The Best of Everything

by Rona Jaffe

  I have— but at the time I wasn't rational. I just kept thinking about my baby." Her voice broke then and she knew that tears were running out of her eyes but she couldn't hold herself back any longer. And for some reason in front of Sidney she didn't feel like a fool at all.

  "I'm just like a man," Barbara went on. "I have to work like a man, fight for my job like a man, think like a man. I don't want to be a man, I want to be a woman—and I know damn well I'm not a woman at all even at my better moments, I'm just a young girl with so many responsibilities it throws me into a state of shock."

  Sidney took his handkerchief out of his breast pocket and unfolded it for her. She wiped her eyes, trying to smile at him, and saw that her mascara had left black streaks on his handkerchief.

  "I'm sorry . . ." she said.

  "I'm glad it's finally being used," he said. 'It's just a decoration up there."

  "You've been very kind. I guess you weren't expecting Niagara Falls. It doesn't really go with the Hawaiians, does it?"

  "They're fun, aren't they," he agreed.

  "I'm glad I met you," Barbara said sincerely.

  "I don't see why. You've spent most of the time feeling miserable." He smiled at her then, the having-fim smile.

  "It was a relief. It must have been a crashing bore for you, though."

  "Don't be silly."

  "It's just that I've had a tough evening," Barbara said apologetically. "I'm not usually like this. And I'm probably a httle high, too."

  "Barbara . . ."

  "What?"

  "Don't go oflF into your shell again. When I first met you this evening I couldn't quite figure you out. You look so young, but there's something withdrawn about you. Not natural shyness but a kind of bitterness. Now, of course, I realize why. But I didn't like you that way and I Uke you this way. You don't have to be like a man, as you put it."

  "I don't know what way to be any more," Barbara said.

  "So you met a few insensitive boys who couldn't realize your needs. It won't always be like that."

  "I know," Barbara said. "But I only know it in my head."

  "Whenever you're miserable," Sidney said, "it seems as though you've always been unhappy and you remember all the bad and disappointing things that ever happened to you. And when things are going wonderfully well it suddenly seems as though life had never really been so bad."

  "How do you knowl"

  He laughed. "Why? Do you think the blues are the exclusive property of the young?"

  She couldn't help laughing with him.

  "Glad to see you two are having a good time," Mr. Bossart said, looming over them, his tweedy outline a little fuzzy in the dim room. He eased himself into his place beside Barbara. "Did I miss anything?"

  "About four thousand drinks," said Sidney.

  "Then I beat you at tlie bar. Y'know who I just ran into? Old George. The best poker player the New Haven Railroad ever had on board."

  "He doesn't look like he'll play much of a game tonight," Sidney said, glancing at the beefy man drooping over the bar.

  "Oh, he's staying in town tonight." Mr. Bossart looked at his watch. "Well. Are we about ready to leave?"

  "Yes," Barbara said softly, reluctantly.

  As the three of them went to the door Mr. Bossart looked back and held up one hand in the direction of his friend at the bar. They nodded at each other and waved.

  The air was cold when Barbara reached the street, the night black and clear, with the deceptive frosty atmosphere that makes you think you are somewhere in the country instead of breathing city fumes. A cab came cruising up the side street, its light on top looking like a Christmas ornament. Mr. Bossart opened the taxi door.

  "You can have the first taxi, Barbara," he said. He patted her shoulder. "Get home safe, now, and good night, and Merry Christmas."

  She didn't get into the cab but turned and looked at him.

  "Barbara and I might as well share a cab," Sidney said casually. "We're both going in the same direction."

  "Aren't you going to the train?" Mr. Bossart asked.

  "An account of ours is having an open house. I might as well show

  up for a few minutes and then take the milk train, as long as it's this late already. He'll be hurt if I don't show."

  "Good night, Sid." Mr. Bossart put one arm around Sidney Carter's shoulders and with the other hand pumped his hand. "Take care."

