Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (25 page)

She was conscious of her friend’s upturned look, then her steady regard, Clover’s eyes on her, speculative and inquiring. She rushed on. “It’s just that-”

And then came to a halt.

“It’s just what?” Clover asked. “You don’t have to pussyfoot with me. Don’t you know that? What’s this all about, huh?”

“Clover, I don’t want you to think I’m
prying —
”

“You’re not the prying kind,” Clover said, picking up her chopsticks. “You never were.”

“I guess I have a particular reason for asking about you and Anton. If you object, I’ll retreat. Fools rush in …”

A warm smile from Clover when their eyes met. “I never thought of you as a fool either. Nor do I think you’re concerned about my rashness, that you’re going to advise me to think twice before I go on with this, this relationship, as you called it.”

She popped a morsel of crisped pork in her mouth. “What’s beginning to occur to me,” she went on, “is that
you’re
stewing about something. Something outside of me but in some way bearing on me and Anton. So it seems to be my turn now. Is Carl involved with someone else, Chris?”

She put up a quick hand. “You don’t have to answer that. I only asked it because it seemed a possible reason for you to bring Anton into the conversation so persistently.”

“No reason you shouldn’t ask. And no, Carl’s not up to any hankypanky. At least I see no indication of it.”

“Oh, well, then. Let me take my foot out of my mouth.”

That tactful look on Clover’s face. She doesn’t believe me, Christine thought. Or at best there’s a doubt in her mind. “Don’t you adore these roasted walnuts?” Clover murmured. “I could eat them till they came out of my ears.”

“Yes, they’re great,” Christine agreed, and took the plunge. “It’s I who’s involved with someone,” she said, out of a need to exempt Carl from censure. There, she had spilled the beans, and was neither glad nor sorry she had. Clover didn’t turn a hair, she was pleased to see. Her friend just looked back at her, no change of expression: she might have been informing Clover that she had bought new dining room pieces.

“I didn’t mean to tell anyone,” she said quickly. “Or maybe I did. Maybe that’s the reason I wanted to be with you today.”

Clover’s chopsticks were arrested in midair. “Oh?” she finally said. “But why me, Chris? You’ve always been closer to Ruth.”

“That’s a question of neighborhoods, Ruth and I live practically on each other’s doorsteps. Anyway, I wouldn’t tell Ruth. I’ve only told you because I feel I might learn something from you. About — well, to put it bluntly, an unorthodox — ”

She forked up some sweet and sour pork, put it in her mouth, chewed and swallowed. “Oh, God, this isn’t working.”

“Now, come on,” Clover said, in the tones of a patient piano teacher. “Take your time, feel your way. We’re old friends, let’s rap without confusion or embarrassment. Tell me anything or ask me anything. What are friends for? My life is the proverbial open book. I’ve never been one to conceal things. Go ahead and say whatever you’ve a mind to say.”

She snickered. “We never used to be this reticent, did we? Staggering into work, discussing abortive love affairs. Gee, you’re white as a sheet, what’s wrong? I’ve got the curse, these cramps are killing me. Or jamming into the John to plot mayhem against the boss. Remember that bastard Tully? We all hated his guts, he was really a rotten man, and then he got Julie Johns knocked up and he was canned. Oh, joy in the morning! We all went out to lunch at Reidy’s and came back bombed.”

“Ah yes, I remember it well. He always had it in for us because we never gave him a tumble. He had this insane impression he was God’s gift to girls.”

“Then
continuez
, as my French teacher at P.S. whatever-it-was used to say. So you’re getting it on with someone else, Chris. I say that flippantly because, well — ”

“The trouble is it’s not that. Getting it on. That’s the catch.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s more than that. I could handle it if it were just
that
.”

“Oh. I suppose I understand.”

“It’s more like something I didn’t bargain for. Not that I bargained for any of it. I never went looking. I never wanted to go looking. I wasn’t missing anything. Or at least so I thought. Anyway, it’s not what I want to talk about. I don’t want to be shriven. I’m in something deeper than I should be and I can’t just say from one day to the next, cut it out, Christine, you’re a naughty girl. I’ve presented myself with a problem and I’ve presented someone else with a problem. It’s there and it’s not going to go away.”

