An American Love Story

by Rona Jaffe

  “I have only one comment on the work,” Clay said. “You may hate this, and if you do, ignore it.”

  You may hate this? She couldn’t believe he was being so humble and gentle. Ergil would have run her over with a steamroller. “Tell me,” Susan said.

  “I think there should be one continuing male character too. You have all these wonderful young women, but we do need a man who lasts.”

  “Ah, yes, a man who lasts. I forgot I was writing fiction.”

  “Is it that bad?” he asked gently.

  “Usually.”

  “I would have thought you’d have to drive them away with a stick.”

  “The ones I do deserve it.” She smiled at him so he wouldn’t think she was being cynical, only amusing.

  “If I had known you then I would have driven them away myself.”

  “Thank you. So … who should this man be?”

  “He might be a good friend. Maybe he goes with one of the female characters, but he’s there for the others when they need him.”

  “A kind of modern family,” Susan said.

  “Exactly.” He chuckled. “Better than the old kind.”

  “What was yours like?”

  “When I was a kid? Unremittingly uninteresting. The kind of life that would make you want to run away from it as fast as you could, and I did.”

  “Are your parents still alive?”

  “Oh yes. My mother watches my shows. My father watches football. What about your family? Are they proud of you?”

  “I don’t know. I think they’d still prefer that I was married.”

  “Why does it have to be either or?”

  She shrugged. “They think I’m too strong. That no man will feel comfortable with me.”

  He looked at her intently. “Then they’re crazy.”

  “Thank you,” Susan said. “Will you tell them that?”

  “My wife was a very famous ballerina,” Clay said quietly. “Laura Hays. She was with the Metropolitan Ballet, danced the lead in Sinners, which was written specially for her. Beautiful and talented. When we got married she gave it up. I begged her not to. All she wanted was to have a baby and retire. I wasn’t interested in children yet; all I wanted was for us to have our careers, our busy exciting lives and each other. She knew that when we got married—we had agreed. And then she changed her mind. Finally I told her I wouldn’t stand in her way, but … she became a different person. We get along the best we can, but … My wife is an anorexic and a drug addict.” A look of great pain flashed across his face. “Acceptable controlled substances,” he said bitterly. “Diet pills, amphetamines, sleeping pills. The happy poisons of our time. Sometimes I blame myself. I should have been there more, seen the signs, tried to stop her. Now the only reason I stay in the marriage is because of our daughter Nina. I could never leave Nina alone with an incapable woman like that. At least I know I’m always there to help my daughter, and my daughter knows I’m there for her.”

  So that was the strange arrangement. “How old is Nina?”

  “Going to be ten. The pride of my life. Smart, feisty. Always has to be the best, and she is the best. Wins every prize at school. I wish you could know her.”

  “I do too,” Susan said.

  “I’m sorry she doesn’t have a role model more like you.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment, as they had at the party when all kinds of unspoken things were clicking and swirling between them, and then he picked up the menu. “What do you think you’d like for dinner?” he asked cheerfully, the good host again.

  They ordered, and he had another bottle of Montrachet brought to go with the meal. His hand lay very close to hers on the table, playing with the stem of his glass, and she wondered how it would feel to be touched by him.

  A married man. You would have to keep your emotional distance, your independence, to handle a married man. But that wasn’t the way it happened; you fell in love, you became vulnerable. She had always tried to protect herself; a glass wall around a glass heart. A man with perception could see that, and it was only dumb luck that none had ever cared enough to try.

  She sat in the banquette next to Clay and they talked of un-threatening things. He told her funny stories about the television business, about narrow escapes and triumphs and sheer silliness. She suspected that under all the activity he was as solitary as she was. He didn’t have to take her to dinner, they could just have had a meeting, even at his office, but he had set out to charm her. They had picked each other across a room; she who had said she wished she could be reckless, he who said he wished he were less. Susan knew they had both lied. She was already reckless, and Clay Bowen wouldn’t be any other way.

  He had his limousine again, and after dinner he left her at her apartment, handing her over to her doorman to be sure she was safe. He neither touched her nor tried to kiss her. It left her off balance; disappointed but relieved and flattered too. The next afternoon her agent called and told her Clay had agreed to an option for her to write a script for a two-hour movie for RBS, for more money than she made in a year.

  The next three months were hectic. Clay was in New York every ten days; to see the taping of a pilot that was being shot in New York, to work with a director he was not happy with, to replace a star who was not good in the dailies, and always, no matter how busy he was, to take Susan to dinner. Sometimes he had time to take her somewhere luxurious where she had never been before, and other nights it was just at a small restaurant, near her apartment, where he always arrived looking rushed and delighted to see her. She had become dependent on seeing him, it made her happy, and she knew he enjoyed being with her, but he was still always a perfect gentleman. Yet the physical attraction was there between them, growing, fascinating her and at the same time frightening her, and she wondered if it frightened him too. Neither of them mentioned it.

