“Darling, there’s no need for you to be there. It’d only make you miserable. I can handle it alone.” She kissed him. “Come to bed, dear. We don’t have to think about Ned any more tonight.”
When Andrew came out of the bathroom in his pajamas, she had turned off the light. He slipped into the bed with her. Instantly she moved close to him and put her arms around him.
“Now, Andy, the important thing. Tell me everything. We’ve got to get it right.”
Her lips were on his cheek. Her body, pressed against his, was warm, relaxed. None of the embarrassment he’d feared so much was there. As he held her in his arms, he found he could speak of everything, the anonymous letter, all his humiliating suspicions and insecurities, and in telling, in the sound of his voice murmuring close to her ear, a wonderful release started through him as the poison of months was drawn out drop by drop.
“When we come home late and you don’t …”
“Andy.”
“I could see myself. I could see it was a disease. I knew the letter was just some crazy crank. But when I’d call and you weren’t home, when you wouldn’t come to Norway …”
“You thought there was someone else? Oh, my darling, if only you’d spoken about it.”
“I was ashamed.”
“I’m the one who should be ashamed.”
“And tonight with Rosemary. And—and when you were on the phone …”
“To Gloria. Poor muddle-headed Gloria Leyden. Oh, Andy, I’ll know now. We’ll both know. And whenever, if ever, it happens again, we can handle it, can’t we? We can just look at each other and giggle it away.”
Andrew could feel her eyelashes fluttering against his cheek.
“And it’s my fault, darling—being so giddy, dashing about all over the place. It’s senseless, I know it is. But ever since we knew about not having a baby … It’s that. You know it is, don’t you?”
The marvelous sense of intimacy restored had reached its zenith, for after the day she’d come home from the doctor with the news that there were complications which made it highly dangerous for her to have a baby, Maureen had hardly mentioned the subject again. Andrew had tried to hide his own great disappointment, but she had handled it with such brittle imperturbability that he’d assumed it had been something less than a tragedy for her. There, without his suspecting it, had been yet another barrier of misunderstanding.
He brought his hand up to stroke her hair. “I never realized it was so bad for you too.”
“Bad? Oh, darling …”
“Maybe if you went back to Dr. Williams?”
“I did. Two months ago. I never told you. I wanted to put it all out of my mind.”
“Then why don’t we adopt a baby?” said Andrew, coming out with his secret wish.
“Adopt one?”
“Why not? I can start looking around tomorrow.”
“Oh, darling, soon perhaps. But not yet, not now. There’s so much else now …”
When they slept, it was in each other’s arms. At some time of the night Andrew awoke drowsily. It was the hour of the demons, the moment of ordeal, where, for months now, the fiends had come squeaking and jibbering. But this night Maureen’s head was resting on his chest; there was warmth, gentleness and peace, as if no sheath of skin existed between them, as if they were one organism, their blood coursing from the same heart. Andrew had got his manhood back.
“This is the happiest moment of my life,” he thought and went to sleep again.
In the morning Maureen was up before him. It hadn’t happened for weeks, not because Maureen was haphazard but because Andrew had insisted it was pointless. When he went into the living room, his breakfast was laid out on the coffee table. The mail was propped against the percolator. He opened it. There was nothing but circulars. He was glancing at an ardent plea to broaden his culture through book clubs when Maureen, in a white silk robe, came in from the kitchen with a plate of bacon and eggs. She slid onto the couch next to him and kissed him.
“Darling, you would rather I handled Rosemary alone, wouldn’t you?”
He had forgotten all about Ned and Rosemary.
“I don’t see why you should have to,” he said.
“No. It’s easier for Rosemary, I think, if it’s just girls together. I’ll call you at the office right after the lunch. Oh dear, it’s a bore, isn’t it? But it’s got to be done. Darling, don’t worry about Ned. You know he’ll have forgotten all about her in a week.”
When Andrew left, she went to the door with him. She clung to him, kissing him, as if he were about to take off for a submarine trip under the Arctic Circle. At the office, Miss Minter, bringing in his mail, said, “My, what’s with you today? Someone left you a million dollars?”
