The Best of Everything (17 page)

you as a little boy and it makes me want to cry. I hate and despise people who are mean to children,"

"So do I. I never slapped my little girl, I never even raised my voice to her. I didn't even want to. That was one of the things my wife and I used to battle about; she wanted to crack the baby a lick or two and I wouldn't let her. So now she has full custody and Vm the unfit drunken father." There was no bitterness in his tone and no self-pity, only that same perceptive matter-of-factness he had when he spoke of any of the things that were so important to himself or to Caroline.

The calmness in his voice moved Caroline more than any emotion could have. She was filled with feelings toward him: pity, love, tenderness, remorse. For the fibrst time she felt the loneliness in this man and, even more, the softness. He had always been gentle, but he had been gentle and strong, the leader and instructor. Suddenly there was only one thing she wanted to say to him.

"I'll get you a drink," he said. "Don't you want one? In any case, I do." He rose to his knees, starting to stand up, and Caroline was instantly on her knees in front of him, facing him with her hands touching his shoulders.

"Please, please sleep with me," she said.

He covered her hands with his own and tenderly took them down from where they were holding his shoulders. "No, darling."

"I'm asking you, you're not asking me."

Tou're a virgin. Stay that way."

"I always wanted my first love aflFair to happen spontaneously," Caroline said. "If you're going to argue with me, then it won't be spontaneous and you'll ruin it."

He looked at her for a long time without speaking. "If someone has to be the first," he said finally, "then at least it will be someone who loves you. Come on." He took her hand and lifted her to her feet.

They ran down the hill toward the clubhouse, holding hands, not speaking but looking at each other every now and then and smiling. He squeezed her hand reassuringly and she could feel the blood pounding in her ears. "I'U call a cab from the clubhouse," he said. "I don't have a car, do you?"

"No."

They skirted a group of softball players, and Caroline recognized

Brenda in a too-tight white jersey and a baseball player's cap tilted over one eye. She was playing second base and she looked very tough. The boy who dehvered Caroline's mail in the morning was up at bat. In the group that was gathered around to cheer, Caroline saw Mary Agnes and April's friend, Barbara Lemont. The happy cries and noises of the watchers and the players seemed very far away, like voices heard through a glass window. She felt completely out of it, a part of her own httle world and this thing that was about to happen to her, and for once she was glad to be separated from the people she knew and the things that mattered to them, things which at this moment did not seem to matter at all.

Mike went to the telephone booth behind the bar in the clubhouse, and Caroline waited for him in the cool, darkened room. Chairs were pushed against the tables and a clock ticked loudly. The club was almost deserted by its members today because of the onslaught of Fabian employees. In the gloom at the far end of the room Caroline heard the murmur of voices and saw a tall shape dressed in white and a smaller shape behind it. She recognized April, with a young man Caroline had never seen before. It seemed very important that April not turn around and notice her. Caroline tapped on the glass of the telephone booth and Mike opened the door.

She squeezed into the booth beside him. He replaced the receiver. "He'll be here in five minutes," he said, and kissed her on the temple. "We'll go to your apartment. If you change your mind along the way I'll take you to a bar."

She put her arms around his neck and he kissed her, this time really, for the first time. He stroked her shoulder blades and back and kissed her again. She loved him for saying that to her, for giving her the last-minute power of choice, and because he had she knew she would not change her mind.

On their way back to New York in the taxi neither of them spoke. They held hands and looked at each other, each in his own thoughts and finding no need for words. Now that she had decided, Caroline felt very close to him. She had a sense of unreality, and the countryside going past the taxi seemed a mass of green streaks. She was scarcely aware of the breeze blowing on her face from the open windows or of the bumps and jolts. When they reached her house she stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs while Mike paid the cab driver. Her house looked different to her, perhaps because she had

never been outside it on a weekday noon. The Chinese laundiy was closed for a two-week summer vacation and it was very quiet without the steam and the noise. There were two women sitting on the bottom step with baby carriages drawn up in front of them. She glanced at them and for an instant she felt a pang of unhappiness, for no reason she could mention. Then Mike walked quickly up behind her and took her arm and they climbed the stairs.

