Guilt by Association (25 page)

“Look, I don’t know what she told you,” he blurted, “but I think you owe it to me to hear the truth.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened slightly. “The truth?” she echoed. “Do you mean the girl lied to me?”

“Of course she lied to you,” he asserted. “All women like that lie.”

“By ‘like that,’ do you mean young, vulnerable—or pregnant?”

“Desperate,” he corrected. “So desperate she’d make up just about any story.”

“Did she make up the pregnancy?”

“So she’s pregnant,” he said harshly. “What does that prove? It doesn’t prove I had anything to do with it. All I did was be nice to her a couple of times. She worked in the building and I’d see her in the elevator. So maybe I said she looked good once or twice. Maybe I bought her a drink one night, I don’t remember, and now she’s in trouble and she sees ‘meal ticket’
written across my forehead.”

“It’s late and I’m very tired,” Elizabeth said.

“Look, it’s blackmail, I tell you,” he insisted. “Plain and simple. She probably got knocked up by some nobody or other and grabbed at a chance to make it into the big time.”

“Just picked you out of the elevator, did she?”

“More likely the social register.”

Elizabeth gave her husband a loathsome look. “She knows about my miscarriages, she knows we don’t sleep in the same bedroom,
she calls you
Bobby,
for God’s sake—and all you did was buy her a drink?”

Robert glared at his wife, wondering why she couldn’t be as dim and manageable as his mother. Then, with an exaggerated shrug,
he tried a new tack.

“So maybe I saw her a few times. Maybe I told her my troubles. Do you think you’re the only one who has troubles? Those were
my
babies you lost, too, you know, but did I ever get any sympathy? No, everyone was always hovering around
you,
consoling
you,
comforting
you,
being strong for
you. ‘
Poor Elizabeth.’ ‘How tragic for Elizabeth.’ Well, maybe I needed someone to comfort me, and had to find it where I could.
But that doesn’t mean I slept with her.”

“And the moon is made of green cheese and there really is a tooth fairy,” his wife snapped. “What if that girl is carrying the only child you’ll ever have in this life? Think about that
and then ask yourself if you really want to be so cavalier about it.”

Robert sank down on the end of the bed with a groan, because that was the very thought that had been torturing him for months,
ever since the girl, grinning with unabashed pride and devotion, had told him the news.

“Okay, so I made a mistake,” he admitted, his head in his hands, his fingers sunk into the thick dark hair that curled fashionably around his ears. “I’m human. But you know me, you know my … appetites, and I was afraid to touch you, afraid if you got pregnant again too soon, I might lose you, like I almost lost you the last time. So I took up with someone who didn’t matter, someone I could use and forget. I never intended it to be anything more than that.”

“Well, it is now,” Elizabeth reminded him.

“Yes, I guess it is,” he sighed.

“All those nights,” she said bitterly. “All those nights that I sat home alone, while you were supposed to be working harder to advance sooner. I feel like such a fool.”

“You weren’t supposed to find out.”

“And that would have made it all right?” Elizabeth shot back. “What I didn’t know couldn’t hurt you?” She shook her head sadly.
“And to think I actually felt guilty for going to the ballet with Marian Pinckton’s homosexual nephew.”

“That was different,” he protested. “You were out in public. Whatever I did, I was discreet about it.”

She turned on him sharply. “You bastard—do you really think you can compare the two?”

“I told you it didn’t mean anything.”

Elizabeth glared at him. “She followed me around all afternoon, in and out of every store on Union Square, to beg me to let you go so you two could live happily ever after.”

“Whatever she may have told you,” he declared, “I never once said I’d marry her.”

“Whether you did or didn’t doesn’t seem very important now. In any case, I wouldn’t dream of standing in the way.”

Robert looked up sharply. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about a divorce, of course.”

She had not intended to say that, but the moment the words were out in the open, she felt an enormous burden lift from her shoulders.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. “There’s never been a divorce in the Drayton family.”

If he had intended to intimidate her by his declaration, he had miscalculated.

