Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (14 page)

Food passed and a drink in your hand and a little linen napkin on your lap. Cigarette smoke circling the room, the sun making a haze of it. The John, when you had to go and where you sat alone on a spotless toilet seat seen to by a helpful neighbor or friend who had later brought the potato salad and cold meats. You lingered in the bathroom looking in the mirror, glad as anything that the familiar face still stared back at you and was not lying on a satin pillow in an oak casket. You put your quiet and reflective expression back on and went outside again.

Maybe it made sense, Meryl thought. Maybe it wasn’t so barbaric after all. She just didn’t like to think of herself lying there dead while the others had fun. Which was terribly selfish. And thoughtless, of course. The close of kin weren’t having fun. The close of kin, perhaps, were momentarily comforted by the support of friends and family. A temporary reprieve. Tomorrow they would weep.

She pulled on her dress, picked up her handbag and gloves, left her bedroom, snapping out the light. She wished, rather a lot, that Ralph was coming with her. It would be late when she left Campbell’s. Someone would probably drive her home, though, or share a taxi. Whatever, but she had to leave now, right now.

The twins, Susan and Amanda, were watching TV. “You know your bedtime,” she said to them. “Be tucked up before Daddy gets home. Understand?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“What are you watching? Nothing violent? You know the rules about that.”

“It’s the end of a Disney,” Susan said, offended. “Next is that circus program we waited all week to see.

“Oh, yes, that will be fun. And then bed.”

“Um hum. Have a nice time.”

“I’m going to a funeral parlor.”

“Oh.”

Out on the street, as if by magic, she got a taxi. The driver had his radio going. It was Mozart, the concerto 21 in C. Or as some people had come to refer to it, the Elvira Madigan concerto. “Sounds nice,” Meryl said, settling back in the seat.

He regarded her in his rearview mirror. “You like music.”

“Sure. Very much.”

“Rock?”

“You can have it.”

“I’ll pass too,” he said. “How do you feel about Mehta as a conductor?”

“I think he’s excellent.”

“I drove him one afternoon. Did you like Boulez?”

“Not enough dash, I’m a little old-fashioned. I’m happy about Mehta.”

He had seen them come and go, he told her. Bruno Walter. Mitropoulos. Koussevitzky, Barbirolli. “You name it,” he said. “I’ve been a long time around. I should be retired, but who can retire these days? I’ll hack till I drop.”

When the cab pulled up in front of the funeral parlor she had a good look at him. Yes, he must be going on seventy. He
would
probably hack until he dropped, she thought, in his cab with the radio turned on to his favorite music station. He was a nice guy, and it seemed meet and right that this cheerful personality should end his days at the wheel, his ears filled with immortal music.

“Nice to talk to you,” she said as she paid him.

“You too, lady. See you around.”

She was ushered into Campbell’s by an attendant at the door. Inside another attendant, correct and formal, indicated the room she was to go to. His smile was pleasant and concerned at the same time. A professional smile, he probably practiced it in front of a looking glass.

She stopped at the doorway of the room assigned to her friend’s family. It was only just past eight, but a very large number of people sat on folding chairs, with some grouped at the place where the casket stood on its catafalque, surrounded by flowers. The scent was almost overpowering. It was the goddamn flowers that were so macabre. Flowers belonged in fields and gardens, why flowers for someone who could no longer smell them? But of course it was for the family of the person who could no longer smell them. The final acknowledgment. Afterwards everyone said how many lovely flowers there had been. “Masses of them, absolute masses.”

She sighted Laura, who was standing at the coffin, gesturing toward it as if she were displaying some rare work of art. Laura looked pale and tired. She looked as if she had been jogging around the reservoir at Central Park for about a hundred hours. There were lines in her face Meryl had never seen before. There was a kind of frantic determination on her drawn face: after all, she had to see this thing through to the bitter end, and then maybe she could let her defenses down, go to bed and fall to pieces.

“Darling,” Meryl said when she gained her side. “Hello, dear.”

“Oh, you came, Meryl.”

“Of course I came. Did you think I could stay away?”

“I am so glad to see you. It’s been such a strain.”

“Of course it has. Laura, have you eaten? Have you had something to eat?”

“Eat — well. Oh yes, at four this afternoon Marcia Lewis — she’s a neighbor — yes. She made a lovely little snack for me.”

