“Why tell me about it? Just go. Just get away from me—”
“That’s my Belinda. I wonder, though. I don’t like leaving you with Jack, the mood he’s in—”
“I can handle Jack! What is it with you? Just get out of my life—for God’s sake!”
“Come on,” he laughed, “ease up. And go easy on Jack—”
“Peter, why not just give me a break? You and the other Ruffians can stick up for each other all you want, but I don’t have to, not after the way you and Jack have distinguished yourselves tonight. Just watch my lips … leave me alone! Don’t you hear me?”
Welles and Mike came out of the study and claimed Venables. Mike kissed my cheek. “Harry says he wants to talk to you. I’ll wait—”
“No, really,” I said, “it’s all right. You guys go ahead. I’ll be fine. Please, go ahead. I’ve got to see Jack.”
“Come on, laddie,” Welles said, tugging Mike away.
The three of them headed off down the hallway. Sally was saying good night in the foyer, guests were filing out. I felt as if I’d been at the party for a week. Venables and his refusal to simply leave me alone scared me. Jack almost seemed a welcome refuge. I felt as if I’d finally fallen off the merry-go-round.
Jack sat at the end of the couch, hunched forward, his elbows on his knees, his head hung down, supported in his palms. A mug of coffee steamed on the end table. His head bobbed periodically. He might have been crying, I couldn’t tell. I sat staring into space. Sally smoked vigorously, diamonds shining like little campfires in a dark night. Harry lit a cigar, got up from behind the desk to look at the rain spattering the terrace. He pulled at the black bow tie, let it tumble loose, and turned back to face us.
“Come on, Jack, it’s not as bad as all that. You might have done your number too late, when the audience had left.”
Jack looked up and took a deep breath. “Faultless timing. Always count on Jack.” He drank some coffee, held it in his mouth, chewing it. The redness had gone from his face, which looked defeated now, pallid with a blue tinge.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” I said.
Sally spoke up: “Don’t rub it in. He knows—”
“Don’t tell me what to do, Sal.”
“Oops, sorry. You know what I mean, though—”
“No, Sal, she’s right,” Jack said. “I should be apologizing. Hell, I am apologizing. To all of you.” He looked sheepishly in my direction. “You must wonder how many apologies I have in me. Well, lots. I seem to need ’em.”
He had always been able to turn me around effortlessly, at least until lately. Until I’d finally had enough. Now I was backsliding. His hands were shaking and I took them in mine, held them tight. “So you had too much to drink …”
He squeezed my fingers, looked at me like a pet expecting to be socked with a rolled-up newspaper. “It was the show. Harry, this goddamn show really lit up my scoreboard. I was in shock when I left the theater. The past just sort of steamrollered me. The center wouldn’t hold, as Mr. Yeats would say. Mine sure as hell didn’t, anyway.” He shrugged. “I just couldn’t bear all those metaphors onstage and all the faces of my fellow Ruffians in the audience. I mean, why am I the only screw-up? So I went to Joe Allen’s and sat at the bar sopping up Bushmill’s and wondering if I just might not be better off dead—no, I’m not being melodramatic. I’m serious. What have I got to look forward to? Stupid Greer School, screwed up everything with Belinda …” He bit his lip, clamped his jaw shut. His voice was breaking. He was fighting for control. And all I could think of was that old shotgun in his apartment. …
Harry cleared his throat, made a dismissive sweep with his cigar. “That’s just the Bushmill’s talking. Look, everybody, it’s been a wonderful night. We’ve all bought a tiny piece of immortality. We got to see a bit of our lives preserved under glass—not many people do. None of us is immune to the emotional effect of this show … we’re all bound to be shaken up by it. Hell, it’s like your first love, right? You never quite get over your first love, do you? Tonight it was like running into her again, only she’s unchanged, still young and beautiful … and we’ve put on a few years. So, we get that bittersweet jolt … a tear or two. And the need for a couple of extra drinks.”