“There’s never been one in the Avery family, either,” she retorted, “but that doesn’t mean there never will be.”

“You mean you’d really be willing to give up everything we have because of some… some nobody from North Dakota?”

“Is that where she’s from?”

He sprang off the bed. “Who the devil cares where she’s from?”

“I guess it’s not important.”

“Then tell me you’re not going to throw away our lives because of her.”

“If I decide to divorce you, it won’t be because of the girl,” Elizabeth declared. “It will be because I don’t want to be married to you anymore.”

“Why not? You wanted to be married to me yesterday, and I’m the same person today that I was then.”

“You really don’t understand, do you?” she charged. “Yesterday I didn’t know who you really were. Today I do, and I’m not at all sure I want to stay with someone I can’t trust.”

“Well, that’s a hell of a thing to say to me.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “It was a hell of a thing you did to me.”

The starch seemed to melt right out of him.

“Please,” he implored, “you’re my wife. I love you. I picked you over a thousand others I could have married. I’ve never loved anyone but you and I never will. I need you. God, I never realized how much until this moment. You’re my strength, my center.
I’m nothing without you. Think of the future, think of all our plans to make this a better country. None of it would mean a damn to me if you weren’t there to share it. If you leave me, I’m finished.”

Elizabeth stared at her husband in surprise. Of all the words
spoken between them over the years, he had never come close to saying anything like this. There had even been a catch in his voice, and in the dim light of the lamp, she could see tears glistening in his magnificent black-fringed eyes. It was a vulnerable side of him that he had never shown before, and—she couldn’t help it—her heart turned over.

“I never realized,” she whispered.

“It’s hard for a man to admit he’s not as confident as everyone expects him to be,” Robert said. “It’s like admitting he’s scared.”

Elizabeth shook her head slowly, more confused than she had ever been in her life. She had been raised with simple values and a very clear understanding of right and wrong. Robert had betrayed her, that was certainly true, but she wondered if perhaps she did bear part of the blame. She had been so consumed with her own grief over the miscarriages that she had failed to consider his feelings. Not only had she accepted all the attention as her due, she had run off to Denver and abandoned him. Had she helped to push him into someone else’s arms when he wasn’t strong enough to resist?

The threat of divorce had been intended to hurt Robert as he had hurt her. But Elizabeth now realized that, regardless of the anguish he had caused her, she was still hopelessly in love with her husband, and try as she would, she could not conceive of spending the rest of her life without him. Despite her earlier determination, she felt the anger that had been coiled so tightly inside of her beginning to loosen.

“I suppose there might have been fault on both sides,” she conceded. “Maybe I could have been more sensitive to your needs.
But what you did … I mean, there just isn’t anything worse that could happen between a husband and wife.”

“If I could undo it, I would,” he cried, covering his face with his hands. “I’d make it all go away.”

“It’s a little late for that,” she observed.

“Please, give me another chance,” he urged. “Give
us
another chance. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I’ll do penance, I’ll toe the line, whatever you want. I swear I’ll never let you down again. Just give me one more chance.”

“Even if I would be willing,” Elizabeth sighed, “there’s still the other problem.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said flatly.

“You can’t abandon her, Robert, if that’s what you’re thinking. She’s your responsibility. Besides, we aren’t just talking about her, we’re also talking about a child—
your
child. There has to be some kind of acknowledgment, arrangements made, an understanding.”

“I said I’d take care of it.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened at a sudden thought. “But it’s even worse than that, isn’t it? We’ll never be able to keep this a secret. Sooner or later, it’ll get out—this kind of thing always does. And then your political career will be ruined. I can’t imagine this country electing a President with an illegitimate child.”

“Perhaps not,” Robert allowed.

Elizabeth brightened for a moment. “I don’t suppose she would let us adopt, let us give the child a name and a good home,
and go back to North Dakota?” she wondered aloud. Then she shook her head. “No… if it were me, I’d never give up my baby.
I’d sooner die.”