Around eleven, his mother called. “Andrew, some people, Hatchard or something, telephoned me. They want me and Lem for dinner on Saturday. Apparently Ned’s engaged to their daughter.”
“Well …” began Andrew.
“What do you mean—well? Either he’s engaged to her or he isn’t. It’s all very odd. They say they’ve met me. I don’t remember any Hatchards.”
“It’s Thatcher,” said Andrew.
“Whatever it is, I don’t remember. Are they well-to-do?”
“Multimillionaires, I believe.”
“Well, that’s a comfort. But I do wish Ned wasn’t so tiresome. I called him, but of course he doesn’t answer his phone. Andrew—explain it all to me.”
For once it was a relief to Andrew that his mother was so totally uninterested in anything that didn’t involve her. He was deliberately evasive, merely suggesting that the engagement and the dinner date were tentative and that she should wait for a confirmation. That more than satisfied her. He’d expected her to ask, as she usually did, what she should wear if she had to go to the Hatchards’, but instead, she said, “Oh, here’s Lem. He’s just got up. Poor darling, he had a terrible night. That wretched heart. Andrew, please don’t go on and on babbling. I really don’t have the time to listen to any more. Perhaps we’ll drop in this evening on our way to the Raffertys’. Yes, Lem, yes, darling, of course I’m coming.”
Because she’d called, Ned was back in Andrew’s thoughts. Now, in his new euphoria, he no longer felt the slightest resentment toward his brother. It was the touching moments of the night before which came back to him, Ned’s absurd effort to boost the beat-up blonde’s morale, his broken confession: “Rosemary’s my chance. I love her. I’ve got to marry her.” Wasn’t it possible that he had, after all, been telling the truth—his sort of truth? Wasn’t Ned perfectly capable of losing ten thousand dollars to a gangster and thinking himself crazy about a homely rich girl without there being any conscious connection between the two facts? Andrew’s love for his brother, so often marred by exasperation or envy, was at its simplest and most protective. Poor Ned, it was too bad reality was reality and that Maureen would have to bring him down to earth. But she was, of course, morally obligated to the Thatchers. Once again he blessed his wife for taking the whole thing off his shoulders.
But all through the morning, the tension of the lunch was with him. He himself went out to lunch with his accountant, rather distractedly absorbing chicken cacciatore and sales figures. Although his only afternoon appointment was with an out-of-town client at three-thirty, he got back to the office early because he was afraid of missing Maureen’s call. By three o’clock, it still hadn’t come in, but it didn’t worry him. Cousin Rosemary had probably taken it hard. Maureen would have to nurse her through the afternoon.
At quarter past three, he was preparing himself for the client when the door of his office flew open and Rosemary Thatcher came hurrying in. She had a wild, disheveled appearance, bringing an atmosphere of disaster as if she were some fugitive from a fire or a subway accident. Only the glasses seemed to have an individuality of their own, large, gleaming, dominating the drawn little tight-lipped face.
“Please,” she said. “Oh, please stop Maureen.”
She must have been running. Her voice came in choking gasps. Andrew had visions of her fleeing from Pavillon (“I’ll pay. I insist”) with the dogs of hell hot in pursuit. He went around the desk and tried to make her sit down, but she pushed his hand aside.
“No. Listen. You’ve got to. She told me about Neddy—everything, the thing in Las Vegas, the trouble in Florida, the—the blonde he brought to your house last night. She thought it would knock me out. As if I didn’t know Neddy, as if I hadn’t imagined far more lurid things about him than that, as if it could make any difference anyway when I love him, when it’s just because of all those idiotic escapades that he needs me.”
