Truth and Consequences (26 page)

Jane disregarded this, struck by the administrative repercussions of Delia's departure. “You know, if Delia leaves, we'll stop paying her.”

“Yeah. That bothers her. Maybe it's even kept her here a while longer.”

“But that can't matter so much. I mean, she must make a lot from her books.”

“Sure, she does. But not as much as she needs to feel safe. See, Delia's been poor much of her life, in ways people like you and me know nothing about. She worries about money a lot. And then, writing is chancy. The creek could dry up, like it did with me. Most writers, if they can't live on their royalties, they get a teaching job, but Delia can't stand teaching.”

“So how will she manage?”

“She'll manage. One way or another. You've got to remember, she's famous now. Seven years ago, when we met, she was only starting to be well-known, it was different. Anyhow, back then I was still writing and publishing. We were going to become famous together, that was her idea. Her delusion.” He laughed harshly. “Now I think she'd like a really successful husband. Somebody like that Wally Hersh, the trustee she was so sweet to at the dinner for L. D. Zimmern.”

“But Delia wouldn't marry someone like that,” Jane exclaimed. “I mean, Wally Hersh is old, he must be well over sixty. And he's so funny-looking. Lily Unger says he looks like a giant hamster.”

“But he loves literature; I heard him say so twice.” Henry smiled. “And he's rich. If Delia married him she would never have to worry about money again. She could hire help to drive and shop and cook and run errands. Right now she has to find people like me or Selma who will do it for nothing.”

“It's not just Selma. Everyone at the Center does things for her.”

“Yeah, I know.” Henry smiled sourly. He's thinking of what Alan has done for her, Jane thought—we both are.

“You'll be going to North Carolina too,” she said, realizing this for the first time and feeling as if she had received a blow just above the heart.

“I don't think so.” He shook his head.

“No?” In spite of herself, Jane felt joy—foolish, of course, because what difference could it make to her?

“No. I mean, maybe I should. I understand what Delia's been through, I know how frightened she gets sometimes when she's alone. I have a lot of sympathy for her, but I don't want to live with her anymore.”

Jane caught her breath. “You don't?” she echoed, forgetting for a moment that even if Henry were free now, she wasn't.

“No. And I think she doesn't want it either. She's not comfortable being with someone who doesn't worship her, doesn't believe in her absolutely. I try not to let it show, but she knows, and it brings her down.”

“It's the same with Alan,” Jane said. “I keep trying, but I don't believe in his art. And I don't believe in him. I asked him not to see Delia alone again, but it's still happening. I'm almost sure of it. When I was outside her office just now I heard all this shuffling and breathing inside. I think he's in there with her right now.”

“Really.” Henry did not look surprised or disturbed.

“Don't you care?” Jane stared at him.

“No. I guess I don't, not anymore. Do you?”

“Yes. It's so insulting, for one thing. I mean, here we are, and right over our heads something's going on, whatever it is. Maybe they're only talking. I don't know. But still—” Jane gasped.

“I see what you mean.”

“It's like he doesn't care what I know or what I feel, not really.”

“Yeah. That's what it's like.” He smiled, but Jane did not smile back.

“You're leaving too,” she said, looking at Henry and realizing how awful that would be, how important it had been that she could still see him at the Tuesday lectures and the Thursday lunches, even if they could never speak privately.

“I don't know—it depends—” He stumbled over the words.

“On what?”

“You, mostly.”

“Me?” Feeling dizzy, Jane subsided onto the window seat. “How?”

“I'd stay here if I could be with you. Otherwise, it'll be the worst place in the world.” He stared at her.

Jane met his glance briefly, then looked away. “I don't—I can't—” she cried.

“I suppose that's understandable,” Henry said. “Alan's going to have great success as an artist, Delia tells me. It's already started. He'll make a lot of money too. You don't want to be involved with a failure.”

“It's not that, not that at all,” Jane said, her voice shaking. “I don't care about that.”

“No. I believe you don't,” Henry said slowly. “It's something else, then. I guess probably you don't love me enough.”

