Promises (18 page)

Anyway, it was accomplished now. The terrace had been newly bricked, there were new yellow awnings,
chairs, tables, and a circle of potted September flowers: chrysanthemums and asters.

“End of summer,” Randi said wistfully. “The year’s growing late.”

Adam looked at his watch. “The day is too. I’ll just help clear this stuff away and get going.”

“What’s the rush? You said they all went to the dog show.”

“I know, but I’m worried that somebody might decide to stop at the office and surprise me.”

“When will you stop worrying yourself to death? But you were always like that, worried that you wouldn’t get your term paper in on time and worried that you wouldn’t graduate with honors. Yet everything you worried about didn’t happen.”

“This is different,” Adam said.

It needed several trips back and forth to bring everything back to the kitchen. While Randi took her usual unhurried steps, Adam rushed. He was feeling the strain of the double life. The day had been wonderful; it was always wonderful here until it came time to leave, when the pressure upon him to reach home grew intense.

He had a terrible fear, then, of walking into the unsuspecting family circle and making some careless slip that would betray him, as well as a terrible fear that during his absence some betrayal might already have occurred. Today he was supposed to be looking up records for the income tax.…

“The kitchen turned out well, don’t you think?” Randi said. “The last of Bunting’s money. It wasn’t all that much, though, and it’s better here than lying in the bank.”

She had bought the best. Supposedly, this was a European kitchen. Adam knew nothing about such things, about center islands and state-of-the-art ovens; the kitchen at home was what it had always been, he suspected, though during his marriage they had replaced things whenever it became cheaper to replace than to repair them.

But this bright new shine was so important to Randi. He found appealing the almost childish pleasure that she was taking in this house of hers, in fluffy lace curtains, fringed lampshades, and the new monster-sized television. It was all so tasteless, so innocent. And so touching.

“I need to shower and get into my suit,” he said as he took off his shorts.

“The dog show lasts till five. I looked it up in the paper.”

“You miss nothing, do you? But all the same I have to go.”

She gave a little pout. “You’re always leaving. I never get to see you.”

“Darling, that’s not quite true.”

“Okay, I know it isn’t. And I know you do your best. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, though, if you simply lived here?”

He did not answer. Since their situation was hardly an easy one, but rather an almost impossible one, quite obviously the easy reply was that what she wanted was equally impossible. There were people back in Elmford, four people.…

As if she were reading every thought that lay behind Adam’s silence, she said briskly, “Okay, enough of that. You know what we’ll do? Instead of a shower you
can take a dip in the pool. I’ll go too. Skinny-dip. Last of the season. It’s almost too cold already.” While she was speaking, her shorts and halter top came off. “Race you,” she cried. “Race you to the pool!”

One tremendous splash followed the other. The sun burned their shoulders, and the water froze their legs.

“I feel like a baked Alaska!” Randi laughed. “Come warm me if you can. Make believe we’re in bed. Haven’t you ever done this? It’s fun. It’s crazy. Come on, I’ll show you.”

The fact is, he thought as he drove through Randolph Crossing toward Elmsford, that all the common sayings are true:
We’re mad about each other
, and
Can’t keep away from each other.
They were all true.

Good God, she must have learned every sexual variation known to man! She must have read every manual in English and a couple in Hindi besides.

Still, that was hardly the whole story. He felt
good
when he was with her. There was something in the atmosphere of her house that relieved him of care. He forgot about the office, about Ramsey and Jenks, and about Jenks getting the raise that should have been his, Adam’s. It was the
atmosphere
that made the difference. In these two years that he and Randi had been together, he had entered another atmosphere.

He felt at home with her friends; he really liked her friends. Considering the fact that she was a newcomer, Randi had gathered about her a good number of nice people: the women at the office and their group, the druggist and his family, and the nursery man who had planted the grounds. They were all so relaxed, so uncompetitive, compared with the people among whom
he lived in the other part of his life, the men at the office, the neighbors, and even Margaret’s foolish cousins, Louise and Gil.…

And he reflected now: Every society has classes; it’s not democratic and it shouldn’t be, but that’s the way it is. The professor of Latin does not spend his free time with the cabdriver. So it was refreshing, it made him feel
decent
, to be among people whom he did not ordinarily meet. He smiled to himself. It was ridiculous, but some of them were really in awe of him and what they spoke of as his “big job.”

