The Best of Everything (62 page)

"What?" she asked vaguely.

"New Year's Eve again. We can't escape it. We'll share all our old regrets together."

"Oh, Paul," Caroline said gently, "I haven't even thought about New Year's Eve. I've been so busy—my work and . . . friends from out of town. I don't even know where I'll be on New Year's Eve."

"With me, I hope," Paul said.

"Could you . . . call me next week? I can't talk to you any more now."

"Oh," Paul said, as if he had just figured out the answer to the problem that was puzzling him and now he felt secure again. "Your date is there."

"Yes," Caroline said.

"All right. I'll call you at the beginning of the week. Save New Year's Eve and one evening before, too, so I can give you your Christmas present."

"Yes." Caroline said. "I'll speak to you later. Goodbye."

"Goodbye, butterfly."

By the time she had replaced the receiver and walked across the room Caroline had forgotten Paul Landis' existence. As she dressed she pretended that this was really Eddie's home, and that he was coming home to her. And then she no longer had to pretend. It was true. When he rang the doorbell a little after eleven she ran to open the door. "Hello, darling."

Eddie stood in the doorway for an instant, dark spots on his lapels and shoulders where raindrops had fallen. "It's raining," he said. "I don't want to get anything wet." He wiped his shoes on the mat.

"It's all right, it doesn't matter." She took his hand and led him into the apartment.

"What did you do tonight?" he asked, taking ofiF his coat.

"I don't remember," she said happily. "Nothing much. Waited for you." He sat on the studio couch and took hold of her hand. "Do you want to go out somewhere?"

She shook her head. "I don't care. Do you?"

"No. I want to be alone with you. I don't want to sit in bars."

"Do you want some coffee?"

"No, thank you." He had a rueful half-smile on his face. "The strangest thing happened tonight. I was talking to my father after dinner, just the two of us, having a drink together in the living room,

and he said, 'Eddie, are things any better with you and Helen?' I said, 'What do you mean?' And he said, *I could tell when we came to visit you last summer. I didn't want to say anything then, but I knew something was wrong.'"

"And what did you say?" Caroline asked softly.

Eddie shrugged. "I said everything was fine, of course."

Tou did?"

"I had to. I don't want to hurt any more people than I have to. This thing is between us, darling; I'm not going to involve my father."

"I suppose you're right."

"But he knew," Eddie said. "I can't fool my father. You know how smart he is. He just looked at me and said, 'I hope so.' That was all. But the way he said it I knew that he wasn't fooled."

"It is strange," Caroline said. "Other people worrying about your life, thinking about it, and never really able to help."

"He said something about you, too."

"About me!"

"He said, 'Remember Caroline Bender?' And I said, 'Yes.' And then he said the strangest thing of all. It nearly knocked me oflF my feet. He was turning his whisky glass around in his hand and staring at it like an antique appraiser, and he said, without even looking at me, 'Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if you'd married her.'" '

"Oh . . ."

"I said, 'So do I.' And that was all."

"So do I," Caroline said softly. "I wonder about it all the time. No, that's not quite right. I don't wonder. I know."

"You and I are married," Eddie said. His voice was as soft as her own. "No two people could be more married in this world."

"No."

"I wanted to tell him about us. I wanted to, more than anything. But I couldn't."

"I know."

"I want to teU everybody."

"So do I," Caroline said. "I can't bear to talk to people who don't know about us, it's as if everything else is just hypocritical small talk."

Eddie smiled. "1 know."

"Hear the rain? It's really coming down now." They listened in silence for a moment to the sound of tlie rain pouring outside. "Outside there's rain, and people making conversation, and telephones ringing, and a great stream of people who see us and speak to us and don't know anything about what's happening to you and me. And here we are, a whole world of love right in one room."

"I know."

"Your hair isn't wet any more," Caroline said tenderly. "It's all dry now."