She was gazing up at him through the glasses with owlish intensity. “I told her it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to me whether Ned had robbed a bank or killed a dozen people, but she just couldn’t get it. She said I was crazy and that if I didn’t have any sense, then she’d have to have it for me. She said she’d go to Mummy and Dad …”
Her hand gripped his arm. It was a tough, male grip for so small a girl. “And she will unless you stop her. So please, please, make her see it’s none of her business, that she can’t go pushing in, destroying, ruining …”
Andrew looked down at her. This very young fury by love possessed was far removed from Ned’s “babe in the woods” who needed his protection.
“Call her,” she demanded. “Now. She’s gone home. I made her promise to think it over for a few hours. She had no choice anyway, as I pointed out to her, since Daddy’s in a board meeting all afternoon and Mummy’s at her bridge club. But she will go to them, I know her. So you’ve got to stop her, because it’s absurd. You don’t know Dad. Mummy’s all right. But Dad’s from the Dark Ages. If he heard all those things about Neddy, he’d—he’d go into a decline. And it wouldn’t change anything because I’m going to marry Ned anyway. I’m of age. I have my own money. What difference does it make if Neddy’s broke, when I’ve got my own money? Mummy and Dad can’t stop us. Nobody can. But if Maureen sticks her nose in, she’ll just hurt them, bewilder them, make them desperately unhappy.”
She swung away from him to the phone and put her hand on it. “Call her. Please. Now.”
It was melodramatic and a little ridiculous, but such ferocity of purpose in so young a girl was also rather touching to Andrew.
In a voice which he tried to make as avuncular as possible, he said, “But, Rosemary, I don’t think you understand Maureen’s position. She’s devoted to your parents; they’re almost like mother and father to her. She knows how important your marriage is to them. She’s got to be level-headed and try to decide what’s best for everyone.”
Rosemary laughed. “You think that’s what her motive is?”
“Of course.”
“That’s funny—coming from her husband. Haven’t you learned anything about Maureen yet? Maureen worrying about Mummy and Dad? Maureen trying to decide what’s best for everyone? Maureen never did anything unless there was something in it for her. She hates me. She always has, because she was the pretty one and I was the homely one and yet I was the one with the money. It’s spite, that’s all it is, spite and envy and worse than that. It’s her big opportunity. At last she can get in with Mummy and Dad. ‘See how Rosemary’s let you down. See how I’m the good one, the sweet one, the one you can trust … ’ ”
Anger came so quickly to Andrew that it was almost out of his control. He could feel his hand quivering with a desire to slap her. But that was the moment when a scurrying Miss Minter came in to announce that his client was in the outer office. Proportion was restored. His anger seemed as childish as Rosemary’s savage accusation against his wife.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave now.”
“But you’ll talk to Maureen. You’ll stop her.”
“Aren’t you being a little unrealistic coming to me about all this?”
“But Neddy’s your brother.”
“And Maureen’s my wife. Oddly enough, we don’t happen to share the same opinion of her. I think you might as well know right now that if she decides to tell your parents, I for one will be solidly back of her.”
Rosemary Thatcher stood glaring at him, her little pink tongue coming out to moisten her lips. “You fool,” she said. “You poor pathetic fool.” She turned away from him, her glasses dazzlingly reflecting the window, and swept past Miss Minter out the door.
“My!” said Miss Minter.
“My—indeed,” said Andrew.
His client walked into the office then and, even if he’d planned to call Maureen, the opportunity had gone.
It was after five when the client left. Andrew let Miss Minter go and stayed on clearing up some work which had to be ready for the next day. Rosemary hadn’t succeeded in marring his new mood of warm, confident happiness. In fact, now his anger had subsided, he found he rather admired her. Whether Ned knew it or not, he had run into a girl who was more than capable of subduing him, and, since she had money independent of her parents, it looked as if she was going to have little difficulty in getting him to the altar, whatever Maureen might happen to feel about it.
Well, so, fine, thought Andrew. It might be the making of Ned.
When he left the office just before six, the flower shop in the building was still open. He bought a large bunch of red and white carnations and took a taxi home. As he went up in the self-service elevator, the fragrance of the blossoms made a little private world of spring for him, and suddenly it came to him that although Maureen had promised to call and hadn’t, he had felt not the slightest qualm of uneasiness, nor had a single demon stirred. There was the proof. The cure was complete.