  "You too."

  "Good night, Mr. Bossart," Barbara said. Sidney helped her into the taxi, and it drove oflF. She glanced back through the rear window and saw Mr. Bossart going back into the bar. She gave the driver her address in a taut voice and turned to Sidney.

  "How far are you going?" she asked.

  "I'm just going to drop you ofiF and then go to the train. I couldn't let our middle-aged Boy Scout send you o£F by yourself at this hour of the morning."

  "There is no party?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "You're so nice," Barbara said. "You know—Mr. Bossart means absolutely nothing to me, you know that, and yet when I looked back just now and realized that he was just trying to get rid of me so he could go back to his poker-playing friend I felt sort of odd. I had this thought: that aU over New York City right now, this minute, there are people trying to get rid of other people because they're bored with them. And somehow it depressed me."

  "But the people who have been gotten rid of are probably relieved to be free again. Haven't you thought of that aspect of it?"

  Barbara thought for a moment. "You're absolutely right. That's just how I feel."

  Sidney put his hand on tbe seat beside hers and then picked her hand up in his. "May I?"

  "Yes." She hadn't expected her heart to turn over the way it did when he took hold of her hand, it was half fright and half what she suddenly realized was excitement and desire. She held her fingers stiffly in his, and when he pressed them she did not respond.

  "This isn't a pass," he said quietly. "It's just a braille the sighted have worked out for things they've realized they can't see."

  She looked straight ahead, reading the driver's number on the little card posted in front of them, reading his name and not remembering it one instant after she had read it. All the time she was acutely aware of Sidney's hand attached to hers, even though he was holding it lightly, and she felt as if her entire arm had turned

  Into a heavy tree trunk. Then he let go, and her arm came to life again, and her hand, alone and deserted on the leather seat, felt cold.

  "Here's my house," she said, wishing it weren't.

  He paid the driver and walked to the door. He paused on the top step. "Will you be all right?"

  "Yes. Thank you."

  He looked up at the windows of her apartment house. "Which windows are yours? Can we see them from here?"

  Barbara pointed, feeling rather warmed. "Yes, see that one with the Christmas tree?"

  "The tree lights are on. That's nice to come home to."

  "My mother stays up late watching television."

  Sidney looked up at the lights for a moment longer. Then he looked down at her, very seriously. "If I telephoned you and asked you to have dinner with me some night, would you?"

  Her voice sounded strange, not her own voice at all but something without breath. "You're married, aren't you?"

  "Yes."

  She had known, of course, the minute he said he had to make the train, the minute she saw he was over thirty-five, but all the same having him tell her outright, irrevocably, came as a shock. She tried to think of something to say quickly to hide her disappointment.

  "How many . . . children do you have?"

  "One son, twelve years old."

  "Oh."

  He was waiting, looking at her with a guarded look on his face. Barbara looked fixedly at the knot of his necktie. "Don't call me," she said. "I don't mean that nastily, I just mean, please don't."

  "That's why I asked," Sidney said quietly.

  "I like you," she said. "I lik
e you. I've had a happier, more comfortable time tonight than I've had in ... I can't remember how long. You know all about me. You know who I am—I'm Barbara Lemont, the girl who wants to get married again. I can't just think about myself. So . . . please don't call me."

  "All right," he said gently.

  He stood there smiling as she fitted her key into the lock and swung the door open. She paused for a moment looking at him before she went in. "Good night."

  "Good night, Barbara." He took a breath, as if he wanted to say

  J 80

  something else, but then he said nothing and turned and walked down the stairs. She went quickly into her house and shut the door before she would have to hear the sound of his footsteps dying away.

