“Are you busy?” she asked hesitantly.
His face lit up when he saw her.
“Never too busy for you,” he replied, snapping off the lamp and standing up to stretch his back muscles. Then he moved over to sit on the sofa. “Are the girls in bed?”
“One is, another is on her way and the third is probably on the telephone.”
“Come sit down,” he invited, patting the sofa.
Karen chose the chair across from him.
“You must have thought I was ignoring you,” she began.
“Nonsense,” he told her. “I know how hard you and Nancy have been working to finish the book.”
It would have been so much easier, she thought, if he weren’t always so nice and so understanding about everything.
“Well, I didn’t want you to think that I’d forgotten your… your kind offer.”
He grinned ar her, the gold flecks in his eyes dancing. “You make it sound like we’re talking about a job.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to,” she apologized. “It’s just that I…”
Karen faltered. She had simply meant to thank him, decline his proposal, and then leave, as quickly as possible.
“It’s been such a short time,” she heard herself saying instead. “We barely know each other. I mean, we’re friends, and I really do like you, but…”
“… you don’t love me,” he finished for her.
She looked down at her hands twisted in her lap. “It’s not that so much,” she whispered, wishing she didn’t have to do this. “But there are things about me, things you couldn’t possibly understand that—well, it isn’t you, you see, it’s that— well, I can’t marry anybody.”
He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, while she struggled with her hands.
“For a long time after my wife died,” he said finally, “I was convinced that I never wanted to get close to anyone again. Losing her had hurt too much, and I knew I couldn’t risk going through anything like that a second time. So I built an invisible wall around myself, a bomb shelter, if you will, and I locked myself into it so I could be safe. I had my work, I had the girls, and I figured that was enough. But I was wrong, because all of life is a risk—and safe is as good as already dead.”
Karen pried her eyes away from her hands to glance up at him. He was sensitive and he was caring and he was trying so hard, but he just didn’t understand.
“And for me, it’s the other way around,” she told him. “Safe is the only way I can live.”
“Does that leave any room for negotiation?”
Her glance slid past his shoulder. “I do like you, in a very special way,” she said. “I trust you more than any man I know. I feel good when I’m with you. I look forward to the time I spend with you and the girls, and all that means more to me than I can say.”
“That’s a start.”
“But it’s not enough.”
“Why not?”
Her eyes fastened on her hands once again. “Because I can’t… I can’t be a wife to you.” She sighed. She had come to think of other women as being lush and green inside, where she saw herself to be brown and shriveled.
A pensive frown creased his forehead. “I’m not going to pry,” he said. “I don’t need to know any more than you want to tell me.”
“I had… an accident,” she heard herself say, when she hadn’t intended to say anything at all. “It was a long time ago, but because of it, there are—things that don’t work like they should.”
“I’m not looking for grand passion at my stage of life,” he replied sincerely. “I don’t really expect to have again what I had with Barbara. But the feelings I have for you are warm and comfortable and constant, and that’s enough for me. I’d just like you to be a part of my life, to share all the laughter that’s ahead, and the tears, too.”
“You make it sound so simple,” she responded. “Only it isn’t that simple.”
Ted took a deep breath. “It can be,” he assured her. “It can be as simple as taking on three little girls who adore you, and their father who thinks the world is an okay place again because you’re in it. And it wouldn’t ever have to be anything more than that, unless, of course, you wanted it to be.”
“I do believe you are offering me a job,” she said with a sudden grin. “Mrs. Peagram’s job.”
“Well, that may not be exactly what I had in mind,” he returned with a grin of his own. “But I’ll take what I can get.”
Karen sighed again. He made it sound almost idyllic, as in the fairy tales she told the girls, where the prince and the princess, no matter what problems stood in their way, always rode off into the sunset together to live happily ever after. But fantasy was one thing and reality was quite another.
“I wish—” she began.
“Look,” he interrupted. “I have to run up to New Haven tomorrow. I’ll be gone two, maybe three days. Why don’t you think about it some more, until I get back. Then we can sit down and talk again.”
“Well, if you insist,” she conceded, although the last thing she wanted was to have another conversation like this.
“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “I know you came here tonight to turn me down. That’s pretty obvious. So I have very little to lose by postponing the moment—and maybe a great deal to gain.”
Karen couldn’t help chuckling. “This would be a whole lot easier if I didn’t like you so much.”
“I’m counting on that,” he replied.
“What’s happening in New Haven?” she asked.
“Something of an honor, actually,” he told her. “My alma mater has invited me to participate in a symposium on changing trends in architecture and then I’ve been asked to submit a proposal for a new computer complex.”
“Yale is in New Haven,” she said.
“Indeed it is,” he agreed.
Karen began to laugh as she hadn’t laughed in years because there were some things that had no rhyme or reason, they just happened, at a time and a place of their own choosing, and there was no point in trying to figure out how or why.
“You went to Yale?” she sputtered.
