Oliver's Story (11 page)

Not the art. For
we
had masterpieces too. Although, befitting our more ancient fortune, of a prior century. The furnishings were vaguely similar. To me antique means old; I don’t appreciate the vintages of bric-a-brac.

But the bathrooms! Here the Barretts proved themselves inextricably bound to Puritan tradition: rooms functional and basic. White-tile, simple—Spartan, one might even say. Surely nothing one might
linger
in. But not the Binnendales.
Their
baths were worthy of a Roman emperor. Or more precisely of the modern Roman
principe
who had created them. The mere notion of “designing” such a room would have outraged the liberalest of Barretts.

In the mirror through the slightly opened portal I could see the bedroom.

Where a wagon entered.

Pushed by Mildred.

Cargo: breakfast.

By the time I’d wiped my face off, Marcie was at table—in a garment she did not intend to wear to work (I hope). I sat down clad in merely towel.

“Coffee, bacon, eggs?”

“Jesus, it’s a damn hotel!”

“Are you
still
complaining, Mr. Barrett?”

“No, it was fun,” I answered, buttering a muffin, “and I’d like to come again ’cause it was silly.” Then I paused. And told her, “In, like, thirty years.”

She looked perplexed.

“Marce,” I said, “this place is strictly for the paleologists. It’s full of sleeping dinosaurs.”

She looked at me.

“This isn’t what you really want,” I said.

Her face seemed sort of moved.

“I want to be with you,” she answered.

She wasn’t coy. Or full of metaphor, as I had been.

“Okay,” I said. To give me time to think of what to say.

“When would you like to go?” she asked.

“Today,” I answered.

Marcie wasn’t fazed.

“Just tell me when and where.”

“Let’s meet at five o’clock in Central Park. The East Side entrance to the reservoir.”

“What should I bring?” she asked.

“Your track shoes,” I replied.

Chapter Twenty-two

I
fell thirty thousand feet and hit the ground. I was incredibly depressed.

“It’s unbearable,” I told the doctor. “Couldn’t you have warned me?”

Earlier that afternoon, my wild euphoria had started to dissolve into a sadness beyond words.

“But nothing’s wrong—” I started. Then I realized how ridiculous it sounded. “I mean things are going well with Marcie. It’s just me. I’ve clutched. I can’t go through with it.”

There was a pause. I hadn’t specified what I could not go through with.

I knew. But it was difficult to say:

“Taking her to my place. Do you understand?”

Once again I’d acted rashly. Why the haste in making Marcie leave her house? Why do I precipitate these gestures of . . . commitment?

“Maybe I’m just using Marcie selfishly . . . to fill the void.” I thought about my own hypothesis.

“Or maybe it’s still Jenny. I mean almost two years later I could maybe have a fling and justify it. But my
house!
To have somebody in my house and in my bed. Sure, realistically the house is different and the bed is different. Logic says it shouldn’t bother me. But damn, it
does
.”

“Home,” you see, is still a place I live with Jenny.

Paradox: They say that husbands all have fantasies of being single. I’m a weirdo. I lapse into daydreams that I’m married.

And it helps to have a place that is inviolate. A pad that no one comes to. I mean nothing breaks the comforting illusion that I’m sharing all I have with someone.

Now and then a piece of mail is forwarded, addressed to both of us. And Radcliffe regularly sends her letters coaxing contributions. This is my dividend for not announcing Jenny’s death except to friends.

The only other toothbrush in the bathroom has belonged to Philip Cavilleri.

So you see, it’s either a dishonest act to one girl . . .

Or betrayal of another.

Dr. London spoke.

“In either case, that puts you in the wrong.”

He understood. But unexpectedly his understanding made it even worse.

“Must it be only either/or?” he queried with a Kierkegaardian allusion. “Could there be no other explanation for your conflict?”

“What?” I really didn’t know.

A pause.

“You like her,” Dr. London quietly suggested.

I considered it.

“Which one?” I asked. “You didn’t say a name.”

Chapter Twenty-three

M
arcie had to be postponed.

By a strange coincidence I’d set our rendezvous for 5
P.M
. Which happened, as I realized in the office, to conflict directly with my psychiatric session. So I called to make adjustments.

“What’s the matter—chickening, my friend?” This time there was no meeting in her office. She could tease me.

“I’ll only be an hour late. Sixty minutes.”

“Can I trust you?” Marcie asked.

“That’s your problem, isn’t it?”

Anyway, we had to run in semidarkness. Which can be lovely when the reservoir reflects the city lights.

