by Susan Isaacs
“You too,” she said. “You were very good.”
“We could tour, like a vaudeville act.” She stared at him. He had said something amusing. At least she thought he’d meant it to be amusing. She smiled. He didn’t. “What are you going to do if you get more invitations to go on TV?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She took a second sip of wine. He had finished his. She was so used to being the hostess she wanted to ask him if he wanted more. “There’s the problem with my husband.”
“How bad is it?”
“Pretty bad.” She wanted to tell him about Nicholas, about how bad it really was. She wanted to ask, What did I do to make it this bad? How did it get so that he never undresses before me any more, that he always wears a bathrobe—even to walk from the bathroom to his chest of drawers—as if depriving me of the last bit of access I have to his body? His renowned body. She wanted to talk, but he wasn’t being a psychiatrist. His wing tips were off, his feet were up, and she was sitting sipping his wine. And calling him Judson. Instead she said, “I don’t know what to do about the publicity. I want to help, but how much? Do I become a vaudeville act?”
“I didn’t mean that in a derogatory manner,” he said.
“I know. But that’s what I can become. For you, this is just another small item on a very long résumé. But for me—” She sighed. “I don’t want to be a professional basket case.”
“You’re not a basket case.”
“Well, a professional ex-basket case. You know, when Nick made his first couple of films, he’d go on these promotional tours. It’s not just the Tonight show. Every city has something: Good Morning Detroit, A.M. Boston, Hello Saratoga Springs. I know that being Mrs. Nicholas Cobleigh I could get onto any show I want. And I know it would help people. I know that in every city there are people who can’t leave their houses, who have nothing to do but listen to these shows. But is that what I want to do?”
“Well, do you have anything you’re really burning to do?”
She shrugged. “Do you still want to be part of the training program? To go and work with phobics the way Ellie Matteo worked with you?”
“I don’t know,” she said. And then it slipped out. “I don’t think so. I don’t know why. I just think of Ellie’s patience, standing there with me until I was able to get into a car. Just to get into it, not even drive. I don’t think I’d have that patience, even though I’ve been through it myself. I’d probably want to shove the person into the car and say, ‘Oh, come on. Stop being stupid.’ Isn’t that terrible?”
“No.” He ran his finger over the rim of his glass. She drank the rest of her wine so quickly she felt a little light-headed. “Let me get some more wine,” he said.
He returned from the kitchen carrying the bottle and refilled their glasses, placing the bottle on the psychiatric journal she hadn’t wanted to see. She leaned forward to pick up her glass. He sat on the arm of her chair.
She didn’t dare lift the glass. She’d shake. She’d spill it. His thigh pressed against her arm. It was really nothing. She was misinterpreting it. He was just being informal. His shoes were off. She leaned back. His arm was there to receive her. His hand felt so warm on her arm. He bent down and kissed her.
A light kiss. A long one. His lips brushing back and forth over hers, getting the feel of them. She should say something, she thought for a second. Now was the time.
Instead she strained her neck, pushing up her head to increase the pressure between their lips. Judson pulled back, keeping the pressure soft, a slow extended exploration of her lips, the lightest brushing. She parted her lips to receive his tongue, but he kept his mouth closed, rubbing his closed lips first against the top and then the bottom of her opened ones.
Her hands, prim and awkward in her lap, floated up as in slow motion ballet, reaching for him. He pushed them back into her lap. “Slow,” he whispered. He continued his light, torturous kissing.
He kept kissing her. She was too excited. It was so humiliating. She couldn’t sit still. Her hips made crazy, irregular circles in the chair. He took her bottom lip between his teeth and gnawed on it. Then he sucked it. It was too much. She tried to pull back. He kept toying with her lip. She put her hand on his thigh.
He pushed it off. “Easy,” he said, and went back to her lip.
