An American Love Story (45 page)

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you can stay with him or you can escape. Those are your choices.”

“I need time. I can’t think.”

“All right. Take your time. But whatever you do, do it with dignity.”

“Dignity …”

“It will make you feel better.”

Dignity? What was the point?

She was constantly in raw pain, even with the little pills they gave her. She called Jeffrey and Dana, who had been wondering what had happened to her, and told them that Clay was living with another woman. She was flattered that they were both so shocked.

After four weeks she didn’t want to stay in the hospital for much longer, but Dr. Giacondo was away, and Dr. Morris was
here, and she couldn’t stand to be alone. Dr. Morris told her she had found a very good, very sympathetic therapist for her on the outside, who would see her every day until Joan Giacondo got back, whenever she felt strong enough to try to leave. To have to tell her story all over again to yet another substitute shrink was not a pleasant prospect, but neither was staying. If a person wanted dignity, bars on her windows was not the best way to achieve it.

Besides, she had things to do that she couldn’t do here. They all involved Clay and Bambi.

When Susan got back to her apartment the first thing she did was get the piece of paper on which she had written the address and telephone number of the house in the Hollywood Hills. She waited until she was sure Clay and Bambi had gone to the office, and then she called the house so she could hear Bambi’s voice on her answering machine.

It was a sweet little voice, like a child trying to act grown up. Susan tried to imagine her. She was probably appealing; Clay could take care of her.
He used to take care of me
. Bambi was such a revolting name—what kind of adult had a name like that? Susan called back immediately, twice, to hear Bambi Green’s voice again; measuring the lilt, the intonations, as if to make this person more real. This was the woman Clay had fallen in love with. She existed. But who was she?

Then Clay called, and Susan again could hardly say a word to him. He talked about work in general terms, the weather in detail, and mentioned that he was going to Anwar’s for the weekend. When he said “Anwar” she choked. All she kept thinking was: How can you be such a liar? Clay seemed to sense her distance, and tried to fill the silence, his voice so kind. She wondered if he suspected that she knew everything.

She had made a script of what to say to him when she told him she knew and they were finished. It was on a small piece of paper, and she read and reread it to herself, trying to memorize it, planning how she would sound. It was totally dignified. She would tell him when he came to New York, in a quiet restaurant, in a booth, so they could be alone. It was her dearest wish that she could make him cry.

Every time she thought of delivering her speech to him she started to shake. It occurred to her that she had not shed one tear since all of this happened. There were no tears in her, she was dry as a dead leaf. She only trembled and was cold.

She and Dana called each other every day. “Change your locks immediately,” Dana said.

“Why?”

“Because he knew something you didn’t know, so you should know something he doesn’t know. Picture that sunbaked lizard putting his key into your lock and nothing happens. Even if he doesn’t try, you’ll know he can’t get in. Do it, you’ll feel better.”

She did, but only because she was afraid that after she told Clay she was through with him he might come when she wasn’t there to take away his things. She could not bear to come home and find anything missing … another abandonment. He would have to do it in front of her.

There was a big pile of mail from her absence, and she looked through it for checks and threw the rest away. They would send the bills again. She cleaned out the spoiled food from her refrigerator, but when she went to buy more she couldn’t think of anything she wanted. She had lost eight pounds in the hospital from being too miserable to eat. She was glad, because she wanted to be as thin as Bambi Green. She could never be as young as Bambi Green, though, never again.

Nina came with a stock of food and made dinner. Stevie was with his friends playing pool, his new hobby, and Nina didn’t like pool and didn’t much like his friends.

“You don’t have to do things for me,” Susan said.

“I’m not.”

Jeffrey came and dragged her off to the country for the weekend to visit a couple he knew. Susan hardly said a word all weekend, except to ask if she could use the phone. She hoped they didn’t think she was unfriendly. “My boyfriend left me for another woman after many years,” she said.

She felt as if her life had vanished, like a wiped slate, and nothing was left except that.

