“Be safe.”
“I will. I hope...” She trailed off. He put his hand on the door knob. Why were they putting each other through this again? Still, he delayed, and she was glad.
“I’ll send you my address when I’m settled.”
“Send it to Michael.”
They smiled fleetingly, looked away.
“If you ever need me, Sara—”
“I know. And you.”
He nodded.
She put her hand over his just for a second, whispered, “Good-bye,” and stepped back.
“Good-bye, Sara.” He pulled the door open and walked out.
She closed it immediately, not watching him out of sight. She stood still for a moment, then turned away to find Michael.
Nineteen
SHE WOKE UP DISORIENTED, cold, and cramped, with a crick in her neck. It was morning, and yet the light was on—Michael’s light. Then she remembered.
She’d fallen asleep in his bed hours ago, after soothing him free of the terrors of his latest nightmare. “Don’t go till I’m asleep, okay?” he’d begged, and they’d drifted off together in the midst of her own yawn-punctuated story of the Pied Piper. The last thing she remembered was Michael murmuring in unison with her, “Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats….”
She sat up, careful not to wake him, and pulled her robe more tightly around her shoulders, shivering a little. Only his face showed above the covers, serious as always, as if he had weighty matters to ponder even in his sleep. She ran a finger lightly across the satin hem of the blanket under his chin, recalling the halting details of the dream he’d sobbed out to her last night. They were all—he, she, and Ben—in the garden at Eden. She and Michael were picking flowers while Ben sat at his desk and talked on the telephone. The new maze was finished; Michael was dying to try it. “Go on in,” said Ben from his desk. Michael ran toward the maze, excited—but suddenly he stopped.
“I wanted to go in, but then I got scared. Dad kept saying, ‘Go in, go in,’ but I wouldn’t go in and he got madder and madder and he started yelling. So I went in, and I was in it, and there were these monsters waiting around all the corners. I wanted to run back and get out, but Daddy wouldn’t let me. So I kept going because there was a lady at the end who would get me and save me.” His swimming eyes widened. “It was you,” he realized as he said it. “But I never got to the end, I never saw you, I just kept running and running from the monsters and Daddy yelling.”
“It was just a dream,” she’d told him, “just a terrible dream, and now it’s over.” She’d had no other words to console him, and she’d tormented; herself then as she did now with the thought that she would never know if she’d helped him or hurt him by sacrificing herself to her pitiful burlesque of a marriage. But for as long as she could be the lady who would save him, she would never give him up to Ben, and ultimately it didn’t matter how much of herself she lost in the process.
But she hated what she couldn’t change, and she hated what was happening to Michael. Another child might react to his situation with rebelliousness or aggression; but Michael only paled, rarefied, grew more attenuated, more exquisitely self-effacing. It was his way of saving himself, she knew—to become invisible. But how she longed to see him throw a truly vile tantrum, or shout out some vulgar curse of his father’s!
She got up from the bed and stretched stiffly.
“Mummy?”
“Go back to sleep a little longer. It’s Saturday, you can stay in bed late if you like.” She kissed his eyelids closed gently, straightened, and tiptoed out of the room.
Silently passing the closed door to Ben’s bedroom, she slowed and then stopped, arrested by a sound. A voice. Not Ben’s. Something clicked in her brain, a fatal, premonitory certitude. She could hear the slow pounding of her blood in her temples. She went closer. Forehead touching the door, looking down at her bare toes.
She heard a woman’s high, rising moan, and now Ben’s gruff voice, low-pitched, asking a question. She saw her hand go out to the doorknob and begin to turn it. Really? a voice inside asked, eerily calm. Is this what you’re going to do? The turning knob stopped. She could either turn it silently back and steal away, or she could press on the handle and push the door open. The significance of the choice paralyzed her because she knew it would change her life.