“Twice,” he confirmed. “Both undergraduate and graduate school. Why? Does that make a difference?”
“Not to me,” she giggled. “But my mother is going to love you.”
nine
four Seasons, by Yanow and Kern, was presented to the public on the thirteenth of August. Its appearance at Demion Five was preceded by a solid month of promotion, designed to whet the appetite of every status-conscious patron of the arts within a hundred-mile radius of Manhattan.
“By the time this little item hits the shelves,” Demelza predicted, “there won’t be a self-proclaimed connoisseur anywhere within hailing distance of this city who’d let himself be caught dead without a copy on his coffee table.”
Karen and Nancy were on the scene that Thursday from two until six, seated behind a table, as the stack of books in front of them slowly dwindled, autographing every first-day purchase with a flourish. Trays of canapés were passed about, champagne bubbled, and the shop was jammed.
“I told you they’d come,” Demelza murmured, breezing by with a platter of rumaki.
Finally, it was closing time. The last canapé had been eaten; the last drop of champagne drunk, and the last paying customer politely ushered out the door.
“My right hand will never be the same,” Nancy complained as she flexed her fingers in agony.
“Oh, the price of fame and fortune,” Demelza declared.
“That remains to be seen,” Karen remarked. “Two hundred copies sold does not five thousand make.”
“After twelve years in my employ,” Demelza chided, “I can’t believe you haven’t learned how to recognize a winner. Hasn’t any of my clairvoyance rubbed off?”
Karen shrugged. “I guess in this case, I’m not exactly what you’d call objective.”
By the end of October, two-thirds of the limited edition of Four Sea
sons had been spoken for.
“Trust me, the rest will be gone before Christmas,” Demelza proclaimed.
“I don’t believe it,” Nancy gasped when Karen handed her a five-figure check for her share of the profits.
“I know,” Karen agreed, having banked a similar check earlier in the afternoon. “Too bad we didn’t print ten thousand copies.”
“That’s okay,” Nancy told her. “I’ve got a great idea for our second effort.”
Karen laughed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
Nancy shrugged. “Well, at least you didn’t say no.”
They began work on Mirror Images, a contrasting study of the people of New York, two days later, finishing the layout at three o’clock on the afternoon of November 14.
Four hours later, Karen and Ted were married in a simple ceremony in a judge’s chamber, after which they celebrated with close friends and family at the elegant Four Seasons Restaurant.
“How appropriate,” gushed Beverly Kern. She smiled benignly at her new son-in-law. “Was this your idea?”
“Actually, it was Karen’s,” he told her.
“How very clever of you, darling,” she trilled at her daughter.
“Thank you, Mother,” Karen responded graciously.
“He’s one of the most successful architects in the country,” Beverly had informed her sister-in-law Edna shortly after the engagement was announced.
“I’m so happy for Karen,” Edna replied. “For a while, there, it didn’t seem that she was ever going to settle down.”
“Well, I suppose it did take her longer than it might have,” Beverly sniffed. “But then, she wasn’t about to marry just anybody. He had to be suitable. Ted’s a Yale man, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“I suppose an architect is better than no one,” she said to her husband with a heavy sigh. “But a widower with three small children? What can Karen be thinking of?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Leo inquired. “Seems like a pretty good fit to me, all things considered.”
“To have someone else’s children foisted on her? How can that turn out to be anything but disastrous?”
“You worry too much,” Leo told his wife.
“We’re so happy for Karen,” Beverly told Ted’s mother during the reception. “Your son is such a lovely man and so successful, too. And those adorable little girls of his—why, they’re just an extra added bonus, aren’t they?”
“We think so,” Ted’s mother replied.
Karen never discussed what finally tipped the scales in Ted’s favor. Not with Nancy or Jill and especially not with her mother. She told everyone it was because he had made it very easy for her to say yes and impossible for her to say no. But of course there was more to it than that.
There was knowing that a career, while not a totally unsatisfactory substitute for marriage and motherhood, was still just that—a substitute. There was, in the final analysis, the desire to be connected to another human being, not to be alone any longer. And there was curiosity. Or perhaps it was that, in the secret place where her best instincts dwelled, Karen believed she had come upon a man who might care more about who she was than about what she had done.
It had always been her fantasy that a knight in shining armor would simply appear one day, like a sunburst, to claim her. He would ignore her imperfections, look deep into her eyes and take her breath away.
Ted Doniger had sneaked up on her. There was no sunburst, no breathless moment of awareness. In the guise of a friend, he gained her confidence. In the guise of a surrogate brother, he gained her affection. Before she quite realized how it happened, she began to trust him with her laughter, her hopes, and her fears. From that grew the fervent faith that he would not turn away from her defiled body, and the belief that he would protect her from the harsh glare of an indifferent world. Further, she knew this was likely her last chance to have the life she had been raised to want—the children, the home, the status, the security, and he had offered it to her on whatever terms she chose to name.
“A good marriage is your only chance for happiness,” she could still hear Beverly saying. Although her values were no longer her mother’s, she knew she would be a fool to turn Ted down.
