To Save a Son (38 page)

“She didn't say anything,” said Maria.

“How is she?”

Maria appeared surprised by the question. “Okay, I guess. Worried, naturally.”

“Everything is getting her down,” said Franks. Hadn't he once decided not to discuss Tina with Maria? It seemed a long time ago.

“You can't expect much else,” she said.

Franks gestured toward her glass and she nodded acceptance. Franks said, “You don't seem to be letting it get you down so much as she is.”

“Maybe I've had my crisis,” said the woman. “Maybe Tina thinks she's still got hers to come.”

He'd like very much to know what they all had to come, thought Franks. “Whatever she feels, she's not helping much,” he said.

She smiled at him and Franks smiled back, arguing pointlessly with himself about why he was doing what he was doing.

“Anything I can do to help?” said Maria.

“I think you're doing it, by listening,” said Franks. Recalling the difficulties with the children, Franks talked about that, too, and of his uncertainty at the way he'd responded, welcoming the chance to speak and not be shouted at in return. Was Gabriella still wetting the bed? he wondered. Bloody stupid to have bought that doll.

“I'm sorry if I made things difficult with the kids,” she said. “I should have talked about it first to Tina, I guess. It just didn't occur to me.”

“I was the person who avoided the issue; I should have warned you,” said Franks.

“I can understand why you did want to avoid it,” said the woman. “It was unthinking of me and I'm sorry.”

They were each overcompensating, Franks recognized. He recognized, too, a tension or an awareness growing between them and wondered if she noticed it.

Maria said, “Europe go okay?”

“Busy,” said Franks. “I didn't enjoy all the protection; I felt stupid.”

“I've practically stopped noticing,” said Maria. “Perhaps I'll take a trip when things have settled down a little. I enjoyed Europe with Nicky.”

Mentioning the man—and their honeymoon—didn't seem to cause her any difficulty. He said, “I can arrange anything, practically anywhere you're likely to want to go. All you've got to do is mention it.”

“It would be good to get away,” said Maria reflectively. “Go somewhere where nobody knew me and sit in the sun and get fat.”

“Getting fat doesn't seem to be a problem for you,” said Franks, and at once regretted it because it sounded gauche. Hurriedly he said, “Getting away and sitting in the sun certainly sounds good.”

Maria looked pointedly at him but didn't speak for several moments. Then she said, “Why don't you try it?” and smiled again.

Franks realized she didn't know everything about his going into the Witnesses Protection Program; he didn't know
everything
about it himself. But that wasn't what she was talking about, anyway. He said, “Do you think this is wise?”

“What?” she said, knowing but wanting him to say it.

“Holding our hands into the fire to see how long it takes to get burned.”

“Is that what we're doing?”

“That's what I think we're doing.”

“Frightened?”

“I don't know,” said Franks. “Are you?”

“I don't know.”

Clutching at straws Franks said, “I should telephone Tina.”

“Yes,” agreed Maria, the more controlled of the two. “You should.”

“Why don't you freshen the drinks?” said Franks. “I freshened them the last time.”

Maria rose slowly, enjoying his attention upon her but stopped too far away to take his glass. “Halfway,” she said. “You've got to come halfway.”

Franks leaned forward, holding out his glass for her to take. She held back, in command, knowing it and wanting him to know it too, and then took it from him. Franks used the telephone alongside the chair in which he was sitting, which was a mistake because it meant that he had to conduct a conversation with his wife while the woman for whom he felt a physical ache—and who was aware of it because she looked and saw how obvious it was and smiled yet again—was sitting only a few feet away. It was a desultory, clipped conversation. He asked after her father and she said there wasn't really any change and she asked about his visit to Rosenberg and he said it had all gone as he told her it would. Tina asked if Maria was back and he said she was and he said the children were okay and when was she coming back, and Tina said maybe in three days, when Maria came up to relieve her. He said he'd call tomorrow and she said okay, and as he replaced the receiver Franks realized it had occurred to neither of them to express anything like love. At least the conversation, as inconsequential as it was, had subdued his physical arousal.

