by Susan Isaacs
Jane would have turned to the man and said, “I never met a lord before. We didn’t have any in Ohio.” Or asked him if noblesse really did oblige these days; or whether he was able to recognize another aristocrat on sight; or if he’d please explain what the Liberal party was. Jane would have gotten him talking. Smiling. Looking down her dress. And after the party, she’d carry on as they’d be getting ready for bed. He could almost hear her: “God, a lord! Did you see? I sat there and carried on a whole conversation with a titled Englishman. Except he looked like a Mafia capo. Didn’t he? With that suit and that weasel face. But he called me ‘My dear.’ Nick, admit it, you’re jealous. Lord Whatever calling me his dear. But what a mean face. Thank goodness there’s no droit de seigneur any more.”
In the limousine going back to the house on Berkeley Square, Pamela said, “I’m glad that’s over.”
He hated the house. It was a double townhouse, big, gray, cold. There was a car showroom across the green and a smelly Arab restaurant down the street. It was like living on a bad block on the West Side.
He’d never liked the West Side. Jane thought it romantic, bohemian. New Yorkish. He remembered. It was her and her brother’s highest accolade.
Jane popped into his mind more often in England than she had when they were both in the States. It was an intrusive kind of popping; he often resented her for it.
Sometimes he thought about her and Judson Fullerton. His imagination wouldn’t let go of her description of Fullerton’s penis, how she’d spoken of it. Nicholas saw it as a battering ram. He pictured them in bed, Fullerton ramming into Jane, Jane shuddering with orgasm after orgasm as she’d never done with him. He heard her screaming: Judson! Judson! It made him sick to his stomach. Then angry.
But sometimes her intrusions were more gentle. Pamela had said, “Nicholas, I can’t believe that in a year or two I’ll be carrying your child.” He’d looked down at Pamela, lying naked, gazing up at him, the tiny points of her pelvic bones protruding, the concavity of her stomach. He’d tried to imagine her pregnant. But the only pregnant woman who came to his mind was Jane.
Jane, belly swollen big by her sixth month with Victoria, climbing up the flights of stairs to their cold-water flat. Was it on Forty-fifth or Forty-sixth? He couldn’t remember. She would know. Climbing up those steps with him after dinner at his mother’s. Take it easy, he’d told her. Every few steps he’d pat her behind in encouragement.
The brown line that crept up the center of her belly. The way the tips of her breasts turned brown too. I can’t stand it, she’d said. I’m such a cow. No, you’re beautiful. Pregnancy was natural to her: broad-hipped, big-breasted, born to be a mother. The bigger she got, the prouder he’d become. He knew it was foolish, but nonetheless, Jane was a walking advertisement to his prowess: Nicholas Cobleigh did this to me! her belly proclaimed.
He could not imagine Pamela pregnant. She wasn’t made for it. It would look wrong. Like a tumor.
Two nights before his birthday, about 3:00 A.M., he’d woken up thinking about Jane. He’d slipped out of bed, glanced down at Pamela, who was sleeping curled like a child in the middle of the bed, and tiptoed down into the library. He’d looked around, a little confused, then picked up the phone. He called the apartment, then Connecticut.
Nick! Jane had said. How are you? This so weird. I was just thinking about you. Just this second! About the time you were rehearsing Romeo and—never mind. Tell me, how is William coming along?
Their old ESP. It used to work all the time. Jane swore she knew when his plane touched down at JFK because her whole body suddenly relaxed; he was safe. And he’d had an extra-sense of Jane. When she was nursing Elizabeth he woke and, still dopey from sleep, grabbed one of his sweaters and brought it into the baby’s room. He’d wrapped it around Jane and she said, I can’t believe it! It’s the weirdest thing. Just three seconds before you came in I started shivering.
Most of the time, he wished he could get her out of his mind, even though thinking of her was comforting. Like in the old days. When things were rough on location, he’d think about her and the girls.
