Promises (13 page)

Shocked to the core by the reality of these written words, he dropped the letter. The words had moved him into a state of terror, as when you are trapped in a nightmare, locked in a dark place with blank walls and no windows.

“They’re coming home late Sunday,” he said on Friday evening.

“That gives us two days.”

“No. I’ve neglected the garden, coming out here every night. It’ll take me most of Saturday to work on it. The corn’s up to my knees and choked with weeds.”

During the days since the letter had arrived, he had spoken twice to Margaret. The sound of her living voice, unlike her letter, had filled him with pity and shame, shame for himself and pity for the situation to
which he had brought them both. Uppermost in his mind was the determination that she must never know. Never! He would go through fire first.

And he said now, “Randi, she—my family—can’t ever, ever know.”

She gave him a small reproachful smile. “Have you any idea how often you’ve told me that? Of course they mustn’t. If they ever do find out, Adam, it won’t be from me.”

“My children,” he said. “And she—I can’t do that to her.”

“I understand. Darling, I really do.”

They were in the apartment. On the windowsill sparrows hopped, pecking at crumbs, causing him to remember that he had not fed the birds at home as he had promised to do. Randi, too, was staring out of the window into space.

She said suddenly, “You won’t let this mean the end for us, will you? You’ll just take each day as it comes, as long as we stay together?”

He nodded.

“You remember my plan? Here, and then the house as soon as it’s ready? And trips now and then. You remember?”

He nodded again.

“It won’t be so bad, Adam. Anyway, we have no choice, have we?”

No. No choice.

“I don’t understand what’s happened to me,” he cried. “I was contented. I thought I was happy.”

“You were in a rut, darling, and didn’t know it.”

How was that possible? If one was content in the rut, was it really a rut? But no answer came. Filled with
tumultuous confusion, he knew only that he could not do without what these few weeks had given to him.

“Oh,” he said, for perhaps the hundredth time, “what harm can come of this? We’re not hurting anybody.”

When she stood up from her chair, he, rising, too, took her into his arms. She was so soft, with her eyes cast down, her lashes brushing her round cheeks, her magic flesh, so soft.

And a thrill of peril shook through him, as if he were guiding a ship through a storm or standing on a cliff in the wind with rocks and ocean below. Yes, he would guide this ship through the storm and keep his balance on the cliff. Yes.

Quite simply, he needed this woman.

N
ina stepped back to study the effect and decided that it was good. In fact, it was so well composed that it was charming and could have been photographed for any illustrious magazine. Over the mantel hung a bull’s-eye mirror, its convex surface reflecting in miniature the room’s lovely melange of pinks and dusty greens. The round table set for two was impeccably dressed with old Coalport plates, remnants of a broken-up set found at a secondhand shop, and an age-mellowed Irish lace cloth found in the same place. At the center in a crystal bowl, a rather extravagant Christmas present to herself, she had made a frothy arrangement of freesias and ferns.

All these possessions, now at home in the new apartment, were precious to her. They soothed the senses, as did the very nature of her daily work: the tactile sense, when fingers touched silks and polished woods; the visual, of course, as experience improved her judgment of color and proportion. Nina lived, and was aware of living, in a sensuous world.

All her friends, several of whom had apartments in this building, were in some way involved with the production and appreciation of taste. Among them there were a model, a student of architecture, and an aspiring actor living with a ballet dancer. Here were the women who bought old dresses from the forties, who knew how to tie a scarf or choose the bag that would make a difference. They loved the city’s fashions, its museums, its concert halls and art films; occasionally, when flush with cash, they sampled its famous restaurants.

At this reminder of food Nina glanced behind the bamboo screen into the minute kitchen and, for what must have been the tenth time this evening, counted on her fingers for reassurance: the wine—she needed to buy a book and learn something about wines—a white, to accompany the blackened fish, Portobello mushrooms, a platter of broiled vegetables, salad with sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese, and for dessert, a
tarte tatin
, with cappuccino or espresso, whichever Keith might prefer. She looked at her watch. In ten minutes it would be time to heat things. She mustn’t forget the French bread. Thank heaven for New York’s delicious takeout caterers. The little dinner would be perfect.

The clock moved too slowly. And she took a book from the shelf, thinking it might fill the minutes before the doorbell should ring. He was always punctual; it was a trait that Margaret would definitely appreciate, she thought, smiling to herself. And she imagined Keith’s first meeting with the people at home. The way things looked, that meeting seemed inevitable, for they had come very, very far in the half year since they had met.

Not having read a complete sentence, she put the
book away and went to the mirror in the bedroom for further reassurance. What she saw there pleased her: black velvet pants and white sweater on a body that never bore a pound too many; eyes wide with expectation, and shining hair still piled high in the style that she had worn for years and would never change, for it was her signature.

“I know this is a cliché,” Keith said, “such an awful cliché as to be embarrassing when you tell a woman that she’s ‘different.’ In your case, though, it happens simply to be a fact, and I can’t help but say it.”

They had been having a drink in a snug downtown bistro, and he had been entertaining her by inventing a background for people at surrounding tables.

“The proper study of mankind—” he had begun, and stopped then, with his head tilted first to one side and then the other, studying Nina from all angles as if she were a statue. “In New York there are three or four general types of women: the Upper East Side fashionables, very expensive, half-starved, dressed in next year’s fashions from shoes to hair; the Village woman, just barely but not quite counterculture, sometimes natural and pretty but sometimes unkempt in jeans and sloppy sweaters. Then there’s the theater crowd, and so on, and so on. You don’t fall into any of the categories.”

“Maybe that’s because I came from the Midwest.”

