The Best of Everything (34 page)

"Curtains?"

"Yes."

"Well, they're lovely, darling."

"I made them."

"Did you!"

And suddenly she realized that he would have been just as pleased if she had given him a new record or a bottle of wine. The curtains had absolutely no extra symbolism to him, none at all, and they could not change her or what she meant to him any more than the fact that a monkey is taught to eat from a spoon can turn him into a baby. She folded the curtains carefully and put them on the kitchen table. "Well hang them up tomorrow," she said, keeping her voice steady and giving him a stiff smile.

"It was sweet of you, darling, to go to all that trouble."

"You don't know the half of how homey I am," she said lightly. She fled into the living room.

The light of the fire was hot on her face, she felt it burning her eyelids. The little bottle of sleeping pills was ruddy in the firelight, its edge red. She could take them all, eat them up like aspirin, and curl up on this couch for good before he had even finished warming the milk. He would think she was asleep and he would not want to disturb her. He would put her mug of milk down quietly on the coffee table and bend to pick up the bottle of sleeping pills. Then he would notice for the first time that it was empty. He would be concerned, upset, he would shake her and call the hospital. All the way to the hospital in the ambulance he would sit beside her as she had seen bereaved relatives sitting beside the sheet-covered hump in many an ambulance that shrieked past her in the street. He would be wondering what would happen if he lost her. He would know why she wanted to Idll herself. She would never have to tell him how unhappy she was again.

There was a click as he set the mugs on the coffee table. "We can sleep all day," he said.

It had been just a wild fantasy, the suicide. She knew she would never do it. People who really meant to kill themselves shot themselves through the head or jumped in front of trains, they did not take pills when they knew there was someone near at hand to make

sure it was not too late. This pill bit was a woman's trick, a device of the lovelorn. It didn't take courage. Courage was to live. Gregg had the oddest feeling, as if someone had given her her life back again. It wasn't worth much, but it was her own life. If she wasn't going to die, at least she was going to live as she pleased, whatever that meant. She wondered whether she had ever done anything because she really wanted to, or only because she had to, like the suicide drawn irresistibly down the platform toward the train.

Chapter 16

In the early spring of that year, 1953, when the first hardy horseback riders appeared in Central Park and the first earnest, shivering, undershirted runners began trotting around the reservoir in the foggy mornings, Mary Agnes Russo began preparing for her wedding. Her conversation, which had formerly centered around office gossip, now centered on herself. If Caroline asked, "How are you today?" she would say, "I picked out the menu for my wedding dinner. We're going to have fruit cup, soup, chicken, peas, potatoes lyonnaise, salad, little rolls, ice cream and wedding cake. And a bottle of liquor on each table." Major items, like the fact that she had gone for a fitting on her wedding dress, needed no introduction. The only thing she kept a secret from the other girls in the oflBce was her wedding invitations, because her friends were going to receive them, and Mary Agnes wanted them to be a surprise. Caroline couldn't help wondering what could be so different about a printed wedding invitation, but knowing Mary Agnes she was prepared for anything.

"And she used to make fun of Brenda!" April said.

"At least she doesn't bring her underwear to the oflBce," Caroline answered.

For an instant April's smile disappeared, and then she looked amused again. "I suppose it seems funny to us because we're not involved," April said. "I'd probably be as much of a fool about my wedding plans."

