The Carlton Club (30 page)

Mary carefully, patiently told Charlotte about her bank account, a checking account, and showed her how to write checks, repeatedly reminding her that these would need to be written in Louise Alcott’s handwriting. Mary also showed her the shoeboxes full of money—Mary didn’t really trust banks, but the checking account was convenient for paying bills—hidden beneath blankets in her bedroom closet. The money in the shoeboxes was Mary’s life’s savings, the accumulation of years of hard work and frugality. Charlotte was amazed that there was so much money—it looked like so much—because Mary had never hesitated to spend money on
her
.

Then Mary died and it was not just a morbid delusion. Mary was really gone and Charlotte was really alone, frightened and confused.

Why had she died? Charlotte’s mind screamed. Sometimes in the quiet emptiness of the house she would scream aloud, “WHY? Why, Aunt Mary?
Why?”

“Your aunt was very ill,” the doctor had said. Charlotte didn’t think to ask, ill from what?

Despite Charlotte’s anguish and grief, she was able to appear calm at the requisite meetings with the attorneys, the authorities and the doctor. She had to. She didn’t want anyone to find out that she was alone. If they did, they would take her away from the house. It was all that she had left.

Charlotte arranged the funeral. It was a real detail that Mary had neglected entirely. Mary’s funeral was surprisingly well attended. Charlotte’s classmates and their parents came, as did Mary’s coworkers from the library. Many other people who Charlotte did not recognize also attended. Mary had no friends. Who were they?

They were people who had visited Mary’s library and found solace there. Most of them had visited during the war: grieving widows, lonely soldiers, restless wives and girlfriends. They remembered Mary’s generosity and the gentle loving care she had given each of them as she helped them find a book that would be a comfort to them. They remembered Mary, even though many of them hadn’t seen her for years, even though none of them was her friend. And they came to her funeral.

For three weeks, Charlotte grieved silently, fighting anger, loneliness, betrayal and loss.

She waited, Charlotte realized with horror on the twenty-first day after Mary’s death, for Aunt Louise to come and comfort her.

“There is no Aunt Louise!” Charlotte yelled at the silent walls in the living room of Aunt Mary’s house, her house. “No Aunt Louise. No Aunt Mary. No one.”

The tears came then, at last. Charlotte cried and sobbed, the pain and grief and anger spilling in hot, wet drops down her young face. After several hours, exhausted, her emotions purged, the tears stopped.

I am by myself, she thought. I have my life to live. Aunt Mary has given me so much love. Even in her death, knowing how much I would hate having to live somewhere else, she has allowed me to stay here, in her house, in the house that I love.

The following day Charlotte returned to school, to her friends and real life. She told them politely, sparing details, that she and her Aunt Louise were doing “as well as could be expected.”

Three weeks later, Charlotte was contacted by her attorneys. Mary had left a letter for Charlotte, with instructions that it be delivered six weeks after her death.

The letter began,
My beloved daughter
.

In it, Mary explained about that Valentine’s Day, about John (Max), and about her fear that people wouldn’t understand and that Charlotte might be ostracized. The theme of the letter, a letter laced with guilt and doubt, was love. The deep irrefutable love that Mary felt for her daughter.

“Oh, Mother,” Charlotte whispered softly, tears streaming down her face as she held Mary’s letter in her trembling hands, “I love you.”

James arrived at Leslie’s apartment two hours after he spoke with Eric.

“Hi,” Leslie said, opening the door before he put his key in the lock. She had been watching for him. “What have you got?”

“Work,” James answered, raising the hand that held a large black portfolio.

The other hand held his briefcase and an overnight bag. James was spending the weekend with her. Leslie’s on call schedule at the Veterans’ Hospital was every fourth night. It meant that once a month she had an entire weekend without night call, although she still made rounds each weekend day.

“Work?” she asked, laughing.

“Yes. I work, too. Even on weekends like you. I thought I’d work while you’re making morning rounds. Or all-day rounds,” he added, smiling, knowing that rounds could take a while. “How’s your service?”

Leslie smiled back. James had picked up the medical jargon instantly. He was interested in what Leslie did. She told him about her patients. The happy outcomes and the sad ones. Sometimes she cried when she told him, and he held her, stroking her soft chestnut hair.

“My service,” she answered, telling him about her medical service, her group of patients in the hospital, “is pretty sick. We had four very sick patients admitted last night.”

“So I may get a lot of work done?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Actually, that’s OK. Just before I left, I got a call about the project I’m working on. They’ve just doubled the amount of acreage, so I have a lot of work to do.”

“What is it?”

“A resort. In Maui.”

“Really? May I see?”

