Treasures (24 page)

“I thought it would be a good hobby,” he explained. “I even bought books to learn about orchids. You’d be surprised how much there is to know about all the varieties. But I’ve given it up and let the gardeners do it. I never have enough time to fool around with things like that.”

Connie was looking over his shoulder toward the pool and the guest wing.

“How many rooms are there?” she inquired.

“Sixty-four. Not counting the quarters for gardeners and chauffeur, which are separate.”

Ben Berg and Melissa arrived from New York and Paris within an hour of each other, and shortly afterward were seated at a little table in the courtyard having dinner. Three pairs of identical dark, heavy eyes surrounded Connie. All three Bergs had the same thick hair; the girl’s was just a tangle of coarse black silk. The two brothers had the same alert and vigilant face, but Melissa’s expression seemed either worried or perhaps just absentminded. At any rate, she looked like one of those children who have been born old. She was badly dressed in sallow green with a loose wide collar, out of which rose a long neck and a pointed chin. Her mother ought to know better or to care more, Connie thought pityingly.

The fountain trickled. Whenever the voices ceased, this music alone filled the night. No air stirred a leaf. The candle flames were steady.

“A perfect night,” Martin murmured. He reached across the table for his daughter’s hand and held it while she held her fork in the other hand.

Connie smiled. “How can you eat like that?” she asked.

“I’m left handed,” replied Melissa, not letting go.

They loved each other, Connie saw. The girl, suffering, was the ultimate victim of the crumbling marriage. As always. And again, she was moved to pity.

Long after the dessert was cleared away, the men were still talking to each other. Inattentively, Connie heard that they were having a mild argument, Ben, faintly sardonic, saying something about industry:
It should be making jobs and products, not paying off debt.
And Martin emphatically responding. Melissa did not speak, but Connie felt her furtive glances. She was wondering, probably, what Connie’s position here might be, and could not know that Connie was wondering the same about herself.

The melancholy began to weigh too heavily, and Connie stood abruptly, saying, “We’re forgetting about jet lag. For Melissa it’s already past midnight.”

“Of course,” Martin said at once. “Go to bed. You, too, Connie. Maybe you ladies might want to do some shopping tomorrow. I think Melissa needs some summer clothes.”

So he had noticed the awful dress. Naturally. He noticed everything.

With Melissa in the house Martin would of course stay in his own bed. So Connie lay awake in a room that was too large for one person to occupy alone. Her memory spun.

“How are things between Martin and you?” Eddy had recently inquired, meaning,
You’re starting the second year. When is he going to marry you
?? To which she had answered only,
Things are fine
, and left him uninformed.

The divorce proceedings were taking their time, it was true. Still, there was no guarantee that Martin had anything else in mind but to continue as they were, even after the divorce should become final. There were no
guarantees of anything in this world, and nothing lasted forever. She ought to have learned that by now. She should not be taking for granted this protected life, this voluptuous nest, this gold-lined cocoon. Indeed, she should not have let herself grow fond of the man. And as she lay looking up at the dim ceiling, a tightness came to her throat, as though she were about to cry.

The day’s purchases were spread on Melissa’s bed, were hung in the closet and laid over chairs. There were swimsuits and sundresses, clothes for every possible occasion in the life of an eleven-year-old girl. Regarding herself in the mirror, Melissa allowed a timid smile to spread from her lips and brighten her sober eyes. Peach-colored linen brought becoming color to her pale cheeks. Her thick hair had been smoothed back with a bandeau above her forehead.

Connie, from her seat on the chaise longue, observing the change, remarked, “You like yourself. That’s good.”

“I’ve never had things like this before. My mother …” And Melissa stopped.

“Well. Now you know you must always wear lively colors, pretty colors, don’t you?”

“I’m going to wear this tonight. Daddy will like it.”

“I’m sure he will.”

Melissa is my heart
, Martin had said.

The girl sat down on the edge of the bed and began to fold sweaters. Connie looked at her, round shouldered and ungainly still, in spite of the improvements. It was absurd that this child should be able to make her feel awkward. Never before, no matter where she had gone
with Martin, no matter whom she had met, had she felt the slightest uncertainty or discomfiture. Yet here in this house, in the presence of his child and his earnest, ironic brother, who would surely be as disapproving of Connie as he was of the house itself, she was displaced. She was the outsider.

She was thinking of a way to make a smooth exit when Melissa spoke.

“Are you a special friend of Daddy’s?”

“I’m a friend. I don’t know what you mean by ‘special.’ ”

“Oh, special. A lady who lives here.”

Connie flushed; she had a sense that some unwelcome information might be forthcoming. Nevertheless, she pursued the subject.

“Why, do special friends usually live here?”

“Not always. But Daisy did. She was very pretty. But you’re even prettier, I think.”

The remark, and the girl’s frank look, were absolutely ingenuous. She was too timid, too unworldly, to be malicious, so this then must be the truth.

“So Daisy was a special friend, was she?”

“Oh, yes. When we left Daddy and went to live in Paris, I guess Daddy was lonesome, so Daisy moved in. But then I think he stopped liking her after a while.”

“What makes you think that?” asked Connie, keeping her voice careless, although her heart began to race.

“She didn’t want to go away, but Daddy told her to. I was here and I heard them.”

“I see. He told her to.”

“Yes. I think I’ll take this dress off and go swimming. Want to come?”

“Not just now. Maybe later I will.”

