“No, I'm not kidding. I've already been doing this for two years.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because I thought you'd laugh at me.”
“Why on earth are you doing that?”
“Because I don't want to be a waitress for the rest of my life. And I'm not looking for a man to save me. I don't want to be dependent on anyone. I want to be able to take care of myself.” What she said to him nearly brought tears to his eyes. Every woman he'd ever known, or dated, wanted to take some poor slob for a ride, including him. Maggie was out there working her ass off, waiting on tables, going to college and aspiring to law school two nights a week. She had never asked him for a penny. And more often than he wanted her to, she showed up with a bag of groceries or a small present for him. She was an amazing woman.
“Come over here,” he said, beckoning her to him. She came over to where he was sitting, and he put his arms around her. “I want you to know that I think you're terrific. You're the most terrific woman I've ever known. I apologize for being an asshole, and I apologize for leaving you on Thanksgiving. I promise we'll celebrate on Thursday, and I'll never bug you about what you're doing again. And another thing,” he said, looking at her matter-of-factly, but there was a tenderness in his eyes she had never seen before. “I want you to know that I love you.”
“I love you too,” she whispered softly. He had never said that to her before. “What does that do to the rules?”
“What rules?” He looked confused.
“You know, the rules. Does that mean we're still just dating, or is this a relationship now?”
“This is I love you, Maggie O'Malley. Fuck the rules. We'll figure it out as we go.”
“We will?” She looked thrilled.
“Yes, we will. And the next time I tell you what the rules are, remember to tell me I'm full of shit. By the way, what's your paper about?”
“Torts.”
“Oh, shit. Tomorrow let me see what you've got. I'm too drunk to deal with it tonight.” But they both knew he wasn't that drunk. He was more interested in taking her to bed and making love. He was definitely not too drunk for that.
“Will you really help me?”
“Absolutely. We're going to get you through college and law school in record time.”
“I can't do that,” she said seriously. “I've got to work.” It wasn't a plea for help, it was a simple statement of fact.
“We'll discuss that some other time.” He scooped her up in his arms then and carried her into the bedroom.
“Did you mean what you said?” she asked him as he set her down on the bed. “Or are you really drunk?”
“No, Maggie. I'm not drunk. And I meant it. I love you. I'm just a little slow at figuring things out sometimes,” although two months wasn't bad, especially for him. She smiled up at him, and he turned off the light.
17
GRAY CALLED CHARLIE IN THE OFFICE THE WEEK before Thanksgiving, and thought he sounded unusu ally glum.
“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”
“Nothing, as a matter of fact,” Charlie said. He had been thinking about that himself. The holidays were always hard for him and he hated to make plans. For him, holidays were a time for people with families to gather around and share their warmth, and for people who didn't have any to feel the bitter chill of all they'd lost and would never have again.
“Sylvia and I were wondering if you'd like to join us for dinner. She's cooking the turkey, so dinner should be pretty good.”
Charlie laughed. “Actually, I'd like that a lot.” It was an easy, painless way for him to spend the holiday with his friend.
“You're welcome to bring Carole, if you like.”
“That won't be necessary, but thanks anyway,” Charlie said, sounding tense.
“Does she have other plans?” Gray could hear that something was wrong.
“I assume so. As a matter of fact, I don't know.”
“That doesn't sound so good,” Gray said, worried about him.
“It's not. We had a major blowout two weeks ago. Carole and I are a thing of the past. It was fun, but not for long.”
“I'm sorry to hear that. I take it you discovered a fatal flaw.” He always did. You could count on him for that.
“You could say that. She lied to me. I can't be with a woman I don't trust.”
“I guess not.” Gray knew him well enough to know that once the fatal flaw had been discovered, Charlie was gone. His job was done. Gray told him to come to dinner at Sylvia's at six o'clock, and a few minutes later they hung up. Gray reported the bad news about Carole to Sylvia that night. She was sorry to hear it too.
“He always does that,” Gray said, looking unhappy. “He always looks for that one thing, whatever it is, that means she isn't a saint and can't walk on water, and then bang, they're gone, and he hits the door. He just can't forgive women their frailties or accept that it still might be okay to love them, and give them a break for once. He never does. He's so fucking afraid that he might get hurt or they might die or leave him that he hits the ejector button if someone coughs. I've seen him do it every time.”
