him. A different kind of agony, if you're into it. Which, as it turns out, I am. How about you? Where did you hook up with old Hank?'
'Oh, we met at a freshman mixer. I was at Connecticut and he was at Yale. We got engaged my junior year. Ho-hum. How about you?'
'Oh, Karp? We worked together in the old homicide bureau. No sparks or anything. Then we were at this party and he got plastered and I had to drag him home. I crashed on his bed. The next morning I was taking a shower, and he came stumbling in, hung over, and there and then, to the surprise of both of us, we fell on each other like animals and fucked our brains out. The rest is history.'
'Oh, see, that's what I mean!' cried Maggie. 'Nothing like that ever happens to me.'
'Like what?'
'Oh, the unexpected. The dramatic. The exciting.'
'Well, as to that, it's not all it's cracked up to be, the so-called exciting life. A lot of it is pissing in your panties. And besides, my life, ninety percent of it, is just like yours. Shopping, cleaning, taking care of the kid, working.' She paused and looked at Maggie. 'If you're bored you could get a job.'
'Oh, right, that's what he always says. It's not being bored. Besides, I had a job, until Jeremy came. It's more like-I don't know-my life is in a, like a railroad siding, just waiting for an engine to pull me along the track again. And Hank is like some kind of express train roaring along the other track getting farther and farther away.' She reached for the bottle and refilled her glass.
'What did you do, when you worked?' asked Marlene.
'Oh, some job in O'Neill's office. Hank got it for me, of course. Just, basically, your D.C. job: sitting around answering phones with other wife-ofs and the little hard chargers starting their Hill careers. Then when I quit, it was supposedly to start working on the files, getting the book ready, but I haven't honestly had the energy. And Hank hasn't said anything, but when I try to talk to him about the way I feel, he gives me this look, like I'm letting down the team.'
'But you're still basically okay. You and him.'
'Oh, like do we love each other. Oh, yeah.' She twirled a lock of her shining hair, looked toward the heavens, and laughed. 'Still madly in love!'
'What with? What do you like about him besides that he thinks you're letting down the team?'
'Oh, see, I didn't really mean that,' explained Maggie in a nervous rush. 'Actually, he's wonderful. The minute he looked at me, I went all squooshy.'
'What was it? Body?'
'No, although that was all right-he was on the crew at Yale. No, it was something about his head, or his face. A look. You know, it was sort of intelligent, but not smart-alecky, and noble, and with depth. Like he was injured somewhere inside and hiding the wound. You know what he reminded me of? That central figure in Picasso's Saltimbanques, the one in profile?'
'Yeah, I know what you mean. It's one of my favorite paintings,' said Marlene, thinking that guys who had that look probably got unbelievable amounts of pussy off little blond art lovers. Or Italian tough girls. Karp, of course, had it too.
'Oh, mine too!' said Maggie, delighted. 'It's in the National. We have to go see it.'
'Yes, two aging housewives standing rapt in front of a seventy-year-old painting, our knees trembling, our undies slowing getting damp…'
'Oh, stop it!' Maggie shrieked, and threw a blouse at Marlene.
Marlene caught it and glanced at the label. 'Mmm… nice silk. From Bloomie's.' She sat up and held the sleeves wide, framing Maggie's face over it. 'It's not your color, really. What do you wear it with?'
'Nothing!' Maggie wailed. 'I never wear it. I have cubic yards of clothes and I never have anything to wear.'
'Drag 'em out,' said Marlene, focusing her attention. 'Let's see what we got.'
An hour or so later, the two women stood looking at a gaudy pile of fabric three feet high, stacked on the bedroom floor.
'God, this is so embarrassing!' said Maggie with feeling. 'I feel like such a jerk.'
'I still don't understand it, really,' said Marlene. 'You know you can't wear all these saturated colors and wild prints with your coloring. And besides'-she lifted up a scarlet brocade jacket and a chrome yellow skirt- 'none of this stuff makes outfits. Why on earth did you buy it all?'
'I don't know. I go into a store to shop and something happens-I become a zombie. I feel this pressure crushing down on me, and I guess I just buy the flashiest thing in sight and dash out. Or else, maybe I desperately want to be someone who can wear an acid green pantsuit.'
'Well, at least you'll make Goodwill happy. I bet a lot of their customers can wear this stuff.' Marlene held a red-white-and-blue bulky-knit sweater up to her chest, struck a Foreign Legion salute, and started to hum the 'Marseillaise.'
'Oh, stop!' laughed Maggie. 'Actually, that'd look great on you. Why don't you pick out what you want and take it?'
Marlene dropped the sweater and gave Maggie a sharp glance.
Maggie blushed rosily and put her hand to her mouth. 'Oh, God, I didn't mean…'
'No, I appreciate it, but the funny thing is I really have lots of clothes. I just didn't bring them with me into exile.' She quickly related the story of her hasty departure from New York, leaving out the shameful proximate cause.
This, of course, was exactly what Maggie wanted to know. It struck her as astounding that someone with Marlene's extraordinary life, and moreover, one with impeccable Waffen-feminist credentials ('You ran a rape bureau?'), would dump it to go be a wife-of in Washington. She probed uncomfortably close to the real reason, and rather than snapping out that it was none of her business and perhaps adding that they were not actually schoolgirls pouring out their little hearts, Marlene changed the subject.
'What was that all about, what you said a minute ago-about files and a book?'
'Oh, that!' Maggie seemed to slump. A tiny, worried indentation appeared beneath the glossy bangs. 'You don't want to hear it.'
'Yeah, I do. It's something to do with your husband?'
'Oh, all right,' Maggie sighed resignedly. 'My husband, prince that he is, whom I love dearly, has this little obsession. I assume you're familiar with the Dobbs case?'
'No, what case?'
'See? Everybody in the known universe has forgotten about it but Hank Dobbs. Oh, yeah, and, of course the Widow Dobbs. Hank thinks it's on everybody's mind as soon as they meet him. Of course, he's been elected to Congress three times and nobody's so much as mentioned it, but there it is.'
'What'd Hank do, anyway?'
'Hank? Nothing. This is about his father, Richard. Ewing. Dobbs.' She said the name portentously, like a butler announcing a belted earl. She was fairly wasted by now, sitting tailor-fashion at the foot of the bed, with the second bottle of wine tucked in the cavity of her crossed legs. They had dispensed with glasses by this time. Maggie continued in the same exaggerated 'Masterpiece Theatre' diction.
'Mr. Dobbs, as I never stop getting told by my husband, and the Widow, and all my in-laws, was… a prince. A perfect prince. Brilliant? Of course. Yale blah-blah, Harvard blah-blah. Brave? Of course! Decorated for bravery in the Pacific, Navy Cross blah-blah. Every little boy's dream of a daddy? Of course! Riding fishing boating skating baseball blah-blah-blah. I am not privy to the secrets of the marriage bed, but I have no reason to believe he would not have won the Distinguished Service Medal there too.
'Okay,' she adopted a more normal tone, 'after the war, Richard and Selma Hewlett Dobbs, that's the Widow, and little Hankie, go to Washington, to make a career. Richard gets a job with naval intelligence. Very important, hush-hush work. He rises, he has a brilliant career ahead of him-secretary of the navy, probably, and who knows? The sky's the limit. The family's wealthy and well connected in Connecticut politics, not the Kennedys quite, but in the same general zone. Richard, of course, knew Kennedy, knew him quite well, and didn't think all that much of him. According to report.'
'Did you ever meet him? Richard, I mean,' Marlene interrupted.
'Yes, a couple of times. He died in sixty-three. Right before Kennedy. Of course, by then he was totally
