Alexandra Waring (52 page)

36
Langley Asks What He Should Do

“Good morning,” Adele said, sitting at her desk as usual on Monday morning.

“Good morning,” Langley said, pausing a moment, thinking it might be possible that Adele would leap out of her chair and yell, “You disgusting jerk! You got drunk Saturday night, attacked Jessica Wright and practically threw up on the deck. Some president you are!”

But she didn’t and so Langley continued on into his office.

He half wished Adele would yell at him. He felt terrible about what had happened, about his behavior at the boat party, and he didn’t think he would feel better about it until somebody did yell at him.

Actually, he thought that if someone did yell at him, then he could bring himself to tell someone how close to the edge Belinda was pushing him—about how really bad things were getting and how he thought he couldn’t stand it anymore. How it felt to hate someone he loved so much, and how he hated Belinda with such a fury at times that it scared him. And it wasn’t her fault! he kept reminding himself, but he still felt betrayed by her, used and played with in some sort of hideous, twisted game of mental illness.

Nobody could know what it was like to have his wife show up one tenth of the time and spend the rest of her time either running away from him or going off her rocker. What kind of life was this for either of them? And yet he had kept hoping it would somehow right itself. That things would change. But, after Saturday morning, he didn’t know how long he could hack it.

Belinda had called him at two Saturday morning, pleading for him to come out to Connecticut. She missed him so much, she said, she was having nightmares, she was frightened and she needed her Langley, desperately, she needed him. And so he had gotten up and driven out there, only to have Belinda come to the front door in her bathrobe, threatening to scream her head off if he didn’t go away and leave her alone. Langley tried to calm her down, but then she did start screaming, waking the servants, and she got so crazy when he tried to step inside the house that the maid and chauffeur suggested he wait outside.

Wait outside!

Then the maid came out and told him Mrs. Peterson seemed to be fine now, and told him in such a way as to suggest that she thought he must have done or said something awful to so upset her. And the maid didn’t dare say it to him, but Langley got the message—it would be better if he left. So he did and drove back to the city.

He got back the apartment, undressed and went back to bed. At seven the phone rang again and it was Belinda again, pleading with him to come out to Connecticut, apparently having no memory that he had driven out there once already. When he tried to explain that, she got hysterical, saying that she would kill herself if he didn’t come. Langley promised he would come, hung up and then quickly called the house back on the other line and talked to the maid, who said she wouldn’t let Belinda alone for a minute. (At this point the servants at least never seemed panicky; they seemed quite used to all this.)

Then Langley called Belinda’s psychiatrist in Manhattan to ask him what he should do. Belinda had been seeing this psychiatrist, Dr. Balakudian, for over six years and, while Langley had always been grateful for one strand of continuity in her parade of problems doctors, he secretly hated Balakudian because Balakudian had a way of making Langley feel like
he
was the crazy one somehow—as though Belinda’s insanity made perfect sense if only Langley’s brain could comprehend it correctly.

D
R.
B
ALAKUDIAN:
Well of course you should go back out to make sure she is all right. (Dr. Balakudian had this horrible monotone and vague accent that made Langley feel like he was being hypnotized by Bela Lugosi.)

L
ANGLEY:
Her maid is with her—

D
R.
B
ALAKUDIAN:
But she called you.

L
ANGLEY:
I know she called me! And I’m in New York City and it’s going to take me a while to get out there and so should I call someone out there? The police?

D
R.
B
ALAKUDIAN:
You cannot call the police on your wife.

LANGLEY: If she’s going to kill herself, I sure as hell can! Then give me the number of a doctor out there I can call, Balakudian!

D
R.
B
ALAKUDIAN:
I am not going to refer you to another doctor.

LANGLEY:
Then come with me!

D
R.
B
ALAKUDIAN:
I cannot go to Connecticut. I have a wife and children.

L
ANGLEY:
Then tell me what to do! What’s the matter with her? What the hell am I supposed to do?

D
R.
B
ALAKUDIAN:
I told you, I would drive out and see her.

L
ANGLEY:
But what do I do about her the rest of the time? She’s acting crazy—surely you can’t think it’s normal for your patients to be threatening to kill themselves in the middle of the night—

D
R.
B
ALAKUDIAN:
She is not crazy. She suffers from acute depression.

L
ANGLEY:
You’ve been telling me that for years and she’s getting worse! Why is she running around like a madwoman and why don’t you give a fuck?

D
R.
B
ALAKUDIAN:
Excuse me?

L
ANGLEY:
What am I supposed to do, lock her up?

D
R.
B
ALAKUDIAN:
I have told you, Mrs. Peterson cannot be incarcerated in any way or it will only increase her feelings of failure.

And so Langley drove back out to Greenwich, only to be told by the kitchen girl that Belinda and her maid and the chauffeur had only just left. And so Langley called up the car and the chauffeur said everything was fine, Belinda was sound asleep in the back, and that he was driving her to Baltimore to visit her brother and sister.

“The twins?” Langley yelled into his car phone, nearly veering into the guardrail on I-95. “You’re not taking Belinda to see the twins. You turn that car right around and bring her into Manhattan.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone and then the maid got on. “Mr. Peterson? I think—” And then the phone went dead. Or they disconnected the phone on the other end, because when Langley tried to call back it just rang and rang. And so he called—oh, God—Norbert Darenbrook and found out that, yes, Belinda was expected to come down today. Why, was there something wrong?