  Meanwhile she was working on her script. It was hard; she was at the typewriter all day, and she wondered how she would ever be able to write a series if this came to anything. She knew they had more than one writer on a series because of the incessant demands, and yet, did she want to share? But she loved doing her script. The characters were all there, trying to succeed; the ones who made it and the ones who didn’t, the quarrels, the jokes, the love affairs, the ambition, the excitement of a world as yet unknown. She knew her story was more sophisticated and truthful than anything she had ever seen on television, and she was proud of it.

  She and Clay had agreed that she write the entire first draft before he saw any of it, and then he could give her notes. She wanted to surprise him with how good it was. When it was finally done her agent said it was excellent, professional, one of the best scripts he had ever seen. She waited to hear what Clay would say. He phoned her the next day. “I love it,” he said.

  “I suppose you have lots of notes,” Susan said.

  “No. It’s wonderful. Can you have dinner with me tonight?”

  “Is this a celebration?”

  “Sure. I wish my life was always this easy.”

  “Me too. When will you start to cast it?”

  He chuckled. “Not so fast. These things are very complicated. I have to put everything together like a jigsaw puzzle. Let’s just say your script has a very good chance, better than anything I have. But the first rule of television is never to expect anything until it happens.”

  “It sounds like my life,” Susan said, but she was not afraid. She knew that this time she was in good hands.

  While Clay was setting his fall schedule, Susan, not wanting to wait idly around while her script was on the back burner for the following year, took on three magazine assignments at once to keep busy. It occurred to her that except for her dinners with him she wasn’t seeing any men at all, not even looking for new ones, and that she was content. It didn’t bother her; it was peaceful, not ominous.

  When the networks announced their fall schedules in early May it was the first time she had really paid any attention to
which shows were going to be on and what had been dropped. Before, as a viewer, it had been a minor annoyance. Now she realized how much it meant to people’s careers. Next would be the consideration of her script, among so many others, for the sweepstakes that didn’t even mean success, only a chance at it. Was that why TV paid so much, so people would go on hoping? Writing for magazines you could starve, but in relative security.

  One day she walked by The Dakota, out of curiosity. It looked English, old-fashioned, with even a little guard’s box in front, strong iron gates, a courtyard within. It was exactly where a man who had no past would choose to live in order to make up for it. Central Park was filled with delicate signs of spring. She hadn’t even made plans for this summer, and it was getting late. We don’t know where we’ll be tomorrow, Clay had said. There was time.

  He phoned a few days later. “Are you free for dinner tonight?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am. Oh, I passed your apartment building. It’s very impressive.”

  “It ought to be for what it costs. You know, I’ve never seen yours.”

  She was glad she had redecorated her apartment. “Do you want to come for a drink before dinner?”

  “I have a meeting, but I can be there at seven-thirty, is that all right?”

  “That’s fine.” She went out and bought his favorite brand of vodka (Montrachet would be too obvious) and a bunch of white flowers. The cleaning woman had been there that morning and everything was immaculate. Susan picked some tapes to play and then decided against them because you had to jump up to change them. Music on the radio would be all right, even with commercials. She could make it very low. Then she changed her mind in favor of albums, which she could stack. At the last minute she chose silence. She didn’t want him to think she was trying to be seductive, because she wasn’t. She just wanted to make a good impression.

  She leaned on her windowsill and watched Clay get out of a cab across the street, too impatient to let the driver make a U-turn, and run toward her door. It made her unexpectedly happy. A moment later he was ringing her bell, so quickly that she wondered if he had pull with her elevator operator.

  She made the drinks while he looked at her living room and the desk where she worked in what was supposed to be the dining area. The door to her bedroom was open but he didn’t go near it. He sat on a chair and she sat on the couch. “Pretty apartment,” he said. He raised his glass. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers.”

  “I have some news about our project,” Clay said. He took a sip and put his glass down. “You know we always have several scripts in the works along the same line, and we can’t develop all of them. We had a meeting about your script, and the fact is you just didn’t make it bad enough. It’s too good, too intelligent, too realistic for television as it exists at this moment in time. The network is expecting a lighthearted little thing and you gave me something that’s …”

  “Not bad enough,” Susan said. She was disappointed, but amazingly, she wasn’t upset. She had enjoyed writing it. He didn’t seem upset either, just rueful.

  “I could have fought for a rewrite,” Clay said, “but I didn’t. The reason I don’t want to touch your script is I don’t want to spoil it. I could keep it, or I could give it back to you even though you’ve been paid and let your agent try to peddle it, and maybe then let someone else ruin it; but I’d like to hold on to it and see what the climate is like later on.”

  “I guess the only thing we know for sure about television is that it changes,” Susan said.

  “Are you miserable?” he asked gently.

  She shook her head. “No. But it would have been fun to work together.”

  “We will. Think of it this way: you would have been stuck with these characters for a long, long time. You’d have to know what they’re going to be doing for the next five years.”

  “I don’t even know what I’m going to be doing for the next five years,” Susan said.

  “I hope a lot of interesting projects,” he said. “I intend to be there.”