“I know what a private person you are,” he had said, “and how much you value your own space. I wish the apartment was big enough for separate rooms, but we can at least have separate beds, if that would make you more comfortable.”
Ted Doniger was a man of infinite patience. He intended to spend the rest of his life with this woman, and he was prepared to wait as long as necessary for the intimacy that so obviously troubled her. Just having her in the house all the time, where he could look at her and talk to her and watch her with the girls, would be enough.
“Do you want to go on a honeymoon?” he asked.
“I hadn’t thought,” Karen murmured, uncomfortable with the implication of the question. “Is it… obligatory?”
“I think it’s up to the two people involved,” he replied casually. “But since I’m still in the middle of the Yale project and you and Nancy are just starting a new book, it might work out better if we didn’t plan anything right away.”
“That sounds reasonable,” she agreed with relief.
A honeymoon, with all that the word implied, would have been too much for her to handle, and she silently thanked him for his understanding. It was going to be difficult enough to change her whole life, not to mention her home, and she was counting on having the children around to help smooth the transition between dropping by and moving in.
They asked Felicity to create their wedding rings and she produced complementing free-form chunks of gold, Ted’s plain, Karen’s set off by a thin row of diamonds. Karen asked Jenna to design her wedding dress, requesting something simple, without a veil or a train, and not white—she would not have been able to deal with the deceit of wearing white. Jenna created a short swirl of pale-peach satin that suited Karen’s coloring and figure perfectly and complemented Ted’s dark-blue suit and tie.
The ceremony was brief but dignified and the reception was later described as elegant. Afterward, however, Karen could remember very little of either, except that she had been surrounded by all the important people in her life. What she did remember vividly was going home to West Seventy-eighth Street.
With the best of intentions, Nancy had whisked the girls upstairs following the festivities, bundling them into bed beside her own Roger and Emily. Mrs. Peagram had been given the weekend off.
The downstairs apartment was dark when Ted unlocked the door, and ominously quiet. For a moment, Karen had the foolish thought that they had come to the wrong address. She walked behind him into the kitchen, her high heels tapping smartly against the hardwood floor, echoing her heartbeat
“It’s so different here without the girls,” she murmured.
Ted snapped on the kitchen light. There was a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice on the counter, with two long-stemmed glasses standing beside it. A card was propped against the bucket. It read: “To a long and happy life together” in Nancy’s distinct, slanted handwriting.
“My sister the romantic,” Ted chuckled. “She must have sneaked down here just ahead of us.”
He reached for the bottle and extracted the cork with a resounding pop.
“Leave it to Nancy.” Karen smiled, wishing fervently that she was back in her own town house, standing in her own kitchen, about to down a shot of brandy before going to sleep in her own bed.
Ted poured just enough champagne into each goblet so it would not overflow. Then he handed one to her.
“I may not have much control over how long a life we’ll have,” he said, smiling at her and touching his glass to hers, “but I promise that I’ll do everything I know how to make it a happy one.”
He was unfailingly nice and he was trying so hard to put her at ease. Karen was glad they still had on their coats so he couldn’t see how hard h
er knees were knocking. Except she could see that her hand, holding the champagne, was trembling.
“Shall we light a fire?” he asked, noticing. “We can sit and enjoy our champagne while we warm up.”
It sounded exactly like the kind of thing her knight in shining armor would have suggested.
“It’s really late,” Karen heard herself reply. “And I’m exhausted. Would it be all right if I just went on to bed?”
“Sure,” Ted said easily. “You go ahead.” He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the cheek, the way he always did. “I think I’ll stay up for a while and unwind. Just holler if you need anything.”
Karen went quickly down the stairs, intending to be fast asleep by the time he finished unwinding. During the past week, she had moved her clothes and personal items over from East Sixty-third Street. She knew which bed was hers, which bureau, which closet, which shelves in the medicine cabinet, where the towels were kept, and how the light switches worked. She would not need any help.
It took her less than five minutes to undress, wash off her makeup and brush her teeth, pull a nightgown over her head and slip between the sheets, leaving only the lamp on Ted’s side of the room lit. In addition to trading the double bed he had shared with Barbara for twins, Ted had fashioned a kind of partition out of draperies which had the effect of splitting the space in half.
Karen lay stiffly in the unfamiliar bed, staring at the unfamiliar half-room, and wondered what on earth she was doing there. This house, which had always echoed with light and laughter, now seemed like a silent tomb, with menace lurking in every corner.
“Please, let me go to sleep,” she whispered into the shadows. “Let the morning come quickly. Let the girls come back early.”
The mist became fog, collecting at her feet, stealing up her legs, swirling about her body, engulfing her. Soon, she could see less than a yard ahead through the thick gray soup. She looked frantically around, searching for the path that had been there just seconds before—but it was gone, gone in the fog, and she was lost and alone. With him.
Guilt by Association Page 27
