Clean Sweep Read online

  Sandy and I started dating right after that meeting in his office. He took me to lunch. He took me to dinner. He took me to sporting events. He took me to romantic little inns in Vermont. He introduced me to his friends. He introduced me to his parents. He even introduced me to his “physical catalyst,” which is what he called his personal trainer, who came to his house three mornings a week and showed him how to pump iron. Before I knew it, we had memorized each other’s phone number and given each other intimate little nicknames (my name for Sandy was Basset, because he reminded me of a basset hound; his name for me was Allergy, because the word sounded like Alison and because I apparently got under his skin like a pesky rash). Before I knew it, we had told each other juicy and disgusting things about our first spouses. Before I knew it, we had grown comfortable with each other, especially in bed: I no longer slept in the nude, he no longer asked me to sleep in the nude; I no longer acted as if I enjoyed giving him a blow job, he no longer acted as if he didn’t notice that I didn’t enjoy giving him a blow job. Before we knew it, we were an eighties couple in love.

  What about passion, you ask? I wasn’t looking for passion then. I just wanted some certainty in my life—some guarantee that the man I married was loaded. This I learned from my mother, who told me over and over that a man wasn’t to be trusted unless he had money; that he wasn’t worthy of respect unless he had money; that he certainly wasn’t marriage material unless he had money—preferably inherited and earned. After years of such brainwashing, the best I could deduce about men was that it was okay to harbor a secret sexual attraction for a gas station attendant as long as the guy you married owned the pumps.

  So I married Sandy Koff, who had money, in 1984. He seemed very happy. So did my mother. Two out of three was pretty good, I thought, which tells you something about my level of expectation.

  We sold my condo and lived briefly in Sandy’s six-bedroom house on the water, which he had rented after his first wife kicked him out of their five-bedroom house on the water. Then we bought Maplebark Manor and moved in there. Life was sweet. Sandy ran Koff’s Department Store, I wrote newspaper articles about the famous and nearly famous. We wore expensive clothes, drove expensive cars, ate in expensive restaurants, and indulged in just enough lovemaking to keep our sex organs from atrophying. I discovered the joys of gardening, Sandy discovered the thrill of speculating in the stock market. I bought all of Martha Stewart’s books so I could learn how to throw parties, Sandy bought a computer so he could keep track of his stock transactions. We had friends, we had staff, we had money—until Black Monday, the day we lost it all. Oh, well, we still have each other, I consoled myself during the next few months. Then came Black Tuesday, the day Sandy came home from Dr. Weinblatt’s office with more than Chinese take-out food on his mind.

  “I’m home,” he’d called through the intercom in the kitchen. We had installed intercoms on every floor of Maplebark Manor so that we never had to raise our voices.

  “I’ll be right down,” I said through the intercom in my office on the second floor. It was seven-thirty, and I’d spent the past few hours working on an article about June Allyson, who had come to Layton not only to promote Depend Undergarments, but also to star in South Pacific, currently in production at the Layton Community Playhouse.

  I hurried down the back staircase and entered the kitchen, where Sandy was unpacking little white boxes of Chinese food and spooning their contents into the pretty Depression-era glass bowls I’d picked up at an auction at Sotheby’s. He had already changed into his robe and slippers, and he appeared to be smiling, which is something I hadn’t seen him do in months.

  “You’re in a good mood,” I said cheerfully as we carried the food, placemats, napkins, and silverware into the glass-enclosed breakfast room off the kitchen. We sat down across from each other at the round butcher-block table and started to dig in.

  “Egg roll?” Sandy asked, offering me one of the items from the Pu Pu Platter.

  “No thanks,” I answered, content with my sesame noodles for the time being. “So tell me why you’re in such a good mood. Is business up at the store?”

  “No,” Sandy said with a mouth full of egg roll. “It has nothing to do with the store. It has to do with Soozie.”

