of buttered toast and coffee. It was an enormously comforting smell. “Okay,” I said, softly.

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay. Whatever you want.” I hesitated. “What exactly is it that you want?” I smiled, seeing the humor in the situation.

  He grinned, the release of tension palpable between us. “Well, I do happen to have a list… . ”

  I cuffed him, playfully. “No list. What do you want?”

  He leaned back. He was enjoying this. “World peace. Season tickets to the Red Sox for the rest of my life, or better still, for them to finally win a frigging championship …”

  “Aha. I knew you were a Boston boy.”

  “Yeah, well … ” He touched my hand again, stroking it, watching what he was doing, then abruptly looked up at me. “I want to be the most important person in your life,” he said, softly.

  “You are.” I hadn’t known it before, but I was telling the truth as I said it.

  “And I want us to live together. Not just me moving into your place—finding a place of our own. Something that is ours.”

  I loved my apartment in Bay Village, loved the skylight and the exposed brick and the bathroom that was the size of a master bedroom. I took a deep breath. “Okay.”

  “And I want us to be together. To make plans together, plans for the future. To be a couple.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s it? You mean it?”

  I smiled. “Yeah. I mean it.”

  “Okay, then.”

  It wasn’t exactly Shakespeare, or the most passionate declaration of love and intent ever made, but it sure rocked my world. Within a week we started looking at apartments. Within a month we found one. It was a townhouse in Charlestown, recently refurbished, on a quiet cobbled street. Not far from Olive’s, arguably one of Boston’s best restaurants, or so I babbled to anyone who asked me about the move. As if I had to convince them that I was still staying hip even if I was leaving Bay Village. In truth it was me I was trying to convince, but it wasn’t a difficult thing to do. Staying hip was becoming more meaningless all the time.

  I think it started, really, when Jeannette stopped working for me. Not that her decision carried that much weight in my life, but it reminded me, somehow, that others were moving on and I was standing still. She stopped being an escort, stopped teaching, started writing full-time, and got married to someone who had nothing to do with the world we had shared. She sounded happy, really happy; there was a lightness in her voice I hadn’t heard before. Her migraines had gone away. She was laughing more than she used to; and I wanted to laugh more, too.

  My mother was bemused. “Charlestown?” she asked, pointedly, and I couldn’t fail to see the irony of the name and its approximation to Charleston. “Just being consistent,” I told her, lightly, and went out to buy curtains. We hired movers who came and took my things away from the brownstone in the Bay Village and I saw the tenants from the floors below me peeking out as my furniture was trundled by their doors. How curious—I’d lived here for years and, true to city life, had never exchanged more than a few words in passing with any of them.
Then again, perhaps I hadn’t wanted to.

  I sat on the big stone steps and leaned against the black ironwork of the banister and realized that I had no idea what any of my neighbors had thought of me while I lived there. Much of the time—well, okay, be honest: for a while there, it was most of the time—I was too obliterated to care. Maybe it was time to start caring.

  So I bought curtains and Benjamin and I divided up chores. (No housekeeping—I wasn’t going to get that domestic. That’s what cleaning services are for.) Robert gave me a cookbook as a housewarming present, at which I initially looked askance and finally, on week three, opened dubiously. Maybe I could try cooking something, I thought. It would surprise Benjamin. It sure as hell would surprise me.

  I wasn’t working out of my bedroom anymore, which was a big change. There was a den in the new place, and I happily settled in, with my overstuffed sofa and my television and my bookcases filled to overflowing with all the books I’d kept in boxes in my mother’s attic on South Battery Street in Charleston for all these years. It was the first time I could ever have them all in one place, and I was giddy with delight. I felt myself surrounded by friends: Flannery O’Connor, Anne Tyler, Ernest Gaines, Gail Godwin, Pat Conroy, Walker Percy. They were all here, and I was at home.

  The telephone numbers hadn’t changed. My business was still flourishing, and no one, not my clients or my employees, knew that this momentous change had happened in my life. Which was exactly the way I wanted it to be.

  My professional life was certainly not slowing down one iota. In fact, there was always something new and exciting happening, though sometimes I could do with a little less of the excitement.

  I sent Tiffany to see Dave Willis out in Sudbury the first weekend we were in the new place. She hadn’t even bothered, when I hired her, to give me her real name; or perhaps Tiffany was her real name. Maybe there were parents somewhere who looked at their beautiful baby girl and assigned her that ludicrous name. Stranger things have happened.