Never Leave Me (19 page)

IT was one of those garden apartments that dot the fashionable sections just off the outskirts of Washington. The hall light was out, so I struck a match while I checked the bell.

Schuyler. I punched the button. Somewhere deep in the house I could hear a chime tinkling. The match flared out and I waited in the darkness. After a few minutes I hit the button again. But there was no answer. The house still remained dark.

I went back out of the hall and sat down on the steps. It was sheer madness, and I knew it. Even if she had called me from home as Mickey had told me, there was no reason for her to be there now. For all I knew she could have gone off someplace for the week-end. After all, it was Friday night.

I lit a cigarette. Maybe I was off on a wrong kick altogether. Could be I wasn’t so sharp after all.

Maybe she was conning me all the time. Maybe there was another guy—even other guys. I didn’t know. All I knew was what she told me. And there was nothing in the book that said she couldn’t lie to me if she wanted to.

The cigarette turned bitter in my mouth and I threw it away. Its sparks scattered on the cement walk in front of me like a hundred little fireflies. The night was turning chill and I pushed my coat collar up around my neck. There was nothing else I could do. I was ready to sit there until Doomsday if I had to.

It had been like that back at the airport in Pittsburgh when I tried to call her and there had been no answer. Even then I knew I would have to see her. There was no other way out for me. So I bought me a plane ticket to Washington and called home instead.

I tried to keep my voice light while I spoke to Marge. “Baby,” I lied. “Brady says I got the deal, but I gotta see the institute president in Washington to-night.”

“Can’t it keep until Monday?” she asked. “I’ve such a terrible feeling about this week-end.” I could almost see her knit her brows together the way she did when she felt low.

“It can’t, honey,” I said quickly, compounding the felony. “You know the job is the last hope we had. Until Brady said okay we were dead. I can’t afford to let anything go wrong now.”

I had the strangest feeling she didn’t believe me. I could hear her breath hit the phone. “Okay, Brad,” she said hesitantly. “If you have to——”

“Of course, I have to,” I jumped in. “If I didn’t I wouldn’t go. You know that.”

Her voice was very small. “I don’t know anything any more, Brad,” she said and rang off.

I put the phone back on the hook and walked thoughtfully out on the field. The Washington plane was just coming in and it got me there a little after nine o’clock. It was almost ten when I first rang her bell.…

From somewhere behind the apartment came the sound of an automobile motor, then a garage door closed. For a few seconds there was silence, then the sounds of high heels against a cement walk came from around the corner of the building.

I scrambled to my feet and faced the sound. My legs were trembling suddenly. She came around the corner, but she didn’t see me.

The moon was full on her face and there was a beautiful, sad loneliness etched into it that my heart was strangely glad to see. “Elaine!” I whispered.

She stopped, her hand clutched at her throat. “Brad!” she breathed, and a sudden joy appeared on her face and as quickly disappeared.

She came towards me. Her voice was low and taut. “Brad, why did you come? We both know it’s over.”

“I had to see you,” I said. “You couldn’t walk out on me just like that.”

She stopped a few feet away from me, her eyes fixed on my face. “Haven’t you done enough?” she cried. “Made me cheap and common like all the others? Can’t you leave well enough alone?”

“That girl means nothing to me,” I said. “She was just being grateful because I promised to help her.”

She didn’t speak, just stared at me with dark, pain-filled eyes. There was something in their depths that told me she wanted to believe me.

I reached a hand towards her but she stepped back. ‟Tell me that you don’t love me,” I said. “And I’ll go.”

“Go away,” she whispered in a tight, bitter voice. “Leave me alone!”

“I can’t,” I said. “You mean everything to me. I can’t let you go like this. Only if you tell me you don’t love me.”

She looked down at the ground. “I don’t love you,” she said in a small voice.

‟It seems like only a few days ago you said you loved me,” I said. “You looked up into my eyes and said you loved me with all your heart. You said that nobody ever made you feel so loved and loving.

“Look at me now and tell me that you lied. Tell me that you don’t love me to-day; tell me that you can turn love on and off like you can water in a faucet. Then I’ll believe you.”

Slowly her face turned up to mine. I could see her lips trembling. “I—I——” She couldn’t speak.

