Full Circle (4 page)

“What did she say?” Jean looked at him with wide, terrified eyes. She was thirty years old now. She wanted security, stability, not a clandestine affair for the rest of her life. But she had never objected to their life because she knew how desperately ill Marie Durning was, and how it worried him. But only the week before he had been talking about marriage to Jean. He looked at her now with a bleak expression she had never seen before, as though he had no hope left, no dreams.

“She said that if she can't come home to us, she'll try to commit suicide again.”

“But she can't do that to you. She can't keep threatening you for the rest of your life.” Jean wanted to scream, and the bitch of it was that Marie could threaten, and did. She came home three months after that, with only a tenuous grip on her own sanity. She was back at the hospital by Christmas that year, home by spring, and this time she held out until fall, and began drinking heavily over bridge lunches with her friends. All in all it went on for more than seven years.

When she came out of the hospital the first time, Arthur was so upset that he actually asked Jean to help her out. “She's so helpless, you don't understand … she's nothing like you, sweetheart. She can't cope … she can barely think.” And for love of Arthur, Jean found herself in the unenviable position of being the mistress caring for the wife. She spent two or three days a week, during the day, in Greenwich with her, trying to help her run the house. Marie was desperately afraid of the help; they all knew that she drank. And so did her kids. At first they seemed to view her with despair, and eventually with scorn. It was Ann who hated her most, Billy who cried when she got drunk. It was a nightmarish scene, and just like Arthur, within a few months, Jean was trapped. She couldn't let her down, let her go … it would have been like deserting her parents. It was as though this time she could make things happen right. Even though, in the end, Marie came to an almost identical end as Jean's parents. She was going to meet Arthur in town for a night at the ballet, and Jean swore that she was sober when she left, at least she thought she was, but she must have had a bottle with her. She spun out on an icy patch on the Merritt Parkway halfway to New York, and died instantly.

They were both still grateful that Marie never knew of their affair, and the agony of it all was that Jean had been fond of her. She had cried at the funeral more than the children had, and it had taken her weeks to be willing to spend a night with Arthur again. Their affair had gone on for eight years, and now he was afraid of what his children would say. “In any case, I've got to wait a year.” She didn't disagree with that, and anyway he spent a great deal of time with her. He was thoughtful and attentive. She had never had any complaints. But it was important to her that Tana not suspect their long-standing affair but finally a year after Marie died, she turned and accused Jean.

“I'm not stupid, you know, Mom. I know what's going on.” She was as long and lanky and beautiful as Andy had been, and she had the same mischievous light in her eyes, as though she were always about to laugh, but not this time. She had hurt for too long, and her eyes almost steamed as she glared at Jean. “He treats you like dirt and he has for years. Why doesn't he marry you instead of sneaking in and out of here in the middle of the night?” Jean had slapped her for that, but Tana didn't care. There had been too many Thanksgivings they spent alone, too many Christmases with expensive boxes from fabulous stores, but no one but the two of them there, while he went to the country club with his friends. Even the year that Ann and Billy were gone with their grandparents. “He's never here when it counts! Don't you see that, Mom?” Huge tears had rolled down her cheeks as she sobbed and Jean had had to turn away. Her voice was hoarse as she tried to answer for him.

“That's not true.” “Yes, it is. He always leaves you alone. And he treats you like the maid. You run his house, drive his kids around, and he gives you diamond watches and gold bracelets and briefcases and purses and perfume, and so what? Where is
he?
That's what counts, isn't it?” What could she say? Deny the truth to her own child? It broke her heart to realize how much Tana had seen.

“He's doing what he has to do.”

