A Dangerous Fiction

by Barbara Rogan

  “That’s what I wanted, another world. I’d been planning my escape since I was twelve years old. I meant to live in New York, and Vassar seemed a good step toward that goal. And the school was very generous.”

  “Had you been to the city?”

  “Never.”

  “Why New York, then?”

  “Because it was the furthest place on earth from where I grew up.”

  “It is that,” Teddy said, and it struck me that he must have had a New York dream of his own.

  “It started with books,” I said. “Everything I could get my hands on. Eloise; Breakfast at Tiffany’s; The Thin Man; Rosemary’s Baby; Marjorie Morningstar; Bright Lights, Big City; Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy.”

  “Your grandmother didn’t object?”

  “She didn’t know. I used to cover my library books with brown wrapping paper, the same as my schoolbooks. The librarian had been a friend of my mother’s, and she was kind to me. She let me watch films on the library’s VCR, which is how I discovered Woody Allen’s New York.”

  “Oh, isn’t Woody wonderful? I saw him just the other day; had lunch with him and Soon-Yi. Let me guess: your favorite film was Manhattan.”

  “How did you know?”

  He smiled. “A beautiful young woman falls for an older, accomplished man. Clearly a case of life imitating art.”

  “It’s not like I set out to do that,” I said stiffly. “Hugo just happened.”

  “I see. And yet you were such a determined young person, weren’t you? Did Hugo know your story?”

  “Of course. We had no secrets from each other.”

  “Did he ever meet your grandmother?”

  “No. I never saw her again once I left for Vassar.”

  He blinked. Teddy was a Southerner, and Southerners are a tribal breed, whippings be damned. “Is she still alive?”

  “She died five years ago. We were in Paris.”

  “So you couldn’t go to the funeral.”

  “I wouldn’t have gone anyway.” I sipped my coffee, cold now. “We paid for the stone.”

  “What did it say?”

  I gave him an approving nod; it was the pertinent question. “Her name and dates.” Nothing more, no “Beloved Mother” or “Adored Grandmother.” For country folk it was the closest thing to spitting on the grave.

  Teddy was quiet. I looked out the window. Not five yet, and already getting dark. Rain was coming.

  Mingus whined. It was his dinnertime. I went into the kitchen and Teddy followed with his recorder. He leaned against the doorpost while I measured out the kibble.

  “People say you’re tough,” he said. “I can see why. You’ve had a hard life.”

  “The first part, maybe. But then I married Hugo.”

  “And now I understand the fairy-tale depiction of that marriage. And yet it couldn’t have been easy, being the great man’s wife.”

  “Nothing could have been easier,” I said. “I was with Hugo, he was working, and I was helping him. Nothing else mattered.”

  “He was kind to you?”

  “Very kind. And generous. I came into the marriage with nothing but the clothes on my back. He loved buying me things, dressing me up.”

  “Like a doll,” Teddy said, and even though I’d had the same thought myself, I didn’t like hearing it from him. “Was he respectful, would you say?”

  “Of course. Why would you even ask that?”

  “Several people told me about an incident at a party you gave here, a few months after your marriage. Do you remember that incident?”

  I opened the refrigerator and bent down to look. There was half a chicken left over. I tore off a piece of breast meat and shredded it into Mingus’s bowl. Gordon had said that kibble is all dogs need, but I’d noticed that Mingus preferred human food, daintily picking out the pieces and devouring them first. Dogs aren’t big on delayed gratification.

  “Chow time,” I said, and Mingus fell to.

  Teddy, too, had a hungry look about him, but I had nothing for him. “There were so many parties,” I said vaguely.

  “In this one, Hugo was huddling with some of his writer friends, the old-timers who’d seen him through his first three marriages and divorces. They were ragging on him for doing it again. ‘Fuck you,’ he told them. ‘You don’t know her. This girl cooks like Julia Child, fucks like the Happy Hooker, and edits like Maxwell Perkins. I’d be a fuckin’ moron not to marry her.’”

  Teddy paused. I said nothing. Mingus licked his bowl and looked up hopefully.