“Please, let me get undressed.” She couldn’t believe she’d said that. He stood, took her wrist, and pulled her up from the chair. Standing up seemed to cool her down, enough to feel the rise of unease, but that only lasted an instant, because he began kissing her again, still lightly, keeping a distance between everything but their mouths. She yanked the cotton sweater out of the waistband of her skirt.
“Do you have a curfew?” Judson asked.
“What?”
“Do you have to be home at any special time?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Then what’s your hurry?”
The kissing seemed to go on forever. Finally, when he pulled her hard against him, she let out such a scream of pleasure she immediately tried to wrench away in embarrassment.
He didn’t seem to notice. He held her tight and moved his lips from hers to the side of her face and then down, to her neck. He remained still. She couldn’t. She ground herself against him.
“Jane,” he said at last, “this feels so good.”
She was so inflamed she was beyond thought. She tried to tear off her clothes, but he held her hands behind her and said “No.” He undressed her slowly, spending so much time kissing and caressing her neck, her shoulders, even under her arms that by the time he unhooked her bra she nearly cried out with gratitude, as though he were relieving her of a terrible burden. “Touch me,” she pleaded, grabbing for his hands, trying to crush them against her breasts. “Judson, touch me.” He would not. He caressed her back, then knelt and kissed her midriff and stomach. “Touch me! How can you not touch me?” He drew her down onto the floor. The carpet was dry and scratchy, tiny hangnails clawing against her back.
He stopped her from pulling off her underpants. “Don’t.” When he finally eased them off for her, he worked them slowly down her legs, teasing, the way a stripper would.
He lay beside her, kissing her, stroking her. When he ran his tongue over her stomach, her muscles contracted so violently they hurt. “Do you like that?” he demanded. “Do you?”
His beard abraded her skin wherever he kissed her. His slacks itched her leg. “I can’t stand this,” she said. He would not touch her breasts or her genitals. She tugged at his hands.
“Stop it,” he said.
She was soaked. He rubbed his fingers in the wetness that had dripped onto the inside of her thighs. He rubbed the wet fingers over his lips until they were shiny. Then he kissed her.
Tears poured down her face. She reached out, half blinded, feeling for the bulge in front of his slacks. He arched away from her.
“Not tonight.”
She opened her legs wide and thrust her hips toward him. He ignored the invitation.
“Why not? Oh, please, why not?”
“Because,” he said slowly, “tonight we’re just beginning.”
26
WOMAN’S VOICE:…and we’re fortunate enough to have Beatrice Drew with us. Miss Drew is one of the grandes dames of the American stage and is here in Houston re-creating her role in the celebrated Broadway drama Starry Night. Miss Drew, before we talk about the play, I understand you are a close friend of Nicholas and Jane Cobleigh and actually appeared with Nicholas years ago. Can you tell our viewers, have you had any late word on her condition?
—Patricia Obermaier, KTRK-TV News, Houston
Nicholas had seen the girl before at New York University. That spring, the night before commencement where he was awarded an honorary degree, she’d been hovering in a corner in the President’s Lounge, sipping what must have been a soft drink through a straw. She looked tiny, and the only reason he’d noticed her was that, coming from a family of redheads, he’d
been wowed by her hair. This was a red no Tuttle had ever had: sleek, unfrazzled, a dazzling red with golden glints. She wore it straight down her back, and because she was so young and delicate—built on a much smaller scale than either of his daughters—she’d reminded him of a red-headed Alice in Wonderland. Whenever he’d glanced at her, she’d hung her head, obviously ashamed she’d been caught staring at him. He mused that she must be the teen-aged daughter of one of the professors and then she’d passed from his mind; he had encounters like that every day.
He’d agreed to a visiting professorship at NYU for that July only because he was at loose ends, between films. Although Jane could leave the house, he realized he did not want to spend a month alone with her, either traveling or in Connecticut. They needed time apart. At least he did. Her tongue, always pointed, had become knife-sharp. She’d held up a screenplay he’d admired, saying, “You like this? It’s a parody of every film you’ve ever made. I mean, I could see this as a sketch on television, with some comedian in a blond wig with his shirt off doing a take-off of you.” She’d opened the screenplay and read, “‘I’ve given you all I can, Jeannie. I have nothing more to give.’ Please, Nick, it’s an embarrassment. Think of the children. All the girls at school will point their fingers and mock them.” He’d grabbed the screenplay from her hand, gotten in the car, driven to Manhattan, and spent the night alone at the apartment. He loved having the king-sized bed all to himself and slept better than he had in weeks.
