Till We Meet Again (84 page)

Freddy smiled indulgently to herself. He was such a beautifully
organized
man. Would any woman dream that a doctor who did such daring things to people’s nervous systems would be the kind of gourmet cook who followed every complicated recipe to the letter, never throwing in a pinch of this or a dash of that, without a debate as to the exact size of the pinch or dash? What patient of his, she wondered, who had been the recipient of his innovative, imaginative use of medical art, would suspect that in his own home he arranged the books in his library not just by author, but by title, as alphabetically as the words in a dictionary, and never, ever left one lying open, facedown, for even a few minutes, because it wasn’t good for its binding? If he heard someone in a bookstore opening a new book and cracking the spine, David had to be restrained from protesting out loud. He was adorably boyish when he got all hot and bothered.

As for his phonograph records! He’d taught Freddy how to hold them always by the edges, with the palms of her hands, so that no fingerprints would mar their black, grooved surfaces; he explained why they had to be replaced in their protective paper sleeves before being put back inside the album covers, after they’d been meticulously wiped off with the special cloth that picked up every last speck of dust. Their only disagreement was whether a record, once on the phonograph, had to be kept there until it came to an end. Sometimes Freddy wanted to stop the music in the middle,
for one reason or another, but David insisted that they wait till the arm of his Magnavox lifted the needle off the record mechanically. “It’s virtually impossible to be sure that you won’t scratch the record if you pick up the needle by hand,” he’d explained, and she’d realized that he was absolutely right, shuddering at the memory of the shameful way she and Jane used to play snatches of one tune or another on their little, hand-wound machine, changing favorite records as casually as if they were playthings.

David had really shaped her up, Freddy reflected, as he slowed down far in advance for a red light, the Cadillac whispering to a stop so smooth that it couldn’t be felt. She’d always had a small corner of disarray in her bedroom, her “rat’s nest” where she would sling magazines, sweaters, letters, newspaper articles that she’d torn out, bills she wasn’t ready to pay, shoes that needed to be reheeled, and snapshots she intended to put into her album someday, all mixed together in one awful mess that served as a surprisingly effective if informal filing cabinet. Whenever Freddy couldn’t put her hands on something where it was supposed to be, she looked in the rat’s nest and found it. But when she’d started to establish a small away-from-home rat’s nest in David’s bedroom, for she spent so much time with him, he’d been admirably firm.

“It’s a minor bad habit, darling,” he’d said. “It would be just as easy for you to put things away immediately or hang them up as soon as you take them off. I know it’s a bore. I know I’m a monster about neatness—in an operating room, you’d have to know exactly where everything is at every second.” She could understand his reasoning perfectly, Freddy thought, and, what’s more, it hadn’t been all that difficult to keep her things in order once she started reminding herself to do it. She still had a rat’s nest at home, but now she felt guilty every time she rummaged in it. She’d soon get around to eliminating that lazy habit completely, she decided firmly.

In fact,
IF
they were going to get married, she thought, wrinkling her nose in perplexity, she’d better start in right away, and start riding herd on Annie too, who’d inherited the rat’s-nest habit. Could it be genetic?

Once she’d left the hospital, Freddy realized that it was out of the question for Annie to stay in England for a year of school. She’d miss her far too much. Her daughter had been back home since the start of classes, although it wasn’t easy to
carry on a romance when an observant nine-year-old expected to have breakfast with her every day. She and David hadn’t slept together for a single entire night; they’d never awakened in the same bed together, for he drove her home at a fairly respectable hour of the evening, particularly since he almost always had to be at Cedars early the next morning.

He was the most considerate lover a woman could dream of, she thought happily, glancing at his profile as he concentrated on the road ahead. Tender, sweet, gentle, as concerned with her pleasure as he was with his own … or more concerned? She only had two other lovers to whom she could compare David, and she couldn’t remember if Tony, or Mac, all those years ago, had ever been as bent on making absolutely sure of her satisfaction as was David. Did David have a unique, built-in sensitivity to women, or was it his knowledge of her neurological responses? And wasn’t she a little disgusting, even to be thinking this way, when she was always so fulfilled after he made love to her?

