Riverside Drive

Even though Howard was the captain of the company softball and squash teams, even though there wasn’t an employee at Gardiner & Grayson who did not like Howard, there was still a bit of a row when Harrison promoted him to associate editor. Apparently some of his colleagues did not seem to think Howard had done much to deserve it, and thus, at the age of twenty-four, Howard acquired a nickname around the house: Prince Charming. (“This is our head publicist, Harriet Wyatt,” one editor had said to an author at a cocktail party, “and this is Mr. Charming, who works in editorial.”)

The Friday night after his promotion, Howard had gone to Crawdaddy’s to meet an old college roommate for a drink. He did so with the first genuine enthusiasm he had felt since arriving in New York. Okay, so what if Teddy was making exactly twenty-three thousand dollars more than Howard at Manchester Hannonford Bank? Howard was an editor at the finest trade publishing house in the world. And so, over a million Heinekens (it seemed), Howard reveled in the feeling of having regained his place in the world.

Enter Melissa.

The noise in Crawdaddy’s was so loud, Howard did not hear her name when Teddy introduced them, and yet Howard felt as though he knew exactly who she was—his. It is true; it happened like that. Howard looked up and instantly felt that he would never find a finer woman to be his wife than the one standing before him. She was perfect. Everything about Melissa was slim, elegant, cool and classy. And it was in that moment, that very first moment, that Howard vowed he would try to win her as his own.

But first there was the overgrown preppy with her to contend with. “Stephen Manischell, Manchester Hannonford,” he said to Howard, shaking his hand. The four of them sat down together at a table, where Howard learned that Melissa Collins also worked at “Manny Hanny” and was currently seriously involved with the creep next to her. But Melissa was not immune to Howard’s intense fascination with her. In fact, within an hour she had moved her chair over to Howard and, with their heads looming closer and closer to each other, told him all about the important aspects of her training program at Manny Hanny (pausing only to tell Stephen to please be quiet, couldn’t he see that she was talking), and what it was like commuting every day from New Canaan, Connecticut. She told him about her parents’ guest house that she lived in. She told him that her mother had cancer and that her father, “Daddy,” imported more cocktail napkins, plastic toothpicks and swizzle sticks than anyone in the world. (She didn’t describe it like that, but even through the haze of alcohol and his fantasies of what her breasts might be like, Howard had figured out what “cocktail accouterments” were.)

Then it was Howard’s turn. Howard was an editor at Gardiner & Grayson, the youngest, he added, that they had ever had. Duke. Yes. Phi Beta Kappa. Columbus, Ohio. “Uh, well, Mom is a housewife…. Dad? Oh, Dad’s in real estate.”

Miracle upon miracle, Melissa whispered to Howard that if he left now she would meet him outside in five minutes and he could walk her to the train. If he wanted to, that is. Whether it was his heart or the Heinekens talking, Howard was never sure, but Melissa to this day swore that he said, “Want to? God, I would crawl if only to see you.”

And so Melissa had given Stephen the slip that night and Howard had walked her through Grand Central to her train. At the door of the train Melissa kissed Howard on the cheek and he tried to kiss her on the mouth and she stopped him. Her hand placed lightly over his mouth, she laughed (looking so beautiful, so right, so utterly glorious in a Town and Country kind of way) and said, “It would be so wonderful if you turned out to be the man I want to give myself to.”

And then Howard went slightly mad. He had never met a girl like Melissa before. There was something about her that drove him wild inside, a kind of craving, a kind of nameless longing that he had never experienced before. Oh yeah, there had been Debbie, at seventeen, with whom he had launched his sexual career in the back of his mother’s station wagon. (“Heh-heh,” his father had said, winking, when Howard requested to drive it instead of his Camaro one night. “Make sure you take a raincoat—it might rain, heh-heh.”) And there had been Susie the Senior his freshman year, and then Cornelia Fordyce the next three. And one or two quickies in New York, and always something with Debbie whenever he was home, and all of them, all of them, were very smart, very attractive women. But they weren’t anything like Melissa. God, Melissa. Walk into a room with her on your arm and, well—everything that could be said was said just by looking at her.

But then, as it has been said, Howard had gone slightly mad.

Melissa explained to him that while she knew it was terribly old-fashioned of her, she really couldn’t even think of engaging in any sexual activity until she was married to the man she loved.

