Lewis turned back to look at her. She was almost in tears; she looked like a woman, and also like a child. He was touched.
“You didn’t do anything,” he said more gently. “I’m not mad at you. Truly.”
He bent and kissed her.
“I’ll come tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay, Lewis.” She hesitated. “Lewis, shall I…”
Lewis smiled. He lifted one finger and pressed it against her lips. He said: “Surprise me…”
He drove home fast; just one little red pill, and he didn’t really need that. He felt angry, and powerful, and free. No one at the gates. By the time he reached the house, the sky was darkening. He went into the living room. Hélène was there, alone. She was sitting, reading a book. She greeted him, and made no comment about the time, or his absence. She watched him as he walked across the room to pour himself a drink, and Lewis knew why she was doing that. She watched his eyes, and she watched his walk. She never asked, but she liked to know—how much he’d been drinking.
He lifted the heavy decanter and poured a good three inches of whisky into the glass. He held it so she could see what he was doing; let her watch; let her count them. He took a swallow of the drink, and then moved across so that he stood just in front of her, not too near, not too far, just enough. He rested his elbow on the marble mantelpiece. Hélène bent her head to her book.
Lewis knew she could feel his anger, and he was glad of it. He looked down at her bent head, at the thick pale gold hair, which she had tied back at the nape of her neck with a black silk ribbon. Should he tell her now, should he tell her what he had just seen on that television set, or should he wait? He might wait. A week. A month—as long as he wanted. He felt he would like to do that. After all, how long had he waited to find out the truth? Five years. Yes, he would wait. But still, he could feel the anger, and it was mounting. The itch to pick a quarrel was very strong…
Hélène turned a page. She tried to force her mind to concentrate on the words in front of her. She could feel Lewis’s anger very strongly; it was like a third person in the room; she had felt it come in with him. It could have been caused by drinking, although he did not look drunk. It could have been the pills he took. It could have been any number of things—resentment at her seeing Thad; a chance remark by a stranger.
These past weeks in particular, but also for long before that, she had grown used to these moods, and accustomed to trying to humor Lewis. Oh, so many devices. She thought of them now, all the little ways in which she tried to conciliate him. The carefulness with which she agreed with all his opinions, however contradictory; the silence she maintained, so that Lewis could talk or rage as he pleased. The efforts—the pathetic efforts—to please him. Making sure Cat was in bed early, for if she was still up when he came home, he always flew into a temper. Trying to arrange that the foods he liked would be served at the times he preferred. Wearing clothes on which he had once complimented her. Wearing jewelry that he had given her on some happy occasion in the past. Wearing her hair loose, as he preferred it. Asking him always, so considerately, about his work, his experiences, and making sure, if he bothered to ask her about hers, that the replies were brief and dismissive. Bowing to his opinions; bowing to his judgments; bowing to him…
She had behaved toward Lewis, she realized then, as she sat with her face bent to her book, in exactly the same way that, years ago, when she was still a child, she had behaved to Ned Calvert. She had seen other women, women much older than herself, behave in the same way. She had seen their fixed smiles, their attempts, in public, to make light of their husband’s rudeness. She had watched them, flirting a little, attempting to charm, women in their forties and older, behaving like coy little girls. She had hated their obsequiousness; now, quite suddenly, she hated her own. She thought: it is unbearable; it is humiliating; I shall never do that again. And she closed her book, and looked up at Lewis.
He was spoiling for a fight—she could see it in every line of his face, in the set of his body. On any other day in the past month, in all the months before that, she would have set out to disarm his anger, and to defuse it, no matter how she had to abase herself to do it. Now, she rebelled. She could feel the rebellion, a hard tight core of it inside her. The instant she felt it, she knew that it had always been there, and that she had allowed it, for years, to dwindle away into a weak and self-destructive resentment. She looked at Lewis quite calmly: not anymore.
“Why did you never tell me about your investments?” Lewis spoke suddenly, in the calm flat voice that always presaged trouble. It was not the central issue, she knew that at once, merely a side one he would use to open the engagement.
