Secrecy (20 page)

She must hold on to some dignity. She sat quite still. Even her face muscles went still, and her tears stopped.

She looked up at him, trying to smile, saying once more, “I’m sorry. It came over me.… My stomach … I’m sorry.”

“Please, will you stop saying you’re sorry?”

“Sometimes my stomach does queer things.… Nothing serious.… Such a nuisance.”

For a few moments Peter studied her thoughtfully. Then, as if he had reached a conclusion, he said quietly, “I don’t believe you’re physically sick, Charlotte.”

There was a long pause, by the end of which she, too, had reached a conclusion.

“It’s true, I’m not. I guess the least I can do is to be truthful with you. The truth is in my head. Everything just suddenly—it just suddenly went away.”

“I see,” he said. “Just went away.” His tone that had been so concerned and kindly turned cold. She understood that he saw this disaster as a rejection of his manhood.

“Oh,” she cried then, “I’m so ashamed! I came here wanting the same thing you wanted, you know I did. You do know it. I never meant to give you the wrong idea. I’m not a tease. I have only contempt for women like that. You are the most wonderful man, so bright, so handsome—” She began to sob.

At that he laid his hand on her shoulder and comforted. “Don’t, don’t. Do you want to tell me your trouble? Let me help you.”

She shook her head, whispering so low that she
did not know whether he heard or not, “It’s impossible. You must be so furious with me, Peter, because I can’t tell you the whole truth, after all.”

At any rate, he kept standing there, stroking her back, while within Charlotte the same imploring question kept repeating itself: Am I to keep this incubus with me forever? At long, long intervals, so long that she was sometimes sure it had left for good, it always returned. That it should have returned at this crucial moment tonight, was cruel. Cruel!

After a long while she grew quiet inside and raised her head. “You must be so furious with me, Peter.”

“I’m not angry, Charlotte,” he answered gently.

Well, maybe not that, but baffled, frustrated, and in a hurry to be rid of her. So she struggled up from the sofa, aware, too, of the humiliating picture they must be making in their state of undress, a pair of lovers who had not loved.

“It’s cold,” Peter said. “The heat goes down after eleven. You’d better get your clothes on.”

I’m wretched, she thought as she replaced the dress, the pumps, and the festive pearls that in a state of joyous excitement she had first put on.

When she reappeared in the outer room, the tray was gone, and there were two cups of coffee on the table.

“Decaffeinated,” Peter said. “I remembered. No, don’t protest. We’ll have a half cup and then I’ll take you home.”

He was back in his suit with his tie done properly. The picture had changed. Had things turned out as expected, Charlotte would have found humor—Peter
had often remarked her sense of humor—in reflecting how so much depends on clothing. This distraught pair had changed ten minutes after the debacle into a decorous couple having their decorous after-dinner coffee.

“You’re so kind,” she said, “considering what I’ve done. So kind.”

“You don’t have to apologize. You don’t have to make all the right noises. Take it easy. You’re miserable. You’re in some sort of trouble, and all I can do is to offer again to help you.”

“I don’t want to be secretive, Peter. But there are some things that a person can’t talk about.”

“I suppose not. I suppose there’s not one of us who doesn’t have something hidden.”

“Only believe that this had nothing at all to do with you. Nothing at all.”

“I believe you,” he answered gravely.

When they arrived at her door, he simply kissed her cheek and walked fast away. She went inside, lay down on her bed, and wept.

She did not hear from him. On the first day after the disaster, she thought that he had not telephoned because he did not want to disturb her. When two more days passed, it was clear that he was not going to call. The brutality of this first stunned and then crushed her. Had she been so worthless to him that he could simply dispense with her as one returns a defective article to the store?

She took her seat in the back row of the classroom, from where she was only able to glimpse him
between heads. At the end of the hour he did not linger. And she knew that he was avoiding her. How dare he treat her like that? A violent hatred rose into her throat and clenched her teeth.

