She telephoned Anna and raved in a manner she would never have believed possible: “Where is he? What lies have you told him? You are monstrous and evil! You are a witch!”
She could hear Anna’s sigh. “I do wish you would not be so hurt. I did explain.”
She phoned his newspaper, the florist, his apartment buildings, his broker, the waiters at restaurants they had frequented. If she could just speak to him. He was never available. He had always just left.
In the sixth week, Sasha called.
“Do you wish to see my father?”
“Oh Sasha,” she sobbed. “Please.”
“I’ll come and get you.”
In Sasha’s car they drove to a section of Old Montreal, a section of cobbles and restaurants with tiny courtyards.
“We’ll go round the back way. You must promise you will be discreet.”
Numbly she followed and through a crevice in an ivy-covered stone wall saw the courtyard, the intimate tête-à-tête Sergei leaning across a table toward a willowy young woman in white. She saw Sergei’s eyes, smoky with obsession.
“Mother found her at the Sorbonne,” Sasha said. “A cellist, winner of various prizes in Paris and of a Europe-wide contest. A few weeks ago she played at one of our little chamber concerts. Enormous promise, everyone thinks. Father wants her for the orchestra. Have you seen enough?”
Emily half turned to him, brushing her hand across her eyes as though for some pain or dizziness, and fainted. When she came to, she was in a doctor’s office. She was, he told her, pregnant.
Afterwards she could never be sure if she had changed from the pill to less certain methods because she had read an article warning of dire side effects or because Sergei had stayed for breakfast and she had begun to crave more than a shadow life.
Driving her home, Sasha demanded: “Well, what did the doctor say?”
“Exhaustion and shock, that’s all. He said I need rest. I want to get away.”
“Dallas or Minneapolis?”
“Sydney.”
At her door Sasha said: “When you’re ready, I’ll help with the packing and everything. I’ll take you to the airport.”
Tentatively he touched her arm. “I do adore you, Emily. I will probably always be faithful to you.”
For days she slept and cried. She did not want to eat but feared for the baby and forced herself. She was often sick. Sometimes she thought she might never have emerged from her apartment, never have opened her violin case again, never have left for Australia, if Victoria had not arrived as mysteriously and alarmingly as the priestess Pythia from a cave at Delphi, mouthing oracular predictions.
“Who is it?” Emily demanded of the silence in the receiver. She had never deluded herself that Sergei would call, having seen his eyes on la celliste ravissante. “Is it Anna? Are you waiting for a formal surrender?”
Silence. Heavy breathing.
She felt a spasm of unease because Anna would never …
“Emily, there’s a man watching me. I can’t leave the phone booth.”
“What? Who is this?”
“It’s Tory, Emily. Help me!”
“Tory?” Roaming confusedly through Montreal acquaintances, her memory took several seconds to alight on her sister. “My god, Tory! Where are you?”
“At the airport. There’s a man watching me.”
“ Which airport?”
“Here. In Montreal. Dorval, is it? He followed me from Boston. Should I speak to him? Perhaps he likes me. But it might be for rape. I’m scared.”
“Tory, darling Tory. I won’t let anyone harm you. Stay right where you are and I’ll come and get you. Now tell me, exactly where in the airport?”
“Eastern Airlines. I’m at the Eastern Airlines terminal.”
“It will take me half an hour at least, Tory. You mustn’t worry. I’ll get there as fast as I can.” Emily pressed her thumping heart, striving to impart calm. “But I promise nothing will happen to you. That’s a promise, okay? Just stay right where you are.”
She called Sasha, and while she waited for him to come, called Jason.
“Thank God,” Jason said. “She’s been missing since early this morning. She seemed perfectly calm last night and when they went to her room this morning she was gone.”
“Why didn’t anyone call me?”
“How could we expect it would involve you? It’s incredible that she could have got into Boston and got a plane by herself. But we knew she had money. Took it from Father’s desk.”
“Father’s desk?”
“She’s been at home for a month. You don’t exactly keep in touch, do you? We thought she was doing extremely well; something happened with Father no doubt. I didn’t like the arrangement in the first place, it never works out, but he keeps trying to atone, you know. And Mother hopes for so much. A disaster.”
“What should I do?”
“I’ll come up tomorrow and bring her back. Oh god. Poor Tory. But you won’t find her difficult. She’s pathetically docile, writes letters to us constantly, and poetry incessantly. That’s where her rage goes. Haven’t you had any?”
“No. She wouldn’t have my address.” Then, puzzled: “But she must …”
“May have just got it from home. Must have been what gave her the idea. Could she stay for a while?”
Emily reeled with panic and nausea.
“Jason, no! I mean, I’d like to. But I leave for Australia in a few days.”
“Australia?!”
“Sydney Symphony. I’ve been offered a position.”
“Good grief! Is something the matter?”
“What kind of question is that? It’s an offer I can’t refuse. About Tory. How’s Mother taking this?”
“Distraught. Father’s fit to be tied. The guiltier he feels, the worse he behaves, as usual.”
“Oh god.”