“There's no change,” he said.

“I told you that.”

“You hungry? I arranged steaks.”

“For both of us?”

“Yes.”

“You knew I was coming back then?”

“Tina said you might; it seemed more sensible to prepare than not.”

“Is that why you decided to stay here tonight?”

Yes, thought Franks. He said, “I always intended to come back here today; there were so many people up there it was like a railway station.”

“I think David's right.”

“David?”

“You tell lies.”

“You didn't say whether you were hungry.”

“Not particularly.”

“It's being prepared now.”

“We'd better eat some of it then.”

“Yes.”

It was a meal with little conversation, but they rarely stopped looking at each other in a way that wasn't looking at all but was a kind of touching, without hands. Toward the end of the meal, which they hardly ate, Maria said, “I always wondered if this would happen. I didn't think it would but I always wondered.”

“Nothing's happened yet,” he said.

“But it's going to.”

“Yes,” accepted Franks in final, easy surrender. “It's going to.”

Maria was suddenly, surprisingly, brisk. “I don't know how it is between you and Tina,” she said. “That's between you. It just obviously isn't very good at all. But you should know about Nicky and me.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to,” insisted the woman. “Nicky was gay. I suppose I should have known before we got married. I was the personal assistant, for God's sake. As close as that, I would have known about the women and I knew there weren't any. No, that's not true. There were some but not a lot; not as many as there should have been for a bachelor lawyer with a lot of money and a townhouse in Manhattan.” For practically the first time during the meal she broke their gaze, fussing with her wineglass. “I know I told you that I wanted whoever did it to suffer. And I do. But Nicky was a bastard for what he did to me. It was an experiment of a sort, I suppose. Respectability required that he was married—before the gossips got it right—and I guess in the early months he tried.
Very
early months; I'd say the first three or four. He could swing both ways. At first I couldn't believe how good it was. Then he answered the question I didn't know he was asking himself and it started going wrong.” There was a further pause. “Late-night meetings started to happen; I guessed he was cheating on me because that was the obvious explanation, but I thought he was cheating with some other woman. He still tried, occasionally. He started asking me to be his man.… We'd done it before and I didn't think anything of it, and then he kept asking and that's the way it was.…” Maria looked up to him and said, “You know what I mean?”

“Yes,” said Franks. “I know what you mean. But I don't know why you want to tell me.”

“I want it—whatever
it
is—to be right between us. So I don't want you to think of me as some hot bitch wanting to get laid practically before her husband's buried. He made me an offer, you see. Finally he couldn't pretend anymore and we talked it out. All he wanted was discretion. He'd be thoroughly discreet and I could be thoroughly discreet, and to the outside world it would be the perfect, loving marriage.”

“That's pretty sick,” said Franks.

“Nicky said I'd be surprised how ordinary the situation is.”

“Did you agree?” demanded Franks.

“No,” she said at once.

Franks held her eyes, saying nothing. Maria shrugged and said, “I guess I would have done, in time. Who wouldn't? But I didn't. I supposed I still loved him; still do, in a funny way. Tried to tell myself that sex wasn't the only thing and that it might come around to be okay, in time. I know it wouldn't have done, of course. We talked about divorce, but he was very frightened of that; respectability again.”

“You don't make him sound a very nice guy,” said Franks. “I know I've got my own reasons for not thinking so, but it seems to me that you do, too.”

“Which means I should hate him; dislike him at least,” said Maria. “But the truth is that I never felt like that. Not even on the night he confessed to me, when he cried and held me and said he hated himself for something he couldn't stop. I never felt any dislike or rejection. If there was a feeling at all, I suppose it was a pity. I know he cheated me and I know he used me—just like he cheated and used you, I guess—but I still couldn't hate him. Do you?”

