“Fucked, you mean,” he said flatly. “They’re not the same things.”
“Maybe to you they’re not,” she answered. “But they are to me. I love you.”
“One good fuck and you’re in love?” he asked sarcastically.
“Isn’t that enough of a reason?” she returned. “I might have gone my whole life and never known how much I could feel.”
He was silent.
“Look,” she said quickly, the words tumbling from her lips almost one on top of the other. “I know that after tonight it will be over. That it will never happen again. But it’s not tomorrow yet, it’s still tonight and I don’t want to lose a moment of it.”
He felt the stirring in his loins and knew from the expression in her eyes that she was aware of it. He felt a sudden anger with his self-betrayal. “We can’t stay in this room,” he said harshly. “The servants—”
“You stay in Loren’s room,” she said. “Through the connecting door.”
He began to pick up his clothing. “What will you tell them?”
“The truth,” she smiled. “That it was too late for you to drive home. After all, what can they say, you’re still my father-in-law, aren’t you?” She looked up at him. “One thing bothers me. I don’t know what to call you. Daddy Hardeman seems ridiculous now.”
“Try Loren,” he suggested. “That shouldn’t be too difficult.” He followed her into the other room. “How long have you had separate bedrooms?” he asked.
“Always,” she answered. She reached for the clothing over his arm. “Let me hang these for you, or they won’t be fit to wear in the morning.”
He watched her drape the suit neatly over the wooden valet. “I thought you had the same bedroom.”
“Never,” she replied. “Loren said that he was a poor sleeper. Besides, you and Mother had separate bedrooms.”
“Only after she became sick,” he said. “We slept in the same room for the first twenty years of our marriage.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said, taking his shirt and placing it on a hanger.
“You’re both too young to have separate rooms,” he said. He looked at her shrewdly. “I know there’s nothing the matter with you. What’s wrong with Loren?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her eyes meeting his. “He’s different. He’s not like you.”
“What do you mean, different?”
“He just doesn’t seem to demand very much from me.” She hesitated a moment. “Now that I think about it, the only time we ever make love is when I seem to suggest it. Even on our wedding night, I wanted him so badly that I lay naked in the bed waiting for him, and he asked if I was too tired.”
“He was never a very strong boy,” he said awkwardly. “Sort of delicate. His mother used to worry a great deal about him. I thought she worried too much at times. But that was the way she was. He was her only child and she knew that she would never have another.”
“I would like to give you a child,” she said.
“You already did. A grandchild.”
She shook her head. “More than that. One of your own. You’re a man who should have had many children.”
“It’s too late for that now.”
“Is it, Loren?” she asked, walking toward him. “Is it too late?”
He looked down into her face without answering.
“You never kissed me,” she said.
He placed his hands under her shoulders and lifted her toward him. She felt his thumbs digging into her armpits, his strong fingers pressing into her back, crushing her breasts against him. His mouth came down hard against her lips. The hot liquid fire began to soak her loins.
She tore her mouth from him and laid her head on his chest. She closed her eyes and her lips brushed against his shoulder and he could hardly hear her soft whisper. “Oh, God, I hope this night never ends.”
He held her very still and very tightly. Because the one thing both of them knew was that morning was just a few hours away.
“More coffee, Mr. Hardeman?”
Loren nodded. He looked across the breakfast table at Sally and waited until the impassive butler had filled the cup and left the room. “You didn’t eat your breakfast.”
“I’m not really hungry,” she said. “Besides I still have ten pounds to lose until I’m back to where I was before the baby was born.”
He picked up his cup and sipped the strong black coffee. He thought of the way she looked at six o’clock that morning.
He awoke when she had slipped from the bed to give the baby his morning feeding but he deliberately kept his eyes closed so that she would think he was still asleep. He felt her standing there at the side of the bed, looking down at him. After a moment, she moved away and he peeked at her through slitted lids.
She was nude and in the gray light of the early morning he could see the faint blue and purple bruises of his passion on her fair skin. She seemed to wander about the room almost aimlessly and without purpose. She paused before the dresser and suddenly there were two of her, back and front, one in the mirror. But she didn’t look at herself. Instead she picked up his heavy pocket watch and looked at it for a moment, then put it down and took up the gold cufflinks made in the shape of the first Sundancer he had built. These she looked at for a long time. After she had put them down, she turned and looked back at him in the bed. He shut his eyes quickly.
He heard her moving around the room again, then the closing of the door behind her and, after a moment, the faint sound of running water coming through the walls from her bathroom. He rolled over on his back and opened his eyes.
He was in his son’s bed, in his son’s room, and the smell of his son’s wife was still on the pillow beside him. His eyes wandered around the room. Everything in it reflected Junior’s love of antique furniture. The dresser and mirror, the chairs, even the delicate Duncan Phyfe desk that sat in the bay of the window. All were his son’s.