“Stupid mistake to have Tory back home. Mustn’t happen again.”
“No. And yet institutions … when she’s doing well. What a mess.”
They were silent, both miserable with guilt, knowing they were not equal to … Some time in my life, Emily promised herself, when I am not pregnant and falling apart at the seams, I will have Tory live with me. I will make her happy. Some time.
“Here’s my car,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
Incongruously as she got into Sashas car, she remembered Tory lifting her into a wheelbarrow and trundling her around the garden. Shrieks of pleasure. More, Tory, more, she was calling. Don’t stop!
Emily rushed toward Tory at the speed of thought, hurtling through air. Don’t stop, she wanted to beg the pilot. This was her preferred relationship to the past: skimming over it in the arms of a Boeing 747.
Montreal was a long way off, eight years to starboard.
But New York and Tory came closer by the minute.
(ii)
“I think it’s Thursday,” Victoria said to herself, aloud. She wrote it at the top of her page, and then she wrote New York. Dear Emily, she continued.
It is beautiful here in Jason’s apartment. There are soft things and white things and the sofa feels like lying on rough grasses doum by the creek near old Mr Hamilton’s house. You remember, the school cleaner? Ruth’s kitchen smells of cinnamon. I love it here and I hope I won’t have to leave. At the place where I was staying everything smells of nurses. Jason has a Ruth, did you know? But they do not sleep in the same bed which is very wise in case Father finds out.
I am so excited you are coming. Jason said he will bring you home tonight. From the airport. I remember the airport. When you came to the airport you were with a young man but I promised I would not tell Father and I have never told. I keep my promises though you did not keep yours, Emily. You did not write to me. You promised to write and you did not did not.
Jason says Australia and England and all over Europe. Did you come to Elsinore in Denmark? There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark and in the rest of the world too. Rem
ember how Father made us memorise Shakespeare? These tedious old fools. Or was it just me and Jason? Did he make you too? Still harping on his daughter. I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
Til tell you a secret Emily. I wanted to go all over the world, I wanted to have young men. You have got too much and have to share. In our family haven’t you noticed} I got all the loneliness? Do you think this is fair?
One is one is one is one.
What’s this on the butcher’s bench
slit open.
for all the doctors to stare at?
They feed her honeysuckle
which is poisonous,
and take measurements
analysing
analysing
You owe me letters. Letters and letters. You owe me 416 letters, one a week for eight years, since you sent me away from Montreal with promises. You say to yourselves: Tory will forget, she knows nothing.
When I saw your pretty young man at the airport I said it would result in a son. Remember I said that?
When I said son, seeing him through the veins
of blood,
your skin blanched like almonds
in fire.
But the young man touched you
and said
tell we more.
Jason said yes, there is a son. When he comes I will see if he has the young man’s eyes.
Emily, I will forgive the letters, only speak to Father for me. We are going to see Father, did you know? Someone has to tell him I am sorry so he will not be angry with me. I’m sorry for vomiting, I’m sorry about the young man. I promise I will stay away from the honeysuckle. If he is angry, will Mother protect us, that is the question? Will she remember us?
It’s easier when I write to say these things. My words when I speak are not good swimmers,they scatter in different currents, sometimes they drown. I have a special request: everyone should share and not be greedy, isn’t that right? Now that you have your son, can I have your young man? Just for a little while. He was so lovely, golden and sweet as fresh-churned butter. On Russell Davison’s farm he had two cows and they made butter and we shared. Do you remember? No one lets me have anything of my own now, though Jason is very kind to me. Wlien you were little I used to push you and Jason on the swings. I gave you all my books and my old dolls. They took away my young man and I never found him again but if I can have yours it will be all right.
How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff
and his sandal shoon.
He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone:
They strangled him with honeysuckle
And left you all alone.
I know a place in Central Park where you can watch children sail boats. Tomorrow I will show you. This afternoon Jason’s Ruth is going to take me downtown to the shops and a restaurant, and on Saturday afternoon we are all driving up to Ashville for a party on Sunday.
Will you promise to speak to Father for me?
Love, Tory.
(iii)
Over the intercom Jason’s secretary said: “Stephen Waller is here. Shall I send him in?”
“Give me five minutes to make a call first. I’ll buzz when I’m ready.”
He began dialling Jessica’s number then hesitated, indecisive, and replaced the receiver. But yes, it really was time. Lately, making love to her, even being with her, was like losing hold of the reins of a team of galloping horses.
Jason did not care ever to surrender power.
And yes, it was time. Before Ruth was hurt, before Jessica was too badly hurt, before he himself became irreversibly vulnerable. Already he had been distancing himself from the white-water turbulence of her presence.
Mentally he rehearsed: Two weeks, I know, I feel guilty as hell ,.. incredibly busy … too hectic even to think about you, which is criminal (nicely ambiguous) … and now the craziest thing … my sister flying in from London this evening … family reunion … another whole week, I’m afraid.
Easing out, not without regret. In any case, she had known from the start.
