“Good night, love,” he said, his eyes following her. “Good night, sweet princess.”
She was snickering as she went to her room. Nancy was Titania, she was a princess, Peggy had certainly raised a courtly boy. Carl lay on his side, his eyes closed. She thought he was asleep, but just before she got into her bed he opened one eye. “Chris?”
“What are you doing still awake? Do you realize what time you have to get up?”
“Just wanted to say good night.”
“Good night, dear.”
She snapped off her night light and lay on her back, her arms under her head. It was pleasant having company. He was a dear boy. Tomorrow they’d go sightseeing. Herself and Rodney, of course, since the others would be in absentia until the weekend. She would see that he had a really good time, and in the process have a good time herself, have a little holiday.
Lord, he certainly had a huge appetite.
• • •
He had claimed to be shy, or at least a slow starter when embarking on new horizons, but so far as Christine could see, Rodney didn’t have a timorous bone in his body. He crossed avenues against the light, learned the bus system almost at once, and had a natural sense of direction. It had been a Monday when Rodney’s flight landed in New York. By the time the weekend arrived, with Bruce and Nancy free to do the honors, Christine and the boy had covered a large portion of Manhattan, had even gone to Brooklyn at Rodney’s insistence: he wanted to see the Brooklyn Bridge.
With Rodney’s itinerary of places to see and Christine’s own preferences for him, they didn’t miss much. South Street Seaport, the Village, Gramercy Square, Henderson Place, Times Square (of course), Broadway from Forty-second Street right up to the Nineties. There was a blister on Christine’s heel, the right foot, which she covered with a Dr. Scholl’s plaster, and she was finally reduced to the walking shoes she saved for trips to Europe. She felt like a first-timer herself, seeing it with a newcomer’s eye, and to boot about fifteen years old. She was wiped out by the time Saturday came, but happily so.
However, she bowed out for the weekend. “You’re not coming with us?” Rodney demanded, when Bruce and Nancy champed at the bit to get a good early start doing the town with their guest.
“Dear, it’s their turn. After all, they have only the two days. They don’t want me barging in. They can do without the authoritative presence of Belinda the witch. Enjoy yourselves.”
“It won’t be the same,” he mourned, looking dashed.
“You should be happy to be with your peer group. They’re not that much younger, after all. Now go on, the three of you, and give it a whirl.”
“He leans on you,” Carl said when they left. “You don’t think he’s a fag, do you?”
“What in the world would make you think that?”
“They always form these attachments to older women. You know that, it’s common knowledge.”
“Thanks for referring to me as an older woman. That makes you an older man, you understand.”
“I only meant — ” he laughed, put his arms around her and told her of course he could see why that boy had a thing for her. “Anyone would, you’re a sexy broad.”
“At the moment I’m a bushed broad. Let’s eat out tonight. They won’t be home till late. I gave Bruce plenty of money for lunch and dinner.”
“Okay with me. Let’s decide where to go and I’ll make a reservation.”
“No, we’ll go to some place we won’t have to make a reservation. Just something quiet and relaxing, no fancy stuff. We don’t have to decide until later on. I’ll get these dishes done, you just take it easy.”
It was a long, pleasant day. After trudging about all week she was glad to take it easy too, just laze around, listening to music on the stereo, Schubert, Liszt, Mozart, Saint-Saëns (that gorgeous organ symphony). Changing from grabbles into the street clothes later and walking over to Tre Amici for veal piccata. The wanderers got home at a little after ten. “You took a cab, I trust,” Christine said quickly. “You weren’t walking around at this hour?”
“We took a cab,” Nancy said patiently. She looked quite set up, Rodney must have buttered her up plenty. They had a wonderful day, they enthused, gone to the Statue of Liberty and to Staten Island on the ferry. “I hope you ate well and sensibly?” Christine probed.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Did you have enough money?”
“Of course.”
