Here I Stay (34 page)
Authors: KATHY
After the holidays Ladiesburg closed its doors to the public. Many of the antique dealers went off to warmer climes, and the others retired to the living quarters over their shops, opening only by appointment. Andrea didn't feel she could afford to close, but bookings for January dropped to almost nothing. She gave Mrs. Horner the month off, a gesture which the latter accepted phlegmatically, remarking, "Gonna be lots of snow this month."
Reba left town too. Andrea was not aware of this until she called the restaurant one day and learned of her friend's departure from the assistant manager. Surprised and a little hurt, she passed the news on to Martin.
"It's the first time in years I've known her to take a vacation," he said, frowning. "I hope she's all right."
"Paula said she had gone to visit friends in Arizona."
"Strange that she didn't mention it to either of us.. .Well, you'll be left in peace for a while. I'm going away for a few days myself."
"Where?"
"Why, darling, I didn't know you cared."
Under the circumstances, the remark was doubly insulting. Andrea stalked out of the room. She assumed he was going to New York; his publisher probably needed buttering up, for Martin appeared
to be making very little progress with his book. Not that she cared. At long last she and Jim would be alone together.
Somehow it wasn't the way she had expected it would be.
Jim was wonderful—much more companionable than he would have been a few months earlier, or even a year ago, before the accident. He didn't seem disappointed or distressed when Kevin called to postpone his visit until the end of the month. He wasn't upset or disappointed about anything. Nor was his amiability merely negative, the absence of ill will. His enjoyment of the things they did together was positive and joyful, infecting Andrea with the same pleasure. He had regained his old interest in sports, including football; he and Andrea made a big occasion of the Super Bowl, drinking beer and eating hot dogs, criticizing the plays and having a fine time.
Andrea knew she should have been blissfully happy. How often in life does one attain a long-desired, seemingly unattainable goal, and find it all one hoped it would be? The sensation she felt was so slight it was hardly discernible—too vague to be called dissatisfaction or disappointment or concern. When she was with Jim she was not conscious of it. But Jim wasn't always with her; he seemed to have plenty to do by himself, and to be perfectly content with his own company. Andrea found herself with time on her hands, and it was then, when she sat reading or sewing or just relaxing, that the dim, almost invisible shadow tiptoed into the edge of her consciousness.
It was Martin's fault, of course. She had grown accustomed to the strange state of existence he had
created, and to the paradoxes implicit in it and in him—the skilled, passionate lover who had lost all interest in taking her to bed, the man who told her one day he adored her and the next day called her a selfish egocentric brat, the admirer who had given her the most subtly flattering gift she had ever received, and who didn't care to claim so much as a kiss as his reward. His behavior made no sense at all; she had given up trying to understand it. Her own feelings were another matter, one she could, hopefully, analyze. She admitted to herself now that she did love Martin, but the word that had once seemed so easy to define had lost its meaning. She didn't know what love was. Physical desire, affection, respect—all those she felt. Whether that was all she ought to feel she did not know. Martin had turned her world upside down; she was living in a room that no longer had a floor or ceiling or walls.
Martin's quibbles and criticisms had even contaminated her relationship with Jim. She didn't agree with him—but he might have a point when he said Jim needed companions his own age. She had never thought she would see the day when she missed "the guys." But that day had come; not only did she regret their loss on Jim's account, she missed them herself—big, noisy, amiable consumers of other peoples' food, joking and kidding with her, filling the apartment with laughter and mud and dirty clothes and love. It was perhaps not surprising that Jim should have let them drift away. The interests they had shared were no longer Jim's interests. But surely he needed someone...I'll talk to Kevin, she promised herself. If he says he can't make it I'll ask him to change his mind. I'll beg him, if I have to.
Another unexpected development during the
days of Martin's absence was her growing reluctance to look at Mary's picture. It came on so gradually she was scarcely aware of it until one day as she passed through the hall, preoccupied with details of a business letter she was about to write, she found herself standing in front of the picture with both hands on the frame, preparing to lift it down. When she realized what she was doing she pulled her hands away. "What's the matter with me?" she asked aloud. But no one answered.
She was sitting on the sofa in the kitchen, staring off into space, when Jim came in. Satan was curled up next to her. He never sat on anyone's lap, but occasionally he condescended to be stroked, slowly and gently. "Well, now, if that don't beat all," Jim exclaimed, in a deplorable imitation of the local accent. "You sure do make a purty picture a-settin' there with your pussycat next to you, purrin' his little heart out."
"That cat doesn't know how to purr," Andrea said, with a disparaging look at Satan. "As a lap cat he's a failure."
"He's been hanging around the kitchen a lot lately. Funny—he never came in here when Mrs. Horner was around."
"Takes a witch to know a witch's critter," Andrea said with a smile. "No doubt they had come to an understanding."
"He always did like you."
" 'Like' is a word that is not in Satan's vocabulary. I'm sure the attraction is proximity to food."
"Maybe he misses Martin." Jim looked at her slyly. "I miss him. Don't you?"
"Not desperately, no."
"You don't have to kid me, Andy. He's crazy
about you."
"Now, Jim—"
"He told me so, a couple of months ago."
Andrea didn't know whether to laugh or be angry. "Asking your permission, was he?"
"We're friends," Jim said. "It would make me feel good if you... You need someone, Andy."
Just what she had thought about him. "We have each other, Jimmie."
"Right. Only...Are you going to marry him?"
"He hasn't asked me," Andrea said sourly.
