Too Much Too Soon

by Jacqueline Briskin

  “But . . . . With her?”

  “Joss, I can’t talk about it—I get ill even thinking about them together.”

  “The same old Crystal,” Joscelyn said bitterly. “Always borrowing what’s not hers.” She touched the fragile, trembling wrist. “Honora, is it still going on?”

  “He says it only happened that once,” Honora said with a little shiver. “Look, call this ridiculous and dramatic, but . . . Joss, it’s true, I really do get nauseated when I think about him and Crystal being together. Another affair—affairs—would have crushed me, but I probably could have accepted it. When we started I knew he was sleeping with Imogene—”

  “He was?”

  “You were too young to realize it then, but he was quite a swinger. Gideon must have really cared tremendously for him to put up with it. I guess that was why he was so hateful later.”

  “Obviously Gideon never found out about this,” Joscelyn said. “Otherwise Crystal would have been a grass widow, not a genuine one.”

  “I’ve always felt so ambivalent about her. I love her, I hate her, and I’ve always graded myself against her, as if our lives were a two-woman competition. If she wins, I lose.”

  Joscelyn gave a grim little smile of accord. “Well put.”

  “The only good thing about not seeing her was that the stupid rivalry was laid to rest.”

  “Ain’t it the truth.” Joscelyn sighed. “But you, you’ve always been so together, above the juvenile crap. Generous of heart.”

  “Never where she’s concerned.”

  “Then you go along with the theory sisters are natural rivals?”

  “No,” Honora said emphatically. “Joss, I’ve never, never been like that about you, mixed up, envious, hateful.”

  Joscelyn, having on occasion suffered these emotions toward Honora, muttered, “Crystal invites it.”

  “I can’t even think . . . .” Honora whispered. “But now do you understand why I ran away from Curt?”

  “There was no other choice.”

  “I couldn’t help myself.”

  “From personal experience,” Joscelyn said, “splitting up isn’t the worst that can happen.”

  “If he wants a divorce, certainly I’ll understand—tell him that, will you. But I’m still too confused to—”

  The waiter was glancing inquiringly at Honora’s uneaten oysters, and she nodded that she was finished. Removing her plate and Joscelyn’s shells, he served the sole veronique.

  “Mmm.” Joscelyn sniffed appreciatively. “Any plans at all?”

  Honora brightened. “I went to a job broker,” she said. “They put me in touch with a London landscaper. A wonderfully talented woman. You wouldn’t believe what she can do with a limited space.”

  “What about financially? Will you be able to make out?”

  “Absolutely,” Honora said.

  Joscelyn, mortified by her animal appetite, ate a mouthful of richly sauced sole and reflected that Honora had always been a soft touch, abysmally generous, a bad money manager. “You’ll have quite a bit of expenses.”

  “Joss, I can’t afford Miss McEwen. And she doesn’t much like West Ken. She’s given her notice for the end of this month.”

  “Good riddance. But working, you’ll certainly need somebody.”

  “Vi’s coming over. Remember? Last January Mel died. She’s been at loose ends and likes the idea of London—she’s never been in Europe. Mel left her quite well off, so she doesn’t have to work. When I’m not around, Lissie’ll be with her.”

  “What about school?”

  “I’ve enrolled her in one where they have these ultra-new auditory trainers, the teachers wear FM microphones and each child has a box strapped onto his chest.” She reached for Joscelyn’s hand, gripping it tightly. “Joss, Lissie tried one when we went on the interview. She actually heard two or three words!”

  “She didn’t!”

  “She couldn’t recognize them as words, of course. Still, it was monumental. I cried.”

  “I am, too,” Joscelyn said, but she was beaming. “It’s a miracle.” After a moment, she said, “That kind of equipment—it sounds like a very pricey school.”

  “The tuition’s about the same as at Prescott,” Honora said quickly. “And Vi’ll share all the other expenses.”

  “Oh, why’re we talking like this?” Joscelyn said. “Curt’ll give you whatever you need. It’s half yours anyway.”

  Honora said with low vehemence. “I cannot take one thing from him!”

