“I don’t mind. You should know, having lived with us, that we don’t go to bed with the chickens.”
She smiled. “You’re mad at me for not calling you tonight when I said I would. Please forgive me, dear. The time somehow got away from me. You know how it is sometimes. So you’ll come on Friday with a girl, all right? Is it Jeannie or a new girl?”
“I don’t have a new girl, I don’t want a new girl, I don’t want any girl at all and I’m going to San Francisco.”
“Does your mother know that?” she asked sharply.
“Why are you going to San Francisco?”
“Because this town’s Sodom and Gomorrah, that’s why.”
“When did you discover that?” she asked dryly.
“Today.”
“Rodney, I’m sure you’re drinking and you’ll end up sick as a dog. We’re coming right over. Carl and I will be right over. In the meantime don’t take another swallow, you hear?”
His voice suddenly had something ugly in it. Some weird undertone that came over the wires when he answered. “Don’t come over,” he said, in that strange, hard, ugly voice. “I won’t open the door to you.”
“Rodney, my God, what is this all about?” she demanded, really alarmed. “What could possess you to say a thing like that? What could possibly — ”
“Christine? I just thought I’d ask you if you enjoyed your lunch today. Your lunch with your friends. The women’s group, I believe you said.”
The tone of his voice and the sudden switch to her day’s activities, which should be of no import or interest to him, gave her pause. Did it mean that he was, for some petulant reason, really angry at her for not cancelling the plans she said she had, was he actually going to hold that against her? He had said, to be fair, that he was not up to par — did it mean that he was in some kind of emotional dither, the way kids got into so suddenly, with their lightning changes of mood?
“Yes, I did,” she said slowly. “Why do you ask? That is to say, Rodney, why do you ask something like that at this late hour?”
“Oh,” he replied. “I thought you said you weren’t jarred by a call at this hour.”
“Something’s wrong,” she said flatly. “Something’s wrong and I want to know what it is, Rodney. I’m waiting, love. If you don’t tell me what it is, I promise Carl and I will hop into a cab and if you don’t let us in I’ll call the super.”
“One moment,” he said. Clear and distinct. “Just one moment, if you please, Christine.”
“Yes. Go ahead. Speak up, Rodney. I want to know what’s wrong with you, what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about your group lunch,” he said. “Your group lunch on Sixty-first Street. With a mutual friend, name of Jack Allerton.”
“I beg your pardon?” she said, a flutter setting up in her chest. “Would you mind repeating that?”
“Why would you want me to repeat it, Christine?”
“You’re right, I don’t want you to. What I do want is that you retract it. Unsay it, Rodney. I have no idea what you think you know but I assure you you’re barking up the wrong tree. And now, if you don’t mind, apologize, please. Apologize and say you’re sorry.”
“A pleonasm,” he informed her. “Apologizing and saying you’re sorry is the same thing.”
“Don’t trifle with someone who’s your good and true friend, and don’t be rude and uncouth, you were brought up better than that. Rodney, how dare you be unkind to me, who loves you! Flooding me with accusations, how could you?”
“How could you?” he countered, and the recollection, nothing at all but now meaning so much, flashed in on her. The bell rang: “Aren’t you going to answer it, Jack?”
“Not expecting any deliveries these days,” he said. “It’s just someone who forgot their keys, they want to be buzzed in. I won’t do that, uh uh. It’s just the way goons get in, you can’t be too careful in these brownstones. Well, you must know that, you lived in one once.”
“How could you is more to the point,” Rodney went on. “I saw you, Christine. I saw you going in there. I was on my way to his flat myself, wanting some company, which you had denied me, and there you were, just ahead of me on the street. I saw you going in. And now I know you’re having an affair with him.”
“Whatever you saw, or whatever you think you saw, is meaningless,” she said, her voice hard and determined. “Also — also, if I were having an affair with someone it would have nothing whatever to do with you. Don’t interfere in my life, Rodney, don’t ever do that. I’m sorry you felt called upon to spy on me, and I’m sorry your imaginings led you to believe that I was at Jack Allerton’s today. When I tell you I’m going to do something, that’s what I’m going to do, and if you should happen to think otherwise, why it’s unfortunate as well as insulting. I’m a big girl, Rodney, and I conduct my life as I see fit. It’s time, high time, that the same should apply to you. That is, if you want to attain the status of a responsible adult.”
“Are you telling me you weren’t there?” he asked belligerently.
“I’m telling you that I was having lunch with my friends at a midtown restaurant and that’s what you’re going to accept.”
“Can you explain why I should accept it?”
“Because I insist you do. A final period after that, Rodney. I’ll try not to hold this against you, because your mother is a cherished friend of mine. But you’ve succeeded in hurting me deeply, as well as blemishing yourself in my eyes because of your flagrant intrusion into my private life.”
At the other end of the line silence now. He was there, though, the wires still hummed. After a second or two she said, “Rodney?”
“Yes, what?”
“Did you understand what I said?”
“Very well indeed. You want me to keep my mouth shut.”
She closed her eyes. God. Who would have thought? Rodney. Upsetting the apple cart. She knew now that Jack had been right. “He’s in love with you too.”
