Second Chances (24 page)

“Oh, but you are, you don’t know.”

Dudley looked very bad, Sara thought. At least five years older than she had on the day when they walked on the grassy space above the sea. The day Sam died. Since then Dudley’s dark-blue eyes have
blurred, her skin reddened and ridged, and her mouth pulled narrower, all tight. She looks drowned, thinks Sara.

This quiet evening, with just the two of them, was repeated, and repeated. Celeste encouraged these visits of Sara to Dudley: “I’m perfectly fine alone,” she told Sara. “I
want
you to go to Dudley.”

One of Sara’s impulses, at first, was to insist that Dudley talk about how she felt, to bring up Sam. Death, dying. But another impulse, which at last won out, was to leave Dudley alone, to allow her to establish her own pace, her own moods for speech, or for silence.

Dudley’s idea, or instinct—it was hard to tell how conscious she was of what she did, at that time—was to speak when she did speak of Sam of happy days, good times. Years when Sam was working well, selling paintings, enjoying painter friends in the Cedar Bar. The fun that Sam and Dudley used to have: “The first few drinks were always so much fun,” Dudley tells Sara. “It’s the tenth or the thirteenth that do you in.” The trips, the romantic reconciliations after fights. But: “We were really addicted to each other, as well as to booze,” Dudley also says. “When we’d break up, after some horrible fight, I’d want to die, I literally did not see how I could go on living. Talk about withdrawal symptoms. And that’s just what I can’t have now. I can’t afford to.”

Fortunately there is a great deal for Dudley to do, of a practical nature. Sam’s four daughters, the lawyers, seem uncharacteristically united in their demands: they want Sam’s paintings. If possible, his letters. Sam (so like him) left no instructions, so that what she does about his girls is up to her—and to her very New England conscience.

Thus, during the first days and weeks that succeed Sam’s death, it does not even occur to Dudley to call Brooks Burgess. Nor does the thought of running amuck, Caitlin-style, cross her mind. She is entirely absorbed in “keeping busy,” in trying to believe that Sam is gone. He will not be around to hear the joke she just heard, although he would like it. He won’t be able to read the book she just finished, which he would appreciate. He won’t eat the second fillet of salmon
that out of habit Dudley just brought home. She
can’t remember
his death, to a degree that seems a form of madness. Or Alzheimer’s? Is that possible?

Thank God there is Sara, available for an impromptu salmon supper—for which she, Sara, devises a delicious mustard-caper sauce. Sara, for listening and for talk.

“It’s really so lucky that he died” is what Celeste has said, several times. To Sara, an astonishing statement. “So fortunate,” Celeste continues. “He could have been crippled or even paralyzed by a stroke. And Sam was such a vigorous, handsome, masculine man, that would have been terrible. He would have hated it! He was even spared horrible cancer, lingering for months the way poor Charles did. Such a blessing for Dudley too, although she probably doesn’t know it yet, poor dear.”

All perfectly true. All correct. But still.

“I can’t quite make out what Celeste is really saying,” Sara confides to Alex, having just repeated Celeste’s version of the death of Sam. “She keeps on using the word ‘lucky.’ It must drive Dudley crazy, although fortunately she’s so preoccupied, Dudley is, just holding herself together. I doubt if she hears very much. But Celeste, I’m sure she means something. She’s signaling, and I’m not getting the message.”

“She means that she wants to die,” Alex tells her after a pause.

“Oh, Alex. Christ, do you really think so?”

“Yes I do. She must.”

They both are silent then, long moments of long distance, until Sara says, “You must be right. She thinks the dead are lucky. She’s tired of being alive. Oh—
shit
.”

“I’m, after all, six years older than Sam is—was” is what Edward remarks, and repeats, and repeats, to Freddy.

“Darling Edward, I know how old you are. And now I know Sam’s age quite as well.” Freddy is unable to control a certain snappishness: of course it is too bad, really awful about poor Sam, whom Freddy really liked, as everyone did. But need Edward be quite so lugubrious?
What good does that do? Need he take Sam’s death quite so personally? “Sam’s dying does not mean that you’re going to die any sooner,” Freddy at last is able to formulate.

But I don’t feel well, Edward decides not to say. I cough a lot, I feel weak. Hypochondriacs get sick too, you mean little Mexican prick. And even though we haven’t had sex for years—for seven, exactly—I could still get AIDS. He says none of this.