She leaned forward. “I wanted, you know, to hear how it is with Anton and you. You’ve so often said, and without bile, that he’ll never leave his wife.”

“I don’t want him to. If he did that might mean he’d leave me some day. Or no, that isn’t really what I mean. It would make him not the man he is, the man I love and honor. I’d like it if she died, but it isn’t all that important. I’m just as happy with the way things are. I love him, he loves me, who’d want better?”

“I used to think getting married was the answer to everything. Yes, I did. I didn’t break my neck trying to land someone, but I did think it was what you were supposed to do. A husband and children. A
normal
life. Sometimes — well lately, I’ve thought it was exactly the trap the feminists say it is. It doesn’t seem to be the answer.”

“The answer? Answer to what?” Clover cried. “Like the old joke.
Religion’s the answer, but what’s the question?
There are answers to arithmetical questions, I grant you. Otherwise it’s feeling around in the dark. What did I find this time? A treasure hunt. Maybe you come up with a guy who says let’s get married and you get married. The altar, a husband, then cloning yourself. Okay, but what question is that an answer to? You’re in this alone, why kid yourself. Who’s going to stop the pain when you have pain? Maybe the doctor, or at least he has some means to make an attempt, but hell, you’re the one with the pain, and if you’re terminal you’re terminal all by yourself, loved ones notwithstanding, they can’t will good health to come to you. You’ve got children and I don’t, but that’s of relatively short duration because one of these days there ain’t no children anymore, they’re out and away and you’re a little bit older, with no one to make chicken soup for anymore.”

“Don’t rub it in,” Christine said wryly. “I’ve been through all that in my mind. You’re doing it differently. I’m interested to hear how it works out
that
way.”

“Okay,” Clover said briskly. “Okay, maybe I’m a mutation from some women, though I do seem to be in fashion these days with my single-status shenanigans. I don’t know how to say it in any other way, Chris, but I’m very, very fulfilled and very, very content. That’s putting it, deliberately, in an unromanticized way, even clinically, no hyperbole. I don’t consider, however, that doing it
my
way means an answer to anything.”

She pulled out another cigarette, lit it. “It just so happened, Chris, that a fortunate thing happened on the way to my fortieth birthday. I met Anton. Nothing wrong before, I had no bones to pick with my lot. But then I did meet Anton, a man I love so much that I’d do anything, short of inflicting pain or torture on another person, to keep what I have and keep it until I die. Unfortunately Anton is
quite
a bit older, so it seems a vain hope. But I don’t want anything to change and I didn’t really mean it when I said I’d like for her to die. Even that isn’t so, because she’s such a big part of him, he’d be losing a hell of lot if she died; it would mean suffering for him and I don’t want him to suffer. He had his share of suffering, I’ve told you about that, the Third Reich and the way it touched him. Why should he lose her too?”

A speculative glance at Christine, a sip of her drink, some hesitation. Then she shrugged. “Chris, I don’t know how deeply you feel about — well, this man you said you were involved with. That’s as good a term for what we both mean as any, I suppose. Involved with. But you’re not a shallow woman and I suspect there are flies in the ointment, even if you do look so radiant, as we all remarked just recently.”

She threw down her chopsticks. “I’m finished and you’ve barely touched your lunch,” she said. “Why don’t you eat a little more? Come on, some more chicken.”

“No, I don’t think so. Not to worry, I’ve eaten plenty.”

“Let’s have cognac with our coffee, okay?”

“Yes, fine.”

She held up a hand, the waiter trotted over to take away their plates and she said, “A fine lunch, thank you very much. We’d like coffee now, please, and two cognacs.”

“Yes, madam.”

“Am I talking too much?” Clover asked when they were waiting for the coffee and liqueurs. “Too much and to no avail? Like, is this all just sound and fury, signifying nada?”

“You’re doing fine. Am I being a bore?”

“Never that. Well, here’s our coffee, the cognacs. How about it, let’s drink to you, Chris. And to your peace of mind.”

“Many thanks.”

They sipped. “Do you want to talk now?” Clover suggested.

“No. Except — well, the man I told you about is younger. A lot younger.”

“You’re
very
fond of him….”

