Change of Heart (13 page)

“Did something happen at the office today?” she ventured as he closed the door with unnecessary force.

He smiled and she felt her throat close with fear. “No,” he said softly. “Not at the office.” He crossed the few feet of floor that separated them and took hold of her. His fingers were hard and bruising on the soft bare flesh of her upper arms. His strength had always been something she rejoiced in; never had it been exerted against her, as it was now. He kissed her.

There was no tenderness in his mouth’ or his hands, no love. Instead there was anger and punishment and—most frightening of all—raw passion. He had never before demanded a response from her; always before he had asked. Cecelia was motionless in his hold, swept by a tide of fear and violent physical sensation.

When he raised his head at last she remained perfectly still. Some instinct told her that resistance from her was what he wanted—he wanted a fight to stoke his anger. So she didn’t move but kept still and frozen as a statue; the only motion about her was the slow trickle of blood that dripped from a cut on her lip. “I’m sorry, Gil,” she breathed. “I don’t know what I’ve done to make you so angry, but I’m sorry.”

He stared, fascinated, at the blood on her lip, He noticed with a corner of his brain that she was trembling. He looked into her eyes and saw she was afraid of him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and all at once he was appalled at what he was doing. Cecelia had been right; he had wanted a fight. He looked now at his wife, at the eyes of a frightened child that looked back at him; he heard again the bewildered pleading tones of her voice, and he was suddenly sick at the thought of what he had done to reduce her to this.

He dropped his hands and stepped back. “God, Cecelia,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She seemed to have ceased breathing, but at his words a deep shudder went through her. She wet her lips with her tongue and tasted the salt of her own blood. “But what is the matter?” she whispered.

He dropped heavily into the nearest chair, and elbows on his knees, he raised his hands to his face. Cecelia stared at him, stared at the fists that were clenched to his forehead. His knuckles were white with pressure. He knew what he was suffering from and he didn’t like it one bit: temper and wounded vanity. Because of that he had tried to hurt Cecelia. God, he thought. What’s gotten into me?

“Gil?” She was kneeling in front of him now. She put her hands on his to remove them from his face. As she slid her fingers along to his wrists she could feel the thundering of his pulse. “Gil,” she repeated, “darling.”

He left his hands in hers and looked at the face that was uplifted to his. She had never seemed more beautiful. He tried, desperately, to get a grip on himself. He couldn’t touch her now. He was afraid of himself, afraid of the violence he still felt within. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I don’t know what made me take my bad temper out on you. I drank too much.” His level voice was belied by the hammering pulse in his wrists. Gently, he removed his hands from hers. Slowly she stood up and he followed her. “Go to bed,” he said. “I’m going down to the kitchen to make myself a pot of coffee.”

“Do you want me to make it for you?” she asked.

“No!” He managed a smile. “No. Allow me the dignity of sobering up in solitude.”

With somber eyes she watched him walk to the door. His steps were perfectly even. As she undressed for bed she discovered that her hands were still shaking.

He left for New York early the following morning and didn’t return until late at night. It was a pattern he repeated all week. The only way he could think of to resolve his own emotional turmoil was to keep as far away from his wife as possible.

Cecelia, for her part, never reproached him for his absences, never asked where he had been. But then, he thought with weary bitterness, she had never complained about his neglect. If he had wanted a wife who was the direct opposite of Barbara he had gotten her. The supreme irony was that he would have welcomed a show of possessiveness from Cecelia.

The image of his wife and Tim Curran, linked together in intimate association, haunted him. Tim, he remembered, was the fellow who could see her “anytime.” Tim was the fellow she had been dating before she met him, before he rescued her father and blackmailed her into marrying him. Tim was the fellow for whose telephone calls she jumped, for whose visits she waited.

Gil stayed away from home as much as he could, and when he did put in an appearance Cecelia usually only saw him in bed. He never again made love to her in anger. But all the extreme tenderness that had characterized his lovemaking in the past was gone. Passion remained, flaming and intense, but the sweetness that had melted her heart had vanished.