“Don’t worry,” Robert assured her. “I’ll handle it.” He leaned down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “You get some rest now,” he said gently. “Just put it all out of your head and leave everything to me. There’s a solution out there—it’s just a matter of finding it.”

He snapped off the lamp and left the room with a self-satisfied smile that his wife missed. Women had been put on this earth to be manipulated, he knew. It was all in knowing the right approach.

Elizabeth snuggled under the covers. It had been a ghastly day, but now it was over. The crisis was past, the healing could begin. Robert would take care of the girl and the child somehow, and even if they never got to the White House, life would go on. In time, the whole episode would be nothing more than an unpleasant aftertaste. Her eyes closed and she slept.

A week later, the body of a young girl washed up on Baker
Beach. An autopsy confirmed that she had drowned, and a coroner’s inquest, finding no evidence to the contrary, ruled the death a suicide, citing the fact that she was pregnant and unmarried as the probable reason. No one came forth to claim her..

On the sixth of August, Robert was invited to join the partnership of Sutton, Wells, Willmont and Spaulding.

1979

There is always one moment…

when the door opens and lets the future in.

—
Graham Greene

A
utumn was a fleeting, frosty breath that swept across Manhattan Island, chasing off the last remnants of summer before vanishing into winter. Snow followed quickly on the heels of Thanksgiving, but didn’t stick around for Christmas. Icy air was all that was on hand to welcome in the New Year.

Karen locked the front doors of Demion Five, double-checking to make sure they were secure before she crossed to the curb to hail a taxi.

Burglaries riddled this exclusive section of Madison Avenue, and shop owners had resorted to installing security barriers and sophisticated alarm systems. Pretty soon, she thought with a sigh, New York was going to resemble an armed fortress. In its two years of operation, Demion Five had been burgled three times. The first time, a week after the opening, vandals had destroyed half the inventory. When Karen arrived, she found priceless books soaked with water, canvases slashed, clothing shredded.

“Vindictive bastards,” Demelza exclaimed, surveying the devastation. “They did this because there wasn’t any money.”

“Why would anyone think we’d be stupid enough to leave money lying around?” Karen demanded.

The co-owner of the eclectic uptown establishment threw up her hands in disgust. “Let’s just call it another form of insurance we have to pay. From now on, we make sure that a hundred bucks stays in the register overnight.”

A cab pulled up to the curb to discharge a passenger and Karen grabbed it right out from under the noses of a timid Oriental couple. She pulled the door shut, gave the driver the address of her Sixty-third Street town house, and fell back against the seat. It was one of the less than chivalrous things New Yorkers did to get from one place to another, and doing it always made Karen feel a little mean inside.

The modest girl from the suburbs had been transformed into a cosmopolitan city-dweller. The long hair she had worn through much of the decade had been discarded in favor of a soft curly crop, Elizabeth Arden had taught her the artistry of makeup,
and Saks Fifth Avenue had reshaped her style of dress. Slim suits and tailored blouses now occupied her closet. As the Washington Square Bookery once accommodated one kind of clothing, uptown now required quite another.

Demion Five was Ione’s brainchild. The art history professor had conceived the idea primarily to help promote her husband’s work, but it was also a unique concept in shopping. When her father died, leaving her a bit of money, she decided to act.
The first thing she did was approach Demelza.

“I know art, but I don’t know anything about running a business,” she confessed. “I want to open a shop that’s not like anything I’ve ever seen, with rare books and magazines like you have at the Bookery, but also with quality art and fashions and jewelry and things. I don’t want a department store—I want this to be like an elegant home where the customers feel comfortable, as though they were calling on old friends. I see a setting with lots of sofas and chairs and carpets and morning coffee and afternoon tea.”

“I always thought the Bookery was like that homey part without the elegant,” Demelza observed.

“Exactly,” Ione agreed. “I guess what I want to do is add a little something to your act, and take it uptown.”

Karen practically wriggled with excitement. “I think it’s a marvelous idea,” she cried. “And of course this kind of thing has to be uptown. It would never fly down here.”