Treasures (15 page)

They had begun afresh.

And then, on a fair Saturday afternoon in the following month, on her way home Connie entered Central Park near the Mall to enjoy the short remaining walk away from the traffic on the streets. The day was closing, perambulators, bicycles, and dog-walkers were all heading for home, but here and there in sheltered spots a few people still sat on benches in the warm sun. Connie was smiling; she felt the smile on her cheeks. What a wonderful city in all its variety! How wonderful to be young here, to have some money in one’s pocket, and to be able to buy such heavenly Chinese blue lamps as she had just found today!

This was the moment at which time was arrested, so that ever afterward she would associate those lamps with what she saw sometime between three-thirty and four o’clock. What she saw were two men on a bench, only partly hidden in a cluster of long-needled pines, two men in an embrace, arms encircling and lips joined.
… How disgusting, here without caring who saw, or perhaps so engrossed as to be unaware that people were able to see.… One of the men was Richard.

She froze. Her heart made such a frantic leap that for an instant she thought it would stop. But her legs kept moving. It was as if her legs knew enough to carry her away from there as fast as they could go. It was as if they understood that she must get home to shelter and safety. Get home. Get home.

Shut the door and sit down, still with coat on, sit gasping, numb. You tried, you did what you should. How could he have lied to you? Rotten. Rotten.

After a while she got up and made a cup of coffee. She was drinking it, warming her cold, shaking hands around the cup, when the key turned in the lock and Richard came in, looking as cheerful as always.

“How was your day? I had more to do at my desk than I’d thought, or I’d have been home by noon.”

“At your desk?” she said. “Try Central Park.”

He stared. “What do you mean?”

“Richard, I saw you, so don’t try to lie your way out. You’ve lied enough already.”

He looked away from her. A flush like a sore disease swept over his forehead and down to his collar.

“It wasn’t your first time, that night.” She waited and, as anger mounted, cried out fiercely, “Answer me! It wasn’t, was it?”

“Well, not quite. But truly, truly, there haven’t been a lot of times. I mean—”

He floundered. The strength drained from him. It was visible in the sag of his shoulders and the helpless droop
of his hands. And within Connie’s chest hung the heavy weight of disillusionment.

Her voice was thick in her throat. “I believed you. How could you have done this to me? To a person who trusted you?”

His reply was so low, so strained, that she barely heard it. “I guess—I guess I couldn’t help it. It just happens sometimes.”

“That’s all the explanation you can give me?”

He sighed and dropped down onto the other chair, facing her across the table.

She thought, what a waste! But he couldn’t help it, so it wasn’t his fault. Except for the outrage of the lies, from the very beginning.

“You should never have married me. Can you tell me why you did?”

“I wanted to love a woman,” he answered simply.

“It was an experiment, then? Some sort of therapy?”

“No. I can—I can do both.”

“You prefer that way, though.”

“I don’t know. But I loved you, Connie. I still do.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“Your beauty, your intelligence and curiosity, your drive that I don’t have. My spirit loves you, and my body does too.” At her scornful stare he insisted, “Yes, it does.”

Connie shook her head. Tears stung, but she did not want to let them fall. In crises one must keep one’s control. And this was crisis. This was the end of the road that had begun that morning when he had walked in,
sun-bronzed and tall in his tennis whites. Then a tear fell.

And Richard cried out, “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry, Connie! What can I do? Can I ask you again to give me another chance?”

She wiped the tear with the back of her hand. “It wouldn’t do any good. It wouldn’t work, and you know that well.”

“What then? Divorce?”

“I have no choice, the way things are.”

Divorce? And then? This misery would be over. But the friendly, everyday routines of life with him would be over too. Until that instant, in this tense and hopeless silence, she had not realized just how friendly, in spite of its disappointments, that life had been, with his comical anecdotes at supper, or their evening walks to window-shop or to see a foreign movie or to go dancing or just to sit reading together.

Presently Richard, clearing his throat, began with difficulty to speak.

“Whatever you do, whatever, just please … If there were some way my father could be kept from knowing your reason. I don’t think I could face that.”

“Do you mean that in this day and age he wouldn’t accept what you are?”

