Random Hearts (22 page)

"It will be like looking for a needle in a
haystack," he told her. It seemed like a gratuitous warning, as if he were
still testing her interest.

"As long as it takes," she said, pouring the
coffee. Last night he had sensed the intimacy between them. This morning it
frightened him.

He had slept well, with little disorientation, knowing
exactly where he was. Before falling asleep he had listened to the sounds she
made as she moved. Once, in the middle of the night, he had awakened.
Straining, he imagined he could hear the rhythm of her breathing. He must have
fallen asleep again while listening. When he awoke, he was certain that her own
waking movements had nudged him out of sleep.

Dressing quickly, he took special care, wanting to look
neat and presentable before she arrived. He felt like a teenager on his first
date.

When she came down in the morning, she looked bright and
fresh. Her hair was clean and fluffy, and she moved in an aura of a sweet
lovely scent. It felt good seeing her.

"You smell good," he told her, feeling an odd
thrill in the center of him.

"Just Arpege."

Peripherally, he felt her eyes probing him.

"You know it?"

"Not at all." It seemed curious for her to ask.

"I was afraid it might be hers," she said,
averting her gaze. It gave him an excuse to move closer, sniffing. It felt very
good to be close to her.

"Did you sleep well?"

"The best since..." He hesitated and then felt no
need to finish the sentence.

"I'm glad."

To show her his sense of purpose, he opened the maps,
leaned toward her, and pointed to the area where they would look first. The
idea had expanded in his mind, and he felt the need to repeat the plan he had
outlined last night. They would take it piece by piece, he explained. First, they
would check all the apartment houses within the area that used Yale locks. That
would narrow down the search.

"And then?"

"Where we can, we'll try them apartment by apartment.
At some we'll have to enlist the help of a resident manager or a janitor. Someone
usually has a passkey where the teeth match up. We'll have to play it as it
goes."

If she had any doubts about the process, she said nothing.

"You still agree there is nothing more important than
this?" he asked tentatively. He had walked a very thin line of logic,
outlining what seemed a monumental, almost impossible, task. He wondered if she
thought the idea half-baked.

"Of course."

"It's a psychological necessity."

"Absolutely."

Was mere consent enough of a commitment? Mostly he feared
that something would intervene to abort the idea, force them from the task. Did
the goals need restating? Would she lose interest or confidence in the idea? He
must, above all, not show her any doubt on his part.

She drove his car. At each apartment within the area, he
got out and checked the type of locks used. Where he was stopped at a reception
desk, he would pose as a salesman from a key company. Since the information
seemed innocuous, he managed to ferret it out quickly. Sometimes, when
confronting an unmanned security system, he checked the lock with a copy of the
key. Few were of the Yale variety, and those that he found did not fit, for
which he was secretly thankful. It was still too soon. When he found an
apartment house that used Yale locks, he went back to the car, and Vivien noted
the address in a notebook they had purchased.

During the first day he came to some inescapable
conclusions. In keeping with Orson's and Lily's sense of cunning and secrecy,
they would not have chosen an apartment with a reception desk. Or even a lobby
with a doorman. What they required was a place with easy access and no prying
eyes. They would also need available parking, preferably a parking lot. They
were, after all, on a tight schedule. He explained his reasoning. She nodded thoughtfully.

"Am I thinking like Orson?"

"Yes. He would consider details like that."

"He was methodical?"

"Yes. Totally organized."

"If he didn't think like this, this entire operation
wouldn't wash." It was more a question than a statement, offered by way of
reassurance.

"Yes, I would say so."

It had not occurred to him until they were heading home
after the first day's excursion that his reasoning had narrowed the search.

Over dinner, at a small Italian restaurant in McLean, he
reviewed the addresses of apartments that had Yale locks. He was surprised how
many used them.

They ordered white pizza, pasta with clam sauce, and white
wine. Edward noted that Vivien ate more heartily than Lily, who picked at her
food. He observed, too, that her fingers were less languid in the way they
moved, stronger. Physically, Lily was more wiry, more fragile looking, although
on balance the comparison did not make Vivien seem less delicate.

The texture of her hair was different as well: Lily's had a
silky quality, Vivien's had a natural curl, an elasticity that made it bounce
when she walked. Eating silently, head slightly lowered, he had the impression
that she was welcoming the inspection. He wondered if she was enjoying it, as
he was.