  When you live in a walk-up it's like living in a village, every landing and every apartment has its own sounds and smells. The elevator, which had worked sporadically, had finally been abandoned. As Barbara walked the stairs to her own apartment those signs of private lives all came to her, one by one, familiar and yet each with their own secrets. The Goldsteins, on the second floor, who had the biggest grocery order and always cooked chicken very early on Friday evening; the Keans, third floor rear, who had eight children and left their apartment door unlatched all day so that tlie neighborhood kids could run in and out; the newlyweds down the hall who walked their gray French poodle every evening with the same air of self-conscious pride, as if it were their first child; the two middle-aged fairies in their one-and-a-half-room apartment, their door closed against the world. Everyone had a family of sorts, even they. Everyone had someone to come home to, to be with when it was time for doors to be closed and the rest of the world had divided off. She had a family too, but it wasn't the kind she wanted. There are all kinds of love, Barbara was thinking, love for a parent, love for a child, love for a friend, but none of them is a substitute for any of the others. None of them is the same in any way as love for a man who loves you too.

  She was alone, a small figure in an empty hall surrounded by closed doors that contained people who loved one another. As she walked, the stairs seemed like a treadmill. She remembered what Sidney had said, that when things have been going badly it seems as though they have always been that way. What else could she possibly have told him but not to call? He was married, he was living with his wife, he had no right to want to see another girl. She would have been a fool to tell him she would see him again. He knows my address, she thought. Maybe he'll call anyway.

  Barbara paused on her own landing, hesitating before going down the hall to her apartment, waiting for one last moment alone with the emotion that made her so confused she could hardly think. He's married, she thought. He's married, and he's the one man I've met whom I could love. Could love? I think I love him already. You only live once. All these things have happened in my life and I haven't

  lived at all. How long can I go on like this, resentful, frightened, alone? Oh, phone me, Sidney, please please phone me!

  He won't call. I told him not to, so he won't. He's old enough to take no for an answer. And it's a good thing for me that he won't call. How could I say no again, how could I keep away from him? Does a two-month-old baby run away from home?

  He'll never call me, Barbara thought, so I can think what I want about him. It's perfectly safe to have fantasies. I love him. It's just a crush, but I feel it I feel sometliing. I feel alive. I want to talk to him and look at him, and have him hold my hand again and even . . . She knew what happened to girls who fell in love with married men. The men stayed married and the girls turned down their suitors until they had lost them all. Oh, occasionally men divorced their wives to marry younger girls, but these were caricatures, the rich, foolish businessman and the peroxided chippy. It hadn't happened to anyone Barbara had ever known. Her own boss, an attractive woman who was forty years old and looked thirty, had never married. Once when she and Barbara had had lunch together preceded by a Martini, her boss had said, for no reason, "Don't ever fall in love with a married man." Now Barbara knew it had been for a reason after all, it was the reason why a woman who was so well groomed and charming was still alone. What good was a love aflFair that ended with die last train to the country, and Christmas presents that had to be given the day before Christmas because holidays were family times, and knowing that you would still be as alone as before because you could never telephone the man you loved when you needed him? She knew about affairs with married men, she was no fool.

  Sidney Carter was probably on the train now, and soon he would be walking up a path to the doorway of his house in the country. He would let himself into the house with his key. He would be home. No matter how bored he was—if he was bored—he would not be lonely. He would go to bed with his wife and forget Barbara. He might want Barbara, but he didn't need her. He won't ever call me, Barbara thought. But, oh, God, maybe he will; and if he does, I'm going to be a damn fool and I don't care.

  Chapter 14

  On February 14, 1953, Valentine's Day, Caroline Bender received a dozen long-stemmed red roses from Paul Landis with a humorous card. Mary Agnes Russo received a box of chocolates in a heart-shaped red box trimmed with white paper lace from her fiance Bill. Gregg Adams didn't know it was Valentine's Day because she had a hang-over and she was trying to revive herself sufiBciently to attend a general audition for the ingenue lead in a forthcoming Broadway play, a role requiring a girl with clear eyes and a winningly fresh face. Barbara Lemont stopped on her way to work to buy some heart-shaped candies for her daughter Hillary. And April Morrison fainted on the sidewalk in front of Rockefeller Plaza.

