The Carlton Club (6 page)

One night in August she said to him, quietly, almost under her breath, “You know so much. It’s so wonderful.”

She might as well have said, “You’re so wonderful.”

Mark laughed.

“Leslie Adams, you are suffering from the intern on resident crush syndrome,” he said amiably.

Leslie blushed. Then, as she thought about what she had said—What if he guesses how I feel about him?—she turned pale.

“Hey, Leslie, I’m flattered,” Mark said quickly, sensing her uneasiness, unaware of its cause. “Not many people think I walk on water. It makes me feel good. I plan to enjoy it while it lasts. Next week when you start working with Alec Russell you’ll have a crush on him and all the facts
he
knows and forget all about me.”

For a moment, Mark wanted to tousle her chestnut curls and erase the troubled look from her large, serious blue eyes. But, instead of touching her, he smiled. It worked. Leslie smiled back. A tentative, awkward smile. But a smile nonetheless.

Oh Mark, she thought, I don’t have a crush on your medical know-how, even though it’s spectacular. I have a crush on you. And it’s not a crush.

Leslie quietly ached for Mark, wanting him, dreaming about him, knowing that he was happily married to the woman who was becoming her closest friend. Sometimes Leslie was tempted to tell Janet. They would laugh about it. Janet would say gaily that, as much as she liked her, Leslie couldn’t have Mark. He was taken.

But Leslie didn’t mention it. It wasn’t something she could laugh about. Not yet.

Janet wouldn’t have laughed, either. She was suffering, aching, too. She knew that her marriage, which had been decaying for over a year, was now, finally, in its death throes.

By the time the summer fog lifted, by mid September, Leslie’s mind was clear on the subject of Mark. Leslie had made it clear, had forced herself to admit the impossibility, the silliness, of her feelings for Mark. Mark was a wonderful man. He was married to, in love with, a wonderful woman.

It was clear. The fog was gone. Now maybe she could tell Janet about it. And they could laugh.

On September twelfth Janet made a cake—a fabulous cake decorated with evergreen trees and snowcapped mountains in honor of Leslie’s home in Seattle—for Leslie’s twenty-sixth birthday. As Leslie watched her friend serve the almost too beautiful to eat cake, she was tempted to tell Janet about how she felt, how she
had
felt, about Mark.

But Janet spoke first. Janet told Leslie about her marriage to Mark. About the marriage that she believed was over.

Leslie listened, quietly, her heart pounding, her mind spinning. Don’t ask me for advice, Janet. I don’t even know if I can be impartial. I care about him too much.

Not that Mark showed a flicker of interest in her. He praised her. He told her she was an excellent intern, and he teased her, gently, about her compulsive behavior. Mark treated Leslie the way an older, wiser brother treats his little sister. Teasing, fond, a little protective.

Even if Mark was free, even if his marriage to Janet was doomed to fail, it didn’t mean he would fall in love with Leslie.

Leslie shuddered. Janet was her friend. That was the reality. The rest was fantasy.

Leslie had to help Janet. She had to help her save her marriage. Leslie listened in amazement and disbelief to what Janet told her.

Janet told her that Mark hated medicine.

“Oh, no, Janet. Mark doesn’t hate it. Not any more than we all do. We all hate being exhausted and cooped up and feeling our lives passing by. We all feel that we’re missing something during all those hours we spend in the hospital. It’s a natural feeling. It’s something we talk about.”

“I think he hates it more than the rest of you.”

“I don’t see it, Janet. I really don’t. And I work with him. Mark’s a wonderful doctor. The best.”

The Best. The words hit Janet like a knife. Of course Mark was the best.

“He’s so moody and irritable,” Janet continued.

“Mark? Not at work. Oh, he gets annoyed like we all do when we get inappropriate admissions or when the blood-draw team says they can’t find a vein or when the X ray misses the area of pathology altogether. Our work situation is full of frustrations.”

“You don’t think he’s sullen or angry?”

