Institute (19 page)

“But, Richard,
how could you?”

Her voice was quavering. Suddenly, instead of talking to me, he began giving out to her. “There’s no mystery to it,” he told her. “The night you had your miscarriage, I carried you downstairs. Remember? To the ambulance, and rode in it with you to the hospital. Then, when I got in the cab to go back to the apartment, I knew I had strained my back. That’s where Inga came in. She had a vibrator, already plugged in by her bed, which she used on herself sometimes. She stretched me out and put it on me. So ... I spent the night. That’s all—or almost all. Hortense, you, of all people should know: I have a hang-up about sex. I don’t know why, I just do. She’s the only woman I’ve ever known who really responded to me. As I said, there’s nothing mysterious about it.”

He trailed off, still talking to her, and then sat looking at nothing while she stared at him for a long while.

“You haven’t answered my question,” I said. “Why—?”

“Oh. Oh, yes. If Hortense divorced me, Lloyd, I’d be free to marry this woman. I don’t think I would, but I might—I’m nuts about her, that I have to admit. I must not, cannot, will not let it happen! If she had stolen a million dollars or murdered someone or danced the hula in church, I don’t think I’d mind very much. I could probably tough it out. But marry a servant—no. No, NO!”

He breathed it in a whisper that had the Book of Revelations in it. Hortense got up, walked around, and looked out the window as though thinking it over.

“Yiss,” she trilled, “it devolves. It devolves that you smaken me on my pretty Swenska tail whenever I uppen my skurt. But wait, wait, wait unteel I peepen and see if mein pantyhosen iss clean!”

“Goddamn it, knock it off!”

“Now there’s a hostess for you! ‘Come in, pliz! Yiss, he iss home—aye tink.’ ” And she popped two or three kneebends which I have since heard are called “knicks,” so jerky they make you uncomfortable, while he chased her around, furious. I stepped between them and motioned for her to sit down.

“We get the idea,” I said. Mr. Garrett stood for several moments, clenching and unclenching his fists. Then he stalked to the foyer, got his hat and coat from the closet, and put them on. He turned to her and said: “The answer is still no. While Inga is alive, there will be no divorce for you.”

“But what am I going to do?”

“Nothing! Nothing. Do that, you will be sitting pretty.
Have
your child—and who knows whose child it is except you, me, and Lloyd? I’ve told you, it’s well provided for. I’m putting it in my will, as well as any other children you have. I’m providing for you in the trust fund that’s already set up for you. I dote on you, you must know by now. I feel for Lloyd much as he says he feels for me. You can’t have everything, Hortense. All you need do is nothing and you’re sitting so pretty, someone should take your picture.”

“Except for the one thing I want!”

“I don’t. That’s the difference.”

I went to bed but lay in the dark a long time before she came in and undressed and presently slipped into bed beside me. But she didn’t come close. Then, when I turned on the light, she was staring at me with a strange look in her eyes, as though she were scared to death or had just waked up to something or had gotten a terrific idea—or all three. I made a speech about getting some sleep, how we needed it so we would be fresh in the morning to tackle what had to be done in some kind of clear-headed way. She made no answer, so I turned out the light.

I must have fallen asleep, because all of a sudden I woke up with the feeling that I was alone. I put out my hand. She wasn’t there! I turned on the light. Jumping out of bed, I rushed through the apartment, shouting her name; but she wasn’t there. She was gone.

I came back to bed and turned out the light. Now I faced a darkness blacker than black. I had lost my job, my dream, and now this woman who had meant so much to me. Yet there is a limit to how much you can feel. By daybreak I didn’t feel anything—just cold gray nothingness.

F
OR THE NEXT TWO
weeks I didn’t live. I skulked—alone, seeing no one except people who meant nothing to me, such as parking lot attendants, gas station men, and waiters, and doing nothing but pray she would come back. I’d make my own breakfast, go down and pick up my mail, the paper, and messages, then go out as though I were going to work, the way I always had. I would walk around to the parking lot, have a look at my car, then let myself in the back way and come back up on the freight elevator to the apartment again. Every time the phone rang, I dived for it. Around ten each morning, Eliza would come, make the bed, put out fresh towels, and straighten up; but on Fridays she really cleaned and would be there till midafternoon. So I wouldn’t be underfoot, I would go down the back way again, get in the car, and drive—anywhere—Annapolis, Baltimore, Richmond, Frederick, wherever. Then I would come back and at six watch the news on TV. I would go out to dinner, generally the Royal Arms. Then back to the apartment, “to catch up on my reading.” But reading just to kill time is the most pointless thing I can think of, and pretty soon, I would turn to cards. Then to bed, for the simple reason that there was no place else to go.