He missed the girls, but most of the time he pushed them out of his mind. He could hardly bear to summon up their faces and see how they saw him. He had flown back to New York on Christmas Eve, and they refused to come to the hotel to be with him and Pamela. Just spend some time with her, he’d pleaded. Get to know her. Victoria had been nasty, Jane to the third power: Can I call her Mommy? she’d demanded. Elizabeth had broken down and sobbed. Don’t you want to be with us and Mommy tonight? The next day, he’d left Pamela in the room for a couple of hours and had gone to his parents’ apartment. Looking into their eyes, too bright, sparkling determinedly to show what a happy family holiday it was. Jane and the girls were there too, of course. Family. Merry Christmas, Nick, Jane said. She’d even kissed his cheek. Then she’d turned to the girls, hanging back, sullen. Say Merry Christmas to your father. Say it!
He felt disloyal, as if he were cheating on Pamela by letting Jane in his mind so often.
He tried to think about bad things. All the years Jane had made their lives so miserable. Making them all share her prison. That she had made it a beautiful prison he granted her, but still…
Her using him.
Her snide remarks. Her nasty wit. Her resentment. Her anger.
Her adultery. It wasn’t the same for her. She wasn’t tempted, titillated, worked on every damned day of her life. He lay beside Pamela. More bad things. Jane’s physical inertia. Her big body gone soft. Loose, saggy breasts. Heavy thighs that shook as she crossed the room. Broad, flabby behind. The complete lack of muscle tone no diet could change.
He didn’t want to think about her. He was only thinking about her because he wasn’t having a good time in England. Laurel Blake. Isolation on the set. Hysterical calls from Los Angeles. Exhausting sessions—it was getting harder and harder—with a new gymnastics coach. Do you want to keep in shape or don’t you? the man had demanded. When you get older, you have to work harder. Use it or lose it. Don’t abuse it.
England wasn’t fun.
One thing he realized on his birthday. England was a foreign country. He couldn’t turn on a television set and see Talk. He hadn’t looked at Jane in over a month.
When Nicholas realized that, he realized just how badly he missed her.
29
MAN’S VOICE: Today’s Talk was taped last week just before Jane Cobleigh left for London. We hope…
—Voice-over as credits roll, Talk, NBC-TV
Cecily had asked the question a month before. Why hasn’t Nicholas asked for a divorce?
Jane didn’t know, and she’d asked herself the question months before that.
She’d told Cecily, Maybe he can’t admit that he failed in something; maybe he doesn’t want to do any more damage to his relationship with Vicky and Liz; maybe he’s not ready to marry Pamela, and if he got a divorce he’d feel obligated to; maybe seeing his parents back together and so happy makes him feel—I don’t know—queasy about anything as final as divorce; maybe it’s inertia; maybe he’s so busy that he can’t put his mind to all the emotional and financial complications a divorce settlement would bring.
Maybe he still loves you, Cecily said.
One thing she knew wasn’t love was what she felt for Judson Fullerton. It was barely even passion any more. In the last year, their sexual encounters had changed. There was no arcing spark, no hot sizzle of two bodies coming into contact. What remained was two minds. Sex had become a creative challenge, having little to do with lust and a great deal to do with making up the elaborate scenarios they required to stimulate desire.
“There are three of them holding you prisoner,” Judson said. “Three big black men.”
“Could you make one a Puerto Rican?”
“A Puerto Rican?”
“Never mind.”
“They’ve been holding you for two days. They’ve only let you have a little water. You’re starving. Ok
ay? And terrified. They haven’t done anything yet, but the tension is growing and growing.” He was lying on her elbow. She shifted to the left and her elbow came free. “Now where are you?” he asked.
“Here.” They were in the guest room of her apartment. She had never taken him into the master bedroom she’d shared with Nicholas.
“Where are you? With the three black men.”
She couldn’t think for a minute. Finally she said, “Swaziland.”
“Come on. Here. In the United States.”
“South Avondale,” she said quickly.
“What?”
“South Avondale. It’s in Cincinnati.”