She stroked his hair and Eddie took her into his arms. For the first time she was really conscious of the feeling of his lips, so that she could remember them, gentle and soft and cool, and then warmer, and the skin of his face, smooth and cool and then warmer, familiar and remembered yet always new and a little surprising because try as she would she could never remember quite how pleasurable, how perfect, the feel of it really was. No matter how much she yearned for him when he was not there, when he was in her arms it was better, always better and always new. From the instant Eddie touched her and she touched him Caroline was no longer aware of the sound of the rain outside her window or of anything in the room. The lights were on, it was harsh and bright, but behind her closed eyelids she saw only a gold-streaked blackness, and when she opened her eyes she saw the beloved nearness of Eddie's face. When his gentle hands searched for the closing of her dress her own hands helped him, and when he slipped the dress away from her to the couch or wherever it drifted, she was conscious only of a feeling of freedom and relief not to be covered by all that unwieldy cloth. She could not be close enough to him, she held to him with her arms, hands, lips, knees, every part of her body that could be closer to his body so tliat they might dissolve together into perfect union.

"I love you, Caroline," he whispered.

"Eddie ... I love you, I love you."

Closer, closer, and nothing could be more natural. The great pleasure was love, that Eddie was with her in her arms, as close as anyone could be, and then there was another pleasure, the physical one, almost unbearable because her heart was so full of love for him. He was murmuring to her and she to him, words of tenderness and passion, hardly aware what the words were, aware only of theii" meaning, not knowing what they were doing except as a great and

consuming need to be closer and to give love and to share love, in every way.

They lay in each other's arms for a long time afterward, but neither of them mentioned what they had done. Caroline tliought vaguely of saying something, but she did not want to spoil it with words, for what was there to say? She only knew that she was happy, and that she loved him more than ever, and that she had never felt so imited with anyone before, in all her life.

He drew away from her finally and sat up. "When does your roommate come back?"

"Who?"

"The actress."

Caroline smiled. "Oh, Eddie ... I forgot she existed. She'll be back any minute. What time is it?"

He was still wearing his wristwatch. "Nearly one o'clock."

"Oh, then we have time."

Eddie was dressing quickly, she had never seen anyone dress so fast. "Get dressed, darling, hurry up," he said.

Caroline could hardly even think. She watched Eddie with her eyes, unmoving, and then finally, like a sleepwalker, stood up too and put on her dress over her skin and rolled up her underthings and petticoat and stockings and put them into one of her bureau drawers. She slipped her feet into her shoes.

"Now we're so respectable," Eddie said. He smiled at her. "I love that dress too, and I hardly had time to look at it. You look as if you're all ready to go to a party. Look at yourself." He took her hand and led her to the mirror that hung over her dresser and he stood there behind her, his arms crossed over her waist in front, resting his chin on the top of her head. Caroline put her hands over his. "I like the way we look together," Eddie said. "We look as if we were intended to be that way."

Caroline looked at their double reflection in the mirror. They looked like an old-fashioned daguerreotype—or, no, that was not quite it. She knew then what it was. They looked like a wedding picture.

When Gregg had come back and Eddie had left, Caroline lay in bed thinking of what had happened that evening. It seemed odd to be lying here on the same studio couch where she and Eddie had made love only a few hours before. It made her feel closer to him, as

if he were still here with her instead of in his hotel. She thought of their love-making with awe, remembering. I'm glad I waited for Eddie, Caroline thought. And then she thought of Mike Rice. But it didn't really happen with him, she reassured herself; it wasn't the same. He can't spoil it for me, I won't let anything spoil it. Eddie was my only lover, and he always will be. With Eddie it was diflEerent, there was no thought of pain or of fear, but only love and closeness. She could never have believed that something so important as sleeping with someone could be so natural. There was no word even to describe it except Love, "sleeping with" sounded so foolish.

She remembered the afternoon with Mike, long ago. It had been on this very same bed, and Caroline was sorry for that. She had thought of Eddie then, she had wanted it to be Eddie instead. But perhaps, she thought, if it hadn't been for Mike, I might never have had this night with Eddie, and I would have missed all that unshy and heartfelt giving. I wonder . . . But it didn't really matter why . . .

