Clemmie (25 page)

When he got home at five-thirty, he became very diligent. He took the laundry and dry cleaning out, and on the way back he stopped and bought the ingredients for a simple meal at home. He also bought two bottles of Scotch and a bottle of bourbon, and, after hesitation, two bottles of gin. There was really no reason, he decided, why he couldn’t make a stab at entertaining. Not too many people. Say just the Tribblers and the Jardines.

He changed to work clothes and mowed the lawn, edged the walk, clipped the hedge, carried the small amount of trash that had accumulated out to the curb for Tuesday morning collection. He put the sprinkler out, then went in and cleaned the house, dusting, dry mopping, changing his bed linen, emptying a startling number of full ash trays. The weakness of hangover plus the stickiness of the continuing heat wave made him sweat profusely.

When he could think of nothing else to do, he rewarded himself by making a tall Scotch and water and taking it with him to the bathroom so he could sip from time to time while he showered and got cleaned up. He put a robe on and went down to the kitchen and fixed his meal. He set his place at the table very carefully, using the best dishes and silver. He found a book to read while he ate, a rather difficult book that he had been meaning to read for some time.

After he had washed and dried the dishes and put everything away, he made himself a weak highball and took it to his desk in the living room. He made a neat stack of unpaid bills, wrote checks and addressed them for mailing. He balanced the checkbook against the last statement, and put a blank check in the pocket of his robe. When those details were settled, he went up to the bedroom,
put the blank check in his wallet, planning to cash it the next day, and took Maura’s letter down to the desk. He read it over, then typed her a long letter, four pages. He read it over. It read well. It seemed to be a very good letter. He had covered a lot of the aspects of the Jardine party, and he felt that he had made it quite amusing. It needed to be amusing to offset the serious part, the story of Anita. Maura would be most upset about Anita. She had been very concerned about her.

Four pages, single-spaced with narrow margins. A hefty and most respectable letter. He put all the outgoing mail where he would see it in the morning. He went out into the night in his robe and turned off the sprinkler, coiled the hose and put it away in the garage. He made himself a third weak highball, settled himself in the living room with book and drink and ash tray, and the lamp properly placed.

The house did not seem nearly as empty if you kept busy. And it was much better to eat with a certain style, rather than gulp a ragged sandwich while you stood by the sink. And the house looked better when it was neat and clean.

This would make a perfectly acceptable routine. Eating in would save money. There was some inside painting that needed to be done. Maura would be very pleased to find it done. Pick up some paint tomorrow. Good quality. Brush it on carefully.

He regarded himself with satisfaction. There was such a satisfying aspect to orderliness and routine. Some work and dinner alone and make three mild highballs last through the evening. Some constructive reading. Long letters to Maura and the girls. They would appreciate those.

He began to read again and found he had lost track. He turned back three pages and began again. After some minutes he began to be aware of a sound that annoyed him, barely audible over the never-ending hushed sound of the traffic.

He got up and went out into the kitchen. The faucet dripped steadily. He tightened it. The drip was much slower, but it continued. He gave it another wrench, but it still dripped. Suddenly, without warning, he was violently angry, throat swelling, face hot, trembling. He
grasped the faucet with both hands and turned it with all his strength. It hurt his hands. He stepped back, breathing hard. “Now drip once more, you son of a bitch!”

It did not. He went back into the living room. In a little while his breathing had slowed down. He picked up the book. He read without knowing what he read. The individual words had meaning, but they would not fit into any intelligible pattern. He dropped the book on the floor. He sat for a long time. Then he got up and began to walk. When he paused, he was by the phone. He rested his hand on it. He picked it up and dialed slowly.

“Hello?” Clemmie said, her voice distant as though she held the phone too far from her lips. He waited, not speaking. “Hello?” she said, more distinctly, more crossly. He put the phone back on the cradle. He walked back and forth through the house. He went upstairs and lay on the bed in his robe. And felt then a rising need for her, a tingling and a stirring, as though a warm oil moved and shifted in his loins. It was an addiction, too great to be contained. He jumped up and ripped the robe off and threw it aside.

