Too Much Too Soon

by Jacqueline Briskin

  “I need to talk to you,” she murmured, biting her lip.

  He stretched out his free hand, opening it as if to say, You have the floor.

  “It’s about . . . well, I wanted to explain, to s-say . . .” My God, at my age, stammering, she thought, and her face grew hot.

  He took a long sip, sitting there peering up at her with a purposefully questioning expression.

  “Ab-bout . . .”

  “You must be waiting to hear my gratitude,” he said. “Okay, I’m deeply obligated for what you are about to do, and forever in your debt.”

  “Don’t be like this,” she whispered.

  “How?”

  “S-sarcastic . . . m-mean.”

  “It’s been so long that you must have forgotten,” he said. “You were ever the noble, generous soul in the Ivory family—even if you can’t quite get the noble, generous words out.”

  She was numbed with misery, not so much for herself as for him. What had the years done to him that he, never petty, was reduced to sneering at a minor physical defect? “Curt, don’t. Please don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Why can’t we talk?”

  “Aren’t we? Or have I lost the knack of conversing with you?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “My learned counsel tell me for their fat fees that I need a loyal helpmeet at my side when I appear in Washington—voluntarily, by the way—the story of my subpoena is incorrect reporting. And you, the high-born UK gardener, flesh of my flesh, have miraculously appeared. I gather from your reaction, a simple thank you won’t suffice. Now what? Should I prostrate myself?”

  A surge of emotion overcame Honora, and she, who so seldom lost her temper, was carried by rage. “Do not speak to me this way!” Her words emerged clear edged and frosty. “I am not one of your women.”

  “Baby, you’ve made that abundantly clear,” he said with loud, hectoring sarcasm. “Now do me a favor and get the hell off my boat.”

  Once, in a hospital room that smelled of antiseptic and dying roses he had rubbed his unshaven cheek against hers and promised to kill anybody who ever hurt her. What if she called that promise now? Would he commit hari-kari and get blood all over the white leather and carpet? She emitted a discordant titter, then tears spurted from her eyes. Appalled, she turned away from him. A witless move. He must see how it was with her.

  “Honora, sit down,” he said in a flat, emotionless voice.

  In her humiliation and misery, she pretended not to hear, fishing in her purse for a Kleenex, dabbing at her eyes as she headed for the entry.

  “You’re right,” he said quietly. “If we’re going to be together in Washington we better get the hostilities ironed out. Stay a minute or two.”

  She halted. After estimating the logistics of lowering her pain-stiffened spine into one of the low, monstrous chairs, she perched on a high stool at the bronze bar, which curved sleekly like the statues. Resting her forehead in her palm, she struggled for control.

  When the crying ceased she blew her nose and stared down at her sodden wad of tissue, wishing disjointedly that she had remembered to take off her wedding ring.

  “How about a drink?” he asked in the same quiet tone.

  “Aspirin.”

  “An Empirin Codeine be all right?”

  “Perfect.”

  He moved behind the bar. She did not look directly at him, but watched his hands, tanned and strong with beige hairs tangling on the knuckles, as he shifted ice from the small refrigerator and poured water at the sink.

  He slid the tumbler across to her with a brown prescription phial. She tapped two capsules into her palm.

  “They’re sixty milligrams,” he warned. “Strong stuff.”

  She nodded, downing both at once with several gulps of water. “My back’s been acting up,” she explained.

  “And my head’s been splitting.”

  “You still have migraines?”

  “I have one right now,” he said, touching his temple wryly. “Time was when I could take the legal gobbledygook in my stride, but not anymore.” He poured himself another drink. “The only good thing I can see about getting old is that it beats the other choice.”

  She smiled.

  “Now,” he said. “Now, what were you trying to tell me before I drew blood?”

  “I’m tired of all the hard feelings.”

  “I’m not trying to stick it to you again, Honora, but it has been pretty painful, communicating through Joscelyn.”

  “Better than through Marva Leigh,” she said, managing to cover her jealousy with wit.

  “Touché,” he said. “God, I’d forgotten how you can come back like that.”

