The Best of Everything (55 page)

It was over at last and she heard footsteps and a door close and then later returning footsteps and footsteps passing them. Dirty pig, Gregg thought, using his bathroom, using his towels, using his bed, using him. Using my love, my beautiful love. I wonder whether he's going to fall in love with her.

It didn't matter, as long as he didn't fall in love with tliat girl. Gregg had to know. She would forgive him anything, as long as he was only using that girl's body and did not love her. She wondered whether there was a way to find out these things as well, whether there would be a way to see what went on inside that apartment instead of only to hear.

Chapter 26

On an evening at the end of October Caroline invited April to dinner at her apartment. They met at the office at five o'clock and ytopped on their way home at a grocery store, where they bought

bread and cheese and ham for sandwiches, and chocolate milk and chocolate-marshmallow ice cream. They deposited their parcels in Caroline's kitchenette, and April took off her shoes and sat on the studio couch while Caroline took off her good office dress and hung it away and put on a pair of old velvet slacks and a sweater. She did not bother to make cocktails because neither of them ever drank when they were not out with men. She put some records on the phonograph and sat on the opposite studio couch, Gregg's bed.

"Where's Gregg tonight?" April asked.

"I don't know. She's been acting peculiar lately," Caroline said.

"It's that David Wilder Savage thing."

"I know . . ." Caroline lowered her voice, as if Gregg actually were hiding somewhere, under the bed or in a closet. "She calls him up all evening long. And then at about twelve-thirty, just when I'm going to sleep, she leaves the house."

"I thought he wouldn't see her."

"He won't. I don't know where she goes. Well ... I do."

"Where?"

"You mustn't tell," Caroline warned.

April's eyes widened. "Of course not."

"She'd be terribly embarrassed if she thought anyone else knew. But I had to tell you. It gives me the creepie-crawlies. She goes to his apartment house and she sits outside his apartment and listens."

"My God!" April said. "How come he doesn't come out and catch her?"

"There's a sort of side place where she sits. On the stairs. And the worst part of it is, she calls me up at the office the next day and tells me everything that went on."

"Like, girls?"

"Yes."

"Oh, God," April said again. "Poor thing. How can she do that? I never dreamed of doing that with Dexter."

It was the first time in over a month that April had mentioned Dexter's name. Ever since she had met Ronnie Wood, the boy from home, she had been like a different person. They had gone out together every evening of his two-week vacation in New York, and when he had left he began writing to her every day. April had a resiliency even Caroline had never suspected. One day she had been a miserable girl with a false smile and httle real interest in anything,

and tiien suddenly she was in love, surprised at it herself, but not nearly so surprised as her friends were.

"What have you heard from Ronnie?" Caroline asked, to change the subject.

"He wrote to me again today," April said.

"And how often do you still write to him?"

"Every day."

"What do you ever find to write that much about?"

"Oh, thoughts," April said. "How I feel about things. I almost never tell him what I'm doing. I mean, what do I do? I don't go out or anything, and every day at the oflBce is nearly the same. I send him books sometimes. He says he misses me."

Caroline didn't want to ask the obvious question: What do you think is going to happen? She was afraid for April because she was always so full of hope and allowed herself to be hurt without ever thinking hardheadedly about anything, and yet, it had been two months, nearly sixty letters; it was incredible.

"You know," April said, "I keep looking between the lines of his letters for something to be wrong with him. Like, is he neurotic, or selfish, or a liar? But he seems so perfect I can't believe it. No neurosis at all. And he loves me." Her voice was the same soft, clear voice that had told Caroline so many shocking stories of heartbreak not long ago, but now it had wonder in it and a kind of pride. "It's amazing," April said. "He's normal."

"Is he still working for his father?"

"Yes. He says he likes it. He's going to take another vacation at Christmas if he can get away, and he's coming to New York. He says he wants to see me."

