Love Always (26 page)

The waitress came to their table, smiling instead of asking if they wanted another drink.

“I don’t believe so,” Andrew said.

“I think I’ll have another,” Lillian said.

“Well, all right,” Andrew said. “Make it two.”

The waitress walked away, her skirt blowing in the breeze. The breeze lifted Lillian’s hair. She said, “I’m not sure we should get married.”

His face went blank. He jerked his head and snorted a little laugh. He looked at her for a couple of seconds. “You’re kidding,” he said.

“We didn’t get along very well in Iowa.”

“We got along in Iowa,” he said.

She looked at him. Her hair blew over her face, and she didn’t push it away.

“We were living in a tiny little house, and I was working night and day,” he said.

“I know, but that might have been romantic. We just fought all the time.”

“We didn’t fight all the time.”

“We fought a lot.”

He put his fingertips on the napkin—lightly, as if it were a Ouija board. He raised his hands, then clasped them and looked at her. She had seen lawyers do that on television, when they were puzzled.

“I think we look at life so differently,” she said.

“At this moment we certainly are looking at it differently,” he said. “I love you. Do you love me?”

“Yes,” she said, “but I don’t think that’s all we should think about. I don’t know how I’m going to fit into your life. I think that maybe you aren’t always realistic.”

“By realistic do you mean conservative? Backward thinking? Safe?”

“But you might let yourself in for a lot of disappointment if
you really have this image of us as Scott and Zelda, living it up in New York. I mean, I read that book you gave me. They were both outlaws from their own lives.”

“They didn’t fit into the slot they’d been assigned, if that’s what you mean.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean, they were actors. And they were so ambitious. You can’t think we’re anything like them.”

“He was very romantic, and he was a risk taker,” Andrew said. “Don’t you see me that way?”

She didn’t. But she wasn’t Zelda, and it seemed cruel to say that she thought there was a difference between being a romantic and being a dreamer. What F. Scott Fitzgerald had done was risky, and it was partly just his good luck that it worked out as well as it did for as long as it did.

“He was an alcoholic and he died young,” she said.

“You’re the one who ordered the second drink,” he said. “I didn’t say I thought I was a duplicate. I only said that we have a lot in common. I look on him as an inspiration.”

“But that’s the way things were years ago. It doesn’t mean so much anymore to have gone to Princeton. People don’t want to go to places like the Plaza now.”

“Walk into the Palm Court any afternoon at five o’clock, and you’ll find it packed with people,” he said. “Fashionable people.”

“Maybe we should talk about this later,” she said.

“You’re treating me the way Zelda treated him. He and I are both genuine romantics—that’s what’s so sad. That neither of you realize that we don’t have to be led around by the nose.”

“He’s dead,” Lillian said. “You talk like he’s a friend of yours.”

“I quite realize that he’s dead,” Andrew said.

The waitress brought their drinks. “I’m sorry it took so long,” she said.

She and Andrew reached for their drinks in unison, the way people on a lurching subway car reach for the strap.

“I can’t understand why you’re bringing this up,” he said.

“I think Zelda was shallow,” Lillian said. “She cared about
appearances, and money and success. I don’t like to be compared to her.”

“She was also quite adventurous and beautiful, and she wanted to have a good time. She was always up for things.”

“You’ve ignored all the bad things about her and blown her out of proportion.”

“Well,” he said, sipping his drink. “You know, most women complain that men don’t appreciate them. I think of the two of you as very attractive, interesting, unusual women. I think you should be glad that I feel that way.”

“You keep talking about both of them as if they’re still alive.”

“They’re very real to me, and in that sense they are alive.”

“If they were alive, they’d be different. They were our age years ago, when the world was different.”

“I’m telling you,” he said, “the Plaza hotel is crowded to this day. Brooke Shields goes to Princeton.”

It was so heartfelt that she caught herself before she laughed. She held her breath. She looked at him.

“Zelda was a bitch,” she said.

“Why is it that beautiful women never like other beautiful women?”

“I don’t think that’s true,” she said. “And if somebody’s a bitch, why should anyone like them?”

“I’ve never heard you talk like this.”

She shrugged. “You’re the one who’s always saying that everybody’s so complex,” she said. “According to you, everybody’s stuffed full of complexities, like toys hidden inside a piñata.”

He cocked his head. “What a brilliant simile,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I know what you’re doing,” he said. “You’re doing just what she did to him. You’re trying to excite me. There’s something sexual about it, at the same time that it’s cruel.”

“
I’m not her
,” Lillian said.

“You were playing a trick,” he said. He took a drink and looked out over the railing. The sky was bright: gray-blue, with only a few wisps of clouds. A sprinkler rotating in a wide
circle sent jets of water around the lower part of the lawn. A boy pedaled by on a bicycle.

“I met somebody on the plane,” she said.

He jerked his head around and looked at her. “What plane?” he said.

“The plane from Iowa to Boston.”

He continued to look at her.

“I did. I’m sure you’ve met people since you’ve known me that you’ve found attractive.”

“You’re putting me on,” he said.

“I’m not. I mean, I think it’s only normal. I met a man on the plane.”

“Does the story get any better than that?” he said, picking up his drink and taking a sip.

“I just thought I should tell you,” she said.

“Well, now you’ve told me.”

They sat in silence. The woman who had left to make the phone call returned, finally, and sank down in the chair, complaining that the line had been tied up all that time, and that no baby-sitter could possibly be talking on the phone and watching the baby at the same time. The little girl began to talk to her mother about buying a Walkman when they went to Burlington. “Stop nagging,” her father said, “or we’ll leave you with the baby-sitter next time.”

