Corporation Wife

by Catherine Gaskin

  ‘All marriages are patterns ‒ chaotic or orderly, they all make patterns.’

  She gave a short laugh. ‘Then perhaps I’d like some chaos in my orderly life. It seems I’ve never done anything ‒ never driven a car too fast, never broken a law. I might almost wish for the sort of chaos that Jeannie’s in ‒ and out of which she’s finding the strength to determine what’s best for her. She’s not just accepting things, as I’ve always accepted them. Yes … I might like a little of that chaos.’

  He looked down at her hand in his. ‘Are you sure this isn’t chaos?’

  ‘It might be,’ she answered. ‘Yes ‒ it might be that.’

  She walked back to the car with him. Before he touched the ignition he looked at her, one final, questioning look. ‘Will you see me again, Harriet?’

  Many times she had heard him ask this question, and in many different ways ‒ all of them had existed only in her imagination. Now she heard the words spoken for the first time, in the damp, still air.

  ‘Yes, Mal.’

  They made no specific arrangements, and it was better that way. When they parted they each had the feeling that their next meeting would be as unplanned as this one, and it held the same promise of freshness and spontaneity. As Harriet walked back to the lodge, she could almost believe that if she never saw Mal again she could still be content. She had a strange sensation of being cherished and treasured because Mal had held an image of her close through these years.

  She smiled often to herself, a secret, quiet smile, as she sat and waited in the lodge for Jeannie to stir and finally waken.

  II

  Jeannie left Burnham Falls that same week, despite Ted and Selma’s protests. She refused Harriet’s offer to drive her to New York. Instead she caught the bus in Main Street, defiantly outstaring the people she knew who glanced curiously at her and at Ted, standing unhappily beside her, the shabby suitcase at his feet. She clung to him a moment before parting.

  ‘I’m going to be fine, Dad. Everything’s going to be fine!’

  She hadn’t told him that she had accepted Harriet’s offer of a loan of two hundred dollars until she could get a job.

  ‘I’m not so sure that I know it all now,’ Jeannie had said. ‘And I can’t afford to be proud about taking the money … I intend to hold out until I get the kind of job I want’

  ‘What kind of job?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘Oh … I have a few ideas,’ Jeannie had replied vaguely.

  When she reached New York she took a room at the Barbizon Hotel for Women. Harriet had told her to go there ‒ it was a good address, without being too expensive. Jeannie studied the streams of women in the lounges and corridors; she didn’t like a world that held nothing but women. She decided that she would leave it as soon as it was practical. In the meantime, it would be comforting to Selma and Ted to know she was there.

  She spent the first day in New York simply roaming the fashionable streets, and wandering through the expensive speciality stores. At the end of the day she had a firm image in her mind of what was accepted as the ideal of the smart woman. They all looked somewhat like Laura Peters. In the next two weeks Jeannie dieted off five pounds, had her hair cut to the fashionable length, and had bought some crisply tailored, dark cotton dresses. She also bought handbag, shoes and gloves. They were not the most expensive, but they were not cheap, either, because now she was really gambling. Paying for them and the hotel used up all her own savings, and she had to dip into Harriet’s money. She told herself that by the time it would be necessary to buy a fall suit, six weeks from now, she would have to be earning enough money to pay for it. None of the clothes she had brought from Burnham Falls would do ‒ and she didn’t want them, either.

  After the first week she started having interviews for jobs. Some, which she didn’t want, were offered to her immediately; others that she did want, were harder to get. After two and a half weeks of being called back for more and yet more interviews, she was finally hired into the management training department of the country’s biggest selling, high-priced cosmetic firm.

  The pay was low, and Jeannie hesitated about accepting it. But most of the girls training with her had college degrees, and they all knew that certain ones among them would eventually succeed to executive jobs. So Jeannie put on the smart grey uniform, and went to sell the product behind the counter at a Fifth Avenue store, which was the first six months of the training. She wrote to Harriet that it would be a little time before she could pay back the money, and she wrote Selma that it wasn’t very different from selling the same product in Carter’s drug store, except that the amounts that some women bought at one time totalled more than her whole week’s salary. Management trainees were not allowed commission.

