After breakfast he put the tray on the floor and they read the Sunday Times, Janet the arts and leisure section and Bill the business and sports pages. It seemed so natural, Janet thought, like married people. For a moment she wondered if Kit and Nat had that special quality in their affair. Janet was no judge, but somehow she knew that what she and Bill had together was rare. It had to be. She knew it because Kit had given her a clue, and because Bill had shown her in a dozen different ways that he’d never been this content with any other woman. He’d never even indulged in the simple, wonderful adventures they had shared. She knew instinctively that he had revealed much more of himself than he would have liked, but his inadvertent disclosures had also told her she was definitely more than just a one-night stand. The physical part was fantastic. To feel his lean, taut body next to hers … but they always talked afterward.
Even now, as they lay in each other’s arms with the paper strewn on the floor and the sheets rumpled at the bottom of the bed, he wanted to know about her childhood in Wichita. And she listened as he told about growing up with that wonderful but overly protective mother and three adoring sisters. The odds, he said, were against him. It was his father and himself against four females, and his father had finally liberated him by packing him off to military school—not without female voices raised in protest, he added. “Brave man, my father. That’s probably one of the reasons I was a little gun-shy of women.” There was just enough bitterness in his laugh to make Janet realize the truth of what Kit had told her, but she was even more aware of the closeness she felt with him because he had trusted her enough to be honest.
Her mind shifted back to the moment she had stood in that vast lobby, waiting for him to come down in the elevator and wondering if he was going to reject her. But he hadn’t and now she was here. For whatever reasons … she was here. Maybe she was tempting fate and this was the wrong moment to tell him, but somehow she had to get it out of the way.
“Bill, I have something to tell you … I suppose I shouldn’t. I know people play games with one another, tell little white lies or simply avoid admitting little things, but something’s been bothering me …”
“What?”
“Remember the first night we met?”
“Do I?” He laughed. “I’m still drying out.”
“Well … I know this is absolute insanity but I was so devastated about the whole thing, I mean ruining your suit and all, that I called you a couple of times to … apologize. I never spoke to you. I mean I did once but I guess I was too embarrassed to … well, to …”
A smile broke across his face. “So you were the one, you little minx. I ought to rap your bottom.”
“You’re not angry?”
He was sitting up in bed, looking down at her and brushing her hair back against the pillow, fanning it about her head. She returned his look, open and candid. And not to be resisted. He slid down and took her in his arms. That was his answer, and it was enough for her.
When Bill drove her back to the hotel Sunday evening, she stood in the center of her room feeling abruptly sad and alone, let down. Lovers, she reminded herself, were only on a part-time basis. She wished she could be like Kit and take it all in her stride. No tears when Nat left. But she wasn’t Kit, damn it, she was Janet, who had fallen in love and was convinced this was the one and only time she ever would.
She picked up her suitcase and put it on the bed, took out the mauve silk robe and hung it away. Nine-thirty. Call home? She picked up the receiver, but then hesitated. If she heard her mother’s voice she would probably cry, and then she’d have to make up some excuses for her mother. This whole affair was turning her into a weeping, wailing mess, she thought angrily. She sat down heavily on the bed and wondered what Bill was doing. Were men sentimental, romantic idiots like women? She doubted it, at least not any that she’d ever met. The talk she’d overheard among men she worked with seemed almost to boast of walking from one affair to the next, never looking back but always forward. Not so with women. They lived and relived the past, running through every nuance of each and every shared moment like an endless litany. Maybe Kit was right and Bill did have the advantage. All men did. There had probably never been a woman in the history of the world who had said to a man, “Darling, I want you to be my husband,” and had heard him respond—and not as a joke—“This is so sudden, I thought you’d never ask.” Kit might enjoy the irony in that, Janet thought, but she didn’t. Frustrated, she got under the shower and washed her hair, scrubbing her scalp until it hurt.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ON MONDAY NIGHT BILL called, asked how her day had gone and made idle conversation. But there was no mention of those magical moments. It was almost as though he’d forgotten about them. If he’d just said, “I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind … thought about you last night and today …” Stupid girl. If he’d said that it would be a declaration of love. Take what you can, Janet, because it’s either that or nothing …
Of course she accepted his invitation to dinner on Tuesday. And then there was lunch on Wednesday and dinner at his apartment on Thursday, with a short trip to his bedroom for “dessert,” as he put it. Too short. Hurried lovemaking wasn’t to Janet’s taste, but then, Bill wasn’t really to blame for that. She had to be up at five in the morning and she was catching a flight to Wichita at the end of the day.
Bill drove her to the airport on Friday and for once everything went according to schedule. They even had time for a long good-by kiss—which didn’t make her departure any easier. As she settled into her seat on the plane and fumbled through her bag to find her handkerchief, the elderly woman sitting alongside patted her hand.
“Don’t be frightened, dear. Flying is safer than …” Than loving someone, Janet almost answered, and continued to think of Bill across the miles from the tip of Delaware to Washington, D.C., West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri….
It wasn’t until the plane began to make its descent that her anticipation began to build.