“No, he's not. He's doing what he wants to do.” She was very perceptive for a girl of fifteen. “He wants to be in Greenwich with all his friends, go to Bal Harbour in the summer, and Palm Beach in the winter, and when he goes to Dallas on business, he takes you. But does he ever take you to Palm Beach? Does he ever invite us? Does he ever let Ann and Billy see how much you mean to him? No. He just sneaks out of here so I won't know what's going on, well I do … dammit … I do.…” Her whole body shook with rage. She had seen the pain in Jean's eyes too often over the years, and she was frighteningly close to the truth, as Jean knew. The truth was that their arrangement was comfortable for him, and he wasn't strong enough to swim upstream against his children. He was terrified of what his own children would think of the affair with Jean. He was a dynamo in business, but he couldn't fight the same wars at home. He had never had the courage to call Marie's bluff and simply walk out, he had catered to her alcoholic whims right till the end. And now he was doing the same with his kids. But Jean had her own worries too. She didn't like what Tana had said to her, and she tried to talk to Arthur about it that night, but he brushed her off with a tired smile. He had had a hard day, and Ann was giving him some trouble.

“They all have their own ideas at that age. Hell, look at mine.” Billy was seventeen, and had been picked up on drunk driving charges twice that year, and Ann had just gotten kicked out of her sophomore year at Wellesley, at nineteen. She wanted to go to Europe with her friends, while Arthur wanted her to spend some time at home. Jean had even tried to take her to lunch to reason with her, but she had brushed Jean off, and told her that she'd get what she wanted out of Daddy by the end of the year.

And true to her word, she did. She spent the following summer in the South of France, and picked up a thirty-seven-year-old French playboy, whom she married in Rome. She got pregnant, lost the child, and returned to New York with dark circles under her eyes and a penchant for pills. Her marriage had made the international press, of course, and Arthur had been sick about it when he met the “young man.” It had cost him a fortune to buy him off, but he had, and he left Ann in Palm Beach to “recuperate” as he said to her, but she seemed to get into plenty of trouble there, carousing all night with boys her own age, or their fathers if she had the chance. She was a racy one, in ways of which Jean did not approve, but she was twenty-one now, and there was little Arthur could do. She had gotten an enormous trust from her mother's estate, and she had the funds she needed now to run wild. She was back in Europe, raising hell, before she was twenty-two. And the only thing that cheered Arthur a little bit was that Billy had managed to stay in Princeton that year in spite of several near fatal scrapes he'd been in.

“I must say, they don't give one much peace of mind, do they, love?” They had quiet evenings together in Greenwich now, but most nights she insisted on driving home, no matter how late she got in. His children were no longer there, but she still had Tana at home, and Jean wouldn't dream of staying out for the night unless Tana was at a friend's, or skiing for a weekend somewhere. There were certain standards she expected to maintain, and it touched him about her. “You know, in the end they do what they want anyway, Jean. No matter how good an example you set.” It was true in a way, but he didn't fight her very hard. He was used to spending his nights alone now, and it made it more of a treat when they awoke side by side. There was very little passion left in what they shared. But it was comfortable for them both, particularly for him. She didn't ask him for more than he was willing to give, and he knew how grateful she was for all that he had done for her over the years. He had given her a security she might never have had without him, a wonderful job, a good school for her child, and little extras whenever he could, trips, jewels, furs. They were minor extravagances to him, and though Jean Roberts was still a wizard with a needle and thread, she no longer had to upholster her own furniture or make their own clothes, thanks to him. There was a cleaning woman who came twice a week, a comfortable roof over their heads, and Arthur knew that she loved him. He loved her too, but he was set in his ways, and neither of them had mentioned marriage in years. There was no reason to now. Their children were almost grown, he was fifty-four years old, his empire was doing well, and Jean was still attractive and fairly young, although there had been a matronly look to her now for the past several years. He liked her that way, though, and it seemed hard to believe that it had been twelve years. She had just turned forty that spring. And he had taken her to Paris for the week. It was almost like a dream. She brought back dozens of tiny treasures for Tana, and enchanted her with endless tales, including that of her birthday dinner at Maxim's. It was always sad coming home after trips like that, waking up in bed alone again, reaching out to him in the night and finding no one there, but she had lived that way for so long that it no longer bothered her, or at least she pretended that to herself, and after her outbreak three years before, Tana had never accused her again. She had been ashamed of herself afterwards. Her mother had always been so good to her. “I just want the best for you … that's all … I want you to be happy … not to be alone all the time.…”

“I'm not, sweetheart,” tears had filled Jean's eyes, “I have you.”