  What she didn’t tell Selma was that many men stopped to buy perfume, and that a lot of them didn’t want the perfume, but only to talk to her.

  Twelve

  It was still warm, but the September days drew in, ending sometimes with a little chill in the air, and sometimes in the mornings a ragged mist hung about the trees, and each day the sun took longer to burn it away. Laura noticed it on Tuesday mornings as she drove to New York. She counted out the summer’s end on these Tuesday mornings. Once in the city, the heat and humidity would again close in, and it was easy to forget that it would soon be fall.

  Goodman was away on a visit to Europe. Strangely, Laura missed the old man. What she felt for Phil was reaching out hesitantly now to touch other people, and Goodman had sensed her love, and was close to it. She did not tell Ed that he was gone; she still needed him as an excuse for staying overnight in New York. She had grown bolder in her dealings with Ed, but not to the extent of flaunting her relationship with Phil before him. She supposed it would have to come sometime ‒ but later, when she was more confident of Phil himself.

  During the long, idle Tuesdays, after she left the hairdresser, there was nothing to do but wander through the stores. She bought clothes extravagantly ‒ dresses, shoes and gloves, lingerie, robes. She was greedy for clothes in a way she had never been ‒ even in the days when Larry had first started making money. She knew that Phil admired beautiful clothes as he admired beautiful women. It was a mark of her insecurity that she wore something different each time she saw him, because there was always the fear that he might grow bored looking at her face alone.

  It was a terrible thing now to sit in front of the mirror and stare at her own face, wondering if it were possible that Phil could grow tired of it. She had a panicky feeling of having nothing else to fall back on. It was an experience of poverty that the lovely clothes and the skilful hairdresser couldn’t take away. She lived with the fear that once he had grown used to the way she looked, he would discover that she was ignorant and stupid.

  Because of Phil she was thinking more often of Larry now than she had done for years. Larry had known her ignorance, and had helped her cloak it; he had even changed her from a pretty girl into an idea of beauty. He had known her flaws, and had been tender to them. From the viewpoint of the stage she had reached with Phil Conrad, she could look back to Larry and know for the first time the extent of his love for her. And also know what she had let slip away.

  She didn’t ever attempt to deceive herself about Phil. He was selfish and self-centred, a ruthless promoter of his own ego. But he had the fascination of a handsome man who is also a clever one ‒ and in his work he was sensitive and perceptive. All his creativeness, warmth and generosity went into his work. There was little left over for Laura. And yet what little she received was enough to tell her what the whole might be. She cherished the small hope that if Phil really fell in love with her he might yet offer her all the richness of his personality ‒ the gifts and talents and success might be offered fully to her, not just absent-mindedly shared.

  And she could tell herself, looking in the mirror, that she hadn’t done a single thing in her life to deserve any better kind of man than Phil Conrad. Compared to Larry, he was not worth anyone’s l
ove ‒ and yet she did love him, because he was all she had to love.

  He quite often mentioned The Other Kind, which was scheduled for production early in spring, so as yet had no great urgency. He had given Laura the script, and she knew it by heart, but he had not named a date for the reading.

  He was deep in plans for the winter series of shows for Amtec, as well as the opening of a play on Broadway early in November. Knowing all his activity, Laura was grateful that he would take every Tuesday night to see her, and she made no protest when it was only a part of the evening. Sometimes he was very late, and she waited for him, either in his hotel or her own. The hours of waiting were bad, and she was afraid that this time he might not come at all. And yet she could not risk a reproach. There was too much to lose in losing Phil.