  “They said you grabbed him by the ear and marched him out to the terrace. You shut the door, and everyone pretended not to watch while you yelled, and Hugo laughed and tried to kiss you.”

  “That was nothing,” I said scornfully. “I told him he was an idiot. He said it was high praise and I should be flattered. But he knew he’d crossed the line, and he never did it again.” Until that note to David Axelhorn, I thought, and I walked past Teddy into the living room and poured myself a drink. Then I had to offer him one. We sat down and I said, “You have to understand that Hugo liked to present a certain macho, Hemingway-esque image. He would have hated to seem what he really was.”

  “Which was?”

  “A loving, faithful husband.”

  Teddy’s mouth opened, then closed.

  I glared at him. “What?”

  He looked down and chose his words as carefully as a man picking his way through a swamp. “When you met Hugo, you must have known his reputation. Was sexual fidelity a big issue for you?”

  His delicacy was an affront, in that it suggested delicacy was needed. “Fortunately,” I said, “I never had to find out. You talked about the deepening of his work in those last books. Where do you think it came from? Monogamy suited him at that stage of his life. Less energy spent chasing women meant more for his work.”

  “I see,” Teddy said in that superior way, and I wanted to slap him, because every time he said “I see,” I heard “Bullshit.”

  “Spit it out,” I said. “It’s obvious you think you know something.”

  “It’s not my place to say anything.”

  “The hell with that, Teddy. This is a two-way street. I’ve answered your questions. Now you’re going to tell me what you’ve heard.”

  “Honestly, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Suppose someone asked me what you and I talked about, you wouldn’t want me giving chapter and verse, would you?”

  “I’m not someone. Apart from being Hugo’s widow, I’m his executor.” I gave him a moment to think about that. “And let’s not pretend there are confidentiality issues. You’re putting it all in a book, for Chrissake. Did you really think I’d just wait and buy a copy?”

  Teddy looked distressed, but whether this was real or feigned I could not tell. I waited for his answer, which came at last with a little shrug of resignation. “I’m sure he was a loving husband. I heard he wasn’t all that faithful.”

  “Someone told you he had an affair? Did they name the lucky lady?”

  “Isabel Delgado and Valerie Lepetit. Sorry, Jo.”

  I hooted. “And you believed that? Who told you?”

  “They did.”

  I stared, my face stinging as if he’d slapped me.

  “In fact,” Teddy said, watching me closely, “both of them said they thought you knew.”

  Someone’s lying: if not Teddy, then Isabel and Val. But why would they tell such hurtful lies? That’s what I thought in words, but below that, memories were stirring, struggling toward the surface. I caught glimpses—Val on the pavement outside the ER, Isabel and Hugo emerging from her house, laughing, his arm around her shoulders—but I forced those images down. Now was not the time, not with Teddy Pendragon strip-mining my face for every nugget of emotion.

  “Bullshit,” I said firmly.r />
  “You didn’t know?”

  “It never happened.”

  “Have you read Michael Holroyd?” Teddy asked. “Brilliant biographer and essayist. Not as well-read as he deserves to be. He wrote, ‘The lies we tell are part of the truth we live.’”

  “You think I’m lying to you?”

  “Not to me.”

  “To myself? You have some fucking nerve.”

  “Jo, please. You asked. You insisted—”

  I cut him off, my voice shaking with anger. “And just when did these alleged affairs take place?”

  He closed his eyes, opened them again. “With Isabel it began before your marriage and continued during their collaboration on the opera.”

  “Ridiculous. Hugo and I were newlyweds, crazy happy. That makes no sense.”

  “I see.” Teddy got up, brought over the bottle of Johnnie Walker, and replenished both our drinks.

  “If you say ‘I see’ one more time, I swear to God I will brain you with that bottle.”

  He drained half his glass in one nip. “She said you almost caught them once. You don’t remember?”