Would David never grab her and rip off a tumbled, hotheaded, ill-timed and delightful quickie, the sort that makes a sexy secret to share all through an evening, Freddy wondered, or was that too unlike him? Probably he would, once this courtship period was over,
IF
they got married—or was it just a question of when?

David had been as good as his word. He hadn’t said another thing about marriage, just as he promised. He hadn’t put the slightest pressure on her to make a decision. So why did she feel as if, somehow, there was some subtle invisible force that was causing her to lean toward saying yes to this man who was so good for her, who took such marvelous care of her, who showed his love in so many ways? Probably, Freddy told herself, it was because he was obviously a man any woman would be insane not to marry.

It was only this dinner tonight, she realized, that was making her nervous. Dinner with David’s mother. It was an invitation she’d already wriggled out of twice, until finally she’d had to accept. Dinner with someone’s mother was not a formal announcement of intention to wed, Freddy reminded herself. It was a compliment to be invited. Nothing more. Not pressure. After all, he hadn’t taken her around to meet his sisters, although she imagined that having sisters was the reason that he was so good with Annie.

He’d assured her that tonight was nothing out of the
ordinary, just the usual weekly dinner he’d been having with his mother for years. “I’m that ridiculously unfashionable thing known as a good son,” David had told her, his dark eyes alive with self-mockery. “It’s not my fault that she’s a good little mother, is it?” She had a good little mother too, Freddy had reminded him, as well he knew, and if Eve didn’t live six thousand miles away, she and her mother would no doubt be just as devoted as Eve and Delphine now were.

Susan Grunwald Weitz, widowed for three years, lived on one of the green and private streets of luxuriously secluded Bel Air, not very far east of Brentwood. They turned off Sunset and soon arrived at her house, a finely proportioned white mansion of Virginian elegance, lying well hidden behind tall gates.

“Hmm,” observed Freddy, impressed and rather surprised. David’s own house was bachelor-sized. “I thought your father was a doctor too?”

“His hobby was investing—oil and real estate. He managed to combine all his interests.”

“What beautiful gardens,” Freddy noticed, lagging behind, feeling just a little reluctant to commit herself to meeting David’s mother, no matter how good, no matter how little.

“Mother’s hobby. Come on, darling, she really won’t eat you.” He greeted the maid who opened the door and led them toward the living room. Freddy had a quick impression of a wealth of paintings and sculpture and bowls of massed flowers everywhere, before she realized that the living room seemed to contain more people than the one good little mother she had been prepared to meet.

Susan Weitz, who was almost as tall as her son, rose, composed and friendly, to greet them. There was not so much as a single streak of gray in her smooth, ash blond hair, her pearls were the best Freddy had ever seen, her blue dress simpler and more expensive than any that Freddy, who now could recognize these distinctions in one glance, had ever seen a Los Angeles woman wearing. Freddy’s first thought was that she must have had her dress made in Paris. Her second was that Susan Weitz must have been the late doctor’s second wife, for she certainly didn’t look old enough to be David’s mother.

However, as she was introduced to the other people in the room, Freddy had to admit that the women in their thirties, David’s three married sisters, bore a family resemblance to Susan Weitz and to David himself. With their three husbands, they made an exceptionally tall, exceptionally lean, exceptionally attractive group, all cordial, yet not one degree overly cordial. They did not seem to be looking Freddy over in any covert or significant way. Just a simple little family dinner, she said to herself, assuming her Honorable Mrs. Longbridge smile. Everyone in the room absolutely
loomed
over her, for Gods sake. She felt like a Munchkin.

“Mother, you didn’t warn me that you were having the girls,” David protested in surprise.

“Well, darling, your sisters were free and dying to come—you know I can never resist them.”

“I told you about my little sisters, didn’t I, darling?” he murmured to Freddy. “Sorry about this.”

“They seem to have grown up since you mentioned them.”

“Well, I’m the oldest, by light-years. Mother had me when she was eighteen. To me they’ll always be kids,” he said, giving her a drink.

