The Carlton Club (34 page)

As Eric and Victoria were exchanging wedding vows in front of their families in the middle of March, Charlie was experiencing the ultimate closeness with a first-year law student she had met three days before.

Two days later, she sat in the Dean’s Office at the Harvard Law School. The dean had received her letter, and he had called her in.

“You want to start law school this fall? After only three years of college?”

“Yes.”

“That’s why you took your LSATs last fall?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you wait until now to apply? The deadline for applications was months ago.”

“I thought I would be moving to Philadelphia. I was planning to be married. But not anymore.”

“And that won’t change.”

“No. He married someone else.” Charlie had waited until after the wedding. Until the end, she had hoped that it wouldn’t happen. Even though she knew it had to.

“Well, your grades are exceptional. As are your LSATs. As is your letter of recommendation.”

“What letter?” she asked anxiously.

“From Robert Lansdale.”

“I didn’t ask him to write a letter. I wanted to do this on my own,” Charlie said weakly.

“You did it on your own. I made up my mind before I asked you to come see me. Mr. Lansdale’s letter just arrived today. He offers to pay for your entire education.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“That’s between you and Mr. Lansdale. Anyway, Charlotte, I am happy to offer you a position in next fall’s entering class at Harvard Law School.”

On the way back to her dormitory, Charlie met Eric. It wasn’t an accident. He was waiting for her. She noticed his shiny gold wedding band immediately.

“Eric, I can’t stand seeing you,” she said, desperately trying to get past him, away from him. Eric stood his ground, blocking her path, forcing her to look at him. “I know you have to finish your classes up here this quarter, but let’s try to avoid seeing each other. Please.”

“Charlie, I just wanted to tell you—”

“What?” she asked helplessly. Leave me alone.

“That I love you.”

“Well don’t. Don’t say it or think it or feel it. Another woman needs your love now, Eric. Give it to her,” Charlie said. Tears streamed down her face as she ran away from the man she loved.

Charlie married the first-year law student a few months later. The marriage lasted six months.

During her three years of law school, Charlie spoke to Robert every few months. If he didn’t call her, she called him.

“Listen to this torts problem, Mr. Lansdale,” she said one day over the phone, her voice lilting, her love of law school obvious.

“Call me Robert.”

“Maybe after I graduate.”

They talked about Eric only once, two years after the baby, a son, was born.

“How’s Eric?” Charlie asked softly. She didn’t hate him anymore. She was happy in law school. She hadn’t found anyone to love, but she was happy. She missed him only when she allowed herself to think about him, but she didn’t allow herself to often. No fantasies.

“He’s good, Charlie. He’s a much better president for InterLand than I ever was.”

“You really wanted to practice law full time,” she said.

“Yes. But Eric has a knack for business. He loves buying land and building beautiful buildings. Which is, after all, what InterLand is all about. He’s opening corporate offices in Dallas, Chicago and San Francisco. He’s already taken over some smaller development companies in those areas,” Robert said proudly. InterLand was flourishing under Eric’s able management.

“How’s the baby?”

“Bobby? He’s wonderful. Eric loves him very much. He’s Eric’s life, really. Eric’s work keeps him busy, but Bobby is his life,” Robert said gently as he thought about his son and his grandson, his namesake. Eric had the kind of relationship with Bobby that Robert had with Eric. It was what Robert had hoped for his son.

And Eric loved Victoria, the way he, Robert, loved Florence, as a friend, companion and the mother of his precious child.

Robert attended Charlie’s graduation from law school. He visited her once at her office with one of Boston’s most prestigious law firms. They didn’t talk as often after her graduation. Robert knew that she was doing well. He could hear it in her voice. And as much as he liked talking to her, Robert worried that his voice only reminded her of Eric. And all that unhappiness.

Robert and Charlie hadn’t spoken for almost six months when he called her. It was late on an autumn night, five and a half years after Eric married Victoria.

“Charlie, it’s Robert.”

“Robert!” Charlie exclaimed, calling him Robert for the first time, without even thinking about it or realizing it because there was something so personal, so emotional, in his voice.

“Eric needs you, Charlie. Please come to him,” Robert said.

James let the phone ring twenty times. Then he hung up and redialed. After twenty more unanswered rings, he telephoned the airline. Lynne’s flight had arrived, on schedule, six hours before. Then James phoned their neighbor. No, she hadn’t seen Lynne’s car. Only the living room light was on. James had turned it on before he left.

James looked at his watch. Ten minutes before six. He had to meet the others in Eric’s suite in ten minutes.

Where was she?

James dialed Lynne’s mother’s number in Denver. He didn’t want to alarm her, but he was alarmed, and she might know.

Lynne answered the phone. It was beside her bed.

“Lynne!”

“James? How did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t. You weren’t at home. I thought your mother might know where you were. Why are you there?”

Lynne told him about what had happened that morning on the flight from LaGuardia to O’Hare.

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“I have an appointment for nine tomorrow morning. I feel better now after resting all day.”

“But you’ll keep the appointment,” James said emphatically.