  She smiled. “So you’re not saying good-bye.”

  “Good-bye?” He stared at her; he actually looked frightened. “Of course not. Never. I love you.”

  She was stunned for only a moment. Then she realized, as the warmth seeped through her, that she had known for a long time that there was more between them than they pretended, and that he wouldn’t disappear.

  “I’m in love with you,” Clay said. “Don’t say anything. You don’t have to love me. But I love you, and you can’t lose me unless you want to.”

  She looked at him, a man who had never yet kissed her, who had never yet touched her, who was married and had a child, and who loved her, and she realized he had been afraid to come near her because he was afraid she wouldn’t want him—and if she had had any sense at all he would have been right.

  “I love you too,” she said. It was still so new that the words felt strange in her mouth.

  “You don’t have to say that.”

  “I know I don’t.”

  They sat there memorizing each other’s faces for a moment, and then he looked at his watch. “Come on, I have to feed you. You must be starving.”

  “Not really …”

  “Well, I am.” He had her up and out of the apartment in ten seconds, taking her to a small, dark, and very expensive restaurant nearby, where she had been with him once before. They sat at a corner banquette and picked at their food. “I go to the South of France every spring,” Clay said. “On business. It’s beautiful there now. They have those tiny strawberries and the gray wine. You have to taste the gray wine, you can’t get it here. The season is very short. And the tiny strawberries … come with me.”

  “I have three pieces on deadline,” she said, half wishing she didn’t, half glad she did. What she meant was: it’s too soon, you’re married, I don’t really know you, France is too far away.

  “Can’t you get an extension? I wish you could come with me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I love you,” he said. “You’re so bright and so beautiful. You make me smile. I love your hair.”

  “My hair? If you ran your hands through it it would eat them.”

  “It’s sexy.”

  “I’ve always hated my hair,” Susan said.

  “What do you know?”

  She laughed.

  “The first time I saw you,” he said, “across the room at the RBS party, I said: That’s for me. I knew the minute I saw you that I would fall in love with you. I don’t say this lightly. This has never happened to me before.”

  “Never?”

  “No. There are lots of opportunities for a man in my position to play around … actresses … I didn’t. I never wanted to get involved where I worked. I thought I had chosen my life and made my mistake and I would live with it. I never thought I would meet you.”

  Touch me, she thought. As if reading her mind he took her hand, and she could hardly catch her breath. “Can we go back to my apartment?” she asked. He nodded and gestured for the check.

  Then they were in her bed, and Clay was making love to her as if he had been starving for her for years. He was totally uninhibited, tender and wild, and he never stopped kissing her. He seemed to be worshiping her body. Without being asked he did all the things she had wished other men would do and seldom did; and he was not doing them to show off or because he was obligated to, but because it gave him the utmost pleasure.

  His tanned skin felt unexpectedly like silk, and smelled fresh and warm; not the faint cologne, which was long gone, but something exciting and indescribable. She melted into him, into his arms, his legs, his scent and embrace, his warmth, the solace of his totally unselfish sensuality. Yet one small part of her kept holding back, dreading the part of his life that was unavailable. They made love for hours and it was almost perfect, almost; for perfection would be too dangerous and she would be lost. He would have to get up and leave, and she would have to survive and sleep. This,
after he had said he loved her.

  At last they dozed, in each other’s arms, and then side by side. Susan glanced at the clock and it was four o’clock in the morning. Clay looked at it, cupped his hand around her skull and put her head on his shoulder, and went back to sleep. She lay there on the wrinkled sheets that had cooled, and moved closer into his side. He was sprawled out like a starfish. Suddenly, a wave of love for him swept over her and she felt her glass heart crack wide open. Such tenderness for him poured out that she held him to her so tightly she woke him up. He smiled and put his arm around her and they lay there holding each other, surrounded by her tenderness, and she was glad he knew.

  She loved him more than she had ever loved anyone in her life. She would love him as long as it lasted. There would be neither thoughts of endings nor of forever, only this happiness.

  He had won. Perhaps they had both won.

  11

  1971—SEATTLE

  It was May, a beautiful spring day, the blue sky so clear you could see the mountains in the distance and the snow on top of them, the tiny bunches of green that were the fragrant forests below, and you thought of the joys of camping, of fishing in the bright water. Bambi was huddled in her bedroom, with the shades down, crying. Other people were happy to be in this outdoor wonderland, and she was miserable because she was going to be trapped here and alone. The college acceptance and rejection letters had arrived. Simon had gotten into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the University of Puget Sound in nearby Tacoma. Bambi had only gotten into the University of Puget Sound.

  Those colleges that had taken him and rejected her hadn’t even bothered to tell her why they didn’t want her. She had some idea. Simon was a straight A student and winner of the senior science prize. She was glad for B’s. She knew she was an artist not a scholar; but what good did it do when her hostile creative writing teacher had given her only a C-plus, and the school literary magazine had refused to print the stories she had started writing? She was lucky she had gotten into the University of Puget Sound.