“I think we need cheering up,” Freddy tells him. “I think I will make a small party, a little dinner. With your favorite
huachinango
.”

“
Al mojo de ajo
.” Edward smiles, if thinly. A party with Mexican food is one of the last things he would choose, at this moment. But, “How nice,” he gamely agrees.

“I will even make the phone calls,” says Freddy, which is not exactly a sacrifice on his part; he enjoys telephoning quite as much as Edward hates it (a considerable drawback in Edward’s real-estate dealings).

The results of his phoned invitations are somewhat mixed, Freddy sometime later reports back to Edward. Sara would love to come, but she is not quite sure about Celeste, who is not there at the moment. Celeste has not been terribly well this week; Sara thinks she might have gone to see a doctor.

Dudley is really sorry, but a daughter of Sam’s has shown up in San Francisco, and Dudley is driving up to meet her for dinner, she’ll stay over at the El Drisco. “It’s really easier than having her down here,” Dudley tells Freddy. “Besides she’s always been rather nice, comparatively. She’s the only one of them who did not want to examine Sam’s will.”

Polly can’t come. “Have you noted how Polly is never free on Thursday nights?” Freddy asks Edward.

“It’s her secret-lover night.”

They both laugh, companionably.

“Well, so far only Sara for sure.” Freddy frowns. “Lord, what a small circle we really are. To lose Charles, and then Sam has reduced us to almost nothing. What we need are some additions.”

Freddy’s small perfect cleft chin goes up, a gesture that Edward knows well—and admires; Freddy does it beautifully.

“I do hope Celeste will be able to come, after all,” murmurs Edward.

*  *  *

Celeste does not come.

“Quite honestly I just don’t feel up to it,” she tells Sara. “You young people,” she vaguely adds.

“Celeste, you really worry me,” Sara can’t help saying. “If you don’t feel well—”

“Sara, my dear, I’m quite all right. Really. But frankly I’ve had more to deal with, as you put it, than I can, this past year. Charles, and then Sam. And then that Bill behaving so very strangely. It’s as though I’d taken a stranger into the house and been robbed.”

This is actually Celeste’s first admission of upset over Bill. And so far, out of character, Sara has refrained from asking, or from making any comment on his total, continued absence. This unaccustomed discretion comes partly from not knowing what to say—as in fact she still does not. “It could have nothing to do with you, dear Celeste,” she attempts. “He could have had to go somewhere else on business.”

Celeste’s laugh is light, quite unconvincing. “For the IRS? Really, Sara.”

“Well, they do travel about, getting after people. But maybe he’s off for more antiques. To Central America, or somewhere. I think I have to tell you, Celeste, I don’t have good feelings about this Bill.”

“You never liked him, I knew that.”

“Celeste, it honestly isn’t as simple as not liking. I told you, he reminded me a lot of someone I knew, who was really bad. And for all I know he really was that person.”

“And you think he ran off when you recognized him? Sara darling, what a melodramatic imagination. I think it’s his way of saying he doesn’t want to get married.”

“And he drinks too much, not to mention—”

“Sara, please. Enough. I really find this all very upsetting. Let’s not discuss Bill further.”

Arrived a little late at Edward’s and Freddy’s, Sara is relieved to see the pretty table set only for three.

“Well, as you can see, we’re only three tonight,” unnecessarily
announces Edward, as after drinks he leads the way toward their small and elegant dining room. “I hope you won’t mind.”

“As a matter of fact I’m most pleased,” responds Sara very warmly. “I had some odd instinct that you might have asked that David. I still can’t get over Celeste’s inviting him—for me.”

A glance passes between Edward and Freddy: brief, opaque. And then Freddy tells Sara, “As a matter of fact he almost was. We thought of it—we were afraid just us would bore you. But you mean that you actually have something against our adorably friendly David?”

“Frankly he gives me the pip,” announces Sara.

Dinner is a blackened redfish that smells strongly of garlic, at which Sara exclaims, “Oh, my favorite smell. I never get enough garlic.”

“Well, quite possibly tonight you will” is Edward’s somewhat dry comment.

“It’s wonderful.” Digging in, Sara smiles across to Freddy, as she thinks, How nice these men are, how enviable, in a way, with their cozy life. Together.

