by Susan Isaacs
“Shut up, Jane.” He lit a cigarette, blew a slender column of smoke toward the ceiling, then reached over and patted her hand. “Okay. Truce. Now, what do you want? I mean, for the rest of your life.” She shrugged. She couldn’t say it. “Tell me. I know what it is anyway.”
He rested his hand on top of hers, finely shaped, with long, strong fingers. She had always loved Rhodes, but this was one of the rare times the love blazed through her, brightening her entire being.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I know,” he answered. “I love you too.” His hand stayed over hers for another moment; then he drew it away. “Okay, Big J,” he said, in his familiar wise-guy voice, “tell me what you want.”
“I want to be married to Nick for the rest of my life.”
“No divorce?” She shook her head. “No more love in the afternoon with dip-shits?”
“No. Just Nick.” She had chosen the wrong place for their discussion. They should have stayed in the apartment where she could have come apart, put her arms around Rhodes, and wailed. She took a deep but shaky breath. “But of course,” she said quietly, “that’s only what I want. It’s not what he wants.”
“Have you asked him?”
“No!” She softened her voice. “Sorry. No. Rhodes, he’s been living with her for two years. It’s not a quickie affair with some little chippy. They’re inseparable. Literally. I hear she can’t keep her hands off him.”
The Cobleighs’ separation wasn’t public, but it wasn’t private either. People in the know knew, and they loved telling Jane about it. We saw Nick the other night. With her. Really? she’d say. And then they insisted on sharing their knowledge: She’s tiny. Prepubescent, but no nymphet. Boring. Won’t let go of him. Literally. They observed Jane carefully as they spoke. She let them see nothing.
“And can Nick keep his hands off her?” Rhodes asked.
“I guess not.” She ran her finger around the small rim of her espresso cup. “In the last month or so…” Her voice faded into silence.
“What? Tell me. Are you breaking for a commercial?”
“Rhodes, just give me a minute. Okay?” She exhaled slowly. “In the last couple of months, he’s been calling more. Mostly about the girls at the beginning, trying to get me to get them to spend some time with him and Pamela. At the beginning all he wanted to do was fight. You know, ‘Do you think it’s fair? Don’t you think that if they knew about you and that unethical so-and-so—’”
“He called him a so-and-so?”
“He called him a son of a bitch. Anyway, he’s been calling a lot lately. Late at night. Three, four in the morning London time. He always starts with some legitimate topic. Did the accountant send the check for Liz’s tuition? How are his horses? He hasn’t been to Connecticut for two years and he’s still paying someone to take care of his horses every day. But then he starts talking.”
“What does he talk about?”
“The film. William the Conqueror. He reads me a page or two of the script and asks what I think of it. Or he asks me about Talk, what shows I’m planning, what this or that guest was like. Or he’ll remind me about Olivia’s anniversary or ask me who was the set designer in some Off Broadway play he was in in 1963.”
Rhodes held his brandy snifter but did not drink. He peered into the liquid, as if it could be read like tea leaves. “It sounds like husband and wife talk,” he said.
“A little. But there are definitely no I-love-yous. There isn’t even warmth. It’s very oddly casual.”
“Does he talk about her?”
“No.”
Rhodes looked at Jane. “What’s that funny expression on your face? Did you ask him about her? You are such a nit, Jane. I mean it.”
“No. I said ‘How is Pamela?’ one time. And he said ‘Fine.’ But I guess he was annoyed, because that was essentially the end of that conversation. I don’t know. I called him last night, for his birthday. She answered the phone and said he’d had a hard day and had gone to bed early.” She looked at her brother. He was staring into his glass again. “I hate her,” she said. “She has a little teeny voice, like a Walt Disney mouse. ‘I’ll tell Nicholas you called,’” Jane squeaked. “How he can stand to listen to it I’ll never know.”