When Martin had been gone for a week Andrea gave up pretending to herself. She missed him. For several days she had developed a habit of stopping in the middle of her work, her head tilted, listening for a sound that never came. When the telephone did ring, which was not often, her reaction to the voice on the other end was always disappointment. There was no reason why he should call, except to announce his return. He didn't owe her a daily report, but he did owe her that much.
Instead of calling, he simply turned up one gray afternoon and let himself in the front door.
Andrea was in the kitchen trying for the second time to reproduce Mrs. Horner's cinnamon rolls. The first attempt had been such a disaster that even Jim the omnivorous had been unable to eat them. Struggling with the dough, which had developed a macabre life of its own, Andrea swore at it and at herself. It was humiliating that she couldn't duplicate the efforts of a fat middle-aged woman who couldn't even read a magazine.
She heard the sound of the key in the lock, and her heart gave an unwelcome leap. It had to be Martin. Jim was in his room, and no one else had a key. And she might have known he would return, without warning, at a time when she looked her worst—hair uncombed, face bare of makeup, hands smeared with recalcitrant dough.
Wiping them on a towel, she ventured into the hall.
"It's not a burglar," Martin said.
"You might have let me know you were coming."
"I guess I might have. Hello."
"Did you have a good trip?"
"Hey, Martin!" Jim's greeting was much more enthusiastic, and Martin's dour look turned to a smile.
"Hey, Jim! Everything all right?"
"Sure. It's good to have you back, though." He glanced out the door. "What happened to the bug?"
"It finally breathed its last," Martin said morosely. "I had to rent a car. Want to help me look for a replacement?"
"Great. Now?"
"No, I have to work up to it. It's been a shock to me, after all these years. Besides, I'm taking your sister to dinner tonight."
"Swell," Jim said.
"Wait a minute," Andrea said.
"Oh, sorry. Would you care to dine with me this evening, Andrea?"
"Sure, she'd love to," said Jim.
Jim saw them off, beaming like a proud father, but his attempt to suggest that the occasion constituted a normal social engagement was not helped by the protagonists. Andrea had weakened at the last moment and put on a new dress she had bought the week before; expecting at the least an admiring look, she relapsed into sullen silence when Martin only glanced at her and made no comment. Martin behaved like a man who was carrying out an unavoidable obligation—entertaining an aged aunt or homely sister. Conversation was nonexistent until Martin turned onto the road; then Andrea said, "Aren't we going to Peace and Plenty?"
"Obviously not."
"Where are we going?"
"I haven't decided."
Several minutes elapsed before Martin spoke again. "Is that a new dress?"
"There was a sale last week—"
"That's what it looks like. A sale, last week."
"Damn it, Martin—"
"It's not an inherent lack of taste," Martin mused. "You did a fine job on the house. Don't you think you deserve as much consideration as a pile of wood and plaster?"
The silence that succeeded this question was not broken again until they reached the outskirts of Frederick, the nearest town of any size. Martin turned abruptly into a parking lot. "This looks as if it would do."
If what he wanted was privacy, the restaurant he selected fit the bill; it was only half full and they were
given a table in a corner, away from the door and the kitchen. When the waiter had taken their order for cocktails, Martin leaned back in his chair.
"Heard anything from Reba?"
"No."
"Anything happen while I was gone?"
"No."
"What would you like to eat?"
"I don't care."
The waiter brought their drinks and Martin ordered for both of them.
"That takes care of that," he said. "Hello, Andy. Have I mentioned lately that I love you?"
"Don't try to sweet-talk me!"
"That is a sin I've seldom if ever been accused of. I missed you."
"I'm sure you were rarely vexed by the thought of me. Did you have a good time in New York?"
"I wasn't in New York. I was in, among other equally tedious places, Mobile, Alabama."
"Oh?"
"Mobile, Alabama," Martin said, "was the home town of Colonel John Fairfax, C.S.A."
For a moment she couldn't think what he meant. Then—"Mary's husband," she exclaimed.
Martin shook his head. "Not Mary's husband. She never had a husband. Her child was illegitimate."
"Don't ask me if I'm sure. I'm sure. Don't suggest alternative possibilities. I've eliminated them. Don't interrupt me. I want to get this over with. For once in my life I am not looking forward to lecturing.
"The man from Mobile was the only John Fairfax who had the rank of colonel. That's why I investigated him first. He was married twice, to local Mobile belles. Neither was named Mary Broadhurst.
"So maybe Mary's John wasn't a colonel. One must allow for the normal human tendency to exaggerate. It's not an uncommon name. I checked out two lieutenants and a captain as well. Nothing.
"It was a clever move on her part. It would have been hard to prove she had not been married, at some time, to a man of that name; by selecting one of the enemy, from a distant area, she lessened the chance that a local nosy parker could trace him. There were Confederate troops in and out of Maryland during the first years of the war.
"Her lover may have been one of them. We'll never know who he was, or why she was still an old maid at the age of thirty-nine. The local boys weren't good enough for a Broadhurst? Her father must have had something to do with it; he wouldn't have made a point of asking her forgiveness if he hadn't felt guilty.
"At any rate, he backed her up when she told him she was pregnant. They picked a name out of the casualty lists and got their story ready. While the old man was alive no one dared challenge them. But when he died, leaving her alone and broke, tongues began to wag. She probably was not very popular anyway; I can't see her sucking up to the local gentry. Someone found out—not all the truth, that would have been difficult to prove—but enough to make her the town pariah. If she had crawled humbly off in a corner, wrapped in her widow's weeds, they might have forgiven her in time. But that wasn't
Mary's style. She stood up to all of them and she won. But she paid a heavy price."
