The Kiss (2 page)

Gordon had a dispassionate view of life, and generally observed life from a safe distance, as though he were willing to watch the game but not play it, unlike Teddy and Isabelle, who were passionate about everything they felt, and expressed it. The flame that she and the child shared was what had kept Teddy alive through a lifetime of illness. And her devotion to her son had long since distanced Gordon from her. Emotionally, Gordon had been removed from her for years, since shortly after Teddy's birth. Years before she met Bill, Gordon had moved out of their bedroom. At the
time, he had explained it by saying that she went to bed too late and rose too early, and it disturbed him. But she had sensed accurately that there was more to it than that. Not wanting to make things worse between them or confront him, she had never dared to challenge him about it. But she had known for a long time that Gordon's affections for her had at first diminished, and then finally disappeared.

Isabelle could no longer even remember the last time they had touched or kissed, or made love. It was a fact of life she now accepted. She had long since learned to live without her husband's love. She had often suspected that he not only associated Teddy's illness with her, but blamed her for it, although the doctors had reassured her that his infirmities and premature birth had not been her fault. She and Gordon never actually discussed it, and there was no way to acquit herself of his silent accusations. But she always felt them, and knew they were there. It was as though just seeing Isabelle reminded Gordon of the child's sickroom, and just as he had rejected his son from birth, out of a horror of his defects and illness, he had eventually rejected Isabelle as well. He had put up a wall between himself and his wife to shut out the images of illness he detested. He hadn't been able to tolerate what he perceived as weakness since he was a child himself. The wall between them was one Isabelle no longer attempted to scale, although she had at first. Her attempts at drawing closer to him after Teddy's birth had been futile, Gordon had resisted all her efforts, until finally she accepted the vast, lonely chasm between them as a way of life.

Gordon had always been cool and businesslike by nature. He was said to be ruthless in business, and not a warm person in any aspect of his life, but in spite of that, he had been affectionate with her at first. His standoffishness had almost seemed like a challenge to her, and was unfamiliar to her. But because of that, each smile won, each warm gesture, had felt like a victory to her, and all the more impressive because he showed no warmth to anyone else. She had been very young then, and intrigued by him. He seemed so competent, and so powerful in her eyes, and in many ways impressive. He was a man in total control of every aspect of his world. And there had been much about Isabelle that Gordon had liked, and which had reassured him that she would make a perfect wife. Her ancestry certainly, her aristocratic heritage and name, her important connections, which had served him well at the bank. Her family's fortune had evaporated years before, but their importance in social and political circles had not. Marrying her had increased his stature socially, which was an important factor for him. She was the perfect accessory to enhance both his standing and his career. And in addition to the appeal of her pedigree, there had been a childlike innocence about her that had briefly opened the door to his heart.

In spite of whatever social ulterior motives he may have had, there was a basic sweetness to Isabelle as a young girl that would have been hard for any man to resist. She was compassionate, kind, without guile. And the loftiness of Gordon's style, his considerable attentions toward her, and his exquisite manners when he courted her, had elicited a kind of hero worship
from her. She was fascinated by his intelligence, impressed by his power and success in the world, and Gordon had been smooth enough with the advantage of being seventeen years older than Isabelle, to say all the right things to her. Even her family had been thrilled when he proposed. It had been obvious to them that Gordon would be a perfect husband and take extraordinarily good care of her, or so they thought. And in spite of his reputation for being tough in his dealings at the bank, he seemed extremely kind to her, which ultimately proved not to be the case.

By the time Isabelle met Bill Robinson, she was a lonely woman standing vigil over a desperately ill child, with a husband who seldom even spoke to her, and leading an unusually isolated life. Bill's voice was sometimes the only contact she had with another adult all day, other than Teddy's doctor, or his nurse. And he appeared to be the only person in her world who was genuinely concerned about her. Gordon rarely, if ever, asked her how she was. At best, if pressed, he told her that he would be out for dinner that night, or that he was leaving in the morning on a trip. He no longer shared with her what he did in the course of his days. And their brief conversations only reinforced her feeling of being shut out of his life. The hours she spent talking to Bill opened the windows to a broader, richer world. They were like a breath of fresh air to Isabelle, and a lifeline she clung to on dark nights. It was Bill who had become her best friend in the course of their conversations over the years, and Gordon who was now the stranger in her life.

