by Rona Jaffe
“I don’t want this in the papers,” Kit said. “I’m a famous actress and it would be bad publicity.”
“It won’t be in the papers. Just tell me your name and address.”
She did. In what seemed like a very short time two cops arrived; both young, both attractive, one black and one white. She wondered if they always traveled in a mixed set or if the man on the phone wanted to be sure she got what she liked. She managed to get up to open the door for them, and then fell on the floor.
They asked her questions, but she was absolutely incapable of speech. Then they were talking about her, trying to figure out what she’d taken and if it would be lethal. One of them was walking her around the room. She didn’t remember much after that until she woke up to find it was midmorning, and that one of the cops had tucked her teddy bear into bed with her before he left.
Being young and very healthy, she didn’t even feel particularly rotten. She rolled over and went to sleep again, and then sometime later the phone rang.
“How do you feel?” the man’s voice said.
“Who is this?”
“Tip Weiner. One of the police officers who saved you last night.”
Weiner? A Jewish cop? “I feel okay,” Kit said.
“I put your teddy bear with you so you wouldn’t feel lonely,” he said. “Did you find it?”
“I haven’t slept with my teddy bear since I was seven,” Kit said, “but it was very thoughtful of you anyway.”
“I didn’t know,” he said. “We didn’t take you to the hospital because you seemed okay. Do you remember drinking coffee?”
“Nope.”
“Do you remember me?”
“I remember both of you,” she said.
“I’m the blond one.”
“I hope this isn’t going to be in the papers,” Kit said.
“It’s not. We took pity on you.”
“Thank you.”
“Listen,” he said, rather hesitantly. “It’s my day off today, and I thought I’d come by to see if you were all right, if that’s okay.”
“That’s okay,” Kit said.
“I’ll bring some food. You haven’t got any food in your house I noticed.”
“That’s because if I buy it I’ll eat it,” she said.
“If you keep drinking and popping pills on an empty stomach you could die by accident,” Tip Weiner said. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
He arrived in a civilian’s car, with two armloads of groceries. He was tall and blond and as cute as Kit remembered, and he was wearing a T-shirt and faded jeans. He had bought orange juice and milk and ice cream and lots of salad things and a barbecued chicken, and bagels and eggs for her breakfast. He scrambled the eggs while she made coffee and then they ate together and talked. He was single, and he was going to law school in his free time. He was a lot brighter than most of the guys she’d been seeing lately, and he was also obviously very kind. It interested her that he hadn’t come over only to get laid, although that was probably on his mind, unless he thought it was a big deal just to have breakfast with a rather well-known actress, which she doubted.
Around six o’clock she was feeling almost normal, so she excused herself and took a shower and dressed. She realized that her house was filthy. She’d been on such a merry-go-round that she hadn’t even noticed. She was embarrassed that he would see the mess, because she was basically a clean person. They had the chicken and salad for dinner, and afterward she took him to bed. He was a very good lover, as she had hoped he would be. He stayed all night, and after that they started to go together. Kit really liked him, as much as she was capable of liking anybody, and he seemed to be in love with her.
She wondered what Emma would make of this adventure when she told her. It was just like Emma’s mother being saved by the fireman who came back the next day to go to bed with her, except of course Emma’s mother had been married and had run away afterward. But Kit had no intention of running away, at least not for the time being. What is it about us, she thought, that makes us want to get saved?
Chapter Fourteen
For a while now, Annabel had realized she was in love with Dean Henry. It was a bittersweet feeling, full of complications. He was twenty-six—soon she would be forty-seven. He would be twenty-seven soon, and already she could see he was fretting that his youth was passing by too quickly. What was she to say; that being young was a state of mind, that when he was thirty he would look back at this time and think he’d been a baby, that youth was highly overrated anyway? Any more platitudes? She had allowed herself to fall in love with him after years of protecting her feelings, and while she spent her days in moments of happiness and excitement, she also knew there would be no forever for the two of them.
She could console herself by thinking that judging by the marriages she’d seen there was no forever for most people. It was small consolation. She had never been like “most people.” She only wanted Dean; she had him now; she wanted their happiness together to last.
It was spring again, and she went to Europe to the collections. This time she did not look for any young man to have a fling with, and she phoned Dean several times just to hear his voice. With the time difference and his erratic schedule she caught him only once. She was impatient to be home with him again. She wondered if he was cheating while she was away, and chided herself for being jealous and silly. If he were so anxious to cheat, he could do it while she was in New York. She worked such long hours, and his time was flexible enough to do what he pleased. That was the trouble with being in love … you cared too much. You wanted your love object to be happy, but only if you were the one who made him so.
He seemed happy. He was thoughtful and romantic. He continued to be insatiable in bed. After they made love he almost purred, like Sweet Pea. When Annabel stroked his thick black hair Dean moved his head in her hand, the way a cat did, sensually, to feel the touch of her palm, to push into her, to be cosseted. She loved the unabashed selfishness of his sensuality because there seemed to be a vulnerability in it too. He was so open. He wasn’t afraid to show his need. He knew she wouldn’t refuse him, or leave him.