I held my arms towards her and she came into them quickly. Her face was against my coat and she was crying, hard bitter sobs that shook her whole body. I could hardly make out what she was saying. “For a moment … back there in the office … that girl was me … and I was your wife … suddenly I was so ashamed. It was so wrong … so very wrong.”

I held her very tight and close to me. Her hair brushed my lips as I whispered to her. I could feel my tears running down my cheeks into her hair. “Please, Elaine,” I begged. “Please don’t cry.”

Her lips were pressing wildly against mine. “Brad, Brad, I love you so!” she cried, her kisses salty in my mouth. “Don’t let me run away from you again! Never leave me!”

“That’s it, darling,” I said, suddenly content. I closed my eyes against her kiss. “I’ll never leave you.”

IT was a week-end to throw away the clock. Time meant nothing. It was the honeymoon that never happened, the dream that never was true. We were together like no two people ever were: we ate when we thought of it, slept when we were exhausted.

We drew a curtain about our lives and the only real things in it were the way we felt about each other. We laughed at all the silly normal things of life; shaving, bathing, dressing, coffee bubbling over the pot, toast burning. It was a private world, created by ourselves for our own delight.

But like all things that man had made, it came to an end. Maybe a little sooner than we had planned, but the time was coming close anyway and we both knew it, even if we didn’t talk about it. And then, when we had started to talk about it, the telephone rang and the week-end burst like a bubble in our faces.

I was stretched on the floor in front of the open fireplace. The heat of the flames was licking out at me and I stretched lazily. She had just come out of the shower and was walking around me. I never saw such a dame for showers. She was shower-happy. Could take one every minute.

The flame cast a reddish gold glow on her legs where they stuck out beneath the towel. I rolled over and made a grab for her and she tumbled down beside me, laughing. I laughed with her, pulling the towel away. She fought to hold it close but not too hard.

Her eyes were sombre as they looked at me. I kissed her tiny nose. She smiled a moment and then her eyes were sombre again. Her voice held its first trace of pain in two days. “Brad, what’s going to happen to us?”

It was a reasonable question, but it stopped me cold. She had a right to an answer. It was only that I had never really faced up to it. “I don’t know,” I said.

“We can’t spend the rest of our lives like this,” she pointed out. I tried for a funny. “What’s wrong with it? Seems great to me.”

She ignored it. “You can’t spend the rest of your life lying and hiding from people. Sooner or later you have to go out of the house.” She gathered up the towel. “I don’t know how you feel, but I’m not made for it.”

I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out, then placed it between her lips. My answer came from the heart. “I hate it, too.”

Then her eyes watching me, she asked quietly. “What are we going to do, Brad?”

I thought for a long time before I answered. This was no week-end jaunt that you paid off with a gag; this was for real. I pushed my fingers through her hair. “There’s only one thing we can do,” I said, turning her face towards me. “Get married.”

Her voice was very low and trembled slightly. “You sure that’s what you want, Brad?” I took a deep breath. “I’m sure.”

“More than anything in this world, I want to live with you, be with you,” she said, her eyes still holding mine. “But what about your wife? The children?”

A pain was growing inside me. I had thought about many things, but not about them. Now I realized I had been concerned only about myself. I looked down into her face. “I didn’t come looking for you, nor you for me,” I said. I remembered what Marge had told me that morning I left to see Brady. I knew now that Marge had the answer before I did. “I think Marge already knows how I feel about you. The other day she said that nobody comes with lifetime guarantees. She would be the first not to

want us to be any other way.”

She leaned her head against my breast. “Say that’s the way she feels, you still haven’t said anything about the children.”

“They’re not children any more,” I answered. “They’re grown people. Jeanie’s sixteen and Brad’s almost nineteen. They know all the facts of life. I’m sure they’ll understand. They’re almost at an age where they can take care of themselves.”

“But supposing they resent what you do and want nothing to do with you? How will you feel?

Maybe after a while you’ll begin to hate me for having taken you away from them.” Her voice was almost muffled against my chest.

There was a tightness in my throat. I could hardly speak. “I—I don’t think that would happen.” “But it might,” she insisted. “It has happened before.”