Did that—did that mean Melissa was a…

“Oh, Howard,” she would whisper, shyly touching his hand, “wonder if you turn out to be the man I love? Wouldn’t you want me to be able to say to you, ‘Everything I have belongs to you and to you alone? Always and forever?’”

Oh, yes, but Howard wanted that, and Howard sold his car after Melissa dumped Stephen once and for all in favor of giving Howard his chance to win her heart. He learned to relish chaste kisses; he learned to meet her train in the morning and walk her to work. He took her to expensive restaurants for dinner, to the theater, the ballet, and he went out to New Canaan on Sundays to spend the day with the Collinses.

He hated “Daddy” Collins from the beginning, but—since Melissa was utterly devoted to him—Howard learned to let him beat him at golf, lecture him on the swizzle-stick business, and suffer his observations about publishing. (“Kind of a faggy way to make a living, if you ask me.”) Mr. Collins hated him too, Howard quickly realized, but things between them improved once Daddy found out that Howard—as a doubles partner—meant that he could finally “beat the shit out of those assholes at the club.”

Mrs. Collins, on the other hand, was wonderful. And it was from her that Melissa had inherited her regal looks. But Mrs. Collins was very quiet, very, very gentle, and by the time Howard met her, was bedridden with the cancer that was slowly killing her. She never complained of the constant pain she was in, and her eyes always lit up when Howard came in to see her. They spent a great deal of time together, actually. And once Howard started bringing her Anthony Trollope novels to read, even Melissa found it difficult to lure Howard away from their talks about them. (“Always see the mother before you commit,” Ray Stewart had told his son, “so you can see what you’re getting into.” Cancer or no cancer, Howard often wondered if he hadn’t fallen a bit in love with Mrs. Collins.)

It was clear to everyone in that mausoleum of a house that things were getting serious. Daddy Collins was getting ruder and ruder, Melissa started talking about how grand it was going to be when she was the president of Manchester Hannonford and Howard was the president of Gardiner & Grayson, and Mrs. Collins, well…

One Sunday afternoon Mrs. Collins took his hand (which she often did) and asked Howard if he was in love with her daughter. Howard said yes. And then Mrs. Collins had closed her eyes, thinking, and when she opened them again she said she hoped she would not offend Howard but…

But?

Did Howard realize that Melissa was—was rather special?

Yes, yes, he certainly did.

She had smiled, though her eyes had not smiled. Slowly, carefully, she said that Melissa was her only child, that she loved Melissa very, very much, but…

But?

Howard could see how spoiled Melissa was, yes?

Spoiled, nonsense!

A chuckle from the invalid lady. “Oh, Howard, she’s dreadfully spoiled, and she always will be. Her father has seen to that.”

Silence.

“My husband, and please, do understand, Howard—it is out of his love for Melissa that he did it—”

“Did—”

“Looked into your background. Your parents, your father’s—real estate business…”

Sigh. “Mrs. Collins, my father’s not in real estate, he’s in the landscaping business.”

“Yes. I know. Howard—listen to me, Howard.”

Silence.

“You must sit down and explain to Melissa. She—and I’m sure you did not misrepresent it to her—but Melissa led my husband to believe that your father owns half of Columbus.”

Oh, boy.

“And you must set my husband straight—now, Howard, before he…”

Mrs. Collins had started to cry.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Collins, it’s okay.”

“She so needs a man who understands her. She’s fragile in ways…Oh, Howard, promise me that you’ll help Melissa leave this house. She won’t be able to do it on her own and I’m too ill…”

Howard explained everything to Melissa that afternoon, prompting her to moan, “Oh, my God, what will I tell Daddy?” and flee to the guest house. And then Howard found Mr. Collins in the playroom and set him straight about the exact state of his finances and those of his family. Though he had readied himself for a fight, Howard was frankly a little scared when Mr. Collins grabbed the wrong end of a cue stick and smashed the sliding glass door with it. “Goddam carpetbagger!” he screamed, face turning purple. (Mr. Collins was from the South.) He broke the cue stick on the corner of the billiard table and slammed the remaining portion down on it, again and again, ruining the mahogany. “A fraud, a goddam fraud, strutting around here like the King of England!”

(Years later, Howard realized that it was not the state of his finances that had so enraged Mr. Collins, but that he—having volunteered the information before proposing to Melissa—had disarmed Mr. Collins of the weapon he had been planning to use to get rid of him with. Ill as she was, Mrs. Collins had been quite on the ball.)