The next day, Sunday, tended to drag, there was a kind of letdown. Empty rooms, a quiet house. “Mind if I put on some music?” Christine asked Carl in the early afternoon.
“Of course not, you don’t have to ask permission, you know.”
“We could take a walk.”
“Yeah. Maybe before dinner. How about eating out again tonight?”
“No, not particularly on a Sunday. I have a capon in the fridge, I’ll put it on around five. I have a feeling they’ll be home early tonight, there’s school tomorrow.”
She chose some records at random, put them on the turntable. They sat there in the living room, she in a caftan Carl especially liked. Sections of the Sunday Times were here, there and everywhere. Carl was reading the business section. It was possible he’d get a call from the hospital. Or some patient. Someone in trouble. Maybe not, though, at this time of year. The cold months brought flu and pneumonia and then he was out of the house a lot. She was a doctor’s wife, she expected that. But the phone was silent.
Once they had taken to bed when the children were out. That was long ago and far away, she thought, undismayed. There was love between them. Sex had a part in their lives, naturally, but it was not a compulsion. Carl wasn’t a man to insist on his connubial rights, he had never asked for submission. But as a doctor he regarded sex as not only pleasurable but therapeutic as well, essential for one’s well-being, the best exercise there was, and fine for the plumbing, not to mention its salutary effect on soma and psyche.
It was not passion, it was exercise. No matter. His body was dear to her, a familiar body that was always a comfort, that was there, together with hers and had been together in good times and bad. One of her aunts had said once, shortly after her husband died, “I loved going to bed with your uncle. I don’t mean for sex. Chrissie. That is, not just sex and certainly not always sex. Just having him lie close to me. I don’t know. I felt, somehow, like a pioneer wife. As if we had crossed the plains, under great duress and with terrible hardships, and had conquered the hardships. It seems so wrong that he should have been taken from me. I feel, you know, as if a terrible mistake had been made. As if it weren’t supposed to be that way, that there was a grievous error of some kind, and now it can’t be undone.”
Of course her aunt and uncle, like her own mother and father, had slept in a double bed, whereas she and Carl had single beds. It must be so sad and wrenching to reach out to the other pillow and find it empty.
But then, she reflected, it must be just as hard to turn over and see that empty, single bed beside your own.
Why was she thinking about death?
Why not, it would happen some time.
Upset with her train of thought, she got up and went to the kitchen, made some coffee. She now wished that the others would come home, wished that laughing voices would conquer the quietness, vanquish the somnolence of the hours that were passing without event.
When she went inside again with the tray with coffee urn and mugs Carl was asleep, his head back against the chair and his mouth slightly open. Soon he would start to snore.
She wasn’t annoyed. Why shouldn’t he be fagged out? He worked his butt off and he merited a weekend’s relaxation. She was, however, unwilling to drowse along with him, the two of them sitting there together, like Buddhas in their chairs, Darby and Joan. She felt like doing something and she did. She scanned the theater section, found an Italian flick playing at the Plaza. She left a note: she would be back at around five.
Then she left the house, flagged down a taxi on th
e street and got to the Plaza in plenty of time to catch the next showing. It was an engaging little film, with a charmingly aging Marcello Mastroianni. She enjoyed it very much and wished, when she left the theater, that she could go to some simple place for dinner and a drink, which she would very much like to do.
She thought of Clover, who could do things like that. No dependents. A man she loved but not someone she was conventionally yoked to. And no children for whom she was responsible. With a kind of startled astonishment, Christine Jennings thought — and truly for the very first time — I should never have married. I should never have had children. They ate you. Little bites over the years, like predators, or parasites, feeding on a host.
But when she let herself into the house she was heralded with welcoming cries. Carl had made a pitcher of drinks, Old Fashioneds. Nancy had prepared a tray of hors d’oeuvres. They sat her down and waited on her. Carl looked refreshed after his nap. Nancy and Bruce plopped down on the sofa beside her, Rodney sprawled on the floor at her feet. The sun, the late day sun, made a glory of the room. They asked about the film she had seen, and said they themselves had walked their feet off.
