“Is that how you felt?”
“For a while. But I’m over it now. It helps a lot to talk about it. I got most of it out of my system when I wrote the book. Listen, you want something to eat with that? A burger, some pie? The blueberry’s not bad.”
“No, thanks. I’ve seen the portions. Trucker size. It’d take me all night and a shovel just to get through one piece.” She smiled, leaning forward slightly. “Are you working on anything now? Another novel?”
“When I have the time. It’s ...” Brian hesitated. Should he tell her? The new book was based on his own boyhood, growing up in Brooklyn in the fifties. And she was so much a part of it. “... too soon to say what it’s about. Right now there are more pages in the wastebasket than on my desk.”
“Oh, Brian ...” She leaned across the table, smiling that radiant smile, lifting him two feet off the seat of the worn leatherette booth. “... I am happy for you. Really. I guess I also came tonight because I wanted the chance to tell you I’m sorry about what happened in London. It was ... the shock of seeing you there. I wasn’t expecting you. Okay, I was angry, hurt, but it never stood in the way of my being proud of you. I always knew you would write a wonderful book someday.”
“You must have had a crystal ball. I wrote some pretty awful ones before this.”
She laughed. “I remember. Still, bad as they were, you had a certain ... well, flair. How many heroines get trampled by elephants, gored by a rhinoceros, strangled by a python, and still have energy left over to play badminton?”
“That wasn’t as bad as the hero who came back to life in my murder mystery because I forgot I’d killed him in Chapter Two.”
“Face it, Bri. You weren’t cut out to fill Mickey Spillane’s shoes.”
She started to giggle. Then he caught the bug too, and nearly choked on his coffee. All at once Brian felt the years slip away. He thought of hot summer nights with Rose out on the fire escape, the smell of bagels wafting from the Hot Spot deli on Avenue J. The [364] two of them munching on green grapes, and smoking Pop’s Lucky Strikes. And Rose, showing him all those crazy card tricks. Christ, things had been a lot simpler back then. A time before Vietnam, when the thought of reaching thirty seemed as impossible as dying. He wanted this feeling to go on forever.
“What about children, Bri? I know you always wanted a family. ...”
It was as if he’d been flying up in a swing, carving great swooping arcs in a crayon-blue sky, and suddenly the swing had been snatched out from under him.
“We’re trying,” he said. “No luck so far.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s not hopeless. Just damn frustrating. I wanted a big family. Now I’d settle for one.”
“Your wife ... I’ve read about her clinic.” Rose tactfully changed the subject. “It’s wonderful, what she’s doing for that neighborhood.”
“She’s a dedicated woman.”
In some ways, he thought, Rachel and Rose were two of a kind. They both had a kind of inner fire, but in Rachel it was scattered in every direction. She was out to save the world. Rose’s fire was slower, hotter, more focused.
Brian thought of that night in London, the way she’d looked at him. She was looking at him that way now, her dark eyes fixed on him, unwavering, with that quiet Mona Lisa smile he knew so well. Oh Christ, he wished she would stop ... stop whatever it was that was making him feel something he shouldn’t.
“That man, at the party,” he asked. “Are you going to marry him?”
“Max?” She looked startled, and her cup wobbled as she brought it to her mouth. Some of it splashed on the back of her hand, and she quickly mopped it up with a napkin. Brian saw the jagged white scar creasing her palm, and winced inwardly. “Now look what I’ve done. Don’t you remember, Bri, how I was always falling off my bike and skinning my knees? Well, I haven’t changed a bit. Just last week, I—”
‘He’s in love with you.”
Her cheeks flushed with color. “Don’t be ridiculous. Max is [365] ... well, Max. I couldn’t get along without him, but we’re just ... oh, this is silly, why are we discussing him?”
“Why not? Aren’t you in love with him?”
“No, of course not. Anyway, Max is married.”
“Oh. I see.”
Her flush deepened, an angry mottled red. She dropped her eyes. “No, you don’t. We’re not ... it’s not what you think. Max has been a wonderful friend. There was a time ... a very bad time, after you ... well, let’s just say Max was there for me. I doubt I would have made it through law school, either, if it hadn’t been for him.”