The apartment was dark and cool, with the shades drawn against the sun. He did not grab for her or kiss her immediately, for which she was grateful, but instead looked around the apartment, which he had never seen before.

^t's a nice apartment," he said.

"Would you like a drink?"

Til make you one." He went to the little metal bar in the comer and poured whisky into two glasses, and carried them into the kitchen. She could hear him taking ice cubes out of the ice tray in the refrigerator.

He came out of the kitchen and they sat together on the edge of one of the studio couches sipping at their drinks. "Is this one your bed?" he asked.

"Yes."

'I've tried to picture it many times."

"Now you know."

"A httle, narrow single bed." He smiled. "It's just as I imagined it."

"I ought to change the sheets. I hadn't planned on this. . . ."

"Don't. Do you think I'd mind the sheets you've slept in?"

They finished their drinks and put the glasses on the floor beside the studio couch. She was suddenly taken with fright, a last-minute resistance to the giving of self, a desire for one moment of privacy and self-communication. "I'm going to the ladies' room," she murmured, standing.

She went into the bathroom and shut the door but did not lock it, afraid that he would hear the cHck of the lock and know that she was frightened. She sat on the edge of the bathtub and put her forehead against the cool white porcelain of the sink. Would he be disappointed when he saw her naked, would he think she was flat chested, would he think she was too thin? Her hands and her thighs were trembling, and yet she had never felt less in her life like making love. She felt as though she had made a bargain, and there was

no backing out, not because he would not forgive her but because she would not forgive herself.

Oh, my God, she thought. I wish I had married Eddie. Why am I here instead of married to Eddie? It's unfair. And then she thought. You fool. You love Mike and you want him. Grow up.

She stood up and opened the door and went slowly into the living room where Mike was waiting for her. He had taken ofiF the bedspread and folded it neatly at the foot of the other studio couch. When she saw the white sheets she felt more natural about the whole thing. He had taken off his jacket and tie but was otherwise fully dressed. He was standing with his back to the window, silhouetted against the dimness, and her heart was beating so violently she could scarcely see him.

"Do you have a suntan yet, darling?" he said in a pleasant, conversational tone.

She nodded.

"Show me your suntan."

Slightly deployed, she slipped the straps of her dress off her shoulders. He put his arms around her and kissed the white marks where the straps had been, and then his lips moved to her throat and then to her lips. She stood for a moment rigidly in his arms, and then passion moved her and she felt warmed and pliable and full of feeling. She wound her arms around his neck like some sinuous plant and opened her mouth for his kisses, feeling as though she would like to be welded to him forever.

He moved away from her then and she heard the faint rustle of cloth as he dropped his clothes on the floor. She was afraid to open her eyes for a second and then she did and she was not disappointed. She closed her eyes again, as if tliat would somehow make her invisible, and slipped out of her dress and crinoline and underpants and kicked off her shoes, standing tliere in front of him with nothing on at all and clenching her fists so that she would not do something stupid like hold her hands in front of herself.

"How beautiful you are," he said.

She opened her eyes. "You don't think I'm flat chested?"

"You have just enough."

He took her hand and led her to the bed and they lay there together with their arms around each other, still kissing. She realized with a start of pleasure that she had forgotten what a man's skin felt

like, and yet, Mike's was different than Eddie's, he had more hair on his chest. What a marvelous feeling this sHght roughness was, better than silk, better than clean sheets, better than anything she could think of.

He began to kiss her body then and she allowed him to do any-tliing he wanted to, not moving, not touching him except to keep her fingers gently on the back of his neck as long as she could.

"Hold me," he said.

She did.

"Now," he said. It was not a question or a command but simply a statement that it was time for the mystery to be ended and the deeper, newer mystery to be revealed. She closed her eyes and waited, feeling her whole body waiting, at the edge of passion.

