For a fraction of time she kissed him back, a surrender crueler than an immediate rebuff, before jerking from his grasp.
Raising his arm, he slapped her full force across the cheek.
The blow stunned her.
She staggered backward, falling sideways on the soft earth. Stars. You do see stars, she thought. Involuntary tears welled into her eyes. She was trembling all over.
He did not offer a hand to help her rise. Staring down at her with beaten rage, he turned to jog back down the eucalyptus-lined road to the house. Althea pushed to her feet, brushing the seat of her jodhpurs.
A couple of minutes later she heard the angry squeal of his borrowed Buick convertible careening along the curves of the private road that led to the highway.
One of the mares had come to nuzzle Althea, but she paid no attention. She rested her forehead on the painted rail. She was not crying. Her tears of pain had dried and her eyes had become hot and gritty, as if the very fluid of life were gone from her.
55
Around four that same afternoon, Roy stood in the largest fitting room behind Crystal Klingbeil, who had flown in from Houston for the day to let Roy coordinate her summer wardrobe. Mrs. Klingbeil was beaming entranced at the reflection of the white-beaded Norell sheath, while Roy, who had ordered the designer original with this specific customer in mind, had a doubtful glint in her eye. She was having second thoughts whether she could in good faith sell the roly-poly oil millionairess a gown that strained this way across her buttocks.
There was a tap at the louvered door and Mrs. Fineman’s powdered face popped in. “Do you mind if I assist you, Mrs. Klingbeil? There’s somebody here to speak to Mrs. Horak.”
Knowing that only the utmost emergency had brought her employer to interrupt this lucrative selling session, Roy was swept by a sense of foreboding. With a blank smile and a polite “Excuse me” at Crystal Klingbeil, she hurried to her office, which consisted of a desk and filing cabinet outside the Finemans’ office. Mr. Fineman stood tapping a yellow pencil.
“Two police officers,” he whispered tersely, nodding toward the closed door of his office. “They insisted on talking to you.”
“Did they say what it’s about?” Roy faltered.
“They showed me their badges and asked us to get you, that’s all I know.” He touched her arm—it was rare for Mr. Fineman to make an impromptu gesture of concord. “Roy, I told them you had worked here as our most trusted employee for nearly ten years.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fineman,” she said faintly.
The inner office also lacked the sumptuousness of the customer side of Patricia’s. More filing cabinets, a pair of desks with unmatched reproduction chairs, an old horsehair sofa on which Mr. Fineman took his postprandial snooze. By the streaked windows that looked out on the alley stood a pair of tall, bulky men. Despite their sport jackets—tweed and bright blue check—there was something about them that screamed “cop.” They’ve stepped directly from a Badge 714 set, Roy thought numbly.
The older of the pair was totally bald. “Mrs. Gerrold Horak?” he asked. “Of 9621 Erica Drive?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Sergeant Wills, this is Officer Monroe.”
“What’s it about?” she asked. Her mouth was dry.
“Before we get to that, you better sit down, Mrs. Horak.”
His dispensation of professional concern made Roy’s heart beat yet more erratically. “I’m all right like this.”
“There’s been an automobile accident near Ventura. Mr. Horak—”
“Gerry? An automobile accident?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ve made a mistake,” she said loudly. “It’s some other Gerrold Horak. Ventura—that’s on the way to Santa Barbara. He never goes there. Never.”
“His driver’s license showed the same address as yours.”
“But his car’s at the house!”
“He was at the wheel of a fifty-six Buick convertible belonging to Arthur Vought—”
“Artie?”
“The car was observed speeding erratically on Highway One. A highway patrolman tried to halt the vehicle. It skidded out of control, hitting the embankment. Mr. Horak was thrown clear. He was dead by the time the highway patrolman reached him.”
Dead?
Gerry was leaving her, not dying.
Gerry was thirty-nine years old, and men of thirty-nine don’t die. Gerry was passionately alive. Why would he be in Ventura?