Vivien's eyes were smaller, despite the difference in their
size—Vivien was at least a head taller. Lily had large eyes, wide, dark pools
set in well-defined bones, and an aquiline Mediterranean nose; Vivien's was
smaller, fleshier. A tremor of rage bubbled up from his gut. Orson's women!
When he lifted his wineglass, his hand trembled. A picture of Orson rose in his
mind, a large floating face with ill-defined futures. He wondered suddenly how
his voice had sounded.

"What did he say?" he asked, his query oblique,
as if he were ashamed to ask.

"Say?"

"I mean, what did you talk about?" Anger ebbed,
although his curiosity hardened.

"When?"

Her eyebrows arched with confusion.

"Like now. If he were here instead of me, what would
you be talking about?"

She shook her head, and her hair bounced.

"Ben, I suppose. Yes. I would tell him about Ben. I
always told him about Ben."

"I mean talk. Between you. That's more like a
report."

"Household, matters, perhaps. He would tell me things
about the office."

"Things?"

"Incidents." Her fingers tapped the table.
"Actually, he never talked about the office much." She was looking
down at her plate. "The food. We might have talked about the food. No—the
wine. He was very interested in wine."

"Nothing more meaningful?"

"Like what?"

"Aspirations? Ambitions? What you both felt inside?
Plans? People? Did you talk about people?"

"I did," she said brightly, as if she had found a
hook on which to hang an adequate answer. Then she shook her head. "I'm
sorry, Edward. We certainly talked, but I can't seem to remember what
about."

"Politics, books, art, movies, television?"

"He seldom watched TV, and we rarely went to the
movies."

"All right, then, the newspapers. Topics that you
might have come across."

"I read the morning paper," she said pointedly.
"Of course, he was already gone."

"Health. Did he talk about health? He was a
jogger."

"On occasion," she said. "When he first
started to jog, he talked about the cardiovascular system. He also took
vitamins and talked about that sometimes. Not often. Sometimes when we were
with other people, he talked about that."

"Money, then? Did you talk about money?"

"No. Not often. He simply deposited money into my
account, and I took out what I needed. Like a household allowance. I saved
nearly ten thousand dollars."

"I'm running out of categories," Edward said,
slightly exasperated. "You're teasing me?"

"No, I'm not. Not all communication is based on talk,
you know." It was a feeble defense, and he was sure she knew it.

"I'm getting a picture of a rather quiet man."

"He was quiet."

"You didn't play games? Cards? Bridge? Scrabble?"

"No. He hated games." She shrugged.
"Sorry."

"Then what in hell made him so damned
interesting?" He had raised his voice. A couple at the next table looked
at them.

"To Lily or to me?"

"To both of you."

She sighed, sipped her wine, then motioned with her index
finger, a kind of no-no gesture.

"We were a married couple. We shared a present, a
child. It was never a question of interesting. He was part of a shared life. He
worked very hard and liked what he was doing." She looked into her
wineglass, inspecting. "Mostly he read law briefs. I read novels,
best-sellers. He was a rising young Washington lawyer."

"All right. So he was successful."

Was it a stab of jealousy? She looked up at him, waiting
patiently for the next question. She had, he admitted, submitted gamely, like a
patient undergoing medical tests. The level of anxiety seemed to be higher on
his side.

"I'm trying to be scrupulously accurate," she
said.

"It sounds boring."

"But it wasn't." It was, he was sure, a protest
to his conclusion, not a defense of Orson.

"Where was the excitement?" He kept his voice
controlled.

"Excitement?"

It had become an abstract interrogation, and for some
reason he felt she was decoying him off the scent, deliberately protecting some
inner part of herself.

"Maybe I've used the wrong word," he corrected,
his frustration rising. Again, she seemed to read his mind.

"How about contentment?" she asked.

"Sounds like something you do when you get old."