  “Soozie?” I asked sweetly, making a real effort not to let bitchiness creep into my voice. Soozie was Sandy’s ex-wife. She was also a caterer who, unlike my idol, Martha Stewart, didn’t have much of a head for business. Yes, she knew how to cook, as Sandy never ceased to remind me every time I tried to make anything in puff pastry and failed. But she didn’t have a clue how to market herself. Consequently, she was a caterer with few parties to cater. She had divorced Sandy because she had wanted to “spread her wings and soar.” From what I heard, she’d been doing plenty of spreading, all right, but it had nothing to do with her wings. Not that I cared how Sandy’s ex-wife spent her free time, mind you, just as long as it wasn’t with Sandy.

  “I was going to wait until we finished dinner,” Sandy said, setting his fork down on his plate, reaching across the table to take my fork out of my hand and wrapping both my hands in his. I knew something big was coming, but I honestly had no idea what. “Allergy, I feel really good about myself now that I have an awareness of where I was coming from in terms of my feelings for you.”

  He paused. I stared. Had he always talked like that? Had I never noticed how ridiculous he sounded?

  “Allergy,” he continued. “I feel so close to you, now that I can put a label on your role in my life.” Another pause, then a deep breath, then a big smile. “You were my transitional woman.”

  I stopped chewing. The sesame noodles that had tasted so good seconds before suddenly turned to cardboard. My heart began to beat faster as I waited for Sandy to finish his speech. I knew there was more. There always is.

  “The thing is,” Sandy went on, getting up from his chair to put his arm around me, “Soozie still loves me and wants me back, and I still love her and want her back.”

  Quick! Think of a joke! I thought as I struggled to comprehend what my husband was telling me.

  What was he telling me? That he’d been seeing Soozie behind my back? That the two of them were lovers again? That he’d loved her all along and only married me out of loneliness or boredom? That I was a failure as a wife, as a woman, as a cook? That he was leaving me forever? That I was going to be alone again?

  I was tempted to heave my plate of Chinese food at Sandy, I really was. The image of that thick, tan sauce dripping down his fluffy white Ralph Lauren terry-cloth robe, the one with the “family crest” on the front pocket, was mighty appealing. But I was too distraught to clean up the mess, and I was much too compulsive to leave it for Maria, our Peruvian housekeeper, who never found a speck of dirt when she arrived each morning because I always cleaned the house before she got there.

  Quick! A joke! A joke! My eyes burned with hurt and anger, but I willed myself not to cry. Never let ’em see you…Isn’t that what the commercial says?

  Sandy, my husband. Just look at him, I thought. What a pitiful sight. He graduated with honors from Columbia University and was at the top of his class at NYU Business School, so he can’t be a complete idiot, and yet listen to how he talks. Look at how he looks. He combs his three remaining hairs clear across his prematurely balding head and he thinks he’s fooling everybody. We all know you’re going bald, asshole. And Soozie, the caterer-whore. Of all the women to be left for. Soozie, whose real first name is the perfectly acceptable Diane but who insists that everyone call her Soozie.

  “I know you must be devastated,” Sandy said, getting up from the table and wrapping me in his arms.

  Devastated? Devastated? I thought, trying desperately to conceal my panic. Don’t let your husband think you’re dependent on him, my mother always said. Never let him know how much you care. Always make him guess. Keep your real feelings to yourself. Never wear your heart on your sleeve. Quick! A joke! A joke!

  “Allergy
? Are you all right? Say something,” Sandy said, looking genuinely concerned about me.

  I took a deep breath and said two things to my faithless second husband. One was: “Sandy, I think it’s good that you’re going back to Soozie, because I’ve been wanting to see other men for some time. You know my motto—‘Never put all your eggs in one bastard.’”

  I waited for him to get the joke before proceeding with the second thing I said, which was: “And Sandy, if you ever call me Allergy again, I’ll tell everyone in Layton the truth about Soozie—that the secret ingredient in her ‘all natural’ chicken salad is MSG and that her ‘homemade’ cakes aren’t from scratch, they’re from a mix.”

  Sandy scowled at me, shook his head, and walked out of the room. “You’re in denial,” he said. “Big-time denial.”