Saks Fifth Avenue had all their front windows full of mannequins in wedding gowns, and Caroline knew that April had gone Oiere on her lunch hour every day that week, to try them on, gaze at herself, feel the material, and regretfully take them off. Dexter had never mentioned marriage again since that evening on the ride to the abortionist in New Jersey, and April, who always took silence for consent, at least had the presence of mind not to purchase a wedding dress, only try them on just in case. Caroline was sure that Dexter would never marry April and she could hardly trust herself to talk pleasantly to him on the few occasions they happened to meet, for fear she would lash out and tell him what she thought of him. She had never disliked anyone so much. His handsome face, which still had some of the aesthetic interest of a work of art for her, filled her with distaste because it reflected his expressions and mirrored his words. Caroline imagined she knew how April felt when she was trying on the wedding dresses; she herself had once done a silly thing like that when she was planning to marry Eddie Harris, but then she at least had a promise. The pleasure of trying on a dress you would wear on an unforgettable occasion for someone you adored was so entirely different than even buying your first formal gown for a dance that she could hardly describe it. The saleswomen looked beautiful, the dressing room was roseate, she herself had never looked better. Every dress seemed to cling to her excited hands just before she slipped it over her head, as if to say, Is this the one? Will this piece of cloth and work suddenly turn into the dress you will remember all your life? She felt so sorry for April on her solitary lunch-hour excursions that she couldn't bear to think about it.

"Dexter's taking his vacation in the fall instead of this summer," April told her. "He says the fall is the only time to go to Europe if you can't go in the spring. We'll go there for our honeymoon."

"It's all set then!" Caroline cried, relieved.

"Well . . . not the date or anything. But we discussed it."

"I'm so glad! What did you decide?"

"Well, I said I'd always wanted to go to Europe for my honeymoon and he said he had too. And he said fall was a good time, like I told you, and then he said he was going to take his vacation in the fall. And he said Europe is wonderful in the fall even if you aren't on a honeymoon. That there are lots of girls there."

Oh, God, Caroline thought. "But he said he'd take you there?"

"Well not just like that: I'll take you there. But I know he will. He can certainly afford it."

Caroline tried to keep her face expressionless, not knowing what to say or how to say it, not wanting April to see into her eyes and know that this poor little deception was fooling no one except herself. But suddenly April's smile vanished, as it had so often these days, and her fingers were cold as she took hold of Caroline's arm. "I know he wants to marry me," April said softly and frantically. "He said so. Remember when I told you he said so? He's never said he didn't. If you're engaged you don't get un-engaged unless one of the people actually says so. It's too important. People don't kid about marriage."

"Some people don't," Caroline said, hating herself for having to say it.

"It's his family," April went on. "They're so rich, society . . . and they're kind of social climbers, I have to admit it. I can't understand why people who have all they have need to worry about appearances. But Dexter says his parents need some time to get used to the idea of his not marrying one of the girls he grew up with."

"A horse-faced deb with a hockey-field stride and a tweed suit with a little tweed hat to match," Caroline said, trying to cheer April up. "I know the type, I went to school with some of them."

"Oh, no," April said. "These are pretty. We were having lunch in one of the supper clubs last Saturday—isn't that funny, lunch in a supper club?—and he introduced me to three girls he used to take out. They were terribly pretty, and two of them had fur coats."

"You ought to try to meet some other boys," Caroline said. "If only to scare him a little."

April smiled. "I've met dozens of Dexter's friends. They always dance with me at the club dances, and one of them even asked me to go out in New York with him."

"Then go."

"Oh, I couldn't. I don't know how to describe it, but he sort of scared me. I mean, he was one of Dexter's best friends, and I know Dexter's told him all about us, and yet when he was helping me on with my coat while Dexter was getting the car he put his hand right on my . . . well, right here." She put her palm on her breast.

"Was he drunk?"

"No. Those boys never seem to get drunk, they drink so much I guess they've gotten immune."

"Nobody gets immune," Caroline said, "and that's another thing you'd better learn."

"Well he wasn't drunk," April said thoughtfully. "I know that *

The girls in the typing pool were trying to decide whether to give a shower for Mary Agnes or collect money and give her one large gift. Because Caroline and April had been friendly with her in the bullpen they were invited to contribute. There was much whispering in the thirty-fifth-floor ladies' room and it was finally decided that since Mary Agnes and Bill were both young and just starting to furnish their first home they would appreciate a gift certificate instead of a party.

"I'll appreciate it too," Caroline said to Mike Rice. "If I have to sit through one more 'surprise' engagement luncheon where the bride-to-be just happens to arrive at the oflBce in her best dress and everybody giggles and runs out of the office at five minutes to twelve, leaving the guest of honor sitting alone at her desk as if she had the plague and loving every minute of it, and then one of her cronies says let's have lunch together and they get to the restamrant where all the typists are pie-eyed from half a daiquiri and they all yell 'Surprise!' I'll die."