She had not believed anything could hurt so much. It was as if he were trying to drive a spike through a solid wall of flesh. Involuntarily she gave a cry.

"I'm hurting you. I'll stop."

"No."

She gasped with the pain and she knew that he heard her but she could not help it. Suddenly there was nothing there to hurt her, nothing, and he was holding her in his arms with his face buried against her neck.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"It's all right, it's all right," she whispered over and over again. 'Tm glad you stopped." But she wasn't glad he had stopped and she knew that he knew it.

"It'll be all right in a minute or two," she said, and reached out for him. Then she knew it would not.

"I couldn't bear to hurt you," he said.

She kissed him on the corner of his mouth very softly, the way he used to kiss her. 'Men are comphcated, aren't they?" she said.

He laughed a little, a laugh with not much humor in it. "Yes."

He got up then and went into tlie bathroom and Caroline pushed the pillow to the head of the bed and leaned against it, hugging her knees. She looked at her knee and then she put her tongue out and licked it, tasting it. It tasted shghtly salty, the taste of flesh, of a body. She felt very sensual, and strange.

Was she a virgin or wasn't she? He had been inside her, she didn't know how far, and so she wasn't a virgin. But he had only done it

for a moment, and had not completed the act, so perhaps she still was. She could never ask him; it would kill him. But was she?

And what had happened to her? This great act, this crossing of a threshold into womanhood—it was nothing, nothing. Was that all there was to it? And yet, she felt difiFerent. She was a woman, she knew she was a woman now because she knew the answer to the mystery that had seemed so comphcated and yet was so very simple. She would never wonder again, and so she was a woman. She had left the continent of girls for another world. She might look for better lovers, she might look for ecstasy, but she would be searching for it as a woman searches. Now that the mystery was solved she knew it would never be so difficult to go to bed with a man again. How strange—she felt ten years older.

Mike came out of the bathroom and began to put on his clothes. "Come on," he said, "I know a nice place where we can have lunch. You must be starved, it's two o'clock."

She dressed, and they did not look at each other. When they went downstairs into the hot, quiet street she took hold of his hand, but it was as a friend, and without desire. She wondered if she would ever desire him again.

He whistled for a taxi and helped her in, and they rolled down the windows and joked and laughed together and he lighted a cigarette for himself and one for her. How strange, she thought, that this virile, sophisticated man could change so much, in just the kind of situation one would think would be his forte. She knew then that the old wives' tales are sometimes true, that absolute iimocence is its own protection—but only with certain people.

Chapter 8

Change in a person's character structure is slow and almost imperceptible, and although many people look back and say. This was tlie day that changed my life, they are never wholly right. The day you choose one college instead of another, or decide not to go to college at all, the day you take one job instead of another because

you cannot wait, the day you meet someone you later love—all are days that lead to change, but none of them are decisive because the choice itself is the unconscious product of days that have gone before. So when April Morrison, looking back, said, "The day of the Fabian oflBce party in 1952 was the day that changed my life," she was wrong. The day she cut her hair because she wanted to look like Caroline Bender, the day she decided to give up her career on the stage and work at Fabian, the day she saw her first movie and dreamed of New York—all were days that changed her life, and if it had not been for all of them she would never have become involved with Dexter Key.

The Hudson View Country Club was like nothing April had ever seen before. As soon as the rest of the employees were safely involved in Softball games and rapid drinking April wandered off by herself and began to look aroimd. There was the swimming pool, the largest she had ever seen, and the water was actually tm-quoise. She lifted a handful of it to see if it were really that color or if turquoise was the color of the bottom of the pool itself, but no, it was turquoise water, it really was. Around the pool were little tables with brightly striped umbrellas over them, and white jacketed waiters were setting out a buffet lunch on the longest table she had seen since her sister's wedding. There were the dressing rooms where the Fabian employees would later put on their bathing suits, and over there on that hill was the clubhouse. The Fabian people were not invited to go into the clubhouse, but they had not been warned to stay out either, and April decided to give herself the unguided tour.