  Joscelyn was no longer bewildered that Honora had left Curt, and while Honora was being a bit silly about the financial end, that was understandable, too. Curt had fathered Crystal’s son. Could any wrong be greater? (Joscelyn’s own hoard of sisterly resentment had been inflated since Crystal, without any kind of training or hard work, had shot to the head of a major engineering company—it was almost as if she had stolen Joscelyn’s degree and identity.) She cut into a new potato. “I’ll pay the tuition,” she said firmly.

  Honora shook her head. “Thank you, Joss, but no.”

  After a few minutes of failed coercion, Joscelyn threw down her napkin. “If you’re trying to make me feel like an outsider, you’ve succeeded.”

  “I’d rather manage on my own, Joss.”

  “I am her mother.”

  “We both are.” Honora shook her head. “All right, Joss. And thank you. With the school fees things were going to be a bit tight.”

  It was a lovely moonless night and Joscelyn decided to walk back to the Churchill. Honora went with her as far as Marble Arch.

  Outside the tube station, Honora murmured, “You were right, Joss. Curt is her father. It’s not fair, keeping them apart. Will you work it out with him about his having her during the school holidays?”

  “Sure.”

  They touched each other’s cheeks and Honora ran into the brightly lit station, leaving her twisted effort at a smile to linger with Joscelyn.

  52

  The following afternoon Joscelyn took the TWA flight to Washington. She was asleep in her Georgetown rental when the telephone jolted her awake. Accustomed to late-night calls from the subway site, she switched on the bedside lamp, reaching for her glasses and notepad before she answered.

  “You’re back.” Curt’s accusatory voice.

  Joscelyn glanced at the clock. “A couple of hours ago,” she said. “You told me you were going home to Los Angeles, so I called the house and left a message.”

  “Didn’t they tell you I was still in Washington?”

  “Oh, God, Curt, it was Elena. While I was telling her who I was, she was trying to explain something—but you know me and Español.”

  “A problem’s come up. I’ll be right over.”

  Assuming that he was as usual staying at the Dolley Madison, the small, luxurious annex to the Madison, that was a fifteen-minute drive away, she half filled the kettle for the Melitta, planning to dress and brush her teeth while the coffee brewed. She was turning on the gas jet as the buzzer sounded. Conscious of a stale taste, she bent over the sink, hastily swirling tepid water in her mouth.

  The door shuddered under a barrage of banging. Wiping drops from her chin, she ran to open it. “Hold your horses, Curt. You want me to get kicked out? How did you get here so fast?”

  “I was in a phone booth across the street,” he said. “There’s been a monumental foul-up at the excavation.”

  “A cave-in?” she asked anxiously.

  “Metshtchersky’s screwed up, but not that much. A delay.”

  Relieved, she said, “I need my coffee. No caffeine, no brain action.”

  She filled the paper cone with MJB, pouring in the boiling water, which steamed up her glasses. While she wiped them, Curt vigorously denounced Andrew Metshtchersky, the short, pompously efficient vice president who was the project manager. The real reason behind his attack was clear to Joscelyn since she sometimes employed this same device herself: he was using anger to avoid bringing up what la
y most painfully close to him.

  Falling silent, he stared at her.

  “I suppose,” she said after a moment, “that you’re wondering about my jaunt to London?”

  He shrugged as though the errand on which he had dispatched her so urgently had become unimportant to him: the wince narrowing his eyes told her that his pose of indifference was maintained only by the utmost mental exertion. “How’s Lissie?” he asked.

  “Wild about the changing of the guards, and she’s fallen in love with clotted cream—can’t get enough of it. She sends you her very best—” Joscelyn signed love.

  He nodded. The small refrigerator kicked in noisily. It was apparent that he was not going to be the one to bring up the subject of his wife—and equally apparent that he was mad with impatience to hear about her.

  “Oh, and Honora’s completely recovered from that bug you were worrying about,” Joscelyn said.

  “I’m very glad to hear that,” he said coldly.