And next she thinks, Could I do this? Could I live like this with someone? These involuntary questions are new to Sara, she has never thought at all in those terms before. And so she further thinks, What is this, some forty-year-old softening of the head? But the image persists: a house with regular furniture, meals cooked in a kitchen. Clean bathrooms. Some permanence with another person. And, startlingly, she recognizes that that person who shares the newspaper at breakfast and sleeps next to her in the same bed every night—that person, that man is Alex.

Well. Jesus, Sara thinks. Jesus, I might have known.

“And then there’s ‘Bill,’ ” says Freddy somewhat later. His quirky eyebrows as he looks at Sara, saying this, make it a question.

Sara starts to say: What a horrible guy, I can’t stand him, he’s a cokehead who really hates women. And I’m almost sure he’s FBI, I used to sort of know him, I think. But some out-of-character caution stops her from saying any of that, and she only says, “Yes, there’s Bill.”

Her tone, though, has evidently given away more than she intended. Edward and Freddy look first at each other (an enviably intimate exchange, Sara feels), and then they both laugh.

“Not, one gathers, your favorite person?” It is Edward who has said this.

And Freddy: “He is a little much. So, so friendly, I have to tell you. He made me very suspicious.”

“Suspicious? Why?” False-innocent Sara.

“Just the way he was coming on to me. So interested in everything I’m doing in San Francisco. All about gay activism. And he is not a gay person, he simply is not. There’s no reason for him to be interested in everything we do.”

“That’s probably what he’s told to do in est, or wherever it is he’s been,” Edward tells Freddy. “In my day it was Dale Carnegie,
How to Make Friends and Influence People
.”

Sara laughs. “That could be just what Bill’s been reading.”

“Or he could be INS,” says Freddy darkly, and seriously. “Trying to throw me out of the country on some technicality,
GAY MEXICAN ACTIVIST EXPELLED
. Or maybe just
QUEER SPIC OUSTED
.”

Sara laughs, although she of course finds this alarmingly close to her own line of thought. How interesting that Bill should be almost universally perceived as a spy, is one of her thoughts.

“I imagine he’s just nosy,” Edward puts in. “And he’s somehow got the idea that asking personal questions is attractive.” He frowns. “The real problem of course is with Celeste. Just what does he want of her, or imagine that he will get?”

Freddy grins. “My dirty little mind says money,” he tells them.

“That’s got to have something to do with it, at least,” Sara agrees. “An undemanding, elegant older woman. And Celeste’s a terrific listener. Sometimes.”

“Undemanding?” Edward laughs. “Our adorable martinet? Little does he know, is all I can say.”

Sara too laughs, but she says, “What Celeste really demands is that people be strong and independent, I think. She wants everyone to be like her.” And then she says, “I have some hunch that we won’t see Bill around anymore, though. I think he got some other assignment, or something.”

“Whatever do you mean?” they ask her, more or less in chorus.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe some richer older woman somewhere else. Or gold in South America. I think he’s what used to be called an adventurer.”

*  *  *

Although she was late for dinner, Sara still finds it possible to leave early, pleading worry over Celeste—whom in fact she is quite sure to find sound asleep.

Thus she gets back to the house a little after ten. She opens the front door, and goes through the atrium to the living room. As, at just that moment, the phone begins to ring.

It is Alex—of course. Alex, very excited. “Sit down,” he says. “I have something to tell you. Strong news.”

Seating herself on the somewhat stiff white linen sofa, Sara almost knows what she is about to hear. And in the instant before Alex speaks she experiences an inner tremble—and a wish that she had been wrong.

But, “You were absolutely right,” Alex tells her. “Your ‘Bill,’ Bill Jones is William Jones Priest. Who was and is CIA.”

“Oh.” After a pause Sara adds, “I don’t ask you how you found out?”

“No. Don’t. I might be tempted to tell you. Just think of it as my own Deep Throat.” And he laughs a little.

Sara is fairly sure that his source is someone he knew through his father from the old, early and relatively innocent CIA days, the old forties. Someone leftover from that era and (usefully for them) still there.

She shivers, sitting in the overheated room. “I’m really scared now,” she tells Alex.

“You mean that you’re not sure he cropped up in your life again by accident?”

“There are no accidents.” She tries to laugh. “But that’s just the hell of it. I don’t know.”