“Nothing can come of this.” Always he made that clear right at the beginning. “I have an ongoing commitment.”
One of his saving graces, he felt, was his honesty, including his unblinking acceptance of his own deficiencies. I’m a bastard to live with, he would say to himself. He had also said this to Nina, and to Ruth, and to a number of other women. Laying his cards on the table. No rose-tinted illusions. Though to himself he would add: but considering everything …
There was also his gentleness, the fact that he took no pleasure in causing pain. If he had to hurt, if there were women who willed themselves to forget the agreed-upon terms, then he did so with as light a touch as possible.
Decisively he dialled Jessica’s number. Now that it was over, a vision of her lithe brown dancer’s body filled him with exquisite sorrow. When, on the fifth ring, she had still not answered, he imagined her doing pliés before the bedroom mirror, or standing naked in the bathroom, still wet from the shower, high-kicking one sun-gold leg after the other, her dainty foot pointed like a swallow at the ceiling, the petal-soft honey-warm crevice between her legs opening and closing like a rare orchid.
He drew strength from the knowledge that, having reached a decision, he was immune. Regardless of the misbehaviour of his blood and the sentimentality of his sexual organ (which he stroked gently as though calming a foolish and exuberant puppy) he would not, in fact, consent to any tearful pleas for “just one more time”.
She was letting the phone ring an unconscionably long time, but he knew she would be at home at this hour of the morning. It was entirely probable that she was willing herself not to answer in order to punish him for the last two weeks. Of course sleeping pills were always a possibility, a syndrome with which he was not unfamiliar either as a therapist or as a lover extricating himself from relationships that had run their course. But in Jessica’s case he thought the refusal to answer was more likely. Part of her attraction was the stubbornness that went along with her coltish grace.
“Well,” she had said lightly right at the beginning — at the Schonbergs’ party where they had met. “That would be perfectly all right because I have one too. An ongoing commitment.”
He had been leaning, whiskey-mellow, on the piano and had whispered that he desired her inordinately but he was afraid nothing could come of it, et cetera.
“It is,” he said reproachfully, “quite uncalled for in your case. A commitment. He’s here at the party?”
“As a matter of fact, he’s in Europe for a few months. Company assignment. But I couldn’t possibly pass up the show I’m doing at the moment so I stayed behind. And your wife?”
“Ruth’s at a board meeting. What does your husband do?”
“Not husband, in point of fact.”
“Ah. In my case also, actually not wife. We intend a more lasting commitment.”
“Indeed?” She raised a sardonic eyebrow. “It’s working well, I see.”
Chagrined he explicated: “An open and honest one.”
“Oh of course. Ned and I, on the other hand, are just playing it by ear. No specific vows of permanence.”
“And what does Ned do?”
“Corporation lawyer. Aren’t you? Do the Schonbergs know any other kind of people, allowing for minor divergences into international law, industrial law, and taxation law?”
“As a matter of fact, I’m a clinical therapist. And a psychology professor on the side, I teach a couple of courses.”
“How did you get in the Schonbergs’ front door? You’re not her shrink, are you?”
“No. She took one of my courses.”
“Contemporary Neuroses or How to Get More Out of Your Sex Life?”
“Cruel,” he said. “To both of us.”
“Therapists bring out the worst in me.”
“You’ve had a bad experience with one?”
“I wouldn’t touch one.”
“What a blow,” he said archly. “And here I was hoping.”
“But we already agreed that this could go nowhere.”
“Your hostility is definitely showing. What do you have against therapists?”
“They manipulate. They’re power freaks. Also I have several friends who’ve been turned into dependency junkies. Have to call their therapists every second day for a fix.”
“In my defence, let me say only that there have been people who came to me incapacitated with misery, who went away functioning and happy.”
“But most of all, I hate their arrogance. That sickening sense of themselves as God.”
In retrospect, he thought, it was not surprising that she had induced a mild frenzy of possessive desire.
On what must have been the twentieth ring, the phone was answered. Breathlessly.
“Sorry. (Gasp.) Heard it ring as I unlocked. (Gasp.) Just ran up the stairs.”
It was not Jessica’s voice.
“Excuse me. I must have the wrong number.”
“Did you want Jessica?”
“Ah … yes. Who are you?”
“New tenant. Lise, Jessica moved out a week ago.”
“Moved out? Thats impossible. Why?”
“Don’t ask me. I just answered her ad on the bulletin board at the theatre. Because of the guy, I suppose. Some guy came back into her life, she said.”
“Oh. Ned from Europe.”
“Ned? No, that wasn’t his name. I met him when I was moving in. But I remember now: she said if Ned called, tell him she’d write.”
“I see. Any other messages?”
“Not that I recall. Oh yes. Just that I wasn’t to give anyone her phone number. She said anyone who mattered knew where to find her at rehearsal. But she still has to come back to pick up a couple of things if you want to leave a message … Hello? … Hello?”
He was stunned. Outraged. Two weeks of disciplined self-denial designed to convey a subtle message, to accustom her gently …
The Tiger in the Tiger Pit Page 15