I didn’t want to think about it. “I’ll face that when I have to.” “And there’s the money,” she persisted.

“What about it?” I asked quickly, a suspicion in my mind that her answer washed away.

“A divorce will cost you a lot of money,” she replied. “I know you. You’ll bend over backwards to be fair to her, give her everything she wants, and it’s only right that you should. She’s entitled to that for all the years you’ve been together. But later, you might resent having given her all that money because of me.”

“I didn’t have much when I started,” I said. “It’s okay with me if I don’t have much when I go.” I smiled at her. “That is—if you don’t mind.”

She squeezed my hand. “I don’t care about money. Only you. I want you to be happy, no matter what.”

I kissed her hand. “You’ll make me happy.”

She pulled my face towards her and kissed my lips. “I will, I will,” she promised. I leaned back against a chair. “I’ll talk to Marge tomorrow.”

“Maybe——” she hesitated a little. Maybe you ought to wait a while, to be sure.”

“I’m sure now,” I answered confidently. “Delaying won’t help. It will only make things worse.” “What will you say to her?” she asked.

I started to answer but she suddenly put a finger on my lips, keeping me silent. “No,” she said quickly. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear it. You’re going to say what every woman faces in her secret heart, in her most terrible nightmares. We live in dread that one day he will come and say that he no longer cares.

“I don’t want to hear what you’ll say to her. Only promise me one thing, darling.” Her eyes looked deep into mine.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Be gentle with her, be kind to her,” she whispered. “And never say it to me.” “I promise,” I answered, kissing her brow.

“You’ll never get tired of me, Brad?”

“Never,” I replied as the telephone began to ring.

We parted, startled. It was the first time it had rung all week-end. She looked at me questioningly. “I wonder who it could be?” she asked. “No one knows I’m home this week-end.”

I smiled at her. “There’s only one way to find out.”

She got up and picked up the phone. “Hello,” she said. There was a crackling in the phone against

her ear and a strange look came on to her face. Her voice grew cold and distant. “Why no, I haven’t seen him.” She looked at me peculiarly.

The phone crackled again. Her eyes widened as she listened and a terrible hurt came into them. The kind of hurt I had seen deep in their shadows the first day I saw her. She closed her eyes for a moment and swayed slightly.

I jumped to my feet and put an arm around her, steadying her. “What’s wrong?” I whispered.

A strained look appeared on her face. “Never mind, Mr. Rowan,” she said in a suddenly numb voice. “He’s here. I’ll put him on.” She held the phone towards me.

I took it from her. “Dad?” I said into the mouthpiece, my eyes following her as she crossed the room away from me.

He was trying to be calm. “Marge told me to try to find you. Junior is very sick. She’s flying out to him now.”

I could feel the room rocking under my feet. “What’s wrong?”

“Polio,” he answered. “He’s in the hospital. Marge said that you should pray for all of us.” I couldn’t speak for a moment.

His voice came nervously through the phone. “Brad! Brad, are you all right?” “I’m here,” I answered. “When did Marge leave?”

“This afternoon. She told me to try to get you.” “Where’s Jeanie?” I asked.

I heard the click on the phone. “I’m here, Dad,” her voice answered. “Get off that phone, you little tyke!” I heard my father yell.

“It’s okay, Dad,” I said. She must have been listening in on the upstairs extension. She would have to know sooner or later. “How are you feeling, honey?”

She began to cry into the phone.

“Easy, baby,” I said gently. “That won’t help. I’ll get right out there and see what I can do.”

“You will, Daddy?” There was an incredulous note of faith in her voice. “You’re not leaving us?”

I closed my eyes. “Of course not, baby,” I said. “Now get off the phone and go to bed. I want to talk to Gramps.”

Her voice was brighter now. “Night, Daddy.”

“Good night, sweetie.” I heard the click of the phone. “Pop,” I said. “Yes, Bernard.”

“I’m leaving now. Anything you want me to tell Marge?” “No,” he said. “Only that I’m prayin’ with you.”

I put down the phone, a bitter taste in my mouth. Marge hadn’t called, because she knew. Pop called because he knew. The only one I had been fooling was myself.