“Of course,” James said, moving to the table in the kitchen. They had never really discussed his work in detail. He had never brought any work with him before. “Until today we thought it would just be the main hotel. Which will look like this.”

Leslie stared at the sketch that he handed her. It wasn’t just a hotel; it was a work of art that blended elegantly, gracefully, naturally into the beautiful tropical setting. Leslie had never seen anything like it.

“James! This is so beautiful. This is yours?”

“It’s my design, my project. I have tremendous creative freedom because the president of the company who commissioned it believes in quality above all. He doesn’t limit me by the usual constraints of cost.”

“It’s wonderful,” Leslie mused, still gazing at the sketch. “I’ve never been to Hawaii.”

“Neither had I until last summer. I made the initial sketches over there. I have to go back this week now that we have more land.”

“You’ll still build this hotel, won’t you?”

“Sure. In fact, construction is scheduled to begin next month. But now we can make an entire resort community,” James said eagerly. It was obvious how much he enjoyed his work. “Now we have room for condominiums. Houses even. I’ll make sample sketches of units this weekend, but I can’t really do more until I go back and see the additional property.”

“When do you go?” Leslie asked casually, even though she knew it might mean they wouldn’t see each other as scheduled.

“I’m not sure. Next week sometime. The deal wasn’t completely signed, sealed and delivered.

In fact, they may need to reach me this weekend. I gave them your number. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t,” Leslie said, putting down the sketch and turning toward him, sensing what they both sensed, that something was missing.

As his lips found hers, kissing her hungrily, Leslie realized what had been missing: the kiss, the touching. Their minds had said hello, but their bodies hadn’t, until then.

“Hi,” he whispered, kissing her neck, wrapping his arms around her, molding her body against his. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” Leslie whispered back. She led him into the bedroom.

Leslie closed her eyes, her head swirling with images, her body trembling with sensations as James touched her. The images were lovely: an alpine meadow, a red-orange sunset, sparking blue water, sailboats with colorful spinnakers, sandy beaches, snowcapped mountains, a muted autumn sun. The images—warm, colorful and sensual—formed a collage of all the wonderful moments with James. It was a collage that would, one day, include this moment: the wonder of James in her bed, making love to her.

As he touched her, as the warmth and rhythm of their bodies moving together became totally consuming, the images melted into a yellow-gold glow.

“James,” she breathed from a voice deep in her soul.

“Leslie.”

It was three o’clock Saturday afternoon by the time Leslie finished her rounds. As she drove along the Great Highway beside the Pacific

Ocean, green-gray under the November clouds, Leslie thought about James. About James and Leslie. And James and Lynne.

The thoughts weren’t new. They were with her whenever she had a moment to think, whenever she was away from the hospital and away from James. Leslie couldn’t think, not rationally or analytically, when she was with him. His presence was too powerful, too demanding, too wonderful to tarnish with the thoughts that plagued her when they were apart.

It had been six weeks. In those six weeks they saw each other whenever it was possible.

It should never have started. That was a given. Once it had started, once they realized they had to, finally, acknowledge the unspoken feelings they had shared in high school, it should have ended quickly.

They should have made love once, like groping teenagers, finishing the scene that had been interrupted at the lake so many years before.

That would have been an appropriate ending. Almost understandable. Almost forgivable.

But they made love again and again. As adults. As a man and a woman full of passion and desire.

They should have ended it after they had replayed every moment they had shared in high school, after they had asked each other what they had been feeling then, all those years before.

“Why did you leave the party that night when Alan kissed me?”

“Why do you think? I couldn’t stand it. I wanted you so much.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You know why.”

“Why didn’t you kiss me on the ferry boat?”

“I wanted to. My lips were too numb from the cold.”

Oh. No. What if he had?

“Why would you just dance one dance with me? Or say something to me in the halls and then leave? Or come stand beside me for a quarter of a football game?”

“Because when you spoke to me, when I touched you, when I even just stood beside you, it reminded me that no matter how bad everything was in my life, you existed. You were real, and you seemed to like me.”

“Seemed to? It must have been so obvious. I couldn’t even be clever and coy. Not with you. But why just one dance? One monosyllabic phrase?”

“Those brief moments made me feel so good, but the feeling was almost too strong, too good. It reminded me of who I really was, and how I had no right to be with you. I had no self-esteem, remember. Of course I didn’t know why. I only made it through those years because I was driven by an instinct to survive and by feelings that drew me to you.”

They should have ended it after they had relived those high school days, after they had shared all the distant feelings and memories.

But they didn’t. They began to share the rest of their lives. By the middle of November, Leslie and James were living entirely in the present, as lovers, as friends, as a man and woman who had met, learned about each other and chosen to be together.