The voices beyond the door rose, high and low, taking turns, the exchange growing more rapid, the intervals of silence shorter. She wouldn’t have understood that double cadence or known so well what it betokened before the night she’d spent with Alex. Her hand on the knob began to shake. Without a sound, her straightening arm pushed the door ajar an inch, two inches, three.
Enough to see the lovers in Ben’s bed in three-quarter profile, oblivious to widening doors or anything else except each other. Tasha’s dark hair streamed across her shoulders, hiding her face as she gazed down at Ben, her arms braced on either side of his pillow, and urged him on with vulgar, harsh-voiced inducements. The grip he had on her breasts looked painful. “Want this, little whore?” he grunted, thrusting up in her, powerful thighs straining. “Do it, yesss,” she hissed, riding him, grinding herself against him. She threw her head back and bared her clenched teeth, grimacing at the ceiling, while his hands slid to her hips and squeezed until his knuckles turned white.
Sara watched them with an altogether odd impassivity. Revulsion was her dominant emotion, not distress. Anger would come soon, but for now this shameful betrayal couldn’t touch the core of her; she might almost have been watching the passionate acrobatics of strangers for all the power this act had to cut her.
Tasha thrust her hands under Ben’s buttocks, humping him violently and grunting her explicit demands. But her stallion had gone lifeless beneath her, and at last she craned her neck over her shoulder to follow his slack-jawed gaze. She gasped, but almost immediately a subtle look of sly, vindictive triumph replaced the shock in her face. Curiously, that didn’t surprise Sara, either.
She might have gone on observing the frozen tableau, waiting with detached interest to see who would speak first, but a noise behind her made her turn. Michael was coming toward her, scuffing along in slippers and bathrobe. If she’d been talking to Dad, maybe he could too, his smiling face as good as told her, especially since this time he hadn’t heard any voices raised in anger between them.
She jerked the door closed on a reflex, slamming it, and moved toward Michael purposefully. What happened next was unpremeditated, her words unscreened, for once, by any mental censor.
“Listen, Michael, remember when you and I went to the Berkshires last year and stayed overnight with the Dearborns?”
“Sure.”
“You just took one little suitcase and you packed it yourself, remember?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to pack that same suitcase now— it’s in the back of your closet—and put in enough clothes for a day and a night. Don’t forget underwear and socks. Do it now, Michael, right now.”
“Where’re we going?”
“We’re going on a little trip, just the two of us.”
“Where?”
For the first time she faltered; she had no idea where they were going. “It’s a surprise. Just do it, darling, and don’t ask me any more questions or it’ll spoil the surprise.”
His gray eyes clouded with worry—she could never hide anything from him. “Is it a good surprise or a bad surprise?” he asked anxiously.
“It’s an adventure, and we don’t always know what to expect from adventures. Now, hurry.” She kissed him, turned him around, and gave him a little push. “Hurry.”
He glanced back uncertainly and then scampered for his room.
Doubts swamped her as soon as he was out of sight. What if she was cheating him out of a choice he had the right to make himself? But he was only a child! He was sensitive, yes, uncannily acute, and probably wiser now than she would ever be—but he was still a child, and she had to take responsibility for him. Walking past
Ben’s closed and now silent door, she remembered with photographic precision the scene that she’d just witnessed, and it hardened her shaky resolve. She was leaving and she was taking Michael with her.
Fear and excitement pumped through her in equal measure as she pulled a small trunk out of her own closet and began throwing clothes into it at random. She felt like an escaping criminal—guilty, terrified, and exhilarated all at once. Where would they go? If only Lauren were back from Europe, they could stay with her. The elderly Hubbards would welcome them, of course, but Sara was reluctant to impose on them without Lauren being there. Well, no matter, they could stay in a hotel, at least until—
“What do you think you’re doing?”
She jerked up, startled in spite of the fact that she had known he would come, had even been expecting him. He filled the doorway, already dressed, his florid features blotchy with anger—or perhaps it was residual passion. “I’m leaving you,” she said steadily. “I’m taking Michael with me.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m divorcing you, Ben.”