“I take it she coughed,” Sylvia said, thinking about it. Although she didn't know Charlie well, she felt as though she did from hearing Gray talk about him. He talked about him a lot. They were more brothers than friends. And in both cases, the only family each had. Gray had told her he still had a much younger adopted brother out there somewhere, but hadn't seen him in years, and was no longer sure where he was. Charlie was the brother of his heart. And from what she knew of his history, it was easy to figure out what happened every time. He was terrified whatever woman in question would abandon him, so he ditched her first.
“The guy just has no flex, there's no give in what he expects.” They both knew from their own lives that in a relationship one had to bend. “He said she lied. Shit, who doesn't sometimes? It happens. People do stupid stuff.” Sylvia nodded, curious about what had happened.
“What did she lie about?”
“He didn't say. My guess, judging from past history, is that it wasn't something important, but he used it as an example, or an excuse, to illustrate that she could lie over something big. That's usually how it works. It's like Kabuki. He makes a lot of ugly noises and faces, and acts shocked. He 'can't believe …' Believe me, I know the drill. It's just such a goddamn shame. He's going to wind up alone for good one of these days.” In fact, he already had.
“Maybe that's what he wants,” Sylvia said thoughtfully.
“I hate to see that happen to him.” Gray smiled sadly at her. He wanted to see his friend as happy as he was himself these days. Everything between him and Sylvia was great, and had been since they met. They laughed sometimes over the fact that they hadn't had a single disagreement, or even a first fight. They knew that something would come up one of these days, but it hadn't yet. They seemed to be perfectly matched in every way. The honeymoon was still in full bloom.
Charlie showed up at exactly six o'clock on Thanksgiving Day. He brought two fabulous bottles of red wine with him, a bottle of Cristal, and another of Château d'Yquem. They were all set for a terrific evening of great wines, good food, and good friends.
“My God, Charlie, we could open a liquor store with all this,” Sylvia exclaimed. “And it's such fantastic stuff.”
“I figured if we were going to have hangovers tomorrow, we might as well do it on great stuff.” He smiled at her.
Sylvia was wearing black velvet pants and a white sweater, and had wound her long black hair into a knot. She was wearing small diamond earrings, and she smiled tenderly every time her eyes and Gray's met. Charlie had never seen his friend so happy, and it touched his heart. Gone were the nutcases and neurotics, the psychotic ex-boyfriends threatening their lives, the women who left him for someone else at the drop of a hat, or tried to set fire to his paintings on the way out. Sylvia was precisely what every man should have. And it was obvious to anyone who
saw them that Gray meant just as much to her. Charlie was relieved to see that she treated him like a king. It warmed his heart to see it, but at the same time it made him feel left out. In the company of people who loved each other to that extent, one always felt the absence of all one didn't have. It was bittersweet for him. Sylvia had prepared a delicious meal with Gray's help. The table looked beautiful, the linens perfect, the flowers she had arranged herself just right. Gray was living well, and basking in the warmth of the love he shared with her.
The subject of Carole didn't come up until halfway through dinner. Charlie never mentioned her, but Gray finally couldn't stand the suspense anymore, and brought it up.
“So what happened with Carole?” He tried to sound casual as he asked him, but he sounded anything but, as Sylvia gave him a glance. She was sure it was a painful topic, and she didn't think Gray should ask. But it was too late to stop. He had jumped in with both feet. Charlie didn't react. “What did she lie to you about?”
“Oh, just a minor matter, like who she is. She didn't even tell me her right name. Apparently, she's traveling through life incognito, and didn't think it was worth telling me the truth.”
“Wow, that's too bad. Is she hiding from an old boyfriend or something? Some women do that.” He was trying to make excuses for her. Knowing how terrific Charlie had thought she was, he hated to see yet another good one wind up in the trash. For his friend's sake, if nothing else, he wanted to give their failing romance CPR. But from the icy tone of Charlie's voice, it sounded like it was already dead and Gray's well-intentioned efforts came too late.
“No,” Charlie answered slowly, “she's hiding from herself.”
