Ex-wifePart 24
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Part 24
“What happened to the man who had wanted to marry her?”
“He changed his mind about that, the first time he saw her in the hospital. She is still married to Noel. She lives upstate with her sister, and Noel visits her every other week-end; brings her books and things.
“I believe that sometimes, she seems glad to see him, and that sometimes she rails at him for two days on end. When she was convalescing from the accident, she begged him to promise not to divorce her—he had plenty of grounds at that time. He promised . . . well, Pat, does that explain why I didn’t want you to meet him?”
“Yes, I suppose it does. I am not husband-hunting, though.”
“Now that you know—you can do what you please. Let’s dance, Pat.”
We danced, as if it had been any other evening. We were quite gay. When we left Small’s, we found a Victoria wandering forlornly through Harlem, and hired it, and drove home at snail’s pace through the Park.
Kenneth talked happily about his Hungarian dancer, as he had talked on so many other evenings.
Then he said, “You know, Pat, you shouldn’t go adventuring in bed among the portrait painters and the Russians. It isn’t any fun, is it?”
“I’ve stopped. I thought it ought to be fun, but it was always dreary . . . like prospecting for gold and finding a coal mine. Coal has its uses, but if it isn’t what one wanted to find. . . . The whole show, kisses and the rest, was once so tied to the beauty-and-sweetness of things. . . .”
“It is for me, still,” said Kenneth. “You know, Patricia, my wife was the only woman with whom I ever slept, in my life.”
I said, “Oh Kenneth, darling . . .”
He said, “Have a cigarette, Pat.”
And we drove on through the warm summer night.
At my door, he said, “I’m not coming upstairs. It’s so late. And don’t try to think of any parting speech, child. Pretend I’ll be coming back, in September, and wish me a pleasant vacation.”
So I wished him a pleasant vacation, and we shook hands, and said “good-night” to each other.
XV
July—The first heat wave of summer sent the store’s advertising manager to a sanitorium, with a thorough nervous breakdown. I inherited his problems and his secretary. Every day, all day, I planned pages of advertising of “Vacation Necessities” and “Week-end Accessories” and “Hot Weather Comforts.” Then I went home to swim with Helena in the pool at the Shelton, and dine with her, discussing “art moderne” languidly. Or else I drove out on Long Island with Nathaniel in a hopeless search for coolness, and discussed languidly over lobster and sauterne, his father’s lessening health. Occasionally, I went with Bill to a relatively cool roof garden and discussed liquor and women, of recent and other vintages.
I had a letter from Lucia:
“PAT DARLING,
“I am happy or I am resigned or I am content. I have gained seven pounds. Sam is the most thoughtful man I ever knew. Paris is hot but exciting. Shortly I shall become one of those women, who, over multiple chins, emit ‘my husband, my husband, my husband,’ in doting accents, at five-minute intervals, as punctuation to all conversation.
“I plan to find you a banker, and convince you that the substance is more satisfactory than the shadow. (Bankers’ shadows, even, are substantial.) Meanwhile I have found you a heavenly gold-and-silver negligee. It will make you regret that you have gone in for celibacy. Or have you? Did the beautiful red-haired Noel really depart within a few hours of his first appearance? How are you and Helena getting on?
“Though the road may be long, we arrive at respectability in the end, my child. I now own a sable wrap.
“Love . . .”
August—The apartment downstairs was redolent of Helena’s paints and oils, instead of Lucia’s bath salts and perfume. In the evening, when I came home, I watched Helena decorating amazingly realistic masks, instead of watching Lucia decorate her own lovely face.
I had a letter and a package from Kenneth. I opened the letter first:
“PATRICIA, MY DEAR—
“I’ve given instructions about having this mailed. By the time you read it, I shall have found out whether they keep Hungarian dancers in heaven. (If not, I plan to fling myself over the golden bar forthwith.)
“If you were fond of me, Patricia, as I have sometimes—conceitedly—thought you were, in memory of me drink no absinthe, any more, all the days of your giddy life. Do you mind?
“I may or may not have presented you with something, in flinging Noel into that life. Whether he turns out to be a present or not, I am sending you another—a string of amber beads, to warm the throat of a young woman who managed to warm my heart.
“Until we meet again, my dear—(that was a war song, or were you too young to remember)—
“Affectionately—”
September—Heat seemed to have lasted, immemorially.
I wore Kenneth’s golden amber beads over summer frocks that were, after an hour’s wearing, wilted as four day old roses. Helena took her painting to the Nova Scotian coast. I missed her cool comments on people as they passed.
I had a letter from Peter. For a minute, when I found it in my mail box, my heart beat faster than ordinarily. I bathed, and put on a cool negligee, and made myself iced tea; and then, when I felt very calm, opened the letter.
“MY ALREADY SOME-TIME LEGALLY DEPARTED,
“Would you risk dining with me once more? Positively last appearance—genuine farewell tour and so on. I have something to tell you that I should prefer to tell you, rather than have you hear it, fourth-hand, in a speakeasy.
“How about telephoning me at the office? It would be pleasant to see you, Patricia.”
Two days later, I telephoned him, and arranged to dine with him on Sunday. Until then, I did not speculate about his “news.”
Sunday was the first cool day in weeks.