He wondered what they knew or thought about his personal life. Randi had assured him that they knew very little and wouldn’t give a damn if they did. Besides, it didn’t matter, because none of them would be likely to encounter the people who were acquainted with him back home.

No, it wasn’t likely. Yet one could never be absolutely sure of anything. This game that he was playing was a dangerous one. And he thought of the morning he had gotten up early to have breakfast with Randi, when he had recklessly overstayed his time and arrived late at the office for an important meeting. Indeed, this was a very dangerous game.… And yet, in a curious way, it was enlivening.

“We had a good time,” Margaret said. “It wasn’t anything like the Westminster Show that we saw in New York—how many years ago, Adam?—but I’ll tell you, I liked it better. We got to talk to people, especially the sheepdog people, so we could compare theirs with Rufus, and—you must be starved! Dinner will be on the table in five minutes. I’ve got your favorite corn soup.”

“I’m not very hungry.”

“You will be once you sit down. It’s no wonder you’re feeling logy after spending a beautiful Saturday in that airtight office.” Margaret’s hands were busy with cups and plates as she talked. “Danny’s dying to tell you something.”

“Dad, I was thinking, Zack is getting old, you know. And I was thinking,” Danny said, looking very earnest, “that when he dies, Rufus will be so lonesome.”

“Well, don’t bury Zack yet. Poor Zack.”

“Dad, I didn’t mean that. I hope he’ll live for years and years. But the fact is, he probably won’t.”

“That’s true.”

“So what I mean is, can we get another dog pretty soon?”

“What do you mean by ‘soon’? While Zack is with us or not? You have to be specific.”

The boy looks more like his mother every day, Adam thought, meaning not the obvious red hair but, far more profoundly, the thoughtful forehead, the candid eyes presaging the man he would be. And thinking so, his heart seemed to move inside him, while shame crawled up his back.

Danny admitted that he would like to have a puppy now, to which Adam replied that he would have to ask his mother.

Margaret said, “Oh, I don’t mind. An extra dog only means buying another bed and bowl.”

“Gee, Mom, you mean it? Gee, Mom, thanks.”

“But I’ll tell you. The time to bring a puppy home is the summer. I’m home then when school’s out, and I can do the housebreaking. If we were to get him now, there’d be nobody home all day to train him.”

“Okay. Next summer. Is it a deal?”

“A deal,” Margaret promised solemnly.

That was another trait that Danny and she had in common: easy acceptance of reality. Neither of them was ever apt to coax or argue. And it occurred to Adam that he was feeling lately a sharpened new awareness of his children, as if he were examining them as a stranger might, at a distance.

This sense of
removal
persisted at the dinner table, as he observed them and listened to their chatter: Megan, who appeared to be so much older than fifteen; Julie’s tender little face with its fluid changes of expression, fleeting from anxiety to mirth and eagerness; then Danny, the ultra boy, who he himself had never been.

He looked at the tablecloth that his mother had embroidered in red and blue cross-stitch and over to Margaret as she served the salad. Old Zack slept in the corner, while Rufus looked back at Adam and thumped his tail, no doubt in expectation of his evening walk. Everyone and every object here belonged to Adam. All was as familiar as his own body. Yet he had such a terrible sensation of intrusion! It was as if he did not belong here or had been caught in some strange place, unclothed and ashamed of his nakedness.

Margaret reproved him. “You’re not eating a thing.”

“I guess I’m too tired to eat.”

“All right. Don’t force yourself. Why don’t you go in and lie back in your chair while Julie practices? Maybe you’ll be hungry later.”

He never wearied of hearing Julie at the piano, even when, correcting herself, she repeated the same passage twenty times. This evening she practiced a Liszt “Mephisto Waltz,” whose glide and sway were so well fitted
to her young, sentimental temperament. From where he sat, Adam could watch her body move with the rhythm. She was smiling. May nothing ever hurt you, he thought. Nothing. And resting back in the chair, he let himself be soothed by the music’s charm and its secret sorrow.

