by Belva Plain
“Really? How interesting.”
“You’d best be going,” Mr. Tory said.
“I’m awfully sorry, Connie,” Richard apologized.
She put up her hand. “Please! If your aunt’s ill, family comes first. Always. I’ll be fine. I’ll have a quiet time reading.”
The library to which Mr. Tory conducted her and where he left her was a handsome, rather masculine room furnished with leather chairs and dark red walls. She had expected to find that the books on the shelves were uniform, expensive sets of the classics, put there by a decorator, not to be read but to harmonize with the furnishings. On the contrary the books were a collection to delight a browser. And then she remembered that Richard had said books were the only things he collected. Finding a copy of the Pickwick Papers, she sat down to pass the time.
She hadn’t been fooled by this ruse. Richard had been whipped away so that his father could talk to her alone. After a decent interval Mr. Tory would come in, probably to fetch her to lunch, and the interrogation, no doubt a diplomatic one, would begin.
And that was exactly what happened, so that by half past twelve Connie found herself in the dining room sitting across from Richard’s father with the Lalique swan between them.
“You’re very well thought of at the club,” he began. “You’re much more efficient than anyone that we’ve had there for quite a while. I thought you might like to know.”
“I’m very glad,” she answered simply. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Have you had jobs like this before?”
“No, never. I’m quite inexperienced, I’m afraid.”
“Indeed! Richard says you’re a newcomer to Texas.”
“Yes, I’d always wanted to see it. Such an exciting place, especially for someone who grew up in a small town.”
Tory’s hooded eyes were keen and all Connie could see were ugly gleaming slits.
“Didn’t your family object to your going so far all alone?”
You’re polite enough in your searching, Connie thought, but you’re surely getting right to the point, aren’t you?
Softly, she replied, “My parents are dead. And I’m sure they wouldn’t have let me. I was very strictly brought up. My father’s parents were British, and he had their ways.” She sighed. The sigh and the words came easily now. “But they’d both been sick so long. I just had to get away from all the sadness.”
“Are you an only child?”
“No, I have a married sister at home. Her husband’s in business there. And I have a brother on Wall Street.”
“I see. Then what would you call this? Rather a lark, what you’re doing?”
Connie gave a small laugh. “You could call it that. Rather a lark.”
“Richard told us this morning that he wants to marry you. We told him it seemed rather hasty.”
The maid came and Tory stopped talking. During the brief, uncomfortable silence Connie’s mind divided itself between tension over Mr. Tory’s possible questions and observation of her surroundings. The spoons and forks had been laid facedown on the table, probably because the chased and monogrammed backs were meant to be seen. The girl’s spring-green uniform matched the background of the wallpaper. She knows something is afoot, Connie thought. Back in the kitchen she’ll be reporting to the cook.
“Times have changed. I can still remember,” Mr. Tory resumed, “at least here in our group, people usually married within the group, people they knew, or certainly that the families knew for a long time. Now it seems that total strangers get together after a few meetings.”
Connie tried a coy comment. “Like Romeo and Juliet.”
Tory said dryly, “They came to a rather unfortunate end, if you remember.” When she made no answer, he continued, “Like them, too, you’re both rather young.”
“Richard is twenty-four.”
“Richard is twenty-four going on eighteen. Oh, he’s well educated, he’s traveled, he’s talented—all that’s obvious, but we who know him best know that he’s also ignorant of life. He’s totally inexperienced.”
She understood what the man was thinking: This girl’s looking for money, and Richard doesn’t see it.
Now she had to wonder and weigh how best to win the man over. To adopt a virtuous, almost a humble posture, or to show strength by standing up to him? If she made the wrong move, he could ruin everything, regardless of what Richard said. She might ruin it all, anyway.… When she’d come so far … Well, she wasn’t going to let him.
“Richard is an idealist,” his father said, sounding the admirable noun as if it were “embezzler.”
