Max remembered how high he’d been flying, and he felt some of that now, seeing the way Rose was looking at him, proud and pleased. “No, you never told me,” he said.
[311] Rose frowned, her eyes turning dark, pensive.
Now Max felt deflated, as if he were falling, tumbling to earth like a broken kite.
“A lot was happening at the time ... ,” he began, adding hesitantly, “It was right after you ... when you were so sick.”
“Oh. Yes ... of course.” She looked away, but not before he caught that ghost hurt in her eyes.
Dammit, why wouldn’t she talk about it? Wasn’t six years long enough?
Six years. His thoughts went reeling back to those weeks Rose had been ill, feverish for several days, then so weak she could hardly get out of bed. No, the truth was, she hadn’t wanted to get up. After a while, she had grown so thin it had frightened him, seeing the cadaverous hollows in her face, the sunken brackets of her collarbone. So every day he made time to visit her, on his lunch hour or after work. He would bring her food, tempting her with stuffed squabs, hot spinach pie, crusty fresh bread from Balducci’s one day, spicy Szechuan take-out the next. He’d ply her with magazines, paperback novels, and finally, when she began to show some interest in getting better, a stack of paperwork from the office. Slowly, slowly, she had inched her way back to the land of the living.
Max knew what had caused it; he knew about Brian. He had pieced the story together from the little Rose had divulged, but mostly from the media coverage—after the story in the News there had been pieces in Newsweek, a photo story in Life, even a spot on the Today show. They were America’s favorite sweethearts for a week or so.
But Rose never spoke of Brian after that first week. She suffered, he knew. It was in her eyes. God, those eyes. They haunted him, even when he wasn’t with her. And heaven only knew what was in her heart, her poor heart that had been ravaged so.
Oddly, after that, she became harder, stronger, more ... brilliant somehow. A diamond chiseled and faceted by tragedy. First, nonstop studying for her bachelor’s degree. Then law school, the same single-minded energy electing her to the Law Review at Columbia. He and his partners hadn’t done her any favor when they took her back, as an associate. If anything, it was the other way around.
The arrival of the tea broke Max’s reverie.
He felt his gloom lifting, turning to amusement, watching Rose take it all in, eyes wide. The tall domed Sheffield teapot, the silver [312] tea strainer that fit over the mouth of the cup, the bowl heaped with glistening brown lumps of Demerara, the white china pitcher filled with steaming water, the creamer brimming with foamy milk.
She stared at the array of paraphernalia on the white damask tablecloth. “I don’t know where to start. Are you sure they don’t offer a course in this?”
The childlike perplexity on her face reminded him so of Monkey he felt a pang of homesickness for his daughter. He thought of how she had watched him pack for this trip, perched on the edge of the quilted bedspread—all legs and skinny arms and russet hair down to the middle of her back—solemnly following the progression of shirts, ties, socks he was folding into his suitcase. This had been their ritual before every trip, since she was a baby. In the old days, when he finished packing, he would stand there, hands on hips, lips pursed, and say, “Hmmm, seems to me I’ve forgotten something. I wonder what.” Then Monkey would pounce into the open suitcase, all giggles. “Me!” she would cry. “Me, Daddy!” But this time she hadn’t picked up on her cue. When he spoke the ritual words, “I wonder what?” she had simply rolled her eyes and said with majestic disdain, “Oh, Daddy, I’m way too old for that.”
Fifteen. Oh Christ, where had the time gone? He was frightened by the ease with which people you love could slip away. He mustn’t let that happen with Rose. No, he must keep her ... as a friend, if not a lover.
Max picked up the thick white china pitcher.
“Here, let me show you.” And in the same instant he thought ruefully, Henry Higgins, you stupid old fart, don’t you know when to quit? “Milk first, like so. Now you strain the tea through this. Careful, only halfway. It’s very strong, that’s what the hot water is for, to dilute it. Now sugar if you like. Voila!”
He watched Rose take a first, tentative sip. “Not bad. But all this fuss over a cup of tea, it’s no wonder they lost the war against us.”
