The Best of Everything

by Rona Jaffe

  "Eddie . . ."

  "Have some more champagne, darling," he said finally and reached for the bottle.

  "Eddie, darling . . ."

  "I missed you so terribly these past three years," he said. "I'd dream sometimes in the middle of the night that I was f alHng oflE a cliff, and I'd wake up suddenly with a jolt—did you ever do that?"

  "No."

  "Well, it's frightening. And then I'd He awake in the dark for hours and I'd have the terrible feehng that I'd lost someone, and I knew it was you, and you'd never care for me again, and we'd never be together again."

  "I love you," Caroline said.

  "Do you?"

  "Always."

  She held out her hands to him and he took her into his arms. "My darling . . ." she said. "Darling . . ." At last she could touch him, at last, and she put her arms around his neck and stroked his hair, so familiar, so soft, and they kissed each other for a while with a fierce, frightened intensity, as if any moment they let each other go they might be parted again and lose each other as they did before, and to lose each other this time after everything that had happened would be more than either of them could bear.

  He took his lips away from hers only once, to say, "I love you, Caroline, I love you," and then they kissed again for a long time, and finally he drew away and Caroline put her head on tlie place where his neck joined his shoulder, where she had always rested it so long ago. He put his cheek on her hair and then he brushed his lips across it. "You always smell like tliose little flowers," he said. "Little sweet flowers, lots of them, not any special one."

  'It's the perfume I always used to wear."

  "I walked into a room once, it was at a party, and there was a girl there with that same perfume on. I went up to her, I don't know why, really, because I knew it wasn't you, but I touched her on the shoulder and she turned around; and it was terrible. It was like seeing someone else's face on a member of your own family."

  Caroline smiled and turned her head and kissed him.

  "Let's run away," he murmured. "Let's run away somewhere. I don't know where."

  "Where?"

  "Back to four years ago. Do you think we can do that? Make everything else disappear?"

  "If we really try . . ."

  He was stroking her face and her hair with his fingertips as if he was trying to refamiliarize himself with them, and then he put his arms around her and held her tightly. "You're just exactly the same," he said.

  At that moment Caroline felt she really was the same. Nothing had happened to her during these three years, nothing of any import. She was Eddie Harris' girl, as she always had been, and the world was good. It was their world, because they loved each other,

  and they would take care of each other, each doing good things for the other, for ever and ever.

  "Where will we run?" Caroline asked tenderly.

  "I don't know. We can't really, except in our minds."

  "Why?"

  "Because this is the world," he said sadly.

  You've changed, Caroline thought, and the realization hit her with pain, but only for an instant. Of course people didn't run away, but they made plans, and nothing that had been done in haste and childishness could not be undone some way. "I didn't mean really run oflF somewhere," she said, smiling at him.

  He kissed her again and Caroline could feel her lips growing warm against his and she put her arms around him and let herself drown with love. After a while they drew away, but slowly, with one more kiss and one more. "We have a whole week," he said.

  "Yes."

  "I love you so much, Caroline."

  "I adore you."

  Eddie sighed. "I guess I have to feed you. I invited you here for lunch so you're going to get lunch. What would you like?"

  "I don't care."

  "Chicken sandwich, filet mignon?"

  She shook her head. "Anything."

  He called Room Service, and while they were waiting for their lunch Caroline told Eddie about her friends in New York and her job and her apartment, about Gregg who collected garbage and April who had finally married a boy from home, and about the day she herself had gone to Mary Agnes' wedding and had pretended it was hers to Eddie. She told him all this briefly, making it all sound light and pleasant, except, of course, the part about Gregg, which was disturbing. It was like the old days together, sharing everything, and Eddie listened intently, holding her hand and never taking his eyes off her face. By the time the lunch came Caroline realized she was very hungry.

  The waiter wheeled in a table covered with a long white linen cloth. The filets were juicy and garnished with watercress and covered by domed silver covers. But when Caroline had taken two or three bites she realized she could not get another one past her

  throat; she was too filled with excitement and happiness and love. She put down her fork and knife.

  "I can't eat," she said. "I'm just so . . . excited."

  Eddie had not eaten either. He pushed his plate away. "I can't either."

  "It's a shame, they're so expensive."

  "Does your cat eat meat?

  "Just chopped-up cat-food meat." She laughed.

  "Are you happy?"

  "Yes. Are you?"

  He nodded. "Happy and sad."

  "Why sad?"

  "Because you're so beautiful."

  "Why does that make you sad?"

  "I don't know. I just said that. It doesn't make me sad, really. I'm glad you're beautiful. It makes me happy to look at you."

  "I love you."

  Eddie took her hand. ". . . you too."

  "We must never, never have to go through all that agony again."

  "No," Eddie said.