Not having made up her mind yet as to which manner to adopt, the shy or the independent, Connie spoke a noncommittal truth. “Richard is one of the kindest people I’ve ever known, honest and trusting.”
“Oh, yes, trusting. And that ties right into his lack of experience.”
Tory met Connie’s eyes with some severity, but she did not flinch.
“Now, I have the impression that you, on the other hand, are rather more experienced.”
The implication was abruptly clear. She followed Tory’s thought: They’ve been sleeping together, the girl’s going to get herself pregnant, and Richard will naturally take on his responsibility.
And now she was ready for Tory. “You’re implying, I think, that I’m experienced with men, Mr. Tory. That I pull tricks. No double meaning intended.” Her little laugh was bitter, and Tory flushed. “You might like to know that, believe it or not, at not quite twenty-one, I’m still a virgin.” She was working herself into such righteous indignation that tears began to blur her eyes. “I come of a very fine family—”
Tory was disconcerted. “Oh, I have nothing against you personally. It’s plain that you’re a fine young lady, and—”
“I understand that you’re looking out for your son’s best interest, and you should. If my father were living, he would be looking out for mine. He always did, he protected us against the world, he died too young—” By now her tears were overflowing her eyelids.
Tory stood up and laid a hand on her shoulder. And she saw that, stone face or no, he was sentimental. He thought her tears were for her dead father. Was it the tears or the indignation that had won for her? No matter; the tide of battle had definitely turned in her favor.
“Come, come, don’t cry. Let’s talk things over sensibly. No need to cry.”
She took the handkerchief that he offered and stood up. “I’ll be a good wife to Richard, Mr. Tory. You don’t have to worry about that. I know the value of a dollar. I get along with people, and I’ll be a help to him. And I love him with all my heart.”
There came the sound of tires crunching gravel.
“Richard’s back,” said his father. “Come, now. He mustn’t see you crying.”
The Torys’ minister performed the marriage at their house with Mr. and Mrs. Tory as the witnesses. Richard had asked Connie to invite someone on her side, but she had declined. The only people whom she knew well enough here to care about were Celia Mapes, the head waitress, and Mrs. Raymond, the landlady, who in many little ways had shown a fondness for her tenant. These two simple women were utterly bewildered by Connie’s Prince Charming story, and truly glad for her as well. So she would have liked to invite them, but at the same time she knew that would only be rubbing salt into the Torys’ open wound. Quite obviously, they wanted this wedding to attract as little attention as possible.
The five participants stood before a small table within the semicircle of the bow window. Connie was thinking: This is the high peak of my life, and it will be over in ten minutes. I have to remember everything. The sonorous words coming out of the mouth above the clean-shaven chin, which is above the reversed collar. Richard’s parents. They’re probably not such awful people, since Richard loves them. The light is streaming through the curtains, turning his face pink. Now he’s smiling at me. I don’t know him at all, and it scares me. Yes, of course I know him. He’s everything that’s
good. And here’s the ring, a diamond band after all. Is this happening to me? To me? I love him. I’m not scared at all. I love him.…
“Richard, I love you,” she said the moment it was over.
Thirty-three floors beneath the windows of the New York apartment, lights moved along the East River Drive. All around in every direction the lights of the great city glimmered and gleamed, dazzling in Connie’s astounded eyes. Tomorrow Richard was going to start her education in the city’s ways and byways: the museums, Broadway, Lincoln Center, Fifth Avenue … No end! My God, no words, no pictures, had ever begun to realize the marvel of it all! For long minutes she stood and gazed.
It was still some time before midnight, and Richard had gone to sleep, but she, wakeful, sat down at the dinette table and drank a cup of hot milk. Her mind spun back over the hours since yesterday, living and reliving this beginning of her new life.