The day after the hearing, Mr. Garrett called to say that Georgia had seen the news stories and that the aftermath was terrific, with editorials in the papers, “and all kinds of beautiful stuff.” But no word about my resignation or what his reaction was. Then Sam Dent called to find out where I was. When I told him that I had quit, he was stunned. Then, in no more than a couple of minutes, Mr. Garrett called again.

“What the hell is this, Lloyd? I just read your note, the one you gave me last night. It’s been in my pocket all the time. I forgot it completely. What’s the point of it? Have I done something? Why are you resigning?”

“That handshake we had did it.”

“Did what?”

“It meant I had to end the deception. On my part, sir, that handshake was sincere, and I felt it was on yours, too. So I had to resign.”

“What deception?”

“Do I have to draw you a picture?”

“You mean, about Hortense?”

“That’s right—about Hortense.”

“But, Lloyd, I wasn’t deceived, so what deception was involved?” He paused and then said: “Well, yeah, I suppose I flinched a little. But not from what I knew had to be going on. It was how to take it that bothered me. But little by little we all liked each other so well that it was nothing to flinch from at all. You’ve dreamed yourself up a bugbear that doesn’t exist. What the hell. Let me talk to her.”

“She’s not here.”

“Well, she’s not at the Watergate apartment. Where is she, then?”

I didn’t say anything for a moment, then: “I don’t know.”

“Say what you mean, Lloyd.”

“I mean she’s walked out on me—or, at least, I think she has.”

“If she wasn’t so goddamned headstrong—” He let it dangle, then finished: “She wouldn’t be Hortense, otherwise, Lloyd.”

“You can say that again.”

“Getting back to your note—”

“I’m sorry, sir, it’s final.”

“It certainly
is
final. I’ve just burned it in the ashtray. I’m punching the ashes now. Now—will you be in? Can I tell Sam to simmer down?”

“No, Mr. Garrett, I won’t be in.”

“Lloyd, goddam it, I’m getting annoyed.”

“O.K., but I won’t change my mind.”

“Suppose I find her for you? Suppose I bring her back?”

“Shut up, damn it, shut up!”

“All right, now I know what I have to do.”

On Friday when I got in, I rang downstairs to ask Miss Nettie if I had had any calls, and she said no but that I did have a visitor. “That girl who was here before. Rodriguez, I think her name is. She’s been here since just after lunch. I said you were out, but she said she would wait.”

I told Miss Nettie to give me a moment to think and then said: “Send her up.”

But what stepped out of the elevator was a girl I had never seen. In place of the ratty, reddish hair she had had before was a mound of black curls, a little crimson bow on them over one eye; a knee-length black dress, very smart; crimson shoes matching the bow, with high heels and open toes and a mink coat I could hardly believe when I saw it. It was full length, full fashioned, and dark, something a movie actress might have, but not many honest women. She also had a sulky look on her face which was quite different from the crazy, hop-skip-and-jump goof who had been there before. Actually, she looked like the Spanish dame she was, not like some sorority kid cutting up. She inclined her head for a moment and then brushed past me into the foyer, through to the arch to the living room where she stood looking around as though to get reacquainted with something remembered but not remembered too well. Then she took off her coat, spread it over a chair, and stretched out on a sofa to face it—all without saying a word.

“Well,” I said, “you again.”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“What do you want?”

“You.”

“You can’t have me.”

“I know that. You asked what I wanted. I told you.”

“O.K., honesty’s good for the soul. But if I’m what you want, and you already know you can’t have me, I don’t get it. Why are you here? I don’t want to seem inhospitable, but—”

“In other words, what am I
doing
here?”

“Yes.”