Sally lit another cigarette impatiently, dropped the lighter on the desk. It clattered in the stillness.
“Belinda was my first love,” Jack said to no one. Just talking in the night.
“Oh, God! Let’s drop first loves!” Sally looked from face to face, then laughed nervously. “We’re all wrecked. Let’s call it a night.”
“Not yet, my dearest,” Harry said through a haze of smoke. “It’s a great night and we’re not going to end on a sour note. We four go back a long way, we’ve been through thick and thin together. Agree?”
“Sure, sure,” Sally snapped.
“Well, it matters, wife o’ mine. We’re a part of each other’s past and present. Intertwined. Like fingers laced together. We’re not going to let tonight end badly. Listen to me—never forget how much we’ve all loved each other. And for how long.”
Jack looked up from the carpet, into my eyes.
“Now,” Harry said, everything about him changing, the moment past, “now, let’s watch all these wonderful reviews again!”
Drained, we watched him slip the cassette into the machine and push the buttons.
Sure enough, the Ruffians were a hit.
Jack insisted on taking me back to the loft.
“It’s the least I can do. And I’ll behave. I promise.” He was fearfully sober, the way shock and shame blast away at booze. It was one o’clock and we waited for a taxi, tires hissing on the wet pavement. It was still raining lightly and the heat was undiminished.
“I’ve got to get myself under control, “he said. “I know that. But it would be easier with your help, kid. That’s all I’m saying.”
It wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. It was too laden with all the traps a marriage holds, at least a marriage in very bad trouble.
He settled himself in the far corner of the back of the taxi. Rain streaked the windows, the wipers beating. The cabdriver was playing his radio, singing along under his breath. …”
“Harry was right. I still love you, kid.” My eyes were closed. I heard Jack’s voice, which had lost its pleading quality and was almost toneless. It seemed far away. He might have been on Neptune. “He was right about loving each other. It’s been such a long time. I know you love me … you must. You’ll always love me.”
I didn’t open my eyes. I didn’t want to look at my husband. I wanted to stay disengaged. I didn’t love anybody.
We went up in the clanking elevator, wordless. My head was beginning to ache. Jack wiped rain and sweat from his face. I hadn’t wanted him to come upstairs but there was no fight left in me. I flicked the light switch, turned on the fan, threw the windows all the way open.
In the bathroom I patted my face dry on a thick towel and took four aspirin. When I came out he was standing by the wheel-of-fortune, watching it spin. “I miss this thing,” he said. “It always seemed to give me good news.”
The yellow roses on the worktable had opened like perfect paper flowers. The card lay beside them.
“I want to go to sleep, Jack.”
“Who sent these?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean? There’s a card right here—”
“Would you just leave it? Please? I don’t know who sent them!”
He picked up the card and read it. “What the hell is this? Who? Come on, who?”
“Jack! Please!”
“For Christ’s sake, what’s the point in lying to me? You must know who they’re from—”
“Please, no scene. Just go, Jack.”
“What do you think I am, Belinda? An idiot? I know you’re fucking Mike! I know it … and I saw Welles and that goddamn Venables drooling all over you tonight. I wasn’t
arriving when I hit Venables, I was leaving, I saw you dancing with Hack, he wanted you then and there and you were egging him on—”
“That’s it,” I cried, voice shaking. “Out! Just get out.” I was beginning to sound like a broken record and my head was spinning.
“The hell I will! These guys act like you’re in heat …” He was coming toward me, his eyes blank and empty, as if he might never have seen me before. He was backing me up, finally grabbed me. “You want a man—”
“I just want to be left alone, please.”
I tried to twist away but he was too strong.
“No, Jack.”