“Do you think my mother would let me miss it?” she asked lightly, forgetting for a moment that she was talking to the new James, the James she hated, the James she had to leave. He sounded like the old James, her caring, loving James. “Why did you call home?”

“Because I wanted to see how you were feeling. And because I wanted to talk to you about Thanksgiving.” And because he had spent the afternoon with a woman who reminded him of Lynne, who reminded him how much he loved Lynne. What he and Charlie talked about had scared him.

“The plans for Thanksgiving will have to change anyway. I’ll probably take this week off instead. I guess I’ll be working Thanksgiving week.”

“If you’re well.”

“I will be. How—” Lynne stopped. She started to ask him about his trip to Maui. It was a question she would have asked the old James.

“How what?”

“Nothing.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow to see what the doctor said. It may be this late or later. We’re spending the day at the construction site.”

The family practitioner who Lynne saw at nine the next morning made the diagnosis almost immediately. He confirmed it by running a blood test that returned within an hour. He referred Lynne to a specialist in Denver. Lynne met with her that afternoon. She confirmed the diagnosis, performed several additional tests and provided Lynne with the name of a specialist in San Francisco.

When James called that night, Lynne told him truthfully that the doctors told her she had nothing serious. She would be fine.

She didn’t tell him that she had to be checked again in a month. Then, if the diagnosis still held, she would have to leave him, quickly, before he found out. She only hoped that her strength would return in time.

The doctors said it would. But she had to eat. And rest.

Peter Pan
opened on Thanksgiving Day. James and Leslie sat four rows away from Kathleen and Mark who sat next to Ross and Stacy. Eric and Charlie sat in the first patrons’ box, theater left.

When the final curtain fell, the audience was silent, stunned, not wanting it to be over. Ever. Not wanting to leave. Wanting to hear the love duets again. Wanting it all to begin again.

Wanting to stay in Never Never Land with Peter and Wendy.

Finally, a single clap broke the silence. Then another. Then the sound, a faint rustling of the entire audience standing up almost in unison, was heard. Then, with the roar of clapping and shouts of “Bravo,” the spell was broken. It had to be. Unlike Peter, they had to grow up. They had a real world to face.

After the final curtain call, the audience filed out, strangely silent. The theatergoers were lost in thought, knowing they had witnessed a most remarkable theater event. They had been part of it, and now it was part of them.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be so young and so talented?” Charlie asked Eric as they drove to his penthouse in Pacific Heights. “I can’t believe she’s the same person who played Joanna. Two unforgettable roles. I wonder what she’s like.”

“I want to go backstage for a minute, Stacy,” Ross said begrudgingly, giving way to the reality that the show was over. He had seen it in rehearsal a hundred times, but tonight it moved him as it never had. Wendy moved him. He wanted to see her.

Ross forgot for a moment that he would be seeing Janet, not Wendy.

“To congratulate the Ice Maiden?” Stacy asked, a little annoyed.

Ross frowned at her, but it
did
make him remember that it would be Janet backstage.

“Does it bother you to see her, Mark?” Kathleen asked. It bothered
her
. Janet’s—Wendy’s—allure, her sensuality and her loveliness were irresistible. Even Kathleen felt it.

“No, Kathleen,” Mark said firmly.

Leslie hadn’t seen James for ten days, not since before he left for Maui. Lynne had been at home recuperating. She was better now, James said. She was flying again.

James held Leslie’s hand as they left the theater and in the car on the way home. They didn’t speak. Both were deep in thought. Because of
Peter
Pan
.

I’m living in Never Never Land, James thought, squeezing Leslie’s hand, not wanting to let go, knowing that, like Peter, he would have to. Someday. Someday soon.

Oh, James, Leslie thought. We are saying goodbye, aren’t we?

Each time Leslie and James made love, that night and the other nights in the three weeks until it was over, it was as if they would never touch each other again. It seemed they were both trying to remember every part of it because soon they would only have the memory. In those weeks, Leslie and James gave each other the indelible memory of a love that had to stop but would never really end.

James was waiting in the apartment when Leslie arrived home on December fifteenth. He stood up when she came in, but he didn’t move toward her. Leslie saw the still shiny key that she had given him ten weeks before, lying on the coffee table.

Leslie knew this day was coming. She was prepared for it. Still, the hot tears splashed down her cheeks. At the sight of her tears, James’s eyes filled, and he broke the vow he had made.

He put his arms around her, holding her, rocking her.

“Leslie. Don’t cry. Please.”

“I’m sorry, James. I will miss you so much.”

“Leslie,” he whispered, unable to speak.

They had both planned for this moment. They had rehearsed the mature, sensitive, brave things they would say. They both believed it had to be this way. It was best. They were lucky to have had the time together. They would always care.

But neither could speak. The emotion was too strong.

They just held each other tightly. Finally, moving at the same moment, they pulled away.

“Goodbye, Leslie,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Goodbye, James,” she whispered through her tears.

James returned to his empty house. Lynne was in Chicago. She would be back in the morning.