Seeing her again, I felt some day-long qualms diminish. She was beautiful. I had forgotten quite how much. We kissed and then began to jog.

“How was your day?” I asked.

“Oh, the usual catastrophes, the overstock positions, understock positions, minor transportation snags, suicidal panic in the corridors. But mostly thoughts of you.”

I fabricated things to say a stride ahead of saying them. And yet, incapable of superficial running conversation, I inevitably focused on the point. I had demanded. She had come. We both were here. What was she feeling?

“Did you wonder where we would be going?”

“I thought you had the compass, friend.”

“Bring any clothes?”

“We can’t eat dinner in our track suits, can we?”

I was curious to know how much she’d packed.

“Where’s your stuff?”

“My car.” She gestured toward Fifth Avenue. “Just an airline bag. The kind you carry on and carry off. It’s very practical.”

“For quick departures.”

“Right,” she said, pretending not to know what I was thinking. We ran another lap.

“I thought we’d go to my place,” I said casually.

“Okay.”

“It isn’t very big . . .”

“That’s fine.”

“. . . and just make dinner. By ourselves. The staff is you and me. I’ll do the goddamn dishes. . . .”

“Fine,” she answered. When we’d jogged another hundred yards, she interrupted our athletic reverie.

“But, Oliver,” she said, a trifle plaintively, “who’ll do the goddamn cooking?”

I looked at her.

“Something in my stomach says you aren’t being jocular.”

She wasn’t. On our final lap she told me of her culinary training. It was nil. She once had wanted to enroll in Cordon Bleu, but Mike objected. One can always get the teacher to come cook for one. I was sort of pleased. I had mastered pasta, scrambled eggs and half a dozen other tricky dishes. This made me the expert who could introduce her to the kitchen.

On the way to my place—which takes longer if you drive than if you jog—we stopped for take-out Chinese food. I had enormous difficulty finalizing my selection.

“Problems?” Marcie asked, observing my exhaustive study of the menu.

“Yeah. I can’t make up my mind.”

“It’s only dinner,” Marcie said. And what she may have meant—or understood—I’ll never know.

I am sitting in my living room, trying to read last week’s Sunday
Times
and pretending that a lady in my bathroom showering is nothing extraordinary.

“Hey,” I heard her call, “the towels here are sort of . . . rancid.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you have clean ones?”

“No,” I said.

There was a pause.

“I’ll be okay,” she said.

The bathroom was suffused with smells of femininity. I thought my shower would be quick (I only had one lousy nozzle, after all), and yet the perfume made me stay. Or was I afraid to leave the reassuring flow of warmth?

I was emotional, all right. And hypersensitive. But strange to say, at this point in the evening with a woman out there waiting to play house with me according to my oddball rules, I couldn’t tell if I was happy or if I was sad.

I only knew that I was feeling.

Marcie Binnendale was in the kitchenette, pretending she could light a stove.

“You need
matches
, Marce,” I coughed, while quickly opening the window. “I’ll show you.”

“Sorry, friend,” she said, extremely ill at ease. “I’m lost in here.”

I warmed the Chinese food, took out some beer and poured an orange juice. Marcie set the (coffee) table.

“Where’d you get these knives and forks?” she asked.

“Oh, here and there.”

“I’ll say. No two pieces match.”

“I like variety.” (Yes. We had owned a total set. It’s stashed away with other stuff suggesting marriage.)

We sat down on the floor and had our dinner. I was as loose as my uptightness would allow. I wondered if the grunge of the apartment and its claustrophobic clutter made my guest nostalgic for her normal way of life.

“It’s nice,” she said. And touched my hand. “Do you have any music?”

“No.” (I’d given Jenny’s stereo away.)

“Nothing?”

“Just the radio that wakes me up.”

“Okay if I tune in to QXR?” she asked.

I nodded, tried to smile, and Marcie rose. The radio was by the bed. Which was some four or five steps’ journey from where we were camping. I was wondering if she’d return or wait for me to join her there. Could she notice my depression? Did she think my ardor had already waned?

Suddenly the telephone.

Marcie stood above it.

“Shall I answer, Oliver?”

“Why not?”

“It could be some little friend of yours,” she smiled.

“You flatter me. Impossible. You answer it.”

She shrugged and did.

“Good evening. . . . Yes, that number is correct. . . . It is. He’s . . . Who am
I?
How is that relevant?”

Who the hell was at the other end, interrogating my own private guests? I rose and sternly grabbed the phone.

“Yeah? Who is this?”

A silence on the other end was broken by a gravelly “Congratulations!”