“That's not the same.” She had clung to her mother then, and the forbidden subject had not come up again. But there was no warmth lost between Arthur and Tana when they met, which always upset Jean. Actually, it would have been harder on her if he'd insisted on marrying her after all, because of the way Tana felt about him. She felt that he had used her mother for the past dozen years, and given nothing in exchange.

“How can you say that? We owe him so much!” She remembered the apartment beneath the elevated train, which Tana did not, the meager checks, the nights she couldn't even afford to feed the child meat, or when she bought lamb chops or a little steak for her and ate macaroni herself for three or four days.

“What do we owe him? A deal on this apartment? So what? You work, you could get us an apartment like this, Mom. You could do a whole lot of things for us without him.” But Jean was never as sure. She would have been frightened to leave him now, frightened not to work for Durning International, not to be at his right hand, not to have the apartment, the job, the security that she always knew was there … the car he replaced every two years so that she could go back and forth to Greenwich with ease. Originally, it had been a station wagon so that she could car pool his kids. The last two had been smaller though, pretty little Mercedes sedans he bought and replaced for her. And it wasn't as though she cared about the expensive gifts, there was more to it than that, much, much more. There was something about knowing that Arthur was there for her, if she needed him. It would have terrified her not to have that, and they had been together for so long now. No matter what Tana thought, she couldn't have given that up.

“And what happens when he dies?” Tana had been blunt with her once. “You're all alone with no job, nothing. If he loves you, why doesn't he marry you, Mom?”

“I suppose we're comfortable like this.”

Tana's eyes were big and green and hard, as Andy's had been when he disagreed with her. “That's not good enough. He owes you more than that, Mom. It's so damn easy for him.”

“It's easy for me, too, Tan.” She hadn't been able to argue with her that night. “I don't have to get used to anyone's quirks. I live the way I please. I make my own rules. And when I want, he takes me to Paris or London, or L.A. It's not such a bad life.” They both knew it wasn't entirely true, but there was no changing it now. They were set in their ways, both of them. And as she tidied the papers on her desk, she suddenly sensed him in the room. Somehow, she always knew when he was there, as though years ago, someone had planted a radar in her heart, designed to locate only him. He had walked silently into her office, not far from his own, and was looking at her, as she glanced up and saw him standing there.

“Hello,” she smiled the smile that only they had been sharing for more than twelve years, and it felt like sunshine in his heart as he looked at her. “How was your day?”

“Better now.” He hadn't seen her since noon, which was unusual for them. They seemed to touch base half a dozen times during the afternoons, met for coffee each morning, and often he took her to lunch with him. There had been gossip on and off over the years, particularly right after Marie Durning died, but eventually it had died down, and people just assumed they were friends, or if they were lovers, it was both discreet and dead-end, so no one bothered to talk about them anymore. He sat in his favorite comfortable chair across from her desk and lit his pipe. It was a smell she had come to love as part of him for more than a decade, and it pervaded all the rooms in which he lived, including her own bedroom with the East River view. “How about spending the day in Greenwich with me tomorrow, Jean? Why don't we both play hookie for a change?” It was rare for him to do that, but he'd been pushing very hard on a merger for the past seven weeks, and she thought the day off would do him good, and wished he would do things like that more frequently. But now she smiled at him regretfully.

“I wish I could. Tomorrow's our big day.” He often forgot things like that. But she didn't really expect him to remember Tana's graduation day. He looked blankly at her and she smiled as she said the single word. “Tana.”

“Oh, of course,” he waved the pipe and frowned as he laughed at her, “how stupid of me. It's a good thing you haven't depended on me the way I have on you, or you'd be in trouble most of the time.”

“I doubt that.” She smiled lovingly at him, and something very comfortable passed between them again. It was almost as though they no longer needed words. And in spite of the things Tana had said over the years, Jean Roberts needed nothing more than she had. As she sat there with the man she had loved for so long, she felt totally fulfilled.