by Daisy Waugh
‘What do you think?’ she said to Max, pouring them both more coffee. ‘You think they’re right?’
But he didn’t answer.
‘Max? What do you think?’
‘I think,’ he said, ‘that I’m probably not the best person to ask.’
She frowned. It didn’t sound like Max.
They had both spoken to their broker that morning. Blanche, only briefly, but Max at some length. Blanche had tactfully retired to the bedroom while the conversation went on. And on. When he finally joined her he looked shell-shocked. She didn’t ask how the conversation had gone. It was clear it hadn’t gone well – and she could have guessed in any case.
She looked at him now, sitting at her small breakfast table, not yet fully dressed. His white shirt was hanging undone, strong chest, lean stomach casually exposed. A sight for sore eyes, he was. Except, it struck her, he did seem rather big. At her little table. Too big, in her pretty apartment, with its red velvet couch, and no room to swing a cat. She’d never noticed before how small her living room was. But after two days with Max’s shoes by the tiny hearth, and his jacket in a messy heap by the bookshelf …
She’d thought, when she asked him about the other girl – the girl with the movie-star looks who’d followed her home from the grocery two nights earlier, who’d asked for him by name with eyes welling, as if she were about to burst into sobs any second – that no matter how well he lied, she would never believe his denials, and no matter what he said, it would be like a knife in her heart … But then somehow, when it came to it, the conversation came and went. Max, of course, denied any knowledge of the woman, and though Blanche didn’t believe him, not even for a second, somehow her heart had never felt so terribly involved. Once a cheat, always a cheat … If he could cheat on his wife, he could cheat on her … and he did look so terribly big. In her little home.
‘What are you going to do, Max?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Max?’ A hint of impatience now. ‘Darling, I want to help you. Are you going to be OK? Are you … I mean to say: what are you going to do? You were talking for ages. How bad is it? Max?’
Ostentatiously, he turned a page of his newspaper.
‘Max! Come on! I can help you! Why won’t you answer me?’
At last he looked up. ‘I would tell you, baby, if I only knew. But it’s hard to calculate. There’s stock I haven’t sold, but he’s telling me I have to sell it. I suppose I could give you a rough idea of just how bad it is. Only why would I? Why do you want to know?’
‘Why?’ she repeated, outraged. ‘Because, of course I do, Max. Because …’
Why did she want to know?
Maybe he was right. Maybe it was better not to know. Maybe, if they simply carried on as if—
‘I’m cleaned out, Blanche,’ he said abrupty, folding his paper, watching her face. ‘Bust. Done. Dusted. Screwed. Fucked. What do you want me to call it? I don’t much mind. Not really …’ He sounded surprised to hear himself say it. ‘But the fact is I’m sitting here now, baby, drinking your coffee … and I swear, I haven’t got a pot to piss in! How about that?’
Blanche gazed quietly back at him, and he at her. ‘Huh,’ she said at last. ‘That’s pretty bad.’
‘You think?’
‘What are you going to do? I can—’
Already, he was shaking his head. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, ‘you have enough on your plate, taking care of your own affairs. Don’t you go worrying about me.’ He flashed her a smile, not a warm one – but he covered it up by stretching across her dainty little breakfast table and dropping a kiss on her cheek. ‘You’d be amazed, the scrapes I’ve got myself out of before now.’
‘Oh. I know it!’ she said.
But she didn’t know, and she would have been amazed. And at that instant, in her ignorance, she lost a little faith. Because of the row over the dailies for Lost At Sea, and then the fist-fight with the new executive producer at Silverman Pictures, and then the fall in share prices on Wall Street, Max appeared before her not quite the all-conquering king of Hollywood and king of her dreams; but as a man, rather older than she, and too big for her breakfast table. ‘I love you,’ she said. Because just then, at that instant, it occurred to her for the first time that perhaps she might not.
