Another Eden (32 page)

"Then I'll get hurt," she retorted airily. "Life's too short to spend waiting for things to happen. If you want to be happy, you have to do something." Sara blinked blandly, refusing to be drawn so soon into the old argument.

Lauren sighed, propping her petite chin on her knuckles. "You can live any sort of life you want to now. You're filthy rich and you're absolutely free. Do you know how lucky you are, Sara?"

"I have a very quiet life in mind."

"Yes, I know." It reminded her—"Did the contract go through for the house?"

She nodded. A Mr. and Mrs. Eustace Turnbull, the dewiest of the newly rich, had offered an unbelievable—to Sara, who would have settled for much, much less—amount of money for the New York house. Now she could pay off what Ben had owed on Eden and still have money left for the modest home she had in mind for her and Michael somewhere uptown, possibly on Central Park South. Ben's real estate investments would be sufficient to pay off his other debts, which arose mainly, she'd learned, from his failing slaughterhouse empire. So about one thing he'd been right: she was no longer a millionaire, but she was still extremely comfortable.

"That's good; now you can start house-hunting in earnest. Have you heard anything lately from Miss Eminescu?"

"No, not since her letter. I don't expect to."

Lauren shook her head in awe. "The
nerve
of that woman!"

Nerve didn't cover it, thought Sara. Two weeks after Ben's death, Tasha had sent her a letter in a frail, shaky hand, postmarked from Mercy Hospital. Her legs were broken; she had internal injuries that might shorten her life; she was only just recovering from a serious head wound, and her face had been permanently disfigured. She understood perfectly well if Sara could not find it in her heart to forgive her for succumbing, after a long and terrible struggle, to her husband's relentless seduction. But if there was any charity left in her, now was the moment when it was most needed—for Tasha had no money at all, and although she was almost too weak to lift her head, the doctors said she must leave the hospital unless she paid them four hundred dollars immediately.

It hadn't sounded very plausible. Still, as much as she despised her, Sara hadn't been able to dismiss completely the possibility that Tasha's story might be true. So she'd telephoned the hospital. Miss Eminescu? Yes, she'd been a patient there. Her injuries? A broken ankle, bruises and contusions, a cut on the forehead that might leave a scar. She'd been released over a week ago.

"What do you think she'll do now?" wondered Lauren.

"Who knows? I'm sure she'll land on her feet somehow. I don't think about her." But she wasn't as indifferent as she sounded. That Tasha had been blackmailing her was a secret she couldn't tell anyone, not even Lauren; the tawdriness of it still shamed her, and she expected she would take that profound embarrassment to her grave.

Lauren raised her arms and stretched. "I'd better go soon. I have to get ready for Maximillian Amis's Christmas party tonight." A thought struck. "You could come with me, Sara. Max knows who you are, we've spoken of you often. Why don't you come? It's such an interesting crowd, I know you'd enjoy yourself."

Sara smiled and shook her head, glancing down briefly at her black faille mourning gown.

"Oh. I forgot. I guess it wouldn't look quite right."

"Not quite."

"What will you do, then?"

"Michael and I are going to trim the tree and give each other our presents. And then he wants
A Christmas Carol
again. He's never stayed awake past the first ghost," she explained fondly, "but this time he swears he's going to hear it all." Lauren's look was tender and—if she wasn't being fanciful—a bit pitying. "It's what I
want
to do," she cried, laughing. "I thank you for the invitation to Mr. Amis's party, but to tell you the truth, it's the last thing in the world I'd want to do tonight."

"Then you're in worse shape than I thought," Lauren snapped disapprovingly. Sara only smiled and shook her head again. The telephone rang twice and stopped. Presently the maid put her head in the drawing room door. "A call for you, Mrs. Cochrane. Mr. McKie." Color flooded Sara's cheeks, but she said without hesitation, "Tell him I have company, Dora."

Lauren jumped up from her chair. "No, I'm leaving." Her grin was huge. "I'll see myself out. Dora, will you get my coat?" Sara stood up much more slowly. Lauren went to her and took her hands. "Merry Christmas, Sara."

"You don't have to go."