“Maybe he can’t any more.” Rhodes looked up. His eyes were so beautiful. Like hers: everyone who saw them together said that. But his eyes had changed. They were no longer merely big, deep, dark blue, and always sparkling: eyes to evoke oohs. They had become the eyes of a man of interesting character. She supposed hers had changed too. Rhodes gazed straight at her. “I think he may be sending you a signal. Do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does he know you ditched Dr. Potato?”
“No. But that’s not something we ever really discussed other than when it first came out.”
“Okay. Let’s get back to where we started. What are you going to do? Are you going to try and get him back?”
“I’m afraid to.”
“Why?”
“He has Pamela. She’s twenty-four, twenty-five years old.”
“Oh, stop it! She’s a wimp. You’re coast-to-coast hot shit. For a reason. You’re alive, you’re real. People respond to you.”
“But maybe he doesn’t want someone so alive. Maybe he wants a wimp.”
“Maybe. Maybe he wants a wife.”
“He could have her.”
Rhodes leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. The tiny bud vase shuddered. “Jane, Nick could have anyone. The point is, he’s had every opportunity to get you off his back and marry her and he hasn’t done it. Why? And why, all of a sudden, is he up at three in the morning making overseas calls? Insomnia? He doesn’t want to wake the wimp? He could call anyone. A hundred million people would be glad to hear from Nicholas Cobleigh at three in the morning or any other time, and believe me, he knows it. So why does he call you? That’s a rhetorical question. Don’t bother answering.”
“What should I do?”
“Confront him.”
“What should I say?”
“Say ‘Nick, I still love you. Do you still love me?’”
“Do you think that’s how men and women talk to each other?”
“It’s how people who want to cut the bullshit talk to each other, and stop acting like a snotty New York bitch.”
A waiter approaching their table with a pot of espresso heard Rhodes and backed off. He took cautious little backward steps, as if he were in a film being rewound.
“What if he says he loves Pamela?”
“Then say okay, sorry to have bothered you. Have your lawyer call my lawyer and get on with your life. But do you think that’s what he’ll say?”
She truly did not know. Some of the time she had an image—admittedly an adolescent one—of meeting. She’d be in Connecticut, just getting ready to go into the city, putting her notes for the show and her shoulder bag on the passenger seat of her car. Suddenly another car would come crunching up the gravel drive. It would be Nicholas’s old gray Porsche. Silly. He’d sold it years before. He’d leap out, run to her: Jane, Jane. Other times, she saw Nicholas in a gloomy parlor filled with dark Victorian furniture. A single beam of light broke through the heavy brocade drapes, but its power was diffused by thousands of specks of antique dust suspended in the air. He held the telephone receiver away from his ear. It hurt him to hear her. He was filled with discomfort at her declaration of love, embarrassed, and, finally, sad for her.
“Rhodes, I don’t want to be one of those desperate women who read a thousand meanings into every How-are-you. Look at the objective evidence. He’s living with her. They bought a house out in Santa Barbara together, and they were looking at co-ops in the city last December.”
“That’s real estate. Real estate isn’t love.”
“What if he says no, I don’t want you. I don’t love you. I stopped loving you years ago. What if he says that the phone calls weren’t signals. They were just friendly cal
ls. He can afford to be friendly. He doesn’t care any more. Don’t you see, I could make an absolute ass of myself. He’d pity me! He’d get off the phone and tell Pamela everything and—”
Rhodes raised his hand like a policeman stopping traffic. “Wait a second.”
“What?”
“A phone call? This isn’t chitchat. Think about it. Didn’t you want me here, face to face, for this talk? It seems to me that if you see each other…”
“How am I supposed to see him? They’re in London, and then they’re going on location through the fall. He’ll be tied up for months.”
“Go there, stupid.”
“Go where, London? How can I go to London? I don’t fly. Rhodes, really, I’ve never been on a plane. It’s one of my last big fears. Every time I think of being on a plane that’s taking off, my heart starts—forget it.”
“Okay. Forget it.”