Judson propped himself up. Jane did not look at his face. He had a circle of hair around his navel, like a wreath. “Are you playing games with me?” His erection was deflating; his penis turned from bright red to the palest pink.
“Of course we’re playing games,” she said.
“You know what I mean.”
Their games had less and less to do with sex. They reminded Jane of the elaborate stories she had told her friend Charlene Moffett when they were six or seven years old. Dark dungeons with creaking doors, wicked stepmothers who got boiled in oil, castles with clouds floating atop their towers, handsome princes with golden hair. Elaborate stories to deliver them out of late-afternoon lethargy, fantasies for everyone, no need unmet.
“Maybe this isn’t my game,” she said.
Judson lay back down, head on the pillow. The bedding was a bright yellow. Too bright. It did not flatter him. “All right,” he said, exhaling as he spoke. “We’ll start from the beginning.” She glanced at his penis; they would have to. “Do you want to do blacks?”
“How about Filipinos?” she asked.
“Filipinos?”
“Bosnian-Herzegovinians.”
He leaned forward and pulled the sheet up to his waist. “All right, Jane. It’s clear this isn’t our day.”
“I guess not.”
“I just wish you could have called. I had the chance to have drinks with the head of the department, and I turned him down to be here by seven.”
She lifted her watch from the nightstand beside the bed. “It’s seven twenty. If you rush, you could still squeeze in a gimlet.”
“Okay,” he said. He sat up and put his feet on the floor, his back toward Jane. A line of hair grew out of the crack between his buttocks, pointing slightly to the right of his spine. He lifted an inside-out sock and stuck his hand into it. Then he turned to face her, his dark blue fist resting on his thigh. “You’re hostile. That’s obvious. Would you like to talk about it?”
“We’ve been seeing each other a long time.”
He nodded and pulled the sock right-side out. “I see.”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do. We had this discussion last year, right before the July fourth weekend.”
“No we didn’t.”
“Yes we did, Jane. You were very direct then. You asked me if I had any plans to leave Ginny, and I was equally direct. I told you no. And I told you why.”
“You told me she was fragile emotionally.”
“She is.”
“That’s not why you stay with her.”
“I see. You’re going to explain me to me. You’ve become a lay analyst. Go ahead. I’m all for enlightenment.”
“No you’re not, but I’ll tell you anyway. You stay married because you need someone you can cheat on. Someone who’s guaranteed to eat her heart out every Wednesday night because she knows you’re in New York spending the night with someone else.”
Judson’s nostrils flared. “This isn’t worthy of your intelligence.”
“You stay married because you need someone to torture.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Someone who’ll be totally miserable every time you say you’ll be home at six and you show up at nine with your hair mussed and your shirt not tucked in properly.” Judson compressed his mouth into a slash. “I see the way you leave me to go back to her. You stuff your tie into your jacket pocket and leave an end hanging out.”
“You’ve concocted quite a story, haven’t you?”
“No. I just know you. I know that you’re the neatest man on earth, and the only reason you go home looking like you just got out of bed is because you want to stick it to her. ‘See, Ginny? Look! I just got out of bed.’ That’s half the excitement, isn’t it, Judson? Does she cry each time? Does she? Does she beg you to give me up? Do you wind up in bed together afterward?”
“Stop it.” He put on both socks, then stood. He picked up his undershorts and held them by the waistband like a bullfighter’s cape. He watched her. “Well?” he finally said.
“Well what?”
“Are you finished with your little scene? Or should I get dressed and leave?”
“Get dressed and leave,” she said. Her voice was so deep, self-assured. Her best voice. Hello, this is Jane Cobleigh speaking for the American Cancer Society. Hi. Today on Talk we’re going to be discussing adultery. Why do people do it? Before you laugh, stay tuned and listen.
She should be shaking, her voice coming out in weak, high bleats.
After Judson put on his jacket, he took a comb from his pocket and ostentatiously ran it through his hair. He walked to the big round mirror over the dresser and readjusted the already tight perfect knot on his tie. Then he walked back to the bed. “I don’t think we should see each other for the rest of the week,” he said. She said nothing. “Perhaps not even next week,” he added. If she waited long enough, he’d say, Not even the week after that. Not until Labor Day. Veterans’ Day. Thanksgiving.
