Her Hungry Heart (28 page)

‘What do you want, Jay? Or let me rephrase that: What do you have, Jay?’

‘Are you sure you’re up to this, Mimi?’

‘Oh, yes, I’m very sure I’m up to this.’

‘I know you’re angry.’

‘Mmmm, yes, I think I am angry. But not because you’ve deceived me. If you think that, you had better know you’ve got it wrong. You felt something lacking in your life. Maybe whatever it was had nothing to do with me or our marriage. I’m sure enough about us and our relationship to bank on that. For whatever reason, you had an affair with Claire, and an unwanted baby. Is that how it is?’

‘Well, not exactly.’

‘Oh. Well, how was it – exactly?’

‘Well, to be honest, I didn’t like her all that much. But she was bright and amusing. I wanted her, so I took her. That’s all. It’s hard for me to explain it. I promise it has nothing to do with us, you are quite right about that. It was a fling. She got pregnant. Intentionally, I think. A child was out of the question, I thought. Then she said she wanted to have the baby, and I realized my boys were grown up, practically men now. All that family business of babies and raising children was over for me. You and I were not into all that, we had made the decision never to have children, and here I’d gone and made one.’

Jay frowned. ‘Though I didn’t like the idea, I couldn’t just ignore it. Another piece of me entering the world, that sort of thing. She wanted it, I agreed. I support the child, not her. I would have, you should know that, but she’s wealthy in her own right. She is jealous of my marriage with you. She knows you have a hold on me, and that I love and respect you as I never could her. That I will never divorce you for her. But she’s the mother of my child, and
occasionally I go away with her. She tries to play your role in my life, but not very well. It’s not even sordid, it’s rather pathetic.

‘His name is Barney, by the way. When he was born, much as I resisted the idea of playing father again, he made me feel great. There really is no more to say about this. I’m not even going to ask for forgiveness. I am asking you to stay with me. Don’t leave me because of this. I love you more than anyone else in the world. My children come second.’

‘Your Bennington deb?’

‘She’s the mother of my child. I feel about her the same as I feel about the other mothers of my children. I’ll never see her again.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, of course you will. She’s the mother of your son. You’re going to want to see him.’

‘Mimi, you won’t leave me, will you?’

‘I don’t know, it all depends. I want children.’

‘Mimi, you never wanted children. We agreed no more children for me.’

‘So you went ahead and had one! You’ve broken that agreement, Jay.’

‘Once. A mistake. I wanted a marriage without children. We agreed.’

‘Suppose
I
want to change the agreement?’

‘Mimi, I consented to Barney because he was already a living thing, flesh and blood. I also consented because he was coming to me without diapers, sleepless nights and colic, whooping cough, chicken pox, scraped knees and screams. I can’t go through that again. With Barney, she has it all. I don’t. I’ve got the son, she takes care of the mess and trouble, and that’s okay. You don’t know what you have to give up to have children. The responsibility. How it changes your life. You’ve never had children, never even wanted children till now.’

‘If this marriage is to work, it’s going to have to be with
me having children and us acknowledging Barney in our lives, with or without his mother.’

‘I’ll never go away with her again.’

‘I didn’t ask you to do that. I’m not asking you to do anything about this affair of yours. That’s up to you. Barney’s welcome in our house, he’s your son. I have cared for and loved your other sons. Would I do less for an illegitimate one?’

Tears came into his eyes. They were genuine. ‘I can’t believe you’re not going to leave me over this.’

‘I am going to leave you, but not over this. I am going to leave you if you don’t consent to our having children. I don’t want to play true confessions here, but I have had the occasional lapse in my marital vows. I can understand you only because I understand myself and my own needs.’ She had slipped it in.

‘Then the rumours were true?’

‘You never believed them?’

‘No, never. That you had lovers? Never. That you toyed with them and played with them was obvious. I know fifty men who would bed you in a minute. You are, after all, a very sexy lady. Like Karel, a natural flirt, a charmer and seducer. It’s part of that Czech charm of yours. But that you actually took young lovers? No, that was not an adventure I thought you would go for.’

‘Do you feel cheated?’

‘Yes, I do, as a matter of fact.’