“I would have thought you might have mentioned them to me, just once or twice, in the past four years, since I introduced you to Gould in the first place, and since they’ve been so successful.”
“You’ve been through my filing cabinets then, as well as my desk?”
That surprised him, a little. He had been waiting, of course, for the placatory reply.
“Yes, I have. Why not? It’s a way of checking up on you. I like to know what you do, how you spend your time. And you’re not likely to tell me.” His tone was still calm, not yet openly belligerent. That would come next.
Hélène looked at him coldly. “I hope you found them instructive.”
“Oh, I did.” He swallowed the last of the whiskey, and placed the glass, with great care, on the mantel piece. “Instructive, and interesting. You like money, don’t you? I should have realized that before.” He paused. “After all, you married me for mine.”
The attack was now overt. There was a long pause while they looked at each other. Then Hélène said quietly, “I didn’t marry you for your money, Lewis. Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?” He flushed, and his voice rose. “Not exactly? Then why did you—exactly? Because you wanted my name? Because you thought I could help your career? Or would you still have married me if I’d been poor?”
“Lewis, I was sixteen years old.” Hélène sprang to her feet. “I was sixteen, and I was pregnant, and I was alone, and I was frightened. Can’t you understand that? You were there, and you were kind, and I liked you very much—I don’t know why I did it. It seemed right then. I was thinking of Cat, thinking of what would be best for her. I—a lot of things had happened to me the year I met you. One after another. They happened very fast, and perhaps that was part of it too. I couldn’t think clearly. I didn’t sit down and make a coldblooded decision. You were there. It seemed right. It seemed best…”
“You married me because of Cat.” His mouth twisted. “You married me because you were alone. You married me because another man had abandoned you, got you pregnant, and I was there.” An expression almost of bewilderment crossed his face. “Right from the very beginning. Why was I so blind? Why was I so goddamn fucking blind…”
“Abandoned me?” Hélène looked at him uncertainly. “I didn’t say that. I said…I—I said I was alone.”
“Don’t lie,” he said with a sudden passion. “Just don’t lie.”
He stopped for a moment, as if struggling to control himself, and through her anger Hélène thought dully, tiredly, that he was now going to say whatever it was he had meant to say from the very beginning. Some new accusation; she could not imagine what it might be—there had already been so many.
But there was no new charge. She thought he had been about to say one thing, and then stopped. Instead, he said, as he had said on many occasions before, “Did you love me? Did that enter into your calculations at all? Just once? Did it?”
Hélène looked away; then she looked back. “I thought I might come to love you,” she said quietly.
Lewis’s face worked. There was a silence. He said in a calm, detached voice, “Oh, I see.” There was a pause; he added, as if it were an afterthought, “You bitch. You fucking bitch.”
Then he hit her. It was a hard blow, to the side of the head, and it knocked her to the ground. Hé
lène lay there for a time, fighting to get her breathing steady, fighting not to cry. Lewis had hit her before, though never as hard, but he had not done so for some time. The fact that she had known he wanted to hit her, from the moment he first came into the room, the fact that she had been unable to prevent it—just the fact that, physically, he was the stronger of the two—all this filled her with humiliation and anger. Clear across the years, she heard her mother’s voice: He hit me once, Hélène. Just once. That was enough.
Slowly she rose to her feet. Lewis had not moved or spoken. She waited until she was quite sure that she could speak with a steady voice.
“You shouldn’t do that, Lewis,” she said at last. “If you ever do that again, I’ll leave you.”
Lewis lifted his head and looked at her. He ran his hand through his hair, glanced around him, patted his pockets.
“Where did I put my car keys? Oh, there they are…”
He picked them up from a table. He picked up the pale linen jacket he had tossed on a chair, and slung it over his shoulder. “Get a divorce then.” He paused. “I’ve already given you grounds.”
He said it quite casually, with a certain pleasure. Then he walked out of the room.