* * * *

At the end of September Cecelia paid a visit to the gynecologist and had her suspicions confirmed. She was pregnant. Gil was sleeping over in the New York apartment that week and she didn’t have an opportunity to tell him until Friday night. She was sitting up in bed reading when he came in at eleven. She closed her book and put it on the bedside table. He was loosening his tie.

“How are things going?” she asked. She might have been addressing a casual acquaintance at a cocktail party.

“All right. The article on Argentina is looking good.” His tie was off and he dropped it on a chair and began to unbutton his shirt. “How have you been?”

She bent her head and looked at the mound her drawn up knees made under the covers. “Fine,” she said. “You might be interested to know that I’m pregnant.”

His hand fell from his shirt button. “What?” He swung around to stare at her.

She kept her head down. “That’s right. I went in to see Dr. Harknis today. She says the baby’s due in May.”

“Cecelia,” he said. His only view was the shining brown crown of her head. “Cecelia.” He walked over to the bed and sat down. He didn’t know what to say.

Finally she raised her head. Her eyes were dark and unreadable. “Are you happy?” she asked.

“Of course I’m happy. Are you?”

“I suppose so. I asked the doctor if I could ride in the National in November and she said I could. Will that be all right with you?”

A muscle flickered in his jaw. She seemed a million miles away from him and he didn’t know how to reach her. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Dr. Harknis said everything is normal.” She looked back down at her knees and smoothed the blanket. “It means so much to Daddy, seeing me win in New York. I won’t hunt this season, of course, but I would like very much to ride in the National.”

He was conscious of a flash of jealousy. The goddamn horses. That was all that mattered to her. And the horse doctor too, one mustn’t forget that. “If the doctor agrees, who am I to quibble?” His voice sounded hard.

Cecelia looked at him appraisingly. He looked tense and tired. Why did she have to care so much, she thought painfully. Why couldn’t she be as indifferent to him as he obviously was to her? “Come to bed,” she said. And when he was lying there next to her and reached over to put a hand on her breast, she turned and generously gave to him the one thing that she thought he wanted from her.

Cecelia had occasional bouts of morning sickness and she felt more tired than usual, but otherwise she was well. She told her father she was pregnant, as she had to account for her failure to hunt, but for the time being she said nothing to Jenny. Her daily routine did not vary. The only apparent change in her life was that Gil seemed to be home a little more frequently.

He was sitting having breakfast with her one morning when Jenny appeared, a look of mingled apprehension and defiance on her pretty face. Cecelia, whose stomach was not dealing well with the plate of eggs in front of her, looked at her stepdaughter and said instantly, “Go upstairs and change. You are not going to school in those grungy jeans.”

Jenny’s voice was high-pitched and whining.
“Everybody
wears jeans, Cecelia. Why can’t
I
?”

“I don’t care what everybody else wears,” Cecelia gave the age-old response of all mothers. “I am only interested in you. Change. Now.”

“But I don’t see why ...” Jenny was beginning when Gil cut in.

“I don’t want to hear another word out of you, Jennifer. Do as Cecelia says.” It was the voice that always exacted instant obedience. Without another word Jenny left the room. Gil turned to his wife.

She was very pale and looked distressed. “Has Jennifer been giving you trouble?” he asked, real concern in his voice.

She essayed a shaky smile. She was going to be sick, she knew it. “Not really. She’s just being a normal kid and testing the limits. It can be wearing but it has to be expected.” She went even paler. “Excuse me,” she mumbled and fled from the table.

Gil did not understand and thought she was upset about Jennifer. He thought for about the thousandth time recently that he had put a terrible burden on Cecelia’s young shoulders when he had married her. It was never easy to cope with the problems of a preadolescent girl; it was less easy when you were only twenty-two years of age yourself. He would talk to Jennifer.

The result of his talk was a very subdued Jennifer. She was so subdued, in fact, that Cecelia became worried. She went into the child’s room after school a few days later and sat on the bed. “Is something wrong, Jenny?” she asked. “You’ve been awfully quiet lately. Did something happen in school?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Jennifer returned a little gruffly. She was very busy putting her books on her desk.

