by Belva Plain
On seeing it, Hyacinth felt a shock. Could he possibly have in his head what Francine always swore he had? But no. It was only—although only was hardly the right word—a very fine gold chain holding a pendant made of two cherubs, female and male, with large diamond eyes.
“Turn around. Let me put it on for you,” he commanded.
In the mirror that hung between the windows, she beheld herself. Her cheeks were flushed. Her dark hair gleamed, her eyes gleamed, and the pendant gleamed on the white skin above her cleavage.
“Oh, Arnie,” she cried, “it's lovely! Lovely. But—”
“But I shouldn't have done it,” he mocked. “And why shouldn't I, please?”
Because, she wanted to say, and did not say, I am already too obligated to you, and I don't want to be.
“You do too much,” she murmured. “It gets harder to find words to thank you.”
“You can at least give me a kiss.”
Obligingly, she moved toward his cheek, but he, moving faster, pulled her to himself and found her mouth instead. Her first impulse was to resist, but as he increased the pressure, her strength rushed away, and they stood there, firmly attached from mouth to hip. Now her will rushed away, and thoughts raced through her agitated mind: It's the wine, I'm weak, it's been two years since I've felt anything.
His fingers were undoing the buttons of her blouse, which opened in front. His skin was fragrant with pine, or spices, or sweet hay. He was strong. Her thoughts kept repeating: It's been so long. How good not to resist, to float. Close your eyes. Let him….
They were in a suite, and when she opened her eyes, she saw past a door that was ajar. She saw a bed already turned down for the night; it was white and crisp. There he would take off her clothes and lay her down—
Oh, no! What are you doing, Hyacinth? You wanted somebody, but not just anybody. You don't want this man. You'll be sorry five minutes afterward if you do this. Oh, no!
“What is it?” Arnie cried.
She was so ashamed! And he would be terribly angry. He would think she was a common tease, one of those despicable women who lead a man on and then deny him.
“I can't. Arnie, I can't,” she whispered. “Please don't be angry at me.”
Like hers, his face was flushed. He had been ready, and she had hurt him, had hurt this very decent, kindly man.
“I'm sorry. Oh God, I'm sorry. It isn't you, Arnie, it's just that suddenly I got scared. I don't understand myself. I guess I'm just not ready yet.”
Absurdly, they were still standing there, only inches apart. For a moment, neither spoke. Arnie's eyes had narrowed, his face hardened.
“What do you think you're doing?” he began, and stopped. “No. You didn't start it. I did. I'm sorry, too. Button your blouse.” And he turned away, for her breast was exposed. And he repeated quietly now, “It's not your fault. I started it.”
Some women would say that a night in bed was little enough to give him for all the good he had already done her. But she was just not one of those women, not able to do it.
He must have read the doubt and regret on her face, because he tried to comfort her. “You have no trust left. That's what it is. I understand.”
“Yes, you do understand, and without knowing half of it.”
Her knees were so weak that she had to sit down. She trembled, and he saw that. He saw everything.
“Am I unstable?” she whispered.
He came to sit next to her. “What? Unstable?” he asked.
“Gerald thinks I am. Am I?”
“Well, if you ever were, Hy, you sure as hell aren't now.”
It was wild, it was utterly reckless and senseless, this need that all of a sudden possessed her. It was jumping off a cliff into midstream, throwing her life away. But she did it now. She did the unthinkable.
“I was in the office that night. I've already told you that Gerald thinks I did it. He isn't altogether wrong. I was in the office that night, and I lied to you before. I guess I didn't know you well enough to trust you with my life.”
And she continued, “I was smoking. You remember that I was almost addicted then? Haven't you noticed that now I never touch a cigarette? I made a vow: Oh God, never again.”
“Jesus, I'm sick!” Arnie said, and he looked it, sick and aghast.