Of course she had sensed it, his youthful admiration, the goo-goo eyes. It was such an everyday occurrence. Such a dreary cliché, a young boy responding to an older woman who somehow put ideas, all unwittingly, into his head. Rodney had gotten it into his mind that he might charm her into some sort of flirtation, innocent or otherwise, but at least something he could dream about, a love object, maybe not available but there, where he could give into his fantasies.
And then, somehow, he had come to know about her and Jack. Had seen her today. Had actually seen her.
And now he was vengeful.
She cleared her throat. “I want you to act like a decent human being,” she said quietly. “And that, my friend, is that. Either you give me some assurance that you can behave in such a manner or else you bow out of our lives. I can’t have it any other way. If you want to think about it, do so, then call me when you’ve made your decision. And now, Rodney, I’m going to say good night.”
She didn’t hang up right away. She waited, to give him time to recollect himself. It didn’t appear to be going to happen, so she started to put down the receiver.
“Don’t hang up,” he said quickly.
“I’m still here.”
“You want me to apologize for what’s only the truth?”
She said, “Good night, Rodney.”
“No. Wait. I apologize. I apologize because — ”
“It doesn’t matter because why. You’ve apologized and I take it you mean it.”
“At the same time it’s bitter fruit,” he said in a defeated voice. “I just would like you to understand that.”
“I just would like you to understand that it’s of no importance to me what your opinion is. And if that’s bitter fruit too, there’s plenty of that in a lifetime, as we all come to discover. One thing more, Rodney. In spite of this breach of friendship and good faith you’re still part of our lives. If you wish to be. You’re Peggy’s son, and at heart a fine boy, only you’ve gone into spheres that don’t have anything
to do with you. We’ll skip dinner on Friday, because it’s better for both of us to wait for a while. Just the same, try to remember that you are very much loved by me and my family, always will be. And now go to bed.”
She waited, but nothing more seemed to be forthcoming.
“Good night, Rodney,” she said, and put down the receiver.
She hadn’t bothered to switch on a lamp when she came in. The room had sufficient illumination from the light that shone in from out of doors. She was glad to be sheltered in shadows, the way she felt and the way she knew she was going to feel when she had been able to sort this all out. Her heart was pounding away, she could see its acceleration stirring her shirt.
How could such a rotten coincidence come about, that Rodney had been on his way to Jack’s today too. How sick and sad and besmirched she felt, how robbed.
There was a slight sound from the other bed, a faint creak of springs. She turned slightly. “Who’s there?”
Carl’s voice. “Me.”
“How long have you been in here?”
“Long enough,” he said. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, I thought you knew I was here.”
“I didn’t know, but it’s all right. This is your room too.”
“Also my life. What’s up Christine?”
“You must have heard. And now you know.”
“Do I? All I heard was denials.”
“There was nothing to do but deny. It’s nothing to do with him. Just me. Us.”
“You are seeing someone else, then?”
“Yes, I have been.”
“Somehow,” he said quietly, “somehow, in my fatuous way, I never anticipated anything like this.”
“I never anticipated anything like this either.”
“What happens now?”
“Nothing. Unless you want a divorce.”
“Why would I want that?”
“You’ve just learned that your wife is having an affair with another man. That’s considered A-one grounds for divorce.”
He didn’t say anything. She didn’t know whether he was sitting stiffly, as she was, or lying down, what his face looked like, what expression he wore, if it was angry or wounded or uncomprehending. “It wouldn’t change things to say how sorry I am that you had to know about this,” she told him. “But I am sorry, terribly, agonizingly sorry, Carl. That you had to be hit over the head so swiftly and brutally. I never wanted to hurt you, just as I never wanted you to hurt me. And now I have.”
“You sure have,” he said then. “You sure as hell have. I must have been cockeyed not to have sensed something was going on. Seventeen years — you think you know someone. Especially if you’re a fatuous ass like me. You don’t expect anything to go wrong.”
“I never have stopped loving you,” she said. “Maybe you won’t be able to believe that. But it’s true.”
“You must admit it isn’t the easiest thing to believe.”
“Carl, this has happened to other couples and it will happen until the end of time. I can’t demand that you live with it, though, I realize that.”
“Do you want a divorce?”
“I don’t know what I want. Maybe to be dead.”
A creak of the springs again as he rose and came over to her, sat down beside her. “Would you like a cigarette?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He got up again. “Be right back, I’ll get some from inside.”
“Don’t turn on the light.”
“I won’t.”
When he returned he lit one for her and positioned the ashtray on the bedside table. Then sat down. “Please don’t say that again,” he said urgently. “That maybe you want to be dead. And please don’t think of me as the enemy.”
“The enemy? You? I should think I would seem the enemy,” she cried.
