An American Love Story (44 page)

Clay’s eyes filled with tears. When he spoke his voice was hoarse with the effort of holding them back. “And you won’t want me anymore?” he said.

She was surprised Maybe he really is depressed and hiding all alone, she thought. She ran over to him and cradled his head in her arms. “I’ll never leave you,” she said. “I love you.” He burrowed his head into her like a cat. “I love you,” she said again. “You’re a wonderful, wonderful person.”

He pulled away.

When Clay left for his plane she called Bill to tell him the number of the flight. He said that it was hard to follow someone from the airport because of all the passengers and the traffic, and it took two operatives, and this would be the end of her deposit, but if she really wanted them to he would try.

They lost him again.

Jeffrey called her that night. “I think you should get rid of those detectives and get somebody really good, the best. Enough futzing around with those guys, this is bullshit. I pulled some strings and asked around, and this is who you call. Worldwide. They’re in L.A., and here’s their number. Ask for Sean Sellar. He’s the head of it. He’s expecting your call.”

“Thank you,” Susan said.

She called Worldwide the next morning. The moment she heard Sean Sellar’s voice she felt reassured. He sounded nice and bright and like a real person.

“I can’t believe you used ‘Dial a Dick,’ ” he said. “They advertise at bus stops and on matchbook covers. Don’t give them another cent. Tell them to get off the case, that you’re dropping it. How much did you give them?”

“Forty-five hundred dollars,” Susan said. “And they’ve been on this for a whole month.”

“Do you know what we charge?”

“What?” she asked nervously.

“Two hundred dollars. Those people put surveillance on everybody. You don’t need surveillance. We’ll find him without ever leaving the office. Do you have a lawyer?”

“No,” Susan said. “Do I need one?”

“Well, I usually work with lawyers, but since you don’t have one, don’t worry about it. I’ll take this case myself because I feel sorry for you. I’ve never worked directly with a client before; it should be interesting. Okay, I need his name, a physical description, and his date of birth.”

“Date of birth?”

“So I won’t confuse him with anyone else with the same name.”

She gave him the information and he asked if Clay had a private line at his office or one he used more than the others, and Susan gave him the number she used. “Don’t you want a picture?” she asked.

“No. We don’t need it.”

“I’ll put the check in the mail today. When can you start?”

“I’ll start anyway. You came well recommended; I trust you.”

What an angel—what a change! “How long will it take until I hear from you?” she asked.

“Give me three days and I’ll have everything.”

Only three days. In three days she would know. She didn’t think about what she would find out, only that the waiting and suffering would finally be over.

The days were long now, at the beginning of summer, and when Sean called Susan it was still light, the kind of beautiful early summer twilight that makes the heart hurt with the memory of beginnings and endings.

“I have your man’s address,” he said.

She grabbed a pen and a piece of paper. She was finding it difficult to breathe.

“He’s living at 7718 Lookout Mountain. The house is rented in the name of Bambi Green.”

Bambi Green. Suddenly Susan saw it all. Bambi the young companion, the one who worked for him; Clay who had always been so independent was living in
her
house, with her. Living with Bambi Green, the girl from his office. In love, living together, working together, a new life for both of them. Susan felt pain smashing through her, the world slipping away, and held on, making herself numb.

Sean gave her the phone number and she wrote it down. “What does she look like?”

He gave her Bambi Green’s height, weight, coloring, and date of birth, things from a driver’s license. He couldn’t tell her if Bambi Green was pretty, she just had to try to imagine. What difference did it make, since she was appealing enough for Clay to fall in
love with, live with. Bambi Green was appealing to
him
. Of course she was pretty.

“Are you really sure he lives there?” Susan asked.

“That’s where he lays his head at night,” Sean said. “He has everything there he needs—he never goes home anymore. He’s a very familiar figure in the neighborhood. He’s been living there a long time. People know him.”

“Bambi Green is thirty-four, but Bill Montana said she looked twenty-four.”

“Slim, in jeans, at a distance … He could have thought that. Clay is living with her. That house is where he lays his head at night,” Sean said again decisively. “Broom him.”

“What?”

“Get rid of him. He’s no good.”

She was trying to hold on to her sliding world, trying to make it real. “What else do you know?”

“She was married to a coffeehouse owner named Simon Green. He died in an auto accident. Look, get rid of the guy. Forget him.”

“I can’t,” Susan said.

“I’ve never been the one to break the news to a client before,” Sean said, sounding sorry for her. “I never realized how much pain there is.”

“Thank you for your help,” Susan said.

When she hung up she sat there for a while, unaware of time, shaking so violently she almost could not stand. What was the house like? Did it have a terrace, a garden, a view? Were Clay and Bambi sitting there together now? She finally stood and wandered around her apartment, hardly aware she was doing it. It was dark now, night. Like a good child, she got into bed, under the covers, but she only trembled harder. The apartment was warm and she was freezing cold. She wondered if she would ever sleep again.

All these years she had known one thing: Clay would never leave her. He had always told her she was his life, and she had thought that having her and his wife was all he could handle; but now she knew that was not true. He had gotten rid of Laura, turned
her
into the wife, and taken a new love. She felt stunned,
betrayed, in shock; tiny and vulnerable. It was as if a beloved, trusted parent had given her away and adopted a new little girl.

Toward dawn she did sleep a little. She dreamed she was in an ancient and rotting house, the floorboards wet and splintered, creaking dangerously at her step. When she woke up early the grief was so intense she had to get out of bed to pace again. She couldn’t eat, she could still hardly breathe. All she could see was them.