He laughed. “Like hell. For what?”
“Adultery. At last I’ve got a witness: myself.” He came all the way into the room, his bulky body seeming, as always, to dwarf it. She didn’t flinch or back away. But she was gripping a green tulle petticoat in both hands as if it were a shield. Through her teeth she asked, “Did you sleep with her all summer while I was in Newport?”
“None of your business. You might as well put that stuff away, you’re not going anywhere.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“It doesn’t matter what you saw, no one’s going to believe you.”
“This time I’m willing to take the chance to a find out.”
She thought his face couldn’t get any redder, but it did. Instead of shouting, though, he took a different tack. “You know what kind of a scandal this’ll cause once it goes public? If you really care about Michael the way you say you do, you won’t put him through that.”
She hurled the petticoat on the bed. “You ruddy hypocrite! You don’t give a damn about Michael’s feelings and you never have. You don’t care how a scandal will hurt him, you only care about how it’ll hurt you.” Her lips curled spitefully. “Think about it, Ben—millionaire tycoon caught by his own wife in bed with a Jewish seamstress. How do you think they’ll like that at the New York Club?”
“You goddamn bitch—”
He moved toward her and she shrank back, hands raised for protection. “If you don’t want a scandal, then don’t fight me,” she said fast, trying not to stammer. “It doesn’t have to be ugly, we can do it quietly in another state, on grounds other than adultery. If we both—”
“Not on your life.”
Again anger overwhelmed her fear of him. “Bastard! Bloody, hypocritical—”
“Who’s a hypocrite?” he raged, hands clenched into white, murderous fists. “You try to do this to me, Sara, and I’ll ruin you! I’ll countersue on the same grounds!”
“What do you mean?”
“I know about you and McKie!”
All the blood drained from her face; her legs gave out and she had to sit down hard on the edge of the bed. Once again she let the chance slip away to deny it. Her mind was a jumble of nightmare dread. What did it mean? How would he use this new weapon against her?
“I’ve known for months,” he crowed softly, fleshy lips curving into a smile.
“Months.” She stared down at her limp hands. Revulsion twisted inside her. “You’ve known for months.” He and Tasha were two of a kind, then, incapable of honest feelings or of straightforwardness about anything. She marveled at their coldness. She wanted out of this murk. “You don’t deserve your son,” she said quietly. “I’m taking him from you.”
“No, I’m taking him from you.”
“Hi, Dad.”
Ben whirled; Sara shot to her feet. In the doorway Michael grinned uncertainly, dressed in his Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers and holding his suitcase.
“Well!” Ben exclaimed heartily. “Got your bag all packed, have you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Sara said, “Go downstairs and wait for me.”
“That’s a good idea,” Ben seconded. “I’ll be right down.”
“Are you coming too, Dad?”
“Well, now, there’s been a little change in plans. Your mother’s not coming with us; it’s just going to be you and me.”
“No,” Sara cried involuntarily. Fighting for control, she sent Michael a ghastly smile. “Go down and wait for me,” she repeated, “your father and I have to talk for a few minutes.” Michael didn’t move. “Please, darling—”
Just then Tasha appeared in the door behind Michael. “Take the boy downstairs,” Ben ordered, “and call for the carriage.”
“Yes, Mr. Cochrane.” She reached for Michael’s hand, but he slipped away.
“Mummy?” He blinked fast to keep from crying.
Sara started toward the door. Ben stepped in front of her, blocking her. “Now, I said!” he bellowed, at the same moment he reached back with one hand and slammed the door shut in Michael’s face.
She sprang at him and he hit her across the cheek with his open palm. She fell on the bed, stunned, but with enough presence of mind left not to cry out—Michael might still be close enough to hear. She tried to stand, but Ben hovered over her, legs spread, breathing hard.