  “Anyway, I guess it was my own failings that made me take it so hard . . . you know, about Alexander.” She had intended to further explain that she was ashamed of carrying her grudge so long, but mentioning her nephew alerted the demons that dwelt within her. She shifted her raffia purse in her lap. “Lissie sends her best love.”

  Curt looked up. “Is she with you?”

  “She stayed with Vi. I didn’t know what would happen, you know, the hearings . . . .” It wasn’t only revelations that she feared. Lissie bore wounds enough from her natural parents’ disaster and did not need to be ripped apart by the reverberations of inaudible bombs detonated by her adopted parents’ quarrels.

  “The last few visits,” Curt said, “she’s been different. Shy around everybody except me and Joss.”

  “She avoids talking to people she doesn’t know really well.”

  “Her speech has come along fabulously.”

  “She’s learned to listen quite well with the auditory trainer.”

  “I have one here, and we’ve used it,” Curt said with a touch of pride.

  “She never said a thing to me—but, Curt, she hardly ever mentions things connected to deafness.”

  “Hey, I figured she was like that with only me. I got a little professional advice about the pre-puberty stage in girls.”

  She leaned forward in the stool. “I did, too!” This was how she’d acquired for a client the child psychologist whose husband had chased her. “At that age most children question their deafness—Why me? But Lissie’s keeping it locked inside. Maybe because of her early traumas.”

  They discussed their child in the worried, vying tone that separated parents assume. When Curt finished his scotch, Honora slipped from the barstool.

  “I borrowed Joss’s car,” she said. “And I promised faithfully to have it back this afternoon.”

  Curt walked out on the deck with her. Close up, she saw the imprint of the years. His chestnut tan concealed new lines around his eyes, and deep creases now accommodated the uneven smile. The lightening of his hair was caused as much by the sprinkling of white as by the sun. He was examining her. Her spirits buoyed, she forgot to worry about the revelations strong California light would make on her. Her expression was unguarded and innocent.

  He looked suddenly tired, sad. “Honora, this time I mean it,” he said quietly. “I appreciate you showing up.”

  “Are you really sure the committee won’t come down hard on you?”

  “The one thing going for me is that I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  “I know that.”

  “That’s the reason I volunteered to testify.”

  “It’s so unfair to print that you had to be subpoenaed—”

  “Ahh, screw them all. At least we’re not enemies.”

  As Honora moved across the asphalt to the Corvette, she felt floaty as silk.

  When she turned at the car, she saw Curt and Marva Leigh leaning on the bow rail. Marva Leigh raised her bare arm, a negligent, friendly wave that managed to be narcissistic, as if she were posing for Vogue. She rested the hand negligently on Curt’s shoulder. Circling his companion’s lean waist, he also saluted Honora.

  She got in the Corvette. Now she felt drained and wooden. That floatiness, she informed herself, was the e
ffect of the codeine.

  * * *

  She didn’t hear from Curt, however Arthur Kohn took her to lunch at l’Érmitage. Glancing around the nearby booths and tables, which were filled with well-dressed people, he explained in a low voice that she would be protected insofar as possible from the media, and that she and her estranged husband would share a large suite at the Dolley Madison. “You’ll have your own quarters, of course, a room, bath and dressing room that can be locked off.”

  She nodded.

  “Mrs. Ivory,” he said, his large head averted, “there’s the question of clothes. Since they’ll be specifically purchased for the hearings, Mr. Ivory wishes them to be charged to him.”

  “That’s quite unnecessary.”

  “You’re already being generous with your time—”

  “Mr. Kohn,” she interrupted, pushing away her fresh raspberries, “I do support myself.”

  “He said you’d be touchy.”

  “And I would feel happier if I weren’t discussed behind my back.”

  “It’s a most awkward situation, I appreciate that. But you’ll be shopping with someone from my client’s public relations firm, so he considers it a business expense. Afterwards, you can give the wardrobe away to charity.” He watched her, his head tilting and his lips parting in that tutorial expression.