“Yes there is. I can tell. Can’t I help? That’s what I’m here for, you know.”

“Daddy said I wasn’t to bother you,” Jennifer mumbled.

Cecelia felt a flash of annoyance. “Why not?” she asked. “And you don’t bother me.”

“He said,” Jenny almost whispered to her desk, “he said you were having a baby and that I should leave you alone.”

Now Cecelia was more than annoyed; she was angry. What was the matter with Gil? He wasn’t usually this stupid. “Yes, I am having a baby,” she said gently. “I was going to tell you myself. But that doesn’t change how I feel about you. I love you. And you don’t bother me.”

Finally Jenny turned to look at her. “You’ll be the baby’s mother,” she said.

Cecelia held out her hand. “Come and sit next to me.” When she had Jennifer next to her on the bed she went on slowly, “I’m
your
mother too, aren’t I?”

“I don’t know,” came the muffled response.

“Well, I am.” She put an arm around Jenny. “Lots of kids have more than one mother. They have the mother who brought them into the world, of course, and then—if something happens so that she can’t take care of them, or if she dies—they have a second mother. The second mother is their real mother too, you know, if she loves them and takes care of them the way I do you. There’s no law that says a person has to have only one mother.”

“I guess not,” said Jenny thoughtfully. Then, “Do you love Daddy, Cecelia?”

Cecelia swallowed. “Yes, honey, I do. That’s why I’m having a baby.”

“Oh.” There was silence as Jenny sat, thinking. Finally she said, “Do you think it’ll be a girl?”

“We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Jenny smiled. “I could help you take care of it.”

Cecelia grinned at her. “I certainly hope so. Babies always depend on their big sisters for help.”

Jenny’s eyes began to shine. “I’ll be a big sister. Like Meredith is to Jason.”

“That’s right.” Cecelia gave her a gentle push. “Come on now, get changed. Poppy is waiting to give you your lesson.”

“Okay,” said Jennifer. But instead of getting up she turned and hugged Cecelia. “I love you,” she whispered.

* * * *

When Gil arrived home that evening Cecelia was on the phone. He came into the bedroom and she looked up from her chair and smiled at him. “I can’t believe it,” she said into the telephone. “What did you do?” There was a pause and then she began to laugh. “I would love to have seen you,” she said.

Gil went into the bathroom, and when he came out she was still talking. “It sounds like fun,” she was saying regretfully, “but I don’t think it would be Gil’s thing at all. Why don’t you and I get together for lunch one day?”

Gil walked slowly over to his closet and began to change his shirt. Cecelia hung up. “What was that all about?” he asked casually.

“That was Janet Osborne, a good friend of mine. She had a Fulbright to study in Europe and then she bummed around the Continent for a few months. It sounds like she had a ball.” Cecelia’s face was still bright with amusement.

“What was the invitation you refused so gracefully?” He looked very grave.

“Oh, it was just a party of kids from college. Beer and pizza, that sort of thing.”

“Not my style, in fact,” he said.

She grinned. “Not at all. It isn’t mine either just now. I get nauseous at the very thought.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” She leaned back in her chair. “How was your day?”

* * * *

He was too old for her. It was the inevitable conclusion of all his tortuous thoughts. He should have left her to the boys of her own age, to Tim Curran, who was so obviously in love with her and who inhabited the kind of world in which she was comfortable. If he had had to marry again it should have been to someone like
Liz,
someone who was of his world and his generation. Someone who would have spent his money and hostessed his parties and sent his daughter off to boarding school without a second thought. He should not have married Cecelia; gallant, loving Cecelia, who, having been forced to marry him—he had gotten to that low point in his misery—was doing her level best to be a good wife to him and mother to Jennifer.

It hurt him unbearably to see her look at him warily, so obviously trying to assess his mood, to say and do the right thing. It hurt him and it made him angry; he was always shorter with her than he meant to be. He had even ceased to make love to her very often. He felt like an intruder in her life, and after that disastrous scene of a few months ago, he thought she was a little afraid of him. The kindest thing he could do for her, he thought with a kind of grim despair, was leave her alone.