When he awoke from a doze, Megan was speaking.

“Don’t you like Nina to send us presents?”

Margaret said vehemently, “Of course I do. I’m glad she’s staying close to all of you.”

“How can we be close if we’re never going to see her again? Is she ever going to come here?”

“That, as I have said many times, is up to her,” Margaret answered.

Adam had no wish to be involved in this painful subject. For the past three months, ever since Nina’s precipitate departure, he had tried to slough it off. It had been almost impossible to do. There had been first an exchange of letters, Nina accusing Margaret of having said “unforgivable” things, and Margaret responding that
“unforgivable
is a strong word. All I wanted to do was to advise you, because I felt, and I still feel, that you are making a grave mistake.” The subject had already consumed too many hours. Yet how else could it have been, in a family as close as this one, after such a sundering?

And Margaret, patiently, had explained to the children why Nina was staying away.

“My heart aches for her, and for all of us who miss her,” she said.

One day when they were alone, she had asked Adam why she herself sometimes had the impression that he did not agree with her.

“I don’t know. I guess I never talk that much about accomplished facts,” he had replied, quite aware that the reply was an inadequate one.

A moment later he had brought forth another thought. “Anyway, we shouldn’t talk so much about it in front of the children.”

To that Margaret had answered, “Why not, as long as they bring it up? We have never hidden the truth from them. I don’t want to sound like a tub-thumper, but I believe children of their age should know what is happening to our country.”

Now, lying back as though he were still asleep, he thought: I may not talk about Nina, but I am aware of her all the time. The thought was wry: It can surely be no mystery why I am. “Double life” is the expression, but it is more accurate to say it is an “inside out” life. Or maybe it is even better to call it “no life at all,” since it has been so mangled and cut in half. And I am the one who has cut it. When I am with Randi, I can never, in spite of all my longing to be there, forget that I have no right to be there. When I am here at home, I long to be back there.…

“Ah, you woke up. You needed that nap,” Margaret said. “Do you feel ready to eat something now? I can reheat the soup, or do you want the salad or some eggs? You tell me.”

She was so good to him. Even though, after a day spent eating and drinking, the idea of food repelled him, he was unable to resist that gentle, worried plea.

“I’ll have the soup,” he said.

“Good. I’ll keep you company.”

At the kitchen table he ate the thick, good soup under
Margaret’s loving gaze, and he felt like the dirt beneath her feet.

Later, upstairs, she came out of the bathroom wearing a new chiffon nightgown, fire-engine red with a bare back and a ruffled flounce at the hem. She stood in the doorway waiting for his comment.

“Going dancing tonight?” he said.

“Do you like it?”

“Very, very pretty.”

It was, and she was, with her milk-white skin and her bright hair.

“I felt extravagant. It was on sale at Danforth’s, so that helped.”

She began her nightly ritual with the hairbrush, picking things up with her free hand and putting them away in drawers and closets.

“I hardly ever wear red. People always say that redheads shouldn’t because it clashes, they say. But I think that’s nonsense, don’t you?”

Wondering why she was making such a fuss over the nightgown, he agreed that it was nonsense.

“I don’t think this clashes with my hair, do you?”

“Not at all,” he said, beginning to feel a strange apprehension of—of what?

“Well,” she said, laying the hairbrush on the dresser, “you’ve had a long day, and so have I. So let’s put the light out and turn in, shall we?” And to his astonishment she pushed down the shoulder straps and slid out of the gown.

Then it occurred to him that he should have shown more admiration for the picture she made as she stood there in her red silk draperies. He should have removed the gown himself and taken her into his arms. But to his
sorrow he had not done so and, lovely as she was, had no impulse to do so now.

Yet impulse or not, he knew he must try. For the message in her eyes was unmistakable. So when she lay down, he opened his arms to draw her to him. And murmuring softly into his neck with eager response, she moved against him, curving her body into his.