  On a few occasions Phil had insisted that they dine in a restaurant. Laura didn’t like this because she was afraid of gossip. But Phil was not a man on whom she could place restrictions or limitations. He preferred to eat in restaurants. He was essentially a man of public places; he wanted people about him ‒ people that he knew. He wanted the constant gossip of show business, the greetings from table to table, the meal interrupted half a dozen times by acquaintances stopping to talk. And through all this he wanted a beautiful woman seated by his side. Laura knew that the evenings she was not there, her place was taken by others. How far Phil’s relationship extended with other women she didn’t know, and she didn’t ask him. She just lived with the hope that some day he might decide that she was enough.

  Inevitably, they were reported once or twice by gossip columnists as dining together, but by then the rumour had gone around that she had a part in one of the shows Phil was producing for Amtec. Whether or not Ed had seen the columns Laura never knew. He never mentioned the subject.

  Once she spoke of this to Phil, and he shrugged his shoulders and laughed a little.

  ‘Of course he won’t say anything about it. Aren’t you doing a good public relations job for Amtec?’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘What can he do? Order you not to see me any more? He wouldn’t dare do that ‒ not right now. At the moment he may be thinking that I’m more important to Amtec than he is, and if I wanted you I could bring a little pressure in the right places …’

  Laura listened unhappily. She had never thought of Ed as lacking courage. And yet there was a point at which prudence became cowardice. She shrunk a little inside herself when she considered of how little importance she was to either of them. So long as she was discreet she might do what she pleased, it seemed ‒ or at least so long as what she did produced some good for the corporation. She didn’t want to believe it. She tried not to. And yet Ed’s manner seemed to bear it out ‒ his lack of interest in what she did in New York, his seeming willingness to let her go her own way. He protested nothing, not even the increased size of her dress bills. As the weeks went by she grew almost desperate for some sign from him, but none came. She began to wonder what was wrong with a beautiful woman who couldn’t rouse her husband to jealousy.

  Not from Phil either did there come any reassurance. She did not easily forget the night when she had tried, for the only time, to question his feeling about her.

  It was very late; he had been in a meeting all evening with the director of the play he was producing. They had been hours of loneliness and mounting tension for Laura.

  When he appeared in the door she moved towards him quickly, impulsively. She embraced him with a fierceness and a hunger she hadn’t known was in her to express.

  ‘Phil ‒ my darling, I’ve missed you so …’ She put her arms about his neck and forced his head down to meet her lips.

  After they had kissed he drew back, smiling and a little surprised.

  ‘Well ‒ what’s all this passion about? I told you I’d be late …’

  She clung to him, standing on her toes to reach close to his ear. ‘Phil, I love you! I love you so much I don’t know what to do with myself.’

  He patted her cheek, a little absently, as he might have done with a child. ‘Easy, lover … easy!’ He tried to disengage himself from her arms.

  She clung to him still. ‘Please be kind to me, Phil! Please!’

  Now he pulled himself away without any tenderness, and walked over to the table where the drinks and ice were ready. He said nothing to her while he poured himself some brandy, sniffed it, and rolled the glass a little between his hands.

  Then he turned back to her, raising the glass in a small salute.

  ‘Here’s to you, lover!’

  As she opened her mouth to speak, he silenced her with a wave of the hand..

  ‘Don’t, Laura! Don’t say whatever it is you’re trying to say.’ He sipped the brandy. ‘You’re very beautiful, you know … really beautiful. We suit each other ‒ we’re having fun. How much more can you have?’

  He smiled at her. ‘Let’s not spoil it.’

  Thirteen

  Tom knew as soon as he entered the Humphries house that this party was a good deal beyond his depth in the corporation. As he hesitated in the doorway of the big living-room, whose sliding glass wall was thrown back to permit the crowd to overflow on to the patio and garden, the first people he saw were Harriet Dexter and Art Sommers, the comptroller. Tom immediately felt that he had somehow stepped out of line; he had never before been to a private party where the higher echelon of the Laboratories were gathered. He looked around hopefully for the bar, or for a maid with a tray of drinks. A drink in his hand would at least give him something to do.