“Much too much, I’m afraid.”

“I see. Younger then. Well, don’t be afraid of younger, Chris. It’s older that’s a worry.”

There was a little silence. Then, “Are you thinking of divorce?” Clover asked.

“Oh, my God, no!”

“But you don’t want to give up this other man.”

“No, I don’t.”

“So you’re on the horns of a dilemma.”

“And to add to the absurdity, his being so young — ”

“Oh, Chris. I’d make a Faustian pact to have myself older than Anton. God, would II” She gestured helplessly. “Or at least both of us the same age, instead of — ”

Draining her glass, she set it back on the table with a small bang, shaking her head. “Because, you see, I’ll lose him. Chris, he’s almost sixty. He’s fifty-six — my father died when he was fifty-eight. I always have that in my mind. And then where’ll I be? Not young, not old. I’ll never settle for a lesser man, Anton’s a
mensch
. I’d die before I let another man touch me.”

She pushed her glass back. “I’d like another, but I don’t intend to join the Swill Club,” she confided. “But you go ahead if you care to.”

“No. This is fine.”

“I had a dream the other night,” Clover announced with a reflective smile. “Some dream, I woke up shaking. I was going to Anton’s funeral. Which was ridiculous to begin with because naturally I wouldn’t be invited to the proceedings, being ‘the other woman.’ Anyway, he died, and there was this funeral, a cemetery, you know, with those ornate white burial grounds benches, and the mounds and the headstones, and all the people stifling their weeping. Hushed voices, solemnity and the sun shining like crazy. I went up to the gravesite, this big, empty rectangle in the ground and the coffin there beside it covered with flowers. There I stood. They were going to put him in there, in that cavern in the earth, and leave him there after shoveling in the dirt and — ”

She frowned. “It was so damned real. I guess I think about it more than I want to, when It really could happen. I stood there, looking down at the place they’d made for Anton to lie eternally in, and I was saying — I kid you not — I was saying, ‘Duncan is in his grave: After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.’”

She pulled a cigarette out of Christine’s pack. “Christ, you’d think I’d remember to bring my own smokes,” she said apologetically. “I don’t usually do this. I’ve finished the whole pack, almost.”

“Don’t be a nut. Clover, you must stop worrying about his age! He’s in the prime of life, for heaven’s sake.”

“A little too prime to suit me, kiddo.” A sheepish grin. “It doesn’t show, maybe, but I’m a worrier at heart. I guess that’s why I seize on things like Old James and Lang’s bracing postulations. It’s mostly about small things. I’m always afraid when I have my period that I’ll get up out of a chair with a spot of blood on my dress. Things like that. So it stands to reason when I have something important on my mind I’ll worry about that too. Only more. I only cited that dumb dream because you said he — whoever he is — is younger than you. So long as he’s of voting age I wouldn’t consider it a drawback. Far from it.”

She reached for Christine’s hand. “By the way, your secret’s safe with me. You must know that or you wouldn’t have confided. I’ll be thinking of you, Chris, wishing you well. I don’t have to tell you how to conduct your life, nor would I presume to. You’re an intelligent woman, you’ll manage all right.”

“Thanks, Clover. Really thanks. I appreciate your patience and forbearance and understanding. And I never doubted for a minute that my secret would be safe with you.”

So Clover loved Anton that much, she was thinking, her mind reaching back to their earlier days, when they had been friends among other friends in a more irresponsible era, when they were young, really young, with nothing to dwell on except dates and fun and that occasional raise to boost their take-home pay. In the meantime life had touched them, left its marks, and today Clover Martinson, who had found happiness, dreamed of losing it. They sat now, certainly better dressed and probably better looking, in Sheila Chang’s, making their own separate peace with what had happened to them and what was going to happen.

And of course they parted, after paying the check, just about the way they had met, casual and smiling, with promises to do this again sometime soon. It really had been so damned much fun. Clover walked off, in her stunning skirt with the matching silk pullover, in one direction and Christine in another.

She walked slowly, strolling really, looking into shop windows and thinking of Clover. What Clover had told her and what she had told Clover. I love her, she thought. More than I ever did, and I hope he fools her and lives to be ninety.