She ran across the field to the terminal, where her mother and father were watching from the window.
“There she is,” Martha Stevens said excitedly.
The next thing Janet knew she was in their arms, suddenly feeling warm and at home in the excited exchange of greetings. “Oh, dad,” she said as she hugged him, “I didn’t know how much I missed you ’til now.”
That night she curled up in the canopied bed … feeling she had never left. The room was just as she had known it would be. She was a little girl again, feeling so safe. The photograph of Clark Gable still hung above her desk. He had been Rhett Butler and she Scarlett O’Hara and this was Tara … God help her … New York was the fantasy now, and this the reality. Still, Bill was standing in the shadows of her mind, and as she fell asleep she held the extra pillow close to her.
On Saturday morning, as Effie was serving breakfast in the dining room she said to Janet, “You better eat that oatmeal … getting to look like a scarecrow. Good Lord.” She returned to the kitchen and came back with a platter of sausage and eggs. “Don’t believe in all that modeling in the first place,” she went on. “Seeing your picture in the magazine doesn’t make me all that proud … told your mother so. Good Lord.” She could still be heard muttering as she went back to the kitchen.
“She’s more proud than she lets on,” Martha Stevens whispered.
There was a hush when Effie swung the kitchen door open again, this time holding a pot of fresh-brewed coffee. Looking at Janet’s plate she said, “I see you lost your taste for eating. Don’t see why those modeling places don’t just dig up a bunch of bones. That’s what you’re getting to look like. Or maybe the food’s not fancy enough like those New York places—”
“It’s delicious, Effie, and I love it, but I really can’t eat any more.”
“Oh, nonsense. They want you to look like a skeleton? It’s downright ridiculous, all this posing and prancing around. Why, sometimes when I see those pictures in that fancy Vogue ma
gazine I don’t even recognize you, looking like Theda Bara. If that’s their idea of what a woman should look like, they ought to take a look at women. Real women. Good wives and mothers. That’d be more sensible for you … to my way of thinking.”
“That’s right, Effie. You give ’em hell,” Dr. Stevens said, getting up from the table. He kissed Martha and Janet. “Don’t wait on me for dinner. I have a feeling I’ll be late, got a couple of real sick ones. If I’m not home by seven you go to the club and I’ll meet you there.”
The country club hadn’t changed in fifty years, Janet observed as she and her mother met her father that evening. Same red damask sofas and chairs. Maybe the draperies were more faded, the Persian rugs a little worn in spots, but no one seemed to notice. That’s what happened when you went away and came back. Friends she’d grown up with hadn’t changed either, not really. They were older, of course. Some were engaged, some married … Mary Lou was pregnant and Clare had a little boy one year old. But their talk and their interests seemed so familiar, so easy and so … similar. And the young men she’d known all her life suddenly looked like they’d been stamped out by a cookie cutter. White dinner jackets, black trousers. The big event … not to knock it … was still going back to the high school football games to root for the alma mater. No, none of them had changed.
But she had. She wished she hadn’t noticed, and in a way she disliked herself for the thought, but all at once she realized she had little in common with them. Face it. New York had seduced her in more ways than one. When she was in New York her heart was here, and now that she was here she very much missed Manhattan. More than ever she realized she had a foot in both worlds, was split between the two. And suddenly she knew she wasn’t sure who she was anymore. The things that Effie had said about not being married, not having children cut deep. She still wanted all that more than anything … and yet her career had hold of her …
That’s the trouble with life, she thought. When we get what we’ve dreamed of, look out … because it’s not quite the brass ring after all. Not so long ago she’d thought she had achieved everything she’d dreamed of—living in New York and seeing her picture in the pages of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. But that really wasn’t the ultimate, was it. Love mattered more. She looked ’round the room at the young men she’d known all her life. Could she be married to any one of them? No. And she could never come home again. Not really. And not to stay. She felt estranged from the people she’d known all her life, and all because she’d left and they never had. Their world was much more snug and safe, they knew who they were, so they had no need to leave. Who was to say who was better—or well—off?
That night she lay in her four-poster bed thinking how much she had changed, even since last night. Now she knew she wasn’t that little girl anymore. Rhett Butler and Scarlet O’Hara … God, all the fantasies she’d lived with. She was Janet Stevens, and Bill McNeil was her lover, and her love. That was true, if somehow less comforting right now than fantasy….
Sitting in church on Sunday between her parents made her realize even more how far she had drifted away. This morning was the first time since leaving home that she’d attended a church service. She felt less guilty than that she ought to feel guilty. Her family were moderate Presbyterians … good people who practiced the good life they preached. It occurred to her for a moment that it was curious that her father continued to worship here after his decision to be buried as a Jew. But then this was the habit of a lifetime, as it had been for her. Her father’s strength was in his goodness, as Yankel’s had been, and not in the religion he chose to follow during his lifetime. He was not denying one part of his heritage for another, but paying each its due.
When they stood on the front steps greeting friends and neighbors after church, Reverend Halsey held Janet’s hand and said, “It’s lovely seeing you, Janet.”
What would he say if he knew she was having an affair? What would her family say, for that matter….