Lynne
. Her energy had returned, but she seemed different. Preoccupied. Almost compulsively busy. She spent every evening, long after he had gone to bed, writing. She had created her own deadline—soon—for her next Monica book, but she hadn’t asked him to start illustrating it.

Lynne was pleasant, efficient and energetic. Impersonal.

They still hadn’t made love.

James decided that Lynne was simply rebounding from her illness. Now that her energy had returned, she was making up for lost time.

Lynne’s behavior was different, but it was not how she would behave if she knew about Leslie. She would confront him with it.

Still, they needed to talk. Now that she was well and he had said goodbye to Leslie.

James realized how little he and Lynne had said to each other in the past three months. He wanted to get close to her again. He wanted to fall in love with her again and to renew the promises of love and friendship and trust they had made to each other.

Lynne had the repeat test on December fourteenth. It confirmed the diagnosis. It meant she had to talk to James soon, as soon as she returned from Chicago. She called him at his office when she returned on the sixteenth.

“Lynne? Is everything all right?” James asked. She never called him at work.

“Yes. Fine. I just got in. James, we need to talk,” she said tentatively. How can I confront him with this? I know I’m right, but I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want to see his face. She decided, then, impulsively, to tell him over the phone. “James, I know that you’re having an affair. I know it started September twelfth. I haven’t had the energy to deal with it until now. But now I do. I want a divorce, James. I can’t live with you anymore. I can’t.”

Lynne stopped abruptly, breathless, her heart pounding, her stomach aching.

“It’s
over
, Lynne,” James said quietly, shaken.

“Does it matter?” she asked sharply as her anger returned. He had admitted it. It was all true. A tiny part of her had held on to the hope that there was, that there could be, some other explanation.

“I love you.”

“No,” she said swiftly. “Not if you did this to me. To us.”

“Lynne, we have all the time in the world to end our marriage. Let me talk to you.
Please.”

“It’s pointless. And painful. I just want out, James. Please don’t make it hard for me. It’s not fair. It’s been hard enough.”

He could hear the pain from months of suffering in her voice. She had known for a long time. For the entire time.

“I’m coming home now. Wait for me. Please.”

On the way home, James’s mind spun as he tried to remember why it happened, how he could have let it happen. How could he have believed she wouldn’t know? How could he have done this to Lynne? To Lynne, of all people.

It was what Lynne’s father had done to Lynne’s mother. Over and over. They stayed together because of their baby girl, because of Lynne, but it harmed Lynne much more than growing up without a father would have harmed her. She watched her mother suffer with each of his affairs. She learned to hate her father.

And she learned to distrust all men. When she grew up, Lynne played with men, toying with their feelings, hurting them the way her father had hurt her mother. And her.

Lynne hated men, distrusted them all. Until she met James.

Slowly, carefully, they had learned to trust each other.

How could I have done this to her? James’s mind screamed at him as he drove home. It had all been so easy to rationalize because the proviso had always been,
Lynne will never know
.

Lynne was in the living room curled into the far corner of the overstuffed sofa. When she saw James, she pushed herself deeper into the cushions.

“Lynne, I am so sorry,” he said moving toward her, seeing in her eyes that she didn’t want him near her. He stood at the opposite end of the sofa.

“You know what’s funny?” she asked, her voice bitter. “I really believed we had something. I believed that we had defied the odds. I didn’t even have a clue that we were in trouble. Then, overnight, everything was different. How could you fall in love with someone else overnight?”

“I didn’t, Lynne. She was someone I knew before I met you. I hadn’t seen her for nine years. I saw her again by accident. I felt, I convinced myself, that I was doing something I should have done nine years ago. I even convinced myself, somehow, that it, the affair, was happening in the past.”

James shrugged, realizing the emptiness of his words and how foolish they sounded.

Helplessly, he watched Lynne cry. He watched her pain and felt his own. Pain and regret.

“Talk to me, Lynne.”

“Why? Do you want to hear about how much I hate you? About how much I hurt inside?”

“I want you to tell me how we can make it through this,” James said firmly, evenly.

“We can’t.”

“You won’t even try?”

“No. Why should I?”

“Because I love you.”

“James. I’ve heard those words before. My father always told my mother that. For years she even believed him.”

“Your father never felt this way about your mother. You know that.”

“I do? From here it looks like, feels like, you’re exactly the same kind of man.”

James sighed. Why should she believe him? He hadn’t given her any reason to.

“I stopped seeing her because I didn’t want to take the risk that you would find out. I didn’t want to risk losing you.”

“That’s why you ended it,” Lynne said slowly. “But why did you start it?”

“It seemed different. Something that was very important to me personally. It was a way to make sense of what had happened in high school. It had nothing to do with you and me. Really. I don’t know how to make you understand that. It didn’t have anything to do with us. I didn’t look for her because I was unhappy with us. I wasn’t. I’m not. I want to spend my life with you. I didn’t look for her at all. It just happened. It could never have happened with anyone else. It could never happen again.”