After all, there was no reason why he should burden himself with her mysterious sorrow, was there? Had she not told him that she would not talk about it? He had decided, undoubtedly, that she was profoundly, pathetically neurotic. There were plenty of women who could come to him without bringing such baggage.… So gradually, the hatred seeped away, leaving behind it a dull resentment toward what had been her fate, along with a sickening sense of humiliation.

He continued to mark her papers with A’s, which she knew she deserved, for she was working harder than ever; work was now her distraction, escape from the loneliness of loss. Had she really been in love with him? Perhaps no one ever could know the difference between love and infatuation until a long time had passed; if it endured, then one would know it had been love. And yet she was certain that it had been love.

She began again to have more frequent nightmares, in which Ted came back and terrified her. He followed her through the streets into her house, and was there beside her bed when she awoke, so that when she actually did wake up in the apartment here, he was present, just as he had been that night in Peter’s room.

She knew, of course, that Ted was the barrier to
sex and love and everything except her work. Had he not been the barrier between Peter and her? What she did not know was how to get past him. Go for “help” again? More than once, after much inner resistance, she had done just that, but “help,” however professional, did not infallibly help.

“Get out among people,” Elena would say, that being her remedy for virtually every ailment. Charlotte, however, was not Elena. Time alone would either cure her, or it would not.

Shortly before graduation on one of those late spring days that are so blue and green and blossom-filled, so sheerly perfect as to seem unreal, she met him crossing the campus. And wanting to test herself before taking leave of this place and of him forever, she stopped to speak.

“I hear that you’re getting a promotion,” she said boldly, and smiled. “I hope you’ll be very happy, Peter.”

He thanked her, and they stood for a moment, uncertainly, under the trees. There he was with the same fresh, outdoor look and the same lambent eyes that had so enchanted her, yet now there was a terrible embarrassment between them. All passion spent, she thought again. And she wondered whether, sometime or somewhere, it might ever be rekindled. No doubt it was foolish to have such a thought. Or was it?

“And what are you planning after graduation?” he asked.

“I have a job in Boston. It’s with a fairly young
firm, but they’re up and coming, and they’ve taken me on,” she said with some pride.

He told her that he was glad for her and that he wished her well.

“You are going to be a great success, as I told you,” he said sincerely. “Mark my words.”

Like formal strangers they shook hands and went in opposite directions.

T
he Lauriers were an interesting couple, he from French Canada and she with an ancestry going back to the first settlers of Boston in 1600-and-something. Both in their early forties, they had migrated first from a firm that concentrated solely on restorations and strict reproductions—“broken arches, dental moldings, and Palladian windows,” said Rudy—to one that had bestrewed America’s cities with office towers—“faceless concrete slabs,” said Pauline—and had finally decided to start out for themselves.

Their office filled three floors of an old brick building. They had started with two draftsmen and already needed one more.

Pauline told Charlotte, “I think we will get along very well.”

She reminded Charlotte of Claudia. There certainly was no physical resemblance between them, since Pauline was dark haired and thin as a stick, nor
did she have Claudia’s calm gestures and thoughtful way of speaking, but her cheerful, commonsense approach was Claudia’s. Charlotte suspected, too, that underneath the surface lay a softness that Rudy would monitor and, when necessary, curb much as Cliff did with Claudia.

“You have an impressive record. What parts of the training had most appeal for you?” Pauline had asked.

“I guess I’d say design and land regulation, how to make buildings fit the environment and people’s lives.”

“Then you speak my language, Charlotte. Rudy can worry over structural engineering all by himself.” Pauline laughed. “He’s a whiz at it, too, which I’m not.”

There was a friendly, an almost homelike, atmosphere in the busy little firm. The two others in the drafting room were Mike, newly married, and Rosalyn, newly widowed. Mike found a small apartment for Charlotte in the building where he lived, for which she was grateful, having had enough of communal living. Rosalyn invited her home to lunch on her first Sunday, with a standing invitation for any Sunday.