“We’re going to the Copenhagen for dinner,” Nancy said, glowing. “No cooking, no cleaning up. Isn’t that nice?”
Okay, so they took something away from you, children always did, it was more or less nature’s law. But would she really change places with husbandless, childless Clover? But there could be no ready answer to that. She couldn’t imagine Clover’s life any more than Clover could imagine hers. Their lives were, quite simply, entirely different. At the moment, right here and now, she was supremely content.
Tomorrow she might feel differently.
And she probably would.
5.
When two weeks had passed, Rodney announced that he really must get cracking and look for a flat.
“You don’t know what you’re in for,” Christine told him. She had been poring over the Times ads even before he had arrived. It was as she thought: it would be a hassle. Studio apartments were few and far between, there was only a column and a half of listings each day and the rents were astronomical. True, there was a sprinkling of moderate-priced ones but you knew damned well they were — to say the least — dingy, if not downright rat traps. In the main, studios were renting for anywhere from $475 up, depending on location and desirability.
And of course everything was going co-op.
“It’s because the whole world is gravitating to New York,” she informed Rodney. “All the moneyed parasites, the kind of people I despise, they’re coming here. Leaving Rome and Paris and Geneva and coming here, damn them. They’re pissed off at taxes and insecurities and kidnappings and the threat of another Europe-based war. How dare they barge in with their Swiss bank accounts and their petro-dollars and take over this city? It’s a rape, it’s plunder, ordinary people can’t afford to live here anymore.”
“It’s also inflation,” he said, unruffled. He had his own copy of the Times now, so that they could compare notes. “How about this, Chris? Two and a half rooms, full kitchen, clean, $225.”
“Where is it?”
“Amsterdam Avenue.”
“Forget it,” she said crisply. “I was wondering about this. Seventy-third Street, just off Second. $240, a studio. Oh, it can’t be anything! Something over a greasy spoon.”
“A what?”
“Some crummy eatery. Let it go. Or no, we won’t let it go. There are few enough leads as it is, we’ll have to investigate them all, anything that sounds in the least feasible.”
She got up. “God, it’s discouraging. Okay, let’s get started. I’ve circled a few possibilities. I’m not very hopeful.”
The first day was the worst because even though you knew it was going to be a rat race the full impact only hit you when you actually got out there and faced it. Rodney lost a bit of his composure when he walked into some of the “airy studio” and “sunny L-shaped room” offerings. He did a lot of throat-clearing and he didn’t have very much appetite when they stopped off at The Brownstone for a three o’clock lunch. “Never mind,” Christine said bracingly. “We didn’t expect to find something first crack out of the bottle, did we?”
“I didn’t realize they’d be so seedy,” he admitted.
“We simply had phenomenally bad luck today. There are things around, I know that as well as I know my own name, even if it doesn’t look that way. We must be patient, you see.”
“Yes, of course, patient.”
And after a few days he began to perk up, taking this hound and hare exploration as a kind of lark, so that before long his gusto returned, along with his appetite, and they set out each morning with Rodney in fine spirits. Now he took along his camera, as if they were once again sightseeing.
“We haven’t time for that,” she protested, when he kept asking her to pose over there beside that tree, or in front of some building he fancied would make a good background.
“It’s only just for a moment. Smile, please.”
She smiled and he snapped the shutter. “You’re very lovely,” he said.
“I’m just a Mum.”
It became almost a way of life after a while, getting up with the roosters each morning, weekends included and both of them very practiced now. “No, not there,” Christine would say, in regard to a listing. “Don’t you remember? We were on that block a day or so ago, the whole street is a decaying shambles.”