"Slow down, slow down," Mike said, chuckling.

"Oh, and the gifts!" Caroline went on. "Somebody gives her a toy baby bottle and somebody else thinks it's terribly funny to give her a sex book, and everybody has one more daiquiri which just about tips the boat and then they all start talking about their boy friends, and finally they all come reeling back to the office at three o'clock and the high finance department begins, with division of the check and tip down to the last penny and a half. The worst of it is she'll keep on working for a while after she's married and soon she'll be pregnant and we'll have to start the whole thing over again."

"You're very young to be so cynical," Mike teased.

"I'm not cynical, I'm practical. I'm going to start making a list of all the money I've given out for wedding and baby parties, and when I get married—if I ever do—beheve me, I'm going to get it aU back."

Mike laughed. "It's nonsense to you and to me, but it's very important to that girl out there that she have her little moment of attention. It's hard for you to see that. You know, I think Mary Agnes will be very disappointed that the girls decided not to give her a party."

"Practical Mary Agnes, who's been engaged lo these two years now because she was saving her money? I think she'll be delighted to have the gift certificate instead."

"Engaged two years . . ." Mike said thoughtfully. "When you wait that long for anything you want the getting of it to be very special. While you're waiting, not saying anything, everyone else forgets about it, but you build it up in your mind until it becomes the most important thing in the world."

He looked at her for an instant unguardedly, and as her eyes met his Caroline felt a start, something that was like surprise and pain. He could mean so many other things, none of them having to do with Mary Agnes. It was hard to know what Mike was thinking when he wanted you to know something that was personal and important to him; he would give you a litde and then make you reach out to understand the rest.

"I should think just getting it at last would be enough," she said, eyes lowered.

"It is, for us. But we're more imaginative. Mary Agnes needs a little confetti." He reached into his pocket and took out his wallet, running his thumb across the bills, counting them. "Look ... tomorrow you ask her to have a Coke with you after work. And tell the other girls. I'll buy some liquor and rent some glasses and all that stuff and we'll have a little party of our own for her. But ask her today so I can know in advance, I'd hate to have to drink up all that Scotch by myself, not that I couldn't do it."

"Mike! You're the most softhearted man I know."

He shrugged. "I like Mary Agnes. Oh, and ask her to invite that fiance of hers. I don't want to be the only man, defenseless, in that mob of girls tomorrow."

Caroline grinned at him. "Why don't you invite Mr. Shalimar too?"

He grinned back at her—if, coming from Mike, it could be called a grin. Everyone had heard the Shalimar story almost as soon as it had happened, it had gone into the realm of office legends by now.

"What? He might decide to look at Mary Agnes' legs this time, and the whole wedding might be called off."

Caroline looked at him affectionately. He was her friend, he was funny, he was wise, he was sad, and he loved her as much as she loved him. She no longer thought of him as a lover, only as an ex-lover, and that as if it had happened to two other people long ago. She remembered that afternoon occasionally with twinges of guilt, and then when she saw him the guilt disappeared and she remembered it with a vague sadness because neither of them had found the magic they had pretended they believed was in the other. "I love you, Mike," she said.

Her friendship for him was in her tone and he did not misinterpret it. "I love you too," he said lightly, smiling at her. "And I always will."

So in the end, Mary Agnes had her party and her present too. Her fiance arrived near the end of the cocktail party, shy, ill at ease, in a cheap tweed overcoat. He seemed awed by all these strange women who were obviously sizing him up, and covered it with a smile of bravado, a Look-at-Me-Girls-I'm-the-Great-Lover smile which was belied by the way he followed Mary Agnes with his eyes. But it was obvious that he, not Mary Agnes, was the boss. She took on a new femininity when she was with him, which made her seem very different from the way she was in the oflBce surrounded by her friends and co-workers,