Hélène heard the engine of the Porsche. She listened to it until it faded into the distance. She sat down, and remained seated for some time, until she began to grow cold.
She did not cry: there was no point in crying. There was no point in apportioning blame, in saying, this was Lewis’s fault, and this mine. They were both wrong, she thought, and they both had a measure of justification.
There it was: she looked at this thing which was her marriage, she looked at the efforts she had made to preserve it, and it seemed to her that she had fashioned and preserved a prison, both for Lewis and for herself. The expression in Lewis’s eyes, when he walked out of the room, had been that of a man just granted parole. Marriage: she looked at it, and it was then, she thought later, that she first relinquished it.
After an hour or so, she stood up. It was nearly midnight, and the house was quiet. She moved around the room slowly, picking up her book, which had fallen to the floor, straightening a chair, a cushion. She did these things automatically, hardly aware of her actions. She began to switch off the lamps, one by one.
Just as she came to the last, the telephone began to ring. It startled her, the sudden ringing in the silent house. She looked at the telephone; she began to move toward it. It rang once, twice, three times. Then it stopped.
The next day, when Lewis came home—he always came home—he apologized. He was not as contrite as he used once to be, and Hélène was not as forgiving. She thought: we have both grown harder.
“I’m not sorry for what I said. I’m sorry I hit you.” This distinction seemed to matter to him; Hélène let it pass.
“Did you telephone me, last night, after you left?” she asked.
“Oh, God.” His face crumpled suddenly, like a child’s. He sat down, and buried his face in his hands.
“I might have. I don’t know. I can’t remember,” he said at last.
Hélène
Los Angeles, 1964–1965
“I CAN’T WAIT. I CAN’T wait. I can’t wait.”
Cat stood in the middle of the ballroom. Two bright points of color blossomed in her cheeks; her small triangular face was fierce with excitement. Hélène looked at her fondly: she had grown taller that summer, she looked suddenly older. She stood in a stream of sunlight, her hands clasped together, her face lifted. She wore her hair in a new way now, parted on one side. It was longer, and more unruly. When she was excited, as she was now, her face glowed, and her eyes lit up: in certain lights they looked almost violet. Something about her stance—the way in which she held her hands, perhaps, or lifted her head, reminded Hélène of her mother. For a moment she saw Violet quite vividly, standing in the trailer, singing the song about lilacs to an audience of one.
Cassie had seen the resemblance too; she and Madeleine stood nearby, also watching Cat, who was now practicing some wobbly pirouettes. Cassie smiled; she shook her head a little sadly.
“Poor Violet. Sometimes Cat looks so much like her. So much…” Cassie’s remark pleased Hélène. Her heart suddenly felt light. It was a dance they were planning, after all, the party for Ellis—Cat was right to be excited…At once she felt a new energy. She picked up her lists and notes, Cassie picked up hers, and they moved off together, thinking and planning.
It was an absurd room, really, this ballroom—a room from another era. Here, at Ingrid Nilsson’s legendary parties, Valentino had once tangoed, and Swanson had waltzed. A room one hundred feet long, lit by crystal chandeliers which had been a gift from the Hungarian prince who had been, briefly, Nilsson’s lover.
One side of it was ranked with tall arched windows that led out onto the terrace; at one end there was a dais for the musicians; there was a high ceiling of filigree plasterwork; tall pier glasses, reflecting the room back upon itself, and then back again. A room of ivory and gilt, pale, delicate and preposterous—a wedding cake of a room. It had not been used since they came to live here: looking at it, Hélène felt suddenly that she loved it.
“Oh, Cassie, there ought to be palms—don’t you think? I’m sure there would have been. Just here, and here—and over there. And around the base of the dais—there ought to be flowers. Lots of them. Flowers with a marvelous scent—gardenias, and tuberoses—oh, and ferns. Write that down, Cassie. We ought to have ferns…”
Cassie smiled. “Camellias,” she said firmly. “We ought to get camellias. Violet always loved them. They’d be right. My, but wouldn’t she have loved this!” She made a note, and then frowned. “You think we can get them at this time of the year? Camellias, gardenias?”