The next morning he’d called the chairman of the department and agreed to teach two hours a week during July. Not an onerous schedule, but enough to give him some time away. He needed time to think, although when he was alone he couldn’t think except to acknowledge that he was angry, she was angry, they were having problems. And he was very unhappy.
When he was a boy, whenever his mother had lost anything—a bracelet, a book, a favorite watering can—she’d sigh. “I feel as if I’ve lost my best friend.” He and Tom used to make fun of her. “What?” Tom would say. “You can’t find your jock strap? You must feel—” And Nicholas would break in, “I feel as if I’ve lost my best friend.” Now the sentence would not stay out of his mind.
But there was that girl again, in his seminar, with that glorious cascade of hair. He’d been surprised when he saw her in class, because he’d been told the seminar was composed of five doctoral candidates. She didn’t look over sixteen or seventeen. She was very quiet and usually kept her head down, scribbling notes as if she were responsible for a complete transcript of the seminar.
At the third session, he’d told them he wanted to get their names straight and called off their cards. She was P. MacLean.
“Mr. Cobleigh,” one of the men called out. Nicholas wasn’t sure if this was B. Nussbaum or L. Drutman. He was even darker skinned than Jane. His posture was unnaturally rigid and he wore mirrored sunglasses all the time, so he resembled a blind jazz musician.
“Yes.”
“How do you compare your oeuvre with that of Orson Welles?”
“I don’t—”
“Forget Citizen Kane,” the man said. “Think of The Magnificent Ambersons.”
“Well, it’s hard to judge Welles on the basis of that film, because whichever studio it was—”
“RKO,” the man said wearily.
“RKO cut about an hour out of the film and eliminated what Welles thought were some of the most important scenes.”
“Do you see any resemblance between your work and Welles’s?” B. Nussbaum or L. Drutman demanded.
“Not really.”
“None at all?” He sounded astounded at Nicholas’s obtuseness.
“No. Do you?”
“To answer that,” Nussbaum/Drutman said, “would take ten hours.” He seemed to be waiting for an invitation.
Nicholas turned to the other four students. “Any other questions before we get started?”
P. MacLean’s head stayed down. She looked more like Alice in Wonderland than ever. She was wearing a blue dress that looked like the old-fashioned pinafores his sisters used to wear, without the white apron but with the same puffy little sleeves that only emphasized her scrawny arms. He couldn’t believe they made dresses like that for adults, although she was so small she could probably wear a child’s size. Why she would want to was another question entirely. He wondered what the P was for: Patty, Penny, Polly. He hoped she wasn’t saddled with something too large for her, like Phoebe.
Fifteen minutes later, when he was discussing how he, as director, had worked with the different art directors, he caught her staring at him. Not at his face. At his crotch. Little Alice in Wonderland. He wanted to laugh, but then he realized she knew he was aware of where her interest had been directed. Before she lowered her head he could see her face turn almost purple with mortification. She began writing furiously, but her note-taking hand must have quivered because she dropped her pen. When she bent down to retrieve it, her seat tilted and nearly fell over. He wished he could give her a look to reassure her. She was so young. He felt sorry for her. But she would not raise her head for the rest of the class.
Nicholas looked ahead, into the long mirror that covered an entire wall of the bathroom in the Manhattan apartment. He looked like hell. Three days fishing in Canada and he had such a bad sunburn the lids of his eyes had puffed, so he appeared to be squinting. The skin over his nose and his cheeks was blistered and so dry it pulled tight. Even worse, there had been a plague of blackflies at the lake, and his neck and the back of his hands were dotted with bites that itched so badly they hurt. The only advantage, he thought, was that his appearance was so distorted he could probably walk the eighty blocks from the apartment to NYU and not be recognized.
