Crazy in Love (15 page)

“Super. Let me pass you to Heidi, my secretary, and she’ll set you up.”

Heidi sounded so well-informed, so organized, that at first I thought John had taken for granted that I would capitulate and do the interviews; then I realized that probably she often arranged them for Avery Foundation grantees. She asked me whether I would prefer to see interviewers at my home in Black Hall or at a hotel in New York.

“At a hotel,” I said, surprising myself.

“Do you have a favorite hotel?” she asked.

“Not really,” I said, thinking, anything but the Gregory.

She named a hotel in midtown, I agreed, and she told me she would call me back with the dates and details. I thanked her, and we said goodbye. Leaning back in my chair, I watched Eugene, Casey, and their babysitter swimming in the bay. Clare was reading in a folding chair. It would be good to leave this place for a few days, I thought. Even in the heat of August. Too much here was familiar, and everything I felt was brand-new. Maybe I would seem more alluring to Nick, giving interviews in my room at a fancy hotel. It would be better for him to envision me in New York than at home. In New York the possibilities were many: he could imagine me brave and lonely in my strange room, he could imagine me toasted and fêted and heralded in print for my beauty and brilliance. If I stayed at home he would imagine one thing only: me, Georgiana Swift, in the bosom of my family, burning the home fires until his safe return.

The hotel overlooked Central Park, and by some error in booking or the Avery Foundation’s generosity, I was given a suite on a high floor. I walked through my rooms, noticing the antique writing desk; the gilded chairs; the little balcony that curved over the street, following the contours of the hotel’s ornate facade, giving one the feeling that this was an aerie in the country. Only the tall buildings across the park and the faint sound of traffic below testified that I was still in the city. Although I had several interviews scheduled that day, I wanted to make some Observatory calls. First I tried to follow up on Mona Tuchman, but no one was home. Then I called two young dress designers I had read about in the Living Section who had succeeded in introducing their work to several big department stores. Later I took a walk down Fifth Avenue, looking in store windows, imagining how the clothes, shoes, and jewelry would look on me. I stared for fifteen minutes at a pair of amber and violet shoes before walking into the store to try them on. Usually in New York I was drawn to the park, but not this trip. This trip I had things to prove that had nothing to do with the wonders of nature.

Steve Wunderlich, my first interviewer, worked for the
New York Times
. He arrived at the appointed hour, and we sat in the salon of my suite. I was wearing my new shoes. We chatted for a few minutes as he tested his tape recorder, set it in the best place to receive our voices. I observed how relaxed he seemed, as if this were his hotel room instead of mine. He appeared young, twenty-five or twenty-six, and he dressed like a professor, in gray slacks, a light madras jacket, and a striped bow tie. He smiled to put me at ease. I wondered whether my manner was as easy as his, whether the people I interviewed felt as relaxed as I did.

“How did the Swift Observatory originate?” he asked.

“I am interested in human nature,” I said, trying to explain my work without sounding pretentious.

“I’ve seen your reports, and I’m wondering about your interviews with people like Mona Tuchman and Caroline Orne. They told you very personal things, details they never told reporters. Can you explain that?”

“Maybe because our interviews were like conversations. Two people sitting together, talking about hard subjects. Both of them have been through hell, and they needed to talk.”

“Why do you specialize in families?”

“The family fascinates me. Everything that takes place in families has incredible power. The strongest feelings occur between family members, and at the same time, the greatest sense of peace, of ease. For example, a woman can feel perfectly comfortable with her sister. They love each other, know each other so well that they have a private language, a sense of what each other is thinking before she says it. Suddenly one sister does the wrong thing—I don’t know, makes eyes at the other’s boyfriend, or tells her mother her sister’s secret. Something fairly serious. If another person did it, someone outside the family, the consequences would be different. The friendship might end, or things might blow over. But in the family a bond exists that is so strong, it has to withstand everything. Maybe one sister wants to claw the other’s eyes out, or maybe they give one another the cold shoulder for a while. Rage is greater, so is love, in a family. Because you know you’re going to be together at the end.”