She had tried to explain it to Bill once in one of their
early-morning phone calls, in the second year of their friendship. Teddy had been sick for weeks, she was feeling run-down and exhausted and vulnerable, and she was depressed over how cold Gordon had been to her the night before. He had told her that she was wasting her time nursing the boy, that it was obvious to everyone that he was going to die before long, and she had best make her peace with it. He had said that when the boy died finally, it would be a mercy for all of them. She had had tears in her voice and her eyes, when she spoke of it to Bill that morning, and he had been horrified by the callousness of the child's father, and his cruelty to Isabelle.

“I think Gordon resents me terribly for all the years I've spent taking care of Teddy. I haven't had as much time to spend with him as I should have.” She entertained for him, but not as frequently as she knew he felt she should. Gordon had long since convinced her that she had failed him as a wife. And it irked Bill to hear how ready she was to accept what Gordon said.

“It seems reasonable, under the circumstances, that Teddy should be your first priority, Isabelle,” Bill said gently. He had been quietly researching doctors for her for months, in the hope of finding a miracle cure for Teddy, but he hadn't been encouraged by what he'd been told by the physicians he'd consulted. According to Isabelle, the child had a degenerative disease that was attacking his heart, his lungs were inadequate, and his entire system was slowly deteriorating. The consensus of opinion was that it would be a miracle if he survived into his twenties. And it tore at Bill's heart knowing what Isabelle went through, and would have to face someday.

Over the next few years, their friendship had deepened. They spoke on the phone frequently, and Isabelle wrote him long philosophical letters, particularly on the nights she spent awake, sitting at Teddy's bedside. Teddy had long since become the hub of her life, and not only had it alienated her from Gordon, but there were times when it also kept her from Sophie, who berated her mother for it on more than one occasion. She had accused her mother of only caring about her brother. And the only one Isabelle could talk to about it was Bill, in their lengthy conversations in the heart of the night.

The moments they shared transcended their daily realities, the pressures of the political arena seemed to vanish into thin air when he talked to her. And for Isabelle, she was transported to a time and a place when Teddy wasn't ill, Gordon hadn't rejected her, and Sophie was never angry. It was like being lifted out of the life she led into the places and topics that she had once cared about so deeply. Bill brought her a new view of the world, and they chatted easily and laughed with each other. He spoke to her of his own life at times, the people he knew, the friends he cared about, and once in a while, in spite of himself, he spoke of his wife and two daughters, both of whom were away in college. He had been married since he was twenty-two years old, and thirty years later, what he had left was only the shell of a marriage. Cindy, his wife, had come to hate the political world, the people they met, the things Bill had to do, the events they had to go to, and the amount of time he had to travel. She had total contempt for politicians. And for Bill for having devoted a lifetime to them.

The only things Cynthia was interested in, now that the girls were gone, were her own friends in Connecticut, going to parties, and playing tennis. And whether or not Bill was part of that life seemed unimportant to her. She had shut him out emotionally years before and led her own life, not without bitterness toward him. She had spent thirty years with him coming and going, and putting political events ahead of everything that mattered to her. He had never been home for graduations and holidays and birthdays. He was always somewhere else, grooming a candidate for a primary or an election. And for the past four years, he had been a constant visitor at the White House. It no longer impressed her, and she was only too happy to tell him how much it bored her. Worse than that, she had dismissed the man along with a career she detested. Whatever there had once been between them was long gone. She had had a face-lift the year before, and he knew that she had been having discreet affairs for years. It had been her revenge for a single indiscretion he'd committed ten years before, with the wife of a congressman, and never repeated. But Cindy was not long on forgiveness.

