The Best of Everything (50 page)

friends but he always seemed a litde superior about them, as if he were sorry for them.

"She just doesn't want to settle down," he would say about April, as if she were a giddy debutante. "I don't know if one man could ever make her happy. She gets tired of them so quickly."

Gets tired of them? Caroline would think, remembering Dexter. Or just can't handle them? She remembered a conversation she had had with April one weekend that summer, a frightening conversation and one that had made her surprised and sad. It had been a hot night in June, and she and April had been sitting in her back yard in the dark with the porch lights turned out so as not to attract mosquitoes and a small citronella candle burning in a glass on the grass beside them. It was very still. Through the back windows Caroline could see the maid drying the last of the dinner dishes and through the side windows of the house next door she could see the images on a television screen. She had not had a serious talk with April for a long time.

"When I remember myself as I used to be when I first came to New York," April said, "I just can't believe it. What an innocent I was! Remember when I was planning to marry Dexter?"

"Yes," Caroline said.

"I even tried on wedding dresses."

"I know . • ."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course," Caroline said.

"Do you sleep with Paul?"

"Paul? No. My goodness, no."

"Doesn't he want to?"

"I don't know," Caroline said thoughtfully. "I suppose he must, in a way. But in a stronger way he doesn't."

"He wants to marry you, doesn't he?" April said.

"I'm pretty sure he does."

"Do you think you would marry him?"

"I don't know," Caroline said wistfully. "I don't think I ever could."

"Because of Eddie?"

Caroline thought for a moment. "No. I can't spend my whole life in mourning for Eddie. I wouldn't marry Paul because of Paul, no one else."

"You can't spend your whole life in mourning," April repeated sadly.

"I meant that for you too."

"I know." April sighed. "It's not that I don't think I'll ever find another love, I know that's not true. It's just that the way I felt about Dexter, the things I did, the fool I made of myself—I can't forget that. I don't think I ever will forget it. It hurts me now to think of it."

"Anyone has a right to make a fool of herself if she's really in love," Caroline said. "There aren't any laws. But you have to realize everyone else does it too, and forgive yourself. That is a law."

"Whose law?"

"Caroline's law," Caroline said.

"Do you really believe that?" April asked softly.

"I have to. I try to, that is."

"You were in love with Mike Rice for a while," April said, "weren't you?"

"Yes. In a way."

"Do you know what Dexter said to me?" April said. "It was the last time I ever spoke to him, that night when I went to his parents' house and tried to get him back. The last words I ever said to him were: 'Dexter, I'll always love you, as long as I live.'" Her voice was so low Caroline could hardly hear it, but clear and sad, like the voice of a child making a confession. "And Dexter said to me: 'No you won't.'"

"He's more experienced than you were," Caroline said. "Maybe he knew."

"That was the night I made that terrible scene," April said. "I cried and cried. I didn't have any pride at all."

"Girls do that," Caroline said. "Maybe I would have made a scene with Eddie if he had told me goodbye instead of writing to me about it."

"And then I started going out with aU those other boys," April said. "Do you remember Chet?"

"Yes . . ."

They were silent, each thinking thoughts tliat existed only in the dark of night when they were alone, or alone with a friend who was close and dear. Caroline could hear the crickets chirping in the grass. "WiU you tell me something?" April said.

"Mm-hm."

"I'll tell you if you tell me. We'll count to three and then show each other how many fingers. Then neither of us will have to say it."

"Say what?"

"How many boys we've each slept with."

It was strange, here in the dark where she and April could barely make out each other's faces Caroline was not in the least embarrassed. She felt sorry for April, though, because April's voice was so young and clear and quiet and because she knew April's love afltairs must be bothering her very much to make her bring them up in this way, to have company, to have an understanding friend, to make her feel less alone.

"All right," Caroline said.

Each put a hand behind her back, in a fist. Caroline put out one finger from her fist, for Mike Rice. "Ready?"

"One, two, three, go!"

They held out their fingers in the light from the citronella candle. Caroline held out one finger. April held out four. Neither of them said anything for a moment.

"Oh, I feel terrible," April said softly. Then she smiled. "Who was yours?"

"Mike."