  “It’s a stupid point to argue, I suppose,” she said.

  “If you weren’t the type of lady that you are, your presence in Washington wouldn’t be much use.”

  “Mr. Kohn, how long do you think this will last? I have my little girl in London, and my business.” But alas no clients.

  “I can’t be certain. Surely though he’ll be testifying more than once. Two days at the least, four at the most. But of course the committee meets on this coming Thursday, so if it’s more than two days you’ll be detained for the weekend—” He broke off as the waiter came over.

  When Honora arrived back at the apartment Joscelyn’s answering machine had recorded a message for her: the New York voice was so deep and raspy that Honora would have been hard put to ascertain its gender if the caller had not explained that she was Mrs. Rickleff, the distaff half of Mr. Ivory’s West Coast public relations firm.

  The following morning the PR woman—“Call me M.J.,”—took her to Patricia’s, chain-smoking thin brown cigarillos while Honora tried on clothes. It had been years since she had bought herself any garment not on a sale rack, and she could not deny the pleasure of sitting in the large, thick-carpeted, mirrored dressing room while pleasant-faced Mrs. Horak, the owner who had waited on her in plusher days, personally carried in outfit after outfit. Yet Honora had been unable to stifle quivers of resentment. This was exactly how she had felt being outfitted for Edinthorpe. The rigidly structured designer clothes that M.J. approved with a raise of her cigarillo were a uniform that had nothing to do with Honora Ivory.

  * * *

  That evening, as she and Joscelyn shared a take-out mushroom pizza in the apartment, she explained her ambivalence.

  “You realize don’t you,” Joscelyn said, “that Curt must be pretty shook to be accepting your help?”

  “Of course I know that, Joss. I was trying to explain how I felt.” She glanced toward the great mound of pale gray boxes adorned with a cerise Patricia’s in cursive writing.

  Joscelyn took another wedge, twisting off the strings of mozzarella. “Well, I’m talking about Curt. Ever since I’ve known him he’s been flamboyant, extrovertish. None of this timid, gray, corporate sobriety. He’s never run scared.”

  “Joss, he’s about to have all of his financial and personal life unzipped. Naturally he has a few qualms.” Enough to leave Marva Leigh behind?

  “I thought maybe I’d come along and lend my support, too,” Joscelyn said. “Is he staying at the Dolley Madison?”

  “Yes—or is it the Madison?”

  “The Dolley Madison’s the fancy annex of the Madison.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m sure it’s a positive move for me to come,” Joscelyn said defiantly.

  “Absolutely, Joss. You can share my room.”

  Joscelyn nodded. Her pale blue eyes were not on her sister as she said, “He was at my trial every day.”

  “Joss, this isn’t the same at all. He hasn’t done anything . . . .”

  “You’re saying he’s not a murderer?” Joscelyn crunched savagely down on the crust of her pizza. “When the Morrell Committee’s finished with him murder’ll seem like a minor felony.”

  Eight

  1976

  Honora, Crystal and Joscelyn

  61

  Their limousine was halted on Independence Avenue amid the traffic heading toward the Capitol. A vast, threatening umber cloud was covering the city, and office workers carried furled umbrellas while inappropriately lightclad tourists scurried into the castlelike, nineteenth-century red sandstone grotesquerie that was the original Smithsonian Museum.

  The Morrell Subcommittee was to meet on the third floor of the Rayburn House Office Building: from this vantage point, a mile or so away, the marble and granite edifice, which had taken on the ominous brownish tones of the sky, seemed dwarfed by the Capitol, yet in actuality the Rayburn Building with its fifty acres of floor space on nine stories was far larger.

  Honora glanced at Curt, who was sitting between Joscelyn and herself, a proximity both disturbing and exciting. His hands rested on his dark blue trousers. Then, abruptly, the left index finger rose up, the nail riffling on the immaculate crease. Instinctively she moved to take his hand to comfort him, then she recollected that touch no longer belonged in their vocabulary. Her impulse to murmur a reassurance was inhibited by a near photographic superimposure of Marva Leigh and him leaning entwined on the Odyssey’s bow. Natural responses blocked, she stared out the window, spotting a couple of fine old gingko trees and a pond cypress, which was exceedingly rare.