“Even if I could get there by ship—and I wouldn’t want to be in the middle of the ocean either—what could I do? Go and ring his doorbell? Go drop in at the studio?”
“Yes.”
“And say what? Excuse me, Pamela. I’d like a few minutes with my husband. And then say to Nick, I love you. I want you back. Get rid of her. I’m your wife. We can make it work because we’ve always loved each other. We’ve always loved each other more than anything else in the world.”
“Yes,” Rhodes said. “That sounds right.”
“Oh, Rhodes, what if he says no?”
“Isn’t it worth the risk? What if he says yes?”
An eight. Eight points of terror. No. Nine. There wasn’t enough air in the cabin. The stewardess kept smiling. Smile, smile. A thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean, faster than the speed of sound, and she had a smile on, even though soon she and all the passengers would be gasping in a vacuum. We regret to say there is no oxygen available on this flight. Huge, symmetrical, too-white teeth, as though she’d borrowed a friend’s. She came down the aisle, and the smile stayed put.
“Is everything all right, Mrs. Cobleigh?” The smile grew wider. Even the back teeth showed now. She’d obviously seen Talk. Knew a phobic when she saw one.
“Fine.” A crinkle sound the smiler didn’t hear: the airsick bag in readiness, tucked under Jane’s left thigh.
“Good!” The stewardess smiled for them both. Encouragement. Or perhaps auditioning, hoping for a Talk show on the problems of flight attendants or cosmetic dentistry. Didn’t understand the Talk format. “We had Mr. Cobleigh a month or two ago.”
Hardly any air, and what there was was too cold. “Oh.” The smile quavered, upset by the neutral response. Jane added a hurried, “That’s nice.”
The quavering stopped. Lips, teeth, gums went back into business. “He ordered the exact same wine you did!”
“Well—” Face the fear. An eight. No air. Some air. A seven. Six or seven. She looked right up into the smile. It was secure now, as big and dazzling as it could get, shining just for her. “That’s what happens after nineteen years of marriage,” Jane said.
London is hotter than New York was yesterday, but inside the limousine it is cool; the rich are rendered immune to climate. Jane gazes out the window, but the blue-tinted glass makes everything back projection. Only she and the driver and the car in the foreground are real.
The manly odor of the leather seats mingles with the perfume of a red rose in a crystal vial attached near the window. She takes a mirror from her handbag even though there is a lighted mirror in a cabinet beside the bar. She looks tired, but she is wearing only a little blush, a little mascara, a little lip gloss. Nicholas never liked her in makeup. She thinks of wiping off the lip gloss. It will feel greasy if he kisses her. But without it she will look too sallow. Too old.
Ridiculous. He will either want her or not want her and will neither leap forward nor recoil because of anything that coats her lips. She thinks he will want her.
Two nights before, he phoned. Their longest call yet. For the first time since they parted, he spoke of the past.
He said, Do you remember when we first moved to the house and I painted it? I had all that green paint from the shutters in my hair, and you were doing something—you had a smudge on your nose.
Polishing the brass knocker, she said. That stupid-looking eagle.
That’s right. I was thinking about it. Do you know, that was the last time I had an obligation to do something. I’m not talking about contractual obligations or my obligations to the girls…or you. I mean, that was the last time I had a job I couldn’t delegate. Ever since then, there have been people I can hire or who volunteer to do—to do almost everything. Well, I am busy. I mean, I need to have things done.
What’s the matter, Nick?
Nothing. I was just thinking about that day. Lying there in the grass. Remember?
Yes. I remember.
It was fun, wasn’t it?
She puts back her mirror. If he were only reminiscing about a pure, perfect moment in what became a dead marriage, he wouldn’t have bothered to call her at three thirty in the morning, Greenwich Mean Time. The marriage is not dead.