Franks was off-balanced by the question. Of course he did; the bastard had come close to wrecking his life. Just how close he still had to find out. So what other emotion could he have but hatred? But he didn't think that was his feeling. To hate, you had to feel anger and vilify and think all the time of revenge. Franks' thoughts about Nicky were of complete emptiness; a void, as if the man had never existed or occupied any part of his feelings. Why was feeling—any feeling—always so difficult?

“I don't know,” he said unwillingly.

“I've told you,” said Maria, still brisk. “All of it. Not particularly nice, is it?”

“No,” said Franks. “I'm sorry. That it didn't work out better, I mean.”

“We've finished eating,” she said unnecessarily.

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you want to go on sitting here?”

“Why don't we go into the other room and have some brandy?”

“I don't think I want brandy,” said Maria.

They were back looking at each other again, touching without feel. Aware of the household staff and of the attentive Elizabeth, Franks said, “You'd better go up ahead of me.”

“Don't be long.”

“I won't.”

Franks took a brandy by himself and kept it a small one. He sat in the same chair in which he'd agreed with Maria that they were going to sleep together. He felt the heat he'd warned her about and realized that if he was going to pull back, like he should pull back, now was the time—the last available time—to do it. There'd been a moment that seemed like a million years ago but really hadn't been when he'd had the chance to pull back, and he was going to regret for the rest of his life that he hadn't done so. Franks drank his brandy, got up from the chair, and went upstairs.

She was already in bed when he went into her room, but when he did she threw back the covers so he could see. She watched while he undressed and he bent over her, not getting at once into bed but starting with his mouth low, just inside her knee and gradually moving up. She shifted to make it easier for him, whimpering with the pleasure of it and then getting ahead of him, snatching at him and forcing him into her, hurrying him to match her, which he couldn't do. She quietened after the first climax, matching his pace, and they came together the second time and only needed to rest briefly before they were able to make love again. Finally, exhausted, they drifted into a half sleep from which Maria recovered first, urging him awake because she needed him again; Franks was surprised—and pleased—that he could match her demands, wanting her as much as she wanted him.

It was near light when he left her at last, to go back to his own room. Franks had slept hardly at all, always vaguely aware of her, but he didn't sleep when he got to bed alone, because he couldn't. What sort of deception was it to have made love to a woman while his wife was away at the bedside of a sick father, and his two children—two trusting, dependent children—were asleep in another part of the house! Franks waited for the remorse to come—
wanted
it to come—but it wouldn't. He felt deceitful and embarrassed, but there wasn't any genuine remorse. Having abandoned practically everything else, Franks refused any longer to stop comparing them. Maria was a much more exciting and accomplished lover than Tina. Was that what he wanted, a wife
and
a mistress? That was a question he couldn't answer. Another, to join all the rest. He didn't know if he wanted Tina and he didn't know if he wanted Maria. Or the additional complication he had created for himself in an already overcomplicated, difficult situation.

In the shower, later, Franks considered confronting Maria and apologizing for a mistake and asking her to forget that it had ever happened and then realized that that was ridiculous and that he didn't want to do it anyway.

They worked to be alone and succeeded in the afternoon, and the lovemaking was better than it had been the previous night. Conscience urged Franks to go up to see Tina and her parents and he did so without experiencing any guilt. Enrico had responded to tests and the doctor was fairly convinced of some sort of recovery but wasn't prepared at that stage to forecast how complete it might be. Tina looked gaunt and tired and had not bothered with any makeup. She seemed impatient and distracted and ill at ease with him. Franks said he didn't think he'd stay, but go back to Scarsdale—sure the guilt would come now, but it didn't—and Tina said that would probably be a good thing and then blurted out that her mother blamed him for Enrico's collapse and didn't want him in the house. It was too much trouble to try to justify himself, and so Franks didn't bother. He got away, back to Scarsdale and Maria.