“No, no,” Jane cried, choking up. “I love you too much, that's what's so awful. I can't help it. But I'm married to Alan, I can't leave him when he's so ill. I'll blame myself and everybody will blame me—”

“I see. You still want to look good. But is it worth it?”

“It's not—I don't—” Jane was unable to speak.

“Here's your tea,” Susie announced, coming into the room. “Oh, hello, Henry. Would you like a cup of tea? There's some nice raisin cookies too, left over from lunch.”

“No thank you, I'm just going,” Henry said. “So, Jane, you let me know what you decide,” he added in a strained, neutral tone. “Give me a call by Friday morning, okay?”

“Okay,” Jane echoed weakly.

“That's funny,” Susie said as the front door closed heavily behind him. “Henry always loves tea and cookies. What's the matter with him today?”

Jane swallowed, which somehow made her chest hurt terribly. “I have no idea,” she lied.

EIGHTEEN

Four days later, on a cold dark morning, Alan Mackenzie was on his way to the drugstore to renew a prescription for his current favorite painkiller. In spite of the errand and the weather, his mood was good. He was in only moderate pain, and his impetuous two-day trip to New York had been a success. Not only had he avoided Thanksgiving dinner with Jane's family, he had visited the Metropolitan Museum for the first time in over two years. He had also seen Jacky Herbert, who had professed to be “very keen” on the drawings for the new Doors and Windows constructions, and had spoken of a show the coming autumn. Jacky was also still negotiating with the “important collector” who might want Alan to design and supervise the building of a ruined tower on his Connecticut estate.

Flush with the checks Jacky had sent earlier,Alan had stayed in an East Side hotel rather than in his friends' cramped guest room on Morningside Drive. With the help of his new toilet-seat-concealing briefcase, he had managed planes, taxis, and restaurants with only intermittent serious pain. He had also seen Delia. She had come to his hotel for tea, and presently lain half-naked on his king-size bed, eating room-service tea sandwiches and drinking champagne, exclaiming over his drawings.

“This one, with the half-open window and the thin blowing curtains, no wonder Jacky loved it, it's so strange and melancholy and beautiful,” she had cried. “I want to use it for the cover of my next book of poems. If you'll let me.” She smiled.

“I'd be honored,” Alan had said, bending to kiss her in an especially sensitive place.

“Oh yes,” she had murmured. “Oh, love.”

Back home after Thanksgiving, life was less agreeable. Jane remained sullen and suspicious: she resented his absence from her parents' Thanksgiving dinner, and appeared to silently doubt his assurance that he had not gone to New York to see Delia, even though it was more or less true: the meeting with Delia had been a lucky accident, since Jacky had known where she was staying.

Alan knew he should be grateful to Jane, and he was grateful. But he didn't, he somehow couldn't, go beyond that, not anymore. They were supposed to be working on their marriage, but it was uphill work, and he was getting more and more worn out. Anyhow, love shouldn't be work. As Delia had written in a poem, it should be play and passion and joy.

Once he had loved Jane, Alan remembered; once he had thought her beautiful. But now she seemed small and thin and slight, conventional both in appearance and attitude. “People can change so much,” Delia had said, speaking about her own marriage to a professor at the Southern college she had gone to, “and then sometimes they aren't right for each other anymore. It's nobody's fault.”

One important change was that Jane now had no understanding or appreciation of his work. She had been very supportive and proud of his books on architecture, which always included a warm acknowledgment of her encouragement and help (research, typing, editing). His longest and most serious book, on eighteenth-century American vernacular architecture, was dedicated to her. At first Alan had thought that maybe she felt left out of his new projects, for which her assistance was not necessary. But it was more than that.

“You don't really like them, do you?” he had asked last week, indicating the new drawings spread out on his drafting table at the Center.

“It's not that, exactly,” his wife said, flatly honest as always, but obviously straining to be positive or at least polite. “Probably I just don't understand. I mean, you draw so beautifully—but I don't know . . . All these doors and windows, they're so kind of strange and empty. Scary, even. Maybe if there were people in the rooms . . .”