Caroline waited for the words she knew were coming next: "We're going to get married." And she expected them with trepidation, not because she mistrusted Ronnie Wood—although there were few boys she really trusted when you came right down to it—but because of April. April was always expecting so much, and the words "We're going to get married" coming from April had a pathetic ring. She would have much preferred to hear April say. He's proposed to me. But April said neither, she simply smiled happily.

"I'm so crazy about him," April said. "I'd like it if he'd marry me. I think . . . maybe ... I can get him to marry me. I wish he would."

And that, Caroline thought, coming from April, is like anyone else being ten years more grown up.

It was fun to make sandwiches with April and talk about people at the office and about life and to notice how, as often as she could, April would interject a reference to Ronnie into the conversation. It was obvious that she was in love with him, but she seemed so much surer of herself than she had been with Dexter that Caroline's fears were nearly allayed. "I didn't sleep with him," April said, "and I'm not going to when he comes to New York this time, either. He's very respectful. He didn't even try, he just kind of asked me if I'd come up to his hotel room one night and I said no, so he never asked again. I'm dying to, though; it's a real struggle for me not to. He's so darling, isn't he? Don't you think he's darling looking?"

'Tes," Caroline said, although Ronnie Wood's looks were not the type that had ever appealed to her. He seemed so young and unsure of himself. He probably was just the kind of boy who would worship April, and Caroline certainly hoped so.

"You know," April said, "I saw Dexter on Saturday. I went to Brooks Brothers to buy my father some ties for his birthday, and Dexter was there buying a tie. He tried not to notice me, but then he really had to, so he said, 'Hello. How are you?' And I said, 'Fine, how are you?' And then he told the salesman he really didn't see any ties he wanted and he would come back some other time, and he ran away. It was such a strange feeling."

"How did you feel about him?" Caroline asked.

"I don't know. I really didn't feel anything. I mean, I looked at him and I thought how if Dexter really tried he could have me back. After everything he did he could have me back anyway. And yet, I'm sure I don't still love him. I love Ronnie in a different way. I think I love him more than I loved Dexter. But it's different."

"But Ronnie's such a good person," Caroline said. "And Dexter's no good, you know that!"

"I know . . ." April said thoughtfully. "It's funny, I was thinking on Saturday how unfair it is that every girl's first love can't be the one who'll turn out to be right for her. Sometimes he's the worst person in the world. But there's always something about your first love —if you're old enough, I don't mean sixteen—that you can't forget. It's like suddenly, for the first time, everything's important because you're doing it with him. And then there are all the little things in

the world that hurt for a long, long time, because you used to do them with him and you can't any more."

"I know," Caroline said,

"I wish Ronnie could have been my first love. He was right there, all the time, and neither of us had ever met each other. He was in college, and then I was in New York, and he was away in the Army ... I guess it's just a question of timing."

"But maybe if you'd met him before you wouldn't have fallen in love with him," Caroline said. "You might have been looking for different things."

"Oh, I'd always have loved him!" April said. "Any time. I know I would have."

I think she really would have, Caroline thought.

"I'll wash the dishes," April said.

"There's nothing to wash."

"Well, let me do it."

"I'll show you my new shoes," Caroline said. "Very dark gray calf, wait till you see." She went to the closet and rooted around among the shoes, hers and Gregg's, on the floor, and a pillowcase full of dirty laundry which Gregg had forgotten to take downstairs to the Chinaman, and one of Gregg's skirts which had fallen off the hanger on the overcrowded rod. "I never can find anything in this mess. I wish we had more room." She found the shoe box at last, and picked up Gregg's skirt to put it back on its hanger. As she did, something fell out of the skirt pocket to the floor.

She picked it up. It wasn't "something," it was three cigarette butts, one with lipstick on it, an empty lipstick case, and a torn piece of a letter. She looked at this rubbish with distaste, shrugged, and put it back into the pocket of Gregg's skirt. But her hand felt something else which made her recoil, withdraw, and then, with amazement, reach in to take it out to look at it. It was two more cigarette butts ringed with a darker lipstick, a piece of a colored envelope, an empty matchbook from a restaurant and a black bobby pin. "Ugh," she said. Her shoes didn't seem important any more, and she put the box on the closet shelf.