He observed it. He leaned over towards her again; slowly, lazily, ran a finger along her forearm and enjoyed the effect of it in her eyes. She shivered. Looked away. ‘You never have to worry about me,’ he said softly, his voice caressing, his gaze peeling away her irritation, her concern, her reservations, making her wonder if, after all, they couldn’t just forget about everything else – stock exchanges, missing wives and pots to piss in – and go back to bed. She was about to suggest as much but, just then, as abruptly as he turned his attention upon her, he turned away again. He dropped his hand. ‘I can look after myself,’ he said. ‘Been doing it since before you were born.’ And he picked up his newspaper again.
For several minutes they read on in silence, or pretended to read. The window onto the street was ajar, and they could hear traffic below. It sounded angrier than usual, more like New York than California: honking horns and drivers’ voices raised. The markets had already closed for the weekend but the mood of uncertainty permeated. Everyone was on edge.
Blanche regretted having riled him. At that instant she didn’t give a fig for her savings, or his. If he didn’t want to talk to her about his wife, his work, his finances – what did she care? As long as she could work, and keep her little apartment. As long as Max would take her back to bed.
‘Max …?’ she murmured.
He looked up – thinking: yes, absolutely. Hell, why not?
The shrill ring of Blanche’s telephone broke through the silence, making her jump. ‘Leave it,’ he said softly, leaning in.
But she couldn’t leave it. She simply couldn’t. Because – in the end – who knew who it might be? It might be anyone!
She couldn’t leave it ringing.
So up she stood, neat and pretty, tripped round the table, playfully swiping his hand away as he reached for her, and picked up the telephone.
She answered in a silly voice, because she knew Max was listening, and because she was faintly ashamed that she had been unable to resist the call. It would ruin the mood, of course. And afterwards they might not go to bed after all. Damn it.
‘Well howdee-doodie out there!’ she sing-songed, idiotically. ‘This is the Blanche Williams residence! One and only Blanche Williams speaking. How may I be of assistance to you on this beautiful-though-turbulent-in-Wall-Street morning?’
‘Hello, Blanche. This is Eleanor Beecham.’
‘Oh!’ Stricken, she turned back to look at Max, watching her with lazy desire. ‘I am … I am very well,’ she said, though Eleanor hadn’t enquired. ‘Thank you. Eleanor … It’s so good to hear from you.’
‘Would you please put Max on?’
‘M-Max? Max Beecham, you mean?’
‘Could I speak to him please?’
‘He’s not … That is to say, Mrs Beecham,’ she turned away from him, the better to deliver the lie, ‘I don’t know what makes you think … Mr Beecham really isn’t here—’
Before she could say any more, the telephone was snatched from her hand. Max had already crossed the room and taken it.
‘El? El? Is it you? Where in hell are you?’
The shock of hearing his voice stunned her for a moment. Even though she had been certain where she would find him, even though she had known all this time, all these years, the fact of his being there, the fact of his failing to hide it … should have changed nothing at all, but it changed everything.
In the silence, he guessed all that. He wished, more than he wished anything, that he had held back. He said: ‘Eleanor, are you OK?’
‘Of course I’m “OK”,’ she snapped. ‘Why does everyone keep asking me if I’m OK? Yes, I’m “OK”. I’m alive, aren’t I? You can hear me speaking.’
> ‘Where are you?’ he asked again. ‘Where have you been all this time?’
‘I am …’ She was going to say ‘at home’. But it didn’t feel like home. Nowhere felt like home. Nothing. She said instead: ‘I am at the house. Do we still own it?’ But she didn’t wait for an answer. She didn’t care. ‘Perhaps – you might be kind enough to join me here for breakfast?’
‘Yes – yes!’ he said. ‘Eleana … yes. I’m on my way.’
Eleana.
‘Matz,’ she murmured, but not really to him. And there was so much sadness in her voice he could not bring himself to reply. He nodded, dumbly, into the telephone. ‘Matz,’ she said. ‘We have a lot to talk about.’
63
By the time he reached the Castillo, Eleanor had bathed and changed. She had sent Teresa out with a list of groceries, and, for the first time in many years, she had cooked.