“But that's part of the point, that there's no one,” Alan had tried to explain. “They're the ghosts of rooms. Memories of rooms.” But Jane's expression had not altered, and for a moment a cold heavy surge of self-doubt had drenched him, like a storm-weather wave full of seaweed and broken shells.

He needed to see Delia, Alan realized, to hear her tell him again that his work was good. But on Monday she hadn't come in to the Center; according to Susie, she was at home with a bad migraine. On Tuesday she was still absent, and that afternoon, against his better judgment, Alan had called her house.

“Yeah?” It was the voice of Delia's husband, Henry Hull. . . . “No, she can't come to the phone, she's not well.” . . . “No, she doesn't want to talk to you or anyone. Look, it would be better if you people at the Center would stop calling, all right? She'll come in when she can.” Henry's voice was harsh with irritation, even with active hostility. Did he guess what Alan and Delia meant to each other? Or could Jane have told him about the incident in Delia's office?

Another cold flood of despondency had washed over Alan. But yesterday Delia, restored to health and more beautiful than ever in a new creamy lace shawl, had mopped up the flood. She had repeated her praise of his work and her desire for one of the drawings as a cover for her new book. Warmed by this, and by a half hour of pure pleasure, Alan had exclaimed impulsively that he wished that they could be together more often—always.

“Oh, my dear.” Delia smiled and made a small shooing gesture, as if waving invisible moths away. “I'd love that too. But you know it's not possible. I need someone with no serious work of his own, someone who has time to take care of me. We both need that.”

“You mean you need Henry.” Alan felt a heartburn spurt of jealousy.

“Not necessarily.” She sighed softly, and fell silent. “There's a time and place for everyone,” she said finally, “and I've begun to wonder if Henry's right for me now. There's so much sorrow and failure around him.” She shook her head slowly, causing her tangled curls to rise and subside. “It's sad. He had a gift once, but he wouldn't put it first, so he couldn't hold on to it.”

Henry's on his way out, thought Alan. And about time. He was never right for her: a dim, semi-employed Canadian, with an irritatingly ironic manner—a parasite on his beautiful, brilliant wife. “Yeah,” he agreed.

Delia gave a long sigh. “You have to put your gift first, always,” she said. “Because it's the only thing that will last. You have to sacrifice everything for it, including yourself. You'll be consumed soon enough anyhow, vanished into dust and smoke.”

“That's true,” Alan said, remembering times in the last year and a half in which he had felt this disappearance imminent, even desirable. “There's not that much time.”

“You know, if you're a creative person, when you're with someone who doesn't really understand what you're doing, gradually a kind of horrible vacuum develops. It sucks everything up eventually. Even your soul.”

Yes, it's the same for me, he had thought. Jane believed in my books, but she doesn't believe in what I'm doing now. She fears and dislikes it, really. “Jane doesn't like my new drawings much,” he said. “Really she doesn't like anything I've done lately.”

“That's serious.” Delia had stopped smiling. She knew, she told him, how destructive it was to live with someone who didn't believe in your work. “That's how it was with my first husband,” she told Alan. “Whenever he talked about my writing it was like frogs croaking in a swamp. He tried to be neutral; he didn't say much, but once you hear that croaking sound, the echoes of it are with you night and day, dragging you down and down into the mud. You have to snatch up everything and get away before it drives you mad.”

“You're right,” Alan replied. Another vision had come to him, and when he was back in his own office he began a drawing. Its central feature was the big Victorian sofa in the room across the hall, its cushions holding the imprint of Delia's body. Her lace shawl was thrown over the back next to the tall open window, and a book lay facedown on the carpet. The sculpture would be mostly in different shades of white and cream, but tinted here and there with a flush of rose-sepia. Sentimental? Yes, perhaps. But he would make it all the same, Alan thought now as he pulled into the snowy parking lot of the drugstore, for love, for Delia.