“I went crazy, you see. I trashed everything and walked up and down, smoking one cigarette after the other. That's how the fire started. It was all on account of that girl, and now here I am!” she cried. “Here I am. That's the reason he has my children. That's what it's all about. I had to sign them away, don't you see? Or else, or else—”
“I do see,” he said gently. “I do.”
“Even now I'm not out of the woods. And I never, never will be. I shall never have my children. I shall never forget the innocent man who died because of me.”
When he put his arm around her, she laid her head on his shoulder; no passion now, no desire was in the contact this time, only the will on his part to give some comfort, and on her part the need to receive whatever he could give.
“It was an accident, Arnie, I swear it was. The curtains must have caught fire, and so it spread. Do you believe I did it on purpose? Tell me honestly, do you?”
“Knowing you, I'll say absolutely not. I don't see why he should make such a charge and be so upset, anyway. It wasn't even his building. I owned it.”
“He was tired of me,” she said simply, “and that gave him an excuse. Now he has all the pleasure of his children without the nuisance of me.”
“You, a nuisance?”
“It happens all the time.”
“It wouldn't happen to me if you would—I don't know whether you ever would consider—no, now's not the moment.”
Suddenly, a terrible fear surged through Hyacinth's blood and chilled her very bones. What had she done? Clutching his arms, she stared into his face, crying wildly, “Arnie! You would never let anything of this slip, would you? Not by accident? I trust you, Arnie! It's my life! My children's lives, too, if the worst should happen to me. I haven't even told Francine. I'm afraid she would get so enraged one day that she would go to Gerald, and that would be the end of me. She despises him.”
“Hy, put it out of your mind. I've already forgotten it. I never heard it. You never told me anything.”
Perhaps she had been naïve. Naïveté was her major flaw, Francine said, and Gerald had said it often enough, too. Yet sometimes in this life, you have to trust somebody.
“I trust you, Arnie,” she repeated.
He stood up. “I'm going to get a taxi and take you home.” He kissed each cheek. “I'm here for you, Hy, and I'll wait for you. I won't rush you right now. But think it over.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
For some months, on weekends and in the evenings after classes, Hyacinth had been sewing, saving her work and showing it to nobody. It had become her habit to listen to music while she worked. I've gone through ten operas, she calculated, and enough clothes to make a small collection.
The upholstery-fabric skirt still hung in a closet. Out of the same cobalt-and-ruby cloth, she had made a jacket to be worn with a finely pleated chiffon skirt, in either of those two colors. These also hung in the closet. The apple green dress that she had made for Francine, who had worn it on her trip to Mexico and loved it, had now been duplicated in green satin of the finest quality and was naturally, she thought, twice as successful. The same closet held a plain black dress with a modified seventeenth-century ruff of superb white lace, a suit of gray menswear woolen piped in scarlet, a flowered linen suit, various knee-length pants, and blouses.
One day she stood looking at them all and wondered what they were for other than to give pleasure to her while she created them. She had not the least desire to wear them. The clothes she already owned were more than adequate for her lifestyle: classes, the weekend afternoons with a few of the women she had befriended in the apartment building, along with Francine's occasional visit to New York. Francine's
social life was far busier than was her daughter's.
When she went to Florida, it was never for more than two days at a time. The children came north, but also briefly. Arnie, whenever he came to the city, took her out to dinner, but never above the ground floor of his hotel….
It was as if that evening had not even occurred. A complicated set of emotions was hers: gratitude and a deep affection. What his feelings after her rejection of him might be, she could only guess. Obviously, he wanted to see her; otherwise, why would he come to her? Surely he had other women who gave him what she would not give him. Perhaps it was simply a case of being sorry for her, more especially so now that he knew the whole story.
As she stood ruminating about her life and absently gazing at her work, she decided one day that it really would make sense to try selling it. If it should turn out not to make sense, nothing would have been lost. So before fifteen minutes went by, she had swept the closet's contents into a large flat box and gone downstairs to call a taxi. Not ten minutes later, she arrived at one of the city's most fashionable Madison Avenue shops, there to exhibit her work to the manager.