Nancy returned to the city two weeks before Labor Day, brown as a coffee bean and looking taller. “I am,” she stated. “Grew almost an inch. Oh, I hope I’ll be one of those statuesque amazons who dazzle the bejeezus out of lesser mortals. What do you think, Mother?”

“I’m tall, your father’s tall, your brother’s tall. Why shouldn’t you be too?” I’m sure you will, Nancy and if that’s what you want I hope it will be so.”

“You’re not tall!”

“I’m five six, what do you mean that’s not tall?”

“Oh,
no
, I mean like five
eleven
.”

“How many men are you going to find who are five eleven? Look around you, women are climbing up there, men are staying much the same.”

“I don’t care about
that
.”

“Since when didn’t you care about gents?”

“I didn’t mean that, I just meant — anyway, yes, I grew, and I’ll need some clothes for school. A lot of the stuff will be too skimpy from last year.”

“Okay, what do we have to fill in on?”

“I’ve got a list. I’ll have to try on things in my closet, see what’s still suitable. So. Yes, now I made this list, but it’s possible
nothing
I have will do, except for around the house. I can’t tell until I find that out.”

“Let me see that list.”

Scanning it, Christine frowned. “It seems to me you’ve got everything possible itemized here. What more would you need besides this? As it is it will cost a fortune.”

“Are we suddenly poor?”

“Nancy! I didn’t say we couldn’t afford this — or whatever else — but for heaven’s sake you’ve put down everything but the kitchen sink. Sweaters, blouses, pullovers, slacks, shoes, boots. A jacket or two — I see you’ve got a question mark next to that.”

“I may want to invest in more than one or two. It all depends on how I decide to coordinate things.”

“Very well — besides these things, what possible other accoutrements could you have in mind?”

“You can’t really know until you go through the stores!” She got that snide look on her face. “Are you going to tell me that when you were my age you — ”

“No, I have no intention of doing that, if you don’t mind, don’t put words into my mouth.” She handed back the list. “I’d like to say, though, that it offends me to hear you use phrases like ‘are we suddenly poor.’ It offends me for your sake. It makes you sound like some petulant brat who’s a Dorian Gray at heart. Spoiled and vain and haughty. It’s not one bit becoming, it sounds like ‘let the servants do that, we don’t have to dirty our hands.’ That’s not the way we are, Nancy, it’s not the way I want you to be.”

“Why should you make a federal case out of a perfectly simple
remark?
In the first place we don’t have servants.”

“I won’t say anymore. Your behavior is your business, you’re old enough to know what you want to be like. And what you want to sound like to other people. Very well, about these things. We can knock this off in no time. A day should do for the bulk of it, the rest can take care of itself a bit at a time. Like the tops, the pants too. You can fill in nicely as you go along, you’ll certainly see things during the school term, right? Tomorrow we’ll go to Bloomie’s and you’ll see, most of it will be accomplished.”

“I fail to see
how
. What’s the hurry? There’s two whole weeks before school starts.”

“Not quite that. But Nancy, surely I shouldn’t have to point out that I have a million other things to attend to? Your father has needs too.
Our
vacation. I can’t be expected to outfit the whole family at the very last minute.”

“But you’ve had the whole summer!”

“So have you, may I remind you. You can’t mean to say that Amy and her mother didn’t go shopping for Amy’s school things? Why couldn’t you have done the same?”

“I don’t have a charge card. Do I have a charge card?”

“You could have phoned me and we would have arranged something. Two short letters from you all summer, and not a word to Bruce, not so much as a post card.”

“I’m sure a postcard would have sent him into the stratosphere. A post card from Sis — now I can die happy.”

“Let’s skip the irony. Make me a copy of that list.”

“How about xeroxing it in triplicate? Then we can frame one of them.”

“Just what we need to hang over the fireplace.”

“What fireplace?”

“The one we don’t have. You be ready at nine-thirty sharp tomorrow morning, we’ll be there when the store opens.”

“Am I permitted to have breakfast first?”

“If you can fit it in. Come on, honey, we’ll have a good time buying lovely things and the sooner we leave the house the better. No reason in the world why we can’t do just about all of it tomorrow.”