A peculiar sorrow seemed to weigh him down. Elizabeth had said so many times that his life had been a succession of failures when it came to his son. That he never really allowed for the differences between them and that try as he might, he could not reshape Junior in his own image.
He closed his eyes wearily. If those were failures, what was this? Another failure? Or betrayal? Or even worse, a final usurpation of his son’s life and place? He drifted into a fitful sleep.
When he opened his eyes again it was after eight o’clock and she was standing next to the bed. She was wearing a simple dress and her face was scrubbed, without makeup, her eyes clear and her hair pulled back behind her head in a neat bun.
“Junior’s calling you from the office,” she said in a flat voice.
He swung his feet off the bed. “What time is it?”
“About eight forty.”
“How did he know I was here?”
“When you weren’t at the meeting this morning, they tried your house. They were told that you had mentioned you might come over here last night but they didn’t think of calling until they tried several other places first.”
“What did you say to him?” he asked.
“I told him that we were up late and that I thought you should stay over instead of driving back.”
“Okay,” he said, getting to his feet. A stab of pain shot through his temples. “Could you get me some aspirin?” he asked, walking to the small desk and picking up the telephone. “Hello.”
“Father?” Junior’s voice was thin and metallic in the phone. “I’m sorry I didn’t know you were there, I would have come home.”
“That’s all right,” Loren said. “I made up my mind at the last minute.”
She came back into the room with two aspirins and a tumbler of water. He gulped them down.
“Duncan’s completed the plans for the revised assembly line for the Loren Two,” Junior said. “We wanted to get your approval.”
“How does it look?”
“It seems all right to me,” Junior said. “We
should be able to save about two hundred and ten dollars per unit by final assembly.”
“Then okay it,” he said abruptly.
“Without your seeing it?” There was surprise in Junior’s voice.
“Yes. You might as well get used to taking the responsibility. You’re the president of the company, you make the decisions.”
“But—what are you going to do?” Junior was puzzled.
“I’m taking that vacation I promised myself,” he heard himself saying. “I’m going to Europe for a year and I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“I thought you weren’t going until next month,” Junior said.
Loren looked up at Sally. “I changed my mind.”
She looked into his eyes for a moment, then silently left the room. He turned back to the telephone. “I’ll go home and change clothes,” he said to his son. “I’ll see you later this afternoon.” He sat down wearily in the spindly Duncan Phyfe chair behind the desk and waited for the aspirin to take his morning headache away.
Now she looked across the table as he put his coffee cup back on it. Her voice was controlled. “You’re running away.”
“Yup,” he nodded.
“Do you think it will make anything different?”
“Maybe it won’t. But five thousand miles can keep us out of a lot of trouble.”
She didn’t speak.
He looked at her steadily. “I have no regrets about what happened. But we were lucky. No one got hurt. This time. But I know myself. If I were to stay, I wouldn’t be able to keep away from you. And eventually, that’s got to destroy all the things and people we don’t want to hurt.”
She was motionless in her chair. “I love you.”
He was silent for a long moment. “And I love you, I think.” There was a note of pain in his voice. “But that doesn’t matter now. It’s much too late in the game. For both of us.”
Chapter Nine
“You bitch! You low, whoring bitch!” Junior’s voice rose to a shrill scream. “Who was it?”
She stared in amazement at the sudden transformation in him. It was as if his body had been taken over by a virulent female spirit. For the first time, she noticed the subdued effeminate characteristics of him. With the knowledge, her fear seemed to vanish. “Lower your voice,” she said quietly. “You’ll disturb the baby.”
His open hand slashed across her face and she went over with the chair in which she had been seated. The pain came like a red flash of fire a moment later as she stared up at him.
He stood over her, his hand outstretched, ready to strike again. “Who was it?”
She didn’t move for a moment, then pushed the chair away from her with her legs. Slowly she rose, the white imprint of his palm clear on the redness of her cheek. She backed away from him, until the dresser was against her. He followed her, threateningly.
She placed her hands on the dresser top behind her without taking her eyes from his face. His hand started down. She moved even more swiftly. He felt the sharp sting even through the heavy cloth of his vest. She spoke only one word. “Don’t!”
His hand paused in mid-air and his eyes fell to his waist. The silver handle of the long nail file gleamed in her hand. His eyes went incredulously back to her face.
“You touch me again and I’ll kill you,” she said calmly.
He suddenly seemed to deflate, his hand fell to his side. The tears sprang to his eyes.
“You go back there and sit down,” she said. “Then we’ll talk.”
As if in a daze, he stumbled back to the armchair in the corner of her room and sat down. He put his hands over his face and began to cry.
The burst of anger that had engulfed her evaporated as quickly as it had come. Nothing was left inside her except pity. He was not so much a man that he was not still a child.
She put the nail file back on the dresser and walked over to him. “I’ll go away,” she said. “You can get the divorce.”