  “No,” I said, but I was lying. I hadn’t so much forgotten as dismissed the incident. Every day, while Hugo and Isabel worked, I’d occupied myself exploring Santa Fe. I visited every museum, every gallery on Canyon Road, the shops around the plaza, and the Indian vendors outside the Inn of the Governors. On the last day of our stay, I came back early. Isabel’s car was in the drive, but the studio was empty. I sat down in the shady courtyard to wait. Lilacs perfumed the air, and I dozed off to the murmur of the fountain and a chorus of birdcalls. I woke suddenly to familiar laughter and the sound of a door opening. Hugo and Isabel emerged, not from the freestanding studio but from her house. His arm was slung around her shoulder. His shirt was half-unbuttoned. Her hair was loose. The moment they saw me, they stepped apart.

  “Isabel has the most exquisite collection of Indian pottery,” Hugo said. “You must see it.”

  They took me inside and showed it to me. When I admired one Hopi bowl in particular, Isabel gave it to me. I didn’t want to accept, but she insisted. “A belated wedding gift,” she’d said.

  I’m not an idiot. I wondered; of course I did. But I couldn’t imagine them in bed together. Isabel was old, Hugo’s age or even older. Beautiful, but old. And Hugo loved me. I’d chalked up my doubts to insecurity and pushed it out of mind, till now.

  “I’m sorry, Jo,” Teddy said.

  I glared at him. “And Val?”

  “Let’s give it a rest, shall we? I don’t want to upset you any more than I already have.”

  “Then answer the question.”

  He finished his drink. “Valerie said the affair began when she painted Hugo’s portrait and ended the night he died. He was with her that night. She called the ambulance; she went to the hospital with him. And then she stayed a little too long. She said you saw her leaving.”

  “I did, but she wasn’t . . . she said a neighbor cut herself.”

  He gazed at me pityingly. Hot blood flooded my face. Of all Hugo had to answer for, this may have been the worst: that this Nothing Man should pity me.

  “She made it up,” I said. “She’s looking for attention. Great men attract leeches. She wouldn’t be the first. How many women claimed they slept with Jack Kennedy?”

  “Most of them did.”

  “I bet you never even bothered to check. You just took it as gospel, whatever lies those women fed you. And you call yourself a biographer!”

  “Knock it off, Jo,” Teddy growled. Finally I’d hit him where it hurt. “I spent two weeks in Paris. I went to the hospital. I talked to the triage nurse, the doctor who treated Hugo, and the paramedics who picked him up at the Hôtel de Crillon on the Place de la Concorde. He was there with her that night; that much is certainly true. As for the rest of her story . . . she knew a lot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you tell her about your pregnancy?”

  I gasped. Mingus came over and studied my face. I buried my face in his ruff. No one knew about my pregnancy, only Hugo and me. I didn’t tell Val, and there was only one conceivable way Hugo would have confided that particular item.

  Pillow talk.

  Chapter 19

  I didn’t sleep that night. Two scenes played through my mind in an endless loop: Hugo and Isabel emerging from her house, and Val coming out of the hospital. In the darkened bedroom I did what I would not allow myself to do in front of Teddy: I wept with anger and shame. I wished Hugo alive so I could kill him. I devised mad plans to hurt the women who’d injured me. But my greatest contempt I saved for myself. How stupid I’d been, how willfully blind! Right under my nose, both women, and somehow I’d contrived not to see. If I’d read those two scenes in a book, I’d have drawn the obvious conclusions; yet in my own life I saw everything and understood nothing. I was all three monkeys rolled into one, a willful fool.

  So much anger, and no outlet. The worst betrayal wasn’t even the sex; it was Hugo telling Val about my pregnancy. Did he tell her how it ended, too? Did Teddy know? Every time I thought about that, I had to jump out of bed and stride around the apartment.

  Morning came at last. At eight thirty, my eyes burning with tears and fatigue, I called the office. Lorna was there early, as usual. I told her I felt unwell and wouldn’t be in.

  “It’s getting to you,” she said, with the grim satisfaction of a Cassandra. “I knew it would sooner or later. Why not take a few days?”