“No. But I haven’t actually worked with him, on the same team, since mid August. Maybe something has happened.”

“No. It isn’t new. It’s just getting worse. It’s been going on for over a year.” Janet started to cry. “Maybe it isn’t medicine, after all. Maybe what he really hates is coming home to me.”

“No, Janet. Mark talks about you all the time. Things like, ‘Here are cookies Janet made for the team’ or ‘Janet says we should all read
Heartsounds
’ or ‘I told Janet I’d be home by eight. I’m going to try.’“

Janet shook her head, still crying. She knew what Mark was like when he got home. It didn’t help to hear that he seemed all right at work. It made it worse.

“I can’t live with him anymore, Leslie. Not feeling the way I do. Not living the way we do.”

“Talk to him, Janet. Mark is a reasonable, gentle, kind man,” Leslie said softly.

Janet’s wet eyes opened wide.

“I admit it, Janet. I think Mark’s terrific,” Leslie said truthfully. Then she added, “I think you both are.”

Two and a half weeks later after Janet and Mark had their talk and Mark had left, Leslie sat once again in her friend’s kitchen.

“How did you leave it?”

“What? Oh. We think for a week. Then we talk again next Sunday night. Go from there.”

“It will probably work out.”

“Not unless he suddenly gets some insight. We’re a million miles apart. Or maybe I’m just crazy,” Janet said grimly.

“You’re not crazy. You’re not inventing this unhappiness. It’s real. I just hope you two can work it out,” Leslie said, realizing how much she meant it.

Mark and Janet belonged together.

The November fog lasted through the weekend, thick in the morning and evening, clearing during the day. It had resettled by the time Mark left the hospital at six Saturday evening. To him the outside world hadn’t changed a bit since he’d rushed to work, late, thirty-four hours before.

The phone was ringing when he entered his apartment. It was Janet.

“Hi, Mark.” “Hi.”

“I think we should meet and talk.” It was the first time in their five week separation that Janet suggested they see each other.

“All right.”

“Can you come to dinner tomorrow night?”

“Not dinner. After. At seven. OK?”

“OK.”

After he hung up, Mark called Kathleen. Her father answered.

“Hello, Mr. Jordaine,” C.E.O. of . . . unbelievable, Mark thought. “This is Mark Collinsworth. How is Mrs. Jordaine?”

“Very well, thank you. They’re going to turn her loose, to use Kathleen’s phrase, next Tuesday.”

“Great. Uh, is Kathleen there?”

“No, sorry. She’s away for the weekend. Due back Monday evening. How did you like the party Thursday?”

“Very much. A little out of my league, but everyone was very nice.” The nicest part was making love to your daughter, Mark mused.

“The Carlton Club Kids are their own league. Kathleen said you really held your own.”

“Oh, she did? Well, I don’t know.”

“Shall I tell her you called?”

“Please. Have her call me if she wants to.”

“She’ll want to.”

“Give my best to Mrs. Jordaine.”

“Sure will. Thanks, Mark.”

He is such a nice, low key man, Mark thought.

A nice, low key C.E.O. of one of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations.

Mark arrived at Janet’s—and his—house promptly at seven.

He drew a sharp breath when he saw her. She looked exactly the way she had looked when they met eleven years before: thin, wide-eyed, young, trusting. In five weeks Janet had lost all the weight she had gained. Maybe more. Her slender face made her huge gray eyes seem even larger. Her gaunt cheeks gave her a haunted, haunting look.

“You look great,” he said.

“Thanks.” She smiled. “Come in.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you want some coffee?”

“Sure. Please.”

How long can we keep this up? she wondered. The careful politeness.

They sat in the living room. It looked the same. Janet had done nothing to move him out. His possessions and her possessions. Their possessions. Mark noticed with surprise that Janet didn’t wear her ring. Mark still wore his, although he might, would, have removed it before his date with Kathleen. If he had remembered.

Had Janet been dating? he wondered. Had she made love with someone else, too?

“You look just like you looked the day we met,” Mark said finally, gently.