He looked up at her through the open fingers covering his face. “That’s easy for you,” he half sobbed. “But what about me? Everyone will know what happened and they’ll all be laughing and talking behind my back.”
“No one will know,” she said. “I’ll go so far away no word will ever come back to Detroit.”
“I’m going to be sick!” he said suddenly. He got to his feet and ran to the bathroom.
Through the open door she heard him retching into the bowl. She followed him and saw him bent over the open toilet, heaving. His entire body shuddered and he seemed ready to fall. Quickly she moved in behind him and supported his forehead with her palm.
He sagged against her as he spasmodically heaved again. But he was already empty. Nothing came out. After a moment, he stopped shaking.
She reached across him and turned on the cold water in the sink. She took a washcloth and, after soaking it, applied it to his forehead. He began to straighten up. She rinsed the washcloth and wiped the traces of vomit from his mouth and chin.
“I made a mess,” he said helplessly, looking down at the yellow and brown vomit splattered across the bottom of the upturned toilet seat and porcelain edges of the bowl.
“It’s all right,” she said soothingly. “I’ll clean it up. You go inside and lie down.”
He left the bathroom and she set about straightening up. When she came out a few minutes later, her room was empty, but the door leading to his bedroom was open.
He was lying on his back atop the covers of his bed, an arm thrown over his eyes. She walked over to him. “Are you all right?”
He didn’t answer.
She turned and started back toward her room.
“Don’t go,” he said. “I feel faint. The room is spinning around.”
She came back to the bed and looked down at him. His face beneath his arm was pale and sweating. “You need something in your stomach,” she said. “I’ll have them bring up some tea and milk for you.”
She pulled the signal tassel on the wall. A moment later the butler was at the door. “Some weak tea and milk for Mr. Hardeman,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She closed the door and went back to the bed. “Let me help you out of your things. You’ll be more comfortable.”
Like a child, he let her undress him and help him into his pajamas, then stood there patiently while she turned down the covers. He got back into the bed and pulled the sheets up around him.
The butler came back with the tea and placed the bed tray over his legs and left. Junior sat up, pulling another pillow behind him. She filled the cup with the tea and hot milk, half and half. “Drink that. You’ll feel better.”
He sipped slowly at the steaming cup and the color began to return to his face. When the cup was empty, she refilled it.
She looked down at him. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
He shook his head silently and she went into her room and returned with a cigarette. “Feeling better?”
He nodded.
She took a deep drag. The acrid smoke tingled through her mouth and nostrils. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
He didn’t answer.
“Actually I was going to go away and leave a note for you. I never wanted you to know about it. The doctor promised he wouldn’t say anything to anyone.”
“You forgot to tell him that you included your husband in that,” he said. “I didn’t know what he was talking about when I ran into him at the club and he congratulated me.”
“It’s out now,” she said. “And that doesn’t matter any more. I’ll leave tomorrow and you can handle the divorce any way you like. I don’t want anything.”
“No!”
She stared at him.
“You’re not leaving.”
“But—”
“You’re going to stay and have the baby,” he interrupted her. “Just as if nothing happened.”
She was silent.
“A scandal right now would break the company,” he said. “We�
��re just completing bank loans for fifty million dollars to retool for the new 1930 cars. Do you think any bank would give us that money if this got out? Not one. On top of that, my father would kill me if I let anything happen that would keep us from getting that money.”
They sat in heavy silence for what seemed a long while. She ground out one cigarette and lit another. He watched her.
“Why didn’t you do something about it?” he finally asked. “What took you so long?”
“I didn’t find out about it until it was too late. Then no doctor would touch me. I was all mixed up with my periods after the baby was born.”
“You won’t tell me who the father is?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “I know who it is.”
She didn’t speak.
“It was him,” he said.
He didn’t have to mention his father by name for her to know who he meant. “You’re crazy!” she said, hoping he wouldn’t notice the sudden trembling of the hand that held the cigarette.
“I’m not as stupid as you seem to think,” he said, a sudden effeminate craftiness appearing in his face. “He spent the night here and the next morning he suddenly decided to leave for Europe a month ahead of time.”
She forced a laugh. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Maybe this does!” he said, getting out of bed. He crossed the room to the cabinet in which his sox and underwear were kept. He pulled open the bottom drawer and took something out and came back to her. He snapped his hand and the bedsheet billowed out on the floor in front of her. “Recognize this?”
She shook her head.
“You should,” he said. “It was the sheet that was on my bed that night. The night he stayed here. Do you know what those yellowish ringed stains are?”
She was silent.
“Semen stains,” he said. “Any boy could recognize them. And I don’t think he’s the type to have wet dreams.”
“That still doesn’t prove anything,” she said.
“Then how about this?” With his other hand he flung something at her.
It fell to her lap and she picked it up. It was the nursing brassiere she had been wearing that night. Now the torn and ripped pieces of it hung from her fingers. She hadn’t even missed it.
The Betsy (1971) Page 15