"Put it another way, then, Edward. I was satisfied. I
had my house and family. I know, measured against Lily it must sound deadly
dull. It's all right.... "She looked up at him, her eyes wide with
apology. "I've had to defend what I had become before. I'm used to it. I
know, I'm running counter to the times. Nor am I rationalizing because I did
not choose to go out and fight the world. I'm all for the equality of women,
but the hard fact is that I liked being a housewife. I liked my persona as
"wife of." I liked the idea of having a man. My man. I never felt
boring or submissive. Not then." She lifted her wineglass. "I thought
he liked his life, too. Shows you." She took a deep gulp of the wine.
"Maybe I imagined him." She laughed suddenly, eyes narrowing.

He paid the check, and they went back to her house. She was
silent as they drove. When they came into the house, she straightened his couch
bed, mumbled some perfunctory remarks about "being bushed," and went
upstairs.

He knew he had offended her, and it upset him.

Sometime in the middle of the night her anger erupted. She
had not slept. Resentment gnawed at her. How dare he try to assign blame? His
implication had been quite clear. She was a boring little housewife, and Orson
was primed, conditioned by a dull life, to climb into the arms of the first
strange woman he encountered. Well, it was his wife. What the hell was her life
like? Maybe she, too, was bored. Bored by him.

Putting a robe over her dressing gown and running a brush
through her hair, she marched down the stairs. The lamp next to the couch
flashed on as she reached the landing. Edward was squinting up at her, rubbing
his eyes. He sat up. His torso was bare.

"What is it?"

"I couldn't sleep," she said, pacing, then
alighting on the chair opposite the couch.

"Now me," she said. "There are things I need
to know."

"Now?" Watching him, an odd note of comparison
charged out at her. Orson always slept with pressed pajamas, which she had laid
out neatly under his pillow.

"What did Lily talk about ... with you?" It had
come out more like an accusation, which she did not regret. "I'm expecting
the same candor," she warned.

"Of course.... "He paused thoughtfully.
"I've been thinking a lot about our life together, Lily's and mine. She
was very much involved with her work—fashion. She knew all the designers, and
she was always asking my opinion. ‘What do you think of this Adolpho, that De
La Renta, this Rykiel?' In retrospect, I evolved a whole series of automatic
answers: A bit daring. Too overemphasized. No grace. Colors too primary.
Comments like that. I wanted to look interested, but I really wasn't, you
understand. I was proud of her, of course. But I didn't have a visceral
interest in her work."

"And you? What did you talk about?" she
persisted.

"My job. The Congressman. Snippets of office gossip.
Again, in retrospect, her interest was probably as lukewarm about my work as
mine was about fashion. Actually, she didn't really like politics. To her
credit, she said so. I never told her how I felt about fashion."

"So what did you share?" She felt pugnacious,
aggressive.

"We were absorbed in our individual work."

He seemed discomfited, and it gave her some satisfaction.

"We did go to the movies when we could," he said.
"Ate in different restaurants. Twice we went to Europe—once we toured
England, and we spent two weeks on the Riviera. That was fun. We did make plans
for other vacations, and we read the travel folders."

"Orson and I would sometimes go to France on one of
his business trips. I liked that."

"But it was outside ourselves, a diversion."

"Did you argue?"

"Not much." He shrugged. "Sometimes it would
aggravate her that I wasn't more positive in my views—like when she decorated
the apartment. I think she would have liked me to be more decisive."

"Why weren't you?"

"What mattered was that she was happy with what she
got. I was satisfied with most of her decisions. What I mean is that much of
what she did, well, it didn't matter as much to me. I was content..." He
stopped short and looked at her, confused.

"There," she said smugly.

"Secure, then."

"What about happy? What ever happened to happy?"

"I suppose I was happy."

"So was I. You weren't bored?"

He stroked his chin, and the blanket slipped below his
waist. She noted from the bit of haired flesh revealed that he was completely
nude.

"No, I wasn't."

"You like being married?"

"Yeah. I suppose I did. It was a lot better than being
alone. Before I was married, I was alone a great deal."

"What about friends?"

"Oh, I had friends. But after we got married, we sort
of narrowed the circle. Socially, things revolved around what each of us was
doing. I guess the bottom line was that we had each other."

She watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed with
difficulty.

"At least, I thought so. Yes," he said bitterly,
"I thought so."

"You had someone in the whole wide world that you
could trust."

He nodded.

"Someone you could commit your life to."

"Like the vows said: In sickness and in health. Till
death do us part." His lip curled into a smile. As it formed, it became a
snarl. "There's an irony for you."