She was wearing a simple dress, older than her marriage and not worn since. It was a sunshine-yellow crêpe affair, looser fitting than when last she put it on. Max recognized it at once, of course. She’d worn it for the breakfast scene in Poppy Girl!, the first movie they’d made together. He’d thought she looked beautiful in it then. This morning – perhaps because he’d missed her, perhaps because he sensed this might be the last breakfast they ate together – he thought she looked more beautiful than ever.
She didn’t glance up as he came in. She was spooning cheese blintz into her mouth, sitting alone at the head of their ebony dining table (commissioned in a different life, to complement their black-and-white marble floor). Sunlight flooded through the French windows behind her, and spread out on the tabletop in front was a feast: a traditional Jewish breakfast the like of which Max had not eaten, nor Eleanor provided, since their wedding day, ten years ago. Latke and honeycake, apple fritters, apricots, bagels and warm challah … there was enough to feed twenty people. The heady scent of it churned up memories, a wistfulness he generally kept under tight control. It made his eyes and his mouth water, and his stomach turn with misery.
‘Eleanor?’ he said, staring at her, not quite sure where to start. His hands ached. ‘What’s with the feast? I thought you didn’t like breakfast?’
‘Es tsegeyt zikh in moyl.’ She pushed the blintze towards him, still not looking at him. ‘I made them myself, Matz. Everything else is bought … Eat! They’re good.’
‘They smell good,’ he said. And they did smell good. Of youth and happiness. She cooked them last, he remembered, to greet Isha and Batia to Hollywood. She had laid out the food before they left for the train station that morning, and there it still was when they returned, and there it stayed the following day, and the day after that. Like Miss Havisham’s wedding feast. He felt sick.
‘Are we ruined, Max?’ she asked mildly. ‘I imagine we are. I suppose we probably are. Teresa’s very worried. But I’ve told her we’ll take care of her. She has nothing to worry about.’
‘Teresa has nothing to worry about.’
‘Good.’ Silence, while she ate some more. And then: ‘What have you done, darling, with all our money?’ She looked up at him at last. He dropped his gaze, ashamed to catch her eye. He pulled back an ebony chair, built to match the ebony table, to match the marble floor, and dropped himself into it.
‘It’s easier, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘We can talk about the money.’ She spooned in another forkful of blintz, too big for her mouth. ‘And then we can talk about the rest of it,’ she said, through the food. ‘We have a lot to talk about. Don’t we?’
He broke off some challah, held it between finger and thumb, scrutinized it as if it would help him to phrase an answer. ‘What have I done with our money?’ he repeated, at last.
‘Oh God! Never mind the money!’ she said impatiently. ‘I assume it is all gone. Never mind, Matz. We made it once. We can make it again. Money is nothing.’
He nodded. ‘We shall have to sell the house.’
‘Good.’
He smiled, eyes still on the challah. ‘Where did you get all this stuff?’ he asked at last. ‘I thought you didn’t like this food?’
‘I hate it,’ she said, reaching for honeycake. ‘But it’s delicious, isn’t it?’
He nodded. ‘Of course it is.’ There was a glaze in her eyes, almost, Max thought, as if she were sleep talking. ‘Eleanor, darling, are you all right?’
‘Stop asking me that!’
‘I’m sorry. But baby, you’re acting crazy …’
‘Crazy?’
‘Well—’
‘What kind of crazy?’
‘I don’t know – I don’t know, El. It doesn’t matter.’
‘How should I act, Matz? Tell me that. How am I supposed to act? Under these difficult circumstances? We have no money left. Shall we start with that?’
‘I’m just so goddamn relieved to see you …’
‘Oh. Really?’
‘Of course, oh really. God dammit, Eleanor …’
‘God dammit,’ she muttered back.
‘Where the hell have you been this past week? I’ve been worried to death.’
‘Yes. I can tell. It certainly seems that way …’
‘Baby – if this is about Blanche …’
Suddenly, like a wild creature, she leapt from her seat, thumped her fist onto the table; honeycake jumped, coffee cup rattled. ‘Of course it’s not about BLANCHE!’