“I've done that, so have you. Some people do it all their lives.”
“I guess that's what she had in mind. I found out by accident. I thought she was lying about her credentials at first. It turned out to be more complicated than that. She was concealing her identity from everyone. She pretends to be a simple girl who hates the fancy social world, and only respects people working in the gutters of life, as she is, which is admirable, but her humble origins are bullshit in her case. She had me feeling guilty for everything I am and have, how I live, and where I was born. I was even afraid to tell her about the boat.”
“So? She's not what she claims? She's a princess in disguise?” It didn't sound like a death penalty offense to Gray. But to Charlie, it was.
“It turns out she's a Van Horn, for chrissake. She's just as 'fancy' as I am, if you want to call it that. I didn't even bother mentioning it to her, but as I recall, her grandfather had a bigger yacht than mine.”
“A Van Horn Van Horn?” Gray looked surprised.
“Yeah.” Charlie said it as though she had had sex with his best friend in plain sight in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel, while being filmed by the press.
“Wow! That's pretty impressive. The Van Horn thing, I mean. Shit, Charlie, that should make things easier for you. Why the hell are you pissed off? You're not playing Pygmalion here, which is hard to do. You know, 'you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear' and all that stuff, although a lot of people try, but it's damn hard and usually doesn't work. She has a pedigree of her own, which may even be better than yours. Is that what's bothering you?” Gray said insightfully, as Sylvia winced. Gray was not hiding what he thought.
“No, of course not. I'm not jealous of her pedigree.” Charlie looked annoyed. “I don't like the fact that she lied. She made a fool of me. There I was thinking that she was feeling shy about my kind of life, while I was tiptoeing around and apologizing, and it turns out she grew up just like I did. She may not like that world, but it's home base for her too. Simply put, she's full of shit. All that humble simplicity is just a lot of pretentious phony bullshit in her case.” He sounded furious as he said it, and Gray laughed.
“Don't hesitate to tell us what you really think,” he teased. “Okay, so she's pretending to be a nobody. So fucking what? That can't be an easy name to wear with the kind of work she does. Neither is yours. Maybe she doesn't want to play Lady Bountiful coming down to the masses from on high. She wants to be one of them and not have to deal with all that shit. Can you blame her, Charlie?”
“Yes, I can. It's fine to lie to the people where she works, if that's what she wants. But it wasn't okay to lie to me. She told me she lived in a one-room studio. Hell, she lives in a ten-million-dollar brownstone on the Upper East Side.”
“Really, how disgusting of her,” Gray said scathingly. “I'm shocked! And what do you think your apartment on Fifth Avenue with the breathtaking view of Central Park is worth these days? Five million? Ten? And let's see, what did you pay for Blue Moon? I can't remember. Fifty million?… Sixty?”
“That's not the point.” Charlie glowered at him. “The point is that if she lied to me about her name and who she is and how she grew up, she'd lie to me about something else, and probably already has.”
“Maybe not,” Gray said bluntly. It sounded like the proverbial tempest in a teapot to him. At Carole's expense. Charlie had poured the tea right over her head, and stormed out. It didn't sound like a fair fight to Gray. With Charlie, it never was. And in the end, although he didn't see it that way, Charlie lost. That much was very clear to Gray, especially now. His whole perspective on life had changed in the past few months. “Maybe all she wanted was to be like everyone else. Don't you want that sometimes? Do you always want to be Charles Sumner Harrington? I'll bet you don't. Shit, Charlie, give her a chance. Okay, so you felt stupid when you found out who she was. But is that so terrible? You really can't forgive her something like that? How perfect are you, for chrissake?”
“I don't lie to people I love. I don't even lie to my friends. I've never lied to you.”
“Okay, that's why we love each other. But I'll tell you one thing right now, I'm not leaving Sylvia to marry you.”
“Damn,” Charlie said with a laugh, “I was hoping you would.” He glanced at Sylvia. “Sorry, Sylvia, I saw him first.”