It had seemed fitting, like closing a circle, to spend their first night at the Houston hotel where she had learned of the position at the country club. Events had made an orderly pattern: the farewell to the parents who seemed to be so numbed by events that one had to feel compassion for them; then the entrance into the hotel wearing the unmistakable bride’s going-away suit. The new luggage. The deluxe suite with the champagne in the bucket and the roses on the table. The light dimmed down to the faintest glow from the lamp in the corner. The white lace nightgown. The groom’s removal of the nightgown. The bodies intertwined on the wide, soft bed.
She had thought—had not all the books, magazines, and movies taught her?—that the night would be long and slow, a dream of repeated delight. It had been neither long nor slow. To be sure, Richard had been eager enough, but it had all been over in no more minutes than the marriage ceremony had needed, after which he had immediately fallen asleep. And she had been left alone and wide awake.
She had grown up knowing about every possible variation in the sex act. One had only to pick up a magazine at the dentist’s office or at the hairdresser’s to read about male impotence, nonorgasmic women, lesbian women, marital incompatibility—everything you wanted to know about sex. On television, in the movies, and in most current fiction, sex was the central theme. So it seemed, excited as she was by long anticipation and stifled desire, that she knew precisely what to expect. What she expected and had been led to expect by all the above was some version of Hemingway’s moving earth. It hadn’t happened.
Still, that was the first night, she told herself. As she had also read, sex is not always an automatic triumph. It often requires long adjustment. And Richard was really a darling. They had had breakfast in their room before taking the plane to New York, and there, in a tiny box between the folds of her napkin, she had found diamond studs for her ears.
“I saw you once admiring them on someone,” he had told her.
On the plane her conscience did a queer thing: It rose up and hit her. There were things she had to say to this good man, and she had fumbled for a way to begin.
“Richard, I don’t think your parents believed me about my job being a lark, and—”
There again had come that twinkle of humor in his eyes. “They probably didn’t.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because I didn’t either.”
She had felt humiliated and ridiculous. But having begun, she would finish.
“Richard, I lied. I lied to you.”
“I know that.”
“Then why—why weren’t you disgusted?”
“I was only sorry that you felt it necessary.”
She felt oddly unclean, “Let me tell you the truth,” she had said. “My father was an alcoholic. We grew up dirt poor and miserable all the time.”
“I don’t need to hear that,” Richard had interrupted gently. “You are you, and I don’t care about another soul.”
“Not your parents? Will you tell them?”
“No. Better not to. They’re good people, Connie, but they have their ways.”
So that had ended the subject, and she had felt a certain relief. Now she could take him to visit Lara without further explanation. There was, after all, nothing to be ashamed of.
She stretched out her hand now to observe the sparkle on her finger. Then she got up and went into the living room, which, furnished in modern chrome, steel, and glass, had a sparkle of its own. In the mirror over the console table she regarded herself in her pink baby-doll robe with the diamonds in her ears, and was satisfied with what she saw. She was young and loved. The future had arrived, and it was good.
CHAPTER THREE
The round little table in the dining ell had been pushed toward the window so that Davey and Lara might have a view of Manhattan at night. Connie, who had found to her surprise that she liked to cook, had made a fine, festive dinner, crown roast of lamb, vegetables cut like flowers, and dessert out of Julia Child’s book of French cooking.
Richard raised his wineglass and touched the others’ glasses each in turn.
“To celebrate our first dinner all together,” he said. And, with a bright glance about him, added then, “To celebrate life.”
All five of the faces became serious, and Connie’s red mouth trembled. It was such a beautiful moment! These dear people gathered here in this gleaming apartment where everything was in its place and belonged to her!
A few new touches had modified its ultramodern chill. In Third Avenue antique shops they had bought a scarlet lacquer screen to conceal the tiny kitchen. The smoky Venetian mirror that hung between the opposite windows now reflected the screen and the group at the table.
“Such a pretty table,” observed Lara. “You’re going to be a good housewife,” she said almost tenderly.
“She is already,” Richard said. “Connie’s a perfectionist.”