“Drink up.” Max glanced again at his watch. “The Brits haven’t lost yet ... not until we see the whites of Devon Clarke’s eyes,” he joked.
Max shifted impatiently in the leather wing chair. It was twenty past one, and the Gray’s Inn office of Adams Rathbone, Esq., had [313] begun to feel like a sauna. They were no closer to a settlement than they’d been two and a half hours ago. He felt as if he were in a tedious drawing-room play, where characters cleverly sniped at one another, but nothing ever really happened.
Even this office, he thought, looked like a stage set. All cluttered with Victorian gimcrack—horsehair sofa laden with cushions, an antique needlepoint bellpull by the door, a scrimshaw tusk mounted over the fireplace. There was even a chair off in the corner piled high with books (probably just for effect). So Dickensian it hurt, right down to the coal fire in the grate—never mind it was a good seventy degrees outside.
Devon Clarke, the star of their little show, was sitting center stage, perched on one plump arm of the sofa, her tiny feet just skimming the badly worn Oriental carpet. A tiny woman well in her fifties, she reminded Max of a parakeet, with her leathery pink skin and pointy features, her bright green dress and the flimsy blue scarf knotted at her throat.
Directly across from her, behind a huge ornately carved desk, sat her caricature of a solicitor, a heavyset, balding gentleman, replete with waistcoat, gold watch chain, and a suffocatingly tight collar.
Max’s client, Booth, had authorized him to offer up to fifty thousand pounds to get her off his back. But Devon Clarke seemed interested only in emoting. So far she’d lamented her way through eight or so versions of the Book of Job, with That Beast, Jonathon Booth, as the fiendish cause of all her affliction.
“... Would you like to know the real reason why he wrote that so-called book, that piece of muck of his?” she was asking now, lighting up her hundredth or so cigarette.
“I wonder—” Max was determined to remain statesmanlike, “if such speculations can really help our business here.”
“Because I refused,” she continued as if Max hadn’t spoken, “to star in his play. I told him what I thought of it, too—a fat lot of self-indulgent nonsense. And boring, boring, boring!”
Max cleared his throat. Enough. This time he was going to nail her down, get this so-called negotiation off the ground.
“Miss Clarke, my client and I deeply regret the distress you’ve suffered. And Jonathon, believe it or not, is eager to make amends. In fact, he feels it would be in your best interest, as well as his, to—”
“My best interest?” Devon interrupted with a hard, bright laugh. [314] “My best interest? Oh, pardon me, but that’s rich. That’s positively priceless. May I tell you how that wretched beast, your client, behaved on our honeymoon? Our honeymoon, for Christ’s sake. We were in Majorca, and I was so sick, I had this beastly stomach virus. And where was he? With his suffering bride? No, not a bit of it. Not for five bleeding minutes. Sickness, he says, declaiming like some over-the-hill Hamlet, depresses him. Well I say, sod him!”
Max glanced over at Rose, seated in a rickety antique corner chair close to the fire. Now she was rising, looking vaguely sheepish. What could she be up to?
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said. “But I was wondering, Miss Clarke, if you might show me to the, uh, Ladies. This place is kind of a warren, and I’m awful at directions, I’m afraid I’d just get lost. ...”
Max had to strain a bit not to laugh. Rose could find her way across the Himalayas in a blizzard. She was the only woman he knew who didn’t get disoriented in Bloomingdale’s.
> What’s she up to? he wondered.
The two women finally returned, looking oddly conspiratorial. What the hell was going on? Even Rathbone looked wary.
Out of the blue, the actress demurely turned to Max, and said, “You were saying before, about some sort of settlement? Well, who knows, perhaps Jonathon really is doing the right thing. This whole matter has been such an ordeal, frightful really. And I’d just as soon not prolong the agony any longer. ...”
Max looked at Rose, and she shot him a glowing look of triumph.
“... In fact,” she simpered, “I’m feeling a bit of a migraine. So I shall leave you two to conclude things with Arthur.” She turned to her solicitor. “Arthur, darling, don’t be a bore and keep these nice people waiting here all afternoon. They have made a generous offer, and I have accepted.”