Howard did not hear from Melissa for five days, and then she had called him at work. Could he come to New Canaan? Please, could he? Right now? They needed him, Daddy and she did, desperately. “Oh, Howard, Mother died this morning.”

Harrison gave him some time off and Howard went out to New Canaan. (Poor Harrison. It had been some time since he had got any real work out of Howard, what with this time-consuming business of courtship.) Mr. Collins didn’t say a word to him, but he did seem relieved that there was someone to look after Melissa as he went through the ordeal of funeral services. And then, after the burial, Mr. Collins disappeared to have some time to himself and Melissa became so hysterical that a doctor had to be called to sedate her.

“Why did he leave? Why?” she kept crying, Valium seeming to do very little but confuse her and slur her words. But after a few days she started to come around and soon she was not hysterical but furious with her father. She started cursing Daddy and endearing Howard. She started discounting Daddy (“He has no imagination, none”) and overpricing Howard (“No one is smarter than you, Howard, I’m sure of it”). And then she started tearing Daddy apart (“He is heartless and cruel and selfish”) and building Howard up to ever increasing heights (“You are the finest, greatest man I have ever known”).

(Howard didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he knew he liked it a good deal better than Melissa locking herself in the guest house and Mr. Collins calling him a carpetbagger.)

And then—and then, the night Howard came upstairs to check on Melissa and found her on her knees, crying next to her mother’s bed. Howard had knelt down beside her, held her close, and told her he loved her. He was not good enough for her, he knew, but he would do everything in his power to make her happy. He loved her, God, how he loved her, and he would take care of her. He would never ever leave her. No, never, and they would have each other, forever and ever and always. “Oh, Melissa, please let me take care of you so you’ll never be hurt again.”

“Hey, Howie?” Rosanne called from the hall.

“Yeah?”

“I want ya to come see Mrs. C on TV. She’s doin’ an editorial or somethin’ and I told her I’d watch.”

“Yeah, okay.” Mrs. C? What was her name? “Fridays” was how Rosanne usually referred to her.

Howard wrapped a thick elastic around the manuscript he had (not) been reading and dropped it to the floor. He certainly wasn’t getting much done this morning. But then, even when he was working full throttle these days, he still felt like he was spinning his wheels.

Howard went into the living room and sat down on the couch. “Turn to Channel 8, would’cha?” Rosanne said, coming in from the kitchen with a toasted bran muffin on a plate. He picked up the remote control from the coffee table and pushed 8. “Oh,” Rosanne said, sitting down cross-legged on the floor, “I found that envelope in the couch. It belongs to her highness.” Howard saw the envelope on the arm of the couch and picked it up while Rosanne hummed along with the theme song of the Mc-Donald’s commercial.

“138 East 77th Street” the return address said in thin black type.

Jackass, Howard thought, turning the envelope over.

“Melissa Collins.”

Melissa Collins Stewart, jackass.

“Oh, Howard,” Melissa had said to him when the first one arrived. “Stephen’s just lonely. The divorce really hit him hard.”

Yeah, right, Howard had thought. So hard that Stephen Manischell felt free to call and write his wife whenever he felt like it.

“Oh, Howard,” Melissa had said later, “it was entirely accidental. Stephen used to summer on Fishers Island and he rented the house this year not even knowing we’d be there.”

Yeah, right, Howard had thought.

“I thought you’d be pleased, Howard,” Melissa had wisely added. “You won’t have to play gin with Daddy.” (Daddy owned a house down the road.) “Stephen loves playing gin with Daddy.”

Hmmm, Howard had thought, brightening a little.

What the hell do I care anyway? Howard thought, tossing the envelope on the table. If he gets her in bed, I’ll pay him for the secret of how he did it.

“She’s on! She’s on!” Rosanne cried, pointing to the screen.

“Hey—I know her,” Howard said. “What’s her name again?”

“Mrs. C—now shut up, Howie.”

Mrs. C was the stunning blonde who lived on the other side of 88th, in 162. Howard had been watching her in passing for years. From the way Rosanne talked about her, Howard had always visualized “Mrs. C” as looking something like his mother (slightly plump, graying, matronly). Melissa knew her from the Block Association but had never introduced him to her. (“Oh, I suppose Cassy’s all right,” Melissa would say, “but not for us.”)

“How old is she?” Howard asked.

Rosanne held her hand out to shut him up and so he did.