  When Caroline came back to her oflBce at half past three she tiptoed past Mr. Shalimar's closed door and went into her own cubicle. She sank into her swivel chair, exhausted with happiness and surprise and emotion. At five-thirty she would meet Eddie again and they would have dinner and spend the evening. She could not make any plans for their future; her mind was too full of everything that had happened to her today, from the first word Eddie had spoken. She only wanted to sit here in peace and remember it, go over everything he had said, every word of love and reunion and feeling, and remember how it had felt to Idss him and be held in his arms. But even now she could hardly remember his kisses, aU she remembered was happiness and passion and love, obliterating anything as exact as the actual touch of his lips. She would have to notice everything more carefully tonight so that when she was home alone in bed she could remember, but she was quite sure that she would forget, again, to notice, because when she was with Eddie every abstract and rational observation fled.

  She managed to leave her oflBce at half past four so that she could

  rush home and change into her most beautiful cocktail dress for Eddie. She realized that this was the first time since she had been at Fabian that she had spent a day in the office doing no work at all. But one would have to be superhuman to work in spite of everything that was happening, Caroline thought, feehng a shght pang of guilt and then putting it out of her mind. She had waited three years for Eddie, he was her life, her future. What was fifty pages of a manuscript compared to that? She took another bath with the bath oil Eddie liked and put on her brand-new red chiffon dress with three floating layers of skirt. As she looked at herself in the mirror Caroline thought fleetingly of the image of herself she had showoi to Paul Landis and the other boys through the years, the thin girl in the black dress, efficient and gracious and untouchable, always. And here she was, flushed with excitement, her skirts swirling as she moved, colorful and silky, leaving a trail of faint sweet fragrance. She was someone she remembered from long ago, and yet she was different, more self-possessed, more poised, and laiowing, because she had once lost him, just how precious it was to have someone to love.

  She met Eddie in the lobby of his hotel. "You went home," he said, looking at her dress admiringly. "That's my favorite dress from now on."

 
; "Mine too, then," Caroline said.

  They walked out together into the cold, brightly hghted night, and as they walked down the wide white steps of the hotel Caroline was conscious of people glancing at them, as people always do who are passing others on a stairway. She knew they made a striking couple, because they were young, because they were both good-looking, because they were happy and in love. "I couldn't do any work this afternoon," Caroline said.

  "I couldn't do much, I can tell you that." He smiled at her. "You take up all my thoughts. I had to go to see someone who has an office down near Wall Street, overlooking the river. You could see the ships go by, and he had two pairs of binoculars, so we stood there and looked out the window at the liners and the Httle tugboats. I was thinking about you, of course, and just then a ship from the French Line came by, all white and shiny in the sun, on its way to Le Havre. I felt as if somebody had walked on my grave. I remembered how you looked on the pier, the last time I ever saw you, when we said goodbye."

  "How do you think I felt?" Caroline said softly. "I've seen quite a few ships going away in my time, and they always reminded me of you.

  "We won't think about it," he said, pressing her hand. "We're together now."

  They were walking down Fifth Avenue and they stopped in front of TiflFany's, where the little windows were lighted for the night. The great steel doors were closed and locked, and behind the glass windows diamonds sparkled on dark velvet: a necklace like a waterfall, a ring with a round stone in it too huge to be believed. Caroline and Eddie stopped and looked into one of the windows, hand in hand, as lovers had stood before through the years, the ones who intended to buy and the ones who could never aflFord to but were just wishing. On a piece of velvet, under all that magnificence, was a platinum engagement ring with a small heart-shaped diamond set in it. "Look," Caroline breathed. "I've never seen a heart-shaped diamond before."

  "I wish I could buy you that necklace," Eddie said. "All those diamonds. I'd drape it on you like the Queen of Sheba."

  "I don't want the necklace. I don't want to be the Queen of Sheba. I just like that little ring." She laughed. "It probably costs a fortune."

  Another couple strolled by them and stopped to look into the next window. They were an older couple, Caroline hardly noticed them. But Eddie stiffened. "Go around the corner," he whispered. "Quick! Look in a window." And he pushed her, not roughly, but with the insensitivity of haste.

  Caroline was so startled that she let him push her, she walked to the corner and turned it, looking back over her shoulder once at Eddie. He was walking away, past the couple, and as he did they turned and greeted him and he stopped. Caroline looked into the window around the corner, and the diamonds and sapphires in it began to wink and shimmer at her as if they were five-pointed stars. She realized that there were tears in her eyes, but she did not quite know why she was crying. If they were people Eddie knew from Dallas, or old friends of his family's from New York, who knew he was married, perhaps he thought he had to hide her. He had, after all, something to keep secret—the fact that he was going to leave his wife for another girl, and so he must protect the other girl until the

  unpleasant separation had been accomplished. That was sensible. Why, then, did she feel so hurt, so frightened?

  Eddie came up the street finally, from the opposite direction, walking briskly. He had evidently gone all the way around the block. "I'm sorry," he said, taking her arm. "They're Helen's parents' best friends. I knew they were in New York but I had no idea we'd run into them. We'll have to be careful from now on."