“No. You would be unusual anywhere, Nina. Do you know what I first noticed about you? Your voice. I was talking to one of the men at your place, when I—”

“You were talking to Ernie about your mother’s antique Chinese lamp that somebody broke.”

“You remember that?”

“I remember. I thought you were the handsomest man I’d ever seen, and I wondered who you were.”

She was not coy about the admission. He had come into the shop to replace the lamp in time for his mother’s birthday. And she had indeed wondered very much about this quiet young man whose air of authority and polished manner were those of a much older person. There had seemed to be something oddly aphrodisiac about the combination of youth and age.

Ernie had never seen him before. “He appeals to you, eh? An aristocratic type. Even has the arched nose, the rich voice, and the natural-shoulder suit. Very attractive. He’s straight too. I guarantee it.”

“Ernie! How silly can you be?”

They had long gone past the first formal distance between employer and employee. Among the three of them, Ernie, Willie, and Nina, serious discussion, arguments, and banter passed equally and freely.

“Not silly. I saw you watching while I was talking to him. He saw you too.”

“And what in heaven’s name does that amount to?”

“Probably nothing. But the lamp still has to be electrified, so unless he wants us to deliver it, he may be back next week to get it. And if you’re in the shop when he comes, you’ll have a chance at him.”

“Foolisher and foolisher, Ernie.”

But it had not been foolish. The most farfetched fantasies can sometimes come true, she reflected now. For when an order for delivery arrived, the boy who usually fetched and carried for the firm was doing something else. And so it was Nina who delivered the fragile lamp by taxi.

The great apartments that filled the fifteen-story limestone
buildings on Fifth Avenue near the museum had no mystery for Nina. She had been in countless numbers of them, in the beginning as Crozier and Dexter’s humble trainee and more recently with real authority. That authority, too, was a fantasy come to life. So with poise she had passed beneath the green awning, given her name, and taken the elevator up to the door that had been opened to her by Keith himself.

For several seconds they stood as if startled; she had an impression of white collar, soft olive complexion, and vivid recognition. In the background lay a vista of mahogany and well-bred portraits in gilded frames.

“Come in, come in. Let me take that from you. Mother will be so pleased. Her luncheon’s tomorrow, and she’s been so worried that the lamp wouldn’t be here.”

Carefully, he placed it on a table beside the fireplace, adjusted the shade, and plugged the cord in.

“As you can see, the room would be positively naked without this thing.” And he twinkled at Nina. “Well, it does look nice, though.”

A frail woman with silver-gray hair and a dress that matched it came into the room.

“Oh, it’s lovely!” she cried, clasping her hands in a gesture that might be thought charming or else affected, depending on one’s point of view. “Do you know, I think it’s even prettier than the old one? But you’ve always had good taste.”

“Not mine, Mother. The compliment must go to Miss—”

“Keller,” she said quickly. “It’s not mine either. It was Mr. Dexter who helped you.”

“No matter. The thing is, my mother is happy.”

“Yes, it was very nice of you to bring it here, Miss Keller.”

“It was my pleasure,” replied Nina with equivalent formality. “Well, have a lovely party and a happy birthday.”

“Wait,” Keith said quickly as she moved toward the door. “I’ll go down and make sure the doorman can get a taxi for you.”

“Thank you, I’m sure I can manage.”

“No, I insist.”

They rode down in silence. There were no cabs in sight.

“Perhaps,” Keith said, “if you don’t mind a walk, we might have a drink before dinner? There’s a little place on Third. It’s not far.”

“I know. I live just west of Third.”

“So I take it that the answer is yes?” And again he seemed to twinkle with some private amusement that lighted his eyes and drew amiable crinkles at their corners.

“You may take it that way.” And she laughed.

“Why are you laughing?”

“It occurred to me, in a very nice way, how like you are to your mother.”

“So they always tell me. Rather formal, they say. I’m not aware of it.”

“I think you do more laughing than she does, though.”

“That’s true. It comes from my father. He could find humor in everything, even in his own final illness. I’m not quite that funny, sorry to say.”

They had halted for a red light, when he looked down
at her, half a head below him, and demanded why they were talking about him.

“I want to know about
you.
Where are you from? Surely not from New York.”

“No. I’m a midwesterner. A small town—a small city—woman. How did you guess?”

“Something indefinable. I just felt an awareness of you. You felt one, too, that day in the shop.”

Looking straight into a face that had abruptly turned solemn, she answered frankly, “Yes. Yes, I did.”

“Good. Now each of us knows where he stands.”

An unfamiliar thrill went through Nina then, a sense of some vague, looming happiness. Let come what may, she thought, as she kept pace with his steps.

At the “little place on Third,” Keith was evidently well known. The proprietor gave cheerful greeting and provided a table in an ell that was almost private. Keith drank scotch. Nina had an aperitif, and they talked. After a while he ordered dinner. “This isn’t fancy. The cooking is Italian homestyle. You’ll like it. I come here often.”

“What about dinner at home? Or don’t you live with your mother?”

“She’s invited out tonight. She’s been very ill, just over quadruple bypass surgery and a broken hip two years before that. It’s one reason why I was so eager to get that lamp on time. It was important for her, although it probably might seem ridiculous to other people.”

“Not to me. When you’re part of a close family, you’re tolerant of people’s little quirks, including your own. At home the big things aren’t lamps and things,
but dogs and birds. Heaven help you if you’re late with their feed and water.” She smiled, remembering.

“Tell me about your home, please, Nina.”

So, at his behest, she talked about herself. Then he talked about himself. By the second cup of after-dinner espresso she had learned that he was an investment banker, had lived in France, knew rather a good deal about art, was an active sponsor of cancer research, and was twelve years older than she.