‘Because if it is—’
‘Don’t you hear me? I said of course it’s not about Blanche. You think I give a damn about ridiculous “Blanche”?’
‘Well I …’ He shrugged, looked at his wife. ‘I guess … I sort of hope you do …’ He sounded less confident now: truly, out of his depth. ‘Where have you been, baby?
‘Tell me …’
As abruptly as she had lost her temper, she collected herself again. ‘Butch tells me you’ve been fired,’ she said, sitting back in her seat. ‘I’m so sorry about that. It’s a bad time for that to happen. On top of all this. He says he fought for you. But I somehow doubt it.’
‘Butch tells you …’
She brushed it aside.
‘What else does Butch tell you—’
‘Matz,’ she interrupted. ‘Matz …’ She leaned forward and reached for his arm, eyes so full of sadness; he caught his breath.
The thought whistled through his head before he could stop it, If we could capture that for the camera …
‘Matz,’ she was saying to him, ‘how often do you remember Isha? How often do you wonder where she is, what she is doing, what became of her? We never talk about her. Never. Do you think of her at all?
‘Do I ever think of Isha?’ he repeated softly.
‘Do you?’ she leaned closer. ‘Tell me …’
‘Do I ever think of Isha?’ he said it again.
There it was, at last: the question she had never asked. The question she never asked, because she already believed she had the answer. It was the reason she hated him. The reason for everything. He looked back at her then, leaning towards him, asking him for comfort with her fathomless green eyes, because she imagined that the suffering and the guilt, the loss and the pain and the darkness which never lifted was hers and only hers. And he hated her for it. After all these years, how dared she ask him such a question? How dared she imagine that she alone suffered with their grief? He wanted to lash out, not quite at her, but – yes, at her: at those wild eyes, swimming in sadness. It’s what he wanted to do, and with one swipe, destroy the memories, all the years of silence between them.
He smiled instead, while his head throbbed with anger, and he made a sound that might almost have been mistaken for a laugh. ‘You ask me that?’ he said to her. ‘After so many years?’
‘Why?’ she spat back, misreading him – not reading him at all, drawing from the well of bitterness that had coloured everything between them for so long. ‘You think it wrong of me to mention Isha’s name? Is that it? I can’t even mention her now? I cannot mention my own daughter? Damn you, Max.
I shall ask you that! Tell me! Do you ever think of our daughter? The little girl we left behind – the little girl you left behind. YOU left behind.’
He shook his head. ‘You are cruel, Eleana …’
‘I hope so.’
Silence again.
Distantly, from the bottom of the drive, came the sound of the iron gates opening. Joseph should have oiled them, Eleanor thought. He usually remembered.
The iron gates banged closed again. An engine was purring up the drive.
‘Where have you been all week?’ he asked again, his tone changing. ‘You still haven’t told me. I have been worried to death. I have missed you.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Were you with Butch?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
She shrugged. She said, ‘I was in Reno. With a detective.’
‘Detective?’
She tore off a corner of honeycake, rolled it between thumb and forefinger. ‘I forget his name,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
Outside, the car came to a stop. They could hear Teresa’s heels tack-tack-tacking across the marble to attend to it.
‘I went to Reno to see a detective. I thought he would help me to find her. But nobody can. You can’t find someone who is already dead. Can you? No. And Isha is gone. You have known it for a long time. Only I have refused to accept it … but she is gone. I accept it now.’
Matz let the words fall. Shook his head. He didn’t want to hear them. As long as Eleanor had hoped, he realized, then he could hope too. But with his wife’s acceptance, what faint light still remained would be snuffed out, once and for all. Darkness. The lid of that small coffin would be closed shut. He stood up, crossed the room to behind Eleanor’s chair. He pulled at her so that she stood up, and he turned her round to face him, put his arms around her, and they embraced. Tired, so very tired, she rested her head on his shoulder.
He held her like that, and she held him, while the bell clanged, the front door opened and closed; and Teresa tack-tack-tacked across the marble towards them.
‘Max,’ Eleanor said, her words muffled by his shoulder. ‘I want a divorce.’