“Do I? I feel better now. About the way I look.”

“How about everything else?”

“I don’t know. How do you feel?”

“I still don’t understand,” he said slowly. “Maybe I have been more distant and preoccupied. I didn’t realize we hadn’t made love for four months.”

“You were so moody at home. Leslie says you’re not that way at work.”

“Leslie? We shouldn’t get her in the middle of this,” Mark said with an edge to his voice.

“I know. I agree.”

“I don’t think I’m moody at work or at home.”

“There are days when you come home and don’t even speak to me. At all. And when I try to touch you, you pull away.”

“Not many days.”

“Many, many days. Day after day. Night after night.”

They sat in silence for a long time, an eternity of thoughts and memories and questions without answers.

He could have walked over to her and held her and made love to her, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. He didn’t know who she was. She was the woman who had yelled at him in a rage a month before, but she looked like the sixteen year old girl with girl with whom he had fallen in love eleven years ago. She was the woman, not the girl. He didn’t know her.

He had to find the old Janet. To retrace the steps. Then he could go to her. He wanted to go to her. To Janet. To his Janet.

“Do you remember the first time we made love?” he asked without looking at her.

“Of course,” she answered, tears flooding her eyes.

Mark looked at her then, his own eyes glistening.

“What were you thinking?”

“What?”

“What were you thinking when we made love? It was a big step and we never talked about it. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking what I always thought when you touched me,” she said very quietly. “I was thinking, I love you. I love you.”

“
Janet
,” he said emotionally. But still he couldn’t move to her. He looked at his hand and the scuffed, eighteen carat gold band he had worn for the past five years. “Why aren’t you wearing your ring?”

“Because the ring is a symbol of you, of us. It means we’re together. I have to feel how it would be without you. To feel the loss.”

“How does it feel?”

“Awful. Empty. Sad.” A small part relief, she thought. She didn’t want to think that, but it was there. In her mind. In her heart. A part of the way she felt.

“So we should try again.”

Janet nodded, crying.

“No?” he asked, confused.

“Yes. But it’s still too soon. We are here, crying because we can remember how much we loved each other eleven years ago, but we can’t even touch each other now.”

“But we both want to try, don’t we? I do,” Mark said.

“Yes.”

“I have clinics in December.”

“Clinics?”

“It’s new. To give everyone a break. Nine to five on weekdays. No night call. No weekends. No holidays. I’ll be off for Christmas, for your birthday. Should I move back in then? In three weeks?” Mark asked carefully.

“OK,” Janet said believing it would never work. Not now. Not in three weeks. Not ever. But they had to try. She had to try. Maybe she was wrong.

Kathleen called Tuesday night.

“I learned something about you,” she began.

“Kathleen!”

“Yes.”

“What did you learn?”

“You told me you went to the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then what I learned is that you’re a cornhusk.”

“Cornhusk
er
.”

“No, those are the other guys. You’re a cornhusk. Or you
have
a corn—”

“Kathleen, it’s not even close to what you think it is.”

“I know, but it sounds like it should be, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t think you can discuss such things over public airways.”

“Wireways.”

“Anyways.”

Silence.

“So, you rang?” she asked, finally.

“I did. To thank you for Thursday.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And,” Mark hesitated, “I was going to ask you out.”

“But?” she asked, disappointed.

“A new development in the trial separation.”

“Oh.”

“A trial reunion.”

“Is she there?”

“No. We don’t start until December first.”

“Oh. Strange. In the meantime?”

“In the meantime, I just have to think about it.” I can’t see you Kathleen, Mark thought. I can’t.

“What do you think?”

“I think it’s an eleven-year relationship. We meant for better or worse when we said it five years ago. We have to give it every chance. That’s what I think. What I want.”

“Oh,” Kathleen said quietly, her voice and confidence a little shaky. Damn. Mark’s wife was so lucky to have him. “Well let me know.”

“If you don’t hear from me, you’ll know.”