"You never once thought that you had made a mistake?
That it wasn't the least bit what you had expected?"

"No, I really didn't."

"That you had made the wrong choice?"

"No, I didn't. I liked coming home to Lily. I liked
being with her. I liked looking at her." His voice lowered. He seemed to
be forcing his eyes to stare at her. "Touching her. Sleeping side by side
with her."

"It didn't sound like it ... earlier"—she thought
in graphic terms, but she couldn't bring herself to say it—"when you
discussed making love."

If he sensed her sudden inhibition, he gave no indication.
She felt an odd tingle deep inside her, a growing need.

"You adjust." He shrugged. "If you make too
big a deal of it, you create problems. I lived with it. Not everything melts at
the same heat." He looked toward her, started to say more, then pouted.

"Am I embarrassing you?"

"A little."

"You never looked at another woman?"

"Looked? Yes, I looked. That's human, isn't it? But I
never went beyond that. It was an article of faith..."

Inexplicably, she felt relentless.

"Do you think she was frustrated? As a woman? A mass
of unfulfilled inner needs?"

"Maybe." He said it slowly, watching her.
"All of us are frustrated, one way or another. Nobody gets everything he
wants. Or needs." Inside, his older view of his marriage was in flux. Like
hers. A battleground.

Why did we marry who we did? she wondered. Had she
overstepped, cast blame? By then her anger had dwindled, and she felt she owed
him something.

"Do you think Orson was?" she asked.

His eyes widened. "How could I know that?"

"You're a man. What is it that men want?"

"I can't speak for all men," he muttered.
"Only for myself."

"Well, then..."

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "In retrospect, I can
see all the missed possibilities." She felt his eyes bore through her.
"You don't know what you've missed until you miss it. Right?"

She shrugged, then nodded.

"What about you?" he asked. "Sounds like you
were as content, fulfilled, and satisfied as a pig in swill."

"Now that's an ugly way to put it."

"Sorry."

Had she been, as he put it, a pig in swill? She wasn't
quite as sure as she had been. Perhaps in a clinical way, if one used as
evidence what was written in popular magazines, designed to make women feel
inadequate, she could classify herself as discontent. As they say, the earth
didn't move. But then she never truly believed it was supposed to.

"Can't we stop apologizing?"

"All right. But something was obviously missing
somewhere," Edward said. The remark rekindled her anger.

"Maybe if they were alive, we could all sit down and
discuss it—the four of us. Then we'd know why."

"I've upset you."

"Maybe something was missing in them. Ever look at it
that way?"

She stood up. Would it always be like this, the chronic
uncertainty, the gnawing presumption of inadequacy? Even when they came to the
end of the maze, found all the paths? That was the ultimate fear: never really
knowing the truth of it. She felt the urge to strike out at Edward, confront
him with his abysmal lack of perception, his appalling ignorance. He was a man,
dammit. He should have known. Couldn't a man tell when his wife was cheating?

"How could you not know?"

"And you," he snapped.

"I'm going up now," she said, sweeping her
dressing gown around her.

Lying in bed, frightened and inert, she listened to the
sounds of her pumping heart. There had been some promise in the idea, a ray of
hope. Now a dark curtain had come down, shutting out the light.

"It's a question of finding out. Isn't that what we're
doing?"

His voice was in the room. Rising on her elbows, she saw
his outline looming over her. He had wrapped the blanket around his waist.

"Finding out what?"

She did not reach for the light.

"We agreed to be truthful," he stammered.

"I was."

"Too much so. It hurt me, too."

She softened somewhat and stole a look at him; the bare
chest, the bulking silhouette. In the darkness, his features were vague, but
there was no mistaking the hurt.

"I wasn't boring. I never felt boring."

"I didn't say you were."

"I was efficient, devoted, loyal and, yes,
loving."

"So was I. You don't marry somebody for
entertainment." Again, she felt the heat of her anger.

"I know that." He must have seen the rage rising,
for his voice was lower, placating.

"When you describe it honestly, it does sound
uninteresting. But it goes deeper than that. You're together to do a life, to
make a family, to offer emotional support. Maybe we didn't discuss politics or
art or movies or television or his law business. Not everything that passes
between a husband and wife falls into a category. I mean, if he had a headache
and complained about it and I gave him an aspirin, what would that come under?
Nursing?"