Is it possible, she asked herself as she watched him examine the contents of the box, that he is accustomed to such eccentric behavior as mine? For now, on second or third thought, she was shocked by what she was doing and would gladly have run out of the place if that would not have been even more eccentric behavior.
Apparently, this rather elegant gentleman was not shocked. On the contrary, he was even showing some interest. Silent minutes passed. Tissue paper rustled.
“I like the menswear suit piped in red with a lace blouse beneath it,” he told her, smiling a little.
One by one, he emptied the box and examined each article slowly, then repacked them all with care.
“Well, I don't know,” he said, looking Hyacinth up and down.
She looked back, thinking, he doesn't know how to get rid of me nicely.
“Well, I don't know. Your work is interesting. You didn't expect a positive answer just like that, did you?”
Hyacinth wanted to say, sir, I didn't expect a positive answer at all; do I look like such a fool? Yes, I suppose I do, or I wouldn't have come here in the first place. Look at the names on the floors below: every big wheel from Milan, Paris, and New York is there. And she herself shook her head.
“How about writing your name here and your phone number, and maybe a little bit about yourself? Give us some time to think. You'll hear from me, one way or the other.”
In a dreamlike state, not sure whether she was fooling herself or whether the gentleman was fooling her, Hyacinth picked up her box and took a taxi back home.
When, not very many days later, the telephone rang and she heard an unfamiliar voice, she thought at once that it must be that gentleman's secretary calling to tell her that Mr. So-and-So regrets, that although he appreciates your coming to see him, etc., etc.
Instead, it was the secretary to a very, very famous name in fashion: Lina Libretti. What Chanel had been in Paris forty years ago, Libretti was today in New York— or if not quite a Chanel, she was—well, a Libretti. It seemed she had been told about the clothes that Hyacinth had displayed at that fine Madison Avenue shop. And would Hyacinth be interested in bringing them to the office tomorrow or the next day?
Completely overwhelmed, Hyacinth replaced the receiver. Of course she knew Lina Libretti, and not only because everyone else did, but also because on several occasions Ms. Libretti had come to speak at the Institute. She was a dark little dynamo of a woman, still with a strong European accent. So it was that on the following afternoon, Hyacinth set off for Seventh Avenue with the flat box under her arm again, and in her heart a mixture of fantastic hope along with some very realistic, cold-water common sense.
The room was large. Enormous windows brought in the sky, and an enormous desk littered with magazines and sheaves of folders stood behind a large wall of shelves filled with photographs of famous people. In the midst of all this bigness, behind the huge desk, sat the tiny woman. In the classroom, she had not seemed quite that small.
She stood up, giving Hyacinth a warm smile. Then speaking brusquely, she got immediately down to business. “You needn't have lugged all that stuff with you. I know your work, your sketches. You don't remember that I was at your class?”
“I remember it very well,” said Hyacinth, thinking, how could anybody forget?
“Yes. I remember you, too. I had had it in my mind to talk to you at the end of the semester. I don't believe in distracting students in the middle of the year. But you beat me to it. You made an impression over there.” With this statement came a wide gesture toward Madison Avenue. “I do four collections a year, you know, and they buy heavily from all of them. But I suppose you've already heard that, too.”
Hyacinth had only a chance to nod before the flow of words resumed. “And you made an impression on me, too. I have a feeling that you know something about art. Also, that you have a feel for nature. Am I right? Won't you sit down?”
Hyacinth was oddly affected. This woman was most out of the ordinary, certainly most intelligent, maybe a clairvoyant judge of people, and possibly possessed of a fierce temper.
“Well, am I right?” repeated Ms. Libretti.
“I do, or I have done, a great deal of painting. And I did grow up in a very small country town.”