He stood by the studio door. He felt as if he had run all the way.

“I can’t hear you,” he said.

“I won’t let you in.” He knew she stood close to the other side of the door, perhaps leaned against it. He touched his fingertips to the door and imagined he could sense the heat of her body through the plain blonde wood panel. Her voice did not sound angry. It sounded very tired and very sad. He wanted his hands on her, his mouth on her lips.

“I have to see you,” he pleaded.

She refused. He said he had something to tell her. She finally agreed to let him in for five minutes, on the condition that he would then go and promise never to call her or try to see her again. He promised. He heard the latch, but the door did not open. When he tried it, it opened.

She had moved back from the door. Three of the small low lamps were lighted, casting their white light downward, leaving the ceiling heavily shadowed. Her hair was down, falling in blackness to her shoulders. She wore a
pink cotton nightgown, prim at her throat, without a waistline so that it draped from the pointed thrust of her breasts to the floor where her bare toes were visible under the hem. She looked small and tired and depressed and, but for the obviousness of her breasts, no older than twelve.

“Sit over there, please.”

He took the chair she indicated, some six feet from the couch. She sat on the couch, her legs curled under her, one hand clasping a slim bare ankle.

“What do you want to say to me, Craig?”

Her subdued mood was contagious. “I just want to talk to you. I want to know why you hung up on me. I came here last night. You weren’t here. I was drunk.”

“I don’t think I have to give you any reasons. You have no claim.”

“What happened? Why are you like this all of a sudden?”

She shrugged and turned her head and looked out at the wide slice of the city across the flat roofs of the lower buildings.

He had to strain to hear her when she spoke. “I’ve just been looking at myself. It isn’t pretty. Like a frog I had to dissect in school. I cut him carefully and laid out all his hidden little colored parts so that he stopped being a frog or anything that had ever been alive. I’ve been doing that to myself, yesterday and today.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I became a woman when I was twelve. When I was thirteen Daddy took me along with him and his wife to Cuba and we stayed at the Hotel Ventura at Varadero Beach. The woman resented me. I was lonely. I was seduced by a drunken boy from Duke University and I can’t remember his name. I’m twenty-three now. I’ve had ten years of living. Ten years of flesh. I think I’ve tried everything at least once.”

“Why do you think you have to tell me this?”

She turned back and looked at him. “You asked for it, didn’t you? There’s always been the money, you know. When you get bored you buy a change of scene. And when you get a jaded palate, you use more spice on your food. I’m as coarse and jaded as any whore you ever saw, Craig.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“It’s true. I’ve been making decisions. I’ve spent two days thinking about myself. Gretchen is going to the Virgin Islands to work on some illustrations. I’m going along with her, I think.”

“Aren’t you feeling sorry for yourself?”

“Terribly sorry, Craig. Terribly, bitterly sorry. Because if I’d known you were going to happen along, I wouldn’t be the person I am now.”

“The person you are now is all right.”

“Do you want a list? Careless, selfish, vicious, sensual, jaded, amoral.”

“You’re just in a mood.”

“My God, how comforting that is. I’m not going to see you again. I keep telling myself that you’ve changed me, Craig, and that I can give you more love and more loyalty than anybody. But I keep hearing a nasty little laugh in the background. And I remember that I’ve felt this way before. I’ve felt sincerely, thoroughly, completely in love. And it always wore off, after a bit. Sooner or later. And then I’d despise the poor damn fool that kept hoping he could turn all my lights back on. I know, I agreed that this would just be your summer affair, darling. But my heart got involved. I’m in love with you. So I don’t want crumbs. I’d rather starve. So get out. You’re not committed yet. We’re splendid in bed and I do amuse you a little, so I’m throwing you out. I’m not having mercy because you are a good and decent man, and a sensitive man. And believe me, I’d have no mercy on your jolly limey wife or your kids. I’m throwing you out because I love you and I don’t want to hurt you and I inevitably will.”

“Such melodrama, Clemmie.”

“Is it? Is it really? I’m committed to you all the way down to the bottom of my rotten little soul, dearest. Leave while you can.”