I dressed carefully, for the sake of years in which Peter’s opinion of my appearance had seemed important. I wore a dress with bright pink rosebuds printed on a deep blue background, and a deep blue velvet hat, and carried my beloved silver fox.
We met at the Brevoort; decided not to dine there, and went to Giacomo’s, because it was a restaurant with a garden. Peter was looking well, looking a little older, weighing a little more.
On the way to dinner, we talked about how hot summer had been.
I wondered what he was thinking, and I thought, “It is not true that, in time, one ‘gets over’ almost anything. In time, one survives almost anything. There is a distinction.”
Over the Martinis, I said to Peter, “I survived you, Peter. I never thought I could. It is surprising, isn’t it, that I did?”
He said, “You look as if nothing had ever happened to you in your life.”
“Nothing much has. I never swam the Channel or had twins or wrote a play or murdered a rival. I have just lived quietly, year after year, on Scotch and kisses.”
I thought that was entertaining—it was the best I could manage off-hand. His face continued to be grave, however, and so I tried again.
“Tell me your great news,” I said, “Have you found love at last, or have they made you an aviation expert, or have you a new bootlegger who sells nothing but genuine pre-war stock?”
I thought, “I used to ache when I looked at Peter, because I loved him so. Now I ache when I look at him, because nothing in me stirs at all. He is just a good-looking young man with whom I am dining. I wonder what he is like, really.”
He said: “The damndest thing about you is that you look so virginal. You don’t change at all.”
“Men think a woman is just as she was, until her face begins to sag, Peter. They judge by contours, not by character. I am twenty-six—I was twenty, or was it nineteen, when we met?”
“You were nineteen.”
“They say every bit of a person’s body changes in seven years. . . . Tell me, did you have an exciting time in Boston?”
He had been sent by his paper to report the last days of Sacco and Vanzetti, recently electrocuted. Throughout dinner, we discussed Sacco and Vanzetti, casually, as strangers meeting for the first time might discuss any piece of front-page news.
When we had reached coffee and liqueurs, Peter said: “Come sit in my back-yard garden and talk to me. It is pleasanter there than here.”
I said, “I don’t want to see Judith, particularly.”
“Oh, she has moved uptown. We found an amusing sort of place over by the East River. I’m moving there after Judith and I are married next week. . . . That was the news I had for you.”
I powdered my face and straightened my hat and put on my gloves.
“I hope that you both will be very happy, Peter.”
And some absurd remnant of belief in miracles curled up and died in me, almost painlessly.
“Must you be so damn formal, Patricia?”
I answered him quite earnestly. “Yes, Peter, I have to be formal. I don’t know you very well, nowadays, and I never knew Judith well.”
“Do you still know me well enough to visit my garden, and have a Tom Collins’ with me?”
“I think I know you well enough for that.”
We walked across Washington Square, and up Fifth Avenue, slowly, without talking, as he and I might walk with other people, when he and I grew old.
The garden had a diminutive fountain that tinkled pleasantly, and painted canvas chairs, and one of those trees of indeterminate species that should be called “New York Yard Tree.” I looked at the moon shining through its crooked branches, while Peter went to mix Tom Collins’, and I tried not to think about anything at all.
When Peter came back, I said, “Why are you marrying Judith?” I did not want to know why he was marrying Judith, but that would do as well, to make conversation, as any other subject.
“Oh, she’s a pleasant girl and I’m fond of her. I don’t want to talk about that, though. I thought we might spend an evening talking about you and me.”
I felt that I could not bear to talk with Peter about him and me. Feelings, hopes, even opinions as to Peter had gone from me so slowly, so very slowly, through months and years. I did not want them back. I did not want to be hurt any more.
“I don’t think there’s much to say, about you-and-me, Peter. Label us as just a couple of the minor tragedies of Prohibition, or examples of the Younger Generation on the wane, and let it go at that.”
“I don’t mean to go in for any lengthy analysis of who was to blame for what. But there are things I should like to tell you.”
He began to walk up and down, under the Yard Tree. When he spoke again, his voice was strained.
“Patricia, I loved you very much, and I treated you very badly.”
“No worse than I treated you, perhaps, Peter.”
He said, “I don’t remember very well what it was all about. We were young, and we loved each other, and we ‘wanted to be free.’ It doesn’t make much sense.”
“I never was able to draw any Great Moral Lesson from it, myself, Pete.”
“I shall make Judith a much better husband than I ever made you, Patricia.”
“No doubt. But am I expected to extract any great comfort from that? I am not old enough yet to be an altruist. Will you give me another drink?”
He filled my glass, and his own.
I wanted to go home. Peter made me feel old.
“People have no second chance with each other, really,” he said. “If I were fool enough to ask you to marry me again, and you were fool enough to do it, I should strangle you within three months afterward. Whenever I came home, and found you serving some man tea, I’d take it for granted that you had spent the afternoon in bed with him.”
“I know. I should never see you pick up a book, without expecting you to fling it at my head. I suppose that is funny.”
“I suppose so. . . . But, Patricia, do you remember—”
“Peter, stop. I probably do remember, whatever you were going to ask, but I don’t want to remember. I wish you would begin to be disagreeable. That makes it easier for me.”
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