"Really? I kind of thought it was."

"Who were yours?"

"Dexter," April said. She took a deep breath. "And Chet, you know him. And . . . Tom Ranks, that boy who used to fly me to Long Island in his private plane. And Tom's friend Walter, the one who was producing that oflF-Rroadway play. I only did it once with him, one night when I couldn't get away from him any longer. Oh!" She put her hands over her mouth, and her eyes above them looked pained and terrified. "Oh! I forgot someone!"

"You forgot . . ."

"I must have wanted to put it out of my mind, I forgot it completely. Jeffrey. He was a friend of Chet's. I remember it all now, it was New Year's Eve." Her voice was frightened. "That makes five."

"It's all right," Caroline said, "it's all right."

"I forgot," April said. "How could I forget? It must have been

such a dreadful experience. I just forgot it. I remember now . . . he went right to my in-the-wall bed. He knew just where the bed was. I remember I was so embarrassed. Oh, Caroline . . ."

"It's all over," Caroline said. "It was a long time ago. Six months." "How could I ever have forgotten a thing like that?" We've all changed, Caroline thought that night, and later in the oflBce she thought it again. Two and a half years, more than half of a college education. It's inevitable that something must happen. She was sorry for April, and she wondered whether or not she should also be sorry for herself. Certainly she herself could not go back either, but would she want to? She was still the same girl Mike Rice had described two years before, sitting on the rock between two decisions of two different ways of living, but now life and the things that had happened to her had emphasized those differences. Nothing was simple any more, not belief, not satisfaction. Even month by month she was more unsatisfied, wanting more out of her career, wanting to get ahead, to make more money, to have more responsibilities and to be recognized. It was the same with people. She would never again be awed and frightened by a Mr. Shalimar, but on the other hand she would never be romantically impressed by a Bermuda Schwartz. It was like taking taxis. At sixteen if a boy took her from one place to another in a taxi she had been impressed by the lux-uriousness and sophistication of it, but two years later if he wanted to go by bus instead of a cab she had been vaguely annoyed. It's easy to see what's happened to April, Caroline thought, but can anyone see what's happened to me? What's happened to me is invisible, but so is a pane of glass, and if you try to break through it you get hurt.

Mr. Shalimar had received two post cards from Miss Farrow, one from California and one from Hawaii where she was vacationing. His secretary brought them around from desk to desk to show the girls, as if all of them had once been very fond of Miss Farrow and would be glad to know that she remembered them. It was a kind of sorority, with admission assured only after you had gone. Now that Miss Farrow was no longer there to make everyone feel uncomfortable she was actually spoken of with affection. It amazed Caroline. Mary Agnes and Brenda were also members in absentia; Brenda had handed in her resignation

on her first day of morning sickness and Mary Agnes had continued at her desk until the end of her sixth month of pregnancy. No one had ever heard from Brenda again, although the girls who had been there as long as Caroline and April still spoke of her on occasion, with amusement. Remember Brenda, they would say, the girl who had her teeth pulled out when she got engaged? As for Mary Agnes, she was given a baby shower on the day she left, and when her son was born she sent a tiny blue announcement depicting a stork carrying a bundle, to be passed around among her friends at the office. And one day at the end of July she appeared.

"Hi," she called. "Anybody home?"

"Well, if it isn't Mary Alice!" said Mr. Shalimar heartily. He hadn't really known her too well.

Mary Agnes was wearing a ratlier matronly-looking navy-blue dress but otherwise had changed not at all. She was as thin as ever, and Caroline remembered that Mary Agnes had been the only girl she had ever seen who had actually looked flat chested in a maternity dress.

"How are you, Caroline?" Mary Agnes asked, looking around Caroline's office appraisingly. "Anything new?"

Caroline tried to think of something Mary Agnes might find exciting. "I'm going to meet John Cassaro on Friday," she said. "We want to try to have him endorse a book he's going to star in for the movies. Then we'll run a band with the endorsement on it across the front cover."

"He's in New York?" Mary Agnes said.

"He lives here, you know, when he's not making pictures," Caroline said.