“You won’t feel this way tomorrow.”

“I
know
that. Don’t be such a fool, really. Right now is one of the few times in my life when I’m capable of being honest. This place is finished for me. I’ll be gone by tomorrow.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Why not? You don’t give me orders. Nobody in the world has any claim on me or gives me any orders, ever.”

“Clemmie …”

She uncurled her legs and stood up. “I’m really very tired, Craig. I’ll pack your things for you. Then you must go, and we’ll say good night and good-by very politely. We will close this deal up with all the politeness in the world, and all the regret on my side, thank you.”

She made a wide half-circle around him and went into her bedroom. He stood up and walked slowly to the bedroom door. She had the small suitcase open on the bed, his things piled next to it. Perhaps if she had been hasty, tumbling the things in, snapping the lid, it would have been different. She bent over the end of the narrow bed, underlip caught behind her white child-teeth, trying to fold things neatly, but folding them very awkwardly and slowly.

He said, slowly, thickly, so that each word fell solid as a stone into the room’s silence. “I can’t let you go.”

She straightened up slowly and turned toward him, her face very young, almost frightened. Her lips moved but she made no sound. He took one slow step toward her and she ran into his arms, sobbing and shaking, and he held the slight sturdy body very tightly, his own eyes stinging. They moved with a four-legged awkwardness to the cot, unwilling to break the embrace. They lay in each others arms and he spilled the suitcase to the floor with a sweep of his leg. She covered his face, his eyes, his throat, with small fluttering kisses, warm as spilled wax, and she made in her throat the crooning sounds of love. When he kissed her, her lips were salt. Then after a time she was content to lie still in his arms, her forehead hard against his shoulder, her lax fists against his chest, shuddering slightly with each deep exhalation.

“I’ll try,” she said in a small voice, faint as a whisper. “Oh God, I’ll try. I’ll be what you want. I’ll always be as you want me. Demure when you wish it. Bawdy when you want that. I’ll wait on you and serve you and love you all the days of my life. I love you so hard, my darling, my heart is way too big for my chest. No woman has ever been happier than I am this minute. Don’t … start anything for a while, my dearest. I just want to lie here and hear your heart and be happy through and through. Help me make it last this time. This is the best love of all, and help me keep it so I can keep feeling this way forever.”

He held her for a long time, and each time his mind turned toward the implications of the commitment he had made, he was shocked and frightened. But he could force it out of his mind by thinking of the long warmth of her body against him, the feel of her under his hands, the fragrance of her hair and her breath.

“You will write her soon, won’t you, darling?” she said.

“What?”

She pushed herself back, tilted her face up at him. “To Maura, darling. Write to her soon. It’s the fair thing to do you know.”

“I think it would be better to wait.”

“No, dear. You’ll tell yourself that it is better to tell her face to face, but you’re only rationalizing. If you want me to, I can help you with the letter. This way she’ll have a chance to adjust. Maybe she’d like to stay in England with her people. You will do it soon? You’ll feel so much better when we drop it in the mail.”

“But …”

She closed his lips with her fingertips. “I won’t nag you about it. You do it in your own time. But do it. And now Miss Clementina Bennet wants Mr. Craig Andrews Fitz very much indeed—very, very much indeed.”

She got up with him early and made breakfast, refusing all offers of assistance. She was alight with love and laughter, flushed and lovely, with a walk like dancing. He tried to give the impression of matching her mood of gaiety, but he felt apprehensive. He could not understand exactly how it had happened so quickly. It was a most awkward situation to be in and, looking across the table at her, he did not see how he could tell her that it was all wrong.

He felt as though he had been a consistent winner in a poker game with a limit on bets and raises, and suddenly, without warning, it had become a no-limit game. He told himself not to think about it. Not for a while. There would be a chance later. Perhaps a quarrel. There would be a chance for him to gracefully change his mind.

He went directly from her studio apartment to the office. As he left she said, “I begin sulking at five thirty, darling. If you aren’t here by six I’ll be unbearable, and it will take hours to soothe me.”