‘None of my admirers meant anything to me, except for one. The only one you ever met. He has been an important lover in my life. Not just for sex, but because he was an extraordinary young man. He has made me grow up in many ways where I have been kept a child by you. You feel cheated because you’re the marrying kind. Would you want me to divorce you for him, and then divorce him because he wasn’t the right man? No, Jay, I’ve always known being married to you was the best marriage I would ever make.
Anything outside our marriage has to be something else. And, actually, I think you have just proved that point.’

‘It’s that young doctor, Rick, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mimi, I don’t want to lose you to Rick, not to anyone. But consider me. I enjoy our marriage just the way it is. I don’t want it disrupted by bringing up another family. I’m not a young man any more, I don’t pretend to be. You know that. Twenty years was bound to make a difference as I grew older. We had no illusions about that.’

‘Jay, I shall leave you, little as I may want to, I promise you I will, unless you agree to have children with me.’

‘Well, let’s not make any rash decisions, let’s think about it. And Rick?’

‘He’s a rolling stone. He rolls in and out of my life and doesn’t gather me to him. He lets nothing cling to him. Not for any length of time. And I am too old for him, anyway.’

‘But you love him?’

‘Oh, yes, I love him, but not in the way you think. Not the way I love you. He understands that, and assumes you will.’

‘You’ve talked to him about me?’

‘Of course. He’s my young lover, just as that girl is your young lover. I don’t know that that says much for us, but it may say a lot for our marriage if it can cope with this situation. It’s because of him that I want to have children. He taught me how much fun being a child can be, something I had forgotten. My own childhood and fun were cut short. He made me understand that I should have no fear of raising children of my own. I could enjoy them and play with them and learn with them about love and innocence, those things I lost as a child.’

‘Am I such a bad lover that you needed to find other men?’

‘Oh, Jay, that’s not worthy of you. I might ask you the same thing. We can go on this way, but it won’t get us
anywhere. Whatever we’ve done is because something in ourselves needs to go outside marriage. I can accept that, that it happened to you as well as me. I don’t intend us to hash this over, or talk about it ever again. You know my terms: children.’

‘What if we have these children and you decide it wasn’t such a good idea? What then? We would have to move house, change our lives. You’re asking a lot. I love my life with you the way it is now.’

‘You’ll like it better, I promise.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘I’ll have Rick’s children.’

‘And marry him?’

‘No, I’ll never marry him. But he wants to give me babies, wants to create another kind of life with me outside marriage.’

‘Jesus Christ!’

‘What?’

‘It’s all that hippie talk. All that love and Flower Power and mother earth. Well, maybe you should make a baby with him.’

‘I may have. That’s something else you should know. I would like to have a baby of his, and so we tried.’

‘I don’t believe this. You have the nerve to …’

‘To what, Jay? Face it. At best we’ve got an extended family already. Four sons you’ve fathered, two ex-wives, who have always drifted in and out of our lives, a mistress, and now Barney. I can accept him as I have accepted and loved all your children. Would you throw me out because I might be having a baby with Rick? That’s okay, Jay, that’s a chance I took. I won’t like it, but I’ll accept it. Although I would have thought that you were a bigger man than that. You don’t want me or children with me? I’ll go back home to my father and raise my babies there.’

‘I feel trapped.’

‘That’s disgusting. Trapped by what? I told you, I’m
ready to leave unless you give me what I want. And I’ll do it quietly, no fuss, no bother.’

‘That’s what has trapped me. You know I’ve never been able to resist you. There was always something about you, a special kind of femininity that excites me, a charm you use on me, on all men, as no other woman I have ever known can. It grabs me and holds me. I could no sooner lose you than my life, and you know it.’

‘You’re angry.’

‘Yes, and you’d goddamn well better know I am!’

‘Angry, why?’

‘Because I love you and I’ll never let you go. And our marriage is too important, too solid to break. Now please, let this rest for a while. We’ll talk more about it later.’ That was his last word for the moment and Mimi knew it. She knew Jay was telling her the truth. She respected that. She would let the matter rest.

