The Best of Everything

by Rona Jaffe

  She stroked his hair and Eddie took her into his arms. For the first time she was really conscious of the feeling of his lips, so that she could remember them, gentle and soft and cool, and then warmer, and the skin of his face, smooth and cool and then warmer, familiar and remembered yet always new and a little surprising because try as she would she could never remember quite how pleasurable, how perfect, the feel of it really was. No matter how much she yearned for him when he was not there, when he was in her arms it was better, always better and always new. From the instant Eddie touched her and she touched him Caroline was no longer aware of the sound of the rain outside her window or of anything in the room. The lights were on, it was harsh and bright, but behind her closed eyelids she saw only a gold-streaked blackness, and when she opened her eyes she saw the beloved nearness of Eddie's face. When his gentle hands searched for the closing of her dress her own hands helped him, and when he slipped the dress away from her to the couch or wherever it drifted, she was conscious only of a feeling of freedom and relief not to be covered by all that unwieldy cloth. She could not be close enough to him, she held to him with her arms, hands, lips, knees, every part of her body that could be closer to his body so tliat they might dissolve together into perfect union.

  "I love you, Caroline," he whispered.

  "Eddie ... I love you, I love you."

  Closer, closer, and nothing could be more natural. The great pleasure was love, that Eddie was with her in her arms, as close as anyone could be, and then there was another pleasure, the physical one, almost unbearable because her heart was so full of love for him. He was murmuring to her and she to him, words of tenderness and passion, hardly aware what the words were, aware only of theii" meaning, not knowing what they were doing except as a great and

  consuming need to be closer and to give love and to share love, in every way.

  They lay in each other's arms for a long time afterward, but neither of them mentioned what they had done. Caroline tliought vaguely of saying something, but she did not want to spoil it with words, for what was there to say? She only knew that she was happy, and that she loved him more than ever, and that she had never felt so imited with anyone before, in all her life.

  He drew away from her finally and sat up. "When does your roommate come back?"

  "Who?"

  "The actress."

  Caroline smiled. "Oh, Eddie ... I forgot she existed. She'll be back any minute. What time is it?"

  He was still wearing his wristwatch. "Nearly one o'clock."

  "Oh, then we have time."

  Eddie was dressing quickly, she had never seen anyone dress so fast. "Get dressed, darling, hurry up," he said.

  Caroline could hardly even think. She watched Eddie with her eyes, unmoving, and then finally, like a sleepwalker, stood up too and put on her dress over her skin and rolled up her underthings and petticoat and stockings and put them into one of her bureau drawers. She slipped her feet into her shoes.

  "Now we're so respectable," Eddie said. He smiled at her. "I love that dress too, and I hardly had time to look at it. You look as if you're all ready to go to a party. Look at yourself." He took her hand and led her to the mirror that hung over her dresser and he stood there behind her, his arms crossed over her waist in front, resting his chin on the top of her head. Caroline put her hands over his. "I like the way we look together," Eddie said. "We look as if we were intended to be that way."

  Caroline looked at their double reflection in the mirror. They looked like an old-fashioned daguerreotype—or, no, that was not quite it. She knew then what it was. They looked like a wedding picture.

  When Gregg had come back and Eddie had left, Caroline lay in bed thinking of what had happened that evening. It seemed odd to be lying here on the same studio couch where she and Eddie had made love only a few hours before. It made her feel closer to him, as

  if he were still here with her instead of in his hotel. She thought of their love-making with awe, remembering. I'm glad I waited for Eddie, Caroline thought. And then she thought of Mike Rice. But it didn't really happen with him, she reassured herself; it wasn't the same. He can't spoil it for me, I won't let anything spoil it. Eddie was my only lover, and he always will be. With Eddie it was diflEerent, there was no thought of pain or of fear, but only love and closeness. She could never have believed that something so important as sleeping with someone could be so natural. There was no word even to describe it except Love, "sleeping with" sounded so foolish.