An alien roar resounded in her head, which suddenly felt pumped with helium. As her head became lighter her body weight increased until her black suede Delman pumps were too insubstantial to support her body’s gravitational pull.
“Mrs. Horak? Mrs. Horak, here. Rest here. . . .”
She sank inexorably down, a small object trapped in a monstrous, whirling vortex. Hands helped her onto the rough horsehair, placing her head on the folded afghan.
Mr. Fineman’s outline blurred and then became etched on her vision with unnerving precision—she could see that one of his eyelashes grew from a minuscule wart. The two plainclothesmen had moved to flank him.
“Rest there a minute,” said Mr. Fineman in the gooey tones used to encourage ailing small children to swallow their medicine.
“But Mrs. Klingbeil . . . the beaded Norell . . . bought it for her. . . .”
“If we lose a sale, we’ll lose it. We’re your friends. Roy, you’re a daughter to us.”
“I better go home. . . .” She struggled to stand.
He pressed her shoulders. “Rest a few minutes. You’ve had a terrible shock.”
An awful, hollow, arthritic kind of ache afflicted Roy’s rib and shoulder bones, making breathing difficult. She drew in shallow breaths, exhaling through her mouth. Opposite her hung the bulletin board covered with the Patricia’s summer-season ads from Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Roy stared blankly at models posed in ludicrously expensive outfits.
Dead?
The cops must have said goodbye. They were gone and Mr. Fineman was excusing himself. Mrs. Fineman came in immediately. “My poor Roy,” she said, her fleshy face askew. “Mr. Fineman’s calling your brother-in-law.”
* * *
Joshua took charge.
He drove to Ventura, identified the body, and arranged for it to be brought home. He set the funeral for 2 P.M. Thursday at Forest Lawn, he selected and paid for the ornate bronze coffin with gold-plated handles, he decided on the type of service, he ordered a messenger service to deliver to Pierce Brothers’ Mortuary a brand-new dark suit—Gerry didn’t own one. He telephoned Gerry’s gallery in New York and his brothers in Pittsburgh, he sent out a press release, he saw to it that there were food, liquor, a bartender, and caterer in the small tract house.
Joshua played the role of host to the many people who visited before the funeral. The Fernauld clan came, and BJ’s in-laws, Roy’s sorority alumnae group, her numerous friends, and every one of Patricia’s employees. Everyone attempted to distract her from her grief. Possibly they succeeded, because of those prefuneral days, she would recall only one conversation.
It was with Marylin.
NolaBee and Marylin were staying in the house with her. On the night before the funeral, NolaBee retired early and the sisters went into the compact yellow kitchen, Roy sitting in the breakfast alcove, Marylin using a padded mitt to take from the oven the savory-smelling casserole that was Coraleen’s funeral offering—the Fernaulds’ elderly couple doted on Roy.
“Coraleen’s chicken Marco Polo, your favorite,” Marylin said.
“You go ahead. None for me.”
Marylin spooned out the cheese-covered chicken and broccoli. “We both need a late-night snack in our stomachs after our drinks.” Marylin’s use of the plural was kindness: she, as always, had been abstemious, while Roy had never been without a glass in her hand. “This’ll slide down easily.” She set the plates on the table.
Roy was soused enough to be obedient. She picked up her fork.<
br />
Since Gerry’s death, though, the taste of meat had become abhorrent to Roy, and with difficulty she swallowed the cheese-oozing bite of chicken. Gulping at her drink, she said, “This thing’s turned me into a vegetarian.”
“Then I’ll fix you some milk bread.” An old Wace cure-all.
Roy shook her head. “Nothing.”
Marylin reached her small, slender hand across the yellow tabletop to clasp Roy’s cold fingers. “I know what you’re going through.”
“You can’t. . . .”
“When they said Linc was dead, I thought I would die, too.”
Roy got up. Before leaving, the bartender had arranged a kitchen counter with clean glasses, the vacuum ice bucket, soft drinks, liquor. Roy reached for the Johnnie Walker bottle.
Marylin’s fork toyed with broccoli. “Do you think that’s a good idea?” she murmured.