"Yes, I do, I said so five minutes ago. Give Michael my love. And give my
very
best regards to Mr. McKie." She laughed at Sara's expression, then turned serious. "Take an old friend's advice and meet the man halfway. I don't even think you understand yourself why you're treating him this way." She kissed Sara's hot cheek, whirled, and tripped out after Dora.

Sara stared at the empty doorway for a long moment, shoring up her defenses, alternately discounting and flinching from the truth of Lauren's last guess. With lagging steps, she went into her little study and sat down at the desk, pulling the telephone toward her. She lifted the earpiece silently and put it against her ear, hardly breathing. Knowing he was there made her heart soar at the same time that it filled her with anxiety. Seconds passed. She touched her tongue to her lips, closed her eyes, and said, "Hello?"

"Sara."

"Yes?"

"Alex here."

There was a clattering sound on the line; Sara said, "I've got it, Dora." She heard a click, and then the new silence took on an intimate tone. Alex broke it quickly. "I'm calling to tell you I've decided to take your advice. My train leaves in an hour." The bottom dropped out of her stomach. "I see."

Alex's palm tightened around the long stem of the telephone. "Is that it? That's all you can say?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"Well, I don't know, Sara. How about, 'Don't go'? How about, 'I want to be with you, Alex, because I wasn't lying when I said I loved you'?"

"Please don't do this."

But the desperate sadness in her voice couldn't stop him this time. "I got your last letter," he said briskly. "It was nice of you to finally take the trouble to write. But I have to ask you something. What did you mean when you said, "The convenient death of my husband doesn't change anything"? Just what the hell is that supposed to
mean
, Sara?" He realized that if he were anywhere else but in a hotel lobby, he would be shouting. "Do you know how that makes me feel?"

"I'm sorry—"

"What do you think I am, some—
vulture
circling Ben's body, waiting to swoop down on the grieving widow?"

"Stop it, stop, please."

"Just tell me why you're doing this."

"I've told you why."

He gave a sharp, derisive laugh. "I thought maybe you'd come up with something more coherent by now."

Sara lined four fingernails against the edge of her desk, pressing until they turned white and made tiny indentations in the wood. "I'm sorry that you can't understand my reasons."

"You haven't got any reasons. You've got a lot of trumped-up, half-baked excuses that don't make any sense."

Silence. She sat in a cocoon of misery while Alex tried to get his temper under control.

"Does it ever strike you as odd that I saw much more of you while your husband was alive than I'm allowed to now that he's dead?"

"Alex—please. I want you to be happy. I want you to start your new life in California, just as you'd intended to do before."

"Before what? Say it, Sara.
Before Ben died
. And now explain to me how that doesn't
change
anything."

"It just—"

"It changes
everything
! There was only one thing keeping us apart, and it's not there anymore."

"It's much more complicated than that." But she couldn't go on, and the long, waiting quiet that followed was intolerable.

When Alex finally spoke, his voice sounded more tired than angry. "I've tried to understand you. God knows, I've tried to respect your scruples. Sara, I've been as patient as a mortal man can be, but I keep coming back to the simple fact that you're behaving like an idiot and I can't seem to get past it."

"Really? Well, then, I guess there's nothing more to say," she snapped, anger finally sparking in her, too. It felt wonderful.

"You're deliberately sabotaging your own happiness, not to mention mine, and all for a lot of fatuous, nonsensical self-justifications that add up to exactly zero."

"Listen, Alex, I'm sorry I don't explain myself very well, but that doesn't give you the right to insult me."

He sighed. "Just tell me this—are you grieving for him? Is it that you've found out you were in love with him all along, and now you can't—"

"No, no, no, no—" She broke off, unable to talk past the lump in her throat.

"What, then?"

"I love you," she whispered. "I'll always love you. Let me go, Alex."

"
Listen
to yourself—!" He cursed monotonously.

"Please try not to be so angry with me," she pleaded hopelessly. "I know why you are, but I can hardly stand it."

"I'm not angry!"

"Oh, Alex—"

"If I thought we'd never be together, Sara,
then
I'd be angry. As it is, I just want to strangle you for wasting so much time." He heard her sniffling "Don't cry. Look, I've got to go. I'll write to you when I get an address."

"It's better if you don't."

"I'll write to you," he repeated, stiff-lipped.