“Oh—Phil.”

“Well, glory be to God,” the holy Cavilleri rolled.

“How are you, Phil?” I said casually.

He totally ignored my question while pursuing his.

“Is she nice?”

“Who, Philip?” I retorted icily.

“Her, the she, the gal who answered.”

“Oh, that’s just the maid,” I said.

“At ten o’clock at night? Come on—come off it. Level with me.”

“I mean my secretary. You recall Anita—with the lots of hair. I’m giving her some notes about my School Board case.”

“Don’t bullshit me. If that’s Anita, I’m the Cardinal of Cranston.”

“Phil, I’m busy.”

“Sure, I know. And I’ll hang up. But don’t tell me you’re gonna write no letters when I do.”

Philip, never one to talk in whispers, had been responding at a pitch so loud it broadcast through the whole apartment. Marcie was amused.

“Hey,” I inquired, so coolly I impressed myself, “when will we get together?”

“At the weddin’,” Philip said.

“Whaat?”

“Hey, is she tall or small? Or fat or thin? Or light or dark?”

“She’s pumpernickel.”

“Ah,” said Phil, and pounced upon my jocular detail, “you do admit that she’s a she. Now, does she like you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ignore the question. Sure she likes you. You’re terrific. If she needs some selling, I’ll just pep her on the phone. Hey—put her on.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Then she’s sold? She digs you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then what’s she doin’ in your house at ten
P.M
.?”

Tears of laughter poured down Marcie’s face. At
me
. Because I was so bad at playing Puritan.

“Oliver, I know I’m interruptin’, so I’ll ask you one quick question and the ball is yours to do with as your heart contents.”

“About our meeting, Phil—”

“Oliver, that’s not my question.”

“What’s your question, Philip?”

“When’s the weddin’, Oliver?”

He hung up loudly. I could sense his laughter all the way from Cranston.

“Who was that?” asked Marcie, though I’m sure she guessed. “He seems to love you very much.”

I looked at her with gratitude for understanding.

“Yeah. The feeling’s mutual.”

Marcie came and sat upon the bed. And took my hand.

“I know you feel uncomfortable,” she said.

“It’s sort of crowded here,” I answered.

“In your head as well. And mine.” We sat in silence. How much had she intuited?

“I never slept with Michael in the big apartment,” Marcie offered.

“I never slept with Jenny . . . here.”

“I understand,” she said. “But if I met his parents it would just evoke a headache or a touch of nausea. Anything that brings up Jenny is still agony for you.”

I could not refute a single thing she said.

“Should I go home?” she asked. “I’d really understand if you said yes.”

Without the slightest introspection—for it was the
only
way—I answered no.

“Let’s take a walk. And have a drink outside.”

Marcie had this strange take-over manner. I mean I liked her strength. And her ability to . . . cope with situations.

Wine for me and orange juice for her.

She sensed I wanted to hang in there, so she kept the conversation superficial. We discussed her occupation.

Not many of us know exactly what the presidents of chain stores
do
. It’s not that glamorous. They have to visit every store and walk down every single aisle.

“How often?”

“All the time. When I’m not doing that, I check the shows in Europe and the Orient. To get a feel for what the next big sexy thing might be.”

“What is ‘sexy’ in the business connotation, Marce?”

“When you wear that stupid cashmere thing I gave you, you promote our ‘fantasy’ or ‘sexy’ line. Look, twenty different stores can sell a simple sweater. But we’re always on the prowl for image-makers, items people never knew they needed. If we’re right, they see it in our ad and kill each other to be first in line. You dig?”

“In economic terms,” I said with Ivy League pomposity, “you build a false demand for a supply of what inherently is worthless.”

“Dull but accurate.” She nodded.

“Put in brighter terms, if you say, ‘Shit is in,’ then everybody buys manure.”

“Correct. Our only problem is if someone gets that brilliant notion first!”

Marcie’s car was parked (illegally) in front of my apartment. It was late when we got back. But I felt better. Or the wine had made me think I did.

“Well,” she said, “I’ve walked you home.”

Exquisite tact. I had both options now. I also knew which one I . . . needed.

“Marcie, if you go, you’ll sleep alone and I’ll sleep alone. In economic terms, that’s inefficient use of bedroom space. Would you agree?”

“I would,” she said.

“Besides, I’d really like to put my arms around you.”

She acknowledged a coincidental inclination.

Marcie woke me with a cup of coffee.

In a Styrofoam container?

“I couldn’t start the stove,” she said. “I went out to the corner shop.”