  “Curt, look, I wish I could think of some snide, clever crack, but I can’t. So here it is, straight. Honora’s staying over there.”

  “The return of the native.”

  “Frankly, I can understand her point of view.”

  He paced to the window. “So the two of you had a nice, sisterly little chat.”

  “This isn’t taking sides, Curt, but you must understand that you handed her a pretty rough deal. Not having your children is her major cross. And I never knew this, but she’s evidently always nourished a string of sisterly resentments toward Crystal.” Joscelyn’s fingertip traced a dark swirl in the Formica of the breakfast counter. “She was pretty vague about verification . . . .”

  “Oh, it’s true all right. My wife has her womanly intuition to guide her, but me, I prefer more exact proof than the color of some man’s eyes.”

  “You talked to Crystal?”

  “Yes, I gave her a buzz. It seems there is one co-venture between Ivory and Talbott’s.” He laughed unpleasantly.

  So the impossible was true. Curt was Alexander Talbott’s father.

  Joscelyn took two pottery mugs from the cabinet, lining them carefully in front of the coffee maker. “Honora would like to work something out so you can have Lissie during school holidays.”

  “Whatever,” he said as if it were irrelevant whether or not he saw the daughter whom he adored. Gazing out the window so his back was to her, he asked cheerfully, “Down to the meat. How much are Mrs. Ivory’s solicitors holding me up for?”

  How often had he complained, only half humorously, that buying a gift for Honora was impossible? She preferred colored semiprecious stones to diamonds, she wore furs only because he gave them to her, she didn’t know one make of car from another—in other words, she was irritatingly unaware of status symbols.

  Curt must have construed Joscelyn’s hesitation to mean that an inordinate settlement was involved. He turned to squint sourly at her. “She’s out to break the bank?” he asked.

  Joscelyn could see her sister’s thin, trembling fingers as she had burst out that she couldn’t take anything from Curt. “She doesn’t have a lawyer; she’s talking separation, not divorce.” The bottom Pyrex was full. “Want some coffee?”

  “No.”

  Joscelyn spooned powdered cream into her mug. “Sure?”

  “Shall I say it again and we can dance? I don’t want any goddamn coffee.” His face was red-splotched and puffy, as if he’d been in a fight. “What’s the tariff on a separation, then?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Was that a tremor of disappointment in his voice? Could he have been counting on the frail hope of pulling Honora home by the purse strings?

  “You know Honora—she’s never been expedient.”

  “Then she must be planning on going back to her old career. Did you warn her that tips won’t pay for her current lifestyle?”

  “She has some kind of job, I don’t know exactly what, but it’s got to do with gardens. Oh, and Vi’s going over to stay with her.”

  “The two of them can rehash old times.” He gave another unpleasant laugh. “And what about Lissie? Is she toodling off to the local County Council School?”

  “Honora’s found a very good place. It sounds like it’s more advanced than she had in Los Angeles, with special equipment—Curt, Honora thinks Lissie heard sounds! She’s learning to listen!”

  For a moment his head tilted in eager interest, then he said studiedly, “Well, that’s progress. It’s an excellent idea, then, for the two of them to stay over there. The next time you write, tell her that I wish her the best in her new enterprises.”

  You shit, you nasty shit. “Curt she’s just as miserable about this whole mess as you are.”

  “Who’s miserable?” Curt asked, the false jauntiness buoying his tone.

  “Maybe she’ll get over it.”

  “Either she will or she won’t.” He straddled a high stool, tapping on the empty mug to mark an end to this dubious personal conversation before he returned to Metshtchersky and the imaginary problems besetting the metro project.

  * * *

  At work the following day Joscelyn heard that Curt had left for Lalarhein where Ivory was overseeing the work on a city rising on the sand near Pump Station 5, Malcolm’s mark on the desert. The huge increase in oil prices had heaped wealth on the arid little country and there were networks of new roads and lavish aqueducts. Daralam now boasted a Sheraton and a marble-faced Hilton. The beggars were gone, the old British homes of the aristocracy had been replaced with modern palaces. The Daralam airport, completed in 1971, also an Ivory project, was the country’s pride, with its magnificent mosaics, restaurants, mini-hotel for laid-over passengers, movie house and swimming pools—one for men, one for women.