For long minutes Connie stood in the bathroom staring at herself in the mirror. The flush had receded, leaving her face pale and shocked.
He told her to go.
And holding her hand to her cheek, she contemplated the delicate fingers spread like a fan, the well-kept nails, and the darkly glowing ruby. Had that other woman, called Daisy, also worn a Harry Winston jewel? And had she stood here before the mirror, too, contemplating herself and her future? Had she, too, been “fond” of Martin Berg before she was cast out?

Outside a wind had risen, rattling the royal palms that stood about the lawn. She went to the window to watch them lash and struggle against the coming rain. For a long time she stood, absorbed half by the approaching storm and half by the storm of her own deliberations.

Finally, she fetched her cosmetic carrying case from the closet in the bedroom, took out the birth control pills, and poured them down the toilet.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

M
idway through the spring the doctor confirmed Connie’s guess.

“You’ll have a December baby,” he said.

Having heard tales of women who, after an abortion, had never again conceived, she was reassured. She thought how ironic it was that, pregnant for the second time in uncertain circumstances, she should now find herself in the opposite position. But it still remained for her to inform Martin, who might very well not be pleased at having fatherhood thrust publicly upon him by his unmarried lover. On the other hand, might not a man nearing fifty be delighted with such a reenactment and confirmation of his youth?

As it turned out, he was neither displeased nor delighted, but rather more astonished than anything else.

“But you were using the pill!” he exclaimed.

“I’m afraid it’s not infallible.”

A disturbing possibility came to her, that he might suggest an abortion. He looked thoughtful, while she endured an ominous silence and studied his face.

He asked then, “When will it be?”

“December.”

Martin nodded. “At least the timing is convenient.”

“The timing?”

“My divorce will be final in thirty days. I found out this morning. That’s why I picked this place for dinner. To celebrate.”

They were at La Grenouille, one of their favorite choices for dining out. She looked past his shoulders at a mass of yellow hyacinths, and beyond them to a family of voluble teenagers with their youthful, handsome parents. A solid family. A
young
family.

“We can be married over the Memorial Day weekend. We’ll have a seventh- or eighth-month baby.”

She understood. He had his dignified position to maintain. Modern times or no, the world of finance was not the world of the theater or the arts. And she had to ask herself now what he would have said or done if the divorce had not yet come to a final solution, or what would be happening if his desire for her had already waned, as apparently his desire for another—or others—had done.

But those were useless speculations. Those dangers were past.

“You look troubled,” he said.

“I guess I’m still in shock.”

“Well, so was I a moment ago.” He smiled. “But now that I’ve absorbed the shock, it’s really rather nice, you know. Let’s order champagne.”

They toasted each other. Martin became talkative; once he had accepted a reality, he always began to organize
projects around it, jumping from one thought to the next.

“We’ll have to move into my apartment. Wait till you see it. It’s spectacular, a whole floor overlooking Fifth Avenue. Of course, it needs to be completely done over. I never liked the way it was done in the first place. Doris wanted her own way, but she knew nothing. And Melissa needs a proper room, no matter how seldom she uses it. Bear in mind a room for my son. Make it suitable for a young man. He may never sleep in it. He’s his mother’s boy, and he probably hates me. But do it, anyway. And guest rooms. I suppose now your sister will want to bring her family sometimes.”

“Perhaps not. She’s a country girl. And they’re so busy building up the business, anyway.”

Pictures flashed as a camera clicks through one view after another: Lara as she must look standing in the doorway of the new white house, standing with Davey in front of the proud facade of the Davis Company, Lara bringing her supper tray on the last night, Lara … The trouble was that the longer one waited to make a healing move, to write a letter or to pick up the telephone, the more difficult it became to do, until finally it became impossible, and one buried the grief at the bottom of one’s mind.

“Well, I’ll be having people fly in now and then. It’s nice, when a man comes in from Australia, not to have to put him up at a hotel.”

Still Connie’s thoughts went wandering. She was acutely conscious of the life that she was nurturing within her. It seemed of a sudden so remarkable that
such a thing could be happening to her, so remarkable that she ought to stand up and announce it. And she thought again of what Lara would say if she knew. She thought of Peg. And, strangely, she thought of Richard. For a few fleeting moments a dark melancholy passed through her.

“We’ll have the wedding, a garden wedding at the place in Westchester. It will need a little freshening up, that’s all. Otherwise, it’s in good shape.”

“I wondered why you’ve never shown it to me, or the apartment either.”

“Because I didn’t remember much joy in either one of those places. But now you’ll bring joy. And beauty. And life.”

There were twenty-seven rooms in the apartment. Past piles of furniture draped in sheets Connie followed Martin into a gymnasium, a poolroom, a music room, a restaurant-sized kitchen, and more. The dining-room floor was marble, but the Victorian chairs were ugly, as was a dark, gigantic painting of men and horses whirling in battle among half-naked women pinned to the ground and ready to be raped. Connie wrinkled her nose in distaste.

Martin laughed. “Yes, it’s awful. Get rid of it. I want you to hire the best decorator in town and give him carte blanche. It’ll take a few million to do this up right, but it’s our home. His home.” He poked her gently in the stomach.

“Or hers.”

“The corner bedroom will be fine for it. The sun’s there for hours.”

“All right. It.”

And Connie felt again the excitement and acute awareness of the growing life. She looked about at the grand rooms. The new life, as yet unknowing, would enter the world in possession of all this, the safety and the grandeur.

The top decorator was an elegant young man with a faintly disdainful manner who moved rapidly through the apartment, approving and discarding, most often the latter. At Connie’s house, to her surprise, the only item that he found worth keeping was the old mirror that Richard had bought on Third Avenue.

“Whoever bought that knew what he was doing,” the man remarked.