Brian thought, Either you’re a very bad liar, or a fool. I saw the way he was looking at you that night. I’d have had to be blind not to.
It was clear, though, that whatever the truth was, she didn’t want to know it. He had no right poking into her business, anyway.
“I’ll bet you’re a damn good lawyer,” he said. “I’d like to see you in action one of these days.”
“Don’t say that.” She smiled. “You might get your wish. Max always says that lawyers are like morticians—we all need one sooner or later, but better later than sooner.”
“He sounds like a smart man, your Max. I’d like to meet him one of these days.”
“One of these days,” she echoed, tracing a pattern in the rings of moisture on the stained Formica tabletop.
Brian saw her profile reflected in the plate-glass window. There was something so brave and forlorn in that ghostly image, like a tintype he had of his great-grandmother, Mary Taighe McClanahan, who by the age of twenty had crossed an ocean and lost two babies.
Then Rose straightened, and glanced at her watch. “Oh God. Look what time it is. I’ll be up all night. And I have to be in court first thing in the morning.”
“Now I know why Perry Mason had those bags under his eyes.”
She laughed, and touched his hand briefly, a whisper of warmth. “It’s been good seeing you like this again, Bri. I mean it. I want us to stay in touch.”
Brian thought, I should stop this right now. She’s still in love with me. I should put an end to it, tell her it’s no use. It can’t lead anywhere.
[366] But he couldn’t bring himself to say those words. Instead, he felt a crazy, furtive urge to see her again.
“We’ll have lunch. Soon. I’ll call you.”
“Promise?” She rose to leave, lingering a moment, her eyes searching his.
“Promise, cross my heart, hope to die.”
Sitting there after she’d gone, he remembered the promise he’d made to her years ago. A promise he’d broken. He shouldn’t do that to her now, all over again. But now, either way, he’d be hurting her.
Do you still love her? Whispered a hard, cool voice inside him.
Did he? The truth was, he didn’t know. He would always love her, in one way. But was love ever that simple? One thing and not another? Defining how he felt about Rose would be like trying to cut a piece out of the sky.
Walking into his apartment on East Fifty-second Street, Brian was surprised to find it dark. It was nearly midnight.
“Rachel? You home?” he called softly, switching on the overhead light.
No answer.
The jumbled shadows of the living room assembled instantly into a bright, reassuring picture. A good place, Brian thought. He took it in with renewed appreciation, the rumpled chintz sofa with its fallout of plump embroidered cushions, an old pie safe with punched tin doors, a pine table beside it, piled now with bound galleys publishers wanted him to endorse, a sheaf of book reviews sent to him by his editor.
And that crazy Adirondack chair by the fireplace—they’d picked it up in Maine the first summer they were married. Brian smiled, remembering how, after poking around in that old barn full of junk, sneezing and filthy, Rachel had stumbled upon it, nearly hidden behind a pile of rusty bedframes stacked against the wall. She had dragged it out, then walked around and around its hulking carved frame, examining its bear-claw fe
et and bear-head arms. Then she pronounced, “It’s the most hideously wonderful thing I’ve ever seen, and if we don’t buy it I’m going to kick myself all the way home.” The old farmer who ran the store was no hick, no sir, he wouldn’t [367] take less than thirty dollars, practically a fortune in those days, and nearly their entire budget for the weekend. But Rachel had insisted, and they’d lugged it out to the car, roping it into the trunk. Driving home along the Interstate they’d argued about where it would go. Rachel wanted to make it the centerpiece of their living room; he’d thought it would be best hidden off in some dark corner. But when they’d finally gotten it home, and cleaned it up, yes, he’d seen how perfect it was. How unique and wonderful. One of a kind, like Rachel herself.
Brian had that funny little catch in his throat he sometimes got looking at old family snapshots. Pictures of his mother when she was young and slim, before her hair turned gray; pictures of his brothers perched on their tricycles.
It got away from us somehow, he thought.