“Yes, Belinda.” He loosened his grip. He seemed to press an interior switch and his anger was gone. He looked at me, kissed my forehead gently, like a lover. “Don’t say no tonight, honey,” he whispered. “I know you, Belinda—”
“Why are you doing this to me, Jack? You say you love me—”
“Because I’ve got to break through, I’ve got to reach you—because I truly need you, Belinda, I need you to hold me. I’m so damn scared of everything …”
I lay down on the bed. He was right. He knew me, he could read my eyes. I felt him covering me, felt him yanking my dress up around my waist, felt his fingers raking across my belly and hooking into my panties, pulling them down. I couldn’t fight, I didn’t want to. His hands felt good, familiar. He knew me, everything about me, and I had hurt him enough, I’d driven him away in the first place and he was my old Jack for God’s sake. …
He was hard, fumbling with his pants, spreading my legs with his knees, holding me open. It was Jack. It wouldn’t hurt me … and I felt so much for him, it was all so complex. A kind of loving. A kind of sorrow.
Soon I was soaked with his sweat and he was inside me and he was whispering in my ear, “For old times’ sake, my love.”
I woke in murky grayness of early morning.
The rain had finally stopped drumming on the skylight.
Something was hurting me. I moved slowly, groggy. I was alone. The sheets were damp, rumpled.
And everywhere, all around me, were yellow roses, shredded, crumpled, smashed flat.
The hurt I felt was a thorn digging into my thigh, the scratch was red with a thin line of dried blood.
It came back to me slowly.
Jack lying still beside me, his breath whistling. Then he had gotten up, stood looking down at me. He had whispered my name, bent down to kiss me softly.
Halfway across the room, his anger and frustration had flared again, he had come back to the bed and I’d felt the roses pelting me. One after another, petals and stems ripped to bits, landing on my bare flesh.
Then he had gone and I had curled into a ball, hugging my pillow, and dived into the pool of exhaustion.
II
Belinda’s Belindas
Chapter Sixteen
THE NEXT MORNING WAS NOT exactly a treat.
I was somewhat hung-over, still awash in the emotional whiplash of Scoundrels All! and the lovemaking with Jack that had brought back to me all his vulnerability and gentleness and sadness. I made coffee and showered and cleaned up the rose-littered bed and then sat down on it, legs crossed, feeling like the fetal position was only seconds away.
What a night! It played back in my mind like a tape gone amok, images crowding one another and overlapping in illogical ways. Kicking Hacker Welles’s shins and enjoying his deadpan humor, blood dripping from Peter Venables’ nose, the home run lifting into the glow of the light standards while the tears spouted and I couldn’t stop them, Harry with his arms around Sally and me as the reviews seemed to validate our whole lives in a peculiar way, Jack with his head in his hands in the study … Jack holding me while we made love.
I hadn’t made love in six months. More than six months. Jack and I had been to bed at New Year’s. And not since. I hadn’t really missed the physical act all that much. I hadn’t even missed the human warmth. I had instead wrapped myself in myself and gotten on with my life. Now having sex with Jack seemed a slightly unusual event, not unpleasant, but emotional more than sexual. And more than that, it seemed ephemeral. Almost as if it hadn’t happened at all. I was afraid that that wasn’t what Jack was thinking this morning. …
You know the way dreams come filtering back to you during the course of the following day, bits and pieces like a landscape illuminated by lightning flashes. The whole image doesn’t come all at once, but you can put it together like a puzzle. As I sat there on the bed thinking about Jack and sex and the mess of the previous evening, images flickered at me. At first I thought it was a dream forcing its way back to the surface. It was insistent, like a voice calling in the night, calling for help … and then it was there, behind my closed eyes, and it hadn’t been a dream. It had really happened.
Jack had left me, I was breathing hard not knowing what to think as the torn rose petals drifted down on me, and I heard the clanking of the elevator as he descended. There was a faint rumble of thunder and the rain had steadied again. I wanted to go to the bathroom and clean up.