  “Deny this,” I yelled as I gave him the finger. Then I wondered which was worse—losing your man or losing your meal ticket. I had just lost both, which was nothing to joke about.

  Chapter 2

  As you might imagine, I didn’t sleep at all the night Sandy left me for Soozie. Every time I closed my eyes, I thought about the two of them together—the stock market big-shot and the caterer-whore.

  One of the images that kept drifting in and out of my mind was their dopey reunion. I imagined that after Sandy left Maplebark Manor (he’d packed his Louis Vuitton bags, jumped into his Mercedes, and sped off to Soozie’s, leaving me with a dining room table full of Chinese take-out food), he’d arrived at the caterer-whore’s, barely able to contain his joy at having successfully removed the one obstacle—me—that was standing in the way of their happiness. Can’t you just picture them? He’d pull into her driveway and there she’d be, standing at the front door, waving a potholder at him. He’d leap out of his Mercedes and rush into her arms, in slow motion, like in those shampoo commercials. She’d run her fingers through his three hairs. He’d bury his hands under her apron. Then they’d go inside and make mad, passionate love on the kitchen floor. They would be so nauseatingly ecstatic about being back together again that they’d forget to bring Sandy’s bags in from the car and somebody would steal them—and the car.

  I’d throw in that last part every time I started to feel overwhelmingly panicked about Sandy leaving me. It would serve Sandy right to have his precious Mercedes stolen right from under his long, skinny nose. God, did I hate him. How could he abandon me and Maplebark Manor? What if that recession all the talk shows were talking about sent the country into a depression? How would I cope without my husband at a time like that?

  I wouldn’t. That was the conclusion I reached at about 5 A.M., the morning after Black Tuesday. I simply would not let Sandy go. I would not go through this economic downturn alone. I would win him back. I would convince him that the stock market crash and the problems at Koff’s had made him understandably nostalgic for the good old days with Soozie, but that if he really thought about it, it was I who could make him happy, I who had helped him build a rich, abundant life. After all, it wasn’t as if Sandy and I didn’t have property together: we had Maplebark Manor. Some couples stay together for the sake of the children. We would stay together for the sake of the house. I would go to Sandy’s office first thing in the morning and show him photographs of Maplebark Manor. He would smile at me and say, “Forgive me, Allergy. It was the recession that made me do it. I’m leaving Soozie and coming home to you. To Maplebark Manor.”

  I was just getting out of bed and thinking about what I’d wear to Sandy’s office when the phone rang at about 9:15. It was Adam Greene, a lawyer who’d been a friend of Sandy’s since high school.

  “Sandy isn’t here,” I said, assuming that Adam was looking for my prodigal husband, who was probably still at Soozie’s, resting up after a night of unbridled passion. Actually, all jealousy and bitterness aside, it was hard to imagine Sandy engaging in a night of unbridled passion. Sure, he had an enormous “member,” but what good was owning a Ferrari if you couldn’t drive a stick shift? Not only that, Sandy was the quietest lovemaker since Marcel Marceau. He never moaned. He never groaned. He never said, “Oh, baby. Do it to me. Give it to me.” He never said anything at all—not a word. When we had sex, you could hear a pin drop, which meant, of course, that I wasn’t doing any moaning and groaning either. It wasn’t that I didn’t have it in me to moan and groan. It was just that it was next to impossible to scream with pleasure when (A) I wasn’t having any, and (B) my partner was like an actor in a porno movie for the hearing impaired.

  All right. So our sex life wasn’t exactly the stuff of romance novels. I didn’t care. I was not about to go through the turbulent nineties alone. I was going to get Sandy back, and that was that.

  “I know Sandy’s not there, Alison,” Adam Greene said to me over the phone. “He’s here in my office. We’ve been discussing your divorce.”

  “Divorce?” Here I was, planning to win back my husband, and he couldn’t wait twenty-four hours to dump me.