  Joscelyn was frowning defiantly at the Capitol dome.

  “Hey, ladies,” Curt said. His hand was calm now, yet Honora could feel the emanations of his compressed energy. “Go into the hearing looking so grim, and the committee’ll figure I’m guilty of more than a bit of grease.”

  “Grease?” Honora asked. They had been married enough years for her to be intimate with the term, but here was the means of diverting him.

  “It’s rather like manure in your business,” he said.

  Joscelyn leaned forward to enlighten Honora in the pedantic cadence of teacher’s pet. “If you don’t pay off the government clerks, nothing happens. Every corporation overseas has a slush fund to oil the wheels. The Congressional hearings before this have all accepted grease as a routine cost of doing business abroad.”

  The cars to their left had begun to move, but their line remained stalled.

  “We could walk quicker than this,” Curt said.

  “I couldn’t. Not in these beauties.” Joscelyn arched her long foot in its elegant, stacked-heel pump.

  “Curt, how do you pay the grease money?” Honora asked.

  Again Joscelyn answered. “The easiest thing in the world. An intermediary, somebody from the country in question, handles it for you. Most governments demand you hire a native consultant, so you generally use him.” She passed her tongue over her pale mouth. “When we were in Lalarhein, Khalid got us a consultant who was terrific at smearing.”

  “Khalid?” Curt asked.

  “Fuad’s nephew,” Joscelyn said. “Khalid Abdulrahman.”

  “You’ve got me baffled,” Curt said. “Khalid’s never had any connection whatsoever with Ivory.”

  “He and Malcolm were buddy-buddy.”

  “I thought Khalid was totally anti-Western,” Honora said. Sometime this past winter, maybe it was January, Khalid had been interviewed on the BBC. He had spent about ten minutes denigrating his British education, insisting that it was his years at Harrow and Oxford that had convinced him Islam must turn from Western decadence. His wandering eye had flashed sternly at the c
ameras when he’d argued that veiled, secluded females were infinitely happier, more secure and lived far more useful lives than their “liberated” Western counterparts. Clips of the program had appeared on the News, there was a to-do in the papers and Prince Khalid attained minor celebrityhood in the United Kingdom.

  “Nowadays he certainly is,” Curt said. “He refuses to show at any function where there’s to be Westerners present—Fuad says Khalid gives him a rough time because he has American friends.”

  “Khalid always did have the lunatic fringe in love with him,” Joscelyn said. “But I never could figure what Malcolm saw in him. They were about the same age, that’s all.”

  “Well, the consultant he suggested must’ve been A-okay,” Curt said. “As I recall, Malcolm’s pumping station finished ahead of schedule.”

  “By three months,” said Joscelyn with sad pride.

  The traffic knot loosened. They inched past the enormous grimy glass conservatory that was the Botanic Gardens and the Bartholdi Fountain with its surrounding flowerbeds, going under the Rayburn House Office Building into the gasoline-fumed garage. Their driver halted to let them off near the bank of elevators. A cluster of people waited, all of them wearing colored plastic name tags. The bulgingly fat cameraman with batteries attached to the back of his belt gave them a long, assessing look.

  On the third floor more people stared. Honora paid attention to the corridor. The high ceilings gave no sense of grandeur, serving only to amplify the roar of voices and footsteps. Cheap wooden chairs were stacked in pairs outside a Congressman’s office.

  Arthur Kohn hurried around a corner, greeting them each with a handshake. He was accompanied by two of the partners whom Honora had met aboard the Odyssey. Joscelyn was introduced all around and the group fell in step behind Curt.

  The media were waiting outside the chamber where the Morrell Subcommittee would meet. Ballpoints and notepads went into action, cumbersome minicams were maneuvered, microphones with call letters were thrust at Curt’s face. Reporters shouted questions at him simultaneously.

  “Mr. Ivory, what sort of inquiries do you expect?”