“In one
day
?”

“Why not, I know every nook and cranny of that store.” She smiled hearteningly. “And so do you. I still don’t see why you couldn’t have had fun with Amy buying things in Northampton, they have such lovely shops there.”

“I didn’t go to Massachusetts to spend my time in stores.” She cast a cold eye on her mother. “You sound as if you were peeved with me for being away and having a good time. Which is grossly unjust. You were tickled pink to get me out of the city during the long hot summer. Now you’re throwing a fit.”

“Oh, jump in the lake, darling,” Christine said pleasantly, which was something of an effort. “Don’t worry, everything you need will simply appear on the racks before our very eyes, and we’ll come home staggering under the weight of your loot.”

“I’m terribly sorry to be such a bother,” Nancy said with exaggerated politeness. “Forgive me for-”

“Honey, will you please go and
unpack
?”

“Just one thing more. Not that I begrudge you and Daddy your European trip, did I ever? But I assure you it’s no big uplift being left with Mrs. Chamberlain to preside over this happy little household. She has her TV blaring every night in that den and I’m sure flakes off when you’re away, like the hell with the baseboards. I just thought you ought to know that.”

“Maybe it’s a kind of vacation for Mrs. Chamberlain too.”

“You can say that again, and in spades.”

Nancy, flouncing out: please God give me strength, Christine thought, on edge. Why couldn’t they be easy with each other, easy
on
each other. Nancy was back and it was like having another woman in the house, a steely, determined woman whose aim was to take over the whole kit and kaboodle, like a rival, or a Mormon second wife, an
ambitious
second wife.

You’re being unfair, a voice inside her warned, You’re in favor of abdicating a mother’s responsibility because you’re up to your neck in forbidden pleasures. And you’re frantic because September the twentieth is just around the corner, and you haven’t said a word to Jack about your vacation. Now it is time to prepare him and you are in a flap about it.

I won’t take it out on Nancy, she thought contritely. Nancy needed love more than she cared to admit. She had always been a defiant little thing, difficult to cuddle: she had, in a way, been born old. Everyone needed love, though, people like Nancy — who held affection at arm’s length — needed it perhaps far more than those who accepted it easily, without question. I’ll make her a whopping dinner, Christine decided. Let’s see, Nancy was a sucker for slaughter-in-the-pan, so how about that?

Not that the name of the dish could be found in any cookbook: Carl had coined it, with one of his dry smiles. It was apt enough, because it was a succulent, runny affair, one of her specialties and a fair amount of work. It was pork chops, center cut, apples, small new potatoes, onion slices, done in a roasting pan and swimming in a rich dark gravy.

She looked in on Nancy, to tell her what they were having for dinner, soon gave that idea up. Nancy, whose bag was opened but still crammed with the clothes of her summer holiday, lay sprawled on the bed, on the phone and laughing into it, clad only in a bra and panties that were little more than a wisp of nothing, long, nut-brown legs scissored, magnificent young torso without a blemish.

Did I really make this beautiful creature? Christine thought, dazzled. Did I actually really create this perfect specimen? How could you not be aburst with pride about such an achievement? She left the doorway with a glow inside her, smiling with pleasure. Okay, she’d just surprise Nance with the special dinner when it came time. Nancy would be on the phone for a while, there would be a half dozen other calls after this one as Nancy caught up with the summer activities of her friends and brought them up to date on her own.

She went out and bought pork chops.

It was a good dinner. Nancy, without access to junk food, (Mrs. Longworth was a stickler for health items, had things like dulse and bean sprouts for nibbles and noshes) seemed starved, and asked for a third helping. A big success, Christine thought contentedly as she watched her daughter stuff herself, looking so well and happy, summer-tanned and my goodness, so much taller!

“Nice to have you back, chicken,” Carl said, reaching over for Nancy’s hand.

“Yes, and to
be
back, Daddy. Mid pleasures and palaces, there’s no place like the old homestead.”

“That’s my girl.”

“Ugh. I’m sodden with food. I ate too much. Or as some would say I et too much. Pork’s got to be the best. Now I must go on an anorexia kick. If I want to be like the wand I want to be like.”

“Thank God there’s a doctor in the house,” Carl murmured.