“Shall we go back to the Birches?” Andrew said.

“Why are you talking that way?” she said. “Why did you say, ‘Shall we go back?’ ”

“You now find everything about me questionable?”

“What are you going to do, punish me for being truthful?”

“You’ve had your way. It would be a little late to punish you.”

“Don’t make me feel bad,” she said. “What do you want me to do: hoard all my secrets?”

“Go right ahead,” he said, folding his hands again. “Fire away.”

“I was talking about honesty in general. I don’t have a list to recite, Andrew.”

“As you know,” he said, “I think that only simple people
with simple lives have simple secrets. And they’re usually in hospitals, being looked out for. I’m hardly shocked. I just wonder about your motivation.”

“You don’t want me to tell you when I’m confused?”

“As I said: Fire away.”

“I’m not a submarine.”

“You really are quite bright this evening,” he said.

“Maybe you should give me credit for having a brain. Not just for being a stand-in for Zelda Fitzgerald.”

“I do,” he said. “When you act like this, I see exactly what F. Scott Fitzgerald found so painful but so energizing at the same time. If you have any doubts, I can erase them.”

“Order another drink.”

“I’d rather go back.”

“I’m not going to make it a contest of wills,” she said. “If it’s so important to you to go back, we’ll go back. Do you mind getting the bill?”

“You get it,” he said. “Really put me down.”

“For one thing, Andrew, it’s not a put-down in 1984 if a woman picks up the check. You’ll have to think of something better.”

“I can think of something better,” he said. “Let’s go back to the Birches.”

She had a sudden image of the room: the wallpaper, the cherry writing desk with the straight-back chair facing the window. The postcard, envelope, and letter opener in the drawer. The big bed with the white spread, the inappropriately modern goose-neck lamps on the night tables.

“On the way back to Boston, huh? We had a fight, and you met a man on the plane.”

“Stop it,” she said.

“Come on,” he said. “I deserve it. Who am I but some unheard of writer. Don’t you wonder why I think I deserve you?”

“Stop it,” she said. “You’re embarrassing me.”

“I’m the one who should be embarrassed. I’m always telling you what’s going on below the surface, and I conveniently forget that you’re complex, like everybody else.”

She got the waitress’ eye and motioned for the bill.

“Put me down,” he said. “I deserve it. But I want you to know that I can prove myself to you.”

He was back to being F. Scott Fitzgerald, but suddenly it occurred to her that the routine had never quite been what she thought it was; he wanted to pretend that she was a bitch and
only
a bitch. Simple, like silly Zelda.

N
ICOLE
was sitting in the living room of Lucy’s house, discussing the future. Work was important to her. Work kept her centered. That was what she was telling Andrew Steinborn.

“What do you think?” Steinborn asked, moving the conversation away from her to Stephanie Sykes. “Does Stephanie feel a victim—does she realize that she’s living in that house because she’s useful? That in alleviating her suffering, Dr. Cora Cranston has mitigated her own, as well?”

“What does mitigated mean?” Nicole said.

“When something is made less,” Andrew said.

“I don’t really see it that way,” Nicole said. “She got picked up by the doctor, sure, but what does it matter that the doctor ends up happier and she ends up about the same? I guess it depends on whether you think doctors are more important people than the rest of the world, and saving one doctor is more important than saving an alcoholic.”

“But Stephanie Sykes has
depth
,” Andrew said. “You think her salvation is important, don’t you?”

“I guess so,” Nicole said, “but look—not everybody’s going to be saved.”

Andrew cocked his head.

“I haven’t read anything except the first two scripts,” she said. “I don’t really know how it’ll go this season.”

St. Francis ran down the stairs and stopped at the front door, whining. Nicole got up and took the sock out of his mouth and opened the door. He ran out onto the lawn and turned and barked. When he was sure that he had lost both the sock and Nicole’s attention, he stopped and walked over to his gully by the rhododendrons.

“Chain the dog,” Lucy called from upstairs.

“Excuse me,” Nicole said.

Andrew followed her outside. The day was bright and breezy. The dog raised his snout and sniffed the air. Lillian had decided to sleep late. Andrew sat on the lawn and bumped onto one hip, pulling a piece of grass and chewing it. Nicole came over to where he sat on the lawn and sat down beside him. He thought that he must have challenged her too much with his questions. It was important to let her know that he cared what she thought and that he was not particularly interested in what was scheduled to happen on the program.

“How do you get inside your character?” he said, starting over.

“Oh, that’s not hard,” Nicole said. “She’s young, so she’s pretty easy to figure out.”

“But you’re both fourteen, aren’t you?” Andrew said.

“Yeah, but I mean, she’s young. She hasn’t really hardened into being who she’s going to be, so I sort of approach her thinking that nothing I do can really be wrong, because she’s changeable, right?”

“Can you give me an example?” Andrew said.

“Well, like in the scene where she’s in the bathroom, and Cora Cranston discovers the lump on her breast? I mean, there’s only one way to react if you find a lump, but somebody like Stephanie, just watching, can really do any number of things. So I thought that at that point she’d really harden herself. I’d try to show her getting hard, because she has enough of her own pain, right?”

“So you see her as very self-protective?”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“Well, how do you get into that? I mean, as an actress, what thoughts go through your mind?”

“That there can’t be two people hogging the camera at the same time. I mean, if I had had more of a reaction than Pauline, I mean Dr. Cranston, that would have scooped her scene, and I didn’t really have the right to have the camera go to me, you know?”

“But leaving aside the technicalities of how the show is
filmed: it was a conscious decision to have your character freeze just then?”

“If I hadn’t decided it, Pauline would just have made a scene.”