A flutter of chiffon, a slipstream of Chanel N° 5, and Devon Clarke was gone.
Max, feeling euphoric, as well as slightly puzzled, could hardly believe his luck. Lourdes didn’t have much over this.
In the back of a cab, headed back to the hotel, Max turned to Rose. “How—”
“Simple,” Rose explained smugly. “As soon as I got her alone, [315] I told her I agreed with her. Men are such beasts. Then I suggested that maybe she was wasting her time suing Jonathon when the best revenge of all was right in front of her nose.”
“And what, may I ask, is that?” asked Max, amused.
“Writing her own autobiography, of course. I mean, listening to all those stories, anyone could see she’s just bursting to tell the whole world everything she’s ever done, with special emphasis on the beastly Booth. All I did was sort of nudge her in the right direction.”
“You’re amazing, do you know that?” Max wanted to kiss her, badly.
Then, not knowing how it had happened, he was kissing her. And it was just like his fantasies, Rose responding to him, mouth soft, willing, her arms cool and silky about his neck.
But in a moment, less than a moment it seemed, she was pulling away with a breathy, embarrassed little laugh, and the fantasy dissolved.
“Oh, Max, I know how you feel. I feel a little crazy myself just now. Such a strange morning. But let’s not get too carried away.”
Max felt a little sick to his stomach. She must be thinking I’m just another middle-aged married man off on a trip, looking for a little quick one on the side. Oh Christ ...
If only it were that simple. But what he wanted was more, so much more ... and, then, not so much after all. He wanted Rose. That simple. And that complicated.
To reach out at night and feel her beside him. To see her across from him at breakfast not just today, but every day. He imagined her swaddled in his old terry robe, hair frayed from sleep, sipping coffee from a mug, scattering toast crumbs over the oak table in his kitchen.
Then he remembered his father at Edgemore Beach, looking like a boiled potato in baggy blue swim trunks, making a show of ogling the pretty girls as they passed by in their two-piece bathing suits. And his mother, pretending to be jealous, swatting him with the bottle of suntan lotion.
No fool like an old fool, she used to tease, as if the very idea of baggy old Norm Griffin and one of those girls were the real joke.
No fool like an old fool. And that’s what Mom would say about [316] me now too. And if she knew how much I want Rose, she’d probably laugh. And she’d be right.
Now he was no longer the golden boy, pride of the Griffins, Harvard scholarship winner, corporate tiger, promoted to senior partner in an astonishing ten years. No, now he was just middle-aged Max Griffin, growing soft like his pop, ogler of pretty girls. An old fool.
To try and salvage his pride, he said, “Don’t worry,” his arm about her shoulders, casually though, as if he hadn’t noticed it was still there. “You’re a damned attractive woman, Rose, but I like you too much to let anything get in the way.”
Rose, he could see, was immensely relieved. She laughed and said, “Oh, Max, I do love you.”
Jesus ... the words he’d longed for. He’d imagined her saying them a thousand times. But not like this, not tossed off the way she’d say it about a favorite dress or a delicious meal.
Max, feeling as if he’d been punched in the gut, stared out the window at the Strand skimming past, and saw that it had begun to rain.
Chapter 20
“Do I really look okay? I’m not overdressed, am I?”
Rose fussed with her sleeve. Probably silly, she thought, going overboard with this dress. But what did she know about this kind of party? How was she supposed to know what people like these would be wearing? At least Cinderella had a fairy godmother to wave a magic wand over her; she’d just have to wing it.
“Stop worrying,” Max was reassuring her. “The dress is wonderful. There won’t be another woman at the party who’ll look half as glamorous.”
Rose looked over at him. Max was seated on the deep-peach sofa in front of the fireplace (a marble fireplace in her bedroom, she still couldn’t get over it). He looked totally at ease in his dinner jacket—and why not? This was Max’s world—all of it—chic London, the Savoy Hotel. Her gaze swept about the room, done in whispers of pink and cream and blue, the delicate little bow-legged French tables and chairs, the huge bed covered in a rose satin quilt aged to the soft nappy sheen of velvet. Yes, Max belonged. But where did she fit in?