“Judson, I think it’s over.”
“What?” he said. He looked so perfect: white linen suit, blue shirt, blue, white, and orange silk tie. Completely in control, from his perfect polished shoes to his perfect combed hair. But he couldn’t stop blinking. He blinked over and over, a terrible tic, as if he could not believe what he was seeing.
Jane lay on the sheet. She did not bother to cover herself. “It’s over, Judson.”
“Just like that?”
“I don’t know any other way to end it.”
“Do you have someone else?”
“No.”
His blinking slowed but did not stop. “No? What do you plan to do for sex then?”
“I don’t think I want to discuss that with you.”
All that time. Two or three times a week. She should at least manage a few delicate sobs. But her eyes were dry and unblinking. It was a completely, astoundingly neutral moment. Years. She felt she owed a tear for all that time, but she could not squeeze one out. The only thing she felt was relief. He would be gone within minutes. She could get dressed and drive up to Connecticut before dark. Maybe the wild ducks that stopped by the pond early every summer would be there—one brown, one black with a blue-green iridescent head—gliding across the dark, still water in back of the house. A wild-duck couple who flew everywhere together.
“Jane.”
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out, Judson. But it wasn’t really designed to work out, was it?” He blinked. She thought he might be getting ready to cry, but no, not Judson. He didn’t even look sad. Stunned. Annoyed. He’d missed cocktails with the head of the Department of Psychiatry and three black men holding her captive. He’d probably go back to Connecticut too.
“You don’t love me?” he asked. A cool, clinical query.
“No. I don’t love you.”
“I see.” He picked up his change, keys, and watch from the other nightstand. “Goodbye, then,” he said, as he walked out the door.
She didn’t even like him.
“Well,” Rhodes said, “what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
He sat across from Jane, but the table was so small she could see him perfectly. Still so incredibly lovely, but random lines were etched under his eyes—some nearly obscured by the thick fringe of lower lashes—and a few
pearly gray strands lightened his brown hair. At first she’d been surprised he allowed the gray to show, but then she realized Rhodes knew it would detract from his beauty to counterattack nature. Besides, there was no need; nature loved him and would always treat him tenderly.
The table was round, with a pink cloth that hung to the floor and a yellow flower that looked like a constellation of tiny stars in a vase in the center. Their espresso cups and brandy glasses were in front of them. The restaurant was one of the most elegant in New York. It was where she took her most important guests. “Madame Cobleigh! Bon soir!” The maître d’ was always thrilled to see her. He always trilled her name loud enough so the patrons closest to the front turned, saw her, and whispered, “That’s her!” When she’d come in with Rhodes, the maître d’ gave him a slower than usual once-over and his mouth had formed a quick Gallic pucker of surprise: this one was no ordinary Talk guest; this one was incredible, special, a…“This is my brother, Louis,” she said quickly. “Ah,” the maître d’ said. “A pleasure, monsieur.” This time he’d meant it.
“So you’ve gotten rid of the shrink for good?” Rhodes asked. She nodded. “Well, good riddance to bad rubbish.”
“Rhodes—”
“He had a face like a potato. When I saw the two of you on Talk that first time, I thought, God, to have to look at Mr. Potato Head for forty-five minutes two times a week. Little potato eyes. And then you went and—”
“He was fantastic in the kip.”
“Oh, cut it out, turkey. ‘In the kip.’ Little Miss New York Trendy. Do you know how pathetically clichéd that affair was? Do you know how many stupid douche bags wind up in bed with their shrinks? At least sixty percent.”
“Shut up, Rhodes.”
“You invited me to New York to talk. Remember?”
“You were coming in anyway in a few days with Philip on your way to Europe, and I thought I’d like to spend some time alone with my brother. My brother who cares for me, who’s sensitive to my feelings. I guess I was wrong.”