The Jordans’ apartment was on the top floor of the building. Andrew got out of the elevator. Holding the carnations, he brought out his key to put it in the lock, but as he did so, he noticed that the lock was scratched and the wood around it chipped. He put his hand out to touch it and the door opened of its own accord.
Anxiety springing alive, he hurried down the hall to the living room. He was confronted with chaos. The pillows had all been pulled off the couch. The drawers of his desk were open, spewing out papers. In the center of the carpet, a golden dress—one of Maureen’s evening dresses—lay sprawled in a twisted heap.
The anxiety tilted over into panic.
“Maureen!” he called.
He ran into the bedroom. His wife lay on her back on the bed. She seemed as grotesquely shapeless as the golden dress tossed on the living-room floor. One leg was dangling over the edge of the bed, the other was crushed under her.
Andrew dropped the carnations. He went to the bed. Lying beside her was a gun—the automatic he kept in the bedside-table drawer. He saw it in the same second that he saw the gaping mouth, the flat, staring eyes, the two wounds, one in her left breast, the other further down and to the right.
“Maureen.”
Her left hand, palm upward, was resting on her knee. The wedding ring wasn’t there. Instead there was a pink circular mark around the ring finger. Andrew leaned forward and touched the hand. There was no sensation of touching Maureen. It was like contact with some cold anonymous thing stumbled against in a dark room.
Andrew Jordan knew then that the worst thing which could possibly happen to him had happened.
FIVE
In the first dazed moments it was as if he were dead too, or almost dead, lying beside his wife on the rumpled white bedspread, knowing with some last flicker of intelligence that horror had struck, but no longer sure what the horror had been or to whom it had come.
He did whatever he did. Later he had no memories at all for that period, but he must have taken in the shambles around him of opened drawers and suits and dresses scattered at random, because, when he was back in the living room, beginning to think and feel again, his first coherent mental image was of one of his sports coats hanging by an armhole from the knob of the bathroom door. He was sitting on the pillowless couch. It wasn’t meant to be sat on
that way. It humped his knees up in front of him. He looked at the crumpled gold evening dress and thought: “My tan sports coat is hanging by its armhole from the knob of the bathroom door.” Then, for a moment, the insulation of shock was stripped away and the reality of what had happened burst in on him with full violence.
Maureen was dead. Hoodlums had broken in. She had surprised them. They had shot her with his gun.
It was rage that he felt before grief. His hands wanted to smash out wildly, pointlessly. Then grief came with the cold, bitter knowledge of his loss. Maureen was gone. How was he going to live without Maureen?
The light from the lamp beside him seemed as blinding as a searchlight. He put a hand up to shield his eyes. He knew he must start what had to be started. Until he moved, nothing would move, the nightmare pall of death would continue to hang motionless here with the blinding light and the golden dress, there in the bedroom with his coat on the doorknob, the rumpled bedspread and Maureen’s eyes—no, not eyes, stones, green flat stones …
His hand was still covering his face when he heard the footsteps. His heart gave a leap of joy. It hadn’t happened after all. It had been a hallucination. Maureen was coming to him out of the bedroom.
“Andrew. Andrew …” The voice and the footsteps, multiple footsteps, clicking, clumping. “Andrew, really! Don’t you know you should never leave your door open in New York? They say Naples is the most dangerous city in the world but it’s nothing to New York these days—absolutely nothing. It’s … Andrew!”
He looked up into his mother’s piercing blue eyes. She was wearing a mink coat. Ruby earrings glinted. Her little hand was resting on Lem’s arm as he loomed, big, beaming his handsome slightly uneasy major’s smile, at her side.
“Andrew—what’s the matter?”
He knew they were there. He knew who they were. He knew everything about them except what to do with them.
“Andrew. That dress on the floor … all this confusion … Andrew, tell me.”
He got up. His knees felt as if he had been in a hospital bed for weeks.
The Green-Eyed Monster Page 4