"I mean it, Alex. It won't make any difference." His fury came flooding back all at once, hot and explosive. "You and Michael have a merry Christmas, Sara," he all but snarled, and cradled the earpiece with a bang.

Sara jumped in sick surprise. She hung up and hugged herself, pushing back in her chair, ice-cold.
What have I done
? The shallow, round trumpet of the mouthpiece stared back at her like a huge black eye, mute and accusing. In a panic, she tried to call up all the causes and motives and justifications she'd been using to explain her actions to herself and, without success, to Alex. Like balky soldiers, they were hard to muster; she sensed mutiny in their surly reluctance to assemble.

Michael was chief among them, of course, as he had been all his life, the compelling influence and prime mover behind most of her conscious choices. His father's death had shattered him, fracturing the already tentative illusion of control he had over his life's circumstances. Since the accident he'd withdrawn even further into himself in spite of everything Sara could think of to do for him, and his nights had been hellish ordeals riddled with dreams of terror and abandonment that left them both limp and demoralized. It was only in the last couple of weeks that he'd begun to show signs of recovery, a new independence she both welcomed and regretted, for she had needed his constant and comforting presence, especially in the early days, very nearly as much as he'd needed hers. But he was far from whole, he was still in deep mourning, and it was unconscionable to consider uprooting him in the midst of his grieving so that she could go off to California to be with her lover. The fact that she'd been strongly tempted to do it anyway increased her feeling of repugnance at the very idea. And even apart from feelings, his or hers, such an impulsive act would inevitably start tongues wagging, possibly ignite a scandal. Although she honestly didn't care about social consequences for herself anymore, she couldn't shirk the responsibility she had to protect Michael, who was too young to protect himself.

That was two reasons. She had others. Although she wasn't in "mourning," she was still in something—shock, possibly—from Ben's death. He hadn't been a monster, he'd been a man; with more flaws than virtues, perhaps, but still a man. She'd cast her lot with him for better or worse, and one didn't get over eight years of marriage in two months unless one was impossibly shallow. Or so it seemed to Sara.

Guilt, of course, played a part. If she hadn't actually wished Ben dead, she'd certainly wished him gone enough times over the years, and now he was. No matter that it was patently, blatantly irrational: she couldn't help feeling culpable.

But her strongest reason was the most irrational of all, which was not consoling and explained why she'd been careful not to mention it to Alex. It was simply the conviction that happiness wasn't really possible, not for her. She was unfortunately not among the lucky ones fated to find contentment in their lives. Healthy or not, she'd had that feeling for as long as she could remember; it wasn't reasonable to think she could escape it, just slip out of it cleanly now that circumstances appeared to have changed. She didn't trust appearances. One had to proceed along life's road with extreme caution because it was pitted with traps and unexpected catastrophes waiting for the blithe and unwary. And what looked like salvation usually turned out to be the deepest trap of all.

Besides, there was something
unseemly
about losing Ben and going immediately to Alex. The convenience and tidiness of the situation had a kind of cheapness that offended her perhaps overly refined sensibilities. She had been Ben's
wife
. She'd cheated on him once; she owed him a measure of fidelity now to make up for it.

There they were then, her reasons, in all their murky splendor. "Half-baked," Alex called them, and "nonsensical." Fine. That wasn't what bothered her about them. Something else nagged at the back of her mind, a lesson being communicated in an obscure intonation,
sotto voce
, vaguely taunting. She pushed the telephone away, straightened her pen set, lined up the corners of the envelopes in her correspondence holder—all to create a diverting background noise. But the voice wouldn't be silenced, and finally she heard its scornful message. Her reasons were impressive in their range and ingenuity, and especially their selfless and high-minded tone, the voice said, but they all had one thing in common—cowardice. She put her forehead on the edge of her desk and wept.

Michael found her that way a few minutes later. He'd been practicing "Silent Night" in the music room for the last half hour, in preparation for the private piano recital he was to give her after dinner tonight; the music had stopped a few minutes ago, she realized now—which ought to have alerted her to his imminent presence, but it hadn't. She'd been too wrapped up in her own wretchedness. She jerked upright when he put his small hand on her back and patted it gently. It was hopeless to try to disguise the ravages of her tears, but she did anyway, blotting her bloodshot eyes with her handkerchief "Hello, sweetheart," she managed thickly.