“A teensy nightcap,” Roy said, switching to brandy. How come with all I’ve drunk, I can still feel this much pain? “It’s really not the same. At least you knew Linc had loved you.”
“Oh, Roy, Gerry loved you, of course he did. Didn’t he marry you?
“It wasn’t his idea. I talked him into living with me. Then after we had a big blow-up, he was sorry and agreed on the wedding.”
“The smartest thing he ever did. You gave him stability, you made him a real home.”
Roy sighed deeply. That arthritic pain through her chest remained. “He didn’t really care where he lived. A borrowed attic, a sleeping bag—any dump was the same to him. All he wanted was a place to work . . . and . . .” Roy’s voice wavered “Marylin, I’ve been feeling guilty, so lousy, rotten guilty. I made his last months hell for him. Phoning him at all hours, fouling up his Oaxaca series. No wonder he preferred Althea.”
Marylin’s lovely eyes darkened to a stormy, grayish green. “Her.”
“I’m so ashamed. The night before he . . . was killed, I called Belvedere to talk to her. She wasn’t home. I’d had a few too many, and I made this big scene with Mrs. Cunningham.”
“He was your husband, Roy.”
“He and Althea had an affair ages ago, long before I met him.” Roy’s eyes filled.
“You’re being right silly.” To cheer her sister, Marylin rendered a near-perfect mimicry of NolaBee’s Southern tones. “I reckon Mr. Man chose you, hon.”
“They loved each other.”
“She doesn’t know the meaning of the word!” Marylin’s soft voice was relentless. “Wherever she is, there’s trouble!”
“That’s not fair.”
“Everybody says she was the one behind Henry Lissauer’s suicide.”
Gossip was so unlike Marylin that Roy’s bloodshot eyes fixed questioningly on her sister.
“Roxanne de Liso was at his art school when he killed himself,” Marylin said. “Roxanne said Althea was always making eyes at him. Mr. Lissauer was Jewish but German, an enemy alien. Roxanne swore that the Cunninghams set Immigration on him. He shot himself the day the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Althea had come over to the house and had hysterics the night before, remember?”
“That’s old garbage, Marylin.”
The exquisite, gentle mouth was tensed. “All the years you two were so close, you had no other friends, but the minute you broke away, people swarmed around you.”
“We went through a difficult phase together, that’s all.” Roy wondered why, when hatred surged dizzily through her, she was defending Althea.
“You’re always so loyal, but this is pushing it too far.” Marylin stood as if to emphasize her words. “Althea Cunningham is one of those people who should be avoided.”
“Oh, Marylin.”
“She’s like a snake. It’s her nature to spit venom.”
* * *
Though it was not yet May, ovenlike heat blew from the inland deserts, and the following day the temperature soared to the nineties. Fortunately, the funeral limousines were air-conditioned.
Roy, in the first car with her mother and Marylin, was battling nausea—she had drunk her breakfast. Despite her grief and physical discomfort, a small ripple of excitement ran through her. Gerry was waiting for her at Forest Lawn. She was on her way to him. Continually she reminded herself that he was dead, dead, dead, yet she could not quell this crazy idea that she was gliding toward a date with him.
NolaBee had suggested the rector from All Saints Episcopal, where she was a communicant. He conducted the funeral service in the gray stone church. Afterwards six mortuary employees directed the congregation to their cars.
A long, slow procession followed the hearse through the rolling lawns of the necropolis to a deep gash in the lavish grass. Here, a dozen wooden chairs were sheltered by a marquee. The chief mourners sat while others gathered beneath elms and sycamores mopping their brows.
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. . . .” The rector had a fine bass delivery, but a treeful of sparrows drowned him out.
The casket began its slow descent into the grave, and as the creaking mechanism lowered the massive coffin, Roy was plunged into the brutal knowledge that Gerry, wearing a brand-new navy striped worsted suit, was being set down with jolting movements into the clayey yellow soil.
Until resurrection. . . .
Forever.