"No kidding. I always liked him." Mary Agnes lowered her voice as if she were going to say something scandalous. "You know, you don't usually think of a comedian as sexy, but I always thought he was the sexiest thing alive."

"You and a million other girls," Caroline said, smiling.

"Well," Mary Agnes said briskly, and broke into a huge smile. "Look what I've got!"

She opened her purse and took out a white paper envelope, and from it she took a sheaf of snapshots. "Here's my baby!"

Caroline took the offered pictures with a mixture of interest

and apprehension. One was always obliged to sigh and chuckle over the beauty of every single baby picture, no matter how many, and no matter how unattractive, and she had always found it rather embarrassing. But Mary Agnes' baby was a pretty one, from what Caroline could see of the round little face, round little eyes, and frilly bonnet, and so it was easy to cry, "Oh, how cute!" over the first four or five nearly identical snapshots and cluck over the rest.

"Those are the latest," Mary Agnes said proudly, tucking them back into her purse.

"They're darling."

"He drinks his whole bottle. He's a regular little glutton."

Caroline smiled.

"I knew you'd want to see them. He's so good. He sleeps the whole night through already, except for his ten-o'clock feeding."

"That's wonderful."

"I didn't mind getting up, though. It's so hot in the summer I hardly sleep anyway. We've got an air conditioner in the baby's room and next week we're going to put one in ours. A cousin of Bill's knows someone who can get it wholesale."

Caroline nodded.

"Who do you think he looks like?"

"Who?"

"The baby. Who else?"

"I think he looks like you," CaroUne said. She'd already forgotten what the baby looked like.

"Really? I'm flattered. Most people think he looks like Bill's father. Of course, you don't know Bill's father. But that's who he looks like. Except around the eyes. He's got my eyes."

"That must have been what I was thinking of," Caroline said.

"Well, I'm going to go show April. I bet she's dying to see the pictures. Where is she? I couldn't find her."

"Down the hall and turn to your left," Caroline said. "She has her own office now. She's been promoted to doing publicity."

"That's nice."

"Would you like some books before you go?"

"Books?" Mary Agnes said. "I don't know. Have you got anything good?"

Caroline gestured to the bookcase. "Take anything you want."

Mary Agnes glanced at the bookcase without moving. "Oh, I don't think so. Thanks just the same. Well, I'll be seeing you. So

long-"

"Goodbye," Caroline said. "Thanks for showing me the pictures."

"You're welcome."

When Mary Agnes had gone triumphantly down the hall to find April, Caroline felt relieved because she had a great deal of work to do, and then suddenly she found herself filled with an emotion which she could only recognize as envy. Mary Agnes knew what she was going to do tonight; she was going to be home with her husband and baby. She would not go to an empty apartment and wait for the telephone to ring, and put a few records on the phonograph (not sad ones, because they would be dangerous) and feed the cat, and finally make a sandwich because it seemed silly to cook and set the table for oneself. Perhaps, if she thought about it at all, Mary Agnes might have a fleeting stab of envy for Caroline, because Caroline would be eating an expensive lunch at Moriarity's with an author, and because on Friday she would be meeting Mary Agnes' favorite movie star. But at the time she would be thinking of Caroline and John Cassaro, Mary Agnes would be sitting in front of her television set, with her husband, in a home, and John Cassaro would be an image on a screen for a moment, someone who did not really quite exist except in daydreams. "Caroline is lucky," Mary Agnes might say to Bill, "she has such an interesting job." And she might even turn to him and ask, "Do you think I'm boring, honey?" But she wouldn't mean it for an instant, and her husband wouldn't even know what she was talking about. Boring? Half of his heart, the woman he loved? How could she be boring? Was life boring, was breathing boring, was serenity and calm and hope for the future dull?

I could have all that, Caroline thought, with Paul. But then she knew she couldn't. She was not Mary Agnes and she never had been. Was it because she was now more demanding and hved at a more acute level of awareness, or because she was simply not in love? A person was good and kind and steadfast and perfectly presentable, and yet for some perverse reason you could not love him in return. Although Paul did not know it, it was as distiubing to her as it must have been to him. But I'm going to meet John Cassaro. Her heart turned over like an adolescent's. She had liked John Cassaro ever