After the weekend Clay called. “I’m coming in on Wednesday,” he said. “Think about where you want to have dinner.”

The divorce was still dragging on, but he was free now to do anything he wanted. Laura was staying with Tanya and Edward until she could find an apartment she liked. She was probably just afraid to be alone. Clay still went to a hotel when he came to New York, his excuse being that business people had to be able to find him. Susan thought it was Bambi who had to be able to find him—how would he explain it if Bambi called a “borrowed pied-à-terre” and she answered the phone? After all, he had probably been lying to Bambi too.

Or maybe, since he was capable of anything, he had told Bambi that he had made Susan Josephs what she was today, and he could make Bambi just as successful. The thought filled her with rage and humiliation. If Bambi knew about them she was probably gloating over her conquest.

She looked over her script again.
I have recently learned that you have been living with a woman in the Hollywood Hills for a long time
. She added:
Bambi has a big mouth
. That was a good zinger at the bitch; he had probably told her not to tell anyone, and she probably hadn’t.
I was devastated when I found out, but perhaps someday when I am less hurt and angry you and I can be friends. I want you to take all your things out of my apartment and give me back the keys
.

It was amazing how many little things accumulated after seventeen years. She found some of the loving notes she had written to him, and she took them back. He had more in California, and she wished he didn’t have any. They were her openness, and he didn’t deserve it anymore.

He had some of her possessions too, but she supposed he had thrown them away by now.

When Clay called the next day to tell her what plane he would be on she told him she had made a reservation at Aurora. “Don’t meet me in my apartment,” she said, in a cold and distant voice. “Meet me in front, downstairs, at seven-thirty.”

“All right,” he said, and he sounded afraid.

She dressed and made up with special care, and she knew she looked appealing—Bambi wasn’t the only one. How could he
leave someone he had loved who looked as nice as she did tonight? She looked the way she had in the old days when he had thought she was the most wonderful woman on earth. She looked like his precious magical monkey.

The monkey is dead, Susan thought.

She was waiting in the lobby when Clay arrived, and went outside so they could meet in the street. It was a beautiful summer evening, still light. “You look very pretty,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“You look thin,” he said. “I mean, you look nice, but don’t get any thinner.”

“The heartbreak diet,” Susan said.

They didn’t speak in the cab, but he kept smiling at her. She had put her notes in her purse in case she got stage fright and forgot her lines: it was so difficult for her to remember anything lately, as if her mind had exploded into lost pieces. She had decided she would tell him in the middle of the meal.

They sat side by side in an oval banquette, with just the right amount of privacy, in the flattering pinkish light, and she ordered a Perrier to keep her wits about her. Clay ordered one too. He started making small talk, asking her how she was, telling her about mutual friends and acquaintances, getting her up to date. All of a sudden she started to tremble and hyperventilate, unable to catch her breath.

“What is it?” he asked, alarmed.

I can’t wait until the middle of dinner, she thought, gasping. I have to tell him now. “I’m having an anxiety attack,” she said, “because I have something to tell you.”

“What is it?” he asked; so kind, so concerned, touching her.

She drew back and sat up straight, holding her arms around her body to make herself stop shaking. She looked at him. “I have recently learned that you have been living with a woman in the Hollywood Hills for a long time,” she said.

Silence.

“Bambi has a big mouth.”

“Who’s Bambi?” Clay said.

“Bambi Green.”

“Bambi Green who works in my office?”

“Bambi Green who works in your office, and who you live with in the Hollywood Hills. You live with her, you work with her, you’re probably in love with her. I was devastated when I found out, but perhaps someday when I am less hurt and angry you and I can be friends. I want you to take all your things out of my apartment and give me back my keys.”

He just sat there, looking as if he had lost.

“I didn’t bring the keys with me tonight,” he said, finally. “I’ll have to give them to you next time, or I can mail them to you.”