Something brushed against his leg. He bent down and scooped a big yellow and white calico into his arms. “Hello there, General Custer, holding down the fort for me, were you? Or just out looking for a late-night snack, you old freeloader.” General Custer began to purr loudly, a sound like a rusty bandsaw. Rachel’s cat, really, but he was democratic about some things. He would let anyone feed him.
In the kitchen, Brian dug a foil-covered can of cat food from the back of the refrigerator, and forked the smelly mess into Custer’s bowl by the radiator. He stood for a moment, looking out the window at the bright necklace of the Queensboro Bridge strung across the river, then noticed the asparagus fern in the basket on the windowsill. It looked yellow, brittle. He felt the soil with his finger. Bone dry.
He filled a water glass at the tap, and dumped it over the fern. This place was beginning to remind him of those apartments locked up for the summer, their occupants off in Nantucket or Fire Island. Except it wasn’t summer; it was only April. And they weren’t on vacation. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d taken even a weekend off.
It even smelled closed up, dry and musty, like a blanket taken out of mothballs.
But now he smelled something else. Smoke. Cigarette smoke. A little alarm tripped inside his head. Rachel used to smoke, but she’d quit years ago.
[368] Brian followed the smell down the hall. He found Rachel curled in the big padded maple rocker by the bed. It was dark in here too, the sodium arc lamps on the street below casting a purplish black-light glow over the room. Brian saw that she wasn’t asleep ... but then she wasn’t quite awake, either. The cigarette in her hand was burned down to the filter, and there were ashes scattered over the crocheted afghan lumped about her knees. She was staring off into space, her face white and oddly still, and there was a look on it that caused a rash of goosebumps to crawl up the backs of his arms.
The face of battle fatigue, he recalled.
“Rachel?” he called softly, almost whispering her name. “Honey?”
He’d never seen her like this. Christ, what had happened?
Then, as if he were a hypnotist and had clapped his hands, she blinked, losing that blank zonked-out expression, and turned to face him.
“Hi,” she said.
Brian went over, dropped a kiss on her forehead. Her hair was damp, as if she’d just washed it. “I didn’t think you were home. You didn’t answer.”
“I didn’t hear you. Sorry.”
Gently, he plucked the smoldering filter from her limp hand, and carried it into the bathroom, flushing it down the toilet. There were no ashtrays in here, only the ones in the living room that they kept for company.
He came back, and sat down on the bed, covered by an Amish quilt they’d picked up in Pennsylvania years ago. In the corner, by the foot of the bed, was an old Shaker cradle. Brian tried to bring back the image of a sleeping baby he’d had when he bought it, that first summer after they’d decided to start trying. But the image wouldn’t come. All he saw was the accumulation of odds and ends piled inside it now—old magazines, books he’d started reading but hadn’t finished, a pair of Rocksport hiking boots in need of resoling.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked.
She gave a thin, colorless smile. “Not really. If you don’t mind.”
He did mind. He felt anger knotting his gut, and his voice tightening as he said, “Okay. We’ll skip over the ‘How was your day, honey?’ When did you start smoking again?”
[369] “I haven’t. I just felt like having a cigarette. Please, Bri, let’s not argue. I’m not up to it tonight.”
She looked like hell, he thought. Okay, he wouldn’t press. She’d get around to telling him what was wrong. Eventually.
He waited, letting the silence wash over him, listening to the soft whirr of the electric clock on the nightstand, the distant sounds of traffic.
“My period started,” she said at last.
The words dropped like large flat stones into a still lake. He felt his hands curl into fists, a slow anger seeping through him.
Not fair, he thought. Fourteen-year-olds get knocked up in the seats of Chevys their first time. And look at Ma. Seven kids. So why not Rachel? Yeah, a blockage in her tubes. But all those treatments, all that planning, rushing home to make love when her temperature rose. Propping her hips up with a pillow to hold in the precious sperm.
And all for what?