Great. Just great
, Langley thought.
I don’t even know what Belinda does in her life anymore. The twins!
The twins! She hates the twins! He drove back to Manhattan and the other half of the gruesome twosome, Noreen, called him at two-thirty to say that Belinda had arrived safely and to ask him what was happening to their baby sister that she was such a wreck? “We put her straight to bed,” Noreen said. “The poor little thing looked like someone washed her on the rocks and put her through the ringer.”

“I know, I know,” Langley said, knowing that all of this was being recorded somewhere so that one day the twins could move to take Belinda’s voting stock out of her hands for reasons of mental incompetence.

“She’s supposed to give out scholarship awards tonight in memory of Alice May, but I don’t know if she’s going to be fit to go,” Noreen said as her little lapdog started yapping in the phone.

“What scholarship awards?” Langley asked, knowing that Jackson couldn’t know anything about this or else he never would have scheduled the boat party. Not when it had to do with the memory of his mother.

Silence. “You mean you don’t know about the fund Baby B set up this year? Piccolo, quiet. Shhh! Stop it! Mommy says stop it! Journalism scholarships for girls? Langley, what
is
going on up there, anyway? Poor Belinda’s breaking up like animal crackers and you and Jackie don’t seem to give a damn.”

He finally got to talk to Belinda, who sounded tired and out of it, but sane at any rate. “I just want to sleep, Langley,” she said, sounding very far away. “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.” And she hung up on him.

And so, late Saturday afternoon, Langley said fuck it, changed his clothes and went to the boat party, determined to have a good time.

And so he had gotten drunk, molested Jessica, thrown up over the side of the ship and gone to sleep.

Appropriate behavior all the way around this weekend in the Peterson family.

And then yesterday, Sunday, Belinda had called from Baltimore sounding not only perfectly fine but in extremely high spirits. She chattered on and on about this scholarship fund she had set up. “I just wanted to do a little something on my own, Lang. Jackie and everybody have all of their things, and Mama would have been happy that, even if I didn’t amount to much, I put some of her money to use to help some other young gals get somewhere.”

(Hearing this made Langley feel sick at heart. There was a kind of patheticness attached—or was it pathetic? Or was it Belinda’s defensiveness? That she felt compelled to hide this—ask the
twins
for their help to do it because she was scared he and Jackson would somehow take it away from her? And would they have? Would they have thought’ she couldn’t handle it? He didn’t know. But he did know that to hear her say this hurt him more than any crazy thing she had ever said to him. It made him feel awful—just awful. And on top of it, he knew how it would kill Belinda if she knew what he had done the night before—that he had been on the make, for God’s sake. And with Jessica! Whom she so liked!)

hen, as the conversation continued, it became clear that Belinda had no memory of having called him Saturday morning, of having seen him in Greenwich Saturday morning, or of having called him again. And she was furious when he told her he had called Dr. Balakudian.

B
ELINDA:
Why did you call Claude?

L
ANGLEY:
Because I was scared, honey.

B
ELINDA:
Scared about what, for heaven’s sake?

L
ANGLEY:
Honey, you were screaming over the phone. You were threatening to—

B
ELINDA:
(starting to cry) Why are you throwing this in my face, why? You know I can’t help it—how can you yell at me for something I don’t even remember? How could you be so cruel? I’m having a wonderful time and you have to be so cruel me—

But back to the problems at hand.

Langley called Adele into his office. “Sit down,” he told her, gesturing to a seat. She did so and Langley stood there, hands in his pockets. “I wanted to say something about Saturday night. About how—” He paused, thinking of how to say it, and then thinking,
Asshole, be a man once in your life,
and said, “I’d like to
apologize
for getting so drunk Saturday night. It was very embarrassing for everyone, and I’d imagine, um, particularly for you—since you work with me.” He looked at her. “I’m really sorry, Adele—that you had to see it. And I hope you’ll accept my apology.”

She smiled a little and nodded. “It brought back memories,” she said.

“What?”

“Memories of the first year I worked for you.” Then she lowered her eyes, as if afraid she had gone too far.

“No,” Langley said, leaning back against his desk, “tell me.”

She looked at him and smiled. “The only other time I’ve seen you or ever heard of you being drunk was at our very first Christmas party at Darenbrook Communications. In Richmond. In December of 1969. Remember?”

He smiled and nodded, although inside he felt sick. She was right. It probably was the last time he had gotten drunk like that. It was the night he had left the party with Belinda, having no idea she was a Darenbrook.

Jessica was not in yet, and so Adele left word that Langley wished to come down and see her for a moment when she was. And then Langley had her call Cassy’s office, to tell her that he wished to see her in Jessica’s office as soon as Jessica got in. That done, he knocked on Jackson’s door and went in to apologize to him.

“Hi ya, Lang!” Jack said, jumping up from the easy chair in the corner of his office, where most mornings he read through forty-seven Darenbrook papers with his coffee.

Langley looked at him. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something different about him
…
And then he realized what it was. Jack was elated. “What is it?” Langley asked him. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” Jackson said, tossing the paper in his hand over his shoulder. It unfolded in the air and came drifting down in sheets. And Jack stood there, beaming at Langley, hands on his hips. (He was in a new suit and tie, but he was standing like Jack La Lanne, ready to lead into exercises.) “So, how are ya?” Jackson asked him—in the same tone of voice one might use to ask, “So how does it feel to win ten million dollars in the lottery?”

“What’s going on?” Langley said, looking around the office.

“Nothing,” Jackson insisted, coming over to him and slapping him on the back. “I’m just in a good mood.”