  Caroline didn't know what to say. She let Eddie lead her past the Tiffany windows and down the street. She turned her head to look at him. He was so young, the outline of his profile was so perfectly made, unmarked by any of the signs that time and living eventually leave. His hand on her arm was warm and reassuring. He was so young, it was such a diflBcult thing for both of them. Chano;ing one's life, especially with others to think about, was always difficult. But being separated from each other was worse, and he knew that too.

  They went to a quiet little French restaurant on the West Side where Caroline had never been before. Eddie spoke to the waiter in perfectly accented French and ordered their food and wine. "Do you like snails?" he asked. "Or are you afraid of them?"

  "No," Caroline said, "I like them."

  'Tlemember Locke Ober's?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "I could afford to take you there about twdce a year."

  "It's all so odd when I look back on it," Caroline said. "I remember things we did, and how much things cost, and I remember how impressed I was then, and I wonder, after all this time, if we went back and ate in all those places over again, would tliey seem so expensive?"

  "Remember the two-dollar steaks at Cronin's?"

  "Yes, and we could only afford those once in a while."

  "Remember that song we used to play in my room: 'Someday I'll Find You'?"

  "Over and over. I just couldn't sing it, though, the melody was too hard for me. But how I loved it! I still have the records, all of them, that we used to play."

  "I do too," Eddie said. "But I never played them any more, I couldn't."

  "Neitlier could I . . . until I got your letter. They made every-

  thing seem too close. You do still play the piano," Caroline said, "don't you? All that wonderful jazz? What a right hand you hadl"

  "I still play," he said. "Sometimes."

  "Oh, you should!"

  "I play at parties. You know, I'm the guy who always wanders away just when everyone is getting drunk, and starts to run off a few chords. The shy one."

  "You were never shyl"

  'It's a good excuse, though," Eddie said. "Shy or . . . feeling depressed; who can tell the difference from the outside?"

  "Oh, Eddie . . ."

  The snails arrived, cooked in their shells, in round silver platters witli little hollows for each shell, and garhc butter sauce and silver tongs. But when the platters were set down on the table Caroline found that once again she could not eat. "I can't," she said.

  Eddie laughed. "Neither can I. Do you think if I stay here a whole week we'll starve to death?"

  "We'll get used to each other," Caroline said. "It's all so new . . . it's all so . . . wonderful."

  They sipped at their wine and laughed and looked at each other and held hands under the table. "It's new," Eddie said, "and yet you've always been a part of my life. I feel almost as ff we're married. I feel as if we grew up together, you're the little girl I teased and played with and fell in love with. It's as if we'd spent our whole childhood together, in some funny way, and no one else can ever mean the same thing to either of us that we mean to each other."

  "I know," Caroline said. "I know you so well, I know you better than anyone in the whole world."

  "And yet, how old were you when we met? Seventeen? Eighteen?"

  "Does it make any difference?" she asked tenderly.

  "None, darling. None at aU."

  "I'U never love anyone the way I love you."

  "I couldn't," he said.

  "What are we going to do?"

  "Ill think of something," Eddie said. "You just listen to me."

  After they had dinner or, rather, after they had ordered several courses and tasted them and let them stand, they went to Caroline's apartment, where they sat on the studio couch and listened again to all the old scratchy Noel Coward records they had listened to when

  they had first been in love, and laughed over the photographs of themselves as they had been four and five years ago, and drank brandy, and found themselves quite quickly embracing again, kissing, clinging to each other, as if even to be an arm's length away was too much of a separation after these lonely three years. It was strange, although they had done many more intimate things than merely kissing when tliey were in college, each of them seemed afraid. They had been parted for so long that in a way they were timid with each other, but, most of all, the image of Edd
ie's wife stood between them, as if she was a problem that had to be solved and could not be thrust aside. He was like a visitor from another world, transitory, wanting to stay, assimilating slowly because part of the assimilation meant breaking the old ties. He probably thinks I resent her, Caroline thought with her eyes shut, her head on Eddie's shoulder. And I do. I hate her.

  At eleven o'clock Eddie stood up. "Darling," he said, looking at his wristwatch, "I don't want to, but I have to go. I promised some people I'd have a drink with them. They're the people I came here to see. Eleven-thirty was the latest I could put them off to, I told them I was going to the theater."

  "Oh . . ."

  Eddie grinned. "Tell me quick—the plot of a play you've seen that I can say I just saw, in case they ask."

  "I wish I could go with you," Caroline said sadly.

  "So do I."

  "This has been the happiest day of my entire life," Caroline said, putting her arms around him. "If I'd wanted to imagine it I couldn't have, it's been too lovely."

  He kissed her. "I'll see you tomorrow too, and the next and the next. I'll call you in the morning. And we'll have lunch."