  “Have you retained an attorney yet, Alison?” Adam asked with not nearly enough concern in his voice to suit me. Adam Greene was supposed to be my friend as well as Sandy’s. He and his wife, Robin, had been to Maplebark Manor dozens of times, just as we had been over to Belvedere, the 23,000-square-foot mansion they called home. Belvedere had only four bedrooms, but it had an indoor squash court, which Adam and Sandy had used quite a bit until they gave up squash for golf. The last I’d heard, the Greenes were planning to convert the squash court into a movie theatre that could show two movies simultaneously, just like the Loews Twin Theatre in Layton.

  “No, Adam. I haven’t hired a lawyer yet. I wasn’t aware Sandy wanted a divorce until just this minute. The body’s not even cold.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing. Tell Sandy he can have his divorce, but he’s going to feel it in his wallet.”

  “I don’t think so, Alison. You’ll be on your own from now on.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You signed a prenuptial agreement in 1984, before you and Sandy bought Maplebark Manor. Remember?”

  Shit. I had forgotten all about that. Sandy had insisted that we have it drawn up, seeing as he was the one with the big money, and I, not wanting to appear dependent—or worse, gold digging—signed the thing, which said that if we ever broke up, I would get what I came to the marriage with and he would get what he came to the marriage with, which, of course, was a hell of a lot more than what I came to the marriage with. As for Maplebark Manor, the agreement stipulated that one of us could buy the other out. If neither of us wanted the house, we could sell it and split the profits, seventy-five twenty-five. Guess who got the twenty-five.

  “Sandy asked me to tell you he doesn’t want the house, since he and Soozie plan to live at her place. You can stay on at Maplebark Manor, provided you come up with the money to buy Sandy out.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, wondering how much worse things could get. “Sandy knows damn well I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “In that case, you’ll have to put Maplebark Manor on the market,” Adam said.

  “You mean sell it? Our beautiful house that we poured every dime we had into? The real estate market is dead these days, in case you and Sandy haven’t noticed. We’ll have to give the house away.”

  “I’m not your attorney, Alison, but if I were, I’d tell you that you really don’t have any choice. Sandy’s finances aren’t what they were, as you know, and he won’t be able to make the mortgage payments any longer. If he has to file for bankruptcy and your beautiful house goes into foreclosure, you won’t walk away with anything but a lawsuit and a lousy credit rating.”

  “That’s it? That’s all Sandy has to say to me after five years of marriage? That if I don’t sell the house fast, the bank will take it and I’ll be broke?”

  Adam put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered something to Sandy. Then he came back on and said, “Sandy asked me to tell you something, Alison. He says,
‘Life is a mountain. Go climb it.’”

  “Gee thanks, Adam. Now I’d like you to tell Sandy something: ‘Life is a cliff. Jump off it.’”

  I hung up on Adam, ran downstairs to the kitchen, and made myself a Bloody Mary. It was only 9:30 in the morning, but I needed fortification: I was about to call my mother and break the news that Sandy, her favorite of my two husbands, had left me. If I didn’t tell her soon, she’d hear about it at the hairdresser or the dry cleaner or, God forbid, at the gourmet produce market, where people had as much fun trading local gossip as they did buying designer lettuce.

  I decided to get dressed before I called my mother. I always got dressed before I called my mother. I trudged upstairs and walked into my walk-in closet off the master bedroom, pulled out a navy blue Fila warm-up suit, and put it on. Then I sat down on my bed and glared at the phone on the night table, gulped down the rest of my Bloody Mary, and dialed my mother’s number.

  “Hi, Mom. It’s me,” I said breezily after my mother, Doris Waxman, answered the phone.

  “It’s I,” she corrected me in That Tone. My mother was a vigilante when it came to the English language—a veritable Guardian Angel of Grammar. If you were foolish enough to say something like “between you and I” in her presence, there would be hell to pay. She also had a voice like Suzanne Pleshette’s—an extremely low, husky, smoker’s voice that people often mistook for a man’s. When she put you down with That Tone and That Voice, you could consider yourself put down. “As a writer, Alison, you should pay more attention to your words,” she added for good measure.

  “To tell you the truth, Mom, I’ve got more pressing problems to deal with—sorry—more pressing problems with which to deal.” Oh, God.