This was our date, Roy thought. He below, me above. . . .
Her body shook in uncontrollable spasms.
NolaBee and Marylin put consoling arms around her, BJ leaned forward with a loud, warm-voiced whisper of courage, and Joshua pressed a clean handkerchief into Roy’s shaking grasp. Billy, his craggy adolescent face for once drawn into sober lines—no wise-ass stuff today—said, “Aunt Roy, hey, Gerry’s not really dead. People will look at his work in museums, and that’s being alive.” Sari’s tenderly loving pats fell on her hip.
Roy, encapsulated by her family, Roy utterly alone, Roy gasping out her torturous grief for her estranged husband.
People would have approached her, but the mortuary men formed a protective phalanx around the family, so there was a general dispersal to the cars.
After a few minutes Roy’s wild outburst subsided. She blew her nose on a fresh handkerchief from Joshua’s apparently inexhaustible supply.
A tall, slender woman in black was moving uphill through the sunlight and shade toward them. Her shoulders were curved inward and her large-brimmed black hat was bent low.
The woebegone posture was so unlike Althea’s arrogant carriage that she had nearly reached the open grave before anyone in the family recognized her.
“Takes a whole lot of nerve, her comin’ here.” NolaBee’s aside, spoken to nobody in particular, was surely audible to Althea.
“Come along, old dear,” Joshua said, taking Roy’s arm.
Roy peered through narrowed lids at the suppliant figure edging toward the grave. Hot possessiveness swept through her, and in a burst of jealousy she understood she could not permit this final encroachment on her husband. Eluding Joshua’s grasp, she took a few tottery steps, her narrow high heels sinking into immaculately mowed grass.
The two women halted on either side of the open pit.
Tears oozed down Althea’s rigid face, making red blotches on the fine-pored skin. “I know I shouldn’t be here,” she murmured, slightly raising the hand that held the crumpled scrap of handkerchief, a gesture that managed to convey contrition and a fragile hope of forgiveness.
Roy’s incoherent determination to guard her dead husband wavered: what must it have cost proud, aloof Althea to humbly beg permission to share in Gerry’s final rites? The ties of friendship, so indestructible in Roy, tugged at her, and tears again welled in her eyes. She took a stumbling step around the heaped-up earth, opening her arms.
Althea moved toward her. “Oh, Roy, you understand? I kept thinking he was meeting me here.”
“Yes, yes,” Roy sobbed. �
�That’s exactly what I felt. . . .”
The widow and mistress shared a desolate embrace.
56
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The red edging of tissue-fine pages had worn to a trace of pink, the black leather binding was separating from its caramel-colored linen. Roy’s paternal grandmother’s Bible.
Reaching for her tumbler, Roy sipped, letting time bear her like a slow-turning torture wheel. Thus I would revolve—resolve?—for all eternity.
She had promised the Finemans to return to work after a week, but those seven days following Gerry’s death had passed in a blur of visitors and NolaBee’s cigarette smoke; thus she had no time to resolve things present, nor things to come. Both Mr. and Mrs. Fineman had sympathetically urged her to take off as much time as necessary. A month, two even. More difficult by far to convince her mother to let her alone: NolaBee, in the clutch of unrelenting maternal instinct, had to be shoved from the house.
But what was so pernicious about nipping in solitude? Why shouldn’t she weep alone in her tedious grief?
The door knocker tapped.
Roy’s head tilted. A neighbor? Friend? Her mother? The restless tapping continued, punctuated by the buzzer.
Setting down the Bible and glass, she went unsteadily to the front door.
Althea stood there. Pale hair slicked back. Pale, elegant cream sweater and matching skirt. Pale jacquard silk blouse.
Roy drew backward in the dim foyer. She couldn’t bear close proximity to this tall, slender, immaculate body that Gerry had cherished and caressed. (In retrospect, the hysterical, graveside embrace seemed an impossibility, and several times during the last days Roy had caught herself boozily pondering the course of events had she been holding a gun.)
“May I come inside?” Althea asked.
Everything and More Page 41