“I’d rather you give them to me. I don’t want them in the mail.” Even though they no longer fit anything, but that was her secret. He had to hand them over; that was a gesture she wouldn’t miss.

“I won’t rob you,” he said in a sweet pathetic voice.

You already did, she thought. “I know. I’d like you to come over tomorrow afternoon for your things and get it over with.”

“Okay. I’ll arrange my meetings.”

“Now I’ll have a kir royale,” she said.

He ordered two, and they sat there sipping them. It was so strange: she felt comfortable now … they both did. She almost felt festive.

He looked around. “This is a very pleasant restaurant.”

“I thought you’d like it. The salmon is my favorite.”

“Remember the wonderful Scotch salmon in London?”

“Yes. You had it twice a day. I only had it at dinner, I thought it was sinful to have it for lunch too.”

He laughed. “You see how silly these sacrifices are years later?”

“Totally. I’ll have another kir royale.”

He ordered two more. He talked a little about business, and never mentioned Anwar Akmal.

“Why did you do it?” Susan asked. “Why did you go off with Bambi?”

“I can’t talk about it,” Clay said, “or I’ll start to cry.”

He seemed on the verge of tears. “I need to know,” Susan said. He shook his head.

They ordered the salmon and ate very little. But they sat there a
very long time, longer than they had spent at a meal alone together in years. “I always liked that dress on you,” he said.

After dinner he walked her home, even though it was far and he usually insisted on taking a cab even if it was six blocks. They walked slowly, looking in store windows, chatting companionably, Clay holding her arm; like a happily married old couple. It was what they could have been someday, and now never would be. When they reached her apartment building he stopped under the awning and kissed hex good night with cool dry lips.

He came the next afternoon to remove all traces of himself, but was unable to do it. He seemed almost deranged; throwing away Polaroid photos of his daughter as a child which he had once brought to show Susan, and an expensive antique silver whiskey flask, and leaving the clothes—the bits and pieces that had accumulated over the nights when he had lied to Laura, the times his family had been out of town, the favorite bathrobes Susan had bought him so he could be comfortable, the extra attaché case when she had surprised him with a new one … He cried quietly and kept holding out his hand for tissues until she gave him the whole box. At last she had made him cry, and she was glad.

“I can’t take them now,” he said. “I don’t feel well.” He was pale, and had started to perspire. It was another anxiety attack, but this time Susan was not afraid that he would die.

She watched him and thought that he had his doctor and Bambi Green to take care of him.

When he was over it he took her keys out of his pocket, carefully removed them from the gold key ring she had given him—another memory—and dropped them on her desk. He put the key ring into his pocket. “I’ll have to take my stuff another time,” Clay said. “I’m late.”

He stood, and put his arms around her gently, resting his cheek on the top of her head. They stayed there for a while, very quietly, and she knew there could be no more final a good-bye than that. Then he was gone.

She sat still as a statue, feeling the aching loneliness, and the fear. An hour passed. How could she get through tonight, tomorrow,
forever? How could she live her life? She didn’t want to be alone right now, she could hardly breathe.

The phone rang. It was a would-be blind date, from the couple in the country; he had already called twice in two days and she had put him off. He wanted to know if she was free. She should say yes, not because she would like him, but because it would be a human being to get her out of the house. She said she would meet him for a drink.

The minute she saw the ugly little man smiling with joy she knew she had made a mistake. It even hurt that he was so glad to see her. She tried to talk, but despite two margaritas, straight up to be stronger, she couldn’t say a word but yes and no; all she could see was Clay.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I shouldn’t have come out tonight. I have so much work. I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” he said. He was so annoyed he made her pay for their drinks.

When she got home Susan called Bambi’s number. Bambi answered on the first ring, as if she had been sitting by the phone waiting for Clay to call. She sounded eager, anxious. “Hello? Hello?” Susan was so stunned to hear her in person that she couldn’t even hang up. “Hello?” Bambi said again. Now she probably thought it was a sex fiend. She hung up.