Her hands lie on her lap, the nails trimmed, unpolished. Natural, as he likes them. Through the two years they have been separated, she has worn a wedding band. She has many: entwined white and yellow gold; platinum; jade; diamonds and sapphires; diamonds and rubies. Thin ones and thick. This one is thin, plain gold, the one they bought in Maryland a half hour before they got married. It has lain in the bottom of her handkerchief box for several years. She has been wearing it for less than twenty-four hours.
When she saw him last, Christmas Day, he was not wearing his. But she is sure he still has it. He will not even have to search for it.
Jane prays, Don’t let me be wrong. But she believes Nicholas loves her.
The limousine slows. They are far from central London, somewhere in the suburbs. Trees keep their branches raised, defying the heat. Across the street are two granite columns. On one there is a large brass plaque: BLACKHEATH STUDIOS.
The limousine stops. The driver turns. This is it, Madam. Shall I drive in?
Yes, she says. But then—Wait! She sees another limousine, a twin to hers, pulling out of the driveway between the two columns. She strains to see inside the car. Suddenly she is sure she sees a fair head.
I’ll get out here.
She jumps from the car and waves to the other limousine. It turns left, slowly, into the street.
Nick! she calls. Nick!
The limousine starts to pick up speed. She runs across the street.
Nick! It’s me!
The saying is true. She does not know what hits her. She never sees that other car. All she knows is sudden horrible pain. And then she is flying above England, and then she crashes onto the street.
30
Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.
O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and be no more.
—Psalm 39
Laurel Blake, playing his wife, Matilda, was saying, “What is England to us, William? Stay with me here.” Emotion muted her voice. Her dark lashes had beads of tears. The camera moved in on him for a reaction shot and Nicholas, the warrior-politician-nobleman William, gazed into Laurel’s brimming eyes with a grief so profound it nearly matched her own.
“Cut,” the director called. “Print.”
Nicholas turned his back to Laurel and yawned. His hand was halfway up to cover his mouth when he saw Murray King shouldering his way past the boom man. Nicholas’s hand, palm facing inward, froze at chest level.
He knew Murray was in London, of course. Murray had arrived two weeks before with a suitcase full of screenplays and two blue suits. But Murray, ever the theatrical agent—happy, buoyant, secure backstage in a theater—did not like movie sets. He was distinctly uncomfortable in the midst of cameras and cables. He had visited Nicho
las only once during a shooting, years before, and had glared at the sound men, gaffers, grips, and cameramen with rancor foreign to his decent nature, as if the only job these technicians were hired to accomplish was the submersion of his client’s career. Murray never even visited a studio if he could avoid it. Intricate negotiations with film company executives and financiers were held over lunches that blended into cocktail hours and slipped into dinners. Yet here was Murray, nearly tripping over a curled edge of tape on the floor, hurrying toward him.
“Murray?” Nicholas said.
Something was really wrong. Murray’s complexion was horrible, pale, with a phosphorescence nearly green. His glasses, shoved on at a crazed angle, were about to slip down the side of his face. “Nicky,” was all he said.
Nicholas swallowed, then cleared his throat. He was too tired, drinking too much, his nerves rubbed raw. It was embarrassing, actually, the way he kept overreacting. He was so worn out a simple good morning seemed a cataclysmic announcement.
“Nicky.” Murray slipped his arm around him. Nicholas let himself be led off the set. He didn’t even ask what was wrong. It was something very bad: Murray shepherding him up the stairs, never letting him go. “Where’s your dressing room?” he asked. Nicholas walked down a hall and tried to open the door. His sweat-drenched hand slipped off the knob. “Here, let me, Nicky.”
It was very bad, but let it be the least terrible of possibilities. His father…something with his liver. Probably bad. In the hospital. His mother. She had seemed fine before he left, but maybe her old illness, her consuming sadness…
“It’s Jane, Nicky.”
No.
“An accident. She was hit by a car and thrown. Nicky, listen to me. She’s in the hospital.”
The silence was so strong it became physical, like air. “Bad?” Nicholas asked.