STORY
Ira Sadoff
UNCOUPLING
Evelyn's wish for children is granted, though not with me.
She moves into the uptown apartment of a lawyer named Ross and his
twelve-year-old boy, Benny. Ross's marriage went bad several years
before and he wooed my wife while working on her boss 's case. There
are no hard feelings now: I know that if it hadn 't been Ross it would
have been someone else.
The day she left me she said, "I want a child."
There was so much determination in her stance, in the way she
held her hands to her thin waist, in the way she pursed her lips, she was
difficult
to
refuse. ''I'll give you a child," I said.
"Your heart's not in it, Michael.
It
won 't work."
Her heart, it must be said, was already at Ross's thoroughly
modern and sophisticated apartment, with its chrome and canvas
furniture, ceiling-to-f1oor aluminum lamps and African knickknacks.
When Evelyn moved in, she contributed an assortment of plants: ferns ,
jades, ivies, exotic flowering cacti. The clash between plants and
chrome, humidity and austerity, took some getting used to, as did
seeing Evelyn with another man. Fortunately Evelyn and I seem
to
be
on good terms, and though it was something of a shock when she first
opened the door to Ross 's apartment, adorned in a new, short, Dorothy
Hamill haircut, Evelyn makes me feel comfortable whenever she
invites me to dinner, which is often.
In
fact, I feel perversely curious
watching Ross and Evel yn interact, the way Evel yn handles her role as
substitute mother. She makes it look so attractive I'm forced to wonder
whether I might not have been happy with this pastoral family
landscape. And while in our arguments I'd maintain parents and
children had nothing in common , watching Benny I can admit
to
the
continuities-his impatience to be excused early from dinner, his desire
to
be taken seriously, are all too recognizable.
In
short, Benny and I get
along surprisingly well.
At the dinner table I watch Ross and Evelyn call each other "dear,"
complain about the price of car insurance, discuss Benny's progress in