By December fifteenth both Mark and Janet knew their marriage was over. They both knew they had tried, maybe too hard, to resuscitate something that was dead.

Neither really understood what happened. Each understood it from his or her standpoint, but they couldn’t agree. They couldn’t make sense of it. They tried to talk patiently, but hit impasse after impasse.

At first the frustration erupted into rage.

Later it was replaced by sadness and grieving.

They spent hours reminiscing, remembering the beginning, the happy times. As they talked the memories became vivid, but they could not force the remembered joy and love into the present.

They made love once. Afterward they held each other and wept. They cried for the love that somewhere, somehow, was lost forever.

“How could it have happened to us, Janet?” he asked, bewildered.

Janet just shook her head, but the lyrics of a song, the song that summarized it for her, taunted her. She wanted to sing it for him; but it would just make him angry because he didn’t believe her interpretation of what had happened, and it would anger her that he didn’t believe her.

But, it was how she felt, had always felt. Every lyric.

If I can make you smile,

If I can fill your eyes with pleasure just by holding you,

Ah, well, that’s enough for me,

That’s all the hero I need be.

It had been enough, she knew, because there had been a time when she could make him happy, when she could fill him with peace with a touch or a kiss. It had been enough for her; she would never have wanted more, but somehow she lost the ability to comfort him. Her presence didn’t matter anymore.

Whether Mark loved her any less, or whether his own torment, the torment he still denied, had become greater than the power of her love, she would never know.

They were left with no feelings. No stir of love. Just a present numbness and an aching pain and sadness for the lovely memories of the past—memories of love and passion and feelings that were gone.

The second week, their last week together, they filed for divorce and started to divide their property. The actual process of dividing their possessions was too painful to do together. It brought back too many memories: their wedding pictures, the handknit mufflers, the quilt for their bed, the souvenirs of happy times.

Janet agreed to pack the boxes for both of them after he left, but she needed to know what he wanted.

“Do you want the fine china or the everyday?” The four hundred guest wedding had left them with complete sets of the china patterns that Mrs. Collinsworth had insisted they choose.

“I don’t care.”

“Stainless or silver?”

“I don’t care Mark snapped, then repeated gently, “I really don’t care, Janet.”

“Is there anything you do want?” she asked finally.

“The Cornhuskers banner,” he said impulsively. Then he wondered, am I really thinking about Kathleen? Certainly not consciously. He had focused only on Janet, on them. He had tried so hard.

But something within him, something subconscious, made him want the banner. He didn’t want it for himself. He wanted to show it to Kathleen.

It all made him very sad.

For the first Christmas in years that Mark could have celebrated his wife’s birthday with her, Janet flew home, alone, to snowy Nebraska. They both knew that the well-greased wheels of uncontested divorce in California were moving efficiently, inevitably toward dissolution of the marriage of Janet Wells Collinsworth and Mark David Collinsworth.

Mark, alone in San Francisco on December twenty-third, decided to call Kathleen.

“It’s Mark.”

“I recognize your, er, husky voice,” she said, barely able to breathe. If you don’t hear from me, you’ll know, he had said. And now she was hearing from him.

“Cute Kitzy.”

“So?”

“We are getting a divorce.”

“Are you OK?” He didn’t sound OK.

“Yes. It’s hard. Sad.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really. Nothing to say. It’s over.”

Good, Kathleen thought. She didn’t want to nurse Mark through the recovery period of a failed marriage. She wasn’t interested in an event by event rehash. She had seen friends be helpful and sympathetic only to have the finally rehabilitated ex-husband spread his newly strengthened wings and find someone new, someone who didn’t know quite so much about his weaknesses and his past mistakes.

Kathleen also knew that recently divorced men usually needed affairs with a number of women—a sexual spree—before even considering a serious relationship. Kathleen had slept with enough recently freed husbands. They were a drearily manic bunch.

Kathleen almost told Mark to call her in six or eight months when he was ready for the serious relationship, but she couldn’t. Maybe Mark would be different. He was already so different from all the others.