Leslie knew it, but she sensed that James didn’t. Somehow James had rationalized his relationship with Leslie so that it didn’t jeopardize his marriage. Somehow the relationship with Leslie was still a relationship in the past.
Of
the past. It was not really happening in the present.

James had created his own private time warp. His relationship with Leslie should have happened years ago. It might have except for a misplaced letter. And it was happening now because it was destined—it had always been destined—to happen.

Leslie knew that as soon as James realized the folly of his logic it would be over. Leslie was a girl he had loved in his past, and she was a woman he could have loved in the present; but James had already chosen to spend his life with someone else. Lynne was his present and his future.

Leslie and James never discussed Lynne, but Leslie had seen his eyes that night, at her birthday dinner, when he told her about Lynne. James’s life was with Lynne. The rest of his life.

There was no point in even thinking about what would have happened if James had not been married. Would this wonderful, passionate relationship they had now continue forever? Or was it stoked by the knowledge that it was fleeting, a nostalgic moment kindled by the unfulfilled desires of youth?

There is no point in thinking about that, Leslie thought as she parked in front of her apartment building, pulling into a space in front of James’s car. No point in thinking at all, she decided, as she felt her heart quicken in anticipation of seeing him.

James was on the telephone.

“Monday morning?”

“I know it’s short notice, but since we’ve got every square inch of the land, I thought the sooner we—you—saw it, the better.”

“Monday’s fine.”

“We’ll take the corporate jet. Plan to leave at eight-thirty. That will get us into our hotel by early afternoon. We’ll just settle in on Monday. Then we’ll go to the site and meet with the local contractors on Tuesday and Wednesday and fly back Thursday morning. Will you be bringing anyone?”

James looked at his pocket calendar. Lynne’s schedule was written on it, and the days he could see Leslie were marked by a small blue dot. Lynne would return late Monday afternoon and fly again on Thursday. Unless she could join him in Maui, which was unlikely, he wouldn’t see her for over a week. He wouldn’t miss any time with Leslie. They would be able to see each other Thursday night, as scheduled.

“I don’t think I will be bringing anyone.”

“You’re welcome to. You don’t even need to let me know.”

Before hanging up, Eric gave James directions to the private jet terminal at San Francisco International Airport.

“You’re going Monday?” Leslie asked after James replaced the receiver.

James nodded, frowning slightly.

“James?”

“Sorry. I need to let Lynne know. She’s”—he continued glancing at his watch—“probably in her hotel in New York by now.”

“I’ll go take a shower. Give you a little privacy,” Leslie said, leaving the room.

James caught her hand as she passed.

“Hey,” he said gently, holding her hand. “I’m sorry.”

“James,” Leslie said carefully. Maybe today would be the day it was over. “I’m the intruder. Not Lynne.”

After Leslie left, James dialed the number in New York that was provided on the computer-generated schedule he kept in his briefcase. It gave all the specifics of Lynne’s itinerary, including flight times and hotel locations and telephone numbers. James carried the detailed itinerary with him, but he rarely referred to it. They had decided early on not to call each other, as a routine, when Lynne was traveling. They made the decision then because James was just getting started, they had substantial mortgage payments and they couldn’t justify the expense. Now they could easily afford it, but the habit not to call was well established.

Lynne answered the phone on the second ring.

“Lynne?”

“James! Is something wrong? Is it Mother?” Or, Lynne thought, remembering the manila folder she had handed to him as she left the day before, have you read it? Lynne’s heart pounded as she waited.

“No, Lynne. Nothing’s wrong. Nothing has happened. I have to go to Maui on Monday. Eric was able to purchase the adjacent land, so we’re going over to take a look.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want to come?”

“I don’t get back until Monday afternoon.”

“I know that’s your schedule. Maybe you could change. We’re taking the company jet. We’ll be back Thursday.”

“No, I can’t change,” Lynne said flatly, wondering if she was his first or second choice, wondering where he was calling from and hating herself for calling their empty house all last night. Why did she need to prove it to herself over and over again? She knew. Without ever having made a call, without ever checking to see if he was gone all night, she would have known. She had known from the very beginning, the moment she saw him on September thirteenth.

She knew. That was why she had written the “Monica” chapter for him to read. She had to do something to make him talk to her about it.

“Have you read the chapter?” she asked quietly, knowing the answer. He wouldn’t have read it last night. He wasn’t home. He was with whomever it was who had taken him away from her.

“No, not yet. I’ll read it before I go.”

“No,” Lynne said quickly, suddenly tired, too tired to deal with it. Too tired. She had been that way for the past four weeks: tired and weak and nauseated. She was too tired to argue or fight, or even to deal with the fact that she had lost her husband.