“She always was. She was the neatest little girl in school. I had to redo her hair ribbons every day at lunch-time.”
Richard was amused. “Hair ribbons? Tell me everything about her.”
“Oh, yes, Connie had braids until she reached fourth grade and became sophisticated.”
“And now you’re a shining bride,” said Eddy. “Positively shining.”
“Am I? Well, I’m happy. And who wouldn’t be in this wonderful, brand-new city?”
“With your wonderful, brand-new husband,” Lara said.
Richard laughed. “I get a kick out of her enthusiasm. She’s walked my feet off every weekend, and by herself she’s gone everywhere from the Bronx Zoo to the Botanical Gardens to the Statue of Liberty.”
“And I took the tourist trip on the boat around Manhattan Island,” Connie reminded him.
“I’ve been here over a year now,” Eddy said, “and I haven’t seen any of those except the statue.”
“But you’ve been working,” Connie said.
Eddy’s sigh was satisfied. “Damn hard. It’s been well worth it, though.”
Davey was interested. “Tell us.”
“Okay. Well, as you know, I’ve been on my own for a while now and loving it. I’ve got more business than I can handle by myself. I’ve hired a bright young MBA, and I’m thinking of taking on a second. When I double the business—no, when I redouble it, which should take another couple of years—I’ll have to move again to a real spread, done right, my final move.”
Richard was leaning with an elbow on the table and a look of genuine interest on his face, prepared to hear more.
It pleased Connie that he liked her brother. Probably, she thought, recalling the strict faces and the noiseless house in River Oaks, he’s glad to be part of a new, active family of young people.
Eddy was giving an exuberant description of Wall Street. He raised his hand, revealing fine gold cuff links.
“It’s like rockets to Mars. A guy like Kramden of Kramden Jessup is worth three hundred million, can you imagine! That’s not to say what the firm is worth. A couple of billion, for sure. Returns on leveraged buyouts can go as high as fifty percent—you know, it’s f
antastic. They’re not for me, though. Not yet. Maybe I’ll work up to them someday, but right now I’m doing what I want.”
“Another language for me,” Richard said. “My work is words and pictures. Persuasion. That’s what advertising is.”
“Well, I have to use a little persuasion too. Only, I use numbers instead of words.” And Eddy gave his familiar grin. “Connie can tell you, I’ve always loved numbers. I can feel them in my fingers. I can feel the market. I dream about it.” He paused a moment and resumed, “Oh, hell, we’re family, so I can tell you. I’m worth almost nine hundred thousand dollars.” He turned to Davey and the two sisters. “You all know what I started with when I left home too. And I guarantee that I’ll have doubled that within six months.”
Richard was impressed. “You’re way out of my league, Eddy. Oh, I get a good salary, but I’m conservative. I put everything into treasuries and tax exempts and watch it slowly grow.”
“That’s fine enough if you feel comfortable that way.”
“Right now I do. I’m still paying off the mortgage on this co-op.”
“You’ve made a good investment. This is a great location down here near the U.N. I’m thinking of a co-op myself. I’m tired of paying rent. And I’d like a view, something near the East River or, better yet of course, Fifth Avenue so I can see the Park.”
“That’d cost you a fortune,” Richard said.
“I know. Well, I can wait.”
“The way you’re going, you won’t have to wait long.” Richard stood up. “Will you excuse me? I’m watching out for Texas time. I have to make a call to a Houston client.”
“Very, very likable,” Eddy said when Richard had closed the bedroom door. “He’s very modest, isn’t he?”
“Richard’s a gentleman,” Connie said.
“He must make a fortune, even at his age.”
“I guess so. We don’t talk about money.”
“McQueen is an international firm, you know.”
“I didn’t. I never thought about it.”
“A love match, then! Just like Lara and Davey here. But it’s nice to have a few luxuries thrown in, too, like that watch you’re wearing.”