“Just ... looking you over again. Hoping against hope that I didn’t like you so much any more. And now that that hope is dashed, how I’m getting the same old buzz, to catch up on you just a little, you and your girl friend—that I don’t like even a little bit. Where is she, by the way?”

This caught me off balance, and I sat there not making any answer. Suddenly she jumped up, came partway around the table, and peered down at me. “She hasn’t been home for two weeks, that much I already know,” she snapped, biting off her words short. “And I know where she is—or was. Do you?”

“Go back where you were.”

“I asked you—”

“And I told you.”

She went back to the sofa, but didn’t lie down. She just sat on it, staring at me.

“O.K., then,” I said. “I’ll answer you. I don’t know where she is. She blew one night. Just disappeared like that. When I went to sleep she was there, and when I woke up, she wasn’t. I’d see her in hell before I would lift a finger, before I would pick up that phone to try and find out where she is. So if you know, don’t feel you have to tell me. Don’t think you’ll be doing me a favor. You won’t be.”

“Where do you think she is?”

“Europe.”

I didn’t know I was going to say it, but when things reach a certain point, you mean to clam up and don’t.

“Europe? What makes you think
that,
Dr. Palmer?”

I snapped: “If she had bought a ticket, that would be a reason. What’s it to you why I think it?”

“One of her reasons could be to have her child over there.”

“And another might be to find a place to mind her own business in.”

“Okay, touché. It’s what you said to me one time, when I hadn’t even been touched. Remember? Just patted a bit on the patches I had. She
is
knocked up, isn’t she?”

“If she were, would I tell you?”

“If she weren’t, you would but quick.”

I let that one ride and she began again. “Now that I’m caught up on her, at least a little bit, why not catch up on me? Ask me about me. Show some interest, like, where did I get this coat?”

“You might say
how
you got it.”

“And you wouldn’t like that?”

“Well? Would anyone?”

“But you
wouldn’t
like me to say?”

“Put an ad in the paper, why don’t you?”

But I sounded the least bit wild, and she got up and came over and looked down at me again. Then in a low, slow whisper: “You care how I got it, don’t you? Dr. Palmer, that makes me happier than anything I can imagine! And all the more because I can say it wasn’t the way you think it was. Not that it mightn’t have been. Not that I’m morally pure. I wasn’t trying to be, but I am.”

“That’s about as clear as mud in a wine glass.”

“I was willing, but he was unable.”

“What’s with that guy in bed?”

“Something—he doesn’t know what himself. And I sure don’t. Except with one woman, he just can’t do it. Dr. Palmer—”

“Get back where you were.”

She went back to the sofa and went on without any break: “So let’s get back to that day when I carried the suitcases for you and he drove me to College Park. We sat in his car for a long time and he got to the point right away—how well he liked me, how pretty he thought I was, how he liked to hold my hand. And so he asked how’s about it. And I asked him back—did he mean what he seemed to mean, recreation done in bed in a horizontal position? He said, yes, that was it. At first I held back because of a yen I had for a certain Ph.D. in English poetry, perhaps by the name of Palmer. But then when he said I wouldn’t regret it and seemed to mean worldly goods, I screwed up my nerve and asked him if he meant something like a mink coat. And he said yes, he did mean that. I said, O.K., I asked nothing better. In my own mind I was faithless to poetry, English or otherwise, and particularly to a guy named Palmer. Well, I said I was morally pure. Didn’t I, Dr. Palmer?”

“Get on with it. What then?”

“At least you’re interested.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? Get on with it.”

“So he called me, maybe a week after that, sent his driver for me and brought me to his hotel, one of the big ones downtown where he’d taken a suite. Did you know, Dr. Palmer, that once you take a suite, you can bring up a girl if you want to, with no questions asked? I thought it was him who was so big they didn’t dare squawk, but it turned out that it was the suite. So, anyway, there I was in his arms, holding close, and then he was peeling me off. He peeled me down to the skin, until I had nothing on. I expected results, of course. I mean, like with you that day, Dr. Palmer, there was physiological proof that you weren’t indifferent to me—”

“You don’t have to go into the details.”

“Except maybe I want to.”

“Get on with what you were saying.”

“There weren’t any results—physiological, I mean.”