Bambi and Clay. Bambi following Clay around, to the office, to meetings, learning from him. Bambi Green with her life ahead of her. Susan with her life over. She would have thought she was already dead, except that dead people did not feel this deep, incredible pain.

There was no air. She dressed and left her apartment, going out into the street. There were cars moving by and she saw them in a blur, a kind of stream. Superimposed over them were Clay and Bambi, the way she imagined them looking living their lives: two pictures—the strips of color of the moving cars and the lives of Clay and Bambi, unfolding before her eyes. The noises of the city were muted; the clatter, the honking of horns, the New York rush hour traffic.

Because she couldn’t hear them she had no idea the sounds were for her.

30

1987—CONNECTICUT

T
he private hospital for people who could not survive the world was very pretty; it had huge green trees, and tennis courts, and her room was pink. Susan looked at none of these. She looked at the movie behind her eyelids of Clay and Bambi: the trees outside her window were their trees. She tried not to think of them together in bed.

A woman doctor came with medication. She had introduced herself several times but Susan had instantly forgotten her name. Her name tag helpfully said
Dr. Morris
. She kept asking Susan to speak, but Susan had not been aware she was not speaking. She was too occupied feeling the pain that radiated up through her throat and watching the movie in her mind.

The doctor had said time made things better, that grief would gradually fade, so Susan counted the days. She had been there two weeks, and she didn’t feel any better. Perhaps she was looking for a measurable miracle. The only good thing was the nights, when she had a few hours of
gently drugged sleep, but then the nights always ended in dreams of the fragile, rotting house, without structure, without safety, with nothing to trust but herself; she who was the most vulnerable of all.

Nina came to see her, and Nina and the doctor asked her if she remembered what had happened. She didn’t—they knew better than she did. Apparently she had been found standing in the middle of traffic, disorientated, unaware. People had been screaming at her, but she couldn’t recall that at all.

The police had found her, strangers. They had taken her to a hospital emergency room, but she couldn’t remember that either. Joan Giacondo, who could perhaps have saved her, was away for the summer. Analysts did that. The doctor who was covering for Joan Giacondo didn’t even know who Susan was. He had wanted her to come here, so Nina had brought her, and apparently she had been lucid enough to sign herself in, which meant she could sign herself out whenever she wanted to.

At the moment she had no desire to leave.

They had given her a pad and a pen, and she had written something secret. She had hidden it afterward, but she kept it, and from time to time she unfolded and reread it, knowing it was about the way she felt. It was the only sane thought she had had since she came here.

TINY TOMBSTONES

A long time ago men outlived their wives. The women had a dozen children, many of whom died young, and then the wives died in childbirth and were buried in the midst of tiny tombstones. The husbands married again.

She wondered if this was the nature of men, or the nature of the world; and if men, barring a death, had to move on. She felt as if she had been the wife, and she had died and been buried among her dead little dreams—of him, of their love. If there had been names on the tiny tombstones which she could read they would have been the names of the projects she and Clay had together.

But since she had not had the decency to die, Clay had killed
her. She thought she would never know why. She knew it would be a long time before she would be able to write again, and that was something else she could never forgive him for, because her work had been her own way of surviving.

Why had he sent her that song, that message: “our dreams all must die,” on Valentine’s Day, so she would not understand? Why had he stopped loving her, and fallen in love with Bambi Green?

And then one day, at the end of the second week, when Nina was visiting her, Susan finally spoke. “I need my messages,” she said. “My answering machine.”

“I’ll get them,” Nina said, and tried not to cry.

“No, bring me the remote control. I want to hear them myself. It’s in my handbag. They took it away someplace.”

“I’ll get it for you.”

“Clay is living with Bambi Green.”

“Who is that?” She didn’t answer. “How do you know?” Nina asked finally.

“I found out.”

“Don’t let him destroy you too,” Nina said softly, and put her arms around her.

Susan wondered what he had thought when he kept calling and she was never there, never called him back. She wondered if he was worried that something had happened to her, or if he cared at all. “Bring me the remote control,” she said.

She played her messages over and over, fast-forwarding past the ones that were not from Clay. He no longer sounded relieved that she was not at home. He had called so many times the tape was full. She erased and rewound it and then she called him back at the office.

“There you are!” he said. “I’ve been calling you.”

“I know.”

“Were you away?”

You sneak off and lie, Susan thought. Then you ask me. “No,” she said.

“Very busy,” Clay said.

“Yes.” She couldn’t think of anything to say to him, but she couldn’t hang up either.

“I was worried about you,” he said.

“Oh.” Noncommittal.

“How’s everything?” he asked.

“Fine. How are you?”

“Up to my eyeballs.”

Up to your eyeballs in shit, she thought.

“Well, I have to go to a meeting now,” Clay said. “I’m glad you’re all right. You know, I worry about the monkey.”

She couldn’t answer.

“I’ll talk to you later, sweetheart,” he said.

She remembered their breath singing across the wires, years ago when neither of them could bear to cut the connection. It was the same today, but this time all she could see was his office with that Bambi in it; him getting ready to go home with Bambi, to the house she had never seen but could not get out of her mind.

Finally they hung up simultaneously. Afterward Susan just sat there, the way she had been doing all along.

She had therapy every day with Dr. Morris. “This is your worst nightmare come true,” Dr. Morris said. “It’s what you always dreaded: losing him. But you thought he would die. What do you want to do now?”