She smiled. A smile as professional as the man at the door. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just fine.” She tapped her handbag. “I have a little flask in here. Gin. It leaves you breathless. It
has
helped, Meryl. Oh, I
am
so glad to see you.”

“This hits me,” Meryl said simply. “I haven’t lost anyone yet. I’d like to do something, is there anything I can do? I mean anything at all.”

“After a while, yes, maybe. When the letdown comes along. Oh, Meryl, your flowers are beautiful. Let me show you. Where’s Ralph?”

“He had a meeting,” Meryl lied smoothly. “He was so sorry. He said to tell you he — ”

“No matter. It’s you I wanted. Come, you must see the flowers you sent.” She chatted animatedly while guiding Meryl to the spot where they were. “I know people go and order flowers and then they never know what they’re going to be like. I’m always fretful myself. You pay some ungodly amount, absolutely blind, and you have no assurance …”

She put an arm through Meryl’s. “It’s an awful expense,” she said worriedly. “I think it’s horrible. I never want to smell another flower in my life. I should have told people to contribute, instead, to a cancer fund, or muscular dystrophy or something like that. But my mother — ”

“Of course, I understand.”

“She did “want flowers. Well, here they are. So lovely, Meryl. You must have spent a fortune.”

Tears spurted to Meryl’s eyes. “Christ, Laura, do you think I care about the money?”

“Still,” Laura murmured, “It is a waste, you have to admit that. Anyway, thank you. I thank you, my husband thanks you, my mother thanks you. Oh come on over and talk to my mother. She’s being incredibly brave. Thank God she’ll be taken care of financially. It would be damned difficult for us to fit her into our lives. I mean moneywise. We just don’t have it. And I’d hate to see her give up her home. That would be the last, the unkindest cut.”

“I’m glad she won’t have to.”

“Listen, can we get together for lunch sometime soon? Not next week, too much to do. But, say, two or three weeks from now? I’d really like that, Meryl.”

“I’m at your service any time you say. I love you, dear.”

“I love you too. What would we women do without each other?”

It was a little before ten when Meryl took her leave. No one had offered her a ride home. Well, when it came right down to it, how many people owned a car in Manhattan? It was, for almost everyone, buses or subways. If money was no object, a rented limousine. Anyway, it was such a short distance home. You could walk if it weren’t for not being able to after dark these days. So stupid not to be able to get yourself home on foot. A crisp, coolish early June evening like this. But of course no one did and, Meryl thought, she wouldn’t be the exception. She stood outside of Campbell’s, searching the far distance, in both directions, for the lights of a taxi. Those cheerful lights. Isn’t that exasperating, she said to herself. All the taxis in this city and not one in sight.

The alternative was to walk over to Lexington, for a downtown bus. She remembered when Madison was a two-way avenue. A bus uptown and a bus downtown. That was long gone by the board. She didn’t like the idea of trekking over, along lonesome streets, from Mad to Park and then from Park to Lex. Shit. She looked back toward the entrance of the funeral parlor. As she did, four people exited. She heard one of them say, “The car’s just around the corner. Let’s go, it’s getting late.”

How about me, she thought of saying. There she was, standing alone on the corner. They might have given some thought to her. Anyway, she didn’t say anything, simply watched them round the corner. Then, stiffening her spine, decided to leg it over to Lexington.

With a last, longing look and still no cabs in sight, she crossed the avenue. She felt queasy, very uneasy, and in her mind recalled the Manhattan of the sixties, when you could still go out at night and have a good time. Or anyway, the early sixties. Sic transit and all like that. She walked briskly along the crosstown street cheerily lit by those pretty, rosy bulbs that had replaced the dim and ugly green ones of yore. She used to hate that dismal green lighting. At Park she hadn’t encountered a soul, but from Park down to Lexington sighted — with a feeling of ineffable happiness and relief — a man walking an enormous dog which, when she hurried to catch up to them, sniffed at her ankles.

His master said, “Hi,” to her, and she returned the greeting, then passed him. She had a feeling that he had paused on the street, to watch her progress down to Lex. Sure enough, he was standing still, in the spot where she had come face to face with him. He raised a hand and waved. She waved back. And people said New Yorkers were unfriendly! It made her feel very good. She would have liked to thank him, but it was the better part of valor to get herself to the bus stop.