"Caroline!" Gregg whispered. "Are you asleep? Can you talk to me for a while?" Caroline kept her eyes shut and she could hear the rustle of small papers as Gregg put something on the coffee table between the two beds. She knew what Gregg wanted to have a long middle-of-the-night talk about: her latest discovery; and tonight again Caroline could not bear to listen. She was too full of her own happiness and she could not break the spell.

She saw Eddie the next morning and then on all through the weekend. The weekend was the best, because she did not have to go to the oflBce and they could have the entire day together. Eddie was always cautious about where he took her, he did not want anyone he knew to see the two of them together, and although it made Caroline feel a little resentful, she could not help but admit the logic of it. Scandal, any kind of scandal, was anathema to Eddie. In many little ways he seemed to have changed, or perhaps she saw him more clearly because she was older. He was imaginative and charming but he was conventional too, and conventional habits and appearances meant a great deal to him. Caroline was glad. At heart she was conventional too, affair with a married man or not. She could not even think of her affair with Eddie as "An Affair with a Married Man" except as a joke, because she knew it was different. It almost seemed more natural for her and Eddie to be together than it was

for him to be married to Helen. Caroline wanted nothing more than to be married to Eddie and to be conventional with him, to have young married couples for friends, to do the ordinary things that everyone else did and have fun doing it. She thought of Mike Rice once more during these happy days, and that was when she remembered his description of her as a little girl sitting on a rock between the call of two difFerent lives. She had wanted to be conventional, he had said, but with an unusual person. She could never be a Mary Agnes. But neither could she be a Gregg, and hiding in one tiny restaurant after another began to make her irritable.

"When do you have to go back?" she asked on Wednesday afternoon.

"Day after tomorrow. I have to be home on Christmas Day." She tried not to feel the pain his words called up, but it was difficult. Christmas: family time. Eddie had to be home in time for Christmas, not with her, but home. "You know," she said lightly, smiling at him, "it makes me feel sad when you say that. I wish you could be with me instead." "So do I."

"But you will be, next Christmas. I have that to look forward to anyway."

"Oh, Caroline . . ." He looked so sad, something seemed to have come over his face, draining it of color. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, and then he held it tightly. "What is it?"

He shook his head and did not answer. He only held her hand more tightly, as if he were in actual pain and having something to hold on to made him more able to bear it. She could not look at him that way, unhappy, different. She could almost feel his pain herself, as if bands were constricting her chest, making it difficult to breathe. "Dariing," she said again, "what is it? Don't look that way." She put her other hand on his wrist.

"When you touch me . . ." Eddie said. "You're the only girl in the world who can affect me that way. It's . . ." "I know . . ."

They were in a restaurant, finishing their coffee, and they stood simultaneously without another word, and Eddie helped Caroline to put on her coat. "I won't go back to the office this afternoon," she

said. They went out to the street, and found a taxi, and went directly to Eddie's rooms.

There was no other place she wanted to be but close to him, as close as possible. "Is this what a honeymoon is like?" she asked him afterward, laughing.

"I don't know," he answered. "Mine wasn't."

"Oh, Eddie . . ."

"Well, it wasn't. I don't know, we just didn't seem to have much to say to each other when we were alone together. I felt as if I had to try to think of things to say. I would never, never feel that way with you. I think of things I have to tell you even when I'm not with you."

"I'm the same!"

Twilight comes early at the end of December, and it was dark outside. "Let's just stay here all evening and have a sandwich or something sent in," Eddie said. "I can't move."

"I don't even want to move," Caroline said lovingly, "if it's anywhere away from you."

They had only one more day together, after tonight, and happy as she was Caroline knew they had to make some plans together, discuss some of what would happen in the next few weeks, even if it would be unpleasant. "Youll have to tell Helen," she said. "What will you tell her? Will you teU her about me?"

"She must never know about you," Eddie said firmly.