So I got up, my head spinning, and something drew me to the window to look down into the street, to watch Jack take his leave. I leaned on the sill and saw him come out into the street. He stood still for a moment, took a deep breath as he glanced up and down Prince Street, then slowly struck off for the corner. The street was empty, which was why I happened to notice someone step out from a darkened doorway opposite the loft. A tall man who wore a dark raincoat. As he passed beneath a streetlamp I saw the glitter of a white shirt and a black tie. A tuxedo. I recognized the figure, the walk, and I thought for a moment it was Harry. He was following Jack. But why in the world would Harry have been waiting in the shadows to follow Jack away from my home?
It made no sense and I strained to see and then I saw that it wasn’t Harry at all.
It was Peter Venables.
He had waited while we made love and now he was following Jack.
It struck me as enormously sinister. But then, it had been a long night and when I woke I’d forgotten all about it.
At least for a while.
Between the opening of Scoundrels All! and the opening of my own show at the Leverett Gallery, the heat of the summer grew even fiercer, if that was possible. For a couple of days I felt a big physical letdown and I doubtless thought about things too much.
I stayed in the loft, didn’t speak with anyone, felt the fan blowing across me and tried to stay calm. I drank iced tea and ate fruit and cold chicken. I painted. The feel of the brushes in my hand, the observable result, gave me the confidence to let my mind roam across other things, the things I couldn’t control.
I ran through all the familiar thoughts about Jack: I couldn’t help it, not after all those years. And I worried about his state of mind and that old shotgun. But my guard was up: I couldn’t let him drag me down into his despair, just when my life was taking off.
I wondered what was going on at the Grangers’. Not just between Harry and Sally and the mysterious, unidentified third party—Harry’s girlfriend. No, I really wondered what the presence of Peter Venables in their home was doing to them. Was Sally still looking on him as the sweet boy she remembered? What did they think caused Jack to attack him at the party? And why did I find myself unable to go to Sally with the story of Venables’ behavior toward me?
There were times I wished I’d never seen Scoundrels All! I wished I could be impervious to the past and its irrefutable connection to the present. What we had been haunted what we had become, and I resented the play’s intrusion and exploitation. But there it was, there was no escaping it. We were all caught in the same trap and I wondered if any one of us would get out unscathed. Given his essential nature, maybe only Welles—our creator, our puppetmaster—would survive to tell the tale.
It all came back to men.
It was the men who had come like shadows from the past to surround me, chattering like tribesmen whose language I didn’t understand. Men closing in o
n me, telling me things I didn’t want to hear, things I didn’t want to believe.
Men who remembered a Belinda I had never known existed. …
I left my telephone-answering machine on.
Hacker Welles called. “Belinda, Welles here. Wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed talking to you. Being around you may be a little dangerous, but then, I’m incredibly brave. Am I repeating myself? I think it means I’m getting old. I want to see you again before I’m too old to enjoy it.”
He called again the next day. “Belinda, Welles here. Did you ever hear of Sumner Welles, big guy back in the FDR years? Well, we’re not related. But you’ve heard of Orson Welles, I’ll bet. Aha, I knew it. Well, we’re not related either. Look, you know my thoughts about your being a beautiful airhead? Okay, I admit it—I was only half-right.”
I was sitting on the high stool beside my worktable, listening to a replay of Welles’s last message and grinning, when Carlyle Leverett arrived.
He came loping off the elevator, storklike, wearing the same kind of light blue wash-and-wear suit he’d worn at Harvard. He had a great bald dome surrounded by fluffy Art Garfunkel hair and a large nose, a large mouth, large protruding ears, very large horn-rimmed glasses straddling a bump in the nose, and the largest bow tie imaginable. He had the largest known Adam’s apple in a long neck and he looked like he was being strangled by a butterfly. He flapped in like the great auk, planted a kiss on my forehead, looked at the final painting I’d done for the show—Belinda’s mouth, the tongue licking the corner of the mouth, and a drop of brandy escaping the tongue and gliding down the chin.
He stroked his own chin. “That’s the dirtiest picture I’ve ever seen.” He hugged me again. “I’ve never been so hot in all my life,” he said. “Why don’t you put an air conditioner in here? Is there more iced tea? How are you feeling?”
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