  She remembered the afternoon with Mike, long ago. It had been on this very same bed, and Caroline was sorry for that. She had thought of Eddie then, she had wanted it to be Eddie instead. But perhaps, she thought, if it hadn't been for Mike, I might never have had this night with Eddie, and I would have missed all that unshy and heartfelt giving. I wonder . . . But it didn't really matter why . . .

  "Caroline!" Gregg whispered. "Are you asleep? Can you talk to me for a while?" Caroline kept her eyes shut and she could hear the rustle of small papers as Gregg put something on the coffee table between the two beds. She knew what Gregg wanted to have a long middle-of-the-night talk about: her latest discovery; and tonight again Caroline could not bear to listen. She was too full of her own happiness and she could not break the spell.

  She saw Eddie the next morning and then on all through the weekend. The weekend was the best, because she did not have to go to the oflBce and they could have the entire day together. Eddie was always cautious about where he took her, he did not want anyone he knew to see the two of them together, and although it made Caroline feel a little resentful, she could not help but admit the logic of it. Scandal, any kind of scandal, was anathema to Eddie. In many little ways he seemed to have changed, or perhaps she saw him more clearly because she was older. He was imaginative and charming but he was conventional too, and conventional habits and appearances meant a great deal to him. Caroline was glad. At heart she was conventional too, affair with a married man or not. She could not even think of her affair with Eddie as "An Affair with a Married Man" except as a joke, because she knew it was different. It almost seemed more natural for her and Eddie to be together than it was

  for him to be married to Helen. Caroline wanted nothing more than to be married to Eddie and to be conventional with him, to have young married couples for friends, to do the ordinary things that everyone else did and have fun doing it. She thought of Mike Rice once more during these happy days, and that was when she remembered his description of her as a little girl sitting on a rock between the call of two difFerent lives. She had wanted to be conventional, he had said, but with an unusual person. She could never be a Mary Agnes. But neither could she be a Gregg, and hiding in one tiny restaurant after another began to make her irritable.

  "When do you have to go back?" she asked on Wednesday afternoon.

  "Day after tomorrow. I have to be home on Christmas Day." She tried not to feel the pain his words called up, but it was difficult. Christmas: family time. Eddie had to be home in time for Christmas, not with her, but home. "You know," she said lightly, smiling at him, "it makes me feel sad when you say that. I wish you could be with me instead." "So do I."

  "But you will be, next Christmas. I have that to look forward to anyway."

  "Oh, Caroline . . ." He looked so sad, something seemed to have come over his face, draining it of color. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, and then he held it tightly. "What is it?"

  He shook his head and did not answer. He only held her hand more tightly, as if he were in actual pain and having something to hold on to made him more able to bear it. She could not look at him that way, unhappy, different. She could almost feel his pain herself, as if bands were constricting her chest, making it difficult to breathe. "Dariing," she said again, "what is it? Don't look that way." She put her other hand on his wrist.

  "When you touch me . . ." Eddie said. "You're the only girl in the world who can affect me that way. It's . . ." "I know . . ."

  They w
ere in a restaurant, finishing their coffee, and they stood simultaneously without another word, and Eddie helped Caroline to put on her coat. "I won't go back to the office this afternoon," she

  said. They went out to the street, and found a taxi, and went directly to Eddie's rooms.

  There was no other place she wanted to be but close to him, as close as possible. "Is this what a honeymoon is like?" she asked him afterward, laughing.

  "I don't know," he answered. "Mine wasn't."

  "Oh, Eddie . . ."

  "Well, it wasn't. I don't know, we just didn't seem to have much to say to each other when we were alone together. I felt as if I had to try to think of things to say. I would never, never feel that way with you. I think of things I have to tell you even when I'm not with you."

  "I'm the same!"

  Twilight comes early at the end of December, and it was dark outside. "Let's just stay here all evening and have a sandwich or something sent in," Eddie said. "I can't move."

  "I don't even want to move," Caroline said lovingly, "if it's anywhere away from you."