“But that’s just what I’m worried about,” she moaned. Why couldn’t he understand? She didn’t want people staring at her. She just wanted to blend in. Rupert Everest, Jonathon Booth’s publisher over here, was related to the royal family. She’d read about a party of his once in Time, Mick Jagger drinking champagne from Julie Christie’s slipper. What could she say to such people?
Rose stepped over to the bathroom door to look in the full-length mirror. The moment of truth.
She stood perfectly still, no twirling about to check herself from different angles or to see if her hem was straight in back. The woman in the mirror wasn’t her at all—no, couldn’t be. Because the real Rose Santini was still that gawky kid from Avenue K and Ocean Avenue, [318] in her navy and white school uniform and oxfords. And this tall, slender, and sophisticated-looking woman in high heels, hair swept up with glittering combs, was ... was ... well, beautiful.
In the afternoon, Max had taken her shopping at Liberty’s on Regent Street. Thick oak paneling on the walls, intricately carved banisters adorning the staircases, antique armchairs and settees upholstered in a glorious peacock design, which Liberty, Max explained to her, had made famous. Rose imagined she had died and gone to shopper’s heaven. Caught up by the enchantment of the place, she’d splurged on a Burberry raincoat and matching cashmere scarf ... and this dress.
Max was right, it was wonderful. Inspired by Renaissance design, it was fashioned from rubbed velvet an almost incandescent deep violet that dropped straight to just above her knees, then flared into narrow pleats—like the petals of a flower—each pleat opening onto a panel of pale mauve antique lace. The sleeves were of the same mauve lace, full and gathered at the shoulder and elbow, tightly fitted along the forearms and tapering to a V at the wrist.
Dark, vengeful triumph rose from some deep locked place inside her. If you could see me now, my dear faithful Brian, would you be sorry you left me? Would you want me back?
That News article, she was seeing it again, and all the others that had come after—the Life spread, those dramatic shots of the rescue, and the wedding, then a close-up of the two of them, Brian and his wife, curled together on the sofa of their Murray Hill apartment; and another of Brian at his typewriter—he was writing a novel about his experiences in Vietnam, the caption had said.
Rose had torn them all to shreds, all those pages and pictures, but they were burned into her memory nonetheless. Her mind turned to it again and again the way her tongue might seek out an aching tooth. And each time, the same question going round and round, an endless unanswerable riddle: Why? Why, Brian?
She remembered again, how she had wanted to stay in bed forever, hide away in her dark apartment for the rest of her life.
But after three black weeks, she had awoken one morning feeling ravenous, and wanting to get up, get out. But even after a huge, hearty breakfast she could barely make it to the door, she was so weak.
[319] The next day she made it out, and then down the stairs, clutching the banister tightly. As she crept along like an old lady the three blocks to Washington Square, it came to her, a kind of epiphany: each additional step she took was proof. She could not be beaten. She was somebody. And someday Brian would see that, too. Someday he would realize his mistake. And he would regret it.
She remembered growing stronger in other ways too. Learning to ignore her grandmother’s hectoring phone calls, Nonnie’s demands that she visit, call more often, write at least. By the time Rose had finished her bachelor’s at N.Y.U., she felt as if she’d logged a million miles between this new life and her old one on Avenue K.
Mother of God, even now Rose couldn’t imagine how she’d managed to get herself through those grueling exams, and her note—a misnomer if there ever was one—for the Law Review.
Her torts midterm had been a killer. A case for which she’d had to prepare a mock brief. God, how could she ever forget Lambert v. Western Securities? She had sweated over it for weeks, knocking herself out checking facts, researching precedents, poring over sections and subsections of the Securities and Exchange Act. And Professor Hughes was the toughest, most demanding teacher at NYU, a campus legend. It was rumored he never gave anything higher than a C+, but Rose had been determined. Her diligence would win him over, she was sure; he would have to award her an A.
And when she received her paper back, marked C-, oh, how devastated she’d been! Professor Hughes had scribbled across the bottom: “Your arguments, though carefully researched, would stand little chance of convincing a jury.”
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