Not Rachel’s fault. Not his. Just one of those things. So why did he feel this way? Bitter, angry ... cheated somehow. It hurt to be with her, made him feel raw. He wanted to lash out at her, blame her for other things, being so busy, so caught up in her work he hardly saw her until they tumbled into bed, went through the mechanics of making love.
Right now he hated her for being so goddamn stoic. Why didn’t she cry, scream, knock a bloody hole in the wall? At least it would be out in the open. Not this great, silent, brooding thing. The Loch Ness monster lurking below the surface of their lives.
Brian stared at the cradle in the corner, tears burning his eyes. He couldn’t bear it any longer. He would get rid of it in the morning. Just so he didn’t have to go on being reminded.
And then suddenly he felt guilty. Here I am feeling sorry for myself, resenting her. Rachel, Jesus, this has to be much harder on her than it is on me.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Me too. This time, I really thought—” She bit her lip. “Never mind.”
Talk to me, he willed. Jesus, can’t you even talk about it.
[370] “Rachel,” he began, tentatively. “Have you thought any more about what we talked about? About—”
“No,” she cut him off. “And I don’t want to think about it now.
I’m not ready to adopt, Bri.”
“We could put in our application. It takes years. In the meantime ...”
She stiffened, pushing the blanket from her lap, standing up.
“I’m sorry. I can’t. Not now. Maybe someday.”
He grabbed her shoulders, gripping her so tightly he could feel her bones beneath the thin fabric of skin and muscle. “When? You won’t even talk about it, for Chrissakes!”
“Why does it have to be now? Why can’t it be next week, tomorrow even?”
His head was thudding now, a rushing sound in his ears.
“Because, don’t you see, our life is nothing but tomorrows. Tomorrow you’ll take some time off from the clinic. Tomorrow we’ll talk. I’m sick of hearing about tomorrow. What happened to today?”
He was trembling, feeling himself almost dangerously out of control.
“Talk to me,” he pleaded, pulling her to him, pressing his lips to her forehead. “Tell me what you’re feeling. Tell me to go to hell. Anything. But please, Rachel, don’t shut me out.”
Once when he was young, a bird had flown into his room and knocked itself unconscious against the window trying to escape. He had cupped it in his hands, felt it stir to life, warm, quivering, unbearabl
y fragile. That was how Rachel felt now, trembling in his arms.
He ached for her in her pain. But he felt his own frustration even more acutely. He wanted to shake her. Make her answer.
Suddenly she tensed, wrenching away. She stared at him for a long moment, her face working, struggling with an anguish that appeared too great for words.
“Brian ... there’s something I ...” She paused, her face working dreadfully. “Tonight after I left the hospital ... a man ... he attacked me. ...”
Rachel hurt, oh God ... and all this time he’d been needling her. Brian felt a hot surge of rage. The bastard. I’ll kill him, I’ll smash him if he hurt her, oh Christ on the cross. ... He caught her in his [371] arms, holding her tightly. “Christ, oh baby, are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“He ...” She drew away, and brought a trembling hand to her cheek, as if to make sure she was still there, all in one piece. Then in a strangled whisper, she said, “No ... not really. He knocked me down, that’s all. I’m okay ... just kind of shook up.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when I first walked in? Jesus, Rachel, the things I said! Why didn’t you stop me?”
“I don’t know ... God, I don’t know. I was so scared when it happened. He pushed me down, but I got away. Then I just felt so relieved ... I didn’t want to talk about it ... or even think about it.”
“Did you see him? Did you see his face?”
Rachel dropped her eyes, and he could feel a shudder pass through her. “It was ... dark,” she muttered. “No, I didn’t see his face.”
“What about the police? Did you report it?”
“I didn’t call the police. Brian, I told you, there was nothing to report. He didn’t hurt me, and I didn’t see his face. Please ... oh please ... can’t we just forget about it? I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Her voice cracked.
Brian saw the white desperation in her face, and felt something hard and frozen inside him give way, like snow crumbling off a mountain ridge. She had never, not in all the years they’d been together, pleaded with him this way. She always seemed so strong ... so capable. And now he was seeing all those layers of steel stripped back; for the first time he was seeing her naked and vulnerable.
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