He would never eat trout again. They had caught so many. It seemed all they had to do was drop their lines into the water, and fifteen trout fought each other for the honor of getting hooked. After the first few heady hours, the fishing had ceased to be fun.
It was even less fun because Michael, who was thirty years old, behaved so stuffily he seemed older than James. He was a banker, but so humorless, so conservative and stodgy, he seemed a caricature of one. He looked old, stringy, with a milky aura around his eyes and the pursed, tight mouth of a man who’d known decades of bitterness. The only subject that animated him was the Federal Reserve System. His red hair was clipped so close his head looked like a rusty scouring pad.
Nicholas and James stayed up drinking that night. In the dark haze just before dawn, James had said, “It’s been sixteen and a half years.”
“What?” Nicholas asked.
“Sixteen and a half years. Your mother threw me out December 1, 1961. Threw me out. It was the psychiatrist who made her do it.”
“Dad—” Nicholas said.
“It’s all right. Just watch yourself. That one who’s getting interviewed with Jane all the time.”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Good.” James poured another drink. They were drinking vodka in paper cups. “Listen, it’s going to be all right.”
“I know,” Nicholas said. His stomach hurt. “Everything will be fine.”
“I mean with Win.”
“Oh. Yes, she’s been fine. In good spirits,” Nicholas said. “She has a volunteer job at Sloan-Kettering she’s involved with. And she looks well.”
“I know she looks well.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“I went up there. The maid wouldn’t let me in. Didn’t know me. New maid. New wallpaper. But then Win—your—mother—came to the door.”
“Did she seem surprised to see you?” Nicholas couldn’t think of anything else to ask. He couldn’t say, Did she throw you out? He couldn’t ask. After sixteen and a half years’ separation, after all your women, how did you have the nerve, the courage, to go and see her?
“She was surprised,” James said slowly. Nicholas had felt embarrassed, as if he were about to hear something about his parents that a son should not know. “But it tur
ned out all right.”
“Good,” Nicholas said, relieved. He supported himself against the rough wall of the cabin and stood. “Well, I’m going to try and get a couple hours sleep. How about you, Dad?”
“She’s taking me back,” James said.
“What?”
“Don’t say what. You’re not in the movies now. You don’t have to give a dramatic performance.”
“Dad—”
“You heard me. We’re going to France for August, and then I’m moving back into the apartment. Sixteen and a half years, even though she never stopped loving me, all because of that psychiatrist.”
“Don’t you think—” Nicholas began.
“You better not let that bastard get his hooks into Jane,” his father had said.
In his bathroom, Nicholas wet a washcloth with cold water, leaned his head back, and put it over his face to cool his sunburn. He didn’t feel like meeting Murray for lunch in the Village and then going to teach. His lips were dried and cracked, and it hurt when he had to smile.
He wasn’t smiling that much. “How’s my Janie, my celebrity?” Murray would ask. Nicholas threw the cloth into the sink and walked into the bedroom. The chairs and the chaise longue were piled with boxes. Before he’d left for Canada he’d ordered an entire small wardrobe, enough clothes to keep in the apartment so he wouldn’t be forced back to Connecticut just because he wanted a fresh suit. He needed a checked sports shirt. He opened a likely looking box from Saks, but it was cotton pajamas. He got a paper cut on the next box. It wasn’t sports shirts either.
It was underwear for Jane. Not the usual white, beige, and the couple of black things she usually wore. This was lacy, sexy stuff in wild colors: gray, wine red, bottle green. One yellow bra had such dainty straps and low-cut cups that it would probably break under the strain the first time she wore it. Nicholas hurled it across the room. It landed in a little mound on the rug, like a dead daffodil. He was so angry at her. Every time he thought he’d reached his limit, she’d do something else to get him even angrier.