A morning’s fruitless search and the real estate page thrown in a litter basket, its usefulness over for that day. Lunch somewhere in the late afternoon and then back to the Colonnade. Carl stopped asking, “Any luck?” because she had snapped at him and said if they had any luck he would be the first to know about it. She sensed he was restless about the status quo. Men didn’t care for disorder in their lives, he wanted everything as usual, for her to sit beside him and watch television of an evening. He’d had a busy, hectic day and now he wanted peace and quiet, not somebody else’s kid yakking away in his British accent and interrupting an otherwise quiet evening.
She finally phoned Peg Thornley about what limit she would set on rent and Peg said, in her chipper Mayfair voice, “Oh, I should think about two-fifty, perhaps three hundred. That should do it, don’t you agree?”
“No, Peg. Not in this city. Well, I’m sure it’s the same in London. I’m afraid it will be far more than that, unless you want Rodney in some questionable neighborhood.”
“Good heavens, certainly not! It’s really of so little importance, I shall leave it up to you.”
“Could you set another limit, a more realistic one?”
“It’s only for a year or so, you must use your own judgment. You’re being so frightfully kind, love, it’s a great deal I’m asking of you.”
“Not at all, Peg. We’ll find something perfectly splendid.”
“I say. What about a hotel?”
“Same as in London,” Christine said dryly. “A hotel would break the bank, my dear.”
The conversation at the dinner table was invariably centered on the treasure hunt. “Find anything perfectly splendid today?” Nancy had been privy to Christine’s London call.
“No splendid, much sick-making.” Rodney, rueful, admitted that the quest was a tour through the lower depths. “One flat really gave me a pause. I simply can’t tell you. As soon as we left Christine told me that on pain of death I must not put my hands to my face until I’d washed them. She made me go into a department store and find the loo, told me to use a great quantity of soap.”
“Well, he touched things. We should really have worn masks.”
“That bad?”
“I can’t tell you. Grease on every surface, and some beastly animals.”
“Animals?”
“Mr. Feelers,” Christine explained.
“Yuck.”
When at last they did stumble onto the Sixty-first Street place it was without confidence, because why should this day be different from a
ll other days? It was the first ad they answered, with a phone number to call: the location was “low Sixties,” which could mean anything at all. It was only $365, which by now seemed a widow’s mite. Of course, Christine said gloomily, it was probably over a store.
“A greasy spoon.”
“Uh huh. Some smelly souvlaki place. A one-bedroom for $365? I must be crazy even to give it a second thought.”
“It says “small” bedroom.”
“That’s why I’m willing to consider it, it’s probably a walk-in closet or a plyboarded L. All right, I’ll phone.”
It was Sixty-first between Third and Second, she announced hanging up. “All ready to go, Rodney?”
They cabbed down to Sixty-first, where Christine suddenly recalled a few visits to a podiatrist on this very street: his office was just off Second. This was a street of brownstones, or limestone row houses, tree-lined, not a highrise in sight. The cabbie pulled up in front of one of the five-story row houses and she said, “This can’t be it, what’s the number?”
“The one you gave me.” He turned in his seat. “See? There it is, right over the door.”
“Why shouldn’t it be here?” Rodney wanted to know.
“Does this look like the kind of shit we’ve been seeing? Excuse me, Rodney, don’t tell your mother I use bad language.” She consulted the slip of paper on which she copied the address the man had given her over the phone. “Well, okay, let’s get out.”
She paid and stood looking up at the building. It was the number she had written down, all right. “There must be some mistake,” she insisted flatly.
“I hope not. It seems so dignified, don’tcha know. Rather like London.”
“It seems divine, but far too good to be true.”
Some of the houses had stone steps leading up to the first floor level, some had been stripped of these attractive, old-fashioned appurtenances: this one had the steps. At the top was the “stoop” and then a heavy, carved door through which you entered on a small vestibule where there was a bank of brass mailboxes, one of which bore the name E. Manson, the man spoken to on the phone. “Here we go,” she said, and put her finger on the bell.
Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances Page 5