“Not everybody’s out of the closet, Connie.”

“And your mother?”

“If they had always known, maybe they’d be used to it by now. I don’t know.” He gave a weak, apologetic laugh. “But this would be quite a surprise, to say the least.”

The Grant Wood couple in front of their imposing house, faces without smiles, cold courtesy.

“Yes,” she said, “I can see. They’d take it out on you. They would.”

“I don’t know about ‘taking it out.’ Their silence can be rather awesome too.”

“Have you ever thought maybe that’s got something to do with the way you are?”

He became suddenly, ruefully defensive. “I’m happy. And I would have continued to be happy if you hadn’t seen me today. I’ve accepted the way I am, and I won’t fight it anymore.”

“You would have gone on doing this to me?”

“I said I was sorry, Connie.”

“All right, I won’t say anything to your parents, or to anyone except my brother. You can depend on my word.”

“I know I can.”

“Blame the divorce on me. They never liked me anyway, so they’ll no doubt be pleased.”

He did not deny it, but said only, “You can keep this apartment. It’s paid for, free and clear. It cleaned out almost all my cash. What’s left is invested with Eddy.”

This unexpected offer made Connie feel cheap, and guilty, too, as if he had read her mind and seen there how painful it could be to give up this home.

“I don’t want blood money,” she said stiffly.

“You won’t have to fight me for anything.”

“I don’t want to fight you at all, Richard. I just want to talk to Eddy. He’ll know what to do. Now I can’t talk anymore. I’m exhausted. Wrung out.”

• • •

“I’m in no mood for explanations or for commiserations from friends like Bitsy Maxwell,” Connie said. “They’ll all just have to wait. I’ll tell Lara myself, so don’t you tell her, Eddy. She’ll be heartbroken for me, but other people will ask only out of curiosity, you know that.”

They were in Eddy’s office, waiting for Richard to arrive. Laid in readiness on the otherwise immaculate desk was a tidy stack of papers like a white island on a mahogany sea; this was Richard’s portfolio of securities.

Now Richard entered. He had been sleeping for the last week at a hotel, or very likely had been lying awake there; gray pouches made semicircles beneath his eyes.

Eddy rose, offered his hand, and smiled. “Come in, Richard. I’m glad to see you, but awfully sorry about the reason.”

Connie twirled a ring around her little finger and did not look up. Richard, stifling a quiver in his throat, rushed to begin.

“I suppose Connie’s told you everything. I don’t know how you will regard me now, Eddy. This is hardly what you expected for your sister. I feel—”

“She’s told me. As to how I regard you—well, I’m not here to judge anything or anybody. All I can say is, people make mistakes. What can you do? You’re both decent and honorable, so there’s no reason why this business shouldn’t be agreeably settled. Those are my sentiments.”

He was in a hurry to finish this business as fast as possible. It was certainly not that he was wanting in
sympathy; it was precisely because he had so much of it that he shrank from contact with sadness; he must strike at the cause of sadness and eradicate it, accept the fact as accomplished and get down to practicalities.

“I never meant to cheat Connie. I realize now that I should have told her. It wasn’t honest.”

“Well, that’s water over the dam. The thing is now to look ahead. I’ve already put Connie in touch with a lawyer. I assume you have one too?”

“I don’t need one. I’ve told Connie I’ve no plan to fight her. She can have the apartment. She can have everything.”

It was painful to hear Richard sound so beaten. And Eddy saw by his sister’s woebegone expression that she was feeling the same pain. Then she spoke.

“I told you, Richard, that I don’t want to rob you. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“But you’ll take the apartment,” Eddy said quickly.

“What will I do with a lot of big, empty rooms?” Connie’s voice was bleak.

“They won’t be empty,” Richard said. “I’ll pay for everything we ordered.”

Eddy had a strange impulse. He wanted to cry out to Richard: Why are you so damned good? The world is contemptuous of such goodness! It’s weak, this goodness of yours. It would be easier for us if you’d put up a little fight for yourself. He looked at the man sitting uncomfortably and looking small—however could Richard manage to look small?—in the oxblood leather wing chair. Richard looked back with a faint, tentative smile, to which Eddy responded with compassion, until
abruptly there flashed into his mind a picture of two men in a bed, and he felt anger. He’d had no right to marry her, no right!