  “I’ll be in tomorrow. Just messenger over a manuscript, would you? Send me the one Chloe and Jean-Paul wanted me to read, that texting novel.”

  After that I fed Mingus and took him out for a walk. It was my favorite time in the city. Gradually my aching head cleared in the clear, crisp air. We walked through the park for a long time, neither of us in any hurry to return to the apartment, and came by a circuitous route to the Central Park Carousel.

  It was a beautiful old wooden carousel, with brightly caparisoned chargers rising and falling to the sound of a calliope. It was always the same, the carousel; it had stood there long before I was born and no doubt would remain after I died, the unchanging center of a city that was constantly morphing around it. Mingus stared in amazement, wagging his tail, while giddy children eddied about. The smell of roasted chestnuts reminded me that I hadn’t eaten. I bought a bag for me and, for Mingus, a sausage from the next cart over. I sat on a bench to eat and watch the carousel turn.

  Mingus had finished his sausage in one gulp and was now eyeing my bag of chestnuts. I took one out. The shell was as smooth as a riverbed stone, but brittle; when I squeezed it, the slit popped open to reveal the crenellated yellow flesh inside. I peeled off the shell and popped the chestnut into my mouth, chewing slowly, savoring the warm, buttery flavor. There is nothing better than roasted chestnuts on a brisk fall day.

  As I ate, I felt stronger. The dark cloud had receded, if only for the moment. Raymond Carver was right, I thought. It is the small, good things that save us. Not lofty ideals, not hope or faith or religion, but concrete, tangible things: the aroma of fresh-baked bread, the taste of roasted chestnuts, the sound of a calliope. These things undermine our stubborn grief, bind us to life.

  I heard a burst of high-pitched scolding, like a very indignant bird, and I turned to look. A little girl was berating two older, towheaded boys, twins by the looks of them, who were playing keep-away with a rag doll. As I watched, one of the boys overthrew his brother. The doll sailed directly toward us; I raised my arm to catch it, but Mingus intercepted with a leap.

  “Whoa!” the boys cried in unison, and the girl wailed, “Oh no!”

  I held out my hand to Mingus, who relinquished the doll. The moment I felt its weight in my hand and looked down at its face, I knew I’d seen it before. I had, of course, many times; it was a Raggedy Andy doll,
brother of the more famous Raggedy Ann. But I had seen it somewhere very particular. I closed my eyes, and this time the memory did not elude me. I saw a cardboard box full of odd bits of clothing. I was tidying up, making room for my things while removing the scattered residue of Hugo’s former lady friends. A pair of pantyhose, daubed with nail polish where a run had started; a bright-red lipstick; a brush full of long blond hair. I averted my eyes as I tossed them into the box, just as I would avoid looking at a dead roach as I swept it up. Between the dryer and the wall I found a black satin bra, C-cup, a small Mickey Mouse T-shirt, and a Raggedy Andy doll.

  Into the box they went. I shut the lid and carried the box out to the trash chute. It wasn’t heavy. I asked no questions.

  “Lady! Hey, lady! Can our sister have her doll back?”

  The twins were standing in front of me, the little girl just behind them.

  “Of course,” I said, reaching past them to hand it to her.

  “That was an awesome catch,” a twin said. “Could we pet your dog?”

  “Sure. Say hi, Mingus.”

  All three showered him with pats and praise. Mingus accepted this as his due and unbent enough to relieve one of the boys of some excess facial ice cream. The dog swaggered all the way home. I trudged behind him, lost in thought.

  • • •

  In the lobby, I stopped to talk to the doorman. “Ray, how long have you been here?”

  “Be twelve years next month, Mrs. Donovan.”

  “Have any of the other doormen been here longer?”

  He thought for a moment. “Only Morris, the weekend guy. He’s been here since before the Flood. Can I help you with something?”

  “I’m expecting a package from work. Bring it up when it gets here, would you?”

  “Sure thing, ma’am.”

  Upstairs, I did what I always do when I’m upset; I called Molly.

  “You’re home?” she said. Molly never bothered with hello.

  “I needed a break.”