“Using the Oval Office as his pulpit, President Reagan recently compared abortion rights to the institution of slavery,” Cassy was saying into the camera. “He also said that we cannot survive as a free nation until the constitutional right to abortion is overturned. Mr. Reagan did not, however, bother to explain that the views he expressed are his own personal opinions, and not the shared belief of the majority of Americans, to say nothing of the highest court in the land.”

I bet she has fun in bed, Howard thought.

Abusing the powers of the executive office…Injecting religious doctrine into the political process…Defiance of the Constitution…WST does not condone or condemn abortion policy…WST vehemently opposes the merging of church and state…

“Hi, I’m Howard Stewart. I saw you today on television. If I may say so, you were wonderful.”

The editorial was over and Cassy smiled in a way that made Howard smile back. Nice. “I’m Catherine Cochran, vice-president and general station manager of WST. Thank you.”

“Wowee kazow and go gettum, baby!” Rosanne cried, rolling backward into a somersault.

With their engagement official and documented in the New York Times, Howard took Melissa to Columbus to meet his family. It was not a great trip. The nice middle-class home in the nice middle-class neighborhood was not to Melissa’s liking. Nor was Howard’s father. Oh, Melissa was polite, but Howard knew her withdrawal into silence was a condemnation. And Howard noticed that his dad’s undershirts showed in the top of his open shirts, that he brought his beer bottle to the table, and that he did not notice Melissa swooning at the suggestion that she and Howard attend the dance at the VFW Hall. And then Howard’s younger brother had clomped in, bare-chested, from his construction job, and his sister announced she had to get ready for her date, which was fine, until her date arrived and explained to Melissa that he was an undertaker’s assistant.

On the plane, flying back, Howard had dared only to ask Melissa’s opinion of his mother. “I liked her,” she said. And then, gazing out the window, she added, “But it must be very difficult for her.”

“What do you mean?”

Melissa sighed slightly, turning to look at Howard. “Well, it’s rather like being stranded for her, isn’t it? Didn’t you tell me her parents were well off?”

Melissa had not gone over very well with the Stewarts, either. And it wasn’t her money, his father claimed over the phone in the kitchen. She was, well, kinda uppity, wasn’t she? “We mean, Howard,” his mother had said from the extension in the bedroom, “do you have fun with her? Do you—laugh?”

Howard and Melissa were married in a huge wedding outside on the grounds of the Collins house. It was the most god-awful wedding Howard had ever attended, though everyone said they had had the best time of their lives. Melissa’s mother’s family, the Hastingses, adored the Millses of Shaker Heights, and they had a grand time of it at the tables by the dance floor which Melissa had designated for them. The Al Capones who comprised Mr. Collins’ business associates had a ball in the house, filling the playroom with cigar smoke, playing billiards (“stupidest pool table I ever saw”) and making phone calls to Hong Kong about missing shipments of swizzle sticks. Ray and his friends were lured away to the swimming pool by a keg of ale and a box of fireworks that Melissa thoughtfully told them about. The Stewart contingents from Maleanderville, North Carolina, Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, and Teaneck, New Jersey, conducted their family reunion under the tent Melissa had set up for them by the gardens at the bottom of the hill. As for Mr. Collins’ family, apparently he had none (or, perhaps, had none he cared to acknowledge).

And then there had been the legion of Melissa’s “friends.” Hundreds and hundreds (it seemed) of perfectly coiffeured dainties—selected and collected at Ethel Walker, Bryn Mawr, Yale, God only knew where—escorted by an army of vaguely good-looking men, all appearing to be wearing the same suit. (“Harvard,” one said to Howard, flapping his school tie at him. “Princeton,” said the one next to him, flapping his. “Manchester Hannonford,” Stephen Manischell joked. “Merrill Lynch,” said the one with the Princeton tie. “House of Morgan,” Harvard said, stopping the other two dead in their tracks. “Bragging, dear?” Harvard’s wife then asked, coming up behind him. “Stephanie told me that Wiley made over four hundred thousand at Salomon Brothers last year.”)

Had they intimidated Howard? No. They had terrified him. Round and round the floor they had danced, talking of mergers and acquisitions and what stocks would give the Stewarts a brighter future. “The publisher of my life,” Melissa kept introducing him as. “His family is over there,” she said, pointing to the Millses of Shaker Heights. “Oh, Daddy? He gave us a beautiful apartment in the city, didn’t he, Howard? Howard’s just crazy about it. On Riverside Drive. Oh, I know, but Daddy didn’t know that and he spent a great deal of money on it and I just couldn’t hurt him that way. I mean, what would I say? No, Daddy’d never believe Howard wanted to live on the East Side. Daddy says Howard would be happiest in a log cabin.”