  They had only one more day together, after tonight, and happy as she was Caroline knew they had to make some plans together, discuss some of what would happen in the next few weeks, even if it would be unpleasant. "Youll have to tell Helen," she said. "What will you tell her? Will you teU her about me?"

  "She must never know about you," Eddie said firmly.

  "And how long will it take ... to get—" she could hardly say it, but it had to be said—"the divorce?"

  He looked at her with a glance that was almost dramatic. Then he shook his head. "Caroline ... I can't ... I cant get a divorce."

  "Can't?" She stared at him, frightened. "What do you mean, you can't? Why can't you?"

  He shook his head again, and on his face was that pale and tortured look that had hurt and mystified her at dinner. But now she knew what it meant. "I can't," he said. "I can't. It would hurt too many people. It would be . . . the end of my life as it is now, everything, my work, my family, my friends, my home. I love my child, Caroline. I can't . . ."

  At first Caroline could not believe what he was saying, and then suddenly she knew it was true. Or at least true at that moment. She

  could not believe it was true for ever. "What about me?" she asked softly. "What about hurting me?"

  "I don't want to hurt you, darling. I couldn't hurt you."

  "Don't you think this will hurt me? Eddie, you're my life. You always have been."

  "I promise you," Eddie said, "111 find some way before I leave New York. I will."

  "And you'll marry me?"

  "I can't marry you, darling."

  "There is no other way," Caroline said. There were no tears in her eyes, but her throat ached as if she were about to cry and she fought to keep her face placid. It was the first time she had ever tried to hide her feelings from Eddie, but she did not want to cry, she only wanted to understand and to reach him so tliat he would understand how she felt.

  "Please don't think I'm going to marry you, darling. Please don't go on telling yourself that," he said pleadingly.

  "Did you know this all along?"

  "Yes," he said.

  "You should have told me," Caroline said softly, and then her voice broke. She could not say anything else because she knew if she were to open her mouth to speak she would cry.

  Eddie laced his fingers together and looked at them, not able to look into her face. "If anyone had told me three years ago that someday I would sit here and say to you that I love you more than any-tliing in this whole world and yet I'll never marry you, I wouldn't have believed him. But I've changed. Things used to be simple then; you fell in love, you married, you wanted something, you took it. But they're not simple any more. This is the way life is, not the way I thought it was then." He looked up at her finally, for the first time, and added quietly, "And not the way you think it is now."

  "I was always the levelheaded girl whom everyone else told her troubles to," Caroline said. "But not now, not this one time. Not with you. And I know I'm right now, because I beHeve in you, I believe in us. Eddie, please don't make me stop believing in us."

  "There are a lot of things you stop believing in after a while," Eddie said. "Don't you think I'd be happier with you than I am the way things are now? Don't you think I want a wife I can love, whom I'm happy with?"

  "You must be happier with her than you'll admit," CaroUne said.

  He shook his head. "I'm not."

  "Then what is it you like? That safe, comfortable life? That heart-shaped swimming pool? That air-conditioned oflBce with nothing to do? Those parties at the country club where you play the piano and feel nostalgic about me? Is that what you like?"

  "Don't say that."

  "Is it true?"

  "It's my life," Eddie said. "That's true."

  She was so hurt she could scarcely speak to him, she sat there immersed in pain and bewilderment, as if she were in a high temperature, and she could not even look at Eddie's face because looking at him made everytliing worse. She looked at the wall because it was cream colored and innocuous and bare and she waited for the pain to leave her as one waits for the crisis in a fever. But it did not leave her, and she did not know what to do.

  "I can't lose you," Eddie said. "I'll have to think of something."

  "Think of me," Caroline whispered. "Please. Think of me."

  The next morning at the oflSce she was still numb, but she was beginning to revive. Eddie would think of something, he had promised. Perhaps he would think of a way to have half custody of his daughter. She would even be wilhng to help bring up someone else's child, and she would love the child, if it would make Eddie happy and make him hers. It seemed so much responsibility, so many things she had not thought of, or had not let herself think of, but there must be a way, and if there was, Eddie would find it. In the hall she saw Mike Rice.