That this marrying business can end in such a mess was appalling. Connie, poor girl, had been in such a rush to get married too. Pam, now, was just the opposite, he reflected thankfully. A modern woman, she was happy enough to be on her own, earning her own few dollars, taking each day as she found it without anxiety. She was a perfect complement to himself—and not just sexually—because that was exactly his own style of living. He saw hardly any other women but her; rarely he found himself roped into a “date” by some business connection whom he did not want to offend by refusal, and he never liked the “dates” because, as he always put it, they usually had “marriage” beaming from their eyes.

Freedom. Freedom was the ticket, and no binding ties, only loose ones that can be dropped when the time for dropping comes. One had only to look at this poor pair of mismatched—

“As to alimony,” Richard was saying, addressing Eddy now, “well, you know what I own. I’ll make no trouble over any amount you think is justified. Just give me the figures. And remember, Connie’s got expensive tastes.”

“You make me feel disgusting when you talk like that!” Connie gasped. “We have no children and I don’t need alimony. Just make some sort of fair settlement.”

Eddy put up a hand before Richard could answer. “Enough. Enough. Let me settle this by saying there’s plenty for you both. Richard, your shelters got you a four-to-one write-off this year, remember? And they’ll
do the same next year. Connie, why don’t you read a magazine in the waiting room while we run over some figures? It won’t take all that long.”

Unable to concentrate on a page, Connie laid the magazine aside and allowed her mind to wander about among disconnected places and faces. The conclusion of the wandering was that you can depend on nothing. Why should Peg, still in her forties, have died of cancer? Why should Richard have turned out like this? The only thing you can depend on is money. That’s tangible. It doesn’t die young or disillusion you. Take care of it and it lasts. It’s there to keep you warm and safe and give you honor, besides. That girl at the reception desk thinks I don’t know that she’s looking me over, envying my mink and my alligator shoes. I used to do that, too, when I worked at Richard’s club; I used to see the rings on their hands when I gave out the menus. I know.… So I’m to have the apartment completed, warm and safe in spite of it all. Well, it could be worse, a lot worse. And it won’t ruin Richard.

The receptionist was speaking to her. “Mr. Osborne just buzzed. You can go back in.”

As she opened the door to the private office, Eddy’s cheerful voice rang out, too loud.

“I give her two years at the outside before she’ll be married again. And thank goodness you have no kids.”

Some six weeks later Connie stood on the sidewalk in the cold, white winter sunshine with a slip of paper in her hand. It’s not possible, she thought. Given the way I
lived with Richard and careful as I always was, especially after that awful night, how can this be? Yet there was no denying the fact. It must have been that weekend in the country.…

“You’re not happy about it,” the doctor had said, observing Connie’s face.

“My marriage just broke up. This is absurd. I can’t have a baby.”

The doctor, a quiet elderly woman, kept a neutral manner, saying calmly, “You mean you don’t want to.”

Although her mind was quite made up, Connie’s heart had begun to flutter in a small panic of its own.

“It’s nothing to look forward to, is it?” she said. “An abortion, I mean.”

“True enough,” the other woman said. “That’s why I told you to go home and think it over for a couple of days. No longer than that, though.”

“I don’t have to think it over. I’m not in a position to have a child. I don’t want it!” she cried, twisting her damp hands in the strap of her pocketbook. “I particularly don’t want this child. I wouldn’t welcome it, and would that be fair to it? Would it? I don’t even know where my own life is going, let alone somebody else’s life. No, no, I can’t.”

The doctor stood up. “Well, then, you can make your appointment at the desk. They’ll give you your instructions.”

So Connie folded the instruction sheet and started home. It was midafternoon, darkening, and children were being brought back from the park. Three baby carriages
passed on her block alone. A few months from now she could be pushing one too. It was unthinkable.

Her heart was still fluttering when she opened her apartment door. For a minute or two she stood still in the foyer and just looked around as if to orient herself. Then, still wearing her coat, she picked up the patient little dog and walked around the rooms.