"Vivien, really..."

"And what about support? Plain old-fashioned prop-up
support. The kind that lifts you when you're down and joins the cheering
section when you're up. I've done my share of both, but I can't count that
under any category either."

"Really, Viv, I hadn't meant..."

But she was deep into it now, unstoppable.

"No. I didn't have any special interests outside of
Orson and Ben. I didn't have hobbies. I didn't join clubs. You might say I was
an outsider in a way, which might have made me somewhat dull, although I never
thought of myself as dull. This was a part of my life reserved for wifing and
motherhood. I can't help the biological clock. Some women just breeze through
it happily. I thought I was one of those." For a moment she waffled; a
wave of self-pity crested, broke, then went past her. Still her anger was not
fully vented. She tried to penetrate the shadows between them.

"I know what you're really after." She grew
suddenly cautious, then angry again. "Men and their ... their things.
That's the standard for everything. You want to know about our sex life."

"It's just one factor. A piece of the puzzle, I
suppose."

"I never once refused him. Not once. Pallid, placid
little Vivien. Always available. Only he wasn't too peachy keen most of the
time. He wasn't always, as they say, hot to trot. I suppose you can blame me
for that as well." She paused, feeling a sly malevolence rise inside her.
"I'd like to know more about your little woman. Did you move the earth for
her?"

"No, I didn't," he said, "if that's what you
want to know."

His answer calmed her. There was no mistaking his sad
regret. Wasn't it, after all, a prime measure of manhood to be capable of
giving a woman satisfaction? Or was that another old-fashioned shibboleth to
keep women lying, faking passion? As she did. What bothered her most was the
indelicate way in which men treated the process, the act. Orson was, at first,
gentle, caring. It was lovely to nestle in his arms, to feel him deep inside
her. Something had changed later. In him? Or her? She couldn't be sure.
Nevertheless, the exchange of flesh was still an act of faith between them, a
renewal of the bond. Did it always have to be measured in ecstatic pleasure?

Perhaps it was futile to berate this man, torture him
further. It may be, she thought, that the chasm of understanding between men
and women was simply impossible to bridge. Reaching over the space between the
beds, she touched his arm.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Maybe it's also a
category. Classify it as blowing off steam. I never did with Orson."

"Maybe you should have."

All anger had seeped away.

"There was just nothing to fight about. Or I didn't
see it. Funny, how much more aware I am now. A little late. Too soon old und
too late shmart, as the Pennsylvania Dutch say."

In the darkness she felt the grip of strong fingers on her
hand. With his other hand he was stroking her arm, and her skin broke into
goose bumps. But she did not pull away. He moved across the space to her bed
and held her. She felt the warmth of his flesh against hers, her nipples
hardening against his bare chest. His arms encircled her, and she brought hers
around him, stroking his back and shoulders. He was trembling.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"I don't really know."

Her fingers stroked the nape of his neck, and his reached
into her hair. Shivers shot through her. The inevitable comparison surfaced in
her mind, the different touch, the different aroma, the softer body. His hands
fondled her breasts. Was he, too, inspecting, comparing? She desperately wanted
to know what was going through his mind at precisely this moment. If she asked,
would she get a truly honest answer? She did not ask. In men, sex seemed an
imperative, an uncontrollable urgency. At this point Orson would be spearing
into her, beginning the inevitable primal stroke.

They stretched out on the single bed. Holding her gently,
he made no move to enter; his hands gently explored, as if he were frightened
her flesh might tear at the slightest movement. She held him, caressing him as
if he were a small boy. Like Ben, she thought. When she kissed him, his lips
were firm and warm, his probing tongue gentle and caressing.

Often with Orson she had concentrated with all the power of
some inner force, waiting for the signals to begin of the ecstasy that rarely
came. Yet with quiet, enduring patience, she had listened for his impending
shudder, anticipated by a storm of shortened breaths and heated flesh, as he
moved with relentless energy to what she assumed was the imperative moment of
joy. Always, it was mysterious, a ferocious, private, male experience.
Sometimes, when he had rolled off her and his steady breathing indicated that
he had slipped into an alien world she wondered if what had occurred had
anything at all to do with her.