“Neither of us should think that. No matter what’s happened, or what will happen. For God’s sake, darling, we’ve been in each others’ lives for a long, long span of years. Two intelligent, caring people. I know you’re not, and couldn’t be, a promiscuous woman, so what I meant was if you consider that I’d be standing in your way, if you’re into something that’s more than just, just an affair — ”
He looked down and then up again and went on. “If that should be the case, then — ”
“Are you telling me that you’d step aside? Or are you saying that you want to? You can’t hack the status quo and you want out. For which I assure you I wouldn’t blame you, Carl. There are lots of things we don’t know about each other, just as there are lots of things we don’t know about ourselves. Surprises are constantly in store. God, I didn’t really believe I’d get to be this age, but here I am, things being taken away from me bit by bit, things you always took for granted. I’m a figurehead, I’m an empty paper bag, I have no place in the scheme of things.”
“Why?” he asked quietly. “Why do you feel that way, Chris?”
“Why not,” she said bitterly. “I’m your average, everyday, garden variety of anxiety-ridden middle-aged womanhood. I’ve done my job, it’s over and I can only look forward to long and empty years, that’s why.”
“Somehow,” he said, “somehow your saying that is worse than the, the other thing. That you’re unhappy. That everything we’ve built up hasn’t been enough.”
His arms dangled between his knees. “And that I haven’t known it. I just thought — well, you had a rich life, a fulfilling life. Like me. With me. For me it’s been, and is, the whole ball game. I never, for a minute, got restless and dissatisfied. Maybe I should have told you that more often. What you meant to me. Mean to me.”
“It isn’t that,” she said tightly. “It isn’t you, Carl. You haven’t failed me, don’t think that, for Christ’s sake. You haven’t done anything but be good to me. It’s true, though, that you have something I don’t, you’re part of the outside world. I’m not.”
“So you went into that outside world and found something else.”
“No. It happened. It was an accident. It could have happened to you.”
“Nothing just happens. It happens because you decide it will happen.”
“Maybe.”
She saw his quick pain. So she wanted to hurt him after all. But it wasn’t cruelty; she absolved herself of that. He would have to know, really know, that she was wretched, that she was up shit creek, not just a petulant protestor, the mad housewife. “I have to know, Carl. Do you want a divorce?”
A prolonged silence. Long enough for her to prepare herself for his answer. She knew, with certainty, that everything would be different if she and Jack were the same age. She had married young — according today’s standards — lived her young life with Carl. It would be painful, perhaps crucifying and a mistake after all, to leave him, but she would be halfway sure, right this minute, that she would do it if she and Jack were in the same time of life.
They weren’t. Those years between them meant far more than just the number of them. Jack himself had commented that she had “gotten there,” meaning financial security, upward mobility, the end of the economic struggle. In ten more years or so it would be the same story for Jack, in all likelihood, the race run, the uncertainty over. Nobody knows my name, he had said. Most people’s names weren’t known, in the way he meant, but Jack Allerton wouldn’t be satisfied with that. He was aiming for literary éclat, either critical or popular, or both. It would be a long time before he achieved that goal, and he needed a young courageous girl who would nourish his drives single-mindedly, share his vie de Bohème with zest and strength.
It was that old bugaboo, the time machine. It was either too early or too late. You could fight a lot of things, but you couldn’t fight time. Forward you went, like it or not, but you could never go back.
“I don’t want a divorce, no,” Carl finally said. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I took so long to answer because I was thinking it over. I took so long because I’m afraid of what you might say when I throw it back to you. I don’t know whethe
r I’m up to it. I don’t want a divorce, I can’t even imagine it, but it’s for you to say too. Christine, do you want it?”
She shook her head. “No.” It was almost inaudible. “No, I don’t,” she said more clearly.
“You’re sure?”
“If I weren’t I’d say so. I’m sure, yes. I hope you are.”
“How can I say it more emphatically?” There was a quick movement of his hands. “My God, it’s not even in the realm of my imagining, Chris. I’m not a complex man, Chris, I’m pretty much a plodding sort, an everyday kind of guy, but I’ve always felt I got the brass ring on the merry-go-round when I got you. Oh, Christ, yes, I want you to stay with me. If you do, I’ll try, try very hard to put everything out of my mind except my love for you. My love and deep, deep concern for your welfare. We’ve got two kids who are almost ready to be out on their own. You don’t think that’s a change in my life too? I’m not getting any younger either, you know. Men have their own hangups, they cut deep. The big prizes are never going to come your way, you know that after a while.”
He put his arms around her, tentative, unsure. “I’ve always depended on you,” he said. “We all have, you’re the star that guides the ship. Asking too much, accepting too much. And now I’ve gotten my lumps. A brick falling on my head when I least expected it. A lot of bewildering things to accept. It hurts. Sure it hurts. You’ve made no explanations and I take it you’re not going to offer any, about what’s been going on, and I suppose that’s the way it’s going to be.”
He withdrew his arm and sat now with his hands on his knees. “I said it hurts,” he repeated. “Not as much as it will later, on, though. I’m still in the trauma stage. Shock and all that. The real hurt will come creeping up on me little by little, but that’s for me to handle. But divorce? Oh, no. No. I love you. God, you’re as much a part of me as my arms, as my legs, my bicuspids. I’ll lose the bicuspids one of these days, I guess, though I hope not for a long time. But I don’t want to lose you. Not ever, if I’m that lucky.”
“I don’t want to lose you either,” she said. “You’re too much a part of me too.” She nodded. “That’s the God’s honest truth. If it helps any.”
Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances Page 29