“Of course we can. This is Hollywood. We can get anything.” Hélène hugged her. “Oh, Cassie. It’s going to be such a wonderful party. The best party ever. I know it. Let’s see—the musicians will be there. The champagne bar will be through there—shall we have some pink champagne? Cassie, Madeleine—what do you think?”
Cassie deferred to Madeleine. Madeleine was the Frenchwoman; Madeleine was the expert. She, too, was becoming caught up in the excitement; she laughed, and clapped her hands.
“But certainly. Both. The pink and the white. Like a wedding…” She turned and looked around the room.
“And the walls—couldn’t we decorate them too? If we were to have garlands of flowers—like necklaces. You could hang them there, and there—in loops, voyez vous, by the mirrors—and here, between the doors. Ça serais charmant—white roses, perhaps. I saw that done once, when I was a little girl, for a great ball that was held at—” She broke off. “At a place near where I lived,” she finished.
Her color rose slightly, but Hélène was too excited to notice. “Yes, what shall we have here?” She paused, frowning. “I know—something exotic. We should have orchids—cattleyas. Don’t you remember, Cassie—someone told me. That was what Nilsson did, after she retired. She never went out. She gave no more parties. She stayed here in this house—and she grew orchids. Oh, yes…” She gave a little shiver. “We should have everything as she would have. Because it’s still her house…I feel that sometimes. Do you?”
She turned; Cassie nodded. There was a little silence, then Cassie sighed. “I used to see her movies. When I was a girl. She was so beautiful…”
Hélène stood still. She thought of those Nilsson films, which she, too, had seen, though much later. She thought of her own films. Images, living on. She gave herself a little shake.
“We’ll do it as she would have liked,” she said quietly. “For her—and all the other ghosts…”
“I want to dance.” Cat’s voice broke in on them. “Mother, show me how to dance—please. Show me now…”
Hélène and Cassie exchanged glances; Madeleine smiled. “Music,” she said. “Wait, ma petite. We must have some music. I shall find a record. Wait.” She turned and ran, out through the conserva
tory, and into the room beyond, leaving all the doors open. There was a pause; quietly at first, then more strongly as she turned up the volume, came the strains of a waltz. A Viennese waltz.
It was ghostly, this music, drifting through from an invisible source. For a moment, it was as if they were listening to music that came to them from the past, from all those long-dead musicians who had played here, from all those evenings of gaiety and dancing. Hélène thought that; she knew Cassie thought it too. Madeleine came back to the door to watch. Hélène crossed to Cat; she rested one hand gently around Cat’s narrow waist and took her small hand in the other.
Cat looked up at her; her face filled with expectation and uncertainty.
“I’ll be the man, and I’ll lead. It’s easy. Just follow my feet. That’s it. Like this, Cat, like this…”
Cat stumbled at first; then, gradually, she became more confident. They began to circle to the music, slowly, and then more quickly. Hélène could feel the tautness, the suppleness of Cat’s body; she looked down into Cat’s face, laughingly, and Cat, laughingly, looked up. They circled, and they circled, their movements now attuned. It was a moment of simple and perfect happiness.
As the music died away, Hélène thought: I shall always remember this; always. An empty ballroom. I shall see it quite clearly, and I shall think, that day, oh, yes, that was the day when Cat and I danced…
The thought made her a little sad. The happiness shaded. Cat was so very young. She might not remember…
The music stopped, and Hélène took Cat’s hands and pressed them tight, with a sudden urgency and passion she could not explain.
“Oh, Cat,” she said. “Remember this.”
“It came this morning. I knew it would. I knew it would come. I knew Hélène wouldn’t forget me!”
Stephani was holding the square of white pasteboard in her hand. The hand was trembling. With one finger she touched the engraved black letters. She turned to Lewis, her eyes shining.
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