Sunday luncheon was a buffet served out in the garden. Effie had outdone herself, with blueberry and corn muffins, rack of lamb with mint jelly, creamed pearl onions and emerald green peas, baked stuffed potatoes and persimmon pie. At four o’clock, lemonade and homemade cookies were served out on the terrace. Her Aunt Linda and Uncle John were there, along with her twin cousins Sally and Amy. Her cousins were fourteen, exactly the right age to be mesmerized by the very notion of her glamorous career in New York.
A starry-eyed Sally asked, “What’s it really like being a model in New York?”
“Wonderful,” she answered, simultaneously flattered and dismayed by their admiration.
“It must be terribly exciting,” Amy put in.
“Very,” Janet said, trying to sound enthusiastic.
“Are the men simply gorgeous?” they asked in unison.
“Absolutely.”
“And the women glamorous just like the pictures in Harper’s?”
“Oh, yes.” Janet said, and wished she had the courage to tell the truth.
The two looked at her almost hungrily and continued to ask questions, but she answered them mechanically, her mind in a different place. All afternoon she weighed her love for her parents and her love for Bill. She wasn’t sure where one began and the other left off. The only thing she knew was that she wanted to go back. This weekend had been a turning point in her life. Of that she was sure. Her family would always be cherished but her childhood would be put away. Now she wanted to go back to the life she had carved out for herself in New York. Two days ago she had arrived a girl, but today she thought of herself as a woman, ready to take on the responsibilities of making her own way in the world with all the rewards and hardships that might come her way. Growing up didn’t make the heart immune, of course, and good-bys were always bittersweet. But while it had been wonderful coming back to visit, somehow she knew that when she boarded the plane she would be going home, not leaving …
As the plane taxied down the runway for takeoff Janet had the same thoughts she’d had for days. How had Bill spent his time? Had he missed her? Had he taken someone else out, taken her to bed? Janet closed her eyes, trying to visualize him with someone else, but her mind rejected the idea. She would never ask him, of course, but she prayed he missed her … missed her badly. As she had him …
If Janet had known the truth, she could have laughed at her anxious thoughts.
Bill had watched that Friday afternoon as Janet boarded the plane and then had waited for the takeoff. As the plane streaked into the sky he had turned and slowly walked to his car.
He missed her already. More than he wanted to. In fact, more than he’d ever missed anyone. Back in his apartment, he sat staring out into the dark. That night he didn’t see the bridge and the view he loved so much. He saw the vivid memory of the past weekend. He felt her presence. But he couldn’t touch the softness, smell the sweet scent of her. And memories, no matter how fine, were lousy substitutes. Yes, by God, face it, he was lonely as all hell.
He switched on the lamp, poured himself a Scotch over ice, turned on the stereo and sat down again. He’d never had to wonder what he was going to do on any given night. He knew dozens of people he could call, and getting a date would be no problem either. All he’d have to do was pick up the phone. But somehow that seemed offensive. What the hell was wrong with him, was he getting moral all of a sudden? Not exactly. The women he knew did everything but eat a bunch of grapes from his navel while swinging from the chandelier and he had never complained. But after Janet his former affairs somehow seemed sordid, cheap … demeaning to both of them.
He reached for the phone, dialed Kit’s number. Out of all the people he knew, Kit and Charles Bristow were the only real friends he had. Now that he thought about it, he’d never felt close to anyone … it had never seemed important before. If anything, he had kept people at arms’ distance, happy not to be beholden to anyone.
He was so deep in thought that Kit’s voice startled him. “Kit? It’s Bill.
”
“Hi. What’s up, doc?”
“What are you doing?”
“What did you have in mind? A gin game, billiards or a roll in the hay?”
“I’m … sort of at loose ends.”
Well, well, well, that’s a switch, Kit thought. Bill McNeil needing someone? She smiled to herself. Things must be picking up for Janet.
“Why don’t you come right out and say it, Bill? It only hurts for a minute.”
“Say what?”
“That you’re lonesome.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why should I be—?”
“Because you called me.”
“I called because I haven’t talked to you for quite awhile.”
“I see. Well, that’s a right friendly gesture, especially at ten o’clock at night.”
“Is it that late?”
“Okay, kiddo, we’re on for a drink at your favorite pub.”
Bill was down to some serious drinking by the time Kit arrived at eleven. “What took you so long?” he asked as she slid into the booth.
“Had to get my face on. What are you complaining for anyway? You did get me out of bed, you know, and I’ve been up since five this morning. Give a girl a break.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Sorry! My God, will wonders never cease. Watch it, Bill, you might be turning into a real person.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Only that I never expected to hear you apologize to anyone. You’re the center of your own little universe, and you just go your merry way without ever considering other people. And then you sit and wonder why no one’s standing there to put you on your feet again when you fall down.”
“And you?” he said, taking a long sip.
“I have Nat, Charlie and his wife, and a very dear friend named Janet Stevens.”
And I have my mother, he thought … and Janet … ? “What do you want to drink?” He said it brusquely.
“Temper, temper … Irish coffee.”
Come Pour the Wine Page 12