Which she did, and craned her neck for the lights of an oncoming downtown bus. In vain, alas. She saw nothing, not a sign of a bus. The avenue was barren of people. Daytimes it would be crowded, jammed with passersby and hurrying shoppers. Daytimes it was cheerful, neighborly. What was she doing here all alone at this time of night, she asked herself, feeling the first tremors of panic. She shivered, quick, convulsive. Where was the bus? She was afraid, she was suddenly terribly afraid.

What could she do? She wanted to climb up to the sky, or scale the wall of a building, beyond the reach of predators. Suppose there was someone lurking nearby? Watching her …

She hugged her handbag to her side, but she wasn’t fearful for her handbag. She was fearful for her life. Why had she done this? Anger, powerful and overwhelming, seized her. Ralph should be here! She shouldn’t be alone here. How fatuous men were, how self-serving, how rotten when it came right down to it. Here she stood, alone and defenseless, at this time of night in this dangerous city.

I hate him, Meryl thought savagely. I hate him. Even when I love him I hate him, have hated him for years, for taking everything and giving little. They earned the daily bread and never gave a thought to the women who kept their homes going. They all thought their wives were so protected and lucky. Staying home and taking it easy. Damn it, she thought, grinding her teeth. How dare they treat us this way?

A beam of light, from as far up as Eighty-sixth Street, caught her eye. A bus? It was! It was a bus, making its lumbering way toward her. Oh, thank God! Thank God! Two blocks away it made its last stop before coming her way. She had never in her life been so glad to see a city bus. She climbed in, put her change in the slot and sat down. It’s the last time, she promised herself. You couldn’t venture forth in this city at night without prearranged transportation. But she was breathing easily now, and when she debarked from the bus and made her way toward her home her thoughts were on her friend, on Laura, whose father lay in that casket at Campbell’s, his face a marble mask. She would phone Laura in a day or two and whenever Laura was ready to face the outside world would take her to some lovely place for lunch. They would talk, and Laura would get a few things off her chest. It was fortunate that Laura’s mother could provide for herself and not have to be a burden. I’d hate to be a burden, Meryl was thinking. Anyone would, that’s one of the things that haunts us, one of the worries. What will happen when I’m old?

The world blew up in a violent explosion when she was just a short way from her building. The blast rocked through Meryl, bursting her lungs like a punctured bellows, tearing the heart out of her body, shattering her bones. The mighty hand of holocaust slammed down on her mouth, the hot breath of doom scorched her face.

The illusion was short-lived. It was natural enough, given the suddenness of the attack. She had heard nothing, sensed nothing, not a sound, not a whisper. Comprehension returned and with it the realization that she had been seized from behind in a silent, swift tackle, that the mighty hand was a human hand and that she was in danger of suffocating with her head wrested back so brutally that the slightest move on her part would surely cut off whatever breath she had left.

Her heart, far from leaving her body, was circuiting round inside it in dizzying revolutions, sending up jets of saliva to her mouth. There was all this distant awareness of what was happening, but no real response, certainly no protest. She stood still as a stone in the iron embrace, crushed against the mass of some powerful body into which she seemed to merge, as if she were united with it, as if she were now part of its contours. She was without will or wonder: her mind had ground to an abrupt halt. Something cold and hard was against her throat. There was no curiosity about what it was, her brain was functioning only minimally.

“Scream and I cut you to pieces,” a voice muttered.

The hand on her mouth tightened. Her lips were twisted behind it, bruised and savaged. She didn’t feel the pain, she felt nothing.

“You hear me?” the voice insisted. “You hear me lady? You want to be sliced up?”

The hand eased away from her mouth. She tasted blood, her mouth was wet. From her lips filtered an answer.

“Okay.” It was a whisper. A knife, she knew. He was holding a knife against her throat. Her breath was dribbling from her in sick gasps. She said again, “Okay.”

She was released, slowly, cautiously, begrudgingly. She saw the gleam of the weapon. Paralyzed, facing the dark shadow of the man as he got down to business, she nearly fell. Bile came into her mouth. She wasn’t thinking anything. Except for the knife. As if she were in a trance, she proffered her handbag. It left her hands without power of determination on her part, it was purely automatic. She didn’t do it, someone else did. It was what he wanted, here it was. She wasn’t thinking of rape because she wasn’t thinking. It was all mechanical, almost a natural gesture. She thrust it at him quickly and efficiently, as if they were transacting some prearranged business. There was a grunt as if from some desperate animal that had been offered, starving, food for its stomach. Then he stripped off her rings her engagement ring and the wedding band. After that he took her wristwatch.