“I thought we settled this a long time ago. You’re never leaving me. I took Michael away once to teach you a lesson, but I guess you didn’t learn it. This time he’s going away for a long, long time, with me and his Aunt Tasha, and you aren’t going to do a damn thing about it. Because if you do, if you make a peep, I’ll fix it so you never see him again.”
“For the love of God, Ben, you can’t do this—”
“I’m doing it.” He spun around, went to the door, and yanked it open.
Jumping up, she ran after him and caught him in the hall. “Please don’t, please don’t.” She pulled on his arm to stop him. He pushed her off roughly and kept walking. Over the bannister she saw that the foyer was empty—Michael must be outside already. She threw herself between Ben and the stairs, blocking the way with her outstretched arms. “You can’t have him!” she shrieked, pummeling him with her fists when he butted into her, forcing her down a step at a time.
“You want me to hurt you? Is that what you want?”
“You can’t take him! Damn you—” She flung herself at him, screaming, nails raking across his cheek. She saw his hand fly backward, then whip toward her face. The blow was shocking; the force of it threw her against the wall. She lost her balance and fell down the last six steps to the hall below.
She lost consciousness, but not for long. When she could see past the shimmering gray cloud of dots blurring her vision, she made out Ben’s white moon face frowning down at her, and she felt his big hands surrounding her biceps.
“You okay, Sare?”
She whispered, “Don’t take him, Ben. Please don’t take him.”
He let her go and sat back on his haunches. “You don’t give me any choice.”
“I won’t leave you, I promise.”
“You’re probably lying. I got to teach you a lesson, and this is the only way to do it.”
“Ben—”
But he stood up and backed away from her, watching her until he reached the door. For a second she thought she saw regret darken his eyes, blotting out the spite. Then he was gone.
She got up slowly; she had to lean against the wall to stay on her feet. Bruised hip, sore ribs, bump on the head, she inventoried automatically; scraped shins, palms, elbows. Not serious. Limping, she made it across the hall to the front door and dragged it open.
In the street, the carriage was just pulling up. Tasha helped Michael inside, then got up behind him. Ben called to the coachman, “Grand Central,” and climbed in too. Sara took two steps out on to the porch and stopped. Michael saw her; his sm
all face in the window looked frightened and bewildered, but he smiled at her. He waved. She lifted her hand, but her mouth was trembling too much, and she couldn’t smile back. The carriage rolled off.
She turned immediately and went back into the house. She crossed to the telephone and gave Alex’s number to the operator in a shaking voice she couldn’t control. “Sorry, ma’am, no answer.” No—of course, it was Saturday, he wouldn’t be at work. If he still went to work. Moving more quickly now, she went to her tiny study, found her telephone book, and gave his home number to a new operator.
“Hello?”
Somewhere in the back of her mind it registered that he’d been sleeping. “Alex, can you help me?”
“Who is this? Sara?”
No wonder he didn’t know her voice; she hardly recognized it herself. “Ben’s taken Michael, kidnapped him.”
“What?”
“They’ve gone to Grand Central Depot in the carriage—Tasha too—and I have to stop them but I can’t do it by myself. Alex, can you come here?”
“Yes.”
“If you can get a cab and pick me up, I think we can stop them.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Thank you.” She hung up and ran upstairs to get dressed.
Twenty
ALEX OPENED THE BLACK hansom cab’s door and leapt to the pavement while the vehicle was still moving. Sprinting up the steps, he lifted his hand, but the door jerked open under it.
“Thank God,” cried Sara. She had been watching for him through the beveled glass sidelight.
He took her arm when she started away without another word, holding her, his other hand going to the side of her face. “Jesus God, what did he do to you?”
“I fell,” she said automatically. No—the time for lies was over. “He hit me, and I fell down the steps. Come on,” she pleaded over his numb curses, “we have to hurry.” She hauled on his hand. “I’m all right, really. Come on!” She pulled him toward the hansom, gave the driver the destination herself—“Grand Central Depot, as fast as you can!”—and got in. Alex jumped up behind her and the cab jerked away.
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