“I'm happy to share him with you,” she said honestly, and then decided to put in her two cents, for whatever it was worth. “I don't mean to butt in, and I see your point. It always worries me too when people do something I don't like. I figure there's more hidden somewhere that I don't know about yet, kind of the tip-of-the-iceberg theory. But I suspect in her case, her heart was in the right place, or it could have been. For people like you, and her, you never really know what people want, or who they see. I think Gray may be right in this case, she may have just wanted a clean slate. She should have told you at some point, and maybe sooner than she did. It's unfortunate you had to discover it for yourself. But she sounds like a terrific woman, from everything you said, and you have a lot in common. Maybe you should give her another chance. We all need a break sometimes. And you can always walk if you get another whiff of something you don't like. You're not committing for life. There are compromises in every relationship, as we all know. Unfortunately, none of us are perfect. You may need a bit of indulgence from her at some point. It's a trade-off in the end, a lot of things you love about someone, for a few things you don't. As long as the scale stays weighted on the positive side, it's worth putting up with a little shit. And it sounded to me, before this happened, that there's a lot about her you do like.” She fell silent as Charlie looked at her. She saw two deep pools of sadness in his eyes. There was a lot of pain in his soul that he never shared. There were tears in his eyes when he looked away.
“I just don't want to get hurt. Life is hard enough as it is.”
Sylvia reached out and touched his hand, as they sat next to each other at the beautiful table she had set. “It's harder alone. I know,” she said, with a lump in her throat. He looked back at her and nodded, but he wasn't sure he agreed. It was hard alone, but it was harder still losing someone you loved. He knew she had been there too. Her last lover's suicide had nearly taken her down with it.
“I don't know,” he said sadly, “maybe you're right. I was
just so furious. I felt so ripped off. And I felt like such a fool when I found out. She has an absolute aversion to her own world and her own kind. She hates everything it represents. How healthy and normal is that?”
“Maybe her life wasn't so easy either as a kid,” Gray added. “We all think everyone has it so great. We don't know who was dumped on, who was abused, who was kicked around, who was neglected, who was molested by their uncle. You just don't know. We all have tough stuff to live with. No one gets off scot-free. Maybe hers wasn't such a cakewalk either. I've read a lot about her father, he's a pretty important guy, but he doesn't sound like a sweetheart to me. I don't know, Charlie. Maybe you're right, maybe she's just a lying piece of shit, and she'll break your heart, and your balls. But what if she isn't? What if she's just a decent human being who got sick and tired of being who she is, and growing up as the kid of one of the richest guys who ever lived? It's hard to imagine for someone like me, but you of all people should know that the responsibilities that come with who you are aren't a lot of fun sometimes. To tell you the truth, I love the things you have, and I have a hell of a good time on the boat with you, but honestly, when I take a good look, I'm not sure I'd want to be you every day. Sometimes it looks like a lot of hard work and goddamn lonely to me.” It was as honest as Gray had ever been with him, and Charlie was touched. More than his friend knew.
“You're right, it is hard work, and lonely at times. But you don't get a choice in the matter. They pass you the baton at some point, sometimes sooner than later, as happened to me, and off you go. You don't get to sit on the sidelines and whine, and say you don't want to play. You do the best you can.”
“It sounds like she is. Maybe she just needed a break from being her.”
Charlie looked pensive as he pushed some crumbs around the tablecloth, thinking of what Gray and Sylvia had said. There was a possibility that it was true. “The woman who told me who she is said that she'd nearly had a nervous breakdown when her marriage fell apart. She pretty much told me that herself early on. Her ex-husband sounds like an abusive bastard, and a sociopath. I've met him, and he's not a nice guy. He made plenty of money on his own, but I think he's a real shit. I have a feeling he may have married her because she's a Van Horn.” Gray had made a good point. Maybe she needed to take a break from all that. She had been living her life in hiding for nearly four years. She felt safer on the streets of Harlem than she did in her own world. It was a sad statement about her life, and all that had happened to her, some of which he knew she hadn't told him yet. It was just too hard for her. “I'll think about it,” he said, and then they all breathed a sigh of relief as the subject of conversation moved on to other things. It had been heavy for all of them talking about his feelings about Carole. They all had issues of their own, scars and pain and fears. Life was about how you managed to get around the shoals and reefs of life without running aground and sinking the ship.
Toxic Bachelors Page 25