  Just then Mrs. Humphries caught sight of him standing alone. She excused herself from a group and hurried forward, her hand extended and a welcoming smile fixed on her face. At the same time he saw the second’s flash of bewilderment, the struggle to fix a name to him. Arnold Humphries was the head of the largest department at the Laboratories, and the closest Tom had ever come to Jane Humphries was having her pointed out to him at the country club.

  He took her proffered hand. ‘Mrs. Humphries ‒ we haven’t met before. I’m Tom Redmond.’

  ‘Redmond …’ Suddenly the puzzled look cleared from her face. ‘Oh ‒ Sally’s husband. Well, I’m happy to know you at last. Such a dear girl, Sally, and such a wonderful worker! She’s taken a load off my shoulders.’

  As she talked she was shepherding him, one hand on his arm, towards the patio. ‘Sally’s out here somewhere …’ She gazed around the flagstoned area, dotted with caterer’s tables and chairs, where the hum of conversation rose into the warm dusk. ‘Ah, there she is …’ She propelled Tom forward a little. ‘Well, you know everyone here, since you’re one of the family, so there’s no need for introductions …’ Jane Humphries released her hold, and vanished quickly back into the living-room.

  Tom paused a moment before he approached Sally. She was standing in profile to him, talking to Steve Dexter. He noted the confident animation of her pointed, upturned face, with its white skin and dark hair, the smile that crossed her lips and face, and made her look pretty, even though she was not strictly pretty. She was seven months pregnant, and she held herself proudly and beautifully, and as yet there seemed no thickening of those lovely legs and ankles. She looked cool and fresh; her maternity clothes were smart, and he remembered then that she had made them herself. She had ignored the empty chairs about her. Sally never sat down at parties. Tom watched her for a few seconds longer in silent admiration. He had passed Steve Dexter many times in the corridors at the Laboratories, and he had never yet spoken to him. He had been in Burnham Falls eighteen months, and it took Sally’s volunteer work for the local Republican Party to bring this meeting about. He experienced more sharply than before the feeling that he was out of his depth.

  Then he went forward to claim Sally.

  When he was introduced and began to talk to Steve Dexter, Tom underwent a sharp reversal of opinion about him. He had seen strength before in that handsome, worn face, now he saw the snap of humour as well, the sudden relaxation. Tom
knew that the older man was enjoying talking to Sally. And yet it was a vague, disengaged enjoyment, as if he had come out of a solitary world of his own, and expected to return to it shortly. He would remember the smiling, happy face of this woman, big with her child, but when he encountered it again he would have to establish contact with it all over again. Tom knew the small legend that had grown up about Steve Dexter at the Laboratories, he knew roughly the outline of the work Steve had laboured with alone in the years before Amtec. Everyone at the Laboratories had enormous respect for Steve Dexter’s ability, and yet no one approached him very closely or intimately. He had the detachment of a scientist, and yet with it the anxious, frustrated air of the scientist who is unwillingly being turned into an administrator. The frustration seemed to fall from him a little as he talked with Sally, and a rare, gentle smile in turn lit his own face.

  Steve proffered a cigarette to Tom. He lit his own from the stub of the last one. ‘You’re in Alan Taylor’s department, aren’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Tom answered. ‘How …? He cut off the question. It wasn’t his business to ask Steve Dexter how he remembered such details of men he’d never met before.

  Steve nodded, inhaling the smoke deeply. ‘Some fine work coming from Taylor’s department. It even looks as if one of your products might turn out to be saleable to the public … so that keeps the Military and the Amtec Board happy. That’s the hell of being a scientist ‒ you don’t know where the ends are pulling.’ He suddenly looked fully at Tom. ‘You ‒ Redmond, you’re young yet. Don’t you think it’s hell being a scientist?’

  Tom wondered if Steve Dexter hadn’t had too much to drink. He was faintly embarrassed. Men in Steve Dexter’s position were supposed to make pronouncements, not ask opinions from their juniors ‒ especially about a subject as sacred as their work. He wished he didn’t have to reply. ‘I’ve never questioned it, sir. I’ve always thought …’