  When April revived she was lying on a bench in a travel agency. She thought at first she had died and was laid out on a marble slab. The next thing she thought was that she had never been so nauseated in her life and if all those strangers didn't go away and stop staring at her she would throw up right in front of them.

  "Are you all right now, honey?" a woman asked. She had a round white face with black mascara on her eyelashes that made each eyelash stand out separately. April concentrated on those spiky eyelashes—that woman looked just like Betty Boop—and fiiiaUy the nausea receded and she could breathe again.

  "That's right, honey, take a deep breath now. Drink some more of this water."

  April sat up. "I have to go to my oflBce, what time is it?"

  "Only nine-twenty-five. Drink some water."

  "No . . . no. I hate water." Why hadn't she realized before that the taste of water made her sick to her stomach? "Thank you for looking after me. 1 have to go to work now."

  "You look awful pale, honey."

  So do you, April wanted to say. She felt strange: warm and secret and like laughing softly to herself. She felt completely away from everybody else, from the kind woman with the paper cup of water,

  from those people looking through the travel-agency window, from all the noises of Fifth Avenue trajBBc she could hear as she opened the door. "Thank you," she said. "I'm all right now, I'm fine."

  As she rode up in the elevator to the thirty-fifth floor April automatically folded her arms across her stomach. Wasn't that silly, when she was sure that whatever was in there was the size of the head of a pin! But she had to protect it. It was hers.

  At first, when she had suspected she was pregnant, she had been terrified. She had run to the ladies' room so many times to look and see if at last perhaps it wasn't true that Miss Farrow had begun to make sarcastic remarks. She had no idea what had given her the presence of mind to have lunch with Barbara and ask her (casually, very casually, in the guise of interest) who was the baby doctor who took care of Hillary now. For some reason she had thought a pediatrician was as good as a gynecologist in cases like this, but when she had gotten to the ofiice the pediatrician had sent her to another doctor. She didn't dare say her name was Mrs. Key. Someone might have heard of Dexter, someone might ask questions or talk. She had tried to think of a nice, refined, married-sounding married name, and finally she had thought of Mary Agnes
, the most blamelessly moral girl she knew. She had said her name was Mrs. Russo. The doctor had no reason not to believe her.

  "I'd say you're about six weeks pregnant, Mrs. Russo."

  "Thank you," April said. "Would you please give me the bill now, I'll pay it while we still have the money." She gave a self-conscious little laugh, just so the doctor wouldn't be insulted at having to talk about money.

  The gynecologist had given her a careful look. "My nurse will give you the bill," he said pleasantly. "Here's a prescription for your vitamins, and on your way out you can make an appointment for next month."

  How easy it seemed to him! Come back next month, Mrs. Russo. And the month after that, and the month after that. She would never see him again. The next time she went to a doctor she couldn't say, I'm not Mrs. Russo any more, I'm Mrs. Key; so she would have to find another doctor. That wouldn't be hard. Once she was Mrs. Key she could ask her in-laws.

  At first she had wanted to tell Dexter the news instantly, she couldn't wait. But the night after her visit to the doctor Dexter had

  to go to someone's party without her, and she couldn't tell him on the telephone. She had sat alone in her apartment thinking of how best she could teU him, and a great warmth and serenity had settled over her. Who would have believed it? The terrible thing, Being Disgraced, the fear, wasn't such a monster after all. Somehow she felt rather proud of herself. She was going to have a baby, she and Dexter, Dexter's child. It was a love link, a bond and, even more, a person. Already she thought of the baby as a person, not a formless speck. She sat in her armchair, surrounding and guarding her baby, and she didn't feel like an Unwed Mother at all, she felt like a kind of Madonna. Was that sinful? Shouldn't she be afraid? But April felt a great peace and calmness. This morning when she had fainted in front of the oflBce was her first sick day.