“What about divorce? Divorce has dissolved many a family.”

“That’s true, unless you fight tooth and nail to keep that from happening. Look at Mona Tuchman.”

“That was just infidelity, not divorce,” Steve said, a wry smile on his face.

“Just infidelity?” I asked, determined to control my scorn. The flip way he said “just infidelity” seemed unworldly and immature; I had the feeling that Steve was single and spent undue amounts of time reading
Playboy
. For a few seconds we sat silently, and I was thinking about my family and Nick, how they had inspired the things I had just said, and how far away they felt at that moment.

“So you’re committed to commitment.”

“Yes. For myself, that is. But the Swift Observatory is just as interested in families where that goes wrong. Right now I’m working on a story about people who join cults or religious orders that prohibit any contact with their families. Some families are devastated, but I was surprised to find a few for whom it is actually a relief—for the families as well as for the cult members.”

We talked for a few more minutes, and then it was time for my next interview. Steve and I shook hands. I admitted the next interviewer, Karine Bernadin for
Islander Magazine
. An hour later I saw Paul Tebib for the
Washington Post
, and an hour after that I saw Holly Roylance for the
Brussels Review
. All of them were bright, interested in what I had to say; only one of them, Karine Bernadin, wore a wedding ring.

That evening I had a drink in the hotel bar. The air conditioning smelled stale; I tried not to think of the cool breeze blowing through my house at Black Hall. I stared at the ice in my glass, imagining that all the men, sitting by themselves or in pairs, were watching me. The idea made me so uncomfortable, I paid cash instead of signing for my drink, so that no one could sneak a look at my room number on the check, and left.

“We took a chance and won our bet,” came John Avery’s voice as I walked through the lobby. He stood by the reception desk with Helen; they grinned at my obvious surprise.

“We’re on our way home from a board meeting, and John suggested we stop by—to see if you’re free for dinner.”

“How wonderful! I was just starting to feel hungry,” I said. The dinner hour had been looming, empty without Nick, and here was relief.

“Let’s eat in the hotel dining room,” John said. “That okay with you, Georgie?”

“Fine,” I said. John left Helen’s side, gave me his arm, and led me through the lobby.

We were seated at a curved banquette, with me between the Averys. “Nick’s doing quite a job in London,” John said. “He and Jean are holding down the fort.”

“He told me Jean was there,” I said. I found myself studying John’s face, the sound of his voice: attentive to anything that might give me a clue about what happened between Nick and Jean when I wasn’t there. “They work well together, I guess.”

“Very well,” John said, buttering a roll. “Some associates can’t work as a team the way they can. Very efficient. Each handles different aspects of the deal, but they get together on the important things. They take a big load off my mind.”

“That’s nice,” I said.

“Jean . . .” Helen said, her nose wrinkling. “Would that be the Jean I met in your office that time? Tall woman, very on-the-move?”

“‘On-the-move’ describes Jean Snizort,” John said, chuckling. “She’s a very aggressive, able lawyer. She was handing complicated transactions early in her career—people trust her.”

Some people, I thought. John turned to me. “And very attractive. A lot of wives would hate to think of their husbands in London with Jean Snizort.” What is John trying to tell me? I wondered. He wouldn’t be so blatant if sparks were flying between them. On the other hand, maybe this is his way of warning me.

“Now, John,” Helen said, scolding. “Maybe Georgie and I don’t like jokes like that. First you say the woman is a great lawyer, then you hint she’s on the prowl. That kind of talk doesn’t flatter you. It makes you sound like an old male chauvinist.” Then, to me, “But I’ve seen her—I know what he means.”

“She’s pretty,” I said, thinking perhaps dinner alone in my room would have been more pleasant.

“Now, how’d the interviews go?” John asked. “That’s what we’re burning to know.”