“I’m at a dangerous age, just the time when you have to begin counting calories. After all that I’m scared to get on the scales.”

Bruce, as always, helped with the clearing up, then stacked things in the washer as Christine rinsed them. “Are you sorry your summer job’s over?” she asked him.

“Yes. I really am. I did dig it. Getting wages, too. I should have done it before, other summers.”

“You were too young.”

“I’ll miss the guys.”

“Bruce, what do
you
need for school?”

“Don’t worry about that. Sometime this next week I’ll go foraging, now I’m not tied down anymore. There’s not too much, I know just about what’s lacking in my dandy’s wardrobe.”

“Shall I go with you?”

“Why should you worry your pretty little head? It would only be a drag for you, I have everything pretty well settled in my mind, what I need.”

The washer was filled, the door closed and Christine turned the ON dial. “That’s it, Brucey, thanks.”

He put his arms around her. “When I get married, will you teach my wife to make slaughter-in-the-pan?”

“Oh, Bruce, I can’t imagine you married! Gone away …”

“I’ll be gone away next year,” he reminded her.

“Yes, but not forever. Married’s a different can of worms. Me a mother-in-law. I suppose she’ll hate me.”

“She’ll probably side with you against
me
. Since it happens to be about ten years away let’s not malign the poor thing, whoever she may turn out to be. A lot of water has to go under the bridge before then. A lot of grind too, you betcha. You finished in here?”

“Just about.”

“The roasting pan?”

“Let it soak. I’m not going to tackle
that
tonight. I’ll just tidy up a little more in here. Go along, get started on whatever you’re doing tonight. And thanks, love.”

She was just about to snap out the light, after putting away unused napkins and inserting a fresh roll of paper towels in the rack when the swinging doors opened. It was Carl.

“What?” she asked. “A glass of water?”

“No, I — ” He regarded her, a kind of quizzical regard. She was rubbing Keri lotion into her hands, thinking of nothing in particular. She wriggled her fingers idly: she had used too much of the lotion, it was slow to absorb into the skin.

“Anything on TV?” she asked abstractedly, and he moved a little nearer. “I just thought,” he said, “that after all it’s Nancy’s first day back home, did you have to light into her?”

Her eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”

“She said you’re upset about some things she needs for school. She said — ”

“
When
did she say?” Christine demanded, her jaw set. “And why? Does she report every conversation she and I have? Who am I, Jean Valjean? And you Inspector Javert?”

His jaw fell open. You read in books that someone’s jaw falls open. It was true, sometimes people’s jaws did fall open. He looked at her as if she were a species he had heretofore not encountered. And a mean, sadistic little thrill ran through her.

“Oh,” she said. “Of course. Talking above your head again. I can’t seem to remember, for the life of me, that you couldn’t possibly know what I’m talking about nine-tenths of the time. You’ve never read
Les Miserables
, have you? How could you be expected to? What room could you make for literature, or music, or any of the fine arts in a mind filled with locomotor ataxia and lupus erythematosis and glomerula nephritis?”

Her hands, on which the lotion was fully dry now, waved in the air, as if she were conducting an orchestra. She was doing that because they were shaking so: she was absolutely furious with him.
Nancy said, Nancy said
. And she had made Nancy’s very favorite meal, painstakingly cutting up apples, slicing onions, peeling potatoes, slaving over the gravy, with the heat from the oven beading her forehead. And he came in here and —

“All she said was — Chris, what’s the beef? God, honey, she had a good time and then you light into her …”

Little red dots danced in front of her eyes. “Work it off,” she said between her teeth. “Don’t talk to me about lighting into anyone. She’s my daughter too, so butt out. Keep your sophomoric little grievances to yourself. You want to do something constructive? Just work it off, whatever’s eating you, scrub that roasting pan, that ought to keep you busy and out of mischief for a while.”

“Now wait,” he said, his own jaw extending. “I want to know what all this is about.”

“What’s it about? What it’s about is if you don’t appreciate me maybe some men would,” she flung at him. “Why don’t you put
that
in your pipe and smoke it? And when you’re finished washing that roasting pan it belongs in the lower cupboard. See? Right down there. Have fun.”