“You see,” Libretti interrupted. “I saw it in your work, all those leaves and shades of sky. The freshness. Maybe that sounds like a lot of nonsense to you, and maybe it is, but anyway, you're very good, my dear, very good. I'm an old woman, way over seventy, and I've seen hundreds come and go. They all think they have the talent, the touch, poor young things, because very few of them have it. They all think they're original, but how many are?” She laughed. “I'm not all that original myself. Listen. Would you like to come work here with me? I can teach you twice as fast as they can teach you in a class.”
It seemed as if Hyacinth's heart was hammering in her chest, her ears, and possibly in her toes as well.
“All right. I see it on your face. You'll come. Now undo this box and let me take a look at your stuff. You practically knocked that poor man off his feet with it the other day.”
Looking back long afterward, Hyacinth estimated that it had taken about half a year for her to accept the full reality of events. For one thing, there had been so much for her to learn that her first hour's euphoria had been completely squelched by the second day in Lina Libretti's establishment. At any moment, she had expected to be informed that she was, after all, not fitted for the work and that the whole thing was a regrettable mistake.
She had never before seen a workroom where, under ultimate strong lighting, sat and stood rows of men and women sewing, cutting, pressing, and finishing the objects of the designer's imagination. Except in fashion magazines, she had never seen a designer pin and fit a living model; the only such experience she had ever had was when she had fitted the green dress on Francine. She knew nothing about cutting knitted fabrics, not much about two-faced cloth, and practically nothing at all about costs or the whole price structure on which survival depends.
Her mistakes were discouraging, and she feared the reprimands that, like a whip, came cracking out of Lina's mouth whenever Hyacinth blundered or forgot. On one discouraging afternoon, she even went so far as to suggest that perhaps Lina would like her to leave. The response was another verbal whiplash of words, followed by a pat on the back and the words, “Don't be an idiot. You'll be here long after I will—if you want to, that is.”
If you want to? Her head seemed to teem with ideas. She went to the costume museum, to the Chinese exhibit, to the Central Park lake, and all were fertile ground for her imagination. The lace on a baby's bonnet turned into a pyramid of flounces on an almond-colored ball gown, and a patterned sari became the flowing sleeves on a cream-colored sheath.
Lina nodded. “Good. Now let's cut them. Watch me. Pay attention.”
; When the same store to which Hyacinth had taken her early samples ordered several of the pieces and displayed them under the Libretti name, an article in a popular fashion periodical reported that the new designer was young, and that her name was Hyacinth.
Lina was generous. “If you keep on as you've begun, I'm thinking about giving you full credit. You will work in a lower price range, not low, but lower, and we'll call your line ‘Lina Libretti's Hyacinth productions.’ ”
It was interesting to see how individuals reacted to this sudden alteration in her life.
Francine was the loving mother. She made an immediate trip to New York, took her to a gala dinner at one of the city's grandest restaurants, and bought her a bracelet to go with her new celebrity. Yet on her face behind the proud smile, there could be discerned a slight, the very slightest, shadow of doubt or incredulity, as if to say that the whole business was unreal.
Arnie showed his typical boosterism and his typical skepticism. “Great! Great! That's showing the world! But you're new at this, so take care. Look around, and find out what the going pay rate is. Don't let anybody take advantage of you.”
From Gerald there came a short, friendly letter of congratulation. Hyacinth threw it into the wastebasket and most certainly did not acknowledge it. Since Gerald had not been known to subscribe to fashion papers, it was surprising that he had even heard this piece of news.
“You told him,” she said to Arnie over the telephone.
“I swear I didn't. Face it, Hy, you're making a name for yourself. And after only six months, too. But don't get a swelled head, kid.”
“Time assuages sorrow.” Out of silence emerged a tag end of wisdom, something Hyacinth had learned in school so long ago that it might have been in another life. “Time heals everything,” it meant. But for her it didn't. It only taught her to cover up and cope, to be grateful for work, for the health of the children, and for an escape, so far, from the storm cloud that still hovered overhead, ready to burst.