“They went well. It was strange, being on the other side of an interview. The reporters seemed interested in my ideas, interviewing technique—things like that.”

“I can imagine,” Helen said. “You prompt people to tell you exceptionally personal things.”

“It might be a form of therapy for some people,” John said slowly. “There they are, in the midst of an extraordinary event—and you come along, asking gentle questions.”

John saying “gentle questions” seemed intimate and flattering, and I felt myself blush as deeply as if he had taken my hand.

“There were no gentle questions after Mother died,” Helen said. “Only terrible, nosy reporters out for blood.”

I hesitated, then asked, “Would you tell me about that?”

“Oh. She was killed by her lover,” Helen said. “He was a much younger man. That was partly why the reporters were so interested. Daddy hated the scandal so much, we almost never talked about her again from that day onward.”

I thought of how horrible that must have been for all the Averys: to love your mother and not be allowed to talk about her when she was no longer there. At the same time, to be ashamed of her actions, furious at her betrayal, knowing you would never see her again.

“He was Jasper’s soccer coach,” John said, his mouth set. A waiter brought our dinners; we sat silently until he left, and no one touched the food.

“We all took it out on Jasper,” Helen said. “As if he were to blame for being a good soccer player, and having a handsome young coach who of course came frequently to our house for dinner. Until he killed Mum, we all thought he was sweet. No one had any suspicions about an affair—we just assumed that Mum had taken a shine to him. She loved our friends.” Helen sounded bewildered, as if she were telling it for the first time, as if in the telling the facts became more real.

“She was always dropping in on our parties, telling us how much she loved being with the young people,” John said. “It was sad, really, when I think about it now. She was awfully lonely. Our father was always off on business, flying all over the world.” He shook his head. “Like me. Like Nick, Georgie. Sometimes I see a young guy like Nick with a wonderful wife like you, and I wonder why he does it.”

Helen placed her hand on mine. “Maybe that’s what I was trying to tell you that day at my apartment.”

“You were thinking about your father,” I said.

“Among others,” Helen said. “Men. The men of Wall Street.” She leaned over, to see past me to John.

“Don’t be sexist,” John said. “Weren’t we just talking about Jean?”

“Poor Mum,” Helen said. “You know, I’m as old as she was when she died. She tilted her head. “I can’t imagine loving a boy that age.”

“Do you know why he killed her?” I asked.

“Heat, lust, I don’t know,” Helen said. “They got carried away for a while, and he thought she was going to leave Daddy for him.”

“Naturally he was rather fond of her bankroll,” John said. “But we know it was more than that.”

“Jasper has never gotten over it,” Helen said.

“You don’t get over something like that,” John said. “You get on with it, but you never forget.”

We ate a little of our tepid dinners. Then John ordered three cognacs. I drank mine feeling sad. I thought of what John had said earlier, about my asking “gentle questions.” I hadn’t had to ask many that night; he and Helen hadn’t needed much encouragement.

“It’s quite a life, isn’t it, Georgie?” John asked after a while, pulling out a cell phone. “What do you say we give Nick a call?”

“Why, thank you—” I said, wondering whether I owed John’s kindness to his reminiscence about the distance between his parents. “But that’s all right. It was a wonderful idea. And thank you for dinner.”

“It was our pleasure,” John said. For the first time in all the years I had known him, he kissed my cheek. Then I turned and kissed Helen’s. We sat there for a moment, and then the maître d’ came to pull out the big round table. We said goodnight and I went upstairs to bed.

THAT HOTEL BED
was so big, a sprawling affair, and Nick was nowhere in it. During the night I explored it with my hands, my toes, pretending that Nick had fallen asleep and rolled just out of reach. All the particles of yellow light in New York, that brassy light peculiar to the city, were somehow concentrated in the air outside my window. Filmy window shades set the mood for romance, but did nothing to keep that light out. I lay on my back for a long time, then I tried my side. Finally I did what I had sworn I would not do: I called Nick in London. It was five
A
.
M
. there.