Neither of these two, Rosalyn still locked in mourning and Mike locked with his bride in a world of their own, was apt to introduce Charlotte to a wider circle. She thought about that but, deciding that time would eventually take care of such things, decided that she would devote herself entirely to her very promising job.

The drafting room was on the top floor. Sitting tall on her drafting stool, Charlotte looked out into the clear white northern light where clustered skyscrapers made dark serrations against the rim of the sky. Below lay the old, meandering streets of this colonial city at the water’s edge. Now and then she looked up from the plan of a vacation house to consider the life that was surging now through these streets and structures, in all of which she was a stranger.

From early childhood her free hours had consisted of whatever minutes might be salvaged from school hours; now, whenever the office was closed, she was totally free, without required reading or need to study for examinations or any obligations at all. After a few months this freedom, which had at first been so welcome, began to trouble her. It was lonely. It was unnatural. Her thoughts sank deeply and dangerously into the past.

Absurd as it seemed when she reflected upon it later, it was that fat blond braid of hers that finally brought about a change. Because of it she was noticed, identified in the apartment house as “the girl with the braid.” Thus she gradually became acquainted with a young crowd, and her weekends began to take on more color.

Yet she found none of the compatible joy that she had found with Peter, none of the good talk, the wit and laughter. These men took her to bars, watched the inevitable television in the corner, and drank. When, on bringing them home, she did not allow them into her bed, some tried once more before
dropping her, and some did not even try a second time.

Then it happened that she met a man who showed promise. He was a cousin of Rosalyn’s, well spoken and quiet, like her.

“I had a hunch you’d enjoy a concert,” he said, so they went, and indeed she did enjoy the evening, especially because when he took her home, he left her at the door without grabbing or fumbling. The next time, they went to a play, using Charlotte’s tickets, since he was, like herself, a working person who had to watch his dollars. They had some dinners with a group of his friends, compatible all, so that she began to feel involved and accepted as she had been in Philadelphia in the days before Peter.

One night when they were having a drink in her apartment after seeing a movie, he broke abruptly into their conversation with a complaint.

“Don’t you think it’s about time, Charlotte? I’ve been waiting for a signal from you, but it hasn’t come.”

She felt her eyebrows rise as if to convey a surprised and total incomprehension, although she did comprehend, very well. “Signal?” she repeated.

“Oh, come on! Can’t you see that I’m being—have been—a gentleman? I’ve been very, very patient, waiting for the ice to melt, to show a few drops of warmth, but I haven’t seen one yet. You even shrink from a good-night kiss.”

A trap was closing down on her. And she replied, knowing how inept was her reply, “But I like you! I thought we could be good friends.”

“Does that mean we can’t have some normal mutual pleasure? This is 1994. Unless you find me, me in particular, repulsive.”

He paused. Of course he was waiting for her to say that he was not. It was true that she had been attracted to him by nothing more than his intelligence and congenial ways, but he was certainly far from being physically repulsive.

“Please. It’s nothing personal,” she said gently. “It’s just that I don’t want to go to bed with a man to prove that I like him, even if it is 1994.”

He persisted. “You mislead a man. Everything about you is misleading, the way you look, your laughter, your gestures, everything, and you turn out to be made of ice.”

Plainly, he was feeling a sense of injury, and she was sorry about that; yet underlying his accusation, she recognized anger. And this in turn aroused some anger in her.

“I never tried to mislead you or anyone,” she said. “It’s your fault if you read something in me that wasn’t there. And I’ve never thought I was icy. In fact, I know I’m not.”

There was a silence during which he seemed to be studying her as they stood, for they had both risen, confronting each other.

“Perhaps not,” he said then, “but you’re certainly wound up tight. I don’t mean to insult you, I mean this as a friend, but you ought to look into yourself, Charlotte. Even now you’re standing with your arms folded over your chest as if you were afraid I might rape you.”

He might have meant very well; nevertheless, the blood was already racing to her head.

“You’d better get out,” she said.

Disbelieving, he cried, “You’re not serious? Get out? You’re actually putting me out?”