They had been living together six months, and her life had changed in so many ways she wondered if she could ever bear to be alone again. She had someone to talk to, and to be quiet with, to read the paper with and have meals with, to take walks with, to go to the movies with on the spur of the moment. Her apartment was filled with the sounds of a human being she loved. His clothes and favorite objects were there. One day she left a note taped to the refrigerator: “Going to the supermarket. Write down anything you want.” And he wrote back: “Love.”
For his birthday Annabel took him to The Four Seasons for dinner. They sat side by side on a dark brown leather banquette facing the pool in the high-ceilinged, airy, tree-filled Pool Room, and ate gigantic crisped shrimps with mustard sauce, and drank champagne; and held hands under the table the way they had on their first date. She’d had the chef make a little birthday cake for a surprise. Dean’s present was a vastly extravagant six-foot-long cashmere scarf with a fringe at each end, in a wonderful shade just lighter than navy blue that matched his eyes.
She’d given a scarf like that to Max, on the last birthday of his life, but his had been white. When she chose the scarf for Dean, Annabel hesitated for a moment, remembering. She had loved Max, and she loved Dean, in a different way. She decided it was neither macabre nor sentimental to have given them both the same present. Both of them had more panache than any man she had ever known.
On the card she wrote: “Just another way of tying you to me.” It was the kind of thing she would never have dared to write a few months ago, but now she knew he would like it, would be flattered, not feel she was moving too fast or assuming too much. He wanted to be tied to her. She found herself thinking of famous couples who had lived together happily despite a great age difference, and at last allowed herself to believe.
Back in their apartment that night Dean
took his birthday scarf and wrapped it around the two of them, drawing her tight against him. “This was the best birthday of my whole life,” he said. “I love you so much.”
How could she not allow herself to believe it would last?
Once in a while on Sundays they drove up to Chris and Alexander’s house in the country. Dean got along with all of Annabel’s friends and she with his. Chris was going to a diet doctor now, and had lost some weight. The puffy look was gone from her face, and she looked much better. She was resigned to the fact that her diet was going to be a long haul, but she was enthusiastic about Dr. Fields; so enthusiastic that she reminded Annabel of those women who got a crush on their gynecologist when they were pregnant because it seemed as if the two of them were working together to create a new person.
“I love Dr. Fields,” Chris kept saying. “He’s so kind. He really understands me.”
“My rival,” Alexander said, chuckling.
Alexander hadn’t meant anything cruel, but it was the first time Annabel was really angry at him. Her eyes met Chris’s across the table, and then they both looked away. Annabel knew about Alexander’s big love affair with James, although Alexander never invited him to the country anymore now that Chris had found out. Still, the romance was going on, and Chris was bravely trying to cover it up and pull her life together. Annabel wished there were a rival. Cameron, or even Dr. Fields … anybody.
Dean was very pleased about Chris’s diet and loss of weight. He couldn’t understand why she wanted to stay with Alexander; such loyalty to someone who seemed, in his opinion, a hopeless case. “You wouldn’t do that,” he said once to Annabel, when they were discussing it.
“No. But I’m not like Chris.”
“You would never let any man walk all over you.”
“I hope not,” she said.
“But of course, you could get any man you wanted,” Dean said.
“Well, thank you.”
Perhaps instead of taking it as a compliment she should have looked at it as a warning. Didn’t men tell you that you could have any man you wanted when they were thinking you might have to look for a replacement? But how could she think that? She was lulled with her happiness and contentment.
Sometimes now Dean was moody, even seemed sad, but when Annabel asked him what was the matter and he said it was just his nature, she believed him. Most of the time he was happy. Whenever he seemed restless she thought of things they could do together that would amuse him. She was busy with the boutique and her business responsibilities. He was working on a new series of pictures in his studio downtown. They talked about the possibilities of a short summer vacation. She had left the shop with the girls before, when she went on business trips. The fact that she and Dean couldn’t seem to set a suitable time didn’t worry her.…
On Annabel’s birthday Emma phoned from location and sent flowers to the shop. Chris took her to lunch, ate very spartanly, wrote down everything she had eaten on a little list she carried in a plastic holder in her handbag, and presented Annabel with a needlepoint pillow she had made herself. She had embroidered on it: Redheads have more fun.
“I’m doing a lot of needlepoint these days,” Chris said. “It keeps my hands busy doing something besides putting food in my mouth.”
That night Dean took her for her birthday dinner to the same place she had taken him for his: The Four Seasons. For an instant it occurred to Annabel that this was unlike him. The Four Seasons was her world, not his. His world was cute little bistros, SoHo, TriBeCa. Part of the charm of their relationship was that each brought the other into a different life, adding variety. But then she dismissed the thought as being ungracious and ungrateful. He had been so impressed by his birthday dinner that he simply wanted to do the same for her. The present he gave her was much more typical of Dean—a very modern black plastic necklace with clear lucite stars that looked like crystal hanging from it. He said one of his friends in SoHo who made jewelry had made it specially for her, and Annabel was very touched. It looked beautiful with her coloring. It was perfect.