She didn't know what made her think of it, perhaps the fact that the pillowcase seemed not full enough to contain laundry and did not have the odd bulges in it that crumpled towels made. Caroline

knelt and gingerly opened the knotted top of the pillowcase and peered inside. "Oh, my God!"

"What's the matter?" April asked.

"Look at this stuflF." Caroline carried the pillowcase out into the room and looked around for a place to put it. Not the studio couch, certainly, nor the dining table. She finally put it on top of the radiator. "Look." She held the top of the pillowcase wide open, and April bent over it, looking inside.

"Garbage!" April whispered. "Where did you get the garbage?"

"It's Gregg's."

"In a pillowcase?"

"The thing that really gets me," Caroline said, "is it's in my pillowcase."

It wasn't really garbage, in the sense of what you find in a garbage pail; it was wastebasket refuse: a torn stocking, a piece of a stocking box with the size printed on it, an envelope that had held air-line tickets, some more bits of letters and bills and papers, discarded cigarette wrappers from two different brands, empty matchbooks and an empty vial that had contained a prescription, with the code number and name still in it, made out to a Miss Masson. Caroline and April stared at these things for a moment in bewilderment, and then Caroline hastily knotted the top of tlie pillow slip again.

"I'd better put it all back right away."

"What is she doing with that stuff?" April asked. "I don't understand."

"I wonder how long this has been going on. . . ." Caroline thought back to how long the pillowcase had been on the floor in the closet, but it was impossible to remember. Gregg had always been untidy, but even so, something as large as a half-filled pillowcase ... It hadn't been there last week, that she knew, because that was when she had bought the shoes and put the shoe box on the closet floor in the comer.

"Cigarette butts," April said. "I mean, cigarette butts!"

"Those other things aren't much better," Caroline said.

"Caroline," April said, "do you think Gregg is crazy? That's pretty peculiar, to collect all that stuff."

"Maybe she just likes garbage," Caroline said. The two of them looked at each other, and then suddenly it seemed very funny and they began to giggle.

"What does your roommate do for a living?" April mimicked. "Why, she's a garbage collector. Only there's one thing wrong with her. She brings it home." Their giggles turned into laughter and they gasped with mirth.

"I'm sorry," Caroline choked, "I can't go out with you tonight. I have to go and collect some garbage." She wiped her eyes.

"I'll have to save mine for her from now on," April said.

"No. She doesn't want yours." Caroline's laughter faded, she looked at April again, and it wasn't funny any more. "It's awful," she said. "Do you know that?"

"I know . . ."

"Whose do you think it is?"

"I don't know."

"Yes you do."

"Yes," April said slowly, and her face was troubled. "Yes, I do. Don't you?"

They talked for a while of other things, but their thoughts were on Gregg and what had happened to her, and finally they talked about that again. "She told me everything else," Caroline said. "But she never told me this."

"She was probably embarrassed."

"I don't blame her."

"It's his, isn't it?" April said.

"Who else's?"

"How does she get it?"

"She must wait until he dumps his rubbish. Or till his maid does, he has a maid. I know Gregg never gets into his apartment, she told me so."

"Isn't that strange. . . ."

"She must have a terribly low opinion of herself," Caroline murmured, "to do something like that. She must really thinks she's nothing, to make herself suffer that way."

When April left, at eleven, Caroline was not tired. She was still thinking about Gregg and the garbage, because it was so curious, and because it depressed her. She had known eccentric people, but they were silly old middle-aged women and men whose friends talked and laughed about them behind their backs and who managed to live and get along despite their odd habits. But to have her roommate, the girl she had lived with and known for over two years,

turn out to be so disturbed, was another matter. She could not comprehend it. None of us would do something like that, Caroline thought—not April, not me, nobody. If I told my mother she'd say. You can't live with that girl any longer, she's sick. And April and I laughed, we thought it was funny. There must be a middle ground somewhere, between revulsion and amusement, that would tell us what's really the matter.