Unlike Isabelle and Gordon, he and Cindy still shared a bedroom, but they might as well not have bothered. It had been years since they'd made love. It was almost as though she took pride in the fact that she was no longer sexually interested in her husband. She was in good shape, had a constant tan, her hair had gotten blonder over the years, and she was almost as pretty as she had been when he married her thirty years before, but there was a hardness about her now,
which he felt rather than saw. The walls she had erected between them were beyond scaling, and it no longer occurred to him to try. He put his energies into his work, and he talked to Isabelle when he needed a hand to hold or a shoulder to cry on, or someone to laugh with. It was to Isabelle that he admitted he was tired or disheartened. She was always willing to listen. She had a gentleness about her that he had never found in his wife. He had liked Cindy's lively spirit, her looks, her energy, and her sense of fun and mischief. She had been so much fun to be with when they were young, and now he wondered, if he disappeared off the face of the earth, if she would even miss him. And like their mother, his daughters seemed pleasant when they were home, but essentially indifferent to him. It no longer seemed to matter to anyone whether or not he was home. He was treated as an unexpected visitor when he arrived from a trip, and he never really felt he belonged there. He was like a man without a country. He felt rootless. And a piece of his heart was tucked away in a house on the rue de Grenelle in Paris. He had never told Isabelle he loved her, nor she him, but for years now, he had been deeply devoted to her. And Isabelle greatly admired him.

The feelings Bill and Isabelle had expressed toward each other over the years were officially never more than friendship. Neither of them had ever admitted to each other, or themselves, that there was more to it than simply admiration, ease, and a delight in the lost art of conversation. But Bill had noticed for years that when her letters didn't come, he worried, and when she couldn't take his calls, because Teddy was too ill,
or she went somewhere with Gordon, he missed her. More than he would have cared to admit. She had become a fixture of sorts to him, someone he could count on and rely on. And he meant as much to her. He was the only person, other than her fourteen-year-old son, whom she could talk to. She and Gordon had never been able to talk to each other as she and Bill did.

Gordon was in fact more English in style than American. His parents had both been American, but he had been brought up in England. He had gone to Eton, and was then sent to the United States for college, and went to Princeton. But immediately after graduation, he returned to England and from there moved to Paris for the bank. But no matter what his origins were, he appeared to be far more British than American.

Gordon had met Isabelle one summer at her grandfather's summer house in Hampshire, when she was visiting from Paris. She was twenty years old then and he was nearly forty, and had never married. Despite a string of interesting women in his life, some of them racier than others, he had never found anyone worthy of a commitment, or marriage. Isabelle's mother had been English and her father was French. She had lived in Paris all her life, but visited her grandparents in England every summer. She spoke English impeccably, and she was utterly enchanting. Charming, intelligent, discreet, affectionate. Her warmth and her light and her almost elfin quality had struck him from the moment they met. For the first time in his life, Gordon believed that he was in love. And the potential social opportunities offered by their alliance were irresistibly appealing to him. Gordon came from a respectable
family, but not nearly as illustrious as Isabelle's. Her mother came from an important British banking family, and was distantly related to the queen, and her father was a distinguished French statesman. It was, finally, a match that Gordon thought worthy of him. Her lineage was beyond reproach, and her shy, genteel, unassuming ways suited him to perfection. Her mother had died before Isabelle and Gordon met, and her father was impressed by him, and approved of the match. He thought Gordon the perfect husband for Isabelle. Isabelle and Gordon were engaged and married within a year. And he was in total command. He made it very clear to her right from the first that he would make all their decisions. And Isabelle came to expect that of him. He had correctly sensed that, because of her youth, she would pose no objections to him. He told her who they would see, where they would live, and how, he had even chosen the house on the rue de Grenelle, and bought it before Isabelle ever saw it. He was already head of the bank then, and had a distinguished position. His status was greatly enhanced by his marriage to Isabelle. And he in turn provided a safe, protected life for her. It was only as time went by that she began to notice the restrictions he placed on her.