  A few weeks later she heard that Curt was in Venezuela to inspect the Texaco refinery project. Then he was in Kenya, in Bangkok, in Gabon, in Idaho, in Alaska. Word seeped back from the exotic sites around the globe that the Big Boss was on a rampage.

  In November Joscelyn’s section of the subway project was completed. She received a note from Australia. Curt’s energetic handwriting with the thick downward strokes stood out from the paper as if in bas-relief: I won’t be in Los Angeles, but my house is your house.

  Having given up her furnished single when she went to Washington, she took him up on his offer.

  Honora’s magnificent camellias along the curving driveway had been disastrously sheared to resemble a privet hedge. Inside, the airy, rambling house sparkled and shone with every kind of polish, so at first Joscelyn couldn’t understand why the rooms seemed like roped-off exhibits in a museum. Finally she realized what was missing. Honora. Her sister had spent a lot of time in the little flower room off the kitchen, composing blossoms and greenery from her gardens into loose, pretty arrangements; she had left her books and magazines facedown to mark her place; she had filled bowls with nuts, candy, fruit—she had imbued the house with life.

  Each weekday morning at quarter to nine Joscelyn drove to work. At Ivory the engineers in her level were at liberty not to come in at all until they were assigned a new project. In the past she had spent these inevitable hiatuses with Honora and Lissie. Now she sat in her little glass-walled office on the tenth floor of the new wing of the Ivory complex and read back issues of Civil Engineering.

  After a week or so of boredom, she booked herself a round-trip ticket to England.

  Making one of her frequent transatlantic calls to Honora, she broached the subject casually. “I’m thinking of taking a holiday.”

  “Here, Joss?”

  “I haven’t made up my mind,” Joscelyn hedged.

  “If you were, it’d be better for Lissie over Christmas. Remember? I told you about the problems she had at first getting accustomed to the auditory trainer. And you know how far English schools are ahead of ours—she’s swamped, poor baby. Daddy and I’re tutoring her in the literature, and the school gave me the number of a nice young Indian for the
maths.”

  “How’re you doing?”

  “Mavis”—Honora worked for Lady Mavis Harcomb—“has given me complete charge of a terrace in Belgravia and a garden in Bloomsbury.”

  “So everything’s coming up roses?”

  “I’m working seven days a week,” Honora said, her soft voice practically inaudible under the hum of the line. “That makes life bearable.”

  Joscelyn canceled her BOAC flight.

  She could never shake the belief that the five indoor servants and seven full-time gardeners were sneering at her for that most shameful of diseases: loneliness. On three successive weekends she took an ocean-view room at the Miramar Hotel, which was less then twenty minutes away in Santa Monica. Let ’em figure me for the world’s most popular houseguest.

  On the third Saturday evening, as she ate her solitary dinner in the hotel dining room, the thought of returning to the impersonal room weighed unbearably on her. Instead of taking the elevator up, she went to the reception desk and checked out. Before nine she was home in Bel Air.

  Figuring a brandy would blur her depression, she crossed the dark hall to the family room, where the bar was.

  As she pushed open the twin doors, lights blazed at her. It took her a moment to accept the misshapen mound on the area rug as two entwined naked bodies. The servants are certainly taking advantage, she thought, backing away.

  The female partner had spied her. Blond mermaid hair streaming over improbably large breasts, she sat up and gave Joscelyn an unembarrassed, complicitous smile.

  The man rolled over to look at her. It was Curt.

  Her brother-in-law’s nudity embarrassed Joscelyn so profoundly that she lost all sense of where she was, yet despite the blood flooding her face and roaring behind her ears she found herself noting that Curt was far better endowed than Malcolm had been.

  “Aren’t you away with friends for the weekend?” His voice had its usual irony.

  “Got back early and needed a nightcap . . . .” she mumbled. “When did you get in?”

  “Late this afternoon. Be a good girl, will you. Toss us those clothes.”