  "Hey," he said affectionately, "I've been watching you lately. You look like you're in love." He peered at her.

  "I am," Caroline said, trying to smile.

  He was genuinely pleased. "I knew it. He's a nice, young, eligible guy, isn't he?"

  ". . .Yes," Caroline said.

  "I knew that too," Mike said. "I'm glad, Caroline."

  "Thank you," she murmured, and then she moved away from him quickly before he could say anything more. She felt then that all avenues of escape were closed to her.

  She met Eddie at his hotel at twelve. There was a cowhide suitcase, open and half packed, lying on the luggage rack.

  Eddie took her into his arms. "Do you love me?"

  "Yes."

  "You really do?"

  "Oh, I really do."

  "Everything will be all right then," Eddie said, stroking her hair. *We'll be together."

  "When are you going to leave?"

  "Tomorrow afternoon on the five-o'clock plane. I'm packing now because I have to go out to dinner tonight with those same people. You'll come to the airport with me, won't you?"

  "Yes," Caroline said. "Of course, darhng. But what then? What about afterward?"

  "That's all arranged. Could you be ready to leave New York in a month?"

  "A month . . ." She could hardly catch her breath. "Yes."

  "Youll have to quit your job. You don't mind, do you?"

  "No," she said, "oh, no."

  "I've found you a job in Dallas. It wasn't easy, but I was just lucky this turned up. There's a very wealthy, kind of eccentric man who's starting to write a book, and he needs an editorial assistant. You've had so much experience you'll be perfect for the job. I'll give you his name and address and you can write to him yourself right away."

  "It's all right," Caroline murmured, her arms around Eddie's waist, her head resting against his chest. "It's all right. I have enough money to stay there for a while, until we're married. I don't need the job." She looked up at him. "Unless, of course, we'll need the money. I'll be glad to work if we do."

  "Caroline . .
. Caroline . . . you love me, don't you?"

  "You know I do."

  "You know I can't marry you, I told you that. You know that, don't you?"

  She drew away from him. "What do you mean?" she asked, frightened and bewildered. "Why do you want me to go to Dallas?"

  "So we can be together, darling. Forever. Don't you want that too?"

  "Together howF' Caroline asked, beginning to tremble with hurt

  and shame because she akeady knew what he meant and she could not quite bear to accept it all at once, it was too terrible.

  "Together," Eddie said. "You'll take a little apartment, and you'll have this good job, and I'll come to visit you. You'll be near me, and we'll have lunch together at least twice a week—I can arrange that— and I'll get away to spend one or maybe even two evenings with you, and we'll speak on the phone every day, and sometimes we'll even be able to manage a whole weekend together. We can drive to the-"

  "Lunch together!" she cried, interrupting him. She took a step away from him, as if she had suddenly found herself embracing, by mistake, someone who looked like Eddie Harris but really was only a stranger with an uncanny resemblance. "One or two evenings when you've escaped from your wife and your respectable married friends? A weekend? And I'm to go on like that for ever and ever, alone, waiting for you, hidden? What do you want me to be?"

  He was very pale. "I want you to be with me."

  "When? When you're free for the evening?"

  "Caroline, I'll see you nearly all the time, I'll see you . . ."

  She didn't want to say it, not because of fear of hurting him but because to say the word would suddenly make it true, and that was almost too much to bear. But she had to say it, to face him with it, and to make herself know, for once and for all, that it was what he meant. And also, she realized, because even now she was hoping desperately that Eddie would deny it. "You want me to be your mistress, don't you."

  "Don't say that," he whispered. "It sounds so ugly."

  "It is ugly," Caroline said. She backed away from him even farther, longing at the same moment to throw herself into Eddie's arms and beg him to reassure her that it was not true, that he loved her, that this whole discussion was a hideous joke. And she took another step away. "Is that what you meant?"