That evening they dined with Karel. It was informal, a delicious meal down in the kitchen with Sophia cooking and serving. Mimi marvelled at how unperturbed she was at the day’s events. At the strength she had to stand up and fight for her marriage, for her unborn babies, and for the right to have a child with Rick. Jay, himself the consummate charmer in his own literary world, the most humane, intelligent, uncomplicated of men, was besotted with her. She had always known that, but had never until now taken advantage of it. Mimi knew that she could charm without any effort of will. It was one of her greatest assets. Since a child, both men and women had been besotted by her. Finally it was that inborn charm that allowed her to seek out her destiny, to stave off that hungry heart of hers.

Jay was charming, amusing. Karel had liked him from the first. On grounds of religious and age difference, he had had doubts. Would a marriage between them work? But he had not stood in Mimi’s way. Now he was happy about that. Jay and her father liked each other’s company. There was
always stimulating conversation between them. And this evening was no exception. Jay was relaxed and happy, enjoying himself as if no problem existed between them. He was pleased to be married into the Stefanik family. It suited him. Would he, she wondered, choose to lose all this? She wanted to stay with him, but she would go if Jay would not give her what she desired.

They had coffee in the garden. Mimi sat back and listened to her father and her husband. She looked at Karel and Jay, and saw, still, at their age, two of the most attractive men in the city, so different in character but similar in many ways. Charismatic figures, highly intelligent, interesting, articulate. They were powerful men, heroic figures, men who in their lifetimes had taken great leaps. Adventurous men in their thinking. She was in awe of that, respected them for it. She had always given them what they wanted for as long as she had known them. Now, in this one thing, it was their turn. She would not waver.

Mimi and Jay had walked to Karel’s house, so they walked back home.

‘Mimi?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re being wonderful about Barney and his mother. Surely you must be angry?’

‘Oh, I think I am angry. But only because, if it was so unimportant, why did you have to deceive me for so long about it?’

‘I don’t think of myself as a deceitful man.’

Mimi began to laugh. It was a sarcastic laugh. ‘But you are, Jay, selfish and greedy, only you’ve got a great cover-up, more than most. You are a very nice man, and you do care about people. That’s one of your many saving graces.’

They had reached a corner and the light was against them. They waited for it to change. He took her by the arm.

‘I don’t want you to leave me. But you will, won’t you?
You’ll walk out on this marriage, and me, and you won’t even think about my feelings, unless you get your way?’

‘No, that’s not true. I’ll walk out on you unless we go down a new path together. And that includes finding a way to live with our extended families.’

He took her by the arm and they crossed the street. Safe on the other side, he pulled her towards him and kissed her roughly. That kiss was filled with passion and anxiety and a kind of truthfulness new to them. Arm in arm they walked home.

In bed he took her in his arms and kissed her. He turned upon his wife the virile and exciting Jay Steindler charm. He was at his most sexually seductive. He was her new lover. This was not the husband who fucked her every morning of their marriage. He had reverted to the lover she had fallen for before he set the ground-rules of their sex life and marriage years earlier.

‘I like you too much to trick you,’ Mimi whispered in his ear, ‘so I have to remind you, I am no longer baby-proof.’

‘Jesus, Mimi, you do pick your moments. Shut up.’ He sealed her lips with a passionate kiss. She felt him enter her, and he accompanied his continual thrusts with whispered confessions of adoration and love.

The following morning Jay Steindler woke as usual by stretching out to feel the warmth of his wife’s body next to him. He fucked her. Jay had his morning fuck just as they always had every morning of their married life when they were together. Their morning routine proceeded as normal.

He took her to lunch in the Russian Tea Room. That was unusual, they rarely lunched together. Between the smoked salmon and the main course and the stopping of numerous persons at their table – most of the literary world lunched there – he presented her with a long, slim, black velvet jewellery box. ‘Is this a bribe?’ she asked, amused because this was so out of character for Jay. Their jewellery buying was always done together. She opened it. Inside was a
magnificent, two-inch-wide Art Deco diamond and emerald bracelet. It was an extravagance unheard of for Jay. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, her breath quite taken away. ‘This
is
a bribe.’ She raised it in her fingers to watch the light play on the diamonds, the emeralds glow, the pattern dazzle the eye. He reached across the table and clapped it on her wrist.