“I’m gonna put this letter on her highness’ dresser,” Rosanne said, placing it there.

“Oh, fine.”

“And here’s some coffee,” she added, walking over and handing him a cup.

“Thanks.”

Rosanne walked toward the door, stopped and turned around. “Mrs. C’s over twenty-nine,” she announced.

“Oh, yeah?” Howard said, smiling.

“Go back to work,” she said. “But remind me, Howie, before I leave I wanna talk to you about Tuesdays.”

Howard swallowed some coffee. “You want to switch days?”

“Naw,” she said. “I wanna talk to ya about Amanda, but I gotta finish the oven first.”

Howard leafed through the pile of short proposals in his lap, sighed, and let them fall back in his lap. His eyes were on Melissa’s dresser now. He rubbed his chin, thinking. It would be a low thing to do. And yet, knowing how meticulous Melissa was, he was sure the letter had been left in the couch for him to find. “Rosanne?” he called.

One second, two, three…

“Better make it short if you want an oven left!”

“Where was that envelope?” he called, rising from the chaise longue.

“The couch!” In a moment, she appeared at the door, wiping her forehead with the back of a rubber glove that was brown with gook.

“In it or on it?” Howard asked her.

“Sort of stickin’ up between the cushions.” She blew a strand of hair away from her eye. “Finished, Mr. Mason?”

Howard offered a half smile and slid his hands into his pockets. “Yes.” When Rosanne returned to the kitchen, he went over and read the letter.

Dear Melissa,

I don’t know what I would do without you these past months. No one told us it would be like this, did they? Forgive me when I say that I can’t help wondering what would have happened if we hadn’t met Howard that night. We’d both be a lot happier, I know. You told me Barbara wasn’t clever enough for me, and I told you that Howard would disappoint you—so I guess we both got what we deserved for not listening to each other.

I just wanted to thank you for listening to me the other day. My success at Beacon Dunlap would mean nothing without someone to share it with and, as always, you understand the importance of everything.

Not long until Fishers Island! (I’m seeing your father next week for lunch.)

Melissa, dear friend, you are all that is keeping me going.

Love,

Stephen

The first night of their honeymoon, spent at the Plaza, Howard had accepted that Melissa was too exhausted to have sex. So exhausted, in fact, he excused her when she pushed him away when he wanted to hold her as they fell asleep. Her excuses the next night, in London, and the next and the next and the next, were all quite reasonable. Melissa was of course shy; it would take time.

As it turned out, they did not consummate their marriage until they moved into the Riverside Drive apartment. Melissa had lain there, eyes closed, chin up, enduring Howard’s touch as though it were a prelude to being shot. When it came to actual penetration, Melissa cried and pleaded and begged Howard not to do it because it was killing her. Howard stopped, but then he thought of Mrs. Collins and Daddy Collins and the wedding and somehow he knew that if he didn’t just push ahead and do it, it might never happen. After he—ever so gently—managed to come inside of her, Melissa jumped out of bed, locked herself in the bathroom, and stayed in the bathtub for nearly an hour. Afterward, robe firmly knotted around her waist, she curled up with the telephone on the living-room couch and called, of course, Daddy. “Everything’s fine,” Howard overheard from the hallway. “Remember how you used to wake me up when you couldn’t sleep? It’s like that, Daddy.”

Howard racked his brain about how to help Melissa. (God, how to help himself.) When therapy was dismissed as ridiculous, Howard pledged his faith in time and gentle reassurance. The only problem was that Melissa seemed to hate reassurance more than she hated sex. (“Just please stop talking about it!” she would wail, clapping her hands over her ears.) But time did bring a change, a compromise, they had lived with since: Melissa used sex (a loose term, considering what it was like) to force Howard into doing whatever horrible thing she had her heart set on. If they spent the weekend in New Canaan with Daddy, if they went to Daddy’s reunion at Schnickle State College in Tennessee, or if Daddy came in and spent the weekend with them, then Howard could look forward to sex the first night after the ordeal was over. And summers! That was an interesting game, renting down the road from Daddy. The three or four weekends a summer that Daddy was not there were the weekends Melissa gave the signal, “I’ll be ready for you in twenty-five minutes, Howard.”