The Weitzes, as Freddy thought of them, for she had caught none of the sisters’ married names, carried on an easy discussion in which they included Freddy so naturally that she soon found herself feeling as if she were a normal-sized human being. Anyway, they looked shorter sitting down.

After the gay, chatter-filled dinner, they all went back to the living room, where Freddy was claimed by Barbara, who announced that she was the baby of the family.

“You have only the one sister, don’t you?” Barbara asked, her kindness evident in her smile.

“Yes, and she lives so far away,” Freddy said regretfully. The sight of the big, companionable Weitz family made her feel lonely for her own kin.

“I’ve seen a lot of her films. She’s simply divine. David tells me that your daughter, Annie, looks a lot like your sister.”

“Yes, it’s startling. But they’re different in many ways. I don’t think Annie will ever be an actress.”

“David says that Annie still wants to be a pilot. Are you happy about that? If I were her mother, I must say I wouldn’t be entirely thrilled with her ambitions, particularly now that you’ve given it up yourself. It seems such a difficult life for a
little girl, not really … well, not really feminine, if you know what I mean. But I imagine you can talk her out of it. David hopes you can, but he’s probably told you, hasn’t he? Channel her gently in another direction, as it were—golf, for instance. Or tennis. Those are such useful sports. Not something you have to do all alone, like flying. I’m an avid golfer myself. Do you play, Freddy? No? What a shame! Well, if you ever decide to learn, I can steer you right to the best pro in town. With your coordination, or whatever it is that pilots have, you’d be an absolute natural! I have an idea—why don’t we lunch at the club and afterwards I’ll introduce you to him? You might want to make a date for lessons. One way or another, I’ll call you in a few days.”

“That would be lovely,” Freddy said, grinding out a smile. She didn’t
choose
to fly, at the moment, for reasons she hadn’t bothered to analyze, but that didn’t mean she’d “given it up.” And just what made Barbara think that you could talk anyone out of flying who really wanted to do it? Could any logic or persuasion, no matter how gentle—no matter how forceful—have stopped her? When you had that need, that urge to climb into the sky and make it your own, there was nothing a mother could do. Or should do. But Barbara was so warm, and she meant well.

“Move over, Babs,” said Dianne, another sister who unceremoniously took Barbara’s place. “Has she been telling you about her golf pro? Pay no attention. She’s really far gone. She’s the club champ, my dear, three years in a row. I think it’s an appalling bore, all that dreary golfer’s talk. But then I haven’t got time for golf anyway, with five children and another on the way. Oh, I know, it doesn’t show yet, but I hardly ever show until the sixth month … I’m lucky about that. You have only one child, I understand? That’s too bad.”

“Annie was born in the middle of the war. I had a job …” Freddy heard herself explaining.

“Bad luck! But then you’re so young. Only thirty-one, David says. You have time to have a dozen more if you want them, don’t you? Heavens, that does sound like a lot of work, doesn’t it? You should see the look on your face! Really, Freddy, I was only joking. But naturally David’s dying for children. That first marriage—well, they weren’t married long enough to have babies—I’m sure he’s told you about it. And you’ve stopped working, I hear. I have some friends with children who continue to cling to their careers, but I
feel so sorry for them … there’s always that appalling tug in both directions—they can never do real justice to their jobs or their babies, no matter how hard they try. Of course, most of them
want
to work, I can respect that, but I can’t help thinking that they’ve made the wrong decision, and that they’ll regret it later. What’s your opinion?”

“I’ve never given it much thought,” Freddy answered. “Annie was brought up by a working mother and she hasn’t suffered as far as I can see. At least not yet.”

“Oh no, of course not!” Dianne cried. “After all, there was the war and all. And then starting your business. You couldn’t
help
it. But she must be so pleased that you’re home for her now. And when she gets to be a teenager, she’ll really need you. In fact, all your little ones are always going to need you, even when they’re grown up. Didn’t you just love being pregnant? I’m never so happy as when I am—I wonder why that is? Probably something primitive and atavistic. Now that you’re not working, I hope you’re free for lunch? I’ll call you next week and make a date. I’d love you to have lunch with me at home, and see my children.”