“This was my best birthday,” Annabel told him happily. “My best ever.”
“I’m glad,” Dean said.
Sunday, which they always looked forward to because it was their one day together, Dean wanted to go to the zoo. When they got to the zoo he wanted to sit on the terrace outside the cafeteria and have coffee. That was all right with her, although a bit strange because they’d just finished an enormous breakfast. But it was a pretty day, and she was happy to be with him, even though sitting in the midst of a throng of strangers, mostly families with noisy children, was not very romantic.
“I have something to tell you,” he said. He looked down at the paper cup of coffee, which he had not even tasted, and then he looked at his hands. Anywhere, except at her. Annabel felt a sharp, remembered fear.
“What?” she said.
“I’m going back to Monica.”
She felt as though his hands were squeezing her throat. The pain was so great that she shut it out, tried not to gasp, although she could hardly breathe. “Why?” she asked stupidly. You said you didn’t love her, she thought. You said you loved me.
“I realize I should marry her.”
“What do you mean?” Annabel said. “This isn’t nineteen hundred. Why should you marry her?”
“Because … I love her. And I want to settle down and have kids. I’ve thought about it a lot. You’ve helped me a great deal. This was a very important period in my life, the time you and I spent together. I want you to know I really loved you. But I want to go back to Monica.”
Bill Wood, she thought. And all those other men, all through college, who decided they didn’t love her anymore. Her rotten marriage to Rusty … Mistakes, mistakes through the years, until finally she’d settled not for love, but only for wary convenience. And now, just when she’d thought she was safe and smart and had allowed herself to fall in love again, here he was, calmly tearing her heart out. Men always took you to a public place to wreck your life because they were afraid you would make a scene. Except, of course, for the worst cowards, who just disappeared.
“Say something,” he said.
What was there to say? That it was convenient that Monica had never managed to find her own apartment? That she was sure he’d had plenty of chances to see Monica when he was supposedly so madly in love with her? That maybe he never really loved her, but he damn sure didn’t love Monica either, and probably couldn’t love anybody? That soon he’d have his marriage and his kids, and his nice, settled family life, and then he’d be cheating? She remembered all those times when she’d wondered how a man could love you one day and then suddenly decide he didn’t love you anymore, and the times she’d even asked them why this was, but never got any kind of an answer at all.
Oh, Dean, she thought, you loved me. You loved me. I was so happy. I was so sure you loved me. I love you so much that I can’t even hate you for using me as a vacation.
“It was nice of you to wait until after my birthday,” she said.
“If you’re going to be clever you’re much better at it than I am,” he said.
“I know,” Annabel murmured sweetly.
He was packed and gone by that night. He didn’t even say he hoped they could remain friends, and Annabel didn’t suggest it. He was going back to his friend, with whom he had spent a fifth of his life and now hoped to spend the rest of it. Annabel felt so filled with tears that she was raw inside, but she could not cry. A few tears filled her eyes, and her voice was unsteady, but the sobs and the anguish had been buried so deeply inside her for so long that she couldn’t get them out. Her apartment was unnaturally quiet. Where Dean had been there was empty space. She had been used to the sound and feel of his presence, and now the home where once she had so enjoyed her independence and freedom was only a place where she felt lonely and bereft.
She put on music, but could hardly hear it. She sat staring at the wall, a glass of wine in her hand, Sweet
Pea cuddled in her lap. She dialed Chris’s number, but there was no answer; they were probably on their way back from the country. There was no Max to call. Even though she had known from the beginning that Dean would not be hers forever, she hadn’t been prepared for the shock and pain of his leaving her.
Young men wanted different things for their lives than she did. A young man wanted a wife and a child; she had been a wife and she had a child—she didn’t want that anymore. She probably couldn’t even have a baby now if she tried. But why was it that the only men she was ever attracted to were so young, so impossible, so impermanent? She never even glanced at a man her age; it was as if they were all invisible.
Younger men were so sexy, so beautiful, so hypnotized by the joy of lovemaking. Their bodies were firm, their minds were leaping every which way, easily bored, impatient to find what was ahead of them.
Young men were so safe.
Chapter Fifteen
For the first time since she was eighteen years old, or perhaps ever, Chris was the most important person in her own life. And the most important man in her life was her diet doctor. Here she was, at seven o’clock in the morning, walking briskly to Dr. Fields’s office for her weekly appointment before she went to work, trying to be first so she wouldn’t have to wait so long; glancing at her reflection in store windows for the first time in months. She was looking better, almost normal again. Soon, she thought, soon …
They sat on opposite sides of his big desk, he in his white doctor’s coat, she in her new khaki dress that she’d bought for the interim period between her old black muumuus, which were much too voluminous for her now, and her Thin Clothes, which were still too tight. Her new dress was of the lightest cotton because Dr. Fields insisted on weighing his patients in their clothes. Chris didn’t think it was fair. She always took off her watch before she stepped on his scale, and of course she didn’t have breakfast until after she’d left his office.